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“They Can’t Beat All of Us” : A Reportback from the Florida Abolitionist Gathering

2025-03-15T22:58:00Z

The banner at the Civic Media Center welcoming participants to the 2025 Florida Abolitionist Gathering.

From February 28 to March 2, hundreds of abolitionists and anarchists from across the country converged in Gainesville for the first Florida Abolitionist Gathering (FAG). Across a passionate weekend of workshops, films, food, debate, ritual, and protest, the contours of a robust regional resistance movement came into focus. The intergenerational, heavily queer and trans, and strongly multi-issue and anarchist group of abolitionists that converged in Florida articulated an expansive vision of liberation anchored in the urgent need to dismantle the prison-industrial complex in all its manifestations. The gathering showed that even as liberals wring their hands about the death of democracy, scrappy groups of organizers continue to fight back—and sometimes win—deep within the belly of the beast.

An Uphill Battle

Even within the darkening landscape of hyper-policing, anti-immigrant crackdowns, racist backlash, and transphobia spreading across the US, Florida poses a particularly chilling context. Despite his conflicts with Donald Trump, popular conservative governor Ron DeSantis has led a vicious campaign against activists in the state for years, prefiguring the national MAGA obsession with pushing back against all things “woke.” The notorious 2021 HB1 law passed in the aftermath of the Justice for George Floyd uprisings dramatically expanded the definition of a “riot” and the charges that can be levied against protesters, made toppling statues a felony, and limited the liability of anyone who injures or kills protesters, among other appalling provisions. The power of developers continues to surge, resulting in rollbacks of environmental protections and further reductions in affordable housing, while punitive policies criminalizing homelessness have led to sweeps of parks. As poverty and harsh laws sweep more and more people into jails and prisons, the conditions inside have worsened. New policies have ended physical mail delivery in most facilities and nearly succeeded in eliminating in-person visits, while DeSantis has called in the National Guard to staff prisons.

Suffice it to say: in Florida, abolitionists face an uphill battle.

Yet the state also features a robust array of resistance movements, including a strong anarchist presence, which have long pushed back against environmental destruction, gentrification, xenophobia, and mass incarceration. The Earth First! Journal was based in Lake Worth, Florida for some years, and active EF! chapters along with groups such as Fight Toxic Prisons have fought campaigns against ecocidal developers and prison profiteers. Protesters have targeted the headquarters of the GEO Group, a major private prison company; the Lake Worth-based Prison Legal News collects and circulates a wide range of information on prisoner rights.

In 2020, outside organizers concerned about the horrifying conditions facing prisoners during the COVID pandemic launched the Community Hotline for Incarcerated People in South Florida, documenting abuses and offering support to hundreds through legal referrals, advocacy, and protest. A mass demonstration in Tallahassee memorialized people who died in Florida prisons in the pandemic, featuring the testimony of a person whose father died from COVID-19 in prison and the laying of body bags in front of the state capitol building.

Gainesville in particular has been the site of powerful abolitionist activism in recent years. Campaigns by Florida Prisoner Solidarity successfully forced the termination of prison labor contracts with the city and county in 2018, effectively closing the Gainesville Work Camp facility; in 2023, in response to activist pressure, the Alachua County Jail became the first in the South to offer free unlimited phone calls to prisoners.

Last year, local organizers agreed that something needed to happen to mobilize against rising fascism in the state and nationally. They proposed a gathering that would bring together abolitionists and anarchists to network and share strategies. While many solidarity groups and campaigns operate in Florida, the geography of the state is so spread out that organizers from different regions may rarely have the chance to connect and collaborate. This gathering offered a chance to bring these far-flung radicals together while keeping the spotlight on prison solidarity organizing, which can often be ignored in broader progressive activist spaces.

Tabling materials at the 2025 Florida Abolitionist Gathering.

