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terriblelifechoices · 6 years

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Does anyone else do the thing, where you write something and put it aside because a newer, shinier idea came along and then totally forget that you wrote it? And then you find it and go, oh, hey, this is neat. I wonder where the writer is going with this.

And then: Fuck. I’m the writer. The writer is me.

Please tell me you do this, or I’m going to feel really embarrassed. Because apparently that’s a thing I did.

Cleaning out the gdocs and came across this. My notes say I was writing it for @thesilverqueenlady which is probably why I was going for Graves in the style of Hannibal Lecter. I have no memory of writing it, or any idea where I was going with it.

IDK if anyone else is interested in reading it, but. Here’s an untitled, unfinished and abandoned ficbit. If you want to take this and finish it, please do.

In which Grindelwald demonstrates his wizard nazi tendencies with human experimentation. Graves is not exactly human anymore, but he refuses to let anyone make him Frankenstein’s Creature.

Graves had a list of things he wanted to do once he’d broken out of Grindelwald’s prison. He’d written it down on a scrap of fabric from a shirt that had long since been reduced to rags. He’d used his own blood as ink, for lack of any other available writing instrument.

Kill Grindelwald was the only thing on it, and once Graves realized that the concerned presence of MACUSA’s healers meant that he was free, that was exactly what he tried to do.

He honestly wasn’t sure how long he’d been Grindelwald’s captive – equal parts prisoner and lab rat. He’d tried counting the days at first, but he couldn’t account for how much time he’d spent unconscious in the aftermath of torture or Grindelwald’s experiments. All he knew was that he was different now: stronger, better, faster, and still not good enough to get out of Grindelwald’s prison. He’d taught himself to pick locks, to break curses, to escape – to survive – by whatever means necessary. He fed his rage and frustration into the thing he’d become – a test subject, the first of Grindelwald’s shock troops, useful for experimenting on but useless in every other regard because his rage helped him shake off the mental conditioning Grindelwald kept trying to implement.

Graves was fairly certain that whatever he was now wasn’t human anymore. Not entirely, at any rate.

MACUSA’s wards were nothing compared to Grindelwald’s. Graves ripped through them, dodging counter curses and hexes thrown at him by MACUSA’s best and brightest. He slammed into Grindelwald, too-sharp teeth bared in a triumphant smile.

“Miss me?” he purred, his too-sharp fingernails drawing blood.

It took four Senior Aurors, a house elf and Madam fucking President to pry Graves off of Grindelwald. Graves took some satisfaction in the fact that he managed to half-kill the bastard in the process. If Picquery hadn’t arrived when she did, he probably could have managed to finish the job.

“Director Graves!” she thundered.

Graves gave the silver chains around his wrists a contemptuous look. There was a reason suspects were supposed to be bound with their wrists behind their backs. Was this deference, to the man he’d been, or mere stupidity?

No matter. Graves flexed his wrists, straining against the chains for just a second, and then he broke them.

“Attacking a suspect in MACUSA’s custody is an actionable offense,” Picquery said, keeping her voice level and her wand trained on him. Her eyes were round with – what, surprise? Or was it terror? MACUSA’s cuffs were supposed to be impossible to break. “I should fire you.”

Graves looked at her. He’d been her man, once. He’d voted for her, bled for her, for MACUSA, for his people and not a one of the silly mewling sheep had noticed that he was gone.

Grindelwald’s blood was still on his fingers. Graves wanted to lick them clean.

Whatever he was now, it wasn’t an Auror. Graves wanted blood, not justice, and if he stayed here, he’d try to take it.

“You can’t fire me,” he said, making his voice sharp and cruel. He had to cut ties with MACUSA completely; had to slam that door shut so violently that the impact crumbled the walls around it to dust. “What right have you to my service? You let a genocidal fanatic walk among you, wearing my face, and not one of you noticed.” He dropped the badge he’d lifted from Grindelwald’s pocket during the scuffle on the table between them. “I quit.”

“You what,” Picquery said.

“I said I fucking quit,” said Graves, and Apparated out of the holding cells, straight to the front gate of the manor house.

The Graves family’s ancestral home was located in upstate New York, deep enough into the woods to shelter them from scandal, No-Maj’s and the occasional high society invading army. It was warded against all manner of dark creatures and spells.

Graves watched with irritated resignation as the wards lit up in warning, red sparks against the night sky like fireworks in July.

He licked the last of Grindelwald’s blood from his fingers and considered the wards. They were old, almost as old as MACUSA itself, and old magic couldn’t be bullied or intimidated into doing anything it didn’t want to.

It could be reasoned with, though. If you were powerful enough, or if your need was so desperate that it called and the old magics answered.

He drew one too-sharp fingernail – one claw, he might as well call it what it was – against the underside of his wrist and let his blood drip freely against the stones.

“I am Percival Richard Graves, master of the House and Head of the Graves family,” he said crisply. “I was born within the House’s walls. I am the only son and heir of Edward Gondulphus Graves and Helena Louise McAllister-Graves. I have walked the House and the grounds and the woods and offered blood and power to strengthen House and Home.

“Graves Manor is mine by birthright and blood, and by my blood I demand that you let me in.”

Making demands of magic old enough to have a degree of sentience was dangerous. Graves didn’t care. This was his home goddamnit. He would not cringe and play the supplicant when it was his by right.

The wards and the front gates swung open beneath his touch.

“Thank you,” Graves said, and went in.

