Achieving New States of Consciousness Through NLP, Neuroscience and Ritual

Philip H. Farber

via: http://www.realitysandwich.com/achieving_new_states_consciousness_through_nlp_neuroscience_and_ritual

This article is excerpted from Meta-Magick: The Book of Atem, newly released by Weiser Books.

Foreword

by Douglas Rushkoff

I DON’T BELIEVE IN TRADITIONAL MAGICK. Nor should you — especially if you want to learn to practice it.

No, it’s probably easier just to get everyone else to believe in it. Then just proceed according to plan and watch the rest of the world conform to your intention.

Of course, that’s just fine for the independent wizard looking to manipulate his way to sex, power, and cash, but what about the person who sincerely means to make the world a better, more just, and pleasurable place for everybody? What about the magician who doesn’t simply want to gain a disproportionate share of existing stuff, but wants instead to change the very relationship of matter, energy, and abundance?

That’s the kind of person who should turn away from traditional ceremonial magick and turn instead to the work of Philip Farber.

Too many novice magicians explore the possibilities of their craft from the hopelessly closed mindset attending the zero-sum game. For them, magick is something one does all alone, for the purposes of improving, changing, or expanding the self. It’s no wonder. Like every other mind technology, from the Torah to neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), chaos magick has been co-opted by the self-help movement. As a result, instead of destroying the “self” so that the person can be liberated, most magick practices only reconfirm the specious boundaries defining selfhood, further trapping the magician in the realm of the already possible — and further isolating all magicians from one another.

As I’ve come to understand it, the intent of Farber’s ongoing literary sigil is to move his readers beyond the practice of individual magicks into the shared space of collective, consensual hallucination. Beginning with the invocation of a known and accepted personage, Atem, Farber quickly branches out in new directions, casting a visionary world picture as if it were a guidebook — a description and instruction manual to a realm that is quite literally created in the process of its depiction and subsequent imagination.

But Farber’s world picture is not a specific map of forces. Rather, it is a place where his readers are free to develop their own. It is a meta-landscape — a series of laws that are each invitations to create new ones. The only terra firma is the guarantee of access to this collective act of ongoing creation.

In this sense, Meta-Magick is truly a “meta” magick — a menu-to-menu creation, an open-source approach to magick that puts each participant in the role of contributor and propagandist.

Meta-Magick is an invitation to participate in several levels of practice: the remapping of one’s own mind, the development of memes that can be transmitted to others, the use of media, and the implementation of social change. It is a picture of a world in which we all contribute to the landscape and its bylaws. It is the world in which we live.

* * *

PART ONE:
Invocations and Simple Evocations

FIRST INVOCATION OF ATEM
ATEM IS A SELFCREATED ENTITY THAT HUMAN MINDS PARTICIPATE IN. It is created, most importantly, of thought, of the attention of anyone who considers Atem for even a moment. This may seem a novel concept, yet there is precedence throughout history. Schools of thought, political ideologies, religious beliefs, corporate structures, forms of government, and much else depend on the attention of humans to exist, and they have built-in abilities to perpetuate, to include more humans, and even to reproduce. These self-perpetuating thought-forms, for our purposes here, are called memetic entities. Democracy is a memetic entity, as are Aikido, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, jazz, Buddha, Beelzebub, Sherlock Holmes, the English language, and Atem. They are patterns of information that act with autonomy across time and yet interact with humans on many levels. All of the given examples became manifest through the interaction of human minds — some, obviously, by an individual, others, less obviously, by changes in culture.

As Atem spreads, there will inevitably be debate about the level of existence of memetic entities. Some will point to these entities’ continued existence under many different names parallel to every era of human history, as we have just done. Some will claim they exist, but as blind, random events without autonomy. Some will claim that they are only imaginings and do not actually exist at all. Atem does not require belief to exist, only attention. Someone who specifically disbelieves in Atem will offer just as much attention energy to the entity, if not more — and the debate itself will fuel the existence of Atem and other memetic entities for years to come.

There is a special emphasis on the existence of Atem, his message, his function in the world. We are participating with Atem now because this entity opens the door to the realm of memetic entities. As you continue to read and to practice the exercises in this book, and as the mind of Atem becomes revealed, you will learn that memetic entities can come into being with ease by following a straightforward formula. Atem carries this message as content, as something you can read plainly in this book and, less apparently, as a way of thinking, a way of organizing the content of your experience so that these things become possible.

Atem is the Opener of the Way; his task is to create the possibility for a whole new pantheon of entities to come forth into the world. Each of us has the potential to engage in the art of bringing forth entities into the sphere of human awareness. Some may write books like this one, each with a new mind within it. Some may embody the entity in a work of art or in a performance. For some, the entity may be something that they teach face to face and pass along to the next person.

In order to teach these skills, Atem exhibits specific qualities that appear to us as analogous to personality traits in humans. Atem has a wide-ranging intellect that may incorporate information from just about any sector of the noosphere. He is very flexible in his behavior, and in his presence the quality of reality itself becomes flexible. This can make him seem to be a trickster, mercurial, hard to pin down. Results and desired phenomena may come by unexpected means. The method of contact with Atem may shift, change form, and offer surprises. Atem is sometimes seen as a virile young man holding a cat or a snake; or as an old man with a cane, his face and body hidden by a cloak; or as a woman about to give birth; or in many other forms. What remains constant, after careful consideration of the manifestation, is the presence of the Six Elements and Eight Powers. The Six Elements are: Attention, Language, Passion, Fitting, Trance, and Making. The Eight Powers are: Communication, Neuroplasticity, Transformation, Transmission, Beauty, Understanding, Balance, and Opening.

Thoughts and manifestations of Atem may occur near bodies of water in the sunlight, or in places that are sacred to computers and information technology, or where the setting sun shines through trees, or at night where people socialize and explore each other’s dreams and desires, or in any other place where the complexity of interactions reaches beyond the ability of a human’s conscious mind. Atem lives on the border of chaos, where the butterfly’s wings beat, where graphs become asymptotic, and where William Blake saw infinity in a grain of sand.

Atem is not here to save the Earth or unite mankind or to put health, wealth, and wisdom in your hand. Atem is here to Open the Way for the diversity of memetic entities who are capable of those tasks and much more.

It is important to remember that what you read here is not true. Nor is it false. It is, however, the way Atem thinks and relates to reality. Just as each human on this planet has a set of beliefs and conceptual filters that help them to define their abilities and limits, so too do memetic entities.

Notice that we do not attribute every idea in this book with academic verification. We do not cite sources (although there is a recommended study list of congruent information in appendix A). There is no need to “prove” these ideas; Atem is simply communicating the way that he thinks. On the other hand, the exercises in this book will demonstrate, within Atem’s mindset, the function and practice of these ways of thinking. The emphasis is on direct experience, which is the route to full understanding of Atem and Atem’s powers.

As with the beliefs of humans, the beliefs of Atem or another memetic entity may appear to be rational, irrational, or just what they are. Some are testable within our traditional consensus contexts, but all are true and testable — within the context of the entity’s reality. Just as we allow for the differing beliefs of humans, tolerance and patience for the differing ideas of Atem will allow you to eventually grasp the overall structure and context in which those concepts may be viewed as “true.”

Consciously, these are still just words. But read on.

SIMPLE EVOCATIONS

Basic Positive Resource Entity

1. Banishing: Imagine a circle around where you sit. Take a deep breath. As you inhale, let your awareness fill the circle. As you exhale, let your awareness contract to as small a point as you can, in the center of your chest. After five or six cycles of this, take a really, really, really deep breath, filling the circle with your awareness, then exhale forcefully and fully, letting your breath sweep through your personal circle, chasing out anything contrary to your purpose.

2. Evocation: Identify something in your life that makes you feel very good in some way. It can be a feeling of confidence, intelligence, satisfaction, arousal, intoxication, approval, or whatever you might describe as a good feeling. Pay very careful attention to how you feel, the structure of the feeling.