The Gathering

The Civic Media Center (CMC) served as the home base for the 2025 Florida Abolitionist Gathering. One of the longest-lasting radical community spaces still operating in the US, the CMC emerged from the global justice and Indymedia movements of a previous anarchist generation. Since its founding in 1993, the space has offered an alternative library, reading room, and infoshop, hosted events in support of grassroots activism, and featured do-it-yourself music and cultural events. In addition to the CMC, organizers partnered with other local art spaces and the public library to ensure that they could accommodate a wide range of workshops and activities. It’s a good thing they did, because over two hundred participants thronged the gathering over the course of the weekend, filling most event spaces to capacity and spilling out into countless discussions in the CMC’s outside courtyard, in a nearby park, and elsewhere across the city.

The gathering’s provocative acronym reflected the centrality of queer/trans organizers, participants, and topics. As we’ve observed on an international level, newer generations drawn to anarchist activity are disproportionately gender/sexual outlaws as well as political radicals; that pattern was very much in evidence in Gainesville.

Tablers such as the Pansy Collective and Queers for Climate Justice offered queer/trans merch and perspectives. Sessions took place over the weekend on producing hormones for do-it-yourself HRT and herbal transition options, a prison book luncheon hosted by the Tranzmission Prison Project on strategizing to get queer content into prisons, a participatory poetry workshop on “writing the queer/trans body,” and a presentation on “Radical Queer Histories of Faggotry, Abolition, and Anarchy.” The Alyssa Rodriguez Center for Gender Justice, an organization dedicated to strengthening movements for gender justice across prison walls, fighting gender-based violence, and eliminating barriers to political participation for incarcerated survivors and other grassroots advocates, presented on the experiences of trans people in Florida DOC facilities and spoke about coalition organizing around reproductive justice and bodily autonomy within and beyond prisons. At a time of intensifying gender fascism, as the right increasingly demonizes trans people, restricts access to abortion, and excuses male sexual violence, it was encouraging to see abolitionist organizers foregrounding struggles for gender self-determination in the movement to end prisons.

This intersectional logic informed a wide range of activities at the gathering. Presenters emphasized connections between varied struggles in workshops on Palestinian political prisoners, immigrant solidarity and anti-deportation efforts, and the environmental impact of jails and prisons. The final event on the program involved the screening of Can’t Stop Change, a new documentary film connecting stories from “LGBTQ2S+ artists, organizers, and educators across Florida (and the new Florida diaspora) into an intersectional climate justice narrative.”

The weekend showed that today’s abolitionists see prisoner support and prison abolition movements as inseparably linked to a wide range of liberation struggles and can confidently articulate the links between them as they build solidarity.

The specific context of Florida and the Southeast informed many presentations. The workshops included a teach-in on the oppression of Haiti and Haitian migrants, and its role within US empire; perspectives on Appalachian anti-capitalist and abolitionist organizing from the mine wars to mountaintop removal; the bail fund and hurricane relief mutual aid efforts in Asheville, North Carolina; and campaigns against new prison construction across the region by Fight Toxic Prisons. One especially interesting presentation by Root Legal, a South Florida nonprofit public interest law firm and community organizing project oriented towards addressing root causes of harm, shared their efforts to forge an abolitionist strategy working with “crime victims” to reject pressure from prosecutors to pursue criminal punishment.

An innovative cultural project launched by the South Florida Community Hotline for Incarcerated People (CHIP) has produced “Bending the Bars”, a full album of original hip-hop written and recorded entirely by musicians inside the jails and prisons of Broward County, Florida. Despite a complete ban on in-person visits and severe restrictions on costly phone calls, outside supporters collaborated with a wide range of incarcerated rappers to produce a powerful musical effort that defies the state’s efforts to isolate and silence prisoners. This was one of many examples on offer of how ferocious, creative, and effective abolitionist organizing can thrive in unexpected places.

While local and regional efforts remained in the spotlight, on Saturday evening, attendees took inspiration from struggles in other territories. Many participants were relieved at the recent release of Leonard Peltier after nearly fifty years incarcerated on charges stemming from his participation in the American Indian Movement’s struggle for Indigenous self-determination. A longtime Florida supporter of political prisoners offered an emotional presentation on the significance of his case to prison movements; some older organizers recalled being radicalized by Peltier’s case decades ago, and despairing of ever seeing him freed in their lifetimes. After viewing a short video of Leonard addressing a crowd of supporters near his home in so-called North Dakota, the assembled abolitionists recorded a wildly enthusiastic cheer and message of support and solidarity, which was sent to Peltier through his supporters.

