How rich nations take their wealth from poorer nations

I’ve recently run into a number of people who aren’t aware of the fact that the prosperity of rich countries and the illusion of a “good” economic system experienced there is funded by poor countries. Getting people in wealthy nations to understand that dynamic is, in my opinion, important for building the global solidarity we’ll need to survive climate change and the death throes of Neoliberal capitalism. I’m going to try to post various articles on topics like that more regularly, just to help increase the circulation of ideas that need to spread. In that spirit, this Guardian article from 2017 is worth your time:

What they discovered is that the flow of money from rich countries to poor countries pales in comparison to the flow that runs in the other direction.
In 2012, the last year of recorded data, developing countries received a total of $1.3tn, including all aid, investment, and income from abroad. But that same year some $3.3tn flowed out of them. In other words, developing countries sent $2tn more to the rest of the world than they received. If we look at all years since 1980, these net outflows add up to an eye-popping total of $16.3tn – that’s how much money has been drained out of the global south over the past few decades. To get a sense for the scale of this, $16.3tn is roughly the GDP of the United States

What this means is that the usual development narrative has it backwards. Aid is effectively flowing in reverse. Rich countries aren’t developing poor countries; poor countries are developing rich ones.

What do these large outflows consist of? Well, some of it is payments on debt. Developing countries have forked out over $4.2tn in interest payments alone since 1980 – a direct cash transfer to big banks in New York and London, on a scale that dwarfs the aid that they received during the same period. Another big contributor is the income that foreigners make on their investments in developing countries and then repatriate back home. Think of all the profits that BP extracts from Nigeria’s oil reserves, for example, or that Anglo-American pulls out of South Africa’s gold mines.
But by far the biggest chunk of outflows has to do with unrecorded – and usually illicit – capital flight. GFI calculates that developing countries have lost a total of $13.4tn through unrecorded capital flight since 1980.

Most of these unrecorded outflows take place through the international trade system. Basically, corporations – foreign and domestic alike – report false prices on their trade invoices in order to spirit money out of developing countries directly into tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions, a practice known as “trade misinvoicing”. Usually the goal is to evade taxes, but sometimes this practice is used to launder money or circumvent capital controls. In 2012, developing countries lost $700bn through trade misinvoicing, which outstripped aid receipts that year by a factor of five.

Multinational companies also steal money from developing countries through “same-invoice faking”, shifting profits illegally between their own subsidiaries by mutually faking trade invoice prices on both sides. For example, a subsidiary in Nigeria might dodge local taxes by shifting money to a related subsidiary in the British Virgin Islands, where the tax rate is effectively zero and where stolen funds can’t be traced.
GFI doesn’t include same-invoice faking in its headline figures because it is very difficult to detect, but they estimate that it amounts to another $700bn per year. And these figures only cover theft through trade in goods. If we add theft through trade in services to the mix, it brings total net resource outflows to about $3tn per year.

That’s 24 times more than the aid budget. In other words, for every $1 of aid that developing countries receive, they lose $24 in net outflows. These outflows strip developing countries of an important source of revenue and finance for development. The GFI report finds that increasingly large net outflows have caused economic growth rates in developing countries to decline, and are directly responsible for falling living standards.

The article goes on to discuss solutions, but I think one of the biggest mental hurdles that people in predominantly white, wealthy nations need to get over, is the notion that poverty is due to some moral failing by poor people, both at a national scale, and at a global scale. We need to work together to deal with climate change, or the death toll will completely eclipse the worst atrocities in history. That means we need to let go of ideas about who “deserves” what – though to be clear, reparations are definitely owed – and focus more on using the resources we have as a species to deal with our needs as a species, including our need for a healthy global ecosystem and a stable climate.

We can’t afford to keep listening to the whines of the wealthy who think they deserve to keep their power, no matter the damage it does. Trying to maintain this system of global inequality will drive us to extinction.

Food for thought on the structure of change

Periodically there’s a flurry of discussion about ways people can help with a movement beyond being on the front lines. A lot of it goes into organizing and logistical work, but some also goes into much less involved forms of participation, even if it’s just wearing a button or something.

I don’t know how much of this is a description of what tends to happen, vs what is “needed” for a movement to be successful, but either way, I think it’s a pattern that anyone fighting for change should at least consider and account for. At the end of the day, those of us fighting for a better world have to rely on collective power, which means our chances of success go up the more people we have on board.

If Beau’s spear analogy describes a reliable pattern – and it seems like it is to me – then I think that the goal should be getting the shaft lined up behind the spearhead. BLM has done a pretty good job of that, showcasing the brutality and dishonesty of the police in a way that’s been increasingly difficult to wave away. That’s something we’d do well to think about when it comes to our own activism and communication.

Dear Small Business Owners: We need to talk about fascism

Most of the time when people talk about capitalists, we’re talking about the ones whose net worth tens of millions and up. Small business owners are generally categorized as “the little guy” that makes America function. I suppose there’s a degree of truth to that, but this pandemic and the response to it have highlighted a class conflict that will cause a lot of problems if we don’t figure out a way around it. It’s not a new problem, and I think a lot of it has to do with how incentives are structured, and “morality” is constructed under capitalism.

