#tbt Aldo Perego, Alfredo M. Bonanno, Massimo Passamani & Pierleone Porcu – Revelutionary Solidarity

Introduction

The concept of solidarity is not only used and abused by the various reformist syndicalist and humanitarian movements and even power itself, it is also sadly emptied of any content by many anarchists. The levelling is such as to reveal a symbolic attitude worthy of the Church but which allows us to put our conscience at rest.

Counter-information and propaganda in the lead, demonstrations (true processions), then nothing, provoke a feeling of powerlessness, a pernicious frustration that sees justification open the way to resignation.

We discover that everything crumbles there where the mentality of the group and quantity thought it was strong. Nothing changes as we enter a vicious circle with mournful calls to a miserable bartering with the State one wanted to fight.

When individuals find themselves alone at night, no longer supported by “collective strength”, the arms of Morpheus transform the imprisoned comrades one wanted to support, to whom one wanted to express one’s solidarity, into a real nightmare with no escape.

So! Should we no longer show solidarity to imprisoned comrades given that it serves no end?

Never! A movement that is not capable of looking after its comrades in prison is destined to die, and that at a high price under atrocious torture.

The reflection must be made in other terms. What does it mean to express revolutionary solidarity? Basically the reply is not all that difficult.

Solidarity lies in action. Action that sinks its roots in one’s own project that is carried an coherently and proudly too, especially in times when it might be dangerous even to express one’s ideas publicly. A project that expresses solidarity with joy in the game of life that above all makes us free ourselves, destroys alienation, exploitation, mental poverty, opening up infinite spaces devoted to experimentation and the continual activity of one’s mind in a project aimed at realising itself in insurrection.

A project which is not specifically linked to the repression that has struck our comrades but which continues to evolve and make social tension grow, to the point of making it explode so strongly that the prison walls fall down by themselves.

A project which is a point of reference and stimulus for the imprisoned comrades, who in turn are point of reference for it. Revolutionary solidarity is the secret that destroys all walls, expressing love and rage at the same time as one’s own insurrection in the struggle against Capital and the State.

Daniela Carmignani

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Nozomi Hayase – Resistance Against Enclosure; Internet as Global Commons

From Antiwar.com

This is a speech given at the Direct Democracy Festival at Thessaloniki on September 4, 2014 about the trend of decentralization creating a global commons on the Internet and the disruptive potential of the Bitcoin blockchain.

Thank you for inviting me to this event. I feel honored to be here in Greece, the birthplace of democracy.

I was born and grew up in Japan. I moved to the States as a young adult. I live beyond borders and don’t belong to one particular nation. In a sense, I find the Internet to be my home. Indeed if there wasn’t the Internet, I wouldn’t be here right now.

Often I find this online borderless world more real than the world outside. In this place called “real life”, we are separated and controlled by the interlocking power of nation-states and corporations. Every aspect of our lives is financialized and imaginations are captured by institutionalized hierarchies. Yet in the interconnected world of cyberspace, I find that imagination is not just surviving but thriving.

I here ask a question. Can the imagination of this virtual world help free the world that has been commodified? Tonight I am going to talk about the resistance against enclosures happening on the Internet and how the trend of decentralization in recent years is facilitating a reopening of the commons.

BitTorrent, Pirate Bay, Creative Commons, Linux and WikiPedia. Here we see the emergence of waves of uprising that challenge this culture of ownership and are weaving a new network based on sharing.

These waves of decentralization in the digital space perhaps best express the essence of social movements. A movement must move. It must flow. This movement of decentralization was built on net-neutrality. The Internet is anarchy, a true force for democracy. In this ecosystem, there is no governing center, no command from above. It enables unmediated peer-to-peer direct connection. In this decentralized system, power is distributed to everyone and there are no levers of control.

These new waves have begun disrupting outer central power that has been stagnating the flow of sharing and communication. In describing the reason behind her release of troves of classified documents, WikiLeaks whistle-blower Chelsea Manning said that “Information wants to be free”.

In 2010, with the rise of WikiLeaks, we saw the beginning of the decentralization of information. WikiLeaks was the birth of journalism for the global commons. With the idea that cryptography could liberate people, they aimed to open governments by exposing secrecy and lies that are used to steal from the public.

This stateless whistleblowing site opened the floodgates, freeing information that had been kept in hierarchical media institutions or centralized state control. Information as the currency of democracy has begun to flow.

But this was not just about information. Manning also said, “I cant separate myself from others, I feel connected to everybody like they were distant family”. In this outer world, we were taught to identify with national flags and look at other people across borders as either allies or enemies, but not as brothers and sisters.

Manning’s conscience was a spark that frees us from the biases of patriotism, imperialism and racism. It kindled an awakening to a larger sense of the commons. We began imagining each other anew based on the ground of equality.

This struck a chord throughout the Internet, bringing forth a new insurgence of justice. In the wake of the financial blockade of WikiLeaks, the online collective Anonymous stepped forward. Anonymous is an open source idea. There are no levers of control, no leadership, only the influence of thought.

They broke down the firewall of the corporate state and restored the right to freely assemble, this time on a global platform. Now everyone can associate with anyone in the world to create Ops and form a legion of shared ideas. The leaderless and egalitarian decision-making in IRC Chat rooms then morphed into a new insurrection in the streets during the Occupy movement. Open source protocols of consensus found resonance around the world and a shared resistance exposed the corruption of global power in the Anglo-Euro alliance that uses financial institutions as weapons of control.

In the West, the financial sector carries between 8 to 15 percent of the entire economy. Visa, Paypal, investment markets, Central banks and remittance industries monopolize the services of money printing and transfer, loans and wealth management. Some of the biggest corporations are running this financial system for their own gain. They charge massive fees, penalizing and basically steal money from the poor and transfer it to the rich.

Those occupy encampments at the centers of capital control gave birth to collective decision making through general assembly to challenge predatory capitalism. But then these movements were crushed by the brutal power of the state. Yet nothing can stop an idea whose time has come. The imagination for a decentralized future has emerged again in another wave of powerful resistance.

In 2008, a white paper published under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto put forward a proposal for a peer-to-peer digital cash without any central authority. Now many people know Bitcoin as a form of digital cash, but what is the significance of this invention?

The potential for elimination of central authority in virtually any communication or financial transactions brings the source of legitimacy back to the individual. We can associate with anyone and create a decentralized system of our shared interest.

The core of this invention is a decentralized network that can achieve consensus amongst strangers at a large scale. This is similar to the “In Each Other We Trust” that was practiced during Occupy. Now with the blockchain technology, this trust is distributed at a global scale.

Here we have an open source network of distributed trust where no single person or institution acts as an authority. Unmediated horizontal interaction and decision making allows us to interact, innovate, and build a new infrastructure for the world without permission.

The blockchain distributed trust network is a global square for the commons. This is a square that cannot be cleared by the state and works autonomously, free of outer control. Access to the network is open to everyone. Unlike banks, the blockchain responds to and welcomes all people indiscriminately regardless of their economic status, nationality or credit history.

The Bitcoin network brings people who are excluded into the circle of consensus. Currently only one billion of the world’s population have real access to the financial and banking system. There are 6 billion people that are unbanked or underbanked. Now through this technology, those who are excluded from this Western-controlled financial system can participate in the world economy on their own terms.

The protocol of this blockchain public square is open source and built through collaboration. The anonymous creator of this technology knew that in order to build and secure the system, there needed to be an incentive to maintain it. This is one reason why currency was embedded in the protocol as its first application. Bitcoin is a public asset ledger that creates peer to peer digital cash.

This is the world’s first transnational currency. It is the Internet of money, and it empowers everyone. In this value transfer network of the blockchain, the concept of the nation-state becomes obsolete. It also makes mafia banks like Goldman Sachs obsolete, as well as the wire transfer industries such as Western Union. We are beginning to take back the power and flow of currency that has for too long been privatized by corporations and central banks. This can eliminate a huge portion of these financial services that extract money from the world economy and then bring this power back into the hands of the people.

The people’s currency has already been used to crowd-fund parts of the global commons. For instance, it was used to collect donations for Edward Snowden and to circumvent the financial blockade of WikiLeaks to sustain this global 4th estate.

With this decentralized currency, we now become our own banks. What happens when we gain the ability to create money and keep it in our own hands? We can declare independence from hierarchical institutions that divide the world into consumer class and sweatshop slaves, into “first world” and “third world” and thus determine access to information, finance and resources.

Up till the invention of blockchain and this stateless currency, we have been systematically kept unfree. Decentralization of information weakened the central powers that control narratives. Because of social media, Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza and the reality of the police state in Ferguson can no longer be kept secret. More people are becoming aware of the continuous illegal wars in the Middle East. Yet, information was not truly liberated to become a revolutionary force that could meaningfully challenge state control.

Around the world, people have been protesting and demanding that governments end the wars. Yet, have these efforts really worked? Many of us have come to think that wars never stop and central control will always prevail. Why is this so? Because right now governments don’t have to listen to the people. They have the means to fund wars simply by printing more money.

Whenever we use the Euro and the US dollar, we are paying for wars, bailing out banks and funding state violence and oppressive regimes around the world. In this modern world, we might think we have moved away from monarchy. Yet, we have the fiat U.S. dollar as world reserve currency, declared on high acting as a King. What we really have is Exxon Mobile dollars or Chevron coins. We have been using Goldman Sachs coins that are disguised as national interest but are actually imposed upon us.

Central banks of the world stagnate the flow of money and use it as means of control to create war economies and enslave us through debt. Bitcoin has a fixed monetary policy. Its decentralized design has a potential to limit or even eliminates this power. If governments don’t have the ability to print money, they cannot buy tanks, missiles and endlessly fund wars. They cannot debase currency with austerity, taxation through rent seeking and support financial colonization by controlling borders and forcing remittance.

