Upcoming Event: Film Showing of Shelter: A Squatumentary

Click on flyer to enlarge.

In economically turbulent times, rent and home-ownership have become unaffordable at best and impossible at worst. Thus, people all over the world continue a long tradition of reclaiming this basic human right by squatting. Shelter: A Squatumentary is a documentary film that explores the squatting movement in the East Bay from 2004 to 2007. We follow three examples of the struggle for housing in an unaffordable market such as that of the San Francisco Bay Area. The film chronicles stories of squatters who have found one tentative solution to the ongoing housing crisis. The film will be shown at Firehouse 51, Friday, May 6th, 7pm. The event is totally free, kid friendly, and food will be on hand. More info on the events page.

Police Rack up Charges While Accreditation Costs Us Tens of Thousands

According to the local muckraker blog, The Voice of Modesto, Modesto Police Chief Mike Harden, announced that the process for police accreditation cost the tax-payers of Modesto $94.000. From the VOM:

Incredible as it sounds this number came from Chief Harden and this doesn’t include the cost of taking a contingent of Officers, the Police Chief,  and  Mayor Ridenour back east for the accreditation  process. According to Chief Harden it cost taxpayers $5,000 to enroll in CALEA (Commission for Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies) and a full time employee at an approximate cost of $89,000 an entity which most of law enforcement in California and the country ignore.  

For pigs by pigs.

The CALEA is actually nothing more than an organization of police and former police. The accreditation that they offer is only a pat on the back and acknowledgement of paying close to 100K in taxpayer money. It's actually quite the nice scam when you think about it. Police take local people's money (no different from the day in and day out grind of court fees, tickets, and lawyer costs) and pay other cops to come out and give them a bullshit shiny medal. Meanwhile, the police get to tout themselves as living up to a certain standard when everyone in the area understands them to be completely corrupt and brutal. At a time when budget cuts threaten to shut down everything from hospitals to day care centers - do we really think this is the best use of our money?

Someone got their hand
caught in the meth jar!

This accreditation also comes at a time when police are in hot water not only after the repeated murders of Modesto citizens - but also the almost monthly indictment of Modesto police on charges ranging from drunk driving to spousal abuse. Officer Todd Parsons was recently arrested for drunk driving, but was only given a 30-day suspension that Chief Harden ever so graciously reduced to 20 days. Furthermore, Parsons only has to take it 2 days a month! Officer Matt Spurlock faces spousal abuse charges and Officer Tony Trock was arrested for taking drugs from evidence. According to Modesto Bee columnist Jeff Jardine, there are also four other officers which are on administrative leave and also face charges. As he wrote in the Bee: 

And Modesto Police Chief Mike Harden confirmed there are four other officers from his department now on administrative leave while under investigation for alleged misconduct.

Banner drop against police in
South Side Modesto Dec 10'.

We can walk away with a couple of things from this. First off, if you haven't noticed already, the police are quite happy to take money from us and use it on something that only benefits them and no-one else. Keep this in mind the next time you hear a cop whining on TV for more assault rifles or Sheriffs on J-Street protesting layoffs. Second, if you haven't clued into this already (and it's hard not to), the police accreditation process is a complete and total joke. It gives the police a way to look nice on paper and also the appearance of asking the community for feedback in the face of widespread anger.

Lastly, we should clue into when the police are actually taken to task by the state. A DUI here, a spousal abuse charge there, and a slap on the wrist for taking some weed here...All of these cops will get off with lighter sentences than any of us ever would. However, it's important to note that it's these cops that the head pigs throw under the bus - and not the ones that shot Francisco Moran, Rita Elias, Brian Reed, Ricky Miranda, Elizabeth Kropp, and a host of other people that live on now only as painful memories. These cops are touted as brave soldiers who made "tough decisions" in "bad situations." We need these cops we are told and we should look past these 'bad apples' which make the rest of the department look bad. However, it's not a problem of bad apples but a broken system that exists to protect itself and the divisions that exist within society. No investigation will change the reality of what the police are to any of us - the biggest and most well armed gang on the street. One that not only serves the interests of the power structure, but one that is also corrupt, brutal, and willing to lie and kill to protect itself.

