Is there something "unethical" about finding, as you put it, "a Marketing paradigm that works"? Do you want to go tell, say, Yahoo! or Amazon.com that?

Madison Avenue proved this half a century ago, and now young entrepreneurs like Srini Kumar are implementing the lesson of a commodification society.

Free enterprise is simply a component of FREEDOM. We like freedom, and that freedom includes the freedom to buy and sell things. Anarchists oppose HIERARCHY and COERCION, and I can assure you that we are free of those twin perils.

Though the rhetoric at unamerican.com says that this is a wave, a grassroots attempt to subvert the system, it is that very system which allows for a target and a means to make bank.

Meanwhile, kids, Srini laughs all the way to the bank, and deposits bank, on your disillusionment.

People pay for things they RESPECT. Certainly, they also pay for a lot of bullshit, but when you buy a music CD, Rod, it's because you LIKE the artist, am I correct? So our customers LIKE what we make, and therefore we think of the money they give us as a blessing. Somehow I doubt you're getting the same kind of respect we're getting, you know?

BITTER, Rod?

G21: I'll conduct the interview, thanks. Why would a site dedicated to anarchy, as you claim, need a publicist?

SRINI: Two things.

Molly isn't my publicist. She introduced herself as that[at the Web Design & Development conference] because she WANTED to be a publicist, and thought it would be FUN to publicize me. She is a nice person who likes Unamerican.com. But she isn't my publicist.

Anarchism is a great idea (or more accurately, a set of great ideas). Great ideas need publicity, or else nobody will find out about them. If one does not publicize one's ideas, those ideas are doomed. Marx was a great self-publicist, as was Castro. These people are hardly capitalists.

I'm finding your grasp of anarchy etc. to be rather primitive. Where did you hear that anarchists are against media coverage? Why shouldn't we use any means at our disposal to get our word out?

G21: Besides producing stickers, cups, mugs, caps, a website what are you actively doing to change "The System?"

SRINI: I am encouraging people to be self-sufficient. Rod, I don't have a BOSS. I am ENTIRELY OUTSIDE THE SYSTEM. If, say, the U.S. Dollar crashed tomorrow, I would still be a happy camper - there would still be a context that would provide for my existence.

These products that you find so easy to disparage are a MEDIUM. We are giving individual Americans a VOICE. People really appreciate the chance to display anti-mainstream sentiments and it is our delight to serve them in this desire.

We also are bringing a lot of people together, politicizing everyone who visits us, and standing up as a site that provides actual relevance and inspiration to our visitors. We've got an entire agenda, Rod, an agenda that includes the termination of enforced patriotism and consumption, advocacy for controversial opinions and lifestyles, and connecting people who cleave to non-standard ideas. That's what we're about.

G21: What social organizations which are working to change the system are you involved with?

SRINI: Good question!

First off, I started Unamerican because I'm just not a "joiner". I don't want to be part of someone else's agenda; I want to set my own. This sort of makes sense, because anarchism is all about figuring how to create substantial change without depending on pre-existing structures. As far as I'm concerned, most existing "social organizations" are simply part of the System, and while they may do good work, I would hardly term them as "revolutionary".

I am a revolutionary, and I've declared solidarity with ALL groups who label themselves as revolutionary. We've made free stickers for Critical Mass, Street Sheet, Food Not Bombs, Earth First!, the IWW, and several anarchist-leaning websites and 'zines.

G21: You say you're "giving people a voice." Last time I looked they had voices of their own. What's the difference between you're telling them what to say(putting words in their mouths, then charging them for it) and say Nike, Sprite, etc. doing the same thing?

SRINI: I agree, Rod - people DO have the right to speak their minds on whatever topic they please. They also by and large FAIL TO USE THIS RIGHT TO MAKE THEIR LIVES BETTER. That's my opinion, but that's why it's important that artists continue to create things that communicate unusual sentiments on the behalf of others. These artforms take the shape of CD's, books, and countless other media; why not t-shirts and stickers, then? Why keep the communication between you and the artist; why not work with the artist to get the word out to even MORE people?

Communication has a lot of power to change things. Not everyone has the particular knack of putting words together poetically in order to make a quick point; that's why, for instance, companies pay millions of dollars to the advertising agencies who coin such insipid stuff as "got milk?" or "just do it".

