The Diaspora Confederacy
A Situationist Experiment

Diaspora: the dispersed; all those peoples who are dispossessed from their homeland, and (in the majority of cases) alienated from their language, economic systems, ancestors, cultural and spiritual traditions.

Confederacy: a loose alliance; or union of individuals for some (often unlawful) purpose.

Situationist: one who replaces passivity with the construction of moments of life; one who aims at making situations, rather than passively recognizing them in academic or other separate terms. "Since the individual is defined by his situation, he wants the power to create situations worthy of his desires."

Experiment: a test made to demonstrate a known truth or to examine the validity of a hypothesis; the process of learning through observation.

Who is the Diaspora?

In what is now referred to as the "united states of america," essentially all of us are members of the Diaspora. Very few of us are indigenous to this land, and those that are native have almost entirely been either slaughtered, relocated, assimilated, or all three. Thus of the 250 million some members of this "nation" only perhaps a few thousand remain on ancestral lands, with a distinct language, culture and spiritual traditions. All of the rest of us are "dispersed" peoples.

Within all intact indigenous nations, an uncompromising defense of the land, people and history is always present. This is true whether we are speaking of Palestinians, Aborigines, Basques, animist Africans or the natives of Turtle Island. Those who have sustained their ancestral traditions in the midst of the omnipresent assault of capitalism and whiteness, have survived exactly because they have resisted the predominant tendency towards a rootless and a-historical "globalization."

Thus, when we say that we are of the Diaspora, we are simply acknowledging the destitution of our present condition. We say that we have been dispersed because this fosters the potential for a legitimately diverse and profound solidarity amongst all those currently living in the so-called "united states." From here there is a possibility of dignified collective action.

The positive action possible among the Diaspora is not rooted in what we have gained through our dispersion, but through what we have lost, and in the question 'where do we go from here?'

Specifically we are:

AFRICANS:

The largest, and the most important migration of peoples to conquered Turtle Island were the 80-100 million captured Africans sold as slaves in the emerging capitalist economy of the "New World." Without the theft of millions of people's labor, without the systematic desecration of their humanity, the invaders could not have created the empire of affluence and global terror that we now refer to as the "u.s." The historical enslavement of Africans is, both materially and psychologically, the most pervasive and foundational ingredient of our present miserable condition in this society.

The mass robbery of human beings instigated by European Christian invaders grew to be such a profitable endeavor that some among the African population began capturing and offering up their own for the thousands-of-miles journey to the insane degradation of the New World. Confined in a state of wretchedness comparable only to the likes of modern factory farms, more than half of the African "cargo" of the slavers died on passage to "the Americas" and were thrown into the sea like simple debris of a business enterprise.

Africans were stolen from dozens of nations throughout the west coast of Africa, as well as somewhat from the internal regions. The numerous languages, cultural and spiritual practices of the Africans were systematically undermined by the slave system. In the West Indies, Africans were "broken" for their eventual task of cultivating vast quantities of cotton, tobacco, indigo and sugar cane on plantations throughout the Caribbean and the southeastern united states.

It is this breaking of human beings that best exemplifies the experience of the Diaspora. Nations and families ruthlessly divided, the women raped by the master, the children sold "down the river." Native dance and music forbidden and forced underground, indigenous names obliterated by the master's name. Native religions and languages banned and replaced by the slaveholder's Christianity and English.

Having endured nearly three centuries of slavery, and another full century of apartheid terror, descendants of Africans in america have been almost entirely stripped of all legitimate sense of being African and have been given, in trade, the offensive and meager identity as an African-American.

EUROPEANS:

One way or another, either taught by the left or by the racist public schools, the history of Europeans in the Americas always begins with the history of those who initiated and profited from the genocidal slaving conquest. This is a piece of the history that cannot be ignored or understated. Yes, two continents were conquered and another was robbed of millions as slaves, and yes, the conquistadors were from Europe.

For sure, there has always been a class of Europeans that stockpiled stolen gold and silver, that burned natives alive and buried the corpses in mass graves, that owned vast plantations and sold the sugar, rum, tobacco, cotton and indigo on the international market, that owned the ships that carted Africans across the Atlantic as cattle, that called for the mass distribution of smallpox blankets, that came to brutally Christianize "ignorant savages," that slaughtered millions of buffalo and harp seals with reckless abandon, that established themselves as the new government, and so forth.

