Breakfast for Anarchists

Sick of the processed crap being fed to you each morning in cereal commercials? You might just be ready for Breakfast for Anarchists, Norman Nawrocki’s book of anti-globalization, anti-corporate poems.

The book marches on to a very loud and clear protest beat. I picture Nawrocki, megaphone in hand, yelling these poems to crowds or singing them in drumming circles (in one poem, “We Drum Drum Culture,” he recommends it).

Nawrocki’s poems inhabit an alternate reality–one in which poor people are already winning the battle against the US government and large corporations, and FTAA really stands for “FANTASTIC TIMES FOR ANARCHIST ACTIVISTS.” Johnny Appleseed makes an appearance as a saviour of the States, tenants turn their building into a co-op and workers take over a data-processing centre. It’s the reality of the daily news fused with imagination and hope.

Nawrocki’s advice: “work less/live more/fuck often.” In “What is to be done” he helps you write a recipe for activism that is very open to improvisation: choose your weapon, your allies, your issues, your audience and get out there and “do something intelligent, somewhere, something new and exciting/that will bring us one step closer to where we all want to go: a healthy planet without exploiters and exploited.”

And if you need breakfast first you can find a recipe for Norm’s Oats on page 41. Stay tuned for Lunch for Insurgents, and Dinner for Dissidents. (Sarah Greene)

by Norman Nawrocki, $12, 80 pgs, Editions No Bar Code Press, 305, rue de Bellechasse, locale 405, Montreal, QC, H2S 1W9, nobarcodepress.com