Afterwards, a large group viewed the recent CrimethInc. documentary Fell in Love With Fire, an anarchist account of the revolutionary uprising that swept through Chile from October 2019 to March 2020. Amid a weekend of sharing strategies for fighting back against an array of miserable conditions, it was electrifying to hear the stories of the Chilean revolt as a reminder that revolutionary possibilities exist in the here and now, that courageous mass defiance can dramatically alter the social consensus in a short period of time, and that the future is unwritten.

Participants at the gathering showed a passionate interest not only in supporting prisoners and dismantling existing carceral facilities but also in critically rethinking the alternative ways our communities respond to harm. An evocative image appearing on stickers and t-shirts insisted, “Abolish All Carceral Logics,” illustrating the grip that our prison society can exert on our minds and hearts as well as our bodies.

One of the weekend’s most widely discussed workshops was titled “Against Me Too: Against Survivor Politics,” which waded into the waters of controversy around efforts to respond to harm within radical communities via community accountability processes. The conversation proved so generative that when the session ended, participants agreed to convene a second time on Sunday to continue the dialogues that had begun. At a time when liberals commonly repurpose the MAGA chant “Lock Them/Him Up!” at spaces ranging from the Democratic National Convention to a rally to defend trans history at Stonewall, it is critical that those of us fighting for total freedom reject the creep of carceral logic into our own approaches to social transformation.

Anarchists have long critically reflected on our small-scale efforts to redress harm outside of criminal legal processes. The many discussions that unspooled within and beyond these workshops confirmed that a new generation of anarchists and abolitionists continue to debate how to dismantle patriarchy and keep each other safe outside of the ineffective and punitive approaches put forward by the state.

On the last afternoon of the gathering, a well-attended caucus of non-white attendees met and shared experiences of navigating the gathering and broader organizing spaces. In the collective debrief session following, caucus participants shared a range of feedback about their experiences, critiquing the predominant whiteness of the gathering and asserting the importance of more autonomous spaces for non-white organizers to connect. While participants diverged in their perspectives of the weekend, many agreed that both the caucus space and the public debrief circle at the close of the gatherings schedule were key features that other gatherings should reproduce. In both autonomous organizing and critical participation in majority white efforts, Black, brown, and Indigenous attendees made clear that their perspectives are integral to effective movements for abolition and liberation. Other suggestions offered toward future gatherings included increased intergenerational spaces, sessions rooting us into the place we gather in and its local context, and expanding the variety of modalities for learning, sharing, and action.

Friday evening’s grief ritual offered one of the weekend’s most moving moments. The assembled participants shared a painfully long list of names of fellow organizers and loved ones who had died in recent years, adding them to a board that would eventually be composted, symbolizing their return to the earth to continue nourishing and fertilizing a new generation of resistance. One participant sung a song to honor Tortuguita, an anarchist murdered by police while defending the Weelaunee Forest in the movement to Stop Cop City in Atlanta.

At the ritual and in several workshops across the weekend, participants honored the memory of Karen Smith, a prolific outside organizer who has been mourned by her comrades on both sides of the walls since her tragic death in a car accident in 2020. As a recently incarcerated organizer recalled, “She gave her heart, her mind, and her life to this movement.” Despite the intense grief and demoralization so many radicals feel amid personal losses and political defeats, the ritual showed the capacity of our radical movements to rebuild our resilience by honoring our departed comrades and sharing deeply with each other.

The altar created by FAG 2025 participants during the grief ritual commemorating our departed comrades.

