The Emerging Commonism

The talk below was given as part of an event at El Kilombo social center in Durham, NC, titled "The End of an Era: The New Unrest and the Emerging Commonism," held on March 3, 2009 with guest speaker Gustavo Esteva. The event was part of El Kilombo's spring 2009 speaker series: "Things Unseen: Building Autonomy in a Time of Crisis."

The Emerging Commonism
by El Kilombo Intergaláctico

I want to start by saying that we have invited Gustavo here tonight because he and his work and his life have played an important role in ours and in the development of this space and this project, El Kilombo. When we began thinking about how to do something in our own surroundings that would have an effect on our own lives and the lives around us, something that was neither a campaign slogan, nor a charity effort, nor an isolated corner in which to either wallow or relish in our discontent, there were not exactly booming echoes of support and understanding around us. Nor did we immediately attract the masses or become a vanguard for progressive action in the area. Glory and recognition both in this society in general and in leftist circles in particular belongs to highly visible activity with highly visible results—be they massive momentary protests or widely published pieces or entry into the inner circle of analysts, activists, and academics huddled inside, and often guarding the doors, of the “progressive” community.

What we did become

What we did become was another kind of community, not big, not loud, not univocally coherent in any of the traditional senses of the term, and far from politically united on anything resembling the kind of platform political organizations are supposed to have. Rather, we began to be, and continue to become, a place in common. We mean this both in the sense of creating a place where people who ordinarily would not cross paths meet—students, migrants, communities of color, workers of various rank—as well as creating a project in which it becomes possible to assume collective control of our lives: our survival, yes—food, housing, health; but also our desire to grow and transform ourselves—our relationships, our daily reality, the energy to desire something and the capacity to create it. This is not a finished project or a guaranteed achievement. We know that we have to do it again and do it a little better every day.

A recent study said that in polls carried out before 1980, 10% of the US population said they had no one they would call a close friend and no one they could confide in; in 2008, 25% agreed with that statement (no close friend, no confidant). Current statistics vary widely citing the use of anti-depressants or mood-stabilizers as anywhere from 10% to 45%, and I site this with no judgment on their use or effectiveness, with an additional 13% on stress-related drugs; to which we must add self-medicating tendencies which include some of the 20% of the population using illicit substances and between 7% and 16% reporting very heavy alcohol use. The excess in these numbers reflect not a sick population so much as a sad one. Making a community, or creating a common, out of that context is no small task and no small triumph.

Current Context

I didn’t know if Gustavo would give US-based data. So here are a few facts about our current conjuncture:

• Unemployment at 7.6%; 30% rise from 2007; 2 million jobs lost in 2008, with the job cut rate increasing at the record-setting rate in 2009; blacks have highest unemployment rate, followed by latinos, trailed by whites
• In addition salary cuts for those who manage to keep jobs
• Since the peak of the housing bubble in mid-2006, prices have fallen 20% and are expected to fall up to 50-60% before the plummet slows. They are not decreasing gradually but are rather in free fall
• Foreclosure rate rising steadily. In 2008 they had jumped 57% in a year: at that point one in every 538 houses undergoing foreclosure; now one in every 433. 2 million more expected to lose their homes in the next two years; affecting families of color at disproportional rates
• Sixteen banks have already failed this year compared with twenty-five in all of 2008. 250 more slated to fail.
• Americans have supplmented what was already a real wage decline with their credit cards, currently amounting to nearly 100 billion in collective credit card debt; this bubble is probably nearing its explosion point also as people lose jobs and houses and will be unable to make payments.
  

For a social fabric that is already thin, instability, uncertainty, and what will in many cases become desperation makes for a volatile situation. Even the evaluation “from above” recognizes the stakes: Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told Congress last week that the economic crisis had become a greater security concern than terrorism.

In this context, most people do not have much hope for, or much reason to believe, in change or liberation as an event or a point at which we will arrive in some moment. It is clear that this is nothing that charity or service-oriented organizations can handle. It should be increasingly clear to many people at this point that government, willing or not, has almost no capacity to actually resolve the current situation and limited capacity manage it. And in any case we should be clear by now that do not want to be the needy and dependent clients of either of these institutions, over which we have either no democratic control (NGOs and philanthropy) or only an artificial or simulated control (representative government). We can’t here fully explore the options for acting on this situation, but I want to make a few broad strokes helping us to bridge our situation to the necessity of what Gustavo has talked to us about, taking lessons from movements such as the Zapatistas that have fought the economic and social destitution of neoliberalism and the dangerous vacuum of power created in its crises.

Too many times, so much time, has been spent arguing over candidates and parties and approaches to the state before discovering that power evacuated the state long ago and we have been left uselessly holding our campaign paraphernalia and political texts, left, that is, on the streets not in a protest march but rather laid-off and foreclosed or evicted and unemployable. Neither does a dogmatic and self-isolating anti-electoralism serve any productive purpose here—both because such a position ignores the historical use of electoral strategies to specific situations, none of which we happen to be in now, and because at this stage of crisis it is not helpful to be or claim to be the lonely voice that was right. It is helpful to be organized and together. And so what we do have hope for is liberation as a collective habit-forming practice. We identify that collective habit-forming practice as the common.

Liberation, why and how

We use collectivity not as an ideological item or political platform. There are certainly many good arguments promoting cooperative rather than competitive designs for economic and social systems, and I don’t feel it necessary to rehearse them here. Rather, we understand collectivity as both the reality we exist within—we share the city, we share the roads, we use libraries and parks and sidewalks and stoplights, we breath each other’s air—as well as an absolute necessity for acting upon our current context. Why an absolute necessity?

First, if we have understood, as we have studied many years in this space, as Gustavo has pointed out many times, as many movements all over the world have declared, that capital is not a thing but a social relation, and that neoliberalism is not an economic system but a social one that requires the fragmentation, isolation, in fact creation, of ‘individuals,’ then we must conclude that fighting capital, or better yet, creating something other than capital, must require different social relations, different social units, different subjects. And one certainly cannot create different social relations by oneself.

Second, what is generically called “change” is often made difficult, as one of our speakers in the last event in this series points out, by the inability to see anything other than the urgent present which requires a great deal of putting out fires, responding to emergencies, and finding temporary measures of survival or pleasure (Kelley). No one can be unfamiliar with the endless parade of information and issues necessary to maintain a grasp on even one’s most basic life and well-being—work and work security, bills, functioning utilities, mortgage/rent obligations, childcare, health concerns—and doing these things household by household, individual by individual, is an often not just time-consuming but life-consuming task. And so we think that daily life must be the place where we act out the most basic and most important changes we see necessary, not, again, because we herald “daily life” as the virtuous, and now quite popular in academic texts on social change, platform for political discourse. But rather because to some extent, daily life must be the project or daily life will always get in the way; it must become the place of liberation or it will always be its obstacle. That is, to say it one more time, that infinite parade of things to attend to as well as the daily routines we build up to make such a parade sustainable, either erases the possibility for revolution or it becomes the revolution itself. Kelley called this “lessening the contradiction between everyday life and our wildest dreams.”

Third, I want to situate this call for a habit-forming and daily collective liberation firmly in the framework in which we have built this speaker’s series, which is in turn based firmly in the place and reality in which we live. Our first event was on Gentrification and the City. There we named gentrification not as an isolated phenomenon but as the territorialized manifestation of dominant power relations in society, global society, as a whole. The same way that suburban flight segregated and de-serviced populations and organized capital investments accordingly, gentrification reorganizes that urban space once again, proposing “progressive” investments—the so-called walkable community of gallery and boutique with its charter schools and “free-range” children—that by necessity exclude some populations. These are usually, nearly always, those very populations that have inhabited that de-serviced space and through pure social cooperation and innovation created an alternative lifestyle to both ghetto and suburbia—and here we mean alternative in terms of social organization, not of consumption. Our second event was on Art and Revolution, in which we differentiated between the “arts corridor” which is slated to run through our neighborhood courtesy of a coalition between developers and what is now referred to as the “creative class,” and the activities of the people who have inhabited these blocks to use creativity—social, technical, and artistic—to survive and design their lives everyday. We are not romanticizing the hazards of poor communities or glorifying our own. We are, to cite that event’s presentation, claiming the right and the space to develop those activities that may not produce fame for any one artist but which produce a daily reorganization of the senses, in common, and a constant renovation of the common.

The freedom to “remake city and self” as proposed in the first event, and as proposed in the second, to make the common forms already in motion “down here” not new sites of visibility “up there” but new organizations and intensifications of life in common, depends upon an understanding of the great wealth that we do have—the wealth of difference.

The Zapatista Initiative

Many years ago already the EZLN (Zapatista Army for National Liberation) warned us that if could not achieve some kind of mutual articulation among those below, those who both sustain and suffer capital through their individual labor and collective production, the current economic instability, the discontent created by neoliberal policies, and the weakness, incompetence, and desperation of a flailing government, would lead to violent outbreaks and great destruction. That destruction, social and environmental, was already happening and would increase, they insisted, but unless there was some kind of organized alternative, the poor would suffer most, and suffer brutally, its effects.

They called for the organization of a national network of struggle. Without dogmatic formulas for mobilizing the masses or sentimental appeals to a false unity, they called for people to join them in organizing the life they shared, both to confront the coming crisis and to dignify their daily existence. Their experience gives us several lessons to draw from.

One. That the great wealth of the poor, or the great richness of those below, came from the great range and abundance of difference that existed there. Any cooperative endeavor would have to maintain and promote those differences, and to create rather than assume commonality. There could be no unity in which differences would submit in the struggle to a pragmatic necessity for sameness for the purposes of an end goal. “The only thing that makes us the same,” the Zapatistas said, “is that we are all different.”

Two. That there is a difference between differences. That is, there is the kind of difference that is a difference between how people interpret orders and either follow or reject rules imposed on them from above or from outside. This creates hugely conflictive and contradictory relations and is a very difficult place from which to “reconcile” anything or from which to create something new. There is another kind of difference however that is a difference of experience, perspective, background, viewpoint, a difference that is essentially singularity. This difference provides many more possibilities for productive discussion and self-mobilization; it is not necessarily harmonious, but neither is it necessarily contradictory; it does not inhibit the creation of the common but rather is the very material, the necessary components of dynamism and diversity, that make possible that common. Maybe this difference can be thought of as autonomy, because it an issue of how the people themselves, singularly and collectively, will decide how they encounter each other and where they will go together, rather than how they will obey or respond to decisions and actions made in a place above or outside of them.

