Jessamyn

Response to Boston Globe article titled "Seattle Caught Unprepared for Anarchists":

To read Friday's front page article, you would think that the word anarchist was synonymous with "violent protestor." As a participant in Tuesday's actions against the WTO, I would like to point out that a majority of those engaging in non-violent civil disobedience were anarchists -- or, as your paper calls them "self-declared anarchists" as if that isn't redundant. Granted, we don't have membership lists or elaborate hazing rituals, just a commitment to direct action and autonomy from external governmental rule. However, we are organized, as Tuesday's action clearly showed. Perhaps this was overlooked in your paper because the thought of a large well-organized group of people who are also opposed to centralized government could seem somewhat scary?

Additionally, I am familiar with the Eugene anarchists and find your unnamed source's take on them [violent, uninformed, trend-following] completely counter to all of my impressions of them as deeply principled, highly educated and thoughtful. Unfortunately, the fact that they are an identifiable segment of the anarchist counterculture means that they become the scapegoat for anything people want to pin on the radical movement in general.

While violence and scary terrorists may make good stories and sell a lot of papers, I think the real story here is how a couple thousand people, standing up for what they believe in, could bring a city to its knees, non-violently. You do not need to fear anarchists for the reasons you think you do.

An Anarchist, Union Member and Geek Responds
by Corin Royal Drummond

In response to a Slashdot.org article by Jon Katz:

First off. Shame on you who believed what you saw on TV. You should know you need to check the web forums, mailing lists and newsgroups for some of the real eyewittness stories. Even a-political geeks know what happened to Keven Mitnick. How can you trust your government and media to tell you who the bad guys are after that. In reality, it was the cops who did their ususal--"rubber" bullets (which are actually hard and fractured jaws, and punctured skin), pepper spray (which they've started swabbing in people's eyes while they're hand cuffed), beating people senseless while they're being held, etc. The ususal stuff, but more than usual. Honestly, this police brutality stuff isn't a joke, or an abberation.

Second, the media has done a very good job portraying "anarchists" as hell-bent chaos makers. Actually anarchism is an "organizational" tendency which relies on mutual aid, voluntary co-operation and the rejection of non-democratic authoritarian leadership--much like..oh...any old open source project. Like open source methodology, anarchist methodology can be applied to any area of endeavor. It's basically just democracy done right.

Third, Katz is acting like these "anarchists' suddently discovered the web and Slashdot. Actually many of the finest geeks I know have been radical activists and geeks concurrently for a long time. There's Tom Jennings the guy who wrote FidoNet and popularized the retailing of internet connections through his ISP The Little Garden. I met him at the Anarchist Confernce in S.F. in 1989. There is a whole class of activist geeks like him and myself, and all the people in IWW IU560 Telecom and Computer Workers Union. We part of the Industrial Workers of the World union that helped organize the WTO stuff. We've had an internet server online since 1995. So don't act like the anarchists are out there and the Slashdot geeks are all these sellout free-market libertarians, who believe in the divine right of corporate rule and IPO stock options. I've read Slashdot daily since Rob was poor (but still adorable).

We "anarchists' or "libertarian socialists" or "anarcho-syndicalists" (my favorite), recognize that the WTO is an organziation composed of the most elite segments of global corporations mobilized with the intent of setting up artificial barriers to the "free trade" they espouse. Big corporations are terrified of free markets, because they don't want to have to compete. They just want a nice compliant third-world government to let them come in and trash the environment, setup sweatshops, kill the local resistance movment, and extract their profit as efficiently as possible. I mean, the acknowledged goal of a corporation is to make a profit. The only thing stopping them from going all the way are people like the anti-WTO protesters, and what's left of the labor movment.

"Class warfare" is what IWW folks would call the activities . That's what the uber-rich do to the working people. We're very clear that working people and the people who own things have nothing in common, and that the main thing to do is organize at your place of work, take over the place, and run it democratically for the benefit of the people who work there. I am part of a group starting a collectively owned web design company in San Francisco called SDO (www.sdo.net). The point is not to become a boss and have employees (and stock options), but to be a co-owner of the business, and keep all the profits to ourselves. The applicable IWW principle is that "Labor is entitled to all we create."

In the IWW IU560 geek union we are in the beginning stages of organizing Computer and Telecom. workers. Our union is unique in that it's completely democratically controled by the rank and file. It's unionism at it's most basic level. The people who work in a place get together, and they're the union. No one else, not a boss, or a union boss tells them what to do. Job shops are federated into broad industrial unions (ie. telecom workers, agriculure workers, education workers, etc) and these industrial unions into one big union. We like to call it "portable unionism" as you stay in the same union no mater what job you currently have (or don't have if you're unemployed). The idea is that we're all working people being screwed over by bosses like the our employers, the WTO, the republicrats, and corporate media. It is simply sensible that we would band together and defend our own intersts.

