Posted on October 28th, 2015 in Uncategorized
There’s a new issue of the Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library out, number 84 to be exact. It’s not available online yet, but they’ve kindly given up permission to reprint Barry Pateman’s lead-off article, a great series of ruminations on the practice of researching and writing anarchist history.
When you are done, you should check out the KSL in all its glory. The main site is here. Viewable back issues of the Bulletin are here. And if you want to support their project (and get the Bulletin before it appears online), go here.
You can find a selection of KSL pamphlets here (we’re reprinting others that were destroyed in our recent fire).
Anarchist History: Confessions of an Awkward Pupil
Barry Pateman
When the KSL issued our first publication, George Cores’ “Personal Recollections of the Anarchist Past” in 1992 there really was a shortage of good, accurate and informative books, articles or pamphlets about the history of anarchism. The works of Paul Avrich were the gold standard – exhaustively researched and reliable – and other occasional gems shone out of the pile. Some of the available material, though, was disturbingly erroneous and we have to put that down partly to a lack of primary material that led authors to make strange assumptions about people and their ideas. Within twenty-odd years, matters had changed beyond recognition. In 1992 I had read more or less every book and pamphlet on the history of anarchism. Now there has been a relative explosion in the material available. Books, pamphlets, articles and blog posts are appearing constantly and, in a rather comforting way, it is impossible to read them all – especially the latter, and this is not even taking into account the once rare and inaccessible newspapers and pamphlets that are now available to read online as well as the digitization of letters and pamphlets that, once, one would have had to travel the world to see.
Why is that? Why the recent flood? Well I do remember Albert Meltzer speaking of academic research muttering grimly “When the buggers have finished with Marxism they’ll start on us,” but I’d like to think that there is in all of that a growing genuine interest in what anarchism is, how it developed and what influences it had on the world about us. Anarchists themselves are keen to preserve and display their own history and they are keen for others to have access to it. I find it especially interesting because a while ago I entered history myself. For a while a spate of students, mainly, were looking to interview me about the anarchist actions and movements I had been involved in. I have to say it was a little flattering, at first. I’d never seen myself as particularly important (I’d always put the stamps on the envelopes and book the meeting rooms, etc) but perhaps I really was a player – even if many of their questions were if I knew so and so and what were they like. It all got a little disturbing though. They knew more about me than I did. They’d quote a flier I’d written here, a meeting I had spoken at there – none of which I could remember with any clarity at all. I began to worry that I wasn’t giving them the answers they wanted. They were often like kindly teachers trying to lead the awkward pupil to the correct response. One young man in particular was very concerned about my casual statement that much of what I had written was not exactingly thought out but intuitive and often a space-filler so we could have the paper ready for printing the next day, and I couldn’t even remember the pseudonym I’d used to write it. Reluctantly I ended these relationships. We weren’t going anywhere. I knew it would end in tears, so I had to walk away.
A free man, left to my books and memories, the world took on a very late summer glow. I basked in the sun of age, gave a few talks thinking I had advice to offer the young ones (in retrospect I had fuck all worth saying) and then packed up the bags and retreated into history. When I surfaced I began to read, for pleasure, some new publications – blog posts, books/ theses whatever, about events I had been part of, and papers I had helped produce. The problem was that I really couldn’t really recognize what was being written about. It wasn’t as I remembered and it didn’t feel at all like they said it did. There were probably good reasons for that – not least some of us not being interviewed, and our grouping/ publication/ support group probably not being considered as particularly important by the writer. After all you can’t cover everything, can you? Any historian has to have some priorities. I shrugged the shoulders and went back to obscure anarchists of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. To be honest that was giving me enough problems. Something, though, wouldn’t settle and I couldn’t let it lie. If I couldn’t recognize in these “histories” the movements and activities I had been part of, what could that suggest about all the histories of other places, people and periods that were being produced?
