Travelling the world, Imminent Rebellion 9

This post starts with Imminent Rebellion 9, out now from Rebel Press. It contains an article by me (which is a few posts below on this blog), and some other great (and, some not so great, but thats the minority) writing from anarchists from across Aotearoa. You can download or order it from the Rebel Press website. The design is fantastic too. Here’s hoping Issue 10 maintains the very high standards that’ve been set by this one

Observant readers will notice posting has been even thinner than normal on the ground recently. That’s because I’m no longer in Aotearoa / New Zealand, having flown to the other side of the planet for a while. Currently, I’m in Glasgow (and contrary to the stereotypes, it’s sunny! So was Manchester. Brilliant!)

Anyway, one of the things I’m doing while travelling around is interviewing a range of class-struggle anarchists. When I get back to Aotearoa, I’ll be editing it into a full length doco. Fun fun fun. The other night I did an hour long interview with Ben Franks, author of Rebel Alliances: The Means and Ends of British Anarchisms, published in 2006 by AK Press,

I do hope to post a bit more frequently as I travel, but obviously that’ll depend on internet access, and how busy I am.

The trip started in Manchester, where I attended (extremely jetlagged) the Manchester Anarchist Bookfair. Several hundred people in a hall, plenty of stalls from political groups and book/zine distros and 3 workshops. I ran one of the workshops, a history of anarchism in Aotearoa / New Zealand and the Operation 8 raids. There was a decent turnout and it was pretty enjoyable, with some quality question/answer time at the end.

It’s been really good meeting anarchists from the various groups over here - I’ve had some great discussions with members of the Anarchist Federation (an anarchist-communist group) in particular, but I’ve also met people from Solidarity Federation (anarcho-syndicalist), Praxis (Glasgow platformist anarchist-communists) and the Workers Solidarity Movement (Irish platformist anarchist-communist), plus a variety of other unaffiliated individuals.

Attention Christchurch crew: Come see me speak about Israel/Palestine (oh, and a film)

The Human Rights Film Festival is on again, and one of the films showing this year is the fairly decent Occupation 101, about the occupation of Palestine. It’s not without problem, but it is a stunningly well made documentary, and is well worth seeing.

As is the tradition with the HRFF, after each screening there is an “expert” speaker who talks for 5-10 mins followed by 20 mins of questions, answers and discussion on the film.

I will be the speaker after both sessions of Occupation 101 in Otautahi / Christchurch, at the Regent On Worcester.

Wednesday, 28 May - 8.00pm
Thursday, 29 May - 6.00pm

For more info, check out 6 clips from the film on the official website. I’ll post up my speech on here sometime after I’ve given it.

p.s: sorry for not posting for a month. been insanely busy doing things, and don’t have internet at home at the moment. i’m leaving the country soon, but will keep blogging with stories from my trip (more about that later…)

New zine: Our Dark Passenger: Anarchists talk about mental illness and community support

Our Dark Passenger: Anarchists talk about mental illness and community support is now out, published by Katipo Books. Weighing in at 34 pages, it is a collection of articles about living with mental illness by anarchists from around Aotearoa, and some writings from overseas. I’ve written a few of the pieces, and collated and designed the zine.

Our Dark Passenger can be purchased from Katipo Books (who will mail it anywhere in the world) for just NZ$2.00 + postage. You can also download the .pdf and print it yourself by clicking here (1.93MB).

The zine has no copyright, so feel free to print and distribute copies as you see fit (just don’t charge more than you need to cover costs). You can download a version imposed for printing by clicking here (for the inside, 1.83MB) and here (for the cover, 100KB). If you distribute it anywhere outside Aotearoa / New Zealand, I’d appreciate it if you emailed me at anarchiazine[at]gmail[dot]com and let me know, it’s always interesting to see how far things spread.

Contents

Page 1 - Front Cover
Page 2 - Contents
Page 3 - Introduction (Asher)
Page 4 - Bryden’s Story (Bryden)
Page 6 - Ending it all (Anonymous)
Page 7 - Cartoon (The Icarus Project)
Page 8 - Mental Illness: My Struggle (Asher)
Page 10 - Depression, police terrorism, and me (Anna-Claire)
Page 12 - Amy’s Poem, Drawing, Are we Falling? The war machine (Amy)
Page 14 - On Being Alone (Asher)
Page 16 - Places to look for help in Aotearoa / New Zealand
Page 17 - Activism and Depression (Bexxa)
Page 24 - Discussion Questions for Workshops and Groups (The Icarus Project)
Page 25 - How I Became a Thief (Jessica Max Stein)
Page 28 - Also from Katipo Books
Page 30 - Back cover, 5 things to NOT say to someone suffering from depression

WARNING

Parts of this zine are likely to be triggering to those who have a history of self-harm or mental illness, so please use your own discretion when deciding to read.

