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Suburban Insurrection: Palo Alto Finds the Beach Beneath the Streets
Not sense newspaper boxes broke through the windows of the INS building in San Francisco have I felt this re-energized and uplifted in regards to militant, illegal street protest in the aftermath of the Reclaim the Streets action in Palo Alto. The event was organized by Anarchist Action, an ad hoc group of various anarchist collectives and affinity groups throughout the bay area, and was billed as a “revolutionary street party”, and “suburban inserrection”.
Suburban Insurrection: Palo Alto Finds the Beach Beneath the Streets By crudo
“Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.”
George Orwell
Not sense newspaper boxes broke through the windows of the INS building in San Francisco have I felt this re-energized and uplifted in regards to militant, illegal street protest in the aftermath of the Reclaim the Streets action in Palo Alto. The event was organized by Anarchist Action, an ad hoc group of various anarchist collectives and affinity groups throughout the bay area, and was billed as a “revolutionary street party”, and “suburban inserrection”. The event raged for at least two hours, involved 250 people, at least 4-5 police departments, and resulted in two arrests. Reports of large amounts of street art/graffiti, and attacks on various large scale corporate businesses have been reported as well. The following is a report on my experiences, and some thoughts on the event.
Upon arriving in Palo Alto’s University street, the first thing that I noticed was the fact of how well off everyone seemed to be. Rich yuppies, but in that, “Hey man, I voted for Kerry”, liberal type prowled the streets, sulking in their Starbucks and Dockers pants. Although there were several small business shops littered throughout the downtown area, most of the stores were upper crust department, chain, and corporate stores. I felt that I was in Santa Cruz’s downtown area after Wal-Mart had taken over. Waiting for people to arrive, and watching the various street/punk kids across from me play around and generally annoy me, the group that I was with waited for the park in which the meeting point was to assemble. Around 7:45pm, large amounts of people started to trickle in, and a Bike Bloc of about 20 rode by, pumping their fists and hollering. Police drove by numerous times, but did not stay park by the park for very long.
Around this time, we noticed that a man in perhaps his mid-30’s was standing directly behind us, watching the group of people with great intent. He was dressed normally, with slacks and a plain shirt. He started at the crowd and looked as if he was waiting for something, and taking mental notes. Myself and another person stood next to him, and followed him as he moved through the area around the plaza, reacting to us standing next to him. Eventually he got tired of us following him, and tried to walk down an alley, and we heard him asking people on his cell phone to run various plates for him. We turned the corner, and he headed back to the convergence spot, and at that point we let various people know who he was and where. We also took some pictures of him with a camera phone, as he “talked” on his phone and tried to look the part and avoid getting photographed. This angered him greatly, as he tried to have a fake angry conversation with his girlfriend, (boyfriend?, pet?, love prisoner?), and kept turning as to avoid being photographed.
Around 8:25, the people started to take to the streets, to the sound of Public Enemy’s, “Shut em’ Down!” Around 250 surged into the street unopposed, and almost immediately people from the sidewalk came out to see what was going on. I did my usual, “Come join us!”, to the smiling old people and young kids, but most seemed content to look on with smiles and some threw up their hands and gave us a raised fist. Coming to a turning point in the street, and cop car was situated right on the left turn lane. The police officer tried to look calm and cool, but had to be thinking to himself, “Oh shit”, and swarms of revolutionary partiers, local youth, and black bloc anarchists paraded around his car. Unfortunately in the next couple of minutes, a young black bloc youth was arrested in connection with a cop car window being hit a large black flag that was on a heavy metal pole. According to other posts the cars window was damaged.
After this unfortunate development, (the arrest, not the cop window), things picked up a bit. My special friend was tailing the entire march, (the undercover), and was now joined by another plainclothes police officer that was walking up and down the crowd. Around this time, we came to a sight that usually makes me go all fuzzy inside, as the crowd was now facing off against several cop cars that were trying to block to some degree our exit from the side street and go back onto University, (the main street which was largely the business district). The crowd, pumped up from the music and the joyous, “Who’s streets? Our streets!”, suddenly went quiet, as the crowd assessed the situation. Thankfully, one group had a plan, and chants of, “5, 4, 3, 2, 1!”, suddenly climaxed in an orgasm of hundreds of running radicals dashing down a full block of one of Palo Alto’s busiest streets. People on the street didn’t know what was happening, but many seemed excited and interested, as their shopping experience suddenly turned into a much more eventful evening.
The crowd now had traveled a full block in full run, and was now situated in a block on University St. across from a Starbucks and an American Express. Within literally seconds graffiti was covering the streets, the surrounding walls, and corporate property. Messages of “Our Streets”, “Class War”, “Fuck the Rich”, “Solution: Revolution”, and other revolutionary anti-capitalist slogans soon littered the streets. A group of anarchists also managed to commandeer a dumpster, and quickly and with much resolve planted it in front of the street and tipped it over, while the street party and various banners blocked off the front of the block. Cars inside were given quick access to get out of the way, so as to allow them not to be trapped inside. One younger black bloc anarchist at this point jumped on top of the dumpster, (now totally tipped over, and blocking both lanes of traffic), tipped his body in an aggressive stance, and screamed at the police coming out of their cars, “Our Streets!”, and then jumped down at least 8 feet with ease and ran off into the crowd which now was occupied with dancing. If urban insurrection should have a mascot, I nominate this young man.
The street party was in full effect, and although many shoppers seemed just to be trying to ignore the spectacle, many people mingled with the crowd and started dancing. I talked to several people on the street about what Reclaim the Streets was, and I really wished someone had brought propaganda describing what the event was about. At this point it seemed that the police had reached some sort of neutrality with the street protest, and were directing traffic, and it seemed were leaving the street party be. I wondered if the police might just leave the protestors alone and allow us to have this one area, (which happened in SF, where SFPD thought that the RTS had a permit because they seemed so well organized). Around this time I was thinking of this, the crowd started to move. After almost passing the block, the second arrest took place apparently in connection with someone breaking the windows of a nearby American Express bank.
The crowd moved on, (with each arrest however it should be noted that people took down the info of the people being arrested, asked them if they could call anyone, unrests were attempted, etc), and now things were getting heated. The police had lost control over the streets of Palo Alto, police property had been damaged, corporate property had been damaged, anarchist slogans now covered the streets and walls, and it was getting dark and still going strong. The march then moved up University street again, and now was at the head of a freeway entrance into the downtown area. After crossing into oncoming traffic, (which was already stopped), the march continued. All police presence was left behind now, and marchers marched unopposed. Going back up into the city, graffiti now was beginning to cover more areas, as teams of people were venturing out and coming back in. Police would show up occasionally, and then would have to move again to be were the march was headed. Various newspaper boxes were pulled out of the sidewalk area and brought into the streets to serve as barricades. Several times the march got boxed in, and we had to double back or go down alleys. At this point it seemed the police had had enough. I don’t know if they had help from their buddies in other police departments at this direct point in the march, but by the end of the night there were at least 4-5 police departments and sheriff units working on the situation. Turning up a street back towards University, we now saw a line of police coming towards us with batons. Making use of a nearby alley, most of the march was now split up and now on the move. At his point it seemed that the march went into two different groups. One following the sound system, and another roaming. Various corporate stores like Borders and Longs Drugs at this point had swarms of protesters inside them, and hordes of goods were taken out and given to people on the street.
Things were becoming a police state and fast, and I was also losing contact with the affinity group that I was with. After roaming and running around various streets, I found a large group still marching and evading the police. After joining this group, we then had to run through various alley’s to evade the police once again. After coming into the clear after evading several police officers, I then tried to make my way down to where I could see massive amounts of police cars, and what I hoped to be where the rest of my group was. After calling on a cell phone, I learned that arrest for a whole lot of people, and perhaps physical assault from the police was going to be happening soon. I came upon the scene of about 50 or so people surrounded on about two street corners by hordes of police. After finding my friends, I tried to turn around and go back, but I was almost assaulted by several officers and told to get back. One protestor took a run for it, and managed to get through the clutches of two police officers almost twice his size, and dash to freedom. Seeing that we all had to get out of here, we then tried to cross the street despite the shouts of police officers. We then walked down a street and tried to get some distance from the police and us, and a cop car pulled up and told us that we all had to go back. I got into a yelling match with the police, stating that what they were doing was illegal, and that we all had the right to disperse, and they were not allowing us to do so. They then stated that they had an exit path for us, and that we had to turn around.
This game of walking in a group, and then being made to change direction when our numbers got to big, repeated itself throughout the night. After finally finding the rest of our group, we made our way back to the main plaza where we had first started the march. It seemed that despite the massive police presence, and many attempts at arrest on various people, the only two arrests where the ones in the start of the event. Palo Alto could not only be described as a police state. Police were on almost any corner, and stopped any group of people that seemed to be traveling together. During this time I thought back to my friend who I had talked to during the Miami FTAA protests, and his description fit what I was feeling in Palo Alto. They split of groups, and apparently broke up an all night rave and gave several people bruises and injuries through beatings. The street in front of the plaza was shut down, not by protestors however, but by the police, who felt it was necessary to block off the street and direct traffic. Upon going to our cars, we were stopped several times and made to change direction by police in full riot gear and with attack dogs.
The event will probably freak the hell out of local police and community leaders, who haven’t seen this type of protest for at least 30 years. For many in the movement, this seemed to be a shot in the arm, an reawakening for a movement that is beginning to question the black bloc/street protest tactic. Perhaps we aren’t done yet, perhaps we can still draw blood. The question is however, how do we go about doing it better, and how are we going to be effective in manifesting solidarity from working and oppressed people while doing it. Of course, many people who own businesses and shop in Palo Alto will not manifest solidarity with the Reclaim the Streets action, but I myself witnessed many working class people who seemed to get the message right away. For many young people, and for many people either joining in for the first time, this was their first taste of militant protest. I think several questions remain however, and several critiques and suggestions can be made.
Firstly, legal aid is still needed on the two people that were arrested, and for active anarchists in the area, if they could post that info, we should start supporting the two people who were arrested. A legal number would have been good to distribute before hand, however, it seems that one was not available. In the future, this needs to be a must. More over, the people that got arrested, should not have. If one is going to engage in illegal activity, then one needs to be prepared not only for the possibility of arrest, but also to engage in such actions in a way that will allow them to slip quickly away from the area, de-bloc is necessary, and then get out of harms way.
Where as protests with a straight forward message, “Stop the War”, “Ban Animal Testing”, etc, has a simple message, Reclaim the Streets is sometimes more complicated, and can take some explaining to get across to people. Simple flyers from the excellent first call out communiqué could have been made off, and given to people on the street, which I think would have helped a lot.
I respect the actions taken against the police car and the bank, however, I think people as always need to ask themselves if doing x action will be good or bad for that specific event. Me personally I thought that the attacks on the symbols of capital and the police car were good targets, however needed to have been executed much better, and should not have ended in two arrests. People also need to think about what type of situation they want to create, a fun and spontaneous party, or a militant street protest. Can we have both?
Militant protest is not dead, it does not belong to the glory days of past actions, long dead radicals, or some far off European country. It can and will be manifested right here, in our own streets, communities, and workplaces. We have to fight as if our lives depended on it, and we need to be clear in our message and our approach, so that when the bricks hit the pigs windows, even if people disagree with us, they know that we did it because we desire social revolution, not childish lawlessness. Anarchist Action wrote: “Palo Alto Was Just a Warning Shot...This is not the end. As the Bay Area and entire West Coast mobilizes for an revolutionary anti-G8 convergence this July, this is just the beginning - and things are only going to build from here. Watch anarchistaction.org for updates - we'll see you in July!” Oh, I look forward to it.
“Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.”
George Orwell
Not sense newspaper boxes broke through the windows of the INS building in San Francisco have I felt this re-energized and uplifted in regards to militant, illegal street protest in the aftermath of the Reclaim the Streets action in Palo Alto. The event was organized by Anarchist Action, an ad hoc group of various anarchist collectives and affinity groups throughout the bay area, and was billed as a “revolutionary street party”, and “suburban inserrection”. The event raged for at least two hours, involved 250 people, at least 4-5 police departments, and resulted in two arrests. Reports of large amounts of street art/graffiti, and attacks on various large scale corporate businesses have been reported as well. The following is a report on my experiences, and some thoughts on the event.
Upon arriving in Palo Alto’s University street, the first thing that I noticed was the fact of how well off everyone seemed to be. Rich yuppies, but in that, “Hey man, I voted for Kerry”, liberal type prowled the streets, sulking in their Starbucks and Dockers pants. Although there were several small business shops littered throughout the downtown area, most of the stores were upper crust department, chain, and corporate stores. I felt that I was in Santa Cruz’s downtown area after Wal-Mart had taken over. Waiting for people to arrive, and watching the various street/punk kids across from me play around and generally annoy me, the group that I was with waited for the park in which the meeting point was to assemble. Around 7:45pm, large amounts of people started to trickle in, and a Bike Bloc of about 20 rode by, pumping their fists and hollering. Police drove by numerous times, but did not stay park by the park for very long.
Around this time, we noticed that a man in perhaps his mid-30’s was standing directly behind us, watching the group of people with great intent. He was dressed normally, with slacks and a plain shirt. He started at the crowd and looked as if he was waiting for something, and taking mental notes. Myself and another person stood next to him, and followed him as he moved through the area around the plaza, reacting to us standing next to him. Eventually he got tired of us following him, and tried to walk down an alley, and we heard him asking people on his cell phone to run various plates for him. We turned the corner, and he headed back to the convergence spot, and at that point we let various people know who he was and where. We also took some pictures of him with a camera phone, as he “talked” on his phone and tried to look the part and avoid getting photographed. This angered him greatly, as he tried to have a fake angry conversation with his girlfriend, (boyfriend?, pet?, love prisoner?), and kept turning as to avoid being photographed.
Around 8:25, the people started to take to the streets, to the sound of Public Enemy’s, “Shut em’ Down!” Around 250 surged into the street unopposed, and almost immediately people from the sidewalk came out to see what was going on. I did my usual, “Come join us!”, to the smiling old people and young kids, but most seemed content to look on with smiles and some threw up their hands and gave us a raised fist. Coming to a turning point in the street, and cop car was situated right on the left turn lane. The police officer tried to look calm and cool, but had to be thinking to himself, “Oh shit”, and swarms of revolutionary partiers, local youth, and black bloc anarchists paraded around his car. Unfortunately in the next couple of minutes, a young black bloc youth was arrested in connection with a cop car window being hit a large black flag that was on a heavy metal pole. According to other posts the cars window was damaged.
After this unfortunate development, (the arrest, not the cop window), things picked up a bit. My special friend was tailing the entire march, (the undercover), and was now joined by another plainclothes police officer that was walking up and down the crowd. Around this time, we came to a sight that usually makes me go all fuzzy inside, as the crowd was now facing off against several cop cars that were trying to block to some degree our exit from the side street and go back onto University, (the main street which was largely the business district). The crowd, pumped up from the music and the joyous, “Who’s streets? Our streets!”, suddenly went quiet, as the crowd assessed the situation. Thankfully, one group had a plan, and chants of, “5, 4, 3, 2, 1!”, suddenly climaxed in an orgasm of hundreds of running radicals dashing down a full block of one of Palo Alto’s busiest streets. People on the street didn’t know what was happening, but many seemed excited and interested, as their shopping experience suddenly turned into a much more eventful evening.
The crowd now had traveled a full block in full run, and was now situated in a block on University St. across from a Starbucks and an American Express. Within literally seconds graffiti was covering the streets, the surrounding walls, and corporate property. Messages of “Our Streets”, “Class War”, “Fuck the Rich”, “Solution: Revolution”, and other revolutionary anti-capitalist slogans soon littered the streets. A group of anarchists also managed to commandeer a dumpster, and quickly and with much resolve planted it in front of the street and tipped it over, while the street party and various banners blocked off the front of the block. Cars inside were given quick access to get out of the way, so as to allow them not to be trapped inside. One younger black bloc anarchist at this point jumped on top of the dumpster, (now totally tipped over, and blocking both lanes of traffic), tipped his body in an aggressive stance, and screamed at the police coming out of their cars, “Our Streets!”, and then jumped down at least 8 feet with ease and ran off into the crowd which now was occupied with dancing. If urban insurrection should have a mascot, I nominate this young man.
