Resonance: An Anarchist Audio Distro

The Delirious Momentum of the Revolt: The Complete Works of A.G. Schwarz – MP3 – Read – Print – Archive – Torrent – YouTube

Today it has been 10 years since Alexandros Grigoropoulos was killed and since Greece rose up in the 2008 insurrection. We offer this zine now, so that we may better consider what the Greek revolt means to us today. This zine collects writings by A.G. Schwarz. The writings are among the best of the insurrectionary writings that came out in the early 2010s in the United States, with essays covering “The Logic of Not Demanding”, the Greek insurrection in 2008 and lessons that can be learned from it, and discussions of various attempts to try insurrectionary approaches in the United States. The essays are very thought provoking and offer a wealth of valuable insights, especially for those who have been inspired by the courage of anarchists in Greece. Order a hard copy of the zine here from Sprout Distro.

“If a rebellion does not communicate demands, it is not because it is senseless, but on the contrary because it is intelligent. And if the people think that it is senseless, this is only because we have not succeeded in challenging the narrator role usurped by the media, we have not distributed enough counterinformation to contradict their lies.”

Music –   Νομενκλατούρα by Javaspa and Οι νύχτες του Αλέξη by Javaspa

The Question of Organization – From Insurrection #4 – MP3 – Imposed – Archive – Torrent – YouTube

The Unquiet Dead Anarchism, Fascism, and Mythology – Chapter 5 The Masked Goddess: Self-Invention and Becoming – MP3 – Read – Print – Archive – Torrent – YouTube

Chapter five of this multipart series discusses strategies for self-invention and becoming in the work of Gloria Anzaldúa, Audre Lorde and Saidiya Hartman; the struggle for access to Native spirituality practices in Canadian prisons and the pitfalls of ally politics; response to calls for oppressed nationalisms and essentialism practiced by people of color. The full text is available at unquietdead.tumblr.com; we will be posting recordings of other chapters in the future.

“If identity is only a game, if it is only a procedure to have relations, social and sexual-pleasure relationships that create new friendships, it is useful. But if identity becomes the problem of sexual existence, and if people think that they have to “uncover” their “own identity,” and that their own identity has to become the law, the principle, the code of their existence; if the perennial question they ask is “Does this thing conform to my identity?“ then, I think, they will turn back to a kind of ethics very close to the old heterosexual virility. If we are asked to relate to the question of identity, it must be an identity to our unique selves. But the relationships we have to have with ourselves are not ones of identity, rather, they must be relationships of differentiation, of creation, of innovation.”

Musical Interludes: Mitski – Your Best American, Janelle Monae – Cold-War

Another Word for White Ally is Coward – From Anti-State STL – MP3 – Print – Archive – Torrent – YouTube

“The concept of the White Ally is bankrupt. One cannot be an ally to a category of people. To speak the words “I am a White Ally to people of color” is to commit an act of double speak, to internalize non-sense. There is no singular black voice that can be listened to, no authentic community leadership which to follow. There are only many different people with different ideas, life experiences and perspectives. To think otherwise, to think that all black people share a common opinion is extremely problematic, one might even say racist. One can be an ally to individuals though there are other words in the English language which describe this relationship with more grace: friend, lover, partner and sometimes cellmate or co-defendant.”

Music: Lil Boosie – Fuck the Police Ft. Webbie

For more writing from anarchists and others on the Furguson Uprising go Anti- State STL and check out the zine Dispatches From Ferguson Vol. 1

N30: The Seattle WTO Protests – a memoir and analysis, with an eye to the future – From CrimethInc. – MP3 – Read – Print – Archive – Torrent – YouTube

With the sub-title “The Seattle WTO Protests: A memoir and analysis, with an eye to the future,” N30 is an excellent overview by Crimethinc of the 1999 protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO). For better or worst, the Seattle WTO was one of the pivotal moments in recent anarchist history in the U.S. The zine combines an exciting personal account of the protests with a somewhat more academic—but nevertheless interesting—analysis of the protest from the RAND Corporation. It ends with a afterward written 7 years later by crimethInc. Very long and very detailed!

Musical Interludes:

Infernal Noise Brigade – L’Etincelle, Ja Helo, Hamaq

¡TchKung! – Smash Things Up, Hall of the Khan, Gone to Croatan, Feral

We also used protest sounds from the movie Breaking the Spell, an excellent documentary about the WTO protests in Seattle also made by CrimethInc.

