Holler From the Rooftops: Creating Some Kindling
A new agitational paper is circulating around the bay area: Holler From the Rooftops. Long-time anarchist rabble-rouser Tommy Strange is at the helm. Tommy’s not the guy at every meeting and gathering, not the guy “on-the-scene” making a name for himself, he doesn’t travel the country going from book fair to book fair. When he says “ I don’t back down and I haven’t gotten soft,” he’s not full of shit. I invited Tommy to some anarchist meetings a while back and he told me, “I want action, I don’t wanna go to school.” How could I argue?
Here’s a link to some of the content from the first issue. Hopefully folks out there will see fit to contribute to the paper; not for Tommy’s sake, but because he’s bottom-lining a new (tried and true?) way to communicate our views to potential comrades. There’s a whole world to win, and Tommy’s not gonna get bogged down debating each and every nuance of your favored political persuasion. As every decent anarchist paper has done throughout history, Holler seeks to make our ideas known and accepted by those outside our circles, while holding the line.
To get a copy. contact Tommy (POB 40656, SF, CA 94140) or ask for one to be included in your next AK order. We’ve got a bundle or two that we’re including in mailorder shipments as you read this.
Why a local newspaper? Why now?
A free newspaper is the only way I see an individual reaching out to complete strangers, outside of the internet, and building some coherent base of radical face-to-face democracy. If you sell it, it ends up in only certain bookstores, and only certain people will pick it up. It’s not something I think I should be doing with my inability to write journalistic concise articles, or that I think I will excel at, but it’s a push forward for myself personally, even if only as an act of desperation. It is not simply a venue for news, facts, and horrors that the media leaves out—though on the surface that may appear to be its purpose—but a connecting point for strangers to make some attempt at bottom-up resistance.
What’s the editorial vision for the paper? Where is Holler from the Rooftops coming from? And whom do you see as the audience?
If I don’t quit—as I consider every other day, since I have that American infection of desiring immediate gratification—I would like it to be a left socialist/anarchist venue for what tiny portion of the masses that it can reach. Perhaps a mixture of the Anderson Valley Advertiser or Counterpunch, mixed with the urgency of old time anarchist papers such as the Masses and Rocker’s Arbeter Fraynd. As an editor, my main goals would be to find ten or more people to contribute, create a lengthy letter section, and act as a filter on a hard-line libertarian socialist viewpoint.
There are not many choices, many ways to look at history or present day problems, or two sides to every story. There is only one ethical “common ground” in which I view the choices for the future, and it is certainly not original, nor is it a naïve, unsubstantiated belief in human needs or human nature. I find no value whatsoever in presenting a Trotskyist or Leninist version of socialism, or revolution. The letters section is another thing. I will print many views there.
On the look of the first issue though, the paper definitely needs more workers’ voices that are not barking this intransigent view, but speaking from experience and the heart.
The last thing I want it to be is Tommy’s monthly rant, which the first issue is.
The audience is meant to be the workers, small business owners, people who still might even, after all the shit that is coming down, call themselves middle class….who have come to the obvious conclusion that there has to be another future, and we have to start building the road now. As I have handed out hundreds to complete strangers, and seen surprise and interest, I would say my overuse of the word “atomization” is not wrong. We live among millions in the USA that are just so sick of the experts and politicians, and in the past twenty years, due to great left book publishers and the internet, there are millions educated about how change really comes about. I don’t believe this paper will have anything to do with a large “spark.” I’m too cynical for that. But I do believe I have to try to create some kindling. To predict what is going to happen shortly in our lives, can either be a cynical intellectual exercise that brings on despair and inaction, or it can be a reasoned and optimistic heartfelt outlook that demands all contact possible to find real community based on physical proximity and common desires.
Your intention is for Holler to become a monthly paper. Tell us about the local independent and radical media in SF and what a paper like yours has to offer.
There is no mass radical print in the bay area. A strange thing in itself. There are tens of thousands in the bay area doing amazing organizing work, mutual aid, and education projects. The people here have the hearts and minds capable even of a long general strike against the wars. I doubt I can spark that. And I can’t change the defeatist “it can’t happen here” mindset absorbed from the ruling class’ and elites’ propaganda, among a large enough number of people. …I don’t think so anyway… More simply, it is a tangible thing you or I can pass on. Thirty percent of the country doesn’t even go on the web still, let alone to far left discussion forums. Yes, I have a problem with people relying on the internet thing as a main source of discussion. I’ve spent years in discussion forums online. Outside of its indispensable use as a great organizing avenue for actions and its obvious use as a source of information and cheap fast communication, when it comes to a “discussion forum,” …I find it dogmatic and flywheel and most often dominated by men who have too much time on their hands…(myself included for years). There is nothing comparable to face-to-face democracy. It creates responsibility and human bonds: comradery comes from the socialistic desires inside all of us. Typing alone is typing alone.