The street party was in full effect, and although many shoppers seemed just to be trying to ignore the spectacle, many people mingled with the crowd and started dancing. I talked to several people on the street about what Reclaim the Streets was, and I really wished someone had brought propaganda describing what the event was about. At this point it seemed that the police had reached some sort of neutrality with the street protest, and were directing traffic, and it seemed were leaving the street party be. I wondered if the police might just leave the protestors alone and allow us to have this one area, (which happened in SF, where SFPD thought that the RTS had a permit because they seemed so well organized). Around this time I was thinking of this, the crowd started to move. After almost passing the block, the second arrest took place apparently in connection with someone breaking the windows of a nearby American Express bank.
The crowd moved on, (with each arrest however it should be noted that people took down the info of the people being arrested, asked them if they could call anyone, unrests were attempted, etc), and now things were getting heated. The police had lost control over the streets of Palo Alto, police property had been damaged, corporate property had been damaged, anarchist slogans now covered the streets and walls, and it was getting dark and still going strong. The march then moved up University street again, and now was at the head of a freeway entrance into the downtown area. After crossing into oncoming traffic, (which was already stopped), the march continued. All police presence was left behind now, and marchers marched unopposed. Going back up into the city, graffiti now was beginning to cover more areas, as teams of people were venturing out and coming back in. Police would show up occasionally, and then would have to move again to be were the march was headed. Various newspaper boxes were pulled out of the sidewalk area and brought into the streets to serve as barricades. Several times the march got boxed in, and we had to double back or go down alleys. At this point it seemed the police had had enough. I don’t know if they had help from their buddies in other police departments at this direct point in the march, but by the end of the night there were at least 4-5 police departments and sheriff units working on the situation. Turning up a street back towards University, we now saw a line of police coming towards us with batons. Making use of a nearby alley, most of the march was now split up and now on the move. At his point it seemed that the march went into two different groups. One following the sound system, and another roaming. Various corporate stores like Borders and Longs Drugs at this point had swarms of protesters inside them, and hordes of goods were taken out and given to people on the street.
Things were becoming a police state and fast, and I was also losing contact with the affinity group that I was with. After roaming and running around various streets, I found a large group still marching and evading the police. After joining this group, we then had to run through various alley’s to evade the police once again. After coming into the clear after evading several police officers, I then tried to make my way down to where I could see massive amounts of police cars, and what I hoped to be where the rest of my group was. After calling on a cell phone, I learned that arrest for a whole lot of people, and perhaps physical assault from the police was going to be happening soon. I came upon the scene of about 50 or so people surrounded on about two street corners by hordes of police. After finding my friends, I tried to turn around and go back, but I was almost assaulted by several officers and told to get back. One protestor took a run for it, and managed to get through the clutches of two police officers almost twice his size, and dash to freedom. Seeing that we all had to get out of here, we then tried to cross the street despite the shouts of police officers. We then walked down a street and tried to get some distance from the police and us, and a cop car pulled up and told us that we all had to go back. I got into a yelling match with the police, stating that what they were doing was illegal, and that we all had the right to disperse, and they were not allowing us to do so. They then stated that they had an exit path for us, and that we had to turn around.
This game of walking in a group, and then being made to change direction when our numbers got to big, repeated itself throughout the night. After finally finding the rest of our group, we made our way back to the main plaza where we had first started the march. It seemed that despite the massive police presence, and many attempts at arrest on various people, the only two arrests where the ones in the start of the event. Palo Alto could not only be described as a police state. Police were on almost any corner, and stopped any group of people that seemed to be traveling together. During this time I thought back to my friend who I had talked to during the Miami FTAA protests, and his description fit what I was feeling in Palo Alto. They split of groups, and apparently broke up an all night rave and gave several people bruises and injuries through beatings. The street in front of the plaza was shut down, not by protestors however, but by the police, who felt it was necessary to block off the street and direct traffic. Upon going to our cars, we were stopped several times and made to change direction by police in full riot gear and with attack dogs.
The event will probably freak the hell out of local police and community leaders, who haven’t seen this type of protest for at least 30 years. For many in the movement, this seemed to be a shot in the arm, an reawakening for a movement that is beginning to question the black bloc/street protest tactic. Perhaps we aren’t done yet, perhaps we can still draw blood. The question is however, how do we go about doing it better, and how are we going to be effective in manifesting solidarity from working and oppressed people while doing it. Of course, many people who own businesses and shop in Palo Alto will not manifest solidarity with the Reclaim the Streets action, but I myself witnessed many working class people who seemed to get the message right away. For many young people, and for many people either joining in for the first time, this was their first taste of militant protest. I think several questions remain however, and several critiques and suggestions can be made.
Firstly, legal aid is still needed on the two people that were arrested, and for active anarchists in the area, if they could post that info, we should start supporting the two people who were arrested. A legal number would have been good to distribute before hand, however, it seems that one was not available. In the future, this needs to be a must. More over, the people that got arrested, should not have. If one is going to engage in illegal activity, then one needs to be prepared not only for the possibility of arrest, but also to engage in such actions in a way that will allow them to slip quickly away from the area, de-bloc is necessary, and then get out of harms way.
Where as protests with a straight forward message, “Stop the War”, “Ban Animal Testing”, etc, has a simple message, Reclaim the Streets is sometimes more complicated, and can take some explaining to get across to people. Simple flyers from the excellent first call out communiqué could have been made off, and given to people on the street, which I think would have helped a lot.
I respect the actions taken against the police car and the bank, however, I think people as always need to ask themselves if doing x action will be good or bad for that specific event. Me personally I thought that the attacks on the symbols of capital and the police car were good targets, however needed to have been executed much better, and should not have ended in two arrests. People also need to think about what type of situation they want to create, a fun and spontaneous party, or a militant street protest. Can we have both?
Militant protest is not dead, it does not belong to the glory days of past actions, long dead radicals, or some far off European country. It can and will be manifested right here, in our own streets, communities, and workplaces. We have to fight as if our lives depended on it, and we need to be clear in our message and our approach, so that when the bricks hit the pigs windows, even if people disagree with us, they know that we did it because we desire social revolution, not childish lawlessness. Anarchist Action wrote: “Palo Alto Was Just a Warning Shot...This is not the end. As the Bay Area and entire West Coast mobilizes for an revolutionary anti-G8 convergence this July, this is just the beginning - and things are only going to build from here. Watch anarchistaction.org for updates - we'll see you in July!” Oh, I look forward to it.
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sounds like there were several people from out of town, many from way out of town. Didn't the RTS movement come out of the movement that was opposed to more roads in England? Does driving or commuting long distances just to go to a street party really make sense?
Don't know, i wasn't there. Yes, though apparently it started a little before this in the early 90s with a group of bicycling activists doing subvertising and painting bike lanes on streets. Yes, if there's no other way to get there (or you're hauling props like sacs of sand, sod, jackhammers, tripods, sound systems, etc.), but gas is expensive these days so probably makes more sense to carpool.
RTS' origins are in the anti road movement but transformed in the 90s into more or less a radical street party. In Switzerland RTS is heavily attended by anarchists and many will come from other cities to join in on the fun. In many ways this action reminds me alot of the RTS scene they have in switzerland except for they party a bit harder(they use more fireworks) ,but this is an awesome start. Suggestions for the next:sound system , fireworks, literature to pass out,wheat paste
From the time that the first African was captured until the completion of Emancipation, slaves struck out against the institution in one way or another. Herbert Aptheker has recorded over hundred insurrections. Although most slave revolts in America were small and ineffective, there were three in particular which chilled Southern hearts. These were led by Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey, and Nat Turner and occurred within the short span between 1800 and 1831. Toussaint l'Ouverture in Haiti had previously demonstrated that slaves could be victorious over large European armies, and the American colonists had taught by their example in the American Revolution that violence in the service of freedom was justifiable. The gradual abolition of slavery which was occurring in the Northern states gave hope that the institution in America might be terminated altogether. However, the slaves saw little reason to believe that their Southern masters would follow the example of the Northerners in abolishing slavery. Many of the slaves came to accept that if the institution was to be destroyed, it would have to be done by the slaves themselves.
In August, 1800, Gabriel Prosser led a slave attack on Richmond, Virginia. During several months of careful planning and organizing, the insurrectionists had gathered clubs, swords, and other crude weapons. The intention was to divide into three columns: one to attack the penitentiary which was being used as an arsenal, another to capture the powder house, and a third to attack the city itself. If the citizens would not surrender, the rebels planned to kill all of the whites with the exception of Quakers, Methodists, and Frenchman. Apparently, Prosser and his followers shared a deep distrust of most white men. When they had gathered a large supply of guns and powder, and taken over the state's treasury, the rebels calculated, they would be able to hold out for several weeks. What they hoped for was that slaves from the surrounding territory would join them and, eventually, that the uprising would reach such proportions as to compel the whites to come to terms with them.
Unfortunately for the plotters, on the day of the insurrection a severe storm struck Virginia, wiping out roads and bridges. This forced a delay of several days. In the meantime, two slaves betrayed the plot, and the government took swift action. Thirty-five of the participants, including Prosser, were executed. As the leaders refused to divulge any details of their plans, the exact number involved in the plot remains unknown. However, rumor had it that somewhere between two thousand and fifty thousand slaves were connected with the conspiracy. During the trials, one of the rebels said that he had done nothing more than what Washington had done, that he had ventured his life for his countrymen, and that he was a willing sacrifice.
In Charleston, South Carolina, a young slave named Denmark Vesey won $1,500 in a lottery with which he purchased his freedom. During the following years he worked as a carpenter. In his concern over the plight of his slave brethren, he formed a plan for an insurrection which would bring them their freedom. He and other freedmen collected two hundred pike heads and bayonets as well as three hundred daggers to use in the revolt, but, before the plans could be put into motion in 1882, a slave informed on them. This time it was rumored that there had been some nine thousand involved in the plot. Over a hundred arrests were made, including four whites who had encouraged the project, and several of the leaders, including Vesey, were executed.
The bloodiest insurrection of all, in which some sixty whites were murdered, occurred in Southampton County, Virginia, in August, 1831. Nat Turner, its leader, besides being a skilled carpenter, was a literate, mystical preacher. He had discovered particular relevance in the prophets of the Old Testament. Besides identifying with the slave experience of the Israelites, Turner and other slaves felt that the social righteousness which the prophets preached related directly to their situation. The picture of the Lord exercising vengeance against the oppressors gave them hope and inspiration. While the Bible did appear to tell the slave to be faithful and obedient to his master, it also condemned the wicked and provided examples that could be interpreted to prove God's willingness to use human instruments in order to bring justice against oppressors. Turner's growing hatred of slavery and his increasing concern for the plight of his brothers, led him to believe he was one of God's chosen instruments.
As his conviction deepened, the solar eclipse early in 1831 appeared to him to be a sign that the day of vengeance was at hand. In the following months he collected a small band of followers, and in August they went into action. Unlike Prosser and Vesey, he began with only a very small band which lessened his chance of betrayal. As they moved from farm to farm, slaughtering the white inhabitants, they were joined by many of the slaves who were freed in the process. However, word of the massacre spread. At one farm, they were met by armed resistance. Slaves as well as masters fought fiercely to stop the attack. Some of Turner's men were killed and wounded, and the planned drive towards Jerusalem was thrown off stride. This enabled the militia to arrive and break up the attack. In due time Turner and several of his followers were captured and executed.
White men in both the South and the North saw little similarity between these insurrections and the American Revolution. The Turner massacre was universally depicted as the work of savages and brutes, not of men. Vigilance was tightened, and new laws controlling the slaves were passed throughout the South. Both the violence of the slaves and the verbal abuse of the abolitionists only served to strengthen the South in its defense of the peculiar institution. Slaves who revolted were depicted as beasts who could not be freed because they would endanger society. Submissive slaves were pictured as children in need of paternal protection from the evils of a complex, modern world. They were never seen as men whose rights and liberties had been proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence
Growing Racism
As Afro-American freedmen sought to claim their rights as men and citizens, they were confronted with constant resistance from whites who were unwilling to accept them. Actually, pressure from the mass of Northern white workers had contributed to abolition of slavery in those states. In the Northern states slavery was forced to compete with free white labor in a way which was not true of the plantation economy of the South. White workers continually complained that slavery was keeping their wages down and unemployment up, and in 1737 the governor of New York had asked the Legislature to investigate the charges that slave competition contributed to unemployment. While this attack had helped to undermine slavery, it had also exacerbated tension between black and white labor. The continual flow of runaways from the South brought an increasing supply of cheap black labor to compete with white workers, and the friction between the two races continued. While many of the runaways, like Frederick Douglass, had worked as skilled craftsmen in the South, they found economic discrimination in the North limiting them to menial labor.
After 1830, when the tide of European immigration began to swell, the competition for jobs grew even sharper, and blacks found that even menial jobs were being taken over by the new European immigrants. Jobs such as stevedores, coachmen, barbers, and servants, which had traditionally been left to blacks, were now being invaded by the Irish. Whereas in 1830 the vast majority of New York City servants were Afro-American, after 1850 most of them were Irish. This economic competition contributed considerably to the hostility, fear, and discrimination which confronted the Northern freedmen.
In 1816 the American Colonization Society was founded. It was considered the ideal solution to the American racial dilemma. Claiming to be interested in the welfare of the African in its midst, the Society advocated colonizing in Africa or wherever else it was expedient. It comforted slave owners by announcing that it was not concerned with either emancipation or amelioration. Both were outside its jurisdiction. It did imply that slaves might eventually be purchased for colonization. Most of its propaganda tried to demonstrate that the freedman lived in a wretched state of poverty, immorality, and ignorance and that he would be better off in Africa.
The movement received widespread support from almost all sectors of the white community including presidents Madison and Jackson. Several state legislatures supported the idea, and Congress voted $100,000 to finance the plan which eventually led to the establishment of the Republic of Liberia.
However, the Afro-American community was not very enthusiastic about the project. In 1817 three thousand blacks crowded into the Bethel Church in Philadelphia and, led by Richard Allen, vehemently criticized colonization. They charged that the Society's propaganda only served to increase racial discrimination since it stressed the poverty and ignorance of the freedman and claimed he was doomed to continue in his filth and degradation because of his natural inferiority. It also argued that whites would only take advantage of the Afro-American, and that the separation of the two races was the only solution. The participants at the Bethel meeting contended that this propaganda tended to justify racial discrimination.
The claim was also made that the removal of freedmen from America would only serve to make the slave system more secure, and they pledged themselves never to abandon their slave brothers. Besides, while they were African by heritage, they had been born in America, and it was now their home. Most of the fifteen thousand who did return to Africa were slaves who had been freed for this purpose, and the project was acknowledged to be a failure. The Society's own propaganda contributed to the alienation of many freedmen. One of its own leaders admitted that lacks could read and hear and, when they were spoken of as a nuisance to be banished, they reacted negatively like men.
Widespread racial prejudice, besides creating racial discrimination, resulted in oppressive legislation. In 1810 Congress excluded Afro-Americans from carrying the mail. In 1820 it authorized the District of Columbia to elect white city officials, and it consistently admitted new states to the Union whose constitutions severely limited the rights of freedmen. The office of the Attorney General usually took the position that the Constitution did not grant citizenship to Negroes, and Congress itself had limited naturalization to white aliens in 1790. This point of view was later justified by the Dred Scott decision. With only a few exceptions, the Secretary of State refused to grant passports to those wishing to travel abroad, although it did provide a letter of identification stating that the carrier was a resident of the United States. Finally, Massachusetts granted its own passports to its colored citizens, complaining that they had been virtually denationalized.
