A Preamble on Justice [P.1]

A Preamble on Justice (Pamplet One), Democratic Confederalist Papers

We will tell you now, what is wrong with this world and our country! No matter what country that it is we are addressing. 

It is that you the people believe in yourselves more than you believe in each other. You believe you are in this world alone.

The fate of the individual has ground under iron heel even the faintest notion of the collective good. And rat racing, pitiless individualism has robbed us as a collective people of both our human conscience as well as our “duty to act”.

There are rights we all have: Women, Men and Children that are ours by virtue of being born human.

No deity nor national charter bestowed them. When either a religion or the state fails to secure these rights, then these institutions cease to be of value. They become a danger. Both the state system and the ideas of every existing religion present clear and present threats to human rights.

The states by trampling them or failing to enforce them. Religions by explicitly negating womens’ role in the world, sanctioning violence to non believing minorities and promising a “world of plenty and paradise” in a world you will never live to see, and no one has ever come back from.  

The virtuous justice of the “world to come” must be palpable, must be tangible, must be established by a happiness, prosperity and security in the living world, the world of the real.

The authority by which we or any other member of a Party of resistance compels you, a civilian to “take hold of your rights” comes only from the hearts and minds of other women and men just like you. We hold up no religious gospel or ideological flag. These rights for many decades were put to paper, signed by the nations and then out right ignored by all existing governments.

Let us reiterate what you may already know. It is in fact in every country too hard to feed one’s family. It is too hard to own the roof over one’s head even in nations where television and popular mythology lead some to believe the “streets are paved in gold”. Landlords exploit us and workers grind to the bone in every single nation. The governments of all “safe and civilized Northern nations” currently disparage and despise the immigrant while the natives seem to have forgotten completely the exodus and plight from which their family once fled.

The time to even speak of pacifism has passed.    

We believe deeply in cutting the knees out from under each and every tyrant and local Oligarchy who together bleed and rape over half the nations of this earth. But in all the numerous wars fought, has a single human right ever been advanced or championed? Were not all these “Great Wars”, “Crusades”, “Jihads”, “Revolutions” and the World Wars 1, 2 and 3 (the so-called  Cd War) all just highly bloody contests to control the resources below and above the soil, to dispose of an excess working class and to compel foreigners to the economic bondage of some great power?     

Progress is wholly unequal and justice has become a perversion. Rights are worth the paper they are printed on.

Governments have sent millions of young people to die, maim and get maimed, kill and get killed for nothing other than a cold hard national ambition. The local Oligarchy of a time, using the state system for naked conquest. Channeling nationalism into mass theft, environmental devastation and ongoing bloodletting.

The many Crusades and Jihads were about the control of religious oligarchy, the Oligarchy of the priests and imams. The World Wars were European, Russian, American and Japanese bids for hegemony and empire; “control of the Core”. They didn’t stop fascist dictators from engaging in further atrocity as long as they were proclaimed anti-communist. Neither the Communist nor the  Capitalist nor the Third World ideologues built us better worlds. The wealth and options of the North West are built on the exploitation of the rest. The World System and Globalization itself is built on raw inequality, the trampling of human life outside the Core. They built up the very instruments of terror we now oppose. Massive armies of spy surveillance, state torture, nuclear war and armies that if unleashed will finish off the earth. 

We present a clear indictment of the current state system. 

One

War is still rampant. It is just more diffuse and costs less white lives. It is now a time of small wars, non-state insurgent, low tech and proxy warfare. Driven by the great power intelligence services, Sunni Jihadists, criminal cartels, student movements and Maoist rebels the annual body count of over 35 Small Wars, is quite gruesome. Major conflict of some kind exists in the following nations; in Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Mexico and the Democratic Republic of Congo claim over 10,000 lives a year. 

In Turkey (PKK and Maosist Insurgencies), Iraq, Somalia, Kenya, the Maghreb Insurgency (Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger and Tunisia), in the Boko Haram Insurgency (Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger Chad), in Sudan and South Sudan 1,000 to 10,000 lives lost a year.

In the Kasmir (India v. Pakistan), the Naxalite Insurgency (India), in Israel and Palestine, Donbass War in Ukraine (Ukraine v. Russia), in Myanmar (Karen, Kachina, Rohingya ethnic conflicts), Insurgency in Balochistan( Iran v. Pakistan), in Thailand, in the Catatumbo Campaign (Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela), Moro Conflict/ Communist Insurgency (Philippines), the Kyber Conflict (Pakistan), CAR, Egypt, and the Islamist Insurgency in Mozambique all claim between 100 and 1,000 casualties a year.

Low burning conflicts are occuring in Iran (PJAK Kurds and Khuzestan Arab), Xinjiang Conflict China (State against Uyghers), India (Assam, Nagaland, Meghalaya and Manipur regions), Indonesia (West Papua Conflict), Cabinda Conflict (Angola), Peru (Internal), Lord’s Resistance Army Insurgency (Uganda, DRC, CAR, South Sudan), Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict (Azerbaijan vs. Armenia), the Dissident Irish Republican Campaign (Northern Ireland against UK), War in Darfur Sudan, Islamist terrorism in Pakistan (Punjab and Sindh), ongoing Chechen Separtism in Russia, the Sinai Insurgency in Egypt, Hezbollah’s Jihad against Israel and the Syrian Civil War spill over into Lebanon.

There is major civil unrest ongoing in Venezuela (CIA against State), Hong Kong (CIA against China) and the United States of America.

Two

They have not ended slavery, they actually expanded it. They rebranded it, but it still retains the essence of complete bondage and subjugation, the degradation of a human into an animal,  a creature of brutal use. There are more forced sweat shop slaves, child slaves, harvesting slaves, mining slavea and sex slave workers and indentured sweatshop laborers than there ever were as plantation slaves or feudal serfs in the late 17th century. 

The North West didn’t ‘liberate women’ without completely objectifying them. In America 1 in 4 women will be sexually assaulted before age 18. 1 in every 147 Americans is in the penal system. The West has the gall to compare their advancements via armed struggle to be some how superior to those of the Monarchists, Fascists, Communists and Islamist Theocracy? These are all different brands of Oligarchy! The grinding logic of the world system depresses wages everywhere and makes humans a commodity, a resource to fully exploit.

Three 

Poverty is a rampant genocide. 7 in 10 people live below $5 a day. 4 in 10 below $2 a day and over 2 billion people, 2 of 8 billion live below $2 a day. Even in so-called wealthy, “Northern” nations most people work their entire lives, living to work and working to live. A human life expectancy of 120 has been brought below 50 in most nations on earth, even in the wealthy North West OECD most still die before 80, most black men will die by age 53.

Damn the Oligarchy for its callous dominance. Cruel indifference to human suffering, abuse of power and massive ongoing theft! Those who speaks in numbers and spread sheets while tens of millions starve or die of easily treatable diseases; and every year hundreds of thousands fall to rape, pillage and war while millions of woman lack control over their bodies and tens of millions remain slaves. Of course, every oligarchy sets up, benefits from a priesthood speaking of unseen God! God of Gods or spirits telling us to be patient, accept hard work, accept our rough lot; in the world to come all will be “amazing”. They also set up a modern priesthood of management for thought and public opinion. A media, many talking heads to explain the “hiccups” to universal progress.  

We tell these men damn their banal statistics, damn their intractable apathy, your failed policies and your unwillingness to move in the defense of the powerless. We will launch a war unlike any the world has seen. A war of workers, not blinded by made up races, invented cultures and unseen magic gods.

If naked you came to your country, than near naked you will depart. If bandit rapists drove you here or there, or a if some planned famine killed ¾ of your family before the rest died reroute of Cholera, or your came here or there shackled beaten and stolen in the belly of a ship; than you’d better damn never forget where you came from. There is not a safe zone, in “the North.” They will build even higher walls as the conditions on the ground worsen.

There is daily racist police violence, there is a technology of surveillance unlike anything in the past eras, an intractable relative poverty, and a plague of fever cough and death. When the world gets worse, and it has the potential to; the people of the North will build up even taller walls. With land mines and robot sentries.   

What is to be done when there is nowhere safe to run?

If the question is “what can be done”, the interlude then is who should do it where. The interesting thing about this paper is that we can give it as a speech in Cairo, Damascus or Jerusalem, Paris or London, Moscow or Beijing, Port-Au-Prince, Port of Spain or Kingston Town. When we speak in the local language, when we have fire in our eyes and sincere passion our hearts; then we earn their time as well as their ears too. 

People know that something has been broken for a long time. But after the grisly violence of the last hundred years, a direct product of a retrograde authoritarian Socialism clashing with a hypocritical republican order masquerading as Democracy; does anyone even trust ideology?

There are some pretty universal deficits when it comes to the global state of human rights, no one knows they have them. No one knows who grants them. They are a product of Enlightenment values, Socialist pressure and also,  common sense. They are a list of demands. They have already been written down in 39 separate United Nations documents. They are fully violated everywhere.

Because we are not interested in part freedoms, half freedoms, freedoms just on paper or any abridgment of these 58 noble rights enshrined in the halls of the United Nations and trampled everywhere else: we’d make a good wager that our message speaks as true in the Gaza as it does in the Gully.

What is to be done? What is the way forward? We need to demand that governments adopt these rights as laws, or we must bring every single government to its knees.

Who is the primary agent of change? 

We, all people.   

As Church, Mosque and State have all failed so colossally we must rise to repossess them. We must not replace a corrupt order, that of the Westphalian State System with a new corrupt order. Nearly every nation is an arbitrary creation; a plantation with a flag. States must become tools in the hands of humanity for justice and rights, not soothe saying witch doctors urging schism and bloated bureaucracies enriching only themselves. We are students of a black history, and a cruel unnatural history is what we have read. 

We indict the entire state system as lackeys to Oligarchy; Oligarchs must be tried and imprisoned. 

The bureaucratic bloat of each state must be reigned in. The nation state is an anachronism. It must be replaced with community centered, democratic autonomy. This is the underlying message of the Democratic Confederalist Parties, the parties of workers and the oppressed; which is to say nearly all people living today.

You are in great company!

If these rogue governments, puppets of Oligarchy cannot be controlled through fair elections, they must be brought to their knees via armed struggle. Not the so-called ‘bourgeoisie’ against the so-called ‘proletariat’, that is old, dated language. Worker against Oligarchy. People who toil, who strive and spend their life as some kind of slave against a tiny, tiny group of malicious factions. Oligarchic Collectives of powerful ruling elite families. Vampires that use the state system to keep us working, keep as all divided and always afraid.

It is not seditious to say “I am a Worker!” You should say it proudly. The Working Class is the class of most humans, the class of people who make this machine run, keep the lights on. It is time to paralyze the machine if we must. To turn off the lights and leave the factory floor.

We are writing of a class of people that currently cannot feed their children, a class which is still affixed in chattel slavery, a class which dies of curable diseases, and lacks even clean water coming into equality with a far smaller class that has all the world’s good things and far too much more. The basis of all rights is an equality before them. 

We are workers and this is a Party for Workers. A libertarian Workers Party, that orients a policy framework toward real social justice via a structural embrace of full human rights.

Saying who is the responsible party is actually the initiating question of this paper. We must believe that it is our duty and destiny as Workers first to set this example, there is no particularist destiny when it comes to human rights. They belong to all women, children and men. They belong to men who love men, women who love women and also to people born either woman or man, but don’t identify as such or change it later. If you are alive, and you are a sentient creature with a heart, a soul, a brain and conscience; you are entitled to Human Rights. “An Injury to one is an injury to all” as long as a single person has their rights violated we allow a permissive air of rights violation, a virus. An infection to a just society.

Human rights must be judged in their Availability, Accessibility, Acceptability and Quality. They must manifest in all aspects of social policy.

Rights for all or rights for none!

So who will be asked to fight? In this struggle of Workers against Oligarchs, Oligarchic Collectives that will bring the entire heel of spies, torture, police, military and government abuse on us for these ideas; Every man, woman and child who is able has to fight. Our unity must be a total unity. No rights will be secure if even one gay, black woman is slurred in closed quarters. We are after all fighting a long and total war. We are fighting internationally. No nation is real, each is an artificial construct to divide the Working Class. We have some allies, but mostly we have an array of very well resourced enemies. With nowhere to run or hide, not even Rojava or Cuba.

If you want to be free, “free” being the full attainment and total implementation of universal human rights as well as one day seeing the end of the war: Not just the several dozen live fire wars raging, but the end of man’s willingness and ability to make war then join humanity’s cause.

This is no prelude to a dream. No woman or man ought fall under wrath of war, famine, pestilence or disease, not while in some many gilded ghettos fear of these horsemen have been near obliterated. We look you in the eyes and tell you help is coming and we’re going to win some of these rights or die trying.

This is no “I have a dream”, when the pages end, you open your eyes and help us hold the lines. We will tell you how!

We’re going to get our Human Rights the old fashioned way. The settler way, the cowboy-cowgirl way. The Kurdish way. With tenacity and brazen force of will. With zealous persistence. Or more specifically the kibbutz bootstrap way, the way once called “Zionism”. Until the left and Palestinians made such a word a dirty word. A word associated with Occupation. But the idea of “Zionism”, before there was Israel, before Israel became a colony of America; the idea was to build piecemeal institutions of a state that was unrealistic and unrecognized, that didn’t yet even exist. To step, by step set up a Parallel State to whatever unjust order was horsetrading, macarading as reality. The idea of “Zion”, “the world to come” built in the world of the real is also known by the Hebrew people as “Tikkun Olam”. Zionism today is almost purely associated with Palestinian oppression. Tikkun Olam, is mostly a liberal kumbaya for social justice, in an age of unmitigated bloodshed and terror.

Until enshrined in righteous law, set in constitutions and adjudicated by judges; rights must have a fort.

We’re going to have to build thousands and thousands of such forts way up in the mountains and hold out for a human dawn, that will hopefully arrive before the Capitalists bleed the entire earth dry and we are left with a violent, well armed desert. Killing each other over water.

Democratic Confederalism is the ideological fusion of American Libertarianism, Jewish Zionism and also a Kurdish Socialism. It has profound commitments to participatory democracy, womens’ equality, environmentalism and the protection of ethnic/religious minorities. It is neither purely left nor right in policy. It is the ideological merger of alternatives to a failed Capitalist Modernity, a solution process where the state has collapsed or the state is an agent of great predation. It is a bold idea, in a war of ideas that prepares a defense of structural rights,  Available, Accessible,Acceptable and of actual Quality. It embraces a false ncesatarian stand that we cannot have elements of left and right in the social policies to which they apply.

These forts, these outposts of liberty and justice will radiate the ideals we fight for. They will demonstrate the viability of a human rights protected world, collective economics, democracy and non-state solutions to daily problems. Our children and our grandchildren will be given their rights. Our outposts, be they infrastructure, training academies or schools to help, heal and save this sick sad world are our answer to the failed projects of Capitalism. We will build up our own credit unions, charter schools, vocational programs, volunteer rescue agencies, housing cooperatives, clinics, banks, universities and major syndicates modeled on justice. Framing Human Rights goals alongside Workers power. With Democratic Confederalism and actionable work to achieve Human Rights we will craft the foundation of thousands of confederated cantons; a series of Parallel States. If the existing states cannot or will not legislate Human Rights Enabling legislation and will not arrest these criminal Oligarchs; we must achieve rights for ourselves and deny the state system our tax revenue.

Democratic Confederalism is the future. It is the full achievement of human rights by social networks and grassroots infrastructure when elected or self appointed government fails to provide, or threatens us. It is not universally adversarial; but it is a matter of survival. It should be defended with armed self defense.

Our main foreign policy as a movement and Party is the full and total exportation of the technology and ideas into the hands of our fellow human beings more oppressed than ourselves by man or nature. The weapons of our immediate war are the bootstrap teaching outposts, guerrilla medical programs and clinics; make shift vocational academies, and security services that prevent inter-ethnic bloodletting, or that of state actors against their own civilians.

We will not, and cannot fight a war purely on ideas like the United Nations has done for 70 years to implement these documents. We must make the governments afraid. This is the only reasonable way any of the will make change. But we must make them nervous, not terrified, in terror they will only lash out with the entirety of their militarily and police forces. History is full of this. However, the majority if not all state governments must be removed. They are illegitimate and serve on the Oligarchy or each nation.

We are not the kind of people who build a school to watch it burn down or build a clinic to then see nurses abused and aid workers threatened or a local community victimized for wanting to better its condition. Every single institution we set up must be defended like a fortress. Defended by a People’s Defense Force. Note carefully from history that our enemy the Oligarchy and the repressive forces of the State will kill rape or torture anyone it believes is a threat. It will rape your loved on in front of you and put whole ethnic groups in death camps. It will torture your activists, kill your leaders and call you a “terrorist”.