If you think you are likely to be affected negatively by this zine, please DO NOT read it!

UPDATE

Unfortunately, we had to remove the article The Spoon Theory due to copyright issues. Oh well….

On being alone…

So, at the moment, I’m alone in the house, and have been for the last couple of days. One of my flatmates is away, at the celebrations for the 100th anniversary of the crib-time strike in Blackball (see this and this) which was the start of a wave of militant unionism in Aotearoa (later subsumed into the Labour Party, unfortunately), while the other is at his partner’s house, and the visiting German anarchist who was staying at mine has also moved on to other parts of the country.

Last time I was alone for any length of time was over new years, and at the time, I felt somewhat similar to how I do now - to put it in as few inadequate words as possible - not good.

Of course, I have several reasons to be happy - I’ve just become an uncle for the first time, I’m in a wicked flat with great people (and 3 cats and temporarily 4 chickens), I have a firm plan for the rest of 2008 that I’m quite excited about. I also should be really busy - I have 3 articles (total of around 6000 words) all due this weekend, which I haven’t really even started on (except in my head), and a smattering of other work to do for Katipo Books and for local solidarity organising with the October 15th arrestees.

Instead, I find myself frozen in inaction. Even typing these words is significantly more effort than it should be. Getting my thoughts onto paper (or, more accurately, computer screen) is, while possible, a mammoth task for me at the moment.

This literal aloneness that I am currently experiencing only brings to the surface a deepfelt metaphorical aloneness that seems to be with me almost every day. At the start of the movie Fight Club, Edward Norton’s character describes the experience of insomnia: “Nothing’s real. Everything’s far away. Everything’s a copy of a copy of a copy.” As someone who suffers from insomnia from time to time (usually coinciding with my lowest periods), this really resonated with me the first time I watched the movie. However, it also provides a glimpse into the appearance of life to me during my depressive states, even when I’m sleeping well.

For me, I frequently feel like I’m not in my body, but watching it. I might be having a conversation, but that’s not actually me, not my consciousness. While my body is doing these things, my consciousness is watching on, stuck in my brain racking over a conversation I had a week ago, a month ago, at some point in my childhood - searching for a hidden meaning, thinking of a better comeback, analysing why I said what I said. My consciousness likely won’t experience the conversation I’m taking part in until later in the day, week or month, when it processes it while my body (what would normally be perceived as “me”) has long moved on.

Still with me? Good. Hopefully this is making some semblance of sense, I get the feeling sometimes that the English language simply doesn’t contain the words to explain some things.

This experience I have just described, the turning of my life into a film I’m constantly watching, leads to an overwhelming feeling of loneliness. I think this is at least partially responsible for my seeking of intense experiences - for it is during these times that I feel most in my own body, it is during these intense times that I actually feel emotions, rather than observe myself experiencing them from the outside. It is in this seeking of intensity that I understand those who regularly self-harm (luckily, something I’ve mostly been able to avoid) - the need to actually feel is an indescribably vital part of living.

I seek out these intense moments in a range of ways - I’ve tried drugs, and while they work in the immediate sense, the after-effects are almost never worth it (and so, these days, I more or less entirely stay away from them). Travel and moving to new cities/countries also seems to work for a period - the sheer shock of being so far from everything I know forces me back into myself. This tends to last for a little while, until I’m settled in to my new location, at which point everything goes back to what I sadly consider normalcy. Starting relationships also seems to work - the intensity that comes with a new relationship jolts me into the moment, although, as with travel/moving, this doesn’t last.

The last example I’ll give is something that I’ve only begun to realise in the last few days, and properly only this weekend, as I’ve had plenty of time to stew inside my brain. Anyone who knows me well knows all too well my desire to have kids. I’m now beginning to wonder how much that is connected to what I’ve just been discussing - there is no doubt that, most of the time when I interact with my friend’s children, I am drawn back into myself, back into genuine emotion. Perhaps my desire to have children of my own is tied in with this, as an opportunity (perhaps the only one), to put myself inside my body for the majority of the time. In this, however, I have fears. Who is to say that, as with moving or new relationships, enough time with a child won’t simply see me seperate my consciousness from my body again, lose my connection with my experiences…

And, despite the ever increasing knowledge of my condition, despite the fact that I now feel able to write about it, to talk about it, to begin to describe it, I still am stuck in the same place I started - totally disconnected from my own reality, totally alone.

