Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook

Known among the locals as "No-Face Ray" for cursing the ways of the Oneida and declaring himself against all sanity and tradition "Chief for Life," Ray was attempting to develop this pocket of land, the thirty acres of the traditional Oneida, the last remaining sovereign Oneida land. Women had been evicted by Ray's private "Housing Inspectors," and seen their houses bulldozed before their children's very eyes. Shopping malls were to rise up, following the pattern of twisted and terrible progress familiar to any denizen of Western capitalism and civilization. If you stood on the edge of the thirty acres, you could already see the future: a giant casino, sprawhng across the land like a bloated carcass.

Ray's private army was patrolling the thirty acres, and we were told that the official explanation for our presence was that we had been invited to a tribal dance. Dancing it was. One by one, all the Oneida families of the thirty acres crowded into the little longhouse, and with them they brought a never-ending procession of all sorts of food and drink. After a rousing meal, during which Ray Halbritter's name was cursed into the highest heavens and the deepest hell, one of the older men stood in the middle of the room and began chanting in a tongue my ears could not comprehend, a sound rich with dignity beyond compare. Children lined up behind his booming bass voice, providing a brilliant treble. Soon the entire room, except for us white folk, was dancing up a storm. They absolutely refused to allow us to remain mere spectators, grabbing us hand in hand until we were all dancing side by side, some of us with considerably less skill than others.

When the dance came to an end, an old man with white hair pulled two of our band off to the side. "Did you bring baseball bats?" he asked. We weren't sure what he meant, so we said that we were "ready for whatever it took," an equally coded answer. He then started telling us stories about bingo parlors burning and Mohawk revolts, about the first winter snow and Ray's mother's facelifts. After considerable mystery, he left us wdth a simple message: "Gringo Windshield."

Ray Halbritter was going to enter the thirty acres to hold a meeting of his cronies in an ancient longhouse that he had closed to the community long ago. His private army of goons was to be there to strike fear into the locals' hearts. In the morning the old man's words rang true. A small line of us in full black bloc regalia surrounded the larger crowd of traditional Oneida, who were for the first time in years going to contest Ray openly. We prayed that our threadbare patches of anarchy and punk would protect us from bullets. Ray scurried into the longhouse at our approach, and his goons tried to arrest one of our burly black-masked friends. I screamed, "Let him go!"

Magic.

Ray's pohce did let him go. We were shocked. Since we weren't Oneida, Ray's police had no legal right to arrest or even touch us. Bristhng with badges, guns, and clubs, they just told us to leave. We began laughing in their faces and mocking them. "Police? You aren't even real police! Come on, just touch me!" "So how does it feel to beat up women in front of their children for a living?" "Don't feel so high and mighty now, do you?"

The traditional Oneida were delighted, and began joining in the taunts. Under cover of the commotion outside, they sent their children through the back door of the longhouse. Inside, Ray and the world he represented found themselves emperors without clothes, as litde children ran around in the meeting openly defying him and giggling at his self-important madness. Soon, the commotion got so out of hand that the local city pohce showed up, along with reporters?an unheard of event in Ray's territory. The traditional Oneida took the police and reporters aside, showing them their home videos of Ray's police beating women and destroying their homes. Smiles broke out on aU our faces when Ray turned tail and fled. The ice that separated us from the Oneida began to break.

There we stood, two tribes?one ancient and the other new?united against a common enemy. The ancient tribe was fighting for survival, and, unlike our ancestors at Wounded Knee, we turned our backs on allegiance to race, nation, and other fictions

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to join them in arms. This alchemy released magic?police unable to police, children ridiculing kings. The Oneida's struggle against extinction goes on, as does ours. Let us hope it goes on together, as we realize the possibilities of tribal alliances that can overcome our loneliest moments and the most impossible of odds. Let us struggle?and dance?together.

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Spell Casting

Desire

Faith