The Power of Inside/Outside Organizing: Julius’s Story

In one of the weekend’s most powerful sessions, two Florida outside abolitionists joined Julius, one of the lead incarcerated organizers of the 2016 national prison strike in Florida, to discuss inside/outside resistance to the Florida Department of Corrections to a packed room of 75 attendees at the public library. After spending over seventeen years in Florida prisons since being sentenced as a teenager, Julius had just been released the previous month. In a particularly moving moment, a south Florida anarchist organizer arrived and approached Julius at the table; as it turned out, the two had been corresponding and organizing together for years, but had never before been able to meet in person. Their emotional embrace with tears in their eyes showed concretely the powerful bonds that can be forged through solidarity across prison walls.

Julius shared his perspectives on how becoming involved in inside/outside solidarity organizing since 2016 transformed his life. He traced his political development over his years inside, acknowledging the shame he felt about his past actions of stealing from other poor people from his own community and misogynistic behavior. While accepting responsibility for harm he caused, he explained that his sentence involved “no recognition of what I’ve been through, or the context that shaped me.” Receiving mail from outside organizers helped him reinterpret his experiences through a political lens, and as momentum built toward the national prison strike, he decided to go all in. He used his own scarce commissary funds to photocopy and circulate materials about the strike, and built relationships with prisoners who were widely respected whose influence could help ensure wider participation. His efforts paid off: at his facility, 90% of the prisoners participated in hunger strikes or sit-down work strikes. Florida prisons kicked off the strike nationally, launching in a dozen facilities two days before the scheduled date and startling Florida Deportment of Corrections officials.

Like other vocal strikers, Julius was targeted by the prison administration with made-up infractions and arbitrary transfers to other facilities in an attempt to hamper his organizing. Yet their strategy backfired. Although the authorities bounced him around to five different facilities in retaliation, Julius gleefully recounted, “I could reach five times as many people with the message as I could have if they’d just left me there.” But outside pressure proved instrumental to offsetting the consequences prison officials can inflict on inside organizers with near impunity. “That’s why your voices are so important,” Julius explained, “because they can’t tell you to shut the fuck up, pepper spray you, and throw you in a cell.”

Julius reiterated a lesson that incarcerated organizers have long emphasized: receiving mail, phone calls, visits, and commissary donations from outside supporters demonstrates to both prison officials and fellow prisoners that an inside organizer has support and cannot be subjected to abuse or isolation without consequences. Achieving a critical mass of both participation inside and support outside provides the only way to win victories and protect organizers, he explained: “They might catch us individually, but they can’t beat all of us.”

Prison was a harrowing experience, and adjusting to life on the outside for the first time in nearly two decades hasn’t been easy, Julius acknowledged. Small things could trigger his PTSD, from the jangle of keys (signifying the approach of guards) to the squeak of shoes on a basketball court (the soundscape of a fight or stabbing). But the organizing that changed his life inside has also transformed his notion of what could be possible in his life outside. The positive thing he’s taken from his seventeen years in Florida’s hellish prisons is the network he formed with other abolitionists—“It’s you comrades who are the inspiration.”

Alongside Julius’s powerful in-person testimony, panelists shared audio recordings of messages from two additional inside organizers who are still currently incarcerated. Their testimony—interrupted by the mechanical voice intoning “you have one minute remaining” that is so familiar to organizers—reminded attendees of the absence of the countless thousands of comrades who remain held captive behind the walls.

In a poignant moment, Julius explained that across nearly two decades behind the walls, his biggest fear was “dying alone in prison without my voice ever being heard.” The panel showed how organizers can amplify those voices, strengthening movements for solidarity and abolition and overcoming the state’s efforts to bury people alive.

Materials for participants at the gathering to write to prisoners.

From Discussion to Action: Protest and Mutual Aid

At the panel discussion, Julius had explained the powerful impact that noise demonstrations outside prisons and jails can have: “That gets their attention, I promise you!” So it was appropriate that the weekend concluded with a demonstration outside the Gainesville Work Camp, a prison focused on extracting prisoner labor that has recently reopened after activists successfully shut it down several years before. About twenty-five participants from the gathering held a spirited rally, making noise and chanting to let officials know that the exploitation of local prisoners did not go unnoticed.

A particularly feisty child of perhaps ten years old who had attended much of the gathering provided a highlight, getting on the bullhorn and chanting, “Oink oink, piggy piggy / We’re gonna make your lives shitty!”

