Tag Archives: 1990

Why Anti-Authoritarian?

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Larry W. Giddings (1990)

The Anti-Authoritarian Movement & Political Prisoners

When we mount a movement to challenge power we must expect and prepare for repression as a matter of course. The resurgence of anti-authoritarian organizations has paralleled a general increase in militancy among progressive forces in North America. The predictable state response to this militancy has been increased repression, including political imprisonment.

There are currently well over 100 political prisoners (PPs) and prisoners of war (POWs) held in North American prisons, representing many diverse political movements. Among these are Native Americans, Puerto Rican independentistas, Black/New Afrikan nationalists, white anti-imperialists and anti-nuclear activists. There are also anarchist/anti-authoritarian political prisoners — captured activists from our own movement.

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Judi Bari Day is May 24!

Judi Bari gives the raised fist salute outside the Oakland Federal Courthouse after winning a round in her lawsuit against the FBI and Oakland Police. March 3, 1995, Photo by Xiang Xing Zhou, first published by the San Francisco Daily Journal.
Judi Bari gives the raised fist salute outside the Oakland Federal Courthouse after winning a round in her lawsuit against the FBI and Oakland Police. March 3, 1995, Photo by Xiang Xing Zhou, first published by the San Francisco Daily Journal.

May 24, 2015 is the 25th anniversary of the attack on Earth First! activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney by car bomb in Oakland in 1990 as Redwood Summer dawned.

The Judi Bari Day event at the Berkeley U-U Fellowship Hall (1924 Cedar at Bonita) will feature special guest performer LAURIE LEWIS, legendary songwriter, fiddler and vocalist.
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‘Woolf Report: 25 Years On & Nothing Has Changed’ – An article by John Bowden about the prison system’s latest attempt to obstruct his move to an open prison (UK)

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In April this year, the 25th anniversary of the Strangeways prison uprising, Lord Justice Woolf, who led the inquiry into the uprising, claimed that conditions in most British jails were now even worse than they had been before Strangeways erupted in 1990.
Continue reading ‘Woolf Report: 25 Years On & Nothing Has Changed’ – An article by John Bowden about the prison system’s latest attempt to obstruct his move to an open prison (UK)

‘Woolf Report: 25 Years On & Nothing Has Changed’ – An article by John Bowden about the prison system’s latest attempt to obstruct his move to an open prison

Rare Photographs of Chinese Women from the 1800s (3)

In April this year, the 25th anniversary of the Strangeways prison uprising, Lord Justice Woolf, who led the inquiry into the uprising, claimed that conditions in most British jails were now even worse than they had been before Strangeways erupted in 1990.

The treatment of those prisoners confined to usually overcrowded local remand and post-sentence jails (of which Strangeways was and is one), where the great bulk of the prison population are held, has always been significantly worse than the treatment of prisoners in more long-term establishments where the potential for collective unrest has always been traditionally greater.
Continue reading ‘Woolf Report: 25 Years On & Nothing Has Changed’ – An article by John Bowden about the prison system’s latest attempt to obstruct his move to an open prison

The abolition of society (en/it)

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Feral Faun

 

“Society…1. a group of persons who have the same customs, beliefs, etc. or live under a common government and who are thought of as forming a single community… 3. all people, when thought of as forming a community in which each person is partly dependent on all the rest”.

Webster’s New World Dictionary

 

Nothing we “know” can be assumed to be true- none of our conceptions of the world are sacred and we would do well to question them all. Many anarchists talk about creating a “new” or “free” society. But few question the idea of society itself. The conception of society is amorphous- and so more difficult to deal with than particular aspects of it like government, religion, capitalism or technology. It is so ingrained in us that questioning it feels like questioning our very nature- which makes it all the more necessary to question it. Freeing ourselves from the character armor that represses our desires and passions may very well demand, not merely the transformation of society, but its abolition. The dictionary definitions above show society to be a single entity made up of individuals who are in a condition of (at least potential) dependency upon each other- which is to say, who are not complete in themselves. I see society as a system of relationships between beings who are acting (or being treated) as social roles in order to reproduce the system and themselves as social individuals.
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Why Anti-Authoritarian?

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Larry W. Giddings

The Anti-Authoritarian Movement & Political Prisoners

When we mount a movement to challenge power we must expect and prepare for repression as a matter of course. The resurgence of anti-authoritarian organizations has paralleled a general increase in militancy among progressive forces in North America. The predictable state response to this militancy has been increased repression, including political imprisonment.

There are currently well over 100 political prisoners (PPs) and prisoners of war (POWs) held in North American prisons, representing many diverse political movements. Among these are Native Americans, Puerto Rican independentistas, Black/New Afrikan nationalists, white anti-imperialists and anti-nuclear activists. There are also anarchist/anti-authoritarian political prisoners — captured activists from our own movement.

Continue reading Why Anti-Authoritarian?

A Crime Called Freedom: The Writings of Os Cangaceiros (Volume One)

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Os Cangaceiros

Os Cangaceiros was a group of delinquents with nothing but contempt for the self-sacrificial ideology practiced by “specialists in armed struggle”. This uncontrollable band of social rebels wreaked havoc on the French state by attacking the infrastructures of oppression, supporting popular revolts, stealing and releasing secret blueprints for high-tech prisons, raiding the offices of corporate collaborators, and creating their lives in complete opposition to the world based on work. This volume, translated by Wolfi Landstreicher, is the first collection of the writings of Os Cangaceiros in English.
Continue reading A Crime Called Freedom: The Writings of Os Cangaceiros (Volume One)