From The Sound News - by Kathryn Herron
“Do not be afraid.” This advice acted as the climax of a presentation about activism and anarchy by Scott Crow, one of the founders of Common Ground, an organization formed after Hurricane Katrina.
This event was organized by BRICK and occurred at South Puget Sound Community College on Oct. 25. BRICK (Building Revolution by Increasing Community Knowledge), is a club at SPSCC dedicated to supporting community members in their attempts to combat social injustice.
BRICK member Kayla Perez said that the club wanted to bring Crow to SPSCC because his “alternate perspective” supported their overall goal.
Crow’s alternative views include not capitalizing his own name.
“A small letter is a big way to undercut the power and prestige often imposed on an author in the public light,” said Perez.
His “little ‘a’ anarchism is about empowering people,” she said. This message contradicts the government’s ideas of terrorism which, according to Perez, “is about making them [people] cower.”
“[BRICK] is built on a premise that ideas are powerful creatures,” said Perez. Because of this foundation, Crow’s ideas about truth and anarchism really align with the organization’s goals.
Crow describes himself as a revolutionary, rather than a reformer. His strategy is based on four ideas: dream the future, know your history, organize your people, and fight to win.
To Crow, anarchy is based on common sense. Though not satisfied with his first experiences with anarchism, his second introduction brought a greater understanding. Through relief work after Hurricane Katrina and other various projects, Crow determined that activism can only be successful if you are resisting and creating.
“It’s easy if somebody’s hungry to feed them. It’s much harder to find out why they were hungry in the first place,” Crow said, illuminating this issue of connecting different struggles.
“Communism had failed, Socialism had failed and Capitalism is constantly failing. Anarchism provided another way to look at politics, especially on the radical left,” he said, explaining that with anarchy, specific community issues can be connected, rather than only focusing on national concerns.
Crow said he supports the autonomy of a community separate from the government, and the necessity of participatory democracy.
“This is not representative democracy where we are voting it away. I want to hear your voice,” he said.
This autonomy also includes defense and the ability of a community to protect itself, though not always with violence, and the power of a narrative and a vision of the future.
After Hurricane Katrina, Crow helped to found Common Ground, an organization based on the idea of “solidarity, not charity.”
Crow traveled to New Orleans after the storm to look for a friend. When he arrived, two days after levees failed, he witnessed government failure.
“It wasn’t the storm that caused the damage, it was government neglect…It wasn’t an accident, it was criminal neglect,” he said.
According to Crow, various agencies insisted on fighting over who would regulate search and rescue parties while thousands of people remained trapped by the flooding.
For outsiders, the destruction was unimaginable, said Crow.
“Everything that you think you know about the First World is gone,” he said.
Crow’s team decided to combat the pressing issues using civil disobedience to “break the law for higher moral law.”
These actions included not evicting people, helping people that were being forced to leave, and restoring a school without the school boards’ permission.
“We dared the police to arrest everybody,” Crow said.
Crow helped provide those affected by the storm with important resources. Common Ground offered free legal advising, women’s shelters, community defense, food and water distribution, cop watch, prisoner support and the development of community gardens, among others.
When the frenzy of Hurricane Katrina began to subside, Common Ground became traditional nonprofit organization and began working on lower scale projects such as wetland restoration, house building and technical training.
In the midst of this chaos, Crow was labeled as a domestic terrorist, though not officially accused of a specific crime.
“I realized that the War on Terror had started to target us, the general population” he said. “If you are going to have a War on Terror, you have to have terrorists. If we don’t really have terrorists in this country, you have got to manufacture a few.”
According to him, the most popular candidates for terrorists are Muslim people and people of Middle Eastern descent, environmentalists and anarchists. The jobs created and the money made from the War on Terror are the driving forces in its maintenance.
“Government doesn’t want to give up their maintained monopoly of civil society,” he said.
According to Crow, the government targets anarchists because they are easy to find. The only weapon they have against us, is fear, he said.
“If we give into fear, they have already won,” he said. His message urges activists not to stop their work because “the bonds of humanity” are “more powerful than any fear they can instill in us.”
Crow’s final advice encompassed the ideals of determining exactly what you, as an activist, are for.
“Our role as activists is to move radical ideas from the margins to the mainstream,” he said. These radical concepts prompt reform. Activists need to reach out of their comfort zones to present ideas and construct common goals.
Crow concluded his presentation by explaining that the most successful method of spreading ideas is “to build the road by walking” and not being restricted by the pressure to have all the answers now.