The problem with the manor house, Graves discovered, was that it was located in upstate New York, deep enough in the woods to discourage visitors of any kind. He spent a pleasantly isolated week removing the dust covers and walking the halls, returning the house to its former glory before realizing that there was no one to share its glory with.

Graves didn’t particularly want to share its glory with anyone, much less have visitors. He wasn’t entirely certain that he wasn’t going to try and eat them.

He spent the next two weeks testing the limits of his humanity, checking his reflection for signs of change and seeing the same face he’d always seen: heavy brows, dark eyes, aquiline nose, more than a touch of silver at his temples.

He could have settled into a comfortably isolated routine, but on the full moon he felt an old familiar thrum in his blood. It was the one that said run.

Hunt.

Kill.

In Grindelwald’s prison, he hadn’t known that it was the full moon when he felt that thrum in his blood. All he’d known was that the urge to hunt and kill was calling, a siren song of destruction. He’d clawed his way out of his cell but couldn’t escape the prison. He’d scratched scars into the walls, his back, his arms. He’d screamed curses and rage and none of it had been enough. It hadn’t even taken the edge off.

Graves killed a deer in the woods with only the moon to bear witness, the forest lit up like it was daylight to his new and improved vision. He ripped out the entrails and left them in the woods, a bloody offering. The heart he ate raw; fear and adrenaline made the meat taste sweet. He brought the rest of it back to the house and stored it in the cold room under stasis spells. He ate it pan-seared and crusted with pepper, pink and rare and gamey.

“Definitely not human,” he told himself, and went to go fetch his spare potions kit from the lab in the old greenhouse.

Grindelwald had improved his sense of smell along with his hearing and his eyesight. The potions lab reeked to Graves’ nose, medicinal and chemical and wrong in the same way Grindelwald’s own lab had been. At least the lab in the old greenhouse didn’t reek of piss and shit and fear, the way Grindelwald’s did.

Graves gritted his teeth and brewed the potion to test for lycanthropy.

Properly brewed, Graves knew, the potion would turn silver if exposed to the werewolf pathogen. That was how the myth about werewolves and silver had gotten started; for anything else, the potion would stay the same muddy brown color. He pricked his finger and let three drops into the bowl, glowering at it when the potion turned a warm, burnished gold.

“What the fuck,” Graves said, and went off to the woods to sulk.

Boredom and a need for answers drove Graves back to the city less than a week after that. Whatever he was now, he wasn’t going to find any answers living like a hermit in the country. Too much isolationism and self-experimentation seemed like a guaranteed recipe for madness.

Graves still wasn’t sure of his control. He didn’t feel any particular need to hunt down and eat his neighbors, no matter how annoying some of them were, but he had to admit that some days they sounded more appetizing than anything he brought home from a restaurant – or worse, his pitiful bachelor attempts at cooking for himself. Food had simply been fuel, before. He hadn’t cared what it tasted like, so long as it had enough calories and nutrition to keep him going.

Food tasted wrong now: the ingredients slightly off, the meat not fresh enough, the vegetables not seasoned well enough to bring out their full potential. He found that he preferred steak tartare to steak cooked rare, which wouldn’t have been a problem, had he been able to eat anything else he ordered when he went out to eat.

He’d learned to live on half-rations while he was Grindelwald’s prisoner. Graves resigned himself to learning to live off of them again and probably would have, if not for Sarah Rogers.

Sarah Rogers lived in one of the tenement buildings near where Graves’ own lodgings where – he’d decided against anything ostentatious; it hadn’t helped when Grindelwald took him prisoner. Maybe here, where people actually seemed to know their neighbors, someone would notice if he went missing again. Sarah had a small, sickly son, and a husband who hadn’t entirely come home from the war. The whole neighborhood knew better than to try and intervene between Sarah and Joseph Rogers’ temper, but the shouting and the crying grated on Graves’ nerves, until he had no choice but to intervene.

“If you ever touch your wife and son again, I will know,” Graves said pleasantly, dangling Joseph out the window with every intention of dropping him.

“Don’t,” Sarah begged, clutching at his arms, trying to keep him from dropping the man who’d blacked both her eyes and broken at least one rib, if Graves was any judge. “Please, don’t hurt him. He’s all we’ve got.”

Part of Graves approved of the fact that Sarah was so protective of her mate, despite how Joseph treated her. But that was the part of him that Grindelwald had changed, and he knew it was the part he shouldn’t listen to.

“He’s going to kill you,” Graves told Sarah. “He’ll kill your boy, once you’re gone. It’s what men like him do.”

He might not have been human anymore, but he wouldn’t do that. Whatever he was, Graves wouldn’t kill children simply to secure his right to a breeding female. He definitely wouldn’t have harmed his own offspring.

“Please,” Sarah said again.

Graves sighed and hauled Joseph back into the apartment. “Fine,” he said.

If he left Joseph’s memories intact, Sarah would suffer for it. Joseph would assume they were having an affair, because he couldn’t imagine why anyone would intervene on her behalf otherwise. “Obliviate,” he said.

Joseph blinked in stunned incomprehension, the last fifteen or so minutes totally erased.

“Stupefy,” Graves said, and Joseph collapsed onto the floor.

Sarah rushed over to him, pressing shaking fingers against his neck. “I thought you weren’t going to hurt him!”

“I didn’t!” Graves protested, indignant. He was a creature of his word. “I just knocked him out. He’ll have a bit of a hangover in the morning, but he won’t remember any of this.”