But you’re only a terrorist if you are killing unarmed civilians. You’re only a terrorist when you kill people who are not part of the actual war.

When we build a school or a clinic, know we plan to defend each and everyone we set up with our lives and steel. In East New York, in Cite Soleil, in the Gaza or the Gully or Rome, Istanbul, or Jerusalem we will fight for human rights like a war for Armageddon with the calculated strategy of Machiavelli acting out the Art of War. We have to form quite a lot of something out of almost nothing. In the world today, the world of the real Human rights aren’t worth the pages they are printed on.

You have to begin in your own community by feeding the poor, clothing the naked and teaching ethics to the young people. You must of course begin close to home and enlist the support of your family and friends. You begin must small, but always dream with grandeur. Question tradition, it perpetuated wrongness. Question impossible, everything was impossible until it was done. 

You must focus on small victories that build off each other. Feeding free breakfast to children or busing families to visit prisoners, is only revolutionary when it offer s service the state does not provide, or provides inadequately AND is openly associated with a Party of the resistance. Keeping a few blocks litter free, keeping them safe and then drug free. Litter free is an act of charity. Safe is an act of community control of policing, drug free is a challenge to some gang or the mob. You could work to rehabilitate convicts and junkies, which is charity. You can integrate the disposed into a meaningful role in the community, turn them from a vagrant to a worker. You could teach law and accounting to the poor or volunteer in a shelter making art, the move from a charity to a revolutionary communal institution has a lot to do with intent. Capitalists and Oligarchs fund charities and foundations to appear philanthropic, wash some of their wealth. Most charities, like NGOs, are about pork chop politics; about small solutions to the worst elements of obvious poverty, but they are not revolutionary.

A communal institution is revolutionary because it seeks to take control of the means of development, it seeks to compete with the inadequate of absent service the state provides with the tax base.   

There are many beachheads to secure. Which is to say places so hopeless that any help is something. There are refugee camps so large they go on for all the eye to see, miles and miles of squalor. There are countries where social services are given only to the preferred ethnic group. We will win this war; but we must wage it correctly. The purpose of an emergency group is to set up the beach head which introduces the skills to develop the initial communal institution, then the strategic planning in place to create backwards and forwards linkages between these institutions. Until the revolutionary institution are valid alternative to what the state offers, further de-legitimizing the state. But expect assault in the front and the rear and side upon these mechanisms.

Thus to secure our rights we must control the means to provide social services, the means of development. To transition from pitiless capitalism to socialism or some False Necessitarian fusion, we require organized workers cooperatives; to control the means of production. You cannot seize institutions of the state and expect them to behave in a manner that is less corrupt, less fallible. You cannot take another mans factory and declare it a workers cooperative. In many ways Democratization of the social and economic spheres of life require new institutions and Social Entrepreneurship; Democratic Confederalism is  an ideology of governance that values empowerment.

We set up new schools, new clinic and new infrastructure run by the workers. We set up new enterprises, also run by the workers. This does not mean total equality attributed to communism, or enforced top down restriction like State Socialism; there is room for elements of both Socialism and Capitalism in a society that is democratic and human rights reinenforced.

We have to focus where the state has failed or is flailing. This is the strategy of an emergency group sent to secure a beach head, build the first forts. But at some stage, an early stage the Party must protect its institution and confederated structures.

WE CANNOT VIOLATE RIGHTS AND HOPE TO FULLY OBTAIN THEM. WE CANNOT GET SUCKED INTO A PROTRACTED GUERRILLA WAR WITH A DECADENT AND BRUTALLY REPRESSIVE NATION STATE SYSTEM.

We must always take preventative measures. There are some very guilty men in the world, probably a few women too, but they’re all going to die of old age just like everyone else. Hopefully in white light tight plastic rooms heavily guarded with the latest in life prolonging health options available in The Hague. We advocate the capture and imprisonment of war criminals, but we cannot call for their assassination. We must isolate them, indemnify them and then better educate their grandchildren.

The posture of the Peoples’ Defense Forces must always be defensive. There is a large body of precedent to suggest against embarking on a people’s war. Such campaigns are bloody, in decisive and always result in widespread death and destruction. The Defense Forces are to protect communities from aggression, state aggression, non state paramilitaries, theocratic fundamentalists or criminal banditry.

There are five key pillars to Democratic Confederalist parties functionality;

Democratic Autonomy (establishing meaningful participatory democracy in a all structures, assemblies and bodies)

Human Mass Mobilization ( Widespread Human Rights Active Education and Policy Level Implementation/enforcement)

Control and Enhancement of all local Social Services (controlling and improving on the means of social and economic development)

Control and Democratization of Productive Mechanisms (controlling and democratizing the means of production)

Mobilization of a Peoples’ Defense Forces (enlistment of local forces for deterrent self-defense)

Know that you are not alone in questioning why it’s been so bad, for so long. Know that we have had a very long night and you have been born just before dawn. Know that good women and men serve in this Party and that we all stand on the shoulders of giants that fell fighting for an idea whose time has arrived.

The only question left is to ask what you can specifically do to end your role as a collaborator or as a civilian and begin training as a champion of our people and our universal rights.

And we have a few ideas!

It has long been established that land, or the possession of land does not bring any inherent, long-term security. Its capture in fact is one of the fundamental historical exacerbation of humanities many woes and burdens. Defensibility is no sure fire guarantee of anything other that temporary survivability, but that does not connote fulfillment of human potential. So “new land” therefore always has old problems, and surely now there is no “new land”. Even since time immoral there is especially never an ‘empty land.’ There is always an indigenous population and a conquering outsider. A colonizer and the colonized. It’s never worked out well to say the least.

So we don’t obtain universal human rights by settlement of land upon some aggressor-violators’ territory, not in the traditional since anyway.

There is no uncharted isle, no unclaimed valley: the word is a much-sectioned off place. Invisible little, bloody lines telling women and men they are forever divided. But we will fight that false notion on the beaches, shores and airwaves, with pen and with the rifle. What divides us are invented lines, lines of conquest, colonization and subjugation. The nation state is not natural, it is man made. It is a false consciousness imposing a loyalty, a flag and an anthem along with a mostly made up history on a global slave population; the working class.

Some slaveries are far worse than others. Some slaveries take on the shape of careers. But make no mistake, you will be kept working until near the day that you die too early from exhaustion and stress.

SO ALWAYS WORKING FROM WHAT IS, not what we’d ideally like it to be is the first major break from “traditional Zionism”. We do not make the capture of a new nation any type of objective or means to our ends. The second defining break is the level of participation. Having a land need not make one a ‘real people’ as any Kurd or Basque can tell you. Nor are the good things of life always enjoyed within a so-called ‘State’ as virtually every Congolese, Sudanese or Sub-Saharan African can tell you.

So, first things first. Seizure of land solves absolutely nothing. 

Second, tactics of economic and political Zionism can be harnessed without the politics of identity-based nationalism and that is called Democratic Confederalism. An ideological theory established by Murray Bookchin; Jew, Zionist then Anarchist but was put into practice by Abdullah Ocalan; first a third world liberation nationalist, then a Maoist then a Democratic Confederalist. Ocalan built on Bookchin who built on Wallerstien who built on Marx. 

Thirdly, mobilization of a wealthy Diaspora is often a detriment. Always better to mobilize the working class Diaspora. Rich people really do all think quite alike. Much of a diaspora is riddled with collaborators, people who defected from confrontation, and their children, and children’s children who culturally have imbibed the rapid individualism of the North and the West.

We must reject all forms of nationalism. The only valid nationalism is nationalism as a cultural sentimentality, but not as a unifying identity. Nationalism8 is a structural implementation of slavery and a re-conceptualization of the feudal order.

No nation had clean historical hands! The particular-ism of United States of America is that the it was a colony that shed its metro-pol Great Britain quite early on. And on top of that within three hundred years came to age as a world empire; presiding of the Globalization Epoch of Capitalist Modernity. It is now in decline and the People’s Republic of China is emergent.

Who can blame the United States that cannot blame Russian, China, Spain, Japan, France, England and virtually every European country? Every nation on earth took part in genocide & atrocity of some kind pre, post or during slavery and colonialism. And to the cultural nationalists of the undeveloped world and their Diaspora we remind them that there is no well documented golden age in Africa, South America and Asia either, even before violent pale monkeys barged in with some germs, guns and steel.

THE IMMEDATE AIM OF THE MOVEMENT IS TO DEMONSTRATE A RANGE OF TACTICS WITHIN A SCHOOL OF THOUGHT CALLED “DEMOCRATIC CONFEDERALISM” TO IMPLEMENT “PARA-STATE INFASTRUCTURE” THROUGHOUT THE WORLD. TO FIGHT FOR AND OBTAIN UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS AS OUTLINED IN THE UNITED NATIONS DOCUMENTS BEARING THE SAME NAME AS FACTS ON THE GROUND. ESTABLISHED BY “WORKERS PARTIES”, “COMMUNAL INSTIUTIONS”, “WORKERS COOPERATIVES” AND DEFENDED BY “PEOPLES DEFENSE FORCES”.

We are not simply content to document or apprehend war criminals, we need real infrastructure and we need it now. No more after the fact agonizing on atrocities. We need emergency groups, we need flying columns and a reserve army of human rights professionals and labor.

Since 1948 there have been few positive developments in the cause of human rights. No army will enforce them; no champions have risen with arms to heroically bring them into a state of real being.

Once again, until the time the United Nations or any state actor will actually protect and enshrine these rights then the women and men of the Workers Parties, and the hundreds of international formations like our own will take this burden on our shoulders for the sake of our future.

We lay claim our 58 codified rights and bellow help is coming, push forward to inevitable victory! We don’t want a state, or some land and we don’t crave power for the sake of power, or the ease of doing some business. Using the following tactics outlined in this program we seek a massive and overlapping set of infrastructures generated by civilians, through Workers Parties to enforce and enact these rights without the blessing or endorsement of any government. Where others have failed we will succeed; because we must succeed if we are to survive.

Humanity this is your call to arms!

← A Preamble on Justice (Pamplet One), Democratic Confederalist Papers

EMS at 9.11

EMS Providers Recall 9/11

There was no way to fully plan for what happened on Sept. 11, 2001 because no one could ever have expected the massive loss of life and destruction that occurred simultaneously in New York City, Arlington, Va., and Shanksville, Pa.

“It was the unexpected times the unimaginable,” said former Fire Department of New York (FDNY) EMS Chief John Peruggia.

Those who responded to 9/11 have not fully survived the event—because what they experienced has not ended. The trauma of that day continues to plague the physical and mental health of many of the responders and, in many cases, shatter their families in a never-ending reverberation of pain and suffering.

The reality is that the death toll from the attacks grows larger each year. And although physical wounds have healed, the emotional scars remain for many of the responders a decade after 9/11.

However, the ripple effect of that day hasn’t been all bad. In New York City, it has led to many positive changes, the likes of which even seasoned responders never imagined, including an internalized culture of safety that’s widely accepted and practiced; a newfound respect and cooperation between fire and EMS personnel; and even—gasp—New York City firefighters and police officers taking the first baby steps toward building a foundation of trust.

None of these changes would have happened without the cataclysmic event we call 9/11. Twenty years later, we look back and remember.

The Way We Were

The primary EMS provider for New York City is the FDNY EMS Division. In addition, more than 30 hospital systems (referred to as “voluntaries”) contract with the city to provide 9-1-1 response units, delivering full-time, professional BLS and ALS service to specific areas of the city. In 2001, there were approximately 950 ambulance tours every day for a city of more than eight million residents and countless tourists.

On 9/11, 24 EMS supervisors were involved in the World Trade Center incident, along with the crews from 29 ALS and 58 BLS units. Assuming each unit had a minimum two-member crew on board, nearly 200 EMTs and paramedics were on site when the towers fell. By evening, an estimated 400 additional EMS personnel had made their way to the World Trade Center.

Arlington

What many people failed to realize on 9/11 is that the Pentagon, while not as tall as the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, was occupied by more than 23,000 people and is one of the world’s largest office buildings. The 6.5 million square-foot structure has 3.7 million square feet of office space, three times the floor space of the Empire State Building. The Capitol could fit into any one of the five wedge-shaped sections. It has 131 stairways, 19 escalators and 16 parking lots.

Because of the high security around the building that is headquarters to our nation’s Department of Defense, and its expansive security perimeter, which includes 200 acres of lawn, the Pentagon incident appeared to be much smaller than it actually was.

Although the death toll at the Pentagon was less than that at the World Trade Center, the same command and control, firefighting and associated physical and emotional stressors were present in the Arlington, Va., incident.

Then the Towers Fell

The first EMS crews to arrive at the World Trade Center had established staging areas and began triaging patients, per protocols. They started transporting burned and traumatized patients to nearby hospitals. They dodged the falling bodies of people who elected to jump more than 100 stories to their deaths rather than die in the fires that raged on the upper floors of the north and south towers.

The responders who were there that day, say that the sound of those bodies crashing to the ground will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Then the towers fell.

Surprised to find that they were still alive, the men and women who were on scene began what could be described as “the long climb to recovery.” Crawling out from under vehicles after what seemed like an hour of entrapment in a suffocating environment and wading through mountains of debris, they entered a new reality—a post-9/11 world. A world of darkness, choking air and “deafening silence.”

“I remember that first breath,” says Al Kim, executive director of Westchester (N.Y.) EMS. Searing hot and acrid, it could barely be called air.

Kim had been walking toward the lobby of the South Tower when it started to fall. Like many at the scene that day, he mistook the roar of the tumbling building for the third plane that was reportedly heading to New York. He dove under a New York Presbyterian Hospital sport-utility vehicle for protection.

When he finally emerged, a thick blanket of gray dust blocked the sun and covered everything within his limited eyesight. The eerie silence was pierced by a single sound—the PASS alarms of hundreds of firefighters. It’s an audible alarm that signals a firefighter is no longer moving. It was a sound he had never heard before—and never wants to hear again.

Physical Toll

The lasting effect of 9/11 is the physical and emotional toll that continues to plague those who responded. New York City’s officials estimate that more than 21,000 people who worked either on a paid or volunteer basis after 9/11 have developed physical and mental disorders as a result of their exposure to toxic substances and traumatic experiences. Most of the responders we spoke to for this article in New York; New Jersey; Arlington, Va.; and Shanksville, Pa., described some degree of physical or mental impairment. For many, the effects cost them their livelihoods and/or relationships.

Since 9/11, many serious health issues, such as chronic respiratory infections and gastrointestinal diseases, have been directly related to the acrid dust and smoke breathed by those on scene. Testing completed by the EPA in the days following the collapse of the towers revealed a complexity of chemical compounds and particulate structures unlike anything ever encountered.

Dust particles, especially those in the air immediately following the collapse of the buildings, were measured at 10 microns or less; particles so small that they are capable of doing damage regardless of the chemical content because of their ability to be inhaled and transferred deep into the lower lungs.

For years, first responders fought for health benefits to help pay for the expensive tests and treatments they required. Gradually, as studies acknowledged that the health issues were due to exposure to toxins as a result of the 9/11 attack, responders began to receive healthcare coverage, but how much and when varied widely.

On Jan. 2, 2010, President Barack Obama signed the “James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act,” establishing the World Trade Health Program. It will provide $4.3 billion in federal funding for both treatment and financial compensation to those suffering effects of the attacks. This is a help, but due to the slow-moving wheels of bureaucracy, it comes very late for responders who had already endured years of fiscal, physical and emotional hardship. Some have already died.

Emotional Toll

Even 20 years later, many of the responders are haunted by quirks of fate that day. If a partner hadn’t been late to work, that crew would have been beneath the tower when it fell. If the building had held up for just a few seconds longer, another person wondered if they would have made it into the lobby and certain death. The decision not to take shelter in a subway stairwell or simply to run left instead of right, made the difference between life and death that horrible day. In psychiatric circles, these feelings are called “survivor’s guilt.”

For most of the personnel we interviewed, the initial anxiety has subsided, although several said they’re still uncomfortable above the third floor in high-rise buildings. Some say they have a tendency to hurry their patient out of high rises and into the confines of their ambulance located on the firm ground below.

However, many continue to be plagued by nightmares, especially as the anniversary of 9/11 approaches each year. Some are still being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder. A number of them no longer work in EMS. Some have sought professional counseling. Others wish they had.