Where do you stand? Shutting the fuck up to not risk our freedom

There can be no doubt that being asked questions with a gun to your face is one of the scariest things that can happen to someone, and so I won’t delve too much further into those specific situations, except to say that the main thrust of my argument still holds true - not saying anything is always a better option for the overall safety and liberty of everyone concerned.

Too many people however, when confronted by Police without firearms (whether at their houses or after being called in for questioning) still talked. Too many people talked to the media, armed with only microphones. The excuses for this have been varied, from thinking one was doing the right thing, to not thinking at all, however in all cases talking had a negative effect, whether directly or indirectly.

The Police intelligence gathering in Operation 8 had two aspects - information gathered specifically to aid in the prosecution of those individuals arrested on October 15th (and any further arrests that Police stated they wished to make), and information gathered to help in building an overall picture of the Tino Rangatiratanga, anarchist and activist movements and communities across Aotearoa with a sinister eye to the future.

Some people answered simple questions like “Do you know person X?”, thinking that either the fact that they knew them didn’t matter, or assuming that the Police already knew the answer was in the affirmative. In doing this, they assisted Police to further enhance their maps of who is connected to who, who works with who. Regardless of whether or not it had relevance to Operation 8 in specific instances, it certainly will help them in investigating any future activity.

When confronted by Police at your house, if they don’t have a warrant, make sure they leave your property immediately. No ifs, no buts. Don’t answer any questions, don’t let them walk around your back yard uninterrupted, don’t leave them alone unwatched until they’re gone. If they have a warrant, then let them in and watch them for as long as possible (theoretically, you should be able to watch the entire search, but Police aren’t exactly known for obeying the rules). While watching, make sure you don’t tell them anything. Don’t answer questions, don’t engage in idle chit-chat. Cops aren’t friendly except for when they think that will help them in finding out the answers to their questions - if they’re being nice, it’s not because they’re nice people, it’s because they want to lull you into talking. Don’t fall for their trap.

If you feel like you need to answer a call for questioning, either talk to a lawyer first, or if you can get a pro bono lawyer, take one in with you. Again, don’t answer anything. Don’t sign anything either, there is no requirement for you to do so. Try to recall everything they ask you - it could prove useful for working out their lines of enquiry, or discovering the extent of their surveillance.

Perhaps the worst example of talking to the media during the aftermath of Operation 8 was the front page story in The Press in Otautahi/Christchurch, with quotes from somebody claiming to be a friend of one of the people called in for questioning. This friend was quoted as saying things which should obviously not have been said to anyone, let alone a journalist from a large media organisation. A saying which is apt here is “If you don’t know anything, don’t talk about it. If you know a little, say even less.”

This isn’t a game. This isn’t about your moral indignation that you have “nothing to hide”. Operation 8 was not the usual bullshit charges of Disorderly Behaviour seen at a protest, where one could have a reasonable expectation of being found not guilty, if the charges ever reached trial. The potential charges in Operation 8 could have resulted in some serious, long term jail time, and even the lesser Arms Act charges still carry a potential of up to four years. This isn’t a game, and those talking to the Police or the media are risking the liberty of those they claim to call friends. The coercive arm of the state arrived on our doorsteps – and will potentially use the information gathered for many years to come.  Inviting a cop in for a cup of tea undermines the good work you and many others have been doing, and can put waste to organising that has taken months or years of effort to do.

At the end of the day, it comes down to a simple question of where you stand. Do you stand with those fighting for justice and liberty, or with those who seek to repress it? If you stand with the former, then it should be second nature that we do not do anything to help those who stand with the latter. One of the lessons learnt since October 15th is a very simple one, one of who can be trusted, and of who breaks trust placed in them. It would do us all well to remember that.

Aotearoa Indymedia needs your help!

Aotearoa Indymedia aims to be a space where people feel inspired to read, write and comment on news and events happening across Aotearoa (and the rest of the world). In order to fulfill this aim, the Aotearoa Indymedia Editorial Collective is empowered to enact the Editorial Policy, which mainly means hiding spam, abusive and duplicate posts and comments and cleaning up the newswire (ie - via moving local posts from the elsewhere newswire if they are posted in the wrong place, or fixing up the formatting of posts when requested by the author).