What I think we have been doing in the field of anarchist history during the last twenty or so years is the job John Locke described philosophers as doing. We have been under-labourers in the garden of knowledge. We have been clearing the rubble from the garden of history to find the patterns beneath it and letting others plant it. The rubble has been the rubble of time and the rubble of previous writers, many of whom lacked the access to this flood of primary material mentioned earlier, or were simply distorted by their own prejudices as to what anarchists were and anarchism was. And clearing away the rubble is no easy task. It’s often lonely work, sometimes maddeningly pedantic and demanding a patience and relentlessness that can be quite exhausting. Of course when we clear the rubble, we put piles of it behind the garden shed or next to the garden wall and these piles can create problems of their own, but there can be no doubt that some fine and exciting work, in the tradition of Paul Avrich, has taken place within this context. We have had to re-think what we thought we knew about our ideal; we have had our eyes opened to the substantial presence of anarchists and anarchism in countries where we had originally thought they had the most minimal of traces. Our understanding of what we might call “prominent figures” has grown, revealing them as far more complex people than we previously thought. In some cases we have been able to see more clearly the anarchist milieu they were part of and consequently have been able to chart some of the social, personal and political dynamics of that milieu and how it may have shaped their writing. (more…)
Posted on October 27th, 2015 in AK Book Excerpts
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Taking Sides: Revolutionary Solidarity and the Poverty of Liberalism, edited by Cindy Milstein, promises to piss a lot of people off. Not that the essays it contains all agree with one another, but each of them does challenge some familiar aspect of activism-as-usual. Below are some fighting words from “A Critique of Ally Politics,” by M. [Oh, and you can get the whole book here.]
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A Critique of Ally Politics
The liberal concept of allyship is embedded in a rights-based discourse of identity politics. It works with the ideas that there are fixed groups of people (black people, women, gay people, and so on) that have been wronged by the structural oppressions of our society, that we must work across these differences to achieve equality for all, and that this responsibility falls especially on those who most benefit from structural oppressions. It centers on the idea that everyone has different life experiences that are shaped by our perceived identities, and so if you have an identity that is privileged in our society, you cannot understand the experiences of someone with an identity that is oppressed.
According to ally politics, in order to undermine whatever social privileges you benefit from, you must give up your role as a primary actor and become an ally to the oppressed. A good ally learns that if you can never understand the implications of walking through this world as an oppressed [fill in the blank with a person on the receiving end of a specific oppression], the only way to act with integrity is to follow the leadership of those who are oppressed in that way, support their projects and goals, and always seek out their suggestions and listen to their ideas when you are not sure what to do next.
It starts to get real complicated, real fast, however, as you discover that there is no singular mass of people of color—or any other identity-based group—to take guidance from, and that people within a single identity will not only disagree about important things but also will often have directly conflicting desires.…
In an attempt to find brown folks to take direction from, white folks often end up tokenizing a specific group whose politics most match their own. “What does the NAACP, Critical Resistance, or the Dream Team think about X?” Or they search out the most visible “leaders” of a community because it is quicker and easier to meet the director of an organization, minister of a church, or politician representing a district than to build real relationships with the people who make up that body. This approach to dismantling racism structurally reinforces the hierarchical power that we’re fighting against by asking a small group to represent the views of many people with a variety of different lived experiences. When building an understanding of how to appropriately take leadership from those more affected by oppression, people frequently seek out such a community leader not simply because it’s the easiest approach but also because—whether they admit it or not—they are not just looking to fulfill the need for guidance; they are seeking out legitimacy, too.…
To be an ally is to shirk responsibility for your own actions—legitimizing your position by taking the voice of someone else, always acting in someone else’s name. It’s a way of taking power while simultaneously diminishing your own accountability, because not only are you hiding behind others but you’re also obscuring the fact that you’re in control of making the choices about who you’re listening to—all the while pretending, or convincing yourself, that you’re following the leadership of a nonexistent community of people of color or that of the most appropriate black voices. And who are you to decide who the most appropriate anything is? Practically, then, it means finding a black voice who agrees with your position to justify your own desires against the desires of other white people—or mixed-race groups.