Comments
omg when will this guy go
omg when will this guy go away?
when will you go away? sooner
when will you go away? sooner, I bet!
look just beause brick doesn
look just beause brick doesn't have enough money to bring derrick jensen doesnt mean yall should be criticising us for bringing scott in. have you ever met this guy??? i wonder if you'd say that crap to his face
fuck Jensen too. not all @s
fuck Jensen too. not all @s need some figurehead jerkoff speaker to worship.
yea dude looks like a bad mofo
yes, people speaking publicly
yes, people speaking publicly about anarchist ideas are "figureheads". Let's hang the last cogent speaker with the guts of the last motherfucker who uses punctuation correctly. Only dickhead haters are the essential proletariat.
keep idolizing a guy for his
keep idolizing a guy for his failures. also, certainly nothing better to spend money on in the world than to listen to this guy whitewash the history of common ground, which, again, was a failure.
yes. proletarians are nameless masses, not "activists."
what makes common ground a
what makes common ground a "failure"? and why wouldn't it be interesting to hear about a project that failed?
sounds like a good speaker
sounds like a good speaker that can actually reach people. glad you could bring him out. by the way, if you ever end up with the money, don't waste it on jensen.
love the idea of "building
love the idea of "building the road by walking". scott crow is one of the people who got me into activism. I saw him speak in 2010 and our SDS chapter is bringing him to speak on campus here in april. check out his website at scottcrow.org
Fuck your activism.
Fuck your activism.
fuck your contentless
fuck your contentless hostility, chump. i personally am glad someone is enthusiastic about something. they'll learn over time from their own experiences, not from bullshit insults on comment sections.
yea because anarchism is just
yea because anarchism is just a personal journey of self-discovery for rubes who worship activist superstars with whitewashed history (where's the part where he defended Darby?)
if you have an argument you
if you have an argument you want to make, make it.
the argument is that he
the argument is that he prioritizes the scott crow brand to the detriment of resistance movements. it's great he has an inspiring presentation, but it's whitewashed inspiration. this guy is one of the main reasons brandon darby ascended to the position he did and maintained the power he did for so long. even after darby was exposed he continued to provide cover. that's a lot that needs owned. you shouldn't talk about common ground without talking about rape, sexual assault, white saviors, and government informants. it's a mixed legacy. that's ok. the problem is scott crow approaches people like he's on high commission plan selling a timeshare or about to flip a penny stock.
That's better. Thank you.
That's better. Thank you.
Scott Crow is so cool. For a
Scott Crow is so cool. For a small fee, he'll recycle you cans. What a swell, guy.
I wouldn't read the
I wouldn't read the suggestive comment above. It potentially could alter your perception, although Im mostly an amateur at this.
He's not so bad! So there
He's not so bad! So there were a couple of big busts. It's not like he's the pope, people should stop treating darby like some sort of priest.
this comment makes no sense.
this comment makes no sense. you can't write an entire adventure novel about common ground and not address the informant and rampant sexism issue. even if it wasn't you who dun it. perpetuating bro style myths about common grounds is unhelpful. there is a story there- it should be told. we don't need more anrarcho insprational speakers- we do need strategies for dealing with the hard messy realities of government infiltration and repression. that narrative is a bit harder to weave isn't it? cause it might invovle admitting YOU DONT HAVE THE ANSWERS. scot is a nice person but politically this kind of thing falls short for me.
Actually no, we DO need more
Actually no, we DO need more anarcho-inspirational speakers while at the same time needing analysis and thought put into the issues of infiltration and more so infiltration designed to disrupt. Anarchists, at least those organizing and doing shit outside of internet comments need, at the very least a basic understanding of behavior that is not positive. And the ability to put a stop to that behavior no matter who the person is. No matter if the person is male/female/gay/straight/black/brown/big/active/loud/supported by black people etc.
Negative and instantly dismissive people are not only insufferable but bad for getting shit done. People who threaten to take their ball and go home at the instance of any problem need to gtfo. We just need to be smart. While at the same time, inspiring people to act and learn and get wild.
A perfect example is the diatribe written by the lady who is not speaking at the book fair anymore. Not only was it so poorly written, but the attached Dines article was plain fucked up. That is NOT how you should act when you want to be smart and inspire people. That is NOT the kind of example we should be setting for others whether she was right/wrong/confused in regards to the way she felt.
sorry but i have heard the
sorry but i have heard the stories scot tells about common ground- and they aren't inspiration because given what he ISN'T talking about its clear that they are broish white washing retelling of something that was much more complicated. sure overly critical tendencies are depressing but there is a middle ground between willful fiction meant to make you sound good and always being a downer.
