by Sean Swain

Explanatory note: In what follows, I would like to make a cogent analysis of the California hunger-strike, which is over at the time of this writing*, and the Gender Anarky oppositive to that hunger strike. I also use, for purposes of contrast, reference to unrelated prisoner resistance in Ohio undertaken by a group calling itself the Army of the 12 Monkeys, and I do so in order to support my own critique.

BackgroundIn July 2013, California prisoners undertook a mass hungerstrike in protest of longer-term solitary confinement conditions. This strike was led by prisoners at Pelican Bay.

In a statement attributed to Sister Amazon of the Gender Anarky Prison Column, this hungerstrike was condemned, as were the anarchists who supported it. According to the statement, anarchist supporters of the strike are uninformed, the hunger strikers are reactionaries who are “worse oppressors than the government,” and a revolutionary agenda can in no way be served by the hunger strike given the tendencies of the strikers and their true self-serving motives underlying the strike.

I would like to respond to these in reverse order, addressing the Gender Anarky critique first, and the strike itself, second.

Gender Anarky’s CritiqueGender Anarky asserts that “supporters” of the strike “have no idea or understanding” of the real situation. This is a dismissie attitude, painting supporters with the same brush. Further there is no way to know if such an assertion is true. Gender Anarky also writes, “any position to the contrary is straight up bullshit.”

Anarchists, in my concemption, acknowledge and validate a variety and diversity of views. This Gender Anarky statement is intolerant of any opposing view, and it is objectively not anarchist.

It also paints all of the hunger strikers with the same bigot-brush, and assigns them the same nefarious, ulterior motive. Just as all suporters are clueless, all hunger strikers are “racists”-“capitalists”-“nationalists”-“anti-revoltionary” and “anti-fag.” This characterization is itself a kind of narrow-minded slander that, if similarly leveled at an ally (“all of those trans prisoners”), would be called out for the reactionism that it is.

So, it becomes clear that this statement is not a theoretical analysis, but is instead a knee-jerk reaction to an event based mroe on how the writer(s) “feel” about the strikers and their perceived politics or lack thereof.

From an anarchist perspective, objectively, no one can be “worse oppressors than the government.” No one else possesses the power to oppress that government does.** To say that someone other than the government could be the worst oppressor is to essentially say that hierarchy is not the problem, that the rulers, the authorities, and the power their yield should only be addressed after properly dispatching enemies on the horizontal plane – like the Aryan Brotherhood, the Mexican Mafia, and perhaps the John Birch Book Club.

It appears that Gender Anarky has confused “solidarity of action” with “Facebook friending.”

Affinity or personal affection are not necessary for mutual aid and cooperation. Whether two struggling groups with a common oppressor “like” each other or not is irrelevant to the common interest of uniting for a purpose in serving the larger class. In this case, if hungerstrikers successfully achieved gains, they would do so for all prisoners designated to the SHU; Black, white, latino, gay straight, trans, bi; no distinction. The worst Aryan ungerstriker with a swastika on his chest did not sign a statement demanding State concessions only for straight white males who vote Republican. He demande concessions for

prisoners. In that sense, his approach is far more consistent with anarchist principles and his thinking is more inclusive than the statement generated by Gender Anarky. Such a hungerstriker might be inclined to point to the statement and claim Gender Anarky “are worse oppressors than the government.”***

The appropriate criteria for judging an action, by my thinking, is whether the

actionis consistent with anarchsit principles. If it is, then as an anarchist, I can endorse, support, or join it. If it is not, I cannot.

If someone blows up the Hoover Dam and plunges the world into a sustainable Stone Age, the question of that mastermind’s politis is irrelevant. It matters not her position on interracial marriage or her feelings about circumcizing newborn males. What she thinks bout anything is irrelevant; she has delivered a better future for everyone, including interracial couples.

If someone is fighting a cop and yells for help, it would be inappropriate to interrogate him about his anti-State proclivities before hitting the cop with a brick. Whatever the human’s views, one must side with the living organism and oppose the State agent, the representative of hierarchy, politics notwithstanding. So, properly, the question is the character of the action itself. And my criticism, then, turns to the hunger strike itself.

The Hunger-StrikeIn my view, the hungerstrikers are not essentially anarchist. In 2003, in my reformist days, I maintained a hungerstrike for 44 days.I sougth reformist goals through acceptable, reformist action.

A hugnerstrike is appealing to authority, not rejecting it. A hungerstriker is validating the ruler-subject relationship. Furthermore, the hungerstriker, operating within the framework of commonly defined pacifism, is implicitly rejecting the legitimacy and efficacy of political violence, thereby reinforcing false conceptions that contribute to the anti-revolutionary status quo. And, on top of all of that, even when successful, the hungerstrike only presents that the problem can be solved through reforms to the system rather than through smashing the State.

