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Then They Came for the Palestinians : How to Respond to the Kidnapping of Mahmoud Khalil

2025-03-11T10:20:24Z

On March 8, Department of Homeland Security agents kidnapped Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian organizer and graduate student at Columbia University who had permanent residency in the United States. Donald Trump’s State Department arbitrarily revoked his residency. They are holding Khalil in Louisiana, over a thousand miles from his home.

This is part of Donald Trump’s promised crackdown on Palestine solidarity activism at Columbia University and other schools around the country. Above all, however, it is a test, and how we respond will determine what happens to the rest of us later—as Martin Niemöller described in his well-known poem.

Here, we will explore the stakes of this moment and share experience from anarchists whose comrade was similarly kidnapped for participating in the Occupy ICE movement in San Antonio, Texas in 2018.

The Antisemitic Plan to Smear Palestine Solidarity as Antisemitic

The Trump regime has promised to deport millions of undocumented people, and their efforts are already underway. The kidnapping of Mahmoud Khalil is something different. Khalil is a permanent resident of the United States who is being targeted for political reasons. Trump is seeking to set an additional precedent in order to open a new front in his campaign to purge the United States of dissidents.

This is the culmination of two years of planning. In April 2023, the billionaire-backed Heritage Foundation published Project 2025, a playbook to overhaul the federal government of the United States in order to consolidate autocratic power in the hands of Donald Trump. Although Trump temporarily distanced himself from Project 2025 during his campaign, it proved to be a solid predictor of his game plan once in office.

In October 2024, the Heritage Foundation followed up Project 2025 with Project Esther, a playbook for repressing those who oppose the genocide of Palestinians. In the text of their report, the Heritage Foundation depicts all concern for Palestinians as participation in “a global Hamas Support Network” and explicitly accuses Jewish Voice for Peace and many other Jewish people of being “antisemitic” for refusing to support Zionism. At the same time, the report relies heavily on anti-Semitic tropes such as fearmongering about George Soros. This exemplifies the way that the far right has sought to appropriate concerns about antisemitism to promote racism, Islamophobia, and antisemitic conspiracy theories.

A slide from a Heritage Foundation presentation about Project Esther. Note that “Soros” and Jewish Voice for Peace are at the tops of the columns titled “Masterminds” and “Organizers.”

The chief source of Trump’s appeal is that he has been able to channel the considerable anger of the downwardly mobile away from those who hold power and towards scapegoats, creating a pressure valve for a wide range of resentments. But in order to scapegoat people without consequences, it is necessary to undermine their social ties, to prevent others from identifying with them, to carve up society into isolated and mutually hostile factions.

Reducing all empathy for Palestinians to support for Hamas is a discursive maneuver intended to frame all who speak out against genocide as legitimate targets for Trump’s government. In addition to demonizing Palestinians, Project Esther lays the groundwork to attack Jewish people as “antisemites” if they don’t get on board with Christian Nationalist priorities. This strategy weaponizes an existing rift that cuts through the Democratic Party—the question of whether Palestinians deserve to be treated as human beings—in order to create the conditions for a fascist takeover of the United States as well as further colonial violence abroad. The ones who stand to gain the most from this strategy are not Zionist Jews, but authoritarian Gentiles.

In view of the significance of Project 2025, we should not underestimate how central Project Esther is to the Trump administration’s strategy. This will help us to understand the kidnapping of Mahmoud Khalil.

The core of Trump policy is performative violence. That is why they have kidnapped an activist who has never been charged with a crime, whose wife—an American citizen—is eight months pregnant, who has a legal right to reside in the United States according to all established precedents. That is why they intentionally targeted a negotiator, the same way that the Israeli government routinely murders negotiators in Palestine. The point is to be shocking, to terrorize, to show that they can do things in public that the Biden administration had to do secretively.

Everyone who has excused or minimized the genocide of Palestinians—for example, by spending at least as much time talking about the 1139 Israelis killed on October 7, 2023 as they do addressing the tens of thousands of Palestinian, Lebanese, and Syrian people slaughtered since then—must understand that today, supporting Israel means supporting Trump’s brand of fascism. The escalating violence of the Israeli colonial project helped create the conditions for Trump’s return; now that he is back in office, excusing Israeli colonialism can only facilitate Trump’s own consolidation of power. As we argued on the night of the 2024 election,

The Biden administration has already done much of the work to desensitize the general public to the program that an emboldened second Trump administration will attempt to carry out—above all, by supporting the Israeli military in carrying out a brutal genocide in Gaza. In so doing, Biden and Harris have accustomed millions of people to the idea that human life has no inherent value—that it is acceptable to slaughter, imprison, and torment people based on their status in a targeted demographic.

You either embrace the struggle for the liberation of Palestine or you become an accomplice in the rise of fascism. This was always true, but today there is no possible excuse not to recognize it.

Even if your sole concern is fighting antisemitism and you do not care what happens to people of any other ethnicity, you pave the way for antisemites to gain power by standing aside as Palestinians are kidnapped. Like Palestinians, Jewish people are on the hit list of potential scapegoats, and what befalls one scapegoat will eventually befall another.

If there are no serious consequences for the kidnapping of Mahmoud Khalil, then soon enough, the Trump administration will push the envelope, moving on to kidnap other activists who obstruct the far-right agenda. Likewise, the Israeli genocide of Palestinians is a template for bloodshed that will be used again and again as long as there are no significant consequences. If politicians like Trump retain their sway by inflicting violence, they will have to continuously expand the range of people they target and the intensity of that violence, just as the Nazis did between 1933 and 1945.

What Will It Take?

For now, a judge has ordered a temporary delay in the expulsion of Mahmoud Khalil from the United States. But this should reassure no one. If we count on judges to restrain Trump, we will have no recourse when Trump’s administration simply ignores the laws, and no plan when he manages to replace them with loyal flunkies—or has his flunkies replace the laws themselves.

On March 10, demonstrators gathered in New York City for a protest that took the streets, resulting at one point in tussles with police. On March 11 and 12, further protests will ensue in New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, and elsewhere.

But the point of these protests must not be to petition the authorities. Donald Trump is not a well-meaning public servant looking to represent his constituents. He is a power-hungry sadist who benefits from our displays of grief and impotent rage. Politics in the United States today is a question of relations of raw force. When we take the streets, we are not addressing Trump or his ghoulish underlings; we are addressing each other. We are setting out to demonstrate that resistance is possible, that there are tactics that can exert concrete leverage against our oppressors, that there are enough people invested in solidarity that it can become a social force capable of compelling Trump and his lackeys to stand down.

At the March 10 demonstration in New York, participants handed out fliers to this effect:

Fascist politicians need the police. But we know masses of people can get the better of the police, their cars, equipment, cameras. All we have to do is to start acting like our friends, neighbors, and our own lives are at stake. All other options have been exhausted. We have to pull down the new fascism before it consolidates control. If we settle for waving signs and chanting, our fate is sealed. If we remember the summer of 2020, we stand a fighting chance.

Mahmoud Khalil.

Learning from Experience

Mahmoud Khalil is not the first person in recent history to be targeted by ICE for political activism. To get more perspective, we reached out to anarchists in San Antonio whose comrade was kidnapped during the Occupy ICE movement in 2018.

This isn’t the first time that something like this has happened. In 2018, ICE targeted a filmmaker and student for their participation in the Occupy ICE camp in San Antonio. They were targeted as a consequence of their activism; the authorities used their political beliefs and tweets as evidence against them.

Both our movement and the campaign to free our friend were held back by our decision to defer to the lawyers. The lawyers wanted to run a PR campaign based on respectability politics and innocence narratives, erasing our radical politics from the conversation. As time went on, the lawyers related with hostility and suspicion towards some participants in the movement.

Deferring to the lawyers and separating the legal support from the movement itself was detrimental to both. We gave up many tools that we could have used to fight; this contributed to fragmenting our movement. There was no rally, no day of action, no unrest, no political scandal. Not even a phone zap!

In 2018, we were aware of the example of the Northwest Detention Center resistance, at which ICE detained the activist Maru Villaplanado. Maru Villaplanado was ultimately released and granted legal status due to a campaign of pressure and mobilization. Unfortunately, this knowledge did not lead us to take the kind of action that could have made a difference for our friend.

Many of us were young and inexperienced. We did not know better than to trust the lawyers. We didn’t know how to draw on the experience of other movements before us or around the country. Since then, we have learned that lawyers should have a very limited influence on our movements. They should focus on their work in the courts. We must prioritize organizing a strong political response, as that is the only real source of power and pressure that we can draw upon outside the legal system.

There is no silver bullet or magic combination of tactics that would be guaranteed to stop Mahmoud’s deportation. However, if we limit ourselves to depending upon a legal system that has no regard for the humanity of its captives while the state targets an activist on explicitly political grounds, we will fail while simultaneously sabotaging ourselves. We wonder how differently things might have gone if we had called for national days of action. We wonder if there was some chance that we could have stopped them from deporting our friend. We don’t know the answer because we didn’t try.

To have any chance of saving Mahmoud Khalil or any of the millions of immigrants in the crosshairs of the white supremacist state, we will need movements that are resilient, that grow in numbers and combativeness. Palestinian, immigrant, Black, Indigenous, and working-class organization and action must create a political crisis that interrupts the deportation machine. If we lead with an organized political response, we will have a better chance of stopping the deportation of Mahmoud and our other comrades and of interrupting the entire system it relies on. I hope that everyone who is confronting this tragedy today can learn something from our experience and put those lessons into practice.

This is not the first time this has happened. If our enemies have their way, it won’t be the last. It is up to us to organize in defense of our friends, families, and neighbors.

-Some Cicadas from Abolish ICE, San Antonio, Texas

We Are Made for Each Other

Let us conclude by expressing gratitude for the courage of Mahmoud Khalil and others who have risked their own freedom in order to express solidarity with other people. In doing so, they show us what is best in humanity—and that gives us a reason to fight for ourselves and each other. Khalil has already distinguished himself in the fight to create a world without ethnic cleansing or genocide. It remains for us to do the same in return.

For everyone who has met Mahmoud, they can attest to his incredible character, humbleness, selflessness, and his love for helping others. He is always willing to stand up for the oppressed. He is funny, kind, and sometimes a little messy. He constantly puts his needs last when it comes to helping others. I always tell him that sometimes he needs to put himself first. He always responds with, “People are made for each other, and you should always be willing to lend a helping hand.”

-Mahmoud Khalil’s wife (identified thus, rather than by name, in the original source)

There is a fundraiser for Mahmoud Khalil here.

The Palestine solidarity movement on Columbia campus in spring 2024.

The Students Walk Out in Los Angeles : A Report from the Streets

2025-02-13T08:57:19Z

In the opening weeks of Donald Trump’s second presidency, some of the fiercest expressions of defiance have come from the communities that Trump is threatening to attack. In Los Angeles, students have engaged in weeks of walkouts and other protests against the mass deportations Trump promised. In Cincinnati, the historically Black community Lincoln Heights responded to a neo-Nazi rally by chasing off the white supremacists, burning their swastika flags, and conducting an armed watch lest they attempt to return.

Both of these communities draw on deep roots of resistance. The students in Los Angeles are walking out in the footsteps of previous student rebels, including those who participated in the historic protests of 2006 against the repression of the undocumented. People in Cincinnati rose in rebellion in 2001 against police violence, foreshadowing the movement that got underway in response to the murder of Oscar Grant in 2008 and arrived on the world stage in 2014 with the uprising in Ferguson. In continuing these legacies, today’s protesters show how difficult it will be for Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and other racist billionaires to control the population of this continent. They also point the way for others who are still trying to figure out how to defend themselves against the new regime.

Here, participants in this month’s demonstrations in Los Angeles offer a short report from the streets.

You can view many other photographs depicting the week’s events by the same photographer here.

Report from Los Angeles

The ongoing anti-ICE protests in downtown Los Angeles have been led by Latino and Latina youth, including striking high school students and fleets of teenagers on 29er BMXes, minibikes, and lowriders. The streets are significantly livelier, compared to the last year of demonstrations protesting the genocide in Gaza. The Los Angeles Police Department has reported several injuries to officers, as well as slashed tires on police vehicles.

Unencumbered by formal speeches and megaphone-driven chants, the participants have instead spent their time setting off fireworks and smoke bombs, doing burnouts at intersections, and chanting “Culero!” at the cops. Anger, frustration, excitement, and joy have mingled in the streets as cumbias and corridos blast from car stereos and live bandas and the smell of burning rubber fills the air.

The events of Sunday, February 2, began at the El Pueblo de Los Angeles historical monument, where thousands rallied with speeches, music, and performances organized by a loose coalition of political organizations and social media influencers. After the performances and speeches, the participants marched to City Hall, where hundreds of people occupied the steps and lawns. The rally formally ended at 11 AM, but the crowd continued to march from City Hall back to El Pueblo de Los Angeles where protesters remained until 11 PM.

This protester’s ensemble succinctly conveys an entire political program. Credit.

It was clear that although the rally was called by formal political organizations, the crowd’s energy quickly exceeded any control they may have had over people’s movement. Crowds took over the 101 freeway in downtown three separate times, leaving the walls painted with “Fuck ICE,” “Brown Pride,” and “Chinga tu Madre Trump!” An estimated three thousand people, including street vendors who flocked in to sustain the protest, held down the blocks between the 101 freeway and Olvera Street all evening, until LAPD eventually used tear gas to disperse the crowd.

According to one participant,

“A crowd of about 100 swarmed an LAPD vehicle, trapping it as they danced cumbia on all sides. Orders to disperse were met with empty cans of beer thrown at police cruisers.”

The next day, on February 3, students across Southern California and in parts of the rest of the country skipped classes and crowds gathered to mark “A Day Without Immigrants,” echoing a 2017 call to protest and boycott in response to the first Trump administration’s rhetorical and material attacks on immigrants. Los Angeles Unified School District attendance was reported at 66%, and traffic on the 101 was temporarily stopped by hundreds of protesters again.

Graffiti on Los Angeles City Hall.

After the previous day’s disordered and timid response to protesters, the LAPD was actively looking for opportunities to escalate and perform arrests. At least one man was arrested on a felony vandalism charge during the demonstrations. Minor skirmishes between protesters and police on February 3, including the use of green-strap 40-millimeter less-than-lethal rounds, culminated in the police kettling a group of 200-250 protesters in a tunnel on Chavez Avenue. At this point, the LAPD faltered, failing to muster and coordinate the necessary resources to carry out mass arrests. The tenacity of the crowd and protesters outside the kettle effectively succeeded in de-escalating the police response; after several hours, the protesters were cited and released.

The strength of these initial protests laid the groundwork for the following week of resistance across Los Angeles County. Student walkouts have happened nearly every day and continue still, with community and mutual aid organizations supporting them. This form of resistance follows in the legacy of the 1968 East Los Angeles Walkouts (also known as the Chicano Blowouts), during which 20,000 high schoolers walked out demanding anti-racist education. The March 2006 rally for immigration reform also saw tens of thousands of students walk out. The energy in the streets and the overall swagger of the protesters recalls the rowdy celebrations after the Dodgers won the World Series in October, which escalated to looting in downtown and the burning of a Metropolitan Transit Authority bus in Echo Park.

You can view more work by this photographer here.

The speed of response, scale, and sustained nature of the protests in Los Angeles were notable. However, marches in San Diego, Phoenix, Austin, and dozens of other cities showed that the draw to make resistance public is not isolated to Southern California. While people have taken to the streets less rapidly than eight years ago, this should not be understood as a public disillusionment with the tactic of mass protest. We don’t have a complete answer for what tactical role street protests should play in the current political moment, but this week in Los Angeles has reminded us that there is still an intoxicating joy to be found in the streets in these collective gatherings of resistance.

And regardless of whether activists, organizations, and organizers call for them—they are going to happen.

The demonstrators at City Hall on February 4, 2025. A video shared by People’s City Council, Los Angeles.

Reports from the Festivals of Resistance / Day of the Forest Defender

2025-01-20T01:04:50Z

January 18 is the Day of the Forest Defender, honoring the life of Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán, who was murdered by Georgia State Troopers two years ago while protesting the construction of Cop City in Atlanta, and everyone else who has given their lives in the fight against those who would render the earth uninhabitable in the course of their pursuit of profit. This year, a call circulated for people to organize festivals of resistance in their communities on the weekend of January 17-19. Here, we share reports from some of these events.

The situation is grim. Despite acknowledging that Trump represents fascism, Democrats have nonetheless welcomed the arrival of despotism, dutifully voting for new legislation targeting immigrants and doing their best to keep protesters out of the streets. Tech CEOs have followed suit, pouring millions of dollars into his inauguration and crowding into St. John’s Church to worship at the feet of their new master.

Elon Musk made the Nazi salute twice from the podium during the inauguration, leaving only just enough plausible deniability to confuse the most naïve. Musk has posted fascist dog whistles on Twitter before, even before he purchased it in order to reintroduce Nazis to the platform, ban anarchists, and promote the fascist agenda.

From this point forward, nothing should surprise us. The incoming government has made it clear that they intend to inflict as much harm as possible on those who are vulnerable while concentrating as much money as possible in the hands of the ultra-rich. These are the central points of their agenda. Attempting to spread information about their misdeeds in order to provoke popular outrage is a waste of time. From here out, all that matters is developing the capacity to defend each other from their attacks while preparing to go on the offensive as soon as the opportunity presents itself.

The faces of the oligarchy looked craven and servile as they lined up at the inauguration to toady to Trump. Capitalism concentrates power in the hands of the most rapacious, but they can only hold on to power by being completely subservient to its demands.

Fortunately, not everyone is taking this sitting down. Anarchists around the country called for “festivals of resistance” the weekend before the inauguration in order to bring communities together prepare to resist. Here follow reports from a few of these. You can read the original call to organize festivals of resistance here, along with a list of dozens of events around the country.

January 11

Sacramento, Chicago, and a few other locations hosted events a weekend early, building up momentum.

Sacramento, California

On Saturday, January 11, well over 600 people came together in downtown Sacramento for a community gathering at a local Methodist Church featuring workshops, skillshares, info-tables, and a key-note address from anarchist author and mutual aid organizer Dean Spade. The previous night, people had gathered to write letters to political prisoners. On the day of the event, hundreds streamed into the building, dramatically outnumbering the nearby Trump rally at the capitol, which brought out only a hundred people.

The workshops included basic first aid, tenant organizing, food autonomy, anti-fascist organizing, community self-defense, and mutual aid. Dean Spade spoke for over an hour on mutual aid organizing with the recent fires in Los Angeles in mind, and also talked about how we need to change the broader culture in our movements, bringing in more people and creating a home for people to grow in through different cycles of struggle.

The event featured a well-organized security team and several zine tables and distros. No major problems occurred. So much pizza was ordered from a local business that the owner told one organizer, “This is bigger than Dave Matthew’s Band.” Crash into this, Dave!

January 17-19

Over two dozen cities hosted Festivals of Resistance this past weekend.

Brooklyn, New York

From noon until after 10 pm, the Interference Archive hosted a marathon of presentations and skillshares aimed at bringing people together and building capacity within New York City’s radical communities. The Archive collects and displays ephemera from social movements; it was covered in banners, posters, communiqués, and other material from the Stop Cop City/Defend the Atlanta Forest movement as part of its ongoing exhibit, “This is Not a Local Struggle.”

The event opened with a moment of silence for Tortuguita. Then, over a dozen local groups and autonomous organizers gave trainings on topics including tenant and union organizing, protest and jail support tactics, and proposals for peoples’ assemblies and other new political formations, coalescing into a conversation about how to oppose the city’s prison expansion plan. The event ended with a community dinner, followed by a screening of several short documentaries about land defenders in Atlanta and Louisiana.

Elsewhere in Brooklyn, people courageously redecorated a billboard. Here follows their statement.

Footage of the billboard in Brooklyn.

Today, thousands of people across the world organized events and took collective action in honor of Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán, who was murdered by Georgia State Troopers two years ago while protesting the construction of Cop City in Atlanta. Tortuguita died defending the Weelaunee Forest. January 18, the Day of the Forest Defender, commemorates their 26 years on this earth and their steadfast commitment to collective liberation. Their spirit is alive in our resistance.

We, the writers of this message, took over a billboard on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, one of NYC’s largest highways, used by 130,000 vehicles daily. We covered a CopShot police billboard—that recruits informants with a $10,000 bribe—with a tribute to Tortuguita and all land defenders. In the context of a city that spends $29 million dollars a day on policing, off the side of a highway that displaced thousands of families with a stroke of a pen, we replace the state’s cowardly propaganda with a commemoration of land defenders’ sacrifice and struggle. Collective memory animates our will to destroy this empire that is killing us and our planet. As the US funnels billions into building Cop Cities across the country in its latest attempt to repress us, they concede what we already know—that rebellion is inevitable.

Viva Tortuguita and all land defenders. We will destroy this empire, with Earth as our witness.

The billboard before it was improved.

Cleveland, Ohio

In Cleveland, dozens of people gathered in a snowstorm to occupy a park and demonstrate our determination to build a world that works for everyone. Gathering around a banner reading “No matter who is in power, we keep us safe,” we held space near a busy intersection where people freely shared their experiences of a failed system and imagined the better world that we can build. This occupation was preceded by an indoor direct action training, allowing folks to hone the skills required to move forward. After the occupation, members of the community gathered indoors to discuss our collective needs and ongoing efforts to meet them, forming new connections and deepening existing ones. The day concluded with a documentary screening by the IWW [Industrial Workers of the World].

These events were organized by a newly formed group of anarchists that includes both experienced folks and individuals new to the movement. While the formation of this group was occasioned by calls for a Festival of Resistance, those involved are determined to cultivate the connections formed, building a group that fosters ties within the community and facilitates future actions, building our capacity for future resistance.

A projection at the entry to the Festival of Resistance in central North Carolina.

Durham, North Carolina

The weekend opened with a concert and dance party on Friday night. On Saturday, the Festival of Resistance in Durham, North Carolina drew 300 people for four hours of workshops running two or three at a time. Visitors could take their fill of free material from a dozen literature tables representing various mutual aid and community defense groups; some of those have been around for years or decades, while others emerged out of the assemblies that followed the election in November. Food Not Bombs provided a full hot meal, there was a busy childcare space.

The events continued on Sunday with four more hours of workshops in Chapel Hill, followed by a screening of a film about Rojava that concluded with a discussion featuring the director.

A short video collage about the Festival of Resistance in central North Carolina.

Gary, Indiana

Following up outreach events in Chicago, more than 75 people gathered outside the Gary/Chicago International Airport to demonstrate against the role that it plays in deportations, which Trump has been threatening to ramp up as part of his program of doing harm to undocumented people.

You can read one report on the action in Gary here:

The Gary/Chicago International Airport has been used since at least 2013 to fly deportees out of the region. GlobalX, an airline company based in Miami, FL, subcontracts with ICE to deport people every Friday from Gary/Chicago airport to Kansas City, MO before taking them out of the country. More than 19,000 people were deported out of Gary between 2013 and 2017 according to public records obtained through a Freedom of Information request by a local organizer.

Demonstrators were leaving the airport on foot Saturday morning when around two dozen Gary police officers descended on them. Officers grabbed and arrested two protestors who were in the process of complying with police instructions. A photojournalist was also seized and arrested by the officers while documenting the other arrests, in what amounts to a violent attack on the freedom of the press.

The march, held two days before Donald Trump takes power for a second time, represents the Gary community’s commitment to their immigrant neighbors in the face of state violence, but builds on the diligent work of community organizers over the years. Since 2017, interfaith groups, immigrant rights activists, and rank-and-file union workers from East Chicago and elsewhere in northwest Indiana regularly held prayer circles and other peaceful protests, but had not been met with significant repression.

Minneapolis, Minnesota

About thirty people attended a movie screening of Fell In Love with Fire, including many new faces. In the discussion following the film, many participants related their experience in the George Floyd Uprising to the uprising in Chile, reflecting on how to fight the new Trump regime. The evening concluded with writing letters to prisoners. People were very engaged and took a lot of zines and posters.

Oakland, California

About 150 people, mostly anarchists, marched to an abandoned OUSD [Oakland Unified School District] building, broke in, and held an assembly in a courtyard inside the premises. A dozen people spoke about various existing projects and how to get plugged in. Then, there were six breakout groups to discuss strategic horizons related to

Antirepression 2, International Solidarity
Housing
Immigration
Community resiliency/disaster relief, and
Other.

Afterwards, at 5 pm, a dance party got underway at the amphitheater at Lake Merritt, and people reconstructed the George Floyd memorial there.

Olympia, Washington

In Olympia, a coalition of local organizations and people from different political scenes organized a big-tent “People’s March.” The more anarchist contingent within the group advocated to attach a Festival of Resistance directly after the march. Dozens of organizations sponsored the events.

The event was diverse, well-attended, and notably intergenerational. The rally before the march drew about 1000 people. There were several speakers, including a speaker for Palestinian liberation, a recorded speech from local incarcerated pan-Africanist Tomas Afeworki, and a speaker and translator from La Resistencia, the group dedicated to shutting down the Tacoma Northwest Detention Center. There was also a moment of silence for a beloved long-term organizer, a participant in the organizing group behind the event, who passed away a week earlier. The march began with a local Indigenous activist performing a drum song; in the back, a marching band kept time.

Because of the ties between anarchists and other local activists, there was a lot of good faith participation. It appeared that the black bloc of about 20-30 people designed its splinter march with consideration for the family-friendly march, diverting police attention elsewhere. A little vandalism and graffiti occurred, to only a few people’s dismay; most in the march seemed unconcerned.

The march ended at the capitol, where people promoted a brand-new announcements-only Signal thread modeled on Austin’s Sunbird. A couple more speakers closed out the march.

The Festival of Resistance started immediately afterwards at a location only a few blocks away. The building was packed from the beginning. Probably 150-200 people circulated through it. This was the real aim of attaching the two events. Food and drinks were served. Several organizations set up tables—letters to prisoners, the Emma Goldman Youth and Homeless Outreach Project, zine distros, and the like—and people mingled and ate for an hour before the sessions. Then, there were announcements, a toast to our dearly departed, followed by two rounds of discussions and workshops. The workshops included direct action 101 (with a local history flipbook collecting printed communiqués), resisting repression, and the history and culture surrounding the local Artesian Well and the struggle against its enclosure. There were topic-based facilitated discussions, as well.

Many people expressed the desire to keep the ball rolling and repeat this model in order to try to continue the conversations rather than having to begin again from scratch. In retrospect, it would have been ideal to have already planned a future event that people could put in their calendars, or an activity that could facilitate people generating something like that together.

Providence, Rhode Island

Following the Providence Festival of Resistance and words from Tortuguita’s friends and comrades, some people marched to the Atwells Avenue overpass and hung a banner over I-95 reading “Revenge for Tortuguita—No More Presidents.”

Richmond, Virginia

Up to 500 people attended the Richmond Festival of Resistance in the course of the day. Many contributed names, remembrances, or tokens of other martyrs to the altar honoring Tortuguita.

In addition to celebrating grief together, Richmond’s “Festival of Resistance,” advertised locally as the inaugural “People’s Assembly,” included a full day of tabling, workshops, panels, and free food. The gathering launched a new initiative, the People’s Assembly, a recurring venue for citywide coordination and strategy building.

The idea is to hold citywide assemblies in each season, building from the neighborhood assemblies that many people left this gathering inspired to begin.

The altar to Tortuguita in Richmond, Virginia.

Tucson, Arizona

Less than a week in advance, a handful of friends decided to hold a humble “Parade of Resistance” on the Day of the Forest Defender. With only three days’ notice on a busy weekend, 30-40 people gathered in a park while members of a local brass band played a short set.

The parade then took a one and a half mile route through the part of town with the most pedestrian traffic. The sound system was bumping a cumbia mix made by a comrade who recently passed away. The vibe was fun and playful, and generally very well received by bystanders, some of whom joined in, dancing in the street for a block or two. The cops arrived about halfway through, but people ignored their orders to vacate the street, and they resigned themselves to redirecting traffic for us. Their investment in a “progressive” image often complicates their efforts to assert control.

The messaging was an experiment in vagueness. The only banner read “Towards a Free World”; it was accompanied by colorful butterfly puppets. A few paraders distributed pamphlets with accessible language calling for revolutionary action and transformation. On the back, a flier promoted an upcoming “Festival of Rebellion” on February 15.

The march ended at sunset at a classic spot for punks and train kids. Across the tracks, there was graffiti honoring Tortuguita and our dear friend who has just passed away. The dance party continued into the night with a bonfire and more graffiti.

Ultimately, it was a nice morale boost and very worthwhile, considering what a light lift the organizing was. It gave some of us a chance to get out in the streets without demanding a bunch of work from an already overloaded network. Definitely better than doing nothing. Hopefully, it created some momentum to carry forward.⁩

Sacrificial Violence and Retribution

2024-12-23T15:05:21Z

In the following analysis, we explore the responses to two different extrajudicial killings as a way to understand the different forms of violence that are coming to the fore in our society right now. In the appendix, we offer an incomplete roundup of various responses to the shooting of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare.

Every day, something like fifty people are shot and killed in the United States. On December 4, 2024, one of them was Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, the most profitable health insurance corporation in the country. In the weeks since, we’ve all heard a great deal more about that particular CEO than about any of the hundreds of other people killed by gunfire this month. At the same time, there has been an outpouring of support for the attack, despite the efforts of media platforms and employers to suppress it.

On December 13, president-elect Donald Trump and vice-president-elect JD Vance invited Daniel Penny to join them at the Army/Navy football game—solely on account of his having senselessly murdered a Black person and been acquitted.¹ Here, we see some of the most powerful political figures in the world attempting to drum up enthusiasm for extrajudicial killings—provided that they target the marginalized.

We must understand the popular response to the shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO in the context of a society in which life is increasingly cheap. After the far right lionized George Zimmerman and Kyle Rittenhouse; after millions participated in a countrywide uprising demanding that police stop killing Black and brown people, only to see politicians across the political spectrum double down on supporting police, with the consequence that police have continued to murder people at a steadily accelerating pace; after bipartisan support for the genocide in Gaza; after hundreds of school shootings, hundreds of thousands of opioid overdoses, and millions of COVID-19 fatalities, not to mention the countless avoidable deaths resulting from the for-profit health and insurance industries—is it really so startling that one person took a shot at an executive? What is startling is that in nearly every other case, the killers have targeted those less powerful than themselves.

Trump’s decision to host Daniel Penny is a literalistic fulfillment of Frank Wilhoit’s dictum that “There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” By contrast, the shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO suggests that the law cannot always protect the in-groups from the out-groups.

But this is not just a question of violence aimed down the social hierarchy versus violence aimed up it. We are talking about two entirely different kinds of violence. Let’s call them sacrificial violence and retribution.

Sacrificial Violence

What is sacrificial violence?

According to René Girard, writing in Violence and the Sacred,

When unappeased, violence seeks and always finds a surrogate victim. The creature that excited its fury is abruptly replaced by another, chosen only because it is vulnerable and close at hand.

Girard is part of a long tradition of European anthropologists whose speculations boil down to a series of just-so stories about humanity.² But we don’t have to buy into his entire framework to recognize what he is speaking about here:

The sacrifice serves to protect the entire community from its own violence; it prompts the entire community to choose victims outside itself. The elements of dissension scattered throughout the community are drawn to the person of the sacrificial victim and eliminated, at least temporarily, by its sacrifice.

Sacrificial violence, in short, is scapegoating carried through to the point of murder, functioning as a ritualized means of preserving a society in which there are tremendous unresolved internal tensions.

If left unappeased, violence will accumulate until it overflows its confines and floods the surrounding area. The role of sacrifice is to stem this rising tide of indiscriminate substitutions and redirect violence into “proper” channels.

And who makes for an ideal scapegoat?

All our sacrificial victims […] are invariably distinguishable from the nonsacrificeable beings by one essential characteristic: between these victims and the community a crucial social link is missing, so they can be exposed to violence without fear of reprisal. Their death does not automatically entail an act of vengeance. The considerable importance this freedom from reprisal has for the sacrificial process makes us understand that sacrifice is primarily an act of violence without risk of vengeance.

This equation explains why ordinary bigots seek their targets among the most marginalized—those no one will avenge. But Girard’s framework goes further, showing how this can help to protect the state in times of crisis.

Perhaps this explains why Trump was able to win the 2024 election by promising to carry out gratuitous violence against undocumented people and trans people. Carrying out “the largest deportation operation in American history,” as Trump has explicitly pledged to do, will wreck the US economy. It will deliver no material gains to the vast majority of his supporters, who benefit from the underpaid labor of the undocumented and the resulting cheapness of commodities. From a purely economic perspective, exploiting the labor of the undocumented inside the borders of the United States provides more advantages to Trump’s supporters than deporting them ever could. By any measure, it’s a waste of resources: deporting a million people in one year will cost eighteen times more than the entire world spends annually on cancer research.

In other words, mass deportations are a costly luxury indulgence that Trump’s supporters regard as worth the expense because they experience the need for violence so intensely.

The same goes for the desire to see violence enacted—both judicially and extrajudicially—against trans people and against women as a whole. The mendacious propaganda falsely claiming that trans people are carrying out mass shootings or that undocumented immigrants are contributing to a crime wave is not received by its intended audience as cool-headed statistical inquiry, but rather as an indulgence of their desire to do violence to the truth itself as a step towards doing violence to those that they imagine can be harmed “without fear of reprisal.” They have not been misled by erroneous reporting; their desire for violence has created a market for falsehoods.

As we argued during the first Trump administration, Trump did not become popular by promising to redistribute wealth, but by promising to redistribute violence. This redistribution of violence creates a pressure valve for a whole host of resentments. To quote Girard, once more:

The desire to commit an act of violence on those near us cannot be suppressed without a conflict; we must divert that impulse, therefore, toward the sacrificial victim, the creature we can strike down without fear of reprisal, since he lacks a champion.

Why are societies driven to desire sacrificial violence in the first place? If it is true that sacrificial violence serves to channel rage away from those who provoke it, then we can infer that the more injustice there is in a society—the more that people are oppressed and exploited and humiliated by those who have more power and more privilege than they do—the stronger the urge for sacrificial violence will be.³

This brings us back to Trump’s decision to fête Daniel Penny. In a time when there is increasingly widespread anger, the role that sacrificial violence plays channeling violence away from those who are responsible for harm is essential for maintaining the stability of the prevailing order. This is the world of The Hunger Games, become real.

What would all these angry people be doing if their rage was not satiated via violence against those more vulnerable than themselves?

A banner seen hanging in Chicago over Lake Shore Drive on December 9, 2024.

Retribution

Retribution is fundamentally different from sacrificial violence. For its target, it seeks the person who is most responsible for a particular injustice, regardless of where that person is situated in the social hierarchy.

As a general rule, those who are most responsible for injustice are usually among those who possess the most power—otherwise, how would they have the opportunity to do so much harm? The average person in the United States has considerably more to fear from corporate executives than from undocumented immigrants.

It is the powerful who are able to pose the greatest threat to others: this is practically self-evident, despite the efforts of billionaire-owned media and social media platforms to humanize the wealthy and dehumanize the poor.

When we see people fixating their rage on the powerless amid the worst inequality in generations, this is a dead giveaway that they have been hoodwinked. It is telling that the populist movement around the wealthiest man to ever become president of the United States is presented as a “revolt against the elites” even as it rallies people to worship oligarchs like Trump and Elon Musk. There is no longer any way to rally people without at least pretending to have a go at some subset of the ruling class.

It is terrifying to realize that one’s enemies are considerably more powerful than oneself. It is much easier to take out one’s misfortunes on those who are even worse off. Easier—and utterly pointless—and despicably cowardly.

The shooting of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare galvanized such a powerful response because it posed the question very clearly: should violence be enacted against the most vulnerable—or against the most responsible? It spoke to millions of people because, across the political spectrum, all of them understood that insurance profiteers are responsible for their suffering or for the suffering of people they empathize with. Precisely because it was legible as retribution, the shooting illuminated that injustice has been taking place on a mass scale.

Commenters on Youtube discussing their feelings about the shooting of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare.

Girard cautions us against vengeance, arguing that a single act of retribution can set off a chain reaction:

Vengeance, then, is an interminable, infinitely repetitive process. Every time it turns up in some part of the community, it threatens to involve the whole social body. There is the risk that the act of vengeance will initiate a chain reaction whose consequences will quickly prove fatal… The multiplication of reprisals instantaneously puts the very existence of a society in jeopardy.

It would put the very existence of this society in jeopardy, at least. Of course, a society in which capitalists are able to amass billions by ruthlessly exploiting everyone else—a society that can only remain stable by targeting more and more people for sacrificial violence—already involves a certain amount of jeopardy.

Indeed, what the capitalists fear most is that this single act of vengeance might come to involve the whole social body, that it could initiate a chain reaction. This is why Luigi Mangione, the person accused of shooting the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, is being charged with the same crime on both state and federal levels, and with terrorism besides.

Is Girard right about the risks of vengeance? We can grant that many people hold sincere but erroneous beliefs about who is responsible for their suffering, quite apart from the inclination towards sacrificial violence that the powerful seek to foster for their own protection. But is it better to inhabit a society in which the powerful can inflict any amount of death and suffering on the powerless without fear of consequences, up to and including outright genocide? Is that really the best way to protect society?

We can also grant that it is far better to resolve conflicts to the satisfaction of all parties than it is to descend into interminable blood feuds.⁴ But the state does not actually exist to resolve conflicts. The judicial apparatus and the hundreds of thousands of police who serve it exist to ensure that conflicts need not be resolved to the satisfaction of all parties. They exist to force unsatisfactory outcomes on people, almost always to the advantage of the wealthy—thereby perpetuating the conditions that stoke the desire for sacrificial violence.

If Girard is indeed correct that sacrificial violence is always directed against those who can be “exposed to violence without fear of reprisal,” then it stands to reason that retribution is the only way to hold it at bay once it is unleashed.

Opposing retribution and accepting sacrificial violence in its place will not serve to avert bloodshed; it can only function to ensure that bloodletting will not threaten the social order. Today, the vast majority of us are closer to being among those who can be killed “without fear of reprisal” than we are to becoming executives whose deaths will be mourned on nationwide media—and the less we act in solidarity with each other, the truer that will be. If we do not wish to risk one day being subject to sacrificial violence ourselves, we must become capable of forging common cause with those who are worse off than us in order to defend ourselves from those who seek to exploit and oppress us.

In the absence of effective collective models for self-defense and social change, retribution hangs in the popular imagination as the only remaining way to take a stand against injustice. Sacrificial violence corrupts and debases all who derive relief from it; by contrast, retribution at least expresses a forlorn longing for a world without injustice. As Girard himself admits,

It is precisely because they detest violence that men make a duty of vengeance.

Beyond Martyrdom

In the iconography of sacrificial violence and retribution, the scapegoat and the martyr are twin archetypes. The former is sacrificed to stabilize the existing order, the latter serves to sanctify a new order by giving his life for it. By sacrificing himself, the martyr demonstrates that the new order has a transcendent value—that it is worth more than life itself. These archetypes are thousands of years old; their influence on us is deeper than we understand.

Of course, most people are only drawn to martyrdom as a spectator sport. Martyrs’ sacrifices often prove most useful to those who have no intention of risking their own lives for any cause. The popular response to the shooting of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare shows how disillusioned millions of people are with capitalism and its beneficiaries, but this response is also a symptom of widespread despair and demobilization. The shooting aroused such an outpouring of pent-up frustrations precisely because these people have not been able to figure out what they themselves can do to put a stop to injustice and exploitation.

It is up to us to show that there are ways to resist injustice and exploitation that do not end in martyrdom. If we do not popularize collective models for bringing about social change, if we leave people to choose between passivity and martyrdom, the vast majority will choose passivity.

Those who approve of neither sacrificial violence nor retribution had better demonstrate an effective alternative. Arguing against retribution without doing anything to change the conditions that provoke it can only set the stage for even more sacrificial violence to occur in its place.

Make no mistake, as economic and ecological crises intensify, we are going to see more and more sacrificial violence—and more public figures will come to view it as necessary, even if they dare not call it by its name. Trump’s violent rhetoric is not a temporary excess; it is just the most visible manifestation of a mechanism that has already resumed the essential role that it plays in stabilizing the social order during every era of unrest.⁵

As anarchists, the spiritual economics of guilt and punishment that underlies the framework of retribution is foreign to us. Calculating culpability and meting out suffering is the work of the state, its judiciary, and its God; we have other ambitions. We do not wish to see the guilty punished as an end unto itself—we seek to do away with the means via which they oppress. We would pass up the fulfillment of any vendetta if we could thereby bring about the abolition of capitalism, even if that meant permitting every former billionaire to walk free. We don’t seek to goad others into becoming martyrs on our behalf. We aspire to model the sort of courage, humility, and care we hope that others will express alongside us so that together we can change the world.

But until we succeed, there will be sacrificial violence—and retribution.

Graffiti seen in Seattle, Washington.

Appendix

According to a survey, over 40% of young people polled deemed the assassination of Thompson “acceptable.” Photographs of graffiti, banner drops, and altered billboards expressing support for Luigi Mangione, the person currently being charged with the killing of the CEO, have gone viral and generated headlines. The December 4th Legal Committee is helping to run a fundraising campaign in support of Mangione’s legal defense; interviews with spokespersons Sam Beard and Jamie Peck have been featured on outlets such as CNN, drawing hundreds of supportive comments. As of this writing, the online fundraiser has raised over $186,000.

Here follows an incomplete roundup of graffiti, posters, corporate media interviews, and demonstrations addressing the shooting of Brian Thompson or expressing support for Luigi Mangione, the person accused of carrying it out.

Sam Beard speaking on CNN on behalf of a fundraising campaign in support of Luigi Mangione’s legal defense.

Pacific Northwest

A poster seen in Portland, Oregon.

Graffiti on a freeway in Medford, OR

California

A banner appeared in Turlock, California.
Two banners appeared on the bridge connecting San Francisco, California.
Graffiti seen in Riverside, California.
Billboard redecorated in Inland Empire, California.
Graffiti seen in Hollywood, California.
Graffiti seen in San Diego, California.

Freight train graffiti photographed in the Bay Area.

Southwest

Graffiti seen in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Graffiti seen in Tucson, Arizona.

Central

A stencil seen in Austin, Texas.
Also in Austin, on December 21, several people participated in a demonstration and circulated the following report:

Today, six Luigis took a couple banners to a highly trafficked foot bridge in downtown Austin and danced to the Mario theme song. Pedestrians cheered, wrote letters to Luigi, and even took photos with the banners. Letters ranged from heart-wrenching stories about family members being denied healthcare to love letters. The overall reception was extremely good. Flyers were handed out that called out the largest health insurance company in Texas, Blue Cross Blue Shield. They read:

“On December 4th, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down. The bullet casings told the story: this was act of vengeance against UnitedHealthCare, who denies over 30% of health insurance claims—a company emblematic of a system that kills. Every year, over 50,000 Americans die from lack of insurance. 38% percent of us avoid necessary care because we’re scared of the cost. One in twelve is drowning in medical debt. Health insurance companies aren’t doctors. They don’t heal—they profit by restricting access to care. While we ration medications, delay appointments, and worry about bills, they rake in billions. We get sicker and they get richer. This violence isn’t on the evening news. It’s buried beneath their marketing, their endless paperwork, their fine print. But make no mistake: this is violence. And they’re laughing all the way to the bank. Blue Cross Blue Shield, Texas’s largest insurer, denies one in five claims while pocketing $18 billion in revenue. Whether Thompson’s death filled you with joy or horror, it ripped the mask off. The truth was laid bare: these companies are complicit in widespread suffering. Think about the last time you or someone you love worried about a medical bill. Put off care because of the cost. Cut pills in half to make them last. You’ve felt the violence they inflict. Now, the media and government scramble to spin the narrative, calling working-class mother Briana Boston a “terrorist” for uttering “Deny, Defend, Depose” when her claims were denied. We must remain clear headed: a small group gets rich off our illness. The solution is just as simple: abolish these corporations and nationalize health insurance. Single-payer healthcare works everywhere else in the developed world, where people live longer and healthier lives. Texans, by contrast, die three years younger, victims of private healthcare. The only question left is this: When will we stop waiting and take what is ours?”

Austin, December 21.

Midwest

Graffiti seen in Chicago, Illinois.
More graffiti seen in Chicago, Illinois.
A banner displayed in Chicago, Illinois.
Graffiti seen in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Graffiti seen in Chicago, Illinois.

In addition, a rally in occurred Indianapolis, Indiana. From a report:

Today, we protest against Elevance Health not in its role as a distinct actor in the health insurance market, a single agent in the hall of mirrors of contemporary capitalism. Elevance operates in just the same manner as UHC in the way it ranks bodies and judges some to be worthy of care and the rest simply not worth the time or effort. In this manner, the only difference between the two is a matter of degrees in subdomains. We believe it is necessary to oppose this system of broad ranking of life expectancies in an age of depreciating life expectations. It is necessary as a precondition to a life worth living. We believe that everyone is worthy of care. We believe that everyone deserves access to a healthy life according to their own standards. Both Elevance and UHC stand as barriers to this possibility. This is why we oppose them.

Graffiti seen in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Southeast

Graffiti seen in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Graffiti seen in Richmond, Virginia.
A sticker seen in St. Petersburg, Florida.
A banner drop photographed in Atlanta, Georgia.

Northeast

Posters appeared in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Graffiti appearedin Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
A banner displayed Vermont.
Graffiti appeared in Baltimore, Maryland.
Several instances of graffiti appeared around New York City, as well as CEO “Wanted” posters. A noise demonstration also took place outside of the Ziegfeld Ballroom. One participant said,

“You know the theme of the event tonight is the roaring ’20s. In the roaring ’20s, there was a lot of wealth and inequality, just like now. So while they’re drinking champagne and thinking about glamor, we’re thinking about the people that we love who are poor, who are sick, and who can’t afford healthcare.”

Artwork in Santiago, Chile.

When they invited him to the football game, Penny had just appeared on Fox News describing the “guilt” he “would have felt if someone did get hurt”—making it explicitly clear that he did not consider Jordan Neely to count as a human being. ↩
For example, Girard argues that desire emerges imitatively and that this inevitably provokes violent tensions between people, as it causes them to compete for the same scarce objects. One might counter that while some of the things that people desire are indeed subject to scarcity, imitative desire could also give rise to cooperation, producing abundance in place of scarcity and diminishing the impetus towards violence, sacrificial or otherwise. In short, Girard does a compelling job of describing the role of sacrificial violence in afflicted societies, but he does not succeed in proving that it is inevitable. ↩
This explains why some of the new voters that Trump picked up in the 2024 election are immediately adjacent to the demographics he is pledging to attack: positioned near the margins, on the receiving end of injustice, they feel the urgency of violence more than most. ↩
There is a longstanding tradition, stretching back to Aeschylus’s Oresteia, of works of philosophy and literature claiming that state power and its attendant centralized judicial system were invented in order to put an end to the cycle of violence that Girard claims is the inevitable outcome of the pursuit of retribution. In the Icelandic tradition, the equivalent work is probably Njáls Saga, which recounts blood feuds and conflict resolution across a half century in the days before Iceland had a centralized government. Centralized state governance took hold in Iceland much later than in ancient Greece, however, so we can compare the myth presented in the Oresteia with the reality of Icelandic history. In fact, centralized government did not spontaneously emerge in Iceland as a means to resolve conflict; rather, once conflicts between various local parties became irresolvable, the king of Norway was able to take advantage of the opportunity to bring Iceland under his control and impose his rule upon it. If this example is any indication, the reality is precisely the opposite of the myth: those who cannot resolve conflicts among themselves will eventually be subordinated to the state, which is itself the result of unresolved conflict that has metastasized into a permanent condition, not the solution to unresolved conflict. ↩
In order to supply the American public with sacrificial violence, the previous generation of Republican politicians repeatedly invaded Iraq. That was a kinder, gentler time, when sacrificial victims were chiefly sought outside the borders of the United States. Just like today’s war on the undocumented, those invasions were justified with discernibly false pretenses and scaremongering. The result was sort of drunken spree from which politicians of both parties emerged with regrets, having completely destabilized the Middle East and made the world a considerably more dangerous place. ↩

News from the Front: The Reflections of a Russian Anarchist in Rojava : On the Collapse of Assad, the Future of Russia, and the Looming Turkish-Backed Invasion

2024-12-19T12:26:25Z

The toppling of the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria was many years overdue. Yet the tragedies in Syria are not over. Israel has bombed hundreds of locations around the country and seized a considerable amount of land in the southwest, while Turkish proxy forces are threatening to attack northeastern Syria in order to carry out ethnic cleansing. As in 2019, when Donald Trump gave Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan the green light to invade the country, we call on people around the world to engage in solidarity actions to discourage the world powers from permitting this to happen.

To humanize at least one of the countless people whose lives hang in the balance here, we offer the reflections of a Russian anarchist volunteer in northeastern Syria who has participated in the revolutionary experiment in Rojava for many years. He describes watching the Russian mercenaries exit this country where they have inflicted so much harm, hoping that one day, he might see the same soldiers lay down their arms in his homeland, just as Assad’s mercenaries have.

For more updates on the situation in northern Syria from anarchist internationalists on the ground, you can follow this Russian-language telegram channel or consult the website of Tekoşîna Anarşîst.

I am composing these lines sitting on the cold and dusty floor, leaning against the wall. I really want to sleep. Over the past two weeks, I have lost all sense of what time it is—I have not often had the chance to be on the surface. Sleeping on a thin mattress in a common room is a routine I am used to. We often fall asleep at different times. Sleep is interrupted by people walking from room to room, information being transmitted by phone and radio, alarms being raised because of possible SNA¹ attacks on our position. To freeze under a swath of open sky, straining my ears over the beating of my own heart—can I hear Turkish drones in the sky? Are there artillery salvos, are there missiles flying?

And so I sit here, hugging my rifle and wrapping my face in a scarf. And the long hours of waiting drag on.

Of course, I think a lot about the situation that has rapidly unfolded in Syria. I can’t shake the feeling that we are on the brink of a major war. Yet here, the view of the quiet villages occupied by pro-Turkish fighters on the other side of the front line can be deceiving. Everything looks calm; the fields between us are empty; nothing moves.

In reality, this is the result of several years of war. The balance of precautions that has developed over this time: traps, mines, surveillance cameras and patrols on both sides—all of these narrow the possibilities for offensive action. Realizing this, I feel an invisible tension that stretches to the horizon in the direction of the enemy.

This situation is periodically shaken by the arrival of artillery shells and gunfire. The people at the other positions around us are in a similar situation. There is a city behind us, and pro-Turkish fighters can try to break through us straight to it. Everyone in our position is ready to defend against any attack.

In contrast to the daily reality on our part of the front, we are able to watch the news. Events are developing at breakneck speed. The Assad regime has fallen, Manbij is under attack by the SNA, Deir ez-Zor is in the hands of the SDF² to prevent the Islamic State from capturing the city—and now Shehba has been surrendered, Deir ez-Zor has been handed over to HTS,³ there is fierce fighting in Manbij and the subsequent retreat. Almost a million people have been forced to leave their homes due to new hostilities. Israel has been bombing military infrastructure throughout Syria. A lot of contradictory and incorrect information is circulating on various channels. It is clear that information warfare and psychological war are being waged. This is intended to influence people’s perceptions of the situation, to shape the discussions and the general mood as well as the coverage that other media outlets provide, not to mention its effects on the participants in the events themselves.

The news about the adoption of the green-white-black tricolor with three red stars as the flag of the new, post-Assad Syria occasioned special discussions among us. The Democratic Autonomous Administration of North-Eastern Syria considers itself part of this Syria. In view of the history of this flag, which became a symbol of the revolution in the country and the banner of the uprising against Assad in 2011, this move is not surprising.

There are also contradictions. HTS took this symbol into circulation. But it does not belong to them. Now an opportunity has opened up to make the project of democratic confederalism a possible option for all of Syria and beyond. Politically and in many other ways, Rojava is stronger and richer than HTS. The latter has just had a wave of success, while in Rojava, we have experience and a well-developed idea. The SDF would also prefer a political solution to the situation in Syria. SDF Commander-in-Chief Mazloum Abdi said that no one wants war here except for the pro-Turkish proxies.

Watching all this, some quick and perhaps naïve thoughts flash through my head. Footage from cities liberated from the regime shows people celebrating the fall of the regime. I have noticed that there are almost no women visible among them. This seems like a significant contrast to what many of the rallies and marches in Rojava look like.

The thought has also crossed my mind that it could become possible to see previously inaccessible places in Syria. After many years of dictatorship, traveling from Rojava to Damascus, for example, without “special routes” has seemed impossible. And what about the millions of people who were born and raised here? What about the Kurdish population, who for a long time were not even granted passports? What about those who were born after their parents were forced to emigrate from Syria? Or the generations who have known nothing but Assad’s rule and war?

These reflections bring me back to the situation in Russia. Witnessing the broad Syrian opposition, millions of people watching what is happening with hope, packing their bags to return home, it is difficult not to think: what will it be like when the same thing happens in Russia?

The Assad regime was guaranteed by Putin’s power; its fall has already completely changed the position of the Russian army here. Following the soldiers of Assad’s regime, who realized that they were no longer in danger from the old order and abandoned their equipment, weapons, and positions, the Russian army is also leaving. I watched with special feeling as the Russian columns passed by me at one of the positions. I peered into the faces of the soldiers, trying to understand whether they realized that all these years, they had been terrorizing the population with bombings, they had surrendered Afrin to the Turkish army, they had kept Assad’s regime alive—and now all this is over. Russian military aid to the Syrian dictatorship has ended. I do not think that those soldiers realized that they were looking into the eyes of a man from the same country as themselves, but who chose the other side of the barricades.

As will probably happen in Russia one day, the fall of the regime here has created a space that must be filled by a new political system. HTS, the former Al-Qaeda in Syria, which is doing its best to appear “presentable,” is unlikely to be able to organize a new state without a quick collapse or a new crisis. Although they overthrew Assad, HTS is not a liberation force in terms of its values. Perhaps in Russia, we will also see the regime collapse thanks to forces that are far from the values proclaimed by the Rojava experiment. Women’s liberation, the coexistence of various ethnic groups and other identities, each with their own autonomy, communes—today, in the Russian Federation, these are not especially popular topics, even in the opposition milieu.

Whatever the character of the force that overthrew Assad, it will stir up hope in the hearts of millions. It will also open the door for new ruling elites and their interests.

Hope and enthusiasm are in short supply in the fight against Putin’s regime today, but they are necessary for success. Sometimes, we will have to endure deep contradictions and disappointments.

In between my reflections, everyday affairs, and the organization of defense, our daily life is not without familiar things. An Arab comrade, who has been through almost all the fronts of the defense of the revolution, pours sugar into the teapot with full ladles, laughing and saying, “Dims” (Kurmanji for “syrup”). A cat named Myshka wanders among us, and we joke that she is part of the defense. A comrade next to me diligently writes Arabic script and shows her work to the Arab comrades, who patiently check her spelling.

Sunrise is coming. We are ready, the strong sweet tea is invigorating, and a new day is ahead. Events are moving very quickly—every couple of hours something new and unexpected happens. What awaits us today? I don’t know. But the thought that we are standing in defense of the revolution and its ideals together with people of all ethnicities and ages from around Rojava, that each and every one of us is making a contribution, gives me strength and clarity. I hope that Rojava’s survival will bring victories to our anarchist movement, which, in my opinion, can learn a lot here in Syria.

Syrian National Army, a proxy force serving the Turkish government. ↩
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the military of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. ↩
Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, a coalition of Sunni Islamist insurgent groups from northern Syria. HTS evolved out of Jabhat al-Nusrah, which began as al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria. ↩

Resisting Local Authoritarianism and Multipolar Imperialisms in Georgia : A Deeper Look into the Protests

2024-12-11T05:20:06Z

On the one-hundred-year anniversary of the uprising in Georgia against Soviet annexation, the struggle for independence from Russian rule remains the chief force driving the popular mobilization that has been growing over the past several months. Yet today’s movement points to a horizon beyond the choice between Europe and Russia, two of the imperial powers contending for influence in the region. It expresses a growing social anger at both the local authoritarian regime and the grip of foreign economic powers upon the Caucasus in general.

Contrary to the dominant media discourse, this popular mobilization is not simply a demand for Georgia to be integrated into the European Union. From a distance, it may seem reminiscent of the 2014 Maidan revolution in Ukraine, but to grasp the deep tumult that this particular struggle represents, we need to look closer.

This article was prepared by a Georgian anti-authoritarian in exile in communication with local collectives in Tbilisi, Kutaisi, and Zugdidi. The photos are courtesy of მაუწყებელი / Mautskebeli. Georgians themselves refer to the country by the name Sakartvelo.

Introduction

In order to understand what is taking place in the streets of Georgia without falling into nostalgia or insurrectionary romanticism, we need to listen to the expression of social anger. This article is aimed at readers in the West, particularly in Western Europe, where many people are trapped in a reductive campism, which presents the movement in Georgia—as well as other struggles in the post-Soviet context, such as in Ukraine or Chechnya—as simply aligned with the interests of the Euro-Atlantic bloc, omitting the geopolitical stakes vis-à-vis Russian imperialism and internal authoritarian policies.

Others looking on from a distance are swept up in a confused exhilaration. The sudden burst of media attention—on a scale we apparently did not deserve even during the 2008 war—tells only part of the story, focusing on the insurrectionary aesthetic of gold stars and European flags waved bravely in the face of water cannon jets.

To attract the attention of the West, you need either tragedy or spectacle. We’ve experienced plenty of tragedy throughout the last few decades. But the recent history of the post-Soviet territories remains a gloomy stain in the backdrop of wars and conflicts, not close enough to really grip the media consumer, not far enough away to inspire guilt.

In our country, the spectacular is more in the mountains than in the street. This time, however, the images of protesters with fireworks, the scenes of direct confrontation with the police, faces covered in blood, have had an effect, both on the corporate media and on the insurrectionists.