“Oh,” said Sarah. “Thank you. Can you help me put him in bed?”

Graves made a face. This was what came of getting to know your neighbors. They expected you to be neighborly.

Still. He’d started this; it was only right that he play it all the way through.

He hauled Joseph into bed, catching sight of bright blue eyes peeking at him from the smaller bedroom. He winked. There was a squeaking noise, and then the eyes vanished and the door shut itself firmly behind them.

“Thank you,” Sarah said again. “I wish there was some way I could repay you.”

“Please,” Graves said. “Don’t trouble yourself. I’ll just be heading home, then.”

The part of him that had been an Auror wanted to do more. Graves told himself it didn’t matter. No good could come of interfering with the No-Maj’s. If the fool woman wanted to stay with the man who would eventually kill her, that was her business.

He’d dropped his groceries in the entryway when he’d burst into the Rogers’ apartment. Graves thought about picking them up, but he suspected Sarah and her son would make better use of them than he could. The boy was sickly, everyone knew that. Fresh vegetables would do him some good. And Sarah could use some feeding up, too. How often did she go without, so her boy could eat?

“Your groceries,” Sarah began.

“Keep them,” he told her. “You and your boy need them more than I do.” They could probably make better use of them, too. He was a terrible cook.

He felt her eyes on him as he walked out of her building and next door into the one where his lodgings were. Pressed together close as they were, he could have heard Joseph’s voice and Sarah’s half-aborted screams even without the improvements Grindelwald had made to his hearing. He and Sarah knew one another in passing, and that was how Graves expected it to stay.

Sarah felt otherwise. She brought him dinner the next night – steak, a little too well done for his liking, but seasoned with a deft hand. Carrots and potatoes seasoned with fresh rosemary and cooked in the same pan as the steak, made savory with its leftover juices. Apples drizzled with honey, which he gleefully shared with her small son Steven, delighted by food that tasted good for the first time since he’d been changed.

“Steve,” Sarah protested weakly.

“He’s a growing boy, Mrs. Rogers,” Graves said, handing Steve another apple slice. “Apples are good for him.” He’d wolfed down the steak and the vegetables. Only good manners kept him from devouring the apple slices as well. “You didn’t need to do this,” he added.

Sarah set her jaw stubbornly. “I don’t take charity, Mr…?”

“Graves.”

“Mr. Graves,” she finished.

Graves considered the meal he’d just eaten. Sarah had kept just enough of his groceries for one portion of a meal. Joseph’s, or Steven’s, maybe. Not enough for herself, surely. Not unless the Rogers’ were used to surviving on considerably less than what Graves considered a half ration.

“Can I make a bargain with you, Mrs. Rogers?” he asked.

Sarah gave him a wary look. “What sort of bargain?” she asked.

Graves gestured to his bachelor lodgings. “I’m a bachelor, as I’m sure you can tell. I find my own cooking skills somewhat lacking, of late. I’d appreciate it if you could teach me how to cook properly. I can’t pay you, but anything you make you’re more than welcome to take home.” That was a lie, but he suspected it was the only way he could convince Sarah Rogers to take any food home with her.

Sarah hesitated.

“Please,” said Graves, giving her his best boyish grin. He nudged Steven, who echoed him with cherubic innocence: “Please?”

“Very well,” Sarah sighed. “How much do you know about cooking?”

“Assume the bare minimum to keep myself alive,” Graves told her, with perfect honesty.

“Right,” said Sarah. She considered his offer for long enough that Graves thought she would say no. “I can teach you how to cook, if you like. But I don’t take charity, Mr. Graves. Not from anyone.”

She should have been born a witch, Graves thought. She’d have been magnificent.

“Yes, Mrs. Rogers,” Graves said.

Sarah was a nurse, Graves learned, which explained her no nonsense demeanor and the faint smell of hospital-grade antiseptic that clung to her skin like perfume. She taught him how to select good meat - the way it was supposed to look, how fresh meat smelled versus meat that had been spoiled - and how to pick the best fruits and vegetables. She gave him cuttings from her own herb garden, maintained carefully in pots on the windowsill. She showed him the best way to season his meals to their full potential, and sighed, wistfully, when he produced ingredients she mentioned would be nice to cook with, if the cost of them weren’t so dear. (Graves tried to get her to take them home, once, and Sarah gave him a flat look. “How would I explain them?” she asked, pressing them back into his hands. Which, fine. Graves didn’t want to cause trouble between Sarah and her ass of a husband. Thank god Joseph’s sense of smell was nowhere near as good as his own, and Joseph couldn’t smell another man’s presence on her the way Graves could. Graves didn’t try to get Sarah to take anything home after that.)

“I think I’ve taught you everything I can,” Sarah said. She grimaced. “It’s not right, me spending so much time with an unmarried man.”

Someone had noticed, Graves translated. He sighed. “I wish you’d let me kill him,” he said.

Sarah swatted him. “You shouldn’t say things like that!” she scolded. “That’s not right, either.”

Graves shrugged, not especially bothered by her censure. “If you change your mind…”

“I won’t.”

“Fine.” Graves ruffled young Steven’s hair. He put a protection charm on the boy as an afterthought. A strong one; the one Aurors used to avoid near misses. He liked Steven’s tenacity. For a kid as puny and weak as he was, Steven got into enough fights for a boy twice his size. The charm for near misses seemed appropriate.

He let Sarah and Steven go back to their own lives, and went back to rebuilding his own.