As we entered the pandemic, it was clear very early on that the best possible outcome for the most people relied on a real lockdown, enabled by massive government assistance to those who could not make ends meet without their wages. This, of course, was unacceptable to a capitalist class whose view of the world revolves entirely around profit and the capitalist religion’s deity, The Free Market. It was surreal to watch politicians and pundits tear their hear out over the “moral hazard” of paying people to stay home during the most deadly pandemic in a century. No real lockdown was achieved in the U.S. Instead, there was a strange “compromise” that meant people who were already well off got to isolate and protect themselves, and people who had no political power – workers – disproportionately non-white, and the elderly trapped in various end-of-life care facilities – were still being exposed, and they made up a sizable chunk of the 671,000 deaths we’ve counted so far.

The only clear benefit the working class got was the now-expired eviction moratorium. The inadequate stimulus checks, and the good – and now expired – unemployment assistance were nice, but for the most part they went directly into the pockets of the rich, as people spent that money on the myriad of large price tags the United States has placed on being alive.

But small business owners – particularly those who ran in-person services – didn’t see that income, because people were trying not to catch a deadly disease. Rather than simply pushing for more direct relief for their businesses, a lot of them pushed for an end to relief for the working class. They called for the government to basically starve the population into working for poverty wages, while exposing themselves to a deadly disease.

I talked before about how a lot of people aren’t willing to take the jobs they used to have, because the way they were fired at the first sign of trouble demonstrated that the one thing that had made their poverty wages worthwhile – the reliability – was a fiction. The short-term gain of firing workers who couldn’t work has led to longer-term problems, as workers aren’t willing to work themselves to death for wages that don’t even cover the cost of living, and a boss who will cut them loose to fend for themselves the second they think doing so is better for their own bank account.

What’s interesting about all this is that small business owners – the ones who actually own small businesses, not the hedge fund manager types who’re classified as “small businesses” because there aren’t many people working for them – are often playing at being capitalists more than they actually are capitalists. If they take a serious hit, and their business fails, they become (horror of horrors) workers. And that seems to terrify them.

This desire to be capitalists, as opposed to workers, has historically led small business owners, to side with the anti-union, anti-worker, pro-capitalist policies of fascism, while turning a blind eye to the racial and ethnic elements, and to the escalating atrocities and injustice. As with firing workers at the beginning of the pandemic, all of this makes perfect “business sense.” A lack of active, organized socialists means no danger of your business – and the hope of wealth – being taken away by the workers (which would put the owner in the nightmarish position of becoming a worker). A lack of trade unions means your workers can’t bargain collectively, so you can do things like paying each one as little as you think they’ll accept. A lack of ethnic minorities means there’s nobody around to make you think about what happened to them, so you can just go about your business in peace.

One of the primary projects in maintaining capitalism is the constant moral indoctrination. We are taught to separate our sense of morality along the class divide. It’s good to care about other humans, but that’s separate from “the economy,” and if the economy is hurt, well that clearly hurts everyone, right? And we’re taught that any effort to make our society a better system for human happiness will hurt the economy, which will then hurt the same people you’re trying to help. God has a pla -sorry, wrong theology- The Free Market will fix everything if we just put our faith in it, and serve it without question.

Part of the reason the propaganda on this subject is so relentless is that this is the primary place where the mythology of capitalism collides with reality. The free market really is a myth, and it always has been. Capitalists rely entirely on the government to enforce their claims to ownership, and to use the lethal dangers of poverty to force workers to accept wage slavery in exchange for survival. Try to maintain that fiction and its inherent contradictions indefinitely, and the lower classes, ethnic minorities, and members of the majority who can’t stomach the endless rivers of blood for profit start to fight back, and fight for change.

And that, historically, seems to be where a capitalist country turns to fascism.

I want to pause here to address something about the United States. I can’t say with confidence that the US is unique in this regard, but it certainly stands out, and not just because of that country’s status as the center of a global empire. It is an unquestioned fact that U.S. racial policy and practices directly inspired the leaders of Nazi Germany. It’s also a simple fact that the United States has had a fascist movement within it since before that political ideology had a name beyond white supremacy. As fascism rose in Europe for the first time (I wish I could say the only time), it also rose in the United States, and has never really gone away. It lost popularity after Pearl Harbor, but even some the soldiers who the U.S. lionizes as “The Greatest Generation” retained their sympathy for fascists, driven by their bigotry, as shown by this excerpt from Howard Zinn’s account of Freedom Day in Hattiesburg, Mississippi (the censored words are my doing):

As we entered the jailhouse a few minutes before 8:00 a.m., the police dogs were growling and barking in their kennels. We turned over the bond money.

A moment later, Oscar came down the corridor unescorted. A few moments before, the corridor had been full of policemen, but now there was not a soul around. Oscar was still wearing his badly worn corduroy pants, and his old boots, caked with mud. His blue workshirt was splattered with blood, and under it his T-shirt was very bloody. The right side of his face was swollen. His nose looked as if it were broken. Blood was caked over his eye.

He told us what had happened. They had put a prisoner into his cell who was in a state of great agitation, very upset about the demonstration at the courthouse. He had been a paratrooper in World War II and told Oscar he “would rather kill a n****r lover than a Nazi or a J*p.” He pushed a cigarette near Oscar’s face and said he would burn his eyes out. Oscar called for the jailer and asked to be removed from the cell. The ex-paratrooper asked if Oscar was “one of them n****r-lovers.” The jailer nodded. The next thing Oscar knew he was lying on the floor. He had been unconscious. Now he was being kicked. He was bleeding. The police came and took the ex-paratrooper out of the cell. Oscar made his phone call.