Also, many states in the Northwest passed laws prohibiting or limiting the migration of Afro-Americans into their territory. An Illinois law said that anyone who entered the state illegally could be whipped and sold at auction. Many states denied blacks the ballot, prohibited their serving on a jury and legally segregated transportation, restaurants, hotels, theaters, churches, and even cemeteries. Most Northern states did not allow them to testify in court against whites. This meant that, if a white man beat a black, the black had no legal protection unless another white was willing to testify on his behalf.
On several occasions white hostility erupted into violence. Black workmen were harassed, abolitionists beaten, and entire communities terrorized. One of the worst of these events occurred in Cincinnati in 1829. With the rapid growth of "Little Africa," that city's black ghetto, the local citizens decided to enforce the state's anti-integration legislation. Some twenty years before, the state had passed a law requiring blacks entering the state to provide proof of their freedom and to post a bond as guarantee of their good behavior. When the inhabitants of "Little Africa" obtained an extension of the 30-day time limit within which they were to comply with the law, the citizens of Cincinnati were outraged, and they took matters into their own hands. White mobs ransacked the area, indiscriminately and mercilessly beating women and children, looting stores and burning houses. It was estimated that half of the two thousand inhabitants of the area left the city. Many of them emigrated to Canada, and the local paper, which had helped to inflame the mob, lamented that the respectable black citizens had left and only derelicts remained.
At the very point in American history when democracy was sinking its roots deeper into the national soil, the status of the Afro-American was being clearly defined as an inferior one. The Jacksonian Era brought the common man into new prominence, but the same privileges were not extended to the blacks. In the South, society was strengthening the institution of slavery against any possible recurrences of slave insurrections. The activities of the slaves, especially those of Negro preachers, were being watched even more closely than before. In the North, both state and federal laws denied blacks many of the rights of citizenship.
In August, 1800, Gabriel Prosser led a slave attack on Richmond, Virginia. During several months of careful planning and organizing, the insurrectionists had gathered clubs, swords, and other crude weapons. The intention was to divide into three columns: one to attack the penitentiary which was being used as an arsenal, another to capture the powder house, and a third to attack the city itself. If the citizens would not surrender, the rebels planned to kill all of the whites with the exception of Quakers, Methodists, and Frenchman. Apparently, Prosser and his followers shared a deep distrust of most white men. When they had gathered a large supply of guns and powder, and taken over the state's treasury, the rebels calculated, they would be able to hold out for several weeks. What they hoped for was that slaves from the surrounding territory would join them and, eventually, that the uprising would reach such proportions as to compel the whites to come to terms with them.
Unfortunately for the plotters, on the day of the insurrection a severe storm struck Virginia, wiping out roads and bridges. This forced a delay of several days. In the meantime, two slaves betrayed the plot, and the government took swift action. Thirty-five of the participants, including Prosser, were executed. As the leaders refused to divulge any details of their plans, the exact number involved in the plot remains unknown. However, rumor had it that somewhere between two thousand and fifty thousand slaves were connected with the conspiracy. During the trials, one of the rebels said that he had done nothing more than what Washington had done, that he had ventured his life for his countrymen, and that he was a willing sacrifice.
In Charleston, South Carolina, a young slave named Denmark Vesey won $1,500 in a lottery with which he purchased his freedom. During the following years he worked as a carpenter. In his concern over the plight of his slave brethren, he formed a plan for an insurrection which would bring them their freedom. He and other freedmen collected two hundred pike heads and bayonets as well as three hundred daggers to use in the revolt, but, before the plans could be put into motion in 1882, a slave informed on them. This time it was rumored that there had been some nine thousand involved in the plot. Over a hundred arrests were made, including four whites who had encouraged the project, and several of the leaders, including Vesey, were executed.
The bloodiest insurrection of all, in which some sixty whites were murdered, occurred in Southampton County, Virginia, in August, 1831. Nat Turner, its leader, besides being a skilled carpenter, was a literate, mystical preacher. He had discovered particular relevance in the prophets of the Old Testament. Besides identifying with the slave experience of the Israelites, Turner and other slaves felt that the social righteousness which the prophets preached related directly to their situation. The picture of the Lord exercising vengeance against the oppressors gave them hope and inspiration. While the Bible did appear to tell the slave to be faithful and obedient to his master, it also condemned the wicked and provided examples that could be interpreted to prove God's willingness to use human instruments in order to bring justice against oppressors. Turner's growing hatred of slavery and his increasing concern for the plight of his brothers, led him to believe he was one of God's chosen instruments.
As his conviction deepened, the solar eclipse early in 1831 appeared to him to be a sign that the day of vengeance was at hand. In the following months he collected a small band of followers, and in August they went into action. Unlike Prosser and Vesey, he began with only a very small band which lessened his chance of betrayal. As they moved from farm to farm, slaughtering the white inhabitants, they were joined by many of the slaves who were freed in the process. However, word of the massacre spread. At one farm, they were met by armed resistance. Slaves as well as masters fought fiercely to stop the attack. Some of Turner's men were killed and wounded, and the planned drive towards Jerusalem was thrown off stride. This enabled the militia to arrive and break up the attack. In due time Turner and several of his followers were captured and executed.
White men in both the South and the North saw little similarity between these insurrections and the American Revolution. The Turner massacre was universally depicted as the work of savages and brutes, not of men. Vigilance was tightened, and new laws controlling the slaves were passed throughout the South. Both the violence of the slaves and the verbal abuse of the abolitionists only served to strengthen the South in its defense of the peculiar institution. Slaves who revolted were depicted as beasts who could not be freed because they would endanger society. Submissive slaves were pictured as children in need of paternal protection from the evils of a complex, modern world. They were never seen as men whose rights and liberties had been proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence
Growing Racism
As Afro-American freedmen sought to claim their rights as men and citizens, they were confronted with constant resistance from whites who were unwilling to accept them. Actually, pressure from the mass of Northern white workers had contributed to abolition of slavery in those states. In the Northern states slavery was forced to compete with free white labor in a way which was not true of the plantation economy of the South. White workers continually complained that slavery was keeping their wages down and unemployment up, and in 1737 the governor of New York had asked the Legislature to investigate the charges that slave competition contributed to unemployment. While this attack had helped to undermine slavery, it had also exacerbated tension between black and white labor. The continual flow of runaways from the South brought an increasing supply of cheap black labor to compete with white workers, and the friction between the two races continued. While many of the runaways, like Frederick Douglass, had worked as skilled craftsmen in the South, they found economic discrimination in the North limiting them to menial labor.
After 1830, when the tide of European immigration began to swell, the competition for jobs grew even sharper, and blacks found that even menial jobs were being taken over by the new European immigrants. Jobs such as stevedores, coachmen, barbers, and servants, which had traditionally been left to blacks, were now being invaded by the Irish. Whereas in 1830 the vast majority of New York City servants were Afro-American, after 1850 most of them were Irish. This economic competition contributed considerably to the hostility, fear, and discrimination which confronted the Northern freedmen.
In 1816 the American Colonization Society was founded. It was considered the ideal solution to the American racial dilemma. Claiming to be interested in the welfare of the African in its midst, the Society advocated colonizing in Africa or wherever else it was expedient. It comforted slave owners by announcing that it was not concerned with either emancipation or amelioration. Both were outside its jurisdiction. It did imply that slaves might eventually be purchased for colonization. Most of its propaganda tried to demonstrate that the freedman lived in a wretched state of poverty, immorality, and ignorance and that he would be better off in Africa.
The movement received widespread support from almost all sectors of the white community including presidents Madison and Jackson. Several state legislatures supported the idea, and Congress voted $100,000 to finance the plan which eventually led to the establishment of the Republic of Liberia.
However, the Afro-American community was not very enthusiastic about the project. In 1817 three thousand blacks crowded into the Bethel Church in Philadelphia and, led by Richard Allen, vehemently criticized colonization. They charged that the Society's propaganda only served to increase racial discrimination since it stressed the poverty and ignorance of the freedman and claimed he was doomed to continue in his filth and degradation because of his natural inferiority. It also argued that whites would only take advantage of the Afro-American, and that the separation of the two races was the only solution. The participants at the Bethel meeting contended that this propaganda tended to justify racial discrimination.
The claim was also made that the removal of freedmen from America would only serve to make the slave system more secure, and they pledged themselves never to abandon their slave brothers. Besides, while they were African by heritage, they had been born in America, and it was now their home. Most of the fifteen thousand who did return to Africa were slaves who had been freed for this purpose, and the project was acknowledged to be a failure. The Society's own propaganda contributed to the alienation of many freedmen. One of its own leaders admitted that lacks could read and hear and, when they were spoken of as a nuisance to be banished, they reacted negatively like men.
Widespread racial prejudice, besides creating racial discrimination, resulted in oppressive legislation. In 1810 Congress excluded Afro-Americans from carrying the mail. In 1820 it authorized the District of Columbia to elect white city officials, and it consistently admitted new states to the Union whose constitutions severely limited the rights of freedmen. The office of the Attorney General usually took the position that the Constitution did not grant citizenship to Negroes, and Congress itself had limited naturalization to white aliens in 1790. This point of view was later justified by the Dred Scott decision. With only a few exceptions, the Secretary of State refused to grant passports to those wishing to travel abroad, although it did provide a letter of identification stating that the carrier was a resident of the United States. Finally, Massachusetts granted its own passports to its colored citizens, complaining that they had been virtually denationalized.
Also, many states in the Northwest passed laws prohibiting or limiting the migration of Afro-Americans into their territory. An Illinois law said that anyone who entered the state illegally could be whipped and sold at auction. Many states denied blacks the ballot, prohibited their serving on a jury and legally segregated transportation, restaurants, hotels, theaters, churches, and even cemeteries. Most Northern states did not allow them to testify in court against whites. This meant that, if a white man beat a black, the black had no legal protection unless another white was willing to testify on his behalf.
On several occasions white hostility erupted into violence. Black workmen were harassed, abolitionists beaten, and entire communities terrorized. One of the worst of these events occurred in Cincinnati in 1829. With the rapid growth of "Little Africa," that city's black ghetto, the local citizens decided to enforce the state's anti-integration legislation. Some twenty years before, the state had passed a law requiring blacks entering the state to provide proof of their freedom and to post a bond as guarantee of their good behavior. When the inhabitants of "Little Africa" obtained an extension of the 30-day time limit within which they were to comply with the law, the citizens of Cincinnati were outraged, and they took matters into their own hands. White mobs ransacked the area, indiscriminately and mercilessly beating women and children, looting stores and burning houses. It was estimated that half of the two thousand inhabitants of the area left the city. Many of them emigrated to Canada, and the local paper, which had helped to inflame the mob, lamented that the respectable black citizens had left and only derelicts remained.
At the very point in American history when democracy was sinking its roots deeper into the national soil, the status of the Afro-American was being clearly defined as an inferior one. The Jacksonian Era brought the common man into new prominence, but the same privileges were not extended to the blacks. In the South, society was strengthening the institution of slavery against any possible recurrences of slave insurrections. The activities of the slaves, especially those of Negro preachers, were being watched even more closely than before. In the North, both state and federal laws denied blacks many of the rights of citizenship.
Part One From Freedom to Slavery
CHAPTER 1 African Origins
The Human Cradle
West African Empires
The Culture of West Africa
The Human Cradle
THREE and a half centuries of immigration have injected ever-fresh doses of energy and tension into the American bloodstream. As diverse peoples learned to live together, they became a dynamo generating both creativity and conflict. One of the most diverse elements in American life was introduced when Africans were forcibly brought to the American colonies. The American experiment had begun and consisted mainly of white men with a European heritage. The African was of a different color, had a different language, a different religion, and had an entirely different world view. But perhaps the most striking contrast was that, while the European came voluntarily in search of greater individual opportunity, the African came in chains. Because the European was the master and thereby the superior in the relationship, he assumed that his heritage was also superior. However, he was mistaken, because the African had a rich heritage of importance both to himself and to mankind. When people interact intimately over a long period of time, the influences are reciprocal. This is true even when their relationship is that of master and slave.
To trace the importance of the African heritage one must go back millions of years. Evidence is accumulating to the effect that Africa is the cradle of mankind. Professor Louis Leakey argues that Africa was important in the development of mankind in three ways. First, some thirty or forty million years ago, the basic stock which eventually gave rise to both man and the ape came into existence in the vicinity of the Nile Valley. Second, some twelve or fourteen million years ago, the main branch which was to lead to the development of man broke away from the branch leading to the ape. Third, about two million years ago, in the vicinity of East Africa, true man broke away from his now extinct manlike cousins. The present species of man-Homo Sapiens--developed through a complex process of natural selection from a large number of different manlike creatures-hominids.
One of the most numerous of the early hominids was Australopithecus Africanus who originated in Africa. Although he also did some hunting, he lived mainly by collecting and eating vegetables. One of the things that identified him as a man was his utilization of primitive tools. He had a pointed stone which may have been used to sharpen sticks, and these sticks were probably used for digging roots to augment his food supply. Leakey believes that Homo Habilis, who lived in East Africa about two million years ago, was the immediate ancestor of man and the most advanced of all the hominids. Although the hominids spread far outside of Africa, it is clear that they originate there and that it was in Africa that true man first emerged. As Darwin predicted a century ago, Africa has been found to be the father of mankind.
For many thousands of years, Homo Sapiens and the other hominids lived side by side in Africa as elsewhere. By ten thousand years ago, however, all the hominids had disappeared. Scholars believe that this was the result of the gradual absorption of all the other hominids by the more biologically advanced Homo Sapiens. This process may explain the appearance of variations within Homo Sapiens. At various times and places, as Homo Sapiens absorbed other hominid strains, differences within Homo Sapiens developed. In any case it is clear that the various types of man came into existence very early. In Africa, this process led to the development of three main types: the brownish-yellow Bush- men in the south, the darker Negroes throughout most of the continent and the Caucasoid Mediterranean types in the north.
Most of the concepts, held even by scholars about the nature and origin of races, are being proven inaccurate. Anthropological literature used to suggest that skin color in some groups was a possible indication of Mongoloid influences or that the thin, straight lips common in another group could be envisioned as a Caucasoid feature. However, it has become increasingly obvious that an analysis based on specific single traits such as these is always a poor indication of either racial origin or of racial contact. In fact, they could just as likely be the result of spontaneous and local variations within a given population grouping. In contrast, recent anthropological research is putting less emphasis on bone measurement and shape and, instead, is turning increasingly to technical analysis particularly through the examination of blood types.
Making and using tools are what differentiate man from animals. The earliest tools which have survived the wear of time were made of stone. As man's techniques of handling stone improved, so did his tools. The hand axe, a large oval of chipped flint varying in size and weight, came into common usage about half a millon years ago, and it has been found in much of Europe, Asia, and Africa. This too seems to have had an African origin. While scholars are not certain about its use, it was probably used for killing animals and for chopping meat.
The first achievement which radically altered man's condition was the invention of tools. The second achievement was his learning of primitive agriculture which transformed the hunter into the farmer. The domestication of animals and the planting and cultivating of crops had begun in the Near East, but the practice shortly spread to the Nile Valley in Northeast Africa. At the same time, farming communities sprang up throughout the Sahara which, at that time, was going through one of its wet phases. This made it well-suited to early agriculture. Farming permitted men to live together in communities and to pursue a more sedentary way of life. Actually, some Africans had already adopted a sedentary community life before the arrival of farming. Making hooks from bones led to the development of a few fishing communities near present-day Kenya.
As the communities along the Nile grew in size and number, society began to develop a complex urban civilization. By 3,200 B.C. the communities along the Nile had become politically united under the first of a line of great pharaohs. These early Egyptians undoubtedly were comprised of a racial mixture. The ancient Greeks viewed the Egyptians as being dark in complexion, and it has been estimated that the Egyptian population at the beginning was at least one-third Negro. Herodotus says that it was impossible to tell whether the influence of the Egyptians on the Ethiopians was stronger than that of the Ethiopians on the Egyptians.
