BOMB fRAGHUENT fOR THE MIND> 4 Contents “Rebel with a cause”-Coyote “Ten Words of Nahuatl” Sean Swain on non-violence. “Fragments of a cultivated mind”-Coyote 2010 Georgia Prisoner Strike- written and compiled by Chicago ABC ZRebel With A Cause” Aflower cannot be a flower if the sun, wind and rain choose to neglect, and power cannot be pawer if the people subversivaly reject. No cause for all these laws, no need for applause, just think for a 2 minute and stop the pause, ponder and reflect, 1f you want to be rebel my friend, then educate yourself and give your life to lend, if you want to be rebel my pal, then educate others,assist, teach and show them how. This is a system that deprives us of truth and education, keeping us wary and dull so we don't take it upon ourselves to reach for liberation. Be a flower in the sun, fuck the power, be the barrel of the gun, aim your bullets, giving death to ignorant obedience, and birth to radical ingenious...be a rebel with a cause, be a rebel for the cause. Upiift yourself, apply yourself love yourself, educate yourselr,free Yourself, and allthat you do for yourself,strive to do it for others too. Be ablessing, nota burden, be the change you want to see, be the reason, be the cause, the effect and the purpose, give your lif purpose, bring purpose to life and give life to others. Exist in this ‘world, know the truth, be the truth, Be a rebel with a cause, know your cause, learn your cause, and teach your cause because the cause cannot be until you cause it to be. Be real, be true, be thoughtful, be alive, and be good. Let the sun shine in your life. Pull back the curtains, ‘open the windows of your mind and let the breeze in. be like the “Ten Words of Nahuatl” Pani- On top 1 Neltiliztli- Truth Maquiza-To escape Coyoctic- Hole Tzintli- Base Poctli- Smoke Nehcaliliztli-Battle Tlazohcamati- Thank you Pohuilia- Count, to count something 10. Quiza- To come out LNV A WD Ryan and everyboay- Got your last letter, and wére all caught up. The mailing with “last act” was supposed to be from another source but it apparently didn't happen. Il ook into it. So, check it out. You said in your last letter that you think probably the point where we might diverge is on the question of violence and you wanted me to expound my views a bit more. And that's cool, but before | do, | think I'd better give some background and give you my views on nonviolence. First, some background. Before | became an Anarchist and befora | was a revolutionary, | started off as a suburban mall rat. | accepted what | was spoon-fed. | was the product of public schaols and cub scouts and the local Methadist church and even two year stiat in the army. | was a typical American idiot. | was probably a typical cheerleader for the fascist order of things-until the Nazis came and took me away. I —p— democracy equals freedom and blah blah blah, My real political education came after my appeals were exhausted and | was here and met another prisaner, former sixties radical, a socialist, who made it clear | was part of the problem if | was not dedicating myself to the cause. We formed a reformist group-a successful one that successfuly lobbied for legislative reforms of the parole board and | served on the advisory board of CURE- Ohio (Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants). | believed the svstem could be fixed, it was only a matter of the squeaky whee! getting greased, a question of mass participation. Is The key senator who sponsred parole reform legislation resigned in scandal for campaign fraud. The bil got twisted into something useless. Despite a membership drive for CURE (between 3 other prisoners and myself, we managed to foster the largest single political membership drive that ever haopened in the Ohio prison system, and at the peak of it one in every 5 prisoners was a member of CURE) everything died. Nothing ‘substantive changed. Up until 2004, 1 was an avid pacifist. | was a member of Pax Christi, a catholic peace group. | believed in the superior morality of the Gandhian method of social change. To this day, ! still have 2 dog-eared copy of Gene Sharps “politics of Nonviolent acti vol. HII,” a nonviolence movement starter-kit. 1o longer hold the view that strictly nonviolent methods are the only legitimate means for achieving social change. And what has persuaded me away from that is an understanding that life and s.rvival involve violence. Lok, | alive today because | ate. We need fuel to stay alive and that fuel s organic. What you eat used to be alive. So, for you to survive, something else must die. Everything in the worid that lives is food for something sise. Including us. Survival is a matter of eating food instead of becoming food. That is the basis of survival. Now, were in a situation where a small group of bastards have hijacked the world and subjected us allto slavery. It's a world ‘where our basic human needs are not met. That's why we get distorted by this pathological order. That's why the population s depressed, stressed, lonely, distracted, flipped-out with road rage, taking pill 10 get up, taking pills to go to bed, self meaication with alcohol, resorting to the distractions and escapes of drugs and porn and adrenalin and shopping and Pawer-tripping. We live in an order where our social and human needs are unmet because we are units, slaves, subjects whose purpase in being alive is to drag stones up the side of fucking pyramid. 