If the United States is the greatest in the world at anything, it seems to be at telling pretty lies about itself, and convincing most of its population to believe them.

I took time to touch on the history of fascism in America because that history acts as camouflage for the fascist movement of the present. In 2019, for example, we learned that one reason Twitter wasn’t treating right-wing extremists the way they treat groups like ISIS/ISIL/Daesh, was because the algorithm couldn’t tell the difference between U.S. right-wing extremists, and a number of GOP politicians. The simple reason for this is that there is no difference. The political backlash from openly naming the Republican Party for what it is was more than even Twitter, a huge and powerful corporation, was willing to risk. This level of open fascism in the GOP is new, in some ways, but a lot of it is very, very old.

I want to take a moment to review Laurence Britt’s 14 characteristics of fascism again. Remember that not all fascist movements will necessarily have every simple element on this list:

  1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
    Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
  2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
    Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
  3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
    The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
  4. Supremacy of the Military
    Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
  5. Rampant Sexism
    The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.
  6. Controlled Mass Media
    Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
  7. Obsession with National Security
    Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
  8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
    Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government’s policies or actions.
  9. Corporate Power is Protected
    The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
  10. Labor Power is Suppressed
    Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed .
  11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
    Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.
  12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
    Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
  13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
    Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
  14. Fraudulent Elections
    Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

I really hope it’s clear to you how this description maps onto the modern U.S. conservative movement and the GOP, especially in light of what we’ve seen in the last year. Many people have been making this case throughout Trump’s time as the leader of the GOP, but think a bit about this list, and about American history. The only two items that haven’t been very clearly a part of US society for most of the last century are control of the media and fraudulent elections. Even there, the Red Scare was an effort to deliberately crush leftism, both in media, and in politics. Any idea that was viewed as anti-capitalist was conflated as anti-American, and the FBI, the Secret Police of the United States, has spent government resources to crush left-wing politics in the United States so effectively that even the moderate social democratic (and still capitalist) policies of people like Bernie Sanders are treated as murderous extremism, with wealthy media figures like Chris Matthews melting down on national TV about the fear of being executed in Central Park.

In many ways, the basic infrastructure of fascism is the background radiation of the United States, and has been all along. It just sits there, waiting for someone to decide it’s worth the social risk to make use of it.

And so as the shift has been made, closer and closer to a fully and openly fascist society, it’s been hard for some people to see it, because it doesn’t look that different from what they’ve always known. And since I know I’m a good person, and I haven’t had a problem with it thus far, that must mean that it’s not fascism! If it was, then I – as a good person – would be horrified and taking to the streets. But it doesn’t seem that much different from everything else, and I’ve got this small business that’s struggling – it’s taking up all of my time and energy, and now I can’t find workers who will take what I’m willing to pay them!

So small business owners ask the government to help us out by threatening or simply removing the workers’ food and shelter, so working for them – at whatever wage the boss offers – is the only way to survive. The government also helps by undermining unions, so that employees don’t have the means to exert any kind of power over the jobs that eat up most of their lives. Of course that helps the “little guys” a bit – they get a desperate, fearful workforce to keep the bosses from BECOMING workers – but much more than that, it protects corporate power (number 9 on the list) by suppressing labor power (number 10 on the list).

But again, it does help the small business owners cling to their status as “capitalists,” and so they support the party that does the most of that, and try hard to find reasons to justify it, and to justify looking the other way for the escalating nationalism, the minority scapegoating, and so on.

This is one way that liberal people, who would press a “save that person” button if it was offered, can end up passively supporting a fascist movement. After that point, the worse things get, the higher the emotional toll of accepting reality gets, and the more pressure there is to keep looking away. And humans don’t like being told that we’re bad people, so some small business owners get defensive and angry. They begin to hate those who try to fight back against the regime, because those people are a constant reminder that those who aren’t fighting back might be bad people for it. They support the regime, and they are generally rewarded for it. In modern America this ranges from people going out of their way to buy products they don’t need, to the support of legislators, to crowdfunding campaigns to support people seen as “heroes for the cause.”

This seems to be the path we’re on right now, and as the climate continues to throw chaos at us, and the Democrats continue to focus on failed policies like austerity and “free market” solutions, I fear it will get worse. I hope I’m wrong, but with the way things are going, I think small business owners are going to have to make a choice about whether to side with life and justice, or with their short-term economic interests, and the horror of an openly fascist United States of America.

There’s a famous antifascist play called “On the Frontier” by W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, a play that I once had the pleasure of being in actually, in which a wealthy arms manufacturer called Valerian makes weapons for a fascist dictator.

At the climax of the play the fascist dictator is overthrown, by his own people who also kill Valerian himself. But just before that there’s a crucial scene in which Valerian’s friend comes to him and says, “It’s all over, the revolution has happened, you need to run away with me now and abandon all your wealth and power and flee to another country with me.” And Valerian says, “No.”

He chooses to stay, and moreover, he chooses to give his money and weapons not to the people trying to overthrow the fascist dictator but to the fascists. And it’s choice that distinguishes Valerian from the victims of the fascist government he supports.

I’m not suggesting we should start executing industrialists; I’m illustrating that if you’re a fascist, and antifascists come for you, you have a choice.

