Hello, Anti-Oppression Forum!

For the year and a half, this blog has served as many different things. It started as a news site for the Unite Left organization, a group which never truly got off the ground. Then, I used it as tool for my local activism while I participated as a member of the Freedom Socialist Party. Finally, for the past several months after I stopped participating in the party, this blog and its corresponding Facebook page & e-mail list has acted as something like a micro-organization in and of itself. 

As you might imagine, an organization with a membership of two (me and Cameron, the co-editor) doesn’t work out so well. Not only has the requirements of updating this blog put a large amount of stress on me, it has also been ineffectual for building a radicalized group of people in the Hudson Valley.

That’s why I’m really happy to say that I’ve been working with several other activists in the area to form a leftist collective. We've been meeting Fridays @7:00 PM in the African Roots Library at the Family Partnership Center in Poughkeepsie. Our agreed statement of purpose says simply:

“We are a forum for activists to gather. We oppose hierarchy, social oppression, and capitalism.”

We’re only a month and a day old and still very small. A couple weeks ago, we organized a small protest against U.S. intervention in Syria by City Hall in Poughkeepsie. Last week, we passed out 30+ fliers around the same area with the dual intent of expressing our disapproval of jail expansion and getting the word out about our new organization. 

Last Friday, we decided on a name: Anti-Oppression Forum. We like it because it includes our goal of combating all forms of oppression—and because its initials (AOF) make us sound like some kind of badass Greek anarcho-syndicalists. Which might be true if you go back a few generations in family history...

Since the Occupy movement began to lose steam, there has been a vacuum in the Hudson Valley for anti-capitalists interested in non-hierarchical forms of organization. Our area lacked an anarchist collective, and that’s precisely what we’re trying to form.

If you think that "time's up!" for capitalism, social oppression, and environmental destruction, I think you should consider getting involved in this group.

Although a major part of the collective’s goal is to provide support for radicals marginalized by our system, we’ve already acted as much more than a social club. The AOF was formed to take action.

As I’ll be shifting the majority of my attention to the new group, the Hudson Valley Radical Facebook page and e-mail list will be put into the hands of the collective. Also, from now on this blog will stop functioning as a leftist news site. Instead, it'll simply be a place for my personal rants—and the writing of anyone who'd like to contribute!

Toward Collective Liberation,

Schuyler

The Anti-Oppression Forum meets Fridays @6:00 PM at the Sadie Peterson Delaney African Roots Library in the Family Partnership Center, 29 N. Hamilton Street, Poughkeepsie. All are welcome. You can visit our website here

Why We Must Stop the U.S. Attack On Syria

Note (September 20, 2014): My thoughts on the issue of U.S. intervention in Syria has changed in the past year, largely because of what I've read by some Syrian activists on Twitter and other online platforms. While I am certainly opposed to U.S. imperialism, I think that the U.S. military actually has an obligation to support popular uprisings, including the Syrian Revolution, in defending themselves against dictators like Assad. The U.S. also has an obligation to ensure that it doesn't contribute to human rights abuses, and in preventing that the U.S. could work with Syrian revolutionary councils to monitor groups like the Free Syrian Army (an idea I took from this article about Syrian revolutionary Razan Zaitouneh). I think activists in the United States have to do more than reflexively oppose U.S. intervention when it might, if only accidentally, do something right. So while I say throughout this piece that the Syrian "revolution deserves better," it also deserved a better analysis than I gave it.
 

President Obama has declared that he will seek approval for a U.S. military strike on Syria when congress gets back in session on September 9th. This gives activists just under a week to organize against a further escalation of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. Yet, it's not enough just to oppose the war—we have to be clear why.

Demonstration in Homs, before Assad turned violent and the Syrian protest movement became a civil war

As I have said in the past, I am strongly supportive of the Syrian Revolution. It is because, and not in spite of this, that I oppose U.S. military intervention. The United States has never entered a foreign country without attempting to open markets and broaden our sphere of power and influence.

The Syrian Revolution was begun by grassroots citizens councils calling for democracy and a more equitable economy. However, with U.S. military intervention, the possibility of Syria's future actually resting in the hands of the Syrian people would be obliterated. 

The Revolution deserves better.

Unfortunately, most the American left simply doesn't get it. Groups like the Workers World Party and the Party for Socialism and Liberation have been actively supporting the Assad dictatorship since Day 1 of the revolution. The basic reasoning is that because Assad has occasionally stood up to the United States, his bloody regime is worthy of their full support. Nevermind the fact that Syria has worked hand in glove with the Israeli government, supported the U.S. invasion of Kuwait in the early '90's, and brutally suppressed its own people for 43 years. If the Assad regime wins out, the possibility of Syria's future resting in the hands of the Syrian people would be non-existent.

The Revolution deserves better.

Other sections of the left are justifying their opposition to U.S. intervention by bashing the Syrian rebels and, like the U.S. government in its War Against Terror, by spreading fear about Islamist influence among anti-Assad fighters. It is true that fundamentalist Islamists have jumped on the bandwagon of the Syrian Revolution, but they did not start it and there's no reason to believe that they'll finish it. Just because President Assad characterizes the revolution as an Islamist power grab doesn't mean that progressives should believe him!

Another common refrain is support of a "peace conference" to be held between both sides of the conflict, including the imperial powers using Syria as their proxy. To hope for ceasefire and a brokered peace is to reject the demands of the Syrian revolution. It is natural to wish for an end to the bloodshed, but if none of the Syrian people's demands are met, a new rebellion is sure to begin anew sometime not far down the road. If the fate of Syria is carved out by imperial powers, the possibility of Syria's future actually resting in the hands of the Syria people would still be crushed.

The Revolution deserves better.

I believe that those striving for freedom and liberty around the world should stand firmly in solidarity with the Syrian revolution. Practically, that means that we should consider the self-determination of the Syrian people to be our core demand for our activism throughout the week to come. Unlike the Assad, Obama, and Putin administrations, the anti-war movement should actually care what happens to the Syrian people.

-Schuyler Kempton