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Train in Vain? Part Two: Critical analysis of the recent efforts on SF's MUNI
Part two of a five-part article about the recent attempts to foment an Italian-style "self-reduction" campaign on SF's MUNI transit system.
In the first part of this piece I described how in response to an anarchist-initiated effort called Muni Social Strike, which aimed at fomenting joint action between MUNI riders and operators against fare hikes and service cuts, a Leninist-led effort with a comically similar name, called Muni Fare Strike, emerged and positioned itself to the immediate political right of the anarchist effort. It was like Muni Social Strike with all the anti-capitalist aspirations shaved off.
The first part of this article can be found here:
http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/11/1785004_comment.php#1785478
What follows is a continuation of it...
WE'RE NOT 'THE PEOPLE'S JUDEAN FRONT' -- WE'RE 'THE FRONT FOR PEOPLE'S JUDEA!'
The comically derivative name of the Muni Fare Strike group alone should have been a clue to anyone capable of finding their ass with both hands that something fishy was up. But on top of that, a guy named Tom Wetzel said that he overheard Marc Norton, who subsequently became the leader of the Muni Fare Strike group, saying at the second town hall meeting that he "didn't think much of what those young anarchist kids and Kevin Keating were getting together." That's not a direct quote, but it was words to that effect.
Then, if putting two and two together exceeded the political sophistication and analytical skills of some of the Bay Area Anarchist Council and Muni Social Strike (MSS) people, there's three out of three.
When Muni Fare Strike came into being I got an e-mail from my former comrade Aaron Hackett ordering people in MSS to give out the content-poor Muni Fare Strike (MFS) leaflet. Although Aaron used a fake name I could tell it was Aaron, because after a decade of friendship and various efforts to do stuff politically together I had broken things off with Aaron in a series of acrimonious e-mails, and the language in the e-mail with the fake name was identical to the language he'd used in our recent exchanges. He made it completely fucking clear in his e-mail that Muni Fare Strike had come together in antagonism to Muni Social Strike.
So, one of the people in the doppelganger group openly said their effort was antagonistic to MSS -- did this need to be made any clearer for the politically unsophisticated? People who think that the class war means trudging around at peace rallies with a baner that says, 'CLASS WAR!' with a circle spray-painted around the letter "A" in the words 'class' and 'war?'
This is where my ability to communicate with several of the BAAC people broke down in a big way. I repeatedly attempted to discuss this on the e-mail list. I got repeatedly blown off on this. A certain anarchist ideologue in particular was adament that no substantive political discussion should take place on the list. There's never been any substantial political discussion in any meeting of BAAC that I've attended, and that group has been meeting for a number of years, so I guess this principle was supposed to extend to the socialstrike list as well.
The fact that Marc Norton and his underlings were out to play Muni Social Strike like a kazoo sailed over the tops of various individuals' anarchist level of consciousness. I'm not claiming that I'm psychic, but I saw what happened coming regarding the effort as a whole in the long run from this, and I saw it from the beginning -- anybody could, other than most of the anarchists in this effort.
I started posting stuff on the socialstirke list demanding that Marc and his buddies say, one, what there politics were; an honest response from Marc Norton should have given everybody fair warning. I also demanded -- not politely requested, demanded, that two, they explain why they were in a seperate group, three, what their differences with Social Strike were, and four, that if they were in a group with political differences with us but still got to be on the e-mail list and got to show up and spout off at social strike meetings that they had to pony up a commitment of time and labor to the stuff we in social strike had already agreed to do.
What was the response from my valiant anarchist comrades? In the subsequent MSS meetings several of the anarchists basically folded like napkins in regard to Marc and company. These anarchists didn't have enough backbone or political smarts to demand anything of those guys from the other group -- no explanations, no time and labor, no nothing.
Marc Norton made it difficult for the anarchists in Muni Social Strike to collectively assert their uncompromising anarchist principles, since he didn't show up at meetings with a stack of unreadable Leniniod newspapers hanging over his arm; he didn't wear a Mao cap or a Che Guevara T-shirt, and his facial hair doesn't directly mimic that of Lenin or Trotsky. Unlike the anarchists who I repeatedly attempt to function with, for a quarter of a century now, this Leninist is a sufficiently serious and politically skillful individual to refrain from wearing his particular flavor of dogma on his sleeve, and as a result he was capable of macking on a posse of callow and naive anarchos in the recent social strike effort. The Leninist ended up playing the anarchists for chumps from the beginning -- because the anarchists let it happen.
My effective political connection to several anarchists who I've tried to do things with for about two and a half years evaporated under the first, extremely slight, external pressure. This is consistent with my past experiences in dealing with anarchists; we are "comrades" as long as it doesn't imply anything real and there is no substance to it, then, as soon as there is any difficulty or trouble, all the anarchists immediately morph into anarchists of the individualist stripe.
This grows out of a flaw that every anarchist group I have ever been involved in since the spring of 1981 in DC has shared. No anarchist group that I have ever been in has ever had any process of political clarification as part of its development as a group, where we devote part of our collective activity to reading and discussing revolutionary history and theory. This is neccessary in order for anyone who is serious about a collective effort for radical social change:
1. To figure out if we can function together,
2. To give us some collectively-worked out ideas of where our actions against this society can be most effective, and,
3. Perhaps most importantly, to give a group of people the cohesion to become a for-real-revolutionary-political group, a group that will stick together in the face of opposition and adversity.
I despise Maoism and Trotskyism, but unlike anarchists, Maoists and Trots are serious enough about what they believe in to devote a central part of their activity to "reproducing their ideology" internally. Their politics are no good, but their very-un-anarchist political seriousness in this and many, many other things cannot be faulted.
In all the anarcho groups I've been in, everybody just calls themselves an anarchist, or something close to it. We get together a lowest-common denominator "Statement of Principles" to avoid the difficulty of dealing with differences, and as long as we don't venture outside of the anarchist subcultural scenester-scene or simpleminded stuff like being the black bloc at peace demos everything goes smoothly. But when groups built on this kind of flimsy basis attempt anything more ambitious, in the complex larger society we live in, they are either totally ineffective, or they collapse altogether, or they end up ceeding all the initiative to whichever leftist outfit has a clearer idea of what it wants, and is aggressive enough to go for it. All three of these things happened at various points with the anarchists of Muni Social Strike. This unfortunately confirms my impression, formed over 25 exasperating years, that anarchists are against leaders because anarchists are more comfortable being followers.
I think that the anarchists in MSS becoming the dupes of the first Leninist who put any real time and effort into playing them didn't happened because the anarchists in question are born chumps, but because none of the BAAC/MSS anarchos that I know of have any prior experience in any kind of real life struggles of working people in the real world; their practical political experience is limited to maybe being in some harmless student group at Cal, or running around a anti-war demo wearing dirty laundry and a bandana on their face. Consequently they were over-awed by what we were trying to pull off and were frantically grasping for a life-preserver. But I also think this kind of will-to-fail or willingness to get hustled is hard-wired into anarchism; it is clearly integral to what anarchism is all about.
Anti-authoritarianism is a useful concept -- when limited solely to individual personality development. In any kind of collective social struggle it becomes a gun that only fires backwards. Anti-authoritarianism comes down to anarchists always having a lame excuse to never take the lead in anything, and always tag along behind anyone who isn't as indecisive as them. It happened with anarchism's great moment of catastrophic failure in the Spanish Civil War, and it's happened countless times in smaller struggles since, like the recent one...
To be continued...
The first part of this article can be found here:
http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/11/1785004_comment.php#1785478
What follows is a continuation of it...
WE'RE NOT 'THE PEOPLE'S JUDEAN FRONT' -- WE'RE 'THE FRONT FOR PEOPLE'S JUDEA!'
The comically derivative name of the Muni Fare Strike group alone should have been a clue to anyone capable of finding their ass with both hands that something fishy was up. But on top of that, a guy named Tom Wetzel said that he overheard Marc Norton, who subsequently became the leader of the Muni Fare Strike group, saying at the second town hall meeting that he "didn't think much of what those young anarchist kids and Kevin Keating were getting together." That's not a direct quote, but it was words to that effect.
Then, if putting two and two together exceeded the political sophistication and analytical skills of some of the Bay Area Anarchist Council and Muni Social Strike (MSS) people, there's three out of three.
When Muni Fare Strike came into being I got an e-mail from my former comrade Aaron Hackett ordering people in MSS to give out the content-poor Muni Fare Strike (MFS) leaflet. Although Aaron used a fake name I could tell it was Aaron, because after a decade of friendship and various efforts to do stuff politically together I had broken things off with Aaron in a series of acrimonious e-mails, and the language in the e-mail with the fake name was identical to the language he'd used in our recent exchanges. He made it completely fucking clear in his e-mail that Muni Fare Strike had come together in antagonism to Muni Social Strike.
So, one of the people in the doppelganger group openly said their effort was antagonistic to MSS -- did this need to be made any clearer for the politically unsophisticated? People who think that the class war means trudging around at peace rallies with a baner that says, 'CLASS WAR!' with a circle spray-painted around the letter "A" in the words 'class' and 'war?'
This is where my ability to communicate with several of the BAAC people broke down in a big way. I repeatedly attempted to discuss this on the e-mail list. I got repeatedly blown off on this. A certain anarchist ideologue in particular was adament that no substantive political discussion should take place on the list. There's never been any substantial political discussion in any meeting of BAAC that I've attended, and that group has been meeting for a number of years, so I guess this principle was supposed to extend to the socialstrike list as well.
The fact that Marc Norton and his underlings were out to play Muni Social Strike like a kazoo sailed over the tops of various individuals' anarchist level of consciousness. I'm not claiming that I'm psychic, but I saw what happened coming regarding the effort as a whole in the long run from this, and I saw it from the beginning -- anybody could, other than most of the anarchists in this effort.
I started posting stuff on the socialstirke list demanding that Marc and his buddies say, one, what there politics were; an honest response from Marc Norton should have given everybody fair warning. I also demanded -- not politely requested, demanded, that two, they explain why they were in a seperate group, three, what their differences with Social Strike were, and four, that if they were in a group with political differences with us but still got to be on the e-mail list and got to show up and spout off at social strike meetings that they had to pony up a commitment of time and labor to the stuff we in social strike had already agreed to do.
What was the response from my valiant anarchist comrades? In the subsequent MSS meetings several of the anarchists basically folded like napkins in regard to Marc and company. These anarchists didn't have enough backbone or political smarts to demand anything of those guys from the other group -- no explanations, no time and labor, no nothing.
Marc Norton made it difficult for the anarchists in Muni Social Strike to collectively assert their uncompromising anarchist principles, since he didn't show up at meetings with a stack of unreadable Leniniod newspapers hanging over his arm; he didn't wear a Mao cap or a Che Guevara T-shirt, and his facial hair doesn't directly mimic that of Lenin or Trotsky. Unlike the anarchists who I repeatedly attempt to function with, for a quarter of a century now, this Leninist is a sufficiently serious and politically skillful individual to refrain from wearing his particular flavor of dogma on his sleeve, and as a result he was capable of macking on a posse of callow and naive anarchos in the recent social strike effort. The Leninist ended up playing the anarchists for chumps from the beginning -- because the anarchists let it happen.
