2003.03 etta cetera & tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE interviewed by Emily Jack for "The New People"
[interviewee's note: I've posted 6 interviews each so far on these "Interviewee" & "Interviewer" sites. 5 or 6 of them were intended for, & in one case so far, printed in the magazine that etta cetera & I edited (with Will Rat for the 1st issue) called "The Street Rat" & then "The Street Rat-Bag" &, finally, "The Street Ratbag".
The final issue, "Street Ratbag 1/7", was intended to be followed by other "_/7" installments. etta & I were struggling with the expenses of keeping the magazine going & had decided to try downsizing it & parcelling it out in smaller portions. "1/7" was never followed by another issue but there was plenty of unused material that I still find of great interest.
I've been emphasizing the previously unpublished or most obscure material so far but it seems fitting that, even tho this interview WAS published in "Street Ratbag 1/7" that BOTH the editors get represented finally since so far it's just been me. etta cetera was "Rita Rodentia" & I was "RATical" in the Street Rat context.
Dating this interview is a little tricky. Most of the interview-related files are dated May 17, 2004 but that's just because we prepared these documents when we were working on the layout of the issue which would've come out at the end of June after June 24, 2004. In the interview, I say I'm 49. That means it was conducted between September 4, 2002 & September 4, 2003. "Street Ratbag 6" came out in September 2002. etta says that she first moved to Pittsburgh 5 years before which would, again, put the interview betweeen October 2002 &, say, 6 months later (if a new year is thought to start with rounding-off after the old one's halfway through). I'm assuming that the interview was done in the spring of 2003.
This is somewhat confirmed by the part in the interview where it's revealed that Emily's interviewing us for the Thomas Merton Center's "The New People" April edition so the interview was probably in March. I never got a copy of this so it's another thing missing from my voluminous, but incomplete, press clippings collection. I don't actually remember if it was ever published in "The New People".
The interview was conducted in a coffee shop. Hence the references to the music & the joining-in by a regular. - August 22, 2014 note from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE]
Interview with the editors of the Street Ratbag
- conducted by Emily Jack
Emily: Okay, I wanted to start by getting a foundation on anarchist philosophy. Do you just wanna make a statement about what the ultimate goals are?
t: I don't really like to generalize things like that, because, to me, anarchists are free thinkers and hopefully aren't in agreement with each other about anything in particular, because if we were all in agreement with each other, we'd all basically be zombies and robopaths, which is what I don't want anybody to be, myself included. Etymologically, the word "anarchy" is usually defined as meaning "without government," but I would just interpret that to mean without hierarchy, without patriarchy, without matriarchy, without any sort of system of non-consensual dominance and submission; neither masters nor slaves, so, maybe that's the grossest over-simplification I could make.
e: I can only speak for myself. So, some of my main goals as an anarchist are to create alternatives to every institution that exists, be it schools, hospitals, supermarkets... It's a super-huge thing, and I'm not that hopeful about it realizing, but on one level, me and a lot of people I know are working on free schools that should be an alternative to schools, and a lot of us are working on community gardens, which are a step in the way of not being dependent on the state for food, or like, supermarkets. And also being involved in co-ops, which is a step in that direction too. Basically a goal for me is to not rely on the state for anything; to be totally independent of the state.
Emily: Just so you guys know, I'm trying to get as many people as possible, because I don't want you to feel like you have to speak for an entire group of people who obviously wouldn't want to be spoken for by, like, a leader or somebody...
Emily: So, in the goal of having a society without an over-controlling state, or a government of any kind, does that assume that people are good on a fundamental level?
e: Well, we had a long conversation about this last night, and, well, tENT has a really good answer... But, for me, I totally believe that for my idea of good, what my idea of good is, I totally believe people are generally good, and my existence reacts in that way; I approach people assuming that they're good, which could get me into trouble [laughs]... And now, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE...
t: I wouldn't choose to use the word good, but, the conversation we were having last night was just, about what hypothetically constitutes basic human nature, and I don't think that a totally overwhelming generalization can be made, but I think if you were to imagine most human beings on the planet, usually, I think people would like to have a good time, if they're inclined to have kids, they'd like to have kids without them dying of starvation, or be raped or murdered by the time they're five, or whatever, or, for that matter, they'd like to have their children outlive them, et cetera. That's a sort of a basic biological imperative, a reproductive biological imperative, and there are things that go along with that that are fairly common sense-ical that don't really have to do with good and evil, in other words, you don't necessarily have to speak in terms of those kind of dualities or polarizations, but usually when people ask the question of, do you think that if you could imagine society without government, do you imagine, or do you believe that people are good, what people are saying is, do you think that people can govern themselves, and not slaughter each other immediately or whatever and my general experience is that yeah, people would have no problem doing that and that probably a lot of the slaughtering et cetera that goes on is probably more government-induced than individual-induced. But to address the more violent or destructive or anti-social aspects of what might be human nature would be a long thing to go into.
Emily: Do you think that an ideal anarchist society would necessarily rely on an informed citizenry, and do you think that's possible when you think about our current system where, supposedly we have this democracy, but people are totally uninformed?
e: I think any well-functioning society should depend on a well-informed citizenry, it seems really obvious, you can't have a good society if people are not informed of what's going on. Also I kind of don't believe that you can just -- I have a lot of problems with "democracy" (Quote unquote), but I don't believe that you can just turn this whole current system into a full-fledged anarchist society, that would never work, like, ever, and I think one of the main, the biggest problems is that there's too many people trying to go by the same code of ethics or whatever, and people, it's just impossible, it just will never work. And while I'm at it, I just wanna talk about representative democracy [laughs], just like the fallacy of it, how, I mean, I feel like people already know this, but, we're supposed to live in a democracy where we elect our representatives and they're supposed to speak for us, but only half of the people vote, and half of those people -- it only is the majority to get that person elected, so it's about 25% of whatever population actually voted for that person, so that's like 75% of the population that didn't vote for this person that this one person is speaking for, so, I mean, right there is just, a really big lie. I'm losing my train of thought...
t: The original question was about whether people should be informed or not in an ideal anarchist society.
e: Oh, yeah. Yes.
