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twitterLAS VEGAS AT LARGE:
Group’s bane: The man
Nation should be one of people, not laws, anarchist says
Leila Navidi
Local anarchists gather at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf for an A-Cafe meeting Thursday, May 28, 2009. Clockwise from left is Charles Johnson, Edward Anauo, Kelly Patterson and Rachel Bovard.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009 | 2 a.m.
Beyond the Sun
Every Thursday at 6 p.m., the anarchists set up shop in a side room at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf on Maryland Parkway.
They blanket two folding tables with a spread of literature that ranges from the militant-sounding “(Expletive) Neoliberalism, (Expletive) Borders: An Anarchist Look at World Trade,” to the more tempered “Don’t Owe Nothin’: A Practical Guide to How You Can Stop Paying for War by Living Simply and Eliminating Your Tax Liability.”
Green-lidded containers that used to hold powdered Parmesan cheese serve as donation jars for radical causes. A tall, rectangular trash receptacle made of wood doubles as a lectern.
These are the trappings of the Las Vegas Anarchist Cafe — a weekly powwow for anarchists and the “anarchy-curious.”
The A-Cafe has been sparsely attended as of late. But no matter. For those who show up, there is an anarchists’ revolution to plan. Charles Johnson, the forum’s 27-year-old co-founder, wants it to be a springboard for activism, a place where like-minded individuals can network.
Today’s anarchist projects can take so many forms — perhaps “the burrito project,” a decentralized movement to feed the hungry, or maybe “radical child care co-ops,” which bring together groups of parents who take turns babysitting. Shortly before the latest meeting, Johnson expounds on anarchist principles. Though talk of anarchy typically evokes an array of alarming possibilities — chaos, violence, terrorism — Johnson says Las Vegas has no reason to fear him or his followers.
Dictionaries define anarchy as political disorder and violence, but the political philosophy that promotes abolition of the state is actually all about creating order, says Johnson, a copper-haired Web developer who grew up in Alabama and moved to Las Vegas in 2007 by way of Michigan.
In his vision of an anarchic society, Johnson explains, decisions stem from consensus. Neighbors might seek mediation for disputes instead of taking matters to established courts. In hard times, people might share food instead of relying on government handouts.
Johnson’s anarchy “is about lawless order, cooperation rather than coercion.”
Nevertheless, the ideology is a tough sell. A libertarian who frequents Johnson’s meet-ups skipped much of the most recent one, bored by Johnson’s half-hour-long reading of an anarchist essay.
According to a bright yellow flier trumpeting “Vegas Anarchy,” the reasons to turn to anarchy are obvious.
“Why Anarchy?” the handout begins. “Well, look around. Consider the alternative. Think about the last time you were at the airport. Think about what it feels like to go through a government ‘security’ checkpoint. The endless lines. The searches. The arbitrary orders about laptops and shoes and liquids and gels. Did the harassment and humiliation make you feel safer? Or did you feel something else?”
For people feeling that “something else,” the A-Cafe can serve as a springboard to activism, Johnson says. He estimates the meet-up has drawn about 60 different people all told since its inception last summer.
Anarchism’s emphasis on freedom appeals to Nevada’s libertarian slant. Its overarching philosophy is what strikes people as unreal. Johnson’s goal is “peaceful revolution from the existing society to a fully free society” — that is, the elimination of government as we know it.
The philosophy has gained traction recently through projects such as Critical Mass, in which bicyclists congregate and take to the streets, often without a set route, and Food Not Bombs, a decentralized movement whose devotees share vegetarian food with hungry people, according to Dana Ward, an anarchist and professor of political science at Pitzer College in California. Johnson, who learned of anarchist thinking through other activists and his libertarian father’s books, is a Food Not Bomber.
On Sundays, he practices his anarchy by joining Gail Sacco, a well-known local advocate for the homeless, and others to serve meals at Baker Park. The idea, he says, is to circumvent government bureaucracy in providing help. Anyone can eat, regardless of income.
“What we’re doing,” Johnson says, “is providing grass-roots mutual aid in the form of food.”
Sacco, who describes herself as a “nonviolent Christian anarchist with a little bit of libertarian in me,” says some participants found out about Food Not Bombs through the A-Cafe.
At the most recent coffee shop gathering, silence follows Johnson’s reading of anarchist Benjamin Tucker’s “State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree, and Wherein They Differ.”
When he began his reading, he had an audience of seven, including one young woman who happened to be in the room using her laptop to browse Facebook profiles before the event got started.
Now, only three listeners remain. (The Facebooker left.) Johnson slips out from behind his garbage-bin-turned-lectern and sits at a nearby table, draining the melted ice of his drink. Ceiling fans twirl overhead. Everyone is quiet.
Despite a clumsy start, the conversation picks up, dominated primarily by Johnson and Rachel Bovard, 26, a self-described anarchofeminist.
The discussion moves from inheritance and patriarchal societies to feminism and the need for anarchists to band together and realize, as Johnson puts it, that “our closest allies are anarchists — not a bunch of statists.”
By 8 p.m., when a Coffee Bean barista pokes her head in the room to announce that the shop is closing in one minute, the small group is talking about specifics.
Johnson has invited Bovard to speak at the A-Cafe about an upcoming nationwide protest against a company whose bulldozers Israel has used to demolish Palestinian properties. Bovard, a writing tutor, has offered to help build an Independent Media Center in Las Vegas.
