CONTENT The content of the art work presented to the masses should be on the political line that capitalism is the root cause of all society's ills. I suggest studying the writing from Bakunin to Marx to grab a deeper understanding of how capitalism projects itself onto ourselves. I know there are deep theoretical differences (between anarchism and communism) but they do share some common threads. Through studying both a person can decide what is more true, if any. The rest of this essay is written in the belief that the reader agrees that all of society's ills are rooted in the system of capitalism. If the reader does not believe that, this is true the essay will fall on deaf ears. From the begin of D.O.T.S. I started to make art to reflect feelings of rage against the police brutality. I always felt there was a connection between police brutality and capitalism. I'm still looking for ways to express this connection through visual art. The connection is that police are not there to protect or serve us but are here to repress any and all people in a fucked up situation or people working to change a fucked up situation. The police function with the belief that if there were no police, we would all become savages and kill each other. This misconception the masses have is based on white supremacy which this country was found on and still ruled by. White supremacy is so deeply rooted in capitalism that no reform is possible. It's easy to say, "Cops are bad because they're bad people." But, actually, cops are bad because their job is to repress the working class. Cops are here to keep the ruling class ruling. The sad thing is that most cops don't know or ignore this and really believe that they make a difference in the community. My work on police brutality made the connection between police brutality and racism and class differences. These are forms of repression. Police don't do these things to protect us; they do them to stop us. My own understanding of the state comes out of this work. So whether a person wants to work on police repression, homelessness, sexism, racism or any other social ill, the connection to the root of the problem needs to be made. We also need to look at the problem the other way around. For example, in the paragraph above, I took police repression and connected it to capitalism. We need to start with capitalism and make the connection with police repression, sexism, racism, and all these wars - whether it's the war on drugs or the war on terrorism. (I'm waiting for the war on wars - I guess that's the war on terrorism.) Working with an art collective where the point of unity is anti-imperialism has deepened my own understanding of capitalism and how art can expose the hypocrisy of it. Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism. They are one and the same. Working with such a group I hope to bring the theory of D.O.T.S. into practice and, hopefully, into reality. One of the posters we produce says, "The Walls of our Cities shall become the Anti-Imperialist Art Gallery." This slogan gives context to what the group action will become. It will not happen overnight. Most stickers and posters on the streets are ads for a new record, movie, band, or event. What we (D.O.T.S.) are doing is out of the norm and will take time to develop so that every person recognizes and understands the messages we are putting forward. I feel right now the general public is not aware of the actively that is going on; that the work benefits the people doing the work more than the one looking at the work. This doesn't mean we need to stop; it means we need to do it more, bigger and deffer. I feel the more that join in, the more powerful the action(street art) will become. I feel other projects can stem from this action. Even other protects that already exist can re-energize themselves by taking up this action. We are up against great odds but we don't believe it's impossible to make political street art the dominant images on the city landscape. I am from a small town. I started to write graf in that small town on the west coast. Modern graf started in NYC before or around the time when I was born. Fifteen years later, it found me and rest of the world. Political street art most definitely will become the dominant images on our cities streets. I'm not just writing it; I'm prophesizing it. By no means, do I feel that this action alone will change anything. I have no romantic belief that after I, or we, design our 100th poster that revolution will come and save us all. I do believe that it will bring new people forward and can bring new understanding of how capitalism works on to the masses. I believe this art will play a major role in bringing a new system of thought into reality. BIGGER THAN D.O.T.S. I believe we as a whole need to reexamine capitalism to see if it is worth what the capitalist says it is. To do this, a few of us need to think and act very radical. I am writing this knowing only a few people will ever read it and the people reading it will reside in a subculture (graf, activism, punk rock, hip-hop) and that's a problem. Subcultures can create a feeling of unity but it alienates at the same time. Even people who are in the that subculture can feel alienated from it. We need to figure a way out of this contradiction soon or we will never see a better world. We need to start to build an infrastructure that can be a working model of how a world can work without capitalism. This needs to be done on a mass scale, internationally. It needs to be done with little or no help from the state (except free money). We need to look at the necessities of life (food, housing, heath care, a job that means something) and make them assessable to everybody. This sounds very abstract and it is because I have no idea in what form this will become after thousands upon millions of people decide what it looks like and make it a reality. We, the "movement," need to be in the lives of everyday people, every day. Communists are going to say this can't happen until state power is seized. And they are sort of right. But an invisible open infrastructure needs to be working before anybody in their right mind is going to sign up for any great social movement looking to radicaly transform social relationships. People need a reference point to decide if things are going to be any better than what they have already. The total abandonment of social service programs (like feeding the hungry, giving health care, shelter, job