What Herodotus and the Greeks referred to as Ethiopia was, in fact, the kingdom of Kush. It was located up the Nile from Egypt. As the Egyptian empire grew in strength and wealth, it strove to expand its power over its neighbors. Egypt sent several military expeditions south along the Nile to try to conquer the black people of Kush. They failed and the Kushites, in turn, endeavored to extend their power over Egypt. In 751 B.C., Kush invaded Egypt and, shortly thereafter, conquered it. This occupation of Egypt lasted for over a hundred years, until both the Kushites and the Egyptians were defeated by an invading army from Assyria in 666 B.C. At that point, the Kushites returned to the safety of their homeland.
The Kushites and the Egyptians had been defeated by a superior technology. While they were fighting with weapons made of copper and bronze, the Assyrians fought with iron. Methods of smelting and working iron had been developed centuries before by the Hittites who lived in Asia Minor. The use of iron spread across the Near East, becoming the basis for the Assyrian power. After their defeat in 666 B.C., the Kushites and the Egyptians rapidly adopted the new iron technology. The coming of the Iron Age to Africa meant the production of better weapons and tools. Better weapons provided safety from hostile foes and protection from ferocious beasts. Better axes meant that man could live in densely forested regions where he had not been able to live before. Better farm implements meant that more food could be grown with less work, this again encouraged the development of denser population centers.
By 300 B.C., Kush had become an important iron-producing center. Its capital, Meroe located on the upper Nile, developed into a thriving commercial and industrial city. Archeological diggings have unearthed the remains of streets, houses, sprawling palaces, and huge piles of slag left from its iron industry. When scholars are able to decipher the Kushitic writings much more will be known about the culture and way of life of this early black empire. In the first century A.D. a Kushite official, whom the Bible refers to as the Ethiopian eunuch, was converted to Christianity by the apostle Philip while returning from a visit to Jerusalem. Shortly, Christianity spread throughout the entire kingdom. When Kush was defeated by the Axumites, founders of modern Ethiopia, several smaller Nubian, Christian kingdoms survived. Not until the sixteenth century, after almost a thousand years of pressure, did Islam gain supremacy in western Sudan. Ethiopia, shortly after defeating Kush, also became Christianized, and survived as a African only Christian island in a Moslem sea. In fact, Ethiopia has remained an independent, self-governing state until the present, with the brief exception of the Italian occupation between 1936 and 1941.
The development of man and civilization in Africa was not limited merely to the area in the Northeast. There is much evidence of cultural contact between people in all parts of the continent. When the Sahara began to dry out about 2000 B.C., the population was pushed out from there in all directions, thereby forcing the spread of both people and cultures. Even then, the Sahara did not become a block to communication as has been thought. There is clear evidence that trade routes continued to be used even after the Sahara became a desert. Scholars also have found that, shortly after the Iron Age reached North Africa, iron tools began to appear throughout the entire continent, and, within few centuries, iron production was being carried on at a number of different locations. At about the same time, sailors from the far East brought the yam and the banana to the shores of Africa. These fruits spread rapidly from the east coast across most of the continent, becoming basic staples in the African diet. New tools and new crops rapidly expanded the food supply and thereby provided a better way of life.
CHAPTER 1 African Origins
The Human Cradle
West African Empires
The Culture of West Africa
The Human Cradle
THREE and a half centuries of immigration have injected ever-fresh doses of energy and tension into the American bloodstream. As diverse peoples learned to live together, they became a dynamo generating both creativity and conflict. One of the most diverse elements in American life was introduced when Africans were forcibly brought to the American colonies. The American experiment had begun and consisted mainly of white men with a European heritage. The African was of a different color, had a different language, a different religion, and had an entirely different world view. But perhaps the most striking contrast was that, while the European came voluntarily in search of greater individual opportunity, the African came in chains. Because the European was the master and thereby the superior in the relationship, he assumed that his heritage was also superior. However, he was mistaken, because the African had a rich heritage of importance both to himself and to mankind. When people interact intimately over a long period of time, the influences are reciprocal. This is true even when their relationship is that of master and slave.
To trace the importance of the African heritage one must go back millions of years. Evidence is accumulating to the effect that Africa is the cradle of mankind. Professor Louis Leakey argues that Africa was important in the development of mankind in three ways. First, some thirty or forty million years ago, the basic stock which eventually gave rise to both man and the ape came into existence in the vicinity of the Nile Valley. Second, some twelve or fourteen million years ago, the main branch which was to lead to the development of man broke away from the branch leading to the ape. Third, about two million years ago, in the vicinity of East Africa, true man broke away from his now extinct manlike cousins. The present species of man-Homo Sapiens--developed through a complex process of natural selection from a large number of different manlike creatures-hominids.
One of the most numerous of the early hominids was Australopithecus Africanus who originated in Africa. Although he also did some hunting, he lived mainly by collecting and eating vegetables. One of the things that identified him as a man was his utilization of primitive tools. He had a pointed stone which may have been used to sharpen sticks, and these sticks were probably used for digging roots to augment his food supply. Leakey believes that Homo Habilis, who lived in East Africa about two million years ago, was the immediate ancestor of man and the most advanced of all the hominids. Although the hominids spread far outside of Africa, it is clear that they originate there and that it was in Africa that true man first emerged. As Darwin predicted a century ago, Africa has been found to be the father of mankind.
For many thousands of years, Homo Sapiens and the other hominids lived side by side in Africa as elsewhere. By ten thousand years ago, however, all the hominids had disappeared. Scholars believe that this was the result of the gradual absorption of all the other hominids by the more biologically advanced Homo Sapiens. This process may explain the appearance of variations within Homo Sapiens. At various times and places, as Homo Sapiens absorbed other hominid strains, differences within Homo Sapiens developed. In any case it is clear that the various types of man came into existence very early. In Africa, this process led to the development of three main types: the brownish-yellow Bush- men in the south, the darker Negroes throughout most of the continent and the Caucasoid Mediterranean types in the north.
Most of the concepts, held even by scholars about the nature and origin of races, are being proven inaccurate. Anthropological literature used to suggest that skin color in some groups was a possible indication of Mongoloid influences or that the thin, straight lips common in another group could be envisioned as a Caucasoid feature. However, it has become increasingly obvious that an analysis based on specific single traits such as these is always a poor indication of either racial origin or of racial contact. In fact, they could just as likely be the result of spontaneous and local variations within a given population grouping. In contrast, recent anthropological research is putting less emphasis on bone measurement and shape and, instead, is turning increasingly to technical analysis particularly through the examination of blood types.
Making and using tools are what differentiate man from animals. The earliest tools which have survived the wear of time were made of stone. As man's techniques of handling stone improved, so did his tools. The hand axe, a large oval of chipped flint varying in size and weight, came into common usage about half a millon years ago, and it has been found in much of Europe, Asia, and Africa. This too seems to have had an African origin. While scholars are not certain about its use, it was probably used for killing animals and for chopping meat.
The first achievement which radically altered man's condition was the invention of tools. The second achievement was his learning of primitive agriculture which transformed the hunter into the farmer. The domestication of animals and the planting and cultivating of crops had begun in the Near East, but the practice shortly spread to the Nile Valley in Northeast Africa. At the same time, farming communities sprang up throughout the Sahara which, at that time, was going through one of its wet phases. This made it well-suited to early agriculture. Farming permitted men to live together in communities and to pursue a more sedentary way of life. Actually, some Africans had already adopted a sedentary community life before the arrival of farming. Making hooks from bones led to the development of a few fishing communities near present-day Kenya.
As the communities along the Nile grew in size and number, society began to develop a complex urban civilization. By 3,200 B.C. the communities along the Nile had become politically united under the first of a line of great pharaohs. These early Egyptians undoubtedly were comprised of a racial mixture. The ancient Greeks viewed the Egyptians as being dark in complexion, and it has been estimated that the Egyptian population at the beginning was at least one-third Negro. Herodotus says that it was impossible to tell whether the influence of the Egyptians on the Ethiopians was stronger than that of the Ethiopians on the Egyptians.
What Herodotus and the Greeks referred to as Ethiopia was, in fact, the kingdom of Kush. It was located up the Nile from Egypt. As the Egyptian empire grew in strength and wealth, it strove to expand its power over its neighbors. Egypt sent several military expeditions south along the Nile to try to conquer the black people of Kush. They failed and the Kushites, in turn, endeavored to extend their power over Egypt. In 751 B.C., Kush invaded Egypt and, shortly thereafter, conquered it. This occupation of Egypt lasted for over a hundred years, until both the Kushites and the Egyptians were defeated by an invading army from Assyria in 666 B.C. At that point, the Kushites returned to the safety of their homeland.
The Kushites and the Egyptians had been defeated by a superior technology. While they were fighting with weapons made of copper and bronze, the Assyrians fought with iron. Methods of smelting and working iron had been developed centuries before by the Hittites who lived in Asia Minor. The use of iron spread across the Near East, becoming the basis for the Assyrian power. After their defeat in 666 B.C., the Kushites and the Egyptians rapidly adopted the new iron technology. The coming of the Iron Age to Africa meant the production of better weapons and tools. Better weapons provided safety from hostile foes and protection from ferocious beasts. Better axes meant that man could live in densely forested regions where he had not been able to live before. Better farm implements meant that more food could be grown with less work, this again encouraged the development of denser population centers.
By 300 B.C., Kush had become an important iron-producing center. Its capital, Meroe located on the upper Nile, developed into a thriving commercial and industrial city. Archeological diggings have unearthed the remains of streets, houses, sprawling palaces, and huge piles of slag left from its iron industry. When scholars are able to decipher the Kushitic writings much more will be known about the culture and way of life of this early black empire. In the first century A.D. a Kushite official, whom the Bible refers to as the Ethiopian eunuch, was converted to Christianity by the apostle Philip while returning from a visit to Jerusalem. Shortly, Christianity spread throughout the entire kingdom. When Kush was defeated by the Axumites, founders of modern Ethiopia, several smaller Nubian, Christian kingdoms survived. Not until the sixteenth century, after almost a thousand years of pressure, did Islam gain supremacy in western Sudan. Ethiopia, shortly after defeating Kush, also became Christianized, and survived as a African only Christian island in a Moslem sea. In fact, Ethiopia has remained an independent, self-governing state until the present, with the brief exception of the Italian occupation between 1936 and 1941.
The development of man and civilization in Africa was not limited merely to the area in the Northeast. There is much evidence of cultural contact between people in all parts of the continent. When the Sahara began to dry out about 2000 B.C., the population was pushed out from there in all directions, thereby forcing the spread of both people and cultures. Even then, the Sahara did not become a block to communication as has been thought. There is clear evidence that trade routes continued to be used even after the Sahara became a desert. Scholars also have found that, shortly after the Iron Age reached North Africa, iron tools began to appear throughout the entire continent, and, within few centuries, iron production was being carried on at a number of different locations. At about the same time, sailors from the far East brought the yam and the banana to the shores of Africa. These fruits spread rapidly from the east coast across most of the continent, becoming basic staples in the African diet. New tools and new crops rapidly expanded the food supply and thereby provided a better way of life.
West African Empires
Although West Africa had been inhabited since the earliest times, about two thousand years ago several events occurred which injected new vigor into the area. The first event had been thedrying of the Sahara, which had driven new immigrants into West Africa and, from the admixture of these new people with the previous inhabitants, a new vitality developed. Then, the introduction of the yam and the banana, as previously noted, significantly increased the food supply. Finally, the developments of iron tools and of iron work further increased the food supply and also provided better weapons. This permitted increased military power and political expansion. These were the necessary ingredients that led to the building of three large and powerful empires: Ghana, Mali and Songhay. Commerce was another factor which contributed to their development. Governmental control of a thriving trade in both gold and salt provided the wealth and power necessary for establishing these large empires.
Unfortunately, our knowledge about West Africa's early history is severely limited by the lack of written records from that period. In recent years, archaeologists have been unearthing increasing amounts of material which contribute to our knowledge of early Africa. West Africans tended to build their cities from nondurable materials such as wood, mud, and grass. The area does have a rich oral tradition, including special groups of trained men dedicated to its development and maintenance. As oral history is always open to modification and embellishment, with no means available for checking the original version, this material must be used cautiously. Nevertheless, when employed in conjunction with other sources, it does provide a rich source of information.
The earliest written records were provided by the Arabs who developed close contact with West Africa by 800 A.D. After that, West Africans began using Arabic themselves to record their own history. In the middle of the fifteenth century, Europeans began regular contact with West Africa, and they left a wide variety of written sources. While most of these early Europeans were not men of learning, many of their records are still valuable to the student of history.
Ghana was already a powerful empire, with a highly complex political and social organization, when the Arabs reached it about 800 A,D. An Arabic map of 830 A.D. has Ghana marked on it, and other contemporary Arabic sources refer to Ghana as the land of gold. From this time on, a thriving trade developed between Ghana and the world of Islam, including the beginnings of a slave trade. However, this early slave trade was a two-way affair. Al-Bakri, a contemporary Arab writer, was impressed with the display of power and affluence of the Ghanaian king. According to him, the king had an army of two hundred thousand warriors which included about forty thousand men with bows and arrows. (Modern scholars know that the real power of the Ghanaian army was due not to its large numbers as much as to its iron- pointed spears.) Al- Bakri also described an official audience at the royal palace in which the king, the Ghana, was surrounded by lavish trappings of gold and silver and was attended by many pages, servants, large numbers of faithful officials, provincial rulers, and mayors of cities. On such occasions, the king heard the grievances of his people and passed judgMent on them. Al- Bakri also describes lavish royal banquets which included a great deal of ceremonial ritual.
The power of the king, and therefore of the empire, was based on his ability to maintain law and order in his kingdom. This provided the development of a flourishing commerce, and it was by taxing all imports and exports that the king was able to finance his government. The key item in this financial structure was the regulation of the vast gold resources of West Africa, and it was by controlling its availability that the king was also able to manipulate its value. However, after the eleventh century, the Ghanaian empire was continually exposed to harassment from a long series of Arabic holy wars. Over a long period of time, the power of the king was reduced until the empire of Ghana finally collapsed. From its ashes emerged the basis for the creation of a new and even larger empire: the empire of Mali.
Mali, like Ghana, was built on gold. While Ghana had been under attack by the Arabs from outside, various peoples from within struck for their own freedom. The Mandinka people, who had been the middlemen in the gold trade and who had received protection from the king of Ghana, achieved their independence in 1230 A.D. They went on to use their position in the gold trade to build an empire of their own. The peak of their influence and power was achieved in the early fourteenth century under MansaKankan Musa who ruled Mali for a quarter of a century. He extended its boundaries beyond those of Ghana to include such important trading cities as Timbuktu and Gao, encompassing an area larger than that controlled by the European monarchs of that day. This empire also was based on its ability to provide stable government and a flourishing economy. An Arab traveler, Ibn Batuta, shortly after Musa's death, found complete safety of travel throughout the entire empire of Mali
Mansa Musa and, for that matter, the entire ruling class of Mali had converted to Islam. This intensified the contacts between West Africa and the Islamic world. Although several of these kings made pilgrimages to Mecca, the most spectacular was the one by Mansa Musa in 1324. On his way there, he made a prolonged visit to Cairo. While there, both his generosity in giving lavish gifts of gold to its citizens and his extravagant spending poured so much gold into the Cairo market that it caused a general inflation. It was estimated by the Arabs that his caravan included some sixty thousand people and some five hundred personal slaves. Mansa Musa took a number of Arabic scholars and skilled artisans back to West Africa with him. These scholars enhanced the university of Timbuktu which was already widely known as a center of Islamic studies. Now, besides exchanging material goods, West Africa and the Arabs became involved in a steady exchange of scholars and learning.
The success of Mali in bringing law and order to a large portion of West Africa was responsible for its decline. Having experienced the advantages of political organization, many localities sought self-government. In fact, Mansa Musa had overextended the empire. A skilled ruler like himself could manipulate it, but those who followed were not adequate to the challenge. Movements for self- government gradually eroded central authority until by 1500 Mali had lost its importance as an empire. Although the period of its power and prosperity was respectable by most world empire standards, it was short-lived compared to the history of the previous empire of Ghana. Again, a new empire was to emerge from the ruins of the previous one.