You can give it up. […] And the historical evidence supports this: when fascists in a particular city stop getting together and organising antifascists go back to their lives as well. In fact some antifascists engage with fascists and provide services to try and get them out of the movement so they get on move on with their lives.

But if you’re a person of colour, if you’re trans, or a person with a disability, or gay, or Jewish, or whatever and fascists come for you there is nothing you can do that will make them happy except stop existing.

–Abigail Thorn, The Philosophy of Antifa

Strangely, the tens of thousands of dollars I’ve spent on rent over the years haven’t reduced my need to keep paying richer people than me for the right to live. Due to my immigration status, this is my only form of income for the foreseeable future, and it’s currently not enough to make ends meet. If you like the work I do, please share it around, and please consider supporting me at patreon.com/oceanoxia. It costs as little as $1 per month (though more is appreciated), and gets you access to a little bit of extra content, and early access to some things like my climate-related short stories.

Beyond local networking: Some thoughts on next steps for organizing

No matter how you look at it, those of us who want a better world are engaged in a struggle that has a decidedly asymmetrical arrangement of power. The capitalist class controls almost every aspect of our society, and even peaceful challenges to their power are met with brutal police violence, infiltration and espionage, rhetorical attacks from politicians, and even legislation that effectively legalizes the murder of activists. And remember – that’s just at the “imperial core”. When it comes to activism in the regions where the U.S. anti-Left war machine has influence, the story is often far, far darker. The U.S.-led war on any left-wing movement, no matter how democratic or nonviolent, has included terrorism, assassination, torture, sexual assault, disappearances, massacres, genocide, chemical warfare, and ecological destruction.

What I’m trying to say is that over the years, activists have learned that even the generally “acceptable” forms of resistance – marches and rallies – require planning, preparation, recruitment, protective equipment, defensive strategies, medical personnel, training, budgeting and fundraising, a press strategy, and more. That’s why I like the idea of mutual aid networks as an organizing tool. Even if the network itself never does anything beyond getting emergency help for those who need it, it can act as training for those involved. While I’ve engaged in a tiny amount of this kind of activism, most of what I know about this stuff comes from listening to those who’ve dedicated their lives to this important work, all over the world.

It seems to me that interest in organizing for political change outside of electoral politics is pretty widespread right now. To some degree it was always there – I knew many people growing up who were involved in activism around Palestine, the sanctions against Iraq, the SOA/WHINSEC, and so on – but in the last year I’ve seen more efforts at unionization, mutual aid groups, and discussions of alternatives to police, than at any point in my life. Along with that comes all of the knowledge-sharing that is part of those discussions. I’ve also seen a lot of people trying to feel their way through local organizing, even if it’s just making connections with other people who share that interest. That last category is who I’ve been thinking about as I’ve worked on my direct action post. I think many more people want change than know how to get it, and the concept of “local organizing” as the first step is pretty widespread. The concept of working with your community to improve that community is not new to anyone, but I think it’s hard for folks to see how that can lead to national change. You get your network of well-meaning folks, and then what?

This is my attempt to provide one answer to that question. This is not the only answer, just the path forward that seems best to me, based on what I currently understand about the world.

We’re facing an increasingly hostile climate, massive levels of waste and pollution all over the place, and a rise in fascism that feels sickeningly similar to the early 20th century. It’s not hard to see how a local – or even national – mutual aid network would make a huge difference in people’s lives, and maybe even counteract the way capitalism encourages mistrust and selfishness. What’s harder to see is how that can challenge the power of the ruling class, or push lawmakers to support legislation. In terms of activism other than protests, how do we go from group chats and local networks to coordinated national or multinational actions that attract attention, spread ideas, and maybe even bring some discomfort to the ruling class?

Flash mobs!

No, but seriously. Think about what you’re seeing in that video. Think about how those events came to happen. Think about the fact that many of those people were strangers to one another. Some of them may not have even known what they were going to be doing until shortly before they did it. Some of them had done flash mobs before, or had a pre-existing skill they used, but plenty of people may have participated in one flash mob, and never bothered to do it again. Some of those people organized that event, and some just showed up because they heard about it and it seemed fun.

Starting in 2003 a trend emerged in which a group of people would converge on a location, take some kind of pre-arranged action, and then disperse. A flash mob could be anything from suddenly filling an intersection with people wearing red shirts, or an unannounced theatrical performance, or even people all following instructions from their smartphones. Flash mobs happen without warning, and crucially they often happen without the participants knowing what they’ll be doing until they start. This last point is key, especially for doing things at malls, where security would try to prevent it if they had advance warning (people who control public gathering spaces like to either charge for events, or require an application). The people organizing flash mobs developed an approach to get around those obstacles by limiting who knew what, arranging events without visible leaders, and having immediate dispersal as a built-in part of the game. A core group designs and prepares for the activity, and then they put out a call, by word of mouth or by social media, for anyone who’s game to show up at a specific time and date. Tell them what to bring and where to be. Ideally, you want to have them gather somewhere “off stage” so you can go over the plan, hand out props, and do any rehearsing that’s needed. From there you can give the group the actual location of the action, and instructions for how and when to join in.

Whether you want to draw attention to a message, carry out a last-minute counter-protest, or just make people’s day a little more interesting and fun, it seems to me that flash mobs – including ones that are either limited to a simple message, or are entirely frivolous – are a great way to develop a useful skillset for collective action, while lowering the barrier to involvement for those who want to help but don’t have time or energy for organizing work. There are some elements that are common to any other form of organizing, but flash mobs tend to focus on accomplishing a specific goal.