Perhaps you’ve watched or participated in organizing that seeks to develop the leadership of individuals who live in a specific neighborhood or work in a particular kind of labor force. This language seems to offer the benevolence of the skills of the organizing group to those who haven’t been exposed to such ideas. It is coded language describing a reductive and authoritarian approach to imposing an organizing model on a community of people from the outside. It also conveniently creates spokespeople who can then be used to represent the whole of that (often heterogeneous) body of people. Over the last several decades, an entire elite class of politicians and spokespeople has been used to politically demobilize the communities they claim to represent.
I frequently hear from antiauthoritarian “white allies” that they are working with authoritarian or nonpartisan community groups, sometimes on projects they don’t believe in, because the most important thing is that they follow the leadership of people of color. The unspoken assertion is that there are no antiauthoritarian people of color—or none who are worth working with. Choosing to follow authoritarian people of color in this way invisibilizes all the anarchist or unaligned people of color who would be your comrades in the fight against hierarchical power. Obviously, there is at least as broad a range of political ideologies in communities of color as there are in white communities.
Posted on October 16th, 2015 in Events
This past year we have witnessed an explosion of activity in response to the ceaseless violence against Black and Brown people by the hands of the police, white vigilantes, and the prison system. We are living the legacy of hundreds of years of colonialism and slavery, but also are part of an inspiring counter-history of revolt against these forces.
Cities have always taken the shape of social containers threatening to explode, but when it inevitably goes down who determines how those stories are represented and transmitted?
Authors Neal Shirley and Saralee Stafford will be reading from their new book Dixie Be Damned: 300 Years of Insurrection in the American South, with a specific focus on issues of legitimacy, identity, and control in urban rebellions from Atlanta and Tampa in the 1960s to Ferguson and Baltimore today.
Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1663325990620831/
Learn more about the book: http://www.akpress.org/dixie-be-damned.html
Posted on October 16th, 2015 in Events
The convening will bring together contemporary artists, activists, critics, and writers to discuss the application of art and culture and their effects on movements for liberation. Looking at the future of resistance through the lens of history from rebellions to Black Lives Matter to uprisings in the streets, the convening will create a space for discovery and collaboration.
Panelists include Roger Guenveur Smith, actor and creator, of Rodney King, his one-man portrait of the victim of police brutality whose involuntary martyrdom ignited the L.A. riots; Dean Moss, dancer and choreographer of johnbrown, his performative meditation on the complicated, controversial legacy of 19th-century abolitionist John Brown; Walidah Imarasha and Adrienne Maree Brown, editors of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements; Dread Scott revolutionary artist; Leon A. Waters author and historian; Andrea Jenkins poet and activist; Marcus Young behavioral and many more.
Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/412089638988075/
Learn more about Octavia’s Brood: http://www.akpress.org/octavia-s-brood.html
Posted on October 16th, 2015 in Events
Since the knowledge contained in DIXIE BE DAMNED is too fiery for the universities to fund, we had to relocate this talk to LAVA space, which has adequate heating and seating capacity. Learn from two southerners about the untold stories of revolt and insurrection in the south, prison riots and slave uprisings, worker sabotage and other hidden narratives of resistance below the Mason-Dixon, and get a chance to reconsider or recalibrate your conception of the yankee/southerner dichotomy.
Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/404310343091961/
Learn more about the book: http://www.akpress.org/dixie-be-damned.html
Posted on October 16th, 2015 in Events
Join us for an evening of southern history – insurrectionary style. We’re joined by Neal Shirley and Saralee Stafford, authors of the fascinating new book, Dixie Be Damned: 300 Years of Insurrection in the American South, just released by AK Press.
