From: Richard Singer <ricinger-AT-inch.com>
Subject: [postanarchism] Re:  Harney: "Fragment on Kropotkin and Giuliani" -- Staten Island and some other matters
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2004 08:49:49 -0500


> But
Giuliani was finally formed by those still floating in
participation, by those whose participation is
imagined through victimhood. Developers victimized by
rent control, young professionals victimized by
alternative street life, and uniformed state and trade
workers victimized by women and people of color. These
needed the protection of terror. It was an unstable
coalition that finally formed him, perhaps more
unstable than similar coalitions that formed his
predecessors like Koch and Wagner. It was unstable
because one part of the coalition literally dumped on
the other. One controlled all the space of the other.
The Staten Island dump remains an apt symbol of the
idiocy of the coalition for its junior partner.<


Ahem...  As possibly the only person on this list who is actually a 
resident of Staten Island, perhaps I should add a word of clarification 
about our borough here...  The southern part of the island, and the general 
right-wing politics which much of the island generates, might have led to a 
stereotype of Staten Island being comprised exclusively of (stereotypical) 
reactionary "white ethnics" and those "uniformed state and trade workers" 
to which the article alludes.  However, the North Shore (where I live) is 
quite different from the South Shore, and the same class and racial 
conflicts that exist throughout the ghettoes of The Bronx and Brooklyn 
happen here.  The North Shore has one of the most concentrated immigrant 
populations in New York City.  It's got the largest Sri Lankan population 
of any neighborhood in the U.S. and has a substantial and rapidly growing 
Mexican population. It's also got a longstanding African American community 
that has had its own history of poverty, social conflict, and clashes with 
the police.  Jersey Street, over in New Brighton (about fifteen blocks from 
me -- and until recently, the home of most of the members of my local 
collective) was the scene of one of last year's police "hot spot" 
crackdowns, where residents -- most, but not all African American -- were 
routinely, randomly rounded up, frisked, threatened, arrested, etc.  And 
the Stapleton Projects (a feature of my own neighborhood) has had some 
notorious clashes between residents and police and is the subject of at 
least a few gangsta rap songs (with special thanks to the Wu Tang Clan, 
etc.).

Regarding the article itself, it seems that Harney makes a few too many 
leaps of generalization in order to prove his theses about the Giuliani 
administration and the way that the "coalitions" acted and reacted here. 
 There is really nothing unique about the reaction that happened in New 
York City; it was the usual story of working class people (mostly white) 
manipulated with propaganda to support politicians who are the most opposed 
to their class interests:  Fear of racial and social violence are 
effectively manipulated so that people don't notice the class war being 
waged against them from above; this is not the story just of New York City, 
it's the story of much of America -- or at least a part of the story...

I'm not sure what point Harney was making about the WEF and the WEF 
protests(?)...  To me (and maybe it's just me), that paragraph is very hard 
to understand.  While the WEF protests generated a larger turnout than 
expected, they were an utter disaster.  If anything, they proved the 
inability of the NYC "anarchist" "community" to mobilize an effective 
protest in the face of great adversity.  (Although, admittedly, the police 
oppression and crackdown on rights was obscene -- even I was followed all 
over the city throughout the weekend, and I was a pretty minor player in 
this.)  There were also internal organizational problems with that protest 
and, in my opinion, there was far too much focus on the futile effort of 
getting the "right message" to the press (though that was only the tip of 
the iceberg, which iceberg I won't discuss much further lest I suffer 
another unpleasant plunge in popularity.)

In any event, sorry to go on about matters that are probably very 
tangential.  Some of this stuff touches close to home, being that I live on 
Staten Island, and that I was probably involved in the WEF protest much 
more than I should have been, and it was probably (for many reasons) the 
very last specifically "anarchist" mobilization for me.  (I hope to do 
something during the RNC, maybe, but whatever I do, I intend absolutely 
*not* to limit myself to the anarchist factions again.)

You may return now to your regular post-anarchist discussion :)...


Richard

Common Wheel Collective
http://www.geocities.com/thecommonwheel/journal.html
http://www.geocities.com/collectivebook