Keywords: Direct Action, Urban Guerillas, Armed Struggle, Biography
Title: Direct Action: Memoirs Of An Urban Guerilla
Author/Artist: Ann Hansen
Publisher:Between the Lines/AK Press Distribution
Media: Book
Reviewer: Brian Burch
No matter what has happened in the last twenty years, the defining
moment of my political activist career was the bombing of Litton
Industries. Their plant, in north west Toronto, was where Canadian
complicity in the arms race was more publicly revealed. In the factory on
City View Drive Canadian tax dollars were subsidising the production of
the guidance system for the American air launched cruise missile. For
years, the Cruise Missile Conversion Project and various local expressions
of the Alliance for Non-violent Action, persistently and non-violently
attempted to end this expression of Canadian involvement in the arms race.
In the fall of 1982 there was a rupture, an upheaval in the resistance to
manufacturing the tools of war --- a bomb went off at Litton Industries, a
bombing that the group Direct Action took responsibility for.
The police took this opportunity to go after peace activists. Our
homes and offices were raided. People were picked up off the street or out of
movie theatres for questioning. False charges were laid to pressure
people to name names. It was a fearful and formative time, one that is
hard to realise was 20 years ago.
Ann Hansen was one of the members of Direct Action. Her book is a
slightly fictionalised account of the history of Direct Action and the
political realities of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Reading Direct Action, one gets a hint of Emma Goldman's Living My
Life. There is a strong, personal narrative linked to a broader world of
movements for positive and compassionate social transformation. Created conversations
between known activists, sections that are almost a diary in nature, parts
that are close to a newspaper feature in balanced detail --- Direct Action
is a structurally complex work.
Finding out that Ann Hansen had not read Living My Life was a surprise. None-the-less, Direct Action is in the tradition of Living My Life --- an open reflection on personal experiences living in a revolutionary milieu.
I shall confess that my first time reading through the work, my first
intent was to see if I was mentioned by name --- and it was. While I was
amused at the use of a possible conversation between myself and Len
Desroches to indicate some of the different responses to the Litton
Bombing within the peace community, what struck home the most was the
short retelling of the incident of being picked up by police who were
driving an unmarked car.
This is, to me, symbolic of one of the less
talked about realities in the aftermath of the bombing of Litton --- the
effects on the lives of people unconnected to the bombing. For about 2
years there was a strong sense of fear in the lives of a number of
activists wondering about what will happen next --- who will have their home
raided? Who will face a series of harassing charges? Will one of us be
charged because the police need to charge someone? Our partners and
families faced harassment as well. There was no indication in the book
that this impact --- that the fall out of the bombing would cause harm to
the lives of people far removed from the action --- had been considered by
any of the participants. I would have liked to see that, partly because I
know through correspondence with the 5 while they were in prison that all
of them were genuinely concerned about the victims of the police actions
that arose in the aftermath of the bombings.
What is revealed throughout the book is a real militant compassion.
Ann Hansen is good at portraying the range of issues that the five
participants in Direct Action had attempted to address. There was not a sudden leap from a
desire for social change to a participation in urban guerrilla warfare.
Rather, we are invited to share in a process that helps to reveal why
people who were deeply committed to a just and ecologically sound world
would accept the risks of both their freedom and lives and the lives of
others as a step towards their ideals bearing fruit.
Some of the biographical details of Ann Hansen were a surprise. The
tapestry of relationships she was a part of was quite complex. Some were
intensely emotional, indicating a capacity for love that I think also
underlies her own willingness to take major personal risks in order to
make life better for others.
The practical details of how the various actions were done, from
the fire bombing of Red Hot Video to the bombing of the Dunsmuir site to
armed robberies, don't indicate a romanticised view of armed struggle or
sabotage. Rather, they are pragmatic and to a great extent background
details to the story of the Vancouver 5/Squamish Five/Direct
Action/Wimmin's Fire Brigade from Ann Hansen's personal perspective.
While Direct Action is a personal statement, it is also an historical
document. 20 years ago, revolution was not merely an advertising concept.
Like in the period when the Weather Underground arose, there were massive
and public demands for radical social transformation. In Nicaragua and El
Salvador there were massive, popular revolts against U.S. backed regimes.
In Canada leaders of unions and churches were participating in
demonstrations that were definitively anti-capitalist and anti-militarist.
There was enthusiasm as victories could be pointed to --- such as
reproductive freedom --- that had been run through mass, non-violent
resistance to unjust laws. So if there were roadblocks to change, was it
unreasonable to want to remove the roadblocks? If there was immediate
harm going to occur --- such as building weapons for the U.S. military or
destroying the ecosystem or exploiting women's sexuality --- was it
unreasonable for people to try and sabotage the actual places where harm
was occurring?
Direct Action looks at this reality and helps to question it. In
the light of a strong anti-globalisation movement and the U.S. response to the events of
September 11th, I think that this is an essential book to read and reflect
upon. We are in a world where the police have recently been given extreme
powers to crack down on dissent. If nothing else, this book will encourage
serious thought about how to effectively resist while considering the
consequences of resistance.
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