Three. New historical conjunctures require experimentation with new practices, new practices both require and create new subjects who are in turn capable of entirely new ideas and inventions. Such practices are useful only to the extent that they remain “living” or changeable and we are able to resist the temptation to congeal them into new dogmas or movement idols. Let me give just one example:

Horizontalism. The Zapatistas could probably be given credit for the emergence and sudden swelling of popularity of the term, thought it doesn’t matter that they usually aren’t. Their horizontalism was essentially the creation of a new common: a common form for organization in which self-government was a turn-taking activity maintained, upheld, and self-run by and for the same communities corresponding to the territory covered by that government. The democratizing effects and sociality created from this system cannot be understated for the lives of its participants and as an example to people all over the world searching for alternative organizing mechanisms.
The accompanying risk, which here as many times results from the appropriation of an idea as ideology instead of as a contextually-based practice, was that in the earnest attempt to be “horizontal,” many groups or collectives just ended up flat.

We need to be able to make the distinction: flat has no internal energy; it is unable to use its diverse elements to make collective decisions about structures that enable action, and so often it either remains paralyzed and unable to act, or its structures arise covertly leaving its acts without a democratic base to support them. It is unable to utilize its differences (of self, capability, of training, of perspective) as wealth and instead resorts to suppressing them for the purpose of remaining “horizontal.” In effect, it flattens its very possibilities to be horizontal. Horizontal in its dynamic sense, however, has energies running back and forth all over it; it magnifies and multiplies its differences (the unique being and offering that each person or group brings) in ways that enable a greater development and proliferation of more difference, which is in turn reinvested in the common. The possibilities created in this kind of production of the common are infinite, exciting, and necessary.

Finally, and to close, one of the key points that the Zapatistas have insisted on in their initiative to create a common beyond their communities, and another lesson for us, has been the issue of “espejismo,” literally mirrorism. The EZLN has said over and over to groups struggling internally and between themselves with personal and political conflicts: stop looking in the mirror! Espejismo is the disease of separation and self-obsession, a depoliticization of society and a disintegration of the collective political subjects possible. The struggle against global capitalism and the reality of the current crises does not allow us these rewardless, self-indulgent but self-alienating detours that are inevitably dead-ends. Mirrorism, seeing or recognizing a reflection of ourselves, may be helpful but is not sufficient, because what we already are is not enough. We will have to become something else. EZLN Major Ana Maria said at a gathering of Zapatista supporters over a decade ago, if we have been a mirror for you, for your movements, then now let that mirror shatter and become an open window into another world, into becoming something else. Creating the common, or becoming common, as a collective, habit-forming, everyday endeavor will require many windows, or perhaps doors, or better yet bridges, in the art of living together. And that is what we see as our task today.

Read More!

Homeland Hip Hop!

Big ups to the Palestine Education Project for pulling this together!

Is this not the hip hop show of the year?! And not only that, it's also a fundraiser for an indigenous youth delegation to Palestine -> this is the real deal: SNAG Magazine, Huaxtec and Haskell Indian Nations University are headed to Palestine this August and you can help them get there while enjoying the show of the year... it sold out last year so get your tix ahead of time here.

And if you don't know...

DAM is Palestine's premier hip hop crew
-> an early, and great track - with an action/video a la Public Enemy's Fight the Power- represents for their hometown of Lyd - check out Born Here. And they're also featured in a little film called Slingshot Hip Hop :p

Invincible & Finale are Detroit's finest
-> Here's their Docu-Music-Video, Locusts, breaking down gentrification in the D. Also make sure to listen to Emperor's New Clothes, Invincible's emergency response to the bombing of Gaza.

Rebel Diaz are an inspiration hailing from many, many places. With Chilean and Afro-Taino roots, Rebel Diaz are Chicago transplants holding it down here in the South Bronx...
-> They regularly rep their many homes and loyalties on songs such as Which Side Are You On?, and are also no strangers to the timely response - check out A Trillion - that's 12 zeros :-)

And last but definitely not least is Brooklyn's own DJ Oja on the 1s and 2s
-> and his band/movement, Earthdriver, just dropped an album.

...now you know.

Read More!

Movements, Bearers of the New World

A panel at the World Festival of Dignified Rage -> I'm pretty sure this is Adolfo Gilly, a zapatista rep (duh), zapatista compañera Everilda moderating, Mónica Baltodano, and Oscar Olivera

There have been way too few English-language reportbacks from the first World Festival of Dignified Rage, which took place for 11 days in three locations in Mexico over New Years. Here's one from a compa in Cali and the new issue of Left Turn Magazine provides a few snippets from speeches at the Festival as well.

Below is one such speech by the wonderful Raúl Zibechi whose work is still woefully under-available in English (check out his bio at the bottom of the piece). This is our second collaboration with the Boston Interpreters Collective and is a translation of a partial transcript of Zibechi's speech. To listen to the complete audio of the speech (in Spanish) go here. It's well worth it as you'll also get a chance to hear his powerful denunciation of South America's left governments' participation in the occupation of Haiti as well as an incredibly extensive list of the movements he so articulately and concisely describes below - Enjoy!

The Movements, Bearers of the New World
by Raúl Zibechi*
(Short version of the text read at the Festival of Digna Rabia, Mexico, January 3 - translated by Frances Miriam Kreimer of the Boston Interpreters Collective)

Some four decades ago, there emerged a new generation of movements, very different from what had been hegemonic in Latin America until that moment. This set of movements, born in the early 1970s and during the 1980s and very active in the 1990s, challenged neoliberalism and occupied the place left vacant by the leftist parties, which became supporters of the neoliberal models, and unions, which did more or less the same (with a few honorable exceptions).

These movements changed the face of the continent; delegitimizing the neoliberal model, or at least the most blatant problematic elements of the model, installed a new balance of power and changed the political map. Despite their differences, they have some features in common.

They turned the struggle for land (rural and urban) into the fight for territories or areas where people (indigenous people, peasants, urban popular sectors) live their daily lives and transform survival initiatives into modes and forms of resistance to the system.

They proclaim themselves independent from political parties, churches, trade unions and the state. But such autonomy embodied in physical territory goes hand in hand with the creation of new ways of living and of exercising power, that is, of self-governance.

These are community-based movements in the broad sense of the term. Unlike previous movements, membership is not individual but familial, and the social base of these movements involves the collective organization of the community structure.

These are not strictly social movements; they are political movements, or political-social, if you will. The division between the social and the political set up by the social sciences and the traditional left is not useful for understanding this new generation of movements.

It is not possible to understand these movements from the outside, or with a focus on the visible structures, those that capture the attention of the media, academia, and the institutional left. Rather, it takes an inside perspective, capable of capturing the underground and invisible processes, which can only be done in a long process of engagement with the movements, not only with their leaders. The concept of "field work" is limited, since it does not consider either living or affective attachment with the oppressed.

They are bearers of the new world because both families and communities establish their lives based on relations of reciprocity and mutual aid -- not to accumulate capital or power, but rather to grow and strengthen themselves as communities and movements. In this respect, I believe that in the movements’ territories, non-capitalist relations predominate, certainly not in a pure and uncontaminated form, but rather in a permanent struggle against the state and the capital that seek to destroy them. In other words, the material and symbolic production of values of use has taken the place of the production of values of exchange, not forever, not absolutely, but with steady progress.

We can see this in many initiatives, from those begun in cities such as El Alto and Plan 3000 in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, to the Piquetero neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, where people built houses, public facilities, streets, water, health and education. Thousands of gardens, in urban as well as rural areas, thousands of productive enterprises, hundreds of restored factories -- we are talking not only about rural areas but also in peripheral urban areas there is an enormous capacity to produce without bosses, without supervisors, and without a hierarchical division of labor.

In these worlds different kinds of thoughts arise. No longer are the academies and the system’s parties thinking about the oppressed, but rather we, ourselves, are doing the thinking. Not in order to produce a theory or a thesis, but in order to strengthen the movement, in order to defend it better, in order to expand it and share it with others. So no theory is produced, but simply ideas and strength to keep going.

This other world cannot be represented in the formal world of State and capital. Moreover, it cannot be represented because only that which is absent can be represented. I also believe that participating in the state weakens and diverts them from their main task, which is "to strengthen that which is ours." However, there are many movements that are still combative and fighting for real changes that maintain relations with states. This is a debate that will be with us for a long time and we have no alternative but to face it in the most united way possible, that it should always be a debate “among ourselves”.

Finally, in these areas in resistance, there exist worlds that are different than the world of capital and the state. Of course, they have their forms of power, with greater or lesser degrees of development. The assembly is the common form of collective decision. A world without power does not seem possible. But the facts show that there can be non-state powers, i.e., non-hierarchial and decentralized powers; rotating shifts, so that everyone can learn to give orders collectively and obey collectively. In each place and in each country people adopt different approaches, but these worlds exist, they have life, and they have not become involved with the State as the unions have.

How does it triumph, this world of values of use, this world that is feminist, communitarian, self-focused and self-directed, able to produce and reproduce life? We do not know. What we see is that it grows by expansion, extension, diffusion, contagion, radiation, resonance It does not grow alone, nor in a form symmetrical to capital and the State -- killing, destroying, imposing, digesting and directing. We cannot impose this other world because we would be negating it, but we may breathe life into it, acting as a ferment and yeast, in the belief that the movements and the other worlds are the only thing that can save us from the catastrophe that the upper classes are preparing.

* Raúl Zibechi is an international analyst for Brecha of Montevideo, Uruguay, lecturer and researcher on social movements at the Multiversidad Franciscana de América Latina, and adviser to several social movements. He writes the monthly "Zibechi Report" for the Americas Program.


Read More!

Freedom & Justice for Atenco!

Please join the campaign and get the word out about this incredibly important initiative launched by the Peoples' Front in Defense of the Land (FPDT)... for those who are new to the FPDT, check out this extensive coverage of their heroic resistance to displacement in 2002 and the government attack on their community in 2006.

A big thank you to Frances Miriam Kreimer of the Boston Interpreters Collective for translating this very important announcement --> hopefully the first of many collaborations between the BIC and zapagringo.com!

National and international campaign
FREEDOM AND JUSTICE FOR ATENCO

The People's Front in Defense of the Land-ATENCO

PRESS RELEASE
México, Distrito Federal, February 17, 2009.