“It was extremely difficult because most of us went back to work that day or the next day. We didn’t have any time off to sort of reflect and recover, which I’m not sure now was a good thing or a bad thing in the end,” FDNY EMS Division Chief Janice Olszewski says.

“When I drive past the site—and I do quite frequently—I still get little butterflies in my chest. I mean, all this time later,” she says. “That’s how strong this kind of [exposure to] trauma is.”

Others can’t bring themselves to look at the World Trade Center site. “I drive with my head turned away and hope I don’t hit a car in front of me,” says former FDNY EMT Frank Puma. After 11 years at FDNY, Puma retired following a non-9/11-related injury. “I try not to let it consume my life. I still have my issues with it, you know. Things that will never go away,” he says.

When you ask what the most vivid memory I have of 9/11 is, what represents the most emotional stress on me and many others that day, it was the smell; the smell of death.

That morning … You know, we’ve all smelled dead bodies; freshly dead bodies. I’m not talking about decomposed bodies [that have a distinctly different smell]. At Ground Zero, there was that smell of blood and death … coupled with the smell of lots of things burning,” says Lahita.

“And there were trees that had no leaves. Pieces of clothing, like dresses and shoes and stuff. I would look up—there was catastrophe. I would look down—there was catastrophe. Everywhere I looked, things were burning. It was like something I’ve never seen. And I hope I never see it again. It came back to me recently when I saw images of Joplin, Mo. It was similar to that, but worse because at Ground Zero, there was also a sea of dust mixed in with all the wreckage!

One of the firemen I was working with a few days after 9/11 made an observation that’s still unfathomable to me and many others who were at Ground Zero. After the collapse, you did not see any contents of the towers that were intact or in their original composition; no chairs or desks or file cabinets, or windows or computers … Just a lot of dust.

It was like everything was totally vaporized. And I mean that. There was nothing that was recognizable. Everything was literally vaporized,” Lahita says.

After 9/11, many say it was hard not to bring those emotions to work. Or worse yet, they bring them home.

Sean Boyle, a Bayonne (N.J.) firefighter and per diem EMT with Jersey City Medical Center, part of LibertyHealth in Jersey City, says that, since 9/11, he and many of his colleagues in EMS, fire and law enforcement no longer sit with their backs to the door when in a restaurant or other public place. He says, “Most responders today have the mindset that they have to walk around with their head on a constant swivel.”

Families

Relationships, marriages and family cohesiveness have also been significantly strained and broken in the aftermath of 9/11. Although there’s no official record, unofficial reports suggest that the divorce rate is high among 9/11 responders. It’s unclear whether the struggle just became too much for some relationships or, like some have suggested, surviving this country’s worst terrorist attack gave those responders a new sense of purpose and perspective.

“I think if you really take to heart that life is short and you should appreciate everything you have … [and] not worry about the small stuff, then, that could take a toll on those around you; or it could be beneficial,” Kim says.

Part of the problem may have been that spouses were left out of the counseling loop. Although counseling was offered to the responders through work and to many of their children through their school, there was no organized effort to assist the wives, husbands and significant others who inherited the emotional victims who suddenly became quiet, silent or different inside.

Getting Help

“We were very fortunate in that we had a peer counseling program set up before 9/11,” says Jack Delaney, retired director of New York Presbyterian EMS. The problem, he says, is that some of our paramedics wouldn’t go for any kind of counseling because doing so could eliminate any chance of getting hired by the fire department. To work around that, New York Presbyterian established a peer counseling program.

“One of the most important aspects of our department before 9/11 was our focus on behavior health. Working with our Employee Assistance Program, we develop trusted relationships with their counselors that contributed to our overall wellbeing during and after the tragedy,” says Arlington County Fire Chief Jim Schwartz.

Responders like former FDNY Deputy Chief of EMS Charles R. Wells, who have taken advantage of the counseling, found it to be of significant benefit. “There’ve been setbacks along the way. You get nightmares. You get times where you have these feeling of impending doom. Thank God for the counseling unit … because they’ve been miracle workers, with me anyway,” he says.

In many cases, the relationships that allowed couples to share their love for EMS and their love for their partner seemed to cave under the excessive emotional pressure and attention the rescuers paid to the job or recovery efforts after 9/11.

To find closure, some responders needed to bring the event full circle. For Olszewski, it meant retracing that day’s steps. Initially it was hard to get her bearings, she says. The landscape is so dramatically different. One day, she returned to the front of the Millennium Hotel, where she was standing when the north tower fell. She walked past the church on the corner, the subway stairwell she nearly ran down into and finally onto Broadway Avenue and safety. “I felt better when I did that,” she reports.

Puma says it helps him to talk about it, but, like many others, he’ll only talk to people who were there that day. “In the beginning I didn’t want to talk about it to anybody,” he says. Eventually, his wife convinced him to open up a bit and participate. She reminded him that someday his baby boy is going to have questions about 9/11 and his father’s role on that terrible day. “Whether you like it or not, you’re a part of history,” she told him.

A few responders, like New York Downtown Hospital paramedic Juana Lomi, emerged from 9/11 feeling affirmed. At first, she says she spent days locked up in her room crying. But she was able to gain perspective by writing a personal journal about her experience and her feelings afterward.

“I think the whole incident … was like a defining day, but it was also a day of confirmation of what I, we, live life to do,” she says. “I made it out of this one, so I better do something better. Keep doing what I’m doing, because it must have been … God’s will that I be there and I should keep myself [in EMS] until I can’t do the job anymore,” she says.

Lomi is the only employee left at New York Downtown who responded to 9/11.

Lessons Learned

“Our system of regional automatic and mutual aid, developed over several decades, was a significant advantage. Units from our neighboring jurisdictions, with whom we work every day, fit into the response as if we were one organization.

Terrorism had been an area of focus for us before 9/11, and one of our most important partners was the FBI. They established a liaison with the Fire and EMS departments in the region in 1999 and were training with us on the morning of September 11,” says Schwartz.

Since 9/11, FDNY approaches EMS and fire operations differently. “We all talk about our careers as before September 11th and after September 11th, and it’s been totally different,” says FDNY Fire Commissioner Salvatore J. Cassano. “It certainly has changed the way we do business. It’s changed the way we think about our job in that we don’t just fight fires anymore. We have so many other responsibilities.”

The first order of business for FDNY was to assign new leaders for the fire department. When the towers fell, the FDNY lost Chief of Department Peter J. Ganci, First Deputy Commissioner William Feehan and 21 other chiefs. Lost with them was significant experience, institutional memory and decades of succession planning.

Those who were left had to step up. On the morning of 9/11, Cassano was a citywide tour commander. Within 24 hours, he was named acting chief of operations, second only to the chief of the department. The formal promotion came just days later. He vowed to institute changes that would guarantee this type of catastrophic leadership void would never happen again.

To that end, FDNY embraced the National Incident Management System (NIMS), putting its own twist on it and dubbing it Citywide Incident Management System. With the help of a NIMS team from the Southwest IMT, FDNY has learned how to better staff and manage long-term incidents, sending only those who need to be at the scene directly to the incident site.

A state-of-the-art fire operations center at FDNY headquarters in Brooklyn was created after 9/11 and now uses live video feeds from police helicopters and Department of Transportation cameras, digital photography, and multiple maps and displays to give ranking officers a global view of an incident and avoid the need to have all command officers on scene to direct operations.

To groom future leaders, the department began an aggressive leadership training program. “We send our staff chiefs to all kinds of management schools,” Cassano says.

In 2002, the fire department established the FDNY Fire Officer’s Management Institute (FOMI), an executive program to provide fire and EMS chiefs with leadership and management training.

In 2004, then EMS Chief Peruggia became the first member of the FDNY to complete the National Fire Academy’s Executive Fire Officer Program, a four-year course aimed to develop leaders in the field of fire service. Since then, six more officers have participated in the program, including Olszewski.

A New Culture of Safety

EMS and fire personnel have a new perspective on safety since 9/11. Looking at the risk/reward through a different lens, the safety of the EMS providers is paramount. “We’re the ones who are going to have to treat the patients, so it’s better to take a safer approach,” says FDNY EMS Command Chief Abdo Nahmod. “We have learned to work smarter and safer.”

New “recall packages” deploy personnel depending on the type and size of an incident. A recall may now involve only 25% of personnel, leaving 50% to relieve the other 50%. Or, if the incident warrants it, only special operations command personnel may be recalled.

According to Cassano, FDNY has quadrupled training since 9/11. “We got fanatical about training, and between training and safety, we’ve been pushing each incredibly hard since then,” Olszewski says.

FDNY’s Certified First Responder Program is helping to improve the relationship between FDNY firefighters and EMS personnel. The program is also part of the curriculum for all probationary firefighters. “It just becomes part of their job vs. something that’s thrust upon them that they didn’t bargain for,” Olszewski says.

Other joint training efforts include firefighter Mayday drills that involve EMS crews. Previously, firefighters would run right past EMS crews with an injured firefighter, not knowing exactly where to take them. Today, Olszewski says the emphasis is, “Bring them to me. I care. I want to help him. I think that’s a big deal,” she says. FDNY also now offers a formal rehab process for its members at all major incidents.

Nahmod and his colleagues in Virginia, and Pennsylvania say that all agencies have learned an important lesson about collaboration since 9/11. “No one agency can handle an incident like this,” he says. “It’s the dialogue that makes it happen, not the technology. You have to figure out a way to collaborate.” FDNY does close to 100 drills with various agencies. It has also established inter-agency liaisons with police and fire to address issues before they become unmanageable. Nahmod admits that there are no Kumbaya sessions yet, but it’s a start.

New Programs

“We in EMS here in New York City have learned to adapt to the ever-changing threat landscape,” Peruggia says. “We are doing great things to serve the people we protect.” In the fall of 2011, the EMS Division deployed a new, triage tag with an orange triage level to identify patients who develop a major medical issue as a result of the incident, not because of it.

“Initially those kind of chest pain or difficulty breathing patients were tagged green because they would be the walking wounded,” Asaeda says. But even with diligent re-triaging, these patients can get lost in a mass-casualty incident. The orange tag category now allows EMS personnel to identify these patients early as a medical triage and get them the treatment they need.

Increased Awareness

There are fewer and fewer of the first-to-arrive 9/11 responders left working in New York City. Those who are still on the job are different. They’ve seen the face of evil, and it has changed the way they work and train. “We realized now … it has affected many, many people, and we just don’t know to what extent,” Asaeda says.

Olszewski says she knows from her firsthand experience on 9/11 that she may again need to deploy the new protective equipment, such as the compact respirator assigned to each member. For others, it may be just another piece of equipment to leave on the ambulance. “But having been through 9/11, I take it with me. And I encourage those under my command to do the same,” she says.

Orlando Martinez was promoted to lieutenant in 2011. As a FDNY EMS officer, he finds that his experience 10 years ago as a responder on 9/11 gives him a valuable perspective. “I’m definitely more aware,” he says. He’s also very protective about the younger personnel working the job. “I’m there for their safety,” he says. “And I’m very emphatic in my orders for the crews to wear the protective gear issued to them.”

For Martinez and his colleagues who responded to the Pentagon, their hyperawareness doesn’t end when their shifts are over. The responders are now aware of all the exits when they are in public places. “It’s always in the back of my mind,” says Martinez. The negative aspect of this new “watch your back” thought process is that it has subtly added extra stress to the lives of responders and their families when they’re supposed to be “off duty.”

What’s Next?

Everyone has their own ideas about what the next attack would look like. Cassano says it doesn’t really matter. It may not be a terrorist attack; it could be a tornado. Rather than focus solely on terrorist attacks, FDNY takes an all-hazards approach to major incidents, something Cassano says all emergency providers, no matter where they live, should consider.

The key is to provide for the safety of emergency workers so they can provide for the safety of the public they serve.

Cassano says that the personnel at FDNY feel a profound gratitude for all the assistance they received following the attacks and they want to give back. “We’d love to share what we’ve learned,” he says.

“We needed a lot of help to recover after September 11th, and we got it from a lot of different departments throughout the city … state, the country, the world. Whether you’re the smallest department in the country or whether the FDNY, we’re all in this battle together,” he says.

Conclusion

As the 20th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, many of the responders we spoke with said they choose not to participate and, in fact, many who can, plan to leave town during the event.

The reality is that the responders to each 9/11 attack site will never be able to forget what they heard, felt, saw and struggled with that awful day. Each responder realizes that they must move on with some semblance of normalcy in their lives. And each agency involved in the 9/11 incidents has learned much from their experiences, struggles and stresses. They’ve instituted new processes to better manage incidents in the future. 

Flight 93

Jill Miller, manager of the Somerset Area (Pa.) Ambulance Association on 9/11, responded to the crash of United Airlines Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pa., as a paramedic on the second-arriving ambulance. She then assumed the position of on-site EMS coordinator.

“What I remember most about that day is the utter shock that there was actually a plane that had crashed. The plane crashed into unsettled Earth, which was then thrust into the air and completely covered in the ground. There was very little debris and even fewer pieces that appeared to be from a plane.

Several days after the incident, when I was made aware that the plane was actually beneath the ground where we first parked and walked, I could not fathom the possibility of it all. I remember that it was one of the most beautiful fall days I could ever recall. The sky was bright blue, and the sun was shining. I pay more attention to those kinds of days now,” she says.

Christian Boyd, a full-time EMT with Somerset Ambulance that day, realized that in less than five minutes, there were no survivors, and there would be few intact bodies to be recovered.

Boyd says that no matter how he tries to forget the crash of Flight 93, he still has vivid memories and subtle reminders of the incident. And, like other responders from New York City and Arlington, Va., after that day, he initially refrained from returning to the crash site. It wasn’t until November 2002 that Boyd drove past the site.

By Teresa McCallion, EMT-B

EMS Martyrs of 9.11.01

EMT Maurice Bary PAPD/ Rutherford Ambulance 

Paramedic Bob Cirri PAPD

EMT James Coyle FDNY FF

EMT Brian Ellicott FDNY EMS

Paramedic Keith Fairben 

NY Presbyterian EMS

EMT Andre Fletcher FDNY FF

EMT Rodney Gillis NYPD ESU

EMT Lauren Grandcolas No Affiliation

EMT Linda Gronlund No Affiliation

EMTJoe Henry FDNY FF

Paramedic Felix Hernandez FDNY EMS

Paramedic George Howard PAPD

EMT Stephen Huczko PAPD

EMT Karl Joseph FDNY FF

EMT Je Jung No Affiliation

EMT Thomas Jurgens No Affiliation

EMT Timothy Keller FDNY EMS

EMT Michael Kiefer FDNY FF

Paramedic Charles Laurencin 

US Air Force

Paramedic David Lemange PAPD

Paramedic Carlos Lillo FDNY EMS

EMT Cynthia Mahoney No Affiliation

Paramedic Kathy Mazza PAPD

Paramedic Yamel Merino Montefiore EMS

EMT Richard Pearlman 

Forrest Hills Volunteer

EMT Jean Peterson Madison Ambulance Squad

Paramedic Kevin Pfeifer FDNY FF

Paramedic Ricardo Quinn FDNY EMS

Paramedic Deborah Reeve FDNY EMS

Paramedic Mario Santoro 

NY Presbyterian EMS

EMT Mark Schwartz Hunter Ambulance

EMTJeff Simpson-Dumfries VA Triangle Rescue Squad

Paramedic John Skala PAPD

EMT Frank Spinelli Short Hill, NJ VAC

Paramedic Daniel Stewart FDNY EMS

EMT Marc Sullins Cabrini EMS

EMT Kenneth Swenson Chatham Emerg Squad

EMT Sean Tallon FDNY FF

EMT Clive Thompson Summit, NJ VAC

EMT Hector Tirado FDNY FF

EMT Mitchel Wallace Bayside Volunteer Ambulance

EMT Glenn Winuk Jericho FD

EMT Zhe Zeng NY Brighton Ambulance

EMT Felipe A. Torre, Bureau of Training

Paramedic Martha Stewart, EMS Station 8

EMT Joseph A. Rodriguez, EMS Station 58

The 46 EMS Martyrs of the 9.11 Terrorist Attacks. Our hearts grieve for our fallen brothers and sisters and ask everyone who reads this to honor them by contacting their families to give

support for our fallen angels, each one a hero from our ranks.

