Solidarity with SXE MADRID across the globe

Against the colonial-spanish state
Against capitalism and cages of all sizes worldwide
For total liberation and in solidarity with SXE MADRID
XVX (A)

5 members of Straight Edge Madrid have been arrested after a raid on their collective

UPDATE 11/11/2015:
Here is the writing  address of a couple people in kidnapped by the state:

Borja Marquerie Echave
Centro Penitenciario Madrid II
Carretera Meco, 5
28805
Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, España.

Juan Manuel Bustamante Vergara (Nahuel)
Centro Penitenciario Madrid V
Carretera M-609, km. 3,5.
28791
Soto del Real, Madrid, España.

Spread the adress and show solidarity!

English translation:

RAID: 5 Straight Edge Madrid Collective members detained this early morning.

The repressed collective defines itself as drug-free, promoting human, Animal and Earth liberation.

This update was posted on their FB wall:
5 STRAIGHT EDGE MADRID COMRADES JAILED THIS MORNING

November 4th 2015

This early morning, Information Brigade has broken into the houses of 5 of our comrades, searching around and taking the collective's material, ending with our comrades detentions.
Right now they're at Moratalaz Commisary and they are not allowed to see their lawyer until tomorrow. They're expected to be facing trial this Friday.
SOLIDARITY AND DIFFUSION.

YOUR REPRESSION DOES NOT FRIGHTEN US.
On the other hand, we have had access to people close to some members of Straight Edge Madrid, who have informed us that the cops have also broken into the house of a member of the Collective who wasn't in Madrid, taking with them an anarchist flag, the family computer and possibly some other material. This individual must now return to Madrid to face trial.

So far, the reasons of prosecution are being withheld, as well as what "felony" they are being charged with.

Social movements call to demonstrate tomorrow, Thursday Nov 5th at 20 hs at Moratalaz Boulevard, Madrid.

Official version of P.D, published at the official website of Interior Ministry is this:

"Information Brigade Agents of Madrid National Police have detained five people, members of the anarchist Straight Edge group, who are charged with belonging to a criminal organization with terrorist goals, damages to property and terrorism. During the raids we have found materials to create explosive artifacts, diverse amounts of gun powder and manuals to create home-made bombs."

Several organizations and social activists have expressed their discontent via social media, demanding for their innocence presumption and raising doubts about the accuracy of the police statements. In summary, skepticism, disbelief and rejection towards these detentions and accusations which are not convincing to several groups.

The most dangerous part of this is that even in case of verifying the detained people innocence, no one will erase the damages suffered at any level. This is, animical, falsely accusatory, mistreating and disrupts/loss of their usual life (work, study, family life). Innocence presumption is a basic of every democratic society. It appears that facts are raising all possible doubts, especially about the authority and many are unclear of the actions of security forces and their communications policies. In the video of the raid, detention and exhibition of seized material, instead of the mentioned bombing elements, we can only see sportswear, banners, screws and a laptop, as proof to justify the raids and detentions this morning.

Stay tuned as this situation updates...

What is STRAIGHT EDGE MADRID?

"We are a drug free collective, anti-speciesist, anti-fascist in promotion of freedom.With conviction and commitment we are looking to change this mediocre life of capitalist misery. We also know that is not only in our hands but in the hands of all who are able to achieve this challenge in one way or another. We will not submit under any form of oppression, as did many in the course of this history. The struggle for freedom is daily and not as a hobby but as the only way to change.

In response to this we are faced with the system firmly in place without bowing the head. We are not part of the mechanisms of struggle that the system caters to nor will we submit ourselves to this mechanism of repression. We are at war against the state and capital, but the war is not only in the street, but against the system that we have internalized. We say "Enough is Enough!" We swallow anger and we yell rebellion. Do not expect anyone fix the problems for us, we take the reins of our own lives.

For us the STRAIGHT EDGE converges in an ideological development that goes hand in hand with the positioning of revolutionary ideas as something more specific and serious, as a policy of self-determination to be validating as theoretical underpinning and not as a cultural representation alternative within capitalism, but as a legitimization of anarchic ideas. There is in this convergence in the discourse and practices with ideas of freedom, thus building an anarchic reference within STRAIGHT EDGE.

More than fine words and emotional speeches. Daily action against the power and the capital in all its forms. For autonomy and total liberation.

https://straightedgemadrid.wordpress.com/que-es-straight-edge-madrid/

A Short Anarchist Essay on the Domesticating and Colonizing Effects of Addiction and Intoxication Culture

"There is no more profound way of understanding the course of history than in terms of this effort to escape from one's own 'sweating self' and to experience even temporary states of euphoria or relief of discomfort regardless of the cost."
- Nathan S. Kline


From its earliest inceptions, sedentary life brought with it a drudging misery for its inhabitants, and with such misery quickly arose the need to placate the unruly and desensitize the weary. As social beings, the disassociated conventions of civilized life have never come naturally, and these impositions into and upon our lives have induced massive, collective trauma. The infrastructure of civilization surrounds, envelops, and teaches us to embody its qualities. It's modern totality is the magnum opus of the domestication set out upon less than a dozen millennia ago, and we are it’s equally insane offspring, each generation's pathology more dysfunctional than the last. What began over ten thousand years ago when we began domesticating plants and animals to meet food demands, and from there led to the deforestation of the lands of Mesopotamia and beyond in order to meet the needs of agriculture, what meant the forcing of other peoples off the land wanted, has continued into the present today. We bind ourselves to its unreasonable and unsustainable demands, suffering a commitment to a lifestyle that demands constant production and expansion through ever-increasing and deepening levels of exploitation and an unwavering devotion to this culture as not only beneficial and enlightening, but the only way in which our species can survive. As demands increase and complicate, so do our techniques and our technologies. Exploitation is no longer enough, for we are no longer just consuming. We need hyper-exploitation for hyper-consumption. Our concept of Progress only serves to reinforce the process of converting the living to the dead.


