Confronting Paranoia/Ageism During RNC Actions
Submitted by Jesse on Sat, 09/06/2008 - 04:07.
I am a 54 year old resident of Minneapolis who has marched in every decade since 1969 against many manifestations of US imperialism and oppression. In the 70's, against the Vietnam war. In the 80's, in solidarity with the Resource Center Of The Americas, against US support of terrorism against the peoples of El Salvador and Nicaragua. In the 90's, with striking nurses of Hennepin County, and the University's workers strikes. From 1994, when the first Tibetan refugees arrived in Minneapolis, to the present, I have seldom missed a March 10th demonstration in support of Tibetan freedom day. In the aughts, in March 2003 against the imminent invasion of Iraq, again in the ensuing years of our occupation there, and most recently, 9/1-9/4 against the RNC.
I reference my personal history with popular movements reluctantly, but to give a context for the following remarks.
On 9/1 I chose to march from the capitol with the Anti-Capitalist Bloc, and followed the red & black flag through several confrontations with police, culminating in the 10 minute skirmish on Shepard Road, and the subsequent mass detainment and arrests. I was gassed when I slowed down to assist a kid who said he couldn't see when running from the encroaching riot cops. I am on the footage Oliver of IndyMedia shot of that skirmish. I chose to march with the ACB largely due to the raids on anarchists prior to the RNC beginning. It was a way to support a group I, of course, have no affiliation with, save for an affinity developed as the police targeted similar groups in the run up to the 9/1 march.
I returned on 9/4 to march again, and understandably paranoia was pervasive. In a hilarious series of encounters that day, I was variously profiled by cops, Republican delegates and anarchists. As I said, I am 54, wore black that day in solidarity with some of the kids and otherwise most closely resemble the Vietnam era demonstrators who attend these things.
A Republican delegate whom I confronted by myself entering a Party party at the Landmark Center looked at me and quipped, "Take a shower!" More than once a cop would say to me, "You're not caught up in this, right?" And I was called a pig by a young woman who was eye-balling me at the Cedar/12th St. standoff.
I don't want to invite coments schooling me on the inevitability of this sort of paranoia. I get it. Again, without making this already long post a bio of my involvement with movements, trust that this paranoia eroded the SDS and affinity groups I ran with 30-40 years ago, for the same reasons. Infiltration by the law has always seeded internal mistrust and dissolution this way. I simply wanted to vent this out somewhere, as it made me sad for the state of resistance and unity this week. I approached Coldsnap twice at the jail vigils to assist, they were also guarded in a way that belied their daily call for volunteers on their Twitter page.
The most personal pang of this contaminating paranoia was the rift it raised in a spontaneous alliance I made with a dude from the SDS in North Carolina. I gave him a ride to his friends, gave him my contact numbers in the event he'd want to reconnect this week, etc. On the John Ireland bridge event on 9/4 he called to me in the crowd and told me he was sorry but he couldn't risk trusting now.
Anyway, I have long been an army of one, directing my energy where I saw fit at the time, and will continue to do so. This paranoia will not influence my continued engagement with right action. Nor can I, nor do I wish to, alter my 54 y.o. appearance. But my experience of this important week of direct action was shot through with mistrust and misperceptions from all sides. If it weren't so sad, it would be so funny.
See you in the streets!
...And Classism
In my area there are Anarchists in their 40s who are active in the movement, and everyone knows them well enough to trust them. But I've faced a lot of classism, which sounds like it has a lot in common with the ageism people are talking about here.
From what I see, a lot of Anarchists' idea of anti-authoritarianism is the refusal to believe in anything they don't want to believe. Unlike the majority of Anarchists I don't come from a middle class suburban background. I'm basically not allowed to participate in the Anarchist movement because I'm not allowed to believe that I know anything important about life that middle class Anarchists don't already know. Kids with 2 or 3 years of life experience at earning a working class income try to tell me how to be working class, and then can't figure out why more working class people don't join the Anarchist movement.
It sounds to me like part of this ageism problem might be a result of the same "everyone has to figure out life on their own" and "everyone has to learn about the world through their own life experience" New Age religious dogma that's been turned into "Anarchist" ideology. Personally, I've found that a lot of so-called Anarchists are extremely emotionally insecure and are more concerned with proving they can think for themselves than they are with actually destroying governments. Or, the way they see it, anyone who has a well developed perspective on anything that they hadn't already thought of is a potential form of authority and therefore is a threat to the success of the revolution. So now they're basically trying to turn childishness into a revolutionary movement, and can't figure out why they aren't winning.
I'm a 60 year old anarchist, no job, always been an anarchist...
...and I had the same agist BS happen to me too. And I was in the Nam man...