The French news network BFMTV reports on the riots live from Rustaveli Avenue in Tbilisi, while the Georgian Prime Minister, Irakli Kobakhidze, employs a discourse that we had already heard from the same channel during the Yellow Vest movement in France, speaking of “violent rioters” and “assailants of the forces of law and order.” European politicians are expressing shock at the police violence and denouncing the disproportionate use of the repressive apparatus, while Georgia’s ruling party, “Georgian Dream,” broadcasts scenes of police charges and raids on demonstrations in Europe in its own anti-Western propaganda.

So why all the attention now? What geopolitical and economic stakes underpin these events? We see pro-Western and pro-Russian forces, a local authoritarian regime rubbing shoulders with BRICS [the transnational alliance involving Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa] and the Euro-Atlantic far right, neoliberal progressivism employing murderous methods. But what is the Georgian population’s own struggle, what are the reasons for their anger at the government and its increasingly authoritarian policies?

For a deeper understanding than can be gleaned from the images that reach Western Europe, we need to situate the events in their immediate local context, and at the same time, frame them in the post-Soviet period in general.

A National Protest Movement in the Context of Local Authoritarianism

Although protesters have been taking to the streets all night long for the past week and are gaining momentum in several cities, they are part of a social movement that began last spring against the “foreign agent” law.

Against this backdrop, the parliamentary elections were clearly rigged to keep the ruling party in power: Georgian Dream, led by the oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili.

Even before the Prime Minister’s declaration suspending discussions about integrating Georgia into the European Union until 2028, people were organizing demonstrations to contest the election results and call for new elections. Police violently dispersed those demonstrations, brutally attacking and arresting people; demonstrators faced ununiformed assailants alongside the police, as well as imprisonment and other forms of legal repression. Yet strikes, resignations from the state bureaucracy, and student mobilizations in regional schools have only gained momentum, going beyond the issue of the election. People have occupied the Georgian Public Broadcaster, First Channel. Already-existing collectives are participating in these protests, including residents of peripheral regions who were already resisting environmentally destructive projects, student movements fighting for access to housing, queer and feminist collectives, and people mobilizing against evictions.

Today, the threat of authoritarianism hangs over everyone, heralding the establishment of a state of emergency and a curfew to stifle the possibility of protest, as well as the reform of the state bureaucracy—a maneuver intended to inflict mass layoffs of opponents and anyone deemed critical of the regime.

At the same time, police repression is intensifying: hundreds of people have been arrested, including minors and young adults; police have sent people many people to the hospital, leaving one young man in intensive care, while carrying out mass searches and beating and humiliating people in the streets. Officers in the riot police who seek to resign are themselves repressed by their colleagues, as revealed by an officer who left the country. For several nights, it has been the “zonderebi,” the “titushkebi”—the armed plainclothes “strongmen” employed for the “dirty work”—who have been prowling the streets to brutalize demonstrators and journalists. The government has also announced a reform of the police, facilitating access to services without going through competitive examinations, in order to speed the recruitment of new personnel in order to achieve the capacity to stifle a movement that is now taking on national proportions.

If the Georgian Dream party came to power in 2012 by opposing the neoliberal government of Mikheil Saakashvili and its bloody police state, it has since come to represent the same police system. It uses police and judicial violence in a tripartite form: French-style street repression (anti-riot weapons, kettling, beatings, and the like), Russian-style judicial repression (arrests and prison sentences for activists and opponents), and mafia violence (beatings by the “thugs,” violence targeting people at their homes, threats to relatives and family members) reminiscent of the methods of the regime of Mikheil Saakashvili, who left office in 2013.

Images of people wounded during the demonstrations.

The generalized rage against the “Kotsi” and the “Natsi”—derogatory terms designating respectively the party in power and the opposition, the United National Movement (UNM), as well as their allies—is evident in the tirade of insults launched against both camps during the rallies. There is too much anger for people to use refined rhetoric; the insults fly in outbursts on television and during public speeches. For the same reason, the politicians of the UNM are driven out by demonstrators, some of whom suffered under their regime before Georgian Dream came to power. “The resistance to the police regime that allowed this government to take power will also mark its end,” activists declare during their speeches, particularly during the rallies organized for the release of all detainees.

This rejection of both parties reflects a profound defiance of the authorities and a refusal to submit to the caricatured dualisms that they promote: the Western civilizational project versus the Russian war project, progressivism versus obscurantism, subservience to Western hegemony versus subservience to territorial imperialism, ultra-liberal nationalism versus ultra-conservative nationalism. The point where these dualisms converge is also their breaking point: unbridled policing, policies that make it impossible to live, exploitation of natural resources as part of the global imperial market, the impoverishment of the population in exchange for economic and geostrategic alliances with foreign powers.

To delegitimize the movement, the government uses rhetoric to revive the divisions associated with “polarization,” putting UNM politicians in the spotlight. The government presents itself as the guarantor of national sovereignty in the face of the threat of war from the north and the danger of a coup d’état by Western forces, constantly manipulating the example of Ukraine to sow fear. They compare the current movement to the Maidan uprising in order to argue that it is not self-managed but controlled by partisans of the Maidan and the UNM, insisting that the Ukrainian revolution led to hundreds of deaths and then, to war.

This anti-Ukrainian rhetoric minimizes both the social dimension and the form of agency specific to the Maidan movement, which cannot be reduced to neo-Nazi forces alone. It is consistent with the anti-war rhetoric deployed throughout the electoral campaign. The way that the government displayed images of the wars as election advertising proves that, behind the illusion of maintaining peace, we find the most despicable methods of maintaining power. They are exploiting the traumas of our collective memory, which remain raw—not only from the war that occurred in 2008, but also from the tumultuous years of the 1990s, which saw an independence movement accompanied by a putsch, a civil war, and inter-ethnic conflicts.

The “Foreign Agent” Law

The current use of police brutality and legal repression was facilitated by new legislation passed last spring, which also serves as the foundation for ideological rhetoric based on anti-Western authoritarianism.

The law regarding “transparency of the influence of foreign forces” reintroduces a project that was dropped a year and a half ago after mass protests. The law was adopted last spring, a year later, after two months of demonstrations and the circumvention of a presidential veto.

Modeled on a Russian original, this law requires any nonprofit organization receiving 20% of its annual income from foreign sources—whether those are grants or individual funding—to register as an “entity representing the interests of a foreign force.” In a local economy marked by the absence of public subsidies and alternative sources of income, contrary to the official rhetoric, this law does not endanger the large NGOs as much as small associations, unions, and independent media, as well as local and self-managed collectives.

Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze openly stated that this law is primarily aimed at silencing the centers of resistance and struggle during his briefing on December 3: “We will build the Namakhvani Dam.”¹ The implication was that with this law in place, nothing will prevent the implementation of hydroelectric mega-projects, considered the pinnacle of economic development. Kobakhidze was referring to the Rioni Valley movement, which is now labeled pro-Western, despite being labeled pro-Russian three years ago. This movement, a self-managed environmental struggle led by locals which managed to force a Turkish company to back down from building a mega-hydroelectric dam, has become one of the main targets in the government’s rhetoric; they frame it as a threat to so-called energy sovereignty and independence. In response to the prime minister’s statement, residents of the valley held a banner at a rally in Tbilisi: “The Namakhvani Dam will not be built.”

Protesters carry a banner opposing the Namakhvani Dam.

In addition to the Rioni Valley movement, many local resistance movements are fighting against the social and environmental injustices caused by large-scale economic projects, including the exploitation and extraction of natural resources.

In Mingrelia, in western Georgia, residents of the village of Balda are mobilizing to prevent the beginning of construction work on an ecotourism development project involving the privatization of the river, land, and living spaces, as well as significant damage to mountain slopes.

In Shukruti, residents are fighting against the exploitation of the soil for manganese extraction by the Georgian Manganese company, a British holding company of Stemcor. Due to the explosions, the village is sinking into the ground, taking the houses of its inhabitants with it. The usual vigils occupying the construction site were moved this autumn to the Parliament in Tbilisi, with more radical forms of protest: hunger strikes and lips sewn shut.

Energy Geopolitics

But behind these small popular struggles are the stakes of the big economic players: China, Russia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iran and, of course, the European Union. Their power struggles are translated into inter-imperialist alliances, conflicts, and wars in which energy is a weapon par excellence.

The war in Ukraine and the sanctions against Russia have strengthened Georgia’s geostrategic position within economic infrastructure projects like the gas and oil corridor, hydroelectric resources, and maritime and land transit routes. The law on foreign agents presents itself as a guarantor of the realization of such projects. At the same time, the government has adopted the offshore law, the anti-LGBT law, and amendments to the law on pensions, as well as signing energy and economic memoranda with Turkey and China.

All of this seems to be part of a strategy of rapprochement with BRICS, particularly with China and Azerbaijan, to strengthen trade by expanding its role as a transit corridor. Georgia plays a strategic role in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s initiative to create a “new silk road” by integrating the China-Central Asia-West Asia economic corridor. Georgia’s involvement is based on two key projects: the construction of a new port in Anaklia, which is intended to become a major hub, and the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway line, intended to strengthen logistical connections between Asia and Europe.

This strategic position enables the Georgian government to exert pressure on the European Union, in particular because of its involvement in the colossal project to build an extensive undersea electricity cable, which would transport electricity supplied by Azerbaijan to the European Union, passing through the Black Sea in Georgia. A significant amount of energy transit already takes place through pipelines crossing Georgia, including the BTC (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan) oil pipeline and the SCP (South Caucasus Pipeline) gas pipeline, which connect the Caspian Sea to Turkey via Georgian territory.²

Considering these geostrategic alliances for the conquest of resources, we can see that the simplistic division of the world into two major blocs—on one side, the Euro-Atlantic bloc and on the other, Russia—no longer makes sense. Now, we must understand the geopolitical chessboard as a multipolar space. Similarly, geopolitically speaking, the Georgian Dream party allies itself as much with the governments of the Euro-Atlantic extreme right (Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán) as with regional powers on the basis of a populist, sovereignist, and conservative discourse. Economically speaking—in terms of its rapacious extraction policies and intent to dispossess and impoverish populations—it is fully in line with the globalized capitalist market alongside the progressive camp.

The Anti-LGBT Law

In order to reinforce the social conflict already initiated by the establishment of Western hegemony in this country, in particular through the interference of institutions and NGOs in the economic and cultural spheres, the government has skillfully appropriated an anti-Western discourse, arousing the sympathy of a part of the population despised by the “pro-Western” part. This rhetorical masquerade allows it to set up certain “social groups” as scapegoats in order to justify the establishment of an authoritarian regime for the defense of “peace, tradition, and economic sovereignty.” In addition to those “blocking” energy independence, it is “the LGBT group” that supposedly represents one of the chief threats to our cultural and religious identity.

This is the context in which the new anti-LGBT law, called the “Law on family values and the protection of minors,” came into force on December 2. The law, which equates homosexual relations and gender identity with incest, criminalizes queer people themselves as well as access to healthcare that the law deems “medical manipulation.” In addition to the queer community, the law also criminalizes any form of support, demonstration, public gathering, or public stance that could be labeled as “pro-queer propaganda.” The collective Queer Resistance wrote about the law’s application in its “anti-fascist manifesto”:

“In Georgia, where nearly a million people have left the country to migrate in search of work over the past five years, one in three children lives in extreme poverty, while the education and healthcare systems are in ruins, the greedy oligarch has based his election campaign on false promises of peace and the propagation of artificial hatred.

“By criminalizing a part of the population—queer people—and legalizing hatred and censorship to establish totalitarian control, the law also designates as criminals all those and everything that opposes the legislation of this evil.”

Confronting the impoverishment and widespread indebtedness of the population, a situation in which banks and private services hold absolute power while the question of national identity still remains to be defined, it became necessary to create a new image of the enemy. This enemy is not far away in Russia or Turkey, but right before our eyes, forcibly imported by the West: the enemy whose very life itself, as well as appearance in public, threatens our morals and traditions and contributes to demographic problems. This is part of an operation to redirect anger over social problems, aiming to replace an old archetype of the enemy with a new one as a catalyst for the construction of identity.

However, if the responsibility for criminalizing queer people lies with the government, Western sexual imperialism bears some responsibility for instrumentalizing the queer question. While the missionaries of “human rights” were supposed to protect oppressed minorities, the ultraconservative response made them one of its first targets, using the anti-Western argument. Queer-washing only reinforced the social and cultural divide, separating “religious obscurantists” from liberal progressives. The government exploits the LGBTQ issue with such vigor because it knows how to provoke a strong cultural and existential tension by reproducing this opposition and defending the anti-progressive camp that is scorned by “civilizational” policies.

The Desire for the West?

This massive protest movement, which has been represented merely as pro-European rallies, has its own specific forms of organization, sociality, and mutual aid.

This is something you would never find on the streets of Europe. During the rallies on Rustaveli Avenue, traditional dances, folk songs, and religious songs take center stage; the cool kids of Gen Z shout slogans—the “Gaumarojos Sakartvelos”—that could just as easily be heard from the mouths of the “obscurantists” as a toast to the fatherland, freedom, and the church; mothers accompany their children.

Mothers accompany their children—in the vain hope of protecting them from police abuse. A mother’s cry—“Let go of her, she is my child”—has become the watchword of the protest, now inscribed in graffiti. Grandmothers, when they still have the strength to move, are surrounded and protected by demonstrators against water cannon fire; priests come out of the Kashveti church to shelter persecuted demonstrators.

Behind the gas masks, the shields painted with the numbers “1312,” there is also the idea of the common, which expresses itself first and foremost as a sense of collective belonging, crushed throughout the history of its existence, and adds a strong cultural, even existential dimension to political resistance.

Rustaveli Avenue has seen many police, military and paramilitary raids since the independence movement of the 1990s. Protesters from the “parents’ generation” evoke the memory of April 9, 1989, the date that marks the tragic beginning of the independence movement with the deaths of young protesters crushed beneath Russian tanks. The use of ununiformed forces and the manipulation around the question of war invoke collective memory: the war crimes of the Mkhedrioni paramilitary group, particularly in the regions of Mingrelia and Abkhazia, a collective trauma arising from the destruction of both bodies and souls following the massacres of Ossetians and Abkhazians, the ethnic cleansing of Georgians and forced displacements, as well as the rupture of inter-ethnic and family ties.

To understand what is at stake behind what can be interpreted as the desire for the West, we must bear this history in mind. First the Tsarist empire, then the Soviet empire made Russia one of the chief colonial powers ruling Georgia, following the Ottoman empire.

To recall the course of the recent history of liberation, Georgia and then Chechnya proclaimed their independence in 1991, before the fall of the USSR. All this took place in a landscape marked by the intensification of both nationalist and ethno-nationalist struggles, calling for the secession of minority ethnic groups under the protection of the USSR (Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, Ossetia).

Following a coup d’état, civil war broke out in the capital between Georgian separatists, led by Zviad Gamsakhurdia, and the putschist opposition, which became the State Council led by former communist leader Eduard Shevardnadze. This war degenerated into a so-called inter-ethnic conflict from 1991 to 1993 in Abkhazia.

The 2008 war with Russia, although it took place in a different context than in the 1990s, revived the same wounds related to ethnic and territorial conflicts. This time, it was South Ossetia, another region mostly populated by ethnic minorities, that ended up being occupied by the Russian Federation.

But let there be no mistake: although the question of the autonomy of ethnic minorities in a territory where a multiplicity of languages, religions, and traditions coexist is a crucial issue, Russia remains an external superpower that uses ethnic tensions as leverage in a power struggle with the sole aim of expanding its territorial reign. Just as in Ukraine, Russia has always known how to associate the violence of its imperial regime with the conflicts over ethnic identity in the Caucasus, setting itself up as the “savior of oppressed ethnic minorities.”

This is why, behind the European flags, we find the hope for a better world, and behind the desire for the West—the desire for independence. But the idea of Europe as a horizon does not only arise in opposition to Russia. It also emerges from the propaganda and soft power of Euro-Atlantic neoliberal hegemony, which has continued to extend its zone of influence over post-Soviet territories since the collapse of the USSR.

For us, the generation of the 1990s, who grew up in the post-war period following the decline of the independence movement, the promise of the pro-Western path represented the dream of a better world that had been on the other side of the Iron Curtain: peace, bread, electricity, hot water, education, and health. Today, even if Europe continues to embody some kind of promise for a part of the population, no one is fooled.

Since the liberalization of visas in 2017, Georgia remains on the list of countries with high asylum demand, alongside Afghanistan and Bangladesh. This statistic shows that, in a population of 3.5 million inhabitants, each family has at least one member in exile and migration, seeking protection and subsistence conditions, in order to gain access to free health care or sufficient financial resources to support the relatives who have remained in the country, or else to repay the loans of a family that is deep in debt. Labeled as “bad exiles” because they are “economic migrants” or migrating “for health reasons,” not only are they denied the right to travel freely, but, in addition, they are subjected to all kinds of institutional and police violence, ranging from hundreds of illegal expulsions to the deaths of detainees in detention centers following police violence.³

While Europe would like to map Georgia under its sphere of influence, its treatment of the Georgian population in exile and economic migration has revealed its deception and duplicity.

Consequently, for the emigrant population, particularly in the context of growing racism and the rise of the extreme right, Europe no longer represents a mythical power that could save us from warlike imperialism and guarantee better social policies in a country prey to private predation. For the population of Georgia, insofar as geopolitical issues are mixed with questions of identity, if turning towards Europe represents a survival strategy for some, the chief concern, now even more so than before, remains the authoritarianism of the local government.

For Internationalist Solidarity

To conclude, I’d like to share the message of support sent to comrades in Georgia from Paris:

“From the gathering of Syrian comrades celebrating the fall of dictator Bashar Al-Assad’s regime, and of Georgian comrades organizing in support of the current protest movement, we want to bring the message of internationalist solidarity to peoples in struggle against imperialism, local authoritarian regimes, and social injustice.

“At a time of genocide in Palestine, wars in Ukraine, Lebanon and Sudan, the rise of authoritarian regimes in Georgia, Iran, and Russia and the extreme right in Europe, the only hope lies in building alliances and solidarity between oppressed peoples. Only the people can save the people!

“From Syria to Georgia, may the regimes fall everywhere!

“Freedom to all the prisoners in Georgia!

“Love and rage,

“Internationalist comrades from Paris”

A solidarity demonstration in Paris. “From Syria to Georgia, may the regimes fall everywhere!”

The construction of the Namakhvani Hydroelectric Cascade, the largest hydroelectric facility on Georgian territory since the end of the USSR, by the Turkish company ENKA. ↩
Already in 2006, the construction of the pipeline had aroused much opposition from locals. It goes without saying that the local economy has not received any financial benefit from these pipelines owned by the multinational consortiums BTC Co. and South Caucasus Pipeline Company. Their management is shared between European companies like British Petroleum and those of Azerbaijan and Turkey alongside Russia and Iran. ↩
Vakhtang Enukidze in 2020 at the CPR Gradisca d’Isonzo, Italy; Tamaz Rasoian, a Georgian-Kurdish national, at the Merkplas detention center, Belgium, in 2023. ↩

Georgia: The Firework Protests : A Report and Video Footage from the Streets of Tbilisi

2024-12-04T07:54:48Z

Tuesday, December 3 marked the sixth consecutive night of clashes between police and anti-government protesters in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. We offer the following short report and video footage courtesy of Georgian anarchists.

The demonstrators are responding to the recent victory of the political party started by the billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, whose wealth adds up to a quarter of Georgia’s entire gross domestic product. This party has been pursuing an agenda emulating the regime of Vladimir Putin, seeking to consolidate power while directing public resentment at scapegoats—for example, passing legislation in October banning same-sex marriages, adoptions by same-sex couples, gender-affirming care, and positive portrayals of LGBTQ+ people in the media.

Like Armenia and Serbia, Georgia has become a destination for Russians fleeing the recruitment drives supplying Putin with cannon fodder to toss into the invasion of Ukraine. Less than a month ago, Russian anarchist exiles in Georgia reported that the victory of the pro-Putin party Georgian Dream in the parliamentary elections of October 26 had brought the opposition movement to an impasse:

It seems that the mainstream opposition has reached a dead end. They cannot move to more radical actions—they act within the framework of liberal democracies, and the ruling party does not care about resistance that remains within the framework of the law, as they have force and administrative resources on their side. November 4 was a very dismal rally, there were much fewer people than at the protests against the “foreign agent law”¹ (but still quite a lot). In general, it feels like there is no trust in the opposition parties.

Over the past week, however, protesters have adopted more radical tactics, engaging in frontal confrontations with the police.

Although anarchists are among the tens of thousands of participants in these protests, they comprise a small minority. The common sentiment connecting the participants is distrust of party politics in general, opposition to the stranglehold that the Georgian Dream party has on power, and hostility towards Russia, which has ruled Georgia for the better part of the past two centuries and defeated it in a war in 2008.

While some pundits have joined pro-Russia politicians in comparing the protests in Georgia to the Maidan protests that led to the Ukrainian Revolution in 2014, there are significant differences. For example, the authors of the following text report no overt nationalist or fascist involvement in the demonstrations. Yet it remains to be seen whether a revolutionary horizon could emerge to compete with the neoliberal goal of integrating Georgia into the European market.

Even if no such horizon emerges, it is significant that the movement in Georgia has been compelled to shift from simply holding rallies to engaging in open conflict. As in 2019, when revolt spread from Hong Kong and Ecuador to Chile and Catalunya like a string of firecrackers going off around the globe, participatory resistance in one part of the world often foreshadows or inspires resistance in another. The tactics that serve demonstrators in one struggle are often taken up elsewhere.²

And the challenges that people in Georgia face—rule by billionaires, a reactionary clampdown on freedoms, an opposition controlled by feeble liberal leadership, and an absence of revolutionary alternatives—are similar to the challenges that hundreds of millions face in the United States and elsewhere around the world.

Here follows the perspective from Tbilisi.

An anarchist flag seen on the barricades in Tbilisi on the night of December 2, 2024.

Background

The Georgian Dream party has been in power since 2013. It is spearheaded by the oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, who made his fortune in Russia. Over the past decade, this party has advanced a Pro-Russian agenda, turning the country slowly and surely away from the West. This year, Ivanishvili went so far as to claim that the 2008 Russo-Georgian war was started by Georgia—a core claim of Russian propaganda. In the parliamentary elections of October 2024, the Georgian Dream party won by a significant margin amid widespread claims of voter intimidation, bribery, and fraud. A few protests took place afterwards, but the energy of the Georgian citizens was at a low. How many protests, peaceful or otherwise, had taken place since the rise of Georgian Dream with little tangible results?

The straws that broke the camel’s back were, first, the nomination for president (which is performed by the ruling parliamentarian party) of a former football player with no qualifications and a history of allegiance to Georgian Dream and to Russia—and, second, the confirmation that the talks regarding joining the European Union will cease until 2028. This second point was especially ironic, given that Georgian Dream propaganda has featured a lot of EU imagery. The outrage over this second point struck the match that set off the firework protests.

Friday Night, November 29

Protesters gathered by the tens of thousands outside of the Parliament and began their demonstration. One could hear the chanting of “Slaves! Slaves!” and rhythmic banging at the metal gates that protect the doors of parliament. Riot police were sent out; by 11 pm, they were deploying tear gas. The police began making arrests; video footage shows several beatings, as well as officers pulling citizens into the wall of police.

Generally, the demonstrators were unprepared for the clashes of the first night. Some had had the foresight to bring gas masks and eye protection, but most were forced to retreat. Those who had come prepared became the first line of attack and they persisted throughout the night—many until noon the next day—throwing eggs and shooting fireworks into the sky.

Saturday Night, November 30

This time, demonstrators showed up angrier and more prepared. The fireworks of the previous day had tripled in abundance. Since the new year was coming up, a great deal of fireworks were available for purchase. This is a longstanding Tbilisi tradition thanks to a lack of regulation regarding who can purchase fireworks. Every new year, thousands of fireworks light the sky. Having spent New Year’s Eve in both North America and Tbilisi, the fireworks in Tbilisi are comparable to the kind of display you can see in major metropolitan areas of the United States on the Fourth of July.

November 30, Tbilisi. It started as just a few fireworks in the sky.

Demonstrators began aiming fireworks directly at the parliament building. There were people scaling the walls to break the windows so that the fireworks could be thrown inside, amid loud cheering from the entire crowd. Throughout the night, the booms of fireworks could be heard.

This time, the police arrived late, after protesters had already assembled several barricades, blocking the side streets that lead into the main avenue. I witnessed metal benches being pulled from their foundations and added to a barricade many times that night. Fires were lit, and people rushed to the front lines to throw firework “grenades” at the police.

November 30, Tbilisi. Demonstrators gather by the parliament building.

That night, some ingenious demonstrator fashioned a kind of makeshift firework launcher that shot several fireworks on some sort of rotating barrel. Aiming it directly at the police, he dodged a water cannon shooting water mixed with tear gas. Word spread through WhatsApp and Telegram urging demonstrators to assist in creating barricades and directly fighting the police.

Around 2 am, the police were able to break through the barricades and unleash the tear gas, resulting in a kind of mass stampede. Demonstrators were yelling to each other not to run too fast, to be mindful of each other. Many retreated, but many remained until the next day, making more barricades, setting fires, launching fireworks, and throwing whatever they could at the advancing police.

Many people were beaten and arrested in the course of Saturday night. The police grabbed whoever they could, beat them, and detained them. Those who were beaten very badly, often to the point of losing consciousness, were released, but fined between 2000 and 3000 lari [the equivalent of up to approximately $1000]—leading one badly beaten person to say to my cousin, “They beat us unconscious and then they fine us for it—it’s like a mass mugging!”

November 30, Tbilisi.

Sunday Night, December 1

Those who sustained less serious injuries were put on trial on Sunday. They were given inadequate council, forced to defend themselves, and accused of being “intimidators” who were instigating violence against individual policeman. My cousin’s friend is expected to be held in jail for seven days.

Nonetheless, on Sunday night, a similar amount of people hit the streets. All the tactics used before had solidified and protesters brought whatever they could to help. Once again, barricades were built, fires were set, fireworks were thrown, and street objects were dismantled to aid in the fight. My sister witnessed a few demonstrators taking apart the outdoor umbrellas of a restaurant. When the restaurant owner came out, the owner helped instruct the demonstrators regarding how to properly disassemble them so that the demonstrators wouldn’t get hurt.

December 1, Tbilisi. People from older generations and younger generations came out in solidarity. There are children protesting and grandparents protesting. They say that if you don’t come to the protests, “You are Russian.” The whole city of Tbilisi has been outside for days on end.

December 1, Tbilisi. Down the alley is a line of “robocops” with plastic shields and a firetruck spraying water laced with tear gas. So when people shoot off the fireworks, sometimes it ricochets off the shields and falls back into our line. You can see it exploding very close to us. The people armed with respirators, saline solution, goggles, and rain gear are on the front lines throwing rocks, glass bottles, and eggs and shooting off fireworks.

December 1, Tbilisi. Here, people are pointing lasers at the cameras to prevent them from conducting surveillance in order to protect identities of the ones on the front lines. Some also use these lasers to blind the police so that they are not able to target specific people when they direct the water cannon. At this point in the evening, people on the front line were running out of fireworks but, as in a game of telephone, called back to people and asked for more. Some people ran off to collect more while others had stashes in their bags to give out. It was frightening that you could not tell whether the smoke was water vapor from the water cannons, smoke from the fireworks, smoke from the bonfires, or tear gas.

December 1, Tbilisi. The people at the front lines remained at the parliament, while the rest of the protesters were preparing for an inevitable police charge involving beatings and arrests. They began building a barricade using everything from benches and trash bins to tables and shelves. Some restaurant owners even allowed for their patio rain covers to be ripped out and used as shields against the hosing.

December 1, Tbilisi.

Monday Night, December 2

In addition to the suspension of the European Union candidacy, Monday marked the first day that the new anti-LGBTQ+ law went into effect.

Monday was more of a standstill. Instead of at the parliament, the fighting took place on the street. There was a defense line of robocops holding their plastic shields, and on the opposite end, we had our fighters shooting off fireworks. However, the police were using copious amounts of tear gas. You could feel the effects from a mile away. They were also using rubber bullets. This was happening at the very front of the street. People in the back continued making barricades and blocking off side entrances. There were people handing out saline solution, sandwiches, water, and goggles.

December 2, Tbilisi.

December 2, Tbilisi. The large sign in front of the monument to medieval Georgian poet Shota Rustaveli reads “Freedom.”

Georgians aren’t generally organized. They rely on communication at the scene and word of mouth. In the past, during demonstrations, this has led to a lot of misunderstandings and to the spread of misinformation, which ultimately resulted in the demonstrations fizzling out. This time, however, people seem to be in complete agreement: it’s time to escalate. I heard no demands to curb the actions under the vague umbrella of “peaceful demonstration.” Instead, wild cheers accompanied any action that threatened the foundations of the parliament. If the doors could have been wrenched open, I have no doubt that we would have flooded through.

In general, the outcome of these ongoing demonstrations remains unclear. International news sources have reported that the participants are calling for another election, but I don’t think that is the case. The time for diplomatic appeasement seems to have passed. Whether this will result in outright revolution is unclear. But the protests don’t seem to be slowing.

Tuesday Night, December 3

We have received no report from Tuesday night, only the following videos.

December 3, 2024

A law requiring organizations that receive more than 20% of their funding from overseas to register as “agents of foreign influence.” Charging that the law was modeled on Russian legislation used to target opponents of President Vladimir Putin, opposition groups staged some of the largest protests in Georgia since it became independent in 1991. Nonetheless, the law was passed in June 2024. ↩
In connection with this, we note that some participants in the unrest in Tbilisi have been using this tool to track the movements of police and ambulances. ↩

The Syrian Civil War Resumes : Perspectives on the Conflict from Western and Northeastern Syria

2024-12-02T23:00:47Z

The Syrian civil war has remained largely frozen since 2020, owing to a precarious balance of power between various factions with various degrees of support from Russia, Turkey, Iran, and the United States. Over the past few days, however, taking advantage of the ways that Iran and Hezbollah have been tied down by conflict with Israel while Russia has been distracted in Ukraine, the anti-government forces Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) have seized Aleppo and intensified their campaign against the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. While Assad has been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and his downfall would be welcome, this development poses new dangers.

As we have explored before, the situation in Syria is complex, and the same events can look very different from different vantage points. In order to triangulate a reality informed by many views, we present here a perspective from participants in the revolution in western Syria alongside a report from anarchists in Rojava, the northeastern region of Syria.

Aleppo, 2024.

What’s Going on in Northwestern Syria?

This is a translation of a statement from the Cantine Syrienne de Montreuil, a project established by participants in the Syrian revolution in exile. You can read an interview with them here.

An alliance of various “rebel” groups (jihadists, Islamists, mercenaries under the tutelage of Turkey, and the like) has launched a major offensive in recent days to break the encirclement of the city of Idlib by the regime and its allies, and to respond to their murderous attacks. The operation has regained territorial control of Aleppo (Syria’s second largest city) and the surrounding area.

This offensive follows the destabilization of the Iranian regime and Hezbollah as a consequence of Israel’s attacks. Longtime allies of Assad, the Iranian-controlled militias have continued to pound rebel areas of Syria following October 7, 2023. Even after the beeper attack orchestrated by Israel in Lebanon, Hezbollah attacked Idlib (on September 20 and 23, 2024) before withdrawing some of its troops to Lebanon.

A protest in Idlib.

In a catastrophic humanitarian and economic context, the military operation by the “rebel” groups has forced hundreds of people to leave the areas that have recently fallen under their control (for fear of reprisals), but it has also enabled hundreds of displaced people to return to their lands and homes and see their families after long years of separation and harsh survival in the refugee camps.

Years ago, Aleppo was already liberated from the Assad regime and self-administered by its residents from 2012 to 2016 before falling back into the hands of the regime thanks to the support of Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. After a brutal siege, a relentless bombardment in which 21,000 civilians were killed, and the nearly total destruction of the eastern part of the city, the fall of Aleppo marked a decisive military defeat for the Syrian revolution.

“We will return.” Graffiti on the first day of the civil evacuation deal when Aleppo fell into the hands of the regime.

Today, we can only rejoice to see the regime’s forces compelled to flee from Aleppo: images of detainees freed from prisons, statues of the Assad family toppled, portraits of [Supreme Leader of Iran Ali] Khameini, [slain secretary-general of Hezbollah Hassan] Nasrallah, or [slain Iranian military official Qasem] Soleimani torn to shreds. But let’s be clear, there is no cause for hope for the future of Syria in the areas “liberated” by these military groups, be they jihadists or “moderates.”

This operation, though decided and coordinated in Syria, could not have seen the light of the day without the green light from Turkey, which itself seems to have been overwhelmed by the scale of the offensive. Let’s face it, few still believe that [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan is a friend of the Syrian people anymore. Turkey massacres Kurdish populations in Syria and elsewhere, organizes forced deportations of Syrian refugees, has been trying for years to normalize relations with Assad, and uses Syrian fighters as mercenaries for its geopolitical interests, not to mention repressing all internal dissent.

As for the Islamist groups, their power has been contested for years by the civilian population of the areas under their control. In 2024, large-scale demonstrations took place in Idlib to demand the departure of [Abu Mohammad] al-Joulani, the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Cham (HTC), the group that governs the enclave. Without popular legitimacy, HTC rules by force; it has failed to fulfill the hopes of the 2011 revolution. The Syrians who rose up against Assad’s tyranny and sacrificed so much to be able to live in freedom cannot live under groups like HTC in the long run.

Al-Joulani = al-Assad.

A bitter and ambiguous joy, then. Much remains uncertain. The humanitarian consequences are likely to be catastrophic. The regime and its allies have stepped up attacks on the areas already controlled by the “rebels” as well as the areas they have just recaptured. Hospitals in Aleppo are already overwhelmed by the lack of resources and staff. We still don’t know what the position of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces will be. The only thing we can be sure of is the eternal return of the supporters of the “axis of resistance,” who, under the guise of opposition to Israel and western imperialism, will once again whitewash the butchers who have murdered and displaced our families and friends.

In the midst of all this, we are largely dispossessed of our revolution and the possibility of self-determination in our country. Between the foreign powers who play their influence games with our blood and the Islamist militias who speak only the language of weapons, for the time being, brute force and geopolitical calculations will decide our future. The situation is not excellent, but the fall of the regime remains the prerequisite for any change in the country. Again and again, the people want the fall of the regime.

Long live free Syria!
Gaza will live, Palestine will be free!
“They must all go” for a free Lebanon!

The sign reads, “The guarantee of our victory is the departure of Turkey from our lands.”

The View from Rojava

A general overview of the main developments the past two days, contributed by internationalist anarchists in Syria.

The offensive of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) made a breakthrough in the first days toward east (Aleppo) and south (Hama) and slowed down on December 1-2. Assad regime forces appear to have recaptured the city of Hama and halted the advance of HTS towards Homs city. Russian air forces are carrying out an extensive bombing campaign, targeting HTS units but also civilian and military infrastructure in Idlib, Aleppo, and along the route of the HTS advance. There are reports of both civilian and combatant casualties. Jets belonging to the Assad regime have also carried out airstrikes, but on a smaller scale. In Aleppo, in the Kurdish district of Sheikh Maqsood, the residents have prepared for self-defense.

North of Aleppo, Şehba canton is been occupied by the [Turkey-backed] Syrian National Army (SNA). Thousands of people who have lived in refugee camps since the Turkish invasion of Afrin in 2018 are now being evacuated. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are organizing a humanitarian corridor to enable people to exit Aleppo and Şehba. No major clashes are reported between the SDF and SNA for now.

In some other regions of the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES), artillery shelling and drone activity occurred, but no more than usual.

There are reports of the Iranian-backed militia Hashd Ash-Shaabi moving into Syrian territory in the Deir-Ez-Zor region in large numbers. In the same region, the SDF and the Deir-Ez-Zor military council are making moves to take some towns and villages under control.

The forces of the Islamic State that remain in the desert of central Syria have not been seen to make any major moves, but it is expected they will use the situation to the best of their ability.

A map published by Al Jazeera showing the current distribution of territorial control in Syria.

The SDF has called for a mass mobilization, asking for young people to join SDF and to be ready to repel the upcoming attacks on the liberated territory. It is a common expectation that the escalation will intensify and Turkish-backed factions will use the opportunity to attack the western regions of DAANES, such as Minbij.

At first, there were rumors about an attempted coup in Damascus; if such an attempt did happen, it seems to have quickly failed.

Egypt, Russia, the United Arab Emirates, and Iran have expressed support for Assad regime.

The Democratic Autunomous Adminsitration of North and East Syria, also known as Rojava, is in the middle of the new turmoil. The number of refugees arriving in the western cantons, counted together with the number of people who have been arriving from Lebanon over the past few months, could easily exceed 200,000 in the coming weeks.

In the first days of the HTS offensive and the SNA push against Şehba, as well as the siege of Sheikh Maqsood, it is clear that Assad regime is in very difficult situation; it seems possible that it will collapse. However, any potential rule by HTS will not be stable and will not be able to resolve the pressing problems that the dictatorship of Bashar Al-Assad created and exacerbated for Syria. Nevertheless, the fall of Assad might open a window of possibility for change in the region, if Syrians—both those who remain in the country and those who will decide to come back after exile—manage to revive the original ideas of the Syrian revolution.

Major global powers like Turkey, the United States, and Israel will benefit from the HTS offensive. HTS fits all of their needs as a force that is opposed to Iran, Assad, and Russia. Given the chance to take up state-making if they win, following the Taliban model, it is possible that main actors in HTS will exercise their influence in a possible future new government. It is even possible that the aforementioned states might support HTS in taking power, seeing as they are not interested in the Syrian peoples independently deciding for themselves.

The fall of the Assad regime would be good for the DAANES in various ways, but it also poses major questions:

A) There is a serious danger that, freed of the necessity to fight against Russia and Assad, the Islamic State will take the opportunity to grow again, although they will also be in conflict with HTS.

B) We can expect that the United States will be increasingly invasive and manipulative if the DAANES becomes more dependent on the United States to protect it from a potential Turkish invasion.

C) Finding a new balance of forces in the region is sure to be chaotic and bloody, and it is not clear how it will conclude.

D) This is especially true as Turkey will be expanding the zone of its direct control much deeper into Syria.

E) Finally, the religious fundamentalists of HTS taking over western Syria will provoke sharp conflict with the revolutionary project in notheastern Syria, especially in regards to how that has changed the status of women in society.

The situation for Lebanon will be very difficult, as the country is going to be sandwiched between Israel and the HTS-controlled part of Syria. This might lead to the escalation of internal conflicts. Hezbollah will be left without a corridor via which to receive support from Iran.

In the regional context, to some extent, the DAANES represents a non-state solution based on self-governance and cultural, religious, gender, and ethnic autonomy. Still, it gets the least international support.

Revolutionary greetings!

Aleppo, 2024.

Update: December 6, 2024

This follow-up report reaches us from the same group of internationalist anarchists in Syria.

So many things are happening today, it is difficult to summarize. We will share some relevant updates, with the disclaimer that we are not an intelligence service but just some revolutionary anarchists following the situation from northeast Syria.

The main news today is the general collapse of the Syrian Arab Army (the army of the Syrian Arab Republic goverment, or SAA), with soldiers withdrawing from many different fronts, even publicly defecting in some areas.

Western Front

The advance of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (the main Islamist opposition coalition, HTS) continues. After taking control of Hama city, they are reaching the outskirts of Homs. Videos of attacks with Shaheen drones (HTS self-produced kamikazes) on SAA military posts in Homs are already spreading in social media.

As the HTS offensive moves south, they are also expanding east and west, not only fighting but also making agreements with local groups. In Mahardah, west of Hama, they negotiated the withdraw of SAA soldiers with the local Christian community; in Salamiya, east of Hama, they made an agreement with Ismaeli community.

Their western advance is entering desert territory, where the Islamic State (ISIS) has sustained their insurgency. It is not clear if ISIS insurgent cells will confront HTS or welcome them.

Eastern Front

SAA soldiers are withdrawing from positions on the outskirts of Raqqa, with the Syrian Democratic Forces (the military coalition of defense forces in Rojava, SDF) moving to capture those territories to prevent further activity of ISIS.

A similar scenario is playing out in the city of Deir Ezzor, where apparently there has been some coordination to secure the area with SAA soldiers before they left their positions.

At least one town situated 50 km south of Deir Ezzor, Al-quraya, appears to be under control of ISIS forces that moved in as SAA withraw.

SDF forces also took control of the border crossing with Iraq at Albukamal, which has been a very important crossing point for the coordination and supply lines of various Iranian proxy forces.

The SNA make a press statement announcing their operation against SDF in Manbij, urging civilians to stay away from military zones.

Southern Fronts

A new front has opened in the south as different rebel groups in Quneitra, Daraa, and Sweida began to take military actions against the crumbling SAA. Allegedly, they have created a common operation room to coordinate the attacks on the soldiers of the regime.

Several groups have been storming checkpoints, police commissaries, and military barracks In some areas. The SAA is reacting to those attacks with bombardments and intermittent clashes.

Videos of soldiers of SAA publicly defecting and joining local defense militias are spreading in social networks, specially among the Druze community of Sweida.

Also in the south—but on the eastern side—the battalion of Al-Tanf is also moving forward. Known as Maghawir al-Thawra, this group was part of the Free Syrian Army (the old name that was used as an umbrella for opposition groups against Assad), but after the emergence of ISIS, their main focus shifted to fight against the caliphate. They received training and weapons from US, as well as support in their operations against ISIS. In recent years, they had been blocking the routes of Iran weapon deliveries and making raids targeting Captagon drug smuggling groups. Now, for the first time, they left their local area of operations and are clashing with SAA forces in Palmyra.

Rumors

Allegedly, Israel is bombing chemical research facilities to prevent them from falling into the hands of the “Rebels.” Allegedly, Russia is evacuating parts of their air force stationed in Syria.

There are reports suggesting that a coup against the Assad government may be taking place in Damascus. There are also reports allegedly from Mossad (Israeli intelligence) indicating that Assad has left Syria, suggesting that he escaped to Iran.

Preliminary Evaluations

It is clear that no one has any faith in Assad’s government anymore. We feel confident announcing that this is the end of the regime. For many Syrians, today will be a day of celebration. After almost 13 years of war, misery, and exile, their dreams of a Syria without Bashar are coming true. In that sense, it is a day of celebration for us too.

But the end of the regime will probably be just the beginning of a new phase of conflict and instability, a very difficult one. Syria has become a battlefield where many military forces (both state and non-state) use violence to pursue their objectives without fear of the consequences. This includes the brutality of the Syrian regime and the Russian mass bombings of the civilian population, the horrific massacres of the Islamic State, and the genocidal and imperialist occupations of the Turkish Army and its proxies targeting the Kurdish people and the Rojava Revolution.

More than a decade of war and suffering has inflicted wounds that won’t heal with the end of the Assad dynasty, and the following day will probably witness more bloodshed and atrocities. The declarations of SNA operation against Manbij will probably be the beginning of a brutal war of occupation, as we already saw in 2018 in Afrin and 2019 in Serekaniye and Gire Spi. The future in Damascus still unclear, and the Islamism of HTS will soon start to reveal its true colors to the Syrian people. Whatever is shown on CNN, the people of Idlib have been suffering and protesting against the authoritarian rule of HTS for months.

Western powers will tacitly accept this apparently diluted version of Salafism, as they already did in Afghanistan. And these big changes will distract people from the massacres that Turkey perpetuates in Manbij, giving the rogue NATO member in the Middle East a free hand in exchange for their loyalty in other affairs that are of higher priority for Western agenda.

The revolution in Rojava is under threat, as always. Let’s celebrate the fall of the regime, but let’s keep building the new world we carry in our hearts.

Revolutionary greetings!

If you want to support evacuees in northeastern Syria, you can do so here.

The Case for Resistance : What We’re Up Against—and What It Could Look Like to Fight

2024-11-20T03:31:21Z

In the following analysis, we explore what we can expect from Donald Trump’s second term and how we can prepare to confront it. If you only have time to read one part, read the proposals for what we can do to resist.

It’s understandable that many people feel exhausted at the prospect of a second Trump era. It’s easy to want to tune out and dissociate. What can we do, anyway?

But we don’t know how the first Trump era would have gone if not for the ways that millions of people engaged in various forms of resistance. Difficult as it was, it could have been much worse. We didn’t topple capitalism or abolish the police, but we kept fascists from taking over the streets, and we prevented Trump and his supporters from accomplishing a great deal of their agenda. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to conceal our collective power.

As long as we relied on our own strength, we became more and more powerful. Our protests galvanized others into action, showing what was at stake and where the regime was vulnerable. Our actions shaped public narratives, counteracting Trump’s efforts to determine popular discourse. The resulting unrest gave the capitalist class the impression that Trump’s reign was bad for business, sapping their support. It was only after we had apparently driven Trump from the stage of history that we let our guard down, permitting our social movements to dwindle and creating a situation in which the Democratic Party could cede power once again.

The lesson is clear. We will only get what we win by our own efforts. The Trump era was not a historical anomaly. It’s not behind us. We are still in it, and we can only get through it by fighting.

Now it is happening again: the Democratic Party is handing Donald Trump the keys to the kingdom, including the most advanced means of repression in the history of the solar system. The popular power expressed in the 2020 uprising—the only thing that has been powerful enough to stop this aspiring dictator—has dissipated, undermined by the same Democrats who claimed that they knew best how to defeat Trump.

This is a pivotal moment, and everyone who isn’t cynically detached is sounding the alarm. Those of us who recognize the necessity of fighting had better find each other, identify the strengths and weaknesses of all the parties involved, recall the lessons of the past eight years, and strategize.

The Balance of Forces

In some ways, we are in a worse position than we were in 2017. Trump’s election in 2016 came as a shock to everyone, provoking an immediate mass response; at the time, the occupation of Standing Rock and the uprisings against police violence in Ferguson and Baltimore were fresh in the minds of millions. This time, the 2020 uprising feels like a distant memory, despite the fact that it was exponentially larger than those earlier movements. Last spring’s student movement in solidarity with Palestine was inspiring, but it did not spread far enough beyond the universities to survive repression and summer break.

Nonetheless, tens of millions of us share the experience of participating in the largest mass uprising in the United States in at least half a century. Those memories have been buried beneath subsequent sedimentary layers of history, but they are not entirely inaccessible.

For the first time, Trump has won the popular vote, making gains with some voters of color. A larger part of the population is prepared to vote for overt fascism than before, knowing full well what they are doing this time. Although grassroots fascist activity dropped off after the abortive coup of January 6, 2021, neo-Nazis have resumed making appearances on the streets. If Trump pardons those serving time as a result of January 6, far-right organizations like the Proud Boys will likely return to the streets in full force.

After eight years of scandals and emergencies, everyone is desensitized and demoralized. Both institutional and rank-and-file Democrats appear to be prepared to roll over and let Trump do what he wants. Like in 2017, Republicans will control the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate; once again, they wield deep institutional power while pretending to be “rebels” against the state that they control. This time around, however, Trump is prepared to push his agenda much further. In 2017, as an upstart in the Republican Party, he was obliged to fill his administration with neocons and other traditional Republicans. Now the Republicans are united behind him, and he is preparing to gut the entire federal government and the upper ranks of the military and install a gang of loyalists.

The fascism they want.

Yet this could create new weaknesses for him. Promoting sycophants to positions of power on the basis of loyalty rather than expertise will not necessarily create an effective government. The more emboldened Trump and his henchmen are, the more likely they are to provoke resistance. In attempting to appoint a cabinet full of rapists, conspiracy theorists, and Fox News hosts, he will force even the most milquetoast liberals to at least temporarily cease to regard the United States government as legitimate. Purging thousands of people from the government and the military while waging open war upon some of the most desperate sectors of society could incite resistance on multiple fronts.

How Popular Is Trump?

Donald Trump is not significantly more popular in 2024 than he was in 2020, nor does he represent a majority of the population. He added a couple million votes to the number he received in 2020, but he still received considerably fewer votes in 2024 than Joe Biden received in 2020, despite the fact that the US population has increased by several million since then. And remember—Biden was not actually popular in 2020, as became obvious afterwards.

So Trump has not really gained popularity. The Democratic Party has lost popularity, that’s all.

This is not surprising. The Democrats have sought to be the party of compromise between irresolvable opposites. They tried to fashion a compromise between capitalism and the working class, between police and the communities that they brutalize, between genocide and peace.¹ Small wonder that they failed. Actually, it is surprising how well they did, considering that they ran on the platform of “democracy” without so much as offering voters a primary in which to choose a candidate. Most other ruling parties around the world fared even worse in the elections of 2024.

But that doesn’t mean people like the Democrats. It just means that people hate Donald Trump.

If some Democrats are eager to respond to this election by chasing the Republicans even further to the right, this only shows how badly they are still misjudging the situation. Their attempt to court the center by cozying up to neoconservatives failed to build a viable majority. This is because the status quo is unpopular. The people who propelled Trump to victory were largely casting protest votes against the ruling order. As we foresaw last July, the center cannot hold.

The 2024 election represents the end of the technocratic neoliberal consensus that dominated the world from the 1970s to the 2010s. Trump’s popularity is not a unique phenomenon. All around the world, far-right populist movements are growing and authoritarian leaders are gaining political legitimacy. For decades, liberals and conservatives have worked together to suppress grassroots movements seeking to address the problems created by neoliberal capitalism; this created a vacuum that the far-right has ultimately filled. In that regard, the Democrats paved the way for nationalism and fascism to succeed neoliberalism. Presumably, they assume that those will be less threatening to their privileges than the end of capitalism would be.

Perhaps this explains how the Democratic Party could spend years decrying Trump as a fascist, then immediately arrange a peaceful transfer of power. Institutional Democrats are hiding their heads in the sand, hoping that if they remain faithful to the institutions of democracy, even unilaterally, those institutions might survive the next four years. But considering how dramatically the playing field has shifted over the past eight years, there is no reason to believe that those institutions will remain intact unless the ruling class needs them as bargaining chips.

The Democrats have no intention to stand up for those that Donald Trump intends to attack. They are the knowing accomplices of fascism.

None of this is good news. Those who are disappointed by the Democrats will not necessarily find their way to movements for liberation. They could drift further to the right, or gravitate towards authoritarian leftist pyramid schemes, or withdraw into apathy entirely. But there are opportunities here.

Billionaire Supervillains

It is surprising that Trump could not add more to his voter base, considering that the world’s richest man supported him by spending $44 billion to buy the world’s chief political discussion platform and considerably more than $250 million more on private election canvassing—including efforts to bribe working-class voters by picking a daily million-dollar lottery winner.

Real supervillain stuff.

Elon Musk and Donald Trump both pretend that they were drawn to politics out of a sense of civic duty; in fact, both are simply scaling up their business ventures by expanding to trade in state power.² The day after the election, a rise in stock shares added $26.5 billion to Musk’s net worth, in the biggest such spike on record. While the Democrats are still trying to preserve neoliberal capitalism as it was, the Republicans represent a new fusion of populist nationalism and oligarchy that seeks to extract profit directly through the state while channeling the rage of the poor into scapegoating the even poorer.

Trump and Musk are only able to masquerade as selfless benefactors because resources have become so unevenly distributed that a few billionaires can determine the outcome of an election. These are the same people who control the supply chain, the communications and news platforms, and the emerging fields of artificial intelligence, neurotechnology, and space travel. This is 21st-century fascism, in which autocracy and technocracy blend together, creating overlapping matrices of control that function at every scale from the intracellular to the interplanetary.³

Whatever promises they make to the white working class, their actual priority is to enrich themselves. You can’t carry out a gigantic wealth transfer into the coffers of billionaires while also solving the economic problems of ordinary Americans. Trump has always succeeded in taking advantage of popular grievances by making poor people identify with him as a symbol of success, giving them the vicarious thrill of cheering for the winning team even as he empties their pockets into his own. But that may not placate people indefinitely.

The world’s richest man canvassed for Trump by picking a daily million-dollar lottery winner, essentially buying an advertisement in which a struggling working-class family had to gush about how grateful they were to their billionaire benefactors. Donald Trump and Elon Musk have no incentive to improve the lives of ordinary workers—the gulf between billionaires and workers is precisely what enables them to pull stunts like this.

Ostensibly, Donald Trump intends to do to the United States government what Elon Musk did to Twitter: seize it, fire everyone who is not loyal to him, and turn it into a vehicle for profiteering and spreading fascism. When Musk took over Twitter, a rash of articles appeared claiming that he would drive it into the ground and the platform would soon cease to function entirely. Unfortunately, that would have been preferable to what actually happened. Despite a few technical glitches, Twitter kept functioning. Musk banned, drove away, or algorithmically suppressed enough of his critics to transform discourse on the platform, leaving just enough diversity intact to preserve popular investment. This is how authoritarians achieve hegemony: with a mix of repression and tolerance.

Regardless of the doomsaying of some journalists, we should anticipate something similar from the second Trump administration. There will be a messy transitional period and a wave of repression, but the real threat is that our society will continue functioning under an even more authoritarian framework—and that most people will accommodate themselves to it.

However, none of these stories has yet reached its conclusion. Ever since Musk acquired it, the platform formerly known as Twitter has been steadily losing credibility and hemorrhaging supporters—not unlike the United States government over the past decade. Historically, emperors surrounded by toadies who only tell them what they want to hear rarely manage to establish stability. We can anticipate chaos and disorganization, then—one crisis after another—and it is possible that the general population, always fickle, will turn against Trump as he fails to solve their problems, just as the Biden administration did.

So now is the time to think boldly, to fight for something more inspiring than a return to Democratic rule. We are not surrounded by fascist bootlickers who desire to be dominated—or at least, they do not comprise a majority yet. We are surrounded by desperate people who are largely disappointed in electoral politics because it has so little to offer them. They will remain on the sidelines until a better way opens up.

The desire to see others harmed in their name has come to substitute for the desire to improve their own lives.

Know Your Enemy

We have at least one advantage. Donald Trump is a known quantity. If it is not always possible to foresee his moves, his reactions are usually predictable. It should be possible to exploit his weaknesses.

Trump thrives on media attention. Seeking to control the news cycle, he manufactures one crisis after another, each intended to distract from the last. During his first term, this forced many people into a cycle of reaction, allowing Trump to set the tempo of engagement. When your enemy controls the tempo of the conflict, he can keep you continually on the defensive.

To this end, Trump is always saying and doing horrible things. With his cabinet picks, for example, it appears that he is trying to provoke a scandal so that his most outrageous nominations function as lightning rods channeling anger and attention, enabling him to push through the rest of his agenda unnoticed.

It is up to us to set our own priorities, to seize the initiative and force our adversaries to fight on the terrain we choose. Knowing some of Trump’s plans for his first days in office, we can begin choosing battles that we might be able to win. The earlier that people can achieve a few decisive victories, even on a local scale, the sooner people everywhere will rediscover that resistance is possible.

Trump will overreach, especially if we force him to. Recall the heady days of summer 2020, when he was trying to show his backers in the ruling class that he could regain control of the streets. When he sent federal agents into Portland in July 2020, he was pouring gasoline on a fire, catalyzing a massive public response that the federal agencies loyal to him—chiefly Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security—could not suppress. Those who had initially watched from the sidelines eventually poured into the streets, taking up umbrellas, leaf blowers, fireworks, and shields. They continued coming out for over a hundred consecutive days.

Arguably, Trump was not defeated at the polls in November of that year, but in the streets in July 2020, when the people of Portland demonstrated that his lackeys were no match for them. This cost Trump the support of capitalists seeking to reestablish law and order—at least in that election.⁴

Portland, summer 2020.

Exerting Leverage

A crucial element of the victory that took place in summer 2020 was the polarization of local and state governments against Trump. The complicity of Democratic officials in “blue” states and cities is well-established, but they still have to pretend to represent their constituencies, which often means chasing after powerful social movements in hopes of coopting them. If we play our cards right, we should be able to force Democrat-controlled local and state governments and agencies to refuse to cooperate with at least some of Trump’s programs. In 2020, popular sentiment forced many local prosecutors to drop the charges against those arrested during the uprising. Many municipalities have been declared sanctuary cities. As empty as those words often are, we can aim to force politicians to give them meaning. Any division that emerges within the ruling class, however small, will be to our advantage.

The first battle will be fought for the hearts—and schedules—of anarchists and other rebels who were active in 2020. Do we have it in us to mobilize again, more, differently? The second battle will be fought for a broader swath of the population, including rank-and-file Democrats. Are they prepared to accept the second Trump era as business as usual, or will they gravitate towards resistance?

If Democrat politicians are not compelled to break with the Republican agenda, we could end up in a countrywide situation analogous to what happened to the Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta, where the majority of the general population came to oppose the proposed police training facility but politicians of every stripe closed ranks in a bipartisan consensus in favor of imposing it by brute force. But if a critical mass of rank-and-file Democrats conclude that they have a responsibility to become unruly, that will force at least some Democratic politicians to hold themselves apart from the “law and order” consensus.

We should also anticipate defections from the bureaucratic and managerial classes. Trump plans to fire thousands of federal employees and surely many more will resign. The effects will trickle down to every level of society. We need to create opportunities for newly disaffected people to connect with each other and put their skills at the service of the movement. If some of them bring insider knowledge of the bureaucracy, all the better. When it comes to leaks from those who retain their positions, there should be an emphasis on equipping movements to act rather than simply seeking to discredit the administration in an imagined court of public opinion.

To take on an entire government, we have to create friction between the different factions that comprise it and exploit the vulnerabilities that this opens up.

Refine Our Strategies

Some of the tools and strategies that we relied on during the first Trump administration may no longer serve us.

Doxxing, deplatforming, and social media bans could disrupt right-wing formations until the right seized control of social media platforms like Twitter. They are unlikely to be effective under an openly fascist regime in which far-right street fighters are granted clemency and rewarded for their misdeeds via crowdfunding and media hype.

Even before Elon Musk purchased Twitter, social media platforms had become sparring rings in which contenders jockeyed for legitimacy in a zero-sum competition, and this had filtered out to influence the atmosphere of some other organizing venues. Such dynamics do not serve us well. This time around, we will have to set aside a variety of destructive patterns if we are to create ecosystems of resistance that can thrive under such challenging conditions.

