Ya Basta! is a tactical and political project initiated by the New York Metro Alliance of Anarchists anti-war working group, in coordination with the M19 Peace Action Coalition, and various individuals, and we intend to apply the ya basta "ethos" and mytho-poetic experience to our activities within the peace movement.
If you'd like to get involved friend us!
Or go here to contact our point person: http://nymaa.org/contactantiwar
For more information on exactly what this "ya basta" thing is, see here: http://nycyabasta.mayfirst.org/
Our call to Possibility:
We ask for your attention for a moment.
We are a group of individuals living in the belly of the beast--each with our own experience of privilege and oppression, each faced with the ongoing slaughter of thousands, the immiseration of millions, and the desperation of all. Every day, human beings are maimed and killed not only in Afghanistan and Iraq (and possibly, very soon, Iran) but anywhere the war machine meets hope and resistance with the deathly silence of Empire.
We are the moderate multitude that has marched, chanted, and testified against an imperial project of brutality and arrogance for 4 years. We are the nameless ones who have seen the powerful unmoved by millions marching, chanting and crying out. This journey has brought us to a question: Is there nothing more? and an answer: There is, and we must make it ourselves.
We pronounce this answer as it was said by our friends in the Lacandon jungle 13 years ago, as it was said by our mentors in Genoa in the face of terrifying repression, and as it has been said since people first demanded a new and better world. Facing a leviathan that can produce only carnage, oppression and absurdity, we throw our hands in the air.
WE SAY: YA BASTA! ENOUGH!
We call on those of conscience to put their bodies where their hearts are. To escape the conflict between those who walk and those who run. Not to offer themselves as a symbol to be argued over by politicians and pundits, but to create a reality that confronts war and its technicians. We are ready. It is time to begin a dialogue, on our feet, as we walk; a conversation about how to transcend our hopelessness, and dismantle the machinery of global violence.
We have our lessons. We have our networks. We have our histories/herstories. What have we learned? Where have we been? And where can we go now?
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FIRST TIME AS TRAGEDY, SECOND TIME AS FORCE!
We call on those of conscience to wear the overalls as a symbol of the invisible yet resistant multitudes who suffer the injustice of globalized brutality.
We call on those who wore the overalls in past struggles to don them once again.
We call for the color orange, as testament to the victims of a war that turns countless deaths into sanitized language, and human beings into "detainees."
Orange for the alarm we raise at an impending catastrophe, as U.S. elites prepare for another attack in the name of "security" and "democracy."
Orange for the threat level we face today, in this 500-year nightmare from which we must awake.
Only an army of dreamers can stop the nightmare of war!
ALL OUT! YA BASTA!
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Our Principles of Activity:
We are a movement of dreamers. Motivated by love and the desire to create a better and more just world, we strive to create a movement that allows us to focus our rage toward WAR and its brutality through direct, non-violent, yet militant engagement with its perpetrators. But this strategy must also include an emphasis on art, music and other vibrant, creative expressions. We will not only wear the overalls together, but also make music, art, and dance, and affirm life against death.
In the past, those that have engaged in these tactics that we advocate have been those peoples self-defined as "men", those who most likely benefit from the system of white privelege. But, as we come together on the streets, we are also: people of color, women, queer people, poor people, transgender people and people who identify outside of the gender binary, people of different abilities, economic backgrounds, educations and experiences.
We acknowledge that for some people putting their bodies on the line is not a whimsical choice, but a part of daily survival. And for others it is a choice with the potential for great risk and consequences because of the particular oppressions of the US injustice system. We acknowledge the privilege inherent in our choice to engage in this tactic, and we seek to work in solidarity with those who cannot do so and those who daily face the risk of arrest based solely on their identities.
Too often direct confrontation with the state has failed or divided those with shared beliefs because we have allowed supremacy to play out in the streets. We seek to struggle together to challenge these manifestations when they happen and to actively hold each other accountable.
We seek action that is transformative- for ourselves and the anti-war movement as a whole. We are committed to a process of organizing and action that mirrors our beliefs in absolute liberation for all, mutual aid and creation as a true act of revolution.
We are dedicated to building a sustainable movement and a "politics as prelude", that fights to end the US war machine at home and abroad and that continues this work beyond any one action or event. We envision this tactic, and its parameters, as part of an ongoing strategy for engagement and escalation of dissent aimed at dismantling the machinery of global violence.
We seek direct engagement but not, at this time, the use of physical violence, to confront the forces of "order" and "security". We also wish to send a clear and unequivocal message to the state and its propaganda wing (the corporate media), and therfore reject the use of shields or "soft" weapons of any kind (including our fists). We ask that those who have a desire to aggressively resist the police sit this one out. Your time will come.
We commit to these principles and will hold ourselves and each other accountable as we organize and mobilize in the streets!
We are an army of dreamers! Forward! Ya Basta!
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