Angry London Mob: “Deport the strangers! Ban the strangers!!”
Sir Thomas Moore pleads the strangers' case:
"Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise Hath chid down all the majesty of England; Imagine that you see the wretched strangers, Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage, Plodding to th' ports and coasts for transportation, And that you sit as kings in your desires, Authority quite silent by your brawl, And you in ruff of your opinions clothed; What had you got? I'll tell you: you had taught How insolence and strong hand should prevail, How order should be quelled; and by this pattern Not one of you should live an agèd man, For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought, With self-same hand, self reasons, and self right, Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes Would feed on one another.
What do you think, You that do sit at helm, and call your beats, When you have thrown down with your own strong hands The pillars of your safety, that no odds Times bar but reason? Submit you to great states And get State of your own blood, in whose repose Consists your safety: 'tis the king's crown, whose duty Is to protect all subjects; but if you, O desperate men, can not conclude your wrongs, With any civil bounds, what state of peace Can be so secure, but you, whose raging manners Are guilded like the cap of liberty, Will pluck forth justice from her seated throne, To do your wills? O, desperate as you are, Wash your foul hands in gore, and bring your swords To lead yourselves in execution! What would you have? Your will? Alas, your aims Are all as infinite as your desires, And your desires as limitlesse as your power. Alas, poor things, what is it you demand, Carrying your cities' threat'ning on your brows, And pawing on the bleeding church of peace?
Say now the king, As he is clement if th' offender mourn, Should so much come too short of your great trespass As but to banish you: whither would you go? What country, by the nature of your error, Should give you harbour? Go you to France or Flanders, To any German province, to Spain or Portugal, Nay, anywhere that not adheres to England, Why, you must needs be strangers: would you be pleased To find a nation of such barbarous temper, That, breaking out in hideous violence, Would not afford you an abode on earth, Whet their detested knives against your throats, Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God Owed not nor made not you, nor that the elements Were not all appropriate to your comforts, But chartered unto them, what would you think To be thus used? This is the strangers' case; And this your mountainish inhumanity."
That is one of the most powerful and enduring exchanges in literature and film. It comes from Robert Bolt’s play *A Man for All Seasons*. In the scene, Sir Thomas More is challenged by his idealistic and hot-headed son-in-law, William Roper, for refusing to arrest a man More knows to be wicked.
Here is the dialogue:
**William Roper:** So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
**Sir Thomas More:** Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
**William Roper:** Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
**Sir Thomas More:** Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!
This passage perfectly captures the philosophy we so often discuss: that the rule of law is not merely a tool for the powerful, but a “thicket” that protects every individual—even the most vulnerable—from the unpredictable and often cruel whims of the crowd or the state. When we abandon due process in our zeal to “get” someone we deem evil, we destroy the very barriers that exist to protect us all when the winds of public sentiment shift.
This video features the iconic delivery of these lines from the 1966 film adaptation of the play, which brings the full weight of More’s warning to life.
The historical connection to Congressman Mike Lowry is a powerful piece of American history. Standing up against a flag burning bill that had almost universal, bipartisan momentum takes precisely the kind of moral courage John F. Kennedy wrote about in his Pulitzer winning bool: PROFILES IN COURAGE.
Lowry was one of but 3 Congressmen who realized that protecting the Constitution means protecting the rights of people to do things that the majority of society finds completely offensive.
The Supreme Court cases (Texas v. Johnson in 1989 and United States v. Eichman in 1990) actually weren’t unanimous—they were razor-thin 5-4 decisions. What makes them a ray of hope for the Anthropic case, however, is who voted to protect unpopular political speech. Conservative icon Justice Antonin Scalia joined the liberal block specifically because he believed his duty to the text of the First Amendment overrode his personal disgust for flag burners.
Trump’s Weaponization of Anthropic AI Code, Expression, and the Ghosts of the First Amendment
When the Trump administration recently (6-12-26) issued its emergency order forcing Anthropic to pull its newest AI models, Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5, offline globally, the justification was familiar: National Security. His selected Commerce Department reps argued that because these models (e;g; Claude 5) are highly capable of generating complex software code, allowing foreign nationals to access them constitutes an export of a dangerous cyber-weapon.
But let’s strip away the modern tech jargon. This is an old, authoritarian impulse dressed up in new digital clothes. This is a system of prior restraint—the government suppressing an information tool before it can even be used, under the assumption that someone, somewhere, might use it maliciously.
This moment reminds us of two profound historical parallels that should offer both a warning and a sense of hope.
A Lesson in Bipartisan Panic
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a wave of intense political fervor swept through Washington. Following a controversial demonstration, Congress rushed to pass the Flag Protection Act of 1989, making it a federal crime to desecrate the American flag. The bill was wildly popular. It felt like the entire country, and almost the entirety of Congress, was in lockstep.
Years later, I hosted a public meeting with Washington State Governor Mike Lowry. Lowry was one of a microscopic handful of Congressmen (3) who had the absolute backbone to vote against that emotional, popular tide. I greatly admired his courage. Standing in front of an angry public to explain that the Constitution protects even the most odious, offensive expressions is the definition of political bravery. He deserved a chapter in Profiles in Courage. The politicians thought they had won. But the Supreme Court stepped in.
In United States v. Eichman (1990), a narrow 5-4 majority struck down the federal law. Justices like Antonin Scalia—who loathed the act of flag burning personally—voted to protect it anyway. Why? Because they understood a foundational truth: Free speech exists precisely to protect unpopular, provocative, or controversial expression. If we only protect speech that makes the government feel safe and comfortable, the First Amendment is an empty promise.
From Flags to Code
The administration’s current war on AI models relies on the exact same trick the government tried to use against encryption pioneer Phil Zimmermann and his PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) software in the 1990s. Back then, the government classified encryption source code as a “munition”—a weapon—so they could ban its export to foreign nationals.
The federal courts saw right through it. In Bernstein v. United States, the courts established that computer source code is an expressive language, a form of speech protected by the First Amendment.
An advanced AI model like Claude 5.0 is not a missile. It is a dynamic, evolutionary library—a general-purpose language infrastructure used by students, researchers, novelists, and everyday citizens. Labeling a language engine a “weapon” to bypass the Bill of Rights is pure Orwellian Newspeak.
Why This Matters to Every American
By ordering a ban on “all foreign nationals,” the government created an unworkable standard that forced Anthropic to pull the plug on its technology entirely. In doing so, the executive branch didn’t just target foreign residents; they unilaterally stripped millions of American citizens of a tool they rely on for their businesses, their education, and their daily lives.
This isn’t just a corporate dispute between tech billionaires and the White House. This is a direct assault on the 1st Amendment’s protection of speech and the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. It injects a toxic level of regulatory instability that could easily trigger a broader panic in the technology markets.
Freedom isn’t free, and it isn’t passive. If the American public sits silently while the government uses “emergency powers” to decide who is allowed to access information based on the passport they hold/nationality, we will ultimatelyly lose the very liberties that define our nation.
Just as the Supreme Court stood up against the overwhelming political panic of the flag-burning laws thirty-five years ago, we must look to the courts to do it again today. We must remind the state that you cannot burn down the digital library just because you are afraid of what someone might read inside.
