The Tacoma Anarchist Network

The North West Anarchist Conference
Saturday, April 24th and Sunday, April 25th. 12:00 pm to 6:00 pm

At Evergreen State College, 2700 Evergreen Parkway NW,Olympia, Washington 98505
Inside Building Seminar II, room E 1107

A Short Introduction:
The idea and focus behind this conference is to bring different types of anarchist practice to the for-front and begin moving away from specific theoretical engagements. Rather than taking theory and separating it from its everyday practice. This is an attempt at allocating theory the ideas brought up in discussion and talked about and beginning to practice them (IE. Praxis). There will be no specific theory leading the discussions or dialogue throughout the time except for the person. The set up is to have the ability to talk and discuss the ideas in an open manner. So after every discussion there will be a small open dialogue about the ideas.

What is anarchist practice either to the individual or collective? How do different anarchist theories engage in their practice everyday? Is the point to find a comfortable space of habitation within capital? Or is it attack capital at its heart? Or is it to create alternatives to capitalism?

[Does ideology have a heart?]

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April 24th – doors open at 12:30

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM

Aragorn!

Neither I nor we.
Experimentation with form, practice, and context as anarchist practice.

Anarchist practice should have the vigor to fail, to stand alone and to work with others. Instead of couching our actions in archaic, or brittle ideas we should dare to try things that we know will not work, work with people we don’t particularly like, and suffer alone on points others are ambivalent about.

Drawing from years of working on anarchist projects, from psuedo-platformist, diy lifestylist, to publishing projects I will speak to a practice against imaginary revolutions, false unity (or solitude), and towards the practice of the unknown.

2:30 – 4:30 PM

Apio Ludd

WHO OWNS YOU?: Self-Ownership as a Basis for an Anarchist Theoretico-Practical Synthesis

I don’t think that it is possible to separate genuinely anarchist theory and practice. To engage theoretically is to engage practically and vice versa. Stirner’s idea of self-ownership provides a powerful basis for anarchist theoretico-practical endeavors with broad and deep implications that, at the same time, provide no easy answers. I will endeavor to show the absurdity of conceiving of theory and practice separately while working out the implications of self-ownership as a basis for anarchist theoretical endeavors and for the synthesis of the various endeavors of different individuals in a way that can strengthen all without enforcing an artificial unity.

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April 25th – doors open at 12:30

1:00 – 2:00 PM

John Zerzan

Anarchy in 2010: Are We up to the Challenge?

2:30-3:30 PM

Alexander & Aria

Identity Politics: Tactically Inefficient

A discussion on how the discourse of identity politics values oppressed
identities creating a guilt economy in both the radical, activist, and
anarchist circles. The topics of victimization and tokenization will be
brought to attention with the focus being how to deconstruct our
identities in order to destroy them and the world that creates them. This
will be an open discussion so come with disagreements and questions.

email us for any other information about the event:
aconferencenw@gmail.com

The Chicago Conspiracy
Friday, April 23rd at 8:00 pm

University of Puget Sound, 1500 North Warner Street, Tacoma, Wa
Inside the Wheelocke Student Center Murry Board Room

The Chicago Conspiracy Trailer (English Version) from Subversive Action Films on Vimeo.

The Chicago Conspiracy is a documentary three years in the making. The project was filmed in Chile, and the story extends into the Mapuche indigenous lands of Wallmapu. The concept for the film was born with the death of a former military dictator. We celebrated in the streets of Santiago with thousands of people after hearing the news: General Augusto Pinochet was dead. His regime murdered thousands and tortured tens of thousands after the military coup on September 11, 1973. We celebrated both his death and the implication that the political and economic system which put him in power might itself be mortal. We began this documentary with the death of a dictator, but we continue with the legacy of a dictatorship.

The Chicago Conspiracy takes its name from the approximately 25 Chilean economists who attended the University of Chicago and other prestigious universities beginning in the 1960s to study under the neoliberal economists Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger. After embracing Friedman’s neoliberal ideas, these economists returned to assist Pinochet’s military regime in imposing free market policies. They
privatized nearly every aspect of society, and Chile soon became a classic example of free market capitalism under the barrel of a gun.

The military coup was a conspiracy initiated by the upper classes in Chile and assisted by their international counterparts. The military’s action and its support from the CIA was executed on the pretext that the president at the time, Salvador Allende, a reformist and supporter of the democratic state, was actually a militant Marxist revolutionary. They claimed his government included a secret Plan Z that would establish a system similar to communist Cuba. The military has never successfully proven the existence of this plan.

The Chicago Conspiracy is a new vision of the military coup that does not focus on the story of the Allende government. Even before Allende’s election, there were armed revolutionary organizations throughout Chile, such as the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR). During the course of Allende’s rule, some factions believed that a reformist government would never bring an end to the capitalist system. This was the main group to lead an armed defense against the military once the coup was initiated. As the dictatorship took hold, the number of nationwide armed organizations grew to include MAPU-Lautaro and the communist Patriotic Front of Manuel Rodriguez (FPMR) in addition to the MIR.

The Chicago Conspiracy begins on March 29, 1985. On this day, two young brothers and militants of the MIR, Rafael and Eduardo Vergara, were gunned down by police as they walked through the politically active community Villa Francia. Recent investigations by the Chilean government have proven that the brothers were targeted by police; like so many young people before them, they were murdered by politically motivated assassins. Their community responded by creating a day of memory and protest, the Day of the Youth Combatant. Their older brother Pablo Vergara was later blown up in the southern Chilean city of Temuco in 1988.

The Chicago Conspiracy is about today. Following a national plebiscite in 1988, Pinochet ended his rule in 1990. The political classes in Chile only allowed the country to vote an end to the dictatorship out of growing fear of armed insurrection. 1990 brought a democratic government to Chile that continues to further the same neoliberal economic policies that were put into place by the dictatorship. Throughout the film, we follow the social discontent that exists to this day. We explore the legacy of a dictatorship.

The Chicago Conspiracy is about the students who fight a dictatorship-era educational law put into place on the last day of military rule. Over 700,000 students went on strike in 2006 to protest the privatized educational system. Police brutally repressed student marches and occupations.

The Chicago Conspiracy is about the Day of the Youth Combatant. March 29 is not only about the Vergara brothers–it is a day to remember all youth combatants who have died under the dictatorship and current democratic regime.

The Chicago Conspiracy is about the neighborhoods lining the outskirts of Santiago. They were originally land occupations, and later became centers of armed resistance against the military dictatorship. A number of them, such as la Victoria and Villa Francia, continue as areas of confrontational discontent to this day.

The Chicago Conspiracy is about the Mapuche conflict. The Mapuche people valiantly resisted Spanish occupation, and continue to resist the Chilean state and the multinational corporations who strip Mapuche territory for forestry plantations, mines, dams, and farming plantations. The government has utilized the dictatorship-era anti-terrorism law to jail Mapuche community members in struggle. Two young weichafes (Mapuche warriors), Alex Lemún and Matías Catrileo, were recently killed by Chilean police-one in 2002, the other in 2008.

The Chicago Conspiracy is a response to a global conspiracy of neoliberalism, militarism, and authoritarianism.

Anti-Prison, Anti-Border Demo
Saturday, April 17th at 2:00pm

At the Northwest Detention Center
1623 East J Street, Tacoma, Washington

Guns For Global Warming
Thursday, April 8th at 4:00 pm

University of Puget Sound, 1500 North Warner Street, Tacoma, Wa
Inside the Wheeler Student Center, Upstairs in room 202

Filed under: Past Events by Admin