The Antisocial Socialist

Standard disclaimer: I am not involved in any of this. Discussions of protest tactics are purely speculative; this is not legal advice, and if you commit an actual crime, don't post about it.
 
Courtesy of a friend who may identify themselves if they choose (thank you!) I read this article in Mother Jones about the No Sleep For ICE movement and can't help constrasting it with the #NoKings protest. Not that I'd want to disparage the latter—I think it's awesome that people did it!—but the former is an example of the kinds of tactics that we increasingly need to see.

I have a number of issues with protest marches, especially in North America. We on the left tend towards reification of historical protest movements without ever analyzing what made them effective (or not). A good example locally is the Days of Action, a series of rolling one-day strikes against the extremist right-wing government of Mike Harris in 1996. These were a resounding failure. Mike Harris and his regime steamrolled over the labour movement in Ontario, which never recovered, and despite being directly responsible for a number of deaths, continues to enrich himself by running gulags for seniors. However, these protests were loud, colourful, and most importantly, made people feel like they were Doing Something. Again—it's important to make people feel like they are Doing Something, that is how movements get built. But when a new far-right regime was elected in Ontario, the entire strategy of the labour movement pivoted to re-enact a protest movement that had been an abject failure, and so we lost again, repeatedly and even harder. 

I had the same issue with Occupy, where what had been a successful tactic in Egypt and New York was exported around the world, without regard to local conditions. It resulted in one baffling morning spent wandering the Toronto encampment, where a lone speaker used the People's Mic to communicate with five comrades. The aesthetics of protest triumphed over the old-fashioned idea that protest ought to accomplish something.

Now we are seeing LARPing of the kind of mass demos that have been happening since the 1960s, most of them failures, as the authorities are quite competent in curtailing this kind of activism, either by assassinating political opponents, kettling demonstrators, or conducting mass surveillance to be used in future disappearances. The great success of #NoKings is the theoretical embarrassment for Trump of seeing his own sad, empty birthday parade dwarfed by crowds in nearly every American city and town. To be clear—this is a success, as Trump cares a great deal about crowd numbers. But this is a regime immune to reality and shame, and entirely capable of generating AI slop to convince the death cult members that what they saw with their own eyes wasn't true.

Which is to say: It's good, it's useful, but now the tactics need to change.

To contrast, No Sleep is very targeted in its strategy and goals. Let's be clear: Every employee of ICE is a human trafficker. They should not be allowed to return to their homes and communities after a day's work, because that day's work is Nazi shit. Targeting them where they live and sleep is critical. It reminds us that these are not normal people who are doing a job, but instruments of a police state who are conducting activities that are unreservedly evil and socially unacceptable. It is a reminder both to them and anyone who cooperates with the Trump regime that, in fact, "just following orders" is famously not a defence at the Hague. Most importantly, though, it introduces friction between the regime's aims and its outcomes, rendering it less effective in kidnapping and disappearing people.

I think we are all thinking: "I am exhausted. I can't fight everything all at once. Where are my energies best spent?" At least, I'm thinking that. This is deliberate; this is flooding the zone, making the laundry list of bad things come so fast and furious that opponents don't have time to recover from one fight before we're thrown into another. It's very tempting to get enmeshed in weekend street demos—for one thing, for those of us who work, they can be done on the weekend—but I would encourage everyone to participate in them with an eye to what they're useful for and what they're not useful for. Remember that surveillance will be gathered on you no matter how careful you are. If you or your comrades get arrested, movement resources will need to be directed towards your defence (and you will be dragged through hell because even if you did nothing wrong, the point of charges is to destroy your employment, finances, and relationships). Stay on the lookout for smaller, more agile actions that can add friction, rather than big showy events. Don't get caught up in violence vs. nonviolence discourse, or crowd numbers.

The answer to "where are my energies best spent" is always, "whatever you can do," which for me tends to be above-ground, legal actions on the weekends. This has different significance locally because our supposedly socialist mayor who used to go to protests passed a protest ban, so imo all protest energies in Toronto ought to at least focus a little on breaking this ban so that we can all get our Charter rights back. But this may not be the conditions where you are.

Also stop using the Hey Ho chant. It reminds me of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves but instead of marching over a log, they're walking headfirst into a police baton.