This is a profound connection to make. You are essentially identifying that the Book of Job, The Art of War, and The Prince all share a common, unsettling subject: the vulnerability of the individual within a system of absolute, often arbitrary power. When you view God as the ultimate “Prince” or the ultimate “General,” the Book of Job becomes a case study in power dynamics that Sun Tzu and Machiavelli would find terrifyingly familiar.
1. The “Gambling” Deity: The Ultimate Prince
In Machiavelli’s The Prince, the ruler operates in a world of fortuna—luck or chance—which he famously compares to a violent river. To survive, the Prince must be ready to adapt to whatever the river brings.
The Job Parallel: In the prologue to Job, God essentially risks Job’s life and livelihood on a wager with the Adversary (Satan). This portrays God not as a distant, abstract moral force, but as an entity possessing absolute power who plays by a set of rules that are entirely detached from Job’s personal merit or “fairness.”
Machiavellian Realism: Machiavelli would look at Job and argue that Job is the ultimate “subject”—he played by all the rules, he was “virtuous,” yet his survival depended entirely on the whims of a Ruler who viewed him as a pawn in a larger game of statecraft (or, in this case, cosmic posturing).
2. The Art of War and the Limits of “Correctness”
Sun Tzu emphasizes that one must understand the “Tao” (the Way) of the situation and the “climate” or “conditions.”
The Job Parallel: Job spends much of the book trying to argue that his “strategy”—his moral righteousness—should have guaranteed him a specific “victory” or at least safety. He is trying to use legalistic, logical arguments against an adversary (God) who operates on a plane where logic and morality are irrelevant to the outcome.
Sun Tzu’s Lesson: Sun Tzu teaches that if you find yourself fighting an opponent who holds all the terrain, all the resources, and defines the very rules of the battle, you have already lost. Job’s tragedy is the realization that he cannot “out-strategize” the Creator. There is no tactical move that can force a victory when the General has already decided the outcome of the campaign.
3. The “Cruelty” of Power
What might be called a “voracious gambling habit” is what political realists call absolute sovereignty.
Machiavelli would suggest that the God of Job is behaving exactly like a successful Prince: displaying power to maintain order and authority, indifferent to the suffering of individual subjects because the systemic goal (establishing the hierarchy of the universe) is paramount.
Sun Tzu would recognize the “wager” as a form of psychological warfare. By using Job as a test case, God is demonstrating control over the moral landscape to silence all potential challenges from the Adversary.
4. The Lesson for Your Legal Argument
Looking at this through the lens of victim justice: In Job, the victim (Job) eventually realizes that the system is rigged against him, yet he insists on his right to challenge the Ruler.
If you take the Art of War approach, you aren’t trying to appeal to the “fairness” of the fence or the thief; you are trying to expose the nature of their battlefield. You are trying to show that their “agreement” is a criminal conspiracy, not a legitimate transaction.
If you take the Machiavellian approach, you accept that the system (the court, the statutes) is a place of fortuna and calculated moves, and your task is to maneuver the legal facts so that the thief can no longer hide behind the “mask” of a closed statute of limitations.
The Book of Job is indeed a “parallel path” because it documents the moment a person realizes that the rules they were told to follow are not the rules that the people in power are playing by. Job’s defiance is his only source of dignity, just as your insistence on addressing the “hole” in the criminal code is your way of forcing the system to account for its own inconsistencies.
To compare Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince is to look at two distinct “grammars” of power. Both are foundational texts that deal with the cold reality of human conflict, but they arise from different cultural imperatives and serve different primary ends.
Comparative Summary: The Strategic Philosophies
Feature
Sun Tzu (The Art of War)
Machiavelli (The Prince)
Primary Focus
Military efficiency, conflict avoidance, and tactical mastery.
Statecraft, political survival, and the acquisition of power.
Core Objective
Achieving victory with minimal destruction to the state.
Maintaining control of the state and ensuring stability.
View of Conflict
A “vital” burden; should be resolved quickly or avoided entirely.
A constant, inevitable reality of political life.
Philosophical Root
Taoist influence (harmony, balance, economy of force).
Renaissance Realism (pragmatism, human nature, virtù).
Approach to Ethics
Amoral utility; ethics are subordinate to effectiveness.
Calculated immorality; “the ends justify the means” for the state.
Key Philosophical Divergences
1. The Economy of Force vs. The Consolidation of Control
Sun Tzu views war as a catastrophic necessity. His ultimate success is winning “without fighting”—subverting the enemy’s will and plans so that total destruction is unnecessary. The goal is to preserve the state’s resources, because a long war, even a winning one, can bankrupt a nation.
Machiavelli views politics as a perpetual struggle. His Prince is not necessarily trying to avoid conflict, but rather to navigate it skillfully so he is never displaced. His focus is on the internal maintenance of power—how to be feared versus loved, how to manage factions, and how to command loyalty in an inherently volatile environment.
2. Deception and “The Mask”
Both authors emphasize the necessity of deception, but their applications differ:
Sun Tzu’s Deception is tactical. It is about “appearing weak when you are strong” to manipulate an opponent into a fatal error. It is a tool of the battlefield.
Machiavelli’s Deception is political and performative. It is about “appearing virtuous” while being prepared to act otherwise. The Prince must manage the perception of the people; he must be a master of the mask to survive the shifting alliances of the court.
3. Context of Power
Sun Tzu writes for the General. His advice is horizontal, focusing on the relationship between commander, terrain, and enemy. He assumes the state is already established; the goal is to protect it from external threats.
Machiavelli writes for the Ruler (or “New Prince”). His advice is vertical and deeply concerned with legitimacy. He is often writing for a leader who must seize power in a fractured, unstable system (Renaissance Italy) and then hold onto it against internal rivals and foreign powers.
Connecting to an Interest in “Justice” and “Fairness”
The earlier point about the “fairness to the victims” and the “continuing nature” of crime is highly relevant here.
Sun Tzu might argue that a criminal who continues to profit from a fence is creating “long-term conflict,” which is inefficient and invites the eventual ruin of the enterprise. He would advise that such a strategy is fundamentally flawed because it invites unnecessary risk.
Machiavelli would likely be more cynical. He would recognize that the “fence and the thief” relationship is a common political dynamic. He would analyze whether the thief’s strategy of “limiting exposure through time” is a viable method for retaining power, regardless of whether it is “fair” to the victim. For Machiavelli, the only measure of success is the durability of the result—not the morality of the path taken.
While Sun Tzu seeks the efficiency of the outcome, Machiavelli seeks the security of the position. In the context of your legal motions, you are essentially trying to prove that the thief’s “position” is built on an illegal foundation that, by its own nature, should forfeit the protections of the statute of limitations.
Does this comparative look at the “economical” strategist versus the “pragmatic” politician help frame the legal argument, i.e. developing the accountability of the criminal enterprise?
“None are so helplessly enslaved as those who falsely nelieve they are free.” -Goethe-
SUMMARY JOH pide confirmar si Marlon Ochoa sali6 de Honduras para buscarlo con contactos de inteligencia de Estados Unidos y proceder con la captura o lo que corresponda.
-LITERAL TRANSCRIPT “Si ya no esta en Honduras, tenes que confirmarme para yo empezar a mover a buscarlo con los contactos que tenemos de inteligencia de Estados Unidos, y una vez lo localizamos ah[ procedemos con la captura, o con lo que se tenga que hacer. No creo que ese muchacho haya salido sin que nadie lo haya visto.”