At this point I want to leave the theoretical and talk a bit about what’s already going on. As I mentioned earlier, people all over the world have been working out ways to resist their rulers for centuries. As the tools and tactics of governments have changed, resistances movements have changed in response. Folks involved in protest – particularly those who’ve taking part in Black Bloc actions – are likely to be familiar with some or all of this stuff. For the purposes of this particular piece, I don’t want to go too deep into specific actions that have been taken, but I do want to focus on this description from a conservative woman who joined in on some Black Bloc activities to see what it was like:

There are different types of bloc organization styles. The building block of antifa is what’s called an affinity group, people you live and work with and trust and know in real life. All the planning is done within that closed bloc, and they don’t let everyone know [what they’re going to do]. I didn’t know that they were going to burn the Portland Police Association when I joined. What they did was put a call out that said, “Anyone show up in black that night at this place, and you can join the action.”

That’s called a semi-open bloc. The planning is done within the closed group, but anyone who’s dressed in black can come join the action.

To be clear – I’m not suggesting that people should burn down buildings, this is just a real-world example of that “flash-mob” style of organizing in action, as described by someone opposed to the group’s goals. These tactics are a tool set, and as with any tool a great deal depends on who’s using it and why. A similar approach could be used to hand out leaflets in a particular location, or to generate buzz about a particular word or phrase, or to crash a politician’s event, or to attract attention to a particular problem. Regardless of what you’re doing, practice and training will increase your odds of a successful outcome.

Flash mobs done for fun or to spread a simple message, are a safe way of practicing logistics and helping people practice coordinated action.  In a lot of ways, it’s practicing martial arts – you might be doing it in case you need to used those skills, but it’s also a fun activity by itself, and largely devoid of any kind of ideological commitment. The same can be said of running, or any other form of exercise. The same can be said of the kinds of marches and rallies we’ve come to associate with political activism.

Generally, those of us interested in organizing are involved with at least one group of like-minded people (if you’re not, you might find help on finding or making such a group somewhere in here). What would it take for that group to get a flash mob together? What are the obstacles? How much notice is needed?

What about having two flash mobs do the same thing at the same time in two different cities? What about more than two?

What would it take to have a flash mob do something in Washington DC at noon, and another do the same thing in London at 5pm? How many people could you get to join in without knowing precisely what was going to happen?

There are already groups that organize events across large regions, but we want to build the capacity for mass coordinated action that – and this is important – is not being run by the political organizations that uphold the power structures and policies we want to change. What I want is for you, dear reader, to have the capacity to do this in pursuit of your own goals. I’ve heard a lot of people over the last year saying that the Left needs a new leader, and while I disagree, I would say that leaders worth following tend to emerge out of work that’s already being done. If you want a leader to follow, then work hard to create a movement that will build up the leaders it needs. Who knows, maybe you’ll find that the real leader was you all along!

Returning to the topic at hand, I listed various tasks involved in organizing an event to underline the need for training. None of us just naturally know how to go about doing any complex action. Even the stuff that seems more or less built in, like moving and talking – all of that requires practice. There’s no reason to think that the skills involved in building and maintaining a just and democratic system wouldn’t be the same. The good thing is that it’s not hard to find basic instructions for how to do this stuff, and it’s not hard to practice it safely and legally, and you can even have fun while you do it!

You will also be practicing field-tested tactics from protest movements around the world. I mentioned this earlier, with the Black Bloc example, but it goes beyond that. During the 2019 protests in Hong Kong, in addition to ingenious use of things like umbrellas and laser pointers, protesters used flash mob tactics to avoid arrest and continue their protests:

Hong Kong protesters have deployed a new strategy of popping up in small groups in multiple locations across the city in an effort to avoid arrest, during their ongoing campaign against police and the local government.
Small flashmobs of protesters demonstrated across a dozen districts after a call for protesters to “blossom everywhere” on Sunday, with many staying closer to home where they could evade police on foot or by bus.
[…]
“We are Pien Dei Hoi Fa[blossoming everywhere],” she said, while behind her a group of fellow protesters smashed up a traffic light.
Crystal, another 21-year-old protester, said: “The police do not allow us to have a big group of people gathering together. They block all the MTR stations, where the police have arrested [us] many times. The police also stop and search at the MTR stations.” She wore a mask, cap and sunglasses to disguise her identity during the demonstration.
She said: “People they just stay around this area. When something happens they can still go home at night without being searched in the tunnel.”

In Chile, where police are notorious for deliberately mutilating protesters, women gathered to sing “Un Violador En Tu Camino”/“El violador eres tú”, as part of their efforts to end the destructive reign of neoliberalism that began with Pinochet. This chant has been taken up, and used in the fight against oppressive governments and patriarchy in other parts of the world as well.

In the 2011 Egyptian revolution, a similar approach to Hong Kong was used, and in the description, we can see how they put their “home field” advantage to work in their favor:

Starting in the alleys was not a random decision. It makes tactical and strategic sense regardless of the technology used to coordinate this. Starting small and away from the main protests is a safe way to pool protesters together. It’s also about creating an iterative approach to a “strength in numbers” dynamic. As more people crowd the smaller the streets, this gives a sense of momentum and confidence. Starting in alley ways localizes the initiative. People are likely neighbors and join because they see their friend or sister out in the street.