Emily: And whether that's possible.
e: I think it's totally possible to be well-informed, if the media would just not be controlled by politics or corporations or anybody else. If people live for themselves. I've met, I've talked to newscasters during Mayday -- Channel 11, again, this is a different guy, though, and I was telling him to go on strike [laughs] for whatever reason, I was like, "You guys aren't -- The people who are in charge of you can not run the station without you. You guys know how to work the cameras, and you're the team, without you they wouldn't be able to function." Cause we were talking about the problems of his job, how he couldn't really voice any kind of opinion that he had, but he just didn't get it, how, without him, the ideas of his boss couldn't be perpetuated without him being defiant or whatever.
t: Partially because he's internalized the idea that he's a disposable cog. That's what I would think, but back to your question: Of course I think people should be informed, of course I think it's possible, in fact I think it's quite simple, and I think that there are ever-increasing tendencies to try to keep people informed through having smaller publications et cetera that bypass the mass media, whose purpose is not really to keep people informed at all, it's purely to propagandize, or to provide escapism, both of which things -- not that I'm necessarily against escapism, cause I enjoy it every once in awhile too -- but both of which things serve to dumb people down. I'm completely in favor of trying to perform the opposite function as much as possible, to, not necessarily educate people, because I don't put myself in the position of supposedly being a person of, whatever, superior knowledge, but of not lying to people et cetera, or at least, if I'm going to lie to people, there's going to be a sort of Zen purpose to it, where it's a deliberate lie that people are expected to catch me at and then realize that I'm trying to say something else that can only be communicated through telling a lie, and I'm really preoccupied with this idea of dumbing people down versus trying to work in the opposite direction. I think that a lot of people, for self-serving reasons set up a hierarchy where they put themselves at the top, such as in the art world, which is a particular peeve of mine, and --
e: tENT said 'peeve'--
[laughter.]
t: And these hierarchies that are created by people for self-serving purposes can usually be shot down pretty easily if you're just paying attention to what's going on, in other words, if a person creates a hierarchy and puts himself at the top of it, a lot of times, especially in things like the art world, it's because they're saying, "What I'm doing is better than what so-and-so is doing, What I'm doing is important for such-and-such reason," and if people were a little bit more self-confident, and might go, "Well, I like what you're doing fine, but I think also I like this thing over here that in your hierarchy is further down just as much as I like what you're doing." That to me is working against the dumbing down, in other words, being able to even address a hierarchy in that way, and the person who creates the hierarchy is working towards that dumbing down, they're trying to make people feel stupid and be stupid, so that they can be smarter than them, so that they can lord it over them and have a better lifestyle than them. Anyway, long involved answer that may have seemed confusing, but isn't necessarily.
Emily: I think we kind of talked about this already -- my next question is What are the implications for a society that's free of a police force? -- but I think you kind of addressed that when you were talking about whether people are good...
e: I bet tENT would wanna comment again. [laughs].
t: I just finished reading "A Clockwork Orange." Have you read that or seen the movie?
Emily: I haven't, no.
t: Okay, well it's a little complicated to get into in its entirety, but Alex, the hoodlum main character is put in prison after committing a few murders and robberies and so forth, and he's chosen for these Ludivico treatments which involves having him drugged in a way so that he'll have a violent sickening reaction to watching films of violence, which he would have ordinarily enjoyed enormously because he was a very violent person. So, the chaplain, who in the slang of the book is called the "Charles," which is obviously a joke off of Charlie Chaplin, which is kind of a Cockney rhyming slang type of thing, he's upset that Alex is going to be subjected to the Ludivico treatment because he says Alex won't really be becoming a good person, he'll just be forced into being a semblance of good, or whatever. So in a society in which you have police, basically people are being forced into being a semblance of something good, out of fear, rather than because that's what they necessarily want to be. Or at least, that's not across the board, but I mean that's sort of built into the system I think, but A Clockwork Orange is partially a commentary on that and on other things too. So, hypothetically, in a society without people being forced to be something, people might actually choose to be something, and, by choosing to be it, it would be a much stronger conviction. Of course they might also choose to be total psychopathic torturers, but the world is already full of psychopathic torturers anyway, so the question is would there be more, or would there be less? I don't personally anticipate ever living in a society without police or in a so-called ideal anarchist society, which brings us back to some of the generalities of maybe your questions. I think a lot of people aren't necessarily working towards some sort of so-called revolution, some people probably are. I personally am not working towards a revolution in which everything has to change for everybody and a new so-called system arises that's supposedly better. I don't want a system. I don't think that any system could ever possibly address every instance, et cetera, and that that's one of the failings of so-called communism or capitalism even deludes itself into thinking that it's really good for anybody except for a tiny minority, but then I'm speaking as if capitalism is an individual entity, which of course, it isn't.
e: I wanted to comment on the crime thing. There's this saying that "A society gets all the criminals that it deserves," which kind of means to me, if a society was really good for itself there wouldn't be any criminals, because it would be able to take care of its own people without having to criminalize anybody...
t: And one of my favorite slogans is, "We are all unequal under the law, and that is its purpose," which is obviously a take-off of the propaganda version of it, which is "We are all equal under the law," but I don't think that that's true at all, I think that that's an utter lie of the first order. I think that we are all unequal under the law and that the law mainly serves the purpose of perpetuating the class system, the class hierarchy, with the majority of the people at the bottom, who are subject to the law, and the minority at the top, who are not subject to the laws at all... [the music changes]... We went from the Doors to, uh, I'm not sure what this is now...
Emily: I believe this is Led Zeppelin.
e: Yeah.
t: Yeah, that's what I thought at first, Oh yeah, there it is, there's that Led Zeppelin voice...
