END:CIV

I’ve been in Australia now for a little bit over a month touring with my film END:CIV, and my brain is full. I’ve learned so much in my short amount of time here, that it goes to show how lived experience can pack in more education than books ever will.

On my second week here, I took part in the 40th celebration of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra, the capital of Australia. The short story is that four aboriginal activists set up an beach umbrella in front of the parliament building, to protest the government’s refusal to acknowledge aboriginal sovereignty. Forty years later, and the embassy (which is now a small structure) and the sacred fire are still there. The anniversary celebration was timed to coincide with “Australia Day” or more appropriately “Invasion Day”  or the day Captain Cook arrived in the land down under and unleashed the 200 year plus wave of violence against aboriginal people and the natural environment here. You see, the British didn’t consider the aborigines to be people, they considered them part of the fauna and declared Australia “Terra Nullius” or empty land. You can watch an interview I did with aboriginal activist Robbie Thorpe speaking about the embassy here.

According to some scientists, aboriginal people have been inhabiting the Australian continent for 40,000 years, although new evidence suggests that they may have been here for over 120,000 years. Regardless, aboriginal land management practices were sustainable, but with the arrival of civilization, deforestation, game farming, agriculture, cities and mining have destroyed many ecosystems. Extractive industries are the darlings of the Australian government, or more accurately, they run Australia, so unless a serious culture of resistance is organized here, these mechanisms will continue to gobble up the continent’s natural “resources.”

END:CIV has been extremely well received here. At the screening in Adelaide, long time anti-mining activist, Uncle Kevin Buzzacutt said the film had fired him up and gave him more energy to continue fighting. Uncle Kevin belongs to the Arabunna Nation and has been working to shut down the Olympic Dam mine in South Australia, which extracts copper and uranium. Even though the mine is not in Arabunna territory, BHP Billiton, the owner of the operation, extracts over 35 million litres of water a day from Uncle Kevin’s people’s land.

Yep, the Olympic dam mine is in the desert, and I went to visit the area to shoot video for the next dispatch of “Stop the Flows.” Uncle Kevin’s nephew, Peter Watts was kind enough to guide us through the outback and show us the water sources that are being depleted. The Australian bush is gorgeous. Even at 44 degree temperatures (around 112 Fahrenheit) plants and animals abound in this arid landscape. I saw kangaroos, emus, dingos, crows, lizards and magpies. Peter also treated us to several types of “bush tucker” (food) that grows wild in South Australia. As you can imagine water is in short supply, and the desert can’t sustain both a mine and it’s local inhabitants. In other words the mine has to go.

The mine itself is massive. The first two nights we camped in its vicinity, and the glow from it’s floodlights lit up the sky all night long. We bought tickets to the tour of the mine and were told that video and photos were prohibited. But we were able to record the entire spectacle using a hidden mobile phone video camera. As expected, the tour guide told us of BHP’s commitment to the environment and to safety, but when asked if he knew that uranium from their mine was used to fuel the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, he claimed ignorance. The fact is that it’s true. It was also revealed that BHP pays nothing for the water it uses to operate the mine. To make matters worst, the Australian government recently approved the expansion of the Olympic Dam mine and if not stopped it will become the largest open pit mine in the world. Expect a full video report in the next few weeks. I’m still raising funds to help pay for this report, so if you have a few bucks to spare, click here.

While I’ve been traveling, emails have been piling up in my inbox asking me about the ant-black bloc column by Chris Hedges entitled: “The Cancer of Occupy.” People want to know what I think since I’ve been staunch supporter of the tactic, but also because Derrick Jensen is quoted in the article. I will not write a full retort, because aside from being about two weeks too late, there’s been plenty of thoughtful responses that I can get behind, mainly David Graeber’s “Concerning the violent peace-police: an open letter to Chris Hedges.” But I’ll throw a few thoughts in for good measure.

I’ve rarely experienced the collective solidarity that I witnessed in Toronto during the anti-G20 “Get off the Fence” march. The black bloc in that march thwarted a 1 billion dollar security apparatus and smashed up the financial district and shopping districts of a major north American city. Proving that even under the watchful eye of the state, extraordinary actions can be accomplished and shattering the myth that the police are unbeatable.

