Difference between revisions of "Anarchy 84/Notes on poverty 3: Kropotkin House, Duluth"
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{{tab}}{{qq|Peter Kropot­kin House of Hos­pita­lity is always open and ready to welcome anyone. It is a place where indi­vidu­als and fami­lies in need {{p|52}}come to stay for a while; it is a place where persons inter­ested in this kind of action may come and see and talk for a time. Here, the muti­lated, the addic­ted, and the healthy, the afflu­ent and the poor, black, red, and white, un­poli­ti­cal and radical come to­gether and realize that they must link them­selves in mutual aid, and to­gether in friend­ship seek out a pattern of living which is more just, more cre­ative, more per­sona­lis­tic, and more rea­lis­tic for our commu­nity of Central Hill­side in the modern world.}} | {{tab}}{{qq|Peter Kropot­kin House of Hos­pita­lity is always open and ready to welcome anyone. It is a place where indi­vidu­als and fami­lies in need {{p|52}}come to stay for a while; it is a place where persons inter­ested in this kind of action may come and see and talk for a time. Here, the muti­lated, the addic­ted, and the healthy, the afflu­ent and the poor, black, red, and white, un­poli­ti­cal and radical come to­gether and realize that they must link them­selves in mutual aid, and to­gether in friend­ship seek out a pattern of living which is more just, more cre­ative, more per­sona­lis­tic, and more rea­lis­tic for our commu­nity of Central Hill­side in the modern world.}} | ||
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+ | {{tab}}One young girl (who, like other black people I have met in the ghetto, was pas­sion­ately com­mit­ted to working for human rights and equally con­vinced that Ameri­can troops should be with­drawn from Vietnam imme­di­ately) spent two hours one after­noon trying to per­suade me that I should orga­nize riots in Duluth during the summer; she did not succeed. | ||
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+ | {{tab}}In the latter part of July and the begin­ning of August, I was in {{w|Canada|Canada}} and {{w|Min­nea­polis|Minneapolis}} to fulfil several spea­king engage­ments. When I got back to Duluth, there were rumours of im­pen­ding riots. (Duluth is the only city in the {{w|Midwest|Midwestern_United_States}} that allows {{qq|the {{w|Job Corps|Job_Corps}} boys}}{{dash|who mostly repre­sent the minor­ity races}}to enter and walk upon its sacred ground.) The {{w|SNCC|Student_Nonviolent_Coordinating_Committee}} agi­ta­tors were agi­ta­ting the riots, said the rumours. {{popup|Bilge water|Nonsense}}, said I. A meeting was called of all {{qq|Humani­tari­ans}} to discuss what should be done. At the meeting, I ex­pressed doubt that there had been any agi­ta­tion (not that I wouldn{{t}} put it past SNCC, which has a rather per­verse view of revo­lu­tion: there just weren{{t}} any SNCC agi­ta­tors; and the black people in the ghetto, al­though angry, were orga­ni­zing for pos­sibi­lity and not futi­lity. The Revo­lu­tion is the Revo­lu­tion: It is the at­tempt to use mutual aid insti­tu­tions, labour syn­di­cates, and revo­lu­tion­ary co-<wbr>opera­tives to create a new society while de­stroy­ing the old; it is not an ado­les­cent spree for loot and pooty that places the res­pon­sibi­lity for the reor­gani­za­tion of society on the greasy finger-<wbr>tips of the leaders{{dash}}whether they be poli­ti­cians of {{qq|{{w|black power|Black_Power}}}} or poli­ti­cians of {{qq|{{w|great society|Great_Society}}}}). They were a little late (said I) in worry­ing about the black people now; they could have done some­thing con­struc­tive and fra­ter­nal about