And yet, saying this only tells the very crudest beginning of the story of Europeans in this country. The vast majority of settlers, in general, and even among the armies of colonization, were not the wealthy speculators and bishops that really spearheaded the initiative. Many millions of European migrants were impoverished folks, criminals or criminalized revolutionaries and religionists, thousands of whom were forced to migrate for exactly these reasons. Very little has been done to understand and describe this process (certainly by the white radical movement in the u.s.) but we can begin with the sparse knowledge we do have, and build from there.

For example, there is the story of the Irish peasants crammed into ships strikingly similar to slaving vessels (often a third to a half of the "cargo" died or was sickeningly ill upon arrival) and sent to america during the famine of the 1840s. These Irish folks were forced to migrate to america because it was cheaper for the landlords to ship them abroad than to wait for starving people to pay rent.

Then there's the English revolution - technically understood as the civil war to overthrow the king - that gave birth to a number of more radical currents among the English peasantry. Many of the soldiers who fought against the king became disillusioned by the fact that once the king was gone, the new parliamentary system still treated the poor as slaves and benefited the state church and the landowners. These folks mutinied and were violently repressed. Many of their leaders were killed, and the living were given two choices: go to Ireland to put down freedom fighters there, or go to america. Most chose america rather than murdering their Irish brothers.

These stories, as well as the simple understanding that what is now Georgia began as a British penal colony, begin to make clear that at least a good portion of the European Diaspora came downtrodden and persecuted, rather than (or as well) as greedy, racist Christians. In fact, the concept of race as we now understand it, and particularly of whiteness, grew out of this interaction between European migrants and African slaves on stolen Turtle Island.

The creation of "white" people in america began as an attempt to maintain the fragile balance of the slave economy in which the vast majority of the population were either slaves, indentured (or landless) Europeans, or natives. The slaving class had to ensure that events such as the Baker's Rebellion, where poor Europeans linked up with Africans and natives in revolt against the rich, would not continue.

Colonial lawmakers created this category of white people and gave white people certain material privileges, such as the ability to own land and the "right" to work slightly less menial industrial jobs and Europeans became white to the extent that they aligned their own interests with those of the slave holders and industrialists. Early in the colonial process, there were dozens of examples of European migrants organizing in vocal opposition to slavery, but by the turn of the twentieth century, this almost entirely gave way to a situation in which, even most so-called revolutionary white people advocated for the "naturally inferior" status of Negroes to be maintained.

So, becoming white had two key components. one was this acceptance of certain human beings as "niggers," barely above animal status, and fit only for brutal exploitation. Second was the decimation of all European cultural or spiritual heritage and the willingness to assimilate into america. Both were dramatic shifts from their condition upon arrival to this country.

For example, many of the Irish migrants identified not necessarily as Irish but more specifically by the county that they had left. They mostly spoke Gaelic and practiced a version of Catholicism that was a combination of Roman Catholicism and the pagan spiritual customs of pre-colonized Ireland. Many of the Irish peasants had lived in townlands, which were stateless, communal means of living, almost entirely unaffected by British rule. All of this had to be either forgotten or undermined in order to consider oneself a white american.

This transition from an identity firmly rooted in land, spirit, ritual and ancestry to an identity of loose affiliation to all peoples from Ireland, and then all of Europe, and then more abstractly to all of those currently deemed white, is a rather gross perversion of the notion of solidarity.

Inherent in the alliance of all European migrants in america into one distinct group of white people is the violent suppression of all that once allowed the European to know herself (ancestral history, custom, language, and spirit) as well as the violent subjugation of all those classed as "non-white." Thus, fundamental in this agreement to be understood as of the white race is the absolute negation of the possibility of legitimate connection with the majority of the world's peoples.

So while the localism of indigenous systems of living in Europe guaranteed the individual's survival through the vibrancy of the community, the transition to whiteness guarantees only the mutual alienation of all those participating. And perhaps the third key component of whiteness is that very near to everyone must participate or the power of the consensual lie tends to dissipate.