Graves discovered that he liked cooking. He liked finding fresh ingredients, and working with them to bring out their full potential. He took to buying things at random, just to see what he could make with them. Then he bought a No-Maj cookbook, because the No-Maj’s had some pretty good ideas about food.

He experimented with cooking with magic and cooking the No-Maj way, which was slower and a lot more work. Graves drew the line at cleaning the No-Maj way, though. He wasn’t entirely human anymore, but he wasn’t crazy.

#my fic #unfinished ficbit #abandoned wip free to good home #percival graves #fbawtft

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crimethinc · 6 years

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Perspectives on the August 12 Anti-Fascist Mobilization in DC: Two Interviews with Organizers

On August 12, Charlottesville fascist Jason Kessler attempted to hold the sequel to last year’s “Unite the Right” rally in Washington, DC. It did not go well for him. In the end, 2000 police struggled to protect two dozen fascists from thousands of anti-fascists and other foes of tyranny. To get some perspective on these events, we spoke with David Thurston—arts director for No Justice No Pride, a member of the steering committee of the DMV’s Movement for Black Lives, and a core organizer with Resist This—and also with an anonymous anarchist involved in organizing the anti-fascist bloc, among other aspects of the mobilization. The interview follows our comments below.

The US government spent $2.6 million to force the fascist rally upon the people of Washington, DC. Let’s do the math: that’s over $100,000 per fascist for a rally that lasted at hour at most. Would the US spend anything like that to protect a rally organized by any other sector of the population? On the contrary, when anarchists and other advocates of liberation organize public events, the government usually invests millions of dollars in repressing us, even illegally. This shows what a farce the “free speech” defense of fascist recruiting drives is—this is not an abstract question of rights, but a concrete matter of the US government asymmetrically investing resources in promoting the spread of fascism.

To put a number on it, then, the kind of “free speech” that enabled Kessler and his like to recruit someone to murder Heather Heyer is worth $100,000 per hour per fascist to the US government. That’s your tax dollars at work.

We were especially inspired by the fierceness with which the black population of DC turned out to face down the police and fascists on August 12. We have some questions about whether it makes sense for anarchists to act separately in a distinct anti-fascist contingent when other sectors of the population are mobilizing so courageously and assertively. It might be more effective for some anarchists to seek to connect with other rebels on the street, in order to bring about an interchange of tactics and ideas.

We’ve seen some alarmist reporting on the clashes, such as the following video. Permit us to repeat that what is happening here is that the US government is forcibly extorting money from its population which is then used to fund the violent imposition of fascist rallies on communities that only stand to suffer from the expansion of fascist movements. It should be no surprise that people defend themselves from police violence to this end.

One more topic bears mention: a few reactionary media outlets have taken this opportunity to accuse anti-fascists of being “violent” towards journalists for discouraging them from filming. This is the same thing they did last year two weeks after the violence in Charlottesville, when the editors of various corporate media publications attempted to create a false equivalency between fascists recruiting to carry out murder and genocide and anti-fascists mobilizing in self-defense.

In a time when fascists go through video footage identifying anti-fascists in order to intimidate and terrorize them and far-right Republican Congressmen are attempting to aid and abet them via new legislation, it should not come as a surprise to anyone that anti-fascists discourage people from filming them without permission. If these journalists are really concerned about this issue, they should prioritize helping to create a world in which no one needs to fear being documented, identified, and attacked by fascists or police just for attempting to defend their communities from fascist activity. Instead, many journalists have prioritized assisting fascists like Kessler in getting his message out.

Read on for the interviews. For one perspective on the history of anti-fascism in DC, read this.

Two Organizers on the August 12 Mobilization

What were your goals going into August 12? What did you think a best case scenario would be for the day?

David Thurston: For the past month, I’ve been working as the arts organizer for the mobilization. My first job was to make sure the rally in Freedom Plaza and the three direct action contingents got the brilliant, vibrant, colorful, and radical banners that the 411 Collective crafted. I also co-emceed the rally with Aiyi’anah Ford of the Future Foundation—we met through the organizing around the National Equality March in 2009. I wanted to see the Nazis vastly outnumbered and I wanted to see DC and DMV activists organize around a synergy and diversity of tactics—allowing us to welcome people into the movement who may never have heard of anarchist theory, but who over time could be introduced to our praxis of non-hierarchical, anti-sectarian, and revolutionary politics.

Another anarchist organizer: I wanted to make Nazis too afraid to come to DC. I also wanted to block their march. The former did not happen due to some last minute infighting, but the latter did happen.

Overall, I would say the action was an overwhelming success. Anarchists provided a great deal of labor in every aspect of the mobilization.

What did the anti-fascist demonstrators do well? What could have gone better?

David Thurston: We succeeded in overwhelmingly outnumbering our opposition, marginalizing their toxic politics, and putting forward an organizing model that can be advanced upon in the future. There were a number of internal challenges and conflicts that took shape in the lead-up to A12, but for the most part, the various components of our effort worked from a space of deep-rooted solidarity.

Another anarchist organizer: We overwhelmed neo-Nazis numerically, but because of some tactical and intelligence failures, we did not get the chance to actually confront them. But when you have thousands of people mobilizing and holding space, do you really need to escalate when the fascists are already too afraid to come out? The fact that the black bloc did not escalate when there was no reason to do so enabled us to hold space, stay disciplined until the end, and demonstrate an ability to show restraint when necessary in order to accomplish our goals of the movement.