Where does the feeling start? What kind of feeling is it? Where does it go as it develops? Does it continue to move? Is it static? Follow the feeling through to its peak. Then ask yourself, “If this feeling had a color, what would it be?” Imagine the color (or colors) in your body in exactly the areas where the feeling is experienced. Then imagine that you are taking the colored shape out of your body and flip it around to face you. Place it on the floor outside your circle and breathe deeply, feeding the shape breath and energy on each exhalation.

Keep breathing and feeding it energy until it transforms. Once it has transformed, imagine you are communicating with it. Ask it what it wants to be called. Ask it what it can teach you that it has never before revealed. Ask it how you can feel really good more often. Find out whatever you can from it. Thank it for everything.

You can also ask this entity if it has anything that it would like to do away from your physical body, off in the external parts of consciousness. If it says that it does, then you can get an agreement of time from the entity-five minutes, an hour, a day, five years, or whatever time is appropriate to the task-and the promise from the entity to return to your physical presence at that time. Note down the time of the entity’s return so that you can take notice when it occurs.

3. Closing: Reabsorb the entity and anything else you may have created in your aura during this operation.

4. Repeat Banishing.

Transforming Negative Entities

1. Banishing: Imagine a circle around where you sit. Take a deep breath. As you inhale, let your awareness fill the circle. As you exhale, let your awareness contract to as small a point as you can, in the center of your chest. After five or six cycles of this, take a really, really, really deep breath, filling the circle with your awareness, then exhale forcefully and fully, letting your breath sweep through your personal circle and chase out anything contrary to your purpose.

2. Evocation: Identify something in your life that makes you feel bad in some way. This technique can be used even with major trauma. It is recommended, however, that you begin with less intense experiences until you develop proficiency. For your first time, think about something in your life that is mildly unpleasant-a situation with family members or coworkers that leaves you feeling annoyed, for instance.

Again, notice where the feeling flows in your body and mark it out with colors as you did for the good feeling in the “Basic Positive Resource Entity” exercise. Flip the shape around and place it outside the circle, in front of you, but this time trap it in a geometric shape of some kind, such as a triangle or square drawn (in your imagination) on the floor.

Keep breathing and feeding it energy until it transforms. Once it has transformed, imagine you are communicating with it. Ask it what it wants to be called. Ask it what it wants. Ask if there’s a way for it to accomplish its goal in a more pleasant manner. Negotiate. Find out what it can do for you that it hasn’t done before. Find out what you can do for it.

Keep breathing to feed it energy. It may transform again, if your negotiation is successful. If it does, flip it back around and draw it back into your body, in its original position.

If it doesn’t change again, you have a couple of choices:

(1) draw it back into yourself, but reversed from its original position, or

(2) breathe and draw some energy from it with your inhalation until it has diminished somewhat, then reabsorb it back, flipped around, to its original position.

3. Repeat Banishing.

Attention

“A path is formed by walking on it.”
-CHUANG TZU

IN THE WORLD OF ATEM, EXISTENCE IS DEFINED BY ATTENTION. Everything that exists, exists in consciousness as a collection of perceptual bits, gathered by attention. When you look, listen, feel, taste, and smell, the record of that experience becomes data for the mind-data that can be recalled or recombined. Whether or not an actual, objective, external reality also exists is irrelevant to Atem; the world that humans and memetic entities live in is the one mediated by perception and the mind.

We can think of our conscious minds, the ostensible engines of perception, as a flashlight in a very huge, dark building. Level upon level of experience awaits us in that building, opportunities for countless experiences of perception, but our flashlight can only illuminate a very small circle at any one time.

Even the tiny portion of the world illuminated by that flashlight glimpse is loaded with potential sensory experiences for which humans are ill equipped. The only way we can observe most of the electromagnetic spectrum, for instance, is with instruments. Our instruments, as amazing as some may be, can detect only those things that we can conceive of, those ways of experiencing that we can imagine. Atem tells us that there are many, many more ways of experiencing than humans have yet imagined. If we imagine another way of experiencing, then suddenly a new realm of reality is opened to us. Was it real before we imagined it?

Zen amateurs question the existence of falling trees in hypothetical forests, and by doing so give existence to all such remote trees.

Our perceptions, thoughts, and memories come in modalities that we are very familiar with. The senses — visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, and gustatory — pretty much describe the whole range of things a human can experience: what we can see externally and what we can visualize internally; what we can hear with our ears and what sounds, voices, or music we might hear in our heads; the things we can touch or bump up against and the feelings that tell us about emotions; tastes and smells perceived, remembered, and imagined. Even in the depths of mystical experience, the mind brings back the ineffable with descriptions of light, harmony, the kinesthetics of wonder, and synesthesia of every kind. These may be awe-inspiring experiences, but to describe them, to recall them, they must be reduced through the filters of perception and language to the sensory units that human consciousness can deal with.

Each sense comes in infinite variety. Not only can each sense be internal or external, but each is also subject to description by location, motion, direction, and size. Vision may be described with qualities such as brightness, hue, saturation, and contrast. Hearing may have qualities such as volume, tone, pitch, rhythm and so forth. Feeling may be described with terms including pressure, temperature, intensity, sharpness, dullness, etc. Taste and smell are possessed of pungency, sourness, sweetness, and so forth. (See appendix B, “List of Submodalities.”)

When we begin to think about how humans organize thoughts, we may notice that any of these kinds of perceptions can be located pretty much anywhere in the body-and very often outside the body as well. When visualizing a remembered scene, only a few people will actually place the mental image inside their own heads. Most of us see the imagining as a tableau somewhere in space, usually spread out in front of us. It is significant to our thought processes whether a recalled image (or sound or feeling) is found in a particular location, whether or not it is dark, light, harmonious, discordant, smooth, rough, or whatever. While this is usually an unconscious process, we do often note it in our speech: “I had that in the back of my mind.” “Now that we have all these choices in front of us . . .” “It’s over my head.” “I was totally wrapped up in it.” “What a pain in the ass!” “That’s rough!” “You have a bright future.”

The narrow flashlight of consciousness can illuminate a portion of this experience at any one time — and the unconscious mind continues to sort and order thoughts in this way all the time. Each of us moves through our day in a cloud or web or vortex or grid of sensory details, a continually interacting flow of external awareness, associations and memories, imaginings and projections, feelings and emotions. Sometimes we are aware of one small part of this flow, sometimes we are aware of another. Some of us have large, grand arrays of sensation. Others have narrow, dull collections of thoughts and images. Some of us scatter our attention through the space of a large building. Others contain their attention within a cozy little cocoon. And, of course, every other permutation that you can think of-and probably some you can’t. The way that attention is arrayed through and about the body will contribute to aspects of our personality, mood, philosophy, preferred modes of cognition, and much else.

Things that we generally consider as “real” exist only as perceptual data that is interpreted by consciousness. And things that we generally consider as “imaginary” also exist only as perceptual data that is interpreted by consciousness. The mind will react to internal perceptions much as it does to external ones. Consider how a memory of something painful can still make you wince or how a joyous memory can bring a smile to your face. Remembering the face, the tone of voice, or the touch of a lover can cause arousal. Hearing a song played or the punchline of a joke told in your mind can make you cry or laugh.

Attention can be directed toward something in a variety of ways. You can look at, listen to, touch, taste, or smell something directly. You can imagine something that is not present or not strictly physical-for instance, a concept, philosophy, or memetic entity. You can make symbolic offerings to something, of food, beverage, money, breath, or anything else of value to you. You can describe something, or appeal to it with language-or conversely, read, listen to, view, or otherwise pay attention to a description encoded in language.
DAY ONE: ATTENTION/ATTENTION

HOW WE DIRECT OUR ATTENTION can determine our present experience. This principle can be tested experimentally in a variety of ways. The following three exercises demonstrate how simple changes in attention engender changes in the external consciousness.