Lailah Naesh (Live Your Life) [A.1, S.1]

LAILAH NAESH

“LIVE YOUR LIFE”  


An American Mayakovsky Production

A PLAY

Written By 

Walter Sebastian Adler 



CAST

Adoneav, a Fugitive

Sasho,  a Voorhi

Medvinsky, a Gangster

Dmitry, a Lawyer

Entwisle, a Patriot

Maria Silverstova, a Prostitute

Appleovich, a Subversive

  Anya, a Martyr

Newey, A Prisoner

Reed, a Marine

Rhubarb, a Mystic

Abu Hamsa, a Fixer

  Mountain, a Professional soldier 

Spirit of War, a Guerrilla

Goldy, a Courtesan

A MIDDLE EASTERN WESTERN






Synopsis: A volunteer returns from a foreign war to “Newyorkgrad”. He is re-united with old friends at a Tavern he is hiding out in, many of which he believed had died in the war. The secret police pursue him. Someone wants him dead. He is haunted by a woman that wrote to him every day on the front, Goldy, a singer who is about to marry her wealthy patron. Adonaev is soon joined by a shot girl, police spy, a gangster, an anarchist and a person who plans to kill him. 

Framing mechanism: A man hides out in a Tavern. He is joined over the course of Act 1 by many of his “dead friends”. They inquire about varying matters and engage him in drinks, poetry and song. It is not ultimately clear if he is himself dead, in some purgatory, or living out an unhinged non-reality confined in a mental hospital. It is revealed that at midnight tomorrow the love of his life will marry a wealthy man for citizenship. 

In Act 2 varying charterers previously introduced take hostages at the Millennium Theatre, in an effort to stop the marriage, which the media declares an “act of terror”, related to the unknown foreign war. Sebastian and his group are ultimately killed with bullets and poisonous gas.  

Conflict: In Act 1, tension builds as 1 or more of the “Old and New Friends” are planning to kill fugitive Sebastian. Ends with a shoot out. In Act 2, the friends take hostages at a theatre, they all are ultimately killed when the police pump in poison gas and then raid the building.


























ACT ONE

SCENE 1

SET IN:

NEWYORKGRAD

Adonaev, a fugitive is being hidden in a Tavern. A soldier returning from a foreign war, losing his mind. A shot girl, Maria Silverstova with forty bullet shots, sells Vodka based drinks. Ever present smoking a cigar is Sasho, the owner. Also, the Gangster Medvinsky, an old friend of Sebastian and Peter, a marine and decorated war veteran. They are later joined by Dmitry, a lawyer bringing bad news of a wedding. Watson Entwisle, newly returned from the colonies with news of an uprising there. Alexander an anarchist, and a professional Solider “Mountain Rock” are all veterans from the war. And Siegfried Sassoon, a Cuban Actor shows up to warn Sebastian the police are looking for him. 

Improbably in walks Anya Campbell, who died in the war. Dan Newey, who was last known to be in Prison; a young sultry Lebanese debutante Anya Rhubarb, the Fixer Ayar Rassool and the burly Guerrilla commander Jansher the Georgian.)

One or more of these old and newly dead friends plans to murder Adonaev. He is told that around midnight the next day Goldy his confidant will soon marry her patron after curtain call at the Millennium Theatre.

SONG

Well I guess I didn’t die in the war!

I’m alive!

But my friends are dead.

I survived to say the most and do the least.

We are the ones who held the barricades

I just returned, 

On a shuttle from the fires of the Middle East,

I survived, I survived by happenstance,

This I know!

When dozens that I slept beside are now in coffins,

In the ground below.

This revolution is a first, and perhaps also a last chance.  

Their fearless faces,

 Are now martyr posters on a wall,

Reports are now coming in, the Turkish Army is fast advancing;

Rojava will likely fall!

Well I guess I didn’t die in the war!

I’m alive!

But my friends are dead.

I walk in concentric circles, I try to tell our story,

A story etched upon my brain.

I tell the tale to many scared civilians, they look at me like a mad man,

A foreign person person gone insane! 

Thanks to the fallen, the Islamic State is now defeated.

Thanks to to the YPG and YPJ these bandits have retreated.

Now raise the glass or the flag!

For what we’ve done! 

American thanks, still it remains unsaid.

There was a clear and present danger,

A vile Jihadist menance,

Lives lost, flags flown high, the dead cannot mourn the dead. 

Thanks to my training:

I can stay awake for days,

Here I am! 

Here I am.

I’m alive, I’m alive but my friends are dead,

Find me the means, count me in all the ways! 

Back in this fortress of a city,

In the heart of the Empire,

Make a stand;

You know the way!

This is your land.

What we gave and what we lost is a nightmare, that forever will replay!

On the very soil of my homeland, 

the total safety of this place,

I beg my God, I beg my family and my lovers,

Give me bullet.

Let me not die in disgrace!

In my adopted not-a-country Kurdistan,

The enemy advances 

The Turkish Army kills my people, burns our cities,

Aims to defeat our revolution,

What are the odds,

What are the chances?

I know forever I will carry, the faces of my dead friends, dagger etched inside me the on the inner most compartment of my mind,

There so much hurry up and waiting, there were bodies on the road,

40,000 died for Kurdistan!

Everything around you could explode!

There was fire on the mountains there, there was bloody murder in the streets,

There was marching, there was dying,

And defeating

There was attacking,

There was terror,

There going forward then retreating.   

Thank to my training,

I can take apart a rifle. I can put it back together. 

Thanks to my training,

I can engage in democracy, I can believe we can do better. 

Well I guess I didn’t die in the war!

I’m alive! I’m alive!

But my friends are dead.

I was hiding in that Tavern, then Adonaev said: 


ADONAEV:

I had spent my 33rd birthday in a Chinese bathhouse, if your could call it a bath house in Sulymaniya. During our border re-entry run from Rojava back into Iraq, most of our column was blown apart in missile strikes, we hid in a P.K.K. dug out for two days. I was covered in piss, shit blood, mostly other people’s blood, mostly my own piss. 

Jansher, my commander, I think he died. Died getting us out of Rojava before the Turkish invasion began. I turned 33. An Armenian volunteer bought me an oriental woman, but all I wanted to do was take a long hot shower. Wash the filth and death off of me. Get out of that fucking uniform forever, get on the next evacuation shuttle. Get back to Daria Andreavna alive. 

Now!I am back in Newyorkgrad, far from the war in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. But! The war and the ghosts never leave me. I ride the train with plump and ignorant civilians. Some Chornay put on an obnoxious show time. 

By way of Baghdad then Cairo, now I am back. My mind isn’t where I had thought I’d left it and nether are any of my friends and family. Is it March? It’s March or it’s April. I have just done a forty day bid in the hospital. Might have been eighty with a two day run for the mountains in between. I might be facing an assault charge. I might be tailed. I hide in the only place I think I can fit in. A Tavern on Ludlow street. I call Sasho from a pay phone. He says to lay low and head to the Tavern riht before night fall.

I don’t know what the hospitals did to me, actually. I just want to kill myself. 

I show up to the Tavern very early. The place is empty. The owner Sasho isn’t around nor is my friend and associate, the Gangster Medvinsky.

On the wire, I heard Ms. Daria Andreavna will get married tomorrow on her 29th birthday, right after the curtain call on a play she sings in, in Midtown. She wrote me every day during the war. I think I’m just too late.

I think I’m being followed. I threw my phone in the river. Now I don’t have a phone. I’m either chasing myself in a circle around the Isle of Man, or the follow follow men are trailing me. Seeing who I meet with, before the pick me up again. 

Well anyway, there’s only one way in, but four ways out of this Bulgarian tavern.

Other than a pity coffee here and there, everyone is nervous about me and giving me tons of space. Avoiding me that is to say. Not Medvinsky, he’s buying me drink. Out in the wide open. Like he doesn’t give a fuck!

In walks a Shot girl Maria Silverstova.

ADONAEV

Zdrastvistia.

SILVERSTOVA

Why Hello my very strange one, my wayward and my leeward Amerikanski. You can say to me Privet, my old new friend. I know you naked.

ADONAEV

I had met Maria at the Bulgarian Bar the very night I got off the evacuation plane. I had met her again on international working woman’s day.

She gave me a good price. There are 70 Rubles in Dollar. Her shots, they cost 280. Her body much more.

SILVERSTOVA

I tell people I’m from Moscow, though of course I am not.

My waist is tight and breasts are quite ample. It is all contained under a little black cock tail dress. Holding around forty plastic bullets of Vodka; I sell them in the Tavern for 70 Rubles apiece. Ethnically speaking I am clearly one of Russia’s 157 sub-ethnicities, perhaps a Chechen, perhaps part Tajik or Uzbek. I think I am a very good listener.

Sasho said you were coming to hide out with us.

ADONAEV

I’m looking for Medvinsky.

SILVERSTOVA

 And Medvinsky, he looks for you.

SILVERSTOVA:

Sasho said “try and make him happy”.

Sasho has a long history with him. Aiding and abetting a terrorist. The Bulgarians have never really expelled him from that ugly little tavern. In an on scene kind of way, maybe they encourage him. Giving him a refuge.

Adonaev doesn’t remember meeting me 80 days ago. He came here right from the airport. Had Sasho the Voorhi sort him out some work and some papers.

He looked and still looks like a terrifying person, a real mad man.

He had just gotten that very same night in a stupid fist fight, beat a Chornay half to death yelling racial epitaphs. And almost been asked to exit, relinquish his tavern card last Saturday.

I draw him over to a small table, though on duty as shot girl I remain an inquisitive journalist.

ADONAEV

Maria, Tovarish Maria how goes the life of night?

SILVERSTOVA:

I’m alive. It’s a start. Would you like a drink?

ADONAEV

    Not on your ruble.

SILVERSTOVA:

There’s other Rubles to pour from. Let’s sit.

Tell me about the Civil War. A little bit, enough to have a sense of what anyone is supposed to do about you or your friends who came back to us.

ADONAEV:

More good was done than any evil, by my otriad anyway. I’m sure the others killed more Jihadists and I did more medical care, but it was all a group effort. But really, few of my friends survived the war. 

The Arabs and Kurds are just going to grind away until Turkey rolls in to squash the entire revolution.

SILVERSTOVA:

What Otriad did you serve in? I’m a little familiar with actors.

ADONAEV:

I served in the Shahid Firat Tabor of the People’s Protection Units, the Y.P.G.

SILVERSTOVA:

Y.P.G.?

ADONAEV:

The Kurdish Militia recieving American support to defeat the Islamic State.

SILVERSTOVA:

Freedom fighting or U.S. Imperialism, maybe both?

ADONAEV:

We were defending the only Democracy in the Middle East besides Israel. Turkey was bombing us from the North, Al Qaeda attacking from Idlib in the West, the Hashid Ashabi Popular Mobilization forces from the east and ISIS from the south. 

You take guns from who offers them in that situation.

SILVERSTOVA:

So, on the news tonight. Turkey has begun a new Operation against Rojava. You are aware Afrin Canton is almost completely over run and Mambij is next and the Turkish army will probably undo all if any progress you all had made out there, against who ever it was the Americans had you fighting? And have now abandoned.

ADONAEV:

I don’t sleep well anymore. I use combinations of masturbation, drinking and drugs to put the lights out, I guess some emphasis on the drinking too. I get it. We all died or almost died or didn’t die and it was all for nothing. I get it. And Daria Andreavna and will never see each other again, and I writhe in pain avoiding my face in the mirror.

I need from you, or Medvinsky. A different kind of bullet.

SILVERSTOVA:

Prosto! You need a new whore! Someone to pay to love you ever better. Not me, I’m too much for you too. I too want luxury carrots remember, not paintings or any poems. The couple times we eye to eyed, we french kissed, it just makes me pity you a lot.

You’re basically not a man to me or Daria Andreavna. You have no car, no good job, no property and for right now no ability to move beyond your own paralysis. I and she and others like us have to think about papers.

ADONAEV:

Ne-yet Prosto. Not simple. I need a revolver so I can restively and decisively shoot myself in the head like a man! Or turn it on her fat ugly Patron. That will be enough. I should have died with my friends in Afrin.

Do you even possess the understanding to know what is on the table there? Do you even have the care? They were liberating the women, they were instituting a democracy and they were planting trees. I feel like I briefly defended a utopia, only to be cast out.

Sent back here where I am less than a man. Less than criminal!

SILVERSTOVA:

Prosto! (Simple) Go back to the begging of the narrative and explain me your motivation!

Tell me how your valiant and slightly suicidal mission began and the connection between your ideas on free life verses a meaningful life in motion. Be, fucking linear! Tell the tale from beginning to end instead of dancing around like a crazy person.

ADONAEV:

Tovarish Maria, I would like a dance from you first. I will pay the full amount in dollars.

SILVERSTOVA:

Your money Tovarish, they say is no good here. You can’t pay for a bullet or dance. You can’t pay in Rubles, Dollars or faceless Dinars. 

You can buy time with or with out sympathy.

ADONAEV:

Sympathies with the resistance?

SILVERSTOVA:

Sympathy with an American Mayakovsky, and those who enjoy his performances. Shamelessly flailing, shamelessly throwing himself in front of armies and trains, over what?

ADONAEV:

You do in fact know what!

SILVERSTOVA:

You know I don’t partake in the lap land for free. Don’t you have a forest wife in Nizhny Novgorod as well as a son somewhere? It will cost you nine hundred dollars to degrade yourself and me tonight.

That actually 64,800 Rubles an hour. Supply and demand.

I don’t think you even have enough for a bullet. Certainly not enough to buy the only thing you really want.

ADONAEV:

I don’t have 100 Rubles to my name.

SILVERSTOVA:

Then you get what you pay for, which is nothingly nothings.

ADONAEV:

What is my story worth?

SILVERSTOVA:

It’s worth less than a lap dance.

ADONAEV:

I need her you know.

SILVERSTOVA:

Oh that we all know.

“It doesn’t take a weather man or woman, to know which way the winds blow.” Old American saying?

   ADONAEV:

I don’t follow pretty your little allegory.

SILVERSTOVA:

Old Russian saying, “I want to dance on your face until your mask falls off.”

    ADONAEV:

     That one I understood, perfectly.

SILVERSTOVA:

As if I was making reports in Russian, or Turkish.

“He has just returned from Syria. The duration of the self deployment was around nine months were we to include Cuba and Russia and also Iraq, Turkey and Egypt. He is haunted. And despondent, a veteran of the People’s Protection Units; called the Y.P.G, you pronounce the G as ‘gay’. He has been with out any doubt ideologically indoctrinated by the Kurdistan Workers Party and given some basic military training. Brain washing. He is to be watched, if necessary eliminated.”

Well I guess you didn’t die in the war.

ADONAEV:

Well I guess I didn’t die in the war.

There was a lot of shame in that. I was mysteriously back in New York, trapped and totally useless. All my best efforts forgotten and amounting to less than one nothing.

SILVERSTOVA:

Stop talking and thinking only about yourself for a minute blat. Tell me about your murdered Comrade Anya Campbell. Tell me about your soon to be dead Kurdish friends.

Enter the Gangster Medvinsky




MEDVINSKY:

But Sebastian Adonaev, being the Sebastian Adonaev, who I invest too much time and energy in; he hopes to fully con-volute the narrative.

Blur apart the story war and Islamic militancy and revolutionary fervor with busty sex-escapades, pornographic poems and perhaps some borrowed prophesy and Haitians. Chornay dancing about the room waving their flags in the air.

Maria, call up some of your friends this man needs a serious distraction.

SILVERSTOVA:

A simple patriotic task.

MEDVINSKY:

One night at the tavern, about one year after Sebastian arrived home. I was sure he was being followed. His quest which began in Cuba, then Russia, then Iraq, Turkey, Iraq, Turkey, Iraq and then finally Syria), or also about eighty days since he returned a version of his former self. He tries to tell me about his time in Kurdistan.

In the end, the sad conversation always goes back to Daria Andreavna.

ADONAEV:

What news do you have about Daria Andreavna?

MEDVINSKY:

Listen man, not again.

She’s all cleaned up. Singing on Broad Street.

ADONAEV:

She wrote me..

MEDVINSKY:

…every single day of the war?

ADONAEV:

Da.

MEDVINSKY:

They have apps that can do that now. Robots can also write you every single day too. You don’t even need to pay them, or sponsor their citizenship.

ADONAEV:

She loves me. And I love her. And the rest of the details can get figured out. For nine months she urged me to come stay alive and come home. I need to find her.

MEDVINSKY:

You can’t even consider supporting Daria, look at the state you’re in.

Even if you were rolling in it, why would you support a woman and her son, who isn’t your son, to stay here? Out of made up imagined duty to act? A perverse Russian American love sickness? 

The kind that sent you to Syria in the first place. You can’t even be your own damn Patron. She’s taken anyway man. Someone else has been paying her rent, credit cards and keeping her papers in order.

ADONAEV:

Sergei? Dmitry? The Chubby Brahman? Corporate Bruce?