Our every relationship is framed by through coercion. In the absence of wildness, our desire for direct experience is left unfulfilled. In its place, the hollowness of modernity: a psychically and ecologically barren monoculture of hyper-consumption makes a pathetic attempt, if any, to replace the engagement our species demands. Lacking the balance of a sustainable and natural experience, civilization deals with extremes, such as the bounce between over and under-stimulation, neither one satisfying or healthy for us in any way. In place of the forager's quest, we stand slack-jawed in the aisles of supermarkets (how many times have you heard someone say in those aisles, “there's just too much to choose from, I wish this were easier?”), a place where even the "original" hits of pop radio are replaced with tamed, detail-less muzak®, as is the warmth and light of the sun with the eerie glow of fluorescents. The conversation around the campfire is relegated to rare and novelty occurrences, if ever, as we take to replacing emotion with "emoticons," and even the voices of our friends and families over telephone lines are becoming more and more often replaced with the beeping and buzzing of text message notifications. It was once written that "our generation will go to its grave shouting its last words into a cell phone,"3 but this dying world may not hear our screams. It has become frighteningly more realistic that we will go to our deaths silently, pressing keys and holding the "send" button.


We are truly surrounded/alone. Our social networking profiles boas legions of online friends, but the reality is we are isolated as we click our way through pseudo-relationships - it's not just quantity over quality, it is, like all of domestication, the abolition of quality itself. We surround ourselves with techno-comforts whilst prisoners within our increasingly standardized and dehumanized, our experiences overwhelmingly clustered yet simultaneously crushingly separated by walls physical and emotional. Fredy Perlman passed away before the permeation of the internet, cell phones, and so much of what shapes the technological ghost limb of many in this culture today, but the writing had been on the wall long before these "advances," and his words ring truer today than ever before when he wrote that "civilization is a humanly meaningless web of unnatural constraints."4 It is in our ever widening disconnect from reality and its pervasiveness of boredom and teeter-totter of over and under-stimulation that the misery of this culture expands into every facet of our existence.


Whether bombarded or deprived, the terror has started to blend into a painful dullness, and we search desperately for comfort, for euphoria, for anything that tells us we are actually alive. At every turn, our quest for connection finds itself funneled into ever-isolating and unfulfilling activities - escapes that replace outlets for the type of ecstatic energy life should create, diverting our desires and replacing them with false engagement, framing our relationship to such experiences originally through the habitual use of intoxicants and now through nearly every mediated aspect of civilization.


This undercurrent developed with the rise of domestication, deepening and strengthening with the onset of the enveloping hopelessness of the first cities. As David T. Courtwright so keenly observed in Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World:

“After the Neolithic Revolution, most humans lived as peasants in crowded, oppressive, and disease-ridden societies. The misery and grinding poverty that were the lot of 90 percent of humanity in the early modern would go far toward explaining why tobacco and other novel drugs became objects of mass consumption. They were unexpected weapons against the human condition, newfound tools of escape from the mean prison of everyday existence."

The once-free were no longer so. Trapped inside, the now-broken were under a constant barrage of fear – the fierce coercion of the Big Man, the uncertainty of early agricultural food production, even the water that was once trusted to sustain was poisoned, diseased. It was no mere accident that the use of intoxicants grew rapidly into regular inoculations. In fact, inoculation is often what one intoxicant provided, as Bert L. Vallee discussed in Alcohol in the Western World: A History, his June 1998 Scientific American article:

“In the context of contaminated water supply, ethyl alcohol may indeed have been mother’s milk to a nascent Western civilization. Beer and wine were free of pathogens. And the antiseptic power of alcohol, as well as the natural acidity of wine and beer, killed many pathogens when the alcoholic drinks were diluted with the sullied water supply.”


As civilization expanded and complicated, so too did its connection to intoxicants and our dependency upon them. The coming of the industrial age only served to increase demands of precision and timeliness that weighed down those laborers chained (sometimes literally) to the engines of production. Concerning the constantly rising levels of alcoholism amongst workers in the early 19th century, Zerzan notes that this addiction “[wa]s an obvious register of strain and alienation, of the inability to cope with the burden of daily life.”6 Be it social control or survival, the relationship was there. Domestication and intoxication became inseparable, one augmenting the other - a vicious cycle that so suitably illustrates the functions of both.


“Alcohol has been around since the beginning of civilization. In fact, people loved alcohol so much that they forgot their nomadic ways and decided to settle down, just so they could grow the grains necessary to make beer. Just think: if it weren’t for alcohol, we’d still be wandering around pitching tents every night.”


- Drinkfocus.com, a website whose “aim is to empower consumers through providing information that may help in the development of informed decisions.”


Intoxication Culture is defined as a “set of institutions, behaviors, and mindsets around consumption of drugs and alcohol” by the author of Towards a Less Fucked Up World: Sobriety and Anarchist Struggle.7 To be clear, Intoxication Culture is not the same as intoxication itself. As mentioned earlier, many prehistoric (or is it pre-hysteric?) foraging people have, and their modern descendants continue to carry, knowledge of intoxicating plants and substances. The difference between an individual experience and our habitude is just that: what for the primal person is an individualized, conditional moment is for the civilized a compulsion. I have chosen to use the term Addiction Culture to expand and extend this concept to include other psychoactive substances, the pharmaceuticals that are pushed by mental and other conventional health industries, the aforementioned dependence upon technological mediation, and in fact the whole of domesticated existence.


In My Name is Chellis and I’m in Recovery From Western Civilization, Chellis Glendinning writes, “As an outgrowth of trauma, addiction is an attempt to confront the pain that lies at the heart of the traumatic experience.” Elsewhere, she cites Morris Berman when he delved even deeper into the core of the matter:

"Addiction, in one form or another, characterizes every aspect of industrial society… Dependence on alcohol (food, drugs, tobacco…) is not formally different from dependence on prestige, career achievement, world influence, wealth, the need to build more ingenious bombs, or the need to exercise control over everything."

Glendinning was one of the first to recognize not only the trauma of civilization and its relationship to literal addiction, but the similarities between how addictive behavior and civilization are rationalized. She identified the major characteristics of addiction as “an out-of-control, often aimless, compulsion to fill the lost sense of belonging, integrity, and communion” which is “shielded from awareness by denial: pretending everything is normal, not admitting pain or vulnerability,” followed by “an attraction to repeated trauma.” Let us explore theses concepts now.