The guide also stressed the need to remain peaceful and not engage in sabotage. The discipline of remaining non-violent is instrumental in civil resistance. Engaging in violence provides government forces with the excuse they’re looking for to clamp down on protesters and delegitimize them in a public way. The guide also recommends that activists try to win over the police and army instead of attacking them. The protesters behind this guide were clearly well trained and knew what they were doing.

This brings up another reason I think forming strategy based on local conditions is crucial: trying to win over the enemy is not always a good idea. It’s definitely one of the tactics that’s been used by the BLM movement, but the opposition in the U.S. is not just agents of the State; it’s also the fascist movement. Fascism, as an ideology and strategy that relies on conspiracy theories and ethnic scapegoating, has mass extermination as its end goal. Fascists don’t want to get along, they want you to cease existing. Deradicalization is important work, but even if that’s something you want to do, it is not work that should be attempted in the setting of a public confrontation. In general, these are people who are more likely to be holding themselves back from violence that might get them in trouble, rather than forcing themselves to attack because of orders. Given that we know for certain that white supremacists have been deliberately infiltrating law enforcement in the United States, it’s worth considering whether the people you want to appeal to even consider you to be human. You and those around you are likely to have a better idea what you’re going to be facing in your city or your country than someone who doesn’t live there, so you can shape your tactics accordingly.

If you do a quick search for how to organize a flash mob, you’ll come up with a lot of sites with a basic guide. I definitely recommend looking at multiple guides, but the central theme is the process of recruiting people to show up at a designated time and place, and to join in. If you want to limit who knows about your action in advance, you can rely on personal networks – contact people you know and trust, and have them contact people they know, to find people who might be on board. If you want a larger group, and don’t care who sees, you can put out a recruitment call on social media. For the rest, success largely seems to depend on how much work you can do in advance. The less you need to teach the folks who join up, the easier the experience for everyone once things get rolling. Once you have some practice arranging things locally, you can try working with a group somewhere else to do the same thing in two locations, and get some practice coordinating events. As ever, be aware of what information you give out, and how you go about doing so. US law enforcement has been known to spy on some pretty innocuous groups when it comes to any activism left of center.

I said it before, but it bears repeating: when you’re first trying out this sort of thing, it’s probably better to aim fairly small, and err on the side of caution. Part of the point of using this form of political action is to maximize safety for the people involved, so they’re able to keep working. This approach to political change will be more effective if it can be done at a larger scale. “Blossom Everywhere” is going to make a bigger impact than “Blossom in a couple places”. That means that we want a growing number of people who know what they’re doing. Your wellbeing is a key part of that. There are times when putting yourself at risk is the right thing to do, but the risk is never the goal. So practice, have fun, and if I can impart a bit of wisdom from my brief stint in a youth circus, be willing to make a fool of yourself in pursuit of something worth achieving.

Thank you for reading, and if you found my work useful, please share it around! If you’re financially stable, please consider contributing to my patreon, to help me make ends meet. Due to my current immigration status, I’m not allowed to seek wage labor, so this is my only means of income. Fortunately, the nature of crowdfunding is such that even a dollar per month makes a difference!

As with other such pieces, I will probably update this over time to improve it. Suggestions or discussion in the comments can help a great deal with that process, so feel free to chime in. Thanks for reading, and take care of yourself.

A response to the IPCC report

In a lot of ways I feel like nothing has changed. The IPCC report confirms what we’ve known for a very long time, and I gave up on the world I know still existing when I’m old about a decade ago. We still need to eliminate fossil fuel use. Because the warming has gone so far, there’s also zero question in my mind that we need nuclear power – especially for industry, as one of my esteemed commenters has pointed out – as well as solar and wind power. The fact that the warming will continue for centuries or even millennia, unless we start pulling vast amounts of CO2 out of the atmosphere at a currently unattainable rate means that our survival as a species now depends entirely on our technology. All other tools of survival are dependent on the climate conditions under which we’ve evolved, and those are gone. For all practical purposes, they are gone forever. We may be able to re-terraform the planet and return the climate to a temperature that’s more optimal for humanity, but that’s at least a lifetime away, and in order to get there, we have to survive.

We also need to stop driving our entire society based on what generates profit for rich assholes. There is no way that the scale of change we need will be more profitable in the short term than a continuation of the trajectory we are on. That means that our ruling class, who got and maintain their power by sacrificing the lives and happiness of others and who clearly believe they are the best people in the world to decide our fates, will happily drive us to extinction while believing to their dying breaths that nobody could possibly have done better. We are out of time. In my view we have been for many years. If we leave it to those in power, our response to climate change will be increasingly authoritarian societies, mass murder, needless destruction of land and resources through warfare, and ultimately an extinction that may have been preventable. I know this sounds alarmist to some, but I’d like to point out that I got the same response a decade ago when I said people should start thinking about storing food against emergencies, for the sake of their communities. These days it’s getting harder to find someone who would call that alarmist. Capitalism is driving us to extinction, and fascism is on the rise on a global scale.

I also want to repeat that I think extinction may be preventable. Based on where our society is at, right now, I do not think the odds are in our favor. I do, however, believe we can change those odds. I still believe both survival and a better, more just world is possible, but the longer we rely on our current rulers (some of whom have been involved in politics for longer than I’ve been alive, and yet haven’t come close to dealing with this problem), the worse our chances will get. I also believe that we don’t have a lot of room to screw up, which is why I’ve been advocating that we start the process of building a better society right now from the ground up, as part of building the power to create the political change we need. We need that resilience no matter what’s coming, and taking that approach seems to me to be the best way to save lives through both climate change and political change.