the {{w|segre­ga­tion|Racial_segregation_in_the_United_States}} situ­ation before the summer, but now{{dash|basically}}they were only worried about the threat to their {{qq|private property}}. I said that it would be bar­bar­ous to call out the mili­tary. Someone de­nounced me as an ob­struc­tion­ist. She wanted a {{qq|firm}} policy. I have since won­dered whether she was disap­poin­ted: there weren{{t}} any riots in Duluth during the summer. Later, however, there was a new rumour: {{qq|the Anar­chists were the ones who had agi­ta­ted for a riot}}. | ||
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+ | {{tab}}Kropot­kin House was closed in Sep­tem­ber. We had gone into a con­sider­able amount of debt (our appeal failed: the {{w|Chamber of Com­merce|Chamber_of_commerce}} had for­mally and unin­vi­tedly opposed us; we were not worthy of aid), we had no support (moral or other­wise) from other Anar­chists in America, and there were dif­ficul­ties (sani­ta­tion, sedi­tion, etc.) with the Depart­ment of Water, Gas, and Sewage Treat­ment{{dash}}and other govern­mental bureaus. Our accom­plish­ments are rather intan­gible (all that I could defi­nite­ly des­cribe would be some small assis­tance in the cam­paign of the resi­dents of the ghetto to resist City Hall by buil­ding an illegal play­ground for their chil­dren). Our fail­ures are many: lack of under­stan­ding, lack of soli­dar­ity, lack of propa­ganda (there are still a few people that refer to Kropot­kin House as {{qq|the Com­mu­nist Whore­house}}), lack of endur­ance, etc., etc. I am con­vinced, however, that there is a defi­nite need and a neces­sity for Anar­chists in America to deve­lop similar or con­tras­ting (and, hope­fully, better orga­nized and more cohe­sive) {{qq|pro­grammes of thought­ful action}} ({{w|rent strikes|Rent_strike}}, etc.) in the ghetto and {{popup|twi­light areas|areas of urban decay}} of this conti­nent (espe­cial­ly making use of the com­muni­ty-<wbr>con­cepts of Kropot­kin, {{w|Mala­testa|Errico_Malatesta}}, and [[Author:Alexander Berkman|Alex­ander Berkman]]); these seeds of com­mu­nity could act as a means of provi­ding hope and presen­ting the pos­sibi­lity of direct action to {{qq|the people of anguish}}. They could also present the pos­sibi­lity of a sub­stan­tial, posi­tive alter­na­tive (Anar­chism) to the horrors of Capi­tal­ism and the ponder­ous, un­work­able bureau­cracy of {{qq|the Great Society}} (i.e., the Government). It is Capi­tal­ism and the State that vic­ti­mize the mili­tant and awa­ken­ing under­classes in Ameri­can life today{{dash}}and they know it. | ||
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Revision as of 22:36, 28 September 2016
3: Kropotkin House, Duluth
A weird, unverbalized, and distorted collage leaped through my mind: I thought of the Diggers in San Francisco (I had been there in February when the police tried to destroy them); I thought of Dorothy Day’s Chrystie Street House of Hospitality in New York and her farm at Tivoli (I had been there in the bitter weeks of early January and the Christmas season); I thought of Emmaus House and Ammon Hennacy’s Joe Hill House; and I thought of a suggestion by Herbert Read: “The strike General Strike of the future must be organized as a strike of the community against the State. The result of that strike will not be in doubt. The State is just as vulnerable as a human being, and can be killed by the cutting of a single artery. But the event must be catastrophic. Tyrrany, whether of a person or a class, can never be destroyed in any other way.” I sighed. I opened a window and, without further ritual, named the house: Peter Kropotkin House of Hospitality.
