"Flag 3" arrests made sure the World Could Wait: When they came for the anarchists, The Stranger asked, "What's anarchy?"

author : Jake Erwin topic : Flag 3

by Jake Erwin

In the Oct. 12 issue of The Stranger, Sarah Mirk reported on the arrest of three (or "two") Olympians at a World Can't Wait rally in Seattle. The arrests occurred after a police officer stole an anarcho-syndicalist flag under the pretense of maintaining peace and order. Mirk, described by The Stranger as being "paid to cover the news stories no one else wants to write," lived up to the description by relying solely on the police report prepared by the officer who instigated the incident for her article. Aside from getting the facts wrong and playing off stereotypes about anarchy, Mirk missed the larger ramifications of the arrests -- namely, the impunity with which authorities shut down political expression. One of the arrestees, Jake Erwin, speaks out.

The Stranger has now officially entered the ranks of botched, mainstream, right-wing, jingo-journalism. The short treatment of the "Flag 3," the three "anarchists" arrested on Oct. 5 before the World Can't Wait rally, has placed The Stranger just above the New York Post, somewhere in between USA Today and the Washington Post.

Writer Sarah Mirk utilized the quasi-fabricated police report of Matthew Hyra, the instigating and arresting officer, as her only source for her quarter-page report on the incident. This blind faith in a faulty police report demonstrates not only the worst of journalistic laziness but also destroys any semblance of objectivity, what was once supposed to be the basis of the journalistic ethos. From the New York Times, or any other major paper, this is to be expected. But from The Stranger? Apparently the thin veil of counterculture credibility separating The Stranger from other US journalistic efforts has not allowed it to foster a truer sense of journalism, fair treatement of stories, or objectivity (or at least non-mainstream subjectivity).

Don't get me wrong; I've never turned to The Stranger for in-depth political analysis of the protests in Oaxaca. But I did at least expect that right-wing journalism would be largely absent from its pages. I guess peer pressure from the Village Voice has shifted The Stranger to the right, resulting in the condescending report of the arrest of "two" (three, actually) anarchists, portrayed entirely through the words of the arresting officer, Hyra.

This disappointment does not come as a surprise, but what is somewhat surprising is that a publication oriented (at least superficially) for and about the counterculture could completely overlook the dire implications of this incident. Even Hyra's police report reveals that he equated the anarcho-syndicalist flag with "a symbol of violence," and therefore decided to snatch it from the group that was gathering prior to the rally.

The implications of his actions go well beyond Cal Anderson Park and encompass much more than anarchy, for Hyra's actions were meant to demonstrate the criminality of anarchy: expressions of anarchy, symbols of anarchy, anarchy in whole. Anarchist actions can obviously include crimes: hell, you can't overthrow a state without breaking its laws. But the tradition of anarchy includes much more than crimes. From Kropotkin's scientific analysis of human nature, to the precedent-setting Paris commune, to Emma Goldman's wide-ranging social commentary, the legacy of anarchy is rich with critical insight into humanity and historical moments of creativity. Those who reduce anarchy to an ideology of violence would be surprised to find that as an ideology it constitutes the search for human freedom and liberty (two words we as North Americans hold dear) and a belief that humanity can reach a level of equality and peace that extinguishes the need for hierarchy, coercion, and authority. They may also be confused to find traces of anarchy emanating from the founding fathers of the US in the sentiments conveyed by Thomas Jefferson when he laid forth the idea that a revolution should occur every decade to prevent static governance and the development of institutionalized tyranny.

Because anarchy, as an ideology, undermines and delegitimizes the very fact of power, it presents the purest threat against those in power. Thus it has been so thoroughly sidelined and demonized by mainstream culture that the word anarchy has become synonymous with the vilest image of chaos; a hellish situation in which the most extremely violent pathologies arise in every person and randomness and death collide to conjure up the end of civilization and everything sacred. It has long been the struggle of any revolutionary ideology to combat the mainstream stereotypes and characterizations of it, and this struggle continues with anarchy. But the incident of the arrest of the "Flag 3" demonstrates that the struggle has once again been elevated to another level beyond the cultural or ideological: the legal level. Anarchy has been criminalized in whole. Its action, its expression, its advertisement, its thought, its entirety has been criminalized. In the Stranger article, as in the police report, Hyra stated that "one of the suspects admitted to being an anarchist." Why is being an anarchist so wrong that one has to "admit" to being one? Will they soon outlaw the internet, as it has been identified by Hyra as "a common medium used by anarchists to communicate?"

Clearly, the criminalization of a thought violates the letter and spirit of the First Amendment of the Constitution. It is no surprise these days to hear examples of human and civil rights violations by every faction of the US government. And it is not the first time in US history anarchists have been persecuted by the government for their beliefs. But this in no way decreases the significance of this incident. In criminalizing a thought, the Seattle Police Dept. has continued the infringement on our right to dissent. The First Amendment protects free speech, but more significantly protects anyone from persecution, by the state or others, due to their thoughts, no matter how counter-social or un-mainstream. When this right is overturned by the police or any other governmental agency, it threatens everyone who has ever disagreed with a government official in even the most minute of ways.

This is obvious. Yet an editor of a "counterculture" newspaper blindly regurgitates the official lies, further denigrating the wrongly accused, extending and legitimizing the violation of the right to dissent, and allowing the crime to go unrecognized for what it really is. The crime in question was not committed by a flag, or a flag-bearer: it was committed by a cop with a personal dislike for an ideology, and whose badge provided the authority to violate our rights and silence our expression. This crime threatens not only anarchists, but anyone with an alternative vision to that of the mainstream or the government, including small counterculture newspapers.

To criminalize dissent, no matter what specific ideological framework within which it exists, threatens us all, and hinders the very human capacity for social evolution. In these days of right-wing jingoism and ferocious red, white, and blue flag-waving, alternative visions hold a very special place in combating the status quo of torture, war, inequality, exploitation, and oppression. All of us who question and challenge this state of humanity must express solidarity in a common fight against it, and it is sad to see The Stranger denounce this struggle.