Furthermore, if you take a look at Egypt’s Ultras, they were instrumental in the street fighting that eventually forced Hosni Mubarak to resign. The Ultras are soccer hooligans who cut their teeth fighting the cops after matches during Mubarak’s reign. How else is someone to gain experience engaging security personnel, blockading roads and disabling infrastructure? People who engage in black bloc tactics get “on the job training” and learn decentralized organization, working within affinity groups, security culture, de-arresting comrades and counter surveillance among other things. Have black bloc tactics brought down civilization? Certainly not. But they have been useful tools for propaganda, morale raising and promoting militancy, as well as the things I mentioned above.

What I do agree with is Jensen’s assertion that our movements should be strategic about how and when tactics are used. Having a long term goal informs how we deploy tactics and helps us prioritize the risks we take. If our actions increase the risk of getting comrades jailed, it better be worth it, otherwise we are simply sacrificing people and community resources to actions that don’t make a dent in the infrastructure of civilization.

Finally, I find it hard to swallow that many people are willing to write off Jensen completely, because they don’t agree with his stance on the black bloc. That is simply intellectual laziness and political purism. Of course we are not going to agree with everything a person says or writes, as I know many people who view my videos don’t agree with all my opinions. But many have chosen this as opportunity to attack and attempt to discredit one of the best and bravest writers we have, and I’m not talking about Hedges. Like I said a few years ago of Naomi Klein, just because she said some things I found problematic in Copenhagen and in Toronto, doesn’t make “No Logo” or “The Shock Doctrine” invalid.

With that said, I’m off to Melbourne tomorrow, then on to Wollongong and concluding the Australian tour in Brisbane. Stay tuned for more angst from the road.

Dear subMedia supporters,

It’s been a whirlwind of a year for me. I started touring with END:CIV almost a year ago so far I’ve personally shown it over 100 times. Yep, that’s more than 100 Q and A sessions in four countries and in four languages. I’ve traveled over 40,000 KM by foot, bike, boats, van, buses, jets and trains. Online views of END:CIV are close to 80,000 on multiple platforms and grassroots screenings keep popping up every month. So far I’ve posted 9 translations on the website with a few more in the coming weeks including Turkish, Mandarin, Cantonese and Indonesian. All in all I consider this 5 year project a success.

My newest project has the working title of Stop the Flows. Over the next five years I will document resistance movements that are working towards stopping the flows of hydro carbons, mineral extraction, natural resources and capital, through grassroots and underground organizing. I will publish the dispatches as I complete them with the goal of compiling them into a feature length documentary to be released on 2016.

The first dispatch took me to Central BC where Unis’toten nation are pre-empting the construction of 4 oil and gas pipelines through their traditional territories. You can watch that here. The next dispatch will focus on the growing opposition to an oil pipeline expansion right here where I live in Vancouver. In December I will compile the hours of interviews and footage I gathered while in Japan, for a dispatch spotlighting the growing grassroots anti-nuke movement. In January I hope to travel to Australia to continue touring and gathering material for Stop the Flows and ditto goes for Europe in the spring.

So this is my pitch and appeal for financial support. As you may or may not know, subMedia does no receive money from foundations, corporations or governments. This fact has kept our media truly independent and rogue, videos that don’t mince words or tap dance around the issues. I feel the this type of unfiltered media is crucial in these times, when we are witnessing increased suppression of dissent, but also the birth of a global revolutionary movement.

With that said, consider donating a few bucks to subMedia. The goal is to raise $10,000 by the end of the year to push these projects through the winter.

Thanks again for supporting radical media!

frank

My plan to go to Europe has been postponed indefinitely. Seems that that this chunk of Turtle Island that I call home has become North America’s largest exporter of fossil fuels. So I’m going to stick around here for the time being to help document and agitate, around the multiple proposed mega projects, that not only threaten the natural beauty of what settlers call British Columbia, but that would blast more carbon into the atmosphere.

So I’m switching gears and I’ve started a project with a working title of “Stop the Flows“.

I still plan to go to Europe and Australia next year and next week I head to Japan to screen END:CIV in half a dozen cities. The film project “The Resistance” is still on, but it may merge into “Stop the Flows” and look at resistance movements against extraction. We’ll see.

All for now, wish me luck in the land of the rising sun.

I had my first van breakdown of the tour last night around midnight. Well, that is if you don’t count the tire blowout I had right before getting to Ottawa. My comrade and I were just saying that it was 12:05 AM, and the world hadn’t ended as announced by the hundreds of billboards I’ve seen on American highways in the past 3 and half months. Weird timing indeed, but thankfully we were about 10 minutes from our destination and the problem doesn’t look serious. Let’s hope it’s not an expensive fix.

