textfiles/politics/SPUNK/sp001299.txt

Anarchy in the Here and Now!
by Joe Average

There is an old saying that if you put 3 anarchists in a room together 
you will have 4 definitions of anarchy! In fact, every anarchist has 
her own way of explaining what anarchy is all about. At the same 
time, anarchists share some very basic assumptions about the ways 
in which the world works and what kind of life would be better. This 
pamphlet presents one personUs view--my own-- of anarchy, one 
that shares certain ideas with all other anarchists and also highlights 
a variety of personal opinions about the nature of society and the 
process of social change. Of course, you need not take my word for it, 
and you need not adopt my view as your own. One of the most 
important messages of anarchy is RThink For Yourself!S Read! Talk! 
Find out about anarchist history and see what anarchists are saying 
and doing today. I have included a list of resources at the end of this 
essay which covers a variety of publications: books, magazines, 
journals, pamphlets, and so on. Each presents a particular view or 
take on anarchy and social transformation; some I agree with, some I 
do not. It is up to you to determine their differences and similarities, 
to find out what unites anarchists and what differences we have in 
our ideas, goals, and strategies. 

What is anarchy and why should I care?

Governments and corporations are out of control, and we no longer 
feel connected enough to one another to oppose them. Many people 
do not even want to oppose these powerful elites, as they benefit in 
certain ways from supporting their programs. But the vast majority 
of us do not benefit, or the costs drastically outweigh any rewards. 
We find ourselves isolated, alienated, disconnected. We have 
problems with the system, but we can not articulate them, nor can 
we even begin by ourselves to fathom what Rthe systemS entails. It 
is so vast. We know it has failed miserably in its promise of 
RhappinessS and Rdomestic tranquility,S that it just doesnUt work, 
but we arenUt sure what we should replace it with.
Many if not most of us hate work and school. We yearn for 
something different but we donUt know what. We harbor vague 
notions of finding a job that doesnUt drain us or that we might even 
like, or of Rjust plugging awayS through school for that diploma or 
degree. Many of us wish we had more to eat, and we have to rely on 
the government to feed us, but we feel like shit because of it. Still 
more people hardly eat at all. They die of starvation and 
malnutrition, slowly, subtly, but definitely. This is not from lack of 
food in the world: we watch on the television as they burn tons and 
tons of grain to keep market prices up. We see a culture so rich in 
food and resources that it can afford to waste vast amounts every 
day. Food goes into the landfill instead of our bellies, and grain is 
grown to feed cattle rather than humans. Millions of people donUt 
have a roof over their head, even though we know that there are 
enough buildings to house everyone. We know. And we all know that 
a small group of people control the vast majorityJof wealth and 
resources in our society, to the detriment of us all. Deep down, we 
have some idea that this system creates our hunger and our 
malnutrition, our homelessness and poverty, our anxiety and despair, 
our isolation from one another. 
We are aware in our daily life that we spectate more than we 
participate. We spend hours and hours watching television when our 
grandparents would have spent the time talking with neighbors on 
the stoop or raising a barn down the road. Of course, just because we 
watch television doesnUt mean we donUt think, but it does isolate us 
from one another and prevents us from making meaningful 
associations and actively participating in public life. And where 
people once came together for speeches and picnics and rallies so 
that they could discuss the political affairs of their communities, we 
are now subjected to the glaring spectacle of electronic elections 
where the choice between Democrat and Republican grows more and 
more meaningless. In fact, daily we become more and more aware of 
the real lack of choices in our lives.
Of course we do make choices, but from what range of options, and 
what kind of choices are we allowed to make? Our employers might 
poll us on our opinion about a new sculpture in the company plaza or 
about how to make production more efficient, but they will not ask 
us how we feel our jobs and work life can be improved, or if we feel 
we make enough money to live on. That is not their concern. Bosses 
want obedient workers, not active participants. The same is true of 
officials in government, who are so contemptuous and distrusting of 
the people that they present only the barest illusion of choice in the 
conduct of state affairs. Congress squandors resources while raising 
its pay, presidents and advisors conduct secret wars and arms deals 
with our tax dollars, and policy makers work hand-in-hand with 
public relations specialists to control the terms of debate and to limit 
public input in decisions. Mainstream corporate media, interested 
purely in profit, actively self-censors news and information to 
conform to a narrow range of options. A commentator might say 
Rhomelessness is badS but would NEVER say Rthe system itself is 
bad because it puts property and profit before human needs.S Thus, 
our range of options is severely limited by elites in government, big 
business, and corporate media because they are frightful of the 
prospect of real public input. Instead of participating, we spectate 
while the RexpertsS make choices for us. In fact, we are never asked 
to participate in any meaningful way in the decisions that truly 
shape and affect our lives. 
Thus, if you take as a starting premise that true democracy is a 
condition in which people in a community gather together to 
participate in the decision-making process, then one way to view 
anarchy is as the logical conclusion of democratic life. It is to say that 
you and I, working together, can shape the affairs of our 
communities far more effectively than can remote politicians and 
bureaucrats, and that their authority-- backed by force and coercion-
-is an arbitrary authority unworthy of our support. Instead, in a true 
democracy, we would replace authority with merit, coercion with 
cooperation, and force with voluntary participation. 
From this we can conclude that democracy as it is practiced today is 