Emily: How do you see the current anarchist scene in terms of its relation to historical anarchism? Would you still frame it in terms of class struggle and the labor movement?
t: Well...
e: We also talked about this last night...
t: We talked about all your questions last night... And we were more articulate last night than we are now.
e: I think you're doing a great job, tENT. [laughs] I always think -- Actually, I was going to the bathroom one time, and I was thinking about Emma Goldman, whom I love, and I was thinking about Alexander Berkman, and I was romanticizing about that era, which a lot of people do, which I don't think is a bad thing at all, I like to romanticize about things. But anyway, I was just thinking about struggle, and it's like, you read some of the text and it's unnerving that it's totally applicable today, like, essays that they write, you can just take them out and put them in a flyer and pass them out and it's like, totally, you can apply it to situations that go on today, which is really frustrating, cause you're like, "Did that change? You know, why is this still applicable?" But, a lot of things have changed, but I think one of the biggest differences is, they didn't have the emergency of the environment that we have today, like, the planet is gonna die. That wasn't even an issue 40 years ago... It was starting to be an issue 40 years ago. Definitely 60 years ago, it wasn't an issue. But at like, the turn of the century -- I mean, maybe I'm wrong, I mean, I'm sure there were environmentalists, but...
t: Yeah, I agree with you in my limited historical perspective on that, but one of the things we talked about last night, which is maybe a little bit tangential, but to differentiate between, say, anarchists a hundred years ago and anarchists now, and I wouldn't exactly say "anarchist scene" because, while there might be "scenes," like there might be punk anarchists and there might be, whatever...
e: It's really hard to tell who's an anarchist and who's not...
Emily: Yeah, I use the word "scene" for lack of saying movement, cause I don't wanna...
t: The funny thing is, for example, for both of us, we collaborate with and work with a lot of people; I personally have rarely ever even asked anybody whether they're an anarchist or not. Sometimes it comes up, sometimes it doesn't. I mean, a lot of times you know that your friends are anarchists et cetera, but I don't necessarily always even think about asking somebody that I'm doing something with whether they're an anarchist or not an anarchist, it's just a matter of you're working with an individual towards a particular goal, or whatever, and you're either compatible with them or not compatible with them. And if you're compatible with them, then maybe you're more likely to get along with each other... well, I mean, by self-definition... And if you're not, you might still try to do it anyway, because for one reason or another it works, but, to try to get back to the tangent before that tangent, last night I was thinking that, let's say, 120 years ago when there were a lot of immigrants coming to the United States from places like Germany, Italy, Ireland, let's say Europe in general, people were coming because they probably did see the United States as a land of opportunity and they probably thought they were going to live in better economic conditions than they were living in when they were in Europe, but when they got there they found themselves enslaved in factories, working sixteen hour days, with no days off, et cetera et cetera, so they were probably a bit disappointed that the land of opportunity was much more of a slave labor camp than they'd realized, and the Chinese got the worst of it, even more than the Europeans did when they were forced into building the railroads and things like that, but because they believed to a certain extent in this land of opportunity thing, they went -- at least this is my reading of it -- "well, we're gonna make it the land of opportunity anyway," and then started trying to put into practice anarchist goals, or not necessarily anarchist, but political goals in a pretty forceful way that were for the improvement of the living conditions of all these people. And then the United States reached a period around the 1930s when they started massively deporting people like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman and all these other immigrant activists. Well, now, the majority of all the immigrants to the United States are probably Asians and Mexicans, I would imagine; I could be wrong, but I don't imagine that immigrants are exactly coming here in droves from Europe anymore, which is what they would have done a hundred years ago. So, I think that most of the anarchists now are more likely the descendants of the immigrants of a hundred years ago than they are the current wave of Asian and Mexican immigrants. And that's one distinction that could be made. What that means is a different story. Maybe it means that, even with all the deportations et cetera, the anarchist ideals and goals, even if they haven't gotten one iota closer to a positive realization, haven't been completely defeated, and there ARE all these descendants of these immigrants, but now the descendants are American citizens and can't be deported back to their countries of origin anymore.
e: Well, also, last night we were talking how the immigrants, they got here and they realized that what they'd been told was a lie, and I think a lot of the anarchists today were brought up in America, being fed the land of freedom and justice, and you were like, "that sounds really good," but then when we got older, they're like, "this isn't the land of freedom and justice," and now we wanna make it that way, so it's kind of like the same thing, but from a different way...
t: Yeah, well, one of the stories I was telling her last night, is that I was born in 1953, so I grew up partially during the 50s which is, of course, intense Cold War era. Propaganda in the United States was massive, of course -- not that it isn't now; now it's even worse, but in a different way. It's worse because it's more sophisticated, but the average American, or at least the average American that I came into contact with was completely against Communism, et cetera et cetera, but... My mother, for example, was completely against Communism and one time I asked her, "What is Communism?" She didn't have the slightest idea. She couldn't even say one word of definition. But she was absolutely against it. And the other thing that she was absolutely sure of was that there was no propaganda in the United States, but that Russia was purely run by propaganda. So, of course, even as a child, I went, "Well, isn't your total vehemence against Communism and your total lack of knowledge about what it is proof that there's propaganda in this country, and that you're the number one brainwashed victim?" So when Etta talks about how people realized what the lies were when they came as immigrants to this country thinking that it was the land of golden opportunity for them, well, we're just people who, as she was saying, grew up being taught the same kind of "land of golden opportunity" kind of thing and then looking around and going, "My mother hates Communism, and she doesn't even know what it is."
e: Also, one other thing about the labor struggle and how a lot of the anarchists were heavily involved in the labor struggle -- we were talking about this last night too -- a lot of the anarchist propaganda that you'll see today is, like, against work and... Well, like tENT was saying, we don't go around and ask everybody if they're an anarchist, but I really don't know very many anarchists who are even in unions or have...
t: Although one of my best friends is, he's in an ironworkers' union, so there are people...
e: Yeah, well, I'm speaking for myself; I guess I know Dave, but, people I hang out with every day are not in unions, they're not, I don't know, whatever, hardcore labor activists...
t: Gordon's in a union...
e: Is Gordon an anarchist?
