Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center
Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center
Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center
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milltant mural In east Los Angeles: Strident voices from some quarters have grown louder.<br />
Photo for the Trtoune by AP<br />
tegrated" if you will - into this specific society.<br />
So in Amerika intra-oppressor class distinctions<br />
have always been muted on the mass level by the fact that<br />
the main distinction was whether you were a settler or a<br />
subject, whether you were in the slave patrols or enslaved<br />
in the fields, whether you were in the frontier garrison<br />
community or imprisoned in the reservation. This was the<br />
all-important identity, to which everything else was subordinate.<br />
Only someone with no contact with reality can fail<br />
to see this.<br />
The Garrison Community<br />
The Euro-Amerikan community is not just a conglomeration<br />
of stores and residences. It is a physical structure<br />
for settler life, in which the common culture of the<br />
Empire garrison still lives on. These garrison communities<br />
are enforcers of the oppressor nation way of life among its<br />
citizens, demanding social conformity and ideological<br />
regimentation. They have certain specific characteristics:<br />
the most glaring of which is that colonial subjects are<br />
generally barred out. Why should the settler garrison let<br />
the "Indians" live inside the walls of the fort? There is an<br />
arrogance but at the same time an underlying feeling of being<br />
threatened or besieged by "those people" - which occasionally<br />
breaks out in collective hysteria (during which<br />
guns are flourished and the laggards rush to buy out the<br />
local gunshops). The confining, boring and philistine way<br />
of life of these communities is one reason Euro-Amerikan<br />
youth "dropped out" of them in such numbers during the<br />
1 960s.<br />
There are, of course, different types of settler<br />
communities, distinguished by a number of things, including<br />
by class. The community of multi-millionaires in<br />
Palm Springs or Aspen is very different from the communities<br />
of Canarsie or Skokie or Charlestown. As are the<br />
"hip-eoisie" communities of Berkeley or Greenwich<br />
Village. On the mass level, however, a certain type oJ<br />
supra-class Euro-Amerikan community has been<br />
characteristic for over a century. It is a small homeowning,<br />
small-propertied community. In it the lower middle<br />
class, the labor aristocracy and other workers share the<br />
tight but generally comfortable life of the settler garrison.<br />
This is where community life is supported by the con-<br />
151 spicuous concentration of state services - parks, garbage