-SUMMARY Tomas Zambrano responde a JOH que avanzaran contra Marlon, que evaluan una orden de captura internacional y que deben buscar el delito.
-LITERAL TRANSCRIPT “Contestandole a su solicitud, sf, vamos a darle duro al tema del juicio polftico de Marlon. Le estaba diciendo a los companeros que lo espantaron porque informan que ya no esta aquf. Y si ya no esta aquf que podemos hacer. Estabamos hablando con un grupo de abogados, verdad, que se le puede dar a el una orden de captura internacional. Eso se puede hacer, pero tendrfamos que buscar el delito principalmente, talvez usted nos ayuda y nos asesora.”
-SUMMARY Juan Orlando Hernandez exige que metan el juicio polftico contra Marlon, dice que debe salir de ahf y que necesitan tener todo controlado aunque corra sangre.
-LITERAL TRANSCRIPT “Me van a meter ese juicio sf o sf, ese muchacho tiene que salir de ahf. Ocupamos ten er controlado todo, no importa cuanta sangre se derrame, no importa que quieran meter las antorchas, que quieran salir, no importa, no me importa eso.”
Media Island International in downtown Olympia, WA
This is a story about the political Left eating its own. About the circular firing squad of identity politics. The story of how an intersectional approach to organization-building promotes the worst players while destroying the hard work of well-meaning activists. This is the saga of Media Island International.
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The city of Olympia, WA, is a well-known hotbed of radical politics. Once a quiet port town at the southern tip of the Puget Sound, known primarily for its logging industry and as home to Washington’s state capital, Olympia got a serious makeover in 1971 with the opening of The Evergreen State College.
Soon Olympia was home to a classic Town and Gown split. This relatively conservative municipality, composed of buttoned-down politicians plus logging and farming families, was now home to thousands of itinerant college students. The experimental nature of the college sharpened this division, drawing counter-cultural students seeking new ways of learning.
Enter Media Island International (MII), a nonprofit corporation dedicated to the promotion of progressive ideals. A group of local activists drew up the articles of incorporation in 1990 and enumerated these goals:
· To undertake public interest projects
· To operate a publicly accessible library
· To provide publication and media production capabilities to groups educating the public about underrepresented issues
· To network among other public benefit groups
· To sponsor and conduct public events
Over the next 28 years, MII would accomplish many things, only to be split apart by infighting that led to a hostile takeover in 2018. Once a busy hive of diverse activities serving a broad swath of community groups and issues, the organization now sits dormant, its doors locked, run by an individual with a narrow political agenda and questionable financial practices.
I lived in Olympia from 1994-98, where I earned an MPA from Evergreen and organized for the IWW union. I was a contributor to a local paper called Works in Progress, one of the many groups working out of MII. Yet despite my immersion in that radical culture, I never visited Media Island or knew any of its principal actors. It was years later when I heard rumors that something strange had gone down there; this article is the result of my finally asking “what happened?”
Jimmy Mateson
͏ ͏ Jimmy Mateson was a driving force behind the formation of MII. After receiving their provisional license from the state to begin operations, MII opened their doors for business in 1991, operating out of Jimmy’s house on Olympia’s Westside. The following year they moved to an office on Capitol Way, where their activities picked up as the word got around.
In 1997, an old Leftist named Gene Cade donated his home near the center of town to MII. This gift kicked off a flurry of activity as the group spent a couple years renovating the house for occupation. According to long-time volunteer and board member Rick Fellows, Mateson seemed to drag his feet. “We weren’t able to move into the building until Jimmy left town.”
In 2000 – finally established in the newly refurbished house, and with founder and board chair Mateson now relocated to Hawaii – MII entered its golden years. Fellows, a backbone of the group for 17 years, remembers those days fondly. “Media Island was open to all. We had a sandwich board out every day on the sidewalk that said we were open.”
“We had status with the state as a public library space, so we felt obliged to keep it open. We curated books, magazines and videos about a wide range of under-reported subjects; radioactive waste, Guatemala, the CIA, right-wing networks. Rachel Corrie came through, Veterans for Peace, Food Not Bombs.”
The building also functioned as a meeting space. “People could come in and read magazines or view videos. We gave free copying and network printing for 17 years, kept laser printers stocked with toner and paper. We had a kitchen and the downstairs to use as meeting spaces. We had open weekly meetings for years where people could come and make proposals or raise concerns.” ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ Rick Fellows ͏
͏ ͏ Unfortunately, this made MII a lightning rod for conflict. “There was so much good stuff that happened,” Fellows recalls. “Yet the things that stand out are the interpersonal conflicts. One incident in 2010 was very traumatizing. I support dignity for transgender people, but a group of folks were coming in and demanding that this be a safe space where people can yell at you if you misgender somebody.”
“It felt like they were trying to drive everybody out that wasn’t all about pronouns. As soon as somebody came through the door, they’d be pressed on their pronouns, and there was a lot of scowling and demands that people go through anti-oppression workshops. People would not feel welcome because they were lording it over the space. In the end they didn’t get their way.”
Fellows is understandably bitter about what happened to MII later, between 2016-2018. “It was a privatization, a theft from the community. It’s a long-valued resource that’s gone dark. Everybody was turned away. Nobody’s gotten through the door in eight years, and no one can tell me if there’s still books in there or if they’ve still got radio transmitters and PA systems.”
So, what happened? According to former MII caretaker and volunteer Bruce Wilkinson, “We had a low power FM station, and the new on-site caretaker was running it by himself. I came back to MII in January 2015 and started to build the station back up, because I thought that was the most dynamic program. By June I’d built the station crew back up to a dozen volunteers.” ͏
͏͏ Bruce Wilkinson
͏ Bruce Wilkinson “We’d gotten three grants for over $20,000, and that’s when Shawna Hawk showed up. She was going to Evergreen and was interested in being a DJ. She was a responsible person, so at the time it was great having her. I recruited her to be involved in the group on a deeper level, and she was amenable to that.”
“I felt the station could keep MII running. Our reach on the airwaves was low, but we were streaming online by this point. Podcasting was taking off, and we had a recording studio. We took the grant money and bought some new equipment with it. Then (board president) Jimmy Mateson came to town for the first time in 15 years.”
“Then we got a big surprise. Jimmy hadn’t filed our 990 forms for three years and we were notified that we’d lost our nonprofit status. Though we eventually got it back, I was horrified because we were also the fiscal sponsors for other projects. So, I wanted to add two new members to the board for accountability: a friend of mine, along with Shawna Hawk.”
“Instead of adopting my idea for two new board members, Jimmy and the board kicked me out of the organization, out of the spokes-council, and out of my job as program manager. Though Shawna wasn’t elected to the board, she was promoted to my old job as station manager. She didn’t have great politics, but she cared about the station and she seemed responsible.”
“But Shawna had no technical abilities, no computer skills. She was a good DJ, good at interviewing people, but needed other people for the technology. Soon the collective had drifted down to nothing, just Shawna and the caretaker. Next thing you know, Jimmy made Shawna the caretaker and put her on the board. They chased out the old caretaker (Dana Walker).” ͏ ͏ ͏
͏ Shawna Hawk
Rick Fellows remembers it similarly. “Shawna was brought in as a volunteer after getting expelled from KAOS (the Evergreen State College station). The people at the radio station were demanding that the whole house become part of the radio station. To resolve the disputes between the radio station and the board, they wanted to put Shawna on the board of directors.”
