Thanks for this page….

The folk song analogy? I decided to lead with it after I’d heard it from three friends. Three of Brad’s anarchist’s friends who said, “His life was like a folk song.”

Me, I don’t have any problem with that, but that’s beside the point. I reported that this is how a lot of people felt. But for that matter, after having interviewed 40 of Brad’s friends, I feel pretty confident that he didn’t take himself so seriously that he would have minded that. Nobody who really loves Woody Guthrie’s music, and gets it, and makes it his own, would mind that. Nobody who gets a song is so silly as to think the song is the whole story. It’s just one story among many.

And one of the stories about Brad that has come up within various anarchist communities since his death is a martyrdom story. Brad probably wouldn’t have liked that one; then again, he didn’t like getting shot, either. What’s a martyr? The word does not mean someone who dies for his beliefs. It means someone who is killed for his beliefs. World of difference.

Now, if you feel, as XDX does, that stories themselves are the enemy, then that’s that, though I’m puzzled by XDX’s argument given her great blog on print culture. My guess is that most of the writers and publishers she admires there, a lot of them the same writers on my shelves, would be alarmed by the anti-story manifesto in her comment.

But if you think stories matter — that they are simultaneously mediated and immediate, as it were — and that by telling stories we are engaging in a living process, one that doesn’t end w/ the martyrdom tributes paid to Brad Will at his memorial, or a Rolling Stone story, or the “Brad Will Presente” carved in the sidewalk on Broadway, then consider the process of storytelling within the various anarchist communities. Consider the creation of martyr narratives and the construction of heroic purity. Ask yourself whether that’s the result of “outside” media, or whether any of it comes inside. Listen to the “Tear Gas Anthem” — is it a martyr song? Is there any “anthem” that’s not?

If, having done that, you conclude that the number one priority is purging yourself of any story that is not genre-fucking-perfecto, look to your own community first. But if you conclude that most stories are a fucking mess, which is why we tell more stories, and that right now there are folks geting killed, squashed, and otherwise maimed by empire, and that one of the very few weapons we have to oppose that is stories — well, then, maybe you can get on with the fight instead of burning books. Much of the discussion here is real, but there’s a strain that doesn’t sound “anarchist” to me at all. Reminds me more of Stalin’s commissars whipping doctrinally errant fascist fighters into line in Spain, 1936.

i wanted to vomit when i first read those words and the whole article makes my skin crawl.

why must we make gods out of men? i was brad’s friend, and his death hurt a lot– but brad’s feet were made of clay. he was human and that is why he died– because hot lead rips through flesh, because governments kill scientifically and without passion, the world stuck through the grinders of clean systems that value everything that is not alive.

brad’s death is meaningful precisely because he was human. he was one of us. he wasn’t a superstar. he didn’t live in the rarefied world of the other, of the object, of the symbol. he was an anarchist. he was a man. and everything he did in his life, everyone of us is capable of (for better or worse– brad wasn’t exactly perfect).

to make brad a martyr, to create this mythology around him, is to deny him meaning– to take away precisely what is special about him. and what is that?
that he was a rebel, that he came from the same set of larger circumstances we all find ourselves in, and he chose freedom, revolution, and anarchy. brad is special because he is one of us, not separate, above, and apart.

a distinction worth making– brad didn’t go to oaxaca to die for his beliefs. he went to oaxaca to *fight for them.* fuck martyrdom.

I am not engaged in any activity related to Plan Mexico, but I don’t think my lack of action in this regard makes me unable to critique the media or a journalist.

“The media has another essential function. It is the creator of images for consumption. It creates celebrities and personalities for people to look up to and vicariously live through. It creates role images for people to imitate in order to invent their “identity”. It creates images of events separated from and placed above life. It is through these images, ingested uncritically, that people are to view and interpret the world, formulating their opinions out of this virtual unreality…

In choosing to seek to get one’s ideas across through the media, one is choosing to feed these ideas to this masticating monster, to offer one’s self to this life-draining ghoul. For anarchists this makes no sense. It is impossible for the media to portray anarchism as a living praxis or anarchists as complex multi-dimensional individuals. It is therefore not possible to express anarchist ideas in a worthwhile way through this forum. The ideas will be chewed up and shat out as one opinion among many, one more turd about whose odor the public can argue. The living individuals get chewed up and shat out as images-of freaks, of intellectual brooders, of street rioters-but essentially as images not living, acting beings. The media is part of the power structure, and, as such, is our enemy. We can’t play their game and win.”

It is a quote. In fact it’s a quote from a song by Chumbawamba.

Brad was a good dude but this article has such a idealizing-tint that I am afraid some of those in the “trenches” may be turning on their own ideals to draw more unenlightened scatter brains and dis-satisfied liberals to their cause. With this new “poser” crowd drawing in it may lead to the abusive of anarchist action to further despotic goals similar to the Russian Revolution.

