Review: Contemporary Anarchist Studies

This review is published in the winter 2009 issue of Peace Studies Journal, volume 2, number 2.

In the wake of the mass mobilizations against the WTO in Seattle in 1999, there has been a resurgence in interest in anarchism as a theory and practice, in both academic study and activist circles. However, anarchism is still widely misunderstood and misrepresented in mainstream culture as violent and chaotic. To address some of these problematic conceptions, Randall Amster, Abraham DeLeon, Luis A. Fernandez, Anthony J. Nocella, II, and Deric Shannon have given us Contemporary Anarchist Studies: An Introductory Anthology of Anarchy in the Academy.

This compilation focuses primarily on anarchism in academia, where it is increasingly present in research and classes ranging from philosophy and education to anthropology and political science. Despite its growing influence on students and professors, the editors claim “there has been no comprehensive anarchist reader for classes, community scholars, and activist collectives that reflects this emerging and growing trend” (p. 1). This collection is intended to fill this gap and “highlight the diversity of contemporary thought around anarchism, indicating the relationship between anarchist theory, critical pedagogy, and political praxis” (p. 2).

As anyone familiar with anarchist politics could imagine, compiling a book on Anarchist Studies could be a contentious undertaking. For one, defining anarchism, particularly in an introductory manner, can be quite complicated. Since the 1960s, anarchism has been greatly influenced by many other radical social and political perspectives, such as queer, critical race, feminist, radical environmental, and animal liberation theories. As a result, “there are as many varieties of anarchism as there are anarchists” (p. 2). Furthermore, a single, totalizing theory of anarchism would be counter to the very idea of anarchism and its fundamental criticism of coercion and the imposition of authority; in the words of contributor William T. Armaline, defining anarchism “would be a claim to power—the power to define the world and future of others without their participation and consent” (p. 137). As a starting point, the editors offer a basic sketch of anarchism as an anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist body of theory and practice based on 1) the rejection of hierarchy and vanguardism and 2) the promotion of decentralization, autonomy, and freedom (p. 3).

The book’s twenty-eight essays are divided into five sections: Theory, Methodologies, Pedagogy, Praxis, and The Future. Together, they present anarchism as a multiplicity of ever-evolving tendencies, ideas, and practices that are sometimes in conversation with one another and sometimes in conflict. From theoretical proposals and discussions of new research methodologies to personal reflections from activist-academics and examples of popular anarchist pedagogy, the book offers a sampling of some of the dominant theories and debates of 21st-century anarchism.

Another potential point of controversy derives from the strained relationship of anarchism to the academy. As an institution that is at its core hierarchical—and that actively creates and maintains hierarchy—academia is fundamentally at odds with anarchism. As David Graeber puts it, “to act like an anarchist would be academic suicide” (p. 107). Stevphen Shukaitis warns against the creation of a field of “anarchist studies” that constructs anarchism as a fixed, static object to observe from afar; the end result, he cautions, could be that the work done by anarchist academics is “turned against themselves and re-incorporated into the workings of state and capital…creating the image of subversion while raking in tuition fees” (p. 167). Instead, he understands anarchism as a process, as a means, and, thus, suggests that the role of anarchism in academia (or of academia in anarchism) is to provide space and resources for “the elaboration of ideas and knowledges useful to further developing anarchist politics…approached from a way that is deeply connected to questions posed by social movements and struggles” (p. 169).

This idea that anarchist studies should serve interests and communities outside of academia is clearly echoed throughout this collection, and many of the essays included communicate the authors’ broader social and political commitments. All share the desire to further anarchist theory and practices, which distinguishes Contemporary Anarchist Studies from other academic writing that attempts to maintain a professional distance from the subjects under consideration. Moreover, many contributors challenge the very idea of scientific objectivity, arguing that it is a foundational aspect of oppressive power structures that impose a false sense of absolutism and “Truth” (p. 162).

In addition to this shared desire, this book is full of proposals for how to strengthen anarchism as a viable and effective system of liberatory thought. Suggestions range from integrating more serious considerations of race (Olson), economics (Buck), or animal liberation (Best) into current theory and praxis to viewing anarchism in terms of recent French philosophy (May), post-structural thinking (Kuhn), and nature (jones). Others go beyond theoretical considerations and put forth concrete, prescriptive ways to create anarchist institutions and, ultimately, a more anarchist society, prescriptions based on the authors’ experiences as activists. In “Addressing Violence Against Women,” for example, Emily Gaarder uses her background in a community-based restorative justice group to explore ways to prevent—and respond to—violence against women without relying on the state, a pivotal challenge for anarchists. She briefly outlines practical steps anarchists can take to address gendered violence in a manner that “embraces both the call for women’s safety and the call for the dissolution of state-sanctioned systems of law and punishment” (p. 54).