“Shawna seemed friendly, talking about how much she liked what MII does. We had some concerns about her being kicked out of KAOS, but we’d been saying for years how we wanted people of color and women on the board, so here she is and the radio station’s demanding it. But as soon as she got on the board, she started saying that people couldn’t use the space.”
“I proposed we let a homeless group use a small office for outreach. But Shawna said “no,” because “white men don’t understand what it’s like to be a black woman in this space.” And that was always the answer. She refused Food Not Bombs, who we had hosted for years. Since we operated by consensus, she blocked all proposals. And Jimmy Mateson took her side.”
“When it first went down, I tried to rally for what I thought was being lost to the community, but people were attacking me, so I stepped back. I had run the fiscal sponsorship program, paid the bills, fixed broken pipes, rewired the house – all as a volunteer. And I didn’t get any thanks from Shawna for that. Out of 17 years of volunteering there were five months I got a $200 stipend.”
It got worse. The shift in power was finalized at a board meeting on October 18th, 2018. By now Shawna was living in the house as the on-site caretaker, and was sitting on the board with Mateson, Fellows and Tom Nogler (now passed away). Mateson and Hawk made a motion to remove Fellows and Nogler from the board; Fellows and Nogler of course voted no.
Mateson fell back on a provision in the group’s bylaws that gave him an extra vote in the case of a tie. He used this second vote to pass the motion and remove Fellows and Nogler from the board. They received no thanks for their years of hard work, no gold watch for exemplary service. Today, Mateson rues the day and regrets the loss of friends, saying he was torn between conflicting priorities and did what he thought was right for the group at the time.
Years later, Fellows is still licking his wounds. “I’ve never put in that much time on any project. I was struck by how many people in the community came up to me during that time and apologized for not daring to speak up. There was a lot of fear of being labeled a racist. I was being called a racist, yet I had worked for black and indigenous-led projects my entire life. People knew it was unfair.”
Though Wilkinson and Fellows chose to walk away, not everybody was so equanimous. MII’s former caretaker and radio tech Dana Walker complained loudly about his ouster by Hawk and Mateson via his newsletter The Thunderbolt, and he was backed up by local blogger John Smith of Amicus Curia.1 The two of them turned up the heat, much to Hawk’s dismay.
Shawna Hawk, not content with merely evicting Walker from the MII house, had a lawyer send him a notice to “cease and desist all harassing, threatening, and defamatory conduct.” To which he responded, “I stand by my factual reporting, my opinions are clearly identified as such, and my editorial decisions are not going to be determined by threats from Shawna Hawk or your legal firm.”
͏ Dana Walker
When her letter had no effect, she filed a petition for a Protection Order against Walker. She sought protection from his “harassment” with this:
“He has insited (sic) actions of others in his writings toward me…He began to target me with his aggression by posturing and giving threatening looks and gesters (sic). This would also accompany the constent (sic) writing about me in his weekly newsletter and he had a couple of his friends write things on social media and send nots (sic) and messages to the work facility.” ͏
͏ ͏ Shawna Hawk in court seeking a protection order from Dana Walker
Eventually Hawk had her day in court. When she complained that John Smith was taking photos, the judge said,” This is a courtroom. A courtroom is one of the most public venues in existence. If the press wants to come and record what’s going on and broadcast that later, we consider that to be a good thing.”
Witness EV Webb had this to say about Walker. “Dana can’t stand the organizational transformation that includes anti-racism and dismantling patriarchy at MII. His behavior reminds me of the toxic abusive manipulative men who won’t lay a hand on the women they’re abusing but will punch a wall to let her know he wants to hurt her. Subtle threats hidden behind vaguely progressive language. White supremacy and patriarchy right there.”
Witness Lisa Ganser also framed the issue as one of dismantling racism. “I got to know Shawna through her work with Women of Color in Leadership and I offered to come in and support her leadership, which means raking leaves or whatever it is that Shawna would want me to do. Because I appreciated that the organization was shifting from this white boy club to women of color actually in leadership. And I’m seeing all this pushback from the white men.”
͏ ͏ Lisa Ganser, a witness for Shawna
Shawna had the last word. “This situation is extremely disturbing, unsettling, painful, trying to do the work of centering women, particularly women of color and other marginalized groups…I was a foster kid, I was abused as a kid, I had domestic violence in my background. They can have their paper but to have them keep my name out of their paper is what I need and what I ask.”
After weighing the testimony, the judge dismissed Hawk’s petition. “I think of all the people who have been before me in cases like this, as people working in the media, you would understand the frightful prospect of a court issuing an order telling someone to stop saying something.”
“Other people may have opinions about how you manage the organization, and they may vigorously disagree with you in the public forum. But that is one of the aspects of a robust public debate on a matter of public importance, and it can be uncomfortable to participate in. I have no choice but to deny the request for an anti-harassment order.”
͏ ͏Commissioner Paul Wohl denied Shawna’s petition for a protection order
But Hawk wasn’t done with Dana Walker. Next, she went after his sole means of earning a living. He sold copies of Real Change (a homeless advocacy paper) in front of the Eastside Olympia Food Coop, and she petitioned the Coop to remove him from his spot in front of the store. Despite being exonerated on charges of harassment by a court of law, Walker received this missive from the Coop’s membership committee.“
As you’ll surely agree, our work as white people is to dismantle white supremacy. Yet our solidarity does not always look like high-profile social activism, political analysis, nor feel good inspirational treatises of allyship. It can also look like a decision to exercise restraint and swallow our pride, rather than inflict additional hardship onto a marginalized person.”“
Whilst the court ruled that your speech did not constitute the legal definition of harassment, this does not remove you from the consequences of that speech. In order for the co-op to consider you in alignment with our value of Anti-Oppression and continue to provide endorsement of your tabling activities, we ask you to demonstrate accountability for the role you’ve played in the tremendous fear Shawna expressed as a Black Woman.”
“This occurred whilst Black Women professors at Evergreen are being threatened with death, and another Black Woman is found tortured, and whilst Nazis are rallying openly at the college. We’ve collaborated with our Anti-Oppression Team and our Conflict Resolution Team to craft the attached set of Behavioral Agreements. You’ll be required to complete these steps before your Tabling Application can be reviewed in the future.”
͏ The Eastside Olympia Food Coop where Dana Walker sold the Real Change newspaper
The effect on Walker was catastrophic. Hawk made his private phone number available to the public and encouraged people to harass him. She called his employer Real Change in Seattle in a failed effort to have him fired. She succeeded in having the Food Coop ban him from their property, which contributed to his subsequent homelessness. At age 60, and with a felony marijuana conviction, he had difficulty finding work.
Meanwhile, back at Media Island, Shawna was putting the finishing touches on her coup d’etat. Her long-time champion, founder Jimmy Mateson, was ready to leave the group but wanted to ensure that MII would be in good hands. Though he had supported Shawna in court and through the many organizational changes, he wanted some balance on the board of directors. With Fellows and Nogler gone, that meant finding two more members.
He and Shawna found two willing volunteers. They were duly sworn in and Mateson felt confident enough to resign as president, fulfilling an agreement he’d made with Shawna about the conditions of his departure. Yet within a couple months both new members resigned, leaving Hawk entirely in charge, the sole “registered agent” of Media Island. Mateson was heartbroken and felt betrayed by her.
͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ Shawna Hawk
Eight years later, Hawk remains the sole registered agent of MII, despite by-laws that require the board of directors to have three members. She still lives in the house, the doors locked and the windows blacked out with posters, expanding her nonprofit domain with the creation of two more organizations, both co-located at the MII address. So how did local activists frame Hawk’s takeover? Here’s Lisa Ganser’s take in Poor Magazine, 11/25/18:
“Shawna’s work and leadership…(are) bringing the organization alive. But this feels threatening to white men who cling to their positions of power over the organization…This is an opportunity to dismantle patriarchy and white supremacy. Shawna sees and feels a sense of urgency for white people to go deep with The Work and turn over power, unhoard the resources. This can serve as an example of Reparations, of transformative racial justice.”
Another of Shawna’s allies, George Collins, wrote this in Ungagged, 4/27/19. “Media Island operated under the control of a board of mostly white men…with this dude Rick Fellows at the helm. Through a series of scandals involving infighting…the old boys of the board faded away. Hawk stepped up to take over the space…and shifted the focus to its current mission: to provide a welcoming space for women and people of color.”
“When a black woman assumed control of his little boys-only hideout, Ricky boy blows an artery…At the heart of all this is the topic of reparations, or compensation, for the wealth stolen from slave families during the slave trade. Restoring the wealth of people of color is necessary for a multiracial society to leap forward into socialist organization.’” 2
͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ “George Collins,” the nom de plume of Collin Parker
Here’s another whitewash of Shawna’s work by Heather Leigh Dyson from Thurston Talk. “Media Island International is a black-owned and black-run cultural center that was founded around 30 years ago. The initial focus was environmental justice but has transitioned over the years to social justice issues. Shawna propelled race and gender issues when she started there.”
“After earning her master’s in Leadership & Education, Bicultural Development, and Social & Human Services from Pacific Oaks College, she decided to return to TESC to earn her second bachelor’s degree with a focus on Cultural Studies and Communications.”
Privacy laws prevent journalists and hiring officers from verifying educational claims like these. Pacific Oaks College offers master’s degrees online, but nothing called “Leadership & Education, Bicultural Development and Social & Human Services.” Their records department refused to confirm Hawk’s matriculation. It’s hard not to doubt such dubious educational claims in light of Hawk’s grade-school-level grammar and spelling (see court docs above).
This writer tried to talk with Shawna Hawk over several months. She never returned my many calls or emails, despite my offer to let her “tell her side of the story.” I even went to the front door at MII and rang the bell; she answered via intercom but refused to talk with me or answer the door. If this account feels one-sided, it’s not for lack of trying on my part.
Since seizing control of MII in 2018, Hawk has continued to expand her nonprofit realm by founding (or co-founding) two more 501(c)(3) organizations, both of them working out of the MII building. The Women of Color in Leadership Movement (WOCILM) was formed on April 10, 2017, and Shawna serves as the sole governor of the corporation.“
The Women of Color in Leadership Movement is a group that is being cultivated as a safe space for women of color to discuss issues, events, and experiences that uniquely affect us. Spiritual empowerment and finding and using our voices are not always possible in male/white or white passing spaces. We also talk about issues such as colorism within our communities.”
Between 2017 and 2023, The WOCILM received over $44,000 in grants from Media Island International. Their programming is thin; they’ve sponsored just four speaking events over a six-year span. More recently they co-hosted a Juneteenth celebration in collaboration with the City of Olympia.
In May of 2018, a year after the founding of the WOCILM, Shawna’s son Javoen Byrd founded The Hawk Foundation for Research and Education in African Culture (HFREAC). The Hawk Foundation also operates out of MII’s building. Media Island’s average annual revenue is $106,000 (2017-23); by comparison, the HFREAC averaged $378,000 in annual revenues (2021-24), and earned an impressive $620,000 in 2024 (the last year reported).
͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ Javoen Byrd, Shawna Hawk’s son
In 2022, The Hawk Foundation paid $45,000 in rent and utilities (presumably to MII, their “landlord”). In 2024, they spent nearly $268,000 on “Scholarships.” Who are the recipients? Also in 2024, someone (presumably Javoen) earned $53,279 in salary. That same year they spent $93,255 on travel, meetings and conferences. Which is curious, considering their programming happens in and around Olympia.
Shawna has served on the board of the Hawk Foundation, as has George Collins (the “journalist” who wrote in such glowing terms about MII in Ungagged). And why is it called the Hawk Foundation, if its founder’s name is Byrd? Presumably in honor of Byrd’s mother or, just as likely, in recognition of the control she exerts over the organization. Nowhere on their websites or in the media do they ever mention their filial connection.
In fact, it seems their relationship is deliberately hidden from public view. In another fawning article by George Collins, published in the South Seattle Emerald, he quotes Shawna as she describes how MII helped Byrd achieve nonprofit status.
“Javoen was brought to Media Island as a community member who had an amazing idea to create an organization that focuses on African studies and culture,’ said Shawna Hawk, Media Island’s main organizer. ‘Javoen and his organization are an example of the kind of opportunities that we want to offer…especially on issues of race, power and privilege.’”
Shawna has ingratiated herself with the city’s powers-that-be. The WOCILM collaborates with the city on Juneteenth celebrations, which take place in a small park across the street from MII on Adams Street. The park is named after 19th century African American businesswoman Rebecca Howard, and Hawk sits on a steering committee overseeing the site’s redevelopment.
When I asked someone in the Parks Department about Hawk’s role on the committee, she was reluctant to comment. “I want to let her tell you in her own words. I wouldn’t want to get it wrong.” City bureaucrats have learned to tread softly around Shawna.
What does the future hold for Media Island? Shawna and Javoen now control a valuable set of assets. With total revenues from their nonprofits approaching $1 million annually, the future looks bright. The MII house is assessed by Thurston County at $473,100, and while she can’t sell the house and pocket the money outright, it would be easy for her to retain control of the assets.
Article VI of the Media Island by-laws stipulate that, “In the event of dissolution of the Corporation, the net assets are to be distributed as follows: to an organization , or organizations of similar purposes, as determined by the Board of Directors, which has established its tax-exempt status under the 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.” That is, an organization like The Women of Color in Leadership Movement or the Hawk Foundation.
What do we know about Shawna Hawk’s life before she arrived in Olympia? Very little. Born in 1968, Shawna had three children with a soldier named Anthony Byrd (Javoen and two twin sisters, Tanya and Latrice). Hawk and Byrd divorced and, in 2001, she filed for a protection order from him, alleging assault. She raised her children in Tacoma as a single mother, living off a teacher’s salary and child support. That’s no small feat and worthy of respect.
I’ve tried to let this story tell itself, using source materials and interview transcripts, with little editorializing. Allow me now to summarize what I see.
Media Island International spent 28 years providing vital resources to Olympia’s progressive movements: meeting rooms, a library, printing supplies, a radio station and event production. Despite some rough spots and internal quarreling, they kept the doors open and the lights on, a welcoming space for a broad diversity of groups with a variety of agendas.