My effective political connection to several anarchists who I've tried to do things with for about two and a half years evaporated under the first, extremely slight, external pressure. This is consistent with my past experiences in dealing with anarchists; we are "comrades" as long as it doesn't imply anything real and there is no substance to it, then, as soon as there is any difficulty or trouble, all the anarchists immediately morph into anarchists of the individualist stripe.
This grows out of a flaw that every anarchist group I have ever been involved in since the spring of 1981 in DC has shared. No anarchist group that I have ever been in has ever had any process of political clarification as part of its development as a group, where we devote part of our collective activity to reading and discussing revolutionary history and theory. This is neccessary in order for anyone who is serious about a collective effort for radical social change:
1. To figure out if we can function together,
2. To give us some collectively-worked out ideas of where our actions against this society can be most effective, and,
3. Perhaps most importantly, to give a group of people the cohesion to become a for-real-revolutionary-political group, a group that will stick together in the face of opposition and adversity.
I despise Maoism and Trotskyism, but unlike anarchists, Maoists and Trots are serious enough about what they believe in to devote a central part of their activity to "reproducing their ideology" internally. Their politics are no good, but their very-un-anarchist political seriousness in this and many, many other things cannot be faulted.
In all the anarcho groups I've been in, everybody just calls themselves an anarchist, or something close to it. We get together a lowest-common denominator "Statement of Principles" to avoid the difficulty of dealing with differences, and as long as we don't venture outside of the anarchist subcultural scenester-scene or simpleminded stuff like being the black bloc at peace demos everything goes smoothly. But when groups built on this kind of flimsy basis attempt anything more ambitious, in the complex larger society we live in, they are either totally ineffective, or they collapse altogether, or they end up ceeding all the initiative to whichever leftist outfit has a clearer idea of what it wants, and is aggressive enough to go for it. All three of these things happened at various points with the anarchists of Muni Social Strike. This unfortunately confirms my impression, formed over 25 exasperating years, that anarchists are against leaders because anarchists are more comfortable being followers.
I think that the anarchists in MSS becoming the dupes of the first Leninist who put any real time and effort into playing them didn't happened because the anarchists in question are born chumps, but because none of the BAAC/MSS anarchos that I know of have any prior experience in any kind of real life struggles of working people in the real world; their practical political experience is limited to maybe being in some harmless student group at Cal, or running around a anti-war demo wearing dirty laundry and a bandana on their face. Consequently they were over-awed by what we were trying to pull off and were frantically grasping for a life-preserver. But I also think this kind of will-to-fail or willingness to get hustled is hard-wired into anarchism; it is clearly integral to what anarchism is all about.
Anti-authoritarianism is a useful concept -- when limited solely to individual personality development. In any kind of collective social struggle it becomes a gun that only fires backwards. Anti-authoritarianism comes down to anarchists always having a lame excuse to never take the lead in anything, and always tag along behind anyone who isn't as indecisive as them. It happened with anarchism's great moment of catastrophic failure in the Spanish Civil War, and it's happened countless times in smaller struggles since, like the recent one...
To be continued...
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The Day Laborers in the Mission kept the strike going there for at least 2 weeks after September 1st. They developed such a good rapport with many of the drivers, on the 14, 49 and 22 bus lines, that 2 weeks into the strike many drivers were putting things--like their jackets or taped pieces of paper--over the fare box so no one could pay.
Not only does Keating intentionally ignore this, he ignores the loose coalition that the Day Laborers built up with other working class groups, composed mostly of people of color, throughout San Francisco. Here's a short list of some of the allies of the fare strike:
Mujeres Unidas y Activas,
POWER,
The Chinese Progressive Association,
St. Peter's Housing Committee,
HOMEY,
La Raza Centro Legal,
The SF Living Wage Coalition,
CARECEN (Central American Resource Center)
At the press conference at 16th & Mission on September 22, most of the above groups were there, as well as speakers from Social Strike and Fare Strike. Large parts of the rally were tri-lingual, with it being translated into Chinese, English and Spanish. The woman from the Chinese Progressive Association was very inspiring as she ended her speech with chants of "Fare Strike" in Chinese.
Now I'm sure we'll have to hear about how ALL of those poor, working class people of color are "pro-wage labor," "reformist," "ice-pick heads," "Stalinists" or "dupes of city hall,” “work-within-the-system guys,” etc. I'm sure Kevin will relish this opportunity to attack not only my politics, but my character as well. That's clearly his main organizing tactic--hatred and abuse.
But I'll finish with this point: Kevin thinks he has the perfect communist line that will lead us all from a fare strike that is basically defensive and reformist, and that it will be his personal teleological act to carry that into a global struggle to overthrow wage labor, markets, the state and national frontiers--I'm sure most of you have heard the catechism before.
But what his pseudo-analysis ignores is the fact that possibly tens of thousands of people--maybe more--actively participated in the fare strike and were in varying degrees affected by it. Hopefully, having succeeded at doing it once, many people now know that it really won't be hard to do it again should the situation arise. But the biggest flaw of the whole effort, regardless of group, was that insufficient numbers of San Franciscans were willing--or able--to take the risk of getting on a bus without paying. Marc Norton, Aaron, Tom Wetzel, the young anarchists of Social Strike, Kevin Keating or even I can't be blamed for that. No one "hijacked" the majority of the population of SF. They obviously saw the stickers, flyers and posters--they were everywhere.
To say that they had no precedent of doing it before is a bold-faced lie. Many of the Day Laborers recanted stories of fare strikes in many of the countries of Latin America. Some even were attacked by the pigs in their strikes and retaliated by torching buses. They're from the same countries as very many of San Francisco’s bus riders.
Many Chinese people were aware of the Star Ferry Riots in 1966, when protests on the Kowloon side against fare increases were spread into looting and arson. Hell, in San Francisco in 1907 during a strike against United Railroads, which operated most of the streetcars in the city, widespread working class solidarity with the striking carmen led to gun battles with scabs trying to drive the streetcars out of the barns and by the end of the strike a year later, 31 people lay dead--the bloodiest transit struggle in U.S. history. So while we came nowhere near that level of intensity, this city does have a history of resistance. We've got to silence the nay-sayers and be ready to try a fare strike again.
But back to Kevin Keating. His most egregiously unprincipled act was completely ignoring that the Day Laborers called the march on November 10th. They not only conceived of it, they organized it and did outreach to all of the community working class groups listed above. But Kevin, obviously realizing that we'd know how racist he truly is by attacking them, turned his venom on Marc Norton and disabled people. So here are three strikes: 1.) his racist diss on the Day Laborers is vicariously projected onto Marc Norton; 2.) he slanders Marc Norton by signing his name and using his real e-mail address on the fake march announcement; 3.) his uses what he calls his "wit" and "humor" to belittle Marc and the Day Laborers as "Down's Syndrome Sufferers," showing how hostile he is to those truly suffering from that condition. Here's the announcement:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Down's Syndrome Sufferers March to City Hall -- Nov. 10th
by Xxxx Xxxx Saturday, Nov. 05, 2005 at 8:34 PM
xxxxxxxx [at] xx.xxxxxx.com
A petition for moderate reform within the bounds of the law, pertaining to the recent austerity measures around SF's MUNI
Hi there! In a capitalist society, there are politicians who win most of the time, there are politicians who lose most of the time -- and then there's us -- the Down's Syndrome guys!
We are a progressive coalition of people with Down's Syndrome, and our cognitive burden has led us to get together a big march to San Francisco's City Hall. We like voting, we like to be nice to the people that are nice to us -- and we like to go for big walks! Walk, to a nice, pretty building like the big French-looking one, near the wino plaza.
By putting our debility on parade, we hope that we can get the people who hold all the power in our society to be nice to us -- and for this, we say an very nice, enthusiastic please! A big, Dumbo-the-Elephant Jumbo Sized Please! In the immortal words of the Bartles and James wine cooler ad guys, back in the 1980's -- thank you very much!
Your friend, Xxxx, at
xxxxxxx [at] xx.xxxxxx.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Judge for yourself. I don't think any person beholden to the "correct" revolutionary line, justifies personal attacks, racist deception and laughing at the expense of disabled people.
But to wrap up: some people are still fare striking. The San Francisco Muni systems isn't getting any better. The act of massive fare evasion worked once and regardless of the ideological spin anyone gave it, people did it because it was in their self-interest to do an action that completely negates the commodity relationship of using transit. Now that's radical and every San Franciscan who did should be applauded--and we should all be ready to do it again.
For the Class War,
Gifford
2. His attempt to make my attacks on his Leninist political leader Marc Norton, and on Gifford and his fellow ersatz Marxist sofa-cushion-warming buddies, into an attack on the Day Laborers, and by some weird mysterious process of leftist transmutation into a "racist" offense against non-white people is a red herring, and does not merit serious response.
3. Hartman and anybody else is more than welcome to come up with their own version of the events, and publish it wherever they like.
4. Gifford is good at, among a number of other wholly dubious skills, posing as an expert on matters he has no knowledge of. Read what I posted; I haven't gotten to the point in the effort where the action itself took off, starting with Sept. 1st.
The politics of the left are a historical failure. The strategies and tactics that emerge from this politics are a failure because of this, even on the smallest levels, for example, defeating a fare hike and service cuts on MUNI.
Only a wholly new type of politics, which people like Gifford and company are unwilling and incapable of contributing to, can contribute to a reversal of the dismal situation exploited and dispossessed people face under the reign of the market and the private sector elite, and ultimately to the destruction of this society, and its replacement by a free society worthy of the human beings who live in it.
I am not hear to be voted most popular boy at the party, but to assert, in the clearest manner, what I think are some possible ways forward, and to politically combat and destroy inpediments to this. Don't like it? Too bad. Go take a bath or something.
It nice to see that at least for the time being Gifford Hartman is no longer posting threats of violence while hiding behind a pseudonym. This marks a considerable step forward for Gifford. Congratulations are in order.
Here's Kevin's Counter-Recruitment e-mail:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--- kevin keating <kapdparis [at] yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hey asshole, or shit-for-brains, or whatever
> appelation a slow-learner such as yourself feels
> most
> comfortable with:
>
> The Drivers Action Committee doesn't belong to us.
> They are a different group from our group. They
> don't
> take orders from us -- got it?
>
> Is this point difficult for you to grasp? Do I need
> to attempt to convey this to you for the fourth or
> fifth time now?
>
> I think that I have already tried to explain this to
> you, and I have done this very, very slowly, too.
>
> If a special education individual, such as yourself,
> who should never leave his apartment without an
> attendant and a white plastic helmet, finds these
> points difficult to grasp, I can try typing this
> message again.
>
> I promise I will try to type more slowly next time.
>
> With my foot up your clown ass,
>
> KEVIN KEATING
>
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unless this is a kinky term of endearment, I think it's a threat. But it doesn't stop there. The people at Rescue Muni are pro-development, pro-capitalist right-wingers hiding behind the front of being concerned about Muni. They're the enemy, but threatening them with violence doesn't help, especially when it's as sophomoric as this:
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: hey douche bag...
> Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 21:32:23 -0700 (PDT)
> To: "James B. Holland" <PRCoPCC@P...>
> From: e ce <t2@y...>
> To: rescuemuni [at] yahoogroups.com
>
> I suggest you scumbags of Rescue Muni engage in a little civil
> disobedience to protest fare evasion -- put your heads under the front
> wheels of the busses, just before they start rolling forward.