Today, the 17th of February, we begin the national and international campaign "Liberty and Justice for Atenco," with the participation of our brothers and sisters -- artists and intellectuals, as well as several civic organizations that make up the Committee that will strive to achieve freedom for our colleagues: Pedro Reyes Flores, Alejandro Pilón Zacate, Jorge Alberto Romero Ordóñez, Adán Ordóñez Romero Román, Juan Carlos Estrada Cruces, Julio Cesar Espinosa Ramos, Inés Rodolfo Cuellar Rivera, Edgar Eduardo Morales Reyes, Oscar Hernández Pacheco, Narciso Arellano Hernandez incarcerated in the Molino de Flores prison, in Texcoco, sentenced to 31 years, 10 months and 15 days of imprisonment; Felipe Álvarez, Héctor Galindo, and Ignacio Del Valle Medina incarcerated in the El Altiplano prison in Almoloya de Juarez, sentenced to 67 and a half years and 112 and a half years in prison; our three persecuted compañeros, America Del Valle, Bernardino Cruz and Adán Espinosa; and for justice in Atenco.

In the repression ordered by Enrique Peña Nieto and Vicente Fox on May 3 and 4, 2006 in Atenco and Texcoco, our human rights were violated by the incursion of the federal police and the police of the State of Mexico, who had orders to subdue our communities through a comprehensive action called "population control", whose purpose was to exterminate the social movement of Atenco, to make an example out of Atenco, and to teach a lesson against any social protest. The action consisted of raids without search warrants, arbitrary arrests, physical and psychological torture, rape of our female comrades, and the murders of Javier Cortés and Alexis Benhumea, in addition to a tortuous legal process fraught with violations of legal protections, due process, personal freedom and access to justice.

Since then we have appealed to all levels of administration and enforcement of justice in our country, and we have always received a negative answer to our demands for freedom for our comrades, unjustly accused by the same people who gave orders for the violence of the Mexican State. The decision last February 12, in which SCJN dealt a blow to the people of Mexico, exonerating Enrique Peña Nieto, Eduardo Medina Mora, and Miguel Angel Yunes, among others, also represented an act of cowardice of the Federal Judiciary, as its ministers did not dare to implicate the interests of the ruling class, but acted as accessories to authoritarianism and repression in our country. With this, it is engraved in the collective memory of the public and in history that not only were we victims of repression by governments but now we are victims of the SCJN, who has denied us the right to justice.

Having navigated the institutional labyrinths and almost exhausted all legal remedies, as the People's Front in Defense of the Land we appeal to national and international solidarity, taking intellectuals and artists up on their promise to collaborate with the Committee for Freedom and Justice Atenco. We deeply appreciate their support. We believe that, through their art, writing and singing, their voice will be heard by other large sectors of the society that suffer the political, economic and social consequences of bad governments, raising consciousness about our demand, and opening a new door of hope for our 13 imprisoned comrades, 3 politically persecuted comrades, and all our people who dream of liberty and justice for Mexico.

From this day on, our people, our persecuted and imprisoned brothers, our families and our hearts are no longer alone. Justice has another face for us, universal and very human, with creative hands that work together to construct a fraternal and unprejudiced support, that which we call the solidarity of brothers and sisters. Starting today, the intention is born to walk together, the People's Front and the Committee, until we achieve the desired freedom for the last prisoner and the last persecuted person of Atenco.

Read More!

International Women's Day & More

NYC's Movement for Justice in El Barrio premieres their latest video "From Across the Border: Our Resistance Against Global Displacement" at the First World Festival of Dignified Rage in Mexico (photo: Kate Cardona)

International Women's Day 2009 is coming up (March 8th ya'll) and the zapatista communities are cooking up "MAMÁ CORRAL: A POLITICAL, SPORTING, CULTURAL AND ARTISTIC EVENT" -> this is a women's event named after Doña Concepción García de Corral, a recently deceased member of the Mothers of the Disappeared of Chihuahua and an adherent to the Other Campaign. Check out the whole announcement here and a story for Mamá Corral from Subcomandante Marcos here. The gathering is specifically honoring MAMAS IN THE STRUGGLE(!) and looks to be a great follow-up to the First Encounter of the Zapatista Women and the Women of the World, which was named after Comandanta Ramona and took place just a little over a year ago.

Here in NYC, Movement for Justice in El Barrio is doing its part this March 8th (SAVE THE DATE!) as well with the NYC premiere of their new video, "From Across the Border: Our Resistance Against Global Displacement"... details below and updates coming soon.

In other news, Atenco's Frente de Pueblos en Defensa de la Tierra (Peoples' Front in Defense of the Land) has launched a National and International Campaign for the Freedom of Atenco's Prisoners (translation coming soon). In case you don't remember, the FPDT was the organization that led a successful movement in 2002 to protect Atenco (on the outskirts of Mexico City) from being taken over by the Mexican Government and converted into an airport. In 2006, this town in rebellion joined the Other Campaign and were soon brutally attacked. They struggle now to free the thirteen people who remain imprisoned as a result of this repression.

Also wanna give a shout out to fellow Regeneración Childcare NYC member, Elliott Liu, who has just published a piece, "Everybody Wants a New Old Left," in response to several Left proposals for organization in the US released in the past year. Liu draws upon the zapatistas, amongst many other movements, as an example of a left social-political movement that has successfully integrated, applied and innovated on lessons learned over the past few decades of anti-capitalist struggle and reflection.

-------------------------------------------

SAVE THE DATE!!!
More info to come…

Sunday, March 8th at 7:00 PM

LaGuardia Memorial House
307 E. 116th St. Btw. 1st and 2nd Ave
Take 6 train to 116th St.

Join us for International Women’s Day!

THE OTHER CAMPAIGN NEW YORK
Movement for Justice in El Barrio

Presents the NYC premiere of:

FROM ACROSS THE BORDER:
OUR RESISTANCE AGAINST GLOBAL DISPLACEMENT

We shared our struggle across borders when we held our international premiere in Chiapas at:

THE ZAPATISTA'S WORLD WIDE FESTIVAL OF DIGNIFIED RAGE

We will share some of our experiences at the festival and present a special video message from the community of San Salvador Atenco three years after they suffered brutal state repression and are still fighting for the liberation of their political prisoners.

Read More!

Solidarity with Gaza (Mexico & NYC)

March in Support of Palestine (Chiapas, Mexico)

On December 27th, one day after the opening of the First World Festival of Dignified Rage in Mexico City, Israel began the full-scale massacre in Gaza that continues to this day. The thousands of Festival attendees from Mexico, the Americas, Europe and Asia quickly issued a statement condemning the attacks and in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. This was soon followed by a march on the US consulate in Oaxaca City by members of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO). The protesters were met with tear gas and nineteen APPO members were arrested. Subcomandante Marcos, spokesperson for the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), spoke out on Gaza the following day at the Festival (the transcript of his speech is below)... and the video above of a solidarity march in Chiapas featuring his words just dropped yesterday.

And things are heating up here in the North as well... check out the brand spanking new Think-Palestine-Act site in the days and weeks ahead for resources "to learn, teach, organize, and act with Palestine" and if you are in NYC this weekend, please come out to the "Hands Off Gaza/I *Heart* Gaza" double header event on Sunday night featuring M1 (of Dead Prez), Immortal Technique, the A-Alikes, Rebel Diaz, DJ Johnny Juice (from Public Enemy) and (Slingshot Hip Hop's very own) Sabreena Da Witch, amongst others.

And now for some words from El Sup...

Of sowing and harvests
Subcomandante Marcos' speech on Gaza at the First World Festival of Dignified Rage

Two days ago, the same day we discussed violence, the ineffable Condoleezza Rice, a US official, declared that what was happening in Gaza was the Palestinians' fault, due to their violent nature.

The underground rivers that crisscross the world can change their geography, but they sing the same song.

And the one we hear now is one of war and pain.

Not far from here, in a place called Gaza, in Palestine, in the Middle East, right here next to us, the Israeli government's heavily trained and armed military continues its march of death and destruction.

The steps it has taken are those of a classic military war of conquest: first an intense mass bombing in order to destroy "strategic" military points (that's how the military manuals put it) and to "soften" the resistance's reinforcements; next a fierce control over information: everything that is heard and seen "in the outside world," that is, outside the theater of operations, must be selected with military criteria; now intense artillery fire against the enemy infantry to protect the advance of troop to new positions; then there will be a siege to weaken the enemy garrison; then the assault that conquers the position and annihilates the enemy, then the "cleaning out" of the probable "nests of resistance."

The military manual of modern war, with a few variations and additions, is being followed step-by-step by the invading military forces.

We don't know a lot about this, and there are surely specialists in the so-called "conflict in the Middle East," but from this corner we have something to say:

According to the news photos, the "strategic" points destroyed by the Israeli government's air force are houses, shacks, civilian buildings. We haven't seen a single bunker, nor a barracks, nor a military airport, nor cannons, amongst the rubble. So--and please excuse our ignorance--we think that either the planes' guns have bad aim, or in Gaza such "strategic" military points don't exist.

We have never had the honor of visiting Palestine, but we suppose that people, men, women, children, and the elderly--not soldiers--lived in those houses, shacks, and buildings.

We also haven't seen the resistance's reinforcements, just rubble.

We have seen, however, the futile efforts of the information siege, and the world governments trying to decide between ignoring or applauding the invasion, and the UN, which has been useless for quite some time, sending out tepid press releases.

But wait. It just occurred to us that perhaps to the Israeli government those men, women, children, and elderly people are enemy soldiers, and as such, the shacks, houses, and buildings that they inhabited are barracks that need to be destroyed.

So surely the hail of bullets that fell on Gaza this morning were in order to protect the Israeli infantry's advance from those men, women, children, and elderly people.

And the enemy garrison that they want to weaken with the siege that is spread out all over Gaza is the Palestinian population that lives there. And the assault will seek to annihilate that population. And whichever man, woman, child, or elderly person that manages to escape or hide from the predictably bloody assault will later be "hunted" so that the cleansing is complete and the commanders in charge of the operation can report to their superiors: "We've completed the mission."

Again, pardon our ignorance, maybe what we're saying is beside the point. And instead of condemning the ongoing crime, being the indigenous and warriors that we are, we should be discussing and taking a position in the discussion about if it's "zionism" or "antisemitism," or if Hamas' bombs started it.

Maybe our thinking is very simple, and we're lacking the nuances and annotations that are always so necessary in analyses, but to the Zapatistas it looks like there's a professional army murdering a defenseless population.

Who from below and to the left can remain silent?

Is it useful to say something? Do our cries stop even one bomb? Does our word save the life of even one Palestinian?

We think that yes, it is useful. Maybe we don't stop a bomb and our word won't turn into an armored shield so that that 5.56 mm or 9 mm caliber bullet with the letters "IMI" or "Israeli Military Industry" etched into the base of the cartridge won't hit the chest of a girl or boy, but perhaps our word can manage to join forces with others in Mexico and the world and perhaps first it's heard as a murmur, then out loud, and then a scream that they hear in Gaza.