3 million years of human survival in sustainable communities that did not lead to ecological destruction and genocide and mass murder and poverty and starvation is a good indication that this way of life imposed on us is nat right. It serves the needs of a small group who run everything. It fucks the rest of us. Al o us. It fucks some of us a greater degree than others. Now, | don't know how you feel about that. Being that your part of the Burning River Anarchist Black Cross, that gives me an indication that you're not too cool with that. Me, | cal this situation violence. Capitalism is violence, subjecting millions to poverty and hunger and exploitation, to the sweatshop foreman's whip. Laws impased by a govermment that has troops with guns, a government with prisons and enforcers to impose THEIR way of life on everyone else whether they like it o not- that's violence. The US i a system run by the wealthy elite who own parties who own candidates who take power and serve the wealthy while indoctrination us in public schools to believe were free and there’s nothing better than lugging stanes up the side of the rich bastards pyramid, so get with program.. or else. Anytime somebody adds, “or else®, that’s violence. You are forced to go along by force, by threat. The fascist order is the bully taking our lunch money. If 1 give i to him without getting punched in the nose and | don't punch him in the nose, don't get confused and think that this situation is peaceful. It isn't. Just because there was no overt violence, it is an atmosphere of violence because there is oppression. My reaction in not punching the bully in the nase is not necessarily anymore more or less moral than if | would have punched him in the nose. In fact, by paying him without resistance, | may be embolde; ing him to victimize more poor kids. It might even be safe to say | have a moral duty to punch him in the nose, to resist, and to hinder his will to oppress. It may be that violence is the more moral response. 7 The system of capital, the covertly-fascist system of rule is the IS and, by extension, the world, is oppressive and it is violent, It is not socially healthy. It is not ecologically sustainable. It is violent. Its laws, its hierarchy, its imposition is what creates the social ill we see today. 1 want to live another way. | want to live without hierarchy or exploitation of human by human. | want to live in peace and want others to have the same freedom as | have, so they can five the way they want to live too. They don't have to live like me. When others ask me what anarchy looks like, | can’t really answer them because | have to ask them how they want to live. Generally, anarchy allows for what they want and need. So, they ‘may not live in the same tribe as me or in the same gang o the ‘same cult or the same commune or the same collective or the same village or the same enclave or the same monastery, or whatever. | won't impose my way of living on them. My tribe will live over here the way we live. But, don't try to impose your hierarchy and Puritanism and prohibition upon me. That's violence. Imposing is violence. Its force. You can have capitalism and empire and all that pathology, but keep it in your own yard. You bring it into my yard, and it will come up stinking. Somebody willfind your capitalism and empire wrapped in a rug on the side ©of a country road. So, | want to live another way. A way without material obsession, without capitalism, a way that meets peoples human needs. | don’t want to make product and buy product, | want to give the ‘human support and receive support. | want to collect others who have been broken by this awful system and we can run away and join the same circus. Or we can build our own right wi are. One where the people have value for what they are instead of what they own or who they play golf with, And at the basis of this is 3 rejection of the pathological culture bombarding us with nonsense. It s an embrace of another way. An alternative. And that isn't violent. It isn't violent at all. And if it was that simple, I'd be down for that. I'd be down for forging new social relations, new ways of structuring small, human ~* communities in sustainable and meaningful ways. The problem is, it would be an alternative way of life. An alternative. And that brings us a problem. For the last 10,000 years,this way ofIfe,this pathological & culture, has developed as the result of imposing. From its inception with the agricultural revolution, this has been an expansionist system and it wages genocide against any other way of life that gets in the way. Look at the American Indian. They didn't live the one right way. They were in the way. Genocide. There’s no talking, no live and let live. Its, “get with the program or you will be assimilated”. You willlive this way. You will lug stones for haurs a day. You will make product and buy product. You will know your place. You will follow the rules pushed down on you by the rich fucks who own the pyramid. You will go along even if you don't ke it and it distorts you. We don't care if you're happy. We just care if you're producing. Besides, everybody knows this is the one right way to live, your social studies teacher told you. So did Ranald Regan. Case closed. Those rampant suicide rates don't mean anything. The only reason'is this system maintains itself, keeps the people lugging stones, keeps them duped into thinking there’s nothing better, is that this fascist system silences all alternatives. If you set Yourself up as an alternative, another way to live, one outside the system of capital and hierarchy, one outside their contro, then you shatter the lie. There is another way to live... and it don't look half bad. You might start getting converts. People will “jump the wall", 50 to speak, will abandon the pyramid construction crew and will come live with you. S0, Ryan- what do you think the owners of the pyramid are going to think about that> when you forge new social relationships that pull their slaves into a new way of living? You think they will 1055 their accumulated wealth into the fireplace and join you? | think nor. | think they will react the same way the Chicago police reacted to Fred Hampton. | think they will react the same way the Philadelphia police reacted to MOVE. 1 think they will try to