>
> With my foot up you collective shit-sucking clown asses,
>
> n t
> Muni Social Strike
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wonder who wrote this? I don't think Muni Social Strike collectively composed this.
But I agree that these Rescue Muni people are bourgeois pigs, but threats of violence don't help. They should have been simply be critiqued in a principled way and then outflanked by our own collective activity of massive fare evasion.
Kevin may have been busy like a "dog" during the fare strike, but most of that activity was going round calling people ice-pick heads and telling others he was going to put "his foot up their clown asses." Hardly the hard work required to foment a citywide anti-capitalist action. Maybe it's time for Kevin to stop his fucking pedantic lecturing and start learning how to get along with people, even his own comrades.
The Fare Strike Lives!,
Gifford
> who should never leave his apartment without an
> attendant and a white plastic helmet,"
Ignoring the productivitity of Keetings sectarianism, the antidisabled stuff that appears in both his emails and posts is disturbing.
I want to stick to substantial issue here, but that's difficult when one of the debaters is Gifford Hartman.
My e-mail above to Gifford was an ill-tempered response to a year's worth of incessant harassment by him. For example this one; in his words, an e-mailed "promise" of violence toward me, which Gifford in his typically incompetent fashion:
1. Put in writing,
2. Signed his name to,
3. and sent to me from the following e-mail address: G [at] XXXXX.com:
The relevant part is this: "...If
you slag off anyone for some selfish, avaricious
reason, I'm going rearrange your dentisitry like Jason
should have done to Geoff. This is a promise. Talk
shit and you pay the price of your hatred. I will be
your amateur dentist and give you any retribution
you've earned in kind. Not that I'm moral, but that
you've earned an ass kicking. Just tell one of your
lies or self-absorbed exaggerations and I redo your
teeth. That's a promise."
This is part of why I broke things off with this guy; a person who is so spectacularly incompetent that they can't even threaten an enemy without leaving a trail of breadcrumbs behind them cannot be taken seriously as a revolutionary. His gross incompetence makes him a liability.
I told Gifford in July 2004 that I wanted nothing more to do with him. In doing that I've apparently made a friend for life. This is not a mutual dispute; there is nothing about Gifford that I find interesting in the slightest. This guy is obsessed with me. Even his buddy Aaron has admitted this, in a phone call, back when Aaron and I were still on speaking terms.
For some reason, Gifford finds me to be terribly compelling. Maybe I should be flattered. Too bad he can't use all this energy in a better manner, like maybe finding me an agent for my novel. Gifford should try to find some more productive outlet for his energies. Hey Gifford, why don't you get a gym membership, or take up Trancendental Meditation?
For more on this, click on the doc, "Which Mark Do We Have Here," on the news page of sfbay-anarchist.org
Here's my take on Gifford in a nutshell:
http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/260/894#comment-894
The appropriate thing to do would be to apologize.
1) Don't work with them. It is clear that both cannot get over YEARS of activist drama. (BAAC has realized this and I believe so has Anarchist Action)
2) If you do involve them make sure you have solid facilitation within your group. DO NOT allow them to interupt other members & DO NOT allow them to take over the floor. (10 minute rules)
Secondly, on another post their is a person posting about as hominem rebutals to Kevin's analysis. It cannot be considered an ad hominem rebutal when the reason all this drama has come about is not because the group was not left enough or was not doing something inherently non-leftist. Instead, the majority of critiques Kevin has given is in relation to drama that he was in fact the center of and created.
I even heard someone ask whether or not the "cause" was important enough to deal with Kevin's shit talking, etc. No it isnt. People work day in and day out and bust their asses, they dont need to come to a meeting that has a possibility of failing for some alterior cause and listen to a pedantic asshole such as Kevin.
Are you folks that full of yourselves and your cause that you cant see that? If your cause is important enough, I will refer you back to the fist point.
1. The "with my foot up your ass" e-mail above was to Gifford Hartman, a private e-mail solely to Gifford Hartman, and not to anyone in Muni Social Strike. I hope I made that clear. Gifford is lying to claim otherwise, but if I had to type "Gifford is lying " everytime the guy lies I'd wear out my fingers on this keyboard.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NO Kevin, it was not. It was to someone who just joined the Social Strike list, were too PC to go to a Starbucks (lame, I agree), got threatened by you and quit soon after.
Kevin, all the character assassination in the world can't excuse away all the insensitive, cruel things you say about disabled people, your cleverly hidden racism (like saying Marc Norton is a Down's Syndrome Suffer, while you merely switched him for the Latino/a Day Laborers who organized the event you were dissing), and the bold-faced lies about this or that person being an "ice-pick head" or the simply juvenile diss of "douche-bag" that seems to be part of your one-size-fits-all shit talking repertoire.
Now we have to endure your inanities of blaming the BAAC people for wanting to reach out further into the community, and then hearing your vicitimization stories about having to break from them. Kevin, wake the fuck up! You've broken from everyone. Not only that, you constantly knock people organized in groups who collectively read texts--like Marx, make the catch-all denunciation that Anarchists corrupted themselves in the Spanish Revolution and have been worthless ever since, and seem paranoid that there are "ice-pick heads" hiding in every crevice waiting to sabotage the communist program you're just on the verge of implimenting, and on and on, ad nauseam. You preach YOUR party line and if we don't fall lock-step behind it, you attack our characters.
And I'm waiting to hear about the motorcycle in the Southern European country, since I haven't heard this lie yet. Go ahead, this is supposed to be about the fare strike, but you can't seem to make ad hominems without using your creative license to fabricate some new lie.
Regardless of all your shit talk, the fare strike was successful because a mass of people did--and are doing--something stridently against the commodification of transit. And dozens of drivers joined us in actively keeping the strike alive for weeks after it began. That's part of a radicalizing of consciousness that no poster, sticker or flyer can impart. And all your dogmatic blustering can't take that away from us.
Gifford
"Disabled activists are going to fuck (me) up." this is Gifford-logic in pure form. Stop me from laughing. Like, I'm just going to stand there and let some dude in a motorized wheelchair wearing a karate ghee repeatedly roll back and forth over my foot?
Cherki's response has some valid point, encased in the gutless equanimity of protest ghetto leftists and anarchos. He displays an inability to make an intelligent distinction, a judgement call, and one clearly needs to be made here.
1. I have tried to stick to the facts at hand,
2. Gifford Hartman is stalking me -- I am not stalking him.
3. As long as this remains on the level of language, I have nothing to fear, and an outlet for my humor writing.
Here's a solution: I proposed that we hold a big public meeting. I will say all of what I have to say about myself and about Gifford Hartman. Gifford can say all he wants to say about himself and me.
At the end, everyone votes to ostracize one of us. Make the decision in a cleal and honest manner, no more anti-authoritarian dicking around -- who is more of an asset to an opposition to the the existing state of things in this part of the world, and who is the biggest liabilty. I'll go with whatever the collective descision is. I have nothing to fear -- what does Gifford have to fear? Plenty, I'll bet.
Obviously the decsion that would result from thsi wouldn't be binding, but it would sent one a hell of a warning out to people in future efforts as to who it might be a good idea to avoid.
Let's especially talk about stuff we've done or tried to do -- my track record goes back to the spring of 1979, and no, I'm not talking about being in an empty shell of an anarchist group that can't function outside of its ideological coccoon. I'm talking about stuff related to people who have to work for a living, a few times in their role as wage-earners, sometimes in their role as tenants, and, not very effectively, but also sometimes in their role as enlisted people in the US Armed Forces -- in most cases people very much unlike me. We can also compare writing; Gifford can bring all the stuff he's done on the backs of beer bottle labels, and the collected works in invisible ink as well.
Well, stellar opponents of all aspecst of the existing state of things? What do you say?
As with most people who act like verbal bullies, the best way to deal with incivility is to ignore the person engaging in the behavior rather than responding (although not letting him on your email list is probably also a good idea).
And, in what alternative universe would Gifford Hartman and all his really creepy, foul, despicable antics be regarded as more of an asset to radical social change around here that me? Do we realy want to start going into the ugly details here?
Who is the anonymous coward hiding behind a fake name while attacking me? Let me guess; I can smell the fumes of cheap bourbon rising off my computer monitor every time I read his uninspired, drooling, slobbering threats...
There is a certain not-so-special disgruntled former follower of mine, who, being a born follower, must always have someone to follow. Most recently he was a lackey of the Leninist Marc Norton in the recent MUNI effort, intervening from the right against an anti-capitalist effort. This violence-prone loser like to post spam about me while looking for his non-existent wit and courage at the bottom of a gallon-sized plastic bottle of Kesslers. And he's been obssesed with me ever since I told him I wanted nothing more to do with him last July. The aspiring Marxist philosopher in question has set himself up as Mark David Chapman to my John Lennon -- and that's not because I resemble Lennon, but because this sketchy clown and former wannabe "left communist" is a carbon copy of Chapman; see today's SF Chronicle Datebook for more info. on that.
This part will be tough for the servile underling of a one-man Trotskyist party in question to get, so now I'm gonna type real, real slow...
Acquaiting an ability to beat guys up who are smarter than you with being a man is a cowards' concept of courage. Unlike certain middle aged juvenile delinquents with poor impulse control and a large retinue of personal demons, I'm a smart guy who writes stuff. Dat's what smart guys do, huh? -- huh-huh-huh! I'm not still sorting out issues left over from the middle-school playground years.
Commit this to memeory, my "man," burn it indelibly into whatever's left of your booze-varnished grey matter:
-- any violence or threats of violence,
-- any more flipping out if I see you on the street,
-- any more e-mails from you to me -- he's sent several dozen since I told him I wanted nothing more to do with him, sometimes under the names of fictional characters from my short stories. (Hey, at least someone is reading them)
-- any more of what I choose to read as your standard-issue sketchy unbalanced clown antics, and everybody in the Bay Area gets to find out what happened with a certain motorcycle in a certain southern European country. We''ll see what that does for your political credibility in the feminist-conscious Bay Area. You can take time out to empty your drool cup before responding, anonymously, or course.
PS to dealing with a certain violence-prone loser:
This individual is so unbalanced that he's sent a written threat of violence to me, with
-- his name signed
-- and from an e-mail address that has his name on it.
Why stop there, tough guy -- why didn't you leave a trail of breadcrumbs back to that small apartment of yours?
See, that's a big part of why I broke things off with this character; He is a totally incompetent buffoon who can't do anything -- and I do mean anything -- in an even minimally capable or competent manner. He can't even threaten someone without painting a white line down his back and all the way to the courthouse. What a loser!
and maybe some of the editors should delete this humilating squabble.
Imagine there’s no Kevin
It’s easy if you try
No one to judge us
No shit talking guy
Imagine all the comrades
Living for today…
Imagine there’s no dogma
It isn’t hard to do
No one to diss or put down
No lecturing too
Imagine all the comrades
Organizing in peace…
Imagine no denunciations
I wonder if you can
No need for ego or bragging
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the workers
Sharing all the world…
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the Bay Area will fight as one.