With blockchain decentralized trust, information as a currency of democracy could generate a bottom up power of consensus. We can have our own banks and money in our own hands and direct its flow. As we divest from the war economy, governments will have to beg people to pay for their war operations. They won’t get to print money for war. They will have to ask. Who here would want to join #OpUS – CollateralMurder or #OpIsraelGenocideofGaza?

The blockchain network creates a world of voluntary association and mutual aid. In this new world, the populace cannot be forced into debt if they don’t agree to it. We can now fund our own Ops with our own currency based on shared trust. We can now create our own communities based on common values.

We share the same problems. Let’s solve them together. The privilege of Western Europe and North America creates the poverty of the Global South. Bitcoin distributed trust delivers power to the periphery. We can unite to keep our network in solidarity for a decentralized future within the global commons. The next time people in Cyprus are hit with the crisis of austerity and their government tries to steal their money, they have a choice.

From Somali migrant workers transmitting money back home to American college students in debt servitude and Argentinians resisting currency default, we can all work together to help each other create our own flow of common wealth. This decentralized autonomous network has the potential to transform war economies based on debt into new economies based on our indebtedness to one another.

Like WikiLeaks challenging information apartheid or Anonymous taking on a state-corporatist ideology of separation and hatred, with the blockchain we can free ourselves from the shackles of monetary apartheid, financial extraction and segregation.

Information is now being freed. Currency is flowing like never before. With the blockchain, we don’t have to occupy the city square. Each simply can become a part of a network that is already creating a global wave of uprising through simply acting as if we are already free.

As the imagination begins to move, forces that try to squash its flow has infiltrated cyberspace. With extreme surveillance and censorship, the militarization and centralization of the Internet has been creeping into our lives. The Internet has become a battleground.

Yet, the Internet is anarchy. It has already unleashed a true revolutionary force: our imagination as currency of the global commons. This is our movement. This is our flow. It cannot be diverted, devalued or controlled. Can our imagination save the world?

The answer is up to us.

Thank you.

Nozomi Hayase, Ph.D., is a writer who has been covering issues of freedom of speech, transparency and decentralized movements. Her work is featured in many publications. Find her on twitter @nozomimagine.

Virginia’s Own Erich Gliebe Steps Down as National Alliance Chairman

“Aryan Barbarian” Erich Gliebe told a Gloucester County Circuit Courtroom earlier this week,

“I have resigned all my positions with the National Alliance, I am no longer director or chairman.”

Gliebe had been embroiled in a bizarre lawsuit brought against him by something called the National Alliance Reform & Restoration Group, a splinter sect dedicated to his resignation. They had no idea this was coming though,

“This is the first time I’ve heard Mr. Gliebe is no longer the chairman,” NARRG’s lawyer, Daniel A. Harvill, told the court.

 

The lawsuit will be dropped.

Read Hatewatch’s full report on their site06-17-06

ACLU of Virginia | (Blog) Virginia’s Ever Growing Surveillance State

From the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia Blog

by Rob Poggenklass, Tony Dunn Legal Fellow

Virginia Police Have Been Secretively Stockpiling Private Phone Records.”  This is just the latest headline reminding Virginians about our ever growing surveillance state. In response to this latest revelation of abuse, the ACLU of Virginia sent Freedom of Information Act requests to five city governments in Hampton Roads, asking for information related to this police data sharing agreement.

The Hampton Roads Telephone Analysis Sharing Network, as the police agreement is called, is a system that allows local law enforcement agencies in Hampton Roads to store data collected from cell phone records. Police departments are saying this data is obtained legally, through a court order, subpoena, or warrant. Under the Memorandum of Understanding signed by the five cities, each agency stores that data so that if at some point in the future, some other law enforcement agency decides it wants to use some of the data, the agency can get the data for a different purpose – this time, theoretically, without a warrant, subpoena, or court order.

The information available so far indicates that this practice may well violate the Government Data Collection and Dissemination Practices Act, which protects individuals’ personal information from being collected, stored and shared by government agencies. As former Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli wrote in a 2013 opinion, “[t]he Data Act seeks to protect individual privacy, by placing strictures upon the governmental collection, maintenance, use and dissemination of personal information.” And, because personal information includes information that “describes, locates or indexes anything about an individual,” the passive collection and dissemination of a person’s telephone records, the Hampton Roads phone sharing program appears to violate the law.

The Data Act does not inhibit the ability of state and local police departments to obtain a warrant to get information related to an active criminal investigation. But, it does place limits on passive collection of data for future reference and it limits how these law enforcement agencies can keep and share information collected legally as a part of a particular criminal investigation. A police department that collects a phone record, for example by subpoena, is authorized to collect and maintain that record in relation to the alleged criminal activity under investigation. But under the Data Act, the agency may not store that record indefinitely or share it with whomever it wants.

As former Attorney General Cuccinelli explained, the collection of personal information is not permitted under Virginia law “unless the need for it has been clearly established in advance.” And, as General Cuccinelli made clear, the “need” that must be established is the need related to a particular criminal investigation – not a generalized societal need or the perceived usefulness of the data at some time in the future. The Memorandum of Understanding signed by the five cities does not meet the standard of particularized need that would bring this data collection and dissemination activity within the bounds of the state law. It appears to seek to authorize a practice of mass surveillance that the state law clearly was designed to protect us against.

The bottom line is that this is exactly the kind of “general warrant” our Founding Fathers had in mind when they put the Fourth Amendment into the Bill of Rights and the prohibitions against general warrants in the Virginia Constitution. As they put it, “no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” And in a recent case, Justice Scalia noted that the first Virginia Constitution, which predated the U.S. Constitution, “declared that ‘general warrants, whereby any officer or messenger may be commanded to search suspected places without evidence of a fact committed,’ or to search a person ‘whose offense is not particularly described and supported by evidence,’ ‘are grievous and oppressive, and ought not be granted.’”

The Hampton Roads Telephone Analysis Sharing Network provides for law enforcement agencies to obtain citizens’ personal information from other law enforcement agencies without probable cause, without getting a warrant, and without establishing a clear need for the information in advance. This is unacceptable and illegal. That may be why the Virginia State Police, as well as the Hampton Roads communities of Portsmouth and Virginia Beach, declined to participate in the data sharing agreement.

As several news outlets have reported, five city governments – Hampton, Newport News, Portsmouth, Suffolk, and Chesapeake – signed the agreement. Two of these cities approved the agreement by having the city council vote on it. In the other three cities, however, unelected city officials simply OK’d the data sharing agreement without a vote. Importantly, they justify this action because the data sharing agreement is paid for by civil asset forfeiture funds, which are obtained through laws that enable law enforcement to take an individual’s property simply by asserting that they believe the property is connected to some type of illegal activity – they don’t even need to obtain a criminal conviction.

Through our Freedom of Information Act requests, we hope to discover more about the data sharing agreement, what led officials from these five cities to sign it, and whether they have signed other, similar agreements.

We are encouraged that the leaders of the bipartisan, bicameral Ben Franklin Liberty Caucus of the Virginia General Assembly have pledged to add this issue to the Caucus’ agenda. We urge the people’s elected representatives in these five localities to make more considered judgments about the legality and the appropriateness of this initiative and reconsider their city’s involvement. As the Virginian Pilot said in a recent editorial on this issue, the data sharing agreement is “more than a problem; it’s wrong, an offense against liberty, and an example of what happens when government pursues an end without regard for the means.”

Want to stay informed about our advocacy to rein in the surveillance state? Continue to follow our blog, and check out our Facebook and Twitter for breaking news! And, sign up to be a grassroots advocate.

#tbt James Guillaume – Ideas on Social Organization

guillaume01

I

The ideas outlined in the following pages can be effectively achieved only by means of a revolutionary movement. It takes more than a day for the great flood to break the dyke; the floodwaters mount slowly, imperceptibly. But once the crest of the flood is reached, the collapse is sudden, the dyke is washed away in the winking of an eye. We can distinguish, then, two successive acts, the second being the necessary consequence of the first. At first there is the slow transformation of ideas, of needs, of the motives for action germinating in the womb of society; the second begins when this transformation is sufficiently advanced to pass into action. Then there is a brusque and decisive turning point — the revolution — which is the culmination of a long process of evolution, the sudden manifestation of a change long prepared for and therefore inevitable.

No serious-minded man would venture to predict exactly how the Revolution, the indispensable condition for social renovation, will come about. Revolution is a natural fact, and not the act of a few persons; it does not take place according to a preconceived plan but is produced by uncontrollable circumstances which no individual can command. We do not, therefore, intend to draw up a blueprint for the future revolutionary campaign; we leave this childish task to those who; believe in the possibility and the efficacy of achieving the emancipation of humanity through personal dictatorship. We will confine ourselves, on the contrary, to describing the kind of revolution most attractive to us and the ways it can be freed from past errors.

The character of the revolution must at first be negative, destructive. Instead of modifying certain institutions of the past, or adapting them to a new order, it will do away with them altogether. Therefore, the government will be uprooted, along with the Church, the army, the courts, the schools, the banks, and all their subservient institutions. At the same time the Revolution has a positive goal, that the workers take possession of all capital and the tools of production. Let us explain what is meant by the phrase “taking possession.”

Let us begin with the peasants and problems concerning the land. In many countries, particularly in France, the priests and the bourgeoisie try to frighten the peasants by telling them that the Revolution will take their land away from them. This is an outrageous lie concocted by the enemies of the people. The Revolution would take an exactly opposite course: it would take the land from the bourgeoisie, the nobles, and the priests and give it to the landless peasants. If a piece of land belongs to a peasant who cultivates it himself, the Revolution would not touch it. On the contrary, it would guarantee free possession and liquidate all debts arising from the land. This land which once enriched the treasury and was overburdened with taxes and weighed down by mortgages would, like the peasant, be emancipated. No more taxes, no more mortgages; the land becomes free, just like the man!