I agree with you, in fact I
I agree with you, in fact I think he could easily include the difficult parts and still come out with a good, inspirational story. That said, i was really just responding to the idea in general, that we need more inspirational speakers, not necessarily scot, but others.
I sort of see scot and others
I sort of see scot and others as pawns so i don't have much against them personally. the government says we need to quell social unrest with a mixture of various although not necessarily consistent ideologies in some community. we will need x number of black businesses, x number of environmentalists, x number of lgbt people representing different causes, x number of latino youth culture community group/church, and so on...
it's a win win. you resist with full cred and help the system maintain law and order. isn't it the same people btw who end up being barriers to real confrontations for the benefit of the org?
I think you are simplifying
I think you are simplifying it way too much and im not sure which kinds of people you are talking about. Professional managers of action are bad of course, but in any revolutionary situation those types hardly can tread water with mass action. At that point in time though, its nice to have a strong, vibrant anti-authoritarian movement willing to fight for its ideals. In order to get there we need people out there and talking, everywhere at all times.
the earth first journal
the earth first journal followed "advice" like this ten years ago and what a fascinating read it's been since then.
....and you... are a bad boy
....and you... are a bad boy internet cynic with loser friends who sit around rolling their eyes all day. I know you will see this because you are checking the reply's to your worthless comment like a tick ;) you are a failure at everything :)
here's the part where Scott
here's the part where Scott "defends" Darby. good thing none of the rest of us were ever wrong about something, eh?
I am enthusiastic about
I am enthusiastic about enthusiasm. good comment
i think that small letters
i think that small letters are a really important alternate perspective, especially when dealing with issues of authority. i'm glad that spscc and brick recognize that. also, scott crow clearly has an incisive analysis of the criminal activity of government organizations, and i think it's important to spread the news!
I prefer the heterogeneous
I prefer the heterogeneous font thing. That's style!
iconoclasta con letras
iconoclasta con letras minusculas
my status:
my status:
[ ] not infatuated with scott crow
[x] infatuated with scott crow and willing to submit to him sexually to be a member of his harem
the first result from a google images search of 'scott crow" is a hi-res black and white portrait of scott. masturbated twice to it already.
deal with it
Communism didn't fail. People
Communism didn't fail. People need to understand history. It goes in phases. Phease 1, then phase II, then phase three, then phase infinity. and then beyond. and then I get a big fat check from Disney. Or was it I have to pay Disney? Jeez, this shit is getting confusing!
dafuq
dafuq
in the field of idea sharing,
in the field of idea sharing, where is it decreed that valuable ideas have to come from wonderful people? if hannibal lecter knows how to prepare an antidote for the snake that just bit your baby, ... are you going to hear him out before you hang him, or just proceed with the hanging?
in the article, there seems to be several ideas worth reflecting on such as ‘the manufacturing of terrorism’, the existence of a ‘higher moral law’ that justifies state-law breaking, and moving radical ideas from the margin to the mainstream, ... not that these ideas originated with scott crow or common ground, and not that these ideas necessarily 'have merit', only that they seem worthy of reflection.
what is common to these ideas is that they are all based on ‘what people as things-in-themselves do’. there is no ‘redefinition of people’.
1. the ‘manufacturing of terrorism’ uses our common definition of a human as a local, independently-existing ‘doer-of-deeds’ as the cornerstone for defining a new category of same, by first describing an action or ‘deed’ that constitutes ‘terrorism’, and using this to define a new category of person, called a ‘terrorist’. of course, the advantage is that the more general criminal law can be leap-frogged over and new techniques for the apprehending, prosecuting, convicting and punishing can be developed for the newly defined category. ‘manufacturing terrorism’ is thus the correct and appropriate word. one of the politically useful new techniques is for the state to authorize killing or locking up terrorists without bringing them to trial, since bringing freedom-fighters/revolutionaries to trial has given them a podium to speak from which has often inspired increased radicalization of the populace.
2. the authorizing of state law-breaking behaviour by a ‘higher moral law’ is what religious fundamentalists are already practicing, and it is being called ‘terrorism’, so scott crow might want to reconsider his choice of words here. russell means phraseology puts it as having ‘natural law’ trump ‘state law’, and natural law is common to animals and nature in general and it means, to ‘respond spontaneously to the dynamics of the relational space one is situationally included in’. that is, natural ‘law’ is spatial, relational and situational, it is not like the voice of god or the scriptures whispering in your ear, telling you what to do IN SPITE OF the unique relational-spatial situation you find yourself in. spontaneously helping one another out in the wake of Katrina in New Orleans derives firstly from ‘natural law’ or ‘natural ‘non-law’. now the high priests of some or other religion may hijack that natural behaviour and re-gurgitate it as a ‘moral law’, but that is like manufacturing a plastic jesus; i.e. it is a reminder rather than a law.
