From Beatnik to Anarchist
Radical eruptions in Lawrence
Jonathan Leyser
Wednesday, April 27th, 2005
In the backdrop of the Campanile, the Kansas Union burns on April 20, 1970, during the “days of rage.” Thirty-five years later, the University of Kansas is still investigating who set the Union ablaze.
Rumor of Lawrence’s “liberals, freaks, activists, queers and the ghost of Burroughs” brought Ailecia Ruscin, graduate teaching assistant in women’s studies, to Lawrence from Auburn, Ala. To continue the tradition, she joined some local ex-punks and created a radical new home for the oppositional culture: Solidarity! Revolutionary Center and Radical Library, 1119 Massachusetts St.
During the day, the space serves the community as a library: free Internet, book checkout and space to sit and read — but this library is run by anarchists.
It is one of many “Infoshops,” anarchists libraries and organizing spaces, popping up around the country in recent years. The homepage on Solidarity’s computers is Infoshop.org, and under the library’s phone is The Anarchist Yellow Pages. Both are ways the Infoshops stay connected.
This bookshop and the Borders a few blocks away are as different as Jock and Freak: Borders offers how-to books including “Build a Dream Home,” “Start a Business,” “Become as Rich as Trump.” Solidarity’s how-tos are “Protect Yourself From the Police,” “Give an Abortion from Home,” “Throw a Legal House Party,” “Build a Squat,” “Become a Conscientious Objector.”
The library also features a large selection of independently published zines, anti-copyright literature and books unique to the space, covering topics ranging from anarchist gardening to queer theory. There are no quiet signs, no late fees, no library cards and loitering is encouraged.
Solidarity is more than just a library. It serves as a late-night rock venue, an auditorium for radical lectures and a hub for activist planning.
Although predominantly students, the space is all-inclusive and has members from all walks of life. Solidarity attracts serious revolutionaries, misplaced outcasts, thrill seekers and curious voyeurs, but also includes transgendered Christian ministers and progressive parents coming in for children’s reading hour.
Not everyone at Solidarity is an anarchist, says volunteer librarian David Titterington, senior in fine arts. “You don’t have to be an anarchist to get involved.”
“The Infoshop is open to the community, it’s just organized by anarchists,” adds Titterington’s shift partner, Cassi Ross, junior in organismal biology.
Ross is not an anarchist but says she loves to be involved because of “all the interesting ideas that swirl around in the space.”
But many at Solidarity do identify as anarchist, including co-founding member Dave Strano. They make a point to clarify their definition.
“People hear anarchist and think ‘chaos and destruction,’ but actually we are about peace and equality. And we’re very organized,” he says as he catalogues zines and prepares shift schedules.
Solidarity makes a point to not hide from the public eye. The organizers continue to advertise their space and are located within open visible distance of the Lawrence Police Department. The group even exposed themselves in a calendar called “Kansas Radicals Exposed,” which features Solidarity librarians baring their bodies of all shapes and sizes, including transgendered. The calendars are sold at the library for about $6.
“It’s really nice,” says Dan Carey, GTA in American studies. “Solidarity is one of the only places in town I know of that integrates members from various countercultures, bringing together activists from different generations who would have never met otherwise.”
Lifelong activist CJ Brune, business manager in the School of Education, was “really inspired” when she saw a protest organized by Solidarity on campus against the War in Iraq.
“I haven’t seen anything like that at KU in a long time,” she says to a group of young anarchists at Solidarity. “There was time, in the ’80s and most of the ’90s, I never thought I would see activism again, and now you are doing the same thing that we did.”
Brune is known for her radical takeover with the “February Sisters” of the East Asian Studies building, which was located just south of Corbin Hall, in 1970.
Solidarity’s protests reminded her of the times of the Civil Rights movements that were going on in the ’60s and ’70s.
“I’m amazed there are people like you remaining active and are not losing faith,” she says. After a thorough pause, she tells the group, “We learn from you now. What can we tell you to help you?”
Former Beatnik Ron Pine recently attended a lecture on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at Solidarity.
“The anarchists organize things — in the ’50s we never organized things,” he says.
Solidarity is part of a new movement of anarchists in action, which some are calling New Wave Anarchy. In the last half decade it has been the fastest growing counter-cultural movement in the United States, according to numerous national media sources, including “The Nation” magazine.
Strano claims the trend is in response to the growing threat posed by the current administration’s consumerist, fascist regime.
The movement lends itself to ideas from communism, socialism, punk and radicalism.
“Anarchism is compassion,” says Belinda Penaloza, freshman in Latin American studies. She identifies as a Christian anarchist.
