Submitted by Reverend Chuck0:
From Melbourne Indymedia
stereotypes about
vision impairment, with a list of blindness agencies at the end, who claim they
work in the interests for and of blind people. Yet, historically, there have
been, many, many mainstream conferences, packed full of blind consumers and
their service providers. What solutions have actually come out of these
conferences? None. Working conditions and wages are still unsatisfactory for
blind workers slaving their guts out at the blind institute, alternative
literature is still being censored by braille libraries across the country, and
braille itself is still undervalued and underresourced. And if you are an
Anarchist, forget about having any material to read. Of course, blindness
agencies across the country are forever promoting their wonderful services and
how they can assist vision impaired individuals to cope with their los!
s. What loss? No, my time with you will be totally different. As I said
before, we are here to celebrate diversity. So, Today I will be discussing a
critique which encompasses anarchism, vision impairment, instutionalisation of
prisoners, censorship, and prison abolition. These topics are all interwoven.
You will see that without anarchism, there are no solutions.
I will start off by telling you a little about my background. I was born in
Australia but I am of Italian descient. At fifteen, my mother was forced to
marry my Father, after which both parents left Italy to settle in this country.
Times were hard, with Dad working as a labourer and mum landing work in various
factories, as a machinist. Although things were difficult, we were all very
close. As a blind child, I was free to roam the neighbourhood, playing with all
the children and getting into all sorts of mischief. I remember playing a
delightful game called "Knick-knocks" during which my cousins brothers and I
would run up to houses in our street, knock on the windows and flee. Of course,
all the neighbours thought it was the girl across the road, not Marisa! she
wouldn't be a troublemaker like that mob of boys there, she's blind. My parents
had a large vegetable garden. There was always plenty of food for the table.
At five, my freedom was under severe threat. !
I was sent to a school for the blind where it was organised that I should live
at the school Monday till Friday and go home on weekends only. My activist self
surfaced. I took steps to prevent my own instutionalisation. I refused to eat,
cried and screamed and would not coperate with the nurses who were employed to
look after us. The long dormitories scared me, just like it would have
frightened Aboriginal children when they were taken from their parents for their
own good, as those repressive policies stated. Against the doctor's and the
school's wishes, Mum withdrew me from this hell and I got my freedom back. I
attended the blind school as a day pupil for 6 years, but at the end of grade
6 I went to a regular school. At eleven years old, I informed the principal
that I was bored, and that I would not be staying at the blind school any
longer. I was not in the principal's good books to start off with, because
every time newspaper articles were printed to promot!
e the reputation of the school, I would refuse to have my name or phot
ograph in the article.
At seventeen, in the 1980's, I joined a group of blind workers and students,
called Peni, people for equality not instutionalisation, and participated in the
picket Held outside the blind Institute in St. Kilda road. We were protesting
for better working conditions, and services. (I don't know if the Iww is
committed to this sort of thing). We eventually occupied the Executive's office
of the Rvib. That was in the days when blind communities were radical.
Currently, I do some work for Grasslands, which is a not for profit vegan
organic grocery store, radio work at 3cr and prisoner support work in the Abc
(Anarchist Black Cross.) Last but not least, I belong to a group called
ButRatherAGo, braille reading action group, which is a campaign aimed at
overcoming censorship of alternative braille literature. A small bunch of
Anarchists held a rally outside one of the braille libraries in October last
year. In fact, one experience that really opened my eyes about what's going on
is that without warning, braille production refused to finish brling my herbal
medicine course. Perversely, it was stopped on the very same day (21 May 2002)
that I rang in to ask for Anarchist literature. My college is very small and was
unable to fund and course, but this blindness agency would not accept money from
me either. Despite the intervention of a solicitor advocate and media coverage,
I have been forced to finish my course alone.
I would like now to look at Anarchism and what it means to us. Today,
dictionary definitions still define anarchism as the absence of government.
These modern dictionary definitions of anarchism are based on the writings and
actions of anarchists of history and present. Anarchists understand, as do
historians of anarchism and good dictionaries and encyclopedias, that the word
anarchism represents a positive theory. Exterior sources, however, such as the
media, will frequently misuse the word anarchism and, thus, breed
misunderstanding.
A leading modern dictionary, Webster's Third International Dictionary, defines
anarchism briefly but accurately as, "a political theory opposed to all forms of
government and governmental restraint and advocating voluntary cooperation and
free association of individuals and groups in order to satisfy their needs."
Other dictionaries describe anarchism with similar definitions. The
Britannica-Webster dictionary defines the word anarchism as, "a political theory
that holds all government authority to be unnecessary and undesirable and
advocates a society based on voluntary cooperation of individuals and groups."
Shorter dictionaries, such as the New Webster Handy College Dictionary, define
anarchism as, "the political doctrine that all governments should be abolished."