Brought To You By Oil and Cancer: Modesto Earth Day Festival

You can't greenwash capitalism. 

The Modesto Earth Day celebration held every year is an exercise in how the world is not changed. The event which is put on by the Modesto Parks and Recreation Department, manages to rake in thousands off dollars through corporate sponsorships and food and tabling vendors. Looking at these sponsors, the event itself becomes even more laughable. The sponsors of this year's Earth Day Festival include Boyett Petroleum, The Modesto Bee, Modesto Irrigation District (MID), Gallo Wine, Covanta Energy, and Frito Lay, just to name a few. So, we have the only large newspaper in town sponsoring the event (the Bee), two of the largest employers (Gallo and Frito Lay), MID, which provides power to Modesto residents, and major polluters such as a petroleum company and a waste incinerator. The Modesto Earth Day Festival is a marriage of corporate, state, and media interests; united together in brandishing themselves as protectors of the environment and friends of the earth.

But why is it important that all of these institutions present the wider public with a "green image?" Because most people understand that the world is being destroyed by capitalism. Our lives and environment are threatened because those in power want to make a buck. Forests are leveled to make way for cattle which are turned into fast-food. Our oceans become black with oil and full of sewage and trash. Species are becoming extinct at a rate that some scientists call the most drastic die-out of living-things since the extinction of the dinosaurs. Our drinking water is becoming more polluted, our foods is filled with pesticides and hormones, our air quality sends asthma rates through the roof, and in records never before, people are getting cancer from a host of man-made sources. Industrial capitalism has lead to the mass extinction and destruction of whole species and ecosystems while at the same time putting the people of the world at risk of mass disasters and disease. As the End of Capitalism blog wrote:

It’s been well-documented for half a century now that the main cause of cancer is industrial pollution and the immense and growing quantity of toxic shit in our air, water, food, and bodies. 

There’s no escaping it either. You can eat healthy and vegetarian, live out in a rural area where there’s no factories spewing death into the air, avoid filling your life with plastics and chemicals, and you’ll still be at risk, because even polar bears on the North Pole are getting dioxins built up in their fatty tissue.  Dioxin, by the way, is the most toxic and carcinogenic substance ever seen on the face of the Earth.  It can give you cancer from even a few parts per trillion – that’s 12 zeros. Dioxin is shot up into the air as a consequence of PVC production, and now it’s in our food, our bodies, and mother’s breast milk. 

We'd rather not.

Most daunting however, is the threat of global warming - caused by the production of CO2 from cars and factories. Just a small rise in the earth's temperature could threaten to change forever the world's weather, make the growth of food harder and would also wipe out various plant and animal species. Most recently, we have also watched as millions of people in Japan have faced an onslaught of environmental devastation and nuclear fallout, caused by the lies and failures of a PG and E backed nuclear company. Now, millions have been exposed to radiation at levels not seen since the Chernobyl disaster. As the World Socialist Website wrote:

From the outset, TEPCO [Japanese nuclear corporation], which has a long record of safety breaches and cover-ups, has provided inadequate, even wrong, information and minimised the dangers. The Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan yesterday was considering raising the official severity of the nuclear accident from five to seven, the highest level, on a par only with Chernobyl. Nevertheless, the government, NISA and TEPCO continue to be driven by commercial considerations.

But just as nuclear power was sold to working people throughout the world as a 'green' energy source - with murderous results, so has the Earth Day Festival been sold to people in Modesto as a 'green' event. But what does it mean when the very corporations which are killing the planet are hosting an event dedicated to saving it? It is all part of an effort by corporations and governments to clean up their image and present themselves as 'eco-concious.' By repackaging themselves as 'green' they hope to cash in on certain markets but also appear that they are addressing the very problems that they are creating.

The rich do not have our interests
in mind.