We don't know about you, but we Zapatistas from the EZLN, we know how important it is, in the middle of destruction and death, to hear some words of encouragement.

I don't know how to explain it, but it turns out that yes, words from afar might not stop a bomb, but it's as if a crack were opened in the black room of death and a tiny ray of light slips in.

As for everything else, what will happen will happen. The Israeli government will declare that it dealt a severe blow to terrorism, it will hide the magnitude of the massacre from its people, the large weapons manufacturers will have obtained economic support to face the crisis, and "the global public opinion," that malleable entity that is always in fashion, will turn away.

But that's not all. The Palestinian people will also resist and survive and continue struggling and will continue to have sympathy from below for their cause.

And perhaps a boy or girl from Gaza will survive, too. Perhaps they'll grow, and with them, their nerve, indignation, and rage. Perhaps they'll become soldiers or militiamen for one of the groups that struggle in Palestine. Perhaps they'll find themselves in combat with Israel. Perhaps they'll do it firing a gun. Perhaps sacrificing themselves with a belt of dynamite around their waists.

And then, from up there above, they will write about the Palestinians' violent nature and they'll make declarations condemning that violence and they'll get back to discussing if it's zionism or anti-semitism.

And no one will ask who planted that which is being harvested.

For the men, women, children, and elderly of the Zapatista National Liberation Army,

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
Mexico, January 4, 2009.

Read More!

Gathering Our Dignified Rage

This is visionary stuff --> both a primer on the organizing that has taken place over the past three and a half years since the Zapatistas released their Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle and a proposal on where we need to head in the context of our global crises... a rewrite of an earlier piece updated for the current context and in preparation for the First Global Festival of Dignified Rage, which begins in Mexico City at the end of this week. Enjoy!

Gathering Our Dignified Rage
Building New Autonomous Global Relations of Production, Livelihood and Exchange
by Kolya Abramsky

Up there, they intend to repeat their history.

They once again want to impose on us their calendar of death, their geography of destruction.

Down here we are being left with nothing.

Except rage.

And dignity.

There is no ear for our pain, except that of the people like us.

We are no one.

We are alone, and just with our dignity and our rage.

Rage and dignity are our bridges, our languages.

Let us listen to each other then, let us know each other.

Let our rage grow and become hope.

Let our dignity take root again and breed another world.

If this world doesn’t have a place for us, then another world must be made.

With no other tool than our rage, no other material than our dignity

- Communique announcing the World’s First Festival for Dignified Rage, 15th/16th September 2008

It has been three and a half years since the Zapatistas(1) issued their 6th Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle(2). The declaration, issued through collective discussion in the Zapatista communities in the summer of 2005, calls for a Third Intergalactica to take place, “from below and to the left”. Since the declaration was issued, much has happened. The developments of both global capitalism and global resistance described so eloquently and humourously in the call have come into clearer definition. Dynamics have accelerated, and the stakes have increased. And, now, with the capitalist world-economy seemingly unravelling before our eyes, the Zapatistas are seeking to usher in the next stage in the process. People in struggle throughout the world have been invited to Mexico to participate in the World’s First Festival of Dignified Rage, which will take place at the end of 2008(3). Let us dare to seize this glimmer of hope that has been so generously and boldly offered, in order to come together in such a way as to collectively shape the world which emerges from the current crisis, ensuring that it is centred around respect and nourishment of human life, and not destruction, suffering and despair. Time is ticking fast. The abyss is near, and the moment is ripe for action, for hope and for long term strategic visions.

******

The call for a Third Intergalactica followed two previous Zapatista Intergalacticas, self-organized international gatherings of several thousand people aimed at weaving a global network of grassroots struggles. The invitations to participate in these meetings were humorously extended to participants throughout the galaxy, hence the name. The first took place in 1996 in Chiapas, and the second in the Spanish state the following year. The first two Intergalacticas had a profound effect on inspiring, galvanizing and even giving some organizational form to a major new circulation of global struggles, which we have witnessed in the last decade. There are many good reasons to believe that the new process of global convergence and resistance called for by the 6th Declaration could have a similarly important inspirational and catalytic effect in creating a space in which the next stages of global resistance can take shape and collectively organize themselves.

The call came at a moment in which it was urgently needed, and highly suited to the moment. In a nutshell, it came at a moment when existing global processes of struggle were beginning to run up against their own limitations. After a rapid and far-reaching success, they were starting to get stuck in the difficult process of collectively defining and moving into the next phase of resistance.

Let us first briefly describe these global processes and recap on their stunning success. The 10 years preceding the call had seen a marked rise in the global networking of struggles. A number of highly active, imaginative, visible and above all effective, organizational processes came into existence. In particular, the following organizational processes stand out: Peoples’ Global Action, the World Social Forum, the Via Campesina and Indymedia, though these are merely the tip of the organizational iceberg. These initiatives had a very rapid and far reaching two-fold success. On the one hand, they played an enormous role in strengthening communication and the process of building common political perspectives between large numbers of different and fragmented social struggles in many different countries. There has been a great flourishing of self organized efforts to question and resist power structures, frequently based on a confrontational approach to capitalism, rather than lobbying. Importantly, great attention is paid to principles of autonomy, diversity and non-hierarchical organizing. At times, global networks have worked extraordinarily well. In a remarkably short time period these networks have become excellent at organizing large global meetings, conferences, global days of action on common themes, calling for emergency solidarity actions in support of particular local struggles, as well as translating and circulating up-to-date and accurate information and news throughout the world in a short space of time. Indeed, these communication flows, which simply did not exist fifteen years ago, have become so regular that they are frequently taken for granted, and hardly noticed.

And, on the other hand, these global networks did the seemingly impossible. In the midst of a triumphalist, post-Cold War capitalist rhetoric, they dared to denounce capitalism, and were so successful, that they rapidly plunged the system and its major global institutions into a legitimacy crisis. Institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, World Economic Forum, or G8 are increasingly unable to hold their summits without facing major protests and riots, immense security costs, and harsh media critique. Similarly, with summits relating to multilateral and bilateral free-trade agreements. These institutions are not just facing a crisis of legitimacy, but also deep existential crises. Frequently negotiations are stalled (most notably the World Trade Organization and Free Trade Area of the Americas), as conflicts of interest have shifted from the protests in the streets into the negotiating corridors themselves. And, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are increasingly unable to meet their budgetary requirements, nor to maintain their clients. And, when the USA launched its War on Terror, the global networks were able to respond in such a way as to plunge the US state and its military apparatus in legitimacy crisis too, both beyond and within the US itself. And, while nation states still retain considerable legitimacy, there has nonetheless been a profound questioning of states, their electoral systems and political parties. Many of these developments were, seemingly, unthinkable just 15 years before. Global movements had become incredibly strong.

And yet, this global convergence process between different struggles also had major limitations and had reached an impasse that was making it very difficult to move forwards. Let us consider this now. Despite their immense success in certain areas (namely denunciation, delegitimation and building communication channels between struggles), they were seemingly incapable of actually slowing and reversing the rapid lurch towards an authoritarian global politics based on fear, coercion, militarism, racism and religious fundamentalism. And, perhaps even more worrying, such political developments cannot be attributed simply to the whims of maniacal leaders the world over, but rather to their undeniable mass appeal to large numbers of people. Importantly, such mass politics is at the expense of and in direct competition with the mass appeal of the more emancipatory visions of social change based on autonomy, diversity and self-organization that global resistance networks are based on. And, faced with this, it seems as if a form of at least temporary paralysis, and also routinization have set in with the existing global processes, mentioned above, which had until then been important. This was true both in terms of immediate visible activities at the global level, and also in terms of being able to open up wider long-term strategic approaches.

It was on the lips of many, but few dared to say it explicitly. Movements seem to have reached an impasse, and were unable to build on their success in order to deepen and expand existing networks so as to make them functional enough to be able to create alternative social relations rather than just denouncing existing relations of power. The 6th Declaration implicitly recognised the potential of these struggles, but also of their extreme impasse and dared to seek to offer a potential way out, or at least an invitation for people to collectively explore and chart new paths in this direction.

******

For years the brutality of the global financial regime has been apparent to all who bore its brunt, and for the rest who cared to look. And now, surprisingly or not, depending on how you may view these things, its sheer fragility has also been revealed in no uncertain terms to people throughout the world. It is no longer possible to label the critics as doomsayers, since now it is major banks, markets and car companies themselves who are hurtling into the void. Governments around the world have responded as headless chickens before a crisis of their own making. Now, the very policy makers who led the world to the abyss are claiming to be its saviours in the making. With bail outs galore, governments have been quick to attempt to rescue failing financial infrastructures and also industrial sectors. They have produced vast quantities of money seemingly out of nowhere, perhaps pulling it from out of their arses, in a move that literally mortgages the futures of several generations of waged and unwaged workers throughout the world. Yet, the bailouts are far from “working”, even in their own terms. Markets stabilize for some days, then plunge again. And, while there is much talk of “all pulling together”, “unity in the face of crisis”, “common sacrifice” and above all of “bi-partisan” solutions, it is crystal clear that infact important interstate tensions are emerging, especially between the EU, China and USA, and also within the EU itself, as economic and political forces pull Germany in one direction and Britain, France and Italy in another. The US political system has been heavily divided internally, first over the large bail out of the banks and more recently (and ongoing as this article is being written), over the bail out of the historic Detroit car industry.

And, on the other hand, in a state of confused semi-incredulity at the demand that they and their as yet unborn children should shoulder the burden of crisis, people throughout the world are slowly but surely breaking out from the constraints imposed by the appeals to trust the world’s leaders in sailing a bi-partisan-ship to the distant shores of salvation.

In the USA, there is a slowly reawakening resistance on foreclosures, ranging from political lobbying, to collectively negotiating rescheduling of bank loans, to direct action and community based resistance to eviction, to squatting of buildings. While nowhere near the scale of anti-eviction resistance during the 1930s Great Depression, there are nonetheless encouraging signs underway(4). And, of great significance, is the grassroots, predominantly Latin@ worker occupation of the Republic Windows & Doors factory in Chicago over the issue of receiving severance pay and other benefits owed to them by Bank of America in the face of being laid off due to the factory suddenly being closed down. The occupation took place under the leadership of Local 1110 of UE (the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America), a union with a history of important struggles including being one of 11 trade unions which during the early days of the Cold War were persecuted and thrown out of the major US labor federation at the time, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, for their unwillingness to persecute radicals within these unions. The factory occupation, which lasted six days, was supported by solidarity actions in numerous cities throughout the US and around the world, and ultimately was victorious. An important victory in the US, showing once again people’s determination and creativity in times of crisis. A week of action calling for a “People’s Bailout” has been called by Jobs With Justice, for December.

