Direct Action: Memoirs of an Urban Guerrilla
Reviewed by Jonathan Slyk
Direct Action: Memoirs of an Urban Guerrilla by Ann Hansen (Between the
Lines, 720 Bathurst St, Suite 404, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2R4, Canada,
www.btlbooks.com; and AK Press, 674-A 23rd St, Oakland, CA 94612-1163, &
POB 12766, Edinburgh, EH8 9YE, Scotland, www.akpress.org; 2001) 493 pp.
$19.95 paper.
From the opening pages describing the spectacular arrest on a winding
mountain highway to the finely-grained portraits of daily existence within
the claustrophobic world of underground sabotage, this sprawling adventure
reads at times so much like a plot lifted from an espionage thriller that
it’s hard to imagine such remarkable events occurring in a young, white,
idealistic woman’s life. But for the author, living the dream as an urban
guerrilla was anything but glamorous, even though there were occasional
thrills and moments of triumph.
In the early 1980s, Ann Hansen was part of a west coast anarchist group
that would go on to engage in the most notorious anti-authoritarian armed
resistance in Canadian history. Calling itself Direct Action, the
five-member cell began a D.I.Y. lifestyle that included shoplifting,
dumpster diving and auto theft before stepping up to what culminated in the
bombings of both a B.C. Hydro substation on Vancouver Island and a cruise
missile guidance system manufacturing plant in Toronto. This was back in
the days when direct action meant something more than giant street puppets
or going limp at demos. A time when punk, peace, anti-nuclear and
environmental protests all converged in a way not dissimilar to today’s
anti-globalization movement. The exploits of Hansen, Brent Taylor, Doug
Stewart, Gerry Hannah and Julie Belmas, later dubbed "The Squamish Five" by
the media (after the nearby logging town where they were eventually
arrested), reached national cult status by the time of their capture and
subsequent trial, but within a few short years had receded into relative
obscurity. All received lengthy prison sentences. Hansen, the eldest, got
life and did seven years of hard time before being paroled.
Expecting a tough-talking, streetwise ex-con, I was somewhat surprised to
hear a warm voice sounding like a children’s librarian on the other end of
the phone. "What do you think of the cover?" she asked me nervously. "Do
you think it’s, you know, too similar to those planes and buildings in New
York?" As fate would have it, the first copies of Direct Action landed on
the Toronto publisher’s desk the morning of September 11. Not surprisingly,
the book’s release was delayed for a month. Also previously receiving the
manuscript were three of the other four former members—who gave their
approval. Hysteria over terrorism and the current fear surrounding dissent
have kept publicity and speaking engagements low profile.
Several weeks after our initial conversation, at an all-day grill in
downtown Vancouver, Ann Hansen and I are wolfing down breakfast and talking
about politics, running a small business and the book that finally spells
out what really happened all those years ago. Hansen, who by law cannot
receive money from the book, says the writing experience was cathartic.
"When I got out of prison, my whole political identity was disintegrated.
It took me ten years just to recover emotionally. It was only after my
cabinetmaking business ended, when I was mentally more free, that I started
to think about that period in my life again." The memoir, she says, was
intended as both an historical document and a cautionary tale for would-be
guerrillas. Yet it can also serve as a basis for discussion around tactics
(which are explicitly detailed), since it highlights the uneasy
relationship between pacifists and more militant activists and discloses
some of the righteous condemnation that often divides the wider milieu in
general.
The sense of time and place in British Columbia are accurately conveyed, as
is most of the political dialogue, reflecting a local anarchist scene that
was strongly influenced by eco-feminism. Direct Action’s critique of
civilization was at least as sophisticated as any other of the time, which,
considering it was largely an intuitive grasp of Leviathan by individuals
in their early twenties, and Perlman’s classic work Against His-Story had
yet to come out, is a tribute to their nascent understanding. Access to
thousands of pages of police wiretap and bug surveillance transcripts
allowed Hansen to literally recreate verbatim much of the psycho-dynamics
among the group members, producing a slice of reality that is dramatic
without being maudlin. And the narrative device of interspersing the cops’
perspectives, whose characters are fictionalized, helps to heighten the
sense of jeopardy. My only problem with the book is it seems overly
drawn-out with the entire last quarter devoted to preparation for a Brink’s
robbery, and no less than three pages elsewhere concerning a haircut at a
beauty school. Meandering details tend to make this otherwise extraordinary
and intensely moving account drag in places. "But that’s what our lives
were like toward the end," explains Hansen. "I wanted to describe the
action, but also those times of monotony and boredom we faced." The story’s
denouement is handled in the epilogue, where, in the sagacious final
paragraphs, the author’s own hard-won thoughts on tactics affirm an
unwavering militancy.
Written with passion and a fearless honesty, Direct Action will likely set
the gold standard for contemporary anarchist memoirs, if not for its
superior writing then for its relevance for today’s struggles around
globalization, eco-defence and the "war on terrorism." Reading about the
promise and perils of direct action, the personal doubts and the
philosophical contradictions reminded me of Derrick Jensen’s poignant line:
"Every morning when I wake up, I ask myself whether I should write or blow
up a dam." Ambivalence over choosing the pen or the sword is not an
uncommon feeling for many of us. Of course it doesn’t have to be either/or,
and our gift is that Ann Hansen—a real life warrior princess—has now done
both.
Link: http://www.anarchymag.org/53/toc.html
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=03/01/07/6660109