3. moving radical ideas from the margin to the mainstream is difficult. have you ever actually tried to capture an idea and grasp it tightly in your fist. it is more difficult to capture than a leprechaun, or do i repeat myself? and if you do catch it, what are you going to ‘move’ it with, ... a ‘refrigerated truck’? ... a portable tabernacle? so, to build the road by walking is perhaps a better approach, like the new university campus with its administration-designed sidewalks that gradually get abandoned during the class-change-triggered pulses of hustle and bustle which open up dirt-brown avenues cut into green lawns that constitute collective-wisdom-blueprints for a new thoroughfare architecture that obsoletes the administration imposed version.
* * *
in all three of the above ‘ideas’, there is a common ‘invariant’. what is it?
it is the common western colonizer concept of human as a ‘thing-in-itself’ or ‘being’, notionally with its own locally originating, inside-outward-asserting, internal process driven and directed behaviour.
in the first case, a receiver is turned on in the thing-in-itself’s central processing unit to tap into ‘higher moral law’ and plug that directly into its behavioural drive unit [a memory stick can substitute for the receiver]. in the second case, it is assumed that ‘terrorist behaviour’ is programmed into memory in clandestine training camp exercises etc. for later activation by coded signals, at which point the programmed behaviours will be operationalized through the central processing unit to directly inform the behaviour drive unit. in the third case, the radical ideas that hatch here and there like brush fires during a hot dry summer, will be brought from the margins into the mainstream, by ‘building the road by walking’.
in this view, the action is entirely ‘inside-outward driving’ as it must be if you REALLY BELIEVE that a human is a local, independently-existing material system with its own locally originating, internal process driven and directed behaviour.
as nietzsche, mach and other philosophers have reminded us, such a view of a human as a ‘local being’ or ‘thing-in-itself’ is bullshit that does not accord at all with physical phenomenal reality. the view of the human as ‘local being’ is linguistic idealization wherein we reduce unfolding dynamical behaviour to notional ‘doer-deed constructs’, as if the subject or ‘doer’ that WE CREATE by linguistic idealization, is the causal source of the dynamic unfolding. in doing this, we deny the physical reality of ‘relational space’.
in other words, our problem is in our screwed up thinking of dynamics being caused by ‘local human beings’. this is fiction, linguistic idealization, it is not physical reality. the farmer does not produce the crops, lightning does not do the flashing, Katrina does not ravage New Orleans.
what russell means calls ‘natural law’ refers to the outside-inward orchestrating that shapes the behaviour of the students as they walk across the lawns. this outside-inward orchestrating of behaviour is RELATIONAL-SPATIAL and it is this relational-spatial outside-inward eliciting of behaviour that gives rise to the new thoroughfare architecture, “the roads built by walking”.
this is not ‘capturable’ as a ‘practice’ or ‘way of doing things’ that can be codified in terms of inside-outward asserting behaviour [‘reasoned behaviour’] and thus encoded as a reason-based radical idea, replicated in the minds of many people to the point it becomes ‘mainstream’. when you are in the chaos of catastrophic transformation, as when the levees break, you give yourself up to the orchestrating influences of the dynamic-habitat that you are uniquely, situationally, included in, ... you give yourself up to ‘natural law’, to put this in russell means’ terms, ... you let yourself ‘rise to the occasion’ or ‘rise to the relational-spatial situation’ you are uniquely, situationally included in. this is the ‘anarchism’ that extracts ‘order from chaos’. this is where the new system of common-sense thoroughfares that obsolete administration-dictated architectures derives from.
guess what? it is not codifiable in terms of inside-outward asserting behaviour as can be programmed into humans seen as ‘local beings with their own locally originating, internal process driven and directed behaviours’. it is relational-spatial situation dependent. the energy it elicits is ‘rising-to-the-occasion’ energy, like the sailboater in the storm uniquely situationally included in the unpredictably unfolding winds, waves and currents; ... the energy is NOT LIKE the powerboater’s energy of internal ‘operationalizing of a reason-based assertive action’ that results in the attainment of a final destination/outcome.
the question the anarcha-indigenist wants the ‘colonizer’ to answer is; ‘why the hell would any group of people want to move from a ‘rising-to-the-occasion’ mode of behaviour to a ‘rational-plan-directed’ mode of behaviour? this question is a both/and rather than an 'either/or' question; i.e. it asks; 'why put reason-driven behaviour in precedence over rising-to-the-occasion behaviour' rather than putting 'rising to the occasion behaviour in precedence over the supporting tool of reason-driven behaviour'?