People in Europe have responded particularly strongly and fast to the crisis, especially in its Southern peripheries, Italy, Spain and Greece. In Italy repeated waves of strikes, tending towards general strikes, have mobilized literally millions of workers throughout the country. In Spain, a country where the speculative housing and construction boom is rapidly unraveling causing great social dislocation, there was a major day of protest in many places throughout the country on November 15th in response to the G20 meeting which took place in Washington with the aim of shoring up the international financial system. Bank workers have also staged an occupation of the main branch of the BBVA Bank. And, within days of Lehman Brothers going under, “Robin-Bank” announced that he had stolen close to half a million euros from 38 Spanish Banks in order to give the money to emancipatory social movements. In Greece, mass riots and protests were triggered by the police murder of a teenager, but also coincided with a strike that had been called previously by two major unions, and has turned into a many day major social uprising, in a country where youth unemployment is as high as 70% in some places, even prior to the effects of the world-economic crisis being felt. Importantly, in all three of these countries, a common slogan has emerged in a very short space of time: “We will not pay for your crisis”.

On the other hand, processes of globally coordinated resistance in the face of crisis have been slow to emerge. Nonetheless, a number of interesting, if entirely embryonic, initiatives are underway. A wide-ranging statement combining demands and a program of action for a “transitional programme for radical economic transformation” to a radical economy was issued by participants in an international meeting of social movements which took place at the Asia-Europe People's Forum in Beijing in October 2008. There were some attempts to have globally coordinated protests during the November 15th G20 meeting, including a meeting of the Latin American Continental Social Alliance which took place in Ecuador, though this emergency G20 meeting was held so swiftly that it was impossible for any major global coordination of protests to occur. One interesting feature, was a statement put out by ALBA countries saying that the G20 was not the appropriate space to resolve the crisis. It is expected that preparation for protests during the next G20 meeting which will take place in April in London might be more impacting. And an international NGO meeting to discuss the crisis and responses has been called for to take place in Paris in January 2009. On the level of direct action, groups in Spain and in the USA have come together to call for a global debtors strike and boycott of banks. As a side note, it is also worth mentioning two other global processes of resistance, neither of which are explicitly connected to the financial crisis itself, but are none the less intimately related. The first are the food and fuel riots which rocked more than 30 countries earlier this year, a rapid and spontaneous reaction to food and fuel inflation. These took place even before the banking crisis became fully developed. The bailouts are likely to generate a period of major inflation, thus making such protests and riots increasingly common occurrences. The second important process is the international mobilizations which are underway to protest the Copenhagen UNFCCC climate change talks which will take place in December 2009, exactly 10 years to the day since the WTO was routed in Seattle in 1999.

Yet, while offering some hope, all of these responses are still very much embryonic, and there is a long way to go before we will be collectively strong enough to change the course through which the crisis is to be resolved.

And so, in the face of crisis, an extension of the permanent crises which many throughout the world have already been living through for centuries, it perhaps is becoming increasingly clear which tasks are lying ahead of us. And, also increasingly daunting. Furthermore, if we are to avoid further great human suffering and barbarities, we are faced with a paradox. While we need to take the time to do it right, we also need to speed up and do it right all at the same time, since doing it wrong, or doing it slow is not an option either. And, while, now is a time for discussing it is not a time for empty chit-chat, but for discussion through which we can collectively transform ourselves and our ability to create something new together. Yes, let’s take the time for taking a deep, and celebratory, breath at the fact that the George Bush Presidency is in its last days, and to celebrate the first African-American to enter the White House, proudly acknowledging within minutes of his victory that “Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled” had contributed to his win. And, while voting for Obama may or may not have been the answer, history alone can judge, his victory surely represents more than a victory of one particular politician, but rather reflects a deep-mass based process that is deeply yearning and searching for a profound change of direction in the face of deep crisis. Again, another point to celebrate. And for sure, it is hard not to be happy on hearing Obama speak out in favour of the Chicago factory occupiers. Yet, despite all this, are we really to believe that Obama represents more than a concerted effort to shore up capitalism in its disastrous entry into the twenty-first century, the West’s belated answer to Mikhail Gorbachev who history bestowed with a correspondingly unfortunate task of shoring up a failing state communist model in its moment of terminal crisis? And, is there not a certain ironic ring to the rallying call "Let's turn Obama into the West's Gorbachev!"?
Above all, now is not a moment for complacency, but one for seizing in order to win strong reforms in the immediate term, avoiding cooptation, and preparing seriously for revolution in the medium term... It is a moment for gathering the combined powers of our Dignified Rage.

******

Dignified and Undignified Ways Out of a Crisis: Negotiating the Space Between Repression, Divisions and Cooptation

Not to be outsmarted or left behind by global dynamics in the financial sphere, the same day that Lehman Brothers, one of the world’s largest investment banks, went under, the Zapatistas issued their invitation to the wonderfully named “World’s First Festival of Dignified Rage”. The timing may or may not have been coincidence, it does not matter in the slightest. The current moment is both a time of great urgency, and also one of great possibility and openness to major changes in social relations. It is vitally important that the potential of this moment is not lost. And, above all is crucial that we keep at the forefront of our minds the importance of the prescience of the call’s emphasis on Dignified Rage. For, the dangers which almost certainly lie ahead should we follow a path of each-to-their-own Undignified rage, as demonstrated in the recent horrendous multiple attacks in Bombay, are almost unimaginable. The Nazi holocaust is a clear reminder of the extents of horror which can be unleashed by undignified rage in the face of a world-wide financial crisis.

The current situation is likely to open up all kinds of calls for financial and monetary reform, some new, some rehashes of old schemes. The Tobin Tax, designed as an international mechanism to simultaneously curb financial flows and also raise revenue for desirable purposes is one such example. Already much of the mainline press in the USA and western Europe are quick to condemn “greedy finance capital” and call for its regulation, while simultaneously celebrating and attempting to prop up the “good industrial capitalism”. Noble “Main Street” is pitted against heinous “Wall Street.” However, the debate about monetary and financial reform, and the extent to which it is either possible or desirable, is not a new debate. It is one that has surfaced repeatedly, with more or less energy, at different moments of financial crisis. The debate was central to the development of the 1848 European (and elsewhere) revolutions which followed close on the heels of a major financial crisis in 1847, forming the central component of Marx’s critique of different proposed “alternatives”, famously debated with the French anarchist, Proudhon in The Poverty of Philosophy. More recently, the attempt to curb “finance capitalism” while shoring up “industrial productive capitalism” was closely related to the rise of corporatism, fascism and Hitler in the Great Depression of the 1930s. On the other hand, in 2001, when Argentina’s banks went under, a twin process of factory occupation and the creation of local alternative currencies which for a period sustained literally millions of people who simply could not affort to use the existing official currency.

Yet, an oversimplistic focus on reforming the monetary and financial system in isolation presents an enormous threat to current emancipatory struggles. On the one hand it is likely to be largely ineffective, while on the other it may open up a very big space for scapegoating and also ensuring the conditions for a renewed round of capitalist accumulation. Such a focus attempts to solve problems on one level, namely the financial and monetary, while in fact these problems originate in another level, namely at the level of the existing world-wide relations of production and reproduction. As such, the World’s First Festival of Dignified Rage is one more step towards creating a global process of resistance and construction of alternative relations that is called for in the 6th Declaration in 2005, and which the proposed Intergalactica would seek to contribute to. It remains unclear what form the Intergalactica will take, should it indeed occur, and whether it will be a one off international event or an ongoing long term process of constructing alternatives. And, for that matter, it also remains an open question whether what emerges is actually called the Intergalactica, as was proposed in the 6th Declaration, or whether it goes by another name. However, for the moment, and for the purposes of this text, I will assume that something called an “Intergalactica” is still on the agenda. If in the end a global process emerges which does not actually go under the name Intergalactica, but under some other name, well, the name itself is not the most important thing.

What is important is that the process of resistance and transformation which emerges is based on a broad and meaningful participation from many different struggles from around the world, with a clear view towards building on the big successes of globally networked struggles in order to overcome their limits and effectively move into a higher phase of struggle. Despite certain very important successes, these global processes are still very limited, and it is important to acknowledge and confront these limitations head on. It is one thing to bring activists from many different countries and struggles together for a face-to-face meeting or protest that takes place over a very short and specific time period, normally lasting a few days only. However, it is quite another thing to actually build long term deep social relations between struggles at the global level, relations that create fundamentally different relations of production, reproduction of livelihoods and exchange and that go beyond the nation state and market as forms of organizing social relations. Until now, most global relations between struggles in different parts of the world have been quite ephemeral and highly superficial, often relying on small numbers of specific individuals rather than being appropriated by larger numbers in the respective movements. At this stage in the young networks, this state of affairs is not especially surprising, due to many different barriers including access to resources for travel and regular computer based communication, foreign language skills, detailed knowledge of the world-economy, the ability to take time away from local struggles and immediate day-to-day concerns, etc. And, while these limitations have not presented a major barrier to networking, protest and denunciation, they do seem to present a major bottleneck to the far bigger task of collectively creating lasting new social relations based on diversity, autonomy and decentralization.

This bottleneck, though not often acknowledged openly and collectively, has meant that global networking processes are not nearly decentralized enough, especially in relation to their own rhetoric of extreme decentralization; nor are they deep enough in terms of their ability to sustain meaningful exchange and mutual support processes, especially between movements in Southern countries. Furthermore, their reliance on small numbers of individuals makes them extremely vulnerable, both to the inactivity of specific individuals and to cooptation and repression (individuals are easier to kill, imprison and buy off than broader collective processes). Above all, global movements are still a very long way from constructing social relations that go beyond both the nation state and world- market, and in many cases (especially in the imperialist countries with a strong social-welfare state), there is still great dependency on state structures, and as the current crisis has shown clearly, financial structures such as the banking and pension systems.