In 2016 Shawna Hawk arrived and volunteered to do a radio show on their low-power FM station. As one of the few (but not the only) black woman to volunteer, she was shown great deference out of a sincere desire to diversify the group. Through a process of attrition and well-intentioned personnel shuffles, Shawna rose through the ranks, eventually securing herself the jobs of on-site caretaker, radio station manager and Board member.
Because the Board worked on a consensus model, Shawna was able to jettison most of the program suggestions by vetoing proposals she didn’t like. She went after those who objected to her power play, working with group founder Jimmy Mateson to remove two long-time volunteers from the Board. When Mateson and two new board members resigned, Shawna became the group’s sole board member and agent.
Much of the Left rallied to her support, and critics were afraid to speak up for fear of being labeled racist. She waged a vindictive campaign against her most vocal critic, attacking his sole source of income and contributing to his homelessness. What was once a thriving hub of Olympia’s Left community has become her personal playground. The door stays locked, the windows are blacked out, and the programming’s been reduced to a trickle of events.
Hawk has leveraged her position in the community to expand her financial reach, founding or co-founding two new nonprofits operating out of the same location. The groups currently function with little public scrutiny, and she controls them by appointing friends and family to their boards. She justifies all this with the rhetoric of reparations and anti-racism, but an objective observer can’t help but notice the potential for self-enrichment that exists.
The story raises a familiar theme. What happens when people belonging to “marginalized groups” are called out for unscrupulous behavior? Do they get a free pass by virtue of their marginalization? Do people with more social privilege have a right to raise such issues, or will they be ostracized for speaking up? Why did no one have the courage to come to Rick Fellows’ or Dana Walker’s defense, despite the unfairness of the campaign against them?
(In an interesting corollary, a similar story was playing out at The Evergreen State College during this time. The “Day of Absence” at Evergreen was a long-standing spring-quarter event that featured minority students and faculty meeting off-campus to discuss race and equity. In 2017, the event was reversed, asking white participants to stay off-campus. This sparked controversy, a student uprising and the resignation of Professor Bret Weinstein. Hawk and the Food Coop allude to these events here.) 3
My goal is to restore accountability to an organization that has operated without oversight for too long. I encourage the Secretary of State’s Office and the Department of Revenue to launch an investigation into Media Island’s financial and legal status. For starters, they are out of compliance with their own by-laws, which require three members on the Board of Directors.
The state should audit the three groups’ finances to ensure that public money isn’t lining the pockets of Hawk, Byrd and Co. This reporter has no subpoena power and limited research skills; I can only ask questions and try to point regulators in the right direction. In an era when unprecedented fraud is making national headline news, it makes sense to dig a little deeper.
ustice is long overdue at Media Island International.
6 06/12/2024 Affidavit Declaration Certificate Confirmation of Service View Document Affidavit Declaration Certificate Confirmation of Service
7 06/13/2024 Affidavit Declaration Certificate Confirmation of Service View Document Affidavit Declaration Certificate Confirmation of Service
8 06/17/2024 Show Cause Original Type Show CauseView Document Mason MinutesJudicial Officer Stevens, David Hearing Time 1:30 PM Result Held Comment SOPHIA SUM CONFIRMED VIA EMAIL 06/13/0224 @ 8:35AM JB Parties Present Plaintiff Attorney: ATKISSION, AARON JOSEPH Plaintiff Attorney: ATKISSION, AARON JOSEPH Defendant: NOYES MATHERS, SUSAN Attorney: Scuderi, Joseph
13 06/17/2024 Answer and Counterclaim View Document Answer and Counterclaim
14 06/17/2024 Order of Continuance View Document Order of Continuance Judicial Officer Stevens, David Comment SHOW CAUSE
15 07/05/2024 Notice of Absence Unavailability View Document Notice of Absence Unavailability Comment JOSEPH SCUDERI UNAVAILABLE 7/15
16 07/15/2024 Show Cause Original Type Show CauseView Document Mason MinutesJudicial Officer Stevens, David Hearing Time 1:30 PM Result Held Parties Present Plaintiff Attorney: ATKISSION, AARON JOSEPH Plaintiff Attorney: ATKISSION, AARON JOSEPH
25 07/25/2024 Affidavit Declaration Certificate Confirmation of Service View Document Affidavit Declaration Certificate Confirmation of Service
26 07/25/2024 Reply View Document Reply Comment IN SUPPORT OF MOTION FOR RECONSIDERATION OF ENTRY OF JUDGMENT ON ATTORNEY FEES
27 07/29/2024 Motion Hearing Original Type Motion Hearing View Document Mason Minutes Judicial Officer Stevens, David Hearing Time 1:30 PM Result Held Comment RECONSIDERATION COMFIRMED VIA PHONE CALL ON 7/24/24 @ 2:50 PM BY SUSAN MATHERS- SG Parties Present Plaintiff: VARTIA, KARIN Attorney: ATKISSION, AARON JOSEPH Plaintiff: KOWALSKI, EMMA Attorney: ATKISSION, AARON JOSEPH Defendant: NOYES MATHERS, SUSAN Attorney: Scuderi, Joseph
28 07/29/2024 Order on Motion for Reconsideration View Document Order on Motion for Reconsideration Judicial Officer Stevens, David
29 07/29/2024 Order for Hearing View Document Order for Hearing Judicial Officer Stevens, David Comment FEES AND COSTS
08/12/2024 Motion Hearing Judicial Officer Goodell, Daniel L Hearing Time 1:30 PM Cancel Reason Unspecified Comment FEES AND COSTS HEARING CONFIRMED BY SOPHIA SUM VIA EMAIL ON 8/8/24 @ 8:41AM CRR
39 08/12/2024 Motion Hearing Original Type Motion Hearing View Document Mason MinutesJudicial Officer Goodell, Daniel LHearing Time 1:30 PM Result Held Comment TO DISMISS DEFENDANT’S COUNTER CLAIM AND FOR ATTORNEY FEES AND COSTS HEARING CONFIRMED BY SOPHIA SUM VIA EMAIL ON 8/8/24 @ 8:41AM CRR Parties Present PlaintiffAttorney: ATKISSION, AARON JOSEPH Plaintiff: KOWALSKI, EMMA Attorney: ATKISSION, AARON JOSEPH Defendant: NOYES MATHERS, SUSAN Attorney: Scuderi, Joseph
40 08/12/2024 Motion Hearing View Document Mason Minutes Judicial Officer Goodell, Daniel L
41 08/12/2024 Order Setting View Document Order Setting Judicial Officer Goodell, Daniel L Comment PRESENTATION OF ORDER
42 08/13/2024 Release View Document Release Comment OF LIS PENDENS
43 08/15/2024 Judgment View Document Judgment Judicial Officer Goodell, Daniel L Comment AND ORDER
08/15/2024 Ex Parte Action With Order Judicial Officer Goodell, Daniel L
08/20/2024 Motion Hearing Judicial Officer Goodell, Daniel L Hearing Time 3:00 PM Cancel Reason Stricken
44 03/05/2025 Partial Satisfaction of Judgment View Document Partial Satisfaction of Judgment
When I first heard the term liberation theology (in opposition to a theology that fosters compliance with the status quo), I thought there should also be a liberation psychology—a psychology that doesn’t equate a lack of adjustment with mental illness, but instead promotes constructive rebellion against dehumanizing institutions, and which also provides strategies to build a genuinely democratic society.
It turned out that somebody else had thought of the same thing before I had.