MEDVINSKY:

What does it matter? Other people’s property now.

ADONAEV:

I need to see her tonight.

MEDVINSKY:

Impossible. She’s a kept woman. Kept a lot closer now. 

ADONAEV:

Well I have her tower address. Maybe leaning towards possible.

MEDVINSKY:

No. Certainly. What do you care or know about children, much less someone else’s children. The boy will need Russian language school. He has ADD so maybe a specialized school. Where will you live? Where are you living now? How will you even get that bitch a visa? Leave her alone anyway. 

ADONAEV:

These are all unanswered questions. I love her though, I feel like I need to do this. She wrote me every day during the war.

MEDVINSKY:

Nope. You do not. In a month you’ll have another woman, or girl if you want. In the meantime is Daria even talking to you?

ADONAEV:

No, she is not. She cut the letters off a couple weeks ago.

MEDVINSKY:

Prosto, that’s it. You too were an okay team once. You supported each other, in a very strange way.

But really, that Suka is curse.

ADONAEV:

She’s only with, who ever she is with for some money and the green card.

MEDVINSKY:

And you actually want a paper work marriage and world of work?! You’re not stupid Sebastian, but your head is not on the right way again. Go slap yourself in a bath room. Go jump on the shot girl for a ride.

You have less than 100 Rubles. Two whole fucking American dollars.

You cannot afford a woman like Daria Andreavna, I will just come out and say that. You do not have enough shiny gold things.

ADONAEV:

Not yet.

Next thing we know a Martyr and a dead Guerrilla enter our Tavern.

ANYA:

In video recording a deceased Ana Campbell tells us, “Yes, forgive me loved ones, I died immediately in an airstrike in Afrin. My body was in, smithereens.

Afrin was shortly overrun by Jihadists and the Turkish State. It was the Western most canton of Rojava; the besieged revolutionary movement called Democratic Confederalism that defeated ISIS and took over 45% of Syria, until the Turks began to bring a genocide upon us in April 2018.

I died pretty. I was a true believer. Sebastian blames himself for my death, but really I was a true believer in the cause. I could have died much worse if the Turkish Army or its proxies took my alive. I would have been gang raped. And had my head cut off eventually. Like all the others.

Sebastian lives with his guilt but Dan Newey another guerrilla I almost once kissed, he does not.

Dan Newey is in a British prison accused of terrorism. As are his brother and father. He mourns me loudly. Honestly, we all lost a lot and much defending the Revolution, but we internationalists that the papers now call “the new Chechens”, we were actors on a stage of world events, but we didn’t do that much.

Now I’m dead, which I’ll tell you seems like being on the mountain without being shot at. It’s peaceful, I’ll have him tell you that. I died with my A.K. in hand. I believed in this, I wasn’t mentally ill. I wasn’t a bandit girlfriend. This was, this is, big and important, but sadly as far as self-defense; a mirage.

Without American airstrikes to back us up we melted under Turkish air power.

At the time of writing this my corpse is still behind Turkish lines and it looks like Mambij is next and then all of Rojava will fall to the Turkish Army, a U.S. ally and second biggest in N.A.T.O.

I was happy alive and happy also dead. But vicariously, I grieve for my Arab and Kurdish comrades who prepare to make Shahid Namorey, immortal martyrdom.”

JANSHER:

Alcohol is Prohibited in the Party.

  I’ll order a water or a Tonic. Drink it in a pint glass like a man. When I was young, I worked seedy places like this.

Actually, I tried to prepare them for a lifestyle of revolutionary militancy. Kill the enemy. Kill the enemy before the enemy can airstrike, execute, torture or disappear you and your friends. I don’t think they all got it. The training was just too short. They retained much of their Western bourgeoisie privileges. They thought it would maybe be like a movie. It’s a shame the woman died, she was the one with possibly the very most potential, excluding the Germans. That’s all I can say about that, Heval.”

Heval is the Kurdish Kurmanji word for friend.

The Front of the Frontline

“Front of the Front Line”:

EMS Honors its Covid-19 Dead

Whatever the “Front of the Frontline is”, that is where the women and men of EMS always stand.

Sometimes people hand you a dead blue baby, and you have to do everything at 10,000 miles an hour. Sometimes you turn up on a huge hysterical crowd where a couple people were shot and are bleeding everywhere. Sometimes you have to deliver a baby in a project stairwell. Sometimes you show up to a tight asthmatic gagging ready to arrest. Or you bring back a junkie, over and over and over again. The same junkie. Or sometimes you show up and someone was just raped in a park. Or you show up and shots are still being fired or a building is still on fire and you have to stand across the street in case someone has been burned alive get carted out and thrown on your stretcher.

You have to rely on your training. For an EMT three-months and for a Paramedic one year.

You had to feel and to care so much to have even shown up for the training. But to keep working you have to learn to un-feel and un-care and learn to forget. 

You had to learn to drive with an efficiency and speed that allows you to get to these terrible moments quickly. You have to carry with your partner 125 pounds of gear up the stairs, or down a subway tunnel, over the river or through the woods. You have to bring the first thirty minutes of the ER out to the streets. 

EMS did this during Hurricane Sandy, we did it on 9.11 and we did this for the very worst five weeks of the Covid 19 Pandemic. We are made “different” by how much we bring, but also for being closest to the danger of an emergency, we always are bold. We leave no one behind. 

It was like a vast invisible wave broke over the city and suddenly everyone who was elderly and everyone who was infirm started going into cardiac arrest.

It was like a natural disaster, except that it wasn’t. There was no clear epicenter or limit to the contagion. There was no sense that the worst was ever over. There was no warm zone. There was nowhere to retreat to except sleep when you could get it.

For most of the Pandemic it was all of us together against an invisible relentless enemy, rapidly spreading out amid fever, cough and death. Unlike all other “front line” services, EMS was running towards unpredictable death, as usual with inadequate equipment, shortages of everything, being compensated as though it were all a summer job. 

I remember very well the worst five weeks of the Pandemic, for there we were with our ambulances, our stretchers, our chairs and our oxygen tanks, arriving at cardiac arrest, after arrest, after arrest. Using the same masks for weeks. Carrying men and women out of their homes in our stair chairs as they desaturated and respiratory arrested right in front of us. In a city that suddenly couldn’t breathe. 

In the very worst period, those five weeks of total chaos; 20% of the FDNY went out sick. Fire Fighters stopped going out on medical calls, then going in much much slower than usual. In that chaos hundreds of EMTs and Paramedics came from around the country, deployed to NYC to manage a daily call volume above 7,000 a day. All services took casualties, everyone was thanked for their service. The pandemic moved to other parts of the country. Some we saved, many we did not. 

Sometimes a civilian friend or a pretty girl at the bar will ask, “What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever seen.” And then, no matter what you say or don’t say, they change the subject. It’s just so dark what we actually have to do. Show up over and over again as people get sick or die. Over the course of the Pandemic a lot of people died one after another.

Recently, as the smoke began to clear the from Covid-19 Pandemic which killed over 22,872 New Yorkers; the Emergency Medical Services counted our own dead. 

So far there have been at least 17 active duty deaths, and 9 amid EMS retirees. Thirteen died from line of duty Covid-19 exposure. Three were from out of town. Several were 9.11 Responders, men and women with over 20 to 30 years in EMS. Several worked at Voluntary Hospitals. Most people in EMS with or without a pension can’t actually afford to ever retire.

Four didn’t die from Covid-19 directly. They died from the bullets of a gun and from drug addiction. Two from overdoses.Two commited suicide off the clock.

John Mondollo was a 23 year old probationary EMT at the FDNY EMS at Bathgate Station 18 with less than 3 months on the job. Matthew Keene was an FDNY EMS Lieutenant, an experienced EMS Officer at Station 17, the Highbridge Outpost. Which is to say one was brand new and one was quite experienced. 

Alexander Raso, a 24 year old FDNY EMT from Station 59 died from a drug overdose in the very beginning of the Pendemic. Brandon Dorsa, a 36 year old FDNY EMT was critically disabled when his ambulance was struck and flipped over in a collision in 2015. He was permanently disabled, developed serious depression and subsequently transferred to Dispatch. His death,  another an alleged suicide was reported on Wednesday 7/15.

The NAEMT published results from a survey indicating that, compared to the general public, EMS professionals had a tenfold higher rate of suicidal thoughts and attempts.

Perhaps the greatest unquantifiable stress associated with the Emergency Medical Services is the feeling that you and your partner have been trained well and tasked to save lives, but over and over again you must watch people die right in front of you. That is in essence a serious part of our job, we must day after day, night after night be there for the worst moments of your lives, realistically speaking, statistically speaking. We are only going to save a certain portion of the lives we are thrust into, called into at the very worst moment to effect. 

The very best EMT or very best Paramedic is only going to be successful some small part of the time, but on varying levels, in varying ways your traumas seep right into us.

The vast majority of people who go into cardiac arrest in a prehospital setting do not come back, and when a combination of early CPR, intravenous epinephrine and defibrillator shocks do bring them back only a tiny percentage of a percentage are neurologically intact, walking out of that hospital to see their families. Over 90%, they just die and they stay dead. They might die in an ER, or spend months or years on life support, but most do die. 

These are very unnerving, intimate moments. We are physically pumping the heart of your dead loved one. We are pushing medications, placing a tube down the airway, we are for about twenty or thirty minutes, with fire men hovering around us, angels of life and death. In the park, trains, six floor carry down tenements, 5 star hotels and housing project towers.

In moments like these, a whole family screaming and crying, your partner advancing a laryngscope blade and ET tube down the trachea of your loved one, who had just been having dinner with you. While you watch the EKG screen flicker out the signals showing what is happening in this person’s heart. You tie off, you insert an IV, you spike a bag of normal saline and begin pushing the appropriate variants of drugs or shocks per signal, the EMTs do CPR, and you try not to get blood, vomit or feces on your uniform. It’s very stressful work trying to bring people back from the dead. It also doesn’t pay the bills consistently in New York City.

So we all have 2, 3 or 4 jobs. We all work 50, 60 or 70 hours a week. A lot of the Medics are in Nursing or PA school too. It is that combination of high stress, chaotic draining interactions, lack of any respect and long long work weeks that does people in. People abandon this field the very minute they can. Most quit this field after only 4 years. 

Some go crazy from it. The rest, it changes us probably for the very worst. The saying goes “Don’t lose your civilian friends”, but you do. And for some, 10 times the national average, they give up. They take their own lives in one way or another. Like Lt. Matthew Keene and EMT John Mondello with guns. Like FDNY Paramedic Lenny Joyner who went alone up a mountain in 2012. Like EMT Alexander Raso who overdosed in March of 2020. Like many that never even made the news.

The parity issue is larger than EMS. It has to do with a wider issue of the public paying for two systems. One that’s mostly white and one that’s diverse, but the diverse system always gets less and inadequate service.

EMS “deserves more” not because it is stressful, or dangerous or how well we did during the Pandemic. We deserve more because of supply and demand. More because we generate profits. More because we do so much every day for New York.

For the sixteen Martyrs we lost, that we know about, for the nine old time EMS members who just passed for all the 13,500 men and women out right now on the trucks as we speak, let’s renew our demand for parity. Let’s be united as a service that is resourceful, resilient and diverse as the city we serve. We do as much or more as any other uniformed civil servant. We’d like to be paid like adults, to live in the city we come from. The city we serve.

Rest in Power:

FDNY Lt. Matthew Keene 

FDNY EMT Brenden Dorsa

FDNY EMT John Mondello

FDNY EMT Idris Bey

FDNY EMT Gregory Hodge 

FDNY EMT Douglas Gertz

FDNY EMT Richard Seaberry

FDNY EMT Alexander Raso

FDNY EMT-D John Redd

FDNY EMT-D Michael Lalima 

FDNY EMT-D Emilio Navedo

Paramedic Marlene Picone/ Maimonedes 

Paramedic Anthony ‘Tony’ Thomas  (HHC/FDNY EMS), NYU Langone

CCEMT-P, RN Brian Saddler/ Northwell

Paramedic Paul Carr/ Ambulnz

EMT Mike Field/ VSFD

EMT Salvatore Mancuso/ BGFD

17 Active Duty EMS Deaths

Retired MOS

FDNY Chief Edward Gabriel ®

FDNY Lt. Trudel Hiller ®

FDNY Lt. David Stone ®

FDNY Lt. Richard Dunn ®

FDNY Paramedic Robert Gibbs ®

FDNY EMT Jim Geraci ®

FDNY EMT Robert Hudson ®

FDNY EMT Robert Hudson ®

EMT Sy Collins ® 

9 Retiree Deaths

Author Bio:

Paramedic Walter S. Adler is a 16 year veteran of the Emergency Medical Services and a Native New Yorker. He served the FDNY EMS for 4 years and has served overseas in Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Haiti, Iraq and Syria. He is currently a 911 Paramedic with Montefiore EMS and BronxCare EMS in the Bronx.

Responsa

Now that our breathe has been held on the latest nonsensical peace plan.

I’m just trying to get up to date, on modern thought process? After “the occupation” ends, hypothetically by raw demographics and a South Africa style global movement in say 2050, when it ends and the Islamic resistance succeeds in bringing an end to ” Israeli apartheid”, will the 4 to 5 million non Palestinian Israelis be allowed to bring their 200 nuclear missiles to New York City, or should we hand them over to the Palestinian unity government? Or neutral broker Iran?

Second, once “the Zionist entity” is replaced by a clearly unprecedented Human rights observing, pluralistic democracy, will Palestinians avenge themselves on virtually every regional power who exploited or massacred or expelled them and side with Iran? Or, use their high level of literacy to collaborate with big Christian or Chinese super powers. Or go their own way?

Third, will Palestinians accept a state in West Bank, Gaza, all of Sinai, all of Jordan, Southern Lebanon and half of Jerusalem and a 100 year Hudna? In an Israeli and Iranian lead Confederation? Or is anti Zionism so profoundly entrenched that only the sea will do?

I’m not making fun. I seriously am curious if anyone actually has a plan besides put Jews into the sea.

Anfom.Frere

January 4th, 2012

It has been two years since I first arrived in Port-Au-Prince. It is remarkable how short it feels, the eyes close just for a second and flashes of the dream on fire emerge in a slew of most visceral memories; as if they were the lips of a lover parted with just one moment before. Yelizaveta, how I miss her already; and if the last two years has erupted now in snap shots, bombastic escapades and grind; well in just eight hours I miss her as if it were a month, then a year, a forever passing in rapid cycle. Time is relative, memory subjective but for the past two years, really two human moments, there has really been only the desire to possess Yelizaveta juxtaposed with my total solidarity with the Haitians. The moral empathy, endless struggle to know them as a people so that I might wed my trade and toil and talent to the cause of their inevitable liberation.

    The attainment of human rights long deferred and structurally denied.

    I am now on a plane. It is Continental Flight 1647 and Victor Emile Cange, my stalwart comrade and partner in this operation slumbers silently, Christianly even. Next to me. We have succeeded in moving 840 kilograms of Basic Life Support medical equipment past U.S. customs and home land security. Long boards have become surf boards, bags loaded with stethoscopes, sphygmometers, training manuals, wound care supplies, are all just our non-declared tourist items. The second anniversary of the quake is eight days away, it is 4th January, 2012, by body is tried still from the ethanol athletics of New Years. Yelizaveta is still on my very lips, I can still feel where she grabbed the blue collar of my uniform and pulled me in.

    Victor and I are wearing the unmarked blue battle dress uniform fatigues of the movement we are affiliated to; the Banshee underground, and the z.o.b. We suspect these uniforms will allow us more scrutiny going into country while lending less scrutiny to our bags. There is an embargo on all bulk items entering the country not coming in as declared and taxes humanitarian cargo until January 15th

    Like most Blan initiatives pre/post-quake; the dynamics of doing any so-called good are maddening and inexplicable; and have many factions to blame themselves on. Principally always the tiny 5% of the Neg, Mulatto and Arab bourgeoisie, followed by the MINUSTAH UN authorities, the cartels, and the Republic of NGO technocrats. And also the heat, and also history and illiteracy, and famine and rampaging Nepalese Cholera too. 

    Once again, we are flying into a hell. Flying into the city of lost children and shattered dreams; the land of many mountains. Ayiti Cherie! We are the third wave of the reinforcements from New York. We will meet Tiputti Capois, our oldest associate and brother at Toussaint L’Ouvature International Airport. And re-supply the Gwoup Ayisyen pou Ijans, the Haitian Emergency Group. We will meet their members and prepare them rigorously. EMT practical drills and negotiations on their future, and plans. We will ready them to stand before the archangel Michael Mastroianni who arrives 21st January to administer a witnessed practical and written EMT exam. For whatever good it will do I pray we find them stalwart and reasonably well organized.