This discussion would be a lot more constructive if it eschewed personalities, personality clashes and personal opinions. By focusing on the politics, not the people, the self reduction movement could actually come to learn from this experience, and do a better job of promoting, and committing, self reduction in the future. Instead, certain people keep repeating over and over and over what we all already know, i.e., that some individuals in the movement don't like each other. So what? This is true of every movement.
Yeah, it's true. Some individuals in this movement don't like each other. OK, now everybody knows. There is no need to repeat it. Repeating it serves no other purpose than make discussion of the politics of self reduction more difficult. In short, the signal is being drowned out by noise. This raises a number of questions:
• What motivates those generating the noise?
• Do they really want to see the cogent and rational discussion of the politics of self reduction that could develop here, not develop?
• Is that their agenda?
• If so, why?
• If not, what is their agenda?
• Who does that agenda serve?
• How should those among us who wish to see a cogent and rational discussion of the politics of self reduction develop, react to the noise that is attempting to drown it the very discussion on which its development most depends?
These are not rhetorical questions. They are an attempt to learn what is actually going on here. Will someone please answer them?
Sounds strange, but it does make sense. If someone is so difficult to work with they destroy groups they join, the problem can be personal yet also a real problem that has to be addressed.
"It distracts us from the real issues here, particularly the ones originally brought up by Kevin himself."
Kevin's posts seem confused. If the aim of the focus was "fomenting joint action between MUNI riders and operators against fare hikes and service cuts" then ideological purity would seem to not matter at all and the goal should have been numbers (since having a small group of ideologues boycott MUNI really has no impact). In his first article Kevin goes into a need for unity with drivers but he makes statements about not working with Trots in the second one. The Bay Area isnt full of blank slates waiting for the right manifesto to draw them into action; unity means not alienating all the political tendencies in the Bay Area. I'd be interested to hear what MUNI drivers think about the organizing and what they think should have been done better; it's easy for people to talk about "the workers" but people are capable of talking for themselves,
"This discussion would be a lot more constructive if it eschewed personalities, personality clashes and personal opinions."
Personalities and personality clashes were a major factor in the breakdown of organizing. I dont understand the difference between personal opinions a political opinions unless you mean we should only talk about what groups we belong to tell us to say.
"certain people keep repeating over and over and over what we all already know, i.e., that some individuals in the movement don't like each other."
Well it's a little beyond that. Kevin's first critiques of the action were full of bigoted venom against people with Down's Syndrome and other such stuff. Even if one doesnt know Kevin it's enough to make you not want to work with him.
"Repeating it serves no other purpose than make discussion of the politics of self reduction more difficult."
Except organizing political actions is only partly about getting the right message. The Other part of organizing is pulling people in and that largely comes down to personalities and alliances. Sectarianism limits alliances and personalities can also drive people away.
"What motivates those generating the noise?"
Maybe people have legitimate problems with Kevin? What motivated his original snide comments about people with Down Syndrome? Maybe he really valued the MUNI action and then when it didnt go well he wanted to lash out and blame others and the anger revealed some underlying bigotries?
"How should those among us who wish to see a cogent and rational discussion of the politics of self reduction develop, react to the noise that is attempting to drown it the very discussion on which its development most depends?"
Why not bring up real issues? There were other aspects of how things could have gone better that you can bring up. The demographics of MUNI riders and how rate changes effected riders with monthly passes are both things that impacted the strikes efectiveness.
"They are an attempt to learn what is actually going on here. Will someone please answer them?"
Many of your questions were somewhat rhetorical in that you hint at a conpiracy of people to disrupt real discussion when Im sure you know personally Kevin, Aaron, Gifford, Norton and the others arguing on the various threads. Certain comments are anonymous but the main thread of personal attacks are all people everyone in the scene knows and we also know they are not spys with evil agendas and the motivation for negative comments is the usual one in any flamewar (one personal attack creates the anger to drive the personal attacks in the other direction).
http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/11/1785004_comment.php#1786093
and the comments right after it provide a reasonable description of what happened. One unmentioned factor in the "failure" of the strike is that in the case of a driver allowing people to not pay but not wanting to get in trouble, the only visible act of protest was in the money comming in to MUNI and while MUNI has financial problems it could easilly eat a few days of lost money to break a fare strike. Keeping something going usually requires momentum generated by publicity so even if MUNI lost half its normal income on the first day (which it didnt) it was in MUNI managements interest to pretend no fare strike occured and put out such a message to discourage future strikes. Getting more workers involved so they could have had the power to openly refuse fares would have gotten around this problem but then MUNI could have just locked the workers out and the strike would have been turned into a more traditional labor struggle which usually requires the involvement of large unions to provide workers with some sense of security that when things are over they will have a job (and will get strike pay during the duration). Grass root strikes obviously are also possible but require more of a comittment by workers and at least from the outside it didnt seem like the level of anger among workers was high enough; some of this was that the focus on some organizers wasnt on the workers but the workers are organized and can speak for themselves (and on their own could have made their voices heard).
If, on the other hand, the purpose of the strike was to spread self reduction, thereby raising the consciousness and liberating the behavior of workers like ourselves, then numbers are not the measure of success. Organizing the fall of capitalism can only take place at the grassroots level, and only by effecting a change in consciousness. This will not happen over night. It is a process that takes place one person at a time.
Ergo, if the strike was intended to effect any quick and/or reformist goals, it failed. But if the strike was intended to teach the skills of self reduction, then it was, and continues to be, a success. During the strike, I personally taught a number of people how to ride the bus for free. Of course, I've been doing things like this all along, since way before the strike, and intend to continue doing them for the rest of my life. Why? Because the only way we can change the way everyday life is lived on this planet is to raise the consciousness of those who live it by providing them with he tools to raise their own consciousness themselves.
When someone comes to realize that that they don't have to submit to the will of the capitalists, their consciousness has been raised. The raising of even a single individual's consciousness is a victory. It will take many such victories before there are so few people left who willing to submit that capitalism collapses of its own weight. But so what? Victory over capitalism will take time. Face it, we are in protracted struggle. In a protracted struggle it is not those who can inflict the most who win, but thise who can endure the most. If we cannot endure patience, our cause is doomed, and all our hopes and dreams with it.
The problem with local radical culture is that, as typically brainwashed Americans, most of them automatically assume that simply because they have not achieved instant gratification, that they have failed. Then, in the typically American fashion, they seek out scapegoats to blame for what is really their own impatience and unwillingness to persevere in what, by it's very nature, can only be a protracted struggle.
It is worth persevering because unless capitalism falls, this planet, and many of its inhabitants, human and otherwise, are doomed. If we let them, our rulers will clear cut and strip mine it, and us, to death. They will squeeze our lives dry and toss the husk over their shoulder. That's how they are.
Fortunately, the life's blood of capitalism is not money or power or resources or force, but the willing compliance of its victims. Its victims comply for two reasons, both matters of consciousness. First of all, most people are simple unaware of their alternatives because news of successful resistance, and especially of its methodologies, is suppressed. Second, most people feel that they have to go along with their own oppression and exploitation because if they don't, they'll get in trouble. They don't know how to resist without getting in trouble.
Show them how to get away with it. They will figure out why on their own. Raise their consciousness. They will raise the consciousness of others because it is human nature to share a good thing. The sharing of the methodologies of successful resistance should be the focus of the self reduction movement. Instead, it attacks itself, thereby doing the bosses' job for them. It's counter productive. It is even more counter productive to avoid discussing political issues because you, personally, don't get along with who brings them up, or disagree with them on some other issue. That's more than just counter productive. It's stupid. Smart people want to hear the truth. We don't care who says it, how or why. Stupid people want to hear that they were right, even when they were wrong, andto hear it from people they like, and to hell with the truth.
The self reduction movement is not failing in America, but it is succeeding at a snails pace. This is not only because Americans are so cowed a people, but also because the movement itself engages in self defeating behavior. In doing so, it sets a very bad example. This is true, not only of public transport strikers, but of squatters, hackers, producer/consumer coops, disgruntled employee publishers, and the vast panoply of alternative economics enthusiasts in general. Until we stop fighting among ourselves long enough to create a viable alternative to capitalism, capitalism will persist. We could best start by ceasing to fight over personalities and personality clashes, and restrict ourselves to fighting over political issues.
There a number of important political issues which the self reduction movement needs to sort out before we get around to such petty stuff as who works with whom on which project. They all involve strategy. Chief among them is this:
Is it more productive to focus on structurally reforming the functional process of state/corporate oppression, or to grow interlocking networks of mutually supportive alternatives to the capitalist system?
Personally, a favor the latter. In the long run it is far more productive to leave the signs and bullhorns at home, and instead pass out fake passes, quietly, out of the bosses' sight. Better still, teach people how to create their own fake passes and how to pass them out without getting caught. Every time someone uses a fake pass, their conscious raises another click. They directly experience the benefits of working outside the capitalist system in a collective, mutually supportive manner. All the rhetoric in the world has less effect on consciousness than does a single, direct, personal experience.
Also, keep in mind that a lower fare, even if we could force one, is still a fare for the same reason that a "living wage" is still wage labor. Both serve to commodify everyday life. As long as anything is a commodity, everything is a commodity, including our own lives. Unless and until we are working to destroy the cultural hegemony of commodity relationships such as wage labor and fares, by creating viable alternatives, whatever we call what we're doing, we're actually supporting capitalism. Is that what we want to be doing? I don't think so.
I don't think that we want to be engaging in a lot of projects that fail, either. It's demoralizing. Attempting to create an Italian strike in America is doomed to failure unless and until the groundwork has been done. Convince enough people to stop being Americans, and resist the commodification of their own lives, and they themselves will organize themselves into formations which make it possible on a mass scale. Telling then why this should happen is not enough. We've got to show them how. We've got to show them they can get away with it. They can figure out why on their own.
I agree that the social strike was a success in general, but, it was an utter failure as an example of a successful organizing campaign. I don't think you can seperate the 2 in a critique of the strike. And, as I have mentioned previously, Kevin's critiques in that sense are completely bunk.
there is an immediate sense of what is possible that people get from taking part in a fare strike (far more than a union action, it goes without saying). for some it might have just been the fun of getting a free ride for a day or two, but for many others the experience of actively dissolving some of the boundaries and norms of private property, legality, through striking makes an idea of what we ought to have in society feel within our reach.
many people were afraid to make that small/large step on sept. 1 because it felt like they were going too far out on a limb with just a few people at the bus stop encouraging them on. we missed the "tipping point"effect in critical parts of the city simply because there were not enough of us to go around and talk to people beforehand. we also missed opportunities to organize directly with drivers because some more radical drivers had their own shit to deal with regarding the union at the same time, because we didnt spend time at the "barns", and because we probably didnt follow up on leads we had due to intergroup "tension" that kept our efforts fragmented.
we do have to be more clear about what our demands on the state are, b/c if the fare strike caught on and the spontaneity and excitement grew, it would be very easy for politicos, liberals, and wannabe celebrity jokers like kevin to fuck things up, water down what we want, and generally hide the power out of sight from where it emanated-on the buses.
and by the way,kevin, i dont think theres anything wrong with resorting to alittle violence when all attempts to communicate with a person intelligently are met with lies and garbage.
It makes me sad, and to be honest, a little angry, to see so much bickering and animosity in our community/whatever we are. It's almost as if the in-fighting is more important to many of you (not just KK) than actually getting something done. Where, and what, are your priorities here, seriously?
