Chapter XII: Coda/Sports & Politics
THE RHYTHM OF BASEBALL - REFLECTIONS FROM A CABIN (1999)
David Van Deusen, Vermont, 1999
Personal Journal Entry - July 13, 1999, Northeast Kingdom, Vermont: It’s been some time now since I called that 10x10 cabin deep in the woods my home. [161] But while I sit here, in this old Northeast Kingdom farmhouse listening to the All-Star Game on the radio, I think of the simple and brilliant pleasure of being back in the cabin in the autumn and listening to a ballgame on my ragged little AM/FM/Shortwave.
Cold winds blowing outside and a fire in my woodstove. Baseball! –Never quite coming in real good, but always adequate. –The transm (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
David Van Deusen Marching In Black Bloc; DNC 1996
A coalition calling itself “Not On The Guest List” organized a march on the Democratic National Convention [Chicago 1996] in solidarity with domestic political prisoners. [1] Participants included Vermonter David Dillinger (Chicago 7) and Dennis Banks (American Indian Movement). The march was supported by a several hundred strong Black Bloc [largely organized by the Love & Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation]. The procession of protesters quickly strayed from its approved parade route so as to pass directly through the heart of a Chicago housing project. There it picked up hundreds of local supporters. Upon entering the “security zone” s (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Building Union Power in AOT Year One: 2015 In Review[1]
AOT-VSEA Union Workers In The Randolph Garage
Provided by David Van Deusen,
Senior Union Representative-VSEA/AOT
January 1, 2016
AOT 2015 Highlights:
All 61 Garages are Organized, with a Union Activist deployed in each (71 overall activists in the Garages including Labor Management Delegates, Stewards, Council Members, & official Garage/Union Contacts);
180 Acts of collective Union activism recorded in the Garages, including participation in the Fight Back Rally (AOT composed 20% of the VSEA memb (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Introduction
“The bow bends; the wood complains. At the moment of supreme tension, there will leap into flight an unswerving arrow, a shaft that is inflexible and free.”
— Camus, The Rebel
We stand at the threshold of a new millennium.[1] In itself this is no more than an arbitrary marker of time. But, the actual circumstances, both psychological and material, both social and political, denote this arbitrary time as one of the most dynamic in history. The age of wo/man has come face to face with itself through its exhaustion. Both realism and nihilism have been unmasked as the oppressors that they are. Fascism has proven itself homicidal and suicidal in its dark absurdism. Authoritarian communism has r... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
“When real life cannot be obliterated by fact, the sophist’s plausible retreat is denial wrapped in the fog of repetition.”
In an October 17th [2013] article in Ring Magazine’s online publication (Hopkins on Boxing and Black Fighters by Lem Satterfield), Philadelphia boxing legend and reigning IBF light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins stated:
“The great Sugar Ray Leonard, right now, if he was boxing, the way that they want you to fight, the people that pull the strings of the puppet, he would be boring today. Ray Robinson – the great Robinson – would be boring today…Because the feeders of the people that buy entertainment. They’re being fed that if t... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Montpelier, Vermont, 2006 – In 2002 a group of Vermont dairy farmers approached organizers Anthony Pollina and Peter Sterling and asked them to help form a democratic organization that could effectively fight for farmers’ rights. What grew out of this is the Dairy Farmers of Vermont (DFV). Today this grassroots organization consists of over 300 farms representing a staggering eight hundred and fifty million pounds of annual raw milk, or one third of the total produced in the state. They expect to open a farmer owned milk processing plant sometime shortly after the year’s first significant snow fall. What follows is an interview with DFV organizer Peter Sterling [1] about the organization, their future plans, as well as the... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
"Get Busy Living, Or Get Busy Dying!"
—The Kings of Nuthin, Boston, Massachusetts
Introduction
March, 2001, The Peoples’ Republic of Vermont- Since the Battle of Seattle, the North American left, and specifically the smaller yet growing revolutionary anarchist movement, has been invigorated at least as much as it has become a common reality in the consciousness of the public. This has not occurred in a vacuum. Nor has this happened due to a simple, quantifiable reason. The reasons are as much diverse and subjective as they are objective and empirical.
One facet of this movement (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
In 2006 Xavier Massot, author of the Black Bloc Papers, predicted the rise of the communist and fascist factions in France, as well has the fall of the traditional moderate left & right parties. A decade+ later France continues to grapple with many of the issues outlined in this interview.