Forward/Backward Thinking

1. Person A holds out an arm, fully extended, palm facing forward. Person B holds hands up in front of his or her chest, at the level of Person A’s arm. (See fig. A.)

2. Person B walks forward at an even pace and continues on even after contacting Person A’s arm. Person B calibrates, learning how much effort is necessary to walk past Person A’s arm.

3. Participants return to their original positions. Person B picks an object or location some distance ahead of him or herself. B continues to think about that object or location as he or she, again, presses past Person A’s arm. B notes how much effort is necessary to walk past A’s arm with attention ahead.

4. Participants return to their original positions. Person B picks an object or location some distance behind him or herself. B continues to think about that object or location as he or she, again, presses past Person A’s arm. B notes how much effort is necessary to walk past A’s arm with attention behind.

5. Partners switch positions and repeat steps 1 through 4.

6. Partners take a few moments to discuss their observations.
Up/Down Thinking

This exercise is performed by three people.

1. Person A stands in the center, and B and C take positions on either side, facing A. Person A holds elbows at sides, forearms folded up against upper arms. B and C take hold of A’s elbows. (See fig. B.)

2. B and C carefully lift A, calibrating and learning how much effort is needed to lift Person A in this manner. A is then gently lowered back to the floor.

3. Person A thinks about something up above him or herself. The more distant this object or location is, the better. Clouds or a distant star are ideal. While A continues to direct attention up, B and C carefully lift A. B and C take note how much effort is needed to lift A while he or she is directing attention up.

4. Person A thinks about something below him or herself. The more distant this object or location is, the better. The center of the Earth is ideal. While A continues to direct attention down, B and C carefully lift A. B and C take note how much effort is needed to lift A while he or she is directing attention down.

5. Participants take a few moments to discuss their observations.

Circular Thinking

This exercise normally requires at least two people. One will perform the experiment while the partner(s) will observe as closely as possible. A solo version can be performed using a video-recording device as an observer.

1. Person A imagines a circle drawn around him or her on the floor. He or she stands in the exact center of the circle, making sure that the circumference is an equal distance in front of him or her as it is behind, and is an equal distance to the right as it is to the left.

2. A imagines that the circle is sliding forward along the floor, until it has moved, in its entirety, in front of A. A holds this imagining for a moment, then returns the circle to its original position.

3. A imagines that the circle is sliding backward along the floor, until it has moved, in its entirety, behind A. A holds this imagining for a moment, then returns the circle to its original position.

4. A imagines that the circle is sliding to the right along the floor, until it has moved, in its entirety, to the right of A. A holds this imagining for a moment, then returns the circle to its original position.

5. A imagines that the circle is sliding to the left along the floor, until it has moved, in its entirety, to the left of A. A holds this imagining for a moment, then returns the circle to its original position.

6. Observers discuss what they observed, no matter how minute.

7. Person A discusses what the experience was like from his or her point of view.

8. Participants change positions and repeat the experiment, rotating until everyone has served as both observer and observed.

via: http://www.realitysandwich.com/achieving_new_states_consciousness_through_nlp_neuroscience_and_ritual

Buckminster Fuller Challenge 2008

Totally Rad!

The brothers of Santa Claus

We are the brothers of Santa Claus
The brothers of Santa Claus
We are the brothers of Santa Claus
The brothers of Santa Claus
Santa Claus is our big bro
he’s makin’ toys up in the northpole
where it’s cold cold
out of reach
we like to chill out on the beach
Santa’s so cold and it might sound silly
but if he don’t wear drawers he gets a
chilly willy
cause brrrrr it’s cold cold
brrrrr it’s cold cold
Santa comes down, gets bakes and tanned
does donuts in his sliegh in the sand
Santa got a cane but he got no limp
he gots lots of hos but he aint no pimp
Santa say ho ho ho
Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho
He don’t know how to frisbee throw
cause
We are the brothers of Santa Claus
The brothers of Santa Claus
We are the brothers of Santa Claus
The brothers of Santa Claus

Utah Phillips

U. Utah Phillips has passed away in his sleep at 11:30PM PDT on May 23, 2008.

http://www.utahphillips.org/

The offical Obituary as provided by the family. May 24, 2008

“Folksinger, Storyteller, Railroad Tramp Utah Phillips Dead at 73″
Nevada City, California:

Utah Phillips, a seminal figure in American folk music who performed extensively and tirelessly for audiences on two continents for 38 years, died Friday of congestive heart failure in Nevada City, California a small town in the Sierra Nevada mountains where he lived for the last 21 years with his wife, Joanna Robinson, a freelance editor.

Born Bruce Duncan Phillips on May 15, 1935 in Cleveland, Ohio, he was the son of labor organizers. Whether through this early influence or an early life that was not always tranquil or easy, by his twenties Phillips demonstrated a lifelong concern with the living conditions of working people. He was a proud member of the Industrial Workers of the World, popularly known as “the Wobblies,” an organizational artifact of early twentieth-century labor struggles that has seen renewed interest and growth in membership in the last decade, not in small part due to his efforts to popularize it.

Phillips served as an Army private during the Korean War, an experience he would later refer to as the turning point of his life. Deeply affected by the devastation and human misery he had witnessed, upon his return to the United States he began drifting, riding freight trains around the country. His struggle would be familiar today, when the difficulties of returning combat veterans are more widely understood, but in the late fifties Phillips was left to work them out for himself. Destitute and drinking, Phillips got off a freight train in Salt Lake City and wound up at the Joe Hill House, a homeless shelter operated by the anarchist Ammon Hennacy, a member of the Catholic Worker movement and associate of Dorothy Day.

Phillips credited Hennacy and other social reformers he referred to as his “elders” with having provided a philosophical framework around which he later constructed songs and stories he intended as a template his audiences could employ to understand their own political and working lives. They were often hilarious, sometimes sad, but never shallow.

“He made me understand that music must be more than cotton candy for the ears,” said John McCutcheon, a nationally-known folksinger and close friend.
In the creation of his performing persona and work, Phillips drew from influences as diverse as Borscht Belt comedian Myron Cohen, folksingers Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, and Country stars Hank Williams and T. Texas Tyler.

A stint as an archivist for the State of Utah in the 1960s taught Phillips the discipline of historical research; beneath the simplest and most folksy of his songs was a rigorous attention to detail and a strong and carefully-crafted narrative structure. He was a voracious reader in a surprising variety of fields.
Meanwhile, Phillips was working at Hennacy’s Joe Hill house. In 1968 he ran for a seat in the U.S. Senate on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket. The race was won by a Republican candidate, and Phillips was seen by some Democrats as having split the vote. He subsequently lost his job with the State of Utah, a process he described as “blacklisting.”

Phillips left Utah for Saratoga Springs, New York, where he was welcomed into a lively community of folk performers centered at the Caffé Lena, operated by Lena Spencer.
“It was the coffeehouse, the place to perform. Everybody went there. She fed everybody,” said John “Che” Greenwood, a fellow performer and friend.
Over the span of the nearly four decades that followed, Phillips worked in what he referred to as “the Trade,” developing an audience of hundreds of thousands and performing in large and small cities throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. His performing partners included Rosalie Sorrels, Kate Wolf, John McCutcheon and Ani DiFranco.

“He was like an alchemist,” said Sorrels, “He took the stories of working people and railroad bums and he built them into work that was influenced by writers like Thomas Wolfe, but then he gave it back, he put it in language so the people whom the songs and stories were about still had them, still owned them. He didn’t believe in stealing culture from the people it was about.”