An out-of control, often aimless, compulsion:
The entire natural world shudders beneath the load that our culture has created. Our entire lifeway - from our food acquisition to our social structures - has asked more from the natural world than it has ever been able to provide. At every rejection of our demands, we have thus forced our will upon the planet. We have desertified once-beautiful wild lands for our food staples: wheat, rice, soy, corn, and so on. We have thrust our drills deep within the earth to extract its black blood, and we have nearly bled her dry so that our daily activities continue. We have dredged the oceans, nearly wiping out all large sea mammals. We have blown the tops off mountains. We kill billions upon billions of land animals in factory farms and slaughterhouses. We've dammed (or is it damned? the answer is most likely both) the mightiest rivers for even more power. More food, more power… we constantly extract at insanely exploitative levels so that our culture, one of what we perceive as convenience, might survive. In turn, we have spread famine, poverty, disease, and every facet of destruction thinkable – and some unthinkable. We've even created weapons that in moments can undo billions of years of planetary development, leaving a scorched wasteland as our only legacy: a vicious cycle of rapacious consumption and incomprehensible desecration.

Denial:
“We cannot go back.”
“It was here way before us.”
“We can’t take something this big down.”
“It’s too late. There is nothing we can do about it now.”
“We can change the bad things about this and keep the good things.”
“Were would we even begin if we did want to stop?”
“We’ll find a new way to make things work without it falling apart”
“You are being pessimistic.”
“You are the one who lives in a fantasy world.”
“It’s not my problem. It’s not OUR problem.”
“I don’t even want to think about this.”
… Is there any doubt about the depths of our refusal to accept the reality of our situation?

Attraction to repeated trauma:
Easter Island. Mesopotamia. Maya. Rome. Anasazi.
Waterloo Creek. Wounded Knee. The Great Purge. The Holocaust. My Lai. Darfur.
American Bison. Northern Spotted Owl. Bali Tiger. Mexican Grizzly Bear. Passenger Pigeon.
Time after time. Failure after failure. Over and over again. Forever and ever into oblivion.


Civilization is the culture of unrelenting trauma, its inhabitants helpless addicts seeking refuge from excruciating distress.


Not that our search for reprieve, however artificial, is condemnable, as the temperance and prohibition ideologies would have us believe (their intoxication being moral absolutism). Rather, such a search is only expected of a creature deprived and cut off. Erich Fromm wrote in Escape From Freedom that, “to feel completely alone and isolated leads to mental disintegration just as physical starvation leads to death.”13 All animals need engagement and without it the need for tranquilization quickly follow in hopes of survival. Courtwright again points to the confinement of domesticated life when he writes, “species seek and consume intoxicants in the wild, but they do so more often and more compulsively under conditions of captivity.” One can reflect upon the terrifying experiences of those confined in cages, from vivisection labs to psych wards to schools to Super Max prisons. Many of the more literal hostages of this culture die, whether physically, mentally, or emotionally, before their captors can administer all the appropriate tests/diagnosis/degrees/sentences - often from their implacable misery. Put simply, life is impossible without stimuli. Biologically, humans (and again, many other beings) just don't survive under such denied circumstances – in other words, even within its own scientific reasoning, we are at odds with civilization.


Our participation within this culture is driving us absolutely insane. We see the pathology playing out all around us – the news stories of people “snapping” have gone from freakish occurrences to freakishly often occurrences. Rates of autism and schizophrenia, among other mental illnesses, rise at what should be alarming rates – people turning within themselves, people tearing themselves into pieces, people unable to cope with the barrage of daily life. Perhaps these persons aren’t so much ill as more rooted in reality than the rest of us; perhaps it is the rest of us who have somehow managed to disassociate ourselves. Perhaps the real sickness is not automatically reacting with confusion or panic or dejectedness when faced with civilization.


Addiction Culture provides the context necessary for placation and pacification, to further disempower us, to more easily break us. Under its enchantment, we perpetuate a cycle of docility and destruction. That is why it is called addiction.
And that is why we must resist Addiction Culture’s promises of a lull in the torrent of civilized misery. Some may argue, as Courtwright has, that “the use of drugs to cope with fatigue and obliterate misery is in many ways a byproduct of civilization itself,” but it increasingly seems more feasible that Addiction Culture is not an unintended consequence, but rather an integral and vital part of the domesticating process. Without civilization addiction culture would not exist, but just as importantly without addiction culture, civilization could not exist. Relief from domestication through civilization has always been the mythology handed to those who would otherwise resist. The fix, whatever it may be, has always been just around the corner, requiring just another act of subservience from us.


Just as the environmental movement will never save any ecosystem, just as the worker’s movement will never abolish work, a culture of false and/or detached pleasure will never bring about a participatory experience. There never was and never will be balm in Gilead, to borrow from the western mythical tradition. Sadly, the stranglehold of addiction was in place long before our struggle to undo it, and it is to no surprise that anarchist communities suffer as much as any other from the pitfalls of Addiction Culture, amongst the many other undesirable aspects of civilization. What is surprising, however, has been the absence (and in some cases removal) of dialogue around the subject, particularly within the context of resistance to civilization and the unlearning of domestication. As Glendinning showed, denial is a central part of the addict pathology. Until we acknowledge the major deficiency of praxis our resistance suffers from by perpetuating Addiction Culture, our opposition will continue to falter, stumbling drunkenly towards abject failure, towards the realization of domestication and civilization: extinction.


As with so many of the problems facing those hoping to overcome and outlive civilization, this undertaking will not be easy, and I make no claim to have all or even any answers to this problem. I can only say that the damage wrought by this culture is deep and manifests itself widely, and the rewilding of our planet and our selves must go as deep as civilization’s despoliation. Our hopes for a life engaged and enmeshed within actual experiences lay within an attack on the totality of civilization and nothing less. The only way we will achieve total liberation from this culture is by tearing out every last vestige of the malicious roots of domestication from within our communities and ourselves. Anarchists purport to be fighting against the world that creates such wretchedness while seeking, building, and sustaining communities free of the stifling woe that is necessary for civilization to continue and that Addiction Culture numbs us to. To end oppression of all kinds, we must confront it by any means necessary and must also be willing to look critically at, speak openly about, and fight vigorously against such an omnipresent component of oppression, simultaneously seeking to heal, working to support on another in our recovery.


An anarchist world is a world of liberatory reality, of daily engagement and constant stimulation, with rewarding experiences and real relations – a world without domestication or civilization, without this web of boredom, depression, docility and misery.