Mutual aid projects will be important. People will need hormones, birth control, abortion pills, money for traveling for medical care or escaping a hostile environment, assistance averting various forms of state violence. But these are fundamentally defensive strategies that must be connected with offensive forms of struggle to succeed.⁵ We cannot separate care and struggle, nor should we let the desire for individual safety interfere with the forms of collective action that represent our only hope of following through on the slogan “We keep us safe.”

Fundamentally, this is a struggle between empathy and selfishness, between solidarity and hatred.

Fight Smart

We must refuse to let any aspect of Trump’s agenda become normalized. At the same time, we should not let his actions provoke us into a condition of perpetual outrage that produces diminishing returns. We must pay close attention to what is happening without letting him dictate the pace of our actions or drain our emotional energy. This requires thinking strategically, looking for opportunities to act effectively rather than simply to pass judgment. Every day will be its own emergency, and each one will be truly urgent—and yet we will not be able to change our priorities every day. We will have to build sustainable forms of resistance through continuous action, seeking strategies that build capacity over time rather than burning out.

If we can develop such strategies, they will also prepare us to confront what Adam Greenfield calls the long emergency of intertwined climate change, political instability, and societal collapse. As hurricanes and floods batter our communities alongside new assaults from the state, we must accept that nothing is ever going back to normal and proceed accordingly.

How Can We Resist?

We will not be able to simply pick up where we left off in 2020. Once again, there will be a learning curve—we will have to connect with new people, demonstrate tactics, make proposals, and debunk liberal assumptions about what is acceptable or effective. If we can hold our ground long enough, some sectors of the population that are currently beguiled or demoralized will probably become restless again, especially if the economy does not improve. But we also can’t let Trump steal a march on us. The first few months will determine how far this goes, how fast.

Many of Trump’s ostensible opponents have maintained that two of the negative consequences of the next Trump administration will be that more people will “radicalize” (to the left as well as the right) and that there will be “chaos” (which is to say, disruptive protests). The implication is that Trump wants and benefits from both of these phenomena. It is incumbent on us to articulate which kinds of polarization and chaos actually benefit Trump and which do not. Donald Trump did not win the 2024 elections because people took to the streets—he lost the 2020 elections as a consequence of disruptive protests, and he won the 2024 election in part because those died off. Everyone must understand this.

Demonstrators in Portland, Oregon at the conclusion of Donald Trump’s first term.

Here are some concrete steps that we can take as individuals and movements.

Quit X/Twitter; Diminish Reliance on Instagram; Join Mastodon and Bluesky

In some ways, Trump’s victory can be traced directly to Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. With Musk playing a role in the incoming Trump administration, the platform may provide warrant-free intelligence directly to federal agencies, while the algorithms will continue to promote authoritarian narratives. Now that tech billionaires are accommodating themselves to Trump’s rule, the same goes for Facebook, which has already lost status as an organizing space, but also for Instagram, which countless anarchist and leftist projects still depend on. This is not just a concern for self-identifying radicals, but for everyone who relies on social media for information.

Fortunately, since the election, millions of people have been fleeing Musk’s platform. Some are going to Instagram Threads, which is hardly better, but millions have been joining Bluesky, creating a new public sphere that could play a role in circulating news and ideas. While the owners of Bluesky have succeeded in branding it as a welcoming space for many of the demographics that the Trump administration intends to target, it remains to be seen how durable that will be—and as long as capitalism prevails, every corporate-owned platform remains at the mercy of the market. For these reasons, Mastodon is still the best bet, but thus far, people are not joining it in massive enough numbers for it to suffice to inform the kind of mass movements we will need.

The unequivocally good news is that the exodus from Musk’s platform shows that people are not yoked to social media platforms, no matter how well-established. From now on, tech billionaires who seek to control the “public square” will be aiming at a moving target.

Establish Local Organizing Venues

Get people in your community used to coming together in person. Establish face-to-face relationships between people doing different kinds of organizing and impacted by different aspects of the Trump agenda. One easy way to get this process started is to host ongoing assemblies, whether to connect new people to ongoing organizing or for different groups and tendencies to establish complementary strategies. Another option is to establish a public venue, such as a social center or regular meeting place, that can serve as a hub for ongoing coordination and a point of entry for people looking to get involved. A third possibility is to establish neighborhood associations connecting those who live and work close to each other.

Most people learn best through action and experimentation. It is better to try something out, learning in the process, than to attempt to reach consensus about the perfect idea.

Build Rapid Response Networks

Once the Trump era gets underway, it will be important to have means via which to immediately circulate breaking news about opportunities to resist or to support targeted groups. One way to do this is to set up an announcements-only thread on Signal and promote it to everyone who might need it. It might make sense to establish a few different response networks—one to announce federal operations and immigration checkpoints in your area, another to promote local organizing events, and so on.

Get these structures in place now, before the pace of events picks up.

Establish Mutual Aid Projects

Establish mutual aid projects addressing the needs that will be more difficult to fulfill under the Trump administration, such as hormone access and reproductive self-determination.
Establish mutual aid projects addressing people’s economic needs, such as solidarity networks and really really free markets. These need not only serve those in the worst conditions of need; ideally, they should show everyone what they have to gain from participating in mutual aid, connecting people from many different walks of life.

We should take seriously the economic concerns that pushed some people towards Trump. We know the economy will not work for poor people under Trump, either; it may well get worse. Mutual aid projects are one of the only ways that we can demonstrate to some of those who voted for Trump that they are better off making common cause with us than trusting politicians’ lies.

While it will be tempting to retreat into enclaves or break off conversations with those who do not already agree with us, we should seek to nourish social connections that are not yet politically mapped and polarized.

Establish Community Defense Projects

Organize community self-defense classes. In addition to spreading useful skills, these can connect people on a basis that can also equip them to act together. If space is available, you could set up a community gym to serve a similar purpose.
Form affinity groups with those you trust and begin discussing what kinds of action you would be prepared to engage in together in response to raids or fascist attacks.
Establish bail funds, defendant support structures, and resources for collective defense ahead of time, so you’ll be ready in advance. Although some lawmakers have attempted to pass laws against this kind of solidarity work, there are still ways to get around those.
This is also a good time to revitalize prisoner support projects.

One of the challenges that the authorities will face is that the court and prison systems are already overextended. If they attempt to escalate to more widespread repression, they might overwhelm the judicial apparatus. We should be prepared to make the most of this, tying them up in court and drawing out proceedings wherever possible.

Prepare to Resist Raids and Deportations

Prepare to respond to ICE raids in clever and effective ways that use repression to leverage outrage. Mass deportations will require massive logistics and infrastructure, providing a host of opportunities for intervention.

This option is explored in detail below.

Organize Pressure Campaigns

Pressure local and state authorities not to collaborate with the Trump administration in concrete ways. Identify specific politicians and functionaries, find a variety of ways to approach them, and make it clear what the consequences will be for complicity.
Identify local agencies and corporations that will play a logistical role in implementing the Trump agenda and bring pressure to bear against them.

Encourage liberals who have experience with phone canvassing to participate in call-in campaigns to pressure officials or support arrestees and prisoners.

Organize against the Police

The police always comprise the cutting edge of state violence; once again, they will be at the forefront of imposing all of Trump’s policies. Through four years of centrist reaction, the Democratic Party and corporate news platforms promulgated a “law and order” narrative intended to re-legitimize the police; the second Trump era will make it clear once again that police are simply the stormtroopers of the ruling class. What’s more, as Trump calls for new crackdowns, the police may be overextended in new ways.

The most powerful uprisings in this country over the past fifteen years have been revolts against the police, culminating in 2020. Resistance to police connects those who oppose state violence on ideological grounds to those who continuously experience it firsthand. This has made for explosive forms of solidarity before, and it can again.

If we want to make our opposition to police as persuasive as possible, however, we should also be experimenting with grassroots programs to address the issues that they supposedly exist to solve. Capitalism has done real damage to the social fabric, contributing to fentanyl overdoses, increasingly visible poverty and mental health crises, and other forms of mass violence. More policing will not fix those problems. By drawing resources out of every form of social support and channeling them towards state repression, politicians have gambled that they can stabilize an extremely unequal society via continuously escalating exertions of violent force. We should demonstrate that there is an alternative.

Debunk Liberal Narratives

Liberals who chanted “No one is above the law” during the first Trump administration must recognize that, with the Supreme Court and much of the judiciary under his control, it no longer makes sense to count on the courts to restrain him. The same goes for the federal investigations in which Democrats invested so much hope. This should be a teachable moment for them: if they are sincere, they will have to get involved with grassroots forms of direct action.

Liberals must stop thinking about the government as representing what is best within humanity. It has become eminently clear that capitalism and the state are elevating the worst elements of humanity to positions of authority. This is not an accident, but the structural consequence of the systems that distribute power. To navigate the ongoing Trump era, we will need to share a thoroughgoing analysis of these systems.

Sow the Seeds of Defiance

Spread narratives impugning obedience itself. As Hannah Arendt said, in the face of fascism, “No one has the right to obey.” Make sure that these reach functionaries in the bureaucracy and members of the armed forces. Police departments and federal agencies like the Department of Homeland Security are already comprised of hardened mercenaries who have no compunction about doing harm in return for a paycheck, but not everyone in the armed forces or bureaucracy will be enthusiastic about serving Trump’s whims.

Study the First Trump Era

For those who have not been on the streets continuously since 2017, it will help to study the various struggles of the first Trump era in order to refine a sense of strategy and historic context.

Reach Out

As resistance gets underway, it will be crucial to make it visible to everyone who has a stake in participating. This could mean making the walls speak with posters and stickers. It could mean distributing literature at your school or in your community. It could mean creating art and music that strengthens the resolve to resist.

Reach In

All of us would probably rather be doing something other than scrambling to prevent fascism from taking hold. We need to find ways to keep this work interesting to us and to everyone else who will have to do it—ways to keep our spirits up and to develop the kind of character that will sustain us through periods of hardship.

Try to organize a concrete victory early on, however small. Brainstorm with your friends: what Trump policy will be least popular in our local community? Make a plan to contest the implementation of that policy. Get started before Trump is inaugurated.

Think about how to offer roles to new people, welcoming them into the fight. To succeed, our strategies will have to be reproducible and contagious. Everything we do—regardless of how popular it is—will have to create conditions that will draw more people into action. It is a mistake to flatten differences into a popular front, but we will need as many people involved in the resistance as possible. When you encounter differences, don’t get stuck in ideological posturing; make a proposition about what you can do together based on what you have in common.

Above all, do not let resignation take hold. Resignation is the foundation of fascism, more so than jackbooted thugs and prison camps. Our enemies are counting on us to assume that resistance is impossible, to keep our heads down while our neighbors disappear, our communities are plundered, our life support systems are dismantled. But resistance is always possible. The fact that you are reading this right now proves that.

Demonstrators mobilize in Berkeley, California at the beginning of Donald Trump’s first term.

Appendix: Strategizing to Stop Mass Deportations

The incoming administration has been very clear about their intention to maintain public support by attacking scapegoats. This was one of the central promises of their campaign and it is popular among Trump’s core supporters. We can understand this as the desire of an increasingly powerless population to enact violence vicariously through a brutal autocrat—an ominous sign of human beings turning on each other as profit margins diminish and prospects for the future decline.

If we let Donald Trump and Stephen Miller expand the infrastructure of state violence, using military funds to build “vast holding facilities” for the millions that they have promised to arrest and deport, they will not stop at deporting undocumented immigrants. Once that additional infrastructure exists, they will turn it against one target after another. Eventually, they will come for all of us.

All who don’t want to see their neighbors, friends, and classmates or coworkers disappeared share a responsibility to act. During Trump’s first term, opposition to his border regime was a powerful cause of popular unrest, from the airport occupations in response to his “Muslim Ban” to the Occupy ICE encampments and the outpouring of solidarity following his manufactured “border crisis” in fall 2018. In 2019, when Donald Trump announced that ICE was about to carry out a new round of massive raids, Willem van Spronsen gave his life in an attempt to disable to the fleet of buses serving a private immigration detainment facility in Tacoma. Afterwards, asked why the raids were not happening, an ICE official expressed that they were concerned for the safety of their officers.

Opposition to Trump’s border policies initially emerged in the streets and airports; only afterwards did legal challenges emerge in the courts. Now, of course, we cannot expect much from a court system that will be dominated by Trump appointees. It will be necessary take steps to prevent the deportation machinery from functioning: to block it via mass action when possible, but also to throw sand in the gears, to disrupt its logistics and organization.

Let’s take a brief look at how Trump might implement these mass deportations and what forms resistance could assume.

According to Jason Hauser, the chief of staff for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under Biden, the infrastructure already exists to expand the deportation machine to a massive scale. Guatemalan, Haitian, and Honduran communities may be targeted first, because deportation to those countries is more straightforward than to many other countries. These communities will likely be targeted with raids at workplaces, churches, hospitals, and schools, and the arrests of those who are already on the record for nonviolent offences or because of their limbo status in an asylum process. Expect raids, buses, and camps.

Once apprehended, these people must be transported to holding facilities. Those could be rapidly erected tents, existing jails that are packed to two or three times their official capacity limits, warehouses converted into temporary detention facilities, military bases, or new facilities constructed with military funding. One official claims that 25 temporary detention facilities could be created in existing warehouses in just one week.

Once in custody, the arrestees will eventually be deported by plane flights. ICE currently has 14 dedicated deportation planes that can carry 135 people each, amounting to a total capacity of 1890 people per round trip. They also contract out many flights through Classic Air Charter, subcontracting with Swift Air and World Atlantic Airlines. If Trump succeeds in invoking the Insurrection Act or the Alien Enemies Act to mobilize the military and bypass immigration hearings, this number could rise dramatically. The current ICE director estimates that between 150,000 and 200,000 people could be deported within the first one or two months, and up to a million in the first 100 days.

This is frightening. And yet plans rarely survive contact with reality. Mass deportation would mean visible ICE actions with the cooperation of law enforcement in every sector of society. It would mean buses filled with prisoners everywhere. It would mean local law enforcement agencies being pulled away from other tasks and redirected towards immigration enforcement. It would mean plane after plane full of neighbors, family members, and friends, handcuffed and waiting on the tarmac. All of these are opportunities for resistance to erupt. The deportations will not all occur in darkness; many of them will take place in public, in broad daylight. It is up to us to make sure that no one can ignore them, and to help others to understand what they can do.

Armies succeed or fail based on their logistics. A complex logistical chain involving multiple agencies and forms of transportation, directed by leaders who are attempting to act on a much larger scale than before, will be prone to failure. How might these logistical links fail?

As the saying goes, our enemies have names and addresses. During the first Trump presidency, people doxxed every ICE agent they could find. Every raid will require the cooperation of local law enforcement; each one will involve staging areas and transport buses. Where do the buses come from? Who maintains them? Are those people also ideologically invested in fascism, or do some of them have misgivings? Where will the new detention facilities be staged? Who will build them? What airports will these deportation flights leave from? What supply lines will support them? How many low-wage airport workers have a stake in the fight against fascism?

In one possible version of an anti-deportation struggle, there will be mass demonstrations, moral outrage, fruitless lawsuits, and symbolic civil disobedience. Most of the participants will be self-professed activists. Efforts to center the authority of existing formal organizations that are not in a position to call for certain kinds of action will impose limits on what tactics the movement can experiment with. Internal divisions and interpersonal competition for control of the movement will further hamper it.

In another possible version of the struggle, every sector of society will become involved in resisting the deportation machine. Local liberal-leaning governments will be pressured into refusing to cooperate with federal agencies. Rapid response networks will bring people out in massive numbers to confront raids—and not all of them will limit themselves to following the leadership of official organizations. Bus drivers will go on strike; buses will mysteriously cease to function; coordinated highway blockades could shut down traffic to airports that are critical deportation hubs. Every form of struggle will emerge, and every participant will be encouraged to take whatever action they can, and the combination of anger and small, concrete victories will motivate more people to act.

The deportations—and any struggle against them—will happen in physical reality, not on social media. If a dozen communities begin immediately organizing mass strategic resistance to deportation, researching logistical chains, outlining targets and strategic goals, and welcoming a diversity of participants and tactics, they could demonstrate effective resistance and light a signal fire for others around the country. If people get organized now and begin to map out and target the infrastructure for mass deportation before Trump takes office, they could seize the initiative, set the tempo, and force him to be the one to have to react.

In 2017, when Trump signed the so-called “Muslim ban,” a single mass occupation at JFK Airport in New York sparked occupations involving tens of thousands of people around the country. Tactics spread rapidly when they are inspiring. What can you and your community do, right now, to prepare to inspire nationwide resistance to the deportation machine?

George Orwell wrote “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.” But the future is unwritten. What comes next will depend, in part, on us.

The Eye of Every Storm : Anarchist Response to Hurricane Helene

2024-11-13T21:01:04Z

At the end of September 2024, western North Carolina and the surrounding states experienced 30 inches of rainfall over two days when an unnamed storm collided with Hurricane Helene over the mountains of Southern Appalachia. The resulting catastrophe laid waste to the entire region. At a time when misinformation, rising authoritarianism, and disasters exacerbated by industrially-produced climate change are creating a feedback loop of escalating crisis, it’s crucial to understand disaster response as an integral part of community defense and strategize about how this can play a part in movements for liberation. In the following reflection, a local anarchist involved in longstanding disaster response efforts in Appalachia recounts the lessons that they have learned over the past six weeks and offers advice about how to prepare for the disasters to come.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimated that Hurricane Helene poured 40 trillion gallons of water on the region. This caused an estimated 1800 landslides; it damaged over 160 municipal water and sewer systems, at least 6000 miles of roads, more than 1000 bridges and culverts, and an estimated 126,000 homes. There have been over 230 confirmed deaths across six states with many still missing.

The entire region was completely cut off from the outside world for a day or more, with all major roads shut down by landslides, collapsed bridges, and downed trees. Water, power, internet and cell service all went down within hours of the hurricane arriving, and remained down for days or, in some areas, weeks. There are still communities that will likely not have electricity for another three months because the roads that the power company would use no longer exist. Six weeks into this disaster, there are still tens of thousands of people who lack access to drinkable water. Not only have thousands of homes been wiped off the map—in many cases, the land they rested on no longer exists. Massive landslides have scoured canyons 30 feet deep, exposing bedrock that has not seen the light of day for tens of thousands of years. The torrential floods moved so much earth and caused so many rivers to change course that scientists have designated the hurricane a “geological event.”

In response, a beautiful web of mutual aid networks has emerged, saving countless lives by bringing in essential supplies, providing medical care, setting up neighborhood water distribution centers, solar charging stations, satellite internet hubs, free kitchens, free childcare, and more. Name a need and there are folks out here who have self-organized to meet it. We share these lessons we have learned in hopes of helping others to prepare for similar situations, aiming to increase our capacity to build autonomous infrastructure for the long haul.

Start Preparing Now

There is no time like the present to get organized.

Our mutual aid group has been around for almost eight years. Within 72 hours of the floodwaters receding, we had a functioning mutual aid hub and were mobilizing folks to check on missing people and chainsaw crews to cut people out of their homes and open up roads. We were only able to do these things because we had already put in the work in our community to build the trust and relationships that are so vital in times of crisis.

While we are a small group, we have an extensive network of friends and allies that has grown throughout years of smaller-scale mutual aid and organizing efforts. The best way to prepare for a disaster is not to stockpile supplies, but to build trust in your community and nurture a healthy web of relationships. The best way to accomplish this is to start doing mutual aid projects in your community before an acute crisis arises. This will give you practice operating as a group and organizing logistics, and it will also connect you with others you wouldn’t otherwise meet and show them that they can count on you. Because of the work we had already put in, when the crisis hit, people turned to us and spread the word that we are a good group to funnel supplies and money through. You can only build that kind of reputation by putting in the work now.

Communications

One of the biggest initial challenges we faced was that most means of communication went offline for between 24 hours and several weeks, depending on where you lived. That includes landlines, cell phones, and internet. We can’t stress enough the importance of having multiple back-up options in place to be ready for a situation like this. First of all, make sure you have a place and time established in advance where folks know they can find each other in the event of a disaster. This is probably a good idea even if communications don’t go offline—nothing beats face-to-face communication.

Satellite internet was invaluable during the first couple of weeks. For some particularly hard-hit communities, it remains the only means of communication six weeks into this disaster. Unfortunately, Starlink, which is owned by the white supremacist Elon Musk, has proven to be the most useful and the easiest to set up in a disaster scenario. We know from past experience that he is eager to suppress social movements that use his companies’ services. There are other companies that provide satellite internet, but it tends to be slower, with significant data limits. These are generally not mobile systems and would be challenging to set up in the middle of a disaster.

Don’t forget that you will need a source of electricity such as a generator or solar power to make satellite internet work.

Radios, especially ham radios, are another important means of communication that should be arranged in advance with people who already know how to use them. Our mountainous terrain limits the distance that radios can broadcast, but it would still have been helpful if we had possessed ham radios.

Supply Chain Logistics

Supply chain logistics are a huge piece of the puzzle. They will be one of your biggest headaches. In the first couple days of a disaster, you will probably only have access to the supplies you already have on hand in your immediate community. Stores will be closed and gas will not be available.

Soon, supplies will start pouring in from outside the disaster zone. The problem is that there will be a significant lag time between the announcement of a request for supplies and the time when those supplies arrive. In some cases, too many people will eventually answer the call, or by the time the supplies arrive, the needs on the ground will have changed. Social media can be useful in getting the word out about what supplies are needed, but it greatly exacerbates the lag time, especially as old posts are screenshotted and shared long beyond their relevance. When you make requests on social media, put a date in both the text and the visuals so people will know when the request was made.

Learn to anticipate what your needs will be a week from now, not tomorrow, because that is when the supplies will arrive. If and when regional support hubs are established, it is generally more efficient to communicate your needs directly to one of these hubs rather than blasting them on social media.

That being said, not every disaster is going to receive the kind of national spotlight that Hurricane Helene did. You may well find yourself in a situation where there are not enough donors or supplies.

Heavy Machinery

We need more people in our sphere that own or at least know how to operate heavy equipment. The floods destroyed hundreds of miles of roads and countless bridges. Massive piles of debris and tens of thousands of downed trees also blocked the roads, rendering many areas inaccessible. This is not the kind of problem you can solve with shovels and wheel barrows.

In many cases, communities that were totally cut off literally bulldozed their way to town; some used excavators to build new bridges out of pieces of the old bridges. It was not the state doing this work, but hillbillies who own heavy equipment who took matters into their own hands long before the state or federal government showed up. The rural activist scene is pretty well prepared to tackle anything involving a chainsaw, given that our network includes more than a few professional arborists and many of us already cut our own firewood. But we were not prepared for scenarios involving debris piles and earthmoving. Even beyond the immediate need of opening access to cut-off communities, heavy equipment such as dump trucks and track hoes remains crucial to the long-term demolition and clean-up work in the months following the storm.

Breaking the Spell

At the risk of repeating a cliché, acute crises such as natural disasters really do break the spell of normalcy that so many of us live under. Across western North Carolina, tens of thousands of people have experienced the joy of breaking out of the shell of isolated individualism and diving into the exhilaration and sense of purpose that collective action offers. Suddenly, people see that we are better off when we work in cooperation with each other, and that there are enough resources to meet everyone’s needs when we collaborate rather than compete. Even for radicals, there is a difference between knowing these truths intellectually and living, breathing, and feeling them 24/7.

To be clear, we don’t think that mutual aid groups should approach their work with the question “How do we radicalize people?” as the primary objective. Our primary goal should always be to save lives and make sure that people’s basic needs are met. But it is true that in the course of this crisis, thousands of people have gotten a taste of how we could organize society better. Many of them have a real hunger to keep that spirit alive but don’t know where to begin or where to plug in.

We should not show up in disasters the way that authoritarian or Christian groups do, looking to prey upon the vulnerable. Rather, we should make sure that there are ways that those who are radicalized by disasters and the experience of responding to them have opportunities to become involved in something lasting.

Rumors and Misinformation

Reliable information is hard to come by in a disaster. Even when phone and internet access return, rumors run rampant as everyone scrambles to figure out what happened and what kind of help is available or on its way. Many people will be deeply traumatized: when you have suddenly lost everything or your sense of stability has been pulled out from under you, fear and anxiety reign. On top of this, many of those joining in relief efforts will be running on pure adrenaline. None of these states of mind are conducive to clear thinking. It is important to get grounded and spread calm.

Do not repeat unverified information, especially on social media. If a statement starts with “my best friend’s uncle said…” or “I heard from a reliable source that…”, there is a pretty good chance that it is a rumor and not verified information. The more sensational the rumor, the more tempting it will be to spread it.

We can’t count the number of rumors that circulated here. Most of them only served to spread fear. “The military is coming in and shutting down mutual aid hubs and seizing supplies.” “Militias are out hunting FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] workers.” It is best to take note of such rumors and be prepared in the event that they turn out to be true, but in the meantime, to keep on doing what you are doing until you see otherwise with your own to two eyes. The best way to get reliable information is in face-to-face interactions with primary sources.

Ask questions of people as you are distributing aid. Whenever we did a supply run or a wellness check, we made sure to ask extensive questions, such as:

“What are the needs here that aren’t being met?”
“Has there been any help from the government yet?
“Are there still missing people?”
“What roads are open or closed?”
“Do you know of people who are still cut off from supplies?”

Vultures

Count on it: the far right will hurry to capitalize on any disaster, no matter what the scenario, in order to advance their fascist agenda. Within hours of communications returning, there were racist fake news stories alleging that Black and brown people were looting. Soon, these morphed into absurd claims that FEMA couldn’t help people because they had spent all their money on immigrants, and then into even wilder conspiracy theories suggesting that the government had manufactured the storm to disenfranchise Republican voters and that FEMA was going to seize people’s land for lithium mining. Never mind that there is no lithium to be found in the mountains of western North Carolina.

On top of this, many far-right and white nationalist groups made appearances in western North Carolina to provide aid. In most cases, they just showed up with a few supplies and left as soon as they had taken pictures to post on social media. It is worth distinguishing between groups that are part of the organized far right, like Patriot Front and the Proud Boys, who are only showing up to score political points, not to help people, and groups that really are there to provide direct aid but also happen to lean to the right. There should be no tolerance for the former. We feel that people should approach groups in the latter category with caution and evaluate whether it makes sense to work with them on a case-by-case basis. Crises make for strange bedfellows; there were a lot of Trump supporters working alongside anarchists to save lives, clear roads, and deliver supplies.

The best solution to countering the influence that the far right can build in disaster scenarios is to be better prepared and better organized. The groups that get the most done, deliver the most supplies, and do the most good are the ones that garner the most respect. It’s as simple as that. A good social media game doesn’t hurt, either. It is vital that we crank out reliable information and inspiring memes and narratives to counter the racist fearmongering that the far-right disinformation machine churns out.

Engaging with the State

We need more nuanced ways of thinking about government aid. Anarchists find themselves in a awkward situation in regards to FEMA and other forms of official government assistance. We rightfully criticize the government for its painfully slow and inadequate response to the disaster, but when the government finally shows up with significant resources, we aren’t sure how to engage.

We’d suggest that people should approach FEMA and similar organizations with the same cautious curiosity as aid groups that lean to the right but are not actively organizing for fascism. While grassroots mutual aid efforts are a thousand times more flexible and efficient in responding to disasters than the lumbering bureaucracy of the United States government, our access to resources pales in comparison to theirs when it comes to money, machinery, and labor. There is simply no way that we can crowdfund the estimated $17 billion in damages that Helene did. We need to strategically tap into those resources without compromising our principles or weakening our own efforts. Strategies such as helping people to navigate FEMA’s cumbersome aid applications and insurance claims can take pressure off our own fundraising efforts.

Another example of how we need a more nuanced approach to engaging with the government concerns the military. The presence of the military drastically changes the atmosphere in a community as soon as they show up. The communal feeling of mutual aid and cooperation can start to dissipate as their chain of command takes over. It is crucial to keep our mutual aid hubs completely separate from the military; do not let them staff or set up shop at our locations under any circumstances. But that does not mean we cannot strategically engage with them to use their free labor (and machinery) to muck out buildings, split firewood, and swing hammers.

The majority of military personnel are working-class folks in their late teens or early twenties who were sold a lie by military recruiters, a decision many of them come to regret. It will not hurt if they catch a glimpse of a better way of helping people.

Finances

Direct financial assistance is a huge need that most disaster relief groups are unable or unwilling to provide. If your group has the ability to raise large amounts of cash, you can be an absolutely invaluable resource in the days and weeks after the disaster. Donated supplies can only do so much.

In our case, tens of thousands of people have not only lost their homes, they’ve also lost weeks or months of employment. Bills are coming due and the overwhelming majority of folks are not getting anything close to the kind of assistance they need from FEMA or insurance companies. If you have a mutual aid group, set up a checking account in the group’s name and a few different digital wallets like Paypal and Venmo. Set up a website and social media accounts with clear links on how to donate. Do not wait for a disaster to do these things.

If you know that a disaster is on its way, take out a large amount of cash to have on hand. Remember, Venmo and credit cards are not going to work when the power grid and communications are down. We have found that most people are able to set up some sort of digital wallet if they need to, but it is important to have cash on hand for those who can’t.

It is also likely that if you are suddenly receiving and sending out large amounts of money in a short time, your account will get frozen or the people you send the money to won’t be able to access it immediately. This is infuriating, but there seems to be nothing that we can do about it—these companies have automated systems that flag accounts and they claim that they can’t override the system when your account is flagged.

Getting Organized

Grassroots disaster relief is no longer the exclusive province of church groups and small bands of autonomous mutual aid groups. The notion has gone mainstream since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when so many people discovered that their neighbors were all they had to count on. At this point, well-organized and well-resourced groups of every stripe are prepared to mobilize quickly—from reactionary right-leaning groups like the Cajun Navy and to networks of volunteer helicopter pilots, not to mention radical groups like Mutual Aid Disaster Relief. Beyond these specific groups, more people understand how to self-organize now. Within three to five days of the flood waters receding, you couldn’t drive more than ten minutes without running into a do-it-yourself relief hub or water station in someone’s front yard, church, or gas station parking lot. It would not be an overstatement to say that within a week, western North Carolina had the highest concentration of four-wheelers, all-terrain vehicles, and dirt bikes in the world, as people poured in from all over the South and beyond to help with search and rescue and to get supplies out to cut-off communities.

Most of these hubs were truly grassroots, with no formal organization behind them. This is an overwhelmingly positive development, but it does not come without challenges. The chief problems were redundancy of effort and lack of coordination between relief hubs, road clearing crews, and people doing supply runs, search and rescue, and wellness checks. The sooner you can develop relationships and good communication systems with other hubs, the better, so you won’t have to be constantly reinventing the wheel.

Creating an intake system for incoming volunteers and arranging for people to coordinate them is a huge piece of the puzzle. We had to turn away many offers of help in the first few weeks because we didn’t have a good system in place for fielding newcomers, especially those from out of town, nor could we guarantee that we could plug them into a project on any given day if they just showed up, despite the fact that there was always a mountain of work to do. Connecting volunteers to communities and individual homes that need medical care, mucking, gutting, and repairs requires an enormous amount of legwork on your part, not to mention building trust between you and the residents. You would do well to have someone in your group that has a deep love of spreadsheets.

History Repeats Itself: First as Farce, Then as Tragedy : Why the Democrats Are Responsible for Donald Trump’s Return to Power

2024-11-06T08:55:49Z

Donald Trump has won the 2024 presidential election. That means that we will have to fight many of the battles of 2017-2020 all over again. But first, in order to understand the scale of what we’re up against, let’s look at how we got here.

The Hot Potato Changes Hands Again

We have long argued that in the 21st century, state power is a hot potato. Because neoliberal globalization has made it difficult for state structures to mitigate the impact of capitalism on ordinary people, no party is able to hold state power for long without losing credibility. Indeed, over the past few months, upset defeats have undermined ruling parties in France, Austria, the United Kingdom, and Japan.

In the 2024 election, both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump were already tarnished by their relationship with state power, but Harris was the one associated with the reigning administration. This is one of the reasons she lost. Tens of millions of Trump voters support his program, yes, but the voters who pushed him over the edge into victory were essentially casting protest votes.

The Democrats have done everything they could to associate themselves with the ruling order: moving their politics to the right, shifting support away from supposed “leftists” within their ranks, demobilizing protest movements. It turns out that this was a losing wager at a time when people are hungry for change.

It remains to be seen how the rest of the country will respond. If the leadership of the Democratic Party are able to roll over and accept a position as the junior partners in fascism, the future could be bleak indeed. On the other hand, if it becomes clear that half the country is going to resist the Trump program, some part of the Democratic leadership will be forced to chase after their position as the representatives of that part of the population, as occurred in 2017.

What happens next will be decided in the streets.

The Party of Complicity

The Republicans have become the party of fascism. In the run-up to this election, the Democrats established themselves as the party of complicity with fascism.

What does it mean to acknowledge that Donald Trump is a fascist, yet do no more than urge people to vote against him? If indeed, Trump intends to introduce fascism to the United States—if, as he has explicitly promised, he will round up millions of people (“the largest domestic deportation operation in American history”), put the military on the streets to suppress protests, and use the court system to attack anyone who opposes him—then limiting oneself to merely electoral opposition means welcoming fascism with open arms.

When fascism is on the way, the appropriate thing to do is to organize underground networks of resistance, as Italian and French anti-fascists did in the 1930s and 1940s. The appropriate thing to do is to prepare to resist by any means necessary. Anything less is complicity.

Beefing up the institutions through which the fascists will enact their policies is complicity. Normalizing violence against the people that the fascists intend to target is complicity. Turning over the communications platforms via which people share information is complicity. Discouraging people from the kind of tactics one needs to fight against a fascist regime is complicity. Over the past four years, the Democrats have done every single one of these things.

The Democratic party leadership is already prepared to coexist with fascists, to be ruled by fascists. They would prefer fascism to another four years of tumultuous protests. Having a more authoritarian party in power gives them an alibi—it makes them look good by comparison, even as they are the ones channeling people out of the streets and paving the way for Trump to carry out his program.

The Road to Fascism

Let’s spell out why the Democrats are culpable for this situation.

The Police

The Democrats began the Biden-Harris era by doubling down on their support for the police, precisely when millions of people around the United States were wondering whether it was time to look for a more effective way to address poverty and mental health crises than to continue channeling massive quantities of public funding towards militarizing police departments. When Trump takes office again in 2025, the police departments around the country that the Biden administration has funded and glorified will be at the forefront of imposing Trump’s agenda.

The Democratic Party’s pro-police turn helped bring ex-cops like New York City Mayor Eric Adams into office in 2020. Adams’s administration has been a disaster; he is currently the first Mayor of New York to face federal charges, including bribery, conspiracy, and fraud. Trump has since reached out to Adams, one corrupt strongman to another. This is what happens when you put state power directly in the hands of the forces of repression.

The Law

Starting early in the first Trump administration, Democrats focused their criticism of Trump on the idea that what he was doing was illegal, using the slogan “No one is above the law.” As we argued in 2018,

If you’re trying to establish the foundation for a powerful social movement against Trump’s government, “no one is above the law” is a self-defeating narrative. What happens when a legislature chosen by gerrymander passes new laws? What happens when the courts stacked with the judges Trump appointed rule in his favor? What will you do when the FBI cracks down on protests?

Now, with the Supreme Court controlled by Trump appointees and Trump preparing to resume power, we will see the answers to these questions. Anyone who is determined to prevent Trump from carrying out his agenda will have to be prepared to break the laws that Trump’s legislature will pass and Trump’s judges will apply.

To march under the banner “no one is above the law” is to spit in the faces of all those for whom the daily functioning of the law is an experience of oppression and injustice. It is to reject solidarity with the sectors of society that could give a social movement against Trump leverage in the streets. Finally, it is to legitimize the very instrument of oppression—the law—that Trump will eventually use to suppress your movement.

As we warned last July, a Trump victory means that all the institutions that centrists have counted on to protect them—electoral politics, the court system, the police, ordinary citizens’ inclination to obey the law and respect the authorities—are now weapons in the hands of their enemies.

The Media

When the owners of Twitter sold it to Elon Musk in 2022, they understood that they were putting control of the 21st century’s chief political communications platform in the hands of a far-right megalomaniac. One of the first things that Musk did was to ban some of the most well-known anarchist accounts that had helped to mobilize people during the first Trump administration. This was a step in the process of reducing Twitter to a vehicle for far-right propaganda.

As we argued at the time,

Musk’s acquisition of Twitter is not just the whim of an individual plutocrat—it is also a step towards resolving some of the contradictions within the capitalist class, the better to establish a unified front against workers and everyone else on the receiving end of the violence of the capitalist system.

Indeed, the funding of a coterie of billionaires was one of the chief factors that enabled Trump to win the 2024 election. The billionaires were able to shift their loyalties to Trump in part because, with communication platforms and street protests brought under control, they did not have to fear that a second Trump administration would create chaos that would be bad for business.

This brings us to the next point.

Emptying the Streets

The Democrats’ effort to discredit and demobilize the movement against the police played directly into the hands of their adversaries, preparing the way for Trump to return to power without resistance.

By competing with the Republicans to assert themselves as the party of law and order, the Democrats enabled the Republicans to drive discourse about “crime” so far to the right that Trump and his henchmen could run on rhetoric about crime even though violent crime has been decreasing for years. This contrasts dramatically with the way that Donald Trump refused to dial his talking points back one millimeter.

At the same time, Democrats have sought to prevent new movements from gaining momentum. When abortion access was curtailed around the country, for example, the Democrats did their best to prevent an effective grassroots mobilization in response.

Did it benefit the Democrats’ 2024 electoral prospects to empty the streets? Let’s go back to 2020 for an answer.

At the time, in op-ed after op-ed, centrists expressed concern that the street confrontations of May and June 2020 might swing the election to Donald Trump. In fact, Democratic voter registration in June 2020 increased by 50%, while Republican voter registration grew by just 6% that month. Those who cited the protests as a factor in determining how they cast their ballots in 2020 voted for Joe Biden by a margin of fully 7%.

In other words, the George Floyd Revolt helped get Biden elected.

And remember—the George Floyd Revolt did not begin with a voter registration drive. It got off the ground with the burning of a police precinct. According to a Newsweek poll, 54% of those surveyed believed that this was justified. If that had not occurred, the movement would not have succeeded in pushing the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others into public discourse, and there would have been no electoral gain for the Democratic Party. There is no way to create powerful movements without taking real action against the causes of injustice.

As the party that coopts resistance movements, the Democrats would have benefitted from more powerful movements in 2021-2024. They preferred to lose.

The Political Ratchet

The Harris campaign received the support of former President George W. Bush, former Representative Liz Cheney, conservative talk-radio host Charlie Sykes and many other right-wing figures. This was not just because Trump’s agenda was shocking even to those who previously represented the face of the Republican establishment—it was also because Harris represented a centrist political project, letting Republicans determine the discourse on issues like immigration.

As we have previously argued,

The US two-party system functions like a ratchet, with the Republican Party steadily pulling public policy and permissible discourse to the right while Democrats, in seeking to acquire power by chasing the political center, serve as a mechanism that prevents policy and discourse from shifting back.

This strategy has helped Republicans normalize what were once marginal ideas about immigration and crime, but it has not made the Democrats any more electable.

To pan back, we can see that Trump’s victory in 2024 marks a crucial turning point in 21st-century political discourse. When Trump was elected in 2016, the neoliberal consensus seemed invincible; his victory seemed to represent a fluke in which an outlier politician had come to power by coopting the rhetoric of the so-called anti-globalization movement. Today, it is clear that the heyday of the neoliberal consensus is over and something else will have to come next. Yet for decades, the Democrats have collaborated with Republicans to crush movements proposing an alternative. They suppressed the forces within their camp, such as the Bernie Sanders campaign, that represented a way forward; this was what made it possible for Trump to falsely present himself as a representative of rebellion.

This has rendered it inevitable that the far right will hold power in the next phase, since the Democrats helped to suppress anarchist, anti-authoritarian, and left alternatives.

Desensitizing the Public

Finally, heartbreakingly, the Biden administration has already done much of the work to desensitize the general public to the program that an emboldened second Trump administration will attempt to carry out. Above all, the Biden administration has accomplished this by supporting the Israeli military in carrying out a brutal genocide in Gaza. In so doing, Biden and Harris have accustomed millions of people to the idea that human life has no inherent value—that it is acceptable to slaughter, imprison, and torment people based on their status in a targeted demographic.

This is exactly the sort of environment that will enable Donald Trump to carry out the kind of brutal domestic policies that he intends to when he returns to office in two and a half months.

The Road Ahead

Ultimately, we cannot blame the Democrats for everything. We are the ones who failed to build movements powerful enough to survive their efforts to suppress us. We are the ones who are as yet unprepared to stop Trump from deporting millions of people and channeling billions of dollars more to billionaires and the security apparatus of the state.

Fortunately, this story is not over yet.

We have a responsibility not to let the election statistics demobilize us. As we wrote in 2016, in response to Trump’s first victory,

Elections serve to represent us to each other at our worst, distilling the most offensive, cowardly, and servile aspects of the species. Many people who would never personally wrest a mother from her children are capable of endorsing deportation from the privacy of a voting booth, just as most people who eat meat could never work at a slaughterhouse. Were it not for the alienation that characterizes government itself, most of the ugly policies comprising the Trump agenda could never be implemented.

There will be a brief window of possibility now when millions of people who had counted on the Democrats to keep them safe wake up and realize that we are each other’s only hope. We have to take action immediately to make contact with each other, to reestablish all that we have lost since the year 2020.

We have to undertake proactive projects that will distinguish us from the political parties, projects that show what everyone has to gain from our proposals, and that offer opportunities to people from all walks of life to get involved in the project of changing the world for the better.

The good news is that we can do this. We’ve done it before. See you on the front lines.

Ya Ghazze Habibti—Gaza, My Love : Understanding the Genocide in Palestine

2024-10-03T10:58:27Z

After slaughtering more than 42,000 Palestinians, including 16,500 children, the Israeli military is now invading Lebanon and threatening to go to war with Iran. In the following in-depth account, an anarchist from occupied Palestine reviews the history of Zionist colonialism and Palestinian resistance, makes the case for an anti-colonial understanding of the situation, and explores what it means to act in solidarity with Palestinians.

Ya Ghazze Habibti

Ya Ghazze habibti, oh Gaza my love. Gaza, which Napoleon, one of its many occupiers, called the outpost of Africa, the door to Asia. This is because he passed through it on his way north and, upon defeat, passed though it again on his way back to Africa.

Gaza, which has always been a central point for passing empires, trade routes, occupations, and cultures, owing to its geographic location along the coast line of the Mediterranean. Gaza, through which passed the Via Maris, connecting Egypt to Turkey and Europe. Gaza, through which the Greeks, the Romans, the Rashidun Caliphate, the Crusaders, the Mamluks, the Ottomans, the British, the Egyptians, and Zionist forces pressed their claims—writing its story as a history of occupations, wars, atrocities, and resistance.

Gaza my love, which was always a battleground, yet always stood still. Gaza, which buries 41,000¹ of its inhabitants, commemorating a year of an ongoing war of annihilation, facing a scale of destruction that has already exceeded the bombing of Dresden by the allied forces during the Second World War, and a daily death rate that is higher than any other conflict in the 21^st century.

Almost a year into the genocide, some things should be clear. The destruction of Hamas is incidental damage. The chief goal is the mass slaughter of children, targeting Gaza’s future. Of the 41,000 deaths reported thus far, about 16,500 are children.

But Gaza is not helpless. The people of Gaza fight, and their courage and resilience are an inspiration for the entire world and generations to come.

Before we discuss the present situation, it is important to review the history. For those of us who grew up and live in the entity, the belly of the colonial beast, it feels like history began in October 7. This is the only narrative Israelis are getting. But things don’t just happen in a vacuum—and similar things have happened before, in similar wars of decolonization and liberation. A little historical background will enable us to zoom out and understand these events as part of long-term processes.

Then we can talk about possible futures.

A History of Conquest, a History of Resistance

Gaza has a long history of occupations and resistance, but our current understanding of the “Gaza Strip” as a rectangle on the map in the south of Palestine does not derive from the natural features of the land—it is an artificial, modern creation. The Mamluks in the 13th century were the first to use the term Quta’a Ghazze (Gaza Strip), but they were referring to the entire south of Palestine, all the way to the modern-day West Bank. The Gaza Strip as we know it was created in 1948.

We cannot understand what is known as the Gaza Strip without discussing the Zionist attack on Palestine in 1948, the massive ethnic cleansing campaign known as the Nakba. Without this context, it’s impossible to understand why most Gazans are not originally from Gaza, and why 80% of the population are refugees. Gaza is an artificial strip of land that became a vast refugee camp after the massive ethnic cleansing campaign conducted by Zionist militias. Out of the nearly 800,000 refugees expelled from their villages, many escaped to nearby countries such as Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank. Those who tried to cross into Egypt found a closed border; unlike other neighboring countries, Egypt did not accept refugees, similar to what the Egyptian government does today. This is how the Gaza Strip emerged: as a Zionist means to control demographics and population.

Many of the Kibbutzim and towns that were attacked on October 7 were built on the ruins of communities that existed there before. Bedouin tribes and other residents from 11 villages around Gaza were expelled to the Gaza Strip, and their lands, which were classified as “abandoned,” were expropriated by the state and turned into military training grounds and settlements. Towns and kibbutzim were built on them to prevent attempts to return. The deportation order, documented by historians as Order Number 40, included an order to burn the villages and leave no remains. We can assume that some of the fighters who attacked these settlements on October 7, 2023 were second- or third-generation refugees who were seeing the ancestral lands of their parents or grandparents on the other side of the blockade for the first time.

By the end of these expulsions, in 1950, the population of Gaza had tripled as a result of the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees. There was no infrastructure to receive so many refugees, and until 1950, there was no aid organization like UNRWA in place to assist refugees. Despite that, historians tell of incredible solidarity from Gaza’s locals, who in time of crisis chose to share what little resources they had with the refugees, keeping them alive. By the decision of the United Nations, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) was established in 1950 and began the task of building refugee camps and schools and organizing aid for the huge number of refugees who, until then, had slept in local schools, mosques, fields, and private homes of locals that opened their doors for them.

The newly-arrived refugees in what would become the Gaza Strip created a looming threat for the Zionist colonial project. Some claim that Gaza has been under siege since 2007—but in reality, Gaza was under siege from the very beginning, passing through various stages of siege over time. The establishment of the Gaza Strip was a calculated decision by David Ben Gurion, the architect of the Nakba and Israel’s first Prime Minister, to give up a piece of Palestine in order to build a huge refugee camp for expelled people fleeing south. In addition to controlling the demographics of the rest of Palestine, the isolation of the strip served another purpose. Its geographical distance from the West Bank, from the Palestinians that remained in the territories occupied in 1948, and from the rest of the Arab world helped to fragment the fabric of Palestinian society. This was a calculated colonial strategy to carve up the land into isolated ghettos—into what were called Bantustans in South Africa—in order to drive a wedge between different classes of occupied people.

By 1967, Israel had solved its original demographic issues but created new geographic ones. The expansionist appetite had risen again and the Gaza Strip was occupied along with the West Bank, Golan Heights, and Sinai Peninsula. Israel later returned the Sinai to Egypt, but the rest of the newly occupied territories posed a significant challenge for the Jewish state, as it was not clear that a simple repeat of 1948 was possible. A new model of ethnic cleansing was called for. The conditions had changed, rendering it more difficult to justify physically expelling people from their land; the next best thing was simply to lock them in place.

The top priority was to prevent by all means the emergence of a situation in which settlers would mix with the natives, so Israel constructed two open-air prisons: one in the West Bank and a more tightly controlled one in the Gaza Strip. Unlike the territories occupied in 1948, these new territories were never officially annexed to Israel. The population never received citizenship. They were denied any rights; their villages were surrounded with checkpoints, walls, and settlements; and military rule was put in place. Indeed, ethnic cleansing and military rule have often gone together throughout history.

Another thing that goes together historically with ethnic cleansing and military rule is resistance. The outbreak of the first intifada from the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza in 1987 set off revolutionary waves throughout the region. This was not solely due to the intensity of the insurrection, but also because it signaled a turning point at which Palestinians took matters into their hands and fought for their own liberation.

In many ways, the Palestinian Liberation Organization had already been doing this starting in the 1960s, taking away the Arab states’ role as “liberators” and shifting the focus to revolutionary Arab guerrillas and Palestinian diaspora communities, mainly in Jordan and later in Lebanon. But the first intifada in Palestine broke out spontaneously. It was not under the control of any particular militarized party or organization; it was led by a network of grassroots groups and organizations that came together under the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU), a network of coordination between the various regional committees, organizations, and parties involved in the uprising.

The fact that the uprising broke out in Gaza is significant. It is not surprising that it began in a refugee camp. Among Palestinians, the camp is the lowest class; it is also the most revolutionary, always the front line of both popular resistance and armed struggle. It is where guerrillas traditionally organized and strongholds of resistance were formed. Due to its centrality in the struggle, it is also where many of the most horrifying atrocities have been committed and the harshest repression inflicted. Refugee camps in Lebanon were hotbeds for revolutionaries during the Lebanese civil war in the 1970s and ’80s; that was also where Lebanese fascists perpetrated the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982, under the watchful eyes of the IDF.

To this day, refugee camps such as those in Jenin and Balata in the West Bank remain a hotspot for armed resistance, with many factions, such as the Lion’s Den and Balata Brigade, that insist on remaining unaffiliated with any major faction of Palestinian politics, beyond the control of both Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The youth in these camps have defended their homes against Israeli raids time and time again, and have paid dearly for doing so. Since October 7, 2023, the refugee camps in Gaza have been a central target for the genocidal forces.

The first intifada articulated the refugee camp as the leading force in the Palestinian revolution. It also showed how explosive the situation was.

The outbreak of the intifada came as a complete surprise to both Israel and the PLO. Israel never imagined the Palestinians would revolt, and the PLO never imagined they would do it outside of their control. Yasser Arafat, the leader of the PLO and its biggest political party, Fatah, saw the uncontrollable and horizontal nature of the intifada as a threat and sought a way to bring it under the control of his organization. This, alongside Israeli and US interference, led Fatah to compromise on their positions and seek peace negotiations with Israel.

This sequence of events, the details of which are beyond the scope of this article, led to the signing of the Oslo Accords, the migration of the PLO to Palestine, the creation of the Palestinian Authority, and the subsequent management of the occupation by Israel’s loyal subcontractor. Among other things, the Oslo Accords involved giving up of 80% of the land in return for the promise of a “two-state solution” and the recognition of Israel. It also meant the division of the West Bank into three areas: area A, comprising 18% of the West Bank, which would be under the control of the PA; area B, 22% of the West Bank, which would be under the civil government of the PA and the security control of Israel; and area C, 60% of the West Bank, which was placed under “temporary” Israeli control.

This also led to security coordination between the newly-formed PA and Israel, which meant that Palestinians were suppressed, jailed, beaten, and executed by Palestinian cops and jailers rather than Israelis. At the same time, the PLO “abandoned terrorism” and armed resistance, dedicating itself to peace negotiations and “nonviolent solutions.” The last part of the agreement, the creation of a Palestinian state, was never implemented.

The accords served as a textbook counterinsurgency tactic. The goal was to crush the uprising, domesticate or isolate the revolutionary wings within the PLO, remove troublesome areas in the West Bank and Gaza Strip from Israeli management, and at the same time, impose the role of cop on the PA while giving the rising masses false hope.

But not everyone was duped. The Oslo Accords did manage to end the first intifada, but they also signaled a fragmentation within Palestinian society, including within the PLO itself, dividing those who favored peace agreements against those who remained committed to the original goals of the Palestinian revolution—refusal to acknowledge the Israeli state, liberation from the river to the sea, and commitment to armed and popular resistance. These two camps were to define Palestinian society and struggle for years to come.

In the midst of the uprising, a few men from the local Gaza chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egypt-based religious social movement, met in a house in Shati refugee camp in the Gaza Strip on December 9, 1988. This was to have significant implications for the future of the Palestinian resistance. Under the spiritual leadership of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a refugee from the village Al-Jura, near Majdal Askalan (known today as the Israeli city Ashkelon), the group decided to split off and start a new movement, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Harakat alMuqawama alIslamiya)—as an acronym, HAMAS. A few months later, the nascent organization released its charter, in which it presents Islamic revival and jihad as a form of anti-colonialism and lays out its political and religious philosophy regarding the connection it sees between Islam and Palestinian liberation. Despite affirming that Islamic rule would allow “Muslims, Jews, and Christians to live together in peace and harmony,” the rest of the text is full of antisemitism and conspiracy theories, articulating the movement’s understanding of Zionism, Israel, and Judaism at that time.

A decade earlier, in 1976, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin had applied for a permit from the Israeli authorities to establish the Islamic Association, which was to be an umbrella organization that would provide legal and administrative cover for the Muslim Brotherhood’s social, religious, educational, and medical services within the Gaza Strip. Israel approved the license. This is one of the sources of the myth that Israel “founded” Hamas. In fact, Israel had nothing to do with “inventing” Hamas; as an occupying authority, it merely granted a permit to one of the institutions of the Muslim Brotherhood about a decade before Hamas existed. There are couple of ways to explain why this happened.

Israel had a policy of noninterference with social Islamic organizations. But it is also helpful to understand the social dynamics at that time. The 1970s were the height of Palestinian revolutionary leftism; secular and Marxist-Leninist organizations were the dominant forces in the armed resistance. Religion, on the other hand, was seen as a private matter, and Israel had an interest in enabling the growth of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic movements that could function as a counterforce to weaken the nationalist movement and create social division.

The creation of Hamas, a decade later, while building on the charitable and social infrastructure of the Brotherhood, redefined Islam as a political movement tied with anti-colonial resistance, taking inspiration from many political parties in the Arab world that combined Islam with nationalism. They drew on the legacies of legendary figures such as Izz Ad-Din Al-Qassam, a spiritual leader and militant active in Palestine in the 1920s and ’30s, who pioneered defining Islamic Jihad as anti-colonialism and organized guerrilla fighting against the French, the British and the Zionists. Hamas’s armed wing, the Al-Qassam brigade, bears his name.

Hamas was active in the uprising from the start, clashing with Israeli forces but also with other Palestinian factions that they perceived to be collaborationist. Several factors enabled Hamas to position itself as the leader of the resistance camp, including the PLO’s implicit acceptance of partitioning the land of historic Palestine into two states and abandonment of the revolutionary path, which caused the Palestinian national movement to fragment into the “resistance camp” and the “negotiation camp.” At the same time, geopolitical processes including the fall of the Soviet Union and the defeat of the Palestinian left in Lebanon were shifting the context. The intifada first erupted out of the refugee camps of Gaza, Hamas’s home territory and main base of support.

Fast forward to the year 2000. After negotiations failed to deliver and the Palestinian state that was promised in 1999 never came, a second, bitterer, and more militarized intifada erupted, triggered by a provocative visit by Ariel Sharon—then-leader of the opposition Likud party—to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem. While the first intifada was popular and decentralized, the second intifada began similarly but quickly fell under the leadership of armed militarized factions, popularizing practices such as suicide bombings and other kinds of deadly armed attacks against Israeli forces and citizens.

Yasser Arafat, the leader of the PLO and the president of the Palestinian Authority, proved to be quite a pragmatist. To the dismay of Israel and international patrons, he refused to denounce armed attacks, often even encouraged them, and more than once, the police forces of the PA found themselves exchanging gunfire with Israeli forces. He appeared to view the “peace process” and the state-building project merely as tools for Palestinian liberation, worth pursuing as long as they worked, but was prepared to abandon them and change course as needed. In response, in 2002, Israel laid siege to the Mukataa, the Palestinian parliament building in Ramallah, trapping him until his eventual death two years later in 2004.

In his place, Mahmoud Abbas came to power—a Fatah party member with US support. To ensure that Arafat’s pragmatism would not recur, the US and other international donors initiated efforts to “professionalize” the PA. These led to a significant structural shift, resulting in an extensive security sector reform with US support and training, the tightening of security coordination with Israel, the de-politicization of the PA and a large part of the Palestinian public, and the appointment of Salam Fayyad as Prime Minister—a neoliberal American-educated economist accused of purging the PA’s institutions of overly critical voices.

In her book Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine, Palestinian anti-authoritarian author Dana El-Kurd details how such aggressive methods of international intervention are used to insulate the PA from its constituency, the Palestinian public, making it answer to international donors instead—especially the US and European Union. They make threats of sanctions and cuts in aid whenever the PA strays from path laid by its masters, the global Western powers. The creation of the PA and involvement in its management were crucial for the US in order to impose its priorities in the region. Palestinians have never been permitted to manage their own affairs in a way that isn’t approved by the United States.

This was visible following Hamas’s electoral victory in 2006. Hamas managed to capitalize on the discontent that followed the failure of the Oslo Accords, the PA’s policies, and corruption and feelings of frustration, gaining 76 of the 132 seats of the legislative council and winning the right to form a government. The resistance camp was at the height of its popularity, as one year before, in 2005, Israel had initiated the Disengagement Plan, evicting all 21 Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip along with the Israeli military, following five straight years of armed uprising. Although Israel continued to control Gaza’s border, airspace, and maritime space, this was still seen as a significant achievement of the armed struggle, which managed to force land capitulations from Israel while the “negotiations” and the “peace process” remained stuck.

In fact, few voted for Hamas for religious or ideological reasons. By building guerrilla infrastructure during the 1990s and the second intifada, Hamas had simply managed to position themselves as a leading force for the national cause, the most significant alternative to Fatah.

Shocked by Hamas’s victory, the United States and Israel quickly moved to initiate what amounted to a coup. They put intense pressure on the new government to “moderate” its views—for example, to accept the US-led “peace process,” the two-state “solution,” and not to threaten Western influence in the region. The “Quartet on the Middle East,” an international body composed of the US, the EU, the UN, and Russia, which was assigned to manage the “solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” according to the “peace process,” conditioned aid to the Hamas government on three demands: acknowledging the accords signed between the PLO and Israel, denouncing “terror,” and officially recognizing Israel. Following Hamas’s refusal, the government was isolated, all aid stopped, and economic sanctions imposed.