Meanwhile, MUNI fares keep rising, and I trust that I don't even need to detail the conditions in New Orleans, Haiti, Iraq, etc, etc.
Come on, folks. It's not as if you started this tomorrow -- I know you all have it in you to rise above this. Change or be changed, forgive or be forgotten. The choice is up to you.
Um, started this yesterday. You know what I mean
THIS IS SO FUNNY ...AND SAD. NOONE CARES ABOUT YOU AND GIFFORD AND YOUR WAR! INDYBAY COMMENTS IS THE BIGGEST PUBLIC MEETING (ER, MUTUAL MASTURBATION) YOU AND GIFFORD WILL EVER GET. ENJOY.
>Kevin Kevin Kevin Keating Keating Keating
Well, OK...but why not just work your way around him? If he's the haranguing wingnut you say he is, he's hardly alone. In my experience, the activist left tends to always have a least a few monomanicial loonies around. If you don't know how to continue work around them without getting into a pissing match, I humbly suggest that you learn.
2. I am saving my rhetorical energy for the next installment of our story.
My proposal of a big public meeting to hash this out bet. me and comrade Sketch-bag still stands. Of course, it might mess with you internet trolls busy schedule of living with your parents, poor personal hygene, and beating off to on-line porn.
"People are wrong to think that the strong dominate the weak; the weak usually manage to pull down the stong, because the weak outnumber the strong, and they know it."
Nietzsche, 'The Anti-Christ.'
That being said, I did read both of your articles, and I do think you're trying to figure out what exactly is broken about radical politics in SF. I'm just not convinced that your bedside manner is going to win a lot of people over. You may want to read your Friere again (presuming you've read him at all) -- co-dialogue tends to lead to praxis much more than strongman, Neitscheian tactics.
ps: if you think jumping down my throat in response is going to accomplish anything, I suggest you read some of my other responses around here. I don't play along with that kind of macho BS, regardless of ideology.
Hahahahahahaha. Kevin, you're a tool. I guess it's better than masturbation to oneself, mr. vanity smurf.
Well...all due respect, it's no more attactive, alluring or captivating when you respond in kind. Masturbation? Try circle jerk with machetes.
Does it ever occur to you that there may be people who come here because they're considering actually doing something, and seeing this kind of childish snipe and counter-snipe turns them off and they never come back?
Does it ever occur to you that by having been involved in activism for a number of years, that you not only have a degree of responsibility, that you have a greater deal of responsibility than someone who is new to activism? I'm not talking to you in specific, I'm talking to everybody who is engaged in this kind of absurd infighting.
Basically? Shame on y'all. I know you know better. You've got a long way to go when it comes to unlearning your macho posturing -- which, in case you hadn't noticed, is a form of oppression. By continuning down this road, you're basically invalidating whatever good you do.
Sorry if you didnt get the comedic reaction.
Sorry if you didnt get the comedic reaction.<
It's not a matter of not getting it, it's a matter of not thinking its funny to watch y'all rip each other apart. Humor can be a weapon.
I'm sorry to see Kevin Keating being so reductionist and self serving here. I thought he did a good job on the fare strike, and worked tirelessly on that first day especially.The day of the Fare Strike, Kevin was riding buses all day for free and engaging riders in discussion. But I think it is important to remember that a lot of other people were doing the same.
Some background: I was in the Fare Strike group, and was really glad to meet Chris and Ian from Social Strike at the meetings in the Mission. It is fallacious to think we were all underlings for Marc Norton. We knew what we were doing and Marc was simply part of it. I'm actually willing to consider that there may be some truth to the idea that Fare Strike represented something to the right of Social Strike, but at this point I don't know enough to say. I'm being honest, and I guess that makes me a "tard" of some sort. Sorry, I've been busy with my head in the books going to the same school Kevin goes to---SF State.We are both working on getting a state sanctioned degree. Anarchists do these things.
At that last march to city Hall, I showed up to see what was going on. A bunch of us thought that standing in front of City Hall in the pitch black talking to ourselves with a megaphone was silly, although the march itself was ok, with a lot of people screaming out support and honking etc., but really that night did not sum up the effort of the Fare Strike, or the Social Strike. Everyone knew it was a bit of a last gathering before letting the major effort go. Kevin, when you try to make this march sum up the whole idea behind Fare Strike it strikes me as dishonest on your part. It's the same sort of slight of hand I've experienced at the hands of people in the ISO. They focus on one thing, and then use it to tie you into being a redbaiter, or somehow involved in the Kerry campaign, while ignoring what actually happens on the ground. This is how I see your description of how the Fare Strike played out. Not accurate at all, and dishonestly constructed. Like the ISO, you use your distorted version to portray yourself as the one pure viable option in a sea of sellouts. I need you to be more genuine in your communication, and less about scoring political points. I also would like you to have more of a self critique. Your self aggrandizement is really insulting and embarrassing. You think you are the only one interested in theory, which shows you haven't really talked to many of the people involved in the strike, especially the ones at SF State.
My experience on the first day of the Fare Strike was pretty radical in some ways given the actual situation on the ground. I started at the Balboa station at around 7am. There was no one there except me and some riders. I was scared to do anything at first. I started talking to some people and giving out some of ride free transfers. That's right, the Fare strike people had incorporated that cool Social Strike prop into what we were doing, because we all liked it, despite what Marc Norton had said about it. I had suggested the same prop before I knew Social Strike had already made them. Anyway, I was joined by three friends. One of us was in constant contact with the drivers as each bus pulled up. This person, I know for a fact, is one of the Fare Strike people who had met with MUNI drivers at the various bus barns, and had been riding for weeks talking to drivers about the strike. Kevin, you seem to be unaware of this fact. Do your fucking homework before being such a blowhard. When the police showed up I used it as an opportunity to scream about the role of the police as opposing the will of the people to protect the status quo and business interests instead. I don't want a medal or think I'm a genius for doing this, I was only trying in my own half assed way to tie in what theory I know to what was actually happening. We weren't at all shocked to see about thirty police, three vans, a truck, and camera toting police filming us. We used their presence to make clear what the people were up against when they acted in their own self interest, and how this is in conflict with the interests of the state. We were also at a MUNI station, so all the suits were coming out, even tearing down our sign at one point. The crowd was on our side though, and a small 70 year old Chinese woman chased that guy screaming at him to give back the sign. People were nodding in approval as we dissed the cops saying they were just there to make sure the people couldn't control their own lives. We didn't really need to teach them that, but it was nice for them to see some people doing something about it. We were all constantly screaming about the failure of Downtown business to pay for the infrastructure that brought them their workers, who make them their profits. I suppose we were doing raps on the labor theory of value and the unfairness of the capitalist system, and how MUNI should be free. We were constantly tying it to the relation of workers to the means of production, and how we are all alienated from our labor, and from running our own cities, and determining what is important, such as free transporation and education and healthcare. What we weren't yelling about was reforming the capitalist system. I didn't hear anything about that all day. So I think your portrayal of the Fare Strike crew amounts to a fabrication. I hope you don't write your school papers like that, because that will tend to get graded down. Usually, facts, even debatable ones, are used to back up assertions, even ones that are designed to make you look really great. One possible lesson for you here might be that you actually don't know everything. Making stuff up doesn't fly. So I am challenging your assertion that you are a good writer. Your writing here is mediocre at best. Live with that. It doesn't mean you don't have anything to contribute. It just means you need to let your delusions die.
Anyway, people were really supportive. The MUNI drivers at that station seemed very affraid for their jobs. We were disappointed that none of them were participating, given that there had been a lot of support from drivers leading up to the strike.
However, the situation in the Mission was totally different. I think this is largely due to the Day Laborers, not Kevin Keating. In fact if Kevin Keating had not been involved, I don't think it would have made one bit of difference in the Mission. That is a counterfactual, not a fact, but worth thinking about. My friend Josh, who is fluent in Spanish, and a member of Fare Strike really did a great job in the Mission, aggressively helping crowds get on the busses, and communicating with drivers. The Mission was the strong point of the whole affair. Entire busloads of people got on with drivers totally ignoring this. Kevin, do you speak Spanish? Are you going to step up and take credit for the most successful part of this whole effort? I hope not. The whole thing was a collective effort, not a Kevin Keating production.
On several occasions that day, I realized some of what I was saying was a paraphrase from a Kevin Keating article I had enjoyed reading on the Social Strike site, which was a great source of articles on the fare strike, and one which I had referred almost everyone of the thousands of people I spoke to, gave stickers to, and flyers to over the month leading up to the strike (I was a late comer).
Kevin, I understand that you have a bad opinion of Marc Norton. I don't know all the politics between you and him, or you and Gifford (who has been a great contributer to the Adventure Club listserv just so I'm not hiding an affiliation here). But I think you are wrong when you try to paint anyone in Fare Strike as underlings or by implication as sanctioning Leninism. You may have seen my, and others', arguments with the ISO on infoshop over the sabotage of anti-war movement at SF State. I am trying to educate myself, and I actually am a slow learner, unlike you with your God like intellect and social skills. But a bunch of us took on ISO, and have formed a new space for anarchists, situationists, non ists, and whover we get along with to try to start something different at SF State. You have not been part of that effort. Maybe you could come and give us a preemptive speech about how we are all pro wage labor Leninists so we can disband now before we try to do anything with out your one man vanguard to oversee our progress.
To sum up. I support the idea of having a critical analysis of the failures of the Fare Strike. But I think Kevin has a really distorted view of how important he is. These are two separate issues. I'm not knowledgeable enough to enlighten you all on the first subject, so I won't pretend. From my perspective this was a partial success. If there is a main failure I see it is that we didn't plan to have a sustained strike, or how to keep the momentum up.
-----Dave
It is also a profound misanalysis to conflate the strike with the self reduction movement. The most effective actions ever undertaken by self reductionists have always been those carried out underground and without announcement.
"....HE MAY RECEDE INTO A STATE OF POLITICAL HIBERNATION FOR SOME PERIOD OF TIME"
Well, he's been hibernating too long. Dave's account will probably wake the sleeping bear. Anyone want to bet $100 that he comes out swinging again, but this time goes for the jugular of the naive and inexperienced young anarchists? He's already put the pro-wage labor leftists in their place.
And another prediction: I can't remember if he's put the perfunctory link to his past glory yet, so look for that too. I bet he adds a link to his past victories, either the yuppie vandalism campaign or the archive of his past postering successes. I can hardly wait.
Stay tuned...
BS. Muni directors just figure in a certain amount of fair evasion into the budget. It has no effect on stopping fair increases.
I've been waiting for the next installment of the Kev vs giff/everyone love/hate relationship.
Since you've already overused many others, what's the next ailment? Since it seems that you're working your way through your mental health dictionary, here are some possibilites:
Autism
Attention Deficiency Disorder
Bipolar Disorder
Epilepsy
Frontal Lobe Damage
etc., etc.
You can never be in hibernation this long, so what's the diagnosis? We've got to alert the medical and mental health professionals.....
I guess if you're an obssesive-compulsive loser with lots of empty time on your hands, you can find the motivation to do stuff like that.
Shall we begin addressing the issue of that motorcycle now, Gifford? And then there's that recent act of speading poisonous gossip that should ensure you a fine reputation among women of the Bay Area.