The Editorial Collective also writes most of the feature articles (the ones in the centre column, like this), sometimes from scratch and sometimes via collating articles from the newswire (or a mix of both!)

Prior to the Police raids of October 15th, the editorial collective had three main editors - all had been editing for some time and so were experienced with what needs to be done. These three did much of the work on Aotearoa Indymedia, helped by the rest of the editorial collective (some of whom have less-regular internet access, others of whom are new, still others who have many projects they are involved in for whom Indymedia takes a low priority). During the raids, two out of those three editors were arrested, and both are currently being held in Auckland Central Remand Prison. As the only one of those three left, I have endeavoured (with help!) to keep Aotearoa Indymedia as up to date as possible with information on the raids and protests, but there are limits to how much an increasingly small collective can do.

Now, perhaps more than ever since Aotearoa Indymedia began, we need your help. If you are interested in taking an active role in the Aotearoa Indymedia Editorial Collective, then please email imc-aotearoa-ed (at) lists.indymedia.org. The process for joining the Collective can be read here.

If you spot a duplicate, spam, troll or abusive post, please DO NOT reply to it, but rather email imc-aotearoa-ed (at) lists.indymedia.org with the URL and the reason you think it should be hidden, and I or one of the other editors will attend to it as soon as possible. You can also frequently find some of us on the global Indymedia IRC server, which is also being used as a regular updating space on the current raids/hearings for Indymedia folks from all over the world.

In solidarity,
Asher, (Aotearoa Indymedia Editorial Collective)

Discussing mental health

Recently I was up in Auckland for the Anarchism Is Organising conference. On the second day of the conference, I ran a workshop on “mental health, mental illness and anarchist community support”. The workshop wasn’t on the agenda prior to the conference, but after some thoughts and a discussion that touched on the subject the previous afternoon, I decided to run it. Not long after I made the offer, I suddenly became incredibly nervous when I realised I hadn’t ever run a discussion on the topic before, and had no idea how to structure it or what to do. After a bit of thinking, I decided that attempting to get anything concrete out of it probably wouldn’t actually work, and therefore attempting to do that would only serve to be demoralising. Instead, I decided that getting people to open up and share their stories would be the most positive first step that we could take.

By lunchtime Sunday, with the workshop just a few hours away, I’d decided on a format - one that began with me opening up and telling my story, from scratch. Trying to put the years of pain and hardship into words, the awful experiences with medication, the lowest lows, the scariest times. I also decided to talk about the incredible lack of support that I felt in the Wellington anarchist community. The discussion would be the first time I had ever talked about my experiences in a large group, and I wasn’t feeling confident or even particularly safe (especially considering I’d only met a large number of the participants the day before), but I’d made the decision to speak out and I wasn’t going to change that. I confided my worry to a friend shortly before the discussion started that I would tell my story, and noone else would feel safe or comfortable enough to tell theirs. While I can totally understand why this might be the case, I was pretty concerned as to how that would affect me - leaving myself so open and exposed.

Then it started. I talked, remembering things that I had long forgotten (whether accidentally or on purpose). Feelings came back to me as real as when I’d first felt them. At times, I had to stop, while at other times swinging the chair in front of me or letting loose a few tears seemed to calm me down a little. When, while talking, I looked up at the rest of the group, I made sure to try to focus on a couple of people who I trusted the most, and the looks in their eyes helped me to continue. Still, it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to talk about in public.

When I finished, there was a brief silence, and then I looked around and there were others wanting to speak. At that point, I felt like a weight had been lifted. For the next two hours, around ten others shared their stories of mental illness, of medication and psychiatry, of community support (or the lack of it), of friends (or the lack of them). It was honestly one of the most beautiful things I’ve been a part of. That so many people felt able to talk so openly and honestly about their deepest held secrets amongst a group of people they didn’t know was incredible. The discussion could easily have gone on longer, but after we’d gone one hour overtime we really had to stop to allow other workshops to take place.

After we’d finished, I gave a big hug to a friend of mine, and we went outside for a ciggarette. A few others joined us and we talked about how we felt after the workshop (emotionally drained but inspired covers it well, I think). A couple of people talked about the possibility of setting up a mental health support group in Wellington, which would be awesome if it gets off the ground.