The Gaza civil war of 2007 saw armed street fighting over the Gaza Strip between the armed wings of Hamas and Fatah. The battle resulted in a victory for Hamas and the subsequent taking over of the Gaza Strip. In defeat, Mahmoud Abbas declared the dissolution of the government, fired Ismail Haniyeh (the Hamas prime minister), and declared a state of emergency. Instead, Salam Fayyad, a more “moderate” Fatah politician approved by the US and Israel, was appointed PM. Abbas also outlawed Hamas’s armed wing. No elections have been held since.

The events of 2007 created a new situation in Palestinian governance, in which Palestinians were under two Palestinian Authorities—the PA under Fatah rule in the West Bank, and Hamas in Gaza. This benefited Israel, further fragmenting Palestinian society and dividing Gaza from the West Bank and the rest of Palestine. Starting in 2007, Israel intensified its siege of Gaza as a collective punishment for electing Hamas, fully isolating it from the world—basically turning the world’s largest refugee camp into the world’s largest open-air prison. The strip was fully fenced from all sides (including the Egyptian border), tighter control was imposed on its maritime and air space, movement outside and inside was highly restricted, and Israel decided which goods were permitted to enter.

Those who equate Hamas with ISIS, Al-Qaeda, or the Taliban would be surprised to hear that during sixteen years ruling Gaza, Hamas never implemented Sharia law. It was an authoritarian and conservative government; it was highly repressive, especially to women, queer people, and political dissidents; yet there were constant internal debates and arguments, elections, and representative bodies. The organizational structure has been detailed in depth; suffice it to say that while it was an hierarchical organization, the system of Majlis Al-Shura (General Consultative councils), composed of elected members from local council groups, with representatives from Gaza, the West Bank, leaders in exile, and prisoners in Israeli jails, does represent a somewhat democratic top-down model of governance.

Not only does Hamas not resemble Salafi jihadism, they were its mortal enemies. Salafi cells that tried to mobilize in Gaza were violently repressed. Hamas have no intention of establishing a pan-Islamic caliphate; they were always more nationalist than religious, limiting their activities to the geography of Palestine. All of this is not to vindicate them—we should remain critical—but I believe that we must be fair and accurate in our criticism, understanding nuance and context, so as to avoid spreading Islamophobic nonsense that throws all Islamist organizations into one basket.

Israel appeared to be fine with Hamas taking over. This served the purpose of further dividing the Palestinians, putting a governing body in control in Gaza to manage it, and providing a justification for Israeli attacks. It portrayed itself as fighting a jihadist Islamic-fundamentalist terror organization in the many airstrikes that followed.

Palestinian historian Tareq Baconi details in his book Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance how Israel initiated the strategy of “mowing the lawn” in Gaza. It would bomb Gaza every once in a while, just enough to damage Hamas’s military capabilities and massacre hundreds or thousands of Palestinians—keeping Gaza in check, but leaving Hamas in power. Israel conducted five major military operations in Gaza up to 2023 and a few smaller ones. This strategy of keeping Gaza in a frozen state—always under crisis management, one step away from collapse, isolated from the world, and without a long term plan—was to explode in Israel’s face on October 7, 2023. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

From Hamas’s side, there are many ways to explain why they decided to take part in electoral politics. It seems that Hamas saw government something like how Arafat saw it—as a tool of resistance, one of many tools with which to pursue liberation. Like Arafat, they were to discover the tensions and contradictions within this approach. As the head of the resistance camp, the leaders of the revolutionary government, Hamas often found itself as a pacifying force. Several times, they had to restrict other militant factions in Gaza, like the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, that were interfering with their ceasefires. They also didn’t participate in some military clashes with Israel, like the 2022 escalation with between Israel and the PIJ. Some now interpret this as a deceiving tactic, duping Israel to believe that they weren’t interested in escalation in order to surprise them on October 7, but I don’t buy it. It might be true to some extent, but there is no denying that many times, Hamas were in fact deterred, and had to walk a tightrope between maintaining a militant stance and restricting other armed factions in order to keep escalations from getting out of control.

The transition from social movement and guerrilla formation to governing body wasn’t so obvious. Al-Qassam, the armed wing, despite securing a great deal of autonomy from the governing bodies, still found itself having to deal with the growing tension between resistance and government. This is not new in the Palestinian movement. In his book The Palestine Question, Edward Said detailed this dilemma within the PLO in its revolutionary days, when revolution and the state-building project often clashed. When it finally came time to move forward to a state, they completely betrayed their people, sold out the revolution, and capitulated to the disciplining powers of the world order. But Hamas took a different approach.

After taking over Gaza in 2007, Hamas had the choice whether to repeat the PA’s path in the West Bank, selling out the resistance and becoming collaborators with the occupation, or to maintain their defiant stance. They chose the latter. Neither Israel nor the international powers were able to fully domesticate them, and they maintained their commitment to decolonization, resistance, and armed struggle—at least in principle, and sometimes in practice. We could see this during the 2021 escalation, the Unity Intifada. While Sheikh Jarrah, a Palestinian neighborhood in Jerusalem, was threatened with eviction, Jerusalem was burning and an uprising was spreading all over Palestine; Hamas declared an ultimatum for the Israeli forces to withdraw from Sheikh Jarrah and the Al-Aqsa compound, followed by a barrage of rockets fired into Israeli cities.

This was one of the few instances in which Hamas broke out of the cage that was built for them. The rocket attack against Israel was not used to ease the siege, negotiate about conditions in Gaza, respond to the assassination of one of its militants, or press any other matter within their immediate circle of concern as a governing or military body; rather, it was an act in solidarity with a neighborhood in Jerusalem and in response to Israeli raids on the Al-Aqsa compound. This positioned them once again as a leading front in the resistance, representing Gaza’s participation in the unity uprising and acting on issues that concern all Palestinians.

The contradictions between armed struggle and popular struggle are a constant subject of debate among Palestinians. Some critics accused Hamas of sidelining the popular struggle that erupted during the uprising by shifting the focus to armed struggle. The reality is more complicated. Hamas is much more than its armed wing; it is an entire movement that experiments with many different methods of struggle, evaluating each strategy according to the results. Hamas has a lot of experience with popular resistance—for example, during the 2018-2019 Marches of Return, in which Gaza residents marched unarmed toward the fence, inspired in part by the civil rights movement in the US, demanding an end to the siege and to be permitted to return to their homes on the other side. This was not a Hamas initiative—it was organized by grassroots activists and civilians in Gaza—but Hamas, as a governing body, had to permit the marches, participated in them, and was involved with some of the funding. Israel’s response was to massacre 223 protesters, including 46 children, by sniper fire. The world did nothing. By contrast, the events of 2021 proved that Palestine only becomes an international issue when Israeli citizens pay a price.

Palestinians are being killed whether armed or not, “violent” or “non-violent,” during peaceful marches as well as militant combat. Israel’s problem with the Palestinians is not this or that tactic, but their existence as a people. The March of Return, Gaza, 2018.

In view of this, I want to propose one way to see October 7. No one outside Hamas knows exactly what led them to decide to initiate such an attack. There are many theories, and I’ll add my own. Hamas might have reached the conclusion that the “resistance government” was no longer working, that it was in fact actually an obstacle, and decided to return to its origins as a guerrilla formation and social movement. They might have tried to do this many times before, as we can see from the many reconciliation attempts with Fatah; they showed a willingness to relinquish control over Gaza and work toward elections time and time again. Baconi’s Hamas Contained details many such attempts and how they were derailed by Israel and the US. Perhaps they thought it was time for something extreme to force them back to the path of resistance, a kind of a government suicide. They have made it clear since October that they are willing to give up governing Gaza, but won’t disarm—another indication that they are attempting to return to their origins.

For the revolution to live, the government must die.

Ghetto Uprising

Then October 7 happened.

A year has passed and it’s still not known exactly what happened that day. This is what we know for certain so far.

In the early hours of October 7, 2023, Hamas, alongside other militant factions in Gaza, launched Tufun Al-Aqsa, the Al-Aqsa flood operation, a coordinated surprise attack against Israel. Thousands of rockets were fired into Israel and thousands of militants breached the siege, broke the fence, occupied military bases, and infiltrated Israeli settlements.

The attack caught Israel off guard; it took hours for the army to respond. According to witnesses, there were three main waves breaching the Gaza fence, which was open for hours. The first wave to break the fence involved Hamas and the other chief armed formations in Gaza, including PIJ, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The second wave was comprised of smaller and less organized armed groups, including probably a few Salafi jihadists. The third wave included unarmed civilians, journalists, bloggers, and curious passersby.

There is no denying that some of the participants committed atrocities against Israelis. Plenty of evidence, in some cases from the GoPro cameras of Palestinian fighters themselves, shows them shooting indiscriminately into Israeli settlements, killing civilians, and taking hostages to the Gaza Strip. A massacre also took place at the (now infamous) Nova music festival.

At the same time, a barrage of lies, made-up atrocities, and propaganda circulated. Israeli rescue teams, military officials, Sara Netanyahu, and Joe Biden spread debunked stories about beheadings, killings of children, sexual violence, and other things that never happened. This inflamed the situation and served to justify the genocide.

Some Israelis were reportedly killed by Israeli fire. The Hannibal Directive is an Israeli army policy aimed to prevent kidnapping by any means, including striking Israeli civilians and forces. The reasoning is that the political price for releasing kidnapped Israeli soldiers or civilians via agreements is too high—as it has repeatedly resulted in the release of many Palestinian prisoners in exchange—so it’s better to attack even at the risk of harming the kidnapped. On October 7, Israeli forces deliberately shelled military bases, Israeli settlements, and cars presumed to be carrying Israeli hostages back to Gaza.

By the end of the day, about 1140 Israelis were killed, 3400 were wounded, and 251 were taken captive. Initially, corporate media reported much higher estimates.

Even a year later, Israelis seem unable to comprehend this attack. For them, it came out of nowhere. They perceive it as a “second Holocaust” (a very popular narrative in Israel), an inexplicable and irrational attack by barbaric jihadist forces seeking to kill Jews for no reason.

But it is a gross mischaracterization to think of October 7 as an isolated event that occurred in a vacuum. Practically all of those who are twenty years old or younger in Gaza have spent their entire lives in a reality of siege, bombings, and massacres, raised by relatives who still remember the events of 1948 and how they were expelled from where the Kibbutzim are now. From the Haitian Revolution and Nat Turner’s slave rebellion to Oran massacre in Algeria, every decolonial war of liberation, every slave revolt, every ghetto uprising has always involved atrocities, often targeting civilians. We cannot demand of Palestinians a purity that we do not demand from any other historical struggle for liberation. We can grieve the atrocities, but we cannot condemn a ghetto uprising, we cannot condemn a slave revolt. We must always understand everything in context with an analysis of power relations.

The attack that took place on October 7, 2023 was followed by a genocide that has been ongoing for a year now. As of the end of September 2024, well over 41,000 people in Gaza are reported dead, although the real number is probably a lot higher. More than 95,000 have been injured. About 1.9 million people are internally displaced, some of whom have been uprooted more than ten times. More than half (60% according to Al-Jazeera) of Gaza’s residential buildings, 80% of commercial facilities, and 85% of school buildings have been damaged or destroyed; 17 of 36 hospitals remain partially functional; 65% of the arable land is damaged.

The current war of annihilation differs from the previous rounds of escalations and massacres—and not just in scale. Israel is no longer pursuing a policy of “mowing the lawn.” Gaza, the open-air prison, blew up. Consequently, the entire population had to pay. Indeed, the Israeli authorities made it clear from the beginning that their intention is genocide.

All those years, while Israel had thought it was damaging its military capacities, Hamas was digging a complex network of tunnels below Gaza, getting armed, and preparing for the ultimate fight. Gaza is unfit for guerrilla warfare in the traditional sense, as it is a mostly flat strip of land without mountains or forests that fighters can escape to. The narrow alleyways of the refugee camps could be useful in some stages of the fighting, and they were, but Israel made it clear that those would be the first places to be targeted, as in Lebanon and the West Bank. The network of tunnels, which stretches across the entire strip all the way to the Sinai Peninsula on the other side of the Egyptian border, was necessary to allow fighters to attack and escape, reappear in another place, hide, rest, store weapons, and hide captives. During the years of siege, the tunnels were also crucial for Gaza’s economy: in addition to weapons, they were also used to bypass the Israeli siege in order to smuggle in basic necessities.

Was Hamas not aware that the Israeli reaction would be so deadly? It’s impossible to say for certain what their calculations were. We can assume that they knew that the attack would result in a bloodbath—maybe not on this scale, but they must have known that Israel would respond severely. According to the equation that Israel created in 2014, for example, after Palestinian militants kidnapped and killed three Israeli settlers in the West Bank, Israel killed about 2200 people in Gaza, the worst massacre in Gaza until 2023. So what would be the price for 1140 Israeli casualties, then?

Should we conclude that Hamas doesn’t care about Gazans’ lives? The answer is more complicated.

We can begin by saying that blaming the resistance for the violence of the occupier makes as much sense as blaming the Kurdish fighters for the Dersim massacre or the occupation of Afrin, or blaming the rebels of the Warsaw ghetto for the Nazi repression. A settler colony’s drive is always to acquire more land while diminishing the number of natives. Throughout all the years of Zionist colonization, Zionists have always presented their atrocities as responses to previous attacks—but the actual goal was always ethnic cleansing. The Gaza Strip itself was built as a solution for ethnic cleansing, a locked ghetto to control demographics, and Israel has been killing people there and in Palestine as a whole ever since. To expect people not to fight, to be helpless victims, was never realistic.

According to Hamas themselves, in the document Our Narrative… Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, published after October 7, they ask—what did the world expect Palestinians to do? After 75 years of suffering under a brutal occupation, after all initiatives for liberation failed, the disastrous results of the so-called “peace process” that Oslo promised, and the silence of the so-called international community, were they really supposed to die in peace? They note that the Palestinian battle for liberation from occupation and colonialism did not start on October 7, but 105 years ago, against 30 years of British colonial rule and 75 years of Zionist occupation. Ten of thousands of Palestinians were killed between 2000 and 2023; all of those deaths took place with American support, and every kind of protest, including peaceful initiatives such as the marches of return in 2018, has been brutally repressed. In light of murderous aggression with full impunity, the document asks,

“What was expected from the Palestinian people after all of that? To keep waiting and to keep counting on the helpless UN! Or to take the initiative in defending the Palestinian people, lands, rights and sanctities; knowing that the defense act is a right enshrined in international laws, norms, and conventions.”

A similar narrative was expressed by Basem Naim, a senior member of Hamas’s political bureau, speaking on October 7.

“If we have to choose, why choose to be the good victims, the peaceful victims? If we have to die, we have to die in dignity. Standing, fighting, fighting back, and standing as dignified martyrs.”

We can also consult Palestinian revolutionary and martyr Bassel Al-Araj. Writing in 2014, just ahead of the Israeli military ground invasion of Gaza on July 17, he made several points²:

The Palestinian resistance consists of guerrilla formations whose strategies follow the logic of guerrilla warfare or hybrid warfare, which Arabs and Muslims have become masters of through our experiences in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza. War is never based on the logic of conventional wars and the defense of fixed points and borders; on the contrary, you draw the enemy into an ambush. You do not stick to a fixed position to defend it; instead, you perform maneuvers, movement, withdrawal, and attack from the flanks and the rear. So, never measure it against conventional wars.

The enemy will spread photos and videos of their invasion into Gaza, occupation of residential buildings, or presence in public areas and well-known landmarks. This is part of the psychological warfare in guerrilla wars; you allow your enemy to move as they wish so that they fall into your trap and you strike them. You determine the location and timing of the battle. So, you may see photos from Al-Katiba Square, Al-Saraya, Al-Rimal, or Omar Al-Mukhtar Street, but do not let this weaken your resolve. The battle is judged by its overall results, and this is merely a show.

Never spread the occupation’s propaganda, and do not contribute to instilling a sense of defeat. This must be focused on, for soon, we will start talking about a massive invasion in Beit Lahia and Al-Nusseirat, for example. Never spread panic; be supportive of the resistance and do not spread any news broadcast by the occupation (forget about the ethics and impartiality of journalism; just as the zionist journalist is a fighter, so are you).

The enemy may broadcast images of prisoners, most likely civilians, but the goal is to suggest the rapid collapse of the resistance. Do not believe them.

The enemy will carry out tactical, qualitative operations to assassinate some symbols [of resistance], and all of this is part of psychological warfare. Those who have died and those who will die will never affect the resistance’s system and cohesion because the structure and formations of the resistance are not centralized but horizontal and widespread. Their goal is to influence the resistance’s support base and the families of the resistance fighters, as they are the only ones who can affect the men of the resistance.

Our direct human and material losses will be much greater than the enemy’s, which is natural in guerrilla wars that rely on willpower, the human element, and the extent of patience and endurance. We are far more capable of bearing the costs, so there is no need to compare or be alarmed by the magnitude of the numbers.

Today’s wars are no longer just wars and clashes between armies but rather are struggles between societies. Let us be like a solid structure and play a game of biting fingers with the enemy, our society against their society.

Finally, every Palestinian (in the broad sense, meaning anyone who sees Palestine as a part of their struggle, regardless of their secondary identities), every Palestinian is on the front lines of the battle for Palestine, so be careful not to fail in your duty.

One last note before we move forward. In the book Blessed is the Flame, the author Serafinski reviews ghetto uprisings and concentration camp resistance under the Nazi occupation from an anarcho-nihilist perspective. The book shows that despite the repressive and paralyzing conditions in concentration camps, acts of resistance such as sabotage, mutual aid, and uprisings still occurred, often despite severe consequences and very low chances of success. The motivation behind many of these acts was the desire to rebel as an end in itself. Serafinski builds on the idea that jouissance, or enjoyment—the creativity and life of the act or rebellion itself—is worthwhile in its own right, independent of its consequences. Examples show that in the direst situations, people choose not to be passively led to the slaughter, but engage in desperate, wild acts of resistance, escaping established logic, morality, and fields of discourse. Against impossible conditions, they choose impossible action. This is reminiscent of Bassel’s understanding of romance as the reason for war.

And people often do what is within their range of capabilities, not what is the most “right.” This is something we have to accept.

“What really counts is the strength we feel every time we don’t bow our heads, every time we destroy the false idols of civilization, every time our eyes meet those of our comrades along illegal paths, every time that our hands set fire to the symbols of Power. In those moments we don’t ask ourselves: ‘Will we win? Will we lose?’ In those moments, we just fight.”

-“A Conversation Between Anarchists,” Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire

“Even your observations and criticism of the paradoxes of the 2014 war were that it made most of society a passive audience awaiting death. You objected to a death that is not surrounded by a romantic narrative. You know that the balance of power between nations is determined by the ‘potential energy’ and ‘kinetic energy’ (a crushing energy). And you know that potential energy—and its function in war—is to transform into a crushing force. I believe that the possibility of creating romantic narratives around martyrdom and heroism is one of the most important elements of potential energy, in which we outperform our enemy.”

“Why We Go to War,” Bassel Al-Araj

Breaking out of the ghetto.

The Fighting since, and Other Fronts

People in Gaza have not been helpless victims since October 7. Yes, Gaza is devastated by the genocide, but the resistance is fighting like hell, despite incredible odds. As of mid-September 2024, Israel has reported 789 of its soldiers and security forces dead. Other reports indicate at least 10,000 killed or wounded. About 1000 Israeli soldiers enter the Defense Ministry Rehabilitation Department every month, according to the Israeli Ministry of Defense. Incredible footage circulated online by guerrilla forces shows them popping out of tunnels, blowing up tanks, sniping at and ambushing Israeli soldiers, and blowing up buildings with soldiers inside. The Israeli military admitted that many tanks have been damaged during fighting.

In the city of Khan Yunis, for example, which Israel has repeatedly invaded, so far, every attempt to defeat the guerrilla forces has failed. In many of the cities, refugee camps and stronghold of resistance where the IDF announcing that they “dismantled the local brigade,” guerrilla forces immediately reappear and regroup following their withdrawal.

The resistance continues.

In the West Bank, the IDF has conducted several incursions into towns and refugee camps, inflicting mass destruction on its infrastructure, killing at least 719 and injuring more than 5700 as of September 2024. Armed resistance, though nowhere near as intense as in Gaza, has claimed the lives of 12 Israeli soldiers and left 27 injured. Several militants in the West Bank have also conducted armed actions against Israeli settlers in the West Bank as well as inside Israeli borders.

Settler violence against Palestinians has intensified significantly since October, with more than 800 attacks and pogroms, killing at least 31 Palestinians, injuring more than 500, and damaging around 80 houses, almost 12,000 trees, and 450 vehicles, according to the UN. About 850 Palestinians were forced to leave their houses as a result of settler and military violence. Settlers also blocked humanitarian aid entering Gaza from Jordan, Egypt, and Israeli ports.

Inside the occupied Interior, also known as 1948 occupied Palestine, or “Israel,” Palestinian communities have found themselves facing a fascist dictatorship. Protesting the genocide was impossible during the first few months, as police violently repressed demonstrations, attacked activists, raided their homes, and jailed people, sometimes for months, for shouting slogans or holding signs. In October and November 2023 alone, Adallah, a legal center for Palestinian citizens in Israel, documented 251 arrests, interrogations, and “warning calls” in response to actions like participating in a demonstration, posting on social media, and expressing opinions in universities and workplaces. Many Palestinian students were expelled from universities; many workers were fired. In some places, this repression eased over time—but in others, especially “mixed” cities like Haifa, protesting the genocide is still impossible.

Protesting for Gaza under intense police repression, Haifa, May 30.

So far, despite isolated armed groups in the West Bank defending their communities from Israeli raids and conducting armed attacks on nearby settlements and checkpoints, not to mention some attempts in the Interior to organize protests, there is no popular uprising, like the Unity Intifada that broke out in 2021 during the previous major assault on Gaza. Israeli repression has proved to be effective in pushing many people into silence and paralyzing street movements. This might change, as repression can also lead to escalation, but for now, we can’t rely on an uprising inside Palestine to stop the genocide.

The situation inside prisons has become inhumane. Palestinian “security prisoners” face torture, violence, and sexual abuse from Israeli guards. The torture camp Sde Teiman rose to world infamy following leaks from whistleblowers and testimony from released prisoners revealing a routine of abuse, beatings, physical and psychological torture, sexual violence and rape, medical neglect, and amputations of body parts. Conditions in “security” prisons all across the country have deteriorated, with the far-right Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir giving orders to reduce the rights of prisoners to the bare minimum. They are confined to dark, overcrowded cells, hand- and leg-cuffed to each other, sleeping on beds without mattresses or on the floor, on a bare-minimum diet. Thousands of new prisoners have been arrested over the past year; under the sadistic management of Ben-Gvir, repression, incarceration, and concentration and torture camps are set to expand. About 60 Palestinian prisoners have died in Israeli prisons since October 2023.

The front of those in exile has been active. Palestinian refugees have managed to mobilize mass demonstrations in many places. In nearby countries, there has been a significant street movement of thousands in support of Palestine. In Amman, Jordan, people have clashed several times with police and security forces outside the Israeli embassy, demanding that their country drop its relationships with Israel and the United States. Mass mobilizations have also occurred in Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Bahrain, and all over the refugee camps and cities of the Middle East, North Africa, and the Arab and Muslim world, often despite repression from their reactionary governments, which fear that the mass mobilizations might turn against them.

Thousands in the streets of Amman, Jordan, celebrate resistance and solidarity.

Protesters clash with the Lebanese army near the US embassy in Beirut on October 18, 2023. No regime is “pro-resistance.”

In the “West,” a solidarity movement sprang up in the cities of Europe and North America. Much has been said about the inspiring mobilizations on campuses and the various blockades, marches, and acts of sabotage. Those in the imperial core have a particular responsibility to take action like this. We can only hope such movements will grow.

Germany, the country with the largest Palestinian diaspora community in Europe (around 300,000), became a unique battleground. The German state has been hostile toward Palestinian liberation for many years, cracking down on marches, censoring speech and slogans, banning solidarity events, and, in some cases, banning national symbols such as the Keffiyeh and the Palestinian flag. In Germany, anti-Palestinian racism and support for genocide is shared by the state, the police and repressive agencies, the far-right, and Islamophobic, anti-Arab, colonial, and pro-apartheid elements in the “anti-fascist” scene.

Nonetheless, Palestinians and their supporters are still resisting. Germany is fully complicit in the genocide, supporting it both materially and rhetorically, providing weapons to Israel and going as far as backing Israel in its genocide case at the International Court of Justice. We can only hope the movement there will continue to break the walls of fear and find ways to escalate.

Globalizing the intifada.

As for the so-called Axis of Resistance—some armed militant groups in the Middle East declared a solidarity front with Gaza. In Iraq, Syria, and Jordan, American bases were targeted. For months, Iran, despite attempting to monopolize “resistance,” chiefly acted as a pacifying force, repeatedly ordering groups to reduce attacks in order to avoid entering into direct confrontation with Israel and the US. Iran attacked Israel with a major missile attack on April 2024, but this was mainly symbolic, as it was announced in advance and caused no significant damage.

Shortly before the publication of this article, in response to the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Iran initiated a second direct attack on Israel. On October 2, 2024, 180 rockets fell on Israel. Again, most of the missiles were intercepted by Israel, the US, and allied regimes such as Jordan. Some mild damage was caused to military bases and a Mossad facility. At this time, the only known victim of this attack is a Palestinian from Gaza staying in the West Bank city of Jericho.

The Houthi movement, a Shia Islamist organization in control of a large part of Yemen as part of the ongoing Yemeni civil war, which some describe as an Iranian “proxy” and part of the “Axis” although quite independent, have been firing missiles at Israel and attacking commercial ships at the Red Sea, considering any Israel-linked ship as a target. They have reportedly caused a huge impact on the global economy and a a significant damage to international trade, damaging commercial vessels and forcing many more to reroute around South Africa, greatly extending their journey.

In south Lebanon, Hezbollah engaged in daily rocket and UAV clashes with Israel, though initially, these were largely restricted to military bases close to the border and a few northern Israeli communities. In response, Israel bombed villages and communities in south Lebanon and attacked Dahieh, a suburb of Beirut where some Hezbollah operatives live, killing civilians as well. The situation has been escalating; as of the beginning of October 2024, Israel has invaded south Lebanon, following many escalations.³

In the fog of war, the world order is marching forward. The US sees the genocide and escalation in the Middle East as an opportunity to enhance its power in the region. Israel Channel 12 reported on October 2023 that “two hundred and forty-four US transport planes and 20 ships have delivered more than 10,000 tons of armaments and military equipment to Israel since the start of the war [sic].” That month also saw special US military aid to Israel reaching 14.3 billion dollars.

In the Persian Gulf, the Mediterranean Sea, and the many US bases in surrounding countries including Iraq, Bahrain, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, the US has deployed several fighter squadrons as well as a THAAD battery and several Patriot anti-missile batteries. They seek to deter any attack on Israel by regional powers, but they are also actively participating in the fighting—like the US-led international coalition to strike the Houthis in Yemen and the Red Sea and the militias in Iraq and Syria.

The US has also directly intervened in Israeli decision-making in order to influence the course of war. President Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin participated in Israeli government and war cabinet meetings, exerting significant pressure to implement their post-war vision. After realizing the American vision might be harder to initiate as long as Netanyahu is in charge, Americans also met with opposition leaders and Israeli civil society organizations.

In that vision, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are united under a “reformed” (meaning American-controlled) Palestinian Authority, and a “two-state solution” is implemented, following a series of normalization agreements with local regimes, in order to “integrate Israel into the region,” ensure its safety, and build a strong pro-American bloc to increase American influence and isolate competing quasi-imperialist regional powers such as Iran and Russia.

This is nothing new. The US has been interfering in this region to maintain its hegemony for decades now. A neocolonial policy of supporting corrupt and reactionary puppet regimes that serve as local proxies in order to guarantee American control over resources is a long US tradition. Ilan Pappe tells us how, following the British withdrawal from Palestine in 1948, the US was in a dire need of a pro-Western regional power. The US decided to invest further in Israel following its military victory in 1967, a major blow to secular nationalist movements in the region.

The Oslo Accords constituted an international intervention in local Palestinian politics. Not only did they serve to break a popular uprising led by decentralized and horizontal networks of grassroots activist groups and parties—they established an authoritarian, collaborationist puppet regime for the colonized to govern themselves according to US, EU, and Israeli incentives. When that regime failed to serve its global sponsors, with Arafat thinking he had more room to maneuver than he was allowed, it was quickly abolished and replaced by more obedient actors. In 2006, when Palestinians voted for the wrong candidate in democratic elections, a coup was initiated and the entire population punished. Palestinians are not allowed to make decisions regarding their own destiny. They must be kept under tight control, as they tend to reveal unruly elements unfavorable for US hegemony.

In recent years, in what Noam Chomsky dubbed “the Reactionary International,” Israel has signed a series of agreements and normalization pacts—known as the Abraham Accords—with local dictatorships, monarchies, and repressive regimes. This took place under US mediation, in opposition to the will of the populations of those countries. The states to join the normalization treaty so far include the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan. Saudi Arabia was reportedly also on its way to normalization with Israel, but the process froze following October 7.

The economic impact of these agreements includes formal investments and business relations between the countries, especially regarding hi-tech industries, and also military relations and weapons trade. According to Israel’s Ministry of Defense, the value of Israeli defense exports to the countries with which it normalized relations in 2020 reached $791 million. Oil deals between the UAE and Israel threaten to inflict ecological disaster in the Red Sea and exacerbate concerns regarding climate change.

A utopia for reactionaries and weapon manufacturers, a nightmare for the peoples of the region.

This entire trajectory, coupled with the “two-state solution” as an aftermath to the “conflict,” represents a pattern in the US involvement in the region. A proposal was even made to have “moderate” (meaning US-controlled) regimes from the region take control of Gaza in the aftermath of the genocide until a “reformed” Palestinian Authority (domesticated enough not to cause its international patrons any further troubles) could take their place as the sovereign.

The regional theater of conflict between the American reactionary authoritarian alliance and the Iranian reactionary authoritarian alliance resembles Cold War campist politics. If back then, people were limited to choosing between the American bourgeois model and the Soviet bourgeois model, today it appears that the choices for the peoples of the region are once again between American imperialism and reactionary, tyrannical, expansionist, and quasi-imperialist powers like Iran, Russia, Turkey, and to some extent China. These countries have their own visions for the region and their own alliances with other repressive regimes, all of which brutally crack down on revolutionary movements that interfere with their plans or steer away from their monopoly on “resistance.™”

It won’t be easy to escape the trap of being caught between these two camps and the dark future both of them represent for the region. But we could start by focusing on grassroots struggles on the ground, instead of on states and their proxies. No government is going to save us from this hell.

Authoritarians and petty tyrants compete for our obedience, but no world order they can offer us will fulfill our aspirations for freedom and dignity.

Palestinians have been betrayed by their leadership over and over. The PLO sought to be the “sole representative of the Palestinian people,” only to crush the first intifada—which had broken out beyond its control and against its wishes—and plunge into the disaster of the Oslo Accords. They went on to become fully entangled with the US regional order, making it one of the most successful examples in the history of the domestication and neutralization of revolutionary movements. The Palestinian resistance as an uncontrollable and ungovernable force, beyond the control of various waves of “representation,” authorities, and mechanisms of pacification and manipulation, remains threatening to all those who compete to impose their preferred world orders and whatever forces seek to bind it to their own interests.

For years, regimes in the Arab world used the Palestinian cause as the only issue around which people were allowed to mobilize and protest; this enabled them to allow people to let off steam while silencing criticism of their own policies. They also used this issue to claim legitimacy, as it was always widely supported by the peoples of the region. Dana El-Kurd shows how the movements organizing around Palestine in those states became schools for activism for the participants, enabling them to eventually oppose their own governments as well. Many of the movements that went on to participate in the Arab Spring started with Palestine solidarity organizing.

Even so-called “radical” regimes masquerading as supporters of the resistance, such as the Syrian government, turned to impose siege and slaughter Palestinians as soon as the latter were perceived to threaten their interests or to join freedom movements, as in Yarmouk refugee camp in 2014. Whether “normalizing” regimes or “resistance” regimes, authoritarians have always treated the Palestinian cause as a tool of legitimacy, empty rhetoric to be thrown around to ensure stability, even though their policies were anti-Palestinian in practice. In moments of truth, whenever the situation is getting out of control, they reveal their true faces.

Today, many governments in the region are actively suppressing Palestine solidarity movements and opposition to the genocide, as they see that these movements might “get out of control” or threaten normalization efforts that they hope will boost their economies, militaries, and repressive capabilities. Our best way out of this mess might be a revolutionary alliance of freedom movements throughout the region, and hopefully the world—a Liberation International that would stand proudly against the reactionary international led by the US and the authoritarian international involving Iran.

Palestine is deeply connected to the Syrian revolution, the tragedy of Sudan, the revolutionary feminists of Iran, the Rojava revolution, the uprising in Lebanon, the many movements in the Middle East since the Arab Spring, and—more globally—the Stop Cop City and Black Lives Matter movements in the US, the anti-colonial struggles of Indigenous peoples everywhere, the anti-junta resistance in Myanmar, Ukrainian resistance to Russian imperialism, and all struggles for freedom and liberation. We draw inspiration, strength, and lessons from each other. A Palestinian victory in Gaza would send waves of freedom to the farthest corners of the earth, while an Israeli victory will embolden those pursuing violent and genocidal strategies everywhere, strengthen the grip of reactionary and authoritarian alliances over entire populations, and enable them to further crush movements of liberation, whether in the name of “stability” or of “resistance.” If we depend on each other, we had better start acting accordingly. Who knows how much time we have left.

“It is true that we go to war to seek romance, and perhaps I was ashamed of admitting this to myself. You know how much of a cliché this term has turned into. I used to run away from this romance whenever it tried to sweep me away, and I used to try and make sense of all those motives. We’re too arrogant to admit this reason but we all know that what draws us towards heroism and martyrdom is the same thing that we are so ashamed to admit: romance.” -Bassel Al-Araj.

Attempting to Clear the Fog

Anarchists have reacted to the genocide and the solidarity movement with several layers of cognitive dissonance. Some positions were confused or naïve, lacking nuance and understanding of the material conditions prevailing in different geographies and political contexts—for example, sloganeering “No war but class war” arguments calling for the “Israeli and Palestinian proletariat” to “unite” against “their common oppressors” and other class-reductionist nonsense. Other positions went all the way to Islamophobia and conspiracy theories: “Israel created Hamas,” “Hamas are just like ISIS.”

Hamas is the subject of the most significant cognitive dissonance. Anti-authoritarians want to support the Palestinian movement, like any other movement for freedom and liberation, but they can’t comprehend that Hamas is an organic and integral part of that movement, so they make up stories to the effect that Hamas is the invention of the occupier, that Palestinians don’t really support them, that we can somehow tell the story of the resistance without them. They wish to somehow separate Hamas from the broader cause. How much easier things would be if that were possible!

Hamas are in fact a national liberation movement dedicated to the liberation of Palestine. The idea of using the religious concept of jihad as anti-colonialist resistance and self-defense is not new; it goes all the way back to the struggle against the French in Syria in the 1920s, if not further. It has appeared in Algeria and many struggles since. It has nothing to do with the Salafi-jihadist brand, and a pan-Islamic transnational caliphate is not on the table. The Palestinian liberation movement is heterogeneous and diverse; it includes many ideologies and ideas we might disagree with. Hamas deserves criticism for its patriarchy, its homophobia, its reliance on reactionary forces such as Iran and the Assad regime, its brutal repression. Brave anti-authoritarian Palestinian groups have already offered this, like Gaza Youth Breaks Out back in 2011. But our criticism should be fair and grounded in reality, not simply a litany of preconceived notions.

We also need to talk about the settlers. There any many different ways to analyze Israeli society. We can use the useful distinction that historian Ilan Pappe makes between the State of Israel and the State of Judea. In short, on one side, the liberal, secular, and “democratic” (Jewish democracy, for Jews only) wing of Jewish supremacy, apartheid, and settler colonialism, the one leading the anti-Netanyahu protests in Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities; on the other side, the more far-right, theocratic, and openly fascist wing, composed chiefly of West Bank Jewish pogromists and their allies. The anti-fascist author and journalist, David Sheen, offers another useful schema, dividing Israeli society into supremacist, opportunist, reformist, and humanist camps.

All of these analyses explore the internal debate within settler society over the best way to manage apartheid, settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. These social rifts are not new, but they have been exacerbated over the last few months. If we do not understand them, we might reach the wrong conclusions.

For example, some comrades cite the Anti-Netanyahu protests to pressure him to accept a ceasefire in order to strike a deal with the resistance to release hostages as evidence that many Israelis oppose the regime. Some people even present it as a mass anti-war movement. This is inaccurate. It fits the anarchist narrative because we are used to insisting on the distinction between people and states, and many Israelis really do oppose Netanyahu. But support for genocide is overwhelming across various political camps.

A huge sign in neon lights over protesters in Tel Aviv tells the whole story—bring back (the hostages), and go back (to Gaza). This is a brazen proposal to resume fighting as soon as the Israeli captives are released. This does not necessarily represent all the thousands of participants, but it does indicate the Zionist logic of these demonstrations—another manifestation of Jewish supremacy, maybe its liberal camp, but nonetheless, there is no concern for Palestinian lives there. Honest, genuine, anti-Zionist voices calling to end the genocide do exist in Israel, and they hold small demonstrations every once in a while, which are often repressed by police and attacked by fascists. They are a tiny, hated, and insignificant minority, with no hope of becoming a mass political power any time in the near future.

The inconvenient truth is that when it’s time to commit a massacre, Israeli society puts aside all petty arguments, stops pretending to be a civil society in a “democratic state,” and unites for the task. Then it is revealed what Israel is in reality: a huge military base. There is no mass opposition to genocide. The mass protests against the judicial overhaul stopped for a few months following the shock of October 7, then reappeared in the form of protests for the release of hostages, renewing the discussion about genocide management. All the reservists’ threats to refuse to serve came to an end after October 7, 2023; they never really intended to follow through. Rebellion and protest in Israel are always limited to narrow Zionist narratives that explicitly delineate what is acceptable and what’s not. The fascist and liberal wings of Zionism might express it differently, but Jewish supremacy and the complete dehumanization of Palestinians are the common threads.

The situation was bad already, but the radical left has shrunk significantly since October 7, with the attacks shocking the Israeli society to its core, awakening settler anxieties and pushing many “leftists” into the warm hug of Jewish supremacy. We can expect this to continue. The reason for this is that the “Israeli left” is overwhelmingly predicated on the notion that “the end of occupation” (decolonization) would mean that they could continue their convenient settler lifestyle minus the guilt. For example, one of the main messages of the anti-occupation bloc during the mass movement against the judicial overhaul that existed up until October 7 was that “the occupation” (which typically means the 1967 occupation) is an “obstacle to Israeli democracy,” and if only we could take care of that, the rest would be fine. It is not easy to find anyone who sees that the entire Israeli regime is illegitimate, that the occupation began in 1948 not 1967, that the land is stolen from the river to sea and decolonization means the radical transformation of power relations.

Alfredo Bonanno said, “The ideal solution, at least as far as all those who have the freedom of peoples at heart can see, would be generalized insurrection. In other words, an intifada starting from the Israeli people that is capable of destroying the institutions that govern them.” I like Bonanno and think that most of his observations are brilliant, but this particular analysis does not fit the reality on the ground. It’s part of a long tradition of Western thinkers who focus on settler society, as if it could be a meaningful vehicle for change. I strongly disagree. There is no historical precedent for societies of settlers or slave masters rebelling against their own privileges, and I don’t think Palestine would be the first to break from this trajectory.

There are settler-colonial societies, like the US, that managed to develop a proud tradition of race traitors after a long development. We saw this during the George Floyd uprising; French Algeria offers another example. I believe that this is theoretically possible for the settler society in Palestine, maybe in some point in the future, but probably not right now. Some Israelis went far beyond the “Israeli left” and fully betrayed “their” society, switched sides, and joined the Palestinian popular struggle, under Palestinian terms and leadership. Some even joined the armed struggle. These are very few, far from representing a significant phenomenon in Israeli society.

Those who want to express solidarity with the very few anti-Zionist Israelis should do so. It’s a good cause and they would appreciate it. But honestly, support for the Palestinian resistance is much more important right now. We should stand with the resistance against the violence of settler colonialism and genocide.

This might be inconvenient, but we must have this conversation. No one has to agree with me, I’m speaking from my own perspective and conditions, and this can be seen as my attempt to appeal to my camp of origin, the anti-Zionist Israeli radical left. In my opinion, the “Israeli Left” is a dead end. I have no reason to doubt the intentions of many of my former and current comrades in the “anti-occupation bloc” and “radical bloc” in Tel Aviv and other cities. They are honest, brave, rebellious souls; many of them really are in it for Palestinian lives, fighting to end the genocide.

But those who have managed to escape the cult of Zionism must now take another step forward. To them, I want to say that we must stop seeing ourselves as actors within Israeli society, trying to improve or reform it in order to save it from itself. It would be better to adopt Al-Araj’s framework of the liberation camp vs. the colonial camp,⁴ and Fanon’s understanding of the adoption of the resistance identity as a political choice rather than an issue of race or origin, and work to shed the settler identity completely.

This is what Palestinians have been calling on us to do for years. There is no reforming a sick society; it will not work to appeal to the interests of a system that is rotten to its core. There hasn’t been a single second in the history of this state since its inception that wasn’t predicated on intense violence and complete dehumanization. This is a call for desertion, full race treason and betrayal, switching sides, with all the risks, repression, torture, and death it might entail. This is not easy, but we have a rich global history to draw from. We can recall John Brown and his militia, or the French in Algeria switching sides and joining the FLN (Front de Libération Nationale, “National Liberation Front”). What those people understood, at crucial historical junctures, was that despite what liberal interpretations of “identity politics” tell us, when revolution calls, it’s not about being a passive “ally” or checking your privileges, but throwing yourself into the struggle. Identity becomes a political choice, based on actions, rather than origins.

“The settler is not simply the man who must be killed. Many members of the mass of colonialists reveal themselves to be much, much nearer to the national struggle than certain sons of the nation.”

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

Anxieties about decolonization are not coming out of nowhere. Nothing is promised to us. Not even liberation itself, to be honest. Some colonial projects have ended somewhat peacefully, with regime transition and reconciliation committees, as in South Africa; others have ended in a bloodbath, like in Algeria. Even the libertarian, confederalist example of Rojava hasn’t been a smooth process. In none of these cases was it perfect. Liberation is always a messy and bloody process in real life.

Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, in their essay Decolonization is not a metaphor, explain that decolonization is incommensurable with other social justice struggles—it is meant to be unsettling, as it would undoubtedly relieve the settlers—including workers—of their stolen resources. We must be honest about what we’re saying. For example, in the debate about the phrase “from the river to sea,” about whether it means democracy or the abolition of Israel—the simple answer is that it means both. Decolonization on Palestinian conditions—the abolition of Zionism, the return of the refugees, the end of military rule, and equal civil rights—will mean that Palestine goes back to what it was before Zionist colonization, a majority Arab land. I believe Jewish people would be welcome to stay—those who are willing to live equally with the rest of the people on the land, without a racist system of segregation and privilege based on ethnicity.

The Radical Bloc in Tel Aviv.

As for class reductionism, there’s no material basis for “class solidarity” between “Palestinians and Israelis.” Under settler colonialism, this is not the same class. Jews and Arabs are not equal, not even when they work in the same workplaces. As Frantz Fanon noted, in a colonial context, national oppression is primary and class oppression is secondary. Settler colonies do not simply exploit the labor power of the colonized or the land resources of the colony, like other kinds of colonialism; they are predicated on the complete erasure of the colonized through ethnic cleansing, genocide, or both.

According to historian Ilan Pappe, Zionism, like any other settler-colonial movement, requires the annihilation or expulsion of the native population in order to succeed. Many such movements were composed of European refugees escaping exclusion and persecution, looking for a place to build their own new Europe. Indigenous populations are always an obstacle to such utopian visions, and so the solution is typically a massive campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Similar settler-colonial projects, such as the US, Australia, South Africa, and Canada, also often found a religious justification for settling, used a superpower to gain a foothold in a foreign land, then looked for ways to get rid of both the empire that aided them and the majority of the Indigenous population.

Israel has made it pretty clear that wherever it engaged in massive ethnic cleansing camping, such as 1948, or during the current genocide in Gaza, its targets are not the Palestinian proletariat, but the Palestinians as a people. All classes and social groups are a target.

If even Marx recognized that the struggle for the eight-hour workday in the US couldn’t really begin before the abolition of slavery, today’s Western leftists should be able to reach the same conclusions regarding settler colonialism and apartheid. If we want to have a meaningful footing in the solidarity movement, we must acknowledge that some issues cannot be reduced to class.

Revolutionaries have already made this mistake before. Many male anarchists in the CNT (Federación Anarquista Ibérica, “National Confederation of Labor”) during the Spanish revolution were dismissive of the women’s organization Mujeres Libres (“Free Women”), proclaiming that gender repression was secondary to the class struggle, and that in any case the revolution would solve it. Today, we know that overthrowing capitalism won’t simply abolish patriarchy. We could create a classless society that would still be sexist and oppressive to women and other genders. Some leftists see the Kibbutz movement as an example of libertarian socialist societies, ignoring the fact that the Kibbutzim are a racist and colonialist project for Jews only, built in the context of the Zionist land theft, often on the physical ruins of villages that were ethnically cleansed. Without a proper analysis of settler colonialism and an understanding of national oppression as a primary issue unto itself, any understanding of the situation in Palestine will remain an awkward attempt to import foreign worldviews and solutions into geographies with radically different problems.

Along with the commitment to free Palestine, I would like to suggest to comrades to allow Palestine to free them as well. It can work both ways. Don’t participate in the movement just to preach, but also to listen. We should not give up our perspectives and critiques, but we must use this this opportunity to enrich ourselves and broaden our horizons by learning from other liberation struggles, instead of simply trying to impose our preconceived notions on them. I would love to discuss sensitive subjects with my Palestinian comrades, such as the dependence of the armed resistance on reactionary elements like Iran and Assad’s Syria⁵. But I must be able to do this as a comrade, from inside the struggle, after developing trusting relationships and accepting a Palestinian worldview, not as an annoying leftist critiquing from the outside. If all we do is spend time with those like ourselves, it will show, and it will reflect badly on us. People notice this, and it will sabotage the relations of trust that we are trying to build within the movement.

Facing the Age of Genocide

The colonial world order has divided the world into the “civilized” part, the impenetrable Global North where liberal democracy prevails, and vast genocide fields filled with a surplus population to be exterminated, enslaved, robbed of resources, and forgotten. In a settler-colonial context, this process happens in the same territory, without the geographic distance between the colony and the metropolis. Ghettos, besieged cities, military rule, and a system of ethnic segregation are constructed, dividing the colonized into several classes of oppressed people, building mental barriers where physical ones are absent, and making sure to prevent any mingling of natives and settlers.

There are several ways in which the colonial order can get out of balance. One way is fascism, in which the colonial practices are brought inside, into the metropolis. In this case, genocidal and racializing practices that were previously reserved for the surplus population in the colonies are utilized against unwanted populations at home. But the colonial order can also go out of balance during uprisings. The natives, refusing to be confined to their place, break the supposedly impenetrable fortress of the colony—which turns out to be very much penetrable—and, as Fanon put it, they flood the forbidden cities, taking everything in their path.

Israel sought for decades to maintain a population of Westernized, liberal democratic settlers, experiencing home (Europe) away from home, after their original home became too dangerous for them. Other, non-European Jews were welcome to join, as long as they were Jewish and accepted Western hegemony. Concrete walls, isolated ghettos, and mental barriers were instilled in order to separate the settler society from the brutal daily violence necessary to maintain this order. There is no one way to do this. Strategies include cultural erasure (for example, Palestinians with citizenship become “Israeli Arabs”); massive ethnic cleansing campaigns when possible (like in 1948) and when not—small ones, like the Judaization⁶ of the Galilee, the Naqab, and neighborhoods in Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Haifa⁷; military rule⁸; conflict management, strict racial segregation, and counterinsurgency, as seen in the Oslo Accords, the separation wall in the West Bank, and the siege of Gaza; and genocide. Today it seems that conflict management, at least, has failed to deliver.

Israel has been humiliated more than once in the last few years. The state lost control during the uprising of 2021 and again on October 7, 2023. The Palestinians have proven time and time again to be an uncontrollable force, capable of threatening a nuclear superpower supported by the strongest empire in the world, despite that empire pouring billions of dollars into security apparatus, counterinsurgency, and advanced technology. Israelis have noticed that the state is incapable of delivering security despite its mighty power, and they are starting to panic. We can only expect that the punishment for rebelling will be crueler each time as pressure grows from shocked Israelis and the international powers to keep rebellious Palestinians under control.

It is entirely possible that as time passes, the genocide fields will expand, and more people will be treated as surplus population. There is no guarantee that we, the privileged citizens of civilization, will not eventually find ourselves on the wrong side of that wall. Racialized minorities know that already, and as for the rest of us—we shouldn’t count on our whiteness, as Jews found out during the Second World War, Irish people experienced under British occupation, and Ukrainians are finding out today. Just as whiteness can be ascribed, it can also be taken away.

Whenever an empire brands a new demographic as surplus population, the borders around “civilization” shift. The more they succeed in trapping a growing part of the earth’s population in a living hell, the bleaker and more uncertain our own future becomes. The more they succeed in crushing the rebellion of the undesirables, the more their success will inform other empires and competing world orders. Just as we are inspired by every slave revolt and ghetto uprising, regimes also take notes and inspiration from each other when it comes to repression. We are all deeply connected.

Haifa, May 2021.

What should we do, those of us situated in this or that entity, citizens of the Global North, whether as settlers in the colony or the imperial core? It’s hard for me to say. Situated in the occupied Interior, which, as I said, does not openly rebel at the moment, is it fair for me to advocate for things I don’t do myself? We feel the need for an insurrection, but our communities are devastated and broken, people are paralyzed, and the wounds are still open from the last round of repression. I can’t tell anyone what to do. All I can do is share my perspective. It’s for you to analyze your conditions and see what fits.

Comrades in the imperial core of so-called North America have showed some amazing and inspiring resistance. Comrades in Europe have too. Sabotage, port blockades, marches, campus occupations—all of these are meaningful, and some have won significant achievements. I don’t want to claim, as some do, that these actions have accomplished nothing so far. We don’t know what the state of Gaza would be right now if not for these courageous actions. Movement building is important in itself. A whole new generation has been politicized and radicalized, and they will carry the struggles forward.

But one thing is certain. We didn’t stop the genocide.

We need to focus. The genocide has been in progress for a year, and at this point, it shows no sign of slowing down or remaining confined to Gaza. I believe the time to escalate is now. The implications are enormous. Right now, Israel is committed to go to war with Lebanon and perhaps also with Iran. The worst-case scenario seems to be unfolding. This is going to make the situation spiral out of control even more; it could cause a full-blown regional war involving an unimaginable amount of death and destruction. We are facing a completely psychotic world order intent on causing the maximum amount of devastation to everything that stands in its way. We cannot remain passive spectators. We are involved and what happens will reflect on us.

From the looks of it, throughout the course of the occupations last semester, comrades in the US developed many insurrectionary elements to develop and expand. They also faced many cops—some in uniform, others concealed within the movement, like liberals, pacifists, professional “activists,” and reformists. People need to find ways to deal with them. Don’t fall for counterinsurgency tactics intended to pacify you, divide and fragment the movement, define for you what is “acceptable” and “legitimate,” or delimit the boundaries of the protest. Be brave, uncontrollable, and ungovernable. The rest is up to you to analyze, as far as tactics go, but don’t let anyone confine you.

Also—ignore smear campaigns. They might become louder if the movement becomes more successful. I already saw Zionist media and propaganda depicting the protests as “antisemitic pogroms.” I shouldn’t have to spend a single moment explaining how ridiculous this is.

We all know that the repressive agencies of Israel and the US are training together, and share tips, tools and tactics on how to repress populations and movements of freedom. This should concern anyone involved in local struggles, such as Stop Cop City, Black Lives Matter, Indigenous solidarity, and support for migrants and refugees. We also know that Israel is exporting weapons and repressive technology everywhere. AI tools are being developed and used to automate identifying and killing “suspects.” And we know it goes the other way around—Israel is bombing Gaza (and now also Lebanon) with US weapons and full support. This is an American (and European) war as much as it is Israeli. The imperial core of the Global North is absolutely involved and is a belligerent part of the aggression, and this makes its citizens an active part as well.

It’s not entirely possible to physically join the armed struggle on the ground the way one can in Rojava or Ukraine, but there is no need to. People can come to Palestine to participate in the popular struggle, as brave American and European citizens already have; some of them have become martyrs themselves. This helps, but the resistance is asking for something else: turn your own cities in the imperial core into a battleground. Bring the war home. Open another front. Join the liberation camp, as Al-Araj puts it, and raise hell against the world order that allowed this to happen. They must feel consequences. I believe an uprising is still possible, here in the Interior as well, but it will require us to be brave, like Gazans are.

One last thing I want to ask—as I was writing this piece, the fighting on the fronts in Lebanon, Iran, and elsewhere escalated significantly. If a full-blown war erupts elsewhere, the attention of the world will shift and Gaza could be forgotten. People should fight for the lives of Lebanese people as well, but don’t stop talking about Gaza and acting for the sake of people there. The genocide there isn’t over. It might even accelerate once attention shifts away from it.

Raise your voice, raise the flag of revolution.

No voice is louder than the voice of the uprising.

“If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze–
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh

not even to himself—
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale.”

-Refaat Alareer, (1979-2023), writer and poet. On December 6, 2023, he was murdered by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza along with his brother, his sister, and their children.

Bibliography

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Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017
Dana El-Kurd, Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine

According to official statics from Gaza’s Ministry of Health. In addition to that number, more than 10,000 are missing, and it is unknown how many more are still buried under the rubble. It’s important to remember that Israel systematically destroyed Gaza’s health care system, bringing it to near collapse, and since then, the numbers are stuck at around 40,000. Other estimates state a much higher number. ↩
Translated by Resistance News Network. ↩
This front has escalated and currently the future for people in Lebanon is uncertain. On September 23, an IDF attack on Lebanon killed at least 570 people. On September 27, Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, was assassinated, and millions in Lebanon are uprooted from their homes. Now Israel is invading south Lebanon. ↩
“I no longer see this as a conflict between Arabs and Jews, between Israeli and Palestinian. I have abandoned this duality, this naïve oversimplification of the conflict. I have become convinced of Ali Shariati and Frantz Fanon’s divisions of the world (into a colonial camp and a liberation camp). In each of the two camps, you will find people of all religions, languages, races, ethnicities, colors, and classes. In this conflict, for example, you will find people of our own skin standing rudely in the other camp, and at the same time you will find Jews standing in our camp.” -Bassel Al-Araj ↩
This is a touchy subject. Hamas initially supported the Syrian revolution back in 2012 and broke ties with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. This move severed the financial support that the movement received from Iran. A decade later, in a controversial statement, Hamas restored relations with Assad. The political chaos and shifting of alliances in the Middle East during the Arab Spring, the military coup against Mohamed Morsi in Egypt and the closing of Gaza’s tunnels on the Egyptian side, and the normalization pacts between various local regimes with Israel all served to isolate Hamas and force it to “pick a side.” In either case, I believe that, just as anarchists and anti-authoritarians in the West were able to understand the decision made by people in Rojava to accept American aid while facing the genocidal army of ISIS in Kobane, they can also understand the decisions made by Palestinians under difficult conditions. Until we have built a Liberation International that can offer actual material support to struggles on the ground, there will be a limit to how much we can criticize decisions made by those facing the threat of annihilation, caught between competing empires and regional orders. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t criticize at all, but we should at least do so with nuance and context. ↩
This is the official Israeli term. ↩
Under neoliberal global capitalism, ethnic cleansing can be privatized as well. Judaization attempts can be under the management of settler organizations or real estate agents, thus allowing the issue to be presented as a simple real estate dispute. The involvement of American settler organizations in the attempts to evict Palestinian residents in east Jerusalem, and gentrification in Jaffa and certain neighborhoods in Haifa, is intrinsically linked to decades-long ethnic cleansing campaigns, under different faces, as colonial systems adapt to new opportunities and circumstances. ↩
There was only half a year, in 1966, when Israel wasn’t imposing military rule on Palestinians. Internal communities of uprooted people inside what became Israel were under military rule until 1966; then Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza a year later and imposed military rule there. ↩

"Live Free, Ride Free, Fuck NYPD" : A Report from a Mass Fare Evasion in New York City

2024-09-23T21:11:26Z

Last week, a series of demonstrations took place in New York City after police attacked a person they accused of dodging the fare on the subway. The police opened fire, shooting the suspect, a police officer, and multiple other people who happened to be in the station. This shows the real cost of police enforcing subway fare. We received the following report from a mass fare evasion action in Manhattan on the evening of September 18.

It’s senseless to have police randomly shooting people to enforce a $2.90 fare. The subways should be free, as they chiefly serve to put working-class people at the disposal of capitalist profiteers in the first place. The resources to make this possible exist—they are simply held hostage by the ruling class, to whom the lives of ordinary people have no worth.

It was a demonstration very much like the one described below that set off the Chilean uprising of 2019, triggering copycat actions in the United States. Struggles against the cost of public transit and the murderous police that enforce it continue around the world.

Photographs by Abu Zeek.

A photograph by Abu Zeek.

“Live Free, Ride Free, Fuck NYPD”

On Sunday, September 15, New York City police officers shot live rounds at random into the L train at the Sutter Avenue station at the border of Brownsville and East New York, Brooklyn. They were pursuing a Black man who had allegedly skipped the $2.90 fare by walking in through an exit door. They shot him and two unfortunate bystanders—one in the arm, one in the head. They also shot one of their own, a police officer, who continues to be the chief focus of concern throughout all of the official statements from the city government.

