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Modesto Anarcho interview in The Signal

by MA
Interview with the campus newspaper, the CSU Stanislaus Signal.
Not our political posters
Modesto Anarcho alterations about recent Signal article
By: Lisa Rigdon
http://www.csusignal.com/media/storage/paper1217/news/2007/11/07/News/Not-Our.Political.Posters-3084329-page2.shtml

An article from the Oct. 17 edition of The Signal claimed that Modesto Anarcho was responsible for plastering political posters on the west side of the California State University, Stanislaus campus because the phrases on the posters were identical or similar to the messages published in Modesto Anarcho's quarterly journal.

The phrases on these political posters included "Freedom Is Free," "Cook cops, not meth," "Coercion is the central principle of government," and "Know your rights & resist the police state."

In a letter to the editor and Signal staff, Modesto Anarcho said, "we do not take credit or claim responsibility for the various posters that have been appearing throughout the walls of the university. Although we are overjoyed that people are attempting to communicate with each other about important issues. . . sadly we are not the renegade artists that you make us out to be."

To clarify their position on this subject, and to voice their true objectives and mission statement, MA permitted The Signal to conduct an interview via e-mail.

MA prefered that the members of their organization remain annonymous in this article.

MA does not consider themselves to be a "group," but rather "a handful of friends that work together on various projects."

Their ongoing projects include their self-titled quarterly journal that is "distributed freely in various spots throughout the Central Valley." MA said their publication can be found in PDF form on their Web site at http://www.geocities.com/anarcho209 and they "also [deliver] free orders to prisoners."

MA tries to "publish texts and flyers [about] various issues in the local area, be they rent strikes, labor strikes, issues with the police, etc.," as another part of their ongoing projects, which has led to them running booths and tables at various events in the Central Valley with the aforementioned published material, they said.

Initially they were inspired to create their publication as "the desire to spread ideas and connect with other regular folks who [were also] tired of the state of the world," MA said. They feel that, "large corporate owned media isn't interested in representing the views and actions of everyday people in a positive light," and that the mass media "alienates us into the roles of passive observers."

MA said their publication, as well as similar publications, exist so, "regular folks [can] find other avenues in which [they] can express [their] ideas, talk about the realities of daily life and what [they] are going to do about them."

Ultimately MA wants to live in "a classless and stateless society with other free and autonomous individuals." To elaborate on this they said, "we would like to live in a world that is without any sort of hierarchical social organization, be it economic (capitalism, wage-slavery, state socialism, ecological degradation), political (nation-states), or social (sexism, racism, homophobia, etc.)."

"We are part of a current that wishes to see the end of both masters and slaves, of employees and bosses, of citizens and Presidents," MA said.

MA accepts that "a society like this would take a complete social transformation (or social revolution) to replace the existing [society] we currently live in." Therefore, in order to cause this social transformation, they "support direct action that bypasses established political channels to get things done directly," they said.

They discussed several examples of regular people "carrying out [their] collective struggles in a non-hierarchical and non-reformist way." MA said people's actions to "go about changing society and [by so creating] the kind of world we'd like to live in are central [to] what makes our publication what it is."

The concept of people taking action to change society brings up whether MA advocates violence to further their causes. MA did not confirm or deny whether they advocated violence, but instead said, "how will any people's fight for freedom be able to remain totally non-violent when it faces so much violence from the system?"

MA did not seem surprised that they were accused of plastering the posters on the CSU Stanislaus campus. "We find this to be the norm with most mainstream media organizations and power structures, be they right or left wing," MA said.

"To them (the media), any sort of action that comes from the people that is self organized has to come from some sort of "group" or "organization," because their logic goes: normal people aren't smart enough to do things themselves. Actually, quite the opposite is true; most change that comes from the people happens when normal folks get together, self-organize and actively try and change the conditions of their lives."

Beyond their publication MA does not carry out formal meetings, but they do run various forums on their web site. MA is willing to attend events in order to spread their publication as well as other literature that supports their projects. They also encourage people who have questions about MA to e-mail them at anarcho209 [at] yahoo.com or send standardized mail to Modesto Anarcho, P.O. Box 3027, Modesto, CA 95353.

MA said their causes and their publications are being mostly well received in the Central Valley.

"For a small group of regular folks who produce a revolutionary publication aimed at the destruction of bourgeois civilization, we think we do very well."

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Entire Interview:
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1. How did your group form itself?

We would not consider Modesto Anarcho a "group" we are simply a handful of friends that works together on various projects. Since early 2007, MA has had several ongoing projects that we'd like people to know about. The first is of course our publication, which we publish every three months and distribute freely in various spots throughout the Central Valley (California State University Stanislaus is one). We also produce a PDF copy of the journal that people can view for free on our website at: http://www.geocities.com/anarcho209. Modesto Anarcho produces a radio show that you can listen to on 106.1 FM. We also run a large literature distribution project that tables at various place such as social events, music concerts, and bars. Our "distro" is a mail order project that people can order from and we also do free orders to prisoners. So if you know someone that's locked up, drop us a line. Lastly, we try to publish texts and flyers around various issues in the local area, be they rent strikes, labor strikes, issues with the police, etc. We post these up on our website or on the internet so that people can download them and make copies in the hopes that others will use them to further their various struggles. For instance, in the run up to the CSU faculty strike last year, many teachers put up copies of our flyer about the strike that read "If the teachers go on strike...let's join 'em!." By doing this, we hope to share resources and ideas.