As to the land owned by the bourgeoisie, the clergy, and the nobles — land hitherto cultivated by landless laborers for the benefit of their masters — the Revolution will return this stolen land to the rightful owners, the agricultural workers.

How will the Revolution take the land from the exploiters and give it to the peasants? Formerly, when the bourgeois made a political revolution, when they staged one of those movements which resulted only in a change of masters dominating the people, they usually printed decrees, proclaiming to the people the will of the new government. These decrees were posted in the communes and the courts, and the mayor, the gendarmes, and the prosecutors enforced them. The real people’s revolution will not follow this model; it will not rule by decrees, it will not depend on the services of the police or the machinery of government. It is not with decrees, with words written on paper, that the Revolution will emancipate the people but with deeds.

II

We will now consider how the peasants will go about deriving the greatest possible benefit from their means of production, the land. Immediately after the Revolution the peasants will be faced with a mixed situation. Those who are already small proprietors will keep their plots of land and continue to cultivate it with the help of their families. The others, and they are by far the most numerous, who rented the land from the big landowners or were simply agricultural wage laborers employed by the owners, will take collective possession of the vast tracts of land and work them in common.

Which of these two systems is best?

It is not a matter of what is theoretically desirable but of starting with the facts and seeing what can be immediately achieved. From this point of view, we say first that in this mixed economy the main purpose of the Revolution has been achieved: the land is now the property of those who cultivate it, and the peasants no longer work for the profit of an idle exploiter who lives by their sweat. This great victory gained, the rest is of secondary importance. The peasants can, if they wish, divide the land into individual parcels and give each family a share. Or else, and this would be much better, they can institute common ownership and cooperative cultivation of the land. Although secondary to the main point, i.e., the emancipation of the peasant, this question of how best to work the land and what form of possession is best also warrants careful consideration.

In a region which had been populated before the Revolution by peasants owning small farms, where the nature of the soil is not very suitable for extensive, large-scale cultivation, where agriculture has been conducted in the same way for ages, where machinery is unknown or rarely used — in such a region the peasants will naturally conserve the form of ownership to which they are accustomed. Each peasant will continue to cultivate the land as he did in the past, with this single difference: his former hired hands, if he had any, will become his partners and share with him the products which their common labor extracts from the land.

It is possible that in a short time those peasants who remain small proprietors will find it advantageous to modify their traditional system of labor and production. If so, they will first associate to create a communal agency to sell or exchange their products; this first associated venture will encourage them to try others of a similar nature. They would then, in common, acquire various machines to facilitate their work; they would take turns to help each other perform certain laborious tasks which are better accomplished when they are done rapidly by a large team; and they would no doubt finally imitate their brothers, the industrial workers, and those working on big farms, and decide to pool their land and form an agricultural association. But even if they linger for sonic years ill the same old routine, even if a whole generation should elapse before the peasants ill some communes adopt the system of collective property, it would still not constitute a serious hindrance to the Revolution. The great achievements of the Revolution will not be affected; the Revolution will have abolished agricultural wage slavery and peonage and the agricultural proletariat will consist only of free workers living ill peace and plenty, even in the midst of the few remaining backward areas.

On the other hand, in large-scale agricultural operations, where a great number of workers are needed to farm vast areas, where coordination and cooperation are absolutely essential, collective labor will naturally lead to collective property. An agricultural collective may embrace an entire commune [autonomous regional unit] and, if economically necessary for efficiency and greater production, many communes.

In these vast communities of agricultural workers, the land will not be worked as it is today, by small peasant owners trying without success to raise many different crops on tiny parcels of unsuitable land. There will not be growing side by side oil one acre a little square of wheat, a little square of potatoes, another of grapes, another of fodder, another of fruit, etc. Each bit of land tends, by virtue of its physical properties, its location, its chemical composition, to be most suitable for the successful cultivation of certain specific crops. Wheat will not be planted on soil suitable for grapes, nor potatoes on soil that could best be used for pasture. The agricultural community, if it has only one type of soil, will confine itself to the cultivation of crops which can be produced ill quantity and quality with less labor, and the community will prefer to exchange its products for those it lacks instead of trying to grow them in small quantity and poor quality on unsuitable land.

The internal organization of these agricultural communities need not necessarily he identical; organizational forms and procedures will vary greatly according to the preferences of the associated workers. So long as they conform to the principles of justice and equality, the administration of the community, elected by all the members, could be entrusted either to an individual or to a commission of many members. It will even be possible to separate the different administrative functions, assigning each function to a special commission. The hours of labor will be fixed not by a general law applicable to an entire country, but by the decision of the community itself; but as the community contracts relations with all the other agricultural workers of the region, an agreement covering uniform working hours will probably be reached. Whatever items are produced by collective labor will belong to the community, and each member will receive remuneration for his labor either in the form of commodities (subsistence, supplies, clothing, etc.) or in currency. In some communities remuneration will be in proportion to hours worked; in others payment will be measured by both the hours of work and the kind of work performed; still other systems will be experimented with to see how they work out.

The problem of property having been resolved, and there being no capitalists placing a tax on the labor of the masses, the question of types of distribution and remuneration become secondary. We should to the greatest possible extent institute and be guided by the principle From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. When, thanks to the progress of scientific industry and agriculture, production comes to outstrip consumption, and this will be attained some years after the Revolution, it will no longer be necessary to stingily dole out each worker’s share of goods. Everyone will draw what he needs from the abundant social reserve of commodities, without fear of depletion; and the moral sentiment which will be more highly developed among free and equal workers will prevent, or greatly reduce, abuse and waste. In the meantime, each community will decide for itself during the transition period the method they deem best for the distribution of the products of associated labor.

III

We must distinguish different types of industrial workers, just as we distinguished different kinds of peasants. There are, first of all, those crafts in which the tools are simple, where the division of labor is almost nonexistent, and where the isolated worker could produce as much alone as he would by associated labor. These include, for example, tailors, shoemakers, barbers, upholsterers, and photographers. It must, however, be remarked that even in these trades, large-scale mass production can be applied to save time and labor. What we say, therefore, applies primarily to the transitional period.

Next in order are the trades requiring the collective labor of numerous workers using small hand-operated machinery and generally employed in workshops and foundries, printing plants, woodworking plants, brickworks, etc.

Finally, there is the third category of industries where the division of labor is much greater, where production is on a massive scale necessitating complicated and expensive machinery and the investment of considerable capital; for example, textile mills, steel mills, metallurgical plants, etc.

For workers operating within the first category of industry, collective work is not a necessity; and in many cases the tailor or the cobbler may prefer to work alone in his own small shop. It is quite natural that in every commune there will be one or perhaps several workers employed in each of these trades. Without, however, wishing to underestimate in any way the importance of individual independence, we think that wherever practical, collective labor is best; in a society of equals, emulation stimulates the worker to produce more and heightens morale; further, work in common permits each worker to learn from the experience and skill of the others and this redounds to the benefit of the unit as a whole.

As to the workers in the remaining two categories, it is evident that collective labor is imposed by the very nature of the work and, since the tools of labor are no longer simple individual tools but machines that must be tended by many workers, the machines must also be collectively owned.

Each workshop, each factory, will organize itself into an association of workers who will be free to administer production and organize their work as they think best, provided that the rights of each worker are safeguarded and the principles of equality and justice are observed. In the preceding chapter, while discussing the associations or communities of agricultural workers, we dealt with management, hours of labor, remuneration, and distribution of products. The same observations apply also to industrial labor, and it is therefore unnecessary to repeat them here. We have just said that particularly where an industry requires complicated machinery and collective labor, the ownership of the machinery of production should also be collective. But one point remains to be clarified. Will these tools belong to all the workers in each factory, or will they belong to the corporation comprising all the workers in each particular industry? [Corporation here is equivalent to industrial union.]

Our opinion is that the second of these alternatives is preferable. When, for example, on the day of the Revolution, the typographical workers of Rome take possession of all the print shops of Rome, they will call a general meeting and proclaim that all the printing plants in Rome are the property of the Roman printers. Since it will be entirely possible and necessary, they will go a step further and unite in a pact of solidarity with all the printing workers in every city of Italy. The result of this pact will be the organization of all the printing plants of Italy as the collective property of the typographical federation of Italy. In this way the Italian printers will be able to work in any city in their country and have full rights and full use of tools and facilities.

But when we say that ownership of the tools of production, including the factory itself, should revert to the corporation, we do not mean that the workers in the individual workshops will be ruled by any kind of industrial government having the power to do what it pleases with the tools of production. No, the workers in the various factories have not the slightest intention of handing over their hard-won control of the tools of production to a superior power calling itself the “corporation.” What they will do is, under certain specified conditions, to guarantee reciprocal use of their tools of production and accord to their fellow workers in other factories the right to share their facilities, receiving in exchange the same right to share the facilities of the fellow workers with whom they have contracted the pact of solidarity.

IV

The commune consists of all the workers living in the same locality. Disregarding very few exceptions, the typical commune can be defined as the local federation of groups of producers. This local federation or commune is organized to provide certain services which are not within the exclusive jurisdiction or capacity of any particular corporation [industrial union] but which concerns all of them, and which for this reason are called public services. The communal public services can be enumerated as follows:

A. Public works (housing and construction)

All houses are the property of the commune. The Revolution made, everyone continues for the time being to live in the same quarters occupied by him before the Revolution, except for families which had been forced to live in very dilapidated or overcrowded dwellings. Such families will be immediately relocated at the expense of the commune in vacant apartments formerly occupied or owned by the rich.

