By Ward Churchill
You don’t have to have the preponderance of the population engaged in some sort of a final campaign to bring down the government. What you do need is the ability to cause an increasing number of people to withdraw consent from some key sectors that keep the system functioning. And if an appreciable number of those people are going into more active forms of resistance and are supportive, at least to the extent that they won’t give you up to the cops and that maybe they will make a contribution, be it monetarily, or by providing you sanctuary, I think that’s attainable over the long haul. You have to have a much greater weight in order to take the structure intact and then rearrange its organization, than you need to have it begin to unravel and collapse, and that’s actually the aspiration that I hold.

You also have to create counter-models that people can look at, that they can be attracted to: “Oh yeah, there is another way of doing this and maybe I’d be more comfortable in that context. I don’t know for sure because I haven’t lived in it, but it looks like something I might like to explore.” That leads to withdrawal, and creates doubt as to the inevitability of state structures and that’s what you’re trying to create.

Not that you’re going to supplant the structure of the state with co-ops, or little land occupations, collectives and so forth. In the 70s in particular, there was this whole notion that you could simply create a society that you want within the shell of the old one, and eventually the old one will wither away. Well that ain’t going to happen either. You’re going to reach a certain threshold and then the state will begin to actively repress you and try to crush you.

The Black Panthers’ breakfast for children program, their community clinics, alternative educational institutions, job placement programs, housing initiatives, and all the rest, when viewed as a package in and of themselves may seem like a very liberal agenda. But it was framed in terms of a very coherent program of self-determination, of self-sufficiency, that sought to remove those service delivery sectors of responsibility from the state, and to place them in the hands of the community.

You don’t see a lot of that happening these days. For most people in the anarchist community who organize in their little collectives and get together and eat their bean sprouts and shit, it’s only for themselves, at the present time. If you want to talk to factory workers, you need to connect with them where they are, not where you think they should be. You need to get over your prohibition on ashtrays. You keep asking me why nobody shows up, except you, when you organize an event - there’s the answer. I’ve answered the question about 15 times. You may have ideas, you may have counter models and they might be constructive, but if people - coming from the bowling alley or something - have to spend 15 minutes reading your fucking signs about what they can or can’t do in exchange for the privilege of entering your sacred premises, they’re going to go bowling instead. Get over your bicycles and go down and bend a wrench with a gear-head for a while. Do what he’s fucking doing.

Maybe he’ll learn how to talk to you and vice versa.

But that’s like shedding the black uniforms. It’s a real psychological barrier to some anarchists, because they’ve got the solution to the world’s problems somehow in code form in their minds. They posit an implicit demand that people are supposed to acknowledge the superiority of their vision as the price of admission. So get the fuck off the university campus and down into a union hall. Put ashtrays on the goddamn tables. Make some babysitting services available. And try to package it in a set of terms that can appeal to the people you’re trying to reach. Call it spin if you will, call it packaging, call it Madison Avenue - but how you pedal it, how you try to reach people, is really important. They’re probably not about to put safety pins in their eyelids and all the rest of that shit. I understand why you’re doing it, and I’m not objecting: it’s just that you’ve got to realize that there are some other people out there you need to reach if you’re going to be successful, who don’t feel that way. And you need to respect that. Because you’re ultimately demanding that they respect you. That’s a reciprocal proposition.

From Indigenism, Anarchism and the State: An Interview with Ward Churchill
(Upping the Anti # 1)  http://www.uppingtheanti.org/