Annals of an Archaic Anarchist

pattrice jones

Originally published in the Summer 2005 issue of Impact Press.

Review of The Voltairine de Cleyre Reader edited by A.J. Brigati (AK Press)

Quick — name two 19th century female anarchists. If you got stuck after Emma Goldman, then it’s time for you to meet Voltairine de Cleyre. Born into poverty in Michigan in 1866, converted to anarchism by the 1887 execution of the Haymarket martyrs, and active as a popular speaker and writer from the 1890s until her premature death in 1912, Voltairine de Cleyre was called by Emma Goldman “the most gifted and brilliant anarchist woman America ever produced.”

Like Goldman, de Cleyre condemned the objectification and exploitation of women with the same urgency with which she challenged the legitimacy of governments. Speaking with more force and honesty than many self-proclaimed feminists manage to muster today, de Cleyre dared to denounce marriage laws that permit husbands to rape their wives as “sex slavery.”

An Army of Fools?

by pattrice jones

Originally published in Fall 2005 issue of Impact Press.

Review of War Made Easy by Norman Solomon

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

So goes the old saying. But when it comes to war, we’ve been fooled over and over again, with the same tricks serving the same purposes every time.

When does credulity become complicity? That’s the question that arises for me after reading Norman Solomon’s War Made Easy.

People in the United States like to think of themselves as peaceful and friendly lovers of liberty. Despite that innocent and pacific national self-image, the USA always seems seems to be fighting somebody, often by means of torture and treachery. In my lifetime, the United States has invaded Afghanistan, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Iraq, and Panama; bombed civilians in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq, Kosovo, Lebanon, and Vietnam; and sponsored reactionary paramilitary violence in Afghanistan, Angola, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Nicaragua and heaven-only-knows where else.

How is it that peace-loving people are so frequently inspired to march to war?

Renters Strike Back: The All-City Rent Strike of 1969-71

by pattrice jones

Originally published in the February 1999 issue of Ann Arbor’s alternative newspaper, Agenda.

“Landlords have money and power… tenants have each other.”

With those words, a group of University of Michigan students launched an event that reverberates to this day. The Ann Arbor Tenants Union’s “all-city rent strike” of 1969-71 began 30 years ago this month and may be said to have never ended. Every day, some Michigan tenants exercise their right to withhold rent in response to poor housing conditions or other problems with their landlords. Most are unaware of the valiant efforts of the activists who secured that right 30 years ago or of the steadfast struggles of those who have sought to maintain tenants’ rights in the decades since. That’s too bad, because the story is instructive as well as dramatic.

Race-ism at the Games

This essay was originally published in March of 1994 as an OUT in Left Field column in the LGBTQ newspaper Between the Lines. OUT in Left Field ran from March of 1993 through January of 1995; Between the Lines was distributed throughout the state of Michigan, USA.

If the editors of Between the Lines ever want to get my column on time, they’ll have to come over to my house and destroy the television. Here I am as usual, way past deadline and outraged about something on the TV.

This time it’s the Olympics. I was all set to write about Tanya and Nancy when The Games themselves appeared on the screen. I couldn’t look away — it was like watching an accident in progress. From the opening ceremony, when South Africa was welcomed to the winter games without any mention of the international boycott which had barred it from previous games, to the patriarchal — OOPS, patriotic medal ceremonies…

Personality Complex: Eli Clare Dives Deep Into the Muddy Waters of Identity Politics

by pattrice jones

This interview and book review was originally published in the December, 1999 edition of LesbiaNation.

In her recently released book Exile & Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation (South End Press), lesbian feminist and disability rights activist Eli Clare explores the political and emotional terrain of disability, class and sexual orientation by means of personal narratives. In sometimes surprising ways, Clare brings together issues that on the surface seem separate but which she sees as parts of a devastating unified field: environmental destruction and the sexual exploitation of children, homophobic violence and the economic exploitation of workers, cultural bigotry and the exploitation of natural resources.

Some of us, Clare maintains, are more scarred by these things than others, but none of us are unscathed. As she points out, our bodies can be and are “stolen, fed lies and poison, torn away from us…. Stereotypes and lies lodge in our bodies as surely as bullets.” But Clare is not content to simply catalog the damage; she insists that “the stolen body can be reclaimed.”

Interview with Jill Johnston

by pattrice jones

This is the transcript of a 1999 interview with lesbian feminist author and activist Jill Johnston. An edited version of the interview ran in the webzine LesbiaNation accompanying this profile of Jill Johnston.

pj: I’ve heard more than one lesbian of a certain age say, “there wouldn’t be a lesbian nation if it weren’t for Lesbian Nation.”

JJ: I saw myself as spearheading something back then, but there was also a group of us. I mean, there was a consensus. It’s just that I happened to have a voice, I had already established a space in a newspaper which was a radical newspaper so therefore I just happened to have that vehicle. A lot what I wrote depended on the people I knew who kept informing me of things I might not have known about. So it wasn’t me alone. And, of course, it was entirely dependent on the consensus that was developing. Any regrets that I might have are purely professional in that I did go way out on a limb and then created problems for myself.

Jill Johnston: (Con) Founding Mother of the Lesbian Nation

by pattrice jones

This profile originally appeared in 1999 as a featured article in the short-lived webzine LesbiaNation.

To say that Jill Johnston is a writer who was one of the earliest and most influential lesbian feminists is a little like saying RuPaul is a singer who had a hit record and big hair…true enough, as far as it goes, but by no means the whole story. Johnston’s 1973 Lesbian Nation inspired a generation of lesbian activists (not to mention the name of a certain website), but the book is both more and less than the political treatise one might expect. Similarly, Johnston herself is a paradoxical figure who contradicts all stereotypes about lesbian feminism.

Johnston was a popular columnist for New York’s Village Voice when she gained notoriety by becoming the first mass media journalist to come out as a lesbian in print. She immediately became a center of controversy not only in the “straight” world but also among feminists and early gay and lesbian activists, such as the members of Manhattan’s Gay Liberation Front.

Many factors fueled the fires. As Johnston notes in Lesbian Nation, her “east west flower child beat hip psychedelic paradise now love peace do your own thing approach to the revolution” was not yet backed by a sound political understanding. At the same time, she stepped right into ongoing struggles between homosexual and heterosexual feminists over the role of lesbians in the feminist movement.

Warlords & Condom Queens

This essay was originally published in September of 1993 as an OUT in Left Field column in the LGBTQ newspaper Between the Lines. OUT in Left Field ran from March of 1993 through January of 1995; Between the Lines was distributed throughout the state of Michigan, USA.

I was hard at work on the promised column on tactics for the queer rebellion when I heard something on the TV that pushed me over the edge. So, that column will have to wait while I ventilate.

What set me off was hearing yet another newscaster refer to an indigenous Somalian leader as a “warlord.” (If you’re thinking, “oh no, now she’s off on foreign policy . . . no wonder they call this column ‘out in left field,’” please bear with me and read on. The relevance to the domestic concerns of U. S. queers will become clearer as we go.)

Leaving aside the question of whether or not this particular so-called “warlord” is evil incarnate, let’s think about words and pictures.