" I guess if you're an obssesive-compulsive loser with lots of empty time on your hands, you can find the motivation to do stuff like that."
This is interesting on a few levels. Keating buys into the whole concept of labelling people as sick, as in not normal. He uses the standard pop psychology jargon of the average Oprah viewer, reflecting many of the same underlying assumptions about how people "should" be. The students of 68 had a lot to say about psychology and its use as a straight jacket. Kevin on the other hand regurgitates psychological terminology as a weapon, with a puddle deep understanding of what he is reinforcing. He seems to think having "empty time" is a bad thing. Yeah, like don't you anarchists know that we should always be producing at the most rapid rate possible, no matter what it is we do? Sort of like Kevin's writing, mass produced with little thought behind it, but always sensational. "Empty time" is a sign of being a "loser" to Kevin. Losers are the ones who don't win, because _competing_ is what it's all about right Kevin?
"Win, win, always play to win" -Terminal Preppie by Dead Kennedies
Gifford Hartman amply qualifies on this score. There are other things that qualify, too, sketchier and creepier than repeatedly hacking into an opponent's e-mail accounts, but as you have noticed I've got more substantive writing to do. I think the Gifford Hartman story is in the process of writing itself at this point.
Do any of you people detect something wrong, unprincipled and cowardly about this person attacking me while hiding behind fake names? I used to use fake names when I was trying to stuff stuff out their in the real world. Then some legal trouble and a little noteriety came my way, and who I was was out of the hat, and I stopped using nom de plumes. But then, I've never been pathologically obssessed with anyone, either.
"fictional novel?" By definition a novel is fiction. No, I'm not re-writing my first novel to accomidate any of this dreck. I wouldn't mess up my fiction, my best work, my ticket out of this rubbish with stuff like this.
And for that matter, I'll try to restrain an impuse to respond to any of the posts that will come up after I post the next section of my critique. I'm glad to see I've elicted such an eager response.
KEVIN KEATING
Kevin wrote:
1. Losers are guys who can't create anything, can't write anything, can't contribute to a substantial effort, can't do anything substantial in their own lives, and then spend a lot of time and effort tearing down the good efforts of others.
Gifford Hartman amply qualifies on this score.
Dave: Actually, Gifford was an important part of the Fare Strike group. He contributes. His writing that I've seen at the Adventure Club listserv has been self reflective, annotated with sources (suggestions for reading on topics to go into history and theory) and experience. No, it doesn't all have to be "peaceful" and lovey dovey, but when he has debated people on that site, its actually been constructive. So when you say he can't write, I guess we're just supposed to take you as an authority on good writing, which is a surreal idea to me. I just can't even imagine that! You labelled people involved in the Fare Strike group as tools of left wing capital. You paint with a broad brush, and your writing reminds me a lot of David Horowitz in that sense. You totally ignore the facts to make your poltiical points. Instead of a group of individuals, you merely attach them all to Marc Norton, end of story. You don't outline any of what went on, or the form that the actual participation of the people you smear. That's why your writing is weak. There is hardly any substance behind the condescension. That's why I see your self percieved position as an authority who tells us all why we're failures, Leninist dupes, or tools of capital as illigitimate. Your "let me tell you how it is" attitude is actually really boring. It just seems like a persona you put out as a front. It would be more interesting to me if once in a while you asked people for more information rather than just assuming you know it all.
Gifford does contribute. Who do you think you are to judge what is "substantial" in someone's life? No one here needs your approval.
A couple years ago he told me and others in all seriousness that he's a better writer than Marx. This elicited laughter that was at once nervous and contemptuous--god, keating's such a fucking jackass clown i remember thinking--but he was so encapacitated by self-reverie that he didn't even notice.
There are two words that explain why Keating will never be half the writer he wants everyone to think he is: No soul.
Yes this quote speaks for itself.
"Post an e-mail address that I can write to you at; you can judge for yourself once you've got enough information."
Dave: While I think some of your critique of the Fare Strike is worth considering, and I am doing that, I think you also need more information so you can judge for yourself. When you're ready to put on your historian's cap, put down the ideological bullhorn for a second, and do some hard research on the actual make up of who was in the Fare Strike, and what they stand for in their views and actions, two things will happen:
1. You will have made a step toward becoming a better writer
2. You will begin to see a different picture than the one you present in your ill informed portrayal of the people in and around the Fare Strike group, and the events of the strike as they developed.
Right now, your writing is lacking factually because you've chosen to make political points serving your self percieved Bay Area reputation rather than researching the people you smear (not just Gifford, but all the anti-capitalists in Fare Strike). You're in an echo chamber in which all of your past duels with Gifford and others are hurting your ability to attain new information.
You put forth a Manichaean view of the whole strike as a battle between the evil Leninist pro wage labor dupes on one side, and the inexperienced but well meaning anarchists on the other. In this story you tell, you emerge as the Yoda figure. It's not convincing.
My hope is that others who were involved in the strike and have a wide ranging understanding of the issues involved will write critical articles on how it all went down. Right now, we're all giving Kevin the hegemony. We need a less Kevin-centric history to be put forth for the record. Think of all the people searching the net who will be relying on Kevin's five part opus to inform themselves on what happened in San Francisco. That scares me.
"Once upon a time, in a sleepy city by the bay, a hero emerged to lead the down syndrome Leninist dupes and infantile anarchists to freedom. His name was Kevin (link to Nietzsche's uberman at Wikipedia here)."
Revisionists will be needed.
If you can't handle this politically, think of it in terms of writing: which is more convincing, hitting your readers over the head with your POV, or luring in the reader gradually? Sometimes, the blunt approach works -- but more frequently, it just leaves people not wanting to listen.
Or continue posting stuff refering to what I write, without any response from me.
Cheers,
Keating
have emphasized their revolutionary anti-capitalist politics.
So, let's start with that.
Having revolutionary ideas, about the potential of the working class,
through the forging of solidarity and alliance among its various
sub-groups, to create a new social arrangement beyond the
present capitalist society, is important. It's important because of
its ability to inspire people to fight for change, to develop personal
commitment to the struggle, and in providing guidance in the
course of action that should be pursued.
But the American working class is currently very far away from
having developed the capacity to mount that kind of challenge to
the status quo. Ask yourself this question: How willing are
ordinary people in large numbers to take action right now in
solidarity with each other, with other workers, against the
employers, or against attacks against the social wage like the
fare hikes and service cuts?
The more widespread the level of solidarity and action, the greater
the power working people will have. The greater the power being
exhibited visibly in actions, the greater the impact on the
self-confidence and consciousness of the working class. The
greater the sense of power ordinary people have, the
more likely people will be willing to entertain ideas of more major
changes. The more invisible such action in support of each other
is, the more people will be inclined to believe "You're on your own"
in dealing with the dominating structures and institutions, the more
people will feel that radical ideas are "unrealistic."
I mention this here because I think we need to think about how the
American working class can BECOME revolutionary. It's obvious
that the American working class is not revolutionary right now.
This is what I mean when I say it doesn't now have the capacity to
mount a revolutionary challenge to the dominating classes. I
believe that the working class can develop that capacity, but it
will take a protracted process of widespread change in the
consciousness of the working class itself.
The present social order is able to reproduce itself from year to
year because of the impacts on people's pscyhes of the kinds of
actions that people are foced to take on. Doing work that is
acquiscent to bosses, being subject to all kind of controls on our
lives, generates in people habits of acquiesence and acceptance
of the existing arrangement. That's because people will tend to
develop the habits of mind that enable them to best "fit" in with
the social circumstances they see no way to change. Changing
those habits is not going to happen over night.
I've been involved in radical politics since the late '60s, and it's
been my observation that anarchists and left-communists rarely
ask themselves this question, of how conciousness can change.
Yet this is a crucial question, and it needs to guide our practice.
The Muni fare strike was -- and could only be -- a fight for a
small change in the terms of our exploitation and subordination
under the present system. The degree of change ordinary people
can bring about depends upon how widespread and how
deep-seated is the willingness for action within the general
population, against the dominant structures. That is, it depends
upon the level of class consciousness that exists at a particular
time. But all such actions, if they become visible and activate
and motivate people, can contribute to raising consciousness
and developing the willingness to fight in the future.
To be a fight for us all, to exhance the sense of solidarity, it was
essential that it be a fight for the interests of the mass of ordinary
folks who depend on Muni. To say (as one of the commenters did)
that lowering the fare doesn't matter because some people are still
doing self-reduction (quietly, as an individualistic form of rebellion)
is to miss the importance of both making the struggle collective
and the solidaristic nature of the aims.
From this point of view, I believe that the key thing in the strike
should have been to focus on generalizing and extending
participation -- not setting some arbitrary ideological litmus test
that someone had to pass to be welcomed as a participant.
At the first Muni Social Strike meeting I proposed that we start
trying to organize a mass organization run by its members through
assemblies, that is, a self-managed Muni riders' union. I also
made similar comments at some meetings of the Coalition for
Transit Justice, and talked up this idea later with some of the
members of Muni Fare Strike.
I think that if the organizers had started out doing tabling at major
bus junctions, to gain membership in a rider organization, they
could perhaps have brought in a lot of orindary folks outside the
circuits of anarchist or radical left activism. These people could
then have helped to spread the action to others. I'm not 100%
sure this would have worked -- I don't want to claim
that my pet tactic would have been the magic elixir. But I think it
was a hypothesis that we should have tested in practice.
Gifford correctly notes that the Muni Fare Strike group was
successful in spreading the strike by getting a number of other
groups to support the effort, and he lists some of the groups.
Some of these groups were also contacted by the Muni Social
Strike folks along the way.
But at the Social Strike meetings I attended and at the so-called
"town hall" meetings, Kevin always talked against this tactic of
spreading the strike by contacting existing groups. He would bad
mouth almost any group you might mention (except the
Drivers Action Committee). But, as Gifford correctly points out, it
was the involvement of the Day Laborers that was the most
important extension of the strike. Not only through one-on-one
organizing among Spanish-speaking immigrants in
the Mission but also by gaining the direct cooperation of many
bus drivers (especially Latino bus drivers).
Kevin's preferred organizing approach from the beginning was the
wordy wall poster. In the early months of the strike effort he touted
this endlessly. Later on he realized that the graffiti-removal efforts
of the city and others had become more organized in recent
years and put a dent in this tactic. Besides, it's a rather alienated
organizing approach -- putting a piece of paper between you
and the people you're trying to reach.
The Muni Fare Strike group, to its credit, emphasized direct
one-on-one organizing from the beginning. Kevin's argument
against this was that it was too inefficient -- there were too many
Muni riders to reach one on one and so you had to spread the
word to the masses via wall posters.
This ignores the fact that the success of the action didn't depend
on getting most Muni riders to participate but required just a
sufficiently impressive militant minority. As it is, at least several
thousand people did participate.
The other forms of outreach that the Muni Social Strike group
proposed at the outset were (1) self-organizing of bus stops by
providing kits to interested people, and (2) mass neighborhood
"town hall" meetings.
The first of these ideas was unrealistic if there wasn't a real
organization that people could plug into. How would individuals get
the "organize your stop" kits? And how would you find/organize
the individuals? Creating a mass membership organization would
have been a way to perhaps organize this, but Muni Social Strike
and Muni Fare Strike didn't want to do that. So the "organize your
bus stop" idea was abandoned by Muni Social Strike, as they
realized it wasn't going to happen.