George Monbiot is doing some excellent reporting on it. The gist is that the extremist right British government is trying to ram through legislation that would ban locking on, obstruct transport, expand stop-and-search, ban specific people from protesting, and jail protesters for up to 51 weeks. It's also very vaguely worded.

If you're wondering, this is targeted at the left, particularly climate justice and racial justice groups. I'm not sure how much of a problem far-right protests like the ones we see here are in the UK, but you can bet that these draconian restrictions won't be applied to them anyway. And, of course, racialized people will be targeted the most, because they always are.

This is part of a larger attack on democracy there, which includes attacks on voting rights and further restrictions on what's left of a free press.

We should all be very concerned, even if we're not in the UK. Other far-right governments look to what's allowed there to determine what they can get away with doing in their own countries. I know that many of us live in places that are along the same path, and I can recall very well the police state that my own city experienced during the G20.

If you're in the UK, here are some things you can do. If you're not, please spread the word. Don't expect the Freezed Peach sorts to show up to help because they never do.

Not content with stirring up shit in my own country, I went to a demo here. It was an anti-Brexit thing and Billy Bragg was playing (everything was running late so I had to leave before the end, but apparently it was too crowded to see him anyway). My impression of London demos is that they’re better than ours in terms of scale, but not necessarily in terms of organization or being able to prune the speakers’ list. A lot of the speakers were really good though; much more inspiring and on topic than what usually happens back home.




Also, I learned some Cornish!







Followed by a party. Which will be followed by sleep.

That was fun! They set up some diagrams and read sections of the 2015 Ontario Health Curriculum in front of Queen's Park. Sadly, none of the Tories came out to get educated about the facts of life, and Sam Oosterhoff will continue to know less about sex than your average 10-year-old and thus disappoint any lover with low enough standards to date him in the first place.


My only big objection was the labelling of reproductive systems as male and female.


Colin Mochrie! OMG. I am a bit of a fangirl so it was awesome to hear him speak.


Nadine Thornhill, the excellent sex educator who has been putting free lessons on YouTube.


Some nuns from the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. They were adorbs.

There were also a bunch of kids reading, including the 16-year-old who helped organize the LeadNow petition and next Saturday's march.

In other news, I had my last rabies shot so I can pet all the trash pandas and wild monkeys now. Also, I am really tired for some reason.

Your humble narrator was quite busy today.

I had the ambition to go to the Justice For Tina Fontaine rally today. At first, it seemed like events were conspiring against me going; the subway was down and I was already running late. In the crowd, I spotted a man looking just as lost and confused as I was, also wearing a keffiyeh, and holding a placard with Tina's picture on it, so I figured we were headed to the same place. We had about an hour and a half of transit adventures and a really lovely talk, and eventually made it to the rally.


Photo by Megan Lewis, stolen from Facebook.

It was a truly beautiful, powerful event. Perhaps the most impressive thing was that this spectacular turnout, with its compelling speeches, ceremonies, and round dances, was all organized by a 16-year-old indigenous girl. The grief of the deaths of Tina and Colten Boushie and so many other indigenous young people is overwhelming, but so is the hope that comes with seeing a young woman organizing all of these communities to come together and fight back. I felt truly privileged to have been there.

Then I went to go see Black Panther, finally. Naturally I loved it and want to go again. I won't post spoilers or anything but if you want to discuss it, I desperately want to hear all of your opinions. (Also I may need to make an icon of M'Baku saying, "Just kidding, we're vegetarians" for when I make cooking posts.)

Went to a hastily organized vigil for Charlottesville. There were maybe about 50 people and almost as many TV cameras. A blessed minimum of speeches as we all knew why we were there. We sang "The Red Flag" and "Solidarity Forever" and marched with drippy candles to City Hall.

it helps, at times like these, to be with folks that get it. There's another demo tomorrow morning but I don't think I'll make it because 8 am is very early. So I'm glad this one happened.

ETA: as I type this, I'm reading of another attack, this time at a solidarity demo in Montreal. Fortunately the victim survived. We must fight these bastards; nothing less than our survival and the survival of the most vulnerable communities is at stake.

• I'm going to be reviewing Luke Cage over at terror_scifi. I just posted the first review, and I'll try to keep it to a weekly schedule if school permits. Incidentally I'm only two and a half episodes in and trying to avoid spoilers, so if you binge-watched it this weekend, try to keep schtum, okay?