This shit has got to stop or like Jesse said it'll all fall apart quick like the SDS did in the early 70'sand they'll be no anti-war moevment.
off the top of my head i
off the top of my head i know a few anarchists who are 30-40+, have douchebag cop mustaches, and have been FUCKIN SHIT UP since like '94, when most of us kids were in elementary school, haha. just cause somebody is older and has a 'stash doesn't mean he/she is a cop.
at the 2004 RNC in New York i picked up a couple old fashioned button up shirts, tucked em in when I was on the streets and succesfully evaded multiple mass arrests when pigs "netted" a whole block, i would throw my hands up and say "i dont know what's going on!" and the pigs let me through the police barricade. just like that. just cause i tucked my button-up shirt in, and viola! no cross country trips for bullshit court trappings! seriously, thrift store button shirts are cheaper than benefit shows for legal defense of misdemeanors.
i found the suspicion and
i found the suspicion and paranoid to be more detrimental to cross-community organizing than nearly any other factor. people felt alientated walking into the convergence center/ street medic spaces. we had the self-replication of a specific culture because this paranoia acted as selective force to exclude many community members. there has got to be a better way to organize safely!
the paranoia did not work to exclude infiltrators, but it did work to exclude the larger community.
I am a 43 year old anarchist!
I too have an exstensive history of protest and direct action participation. I too feel like I am excluded from the local and national anarchist community because of my age.
Eldercamp for Anarchists?
I hope the age segregation can be worked through. I'm 53, wound up working with a number of people past the usual 'demographic' at the Wellness Center. There's a lot of good will amongst older folk, plus a lot of knowledge on how to get things done, and connections that could be leveraged for change. Seems to me that it would be worth the trouble to link in that broader group - which often have deep connections and ability to work the levers of power.
Like I've said, for every young person brutalized in the Ramsey Cty jail, there stands behind them a really pissed off mother, her network, the extended family, the young person's friends, and their families. All of whom have their eyes opened to what's going on. And are now more inclined to challenge the status quo, and may want to take part in active resistance, if they can find a way to hook in.
I know my 75 yr old mother has been following the police state/fascism through indymedia I send her...then she gives people in her bridge group an attitude adjustment.... And so it goes.
I am a 46 year old anarchist
I've have a similar long history of activism and a similar series of experiences in recent years of being suspected of being a cop, as I am a white middle aged male. These experiences have brought me to the conclusion that older anarchists should begin to march together rather than with the younger anarchists. Culturally, many of us differ, in a generational sense, from the younger anarchists. We have the same goals and desires, but we have a different way of achieving them.
Imagine a bloc of older anarchists, dressed not like the younger anarchists, but like their own peers, marching together. I doubt anyone would mistake us as cops. Anyway, that's my two cents.
age
Yes - a lot of us have been thinking through stuff like this. With gray hair, I have continued to head out to most of the economic justice and antiwar events that I can stomach, and I don't perceive that much social splitting by demographic group. It is perhaps the photos which seem to reflect a narrow demographic which could visually imply that street protests are a phase that some people go through. This isn't true, and it more likely reflects who still has summer vacation this week, and possibly, who wouldn't risk getting their kids taken away because they have a fake felony riot charge pending. There are other peace marches which are strongly skewed towards 60 yr age due to their networking.
There are many spheres of 'activism' which have more older people, and sometimes they fret about recruiting more younger people or sigh and conclude that younger people are selfish and spoiled these days. In high school, I recall volunteering for a mainstream liberal environmental organization. A ~28 yr old guy made this comment that we were too young and should be busy going to parties at our age, and I really remembered this put down. In retrospect, I bet our age made him nervous in some way. In school it is often difficult to be aware of alternatives to big name groups you hear about in Newsweek or ABC news such as Planned parenthood, Greenpeace, the democratic party, jogathons for breast cancer, and it can take a while to learn about the full scope of options. Remember that the most infamous police infiltrator from the 2004 conventions was an 18 yr old female, involved in the McDavid case. I think the reason so many plainclothes officers as opposed to deep infiltrators were men in their 30s and 40s who had a hard time dressing like normal people is that the police department hires so many people like this. But unless the police intelligence rate extremely low on social perceptiveness (how people dress and act etc), I don't think it would be that difficult for them to get an informant or plainclotheswoman who looks right.
I feel your pain
I am 56 years old. I've been doing activism for 38 years now. I now use a walker to get around. I went to both Denver and St. Paul. I am fairly well-known on the coasts but not in the midwest. I have been an anarchist for almost all of this time. For all this time, i have been a paralegal and legal support/legal first aid person, literally inventing some of things that Coldsnap and others take for granted. And when they begged on Twitter for help and i volunteered, they said they didn't need any help. I can understand wanting to make sure your groups aren't infiltrated and that you can trust people, but don't ask for help.