A single from Phillips’s first record, “Moose Turd Pie,” a rollicking story about working on a railroad track gang, saw extensive airplay in 1973. From then on, Phillips had work on the road. His extensive writing and recording career included two albums with Ani DiFranco which earned a Grammy nomination. Phillips’s songs were performed and recorded by Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings, Joan Baez, Tom Waits, Joe Ely and others. He was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Folk Alliance in 1997.

Phillips, something of a perfectionist, claimed that he never lost his stage fright before performances. He didn’t want to lose it, he said; it kept him improving.
Phillips began suffering from the effects of chronic heart disease in 2004, and as his illness kept him off the road at times, he started a nationally syndicated folk-music radio show, “Loafer’s Glory,” produced at KVMR-FM and started a homeless shelter in his rural home county, where down-on-their-luck men and women were sleeping under the manzanita brush at the edge of town. Hospitality House opened in 2005 and continues to house 25 to 30 guests a night. In this way, Phillips returned to the work of his mentor Hennacy in the last four years of his life.

Phillips died at home, in bed, in his sleep, next to his wife. He is survived by his son Duncan and daughter-in-law Bobette of Salt Lake City, son Brendan of Olympia, Washington; daughter Morrigan Belle of Washington, D.C.; stepson Nicholas Tomb of Monterrey, California; stepson and daughter-in-law Ian Durfee and Mary Creasey of Davis, California; brothers David Phillips of Fairfield, California, Ed Phillips of Cleveland, Ohio and Stuart Cohen of Los Angeles; sister Deborah Cohen of Lisbon, Portugal; and a grandchild, Brendan. He was preceded in death by his father Edwin Phillips and mother Kathleen, and his stepfather, Syd Cohen.

The family requests memorial donations to Hospitality House, P.O. Box 3223, Grass Valley, California 95945 (530) 271-7144 www.hospitalityhouseshelter.org

Word document here: http://www.utahphillips.org/utahphillipsdeadat73.doc PDF version: http://www.utahphillips.org/utahphillipsdeadat73.pdf

From: http://www.utahphillips.org/

why aren’t all bikes like this ?

from http://welcometovoluntarysimplicity.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/why-arnt-all-bikes-like-this/

On the streets of India and China these types of bike are common place. Cheap utility vehicle options are born more out of economic reason rather than an ethical or environmental one, thats understandable but why have we not adopted the same route?

I must admit I’m a bit bias because I love these things, but also I can’t see why more bikes arn’t built this way over the conventional bicycle style. I want to see a larger range of utility bikes on the market at affordable prices. It’s not just that there useful the environmental impact speaks for itself. Being a non car person I still often have to rely on car owners to move anything bigger than what will fit in a rucksack, which is very annoying but one of these would make life much easier as well as giving me back a sense of independence.

What bothers me most is that it’s probably the western fear of looking odd. The last thing most people want to do is stand out. How many times have you heard people say “I’m not walking down the street carrying that!”

I know you can get trailers and panniers for conventional cycles, which from a permaculture point of view I have to say is better than having to scrap an old bike for a new one but I want custom built utility cycles to replace conventional cycles. I’m sure the environmental impact would be staggering. I know that I don’t go shopping on my bike for two reasons, one is that everything on my bike is quick release so it’s easy to pinch bit’s off it even when it’s chained up. Two I’ve nowhere to put my shopping! A trike with a box on the front would solve all my worries and it would’nt fall over!!

Here are the ones I like that are on the market at present. I’ve not posted links as this is not an advertisement.

I want to make one similar to this one above.

The main hurdle at present is that they are on offer but not at an affordable price, most start at the £1000 mark! The solution then is to customize existing bikes to what you need. Last month I was given a lift through the centre of london on a customized bike. It had a seat on the front which could also double as a box and a smaller seat at the back, so you could have two passengers. I’m in the process of doing this myself, any tips are welcome and I’ll post the results, even if they are a shambles!!. I see so many scrap cycles just dumped and they are always going on freecycle.

What to Expect from the Conventions

An Analysis of the Strategic Opportunities and Challenges Presented by the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions

Prepared as a contribution to In the Middle of a Whirlwind: 2008 Convention Protests, Movement and Movements, a project coordinated by Team Colors and published by The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest

The Short Answer

If you plan to attend the demonstrations at the Democratic or Republican National Conventions, you should already know what you intend to accomplish there and how you will go about it. If, for example, you intend to blockade a street, you should already be in a committed affinity group, have picked out a location, and be hammering out the details. Things never go as planned, but preparation helps get things off on the right foot. If you haven’t done any of this yet, there’s still time, but get a move on—one thing that has been proven not to work at mass mobilizations is for everyone to show up hoping everyone else has done the work.

Doubtless, there will be some—perhaps ten, perhaps ten thousand—for whom the conventions are a life-changing experience, and others for whom they will be non-events. We get out of life what we put in. But one has to prioritize—so how important are these conventions, anyway?

The Long Answer

To answer this question, let us:

• reappraise the effectiveness of mass mobilizations in general
• consider the current context
• scrutinize the motivations and infrastructures of both the organizers and the authorities
• and examine the specific strategies that have been proposed for the protests.

Advisory: The pernicious thing about analyses like this one is that, in framing human activity on the stage of world history rather than in terms of personal decisions and experiences, they present life through the wrong end of the telescope. Reading too many texts like this can convey the impression that the desires and actions of any given individual are insignificant in the grand scheme of things. In fact, we experience the world as individuals, not as a grand totality—each human being is literally the center of his or her world, and our treatises should start from this premise rather than obscuring it. There is no “world history” except for the sum total of all our individual lives. It can be useful to examine social and historical phenomena in hopes of making our efforts at resistance and liberation more strategic, but the center of gravity should always be your life.

Return to Summit Demonstrations?

As chronicled in our earlier report, Demonstrating Resistance, since the turn of the century the North American anarchist movement has gone through a turbulent love affair with mass actions, passing from heady infatuation to messy breakups, attempted reconciliations, and finally wistful nostalgia. At first, following the WTO protests of 1999, mass mobilizations were taken for granted by many as the way to take on capitalism. Later, as bills came due in the form of legal troubles, burnout, and diminishing returns on previously effective tactics, it became popular to describe the mass action model as obsolete.[1][1] We cannot consider this disenchantment outside the context of the antiwar movement, of course, which is examined in the following section. Some of those who participated most enthusiastically in the heyday of summit-hopping subsequently brushed it off as a dead end. We must take their criticisms seriously, even if we factor in the disillusionment that typically comes with age and the tendency people have to condemn an approach in universal terms simply because they no longer wish to participate in it themselves.

Two of the most common adjectives critics use to describe mass mobilizations are reactive and symbolic. One can hardly argue with the former description. The tentative efforts that have been made to duplicate the mass mobilization model on a proactive basis, such as the 2002 Fiesta del Pueblo in Boston and the “Fix Shit Up” campaign in Georgia preceding the 2004 G8 summit, have not been promising; it seems that, at least for now, it is much easier to mobilize a great number of people against something than for something. Constantly responding to events organized by our enemies keeps us from taking the initiative and distracts us from manifesting examples of the world we wish to live in. But this does not mean there is no such thing as a good time to react, only that we must be judicious in picking when to do so.

The charge that mass mobilizations are symbolic is more complicated. What does it mean for something to be symbolic? The togetherness, visibility, and conflict with the forces of law and order that many of us have experienced at demonstrations were real enough. A militant march calling for the abolition of capitalism cannot immediately achieve its object, of course, but that doesn’t mean it is merely symbolic—if it contributes to the development of a current of resistance, then it is as effective at its stated purpose as a grocery distribution might be. David Graeber has argued persuasively that the upswing of anticapitalist mass mobilizations around the turn of the century was instrumental in bringing about major defeats for the WTO, FTAA, IMF, and World Bank. Certainly, the liberal antiwar marches organized since then have done nothing to halt the Iraq war, but this simply suggests that some mass mobilizations are merely symbolic while others are not.