training) by revolutionaries needs to be reexamined, especially by revolutionaries that hold up the Black Panther Party as vanguards of the 1960's - 70's. The Black Panther Party wasn't considered Public Enemy # 1 by FBI for nothing. The party was composed of young black men and women not just saying there were going to change shit for the better, but were doing it. When the youth needed food before school, the party fed them. When the community needed heath care, the party ran a free clinic. When the police were beating, raping and murdering the people, the party was out on the street with guns watching the police to make sure the shit didn't happen. Now there were plenty of theoretical problems within the Black Panther Party, but the plan of action in their social services programs was not one of them. These social programs worked so well, the state took them over. The work on social services made the Black Panther Party very visible to the masses and also to the state. And state came down hard, so hard that the movement never quite recovered, even today - thirty years later. To say social services are just a waste of time because they will bring only reform is wrong. In the best case, the state will step in and regulate the program. If the program is well received, the community is willing to fight to keep it. In the worst case, the state steps in and stops it because the community is not willing to fight. In both examples there is a need for a revolutionary role. In the best example, the revolutionary needs to struggle with the people to show the state is not needed and the service doesn't to be regulated by the state. In the worst example, the revolutionary role is the same, but needs to make more noise so that community knows it's under attack. Also, the revolutionary should bring all this up before it happens so a plan can be formed beforehand. There is no need to hold back. We know what the state is capable of. We need to make it very clear we are willing to defend the service. The American idea of "What's in it for me?" needs to be answered. It needs to be answered by living examples (social services). But we need to understand that the "what's in it for me" idea is rooted in capitalism. The contradiction is we can escape it without answering it. We shouldn't believe that at best our actions can only bring social reform. It should be known that the worst can bring social reform and the best will bring a revolutionary solution. Revolutionary struggle can take place in a social service programs as much as in anti-war coalitions, if not more. We should not stop working on one (anti-war movements) and start working for the other (social service). Both should be worked on and made into one and the same. The ruling class's infrastructure is control of water, sewage, power, gas, telephone, education, police, roads, fire, etc. These services will never be in the hands of the working class until capitalism is dismantled. The movement can start to build its own infrastructure through social services. In this way they can build a community of resistance and be a positive, visible voice against capitalism to the masses on an everyday basis. The infrastructure needs to umbrella all social service work; it important for people to focus their work, but if they are not an umbrella to a larger group, their work could go unnoticed. Further, it could be harder to connect the issue to the larger problem capitalism. Today the movement has splintered into thousands of different organizations. This needs to end. A united front needs happen, working on an infrastructure can bring a united front into reality. The building of an infrastructure will directly challenge the power of the state. The ones building such an infrastructure need to beware of this from the get-go. The state is not going to roll over and let their power be challenged without a fight. There needs to be no illusion that the state will just crumble and that the ruling class will collectively decide, "You guys are right. Here is all the wealth of the world, la la la la la." That shit ain't never gonna happen; we must be ready for them. This infrastructure can be built from or top of organizations such Food Not Bombs other anti war groups, info space etc. The need and problem is to grow not just locally, not just nationally, but also internationally. There is a need for a clear platform and program to be in place. We need to see what's wrong and then act and build up from there. There is no need to move from your own city or country to start doing this. As far as I know, capitalism is everywhere and needs to be confronted everywhere at once. This gets back to the real problem. All of this can't really happen until state power is seized or destroyed. The infrastructure will be limited because of capital, time, and housing all other traps that capitalism is full of. But the reason to go forward still stands. People need a reference point, something concrete to see and work for. They need to see it in their life time, in their own experience in order to learn from it, to gain experience, to create a new way of working together, to see that capitalism is not what it is cracked up to be. How the fuck does D.O.T.S. fit in to all this? As I stated before, the act of street art alone will not change a god damn thing. Street art attached to a larger group will make that a group's actively known to the masses, if the street art is up (meaning it's everywhere). The masses will beware of the social programs and where to go to plug in. This will be the most effective way D.O.T.S. (street art) can work. The D.O.T.S. can be done without a larger group, but art work could be read as a dead end to the viewer. There will be nowhere the viewer can go to plug in. And being anonymous can also thicken this wall between art maker and art viewer; we need to change this. The art maker and art viewer can be one and the same by throwing the idea of aesthetics out the window. Who gives a shit if it looks pretty as long as the political line is correct? Capitalism is shit. We should never say anything nice about it. Art work, work and play should be done to reflect this. No market plays fair; no market is natural, no market will stop exploitation. Capitalism is here to enslave us to a wage, to the state, to the banks, to the landlords. We as D.O.T.S. must gain an understanding of this and bring that understanding to the masses. We must become willing to do anything to end capitalism. go