These similar dictionary definitions of anarchism reflect the evolution of the
theory of anarchism made possible by anarchist intellectuals and movements. As
a result, dictionary definitions, although fair, only reflect watered down
definitions of the word anarchism. Professor Noam Chomsky, in fact, has refuted
the definition, as written in the New American Webster Handy College Dictionary,
describing anarchism as a "political doctrine."
According to Chomsky, "dis..anarchism isn't a doctrine. It's at most a
historical tendency, a tendency of thought and action, which has many different
ways of developing and progressing and which, I would think, will continue as a
permanent strand of human history." Anarchists are against chaos When you hear
about anarchists you are led to believe that we are mad bombers. Every other
group that lets off a bomb is immediately labelled 'anarchist' whether they be
nationalists, socialists or even fascists. The myth is created that we believe
in violence for the sake of it. The other myth is that anarchism is chaos. It
is claimed by politicians, bosses and their hacks in the media that if there was
no government there would be chaos. But did you ever wonder about society today
and come to the conclusion that perhaps we are already living in chaos? At the
moment thousands of builders are on the dole yet homeless people need housing to
live in. Thousands of people are dyi!
ng of starvation around the world yet millions of dollars are spent every day
on nuclear arms which have the potential for wiping us and the world out.
You might ask why is this so? We say that there is one big reason - PROFIT! At
the moment we live in a society in which there are two major classes - the
bosses and the workers. The bosses own the factories, banks, shops, etc.
Workers don't. All they have is their labour which they use to make a living.
Workers are compelled to sell their labour to the boss for a wage. The boss is
interested in squeezing as much work out of the worker for as little wages as
possible so that he/she can maintain high profits. Thus the more wages workers
get the less profits the bosses make. Their interests are in total opposition
to each other.
Production is not based on the needs of ordinary people. Production is for
profit. Therefore although there is enough food in the world to feed everyone,
people starve because profits come first. This is capitalism.
Voluntary coperation is at the root of all activism: no leaders, just voluntary
coperation. Instutionalisation goes against all anarchist principles.
Institutionalisation is not necarily confined to an actual institution, such as
the one I was almost imprisoned in. Instutionalisation is also about
capitalism, which I defined earlier on. It's about beaurocracy, and about
government rules, or the rules of churches and organized religions. In anarchy,
there are no laws except for the natural laws made by Nature. The Green
Anarchists fight to protect our Earth from logging and war, but this is another
topic in itself which perhaps someone can take up at another time.
To look at vision impairment, we need to go back in history for a moment. In
the 18th century, institutions and asylums for the blind were set up and the
families of blind and vision impaired children were convinced by the authorities
to place them in these homes. The seed of division between the able-bodied and
the disabled was created, with the gulf widdening as the years passed. At
present, the gulf has taken a different shape.
I meet a lot of blind people these days, who either don't wish to engage as
activists, or, as so often happens are used as puppets by blindness agencies so
that they may acheive a reputation as the expert, on blindness. Over the years,
many blind people have become afraid of me because of my activism and because of
the braille campaignj and also because I hitchhiked around Australia. One blind
woman who works at a particular blindness agency refused to inforview me on
radio for the Blind unless I left out the hitchhiking experiences so I declined
her invitation. In my own experience, it appears that activism is divided, with
the government and the institutions attempting to create wedges and divisions
between us. For instance, the braille Campaign which I mentioned previously,
aims to educate activists and community groups in the area of providing
information in accessible format. Ask yourselves these questions. When an
action or rally is planned, is there money put as!
ide from benefit gigs for instance, to provivide braille fliers, posters etc.
Was money set aside for the braille timeableing of this confouence? If a food
co-op compiles a recipe book, is thought put into pooling resources for the
brling of this literature? With radical music ie cd distros, is thought put
into placing braille labels on cds? The mainstream view of economic rationalism
(lack of resources), should not be rampant in our movements and safe spaces.
What can we do about this? Well, I can only speak for myself and all the
fantastic activists that I have been involved with. Grasslands Groceries bought
braille labels to place on the till so that I could serve customers at the cafe.
The info shop also purchased a small taperecorder so that I could do research
for the braille campaign. Anarchist Black Cross put aside some money from a
benefit gig to ensure that all bulletins are brailled. A poetry book written by
Prisoners has also been placed on computer disk ready for brling. Various
anarchist publications have also been brailled, or at the very least put on disk
so that this is accessible to blind people. The question is not how many people
will read this but rather, it is about availability, for if there is no
availability how then can people read, and be educated about Anarchism? 3cr
provided braille labels on the pannel to enable me, as a blind person to do
radio broadcasting. But there is still a long way to go, !
before our movements stop mirroring the mainstream.
I must talk about the bad experiences as well as the good ones, and to point
out that many activist collectives are also conditioned. Ie They put the
disability rights issue into the "too hard basket". In fact I have attended
activist forums where some people have sarcastically remarked "Next thing you'll
be wanting publications in Chinese."
Once every couple of years, the blindness agencies in this country hold what is
known as the World Blind Union. This is where delegates from all over the world
come together to make decisions on behalf of blind and vision impaired people.
