Susan Dubrofsky is an Editor of Montreal Serai and a Graphics artist, Poet and writer.

Norman Nawrocki's latest CD is called Duckwork, his 18 th release since 1986 and his first solo CD. It includes pieces, serious and humorous, with themes about the outrageous power used by the United States , about lack of power by the ordinary person, about dreams and about historical events that have shaped our lives. Click on his picture to hear, “By What Right, America ”.

Q. What is being an anarchist to you and how has it affected your life?

A. I grew up in a working class neighbourhood in Vancouver . I stumbled on my first book, called The Anarchist, by Andrew Horowitch and, at fourteen years old, I identified with anarchist thought. When I got out of high school and met other anarchists, other than just writing essays and debating in academic circles, I realized I would do community work and I would push for autonomous, independent, direct actions that community groups could carry out. I would push for critical thinking and self-education. I would try and promote consensual decision-making, as opposed to deciding anything with a boss or chief, President, and I would push for people broadening their perspectives and that the local fight was connected to a bigger fight which was connected to sort of a questioning of the entire system we lived in.

Q . So how has this affected your life in terms of what you do, your work, how you survive? Has there been situations where you couldn't do something because you are an anarchist?

A. People in radio, interviewing me, from CBC, knowing he's an anarchist say let's not interview him, and then, other radio stations, people interview me and then go, Oh wow, this was all right, I thought you'd be really scary. I try not to scare people. The point is not to drive people away, the point is to bring people closer.

There might have been moments in my life when I didn't get certain jobs because of my politics, but there's other work to do. I don't make my living as an anarchist. I am not an anarchist for hire. People hire me for music skills, for acting skills, for performance, comedy and teaching.

Q. Why did you begin to do this type of performance?

A. It started about 20 years ago. I got drunk one night with a friend who is an established Montreal performance poet. He read his poetry to me and I let it slip I had some poems in a shoe box under the bed, written in pencil and that they were very bad. The next thing I know is I had agreed to a public reading in a café here in Montreal . I was scared shitless. But people clapped and came up to me and said, do you have any books, do you any recordings, do you have any videos? What are you talking about? We really like your stuff? I got phone calls from McGill University that following week. We understand that you do this crazy performance, poetry stuff and we want to book you for a big poetry series, a big club downtown, can you come and appear with a band? It was a fluke that I ended up doing what I do now.

The music came later. And I've put together a band for this album, Duckwork Band, which will do the album live.

Q. What has been the response to your work?

A. I wouldn't have been doing all this for twenty years if the response hadn't been so positive. When I first started, people said, wow, this is different, unusual, I had no idea politics could come true in poetry, in music.

Q. Have you performed in the United States ?

A. All over the states. You name it, L.A. , New York …

Q. Do you receive a different response in the United States than the one here in Canada ?

A. No. People appreciate the music, the content, the words, the politics. I haven't been to the States for several years, I'm not so sure I want to go down there, in fact, I'm very reluctant to cross the border. It's been seven years, I guess.

Q. In your CD, you have a lot of material challenging American policies. What response have you been getting from people in the states?.

A.  The response I've been getting from the album so far from people in the states is they love it. I won't go down there to perform, but I'm happy to send the album to the states, happy to play it on the radio, and have it reviewed there.

Q. Has your performance ever caused an incident that you couldn't handle?

A. Not doing these shows. I do sex education shows as well. Comedy cabarets that deal with the questions of sexism, date rape, homophobia, violence against women, safe sex, better sex. The sex shows are quite topical… quite provocative. I started doing these shows about ten years ago.

They were aimed at men, but women found them quite affirmative. When I first started doing these shows, I had death threats. I had to have police protection. I had bomb threats. I got punched out in the middle of a show. I had uniform policemen in the audience, keeping an eye out. They were heavy shows. I was scared to death. Scared, scared. And it wasn't because of my anarchist politics, it was because of my anti-sexist, anti-homophobia politics. Had they known I was an anarchist, I would have had more death threats, more bomb threats.

Q. Was this in the states or in Canada ?

A. In Canada . In the states, people were a bit uptight and I would be brought into campuses by human right officers, dean offices, counseling officers, health departments, doctors, nurses, chaplaincies.

I still get reactions from people who don't want to book the show because they say they don't want things like this on their campus. Now I don't request security, because I don't feel I need it anymore. But I did need it when I started doing some of these shows, the mid-nineties to the late-nineties. They were scary shows. People said I should buy a bullet-proof vest, get life insurance. I thought they were kidding. I didn't take that seriously but there were times when I was on the road, I feared for my life. When I was in the motel, I made sure the door was locked and that I had access to the phone and the chair was against the door because there were Christian fundamentalists following me across the country, dogging me wherever I went, putting the word out, stop this guy, stop what he is doing.

Q. As an anarchist performer, what counts as your most satisfying moment?

A. When people who I don't know, ordinary, everyday people, say I really like this, Thank you. This makes a difference. This is me. I recognize myself in this. Someone in one show came up to me and said, I'm inspired to go out and organize my building now because the landlord raised the rent and I was thinking how was I going to get people fight back and your stuff inspired me and I'm going to knock on every door and organize a rent strike, and we're going to fight back, thank you. Guys come up to me after the sex shows and say, you know, nobody makes me cry, you made me cry, now I have to go home and think about it. Those are the moments.