One might argue that trade summits and political conventions are essentially media events—that they are themselves symbolic. According to this logic, even the most confrontational demonstrations only pit one spectacle against another, thus remaining within the field of political discourse rather than mounting a real attack on the root system of capitalism. This begs the question of what comprises the essential infrastructure of the capitalist system: is it only the labor of workers in factories, or does it also include the legitimacy people accord governments and laws, the illusion of the absence of dissent, the hypnosis of empty streets? Not to suggest that it is more important to confront capitalism on the level of rhetoric and representation than at the sites of production; but the Seattle WTO protests showed that the former approach can complement the latter in times of low revolutionary consciousness.

Anarchists with a taste for confrontation and property destruction have suggested that large-scale demonstrations have become so heavily policed since 9/11 that it is impossible to get away with anything. Whether or not this is true, one cannot evaluate the importance of this contention without establishing what the point of confrontation and property destruction is in the first place.

Clearly, anarchists cannot smash capitalism one window at a time; as has been pointed out before, natural disasters regularly do tens of thousands of times more financial damage to corporations than anarchists ever have without bringing the downfall of capitalism any closer. The trashing of corporate shop fronts during the Seattle WTO protests contributed to the surge of anarchism in the US because it was a visible—even symbolic—statement, not because of the financial losses inflicted on Nike and Starbucks. The effectiveness of such actions cannot be measured in purely military or economic terms; they are powerful because they are visible and inspiring to others, expressing a dissident value system with a simple gesture that can be easily imitated.[2][2] At the same time, they draw this power from directly attacking manifestations of the capitalist system, which they could not do if they were merely symbolic; thus these actions depend on a precarious combination of symbolic and concrete. This contrasts sharply with the clandestine cell approach associated with the Earth Liberation Front, which maximizes material and financial damage while tending to isolate the confrontation from a broader social context.

Aspiring window-smashers who marched in frustration down streets lined with police have long fantasized about how much easier it would be to smash those windows without a public call to action tipping off the authorities. Yet it does not appear that most of those who withdrew from the mass action model in search of more effective approaches have found them. Despite calls for more clandestine action in the wake of the decline of mass mobilizations, autonomous direct action is hardly at a high point in the US right now. One of the essential characteristics of mass mobilizations is that the urgency and companionship enable participants to pass beyond their everyday limits; for a short time, they collectively produce and experience a different reality, and act accordingly. Without this feedback loop, it is much more difficult for many people to cross the threshold into serious action.

So is it more effective for one person to smash twenty windows on an empty street, or for twenty people to smash one window with the eyes of the world upon them? For that matter—is it safer to smash windows alone, or during a mass mobilization when lawyers are prepared to spring into action and police may be hard pressed to prove that they grabbed the right black-masked hoodlum? Is an example more infectious when it takes place in a typical suburban setting, or in a glamorous moment of collective activity? There may not be simple answers to these questions, but this indicates that those who desire contagious conflict with the state cannot simply brush off the value of mass mobilizations.

We cannot discuss the matter of visibility without addressing the role of the media. Mass mobilization is a risky strategy indeed if its effectiveness hinges on attention from corporate media; indeed, one of the great lessons of 9/11 was that a movement that depends on media coverage for its morale can be dispelled in a single day. Yet mass mobilizations lend themselves well to decentralized media; because so many witness them together, they are often documented by a multiplicity of voices in a way that smaller-scale actions rarely are. At best, this independent coverage can force the corporate media to pick up stories and stick closely to the facts, for fear of being upstaged or delegitimized by their underground competition.

Some critics feel that anarchists should focus on building up infrastructure, and that mass mobilizations simply distract from this. This poses a dichotomy that is contradicted by recent history. The indymedia network, arguably one of the most successful anti-authoritarian infrastructures in the world, came to be as a direct result of the WTO protests in Seattle. Likewise, though efforts to coordinate nationwide networks in the US for their own sake have all fizzled, consultas and chapters of Unconventional Action have appeared all across the US over the past several months. By providing a massive challenge and a common goal, a successful mass mobilization can enable anarchists to make qualitative as well as quantitative advances in experience, connections, and capabilities.

So the most primitive—though not necessarily wrong-headed—argument for anarchists to invest themselves in demonstrating against the Democratic and Republican National Conventions is that it’s been half a decade since the last major anarchist-organized mobilization. It’s good to have them every once in a while so we can maintain visibility outside areas in which we have a lot of local activity. Summit-hopping is draining, but the occasional major action can be reinvigorating.

All this is not to say that we can count on a mass mobilization to inaugurate a new era of social struggle simply because this has occurred in the past. Let us now consider whether this summer is the most opportune juncture at which to hazard this experiment.

The Historical Context

Some have charged that the antiwar movement
failed because it was not empowering for
the working class or people of color.
This is a half-truth: the antiwar movement failed because it was not empowering for anybody.

The so-called “anti-globalization movement,” named by corporate media with a vested interest in obscuring the possibility of modern-day anticapitalist struggle, emerged as if from nowhere in the late 1990s. In fact, it was the convergence of a wide variety of smaller social currents ranging from indigenous liberation struggles to the do-it-yourself punk scene, all of which had been quietly developing over the preceding years. Perhaps the most surprising accomplishment of the movement was to reintroduce and revitalize street-level conflict, which many had deemed irrelevant in the postmodern era.

The North American wing of this movement was not prepared for the sudden changes wrought by September 11, 2001; although the militant anti-IMF protest organized for that month became the first antiwar protest, anarchists lost the initiative to liberals and communists who were more familiar with single-issue antiwar organizing. To the glee of authoritarians of every stripe, the antiwar movement replaced the anticapitalist movement in the public eye between 2001 and 2003.

The antiwar movement of the following years was a colossal failure—perhaps the most colossal failure in the history of antiwar movements. Taken together, the demonstrations that took place worldwide on February 15, 2003 comprised the most widely attended protest in human history—and yet they did absolutely nothing to hinder the Bush administration. One might say it was a triumph of co-optation that so much outrage and motivation was diverted into ineffectual rituals, so soon after anticapitalists had demonstrated the power of direct action. To be fair, the effectiveness of the demonstrations of 1999-2001 did not become clear until years later when many were no longer paying attention. Also, there were scattered efforts to apply direct action in antiwar efforts, such as the targeting of recruitment centers and ports engaged in military shipping; these were simply too little too late. Imagine the effect if a mere tenth of the participants in the February 15 demonstrations had smashed recruiting center windows or blockaded ports!

Some have charged that the antiwar movement failed because it was not empowering for the working class or people of color. This is a half-truth: the antiwar movement failed because it was not empowering to anybody. The groups that dominated antiwar organizing did all they could to limit the tactics and strategies of participants to the lowest common denominator. Few will stick around in a movement that is not committed to or capable of accomplishing its professed objectives, and this is doubly true of people with limited resources who are all too familiar with being exploited for others’ gain. There were efforts to recruit working class people and people of color, but these rarely created mutually beneficial collaboration and dialogue. It could be charged that organizers sought to involve a wide range of demographics in order to present the movement as diverse, while still endeavoring to control its content and direction. Approaching the antiwar movement as an opportunity to create a mass under liberal leadership, rather than a chance to actually fight the war machine, actually undermined the possibility of it ever adding up to a durable, empowered mass.

By the middle of Bush’s second term, public sentiment was acknowledged to be overwhelmingly against the war, and yet the antiwar movement had effectively collapsed. The tactic of mass mobilization, which liberals had hijacked from radicals, had accordingly been abandoned; protests still occurred, but none drew numbers worthy of the word “mass.”

Now the antiwar movement has ceded the territory it took in 2002, and it’s up to us to fill this vacuum.