On January 20, hundreds of people were mass-arrested during Trump’s inauguration and indiscriminately charged with eight or more felonies apiece. How did the legacy of the J20 case influence planning ahead of August 12? How do you think it influenced those who did not participate in the planning, but came to participate?

David Thurston: The fact that there were absolutely no convictions for J20 defendants was probably a big factor explaining why our city’s multitude of police forces were relatively restrained. My inkling is that someone above or in the orbit of Chief Newsham realized that it was not in the city’s interests for local police to play the role of being the extreme right’s de-facto storm troopers. That said, the massive deployment of state power was obscene. My guess is that a few million dollars of city money probably went into massive police overtime.

There may have been some folks who were afraid to come out, but my opinion is that that was probably because of what the neo-Nazis represent, and not because of anything that went down with J20.

Another anarchist organizer: We thought long and hard about how to avoid isolating ourselves from other social movements and argued against others trying to marginalize radicals. Considering that our movement had set up the tech support, website, security, trainings, and other essential aspects of the mobilization, it was impossible to isolate us on the sidelines where we would be easy targets for police violence.

Did it make sense to call for a distinct anti-fascist bloc, when so many people turned out to oppose the fascist rally with their own ways of being militant? Why or why not?

David Thurston: I think it was great to have an anti-fascist bloc that could plan direct action based on the worst-case scenario of a sizable far right turn-out. It was also good to have a space where the lessons of prior direct actions, especially J20, could be debated in depth.

In practice, there was a lot of synergy between the direct action contingents and the two permitted rallies, even though the permitted rallies gave voice to ideas more in line with traditional left liberal thinking.

Another anarchist organizer: I think the strategy of the bloc that day was to be able to

defend our communities

show a specifically radical presence that day.

A year after the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally, what do the events in DC tell us about the current political situation in the US?

David Thurston: I think last weekend’s events make it clear that the far right is in political, ideological, organizational, and interpersonal disarray. After the debacle of Jason Kessler’s pitiful mobilization, he went on a twitter rant attacking the rest of the self-proclaimed alt-right, calling them cowards for not mobilizing, and describing them as would-be Nazis living in their parents’ basements. While trying to get a permit in Charlottesville, Kessler managed to dox his own followers by turning over encrypted Signal threads, emails, and more to the state.

But we can’t rest on our success last weekend. While joining a proto-fascist organization remains a marginal idea for the millions of white people who voted for Trump in 2016, specific neo-Nazi proposals and talking points—especially around immigration, border security, and global imperialist hubris—remain appealing to wide swaths of low-income, working-class, and lower-middle-class white folk in our nation.

The radical left has immense potential to grow if we can shed the baggage of years of being fairly marginal to political debate. Anarchists need to organize creatively, finding space to work in alliance with left-leaning liberals, but also with socialist groupings with whom we have significant differences.

Another anarchist organizer: I think the rally on August 12 shows that militant anti-fascism works. A year ago, there were 500 fascists marching in the streets of Charlottesville. This year, less than 25 showed up because they were afraid. At least on the East Coast, anti-fascism has made sure the far right is demobilized.

So we’ve pushed back on-the-ground white nationalists… but as a movement, how do we use that strategy to disrupt other forms of organized white supremacy? How do we scale that strategy up to take on local right-wing lobbyists, local Republicans, police union officials, the Chamber of Commerce, DHS, and ICE officials?

The fascistic turn of the United States has been a 30-year process, and there are local people with local power who are marching us there. We need to figure out how to demobilize them.

Trump did not come to power because of the “alt right”—the alt right was able to use Trump to enter mainstream politics. Now our social movements need to identify the social leaders who pushed our local communities to the right and destabilize their political power.

The chief takeaway from this weekend is that even if we did not push the limits of the struggle, we did push a mobilization that was specifically anti-fascist. Anarchists and anti-fascists wrote the original call to action for the mobilization, provided experience, and pushed a strategy that allowed for numerous communities to come out and confront fascism.

The most challenging dynamic we had to navigate was engaging with liberals who wanted the day to look like “Boston” [the massive anti-fascist mobilization that took place there in response to a fascist rally a week after “Unite the Right” in Charlottesville] but did not emotionally prepare for the real possibility that the fascists could have mobilized hundreds.

Do you have any particularly instructive anecdotes to share from August 12?

David Thurston: My favorite moment was when the permitted march from Freedom Plaza entered the periphery of the “Rise Up Fight Back” contingent anchored by Black Lives Matter DC. They organized a block party near Lafayette to celebrate black joy and resistance, making the point that no neo-Nazi mobilization was going to intimidate them or cast a pall on the vision of black liberation that this movement was articulating.

On a personal note, I encountered a brother named Amir who introduced himself to me at the rally. I didn’t recognize him, but Amir told me that he was one of three young black men who tried to mug me near my neighborhood in DC. Amir apologized for his actions. I was so moved and thanked him, letting him know that I wish him the best, and never wanted anyone to go to jail for something as petty as trying to take $10 from me. To see him in the struggle for a radically different future on A12 made an impact on my psyche that I have a hard time adequately explaining.

We are living through perilous times. If we organize creatively and synergistically, radicals can lay the foundation for movements that could, within a decade or so, lead to revolutionary transformation in our country and around the world. But if we fail, the threat of global political, economic, and ecological cataclysm is immense. I have friends working hard to elect left-liberal to social democratic candidates for public office, and friends whose focus is on direct action and community based organizing. We need to build a radical tent broad enough for all of the above if the revolutionary potential of this moment is to be realized.