REFUGEES:

That millions of people find the conditions in their country so undesirable that they choose to migrate elsewhere is not a surprise. The daily conditions imposed by the dominant society, particularly in the vast portions of the world where this domination is blunt, undisguised thievery, are absolutely noxious towards all things that live or might wish to live. Capitalism is war. Whether it shows itself in open violent conflict or not - and (taken globally) it does daily - the continuation of this system is both rooted in, and inherently violence. As a result, refugees of war are everywhere.

A refugee of war is a time-bomb. Every war that the colonial and neocolonial masters have instigated over the past hundreds of years has simultaneously sown the seeds of resistance in millions of survivors. In places such as Palestine where the people have faced over 50 years of military occupation, apartheid and genocidal "removal" campaigns, the rage felt among the people is truly awe-inspiring. At this point, more than 50 percent of the population of the occupied territories are 18 years old or younger. They have known nothing but Israeli oppression and have nothing to look forward to but the Intifada.

And there are many, many Palestines, just as there will be many, many Vietnam-style wars of national liberation.

Of course, the vicious irony of the situation is that people flee their impoverished home conditions and enter the u.s., the country that crafted the conditions at "home," crafted a way of life here that is rooted in flaunting the affluence gained from the theft abroad, and is armed beyond compare to guarantee the perpetuation of such poverty.

The offensive posture of the u.s. state toward the third world migrant - in terms of making her feel thoroughly unwelcome (the violent excesses and policies of intimidation of the INS, the militarization of the Mexican border, English-only laws, deportations, etc.) - is fairly well understood and described by american progressives and radicals. More complicated, and perhaps more revealing of the true nature of the migrants' presence in the u.s. is the offense of the posture that encourages him to stay.

It is this "middle path" of simultaneously damning you and also needing you to survive so that you can be exploited that is the essence of imperialist domination. The "guest worker" programs geared towards the gross exploitation of Latinos, and the acceptance of Indians, Asians, Africans and West Indians into the scientific and computer engineering fields are two prongs of this same attack.

The Latina is "niggerized," both to extract enormous profits without having to set up operations abroad, and to establish the foundations of a (veiled) neo-nazi platform. The legitimate rage of the descendents of slaves in america is redirected, (downward) while continuing, virtually unabated, the total tyranny and assault on Black people in this country. The Spanish-speaking "nigger," and the Third World migrant in general, is used as the context for the forces of reaction to actually intensify the open hostilities and murderous delights that has existed here, to various degrees (almost entirely among white people) ever since the invasion.

And though it is less blatant, the existence of a Third World intelligentsia in america is part of the same process. Because although the Third World educated class enters the american university to flee the poverty at home (and at times do actually achieve a degree of material prosperity here) their presence in the first world ultimately aids in the mass impoverishment (materially or otherwise) of the bulk of the world's population. From the standpoint of the empire, the educated migrant is merely the exception that proves the inherent niggerdom of the entire third world.

The migrant is also made to feel welcome to the extent that he becomes american, which is the same as saying, "the extent to which he becomes not himself." Much like in the economic sphere, the migrant then becomes trapped between two identities, both of which are not enough to keep her alive. Economically she is not quite a slave and yet not quite a second class citizen. Culturally she is never again fully of her people, and yet never allowed to forget her exclusion from full participation in amerika.

In practice, this paradox tends to play itself out in ways that appear contradictory, or confused. First generation immigrants create communities in which some portion of home is kept alive: the languages, the foods, the religions, the celebrations, and so forth. here, there is almost a vibrancy, and, at times, even an atmosphere of community self-defense that is inspiring and liberatory. And yet, almost as soon as possible, and certainly by the second or third generation, these practices fade away in favor of the quasi-americanism that becomes possible. Sadly, in the narrative of immigrant communities' survival, it is inevitably emphasized that it was the assimilation, and not the community self-defense that kept the people alive.