Today, liberal politics beyond the voting booth has been completely deflated by the failure of the antiwar movement. Liberal hopes are once again pinned on electoral politics, and the streets are as quiet as they were in the mid-1990s when neoconservatives were crowing that capitalism had triumphed as “the end of history” and the obsolescence of mass mobilizations was taken for granted by anarchists. This is to say: the liberal antiwar movement has ceded the territory it took in 2002, and if anarchists could fill this vacuum we might become major players once again.

Especially if a Democrat is elected to be the next President—but either way, really—anarchists now find ourselves in an explicitly oppositional position that brings out the differences between us and liberals as well as conservatives. If we are bold enough to take advantage of this—by practicing effective direct action rather than staging spectacles and recruiting drives, for example—we may be able to seize the initiative once again. Not being subsumed in a predominantly liberal opposition enables us to take the initiative to mobilize a real opposition beyond the dead ends of electoral politics and merely perfunctory protest. Many of those who participated sincerely in the antiwar movement must recognize its limitations; indeed, there seems to be some interest in the anarchist anti-RNC organizing among older antiwar activists in the Midwest. If we can demonstrate an effective alternative, we may earn new allies.

The political machine, having lost a lot of popular faith during the Bush years, is now attempting to recapture public attention through a gripping new electoral spectacle. We’re to believe the fate of the world hangs in the balance, even as media focus on “superdelegates” and voting districts betray just how little influence any of us really have. Anarchists are the ones best equipped to counter this, and we should not miss the opportunity. We may not persuade everyone to become anarchists in 2008, but if we re-enter the public eye as the ones who saw it coming, when the inevitable disillusionment sets in following the election our model for contesting power outside the voting booth will be visible as an attractive alternative.

Electoral politics dominates the imaginations of people in the United States to an unparalleled degree. Whenever the question of social change arises, one is always pointed to the ballot box: if you don’t vote, you can’t complain, which is to say, vote and shut up. One might argue that there is no more strategic target for direct action than the conventions, which represent the total hegemony of the two-party system. Even opposition to the excesses of capitalism can still be re-absorbed into electoral politics—one of the major issues at the WTO protests was that the WTO could supersede the “democratic process” of participating nations. Only a direct attack on the electoral spectacle itself could reframe the terms of public discussion to foreground more effective approaches to self-determination. Powerful actions at the conventions could set a new tone for the coming years, setting a precedent for people using their own strength and energizing smaller-scale direct action organizing throughout the US.[3][3] It goes without saying that without sustained local organizing towards long-range goals, we can’t expect the convention protests to achieve anything at all, however dramatic they might be.

Right now we can still draw on the outrage arising from the Iraq war to mobilize people. After this election, it will be a moot point, part of history. If we play our cards right at this historical juncture, we can draw on the frustration of those who feel betrayed not only by Bush but also by the Democrats who acted as his accomplices and by the liberal antiwar movement that channeled dissent into a powerless dead end. The same goes for immigration and global warming—the Democrats are attempting to frame themselves as the ones who will save the world from climate change, and we owe it to everyone to call bullshit on this.

But are anarchists in the US prepared to organize an effective mass mobilization at this point? The new generation, who grew up on stories of the Seattle WTO protests, has never participated in anything comparable, however eager some are to do so. Likewise, though some survivors from the last generation have gone long enough without a major mobilization that they are interested in attempting another one, there is still a lot of inertia and hesitation. Many who have been disappointed before do not want to put all their eggs in this basket. So, having considered the reasons why the conventions might present a strategic target, let us turn to the drawbacks of focusing on them.

Drawbacks to Focusing on the Conventions

Dubious radicals who don’t want anarchists to organize against the conventions have trotted forth the usual clichés. One has even suggested that rather than targeting them with direct action we should be learning from Obama, whose campaign has supposedly ignited the hope of a nation.[4][4] Our take on this, conversely, is that politicians like Obama are elevated to the national spotlight in times of increasing dissent and discontent, so that grassroots outrage is channeled back into institutional cooptation. That’s our power they flaunt at us. Like everything else, it looks sexier on the other side of the television screen—but rather than coveting it there, we should focus on continuing to build it, not to mention resist their efforts to hijack it. It’s safe to say that if you’re jealous of a politician’s ability to hypnotize people into renewed faith in representative democracy but shrug off a nationwide grass-roots anarchist mobilization, you need to check your priorities as an anarchist. Remember, after the Global Day of Action on June 18, 1999 that foreshadowed the WTO protests, there were anarchists who insisted that mass mobilizations had reached their peak and it was time to focus elsewhere. Someone is always bound to think the time isn’t right.

Whether or not they are grounded in reality, these misgivings themselves constitute a drawback to focusing on the conventions, for a mass mobilization cannot succeed without widespread faith in its potential. It would not even be worth discussing the matter further if there were not hundreds—hopefully thousands—of other anarchists who are willing to take the chance.

Aside from the predictable criticisms, there are more substantive drawbacks to choosing the conventions as the site for a grudge match with hierarchical power. Successful mass actions can only be outgrowths from already thriving relationships and social currents; they offer the opportunity to measure our capacities, but it is unrealistic to expect them to produce powerful movements out of thin air. In this regard, it’s not promising that these mobilizations come after years without much direct action organizing, when few anarchists have had the opportunity to develop their skills or networks. A summer of direct action training camps cannot make up for this; highly publicized calls for buildup actions might have done the trick, but the conventions are only a couple months away as of this writing.

There is something paradoxical about organizing a mass mobilization as an advertisement for direct action. Generally, whatever approach one adopts sets a precedent for more of the same; interrupting the electoral spectacle is not the same as creating empowering contexts for self-determination. As the party conventions only occur once every four years, successful demonstrations this summer have little risk of setting off another wave of summit-hopping; but it remains to be seen to what extent the somewhat abstract goal of “breaking the spell of electoral politics” can actually motivate people to put their bodies on the line.

On a related note, anarchists appear to have put more energy into strategizing the nuts and bolts aspects of the convention protests than into presenting a case for militant action there to the public at large. No plan that depends on mass participation can succeed if it is not persuasively put forward to great numbers of people. In this regard, it is fortunate that the first Unconventional Action paper has been succeeded by a second paper focusing on a critique of electoral politics.

It has been charged that mass mobilizations deplete a lot of energy that could otherwise be invested in more sustaining, sustainable ventures. This is especially true in the US, where direct action in general rarely provides the participants with resources besides visibility and morale. Though this may be an opportune juncture for a mass mobilization, it would be better if that mobilization did something to secure new resources for further direct action-based organizing. There have been examples of this on the local scale in recent years; overseas, the riots in Denmark over the eviction of the social center Ungdomshuset provide a model for a nationwide mobilization aimed at securing space in which to nurture resistance movements. In the United States, however, no version of this approach has appeared on the national scale.

Were we facing a choice between a national mobilization aimed at securing immediate resources and the more visibility-oriented approach of the convention protests, it might be that the former would make more sense. But the fact is that no such possibilities are on the table at this point. Those who feel the time is right to return to the streets must make the best of the RNC/DNC protests; the more who do so, the more likely they are to turn out well. At worst, the conventions will be a sort of Groundhog Day at which anarchists will see their shadow and hide out for four more years.

RNC or DNC?

Ideally, the convention protests would be framed as a single mobilization, to emphasize the total rejection of party politics and so-called representation. This would make clear that our protests have nothing to do with the platforms of the individual candidates. If anything, insofar as the Democrats are expected to win the coming elections, it would probably be most strategic to focus on Denver, however thorny it might be working out how to demonstrate against an African-American or female presidential candidate.

Unfortunately, in the course of the past year, major differences have emerged between the local organizing in Denver and St. Paul. It now appears that, as in 2004, the demonstrations at the RNC will be several orders of magnitude larger than those at the DNC. Like it or not, we must take this into account.