For most contributors to the book—who all have a background in academia—the struggles from which they draw their lessons and suggestions are based in the classroom. Multiple essays characterize traditional schooling models in the United States—in both public schools and universities—as reproducing the oppressive, hierarchical social relationships necessary for the advancement of capitalism. It is, therefore, as William Armaline writes, “a matter of strategy for us to consider pedagogy in any attempt to remake our communities in a way that reflects our mutual desires and needs” (p. 140).

Armaline asserts that a pedagogy steeped in anarchism—one that consciously minimizes power imbalances between teachers and students—can have liberatory potential and allow for the “active deconstruction of oppressive elements of society and the creation of situated knowledge and grassroots community” (p. 137). Abraham DeLeon and Kurt Love similarly advocate a rethinking of social studies and “hard” science in secondary schools that questions the primacy of the state, objectivity, and historical discourses that naturalize capitalism, patriarchy, Eurocentrism, and other imposed systems of domination. Both essays suggest ways teachers can challenge these entrenched ideas in the classroom.

Others focus their attention on the university in particular, claiming that the creation of new methodologies infused with an anarchist perspective could lead to academic research that does not, as Luis Fernandez says, “reproduce colonizing effects or help reproduce state practices” (p. 95). Jeff Ferrell goes a step further in his unrepentant attack of the accepted research ethic in his fields, criminology and sociology, which he sees as “an intellectual side water with little hope of effectively confronting contemporary injustice” (p. 78). As an alternative, he cites philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend, who wrote that “the only principle that does not inhibit progress is: anything goes” (p. 73). Therefore, to Ferrell, the way to break out of this intellectually deadening quicksand is to challenge all methodological orthodoxies, to put down the data sets and go back out into the field where researchers are vulnerable and outcomes unpredictable. In the end, this could produce research with some relevance outside of the academy.

The question of relevance surfaces repeatedly throughout the book. Several contributors (in particular Paul Routledge, Stevphen Shukaitis, David Graeber, and Deric Shannon) discuss the role—if any—of radical academics in social movements. These essays are some of the most compelling, as they offer pointed critiques of the academy that are directed toward other academics, as well as suggestions for how to resist institutionalization and maintain political commitments. This group of essays makes clear that beyond incorporating anarchist thinking into the classroom, researchers are increasingly considering their role in the larger society and, in doing so, attempting to transform the very nature of academic work. On this Routledge is direct: “‘relevance’ entails making certain political commitments to a moral and political philosophy of social justice, and research is directed both toward conforming to that commitment and toward helping to realize the values that lie at its root” (p. 82). He offers very concrete suggestions—grounded in his own experience with the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA)—for how to make this a reality.

In focusing explicitly on the need to direct research toward the world outside the classroom, Routledge echoes many of the ideas found in Constituent Imaginations, a recent collection edited by Shukaitis and Graeber that explores “methods through which social research creates new possibilities for political action” and “methods and strategies of how to most effectively use the space we find ourselves in to find higher positions of subversiveness in struggle” (2007 p. 31). Despite the obvious similarities between the two books, there is a key difference: Constituent Imaginations is more concerned with drawing examples from diverse histories than with any one theoretical tradition (i.e., anarchism).

While seemingly benign, this difference is of great importance in the case of anarchism. As Graeber puts it, anarchism is not the invention of a group of nineteenth-century European theorists (eg, Kropotkin, Bakunin, and Prodhoun, all of whom are cited repeatedly throughout this book); neither did these theorists claim to invent anarchism, but rather to describe what they saw in people around them. To them, says Graeber, anarchism was “a kind of moral faith, a rejection of all forms of structural violence, inequality, or domination (anarchism literally means ‘without rulers’), and a belief that humans would be perfectly capable of getting on without them. In this sense, there have always been anarchists, and presumably, always will be” (p. 105).

A few authors in Contemporary Anarchist Studies do reaffirm this sentiment: in his admonition against the creation of “anarchist studies” departments, Shukaitis notes the tendency inherent in this line of thinking to understand anarchism as a word, a socio-political identity, rather than as an ethic or set of practices that could go by other names. The latter perspective, he claims, reveals “a much richer and more global tradition of social and political thought and organization that while not raising a black flag in the air is very useful for expanding the scope of human possibilities in a libratory direction” (p. 170). Conceiving of anarchism as a natural, rather than affected, tendency opens up the potential for much greater affinities across cultural, geographic, and historical lines.