More police on public transit only makes the subway system more dangerous for everyone.

An autonomous call to meet at Union Square for a mass fare evasion began circulating on September 17 via an online post and printed flier emblazoned with the mantra “Live Free, Ride Free, Fuck the NYPD” and cartoons depicting people jumping turnstiles. There appeared to be no organizations involved, no manifestos, no roles assigned.

The action flier, despite its simplicity, articulated the goal and politic of the action. It was distributed widely on social media by organizations of different sizes and tendencies. Print copies were handed out at the Sutter Avenue action Tuesday night, on September 17, and in subway cars throughout the city.

At 7 pm, 250 or more people gathered on the 14th Street steps, assessed the situation, and shared a plan among small crews. They considered several different stations as options, in view of the large number of police staged at entrances and the general layout of the platforms.

As one participant reported,

7:30. I was sick with fear and desire. I had traced the perimeter of the crowd gathered at Union Square. There were around two hundred and fifty people, most wearing masks or kaffiyehs. The turnout was good if you consider how little time had passed between the shooting and the demonstration—great if you add the fact that this was simply one of many marches called that week, and indeed, that day. While many of the other protests had been called by established organizations with thousands of followers on social media and resources to share with their participants, this humble march had no central organizing body. There was a flier, yes, but the common thread sewing together this brave collectivity was the desire to act—to do something, whatever possible, to push back against police violence on the subway.

Without clear leaders or planned speeches, the group milled about waiting for someone to take initiative. 14th Street had police vans branching out for blocks outside of Union Square. Talking among themselves, a few affinity groups decided that a march towards West 4th Street might thin police numbers—a plan that hinged on the idea that it would take the police longer to mobilize than the already anxious demonstrators. The plan to march was passed around the crowd and, by 7:45, we were stepping off the square and into the street. These first few blocks would prove to be decisive.

When the crowd stepped off at Union Square, one vocal white-shirted officer, alone but emboldened by the sizable police presence, threatened to arrest anyone who dared step into the street. Defiance was met with immediate police attempts to snatch and grab; this pushed the march to continue on the sidewalk.

It’s worth noting that the cops were bravest at the beginning and the end of the night. Though this was by no means catastrophic, the white shirts had an outsize effect on an otherwise energetic crowd. More physical resistance in the front could have dealt with the situation, emboldening the crowd rather than amplifying fear.

Graffiti in the wake of the march.

The crowd marched quickly down Broadway, continuing to scuffle with white shirts, though the latter were fewer and further between. A participant tagged up the Wells Fargo. It turned out that many people had come prepared to throw down, though the march may have been too rushed for this, leading to missed opportunities. The mutual aggression between the world’s largest metropolitan police force and people who had been in the streets all year protesting the genocide in Gaza lent an appropriate tension to the short night.

A crowd gathers on the corner of Waverly and 6th Avenue. The New York City Police Department Strategic Response Group did not arrive at the West 4th Street station until after more than half of the group had successfully evaded fare.

The march took a right on 8th, then a left on University, continued through the park to 4th, then went up 6th to the subway entrance at 8th and 6th Avenue. The front of the march outmaneuvered the police at the under-guarded entrance, with 100 or more people jumping the turnstiles, despite police attempts to carry out snatches and efforts to de-arrest the targets. For a short time, a whirlwind passed through the station, leaving smashed screens, painted cameras, and spray-paint tags on the platform.

More than a hundred people evaded fare by hopping the turnstiles en masse at the 8th Street entrance of West 4th Street Station.

Fliers were passed out to commuters, explaining the intentions behind the act and posing the question *What comes next? Some had come to do more than this, some had no idea what was going on, and many people in the second half of the march were blocked from entering the subway together. Various standoffs ensued, with protesters shouting down cops, but most people had successfully dispersed on foot or via train car by 9 pm.

A flier distributed to pedestrians and car drivers read: “You may have heard NYPD shot a fare evader, two bystanders, and a cop over $2.90. With this many cops in the MTA it was only a matter of time. Today we are making the subway free. This is one logical response. What comes next?”

The autonomous call for this action cut through a tendency to hide behind the red tape of safety, responsibility, or management. Consequently, it brought out a crowd that was brave and ready to take the initiative to achieve a simple goal. This mass public fare evasion sought to strike a balance of confrontation and participation that has rarely been seen this year. Mass fare evasions set the stage for this specifically because the potential for crowd conflict with the police is high. Evading fare in this context, rather than on our daily commute or in a clandestine formation, is not an attempt to evade the police, but rather to prepare for confrontations and carry them out on favorable terrain, at the right time, with the right energy and numbers.

During the “FTP” demonstrations in 2019, law enforcement used the long corridor at the 4th Street entrance to kettle and arrest fare evaders. Some participants in Wednesday’s actions participated in those demonstrations; their experience and strategic reflections surely informed the decision to take the 8th Street entrance.

The shooting that the police perpetrated on September 15 is unspeakably disturbing. Both the fact that it could take place at all and the justifications that the NYPD have offered for it imply that the public should be subject to police control by lethal means no matter the circumstances.

In response to such an outrage, we cannot limit our horizons to monetary damage, disruption, or individual instances of direct action. The police and the violence that they constantly perpetrate against communities are not simple policy issues that can be reformed though a carefully arranged activist campaign. Police shootings, Palestinian liberation, the rising cost of public transit: all of these are “single issues” that in fact could only be addressed via mass rebellion. Mass rebellion could change everything, or it could only satisfy single-issue demands, but it is the only method that will work to bring about change in relation to any of these.

Hundreds of people confronting the police, asserting their own agency over historical change—this sort of self-transformation is a necessary precondition for revolution. Only mass insurrectionary action can topple the state. Clandestine asymmetrical action can disorganize the enemy, it can startle them and build morale, it can be used in defensive moments—but this has to culminate in large-scale maneuvers, in winnable confrontations if we want to see long-term change.

It is hard to know when and where this will become possible, and even then, it may not succeed. But we have to try. As a stepping stone towards that horizon, the general feeling should be that fare evasion is the new normal—that it is popular, participatory, uncontrollable, and cannot be stopped.

Make everything free.

The experiences of the movement to stop Cop City and the movement in solidarity with Palestinian resistance indicate that clandestine direct action is not sufficient against the police or the military. We need thousands of people creating an unpredictable and ungovernable situation. Small closed groups employing a strategy of secrecy cannot achieve this alone, however determined they may be. But these groups can encourage and join larger crowds in expanding the popular understanding of what is possible. They can develop and spread the capacity to win confrontations with the forces that exist to prevent revolutionary change.

Organized groups that communicate and act in clusters can create a political context in which unruly mass dynamics are possible in the course of attending actions organized by others, but they can also take steps themselves to create opportunities for large crowds to assemble in conditions that lend themselves to autonomous initiative and participatory activity. That was the premise of this action, which is just one of many in an ecosystem of many different protests and other efforts.

The same night, OMNY card readers were smashed and walls were tagged at the Halsey L station, rendering passage free for the day until the MTA could address the damage. This was gratifying and significant, no doubt, but what can be achieved in invite-only hit and run actions will not quantitatively accumulate in a linear way unless we qualitatively challenge the ability of law enforcement to control public space. Doing so requires large crowds. There is a small tension between these two approaches to subversive action; it is the task of aspiring revolutionaries to reconcile these tensions.

“The same night, OMNY card readers were smashed and walls were tagged at the Halsey L station.”

Appendix

Footage from the fare evasion movement of 2019 in Chile.

Anarchists on the Wave of Protest in Indonesia

2024-09-23T00:03:59Z

In August 2024, a wave of protests rocked Indonesia, ostensibly in response to political machinations aimed at anointing a successor to President Joko Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi. Very little information has circulated about these protests in the English-speaking world. To get a sense of the deeper issues at play, we reached out to anarchist participants in different parts of Indonesia.

We interviewed Frans Ari Prasetyo, an independent researcher and photographer in Bandung, and M, a participant in an anarchist collective in Jogjakarta. The photographs are also by Frans Ari Prasetyo.

If you want to help foster more connection between anarchists in Indonesia and elsewhere in the world, you could support Page Against the Machine, an initiative to translate books by Indonesian anarchists into English.

“Never trust government.” A protest in Bandung on August 22, 2024.

According to the news that reaches us in the United States, the ongoing protests are reportedly a response to a change in election law, and more generally, a corrupt political dynasty. Is there more to the story?

Frans Ari Prasetyo: This recent revolt highlights the peak of popular discontent with Jokowi’s two-term presidency, especially among younger Indonesians. Although this protest will not lead to President Jokowi’s removal, as he will retire in October 2024, it shows that social movements in Indonesia, particularly in Bandung, have become more dynamic and diverse since the end of the authoritarian era with the 1998 reforms. These protests emerged in response to Jokowi’s attempts to alter the law regarding the regional executive elections that were established by the 1998 reforms.

The Constitutional Court issued two rulings concerning the age limit for regional executive positions. First, it ruled that candidates must be at least 30 years old when they register. This decision could prevent President Jokowi’s youngest son, who is only 29, from running for a regional executive position. The second ruling annulled the 25% quorum required for political parties to nominate regional head candidates. The Court lowered the threshold to 6.5-10% of the valid votes in each region. This change allows smaller and medium-sized parties to nominate their own candidates, giving voters more options for leadership. Previously, only larger parties could nominate candidates due to the 25% benchmark. However, this ruling also opens the door for the former Jakarta governor, who is popular with the opposition and has high electability, as well as other opposition-backed candidates.

Jokowi’s actions might be seen as undermining democratic principles. This could be driven by a desire to maintain power and protect himself while retaining a strong political influence even after his presidency ends in October 2024. There is still much work needed to advance democratic inclusiveness, accountability, and quality of life, both in Indonesia and globally. However, progress seems to be slowing rather than advancing. Many Indonesians fear a potential collapse of representative government. Additionally, there are other laws under consideration, notably the Military and Police Laws, which could have significant implications.

A protest in Bandung on August 22, 2024.

M: The protests in Indonesia are driven by a combination of factors including changes to election laws, widespread corruption, economic grievances, and dissatisfaction with political leadership and police brutality. While the changes to election laws and the influence of corrupt political dynasties are central to the current unrest, they are part of a broader context.

The Core Issues Driving the Protests

Election Law Changes: The protests have been significantly fueled by recent amendments to Indonesia’s election laws. Many Indonesians view these changes as undermining democratic principles and increasing the influence of entrenched political elites. Some see the amendments as facilitating the manipulation of electoral outcomes, which has raised concerns about fairness and transparency in the democratic process.
Political Corruption: Corruption remains a longstanding issue in Indonesian politics. The perception of widespread corruption among political elites, including members of powerful political dynasties, has contributed to popular frustration. Many protesters are demanding a fair trial and punishment for the offenders, as well as greater accountability and transparency from relevant institutions such as the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).

Additional Factors

Historical Grievances: Indonesia has a history of political turbulence, and recent protests are influenced by historical grievances, including previous movements against authoritarian rule and corruption. The legacy of the Suharto era and the 1998 Reformasi (“Reformation”) movement continues to impact people sentiment and activism to this day.
Economic Discontent: Economic issues also play a significant role. Rising inequality, unemployment, and dissatisfaction with economic policies have fueled discontent. Many Indonesians feel that the benefits of economic growth have not been evenly distributed, exacerbating social and economic tensions.
Social Media and Activism: The role of social media in organizing and amplifying dissent cannot be overlooked. Social media platforms have enabled activists to mobilize and spread information rapidly, contributing to the scale and intensity of the protests. This led to increased popular oversight of their performance and any crimes they commit. Hashtag movements have also expanded, with the term “no viral, no justice” emerging in response to ongoing issues.
Current Leadership: President Jokowi has faced criticism for failures in handling corruption and political reforms and issuing unpopular draft laws. Over the ten years he has been in power, Jokowi’s administration has been accused of not doing enough to address the systemic issues that contribute to popular disillusionment. Jokowi’s focus during his presidency has been to promote forms of development that have been detrimental to society and the environment. This has generated significant criticism and conflict at the grassroots level, where communities are directly affected by his policies.
Police Brutality: There is anger about police violence against protesters, arbitrary arrests, mistreatment of detainees, abuse of power, corruption, the increase in the national budget for armaments, the use of tear gas in demonstrations, professional misconduct, and police involvement in the “protection” of illegal online gambling, human trafficking, drug trafficking, and the “security” of mining and palm oil plantation areas in conflict with local communities. Critics argue that this reflects systemic issues within the police force, such as lack of accountability, inadequate oversight, and a tendency toward authoritarian practices. Human rights organizations, activists, and other people often call for reforms to improve policing practices, ensure greater transparency, and protect civil liberties. Anarchists call to end the institution and fight them.

A protest in Bandung on August 22, 2024.

Offer a brief overview of previous powerful social movements in Indonesia that set a precedent for the current wave of activity, and give us a chronology of the significant events leading up to the current unrest.

Frans Ari Prasetyo: Before this protest, there was another demonstration against the appointment of a controversial police chief as the chairman of the KPK (Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi, “Corruption Eradication Commission”). Many feared this appointment would diminish the KPK’s neutrality and hinder its ability to effectively combat corruption. In 2019, people held the largest protest since the 1998 reforms, known as #reformasidikorupsi. These demonstrations, and the state’s response to them, caused a dramatic drop in public trust in the Jokowi government.

The #reformasidikorupsi protests lasted almost two weeks and took place in several cities. Tragically, police killed several protesters. Many hoped this resistance would lead to a second Reform, similar to the first Reform that overthrew the New Order (Suharto) regime. However, Jokowi managed to calm the situation by reaching out to opposition parties and offering them a role within the governing bloc. Notably, Jokowi also succeeded in fostering cooperation between the military and police, which worked together extensively during the protests.

On May 1, 2019, autonomous groups took to the streets. Most of them joined the black bloc. Although this was not the first black bloc protest, it was the largest to date, surprising many. Given the context of the ongoing demonstrations, perhaps we should not have been so surprised.

In 2022, large protests erupted after the passage of a controversial Criminal Code (KUDP), which many compared to colonial-era laws. Prior to the approval of the Criminal Code and the subsequent protests, in October 2020, the House of Representatives (DPR) and the Indonesian government passed the neoliberal “omnibus law.” This law aimed to boost employment during the pandemic and accelerate changes to laws perceived as hindering economic growth, development, and investment.

Facing constitutional limits that prevented him from seeking a third term, Jokowi appointed his brother-in-law as Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court. He also considered relaxing the age requirements for vice presidential candidates, which could allow Jokowi’s eldest son to run alongside Prabowo in the 2024 presidential election. Prabowo, a former New Order general with a history of human rights violations, including the kidnapping of activists during the 1998 reforms and military operations in Papua, sought refuge in Jordan after the reforms. He returned to Indonesia during President Abdurahman Wahid’s (Gusdur) administration and engaged in political activities, leading to the founding of the Gerindra Party (Gerakan Indonesia Raya) and his appointment as its chairman.

Prabowo and Gibran, Jokowi’s son, won the 2024 election, marking a step backward toward the New Order.

A protest in Bandung on August 22, 2024.

M: Here, I will offer you a short chronology.

A Chronology of Events

2017: The Jakarta gubernatorial election saw significant unrest and large-scale protests against incumbent Governor Ahok, primarily fueled by allegations of religious blasphemy with strong racist tendencies (he is of Chinese ethnicity). Ahok’s defeat marked a rise in political and social polarization.

2018-2019: Indonesia experienced several high-profile corruption scandals involving high-ranking officials and ministries; these exacerbated popular frustration with the political elite.

2019: The re-election of President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) catalyzed protests by opposition groups alleging electoral fraud and criticizing Jokowi’s policies. This period also increased popular scrutiny of the influence of Jokowi’s political dynasties and nepotism.

2020-2021: The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated existing issues including economic instability. People’s dissatisfaction grew over the handling of the pandemic and perceived corruption in relief efforts.

2022: Demonstrations erupted in response to new Job Creation Laws (the “Omnibus Law”) perceived to favor capitalist interests over workers’ rights. These protests highlighted ongoing concerns about labor rights and economic inequality. 2022 also saw an extraordinary case involving a senior member of the National Police, Ferdy Sambo, who was serving as the head of the Propam Division. (“Kadiv Propam” stands for the Head of the Division of Profession and Security, who has the authority to perform the duties of the Propam Division, which relate to the development of professional standards and security within the internal environment of the National Police organization.) He was implicated in the premeditated murder of Brigadier Joshua Hutabarat. Although Sambo was initially sentenced to death, the final verdict was life imprisonment. This incident drew significant attention nationally and internationally. It marked the first time that a General of the National Police was sentenced to life imprisonment in Indonesia.

2023-2024: Recent unrest has been fueled by a combination of dissatisfaction with electoral laws, allegations of corruption, high unemployment, and growing frustration with entrenched political dynasties. The ongoing protests reflect a continuation of the struggle for political change that has characterized Indonesia’s recent history.

A protest in Bandung on August 22, 2024.

Every movement involves different factions and currents with different ways of seeing the world and different goals. Can you describe the different groups on both sides of this conflict?

Frans Ari Prasetyo: In Indonesia’s relatively weak political culture, declining labor movement, and fragmented left, it is not uncommon for individuals to identify as anarchists or align with anarchist principles. This flexible and inclusive interpretation of anarchism seems to be the most widespread form of anarchist thought. The trend of social movement anarchism is particularly appealing to many young people in Indonesia, especially in Bandung, which has a long history of anarchism dating back to 2014. In Bandung, the autonomous movement released a compilation album titled “Mobilisasi Kemuakan” (“Mobilization of Disgust”), featuring twelve bands across various music subgenres, including punk, metal, and hip-hop. The album’s lyrics rejected the elections, and it included a special booklet critiquing representative democracy and contrasting it with popular mobilizations in the streets and “direct democracy.”

The “Mobilisasi Kemuakan” (“Mobilization of Disgust”) compilation, an assault on representative democracy.

Conversely, a prominent Marxist intellectual group in Indonesia supported Jokowi by mobilizing leftist activists, youth groups, and new voters through a flashy newspaper campaign before the 2014 presidential election. They justified this support by highlighting Jokowi’s opposition to Prabowo, a New Order military general with a history of human rights abuses. Ironically, Jokowi became a key advocate for Prabowo’s presidency in 2024, with Prabowo’s deputy being Jokowi’s eldest son.

The current protest movement appears to have fragmented into three main groups: university students; labor and mass organizations, including nationalist and religious groups; and informal groups focused on specific identity-based issues, such as women’s groups, artists, journalists, gender nonconformists, and religious minorities. Some of these groups are labeled by society, the police, and the state as “black-on-black” or “anarcho” groups.

These “anarchist” groups express themselves through various means, including shouting, singing, graffiti, and carrying flags, posters, and banners while lighting flares in the streets. They aim to raise awareness. Unfortunately, the current democratic system does not offer an effective means for waging a street-based struggle against the state or the police and military. This anarchist activity has left the public, the democratic process, and even the police somewhat unsettled. It is unfortunate that the police’s determination to win all public battles, particularly against anarchists, has led to a diminished public understanding and support for anarchists as part of civil society.

Student groups often play a crucial role in initiating protests and remain a prominent feature in mainstream media coverage as agents of change. They are widely regarded as intellectual and critical voices on government policies. As educated citizens, they have the potential to influence government decisions.

Student participation in strikes across Indonesia has fueled a new social movement, leading to increased political awareness. Students have become a powerful force in protests, with many identifying with the anarchist movement, which channels the energy and passion of the subversive youth.

A protest in Bandung on August 22, 2024.

M: The current resistance movement is generally divided into two groups: the elite within the government and political parties, and the community outside of the government. Those within the government who position themselves as “opposition” have their own political and party agendas; they also seek to secure their interests, which we don’t give a shit about at all. On the other hand, the recent extra-parliamentary movements include a diverse array of groups including veterans from the 1998 protests, human rights organizations and activists, women’s groups, environmentalists, journalists, Indigenous communities, farmers, fishermen, informal workers, academics, religious student organizations, Papua students, university professors, online transport drivers, political and popular figures, artists, comedians, mothers, high school students, punks, and, of course, anarchists, who are frequently scapegoated as instigators of unrest and “provocateurs.”

These extra-parliamentary groups have reached a point of exasperation with the increasingly reckless actions of Jokowi dynasty, especially as his presidency nears its end. Civil society is also expressing concern over the president-elect and vice-president-elect of the next administration, both of whom have very bad track records; they are set to be inaugurated in October 2024. The president-elect, Prabowo Subianto, is the son-in-law of former President Suharto; he was a high-ranking general under the Suharto regime and currently serves as Minister of Defense. He was involved in the abduction and disappearance of student activists in 1998, as well as a series of military operations during the Suharto era. He is also a very wealthy businessman. Gibran Rakabuming Raka, the vice-president-elect and Jokowi’s eldest son, has faced significant criticism due to nepotism and violations of the presidential age limit policy, as addressed by the Constitutional Court earlier this year.

A protest in Bandung on August 22, 2024.

We have seen “ACAB” scrawled on expropriated police shields and police vehicles during the unrest. What is the role of anti-authoritarians and anarchists in these protests? And how prevalent are broadly anti-authoritarian sentiments in Indonesian movements today?

Frans Ari Prasetyo: Since the rise of the global justice movement in the 1990s, anarchist ideas have seen a resurgence and continue to attract more adherents. Despite police repression and ongoing criticism from mainstream media, the movement has gained traction. Bandung, historically a hub for anarchist activity in Indonesia during the 1990s, remains home to a vibrant anarchist collective. The movement grew significantly in the mid-2000s through various efforts, including labor strikes, football hooliganism, protests against evictions, mutual aid efforts, and the distribution of books and pamphlets. Contributing factors including systemic economic inequality, gentrification, housing and land access issues, labor restructuring, and government repression have fueled widespread anger and confrontations with the police.

Anarchists have been dedicated to creating spaces aligned with their beliefs, exploring alternative forms of resistance and defining the boundaries of freedom, local protest, and transnational social movements.

Authoritarianism and militarism have been deeply ingrained in Indonesia’s experience since the New Order, and this militarization has expanded under Jokowi. The anarchist resistance to Jokowi’s government has been strong. The executive branch has consolidated power over police and military budgets to control protest movements. Although the police did not overtly campaign for Jokowi, their support contributed to his electoral success in various regions, reminiscent of their role during the New Order era.

Following the 2019 May Day Black Bloc, which led to the arrest of over 700 individuals in Bandung, it is clear that the police are increasingly determined to win all public confrontations, especially those involving anarchists. As a result, anarchists risk becoming isolated from some communities. In certain residential areas of Bandung, residents display banners reading “Anti-Anarcho,” “Anarko Dilarang!” (“Anarcho Forbidden!”), or “Daerah Ini Bebas Anarko” (“This Area is Anarcho-Free”). At the time, no one wanted to be associated with the subversive resistance movement.

In 2020, during the Omnibus protests, these banners began to disappear. However, the police continued to sweep through protests, arresting and committing acts of violence against civilians simply for wearing black. This targeting of anyone in black at protests, intended to isolate the anarchist movement, is having the opposite effect, driving many angry young people toward anarchism.

In 2022, fierce demonstrations and clashes with the police erupted following a deadly incident at a football stadium. As a result, “ACAB” and other innovative anti-police slogans and graffiti became increasingly popular.

A protest in Bandung on August 28, 2024.

M: The anarchist movement in Indonesia is growing. We are not only introducing anti-authoritarian ideas through discussions, publications, translation, social media, art, and music, but also actively participating in grassroots movements, particularly those opposing evictions and environmental destruction, as well as movements against police and the state. We advocate for decentralized movements employing direct action, build mutual aid networks around the archipelago, occupy land in conflict with the state and corporations, and address daily issues faced by the community at large, including our own issues. We achieve these things via organizing based on anarchist principles and fostering critical awareness within society.

We seek to raise awareness, exposing how manipulative and exploitative the state and corporations are towards society. We provide information about their misdeeds. As people get more informed, they also become more critical, losing faith in the mechanisms or strategies of the state, and in the police as well.

We are not alone in this effort. We have begun to build relationships with student groups, punks, artists, musicians, academics, queer communities, unemployed individuals, lawyers, informal workers, and others. The organic anarchist movement has been fulfilling its role while amplifying the growth of anti-authoritarian movements across various regions.

However, this is not without challenges. Some friction has occurred between the student groups and us anarchists. Indonesian students often wear their campus jackets during demonstrations and use ropes to create barriers, claiming this is to avoid the infiltration of police agents or provocateurs. They also tend to act as if they are the leaders of the protests, a form of vanguardism. Ironically, their slogans like “The People, United, Cannot Be Defeated” and “Beware of Provocation, Do Not Let Us Be Divided” contradict the reality on the ground when they separate themselves, claiming to represent the people. When tensions rise, it is usually anarchists who step forward, sparking the enthusiasm of other demonstrators and leading to clashes.

For example, in Bandung, when the situation became chaotic, with tear gas and stones flying, demonstrators scrambled to seek refuge on a campus, but students there blocked us, shouting, “Don’t let them in! They are not part of us!” A more distressing incident occurred in Sukabumi, where some demonstrators identified as “black bloc” were beaten by many students.

Students often fail to understand that the diversity of demonstrators is a reality they cannot avoid, which shows that the movement includes different social strata. Greater involvement of different groups fighting the same enemy is tactically important. The students also forget that anonymity is crucial for the safety of demonstrators, as police often target “black bloc” groups.

A protest in Bandung on August 28, 2024.

How does the movement vary in different parts of the country?

M: Indonesia, being a vast archipelago country, has regions with distinct resistance cultures influenced by local customs and issues. Java, as the center of finance, business, information, technology, and power, exhibits significant social, economic, and educational disparities. Resistance in each region often highlights local issues.

For instance, Kalimantan faces severe ecological threats from massive mining and palm oil expansions and the displacement of Indigenous communities. The controversial National Capital City (IKN) project, which aims to relocate the capital from Jakarta to Penajam Paser Utara in East Kalimantan, will devastate 256,142 hectares of natural forest and 68,189 hectares of sea. According to the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas), the IKN project budget is IDR 466.9 trillion, to be funded by the state and foreign investors. The IKN project also involves high-ranking officials with significant investments in the project, including Prabowo Subianto, the Minister of Defense, and Luhut Binsar Panjaitan, Indonesia’s Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment—and previously, a high-ranking general during the Suharto era.

The level of police repression varies by region, with actions in the eastern regions generally facing a harsher response from law enforcement.

A protest in Bandung on August 28, 2024.

What parts of society are in the streets? Have those who have been targeted by police before—such as organized labor, punks, soccer ultras, or West Papua independence protesters—taken part in these protests?

M: The soccer ultras have their own resentments due to the Kanjuruhan tragedy—a tragic event that occurred on October 1, 2022 at Kanjuruhan Stadium in Malang, Indonesia. A riot erupted after a football match between Arema FC and Persebaya Surabaya. Police used tear gas to disperse the crowd, leading to chaos as thousands of supporters rushed to the exits. The resulting crush and suffocation led to the deaths of over 135 people and many more injuries. This also highlighted issues related to crowd control and stadium safety.

The parents of the victims joined football associations in condemning the tragedy, demanding justice for those affected. A trial took place, resulting in the conviction of three low-ranking police officers and two match organizers, each of whom received a maximum sentence of only two and a half years. In the verdict, the judge stated that the tear gas affected hundreds of people due to wind direction towards the stands. The Kanjuruhan incident is recognized as the second-worst football disaster in history, following the 1964 tragedy at Estadio Nacional in Lima, Peru, which claimed the lives of over 300 people. To this day, the families of the deceased continue to demand accountability, justice, and transparency.

Meanwhile, people in Papua continue to fight for independence despite being negatively framed as an Armed Criminal Group by the state. This terminology, intensified during Jokowi’s presidency with covert support from Defense Minister Prabowo, is used to malign the Papuan independence movement. Unfortunately, corporate media often employs this label.

All of the groups you mentioned are direct victims of Jokowi’s government policies. Naturally, they are using this moment to unite and express their anger alongside other affected communities.

A protest in Bandung on August 28, 2024.

Frans Ari Prasetyo: Indonesia has undergone significant changes since the 1998 Reforms, including rapid growth in civil institutions, an expanding middle class, and the rise of a vibrant culture and metropolitan lifestyle. However, these changes have also raised concerns about media influence on public opinion, the rise of populist movements, and attempts to return to authoritarianism under the guise of development. During the politically-charged Reformasi era, anarchists protested against the dictatorship. This response was not surprising, as Indonesian anarchists have historically aligned with the working class and class struggle. However, the decline of the political left after the 1998 Reforms also led to a decline in anarchism.

Despite this, anarchists remain active in ongoing protests. Anarchism and the black bloc have become significant cultural identities for participants in youth protests in Bandung. Young people involved in music subcultures, football hooliganism, anti-colonial resistance in West Papua, and other movements often engage with anarchism, particularly through the black bloc. Labor organizations have also been involved, especially in opposition to the Omnibus Law, which directly affects their interests. This involvement is notable given the ruling party’s influence over unions through their main coalition, which maintains a broad clientelist structure within civil society groups, including organized labor.

A protest in Bandung on August 28, 2024.

To what extent is this movement in dialogue with or influenced by the recent uprisings in other parts of the world such as those in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Bangladesh, or elsewhere?

M: I don’t have the capacity to answer this question. However, we are quite inspired by the movement in Hong Kong and adapted some of their strategies.

Frans Ari Prasetyo: Countries such as Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Cambodia, and many in Africa and Latin America face significant governance challenges. These challenges often include low GDP per capita, high levels of armed conflict, and low political stability. These nations have been trapped in a cycle of internal conflict and poor governance for decades, and it seems likely that they will continue to experience volatility across all levels of society. The current insurgency in some of these countries exemplifies the turmoil that can arise as a consequence.

When societies develop a robust state apparatus without a strong and productive domestic economy, large sectors of the population may be more susceptible to the autocratic narrative that state capacity is the key to development. Over the past decade, Indonesia has navigated a complex landscape, shifting between democracy and autocracy.

Indonesia may represent a failure of the “democratic sufficiency thesis,” which posits that democracy is essential for achieving a higher quality of life in the medium to long term. This appeared to be the case in post-1998 reform Indonesia, which emerged from 32 years of authoritarian and militaristic rule and celebrated its transition to democracy. However, it continues to face challenges in delivering a quality of life that matches its democratic standards and state capabilities. While Indonesia has been more fortunate than Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and other countries in Africa and Latin America, there are concerns that the Jokowi administration may have inadvertently veered back toward militaristic authoritarianism over the past decade.

Western-style democracy is not inevitable, as history lacks a predetermined goal or purpose. Instead, history is shaped by human agency, ideological struggles, and political conflicts, with the future remaining always unwritten.

A protest in Bandung on August 28, 2024.

Can you direct us to some resources to understand the history of anarchist activity in Indonesia, and tell us concrete ways that people can support anarchists organizing there?

M: Right now, we clearly need international support to highlight the legacy of oligarchy and nepotism under Jokowi, as well as the police brutality. We urge you to condemn the Indonesian police and military for their brutal actions.

Furthermore, after reflecting on several incidents involving clashes with the police or with right-wing nationalist and conservative religious mass organizations during demonstrations or land occupations, we feel it is necessary to put more effort towards tactics during demonstrations. We plan to equip ourselves better with protective gear and to hold “trainings” to deepen our knowledge of safety, as well as field tactics for defense and attack. We also need support to sustain the street paramedics.

A protest in Bandung on August 28, 2024.

Frans Ari Prasetyo: Anarchistic groups are present throughout Indonesia. Some of these groups identify explicitly as anarchist, while others do not. Regardless of their labels, their actions align strongly with anarchist principles. As long as we share similar ideological ties and diverse strategic and practical approaches, it seems reasonable to collaborate, even if not everyone identifies as an ideological anarchist.

Anarchism offers a framework for understanding the complexities of youth activism. It provides a lens through which to examine the interconnected challenges of systemic economic inequalities, resource distribution, access to public goods, labor systems, state repression, and police-military actions. The ongoing anger towards the police and military has led to numerous confrontations and riots.

Despite its challenges, the anarchist movement has played a significant role in reshaping anti-capitalist struggles during a period marked by fragmentation and decline due to aggressive neoliberalism and resurgent authoritarianism.

Collaboration can help build a stronger movement and society. The COVID-19 crisis has established a new pattern of activism in Bandung. Civil society has adapted by forming networks that operate rhizomatically, enabling survival and resilience. I have observed and directly experienced the impact of this pattern. Since the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, this approach has proven to be effective, flexible, and dynamic, particularly within youth movements.

In Bandung, we use the term lintas tongkrongan (cross-hangout) to describe collaboration without hierarchy. Many young people, as elsewhere, spend significant time together, or nongkrong (hanging out). This can be a valuable source of energy and passion for civil activism, including anarchist activities.

A protest in Bandung on August 28, 2024.

What would it mean to win?

M: We’re not looking for “victory.” What we really want is for more people to realize the evils of the state, capitalism, and their instruments. We want to keep organizing autonomously, to fight injustice with direct action, and to put down roots like wild plants that can’t be stopped, not even by concrete.

Frans Ari Prasetyo: We may be approaching the issue from the wrong angle if we view victory as the ultimate goal of a struggle. We are engaged in a conflict that may not have a clear-cut resolution. If we achieve victory, it will be worth considering what happens next. There is a risk of a “false victory,” where we end up becoming something new that reflects what we fought against or defeated.

If we regard this victory as charity activism, it could lead to a change in position rather than a genuine shift. Not everyone who loses will disappear; some may adapt their methods to appear progressive, potentially turning charity into another manifestation of the class structure and inadvertently perpetuating the status quo.

In Indonesia, the 1998 Reformasi victory, which ended the 32-year militaristic-authoritarian regime of the New Order, led to the establishment of a democratic government. Could the state have done more to ensure consistent improvements in the quality of life, even with strong democratic accountability? Or was the victory simply about thwarting the election law?

We are dealing with a government, oligarchs, and predatory business and party elites who have appropriated everything belonging to the people. Therefore, we must fight as hard as we can. The current social order, post-reforms, has been built on the victory over the New Order. The transition to civilian rule has been managed by individuals—and characterized by policies—that were part of the dictatorship.

In the past decade under President Jokowi (2014-2024), Indonesia has shifted back to an authoritarian, militaristic state known as Neo-Orba. Jokowi was initially portrayed as a populist president defending ordinary people; many former reform activists who overthrew Suharto’s New Order now support Jokowi’s Neo-Orba regime. As Jokowi’s term ends in 2024, many of these activists will switch their support to a New Order military general who once kidnapped them and was twice defeated by Jokowi in presidential elections. This general will become the next president of Indonesia, with Jokowi’s son as his vice president. This continuity of power and wealth mocks the quest for greater equality, perpetuating a cycle of inequality and exclusion.

Why should a great victory be followed by even greater demonstrations, only for those victories to justify new and more extreme forms of inequality? This reflects a trauma from the 1998 demonstrations, where the results are still unfolding today. Protests are important, and victory is a bonus, but it is crucial to build political consciousness in everyday life amid the combined hegemony of the state, capitalism, and neoliberalism. We should create grassroots alternatives, even if they start out small, and spread them across many areas in order to empower people with the freedom and justice they need daily. Building politics involves more than just engaging in spontaneous protests; it means addressing real everyday problems and developing political organs for the movement beyond merely empowering the recipients of aid.

Civil disobedience can be a powerful tool for achieving equality and signaling victory. The working class, the youth, and other civilian groups have the right to self-determination. We do not seek mere redistribution of poverty or a return to old colonial, capitalist, or neoliberal laws. Instead, we use civil disobedience to build civil and political power through education, advocacy, direct action, and solidarity. Acts of disobedience demonstrate that resistance and alternatives are possible, even as we navigate repressive laws, suffocating capitalism, and rampant neoliberalism.

Who can extinguish the fire once it has started? This regime has been playing with fire from the beginning. They can blame the protesters as much as they like, but they cannot blame the fire. I want us to stay angry, and I want the state to panic once more. See you at the next protest, and the next, and the next. Long live resistance, long live solidarity!

A protest in Bandung on August 22, 2024.

Appendix: Demonstrations around Indonesia

Courtesy of M, here follows a brief summary of the demonstrations that took place on various major islands in Indonesia August 22-27.

Jawa

Jakarta: On August 22, 2024, thousands of demonstrators gathered in front of the Indonesian Parliament (DPR RI), prompting the deployment of 3200 security personnel. Similar demonstrations took place in front of the Constitutional Court. Coinciding with this, the 828th Kamisan Action¹ in front of the Presidential Palace also drew large crowds. Protesters carried a replica of a guillotine as a symbol of resistance against monarchy.

In the afternoon, at 14:20 Western Indonesian Time, protesters demolished the right gate of the DPR RI building. DPR member Habiburokhman was struck by a bottle thrown by demonstrators. The protest continued into the evening, with police using beatings, tear gas, and water cannons to disperse the crowd. Journalists were assaulted for attempting to cover police attacks and were forced to delete their footage.

Bandung: At 5:30 pm, protesters demolished the fence around the West Java Regional House of Representatives (DPRD) building, leading to clashes. Intelligence agents assaulted a journalist, while a student lost an eye due to a stone thrown by police.

Tasikmalaya: The protest involved the burning of several facilities at the Tasikmalaya DPRD building.

Bogor: Protests took place at Tugu Kujang.

Cirebon: A student and a police officer were injured during the demonstration in front of the Cirebon DPRD building.

Yogyakarta: Thousands gathered, starting at Abu Bakar Ali parking lot, marching to Zero Kilometer Point, and ending in front of the Special Region of Yogyakarta DPRD building.

Semarang: The protest in front of the Central Java DPRD building turned violent when protesters forced their way in, causing the fence to nearly collapse. Police used tear gas to disperse the crowd, resulting in 26 injuries, with 18 requiring hospital treatment. Protests continued until August 26, 2024, with the breach of the fence around Semarang City Hall.

Surabaya: Demonstrations took place in front of Tugu Pahlawan.

Solo: Protests occurred in front of the City Hall.

Malang: Thousands protested around the Bundaran Tugu Malang area.

Sumatera

Padang: Protests took place in front of the West Sumatra DPRD building.

Bukittinggi: On August 23, 2024, hundreds protested in front of the Bukittinggi DPRD building in heavy rain.

Lampung: The protest on the night of August 21 featured participants in Money Heist costumes.

South Sumatra: Protesters at Simpang Lima wore masks of politicians including Joko Widodo, Bahlil Lahadalia, Yusril Ihza Mahendra, Prabowo Subianto, and Bobby Nasution. They displayed a coffin in their demonstration.

Jambi: Thousands of students marched from Simpang Bank Indonesia to the parliament building in Telanai. The protest turned violent with police beatings, resulting in three people losing consciousness and four injured.

Aceh: Protests in front of the Lhokseumawe DPRK led to clashes between thousands of students and security forces. A similar protest occurred at the Aceh House of Representatives in Banda Aceh, ending in violence and five arrests.

Bengkulu: In response to protests, the security staff of the DPRD assaulted students in an effort to disperse the crowd.

Sulawesi

Makassar: Thousands protested the passage of the Regional Election Bill (RUU Pilkada), with some burning tires. The protest was dispersed when First Lady Iriana Joko Widodo was scheduled to pass by.

Kendari: Thousands of students and journalists protested in front of the Southeast Sulawesi DPRD building.

Palu: Protests occurred on August 23, 2024 in front of the Central Sulawesi DPRD building.

Nusa Tenggara

Kupang: A sit-in protest took place in front of the office of the NTT KPU (Nusa Tenggara Timur Komisi Pemilihan Umum, the General Elections Commission in East Nusa Tenggara province, the capital of which is Kupang City).

Mataram: The protest in front of the West Nusa Tenggara DPRD building turned violent after police attempted to disperse the crowd with tear gas and water cannons.

*Denpasar (Bali) **: On August 23, 2024, students from various universities, public student organizations, NGOs, LBH Bali (Lembaga Bantuan Hukum,* Community Legal Aid Institute—a frontline organization that provides legal assistance to those in need, free of charge), and others participated in a protest.

Maluku dan Papua

Ambon: The protest ended in violence with broken windows at the DPRD building after the request of the Aliansi Mahasiswa Pattimura (the Student Alliance of Pattimura University in Ambon City, in the Maluku province) to meet with coalition party members was denied due to their absence.

Manokwari: Protests were held in front of the Papua Barat DPRD building.

Sorong: A silent protest took place at Taman Sorong Park.

Kalimantan

Banjarmasin: Thousands of students from various campuses occupied the South Kalimantan DPRD building.

Samarinda: Thousands protested in front of the East Kalimantan DPRD building, demanding the cancellation of the Regional Election Bill and expedited approval of the Asset Forfeiture Bill.

Balikpapan: The protest at the Balikpapan DPRD building turned violent with clashes between students and police.

Pontianak: Students participated in an emergency democracy action at the West Kalimantan DPRD.

Palangkaraya: Hundreds of students protested, but the action ended in chaos after demands to meet with the Chairman of the Central Kalimantan DPRD were not met. The crowd rejected the conditions that only representatives could enter the DPR building to express their demands.

People in many cities continued to demonstrate after August 22, 2024.

The Aksi Kamisan (“Kamisan Protest”) is a weekly protest in Jakarta initiated by the families of the victims of the Semanggi tragedy, in which activists were shot dead at Jakarta’s Semanggi intersection in late 1998. Every Thursday afternoon since 2007, the families and their supporters stand in protest in front of the Indonesian Presidential Palace carrying black umbrellas, wearing black clothes, and bearing banners and photographs of the victims. This protest spread to many cities in Indonesia; it has taken place in Bandung since 2013. The Semanggi tragedy took place under the authority of Prabowo Subianto, a former New Order general; now Prabowo and Gibran, Jokowi’s son, have won the 2024 election. Protesters in the Aksi Kamisan call attention to unresolved human rights violations from various periods, including the 1965-66 anti-communist purge and the 1998 riots, in regards to which Prabowo was once brought to trial but was not found guilty. Aksi Kamisan was actually inspired by the movement of the mothers of those disappeared in Argentina between 1976 and 1983, who protested by unfurling cloths with the names of their disappeared family members in the Plaza de Mayo, opposite the Casa Rosada, the presidential palace, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. ↩

The Disaster Is Already Here : Anarchists in Southern Brazil on the Floods of May 2024

2024-06-25T21:23:39Z

In the first days of May 2024, the territory known as Rio Grande do Sul in so-called Brazil suffered the biggest climate catastrophe in its history. More than a week of intense rain caused several rivers to overflow, wrecking dozens of cities and destroying everything in their path, before flowing into the Guaíba River, causing the biggest flood ever recorded in the Greater Porto Alegre region. By June, 171 deaths had been confirmed. Thousands of people lost everything; 614,000 were rendered homeless; over two million were impacted. The force of the waters erased entire cities from the map. More than 90% of the industry of the state of Rio Grande do Sul was flooded.

This is the greatest economic and structural damage a climate event has ever caused in Brazil. Reckoning by the number of people affected and the material damage, the tragedy already surpasses the destruction that Hurricane Katrina inflicted on New Orleans in 2005.

The state and the capitalist mode of production are directly responsible for the devastation of the planet. They have cut down forests to make way for cattle, monoculture, and mining, degrading the soil with urban expansion. They are producing more and more catastrophes like the one that struck Rio Grande do Sul. Amid all the horror, we see the complete failure of the ruling class to care for our lives and our environment.

The Municipality of Lajeado after the waters of the flood receded.

At the center of this tragedy, anarchists, Indigenous communities, quilombos, and social movements have been organizing solidarity efforts as they try to rebuild their lives and their territories—soliciting and distributing donations, calling for joint efforts for cleaning and reoccupying affected properties, and organizing new occupations of empty buildings to house those who lost their homes.

Here, we explore how capitalists and the state have taken advantage of the catastrophe and how grassroots movements have responded to it, and present an interview with anarchists impacted by the flooding.

If you are dismayed or inspired by what you read here, please considering supporting anarchists in southern Brazil here as they address the ongoing impact of the floods.

A video about the flood by the Antimídia collective.

The State

Whenever a “natural” disaster strikes, we see once again that the priority of the state has never been to protect our lives. For decades, the Brazilian government ignored warnings about the dangers of environmental destruction and climate change and failed to take effective measures to prevent catastrophes like this. On the contrary, it played an active role in the destruction—sometimes at a slower pace, sometimes devouring the land voraciously. This contempt for life and hatred of nature was blatant in Bolsonaro’s neo-fascist government. But even social democratic regimes, including progressive governments involving parties like the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers Party, or PT), contributed heavily to global warming, relying on the automotive industry, oil extraction, and other energy sources with a high environmental impact to boost economic growth. In 2015, during the tenure of the PT’s Dilma Rousseff, scientific reports warning that climate change would cause floods were shelved as “too alarmist.”

At the state and municipal levels, the government’s continuous negligence has an immediate impact on our lives. Despite threats from one weather system after another, the governor and mayor did not develop adequate evacuation plans or warnings. They did not even invest in the most minimal steps to protect the population. The current governor, Eduardo Leite (from the right-wing Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira, Brazilian Social Democracy Party, or PSDB), shredded the state’s environmental legislation in order to favor businesspeople and reduced investments in Civil Defense during his government. Confronted by journalists, Leite tried to justify this by claiming that “There are these studies that, in some way, warn, but the government also has other agendas.”

In Porto Alegre, the dam floodgates that protect the city failed due to lack of maintenance and closing errors. This became even more serious because the last administrations of Porto Alegre city hall had scrapped the DEP (Department of Storm Sewage), the body responsible for the system of dikes, floodgates and pumping stations that protect the capital of Rio Grande do Sul against floods, which imposed further demands on the DMAE (Municipal Department of Water and Sewage). According to experts, the city would not have flooded if the system had been properly maintained and managed.

Making matters worse, the mayor of Porto Alegre, Sebastião Melo, only decreed water rationing after 85% of the city was already without access to drinking water. The populations of some neighborhoods were only notified that the pumps that prevented the flooding of their homes had been turned off after the fact, giving them no time to evacuate.

The Impact of Capitalism

The capitalist mode of production is the cause of climate shifts that threaten all life on earth. At the same time, the corporations and executives that profit from it are doing very little to mitigate the suffering of the population. In this case, if anything, they have made the situation even worse.

The capitalists failed to keep the supermarkets that were still operating stocked. Since they were interested in making a quick profit on people’s despair, they allowed those with money to buy up all the available water and supplies. At the same time, dozens of stores were flooded while they were still filled with food, water bottles, and other essential items for the population, which had been locked inside under the protection of police and security guards armed with rifles—who had formed paramilitary groups to prevent hungry people from accessing food or other resources destined to rot in water. The corporations and the state were more interested in protecting these goods than saving the lives of those who needed them, even if the items were bound to be discarded and compensated for by insurance companies.

A civil police officer shoots in the direction of a person suspected of looting a supermarket in Porto Alegre.

While people volunteered to rescue tens of thousands of dogs, cats, and horses from rooftops and organized spaces to welcome them with veterinary care and food, pet stores abandoned fish, birds, and mammals in their cages inside flooded facilities, while moving electronics to safety. Animals sold as objects were abandoned to drown, highlighting the logic of this system: for capitalists, life is just another commodity to be compensated for by the insurance company.

The little support that big companies offered was derisory. Grendene, one of the world ‘s largest footwear producers, suggested that its workers should donate items from their own food baskets to people affected by the flood.

The beverage industry Ambev, the largest brewery in the world—which turns an annual profit equivalent to twice the budget of the city of Porto Alegre—packaged drinking water in aluminum cans—more of a marketing campaign than a form of real solidarity.

Federação das Indústrias do Rio Grande do Sul (FIERGS), an entity that represents industries in Rio Grande do Sul, asked the federal government for R$100 billion (US$20 billion) in aid for companies affected by the flood. When businesspeople talk about “small government,” it is only where that concerns the interests of ordinary people. When it comes to defending the interests of the elite, they want a massive state.

Defenders of capitalism praised the actions of billionaires and businesspeople who donated paltry portions of their fortunes to help flood victims. This is when the good deeds were not complete lies, like the image that would show a helicopter belonging to billionaire Luciano Hang rescuing stranded people, which was actually an image generated by artificial intelligence.

Meanwhile, ordinary people, including some who lost everything, were much more supportive and willing to help, donating proportionally much more of their resources than the super-rich. A live show by a rock band raised more money than the donations that the United States government and egocentric billionaire Elon Musk sent to Rio Grande do Sul, all combined.

Not to mention that capitalists profited directly from the catastrophe, such as the large supermarkets that sold all their stocks of bottled water to desperate people, often at abusive prices, and still had record sales with the generosity of ordinary people who bought items for donate to those who lost everything. And they will continue to profit while the people affected and those who sympathize with them are fighting to rebuild what was lost.

Grassroots Mutual Aid

Solidarity between those impacted by the disaster has proved essential for survival. Without it, the situation would have gotten much worse. Yet the city of Porto Alegre tried to hinder volunteer groups that organized donation centers and ran mutual aid hubs for weeks—the authorities made agreements with the property owners so that they could take over the operations, excluding and criminalizing the volunteers who had been organizing them up to that point. In another case, on May 20, the Military Police seized a truck that people were using to distribute food to those affected by the floods. Not coincidentally, the truck was from Cozinha Solidária da Azenha (the Azenha Solidarity Kitchen in Porto Alegre), linked to the Homeless Workers Movement (MTST). The police claimed that the truck was unlicensed, but it was not possible to obtain licensing as the systems were down throughout the state due to the effects the rains.

In the vast majority of neighborhoods, assisting those impacted by the flood was left up to the community itself and other volunteer groups that worked together to guarantee supplies of water, food, and warm clothing. This was the case for incarcerated people isolated in prisons in the region, who were left with no access to water, food, or hygiene items. It was left up to families—who were also affected by the floods—to organize to take them these basic items.

The Azenha Solidarity Kitchen, organized by the Homeless Workers Movement (MTST) in Porto Alegre.

In Porto Alegre’s Sarandi neighborhood, the Quilombo dos Machado organized these operations for weeks with the support of other urban quilombos in the city, without any assistance from the state. As Luiz Machado, a resident of the Quilombo dos Machado, said,

“this welcoming that the state should be doing, we—the community—are doing for ourselves.”

When the Quilombo community asked Governor Eduardo Leite of the PSDB for help, he responded that “the state and public authorities do not have the structure to cover all spots”.

The governor’s words reveal a Brazilian form of necropolitics and environmental racism: a system designed to fulfill the economic demands of the rich, guaranteeing profits and votes rather than allocating resources to save lives—especially the lives of the poor, Black, and Indigenous, the demographics most affected by the floods. This is not just a question of inaction or failure. These situations are part of an ongoing extermination project.

A call for donations for anarchist and autonomous occupations affected by the floods in Porto Alegre.

After the Catastrophe: Direct Action

Municipal and state governments are building temporary cities for the tens of thousands of displaced people to live in until their neighborhoods are rebuilt or new housing is built elsewhere. But this is unnecessary; it only wastes materials and energy. In Porto Alegre alone, there are more than 100,000 empty homes already. Fully 30% of the homes in the city center are unoccupied. That’s ten times more than the total number of temporary homes planned. This is simply another way to channel funds to construction companies while politicians seek popularity through populist measures that do not touch the roots of suffering and inequality. Worse, it is an attempt to move the poor and Black population away from areas that the government and the construction companies covet, in order to pave the way for construction companies and other predatory projects to appropriate people’s homes.

New building occupations are emerging in response to the problem of homelessness. An autonomous movement of homeless people occupied an old abandoned hotel in the center of Porto Alegre in order to house 45 families. The National Movement for the Fight for Housing (MNLN) occupied another building, now called Ocupação Rexistência, dedicated to housing dozens of families of people affected by the current crisis. Members of the movement emphasize that they do not want the construction of a “temporary city” for affected families, but rather that empty properties be immediately used for housing. On June 8, the MTST occupied an abandoned 25-story building owned by the National Social Security Institute (INSS), also in Porto Alegre, to shelter families left homeless by the floods. Social movements employing direct action have been more efficient than governments when it comes to sheltering the 160,000 people who lost their homes.

For politicians and businesspeople, rebuilding the city is an opportunity to make a profit. Massive amounts of materials are needed to rebuild infrastructure and homes destroyed by water, and capitalists will profit by producing and selling these materials. Companies will compete hastily placed bids. And, as always occurs here when the government works directly with capitalists, there will be delays, corruption, overpricing, misappropriation of funds, favoritism.

Let’s not deceive ourselves—no government is going to attack capitalism. That goes for supposedly left-wing governments like the federal government of the PT too. No matter which party rules, be it the center-left PT or the lunatic far-right of Bolsonaro, the Brazilian state is structured to enrich an elite, bargaining away the future of life on this planet in exchange for power.

This Is No Natural Disaster

So the tragedy that devastated the territory occupied by the state of Rio Grande do Sul was not simply an inevitable natural disaster. This is just the latest in a series of extreme climate events that are happening with increasing frequency and intensity as a result of decades of destruction and exploitation of the planet, as the authorities ignore warnings from scientists and repress the self-determination and resistance of social movements and traditional peoples in the name of economic growth. In this brutal system, the state and capitalism converge to plunder the land and exploit our bodies while preventing measures that could reduce the impacts of these events on our lives.

These are the local consequences of a global problem. The same system that causes floods in Rio Grande do Sul causes fires in the Pantanal and the Amazon; it promotes genocide in Gaza to control natural gas reserves and oppresses students who rise up to stop that massacre; it contaminates water, violates Indigenous territories, and sinks entire neighborhoods to extract coveted minerals from the earth. It destroys forests, oceans, mountains, and deserts to guarantee profit for a handful of people while condemning billions to misery.

If, on the one hand, the politicians and capitalists have shown once again that they are not concerned with the well-being of the population, on the other hand, we see that solidarity still emerges spontaneously and we are capable of supporting each other, even overcoming serious ideological differences.

Thousands of people took the initiative to organize rescues with their own resources, risking their lives to save others, human or not. People have created shelters and support points including donation distribution centers and solidarity kitchens; every day, these produce thousands of lunch boxes for the displaced, which are transported by volunteer drivers. All this is maintained by a massive network of solidarity, extending outside the regions affected by the disaster, spreading throughout the territory occupied by the Brazilian state and other countries as well.

When the disaster struck, the majority of the population quickly set aside meritocracy and individualism and dedicated their time to helping other people, never asking whether they deserved that help, never expecting a reward for it. People paid out of their own pockets to ensure that others had something to wear and something to eat. In the midst of the catastrophe, many people had the chance to realize that we are all in this together and that money is of little help when there is no more water to sell on the market.

Capitalists and the state will do everything in their power to take over and centralize self-organized solidarity actions, whether by forcibly seizing control of operations, requisitioning properties, coercing people to return to their jobs, or institutionalizing the aid organizations that remain. Our self-organization and unrestricted solidarity are a real threat, as government and capitalism depend on our disunity and our indifference to others’ suffering.

We need to continue mobilizing and coordinating if we are to prevent capitalists from using this catastrophe and ones to come to advance their destructive projects. It is up to us to organize ourselves to occupy abandoned properties and ensure that they are used for the benefit of our communities. Make sure church buildings are used to support people in need and not to spread hate and intolerance. Fight so that no one profits from the tragedy, so that resources are distributed to those in need. If we are forced to rebuild our lives and our cities, let’s make sure we build something better, something fairer.

If what is called humanity has a future, that future will be collective. Otherwise, it simply won’t be at all.

Interview: Okupa dos Mil Povos

Okupa dos Mil Povos is a squat with almost twenty years of history in Porto Alegre. Located in one of the neighborhoods most affected by the flood, the territory was submerged for 24 days. Among the inhabitants are children, dogs, and cats. They still suffer from the effects of the water, mud, oils and chemicals that remained after the flood, in addition to the effects of the high-impact cleaning products needed to restore the space.

In this brief interview, we spoke with participants in the occupation about the solidarity work and fundraising to recover the space and resume life after the tragedy—now that climate catastrophes are no longer a future threat, but part of the present experience of surviving capitalism.

A discussion during an event at Okupa dos Mil Povos.

Tell us a little about the Okupa dos Mil Povos and how the May floods affected the space.

The Território Okupa dos Mil Povos was born as an autonomous collective at the beginning of 2021. Comprised of several people from different parts of the world, this anarchic collective emerged within a squat that started in 2005 when people expropriated capitalist real estate speculators to build a real alternative to the inert life of prevailing neoliberalism. In these few years of life as a collective, the collective has given free rein to the accumulation of knowledge that the Anarkopunk Movement built over decades, also following the rebellious and combative heritage of many generations of anarchists who gave their lives to build the present struggle that we carry out today through self-organization and direct action. We have been an active part of the Teia dos Povos (Web of The Peoples) in struggle in Rio Grande do Sul, creating and maintaining a forum for the dissemination of theoretical and graphic material for two years, bringing people closer to the ideas of autonomy of the Web that is expanding throughout Brazil.

Together with Indigenous and quilombola villages, we built the 5th People’s Assembly in 2022; we carried out health days with Warao Indigenous people who immigrated from Venezuela; we held raffles and sold screen-printed t-shirts to finance the healing and prayer house for the Kaingang community in the reclaimed Indigenous land in Canela, Serra Gaúcha—not to mention many construction days, vegetable gardens, murals (2022), conversations, and discussions. We were part of a propaganda and mural-painting collective that met at the Ateneu Batalha da Várzea (2021-2022). In this social center, in 2022, our collective held a series of discussions about the struggles in Latin America that we call “Latin America in Flames,” that drew participants from Colombia, Ecuador, and Chile.

We held open calls for street demonstrations, in support of the Colombian people in 2021 and denouncing the persecution and disappearance of Yanomami Indigenous people in 2022. We visited, accompanied, and promoted the recovery of ancestral territories alongside Kaingang, Xokleng, and Guarani Indigenous peoples. We wrote on the walls of the city of Porto Alegre a thousand times, day and night, during demonstrations or in the dark of night.