The construction of new houses containing healthy, spacious rooms replacing the miserable slums of the old ghettos will be one of the first needs of the new society. The commune will immediately begin this construction in a way that will not only furnish work for the corporations of masons, carpenters, ironworkers, tilers, roofers, etc., but will also provide useful work for the mass of people who, having no trade, lived in idleness before the revolution. They would be employed as laborers in the immense construction and road-building an d paving projects which will then be initiated everywhere, especially in the cities.

The new housing will be constructed at the expense of the commune, which means that in exchange for the work done by the various building corporations these corporations will receive from the commune vouchers enabling them to acquire all commodities necessary for the decent maintenance and well-being of their members. And since the new housing has been constructed at public expense, this system will enable and require free housing to be available for all.

Free housing might well cause serious disputes because people living in bad housing will compete with each other for the new accommodations. But we think that it would be a mistake to fear serious friction, and for the following reasons: First we must concede that the desire for new and better housing is a legitimate and just demand; and this just demand will stimulate the building workers to make even greater efforts to speed construction of good housing.

But while awaiting new construction people will have to be patient and do the best they can with the existing facilities. The commune will, as we have said, attend to the most pressing needs of the poorest families, relocating them in the vast palaces of the rich; and as to the rest of the people, we believe that revolutionary enthusiasm will stimulate and inspire them with the spirit of generosity and self-sacrifice, and that they will be glad to endure for a little longer the discomforts of poor housing; nor will they be inclined to quarrel with a neighbor who happens to have gotten a new apartment a little sooner. In a reasonably short time, thanks to the prodigious efforts of the building workers powerfully stimulated by the demand for new housing, there will be plenty of housing for all and everyone will be sure to find satisfactory accommodations.

All this may seem fantastic to those whose vision goes no further than the horizon of bourgeois society; these measures are, on the contrary, so simple and practical that it will be humanly impossible for things to go otherwise. Will the legions of masons and other building workers be permanently and incessantly occupied with the construction of new housing worthy of a civilized society? Will it take many years of incessant labor to supply everyone with good housing? No, it will take a short time. And when they will have finished the main work, will they then fold their arms and do nothing? No, they will continue to work at a slower pace, remodeling existing housing; and little by little the old somber quarters, the crooked filthy streets, the miserable houses and alleys that now infest our cities will disappear and be replaced by mansions where the workers can live like human beings.

B. Exchange

In the new society there will no longer be communes in the sense that this word is understood today, as mere political-geographical entities. Every commune will establish a Bank of Exchange whose mechanics we will explain as clearly as possible.

The workers’ association, as well as the individual producers (in the remaining privately owned portions of production), will deposit their unconsumed commodities in the facilities provided by the Bank of Exchange, the value of the commodities having been established in advance by a contractual agreement between the regional cooperative federations and the various communes, who will also furnish statistics to the Banks of Exchange. The Bank of Exchange will remit to the producers negotiable vouchers representing the value of their products; these vouchers will be accepted throughout the territory included in the federation of communes.

Goods of prime necessity, i.e., those essential to life and health, will be transported to the various communal markets which, pending new construction, will use the old stores and warehouses of the former merchants. Some of the markets will distribute foodstuffs, others clothes, others household goods, etc.

Goods destined for export will remain in the general warehouses until called for by the communes.

Among the commodities deposited in the facilities of the Bank of Exchange will be goods for consumption by the commune itself, such as food, lumber, clothes, etc., and goods to be exchanged for those produced by other communes.

At this point we anticipate an objection. We will probably be asked: “the Bank of Exchange in each commune will remit to the producers, by means of vouchers, the value of their products, before being sure that they are in demand; and if these products are not in demand, and pile up unused, what will be the position of the Bank of Exchange? Will it not risk losses, or even ruin, and in this kind of operation is there not always the risk that the vouchers will be overdrawn?”

We reply that each Bank of Exchange makes sure in advance that these products are in demand and, therefore, risks nothing by immediately issuing payment vouchers to the producers.

There will be, of course, certain categories of workers engaged in the construction or manufacture of immovable goods, goods which cannot be transported to the repositories of the Bank of Exchange, for example, buildings. In such cases the Bank of Exchange will serve as the intermediary; the workers will register the property with the Bank of Exchange. The value of the property will be agreed upon in advance. and the bank will deliver this value in exchange vouchers. The same procedure will be followed in dealing with the various workers employed by the administrative services of the communes; their work resulting not in manufactured products but in services rendered. These services will have to be priced in advance, and the Bank of Exchange will pay their value in vouchers.

The Bank of Exchange will not only receive products belonging to the workers of the commune; it will correspond with other communes and arrange to procure goods which the commune is obliged to get from outside sources, such as certain foodstuffs, fuels, manufactured products, etc. These outside products will be featured side by side with local goods. The consumers will pay for the commodities in the various markets with vouchers of different denominations, and all goods will be uniformly priced.

It is evident from our description that the operations of the Bank of Exchange do not differ essentially from the usual commercial procedures. These operations are in effect nothing but buying and selling; the bank buys from the producers and sells to the consumers. But we think that after a certain length of time the functions of the Banks of Exchange will be reduced without inconvenience and that a new system will gradually replace the old system: exchange in the traditional sense will give way to distribution, pure and simple. What do we mean by this?

As long as a product is in short supply it will to a certain extent have to be rationed. And the easiest way to do this would be to sell these scarce products at a price so high that only people who really need them would be willing to buy them. But when the prodigious growth of production, which will not fail to take place when work is rationally organized, produces an oversupply of this or that product, it will not be necessary to ration consumption. The practice of selling, which was adopted as a sort of deterrent to immoderate consumption, will be abolished; the communal banks will no longer sell commodities, they will distribute them in accordance with the needs of the consumers.

The replacement of exchange by distribution will first, and in a comparatively short time, be applied to articles of prime necessity, for the workers will concentrate all their efforts to produce these necessities in abundance. Other commodities, formerly scarce and today considered luxuries, will in a reasonable length of time be produced in great quantity and will no longer be rationed. On the other hand, rare and useless baubles, such as pearls, diamonds, certain precious metals, etc., will cease to have the value attributed to them by public opinion and will be used for research by scientific associations, as components of certain tools, e.g., industrial diamonds, or displayed as curios in museums of natural history.

C. Food Supply

The question of food supply is a sort of postscript to our discussion of exchange. What we said about the organization of the Bank of Exchange applies in general to all products, including foodstuffs. However, we think it useful to add in a special section a more detailed account of the measures dealing with distribution of the principal food products.

At present the bakeshops, meat stores, wine and liquor shops, imported food stores, etc., are all surrendered to private industry and to speculators and these, by all kinds of fraud, enrich themselves at the expense of the consumers. The new society must immediately try to correct this situation by placing under communal public service the distribution of all the most essential foodstuffs.

This must be borne in mind: we do not mean to imply that the commune will take possession of certain branches of production. No. Production in the true sense of the term will remain in the hands of the associations of producers. But, for example, what is involved in the production of bread? Nothing beyond the growing of wheat. The farmer sows and reaps the grain and transports it to the warehouses of the Bank of Exchange; his function as producer ends at this point. Grinding grain into flour or changing flour into bread is not production; it is work similar to that performed by various employees in the communal markets, work designed to put a food product, bread, at the disposal of the consumer. The same goes for meat, etc.

Thus viewed, it is only logical that the processing and distribution of foodstuffs — baking, slaughtering, winemaking, etc. — should be performed by the commune. Thus, wheat from the warehouses of the commune will be ground into flour in the communal flour mill (which will be shared with several communes); the flour will be transformed into bread in the communal bakeries and delivered to the consumers in the communal markets. It will be the same for meats: the animals will be slaughtered in the communal slaughterhouse and cut up in the communal butcher shops. Wines will be preserved in the communal wine cellars and bottled and distributed by special employees. Finally, all the other perishable food commodities will be kept fresh in communal warehouses and kept in glass enclosures in the communal markets.

Above all, immediate efforts must be made to institute the free distribution of certain essential foods, such as bread, meat, wine, dairy products, etc. When abundant food is available and free for all, civilization in general will have taken a giant step forward.

D. Statistics

The main function of the Communal Statistical Commission will be to gather and classify all statistical information pertaining to the commune. The various corporations or associations of production will constantly keep up-to-date records of membership and changes in personnel so that it will be possible to know instantly the number of employees in the various branches of production.

The Bank of Exchange will provide the Statistical Commission with the most complete figures and all other relevant facts on the production and consumption of goods. By means of statistics gathered from all the communes in a region, it will be possible to scientifically balance production and consumption. In line with these statistics, it will also be possible to add more help in industries where production is insufficient and reduce the number of men where there is a surplus of production. Statistics will also make it easy to fit working hours to the productive needs of society. It will be equally possible to estimate, not perfectly, but enough for practical purposes, the relative value of the labor time involved in the various products, which will serve as the criteria for the prices of the Banks of Exchange.

But this is not all. The Statistical Commission will be able to perform some of the functions that are today exercised by the civil state, for example, recording births and deaths. We do not include marriage because in a free society, the voluntary union of a man and a woman will no longer be an official but a purely personal matter, not subject to, or requiring, public sanction.

There are many other uses for statistics: in relation to diseases, weather phenomena, in short, all facts which regularly gathered and classified can serve as a guide to the development of science and learning in general.