While the construction of alternative relations of production, reproduction of livelihoods and exchange are frequently at the centre of specific local struggles (especially land related struggles in Southern countries), these relations almost never extend to the regional or global level, and where they do (such as direct exchange coffee or the occasional solidarity project related to building infrastructure such as health clinics or renewable energy installations) they still have a very small reach and are limited to specific products (often artesanal). In general, global resistance networks are still far better at spreading news and coordinating protests in different parts of the world than they are at spreading products, people, skills, financial and technical support. (Though these latter set of activities do occur frequently, for the most part it occurs within the context of fairly paternalistic NGO activity that is based around the premise of reform and integration into existing power relations rather than in a horizontal politics based on autonomy, solidarity, diversity and a confrontational approach to power). At the level of “resisting states” there have been important regional integration processes in Latin America, most notably the ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas) which has been spearheaded by Chavez, or the Hemispheric Integration of the Peoples, spearheaded by Evo Morales. These states have been able to embark on more extensive and long term cooperation processes, such as in health, energy, communication and finance. However, for the most part, such cooperation has taken place within the framework of nation states, rather than building direct movement-movement relationships. Overcoming these bottlenecks in global networking processes would take horizontal autonomous self-organization to new levels in terms of their collective ability to build far-reaching and lasting global alternatives that go beyond both the nation state and the market. There is an urgent need for movements to tackle these difficult tasks. If these bottlenecks are not overcome very rapidly, enabling a serious and accelerated world-wide process of constructing alternative relations, there is a danger that everything that has been built up in the last years will be lost.

It is in this context that the Zapatista call for another Intergalactica must be understood. For the Intergalactica to contribute to a long term process of building new social relations at the global level, it will be important that it is a participatory process, driven forward by struggles across the world, constructed through a process of dialogue and exchange. The Zapatistas have set the ball rolling, with a directed invitation. This invitation is based on the Zapatistas’ own awareness that they themselves have fought a long social struggle that has spent many years in the laborious and painstaking process of constructing long term autonomous social relations. This process has been based on collectively taking over land, one of the fundamental means of production and reproduction of people’s livelihoods. However, the Intergalactica is not just the responsibility of the Zapatistas but of all those who identify with it throughout the world. Active rather than passive participation from these different struggles will be what gives the process real depth and meaning. This includes the need for a collective global discussion process, based in decentralization and autonomous self-organization, to define what kind of a process the Intergalactica should be. What are its goals, contents and methods, who will participate in it, through what kind of process and which forms of participation? And, if it is to involve particular large international meetings or encuentros along the way, where would they take place and when? However, before discussing possible ways forward for creating such a global process, let us first take a look more closely at the undignified way of resolving crisis.

Undignified Paths in the Face of Resistance

Historically, capital and state power have responded to popular resistance through the combined use of 3 major strategies: dividing struggles, integrating them through partial reforms, and repression. These three strategies have not been employed in isolation from one another, but in careful combination. They have been implemented with varying degrees of success (from the point of view of capital and state power), and never permanently. In the current context of global resistance we are already in the whirlwind of these three responses. Having slowly brewed over the last several years, these dynamics are likely to be greatly intensified and accelerated by the current economic crisis and the Obama election. The degree to which we are able to anticipate, prepare for and confront this three-pronged response will greatly determine how successful movements are in defining the terms of debate and terrain of struggle in order to expand the space from which to go about building viable long term emancipatory social relations and moving beyond their current impasse. It will also be crucially important not to lose sight of history. Let us look at the three prongs – division, integration, and repression – one by one.

The continued existence of the capitalist world-economy has relied on its ability to divide populations from one another, both within countries and between countries, in order to prevent unity of struggle within the world-wide division of labour. Especially important has been capital’s ability to prevent global circulation of struggles by maintaining a world-system divided into nation states. The world-wide division of labor has been hierarchically structured, based on imposed (and continually reimposed) divisions based around (especially, but not exclusively) race, ethnicity and gender hierarchies, as well as those between waged and unwaged labor. When considering the global division of labor, certain (minority) sections of the world’s population have been implicated in the exploitation and discrimination of certain other (majority) sections of the world’s population, due to gaining direct or indirect material rewards from their position in the hierarchy. In particular, the imperial expansion of the late 19th Century (“Scramble for Africa”, etc), and the consequent subjugation of workers in the colonies, enabled often quite substantial partial reforms to be granted in response to the growing strength of workers’ struggles in capitals core, Europe and the USA. Another crucial divide throughout history has been the citizen/non-citizen divide, or, taken to its worst racist extremes, the “human”/”non-human” divide, as epitomized in the 20th Century by the genocidal social deal offered to “pure German” workers in Germany in the Hitler period. And, last but not least, let us not forget the so-called post-World War II “welfare state” model which has provided large sections of the populations in the capitalist center (especially, but not exclusively, white male unionized workers) with greatly improved material standards of living and political freedoms at the expense of the great majority in peripheral countries, as well as people of color and unwaged (especially women) workers within the core countries themselves.

The second major strategy employed in response to social struggle has been cooptation that has integrated struggles, by partially giving in to certain demands for social, economic and political reforms while not substantially challenging private ownership and profit relations, political decision making, and labor control mechanisms that have defined capitalist (and imperialist, patriarchal, racist…) social relations. In the first half of the twentieth century, the Keynesian welfare state was widely introduced in core capitalist countries, in response to the fear of the Russian Revolution inspiring and supporting similar processes throughout the world. In the second half of the century, in response to the 1949 triumph of the Chinese Revolution, developmentalism combined with formal political independence was introduced into the colonies. The Keynesian deal which linked productivity to high wages was so ingenious that not only was it able to buy off social struggle, but also to actually harness it to such an extent that, safely channeled, demands for higher wages actually contributed to economic growth.

Last, but not least, has been state repression. Those resistances which could not easily be integrated or bought off with reform have simply been crushed and intimidated out of existence, involving mass imprisonments, torture, and political murder, as well as war. Of crucial importance in terms of developments in the 20th Century was the repression of the revolutionary wave which circulated much of the world in the wake of World War One and the Russian Revolution, the fascist destruction of movements in Europe, Stalin’s repression on worker resistance in both the USSR and satellite states, repression by the US and its allies in third world countries, such as Vietnam or Indonesia, and the fierce repression of African American struggles in the USA, especially in the late 60s and 70s, amongst many other examples.

World-wide Unity Against Division: an Indispensable Basis for a Dignified Way Out of the Crisis

Bearing this in mind, perhaps one of the most important tasks facing emancipatory struggles in the coming years will be to maintain and deepen the levels of internationalism and inclusivity of global networks across the hierarchies, old and new, which divide people from one another. The inclusive nature of the term “Intergalactic” (fortunately, broad enough to include “aliens”…) is vital. Unity is understood here to be a decentralized unity based on a diversity of autonomous forms of self-organization from which different struggles within the world-wide division of labour can communicate and cooperate with each other in their particular struggles to break free from the domination of capital over their lives, but at the same time are able to struggle amongst themselves to break down hierarchies and divisions which exist within the division of labour itself. In order for the Intergalactica to really move in this direction, it is of central importance that relevant movements and struggles are aware of the Intergalactica process and are actively participating in giving it shape.

A key question that needs to be addressed before addressing any other question is who will take part in the process of building the Intergalactica and on what basis. For a long-term and transformatory global process such as the Intergalactica to come to fruition, it is especially important that people from as many countries and as many different struggles of exploited, oppressed and marginal social groupings as possible are able to participate in its construction. Yet, beyond such general and vague niceties, is the particular need of overcoming divisions that are currently being fostered within the world-economy itself, as well as of course transcending hierarchies and divisions which have been built up over centuries of colonial history. Unless intentionally addressed by emancipatory struggles these divisions are likely to be reproduced within global networks themselves. In particular 4 types of “global” divisions currently stand out, divisions which are likely to become much deeper and more damaging in the near the future:

• The so-called “Clash of Civilizations” is a process which could turn out to have similar divisive effects on global struggle as the Cold War did, in which (on a greatly uneven and hierarchical basis) people from “the west” and “the Arab world” are trained to fear, distrust and hate one another, divided by ignorance and encouraged to align themselves to one or the other side of absolute religious and cultural divides based around “good” and “evil”. The recent horrific terror attacks in Bombay, together with Obama’s insistence on maintaining and strengthening a hardline-approach to the war in Afghanistan (despite using an obviously calmer and less hysterical rhetoric than Bush uses), do not bode well for easing this situation in the near future. Crucially, until now, “the Arab world” has hardly been involved in the (contemporary) secular global networks of anti-capitalist struggles mentioned above. Furthermore, these global networks still remain largely ignorant of and isolated from struggles in the Arab world, though the situation in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan is changing this slowly and some interesting links between movements have been made, such as the International Solidarity Movement in relation to Palestine, and links made with migrant worker struggles in the USA and UK with Iraqi oil workers unions. Most recently is the amazingly successful and hope-inspiring efforts of the Free Gaza Movement to break the Israeli siege of Gaza by entering the territory in ships. Especially as energy and climate change becomes increasingly central to world political and economic debates, there is great need for global movements to be wide enough to include on their own terms the important struggles of oil workers in Arab countries. As people sitting on some of the most important energy reserves in the world, they surely have an invaluable contribution to make in the imagining and building of a new world.

• Africa has been exploited and marginalized at the lowest levels of the hierarchical world-economy. Unfortunately, sometimes in global anti-capitalist networking processes, these processes of marginalization have also been reproduced. And, as the world-economy becomes increasingly multipolar, a process surely greatly advanced by the current crisis, Africa will almost certainly have even less of a share of the global surplus than it had in the last years. Food and energy inflation are likely to have a particularly strong impact on Africa, especially hitting women, young and elderly particularly hard. It is not unlikely that Zimbabwe, a country with seemingly limitless skyrocketing inflation and fierce internal political struggle and repression, presents a foreboding warning of things to come. It is also becoming increasingly apparent that struggles over control of Africa’s oil are going to have major global impact. The fact that the last two World Social Forums have taken place in Africa (Nairobi and Bamako, the latter as part of the 2006 Polycentric Forum) and that the Forum for Food Sovereignty also took place in Mali last year has perhaps slightly improved this situation. However, African struggles are still highly marginalized within many global anti-capitalist networking processes. The multiple wars in Africa have had very little prominence within global networks, a discussion of reparations for slavery for Africans and their Diaspora is still very low on the agenda of most global networks, and most discussion around debt is still based in the language of pleading for “debt forgiveness” rather than demanding non-payment of illegitimate debts. These discussions, especially in relation to reparations, need to be central in any global debate on resistance in the face of crisis.

• The Citizen/non-citizen divide, despite sparking a vast amount of self-organized struggles throughout the world, especially in North America and Western Europe, makes it incredibly difficult if not impossible for undocumented migrants to travel to international meetings, gatherings, and protests and to make any form of direct exchanges with movements in other countries. Any form of contact with struggles in other countries must, by necessity, always be indirect, either through web, texts, videos, radio etc, or through intermediary (documented) supporters, who may or may not be mandated by the undocumented people concerned. This reliance on indirect and mediated communication presents profound challenges to self-organization and unmediated self-representation. Movements will have to think of creative ways to overcome this division itself.