Some scholars included in this book utilize the broader conception of anarchism described by Graeber and Shukaitis. During his time as a participant in the anti-corporate globalization movement in Barcelona, Jeffrey S. Juris observed a proliferation of anarchist ideas and practices; yet when he asked activists to describe their political identities, most avoided adopting a specific label and instead chose to borrow from various contemporary and historical perspectives, only one of which is anarchism. Juris sees this flexibility and inclusiveness as a major strength of these types of movements. In her section on combating gender violence (mentioned above), Emily Gaarder also points out that though restorative justice is in line with anarchist principles, the two are not explicitly associated and many of its practitioners would not identify as anarchists. Caroline K. Kaltefleiter inverts this process by reclaiming the Riot Grrl movement, arguing that what mainstream society came to represent as simply a music and fashion style was based on an anarchist politics. Through her discussion of girl zines and street activism, Kalrefleiter explains how Riot Grrl was—and still is—“a fluid sphere of resistance, source of empowerment, and viable agency for social change” (p. 226).

Still, these examples are all drawn from a relatively narrow range of cultures. Graeber, on the other hand, mentions his doctoral research in rural Madagascar where villages were largely self-governed and made decisions by consensus, two practices lauded by anarchist groups around the world. Nowhere else in the book are anarchism’s myriad debts to indigenous practices mentioned, which points to the more general issue of what perspectives are and are not included. Men’s voices dominate, both as authors and editors, a shortcoming all too common in anarchist groups and projects. The introduction does acknowledge this imbalance, but there is little discussion of why or how to address it.

Though the relationship between anarchism and the university can be tenuous, Contemporary Anarchist Studies makes compelling arguments—both theoretical and practical—for ways radical academics can use their privileged positions to further social movements without sacrificing their political ideals. This book itself is a compelling example: the editors worked as a collective and made decisions by consensus, a process that, in their words, “mirrors anarchism itself” (p. 6). That the end result was published by Routledge, a respected academic press, is proof that anarchism is alive and growing in the academy.

Trash, Migration, and Exclusion in the Borderlands

This is long overdue. I read Leo Banks’ article when I was in Tucson last spring and was beyond outraged at its racism and ignorance. This type of thinking has to be challenged and exposed for what it is and what it is really saying.

In the US/Mexico Borderlands, battles are fought over trash. For years the media and anti-immigrant activists—from the Minutemen to Sheriff Joe Arpaio to Fox News—have used the issue of trash left in the desert by unauthorized migrants as a rallying point to advocate for more vigilant border enforcement. More recently, federal authorities have begun issuing littering citations to humanitarian groups that leave water in the desert for migrants. These commentators and government representatives move easily from this representation of a fragile desert ecosystem under threat of destruction by migrants and their allies to a more general xenophobic representation of a US under threat of invasion by “illegal aliens.” Yet underlying these stories about desert littering—and, by extension, the discourse of an “alien invasion”—are extremely simplistic and problematic conceptions of nature, space, and migration in general. By working together to naturalize borders and a politics of exclusion, these misconceptions have very real material consequences, like the deaths of thousands of migrants in the desert in the last fifteen years.

Such an appeal to pop environmentalism is powerful—it is hard to argue that trash in the desert is not a problem. Leo Bank’s feature article in last spring’s Tucson Weekly is full of photos of piles of discarded backpacks and water bottles meant to inspire action on the part of a previously uninformed populace. “Have you had your holy-smokes moment yet regarding our illegal-immigration crisis?” he asks at the beginning. “If not, travel to Arizona’s border region, and go off-road to the game trails, mountain passes and grassland flats that make this area so magical. In many places, the magic is gone, lost beneath piles of garbage.” He then sets out to dramatically describe the amount of “trash has been dropped since this invasion began.”

There are a number of shortcomings to this logic. Most simply, it is based on a romanticized view of nature as something pristine and external to humans, something outside our cities to be visited, observed, catalogued, and enjoyed. Implicit in this characterization is the absurd assumption that the rest of us—the non-migrants—are not involved in the transformation and degradation of the environment, as if we exist independent of nature. Such naïve thinking is especially ironic in the southwest, where fast growing, sprawling desert cities and their thirsty golf courses are turning rivers into dry streambeds (Tucson, Phoenix, Las Vegas, etc).

Likewise there is the ecological havoc wrought by the increasing militarization of the border to consider. The 2005 Read ID Act exempted construction of the border wall from all federal environmental regulations, from the Clean Air Act to the Endangered Species Act. The wall itself cuts through sensitive, protected habitat on both sides of the boundary, and is lined on the US side by wide dirt access roads for Border Patrol vehicles. Yet Banks’s seems to think that halting migration and picking up the trash will simply return the desert to its “pre-invasion beauty.” If “pre-invasion” is going to be our benchmark standard, it might be more useful to consider other invasions of the southwest, such as the colonization of the Americas by Europe.