Their revolution is under way.
Discussion: 15 comments so far…
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Why do these people look like a) rejects from a Star Trek convention or b) people that still live with their mothers?
I hear a few of these people call into local hate talk radio, and they are not received well there...the right wing people like government when it fights wars on drugs, Iraq, etc. and builds jails...alot of these people cash their unemployment, disability, or social security check before going to these meetings. Do anarhofeminists believe in birth "control"?
why you gotta hate on Star Trek?
Free Thinkers will soon rule the world!
Comment removed by staff.
Great! Las Vegas needs some independent thinkers. Glad to hear it.
Oh come on, my comment wasn't abusive (or was the 'bleached skulls' comment over the top?). It was simply to point out that people like Johnson need the law more than they can imagine because they would not be able to defend themselves in the society that they seek.
And he wouldn't. He wouldn't last a day. That isn't a threat from me to him, it's just the fact. He isn't cut out for a Mad Max world.
I'm not surprised by some of the closed-minded comments here. But going, think about the basic principal of what these guys and girls believe - a world where people coexist through voluntary cooperation (rather than coercion).
Is that something to laugh at? Perhaps we do need laws to protect us right now, but that is only because we are too barbaric to get along without the force of government. Does that mean the ideal is impossible? Not exactly.
There are plenty of examples where people get along cooperate, volunteer, help one another without government compelling them to do so. This is a noble idea if you are open and willing to admit that government is not always the solution to our problems.
If we were living in the 1950's, these guys would be called beatniks. In the 60's they were hippies. Today, they're "anarchists". Tomorrow, they'll be "kooks".
Those who are curious about how Anarchists expect their ideas of lawless order and consensual cooperation to work out peacefully in a free society, those who are sure they have a knock-down argument that Anarchism cannot possibly work, and those who are just interested to learn more are all invited to come to our upcoming Anarchist Cafe event tomorrow at 6:00pm at the Coffee Bean (4550 S. Maryland Ave.). Part of the night's event will be a freewheeling "Ask An Anarchist!" Q&A session in which you can ask your questions directly, and you can find out more about how Anarchists would respond to them.
(For example, questions such as "How would people defend themselves from violence without government law-and-order?" is nothing that Anarchists have not heard before. Our literature table, in fact, carries pamphlets that address precisely that question.)
goingbust, regardless of what I, personally, am or am not capable of defending myself from, if you think that Anarchists advocate a society without peace or social order, then you have misunderstood what Anarchists advocate. We advocate a society without rulers, not a society without rules. Perhaps you think that without government laws, there can be no rules of orderly social conduct and no organized defense against violence; but if so that claim is something you'll need to prove.
Anarchists (or at least, those who believe in the kind of Anarchism that I advocate) have no beef with peace, order, civilized society, or organized self-defense. What we believe is that peace, order, and civilization can emerge from the social connections between free and equal people, without having to be imposed by a central government. In such a society order is achieved by means of community-based (rather than government-based) self-defense, a peaceful and competitive selection of private mediators and arbitrators for disputes (rather than monopolizing mediation in an overwhelmed and constantly rigged government court system), and voluntary associations for community, trade, and mutual aid (rather than government welfare bureaucracies, government-privileged-and-government-subsidized corporations, and government-controlled "public spaces"). If you think that such an arrangement is impossible or impractical, again, that's fine, but you'll have to give some explanation of what's wrong with it, rather than simply assuming it away, if you want anyone else to agree with you.
mred, I agree with you that the American Right is not consistently opposed to invasive big government. That's part of the reason why I'm an Anarchist rather than a Rightist.
Anarcha-feminists believe that government should not intervene in any way in women's decisions about their own bodies or about their own reproductive healthcare. So they oppose any form of government prohibitions on birth control (or abortion). There is no one particular anarcha-feminist position on whether women ought to choose to use birth control, and if so what methods they ought to choose; that's something that each individual woman needs to work out for herself in her own life. The important thing is that she be free to choose and able to get all the relevant information needed to make the choice.
Hope this helps. And if you've got more questions, again, come on down to the A-Cafe tomorrow night and you can ask me directly.
You "anarchists" seem to be more what I call a "libertarian". The question is just how much you can break down government. A libertarian would say a lot. I guess an anarchist says even more, but at some point there does need to be force emanating from some source in order to create "peace, order, civilized society". Your solution is a willing collection of people organized for that purpose, you just don't call it a government. And maybe it isn't, by today's standards. Still, your ideas sound more like a libertarian society as envisioned in the novel "The Probability Broach" by L. Neil Smith and other libertarian writers.
A lot of confusion people have about anarchism can be avoided if we define its primary enemy not as "government" - a word which can mean different things - but as hierarchy. Since the nation-state is hierarchical by its nature, all anarchists oppose it. If you simply define government as social order, though, which many people seem to do, then anarchists do not oppose it, since we advocate social order based on cooperation among equals. (Think that's utopian? Try the alternative!) So any institution which gives some people control over others is not acceptable to anarchists.
Glad to see this here! Keep up the good fight.
I find it rather astonishing that so many people have managed to convince themselves that the only way to be secure is to surrender whatever ability you do have to defend yourself and place yourself at the mercy of someone else. Especially when the group they expect to defend them has such a long and storied history of violence and coercion toward those they are "protecting."