Kevin touts the first "town hall" meeting, which he says had 70 or
more attendees. Actually I counted slightly over 50 people. I saw
very little publicity for this. The people present were mostly young
anarchists. There was no evidence of numbers of folks outside the
radical activist circuit, except for two bus drivers from the Drivers
Action Committee.
Now, what if there'd been weeks of tabling at bus junctions and
getting people to sign up to join a membership organization and
THEN you call them all to come to a town hall meeting. It seems
to me that would have been more likely to bring in more ordinary
Muni riders.
Part of the reason we want to reach out beyond the already
existing radical activist circles is that we want to activate more
ordinary working folks, we want to get more people involved, get
them thinking about changing things, learning about how to do this.
But to do that you have to create an environment where people
who don't already have some 100% revolutionary perspective can
feel comfortable being themselves and participating, not
intimidated. Some blowhard constantly bad mouthing everybody
who disagreed with him wasn't helpful for this.
Some of the people in Muni Social Strike told me they were
against a Muni riders' union because of the likelihood it would be
"reformist." Here I gather they are thinking about the current level
of consciousness within the general working class population.
But you can't have it both ways. Either you want to organize the
working class to fight and to control its struggles and learn and
grow in the process, or not. If the numbers of people who have a
100% revolutionary anti-capitalist perspective are small in
numbers now, you do not expand that movement if you limit fights
to only those people.
In saying there needs to be a mass organization/movement in
which people as they actually are now can feel comfortable
participating, I'm not saying that there is no room or need for
anti-capitalist revolutionaries in this process, to influence
the movement. But the struggle in this case wasn't a struggle for
revolution, but for fighting against a fare hike and service cuts and
layoffs. Lots of people agreed with this even if they did not agree
with the anti-capitalist politics of the revolutionaries. Don't we want
them involved in the struggle even if they don't right now agree with
revolutionary politics? Isn't that what a mass struggle in our
society today actually presupposes?
In the Muni Social Strike group, Kevin emphasized outreach to
Muni drivers. This is why they started with leafletting the drivers
and developing links with the Drivers Action Committee. I think this
was important to do for developing the support of the drivers.
Ultimately, however, a handful of (mostly white) revolutionaries who
don't work for Muni can't organize the (overwhelmingly non-white)
transit workers. The workers need to have their own movement.
The problems they deal with on the job are not the same as the
problems faced by the riders.
Kevin always accuses me of being a "democrat." That's because I
believe that the working class can only liberate itself and run
things collectively, that is, through the creation of organizations
and movements run on the basis of direct democracy. To be
"against democracy" is to be for dictatorship. As the old
Internationale said: "We don't need any condescending saviors
to rule us from a judgment hall."
that lowering the fare doesn't matter because some people are still
doing self-reduction (quietly, as an individualistic form of rebellion)
What I actually said was that the point was not to lower the fare, but not pay it at all.
Not paying fares a revolutionary act for the same reason that not paying taxes is a revolutionary act. Teaching other people how to avoid paying is even more revolutionary. Except (perhaps) for being beaten and or robbed by the police, few things radicalize the consciousness of the average worker as does learning by experience that, yes, the system really *can* be beat. Yes, you really can break the rules, even the law, without suffering any undue consequences.
No, it's not individualistic, unless you refuse to share. In a society based on commodity relationships, sharing anything is a revolutionary act. Sharing the revolutionary skills of practical, applied ferality is, at this point in time, the most revolutionary thing we can do. People will never rebel openly until they know from personal experience that they can get away with doing it in the not so open. That's why we must build a culture of mutual support among fare dodgers, squatters, hackers, on the job pilferers, forgers, pirates, grey market laborers, black marketeers, etc. Whatever else it may be, revolution is illegal. Outlaws unite!
with all the crap, we need lots more honesty and self reflection
and more sooooouuuuul!!!
because you can bet your last money it's gonna be a stonegas, honey!
"What I actually said was that the point was not to lower the fare, but not pay it at all.
Not paying fares a revolutionary act for the same reason that not paying taxes is a revolutionary act. Teaching other people how to avoid paying is even more revolutionary. Except (perhaps) for being beaten and or robbed by the police, few things radicalize the consciousness of the average worker as does learning by experience that, yes, the system really *can* be beat. Yes, you really can break the rules, even the law, without suffering any undue consequences.
No, it's not individualistic, unless you refuse to share. In a society based on commodity relationships, sharing anything is a revolutionary act. Sharing the revolutionary skills of practical, applied ferality is, at this point in time, the most revolutionary thing we can do. People will never rebel openly until they know from personal experience that they can get away with doing it in the not so open. That's why we must build a culture of mutual support among fare dodgers, squatters, hackers, on the job pilferers, forgers, pirates, grey market laborers, black marketeers, etc. Whatever else it may be, revolution is illegal. Outlaws unite!"
This is simply mistaken. The point was not to avoid paying.
The point was to organize a collective struggle to avoid a
fare hike and avoid service cuts. The idea that we could get
Muni suddenly run for free is highly implausible. And if you
mean that the point was for YOU to avoid paying, because
you're willing to be stealthy, you're forgetting that only a few
people can get away with that. Ever heard of the "free rider
problem"?
The action becomes collective if it involves actual coordination
and especially if it involves a democratic decision-making
process among a significant number of people.
Most illegal activities are done for individualistic, self-interested
reasons. Most criminals are merely businessmen who deal
in illegal goods and services. In that sense, there is nothing
revolutionary about it.
fare hike and avoid service cuts.
Well, there's the problem then. Not everyone involved in this thing had the same goal. Some had realistic goals and some didn't. The pursuit of unrealistic goals is demoralizing. Banging our heads against a brick wall does more harm than good. It demonstrates the futility of resistance in a way no theoretical discussion can ever hope to.
The collective consciousness of the the San Francisco working class has not reached the level of fervor, let alone of organization, that it would take to actually effect Muni policy. Not only is this not Italy in 1977, it's not even Alabama in 1955. The most successful public transit action in American history, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, succeeded not only because people were fed up to here with sitting in the back of the bus, but because they had in place the social infrastructure that was needed to provided a functional alternative to riding the bus at all. We've all seen the pictures of Black Montgomery walking to work that year, rather than ride the bus. But as publicized as the walkers were, the real backbone of the strike was the car pools. To attempt to organize a strike of the Muni bus lines without first setting up car pools, is not only futile on the pragmatic level, but on the theoretical level, it's putting the cart before the horse.
>The idea that we could get Muni suddenly run for free is highly implausible.
Not quite. The idea that we could get Muni suddenly run for free *for everybody* is indeed highly implausible, short of a mass uprising a la Spain,1936. But then so is mounting a strike effective enough to bring about a fare reduction without first setting up enough car pools to take up the slack.
On the other hand, getting Muni to run for free for some people is not just plausible, it's happening. Some people have been riding for free for decades, not because they are willing to be stealthy, but because they are able to be clever. In most, though not all, cases, it is also because they work collectively. Fake passes aren't that hard to make, but they aren't as easy to make as they used to be. What actually happens, or so rumor has it, is that certain more highly skilled individuals produce the passes, which are then distributed along similar networks as the black market distributes other contraband, i.e., f2f, between people who have learned through practice and experience to trust each other.
There is a practical limit to how many people can get away with it, but it's not a "few," nor has it been reached, even after literally decades of organized forgery and distribution. Yet the networks have grown, and continue to grow. No, it has not had any appreciable effect on Muni policy. It has, though, had a clear and demonstrable effect on that segment of the working class which participates. Not only does it put money into working class pockets, it heightens the consciousness of all who participates. Participation not only has a positive effect on the morale of participating individuals, but serves as a training ground where they can acquire the skill set that is prerequisite for conducting effective clandestine operations. This skill set includes not only forgery, which is always a useful thing to know how to do, but more important, how to set up secure social networks.
And let's be realistic here, clandestine activities are crucial, not only in a prerevolutionary situation such as the one in which we find ourselves presently, but in the truly revolutionary situation that we are working to build. Capitalism is the impregnable bastion of the ruling class. It can not be taken by frontal assault. Our only hope is to starve them out. Yeah, we can do that. But first we need to build up the social infrastructure necessary to replace it. As long as we are dependent on the powers that be for public transportation, let alone food, clothing and shelter, they have us by the collar. We must become instead what is called in Italy, "cani sciolti," dogs without collars any more. Either we cast off our leashes or we walk meekly at heel. There is no third choice.
To live without collars we learn to provide for ourselves. We can do this a lot better in packs than we ever could one at a time. And as long as packs of feral rebel workers are hunted down like dogs, we *have* to be stealthy, and we are, and it works. That's why fare evasion by way of forged passes has not only succeeded and continues to succeed, it continues to grow, while actions like September's fail repeatedly.
And yes, it is revolutionary. We are building a culture of organized resistance, the only way possible, one person at a time. Our decision making is as democratic as collective decision making can possibly be, because it involves only one decision, the decision to participate in clandestine resistance. You make the decision or you don't. It's as simple as that.
Participation is almost never a solitary act. Just like its nearest analog, the black market, it's central element is composed of networks of willing individuals, and based on trust. It is the ideal training ground for revolutionaries because it not only teaches vital skills and builds crucial social infrastructure, but also accomplishes something positive and tangible in its own right. This makes it self sustaining. Until we build sufficient interlocking and mutually supportive networks of alternative, and when necessary clandestine, feral logistic support for our revolution, our revolution is doomed.
Not all of us are willing to wait until that great, glorious day in the future when the entire working class suddenly sees the light and rises as one. We see the light already. The scales have fallen from our eyes. Our revolution is happening now. It is an ongoing, organic process that grows even as we speak, not a theoretical insurrection sometime in the future for which we are organizing today. It's today. It was yesterday. And it will be tomorrow.
>Most illegal activities are done for individualistic, self-interested
reasons.
So are most acts of rebellion. What, you expected the working class of San Francisco to suddenly start walking to work because they believe in some theory they read in some book? Gimme a break. People rebel because it is good for them. They directly benefit. Their families directly benefit. Otherwise, they don't rebel. In almost all cases, that benefit is material. This is a fact of life. It's not because we have internalized capitalist values, but because we are mammals. That's how we mammals do live. We do what we perceive as benefiting ourselves and our families, and avoid everything else. This has been going on for at least 65 million years, and shows no sign whatsoever of letting up any time soon. If you don't factor it into your theory, your theory is bunk.
>Most criminals are merely businessmen who deal
in illegal goods and services. In that sense, there is nothing
revolutionary about it.
This is factually incorrect. The vast overwhelming majority of criminals, both in prison and and out, are not criminals because they conduct illegal business, but because they alter their consciousness in ways that the law does not approve of. The next largest category is petty thieves. Show me a worker who has never stolen anything from his or her boss, not even time, and I'll by you a drink, Tom. You know find me. Bring that worker over and introduce me. I'll buy you both drinks. Then I'll notify Ripley's and Guiness.
Not only is stealing from bosses a revolutionary act, so is any conscious defiance of the values of capitalism and the laws of the state. Stealing from fellow workers is not revolutionary precisely because it is not in defiance of capitalist values. Stealing from workers is what bosses do. Stealing from workers *is* capitalism.