Another issue here is the treatment of migration as an isolated incident that begins only when someone crosses the US/Mexico boundary. On the contrary, migration is tied to a complex web of interrelated environmental, social, economic, and political forces acting unevenly over space and time. A long history of US military intervention in the region, free trade agreements like NAFTA, and the mandated imposition of neoliberal policies are just a few of the factors that bear considering. Yet nowhere does Banks ask why so many people are walking through the desert to begin with, or why there are “backpacks, clothing, food cans, toothpaste, toys, water bottles,” as well as bibles, religious statues, birth certificates, and diapers, discarded along the trails. Calling all this trash obscures the reality of what is happening out there: people are traveling great distances and taking great risks, children in tow, hoping to establish a new life for themselves in the United States. But why? Instead of investigating this basic questions, Banks mocks an out-of-town church volunteer who, after picking up trash, said it “tells stories of ‘hardship and hope.’” “She’s delusional,” Banks says. “The hardship is mostly self-imposed, and there is no hope in garbage.”

Conflating concern for the environment with more controls of migration displaces a very political issue onto the environment and works to depoliticize the border and migration. In reality, the border itself was imposed on Mexico when the US won control of what is now Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah in the Mexican-American War in 1848. The border as we now know it has been produced by a series of conflicts, campaigns, and policies that are inextricably tied to economic, political, and social changes on both sides of the border. In the last fifteen years in particular, US border policy has methodically pushed people away from the more traditional urban crossing areas (El Paso, Tijuana, Nogales) and into remote areas where geography itself has been used as a tool of deterrence. In a very specific way, therefore, the presence of so many thousands of people walking through fragile desert has everything to do with the particular ways in which the border has been produced. As the number of Border Patrol agents and fences grow, people are left with few alternatives to walking for days—and so carrying the food and water with them that ends up as trash along the way—through ecologically sensitive areas.

The US government’s attitude toward migration is clearly written onto the landscape of the Borderlands. Crossers are confronted with an array of high-tech security tools, armed guards, and towering walls. When they venture away from urban areas they enter a desert that is endlessly described as harsh, unforgiving, and uninviting, much like the United States in general for unauthorized migrants. As the journey north takes place in more remote areas, the increasing danger and difficulty seem to come from the environment itself rather than from US immigration policy, thus naturalizing both the border and the structural violence that comes with it. Nature and geography, then, become implicated in these social and political struggles, revealing the very blurry boundaries between them. And as a result, the story of political and economic policies that leave many people with few alternatives to risking their lives to leave home in search of more opportunity elsewhere simply becomes the story of irresponsible people behaving badly in a place they shouldn’t be to begin with. Moreover, humanitarian volunteers who leave life-saving bottles of water on heavily trafficked migrant trails become litters with no respect for fragile desert ecosystems and criminalizing aid becomes protecting the environment. In the end the idea that there is a clear difference between “us” over here and “them” en route becomes simplistically external and absolute and a virulent politics of exclusion is projected onto the desert.

It is important to consider the ways in which the border was—and still is—produced; in other words, we need to denaturalize it. At the foundations of these competing discourses about migration are differing ideas about space more generally: on the one had space, like nature, is empty, something through which migrants pass; on the other, the border, and our ideas about its naturalness, is a space that has been produced through practices and policies over the last hundred and fifty years. Control of the border, then, comes to be about the control of space, which also is about the manipulation and use of nature to a political end. When seen in this sense, focusing on the destruction of the desert by migrants becomes rather inane; there are much bigger acts of destruction going on, from livelihoods all over Mexico and Central America to the lives of the hundreds of migrants who die in the desert every year.

It is important to understand how turning to the environment as a proxy for battles over migration misidentifies a very political international issue as very local and apolitical, and how it carries with it much larger ideas about the relationship between the US and Mexico. At their best the arguments of people like Banks are shortsighted or disingenuous; at their worst they are dangerously misleading. And at their root lurks the enduring violence and xenophobia that has plagued the relationship of the US to its southern neighbors for centuries.

Public Living Room: An Incomplete History of Station 40

After too many months and emails and all-night editing sessions, Public Living Room: An Incomplete History of Station 40, 2003-2008 is finally done. Finally! In short, it is a history (just one of the many possible histories) and analysis of Station 40, a collective events space where the three authors lived for a few years. You can read it on screen or download it to print (it’s designed to print on legal-sized paper). Enjoy.

Life and Death on the Border

Check out the Northeast Anarchist Network’s most recent issue of their print publication, The Nor’easter. It includes this article of mine about the border.