The Songhay empire was based on the strength of the important trading city of Gao. This city won its independence from Mali as early as 1375, and, within a century, it had developed into an empire. Songhay carried on a vigorous trade with the outside world and particularly with the Arabic countries. The ruling class, in particular, continued to follow the religion of Islam, but it is generally believed that the masses of the population remained faithful to the more traditional West African religions based on fetishism and ancestor worship. Two of the more powerful rulers were Suni Ali, who began his 28-year reign in 1464, and Askia Mohammed, who began his 36-year reign in 1493. Askia Mohammed was also known as Askia the Great. The security of Songhay was undermined when Arabs from Morocco invaded and captured the key trading city of Timbuktu in 1591. Thus ended the last of the three great empires of West Africa.
It would be a mistake, however, to assume that those parts of West Africa which remained outside of these three empires fulfilled the usual European image of primitive savagery. On the contrary, a number of other small yet powerful states existed throughout the entire period. If this had not been so, the Europeans, as they arrived in the fifteenth century, could have pillaged West Africa at will. Instead, the Europeans were only able to establish trading stations where local kings permitted it. With the exception of a few raiding parties which seized Africans and carried them off as slaves, most slave acquisition was done through hard bargaining and a highly systematized trading process. The Europeans were never allowed to penetrate inland, and they found that they always had to treat the African kings and their agents as business equals. Many of the early European visitors, in fact, were impressed by the luxury, power, trading practices, skilled crafts, and the complex social structure which they found in Africa. Only in some parts of East Africa, where the states were unusually small, were the Portuguese able to pillage and conquer at will. While many Europeans may have thought of Africa as being filled with ignorant savages, those who reached its shores were impressed instead with its vigorous civilization.
Although West Africa had been inhabited since the earliest times, about two thousand years ago several events occurred which injected new vigor into the area. The first event had been thedrying of the Sahara, which had driven new immigrants into West Africa and, from the admixture of these new people with the previous inhabitants, a new vitality developed. Then, the introduction of the yam and the banana, as previously noted, significantly increased the food supply. Finally, the developments of iron tools and of iron work further increased the food supply and also provided better weapons. This permitted increased military power and political expansion. These were the necessary ingredients that led to the building of three large and powerful empires: Ghana, Mali and Songhay. Commerce was another factor which contributed to their development. Governmental control of a thriving trade in both gold and salt provided the wealth and power necessary for establishing these large empires.
Unfortunately, our knowledge about West Africa's early history is severely limited by the lack of written records from that period. In recent years, archaeologists have been unearthing increasing amounts of material which contribute to our knowledge of early Africa. West Africans tended to build their cities from nondurable materials such as wood, mud, and grass. The area does have a rich oral tradition, including special groups of trained men dedicated to its development and maintenance. As oral history is always open to modification and embellishment, with no means available for checking the original version, this material must be used cautiously. Nevertheless, when employed in conjunction with other sources, it does provide a rich source of information.
The earliest written records were provided by the Arabs who developed close contact with West Africa by 800 A.D. After that, West Africans began using Arabic themselves to record their own history. In the middle of the fifteenth century, Europeans began regular contact with West Africa, and they left a wide variety of written sources. While most of these early Europeans were not men of learning, many of their records are still valuable to the student of history.
Ghana was already a powerful empire, with a highly complex political and social organization, when the Arabs reached it about 800 A,D. An Arabic map of 830 A.D. has Ghana marked on it, and other contemporary Arabic sources refer to Ghana as the land of gold. From this time on, a thriving trade developed between Ghana and the world of Islam, including the beginnings of a slave trade. However, this early slave trade was a two-way affair. Al-Bakri, a contemporary Arab writer, was impressed with the display of power and affluence of the Ghanaian king. According to him, the king had an army of two hundred thousand warriors which included about forty thousand men with bows and arrows. (Modern scholars know that the real power of the Ghanaian army was due not to its large numbers as much as to its iron- pointed spears.) Al- Bakri also described an official audience at the royal palace in which the king, the Ghana, was surrounded by lavish trappings of gold and silver and was attended by many pages, servants, large numbers of faithful officials, provincial rulers, and mayors of cities. On such occasions, the king heard the grievances of his people and passed judgMent on them. Al- Bakri also describes lavish royal banquets which included a great deal of ceremonial ritual.
The power of the king, and therefore of the empire, was based on his ability to maintain law and order in his kingdom. This provided the development of a flourishing commerce, and it was by taxing all imports and exports that the king was able to finance his government. The key item in this financial structure was the regulation of the vast gold resources of West Africa, and it was by controlling its availability that the king was also able to manipulate its value. However, after the eleventh century, the Ghanaian empire was continually exposed to harassment from a long series of Arabic holy wars. Over a long period of time, the power of the king was reduced until the empire of Ghana finally collapsed. From its ashes emerged the basis for the creation of a new and even larger empire: the empire of Mali.
Mali, like Ghana, was built on gold. While Ghana had been under attack by the Arabs from outside, various peoples from within struck for their own freedom. The Mandinka people, who had been the middlemen in the gold trade and who had received protection from the king of Ghana, achieved their independence in 1230 A.D. They went on to use their position in the gold trade to build an empire of their own. The peak of their influence and power was achieved in the early fourteenth century under MansaKankan Musa who ruled Mali for a quarter of a century. He extended its boundaries beyond those of Ghana to include such important trading cities as Timbuktu and Gao, encompassing an area larger than that controlled by the European monarchs of that day. This empire also was based on its ability to provide stable government and a flourishing economy. An Arab traveler, Ibn Batuta, shortly after Musa's death, found complete safety of travel throughout the entire empire of Mali
Mansa Musa and, for that matter, the entire ruling class of Mali had converted to Islam. This intensified the contacts between West Africa and the Islamic world. Although several of these kings made pilgrimages to Mecca, the most spectacular was the one by Mansa Musa in 1324. On his way there, he made a prolonged visit to Cairo. While there, both his generosity in giving lavish gifts of gold to its citizens and his extravagant spending poured so much gold into the Cairo market that it caused a general inflation. It was estimated by the Arabs that his caravan included some sixty thousand people and some five hundred personal slaves. Mansa Musa took a number of Arabic scholars and skilled artisans back to West Africa with him. These scholars enhanced the university of Timbuktu which was already widely known as a center of Islamic studies. Now, besides exchanging material goods, West Africa and the Arabs became involved in a steady exchange of scholars and learning.
The success of Mali in bringing law and order to a large portion of West Africa was responsible for its decline. Having experienced the advantages of political organization, many localities sought self-government. In fact, Mansa Musa had overextended the empire. A skilled ruler like himself could manipulate it, but those who followed were not adequate to the challenge. Movements for self- government gradually eroded central authority until by 1500 Mali had lost its importance as an empire. Although the period of its power and prosperity was respectable by most world empire standards, it was short-lived compared to the history of the previous empire of Ghana. Again, a new empire was to emerge from the ruins of the previous one.
The Songhay empire was based on the strength of the important trading city of Gao. This city won its independence from Mali as early as 1375, and, within a century, it had developed into an empire. Songhay carried on a vigorous trade with the outside world and particularly with the Arabic countries. The ruling class, in particular, continued to follow the religion of Islam, but it is generally believed that the masses of the population remained faithful to the more traditional West African religions based on fetishism and ancestor worship. Two of the more powerful rulers were Suni Ali, who began his 28-year reign in 1464, and Askia Mohammed, who began his 36-year reign in 1493. Askia Mohammed was also known as Askia the Great. The security of Songhay was undermined when Arabs from Morocco invaded and captured the key trading city of Timbuktu in 1591. Thus ended the last of the three great empires of West Africa.
It would be a mistake, however, to assume that those parts of West Africa which remained outside of these three empires fulfilled the usual European image of primitive savagery. On the contrary, a number of other small yet powerful states existed throughout the entire period. If this had not been so, the Europeans, as they arrived in the fifteenth century, could have pillaged West Africa at will. Instead, the Europeans were only able to establish trading stations where local kings permitted it. With the exception of a few raiding parties which seized Africans and carried them off as slaves, most slave acquisition was done through hard bargaining and a highly systematized trading process. The Europeans were never allowed to penetrate inland, and they found that they always had to treat the African kings and their agents as business equals. Many of the early European visitors, in fact, were impressed by the luxury, power, trading practices, skilled crafts, and the complex social structure which they found in Africa. Only in some parts of East Africa, where the states were unusually small, were the Portuguese able to pillage and conquer at will. While many Europeans may have thought of Africa as being filled with ignorant savages, those who reached its shores were impressed instead with its vigorous civilization.
"Didn't the RTS movement come out of the movement that was opposed to more roads in England?"
yes. and those people involved then also travelled, and continue to travel, at some point in their lives, in motor cars. the point is its a stupid straw man argument, to whip out this kind of argument:
"aren't you opposed to X, then how can you Y" (where Y is somehow connected to X).
we have to live in a fucked up system, and living within it means we are part of it, against our will. we are against capitalism and consumerism, but if we try to live without money, we will die. does the fact that i buy food at safeway mean i cant be an anti-capitalist? if you think that is the case, then there really isnt anything for you and i to talk about.
of course, if your point is shouldnt we try to do things locally, or if it is about whether RTS in particular be a local manifestation, then that IS an interesting discussion, but the answer is not obvious, as pointed out in a previous post.
yes. and those people involved then also travelled, and continue to travel, at some point in their lives, in motor cars. the point is its a stupid straw man argument, to whip out this kind of argument:
"aren't you opposed to X, then how can you Y" (where Y is somehow connected to X).
we have to live in a fucked up system, and living within it means we are part of it, against our will. we are against capitalism and consumerism, but if we try to live without money, we will die. does the fact that i buy food at safeway mean i cant be an anti-capitalist? if you think that is the case, then there really isnt anything for you and i to talk about.
of course, if your point is shouldnt we try to do things locally, or if it is about whether RTS in particular be a local manifestation, then that IS an interesting discussion, but the answer is not obvious, as pointed out in a previous post.
If you think the air is so polluted, why are you still breathing it?
If you think the US is so bad, why are you still living here?
How can you oppose logging and still insist on using paper?
Etc.
If you think the US is so bad, why are you still living here?
How can you oppose logging and still insist on using paper?
Etc.
good write up about palo. police overreact to simple expression of human freedom. no more jails police or war!
***If you think the air is so polluted, why are you still breathing it?
If you think the US is so bad, why are you still living here?
How can you oppose logging and still insist on using paper?***
Are you that dense?
Criticism of power (govt. and corporate) is the essence of a democratic society---so the correct question would be, "If the US is so bad, what are you doing to change it?" It' jingoistic, gullible idiots like you that perpetuate the status quo and allow a corrupt system to continue.
If you think the US is so bad, why are you still living here?
How can you oppose logging and still insist on using paper?***
Are you that dense?
Criticism of power (govt. and corporate) is the essence of a democratic society---so the correct question would be, "If the US is so bad, what are you doing to change it?" It' jingoistic, gullible idiots like you that perpetuate the status quo and allow a corrupt system to continue.
***If you think the air is so polluted, why are you still breathing it?
If you think the US is so bad, why are you still living here?
How can you oppose logging and still insist on using paper?***
Are you that dense?
Criticism of power (govt. and corporate) is the essence of a democratic society---so the correct question would be, "If the US is so bad, what are you doing to change it?" It' jingoistic, gullible idiots like you that perpetuate the status quo and allow a corrupt system to continue.
If you think the US is so bad, why are you still living here?
How can you oppose logging and still insist on using paper?***
Are you that dense?
Criticism of power (govt. and corporate) is the essence of a democratic society---so the correct question would be, "If the US is so bad, what are you doing to change it?" It' jingoistic, gullible idiots like you that perpetuate the status quo and allow a corrupt system to continue.
***If you think the air is so polluted, why are you still breathing it?
If you think the US is so bad, why are you still living here?
How can you oppose logging and still insist on using paper?***
Are you that dense?
Criticism of power (govt. and corporate) is the essence of a democratic society---so the correct question would be, "If the US is so bad, what are you doing to change it?" It' jingoistic, gullible idiots like you that perpetuate the status quo and allow a corrupt system to continue.
If you think the US is so bad, why are you still living here?
How can you oppose logging and still insist on using paper?***
Are you that dense?
Criticism of power (govt. and corporate) is the essence of a democratic society---so the correct question would be, "If the US is so bad, what are you doing to change it?" It' jingoistic, gullible idiots like you that perpetuate the status quo and allow a corrupt system to continue.
***If you think the air is so polluted, why are you still breathing it?
If you think the US is so bad, why are you still living here?
How can you oppose logging and still insist on using paper?***
Are you that dense?
Criticism of power (govt. and corporate) is the essence of a democratic society---so the correct question would be, "If the US is so bad, what are you doing to change it?" It' jingoistic, gullible idiots like you that perpetuate the status quo and allow a corrupt system to continue.
If you think the US is so bad, why are you still living here?
How can you oppose logging and still insist on using paper?***
Are you that dense?
Criticism of power (govt. and corporate) is the essence of a democratic society---so the correct question would be, "If the US is so bad, what are you doing to change it?" It' jingoistic, gullible idiots like you that perpetuate the status quo and allow a corrupt system to continue.
The following is an account of one section of the student revolt all across Japan in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The insubordination at Nichidai was the most widespread and uniquely common eruption of all those storied tales from the era of the Zengakuren and Zenkyoto. This story’s precedent is of course the Zenkyoto's emergence on the Todai campus in Tokyo(Japan's Harvard). But Nichidai went much further. This story has not been available on the internet until now, and the only articles on the Zengakuren and Zenkyoto that were translated into English exist in the now-defunct AMPO journal, which I pull this history from. The article was written by longtime AMPO writers Muto Ichiyo and Inoue Reiko. It is in the interest of the establishment that such secret history goes trammeled into the sewers of history, that the glorious hopes and dreams of generations of individuals get lost in Japan’s "sea of consensus." Against that boredom, I present an excerpt from Nichidai history, replete with photographs from this struggle of hope.
Nichidai was different from Todai in some important aspects. The largest university in Japan with more than 100,000 students, Nichidai was designed not to produce power elites but to supply Japanese business with white-collar proletariat and technical staff. It was a huge money-making system comprising 11 departments, four subsidiary colleges, 25 research institutes, and more than 30 high schools as well as numerous training schools and courses strewn all over the country. Nichidai was a rightist university. The trusteeship headed by notorious rightist Furuta Jujiro mercilessly repressed any spontaneous student activity. There were no independent student associations, and freedom of speech and expression did not exist inside the campuses. Students and professors were unable to criticize the university leadership. Order was maintained by sheer violence. The university bureaucracy hired a private army recruited from rightwing gymnastic club and professional fascist groups. They would enforce Furuta’s directives by beating up dissidents. Nichidai students rightly likened their school to a huge concentration camp. But even that heavy establishment was shaken in the era of rebellion, liberating long suppressed youthful energies which gushed forth with unprecedented force.
The explosion was triggered by university corruption. In 1968, the Tax Agency exposed the embezzlement of 34 billion yen ($17 million) by university authorities. During the agency’s investigation, the chief accountant disappeared, and a clerk committed suicide.
Moved by a common sense of justice, a handful of students started to organize secretly, and at midnight put up wall posters and slogans. Class discussion started and spread. Open, protest action was unimaginable in the fascist-controlled environment. But the Department of Economics students were the first to rise up, classes and clubs issuing statements demanding clarification of the embezzlement and freedom for students. The Department of Humanities and Physics followed suit. On May 21, the first public rally was held by 300 economics students. The action encouraged other departments, and on May 25, 2,000 students gathered at Tokyo’s Kanda campus to organize the first street demonstration ever held by Nichidai students. A modest demonstration, it nonetheless had an insurrectionary value for the participants. Watching their columns swell to more than 3,000 as they walked over 200 meters, they overcame their fear of fascist terror. School authorities replied by locking the students out and sending in their private army armed with real swords to attack them. But the crowds of protesting students snowballed, record crowds turning out every week.