2. What inspired you to create the journal that you publish?

The desire to spread ideas and connect with other regular folks who are tired of the state of the world is our main desire for publishing Modesto Anarcho. Obviously, large corporate owned media isn't interested in representing the views and actions of everyday people in a positive light. The mass media is a vehicle for manufacturing consensus on what people think and reduces what is happening all around us to that of a "spectacle" which alienates us into the roles of passive observers.

Locally we can see this quite often in media reports about interactions between institutions of power and regular people. For instance, last year in Modesto police brutally beat and attacked young people coming out of a concert featuring a DJ. Through the media, police were able to play up the image of "hyphy" and use it's reputation as an excuse for attacking youth of color. The local media ate this up and spewed it out to the public without any sort of critical analysis. Despite the fact that no charges against anyone arrested the night of the "hyphy riot" were ever found to be true and many young people testified to the brutality of the police, the media was able to play up white middle class fears of rampaging black youth and a the need for a "valiant" police force to beat them, in order to sell papers. The mass media, like all institutions of the upper class and the rich, are not neutral. This means that regular people don't have equal access to them as do people in power, the police, and businesses. Thus, as regular folks we need to find other avenues in which we can express our ideas, talk about the realities of daily life, and what we are going to do about them. This is why a publication like Modesto Anarcho exists.

3. What other groups are you affiliated with in the Central Valley and beyond?

There are not many "groups" in the central valley and few share our political outlook, so we find we are mostly drawn to working with individuals and networks of friends.

4. What is your formal mission statement/purpose for your organization?

We want to live a classless and stateless society with other free and autonomous individuals. By that we mean that we would like to live in a world that is without any sort of hierarchal social organization, be it economic (capitalism, wage-slavery, state socialism, ecological degradation), political (nation-states), or social (sexism, racism, homophobia, etc). We would like to see human communities based upon complete and widespread direct control by all people over their needs and existence. This means a totally self-organized and self-managed society with power generating from the bottom and spread out horizontally to others. This means people freely, ecologically, and autonomously working together for our own needs and desires, not for profits or for the state. At times this belief in a society organized without hierarchy has been called "anarchism" or "anarchy" by some, but similar ideas have also been expressed by groups and peoples such as Zapatistas, indigenous, Situationsits, autonomists, anti-state communists, and more. We can see these types of self-organized communally run societies existing in the anarchist revolutions of Spain in 1936 and the Ukraine in the 1920's, the current Zapatista communities in Chiapas, the !Kung gatherer-hunters in Africa, the workers councils of Hungry in 1956 and Paris in 1968, and many more. We are part of a current that wishes to see the end of both masters and slaves, of employees and bosses, of citizens and Presidents.

Of course, a society like this would take a complete social transformation (or social revolution) to replace the existing one we currently live in. The question then is how do we get there? In short, we support direct action that bypasses established political channels to get things done directly. We also want to organize ourselves based around the same ideas that we'd like to see in a future society, meaning we'd like to organize for change without any sort of hierarchal structure that doesn't allow different groups to be autonomous of each other. This means that we find ourselves outside of the statist, reformist, and authoritarian "left-wing" that is comprised mainly of liberals, Marxist-Leninists, and union bureaucrats. These people want a different set of bosses telling us what to do; we want to abolish them altogether. At the same time, we find a lot of inspiration for how to go about creating change just by looking at the various struggles in our own communities that are happening all the time.

Many of these examples people may already be very familiar with. For instance, in the summer of 2006, many school students in Central Valley and beyond organized themselves into various autonomous groups and networks and started walking out of their schools in protest of proposed legislation aimed at economic refugees living in the United States . The movement quickly grew and spread, even though many unions and political parties called on people not to take action. Many people refused to listen however, and on May 1st 2006 over 10,000 people actually shut down downtown Modesto with an un-permitted march. In order to avoid conceding the success of the movement, police and the media framed the protests as an example of "democracy in action," but the reality was that thousands of regular people actually brought the city of Modesto to a standstill. While the structure and nature of the actions leading up to May 1st could in a sense be called "anarchist" or "anti-authoritarian," those involved were largely politically unaffiliated. In this example as in many others, we see not only a way of carrying out collective struggle in a non-hierarchal and non-reformist way, but we also can see within these struggles the seeds of a future society that exists without exploitation and oppression. These ideas about how to go about changing society and also the kind of world we'd like to live in are central to what makes our publication what it is.

5. What specific groups and/or causes does your organization support?

We support groups and individuals who we feel represent our ideas and are struggling against the current order in ways we have an affinity with. On our website at http://www.geocities.com/anarcho209/links we have a large link library in which people can check out various social movements, projects, and groups that we find worth supporting.