destroy you the same way they destroyed the Black Panther Party Free Breakfast Program in the bay area. | think they will round you up the way they rounded up runaway slaves. | think they'll scalp you the way they scalped Native Americans. | think they'll burn you out and gun you down like they did at Waco and ruby Ridge. . Fascists have a history of being just a hint intolerant. They will not et you disrupt the pyramid construction with naive and lofty ideals of freedom and mutual aid and collective cooperation. And you'll know just as soon as you become 3 blip on their radar. You'll know because they'll crack your skull. They'll impose themselves with violence and they will outlaw you. If no law exists to outlaw you, they'll make one. They can't afford to have an alterative. Their fascist, pathological system continues onlv because there is no other alternative, nothing anyone else can see. So, don't get me wrong. 'm down with community-building, the bottom up self organization of people, with the whole ©empowerment thing. I'm down with creating an alternative to this twisted, pathological disorder of exploitation and suffering and violence. But I'm not down for a course of action that leaves me lying on the curb where the dogs and birds can eat me. | dor't want to be food for something else. | want to survive. And | want my way of iving; they say that develops as an alternative, 10 keep going. | don't want to be Fred Hampton. ¥'m a revolutionary. | befieve in revolution. I don't think anything short of that can “fix” things. | used to think that, but experie has shown me differently. | don’t believe the world will be right if we just implement this program or that one, if we just save the whales or give inner-city kids a decent breakfast or get a city council to fund some program or get computer in the schools. All of that is rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic. And those in power won't let you do it unless it benefits them in some way. So, being a revolutionary, I've come to the conclusion that power must switch hands. It must be taken from the fascists, who own tne pyramia, and the pyramid must be torn down and all social relationships from that point forward, at least in my corner of the world, will all be horizontal. | can'tlive in some compromise situation. | can't live under fascist pathology, lugging stones up the side of the pyramid, flipping burgers and making the enemy of all humankind wealthy off my labor and exploitation. | can't give the bully my lunch money and pretend tha's peaceful coexistence with him, submitting like a fuckin coward because I'm afraid the buly wil punch me in the nose if | offer resistance. !can'®. | have to live in an alternative to that. An alternative to the pyramid scheme. My eyes are open and | see the sickness of capitalism and bourgeois demacracy for what it is and | can't live in it | have to find anather way and | have to find others who want to live the same way. But. The fascists won't let us bail out. They will impose themselves on us, they will respond with violence. So, again, were back to that. If we're an alternative, we end up like Fred Hampton. S0, came 10 a conclusion. A thoughtful one. Not one out of some romantic notion of a violent revolutionary. I've come to the conclusion that | have a duty to myselfand a duty to everyone else to resist this fascist system effectively. | have ta et the bully 10 5top taking my lunch money efiectively. | have to open up freé space where they can't come fucking with me, where people are free. And | know of only one way t0 open up free space and take that space away from the fascists. It's called guerrilla warfare. There's only one way to get the bully to stop taking your lunch money. You have to hurt him. You have to hurt him so fuckin bad that he won't come looking for you again. You have to make it a loose-situation for him. Make it not worth his time and effort and oss of blood from his nose. You have to kick a dent in him. ¥'m no socialist, but look at the example of Cuba. They engaged in guerrilla warfare. Started with 12 people. In 18 months, they defeated an armed, technologically advanced military of 80,000 troops and collapsed the ruling regime. They opened up free space (how *free” is debatable, buts it’s free of direct American interference). Cuba said, “you can have your system. You can have it in your yard. But if you bring it here, you'llfind your capitalism and your empire wrapped in a rug on the side of a country road”... Look at the example of the Zapatistas. They have their own free space. The Mexican government doesn't venture in there. Not without taking losses. In order to establish a lasting, enduring way of life that is an altemative to capitalism and bourgeois demacracy, you must first establish a free zone of operations. One argument you raised i the conditions argument, That conditions are not ight for revolution. By that, I'm guessing that You mean the subjective conditions- that there isn't the consciousness for revolution, that people aren't at the point Where they are screaming, “I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore.” These conditions are never going to be present. Never. The fascists know just how much shit most people will take. George Jackson said that it will never happen unless those in control have an uncharacteristic bout of insanity and let the conditions. arise, and he didn't see that happening. | don't either. For subjective conditions to be present, the enemy must “drop the ball*. In the history of revolutions, in most instances, subjective conditions were greatly lacking when the revolutions took place. ‘The revolutions in Great Britain, France, Russia, the US, in Cuba, Nicaragua, in southern Mexico. | read somewhere that the percentage of population that fought in the American Revolution -on both sides- was about 5% that means 95% of the people at the time didn’t pick up a rifle. They were not movedto 17 participate. In the Cuban Revolution, the Guerrilla forces never numbered more than 3,000 at any time and the enemy was 80,000 strong on an istand of millions. What was it-4 million? 