EASTWEST #4: An Anarchist Newspaper

Here is a print version of the latest issue for printing on your own.

marxist-leninists! maoists! stalinists! white people! liberals! gentrifiers! qilombo front group! racists! tough-guy posturing!

"Disrupt inequality, lift up sF: Protest tech conference in San Francisco and an end to displacement. Tenants and workers join together to demand tech companies do more to fix the housing crisis and the city’s rampant in-equality. Take the opportunity to interrupt this spectacle of tech-driven gentrification. 5:00pm at Pier 48."

Here we see hapless, in-love-with-the-system liberals of the Eviction Free San Francisco and San Francisco Tenants Union ilk "demand (sic) tech companies do more to fix the housing crisis and the city’s rampant in-equality." This line of thinking is like saying, we demand that capitalism solve the ecological crisis -- when capitalism is the ecological crisis.

There is no credible direct action opposition to gentrification and displacement in San Francisco right now. Deluded liberals who want the tech industry to 'help solve the crisis' are a function of the problem -- and, as always, offering passive applause, there is 'EastWest' and its identical twin, 'Fireworks,' the devoid of critical faculties, all-protester-all-the-time channel.

'EastWest' is the latest expression of a scene whose members are quite capable of expressing their opinions, and of being quite eloquent in this. What they are not capable of is engaging in sustained real-world activity -- the real world, outside of their comfort zone -- and create a recognizable presence for what they claim to be about in the larger world around them. Their are plenty of opportunities for this, and these people are clearly never going to take them. They will always play the role of passively applauding other people's actions, liberals, Stalinists, black nationalists, fans of electoral politics, or whatever.