Anarchy At Chase Oaks: Get A Job, Rebel, Repeat — How To (Almost) Get Recruited By The Wobblies

Nevermind al-Qaeda!

Here come the Wobblies!

Be aware, good people of Texas.

Some of these anarchists are located in Austin, of course.

But there’s also a dozen or so in Fort Worth.

And one in Plano.

Yes, Plano!

“Oh, dear Plano, how dost thou astray?” you ask.

Well, the corporate home of Perot Systems, Electronic Data Systems, Frito-Lay, Cinemark Theatres, UGS, and JCPenney hasn’t strayed much at all.

And there is another reason why Gene Akins’ mere presence in the wealthiest county in Texas might not cause the power-elite there to worry:

His doctor told him six months ago that he had six months to live, or so says the 71-year-old Hospice patient.

Still, the native of smoggy Los Angeles, Calif. isn’t letting his emphysema stop him from being perhaps the only self-described anarchist in Collin County.

Akins treats his lung’s damaged air sacs with breathing (exhale-focused) exercises, air purifiers, and pure oxygen inhaled in his mouth through a tube for 16 hours a day.

“Thank God I’ve lived long enough to get Medicare,” he said, laughing, as he reminisced about protesting in front of the headquarters of a local cement manufacturer.

Akins also treats himself to hard work selling advertising for various hunting and fishing magazines.

Every ad sold is another nail in capitalism’s coffin, right?

“Everything is in place (to destroy the capitalist economic system) except the attitude, the will, the wake-up call, the epiphany,” he said, “and, hey, epiphanies have been known to happen, man.”

And Akins has suffered plenty an epiphany over the years as a high school drop out, a pre-hippie “beat,” a thief, a prisoner, a draft dodger, an Alcoholics Anonymous participant, a magazine publisher, and a Green Party operative.

“The Green Party principles didn’t conflict with the principles I learned in AA. Quoting Aristotle: ‘Truth does not oppose truth. Truth opposes error,'” he said, from the Plano apartment he shares with his wife.

So while fighting emphysema, he helped Ralph Nader and other Green candidates get on the ballot in Texas in 2000.

However, he doubted the famed consumer advocate would have been effective had he won the presidential race.

“You have to have a whole bunch of Greens. They’ve done it in Europe, but even then, they all went to the Right forming these mixed governments with mixed economies,” he noted. “You know what the last socialist nation in Europe was? Yugoslavia.”