Los x Vandales

So here's something heavy to think about. A little reading guide to prepare you for the 2008 elections. Don't look for it to point to a candidate because it won't. No, I didn't write this, but I am sharing it with all I can come in contact with because this is what the original author would want as well. Propaganda? Yes. But, it speaks insurmountable amounts of truth. After you're done reading it, reflect, and apply it to your own life and experiences. It all makes sense. As the old saying goes "If voting really changed anything, it would be illegal."

The bush era is coming to an end, and once again the spectacle of a presidential
election captivates the people of the United States.
Enticed by vague rhetoric of hope and change, against a backdrop of increasing
precarious and desperate global crises, millions will rally to elect a new
politician to solve the problems the last batch of politicians created, or at
least failed to alleviate. While we already don't have much of a choice in the
two-party framework, the politicians and the mass media controlled by their
major donors assure us that we don't have any other meaningful way to make a
change than to go along and vote for the lesser of two evils. Certainly, the
urgency of domestic and global crises demands that we all take responsibility
for radically changing the world.

But is voting the only, or even the most effective tool that we have?

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Even if our candidate doesn't win, we can
impact government policy by showing
that we're concerned about the issues our
candidate stands for.
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If all you can imagine to do about an issue that
concerns you is to vote for a candidate, and even
if your vote actually mattered statistically, the
best that an election "victory" would ensure
is their place in power, not what they will do
with it. Votes don't give politicians incentive to take action; when people bypass the
established means of change and act directly
to transform society, politicians must then
scramble to catch up and prove their relevance
by confirming the changes that the people
have enacted. And the belief that we can hold
politicians accountable through the threat
of withholding our votes in the next election
rests on the fallacy that being voted out of
office actually poses a threat to a member
of the ruling class. Rather than investing
our energy into electing the least objectionable candidate, we can organize social
movements that more effectively pressure any
ruler that comes along to make the changes we
prioritize--or, better yet, make those changes
ourselves.

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FALSE CHOICE, FALSE HOPE

This election season, the politicians who piloted us into unwon wars,
ecological catastrophes, and grievous imbalances of wealth and power will
attempt to recast themselves as the only ones who can rescue us from them. If
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain portray their values and stances
regarding the war in Iraq, global warming, and the economy in opposition to each
other, it's only to mask their shared ruling-class interests: securing US global
military dominance, keeping political power for politicians over the rest of us,
and upholding the interests of the wealthy corporations that seek to control
economic and political power not just in the US, but around the world. In the
end, no matter who we vote for, we will be electing the same system of rulers
that facilitates war, ecological devastation, and the increasing disparity
between rich and poor.
From the fundamental similarity between the interests of the two ruling parties
emerges the central paradox of the election: when the compelling crises that
profoundly concern the electorate are so obviously facilitated by the last batch
of Democratic and Republican politicians, how can the current candidates present themselves as likely hopes to solve them? With current popular opinion
solidly against the war and anxious about global warming, the candidates have
an interest in paying lip service towards finding solutions to these problems.
But they find themselves in a difficult position, since the economic and
government/military interests that fund, defend, and enforce Democratic and
Republican power are the same ones underlying imperialist occupations and
catastrophic climate change. So the importance of this election isn't how the
politicians will solve these problems: they won't. The significance of this
election lies in how the Democrats and Republicans will spin these urgent crises
to retain their seats of power, and how the rest of us will refuse their false
promises.

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NO WARMING

Never before have we had a political climate in which the presidential candidates
unanimously acknowledged the significance of global warming. The state of our
environment could not have grown so dire
without government complicity in the
destruction of the earth so that big business could make an easy buck. In Appalachia the government sells out entire
mountains to literally be blown up for
easier mining, American car companies take
advantage of low emission standards to
manufacture some of the least fuel efficient cars in the world, factory farms and
industrial logging receive federal subsidies while they create an increasing amount
of CO2 in the atmosphere, & the list goes on.
For those who care about the earth and its
inhabitants, the shift in rhetoric towards
environmental concern may seem like a
step in the right direction. However, allowing the same political system that has
facilitated the destruction of the earth for
corporate profit to co-opt the struggle against global climate change as a political
"issue" will only ensure that any official
solutions operate within the logic of capitalism & the government, keeping those greedy interests intact and ensuring the further
commodifying & destruction of the planet.
In order to continue getting richer and
secure their power, the rich who run this
country must ignore, subvert, or overcome
limits to growth. The secret of the ruling
class' ability to hold on to power is how
it uses limits and crises as new launch pads
to secure their position in power. So the
capitalist solution to climate change will
look like, well, capitalism: carbon credits,
Tradable Emissions Quotas, carbon futures, Al Gore's green investment banking
firm. Then there's green consumerism:
green cars, solar panels, green home make-
overs. They don't care about the earth; they
just need to make sure we keep buying, so
they keep getting richer. Like the politicians they puppet, corporations aren't invested in honestly being responsible or accountable, only in convincing consumers to buy
the "socially responsible" image they market,
so that the consumer economy that threatens
our planet's survival can keep grinding on.

