Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
Interview with a Tupamaro
I think he was very circumspect in that interview. I’d have to know more about him to say more, but there was lots of interesting stuff buried in what I took to be liberal conventional wisdom.
One thing the left and left-sympathetic libertarians could use in this country is a something along the lines of a widely distributed—no central node, one central ideal—mutual aid network. From there, it’s easy to apply broad pressure while minimizing individual exposure to harrassment. The left academics have that to a certain extent. The people whose stories you put in “Murdering of My Years” do not.
Little things that have enjoyed success as steps away from the mindless dominance games of neoliberal capitalism are co-ops and credit unions.
Posted by harry on from 11/24 at 11:25 AMThanks, Harry...you’re dead on as far as I’m concerned. In a naive way, I was expecting something different when I got the chance to speak with Conteris. A magic formula? I dunno. His words of caution combined with his historical context are valuable...but, as you state, we need more connections made and more support available ASAP.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from 11/24 at 11:33 AMIf I were limited to just one criticism of the dissenting movement(s), it would be that most have set overly ambitious goals. If people engaged in dissent were able to get, say, three months groceries or places to live on short notice, we’d have a humane version of the notorious good old boy networks. No yachts or cushy sinecures, of course, but keeping body and soul together with some shelter means a lot when you’re struggling to act in accord with your conscience.
A lot of the Duoploy’s party base would jump at something that had more meaning and potential for meaningful action. Most of the time people can’t see something until they’re right in the midst of it. I joke with friends about writing sometimes, you can’t get published unless you’re already published. The corollary is, mutual aid is incomprehensible until you’re actually doing it.
Posted by harry on from 11/24 at 12:26 PMYour ideas are provocative, Harry. You have my mind working overtime.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from 11/24 at 01:44 PMI’ve been communicating with friends about this for a while. We, as a people, have the technology and the tech people to make resource allocation work, but personality clashes and opportunistic freeloading have been a real obstacle. The “friend of a friend” reputation system breaks down after a few degrees. Another obstalce is an ongoing debate about persuading Big Money to back it.
It works, oddly enough, in the free and open source software movements. They have millions of people and therefore have the badly needed redundancy essential to major undertakings. Support is distributed, so eight hundred pound financial gorillas have a tough time coopting. It’s far from perfect, but it has worked so far.
The question I’ve never been able to answer positively is, “can I make a living doing this?”. There are individuals who, thanks to exceptional ability and steadfast ethics, manage to create things that last a while, but that’s not good enough for people with extensive commitments. Reducing footprint and needs is hard on people who have been sucked into the system for decades. Employer healthcare plans are big, effective chains.
Any project that gets going needs boosting from public figures viewed by a majority of the participants as beyond reproach.
Posted by harry on from 11/24 at 02:43 PMUruguay—the secret country. did you catch Galeano’s great post on znet recently about the elections there?
seems to me that the ties that bind us to our current amerikkkan lifestyle are more like drugs than chains. and so, to continue that metaphor, we need to go cold turkey (how appropriate). see ran prieur’s blog for inspiration, among many others.Posted by stacy on from 11/24 at 06:29 PMGaleano’s post was brilliant...not that I’d expect anything less.
Here’s something I wrote a while back on those “ties that bind”:
In the most remote regions of Brazil, slave labor is employed to cut down grand swaths of the precious rain forest to make room to grow eucalyptus which is then burned by male slaves (who exploit the body, mind, and spirit of female slaves forced into prostitution) to make charcoal for the steel mills of Brazil where the poorest of the poor toil for wages that do not sustain them so that steel can be shipped to a General Motors plant in Mexico (GM is now the second largest employer south of the border...Walmart is first) where the poorest of the poor endure maquiladora conditions so these automobile parts can then be shipped to a GM plant in the U.S. (roughly 50 percent of what is termed “trade” consists of business transactions between branches of the same transnational corporation) where even the poorest of the poor proudly take on imposing debt to possess a car “made in the U.S.A.” so they can clog the highways that were paved over inestimable eco-systems, filling the air with noxious pollution as they make their way to the drive-through window of an anti-union fast food restaurant that purchased the beef of slaughtered cattle that once grazed on land cleared by male slaves who exploit the body, mind, and spirit of female slaves in the most remote regions of Brazil…
Posted by Mickey Z. on from 11/24 at 06:32 PM
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