It’s a lot. It’s too much, really. There is no justice to what’s happening. Those responsible still wield unimaginable wealth and power, and the people suffering and dying the most are the poorest among us, not just in those nations kept in poverty by the rich nations, but also within the rich nations. Add in the pandemic, and there’s a burden of grief upon everyone who understands what’s going on. It’s hard to see any hope at all sometimes. We’re stuck in a fog bank, and not only can we not see a way out, we know there’s a very real possibility that the fog now envelops the entire world. Insofar as the temperature is going to keep rising, we may be stuck in that “fog” for the rest of our lives. Our best hope to get out is to build new spaces that are fog-proof, so that we can actually see each other and be whole again. In the meantime, we do what people always do when stuck in the fog. We call to each other, so we know we’re not alone. We feel our way forward, and guide those around us to better footing. We build fog horns to call those beyond reach of our voices, and warn them of rocks, or direct them to harbor.

I’m planning to post science fiction much more often here, and more regularly to my patrons, because I think a lot of people have trouble imagining how human society could exist on such a strange and hostile world. Storytelling – narrative of one form or another – is a method of communicating information and ideas that seems to be universal within our species. Hopefully I can find ways of doing it that can help at least some of you in that regard. I also decided, based on comments, to engage a little more directly with bad news and the darker end of things. Beyond that, I’ll keep trying to make content that will help people figure out their role in all this, and I’ll at least consider requests if there are particular things someone wants me to look into.

On that note, I think I’ll leave you with Rebecca Watson’s video about the IPCC report, because I like the tone:

 

The way the United States treats people with disabilities is deliberately cruel, and beyond unacceptable.

I’m working on a longer piece about disability, accessability, and some trends we should be working to change, but in the meantime, check out this interview, and pressure your legislators to support legislation that move to deal with at least some of this. You can text SIGN SSINOW to 50409 to push Schumer to include improvements to Supplemental Security Income, and move away from a deliberately cruel system that traps disabled folks in poverty and isolation. This is also something worth pressing your senators and representative on. There is no justification for this.

Mutual aid, 6th edition

Updated on the 1st of August, 2021

With the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, joblessness is increasing, and people are in need of help. This is particularly a problem in the US, but many others in other countries are also struggling, and it’s likely the number of people needing help will be increasing as the crisis continues. This isn’t going to be over any time soon, and the economic impacts are going to last even after vaccines have been widely distributed.

To that end, I’ve put together a list of different resources for people who are struggling to make ends meet. This is a mix of both ways to seek help, and ways to give help to those in need. I will update and re-post this at least once a week while the pandemic and associated economic fallout continue. This is currently mostly focused on the U.S., with some UK resources, but I want to expand it to cover anyone needing help anywhere if possible. There’s a lot here, and it’s currently not particularly organized, because I don’t currently have a system for doing so. I also haven’t included much about things like PPE crafting or distribution – this is mostly focused on aid relating to  food, housing, and other things that currently require money.

Because of the duration of the pandemic, and the lack of help from the US government, many of these may be running out of resources, so please help if you can! Supporting each other in times of need is how humanity has gotten this far, and for those who have more than they need, now’s the time to give back to the society that made that wealth possible. If you want to start a mutual aid network in your area, here’s a guide on how to do that.

I think it’s worth mentioning that if you’re doing OK, and you want to help, contributing to mutual aid efforts is one way to do that. Actually contributing your time and labor, in whatever capacity you’re able, is also likely to be valuable. Many of the initial projects to help people survive the combination of a pandemic and the cruelty of a capitalist system were short-term efforts to deal with what most expected to be a short-term problem. The pandemic continues, and in case you missed it, climate change isn’t going to give us any breathing room. Mutual aid can’t solve all our problems, but it can help people survive, and it can be a tool for networking and organizing. That’s something YOU will need going forward, dear reader, unless you want to be entirely at the mercy of the billionaires and their endless greed.

If anyone has corrections or resources I’ve missed, please include them in the comments and I’ll add them in to the next round. 

Twitter thread on resources for people facing eviction – share it around, and add to it if you have anything to add. 

  • From Bigdoorbrigade.com, who have done a great job pulling this stuff together. Look at this stuff, but check them out too, because they’ve got more on how to help, how to organize, and so on:

https://www.mutualaidhub.org/ – a map of mutual aid projects and requests around the United States. FYI, McAffee flagged this site as somehow worrisome. I’m not sure why.

https://mutualaiddisasterrelief.org/ – Mutual Aid Disaster Relief – solidarity, not charity. This is an opportunity to help, and by doing so you increase the odds that you’ll have help when the next climate disaster hits your region

It’s Going Down  is a digital community center for anarchist, anti-fascist, autonomous anti-capitalist and anti-colonial movements. They have a list of mutual aid efforts focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic across the United States as well as some in Canada.

This is a US-based google doc with a huge amount of resources linked, from guides, to counter-propaganda, to existing aid efforts. Tactics and info are relevant across the board, most of the linked aid efforts are centered in the US.