Moreover, when we allow corporations and governments to frame the dialog of resistance to the destruction of the earth and ourselves along with it for profits, we allow those doing the dirty work to stifle any talk of resisting the entire megamachine and engaging in resistance in a real and tangible way. Instead, we are told from everyone from corporations to Al Gore that solutions are to be found in the marketplace. We shouldn't tear out dams and block logging roads, we should instead buy different light-bulbs and go vegan. And it's just this push to find more 'eco-friendly' products on the market which has driven corporations and governments to take on a green image and begin selling green products. However, if the recent BP spill in the Gulf Coast  and the ongoing disaster in Japan are any indications, capitalism will not be changing it's tune anytime soon.

As the SubMedia Collective articulated in their recent stop in Modesto showing their film END: CIV, what is needed now is resistance to capitalism, not "solutions" within it. In the Central Valley we've seen several local struggles over threats to the environment. They include the battle to shut down the Tallow Plant in South-Side Modesto, fights over air-quality, and in the last several years we have seen a grassroots movement spring up around the existence of the Covanta Plant, located in Patterson. Besides being one of the sponsors of Earth Day, the Covanta plant takes e-waste, garbage, medical supplies, and other trash from across the west coast and burns it. In doing so, it pumps Dioxin into the environment as well as polluting the air with smoke, leading to increased cancer and asthma rates in the area. As the Green Action group wrote:

A company called Covanta operates a garbage incinerator in Crow's Landing that burns about 800 tons per day of solid waste. The incinerator emits dangerous toxic chemicals and toxic metals into the air, including dioxin, one of the most toxic chemicals known to science. Even low levels of dioxin can cause illnesses such as cancer & birth defects. The company claims that the design and technology of their incinerator system "insures complete combustion and breaks down dioxin" and is environmentally safe." The truth is that the incinerator cannot completely or safely destroy all the waste being burned, and in fact creates dioxin and emits it into the air. The incinerator tried two years ago to import medical waste from across the state to be burned here, but concerned residents stopped that toxic threat!

Protesting Covanta in Modesto.

Events like Earth Day need to be exposed for the farce that they are. We are not on the "same team" as corporations and governments, because we understand them to be the ones that have lead us into the current economic and ecological crisis. They offer no solutions to the problems laid ahead of us; as always, it is the task of the working class to destroy the systems which immiserate us. Those in power have no interest in stopping the destruction of the natural environment and returning to ways of life where food, shelter, and water are shared in common and in harmony with the earth. Furthermore, the very corporations which help sponsor this event are the ones which are polluting our area the most. We don't need a corporate green-wash. We need a deep green resistance.

Gifford Hartman Talks about the 'Crisis in California' Tonight

Bay area folk-labor historian and organizer Gifford Hartman will discuss the ecological, economic, and social crisis in the Central Valley, tonight starting at 6pm, at the Fireside Lounge at Modesto Junior College. The event is free and open to both students and non-students. His talk is based on his essay by the same name, which was published in Modesto Anarcho #13. 

As the United States’ most populous state, California is the world’s eighth largest economy. The state has some of the planet’s most productive farmland and in the 1990s enjoyed an extensive real-estate boom. But intensive, industrialised agriculture has polluted much of the environment and now, with more foreclosed homes than anywhere else in the world, it is also home to a growing number of tent cities.Gifford Hartman takes us on a road trip through California’s Central Valley to witness the toxicity: of mortgages and ecosystems, houses, drugs and human relations.

Gifford's talk comes at a time when Modesto Junior College students are facing massive cuts and fee increases. Where millions are unemployed or underemployed and thousands face homelessness and home foreclosure. We encourage all students, workers, and the unemployed to attend - and more importantly, use the space to talk about what we can do in this crisis. 

6pm

Modesto Junior College, East Campus

Fireside Lounge, Part of Student Center

Free!