6. Does your group have formal meetings for the public to attend?

Modesto Anarcho runs a website at: http://www.geocities.com/anarcho209 and also a myspace page at: http://www.myspace.com/modanarcho. On both of these websites you can find out about various events that are going on in the local area that we find interesting. We also table (set up stalls with literature and information) at a variety of events. The information about when and where we will be tabling is on our websites and people can come out and talk with us.. If people like what we are about, we encourage them to invite us to show up at their events. People can also email us at: anarcho209 [at] yahoo.com.

7. Beyond your journal, do you provide a forum, either virtually or in person, where people can talk about issues related to your organization's mission and/or purpose?

There have been several Anarchist Cafés organized in the Modesto area. An Anarchist Café is a social space in which people get together to talk, share resources, participate in workshops, listen to bands, eat and share food, etc. There have also been various educational events that have happened around the Modesto area; film showings, speakers, etc. There are several ongoing projects that we work on as well. For instance some of us are involved in an ongoing Radical Mental Health Discussion Group, in which people can come together to collectively talk about their problems. For information about this project, you can email: cvradicalmentalhealth [at] yahoo.com. People can also post on our website's message board and we welcome feedback, either by "snail" or email in regards to our publication or our ideas. To get in contact with us through the mail, write to: Modesto Anarcho, PO Box 3027 , Modesto CA 95353 .

8. Does your group advocate violence to further its cause(s)?

Modesto Anarcho does not support an economy that forces people with the threat of violence to choose between wage slavery and starvation. We do not support an economy that forces people with the threat of violence to choose between homelessness and rent slavery. We do not support an economy that globally forces people with the threat of violence to flee their homelands and become economic refugees in order to feed their families, while at the same time facing the threat of more possible violence while crossing arbitrary borders. We do not support violent government sanctioned killing, displacement, and maiming of people with bombs, wars, and occupation. We do not support the violent killing of people in the name of religious fundamentalism or political authoritarianism. We do not support the violent removal of indigenous people from their lands. We do not support the violent destroying of the earth and it's ecosystems for the sake of profit or the state. We do not support the violent killing and shooting of people for the crime of being poor and of color as the police here and everywhere do so regularly. We do not support an ever expanding surveillance and prison complex that is based completely on violence that locks up people for the crime of being poor and of color everyday. We do not support a violent hierarchal society that places working and poor people in poverty and leads them into addiction, drug abuse, and stealing from their own communities.

We do not support any of these things and more, because we understand them to be systems that are based on threats of violence. A better question would be - how will any people's fight for freedom be able to remain totally non-violent when it faces so much violence from this system?

9. Do you formally state that your group is not responsible for the posters that have been put up on campus at California State University , Stanislaus?

We do not take credit or claim responsibility for the various posters that you report to be appearing throughout the walls of the university. Although we are overjoyed that people are attempting to communicate with each other about important issues, sadly we are not the renegade artists that The Signal made us out to be. While an organization that seeks to recuperate the actions of others may happily claim to be behind "front page news," we however want to participate with others in collective revolt and struggle, not be the directors of it.

10. The aforementioned posters use phrases such as, "Freedom is free," "Cook cops, not meth," "Coercion is the central principle of government," "Kill your boss," "Don't vote it only encourages them -- Anarchy" and, "Know your rights & resist the police state." Does your group support any of these phrases?

We feel that the best way for people to understand where we are coming from (beyond this interview) is for people to read Modesto Anarcho.

11. What is your reaction to being mistaken for the group responsible for the posters placed at CSU, Stanislaus?

Various types of political and social communication, be they stickers, posters, flyers, notes scribbled in bathroom stalls, etc, have been appearing on CSU probably since the first wall went up. Copies of Modesto Anarcho have been seen laying around the campus for the past couple of months. Obviously, people won't stop commenting or sharing their distain and frustration with the current system whether our publication exists or not. For that reason, we found the article in The Signal to be quite funny because we felt that it placed a large amount of importance on us. We find this to be the norm with most mainstream media organizations and power structures, be they right or left wing. To them, any sort of action that comes from the people that is self-organized has to come from some sort of "group" or "organization," because their logic goes, normal people aren't smart enough to do things themselves. Actually, quite the opposite is true; most change that comes from the people happens when normal folks get together, self-organize, and actively try and change the conditions of their lives.

12. Does your group advertise its personal messages beyond the publication of your journal or what is published on your web site?

Our primary mode of connecting with people is mostly through going to events with literature and information and just talking with people. At the time of writing this interview, the Modesto Anarcho Crew tabled at a local MEChA group event at MJC, a Craft Fair in Modesto, and a punk rock show in Patterson. The connections that we build with people through face to face communication is what is the most important for us and it is also that affinity and friendship which will hopefully lead to a revolutionary movement.

13. How do you feel your group is being received in the Central Valley?

Very well actually. From striking teachers putting up our flyers, to young kids taking copies of Modesto Anarcho back to their class rooms, from prisoners writing to tell us how they are setting up discussion groups in their cells, to people just letting us know that they enjoy our publication, for a small group of regular folks who produce a revolutionary publication aimed at the destruction of bourgeois civilization, we think we do very well.

More background information: http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20071025115943977
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