• By: Charles Johnson (Southern Nevada ALL, UCIR)
• Type: Presentation / Group discussion
• Language: English
• Schedule: Sunday, Nov. 8 12:30-1:30pm (Block 4). Room 209.

This workshop will be focused on an introductory discussion of the ideas and activism of anarchism (meaning the abolition of all forms of government and opposition to all systems of domination, replacing government with peaceful social cooperation and domination with free social relationships based on mutuality and equality).

Shared Article from radgeek.com

No Borders, No State (Slideshow)

Format: ODP (OpenDoc/LibreOffice) Content warning. The presentation discusses how anarchist politics and migrant status were often explicitly linked in nationalist rhetoric & anti-immigrant legislation of the 1900s-1920s. To document the stigmatization, this presentation does include images of a couple of highly racist political cartoons that appeared in U.S. magazines in the early 20th century.

radgeek.com

I will briefly introduce the basic ideals of Anarchism, discuss the meaning of Anarchy, and clarify some common misunderstandings about Anarchy and Anarchists — why Anarchy means peace, not violence, and cooperation, not conflict. I will then discuss why Anarchists are opposed to all national boundaries, why Anarchists favor the abolition of all systems of coercive immigration control, and how we hope that autonomous communities, voluntary cooperation, and grassroots, people-powered social change can replace the violence of political borders. The talk will cover both theory and practice, including a presentation on historical and contemporary examples of anarchist work against government borders — including No Borders camps in the U.S. and Europe, and international solidarity actions such as cross-border support for the Magonista uprising in Baja California during the Mexican Revolution.

Finally, we will also discuss the interconnection of struggles, and how anarchism supports the struggle against the state and its borders as part of a multidimensional struggle for social transformation, against all forms of oppression and domination.

The purpose of the workshop is to give an overview of the ideas of anarchism and some of the ways they have been put into practice in multidimensional cross-border struggles for freedom and social justice. Although I advocate Anarchism and will present my reasons for believing in it, my main purpose is to open up a conversation, about Anarchism and also particularly about the interconnection of struggles, the role that opposition to state violence, and the effort to build grassroots alternatives, play in all of our movements (whatever we might call them), and about whether or not a world without government borders must also be a world without governments. As such, I will plan to leave as much time as possible at the end of my formal presentation for discussion amongst all the participants.

• A New Old Problem with No Name. cherylcline, der Blaustrumpf (2009-10-30). I read Mary Pipher's Reviving Ophelia when it was published 15 years ago, in 1994.  I reread some of it on Saturday night.  It was part of my futile never-ending quest to understand why and how some men exploit women and children and generally get to go on with their… (Linked Friday 2009-10-30.)
• Police Officer Suspended Without Pay. Radley Balko, The Agitator (2009-10-29). If you follow with any regularity the police misconduct stories I post on this site, you're no doubt familiar with the phrase "paid administrative leave." No matter how serious the alleged misconduct, cops nearly always get paid while they're being investigated, a period that typically takes months. But last week… (Linked Saturday 2009-10-31.)
• Not your grandfather's Bill of Rights. Or anyone's for that matter. Campaign For Liberty Blog (2009-10-31). The thing is, that this rendition of the Bill of Rights. especially 1, 2, and 4 — “usually need permission!” — is more or less an exact rendition of the Bill of Rights as seen through the prism of legal interpretation by the best-protected precedents and the highest courts in the land. And that’s exactly why it’s a huge goddamned waste of time and energy to around pretending like appealing to the Bill of Rights is going to do a damned thing for vindicating your rights in most real-life, practical situations. (Linked Saturday 2009-10-31.)
• Armed to the Teeth: The Fight Over Rural Dental Care. Boing Boing (2009-10-31). Want to make sure poor people have better access to good dental care? Then stop calling in the government to shut down competition and ratchet up prices. (Linked Saturday 2009-10-31.)
• Let’s reform it out of existence. Kevin Carson, United States Pirate Party (2009-10-05). Patents, historically, have played a central role in industrial cartelization.  The exchange and pooling of patents (for example GE and Westinghouse at the turn of the 20th century) has been used to create stable oligopoly structures.   Today it's hard to overestimate the importance of patents as a structural support… (Linked Saturday 2009-10-31.)

Happy Day of the Dead, y’all.