Coronavirus resource list “This kit is a collectivized document that will be updated as more mutual aid projects and resources appear online. Recognizing that not everyone will have access to great internet to access some of these, I encourage you to apply these offline as well as online.”

COVID-19 Mutual Aid UK – Mutual aid resources in the United Kingdom

For those interested, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now did an interview with Dean Spade, who created Big Door Brigade.

The Human Network Initiative is a collaboration between Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. They have put together this collation of local and state resources

The Asian American Resource Workshop has created a wider ranging sheet of resources and mutual aid groups. It includes a lot of information on how to combat prejudice and xenophobia in this unprecedented situation

The folks behind the news site Boston.org have set up the Boston Helps network

A neighborhood group has been organized for Jamaica Plain and Roxbury, with similar groups in many Boston neighborhoods

Just outside of the city, communities like Cambridge have also seen mutual aid groups being set up

Wildcats want to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone who has supported us so far! With your solidarity, we have raised just enough to take care of the basic needs of all 80 graduate student workers who were recently fired for grade withholding. Thanks to you, we have been able to rest assured that our rent, food, and other needs will be covered. Your donations also fed thousands of strikers and our allies on our month-long picket line and covered medical and legal expenses of those who were violently arrested by University of California police. This fund continues to be the foundation for our ongoing fight for a cost of living adjustment (COLA).

MAP staff are already doing all we can to support local medical services who are serving Palestinian communities living under occupation and as refugees. We have already provided emergency hygiene supplies to 1,200 vulnerable Palestinians living in Gaza. We anticipate further need for an emergency medical response in the weeks and months ahead. Please help us be there for Palestinians during this crisis with a donation today.

Your donation can help pay for:

  • Hygiene Kits
  • Antiseptics
  • Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
  • Medicines and medical supplies

The chancellor’s announcement now helps millions of hospitality workers, but sadly still so many are not protected by this as they don’t have contracts, were paid off pay roll or dismissed by employers before the announcement. We decided to take action to help those that are still hurting. We have the technology, contacts & understanding to make a difference quickly.

We have created ‘The Hospitality Workers Emergency Fund’ to allow the kind hearted, altruistic & caring UK public to donate to an emergency fund to help the most vulnerable & in need in our sector during this time. Our mission was always to champion hourly paid tipped workers, we never imagined in this way…

  • This journalist furlough fund is trying to help journalists who’ve seen their pay stopped for one reason or another. You can donate here, or follow a link to request aid

Here are just a few other places to donate that I’ve seen floating around. There are likely more local efforts where you live.
Nationwide: UNITE HERE’s fund for impacted workers

I’ll keep updating this as I find new stuff, and as always, let me know if you come across things I’ve missed, and please consider donating to my patreon, as I’m barely making ends meet myself!

The US is facing an eviction crisis. Here’s a list of resources that you should share

Update: There are more dead links in the last mutual aid post than I was expecting, so I’m taking a little extra time to go through those and find what new resources I can. The new edition will be up on Sunday.

I’ll be updating my mutual aid post tomorrow, and this will be on it, but it merits its own post as well. Share this twitter thread as widely as you can to increase the odds of useful information getting to someone who needs it. It includes resources by state as well as federal resources. Congress continues to fail in their duties to the American people, and some may even thing that mass evictions will be “good for business”, as it’s likely to create a whole bunch of desperate people who’re more likely to agree to bad pay and bad working conditions. Some state legislatures may help, many will not. Also please keep in mind that, as a rule, you can’t trust landlords. They’ll make up cleaning bills to keep your deposit, and they’ll lie to you about your rights as a tenant if you let them. There are good people who are landlords out there, but they’re not who a majority of renters have to deal with. Know your rights, share information widely, and look for ways to help those around you.

Stability, the “labor shortage”, and why people put up with shitty jobs

I’m willing to bet there are a number of areas in which I would disagree with this guy, but his point about stability is worth taking in.

This doesn’t just apply to employment under capitalism. It’s key to how a lot of systems keep going, despite all their obvious problems. Most systems of governance work decently for most people. If people have their basic needs met (including stuff like having free time) in a stable manner, they’ll put up with a lot of bullshit. Part of the reason I was OK working as a cashier after leaving my job writing curriculum was because it provided me with a reliability that my academic, grant-paid work could not. My salary as a curriculum writer was higher, and I had excellent benefits, but none of that mattered much when work that would have been funded in the past wasn’t, and I found myself facing 4 hours of work per week with no benefits. I was more invested in the work than in ringing up camping equipment, but what I really needed, before everything else, was to know that I could pay the bills. Short of that, I needed to have some reasonable expectation that a period of being unable to make ends meet would lead to being able to do so more reliably in the future.

I think this is also why there’s so much effort in the United States to hide the fact that people in the USSR generally ate as well or maybe even better than Americans, people like Chris Matthews might have a real fear of being executed by Bernie for being too rich, but that’s a worry for the ruling class. For everyone else, the threat was either nuclear war (which I’m told would make it difficult to enjoy a stable day-to-day life) or starvation. Throughout my entire life, I’ve heard people in the US talk about the horrible conditions in all these “socialist” countries around the world, that was DEFINITELY not in any way connected to the economic sanctions placed on them by the most powerful country in the world.

The threat of instability and uncertainty have always been used to prevent economic and political change. It will be interesting to see what happens to that dynamic now that our destabilization of the climate is making certainty and stability increasingly difficult to maintain.