Democracy in America?: Occupy Movement Calls Nation’s Bluff

In many ways, the core of the Occupy Wall St. movement’s impact in the U.S. has been to expose how corrupt our systems of governance really are, and to show in action what (direct) democracy, actually looks like. We live in an age of perverse language, when “democracy” and “freedom” are exported by drones, or at gunpoint, and where anarchism — democracy without government — is viewed by many as tantamount to terrorism.

With those specific things in mind, here is a cluster of material related to the underlying theory and evolving practice of the Occupy movement, highlighting adaptive and prefigurative organizing successes and casting an eye towards 2012.

read more at SELECTIONS FROM THE COALMINE >>

Considering Zomia: Elevation & the Art of Not Being Governed

Last year, while traveling in East Asia, I read a fascinating book, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, by James C. Scott, a professor of Agrarian Studies at Yale University.

Scott’s book is essentially about  a  very large number of intentional Southeast Asian maroons or refugees–Zomians–and the book is making me re-think a lot of things, about the normal “advance of civilization” narrative and all that it assumes, presupposes, and omits. It’s also made me to recontextualize my understanding of nation-states to include the surprising importance of elevation.

Tibetans are Zomians. They are are, as I think almost everybody knows, long-term resisters against the Han Chinese empire. The Tibetans are fierce and lovely people who wish not to be told where or how to live. Their monks are known for many things, including sparking militant protest, as they did in March 2008 in Lhasa (elevation: 11,450ft) :


Continue reading