t: No, but, he's someone that you know who's in a union. [laughs]
e: Whatever. Most of the anarchists that I know [laughs] distribute propaganda that says "Fuck work." Distribute propaganda that says "Quit your job."
t: No, I agree with you...
e: And it's not like, it's not because they're lazy and they don't wanna work, because they do work all the time, like 24 hours a day if they didn't have to sleep, but it wouldn't be for a boss or for a company, you know...
t: But see, it's a logical progression from the days of labor organizing. When these immigrants came over, in say 1885 around the time of the original May Day, Haymarket, all that sort of thing, struggling for the 8 hour work day, et cetera, people found themselves thrust into enslaved -- slave conditions and they worked towards trying to improve those conditions as much as possible, and probably, also, people were not working -- Leon Czolgosz who was the guy who assassinated McKinley was forced to work in a factory by the time he was 12 or whatever, but by the time he was in his early twenties, I think he was basically thinking, "Fuck this," and that's when he killed McKinley, shortly thereafter. The thing is, we are fortunate enough, meaning Etta and myself and many other anarchists who are a hundred years down the road from this situation, we're fortunate enough to be able to try to take the next step, which is to avoid being enslaved as much as possible. Sometimes I think of myself as a runaway slave, which to some people might seem disrespectful to, let's say runaway slaves of 150 years ago, but I don't mean it in that way at all, what I mean is, I think the majority of people in the world, not just in this country, are born into slavery, and the way I think we're born into slavery is that we're born into having no commons, for one thing, because people have claimed that they own the environment that we're dependent upon to live in. If they could take the air and the water, they would do it and --
e: They are taking the water...
t: They are taking the water, and I'm sure that someday they'll work towards taking the air. It's the next step, basically in total control over the environment. So, when you're not born as one of those people who so-called "owns" the land, et cetera, and you're born completely without a commons, then you're born as a serf on the so-called "property" of the ruling class. Now, you're not told that; it's not like when you're born they go, "You're a serf, and there's the aristocracy there." I mean, people in this country used to believe that there's no class system here. Now, I think even the military would openly admit that there is a class system and the military's purpose is to suppress the rebellion of the "lower" class, and actually I've been reading a military field manual from 1985, and it's about the suppression of civil disturbances by military forces et cetera, and it specifically mentions class in there, which I thought was pretty interesting, because I think that 30 years before that it probably wouldn't have been mentioned at all, so I think that there's been a certain amount of so-called "progress" in the sense that maybe 50 years ago there would have been much more of a wide-spread denial of the internalization of class; the internalization of being a slave and the internalization of being a master, which is another thing that we were talking about last night, that, I personally see more hope in an undermining of the internalization of class-specific roles, in other words, being born a master, being born a slave, than I do in what is conventionally called "class warfare," which is a more militant idea of polarizing those two until the proles rise up because they can't stand the misery that's being imposed on them by the ruling elite and they wipe out the ruling elites. Personally, I don't think that it'll ever work that way and I think that radical steps in that direction by groups like the Red Army Faction or the Red Brigades or other European groups have been valuable in certain ways, but are ultimately against my sense of humor, if nothing else.
Emily: How would you describe anarchism in Pittsburgh, in terms of, how big is it? How visible is it, in comparison to other cities, or...
e: Well, like I already said, it's really hard to tell who's an anarchist and who's not, so I really don't know all the anarchist activity that's going on in Pittsburgh. Cause I was thinking about the march last Sunday, and tENT was like, "How many anarchists were there?" And I was like, "I don't know, I don't really know everyone who's an anarchist." You know, so, ...
t: I'd say it's somewhat thriving, though...
e: Yeah, I mean, there's definitely been an insurgence, like when I first moved here 5 years ago, there was an extremely small active anarchist scene that was like, people openly declaring that they were anarchists and doing, like Food Not Bombs or actions in the name of anarchism.
t: Let's put it this way, if you're a young person and you feel moved to try to make certain social changes and you run across various groups of people who are working in the direction of those social changes, and you go to meetings organized by different people, and you go to one meeting where there's one guy who speaks throughout the entire time, and everybody has to raise their hands like they're students to talk, and then you go to another meeting, and everyone talks and it's the women talking as much, if not more so, than the men, and everybody's telling jokes and passing food and booze around if they're inclined to drink, which meeting are you probably going to want to go to afterwards? I mean, if you're inclined towards wanting to be either an authoritarian yourself, or a follower of an authoritarian, then you're going to go to the first meeting, but I don't really think that most people are naturally inclined towards doing that. I think most people are more naturally inclined towards wanting to think for themselves, et cetera, and to have friends, which relates back to one of the earlier questions that you asked about whether people are basically good or not good or whatever, which, again, I wouldn't use that word, but I think that people are more inclined to wanting to be free thinkers, partially because there's a certain amount of joy to it, or pleasure to it, it's much more pleasurable, at least for me, to have an inspiration, to have a funny idea, or whatever, and you're much more likely to have a funny idea when you're not being bludgeoned over the head with somebody's party line...
e: And, I just wanted to tell a couple things. First of all, when I was in junior high, my US history teacher gave the class a project, an essay question to do for homework, and it was like, "Do you think people are basically good or basically evil?" And I went home, and I was trying to work on my homework and I started crying cause I couldn't figure out the answer, I was just like, "I don't know!" Like, "How do I know? I don't know!" -- terrible. But, that just reminded me of that. And my brother was like, trying to help me... But, I was talking to tENT last night about, I get caught up in my little anarchist bubble of like, going to meetings and having people be totally respectful, and making sure they're not talking too much, and really trying not to be authoritarian, and then I'll go to other meetings and I'll forget that the majority of people are totally patriarchal and sexist, and it's, like, all these older white guys talking the whole time about stuff that isn't even pertaining to the meeting, it's just like, "What are you talking about?" And I think that happens in a lot of other... It's just like, what I was telling to tENT last night, I think the anarchist movement in general is extremely, way more introspective and is working really hard on checking their actions and their motives and really analyzing it, be it internalized racism or internalized classism, or sexism, I mean we're constantly having meetings amongst each other and talking about these different things to try to get over socialized constructs that we've all grown up with, and... There's one other thing I wanted to say... I don't know...