But stealing from bosses? Hell yes. Take everything that isn't nailed down. Even if you can't use it yourself, you can always give it away. The very act of giving away to fellow workers what you have liberated from from the clutches of capitalism revolutionizes the social order by demonstrating to the people you give it to that there is a direct, tangible, material benefit to collective resistance.
Besides, we're in a war here. The class war has been going on for a very long time. We didn't start. The ruling class started it, the very first day the very first boss exploited the very first worker. Capitalism, as i can't point out too many times, cannot be defeated by frontal assault. Our only hope is protracted, guerrilla wa. We can wear down their defenses by repeated raids and constant harassment and starve them out by refusing to work for them and buy what they sell us. The most basic principle of guerrilla war, and this includes guerrilla economic war as well as physical confrontation, is to harass, harass, harass. Avoid direct confrontation except when we have overwhelming numerical superiority and superior position, and even then we need effective escape routes to make it succeed. If there are ten sheriffs breaking down the door of your squat, and twenty of you on the roof throwing furniture at them, yeah, you can hold them off for a while, maybe even drive them away. But they'll be back with a SWAT team, and when they get there, you had damn well better be somewhere else.
History has proven conclusively that the single most effective form of guerrilla war is essentially economic in structure. The effective guerrilla does not concentrate on the enemies troops, but on their logistical support. Cut their supply lines. Disrupt their communications. Deprive them of the material means to wage class war against us. Steal *everything* that's not nailed down. Anything that can be pried up wasn't really nailed down in the first place. Use what you take, not only to deprive the enemy, but to provide for yourselves. What you you can;t use, give away. What you can't give away, destroy. War without ceasing against every boss. Never give up. Never surrender.
But don't expect to displace capitalism without being able to replace it. Build the revolutionary social infrastructures that provide for our needs at every level, open, clandestine and whatever. Nothing else will work, least of all a transit strike led by people who haven't even thought, let alone organized, far enough ahead to come up with a system of car pools to replace riding on busses.
Yeah, it can be done. We don't even have to figure out how. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Learn from Montgomery. It was the single most effective transit strike in history. It's effects are still being felt today. They did it. We can do it. But we can't do it by denouncing Muni fares. We have to also provide working alternatives. The underground wing of the movement is doing that, and has been for decades. The above ground wing is not. Why not? Why are no car pools being organized to provide a way to get around town without riding the bus? Where are the above ground alternatives to clandestine resistance? First provide them, then criticize clandestine alternatives. In the meantime, you're just talking theory, and unsound theory at that. Revolution must be concrete or it's not revolution. It's a lot of hot air. The working class is not a balloon. Hot air will not make it rise. We tried that, again and again and again. it's doesn't work. Einstien once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result every time. But Einstien's definition, the bay Area activist community displays definite symptoms of collective insanity. Until we achieve coherence of reasoning, grounded in consistence with the facts on the ground, we just blowing hot air. What a tragic waste of time and talent.
As for the discussion itself. We did not need carpools in the Bay Area. We already had running busses. The point was unlike in Montgomery was to boycott paying not to boycoott riding. The majority of people who tried to ride for free during the main period of the strike did. Some people still do. Most don't do it with fake passes. Most either sneak in the back doors or get a transfer passed from a friend, or just get on the bus and seemingly ignore the busy driver. If you're not young that usually works.
The problem here in San Frnacisco is the majority of people buy fast passes and they didn't raise those prices. The different groups also did not tell people not to buy their September Fast Pass. Therefore a fare strike could not succeed without its base majority (Fast pass holders) not "on strike", Everything else, especially the stupidity of Keating, is irrelevant.
quite compatible with the existing system continuing. The same
is true of individualistic acts of theft. Illegal trading in
drugs is probably the largest source of recruits for the prisons.
This is because a certain part of the market economy is
made illegal, not because it is inherently anti-capitalist.
Your commendation of individualistic acts of theft doesn't
answer the key question that I posed: Given that the working
class is not revolutionary now, how could it become
revolutionary? In a society based on the amoral ethic
of "do unto others before they do unto you" and "You're on
your own," acts of theft by the more plebeian parts of the
population are simply the application of the prevailing
capitalist value system by people without the capital
to apply it on a legally authorized and grander scale.
It poses no challenge at all to capitalism.
Replacing capitalism with a system that gets us past
predation, exploitation, domination and submission,
presupposes a much higher level of collective organization,
willingness to support each other, so that a society based
on social ownership and collective self-management is
prefigured in the forms of organization of struggles on a
widespread scale. An increase in the level of solidarity
in practice and of collectively coordinated and organized
struggle is necessary to develop in people the habits
and ways of thinking that will support further solidarity
and collective organization and greater self-confidence
in the oppressed that fighting back together makes sense.
Individualistic acts of the sort you favor do nothing to
change consciousness and behavior in the way needed.
Your judgment that even resisting the fare hike FOR
EVERYONE wasn't realistic is another expression of the
basic pessimism of your outlook.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alberteins133991.html
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/26032.html
http://www.wisdomquotes.com/002899.html
http://www.ed.gov/nclb/overview/intro/presentation/edlite-slide007.html
http://en.thinkexist.com/quotation/insanity-doing_the_same_thing_over_and_over_again/15511.html
http://www.livingnow.info/story/5190/Einstein_-_Definition_of_Insanity
Let's get some points clear:
1.) You live in the East Bay and absolutely NOTHING about the fare strike, except reading websites and fliers, in the months-long build up to it.
2.) You DIDN'T come to any meetings of ANY group in the build up to the fare strike.
3.) You DIDN'T fare strike, but monitored things from Berkeley by internet.
Conclusion:
You know NOTHING about the organizing and the tens of thousands of conversations we had with Muni riders. Do you even know what a FastPass is?
So, I suggest that you shut the fuck up and start worrying about where you live. AC Transit is much, much worse than Muni, so stop armchairing your unsolicited opinion about San Francisco and get off you ass and do something WHERE YOU LIVE!
Sincerely,
Sam
but in the mission, chinatown, bayview/hunters point and other working class parts of the city, the majority of people either pay daily or regularly fare strike through the back doors or other scams.
neither of the groups calling for a fare strike had much success with the obviously more conservative fast pass buyers. yet, when encountering them a boycott of fast passes was mentioned, but many complained about the inconvenience of buying a fast pass after the first week.
the lack of fare increase on fast passes, and their widespead use, definitely weakened the radical possibilities of the fare strike, but i agree that some of the above comments do nothing to help make this point more clear.
1.) You live in the East Bay and absolutely NOTHING about the fare strike, except reading websites and fliers, in the months-long build up to it.
Youre right, i live in the East Bay. I am also in the city at least 3 times a week. You don't know what i did and didn't do to support the strike,. I admit i didn't make it my fisrt priority, but i did a little. And on the first day, i was around the city the whol;e day leaflettting and supportingg the strike, and expected to be part of a concerteed campaign to do it on other days. I was never asked, except on the days around the start of the service cuts.
2.) You DIDN'T come to any meetings of ANY group in the build up to the fare strike.
I went to what i believe was the first Social Strike town hall. I didn't go to a lot of other meetings, soem that i thought of going to were at the inaccessible Station 40, (up 2 fllights of stairs=I have a dsiability that makes lots of stairs hard.)
3.) You DIDN'T fare strike, but monitored things from Berkeley by internet.
I worked on the fare strike on the first day, and i continue to fare strike today/ I don't pay for MUNI. I also was a meember of two different fare strike specifc email lists and had a little tiem to read and answer posts and read web sites. We all do whatever we can do. I'm glad you sma (whoever you are) were super-striker and talked to everyubody in the entire city and the stirke went so successful because of all your hard work.
Conclusion:
You know NOTHING about the organizing and the tens of thousands of conversations we had with Muni riders. Do you even know what a FastPass is?
So, I suggest that you shut the fuck up and start worrying about where you live. AC Transit is much, much worse than Muni, so stop armchairing your unsolicited opinion about San Francisco and get off you ass and do something WHERE YOU LIVE!
AC transit is worse than muni. Absolutely. The set-up is way difefrent here. You don't have a lot of people already individually getting on the busses for free. The drivers and supervisers are way stricter. In San Francisco if soemone doesn't pay, the driver generally dirves on. In the East Bya, the driver will hold up and the bus, ask the perosn to leave and call the special AC transit sherriffs to haul them off if necessary. I've never seen anybody sneak on by the back door here and i ride the busses here almost everyday. The drivers here seem to be (or are pushed too be-actually probably a little fo both) just plain meaner than in SF.
Sincerely,
I don't believe you are sincere. If you were sincere you would tske a litlte constructuive criticism, no matter where the persom lives.
Sam
Not only do they tell deanosor to "shut the fuck up," they physically blocked him from attending meetings. And people wonder why the fare strike didn't attract more activists!?! Gimme a break.
From: a-infos-en [at] ainfos.ca
Subject: (en) Ireland, Anarchist Workers Solidarity #89 - Swedish and Finnish Commuters Take Direct Action for Free Public Transport
In Stockholm, Gothenburg and Helsinki commuters are taking the
initiative in the fight for decent, free public transportation. Buses,
trams, commuter trains and subways are necessary for workers to get
around in society. A campaign, planka.nu, has been set up in Sweden
and Finland calling for free public transportation. Here OisÌn Mac
Giollamóir interviews Anna from the planka.nu campaign.
> How did planka.nu start?
It started as a small campaign initiated by the SUF (Syndicalist Youth
Federation) group in Stockholm after an increase in fare prices. We
made posters and flyers and arranged mass protests in the subway. We also started "P-kassan" - the freeriding insurance. You pay a small
amount to join the insurance fund after which if you get caught
freeriding your fine is paid.
> How is this campaign run and structured?
In the campaign we practice direct democracy in meetings, there is no
committee where anyone has more power than anyone else.
> What has been the reaction of the media and the state?
The reactions have been stronger than we expected, freeriding seems
to be a very controversial method of engaging in politics. Maybe
because it's so simple, everybody does it at least sometimes. I think
that planka.nu focuses on this common phenomenon and that really
scared the politicians. Some of the media loved us and at the same
time other media refused to publish the website address
http://www.planka.nu or even mention the word "planka". All the local
planka.nu groups - Stockholm, Gothenburg, ÷stergˆtland and
Helsinki have been reported to the police but freeriding isn't illegal so
nothings happened.
> Where do you see this going in both the short term and the long term?
So far we've been successful in bringing this issue from the bottom of
the list of political problems. For years it wasn't even considered
political and nobody wanted to talk about the relationship between
social welfare, income and the ability to travel between city and
suburbs, to work and to school etc. We're aiming for free public
transport and we're still a far way from it. We've yet to see what we're
going to do about it next.
> What is the role of the SUF in this campaign? What advice if any
would you have for others who are campaigning around the issues of
public transport?
The only thing left over from the time when planka.nu was an SUF
initiative are the anarcho-syndicalist values. SUF has no role in the
campaign. The most important advice is definitely don't underestimate
the media, don't be afraid of using it, and remember: You can do it!
United we stand strong.
For related articles see Anarchism, ecology and the environment
http://struggle.ws/wsm/environment.html
-------------------------------------
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This edition is No89 published in Sept 2005
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