This essay was shared from http://green-anarchy.wikidot.com/intoxication-culture

"Capitalism Plus Dope Equals Genocide" written by Michael Cetewayo Tabor (Black Panther Political Prisoner, NY 21 RIP)

I. The Problem.

Recently in the Black colony of Harlem a 12 year old Black boy was murdered by an overdose of heroin. Less than two weeks later a 15 year old Black girl met the same tragic fate. During the year 1969 in New York City alone there were over 900 deaths resulting from drug addiction. Of these 210 were youths ranging in age from 12 to 19. Of the over 900 dead, the overwhelming majority were Black and Puerto Rican. It is estimated that there are at least 25,000 youths addicted to narcotics in New York City - and that is a conservative estimate.


Drug addiction in the colonized ghettos of America has constituted a major problem for over 15 years. Its use is so widespread that it can - without fear of exaggeration - be termed a "plague". It has reached epidemic proportions, and it is still growing. But it has only been within the last few years that the racist US government has considered drug addiction "a matter of grave concern". It is interesting to note that this growing concern on the part of the government is proportionate to the spread of the plague into the inner sanctums of the White middle and upper-class communities. As long as the plague was confined to the ghetto, the government did not see fit to deem it a problem. But as soon as college professors, demagogic politicians, money-crazed finance capitalists and industrialists discovered that their own sons and daughters had fallen victim to the plague, a virtual "state of national emergency" was declared. This is significant, for it provides us with a clue to the understanding of the plague as it relates to Black people.


From the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, to the clergy, to members of the medical profession, so-called educators, psychologists, right on down tot the chemically enslaved addicts on the street corner, the hopes for effectively curbing the spread of the plague are dishearteningly dim. Despite the stiffer jail sentences being meted out to those whom the law defines as 'drug profiteers' - a euphemism for illegal capitalists - there are more dope dealers now that ever before. Despite the ever increasing number of preventive and rehabilitative programs the plague proliferates; it threatens to devour and entire generation of youth.


The basic reason why the plague cannot be stopped by the, drug prevention and rehabilitation programs is that these programs, with their archaic, bourgeois Freudian approach and their unrealistic therapeutic communities, do not deal with the causes of the problem. These programs deliberately negate or at best deal flippantly with the socio-economic origin of drug addiction. These programs sanctimoniously deny the fact that capitalist exploitation and racial oppression are the main contributing factors to drug addiction in regard to Black people. These programs were never intended to cure Black addicts. They can't even cure the White addicts they were designed for.


This fascist government defines the cause of addiction as the importation of the plague into the country by smugglers. They themselves even admit that stopping the entry of the plague is impossible. For every kilo (2.2 lbs.) of heroin they confiscate, at least 25 kilos get past customs agents. The government is well aware of the fact that even if they were able to stop the importation of heroin, dope dealers and addicts would simply find another drug to take its place. The government is totally incapable of addressing itself to the true causes of drug addiction, for to do so would necessitate effecting a radical transformation of this society. The social consciousness of this society, the values, mores and traditions would have to be altered. And this would be impossible without totally changing the way in which the means of producing social wealth is owned and distributed. Only a revolution can eliminate the plague.


Drug addiction is a monstrous symptom of the malignancy which is ravaging the social fabric of this capitalist system. Drug addiction is a social phenomena that grows organically from the social system. Every social phenomenon that emanates from a social system that is predicated upon and driven by bitter class antagonisms that result from class exploitation must 'be been from a class point ,of view.

II. Escapism and Self-Destruction

In regard to Black people, our problems are compounded and take on appalling dimensions as a result of the racist dehumanization that we are subjected to. To understand the plague as it relates to Black people, we must analyze the effects of capitalist economic exploitation and racist dehumanization.


The heinous and sadistic program of annihilating the humanity of Black people that was initiated over 400 years ago by money-mad slave masters and that has continued unabated until this very day is deliberate and systematic. It is done for the purpose of justifying and facilitating our exploitation. Since the reality of our objective existence seemed to confirm the racist doctrines of White superiority and its antithesis, Black inferiority, and since we lacked an understanding of our condition, we internalized the racist propaganda of our oppressors. We began to believe that we were inherently inferior to Whites. These feelings of inferiority gave birth to a sense of self-hatred which finds expression in self-destructive behavior patterns. The wretchedness of our plight, our sense of powerlessness and despair created within our minds a predisposition toward the use of any substance which produces euphoric illusions. We are inclined to use anything that enables us to suffer peacefully. We have developed an escapist complex. This escapist complex is self-destructive.


The depraved capitalist-racist oppressor exploits these psychological and emotional deficiencies for all they are worth. The oppressor encourages our participation in any activity that is self-destructive. Our self-destructive behavior patterns and our escapist tendencies constitute a source of profits for the capitalists. They also, by weakening, dividing and destroying us, reinforce the strength of the oppressor enabling him to: Perpetuate his domination over us.
Fratricidal street-gang fighting is a direct manifestation of a self-destructive behavior pattern. It is also a form of escapism by which Black youths vent their rage, frustrations and despair on each other rather than dealing with the true enemy. Pathological religionism or the fanatical indulgence in religion is essentially escapist because it encourages the victim to concentrate his attention, energy and hope for salvation and freedom upon a dubious, mystical force. It discourages confronting the actual causes of our misery and deprivation. It encourages the focusing of attention upon pie in the sky, rather than the securing of more lamb chops right here on planet earth. It also serves as a source of profits for those religious charlatans, preachers and ministers who exploit it.


Alcoholism is both self-destructive and escapist. It is also a source of tremendous profits for the capitalists. The amazingly high number of bars and liquor stores in the Black communities testify to this tragic fact. The capitalist liquor industry could prosper just on the business it does in the Black ghetto alone.

III. The Heroin Addict

The most escapist and self-destructive activity for us and one of the most profitable for the capitalist, and therefore the most encouraged by him, is drug addiction, specifically heroin addiction.


About 1898 a German chemist discovered diacetylmorphine, heroin. It was hailed as the perfect drug for curing morphine addicts. But soon it became apparent that it was more addictive than morphine. By the 1920's there were addicts who were injecting heroin directly into their veins. Heroin production in the United States was discontinued 'and the drug was no longer used as an antidote for morphine addiction and as a pain killer.


Heroin addiction, the plague, the scourge of the Black colonies of Babylon. The plague, whose spiritual, moral, psychological, physical and social destructive powers greatly exceed that of any disease hitherto known to humanity. The plague, opium from Turkey, shipped to Marseilles, converted into morphine base, then processed into heroin, smuggled into America, cut, diluted, then placed into the Black ghetto. The plague, poisonous, lethal, white powdery substance, sold by depraved, money-crazed beasts to Black youths who are desperately seeking a kick, a high, a means, anything that will help to make them oblivious to the squalor, to the abject poverty, disease and degradation that engulfs them in their daily existence.