Emily: I went to this debate at Pitt that was on the impending war against Iraq, and the way that it was set up, there were four people who gave speeches, and then they were asking each other questions, and then they took questions from the people in the audience, but the way the did it was everybody had to write their questions down on a notecard, and then they passed them to the middle, and then the mediator read through them, and then he would pick out a question and ask. And he said that the reason to do that was to get rid of silly questions...
e: Whatever!
Emily: I know, and so halfway through, this guy gets up and he's like, this guy from the audience stood up and took on the mediator, and was like, "I came here to hear people -- people's opinions -- and share ideas with people, and you're censoring..."
t: Yeah, exactly. This is something that Etta and I have to face all the time, Etta these days much more than me because I'm much less of a socially outgoing person than she is, but this whole issue of what constitutes reasonable grounds for censoring someone is incredibly idiotic, and to censor somebody on the basis of their question being silly, for example, is extremely suspect at any intellectual level, I think. What constitutes a silly question? Is it wrong for a person to have a sense of humor? I mean...
The editors of the Street Ratbag as "Money Against Capitalism" at the Resistance to the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in 2000 - photo: Carlin
e: What does silly mean, exactly? Silly probably means something that doesn't jive with that guy's politics who was reading the questions...
t: Right. Exactly. To me, that's just basically Nazism or whatever...
e: Fascism.
t: And it's just like... It's like declaring something to be "normal" in psychoanalytic terms is extremely dangerous and the thing that I always refer to is that the first people who the Nazis killed, before they killed Jews and gypsies and homosexuals and political people, et cetera were the people in the insane asylums. Those were the easiest people to pick off, et cetera. Karlheinz Stockhausen, the composer's mother was killed under those conditions, and his father was a Nazi, so, think of that family background.
e: Sounds conflicted. [laughs]
t: But, anyway, I would never trust anybody who would reject a question for being silly, or at least somebody who wouldn't at least laugh about it if they thought it was silly. I mean, that's like Stalin to me, or whatever. Stalin is definitely the bogeyman in my perspective.
e: Oh! I know, I wanted to tell you more about anarchists in other cities. Philly -- Philadelphia, that city across our fair state, has an enormous anarchist scene there. It's like, like Portland has a really huge anarchist scene, like, you can't go anywhere without seeing anarchists...
t: You can't sneeze without putting a germ on another anarchist.
[laughter]
e: Oh, but there's this guy in Philly and he's an anarchist historian and he goes around doing anarchist historian slide-shows. He claims that the anarchist movement today across the world is the largest it's ever been. Even -- and I said, "Well, what about in Spain?" And he said, "It's way bigger than it was in Spain." So...
t: Which I would tend to agree with from personal experience. The stories that I always tell just about numbers is that, sometime around 1969 was when I came across the word "anarchy," and I thought, "Oh, I'm an anarchist," because I was already, whatever, against hierarchy, against government, anti-authoritarian. But I hadn't run across the word yet. I met maybe one other person who had ever even heard the word. Now, certainly, any teenager you would talk with has run across the word. They might have some fashion notion of what it is, or whatever, but they would at least have run across the word and have some notion that it means "anti-authoritarian" or some such thing. Okay, by 1986, I attended the Haymarket Centennial in Chicago. There were about 100 to 200 anarchists there and it was the largest gathering of anarchists I'd ever seen. For me it was an incredible event. It was one of the first times in my life that I'd ever...
e: Tell the story...
t: No, I'm not gonna tell that story...
e: I'll tell it...
t: No, no, I'll tell it...
e: tENT got captured by the police and all of the... This is really abridged -- He got captured by the police and a whole rowdy group of people freed him. He was even in the -- you were in the van...
t: Right, I was...
e: He was in the paddywagon and all the people got him unarrested out of the paddywagon...
t: They were screaming "Free the hostage! Free the hostage! Free the hostage!" And they actually let me go, I think partially because they were afraid of the crowd and there weren't enough back-up cops...
e: Do you know about Haymarket?
Emily: Yeah, I read Emma Goldman's autobiography a while back...
t: But anyway, just to backtrack in this chronology, talking about quantities of people involved, or whatever, or who consider themselves to be anarchists, it wasn't until 1976 that I met one other person who was a friend of mine who called themselves an anarchist, so I'd already been an anarchist for, let's say 7 years, or, you know, self-declared as an anarchist before I even met this one other person who was a friend of mine, now one -- note the digit --
Emily: Let the record show...
e: tENT has his index finger extended...
t: So things have certainly changed since then, which I think is wonderful... Do you wanna say more?
Emily: Things have changed in terms of people identifying themselves in that way, or...
t: Yeah...
e: "Anarchy" is a household word, thanks to Seattle.
t: It's like a brand name. Just kidding [laughter]. Just kidding. Didn't really mean that...
e: Well, you know, everybody know the anarchists, whether they hate them now or not. They're like, "Those anarchists!"... It's a household word.
t: Yeah, my mom only buys "Anarchy" brand vacuum cleaners now.
[laughter]
Guy at nearby table: They say anarchy would be chaos. But it can't be worse than this chaos... People driving around in pieces of metal [unclear...] ... society. I wonder if Europe's cooler than this, or if it's just as big a mess as this. You been to Europe, hon?
e: Yeah...
Guy at nearby table (Victor): Is Europe as messy as this? As terrible as this?
e: I don't know; it's debatable. It depends on what part you're talking about.
V: Police, they like, walk into a place, they look at you like you're the criminal and you're just standing there having a drink or something...
t: It's called "Guilty even after proven innocent."
V: ...they'd punch you in the face just as soon as look at you... [Unclear...]
t: Thuggery.
V: Just cause they're police they think they're hot shit... [Unclear...]
t: Comments are hopefully being heard by this microphone by Victor at another table...
e: It seems like there's another anarchist in the coffee shop.
[laughter]
V: ...But I always liked anarchy. "The Living Theater," did you ever hear of them?
t: I just watched a documentary about them.