“Being a true Christian means you’re also going to be an anarchist,” she argues. “There is just so much misconception about both. People don’t investigate either. They just accept the government’s and capitalists’ manipulated definitions.”
Penaloza has been involved with many of the groups grounded at Solidarity.
She helped start Workers Support, a group offering assistance to people, especially “legal or illegal” Hispanic immigrants, who are unable to get government services. Penaloza herself emigrated from Mexico City six years ago.
Penaloza also finds time to write to her pen pal — an inmate in a New York correctional facility — as part of Kansas Mutual Aid, an ongoing effort lending support to “political prisoners.” To anarchists, that means all prisoners.
She was proud to take part in organizing the North American Anarchist Gathering in 2002. Five hundred anarchists camped at Clinton Lake for the weekend convention. The U.S. State Department was on hand in response to an Oversears Security Advisory Council’s listing of a potential threat, which Penaloza lightly mocks. She says the convention went smoothly and peacefully.
This Saturday, as most, Penaloza leaves a meeting to go home and help her housemate, Vanessa Hays, senior in women’s studies, prepare for Food Not Banks.
Hays makes her way through erupting bags of bread, beans and indefinable edibles that fill her kitchen and begins cooking with some help. Food Not Banks is a local take-off of a growing national anarchist effort, Food Not Bombs, which provides a free vegetarian meal, made of food reclaimed from dumpsters, to the community. It serves massive appetites in front US Bank, on the corner of Ninth and Massachusetts streets, every Saturday evening at 7.
“We feed off their wastefulness,” says an FNB regular, calling himself “Scrounger,” as he takes big bite of recovered rigatoni.
Like many anarchists, Scrounger makes dumpster-diving “a way of life.”
Strano explains that their black-bin binges “utilize the excess, rather than participate in disease of consumerism.”
“I do it because I can’t afford a good slice,” Scrounger says, plainly.
Students reflect in the aftermath of a protest held July 20, 1970, in which 18-year-old freshman Nick Rice was killed by a police officer.
After filling up at Food Not Banks, Erica Goddard, freshmen and native Lawrencian, fights her way through a crowd of tube tops, beer bellies and slurred hoots in front of It’s Brothers Bar and Grill, 1105 Massachusetts St., turning the corner to check in at the Oread Community Network’s meeting at Solidarity. You won’t see this hipster spending her weekend partying or bar hopping. Her Saturday nights are dedicated to patrolling Lawrence on bike for OCN’s version of Neighborhood Watch.
The 115-pound anarchist, together with her patrol partner, cruise the streets between 1 and 4 a.m., keeping an eye out for police harassment or the average drunkard in need of escort. Goddard says she helps them so they don’t have to face the consequences of police intervention, such as a fine or being hauled off to jail.
The anarchists carry ideals and dreams that could never fit into a ballot box. They do not support political parties. Instead, they try Direct Democracy, which Strano vaguely defines as “everyone in the community taking part in every decision.”
Many anarchists do not vote, yet they maintain a reputation as one of the most politically active groups in town.
In mid-April the group was bestowed Lawrence’s Tom and Anne Moore Peace & Justice Award, which recognizes a person or group for significant contribution to the local, national or international community.
The group’s most recent focus is queer rights. Ruscin, the GTA in women’s studies, is passionate in her message for the queer community in Lawrernce.
“I say act up, fight back, let’s get out of the bars and into the street,” Ruscin says. She shares the idea that gender and queer rights is the civil rights movement of our time; and Solidarity’s support gaily expands beyond its large queer section in the library. In early April, it hosted the Tranny Road show, a truly bi-partisan transient performance group. Most recently the group has started “Queer as Fuck,” a radical “queerleading” group lending their cheers out to queers.
In August 2001, and again in March 2004, the anarchists threw a block party on “corporate corner” on Massachusetts Street between Sixth and Seventh streets, blocking the streets with sofas. The eclectic party-goers played a game of corporate heads piñata, blasted loud punk music and sprayed anti-corporate logos in front of the Gap.
The revolution will not be televised, but is being digitalized, and catalogued, and organized — by the anarchists, seemingly set on bringing radicalism back to Lawrence.
The anarchists’ next protest will take place, with raised fists rather than flags, on April 30 at the Army Recruiting Office, 2223 Louisiana.
"The role of youth is to really challenge old people—to make them think," says Roger Martin, university features publications editor. "I wish that you, and your whole generation, could be an aggravator to us all. Make some trouble. Cause some hell, kid."
Leyser is a junior in journalism. Edited by Lori Bettes and Janette Crawford.
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