The May floods only confirm that the fight against capitalism and governments around the world is increasingly essential and vital. Our house, along with the community space, was underwater, under mud, chemicals, and contaminating oils, for more than twenty days. We will continue cleaning and we will continue building autonomy and anarchic popular rebellion, without leaders or parties, until we destroy the last pillar of prison society.

A glimpse of the Okupa dos Mil Povos, “Occupied Territory of a Thousand Peoples.”

How have mutual support actions been organized, one month after the floods?

Now, after the first month since the flood, there is no way of donating left that is not institutionalized or bureaucratized with social and personal records. In this context, it is very difficult for us to raise funds from these platforms. Our only inflows of money, so to speak, are from supportive companions and people we know who know about our situation and help us with something. We are still in great need of basic things like beds, a proper kitchen, and refrigerators. These are things that we do not have access to due to lack of economic resources; with our jobs we cannot cover the costs of things like these. In the beginning, lots of help arrived and, although it was not enough in the face of everything we lost, we were very happy to feel and see the mutual support of people, especially from anarchic circles, which is where solidarity is most seen in a moment of loss like this.

We also see a consistency in the generation and accumulation of data by most NGOs and delivery institutions.

Which occupations were affected and how has the collaboration been between radical social centers, occupations, and other movements?

In Porto Alegre, there are several squats with left-wing tendencies, all very different from each other, and others that are also anarchist, with queer/gender dissent and the like. In our experience as a house, I believe that support between these centers has been almost zero—it is sad but true. There is a social center that made a bridge between these anarchist spaces: the “Esp(A)ço” ran a big campaign where they managed to buy some collective tools which, in a sense, was the link to a minimum of dialogue and communication. It is important to note that personal relationships of affinity also involve this flow of communication that is not so visible, but exists. At the end of the day, we all know how our companions from other spaces are doing through this sort of word of mouth.

Other donation delivery channels are usually very limited and precarious, as well as bureaucratic. In general, we receive little and dedicate ourselves to contributing to other spaces of resistance, despite not being so close in terms of thought and action. We see the urgency of the need for minimal coordination of anarchic spaces and also in the construction of horizontal collective bodies.

A glimpse of the Okupa dos Mil Povos.

How can people from outside Rio Grande do Sul—and also from outside Brazil—help with the reconstruction work in occupations in Porto Alegre?

To answer the last question, we would like to say that we see anarchist solidarity from several points of view.

The first is material: without a doubt, this is often urgent for daily life and subsistence. In this sense, we still have open channels to receive support from anywhere on the planet.

We believe that combative solidarity is also very important. Continuing to strengthen the frontal struggle against all power structures is part of the tool called solidarity.

Another important dimension we see is communication beyond Instagram or Facebook. Direct conversation is important to bring different realities closer together and generate future affinities.

Finally, we would like to thank everyone who still believes that anarchy is possible, that building it is a daily task, everyone who strives to live their ideas of freedom more concretely every day!

An embrace for everyone!

From the occupied territory of los thousand pueblos,

June 8, 2024, Porto Alegre

-Organized individualities and anarchic collective of los thousand pueblos

A satellite image shows the flooding in Porto Alegre on May 6.

Six Months in a Neoliberal Dystopia : Social Cannibalism versus Mutual Aid and Resistance in Argentina

2024-06-17T18:06:18Z

In December 2023, Javier Milei came to power in Argentina, introducing sweeping deregulation and austerity measures. Promising to crush social movements in the name of unfettered capitalism, his administration is paving the way for complete social collapse and the emergence of narco-violence on a mass scale. In the following account, our correspondent paints a vivid picture of the rival forces and visions that are contending for the future of Argentina, culminating most recently in the clashes of June 12, when militant demonstrators took on nearly three thousand police officers surrounding a barricaded congress.

If you are inspired by what you read here, please consider donating to La Cultura Del Barrio, a decade-running anti-fascist social and sports club in Buenos Aires. Skyrocketing inflation and the complete deregulation of the Argentine real estate market have made it difficult to hold on to physical community spaces at precisely the moment that they are most desperately needed. If you are positioned outside the Argentine economic crisis, you may have an opportunity to help those on the front lines there to survive cutthroat capitalism and demonstrate an alternative.

The anti-fascist, anarchist, and autonomous bloc during the demonstration of March 24: “Against state violence—popular self-defense.”

Snapshots

In late January 2024, social movements, neighborhood assemblies, and leftist organizations gather in front of congress to protest the massive package of neoliberal reforms being debated inside. Police respond in massive numbers. One officer can be seen strolling around wearing a “Don’t Tread on Me” Gadsen flag patch on his vest.

By the end of the evening, although nothing much has happened, police are riding around in pairs on motorbikes, shooting rubber bullets indiscriminately into the crowd.

A police officer with a Gadsen flag in front of congress in January 2024.

A few days later, Sandra Pettovello, Minister of “Human Capital,” refuses to meet with social organizations to discuss the delivery of food aid to thousands of comedores populares (neighborhood soup kitchens). Taking a page from Marie Antoinette, she declares, “If there is anybody who is hungry, I will meet with them one on one,” but without the intermediation of social organizations.

The next day, thousands take her up on her offer, lining up in front of her ministry. She refuses to meet with any of them.

The line downtown stretches for 20 blocks the day after the Minister of Human Capital declared that she would receive those who were hungry on an individual basis.

By early March, Telam, the public news agency, has been shut down and shuttered. So has the INADI, the national institute against discrimination. Waves of layoffs decimate almost all public institutions, including the national library. There is talk of privatizing the national bank. As workers mobilize to defend public institutions and their workplace, they find the buildings barricaded off and surrounded by riot police. So-called “libertarian” activists stage a photo op celebrating the closings and firings.

Cops surround the shuttered building of the public news agency Telam.

Ursula is interviewed on live TV by a reporter from one of the pro-government channels. “I’m a widower, I receive a government subsidy, and live with my mother, who is retired.” She mentions that she has three children, one of whom is standing on the street in the cold next to her as she’s being interviewed. She says that she recently lost her job. As she explains that they try to survive by selling packs of stickers on the street, she breaks down in tears in front of her teenage daughter.

Minutes before Ursula’s interview, another woman had been interviewed on the street. “I work three jobs to make ends meet.” Neither of them mentioned the political and economic decisions that have led them to these situations.

The cost of living has exploded. Inflation is “under control” now—if one can call a 9% monthly inflation rate under control—only because consumer demand has collapsed. The cost of utilities, medicine, and basic food items have exploded with well over 100% price increases in all of these categories. At the same time, rent contracts have been completely deregulated.

The result is not surprising. As the real value of wages collapses, sales plummet. It’s not just the public workers that the ultraliberals have stigmatized as “parasites living off of society” who are losing their jobs. Small businesses and factories are closing one after the other. During the month of May, 300,000 “salary accounts”—bank accounts used exclusively to receive monthly wages—have been closed.

In one factory in the province of Catamarca, workers have not taken the loss of their workplace laying down. The 134 workers of the Textilcom textile factory, suspecting that it was about to be shut down, occupied the factory as an act of resistance against the closure and as leverage to ensure that they would not be robbed of back pay.

Yet even here, the workers who are taking collective action, occupying a factory, and suffering the practical consequences of capitalist market logic still make it a point to distance themselves from the unemployed, informally employed, and marginalized people that make up the bulk of the social movements. “We don’t depend on state aid, we don’t want aid, we aren’t like the piqueteros.”

A random person confronts President Milei on the street, yelling, “People can’t make ends meet!”

Milei responds, “If people weren’t making ends meet, they would be dying in the streets, so that’s false.”

Even the pro-government and right-wing press describe his statement as “despicable.”

At the same time, social organizations break the news that the Ministry of Human Capital has been refusing to distribute over five thousand tons of food and goods. While the Ministry has been accusing the vast network of comedores populares run by social organizations of extortion and alleging that an audit revealed that half of the comedores populares do not exist, all of that food has been sitting in their warehouses, rotting.

A judge orders the government to begin distributing the food. Rather than comply, they appeal the judicial order.

Meanwhile, 49% of the country in living in poverty, with 11.9% of the population in extreme poverty—defined as “those unable to meet their basic food needs.”

Demonstrators outside the location where the Ministry of Human Capital is holding up thousands of tons of food aid.

These are just a few glimpses of the massive economic and social tragedy that has unfolded in Argentina since the government of Javier Milei came to power. The last four are from early June, as tensions ramped up ahead of June 12. Through his government, the neoliberal political class of the past has once again reentered the halls of power, with a cabinet representing a who’s who of neoliberal ideologues responsible for Argentina’s last economic crash in the early 2000s.

Spiraling poverty rates and out-of-control inflation didn’t begin with Milei’s government. They already existed, which was one of the factors that contributed to Milei’s popular appeal and electoral triumph. The preceding center-left Kirchnerist government’s failures stemmed from a misconception about the fundamental nature of capitalism: the Kirchnerist either did not recognize or did not acknowledge the impossibility of reaching a lasting truce between market interests and the general interest of society. Nonetheless, the previous government understood society as a connected whole, at least in principle, and saw freedom as something produced collectively. The friction between their words and their deeds paved the way for today’s experiment in completely deregulated capitalism.

Now, Argentine society is at the mercy of people who believe that the invisible hand of the market will resolve all problems—and others who pretend to believe this for the sake of political gain. People whose definition of freedom is every man for himself. We are in the hands of the most fanatical adherents of obscure Austrian ultra-capitalist economists. As their fantasies meet the real world, the consequences are immediate—precipitating an explosion in collective suffering and misery.

Buenos Aires, June 12, 2024.

The Ultraliberal Capitalist Fantasy Meets the Real World

It was like watching a child learning in real time during their first economics class. Esteban Trebucq, one of the most pro-Milei journalists on the right-wing news channel La Nacion+, was discussing the skyrocketing of monthly premiums at private insurance companies. In a span of five months, private insurers have raised their premiums by over 150%, one of the many consequences of Milei’s massive executive order deregulating large sectors of the Argentine economy including the insurance “industry.”

“There are old people, retired people on fixed budgets,” Trebucq was saying, “people who have pre-existing conditions, families who can no longer afford the premiums and fall back into the public system.” A public health system which is already feeling the impact of the greatest austerity project in history—as Milei likes to boast—and is ill-equipped to handle the influx of tens of thousands of new patients from the private sector. “With inelastic goods and services, the things that people need in order to survive, there’s a power imbalance between the one who needs the good or service and the provider.”

I remember blinking blankly at the screen, wondering how he could get so close, yet still be so far.

Milei’s executive order abolishing over forty regulations and loosening hundreds more was announced last December on live television, immediately provoking spontaneous mobilizations in many neighborhoods of Buenos Aires as well as in front of congress. It was a flagrant abuse of presidential authority: executive orders were meant for responding to emergencies, not creating them. Essentially, Milei used the Decreto de Necesidad y Urgencia (“Executive Order of Need and Emergency”) to bypass congress in order to unilaterally impose a constitutional reform. The lower house of congress has since rejected the executive order, but is still in effect because, due to a Kirchnerist modification in 2005, executive orders must be rejected by both houses of congress in order to be repealed.

The deregulatory changes express the most extreme neoliberalism. The logic behind them pretends that social and commercial relations are always taking place between equals, and that any intervention in the interest of society as a whole will only result in inefficiency and poor service, hindering competition and therefore growth and productivity. According to this reasoning, regulations to protect the poor are the chief cause of poverty itself.

In their eyes, the tenants who needs a roof over their heads and the landlords who own the homes are negotiating on an equal footing. You have the freedom to pay your entire salary to have a roof over your head, if that’s what the landlords choose to charge you, or else you can freely choose to sleep under the stars. The workers who have no choice other than to sell their labor in order to feed their families are not being coerced by the capitalists who control the housing market and the means of production. That is the reasoning that Esteban Trebucq and his colleagues promote.

Yet, here he was on television, almost conceding that the world doesn’t work that way.

But he never connected the dots. Eventually, the government made the formal accusation, which has become a judicial affair, that the insurance companies constituted themselves into a de facto “cartel,” conspiring to uniformly raise prices. Of course they did! That’s what always happens when an industry reaches the monopoly stage of capitalist development and is left to exploit and extort freely.

Police try to remove a laid off bus driver who has thrown himself under a bus in protest. “I just want to feed my family.”

Deregulation has sparked an explosion in utilities costs and basic living expenses: increases in the 300% to 400% range on public transportation, over 100% in gas and electricity bills and the cost of fuel, well over 100% in the cost of rice and bread and other essentials. Coupled with austerity measures, this has set off a brutal recession, as evidenced by dramatic drops in consumption in two areas with inelastic demand— basic foodstuffs and medicine.

Within six months of the capitalist fantasy economy meeting the real world, the consequences are that in Argentina, many people are going without their medicine and skipping meals on a regular basis. In a country that is known as “the wheat field of the world,” a loaf of bread costs the same as it does in Paris. In a country where average wages are a tenth of what they are in Europe, a cup of coffee costs as much in Buenos Aires as it does in Madrid. In a country that processes its own oil and has a public oil company, fuel now costs what it does in the United States. Argentina now has both the highest cost of living in Latin America and the lowest minimum wage.

The brunt of austerity is not being born by the political class, as Milei promised, but by the country’s workers—both employed and unemployed—and middle class. Given free reign, the capitalist class has shown that its program is simply maximum extraction of wealth from the producing class.

This is no surprise to us. Anarchists warned of the bait and switch from the beginning, yelling to anyone who would listen that it was no coincidence that all the oligarchs of Argentina were uniting behind this supposed “rebel.” The eternal dream of capitalists is to strip the state of any elements that do not function to enable them to accumulate wealth—maximizing profits by returning us to the conditions of the late 19th century.

Their dream is our nightmare. Larger and larger sectors of society are realizing this as they experience it for themselves. European prices, African wages, Southeast Asian labor conditions.

“We are the nightmare of those who want to rob us of our dreams.”

The Battle of Ideas

When it is obvious to ordinary people that they are materially worse off by any measure, how is it possible to contain disturbances and prevent a general upheaval? Even more incredibly, how is it possible that Milei still maintains popular support of around 50%?

The answer is ideology.

Ideology, paired with resentment, distraction, and the leveraging of poor against very poor.

Milei has spent a lot of time abroad, arranging to be seen with the likes of Donald Trump, Spain’s far-right Vox leader Santiago Abascal, the white supremacist Elon Musk, and El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele. To Milei’s hard-core supporters, this is proof of his popularity as a defender of capitalism, freedom, and Western values. His diehard base is similar to the supporters of Donald Trump: they are overwhelmingly male, prone to conspiracy theories, frustrated with their life circumstances, and convinced that what they see as socialism, foreigners, and the woke agenda are responsible for their personal misfortunes and for Argentina’s economic crisis in general. They still zealously believe that we need to suffer now in order to be better off tomorrow, that a “V-shaped” economic recovery is imminent.

Likewise, the discourse about abortion being murder and the positive references to the military and the last dictatorship are red meat for the older, relatively well-to-do right-wing voters who feel the economic pressure somewhat less than other sectors of society. They have accepted Milei—first grudgingly, and now somewhat more eagerly—following the political marginalization of a more moderate right-wing option. Again, this is reminiscent of the way Trump absorbed large segments of the traditional conservative base in the United States.

But there is a broader ideological conflict at play. Milei and the ultraliberals reference this constantly. The true believers say they want to transform the core mentality of Argentines and Argentine politics. The pragmatically-minded among the far right and the capitalist class understand that their best protection against solidarity spreading between struggles and across demographics is to drive wedges between different sectors of the working class, dividing those suffering the economic crisis to different extents and in different ways.

The public worker has to be pitted against the worker in the private sector of the formal economy. The worker in the formal economy has to be pitted against the worker in the informal economy. Those who have work, formal or not, have to look with disdain and contempt at the unemployed who are trying to survive on their own or organizing collectively to demand the means of survival. It’s especially important to demonize those who are unemployed, are active in social organizations, and also happen to be lack Argentine citizenship.

Every day, we see right-wing media outlets promoting these divisions. The small shopkeeper rages against the street vendors who don’t pay taxes and supposedly “aren’t even from this country.” The office worker tells the camera that he’s glad public employees are being fired and institutions shut down, since he has been convinced that there is a high tax burden on private enterprise in Argentina, created by the need to finance the state—and that this, not capitalist greed, is what is keeping his wages from increasing. The taxi driver stuck in traffic while unemployed workers are blocked from reaching the president’s residence fumes against the lazy moochers who don’t provide to the economy and don’t let others work. He is outraged that they expect to live from handouts and that the “culture of work” has been lost. Later, the same journalist will go from one store to the next, talking to shopkeepers about how severe the losses to their daily revenue created by the demonstration were. We are to believe that the unemployed and the social organizations, the most vulnerable and poor of Argentina, are the demons keeping the Argentine economy from booming.

The recession is reducing the inflation rates, while unemployment rates are exploding. For the last few years, job “opportunities” were abundant in Argentina, but they were poorly paid; one job was often not enough to survive on, and the real value of salaries was constantly diminishing against inflation. Inflation hits the lowest earners hardest and is almost always a de facto tax on the poor, but it is still an unarguably collective phenomenon—one that no advocate of the market economy can blame on the personal failures of individuals.

As recession advances and we trade one crisis for another, the ideological campaign that the capitalist class has been waging is coming into focus. Unemployment unfolds as a personal drama. Inside thousands of homes across the country, death by a thousand cuts is taking place as somebody sits alone thinking how they will make ends meet next month, or arrives home to tell their partner that they’ll have to turn to odd jobs to keep the kids fed, or as they head, timid and embarrassed, to a comedor popular for the first time because the fridge is empty. Each unemployed person is bombarded with propaganda emphasizing that it is their fault. You should work more, if you really look you’ll find something, you should hustle more, start a small business. Unemployment is a personal failure for which you alone are responsible. That narrative is no coincidence: it’s a containment dam against the spread of solidarity and resistance.

And because for now, they are winning the battle of ideas, we see examples like the Textilcom workers mentioned above. These workers are involved in a classic model of labor struggle—occupying a factory to defend their interests against bosses who are firing them as a result of this government’s policies. Yet even as they are about to become unemployed themselves, they still find it necessary to distance themselves from those who are currently unemployed. In hopes of appealing to the good will of society, they do not identify with the ones on social plans, the piqueteros. When asked about this government and its policies, they answer that they are “not interested in politics.”

How long can the dam hold?

Police and ideology work hand in hand to suppress resistance.

It’s the afternoon of May 30. La Nacion+ has a correspondent on the train Roca, one of Buenos Aires’ main train lines, because the train is traveling at a reduced maximum speed of 30 kilometers per hour as a protest by railway workers demanding wage increases—a partial measure as a prelude to a 24-hour strike on June 4 if no agreement is reached.

The journalist is interviewing commuters, clearly hoping to elicit something like “They should protest, but without complicating the lives of other workers” or “I make half of what they make and you don’t see me out here blocking roads,” or “This is the problem in this country, people always protesting and not working.” Instead, a woman in her mid-thirties answers, “I’m fine with it. Everything that is done in defense of the workers is perfectly fine. Of course, it will affect us all, but I’m in favor of all protests against injustices against workers.”

He pushes her about the “inconvenience of the delays.” She sticks to her guns. “It’s part of what we have to go through. If we aren’t all united in the situation that we’re going through, there’s no way out. We’re all workers, and if I were in their position one day, I would like others to support me too.” The next person, a young guy in a hoodie, flatly states “They need to negotiate wages, this is all Milei’s fault. He’s a son a bitch.” The next person, a machinist wearing a Boca Juniors jersey, responds, “Of course it’s annoying, I’m taking over an hour to get home. But Milei should resign. Everybody should take to the streets.”

The reporter accosts four or five more people, but they all respond in the same vein, so the studio announcer—once again, it’s de facto government spokesperson Esteban Trebucq—takes over. “Seems to be a lot of leftists on the train today.”

Maybe. Or maybe, even if the tide has yet to turn, the cracks in the dam are multiplying.

Society versus the forces of order.

The Construction of the Internal Enemy: Journalists Point the Gun, Cops Pull the Trigger

So it has to be again, the good Argentines against the Orcs, as ex-President Mauricio Macri recently referred to leftists and social organizations. Classism and racism are becoming ever more normalized. A teenage Milei fanatic at the president’s book release and concert (yes, he sang… no, I don’t care to explain) flatly states that “Milei has a tough job ahead of him, but I believe he can get this country of negros going again.” Negros literally means blacks, but in Argentina this term has classist as well as racist implications. Used to describe a socioeconomic condition rather than a skin color per se, it is basically slang for “lazy ignorant poors.” It’s a scandalous thing to say on national TV, but the journalist on La Nacion+ doesn’t bat an eye.

Anyone who resists in an active and organized manner becomes public enemy number one, the embodiment of the negros, the Orcs. Those who dare take to the streets and inconvenience the good Argentines. The violent ones who won’t cede their dignity to the 56% of voters who asked for this. The social organizations of the poor, unemployed, and informally employed.

In Argentina, there is an incredible quilt of solidarity that protects the most exposed, forgotten, and marginalized from capitalism as best it can. Over decades of chronic poverty, unemployment, and starvation wages, the social organizations—known as piqueteros, which essentially grew as a response to the neoliberal policies of the 1990s—have woven a network of comedores populares. These are spaces where anybody can find a warm plate of food, or at the very least, some maté, the traditional Argentine drink, to silence the rumblings of hunger in their stomach. But they are also much more than that.

A comedor popular.

They often provide local youth with a space where they have access to free cultural activities, much as a neighborhood sports club might. A place where kids can sit and draw or see a free puppet show, a safe space in neighborhoods where the streets are often overrun with petty crime, illegal capitalism, and drug addiction—which many children fall prey to without the networks of support that the comedores populares and the social organizations provide.

Of course, if the government and corporate media are to be believed, the comedores and social organizations are the dregs of society, criminals who have made it their business to leech off of the poor for economic and political gain. For weeks now, the “Ministry of Human Capital” has been spearheading a campaign of stigmatization gleefully amplified by the press. They allege that a government audit revealed approximately half of the comedores do not actually exist. That leftist and Peronist organizations, who manage access to the comedores and the government subsidized jobs that exist there, were forcing people to attend marches and demonstrations on threat of being expelled from the comedor or not receiving food. In other cases, they claim that the food aid delivered by the government was sold in neighborhoods rather than distributed at the comedores. Finally, they claim that the participants were providing fake expense reports to the government in order to divert funds intended for the comedores to their own political organizations.

This is where it gets complicated, as the right wing is instrumentalizing a grain of truth.

There are approximately 35,000 comedores populares in Argentina, employing over 130,000 people and feeding who knows how many hundreds of thousands. Many of these are run by the mass organizations of traditional leftist parties—the largest being the Polo Obrero, the unemployed workers front of the Trotskyist Partido Obrero. Others are extensions of left-wing Peronist organizations, while still others are truly independent, simply based in neighborhoods. In the early 2000s, the Kirchnerists recognized that the social organizations had a revolutionary potential and posed a potential threat to governability; in response, they incorporated them into a system of interdependence with the state. The social organizations act as intermediaries providing the subsidized work plans that many people who aren’t strictly volunteers at the comedores depend on to subsist. Likewise, the comedores depend on food aid that comes directly from the federal government. Considering the scale of the network of comedores, the dire conditions in which many of them are organized, the corruption that is endemic in Argentina, and the clientelism, verticality, and authoritarianism that permeate Peronist political organizations, nobody should be surprised that there are indeed cases of abuse, corruption, and extortion.

As anarchists, we are critical of the dynamics of clientelismo politico, political clientelism. It may look like mutual aid, but it is a tool via which authoritarian organizations—not just corrupt elements within them—exploit the needs of poor communities to consolidate their own political influence and financial gain.

But the vast majority of the comedores are collectively generated and run, an essential bulwark of community defense against the consequences of capitalism in the country’s poor neighborhoods. Milei’s government is trying to stigmatize them as a whole in order to make it easier to isolate and target them, cutting the remaining threads of the social safety net in order to create a more atomized society.

Workers involved in a comedor popular protest. The sign reads “Hunger Doesn’t Wait.”

Where the comedores populares and social organizations cease to exist, people will look to escape poverty and hunger through other means. The government is paving the way for social cannibalism and the narco-state—free market capitalism in its purest form.

And this is already happening, on both fronts.

Rosario, March 5

The slums of Rosario, Argentina’s third largest city, are already largely dominated by rival narco gangs. The fact that Rosario is a port city and that its ports are privatized makes it a particularly attractive hub for the drug trade. Many local youths, faced with the choice between 12 hours a day of low-wage exploitation or a relatively lucrative and “glamorous” role as a narco foot soldier, choose the latter option.

Emboldened by the “law and order” line of the new government, Pablo Coccocioni, Minister of Security of the province in which Rosario is located, posts an image to his Instagram account on March 5. Under the headline “They’re Going to Have a Worse and Worse Time,” it shows dozens of prisoners lined up in rows, sitting cross-legged, shirtless, heads down. It is a carbon copy of the photos of captured gang members we see coming from Bukele’s El Salvador.

The image posted by the Minister of Security of Santa Fe, where Rosario is located.

Only four days later, a fifteen-year-old narco foot soldier walks into a gas station and murders the gas station attendant. This is the fourth in a string of random murders of workers across Rosario since Coccocioni posted that image. Two taxi drivers and a bus driver have also been killed in cold blood while working. People are afraid to leave their homes.

In retrospect, Bukele had said, “That picture was a grave mistake; you can only do that when the gangs are neutralized and you have control of the street.” This is not the case in Rosario, and the consequences do not impact the political class, nor the police or armed forces, but rather, innocent workers going about their day. If we imagine that the government is actually trying to suppress gang activity, Coccocioni’s post was a strategic mistake—but such provocations create the conditions for voters to shift even further to the right. We live in a jungle, we are faced with animals and murderers, “law and order” politics are the only way out of this jungle. Even though, in fact, those politics are the cause of the crisis.

Narco state brutality. A fifteen-year-old narco foot soldier executes a worker at random.

Western Suburbs of Buenos Aires, May 26

Like countless other young people in Argentina, the musician Manuel Lopez Ledesma is working as a Rappi delivery driver to make ends meet. As he waits outside a pizzeria for his order, he’s intercepted by two teenagers who kill him while attempting to steal his motorcycle. This is a classic example of the kind of social cannibalism that poverty generates.

The next day, a militant protest of Rappi delivery drivers in front of the local police precinct results in the burning of five vehicles, including a police cruiser. It’s a small explosion of anger and fury. Righteous, but also providing fodder to those who want to campaign for more law-and-order policing.

Delivery drivers set fire to a police cruiser in protest against the murder of a colleague.

As crime rates surge, it isn’t the rich who are exposed. They are protected behind walls, by private security, in closed neighborhoods. They travel in private vehicles; they never set foot in a bus or train. People from working class neighborhoods are the ones who suffer the social cannibalism, who must fear being beaten or perhaps killed for their cellphones or backpacks while riding the train or waiting for the bus. This only deepens social resentment, paving the way for people to become more reactionary. With labor struggles and other forms of resistance multiplying, the escalation of social cannibalism and narco-trafficking serve to legitimize the structures of repression that are essential to the project of completely deregulating the Argentine economy.

If we live in a jungle, if anybody on the street could rob me as I wait for the bus on a cold Monday morning, if every hooded figured on the street could kill me as I wait to make a delivery for a few pesos, most people will end up supporting whatever measures the authorities promise to take to exert more control. The result is a war of “law and order” against those who have been lumped together as an amorphous and terrifying horde of petty criminals, cold-blooded murderers, orcs, dirty leftists, and corrupt social organizations who prey on the poor and vulnerable.

In the eyes of a terrified population and a society decimated by the propaganda of resentment and individualism, there is no alternative.

Solidarity and Mutual Aid versus Hustle Culture and the Narco-State

Fortunately, there are still people fighting the good fight, even in the midst of this mess.

Isla Maciel, Any Given Saturday Morning

In the middle of the “famous Isla Maciel,” an island near the internationally recognized neighborhood of La Boca—notoriously poor and dangerous even by Buenos Aires standards—a couple dozen teenagers are gathered. A closer look reveals that they are wearing t-shirts sporting the internationally recognized emblem of the twin flags of anti-fascism. The kids are taking part in one of several free boxing sessions that Boxeo Popular holds in the neighborhood every Saturday for local kids and teenagers. Boxeo Popular—“People’s Boxing”—is a project started and run by Accion Antifascista Buenos Aires (Anti-Fascist Action Buenos Aires) and the anti-fascist sporting and social club La Cultura del Barrio. Laura, one of the founders of the project, reports that “thirty-three families participate in the project, through which we support and empower about eighty-five kids.” The club provides the kids with uniforms, equipment, a licensed coach, and a post-training snack.

Boxeo Popular: “Grassroots Organization. Mutual Aid. Generating Alternatives.”

“We understand this project, which is now in its sixth year, in the logic of mutual aid, not of welfarism,” explains Laura. “We provide a framework and an initiative, while the kids and the families contribute to making it possible every week by providing the necessary infrastructure and participating actively in its realization.” As for how the project defines itself, “It’s a means, not an end in itself. Guaranteeing access to sport and recreation at no cost, without prejudices or discrimination, through physical, sporting, and play activities which are oriented towards fostering values opposed to all forms of oppression—without losing sight of the different psycho-social situations of vulnerability that the youths participating in the project might be experiencing.” She sees the project as a concrete manifestation of values with much broader implications. “It’s a means through which we foster working class sport, organization and self-management through mutual aid, active participation, and education—reappropriating our strength as a class and collectively building real alternatives and spaces of social resistance.”

Teenagers participate in a boxing session in Isla Maciel.

A Boxeo Popular session.

Villa Crespo, Central Buenos Aires, Every Day at 8 am

La Cultura del Barrio, Latin America’s only explicitly anti-fascist sporting and social club, opens its doors for the day. The first participants strolling through its doors might be here for a functional fitness training class, yoga, boxing, or Muay Thai. Later, in the evening, they can attend more sporting activities, or a straightedge hardcore show, a discussion, or any one of the myriad activities spread out through the club’s two stories. All of these events feature a mix of young and old, all genders, subcultural types and regular folks from the neighborhood. The political culture of the space is explicit: it is covered in anti-fascist and queer flags, posters and stickers from anarchist organizations across the world, and a large banner reading “Against State Violence—Popular Self-Defense.”

The club, founded in 2011 as an outgrowth of Accion Antifascista Buenos Aires, is unique in that, without hiding its political convictions, it has become a space used by the entire local community, with hundreds of dues-paying members participating regularly in its activities—though no one is ever turned away due to lack of funds, and the club strives to maintain accessible prices. The club’s core values reflect the anarchist leanings of its active members: mutual aid, grassroots organization, a pursuit of alternatives outside of the logic of profit and capital.

A show at La Cultura del Barrio.

A discussion at La Cultura del Barrio.

Social organizations, neighborhood assemblies, neighborhood sports clubs (which the current government also wants to privatize), mutual aid and solidarity groups, and rank and file unions are all representations of our concept of society. As these exist in Argentina today, they are imperfect. This is not surprising, as—like all of us—they can’t help but show the influence of the society from which they emerged.

The attacks of the state and its press may masquerade as an ethical crusade against corruption or abuse, but this is just an excuse. Yes, corruption and abuse are endemic to Argentine society. But if that were really the issue here, we would be talking about the need to dismantle the police apparatus, which is wildly corrupt, abusive, and, in many neighborhoods, central to organizing crime and drug gangs. Or we would be talking about the church, with its history of subservience to military repression and its numerous child abuse scandals. Yet, to no one’s surprise, there no breathless outrage targeted towards those institutions.

The state is attacking social organizations, trade unions, and neighborhood social and sports clubs on principle because they are tangible and material representations of the relations we want to build. We want to create a context in which people may truly interact as equals in pursuit of their collective interests, defying the logic of neoliberal capitalism.

Police guarding the entrance to La Cultura del Barrio during the anti-anarchist raids ahead of the 2018 G20 summit.

They want us isolated, atomized, each one with three jobs hustling until our luck turns, imagining that we could be millionaires if only we wake up early enough and work diligently enough. Every volunteer at a comedor popular, every militant in a social organization, every rank-and-file worker at a workplace assembly, and every kid taking part in a free activity in their neighborhood club is a brick in the wall of resistance to the capitalist project.

But just as a barricade blocks a street but opens the way, our projects of mutual aid and solidarity are much more than collective acts of resistance. They also enable us to experience life outside the logic of capitalism. They show that one can participate in fulfilling activities without having to spend money, that one can be welcome in a traditionally macho space regardless of appearance or gender, that anyone can get together with friends and start a band or organize a demonstration. They show that each of us is much more than our earning or spending power. In a time when a future outside of capitalism has become almost unimaginable, they offer glimpses of a different world.

An aerial view of the massive march in defense of public universities in April 2024.

Resistance

Despite the events of June 12, which both sides have an interest in playing up, the current objective reality remains sobering. There is no convergence of struggles, no sign of an imminent uprising. The Peronist movement, including its left wing, is largely absent from the streets and protests—banking on letting the ultraliberals crash on their own so as to present themselves once again as the only viable governing power. The major unions refuse to execute a plan of struggle, limiting themselves to periodic measures in order to negotiate behind closed doors to protect themselves against changes in labor law that would diminish their influence. While it was nice to see the right-wing press cry about the losses generated by a 24-hour general strike (a reminder of who actually creates wealth), traditional industrial strike action can only get us so far in an economy in which half of the workforce is in the informal sector. The Marxist left can be commended for being present on the streets and in the struggles, but their influence is marginal, speaking both qualitatively and quantitatively.

History does not inevitably tend towards “progress,” nor is this a Hollywood movie in which the good guys will inevitably win. As poverty and hunger advance and the capitalists attack the social fabric woven over the decades since the last neoliberal experiment here failed, a grim dystopia awaits us if they succeed. Poverty, isolation, extreme exploitation, and finally, the narco-state.

Resistance is stirring, and flashpoints of conflict are coming quicker and stronger. On March 24, hundreds of thousands participated in the traditional demonstration remembering the military coup, rejecting Milei’s efforts to rehabilitate the memory of the last dictatorship. In late April, close to a million people took to the streets in defense of free and public universities. The bureaucratic unions, led by the Confederacion General del Trabajo, have held two general strikes, one of which involved considerable participation in the transport sectors. In the province of Misiones, education workers have been camping in protest for almost two weeks now. Hostility towards ultraliberals is growing—as could be seen during Milei’s last public event in Buenos Aires, on May 23, when people attacked his supporters and stole their flags.

An attack against a Milei party office on May Day 2024.

Flags seized from Milei supporters during his appearance in Buenos Aires in May 2024.

And then, on June 12…

One More Snapshot: June 12, 2024

It’s 10 am and the upper house of congress is in session. Today is the day of the vote on Milei’s mega-package of over two hundred ultra-neoliberal reforms, and another vote about whether to grant him extraordinary powers.

Tens of thousands have mobilized in front of congress again. The mainstream unions, the center-left and left-wing Peronist parties and organizations, the powerful Trotskyist left and the rest of the Marxist groupings, social organizations, neighborhood assemblies, and students.¹ The social movements and the “popular camp” face a congress that is completely barricaded off and defended by almost three thousand cops. Nonetheless, a Molotov cocktail flies through the air and strikes a police water cannon. Union workers can be seen in hand-to-hand combat with police. The entire area surrounding the congress erupts into pitched battle. Demonstrators overturn a press vehicle and set it on fire; they use another as a barricade; they light fires and use projectiles to defend themselves against police on motorbikes, police shooting tear gas and rubber bullets.

Buenos Aires, June 12, 2024.

Nonetheless, the package passes by a vote of 37-36, a result only possible thanks to the betrayal of two Peronist senators, and with Vice President Victoria Villarruel—an enthusiast of the dictatorship—casting the tie-breaking vote while Milei waits to board a plane to the G7 summit. The Office of the Presidency releases a statement describing the demonstrators as “terrorists” attempting to “overthrow the government.” The thirty-five arrestees are placed in pre-trial detention and charged with “crimes against the public powers and constitutional order.”²

As I reflect on the scenes of battle, my thoughts return to late May, just two weeks earlier, when Milei was giving a speech in the United States while police vehicles and a water cannon guarded one of the deposits where thousands of tons of food were being held. He had been emphasizing his usual talking points. “A moment will come when people are starving to death. So somehow, they’ll figure something out in order to not die. There doesn’t need to be an intervention to resolve the external question of consumption, because somebody will resolve it.”

I think back to his last sentence. “You think people are so stupid that they won’t do something so as to not die of hunger in the streets?” There, at least, he and I agree—and I have no doubt that tens of thousands who heard him had the same thought. In 2001, that “something” was a popular uprising that forced the president to resign and flee in a helicopter from the rooftop of the presidential palace.

Buenos Aires, June 12, 2024.

Still, the clashes of June 12 were nothing compared to what happened in December 2001. The reality is that Milei still retains a significant amount of social and political capital. But as the ultra-neoliberal project plunges Argentina further into poverty and unemployment, social conflict can only intensify. Our enemies in power are acutely aware of this and are preparing accordingly. We must do the same if we are to finish the task started in 2001.

Sensationalistic news coverage of the events of June 12.

The Sunbird: How to Start an Announcements-Only Thread on Signal : And How Organizers in Austin Used One to Coordinate Solidarity with Palestine

2024-05-27T20:36:48Z

As billionaires have clamped down on social media, secure group messaging platforms like Signal have moved to the fore as spaces for discussion and organizing. In this interview, organizers in Austin, Texas describe how they established Sunbird, a Signal account that runs an announcements-only thread to enable participants in the Palestine solidarity movement to share news and coordinate horizontally.

This model represents an alternative to centralized, top-down leadership models, showing how a movement can scale up without losing its decentralized, egalitarian character.

To skip directly to a step-by-step guide to establishing your own announcements-only Signal thread, click here.

Tell us about Sunbird.

Sunbird was started on April 24 by a group of unaffiliated students and community members in Austin, Texas. Our intention is to serve as an anonymous, real-time announcement and coordination platform to foster greater participation and activity from everyone who is involved in the struggle for the liberation of Palestine.

A principle that we hold dear is diversity of tactics. Everyone should be able to plan and promote events and share announcements while retaining their anonymity. In the current climate of repression, in which public organizers are being targeted all around the country, this is especially important. Here in Texas specifically, the 5th circuit ruling in McKesson v. Doe criminalizes organizing protest-related activities.

Sunbird is a creative technological solution to this problem. We draw inspiration from decades of movement infrastructure going back to Indymedia, the origins of Twitter as TXTmob, and the work of the Riseup collective, not to mention anonymous partisans in Ukraine, Hong Kong, and elsewhere who have creatively used Telegram groups to similar effects.

An announcement on Sunbird.

Why did you establish Sunbird?

Sunbird was created in the wake of the internationally coordinated economic blockades of April 15. When students established encampments at Columbia and then elsewhere, it became clear that in order to ensure the longevity and widest possible ownership of the movement locally, there was a need for an anonymous switchboard to potentiate fearless and confident participation.

The best way to combat the repression of social movements and to empower ourselves to act is to eliminate the distinction between organizer and organized. We believe that no individual or organization in Austin speaks for the entirety of the Palestinian resistance; consequently, we wanted to create a space that could empower everyone who feels ethically called to respond to the ongoing genocide to take action, announce events, and share live updates.

Who are you? Are you students?

We are an all-volunteer collective. Some of us are students at the University of Texas at Austin, others are community members. We are not affiliated with any organization, student or otherwise.

What scale is Sunbird operating on?

Sunbird is a platform for the Pro-Palestine, anti-genocide movement in Austin, Texas specifically. The need for platforms for anonymous coordination of diverse and creative movements exists wherever hearts yearn for liberation and freedom. We are inspired by similar projects elsewhere, but Sunbird is a special and unique solution deep in the heart of Texas. The power of Sunbird lies in our attention to and participation in our local context; rather than seeking to scale up this project, we encourage people to establish similar experiments with switchboard-style announcement threads elsewhere. We have heard that movements around the country are exploring creating platforms inspired by Sunbird.

We grew rapidly during our first few days, quickly hitting the 1000-person limit for Signal groups. To address this, we initially started a Telegram channel, as Telegram has better support for larger groups, but we ended up returning to Signal, establishing a second announcement channel that mirrors the content on the first. Downloading Signal in order to keep up to date with Sunbird was the first time many movement participants had installed an encrypted messaging application on their phones; Signal threads already existed for supply coordination, jail support, and other core functions, so sticking with Signal was easier than changing platforms. Though numbers fluctuate, there are currently approximately 1200 people across both announcement groups, a number that represents a sizable percentage of the most active and committed participants in the local pro-Palestine, anti-genocide movement.

State troopers and other violent mercenaries prepare to attack students on the University of Texas campus on April 29, 2024.

Why did you choose Signal?

There are two major benefits to using Signal. First, the messages are end-to-end encrypted, which means that Signal (the company) does not have access to them. Only you and the person on the other end can access the messages. This makes Signal different from texting and social media. Second, while you need a phone number to make an account, following a recent update, it is now possible to withhold your phone number from the people you message. This is very important for those who prefer to remain anonymous, because your phone number can be used to connect your messages to you.

We live in the age of surveillance capitalism. Big tech is actively working with governments and private security companies to monitor and undermine individual activists and entire movements. We see this in the shadow bans on Instagram and Twitter, the firing of pro-Palestine employees from Google, and the well-documented collaboration between law enforcement and tech companies.

We are normal people who live normal lives, but we take digital security very seriously. We are not technological or cryptography experts. We don’t have specialized skills. What we have set up is something anyone can do.

Anonymity is an important part of the Sunbird model.

How does Sunbird work?

We use Signal to coordinate, as well as encrypted documents in Riseup and Cryptpad. We work in shifts, since we receive up to hundreds of messages a day from different individuals, organizations, and journalists. To make sure that we all understand what is happening while any one person is away, we keep detailed notes, message drafts, and the text of frequently sent messages in a cryptpad.

We set up our Signal groups to only allow admins to post messages. This way, users can keep up with important developments and event information without being bogged down by chatter. All of the announcements in the group are aggregations of group member submissions. Though we edit for clarity—and we would have weeded out content by those opposed to Palestinian liberation had we ever received it—we welcome shared resources and announcements that movement participants believe would benefit others.

We don’t forward everything we receive. We avoid posts that would sow fear and disinformation; these can function as a form of self-repression, doing the work of the state. We work to verify all information that we send. We happily forward messages from many organizations in our role as a sort of “switchboard,” but we are not affiliated with any one organization. Our focus is on hyper-local announcements rather than nationally- or internationally-focused graphics, news, and content, though we do include some virtual events that movement participants submit.

How does Sunbird interface with larger established organizations?

In many movements, there are large, well-funded organizations that, despite their good intentions, undermine movements when they try to establish a central role as the single or authoritative voice of the movement. Just as resistance movements in Palestine collaborate to enable diverse forms of political action to take place alongside each other, we see Sunbird as encouraging a plural and diverse movement not monopolized by any one group. In places where a single organization has been able to establish itself as the “authoritative” voice of the Palestinian movement, this often undermines independent initiatives. These organizations can limit the bravery, ferocity, or creativity of movements, as the organizers are too cautious, unprepared, or incapable of directing those initiatives.

By using an anonymous switchboard-style model instead of the centralized model we have seen in the past from groups like the ANSWER [Act Now to Stop War and End Racism] coalition or PSL [Party for Socialism and Liberation], we protect all organizers—regardless of organization—from being held responsible for the activity of the movement as a whole. This is especially important in Texas in the wake of McKesson vs. Doe.

What has Sunbird enabled people to do?

During the first violent crackdown on students and community members, on April 24, Sunbird sent out live announcements to help keep students safe as state troopers called in from Houston violently attacked a planned rally. Sunbird facilitated the distribution of a jail support hotline phone number and circulated updates on police movements and other developments, helping students to remain calm amid the worst state violence seen on campus in decades.

The original organizers of the rally tried to work with police to disperse the crowd when the police declared it an unlawful assembly. After the police arrested the student organizers who were trying to de-escalate the situation and end the protest, the crowd became significantly bolder, leading to a several-hour standoff in which the state troopers were eventually forced to withdraw from campus. After the students successfully expelled the police from the campus, they declared the South Lawn a “Liberated Zone.”

A student paints a sign at the South Mall on April 25, 2024.

The courage and intelligence of the crowd in these moments—as well as the care, commitment, and initiative of ordinary students who were transformed by their experiences—represent an important corrective to the inertia one often finds in larger organizations.

Over the following days, Sunbird became a crucial element of infrastructure for students and others who wanted to organize events in the Liberated Zone. We invited everyone to submit event announcements, which we circulated on their behalf. We ourselves organized no events in the Liberated Zone, but we received event submissions from dozens of people and organizations, including a Popular University organized by the student organization that had planned the original protest on April 24, a talk from a doctor who had recently returned from medical mission in Gaza, and a call for musicians to participate in a jam session—not to mention reading groups, live call-ins with other student encampments, art makes, meetings for various newly-formed groups, and workshops on direct action, protest first aid, digital security, and the legal system for protesters.

We helped coordinate large supply runs for the Liberated Zone, helping off-campus supporters figure out the on-the-ground needs for food, water, art supplies, literature, and shade. We also helped put people in touch who took on the responsibility of storing these materials every night and bringing them back to the Liberated Zone each morning.

Many people told us that they would not have felt comfortable planning things without the anonymity, support, and encouragment that Sunbird provided. It often occurred that people would message Sunbird with an idea, saying something like “I think students/alumni/artists should…” In response, we encouraged people to organize events themselves and to use Sunbird to promote them. This approach to political organizing contrasts with the narrow vision of political change that is common among non-profit organizations and authoritarian political groups, which seek to maintain tight control on who participates in a movement and how. For our part, we believe that movements are stronger when people are able to determine for themselves how to contribute their particular talents, experiences, capacities, and specialized knowledge; the role of organizers should be to encourage autonomous initiatives.

Through Sunbird, University Baptist Church, which is located just off campus, declared itself a sanctuary space. Intitially imagined as a police-free space for student protestors fleeing violence, over the course of a few weeks the UBC space became a robust movement space with nightly dinners, workshops including media and legal trainings for those who had been banned from campus, and a place to store materials that could not be kept on campus overnight. The church held a nightly dinner for almost three weeks before switching to a weekly dinner. Arrestees from April 24 and 29 have used this space as a place to heal and plan as they face legal charges and pending disciplinary action. Here, Sunbird helped not by seeking to impose any one vision of organization, but by encouraging and promoting different local iniatives, in this case helping to put the pastor of the University Baptist Church in touch with people who had been contacting Sunbird looking for a space to hold workshops.

The first meeting of graduate students concerned about Palestine was announced via a message through Sunbird and took place in the Liberated Zone. No one there acknowledged being the person who posted the call, but within an hour, over 30 graduate students had formed a new robust organization with plans to coordinate graduation day actions and to draft a letter from the grad students to UT Austin president Jay Hartzell. As of today, the letter has well over 1000 signatures and graduate students are continuing to talk into the summer about how to use or withhold their labor to continue to pressure the university in the fall.

On April 29, we were contacted by students who were planning to set up an encampment. We were able to send out live updates during a second violent crackdown by Texas state troopers on UT campus, which led to the largest mass arrest in Austin since the anti-apartheid movement and the largest mass arrest with charges in this city’s entire history. Receiving live updates from people on the ground, Sunbird was able to help many people quickly mobilize to join and defend the students. We also shared announcements about post-arrest support logistics, including a jail support vigil that ran for nearly 48 hours as the arrestees were released.

On Commencement Day, several student walkouts took place at graduation ceremonies while other actions occurred around campus. All of these were announced on our Signal channels or described in live updates we received from students in attendance.

These are just a few examples of the events that Sunbird facilitated over the past month. Some of them were organized by established groups, but a large number of the events submitted to Sunbird were organized by individuals or informal groups that had just met, many of them new to organizing.

Demonstrators stand with linked arms to protect a solidarity encampment at the University of Texas, calling attention to the university’s relationship with defense companies on April 29, 2024.

Have there been any similar efforts in Austin since Sunbird got started? How have those fared? Can those efforts show us anything about how best to use this model, or what it is best for?

Yes. Both larger organizations and autonomous initiatives have started announcement-only Signal groups clearly inspired by Sunbird or attempting to compete with it.

In the group started by a larger organization, several admins were using their legal names, a practice we would caution against as it can allow the state to target organizers. Furthermore, a group like this can easily become limited in perspective, since it is not informed by submissions from other participants in the movement.

In general, it appears that the groups set up to compete with Sunbird were not able to last as long or experience as much success as we did because they did not adopt the principles we used to run Sunbird. The messages they posted were often poorly formatted, included conflicting or alarmist information, and did not foster the same sense that users could directly participate and interact with the admins. This was acceptable if you only wanted to receive announcements from organizers telling you what to do, but many found this a disempowering experience.

On the other hand, when smaller autonomous initiatives such as the church canteen or the organized arrestees have started announcement threads, it has been clear that the announcements are specific to those entities. In these cases, the model that Sunbird provided as an announcement-only thread was adopted, becoming part of a more broadly shared strategic intelligence across social movements in Austin.

How do you anticipate that the model you are employing might be repressed or coopted? Do you have any ideas for how people like you might deal with such challenges in the future?

This model cuts against the impulse to manage or consolidate. Our commitment to the principles outlined above sets Sunbird apart from established organizations. We have gained much of our influence by being calm and faithful cheerleaders of initiatives of all kinds. We sincerely want the movement to win. Established organizations want a megaphone for themselves, not a switchboard for everyone, so a model like this would probably feel like a waste of time compared to the larger reach available via social media. Our wager is that the movement itself requires a reliable switchboard that platforms many kinds of initiatives and trusts the creativity and intelligence of the participants. Without this advantage, we suspect that competing sectarian announcement threads would quickly fade into irrelevance or be eclipsed by better models.

Because of their centrality to movements, announcement platforms of all kinds receive a lot of attention. Since October, we have seen state and non-state actors go to great lengths to identify organizers in the movement for Palestine. Though it remains to be seen exactly what forms of repression will emerge in response to this cycle of movement activity, we want to reiterate that anyone employing this model should take precautions to do so anonymously, following good digital security practices and only working with a small number of trusted comrades.

Packing up signs after a protest at the University of Texas campus on April 25, 2024.

Start Your Own Announcements-Only Service on Signal

1) Obtain a burner phone and set up Signal on the burner. Use Signal settings to hide the phone number and set up a Signal username. To assist people in contacting you, post your Signal username in your profile byline.

2) Assemble a few trustworthy friends who are willing to take turns as admins. This is the hardest part. These individuals must be reliable, good writers, and willing to sit in front of a screen during entire shifts. The group of admins must be large enough that everyone can take breaks so as not to burn out, while being available to offer second opinions or review message drafts; but it should be small enough that everyone can trust each other and the identities of the admins won’t be widely known. Because of state repression, maintaining the admins’ anyonymity is of utmost importance. This is not something to discuss freely or in public organizing spaces; the admins’ identities should only be revealed on a need-to-know basis.

3) Install Signal desktop on the admins’ laptops (this is currently limited to five devices). Have each admin send the QR code from their Signal desktop to the person holding the burner phone to link their device to the same Signal account. If you already use Signal desktop, you can download Signal Desktop Beta to use for your own personal device and link your shared admin account to the more secure and stable Signal Desktop app.

4) Set up shifts. Shorter shifts are better during high-activity periods when admins must be monitoring messages constantly. During lulls, day-long shifts are feasible.

5) Set up a separate Signal group for admins. This is a good place to discuss message framing, workshop tricky submissions, and generally figure out how to stay on the same page. Determine a setting for disappearing messages that is long enough for consistency and short enough for security (we set our timer to one day). Utilize riseup pads as secure ways to draft messages, keep track of important contacts, paste old messages for reference, and keep lists such as supplies offered/supplies needed.

6) Set up the announcement thread with your burner number as the group admin and adjust the settings so that only admins can send messages to the group. Put a description of the function of the group and instructions for sending submissions (including your admin account’s Signal username) in the description of the group.

7) Advertise your group! We created small flyers with a description of the group’s function on one side and a QR code on the other. Friends of ours passed these out at large rallies and marches, explaining what Sunbird is and actively guiding people in downloading the app and setting up a Signal account. Our group’s growth started slowly, then snowballed as more people added their friends. Eventually, we reached the 1000-person Signal group maximum capacity and started a second mirror group to which we forwarded all the messages posted to the first group. If you do this, be sure to link successive groups in the initial group’s description so folks can easily send it to their friends.

8) Start sending messages! There are a few that we would send at least once a day: “What is Sunbird?” “How to hide your phone number and create a username,” and “How make an announcement or submit an event to Sunbird.” We sent out daily schedules comprised of submitted events, supplies needed at the encampment, and requests from people wanting to connect with others to get organized.

9) Dispatch trusted friends to actions and events to send you live updates via text, photo, and video.

10) Don’t burn out! Add admins as needed, take breaks sometimes, and be transparent with the group about posting hours, response times, and the like. It’s OK to match your posting frequency to upticks and lulls in movement activity.

Police use chemical weapons to attack protesters at the University of Texas on April 29, 2024.

Share some tips for writing Signal announcements.

Use a calm, helpful tone. Sunbird was not just a source of information; during high-intensity moments, it was a source of reassurance. Responding to direct messages in a timely manner instills trust in those messaging Sunbird with requests and submissions.
Forward a wide range of submissions. Include those from larger organizations and individuals while maintaining a focus on live local events and updates; steer away from analysis, national or international news, fundraisers, and the like (all of which have ample platforms in other spaces).
Synthesize reports on police, university employees, and Zionist presence. Follow SALUTE protocols (specifying the Size, Activity, Location, Unit, Time, and Equipment of groups as applicable). Avoid spreading fear or rumors.
Send clear, well-written messages. Put effort into good formating and add emojis for readability. This will convey that your account is serious and trustworthy.
Clearly distinguish the messages you draft yourselves from messages forwarded to you. We include ”FWD:” at the beginning of all forwarded messages and “Sunbird here!” at the beginning of messages that we author.
Avoid linking to sites like Instagram and Twitter. We are actively trying to create alternative platforms to the exploitative and empty ones offered by Meta and Elon Musk.

An example of an announcement on Sunbird.

What principles can make a switchboard service like Sunbird successful?

No one way works. Our movements are powerful when everyone takes initiative. This means that we post events and messages from everyone in the movement, seeking not to monopolize or centralize control but to proliferate a sense of empowerment and participation. While the power of running a platform might make sectarian decisions to exclude certain groups seem appealing, over the long run, this sort of control and exclusion runs contrary to the goal of the platform and could undermine trust in it.
Tell no lies, claim no easy victories. We work hard to verify all the information we send out. In some cases, this has meant following up to verify that jail support forms calling for confidential information or fundraisers for medical support were being hosted by trusted groups—that they were not honeypots or scams. Overwhelming people with poorly written, factually dubious messages is a surefire way to lose the respect and attention of movement participants.
Don’t Panic, Stay Tight, We’re Gonna Be Alright. In high-stakes protest scenarios, fear and panic can rapidly sap a crowd of confidence and undermine the bravery, determination, and resolve necessary to keep everyone safe and accomplish goals. While Sunbird played a crucial role providing live updates, we made an effort to keep our announcements factual. At some points, we held off on posting information (like confirmed gatherings of police far away from campus) that might instill panic rather than equipping people to act.
No Police Orders. The police have megaphones, guns, chemical weapons, and the backing of the courts and the prison system. They can announce their own orders and to enforce them. While other announcement threads reposted police dispersal orders or the ever-shifting rules of university bureaucrats, we chose to not amplify the messages of our enemies.
Take yourselves seriously. We are doing this because we want to stop the genocide in Gaza and because we are revolutionaries who believe in the liberation of Palestine and all oppressed peoples. The least you can do is take your historic task seriously: spend the extra time it takes to format things nicely, write clearly, treat every communication with the respect it deserves. The political culture in the US that treats “activism” as an unserious hobby undermines our movements and often results in people treating the political projects they value deeply with less care than the work they do for the careers they hate or the degrees they don’t really care about.

Professors, students, and supporters demonstrating at the University of Texas Austin campus on April 25, 2024

The Encampments Spread to Mexico : The Palestine Solidarity Camp at UNAM in Mexico City: An Interview

2024-05-05T16:20:00Z

On May 2, students from a number of schools and student organizations across Mexico City launched a Palestine solidarity encampment in the heart of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), within view of the Okupa Che, a 24-year-running anarchist squat that once served as the UNAM’s largest auditorium. They established the encampment as an expression of solidarity with the wave of university encampments taking place in the United States against the Israeli state’s genocide in Gaza. By the end of the encampment’s first day, it already involved fifty tents, a free kitchen, and the visual redecoration of the space around it with messages of solidarity with Palestine.

We conducted this interview in person with a well-connected participant.

Tents in the Palestine solidarity encampment in the center of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. The banners read “Stop the genocidal imperialism in Gaza—long live the struggle of the Palestinian people—break off relations with Israel!”

Outside the Okupa Che, a longstanding anarchist squatted social center in the heart of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Q: Let’s start with the basics. How long has the encampment been here?

A: It started today, at noon.

Q: Oh shit, today?

A: Today. The original decision that we took in assembly was to camp out until Sunday, but now my understanding is we’re going through until at least next week. We’re going to have another assembly to take stock of how it’s going and decide whether to extend the encampment longer or continue along another course of action.

I feel like there were more people in the assembly than came to the encampment, but lots of people passed by today and found out about it, and went home to gather supplies, so I expect more people will come to spend the weekend here.

Tents in the Palestine solidarity encampment in the center of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Tents in the Palestine solidarity encampment at UNAM.

Q: How did it start?

A: Well, I can tell you how I found out about it: I saw a flier posted by various collectives—I think Juventud Anticapitalista (anti-capitalist youth) made it—calling for an inter-university assembly about how to take action in solidarity with all the Palestine solidarity camps happening in the United States. The idea was for the camp here to be a center of organizing that other actions can emerge from, as well as a space to talk about what’s happening in Palestine. The assembly involved students from different high schools and universities, even schools on the outskirts of the city, and also art collectives, political collectives, a little of everything.

