Jamie Valleau Mcquilkin

by Pontus Järvstad

Jamie was passionate about changing society from the ground up. He was inspired by anarcho-syndicalism, believing in building movements that could challenge an uninspiring defeatist labor bureaucracy. A belief that also made him seek out innovative ideas in political psychology. Ideas on how to encourage collective, even altruistic, thinking amongst people. These were ideas on how to challenge the atomization of society and to build new communities. It even challenged my own Marxist conception of a class-for-itself. Jamie yearned to know the world, and he had a zeal for changing it. This zeal was a fire that not only burned but also shed light. He believed in the importance of building structures for radical politics that would stand the test of time. Building communities that would not be ruled by structureless tyranny. I remember how he analyzed the 2008 Icelandic financial crisis as a missed opportunity. There was revolutionary potential in the protests back then that had been lost because the radical left was so disorganized. As an example, he gave the Spanish Civil War, how in the 1930s Spanish Anarcho-Syndicalism would with their pre-established structures, however briefly, revolutionize society.

In IWW Jamie worked with his comrades to empower immigrant workers and to teach them about their rights in the labor market. At that time the Icelandic unions did very little to inform immigrants about their rights. IWW activists often had to assist foreign workers getting the service they were entitled to from their own unions. Jamie sought out workplaces where he knew workers were exploited, and he assisted them in directly improving working conditions. It was a class struggle not only concerning bread and butter, but actual working conditions. On another occasion I remember how Jamie and several others of us directly “marched on a boss” to confront them with wage-theft. Where the conventional union had failed Jamie and the workers finally succeeded in getting the wages paid through direct action. With his bagpipe in hand Jamie was also part of revitalizing radicalism in the annual 1 May marches in Reykjavik. The IWW organized a radical and intersectional bloc in the march, including a diversity of struggles, from trans to refugee organizations. With several of his comrades in IWW he tried to bring this radicalism to the conventional labor movement. He was elected to the board of the second largest union in Iceland. It was a project that took much time and energy from his life, unfortunately it did not work out the way he envisioned.

Jamie was a passionate musician and had an immense creative urge. In 2014 he was part of a group that occupied a house down by the sea in Reykjavik. It had previously hosted Radical Summer University, now the building was to be sold to feed the growing tourist industry. Jamie together with other artists occupied the space and organized an art community called Já List. They organized workshops, art shows and concerts open to the public. Although this project did not last it was the beginning of his participation in creating social spaces. Autonomous places where one could breathe freely, not being smothered by capitalism and commercialism. Two years later he joined in organizing Andrými, a social center that held free dinners, concerts and hosted the Anarchist Library. It became closely connected with the refugee community helping them in their struggles and breaking their social isolation. Andrými still exists today as the only self-managed social center in Iceland.

The plight of refugees brought Jamie to be more involved in No Borders Iceland. He helped refugees in their search for asylum, work and housing. Those threatened with deportation sometimes were hidden with the help of Jamie. I remember one occasion when Jamie and several others went to the airport in Keflavik to protest a deportation. The individual was dragged by the police, pleading for their life not to be deported. It exposed, once again, to the public the violence of deportations.

Long before the fame of individual climate activists, Jamie was guided by a sense of urgency about climate change. On this issue he was often the most pessimistic. He was furious about the slow sleepwalk of humanity into the furnace of ecological collapse. He had a deep love for nature and spent much of his time exploring the Icelandic wilderness.

Although Jamie is no longer with us, his legacy lives on in the political projects he helped to create in Iceland. Together with others he brought about structures for societal change that still exists today. He lives on in the memories of all who joined the struggle with him and befriended him in Iceland. In honor of his memory, we should mourn him, but we ought also to organize.