I also talked afterwards to a couple of people who have never experienced mental illness, who came to listen and learn. What they said only made me more confident that what happened was the most positive first step we all could have taken. While it may never be possible to understand exactly what we go through, speaking that honestly and extensively is probably as close as it gets.

Avoidance

At the moment, it seems like online is my only connection to the world outside my front door. I’ve only left the house once in the last week (maybe longer? I lost track…) and that was only to the petrol station across the road to get out some cash (to order in comfort food…mmm, vegan pizza). Even then I had to drag one of my flatmates with me because I didn’t feel up to going outside on my own.

I’ve skipped at least two meetings, the most recent of which was yesterday, because I don’t feel up to seeing other humans right now. I’ve even been avoiding the two people I live with (both of whom read this blog, hi!) for the most part…

Tomorrow night I’ve got a meeting that I really want to go to, for a new collective I’ve just joined. I especially want to go because I haven’t actually been able to attend a meeting of that collective yet, in the few weeks since I told them I wanted to join. Hopefully I’ll feel up to going - I think I’ll probably try to force myself even if I don’t - but the thought of being around a group of people brings up feelings I don’t know how to label - fear, anxiety, nervousness….

These feelings have happened before, they seem to come during especially bad patches of my depression (although not always).  Not really sure what to do about them. Part of me has an inkling that forcing myself to have as much human contact as possible would be healthy right now, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy…

A really bad idea…

Imagine this scenario: For the past 3 nights, you haven’t slept - of course, you’ve slept a few hours during the middle of the day, so you’re still somewhat functioning, but the sleep has been constantly broken and shitty even when it has existed. The fourth night, you decide you are going to try to sleep no matter how you feel, no matter how fast your mind is working, no matter what. At around 3:30am, you finally feel like there’s a small chance you can squeeze out some sleep, so you go to bed. You decide that old favourite method, reading yourself to sleep, and pick out the thing on your bookshelf that its been longest since you’ve read. You glance at it, think to yourself “thats not the best bedtime reading” but nothing else seems interesting, so you go to bed and start reading. The reading material you picked? Support, a (fucking excellent) zine about sexual assault and supporting survivors.

And that, my friends, was a really bad idea. Anyway, to cut a long story short, you read the whole zine, then turn out the lights. Your mind runs faster than ever, and eventually, you get out of bed, because there’s no way in hell you’ll be getting to sleep tonight. You go online, and post your experience on your blog, for some inexplicable reason in the third person. The end…

A lack of language, an abundance of masks

Grumpy. Down. Shattered. Emotionally exhausted. Blergh. Not great. Mentally fucked. Crappy.

These are all words I’ve used to describe my state of mental health to my friends, all woefully inadequate. The total lack of language I have to adequately convey the (at times) complete debilitation I feel no doubt is a contributing factor to the lack of support I frequently get from friends (see Depression and support). If I can’t describe what I’m going through, how can I ever hope to get what I need in terms of support?

During recent reflection, I have realised that a number of times this year, I was feeling something I’ve always denied to myself. Only in the last week have I finally been able to label where I was (and perhaps still am) - suicidal (at times verging on, at times more than that). Perhaps, if I had used that word, my friends may have had a better understanding of my mental state. Unfortunately, I can’t help but feel that much of the response would have been to deny my experience, to tell me I was “over-dramatising” the situation.

After suffering from mental illness for 8 years, I’ve got very good at putting on masks when interacting. In all but my lowest periods (and sometimes even then), all but those who know me the best (and sometimes even them) see a very different array of emotions to those which I am actually feeling. I’ve gotten pretty good at appearing happy or at least content, at feigning enthusiasm or excitement. For me, these false emotions serve two main purposes:

• A coping mechanism - I figure that I’m stuck with my mental illness, and other than tinkering on the edges, there’s not actually a hell of a lot I can do about it at its roots. By putting on a mask, I am still able to participate to some extent in things, whether they be socialising, political activism or whatever.
• An avoidance of pity - There are few things that frustrate me more than being pitied, and, unfortunately, that is frequently the response I get from friends when I let my mask drop. If its not pity, I get patronised, which is just as bad. By projecting fake emotions, I’m able to interact with people without being pitied or patronised for my mental state.

Unfortunately, these masks also certainly serve a negative purpose, to hide my true state from my friends and therefore lessen the chance of receiving the support I need. Together with the lack of language I possess for when I do choose to voluntarily drop my masks, is it really surprising that the vast majority of the time, I feel like I’m going through this alone?