The Danger of Paper

At the turn of the last century, a Sōtō Zen priest named Uchiyama Gudō served in a rural Japanese temple. The farmers who came to him for weddings and funerals were hard working but extremely poor. Japan was industrializing at a lightning pace and, as was happening around the world, everyday working people were being crushed by laissez faire capitalism run amok.

Anarchist and socialist ideas were taking hold amongst working people in Japan. People understood in their guts that a better world was possible than the one being built by rich industrialists. Gudō began publishing essays in the socialist newspaper Heimin Shinbun, advocating for the poor farmers of his temple and expressing the Buddhist principles underpinning his socialist political views.

Gudō acquired a printing press and began publishing tracts and pamphlets of other anarcho-socialists, as well as his own essays. In 1909, he was arrested for publishing a tract calling for the Emperor's overthrow. The Imperial secret police claimed he'd hidden explosives in his temple along with the illegal press. Gudō and eleven others were executed in 1911, charged with plotting to assassinate the Emperor.

Shortly thereafter, here in the US during the first Red Scare, the US government seized anarchist and socialist newsletter subscriber lists in order to track down, arrest, imprison, and, in many cases, deport dissenters. These people were using their right to free expression to fight against the crushing capitalist economic system and a senseless war devouring Europe’s working class.

Last year, 22 people were arrested in Texas following an anti-ICE protest and accused of antifa terrorism. “Des” Rolando Sanchez Estrada was not at the protest, but his spouse was. Based on that connection, he was arrested for possessing anarchist zines - cheaply produced, often handmade, pamphlets. The prosecutor described these as “antifa materials” and Sanchez Estrada was charged with conspiracy related to distributing the zines. Last week, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison. That was the lightest sentence amongst those on trial.

It’s easy to dismiss speech as weak and ineffectual protest. "It's just talk." But the ruling powers don’t see it that way at all. They know its power and that is why, in every age, they use every power at their disposal to wipe out the means to wake people up to the fact we do not have to accept things as they are. We can fight with all the tools available to create a world where, in the words of Uchiyama Gudō, “each individual simply lived and acted according to pure-hearted kindness—that is, with a spirit of independence and freedom, the will to help the weak, and caring for one's neighbor—we would all be able to lead a peaceful and perfect collective life.”

Despite it all, it’s another gorgeous day of blue skies and golden sunshine in occupied California. Get the zine.

This Week's Links

Forever Wars - The Next Step in Criminalizing ICE Protests Is Here : First came Prairieland. Now an indictment treats mutual aid and road-blocking as a criminal conspiracy

Eye Magazine - Sticks in the mind : Does anyone care about posters, or are they just an ego-trip for the designers who still make them?

LitHub - How Silicon Valley Became a Center of Reactionary, Anti-Democratic Politics

New York Magazine - The Mirage of the Gifted Child : Critics say the process we use to identify bright kids is flawed and insular. But what if giftedness itself is a lie?

The New Republic - I Live in the South. Here’s Why I’m Constantly Thinking About Leaving : Southern GOP pols are routinely stripping Black leaders and people of power and agency. Simply put, the South is not a democracy.

Lux - All Children Are Beautiful : Kid Lit Worth Fighting For

ICT News - AMERICA 250: A step-by-step guide to Indigenous erasure : The missing and crucial truths not in America’s history books that redefined tribal nations and Native peoples 250 years after the country’s founding

The Conversation - A million new SpaceX satellites will destroy the night sky — for everyone on Earth

Cover Song of the Week

Until next week, gassho.