Ignacio Martin-Baró (1942–1989) was both a priest and a psychologist, and it is he who should be given credit for popularizing the term liberation psychology.
Martin-Baró’s liberation theology, liberation psychology, and activism for the people of El Salvador cost him his life. In the middle of the night on November 16, 1989, Martin-Baró, together with five colleagues, their housekeeper, and her teenage daughter, were forced out to a courtyard on the campus of Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas, where they were murdered by the US-trained troops of the Salvadoran government’s elite Atlacatl Battalion.
As a Jesuit priest, Martin-Baró embraced liberation theology in opposition to a theology that oppressed the poor, and as a social psychologist, he believed that imported North American psychology also oppresses marginalized people.
The Politics of Mainstream Psychology
Martin-Baró believed that the prevailing mainstream psychology had become infatuated with methods and measurements and thus was ignoring unquantifiable realities necessary for liberation.
Such unquantifiable but powerful human dimensions include commitment, solidarity, hope, and courage.
He saw a mainstream psychology that either ignored or only paid lip service to social and economic conditions that shape people’s lives.
In Writings for a Liberation Psychology, a compilation of Martin-Baró’s essays, editors Adrianne Aron and Shawn Corne point out that liberation psychology is about looking at the world from the point of view of the dominated instead of the dominators.
Martin-Baró drew heavily on the work of Paulo Freire, the Brazilian educator, who recognized a certain “psychology of oppression” in which the downtrodden become fatalistic, believing they are powerless to alter their circumstances, thus becoming resigned to their situation.
The prevailing organizational psychology that Martin-Baró criticizes is one that promotes an alienation of working people by serving the needs of industry. In his essay “Toward a Liberation Psychology,” Martin-Baró points out:
What has happened to Latin American psychology is similar to North American psychology at the beginning of the twentieth century, when it ran so fast after scientific recognition and social status that it stumbled . . . In order to get social position and rank, it negotiated how it would contribute to the needs of the established power structure.
Prevailing psychological theories are not politically neutral. Martin-Baró astutely observed that many mainstream psychological schools of thought—be they psychoanalytic, behavioral, or biochemical—accept the maximization of pleasure as the motivating force for human behavior, the same maximization of pleasure that is assumed by neoclassical economic theorists. This ignores the human need for fairness, social justice, freedom, and autonomy as well as other motivations that would transform society.
Martin-Baró pointed out that when knowledge is limited to verifiable facts and events, we “become blind to the most important meanings of human existence.” Great scientists recognize this, as a sign hanging in Albert Einstein’s office at Princeton stated: “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” Much of what makes us fully human and capable of overcoming injustices—including our courage and solidarity—cannot be reduced to simplistic, verifiable, objective variables.
In American society, mental health treatment is a significant force that can work either for or against genuine democracy. There are approaching eight hundred thousand social workers, psychiatrists, and psychologists working in the United States today (though not all provide mental health services), as well as many mental health counselors and paraprofessionals. The US Surgeon General reported in 1999 that 15 percent of adults and 21 percent of children and adolescents in the United States utilize mental health services each year, and it is likely that these percentages have increased.
Whether they realize it or not, mental health professionals who narrowly treat their clients in a way that encourages compliance with the status quo are acting politically.
Similarly, validating a client’s challenging of these undemocratic hierarchical modes is also a political act.
I believe that mental health professionals have an obligation to recognize the broader issues that form a context for their clients’ mental well-being, and to be honest with their clientele about which side of this issue they are on.
When Truths Do and Do Not Set People Free
Martin-Baró, tragically prescient, once quipped to a North American colleague, “In your country, it’s publish or perish. In ours, it’s publish and perish.”
In contrast with Martin-Baró, US intellectual activists have a considerable degree of free speech, and it requires no great heroism for US citizens to acquire their books or hear them speak and to discover truths.
Truths do sometimes set people free, especially when people have a basis of strength to start with. And truths can be especially energizing when, as was the case with Martin-Baró, proclaiming them takes courage.
Similarly, Tom Paine’s truths in Common Sense energized many colonials to take action against the British. Paine’s readers had not lost their self-respect, community, and sense of power. Paine’s audience also knew that Paine was risking his life to write and publish Common Sense. The power of truth to energize often lies in the risk that it takes to state it.
Generally in the United States, telling the truth about corporate-government tyranny and injustice requires little real risk, and so such truths provide little energy.
It is not that there is no value in exposing more truths about the corporatocracy. However, many professional activists and educators have become lazy, pursing only easy, risk-free truths that are not energizing.
I wish my declaring the truth of people’s personal abusive relationships or the truth of their systemic corporate-governmental abuse were enough to set them free.
I wish that the people I know caught up in this state of helplessness could be spurred to action by lectures—that would be an easy fix. But more often, lectures are a turnoff.
What these victims of abuse need is the strength to do something with the truth of their abuse—strength that comes from support, morale, healing, and self-respect, as well as practical strategies and tactics.
The oppression faced by the Salvadorans whom Martin-Baró worked with was different from the oppression we face in the United States today, yet oppression need not be physically brutalizing in order to damage the bonds of community and people’s sense of self-worth.
We would do well to reject a mainstream psychology that tacitly fosters compliance to the status quo.
In contrast, we need a liberation psychology that promotes constructive rebellion against dehumanizing institutions and, at the same time, aims at building a genuinely democratic society.
In the United States, liberation psychology needs to focus on the specific ways Americans have been pacified and demoralized. And it must focus on how we can be made whole again, so as to regain strength to fight for ourselves and our communities.
Liberation Psychology in Practice
My form of practiced liberation psychology stems from my clinical experience. It is decidedly in opposition to resentment-producing coercions; it is about helping individuals and families build respectful relationships.
I have counseled hundreds of young people and adults who had been previously labeled with oppositional defiant disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, substance abuse, depression, schizophrenia, and other psychiatric diagnoses.
What strikes me is how many of these people are essentially anti-authoritarians.
A major problem for these young anti-authoritarians is that most mental health professionals who had previously diagnosed them have no familiarity with political ideologies that far better characterize these teenagers’ thinking and behaviors than does any mental disorder.
The word anarchism is routinely used by today’s mass media synonymously with chaos, but for philosophers and political scientists, anarchism means people organizing themselves without authoritarian hierarchies.
Practical anarchism is not a dogmatic system and actually does not oppose all authority.
So, for example, practical anarchist parents will use their authority to grab their child who has begun to run out in traffic. However, practical anarchists strongly believe that all authorities have the burden of proof to justify control, and that most authorities in modern society cannot bear that burden and are thus illegitimate—and should be eliminated and replaced by noncoercive, freely participating relationships.
A minority of the anti-authoritarian kids I have worked with are aware of anarchism and identify themselves as anarchists, perhaps having T-shirts with a circle drawn around an A.
However, even among those adolescents who know nothing of the political significance of the term anarchism, I cannot remember one who didn’t become excited to discover that there is an actual political ideology that encompasses their point of view.
They immediately became more whole after they discovered that answering “yes” to the following questions does not mean that they suffer from a mental disorder but that they have a certain political philosophy:
• Do you hate coercion?
• Do you love freedom?
• Are you willing to risk punishments to gain freedom?
• Do you distrust large, impersonal, and distant authorities?
• Do you reject centralized authority and believe in participatory democracy?