not true democracy, but is rather a great big joke. It is a system 
where a small number of people wield the power to shape public life 
and opinion, to make laws and extract obedience from the majority 
of the population either by direct force or by more subtle means 
such as propaganda and misinformation. We do not participate in this 
system in any meaningful way: once in awhile we are RallowedS to 
RvoteS in the shams called elections, and we vote for people who tell 
us that they represent our best interests. In the end, though, nobody 
can truly represent our interests on such a grand scale, and we do 
not have the power to enter the political sphere so as to have a say 
in how our taxes are spent or how our government behaves. Most of 
us would like to see our tax dollars--if they are to be collected at all-
-going toward social spending rather than military spending, but our 
leaders tell us that we RneedS to build weapons of destruction. They 
tell us that it is more important to spend money on tracking down, 
prosecuting, and incarcerating non-violent drug users than it is to 
educate our children or feed hungry people. When we do attempt to 
enter the political arena in a meaningful way, such as in large-scale 
protests over the Vietnam War and the Persian Gulf Slaughter, or in 
citizen-based initiatives to freeze the nuclear build-up or to curb the 
deadly policies toward Latin America, our leaders ignore us or attack 
us. This proves that we are not meant to actively participate in 
political life, and that we are supposed to be obedient and 
acquiescent and let the RexpertsS handle all the decisions. 
The same is true in the workplace, where we are even more 
brutalized and alienated. The difference there is that bosses never 
even had a pretense of democracy and participation. You shut up and 
do what you are told or you are fired! Period! Bosses exploit our 
labor and return small crumbs to us. Corporations destroy the 
environment to produce commodities for our consumption, and 
advertisers make us think we need all the crap that they produce. In 
the end, they make off stinking rich and we work our lives into an 
early grave for shit. The poorer we are the less chance we have in 
getting our fair share of the wealth that we deserve, and the less 
power we have to oppose bosses and the ways in which they use us 
as factory fodder. The poorer we are the less chance we have in 
opposing corporations and their constant dumping of toxic wastes in 
our communities. They have the economic power to do as they 
please, with few constraints by the government. Together, the 
government and big business form a powerful organization that 
clearly acts contrary to the interests of the vast majority of people. 
We work in their offices and factories and then, when they find an 
enemy overseas, we die in their wars, or we watch as they send our 
sons and daughters, brothers and sisters and lovers to die. For what 
thanks?-- A pitiful wage and a cheap concrete memorial on the 
courthouse lawn. THANKS BUT NO THANKS! 
As an anarchist, I oppose the power of all bosses, whether they rule 
in the state or in the workplace. In fact, as an anarchist I oppose ALL 
forms of coercion, oppression, domination, and hierarchy. This 
includes not just one individual dominating another, but also 
SYSTEMS of oppression such as capitalism, racism, sexism, and 
homophobia. At root, I practice the principle that an individual 
should have the freedom to do what she wants so long as it does not 
harm another individual, and that one should never be brutalized for 
oneUs skin color or sexuality or gender or way of dressing and eating 
and living. Anarchy is about creating an environment wherein the 
individual can develop her creative potential and exercise her liberty 
to the greatest extent possible in the absence of coercion, laws, 
regulations, and arbitrary authority. Does this mean, then, that I am 
opposed to all forms of organization and order?
Of course not. Anarchy does not mean Rwithout orderS or Rwithout 
organization.S It is not chaos. To myJmind, what we have today is 
chaos, with governments brutalizing and terrorizing populations, 
making war on us, regulating us, constraining us, strafing villages 
and cities with bombs, napalm, agent orange, poison gas the world 
round--ALL governments have at one time or another been guilty of 
such atrocities. Some, of course, are worse than others in the amount 
of suffering and destruction they cause. Formerly RCommunistS 
Soviet Union and presently RCapitalistS United States are both guilty 
of a long list of dirty deeds, including invasions, covert actions and 
intervention in other countries, brutalization of domestic populations 
both at home and abroad. But they are not without rivals: the 
governments of Indonesia, China, Iraq, United Kingdom, Spain, Iran, 
Turkey, El Salvador, Romania, Guatemala, Germany, and countless 
others have been guilty at one time or another of great crimes 
against humanity. This to me is not order: it is chaos.
Chaos is the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund using 
economic coercion and the threat of violence to force people in so-
called RdevelopingS nations to give up subsistence farming and vast 
tracts of land to Multinational Corporations who then engage in 
export agribusiness, using the formerly self-sufficient peoples as 
wage-slaves in their fields. These economic agencies--like the 
governments and corporations who lend them authority and, when 
necessary, military force--need obey no moral codes. They are bound 
by no standards of ethics and sensibility, save their own, and they 
call what they do the protection of RinterestsS and the maintenance 
of Rorder.S Of course, it is obvious that it is not our interests they are 
protecting, but those of rich bosses and corporations. To me, their 
RorderS is deadly. It is not the kind of world in whichJI want to live! 
Anarchy opposes this RorderS not with chaos, but with a DIFFERENT 
KIND OF ORDER! It is a better order, a way of setting up a society in 
the most reasonable and non-coercive way possible. The challenge 
for me as an anarchist is to find the best KIND of social organization, 
one in which the individual can grow and develop to her greatest 
potential, uninhibited by lack of food or shelter or a fair share of the 
resources required to live. To me, anarchy is the attempt to create 
this kind of society, one without leaders and without coercive 
authority, without wars and without deprivation. 