Action committees were organized at all levels, which were unified into the Nichidai Zenkyoto(, “All student struggle committee). Their demands were the resignation en bloc of the trusteeship, the disclosure of university accounts, freedom of assembly, the abolition of censorship over campus publications, and the retraction of disciplinary action against activist students. The Zenkyoto demanded a collective bargaining with the trustees, but Furuta and his private army only escalated their violent attacks. Cases of violence by rightist thugs were too numerous to count. Furuta mobilized as many as 1,000 armed thugs on a single occasion, to give an idea of the scale of violence. That happened on June 2 when students gathered in front of the university’s head-office in Kanda to demand mass negotiations. The fighting units mobilized by the trusteeship were arrayed at nearby Yasukuni shrine in a stand-by position, poised to attack the protesting students. That day, the demonstrators outnumbered and overwhelmed the fascists, who were unable to make a sortie, but some were called to the headquarters, where they showered Cocacola bottles down to the students who massively encircled the building. On June 11, as thousands of students planned to hold a rally inside the campus, armed fascist groups joined by university employees in the student-control section attacked them. These para-military forces were brutal, and more than 200 students fell to the tarmac, bleeding and groaning. It was at that point that the riot police arrived to intervene. The students naively welcomed them, thinking that the police were protecting them from the thugs, but the fully geared police turned on the students, attacking and beating them, together with the fascist groups. That opened the students’ eyes. State power sided with Furuta.
The enraged students then occupied the school buildings, one department after another. Barricading the edifices, they began to live there, in the Nichidai community they had created, defending their citadels and developing their thinking.
The Nichidai struggle culminated in a mass bargaining session held on September 30 in a huge auditorium formerly used for sumo wrestling matches. The four-floor hall was packed by 35,000 students, whose collective weight threatened the old building with collapse. Furuta and other leaders at last had to appear before the angry crowds to reply to them. Reading the proceedings, one is struck by the spirit of democracy that prevailed in the hall. The front rows were occupied by 800 Furuta troopers, all big and strong men from sports clubs, who booed and slandered the Zenkyoto in a rude, menacing manner, red-baiting them and shouting “smash Zenkyoto.” Using its overwhelming presence, Zenkyoto could have easily silenced the guards, but it patiently tried to convince them of the correctness of their cause.
After the fascists left, having failed to disrupt the rally, Furuta and his trustees arrived. Furta made excuses and refused to negotiate. The mass meeting was held, according to him, as a gesture of goodwill on the part of the university. But the students were patient. Akita Meidai, Nichidai Zenkyoto Chairperson, spoke on behalf of all, after which other students rose and spoke, trying to persuade Furuta. The session lasted for 12 hours, until three a.m. Overwhelmed by the moral superiority of the students and having exhausted his last subterfuge, Furuta and the other trustees finally succumbed and signed an agreement accepting all Zenkyoto demands. The Nichidai struggle seemed to have ended in victory for the students.
But the next day, Prime Minister Sato himself intervened. He declared that the Nichidai agreement was not valid as it was forced on the trusteeship by the “mass violence.” Nichidai immediately negated all the promises it had made, and the trusteeship reversed its pledge to resign en masse. The agreement, solemnly signed by all trustees, was declared null and void. Four days later, the police issued arrest warrants for Akita Meidai and seven other Zenkyoto leaders, who had to go underground.
One of the fascist groups involved in the Nichidai struggle was the Nippon Kai (Japan Association) whose president was Furuta himself and whose chairman was Prime Minister Sato Eisaku. The Nippon Kai members included top business and political magnates, such as Keidanren president Uemura Kogoro, former prime ministers Tanaka Kakuei and Fukuda Takeo, and current prime minister Nakasone Yasuhiro. Moreover, the thugs sent into Nichidai to terrorize Zenkyoto students came from 12 different fascist and Yakuza (gangster) organizations, all of which had close ties to big business and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.
The Nichidai Zenkyoto defied not just the fascist trusteeship of a single university but this whole structure of Japanese society, in which underworld borders on, or even fuses into, the world of dignitaries. This structure, usually concealed from public view, surfaces in all its squalor, deploying its built-in mechanisms of open violence, when masses of people rise up and endanger it.
The perfidious behavior of the Nichidai trustees, instigated by state leaders, was a traumatic revelation to Nichidai students, who realized that they were fighting not merely the corrupt and arrogant university leadership but state power itself, which was based on the Nichidai type control of the common people. This was why the Nichidai Zenkyoto defined their struggle as “Nichidai Revolution.” By this, they meant that changing Nichidai totally was tantamount to changing the entire structure of Japanese society. This awakening radicalized the masses of Nichidai students. An activist who had been among the non-political students at the beginning of the struggle explained a few months later: “Our struggle is fought precisely at a university in whose image the ruling class hopes to reshape all universities. Our struggle is therefore not to modernize Nichidai in which to bring it up to 20th century standards. Our task rather is the most advanced one facing contemporary society.” Why? Because Nichidai despite its pre-modern practices was a built-in instrument of an over-mature capitalist society. He argued, “We entered this university to learn the truth,” he argued, “but the university refused to treat us as human beings. Instead, it tried to supply us as commodities to bourgeois society. Our revolt is a revolt against all this. It is not merely against Furuta and university corruption, but against the dehumanizing functions imposed by capitalist society on the university.”
The Nichidai barricades were sturdily built. Inside, well-organized student communes were set up, rules made by the occupying students well observed, committees organized for different functions, political discussions and cultural activities held constantly, and Molotov-cocktails and other casual weapons prepared to ward off fascist and police attacks. The students began a counter-university, lecturers were invited from outside, and films were shown. A student recalled, “We had lectures everyday. There we listened to first-rate lecturers we had never heard before, and saw so many films. Ironically, we felt we were enjoying university life for the first time.” Students who had been so many isolated “commodities” merged together into the commune, where all people were comrades. Thousands lived in such communes. Despite the constant fear of fascist attacks, they felt that they had at last become themselves, free and dignified. It was a cultural revolution, and especially a social revolution, for they found that through the struggle, social relationships in everyday life had changed. The students felt strongly attached to the barricade, which became the symbol of their new identity.
The Nichidai Zenkyoto struggle gained broad popular support. It was closer to the grassroots than the Todai struggle. The students were not elites, and the issue was simple. Nichidai graduates were everywhere, and many of them knew the Zenkyoto students were right. The corruption of the Nichidai leadership was clear to everybody, violating common people’s sense of justice. The media also had to denounce Furuta for employing violence against the students. Akita Meidai, the Nichidai Zenkyoto leader, was an extremely popular personality, a shy young man from the working class with no halo around him. The major Nichidai departments and other large private universities, like Chuo, Meiji, and Senshu, were located in Tokyo’s Kanda district, which abounded with bookstores, coffeeshops, student restaurants, mahjong parlors, and other service stores frequented by the students. In 1968-69, that area became an arena of serious clashes between students from Nichidai and other schools and the police. Whenever the police attacked students with tear gas and clubs, the local community sympathized, offering asylum to students chased by the police and caring for the injured.
Here the article breaks off.
I know from an Anarchist comrade that at some point, the fascists and police led a joint assault upon communized Nichidai, beating to a pulp faculty and students. The communes were raided and this unprecedented community was brought down. I haven’t found out when or how yet, perhaps I’ll amend this when I do find out…for now I leave it to your imagination, to spark dark fires in the silos of your fighting mind. So that such desires surge forth once more, in Japan or elsewhere, heedless of the constraints of “reality,” seeking accomplices in the destruction of boredom and the creation of community.
Nichidai was different from Todai in some important aspects. The largest university in Japan with more than 100,000 students, Nichidai was designed not to produce power elites but to supply Japanese business with white-collar proletariat and technical staff. It was a huge money-making system comprising 11 departments, four subsidiary colleges, 25 research institutes, and more than 30 high schools as well as numerous training schools and courses strewn all over the country. Nichidai was a rightist university. The trusteeship headed by notorious rightist Furuta Jujiro mercilessly repressed any spontaneous student activity. There were no independent student associations, and freedom of speech and expression did not exist inside the campuses. Students and professors were unable to criticize the university leadership. Order was maintained by sheer violence. The university bureaucracy hired a private army recruited from rightwing gymnastic club and professional fascist groups. They would enforce Furuta’s directives by beating up dissidents. Nichidai students rightly likened their school to a huge concentration camp. But even that heavy establishment was shaken in the era of rebellion, liberating long suppressed youthful energies which gushed forth with unprecedented force.
The explosion was triggered by university corruption. In 1968, the Tax Agency exposed the embezzlement of 34 billion yen ($17 million) by university authorities. During the agency’s investigation, the chief accountant disappeared, and a clerk committed suicide.
Moved by a common sense of justice, a handful of students started to organize secretly, and at midnight put up wall posters and slogans. Class discussion started and spread. Open, protest action was unimaginable in the fascist-controlled environment. But the Department of Economics students were the first to rise up, classes and clubs issuing statements demanding clarification of the embezzlement and freedom for students. The Department of Humanities and Physics followed suit. On May 21, the first public rally was held by 300 economics students. The action encouraged other departments, and on May 25, 2,000 students gathered at Tokyo’s Kanda campus to organize the first street demonstration ever held by Nichidai students. A modest demonstration, it nonetheless had an insurrectionary value for the participants. Watching their columns swell to more than 3,000 as they walked over 200 meters, they overcame their fear of fascist terror. School authorities replied by locking the students out and sending in their private army armed with real swords to attack them. But the crowds of protesting students snowballed, record crowds turning out every week.
Action committees were organized at all levels, which were unified into the Nichidai Zenkyoto(, “All student struggle committee). Their demands were the resignation en bloc of the trusteeship, the disclosure of university accounts, freedom of assembly, the abolition of censorship over campus publications, and the retraction of disciplinary action against activist students. The Zenkyoto demanded a collective bargaining with the trustees, but Furuta and his private army only escalated their violent attacks. Cases of violence by rightist thugs were too numerous to count. Furuta mobilized as many as 1,000 armed thugs on a single occasion, to give an idea of the scale of violence. That happened on June 2 when students gathered in front of the university’s head-office in Kanda to demand mass negotiations. The fighting units mobilized by the trusteeship were arrayed at nearby Yasukuni shrine in a stand-by position, poised to attack the protesting students. That day, the demonstrators outnumbered and overwhelmed the fascists, who were unable to make a sortie, but some were called to the headquarters, where they showered Cocacola bottles down to the students who massively encircled the building. On June 11, as thousands of students planned to hold a rally inside the campus, armed fascist groups joined by university employees in the student-control section attacked them. These para-military forces were brutal, and more than 200 students fell to the tarmac, bleeding and groaning. It was at that point that the riot police arrived to intervene. The students naively welcomed them, thinking that the police were protecting them from the thugs, but the fully geared police turned on the students, attacking and beating them, together with the fascist groups. That opened the students’ eyes. State power sided with Furuta.
The enraged students then occupied the school buildings, one department after another. Barricading the edifices, they began to live there, in the Nichidai community they had created, defending their citadels and developing their thinking.
The Nichidai struggle culminated in a mass bargaining session held on September 30 in a huge auditorium formerly used for sumo wrestling matches. The four-floor hall was packed by 35,000 students, whose collective weight threatened the old building with collapse. Furuta and other leaders at last had to appear before the angry crowds to reply to them. Reading the proceedings, one is struck by the spirit of democracy that prevailed in the hall. The front rows were occupied by 800 Furuta troopers, all big and strong men from sports clubs, who booed and slandered the Zenkyoto in a rude, menacing manner, red-baiting them and shouting “smash Zenkyoto.” Using its overwhelming presence, Zenkyoto could have easily silenced the guards, but it patiently tried to convince them of the correctness of their cause.
After the fascists left, having failed to disrupt the rally, Furuta and his trustees arrived. Furta made excuses and refused to negotiate. The mass meeting was held, according to him, as a gesture of goodwill on the part of the university. But the students were patient. Akita Meidai, Nichidai Zenkyoto Chairperson, spoke on behalf of all, after which other students rose and spoke, trying to persuade Furuta. The session lasted for 12 hours, until three a.m. Overwhelmed by the moral superiority of the students and having exhausted his last subterfuge, Furuta and the other trustees finally succumbed and signed an agreement accepting all Zenkyoto demands. The Nichidai struggle seemed to have ended in victory for the students.
But the next day, Prime Minister Sato himself intervened. He declared that the Nichidai agreement was not valid as it was forced on the trusteeship by the “mass violence.” Nichidai immediately negated all the promises it had made, and the trusteeship reversed its pledge to resign en masse. The agreement, solemnly signed by all trustees, was declared null and void. Four days later, the police issued arrest warrants for Akita Meidai and seven other Zenkyoto leaders, who had to go underground.
One of the fascist groups involved in the Nichidai struggle was the Nippon Kai (Japan Association) whose president was Furuta himself and whose chairman was Prime Minister Sato Eisaku. The Nippon Kai members included top business and political magnates, such as Keidanren president Uemura Kogoro, former prime ministers Tanaka Kakuei and Fukuda Takeo, and current prime minister Nakasone Yasuhiro. Moreover, the thugs sent into Nichidai to terrorize Zenkyoto students came from 12 different fascist and Yakuza (gangster) organizations, all of which had close ties to big business and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.
The Nichidai Zenkyoto defied not just the fascist trusteeship of a single university but this whole structure of Japanese society, in which underworld borders on, or even fuses into, the world of dignitaries. This structure, usually concealed from public view, surfaces in all its squalor, deploying its built-in mechanisms of open violence, when masses of people rise up and endanger it.
The perfidious behavior of the Nichidai trustees, instigated by state leaders, was a traumatic revelation to Nichidai students, who realized that they were fighting not merely the corrupt and arrogant university leadership but state power itself, which was based on the Nichidai type control of the common people. This was why the Nichidai Zenkyoto defined their struggle as “Nichidai Revolution.” By this, they meant that changing Nichidai totally was tantamount to changing the entire structure of Japanese society. This awakening radicalized the masses of Nichidai students. An activist who had been among the non-political students at the beginning of the struggle explained a few months later: “Our struggle is fought precisely at a university in whose image the ruling class hopes to reshape all universities. Our struggle is therefore not to modernize Nichidai in which to bring it up to 20th century standards. Our task rather is the most advanced one facing contemporary society.” Why? Because Nichidai despite its pre-modern practices was a built-in instrument of an over-mature capitalist society. He argued, “We entered this university to learn the truth,” he argued, “but the university refused to treat us as human beings. Instead, it tried to supply us as commodities to bourgeois society. Our revolt is a revolt against all this. It is not merely against Furuta and university corruption, but against the dehumanizing functions imposed by capitalist society on the university.”
The Nichidai barricades were sturdily built. Inside, well-organized student communes were set up, rules made by the occupying students well observed, committees organized for different functions, political discussions and cultural activities held constantly, and Molotov-cocktails and other casual weapons prepared to ward off fascist and police attacks. The students began a counter-university, lecturers were invited from outside, and films were shown. A student recalled, “We had lectures everyday. There we listened to first-rate lecturers we had never heard before, and saw so many films. Ironically, we felt we were enjoying university life for the first time.” Students who had been so many isolated “commodities” merged together into the commune, where all people were comrades. Thousands lived in such communes. Despite the constant fear of fascist attacks, they felt that they had at last become themselves, free and dignified. It was a cultural revolution, and especially a social revolution, for they found that through the struggle, social relationships in everyday life had changed. The students felt strongly attached to the barricade, which became the symbol of their new identity.
The Nichidai Zenkyoto struggle gained broad popular support. It was closer to the grassroots than the Todai struggle. The students were not elites, and the issue was simple. Nichidai graduates were everywhere, and many of them knew the Zenkyoto students were right. The corruption of the Nichidai leadership was clear to everybody, violating common people’s sense of justice. The media also had to denounce Furuta for employing violence against the students. Akita Meidai, the Nichidai Zenkyoto leader, was an extremely popular personality, a shy young man from the working class with no halo around him. The major Nichidai departments and other large private universities, like Chuo, Meiji, and Senshu, were located in Tokyo’s Kanda district, which abounded with bookstores, coffeeshops, student restaurants, mahjong parlors, and other service stores frequented by the students. In 1968-69, that area became an arena of serious clashes between students from Nichidai and other schools and the police. Whenever the police attacked students with tear gas and clubs, the local community sympathized, offering asylum to students chased by the police and caring for the injured.
