|
An Interview with Nestor Makhno July 7th, 1999 Jason: Do you have any identity issues anymore, or is it pretty much out of the bag- the cat's out of the bag? Makhno: Well, on the advice of my attorney, I cannot confirm nor deny that I am Nestor Mahkno of the Mission Yuppie Eradication Project. But I can say I certainly know a lot about the Yuppie Eradication Project... Jason: Oh, okay. Makhno: ...In that I'm in wholehearted sympathy with the perspective expressed on their posters. Jason: Ah, okay. So, what was the exact date of the arrest? Makhno: May 14th, four in the- around four in the morning, four a.m. I was about to go up the steps and into my apartment when out of the shadows leapt two SFPD officers. Jason: Uniformed? Makhno: They were in uniform. Jason: Wow. Makhno: Yeah, so... Jason: You were coming home and they came in and they arrested you. I read the account in the paper. Is there anything else that you want to describe that went on that you thought that the paper left out? Makhno: Which one? The Chronicle or the Examiner? Jason: I think I may have read the Examiner. I may not have read the Chronicle. They were different? Makhno: Yeah, well, what happened, these two cops grabbed me and they didn't tell me what I was charged with. They didn't read me my rights, and they didn't allow me to make any phone calls. I was basically held incommunicado for about fifteen hours. Mostly... Jason: Wow. Makhno: Yeah, under California- this may not be of much interest- but under California penal code, I believe it's 851.5, an arrested person is allowed to make up to three phone calls within three hours of arrest. And a public official who denies them this is guilty of a misdemeanor. Jason: So, again, are there any other details that they left out of the stories? Makhno: Yeah, uh... Jason: Besides that. Makhno: Yeah, I was taken to the Mission police station. I was, like, you know, handcuffed to- there was, like, a rail of a bench, and over the course of the next several hours or so, a whole parade of cops coming in and ooh-ing and ah-ing over me going, "Wow, is that him? Hi, Nestor." You'd think they'd captured John Dillinger or something. Jason: Oh really? Makhno: It was flattering. Jason: It must've been. Makhno: Yeah. Jason: So, did you get interrogated after that? Makhno: No, I said, "I've nothing to say to you." I demanded to speak to my attorney. In fact, I said, "I want to talk to my attorney," like, many dozens of times, maybe a hundred times. And they, you know, one of the arresting officers, Galiano, claimed, "We can hold you for up to seventy-two hours before booking you," which is, well, maybe physically they can do that, but they would be breaking the law. Of course, cops- most cops are not that well trained. They don't know the law. They break it all the time, and when they find out what it is, they go to court and they lie. And people believe them because they're cops, you know. Jason: Credible because they're in uniform probably. Makhno: Yeah, yeah. Jason: So, is there a trial soon? Makhno: No, I was- I asked them what I was charged with, and they hadn't cooked up anything until after they raided my apartment and stole everything of value from it. Jason: Yeah, that's what I read about. Some ridiculous things. Makhno: Yeah, and then around maybe, I believe, approximately twenty to four the following afternoon, the cops charged me with felony, making terrorist threats, a misdemeanor, malicious mischief. The charges were subsequently dropped about three days later. Jason: So, let's switch gears. So, how long have you been an activist? Makhno: Oh, I've been involved in political activity since, like, the late 1970s, literally since I was a teenager. I first came out to the West Coast at age eighteen- took Greyhound. Jason: Oh yeah? Makhno: Yeah. Jason: So, you've been doing it for a little while. Like, what kind of other things? Makhno: Organizing rent strikes with the Berkeley Tenants Union, when I lived in Berkeley, against a particularly obnoxious landlord named Raisa Valley; anti-military activity, where during Fleet Week friends of mine give out this leaflet titled "Harass the Brass," which is a history of how American enlisted men helped to sink the war effort in Vietnam, and about the importance of mutiny in revolutionary movements, you know, the enlisted people in military make the military collapse and use their weapons and on behalf of the revolutionary movement, like the Russian and German revolution and the Spanish Civil War. Friends of mine and I have also been involved in what's called Black- what we call "Friends of Black BART." Whenever BART's going to jack up the price- the BART managers are going to jack up the fare- we give out- do like industrial-scale leafleting and postering and putting up stickers, encouraging mass resistance to fare hikes, and also try to make a connection between the wage slaves who work for BART and the wage slaves who take BART, taking action together against management. What else have we done? A lot of stuff around Muni. Back in eighty- it was '93, Mayor