Deric Shannon - The End of the World as We Know It?: Crisis, Resistance, and the Age of Austerity

Acknowledgments

I finished this book up moving among four different cities on two coasts, often broke. But Im a millionaire in friends, many of whom welcomed me into their homes and lives in this process. Id like to first acknowledge all of them who I can think of: Abbey Volcanofor giving me her extra room as a crash pad and storage space multiple times; Maggie Spallina, Richard Rex, Colin O Malley, Jake Allen, Crescenzo Scipione, Shane Burleyall for putting me up (and putting up with me) in upstate NY; Mark Bray and Yesenia Barragn for giving me the couch in their balcony room in their New Jersey apartment during nights when I desperately needed space away from my life; Maria Yates, Naitha Bellesis, Melany Pinick, Nestor Guillen, Jesse-James Bentley, Cindy Smith, Tom Wetzel, the entire Juliana/Sasha/Charles/Bill householdfor making the Bay lovely; my brother and sister Bill Armaline and Nicole Steward and my friend, Adam Weaverfor helping me navigate San Jose; my new friends, Mike McQuaide and Stacy Bell McQuaidefor helping me settle into a small Georgia town and acclimate to life in the South and a new job; and my mom and pops and brothers, as always for varied reasons.

Special thanks are also due to Abbey Volcano for a careful and iron editorial hand, Charles Weigl and Zach Blue for critical guidance, Kate Khatib for continually amazing cover art, and all of the folks at AK Press for their generous support of the project.

My gratitude to all of you.

Dedication

To the dispossessed.

Contents

Acknowledgments v

Dedication vii

INTRODUCTION

Snapshots of the Crisis, Austerity,
and the Movements Against

Deric Shannon PART 1: THE CRISIS

From The Fall of Saigon to the Fall of Lehman

Paul Bowman

Interview With Noam Chomsky:
On the Origins of the Crisis and Methods of Resistance

Interview by Deric Shannon

Predatory Lending and the Twenty-First
Century Recession: Preying on the American
Dream and Reasserting Racialized Inequality

Davita Silfen Glasberg, Angie Beeman, and Colleen Casey PART 2: EFFECTS

The End of Meaning, The Meaning of End :
Some Thoughts from Greece

Antonis Vradis

A Failure of Imagination : Human Rights
through Neoliberalism, the Economic Crisis,
and Austerity Policy

Harpreet K. Paul

Mechanisms of Power : Privilege and Racism
as Exercised through Economic Crisis

Ernesto Aguilar and Ayn Morgan

No Mancession : Crisis, Gender, Reproductive
Labor, and the Commons

Gayge Maggio

Interview with Miguel ngel Fernndez:
On the CNT and Crisis in Spain

Interview and translation by Dustin Shannon

Institutionalizing Crisis :
The Case of Dayton Bosnia-Herzegovina

Jasmin Mujanovi

The Puerto Rican Experiment :
Crisis, Colonialism, and Popular Response

Jorell A. Melndez Badillo PART 3: THE RESPONSE OF THE DISPOSSESSED

Infiltrating the Mythology of American Empire :
Media, History, and Occupy Wall Street

Mark Bray

Undoing the Reasonable Middle : Sexuality and Gender Movements in the Age of Crisis and Austerity

Abbey Volcano

Argentinas Movements Against Austerity
and the Politics of Space

Marie Trigona

Austerity and Unions : A Case Study of the
Canadian Union of Postal Workers

Nick Driedger

No Exit : Transforming Housing
through Solidarity and Resistance

Shane Burley

Circumscribed by Conditions They Did Not Create :
The English Riots of August 2011

Christian Garland

Solidarity Networks as a Means of
Building Resistance to Austerity

Matthew Adams PART 4: THE RULING CLASS RESPONSE

Militant Reformism and the
Prospects for Reforming Capitalism

Nate Hawthorne

States of Emergency :
Green Capitalism and Transnational Resistance

Yesenia Barragn

Policing Dissent and Copping a Profit :
Police and Austerity in the United States

Adam Quinn

Dimensions of Crisis in Greece

Chris Spannos

Insurgency Control :
Tools of Repression in the Age of Austerity

Sean Parson and Luis A. Fernandez

Nationalisms Chilling Effect On Anti-Austerity Movements :
The Case of Israels Tent Protests

Uri Gordon

Marikana : A Point of Rupture?

Benjamin Fogel PART 5: EDUCATION AND THE STUDENT RESPONSE

Revolutionary Terrains and
Higher Education in the US

William Armaline and Abraham DeLeon

Interview With Qubcois Student
Organizer Jamie Burnett

Interview by Abbey Volcano

Necessary Steps in Tough Economic Times : New York
Students Take to the Streets in the Wake of Occupy

Marianne LeNabat

Interview With Rudy Amanda Hurtado Garcs :
A Militant in the Colombian Anti-Neoliberal Movement

Interview and translation by Yesenia Barragn and Mark Bray

Paths Written in Concrete :
The Chilean Student Movement of 2012

Mnica Kostas, Scott Nikolas Nappalos, and Felipe Ramrez CONCLUSION

The End of the World as We Know It?:
Toward a Critical Understanding of the Future

Deric Shannon

Contributor Bios

Index 511

Snapshots of the Crisis, Austerity, and the Movements Against

Deric Shannon The law doth punish man or woman
That steals the goose from off the common,
But lets the greater felon loose
That steals the common from the goose[1]

By now, dozensif not hundredsof competing narratives that outline how we arrived at this particular global moment are circulating, typified by multiple crises (economic, social, ecological, political, etc.), multiple contestations over the means of life, and multiple possibilities for the future, some certainly more pleasant than others. Much of this work on crisis is (justifiably, I think) rooted in the market collapse of 2008, and the rise of austerity politics and various new social movements. While neither capitalist crises, nor economic policies focused on cutting social spending and upwardly distributing wealth, nor movements of affected populations are particularly new, we do seem to live in a time of multiple possibilitiesperhaps an acceleration and amplification of these things.

It is important to pose the sense of possibility such a historical moment provides as an open question: Is it the end of the world as we know it? I can save any readers waiting for the answer to that particular question some time by stating categorically, here in the books second paragraph, that this collection never answers that question. However, plenty of examples exist all over the world of what look like instances of society coming apart at the seams. Sometimes social explosions are global in scope and we are living in what could be a huge conflagration.

It makes sense, then, to begin this collection with the market collapse. Capitalism, after all, is assembled in such a way to invisibilize its attendant social relations, to make them seem natural, and, perhaps most importantly, to make them seem inevitableas if there can be no alternative.[2] When historical moments of crisis hitwhen peoples expectations are undercut by austere social realitiesthey shake the faith in capitalism that allows it to be continually reproduced in our daily lives. People begin to see that the way that weve organized our lives is one option, but that other possibilities may also be on the table. While global movements have also arisen in times when capitalism has not been in crisis, in the current historical moment, crisis was a primary spark.

Snapshots A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.
David Sedaris

I want to begin by explaining the purpose of this collection and the way it is organized. This book begins with a few assumptions, the first of which is that we can only ever have a partial understanding of the world we live in and possibilities for the future. However, our understanding can be more or less partial, more or less informed, and bringing together analyses and stories from around the world, particularly during a historical moment such as ours, can be valuable in deepening our understanding of the present and possibilities for the future.

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