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Anyway, here are some non-sequential thoughts and highlights from the road.

I spent 10 days in Montreal. Like New Orleans, there’s no other place like it in North America. Listening to people speak french is romantic and all, but the anarchist scene there is tops. Cheap rents allow people maximum time to work on their projects and spaces for folks to congregate abound. Graffiti is prolific throughout the city’s industrial sectors and political posters are plastered on every neighbourhood. In an abandoned building, I heard a talk from a comrade about the struggle for space in Vancouver, where the rents are ridiculously high, and city zoning inspectors have a weak sense of humour when it comes to aerosol art. Our sole anarchist social space was shut down a few weeks ago, and I’ve been dreaming about how we are going to fill that void this summer and beyond.

I crossed back into Obamaland three days ago, and the one thing I had on my mind as I approached the security check point at Niagara Falls, was all the people I met, who are or have been, in one way or another swallowed up by the “Justice” system. Most of those were rounded up in the post-g20 witch hunt of anarchists. Others are long time revolutionaries like anarchist black panther Ashanti Alston and urban guerrillas Ed Mead and Mark Cook of the George Jackson Brigade. Look for those interviews later this summer on subMedia.tv

While in Kingston, a city with seven prisons, I had the pleasure of meeting Ann Hansen of the Vancouver guerrilla group, Direct Action. Hansen gave a talk about the Conservatives’ plan to expand Canada’s prisons, now that they have obtained a majority in Parliament.

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The night before I screened END:CIV at the anarchist social space AKA. Aric McBay, who is featured on the film, gave a talk about sustaining communities of resistance. I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. I believe that in order to be successful, our communities of resistance have to be multigenerational, need spaces to call their own and support people who are caught up by the system. Aric’s talk pretty much sums it up.

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Finally, last night in Buffalo, Leslie James Pickering, from the Earth Liberation Front Press Office, gave a talk about liberation movements in North America and the about the exploits of the ELF.

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As I enter the final stretch of this crazy tour, I wonder what would it take for peeps to shit to the next level, to really build a revolutionary movement that dismantles this mad system once and for all. Or is it really going to be the end of the world as we know it?

I have safely crossed the Mason Dixon line and I write this missive from a cozy anarchist bookstore/coffee shop called Red Emma’s in Baltimore. Well, I say “safely crossed”, but I was in no more danger in the American south than in any other part of this fucked up country. In all honestly I love the south. Having lived for almost 12 years in Atlanta and having traveled extensively through Dixieland, I was able to let go of stereotypes injected into my young mind by Hollywood. Mostly fears of widespread racism and that I ran the risk of getting lynched by white hooded rednecks.

Yes there is racism and there are rednecks in the south, but the same is true of British Columbia. In all the years I lived in the ATL I experienced blatant racism twice. In the four years I lived in Boston, it was a monthly occurrence. Go figure.

Anywho, I have to offer apologies to many people I worried with my last blog entry. In my sad and lonely state I guess I was looking to talk to anyone, and in this case was my keyboard and the hundreds of people who read this. So let it be known that I am fine, I was just going through a tough time, so please don’t worry about me.

Since I wrote that, the days became sunnier and I was able to see comrades, childhood friends, high school pals and a sizeable percentage of my massive family in Puerto Rico. I also got to spend time in one of my favourite places in the world: New Orleans.

I cannot explain why New Orleans is the cats pajamas, you just have to go there and see for yourself. The city has a certain patina rarely found in North America. There’s music wherever you go, the people are friendly and easy to talk to. It’s a shame that this country abandoned this gem. Yep almost 6 years later, the damage from the breached levees still haunts parts of the city, especially the 9th ward.

My friend Flux took me on a tour of the area and it’s almost completely uninhabited. The “new” levees already show signs of disrepair and the word on the street is that they were built worse than before. No wonder people don’t want to move to this side of the canal. But you can see signs of progress within this disaster. Anarchists came here in droves and joined locals in rebuilding homes and infrastructure. I met many of the people who came here temporarily and never left. I came close.

So with that said, this is a book end of sorts as I embark in the second half of this mad tour. Many thanks to those who sent gas money and tunes. Both have been essential to making this thing happen. Please keep em coming! Also mark your calendars for May Day as I’ll unleash END:CIV on the web and I’ll need as much help as possible in spreading this meme.