Just in the last few days, we’ve seen a wave of solidarity actions with #NoDAPL which have included occupied buildings and acts of sabotage as well as continuing bloody clashes between water protectors and police, corporate security, and military personnel in North Dakota as resistance camps have sprung up in other states against other pipeline projects. Meanwhile, far-Right violence and organizing continues alongside continuing anti-fascist activity, as white nationalists of all stripes await the turnout of the election. Just yesterday, we watched as David Duke was run out of Dillard University, a historically black college, while a black church was torched and left with pro-Trump graffiti in Mississippi. Meanwhile, riots, work strikes, and hunger strikes have continued inside the US prisons, nearly two months after the start of the national #PrisonStrike. One thing is clear: despite the hum of the election spectacle in the background, nothing will be resolved after a new President takes office.
But while our forces work overtime to build and organize for the long haul while also taking part in the struggles that expand in front of us, the Left continues to peddle the same lies that it has for almost the last 100 years. For instance, liberal filmmaker Michael Moore, in a last ditch effort to get young people and low-wage workers out to vote for the imperialist and neo-liberal Democratic Candidate, Hillary Clinton, has released a new film that is playing in theaters across the US. In TrumpLand, which is nothing more than Moore giving a speech, he extols the virtues of Clinton and declares that that people can successfully put pressure on her to make “progressive” choices. Sound familiar? This is the same sad song being peddled by everyone from Hollywood celebrities to Bernie Sanders.
After the spectacle of democracy is over in only a few days, none of the tensions and problems which propel the current wave of struggles will be resolved. The sign will read under new management, but nothing will have changed.
We must remember that government is a ruling body of seemingly legitimate violence and force that seeks to manage and police a population and territory. It exists for the purpose of containing the contradictions inherent within a power structure based on exploitation and domination, and works to destroy or at least manage forms that it deems illegitimate.
The ethical position to make in our time is not to choose this or that manager of this nightmare, but to become part of the movement that seeks its destruction and the creation of a new way of life. But in order to strengthen that position, revolutionaries have to also draw lines in the sand within social movements and struggles that attack liberal and Leftist notions of social change. This is no easy task but as we have seen in all major cycles of struggle in the last several years, it is perhaps the biggest hurdle that we come up against each and every time.
For instance, one thing we have heard since the #PrisonStrike began and as more people have started to pay attention to us and our work, has been this reoccurring notion that we need to somehow make the mainstream media “care” about different struggles. “Why isn’t CNN covering the prison strike?,” we hear. “What about #NoDAPL?,” we see angry tweets directed at politicians and media corporations alike. Many people just can’t seem to wrap their heads around the idea that the mainstream media just does not give a fuck.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTBWfkE7BXU]Trying to get the mainstream media to care has become for many, a struggle in of itself, or – the struggle. Tied to the dead-end of respectability politics, non-violence, “holding the Democrats accountable,” and working within the system, the belief that getting mainstream media attention is synonymous with social change has long been detrimental. The media isn’t in the business of changing the world; and the institutions and corporations that use it in order to manage their empire also aren’t going to let it’s coverage get out of hand or create a world view that runs counter to theirs. The media is pushed forward by it’s own drives, it’s own motives, and is managed and controlled by people who do not share our interests.
Ironically, we hear people say, “It’s almost like the corporations that own the news don’t want to stop making billions of dollars off fossil fuels and prison slavery.” Exactly.
But moreover, the media, and the drive to get media attention is often used as the yardstick in which social movements are measured. The more media attention one gets, the better, many wager.
Thus, the media ends up serving as a judge and jury of social struggles and the way that everyday people fight back. But moreover, the media also plays a hand in taking social struggles and making them make sense within the framework of capitalist democracy. Thus a prison riot is reduced to people simply angry over lack of food, not the existence of prisons in themselves. The people that rioted against the police last night were criminals and hooligans, not people from a community coming together to defend themselves. The workers on wildcat strike at the fast food chain were greedy for more pay and refused to listen to their managers in the union, as opposed to friends and family that we should support. This is the function media plays when it comes to social movements and struggles; breaking people apart into “good protesters” or “bad protesters,” “rioters” or “peaceful,” “criminals” or “citizens.” And these are the sound-bytes that are beamed into millions of homes and break-rooms where tired working people are looking for just a few tid-bits of news.
But the media also often goes on the offensive and tries instead to attack a struggle head-on. For instance CNN drew criticism several days ago when it ran an article entitled, “Not all Standing Rock Sioux are Protesting the Pipeline,” at a time when violence was at its peak. Far-Right news outlets like BreitBart and Fox News have banked their careers in doing this full time; especially when it comes to black and poor people’s struggles.
Other times, the media comes in after a struggle is done as a way to “make sense” of it and simply pronounce it dead. For instance in the case of the prison strike, now 2 months into the historic action, many mainstream outlets are now running stories about the strike if only to throw in the towel. In this way, the media is able to “report” on something as a way to help control and contain the narrative; all that’s left is for some politician to either attack it or attempt to acquiesce to the energy created by it organically.
Our point here is not to attack anyone who is involved in anything that ends up getting talked about in the mainstream press, but to push our struggles and movements to move away basing our success our failure solely on media coverage. To understand that the mainstream media is not our friend and has it’s own interests. But overall, to instead put our focus into creating and maintaining our own media and methods of communication and information sharing.
This is why IGD exists and this is why we intend to be around for the long haul. This is why we need your support, your contributions, and your help in making our project grows.
#NODAPL SOLIDARITY AND RESISTANCE SPREADS
Solidarity actions from occupations of DNC officers, to marches and demonstrations in solidarity, to acts of sabotage continue to grow alongside continued repression of the #NoDAPL movement. Grabbing the most headlines was the vandalizing of the North Dakota capitol building. As always, if you have reports of solidarity actions or videos, interviews, or any sort of media about these actions, please send them our way. Here’s some collected tweets:
Updated latest #NoDAPL article to include vandalism at ND capitol grounds, & threats of arrest on Army Corps land https://t.co/zMXwWgRrn6 pic.twitter.com/N1OWD29J8Q
— Unicorn Riot (@UR_Ninja) November 1, 2016
https://twitter.com/naklabic/status/794255743113428998
The #NoDAPL movement has also been rocked with news that water protector Red Fawn Fallis has been charged with attempted murder. According to article:
[A]uthorities have charged water protector Red Fawn Fallis with attempted murder and a slew of other charges stemming from the standoff on October 27, when hundreds of police raided a frontline resistance camp. Authorities say Fallis fired three shots during the standoff. She faces up to 20 years in prison. This comes after Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier said he could not confirm any shots were fired by water protectors on October 27.
As a resistance movement we must stand behind Red Fawn Fallis and all those that push back in self-defense and also not allow the state to railroad her.
Bern, Switzerland: Solidarity with the #NoDAPL protests
Let’s support the struggle of the Indigenous population against the ‘Dakota Access Pipeline’!
The ‘DAPL’ is a petroleum pipeline under construction between the Bakken shalefields in North Dakota and Peoria in Illinois.
The ‘DAPL’ project represents a massive threat to the environment and population of these regions. Additionally, the pipeline crosses indigenous territories and is therefore a further expression of ongoing colonialism.
Against capitalism, ecological destruction and colonialism!
For international solidarity and a world free of control!
(via Linksunten Indymedia, translated by Insurrection News)