A CALL TO CONFEDERATE:

You are invited to join the Diaspora Confederacy. You are invited because your vision of revolution bears a strong resemblance to ours. Which is not to say it's the same. It's not. Part of what we like about you is that you resist letting yourself fall prey to a monolithic version of resistance to this monolithic society. You may even be invisible to the traditional organized left movement, (even among the revolutionaries) or visible only when wearing a cloak to shroud your heart's true desire. You remain larger and more human than the various identities and ideologies that are compiled within you. We seek to affirm what can not be compromised, contained, controlled, or categorized about you.

Now, we understand that everyone chafes against their suffering and desires to be liberated. We understand that no matter how buried that desire is, every human has the capacity to fully actualize that yearning and be free. In this understanding there will always be a portion of our heart that stands in undying solidarity with all people. And yet, we are not inviting everyone. Each of us must choose our own path through and out of this oppressive society. And although no one will achieve liberation without us all achieving liberation, my way may not be yours. The end justifies distinct means for each of us.

"We were not able to choose the mess we were born into - this collapse of a whole society. But we are able to choose our way out." -C.L.R. James

Some things common about our way:

· We are radical. We seek to dig up the root sicknesses, crimes, and failures of this society and do away with them. We seek nothing less than the full re-organization of all elements of life such that the oppressive society may never take root again.

· We want to live. We are determined to do what is within our power to live, day by day, to the fullest and most dignified extent possible, despite the continued existence of the oppressive society.

· We view the reclamation of land as fundamental. We seek to be grounded in a place and willingly dependent on the resources that the land provides. We are determined to cultivate and honor the practices and skills that are necessary to have a right relationship with the earth.

· We honor those who came before us. We seek to ground our work in a deep understanding of the past. We look to the past to learn of the ways of our people, both the life-affirming aspects of culture and the destructive choices that brought us to our present wretched state. Particularly, we study the struggles of those who fought for freedom: John Brown, Harriet Tubman, the May '68 uprising in France, Tecumseh, the Intifada, Emma Goldman, the Haitian Revolution, Miss Ella Baker, Crazy Horse, the Mirabel sisters, to name a few.

· We honor the spirit. Recognizing that spiritually based societies created a much more liberated existence for the earth, animals and people, we validate and support those who integrate spiritual practice into their daily lives.

· We change where we are. While revolution is global, we have no pretenses that our work will profoundly change anything beyond our immediate locale.

· We seek human connections. we strive towards mutual vulnerability, intimacy, revelation and challenge among our co-participants in the liberation process.

Some things we challenge:

We reject reform. we are not looking for incremental changes, because incremental changes inevitably increase, rather than decrease, the longevity of the oppressive society. We resist the totality of our present conditions in order to gain total liberation.

We reject all creations of a category of human beings that is "most oppressed," by the system and we reject all of the ways in which this ideology fosters passivity among some and victim-ness or vindictiveness among others.

At the same time, we refuse to participate in a project that doesn't seriously address issues of privilege. We seek to both describe the poverty of the affluent, and to undermine and undo all systems of privilege (particularly capitalism, whiteness and patriarchy).

We reject tactical conformity. In all situations (but particularly in matters of self-defense or self-preservation) we have no pre-set response as an organization, and fully assume that any autonomous individual can and should act as they see fit, regardless of the actions of anyone else in the confederacy.

We question mass mobilization. While large scale demonstrations of solidarity and confrontations against the State clearly play an important role, building and/or engaging in protest organizations will never be our primary purpose. We have no desire to ask the power elites for our freedom, nor do we wish to influence public opinion through media which we do not control, and which speaks a language that we can not.

We question intoxication. In an effort to stay focused on the problems that face us, both individually and collectively, we question the dominant tendency in our society that says there is benefit in "escaping" our reality through drugs, alcohol, television or other addictive processes. We seek to participate in the joyous adventure of undermining this society and building a new one, rather than trying to "escape" something which will still be there when we come down from our high.

WE ARE SITUATIONISTS…

The Situationist International (SI) was an organization that existed from about 1958-1971, mostly centered in France, but throughout Europe and also in Algeria. Starting with the notion that "admitting that there is no revolutionary movement is the first precondition for developing such a movement," the SI rigorously presented a challenging viewpoint and practice which demanded total contestation of our whole society.