Q. I hear that subcommandté Marcos is a fan of yours?

A. Yeah. Marcos sent Rhythm Activism, one of my bands, a thank you letter because one of our albums was inspired by the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas . The album's called Blood and Mud. We talked about the history of the rebellion in Chiapas and the roots of the rebellion historically in Mexico and the history of anarchism in Mexico and this album went out and was number seven on the charts in the United States - it was amazing and we toured Canada and the United States and Europe and raised tens of thousands of dollars to send to Chiapas, for schools, hospitals in the liberated zone and unknown to us, friends by the dozens bought copies of the albums to give to the Zapatistas in the jungle and I think somebody must have handed Marcos, over the period of a year, a dozen copies of our album, so he must have a collection now, so then he wrote a thank you letter, thanking us, Rage Against the Machine, Indigo Girls, a couple of other bands, for our contributions to their struggle.

Q. Why did you use the title ‘Duckwork' for this CD?

A. I like it. I bought a couple of duck toys and I have just been very fond of them.

Q . So there's no relationship to the content of the CD?

A. (He laughs) Because I think we have to listen to the ducks.

Q. In the last track you have the duck calls.

A. Yes, real ducks. If you take the time just to close your eyes and listen to the ducks they can teach us things. They teach us things about, we don't pay attention to this environment, the question of environment, we're going to be gone, after we're gone, you're next. So its also about environment.

Q. What is your favorite track on this album?

A. The secret track. Have you heard the secret track? There's a secret track, its my favorite one. And the ducks, that's my favorite one as well. It comes after the ducks.

Q. Tell us which track on this Cd would you choose to put on as an MP3 on our website and I'll tell you which one we picked.

A. “By What Right America ”.

Q. That's exactly what we chose. There was comment made that some of the invasions of certain places made by the US were questionable.

A. They were military interventions as opposed to invasions and military interventions could have been ten soldiers, twenty soldiers, fifty soldiers, a thousand soldiers.

Q. Of all your Cd's, your books and all other works, your videos, do you have a personal favorite – one that is closet to your heart and why?

A. I am proud of them all. I am proud of this last album and my last book, The Anarchist and the Devil. They are letters from an uncle to my father, pre-world war II, during and after the war, and he's in the anti-fascist resistance and he's hanging out with Jewish Guerillas and anti-fascist guerillas as well. I just did a performance of that the other day at the Festival des Voix des Ameriques, and it was one of my best performances in years. CBC is going to air it sometime in April on the program Cinq à Sept.

Q. Do you feel that what you do is changing people's consciousness?

A. I like to think so. I get a lot of first person stories. It touches, moves them, affects them in some way. We did something about Coors beer. Coors beer set up in Boulder, Colorado a century ago. The founder came from Germany, had very fixed right-wing views and wouldn't hire people of colour, of questionable sexual orientation, gave money to the KKK, allowed the KKK to meet in the brewery, and over the years, there was this heritage foundation and Coors was the one that steered Ronald Reagan on his path, Reaganomics, the list go on and on. We did this piece and performed it all across the country, it played on the radio. People, bar owners, who heard it would say, is this true. Do you have the facts? Okay I'm not carrying Coors beer anymore. The hell with them. There is a sordid story behind Coors beer and now with this merger with Molson, it's even more important to know about it. Civil liberty groups, black people groups, gay-lesbian groups, in the United States, instituted a boycott of Coors products and some of the breweries were bombed by various underground radical groups. Trade unions boycotted them as well. They hurt the business so much that by the early nineteen eighties, that's when Coors came into Canada, they were suffering so much, their sales were down, they came into Canada in a big way, and started promoting rock concerts, this was the big thing, let's promote rock concerts and the kids will drink our beer, so Coors did rock concerts, beer promotion and it was at that point that we did the research and did the songs. All the articles were coming out in the states about what Coors was all about, but people in Canada didn't know about this and then, because the backlash was so great, even in the mid-eighties, Coors decided to give money to National gay and lesbian groups in the United States, but at the same time they were handling the heritage funds and the John Birch Society and the list goes on, all these extreme right wing groups, so they were trying to polish the public image with one hand and on the other hand they did whatever they could to control what they really wanted.

Q. Where are the contradictions in your life, as an anarchist, that you have had to deal with?

A. I wished I lived in a perfect world. I wished that everybody had everything they needed and that there were no homeless people and nobody went hungry and nobody was in prison and everybody was healthy, happy and at peace. But the world isn't like that. I live downtown. I hate this area, it's noisy, it's stinky, my lungs hurt from the air I breathe, it's the cheapest housing I can afford in Montreal . I ride a bicycle everywhere I go. I have to ride the bus, occasionally I have to rent cars, take airplanes to go and do shows. I don't want to add to the pollution but it's the only way I can get around. So, yes, I live with many contractions.

Q. Is there anything else you want to say that's important to you?

A. Nope.

For Nawrocki's cd's, books or performances:  www.nothingness.org/music/rhythm