Here the article breaks off.
I know from an Anarchist comrade that at some point, the fascists and police led a joint assault upon communized Nichidai, beating to a pulp faculty and students. The communes were raided and this unprecedented community was brought down. I haven’t found out when or how yet, perhaps I’ll amend this when I do find out…for now I leave it to your imagination, to spark dark fires in the silos of your fighting mind. So that such desires surge forth once more, in Japan or elsewhere, heedless of the constraints of “reality,” seeking accomplices in the destruction of boredom and the creation of community.
i think you missed the sarcasm. i believe the post was offering examples of "false" logic.
In the wake of two strikingly successful, mostly nonviolent, and essentially democratic insurrections, a major magazine bemoaned the upheaval under the headline "The Downside of People Power." "The military coup may be a thing of the past," its editorialist declared, "but the popular coup is in vogue." If the language sounds familiar, it might be because it unconsciously echoes The Guardian's famous description of the Ukrainian revolution as a "postmodern coup d'etat." But this article did not appear in The Guardian, and the revolts it rebuked did not take place in Ukraine or Kyrgyzstan or Lebanon. The piece was in the May 9 Business Week, and the rebellions were in Ecuador and Mexico.
The Other Insurrections
In the wake of two strikingly successful, mostly nonviolent, and essentially democratic insurrections, a major magazine bemoaned the upheaval under the headline "The Downside of People Power." "The military coup may be a thing of the past," its editorialist declared, "but the popular coup is in vogue." If the language sounds familiar, it might be because it unconsciously echoes The Guardian's famous description of the Ukrainian revolution as a "postmodern coup d'etat." But this article did not appear in The Guardian, and the revolts it rebuked did not take place in Ukraine or Kyrgyzstan or Lebanon. The piece was in the May 9 Business Week, and the rebellions were in Ecuador and Mexico.
Latin America's outbreak of people power hasn't received as much stateside attention as its counterparts in Central Asia and the Middle East. This is presumably for the same reason media accounts of nonviolent Arab movements often ignore Palestinian resistance to Israel's "security barrier": The uprisings aren't aligned with U.S. interests. Official Washington has not been celebrating South America's turn to the left--three-quarters of the continent's people now live under left-wing governments--and popular protest is generally regarded as a part of that shift. So it gets left out of the narrative of democratic transformation, and when it does surface, it's treated rather differently than its Asian equivalents. Instead of Business Week's Jason Bush describing the Ukrainian and Georgian protestors as "democratic political movements," we have Business Week's Geri Smith complaining that "citizens are taking to the streets, rather than the ballot box, to register their political grievances." (Actually, they've been taking to both.) She also quotes Moisés Naim of Foreign Policy, who calls the ferment "the politics of race, revenge, and resentment." The solution, Smith concludes, is for the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank to subsidize "solid government institutions."
Smith and Naim aren't alone. When The Christian Science Monitor's Danna Harman filed a solid report on the Latin American upheaval, published April 29, the voice of caution was Vinay Jawahar of the establishment group Inter-American Dialogue, who told Harman that it was "hard to argue that this sort of instability is good for a country." You'd think it harder to argue that it's good for a president to dissolve his country's Supreme Court, which is what happened in Ecuador before the subsequent protests reversed his illegal decision and forced him out of office. Or for a ruling party to trump up charges against its most popular opponent to keep him off the ballot, which is what happened in Mexico before popular discontent rode to the rescue. Some sorts of instability are good for a country, especially when the status quo is hardly stable itself. The growing popularity of these tactics has a positive spillover effect as well. Long before the demonstrations in Ukraine and Lebanon, unnoticed by most observers, people power was undermining not just violent regimes but violent revolts.
For much of the twentieth century, the chief means of overthrowing a government were guerilla warfare and military coups. Nonviolent resistance existed--at times it thrived--but it was generally regarded as an odd aberration that rarely worked. But since the '70s, for a variety of reasons, the trend in revolution-making has been a gradual global shift from violent "people's war" to nonviolent people power. In an important new book, Unarmed Insurrections, the Rutgers sociologist Kurt Schock points out that there were 31 major nonviolent rebellions in the second and third worlds from 1978 to 2001, starting with the Iranian revolution of 1978-79. (It's important to distinguish the overthrow of the Shah, a classic example of people power, from Khomeini's later consolidation of state power, a much more coercive affair.)
Nonviolent resistance, Schock reminds us, is not the same thing as "passive resistance." It's a set of tactics, not a politically correct lifestyle; it's aimed not at persuading leaders to change their policies, but at making it impossible to enforce those policies. Gene Sharp has been cataloging those tactics for decades, listing 198 of them in 1973's three-volume study The Politics of Nonviolent Action and citing several more since then. They fall into three general categories: methods of protest and public persuasion (e.g., a march), of organized noncooperation (e.g., a tax strike), and of "nonviolent intervention" (e.g., a land occupation). Contrary to the conventional wisdom, such methods have frequently worked under repressive dictatorships as well as under relatively benign systems; many times they've succeeded where guerilla tactics have failed. In 23 of those 31 rebellions, from Bolivia to Bulgaria and from Mongolia to Mali, the uprising contributed directly to regime change.
And that statistic understates what has happened, since it focuses on the most visible sort of success. More substantial changes can occur without the government formally changing hands. Of the recent turbulence in Latin America, the most interesting event may be the revolt of the Bolivian Indians. They were the backbone of the protests that drove President Sanchez de Lozada out of power in 2003, and of the more recent turmoil as well, but that's not what I'm referring to here. I'm referring to the fact that about a fifth of the country's population now lives in villages that run their own affairs, outside of the capital's control. This power was not ceded to them. They simply took it.
That's a rural phenomenon, but it has urban echoes: The state has had a hard time governing El Alto, the overwhelmingly Indian city at the heart of the 2003 rebellion. Similar semi-autonomous zones exist in other South American countries. The Nasa Indians of Colombia, for example, gradually took back their traditional lands from the 1960s to the 1990s, and do what they can today to fend off incursions by government officials, right-wing paramilitaries, and Marxist guerillas.
Then there's a social movement that's rarely regarded as a movement at all: the squatters who occupy unused, usually government-owned land in and around most major third world cities. There they've built vast, self-governing neighborhoods that, despite some serious social problems, are usually more pleasant places to live than the legally built slums. Some, indeed, have evolved into middle-class neighborhoods. (In Shadow Cities, his account of life among the squatters of Brazil, Kenya, India, and Turkey, Robert Neuwirth notes that mainstream Brazilian businesses have started to set up shop within the illicit favelas, in "the squatter city version of gentrification.") In such territories, simply building a house is, technically, an act of civil disobedience, but millions of people have constructed not just homes and enterprises but decentralized systems of self-government--a civil society that can then resist, often successfully, when the state attempts to crack down.
This shouldn't be alien to North American audiences. U.S. history is filled with similar rebellions--and not just the famous revolt against Jim Crow. Our own rural squatters settled the West in enormous numbers, their claims eventually ratified by state occupancy laws and federal preemption acts. The nation's law libraries are littered with rules that were rendered a dead letter by disobedience before they were formally repealed or reversed, from sodomy bans to the regulations governing CB radios.
If Latin Americans, in the words of Business Week, "are taking to the streets, rather than the ballot box, to register their political grievances," that's no reason to mourn. The power to disobey unjust laws and unjust rulers is an essential part of political liberty. So is the ability to create grassroots institutions with the resilience to withstand repression. Real self-government is not a mere spectator sport, a matter of politely casting a ballot every few years--especially, as in Ecuador and Mexico, when the last gang to get elected is actively undermining the rules of the game.
The Other Insurrections
In the wake of two strikingly successful, mostly nonviolent, and essentially democratic insurrections, a major magazine bemoaned the upheaval under the headline "The Downside of People Power." "The military coup may be a thing of the past," its editorialist declared, "but the popular coup is in vogue." If the language sounds familiar, it might be because it unconsciously echoes The Guardian's famous description of the Ukrainian revolution as a "postmodern coup d'etat." But this article did not appear in The Guardian, and the revolts it rebuked did not take place in Ukraine or Kyrgyzstan or Lebanon. The piece was in the May 9 Business Week, and the rebellions were in Ecuador and Mexico.
Latin America's outbreak of people power hasn't received as much stateside attention as its counterparts in Central Asia and the Middle East. This is presumably for the same reason media accounts of nonviolent Arab movements often ignore Palestinian resistance to Israel's "security barrier": The uprisings aren't aligned with U.S. interests. Official Washington has not been celebrating South America's turn to the left--three-quarters of the continent's people now live under left-wing governments--and popular protest is generally regarded as a part of that shift. So it gets left out of the narrative of democratic transformation, and when it does surface, it's treated rather differently than its Asian equivalents. Instead of Business Week's Jason Bush describing the Ukrainian and Georgian protestors as "democratic political movements," we have Business Week's Geri Smith complaining that "citizens are taking to the streets, rather than the ballot box, to register their political grievances." (Actually, they've been taking to both.) She also quotes Moisés Naim of Foreign Policy, who calls the ferment "the politics of race, revenge, and resentment." The solution, Smith concludes, is for the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank to subsidize "solid government institutions."
Smith and Naim aren't alone. When The Christian Science Monitor's Danna Harman filed a solid report on the Latin American upheaval, published April 29, the voice of caution was Vinay Jawahar of the establishment group Inter-American Dialogue, who told Harman that it was "hard to argue that this sort of instability is good for a country." You'd think it harder to argue that it's good for a president to dissolve his country's Supreme Court, which is what happened in Ecuador before the subsequent protests reversed his illegal decision and forced him out of office. Or for a ruling party to trump up charges against its most popular opponent to keep him off the ballot, which is what happened in Mexico before popular discontent rode to the rescue. Some sorts of instability are good for a country, especially when the status quo is hardly stable itself. The growing popularity of these tactics has a positive spillover effect as well. Long before the demonstrations in Ukraine and Lebanon, unnoticed by most observers, people power was undermining not just violent regimes but violent revolts.
For much of the twentieth century, the chief means of overthrowing a government were guerilla warfare and military coups. Nonviolent resistance existed--at times it thrived--but it was generally regarded as an odd aberration that rarely worked. But since the '70s, for a variety of reasons, the trend in revolution-making has been a gradual global shift from violent "people's war" to nonviolent people power. In an important new book, Unarmed Insurrections, the Rutgers sociologist Kurt Schock points out that there were 31 major nonviolent rebellions in the second and third worlds from 1978 to 2001, starting with the Iranian revolution of 1978-79. (It's important to distinguish the overthrow of the Shah, a classic example of people power, from Khomeini's later consolidation of state power, a much more coercive affair.)
Nonviolent resistance, Schock reminds us, is not the same thing as "passive resistance." It's a set of tactics, not a politically correct lifestyle; it's aimed not at persuading leaders to change their policies, but at making it impossible to enforce those policies. Gene Sharp has been cataloging those tactics for decades, listing 198 of them in 1973's three-volume study The Politics of Nonviolent Action and citing several more since then. They fall into three general categories: methods of protest and public persuasion (e.g., a march), of organized noncooperation (e.g., a tax strike), and of "nonviolent intervention" (e.g., a land occupation). Contrary to the conventional wisdom, such methods have frequently worked under repressive dictatorships as well as under relatively benign systems; many times they've succeeded where guerilla tactics have failed. In 23 of those 31 rebellions, from Bolivia to Bulgaria and from Mongolia to Mali, the uprising contributed directly to regime change.
And that statistic understates what has happened, since it focuses on the most visible sort of success. More substantial changes can occur without the government formally changing hands. Of the recent turbulence in Latin America, the most interesting event may be the revolt of the Bolivian Indians. They were the backbone of the protests that drove President Sanchez de Lozada out of power in 2003, and of the more recent turmoil as well, but that's not what I'm referring to here. I'm referring to the fact that about a fifth of the country's population now lives in villages that run their own affairs, outside of the capital's control. This power was not ceded to them. They simply took it.
That's a rural phenomenon, but it has urban echoes: The state has had a hard time governing El Alto, the overwhelmingly Indian city at the heart of the 2003 rebellion. Similar semi-autonomous zones exist in other South American countries. The Nasa Indians of Colombia, for example, gradually took back their traditional lands from the 1960s to the 1990s, and do what they can today to fend off incursions by government officials, right-wing paramilitaries, and Marxist guerillas.
Then there's a social movement that's rarely regarded as a movement at all: the squatters who occupy unused, usually government-owned land in and around most major third world cities. There they've built vast, self-governing neighborhoods that, despite some serious social problems, are usually more pleasant places to live than the legally built slums. Some, indeed, have evolved into middle-class neighborhoods. (In Shadow Cities, his account of life among the squatters of Brazil, Kenya, India, and Turkey, Robert Neuwirth notes that mainstream Brazilian businesses have started to set up shop within the illicit favelas, in "the squatter city version of gentrification.") In such territories, simply building a house is, technically, an act of civil disobedience, but millions of people have constructed not just homes and enterprises but decentralized systems of self-government--a civil society that can then resist, often successfully, when the state attempts to crack down.
This shouldn't be alien to North American audiences. U.S. history is filled with similar rebellions--and not just the famous revolt against Jim Crow. Our own rural squatters settled the West in enormous numbers, their claims eventually ratified by state occupancy laws and federal preemption acts. The nation's law libraries are littered with rules that were rendered a dead letter by disobedience before they were formally repealed or reversed, from sodomy bans to the regulations governing CB radios.
If Latin Americans, in the words of Business Week, "are taking to the streets, rather than the ballot box, to register their political grievances," that's no reason to mourn. The power to disobey unjust laws and unjust rulers is an essential part of political liberty. So is the ability to create grassroots institutions with the resilience to withstand repression. Real self-government is not a mere spectator sport, a matter of politely casting a ballot every few years--especially, as in Ecuador and Mexico, when the last gang to get elected is actively undermining the rules of the game.
Air
Leave your car at home two days a week (walk, bike, or take the bus or subway to work instead). You'll reduce carbon dioxide emissions. More clean air tips:
http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/content/ActionsIndividualMakeaDifferenceRoad.html
http://www.earth911.org/master.asp?s=lib&a=air/cleanairtips.inc
[top]
Dealing with Pests
Storing pesticides and other chemicals up high in a locked cabinet -- out of reach of small children -- is an effective way to ensure that kids do not mix with dangerous chemicals.
More information:
http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/regulating/store.htm
Before using insect repellants on your skin or in your yard, read the label first!
Outsmart and prevent pests by removing sources of food, water, and shelter before deciding to use a pesticide.
More information: http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/factsheets/
http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/controlling/index.htm
http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/feature/backyard/PestMgt.html
http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/factsheets/skeeters.htm
[top]
Preventing Harm to the Environment - Do not dispose of gasoline, oil, or weed killers and other lawn and garden pesticides down the drain, into surface water, onto the ground, or in the trash. Check with your local household hazardous waste collection agency for safe disposal for these types of products.
Crowd out weeds the natural way- Keep your grass long. Over-seed your lawn each Fall for a thicker lawn in the Spring. Slightly longer grass, around 2½ to 3½ inches, is healthier and drought-resistant with fewer pests and weeds, which have a hard time taking root.
Many plants and insects can serve as nontoxic, natural deterrents to weeds and garden pests. Introduce ladybugs to eat aphids, plant marigolds to ward off beetles, and look for quick-sprouting plants to block weed growth.
More information: http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/regulating/disposal.htm
http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/househld/hhw.htm
[top]
Eating
Eat fewer fatty fish, such as lake trout, or fish that feed on the bottoms of lakes and streams such as catfish and carp. These fish are more likely to contain higher levels of chemical pollutants.