The goal is to pressure the university to break its ties with pro-Israel entities, because UNAM has a certain degree of political weight on the national level. Also, the presidential election is in June, so its electoral campaign season right now, and we thought we could extend our demand to the national level: that the government should break its ties with Israel too. However, it’s not like there’s a single political line here, there are many, and at some point, we may have disagreements about what actions to take to achieve our goals.

A banner at the Palestine solidarity encampment at UNAM. The text reads “Until what is essential becomes visible,” a reference to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, and likely to graffiti that appeared during the uprising in Chile in 2019 depicting the Little Prince with the inscription “What is essential is invisible to the state.”

Q: So the camp isn’t only for UNAM students?

A: Right, no one’s checking your student ID here. It’s mostly students, but we intentionally wanted it open to the public in general because we think that’s part of this being a public university. Personally, I’m in the philosophy department and majoring in Latin American studies, but I’m not here just as an individual. I’m participating with my direct action-based activist film collective.

Q: Can you speak to the specific location of the encampment and the meaning and history of this location?

A: To the north, we have the central library of the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) system. It’s the symbol of the school: people take their graduation photos here because of the enormous Juan O’Gorman mural on the building.

On the other end of the encampment is the main administrative building of the university, including the chancellor’s offices, which also features historic and widely recognized murals. By planting our encampment between two of the most emblematic buildings of UNAM, we’re projecting our message right from the symbolic heart of the university.

Tents in the Palestine solidarity encampment at UNAM.

The Palestine solidarity encampment at UNAM.

Q: And the Okupa Che is, like, right there [gestures]. Does the fact that there’s a 24-year-running anarchist squatted auditorium next door make the encampment more viable?

A: Since the student movement in 1968, which has a whole history and context of its own, the law has given universities autonomy from police—they’re not allowed to enter. Even so, it’s peculiar to have a squat in the middle of a university, and Okupa Che is an unusually protected space for the amount of activity that comes out of it. On the other hand, Okupa Che doesn’t define itself as an exclusively student space, and it rejects certain forms of what can be understood as “student activism.” However, even if what we’re doing doesn’t emerge directly from working with the Okupa Che, there’s that sense that they have our back because we’re also occupying space autonomously.

Outside the Okupa Che, a longstanding anarchist squatted social center in the center of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

The unpermitted street market outside of the squat is another extension of those values and practices, even if it’s not directly tied to the Okupa Che. During the pandemic, students needed a way to cover their costs without abandoning their studies, and the Tianguis street market was born. There were attempts to establish a street market before the pandemic, but it wasn’t until COVID-19 that there were organized, mass calls to have people set up and sell their goods. There were conflicts over whether it should just be for students, but personally, I think it’s better for it to be open to the whole public. This is a “public” institution, after all.

So having these two unpermitted, collective uses of university territory next to us offers a kind of informal network of protection, because we know that if something happens to the encampment, there are people who will fight for us—not even because they are involved in our movement, necessarily, but because what we have in common is the collective occupation of public space.

Artwork calling for solidarity with Jorge “Yorch” Esquivel, an anarchist prisoner targeted for his involvement in the Okupa Che squat.

Q: From what I can tell, what’s happening in the United States is an explosion of ad hoc student organizing. In contrast, the student movement here seems to have a more consistent tradition of struggle. As someone involved in student activism in Mexico, are there any lessons for the students taking action now?

A: If there’s one important difference I would highlight, it is the fact that what is happening in the United States is capturing the attention of the public. The student rebels there should take advantage of that. One of the privileges of the United States is that when something noteworthy happens there, it’s news for the whole world. In that sense, while I know there is persecution happening against the encampments, there is also a kind of unique protection in the United States, because the whole world is watching.

There’s a tension there: the importance of not losing that attention, but also of connecting it to international networks. That’s the kind of support that can make a meaningful difference for international movements and struggles, because imperialism and racism are not just limited to Palestine. Now is the time, so push—push with everything you’ve got.

The Palestine solidarity encampment at UNAM.

Graffiti at the Palestine solidarity encampment at UNAM.

The Palestine solidarity encampment at UNAM.

Why the State Can't Compromise with the Gaza Solidarity Movement : And What That Means for Us

2024-05-03T13:14:11Z

On April 17, students at Columbia University initiated an on-campus encampment in solidarity with Gaza. After the administration called in the New York City police department in a failed attempt to evict the encampment, students across the country established encampments and occupations of their own. In the following analysis, participants in the movement explore the strategic questions it confronts today.

Why the State Can’t Compromise with the Movement in Solidarity with Gaza

After students began occupying Columbia in solidarity with Palestinians, student occupations and encampments spread like wildfire, occupying over one hundred universities around the world. Well over two thousand students have been arrested. Each day has seen new occupations and new tactics. Again and again, police repression has outraged students, professors, and community members, drawing larger numbers to more and more militant demonstrations. The movement for Palestinian liberation is growing by leaps and bounds in the United States as a consequence of the bravery of demonstrators and blockaders over the past six months—most recently, thanks to occupiers who have been willing to risk arrest, police brutality, defamation, doxxing, and expulsion.

On April 30, police staged a militarized raid on Columbia University, locking other students and faculty members inside dormitories and campus housing and holding them hostage while they brutalized and arrested demonstrators. Similar scenes played out at the City University of New York (CUNY). Police have launched tear gas at students at the University of South Florida in Tampa, allowed fascists and Zionists to attack an encampment at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) with pepper spray and fireworks, and engaged in skirmishes with students across the country.

Yet as repression has escalated, so has resistance. The movement gained its initial momentum when students at Columbia immediately reestablished an encampment after police evicted the first one. Similar stories have played out from Texas to California and Illinois. When the Los Angeles Police Department joined fascists in attempting to evict the Gaza solidarity encampment at UCLA, protesters with helmets and shields held them at bay for eight hours.

Why are the police being so heavy-handed? Why are the media contorting themselves into increasingly bizarre contradictions to condemn the protests? Why are the Democrats and the Republicans united in opposing these protests? And how is it that, in their haste to crack down, university administrations, politicians, and police appear to have forgotten the basic principles of protest management?

Demonstrators face off with the police from behind a barricade on UCLA campus on May 1, 2024.

Where We Are

What follows is a brief attempt to address those questions, in hopes of getting oriented in the new terrain that is opening up before us.

The basic demand to see Palestinians as human beings is incompatible with the agendas of the United States government and universities.

The US needs Israel as a strategic partner to maintain a foothold in the Middle East; universities rely on funding from and research relationships with the military, arms manufacturers, and Zionists.¹ It is impossible to acknowledge that Palestinians are entitled to the universal human rights that form the basis of the US empire’s claim to moral legitimacy while continuing to supply the weaponry, funding, and diplomatic cover necessary for the Israeli military to continue killing civilians and destroying their homes. These protests reveal deep-seated contradictions between discourse and practice that the government, corporate media platforms, and universities are determined to conceal.

They know full well that they are complicit in genocide—yet, like any bully, they double down on their lies when confronted. There is simply no space in the US government or media to acknowledge opposition to Israeli settler-colonialism as a morally defensible position. This explains the unification of Democrats and Republicans in opposition to the protests as well as the intense repression that the authorities immediately meted out. It also explains the incredible rhetorical acrobatics on display from media outlets as they excuse police for beating large numbers of demonstrators—many of whom are Jewish—in the name of combatting anti-Semitism. This is especially egregious as mass graves are uncovered in Gaza, Israeli bombardments continue, and Netanyahu continues to promise a ground invasion of Rafah, even after slaughtering over 35,000 Palestinians, over two thirds of whom were women and children.

University administrations are caught in an impossible position.

From one side, despite their inherent institutional conservatism, the universities face an escalating frontal assault by right-wing politicians on both the state and federal levels, not to mention the threat of capital flight leveraged by billionaire donors. On the other side, the universities are experiencing a mass revolt from students and faculty mobilizing around the seemingly reasonable demand that they stop supporting the mass murder of children and the attempt to erase an entire people. The only way the administrations can imagine that they might survive the former is by cracking down on the latter as hard as possible.

They are forced to justify this in the name of free speech and safety, even as the police they bring in shoot live rounds at random inside campus buildings. Likewise, although many of the protest encampments represent the most successful voluntary collaboration between Muslim and Jewish students taking place anywhere in the world today, the administrations have claimed that it was necessary to destroy them in order to keep the peace.

Police carrying out a militarized raid of a Gaza solidarity encampment to “keep the peace” and protect student “safety.”

Accusations of anti-Semitism are cynical lies coming from administrators and politicians who have already showed that they could not care less about protecting students from actual white nationalists.

The same university administrators who used “free speech” as an excuse to vilify and arrest students for protesting against white nationalists speaking on campus are now attacking and brutalizing anti-Zionist Jewish and Palestinian protestors in the name of protecting Jewish students from anti-Semitism. Free speech and student safety are both false pretenses: the truth is that university administrations and police will seek to destroy any force that actively challenges their power. This explains the previously unthinkable alliance between Republicans who refuse to disavow white nationalists in their own party, Democrats who champion genocide in the name of resisting anti-Semitism, and university administrators.

The Democrats are attacking these struggles because it is impossible to incorporate them into the left wing of the Democratic Party.

There is no way for Democrats to give the Israeli government carte blanche to carry out genocide while buying the votes of those who believe that the lives of Palestinians have inherent value. This makes for a situation that may be unique among all the mass struggles in recent history.

Centrist media outlets and Democratic politicians were prepared to countenance the George Floyd Uprising of 2020 in hopes of drawing activists back into the fold of policy negotiations. They thought that they could exploit those protests to build an electoral base against Trump during an election year.

This moment is different. It is impossible for the Democrats to budge at all now because both parties have hinged their political platforms on unequivocal support of the Israeli government, condemning any opposition as anti-Semitic. Democratic politicians have continued doubling down on that position even as it has become more and more preposterous. The fact that the Democrats now control the federal government prevents them from benefiting from outrage against what is effectively a bipartisan policy.

In that sense, there is a sort of symmetry here. While the (first?) Trump era ended with the George Floyd Uprising, cementing the ascendancy of direct action tactics at the culmination of four years of resistance to Trump, the Biden era appears to be ending with a conflagration of its own, signifying an irreparable break between the centrists and the autonomous movements they have long sought to co-opt.

The barricades around the Gaza solidarity encampment at UCLA.

We should read the violent repression and media slander as a sign of the rigidity and vulnerability of those in power.

They are defending a fundamentally untenable position with an apparently irrational amount of violence. Likewise, corporate media pundits are decrying us despite the fact that the demand to stop the genocide is more popular than either presidential candidate—according to one recent poll, 55% of Americans disapprove of Israel’s military actions, while only 36% approve. The fact that the movement has grown in numbers and ferocity despite so much repression is a sign of its vitality and strength.

This situation is somewhat reminiscent of the circumstances in which the movement for Black Lives originally got off the ground. A decade ago, when the revolt in Ferguson broke out in response to the murder of Michael Brown, it was difficult even to obtain information about how many people police killed every year; abolitionists were among the only people addressing the issue. As a consequence, the movement gained momentum as that question gained traction among the general public, because practically no one else was offering a persuasive account of what was occurring or why. Similarly, the fact that neither Republicans nor Democrats are willing to acknowledge the truth about what is happening in Gaza, who opposes the genocide, and why they oppose it constitutes a tremendous vulnerability for them.

Politicians are terrified of the protests, but they are even more terrified by the prospect that the protests could continue past the end of the school year, spilling over the bounds of the campus and into a long, hot, summer.

It is the responsibility of anyone trying to stop this genocide to ensure that their nightmare becomes a reality. And it could: the George Floyd Uprising is still alive in the memories of the millions of people who participated.

The state wants to smash these protests before they expand. Anyone who truly aims to end the genocide in Gaza should want this political crisis to expand and deepen. In the long run, the only way to end the genocide in Gaza will be to the dismantle the American war machine and the corporate board rooms that drive it.

Potential Pitfalls

If the foregoing hypotheses are correct, then there are several pitfalls that participants in this movement should be careful to avoid.

Every occupation that disbands after winning minor concessions will only pave the way for genocide.

The original Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia University began by rejecting empty promises:

The administration sent representatives to negotiate. In the first round, they offered a “non-binding, university-wide divestment referendum”—an unimpressive offer, since the university had refused to take any action after a similar referendum passed at Columbia College in 2020 with 61% of the vote.

The wave of encampments around the country was only possible because the students at Columbia refused to fall into that trap again.

Abandoning the encampments and the spirit of confrontation that has made them possible means closing the space of political possibility that we desperately need right now. It means shutting down the zone of potential encounters, where participants can experience the sort of political and tactical development that will be necessary to build a post-imperial, anti-colonial form of life.

At the same time, the only way that these occupations can actually stop the genocide will be by catalyzing a much larger social explosion and political crisis. The terrain at stake here is much larger than the university—and the participants in every occupation should operate with that in mind. Our objective should not be to obtain promises, or committees, or even divestment, per se; our goal should be to bring about Palestinian liberation as an aspect of total liberation. We should evaluate every tactic according to whether it can enable us to advance towards those goals, understanding that Palestinian liberation will only come about as the result of a full-scale political crisis in the United States.

Do not let “centering Palestine” serve as a rationale to become less disruptive.

The war machine killing Palestinians is an essential part of the war-making institutions of the US empire, which includes not only universities and weapons contractors, but the economy itself. All of these are interconnected with other governments and colonial projects around the world. Stopping the genocide of the Palestinians means challenging every aspect of the prevailing world order.

The voices of most of those who suffer as a consequence of that order are rarely heard within the walls of universities.

This is about you, too.

As the struggle against Cop City in Atlanta has made clear, the oppression of the Palestinian people represents a blueprint for a possible future for all of us. In fighting for a free Palestine, we are fighting for our own future, as well. Acknowledging this should strengthen our resolve to put an immediate stop to the genocide.

Palestinians have been steadfast in their solidarity with struggles in America, from Ferguson to the uprising of 2020 and beyond. Students at Columbia University articulated these connections when they began chanting “Stop Cop City” during the police raid on April 30. Cop City is everywhere, the roots of the genocide in Gaza are everywhere, resistance is everywhere.

Those concerned with their personal safety should not deny others the freedom to take risks that they are willing to accept.

There is no shame in being afraid for your safety. This is an increasingly frightening situation. The question is how we can build the collective capacity to take the risks—and endure the consequences—necessary to create a world without state terror. One of the minimum conditions for this undertaking is that we must not attempt to dictate to others what actions should be possible or acceptable.

If you are not prepared for the risks that you perceive to be associated with a particular tactic or strategy, do not attempt to prevent others from employing or pursuing it. Simply look for another role you could play or a complementary strategy you could pursue.

“What I mean by ‘daring’ is a readiness to walk into terrain which none of us explored before. What I mean by ‘caution’ is the perception that our ability to approach this terrain grows only to the extent that all those like us approach it with equal daring. We’re reaching for a field of possibilities that can be reached only if we move together as we’ve never moved before; we proceed with caution because those who move too far ahead will be caught without a lifeline to the rest. What I think is taking place around me is an advance consisting of small steps taken by all simultaneously. Each small step creates the conditions for taking the next. Any move that prevents the continued advance of all cuts off the possibility of further advance by any.”

-Fredy Perlman

This risk assessment matrix might assist you in making decisions about risk and consequence.

Moving Forward

Since the end of the Second World War, genocide has been understood as the clearest example of absolute evil. “Never again!” has been held up as a moral imperative. Although the United States has used this narrative cynically on numerous occasions to justify military intervention, it nonetheless expressed the laudable judgment of people of conscience everywhere.

The current conflict amounts to this: either the United States empire must be dismantled or the conscience of a whole generation will be destroyed.

In view of these stakes, the participants in every encampment and occupation—including the ones that have been forcibly evicted—should consider the following strategic questions.

What is the next step in escalation? How will you respond to a raid, an eviction, or slow death by committee? What is your plan if Israel begins a ground invasion of Rafah? Will you take a building, march downtown and impose economic consequences, blockade highways and ports, or something entirely new? If the encampments become impossible to defend, what is the next step that allows people to continue struggling together?

How do we keep growing after the semester ends? How can on-campus struggles benefit from non-student support? Can the power built on campuses overflow into the communities that surround them?

How do we shift antagonism away from university administrators, whom politicians are currently using as sacrificial shields, towards the adversaries whose defeat would actually impede the war machine? Divesting from war profiteers is a good first step; occupying factories and blockading ports would be a logical escalation. Who are the billionaires and vested money interests forcing the crackdown on campuses? Who has the most to lose from putting an end to unconditional US support for the Israeli military’s colonial violence?

How can we act now in ways that will prepare us to confront the likely return of Donald Trump to power in January 2025? We will need every tactical innovation, every new relationship, every network and form of infrastructure that we can build to confront the full force of right-wing fascism that looms in our future. We are in a moment when history cracks open and countless new possibilities and dangers emerge as the old order crumbles.

What comes next could be terrifying. But our part in the story is up to us.

While anti-Semitic fascists have sought to spread the narrative that Israel controls the United States, it is the other way around: Israel is the junior partner in the relationship, serving a purpose for the United States government, just as Christian nationalists in the US treat Israelis as pawns within their agenda. ↩

Defending the Camp : A Report from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Gaza Solidarity Encampment

2024-05-01T11:08:52Z

All around the United States and now in Canada, Australia, and several European cities, students have established encampments protesting the bloodshed taking place in Gaza. Over the past few days, more than two thousand people have been arrested in police raids targeting these encampments. Yet despite the high-profile assaults on Columbia University and other occupations, many encampments have managed to stand their ground, even in the face of repeated police attacks. In this report, participants in the Gaza solidarity protest encampment at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) recount their experiences learning to hold their ground.

You can access a printable zine version of this text here.

Day 1: Friday, April 26

At 5 am on April 26, approximately thirty students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign occupied Alma Mater, the well-known statue at the center of campus. In less than half an hour, the protesters set up a welcome table, a medical tent, a food tent, half a dozen camping tents, and a makeshift yurt constructed from less than $400 worth of materials. Within 20 minutes, half a dozen cops and about ten Facilities and Services (F&S) workers rolled up with a box truck. They said that the protestors were breaking university policy by putting up structures and would be subject to arrest for trespassing if they did not comply with an order to tear down the structures by 8:25 am.

The idea spread that we would buy time for reinforcements to arrive by feigning compliance and slowly taking down the tents. This was a bad idea. It resulted from a lack of consensus on whether to hold our ground, and also from fear. Students began disassembling the yurt first, reasoning that only thirty people would not be enough to defend it. Students formed a ring around the yurt as a few people began slowly deconstructing it. Afterwards, the circle reassembled around the main encampment. Due to fears of a raid and a breakdown in communication, another crew of campers began taking down tents.

Day 1, early morning.

Several protestors advocated for holding our ground, chanting “We keep us safe!” and counting to 12. At the 8:25 am deadline, police moved in to make arrests, violently assaulting the students at the front of the circle. A few brave campers broke formation to mobilize behind their comrades, de-arresting several of their peers. For a brief moment, the campers pushed back and encircled the cops, who visibly panicked, yelling “Do not surround us!” However, the cops managed to surge forward, stealing the materials for the yurt and the few tents left on the ground. In the end, they made one arrest from the side of the circle that was not supported by reinforcements, then left the site.

Between thirty and forty folks remained at Alma over the next few hours through heavy rain—eating, playing music, passing around a soccer ball, and resting. Organizers put out a call for a mass mobilization at 3 pm in time for the Jummah prayer and the end of Friday classes. Between two hundred and three hundred students and community members responded. During the prayer, some people put the tents back up.

A dozen campus cops and a handful of F&S quickly returned, forming a line about 50 feet away to try to enter the camp and take down the tents. The protesters assembled in a circle once again, with a larger group of about forty to fifty people focused at the front where the cops aimed to make their incursion. This group had reinforced banners and umbrellas, and most of them were prepared to push and de-arrest as needed.

At first, the police were able to shove their way through the first line, but they quickly found themselves kettled within the crowd. Some pulled out batons, but many seemed hesitant about employing them. Other officers attacked protesters’ necks, collarbones, and chests, inflicting one concussion and many minor injuries. In the end, the police were only able to tear down one tent before another surge from the demonstrators drove them out of the camp for the rest of the night.

Day 1: the second clash with the police.

After the scuffle, people recovered a body cam and a clip of lethal ammunition from the ground.

For the rest of the afternoon, cops and F&S gathered in the parking lot in front of the camp, never totaling more than twenty. They shut down Green Street, the main road along the encampment, as well as the Union and Transit Plaza bus stops, and brought in four city busses and a horse trailer for mass arrests. Fire trucks were parked two blocks away, prepared to turn their hoses on students. Officers from four different police agencies including the University of Illinois, Champaign County, Urbana, and Mahomet amassed in riot gear, with pepper spray and tear gas at the ready. Eventually, however, the union representing F&S filed a cease-and-desist order, affirming that F&S workers did not need to comply with orders to take down the camp.

Despite the threat, the crowd of campers grew in size, spirit, and knowledge over the course of the afternoon. Participants expressed approval of the reinforced banners that some people brought to the front; others distributed goggles, gloves, and additional protective equipment. Several comrades offered a brief presentation describing how to perform de-arrests and keep each other safe during confrontations. The group agreed to block the buses if the police arrested anyone. Nonetheless, police snatched one camper who left camp alone wearing a neon vest; they were arrested out of the camp’s line of sight.

Day 1 after the second clash: waiting for a raid that never came.

Police emptied and closed the Union building early, at 6:15 pm. Then the police line moved towards the encampment, interrupting the evening prayer. Moments before the attempted incursion, protesters sprang back into their positions to defend the encampment. The police retreated to their original position as if nothing had happened at all. The protesters held their positions, chanting and singing louder.

At some point in the midst of this chaos, student leadership entered into negotiation with a university employee who went back and forth between the students and chancellor Robert J. Jones; the chancellor communicated by phone, considering it unsafe or unimportant to be present in person. While the negotiations dragged on for hours, rain began to pour down on the encampment. Despite this, the energy of the encampment swelled. People were righteously angry. Some suggested rushing the police line and either surrounding or occupying the Union during the negotiations.

By this point, much of the front line had been there since 5 am that morning, running on as little as two hours of sleep. They were recovering from two clashes with the police that day, not to mention standing for hours, and were now soaked through their clothes to the bone. Most of the protestors had no previous experience with facing police in this way.

By 10 pm, even the front line began discussing how to best safely disperse. The crowd got smaller through the evening, dropping down to just below two hundred. The bystanders, counter-protesters, and reporters who had been standing between the encampment and the riot cops had cleared out. The authorities had erected giant spotlights around the area, directed at the few tents left standing. Student leadership left the negotiations with a compromise: the crowd could disperse with no arrests on the condition that the camp would be moved to a sanctioned protest zone far from the center of campus. According to the agreement, it would be allowed to remain until the following Monday—after which the police would carry out mass arrests.

The camp was disassembled and we dispersed. The following morning, a few tents were set up at the sanctioned site as a diversion; but some organizers planned to come back.

Day 2: Sunday, April 28

Under the cover of two diversions—the encampment at the sanctioned site and a leaked message that protesters would disrupt a sporting event in a different part of campus—protesters moved into the main quad at 1 pm on April 28. Now knowing the necessity of maintaining mass, organizers waited until students and community members had responded to a public call for mass mobilization before they set up tents. Over the course of the day, the community engaged in making banners and posters, de-arrest trainings, and meals provided by faculty and community members.

Day 2: the welcome table before structures were set up.

The campers stayed informed of police and counter-protester activity through a robust scouting and communications system. Comrades with more on-the-ground experience organized into a security team, sharing knowledge gained from the Emory encampment and the Stop Cop City/Defend the Forest movements. More personal protective equipment was made available to protesters and frontliners, including heat-resistant gloves, gas masks, helmets, and goggles; this fueled a sense of collective power and raised morale. Several times, when the camp received information on police activity, the crowd was able to mobilize within seconds into a protective formation that was both strong and dynamic. These were the same people who had no experience mobilizing against police only two days prior.

We made it through the night with no police raid and minimal interaction with counter-protesters.

Night 2.

Day 3: Monday, April 29

We woke to pouring rain at 5 am, but the crowd of thirty campers arose in good spirits. Throughout the day, the camp grew again in size—first to fifty and then to one hundred by the evening. More tents were erected and various forms of programming took place including banner making and additional de-arrest trainings. While F&S was seen out on the quad working, there was ultimately no visible presence of cops all day. The night ended with a screening of The Battle of Algiers. It seems more are camping out tonight. In conversations, campers expressed motivation, pride, and surprise at our success. Many expressed they had never thought it possible to stand their ground like they did on Friday.

As we begin the last academic week before finals, time will show whether the encampment shrinks, clings to its claimed territory, or expands—whether we wither and divide until we are destroyed, or flourish until we win.

Strategic Reflections

As of now—dawn on May Day—our encampment persists. Here are some of our thoughts on the basis of our experience so far.

1. Defend each other, not the tents!

The long thin arm-linked line is insufficient. We must be like water: dynamic and willing to meet the cops where they are at; moving around obstacles with ease; mobilizing to protect our comrades wherever needed. During the first clash with cops and F&S, if all thirty campers had mobbed up and begun pushing back, the situation would have played out differently. The people, tents, and yurt would have been safe and de-arrests easier. The circle line is effective only as a way of obscuring activity inside the camp from police line of sight. The encampment is us, the people, and we must defend each other. Our presence is the core of the occupation—not the tents, the food, or the supplies. We keep us safe.

2. Encampment is escalation.

Putting tents up on campus is against almost every campus policy. Refusing to take them down means refusing to listen to a “lawful command.” The basic premise of the encampment is already an escalation that the cops will meet with force; they have done so or tried to do so on almost every campus with an encampment. So organizers should not concern themselves with de-escalation or “remaining peaceful.” Neither remaining on the defensive nor being compliant will protect us, but being dynamic and meeting the cops head-on might.

3. We do not wait for the right conditions to act—we create those conditions.

Several organizers who had participated in previous symbolic actions refused to support the encampment because they felt that the conditions were not right to do so. This vague and counterproductive stance fails to take into account the people’s power to share knowledge, build solidarity, and create a culture of disruption. The Cal Poly occupation taught us: if you build it, they will come. Day 1 of the UIUC encampment taught us: if you build it, they will defend it, they will learn from it, they will grow from it.

4. Reinforced banners can win the day and the crowd’s trust.

As we saw at Emory and UIUC, reinforced banners will be best at defending and pushing. Some participants regarded the militants with unease and mistrust until they used the banner to prove that they really could “keep us safe,” like the chant says. Plywood, insulation board, lumber, scrap wood, metal sheeting, garbage cans, and water barrels can all be used as raw materials, and some can even be sourced from campus dumpsters. Be creative and be brave.

5. Resist “divide and conquer.”

Participants in the UIUC encampment have not wasted any time hunting for “outside agitators” or drawing lines differentiating students and non-students. All are welcome here. So far, the university itself has not used this tactic. Hopefully, the encampment will be ready to handle it whenever they deploy it against us.

6. Negotiations are a double-edged sword.

Negotiations delayed the police raid—and diminished our ability to fend off the raid. The administration is negotiating in bad faith; they aim to waste our time, so we should only engage with them when reinforcements are on the way and buying time is advantageous to us.

7. Build more yurts and other structures. Seize campus infrastructure and use it as barricades.

We have not done this at UIUC yet, but it would improve our defenses. We need to find activities that make the most of our time and improve our defenses.

8. Escalate for Gaza. Impose a cost on complicity in genocide.

The administration, as seen during Day 2 of the encampment, may choose to ignore the protest. Be prepared to escalate your actions in order to continue making it more expensive—whether materially, financially, or socially—to remain complicit than to divest.

Night 1 in the rain during the face-off with the police.

9. Do not reproduce the regime inside the encampment.

Encampments are liberated zones; they should not reproduce authoritarianism, capitalism, or any other form of oppression. Camp security teams should not replace the police with whoever can buy a vest and megaphone at Home Depot. Campers should not feel pressure to ask for permission from “leadership” to act. Decisions should be made autonomously wherever possible, or else by consensus. We must trust and love each other enough to coexist without hierarchy. In our camp, we share food, shelter, defenses, and entertainment. We use space freely, reappropriating sidewalks, lawns, and gardens, leaving things out without worry that they will be stolen, relaxing and napping knowing that we will be kept safe.

10. Against liberal counterinsurgency.

As the movement grows, so will the counterinsurgency. They will wear vests, they will spread fear about the police, they will advocate for de-escalation. At Northwestern University, they caved into symbolic successes with no material win. Here, too, some organizing groups may already be preparing for de-escalation. Be wary of those who attempt to stifle the movement in the name of “safety.”

Try to approach conversations with both compassion and conviction. Gaza does not need concessions—Gaza needs liberation.

From Redwood Trees to Olive Groves, the Commune Grows : A Statement from the Tree Occupation at Cal Poly Humboldt

2024-04-29T22:45:49Z

Today—Monday, April 29, 2024—there are encampments and building occupations in solidarity with Gaza in place at dozens of universities around the United States, and they are beginning to appear elsewhere around the world. Police have already carried out a number of brutal raids targeting them, but in many cases, the protesters have come back, undeterred, or even faced down the police. One of the fiercest occupations has taken place at Cal Poly Humboldt, where students took over a building, survived a massive police assault, and then forced the police to retreat off campus.

As of today, the occupation at Cal Poly Humboldt has held its ground for a week. The school has been shut down until graduation. Right now, local, state, and federal agencies are amassing forces to prepare to raid the encampment.

At this critical moment, we received a statement from people who have established a tree occupation to hold territory at Cal Poly Humboldt. We present it along with pictures from the occupied university and a video of a participant in the Cal Poly occupation calling to address participants in an encampment at another university across the country.

You can access a printable pdf of this text in zine form here.

A participant in the Cal Poly occupation calls to address participants in an encampment at another university. We have blurred the video for the security of the protesters—but please listen to the audio.

From Redwood Trees to Olive Groves, the Commune Grows

We have heard the call to escalate in solidarity with Palestine, and we are answering: we have taken to the trees.

From where I sit, in the branches of a redwood tree, I have the ocean to my right and the forest to my left. Usually, it hurts to look at the cityscape, to see the colonial infrastructure remaking native lands according to its own ends. But today, I see these mission-style buildings covered in calls for a free Palestine and the return of Native homelands. I see a sprawling, ever-growing camp filled with people who are feeding and clothing each other, held by the protection of our barricades. I see medics keeping folks hydrated, kids playing, artists and musicians creating, gardens sprouting up, and everywhere the sense that a new world is being born. This vision is stoked by the militant flame of the brave occupiers, by the desire to defend it all—to push the cops out every time they attempt to harass us or pull down the barricades.

The success of our occupation thus far has come about as a consequence of our ability to adapt while refusing to back down. We learn from nature that diversity makes an ecosystem more resilient and vibrant, and the same is true in our movements. There is no one perspective, tactic, or voice in our camp. No one speaks for everyone. What brought us together was a shared revulsion for this genocide. What keeps us together is our commitment to escalation towards liberation, to upholding each other’s autonomy, and to nurturing lifeways together amid this struggle.

We recognize that a diversity of tactics is crucial for maintaining an offensive position. To expand our tactics, we have turned to our personal history of struggle against empire here in so-called Humboldt. Judi Bari, an environmental activist who was car-bombed and framed for her activity with EarthFirst!, spoke about the need to end the global capitalist machine in order to halt planetary destruction and oppression of all kinds. We concur. This tree sit is a love letter to these connections, to all those struggling to end this genocide, and to Palestinians worldwide. Among the great old trees, a tree sit is a sign of rebellious hope—hope as a way of choosing agency. It is an invitation to a new perspective on the world itself.

This tree sit is also a love letter to Tortuguita. Tortuguita was 26 years old on January 18, 2023 when Georgia State Troopers murdered them in the Weelaunee Forest. At that time, they were defending the forest from the Cop City project. Funded by the likes of Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo, Delta Airlines, UPS, Home Depot, Equifax, Georgia Pacific, so on and so forth, Cop City is a deforestation project designed to build a massive mock city in which US police will train in urban warfare; Israeli Occupying Forces will be contracted to train them in the art of imposing apartheid. This is just one of many proposed cop cities across the country. The fight to free Palestine and the fight to free ourselves are intimately intwined. The military and police see these connections—and so must we.

This connection, in conjunction with a knowledge of history and with our own experiences over the last week, have shown us that any struggle to put an end to genocide necessarily includes a struggle against the police themselves, just as putting an end to genocide means stopping extractive colonial capitalism, halting the causes of climate chaos, and putting an end to the ongoing imperial nightmare we live in.

Police and the military are the ultimate threat wielded against anyone who fights effectively for a better world. We are inspired to see all the beautiful things that have flourished so spontaneously in just one week thanks to a few people being brave enough to create and defend a cop-free zone. We are not just working to destroy the nightmare of the world as it currently exists—we are also defending the seed of the world to come, defending a life worth living and sharing with others.

There will be no end to these wars of empire if the struggles in “first world countries” don’t develop teeth and begin to embody solidarity and “land back” as more than symbolic gestures. We will not go back to normal. Normal means ignoring the genocide of Palestinians every day, while living miserable lives on a hamster wheel of labor that never made us happy in the first place. Normal means earning a paycheck and turning our backs on the 14,000+ Palestinian children murdered just since October 7. This occupation has shown that when you stop everything and get off the hamster wheel, what is waiting for you is community and endless possibilities.

We fight for the living, and we mourn the trail of dead that this empire of money and war has left in its path. We remember you, though there are too many to recount here, all of you who have died at the hands of this global empire—

Haya Sharif Bakr Al-Batniji. George Floyd. Ibrahim Amma Saad Al-Qara. Sandra Bland. Sham Abdul Karim Ibrahim Al-Hato. Treyvon Martin. Hosni Mohamed Hosni Muhareb. Toypurina. Musk Omar Kamel Abu Rahma. Tortuguita. Adam Youssef Muhammad Al-Hila. Josiah Lawson. Zeina Hossam Jamil Al-Zaanen. David Chain. Sondos Ziyad Mahmoud Al-Azaib. Rayshard Brooks. Malik Youssef Omar Sharaf. Avalon. Mansour Hamada Monsour Sobh. Berta Isabel Caceres Flores. Marie Ihab Darwish Gouda. Fred Hampton. Zakaria Imad Abd Muheisen. Nex Benedict. Khalaf Fawzi Muhamma Al-Sawarka. Rachel Corrie. Shireen Abu Akleh. Al-Jarrah mahmoud Misbah Al-Khor.

And so many more. We won’t let you down.

Day One: University of Texas Austin Students Take the Lawn : A Report

2024-04-25T22:43:42Z

On April 24, students, faculty, and community members assembled on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin to demonstrate against the complicity of the university administration in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Fearing a repeat of the upheavals that have taken place at Columbia University and elsewhere around the country, campus authorities mobilized a massive number of police in response. Yet despite arrests and violence, the demonstrators ultimately outlasted and outmaneuvered the police. In the following report, participants describe what they learned.

Student-led solidarity actions at universities have been taking place for six months already. In the last week, however, they have escalated, with encampments and walkouts at over 40 campuses across the country. Students as far away as Australia, Italy, and France have organized their own encampments and other protests in solidarity. In the last 48 hours, new encampments have appeared on at least fourteen US campuses, including at least three encampments—in Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC—that are cross-institutional collaborations. Police have evicted some of these, but others continue to hold their ground. Over that same period of time, at least six schools have hosted walkout demonstrations. Two school encampments took over campus buildings.

The Gaza solidarity encampment on the East Lawn of Columbia University on Wednesday, April 17.

The Gaza solidarity encampment on the West Lawn of Columbia University one week later.

In the wake of the events described below, UT faculty members published a courageous statement in support of the demonstrators and joined some of the student organizers who were arrested yesterday in organizing a massive rally for today, which drew 2000 people to the South lawn. In speeches, some of the student activists directly connected the ongoing movement to the nationwide uprising that took place in 2020 in response to the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others.

Defending specific territory gives a movement a place to cohere and opens up a space in which the participants can build relationships and go through a process of political development. At the same time, it provides adversaries a fixed target against which to direct pressure. Defending encampments in the open is more challenging than defending indoor occupations, even if the latter can entail greater legal risk. In both cases, what happens outside and around the police response usually determines the outcome at least as much as what occurs inside the occupation. As the building occupation at Cal Poly Humboldt demonstrated, police can only besiege and evict occupations if they are not themselves besieged.

Current campus organizers might benefit from reading participants’ reflections on the “autonomous zones” of the 2020 uprising:

Even if our goal is simply to hold a particular physical space, we have to prioritize carrying out offensive activities throughout society at large that can keep our adversaries on the defensive, while investing energy in the activities that nourish movements and spaces rather than focusing on defending particular boundaries. We should understand occupied spaces as an effect of our efforts, rather than as the central cause we rally around.

It might also be instructive to consult the experiences of the student occupation movement of 2008-2010.

Centrist media outlets have dishonestly portrayed the participants in these demonstrations as “anti-Semitic,” intentionally obscuring the fact that a significant plurality of the organizers are anti-Zionist Jews. In fact, only four months ago, leaders of the Republican Party of Texas voted against barring members from associating with Nazis and Holocaust deniers after a prominent Texas Republican hosted a well-known white supremacist and anti-Semite. Those who are repressing these demonstrations are the ones with ties to organized anti-Semitism. As students chanted yesterday in Austin, “APD, KKK, IDF they’re all the same!”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu maintains that the Israeli military is still determined to carry out a ground assault on Rafah, where over a million refugees are currently crowded. If the events of the past six months are any indication, should such an invasion take place, it will result in the deaths of at least tens of thousands more Palestinians, disproportionately impacting women and children. This is the horrific scenario that demonstrators are mobilizing to prevent. Everyone who aspires to stand in solidarity with Palestinians should be thinking right now about what they can do to prevent Netanyahu from ordering a ground assault on the people in Rafah.

Students assembling with umbrellas on the night of April 24 to defend the Gaza solidarity encampment at Emerson University. Police carried out a massive raid shortly afterwards, arresting 108 people and leaving blood all over the pavement.

University of Texas Austin Students Take the Lawn

On April 24, 2024, students, faculty, and community members converged at the University of Texas at Austin campus (UT) to protest the ongoing genocide of Palestinians. The initial protest, a walkout from classes and a Popular University spearheaded by the Palestine Solidarity Committee, drew several hundred people to the area surrounding the Gregory Gymnasium. At the behest of the University President Jay Hartzell, an unprecedented array of militarized police immediately attacked the protest, including mounted police officers, heavily armed state troopers (some bussed in from Houston), and officers from the Austin and the University of Texas police departments. Over the next six hours, thousands bravely confronted the police officers, playing a game of cat and mouse across campus that culminated in an hours-long standoff in the South Lawn. Eventually, the police were forced to withdraw and the crowd won control of the Lawn.

Unable to countenance any resistance to the ongoing acts of violence they sponsor, US authorities have deployed police to universities across the country, including New York University, the University of Minnesota, the University of Southern California, Emory, and Emerson. UT Austin was no outlier to this emerging dynamic. Before the protest even began, the University was prepared to deploy police in large numbers.

As soon as people assembled, police wasted no time charging and snatching people from the crowd, clubbing and pushing without provocation. The crowd persevered, repeatedly routing officers or surrounding them in larger and larger concentric circles. On multiple occasions, small clusters of officers found themselves enclosed on all sides by crowds that outnumbered them by an order of magnitude. In the end, it was the police who gave up and left campus in defeat.

The dedication and creativity of these demonstrators is worth celebrating. Our contemporaries at encampments in universities across the country have provided us with their own hard-earned insights and reflections. In return, we send warm greetings to them and humbly offer a few reflections on yesterday’s events for our comrades struggling at UT Austin and to those elsewhere who are still planning their next moves.

Bold Actions, Bold Words—Courage Is Contagious

All of the police tactics aimed to instill fear: large numbers, riot gear, horses towering over the crowd, vague commands, snatching protestors one by one.

Demonstrators did not succumb to fear—and were rewarded for their courage. When police grabbed the first person, students surged forward chanting “Let them go,” encircling the police cruisers and lining up face to face with helmeted police. Bold actions resonated broadly in the crowd. The crowd took space forcefully, eventually kettling the police on the walkway. It was tense and sweaty, with a steep learning curve, but five hours of facing off with the police made the crowd more confident, not less.

No More Wait and See!

Twenty minutes into the action, the march became headless. But it was never directionless, and its refusal to be controlled was a strength.

Moments of stagnation, imposed both from within and without, repeatedly gave the police the opportunity to make the first move. In these moments, the words and improvised gestures of individuals enabled the crowd to develop its collective intelligence. Whenever the cops succeeded in splitting us between police lines, on opposite sides of a thoroughfare, on opposite sides of a building, our calls to action flowed like water around them.

Proposals spread throughout the crowd. Some fizzled out. Others caught on, sparked enthusiasm, and spread like wildfire until the whole crowd shared a goal. The lawn! We’re taking the lawn!

Students succeeded in achieving the goal of taking the lawn by choosing not to wait for instructions and by getting creative, finding and showing each other back routes to it. Police attempted to block the march on a main road, but participants split up and dashed through alleys, hopped down stairs, ducked around bushes and into buildings. Doors were propped open and hundreds poured through them onto the unguarded lawn. Passing through these buildings was a baptismal moment.

In Europe, this strategy of breaking up and reforming on the other side of obstacles is called five fingers make a fist.

Keep Moving, but Don’t Run Away

The march was most successful when the participants maintained the initiative, moving before the police moved them. In the most inventive moments, the crowd remained mobile, responding to dispersal orders and impenetrable police lines by spontaneously redirecting the march.

Sometimes, in protest movements, crowds simply flee from confrontations in hopes of “remaining flexible.” Thankfully, this is not what happened at UT. There is a balance between confronting obstacles and remaining unpredictable. While it is necessary to make the best of moments when we are forced back or out, in the long run, movements need to be able to force out the police. Instead of engaging in protracted face-offs and waiting to be dispersed or moved, we should take this lesson from Thursday to heart: fight where it is possible; where it isn’t, remain mobile.

Surround Them

Despite their heavy-handed tactics, the police failed to control the crowd. They had the lawn, but we had everything else. All afternoon, students, faculty, and community members flowed into and around the South Mall. Police got themselves surrounded repeatedly, and eventually had to push through the crowd to obtain access to food and water. Protesters could have done more to take advantage of that moment. Spatially speaking, as long as the police occupied the lawn, we had the upper hand.

While they had to defend their precarious position against wave after wave of students, we could come and go, regroup, take breaks. When horse-mounted cops rushed the crowd in order to sweep the sidewalk, they weren’t attempting to control the crowd or push us anywhere in particular. They were trying to escape.

Make Space(s) Worth Defending

To sustain momentum, especially the momentum of an occupation, people must have a vision of what they are fighting to defend, what they want to create together. Spaces of joyful imagination and exuberance give us momentum and direction even when there is not a line of police or enemies to confront. Chanting can keep spirits high during the direct confrontations, but nobody can shout all day, and the energy of the space dies along with the chant. Blankets over the lawn become supply depots, where the distribution of pizza or hand sanitizer becomes a site for the collective reproduction of our lives. Office supplies become the ingredients for a direct-action training. These efforts reproduce themselves in ways that words alone cannot.

As soon as we occupy a space together, we should fill it up. Every friend, classmate, coworker should be called to join us, bringing things to sustain the space and refresh the front lines. Food, water, games, activities, and music can provide an anchor for our resistance. What we do together in these moments will shape what we will be capable of doing with the rest of our lives.

With a little more initiative, small organized groups could have taken advantage of the situation to greater effect. Much of the campus was left vulnerable. That being said, the confidence built by yesterday’s events was obvious to anyone who remained on the lawn. It will only continue to grow. For now, some university faculty have declared “No classes, no grading, no work,” and will be gathering at noon to pick up where yesterday left off. [Editor’s note: at the time of publication, this had already occurred; see the introduction for details.] The concession of the lawn by the administration represents a definitive win.

What happens next will be determined by those who are willing to continue taking bold action. The circumstances demand it of us. Do what is necessary to stop the genocide in Gaza. Defeat is not an option.

Further Resources

Click on the image to download a printable pdf of this text in zine form.

Report from within the Cal Poly Humboldt Building Occupation : The Occupation of Siemens Hall

2024-04-23T19:40:37Z

On April 22, 2024, inspired by the resilience of the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia University and other demonstrations around the country, students at Cal Poly Humboldt campus in Arcata, California occupied a building in solidarity with Palestinians, precipitating a showdown with police from throughout the region. In the following report, participants in the occupation describe what took place and what they learned.

This represented a significant escalation in the current wave of student demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine. As the local organization Humboldt for Palestine announced, “this was not a protest organized by Humboldt for Palestine, but an organic CPH student organizing movement.”

After an hours-long standoff, local media reported that the police were forced to withdraw:

10:50 pm: All law enforcement have left from in front of the building and appear to be leaving the campus. Scanner traffic appears to confirm that law enforcement has left the scene. One officer said that law enforcement is being “disbanded.” Students are currently pouring in and out of the occupied building.

Cal Poly Humboldt remains shut down through at least tomorrow, according to the administration.

You can read more about the recent history of building occupations as a tactic in student organizing here.

Barricades around Siemens Hall.

Report from within the Cal Poly Humboldt Occupation

On Monday, April 22, a group of 45 students, alumni, and community members occupied Siemens Hall on the Cal Poly Humboldt Campus in the far northern coast of California in solidarity with those facing genocide in Gaza.

Within an hour, campus police attempted to negotiate with the occupiers, who stood strong and refused to exit the building. Soon after, police from every department in the county showed up—including a helicopter, K-9 units, and off-duty police. Students responded by swarming them.

The cops’ initial plan to carry out a mass arrest was thwarted by a series of clashes both inside and outside the building. The occupiers beat back police advances, despite facing brutality unlike anything we have seen over the last decade of struggle in Humboldt County. It is important to note that the police used both batons and shields as weapons to brutalize protesters; in the hands of police, any tool is a weapon.

Barricades around Siemens Hall.

Police arrested two people and dragged them out of the building by their hair; they inflicted multiple cranial lacerations on another person, necessitating a trip to the hospital and several staples. Many more people were left with head injuries and at least one with a concussion.

During the clashes, police drove a university truck into the crowd, pushing protestors toward the riot line. Yet despite this brutality, it became increasingly apparent that the police were completely unprepared to face down the ferocity and intelligence of the student occupiers. The police were physically repelled from Siemens Hall and massive barricades were erected out of objects from within the building including chairs, desks, trash cans, and doors that had been removed from their hinges.

The police surrounded the occupied building, and a large crowd of students, faculty, and other community members surrounded them, chanting “De-escalate by leaving!” and “People power! We are stronger!” among other chants.

After a six-hour standoff, the police packed up and went home. Hundreds of students rushed into the building and joyously embraced occupiers. The police-imposed division collapsed and we achieved the upper hand. The university has declared a three day lock down. For us, this is only the beginning.

Footage showing police withdrawing from Cal Poly Humboldt campus on the night of April 22, 2024.

This communiqué comes from within the occupation. We would like to pass on a number of lessons that we have learned.

1. Out of the quads, into the buildings.

It’s clear that in order for this crisis to develop further, student occupations should take buildings whenever possible. The first action of the police was to instruct the occupiers to move to the quad. In saying this, they showed that we can wield the most power by occupying the spaces where classes are held and administrators have offices. In addition, buildings on campus are filled with everything you might need to construct barricades and protect an occupation.

2. If you build it, they will come.

It only took a small number of students to occupy Siemens Hall. Don’t be afraid to hold your ground. This movement is strong. Seemingly out of nowhere, hundreds if not thousands will come to support you. Importantly, outside crowds were able to impede the police by dividing their attention. The cops found themselves kettled and completely unsure of where to turn. Someone set up a barbecue—free hotdogs fueled the crowd.

3. The pro-Palestinian movement must be a movement against the police.

At every step, police will not hesitate to brutalize those who call for an end to genocide in Palestine. In Gaza, Palestinians face the Israeli military; in the United States, we face the police. We must recognize that these forces are one and the same: they are all foot soldiers of empire.

4. Listen! organizer.

We need not wait for the permission of professional activists to set the terms of struggle. Student occupiers acted decisively to take the building without the backing of any established organizations. Collectively, we found we had the skills, experience, and creativity needed to carry out our action. While student organizations often recommend starting with a list of achievable demands and entering into endless negotiations with administrators, our occupation held one demand for six hours: that the police leave campus.

5. Be prepared.

Our town is somewhat sleepy. We underestimated the scale of police repression we would face. Four years after the George Floyd Uprising, we should heed its lessons. It is best to come to all demonstrations with goggles, gas masks, laser pointers, and shields. You never know what a casual sleepover might become.

Footage showing police withdrawing from Cal Poly Humboldt campus on the night of April 22, 2024.

Further Resources

Click on the image to print a zine version of this article.

Campus Building Occupations, 2008-2010 and Today

2024-04-22T22:39:28Z

A wave of campus building occupations took place in response to austerity measures following the recession of 2008. As today’s Gaza solidarity movement begins to experiment with encampments and building occupations, it could be instructive to learn from the previous generation of student activists.

On April 22, 2024, inspired by the resilience of the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia University and other demonstrators around the country, students at Cal Poly Humboldt in Arcata, California occupied Siemens Hall. This represented the first confrontational building occupation of a wave of student demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine.

Police attempted to storm Siemens Hall in order to evict it; they inflicted severe injuries on some students, but failed to gain entry. The officers established a perimeter around the building, but students and university faculty gathered around them, surrounding them and chanting “De-escalate by leaving!” In the end, local media reported that the police were forced to withdraw:

10:50 pm: All law enforcement have left from in front of the building and appear to be leaving the campus. Scanner traffic appears to confirm that law enforcement has left the scene. One officer said that law enforcement is being “disbanded.” Students are currently pouring in and out of the occupied building.

“Cops go home!” the students chanted victoriously. “People power! We are stronger!”

Taking over a building and forcing the police off campus is no mean feat in the age of police militarization. Yet this is not the first time this century that student movements have employed these tactics. From December 2008 to March 2010, a wave of student building occupations helped to spark a new era of combative grassroots struggle. Starting with only a few participants, these building occupations eventually helped to inspire the Occupy movement, which catalyzed tens of thousands of people into action.

The following text chronicles the emergence of this wave of building occupations from the perspective of those who helped start it, first in New York and then in California. This article originally appeared in issue 9 of Rolling Thunder, our Anarchist Journal of Dangerous Living. It appears here with a handful of modifications reflecting the decade and a half that has passed since.

Students occupied the New School in New York City in December 2008 and again in 2009.

Coast to Coast Occupations

“The coming occupations will have no end in sight, and no means to resolve them. When that happens, we will finally be ready to abandon them.”

–Preoccupied: The Logic of Occupation

This is How We Learn, This is How We Fight

By a participant in the occupations in New York City of 2008-2009.

In December 2008, the month of the Greek rebellion, the widely hated president of New York City’s New School for Social Research fired the Provost and appointed himself. He also cut the library in half, shut down a building where students gathered, and raised tuition. When the Faculty came out with a vote of no confidence in him on December 10, previously apathetic students joined those trained by summit battles to take action. Standard campus activist SDS [Students for a Democratic Society] groups wanted to wait for the right time—”the movement is not ready,” “we need more numbers.” We thought otherwise.

After two grueling meetings, on December 16 at 8 pm, thirty students and non-students took the first floor of 65 5th Avenue, in the middle of Manhattan, blocking the exits with chairs, tables, and trash cans from the cafeteria. Within hours, hundreds of people came out in support, and students who until then had only read Hegel were fighting security guards with tables and blocking the streets outside. This lasted from Wednesday night to Friday morning. Authoritarian groups issued demands while autonomous groups conspired to bring in more people and expand the occupation. At key moments, against the formal consensus of some, friends outside were broken in with spectacular actions. A Greek solidarity march came by and livened up the party with a hundred more anarchists. The president was chased down the street to his home, and conceded to some of the demands soon after. We left with no repercussions, but bitter that the university still functioned at all.

After winter break, a plan was hatched to continue the struggle with a more daring action. With dozens of new people radicalized and hundreds of new supporters, we set our sights high: we wanted the whole fucking building. We announced our threat early: April 1 we shut the school down unless the president resigns. We distributed our analyses everywhere and continued minor escalations: illegal teach-ins, graffiti, vandalism, “open” occupations.

New York University [NYU] joined the wave and occupied their student building in February, and we joined in with pleasure. After a massive street conflict outside and three days barricaded inside, we left with no charges. April 1 came and our plan was snitched, so we held off for another week until the NYC anarchist book fair. They thought we’d given up, but we came in like thieves in the night and seized the whole building, all with only 19 people, students and non-students. This time the university wasn’t playing around.

A barricade of chairs at NYU in 2009.

More than two hundred police vehicles responded, along with helicopters, emergency units, and hordes of SWAT, JTTE, and other teams; they closed down three streets and shut down Union Square. It took them seven hours to chainsaw their way in. Our friends caused a conflict outside as a distraction, but those inside couldn’t escape. The occupation ended before our supporters could start a riot, but the action sent shockwaves across the nation.

The New School, occupied.

The following September, people at UC Santa Cruz took things up a notch, occupying a student center for a week with no demands and then seizing two massive buildings for over a week in November. UC Davis, UCLA, SFSU, and Berkeley were all occupied after that, raising the bar each time, and afterwards it seemed that there were only two options left: shut down more universities with multiple occupations, or extend the struggle to the city and continue it there.

[The foregoing text was written at the beginning of 2010; indeed, although the student occupation movement died down after that, the occupation movement itself exploded into public space in 2011 with the Occupy movement.]

A banner reading “Everything,” as in “Occupy everything,” which became a popular watchword coming out of the student occupation movement of 2008-2010, helping to give rise to the Occupy movement that broke out in 2011.

Thoughts for Future Occupiers

Conclusions from the New School Occupations of 2008-2009 in New York City.

You don’t need to convince everyone before the occupation. Everyone knows the situation. You just need to start the party.
You don’t need a lot of people to start an occupation—at least ten, maybe less. All you need to do is hold it until people come. What goes on outside is more important than what goes on inside.
You don’t need a lot of time to prepare. We planned our first one in two days with twelve people. Just bring some locks and chains and take advantage of materials in the building.
When you take a building, don’t immediately hold a meeting. That’s a mistake. Start changing the space, preparing it, remolding it to your desires.
An occupation must expand; otherwise, it dies.
There are hard, soft, open, and closed occupations. There are one-room, floor, building, and multiple-site occupations. Every occupation demands its own style.
Demands are unnecessary; it’s the action that counts.
If you know the occupation is going to end, escape early or end it with a riot. Anything else will wreck future possibilities.
Occupations are not enough—they must combine with other forms of action if they are to be meaningful in the future.

The occupation of the New School in New York City in 2009.

The Berkeley Rebellion: A Semester at Siege

By Josh Wolf.

“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”

Forty-five years after Mario Savio¹ spoke those words on the steps of Sproul Hall at the University of California at Berkeley, a new student uprising broke out on the campus.

With the California state budget barely coming together, cuts to public education and fee increases for the state’s public college systems became almost certain. State workers lost wages in the form of furloughs, or unpaid leave; others were laid off. The Regents of the University of California, a board consisting mostly of wealthy tycoons appointed by the governor, proposed raising student fees to help offset the budget cuts.

All this ignited strikes and protests throughout the state’s public universities and community colleges in late September. At UC Berkeley, workers, professors, and students called for a strike on September 24, 2009. Organizers from the Associated Students, the American Association of University Professors, and a wide variety of other groups endorsed the one-day strike. On the appointed day, about 5000 people gathered on campus for a rally that transformed into a march though downtown Berkeley.

A poster for the walkout and strike on September 24, 2009.

Not surprisingly, neither this nor numerous other demonstrations changed the minds of the UC Regents, who were scheduled to approve a massive fee hike on November 19. In anticipation of this, students and workers began striking on several campuses the preceding day. In addition to the tuition hike, they were protesting the privatization of the public education system through increasing reliance on corporate money, rampant layoffs, and the ongoing worker furloughs.

Two days later, after the regents approved the fee increases, about forty people slipped into UC Berkeley’s Wheeler Hall before dawn and locked all the doors. Some of the occupiers knew each other and had been organizing together for months; others had essentially stumbled into the occupation after joining a march the day before. Most were university students. All expected the police would break down the doors early the next morning.

A flier for the protests of November 18-20, 2009, at the University of California at Berkeley.

The First Occupation of Wheeler Hall

The UC police discovered our occupation around 6 am; it wasn’t long before they figured out how to break in. Most of us were gathered on the second floor, but a few were securing the basement when we heard the commotion.

“They’re inside!” gasped a student who had just sprinted up the stairs, barely escaping arrest. Three behind him were not so lucky; we would soon learn that they had been charged with felony burglary.

He pulled back his shirt to reveal red marks from an officer’s baton. Someone slammed the door shut behind him and secured it.

While some participants had been planning to occupy a building before the semester started, others had only had a few minutes to prepare. The first and only meeting had taken place less than twelve hours earlier. It quickly became apparent the locks and chains people had brought wouldn’t be enough to adequately secure the doors. Searching the building, students found a stash of tables and wooden chairs with small desks attached. These seemed to wedge perfectly between the doors, which they then cinched shut with packing straps.

But the same setup hadn’t held for more than a few minutes downstairs. We were certain that police would come storming through any minute. People pressed their bodies against the doors and held fast to the handles at each of the floor’s four entrances.

As a journalist, I tried at first to act as an “objective observer,” staying out of the action while my fellow students literally put their bodies between me and riot police. Later, a girl asked me to help her take a break; realizing how ridiculous it was to think I could remain an impartial observer in such a situation, I accepted a shift holding the door. I’m glad I did; when it came time to arrest the people inside, it made no difference to the police that I was there as a journalist with a police-issued press pass around my neck.