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NO WAR

"No Blood for Oil" has long been the
slogan of the anti-war movement.
Securing oil resources through blood-
shed only makes sense to an economy in
which oil is more precious than human
life. The anti-war movement has thus
embarked on a strategy of disrupting
"business as usual." Demonstrations,
political dissent, sabotage: these express-
ions of protest and discontent with the
war cost the ruling class far more than
the money they have to spend to fix the
windows of their recruitment centers
or the salaries of the police they pay to
beat up anti-war demonstrators. More
importantly, these acts of resistance cost
the politicians an obedient electorate,
because when we find direct ways to affect
change, we no longer need politicians
and their empty promises.
If Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton
claim that they will eventually end the
war, it is only because the political cost
of human life in this war has become
too expensive for American imperial
interest to continue unchallenged. It
is now worthwhile for the Democrats
to appropriate the anti-war movement,
to pay lip service to its values, to sweep
people away from direct action in the
streets to predictable, contained boxes
on ballots this November.
The Democrats, who uniformly support
expanding the US military and its presence internationally, will not do anything
about America's addiction to war. To
them, the Iraq war is an aberration,
rather than a logical conclusion of the largest military in the world coupled with an
economy based on insatiable greed. The
Pentagon itself is the single largest
consumer of oil in the world, ensuring a
never-ending cycle of war that will only
escalate as the supply of oil decreases.

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THE PRECEDENT OF RACE & THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE

While this summary suggests that this election is just another page in the long book
of tyrannical government and a cutthroat
economy, at the same time it undeniably
touches on important issues, in particular
the racial implications of Obama's campaign.
For the first time, our next president might
not be another white man. But how can a
Black man emerge as a leading candidate
for the Democratic nomination & the presidency, at the same time that the majority of
all Black men in the US, at some point,
serve time in prisons & jails? With a nation-
wide spread of nooses at high schools, colleges, and workplaces--the symbol of mass
white complicity in racist terror though
lynching--how is it possible that a Black candidate for president can garner compel-
ling majorities in predominantly white states?
These paradoxes reveal how Obama's
candidacy actually reinforces the foundation of white supremacy on which our
country is based. His success reinforces
the myth that poverty, particularly Black
poverty, is the fault of the poor. It is an
alluring possibility that our country's legacy of racism might not prevent its targets
from attaining political power, supposedly
demonstrating the fulfillment of the democratic promise of America. But racism and
white supremacy are deeply ingrained
institutions, not offices to be held, & thus
cannot be voted out. Obama's chance at
the presidency says less about how far we
have come in overcoming the racist foundations of our society, and more about the
flexibility of the system to allow a person
of color to lead its imperialist, ecocidal
agenda. So long as Black people are being
incarcerated at alarming rates, communities of color are held hostage by the threat
of state violence, and the US military continues to occupy nations & kill people of color
across the world (continuing the 500-year-
old system of European colonization) the
color of its President does not matter.

