Statement from Anarkismo on the AK Press accusations against Michael Schmidt

Originally published on Anarkismo, 30 September 2015

Original AK Press accusations here (25 September 2015)

The international Anarkismo Network, which brings together class struggle anarchist organisations from more than a dozen countries in both the global South and North, and has relations with far more from across the globe, has noted with great surprise and concern the recent accusations by AK Press that Michael Schmidt is a fascist working undercover to infiltrate the anarchist movement.

Michael Schmidt has been a regular and long-standing contributor to Anarkismo.net and, in the past, has sat on its editorial and delegates groups. If these accusations are proven to be true Anarkismo will take immediate and appropriate action to ban him from posting on the website, as well as to guard against any possible future infiltration.

Before we can make any pronouncements on the matter, however, we need to carefully examine both the AK Press evidence, the article by Alexander Reid Ross, as well as Michael Schmidt’s response to the evidence and article. As a network Anarkismo has not taken sides, and will not accuse the accuser or the accused before there is more information and all the evidence has been presented. Both sides will have to explain themselves thoroughly first and be available for answering any serious questions about the information.

However, we must be clear that we feel the way in which AK Press has dealt with the matter is irresponsible and prejudicial, judging and condemning Michael Schmidt without presenting any evidence, and without allowing him the right to defend himself, or to respond to the article before making the public announcement of 25 September 2015.

Both sides must be given a fair chance to have their say.

The Anarkismo Network therefore demands that the alleged “incontrovertible evidence” be released by AK Press with immediate effect, and not to refer us to the journalist: since AK Press itself has endorsed the position, it must take responsibility for the proof.

We furthermore demand that AK Press unconditionally and explicitly state, also with immediate effect, that its allegations refer to Michael Schmidt alone, and not to any publishers, co-authors, editors, left organisations or currents with which Michael Schmidt may have been associated.

We urge AK Press to publish Michael Schmidt’s official responses on its newswires and sites, as we believe that he has the right to defend himself.

Ayotzinapa – A Tribute to the Disappeared/Tributo a los Desaparecidos

This is a selection of images from the “Tribute to the Disappeared” art gallery that has just been installed at the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center in New York City to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the forcible disappearance of the 43 students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Normal School of Ayotzinapa, Guerrero state, Mexico (26 September 2014).  The gallery’s curator, Andrea Arroyo, made a call to artists from around the world, inviting them to express their feelings and solidarity with the disappeared students and their families.  These images are only a few of the sum total Arroyo has collected; the full collection can be viewed on her website, A Tribute to the Disappeared.

The gallery will be present at the Center until October 16; the hours are from 10am to 5pm, Tuesday through Friday.

 

 

 

 

Chris Hedges: “What It Means to Be a Socialist”

This is a selection from Chris Hedges’ recent column, “What It Means to Be a Socialist” (Truthdig, 9/20/15), no doubt written in part as a response to the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) erroneous claim to adhere to this radical political philosophy.

We will, as Friedrich Engels wrote, make a transition to either socialism or barbarism. If we do not dismantle global capitalism we will descend into the Hobbesian chaos of failed states, mass migrations—which we are already witnessing—and endless war. Populations, especially in the global South, will endure misery and high mortality rates caused by collapsing ecosystems and infrastructures on a scale not seen since perhaps the black plague. There can be no accommodation with global capitalism. We will overthrow this system or be crushed by it. And at this moment of crisis we need to remind ourselves what being a socialist means and what it does not mean.

First and foremost, all socialists are unequivocal anti-militarists and anti-imperialists […].

These neoliberal forces are rapidly destroying the earth. Polar ice caps and glaciers are melting. Temperatures and sea levels are rising. Species are going extinct. Floods, monster hurricanes, mega-droughts and wildfires have begun to eat away at the planet. The great mass migrations predicted by climate scientists have begun. And even if we stopped all carbon emissions today we would still endure the effects of catastrophic climate change. Out of the disintegrating order comes the nihilistic violence that always characterizes societies that fall apart—mass shootings at home and religious persecution, beheadings and executions by individuals that neoliberalism and globalism have demonized, attacked and discarded as human refuse.

I cannot promise you we will win. I cannot promise you we will even survive as a species. But I can promise you that an open and sustained defiance of global capitalism and the merchants of death, along with the building of a socialist movement, is our only hope. I am a parent, as are many of you. We have betrayed our children. We have squandered their future. And if we rise up, even if we fail, future generations, and especially those who are most precious to us, will be able to say we tried, that we stood up and fought for life. The call to resistance, which will require civil disobedience and jail time, is finally a call to the moral life. Resistance is not about what we achieve, but about what it allows us to become. In the end, I do not fight fascists because I will win. I fight fascists because they are fascists.

“Emergency Heart Sutra” by John P. Clark

This is John P. Clark’s “Emergency Heart Sutra,” which is published as a coda of sorts to scott crow’s new book, Emergency Hearts, Molotov Dreams (GTK Press, 2015).

For the Emergency Heart

The practice of Perfect Wisdom is nothing

But the practice of Perfect Compassion

For all suffering beings.

All things are nothing to it

Except as they alleviate

Needless ills and misfortunes

For all suffering beings.

Nothing it can do, say, or think

Matters apart from this.

The Emergency Heart is distracted by nothing

Even its own distractions.

The Emergency Heart fears nothing

Even its own fears.

It goes beyond everything

To practice Perfect Wisdom that is nothing

But the practice of Perfect Compassion.

Gone, gone, gone fully beyond!

Beyond poor charity to Perfect Solidarity!

Emergency Heart Sutra!

Emergency Hearts, Molotov Dreams: A scott crow Reader

Comrades, it is with deep gratitude and excitement that I wish to announce scott crow‘s new book:
Emergency Hearts, Molotov Dreams: A scott crow Reader. Selected Interviews and Conversations 2010-2015.

Emergency Hearts, Molotov Dreams is a selected collection of interviews, presentations and conversations that crow has given over the last five years covering a variety of topics such as anarchy, cooperatives, police brutality, prisons, animal liberation, environmental justice, surveillance and political movements. Many of the interviews have been expanded, remixed and edited from their original publications to expand on the ideas, praxis and histories.

This book is from a new radical publishing cooperative GTK Press in Cleveland, OH, which is part of the longstanding bookstore called Guide To Kulchur.

Preface by Tom Nomad
Afterword by Lara Messersmith-Glavin
Poem by John Clark

Interviewers featured: Abby Martin, Grayson Flory, Anne Gessler, Kit O’Connell, Vic Creatuure Mucciarone, Baruch Zeichner, Jonny Gordon-Farleih, Nathan Diebenow, Matt Tedrow, DJ Pangburn, and Darwin BondGraham. Including a co-presentation with Debbie Russell.

210 pages
$20 shipping included

Copies can be ordered directly from GTK Press, or picked up at one’s local alternative bookseller.

Here is my review of the text, featured prominently on the cover insert:

“Through these illuminating interviews, crow shares his critically valuable thoughts on State oppression, class inequality, social exclusion, and the destruction of the biosphere.  He hails advancing dual power, resistance culture, direct action, anti-authoritarian internationalism, and inter-species solidarity together with courage and joy.”