The New Fascism

We spend a lot of time talking about how the Left tries to control, manipulate, and contain working-class resistance and social struggles. While this of course is true, in the last few years the Right has been gaining power in massive numbers. Recently, the 'Tea-Party' has shown itself to be a major player in American politics, and presented itself as a 'grassroots' movement against big government. They've managed to promote an attack on social services and programs (budget cuts) as well as attacks on gays and immigrant workers. However, the Tea-Party is backed by multi-million dollar companies and controlled by major politicians and pundits. They support the same-old no-holds barred capitalism and authoritarian 'Christian' values that we've become so used to over the last decade under Bush. The following article is taken from Modesto Anarcho #16. 

by CEN

Commenting on how the German working class movement could have stopped his debased regime from gaining power, Hitler once exclaimed, “Only one thing could have stopped our movement - if our adversaries had understood its principle and from the first day smashed with the utmost brutality the nucleus of our new movement.” Today, as capitalism breaks apart, the working class is left with the historical task of organizing itself as a force. Not only against capitalism, but against a radical right-wing that will also attempt to constitute itself as an alternative to the current state of affairs.

A storm is coming...

Today a new movement in the U.S., commonly known as the “Tea Party,” is finding its place in the back rooms of community centers, in the pews during Sunday church service, and the offices of corporate elites and business owners. And, it is time for its adversaries to respond in kind. Fascist movements, however skewed and modernized, are alive and well in present times. It is foolhardy not to take note of their mobilizing, however juvenile it may look to people aware of the issues. The Tea Party Movement is a neo-fascist movement.

The Tea Party movement has metamorphosed into more than an anti-stimulus campaign; it’s more than a couple of protests demanding no taxes. It is taking over through culture and technology and it won’t be stopped until all the gains made by the working class have been beaten back into the dustbin of history.
There are several qualities which constitute a fascist movement. They include:

• Fear, a xenophobic hatred of “the other,” and/or foreigners
• Hatred of multiculturalism
• Base of support from the middle class, yet also taking from the disillusioned working class
• Adoption of populism
• Use of left-wing slogans and rhetoric for hard-right policies
• Belief that both free-market capitalism and socialism are bad
• Belief in a supreme leader whose word is truth
• Mythology of “better times,” and how the present time should emulate the righteous past
• Merging of state and corporate power
• Extreme patriotism and nationalism

Past fascist regimes, as well as current parties throughout Europe have varied traditions and histories, but for the most part, prevailed due to a certain set of persistent conditions including: industrially-advanced economies hard hit by the recession, a discredited Left alternative, dissatis13
faction with an inefficient or corrupt parliamentary system, an end of consensus politics, racism provoked by “job stealing” immigrants, a respectable Right, and nostalgia for a strong state. (Source: Fascism by Stuart Hood)

What has set the Tea Party apart from just your average run-of-the-mill patriarchal, right-wing, racist political party made up of mostly bourgeois exploiters, is that the Tea Party is transformable. It includes an infinite turn-style of participants, where groups are created, formed, and then disbanded within a few months, only to crop up in the next town over whenever a scratch against undocumented workers, social programs, or gay marriage needs to be itched.

However, many people involved in the Tea Party are blatant megalomaniacs, unapologetic for their extremist views. For example: Tom Tancredo, an anti-immigration former representative and speaker at the Tea Party National Convention talking about the “cult of multiculturalism,” and how Obama is a socialist. While equating the current president with socialism has become common place, Tancredo has become one of the most outspoken critics of the administration, stating Obama was elected by “people who could not even spell the word ’vote’ or say it in English” and that Obama is “...the greatest threat to the United States today, the greatest threat to our liberty, the greatest threat to the Constitution of the United States, the greatest threat to our way of life; everything we believe in. The greatest threat to the country that our founding fathers put together is the man that’s sitting in the White House today.” He has publicly called for impeachment charges against Obama in an editorial for The Washington Times. He is the honorary chairman of the Youth for Western Civilization, a nonprofit far-Right group against multiculturalism that has ties to white supremacist organizations.

The enemy of my enemy is not
 my friend.