    I pray too that the city isn’t exactly as I left it two years ago.

    Around us on the plane are the faces of Haiti; noire, mulat, blan and representing all things. Things tragic, things ineffective, things self-serving, self-dealing, against and for human dignity, faces of perseverance, of calm of nervousness of taking and of giving. There is also the hard face of Haitian pride, indomitable. 

    So many trying with the mandate of science, God, and reason to remake the face of Haiti; save her somehow in some small way.

    So many never even asked the Haitian people. Too many are simply short sighted interventionists. Or cowered by the ten million masses shackled in the modes of survival. Today we will ask the GAI and their members where to from here? Victor, myself, Michael, all of us in Banshee and LAHAF; all the supporters of the movement; all the veterans of the first and second waves; one and all are fighting for a small dream too.

    But thankfully none have died for it, yet. I remember so many faces from the first time; from 15 January, 2010 to 28 January, 2010; the first wave. The Bed Stuy-AMHE Detachment. Our tumultuous landing in the 6th day of relief, before the bodies were buried or the smoke had cleared. Indomitable will; fearlessness and selflessness and all of that faith we had in our humanity. The cooperative solidarity of a Kombit Medikal. That two weeks, that slaughter of so many Haitians; who knows whether it was 1, 2, 3,000,000 people; no one knows at all. That laid the basis of my dream, the dream I sold to Victor, to Cassidy, to Dominich, to Lou Auguste Jr and LAHAF, to Jenn Slitter, to all of the Banshee underground, well I’d sold the dream even to myself convincingly. We dreamed that the Haitians would have the training, will and organization to save lives.

    I must always remember the steams of the bathhouse, where me and my first partner, my first co-conspirator beautiful Yelizaveta Kotlyarova gave me true support and true unflinching council. Must also keep my parents in mind, or in a heartbeat I would lose myself in the people of Haiti and never return to America at all. Go big or go home, banshee-motherfucka-if-ya-ain’t-running-with-it-run-from-it.

    Victor knows this well.

    We were both there in the blood and rubble of the trembling earth. Our tears and their lack of tears our blood and their blood, mixed into the casement and cracks on the pavement. I may have the face of a blan, but my heart is that of a Haitian. My constitution to take the struggle to where it must logically go, all the way up the great mountain, to secure this people, my adopted people from vicious exploitation, mismanaged sympathy, foreign rape and plunder. For two whole years we organized volunteers, we supplied the GAI with trainers and gear. And reinforced the shared dream. Not EMS in Haiti! Not mere ambulances! The power to respond to human and natural disaster on their own, the ability to rescue their own people. Liberty through control of their own social services, full human rights would come later, full reclamation of sovereignty. Realization of emancipation and the conclusion of the revolution. Haiti, finally in the hands of Haitian people. 

How am I such now a major patriot for a foreign people? In their eyes I see my own people, maybe I see myself in another life. That is what the earthquake showed me about myself and my destiny. I see my reflection as a human in them. I see a way to reclaim my own humanity, restore my own life through something much more important than mere me.

And I have lost so much on this battle already, they think, some think I am a mad man possessed by the spirits. Which spirit I do not even bother to guess. Something had entered me in those grisly days of the first wave. I saw the world to come.

I saw that were I to show ineffable might, like a Haitian; I would live to see the liberation. I would live to see our victory over that oligarchy.

    The Haitian oligarchy first and then the tyrants in my own nation and all of the other plantations too. For it was in this country, this was the beginning of the Great Revolt, it was the very first time a rebel alliance took on European hegemony, slavery and colonialism; and for a time won.

    There was no only Yelizaveta and the slaughter I saw from the quake. Both opened my eyes to hating and to loving, to despair and to a possible freedom. With my eyes opened now they can never close until I am cold and dead. Haitian and foreigner, blan, mulat, neg; l’union fait la force! We are here to keeping laying a base.

The ability to heal and help is not the ability to save. Wounds and sickness across a body politico cannot be helped with small cosmetic Band-Aids. The blame for what happened here is a shared blame. There are so many people black and white and in between that have conspired to ruin Haiti. To keep her people backwards and maldeveloped as lesson to all those who would join the revolt.

Haiti hemorrhages now for 200 plus years and they kick her when she is down, they steal whatever there is to steal, they plunder and they rape and they abuse her while she lies long vanquished. 97% of the fucking trees are gone! 84% of the people live below $2 a day. No one even knows how many died in that quake because there was no census since 2004! When US marines kidnapped the first and only elected President Aristede and dragged him off to house arrest in the Central African Republic. 

But Haitians will never be exterminated. Or long brought to their knees. They are capable of incredible resistance. Résistance to both foreign and domestic enemies. A year ago Jean Claude Duvalier (Baby Doc the last dictator) returned to a city of barricades and a populace demanding his arrest. Aristede returned to be celebrated though his party Lavalas is banned an illegal still. Resistance to and beyond death. In one generation or two in diaspora Haitians have become doctors, lawyers, nurses, lawyers and business men. More millionaires than any other Caribbean diaspora. They make up 1/5 of the Greater New York healthcare work force. Who knows if these statistics are true, they reflect a fact on the ground.

In Haiti, despite the best efforts of 10,800 non-governmental organizations (Klass ONG), charities and missionaries unleashed in the 1980’s after the fall of Duvalier in 1986; things have gotten as bad as sub-Saharan Africa. A UN garrison of roughly ten thousand Brazilian and Argentine soldiers occupies the only UN peacekeeping mission in a nation with no declared ceasefire between combatants; neo-Duvalierist oligarchs and the Famni Lavlas party. 

Here everyone is dying.

Of cholera, of being a restovik child slave, of preventable disease, of Cholera, of road accidents, of child birth, or exposure and tropical storms, of hunger. Life expectancy is below 58. There are over 46,000 mostly white development technocrats here, they live well. On the top of the hills with servants and drivers. Parts of Kenscoff and Petionville look like high society France. With chipping paint. There is an opera house at the top of the mountain called Tara’s. You can see plays there or famous international musicians. There are so many Haiti’s except the one that most of its citizens live in; one of early death and great squalor.

If you are blind to that then you have not really been to this place. Or you are part to blame for it.

Many but few, have made Haiti what she is. The iron heel is elusive and complex. The violators are of all colors and creeds. NGO imperialists, human and drug traffickers, Dominican businessmen, the local oligarchy. But before we can know our enemies we must know our friends. Tiputti and his sister Tipudine Capois do not talk politics. They are not affiliated with Lavalas or any faction we are aware of.  They met us during the quake and have told our grand alliance; Alliance 01 that they will organize their people.

We began with 68 EMT trainees and I am told we now have only 25 or 26 that are ready to test out, a year later. The other possible 100 members of GAI dropped the course Paramedic Instructor Howard carried out for 6 months, but they hang around the club and see what will be offered. Their motives are as diverse as our own collection of idealisms, but they want jobs in the medical sector. They want to leave the island some. They have varying degrees of patriotism, none speak English except Tiputti and his sister Tipudine. Many were original responders like Tiputti Capois who met Victor and I two years ago during the first wave in “unit C” when we enlisted several hundred to secure the General Hospital. Many are new. Most of the serious opportunists are gone allegedly. The GAI has held out with no pay for nearly two years, we sent a scout Wilkinson Francois to assess them three months ago, he reported enthusiasm but virtually no command structure of program for the future. He reported 25-30 possible EMTs and 40-100 first aiders, Haitians despise making rosters and lists of names, so they don’t do it. 

These 25 potential EMT trainees, and 100 some odd responders, their family and friends are what we are here to properly assess the operational capability of.

Are they young bold visionaries seeking change in Haiti? Or are they opportunists as so many warned. Do they want real change, or do they just want jobs and livelihood? Well only Wilkinson had asked. Paramedic Instructor Howard has disappeared. Wilkinson as a Haitian and speaker of Haitian Creole had reported to us that they were sincere. And also a bunch of disorganized civilians in their early 20’s.

His report was what got authorization for Victor and I to proceed with a third Wave.

All the experts and much of the diaspora had told our Alliance that EMS in Port Au Prince is simply impossible. They told us our volunteers would be kidnapped, our supplies stolen or killed. They told us Haitians don’t do anything without being paid. Thinly guarded racism, a lot of it.

Victor has faith. I have zeal. And Michael Mastroianni has a great deal of expertise and we all wish to see if two years of effort had a result. Hundreds of other members and volunteers are waiting for our unit to validate or invalidate a lot of sacrifice. They came from Atlanta, from New York, from Miami, from Las Vegas, from Seattle and Chicago; 104 in the first wave, 28 medical and communications volunteers in the second wave. Now, just 3 in the third. Civilian volunteers all, mostly EMS, fire, and communications backgrounds kept this going for two years. GAI survived without pay or resources cut off from LAHAF and BANSHEE in the states except phone calls and email, periodically. They and we are fighting to give the people here and abroad something to believe in.

Hope floats? Maybe.

Soon people will testify. Haske & Mapfre, Greenlee, Denby, Marriana, Fishman and Resnick who shot a lot of film and took a lot of pictures. Hundreds of hours of never gonna be seen footage. How this occurred was wrongly held faith in the power of the media. No film was ever made. Thomas later made a short one.

Victor and I are emergency medical professionals, I’m an EMT, and he’s a paramedic. We have to determine alongside paramedic Mastroianni; was this all for nothing or is the GAI real. Can GAI pass BLS exams, take multiple choice tests and pass? They never even had power points or text books. Can they complete the eight stations of basic life support practical skills, can they hold up as real EMTs? Are they school kids or potential heroes and avenger of their people? We have to testify in less than 20 days.

Testify about the birth of Haitian EMS, and if a clandestine Haitian human rights movement can grow from that or not. In an hour we land at Toussaint L’Ouvature.

This time I bet they stamp my passport.

Thank god this is all finally happening. Despite all the struggle and all of the loss and hardship I feel as though we are close to the edge as well as the tipping point too. Real change. I pray I will never forget Yelizaveta’s face, how could I? More I pray I never fail to separate FACT from EMOTION, as all too many do in Haiti coming from the outside. I must make sure I sleep more, a little more. We have a lot of work cut out for us. Making the GAI ready for Michael, the 22 January test, the 26 January Consortium on EMS in Haiti, a lot must be done in just 22 days. 

If you ain’t running with it, run from it. That’s what my life coach Lil Wayne told Yelizaveta and that’s what she told me.

NOTES

NOTES

It is not that any of us longed to die. It was only that we believed that in this transience, this short human life, it was preferable to die on ones feet moving towards a just idea. Moving in solidarity, in defense of the powerless. Then it would be to die on our backs or our knees, half lives, shuffling along like zombies. Always asleep. With meaningless, un-free lives wasted. Lives spend like serfs and slaves.  

Have you ever had an amazing noble idea in your head? That simply refused to translate itself or find traction in reality? Have you ever risked everything, sacrificed absolutely everything for such an idea? Myopically, almost psychotically pushing forward in the face of a stubborn, intractable cruel reality. When you can bring yourself to do that. To engage in nothing short of overwhelming zealotry. Pursuing a new reality, a reality where the vast suffering of this world is mitigated. Where the chaos and carnage and daily humiliation that is the lot of most humans is undone by rights, by hope, by heroism. That is called the motivation for the fight.  

It has been a very long hard bloody road to the mountains and back from them. From Manhattan to Jerusalem to Havana. All the trips to the City of Port-Au-Prince. To Greater Boston. Back to Brooklyn then to out Russia. Across Russia on a train then into the Middle East to fight in Rojava. Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Egypt and then back to the Big Apple again. Riding on the backs of armored trucks and flying carpets. On horses, on tanks on airships. Over the great rivers and through the woods. Mountains beyond mountains beyond mountains. With stopovers where all civilization has come to a resolute end in the Fertile Crescent. Smoldering villages. Enormous cities razed to the very foundations. Once historic places, simply crushed and undone. Burning down river by river shore to deep sands of desolation. A revolution within a civil war within an endless third world war. A place called Kurdistan which exists not on maps but in the hearts and dreams of perhaps forty million stateless, long oppressed people. Engaged a very long fight for their right to exist.  

How do you make any sense of such carnage to people that were not there? How do you make an enjoyable narrative about bloody chaos? Articulate ideas that when they become facts on the ground, have vast contradictions. Has a highly improbable capability to ever survive!  

The revolution itself has hardly been secured. The struggle is hardly over. The iron heel and might of the Turkish army looms right over the border to the North. Ready to descend quickly and murder us all. Undo everything that has been fought for against the so-called Islamic State. The Forces of the bloody dictator Assad backed by the Russian army and Hezbollah dig in to the south of the Euphrates river. The collaborationist Iraqi Kurdish K.D.P. Peshmerga, the Iranian supported Hashid Ashabi popular mobilization forces, the Shi’a dominated Iraqi Army and all manners of Iranian revolutionary guards to the south east in Sinjar. To the West the Jihadists of Al Qaeda’s latest rebrand and Islamists of different types in Idlib.

Enemies of the revolution on every single side! In fulfillment of my promises I will try and present our little part of the story as the defense has really only just begun. Everything might be wiped away before you even paid attention to vastness and hope of it. I worry, no sadly I expect, that long before this manuscript is ever published anywhere, all will be lost. My remaining Hevals will all be killed. The Turkish Army will literally roll over the border and everyone will be slaughtered. This isn’t really speculation, since it has happened many times before.

#038 Moscow Hostage Crisis

#038

Moscow Hostage Crisis 

Part One 

Life of the slave show!

    I will remove you from your castle and make you watch the way we live in the wilderness below.       

And she slips off her high heels into a star-crossed stare down, 

    She always calls the shots,

    Gun shots to blood soaked makeshift cots.   

The shots she calls are complicated.

             She must find me highly dedicated. 

She mostly deals with the haves, and I am the have nots.

The rules are anything goes, but no know one “knows”.

    If she’s been known to steal the weapon from my over coat,

    I’ve been quick to remove my clothes.

       I spill_ for the thrill of those invited, I can kill on compunction, I still have the will; 

To activate the full facilities, 

Of word play, and use of allegory_

       To execute deliverance of a blue-blood-bleeding testimony_ 

A Former Soviet love story.

    Involving a Chechen peasant and a woman once of Penza now mostly of night.  

    It will be of little glory, the way I tell the story.

    It’s based upon real people. Real blood_ and real bleeding_ 

Of taking-of wanting-of feeding the need. 

Of fucking and fighting and the will to survive in a City of glass, steel, and greed. 

           Real emotional explosions_ her eyes are always so bright,

 She has long since urged me to put down the weapon and give up the fight. 

But I have a last name that is easy to place,

I could buy some new papers, but not a new face.

They can spot us on site!

It’s the ongoing struggle of those who lead: 

A tragic_ unyielding life of night.  

We’ll sell a sordid tale. 

I wish I had found her back when she was nineteen or twenty_ 

Before she had to do what she did,

And does what she still do, 

To keep from starving in the shadow of plenty. 

My objective and travail_ is to recruit the members of this audience into a clandestine apparatus_ And harness our collective clandestino

To force a mighty train to prematurely jump the rail.  

         I wear suspenders with buttons, a Mayakovsky cap, and iron plated under shirts. 

I dreamed up a plan to get revenge on a man, or a series of men, hit them in their pockets, 

Hit them where it hurts.          

    I called her late at night_ bleeding all over the place,

      She said don’t get your bleeding heart on my red carpet, 

And her mother fixed me midnight supper.          

Herring, beets, Palemni.

        And she wiped the cake of crimson off my bloody Chechen face.

    (Small talk)   

 “And the snow fall is phenomenal this year”_ 

She retorts”

 “Don’t get French with me my dear.”

_They really punched yer ticket_ did a number on you in the district, this time.

          (She loves the way I make the Ameikanski noire lingo mix out elequently with a touch of old Fenian rhyme.)

The pay phone call cannot be traced_

The weapons hidden in the drywall_ 

In the space your men replaced_ 

The ice cold taste of 9 proof Baltika is refreshing, albeit haram_

Those good patriot informers_ those zombies_ those follow-follow men.

They beat me for a fortnight, 

Demand I sign a grim confession,  

Attesting to the building and/or placement of some near but unexploded bomb.

        “Why can’t you be like normal men?”

 I told her: “I’m hungry for my freedom and I’m never going hungry again!” (Sung)

And she says;

 “I cannot love you if you’re dead.” 