Apart from that essentially anarchist critique, hungerstriking is

notnonviolent. As a former hungerstriker, I can say unequivocally that a hungerstrike is violence. It inflicts harm upon the hungerstriker.

As an anarchist and as a revolutionary – and simply as a prisoner – I must object on principle to any strategy that inflicts harm upon a prisoner rather than upon the guards.

Contrast the hungerstrike with the unrelated but simultaneously-occuring Army of the 12 Monkey resistance in Ohio prisons. The 12 Monkey actions were of a distinctly different character.

Apart from organization, which appeared to be strictly horizontal, non-hierarchic, and based on consensus, their conduct was revolutionary rather than reformist. Their literature called for attacks on the prison system, to include sabotage and violence against staff; and while some of their flyers made reference to potential gains like conjugal visits or state-pay raises – which seems to imply a process of negotiating demands – the group made clear their singular purpose in crippling the prison complex. In other words, The Army of 12 Monkeys’ singular and non-negotiable demand is the end of prisons… conjugal visits and state-pay raises be damnded.

From another view, The Army of 12 Monkeys was “revolutionary” and “anarchist” in that they appealed to the prison population to engagei n insurrectionary action, in complete rejection of the authority of the State and its agents. One flyer, featuring Guy Fawkes, stated: “If you are a PRISONERS, consider this an invitation… If you are a WARDEN, consider this a threat…”

The 12 Monkeys rejeted the pacifist-reformist paradigm, instructing on guerrilla methods for attacking staff. But even in thsi, the Army of 12 Monkeys can be distinguished from prior prisoner revolts such as the Attica and Lucasville Uprisings in that, even when avocating political violence, they did not advocate

recognition of the State. That is, unlike Attica and Lucasville where prisoners ultimately sought concessions from the State in exchange for returning control of the prisons, the Army of 12 Monkeys did not contemplate recognition of the State so much as they intended its destruction. In this way, the emergence of the Army of 12 Monkeys is singularly distinguishable from all previous prisoner resistance, and is more analogous to the 19th century slave revolts led by Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey, or the John Brown rebellion at Harper’s Ferry – all of which are far more in line with genuine anarchist principles than the hungerstrike which gained more “anarchist” support.

Instead of facilitating prisoners starving themselves to death, begging for scraps from the mater’s table, anarchists could have supported a revolutioary formation intent on burning down the prison industrial complex and liberating everyone completely. Self-harming, pacifist reformism (that was in the end defeated) won out.

In this way, the prisoners’ self-harming, pacfist reformism didn’t just prove a failure; didn’t just use up a lot of time and resources; didn’t just pull a huge number of self-identifying anarchists away from a more-essentially anarchist revolutionary action; but after all of that (and setting back reformist goals by failing), the hungerstrike continues to suck all of the air out of the room while the Army of the 12 Monkey resistance continues and spreads, absent any media attention and ostensibly without any free world support, seemingly still disconnected – in the wa that self-harming, pacifist reformism is inextricably connected – to the anarchist community.

There appears to be no outside support for the Army of the 12 Monkeys apart from the online posting of their materials (http://ge.tt/2ckaeFO/v/0; http://ge.tt/6UJJ4xP/v/0; and http://ge.tt/6UJJ4xP). Yet, after their emergence at the Mansfield Correctional, which drew the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (who had personnel on site within 2 weeks), the group spread to the Lake Erie Correctional and staged a 3-da riot, and then spread to Noble Correctional. These are also, it must be reminded, the events that the Ohio prison system simply cannot deny. Quite conceivably, 12 Monkey resistance spread and is ongoing at plausibly-deniable levels at every Ohio prison. Prison staff intimate, for isntance, that 12 Monkey materials were found in a large cache hidden in a common area in shakedowns after a prisoner-on-prisoner beating death that occurred at Toledo Correctional.

Objectively, the California hungerstrike, by maintaining attention, may yet contribute to the neutralization of a revolutionary, insurrectionary, anarchist resistance formation that is singularly monumental and historic for its revolutionary, insurrectionary, and essentially-anarchist character.

*I point this out because, while the strike was ongoing, every reference I made to it was supportive and I write this criticism only now, after the strike has ended. While ongoing, I owed fellow prisoners in struggle my solidarity. Consulted post-action, I owe them my honesty…

**Perhaps “capitalists” could be considered “worse oppressors” from a certain perspective, but I am assuming a theoretical understanding that governments serve as middle-managers for the capitalists and, therefore, multinational corporations are “government.”

***Ironically, Gender Anarky has the inauspicious distinction of being more narrow-minded and exclusionary than the reactionaries they critique.

WRITE TO SEAN SWAIN:

Sean Swain #243205
Ohio State Penitentiary
Coitsville-Hubbard Road
Youngstown, OH 44505