Initially the plague does just that. Under its sinister influence, the oppressive, nauseous, ghetto prison is transformed into a virtual Black Valhalla. One becomes impervious to the rancid stench of urine-soaked tenement dungeons, unaffected by the piercing cries of anguish of Black folks driven to the brink of insanity by a sadistic, social system. Unaffected by the deafening wail of pig-police car sirens as they tear through the streets of the Black Hell en route to answer a 1013 call from some other pig-police who is in a state of well-deserved distress. Unaffected by the trash cans whose decayed, disease carrying, garbage has overflowed to fill the ghetto streets.


Yes, under its ecstatic influence one is made oblivious to ugly realities. But there is a trick, a cruel monstrous trick, a deadly flimflam awaiting its naive, youthful victim, for, as the illusionary beauty of the heroin-induced high begins to vanish, correspondingly, the temporary immunity from reality attained under its chemical trance vanishes. The reality that the pathetic victim sought so desperately to escape, once again descends upon and re-engulfs him. The rancid stench of urine-soaked tenement dungeons begins to assail his nostrils. Those Black cries of anguish seem to blend with the wailing sirens of pig-police cars. He hears them now, very loud, and very clear--in stereophonic sound. And that garbage that flows over onto the streets from uncollected trash cans is felt underfoot.


The young victim is not long in discovering that only by taking another dosage will he be able to attain sanctuary from his hideous reality. Each shot of the plague that he injects into his blood system brings him that much closer to the grave. Soon he is strung-out, hooked. He is physiologically and psychologically dependent on the plague. Both his body and mind have become addicted to heroin. He has now become a full-time, chartered member of the Cloud 9 Society. His physical body begins to take on a decimated appearance. A shameless disregard is displayed toward his clothes. That his shirt is filthy and his shoes are soleless, leaving him to walk virtually on his naked feet, does not matter. That his unwashed body now emits a most foul odor disturbs him but little. That his non-addicted friends now shun him and look upon him with contempt matters not, for the feelings are mutual. They no longer have anything in common. Everything ceases to matter. Everything except heroin, the plague.
As he continues, his body begins to build up an immunity to the drug. Now, in order to attain his euphoric high he must increase his dosage. This means that he must obtain more money. So enslaved has he now become that he will do anything for a bag, for a "shot". To lie, to steal, to cheat, to rob is nothing to him. Whatever he must do for a "shot" he will do, he must do, for he is a slave to the plague.


The vicious cycle grinds into motion. He violates what the ruling class defines as being the law in order to secure money to feed his sickness. Inevitably he gets flagged-off, busted. He goes to jail, and after he has served out his sentence he is released. The first thing he wants is a shot. The cycle continues. And he plunges deeper and deeper into the abysmal pit of degradation. And there, always there and ever willing, for a price of course, to meet the addict's demand for dope is the cop-man, the dealer, purveyor of poison, distributor of death, merciless, murdering scum, of the planet, vile capitalists, salesmen of death on the installment plan, the dope pusher, the plague-man.

IV. Capitalism and Crime

Dope selling is beyond a doubt one of the most profitable capitalist undertakings. The profits from it soar into billions. Internationally and domestically the trade and distribution of heroin is ultimately controlled by the Cosa Nostra, the Mafia.


Much of the profits amassed from the drug business is used to finance so-called legitimate businesses. These legitimate businesses that are controlled by the Mafia are also used to facilitate their drug-smuggling activities. Given the fact that organized crime is a business and an ever-expanding one at that, it is constantly seeking new areas of investment to increase profits. Hence, more and more illegal profits are being channeled into legitimate businesses. Partnerships between the Mafia and "reputable businessmen" are the order of the day. There is a direct relationship between legitimate and illegitimate capitalists.
Over the years a number of politicians and foreign ambassadors and wealthy businessmen have been arrested in this country for drug activities. Others, because of their wealth and influence, were able to avoid arrest. In the fall of 1969 it was discovered that a group of prominent New York financiers was financing an international drug smuggling operation. No indictments were handed down. Shortly after that a group of wealthy South American businessmen were arrested in a plush New York City hotel with over $10 million worth of drugs.


Given the predatory and voracious nature of the capitalist, it should come as no surprise that so-called legitimate businessmen are deeply involved in the drug trade. Capitalists are motivated by an insatiable lust for profits. They will do anything for money. The activities of organized crime and the "legitimate capitalists" are so inextricably tied up, so thoroughly interwoven, that from our vantage point any distinction made between them is purely academic.


The legitimization of the Mafia, their increased emphasis upon investing in, and establishing corporations, has been accelerated by the stiffer prison sentences that are being meted out to drug profiteers. In New York this has resulted in the gradual withdrawal of the Mafia from their position of actual leadership of the New York drug trade. The New York drug trade is now dominated by Cuban exiles, many of whom were military officers and police agents in the pre-revolutionary, repressive Batista regime. They equal the Mafia in ruthlessness and greed.


These new local dope kingpins have established a broad network of international smuggling operations. They utilize the traditional trade routes and create new ones, as indicated by the increased number of Narcotics Bureau seizures of dope coming from South America.


The concept of Black Power has influenced the thinking of every segment of the Black community. It has come to mean Black control of the institutions and activities that are centered in the Black community. Black teachers demand Black community control of the ghetto schools. Black businessmen and merchants advocate the expulsion of White businessmen from the ghetto so that they can maximize their profits. Black numbers-game operators are demanding total control of the ghetto numbers operations. And Black dope dealers are demanding community control of heroin. It is a tragedy that in New York the greatest gains made in the realm of Black community control have been made by Black racketeers, numbers-game bankers and dope dealers, by the Black illegal capitalists. Prior to 1967 it was a rarity to find a Black dope dealer who handled more than 3 kilos (1 kilo equals 2.2 lbs.) of heroin at any given time. Independent Black importers were unheard of. Now, there is an entire class of Blacks who have become importers, using Mafia supplied lists of European connections.
The extent and instant rate of profits reaped from the dope industry could arouse the envy of U.S. Steel, General Motors and Standard Oil. From the highest level to the lowest, the profits are enormous. If the individual is sufficiently ambitious, cunning, ruthless and vicious, he may graduate from the status of street peddler to big-time wholesaler and distributor in a short span of time.