How Anarchy?

How do we go about building this kind of world? Some people feel 
that it must be done by gaining control of the state machinery, either 
through the so-called RdemocraticS process--as with Labor and 
Socialist and Libertarian parties--or by Revolution. Many 
Revolutionaries--such as Communists and Marxists--foresee a period 
where a small RvanguardS of radical intellectuals would act Rin 
behalf ofS the Rworking classS in order to seize control of the 
distribution and allocation of resources. Communists believe that in 
order to create a just society, RrepresentativesS of the working class 
must act in their interests by seizing state power and instituting a 
dictatorship. 
As an anarchist, I feel that these methods are flawed and doomed. 
Acting within the system through lobbying and voting and 
politicking CAN be a good tactic for increasing the responsiveness of 
institutions to the needs of greater numbers of people, but in the end 
nothing really changes. It is the system itself which is so flawed as to 
make any small gains within seem incremental at best. Acting 
through RRevolutionS in the classical sense of the word is even more 
useless to my thinking, as you just replace one set of bosses with the 
other. These new bosses claim to represent the interests of the 
Rworking classS but, as we have seen in the Soviet Union, large-scale 
Revolutions degenerate into static bureaucracies at best, and 
totalitarian dungeons at worst. The main problem with this brand of 
Revolution is that it tries to force changes from the top down onto a 
society that is not ready for the shock of transformation. The changes 
are dictated from above, from a national- level state machinery, 
rather than emerging from the needs of people in their communities. 
Moreover, Marxist-style Revolutions focus only on economic aspects 
and ignore the ways in which power is exercised in society, whether 
it be the Communist bureaucrat dictating the life of the farmer and 
factory worker, men oppressing women, or one ethnic group 
dominating another. Finally, talk of Revolution today is not so much 
arrogant as it is irrelevant: increasingly the professional 
Revolutionaries are out of touch with basic needs and desires felt by 
people in daily life, and their sloganeering is elitist and boring. They 
are more interested in recruiting members, garnering dues, and 
hocking their papers than they are in working with people in a 
community to affect real changes.
To be fair, much anarchist thought and action in the past and present 
is equally useless. Many anarchists used to feel that it was enough to 
just rise up and destroy the state, afterwards instituting 
RspontaneousS social organizations to co-ordinate work life and civic 
life. To me, this is an absurd idea for todayUs political and social 
situation. To begin with, the state is too powerful at this time for 
people to overthrow directly and militantly. This is by no means to 
say that militant confrontation with authorities is to be ruled out: in 
fact, it is crucial that we DO confront authorities when the need arises 
so that they are always aware that we are here and that we oppose 
their brutality and oppression. But to imagine that we could topple 
all the powerful institutions such as the police and army, the FBI and 
the CIA, schools and the IRS with militant street fighting alone is an 
exercise in futility. 
Rather, I believe we should couple our work in confrontation--from 
within the system and from without--with a broad-based attempt to 
create alternative social relations and economic networks which help 
us to minimize our reliance on the state and on corporations, and 
which emphasize reliance upon ourselves and those in our 
communities. We need to constantly work to decentralize power, to 
create institutions which are responsive to our needs and that are 
inclusive of a diversity of peoples and opinions, and to build 
organizations from the ground up--the Rgrass rootsS--which do the 
work of social maintenance without the coercion of government and 
corporate power. Call it what you will: community control, workplace 
democracy, DIY (Do-It-Yourself) cultural innovation--the bottom line 
is voluntary participation and direct access for all individuals in 
shaping the processes of society.
This kind of social transformation could cover a lot of ground, 
encompassing areas such as but not limited to: 
Food: localized agricultural support networks which connect rural 
and urban people into networks of exchange so that a community can 