Jordan was going to jack up- either jack up the fair in Muni by twenty-five cents, or he was going to eliminate transfers. So we did the same thing, you know, putting up lots of wall posters, giving out leaflets to people who work for Muni. And the day that he eliminated transfers, we had a fake letter that we put up all over bus stops in the financial district that had fake transfers on them and people were taking them. Bus drivers were accepting them. Jordan had to issue a denunciation of it at five p.m. that day. Jason: Okay, that sounds- so, as far as the Mission Yuppie Eradication Project, the methods are known. Makhno: Yeah. Jason: Are you following any historical models? Makhno: Not really. Whoever's behind it- ha, ha, ha- obviously must have found that those 11" by 17" wall posters put up with wall paper paste is a really effective way of getting a message across. It's really low-tech, you know. It's not like we've got to go take over a TV station or have our own radio transmitter. It's something where we can get it up- get it up and out there and everybody can be aware of it, you know. And in my humble opinion, they've been very effective in, like, the message is completely transparent. Anybody who looks at them knows on what side of the class divide they fall. I'm pretty sure that people, when they see them, there's the people who sympathize but don't really approve. Then there are people who sympathize and, you know, get a laugh out of it. Then there are people, the bourgeois types, who, you know, well, hopefully maybe some of them laugh too. But I hope that, you know, it irritates the hell out of bourgeois types and is a source of encouragement to working people, tenants, low-income people, artists being, you know, being threatened with gentrification. Jason: Okay, so, what is your definition of gentrification, and how do you think it begins to occur? Makhno: Well, one of the ways it begins to occur is that, like, in a working-class neighborhood, people who are, say, you know, somewhat antagonistic to mainstream American society- artists, bohemians, musicians, writers, political radical types- who end up, like, living in working-class neighborhoods like the Mission because they want to get away from the rest of America. Unfortunately, then the rest of America sees them walking around in the streets of a neighborhood they often perceive of as being dirty or dangerous or undesirable, and they begin thinking that it's hip or cool. They start showing up. Bars that used to be old man bars or working men's bars get turned into places oriented toward the "hipoisie," chi-chi restaurants start opening up, and then the more upscale crowd begin by coming to party in a neighborhood like this, and they end up moving in, displacing long-term tenants. They'll outbid you on the rent. They'll offer the landlord more rent to, you know, get a place. They'll buy a building and evict all the original occupants, you know, in an owner-move-in eviction. They'll get together with a bunch of other people who've got enough money to do so and get one of these tenancy-in-common things which also results in owner-move-in evictions. And then, of course, you've got the condos, all these luxury condos going up around the neighborhood. Jerks, like that guy Joe O'Donahue of the Residential Builders Association, will say, "Not one of our condos has displaced a tenant." And while it's technically true, the construction of luxury condos in, like, a low-income working class neighborhood drives up the surrounding property values, meaning that landlords have more of an incentive to evict people so that they can jack up, you know, the rent of whoever else is moving in; or so they can just jack up the rent of you, you know, when you're already living there. Jason: So, do you think that what you've been doing has had an impact? Makhno: I think it has, but obviously I'm somewhat biased. I think that'll really be for other people to judge. Jason: I'll edit it if you want. Makhno: Oh no, no, no. That's- yeah, I mean, I think- I think, though, that those posters put up by whoever it is, it's fine to mention Mission Yuppie Eradication Project. I think they've had a lot of impact, I hope. As I say, I'm somewhat biased. It's really for other people to tell. They've been successful. They've been successful in, you know, making clear what's going on in the neighborhood and making clear that it's not a natural process and it's not inevitable and it can be- it can be resisted and it can be turned back. Jason: So, you ever had to impersonate a Yuppie to infiltrate any kind of organization? Makhno: No, but that's... Jason: Or just to work? Makhno: Well, you know, like, I was doing temp work before I got arrested. Now, just all of a sudden, it seems like none of those temp agencies are calling me anymore. Boo hoo hoo. I need the money, but I hate temp work, and I was tired of doing it anyway. So maybe it's kind of a blessing in disguise. I hadn't thought about that, but I'd be all for sending revolutionary moles into bourgeois organizations so we can