In 1891, when coal companies in eastern Tennessee brought in cheap convict labor to take over their jobs, workers responded by storming the stockades, freeing the prisoners, and loading them onto freight trains. Over the next year, tactics escalated to include burning company property and looting company stores. This was one of the largest insurrections in US working-class history. It happened at the same time as the widely publicized northern labor war in Homestead, Pennsylvania. And it was largely ignored, then and now.
Dixie Be Damned engages seven similarly “hidden” insurrectionary episodes in Southern history to demonstrate the region’s long arc of revolt. Countering images of the South as pacified and conservative, this adventurous retelling presents history in the rough. Not the image of the South many expect, this is the South of maroon rebellion, wildcat strikes, and Robert F. Williams’s book Negroes with Guns, a South where the dispossessed refuse to quietly suffer their fate. This is people’s history at its best: slave revolts, multiracial banditry, labor battles, prison uprisings, urban riots, and more.
Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/738898306216723/
Learn more about the book: http://www.akpress.org/dixie-be-damned.html
Posted on October 16th, 2015 in Events
Join us at the FNECC to hear anarchist historians Saralee Stafford and Neal Shirley speak about their new book, Dixie Be Damned: 300 Years of Insurrection in the American South, which engages “hidden” insurrectionary episodes in Southern history to demonstrate the region’s long arc of revolt. Countering images of the South as pacified and conservative, this adventurous retelling presents history in the rough: indigenous resistance to colonialism, treason to whiteness, slave revolts, labor battles, prison uprisings, urban riots, and more.
Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/912667355461865/
Learn more about the book: http://www.akpress.org/dixie-be-damned.html
Posted on October 16th, 2015 in Events
The Baltimore urban rebellion of 2015 was not a random incident in an otherwise passive American South. It should instead be seen as the most recent episode in a centuries-long history of what one author describes as “normal pissed-off people” participating in “autonomous rebellions.”
Ask Critically, Act Bravely, MSU’s Center for Gender in Global Context (GenCen), Peace and Justice Studies, and the History Department are excited to bring Neal Shirley and Saralee Stafford, the authors of newly released history book “Dixie Be Damned”, to MSU to speak about their work.
Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1634745766763923/
Learn more about the book: http://www.akpress.org/dixie-be-damned.html
Posted on October 16th, 2015 in Events
From the Convict Lease to the Prison Plantation: Race, Gender, and Revolt Against the Carceral State
This past year we have witnessed an explosion of activity in response to the ceaseless violence against Black and Brown people by the hands of the police, white vigilantes, and the prison system. We are living the legacy of hundreds of years of colonialism and slavery, but also are part of an inspiring counter-history of revolt against these forces. This will be a provocative presentation and discussion on several histories of rebellion against prison and forced labor, and how those histories connect with our own period of anti-police riots and prison struggle.
Authors Neal Shirley and Saralee Stafford will be reading from their new book Dixie Be Damned: 300 Years of Insurrection in the American South, focusing on a cross-racial miners’ and prisoners’ rebellion against Tennessee’s early convict lease system, and a 1975 revolt at a women’s prison in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Posted on October 16th, 2015 in Events
From the Convict Lease to the Prison Plantation: Race, Gender, and Revolt Against the Carceral State
This past year we have witnessed an explosion of activity in response to the ceaseless violence against Black and Brown people by the hands of the police, white vigilantes, and the prison system. We are living the legacy of hundreds of years of colonialism and slavery, but also are part of an inspiring counter-history of revolt against these forces. This will be a
provocative presentation and discussion on several histories of
rebellion against prison and forced labor, and how those histories connect with our own period of anti-police riots and prison struggle. Authors Neal Shirley and Saralee Stafford will be reading from their new book *Dixie Be Damned: 300 Years of Insurrection in the American South*, focusing on a
cross-racial miners’ and prisoners’ rebellion against Tennessee’s early convict lease system, and a 1975 revolt at a women’s prison in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/518117595004851/
Learn more about the book: http://www.akpress.org/dixie-be-damned.html