strive for self-sufficiency: re-greening of cities and towns using 
available spaces as commons for growing food: learning how to grow 
food and teaching others: networks of community kitchens where 
neighbors and friends can come together to share food and cooking 
tasks and skills
Housing: co-operative housing arrangements both within a house and 
between neighbors who could share such tasks as gardening, child 
care, maintenance, and so on: squatting and squatter support for 
housing the homeless!
Economics: starting locally-based co-operative and anti-profit 
businesses, encouraging barter and exchange networks, realizing the 
power of your own community to produce a variety of necessities as 
well as desired luxuries: shift from reliance on a capitalist system to 
an economy where people share all wealth and resources equitably: 
taking away the profit motive and doing business in order to support 
yourself and your partners so as to do away with the need to expand 
into industrial modes: educate yourself and others about how the 
consumer choices they make affect people in other parts of the 
world, and encourage people to alter their habits accordingly... 
Work: many of us believe that we spend way too much time working 
for others. Shifting economic emphases would help us become less 
and less dependent upon the shit wages they pay us, and allow us to 
work less. In fact, we should be able to produce as much as we need 
if everyone pitched in just a few hours a day...it requires 
commitment and participation, but the results are worth the effort! 
Anything we can do in our communities to ease our dependence 
upon Rthe manS and his wages is worthwhile. At the same time, 
explore ways in which your industry or workplace might become 
more responsive to workersU needs, and better yet how might you 
band together to gain ownership of the company!
Ecology: drastically decreasing consumption of packaged corporate 
goods is a lot easier than it seems. It is fine and well to attack 
corporations for their pollution and waste and exploitation, but in the 
end capitalism demands that consumer market needs be met, and if 
we can reduce our market needs in a sustained way, we can truly 
cripple the rich bosses who profit from our consumption and labor! 
This includes growing your food or buying it from local sources and 
in bulk, brewing your own beer and rolling your own cigarettes and 
encouraging others to do the same, cutting out certain luxuries you 
can do without...living by example can be very powerful! In order to 
drastically reduce water use and to free up land for re-greening, help 
promote widespread practice of vegetarianism (see resource guide in 
the back of this pamphlet!)
School: organized revolt in school is well nigh impossible. The system 
is too powerful. But learning is a value in itself and furthermore can 
be very beneficial. If you want to do certain things within the 
system, stay in school and see what you can do in the meantime to 
spread awareness about how fucked up schools are, and how you and 
your classmates might make some changes. If you can not stomach 
one more day of school past the age of 16 but you love learning, drop 
out and spend your life with books from the library (the public 
library is a very good institution, and would hopefully exist in ANY 
society--especially an anarchist society!) Find others who are drop 
outs and start study groups where you read things together and 
discuss them. Organize alternative schools, home-school co-
operatives, and so on. DonUt let them indoctrinate you: schools are 
the place where that happens most dramatically! Avoid it! Help 
others to do the same!
Family: re-define family to include a multitude of possibilities, such 
as gay and lesbian parents, multiple parenting and collective child-
rearing, friendship networks and extended kin ties and so on. Share 
responsibilities fairly and equally and make decisions democratically 
with as much participation as possible. Adopt children who need 
homes, raise children without gender or racial or sexual stereotypes.
Culture: find ways to integrate work and pleasure, aesthetics and 
pragmatics. Start DIY spaces, hostleries for nomads, artist co-ops, 
public art movements with murals and junk sculpture and mass 
public participation (everyone is creative--help others realize their 
own creativity)...Provide people on the streets with colored chalk, 
disrupt daily life, graduate to spray paint and stencils, brushes and 
paints, transform your environment and make it fun and beautiful!