Paulino was from Puebla but had lived in the U.S. for seven years. After his mother died, he returned to Mexico for her funeral and then had to figure out how to get back to his life north of the border. He decided to bring with him his two youngest daughters, Arleta (age 9) and Jacquelin (age 14), who had been living with their grandmother. They began their walk through the brutal Sonoran Desert a few days before Jacquelin’s quinceñera (fifteenth birthday party), a major milestone in the life of many Mexican girls. Their pollero (guide) assured Paulino the trip would be quick and the girls would safely be with their mother in L.A. in time for the party.

As is often the case, the trip took much longer than expected. Days of walking up and down rocky trails in the extreme heat wore them all down, especially Jacquelin. She became sick and unable to keep up with the rest of the group. The pollero left the three of them behind. The next day, Paulino tried unsuccessfully to flag down a passing Border Patrol helicopter. He was considering starting a brush fire to get some attention when we ran into him.

They were miles from any road, in the middle of the desert, and Jacquelin was not doing well. She had turned 15 the day before, but their circumstances diminished the significance of the event. That July afternoon it was 110 degrees in the shade. Unfortunately, there is very little shade in the desert.

It was my first day volunteering with No More Deaths, an organization based in Tucson that provides direct humanitarian aid to people crossing the border in southern Arizona. We had set out early that morning, the dangerous sun still low in the sky, to patrol the remote trails that crisscross the desert and lead literally thousands of people into the United States every day.

Each group of volunteers has at least one Spanish speaker and someone with medical training. Our medic tried to cool down Jacquelin’s overheated body and gave her water. Luckily, Jacquelin was in good shape – in Puebla she had been a soccer star. It did not take much to restore her strength and energy. Armed with several gallons of water, food and packets of electrolytes, the three set off to continue their journey north as the sun started to set behind the stark stone mountains to the west.

During the time I have spent volunteering with No More Deaths over the last two years, I have met many other people on the trails. Everyone has had a different story, a different reason they were risking their lives to cross the desert on foot. Many (like Paulino and his daughters) have families already in the U.S. that they are trying to join. Others leave their homes to come work for a few years, save some money and then go back. Some came to the U.S. when they were small children, lived here their whole lives and were deported. They may not speak Spanish or know anyone in the country that the U.S. government sends them back to. They are seen as “illegal” in the place they call home.

The final leg of many migrant’ journeys begins in Altar, a dusty desert town about 50 miles south of the border at Sasabe. People travel to Altar from other parts of Mexico and Central America, where they find guides to take them over the border. Most of the people we meet out in the desert came along this route.

For the last five summers, No More Deaths has operated a remote camp about 12 miles north of the official border, near the town of Arivaca, Ariz. Hundreds of people from all over the country have volunteered over the years to help run the camp, some for a week, others for months. Each morning and afternoon small groups hike some of the most trafficked trails that funnel people north toward Tucson. Volunteers carry gallons of water, first-aid kits, clean socks and food packs. Some days we encounter groups of up to 30 people who take our water and socks and keep going. We also see smaller groups or lone walkers who have been separated from their groups, which can be extremely treacherous for someone unfamiliar with the desert. Sometimes they want to keep going, sometimes they want to go back to Mexico so they can go home or try again later. Occasionally, we find sick or injured people in serious danger who need to be evacuated by ambulance or helicopter. Usually, however, we see more signs of people than the people themselves. Fresh footprints, empty water bottles, food wrappers, apple cores still yellow. Backpacks, hats, shirts, shoes. Toothbrushes, underwear, lipstick, children’s toys. The trails are littered with thousands of pieces of thousands of lives, scattered across the ground in the most inexplicable ways. We can sometimes sense their presence, but if they don’t want to be found, we won’t find them. It’s better that way – it means they don’t need help.

The border passes through one of the most brutal landscapes on the continent: thousands of square miles of harsh, dry, rocky desert inhabited by rattlesnakes, scorpions, vultures, coyotes, tarantulas and innumerable spiky, spiny plants that slice through any exposed skin. Armed bandits roam the desert trails, preying on migrants. Sometimes they work in collusion with the polleros, who lead groups straight into ambushes where everyone is robbed of all the money they are carrying to pay for their journey. Women are routinely raped, their bras and underwear left dangling from tree branches like trophies. Border Patrol abuse is all too common.

The border makes people invisible. By pushing migrants away from populated areas and out into remote desert, the border prevents most of us from witnessing and understanding the violence and brutality inherent in the U.S. immigration system – and in borders in general. People walk under cover of darkness, far from roads and houses, sometimes for five or six or more nights. When they encounter bandits or Border Patrol, there are no witnesses. When people (or a father and his two daughters) are left behind – or when they die – no one knows where to look. Most bodies are never recovered, making the official count (183 in Arizona last year) a gross underestimate. And when they reach their destinations in the U.S., migrants are often expected to remain in the shadows, on the margins.