tell what the "bourgies" are up to. Jason: I see, I see. Besides arresting you, what other kinds of counter-methods have you experienced? Makhno: Well, the police- the police executed a search warrant in my apartment and stole everything I could use to effectively communicate with other people: my Macintosh, a bunch of diskettes, floppies for an old computer I no longer own, my camera and two of its lenses, my first sixteen millimeter movie, or rather the first print, the work print and the two soundtracks to my first sixteen millimeter movie, everything I've ever written, all my fiction, short stories, drafts of two novels in progress, political writings that were like in a series of really well-organized files going back to 1983, publications I've been involved with, all kinds of obscure ultra-left journals from France and England and Italy, more than seventy books, too. The fact that the books were mostly about revolutionary Marxism or anarchism clearly shows that it was a political arrest and that the cops continuing to hold on to my stuff is politically motivated. It's political harassment, 'cause the cops- the SFPD- are wholeheartedly committed to enforcing the gentrification of the Mission. Jason: Why do you think they're behind it? Makhno: Because it's big money that gives the police their marching orders. The police are basically the armed servants of the private sector elite, the private goons of the capitalist class. Jason: All right. I saw the appearance that you made at the Anarchist Bookfair. And I noticed that there was definitely a strain in the audience that was questioning what you were doing in your methods in terms of what... Makhno: Sure. Jason: How did you respond to those criticisms? I mean, what were the criticisms specifically? Makhno: Well, one person said what would you- what would you say to people who believe you should stick to non-violent tactics? And I said I would say they are mistaken. But, I mean, we live in, like, a society- the dictatorship of the market is predicated on violence. I won't even go into all the detail, but all the violence is necessary to give capitalism up off the ground, or specifically capitalism in North America, or let's say the New World. But we live in a society which incarcerates its population at a higher rate than any other country in the world- we may only be second after, like, the Mafia democracy in Russia- where the level of police violence against civilians far outleads all of the rest of industrialized world, where the capitalist- the capitol Washington D.C. has a higher infant mortality rate than Jamaica or Chile, where the United States regularly executes people, where more than two hundred years of American law and jurisprudence are a pyramid resting on the rape of a quarter million men and boys every year in jails, prisons and detention facilities. And then we get the daily violence of the capitalist workplace, which isn't just everybody who's injured or maimed or killed in an accident, that worker going to work, but the fact that most of us have our energy from the most vital period of our lives all sapped away for, like, useless, meaningless, degrading wage slave jobs of the corporate America. This context for some upper middle class types to whine about people trashing their car when they're invading working class neighborhood and displacing people, I have to laugh at it. And I also ask them which mass murderer they voted for in the last presidential election. Jason: I see. That pretty much puts it in a certain kind of context that makes screwing up a car not seem... Makhno: It's pretty trivial. Hopefully not trivial, but let's say, see it in perspective. Jason: Do you have friends you think would qualify as being Yuppies? Makhno: I have friends who are journalists and attorneys, but they're not- they're cool people. They're not the bourgeois type. Jason: What specifically delineates- it's not necessarily income? Makhno: No, because you've got very very well-paid people who are still solidly part of the working class. For example, Muni- employees of Muni. That's why they're under attack by stuff like Rescue Muni right now, people who work for BART. Generally, I think of Yuppies as being this sort of band of the professional managerial strata of the bourgeois class. Many Yuppies, technically speaking, they're wage slaves, but they're so servile to capital and they're so pathologically identified with the boss and the rich and the system of the rich that they're kind of like traitors to the working class. Many of them will be stock brokers, people who work in computer, you know, people that are making big bucks in the computer industry. And there, again, too, like a lot of people who are making good money in the computer industry, it's not like I'm moralistic about it. I mean, I think, you know, I have nothing- there's nothing more- a person having a good life or, like, earning as much as they can, if you got to work, you should get as much back as you can. But when along with that comes this attitude of just, you know, me, me, me, gimme, gimme, gimme. In