croydonclasswar presents....

extracts from 

THE FAILURE OF NONVIOLENCE

by Peter Gelderloos




US Federal Judge Ann Aiken is just one of many government authorities who believe that dissidents must be nonviolent. It's really a no-brainer about why they would want those they rule to remain peaceful, even though nonviolent conspiracy theorists continue to pretend that the FBI is engaged in a secret plot to make us all violent.

Aiken was the judge who sentenced radical ecologist Daniel MacGowan to seven years in prison for a series of Earth Liberation Front arsons that harmed no one but damaged property connected to businesses and institutions that were destroying the environment.

After September 11th, 2001, the FBI named radical ecologists and anarchist as the domestic counter-terrorism priority.

 One of the primary blows of repression that made up the Green Scare was 'Operation Backfire' which targeted 18 people for participation in such arsons. Their case was based entirely on the word of snitches - many of whom were people who no longer had the support of a community that accepted the validity of illegal direct action. Daniel was one of those who refused to snitch, but because he and his legal team were threatening to subpoena government records about illegal spying, prosecutors agreed not to seek the life imprisonment they were initially aiming for.

While sentencing Daniel MacGowan, Judge Aiken told him didactically: 

Don't use Ghandi just when it's convenient. I hope you'll go back to your website and tell who you were, what you did. (...) To the young people, send the message that violence doesn't work. If you want to make a difference, have the courage to say how the life you lived was the life of a coward....It is a tragedy to watch these extremely talented and bright young people come in and do damage to industries.

perfectly normal judge ann aiken (her son committed suicide in 2011)

Fortunately, most of the people targeted by this repression could see the hypocrisy of a judge calling a person a coward when they are about to be locked up in a cage for acting on their beliefs. Judges, after all, are the ultimate cowards, bureaucrats who force moral lectures down the throats of those whose freedom they hold captive, who make their living sending people to prison to endure forms of psychological and sometimes physical torture they cannot even imagine. ''talented and bright young people'' should be able to conclude that a judge who had never participated in social movements is talking out of her ass when she tries to instruct us about what methods work and what don't. 



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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/04/daniel-mcgowan-
arrested_n_3016885.html

http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-what-s-missing-is-solidarity


http://supportmariusmason.org/

marie Mason and eric mcdavid

At the trial of eco-activist Marie Mason the Prosecution argued that  'a good cause does not justify the worst means. That's not how society works'


croydonclasswar says.... 

fuck that society