Please put the house in order, 

Use the lithium, 

Use Russian Standard Vodka; use my lips if necessary, 

To rectify the madness as it expands inside your head.

       I’m not saying that I love you now or later, 

Simply I refuse to cater_ 

To all the “incidents generated lately” when you do not behave_ 

Explain how you plan to court me_ 

From a black-bag-disappearance. 

In frosty, shallow, unmarked open grave.

       If you’re going to dedicate, in your exacerbation, 

Resistance efforts to a woman (me) who can only love you out of pity, 

In this bleak and foreign city_

Even if the words sound epic, also pretty_

Fuck it man! You’re doing it again!

I sigh and then reply:

“Did I tell you lately you’re my dorogaia and if not for loving you_I’d surely be dead a thousand times at the hands of ten thousand lesser men?”

Oh, when last we wrote I spoke of devouring her, for hours. 

To tease her- to please her_to want her to need her- amid a bed of hand-picked, Peonies; or provincial-wild-flowers.

She isn’t one for single serving dancehall roses, she moves too fast for poses.

Her bright eyes beckon as they dart about the room filled with bluff and imitating glee_

“Accelerate your tempo of evacuation_ 

The checkpoints separate the have everything’s_ 

From the people who are dressed like you_ 

And carry paper work like me.”

I suppose you and only you_ the woman that I trust and choose_ 

Can entrap these men of business with their whoring, 

With their thirst for further treasure_

With long lines of china white running from the mouse trap to their nose.

How many slaves does it take to keep this neon play ground running?_

I know via your profession you can undertake a series of transactions_

Blonde dynamite distractions_

Before any know exactly what’s in store.

Reduce the need for automatic weapons, 

Acquire us the proper routes and channels_

And guide us through a tunnel to the vile trading floor.

    She looks at me and rolls her eyes and says in Russian “Lord have mercy.”

    I said “I don’t have imaginary friends; there ain’t no need to curse me._   

Where we met is unimportant. 

Did I mean to enlist her? 

I couldn’t resist her. 

I had causes and struggle and vengeance and plan.

I shouldn’t have kissed her 

And longed for her touch,

For surely she lays nightly in the arms of some husband, some man.

We have become a most curious spectacle_lately.

     You hate me? Push further,

Took you home from the bar stool, 

Bite me_

Kick me_

Bait me.

She could have killed me that first night, just with things that she said:

I looked at her once. 

And the wheel was turning quickly but the hamster was dead. 

The wheel was her cold rationale, 

The hamster was the morals that once governed the wheel.

And there were bright lights, that up lit her eyes_ and whatever that implies.

Separating what she does_ 

From that which she’s still willing feel.

“You take up so much clock! 

Blood from a rock! 

I must return to District work which begins at moon rise.

And the steel trap will slam shut_ 

And bind me behind those District walls.

        And the men of that vile district,

    Will use their credit cards_

To try and pay for my flesh and access to between my thighs.”

She said “root for me.”

I’m going voodoo out tonight_

To earn my money the City.

         If you truly are my friend, 

Understand that I’ve been hungry and I’m never going hungry again.” _(Sung)

I am looking down the barrel at my pin striped enemy. 

      And the columns we’ve been shaking 

And lives we’re always taking, 

I was seeking sweet surrender and I sought it at her feet. 

You think you’re not a target? You pay your taxes don’t you?

        Are you blind to their transgressions? 

A cavalcade of charging bulls rampaging down the street.

       Everything from here out, it’s true,

My bones rust, from your star dust, your fairy eyes_

     I loose myself to you.

She says, “Oh the things you might do,” 

Our harsh and untenable positions have emboldened us_ as we know no one cares or pays attention, or even has a clue.

If we want it bad enough we can get it:

     “For the rest of our lives_

_we do.”

Even if that life, she says, will last no longer than another a day or two.

Kiss me _fight beside me Dorogaia

Even if to you my name and words are sometimes strange, 

For what they do to your body and mind,

     And what they did to my family,

     Help us create a major crisis at the Moscow Stock Exchange.

You’re crazy she said, 

You’re crazy won’t get me dead. 

Well talk about your ridiculous plan in the morning.

It’s all a slave show, and if you didn’t know.

Russians who help rebels aren’t even given a funeral, much less a warning.

#14 Sometimes the Vodka Drinks Me

#14: Sometimes the Vodka Drinks You

I.

What does a half Jew know about the Ghosts of Christmas past? 

Arrogance vast! 

If sirens of suffering call-free-for-all_ 

_then have your crew insert wax in their ears and bind your bleeding heart to the mast! 

Look at your most tragic failures, 

Look at your past! 

Your sister, your brother, your comrade, the love of your life: raped and abused

Self-murder imprisoned and her young body used: 

The die is cast.

You toast to our fortitude? 

Look in the mirror and see the accused!

Who put the world on your shoulders man?! 

Whoever asked!

         Labriut.

         There was nothing one person ever asked you to be, 

Nothing they asked you to do.

         No one expected a miracle. 

You battle demons still in their name, 

And when it was done the world was exactly the same, man it’s too true:

Sometimes you drink to remember, 

Sometimes you drink to forget.

And sometimes the vodka drinks you.         

II.

The card said:

        “Ya tbya verejnum glaz najom.”

         So I went up to Brighton Boston.

         To consult with a gangster named Medvinsky. 

         “Droog.” 

         You had better turn that walk into some kind of fearsome-forward-run.

        “Get gone, Get done.” 

        Get yourself a final lavish Turkish bath,

You lost a lot, 

She lost a bit, 

We’ve all lost something over flesh chase bullshit,

                                         A fait complit_ it’s done. 

      Since you won’t take a lap dance down on Brighton 7 as down payment on your solitude, 

We can’t build you back until you repay the debt accrued, 

Pass port change your latitude, 

It’s your very Westy attitude we’ve come to question!  

                                    So make adjustments to the clout,

 You thought you could throw about. 

Without suggestion: 

          Settle up and out.

          Take a shot then,

Run.  

          You have to settle up with the Voorhis down in Oceania, 

That won’t be fun.

        “Gde bolit tovarish?”

“Did you even stop to think about the things that you two unleashed?  

             With passion pens, with cold war sword play, and with gun! 

              It was your morals that she prayed on with her callous kick box on the night she almost killed you.” 

“For sport?” 

 “Not for sport.  For fun.”  

“You had best turn in your 8 shot, because she’s gone and punched your midnight ticket now!” 

“She’s removed the bullets from your gun.”

              There’s no blame in this situation. You two just forgot your host nation, class and social station.

    And lost in excited trepidation you made war.

But in all that war you’ve been making, 

You were changing nothing

See the score?  

And shortly one dead Russian escort 

And one badly tortured gun man is all there will be to show totality of foolishness:

The things, you and she were fighting for.

Let’s do a shot for good intentions now a bloody mess under duress:

What Medvinsky says is partly true:

Sometimes you drink to remember, 

Sometimes you drink to forget.

And sometimes the vodka drinks you.         

III.

Sometimes, 

I get drunk. 

And I drive my car 

In figure eight circles around the Adler Loop in coop city,

The only street which bears my name. 

       And from the wheel of my Civic I survey a high rise brick kingdom. 

All I can see!

Sometimes I drink to remember, sometimes I drink to forget.

And sometimes the vodka drinks me.

It’s a bevy of victimless crimes. 

          There are no children playing at these midnight hours, 

Most of the times, 

Or those that are carry various calibers as they carry on trade in West Indian nickels and dimes.

           With each kiss of Stolichnaya I get further from all the accusing faces of friends lost, 

And lubricated by the demons still waters I am forgiven for my yet unfulfilled promises. 

And that which such promises cost.

            I sip and shoot shot and bottle tip. 

And the ghosts of past make clever cheers: 

Nazdrovia! 

They say as I sip. 

More shots! 

To the last drop, a fast viscosity, a deadly drip. 

              Cheers to little Malka who’s daddy abused her, and who’s foreign baby’s father used her like a Siberian doll and fled leaving a teenage mother with child in the slums of Shahoun Daled

Shot to the head. 

               Cheers to Maya captured and bonded to brothels at the age of sixteen, 

Pale white tits all the gawk of Montreal’s flying flesh carnival scene. 

Long white lines of supine mortgage, 

Traumas of the slave trade never fully known_ what they made her do.

Time supine, also prone.  

Third shot for Rahula, also called Jeremy McGaffey, 

A soldier, a comrade now dead, and all the dark things he saw before putting two rounds in his tough brilliant head.

               For all that they went through these three in particular abused an accosted,

I empty the bottle to my useless gestures exhausted, 

Having arrived too late to have saved them and too weak to have healed them, and play pretend knights making promises into a sad mock-ery.

Sometimes I drink to remember. 

Sometimes I drink to forget.

And sometimes the vodka drinks me.

IV.

        I awoke in hand cuffs black hood folded blind.

And it wasn’t just another Saturday night wilding-wild-West Indian 

On the loose in Coney Island of the mind,

                               Truncated by tell-the-boys-in-blue I won’t be easy. 

       They had laid their hard hands on me. 

Stop the tape. Pause. 

Rewind.

Wam! 

 Something struck the Gulliver out of nowhere_ it gyrated my warbles.

      This time, maybe; my past had caught me.       

That then said;

       My first thought was of my baby, my lady who is even tougher than I am. 

                 Good thing your woman’s hidden said the voice in my head.

                 Simmer-on-sinner,

 A loser or a winner is in the end always picking up taps for the devil at dinner. 

      When I say baby, I should say goddess, she’s a warrior.

          Or just several shots short of serial killer, 

A base sinner invited into your house for the small talk most certainly, also her chest, high heels and the promise of dinner.

              She loves me because I am a good man. 

    You can, only hurt a Real man by destroying his goodness and if he be a hard man, 

No kid’s gloves_ 

_you can only do that by hurting people he loves.

        I’ve been interrogated before.

There many ways to do it,

        You can purchase a good deal of information via third party use of shill, mark or whore. 

When people don’t know what they’re fighting for…

Or stacked shocks, shock headed peter_a drill with a small bore.

      But who’s keeping score, anymore.

      I was trained in district Florentine. 

      I have mental blueprints to up the ante of an occupation, or increase the flicker flame of fire on a low boiling international class war.

    What for? What was in it for me?

      I was tapped long ago on my shoulder by a series of sirens 

And enlisted in a long simmer struggle to even a score, 

Against the forces of Razpizdia, general a-pathology bloody feuds based little more than mistranslated folk lore.

 To Hit back, 

          And coordinate the American arm of a general attack on behalf of the wretched run miserable, the abused and the victimized poor!

Oh that’s adorable, he’s a man with ideals. Let’s get him out of his country and rip out his teeth with some plyers so he can see exactly how real change making feels!

         The prelude to a good long torturing is an offer you can’t refuse.

         Already assume you have nothing to lose.

False positive clues to dissuade and amuse as they work to disfigure, 

And of course to abuse.

 They said I was born chosen, but I keep on choosing battles that my lady says that I’m destined to lose.

      That’s what she said.

      And when panting and longing and holding me tightly, through the calling of names 

But only she is the one I allow in my head.

      The trick is to talk in circles, 

Keep asking for cigarettes, 

     Saying nothing makes them think you know more than you do.

Once the beatings begin you must meditate your way through the blood and the swelling. 

So master art of storytelling.

So when that occurs you can only betray yourself via you’re capture and give long accounts of imaginary conspirators.

 And try and make sure you don’t know where your woman is being hidden 

      A pale horse with pale rider will give no account of the devastations witnessed passing though places he’s ridden.

              You can beat a man into saying almost anything. 

You can try and buy him, make him sing tunes you want him to sing. Strike his face with a truncheon cuffed to chair he’s got nowhere to run.

        And if they know who you are they just might do it for fun.

              But having done this before, if you want to get to my family you’d better be legion, better have monstrous tentacles, bottomless pockets, or know how to properly swim. 

For I know the face of the devil and Invest adequately in keeping my loved ones from him.

              I hide my woman in Haiti. Just cause you can see her golden blonde hair from space, well that don’t mean you can fight your way through eleven million Haitians. Has nothing to do with race.

               I’m one popular fucking blan these days. They say no good deed goes unpunished, and but I have my ways.

              Russians have counter insurgency down to a T. 

      The Ts for torture the shit out of everyone. Best believe these days several are gunning for Vasa, Vasa is me.

        Its a long game, its a late stage in the war.

        A fist crunches my face, then a bucket of water.

        I’ve brought a box cutter on a plane before.

       Before  it was cool.

        Who am I?

        Fool, If you allow yourself to be coffined they will attempt it using desriptive pejoratives.

    I’m new school. 

        I have spoken to you at length in babalonian, but parable take away, here’s the golden rule: 

         Don’t pose a question that you do not intend in a timely fashion to unravel.

       I am a man of three colors. Red black and green. I’m in the business of chechen resistance, this involves travel. 

   In my rounds and deployments you’d have no idea of the suffering I’ve seen.

       Its less a riddle to fuck the answers out of me. But just incase they get me, know that when my families safe, and Ichkerias free, and most of the world is a place where its safe for your pasty white children to be, and then we can agree that when you open your eyes and turn off your tv, then you will collaborate with a chechen like me, and the resistance generally. 

           These are hard cuffs. I’m not going anywhere. I zone out and I dream of the mountains, the scent of my babies hair. I know she’s safe, I know they gonna break me out. Unpleasant nights until that occurs, no doubt.

   Soon as these wolves know they got Vasa the gunslinger, I can hear them shout. 

Ya tbya verjnum glas najum.

I’m gonna cut your fucking eyes out.

        Do your worst motherfuckers. I’ve heard these words before.

 You aint getting nothing but nonsense from the lips of a rebel implore, 

ladies and gentlemen my name is Vasili Pveada, the world is one fire and you’re all in a tower on top of a hill,  for the blood that they spill, for our loved ones they kill, listen to me.

 The armed wing of the human rights movement has long arms and old soul memories, we will not stop fighting, until every last man woman and child is free.

#55 Havana Road

 # 50: Havana Road
 
We could be in Havana by nightfall. 
It’s what I’ve been whispering for years. 
If I could just trade a pound of my flesh for just one single ounce of your tears. 
 
Bloody paw marks cross my face! Self-inflicted. 
Lash marked loved one; I am so careless for you. 
Dug my own American grave in a record time, the scary parts of our company is that most of our stories are true. Avail me of your sling shot eyes, Last cartridge spent. 
Temptation looks like you. 
But, sin-not-simple-sinner! 
Your thighs delight the treachery of lawless temperament. 
Losing bearings righting wrongness. 
Leather boots, And dark sun glasses, Skinny dipping long legged mikvah, digress under stress! What you wear under that dress is tougher than my mechanical heart or the flash of iron eyes scaling walls and the ripping off of clothing, 
As the best dreams fall apart. 
Over last supper, Our unsung broken heroes if the story’s told right can make all the martyrs grin. 
Losing ones lost morals doesn’t make the skin itself once broken any thinner. Or the self inflicted violence of total recollection even a mostly piratic win. Temptation looks like you! How do you say exsanguination in Cyrillic? 
I have not three fucks of clue. 
I am too brazen for these bonds, As Benjamin bondage holds plantation risings, pale of settlement, comfort keeps the ghetto wall in check, 
A noose about my neck! 
The only true reminder, as I quiver amorous beside her, 
What just one night loose in Babylon can make a brother do! And all this special for you, I pause to dot a check list, of what calamity ill next ensue. 
For that’s just the market price to play, with a deadly creature such as you.
Some French-Reggaetone anthem belted out from the bodega, 
As some abstracted grindhouse of a poem, 
Or foreign tongued gift made of song. 
And black death inside us, from those fires we long left burning, another late night in Brueklyn Soviet, 
And we lied when we said that we knew our right from wrong. 
I tell her, “We all just pretend that we’re strong.” 
Like a tribute to golden aged exile. Or an ode to a bold deportee. She says that my goodness is good for her only half of the time. “But bless you you’re savage when beaten but always loving when looking at me.” 
You’re drunk off your tired you’re constantly trying, you’re doing god’s work, so they claim. Just make sure that the salt it stays in the mind and not in the wounds as it distorts all the forces of blame. 
What a spree! We did some violent pen to pad scribbling’s by cell phone at midnight. 
Lately for her, and the glorious plot! 
Plotting out plan dalet through z. 
We all hope this violence you do to yourselves, is making a man out of me. The trouble with the nightlife in Brooklyn, Is that sinning comes mostly for free. When a thousand sweet words are the only way left_ 
_This city of Zion in a world of struggle has been bleeding the shit out me!
There is no lonelier place than the boardwalk at midnight. When your love lies in another man’s arms, And the ghosts and the screams from a life you had lived twice before_ are never completely drowned out by these danger filled banshee siren alarms! 
Jessica asked what’s been killing me lately? 
The Malboroman he has blackened my lungs and the Vodka has clouded the morals you so often condemn. 
And I sold both my two souls and cut my own heart for the Russians just to try and see the world like them! 
Madman, I hope she cries for you. As much as you secretly cry for yourself. As you dash your ambitious wilding dreaming, 
On dagger ragged rocks of mislaid plans seen on Steeplechase pier. 
Lover, lately I have no inclination for fear. Salt tastes like salt. If there’s blood on the streets you can bet a green dollar that god gives not a single shit, And always there’s a human to fault. 
I’ve been a boxing a brickwall most lately. 
And we all know the wall always wins. 
When the lights went out you will be left alone with your failures, your torments and sin. 
And a candle, will be the only way you better know the devils in your casement mirror. Death winks at you from the dirty mirror. And she calls for as you lie helpless and still unable to really hear her.
We’d could in Havana by nightfall. 
It’s what I’ve been howling for years. 
I’d easily trade a pound of my flesh for a single ounce of your tears.
 