During the first week of my residency, the nights were spent in cleaning the house. Gary Moland, a pacifist friend, swept and mopped the floors. Kelene Koval (an Anarchist), Bob Pokorney, and Jim McCaffrey exuberantly scrubbed the walls and ceilings. Neighbours, timidly at first, but with growing confidence, provided mutual aid (even ‘the Polish Fascist’). Propaganda was not needed; their curiosity (and their loneliness) brought them. A great crowd of students (most of whom had heard me speak on Anarchism at their respective schools) came, barefooted and wearing cut-
By this time, about half a dozen people were staying more or less regularly at the house. Someone had given us a bed; someone had given us a sleeping-
I do not wish to give the impression that life at Kropotkin House was all gentle, beautiful, sensitive, serene, and unruffled. I had to stay up all night once with a raving “druggie” who couldn’t find enough money to pay for his particular escape. All that this friendless creature of paranoia wanted was to find someone who would talk with him. (I actually fell asleep on my feet in the laundry the next day; but, ever since, I have had little patience for crude Calvinists who call for more laws and stricter punishment against drug-
About a month after the house was opened, Kai Johnson, an Anarchist and pacifist, brought some paints and proceeded to paint murals on the walls of two of the upstairs rooms. I painted the door of my room black with brilliant red panels. The Benedictine Sisters of the Sacred Heart (a local convent in the ghetto) discovered the house and, even though they did not approve of me, were quite impressed with the idea and donated two desks, seven chairs, an old French writing-
A few days after our “gathering” on July 19 in Cascade Park in honour of the Anarchists in Spanish prisons, a <span data-html="true" class="plainlinks" title="Wikipedia: Mexican-
Some of the teenage boys in the neighbourhood saw Kai painting one day and they patiently waited until no one was in the house and then climbed through the second-
The hippie came in procession one evening and presented me with great bunches of red roses and lilacs and named me: “the Digger”.
When I finally lost my job (I was most imprudent: they caught me disseminating information about workers’ control and the war in Vietnam) and we needed money for the house, we sent an appeal for support to over 500 people (humanists, as it were) in the area. I quote from it to give some idea of the simple and basi principles we tried to activate:
“Central Hillside, Duluth, Minnesota, is a community facing enormous human problems: poor housing and high rents, social and emotional isolation and anguish, insufficient income and inflating prices, deteriorating family life, violence, loneliness, fragmented educational and cultural attempts, and racial injustice. Central Hillside is a symbol of urban man’s suffering and desperation—
“Now the terrifying paradox of the whole thing is this: Central Hillside, and every person in it, is a living condemnation and exhortation of the city of Duluth. For it is here, in Central Hillside, that we find a new situation of urban man, with its environment of isolation and dehumanization, which is beginning to shape the desire for new structures, new patterns, new forms of renewed and activized life. There is tak now of ‘turning Central Hillside inside out’, of a burst of new energy and life as the community discovers ideas and forms that are relevant to the vast shapes of need and strength, of hope an despair. Both the world of Central Hillside and the power of love and joy are forcing the city of Duluth to face the need for radical and creatie renewal and reformation. Peter Kropotkin House of Hospitality is a sign of new shapes and values in the community of Central Hillside and in the city of Duluth.
“Peter Kropotkin House of Hospitality is a gathering place for those people who are concerned about the problems of Central Hillside and desire to contribute to its social and emotional growth and reformation. The house is named in honour of Peter Kropotkin, the great writer and activist of the anarchist movement, who taught the necessity of personalized and functional communities as means of enjoying life and resisting blatant totalitarianism (as in China and the Soviet Union) and creeping centralization (as in England and the United States). We are a group of neighbours and friends who seek to be available in their community day after day, day in and day out. Our gathering of friends and neighbours is flexible, pluralistic, ad hoc, and dispensable. We do not desire to establish the same old formalized structures and programmes. We do not receive money from any institution. We do ot receive money from the Government. We do not receive money from any corporation. We believe that the people of Central Hillside must solve their own problems through direct action.
“Peter Kropotkin House of Hospitality is always open and ready to welcome anyone. It is a place where individuals and families in needOne young girl (who, like other black people I have met in the ghetto, was passionately committed to working for human rights and equally convinced that American troops should be withdrawn from Vietnam immediately) spent two hours one afternoon trying to persuade me that I should organize riots in Duluth during the summer; she did not succeed.
In the latter part of July and the beginning of August, I was in Canada and Minneapolis to fulfil several speaking engagements. When I got back to Duluth, there were rumours of impending riots. (Duluth is the only city in the Midwest that allows “the Job Corps boys”—
Kropotkin House was closed in September. We had gone into a considerable amount of debt (our appeal failed: the Chamber of Commerce had formally and uninvitedly opposed us; we were not worthy of aid), we had no support (moral or otherwise) from other Anarchists in America, and there were difficulties (sanitation, sedition, etc.) with the Department of Water, Gas, and Sewage Treatment—