ARMED STRUGGLE, GUERILLA WARFARE, AND THE SOCIAL MOVEMENT INFLUENCES ON DIRECT ACTION BY ANN HANSEN
M
y name is name is Ann Hansen. I am a 51-year-old Canadian woman who is currently on parole until the prison system has personally viewed my dead body. I was sentenced to “life” for conspiracy to rob an armored car guard, the British Columbia Hydro and Litton bombings, firebombing a Red Hot Video porn store, unlawful possession of explosives and weapons, auto theft, and possession of stolen property. I was arrested on January 20th, 1983 along with four others and charged with these “offences” for actions we carried out as members of an urban guerrilla group called Direct Action. As the name would indicate, our urban guerrilla group identified ideologically with anarchism, and as such, we were struggling to help create a society in which power would rest as much as possible in the hands of the people. We were one of the first guerrilla groups in North America to develop a critique of not only capitalism, but also socialism. Unlike most urban guerrilla groups and social movements during the seventies and eighties, we did not blindly accept the concept that technology, progress, development, science, and material wealth are good in and of themselves. We also did not share the socialist view of the state as a revolutionary vehicle for the people. In our analysis the state is a repressive apparatus that concentrates power and decision-making in the hands of a small number of people who will inevitably become corrupted whether they be peasants, working class, middle class, or ruling class. In retrospect, if I were to label the political analysis of our guerrilla group, Direct Action, it would share more in common with green anarchism than any other ideology. Our politics evolved from our involvement with traditional native people who showed us how western thinking – in the form of patriarchy, capitalism, and even socialism – tended to objectify life on this planet. The traditional native peoples taught us how the objectification of life inherent in the philosophies of capitalism and socialism reduced all life to mere material value, thus reinforced one of the worst aspects of human nature: greed. Practically speaking this means all life is exploited, reducing the environment to a “natural resource” to be “developed” for profit. Animals, birds, fish, and insects become “product,” “livestock,” “pets,” “game,” and “pests.” Women become sex objects to be exploited to sell “products,” while humans in general become “consumers” and “producers.” According to this way of 3
