Forward> The Case of Daniel Baker: Online Speech and Community Defense
On January 15th, 2021, two men received a knock on the door of their Tallahassee apartment from someone claiming to be delivering a Postmate parcel… Moments later, their door crashed open and a percussive grenade ignited as FBI swarmed in with guns drawn…
This was the arrest of US military veteran, YPG volunteer medic and instructor of yoga and jujitsu Daniel Baker on charges of inciting violence at Florida’s state capital. On October 12th, 2021, Dan Baker was sentenced to 44 months in Federal Prison for “interstate communication of threats” for his facebook posts and his militant anti-fascism, including his time fighting Daesh or ISIS in Rojava.
To Support Dan: see below Essay
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Intro: We all live in a Story- a social and historical context we rarely think about. For instance that women, half of humanity, are still systematically discriminated and oppressed. Dan Baker has been studying in prison and here makes a brilliant attempt to frame a new HER-STORY.. read on, it could change your life.
HerStory
from Mongoose Distro Nov 2022 by Dan Baker via thefreeonline illustrations added
This essay is being written from prison. I am a political prisoner, which has made me strong in my convictions and allowed me to define myself and uproot patriarchal, racist, sexist, hierarchical, specieist and capitalist conditioning. But the programing has done damage deep within my mind, so I must struggle daily to change and grow in a more wholesome direction.
Herstory – by Dan Baker
I offer this self criticism, that I still regularly catch myself thinking and speaking from a sexist perspective.
For example my cell mate, a gay black man named Muhammad, tested me with a simple riddle, which I failed. His riddle went like this: “A boy and his father are in a car crash. The father dies. He is taken to a hospital but the doctors says ‘I cannot operate on this boy for he is my son!’ Who is the doctor?”
Obviously the doctor is the mother, but in my exhaustion at the end of a day of fitness exercises and stress in prison, I was assuming the doctor must be a man, as I thought it was a gay, progressive riddle. The riddle can be told with the mother dying in the car crash and the father being a nurse, a traditionally female role.
So I still have a lot of work to do, if sexist tendencies come out when I am tired. This shows the depth of the patriarchal conditioning of my childhood, and the years of work I must still put in as a man to overcome that.
Being a man I am fundamentally unfit to teach anyone about feminism, only women can teach us about feminism, and that is how I learned. This essay is part of my efforts to become a better man, a better member of my community, a better person in general, all gender aside, and to internalize and share what the brave and capable women of the YPJ have taught me.
I hope men who read this will pass these words on to other men and do their own research, write essays and send me a copy so we can grow together. I would love for women who read this to offer me criticisms and teach me more about feminism, and I also need to hear from all of the other genders and everyone in between each gender.
This work is incomplete until we have liberated transgender comrades, the full spectrum of gay friends and welcomed into the community everyone who does not easily fit into a male or female category.
All of our fates are bound up together, and a bundle of sticks will not be broken.
The purpose of this essay is to acknowledge that a war against women exists, to share Her Story and to motivate all conscientious people to support the perennial rage of women, the most oppressed population. The Women’s Revolution in Iran, Rojava, Haiti, North America and the Chiapas needs all our support and efforts.
In this essay I will draw on the writings of Abdullah Ocalan, Mikhail Bakunin, Voltairine de Cleyre, Sam Dolgoff, Louise Michele, Lucy Parsons, Ruth Kinna, Jeff Conant, Comandante Durito, Subcomandante Marcos, “Strangers in a tangled wilderness” (a collective), Maxwell Schnurer, Pattrice Jones, Lynne Segal and Tom Wetzel, among others.
I am simply expropriating their beautiful thoughts, realizations and ideas to paint a broad picture. I take no credit for the progress they have forged for us. I do take responsibility for all the faults of this essay.
Recent events in Iran, Haiti, North America, Rojava and the Chiapas mountains have inspired me to raise my own hoarse voice. I am most deeply moved by the liberation struggles of women, vulnerable populations and animals.
All of these beings liberation are connected, as I will prove here shortly. This relates to the women’s struggles in Iran, and the Women’s Revolution is the foundation upon which all Revolutions are made.
The workers of the world will win or die depending on how well women and animals are liberated.
This essay will go in chronological order from ancient times to the present day struggles and explain why and how we resist patriarchy, support women and can win liberation for all beings in this lifetime, while creating the conditions for total liberation in the future.
In ancient times Neolithic society was based on women’s emotional intelligence, which is better developed than men’s analytical intelligence.
Women have a stronger bond to life, being creators, mothers and complex social beings. But women are more than sister, mother, daughter and lover, and all men have a responsibility to see each woman and other genders as more than these gendered labels- as members of the community, as professionals and comrades and defenders and so on.
The Free 