my- I don't give a fuck about my- them thinking to themselves I don't give a fuck about whether my- what I'm doing is, like, destructive to the interests of working and poor people, then at that point I think it's, you know... Jason: Then they get their membership card. Makhno: (laughs) Yeah, yeah. Jason: So, putting things in a much larger context since I've heard you mention philosophies- Marxist philosophies, anarchist philosophies- what do you think the standing of these philosophies and political movements is today? It seems like, you know, with the collapse of the Soviet Union it might be dying, so to speak. Makhno: Well, what existed in the Soviet Union was never antagonistic to capitalism. I mean, the Bolsheviks betrayed the Russian revolution from a very early point and they basically were out to create state capitalism. They were out to compel industrial capitalism into existence in a very, very quick period of time. And that's what their model was. That's what similar regimes did in China and Cuba and Vietnam and all these other places. And if you examine the history of the actual revolutionary movements in the 20th century, well, starting with the Russian Revolution and going forward to France in May of '68 and Italy in 1977, you find that the so-called Communists were always the vanguard of the counter-revolution. They were always fighting on the side of capital against people who were trying to get rid of capitalism. So I think that while on the one hand the arrival of an American-style regime in Russia has proven that what we live under here is- was actually a lot worse than what they used to live under there. It's- I'm glad that, you know, that, you know, 20th century's dominant counter-revolutionary ideology, Leninism, will not be in the way of the emergence of authentic anti-capitalist politics in the future. And the class struggle that was never a function of the foreign policy of a bunch of old men in Moscow. It's produced by the dynamics in class society itself, and it hasn't gone away. It's just a matter of people recovering from the big hangover of the market in the 20th century and then going forward and creating a new social movement for the next century. Jason: Big hangover of the market... Makhno: Yeah. Jason: Okay. So, do you know of any other, like, organizations that have your goals? Makhno: That's a good question. Jason: And how do their methods differ? Makhno: I've heard that there are- that people, because of all the recent national media coverage, that there are people who've been emailing this writer Laura Wellman at the Weekly from like New York and Boston and Chicago, saying, "Yeah, we're totally down with that Mission Yuppie Eradication Project. We've got to start doing the same thing here." Jason: Is that Dog Bites? Makhno: Yeah. Jason: Okay. Makhno: Yeah, and, you know, I don't... Jason: You don't mind. Makhno: Yeah, no, I think that's totally cool. Jason: I've heard of an organization in Oakland- because I guess in West Oakland gentrification is starting to set in- where what they do is- it's more of like a non-profit organization- not-for-profit, I guess- and they get money and buy property. They just basically blockout to potential buyers- undesirable buyers, basically, who would buy all the property, right? Because you can't buy it if they don't want to sell it, right? So, do you know of any organizations like that in San Francisco? Or what do you think of those methodologies? Makhno: Well, if they're having- if they're preventing gentrification, then I'm not going to dis them. But I'm not in favor of playing a game that involves buying property. I want- I'm against, you know, I'm against the existence of property as a social relation. And I think that what working and poor people need to do is just turn our neighborhoods into a no-go zone for real estate speculators and for, like, landlords and yuppies who are their loyal tools. What we need to do is start thinking toward, you know, a long-term, like, you know, say, city-wide or even area-wide general rent strike. And beyond that, like, a goal of not just of going on strike until, say, the rent drops by fifty percent, but going on rent strike forever. Like, abolishing housing as a commodity. Housing shouldn't be a commodity and nothing else should be. Jason: Have you heard of this happening before in history? Makhno: Oh yeah. Well, like, all throughout Western Europe you've got many tens of thousands of units of perfectly decent housing where people live, and they live collectively and they don't pay. It's called squatting. I mean, usually the image of squatting that you get is of a- this, you know, if it's squatting, it's squalid or that, you know, you're living with dope fiends, or there's, like, a hole in the roof and water is pouring in. And that's where people get their drinking water. But, like, that's not necessarily the case. There are a lot of- and, in fact, until relatively recently, even in the Lower East Side in Manhattan, there were, like, you know, a lot of like really, really