No More Deaths helps make the border real to those of us who have never had to cross it. It ceases to be a line on a map or a wall that people have to devise a way around and becomes a place, a region, a system. It transcends politics and books, theories and debates. It’s about life and death, humanity and dignity. It is about people who have been made invisible, each with their own vibrant stories and histories and dreams, walking for days through that unforgiving, inhospitable landscape. Spending time out in the desert helps make them visible to us.

The work of No More Deaths does not end when we leave camp – the border exists and expresses itself in other ways farther north. It divides cities, neighborhoods and neighbors. It is the hazardous working conditions, minimum-wage violations and the extreme lack of security that comes from the jobs so many immigrants find when they arrive in the U.S. It is the fear to report police abuse, go to the hospital or fight an eviction. It is the stereotyping and discrimination still faced by brown people who have been in this country for generations. All systems of oppression rely on the dichotomies that are created by borders – queer/straight, man/woman, legal/illegal, us/them. The border is everywhere, but most people think they have never seen it.

In order to seriously fight the wall that supposedly separates the U.S. from Mexico, we must also fight these other borders. The most obvious inland manifestations of the border are the ICE raids on homes and workplaces that terrorize immigrant communities and destroy families. Across the country, groups have been forming and organizing to fight the raids. Many cities now have hotlines that people can call for emergency advice if they think ICE is in the area. In other places – like San Francisco, Rhode Island and Watsonville, Calif. – people have created rapid response networks, phone trees used to mobilize people who are able to challenge, disrupt or publicize immigration raids. Other similar projects are in the works elsewhere.

Borders are integral to the functioning of capitalism, a system based on division and exploitation. Every day we have the opportunity to confront the oppressive, violent, hateful reality that results, be it by making the desert safer for people on their way to the U.S. or by challenging the power dynamics in our interpersonal relationships. No More Deaths is just one avenue through which we can take action to help bring about a borderless world; others are created daily. All are essential.

Into the Beautiful North

Another review of mine (though pretty heavily edited)  is up on Boldtype.

“The border runs down the middle of me,” Luis Alberto Urrea, the son of a Mexican cop and a New York socialite, once claimed. This physical and psychological “border” also divides Urrea’s newest novel, Into the Beautiful North, into two parts — Sur and Norte — turning a whimsical coming-of-age travel story into an exploration of transnational migration.

The story begins as a group of shady bandidos starts harassing people in the tiny Mexican village of Tres Camarones. With all the town’s men off working in the US — including the only cop — 19-year-old Nayeli is forced to come up with her own plan of defense. After seeing The Magnificent Seven at the local theater, she decides to go to the US to recruit seven Mexican men to come back and defend the town. The journey takes Nayeli, her two angsty girlfriends, and her gay boss out of their isolated village and into the swirling chaos of the US/Mexico border, where they encounter many of the characters from Urrea’s award-winning nonfiction — predatory Mexican police, US Border Patrol agents, glue-sniffing street kids, menacing coyotes. But amid these devilish sorts, there is also an element of absurdity, most notably in Atómiko, the staff-wielding, pole-vaulting superhero from the Tijuana trash dumps who joins their bumbling gang.

Despite the misogynistic overtones (i.e., the women in the village need their men to save them), Into the Beautiful North is a valuable addition to the growing body of border literature. Urrea touches on many tensions that affect people on both sides of the fence — from the effects of migration on families to the decidedly un-Hollywood reality of arriving in the US — while imbuing the story with a touch of the fantastical. The result is an exceptional tale that transposes the polarizing discourse of immigration politics with a rambunctious adventure that shows there is still some magic left in our troubled world.

More Jeff in Venice

This very brief adaptation of my much longer review of Geoff Dyer’s Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi was just published on Bold Type.

Geoff Dyer’s work often grapples with two extremes: peak experience (Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It) and total existential breakdown (Out of Sheer Rage). He and his characters — who are too easy to think of as Dyer himself — bounce around the globe in their explorations of the terrain between these two poles. At times they strike a balance, if only for a brief moment. Other times, they just keep moving, in search of better parties, more spectacular beaches, or more fulfilling relationships — as if they can outrun their demons.

Dyer brings this framework to his latest novel, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, a peculiar homage to Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice. The book is actually two stories that are never explicitly connected, though plenty of details suggest the character in each is the same. Both are insecure, disillusioned British writers in their mid-40s who use their assignments as opportunities to reinvent themselves. One travels to Venice, ostensibly to review the flashy Biennale, but is really there for the parties; the other, while on assignment in Varanasi, India, (also known as Benares) loses himself in the swirling intensity of the holy city. The first meets a woman, does some coke, and ends up right where he started, just hungover and lonelier. The second undergoes a sort of spiritual rebirth and emerges seemingly blissful and content (though a little unhinged). Dyer does a characteristically masterful job of painting a magical picture of the two watery, dreamlike cities as a backdrop.