Unamerican Activities is dedicated to enabling such communication in a NON-PRODUCT-FOCUSED context; it's our joy to create such slogans, actually. We think it's fun. And so for the bargain price of a buck, our customers can let us handle the overture, while they glory in the conversation.

Nike, Sprite etc. aren't SAYING anything except for "buy our stuff and be cool". We sell tools that help people CONVERSE with other people on issues such as work, racism, religion, school etc. etc. etc. Think of a slogan as either being a dead end or a portal into a good slogan. We create just-add-water conversations about substantial topics. People like such conversations; we enable them. We think that is politically and culturally significant.

G21: You mention among the organizations you work with the IWW. Eugene Debs said in 1904:

"...[the] higher object is to overthrow the capitalist system of private ownership of the tools of labor, abolish wage-slavery and achieve the freedom of the whole working class and, in fact, of all mankind..."

SRINI: We get people talking about freedom.

People who talk about freedom are people who achieve freedom.

You can't get freedom unless you know what it looks like. People see what we've created, and they're encouraged to make it happen in their own worlds.

In my personal opinion, nobody is freer than the person who owns their own successful little business, or who owns it with a small collective of co-owners. These people make their own hours, determine the dimensions of their own work, and as far as I'm concerned are the salt of the earth. I don't GIVE a fuck about a person's ideology; if they run their own shop, I have some respect for 'em. And regardless, they WILL survive the millenium and the turmoil that I forsee. To me, freedom is survival itself; our system is going down, and those who hang on to it for too long are doomed to sink along with it.

One abolishes wage-slavery by simply abolishing the wage. There is a huge difference between drawing a wage and owning equity. By encouraging worker-owned collectives (otherwise known in this system as "partnerships"), or starting, say, a web-based mail-order business, Unamerican hopes to help people get out of the rut of working for the MAN in order to be productive.

Why be a cog in the machine when the cost of OWNING the machine is subject to Moore's Law?

G21: You say you have an agenda for terminating "enforced patriotism and consumption." What is that agenda? When will enforced consumption disappear from our lives, in your view?

SRINI: The agenda is simple and very, very complex. The complexities can be found on our website, at http://www.unamerican.com. The simple answer to your question is:

• Flag-waving does not make you a patriot. Creating and distributing wealth to your society makes you a patriot. Encouraging other people's freedom to participate in the productive process is patriotic. Flag-waving, on the other hand, is a misleading gauge of a person's value to a society.
• Consumption is not in-and-of-itself a sin. However, we feel that a person's resources (e.g. money) can be allocated in ways that will ultimately make that person RICHER in all ways when INVESTED. Investment is not limited to such mainstream opportunities as stocks and mutual funds, although that's better than drinking a can of Coke every day. Investment can include starting a small business (unamerican got started with $40, for instance), or taking classes, or contributing services to one's community.
• Consumption and production ought to be a sort of Taoist balancing act, in my opinion. Most people dig themselves deeper and deeper into debt, because they've failed to look at themselves with any sort of scrutiny as to their own true potential. When one resonates with one's true potential, one's debt is soon repaid.

There's a lot more to the "agenda" than simply small-business advocacy. You know that.

G21: Let's get back to a core issue here, web profits. The last time we spoke you said that your site was making approximately $6,000/month. That's a lot of "respect." If your goal is to empower people, what percentage of this largesse is being directed to empowering the community you serve?

SRINI: All of it, really. At this point, all profits of this company are being reinvested into the company (hence my day job). We have a lot of individual campaigns in the planning stages, some sweeping and national, some merely online or single-community-focused. All of them are being implemented in order to give voice to individuals, but cynics will accuse us of merely using these issues to bring attention to our company. Let a million accusations fly, I say - we're honest people who have nothing but good intentions. I have nothing to fear; money is but a tool to me, and we intend to use our access to this tool for the good of humankind.

We endeavor to find interesting people and give them a voice; to that end, we're building up a grassroots distribution network through our catalog. [The Unamerican catalogue is being featured in 200 stores.] While 200 stores nationwide may not seem very impressive when compared to Starbucks, for instance, we feel that these 200 stores (and the others that will follow) will be very open to the Unamerican line of books and music that we are planning.

If you don't think giving people a book deal is empowering, well, Rod, I'll just avoid giving YOU one then....

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