Paris, France & Brattleboro, Vermont March 31, 2006 –Over the course of the last 30 days France has been rocked by a series of escalating demonstrations and mass labor strikes. The unrest is by and large a reaction to a new law passed by the center-right government that repeals job security guarantees for young workers. Where previously all French workers were protected against unjust firings, now many people, mainly those 28 and youn... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
October, 2011
An open letter to the people of Vermont, Gov. Peter Shumlin and other interested parties [1]:
Vermont’s leading voices for working families and the environment are united and speak with one voice when it comes to renewable in-state energy production. We agree that renewable energy production is necessary if we are to become energy independent, environmentally responsible and carbon neutral. We also comprehend the building of these new energy facilities as a source of construction jobs for working people. However, the question becomes, will these jobs go to out-of-state corporations, will they go to irresponsible in-state companies or will they provide livable wages, good benefits and (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Gonna leave the city, got to get away,
Gonna leave the city, got to get away.
All that hustling and fighting man,
you know I sure can’t stay.
-Goin’ Up To The Country, Canned Heat
Something is happening here but you don’t know what it is.
Do you, Mr. Jones?
-Ballot of a Thin Man, Bob Dylan
From 1965 through 1975 it is estimated that 100,000 young people migrated north to the Green Mountains; most simply passed through. Still, many thousands remained. These newcomers, mostly white, of mixed class background and primarily from the eastern cities, shared the commonality of being part of a loosely defined 60s counter-culture. This youth migration culminated in... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Montpelier VT, April 2009- We know how things stand [1]. The recession is teetering on a New Great Depression; many say we are already there. Tens of thousands of Vermonters are out of work. Thousands more are slipping into severe poverty. Nonunion workers are losing their jobs and having their benefits gutted, while union workers are facing layoffs, pay cuts and increases in their health care costs. Republican Governor Douglas has reacted by calling for mass layoffs, a decrease in unemployment benefits and cuts in social services; all at a time when we need jobs and services more than ever!
Up until now, working Vermonters have been on the defensive. But, as a District Vise President in the Vermont AFL-CIO, I am here to say this is ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Montpelier VT, April 2008- The Executive Board of the Vermont AFL-CIO, representing thousands of workers in countless sectors across Vermont, have unanimously passed an historic resolution expressing their "unequivocal" support for the first US labor strike against the war in Iraq.[1] The strike, being organized by the Longshore Caucus of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU), will seek to shut down all west coast ports for a period of 8 hours on the day of May 1st 2008. The Vermont AFL-CIO is the first state labor federation to publicly back the Longshoremen; other state federations are expected to follow.[2]
The resolution, among other things, calls the war in Iraq "immoral, unwanted, and unnecessary", states tha... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
“Laws never made men a wit more just.” –Henry David Thoreau
Cabot, VT, February 2018 -Every day I am honored to call rural Vermont my home. Our rugged mountains and vast forests are home to some 600,000 hardy Vermonters. Politically we are the most leftist state in the nation; all of our children have universal healthcare, our minimum wage is $10.50 an hour (with a serious movement towards achieving a $15 an hour livable wage), our unemployment rate is 2.8%, we practice a form of direct democracy at the local level (Town Meeting) whereby every citizen is a legislator, democratic socialists (Vermont Progressive Party) are elected to 10 seats in the Statehouse and hold the positions of Lt Governor & State Auditor,... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
St Johnsbury, Vermont, November 2002 –United Electrical Workers Local 234 at the St. Johnsbury Fairbanks Scale factory went back to work with a new three year contract on November 19th following a three week strike.[1] The strike was a defensive maneuver in response to management’s attempt to enact an indefinite pension freeze, and to significantly decrease wages by way of requiring higher worker payment for healthcare. While the workers did not get all they hoped for in the final contract settlement, they did force the bosses to unfreeze their pensions in the final year of the contract, and gained a 26 cent an hour pay raise in the second and third year, and reduced the amount of healthcare payments management originally sought... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Montpelier VT, October 2003- The Vermont Workers’ Center, in collaboration with the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE –who recently organized Montpelier’s Hunger Mountain Food Co-op), has gone public with a now several month old campaign to organize a general union of Montpelier workers.[1] This campaign seeks to gain union representation and recognition in every single shop, the majority of whom are from the service and retail sector, in this capital city (population 7800). For the last few months the drive has been furthered by the formation of an organizing committee made of rank & file workers from dozens of distinct shops. The union seeks to gain fair wage increases (with the goal of achieving liva... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Note On The Third Revised Edition
This edition is intended for print ten years after the original. We have kept most of the text as it appeared in 2004 and then in 2007. One difference is changes to the chapter “Self Determination For The Abenaki.” On this issue our views have evolved, and this is reflected herein. We have also added some footnotes and other minor changes to update some basic points as the social and political developments in Vermont demand. Despite the revisions seen in this edition (and those seen in the 2007 edition), our basic views have remained the same. Vermont continues to be a unique, democratic, and progressive place along the Northeastern fringe of the American Empire, and we remain commi... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
From Somewhere in the United States of America, September, 2001[1] –One the morning of September 11th 2001, four commercial airliners were hijacked and used to destroy popularly perceived centers of U.S. military and economic power. The outcome of these attacks were, in part, the partial destruction of the Pentagon, the complete eradication of the World Trade Center, the death of all persons onboard the four planes, the death of an untold number of workers from within the fallen buildings, and an the death of an unconfirmed number of NYC firefighters and ambulance personnel. At this point reports have been circulated that those operatives responsible for the attacks held an extreme Muslim Fundamentalist ideology.