E. Hygiene

Under the general heading Hygiene, we have assembled the various public services which are indispensable to the maintenance of public health. First, of course, are medical services, which will be free of charge to all the inhabitants of the commune. The doctors will not be like capitalists, trying to extract the greatest possible profits from their unfortunate patients. They will be employed by the commune and expected to treat all who need their services. But medical treatment is only the curative side of the science of health care; it is not enough to treat the sick, it is also necessary to prevent disease. This is the true function of hygiene….

F. Security

This service embraces the necessary measures to guarantee to all inhabitants of the commune the security of their person and the protection of their homes, their possessions, etc., against deprivation and accident (fire, floods, etc.).

There will probably be very little brigandage and robbery in a society where each lives in full freedom to enjoy the fruits of his labor and where almost all his needs will be abundantly fulfilled. Material well-being, as well as the intellectual and moral progress which are the products of a truly humane education, available to all, will almost eliminate crimes due to perversion, brutality, and other infirmities. It will nevertheless still he necessary to take precautions for the security of persons. This service, which can be called (if the phrase has not too bad a connotation) the Communal Police, will not be entrusted, as it is today, to a special, official body; all able-bodied inhabitants will be called upon to take turns in the security measures instituted by the commune.

It will doubtless be asked how those committing murder and other violent crimes will be treated in the new equalization society. Obviously society cannot, on the pretext of respect for individual rights — and the negation of authority, permit a murderer to run loose, or wait for a friend of the victim to avenge him. The murderer will have to be deprived of his liberty and confined to a special house until he can without danger be returned to society. How is the criminal to be treated during his confinement? And according to what principles should his term be fixed? These are delicate questions on which opinions vary widely. We must learn from experience, but this much we already know: that thanks to the beneficent effects of education (see below) crimes will he rare. Criminals being an exception, they will be treated like the sick and the deranged; the problem of crime which today gives so many jobs to judges, jailers, and police will lose its social importance and become simply a chapter in medical history.

G. Education

The first point to be considered is the question of child support (food, clothes, toys, etc.). Today parents not only support their children but also supervise their education. This is a custom based on a false principle, a principle that regards the child as the personal property of the parents. The child belongs to no one, he belongs only to himself; and during the period when he is unable to protect himself and is thereby exposed to exploitation, it is society that must protect him and guarantee his free development. It is also society that must support him and supervise his education. In supporting him and paying for his education, society is only making an advance “loan” which the child will repay when he becomes an adult producer.

It is society and not the parents who will be responsible for the upkeep of the child. This principle once established, we believe that we should abstain from specifying the exact manner in which this principle should be applied: to do otherwise would risk trying to achieve a Utopia. Therefore the application must be left to free experimentation and we must await the lessons of practical experience. We say only that vis-à-vis the child, society is represented by the commune, and that each commune will have to determine what would be best for the upbringing of the child; here they would have life in common, there they would leave children in care of the mother, at least up to a certain age, etc.

But this is only one aspect of the problem. The commune feeds, clothes, and lodges the children, but who will teach them, who will develop their best characteristics and train them as producers? According to what plan and principles will their education be conducted?

To these questions we reply: the education of children must be integrated; that is, it must at the same time develop both the physical and mental faculties and make the child into a whole man. This education must not be entrusted solely to a specialized caste of teachers; all those who know a science, an art, or a craft can and should be called upon to teach.

We must distinguish two stages in the education of children: the first stage, where the child of five or six is not yet old enough to study science, and where the emphasis is on the development of the physical faculties; and a second stage, where children twelve to sixteen years of age would be introduced to the various divisions of human knowledge while at the same time learning one or more crafts or trades through practice.

The first stage, as just mentioned, will be devoted to development of the physical faculties, to strengthening the body and exercising the senses. Today the powers of hearing, seeing, and manual dexterity are incompletely and haphazardly developed: a rational education, on the contrary, will by special systematic exercises develop these faculties to the highest possible degree. And as to hands, instead of making children only right-handed, attempts will be made to render children equally proficient in the use of the left hand.

And while the senses are developed and bodily vigor is enhanced by intelligent gymnastic exercises, the culture of the mind will begin, but in a spontaneous manner; the child win naturally and unconsciously absorb a store of scientific knowledge. Personal observation, practical experience, conversations between children, or with persons charged with teaching — these will be the only form of instruction children will receive during this first period.

No longer will there be schools, arbitrarily governed by a pedagogue, where the children wait impatiently for the moment of their deliverance when they can enjoy a little freedom outside.

In their gatherings the children will be entirely free. They will organize their own games, their talks, systematize their own work, arbitrate disputes, etc. They will then easily become accustomed to public life, to responsibility, to mutual trust and aid. The teacher whom they have themselves chosen to give them lessons will no longer be a detested tyrant but a friend to whom they will listen with pleasure.

During the second stage, the children, being ages twelve to sixteen, will successively study in a methodical manner the principal branches of human knowledge. They will not be taught by professional teachers but by lay teachers of this or that science, who are also part-time manual workers; and each branch of knowledge will be taught not by one but by many men, all from the commune, who have both the knowledge and the desire to teach. In addition, good books on the subject studied will be read together, and intelligent discussion will follow, thereby lessening the importance attached to the personality of the teacher.

While the child is developing his body and learning the sciences, he will begin apprenticeship as a producer. In the first stage of his education, the need to repair or modify toys will introduce the child to the use of simple tools. During the second stage, he will visit different factories and, stimulated by his liking for one or more trades, will soon finally choose the trade in which he will specialize. The apprentices will be taught by men who are themselves working in the factories, and this practical education will be supplemented by lessons dealing with theory.

In this way, by the time a young man reaches the age of sixteen or seventeen he will have been introduced to the range of human knowledge, learned a trade, and chosen the discipline he likes best. Thus he will be in a position to reimburse society for the expenses involved in his education, not in money but by useful work and respect for the rights of his fellow human beings.

In conclusion, we should make a few remarks on the relationship between the child and his family. There arc people who assert that the program of placing the child in the custody of society means “the destruction of the family.” This doctrine is devoid of sense. As long as the concurrence of two individuals of different sexes is necessary for procreation, as long as there are fathers and mothers, the natural connection between the parents and the child can never be obliterated by social relations.

Only the character of this connection will be modified. In antiquity the father was the absolute master of the child. He had the power of life and death over him. In modern times paternal authority has been subject to certain restrictions. What, then, could be more natural, than that a free egalitarian society should obliterate what still remains of this authority and replace it with relations of simple affection?

We do not claim that the child should be treated as an adult, that all his caprices should be respected, that when his childish will stubbornly flouts the elementary rules of science and common sense we should avoid making him feel that he is wrong. We say, on the contrary, that the child must be trained and guided, but that the direction of his first years must not be exclusively exercised by his parents, who are all too often incompetent and who generally abuse their authority. The aim of education is to develop the latent capacities of the child to the fullest possible extent and enable him to take care of himself as quickly as possible. It is painfully evident that authoritarianism is incompatible with an enlightened system of education. If the relations of father to son are no longer those of master to slave but those of teacher to student, of an older to a much younger friend, do you think that the reciprocal affection of parents and children would thereby be impaired? On the contrary, when intimate relations of these sorts cease, do not the discords so characteristic of modern families begin? Is not the family disintegrating into bitter frictions largely because of the tyranny exercised by parents over their children?

No one can therefore justly claim that a free and regenerated society will destroy the family. In such a society the father, the mother, and the children will learn to love each other and to respect their mutual rights; at the same time their love will be enriched as it transcends the narrow limits of family affection, thereby achieving a wider and nobler love: the love of the great human family.

V

Social organization cannot be restricted to the local commune or the local federation of producers’ groups. We will see how social organization is expanded and completed, on the one hand by the establishment of regional corporative federations comprising all the groups of workers in the same industry; and on the other by the establishment of a federation of communes.

We have already indicated in Section III what a corporative federation is. Such organizations in a rudimentary form exist in present society. All workers in a given trade or craft belong to the same organization, for example, the federation of typographical workers. But these organizations are a very crude sketch of what they will become in the new society. The corporative federations will unite all workers in the same industry; they will no longer unite to protect their wages and working conditions against the onslaughts of their employers, but primarily to guarantee the mutual use of the tools of production which are the property of each of these groups and which will by a reciprocal contract become the collective property of the whole corporative federation. In this way, the federation of groups will be able to exercise constant control over production, and regulate the rate of production to meet the fluctuating consumer needs of society.

The corporative federation will operate in a very simple fashion. On the morrow of the revolution, the producers’ groups [local unions] belonging to the same industry will find it necessary to send delegates from city to city to exchange information and learn from each other’s experience. These partial conferences will prepare the way for a general congress of the corporative federation to be held at some central point. This congress will formulate a federative contract which will be submitted for the correction and approval of all the groups of the corporative federation. A permanent bureau, elected by the congress and responsible to it, will serve as the intermediary link between the groups of the federation and between the federation and all the other corporative federations.

When all the branches [industries], including the agricultural organizations, have been organized in this manner, they will constitute a vast federative network spanning the whole country and embracing all the producers, and therefore all the consumers. The statistics of production, coordinated by the statistical bureaus of every corporative federation, will permit the determination in a rational manner of the hours of labor, the cost price of products and their exchange value, and the quantities in which these products should be produced to meet the needs of the consumers.

People impressed by the hollow declamations of the so-called democrats will perhaps demand that all these details should be settled by a direct vote of all the members of the corporative federations. And when we reply in the negative they will accuse us of despotism; they will protest against what they consider to be the authority of the bureaus, arguing that the bureaus should not be invested with the exclusive power to deal with such grave problems and to make decisions of the greatest importance. Our answer will be that the tasks performed by the permanent bureaus do not involve the exercise of any authority whatsoever. They concern only the gathering and classification of information furnished by the producers’ groups. Once this information is combined and made public, it will be used to help fix prices and costs, the hours of labor, etc.