V: Yeah, you're an older guy, aren't you?
t: Yeah. Yeah.
V: How old are you?
t: 49.
V: Okay, you're getting close to when The Living Theater were popular. You know them?
t: Yeah, I know, I've seen two movies of them...
V: ...You were about 13 when the 60s hit real big...
e: Yeah, child of the 70s...
V: Was he in a band? Were you in a band? Do you have older brothers or sisters who turned you on to some...
t: No, my older sister was a missionary type.
V: Oh, she was straight?
t: Very straight. Yeah. [laughs]
e: Victor, have you met tENT?
t: Nice to meet you. I've heard about you, she's told me about you actually.
e: tENT writes the "Street Rat" with me.
V: Is that what you're doing? This interview for Street Rat?
e: No. This is Emily. She's writing for the New People. The Thomas Merton Center newspaper.
V: Oh, the New People. Thomas Merton Center! What edition? The April edition?
e: Yeah...
V: I'm gonna get several copies of it... [unclear]
Emily: Okay, so, how do you see the role of anarchists in the anti-war movement?
t: This is another thing we talked about last night... I think last night I felt kind of funny about that question because first of all I hadn't met you yet, and I wasn't sure what your perspective on things was, and from your question, which I think I was now incorrect about, I had the feeling that you were kind of asking about it as if anarchists were coming into the peace movement more from the outside or whatever. Which, of course, would not be the way that I would see it. I mean, I think that anarchists... Many anarchists support the idea of -- let's say -- selective assassination, as opposed to war, and there is violence implicit in that. Anarchists are generally across the board, against war, except for perhaps armed insurrection under certain circumstances, just because war is largely a creation of hierarchies and governments et cetera, it's generally designed to suppress the masses in favor of imperialism. That's pretty much its only function, just like now, any war against Iraq, it's not to get rid of Saddam Hussein, he's just a convenient bogeyman. Personally, I'd be perfectly happy to see Saddam Hussein chopped up into a billion pieces and fed to a rooster, but they'd have to do it to Bush at the same time, which wouldn't happen. I mean, I don't distinguish that much between Hussein and Bush. I see them as being both part and parcel of the same thing, along with the Bin Laden family or whatever. I see them all as basically being rich people who are cynically manipulating the masses for their own well-being, with absolutely no hesitancy about committing genocide et cetera. So, anarchists are pretty much inevitably going to be involved with the peace movement, but more from the inside rather than people coming into it from the outside for the first time, or whatever. I mean, traditionally, I doubt that there's ever been anarchists who haven't been against war as it typically manifests itself. [August 22, 2014 note: There was supposedly an anarchist who was friends with Mussolini who was pro-war & advised Mussolini in that direction because he thought that war would precipitae revolution. I can't comment on the historical accuracy of that but it seems worth interjecting as a 'Devil's Advocate' repsonse to my earlier self.] Now when you get into issues of what constitutes class war et cetera, then it gets to be a more complicated thing to answer, or again, armed insurrection et cetera. Anyway, so, what's the question again? What do anarchists bring to the peace movement?
Emily: Yeah, what's the role...
t: I would think that their role, or whatever, our role, would be the same as anybody else who gets involved with the peace movement, which is to try to throw a monkey wrench of whatever sort into the evil -- or not evil, because I want to stay away from...
e: Yeah, whatever, George Bush...
[laughter]
t: The machinations... George and I have a lot in common. If I had a child, they'd be an alcoholic too. Whatever. Never mind. Just throw a monkey wrench, whether it's a conceptual monkey wrench, or a physical monkey wrench or whatever into the imperialist war machine. If there's going to be a war, well, actually, here's a little relevant tangent: I was of draft age at the time of the Vietnam War, and I was the only person I knew who refused to even register for the draft because I said that if I was going to kill anybody, I was going to do it for myself, I wasn't going to do it because the government told me to do it. Why would I want to just randomly pick somebody that the government -- kill some so-called "Gooks," which is what they wanted me to do at the time. If I was going to kill anybody, I would be much more likely to have killed Nixon or whomever, because I could see very concrete reasons for wanting to get rid of Nixon. He was causing...
e: [imitating police radio] CCRrrr Did you pick that up?
[laughter]
t: Hey, Nixon's dead now, okay? I killed him, it just took too long. So, whatever, to get back to the question and to be redundant, the role of anarchists in the peace movement is pretty much the same role as anybody else's role in the peace movement. To stop the imperialist war machine. With different tactics perhaps, than other members.
Emily: Different tactics, do you wanna...
e: I'll talk about tactics. I think it's really important for people to be supportive of all tactics, and the only thing that's gonna create any kind of change is a complete diversity of tactics, be it, you know, lobbying Congress, that's a tactic, you know, I've lobbied Congress, and I'm an anarchist, you know, so it's kind of like, philosophically awkward for an anarchist to go and lobby Congress, but it's a tactic to get to a desired goal. People just have to find out what they're most comfortable with, and do that cause it's gonna take whatever everybody can do collectively to stop or change... whatever goals that they have. And it's really really important that people have solidarity and not defame other activists publicly -- ever -- to the media, because it just creates...
t: Because they can use that against you...
e: Yeah, cause it'll just aid in dividing the movement and pitting people against themselves, which happens all the time; the reporters will play "Good Protester/Bad Protester," and say, "Oh, these protesters are good; these protesters are bad, so, pick a side," and also we were talking about... I don't know if you've talked about scapegoating...
t: Do you have this issue? [handing me a Street Ratbag] Keep going, I just wanted to point out the relevant article, "Dilemma for Democracy," Geoff Roach and Dennis Roddy. Dennis Roddy's a local journalist who uses the divide and conquer technique. Here, take this.
e: I forgot what I was talking about, tENT! And it was gonna be the best thing...
