Thursday, March 20, 2003 

The Marvelous Against The State

On March 20th, as the United States military began its invasion of Iraq, thousands of peace demonstrators in Portland, including the members of the Portland Surrealist Group, expressed their frustration and disgust by participating in a citywide protest, which started as a march from the Terry Shrunk Plaza and ended in a maelstrom of bold contestations.

Leaving the Plaza like a colossal anaconda, the size of the march alone transformed the urban environment by establishing an ethereal and harmonic mood throughout the streets, while eliminating the hostile supremacy of cars and commerce, which ultimately upset those who treat the city as merely a shopping mall or transit center. The march quickly glided from the Yamhill District in the southwest to the Old Town District in the northwest, where a large number of demonstrators chose to block the intersection at 2nd and Burnside by sitting in the middle of the street, denying access to the Burnside Bridge. As the seeds of insubordination blossomed, the blockade evolved into a poetic and festive occupation, which included drum and dance circles, free food, creative vandalism, ceremonial flag burning, a candlelight vigil, socializing, and the use of the bridge for walking and skateboarding.

Not long after the start of the occupation a group of demonstrators clashed with the Portland Police Bureau on the near-by Steel Bridge, resulting in the heavy use of chemical weapons and a fiery physical altercation. Almost immediately after this another group of demonstrators crossed the Burnside Bridge, making their way onto Interstate 5 and Interstate 84, where they briefly blocked both expressways before being arrested, or forced to disperse. Following these actions a group of demonstrators on bicycles, Portland’s version of Critical Mass, quickly halted traffic on Interstate 405 before being violently subdued by the Portland Police. Eventually, what was left of these splinter groups rejoined the demonstrators at 2nd and Burnside, and six hours after the occupation began the Portland Police started their assault on the demonstrators with rubber bullets, chemical weapons, and concussion grenades. By midnight they had forced the thinning crowd to scatter west down Burnside, and arrested those who tenaciously remained defiant.

As our world seems overrun with callous warmongers and corporate toads these encouraging forms of collective resistance, roused with a rush of adrenaline, act as passionate oppositions to Christian capitalism’s colonial assault on our mental, environmental, and public spaces. Freed from the established order these spaces become reclaimed commons, and function as insurgent arteries of the ever-emerging Marvelous.

Brandon Freels

Saturday, March 01, 2003 

Open the Global Prison! Disband the National Armies!

Imprisoned in an everyday cage, neither our bodies nor our minds are free in any real sense. We have lost our power to a parasitic society. Working for bosses, landowners, national and global elites, we have been conquered by an authoritarian structure that cannot meet the fundamental human needs of passion, peace, and freedom. The price of mere existence continues to rise, with millions homeless, and those who are not obedient guaranteed space in prison cells or cemeteries. The corporate media won’t mention it, but we have become trapped in a dichotomy of working and consuming, as the values of Christian capitalism force us to choose between survival without real life, or real life without survival.

At this moment, the United States government, under the Bush regime, seeks to literally rule the world, spreading these values by coercion, with its economic big stick and hair-trigger militarism. We are told that Islamic fascists are the enemy, but how easily governments forgive their own past and its consequences, while using the terrorist label to discredit any opposition to their own imperial plans. The greed-driven oil industry and corporate globalization demand no less.

We realize the callous stupidity of a system that allows those like Bush to rule, and advocate the complete annihilation of that system. With only our labor power to give, the working class, in its widest sense, can achieve this annihilation through collective revolt. Mass occupations of buildings, land, and essential workplaces combined with neighborhood assemblies and community self-defense alliances could make a difference. The formation of mutual aid networks could replace our dependence upon capitalism for meeting survival needs. A rent and work strike alongside an oil boycott might become dangerously motivating.

The conditions of existence must be reclaimed on every level. This includes reinventing the means of production and restoring full communication between people, the natural world, and themselves. Breaking the fangs of capitalism would open the doors for recreating everyday life, with abundant gardens and reforested cities. The elimination of corporate, religious and other social conditionings would unleash a society where desire and the imagination could help establish a poetic future. In this sincere and humane community we would be free to create and manage our own affairs, as unique beings in a collective adventure.

If the Marvelous sought by surrealism is to fully materialize, a revolt as deep as our dreams is essential. We will dream together!

NEITHER YOUR WAR NOR YOUR PEACE!

The Portland Surrealist Group
March 2003

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