On the other hand, i like it when cops let me pass, and say can i help you. It sometimes gets me to places where others can go, and has saved my slow-moving ass.
On the other hand (how many hands do i have?), there have been many young people here and in Denver, who i just met, who are open and welcoming and who want to work with everybody.
more on ageism
thanks for this dialogue. i'm 57, did write a piece earlier on indymedia about the whiteness of the anti authoritarian youth. i'm saying anti authoritarian now because when i said anarchist, i was criticized as stereotyping negatively, though i wasn't. the feedback on my article including people saying, i was old; i was cointelpro; i was anti anarchist, etc.
i think we need an intergenerational dialogue. i run a social justice minor at the U of M and love my students and learn from them everyday. in fact, one of them is on the RNC welcoming committee (and wasn't arrested). i want to talk w/ him after things settle down.
i remember we (50+) used to say we wouldn't trust anyone over 30, and i remember as a young lesbian not trusting lesbians who were feminine, only flannel shirted. we seem to repeat history all the time. history too repeats inself with infiltration in radical orgs by cops, so i get some of the paranoia.
keep this dialogue going! thanks, lisa
agreed
im a 31 year old and i look 24.
the dress alike conformist anarchist children are the same spectacle roles as are the police.
its the same situation of dogma (in the case of the anarchist children, dress, presentation, paranoia) over morals (community building and welcoming outsiders) as is evident in the religious right.
im a hoser (canadian). quebec, dc, windsor, 3 rnc's, oaxaca, katrina relief and i found myself treated no more warmly by these pathetic "anarchist" children than by the cops. lost much hope for american progress in minneapolis this past week.
the anarchist children might as well be in nike tshirts or other such uniform of cultural conformity. their attitude of paranoia and non inclusion, smug superiority, predjudging based on appearance and age etc..... well, if it was in italy in the 1930s................. itd be fascism
Pretty much the same here. I'm 51 and don't look my age...
but there is persistent ageism and stereotyping. If you're over 24, forget about having anything to do with the anarcho-punk "movement"... or that's the way it seems. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule, but from what I've seen, people usually age out of active participation by the time they get to be 26 or 27, married, into their first real job, with a child on the way or already at home. That, and the pervasive social conditioning provided by the public school system, with its age-linked grading, where people only a couple of years older are socially cut off from those younger, tends to instill and reinforce this ageism. There is no real community of people of all ages. I wonder if this is the case with home-schooled anarchist youth?
"but there is persistent
"but there is persistent ageism and stereotyping. If you're over 24, forget about having anything to do with the anarcho-punk "movement"... or that's the way it seems. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule, but from what I've seen, people usually age out of active participation by the time they get to be 26 or 27, married, into their first real job, with a child on the way or already at home. "
That's not totally true. There's plenty of us older anarcho-punks that are still around and still active. I'm 37 years old, have three kids, and still occasionally manage to find time and energy for activism. While many of my peers have dropped out to some degree, this usually has to do with increased responsibilities that come with parenting. It's not that they don't want to contribute to the cause, it's simply impossibly to find the time when you're working 2 jobs to put food on your table, paying for childcare, health insurance, etc. Our movement really lacks a support system to help parenting age activists and until that's resolved then there's going to be a lot less of us involved on a day to day level.
It sounds like we need some kind of a network
I propose we form an anarchists older person's network, get an email list, maybe have a conference. I would like to do this so we can figure out what we can do together, both within and outside of the movement. I think we should fight the ageism in the movement, and fight the state/capitalism/hierarchy. If we only do one or the other it would a mistake. We should also acknowledge that we might have differences. Please write me if you're interested in working on this write me at deanosor@mailup.net.
We can still change the world.
minimize ageism
I am one of the younger people that has been referred to so far in this debate and on more than several occasions I have been suspected of being a cop or informant. This I would attribute mostly to me not necessarily fitting the mainstream image of the young anarchists participating in direct action. If I were an informant, wouldn't it make sense for me to lower suspicions by making myself blatantly stand out as an anarchist on first impression?
I don't like the idea of separating people based on age... I really think the younger generation of activists have much to learn from older generations. A march with not just young people, but people of all ages may also be more effective because it would cause law enforcement officers to think twice before gassing and mass arresting a crowd... maybe... the poor peoples march was gassed regardless of the fact there were people of many age groups.
In any event, I feel we should be more united in our common causes, and improve our logistics a bit. I agree with deanosor, an email list, web forum, chat room, and/or conference would be a good idea to help continue the debate.