“The last light of the sun came down through the broken windows, all pretty and shit, catching on that big jagged shard of glass and then pouring out into the room over my bed. Over Marcellus. He snored in that way he always did, endearing and soft.

I hurried to dress in the last of the daylight, but once I was done, I lingered. I paced, I ran my fingers through my beard, I watched the twilit horizon and counted the silhouette bones of the buildings Portland calls its skyline.

Anything but go to work.”

Worker-Student Action Committees: France May ’68 – by Fredy Perlman and Roger Gregoire – MP3 – PDF (print) – PDF (Illustrated) – EPUB – MOBI – Archive – Torrent – YouTube

On the occasion of May Day 2018 and the 50th anniversary of the worldwide social upheavals of 1968, including the iconic general strike in May-June in Paris, we are presenting this audio zine of Worker-Student Action Committees by Fredy Perlman (co-writing certain passages with Roger Gregoire), a contemporary first-hand account and analysis of some of the events by those who were budding, wide-eyed militants at the time.

Fredy Perlman is considered by many to be one of the greatest anarchist thinkers and writers of the 20th century, one whose contribution is inestimable and, decades after his passing, is still unfolding. His life and work are foundational influences on American insurrectionary anarchism and anarchist publishing generally. His body of work changes almost everyone it touches, and traces a remarkable arc from the cogent analysis of a young and quite anti-authoritarian Marxist (the present work, as well as an early essay called The Reproduction of Daily Life which may be considered an impeccable distillation and suitable substitute for reading whatever passages of Marx’s Capital remain relevant), through visionary, scathing, and magisterial critiques and meditations on the revolutionary Left that he saw ultimately holding back fundamental social change (in Anything Can Happen, Letters of Insurgents, and the satirical and brilliant Manual for Revolutionary Leaders), moving consistently and finally before his death in 1985 into the territory of an out-and-out contest with the twisted heart of industrial culture and Western civilization itself (Progress and Nuclear Power, the premier primitivist essay Against His-story!, Against Leviathan!, and the crown of his shorter writings – The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism).

The thread running through all of these works is the un-living monster that saps the living energy of potentially creative, social beings and diverts them into a machinery of profit and control. Long before Perlman went on to pen the anti-Hobbesian, mytho-poetic re-telling of the story of the Western world, he was in Paris with this up-close reportage of what is largely seen as the epochal paroxysm of revolt of the last half-century. In the Age of Trump, in a time of incredible precarity, exploitation, and brutality, and of renewed social ferment and glimmers of revolutionary ambition, many people have newly entered the fray of action and ideas, rummaging through the wreckage of the last century for a talisman, a movement, a leader, or a clue for undoing our nightmarish current straits. Laid bare here for a new generation of listeners, in a crystal clear tract from one of the brightest subversive minds of that century, is the colossal treachery of the communist parties and labor unions who became the new cops at the earliest opportunity, the ineptitude of pre-defined social roles (be it activist, militant, theorist, student, worker…), and the incredible recuperative power of Capital in the face of a challenge. The sense of a missed opportunity as experienced by a consummately humble and self-critical soul shines through here as it does in few other accounts. Of course, from our current vantage and in light of his later work, Perlman’s references to workers’ power and the taking over of the means of production are bound to strike us as naive and leave us cold. But even at this early juncture Perlman proffers a distinct critique of the hallucinatory workerism that quenched the flames of revolt, the radicalism nowhere near radical enough to carry the day, and the credulity and obedience that still have yet to be broken.

Perlman’s own path, shown here in its humble, early steps, has the unique quality of highlighting all the most vital questions and lessons for anarchists in the face of the horror show of the 20th century and its legacy, the pitfalls of its politics, its dead ends and its last remaining potentials. With this audio zine, it is our hope that you’ll move, as Fredy and so many others moved, directly into deeper explorations.

Music: Fais que ton rêve soit plus long que la nuit by – Vangelis Papathanassiou – Recorded in 1971 the entire theme of the record focuses on May 1968 in France and the student riots taking place there at the time. The album consists of a collage of music, field recordings, news snippets, protest songs and paroles.