But beyond keeping ill company, Tea Partiers are some of the biggest liars and corporate whores around. While claiming to be grassroots, in fact the movement is heavily funded by Koch Industries, one of the world’s biggest energy corporations. This multi-billion dollar company has been working with Republican politicians and far-right activists for the last half century. It is a never-ending supply of corporate-money to throw into the machine of democratic government. Once candidates backed by Koch are in power there will be military, weapons, technology, and manufacturing contracts for the corporation’s loyalty. Its credentials and those of its founders and many of its well-known followers are widely documented by the AFL-CIO in the New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, and other publications.

Yet most of its “regular folk” followers turn a blind eye to the fuel that created the fire, because acknowledging Koch Industries and other corporations’ cooperation would discredit its stance as being born out of a grassroots anger for the current state of American politics. No one wants to side with corporations, and most Tea Party followers like any wily bitch, will bite the hand that feeds them.

The Tea Party also twists its own projected image of the working class to bolster its stance as an “everyman’s party.” It places “the worker” as an idealized, independent, courageous individual with an explorer’s mentality and family values at its core. It makes the lowly, God-fearing farmer, circa 1785 with his shotgun, wife and seven children its hero. The Tea Party movement encourages stratification between the “hard working, countryside” population, and the “decadent, urban” population, believing the latter will eventually kill itself through its deviant lifestyle.

The Tea Party gathers most of its support from middle America and rural areas, where supporters see the movement as representing “real America,” and those who do not believe are not patriotic or in line with the causes of “freedom,” and “justice.” The movement reaches out to a specific group of people, mostly lower-middle-class working folks who feel disenfranchised, but excludes workers such as undocumented laborers, intellectuals, and anyone who belongs to a minority category not in line with Tea Party values.

The Tea Party is a collection of groups whose membership is made up of anywhere from a few people to a thousand. What keeps these groups weak is that the connections that exist between them are often vague and disorganized. The biggest of these remain at the top, out of focus, funneling money no doubt, but without a direct battle plan.

Extremists such as Tea Partier Rand Paul (R-Ky.) oppose abortion even in cases of incest and rape. It’s going to be an uphill battle to include birth control as preventive care that should be covered under the new health-care bill. And it doesn’t end within the government’s arbitrary borders. According to Jodi Jacobsen, Editor-in-Chief of the Reproductive Health Reality Check website, “We will see almost immediately a range of efforts to focus on restricting reproductive and sexual health and rights. They will try to pass a law codifying a global gag rule, try to reinforce and strengthen abstinence-only until marriage funding in U.S. global AIDS funding.”

Destroy the Right.

A cornerstone of a fascist regime is herding women into traditional roles, as wife and mother, rearing large families and being homemakers, with no voice for family planning and no chance for sexual freedom. After the election The Tea Party movement has been put on the back burner in most traditional media outlets, but it’s still there, slowly simmering, much like its European counterparts, gathering its base of supporters, fine-tuning its dogma, and waiting.

In April of last year, Noam Chomsky was giving a speech on both major U.S. political parties kneeling to the demands of corporations, but digressed to make a fearful prediction about the Tea Party movement. He stated, “’I’m just old enough to have heard a number of Hitler’s speeches on the radio, and I have a memory of the texture and the tone of the cheering mobs, and I have the dread sense of the dark clouds of fascism gathering.”

What to do about Tea baggers in your community:

Tea baggers love to set up shop at community and traditionally “patriotic” events such as regional and county fairs, parades, and local farmers markets. Shut them down, counter-demonstrate, and do not allow them to operate in public.

Many tea baggers make a point of writing daily to their local newspaper just to spew their misguided views on society, many of which get published in the opinion pages; most go unanswered. But go one step further: Create your own media to combat what the tea baggers are saying in your community. Put posters, stickers, and signage in high traffic areas.

Act in solidarity when tea baggers attack the homeless, undocumented workers, or women’s services and abortion clinics. Cross the barriers placed upon the various sections of the exploited by capitalism and build counter-power.

Fight The Tea Party!