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libertariantaoist · 8 years

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Professor Don Boudreaux of George Mason University says that Trump’s trade policies are unethical. Boudreaux, who is one of my favorite free-market economists, should stick with economics instead of veering into ethics.

Boudreaux is correct that free trade is an overall positive for America, that trade restrictions and tariffs are an overall negative, that trade deficits can be both good and bad, that creative destruction is good when driven by comparative advantage and true competition, that mercantilism and other forms of political interference in markets is almost always bad, and that President Trump’s stated trade policies are a mishmash of contradictions that will harm working-class Americans.

Now for a big “However…”

However, Boudreaux is not necessarily correct about the ethics of trade. In a recent letter, for example, he wrote that individuals have a right to buy goods and services from whomever they want, at whatever price they want. Therefore, he went on to say, it is unethical for the government or Donald Trump to tell them what they can do with their money. He uses an analogy of a neighbor pointing a gun to your head and telling you that you have to hire his son to cut your lawn instead of using a lawn service across town. (The letter is reprinted at the end of this commentary.)

Of course a next-door neighbor isn’t a nation state, or a democratically-elected government, or the rule of law. And economics is not a moral philosophy. Economics is just one of the social sciences and no more important in understanding human interactions than sociology, psychology, anthropology, and political science.

For a different view of the ethics of trade, consider the cotton trade under slavery, keeping in mind that cotton was a global industry in the nineteenth century that rivaled the oil industry of today in economic importance.

The English bought American cotton produced by slaves, and in the process put tens of thousands of East Indians cotton workers out of work. Later, New England cotton mills also bought slave cotton, enriching Brahmin families with fortunes that were subsequently passed onto succeeding generations, including some of the current generation of left-liberals who still live on the tainted wealth yet sanctimoniously preach about social justice and fairness.

Was it ethical to buy slave cotton? Should the British government have stopped cotton merchants from buying it?

Or how about buying rubber from the Belgian Congo during the reign of King Leopold II of Belgium? Was that ethical? Consider that Belgian colonists inflicted a genocide on natives in the Congo that was worse in sheer numbers than the Holocaust.

Or how about buying goods today from mercantilist China or oil from mercantilist Saudi Arabia? Does it matter in terms of ethics that neither of these two states is a liberal democracy that protects civil liberties, but both are autocratic states that punish citizens who depart from the party line and social norms?

Or to go back to Boudreaux’s example, how about the ethics of using a lawn service that has a workforce of children kept in chains and flogged mercilessly?

Boudreaux might respond that these aren’t good examples, because his ethical principle is based on perfect competition and total individual freedom, and not on conditions of slavery and genocide—or any other coercion for that matter. Of course perfect competition is a theoretical construct and not a reality, and individuals don’t live in Galt’s Gulch or some other anarchist fantasyland without any government.

The point is that the ethics of trade is not as black and white as the professor would have us believe. That’s why volumes have been written on the subject and on moral philosophy in general.

The question of the ethics of trade is further complicated by two other realities.

The first reality is that much trade is conducted by corporations, not individuals. Take the steel industry. Individuals don’t buy slab or sheet steel coming out of steel mills; corporations do.

How have corporations done with respect to steel? Not well. First, the American steel industry was coldcocked by the rise of the steel industry in mercantilist Japan after the Second World War, when American steel companies had grown fat, lazy complacent and inefficient. Decades later, the American steel industry was coldcocked again by mercantilist China, which made massive malinvestments in excess steel capacity. The result was a drop in worldwide steel prices, a gutting of the U.S. steel industry, and the firing of tens of thousands of American steelworkers, who didn’t have much say in the matter.

Economists correctly state that cheaper steel benefits the corporations that buy steel, such as automobile companies. Likewise, cheaper steel also benefits consumers who buy final products containing steel, such as cars, which would be more expensive if steel were more expensive. They also say that if other countries want to beggar their own citizens by underpricing steel and other products, that’s good for American consumers, who can import goods at lower prices and spend or invest the savings in more beneficial ways. No doubt, the same argument was made by the English when they bought cheap cotton produced by American slaves.

This leads to the second reality: that all trade is not mutually beneficial. There are winners and losers from some trade, especially trade with mercantilist countries. In the case of steel, for example, auto buyers have won and steel workers have lost. Or stated differently, society as a whole has benefited while a segment of society has lost.

But there is a cost to society that is not part of the standard economic calculation. Taking the steel example again, formerly thriving steel towns are in decay and have seen a plummeting of incomes and a corresponding skyrocketing increase in drug use, divorces, school dropouts, and welfare dependency—all of which are a cost to society at large. It’s easy to be cavalier about this when one is securely ensconced in George Mason University, which is located near the Imperial City of Washington, D.C. But it’s impossible for those experiencing the decline firsthand to be cavalier about it.

Which brings us to a final question: If society has benefited from workers in the steel industry and other industries losing their jobs, doesn’t society have a moral obligation to help these same workers?

Contrary to what Boudreaux seems to think, this is not a question that can be answered by economics.

* * *

Addendum: Letter from Boudreaux to a Reader

Mr. Eddie Nunez

Mr. Nunez:

Thanks for your e-mail.

You say that while I might be correct that Donald Trump doesn’t understand the economics of trade, I am “out of bounds to write as though it is unethical for our new President to favor additional trade restrictions.”