• Rival power/imperialist blocs. Rivalries between regional power blocs have increased in recent years, and are likely to continue doing so in the future, especially along the lines of tensions between USA, China and EU countries, but also other countries including India, Brazil, Russia, Japan and the Koreas and the alignments that these latter countries’ governments and their capitals choose in relation to the former countries. Currently it is still fairly easily for information and people to circulate between these regions, however, regional and national protectionisms (as well as military tensions) could emerge which make such contact more difficult in the future. Importantly, until now, Chinese struggles, which are accelerating rapidly in parallel to China’s growth as an economic power, have been more or less entirely absent from global anti-capitalist networking process. However, in recent years there have been some intentional contact making processes outreaching towards Chinese struggles driven by people active in a range of different global networks, the most prominently the World Social Forum, and most recently the Asia-Europe People's Forum in Beijing in October 2008. The fact that the last major WTO summit took place in Hong Kong also provided an important moment for connections to be made between different struggles, but there is still a great deal of work to be done in this area. The world-economic crisis makes this task even more urgent. The US bailout effectively mortgages generations of workers, and in particular, Chinese workers, since the Chinese economy is the only real guarantee of these loans. In other words, the bail out is based on the highly spurious assumption that workers in China will actually be prepared to shoulder the burden of propping up the world-economy. The crisis is hitting Chinese export factories particularly hard, especially migrant workers, and it remains to be seen what type of responses emerge. There is great danger that interstate competition, rivalry and conflict can increase as different powerful states seek to find “national” solutions to the crisis through offering protections to workers in these countries. And, while history does not repeat itself, the responses to the breakdown of the world-market which preceded World War Two nonetheless serve as an ugly historical reminder of what undignified “solutions” look like.

Global resistance efforts, such as the Intergalactica, or whatever global process emerges from the international process kickstarted by the Zapastistas, will have to acknowledge, anticipate and overcome these divisions to the extent that is possible in order to strengthen global unity of emancipatory struggles. The attempts from capital and state power to divide the global circulations of struggles and the people involved in them is almost certain to intensify in the coming years. However, high levels of participation in the Intergalactica from these regions, countries and sectors are very unlikely to happen spontaneously, and may in fact require an intentional and targeted preparation process that seeks out contacts and collaboration with struggles in these parts of the world, not just relying on existing contacts but rather trying to build new relationships where none currently exist. There are many obstacles that will have to be overcome in this process, not least of all language and access to funds.
Building the Intergalactica Slowly but Surely: A Review of Events from the 6th Declaration to the World’s First Festival of Dignified Rage

Until now, the global process outlined in the 6th Declaration has got off to a seemingly solid start. Since 2005, the Zapatistas have convened three large scale international gatherings, or encuentros, a continental meeting (convened together with other organizations), and an international caravan. A fourth international gathering, the World’s First Festival of Dignified Rage, is about to take place as this article is being written. So far, the process has been predominantly driven forward by the Zapatistas, with a strong response coming from different groups around the world. The fact that the Intergalactica itself has been slow to take shape (and in fact has scarcely been mentioned in Zapatista communiqués since the 6th Declaration was issued) does not detract from the fact than an important international process is slowly getting underway. Arguably, given that it will be desirable to build a deep long term process rather than simply a superficial one off glitzy meeting, the slow pace of building the Intergalactica itself is in fact a wise move, and is hopefully laying a sound basis for accelerating the process in the near future.

To date, the process outlined in the 6th Declaration has passed through a number of stages(5). The Other Campaign within Mexico itself, an initiative aimed at building a strong country-wide non-electoral political process from below and to the left, has gone through various phases(6); the first and second Encuentros of the Zapatista Peoples with the Peoples of the World (December 2006/January 2007 and July 2007), paralleled by a period of consultation in which struggles around the world were able to make proposals for the Intergalactica. In October 2007 an Encuentro of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas was convened by eight indigenous organizations, including the Zapatistas, in Sonora, Mexico. In December 2007/January 2008, there was an international women’s Encuentro, dedicated to Comandanta Ramona who died in 2006. In response to the ongoing escalation of repression directed against the Zapatistas, an international Observation and Solidarity Caravan took place in Zapatista territories, Chiapas, in the summer of 2008. All of these events have been important events in their own right. However, none of them are the Intergalactica proposed in the 6th Declaration. Rather, they can all be understood as steps along the way to building an ongoing and long term global process, one that may take the name Intergalactica, or perhaps some other name. And now, the Zapatistas are marking their 25th anniversary by holding the next stop along the way, the World’s First Festival for Dignified Rage(7).

Let us briefly review the international aspects of this process. Narconews, one of the main English language website following developments since the Sixth Declaration was issued, has links to Other Campaign related materials in 8 languages, interestingly, including Farsi. Already, before the first Encuentro of the Zapatista Peoples with the Peoples of the World took place in Chiapas last December/January, a decentralized process of preparatory meetings and other activities had taken shape throughout much of Europe, South, Central and North America in response to the Zapatista call. Between July 2005 and July 2006 (the period of consultation), 19 different activities were reported in 16 cities from 9 countries. Importantly, this included several within the USA, involving close overlap with those involved in the powerful migrant struggles that are erupting there. Many of them are Chican@s (Mexican Americans) and Mexican migrants involved in the Other Campaign from within the USA, what has been dubbed “the Other Campaign on the Other Side”. Whilst most of these meeting and initiatives have been fairly conventional processes of one-way solidarity to what is occurring in Mexico, some of them have gone further, employing the language and perspectives of the Other Campaign to engage in activities relating to local issues. Three important examples of this have been the local struggles organized by an immigrant organization Movement for Justice in El Barrio, in Spanish Harlem, New York and two different border camps against the US and Mexican border, as well as the complementary, although not explicitly linked, “Another Politics is Possible” track, which took place at the US Social Forum in Atlanta. From these meetings and activities, a number of proposals have emerged for how the future Intergalactic Encuentro should be organized and what its contents should be, which will be addressed later in this article. Although not without its limitations, which will be addressed later in this article, it is clear that there is a strong international process emerging around the Intergalactica.

The two Encuentros Between the Zapatista Peoples and the Peoples of the World drew several thousand people to the autonomous Zapatista Caracoles(8) in Chiapas, about half from Mexico and the other half from close to fifty countries from around the world. The first meeting was held in one of the Caracoles, Oventic, over four days, and the second held in 3 Caracoles (Oventic, La Morelia and La Realidad) over nine days. The two meetings were opportunities for the Zapatistas to present their grassroots achievements of autonomy and self-government to people in struggle from different parts of the world, as well as for the Zapatistas to learn about struggles in other countries.

In the first Encuentro, members of the Juntas de Buen Gobierno (Good Government Councils) presented Zapatista experiences in the following areas: autonomy and other forms of government; the other education; the other health; women; communication, art, culture and the other commerce; and land and territory. The final session of the first Encuentro was devoted to hearing proposals from around the world as to how, when and where to build the Intergalactic Encuentro, proposals which had emerged from the period of international consultation opened by the Zapatistas. Interestingly, the strongest participation from outside Mexico probably came from the USA and Canada, including a large number of Indigenous and First Nations organizations from these countries, as well as organizations active in the Other Campaign on the Other Side.

The second Encuentro built on the first Encuentro, going into greater depth about the nuts and bolts of autonomous organizing, with presentations by promoters and other community activists from each municipality around the themes of autonomy, collective work, health, education, and women. A very impressive delegation of Via Campesina representatives from major peasant organizations worldwide participated in this Encuentro, from: Brazil, Bolivia, Honduras, Dominican Republic, USA, Canada, Quebec, Basque Country, India, Thailand, Korea, and Indonesia. Unfortunately the one African representative, from Madagascar, was denied a visa. One day was devoted to speeches from most of the Via Campesina delegates. The second Encuentro did not have a session devoted to the Intergalactica, and in fact there was almost no mention of the Intergalactica, clearly a deliberate decision on the part of the Zapatistas. On the other hand, there was an important unofficial, and self-organized, side meeting which involved around 50 people living in the US, and one of the major themes of the discussion in this meeting was the need to have a similar process to the Other Campaign within the USA itself, which rather than focusing on supporting and participating in the process within Mexico (itself a very important task), would aim to start a long term process to building a form of grassroots political process that goes beyond electoral politics within the USA itself. Mexicans and non-Mexicans alike were proposing this.

In a number of ways the second Encuentro built on the first, slowly deepening the global process that these Encuentros aim to be constructing. In addition to a more in depth presentation of how the Zapatistas have organized over the last years, the second Encuentro was a space for greater participation from different Zapatista communities, with people from each municipality presenting, and in three different Caracoles instead of only one. This was an important space to give large numbers of Zapatistas direct experience with international meetings, with the many different forms of participation that this involved, from speaking on a panel before thousands of people, to preparing cultural events, to organizing the logistical side of large international gatherings, to international “baile popular” (popular dance). Perhaps the most important deepening of the process could be seen in the Via Campesina participation, giving the Encuentro the international scope and presence of mass-based grass roots organizations that the first Encuentro had lacked to a degree (in the first Encuentro there were few, if any, participants from Asia and none from Africa). This process of building specific sectoral alliances along the road to the Intergalactica had been building over time, with Via Campesina having distributed Zapatista corn at the World Forum on Food Sovereignty which took place in Mali earlier this year. The decision to hold the indigenous peoples Encuentro and a women’s Encuentro later in the same year was a further step to building important sectoral links, taking the time necessary to ensure that the process being built is firmly anchored in real struggles before moving on to the Intergalactica itself.

The Third Encounter for the Zapatista Peoples With the Peoples of the World took place from December 28th 2007 to January 1st 08. It was a women’s encounter, of Zapatista Women, with Women of the World. Why a women's encounter? ¨Because it was time,¨ repeated the Zapatista voices, Zapatistas who had implemented the Revolutionary Law for Women in the very early stages of the Zapatista uprising. Over 3,000 people came together to listen, observe, celebrate, and build stronger resistances with these rebellious Tzetzal, Tzotzil, Chol, and Tojolabal Zapatista women. The days were filled with talk of the concrete measures Zapatista women and girls have taken to organize for self-determination, liberty, democracy and justice in their own communities. Through a long process of struggle, Zapatista women have gained many advances in their communities, ranging from the outlawing of alcohol and drugs to curb domestic violence, to taking ever more positions of representation and responsibility, as education and health promoters, in the Good Government Councils, as comandantas of the EZLN, and in artisan cooperatives, to choosing their own partners. And, for the days of the encuentro , men were given a secondary role. They were not allowed to represent or translate, nor sit inside the auditorium. Signs had been hung around the Caracol reading "In this gathering, men cannot participate as note-takers, translators, presenters, spokesmen, or representatives [of an organization]. Men can only work making food, sweeping and cleaning the Caracol and the latrines, taking care of the children, and carrying firewood." By having a women's encuentro, women’s voices were heard directly and not spoken over or marginalized, while at the same time, they emphasized that the movement included their brothers, husbands, children, elders... everyone in the community.