decent, decent good housing where people lived and didn't pay a landlord and didn't pay the state. Jason: Why didn't they pay? Was it a... Makhno: It was in an area of the Lower East Side that I think had been temporarily written off by real estate speculators. So a lot of, kind of artists, political radicals, working people, like, would go in and, you know, occupy a place, paint it, fix it up, do the plumbing and the electricity and so on. And it was like perfectly, you know, really excellent life for these people. Unfortunately I believe Giuliani and before him Denkins sent the NYPD in to clobber that, because the police are basically there to keep the neighborhoods safe for capitalism. Jason: So, was that kind of action basically illegal? Makhno: Oh yeah. Jason: It's illegal. Makhno: Yeah, I mean, the law is all about defending private property, defending, you know, making sure that you- that everything exists to be bought and sold. But on the other hand there are- there are little technicalities around it. In California, if you occupy a place and you have mail delivered to you there, then regardless of whether you pay rent or not, you're a tenant and they have to go through the actual eviction process to kick you out. Now, that's technically, but the cops don't pay attention to that. The cops will, like, often- they'll just go after you and storm your home and throw you out, 'cause the cops are, like I keep saying, they're- the police exist because of the market economy. They're its- you know- its armed wing. Jason: So are there any other formalized chapters in different parts of this city or the East Bay or L.A. or in Portland? Makhno: No, but it would be cool if we could get together some kind of anti-Yuppie international, you know, not just here, but gentrification's a global issue. It's something that affects people in Western Europe and in China and in Japan and South Africa and all over. And it's like- basically, this is like one little expression of, like, a global plight for control over social space. And it's a matter of, like, will the working class control it or will capital control it? Jason: So, do you believe that right now you are under surveillance or any kind of- well, is the heat on, basically? Makhno: The cops still have all my stuff, which is a pain in the ass. But, you know, I have faith that I'll get it back. They- I found out after I got arrested that they had actually had my house under surveillance. And a bunch of the people in the neighborhood knew about it, but they didn't know it was me. They thought it was our neighbors who often have trouble with the cops. Jason: Like a stake-out? Makhno: Yeah, yeah. And during all the time that they had me staked out, the only thing they allegedly saw me doing is they allegedly saw me keying the paint on an SUV. So they had a stake-out- what was it?- around the clock, several cops, paid overtime so they could catch, like, you know, like, forty dollars worth of damage on an- which I didn't do, which I didn't do. Obviously the cops have too much time on their hands. They can't hang out at Rolling Pin Donuts all the time, I guess, huh? The SFPD need to be downsized. Of course, they need to be downsized out of existence, but that would require a revolution. Yeah, I assume my phone is tapped, but that may or not be true. I just- I mean, I operate under that assumption just to be careful. And I don't think they'd get the apartment bugged. They may have it bugged. Mainly they've just stolen, like, all my stuff, everything I've used to effectively communicate with other people other than my telephone, which is probably tapped, and my ability to speak. Jason: Your ability to speak. Makhno: Yeah. Jason: Okay, that means you can actually speak, but, I mean... Makhno: Yeah, they've just stolen my computer, they've stolen my tape recorder, they've stolen my camera, my film, everything I've ever written, my mountaineering axe. Jason: That's a weapon. Makhno: Yeah, and then lots of pictures from mountain climbing and backpacking trips. I don't know what relevance that is to them. Maybe they think I've got a weapons cache in, like, a snow field up on Shasta or the summit of Mt. Whitney or something. Jason: Right- your hideaway, your bat cave. So, let's see, any other new eviction stories to relate? There was one in the Weekly. I think it was the last one. Makhno: Was there? When was that? Jason: It was a while back, a couple of months ago. Makhno: About the people evicted up the street by the owner-move-in-eviction dude? Jason: Yeah. Makhno: Yeah, did you see that article? Jason: I did read it. Makhno: What'd you think of it? Jason: I thought it was pretty good. Makhno: I thought it was pretty good, too. It's by Nestor Mahkno. Jason: Oh, right, right, yeah, yeah. Makhno: Yeah, the cops actually took all the copies of that story too. Jason: Really? Makhno: Yeah, they stole... Jason: I still have one. They didn't get all of them. Makhno: That's good. Yeah, they stole everything I have ever written. Jason: Ah man. Makhno: Yeah. Jason: But no other new stories you