The iww.org is our network of 6-7 inernet servers in 3 countries. Check out our main site at http://iww.org. If you're interested in IU560 and the Geek and Telecom workers organizing, subscribe to our list at iu560-l-request@iww.org with the word subscribe in the subject. Or I could really use some help with the web site. Anyone know LDAP?

Yours for a world without bosses,

Corin Royal Drummond
Oakland, California
An iww.org administrator

+ Corin Royal Drummond, corin@iww.org + GNU/Linux System Administrator and Web Developer + Industrial Workers of the World, IU 560 Computer Workers, Local 23

Smashing windows and terrifying people
by radio4all

In response to a Slashdot.org article by Jon Katz:

jsm is right on here.

I find it sickening that so many people have decried the "violence" of the anarchists while conveniently ignoring the ultra violence of the police onslaught against the protestors.

The police did NOT start firing tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowd because of window breakage. The window breaking started long after the cops were firing on the crowd.

Now I ask you. If you were protesting non-violently and the police started indiscriminately cracking skulls and gassing everyone in sight -- including people coming home from work and coming out of bars and restaurants -- wouldn't you be just a tad pissed off?

The police gassed and shot the residents of the capitol hill neighborhood in Seattle TWO DAYS IN A ROW! These people wanted the cops out of their neighborhood and wanted them to leave the protestors alone -- just look at the local opinion polls; the city of Seattle is overwhelmingly in favor of the protestors.

Instead of shaking your head about something you obviously know very little about (i.e. the "violent" anarchists) why don't you take the time to investigate the class action lawsuit in the works against the Seattle police department and Mayor's office for police brutality and smashing of citizens constitutional rights.

And to equate this expression of citizen outrage with the senseless murders at columbine is a disgusting and pathetic way to plug your previous hackwork.

As for your Techno-Idealism, boy you worked at Wired far too long for your own good.

You want to see Techno-Idealism, check out some of the work that "violent" anarchists are doing on the net.

TAO Communications
http://www.tao.ca

The A-Infos Radio Project
http://www.radio4all.net

Independent Media Center
http://www.indymedia.org

Direct Action Media Network
http://damn.tao.ca

Furthermore, most people weren't there to "reform" the WTO they were there to stop it. The WTO is an unelected unaccountable organization that exists to erode the sovereignty of nations and communities. Any law that a local community or a nation passes that another nation, some corporation, or the WTO itself deems as a "barrier to trade" can be overruled by the WTO. And nations that refuse to respect the WTO's ruling can be punished with trade sanctions.

Despite what you would be lead to believe "Free Trade" (really meaning trade that benefits the most powerful nations and corporate interests) is NOT here to stay. If people organize against it.

Rules, regulations and laws are made by people and people can change and eliminate them if they have the will to do so. "Free Trade" is so many pieces of paper that have legitimacy only if we acknowledge their legitimacy.

You ain't seen nothing yet. Seattle is just the beginning.

The A-Infos Radio Project http://www.radio4all.net (under construction)

the internet defeats the WTO?
by tao.ca

In response to a Slashdot.org article by Jon Katz:

outside of the 'violence versus non-violence' and the 'anarchists are responsible' debates, one thing that skirts the surface of this entire phenomena is the role and presence of the Internet.

seriously, how did everyone (protestors and otherwise) find out about the WTO? i mean, who cares about economic policy? back in the day, stuff like this was only the terrain of spooks and negotiators. heck, even businesses didn't really pay attention to trade negotiations. but now the internet takes notice of anything that resembles itself:

WTO: a network of nation states (which are themselves networks) trying to come to a set of protocols (rules) to allow further exchange (i.e. develop more stable and distributed networks).

NO2WTO: a network of networks (protestors and grassroots groups) trying to stop any other network of networks (WTO) if it does not reflect their idea of what a network of networks should be (i.e. accessibility and freedom).

of course then there's the rest of us, who have watched it all on tv and on the net and our only response is, again, to criticize or support competing sides, largely on the basis of their networks (of politics or personality).

in the end, it seems the WTO meetings were not successfull, but that the networks of networks were, whatever that was.

i guess when OJ was found non-guilty, or when Diana died, the news of this spectacle swept the networks. yet in this scenario, it seems, the networks, in and of themselves, swept the WTO right off the map, when generally speaking, nobody would have cared :?