"We have done this because we love liberty and hate authority." – Voltairine de Cleyre
Posts tagged mutual aid
Supper Club: The Black Oak Years
Dec 21st
I used to write for Black Oak Media. Here is a short collection of the articles that appeared in their various publications.
Direct Download - Supper Club: The Black Oak Years
The Red and Black Stands Its Ground.
Jun 4th
Dear Friends, Fellow Workers and ALLies,
The community and workers of Portland’s Red and Black Café, an IWW, anarchist, vegan, co-op, needs your support and solidarity.
A uniformed police officer, James Crooker, entered the Red and Black Café and ordered a cup of coffee. On his way out of the store he was delayed by another customer who wanted to let him know how much they appreciate the police and the service they perform (keeping the homeless out of sight, the workers working, minorities in jail, and the angry away from the throats of “Our [corporate and political] leaders [who] invent nothing, but new taxes, and conquer nothing but the pockets of their subjects”1).
John Langley, one of the co-owners and Fellow Worker, of the Café approached Officer Crooker and asked him to leave, stating how uncomfortable he felt having an armed Police Officer inside an Anarchist Café.
As John Langley explained to Lynne Terry:
“It’s not about the police,” Langley said. “It’s about what the police represent to many people who frequent the cafe.
The cafe draws vegans — of course — along with homeless people and animal-rights and environmental activists who Langley said have been targets of police abuse and harassment.
Now this story has gone national and the Conservative/Liberal Statists are up in arms. William Gillis, in a letter to Roderick Long, describes the impact on the Café:
“I have good friends on staff and their phones are ringing off the hook with death threats. Mainstream conservative and liberal pundits have talked of showing up with weapons to start a confrontation… My friends could really use some support; in this environment some kind words or awareness from those who aren’t fanatical devotees of the police state would go a long way.”
The anarchist stands resolute against rulership, against authority, against oppression – period. This is why we will sit at a lunch counter against the wishes of its racist owner and, at the same time and in the same respect, remove the statist myrmidon from our own coffee shop.
This is not a contradiction; this is consistency!
So help out the Red and Black if you can, give them a shout, drop a buck or two in their paypal and make the Neo-Con-Liberals tremble.
“Crowned heads, wealth and privilege may well tremble should ever again the black and red unite.” — Otto von Bismarck.
1. Thomas Hodgskin
Sustainability, Mutual Aid, and Liberation Redux
Feb 15th
In the Winter 2009 issue of Black Oak Presents I wrote
With natural disasters turning cities into ruins, now is a good time to think about the rebuilding process. Initially I agreed with [former] Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert that rebuilding the disaster prone area didn’t make much sense, but I have changed my mind. Done correctly, New Orleans, Louisiana; Greensburg, Kansas; and other devastated cities can become models of sustainable development and Mutual Aid.
The earthquakes that hit Haiti along with the worldwide economic downturn present a good time to revisit the ideas in that article. I don’t want to focus on Haiti’s specific political and economic problems, rather I would like to look at voluntary, community based responses to the issues that have effected Haiti, southeast Asia, Greensburg, KS, New Orleans, etc. More >
