Unamerican Activities
By Joshua Bennett

It is difficult to classify exactly what Unamerican Activities really is, or what it represents. A few things are clear. The organization began in 1994 when Srini Kumar, a Stanford Sociology graduate, made a stack of "Fuck Work" stickers that, "blew out of the store." Unamerican started selling stickers, t-shirts, mugs and buttons sporting slogans like, "Jesus Hates Me," "Whitey Will Pay," "I’m in Scenester Hell," and "Bomb the Mall," that appealed to many within the American (and even global) counterculture. Unamerican's popularity grew. Then, around the turn of the millennium, a personal dispute within the company erupted onto the Internet. James Squeaky, who joined Unamerican in May of 1997, and Srini exchanged a volley of personal attacks over Unamerican’s customer e-mail list of over 40,000 people. James quit the company. And, for several months this year, Unamerican conducted no activities of any kind.

Some things are less clear. Unamerican has promoted itself as, "A punk rock band without songs, only titles," and, "Anarchy’s Ad Agency." Journalists have described it as "part of the system it claims to abhor" (g21.net, July 1998); "dedicated to testing the limits of free speech while pissing off ‘squares’ and ‘normals’" (San Francisco Bay Guardian, March 25 1998); "intended to foment revolt by teaching workers to start their own businesses, like Kumar’s" (The Village Voice, March 17 1998); and "the reproduction of capital decked out in punk gear." (Maximum Rock & Roll, #200). In a recent interview James Squeaky said, "I see Unamerican now as a business that sells stuff and tries to tout itself as a political organization."

According to Srini, "We toe the line between irony and hypocrisy every day. That’s my job." (SF Bay Guardian). But this very hypocrisy may have caused Unamerican to turn from what was perhaps the most promising punk business in existence to its current, confused state.

James, who now works full-time on his own project, misterridiculous.com, agreed to speak with us about his experience with Unamerican and how it relates to business, punk business, and individuality.

From "Fuck Work" to "Fuck Unamerican"
James and Srini met at the Anarchist Bookfair after-party in 1997. At the time Srini was headed to Europe and James, working at a San Francisco Kinko’s, offered to run Unamerican while he was gone. At that point, James recalls, "Srini envisioned (might still actually) Unamerican becoming a ‘political party.’ I saw it more as a company that would go around and fuck shit up, becoming almost a label of quality—we’d find out there was someone doing something cool and would ‘sponsor’ it, network other people through the website, publish people’s writing and such."

When Srini returned from Europe, he made James his "partner," though he set up the business as a sole-proprietorship and never worked out any kind of formal agreement with James. During the next year, James worked day jobs for pay and remained "unpaid by Unamerican while we got it off the ground." Around the end of that year, orders had increased to such a level that he devoted himself to Unamerican full-time, taking in a subsistence-level salary while working "60, sometimes up to 80, hours a week."

In those days, James believed Srini’s vision of Unamerican reflected his own. "I saw a lot of potential in making the business successful and thought it would be a cool and interesting way of working on something I thought would do neat things for the activist community. I thought Srini was very intelligent and had some great ideas." During his first two years with the company, James thrived on the constant contact with "neat kids and customers," in addition to the attention he received. "It was great and I believed that any annoyances that went with the job would be compensated for in the future. I felt like people really looked up to us and that was a really great feeling."

At around the same time, signs of Unamerican’s success began to appear. The most notable may have been an extremely positive article in the San Francisco Bay Guardian (March 25, 1998). The write-up lauded Unamerican’s irreverent attitude and touted its approximately $2,000 monthly revenue. "Kumar and his cohorts, mainly one James (Squeaky), sell stickers that tempt you to see what you can get away with . . . For these anarchists, the real enemy isn't the ‘state’ exactly or ‘the system,’ although it may include them, of course. It's bigger than that. It's anything and everything drainingly dull, hopelessly mainstream, and life-sapping"(SF Bay Guardian).

In an October 15, 1998, Spite Magazine article, Will Hines wrote about Unamerican: "Just like a great punk rock band, the slogans at Unamerican.com live in a hard-to-reach middle ground where everything is both sarcastic and earnest, cynical and idealistic, rebellious and responsible—all at the same time."

But as rave reviews surfaced, so did criticism. In July of 1998, g21.net published a critique of Unamerican’s press kit. "Unamerican has commodified anarchy. By pandering to disaffected youth, these young guys have found a *Marketing* paradigm that works . . . Kumar and company have simply found a fertile vein of angst to tap and are profiting from other people's disaffection . . . there is indeed ‘gold in them thar hills’ if you're willing to leave your ethics at the door."
This kind of commentary was somewhat anathema to James. For years he’s meandered from one job to another, often quitting out of disgust. He’s concluded that "a lot of people work for really silly reasons. Most don’t like what they do.

Employers usually treat employees poorly. A lot of people work just so they can continue to work. They live lives that require a certain amount of money to maintain, working to do so makes them miserable, so they use the lifestyle as an escape from the work—but don’t realize that if they just changed that lifestyle they wouldn’t have to work so much."
To illustrate the gap between commentary like that on g21.net and James’ own belief system, consider the fact that before working for Unamerican, James created and published two issues of a zine called Static, dedicated to various forms of work sabotage. (Oddly enough, James’ Static partner, Robynn Takayama, followed a path that approximated James’: she worked for Unamerican and became engaged to Srini, only to sever all ties to both Srini and Unamerican in late 1999.)