5? f revolutionaries wait for the subjective conditions to be right, ‘we would still be in the rule of Britain, and it would be a monarch, as would all of Europe- an every place else in the world would be colonized. If subjective conditions were necessary, George Washington would be a traitor, Benedict Amold a hero of the British Crown, and Fidel Castro would be 3 minor footnote in English fanguage history classes in Cuba. In terms of objective conditions, things are good. Empire so over expanded. Repression has gotten many to question the ruling regime. The vast majority of Americans are unhappy. Those in power are unpopular and the people are suspicious. The economy Is not good. The war has jaded public opinion. The lessons of Cuba, Nicaragua, Southern Mexico. In all 3 instances, everyone said, “the conditions are not right. Revolution cannot happen here”. Insurgente Marcos of the Zapatistas has recounted many times how everyone said it could happen somewhere else, but “not here". Always, “not here” wherever “here” is. That's what they said in Cuba until Castro made it happen. It's what they said in Nicaragua until Carlos Fonseca and Daniel Ortega and others made it happen. It's what they said in Grenada until Maurice Bishop. It's what they said in Mexico until the Zapatistas. Now, the country just south of the Empires border is quickly spiraling toward civil war. Again, | want to do what effective. History shows again and again that guerilla warfare is the method for successfully and quickly bringing political and social change. In place like Cuba and Nicaragua and Mexico, where the conditions for revolution were not present at the start of hostilities, guerrilla warfare manufactured the conditions. Before long, the guerilla wins sympathy and emboldens the populace to resist until that resistance reaches a kind of critical mass that brings about the end of the political system. )3 And, ultimately, that’s what we want right? That's what we. need/ don't we need the bully to stop taking our lunch money? Don't we want free space to live as we want to live, with no hierarchy, no imposition of will, no exploitative system of capital? And don't we want a revolution? ! do. | want a revolution. And revolutions involve violence, violence in defense of people and lfe and freedom. That's what | see asa final goal: freedom. And | only see one way to get that, iven that the ruling eite won't put down the shotgun peacefully and walk away. It isn't the liberation forces that initiate the violence. It isn't the kid who refuses to give up his lunch money who initiates violence. It's the bully. Were na situation of violence now. It's impased upon us and we're accepting it passively. So, for me, it doesn't seem irresponsible to talk to prisaners about violence. It seems irresponsible to me if | don't. It would seem irrespansible to me if| would pretend they would get out of prison and lug stones for the fascists and accept butchered half-lives. it seems irrespansible to not devise an alterative. It seems iresponsible if1 don't try and persuade everybody to take action now that | believe can change things. Change it now. V'm not proposing violence for the sake of violence. 'm not proposing irresponsible violence. I'm not proposing violence against ordinary people. 'm not proposing violence of suicidal missions like that of Jonathan Jackson and his compatriots, however nable that was. And aready know not everybod is cut out for it nor should they be. “Guerilla” is not the only role in any revolution. But itis a necessary ane, | think. 've come ta the conclusion that 'm a revalutionary. Revolutionaries want revolutions. Revolutions are violent. It would seem irresponsible to me to relate to people on any level and nat be honest about that, to portray a happy world of Anarchy falling from the sky lie manna from heaven, or to can handle. I share your fear that released prisoners won't be able to function normally and relate to friends and family who have not experienced the brutality of this state-sponsored mind-warp. | too believe prisoners come out filled with rage after being /Y subjected to this. They should feel rage. Simply think there's a responsible way to channel that rage ‘toward the power-brokers who distorted him for the maintenance of their own status quo. It sure beats leaving them to flounder around until they beat up thelr girfriend, or pistol-whip 3 store clerk, or get drunk and crashinto a family of six. I would prefer seeing them knocking fences off of prisons. or ‘blowing up the enemy’s infrastructure. Or taking political hostages and demanding millions in food to be delivered to the inner cities of Ohio. Something that wakes people up, wins them over, exposes the powerlessness of the fascists, and creates a new political dynamic, generating the subjective conditions for revolution like nothing else can. Well, this is getting heavy (heavy in terms of gravity pulling onit, ot heavy in terms of depth) so | better get this in the mail. in terms of Conditions Factory distribution, sharing a P.0. boxis cool. At some point, I'd like to be able to fund our own and fund copies and mailing. At least subsidize it. In terms of mail, | wouldn't expect a lot but you never know. Forwarding it once 3 month would work. Ultimately, anybody who' would get into what we've got going would end up writing one of us here directly anyway. 1l write more shortly to answer your other questions about organization, etc. and projects we've got in mind. One of them we need re-mailed o it can have the Conditions Factory return address on t. Anything | do like that, f you're cool with t, 1l