As the demonstration concluded with a chant of “We love you, we see you / We won’t be free without you,” a group of incarcerated workers could be seen waving. One organizer described it as the best part of the gathering: “After a weekend of talking about solidarity, then being in it.”

The demonstration at the Work Farm prison in Gainesville.

In addition to the demonstration, the weekend’s cultural events raised a significant sum of money for a variety of solidarity projects. A show one evening benefited Florida Prisoner Solidarity’s support efforts, while proceeds from a rave helped the Gainesville Books to Prisoners program and mutual aid efforts in Gaza and Sudan. In particular, money raised throughout the FAG weekend successfully funded a water well in Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, which is now supplying 300-400 families, enabling them to resist Israeli colonial forces seeking to displace them. The relationships of solidarity that were strengthened this weekend transcended apartheid walls and national borders as well as prison walls.

The Florida Abolitionist Gathering showed the outlines of a fierce and broad movement against prisons and the world that creates them, anchored in an anarchist vision of total liberation. In the difficult times ahead, we can find strength in remembering that prisoners in the most horrific conditions have sustained their determination through the power of solidarity—and that every one of us can play a role in fighting back as we build towards a world free of prisons and all forms of exploitation and oppression.

To learn more or get involved:

Florida Abolitionist Gathering – also check out their Instagram (T-shirts from the gathering are still available, in case you missed it!)
Want to host the next Abolitionist Gathering in your area? Whether you’re from Georgia (GAG), South Carolina (SCAG), Louisiana (LAG), or somewhere else in the region that makes for an even worse acronym, you can reach out to the organizers through the links above.

Organizations:

Civic Media Center (CMC)
Florida Prisoner Solidarity
Fight Toxic Prisons
South Florida Community Hotline for Incarcerated People (CHIP)
“Bending the Bars” – hip hop album by incarcerated musicians from Florida
Root Legal
The Alyssa Rodriguez Center for Gender Justice
Florida Institutional Legal Services Project](https://www.floridalegal.org/)
Transgender Gender-Variant & Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP)
Oakland Abolition and Solidarity

Films:

"The Only Immigrant Trying to Steal My Job Is Elon Musk" : A Bus Driver's Perspective on Elon Musk's Austerity Measures

2025-02-24T13:23:25Z

In the following narrative, a bus driver describes how the cuts that Elon Musk is carrying out in the federal government are affecting ordinary public transit workers.

There is a poetic opposition between the figure of the anonymous bus driver and Elon Musk, the billionaire car mogul. The bus driver and the automobile profiteer represent different modes of transportation—public and private—that imply different models for society. On the one hand, a vision of collectivity emerging from common resources and public service; on the other, an unbridled profit motive justifying privatization, isolation, and immiseration. Everyone riding together—or the lone plutocrat speeding away from a betrayed community. Why else market the “Cybertruck” as bulletproof?

Elon Musk made much of his fortune from taxpayer-funded subsidies; now he is trying to delete all of the functions of the government except the ones that benefit him personally. The irony of a man who made his fortune selling cars implying that impoverished bus drivers are parasites on the public should not be lost on anyone. As much as Elon Musk pretends to be an enemy of big government, billionaires like him need the state more than anyone else does. It is easy enough to imagine public transit without the state—all it would take would be to abolish the mechanisms (such as property rights) that impose artificial scarcity, so that those who enjoy doing things for others’ benefit could do so without fear of going hungry. But it is not possible to imagine Elon Musk without a government forcefully extracting hundreds of billions of dollars of taxes with which to protect him from those he exploits and oppresses.

People around the country have begun expressing their displeasure against Elon Musk by demonstrating at Tesla dealerships. Another round of demonstrations is scheduled for March 1, this Saturday. Without further ado, the bus driver’s story.

Click on the image to download the flier.