Such operations involve simple mathematical calculations which can yield only one correct result, verifiable by all who have access to the figures. The permanent bureau is simply charged to ascertain and make the facts known to everyone. Even now, for example, the postal service performs a somewhat similar service to that which the bureaus of the corporative federations will render in the future; and we know of no person who complains that the post office abuses its authority because it collects, classifies, and delivers the mail without submitting every operation to universal suffrage.

Furthermore, the producers’ groups forming the federation will intervene in the acts of the bureau in a far more effective and direct manner than simply by voting. For it is they who will furnish all the information and supply the statistics, which the bureau only coordinates. The bureau is merely the passive intermediary through which the groups communicate and publicly ascertain the results of their own activities. The vote is a device for settling questions which cannot be resolved by means of scientific data, problems which must be left to the arbitrary decision of numbers. But in questions susceptible to a precise scientific solution there is no need to vote. The truth cannot be decided by vote; it verifies and imposes itself by the mighty power of its own evidence.

But we have only dealt with one half of the extracommunal organization; the federative corporations will be paralleled by the establishment of the Federation of Communes.

VI

The revolution cannot be confined to a single country: it is obliged under pain of annihilation to spread, if not to the whole world, at least to a considerable number of civilized countries. In fact, no country today can be self-sufficient; international links and transactions are necessary for production and cannot be cut off. If a revolutionary country is blockaded by neighboring states the Revolution, remaining isolated, would be doomed. just as we base ourselves on the hypothesis of the triumph of the Revolution in a given country, we must also assume that most other European countries will make their revolutions at the same time.

In countries where the proletariat has managed to free itself from the domination of the bourgeoisie, the newly initiated social organizations do not have to conform to a set pattern and may differ in many respects. To this day there are many disagreements between the socialists of the Germanic nations (Germany and England) and those of the Latin and Slavic countries (Italy, Spain, France, and Russia). Hence, it is probable that the social organization adopted by the German revolutionists, for example, will differ on some or many points from what is introduced by the Italian or French revolutionaries. But these differences are not important insofar as international relations are concerned; the fundamental principles of the Revolution (see Sections I and II above) being the same, friendly relations and solidarity will no doubt he established between the emancipated peoples of the various countries.

It goes without saying that artificial frontiers created by the present governments will be swept away by the Revolution. The communes will freely unite and organize themselves in accordance with their economic interests, their language affinities, and their geographic circumstances. And in certain countries like Italy and Spain, too vast for a single agglomeration of communes and divided by nature into many distinct regions, there will probably be established not one but many federations of communes. This will not be a rupture of unity, a return to the old fragmentation of petty, isolated, and warring political states. These diverse federations of communes, while maintaining their identity, will not be isolated. United by their intertwining interests, they will conclude a pact of solidarity, and this voluntary unity founded on common aims and common needs, on a constant exchange of informal, friendly contacts, will be much more intimate and much stronger than the artificial political centralization imposed by violence and having no other motive than the exploitation of peoples for the profit of privileged classes.

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Anarchist Black Cross of Mexico: The four anarchist comrades end hunger strike

On October 17th, 2014, comrades Carlos López, Mario González, Fernando Bárcenas and Abraham Cortés called off their hunger strike that began on October 1st.

The comrades are well, without complications or physical damage. They will soon make the reasons and motives for ending the strike public.

For now this is all the information we have.

Freedom for all! Down with the prison walls!

Anarchist Black Cross of Mexico
h/t Anarchist News

#tbt Ema Goldman – Anarchy and the Sex Question

The workingman, whose strength and muscles are so admired by the pale, puny off-springs of the rich, yet whose labour barely brings him enough to keep the wolf of starvation from the door, marries only to have a wife and house-keeper, who must slave from morning till night, who must make every effort to keep down expenses. Her nerves are so tired by the continual effort to make the pitiful wages of her husband support both of them that she grows irritable and no longer is successful in concealing her want of affection for her lord and master, who, alas! soon comes to the conclusion that his hopes and plans have gone astray, and so practically begins to think that marriage is a failure.

The Chain Grows Heavier and Heavier

As the expenses grow larger instead of smaller, the wife, who has lost all of the little strength she had at marriage, likewise feels herself betrayed, and the constant fretting and dread of starvation consumes her beauty in a short time after marriage. She grows despondent, neglects her household duties, and as there are no ties of love and sympathy between herself and her husband to give them strength to face the misery and poverty of their lives, instead of clinging to each other, they become more and more estranged, more and more impatient with each other’s faults.

The man cannot, like the millionaire, go to his club, but he goes to a saloon and tries to drown his misery in a glass of beer or whiskey. The unfortunate partner of his misery, who is too honest to seek forgetfulness in the arms of a lover, and who is too poor to allow herself any legitimate recreation or amusement, remains amid the squalid, half-kept surroundings she calls home, and bitterly bemoans the folly that made her a poor man’s wife.

Yet there is no way for them to part from each other.

But They Must Wear It

However galling the chain which has been put around their necks by the law and Church may be, it may not be broken unless those two persons decide to permit it to be severed.

Should the law be merciful enough to grant them liberty, every detail of their private life must be dragged to light. The woman is condemned by public opinion and her whole life is ruined. The fear of this disgrace often causes her to break down under the heavy weight of married life without daring to enter a single protest against the outrageous system that has crushed her and so many of her sisters.

The rich endure it to avoid scandal — the poor for the sake of their children and the fear of public opinion. Their lives are one long continuation of hypocrisy and deceit.

The woman who sells her favours is at liberty to leave the man who purchases them at any time, “while the respectable wife” cannot free herself from a union which is galling to her.

All unnatural unions which are not hallowed by love are prostitution, whether sanctioned by the Church and society or not. Such unions cannot have other than a degrading influence both upon the morals and health of society.

The System is to Blame

The system which forces women to sell their womanhood and independence to the highest bidder is a branch of the same evil system which gives to a few the right to live on the wealth produced by their fellow-men, 99 percent of whom must toil and slave early and late for barely enough to keep soul and body together, while the fruits of their labour are absorbed by a few idle vampires who are surrounded by every luxury wealth can purchase.

Look for a moment at two pictures of this nineteenth century social system.

Look at the homes of the wealthy, those magnificent palaces whose costly furnishings would put thousands of needy men and women in comfortable circumstances. Look at the dinner parties of these sons and daughters of wealth, a single course of which would feed hundreds of starving ones to whom a full meal of bread washed down by water is a luxury. Look upon these votaries of fashion as they spend their days devising new means of selfish enjoyment — theatres, balls, concerts, yachting, rushing from one part of the globe to another in their mad search for gaiety and pleasure. And then turn a moment and look at those who produce the wealth that pays for these excessive, unnatural enjoyments.

The Other Picture

Look at them herded together in dark, damp cellars, where they never get a breath of fresh air, clothed in rags, carrying their loads of misery from the cradle to the grave, their children running around the streets, naked, starved, without anyone to give them a loving word or tender care, growing up in ignorance and superstition, cursing the day of their birth.

Look at these two startling contrasts, you moralists and philanthropists, and tell me who is to be blamed for it! Those who are driven to prostitution, whether legal or otherwise, or those who drive their victims to such demoralisation?

The cause lies not in prostitution, but in society itself; in the system of inequality of private property and in the State and Church. In the system of legalized theft, murder and violation of the innocent women and helpless children.

The Cure For The Evil

Not until this monster is destroyed will we get rid of the disease which exists in the Senate and all public offices; in the houses of the rich as well as in the miserable barracks of the poor. Mankind must become conscious of their strength and capabilities, they must be free to commence a new life, a better and nobler life.

Prostitution will never be suppressed by the means employed by the Rev. Dr. Parkhurst and other reformers. It will exist as long as the system exists which breeds it.

When all these reformers unite their efforts with those who are striving to abolish the system which begets crime of every description and erect one which is based upon perfect equity — a system which guarantees every member, man, woman or child, the full fruits of their labour and a perfectly equal right to enjoy the gifts of nature and to attain the highest knowledge — woman will be self-supporting and independent. Her health no longer crushed by endless toil and slavery no longer will she be the victim of man, while man will no longer be possessed of unhealthy, unnatural passions and vices.

An Anarchist’s Dream

Each will enter the marriage state with physical strength and moral confidence in each other. Each will love and esteem the other, and will help in working not only for their own welfare, but, being happy themselves, they will desire also the universal happiness of humanity. The offspring of such unions will be strong and healthy in mind and body and will honour and respect their parents, not because it is their duty to do so, but because the parents deserve it.

They will be instructed and cared for by the whole community and will be free to follow their own inclinations, and there will be no necessity to teach them sychophancy and the base art of preying upon their fellow-beings. Their aim in life will be, not to obtain power over their brothers, but to win the respect and esteem of every member of the community.

Anarchist Divorce

Should the union of a man and woman prove unsatisfactory and distasteful to them they will in a quiet, friendly manner, separate and not debase the several relations of marriage by continuing an uncongenial union.

If, instead of persecuting the victims, the reformers of the day will unite their efforts to eradicate the cause, prostitution will no longer disgrace humanity.

To suppress one class and protect another is worse than folly. It is criminal. Do not turn away your heads, you moral man and woman.

Do not allow your prejudice to influence you: look at the question from an unbiased standpoint.

Instead of exerting your strength uselessly, join hands and assist to abolish the corrupt, diseased system.

If married life has not robbed you of honour and self-respect, if you have love for those you call your children, you must, for your own sake as well as theirs, seek emancipation and establish liberty. Then, and not until then, will the evils of matrimony cease.