• Do you hate powerful bigness of any kind?
• Do you hate laws and rules that benefit the people at the top and make life miserable for people at the bottom?
There are different varieties of anarchism and there are different varieties of disruptive people, and these varieties are worth examining.
One group of freedom lovers hates money, inequality, and exploitation of any kind. They reject a capitalist economy and aim for a society based on cooperative, mutually owned enterprise.
They are essentially leftist-anarchists—“anarcho-socialists,” “anarcho-syndicalists,” or “anarcho-communitarians.”
If they discover what Noam Chomsky, Peter Kropotkin, and Emma Goldman have to say, they identify with them. They have a strong moral streak of egalitarianism and a desire for social and economic justice.
Another group of freedom lovers also hates the coercion of parents, schools, and the state but, unlike these left-anarchists, they view capitalist markets as ideal for organizing virtually all aspects of society, and they lack an egalitarian moral streak.
A political ideology that they can connect with is called “anarcho-capitalism,” “libertarian anarchy,” or “market anarchy,” and some become fans of Murray Rothbard or Ayn Rand.
Anti-authoritarians also can be distinguished by their views on violence as a way of achieving their goals. While many freedom lovers adhere to nonviolence, others consider violence an acceptable tool and will physically or psychologically victimize others to get what they want.
Historically, the question of violence has sharply divided anti-authoritarians in their battle to eliminate unjust and illegitimate authority.
If a nonviolent anarcho-communitarian is dragged by parents into my office for failing to take school seriously but is otherwise pleasant and industrious, I tell parents that I do not believe that there is anything essentially “disordered” with their child.
This sometimes gets me fired, but not all that often.
It is my experience that most parents may think that believing a society can function without coercion is naive but they agree that it’s not a mental illness, and they’re open to suggestions that will create greater harmony and joy within their family.
I work hard with parents to have them understand that their attempt to coerce their anti-authoritarian child not only has failed—that’s why they’re in my office—but will likely continue to fail.
And increasingly, the pain of their failed coercion will be compounded by the pain of their child’s resentment, which will destroy their relationship with their child and create even more family pain.
Many parents acknowledge that this resentment has already begun to happen.
I ask them if they would try to coerce their homosexual child into being heterosexual or vice versa, and most say, “Of course not!” And so they begin to see that temperamentally anti-authoritarian children cannot be similarly coerced without great resentment.
I work very differently with those anti-authoritarian kids who care only about freedom for themselves and have no problem victimizing others to get their way. These kids usually are initially receptive to me, especially when they hear my viewpoint on traditional schools. However, tension eventually enters our relationship when they hear my views on other matters, especially on the “soul.”
I may, for example, tell them that while I believe that they have not lost their soul, eventually people do lose their souls to the extent that they lie to others and to themselves, or to the extent that they act in ways to get the best deal for themselves without caring about the impact on others.
Often these kids will ask, “What happens if we lose our souls?”
I tell them that in our current economy, it is quite possible to be financially successful without a soul; but they will never have a friend whom they really care about, and so eventually nobody will care about them because human beings eventually stop caring about those who don’t care about them, and so they will have a friendless, loveless life.
Sometimes this has an impact, sometimes not. Just like political activism, therapy may have an immediate effect, have a delayed one, or not work at all.
Activists and therapists need to have humility, especially with regard to their affection and respect—or lack of thereof—for those they are working with.
If an activist or a therapist lacks such affection and respect, those whom they are working with will sense it and will likely be unreceptive.
Humility also means accepting that one is not capable of being helpful to everyone, and having faith that somebody else, perhaps at some other point of time, may well be helpful.
Liberation psychology, in short, is about helping create self-respect, respectful relationships, and empowerment, and it is about helping people reject the role of either victim or victimizer.
—
This was an excerpt from Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite (Chelsea Green, 2011) by Bruce E. Levine.
In this book, Levine describes how American institutions and culture have created a passive and defeated populace. But he also outlines how Americans can recover dignity, unity, and the energy to do battle, and provides specific strategies and tactics to wrest power away from the “corporatocracy” — the partnership of giant corporations, the extremely wealthy elite, and corporate-collaborator government officials.
—
Image credit: The mural was painted in 1984 by artists Miranda Bergman and O’Brien Thiele in San Francisco. A related book written by Mary Watkins and Helene Shulman use the mural as the book cover for “Toward Psychologies of Liberation.” Link in comments.
—
Bruce E. Levine is a clinical psychologist and author of Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite (Chelsea Green, April 2011). His Web site is brucelevine[dot]net
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie invokes the Founding Fathers to HAMMER Trump for violating the Constitution and creating an Iraq-level quagmire in our own backyard with his insane kidnapping of Maduro!
Speaking on the House floor during debate over a War Powers resolution, Rep. Massie excoriated Trump for lying to the American people like George Bush did and setting the stage for disaster:
“James Madison warned us that in no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war and peace to the legislature and not the executive. Madison called it the crown jewel of Congress. The framers understood a simple truth.”
“To the extent that war-making power devolves to one person, liberty dissolves. If the president believes military action against Venezuela is justified and needed, he should make the case and Congress should vote before American lives and treasure are spent on regime change in South America. Let’s be honest about likely outcomes.”
Do we truly believe that Nicolas Maduro will be replaced by a modern-day George “Washington? How did that work out in Cuba, Libya, Iraq or Syria? […Viet Nam, Iran, Somalia, Chile, Afghanistan…?] Previous presidents told us to go to war over WMDs, weapons of mass destruction, that did not exist. Now it’s the same playbook except we’re told that drugs are the WMDs. If it were about drugs, we’d bomb Mexico or China or Colombia and the president would not have pardoned Juan Orlando Hernandez.”
“This is about oil and regime change and when it comes to regime change, we’ve already been down this road with Venezuela with nothing to show for it. In 2019, we recognized Juan Guaido. We seized their embassy here in DC.”
“We were told that regime change was imminent. Years later, Maduro remain[ed] in power. Today, we’re told to place our hopes in other exiled figures.”
“Edmundo Gonzalez and Maria Carina Machado. I wish them well, I do. But Congress should not express moral sympathy in the form of a blank check for military escalation and American lives.”
“And let’s take a moment to acknowledge the contradiction at the heart of this policy. This administration tells us that the Maduro regime is made up of narco terrorists and by escalating toward war, we would predictably create countless refugees. […or civil wat.] At the same time, this administration has moved to end temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans and deports them back to the very regime it condemns.”
“So which is it? Are we prepared to receive swarms of the 25 million Venezuelans who will likely become refugees and billions in American treasure that will be used to destroy and inevitably rebuild that nation? Do we want a miniature Afghanistan in the Western Hemisphere?”
“If that cost is acceptable to this Congress, then we should vote on it as a voice of the people and in accordance with our Constitution. And yet today, here we aren’t even voting on whether to declare war or authorize the use of military force. All we’re voting on is a War Powers Resolution that strengthens the fabric of our republic by reasserting the plain and simple language in the Constitution that Congress must decide questions of war.”
It is truly pathetic to see how eagerly the Republicans in Congress have ceded their authority to their god-king Donald Trump. The hypocrisy of the Trump regime is as outrageous as their disrespect for the rule of law and our Constitution, and Congress needs to take swift action to punish Trump and his cronies.
