War Commentary #3

We are happy to announce that hundreds of copies of our latest War Commentary have been distributed across Oakland and we would now like to make it available on the internet. Please feel free to print 10-15 copies of this 8.5x11 single-sheet publication, formatted for the home or work printer, and leave where the most people can find them.

In this strange time, with a new stay-at-home order in place across California, corner stores and gas-station parking lots are some of the few hubs of social life in Oakland, and these are the spots where we placed our humble little news-rag in the hopes of sparking lively conversations and thought. Never forget the impact our printed words can have in this atomized world of Zoom calls, social media, and social distancing. Good luck until next time.

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First there was the quarantine. People were already struggling, but then they really started to worry when everything locked down. And then George Floyd was murdered by the police, triggering another uprising here in Oakland. People went wild for almost a week straight, so wild that a night-time curfew was enacted and the National Guard brought in as close as Vallejo. You remember what it was like, just like we all do. First it was there, then it wasn’t, and now we’re all heading back into quarantine.

What happened during the uprising is just a taste of what’s to come. The cat’s out of the bag now, too many people know the secret: if you strike everywhere at once, the police are powerless. The more people who strike, the greater the chance of success, and cooperation is key to distributing this risk so that everyone has a chance of getting away clean. If people are competing against each other, the police always get the upper hand, and as they’ve shown us, they are perfectly willing to kill someone guilty of nothing more than theft. In order to win, we all must cooperate, and in this way, anarchism can spread across The Town even wider than it already has.

During the uprising, everyone could see the influence of anarchists on the streets, but there is still too much confusion about what anarchy means. There are some people who call themselves anarchists and believe in something called anarchism, but anarchy itself is a state of being where difference is allowed to express itself, where people are allowed to chose their own paths, and where the state and capitalism no longer rule over our lives. So we can’t tell you how to join the movement, because if you are reading this, and any of it makes any sense, then you are already part of it. Anarchism might express itself in a group or a project, but anarchy is made by all of us, together.

Capitalism encourages us to compete with each other at every moment, for every resource. Anarchism is the polar opposite. Anarchism is the conscious practice of cooperation, mutual respect, and equality. In this capitalist world, where a few people are allowed to hoard everything, some people decide to institute their own state of anarchy and redistribute all
that plundered wealth. Some people call this theft, crime, looting, stealing, what have you, but it has existed ever since the first people began to sit on their wealth rather than share it.

The indigenous Ohlone tribes of the Bay Area committed a crime whenever they fished from a stream that belonged to some Spanish colonizer, at least on paper. An indigenous or black slave committed a crime whenever they escaped their captors, just as their very existence was criminal in the eyes of a racist society. The point is, crime is defined by those in power, just as those in power are the biggest criminals, given that all they do is sell us back stolen goods that should otherwise be free. Without the police to back up property relations, freedom becomes within our reach, but as you all know, freedom is the best drug out there. It’s best to drink responsibly, and always with the aim of helping others. There are people who are easy to steal from, usually the poorest, just like there are businesses that are easy to rob, usually the smallest. Just because it’s easy doesn’t mean it’s good, and the corner stores that carry this paper deserve to thrive in this miserable wasteland while the banks, the corporate shops, and multi-national cargo containers deserve only to be plundered. Good luck in all the days ahead. Take care of each other. Stay free. Get wild.