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COLLECTIVES vs.
POLITICAL PARTIES
How do we organize
ourselves as we work towards the worlds we want?
Political parties stem from the premise
that power is a scarcity that must be
seized from those with conflicting interests. They operate by reducing divers
desires to a lowest common denominator
to rally support for their candidate. The
principle of maintaining power always
takes precedence over any conviction
or ideology; thus the major US politics
parties survive year after year by shifting their platforms, chameleon-like, t
reflect whatever image they calculate
the most voters/consumers will buy. An
since the current political and economic
system protects the monopoly of power
held by the major parties and their
corporate supporters, any solutions the
propose to social problems will have only
one ultimate goal: to secure the status quo
that keeps them in power. For example,
Democrats focus on state-based proposal
(legislation, international treaties, etc) to
global climate change, whereas Republican
focus on "market" (i.e. corporate capitalist) solutions, and in this distinction the
create the illusion of choice for voters. But
the root cause of global climate change
lies in the economic system driven by constant expansion that requires environmental devastation to function, along with
the state that protects the sanctity of
property so that it can continue. Thus
any solutions proposed by the political
parties will only cement the power of
this system over us, while inhibiting any
effective movement to address the root
causes. However, in the US party-based
framework of political power, they want
you to believe that if you want to make
a difference, your only option is to join
with one of them, in hopes that if your
party can wrestle enough power away
from the others, they can enforce their
will on everyone else.
An approach more empowering than
signing on to a political party is organizing with people with whom you share
interests to collectively realize your desires
and your potential to make change. When
we organize as equals, we value diverse
perspectives, each individuals unique
contributions, and complex understandings and realities, as opposed to the
simplified, divisive issues that drive party
politics. In this model, power is in abundance, not scarcity; and the further we
build our capacity to work together and
value each other's unique contributions,
the more our individual and collective
power increases. While it would take the
bureaucracy of a political party months if
not years to evaluate the potential costs
and benefits to their power to address a
certain issue, collectives can be started
anywhere at any time, requiring no more
than a few people to achieve or combat
something. The power of political parties
comes from members' allegiance, whereas the power of collectives comes from
participation.
In contrast to representative democracy,
collective decision-making takes place on
an ongoing basis, allowing participants to
exercise real control over the projects to
which they lend their time and effort.
Unlike majority-rule democracy, collectives
can use consensus decision making, which
values the needs and concerns of each
individual equally; if one person's needs
are unmet by a resolution, it is every one's
responsibility to find a new solution acceptable to all. Collective decision-making does
not demand that we accept any person's
power over another, though it does require
that everybody consider everyone elses
needs. What it loses in efficiency it makes
up tenfold in freedom and accountability.
Instead of asking that people choose
leaders or find common cause by
homogenizing themselves,
collectives form a more
powerful working
whole while allowing each participant to retain his or her own autonomy.

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ANARCHY vs.
GOVERNMENT
How is power distributed
in the worlds we want?
Government exists to protect property and
control people; it is the absolute opposite
of freedom. Whether the cops, judges, and
soldiers protect the property of Communist party bureaucrats, the king, or wealthy
capitalists in a Western democracy, the
function remains the same. Without inequalities of wealth and power, government
would be useless for lack of anything to
defend; who needs to steal when we have
the fruits of our own labors? However, we're
told that only government can keep people
safe from the threat we pose to each other
if unchecked by a higher authority. But
does relinquishing our self-determination
to a central authority leave us safer?
Our leaders couldn't protect us from
terrorist attacks in 2001, but they did send
Americans around the globe to kill and die
in brutal occupations that entrenched anti-US resolve throughout the world. Meanwhile, the government's rhetoric of fear,
faithfully preached by the capitalist media,
left many of us even more convinced that
our safety relied on the state and military
apparatus--when in fact the actions of the
government have created unprecedented
hatred towards its citizens. The "homeland" that the Department of Homeland
Security claims to protect through secret
prisons, torture, & surveillance can't refer
to our communities (who frequently bear
their attacks); the only thing kept secure
by the expanding police state is the
state apparatus itself. With 1 of every 100
American adults in prison, who is protected
by all the incarceration? There is only one
function for which government is necessary--the maintenance of itself--& its
struggle for self-preservation enslaves us all.
Many understand anarchy as a general
state of chaos, senseless violence, and material desperation. However, government
bureaucracies & greedy corporations have
ensured that this chaos has become the
permanent state of affairs. Anarchy is the
opposite of bureaucracy. There is nothing
more efficient than people acting on their own initiative as they see fit, & nothing more inefficient than attempting to dictate every one's actions from
above. Top-down coordination is only necessary to make
people do something they would
never do of their own accord.
Anarchy is the idea that no one is more
qualified than you are to decide how you
live, that no one should be able to vote
on what you do with your time and your
potential. The kind of freedom that anarchists fight for is not to be confused with
so-called independence: no one is truly independent, since our lives all depend on each
other. The glamorization of self-sufficiency
in competitive society serves to accuse
those who will not exploit others of being
responsible for their own poverty. In
contrast, anarchy offers a free interdependence between people who share
consensus, highlighting the collectivity
& cooperation that make individual
freedom possible.
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THE SYSTEM is all social and political
possibility compressed into a single point;
the illusion of choice masking a profound
lack of agency over our own lives.
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MUTUAL AID vs. CAPITALISM