None of this takes the place of working actively to limit the excesses 
of our government and its penchant for wars and subversion and 
oppression of people in other countries and at home. Starting a food 
co-op will not compel the state to pull its resources out of the 
military system and its weapons and influence out of other nations. 
We need sustained and protracted activism to challenge state and 
economic power at all levels, from the courtrooms and congressional 
chambers to the streets and barricades. 
But a housing co-op multiplied thousands of times WILL make a 
huge difference: it will alter and shape the ways in which we engage 
in social relations, and it will increase our participation in the 
decisions that effect our lives. In the same vein, civic groups and 
citizens councils that attempt to take over tasks previously delegated 
by local governments will herald a truly democratic public life and a 
system within which individuals feel they can act and be heard. DIY 
music clubs and magazines and pirate radio stations can form a loose 
network of alternative media which present a range of opinions and 
options not found or even possible in mainstream corporate media. 
Moves for workplace democracy and ownership, or the founding of 
alternative anti-profit businesses and co-operatives will go a long 
way toward a society based on sharing and cooperation and freedom 
rather than on greed and competition and deprivation.
We may never fully rid ourselves of deprivation, or of conflict and 
violence, but we can certainly work toward social organizations 
which minimize the conditions in which these arise. By working to 
reduce, minimize, or eliminate coercion, competition, exploitation, 
and oppression, we lay the groundwork for a different kind of social 
world. At the same time, then, we must also encourage co-operation, 
sharing, mutual aid and support, and respect so as to create a 
community and a public life in which individuals feel connected to 
one another rather than isolated, and where we each feel free to do 
as we please so long as it does not oppress or coerce another. We 
need to foster both personal and social relationships that respect and 
tolerate difference, wherein a variety of groups and individuals can 
come together as they see fit for the creation of community and the 
equitable sharing of resources. Groups can form and function as they 
need, or live separately as they desire. The important thing is that no 
one group or individual should hold coercive power over another, 
and that we all have the freedom to make choices. This is what 
anarchy is about: creating the conditions in which we DO have REAL 
choices about the ways in which we live our lives. 