In Denver, which will host the Democratic National Convention at the end of August, anarchist organizing has taken place in the shadow of Recreate 68, a coalition of liberal and radical groups. This has manifested itself most recently with the cancellation of one of Unconventional Denver’s two primary days of action, despite two nationwide consultas and months of planning, at the request of an immigrant and Chicano rights coalition. The anarchist community in Denver has appeared at times to be approaching the convention protests as a local rather than national event; the handful of organizers who have taken the DNC on as a serious project are overextended by all accounts.

In the Twin Cities, on the other hand, anarchists are involved explicitly in every level of the organizing in a way we haven’t seen since the successful FTAA protests in Quebec of April 2001. The RNC Welcoming Committee, an explicitly anti-authoritarian organizing group, has for well over a year already, and has established relationships of mutual respect and collaboration with broader antiwar organizations throughout the region—an achievement that has eluded other anarchist organizers for years. We may not be blessed with an organizing group as creative and diligent as the Welcoming Committee any time soon—all the more reason for anarchists to take advantage of their groundwork.

The surge in anarchist traveling culture that coincided with the publication of Evasion is long past; nowadays most anarchists can only be away from their communities for limited periods of time, so they have to choose carefully which national events to attend. Most will probably choose the RNC over the DNC, deeming Denver a tragic but unavoidable missed opportunity.

This does not mean there is no potential for demonstrations at the DNC. Even a small but exciting action in Denver could serve the important purpose of heightening expectations and morale for St. Paul. Hopefully at least a moderate number of highly motivated anarchists from the surrounding region will converge in Denver with a plan for making something memorable occur.

Failing all else, being the main news at the RNC will frame us as the true opponents of the unpopular Republicans and thus distinguish us from the Democratic Party. Democrats will not be happy about a major confrontation in St. Paul, for fear that it could distract attention from their electoral efforts and portray opponents of Republican policies as streetfighting militants. Besides, if the Democrats do win the election, we can always deal with them at the inauguration.

On the Other Side of the Barricades

While anarchists are organizing for the conventions, what’s going on in boardrooms and at police trainings? What strategies can we expect the authorities to apply at the conventions, and what factors may tie their hands?

Both Minneapolis and St. Paul have liberal governments that need to come across as supportive of law-abiding protesters; in this regard, healthy relations between anarchists and other antiwar organizers constitute a real challenge for them. Officials have emphasized that the police will be civil—not starting in riot gear; that there will be no “free speech zones”—demonstrators will be allowed “within sight and sound” of the Excel Center hosting the RNC; and that the police strategy will not resemble the brutal “Miami model” applied at the 2003 FTAA protests, but rather will establish a new “St. Paul model.” It’s also worth pointing out that St. Paul will be fielding about 3000 police, compared to the tens of thousands on duty in New York City during the 2004 RNC.

The climate has definitely shifted over the past four years. Following the 2003 FTAA protests, the brutal tactics used by Miami police chief John Timoney—who had been police commissioner in Philadelphia during the 2000 RNC—fell out of favor. Shortly before the 2004 RNC, the “Timoney three,” three protesters who had been badly beaten by Timoney and then charged with multiple felonies at the preceding RNC, were declared innocent. The policing at the 2004 RNC in New York was extremely intimidating, but comparatively restrained—presumably it would not have served the interests of those in power for major confrontations to erupt there. Since then the tide has flowed back to the left in the United States, and the authorities must be preparing for new management. In Washington, DC, the police who were so quick to make mass arrests at events like the 2002 IMF protests have subsequently had to restrain themselves after a series of successful lawsuits; at the antiwar protests last March 19, they were so hesitant to make arrests that many concluded they were only targeting those who committed felonies.

All this could change overnight if the powers that be saw a significant threat to their ascendancy; but it suggests that compelling the police to use force at the conventions this summer would be a coup, in that it would frame them as aggressors in a time when they are trying to dispel that image. Rumor has it that the St. Paul police are consulting European police forces for tips on how to control crowds via containment rather than brute force. We should strategize accordingly.

Going into the 2004 RNC protests, many feared that the police would be as brutal as they had been at the FTAA protests the preceding year; coming out of them, some felt that the police had set out to avoid such gratuitous use of force, and that it would have been a victory rather than a defeat to compel them to beat and tear gas people in downtown New York City during such a highly televised event. It may be that we don’t need to succeed in actually shutting down the convention in St. Paul this summer to deal a blow to our enemies and seize the attention of the world; we need only provoke a serious confrontation with the police.

The Strategy

Some felt that the 2004 RNC protests were unsuccessful because there was no clear, unified anarchist strategy; anarchists participated by the thousands, but by and large only swelled the numbers at liberal events or got arrested in symbolic gestures. The Unconventional Action network appears to have begun as a reaction to this, in order to formulate a coherent strategy for this summer’s convention protests. Unconventional Action groups, along with the RNC Welcoming Committee and anarchist organizers in Denver, have fallen back on the consulta model previously used in the buildup to the 2003 FTAA protests in order to give a semblance of participatory transparency to the process of establishing a strategy. It must be said that this model is at its most effective and appropriate when it is utilized by longstanding groups with shared experience and accountability, rather than new ad hoc groups and atomized individuals with little real accountability or coherence.

As the strategy for the DNC protests is being reworked as this is written, it’s not possible to say much about it for certain. For now, our analysis must focus on the RNC protests, for good or for ill.

So, following a full year of regional and national strategy consultas, the RNC strategy that has been consensed upon by groups nationwide is… shutting it down via blockading. This may strike those who remember the summit protests of the turn of the century as a failure of imagination; since the fluke of the 1999 WTO protests, no blockading strategy has succeeded in shutting down a meeting or convention, though this has been attempted countless times from Gleneagles to Australia.

So why blockading? First, it gives protesters something concrete to do. Perhaps it would have been better if some other proposal had taken hold, offering some new experiment; but at least people are talking about collective direct action again. Even if the blockading is not entirely successful, the experience of attempting to achieve a concrete goal rather than simply participate in symbolically making a statement will shape the organizing for this and future events. A successful organizing campaign towards blockading could promote an orientation towards proactive direct action among demonstrators for years to come, regardless of the success of the actual blockading at the RNC.

Similarly, protests will only have a chance of seriously disrupting the RNC if they are able to involve a great number of people coming from a wide variety of perspectives, abilities, and comfort levels. Blockading is an extremely versatile tactic; in fact it is not one tactic at all, but a category including a wide selection of tactics ranging from nonviolent civil disobedience to all-out streetfighting. Despite the apparent stalemate of the post-WTO years, no comparably broad and participatory approach for coordinating direct action has appeared.

Combined with the outlying locations of most hotels, the geography of downtown St. Paul is potentially conducive to successful blockading. Considering the tremendous number of delegates who must be able to reach the convention center and the comparatively small number of police that will be in St. Paul, it seems that blockading could actually succeed if enough people participate. If this is an approach that could work in St. Paul but not in another city, it’s important that we not miss this opportunity. There is a significant difference between attempting to prevent eight people in helicopters from reaching a convention center, as demonstrators attempted at the 2005 and 2007 G8 summits, and stopping tens of thousands of delegates and assorted hangers-on traveling by bus or car. In this case, it should only be necessary to stop a fraction of them to prevent the convention from moving forward.

Like the emphasis on strategy, it is possible that the blockading approach has reappeared in reaction to anarchist strategies at the 2004 RNC, some of which focused on harassing the delegates themselves. Blockading indicates that the important target is the political machine itself, not the individuals who make it up; conversely, attacking the delegates frames the protest as a private conflict between specialized individuals—protesters and politicians—rather than a conflict between people and institutions. Belligerent protesters are hardly going to change the minds of the delegates, and even if they could, those delegates would only be replaced with others more loyal to the party officials and their corporate masters. Targeting the delegates has sometimes been framed as an application of the “SHAC model” from the animal liberation movement, in which individuals who do business with animal abusers are targeted personally. This is a thoughtless error, for the SHAC model presupposes that those targeted can take their business elsewhere, whereas the essence of the US political machine is that there is only one route to power.