This directly attacks the dominant notions of the left that say we should simplify and alter our demands so that we are "meeting people where they're at," since the people can't understand oppression in it's entirety, but must instead be shepherded towards freedom in "baby steps" of concessions gained from the state.

"Those who are really confronting their lives and therefore this society will soon understand how to use these texts. Those who aren't, won't, regardless of explanations. Situationist language is difficult only to the extent that our situation is. "The path to simplicity is the most complex of all." -SI

The SI fought against all ideologies (including situationism) and party lines, all of which reduce the individual's capacity to think for herself. They fought for full self-management of society, not only in the factories, farms, and schools but in all aspects of our everyday lives.

"The SI is an international association of individuals who, having demonstrated an equality of capabilities - in general, not in every detail - are equal in all aspects of it's democratic management." -SI

The SI was organized into various national sections that could operate fully autonomously within their home country and that came together for general assemblies of the "international" where theoretical and policy decisions were made. The membership of the SI was always intentionally small, and exclusions from the organization were fairly common.

"Our 'exclusions' only express our freedom to distinguish ourselves from the confusionism around us or even among us. We merely refuse to be ourselves mixed up with ideas and acts that run contrary to our convictions and tastes…

A year doesn't go by when people we loved haven't succumbed, for lack of having clearly grasped the present possibilities, to some glaring capitulation. But the enemy camp objectively condemns people to imbecility and already numbers millions of imbeciles; the addition of a few more makes no difference." -SI

The high point of the SI came in May/June 1968 when large-scale student takeovers of universities inspired some ten million workers to go out on wildcat strikes. While the state and the Communist labor unions fought to repress this revolutionary energy, the SI helped to form worker-student action committees and advocated for the occupation and liberated recreation of all the institutions of France.

After this brilliant upsurge of revolutionary activity, the membership of the SI skyrocketed. But not long afterward, tensions and division grew and the organization fell into decline by 1971.

"The numerous deficiencies that have marked the SI were invariably produced by individuals who needed the SI in order to personally be something; and that something was never the real, revolutionary activity of the SI, but it's opposite … as for us here, we can take part in the SI only if we don't need it. We must first of all be self-sufficient; then, secondarily, we may lucidly combine our specific desires and possibilities for a collective action …" -SI

… BUT NOT THE SI

We strive to be situationists because we choose to be actors in our own liberation. We reject both the passivity of the dominant way of life and also the passive means of resistance so far offered up by those who specialize in "protest" and make careers out of "activism."

We reject such tired goals as "social change" (a non-statement, in that societies changing should be taken for granted) and "social justice," (all too often implies, in practice, the socialization of the warped systems of punishment and dehumanization referred to as "justice" by the state).

"Everywhere there are social confrontations, but nowhere is the old order liquidated, even within the very forces that contest it. Everywhere revolutionaries, but nowhere the revolution." -SI

Inspired by the SI we seek to create an organization in which individuals can still exist and think for themselves, and where an uncompromisingly revolutionary viewpoint can be articulated and fought for. We have no desire to lie about our desires or our demands. We are absolutely fucking sick of this sick society, and we are tired of the lame restructurings of americanism that pass for resistance and exhaust our patience daily.

But the Diaspora Confederacy is not the SI reborn. There is no use in rebirthing the SI, and even if there were, we break with their theory and practice on two rather large points.

First, we reject the SI idea that materialism, and a certain hedonistic, anti-spiritual way of life is somehow revolutionary. The decimation of spiritually centered nations, and the excessive accumulation of material goods is exactly what got us into our present mess. We will not participate in the continued genocidal assault on indigenous peoples worldwide out of some warped notion of revolutionary "progress."

And second, we seek to build an organization much more clearly international than the SI. By this we mean that we can't imagine a revolutionary organization that does not explicitly struggle to destroy whiteness and create one world in which many peoples and nations can exist as liberated equals. The Diaspora Confederacy needs to be, from start to finish, composed of people from many nations and working fully for all of their interests.

