Claustrophobia is produced and edited by a small collective of anti-authoritarians . We see this paper, along with all of the other projects we are involved in, as a small part of what we need to do to make our dreams - of a world without discrimination, coersion, or oppression of any kind - a real alternative to the ugly condition of life today.
We call ourselves anarchists, and make no apologies for that. There is a lot of good still to be learned from the anarchist movement, whatever its problems may be. We hold strong beliefs. THe same way millions of other people hold on tight to any number of other beliefs. Sometimes its a wonder people can breath the air around them with all the clashes of ideologies, value systems, and religions happening all the time. To us that's healthy. Anyone with a sense of passion needs to hold on tight to their beliefs to stay afloat in the sea of frustration that drowns poor people today.
What we're trying to say is that all the fine points of dogma, the history, and the specifics of anarchism isn't what's important to us. We want to see people living in reality, struggling over what's real; not arguing over references that have nothing to do with their life. There are revolutionary and human principles we stand for; we might have come to them through the anarchist scene, others might have found them any kind of way. The principles are what matters.
So what is it that we believe? One, nothing about this world has to be this way. It's not "God's will", its not the way of nature, and we definitely don't think its useless trying to change a situation you can see is straight-out wrong. Struggle is the key.
What unites us as anarchists is that we recognize we share a collective rage with all of humanity. We know its nothing as simple as a rage at "injustice" or anything like that - what use is a concept like "justice" anyways, except to those who want to control other people's lives? What enrages us is the realization that this system denies us our humanity, prevents us from recognizing the humanity of others, and that everything we do that legitimizes the system pushes us deeper down, drives us farther apart from the people around us.
The age we live in is an age marked by division and control. It began when people started living in families under a father's control, and men were able to use power over women and children in their own family as a tool to get power over other men. Power is like junk, once you develop a craving for it, you just need more and more to satisfy you until you end up killing or dying to get what you want. That's what's been happening to our world for thousands or years. When men's power over children and women wasn't enough, they created a class structure where some men would have to work for other men. And when exploiting the working classes of the land nearby wasn't enough for these lords, they would go to war to conquer other lands and enslave more subjects to work them. And when finally even that wasn't enough, these rulers started to develop philosphies of white supremacy and all that to make all of what they were doing seem natural, and in the process cement their control over all their subjects. Along the way, most everyone has had their life reduced to the production of wealth for rich white men. Fleshy machinery that is expendable as scrap metal, insulted and condescended to.
We are united by a common rage, yes, but also by a common love for the human spirit and its potential, and a common desire for an unbounded life. Love and rage. Its the title of a book by Carl Harp, an anarchist revolutionary who was murdered in prison over fifteen years ago. Its also the name of one of the most influential anarchist organizations in North America today. Those two words, better than any political statement could, represent what we stand for, and what our comrades have been struggling and dying over for hundreds of years.
We believe in living life to the fullest, in developing all of the humanity that exists inside all of us. We believe that no one is free while others are oppressed. We believe that through struggle, the new life will be born.
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