As you may know, I’ve out and about doing Food Not Bombs work; I’ve also been working to help put together this year’s Living Without Borders, which is coming up just this weekend. If you’ve been considering coming, you may be interested to know that a list of confirmed workshops is now available online, including my own workshop — No Borders, No State: Anarchism, Immigration Freedom, and the Interconnection of Struggles — as well as Susie Demisse’s workshop on prison abolition, Joanna N?@c3;ba;?@c3;b1;ez’s workshop on the criminalization of immigrants, and a workshop by FW Paul Lenart (of the Reno IWW) on internationalism, radical unions, and labor solidarity across borders. Interested? Register to let us know you’re coming. Come on down. And spread the word!

And y'all? What have you been up to this week? Write anything? Leave a link and a short description for your post in the comments. Or fire away about anything else you might want to talk about.

This is a recent bit of correspondence that I received from an anonymous victim-blamer through my online contact form. Apparently in response to my post from October 2007 on Officer Dan Gilroy, a grown-ass man who has no problem using his position as government police to repeatedly punch 15-year-old black girls in the face over allegedly walking outside after midnight. Our anonymous correspondent thinks that Shelwanda Riley — the 15-year-old victim of Officer Dan Gilroy’s sado-fascist power-trip anger management problem — is the one whose conduct ought to be at issue. And would like us to know, I guess, that she ought to feel grateful that the pig didn’t break her ribs or something:

From: Anonymous (no e-mail address provided)
Date: 10/28/2009 10:47 AM
Subject: Shelwanda Riley (radgeek.com feedback form)

I know this is old. I just saw the youtube video of the cop and the resister. That girl was fortunate to only have been beaten as badly as she was for the terrible behavior she exhibited. Police brutality is different with each situation, and if I was that cop… The cops will not mess with anyone who is not acting stupidly.

Oh, O.K., what with the girl walking alone at night and not doing exactly what this hyperviolent control-freak ordered her to do, well, obviously she was asking for it. Of course.

• Nokia Sues Apple, Claims iPhone Infringes on Slew of Patents. Daring Fireball (2009-10-24). In which government-imposed patent monopolies once again promote science and the useful arts by rewarding innovative research and development. (Linked Saturday 2009-10-24.)
• Would-be bounty hunters nab innocent woman in Bristol. State & Regional Politics for Richmond Times-Dispatch (2009-10-25). 1. The bounty hunters didn’t just “nab the wrong woman.” They strip-searched and sexually assaulted her. 2. As a result, these three rampaging rapist thugs are facing arrest and multiple charges of abduction, robbery, and sexual battery. As well they should be — and I hope they rot. But care to guess how many charges they would be facing if they really were on that government police “drug task force” they pretended to be on, and did exactly the same thing to exactly the same innocent woman?
  
  (If your guess is “any,” guess again.) (Linked Sunday 2009-10-25.)
• Sexist Beatdown: The Happy Hooker, Or Why Doesn't Steven Levitt Suck Dick For a Living? The Sexist (2009-10-25). In which Econo-Creep Central Junior Partners Levitt and Dubner examine the economics of sex work with a sample size of N=2. (Linked Sunday 2009-10-25.)
• Soviet Shoes, by David Henderson. EconLog (2009-09-30). I mentioned in Tuesday’s post that one of my favorite passages from Scott Shane’s Dismantling Utopia is the passage about shoes. Commenter Bill asked me for the passage. Here it is: My informal survey suggested that some of the longest lines in Moscow were for shoes. At first I assumed… (Linked Sunday 2009-10-25.)
• Miroslav Pa?@c5;a1;ek's work, in pictures. Mike Gogulski – nostate.com, Anarchoblogs in English (2009-10-23). A couple of post-police attack photos, taken on 6 September 2009, the day after. Bruising to right upper arm showing finger impressions of Miroslav Pa?@c5;a1;ek Slovak State Police hired thug Miroslav Pa?@c5;a1;ek has learned how to inflict great pain with his hands while leaving few if any marks on the… (Linked Sunday 2009-10-25.)
• How an insurance mandate could leave many worse off. Marginal Revolution (2009-10-26). In which it is discovered that forcing working folks to pay for big corporate health insurance, whether they want to or not, and whether they can afford to or not, might turn out to prop up big corporate health insurers at the expense of working folks. (Linked Monday 2009-10-26.)