The Daily

U. Washington

At the teach-in, Leonard sat behind a foldable table. He warmly and eagerly passed out the fruits of his late-night labor to the kids passing through the black door into the Human Services Council building downtown.

Leonard's pocketknife and key-chain were hooked to the belt around his blue jeans. As he knowingly chose between the 50 or so pamphlets spread before him, the subtle tattoos that dotted his forearms were visible.

Outside, sports fans ambled by the center toward Safeco field to watch the Mariners lose game three. About 200 kids stopped short of the new stadium and filed into the dingy space on a short diagonal street off Pioneer Square to learn more about anarchy.

Leonard, along with others of the Association for Northwest Anarchists, helped to coordinate the day-long session. Classes ranged from Anarchism 101 to Anarcha-Feminism to Animal Liberation.

Leonard, who has been doing this sort of thing since he was 16 -- when he started listening to punk rock and playing drums in a band -- is enjoying himself. He welcomed everybody to the center with a smile. Occasionally a girl walked over and hugged him, begging to go hiking with him the next day.

He cracked jokes with his friends while kids rode long-boards over the smooth linoleum floor. There was a bag of bread and bagels and some orange juice. A long table looked like it had been wrapped with books about anarchism -- a display set up by Seattle-based Left Bank Books.

As I sat down with Leonard to ask him some questions I pointed out that Francisco Franco can't be considered a communist -- something that was just mentioned in one of the classes. Leonard ignored the comment, and I decided not to mention that I just heard a version of the Russian revolution that didn't include Leon Trotsky.

Leonard may not be as interested in getting all the facts straight as he is about giving kids somewhere to go and something to do. Apart from organizing events like the anarchist teach-in, he plays in two bands and works with kids at the Redmond Firehouse.

Here is an excerpt from a question-and-answer session with Leonard.

The Daily: Do you find a lot of disagreement among anarchist about how to go about accomplishing things?

Matt Leonard: Yeah, definitely. A big part of that is that, as anarchists, we take one of the most revolutionary philosophies of any ideology or any social struggle out there because we recognize the vast amount of injustices and see the connections.

We stand opposed to pretty much everything in our current social structure. I see things that happen to people of color and people of the Third World, even to people here and to myself, and it enrages you. And so a lot of times that rage is captured by doing what I would deem reactionary things that may not solve the problem, but they give you an immediate feel-good thing, which can be anything from punching someone to breaking a window to even screaming.

People find different ways to channel their feelings, the gut reaction of an injustice, verses looking at things rationally and what's going to solve that injustice and change that situation.

TD: Why is anarchism viewed in such a negative light?

ML: Like I said, it poses a threat to every aspect of the power structure. We don't want to put ourselves in power; we don't want to have different people take power; we want to have everyone controlling their own affairs. By that, anyone who has power we scare.

People with power and wealth are going to find anything they can to marginalize anarchists because it's the biggest threat to them. Like communism is branded as being an inherent bad thing in this country, anarchism is the same way.

TD: What's the difference between libertarianism and anarchism?

ML: In the 1800s, when the term libertarian was being used a lot, it meant libertarian socialism which was basically socialism with individual liberties. Since then libertarianism has lost the socialism aspect where it becomes, 'we want to have individual liberties, we don't want taxes we don't want government,' but never stops to question any other forms of inequalities that exist whether it be racism, sexism, heterosexism or economic inequalities.

I think libertarianism takes the most simplistic aspects of anarchism and puts them out there without a social context. 'We don't want these things holding us back from our individual liberties, but as an individual I'm free to hold everyone else back.'

Anarchism always places it in the social context. We need to have individual liberties in congruence with the rest of the society.

TD: Have things changed since last November?

ML: I think especially in Seattle, WTO was a huge catalyst for mobilizing a lot of people to get involved and active in organizing as well as just raising consciousness in a whole slew of issues and social struggles.

TD: Do other people, non-anarchists, take you more seriously now?

ML: It depends who you're asking. There's definitely more interest in the general public in anarchists. A lot of times that interest is simply curiosity or wanting to poke fun and make fun and see what the anarchists are doing.

I know a lot of people whose ideas of what anarchists are is what they saw on the TV during the WTO. I think most people in the back of their mind do believe that there is something further beyond that and I think they're eager to explore that.

TD: There was a documentary on The Learning Channel that basically painted the Earth First organization as a coercive organization that manipulates and exploits impressionable kids. Do you agree with that portrayal?

ML: Even in the Earth First journal that's an ongoing criticism they have of themselves sometimes; 'we need to get rid of this anti-humanism and these misanthropic views that humanity is flawed.' With Earth First they do, a lot of times, pull in really young, impressionable kids and kind of harvest the fact that these kids are seeing all these problems and think everything's fucked up so let's get out there and fuck shit up back. They don't know what that really causes or what they really do sometimes.

TD: What do you think of tree-spiking, hammering steel spikes in to trees so that when they are harvested, the spikes jam up the saw blades and sometimes injure the loggers?

ML: Sometimes a lot of Earth First stuff is reactionary, and it isn't friendly; and things like tree-spiking don't attract the average person -- it kind of turns them off. So it's a careful balance between reactionary -- what action can be taken immediately to save the forest -- versus what's going to change the social structure. I mean I can morally support breaking Nike's windows.