“The Only Immigrant Trying to Steal My Job Is Elon Musk”

“Did you see that Facebook post about the budget cuts?” my co-worker asks. “What the fuck, no,” I reply. She hands me her phone. I see a headline announcing that, due to the push to slash basic services coming from Elon Musk and Donald Trump, 20% of our funding for local public transportation is now threatened. Lawyers are fighting it out in the courts, but if these cuts go through, it will mean less service, possible layoffs, and lots of people not having access to a system that is one of the few lifelines for poor people in our area. People depend on these buses to get to their jobs, to medical appointments, to programs for special needs adults, to court dates.

I sit back down, staring out the window at the cold, grey parking lot. I am waiting for a member of the morning shift to come in with a bus so I can take it out. A few buses dot the bus yard. They’re sitting idle because the parts on order haven’t come in for months—even years, in some cases—and because the city refuses to hire enough mechanics to keep up with daily maintenance. This means that drivers on night shift, like me, sometimes have to wait hours for a bus to arrive. Our transit agency, which contracts out to a huge multi-national corporation, is already dramatically underfunded. The new cuts will only compound our existing problems.

“Fucking Musk, man,” I say with a sigh. Another co-worker on the night shift agrees with me. He’s in his mid-70s, but he’s still working full time because he recently burned through all his savings burying his parents. I launch into a long rant about how both Musk and Trump hate labor unions and workers and want to replace us all with artificial intelligence. A third co-worker, presumably a Trump supporter, grumbles about how “they” just want to blame the cuts threatening our jobs on the “administration.”

Who else would you blame it on?

It’s pitch-dark when I enter the trailer park, passing a metal gate, I drive slowly through the ever-growing rows of manufactured homes. Some of them have signs reading “For sale.”

“Lots of people moving out?” I ask my only passenger.

“Yeah, no one can afford to live here anymore,” she replies. As I turn the corner, she launches into a long tirade about the corporation who owns the trailer park and how they keep raising the cost of “space rent,” the monthly fee that mobile home owners pay to trailer park owners. “Every year the rent here goes up. New people move in from out of town and they can pay more, and that’s pushing us out,” she says, as I unhook her walker inside the cold, dark bus cab. “I don’t know why the landlords are so greedy. Do they just want everything?” I lower her and her walker down onto the pavement outside her trailer.

As the electronic ramp whirls its gears, I turn to my left. In her front window, there is a strange collage of images of Donald Trump. It is faded and worn from the sun. I shake my head and chuckle, resisting the temptation to point out the obvious. How can you complain about a corporate landlord ruining your life, but place all of your hopes in another landlord who is trying to become a dictator?

Perhaps she senses my disdain. “Trump is gonna fix it, you’ll see. Prices are going to go down once he starts drilling.”

My eyes narrow. “Biden was drilling more oil than any president before him,” I reply.

“He needs to get his head drilled,” she retorts, making me laugh. Then she launches into another rant about DEI and how it ruined the schools she apparently taught at before she retired. As she hobbles inside, I cast one more glance over my shoulder. Trump’s smiling face leers back at me, ominous. The machine moans as the wheelchair lift cycles back into place.

I meet all sorts of people like this at my job. One guy smells like piss so bad while I strap in his wheelchair that I have to turn my head so I don’t gag. The car in front of the house where I pick him up has a bumper sticker on it reading, “I Don’t Trust the Liberal Media.” I wonder if the conservative media is telling him his healthcare is about to be nuked from orbit.

Another guy, as I load and unload his wheelchair, takes out his Trump hat, puts it on, and asks me what I think of it. I tell him Trump and Musk want to use the military to shoot protesters, destroy unions, and fire workers like me, so why would I give a fuck about them. He looks away, says, “Alright then,” and jets off on his electronic scooter. I wonder if he is looking forward to ICE deporting half of his neighbors.

On election day, I lost it and got into a heated back and forth with a pro-Trump guy. He rested his case by proclaiming that we need to make it easier on rich people so that the wealth will trickle down to the rest of us. I want to grab these people and shake them.