I, as an anti-... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
“Let us remember that every great step forward in history has not come into fruition until it has first been baptized in blood.”
- Mikhail Bakunin
Introduction
Militancy and direct action are not only necessary tactical tools for the anarchist left, but, when correctly implemented, they are also the facilitators of inspiration and motivation for both those involved with the act in question and those who observe the act in question. It is such activity that helps draw numbers into the movement by creating an outlet for the venting of frustration and alienation. In short, militancy and direct action, by challenging the entrenched power of the wealthy ruling class and state, fosters a sense of empowerment upon ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
San Cristobal, Mexico, January 1st 2006 -Deep in the Mountains and jungles of Chiapas, populated primarily with indigenous peasants, stirs a force which is seeking to upstage the high financed drama of the 2006 Mexican presidential election. The force grows out of rebel occupied territory held by the EZLN, commonly known as the Zapatistas. The Zapatistas control five regions in Chiapas. Each of these regions includes many small villages, containing a total population in the tens of thousands. Since an armed uprising launched on January 1st, 1994 (the day NAFTA went into effect) these communities have been administered autonomously, guided by humanitarian principles, and utilizing directly democratic decision-making structures at a local lev... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Northeast Kingdom Vermont, Fall 2012- As the Conservation Organizer for the Vermont Sierra Club I am happy to report that in 2012 we made extraordinary progress in advancing a new Tribal Forest model of conservation in Vermont [1]. And now, with your support, we intend to close on the first Nulhegan Abenaki Tribal Forest in over 200 years by the first of the year.
This first, modestly sized, tribal forest (70 beautiful acres in the heart of Nulhegan traditional territory) will be in Barton, in the Northeast Kingdom, and will be owned directly by the Nulhegan Abenaki Tribe, with permanent conservation easements on the land held by the Vermont Land Trust and the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board (VHCB).
With help from many ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Moretown VT February 2014 -We, in each of our towns and throughout the Mad River Valley, are together a community [1]. As town meeting approaches, I trust that all of us, regardless of our particular political persuasions, agree. And, as a community, we do right to concur that one does well when one’s neighbor does well.
This commitment to our friends, family and fellow residents is an old one. When the Green Mountain Boys evicted New York land surveyors, tax collectors and sheriffs, I do not doubt that they too were motivated by this notion of self-preservation as inalienably linked to community; Freedom and Unity.
More recently, we saw this belief manifest during the crisis following Hurricane Irene. Two and one half y... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Swanton Vermont, 2003 –More than 10,000 years before Europeans stepped foot on the shores of what is now called North America, Native Americans hunted and fished the forests and rivers of Vermont.[1] Many archaeologists contend that these natives were the distant ancestors of the contemporary Vermont Abenaki Tribes. By the time European settlers began to colonize New England in the 1600s, Abenaki communities, with an estimated combined population of 10,000, were firmly rooted in what is now considered Vermont. While other bands, numbering upwards of 30,000, existed in Maine, New Hampshire, and Quebec. Such communities were in continual existence within the Green Mountains hundreds, if not thousands of years before the first Englishman... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Vermont, 10/24/18 -Major news sources are reporting that pipe bombs have been sent to a multitude of political targets including former U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton-Democrat, Democratic-leaning billionaire George Soros, CNN (who has been critical of Donald Trump), former Vise President Joe Biden-Democrat, and former U.S. President Barack Obama-Democrat. This represents an escalation of political violence by growing factions of the U.S. Extreme Right.