Despite its detractors, Unamerican became increasingly popular and seemed ready to become a phenomenally successful punk business. The Village Voice compared Srini’s domination of counterculture merchandise to Bill Gates’ software empire. Even recently, the company received perhaps the greatest measure of marketing success: the pop-culture allusion. San Francisco Bay Guardian columnist Annalee Newitz wrote "I can't wait for f-biz, which I think should probably become a slogan for an Unamerican Activities sticker" (May 31, 2000).

James takes much responsibility for the wide swath Unamerican stickers have cut across the counterculture landscape. "The propaganda is hard to avoid if you are involved with anything outside the mainstream. I find stickers in photos inside album covers, mentions in magazines and, at least once a week, on the back of someone’s car."

The most severe blow to Unamerican’s credibility as an alternative business came when Maximum Rock and Roll, a longstanding flagship of the punk movement, published an article, "Fuck Unamerican," by Mimi Nguyen. The article attacked Unamerican’s claims that it opposed capitalism and "the system." Nguyen made a case that Unamerican was a typical business, appearing punk only to sell merchandise to a market niche. "By way of an expanding product-line and an enthusiastic business politic, Unamerican wants to channel your revolutionary desire into a conventional capitalist mold. Between bootstrap entrepreneurship and individual consumer will, it's the return of that patriotic fetish, the American Dream in a mohawk."

The article initially affected James profoundly, but it also brought to the surface doubts he had already harbored. "The more Srini lamented over and dissed the article (he became completely obsessed with the article and Mimi), the more I started to realize its validity. I tried to point out to Srini that the article made some valid points and he freaked out at me. That was about the end of our relationship as far as I'm concerned—it was all sort of downhill from there."
In fact, it was a specific event that caused these initial doubts to surface. In 1999, a cross-country trip in which James was going to promote Unamerican was nixed by Srini and Robynn, who claimed that there was not enough money to fund the trip. "They started talking about ‘getting rid of me,’ so there would be more money for the company. The moment I was made to feel expendable from a company that I was under the impression I co-owned was the moment I realized Unamerican only existed to boost Srini’s (and at the time Robynn’s) ego. It had nothing to do with revolution, nor was it a cooperative among us. That’s when I realized it was just another ‘shit job,’ and much worse than any other job I’ve ever had or could imagine."

Unamerican began with the phrase, "Fuck Work." Its ethos was thereafter dominated by its goal of distributing five millions free "Fuck Work" stickers by the year 2000, its frequent emphasis on eliminating "wage slavery," creating a three-day workweek, and uprooting the existing capitalist structure. But since working with Srini, James’ revelations about "work" have driven him to disapprove of the phrase that started it all.

"Not everyone has the luxury or option to "Fuck Work," so saying so comes from a background of middle-class privilege. A lot of people who work have debt, families, etc. So, changing the environment of work is much more important than just encouraging everyone to ‘start their own business,’ as Srini would. Working on making unions stronger and not corrupt is very important. Instead of starting another record label or little distro, I'd like to see politically-minded people start or join more things like food co-ops, find more ways to help the homeless, and such."

"‘Fuck Work’ is really designed to be vague enough that no one could figure out exactly what it's supposed to mean. A lot of people assumed it meant whatever they wanted it to, from ‘I don't like to work,’ to ‘I am lazy,’ to ‘I think the ideas of ‘work’ need to be re-evaluated,’ to something equivalent to ‘fuck everything.’ So, my quest to ‘fuck work’ right now is to eventually have my own business that allows me to be self-sufficient, or at least find a way to freelance, so that I am not tied to the commitment of a job, etc. On the road to that, I am trying to find a job I can actually enjoy doing and get a lot out of."

To further chip away at Unamerican’s punk business status, James is now refuting many of Srini’s claims. Much of Unamerican’s positive press focused on two areas: First, Srini claimed to have given out free stickers to many groups, including the San Francisco homeless population, Food Not Bombs, Earth First! and more, so that the groups could fundraise by selling them. Second, many articles published Srini’s claims that Unamerican was making money, ranging from $2,000 per month in March of 1998 to $12,000 monthly in February of 1999. James maintains that both these claims are false, saying, "When I left the company, we still had no idea how much money we were even making," and:
Even the claims Unamerican makes as a ‘social cause’ are mostly lies. Srini never went around San Francisco passing out 3,600 "Poverty Sucks" stickers to homeless people (or whatever he claimed on the site)—they were still sitting in my living room when I left San Francisco and in the new headquarters in Oakland when I left the company. Srini repeatedly claimed we had done things like donate stickers to Food not Bombs, the San Francisco Bike Coalition (Critical Mass), the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World), etc. As far as I know, that never happened. We never donated any money, helped anyone out, or really even put in our two cents on any specific political topics (outside of a few essays Srini or I wrote and distributed).

The fact remains that Unamerican was extremely popular within the punk and other counterculture scenes. Good and bad press weigh fairly equally against one another, and each side has their bias. James continues to attack the company’s claims while Srini continues to make, and appears to fervently believe, in them. Although it may never be possible to know Unamerican’s full story for certain, within it are contained both an inspirational tale of how significant an impact a successful alternative business can have, and a cautionary story of the challenges, potential pitfalls, and contradictions inherent in running such an organization.