Collective response to “Racism at NA ABC Conference” by JoNina & Lorenzo Ervin

AlexABC is not federated in any way. Just carrying the news from what seems like a fucked up conference.

http://anarchistnews.org/content/collective-response-racism-na-abc-conference-jonina-lorenzo-ervin

We are writing as the crew that organized the North American ABC Conference, in response to JoNina and Lorenzo’s public letter “Racism at the NA ABC Conference.” We are nine people spread across the country, from New York to Sacramento, in conjunction with Denver ABC, and as such have a range of views on their open letter. This response is not a full statement of all of those views, or even a consensus of what things we all agree on, but rather a response required to urgently address the letter and to clarify information within it. This statement is NOT to discredit, disqualify, disregard, or fault JoNina and Lorenzo for their experience(s). The information provided is correct to the best of our account, and is provided for the purpose of transparency.

We also note that our public response to this matter is made against our preference for dealing with conflicts internal to anarchist movements. We are troubled by JoNina and Lorenzo’s decision to publish their letter on the Internet (including Facebook) in addition to sending it out over our closed listserv. We find it inappropriate to publicly handle internal matters, where anyone and everyone is privy to internal conflict, that typically makes it difficult to move forward and lends itself more to internet flame wars than revolutionary efforts to deal with oppression within our movements. We do not wish to hide these issues or sweep them under the rug, yet we do value resolving internal conflicts present in anarchist movements and our ABC organizing amongst ourselves—autonomously, collectively, internally. Our preference for handling this situation and the issues it raises includes dialogue between JoNina and Lorenzo, us as conference organizers, members of the panel during which the letter was read, and all other conference attendees and their associates. Thus, we would like to make it clear that this response is being made public only in response to JoNina and Lorenzo’s open letter. We do not make any promises to address this matter in public forums in the future.

Before we respond, we are providing some context, especially for international readers who expressed  confusion about the situation. At the 2014 North American ABC conference, held outside of Denver, Colorado, there were a variety of panels, workshops, and discussions covering an array of issues around prisoner support. The panel in question was one on “Playing Lawyer,” and featured speakers who talked about working on parole cases, working on their personal and other legal cases, and finally, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests on behalf of Jalil Muntaqim’s parole campaign. Jaili’s parole was recently denied, largely due to a letter-writing campaign conducted by prison guards and fraternal police organizations. Racist cops and guards sent dozens of letters to the parole board, and Jalil requested that a white activist, who is involved in his support and was a member of the panel, read the letters to the panel attendees. The letters, most of which were read aloud or had sections of them read aloud, became progressively more racist and disturbing. There was tension in the air, some nervous laughter, and groans accompanied by outbursts of “What the fuck?” and other such exclamations. The final letter read was comprised almost entirely of racial epithets and slurs directed at people of color in general, and displayed a disgusting level of racism leveled against Jalil and all people of color in the name of keeping him from parole. It is this letter, and the reaction or lack of reaction to it, which prompted the open letter from JoNina and Lorenzo.

We acknowledge that internal oppression and privilege exist at the NA ABC conference, within the NA ABC network, and within NA anarchist movements. At the conference, we have experimented with various ways of addressing internal oppression (including, but not limited to, racism) as a group. Last year, we held three fishbowl discussions: one on race, one on class, one on sexism/patriarchy/gender. This year, we held two group exercises exploring privilege and oppression within our groups and at the conference. While these efforts are clearly not sufficient for countering our internal privilege and oppression or from preventing incidents such as this one, we feel it is important to acknowledge the work we have been doing in this area and are committed to do in the future.

As organizers, we are certainly accountable for what happens at the NA ABC conference. With that understanding and with our commitment to addressing all forms of oppression within our organizing, we have organized these conferences under this statement of purpose and these points of unity:

“The Annual North American ABC Conference exists to provide an inter-generational forum for anarchist, autonomous and anti-authoritarian people engaged in anti-repression work with an emphasis on PP / POW support. It is a unique convergence of peers with an expectation of dynamic participation in mutual aid. Moving in a direction of international organizing, we aim to build and sustain working relationships, ultimately existing as a much greater weapon against state repression. This event utilizes group discussions and working groups where everyone is encouraged to participate equitably and where their unique experiences and knowledge are valued. We facilitate a space that is 100% sober from beginning to end out of respect to the boundaries set by the indigenous principles of the event center. An added benefit is the creation of a focused working environment in which to heal, learn, strategize and hopefully emerge with greater strength and resources to better do our work. We seek to dismantle hierarchies, challenge privileges and break down sectarian barriers within ourselves. Engaging in any oppressive behaviors will not be tolerated and will be addressed immediately. We warmly invite the participation of those willing to co-create this space in which we will further strengthen anti-repression work and PP/POW support.”

We included this statement in our registration forms that went out to everyone invited to the conference. We take this statement seriously and worked hard to adhere to it throughout our organizing and during the conference. As conference organizers, we clearly fell short of living up to all the aspirations in this statement, and for that we take responsibility. We deeply regret that our failure to immediately address the harmful effects of the letter being read in the moment hurt some of our comrades and made them feel so unsafe that they are no longer willing to join us at future conferences.

Accordingly, we cannot stand by while blame is unjustifiably directed at people. JoNina and Lorenzo directly called out Paulette D’Auteuil, the National Secretary of the Jericho Movement, for comments she made during the panel discussion. We believe that the statements made about Paulette mischaracterize the content and intent of what she said at that time. Paulette, who neither organized nor was a participant on the panel,  proposed a hypothetical in which people of color attending the panel would have been warned of the contents of the letter and would have had full control over how to handle it, whether to read it or not, or indeed, to leave the room during its reading if they chose to do so. We understand that the suggestion that people of color should simply leave during the reading of a racist letter would have been a racist and inappropriate suggestion. Certainly we, as the organizing crew (which is not all white), do not advocate or condone “white radical racial segregation” at this or any conference. To characterize a small part of Paulette’s hypothetical as an actual proposal, however, is unfair.

Paulette has worked to support Black political prisoners and prisoners of war for decades. She was invited to this year’s conference because of her dedicated organizing and will be invited in the future for the same reasons. She can speak for herself as to her motives and intentions for her comments and suggestions, if she so chooses, and we certainly do not hold her or the Jericho Movement responsible for the panel or its content, as neither she nor Jericho had any involvement in organizing it.

Yet there is responsibility to be taken for what happened and that responsibility was taken during the conference, however imperfectly and inadequately in the eyes of JoNina, Lorenzo, and others at the conference. The reader is responsible for reading the letter in an insensitive way. He immediately accepted that responsibility during the panel and engaged in discussions about the issues afterwards. Additionally, all attendees within earshot are responsible for inadequately addressing the situation in the moment. We are upset that the people in the room (many of us were in the room) collectively failed in those responsibilities, and we are glad that most people engaged in difficult and productive conversations about it during the panel, during the anti-oppression group exercise immediately after the panel, and during the rest of the conference. Despite these efforts, JoNina and Lorenzo are right that such inaction and failures reveal internalized oppression that needs to be addressed.

Finally, we would like to address the other quotations included in the open letter from JoNina and Lorenzo. None of the quotes included in the letter were spoken by anyone at the conference to the best of our collective knowledge and it is problematic to present statements as quotes when they were not actually spoken. No one vocalized that the panelist who read the letter “meant no harm,” the person who made the analogy about a letter being from a misogynist never used the term “bragging letter” even though what she did say was not far off from that idea, no one said that JoNina and Lorenzo or any other people of color attending the conference were “too thin-skinned,” and no one said that the protests of the letter being read were “racial agitation from Lorenzo and people he brought.” Additionally, the two attendees insensitively identified as “Hispanic” (a colonizer’s term for colonized peoples) did not make the statements attributed to them in the open letter. To put forth these fragments as direct quotes from anyone attending the conference is simply untrue.

We are in full agreement that North American ABC chapters and our comrades should develop in-depth, comprehensive, and continuous anti-oppression programs, including workshops, readings, discussions, and continued support for political prisoners, prisoners of war, and mass prison movements.

Further thoughts will be forthcoming, privately and individually if not publicly and collectively.

With respect,

The NA ABC Conference Organizing Crew & Denver ABC

Racism At The North American Anarchist Black Cross Conference

http://blackautonomyfederation.blogspot.ca/2014/09/racism-at-north-ameri…

By: Lorenzo and JoNina Ervin
To: Denver Anarchist Black Cross
North American Anarchist Black Cross
Re: Racism at North American ABC Conference

Dear Comrades:
An ugly, racist incident happened at the September 11-14, 2014, conference of the North American Anarchist Black Cross (NA-ABC) which disrupted the meeting and created conflict among activists there, after a young activist read a letter from a white racist prison guard who opposed the parole of black political prisoner, Jalil Muntaqim. The letter was read at the instruction of Brother Jalil to show the racist and entrenched opposition to his parole by white cops and their fraternal and police associations. We do not blame Brother Jalil, who has been in prison for decades and had no way of knowing that black people would be sitting in the room when the letter was read, nor the young activist who read the letter, not knowing how it would impact the black people who heard it, and who later apologized for his error. We blame other activists on the panel and other listeners who sat by or said nothing. We also criticize the NA-ABC, which created a climate where this or another racist outrage was bound to occur because the organization has never dealt with its own internal racism.