On the surface, this is a slight departure from the youthful romanticism of Dyer’s previous fiction. The travel and parties are still enjoyable, although this time, they’re competing with a nagging angst that rarely goes away. But at second glance, the old Dyer is still there, still waging a war against the tedium of modern life — he’s simply older, calmer, and less naïve. The two writers in Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi are ultimately caricatures of two clichéd approaches to finding happiness, and the book ends so absurdly that it’s clear Dyer still finds humor in the drama of existence.

State Violence, Police Raids, and Dissent in London

The following was written by the RampART Collective, a group that maintains a social center in East London that was raided during the G20 summit a few weeks ago. It does a good job of framing police violence as systemic rather than based on the aberrant behavior of a few bad cops. It was originally posted on London Indymedia.

On the Thursday following the G20 protests, two squatted social centres in East London were raided by riot police, apparently looking for instigators of the attacks on the Royal Bank of Scotland. RampART Social Centre, which has existed for more than four years, and a newly opened Convergence Centre in Earl Street were both being used to house and feed protesters throughout the period of the G20 summit. In both cases, the police acted illegally but, other than a brief report in the Independent which referred to unwarranted violence, the raids remained largely unreported. In both buildings, people were subjected to physical violence and verbal abuse and those that were arrested were later ‘de-arrested’ for lack of any supporting evidence. Our only ‘crime’, it seems, is that we are political activists and squatters and thus deemed to be suitable targets. If only we had kept our heads down and stayed away from these kinds of activities, the logic goes, we would not deserve what we had coming.

It is right and proper that the events leading up to the death of Ian Tomlinson should be the subject of a criminal investigation but the danger, as we see it, is that it will be seen as an isolated incident and will be dealt with simply by disciplining individual officers, only serving to further obscure the role of the police in perpetuating a climate of fear. Under the terms of the global surveillance state, citizenship has become an exercise in evading a charge of deviance. In fact, the proliferation of forms of deviance is the flip side of the supposed ‘lifestyle choices’ available under the terms of consumer citizenship. You can ‘choose’ to spend your money on home improvements, high fashion and high-tech gadgets and are applauded for making the ‘right’ choices. But if you choose to occupy an unused building for the purposes of providing space for political discussion, self-education and creative activities without the intrusion of CCTV cameras or access restrictions, and particularly if you refuse to levy a charge which situates these activities in terms of market forces, then you effectively become outlaw. And, if you choose to express your outrage at a system that produces inequalities and then condemns those that become unemployed and homeless, you become a target for repression. The differences between Tomlinson and the people who went to the Bank of England to demonstrate against the iniquitous excesses of neoliberal capitalism are marginal, despite attempts to distinguish between ‘innocent’ bystanders and ‘guilty’ protesters. Tomlinson was on his way home from work. The demonstrators were exercising their lawful right to protest. Both were exercising their right to the city as citizens of a supposed democracy.

When RampART social centre was raided on the Thursday, members of the volunteer collective were sitting down to a cup of coffee and biscuits. Other members were elsewhere in the building speaking to some guests who had come to stay for the duration of the protests. We were aware of the massing of officers outside the building but were used to the presence of a Forward Intelligence Team, the police paparazzi,who had been frequent visitors to Rampart Street in the weeks leading up to the G20, photographing and scrutinising anyone entering the building. And so, for us, it was business as usual.

At the Convergence Centre, the police seemed to be employing a new tactic whereby people being searched before entering the building had their mobile phones confiscated and were threatened with arrest unless they could ‘prove ownership’. Essentially, this amounted to an attempt to illegally secure personal details.

The raid itself was surreal. Or rather, it was hyperreal, in the sense that, as some of us commented later, it was like being on the wrong side of a ‘first person shooter’ video game. Some of us thought the men and women in balaclavas, padded uniforms, helmets and carrying riot shields were pointing toy guns at us. In fact, as we discovered later, they were tasers, which are designed to stun but are occasionally known to kill.

It’s tempting to say that the violence that we experienced was out of all proportion to the level of resistance which was, in fact, zero. But to even speak of proportionality is a mistake, because it implies that there is something in our actions that warrants a violent response. One member of the collective was punched in the face, another was pushed downstairs, saw someone have his head smashed against the wall and was met with looks of disbelief when he pleaded with officers to protect his glasses. One of the residents of the building was punched and kicked, narrowly avoided taser fire and was arrested in his pyjamas.

