Toledo Tales

Left: United and committed to change

(Toledo, OH) The five members of the Toledo-area Workers' Solidarity Collective said that they are excited about the launch of a springtime "consciousness-raising campaign."

"2007 will go down in history as the year in which the elimination of poverty and violence becomes seen as an attainable goal, by encouraging nation-states to harmonize their legal apparatuses," said Mitch Bednarski, a member of the group. "The world cannot survive many more decades of rule by violent gangs of armed males calling themselves governments. The situation is insanely suicidal, and we in Toledo will be lynchpins in sparking the Revolution, although maybe we shouldn't use the word 'lynch,' since it carries such obvious connotations of the post-Reconstruction South, or the word 'pin,' since it is such a glaring reference to the penetrating phallus."

Bednarski said that the group plans to "take the fight to the streets" with some innovative programs this spring.

"We have some awesome letter writing and petition campaigns, solidarity meetings, film screenings and tours by visiting activists," he said, licking stamps on some Earth-friendly, biodegradable envelopes. "Only those who rise up against capitalist, patriarchal authority with a fully developed revolutionary consciousness, and who are moved by the clear values of equality and freedom and endowed with an immaculate ethic are the true revolutionary vanguard. Not like Kyle, who took off with the $100 we raised for 'Food Not Bombs' and blew it on a sheet of acid. That was totally unrevolutionary-like."

Raising the wrong kind of consciousness

The group; however, is struggling with one "major structural barrier," said Bednarski.

"A motion was put forward in committee last week for the Collective to start issuing ID cards," he said, scratching the back of his neck. "At first Sheila said that only fucking cops demand IDs, since the pigs need to know who to watch in order to protect the social order, but I think it might be kind of cool to have, like, matching IDs and T-shirts. But the rest of the committee said I was a bourgeois wanker, and we dropped the question. But I still think we could get some matching hemp hats or something."

Labels: anarcho-feminism, Toledo, Workers' Solidarity Collective