A characteristic feature of class and racial oppression is the ruling class policy of brainwashing the oppressed into accepting their oppression. Initially, this program is carried out by viciously implanting fear into the minds and sowing the seeds of inferiority in the souls of the oppressed. But as the objective conditions and the balance of forces become more favorable for the oppressed and more adverse to the oppressor, it becomes necessary for the oppressor to modify his program and adopt more subtle and devious methods to maintain his rule. The oppressor attempts to throw the oppressed psychologically off-balance by combining a policy of vicious repression with spectacular gestures of good-will and service.


Given the fact that Black people have abandoned the non-functional and ineffective tactics of the "Civil Rights" era and have now resolved to attain their long overdue liberation by any means necessary, it has become necessary for the oppressor to deploy more occupation forces into the Black colony. The oppressor, particularly in New York, realizes that this cannot be done overtly without intensifying the revolutionary fervor of the Black people in the colony. Therefore, a pretext is needed for placing more pigs in the ghetto.


And what is the pretext? It goes like this: Responsible negro community leaders have informed us, and their reports concur with police findings, that the negro community is ravaged by crime, muggings, burglaries, murders and mayhem. The streets are unsafe, business establishments are infested by armed robbers, commerce cannot function. City Hall agrees with negro residents that the main cause for this horrible situation is the dope addicts who prey on innocent people. Yes, the dope addicts are to blame for the ever-increasing crime rate. And City Hall will answer the desperate cry of negro residents for greater protection--send in more police!


That victims of the plague are responsible for most of the crimes in the Black ghettos is a fact. That Black drug addicts perpetrate most of their robberies, burglaries and thefts in the Black community against Black people cannot be denied. But before, out of desperation, we jump up and scream for more police protection, we better remember who put the plague in Harlem, Bedford Stuyvesant and the other Black communities. We better remember who ultimately profits from the drug addiction of Black people. We better remember that the police are alien hostile troops sent into the Black colonies by the ruling class, not to protect the lives of Black people, but rather to protect the economic interests and the private property of the capitalists and to make certain that Black people don't get out of place. Rockefeller and Lindsay could care less about the lives of Black people. And if we don't know by now how the police feel about us, then we are really in bad shape.

V. The Police

The plague could never flourish in the Black colonies if it were not for the active support of the occupation forces, the police. That narcotics arrests have increased in no way mitigates the fact that the police give dope peddlers immunity from arrest in exchange for money pay-offs.


It is, also the practice of pig-police, especially narcotics agents, to seize a quantity of drugs from one dealer, arrest him, but only turn in a portion of the confiscated drugs for evidence. The rest is given to another dealer who sells it and gives a percentage of the profits to the narcotics agents. The pig-police also utilize informers who are dealers. In return for information, they receive immunity from arrest. The police cannot solve the problem, for they are a part of the problem.


When you consider that a kilo of heroin purchased by an importer for $6,000, when cut and bagged and distributed will bring back a profit of$300,000in a week's time, it becomes easier to understand that even if the death penalty were imposed on drug profiteers, it would not deter the trade.


The lying devious puppets of the bourgeois ruling class, the demagogic politicians of Capitol Hill have now passed a law which gives narcotics agents the right to crash into a person's home without knocking, on the pretext of looking for narcotics and "other evidence". This law was ostensibly passed to prevent dope dealers from destroying the dope and "other evidence." Now, anyone who thinks that this law will be confined to just suspected drug dealers is laboring under a tragic and possibly suicidal delusion. To assume that only suspected drug dealers will be affected by this law is to negate the reality of present-day America. To allow yourself to think for one moment that this law only applies to suspected drug dealers is to deny that the laws being passed, the policies being implemented, and the methods and tactics of the police have become blatantly and shamelessly fascist.


It should come as no surprise when the homes of revolutionaries and other progressive and true freedom-loving people are invaded by the police on the pretext of searching for drugs and "other evidence". A number of revolutionaries have already been imprisoned on framed-up narcotics charges. Lee Otis was given 30 years and Martin Sostre was sentenced to 41 years on trumped-up narcotics charges. Rest assured this policy will be intensified. It would do us well to consider what kicking in .a person's door in search of drugs and "other evidence" actually means. What is "other evidence"? The bourgeois, fascist law-makers have not specified what constitutes "other evidence". The No-Knock Law !s an integral part of the fascist trip that this country has embarked upon.
Before, when the home of a Black person was burglarized by a drug addict, or a sister had her purse snatched, the police took all night to respond to the call, or didn't respond at all. The burglar or purse-matcher was hardly ever caught. In most instances, when someone was arrested, it was the wrong person. But when an exploiting capitalist business establishment in that very same ghetto, especially a White one, gets ripped-off, there are immediately 15 siren-wailing police cars on the set, and three dozen pigs are running up and down the street, waving guns in everybody's face. And you can lay 5 to 1 odds that somebody is going to jail for it. Whether or not the arrested person perpetrated the act is irrelevant from the pigs' standpoint. The racist pig-police use Blacks as an outlet for their sadistic impulses, inadequacies and frustrations. Now that more police have been sent in, the situation has gone from bad to worse.

VI. Revolution

The racist pig-police, the demagogic politicians .and the avaricious big businessmen who control the politicians are delighted that Black youths have fallen victim to the plague. They are delighted for two reasons: one, it is economically profitable, and two, they realize that as long as they can keep our Black youths standing on the street corners "nodding" from a "shot" of heroin, they won't have to worry about us waging an effective struggle for liberation. As long as our young Black brothers and sisters are chasing the bag, as long as they are trying to cop a fix, the rule of our oppressors is secure and our hopes for freedom are dead. It is the youth who make the revolution and it is the youth who carry it out. Without our young, we will never be able to forge a revolutionary force.


We are the only ones capable of eradicating the plague from our communities. It will not be an easy task. It will require tremendous effort. It will have to be a revolutionary program, a people's program.


The Black Panther Party is presently in the process of formulating a program to combat the plague. It will be controlled totally by the people. We, the people, must stamp out the plague, and we will. Dope is a form of genocide in which the victim pays to be killed.

SEIZE THE TIME!

INTENSIFY THE STRUGGLE! 