know of? Makhno: No, none that I've heard of. No. Jason: Okay. Well, I think that's- that'll probably be a number of pages. Makhno:: Cool. * * * Makhno: We had an event Thursday, July 1st, at ATA on Valencia near 21st. And the idea was how to use all this publicity around resistance to gentrification in the Mission and catalyze it into organized action. And it was generally a pretty good meeting. We're gonna have another meeting ... out of- you know, and hopefully like specific actions Jason: So, working within the system- what specifically do you think is wrong with it? Makhno: It doesn't work. It doesn't do us any good. I mean, like, there have been people trying to vote and petition their way out of the housing crisis for thirty years, and what do we have to show for it? We have the most disastrous, you know, totally artificial market-driven scarcity of housing in the United- of any major city in the United States, of any city, period, in the U.S. And what we need is direct action. We need- if enough tenants, working people, poor people, people who live in residence hotels and public housing tenants all get together, then we can make it- we make our neighborhood a no-go zone for real estate speculators and landlords. Jason: So, what would you do? How would you answer the question of creating a community movement, an original community between, say, different ethnicities, maybe even different socio-economic classes that doesn't exist, you know... Makhno: Well, I mean, I think different- it basically is a class thing, and I don't, you know, seek- I don't seek an alliance with, like, the upper middle class or the rich. I think that the kind of community- the only kind of community that can exist under capitalism is a community of struggle, you know, working people and poor people getting together and asserting our needs against capital's needs. Capital needs us to work hard and live poorly and we need to, you know, resist work as much as possible and live well. Jason: So, how would you put this into terms to somebody, say, who moved here three years ago from Nicaragua? Makhno: To me it's not a matter of, like, when somebody moved to the neighborhood but what social class they're a part of. One thing, I think, that might effectively have raised that issue is that the last Mission Yuppie Eradication Project posters were in both Spanish and English. And what you're pointing to is a real fact, which is that housing activists haven't done enough or enough efficient outreach among Spanish-speaking residents in the Mission. Spanish-speaking working class people who are, you know, in a lot of ways, the real backbone of this neighborhood. Jason: Do you know the numbers? Makhno: No, I don't. I think it's roughly something like thirty-five or forty percent of everybody who lives in the Mission. The Mission's roughly about sixty thousand people. And one reason why, you know, more working people haven't gotten involved in this is that most of them are being worked to death by capital, forty-plus hours a week. You get home, you're tired, you know, you've got to do the laundry and, you know, eat and take care of the kids and you want to have some semblance of a life of your own where you relating to, like, friends and loved ones. And there's not a lot of time to write leaflets or, you know, go to meetings or put them up with wallpaper paste or whatever. Jason: So, it just strikes me as- it's definitely a tough fight, especially with those kinds of differences among poor people that are coming from a background... Makhno: Yeah. Jason: I think definitely putting things in economic terms, I think, is- probably would be the answer, if you can understand things on that level. Makhno: Sure, yeah. Jason: So, you ever consider having, like, workshops or maybe even writing a sort of manifesto? Makhno: I haven't, but... Jason: Or educational materials? Makhno: I haven't, but now that you mention it, I think it would be a really good idea, you know, describing, like, the social forces that were- are victimizing the Mission in the context of global capitalism. I mean, that can be very, very useful. Unfortunately, for the time being at least, my wings are clipped as far as putting it up with wallpaper paste. Jason: Yeah, right. Well, maybe it'll change. But are you basically rendered inactive at this point? Makhno: Oh no, not at all. I've been involved in, like, you know, helping to set up- putting up flyers, drawing attention to that meeting at ATA. And I've been putting up flyers, drawing attention to this meeting at Cell space, which is- I forget their exact address, but it's on Bryant near 18th. Jason: I think it's between 19th and 20th. Makhno: 19th and 20th, yeah. Jason: Yeah, I know the space. Crucible Steel Gallery... Makhno: Yeah. Actually it's the next block over that, Bryant, between 19th and 20th, is where Blowfish Sushi is. Jason: Oh, okay, yes, the bastion of all those... Makhno: Yeah, "White Army Sushi" Jason: White Army Sushi, that and Circadia, right? Makhno: They're further on down, yeah. cubby missalette home page |