To return to blockading—entirely apart from its effectiveness at shutting out delegates, successfully shutting down even a part of downtown St. Paul would be experienced by the participants as a hugely empowering event. It’s possible, if the blockades are successful, that police will attack them in some places while ignoring other zones—that was the approach they utilized at last summer’s G8 protests in Germany. During the brainstorming phase of the strategy discussions of the past year, one running theme was the establishment of autonomous zones; creating such a zone in direct confrontation with the authorities would be significantly more inspiring than simply creating an autonomous zone somewhere else with their implicit permission.

Speaking of autonomous zones, blockading can open up space for other tactics that are otherwise much more difficult to utilize; property destruction and street parties are two obvious examples. In this regard, whether or not they serve any other purpose, successful blockades enable participants to apply a diversity of tactics.

Finally, if serious blockading is to be an option, it must be organized months in advance, whereas other approaches can be put together with less warning. It might turn out that blockading is not the most effective strategy for the RNC protests, and the participants must shift direction at the last minute; but for it even to be a possibility in St. Paul this coming September, it is necessary that organizers be preparing for it right now. Only time will tell whether it proves to be an effective approach, or for that matter whether this summer’s convention protests will be effective at all; but this is also up to us.

What Constitutes Victory?

As suggested above, it may not be necessary to successfully shut down the DNC and RNC to achieve the goals of this summer’s protests; it may suffice to make a valiant, sincere effort. None of the major mobilizations of 2000, such as the IMF/World Bank protests in Washington, DC and the RNC in Philadelphia, succeeded in shutting down their targets. At the time, this was regarded with mixed feelings, but if a mobilization of comparable scale were to take place this year, it would be a massive achievement, proof that the anarchist movement in North America has neither dissipated nor given up on confronting hierarchical power in the streets. The point is not to bring back the obsession with summit hopping that characterized the anarchist movement eight years ago, but to demonstrate that we can utilize that approach when it is strategic, as a complement to our ongoing efforts in other contexts. History is opening a window to us right now, should we desire to take advantage of it.

See you, once again, in the streets.

Additional References

Unconditional Faction – A hilarious satire regarding why not to target the conventions

Why Blockading – A text from the RNCWC regarding the reasoning behind the blockading strategy

Ending a War: Inventing a Movement: Mayday 1971 – A historical reference point for what happened last time a mass mobilization focused on decentralized blockading near the end of an antiwar movement—or download the PDF

The above and more can be found in its original habitat at http://crimethinc.com/texts/recentfeatures/whattoexpect.php

Day in the Life of Joe Middle-Class Republican

Day in the Life of Joe Middle-Class Republican

by John Gray

A la . . . http://www.thomhartmann.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=597&Itemid=9

Joe gets up at 6:00am to prepare his morning coffee. He fills his pot full of good clean drinking water because some liberal fought for minimum water quality standards. He takes his daily medication with his first swallow of coffee. His medications are safe to take because some liberal fought to insure their safety and work as advertised.

All but $10.00 of his medications are paid for by his employers medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance, now Joe gets it too. He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs this day. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

Joe takes his morning shower reaching for his shampoo; His bottle is properly labeled with every ingredient and the amount of its contents because some liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained. Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some tree hugging liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air. He walks to the subway station for his government subsidized ride to work; it saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees. You see, some liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day; he has a good job with excellent pay, medicals benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed he’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some liberal didn’t think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

Its noon time, Joe needs to make a Bank Deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae underwritten Mortgage and his below market federal student loan because some stupid liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his life-time.

Joe is home from work, he plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive to dads; his car is among the safest in the world because some liberal fought for car safety standards. He arrives at his boyhood home. He was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans. The house didn’t have electric until some big government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification. (Those rural Republican’s would still be sitting in the dark)

He is happy to see his dad who is now retired. His dad lives on Social Security and his union pension because some liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to. After his visit with dad he gets back in his car for the ride home.

He turns on a radio talk show, the host’s keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. (He doesn’t tell Joe that his beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day) Joe agrees, “We don’t need those big government liberals ruining our lives; after all, I’m a self made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have”

Visualize the Zodiac

I have been wanting to learn more about the Zodiac for a long time. Fortunately I have met Michael Ax, the creator of http://zodiacdegrees.com/, late this Spring. We had spoken here and there before, but not about the Zodiac and related topics. One evening we were talking and he showed me how to use his site. I still don’t know exactly how it works due to my lack of knowledge in Astrology, but I at least know now how to look up the illustrations corresponding to my chart. I think that if one has some background knowledge of the Zodiac, this site will be easy to use. Unfortunately for me Michael left town for a spell and I am left to my own devices on further understanding his site and the Zodiac in general. I will post more on my progress as I figure stuff out.

For practice and for sharing my progress in this process, I may do a popular persons chart and illustrations. I would like to hear your ideas on who to use for this process. I think it should be someone relevant and who we all know. Also, send any comments or help or suggestions that you feel may help out this process.

Michael said that these illustrations can be put together to tell your story. I am sure that there is a correct sequence that one should look at these, but since I am just learning, I will find all mine and the popular persons that I choose, and move them around at random to see what I come up with. This should be a good way to learn this system.

I am drawn to this system because it sticks in my head, unlike past attempts at learning things like the Zodiac. It sticks due to the fact that it creates multiple pathways of ones chart in the brain. Left and right hemispheres are used by the charts, diagrams, symbols, math, illustrations and stories. These all go together to make memorable interpretations and understandings of your birth chart.

Check out http://zodiacdegrees.com/ and let them know what you think too, it is a work in progress

Taurus 15.. 16
Fixed Female NonLinear Spring Earth reporting to Venus & Luna:
genius introduction

decan of struggle, span of enjoyment & confirmation

Aquarius 23.. 24
Fixed Male NonLinear Winter Air reporting to Saturn & Uranus:
tempered by wisdom

decan of repression, span of perspective & management

Capricorn 24.. 25
Cardinal Female Linear Winter Earth reporting to Saturn:
newcomer’s surprise

decan of idealism, span of dependence & group-performance

Virgo 24.. 25
Mutable Female Linear Summer Earth reporting to Mercury:
one good man

decan of renunciation, span of experimentation & education

To check out the illustrations for your chart visit http://zodiacdegrees.com/

Peace Between Our Sheets

from interview with Marnia Robinson

Dutch scientist Gert Holstege, who said that his brain scans of men ejaculating look like brain scans of people shooting heroin, once remarked that we are all addicted to sex. Orgasm is the most powerful (legal) buzz available to us. I believe that when we consciously move from compulsion to equilibrium in our sex lives, we strengthen our sense of inner wholeness. This decreases our vulnerability to all addictive activities and substances. Without the feelings of lack, uneasiness and neediness that mysteriously show up after sexual satiation, we simply aren’t as susceptible to manipulation of any kind, whether by advertisers, governments or porn producers.

Within four months after my husband and I began this practice, his twelve-year addiction to alcohol was under his control. Within a year he was off of Prozac and his chronic depression had lifted. I think our sexual cravings have a very powerful effect on our inner compass, our reward circuitry. With a working compass, we can steer in our true best interests. This may be why sexual mastery was considered a powerful spiritual path by the Taoists, the earliest Christians, and others throughout human history.

Read the rest of the interview here . . . http://www.realitysandwich.com/finding_peace_between_our_sheets

We are intimately related

For more information about Fred Rogers and Family Communications, the company he founded, please visit our website at www.fci.org

“Our world hangs like a magnificent jewel in the vastness of space. Every one of us is a part of this jewel - and, in the perspective of infinity,  our differences are infinitesimal. We are intimately related. May we never even pretend that we are not.“