I disagree for many reasons. But I’ll here offer only my chief one. Mr. Trump’s ethics tell him that he (or other state officials) have the right to restrict the ways in which I may peacefully spend my own income. But my income belongs to me; it does not belong to Trump; it does not belong to the government; it does not belong to the country or to ‘the People’; it does not belong to American corporations or to American workers. It belongs to me and to me alone. And of course what’s true for my income is true for the income of every other peaceful person. Yet Trump bellows as if it is not only appropriate, but downright noble, for him to interfere in my and others’ peaceful commercial affairs, conducted with our own incomes, for the sole reason that some of those affairs are with non-Americans. Such interference is unethical.

You likely doubt me, so let me ask: If your next-door neighbor, Jones, pokes gun at your head to order you to pay to him a fine if you continue to have your lawn mowed by a company located across town rather than by his teenage son, would you not immediately understand such coercion to be unethical? Of course you would. Now I challenge you to explain to me how Donald Trump’s actions on the trade front differ in any essential ways from those of this hypothetical Jones.

I can think of no essential difference. Sure, Trump was elected to a grandiose political office. So what? Suppose that a majority of your neighbors vote to empower Jones to threaten you with violence in order to discourage you from buying your lawn-care services from someone outside of your neighborhood: would you then think that Jones’s actions are ethical? I wouldn’t.

I understand that government has long interfered, and in many different ways, in the peaceful affairs of private citizens, from telling blacks where they could and couldn’t sit on buses to confiscating large chunks of citizens’ incomes for transfer to corn farmers, airplane manufacturers, and other politically powerful groups. I regard all such interference to be unethical. But because Trump trumpets so loudly and so proudly his promise to interfere in Americans’ commerce with non-Americans – and for no reason other than to enrich some Americans at the expense of other Americans – I focus much of my attention on this particular instance of vile, inexcusable behavior.

Sincerely, Donald J. Boudreaux Professor of Economics and Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center George Mason University Fairfax, VA 22030

#craig cantoni #libertarian institute #don boudreaux #trade #economics #tariffs #ethics

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tarilyn27-blog · 8 years

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Standing on the sidewalk doesn’t work

I got into an argument today, after hearing that the official white house website, less than 24 hours after the inauguration of Donald Trump, shut down the following pages: LGBT, Equal Pay, Women in STEM, Health Care, and Civil Rights. They also disabled petitions from WeThePeople, one of the largest petition sites we have. I pointed out that five states have already passed laws attempting to criminalize and/or discourage disruptive protests. My opponent informed me that such people should be thrown in jail for disrupting her daily life with their grievances. I could not believe my ears. First of all, the issues that are being protested are worthy goals - preserving our civil rights and our environment. Second of all, non-disruptive protest can be effective sometimes, but with as far gone as we are right now, standing on the sidewalk with our signs isn’t going to work. We need to block roadways, to strike, to disrupt everyone’s precious routine. If you let them take away that right, then next they’re going to take away our right to stand on the sidewalk. And they will slowly but surely begin to chip away at our liberties until we have none left and we wonder what has happened to them. We have a right to demand redress from those in power, and to raise our voices when they are not being heard. We have a responsibility to all of humanity to make sure that we stand up for what is right, no matter what. We will fight, and yes, we will disrupt your silly little routines to preserve our planet and our rights. You think our fight is petty, you think it’s whiners and crybabies who don’t know what the real world is, pick up a goddamned history book and educate yourself.

Some examples:

As one of the four mounted heralds of the Suffrage Parade on March 3, 1913, lawyer Inez Milholland Boissevain led a procession of more than 5,000 marchers down Washington D.C.'s Pennsylvania Avenue. The National American Woman Suffrage Association raised more than $14,000 to fund the event that became one of the most important moments in the struggle to grant women the right to vote — a right that was finally achieved seven years later.

As a nascent union, the United Auto Workers, formed in 1935, had a lot to fight for. During the Depression, General Motors executives started shifting work loads to plants with non-union members, crippling the UAW. So in December 1936, workers held a sit-in at the Fisher Body Plant in Flint, Michigan. Within two weeks, about 135,000 men were striking in 35 cities across the nation. Although the sit-ins were followed by riots, the images of bands playing on assembly lines and men sleeping near shuttered machines recall the serene strength behind the movement that solidified one of North America's largest unions.

Even though African Americans constituted some 70% of total bus ridership in Montgomery, Ala., Rosa Parks still had trouble keeping her seat on Dec. 1, 1955. It was against the law for her to refuse to give up her seat to a white man, and her subsequent arrest incited the Montgomery Bus Boycott. One year later, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court's decision that made segregated seating unconstitutional. Parks was known thereafter as the "mother of the civil-rights movement."

After the death of pro-democracy leader Hu Yaobang in mid-1989, students began gathering in Beijing's Tiananmen Square to mourn his passing. Over the course of seven weeks, people from all walks of life joined the group to protest for greater freedom. The Chinese government deployed military tanks on June 4 to squelch the growing demonstration and randomly shot into the crowds, killing more than 200 people. One lone, defiant man walked onto the road and stood directly in front of the line of tanks, weaving from side to side to block the tanks and even climbing on top of the first tank at one point in an attempt to get inside. The man's identity remains a mystery. Some say he was killed; others believe him to be in hiding in Taiwan.

494 B.C. -- The plebeians of Rome withdrew from the city and refused to work for days in order to correct grievances they had against the Roman consuls.