We especially blame the National Jericho Movement, which put on the workshop where the letter was read and the Jericho representative at the conference, Paulette D’Auteuil. She not only refused to apologize or correct the young activist, but made racially inflammatory comments of her own, saying that blacks and other POC should “just leave the room,” rather than not reading such a letter in the first place, or even giving any warning of its contents. She thus encouraged other racist letters to be read to a room full of whites in the future, thereby advocating white radical racial segregation at NA-ABC annual meetings, which already have few black or POC participants. This is an absolute and utter outrage, and everyone should find this unacceptable. Then, Paulette took the posture that it was “all Jalil’s fault,”and that we should take the matter up with him if we didn’t like it. As we have pointed out already, we hold Brother Jalil blameless, and we do not believe he would intentionally attempt to embarrass or demean other black people by forcing them to listen to such a racist and inflammatory letter. The other Jericho representative at the conference, Kazi Toure, who is black, was not present in the room when the letter was read. But after learning what happened, he expressed embarrassment, chagrin, if not outright anger over the incident because he is black.

We therefore believe that Paulette should make a full public apology to the NAABC and to us as participants in the conference for her misbehavior, or she should not be allowed to attend further meetings of the NA-ABC. In addition, the entire panel where the racist letter was read should make a full public apology for not stopping the letter from being read, or failing in any way to rebuke the activist who read the letter. The panelists’ silence just enabled the activist to repeat all this racist guard’s drivel, in what the activist felt was a supportive environment of white people who “saw no problem” with the comments being repeated at a radical gathering, which included black people. Finally, the leadership of Jericho should make an apology for this entire matter: for allowing the racist letter to be read, failure to exercise control of the panelists, and the racist misbehavior of Paulette as Jericho representative to the event.

And yet, all of this is just a reflection of internal racism within the North American Anarchist Black Cross, and its organizational culture that is too white, too middle class, and closed off from urban communities of color. It has never been healthy to have privileged white people doling out support to black prisoners, while not building a support base in the black community from which those prisoners come, and not recruiting black and other activists of color. The fact that NAABC holds meetings on the side of a mountain removed from the city, instead of in an urban space in Denver, speaks volumes about your lack of black participation and community outreach. You are not making a welcoming environment for blacks to attend. So this incident is to be expected in this type of white environment, and it also explains how the majority of white people who heard the racist comments thought it was “no big deal,” that the speaker “meant no harm,” that black people who heard the racially offensive comment should not be disturbed, or were being “too thin-skinned,“ or that this was all just “racial agitation from Lorenzo and people he brought.” The fact is that this racist climate was already there inside the NA-ABC as a movement for a long time, and this was just the trigger for the latest incident. The ABC in North America is a Political Plantation, a white-led movement with serious internal racism, which it refuses to deal with, or even listen to peoples of color when we point it out. Some of you even blame us for raising it in the first place, and then refuse to make any changes. As one white person who did speak out from the audience said: listening to the letter from the prison guard was like listening to a “bragging letter” from a rapist. If you do not want women to apologize for their own rapes by demented men, why do you want black people to accept racist insults and then be faulted for speaking out?

Do not expect us to passively accept such racist indignities, even from our own white allies. On a personal level, the reading of the letter was the worst form of racist insult to Lorenzo. He was raised in the segregated South in the 1950’s; had white racist vigilantes and cops put a gun to his head, then spit in his face and call him a nigger; tell him he had no right to speak up; that “niggers don’t deserve civil rights,” and that only the rights of white people mattered. In those days, Lorenzo was restrained from speaking out because of the violent racism of the KKK and other white racists. Later, Lorenzo spoke out as a young civil rights protester. He also heard plenty of vile insults from racist prison guards during his 15 years as a political prisoner, including insults from guards who opposed his release on parole. What would make you think that Lorenzo wanted to hear these insults at an ABC meeting? He will never passively accept white supremacy or its insults, even if it comes from from the mouths of white radical socialists or anarchists, who feel that they are “sincerely motivated” and thus blameless in their own eyes.

We do not personally hold the Denver Anarchist Black Cross, which hosted the North America ABC conference, responsible for this incident, or think the Denver ABC had any intention for this incident to occur. However, we feel that the annual NA-ABC meeting is no longer a safe space for us as black activists, and we will not attend any future events. Nevertheless, because we care enough about ABC as a radical prison movement, and feel that positive changes should come out of this incident, we are proposing these solutions:

12 Point Racist Recovery Program for North American ABC:

1. The NA-ABC must create a permanent anti-racist/anti-oppression committee, which will be a semi-autonomous group able to challenge internal racism and call people out for offensive behavior. However, it must also train all ABC activists in anti-racist ideology, set new policies, and call for institutional change. This committee should also be in control of all anti-racist communications of the group.

2. Every year at the annual NA-ABC gatherings, there must be workshops to talk extensively about the dangers of internal racism within the ABC. Besides anti-racist workshops for white participants, black/POC conference attendees should have their own workshops to deal with the effects of white racism, and differences among ourselves. [For instance, at least two Hispanics made two anti-black comments at the conference. One said that he was not offended by the racist letter because he saw himself as a “white Mexican,” and another called Lorenzo a “token who should not be allowed to speak for all peoples of color”].

3. We are asking the Denver ABC and NA-ABC to join with the Ida B. Wells Coalition Against Racism and Police Brutality to create an online discussion list, “ABC-Anti-Racist” to discuss internal racism all during the period between ABC conferences.

4. We call upon the NA-ABC to provide a written disclaimer at the beginning of each workshop forbidding panel members to use racist or oppressive language against any racial group, nationality, or oppressed peoples. [NOTE: this rule cannot ever be used to stifle discussions of internal racism and white supremacy.]

5. We call upon the NA-ABC to use the book, “The Progressive Plantation: Racism Inside Radical Social Change Groups,” as a study guide for ABC chapters and activists. We ask P & L Press to print the book at no cost, and provide it to everyone, then hold consciousness raising study groups. We will provide the manuscript for you.

6. Join with us as we create a “Progressive Plantation” discussion page for activists on Facebook, inside and outside of the ABC.

7. We call upon you to create a permanent POC standing committee within NA-ABC to propose anti-racist internal politics for the entire group, challenge acts of racism, and involve more POC inside the ABC. Even though we will not attend any more NA-ABC meetings, we expect you to continue to work with us through this POC committee and other contacts.

8.There needs to be a process created and made part of the standing rules to expel persons or groups engaging in racist or oppressive behavior. This should come after giving them a warning.
9. When racist behavior takes place, the entire conference should shut down its workshops, and deal with it immediately, and the ABC should never cover up or ignore such incidents.

10. The ABC must make anti-fascist ideology and internal anti-racist training a central part of its politics.

11. We are not asking the North American ABC to completely divest itself` of political prisoner support work for black/POC political prisoners and POW’s from the 1960’s or 1970’s, or those contemporary campaigns they have started in the animal liberation, radical environmental, and other such white radical campaigns. The NA-ABC, however, must change its white privilege model of selective support of black political prisoners to one of dealing with mass imprisonment of African/POC’s, and the new generation of prisoners since the 1980’s. Jericho is fully capable of dealing with its New African prisoners, and even those prisoners want the 20/50 plan applied to an overall campaign against mass imprisonment in this period. The NA-ABC must have its own politics on this, not just adopt Jericho’s program. This will allow the NA-ABC to help build a new mass movement, work with black/communities of color, and build coalitions with activists of color, both inside and outside the prisons. [We had sent our mass imprisonment proposal prior to the conference, which was adopted by the Mass Imprisonment workshop].

12. Although we do not believe than any organization can deal with internal racism in isolation, we encourage the NA-ABC to try to deal with your problems internally if you can do so, but caution you not to cover up or defend yourself from charges of internal racism, but to implement or come up with viable plans to heal the group, rebuild unity, and show respect to all who attend your events in the future. We believe that this is the moment of truth for the North American-Anarchist Black Cross.

So this is our proposal dealing with anti-racist institutional change for the NA-ABC. We are open to discussing this matter further by a series of online conferences with the Denver ABC and others. This letter/proposal is not meant to be totally hostile or accusatory, and is made in good faith.

Love and struggle,
JoNina and Lorenzo Ervin, (on behalf of the Black Autonomy Prison Federation and the Ida B. Wells Coalition Against Racism and Police Brutality).

Brian Jacob Church (NATO 3) to be Released in November; Support Campaign Underway

From Anarchistnews.org:

Brian Jacob Church of the NATO 3 is scheduled to be released in November of this year, so we’ve launched a campaign to raise money for his release. Donate today to help welcome Jacob home!

https://www.youcaring.com/JacobChurch

On May 16th, 2012, just prior to the NATO summit in Chicago, three Occupy activists were arrested and eventually charged with 11 felony counts, including four under the never-before-used Illinois terrorism statute. Brian “Jacob” Church, Brent Betterly, and Jared Chase came to be known as the NATO 3. The case went to trial in January of 2014, and the NATO 3 were acquitted of all of the terrorism charges.

Unfortunately, the jury found them guilty of two felonies each—possession of an incendiary device with the intent to commit arson and possession of an incendiary device with the knowledge that another intended to commit arson. They were given sentences ranging from 5 to 8 years. Jacob is the first of the three to be released. He is scheduled to return to us in early November!

Please donate to his release fund to help ease the transition after two and a half years behind bars. Donations are needed to help pay for Jacob’s living expenses while he works to get back on his feet during the immediate aftermath of his incarceration.

https://www.youcaring.com/JacobChurch

If you’d like to write to Jacob, please address envelopes to:

Brian Jacob Church
M44717
P.O. Box 999
Pinckneyville, IL 62274

And if you have any questions, you can email us at freethenato3 (a) gmail (dot) com, or check out our website at http://freethenato3.wordpress.com.

If you’d like to write to Brent or Jay, their addresses are:

Brent Betterly
M44724
4017 E. 2603 Road
Sheridan, IL 60551

Jared Chase
M44710
2600 N. Brinton Avenue
Dixon, IL 61021

Brent is scheduled to be released in May of 2015 and Jay is scheduled to be released in May of 2016, though he is still facing other charges that he received while in custody at Cook County Jail.