We would stress again that this happened to people who, like Ian Tomlinson, were simply exercising their most basic civil rights: to congregate peacefully with friends and to walk the streets unmolested. Some might think that we are opportunistically linking what happened to us with Tomlinson, and would want to make a clear distinction. After all, he was a regular bloke in the wrong place at the wrong time, and we were deliberately taking part in political activism. But to continue in this vein is lose all semblance of what it means to live with even a modicum of freedom and self-respect.

The press reported that four (and, in some reports, six) arrests had been made during the raids on RampART and the Convergence Space. Two known to us personally were held in police cells for up to ten hours, had their clothes confiscated and were sent home in Guantanamo Bay style boiler suits. News of arrests functions to assuage anxiety and to justify the cost of police operations that amount to little more than exercises in public relations. The public can rest assured that the dangerous anarchists have been infiltrated and detained and that ’scroungers’ and ‘cheats’ have been brought to book.

Comparisons have inevitably been made between Tomlinson’s death and the death of Blair Peach during an Anti-Nazi League demonstration in April, 1979, widely speculated to be as a result of assault by the police. Although Peach’s brother reached an out-of-court settlement with the Metropolitan Police in 1989, no officer was ever charged in connection with the death. Thirty years later, the same police force has been granted unprecedented powers in the name of ’security’ and justified on the basis that London is under threat from elements in the population that threaten ‘our’ way of life. The result is the proliferation of deviant identities which function as a focus for collective anxiety and paranoia (‘terrorists’, ‘anarchists’, ’squatters’, ‘foreign workers’ etc.).

Since the incidents on the 1st and 2nd of April, voices have been raised in condemnation of police actions, particularly the tactic of “kettling” which herds protesters like cattle and allows the police to punish those who attempt to escape. Back at RampART on the Wednesday evening we saw the resulting head injuries and beaten bodies If we are to avoid more deaths and injury, then we need to think seriously, not only about the powers granted to a police force that seems dangerously out of control but about the ideology that sanctions violence in the name of respectability. We need to think about what it means to be a citizen in 21st century global culture and about the treatment of those that effectively have their human rights revoked because they refuse, or are unable to conform to the dictates of consumer citizenship. We need, in short, to be aware that, as the global downturn deprives people of their homes and livelihoods, any one of us could end up on the wrong side of the divide that separates ‘us’ from ‘them’. Any one of us could become a scapegoat for the unfocused anger which results when people relinquish responsibility for their own lives and then find themselves deprived of their freedom and dignity. Places like RampART exist because some of us believe that we can reclaim our freedoms but only if we work together in a spirit of mutual respect and toleration.

A Perfect Beginning

In the phone interview several weeks ago the man told me training would be March 30 to April 3 but didn’t mention where. I assumed they’d call me closer to the start date with more details.

By last Saturday I’d still heard nothing, which made me think I actually didn’t have the job. I called the LA regional office and left a message. This morning at 9:00 AM a woman with a welcoming Mid-Western accent called me back. I think her name was Linda. She wasn’t sure which training site I was supposed to go to but said she’d look into it and get back to me.

Just before 11:00 my phone rang. This time it was a man, and he had a very different and difficult to understand accent. He told me I needed to be at St. Brigid’s Catholic Church by noon. It’s near 52nd and Western. When I said that was impossible he wasn’t pleased. The training had started at 8:00 that morning, he pointed out, so I should get there as soon as possible.

I walked home, took a shower, ate lunch, and rode six and a half miles to the church. After I locked up my bike I checked the time – 12:30, better than I’d expected – and saw the man had called me three times while I was riding. I called him back.

‘I’m sorry I was so hard on you,’ he said. I wasn’t quite sure what he meant. ‘I made a mistake – I told you the wrong location. There are two people with your name. Your training is at the Hollywood Youth and Family Center.’ That’s six blocks from my house. I said it would take me a while to get there.

‘But there’s good news,’ he assured me. ‘Your training doesn’t start until tomorrow.’

Welcome to the US Census Bureau.

Places in Between

A Family Affair

Everyday when the middle school across the street lets out, people line up on the sidewalk to sell snacks to the students. Whole families cluster on one corner, each offering something different. Mothers have little carts full of Doritos, Funyons, and Hot Cheetos (everybody’s favorite). Young daughters stand shyly behind coolers overflowing with Coke and Gatorade. At the end of the row fathers wrap hot dogs in bacon and grill them on portable griddles. All of it is on wheels.

As soon as the bell rings kids swarm them, a short stop on the way to the corner of 1st and Vermont where boys practice kick flips and girls chat excitedly. Some days a cop sits in his car across the street and eyes them all suspiciously. Everyone’s got a bag of chips or a drink in their hand, fingertips stained red by the Cheetos.

Half an hour later the students are gone and the sidewalks by the school empty. Colorful wrappers lay in the gutter. The families pack up their wares and wheel them away down the street, grills still sizzling, off to some other opportune corner.