With the police separated from us by only a wooden door held by a handful of people, we realized that we were about to be hauled off to jail without even briefly interrupting the machine.

“Did anybody call the media?” A handful of laptops appeared from book bags and people raced to find the phone numbers of local TV stations. Another person began posting to indymedia, while others called their friends to tell them we were inside. One student copied down all our names and emergency contacts and emailed them to the National Lawyers Guild. Other students sat down to write up a list of demands.

We had all agreed before the occupation that one of the goals of our action would be to force the university to rehire thirty-eight janitors from the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), who had been laid off. Someone suggested we should demand amnesty for our friends who had been arrested earlier and were now facing felony charges. Why not ourselves, too? We stipulated that no one should be charged or face student disciplinary action for participating in the protest.

Occupiers address supporters from the second floor of Wheeler Hall on November 20.

The small group added two more demands: that the university renew its lease with the Rochdale Co-op—it had been threatening to use the building for market-rate student housing—and that it enter negotiations in good faith to renew the leases of the predominantly minority-owned local businesses at the Bear’s Lair food court. While it was impossible to meet to reach consensus with the students spread out guarding the entrances, news of these demands quickly circulated and no one seemed to have any objections.

Later, many outsiders would ask why we didn’t demand that the administration roll back the fee hike. One of the occupiers responded that we had limited ourselves to making demands the Berkeley administration actually had the power to grant. This was a tactically sound decision, but not one we had made together. After months of meetings and protests, the participants were suddenly forced to make decisions quickly—sometimes independently—while fighting to keep the occupation alive.

As minutes turned to hours, spectators began to arrive outside Wheeler Hall. At first, it was just a lone student here and a news camera there; but soon a crowd coalesced and began to grow. A student picket line formed blocking the path to class. The AFSCME union reinforced the student picket; it eventually became a sit-down barricade, before being enveloped by the crowd. Inside, we could hear the police banging away and pulling at the handles, but the doors held.

“Whose university?” one person would yell.

And the halls would reverberate with the sound of forty determined voices: “Our university!”

Supporters outside the occupation of Wheeler Hall.

At 9:13 am, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau sent out an email to the entire campus urging students, staff, and faculty to avoid Wheeler Hall until further notice. Of course, the Chancellor’s communiqué only drew dozens more to the crowd, which had gathered outside the classroom window where some of us had congregated. Acting as police liaison, one of the occupiers called the police to deliver our demands and discuss possible negotiations. The officer told her she would call back later. After some time had passed, the officer called back just to repeat that she’d call back later again.

The crowd continued to grow throughout the day. The police force increased as well, as officers from the Berkeley Police Department and deputies from the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office joined the UC Police in and around the building.

The police erected metal barricades around the perimeter of the building, and repeatedly attacked students who approached. An officer shattered the wrist of a student resting her hand on the barricade. Another officer shot a student in the stomach with a rubber bullet, and the police injured countless others with their batons. In response, students physically resisted attempts to bring more officers into the building and to control the crowds; some even fought off the police.

Occupiers address supporters from the second floor of Wheeler Hall on November 20, 2009.

Eventually, the administration announced that they wanted to negotiate. We offered to parley on the public lawn outside the window, over the local radio station, or even privately on the phone, but the police chief demanded that we take down our barricades and let them in first.

We smelled a rat, and rejected the offer. Everyone continued holding the barricades as the afternoon passed and the crowd continued to grow. As it grew dark, one of us called out to ask if people would stay through the night. The crowd cheered: they were there to stay. Shortly before 6 pm, a deafening banging erupted at all the blocked doors at once. Were the police breaking through the doors with battering rams? Fear and uncertainty gripped us.

Before long, the group defending one of the entrances abandoned its post and ran to the classroom facing the window over the crowd. We had discussed retreating to this room when the police finally penetrated our defenses, so the crowd outside would witness their behavior while our cameras captured it from the inside.

Everyone had already scrambled into the room and had been sitting there, hands over heads, for some time when the police finally broke through the barricades. We watched in silence as they ran past the door, then came back to unlock it and let us know we were all under arrest.

But by now the crowd had grown to more than a thousand angry students, and every news camera, mainstream and independent, was turned on Wheeler Hall. The university realized it couldn’t charge us with the felonies that the police had doled out earlier that day. With the volatile crowd surrounding the building. the police didn’t even take us to jail. Instead, they held us in the hallway and issued us a citation for misdemeanor trespassing, which the district attorney later dropped, We were then escorted out of Wheeler Hall into the glare of high-intensity spotlights and cheering crowds.

It was a bit uncomfortable—we knew that it wasn’t the forty-three of us who had made the occupation into such an important event, but the thousands outside.

This message was echoed by several others who had been inside the building, as we passed around a megaphone in front of an old tree at the edge of the crowd. There was revolution in the air, and we felt that we were making history.

“Occupy everything”: public artwork in support of the movement.

Growing Unrest

The next few weeks were punctuated by a series of actions.

The Associated Students hosted a forum with the police to discuss the behavior of the police outside Wheeler Hall during the occupation. Rather than participate in a process that would never yield results, a student climbed onto a chair and delivered a verbal assault on the police, after which about thirty of us—ninety percent of the people inside—marched out to hold our own meeting.

On December 3, the anniversary of Mario Savio’s famous Free Speech Movement address, the Associated Students once again attempted to diminish student power by holding a “non-political” commemoration of the speech. We set out to interrupt it, arguing that the Free Speech Movement was anything but apolitical and that there was still no free speech on campus. We arrived with fliers and banners. When people began taping banners to the wall of Sproul Hall, the police took them down and refused to give them back; this became less of a problem once the cameras arrived.

Veterans of the movement spoke alongside current students about past and present crises; everyone seemed to agree that the best way to commemorate the Free Speech Movement would be to have free speech. But at 1 pm, the university-sanctioned hour of free speech came to an abrupt halt when the PA system was turned off without warning. A UC professor who had been involved in the Free Speech Movement as a student was in the middle of his sentence.

From the steps of Sproul, the group of fifty or more people marched around campus, ending at the Bear’s Lair food court for a meeting. Unlike meetings earlier in the year, this one seemed to have a concrete direction and purpose.

When we’d barricaded the doors to Wheeler Hall on November 20, we had followed Savio’s lead and thrown our bodies upon the gears, demonstrating that we had the power to make the machine stop. Now it was time to demonstrate that we also had the power to bring it to life.

Supporters outside the occupation of Wheeler Hall.

Live Week: Wheeler Hall is Re-Occupied

At Berkeley, the last week before finals is known as “dead week” because there are no classes scheduled, although some teachers hold class anyway. As many classrooms stand empty during the week while limited study space is available for students, we decided to return to Wheeler and transform it into an open occupation: Live Week.

We modeled our plan after the European occupations earlier in the year. We would not seal the doors with locks and chains, but would simply occupy the space with our bodies, demonstrating an alternative to the university system.

During the preparations for Live Week, some of the organizers who had been active earlier in the semester were noticeably absent. Many of the groups involved in the movement had met at a conference in late October to begin planning a “day of action” for the following March, and it seemed these people, many of whom were involved with campus socialist groups, felt our energy would be better spent working toward this future event.

After only a few planning meetings, we arrived Monday around 2:30 pm and set up an infoshop in the foyer. Students stopped to pick up a zine or cup of coffee as they left the review session in the auditorium; meanwhile, as the class dispersed, we assembled inside.

Shortly before a UC professor began a lecture addressing the systemic problems in the public education system, we were told that we had to leave the auditorium unless we were willing to rent it from the school.

We refused, and the lecture continued as scheduled. We shared a communal vegetarian meal a few students had prepared at a student co-op using donated food. After dinner, we were told again that we had to leave. Eventually the police showed up, trained their cameras on us, and informed us that if we did not leave we could be arrested or face student conduct charges. It was about 8 pm, two hours before the building was scheduled to close.

We stayed and the police did nothing. Almost one hundred of us held the first general assembly of the occupation. Shortly before 11 pm the police returned with their cameras and repeated their formal order. There were more this time and it seemed possible that they would arrest us.

Officers took up posts at the doors to prevent more people from entering. Some people who didn’t want to risk arrest left, but most stayed, and efforts to prevent more people from coming in proved fruitless. Around midnight, the officers gave up trying to keep people out, and most of them left. We had won the battle.

Some people patrolled the space throughout the night in case the police returned. Others busied themselves cleaning up in preparation for classes to resume in the morning.

By the next morning, Live Week had become part of the university. The transformation extended beyond Wheeler Hall. It was subtle at first: students made eye contact with each other when they might not have before, exchanged a few more friendly hellos.

Yet by reclaiming a building from the administration, we had begun to realize our potential. The awakening was contagious: students began to flock to Wheeler from across the university.

They didn’t come for the movement-building meetings. They didn’t come for the dance parties, rock concerts, and hip-hop shows. They didn’t even come for the free food. No, left with nowhere else to study late at night, the classrooms became a vibrant study hall—in fact, someone painted a banner reading “study hall” to indicate where students could find a quiet place to prepare for their exams.

At the meetings that took place after the occupation got started, activists questioned why we hadn’t drawn a bigger turnout. We had successfully held the building for multiple days, and yet there were so few of us. On the first night there had been over one hundred people at the general assembly, but now there were perhaps twenty. An additional fifty or sixty students were studying in the classrooms at any point throughout the night—but with tens of thousands of students on campus, where was everyone? Someone suggested we throw a concert with a big-name act to bring in people. Maybe The Coup?

The next day, Boots Riley of The Coup was confirmed and fliers circulated promoting the show. Meanwhile, a debate developed over whether the occupation should continue after the Friday night show. Most people eventually agreed to clean up and clear out of the building before finals began on Saturday morning.

But early Friday, around 4:30 am, while all the occupiers were asleep or deep in their studies, the police raided the space. Officers handcuffed the doors shut to prevent anyone from leaving and woke everybody up to the news that they were under arrest.

At first, police told students that they didn’t need to get dressed and that they wouldn’t be hauled off to jail. But they changed their plans after marching the students, some in their boxers and bare feet, to a classroom in the basement.

After being charged with misdemeanor trespassing, the students were taken to Santa Rita, the main jail in Alameda County. Most weren’t released until late afternoon or early evening. Sixty-six people were arrested, forty-two of them students. Most of the non-students were people who live outdoors and had been invited inside Wheeler to escape the cold rain.

Building occupations can give teeth to mass movements—or even catalyze them.

Counterattack

Angered by the arrests and determined that the show must go on, a few organizers sent out an announcement that the concert was still happening and called for people to meet outside Wheeler Hall. After hours of trying unsuccessfully to find a venue, at the last minute someone convinced Casa Zimbabwe, an off-campus co-op north of campus, to host the show.

That night, dozens of activists from across the state converged outside Wheeler Hall in the pouring rain to show their support for the Berkeley rebellion. Some students came all the way from UCLA; others arrived from UC Santa Cruz, UC Davis, and San Francisco State. We marched across the dark campus to the co-op, where several bands performed in the underground garage, including Boots Riley with Roberto Miguel on guitar. After the concert, some of the attendees donned black masks and headed back to campus to respond to that morning’s assault.

About sixty people marched down Euclid Avenue, a street near the north side of campus, around 11 pm. A few people kicked over newspaper stands and dragged them into the street. Others dragged them out of the road and put them back on the sidewalk. The chanting crowd turned and headed down the edge of campus along Hearst Avenue.

Someone lit a half dozen or more torches and handed them out as the crowd turned onto the paved path to University House, the chancellor’s on-campus home. As the crowd approached, the energy increased. A few individuals emerged from the sea of black, smashing the street lamps along the entryway to his house and overturning the planters in front of it. According to later reports, incendiary objects were thrown at the house and the windows were smashed out.

A police car roared up, sirens blazing and lights flashing, and the crowd scattered. The participants dropped their bandanas and quickly blended into the scattered groups of students walking through the rain. Other squad cars arrived from all directions as some continued to run, while others tried to walk away calmly.

Eight people were arrested that night. Their charges included rioting, threatening an education official, attempted burglary, attempted arson of an occupied building, felony vandalism, and assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer; UCPD alleged that when they reported to the scene, “things on fire” were thrown at their cars. The next day, governor Arnold Schwarzenegger described the march to the chancellor’s house as terrorism. The chancellor told the media that he and his wife had feared for their lives. Once again, the student movement at UC Berkeley was national news.

As it turned out, the police had only managed to capture the ones who decided not to run. The arrestees included a journalist who was documenting the events that night and several students and non-students who did not participate in the property destruction, according to witnesses. Held on over $130,000 bail, many of the arrestees spent the weekend in jail waiting for arraignment. But the district attorney dropped all the charges, and they were released after their day in court.

While many in the student movement criticized the attack on the chancellor’s home, others defended it as a legitimate response to the terror the police had inflicted on the students arrested earlier that morning at the Wheeler occupation. Some students feared the movement would lose support now that protestors had turned to violence; others questioned whether the property damage at the chancellor’s home should be considered violence. They argued that the response seemed appropriate in view of the violence administered by the university against its own students.

In still other circles, it seemed that the attack itself wasn’t as offensive as the fact that students had acted autonomously. “What makes those individuals think that they have the right to impose their political views on the entire group?” demanded a student in an email to a campus mailing list. “This hypocrisy must be intolerable to the ENTIRE group! We cannot allow that to happen again. If someone thinks that individuals taking unilateral action, without the consensus of the general assembly, is appropriate, then I place them in a category with (UC President Mark) Yudof.”

While this appeared to be a minority perspective, many questioned whether the action outside the chancellor’s home was tactically sound. They worried that if we wanted the administration to work with us to make the changes we demanded, this assault could hinder our goals. But others doubted we could win the war for public education without such skirmishes: unless we can threaten the status quo, what leverage do students have against the university?

These quarrels threatened to divide the movement, but students still came together for the court appearances and disciplinary hearings. About forty people gathered for an end-of-the-year picnic in People’s Park before the students all scattered for winter break.

“I believe that the university administration not only set the stage for a violent turn in protests by acts which have repeatedly raised tensions and undermined belief in its good will, but actually engaged in most of the violence that has occurred.”

-Education professor Daniel Peristein, after witnessing the events at the chancellor’s house from his office window

Wheeler Hall, occupied.

Afterwards

On January 6, 2010, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed a state constitutional amendment requiring the state budget to allocate at least ten percent of its funds to the state college system. He said the money should come from cuts to the state prisons.

Instead of scaling back draconian sentencing and setting nonviolent offenders free, however, Schwarzenegger suggested that the state could save money by privatizing the prisons. While students had demanded “books not bars” throughout the semester, no one was calling for privatization. The governor had hit upon a devious way to play students and prisoners against each other. Most student activists wrote off the governor’s announcement as hollow lip service.

Despite everything, there was a whiff of victory in the air. “Those protests on the UC campuses were the tipping point,” the governor’s chief of staff Susan Kennedy acknowledged in the New York Times. The Times neglected to mention that the previous time the governor had addressed the UC protests he had described them as terrorism. While Kennedy did not suggest that it was the march to the Chancellor’s home that prompted the governor to act, the combination of peaceful and confrontational organizing has historically proven to be a powerful recipe.

A mass mobilization was scheduled for March 4, 2010. Some have called for a general strike, and meetings are planned across the state’s college campuses. But with more than a month of vacation between the two semesters, momentum died down.

The march on March 4, 2010 did not revitalize the movement; its high point had passed. But it did bring together many of the people who would go on to participate in the Occupy movement in fall of 2011, under slogans—such as “Occupy everything”—that had originally been employed only by the most radical and risk-tolerant participants in the student movement.

“It Is an Honor to Be Suspended for Palestine" : Dispatches from the Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University

2024-04-21T08:40:00Z

On April 17, students at Columbia University and Barnard College set up an encampment in solidarity with Palestinians facing genocide at the hands of the Israeli military. On April 18, the university administration brought in massive numbers of police to arrest the demonstrators and crush the encampment; yet in response, students established a new encampment, bigger than the first, inspiring copycat actions from Yale to St. Louis. In the following report, participants offer a blow-by-blow account of the events at Columbia and a strategic appraisal of the tactics that the demonstrators have employed.¹

First, it is necessary to emphasize the urgency of the situation in Palestine. The Israeli military has killed well over 34,000 people in Gaza, the majority of them women and children, and is now preparing a catastrophic ground invasion of Rafah. The Israeli government has already gone to great lengths to make Gaza uninhabitable, demonstrating that they will butcher as many Palestinians as they are permitted to—and the United States government has aided and abetted them every step of the way. Fierce actions that interrupt the material functioning of the war machine are the only hope to put a halt to the genocide that is unfolding before our eyes.

The protest at Columbia emerged in the wake of a coordinated day of action involving blockades across the country. In taking on a prestigious university, the demonstrators are interrupting the functioning of a small part of the global machinery that enacts and excuses colonial violence. At the same time, the horizon of campus organizing is limited by the structure of higher education itself, which functions as a way of gatekeeping access to power and legitimacy. If universities persist in suspending students who express compassion for those enduring colonial violence around the world, we owe it to those students to foster vibrant movements for liberation that can offer a better venue for their aspirations and talents than the capitalist economy ever could have.

“I think all of these administrators need to get a grip and listen to their students and watch the news and see how many people have been killed.”

-Maryam Alwan, one of the suspended students

The Backstory

Since the 1960s, Columbia’s campus has been both a bastion of privilege and a hotbed of activism. In April 1968, at the high point of the anti-war and Black liberation movements, students and their non-student comrades occupied many buildings at the university. The notorious anarchist group Up Against the Wall Motherfucker—“a street gang with an analysis”—made their public debut during that pitched struggle. The building occupations that spring hold a mythical place in the history of 1960s campus resistance.

You can read a full history of the 1968 occupation of Columbia here.

A student activist occupying the office of the president of Columbia University, smoking one of his cigars, during a six-day campus uprising and strike in 1968.

In the 1980s, campus activists waged a powerful campaign to force the university to divest from apartheid South Africa, including a three-week-long tent encampment. The Palestinian-American academic Edward Said, author of Orientalism and one of the most prominent public intellectuals in support of Palestinian liberation, taught at Columbia for nearly four decades, until his death in 2003. His presence helped establish the university as an important node within pro-Palestine scholarship and activism, even as a vocal Zionist contingent within the student body and faculty pushed in the opposite direction. Through much of the twenty-first century, conflicts over Israel and Palestine marked some of the most visible and contentious activism on campus.

The cover of a pamphlet from 1968, showing one of the hundreds of demonstrators injured by police during the strike that year.

In 2016, the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) coalition linked together an array of different student organizations in support of Palestinian liberation. The coalition helped to bring about a referendum on divestment in 2020. The proposition passed with a majority of votes from Columbia College students, but then-President Lee Bollinger ignored it, and the coalition went dormant.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the Student Workers of Columbia union campaign and strikes absorbed much student energy over the following years. But pro-Palestine activism remained a critical fault line on the divided campus.

Within days of the October 7 attack, large demonstrations in support of Israel and in support of Palestine took place on campus and just outside of it. While the majority of the politically active student body stood for Palestinian liberation, an active pro-Israeli student minority with strong alumni support received the solid backing of the administrations of Columbia and Barnard. Over the following weeks, administrators cancelled pro-Palestinian speakers and events and censored a faculty webpage that attempted to post a pro-Palestine message; graduate students who conveyed pro-Palestine messages to classes and students faced censure. An activist who got into a scuffle with a former IDF soldier was arrested and charged with a hate crime; by contrast, two Zionists who sprayed an Israeli-developed stink chemical onto dozens of pro-Palestine demonstrators at a campus event were merely suspended, despite the attack sending one person to the hospital. In November, after a walk-out, art installation, and die-in protest on campus drew hundreds, a Columbia administrator suspended Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP), claiming that the groups had violated campus event policies. Outraged faculty held a demonstration in support, while a revitalized CUAD soon incorporated over 100 different campus organizations, including the 3000-strong student workers union.

The groups that joined the coalition reflected a wide range of political perspectives and ethnic and religious backgrounds, tapping into a diverse range of the campus’s social networks. These would be instrumental in the struggle to come.

Participants in Columbia’s graduate worker union demonstrating during the previous round of protest activity at Columbia.

The Calm before the Storm

As late as Tuesday afternoon, the campus was locked down, support for Palestine was not visible anywhere, and a Zionist student group had a table set up in the center of campus with no opposition. It was dispiriting. But behind the scenes, furious preparations were taking place.

We are told that at first, the organizers had set a goal of starting the encampment when they had commitments from more than two hundred participants, but they were only able to confirm a little more than a hundred. On the morning of the occupation, when it was time to set up the tents, numbers had dropped to about sixty. There was internal disagreement about whether to go ahead with the plan right up to the last minute. But fortune favors the brave.

Wednesday, April 17

At about 4:30 am on Wednesday morning, students flowed onto the East Lawn with camping supplies and determination. By dawn, dozens of tents covered the grass. A banner addressed those on their way to the library: “While you read, Gaza bleeds.” The Muslim participants held their first morning prayers at 5:45.

The East Lawn on Columbia University campus on Wednesday, April 17.

As Columbia President Minouche Shafik sat before right-wing politicians in Washington, DC attempting to prove that she was sufficiently committed to repressing any sign of support for Palestinian liberation, hundreds of students occupied the space and marched in a picket around the fenced-in lawn.

On Wednesday afternoon, the area around the encampment became a field of debate, as campers and picketers exchanged barbs with small clusters of Zionist counter-protestors.

“Terrorists go home! Rape is not progressive!”—“Shame on you! Shame on YOU!”

“Israel is a terrorist state!”—“Raise your hand if you know Hamas kills Palestinians!”

“This is a shameful, shameful moment in history that we will never forget!”—“Release the hostages!”

“Resistance is justified!”—“This is not resistance!”

Whenever the picket line and chants slackened, the trolling would intensify. As marchers paused briefly to get lunch, the counter-protestors launched into a painfully off-key rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner. Through the small sound system, campers blared Mohammed Assaf’s anthem “Ana Dammi Falastini” [“My blood is Palestinian”]. The struggle to hold the camp was sonic as well as spatial.

Around 3:30 in the afternoon, a light rain began to fall, and organizers zipped up the walls of the central white canopy tent. Reports arrived that access to campus through the main gates at 116th Street had been entirely shut off. Student members of the University Senate arrived with an update that the administration had agreed that they would not attempt to evict the encampment until the following day in order to provide time for negotiation.

Having little reason to trust the administration’s words, organizers worried that the promise was a pretext to induce the encampment to let its guard down and slacken the picket and occupation, paving the way for an easier sweep. They saw the closing of the university gates and the questionable promise not to raid as elements in a slow kettling of the encampment. In response, they encouraged supporters to post up nearby in dorms and libraries and remain on call. As one undergrad organizer put it, “Lasting through the night required a certain tact. We needed the students to surround us.”

The administration sent representatives to negotiate. In the first round, they offered a “non-binding, university-wide divestment referendum”—an unimpressive offer, since the university had refused to take any action after a similar referendum passed at Columbia College in 2020 with 61% of the vote. Employees from Columbia and Barnard handed out leaflets urging the protesters to disperse, threatening “interim suspensions,” apparently a new form of discipline. Perhaps in response to the multiracial and BIPOC-led encampment, which contrasts with the white-dominated and socially segregated norm on Columbia’s campus, the administrations sent “women, mostly Black, in pencil skirts, and men of color in two-piece suits—the ‘Public Safety Diversity Pamphlet Remix,’” one organizer observed archly.

Around 7 pm, the administration issued an ultimatum to clear out by 9, threatening arrests. Tense negotiations continued. The University Senate refused to sign off on bringing the NYPD onto campus, which is required according to the formal procedures established in the aftermath of the 1968 protests, though organizers doubted that the administration would honor them.

The university offered some concessions. They promised to disclose the financial ties between Columbia and Israel and to offer amnesty to the campers if they left before 9. Presumably, the goal was to make it easier to carry out a raid targeting whoever remained. “They wanted us to decrease in numbers so they could fuck us,” growled one organizer afterwards.

The administrators tried to play hardball, insisting they wouldn’t negotiate further. The occupiers stood firm. Students from a range of religious and political backgrounds insisted on their commitment to the movement. Some echoed the sentiments of a JVP member who spoke at the rally the next morning: “My Jewish values demand that I take this stand against injustice.” Another student organizer explained: “We don’t fear the NYPD or Columbia. The only thing we fear is Allah.”

As the deadline approached and organizers reached out to their networks, scores of messages circulated the campus. The trickle of supporters from nearby dorms and libraries became a flood. By 9 pm, a massive picket encircled the entire encampment, the supporters linking their hands and arms, with three different chants going. The deadline passed, but the numbers were growing, not shrinking. Students knelt to pray, songs resonated over the lawn, spontaneous dancing broke out. New tents arrived to complement the dozens already set up. “They said they would sweep at 9—where the fuck are they?” wondered one camper. At 10 pm, rumors spread that NYPD had mobilized in riot gear outside the gates, but the crowd held strong.

In the end, the size and spirit of the camp proved too much to evict that night. At 10:44 pm, organizers got word that the administration had been forced to abandon plans for a sweep. The camp survived the night.

The East Lawn on Columbia University campus on Wednesday, April 17.

Thursday, April 18

Thursday morning arrived gray and chilly with intermittent rain. Manhattan’s Upper West Side was abuzz. NYPD vehicles swarmed the streets surrounding the campus. Inside the camp, organizers busied themselves with logistics, managing food donations and keeping the camp clean; “This is not our land, this is Lenapehoeking,” anti-colonial participants emphasized. They made plans for the day’s activities: a rally and walkout at noon, lunch and art-making at 2 pm, a teach-in on labor and Palestine at 3, a vigil later on. But around 10 am, while reports were arriving about a massive police force assembling nearby, three Barnard organizers who had taken public roles received notice of their immediate suspension from school and eviction from their dormitories.

A fiery rally got underway. One of the suspended organizers took to the microphone: “It is an honor to be suspended for Palestine. It is an honor to be evicted for Palestine. And if it comes to that, it will be an honor to be arrested for Palestine.”

Four converted school buses fielded by NYPD arrived on Amsterdam Avenue. Cops blocked the subway exit closest to campus. Three surveillance drones buzzed overhead. While some still couldn’t believe that the administration would violate the policy against NYPD incursion that had held since 1968, it was becoming clear that a raid was imminent.

As afternoon arrived, participants who had agreed to face “red” levels of risk huddled at the center of the East Lawn in the center of the field of tents, while others joined the march encircling the encampment. Around 1 pm, a phalanx of NYPD officers entered campus from the 114th Street gate next to Butler Library with truncheons and zip ties. Some people linked arms and attempted to obstruct police from reaching the lawn; but few were willing to take this step, and the police shoved past those who did. As hundreds screamed in rage, officers calmly took up positions around the lawn, blocked off any exit, and began blaring an order to disperse on threat of arrest for trespassing.

Police enter Columbia campus on Thursday, April 18.

A captain yelled at two green-hatted legal observers standing near the seated circle of campers to get back. When they answered that they had a legal right to observe, officers arrested them.

At 1:28 pm, the officers began zip-tying the students and hauling them off. A ferocious wall of protestors looking on from outside the lawn screamed, cried, filmed, and chanted “Shame!” Round after round of occupiers were led out through a tunnel of police to 114th Street, shouting out their names and information to legal supporters hovering at the edges with notepads as the throngs bellowed at the officers and sang hymns of praise to the arrestees. By about 2 pm, over a hundred people had been hauled off; the East Lawn was strewn with abandoned tents but empty of campers.

Police and university facilities staff walked across the lawn, disassembling and bagging up the tents. A crowd of hundreds remained on the other side of the fence around the lawn, furious but unsure where to direct their energy. Some surged off the campus and reassembled at 114th Street and Amsterdam, attempting to block the four NYPD buses carrying arrestees. Eventually, the busses escaped by driving the wrong way down one-way 114th Street to Broadway and headed downtown. Dozens of people clustered in noisy solidarity demonstrations on both sides of 116th Street. As word spread throughout campus about the raid, more and more students, faculty, and others crowded into the center of campus.

At this point, around 2:30 pm, some students spontaneously took a step that proved decisive. A few people scaled the low fence surrounding the entirely empty West Lawn, just yards away from the evicted East Lawn. “Come on!” yelled a couple of voices, then a chorus. “Hop the fence! Everybody onto the West Lawn!” Within minutes, a line of dozens of students sat in the center of the lawn facing the evicted space, arms linked, singing and chanting. Organizers quickly called for the amorphous crowd to reform as a march encircling the new lawn. Someone dragged a tarp out onto the grass. Before long, flags were planted and banners were laid out on the new space. Something new and unpredictable was brewing. Would it last?

Most of the NYPD officers had melted away as soon as the tents and blankets had been hauled away from the former encampment site on the East Lawn. A facilities employee with a forklift quickly covered the grass with large pallets of the supplies used to construct the temporary flooring that will be set up for the Commencement ceremonies in early May. Campus Public Safety staff still thronged the space with some NYPD presence, and drones still buzzed overhead, but the officers no longer stood tense in preparation to hold lines. They stayed away from the West Lawn, and emboldened students swarmed the grass. Within hours, an entirely new encampment had taken root.

Across town, a large contingent converged to do jail support for the arrestees. Before midnight, everyone had been released; they had not received criminal charges, but simple $250 citations, with no bail required. As night fell, they emerged from lockup to a cheering crowd offering snacks, drinks, hugs, and updates.

While the mass arrest frightened many people, it outraged and emboldened others. Protesters kept chanting for hours, while a ring of students holding hands continued to march around the growing presence in the West Lawn. As night began falling, many hauled in sleeping bags, blankets, and more tarps. There had been some previous discussions for a contingency plan regarding what to do after the eviction of the original encampment; but amid the chaos, organizers scrambled to decide how to respond to this organically emerging sequel.

There was a palpable determination to hold space. On receiving indications that the NYPD would not be called back in to sweep the West Lawn provided students did not set up tents again, dozens of students decided to curl up and sleep out in the open air. Despite the eviction and the arrests, a Palestinian solidarity camp held strong for a second night, just yards away from the original.

Police seizing the East Lawn on Thursday, April 18.

Reflections on Thursday’s Events

This encampment marked the first protest some of the participants had ever experienced, and the first experience with police repression for many more. Here, one experienced participant shares reflections on the day.

One of the most significant factors shaping how the struggle at Columbia has unfolded since the beginning of the encampment on Wednesday is the restriction of physical access to the campus. Columbia’s Morningside campus itself is relatively small, just four short blocks by one long block; the perimeter is comprised of walls and iron gates. An archway over Amsterdam Avenue connects to additional campus buildings and the law school in another linked area of two square blocks. Barnard College, Columbia’s sibling institution on the other side of Broadway, is similarly compact, forming a rectangle one block long by four blocks wide, fenced in with even fewer entrances and exits, though those with Columbia and Barnard IDs can freely enter either campus.

Beginning last fall, after large and contentious pro-Palestine demonstrations and Zionist counter-demonstrations took place on campus, the university began selectively restricting access to campus by locking nearly all the access gates and requiring people to swipe an active ID card at a reader staffed by private security guards. This has been an immensely unpopular move across the board, on account of both the inconvenience it creates and the Orwellian police state vibe it imposes.

From last October when the university instituted the policy until this week, the access restrictions were only in place for a few hours at a time, or at most a day, timed to coincide with planned demonstrations on campus—sometimes, according to administration emails, based on NYPD intelligence. However, on the Monday before the encampment was launched, the administration announced that the restricted access policy would be in place the entire week, intensifying resentment across campus. These policies were strictly enforced throughout the week. At one point on Friday, the guards at some entrances began visually comparing cardholders to the photographs on the cards they presented in hopes of preventing people from sharing their IDs. While this strategy has not succeeded in completely excluding unauthorized rebels, it has dramatically reshaped the terrain of student struggle and its relationship to the broader movement for Palestinian liberation across the city.

We can imagine that in the future, more and more campuses will resemble Columbia today: locked down with access almost totally restricted to cardholders (or controlled via more advanced biometrics) and hyper-surveilled inside the gates. While this will remain impossible at campuses that are integrated into urban centers such as NYU, we can expect that geographically concentrated campuses will increasingly adopt this model, especially in response to student unrest. In this context, it’s worth considering how to strategically approach the relationship between authorized and unauthorized rebels.

Throughout the conflict, police and security attention and the most stringent restrictions on access have concentrated on the entrance at 116th Street and Broadway. Less used entrances, while still protected by card readers and guards, often see little traffic, with only one or two unarmed rent-a-cops staffing them. A determined group that moved quickly could easily enter en masse. They would be vulnerable to surveillance once inside, but once they reached the crowd, they could probably blend in.

That said, since the confined and surveilled space limits tactical possibilities, assembling unauthorized rebels probably only makes sense in high-stakes moments, when more experienced crews could tip the balance and open up a wider range of possibilities. Had even a dozen rebels with tactical skills and experience working together been present during the raid on Thursday, things could have unfolded differently. Outside of such moments, however, there’s no reason for a non-occupational movement to be tied to one specific area. Both students and non-students have more mobility and flexibility off campus, not to mention a broader array of options for taking action and connecting with others.

A march outside Columbia campus.

The almost complete restriction of participants in the encampment to Columbia and Barnard students helps to explain the distinctive treatment that the arrestees received from the NYPD. As horrifying as the raid was, it was abundantly clear that the police had been strictly commanded to handle the students with kid gloves. Apart from some brief shoving and scuffles, they didn’t hit anyone, and no injuries were reported at the time, although apparently one arrestee who fainted did not receive immediate medical attention. [Update: it has since been reported that one protestor suffered a broken wrist during their arrest by NYPD.] Indignant claims by student organizers in the aftermath about the “violent” arrests notwithstanding, in my many years of interacting with police at demonstrations, I’ve never seen them display this kind of timidity in the course of carrying out arrests. In one peculiarly tender moment during the raid, a slim young person being led off the lawn with their hands zip-tied said something to the officer leading them, who reached forward and gently pushed their glasses back into place on the bridge of their nose.

Similarly, after arresting the participants, police and university staff carefully went through all of the tents one by one, disassembling them, placing them and the strewn belongings in plastic bags, and loading them into a truck; they have since sent messages confirming that a process is in the works to return students’ confiscated property. Compare this with the way NYPD officers treat the tents and belongings of the unhoused after sweeps of homeless encampments in the city, for example.

Many witness accounts and some press coverage described the invading cops as wearing “riot gear.” Presumably, these observers have never seen a genuinely militarized police response. The officers who conducted the arrests did not have shields. They wore very little body armor. None displayed the capacity to fire tear gas canisters, rubber bullets, or flash-bang grenades. Some had visors and helmets, but many were in standard uniforms. By contrast, some cops in more formidable riot gear were located off campus; they have been present at some of the demonstrations outside the walls.

All media accounts and police statements to the press report that no one resisted arrest. In fact, a number of people went limp and refused to cooperate; police dragged and carried them away gently, compared to the usual treatment of arrestees. It seems to have suited everyone’s narratives not to define this as resistance. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many NYPD officers were annoyed at having to “babysit” the rebellious students. The police’s own media narrative emphasized that the camp and its participants posed no danger and offered no resistance. The fact that even the NYPD have tried to distance themselves from the decision to carry out the raid indicates how much social power, media attention, and public sympathy the students are perceived to have.

In this context, we can reflect on other possibilities that could have unfolded that afternoon. The universal outrage provoked by the raid and the subsequent retaking of space on campus have shifted the advantage back to the movement, so the mass arrest was not a defeat in a broader sense. But the unique situation offered by the strong limits of police tactics could have enabled fiercer resistance.

At several points, some participants outside the “red” team awaiting arrest on the lawn had the opportunity to engage police more directly. For example, as the squad of arresting officers approached from 114th Street to enter the lawn, a few linked arms and invited others in the crowd to do so, so as to obstruct the police from beginning the operation before they could establish control of the space. Had a crew of even ten to fifteen been ready to lock down to the gates or form a firm line to block the police, it could have bought time for more participants to join the encampment, forcing the police and administration to rethink their plan of simply sweeping out passive occupiers.

Likewise, while the police were prepared for a large arrest, they were nonetheless substantially outnumbered by the participants. If rather than conceding the lawn to those anticipating arrest, the crowd had set the goal of preventing any arrests from happening, they might have swarmed the East Lawn en masse in numbers that would likely have exceeded NYPD’s mass arrest capacity, at least for a time.

Of course, we recognize and respect that different people are willing and able to take on different degrees of risk. But considering that a large group of people had decided that they were prepared to be arrested, it is worth considering how to employ that risk tolerance to achieve the maximum results. By sitting in a circle and waiting to be hauled off, the arrestees created a photogenic spectacle, crafting an appealing narrative about peaceful campers dragged off by fascist cops at the beck and call of the tyrannical university president. But if the campers who considered themselves “arrestable” had deployed their risk levels in an attempt to prevent or at least obstruct the eviction rather than accepting it as inevitable, they could have created a less predictable situation in which the hundreds of others present could have taken on active roles themselves, rather than being relegated to serving as spectators.

Once the arrests began, those who were looking on could have reconvened at both ends of 114th Street in order to block the buses from leaving. Since this tactic would have taken place outside the gates, it would have enabled us to draw on larger and more experienced crews from around the city, perhaps immobilizing the police and spreading the conflict to a broader terrain.

Of course, it’s easy to speculate thus in retrospect. We mean no criticism of the organizers, the crowd, or the courageous arrestees. But as Palestinian solidarity encampments and occupations spread across the country, we anticipate that many more will confront situations like these in the coming days and weeks. We offer these reflections in hopes that others can consider in advance how they might act in similar situations.

One thing to emphasize is the urgency of acting quickly when opportunities appear. Whether it’s a walkway on which only one officer is telling people to turn back, a tent just out of reach that could be snatched back across the fence before the police grab it, or a new patch of territory that remains undefended, these possibilities may only open up for a matter of seconds. Police and other mercenaries go into these situations with orders from above, anticipating a predictable situation; presenting them with a surprise of any kind can completely change their calculus, shifting the balance of power.

The bold decision to occupy the West Lawn exemplifies this. It was significant, first, because holding physical space has proved to be a critical element in focusing the energy and attention of the movement on campus. Countless demonstrations have taken place at Columbia since October, but however energetic and well-attended they were, all of them dispersed within a few hours, conceding both the physical territory and the initiative to the administration, which ratcheted up repression by targeting the participants after the fact. By contrast, holding territory has compelled all sides to confront the fact of the ongoing genocide; it has drawn many more people into the movement, creating a new cross-pollination between campus life and protest activity. To the extent to which the administration cannot distinguish between the student body as a whole and the protesters, everyone involved is safer.

The occupation of the West Lawn unfolds.

In the decision to occupy the West Lawn, it was strategic to open up a gray area between risk and arrest. When the participants in the encampment were threatened with arrest, they sorted themselves into distinct roles—some arrestable, some not. This presented the police with a legible situation. On the other hand, once people hopped the fence, they entered an undefined zone in which their courage and creativity could rapidly transform the decisions facing the authorities. At the beginning, when people first stormed the West Lawn, they immediately sat down—signifying, it seemed, a willingness to be arrested. But once a critical mass of people began to use the space for other purposes, creating an ambiguous situation, new horizons opened up. The move to the West Lawn was successful because it was unplanned, rash, passionate. It defied the expectations of the administration and police as well as many of the organizers and protesters. None of the parties involved knew what would happen, so none could contain the possibilities.

Finally, the immediate reestablishment of an occupied zone successfully leveraged an asymmetry between the protesters and the administration when it came to their vulnerability to negative publicity. The administration had decided to arrest the participants who refused to disperse from the encampment, and the police had prepared to do so. But even though the police had the material capacity to do far worse, neither the administration nor the police were prepared to bear the negative consequences of going further. The students regained the initiative by taking advantage of the fact that the authorities were already risking bad press, which could be magnified exponentially if they overreacted in an unpredictable situation. This turned what could have been a devastating defeat into a pivot that built the movement’s momentum.

Columbia campus on the morning of Thursday, April 18.

Friday, April 19

It’s Friday afternoon, and we’re sitting on a green tarp on the occupied West Lawn surrounded by a festive swirl of resistance. At least three or four hundred people are thronging the West Lawn of Columbia’s campus. The crowd is mostly undergraduates, with growing numbers of grad students, faculty, alumni, and others. Most are sitting, though a few dozen circulate or cluster in small groups. Perhaps half are masked, many sport kaffiyehs, and nearly as many are wearing hoodies, sweats, or caps with Columbia or Barnard logos. A dozen large Palestinian flags dot the landscape, along with many more small ones; the original banner reading “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” rescued from the wreckage of the original occupation on the neighboring lawn, now stands proudly on plastic poles held up with duct tape, only a bit smeared from rain. If the Columbia administration expected that ordering a full-scale New York Police Department raid would quash or dampen the resistance, they could not have been more wrong.

We’d arrived a few hours before, laden with bags of bagels and takeout containers of rice and curry. As we stepped up to the open gate to the West Lawn, a smiling student in a kaffiyeh stepped into our path.

“Hey there, we’re here to drop off some food in support,” we explained.

“OK, cool,” they responded. “Are you Columbia students, or alumni, or what?”

“Yeah, we are.”

“What part of Columbia are you from?”

Each of us mentioned a school or department.

“OK, cool. You pass the vibe check. Come on in!”

Having made our way through the whimsical “security” at the open gate, we proceeded onto the lawn.

In a corner of the northern end, a couple dozen student organizers are sitting in a closed planning meeting. An outer ring stands holding sheets, towels, and banners to obscure view of their deliberations. Passersby approach the fence in a continuous stream to take pictures or film, some with clearly hostile intent and others with ambiguous aims. A surveillance drone buzzes overhead ceaselessly; a helicopter growls by periodically. Although one of the gates to the lawn has been opened (if you’re willing to brave the “vibes” vetting), so many people are still hopping over a closed section of the fence at the opposite corner of the lawn that a volunteer is posted there with a folding chair to assist.

People looked surprisingly relaxed, given the previous day’s events. Most of them are smiling; a few have that manic, electric, slightly dazed look that I associate with participating for the first time in some sort of revolutionary upheaval. I remember the first glimpses into a new world we experienced in our first protests and occupations—the FTAA, Occupy Wall Street, the George Floyd Rebellion—and wonder how these students will remember these days in the years to come.

Some sleep or read and plenty look at phones, but most are actually talking to each other. Every conversation I hear around me is about action. Knots of first-year undergrads debate strategy and try to anticipate how the university will respond; adjunct instructors share reports about the arrestees with graduate teaching assistants; friends give updates about those suspended; multiracial clusters of sophomores tease out the parallels and differences between anti-Semitism and anti-Blackness. Insofar as we can venture a guess based on visual cues, the gender balance seems heavily skewed towards women, femmes, and nonbinary folks. Erotic cultures are on display—hand-drawn cardboard signs declare “Dykes For Divestment” and “Bottoms For Boycott”—but the vibe doesn’t feel charged in a sexual way. It’s chill and friendly, with an undercurrent of rage and determination.

Some people wearing media credentials circulate, taking pictures or approaching individuals for interviews, but without the aggressive intrusiveness common to mainstream media. Some people hand out fliers, books, and pamphlets, but this doesn’t create the impression of sectarian parties swarming with cult literature that I’ve experienced at many Palestine solidarity demos. One of the interesting consequences of the university authorities converting the campus into a fortress and excluding all outsiders is that the culture of the encampment is an extension of the culture of the campus.

Overheard: “No Taylor Swift in the liberated zone!”

On the microphone at the south end of the lawn, a succession of speakers keeps up the energy. A fiery woman in a green dress leads impassioned chants, alternating between Arabic and English. Representatives from nearby universities make their case for solidarity across campuses. An organizer from the Amazon Workers Union gives a rousing speech and pumps up the crowd with chants: “SHUT IT DOWN!” A young woman in a black headscarf wanders from tarp to tarp asking if anyone wants a cough drop or Advil. Barnard enbys in Carhartts studiously scrawl signs with fat sharpies. Someone giggles as they imitate how a friend strutted out of jail after their release.

A friendly graduate student on a blanket near me strikes up a conversation:

“How are you doing, brother?”

“Pretty good, how about you?”

“Awesome, but I’m pretty tired.”

“Were you here all night?”

“Yep. Are you just getting here?”

“We were here yesterday too.”

“I’ve been here since Tuesday night. Yesterday was really something, huh?”

“Yep. Heartbreaking to see all the arrests, but super inspiring to see everyone swarm onto this lawn afterwards.”

“Yeah, I know! When we were in jail yesterday, we had no idea people were going to do that. It wasn’t even planned. Then when we got out and we heard that people had taken this space—we were ecstatic.”

“You think folks are going to stay?”

“Oh, definitely. If it starts raining, I think people will put up tents again, regardless of what the administration says—fuck them! There’s no way I’m going anywhere.” He snuggles into a sleeping bag.

In every space of freedom opened in the course of struggle, however temporary, one of the most important steps is to establish a revolutionary commons through which resources can reach people outside the logic of capitalism, profit, and private property.

Word is circulating is that the administration has promised not to call NYPD back in, provided the students don’t set up tents. Many participants are expressing a deep-rooted determination to stay until evicted. At the same time, the university is going forward with assembling the bleachers that they plan to use for their commencement ceremonies—which are just a couple of weeks away. There’s no way they’ll allow this assembly to remain here while they are trying to confer degrees. Another conflict is coming, though whether it will involve another mass arrest remains to be seen.

Beyond the immediate environs of the occupied lawn, the campus is mostly deserted. As we stroll across an empty courtyard en route to a bathroom, two young NYPD officers walk past us. They look surprisingly timid beneath their affected swagger. “Fuck you,” my friend hisses as they pass by. After a beat, one of them replies sarcastically, but softly, “Have a nice day.” After yesterday’s raid, both NYPD and campus cops are keeping a lower profile.

Celebrities have taken an interest. Cornell West came just after the arrests and spoke to the crowd at the newly occupied West Lawn. Susan Sarandon turned up outside the gates to show support. Camera-hungry vultures, I grumble, but these sightings really do seem to generate excitement and boost morale.

Cornell West speaking on the West Lawn.

We chat with a professor we recognize. A group of faculty from various departments held open office hours to meet with students out on the lawn earlier in the day. Everyone is having emergency meetings, from academic departments to the UAW-affiliated student workers union to the students at the professional schools. Dozens of statements are circulating, editorials are being written, call-in and mass email campaigns are underway: a flurry of relentless activity.

Somehow, Gen Z has learned the “people’s mic” from the Occupy era. Between speakers, we all repeat after an organizer who spells out the “community agreements”: no drugs or alcohol, don’t engage counter-protestors, “We do not police each other but we also keep each other safe,” clean up after yourselves, eat the food if you’re hungry. A tarp in the center of the lawn offers a surprisingly well-organized array of sandwiches, bagels, Indian food, granola bars, waters and sodas, and a continuously replenished stash of other snacks and supplies.

As the evening approaches, word circulates of an emergency general body meeting for the union. Nearly 150 people turn out on a couple hours’ notice. The conversation is impassioned: Should we do a walkout? What’s the legal status of a wildcat strike? Do the suspension of student workers who were arrested at the encampment constitute an unfair labor practice that can be the basis of a legal strike? What other forms of escalation are possible? Where are the faculty at? With such a short time left in the semester, what would be impactful? The vast majority agree: striking is on the table. A walkout is planned for Monday. Will the faculty join us? Will this university just shut down?

“Disclose, divest—we will not stop, we will not rest!” Rebels in kaffiyehs dance enthusiastically, others bang on pots. In a thick sleeping bag next to me, the student who got out of jail last night sleeps angelically.

The encampment on the night of April 18.

Midnight, April 19-20

Midnight, on the seam of Friday night and Saturday morning. The crowd is even larger, five hundred or more, and the energy is defiant and festive. A large cluster on the south end of the lawn continuously dances, cheers, drums, waves flags, sings. At one moment, dozens lift up their phones with their flashlight apps blazing like lighters and sway in a circle. Despite the constant cheers and ruckus, dozens have already bunked down in sleeping bags and under piles of blankets. Others wander, chatting excitedly or gathering up trash.

An hour ago, a breakaway march of fifty or people circled outside the gates; we heard about one arrest. A graduate student from the union wanders from tarp to tarp, canvasing people to gauge how much support there could be for a wildcat strike in different departments. A knot of undergrads discuss the day’s events; one rattles off a list of other universities where solidarity encampments are popping up, awe tingling in her voice. It feels like we are collectively stepping through a door into the unknown. Something big, bigger than we can imagine. The university thought it could break our spirit of defiance and crush our experiment with Palestinian solidarity.

But today has made it undeniably clear: this is just the beginning.

The encampment on the night following April 18.

Appendix I: The View from Outside

Most people never have the opportunity to attend prestigious institutions like Columbia or Barnard. We offer a perspective from one such person, in order to emphasize the importance of non-students in the struggle for Palestinian solidarity and against the university administration.

I arrived at Columbia on Friday evening around 6 pm. All day, I had been listening to live reporting on WKCR, the Columbia student radio station. Every few minutes, the reporters announced which metro stops were barricaded and which were open, along with the location of the winding street demonstration and announcements from the lawn encampment. My body was buzzing, my energy fueled by the constant stream of information. I had to make it uptown. I found a friend to join me.

As I approached campus, the situation became clear. The front gates are directly adjacent to several metro stops. The NYPD probably recall the anti-fare-hike protests of 2019, during which protesters took over the subways; they may even know about the Chilean students whose subway protest catalyzed an uprising that same year. Dozens of NYPD were gathered outside the main gates of campus, some in riot gear, adjacent to a demonstration of about 200 people in a “protest pen.” Most of the demonstrators appeared to be non-students, primarily young people, while about ten students were hanging over a wall about one story above the crowd, waving a massive Palestinian flag. They were reaching down from the ivory tower, doing their best to connect the protests inside and out.

The gulf between the two was stark. I had heard that entrance was limited to students, but I had not understood that Columbia is essentially a fortress. Like the fenced-in protest pen outside, the campus had been turned into a semi-sanctioned protest zone surrounded by police. Granted, this was also the result of the determination and defiance of the students, whose protest has obstructed the daily operations of the campus.

To enter campus, students had to pass through tightly controlled entrances manned by Columbia campus security, hired security from Allied Universal, and NYPD officers. I watched police turn away a group of students carrying sleeping bags and tents. We heard a rumor from inside that the administration would not bring NYPD in to sweep if the students did not set up tents. “The NYPD hates tents.” They remember Occupy.

All the other gates to the main campus, which spans several city blocks, had been locked with chains and bike locks. There were few ground-floor windows, and many of them were covered in burglar bars. This did not stop dozens of groups of people from wandering the vicinity. Some spoke on the phone with their friends inside the campus, peering through cracks in doors without handles to describe what they could see inside, in desperate hopes that those within would be able to find the doors and open them. Others waited outside unguarded doors, or pointed at the skybridges, windows, fences. As the hours passed, many of these groups vanished. I began to see holes in the fences, open windows that were near enough to the ground that one might be able to climb to them. Other people were sweet-talking the guards, scanning borrowed ID cards, circulating the locations of possible entrance points. The fortress proved penetrable, though the security details were growing before our eyes.

Let’s talk about the distinction between student and non-student, which is so important to the university administration and the NYPD. On Thursday, the administration had suspended students and brought in police to arrest them for “trespassing”: in effect, they were equating “protester” with “non-student.” But this attempt to quash the protest failed; the existential threat only catalyzed more students into solidarity. Growing in response to repression is a vital sign—a strong indicator that a movement will not back down.

Thwarted, the administration and police shifted to tolerating the protest, so long as there were no tents—and no outsiders. Having failed to purge the student body of protesters and accidentally blurred the lines between students and non-students in a way that turned people against them, they sought to reestablish and re-legitimize that division by imposing it from the opposite direction. That is why the NYPD is stationed outside the metro and the university gates: to prevent the influx of non-students.

In surviving the attempt to evict it, the encampment at Columbia has become a symbol of the courage and determination of the movement in solidarity with Palestine. As long as it persists, it will inspire demonstrators elsewhere around the country to expect more of themselves, too. But as we have seen in previous movements, the only way for a movement to persist is for it to grow.

There are three ways that the movement occupying the West Lawn can grow. First, it could continue to draw in more elements of the student population within Columbia. Second, it can proliferate to other universities; already, students at Yale and other universities are organizing occupations of their own. Third, and most importantly, it can grow by overflowing the boundaries that separate academia from the rest of society.

New York City has seen some of the most robust, sustained, and sophisticated protests against the genocide in Gaza, most of which have not been organized by students. In previous movements on Columbia campus, such as the building occupations of 1968, non-students played a crucial role.

This is why the most important boundary to overcome is the distinction between inside and outside. As long as a strict separation remains between students and non-students, between included and excluded, those who wish to act in protest will have to choose between a venue in which any action will be seen as possessing social legitimacy but must be undertaken by highly surveilled students who consider themselves to have a lot to lose, and a space outside the walls where more forms of action are possible but less is at stake in terms of perceived legitimacy and the power to disrupt. The solution is to tear down the walls.

Appendix II: A Handout

This text was distributed at Columbia.

Click on the image for a printable pdf of the handout.

This is about stopping the genocide in Palestine.
Both political parties are fundamentally committed to supporting the genocide.
To the extent that commitment might waver, Israel is prepared to drag the US into war with Iran, and this might look like a better and better option for one or both political parties.
So this movement to stop the current war on Gaza has to consider that it may have to become the movement to stop the war that is coming to distract us from the war on Gaza.
At the same time, even the liberals, the scholars of bureaucracy, are telling us that the US political system is on a terminal collision course with the November election. This is the spring before the fall.

Once again, we are told to dutifully support the lesser of two evils. But now, choosing the lesser of two evils amounts to choosing which PR campaign you prefer to justify the absolute evil of genocide. There is no lesser of two absolute evils. The logic of the two-party system that has deceived us for generations has finally reached its end.

Under these circumstances, this movement could be our last chance to open up some other possibility before something even worse than democracy is imposed on us.
The question facing all of us now is how to stop the genocide in Palestine. But the only possible answer to this question involves asking how to stop the war machine that is the economy, how to stop the political system that is the war machine, how to stop the universities that are the political system, how to stop it all before it kills more. How to tear it down and not let it build back better. If we dig just a bit into our collective memory, we’ve had some practice with this.
Recently, we’ve seen small groups of people paralyze metro areas for hours using simple blockade tactics.

What if these tactics of grinding traffic and commerce to a halt spread to the scale of the George Floyd uprising? What if we blocked everything? For Gaza and for whoever is next in their sights? For the earth and for the people who come next? For each of us, so that we can live with dignity, knowing that we have done what we swore we would do if ever it came to that?
What happens if we stop everything? Could it really be worse than keeping it going? Could an apocalypse that resulted from our not working to feed the war economy really be worse than the apocalypse that is being created—in Gaza, the ocean, the atmosphere—by our working lives? These are not abstract questions. It really has come to this.
In the last week, we’ve seen the tactic of occupation spread across university campuses at a rate that we can only compare with the Occupy movement over a decade ago. During the fall of 2011, we witnessed and helped to build something we thought was impossible. We are once more witnessing and helping to build the impossible.

Blocking everything for Palestine demands that we rapidly create a set of options for life that are currently beyond the bounds of what is realistic—which really just means “what the police will allow.”
For decades, the Israeli military has trained and been trained by US police departments. Palestine is about everything because Palestine is the model for the cop world they are building everywhere. This is our moment to rise to the task of defeating it.

This text incorporates firsthand testimony from many witnesses, including Ry Spada. ↩

CrimethInc. : Categories : Current Events

Then They Came for the Palestinians : How to Respond to the Kidnapping of Mahmoud Khalil

The Antisemitic Plan to Smear Palestine Solidarity as Antisemitic

What Will It Take?

Learning from Experience

We Are Made for Each Other

The Students Walk Out in Los Angeles : A Report from the Streets

Report from Los Angeles

Further Reading

Reports from the Festivals of Resistance / Day of the Forest Defender

January 11

Sacramento, California

January 17-19

Brooklyn, New York

Cleveland, Ohio

Durham, North Carolina

Gary, Indiana

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Oakland, California

Olympia, Washington

Providence, Rhode Island

Richmond, Virginia

Tucson, Arizona

Sacrificial Violence and Retribution

Sacrificial Violence

Retribution

Beyond Martyrdom

Appendix

Pacific Northwest

California

Southwest

Central

Midwest

Southeast

Northeast

News from the Front: The Reflections of a Russian Anarchist in Rojava : On the Collapse of Assad, the Future of Russia, and the Looming Turkish-Backed Invasion

Resisting Local Authoritarianism and Multipolar Imperialisms in Georgia : A Deeper Look into the Protests

Introduction

A National Protest Movement in the Context of Local Authoritarianism

The “Foreign Agent” Law

Energy Geopolitics

The Anti-LGBT Law

The Desire for the West?

For Internationalist Solidarity

Georgia: The Firework Protests : A Report and Video Footage from the Streets of Tbilisi

Background

Friday Night, November 29

Saturday Night, November 30

Sunday Night, December 1

Monday Night, December 2

Tuesday Night, December 3

The Syrian Civil War Resumes : Perspectives on the Conflict from Western and Northeastern Syria

What’s Going on in Northwestern Syria?

The View from Rojava

Update: December 6, 2024

Western Front

Eastern Front

Southern Fronts

Rumors

Preliminary Evaluations

The Case for Resistance : What We’re Up Against—and What It Could Look Like to Fight

The Balance of Forces

How Popular Is Trump?

Billionaire Supervillains

Know Your Enemy

Exerting Leverage

Refine Our Strategies

Fight Smart

How Can We Resist?

Quit X/Twitter; Diminish Reliance on Instagram; Join Mastodon and Bluesky

Establish Local Organizing Venues

Build Rapid Response Networks

Establish Mutual Aid Projects

Establish Community Defense Projects

Prepare to Resist Raids and Deportations

Organize Pressure Campaigns

Organize against the Police

Debunk Liberal Narratives

Sow the Seeds of Defiance

Study the First Trump Era