Eat a locally produced diet. Grow your own food or support local farmers, natural food stores and food co-ops. You'll save money, eat quality foods, create jobs, increase farmlands, and strengthen your community. You also reduce pollution generated by transportation and energy costs from shipping food.
Buy domestically-produced, certified organic food. Organic farmers don't use toxic chemicals, or harmful pesticides or fertilizers. Buying locally produced food decreases on the environmental impacts of transporting food.
[top]
Electronics
Buy Energy Star electronic equipment from manufacturers with take-back programs.
Recycle your computer.
More tips and information :
http://www.energystar.gov
http://www.eiae.org
http://www.earth911.org/master.asp?s=lib&a=electronics/elec_index.asp
[top]
Energy
Ask your power company to switch all or some of your electricity to green power.
Look for the Energy Star label on products and equipment, you can reduce your energy bill by 30 percent and your electric lighting charges by 40 percent while cutting pollution.
Get a programmable thermostat and set the temperature up in the summer and down in the winter while you are at work.
Turn your water heater down to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. You'll cut your water-heating costs by 6-10 percent.
Keep your home appliances running at peak efficiency to save electricity, conserve resources and reduce global warming. Remove lint and dust from your refrigerator coil and freezer. Clean up lint around your dryer, furnace, and any vents leading to or from them. Change or clean the filter in your air purifier or furnace.
Paint your exterior and interior walls in a light color so more light is reflected. Paint the edges of the window in white so more light reflected inside. During the day, open blinds to bring in natural light instead of turning on lights.
More tips and information:
http://www.energystar.gov
http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/p2home/aboutp2/energy.htm
http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=heat_cool.pr_consumer_cool_change
[top]
Landscaping
Doing major landscape renovation, time the grading and excavating projects when rain is less likely to prevent erosion and contamination of run-off water. Cover excavated materials, dumpsters, and stockpiles of asphalt, sand, and yard clippings to prevent contaminants from getting into storm drains.
More tips and information:
http://www.epa.gov/reg3esd1/garden/index.htm
[top]
Paper
Using double-sided coping, reusing single-sided paper, using electronic mail, and circulating documents with routing slips, an organization can save a significant amount of energy and natural resources. One ton of waste paper saves enough energy to power an average home for 6 months not to mention the monetary savings from purchasing less paper.
One ton of recycled paper uses: 64% less energy, 50% less water, 74% less air pollution, saves 17 trees and creates 5 times more jobs than one ton of paper products from virgin wood pulp.
Purchase paper products containing post-consumer recycled paper.
[top]
Shopping/Products
Use a baking soda paste as a general stain remover. Rub chalk on grease stains prior to washing. Apply butter or margarine to chocolate stains, let set at least 15 minutes and wash.
Use herbs, set out a small dish of vanilla or leave an open box of baking soda in the room as an air freshener.
Use cat litter or sand instead of salt on icy walks.
Buy products that contain recycled materials.
Buy food and other products with reusable or recyclable packaging instead of those in nonrecyclable packaging. It can reduce carbon dioxide emissions, a green house gas that is potentially harmful to the envirnment.
Buy in bulk when you can and avoid excess packaging. Even recyclable packaging requires energy and resources to create. Also look for refillable containers. Seek out concentrated products which use far less packaging.
Choose low or no-VOC paints, water-based floor sealers, and wood products from certified sustainable forests.
When asked whether you want paper or plastic bags, select the type you are more likely to reuse for other purposes, such as trash can liners, newspaper recycling or future shopping.
Some retailers like Home Depot offer suggestions for buying "green" products: ask them about it.
More tips and information:
Learn about Environmentally Preferable Purchasing (EPP)
What Environmentally Preferable Products are out there?
http://www.newmoa.org/Newmoa/htdocs/prevention/p2week/2001/index.cfm#tips
http://www.earth911.org/master.asp?s=lib&a=shopsmart/shop.inc
[top]
Travel
Next time you travel, look for lodging that practices conservation.
Use e-ticketing to reduce paper usage.
More tips and information:
EPA's Green Meetings Guide
http://www.greenhotels.com
[top]
Vehicles
If you change your own motor oil, recycle it at a "quick lube" shop, gas station, or auto store that accepts used motor oil for recycling.
Check out EPA's Green Vehicle Guide. You may be surprised to know that you have cleaner more fuel-efficient choices in any vehicle size you need, even an SUV.
Keep tires properly inflated and wheels aligned to reduce tire drag on the road. Gas mileage drops 1% for every pound below the recommended level.
Don't top off the gas tank. This allows harmful chemicals to escape into the air.
[top]
Water
Think before you pour. Many hazardous products flow from household drains through sewage treatment plants and into coastal water bodies.
Install a water-efficient shower head (2.5 gallons or less per minute), it reduces water consumption and energy used to heat the water. They pay for themselves in only four months.
Only run full loads in the washing machine or dishwasher.
Turn off water while brushing teeth and shaving.
More water saving tips: http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/p2home/aboutp2/water.htm
virtual house http://www.h2ouse.net/
[top]
Waste Minimization/Recycling
In a lifetime, the average American will throw away 600 times his or her adult weight in garbage. This means that each adult will leave a legacy of 90,000 lbs. of trash for his or her children.
Recycling all of your home's waste newsprint, cardboard, glass, and metal can reduce carbon dioxide emissions, a green house gas, by 850 pounds a year.
Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV set for three hours or to light one 100 watt bulb for 20 hours.
The energy required to replace the aluminum cans wasted in 2001 was equivalent to 16 million
barrels of crude oil: enough to meet the electricity needs of all the homes in Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, San Francisco, and Seattle.
Between 1970 and 2003, one trillion aluminum cans were sent to landfills worth well over $15 billion.
Americans throw away enough aluminum every three months to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet.
Five recycled plastic bottles make enough fiberfill to stuff a ski jacket.
Improving or remodeling your home, try to buy recycled products. It reduces the amount of material going to landfills. Flooring, insulation, plastic lumber, woodwork, shingles, and many garden/lawn products are made from recycled materials.
Buy carpet made from recycled drink bottles (polyethylene terephthalate fiber). This recycled-content carpet is durable, resists moisture and staining, and requires no additional chemicals for its manufacture.
More tips and information:
EPA's Consumer's Handbook for Reducing Solid Waste
[top]
General tips, facts, and information for consumers:
The average American needs twenty-five acres of ecologically productive land to support thier lifestyle. That's three times the world average. Want to know your ecological footprint (amount of land needed to provide all the resources and space you use, directly or indirectly, including the amount for storing and absorbing your waste and pollution)?
More information on your ecological footprint:
http://www.ecofoot.org/
More tips and information:
EPA's Individual's Guide to Pollution Prevention (P2)
EPA's Earth day 2003 Community Guide
The Northeast Waste Management Officials' Association's (NEWMOA) Pollution Prevention Tips
Union of Concerned Scientists' Green Tips
Pacific Northwest Pollution Prevention Resource Center's P2 For You Web-Guide
[top]
Disclaimer: [The tips above are intended as general pollution prevention tips. They are not intended to be an all-inclusive list of resources. EPA cannot attest to the accuracy of information provided by non-EPA links. Providing links to a non-EPA Web site does not constitute an endorsement by EPA nor any of its employees of the sponsors of the site or the information or products presented in the site.]
Leave your car at home two days a week (walk, bike, or take the bus or subway to work instead). You'll reduce carbon dioxide emissions. More clean air tips:
http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/content/ActionsIndividualMakeaDifferenceRoad.html
http://www.earth911.org/master.asp?s=lib&a=air/cleanairtips.inc
[top]
Dealing with Pests
Storing pesticides and other chemicals up high in a locked cabinet -- out of reach of small children -- is an effective way to ensure that kids do not mix with dangerous chemicals.
More information:
http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/regulating/store.htm
Before using insect repellants on your skin or in your yard, read the label first!
Outsmart and prevent pests by removing sources of food, water, and shelter before deciding to use a pesticide.
More information: http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/factsheets/
http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/controlling/index.htm
http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/feature/backyard/PestMgt.html
http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/factsheets/skeeters.htm
[top]
Preventing Harm to the Environment - Do not dispose of gasoline, oil, or weed killers and other lawn and garden pesticides down the drain, into surface water, onto the ground, or in the trash. Check with your local household hazardous waste collection agency for safe disposal for these types of products.
Crowd out weeds the natural way- Keep your grass long. Over-seed your lawn each Fall for a thicker lawn in the Spring. Slightly longer grass, around 2½ to 3½ inches, is healthier and drought-resistant with fewer pests and weeds, which have a hard time taking root.
Many plants and insects can serve as nontoxic, natural deterrents to weeds and garden pests. Introduce ladybugs to eat aphids, plant marigolds to ward off beetles, and look for quick-sprouting plants to block weed growth.
More information: http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/regulating/disposal.htm
http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/househld/hhw.htm
[top]
Eating
Eat fewer fatty fish, such as lake trout, or fish that feed on the bottoms of lakes and streams such as catfish and carp. These fish are more likely to contain higher levels of chemical pollutants.
Eat a locally produced diet. Grow your own food or support local farmers, natural food stores and food co-ops. You'll save money, eat quality foods, create jobs, increase farmlands, and strengthen your community. You also reduce pollution generated by transportation and energy costs from shipping food.
Buy domestically-produced, certified organic food. Organic farmers don't use toxic chemicals, or harmful pesticides or fertilizers. Buying locally produced food decreases on the environmental impacts of transporting food.
[top]
Electronics
Buy Energy Star electronic equipment from manufacturers with take-back programs.
Recycle your computer.
More tips and information :
http://www.energystar.gov
http://www.eiae.org
http://www.earth911.org/master.asp?s=lib&a=electronics/elec_index.asp
[top]
Energy
Ask your power company to switch all or some of your electricity to green power.
Look for the Energy Star label on products and equipment, you can reduce your energy bill by 30 percent and your electric lighting charges by 40 percent while cutting pollution.
Get a programmable thermostat and set the temperature up in the summer and down in the winter while you are at work.
Turn your water heater down to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. You'll cut your water-heating costs by 6-10 percent.
Keep your home appliances running at peak efficiency to save electricity, conserve resources and reduce global warming. Remove lint and dust from your refrigerator coil and freezer. Clean up lint around your dryer, furnace, and any vents leading to or from them. Change or clean the filter in your air purifier or furnace.
Paint your exterior and interior walls in a light color so more light is reflected. Paint the edges of the window in white so more light reflected inside. During the day, open blinds to bring in natural light instead of turning on lights.
More tips and information:
http://www.energystar.gov
http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/p2home/aboutp2/energy.htm
http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=heat_cool.pr_consumer_cool_change
[top]
Landscaping
Doing major landscape renovation, time the grading and excavating projects when rain is less likely to prevent erosion and contamination of run-off water. Cover excavated materials, dumpsters, and stockpiles of asphalt, sand, and yard clippings to prevent contaminants from getting into storm drains.
More tips and information:
http://www.epa.gov/reg3esd1/garden/index.htm
[top]
Paper
Using double-sided coping, reusing single-sided paper, using electronic mail, and circulating documents with routing slips, an organization can save a significant amount of energy and natural resources. One ton of waste paper saves enough energy to power an average home for 6 months not to mention the monetary savings from purchasing less paper.
One ton of recycled paper uses: 64% less energy, 50% less water, 74% less air pollution, saves 17 trees and creates 5 times more jobs than one ton of paper products from virgin wood pulp.
Purchase paper products containing post-consumer recycled paper.
[top]
Shopping/Products
Use a baking soda paste as a general stain remover. Rub chalk on grease stains prior to washing. Apply butter or margarine to chocolate stains, let set at least 15 minutes and wash.
Use herbs, set out a small dish of vanilla or leave an open box of baking soda in the room as an air freshener.
Use cat litter or sand instead of salt on icy walks.
Buy products that contain recycled materials.
Buy food and other products with reusable or recyclable packaging instead of those in nonrecyclable packaging. It can reduce carbon dioxide emissions, a green house gas that is potentially harmful to the envirnment.
Buy in bulk when you can and avoid excess packaging. Even recyclable packaging requires energy and resources to create. Also look for refillable containers. Seek out concentrated products which use far less packaging.
Choose low or no-VOC paints, water-based floor sealers, and wood products from certified sustainable forests.
When asked whether you want paper or plastic bags, select the type you are more likely to reuse for other purposes, such as trash can liners, newspaper recycling or future shopping.
Some retailers like Home Depot offer suggestions for buying "green" products: ask them about it.
More tips and information:
Learn about Environmentally Preferable Purchasing (EPP)
What Environmentally Preferable Products are out there?
http://www.newmoa.org/Newmoa/htdocs/prevention/p2week/2001/index.cfm#tips
http://www.earth911.org/master.asp?s=lib&a=shopsmart/shop.inc
[top]
Travel
Next time you travel, look for lodging that practices conservation.
Use e-ticketing to reduce paper usage.
More tips and information:
EPA's Green Meetings Guide
http://www.greenhotels.com
[top]
Vehicles
If you change your own motor oil, recycle it at a "quick lube" shop, gas station, or auto store that accepts used motor oil for recycling.
Check out EPA's Green Vehicle Guide. You may be surprised to know that you have cleaner more fuel-efficient choices in any vehicle size you need, even an SUV.
Keep tires properly inflated and wheels aligned to reduce tire drag on the road. Gas mileage drops 1% for every pound below the recommended level.
Don't top off the gas tank. This allows harmful chemicals to escape into the air.
[top]
Water
Think before you pour. Many hazardous products flow from household drains through sewage treatment plants and into coastal water bodies.
Install a water-efficient shower head (2.5 gallons or less per minute), it reduces water consumption and energy used to heat the water. They pay for themselves in only four months.
Only run full loads in the washing machine or dishwasher.
Turn off water while brushing teeth and shaving.
More water saving tips: http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/p2home/aboutp2/water.htm
virtual house http://www.h2ouse.net/
[top]
Waste Minimization/Recycling
In a lifetime, the average American will throw away 600 times his or her adult weight in garbage. This means that each adult will leave a legacy of 90,000 lbs. of trash for his or her children.
Recycling all of your home's waste newsprint, cardboard, glass, and metal can reduce carbon dioxide emissions, a green house gas, by 850 pounds a year.
Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV set for three hours or to light one 100 watt bulb for 20 hours.
The energy required to replace the aluminum cans wasted in 2001 was equivalent to 16 million
barrels of crude oil: enough to meet the electricity needs of all the homes in Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, San Francisco, and Seattle.
Between 1970 and 2003, one trillion aluminum cans were sent to landfills worth well over $15 billion.
Americans throw away enough aluminum every three months to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet.
Five recycled plastic bottles make enough fiberfill to stuff a ski jacket.
Improving or remodeling your home, try to buy recycled products. It reduces the amount of material going to landfills. Flooring, insulation, plastic lumber, woodwork, shingles, and many garden/lawn products are made from recycled materials.
Buy carpet made from recycled drink bottles (polyethylene terephthalate fiber). This recycled-content carpet is durable, resists moisture and staining, and requires no additional chemicals for its manufacture.
More tips and information:
EPA's Consumer's Handbook for Reducing Solid Waste
[top]
General tips, facts, and information for consumers:
The average American needs twenty-five acres of ecologically productive land to support thier lifestyle. That's three times the world average. Want to know your ecological footprint (amount of land needed to provide all the resources and space you use, directly or indirectly, including the amount for storing and absorbing your waste and pollution)?
More information on your ecological footprint:
http://www.ecofoot.org/
More tips and information:
EPA's Individual's Guide to Pollution Prevention (P2)
EPA's Earth day 2003 Community Guide
The Northeast Waste Management Officials' Association's (NEWMOA) Pollution Prevention Tips
Union of Concerned Scientists' Green Tips
Pacific Northwest Pollution Prevention Resource Center's P2 For You Web-Guide
[top]
Disclaimer: [The tips above are intended as general pollution prevention tips. They are not intended to be an all-inclusive list of resources. EPA cannot attest to the accuracy of information provided by non-EPA links. Providing links to a non-EPA Web site does not constitute an endorsement by EPA nor any of its employees of the sponsors of the site or the information or products presented in the site.]
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