DESTROY THE PLAGUE!

ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

Michael "Cetewayo" Tabor (REST IN POWER)
N. Y. Panther 21, Political Prisoner

Intoxicating Spaces: Colonialism, Nationalism and Consumption. Presentation of, “Interrogating the Intersections of Colonization, Class, Race and Addiction.

Presentation of, “Interrogating the Intersections of Colonization, Class, Race and Addiction,” by Amelia Saunders as part of the talk, Sobriety As Accessibility: Interrogating Intoxication Culture, at the Reclaiming Our Bodies and Our Minds conference on March 16, 2013.

Shared from http://livingnotexisting.org/essays/sobriety-as-accessibility-interrogating-intoxication-culture/intoxicating-spaces-colonialism-nationalism-and-consumption/

For the next fifteen or so minutes, I will be discussing the idea of ‘intoxication culture’ as a colonizing tool that has, over time, been used to hail certain bodies in nation statehood, citizenship and patriotism while damning others to be left in the margins. Also, I aim to look at how this relationship between alcohol, drugs, nationalism and colonization is structured through space. I will be engaging with these ideas through a lens that is critical of colonialism.

My work is drawn upon the research I have done in areas of colonialism, law, race, and space theory. I mainly draw upon the work on Sherene Razack and Nick Riotfag, in tandem with the ideas and theories of Judith Halberstam as they relate to identity and space construction.

The position with which I approach my research is that of a white cis-gender, queer woman from a low-income background. I also come from a background of alcohol and drug abuse and am myself a recovering addict and alcoholic. As I am merely presenting my thoughts and ideas and the research I have done on this topic, I can only share from my position of experience and research.

The main questions of my research are: how does colonialism speak to and construct the addict and a culture of intoxication? How is this produced in time and space? How does intoxication culture continue to oppress certain populations, while rewarding others?
First, What is Intoxication culture and why is it important for the discussion of race and space construction?

I first came across this idea in Nick Riotfag’s anarchist zine ‘Towards a Less Fucked Up World’. This specific zine is titled “Sobriety and Anarchist Struggle”. I consider intoxication culture to be a culture in which intoxication is not only normalized but also expected. For the purposes of my research, I understand intoxication culture to be a culture within which spaces have been constructed in order to normalize the capitalistic enterprise of inebriation, pushing those who do not wish to engage in such a transaction to the margins of intelligibility(9 – 15).

I express that the idea of intoxication culture is important to the conversation of race as it relates to alcohol consumption and space construction, because I take the position that intoxication culture is itself a tool of white supremacy. I argue that this tool aims to encourage the passivity of racialized communities and individuals(Riotfag, 12). I argue that it does so while constructing spaces that structure the relationships with alcohol and drugs with oppressed communities and racialized indivuals as something ‘abnormal’.

Nick Riotfag addresses the prevalence of addiction within oppressed communities. Riotfag discusses drug and alcohol use in Black communities, Indigenous communities and queer communities. Nick Riotfag also acknowledges the role the state has played in the development of a dependant relationship between oppressed communities and drugs, such as the CIA involvement in the introduction of Crack in urban black communities in the United States(12).

As example of a form of resistance, that I would argue position sobriety as a tool of decolonization, the Black Liberation Movement rectified policies of prohibition within their communities; The Zapatista societies of Mexico are dry communities; Indigenous communities across Turtle island ban alcohol from their communities and reserves as a form of identity reclamation and culture regeneration(12). Riotfag quotes Frederick Douglass as stating, “when a slave was drunk, the slaveholder had no fear that he would plan an insurrection; no fear that he would escape to the north. It was the sober, thinking slave who was dangerous, and needed the vigilance of his master to keep him slave”(13). As I have stated, I think it is important to acknowledge these relationships and their utility for state rule and citizen pacification. For the purposes of my research, I have sought answers to questions that pertain to citizenship and patriotic rhetoric which I argue has been instrumental in the development of relationships of dependence and the introduction of drugs and alcohol into oppressed communities. What I find of interest here is the spaces in which the relationship oppressed communities have had with substances that, has encouraged a relationship of dependence, addiction and a larger societal stigmatization. Similarly, I have noticed that the rhetoric of recovery follows similar nationalistic, white supremacist, capitalistic discourses (which I unfortunately will not have time to go into today!).

Drawing from this, I plan to discuss racial categories and identity as a system that deciphers who can access nation, land and citizenship and how this interacts with alcohol, drugs and recovery.

Razack states that race and space are constructed through “Racial and spatial boundaries, as to keep the colonized in their place, which is to be out of place”(61). Razack is stating that the ways in which spaces are constructed specifically in our North American, white supremacist culture, is to reduce the visibility of racialized individuals and communities while selling the idea of assimilation to these communities through various means. I would argue one of these means being the ‘proper method of intoxication and substance usage’. The construction of a proper method of intoxication creates a binarism that constructs an improper method of usage, as Geoff has stated earlier in the presentation. As Razack argues that the prospects of white supremacy are reliant on the construction of space in racialized terms(*), I will, in tandem, argue that ‘improper usage’ or ‘improper inebriation’ within oppressed communities is seen as a complication for nation statehood and as a threat and problem for white supremacy.

Sherene Razack considers the relationship between alcohol policies and land settlement in British Colombia in her book, Race, Space and the Law. In Chapter two Razack states that process of colonizing British Columbia was contingent on the strict enforcement of liquor laws(65). The liquor laws enforced by white settler government dictated who could drink, where and with whom. As Razack suggests, “the regulation of liquor was about space”(65).

As such, alcohol was once only available to citizens of the Canadian state, not inclusive of Indigenous folks, before the idea of the status and non-status Indian came into existence(Razack, ). It was also available only to those citizens who could reproduce state nationalism through a heterosexual discourse. It has become evident through my research that colonialism plays an important role in the establishment and normalization of heterosexuality(Razack, 67). Upon discussing this with my colleague, Clementine she summed it up as such ‘If you control who drinks together, you control who fucks’. At first, I laughed at this thought but then realized its truth and profundity. The relationship that alcohol, colonialism and race have is such to continue a white statehood through heterosexual procreation. It is space construction that insures the continuation of a ‘pure’ white race which would continue the legacy of the nation state.
What I find interesting about this relationship is that the consumption and purchasing of liquor was once only limited to the white, heterosexual patriot subject. Where white settlers were the only ones allowed to purchase and drink alcohol, Indigenous folks and people of colour were not allowed to by legislative rule. We can see these attitudes still prevalent in the marketing of certain alcoholic products, such as Geoff mentioned earlier with a product such as Molson Canadian. Upon watching a commercial for the product, it is almost impossible to not recognize the nationalistic rhetoric prevalent in much of the companys marketing, where Canadian pride is built on the consumption of this beverage, and once having purchased and drank this product, you are able to claim ‘I am Canadian’.