How do we distribute resour-
ces in the worlds we want?
Today, capitalism supposedly reigns sup-
reme. United in their conviction that
unlimited economic growth is necessary,
the two parties differ only in how to most
effectively stimulate it. Some economists
have even declared the supposed victory
of capitalist democracy in the post-
Soviet world as "the end of history." But
on the underside of the triumphant
rhetoric lies the material misery of the
many poor and the profound alienation
of the few rich. If our economic
system "works" so well, why
are so few people actually
secure in their basic
needs or satisfied
with their lives?
This widespread dissatisfaction isn't an
accident--our economy relies on this
feeling of incompleteness to keep us obediantly consuming the newest solution
being marketed to us. Capitalism demands
constant expansion to survive; the dark
side of this "growth" is the shrinking of
the earth's natural resources as they are
converted into dead units for economic
exchange, as well as the toil of workers
who are paid increasingly less for more labor.
The logic of capitalism operates direc-
tly at odds with human needs. When former
World Bank president Lawrence Summers
wrote, "the economic logic behind dumping
a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage
country is impeccable," certainly it must
have been obvious that the human logic
of such action is inexcusable and insane.
However, this kind of insanity prevails
under an economic system that materially
rewards those most ruthless in their pursuit of wealth. When competition provides
the basis of profit and one person's gain
equals many others' loss in the zero-sum
world of business, the human cost can
only be unspeakably brutal. So as the
world spirals into increasing poverty and
ecological collapse, the corporations on
top keep the wheels of misery in motion,
secure in their illusion that the pursuit
of profit is the only way forward. If the
"end of history" means the extinction of
the human race, then indeed capitalism
is perhaps the only economic system so
blinded to human and ecological realities
to push us over that cliff.
But what could exist beyond capitalism?
After all, the pundits and economics professors have many of us convinced that
capitalism is the basis of our daily
survival. However, beneath all the talk
of the stock market and interest rates
lies the reality that none of us could
survive against the capitalist economy
if it wasn't for mutual aid and the
gift economy. Child care, gift-giving,
mentoring, co-ops, libraries, theft, bartering;
these and a thousand other examples of
mutual aid form the foundation on which
the formal economy rests. And nearly all
of these things are self-organized; we don't
need a chair of the Federal Reserve to help
us carpool to work or share tools with
our neighbors. Our daily lives provide
countless examples of how we cooperate,
share, and resist the competitive greed
driving the economy of investment
bankers and multi-national corporations.
Capitalism, rather than inescapably
dominating our daily lives, simply gets
in the way of us doing what we do best:
supporting one another to meet our
basic needs and create fulfilling lives.
Practicing mutual aid recognizes our
shared interests, rather than assuming
that competing will lead to the best results
for everyone. Competition isn't human
nature, as scientists and economists want
us to believe; we can choose individually
and collectively which "nature" creates
the world we most want to live in, and
work towards it together. In doing so we
develop the trust in one another that we
need to create a whole economy and way
of living based on cooperation.

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DIRECT ACTION vs. VOTING - What tools do we use to create the worlds we want?

Voting is the least effective strategy for
having a say in society. You can vote once
or twice a year, but it's what you do every
day that counts. The alternative to voting,
broadly speaking, is acting directly to
represent your interests yourself. Direct
action is occasionally misunderstood to
mean a specific kind of campaigning, lobbying for influence on elected officials by
means of political activist tactics; but it
properly refers to any action or strategy
that cuts out intermediaries and solves
problems directly, without appealing to
elected representatives, corporate interests, or other power holders.
Voting is a lottery--if a candidate doesn't
get elected, then all the energy his con-
stituency put into supporting him is
wasted, as the power they hoped he would
exercise for them goes to someone else.
With direct action you can be sure
that your work will offer some kind of
results, and the resources you develop
in the process--whether those be experience, contacts and recognition in your
community, or organizational infrastructure--last far beyond the election.
Voting forces everyone in a movement
to try to agree on one platform, suppressing differences and suppressing
everyones' individual desires. With direct
action, on the other hand, no vast consensus is necessary: different groups
can apply different approaches according
to what they believe in and feel comfortable doing, which can still interact to
form a mutually beneficial whole.
Finally, voting is only possible when
election time comes around and can only
address the topics that are current in
the political agendas of the candidates.
During this election year, we hear
constantly about the options available
to us as voters, but almost nothing
about our other opportunities to play a
decisive role in our society during the
other 364 days of the year. Direct action
can be applied whenever you see fit, in
every aspect of your life, in every part
of the world you live in. While voting
and direct action are not mutually
exclusive, we hear so little about the
latter precisely because it puts power
back where it belongs: in the hands of
the people from whom it originates. Not
only can direct action more effectively
accomplish our goals than voting, the
experience of solving problems and
creating a better world directly rather
than through representatives opens up
a limitless horizon of possibilities for
managing our own lives, without relying
on any authority to do it for us.
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REVOLUTION means exploding the cons-
traints that keep us locked into this one
compressed point of possibility of how we
can live together, and allowing all of
us to expand outwards into the limitless
possibilities that exist beyond hierarchy.
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