Trump represents the triumph of the nihilism of our age. The foreclosure of the idea that the working-class can take and shape its own destiny. Instead, apparently, we should throw ourselves at the mercy of a reality TV star who shits in a gold toilet, eats breakfast with billionaire pedophiles, and has dinner with neo-Nazis between rounds of golf. In the absence of the kind of social movements that could connect people and enable them to grow and change, Trump has built a mass parasocial spectacle that makes these isolated people feel like they are part of something greater than themselves even as all of our lives become smaller and smaller, more and more impoverished and alienated.

There’s an old saying that society get the villains it deserves. Perhaps our age is getting the fascists it deserves, too.

I shuffle into the union hall, past the placards reading “ON STRIKE” and faded signs several decades old. Almost fifteen years ago, during Occupy, I attended a meeting in this same room. I wonder what’s changed since then. I find a seat and one of our union shop stewards slides a packet across the table to me. I open it up and start paging through it, looking at the spreadsheets and graphs.

We start to discuss the ins and outs of the proposed contract that our elected union representatives and corporate lawyers have been going over during recent meetings. One of the much-hated top corporate bosses was recently fired for corruption, much to the delight of the entire workforce. As one of my co-workers said, “Really tells you a lot about a place when motherfuckers are walking around singing, ‘Ding-dong, the witch is dead!’ and morale has never been higher!”

We go through the contract. Despite a few small improvements, things are mostly the same. “What about the pay?” I ask, fingers crossed. The shop steward cocks her head to the side and turns a page, pointing with her pen to a graph showing a dollar increase. She explains that the contract will be for five years, during which time we’ll only be getting a few cents more each year. “This is literally what I was making ten years ago,” I sigh, “and this contract will be valid for five years?”

I already can’t save money. Imagine what things will be like in five years.

She shrugs. “We’re encouraging you to vote “Yes,”’ she says, and hands me a piece of paper on which to mark an “X” signifying yes or no.

If enough workers vote the contract through, the company will ratify it and it will govern my life for the next five years—presuming that I don’t get downsized. Any strike or protest activity will be illegal, as per our “No Strike” agreement. If enough people vote no, it goes back to the union bargaining team, and they will continue to bargain for more changes in closed door meetings.

I head into another room, mark an X by “NO,” and drop the piece of paper into a wooden box. I wave to a few co-workers on my way out. As I leave, I pass a portrait of Sean O’Brien, the president of the Teamsters union. You smug bastard, I say to myself. I remember his glasses and bald head on stage of the Republican National Convention last year, when he called Donald Trump a “Tough son of a bitch.” What a dipshit.

I used to have a poster in my room many years ago, proclaiming, “The past doesn’t pass.” Next to the slogan was a photo of striking Teamster bus drivers—bus drivers, just like me—beating police officers with baseball bats during the general strike of 1934 in Minneapolis. That was one of the decisive labor battles that forced the ruling class to accept the New Deal in order to cool down the class war that was brewing on the streets.

The past doesn’t pass, but the future can leave you behind.

At home, I look over a letter announcing that people in my neighborhood shouldn’t drink the tap water because the levels of uranium in the river are too high. Sometimes I wonder what I would say to my children about this moment in history—if I could afford to have children. Probably the same things my parents say to me now: they’re sorry we are inheriting this world. Sorry they didn’t fix it. Sorry they didn’t build strong enough movements to turn the tide against these monsters.

At work, as I drive, I begin to notice that there are fewer Trump flags and signs out. Resentment is rising. A joke by a cashier here about being replaced by AI, a comment there about Trump cutting programs. I walk into the break room and someone is shaking their head angrily while watching a video of Musk on their phone. They mutter something about tariffs and rising prices.

The tension in the air is palpable. It is similar to how things felt at the start of the economic crisis in 2008, when many of the homes in my neighborhood were foreclosed on and many people lost their jobs. It also reminds me of the start of the pandemic—how at first, I thought it wouldn’t be so bad, only to watch in horror as our family members and friends succumbed to the virus.