We can see this nationalist discourse manifest in certain spaces constructed for the purposes of buying and consuming alcohol. For example, imagine yourself walking down King Street West on a Friday night. The bars are full, and everyone is trying to get laid. Who do you see? Who is in the bars? How old are they? What colour is their skin? What is their gender presentation? Now, how about if you walk by Queen West and Bathurst at any given time of day or night… Who do you see? How are they drinking? Are they using drugs in a public space? Are they racialized or are they white? Spaces such as these that are constructed with invisible borders, are dictated by race as constructed by white supremacy.

In her research, Razack focuses on the illegality of alcohol consumption for Native folks which defined a racial boundary that was integral to the heterosexual policing of Native folks in British Columbia; the Native identity was constructed as a non-heterosexual, non-white ‘other’ who threatened the white, Eurocentric compilation of nationalistic identity. This, in turn, was concretized as heavily policed liquor laws and laws pertaining to inter-racial sex relations.
As Razack notes in her work, liquor laws, and the construction of spaces and borders are also very much about sex(67). They are about the mixing of cultures, an idea that reiterates eugenic ideas. It is through the colonization of space that race can be managed, heterosexuality solidified and the ‘legacy of white Canadian statehood’ continued(67).

This nationalistic consumption and intoxication is undoubtedly reified through systems of white supremacy. I would argue that, as Geoff stated earlier in this presentation, that the ideology of ‘othering’ is used for people to identify as addicted or non-addicted people. The idea of ‘othering’, as David Goldberg states is used for white supremacy, constructs itself by conceptualizing order anew, and then by reproducing spatial confinement and separation in renewed terms’(*). If we apply this idea to the construct of the addict, we can see this as it relates to spatial construction in urban areas. I think that is important that we question how these spaces have come to exist, and through which process can the invisible borders, tied up in race, addiction and discrimination begin to be dismantled?

In her article, Razack discusses the legalization of alcohol for Indigenous folks in Canada and the “problem of Indian drunkenness” the state was then presented with(66). This was faced with policies that once again outlawed the sale of alcohol to indigenous folks. The anxiety the white Canadian state faced in regards to the “problem of the drunken indian” related to their desire to build and reform a respectable white society, as the pervasiveness of alcoholism and addiction in communities deeply affected and destroyed by colonialism presented a problem to the sustaining of this patriotic imaginative.
I would like to briefly use an example that I have come across in my research. In 2001 John Stackhouse, a journalist for The Globe and Mail, published an article called “Welcome to Harlem on the Prairies”. The article as discussed by Craig Proulx, a Metis professor of Anthropology at McMaster University, claims to be written to empower Aboriginal folks who live in this ‘Harlem on the prairies’, while asking the reader to be the judge of the plausibility of peaceful Aboriginal – Settler relations(143). Instead, what Stackhouse does is utilize what I have discussed here, white supremacist discourse and rhetorics of nationalism and racism, to construct both the identities of racialized folks who he silences, and the white authoritarian settler who he puts on a pedestal(147). Pictures that accompany the article are those of ‘drunk Indians being carried to police cars’ and ‘concerned white police officers looking on’ and doing their duty for the nation state by sweeping the streets of this Canadian Harlem clean of the problem of race integration in the pursuit of maintaining borders constructed around race and alcohol and drug consumption. In the article, the only racialized folks who are given voice are those who work directly for the government through judicial services. Upon investigating this relationship, Proulx quotes Jeanne Guillemin in saying “Since the police and other keepers of the peace in urban and reservation areas have the same values as the rulers of American society, they perceive public inebriation as an ultimate degradation, a fall from civilization. They judge Indians who drink publicly even more harshly than the individual white, because Indians as a group seem to have been born uncivilized with no shame about their categorical degradation”(148). I urge all you to read the article ‘Welcome to Harlem on the Prairies’ by John Stackhouse and draw your own conclusions on what is being said and what it reifies.
The privilege of those who are able to drink in certain spaces, such as at bars on weekends and Friday nights, over lunch with the buddies, or with mimosas at brunch with the girls are constructed upon their relationship within racial borders that dictate who is not allowed to access this privilege. It is this privileged relationship to alcohol and drugs that is a large part of the patriotic imagination, which boasts ‘proper consumption’ as a nationalist duty.
That statement I wish to close with is this: Given the nature of our culture as one of intoxication and seeing the connections that intoxication has with colonialism and racism, how can we work towards a community and a society that operates in a framework of accessibility? This means an accessibility for racialized folks, status and non-status Natives, immigrants, queer folks, and the addicted and the non-addicted alike. I ask what this would mean for you personally? Does this mean you interrogate your own relationship with substances and alcohol? Does it mean you are more conscientious of the spaces in which you drink? Or does it mean that you work with your community to make events dry and alcohol-free and accessible for all?

To interrogate intoxication culture we must truly investigate the ways in which intoxication, alcohol and drugs have shaped our lives and our experiences, as well as how it has worked to construct ideas, identities and the spaces associated with those identities. It has become evident to me, through my research, that to interrogate intoxication culture is to interrogate a deep-rooted racist, nationalistic, colonial discourse. If we truly want to create a culture of accessibility, then we must redefine our relationship with that which aims to render us incapacitated to do so, both individually and collectively.

Work Cited

Proulx, C., “‘An Analysis of ‘Welcome to Harlem on the Prairies”’ in Aboriginal Peoples in Canadian Cities: Transformations and Continuities., pp.,143 – 171, Wilfred Laurier University Press, Waterloo., 2011.

Razack, S., “In Between and Out of Place: Mixed-Race Identity, Liquor and the Law in British Columbia, 1850 – 1913” in Race, Space and the Law: Unmapping a White Settler Society., pp., 47 – 71, Between the Lines, Canada, 2002.

Riotfag, Nick., “Towardsalessfuckedupworld: Sobriety and Anarchist Struggle”. Independent., 199-.