I half to say I agree with “AYY JEEZ” in regard to Brad’s activist-tourism as being but a spin-off of the United States military adventurism which has lead to some of the world’s more shocking failures.

-Friend

“The media painted a picture of a gung-ho idealist who didn’t know which way was which, but the guy was not clueless,” says Gibler. “That first day I said, Hey, Brad, you wanna come along to the barricades tonight?” He looked at me, and he said, “I can’t wait to get out there, but people are getting killed. I need to get a feel of the place. Walking around at night without that is not a smart move.”

Is waiting around until the next day a much better idea? It takes a long time (and knowledge of the language) to understand the social and political situation in another country so maybe its not the best idea to jump into the front lines, for the sake of all involved. It sounds like he went down there with preconcieved notions of what it was all about and just jumped in to trumpet the cause. I know the people at narconews will disagree with this but the APPO had plenty of opportunist wannabe politicians who are about as revolutionary as the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institutional. So obviously this isn’t a straight libertarian revolution, so should anarchists go out on the lines so another politician like Evo Morales or Chavez can be put back in? I also question this idea that Oaxaca was on the brink of a people’s revolution. It seemed like the support of the general populace started backing off once the APPO resorted to trashing stuff and making the state “ungovernable” just so the governor would step down.

Now sure breaking some shit and overthrowing the government sounds good and all but its just harmful if you’re doing it in an impoverished city and your organization has dubious support from the people who have to live and work there after its done. Are the poor and indigenous really going to benefit from activists shutting down their city to make a political point and getting rid of the governor, or would activist be better off setting up alternative structures that help people. It seems that people like Will want to rush off to some locale to get a taste of rebellion and hopefully see the revolution, but they have little understanding of the context and the consequences of their actions.

I’m not trying to get down on international solidarity efforts. Things like prisoner support and spreading information about whats going on around the world is important. I can understand participating in actions that have concrete benefits for people, like setting up alternative institutions, getting people resources and assistance, or reclamation actions like the MST. But throwing down barricades just to be heard often seems counterproductive when you have nothing tangible to protect behind them. I think activists often get stuck in a rebellion-for-rebellion’s-sake frame of mind and too often has unintended consequences and doesn’t help to further the movement. Just because we see rebellion popping up somewhere in the globe doesn’t mean we should hop a plane and jump in OR uncritically cheer it on over the web.

Activists like to say they’re in the trenches fighting for freedom. If that’s the case then ACT LIKE IT. You can’t go to some country, barely knowing the language and get yourself into an uncertain situation and start getting vocal or fighting. That’s what the US military does and you can see how bloody and fucked up their adventurism gets (journalists’ ignorance of local situations is similarly detrimental). Obviously in places like Mexico you don’t get arrested and beat up for protesting, you get shot, so prepare and act accordingly, we’d be better off with Brad Wills around countinuing his activism rather than dead with some footage of a couple gunmen. I’m not saying we should stop fighting for the revolution, I’m just saying that we need strategic thinkers rather than cheerleaders. If you want to be in a trench, make sure you’re in the right one, make sure you know what your doing, and make sure you know what you’re fighting for. Remember the Spanish and Russian revolutions, it wasn’t for a couple years before foreign supporters understood what was really going on under the auspices of a “people’s revolution”. Sure there was a need for intenational fighters and supporters, but they aren’t much help when they end up working for quasi-revolutionaries and despots. Lets learn from past mistakes.

they seem really effective.

i liked mario’s comments because he kind of brought the conversation around again to what people are ACTUALLY DOING to continue the work brad (and others) were engaged in.

I heard about the activism in Congressional hearings and the calls (i made my calls to congress and am organizing a rally in california outside pelosi’s office about her support for Plan Mexico). It was inspiring.

I understand the bitterness of some of the commentators but feel it’s counter-productive to attack a journalist who has raised issues to a new audience.

And I am baffled by the silence of the people who seemed so passionate in denouncing Jeff for his actions but when mario suggests that people are taking ACTION to stop state violence and us funded repression, there is SILENCE!

Maybe you’re organizing something that would convince my neighbors to oppose PLAN MEXICO.

But I have a feeling that for that to happen aloof (non)activists need to look around and be more creative in their efforts.

what did you call them, mario? Oh yes, armchairists. Good word.

margaret

That said, I disagree with Finne about the APPO. I agree with all your points about pop-hagiography (tho, given the anger of some here who feel that I’ve betrayed Brad, it’s hard to see this as hagiographic), and I cringed when I saw the word “superstar,” over which I had no control. But just as dangerous is the kind of movement celebratory narrative that suggests that the resistance is always strong, the people are always on the march, the revolution is always about to happen. That denies the real suffering experienced by those who sometimes do get their asses kicked. The APPO got its ass kicked, and what’s left is in disarray. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be another uprising — there will, and I’m guessing it will be bigger — but it will be a new uprising with roots in the old, just as the APPO was a new uprising with ideological roots in the Zapatista movement.