While these targets are not reliable allies of the Left (let alone Organized Labor), they are (inaccurately) viewed by the Far Right as being such. Therefore the Left needs to understand this as an escalation of violence against us by the enemies of democracy. For this, we, the Left, nee... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Whereas:
Organized Labor must stand in solidarity with working people in all parts of the world when they rise up to defend their rights and when they struggle to build a better, more democratic and more socialist world;
The People of Rojava, northern Syria, have risen up in order to combat ISIS and the dictatorship;
The People of Rojava, through their armed forces known as the People’s Protection Units (YPG) & the Woman’s Protection Units (YPJ) and allied militias, have liberated large sections of northern Syria from ISIS and the dictatorship;
The People of Rojava are presently defending themselves bravely against ISIS and Turkish aggression;
The People of Rojava seek to establish a libert... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
“The chains of authoritarianism and capitalism can only be shattered when they are broken at many links. Vermont is our home, and it serves as the one link that we can access, but it is only one. Any victory here would only be partial. Deliverance to the Promised Land will only come when many more than us rise up against that which holds the multitude in bondage.”
-The Green Mountain Anarchist Collective, From Vermont Secession
Introduction:
Montpelier, Vermont -Established in 2000, in a cooperative household located at the termination of a wooded dirt road in Southern Vermont, the Green Mountain Anarchist Collective (GMAC), for a time, did its part in carrying forth Vermont’s long tradition of radical, le... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Proposal To: The Federation of Revolutionary Anarchist Collectives-Great Lakes Region[1]
Submitted By: The Black Heart Anarchist Collective-Columbus Ohio, December 25 2001
Written By: David Van Deusen (co-founder of the Green Mountain Anarchist Collective), with Lady and the Black Heart Anarchist Collective.
Introduction
Columbus, Ohio, 2001 –We do not question the need to form tightknit membership based revolutionary anarchist federations. This need is self-evident. We recognize the need to do so on a regional basis, so that organization can be more responsive to the cultural, social, and economic particularities of the region in which it is situated. Regional organizations al (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
On January 11th, 2003, a mass contingent of anti-racists squared off against the forces of irrational hate as encapsulated in the Midwest based, neo-Nazi, World Church of the Creator (WCC), and the West Virginia based National Alliance (NA). [1] The WCC and NA targeted Lewiston for recruitment following racist public statements by the city’s mayor aimed at the local Somali community. The confrontation took place on the outskirts of the working class city of Lewiston, Maine, in front of a National Guard Armory. There, 500 anti-racists pushed themselves through police barricades in order to stand witness against the 30 or so fascists meeting, under heavy police protection, inside the armory. In addition to this protest, an estimated 500... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Montpelier, Vermont, 8/23/16- Anyone who grew up in New England or Quebec in the 1970s, any baseball fan really, knows tales of the Spaceman. Pitching for the Boston Red Sox from 1969-1978 and the Montreal Expos from 1979-1982, yarns of Bill sprinkling “marijuana dust” on his pancakes to help him cope with big city bus fumes abound. We Vermonters know him as an adoptive (and eccentric) favorite son, involving himself politically in support of single payer healthcare and endorsing Anthony Pollina’s own 2008 run for governor. Now the Spaceman is running for Governor in his own right; as the candidate of the Vermont Liberty Union Party. To his right is Republican Phil Scott. Also to his right is Democrat Sue Minter. Bill may ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Proposal To: The Northeastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists
Submitted By: The Green Mountain Anarchist Collective (NEFAC-VT)
Introduction
The Old Socialist Labor Hall, Barre, Vermont 2004 — The current social and political dynamic within North America, and much of the western industrialized world, is one of both growing hope and an escalation of capitalist oppression.[1] While workers are being attacked by the forces of capital, and while the U.S. ruling class embarks upon imperialist campaigns of war, conquest, and cultural-political-economic homogenization, a mass movement is building within the very walls of the empire. The 1999 Battle of Seattle witnessed the coming together of a great and diverse new American ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)