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

438 Pages·2014·2.55 MB·English

by  Deric Shannon

Acknowledgments
I finished this book up moving among four different cities on two coasts, often
broke. But I’m a millionaire in friends, many of whom welcomed me into their
homes and lives in this process. I’d like to first acknowledge all of them who I
can think of: Abbey Volcano—for 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 Burley—all for putting me up (and
putting up with me) in upstate NY; Mark Bray and Yesenia Barragán 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 household—for making the
Bay lovely; my brother and sister Bill Armaline and Nicole Steward and my
friend, Adam Weaver—for helping me navigate San Jose; my new friends, Mike
McQuaide and Stacy Bell McQuaide—for 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 1
Deric Shannon
PART 1: THE CRISIS
From The Fall of Saigon to the Fall of Lehman 27
Paul Bowman
Interview With Noam Chomsky:
On the Origins of the Crisis and Methods of Resistance 45
Interview by Deric Shannon
Predatory Lending and the Twenty-First
Century Recession: Preying on the American
Dream and Reasserting Racialized Inequality 55
Davita Silfen Glasberg, Angie Beeman, and Colleen Casey
PART 2: EFFECTS
The End of Meaning, The Meaning of End:
Some Thoughts from Greece 73
Antonis Vradis
A Failure of Imagination: Human Rights
through Neoliberalism, the Economic Crisis,
and Austerity Policy 83
Harpreet K. Paul
Mechanisms of Power: Privilege and Racism
as Exercised through Economic Crisis 107
Ernesto Aguilar and Ayn Morgan
No Mancession: Crisis, Gender, Reproductive
Labor, and the Commons 117
Gayge Maggio
Interview with Miguel Ángel Fernández:
On the CNT and Crisis in Spain 137
Interview and translation by Dustin Shannon
Institutionalizing Crisis:
The Case of Dayton Bosnia-Herzegovina 147
Jasmin Mujanović
The Puerto Rican Experiment:
Crisis, Colonialism, and Popular Response 165
Jorell A. Meléndez Badillo
PART 3: THE RESPONSE OF THE DISPOSSESSED
Infiltrating the Mythology of American Empire:
Media, History, and Occupy Wall Street 185
Mark Bray
Undoing the Reasonable Middle: Sexuality and Gender Movements in the Age
of Crisis and Austerity 203
Abbey Volcano
Argentina’s Movements Against Austerity
and the Politics of Space 215
Marie Trigona
Austerity and Unions: A Case Study of the
Canadian Union of Postal Workers 237
Nick Driedger
No Exit: Transforming Housing
through Solidarity and Resistance 247
Shane Burley
Circumscribed by Conditions They Did Not Create:
The English Riots of August 2011 267
Christian Garland
Solidarity Networks as a Means of
Building Resistance to Austerity 279
Matthew Adams
PART 4: THE RULING CLASS RESPONSE
Militant Reformism and the
Prospects for Reforming Capitalism 305
Nate Hawthorne
States of Emergency:
Green Capitalism and Transnational Resistance 331
Yesenia Barragán
Policing Dissent and Copping a Profit:
Police and Austerity in the United States 349
Adam Quinn
Dimensions of Crisis in Greece 365
Chris Spannos
Insurgency Control:
Tools of Repression in the Age of Austerity 381
Sean Parson and Luis A. Fernandez
Nationalism’s Chilling Effect On AntiAusterity Movements:
The Case of Israel’s “Tent Protests” 399
Uri Gordon
Marikana: A Point of Rupture? 409
Benjamin Fogel
PART 5: EDUCATION AND THE STUDENT RESPONSE
Revolutionary Terrains and
Higher Education in the US 427
William Armaline and Abraham DeLeon
Interview With Québécois Student
Organizer Jamie Burnett 445
Interview by Abbey Volcano
Necessary Steps in Tough Economic Times: New York
Students Take to the Streets in the Wake of Occupy 451
Marianne LeNabat
Interview With Rudy Amanda Hurtado Garcés:
A Militant in the Colombian AntiNeoliberal Movement 465
Interview and translation by Yesenia Barragán and Mark Bray
Paths Written in Concrete:
The Chilean Student Movement of 2012 475
Mónica Kostas, Scott Nikolas Nappalos, and Felipe Ramírez
CONCLUSION
The End of the World as We Know It?:
Toward a Critical Understanding of the Future 491
Deric Shannon
Contributor Bios 501
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, dozens—if not hundreds—of 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 possibilities—perhaps 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 book’s 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 inevitable—as if there can be no alternative.[2] When historical
moments of crisis hit—when peoples’ expectations are undercut by austere
social realities—they shake the faith in capitalism that allows it to be continually
reproduced in our daily lives. People begin to see that the way that we’ve
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.