When anarchy?

It need not be a distant Revolution or a Great Cataclysm. It is 
happening now. Anarchist societies are there, lurking below the 
legacy of greed and violence and war and hunger and oppression. 
Whenever we engage in an act of mutual aid, whenever people come 
together voluntarily to share food and fun or to perform a task or get 
a job done, that is anarchy in action. What the anarchist wants to do, 
then, is to recognize these situations and turn them into more or less 
permanent networks that individuals can move in and out of as they 
need.
When neighbors co-operate to do repairs on the streets in their area, 
or to grow food on a common land, or to fix up abandoned houses for 
low-income and homeless people, they are in their own way de-
legitimizing the government or corporate power and taking matters 
into their own hands. Of course, it is fine and well to petition the 
government to spend the money it extorts from us for such things--
after all, it IS OUR WEALTH! But we should not expect the 
government to be responsive to the real needs of people, as the state 
exists to protect the rights of the rich and privileged, not the poor 
and the underemployed or even the middle class. Rather, we should 
come together and figure out how we can get all the things done 
DESPITE the state, eventually making its existence irrelevant.
Perhaps more and more people working to increase citizen power 
and participation will find that many of the taxes they pay are 
unjust, and they only want taxes to go toward schools and libraries 
and road repair, not toward business incentives or building new 
super highways or financing the military. Then from the networks of 
support they are developing, they can create grass roots political 
initiatives which would alter the ways in which the decisions are 
made on government spending and greatly increase citizen input. 
Perhaps eventually people will come to find that the old systems of 
governing are inadequate and they need and desire more localized 
and direct control over their lives. This is what community power is 
all about: an attempt to involve everyone, black and white and latino 
and asian, women and men, young and old, gay and straight, 
Christian/Jew/Muslim/Hindu/Atheist, in the decision making 
processes of the community. And for the anarchist, it is about 
equalizing this involvement so that power, as well as resources and 
wealth, be shared in common. Finally, as an anarchist I see equality 
and cooperation as the only way to organize a society wherein the 
individual can develop her potential and exercise her liberty to the 
greatest extent possible. 
We can begin this transformation here and now by highlighting what 
is already good and existent in human relations, and by 
simultaneously developing new kinds of networks. We donUt have to 
build Revolutionary Parties or high-powered Congressional Lobby 
Organizations to do the work of social change. It takes groups of 
people committed to the idea and benefits of anarchy, community 
power, worker control, respect and tolerance, and true democracy 
who can get together and get things done, all the while sharing their 
successes and failures honestly with other groups who are trying 
similar things elsewhere. It means collaborating with those who are 
different in some way or another from you, and respecting those 
differences and learning something from them in the process. It 
means supporting and learning from groups who have long resisted 
the powers of the state, such as Native Americans and Afrikan 
Americans who face state-directed brutality and economic coercion 
on a daily basis in the inner cities and on the reservations of the U.S. 
It requires an international perspective so that we connect our 
struggles with those of groups in other parts of the world who are 
fighting tyranny, coercion, death squads, oppression, poverty, 
hunger, and disease. And finally it takes a sane mixture of rage and 
patience, as either sensibility alone dooms us to failure and futility.