 

Al Prelude

Al Prelude

It is not that any of us longed to die. It was only that we believed that in this transience, this short human life, it was preferable to die on ones feet moving towards a just idea. Moving in solidarity, in defense of the powerless. Then it would be to die on our backs or our knees, half lives, shuffling along like zombies. Always asleep. With meaningless, un-free lives wasted. Lives spend like serfs and slaves.  

Have you ever had an amazing noble idea in your head? That simply refused to translate itself or find traction in reality? Have you ever risked everything, sacrificed absolutely everything for such an idea? Myopically, almost psychotically pushing forward in the face of a stubborn, intractable cruel reality. When you can bring yourself to do that. To engage in nothing short of overwhelming zealotry. Pursuing a new reality, a reality where the vast suffering of this world is mitigated. Where the chaos and carnage and daily humiliation that is the lot of most humans is undone by rights, by hope, by heroism. That is called the motivation for the fight.  

It has been a very long hard bloody road to the mountains and back from them. From Manhattan to Jerusalem to Havana. All the trips to the City of Port-Au-Prince. To Greater Boston. Back to Brooklyn then to out Russia. Across Russia on a train then into the Middle East to fight in Rojava. Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Egypt and then back to the Big Apple again. Riding on the backs of armored trucks and flying carpets. On horses, on tanks on airships. Over the great rivers and through the woods. Mountains beyond mountains beyond mountains. With stopovers where all civilization has come to a resolute end in the Fertile Crescent. Smoldering villages. Enormous cities razed to the very foundations. Once historic places, simply crushed and undone. Burning down river by river shore to deep sands of desolation. A revolution within a civil war within an endless third world war. A place called Kurdistan which exists not on maps but in the hearts and dreams of perhaps forty million stateless, long oppressed people. Engaged a very long fight for their right to exist.  

How do you make any sense of such carnage to people that were not there? How do you make an enjoyable narrative about bloody chaos? Articulate ideas that when they become facts on the ground, have vast contradictions. Have improbable capability to survive.  

My name is Sebastian Adonaev, but the Kurds named me “Blacksmith Winter”, or Kawa Zivistan. The Arabs, they needed to name me too so they called me “Abu Yazan”. Because my then part-girlfriend, part-confidant Polina has a son named Yazan. I was 33 when I deployed but looked and felt a bit younger. I felt brave or stupid enough to volunteer for a war. At the most desperate heights of the conflict, which would end up killing over 500,000 people, there was a cry for some extra hands, some Hamsas. Every side called up all available reinforcements. Just before Baghdad almost fell, the mostly Shiite al-Hashid ash-Shabi Popular Mobilization Forces called up half a million Iraqis to hold I.S.I.S. back.  The Assad Regime enlisted thousands of Russian, Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah to fight Daesh and other Sunni rebel factions aligned with ISIS, Al Qaeda, the Free Syrian Army brands and the Al Qaeda reboot H.T.S. The Islamic State took in over 40,000 foreign fighters and the mostly Kurdish forces in the “Syrian Democratic Forces”  enlisted just 500. I fought alongside the Iraqi Special Operations Forces in Iraq and for the Syrian Democratic Forces, in the Y.P.G. Militia defending the idea of Rojava in Syria. I contributed very few bullets, mostly serving as combat medic during my time there. Mostly stopping hemorrhage and carrying the wounded to ambulances. Mostly trying to train people to save lives, actually, at a time when almost everyone wanted to kill.

After defeating the so-called “Islamic State” as a force holding any territory, the United States military all but completely abandoned their Kurdish allies and Turkey invaded Rojava.

We who survived to talk about the Syrian Civil War, we often found there were not easy words to describe what we took part in. This is story grounded in history and ideology. The tale of a stateless people spread over 4 nations, 40 million strong. This is a love song after a series of hard fucks in Spanish and some love making in Russian. This is a Post-Soviet Lullaby, written in Imperial English about Western privileges. I have heard on the wire that the Turkish Army is fully mobilizing to crush Rojava. A fully modern army of over 435,000 soldiers. That Anya is losing her mind in Baghdad and Ana Campbell, that optimistic young woman I once gave hand grenades to, well she died in an airstrike in Afrin. Here I am in Capitalist Modernity’s very heartland and loving embrace. Doing nothing useful for Kurdistan. Just writing stupid love songs. Composing vain self serving propaganda plays.

I’m not sure exactly what I’m supposed to hide and what I can give away. I’m actually very detached from Western thinking so I don’t even know what actually makes compelling propaganda in the West anyway. Actually, the sly and looming enemy knows most of our real names, and frankly were there not many informants amongst us, it is simply a matter of sad fact that to get their passports back many of the French and British volunteers gave us away. Not to snitch jacket, but with a little lean on anyone can make a person flip. Really, there were not that many of us internationalists to keep track of. As the mad China-man Andok said, “the hard drives containing our data were barely even secured and this place is awash in spies.” Our overall numbers were estimated to be around 500 strong of which around 50 later perished. Mostly in combat, some in a wave of alleged suicides. We were small enough therefore for the various security services to keep track of.

So what is the actual purpose of this little manuscript? It is certainly not to glorify or denigrate the volunteers. I think it brave we went there but I don’t think we game changed a single thing. Perhaps we were all only there to bear witness that the revolution has even happened. It is surely not my aim give away military secrets and name names, because I am many things but not a Josh, a ‘donkey ass betrayer. Suffice to say the C.I.A., MI5 and the M.I.T. know all our names.
I heard some comrades sang like little opera singers to get their European passports back. All speculation, none can actually say. Americans, we had the easiest deal. After ISIS is finished maybe it will not be so black and white, fighting a N.A.T.O. ally and what not. Assisting a revolution for stateless democracy, womens emancipation and social ecology in the heart of the war torn Middle East. ‘Heval Ciya’ the Scott always used to say that the 231 Sniper Unit changed the entire game, but really only the United States and the Coalition airstrikes probably, certainly did. When the last of the under 2,500 U.S. Special Forces leave the Turks will invade in force and try and undo everything.
There’s a story we heard about a Y.P.G. Euro volunteer vacationing in Turkey immediately after his tour. He was of course arrested and will serve life in prison. He probably should have made better choices for leave and decompression. There are lots of crazy people here. You have to be little crazy to travel half way across the earth to enlist in a revolution inside a bloody brutal civil war amid a great power confrontation placing Russia and Iran directly against the United States and N.A.T.O.
I was told by ‘Heval Jansher’ the Y.P.G. guerrilla who helped train us that, that if I survive the war I should “write something about Rojava that does justice to the over 12,000 martyrs. That does justice to the cause of Kurdistan. Honors Abdullah Ocalan and upholds the values of the revolution.” That it should humanize this resistance struggle inside a revolution inside a civil war inside a great game for the Middle East.

Maybe Heval, just make it a kind of strange fucked up love story,” Jansher joked with me over cigarettes and endless black tea. 
So I hope this account manages some of that, compiling the oral history, experiences and many martyrdom’s shared amongst the approximate 500-600 foreign Y.P.G./Y.P.J./I.F.B. Internationalist fighters. At the very least I’d like to capture what it was that made us enlist in this hell to take part, to fight and die and kill and try and help, to be less than a foot note in the epic tale of Kurdistan. But still a part.
“It has to be a love story or they will never make a movie about it comrade,” Heval Jansher once said, “to the West without a Movie, it is perhaps like this struggle is not even happening at all.” But he also said a ‘real revolutionist’ has no love except for his or her people. That any romantic love is a “bourgeois luxury for civilians”.

“Our love story is for the Resistance of the Age” he used to say, but then Heval Jansher also laughed and noted Jake Gillenhaul was then already shopping around a script where he plays an anarchist falling in love for a beautiful Y.P.J. fighter and another action exploitation of the Y.P.J. was coming out soon in France. But that will likely not go anywhere useful.
“You see, in real life we would probably platform and deport this stupid volunteer and the Y.P.J. comrade, she would be shamed and sent briefly to prison” Heval Jansher told me. A famous saying states that the “Kurds have no friends besides the mountains.” Well that’s no longer completely true. The 500 who served and the 45 who died besides the 12,000 Kurdish and Arab martyrs of the battle to defeat ISIS and defend the Rojava Revolution will live forever in the Kurdish tradition, since in Kurdistan ‘Martyrs never die’. Shahid Namarin. These were kind of talks we had at the Qerechow Academy.

That then said this is not a love story at all. It’s not even “a Middle Eastern Western”. The revolution itself has hardly been secured. The struggle is hardly over. The iron heel and might of the Turkish army looms right over the border to the North. Ready to descend quickly and murder us all. Undo everything that has been fought for against the so-called Islamic State. The Forces of the bloody dictator Assad backed by the Russian army and Hezbollah dig in to the south of the Euphrates river. The collaborationist Iraqi Kurdish K.D.P. Peshmerga, the Iranian supported Hashid Ashabi popular mobilization forces, the Shi’a dominated Iraqi Army and all manners of Iranian revolutionary guards to the south east in Sinjar. To the West the Jihadists of Al Qaeda’s latest rebrand and Islamists of different types in Idlib.

Enemies of the revolution on every single side! In fulfillment of my promises I will try and present our little part of the story as the defense has really only just begun. Everything might be wiped away before you even paid attention to vastness and hope of it. I worry, no sadly I expect, that long before this manuscript is ever published anywhere, all will be lost. My remaining Hevals will all be killed. The Turkish Army will literally roll over the border and everyone will be slaughtered. This isn’t really speculation, since it has happened many times before.

False Necessitarian Theory

False necessity, or anti-necessitarian social theory, is a contemporary social theory that argues for the plasticity of social organizations and their potential to be shaped in new ways. The theory rejects the assumption that laws of change govern the history of human societies and limit human freedom. It is a critique of “necessitarian” thought in conventional social theories (like liberalism or Marxism) which hold that parts of the social order are necessary or the result of the natural flow of history. The theory rejects the idea that human societies must be organized in a certain way (for example, liberal democracy) and that human activity will adhere to certain forms (for example if people were only motivated by rational self-interest).

False necessity uses structural analysis to understand socio-political arrangements, but discards the tendency to assemble indivisible categories and to create law-like explanations. It aims to liberate human activity from necessary arrangements and limitations, and to open up a world without constraints where the possible becomes actual.

Background

Modern social theory contains a tension between the realization of human freedom and the necessity of social rules. Liberal political theorists of the seventeenth century, such as Hobbes and Locke, saw the issue as one of sacrificing some individual freedoms in order to gain others. They understood social rules as enabling constraints—necessary impositions that limited activity in some spheres in order to expand it in others. (For example, traffic laws compel us to drive on one side of the road but allow us to travel more freely than if we were constantly assailed by oncoming traffic.) In the socio-political realm, these early liberal thinkers argued that we agree to surrender our freedom for political authority in order to gain greater freedom from a state of nature. The sovereign authority is a constraint, but it allows freedom from the constraints that other individuals might impose upon us. In this way, rules are always seen as a means of increasing freedom rather than rescinding it.

These early Enlightenment thinkers opposed existing religious, aristocratic, and absolutist institutions and organizations as the natural state of the world. However, they did not argue for the absolute freedom of the individual outside of any constraining rules. For them, human activity was still subject to certain types of social arrangements that followed a historical necessity.

Inspired by Kant‘s thesis of human freedom, which argued that there is no evidence to disprove our absolute freedom or capacity to resist external domination, thinkers at the end of the eighteenth century addressed how human freedoms were constrained by social institutions. Thinkers like FichteSchillerSchelling, and Hegel argued that those institutions that constrain human freedom and subject the individual to fear and prejudice insult human dignity and deny the individual his autonomy. But they attempted to formulate universal laws, which in turn led to deterministic social and political arrangements. Marx, for example, put humanity at the mercy of historical and institutional necessity.

The contemporary theory of false necessity attempts to realize this idea in its entirety, and to escape the limitations of liberal and Marxist theories. It aims to realize social plasticity by decoupling human freedom from any necessary social rules or historical trajectory. The theory recognizes the need for social rules, but also affirms the human potential to transcend them. Humanity need not be constrained by any structure.

Development and content

The development of the theory is credited to philosopher and politician Roberto Mangabeira Unger. His main book on the thesis, False Necessity: Anti-necessitarian social theory in the service of radical democracy, was first published in 1987 by Cambridge University Press, and reissued in 2004 by Verso with a new 124 page introduction, and a new appendix, “Five theses on the relation of religion to politics, illustrated by allusions to Brazilian experience.”

The theory of false necessity attempts to understand humans and human history without making ourselves the object of a law-giving fate. It rejects the assumption that certain and necessary laws of organization and change govern the social, political, and economic institutions of human activity and thereby limit human freedom. It holds that the problem with traditional deep structure theory, such as Marxism, is that it couples the distinction of deep structure and routine practice with both indivisible types of social organization, and deep seated constraints and developmental laws. The theory rejects the constraints and focuses on how human behavior is shaped by the deep structures of these institutions, and how they can be remade at will, either in whole or in part. The aim is to rescue social theory and recreate the project of self-affirmation and society.

Rather than “enabling constraint” or “universal structure”, the theory advocates “structure-denying structures”—that is, structures that enable their own dissolution and remaking. Since these structures normally constrain our activities, this would increase our freedom.

Sources of entrapment and emancipation

The problem of false necessity arises due to the failure of transformative practice to realize its stated aim. This can take form in three different scenarios:

  • the ideals fought for (democracy, decentralization, technical coordination, etc.) result in the development of rigid institutions
  • an oligarchy effect in which groups and rulers clash at the summit of power and drum up popular support
  • the survival effect in which there is a fear of disturbance of contemporary arrangements.

Unger points to mass politics as a means to counter oligarchy and group identity. However, if these forms are only disturbed and not destroyed, democracy is limited and becomes a quarrel about forms of power and seizing advantage. Likewise, enlarged economic rationality provides another source of emancipation by shifting economic and social relations in the ability to constantly innovate and renew.

The radical project

The theory of false necessity develops the idea that the organization of society is made and can be remade—we can rebel against the worlds we have built; we can interrupt our rebellions and establish ourselves in any of those worlds. By emphasizing the disembodiment of institutional and social structures, the theory provides a basis to explain ourselves and our world without using necessitarian thought or predetermined institutional arrangements.

At the extreme, the theory of false necessity criticizes and thus unifies strands of the radical tradition. It frees leftist and liberal ideals from institutional fetishism, and emancipates modernist ideals from structural fetishism. The theory further detaches the radical commitment from utopian claims and provides a theoretical basis for transformative action. That transformative action, Unger believes, does not have to be a complete overhaul or total revolution, but rather is “a piecemeal but cumulative change in the organization of society”. The key to the project, in the words of one critic, “is to complete the rebellion against the naturalistic fallacy (that is, the confusion of accident with essence and contingency with necessity) and to effect an irrevocable emancipation from false necessity”.

Thinkers and opinions

Contemporary[when?] political thinkers and philosophers have developed and advocated the theory of false necessity. Roberto Mangabeira Unger has employed the theory in developing social, political, and economic alternatives, as well as in his political activism and appointments in Brazilian politics. Richard Rorty compared the theory’s move towards greater liberalism with Jürgen Habermas, and called it a powerful alternative to the postmodern “School of Resentment“. Other thinkers have said the theory is “a challenge that the social disciplines can ignore only at their peril”. Bernard Yack wrote that it contributed to “a new left Kantian approach to the problem of realizing human freedom in our social institutions”.

See also

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