It is similar to the world economic forum. It is put about by bness agencies
and many brainwashed blind people, that we should be grateful for what we have.
There is an illogical viewpoint that because millions in backward parts of the
world are deprieved of their proper right to receive basic care, we, in more
advanced situations should be satisfied with any basic service that is
substandard. The general public are free to access bookshops and libraries, and
it is purely discriminatory that the right of blind people to gain knowledge and
information is inhibitted by any restrictive practice of those providers who are
entrusted by the public, with the delivery services such as braille production?
Should we regard ourselves as members of !
an underclass, happy to receive handouts prescribed for us by some impersonal
alms dispenser? Anyone who imagines that what I am saying is in any way extreme,
would do well to catch up on their history homework, bearing in mind that
history has a compelling habit of repeating itself in one way or another. The
instutionalisation of vision impaired people continues, as braille libraries
across Australia merge into one centralised privatised cormrate body, archiving
the braille books, and preventing anyone from browsing the shelves. Books must
be posted to the blind person. There are no catalogues in braille. In fact, I
was told in no uncertain terms that public libraries are for sighted people,
these are lending libraries, not pulic libraries.
In the same way, Prisoners are instutionalised and blatantly discriminated
against. In the States and other countries, prisoners are forced to legally
challenge the Department of Correction's unjust policies of censorship and
discrimination against those inmates who are labeled or self-described as
"anarchist."
It is our position that the classification of anarchist inmates as a "Security
Threat Group" is unfair and unnecessary. As an Anarchist who sees the abolition
of Prisons as part of a utopian vision, I'm always challenged with the question
"What do you do about crime?" "How about the sociopaths and violent ones?" Two
excellent questions that as far as I know of have never been addressed by most
Anarchists.
Anarchist Black Cross seeks to address these questions, by providing prisoner
support, by sending letters and tapes, producing a monthly bulletin and
compiling poems and other artistic endeavours, from people in prison. There
have also been times when I have been involved with providing advocacy for
prisoners, ie matching them up with a lawyer.
"Prisons" or "Penitentiaries" originated over 202 years ago with the
Quakers in Philadelphia who believed that sinners, or lawbreakers should spend
their time alone to study the Bible to be penitent for their crimes so as to be
released as a productive member of society. Rules of complete silence were
strictly enforced. It didn't take long to realize that this approach wouldn't
work as prisoner after prisoner suffered nervous breakdowns and displayed signs
of mental illness due to their complete lack of human contact (1)
The Quakers realized that this solution was meaningless because it didn't
address the underlying roots that lead to criminal activity. But it was too
late as society picked up on the idea and mutated it beyond recognition complete
with tax subsidies and massive propaganda. Today, as in the 1800's, isolation
blocks make up the primary means of confinement and they are commonly called
Control Units. The guards which work in these units are some of the most brutal
and inhumane. The newer units have solid doors and the only contact that one
confined behind it has is through a small window for counting purposes and a
food slot. The debilitating effects of total, isolated confinement as the
Quakers found out, results in jeopardizing a Prisoner's well being. This
inhumane and barbaric treatment is meant to debase and degrade a prisoner's very
soul, the purpose being they will cause no problems for the Prisoncrats in
general population for fear of being sent back. You do not!
have to break a rule to be placed in one of these units. All one has to be,
is have a screw think you are uncontrollable or a potential threat to the
security of the institution. Other degrading laws such as strip searches seek
to further degrade prisoners.
Censorship and degradation are also present when there are whole areas of work
that simply don't get published into braille because someone decides there is no
demand for them. Works by anarchist authors and books on pagan religions for
example, just don't make their way into Braille. Works such as Mills and Boon
and popular mainstream material do, some aboriginal literature also finds its
way into the braille collection. I have always been a very determined person.
I made certain that I worked a whole range of jobs, and when I got tired of
working I chucked work in completely and hitchhiked around various parts of the
country. I would like to finish by saying that just because something does
not affect you, it does not mean that we can ignore it. An injury to one is an
injury to all. This means that we as Anarchists need to work coperatively and
collectively to help each other because everything is interwoven. It is not
enough to say "But I don't know anything !
about blindness, I know nothing about braille equipment." "I know nothing about
prisoners, I've never been in gaol and probably never will be." Wrong. One of
our number could end up in gaol at any time, especially with all these
repressive anti-terrorist policies that are creeping in.
Solutions:
To have a social centre without paid membership, and have mechanisms put in
place where solidarity can be exercised. Our movement desperately needs
conflict resolution. I urge us all whether anarchist or anything
else for that matter, to educate yourselves. So, if you wish to join the
braille campaign please contact Grasslands on 93620830 or if you wish to join
Abc write to pobox 300 East Brunswick 3057 or you can see us today at the
conference.
Collectives' Writings That Gave me Inspiration
Break the Chains Collective America
Braille Campaign Collective (Australia)
Michael Lee (who I believe is in one of the Abc's in America).
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