Emily: You were talking about the way the media...
e: Oh, yeah, pits people against each other. Well, okay, and also anarchists generally are portrayed as the most radical, and often portrayed as violent, although, most of the anarchists that I know are not violent at all. A lot of the "violence" in the media is property destruction, which, I've never heard a building scream when you punched it, so it's not violent to me to...
t: Do you mind if I interpolate something about that?
e: Go ahead; go ahead, patriarchy.
[laughter]
t: Go ahead, matriarchy, condescending matriarchy. Are you gonna finish your thought or what?
e: No, go ahead, no, just go.
t: Okay. The whole thing about the violent anarchist thing is pretty funny because people have really internalized the idea that anarchists are violent and the police are just doing their job. And they can actually watch video of say, five cops strangling and beating a 17 year old girl, and go, "Oh, those cops have it so rough." And they've got guns, and dogs, and fire-extinguisher-sized canisters of gas...
e: And courts and judges...
t: And snipers and tanks and SWAT teams, and, yeah, courts and judges and jails et cetera, and here's a person who's unarmed, and maybe even not wearing that much clothing, certainly not wearing body armor et cetera, and people can still watch footage of that and say, "Oh, it's so hard for the police to deal with these violent anarchists." It's like, if it were 5 of my friends grabbing some teenage girl off the street and clubbing the shit out of her, well you can be sure that people would go, "Oh my God! These are insane psychotics!" But they can see cops in uniforms doing that same thing, and they go, "It's so horrible that these cops have to deal with these violent anarchists." Well, the thing is that they've internalized that because they don't want to have to face that that's what's going on because once they face it, they become a potential victim. Once they don't say, "You're doing such a good job, officer, I can't believe the restraint that you had in strangling that person." Once they go over that mental plateau, then they become a potential victim of that cop, which is terrifying for people. But anyway, so much for that tangent. Any word from the matriarchy?
e: Well, I just wanted to talk about, in Seattle, which was a huge catalyst in activism across America and of activating people to -- inciting action, I mean, what happened in Seattle was totally a catalyst and there was a lot of groups that are liberal, left-wing groups that publicly defamed the property damage that went on there and it's just extremely uncalled for, because without that property damage, there wouldn't have been half of the coverage that was on TV. Even though the coverage was horrible, and it was all about these "violent anarchists" breaking everything and...
t: But it still brought a lot of satisfaction to a lot of people, just like if I heard that Bush got assassinated, I would have a great -- I'd party that day. Or if I heard that Hussein was assassinated, I'd party that day. [August 22, 2014 interjection: I didn't, actually, but I think that's because he wasn't executed by Iraquis independent of US intervention.] So even if the assassin were portrayed by the media as being this horrible, evil person or whatever, many many millions of people would be happy about it. I think that millions of people were happy about the stuff that happened in Seattle, even people who didn't necessarily approve of whether a Starbucks window was broken, which I personally couldn't give two shits about, I mean, I think there are far more important things than whether a Seattle Starbucks window gets broken. I say, I'm perfectly happy that people broke the Starbucks windows. But a lot of it is, in the case of the kind of people who she's talking about who would defame the so-called "violent anarchists," these people are trying to win respectability within the bourgeois culture that they are ultimately going to be beneficiaries of. Last night we were talking, historically, about things like the English Civil War and about the Spanish Revolution, or the Spanish Civil War. In the case of both of those revolutions, there were some incredible things going on, including, in the Spanish Civil War, the collectivization of property et cetera, and the anarchist fighters included both men and women, so it wasn't purely a patriarchal type of thing, et cetera, and then the Stalinists came along and betrayed the whole thing so that Stalin could be respectable in relation to capitalist society, so that he could increase his power base by not being considered to be too wild of a revolutionary et cetera, so you have Stalin betraying the revolution. In the case of the English Civil War, you have poor people fighting the war so the bourgeoisie can get greater power and take the power away from the royalty to a certain extent, but then, after the civil war is over, you have groups like the ranters, the levelers, the diggers, et cetera, all of whom want to just go back to leading peaceful lives on the commons, having common property which then they could farm and that sort of thing, and the bourgeoisie came out and were having none of it. They had gotten their power, they'd used the poor people as the pawns to be the actual fighters et cetera, and then they turned around and betrayed them and took everything away from them et cetera, and that's the typical dynamic of a so-called revolutionary situation. It's a dynamic that you're going to see over and over again in current situations too, like with Seattle, you're going to see bourgeois liberals who are ultimately going to be the beneficiaries of the revolution turning against the people who are doing the hard work, and screwing them up the ass with a pile of sharpened credit cards.
[laughter]
e: Roll credits...
----
tape ends
----
e: Well, there was the one question that was "What are the challenges for the anarchist movement?" And so, things that that question made me think about was, first of all, black bloc tactics. It's common tactic for anarchists to wear all black, unite at marches under a black bloc and then try to do direct action through anonymity of clothing, and I just feel like this tactic is totally old, and the cops know this tactic, and it's really really ineffective now, but people are just caught on it, and they keep doing it and it's just really ineffective, so I feel like one of the challenges for the anarchist movement is constantly being creative and fresh and coming up with new ideas, for one. And also, the imagery of the movement I have issues with. A lot of imagery that comes out has grenades and guns and bombs, and a lot of people that are putting out this imagery don't know the first thing about guns, would probably never use a grenade, would probably never use a bomb or anything, so it just makes me question what their motives are and if they're really thinking about what kind of propaganda they're putting out because they're non-violent, I mean, these people are generally non-violent and not for violence in that way, of course self-defense is a totally different story, but, I just feel like people need to really think about what kind of propaganda and imagery they're putting out into the movement and...