1765-1775 A.D. -- The American colonists mounted three major nonviolent resistance campaigns against British rule (against the Stamp Acts of 1765, the Townsend Acts of 1767, and the Coercive Acts of 1774) resulting in de facto independence for nine colonies by 1775.

1850-1867 -- Hungarian nationalists, led by Francis Deak, engaged in nonviolent resistance to Austrian rule, eventually regaining self-governance for Hungary as part of an Austro-Hungarian federation.

1905-1906 -- In Russia, peasants, workers, students, and the intelligentsia engaged in major strikes and other forms of nonviolent action, forcing the Czar to accept the creation of an elected legislature.

1917 -- The February 1917 Russian Revolution, despite some limited violence, was also predominantly nonviolent and led to the collapse of the czarist system.

1913-1919 -- Nonviolent demonstrations for woman's suffrage in the United States led to the passage and ratification of the Constitutional amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote.

1920 -- An attempted coup d'etat, led by Wolfgang Kapp against the Weimar Republic of Germany failed when the population went on a general strike, refusing to give its consent and cooperation to the new government.

1923 -- Despite severe repression, Germans resisted the French and Belgian occupation of the Ruhr, making the occupation so costly politically and economically that the French and Belgian forces finally withdrew.

1920s-1947 -- The Indian independence movement led by Mohandas Gandhi is one of the best known examples of nonviolent struggle.

1933-45 -- Throughout World War II, there were a series of small and usually isolated groups that used nonviolent techniques against the Nazis successfully. These groups include the White Rose and the Rosenstrasse Resistance.

1940-43 -- During World War II, after the invasion of the Wehrmacht, the Danish government adopted a policy of official cooperation (and unofficial obstruction) which they called "negotiation under protest." Embraced by many Danes, the unofficial resistance included slow production, emphatic celebration of Danish culture and history, and bureaucratic quagmires.

1940-45 -- During World War II, Norwegian civil disobedience included preventing the Nazification of Norway's educational system, distributing of illegal newspapers, and maintaining social distance(an "ice front") from the German soldiers.

1940-45 -- Nonviolent action to save Jews from the Holocaust in Berlin, Bulgaria, Denmark, Le Chambon, France and elsewhere.

1944 -- Two Central American dictators, Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez (El Salvador) and Jorge Ubico (Guatemala), were ousted as a result of nonviolent civilian insurrections.

1953 -- A wave of strikes in Soviet prison labor camps led to improvements in living conditions of political prisoners.

1955-1968 -- Using a variety of nonviolent methods, including bus boycotts, economic boycotts, massive demonstrations, marches, sit-ins, and freedom rides, the U.S. civil rights movement won passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

1968-69 -- Nonviolent resistance to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia enabled the Dubcek regime to stay in power for eight months, far longer than would have been possible with military resistance.

1970s and 80s -- The anti-nuclear power movements in the US had campaigns against the start-up of various nuclear power plants across the US, including Diablo Canyon in Central California.

1986-94 -- US activists resist the forced relocation of over 10,000 traditional Navajo people living in Northeastern Arizona, using the Genocide Demands, where they called for the prosecution of all those responsible for the relocation for the crime of genocide.

1986 -- The Philippines "people power" movement brought down the oppressive Marcos dictatorship.

1989 -- The nonviolent struggles to end the Communist dictatorships in Czechoslovakia in 1989 and in East Germany, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in 1991.

1989 -- The Solidarity struggle in Poland, which began in 1980 with strikes to support the demand of a legal free trade union, and concluded in 1989 with the end of the Polish Communist regime.

1989 -- Nonviolent struggles led to the end of the Communist dictatorships in Czechoslovakia in 1989 and in East Germany, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in 1991.

1990 -- The nonviolent protests and mass resistance against the Apartheid policies in South Africa, including a massive international divestment movement, especially between 1950 and 1990, brings Apartheid down in 1990. Nelson Mandela, African National Congress leader, is elected President of South Africa in 1994 after spending 27 years in prison for sedition.

1991 -- The noncooperation and defiance defeated the Soviet “hard-line” coup d'état in Moscow.

1996 -- The movement to oust Serbia dictator Slobodan Milosevic, which began in November 1996 with Serbs conducting daily parades and protests in Belgrade and other cities. At that time, however, Serb democrats lacked a strategy to press on the struggle and failed to launch a campaign to bring down the Milosovic dictatorship. In early October 2000, the Otpor (Resistance) movement and other democrats rose up again against Milosevic in a carefully planned nonviolent struggle.

1999 to Present -- Popular protests of corporate power & globalization begin with Seattle WTO protest in Seattle, 1999. This is what set the trend for the Occupy movement which is still alive.

2001 -- The “People Power Two” campaign, ousts Filipino President Estrada in early 2001.

2004-05 -- The Ukranian people take back their democracy with the Orange revolution.

2010 to Present -- Arab Spring nonviolent uprisings result in the ouster of dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt and ongoing struggles in Syria and other Middle Eastern countries.

And if you’re curious how Trumps rise to power parallels that of Adolf Hitler and the rise of fascism in Germany, please see the following links:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/01/comparing-fascism-donald-trump-historians-trumpism

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/paul-krugman-uncovers-chilling-parallels-among-trump-fascism-and-fall-roman-republic

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/a-scholar-of-fascism-sees-a-lot-thats-familiar-with-trump

any more questions?

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