Sunday, March 27, 2011

Republic of Virginia

An interesting new group has formed in Fredericksburg. Check out the Republic of Virginia. Left and Right unite for an independent Virginia federation of autonomous communities! Greens, Libertarians, Tea Partiers, and Anarchists unite against the Empire!

Thursday, March 17, 2011

It Was a Noble Effort

Anarchists and the homeless manage to hold out for nine days in Monroe Park before the PIGS sweep in. Get the details. Great work, Wingnut Collective!

Friday, January 7, 2011

R.I.P. "Hippie John" Mahoney

An old friend recently passed away. Read his obituary here.

I first met John in 1988 at an anarchist seminar at VCU that some of us then-Wobblies had put together. One Sunday afternoon a short time later, John gave another anarchist and I a lift to an IWW gathering in Baltimore. I would frequently encounter John around Richmond over the next couple of decades and usually have an interesting political discussion with him whenever I ran into him.

John was an ex-Yippie who had gotten into radical politics during the Vietnam War era. I'm not sure how old he was when he passed, but my guess is that he was in his late 50s. John had been arrested during civil disobedience in protest of the U.S. war in Central America during the 1980s, and was involved in a local trial dubbed the case of the "Richmond Eleven."

I had my differences with John. Over the years, I started moving in political directions he didn't particularly approve of, and I could never get behind his visceral hostility to the symbols of Confederate heritage that decorate Richmond. History is history, and its remembrance neither deifies or demonizes its content.

John was a good guy. I greatly respected him, and I will miss his presence in Richmond.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

If Virginia Told the Feds to Go to Hell...

There are currently 95 counties and 39 independent cities in Virginia. Let's imagine that Virginia were to secede from the federal system and devolve political power from Richmond to the local communities. Suppose Virginia were to become a confederation of 134 sovereign political entities. What exactly would we be giving up?

A federal regime that is 17 trillion in debt? Federal entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare that will be bankrupt within a generation? A military-industrial complex that spends more money on armaments than most of the other countries combined? The Federal Reserve with its policy of permanent inflation?

Let's face it. The American Empire is sinking. The question is not how to save the ship but how to go about building the lifeboats from which we will escape its clutches. What good does Rome on the Potomac do for Virginians, anyway? Let's take a look at some of the more successful nations around the world: Switzerland, Norway, Finland, Monaco, Liechtenstein, Holland, and Luxemborg. What do they have in common? They are small, relatively self-sufficient, and capable of being responsive to their citizens' needs. Which is a better model for Virginia? To remain a precinct of the United Soviet States of America, or to forge its own independent path?

Monday, September 13, 2010

A Small Ray of Light in the War on Drugs?

Richmond's top prosecutor plans to expand his practice of giving second chances to certain drug dealers, allowing suspects with no violent history or felony convictions to avoid conviction.

Read the entire article here.