• It's been an epic time of concerts. There are more concerts than I can reasonably attend given that I have this annoying need to work for money and such, but I am still managing to hit a lot of concerts. Legendary Pink Dots last Tuesday, the Levellers on Friday, Billy Bragg next Tuesday, and Stiff Little Fingers, Tanya Tagaq, Peter Hook, and Dido and Aeneas all in the near future.

I can't stress enough how completely brilliant the Levellers were. I've never seen them live before, and they were just incredible. I ended up right at the front and danced for like two hours straight.

• Went to the big $15 and Fairness demo on Saturday. It was worth attending.

• I think the pedometer on my phone is fucked. It's seriously undercounting my steps compared to what I'm used to, except for at the Levellers show, where it thought I somehow walked 7000 steps during the time I was inside the Opera House. I checked all the things that it could possibly be and they were all functioning normally, which lead me to the conclusion that Apple wants me to buy a new phone but since I don't want to do that, Apple's going to end up with me buying a Fitbit instead.

• L'shana tova to everyone celebrating it.

Last night, there were demos in at least 18 Canadian cities and towns. I went to the one here with misslynx. It was surprisingly large, given the two days that the organizers had to get it together. We shut down traffic at Yonge and Dundas and Yonge and Queen* and rallied outside of the Canadian Border Services Agency office.

Here's some coverage from CTV.

( More photos )

Meanwhile, the Tories remain sad that all this dead baby stuff is making them look like big meanies during an election campaign and committed to taking in fewer refugees and supporting Assad (reminder: the reason the war in Syria started four years ago) by bombing anything we can.

There are a lot of horrible things in the world. I can't do anything about most of them. I can do something about this.

* Non-Hogtowners: The busiest part of the downtown.

I am a bad, bad blogger.

Like the rest of the English-language media, I've been totally crap about blogging what's been happening in Québec, which is only the most politically significant event in the country right now. I mean, I've been re-linking to a bunch of things on Facebook, but that's not the same as getting the word out about what's been going on there, what those red squares are all about, and the massive violations of civil liberties that are taking place while the rest of Canada has a long nap.

Okay, so it all started with a student strike over tuition rates. Yes, Québec tuition rates are the lowest in the country. Entitled Boomers, forgetting all about their own advantages, say that Québec students are spoiled brats for wanting them to stay that way. I say, if your city has the lowest amount of homicides, does that mean you should raise that rate to be on par with the rest of the country? A post-secondary education is mandatory for any job above minimum wage (and increasingly required for minimum wage jobs), and tuition rates are a barrier that keeps lower-income people out. Period. Québec's low tuition rates have kept the province more egalitarian (that and universal daycare).

So it's not just any strike, but the largest in Canadian history. And it's been violent. By which I mean the cops have been gassing and shooting these kids. Several young people have lost eyes because the cops are aiming for their heads.

If that's not enough to hit all your rage buttons, the government just passed an emergency law, Bill 78, drastically restricting civil liberties, particularly around campuses. It initially defined a "riot" as a gathering of 10 or more people; that was later amended to 50, which still rules out some of your more exciting dance parties. There have been mass arrests and kettling, the same techniques that, two years after the G20 here, have been deemed illegal and immoral.

And yet the movement keeps growing. The students aren't discouraged, the protests keep getting bigger, and are drawing international support. Even—and you're going to love this one—the National Post is coming around:

“Entitlement.” We hear that word associated again and again with student protesters in Quebec. Usually, it’s preceded by the words, “sense of.”

“They think someone owes them a living,” disgruntled critics harrumph. “Wait until they get into the real world.”

Setting aside the fact that this intergenerational hectoring dates back to Socrates, let us ask: Who exactly is making the charge? Quebec has had low tuition rates for a half century. That means almost every living adult in the province, having already been afforded a plum goodie, is now wagging his finger at the first generation that will be asked to pay the tab. So who really is entitled here?

So that's why a lot of us are wearing red squares. This has become much more than disgruntled students not wanting to spend half their careers repaying a massive debt. This is about class, and wealth distribution, and equal opportunities for all.

And it's kind of amazing.

( cut for video that autoplays )

If nothing else happens today, May Day 2012 will be forever remembered as the year the Left remembered about graphic design.



( post 'em if you got 'em )