in the aboriginal ‘circle process’, people come into the circle to share their personal reasoned perspectives [‘from the heart’] and the participants leave the circle process with an understanding of the relational-spatial dynamics they all share situational inclusion in, with its outside-inward orchestrating pull that elicits ‘rising to the occasion’ behaviours in them. this ‘rising to the occasion’ energy is primary; ... ‘rational-plan-directed’ energy is a distant second that serves as a support tool, ready to be dropped or revised at any moment should the ‘rising-to-the-occasion’ energy demand it.
to summarize; the three ‘ideas’ of ‘manufacturing terrorism’, ‘letting ‘higher moral law’ authorize state-law-breaking behaviour’ and ‘moving radical ideas from margin to mainstream’ depend, implicitly, on the notion of a human as a ‘being’ or ‘thing-in-itself’ with internal process driven and directed behaviour.
this is a bullshit notion that the screwed up colonizer culture has built into its psychological foundations, that asks us all to be robots driven by linguistically idealized ‘reasoned concepts’, and thus to ignore ‘natural law’ that it calling to us to ‘rise to the occasion’ within the continually unfolding relational spatial-plenum, letting ourselves be energized by the outside-inward orchestrating influence that we are each uniquely, situationally included in.
the ‘common ground’ actions in New Orleans in the wake of the levees breaking were natural law induced, outside-inward orchestrated ‘rising to the occasion’ derived actions. these dynamics are inherently relational-spatial and cannot be reduced to actions in terms of what humans as ‘local-things-in-themselves-“beings” have done’ WITHOUT LOSING TRACK OF PHYSICAL REALITY by substituting in its place, non-relational-spatial ‘linguistic idealization’ of the ‘lightning flashes’ [nietzsche], 'doer-deed' variety.
anarchism of the ‘natural law’ type, which acknowledges the relational-spatial nature of our experience, is not codifiable in 'rational' terms of ‘what things-in-themselves do’, and is achieved only when one ‘lets go’ of the ‘sense-of-self’ in terms of a ‘local being’ with its own ‘locally originating, internal process driven and directed behaviour’ that notionally moves about and interacts with other such ‘local beings’ within a notional absolute space and absolute time NON-RELATIONAL-SPATIAL ‘operating theatre’.
emile, i love you, but you're
emile, i love you, but you're gonna get it
you are merely a body without
you are merely a body without organs - most notably, a heart.
The body without organs is
The body without organs is not "mere" and the heart is not an organ.
The heart is an organ and a
The heart is an organ and a muscle, and the lifeless schizophrenic capitalist body in question is mere in the grand order.
lol, the body without organs
lol, the body without organs is not the "lifeless schizophrenic capitalist body", but it's cute that you read enough deleuze to string the jargon together into meaningless phrases. also lol @ "the grand order"
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nothing i've said here is
nothing i've said here is meaningless.... I will continue to pity you your boring evil, stupidity, and ignorance.
But most of all your ugliness
But most of all your ugliness. I've yet to see anything come out of you but ugliness and dishonestly.
the ‘body without organs’ can
the ‘body without organs’ can be understood in the context of the ‘historical view’. that is, the human is included in ‘unfinished business’ as Emerson says in ‘The Method of Nature’. this tempts us to impose a jumpstart sourcing of animation to the human by way of defining the internal parts [organs] of the human to explain it in an inside-outward asserting sense. the body without organs is the physical phenomena which is relational-spatial and ongoing.
as peter westbroek says in ‘Civilizing Earth’;
in other words, it is convenient to give organs to biotic forms so that we can consider their histories as if ‘histories-in-themselves’. as westbroek points out, the three historical views of geo-physical historical development, geo-biological historical development, and geo-anthropological historical development are all included in one another. all we are lacking is to synthesize these three within a common systems framework.
since we haven’t gotten to that yet, it is convenient to impute jumpstart sourcing of bodies without organs, by notionally giving that job to the organs, ... so that we can get on with our rational viewing of humans as things-in-themselves, without having to deal with the physical reality of geo-anthropological historical development being included in geo-biological historical development, being included in geo-physical historical development.
of course, getting on with our rational viewing on this synthetically jumpstarted body-with-organs idealization, is screwing us up, royally.
"The Future belongs to those
"The Future belongs to those who plan for it" -Malcolm X
"Derrr people are stupid , Fuck Authority.... Punks not Dead"- Some Asswipe Crusty Anarchist
"The future belongs to those
"The future belongs to those plan for it....Elijah Muhammad is the voice of God...and oh yeah, I hate homosexuals"
-Malcolm X
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