Other Great resources on May 1968 include:

When the course [he was teaching] in Turin ended, Fredy took a train to Paris and found himself caught up in the tumultuous events of May 1968. His experiences during these intense, joyous weeks deeply affected his views and remained a constant reference point whenever he considered possibilities for social change… The massive street actions in which thousands confronted the forces of the status quo gave rise to hopes that the old world was about to be overturned… Many buildings were occupied, and the State’s authority was effectively excluded from these liberated areas. People organized committees to carry out necessary tasks. There was a feverish exchange of views, proposals for collective activity. Discussions went on around the clock—some in an amphitheater where there was a microphone, but mostly between individuals who were discovering the joys that the mass media had deprived them of. There was a widespread conviction that daily activity was about to be transformed and that everyone would participate in choosing and bringing about new social arrangements. Fredy took part in a loosely-organized group of intellectuals, students and young workers who held discussions at the Censier classroom complex and who also tried to communicate their aspirations to auto workers who lived and worked in the Paris suburbs… Many of the mass demonstrations in Paris ended with the construction of barricades and confrontations with the police. Tear gas was frequently used and demonstrators were chased and beaten by aggressive riot squad police… During these action-filled weeks, there was little time for reading, but Fredy learned about ideas and histories which influenced him in the decade which followed: the texts of the Situationist International, anarchism and the Spanish Revolution, the council communists. In July 1968, as law and order were being re-imposed on French society, Fredy returned to the United States… Militants from Europe also visited us in Kalamazoo. One of them, Roger Gregoire, stayed with us for several months, working with Fredy on an account and evaluation of experiences the two had shared in May and June 1968 while members of the Citroën Worker-Student Action Committee.

—Having Little, Being Much by Lorraine Perlman

The Unquiet Dead: Anarchism, Fascism, and Mythology. Chapter 4. The White Goddess: Essentialism and the Land – by anonymous  – MP3 – Read – Print – Archive – Torrent – YouTube

“I have felt troubled for some time over some white feminist practice and advocacy of essentialist ‘nature spiritualities.’ This tendency is certainly not limited to feminists, but I find it most upsetting as it is performed by them—the political deployment of a belief structure under the premise of sisterhood can be insidious. If we are against fascism, we must ask in what ways we are replicating its themes in our struggle for freedom, and how may we fight that tendency. I write not as part of a relentless drift towards inertia, the enforcement of identity politics that prevents movement; rather, I want to examine the real friction present between white feminists and those they are trying to save. Essentialism has poisoned our common well for too long.”

Musical interludes – Sleater-Kinney – Stay Where You Are

“When the Goddess becomes a white woman, is She any less terrifying than the Christian God—and if so, is that not a reaffirmation of essentialist misogyny? How can we approach issues of gender, race, spirituality and the “natural world” without reinforcing the oppressive constructs inherent in each? How can white people show real solidarity to those with marginalized histories, the kind of solidarity that changes our mutual present? How can people of color engaged in resistance to white supremacy and efforts towards self-actualization be recognized in ways that do not prop up racial difference or assimilationist enclosure?”

You can also listen to the Cyborg Manifesto, which is discussed in this text.

The Witch’s Child – By Anonymous – MP3 – Read – Updated PDF – Archive – Torrent – YouTube

We recorded and released this piece in 2015 but that version of the text omitted some key parts. So in anticipation of this years May Day we have reformatted the zine and rerecorded the audio.  We hope this beautiful story gives you the strength and inspiration to sprout forth for spring.

“This is why it seems you have everything, but you feel you have nothing. Trust your feelings. Do not numb them with the pills they offer you. Because those feelings of anguish and rage are the same itch the seed feels in the last days of Winter, before it bursts open and sends out its buds into the world. It is this growth—uncontrolled, spontaneous—that would deprive them of their soldiers, which is why they fear it above all else.”

Music by: Mariee Sioux – Flowers and Blood

We Who Will Destroy the Future – by Margaret Killjoy – MP3 –  Read – Zine – Torrent – Archive – YouTube

The 29th century treats the 21st like a prison colony. One convict, Maya, dreams of a jailbreak… or, failing that, revenge. This new short story, first appearing here on Resonance, may be purchased in zine form from Detritus Books.

To read more by Margaret Killjoy go to birdsbeforethestorm.net/

“‘You know why they dump us here? You know why I think the twenty-first century is the prison century?’

‘Because the Corrective Council abolished the death penalty and couldn’t send any more people to Stalinist Russia without someone noticing?’

‘I bet they calculated that twenty-first century America was the worst placetime to live with the longest life expectancy. Highest rates of anxiety in recorded history, but they’re gonna cure cancer soon enough that we’ll have plenty of time to suffer.’ Maya tried to toe another brick off the edge, but it wouldn’t budge. She pulled back to kick it, changed her mind, stomped on the silver tar paper roof.”

Music:   We Who Fell In Love With The Sea  by Rome