Jeff Shantz

Some reflections (from a few years back, relevant to building in the NOW) on bridging an insurrectionary moment with the future... Here is the text as PDF version. {Also available as a 6-page double-sided A4 foldover booklet for photocopying: PDF brochure } This article was published back then, in Socialism & Democracy (http://sdonline.org/50/re-building-infrastructures-of-resistance/) and also on Infoshop.org (2011):

"We need to be prepared not just intellectually but organizationally for radical struggles and transformation. Infrastructures of resistance serve as means by which people can sustain radical social change before, during and after insurrectionary periods."

http://sdonline.org/50/re-building-infrastructures-of-resistance/

Click here for this event's facebook page.

-==== on his 'bLiNg IS dEaD' tour ===-

The criminalization of dissent, and possible threats to civil liberties posed by this criminalization, have become central issues of debate within liberal democracies, particularly in relation to discussions of political violence and the role of law in protests. Law against Liberty provides significant commentary on the criminalization of political movements and dissent within (neo)liberal democracies in the contemporary context.

Vandeplas Publishing: see their page for this book here

Now available: New, in paperback from Imprint Academic Publishers

• Table of Contents (Files are PDFs.)
• Introduction
• Index

+ Back Cover... This volume examines historical and contemporary engagements of anarchism and literary production. Anarchists have used literary production to express opposition to values and relations characterizing advanced capitalist (and socialist) societies while also expressing key aspects of the alternative values and institutions proposed within anarchism. Among favoured themes are anarchist critiques of corporatization, prisons and patriarchal relations as well as explorations of developing anarchist perspectives on revolution, ecology, polysexuality and mutual aid. A key component of anarchist perspectives is the belief that means and ends must correspond. Thus in anarchist literature as in anarchist politics, a radical approach to form is as important as content. Anarchist literature joins other critical approaches to creative production in attempting to break down divisions between readers and writer, audience and artist, encouraging all to become active participants in the creative process.

Click here to see it published in the Cloverdale Reporter

Re: "Outside activists in fore at SFPR protest camp," May 4

To the editor;

It is curious that in your report on the camp against the South Fraser Perimeter Road you chose to focus so heavily on personalities and the supposed identities of a few "activists" rather than the serious issues that brought so many people from diverse backgrounds together to oppose the road development. Indeed there are many social and environmental harms resulting from the freeway development.

[This article, written in 2003, won a Memefest Award in 2004. It is still relevant today as this war is still raging on.]
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Rather than simply encouraging, facilitating or transforming war, as Arquilla and Ronfeldt (1993) discuss, info tech is based in war. Indeed the wars over the resources of cyberwar and netwar are fought in the forms of cyberwar and netwar. The information age is rooted in the bloody killing fields of low-tech territories.

This was published with a large photo from the camp on the center of the Letters Section in Friday's Surrey Leader:
http://www.bclocalnews.com/opinion/letters/121339598.html

Re: “Road opponents camp out,” The Leader, April 27.

The camp and occupation against the South Fraser Perimeter Road and Gateway Project are much needed and welcome initiatives.

In addition to the many social and environmental harms resulting from the freeway development identified in your article we might add another, less obvious, impact.

By Matthew Burrows
APR 28, 2011. Article from The Georgia Strait - straight.com

He may look like he belongs in the industrial band Ministry, but when the Straight caught up with Surrey resident Jeff Shantz, he was standing on the banks of the Fraser River inside the South Fraser Protection Camp.

• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 2: Black Blocs in Theory and Action (2003 draft)
• Chapter 4: Heterotopias of Toronto (2004 draft, for print)
• EndNotes
• Bibliography
• Index

"Jeff Shantz's Active Anarchy gives anarchism its due as the do-it-yourself dynamic driving a new generation of social movements. As Shantz shows, these anarchic movements rock to a different sort of rhythm -- a rhythm founded on the subterranean beat of Bakunin, Bey, Kropotkin, Goldman, and Debord, and attuned today to autonomy and anti-authoritarian invention. Taking the reader with him into the battles of black blocs, freegans, and Reclaim the Streets activists, Shantz provides a courageous, wide-ranging account of progressive social change in action."—Jeff Ferrell, author of Tearing Down the Streets: Adventures in Urban Anarchy

See more reviews

NEW! Now available from Cambridge Scholars Press From the book... Table of Contents (see below) Foreword Introduction Index Jeff edited this exciting collection of new essays from various authors whose chapters examine anarchism and dada, Wole Soyinka's anarchism, eco-anarchy and critiques of capitalist civilization, DIY anarcho-punk assaults on corporate culture industries, and anarchism and drama.

or, here's the whole book as a pdf: creativepassion.gidget.koumbit.org

and here.