In this effort we can take direction and inspiration from numerous individuals, such as Marcus Garvey, Noel Ignatiev, Gayatri Spivak, C.L.R. James, Vine Deloria, Cherrie Moraga, Charles Payne, Nawal el Saadawi, Walter Rodney, Mab Segrest, Franz Fanon, Emiliano Zapata, Rod Coronado, Souad Rashed Dajani, Carter G. Woodson, Leslie Marmon Silko, and many more.

BEGINNING THE EXPERIMENT

"The greatest difficulty confronting groups that seek to create a new type of revolutionary organization is that of establishing new types of human relationships within the organization itself. The forces of the society exert an omnipresent pressure against such an effort. But unless this is accomplished, by methods yet to be experimented with, we will never be able to escape from specialized politics. People's creativity and participation can only be awakened by a collective project explicitly concerned with all aspects of lived experience. The only way to 'arouse the masses' is to expose the appalling contrast between the possible constructions of life and its present poverty." - SI

We can just begin anew. Certainly there is plenty we can learn from past struggles, and we have every intention to plant our feet firmly in history, but there is no way of truly knowing what will be most successful and what will fail today. This is why our work is an experiment. We will put into action what we've learned, and be taught by the consequences of our acts.

Some proposals about where to go from here:

Creating Liberating Contexts:

It is not possible, at this time, to create truly liberated spaces. We currently cannot, for example, eat without some participation in capitalist modes of production and distribution. And, on top of the material barriers to full liberation, any grouping of human beings will, presently, be tainted by oppressive thought patterns and behaviors such as racism, sexism and class privilege. However, it is possible to partially re-shape the behavior of human beings by creating different contexts for them to operate in, and these spaces already exist, all throughout the world.

However brief or single-issue they might be, the following can all be liberating contexts to some extent: food co-ops, housing collectives, radical/queer/Black bookshops, high school "anarchy clubs," farms, Earth First! "free states," independent media centers, free schools, worker's strikes, political workshops, identity-based support groups and caucuses, cultural centers, community gardens, underground or "militant" cells, small/cooperative businesses and even monastic orders.

We propose a thorough and critical evaluation of all of these different models, so that we can support, enhance and enlarge these tendencies. Any thing that either currently exists, or that we will create, will address well certain issues and not be able to adequately deal with other problems. For example, Earth First! is healthily and tangibly fostering uncompromising resistance to eco-cide, but the movement is greatly plagued by it's own whiteness and drunkenness. Within each institution, tensions such as this will always exist. It is our choice as to what we prioritize and what we sacrifice towards that end, so we ought to choose with care.

Some possible priorities are:

Education:
Trapped between the coercion and indoctrination of public schools and the market driven, privilege-ridden universities, young people desperately need more wholesome, useful, and radical educational opportunities. Likewise, working people are systematically disempowered and perpetually made to feel stupid in our society. Alternative educational opportunities exist for both groups, but they tend to be, in one way or another, fettered to the old world (such as training Latinos to be more "employable," or the re-creation of adult dominated, anti-creative schools for young people). The creation of a multi-faceted, autonomous and revolutionary school (or study group, or popular education center) is an excellent hypothesis to experiment with.

Labor:
In a money economy, dignified labor is both vital and virtually impossible to find. Both the privileged and the under-privileged individual are tracked into a lifetime of de-skilled and alienated labor. And, both non-profit organizations and capitalist unions survive off of the continuation of the very system that we oppose, and thus can never truly address our need for meaningful work. it would be tremendously inspiring to see the birth of independent, cooperative work opportunities that provide both decent wages and skills to all involved.

Housing:
Many of us learned the largest portion of what we currently understand about how to be hateful, nasty, addicted, selfish, violent, victimized fuckers from our childhood homes. The home is one of the most intimate forums for either fostering or destroying oppressive behaviors. By struggling to create radical housing initiatives, we can begin to define the conditions for healthful boundaries, sexuality, solidarity, communication, commitment, power-sharing, trust, eating, and so forth. And these struggles exist, both within the home, and in relation to the larger neighborhood, city and state. Currently, there are very low standards put on "collective" living. For the most part, if certain mediocre requirements are met, a house is deemed "cooperative." Working to rise above this insulting self-definition would be a brilliant and intriguing experiment.

 

home