Emily: Do you think that they get caught up in the word "revolution," and the way that that has played out historically?
e: Yeah, definitely, and they're not really thinking about what they're doing...
t: Well, I don't completely agree with that; I think people are just using these images, I mean, personally, I'm not in favor of using that type of imagery, for pretty much the same reasons that Etta is saying, but I think that I can think of at least a few friends of ours who would use that image because they really are in favor of an armed insurrection, even if they're not likely to personally perpetrate it... I think that what we're talking about is what I would call "guerrilla playfare," in other words, not guerrilla warfare, but guerrilla playfare, and playfare could be spelled "p-l-a-y-f-a-r-e," as it would be if it were a pun directly off of warfare, without changing the "fare" part of it, or it could be obviously "f-a-i-r," and you want to keep things fresh in guerrilla activity, because otherwise, you don't take people by surprise and then people can work against you, they can plan against you more easily. If the police expect you to be in a certain place, then it's not necessarily the place where you want to be, for example. If the police are expecting you to use a certain tactic, that's not necessarily the tactic you want to use. You don't even necessarily have to always use tactics that are even immediately comprehensible to everybody. That's my personal take on things, which kind of brings us back to the whole silliness thing. I'm always happy when I see things like the Pink Bloc, you know, the Flaming Queer Bloc, or whatever. To me, that's great, because it's not necessarily something intended to be threatening. Not that I'm against things that are intended to be threatening in the way that the Black Bloc is intended to be threatening, I just mean that it's great when people come at things from all different angles, so again, "guerrilla playfare," keep it fresh, always keep it changing, just like if it were guerrilla warfare. It reminds me of a story about Viet Nam, there was a Viet Cong, or just a Viet Namese sniper -- people didn't necessarily have to be Viet Cong, I think, to want to get rid of the imperialist invader -- who would come up inside a hollow tree that was inside a US military compound, and would shoot one of the soldiers from inside the tree and then go back down through the tunnel, away again. Well, the US military could never figure out where this sniper was coming from, because they were coming from a completely unexpected angle, from inside a tree that was inside the fort. So they expected people to be shooting people from outside, they didn't expect people to actually come up inside the tree...
e: Trojan horse...
t: Yeah, in a sense, except they didn't actually bring the tree in there, the tree was already there...
e: They didn't leave the tree at the gate of the military base...
t: I mean, the point is, I'm not saying, "We should come up in trees and start shooting military people..."
[laughter]
t: ...because I have no intention of shooting anybody if I can avoid it, including soldiers, et cetera, because soldiers aren't usually necessarily the problem. It's more the people who are manipulating the soldiers who are the problem. And criminal sanity, that's another key concept to me. Criminal sanity, rather than insanity, in other words, when you're born a slave, you are also automatically born a criminal. You're immediately criminalized by virtue of being a slave. Anything that you do that's ultimately expressive of wanting to be free because you're born a slave is criminal. So, people who are extremely criminal are often called "criminally insane," but, I think it's also possible to have the kind of person who's "criminally sane," in other words, the person who is self-consciously a criminal because they are recognizing that they're born into slavery and that that system is unfair to them, and they're trying to set the system aright. That doesn't mean that I agree with everything every so-called "criminal" does, et cetera, but I would certainly re-define what criminality is if you're going to attach an onus to it or whatever. I mean, I would certainly put George Bush, Sr. as one of the primary crime lords of the twentieth century, for example. But then I would put other friends of mine, like our friend Crust who's in jail right now, who's certainly considered to be a criminal, as being basically a pretty nice guy.
e: Did you talk about the revolution conversation as internalized slaves and internalized masters?
t: Yeah, I did talk about that a little bit. I think when you were smoking a cigarette, maybe.
e: Okay. And also, you can probably fit this into some other question that you asked a while ago, but, one thing about most of the anarchists I know is that they're not just having reactions to -- it's not purely reactionary. I would say finding the balance is the hard part, but most of the people I know are trying to change their lifestyles as well as react to the political oppression that surrounds us, so, not just protesting and lobbying for different laws or whatever, but actively trying to change their lifestyle so it doesn't hurt a lot of people, you know, by choosing where you shop or not shopping and how in anarchist circles, eating trash is totally acceptable, which it wouldn't be in, say, like, I don't think in socialist circles generally eating trash is acceptable. You know, and just like being totally sustainable and not being too hard on the environment. Like I know this person who composts their... feces, humanure, as to save water, uses graywater, always carries around a travel mug. Whatever. Just stupid little things that are personal and lifestyle choices that you can make that in a very small way affect the world.
Emily: Did you say everything you wanted to say about challenges facing the anarchist movement?
e: Ummm... Yeah, just being creative in tactics... Oh, well, one thing, one thing that I have a challenge for myself, is that I talk about politics to pretty much everyone I meet, just like, it comes up, cause I'm married to the revolution [laughs]. And I was at Eat n Park the other night, and me and my friend Neo were writing a song for the City Council, cause they were passing this anti-war resolution and I wanted to write them a song. And I sang it to the -- my waiter, Josh, and his reaction, which is a typical reaction that happens to me when I talk about things that I participate in is "Oh, well I don't really have time to do stuff like that, I don't really, I'm not really into politics," and it makes me feel really bad, this reaction because these people are kind of feeling guilty about not being involved, and it really bothers me and kind of hurts me, like, I'm not telling you this because I'm like, "You should get involved and you should do this," and I never say, like, "You should do anything," but just expressing or telling people about my activities puts them on the defensive, and, I don't know, that's like a challenge for me, to learn how to talk in a way that won't make people feel guilty about, like existing without, like, [laughs] spending all their time fighting the man, or whatever.
t: I think it's great if people are just nice.
e: Yeah! Oh my God, I totally agree!
t: I think it's great if somebody doesn't try to run somebody over who's going across the street with a walker. That, to me, is a big step. So, if this waiter, for example, isn't the type of person who's going to try to run somebody over who's walking across the street, then, as far as I'm concerned, they are doing something important, or whatever, which is not being an asshole.
e: Yes! I'm a full supporter of being friendly. I totally support being friendly... Well, that's a problem the anarchist movement faces. Constantly, different anarchist groups are being accused of being cliquish and elitist, and people need to work on their shiz-nit. I always -- One of the most important things for me is, anybody who expresses any kind of interest in anything I'm involved in, I will give them as much information as I can. That's my way of dealing with the cliques and the elitists, is just to tell people all of the information that I have on whatever it is that they express interest in. Just a tactic in fighting elitism. [laughs] And being friendly. Smile. Don't be cliquish. Right?
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