Where can locals find copies?
I foolishly thought I could somehow keep a free paper stocked all up and down 24th street and in the Valencia street bookstores. Uh, it’s free, and completely different than what people are used to in general—so every stack is gone in a day! So for now, I would say I can’t even answer that question truthfully. I live at Folsom and 24th… cafes around there and places like Café Boheme at Mission and at Modern Times bookstore on Valencia…Bound Together on Haight…It will take time to get a routine set up, and find the places that appreciate it, and hopefully advertise too. Then again, someone can always buy a stamp and put a dollar in an envelope. Friends are helping spread it around. I am actually working more on getting advertising (cuz I can only afford half the printing costs for next two issues), and handing it out in person than worrying about constant restocking. I need the immediate people contact and encouragement and discussion now, and that is really the papers’ purpose, from a personal survival perspective. I would think by issue three, there will be twenty or so main places where it will always be available.
Tell us about your People’s Councils idea. The Councils are definitely rooted in your conception of anarchism, explain what they are and how you see them taking off in SF.
Anti-capitalist non-party-orientated bottom-up direct democracy to form a mass strong enough to do mutual aid locally in the form of occupying housing, or seizing unused manufacturing as in Argentina recently (Occupy, Resist, Produce), perhaps setting up direct supply lines to farmers as things dive into a real economic depression…and nonviolent direct action in all ways for land and liberty, and a more effective and militant attack against our government’s militarism and involvement in the financial and militaristic strangulation of worldwide worker and land and liberty movements. … I still can’t get my head right on why even spurts don’t seem to be happening here. Where are all the experienced organizers and what are the great minds thinking here? Isn’t it obvious that we need a very anarchist “political” and social bottom-up worker intelligentsia, the real rabble, not those Leninist centralizing committee types, to be on the streets organizing a million… to put dents in the USA mass murder machine, and throw some fear back at the ruling class? Don’t even call it revolutionary, or anarchist, if the people don’t want some over reaching banner. But call it immediately necessary if we are to build any roads for a better future. There is nothing the bourgeois political parties fear more than multi-colored libertarian peoples’ organizations. There are no shortage of examples of people outside the USA ten times more “overloaded” or overworked than us, and threatened with death squads just for putting out a newspaper… being heroic and profoundly forward looking and achieving so much in so short of time. It sure seems like a bust, me just throwing this out in the first issue with only a handful of people even actively interested. But insert that Gramsci quote here.
Papers aren’t the easiest things in the world to produce. What sort of help are you looking for?
Investigative reporting…and ..contributions of work stories, life stories…a handful of people that will make it a “must read” ….entertaining and humorous too…with all the ironies and engaging humanist color of living in resistance, living in a mashed up spat-upon society, and living for love and joy also. If it continues to be my rant for three more issues, it should stop.
I tried to add more humor/more attractive city stories… but couldn’t. Except when I’m drunk or at work, I don’t have a sense of humor or a “writer’s eye” anymore. If I could help the new bell hooks, James Baldwins, Nelson Algrens, and Arhundhati Roys, find their voice, that in itself would be a victory.
Being a long-time resident of San Francisco and a rabble-rousing anarchist with a long pedigree, what keeps you going?
My pedigree is really lacking in any organizational work. I learned long ago I don’t have the personality or patience for small meetings and small demonstrative actions. I’ve heard the real reason I still get such respect from REAL organizers and fellow workers, is that I don’t back down and I haven’t gotten soft. I’ve been in underground leftist bands for over twenty years. I think that is the extent of it. When I look at the rest of the world, I don’t take my blank resume as such a big fault. The learned and experienced advise and coordinate but never really lead people to big gains. Only in an organized militant mass via free association do I believe effective change takes place…wherein creative initiative of each individual magnifies and flourishes….
I feed like a leech off of inspiration of the people doing the good work. I assemble it all like building blocks. I live for what people in Mexico and Bolivia are doing. I live for the potential that smolders and fizzles here…Then I find a book like AK’s Direct Action an eye opening and wonderful inspiring read….though I would never participate in such one-off demonstrations for many reasons. I fed off the unquestioning friendship of so many people at that 6th St. Books peoples’ center I tried. Straddling two worlds, I guess….the gutter to the suburban runaway. I’ve always appreciated the voice of an ex-junkie or ex-con more than the people I should take advice from. On a base human level, I’m only able to continue with fists up, because of a small amount of friends such as Zach, Nick, Ramsey, Mike M, Caroline, Mary Gail, and recently co-workers and my “bosses” at Last Gasp…along with ex-co-workers from Mordam Records and people like Joe B., Mellisa M. ….and that stranger you run into once a week…that in just a short time…with a sideways glance and a loaded comment…lets you know…none of us are alone….we just act and react like we are.