The First American Indigenous Peoples’ Encuentro was held in Yaqui tribal territory from the 11-12 October, 2007, in Vicam, Sonora, Mexico. The gathering brought together indigenous groups from all over the continent, communities in resistance for 515 years, to tell their stories of “pain and dignified rebellion” and to share “experience and wisdom” in order for “the continent to recover its voice.” In particular there was strong participation from the settler countries known throughout the world as “Canada” and “United States”, including from the Kanion’ke:haka/Mohawk, the Mik’maq, the Denen nations, the Hawdenaw swee nation, and the Anishanabe. A number of years ago, the CIA issued a report saying its greatest fear was that the continents indigenous people could form an alliance of resistance. Well… it seems that this is indeed happening.

And now, the latest event in this marathon process of globally orientated resistance is the World’s First Festival of Dignified Rage, which will take place at the end of December 2008. The Zapatistas are hosting this festival on the basis of their listening and reading of the different proposals and discussions generated in the course of the events described above which have occurred in the three years since the 6th Declaration was issued, both within Mexico and globally. The festival will consist of different thematic exhibitions and discussions in which invited organizations, collectives and individuals will present themselves in their own terms. After a strong process in which the Zapatistas have used the international gatherings to present in great detail their experiences at transforming social relations in Chiapas to people from around, the Festival now offers a space for people from around the world to learn from one another. Importantly, the list of participating organizations includes workers organizations from Iran.

An important feature of this whole process has been the progressive deepening of the revolutionary discourse and how this is markedly different from most other international networking processes. In the first Encuentro the speeches repeatedly stressed the need for resistance to find ways of self organizing in order to come together in common struggle. An emphasis was on the need to organize resistance which is already occurring throughout the world. The second Encuentro started with a pre-Encuentro event the night before the Encuentro itself at the indigenous training center, University of the Land in Chiapas in San Cristobal, which in no uncertain terms laid out the terms of struggle, setting the scene for the main Encuentro. The Zapatistas recognize that there are three main ways of embarking on anti-capitalist struggle: establishing alternative consumption patterns, establishing alternative trade patterns or establishing alternative production relations. They have decided to go for establishing alternative production relations, namely collectively taking over the means of production. Having taken over the land, they stressed the importance of rural and urban unity in struggle, so that in addition to taking over land, it will become possible to take over factories in the future. Whilst respectful of the other methods of trying to create non-capitalist relations, taking over the means of production is, in their opinion, the most direct way of struggling against capitalism and creating alternative social relations. Related to this, is their experience of basing autonomy on a process of disengaging from reliance on the state, creating their own self-managed systems in replace of the very limited and distorted state health, education and other state support systems and mechanisms. For an Intergalactica coming “from below and to the left”, such a shift in rhetoric is a very important challenge to global movements who seem very timid around discussing (and above all acting on) the question of means of production. It is an especially challenging discourse for struggles in the capitalist core countries, where that idea was largely abandoned years ago in favor of some form of social-democratic welfarism. Another important challenge that has been thrown out, if not explicitly, then at least through the language used by the Zapatistas, is the need to fundamentally challenge the concept of expanded citizenship as an emancipatory route. Neither the 6th Declaration nor the spoken Zapatista word at the Encuentros themselves have contained any trace of lobbying about them, nor of defining people in relation to the state. The word “citizen” is refreshingly completely absent. Citizens have always existed throughout history only in relation to non-citizens, people defined to be of unequal status to those defined as citizens. The concept of citizenship is intimately bound up with the concept of the nation state, and the struggle for alternatives that go beyond the nation state also point to a conception of the human being that goes beyond citizens and citizenship.

No Time to Lose! – Accelerating the Construction of New Autonomous Global Relations of Production, Livelihoods and Exchange

And, so, what are the long term strategic and short term organizational concerns that lie ahead? In a nutshell, there is a need for a global process that seeks to both expand and deepen global networks, on the one hand to include geographical (as well as sectoral) areas that are scarcely part of global networks and avoid “national” solutions to the crisis, and on the other hand increasing the functional strength of existing networks, so that they can move beyond exchange of information and coordination of protest towards an accelerated process of building long term autonomous and decentralized livelihoods based on collective relations of production, exchange and consumption that are based on dignified livelihoods.

Expanding the geographical and sectoral reach of global networks will entail a particular effort to reach out to struggles in Arab countries, China and Africa, so that these struggles can participate actively in defining the global process of struggle that develops in the future. This is likely to require going beyond existing contacts, making special efforts at both linguistic and political/cultural translation. It will also be important to continue developing creative ways that allow for as unmediated and direct a participation as possible of migrant struggles, many of who lack the legal (let alone financial) possibility to travel internationally, making it very difficult, if not impossible, for them to participate directly in international meetings, protests and exchanges. Crucially, this is not just about expanding networks for the hell of it, but to keep struggles internationalist and not nationalist in orientation, to ensure that our struggles do not inadvertently result in one section of the world’s population winning reforms that can only be offered on the backs of another section of the world’s population, as was the case with the nationally orientated reforms offered by Keynesianism. This is especially crucial when it comes to maintaining and expanding the western welfares states. Particularly challenging in this regard is how to meet the demands of refugee and migrant populations in these countries in such a way that avoids integrating them as new privileged layers into an already highly unequal and hierarchically organized world-wide division of labour, whilst simultaneously maintaining and, in all probability, actually exacerbating that hierarchy. It will be important to find ways of meeting these demands while simultaneously undermining the global hierarchy.

Deepening the functionality of global networks will entail strengthening the capacity of direct exchanges between movements (especially South-South), so that they are really able to learn from each other and to dialogue with one another in order to build common analyses, perspectives and above all common agendas for creative and constructive actions, both short and long term. In particular, this might include exchange of experience on how to avoid, prepare for and respond to repression; exchange of experiences on how to avoid cooptation – especially new forms of protectionism and racist deals, dangers of regional integration, reforms that grant reforms but do not challenge global market, etc; exchange of experience about differing approaches to the state in order to avoid falling into dogmatic approaches towards taking state power or not, but about a discussion process about what actually works, how organizations make decisions in terms of how to approach the state, factors to take into account, compromises to make, etc. It could also include very practical exchanges on all the concrete skills and knowledges necessary for autonomous self-management, such as language training, exchanges on agricultural techniques, renewable energies, self managed health, to name but a very few examples. Importantly, it would be important to build up such a participatory process on the basis of the delegates mandated from organizations and movements, not just individuals, and it would need a financial basis to make these expensive processes viable.

These are all some short term activities that could provide a basis for long term strategies that seek to fundamentally change the global social relations which currently exist. The financial crisis reveals the urgently necessarily, but enormously difficult, task of massively reducing people's dependence on the money economy and financial institutions, so that we can collectively disengage from them and leave them behind. This is an especially difficult task in the core capitalist countries, where people’s daily lives are so intertwined with this world. It will only be possible to break our dependence if we are able to build major capacity in the non-commercial and mutual support-based provision for key areas of satisfying our basic needs (e.g. food, shelter, energy, health, education pensions, etc.), in order to reduce our dependency on waged labour. It will be necessary to reach a far greater capacity than currently exists. Paradoxically, for this to happen movements will have to be able to access larges sums of money, infrastructure, skills and knowledge, as well as many other sources of wealth, again on a far greater scale than movements are currently able to muster. It will require a concerted world-wide effort to acquire key means of generating wealth and sustaining life.

Faced with a worsening world-economic crisis, a twin-pronged approach is called for. On the one hand, there is the need to demand vast sums of money from the state, in the form of public funds and an increasing share of public wealth, access to interest free and unconditional loans which could enable movements to buy collectively controlled and non-commercial sources of wealth generation such as those described above. It will be necessary to create levels of mobilization and pressure on national governments and international institutions so they are unable to avoid making these concessions, especially in relation to the new Obama government, while at the same time maintaining autonomy and avoiding cooptation.

And, on the other hand, it will be necessary to once again place the seizure without compensation of the key means of production (and reproduction) at the heart of revolutionary strategies. Again, this is a monumental task, one that will not occur without strong social mobilization and struggle, but it is a process made much more possible and realistic to imagine by the massive bankruptcies and devaluation of capital that the crisis entails, leaving a trail of abandoned buildings, companies and other pools of social wealth that are deemed “non-competitive” and hence useless. And, crucially, if they are not taken over and collectivized, they will be bought up on the cheap and will fuel a new round of socially and ecologically disastrous capital accumulation. Entire regions or even countries are simply waiting to be taken over and collectivized and defended for common use outside of the realm of profit, not least General Motors, Ford and the USA itself!

And so, the Zapatistas have invited people throughout the world:

Let our dignity take root again and breed another world.

If this world doesn’t have a place for us, then another world must be made.

With no other tool than our rage, no other material than our dignity

----------------------------
1 It is important to stress that that this article deals with the global resistance process the Zapatistas have launched with their 6th Declaration. However, it is not a discussion about the Zapatistas themselves, nor is it an attempt at analyzing the internal political developments within Chiapas or Mexico. On the one hand, this is not the purpose of the article, and on the other, I am in no way qualified to write such an article.

2 For a detailed discussion of the global dimensions of the Zapatistas’ 6th Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, and for a comprehensive reference to related links etc, see : Kolya Abramsky, August 2008 [April 2007] – ‘The Bamako Appeal and the Zapatista 6th Declaration - From Reorganizing the Existing World to Creating New Ones’. CE1 in the Critical Engagement series from CACIM. Available also at www.cacim.net.

3 The invitation to the World’s First Festival of Dignified Rage, together with information about participants and programme, can be found at http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx

4 An interesting organization to have emerged in this respect is Take Back the Land.

5 Information and footage from these events and processes can be found at http://zeztainternazional.ezln.org.mx and also http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx

6 A discussion about The Other Campaign is beyond the scope of this article, and, in any case, the author is in no-way qualified to write such a piece.

7 The author attended the First and Second Encuentros of the Zapatista Peoples with the Peoples of the World. The observations which follow about these gatherings are based on this direct experience. However, the descriptions of the other events, which he did not attend, are based on second hand readings, from the Zapatista websites, other related sites and personal conversations with people who did attend, and consequently may be slightly less accurate, updated and detailed.

8 Caracol is the most important organ of self-governance in the Zapatista construction of autonomy. It literal translation in English is “snail”, though the word “conch” is also frequently used.

Read More!