Spilling over from our last conversation on Turning Away from The State, we decided to revisit the classic Accomplices Not Allies: Abolishing the Ally Industrial Complex (2014) by Indigenous Action (now Indigenous Abolition), and to pair it with Peter Gelderloos’ Debunking the myths around nonviolent resistance (2020).
This provocation is intended to intervene in some of the current tensions around solidarity/support work as the current trajectories are counter-liberatory from my perspective. Don’t construe this as being for “white young middle class allies”, just for paid activists, non-profits, or as a friend said, “downwardly-mobile anarchists or students.” There are many so-called “allies” in the migrant rights struggle who support “comprehensive immigration reform” which furthers militarization of Indigenous lands. – Accomplices Not Allies
The Floyd rebellion follows a long tradition of movements using a diversity of tactics to achieve their goals, discrediting champions of nonviolence. – Debunking nonviolent resistance
Accomplices Not Allies is available as to read here online or as a printable imposed zine.
Debunking the myths around nonviolent resistance is available online for free through Roar Magazine or as a custom printable imposed zine.
As always, we meet at Camas Books and Infoshop, 2620 Quadra Street, on unceded Lekwungen Territory at 6:30pm on Sunday September 29th.
Over the past few weeks we have been reading Peter Gelderloos’ How Nonviolence Protects the State and the discussions have been riveting! This book has both strong points to make in favour of diversity of tactics, but unfortunately, it also has its limitations, which we are unpacking.
“On Revolution and Equilibrium” by Barbara Deming extensively quotes Frantz Fanon to argue for revolutionary non-violence. Instead of attesting to some imaging sense of ‘purity’ she states it is more important to avoid becoming ‘dizzy’ than to aspire to be pure. What kind of future do we want? Who will be involved in building this future? These are the questions Deming asks while putting Fanon forward to argue for a blance between self-assertion and respect for others.