And, for what it’s worth, I think it’ll make use of the concept of martyrdom. Remember, first, that “martyr” means simply someone killed by the powerful for the act of bearing witness to truth. Brad may not have been a superstar, but he was unquestionably martyred; moreover, he’s viewed as such by many in Oaxaca. One of the most fascinating developments, I thought, was that after Brad’s death many ordinary Oaxacans suddenly “remembered” their encounters with the gringo who came to film their revolution. They weren’t lying, any more than the many holocaust survivors who “remember” Mengele are lying. Such stories become things on their own, deeply embedded metaphors for expressing all sorts of things — in Oaxaca, I think, “remembering” Brad spoke to the awareness of Oaxacans that as isolated as they felt some days, suffering from media black out and the much worse actual assault of military troops, there were other people from far away who knew about them and shared their beliefs. I think that’s why Brad’s memory survives so strongly there now — not because Oaxacans need a white guy from the U.S. to validate their struggle, but because his memory is a shorthand for the awareness that the struggle has a resonance far beyond the immediate.

Let’s experiment with exploring different ways of engaging with reality than sarcasm and snark. It often leads to factually inaccuracies (”presumably written by one of Brad’s countless friends…) that then serve as the shaky foundation for ad hominem or broad strokes not worthy of a critical view: (”Thanks to such shining examples of journalistic integrity as Rolling Stone”) meant to foster a sense of unity and superiority amongst the true cognescenti, that is those reading the material in the first place. This then can lead to false analysis (”All they have to do is hope some sexy, well-connected US journalist “) that distracts and disempowers us from our true possibilities.

Mass media exists, people read it, are impacted by it, etc. Rolling Stone has also published about the still ongoing “Drug War”.

Brad Will’s murder has been utilized for the precise purposes that he was seeking to report the story and is bumbling up into a greater consciousness, and with it the issues of Oaxaca, Chiapas, Atenceo, Mexico etc etc, not because he was sexy and well connected, but because many people, his friends and other dedicted activists are still raising it in a variety of ways.

From civil disobedience, to letter writing to getting thrown out of Congressional hearings, working with migrant and immigrant communities, making and showing films, hosting forums with other human rights activists, etc etc

The good news is that YOU can be INVOLVED and CONTRIBUTE in some unique way that will impact us all in a helpful manner,

We are currently working to STOP PLAN MEXICO, a $1.5 billion Bush/Calderon military package that would be used against the civilian population in Mexico, with a special $60 million allocation to the prosecutor and investigator;s office who is responsible for not indicting the filmed murderes of Brad (Emilio Alonso Fabian, Estevan Ruiz, Estevan Lopez Zurita and Eudacia Olivera Diez also kiled that day) and others in Oaxaca and elsewhere.

So, it does not matter what the corporate media does or does ot print, it matters how we use what exists to accomplish our goals with a diversity of approcaches and tactics.
http://www.friendsofbradwill.org

Your love and joy and snark and sarcasm are welcome to be utilized in a helpful manner.

Stop Plan Mexico.

One glaring error I wanted to point out, though, is that the APPO was not “crushed”, and even if it had been the Oaxacan struggle would most likely continue autonomously. There were also times when the article felt like some kind of pop-hagiography - calling someone a “superstar” and implying that they were a martyr can easily incorporate our collective memory of Brad (and by extension for most RS readers, the Oaxacan struggle his death “revealed” to us) into the Western liberal narrative of popular social defeat and endless streams of righteously dead activists.

Most importantly, that image of Brad as a “damaged martyr” highlighted the very real possibility of the article becoming a recuperative effort, in which Rolling Stone’s audience experiences the conflict in Oaxaca as a corollary of the life of a revolutionary killed by a “corrupt government” (as if there were “legitimate governments”), and who was basically doomed by his “idealism” to begin with. If this is the image most readers of the article are left with, the struggles of both Brad as an American anarchist and the Oaxacan rebels as an insurgent population become totally inaccessible - they become monuments (much like the lives of the Roman Catholic martyrs) which are intelligible but ultimately not empowering.

Noble Swarm (apologies for mangling your name as Swamp — I didn’t realize you’d named yourself after fashionable political theory) : Sadly, I have not been able to convert Brad’s remains into a downpayment on a Prius. I don’t actually have a car, but like all my colleagues at Harper’s and Rolling Stone, I dream of a Hummer converted to run on the blood of Oaxacans mixed with the integrity squeezed from the last squats of the Lower East Side. That’s why I write.

This is a good article. I only noticed one factual error. Brad didn’t know how to make bear claws which are pastries. He did help make black bear lock down devices. That made me chuckle.

Black bears - http://www.nopepperspray.org/rudin.htm
Bear claw - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_claw