List of Resources

Practical Anarchy
Quarterly magazine produced by a vegetarian librarian that stresses 
clear writing and the sharing of practical information.	Recent
topical issues: Anarchy & Voting, Women & Anarchy. 

Wind Chill Factor PO Box 81961 Chicago, IL 60681 
Militant Do-It-Yourself urban anarchist magazine. Generally packed 
with articles and graphics. Topics include: gentrification, 
Native American issues, Anarchist Black Cross work ( political 
prisoner support), reports on demonstrations and protests, and much 
more. These folks also distribute pamphlets and records, so write to 
them for a list of available materials!

Anarchy! A Journal of Desire Armed c/o CAL PO Box 1466 Columbia, 
MO	65205-1466
Provacative quarterly journal that spans both anarchist theory and 
practice. One of the best sources of news and information on 
international anarchist activity today. Features lengthy articles as 
well as rants, essays, book and magazine reviews, cartoons, and
	the famed collage work
of Baer, Being, and Keohnline.

Love and Rage ( Amor y Rabia) Box 3 Prince St Station NYNY 10012 
Revolutionary anarchist tabloid of the Love & Rage network.
	Plenty
of news and information on anarchist activity as well as	business of 
the
L&R net.

Profane Existence PO Box 8722 Minneapolis, MN 55408 
RMaking punk a threat againS is the (hopeful) subtitle of this tabloid. 
This collective endeavor attempts to wed the subcultural expressions 
of punk to the political ideas and goals of anarchy,	with
some success. Always an interesting read for getting a feel for	the
politicized wing of punk culture.

Dumpster Times PO Box 80044 Akron, OH 44308 
Produced by the incomprable (and indominable) Wendy Duke, this 
publication is always thought-provoking, with lots of writing from
	the
heart. Never petty, boring, or sectarian, Wendy assembles
	articles and
cartoons that are at times light and humorous, and	just as often 
serious
and urgent.

dreamtime village c/o xexoxial endarchy 1341 Williamson Madison, 
WI 53703
An intentional community in rural Wisconson devoted to the practice 
of anarchist-style cooperative living, and the creation of small-scale 
sustainable life and culture. Write them to get on theri mailing list 
for information on their activities. 

Perennial Books PO Box B14 Montague, MA 01351 
Distributor of a variety of new and used books of interest to 
anarchists and anti-authoritarians. Write for their catalogue. 

The Shadow PO Box 20296 NYNY 10009
Anarchist squatter tabloid from the Lower East Side of NYC. Good for 
familiarizing yourself with the housing struggles in that community. 

The Match c/o Fred Woodworth PO Box 3488 Tuscon, AZ 85722 
Fred is a real character, and he produces a high-quality journal using 
offset press technology. Strong in the area of fiction and personable 
essays (FredUs personality always shines through.) 

Anarchist Youth Federation PO Box 365 Canal St Station NYNY 10013-
0365
The AYF is a loosely affiliated network of chapters around the 
country which generally serves the needs of the young and young
	at heart.
Basically a good contact for sharing resources and	building youth
solidarity accross the continent. Write to find out how you can start 
an AYF chapter in your town.

The Web Collective PO Box 40890 San Francisco, CA 94110 
A group of Bay Area anti-authoritarian activists currently working 
on a Direct Action Manual, among other things. 

BAD Brigade PO Box 1323 Cambridge, MA 02238 
This organization produces numerous pamphlets and broadsides on a 
great variety of topics, such as war, pornography, electoral politics, 
and so on.

This is just a small sampling of what is out there--and here I focused 
on projects within the US alone! Through any and all of these 
publications and organizations you will be introduced to many 
others, spanning the vibrant international anarchist scene. Good luck, 
and feel free to contact the Bloomington Anarchist Union for more 
information! If you donUt contact us, feel free anyway....