In 2008, many people thought that crowds would flood the streets immediately when the administration bailed out the banks while leaving the rest of us high and dry. That didn’t happen. It took years for resistance to grow. In Chicago, workers occupied their factory when they were terminated without pay. In Wisconsin, workers occupied the capitol building against government attacks on collective bargaining. In California, students occupied universities to protest budget cuts. The Occupy movement began in the fall of 2011 and rapidly built to massive occupations of city squares across the US, coordinated port shut downs, and a general strike in Oakland, California. With Joe Biden as vice president, the federal government helped to coordinate violent raids targeting the movement in order to break it apart.

In 2020, on the other hand, things didn’t fester—they exploded like a bomb. Millions of people across the country mobilized in response to the pandemic, providing mutual aid in the face of government inaction and right-wing disinformation, and then hit the streets in the George Floyd uprising.

Who knows how things will evolve this time. It will probably be different from both of those scenarios, but it could be similar in some ways. What is clear is that things are not as people expected them to be. Many people on the left thought—or at least hoped—that Trump would govern the way he did the first time, constrained by mass protest, the courts, and his own party. Many who voted for him honestly did not expect him to follow through on many of the policies he explicitly promised to carry out. Those who were not paying attention are surprised that suddenly, jobs are disappearing and services are being cut while prices only continue to rise.

The material conditions are forcing people to reckon with the fact that the state is attempting to reshape our lives for the sake of an authoritarian project. As we speak, thousands of people are flooding town halls across the United States, screaming at their so-called representatives about the plan to gut programs like Medicaid—only to hear the bureaucrats repeat a slew of MAGA talking points. Anger is brewing. Hopefully the MAGA strategy of “flooding the zone” with shit will produce diminishing returns as people turn towards their neighbors and co-workers and away from their phones and YouTube.

This is an opportunity for us to call out the authoritarian project of the Trump administration, the techno-dystopian fantasies of billionaires like Musk, and the complicity of the Democrats who helped make all of this possible. Beyond naming the systems that we are up against, we also need to be clear about our position as workers and how the billionaires running the country want both to hurt us and to weaponize our anger, turning us against each other through propaganda and fearmongering. This is why it’s important to stand in solidarity with everyone attacked by the Trump administration, whether trans folks, migrants, prisoners, or beyond. We can’t leave anyone behind. The only immigrant trying to steal my job is Elon Musk. It’s time to be clear that our interests are not theirs; we must develop and promote our own vision of a better world in total opposition to the ruling class, the billionaires, and their fascist puppets.

Moreover, it’s time for action. We need to give expression to these antagonisms while revealing the poverty of the institutional forms currently at our disposal—the Democratic party, the ever-shrinking union bureaucracy, the non-profits. We can show examples of past struggles and resistance from the mass wildcat strikes by teachers in West Virginia and the fierce anti-fascist mobilizations against the alt-right to the airport shutdowns following the Muslim Ban. We can support and expand the existing fronts that are already breaking out around us: protests against Musk outside of Tesla, rallies to demand that hospitals continue to treat trans people, community defense and rapid response networks to address ICE attacks, bashing back against the violence of the far right. We can demonstrate the utility of tactics and strategies that others can take up and expand on as all of us figure out how to fight in the new reality.

It’s hard to look at the news without imagining tanks on the streets or scenes out of V for Vendetta. But the scenario I worry about most is that this will simply become the new normal. That we will accept this just as we accepted the last round of attacks. As we accepted the genocide in Gaza. As we accepted the ecological gun to our heads that is climate change.

While people are angry and energized, we have a chance to push in a new direction. Let’s use this moment to foster broad and popular networks of resistance that improve our lives, strengthen our communities, and enable us to meet our needs directly. At this point, we don’t have much of a choice.

Like it or not, this is life now—and it is coming for all of us.

“It Was Not an Unexpected Death” : An Account from the Opioid Epidemic

2024-03-14T18:08:05Z

Starting in 2021, drug overdoses have killed more than 100,000 people in the United States every year. While politicians used the crack and heroin epidemics of the late twentieth century as a pretext to introduce mass incarceration, mandatory minimum sentencing, three-strikes laws, and racial profiling, all of which disproportionately targeted Black and brown people, so many white people have died of overdoses over the past decade that the rhetoric around the opioid epidemic has changed dramatically. Today, even racist conservatives acknowledge the opioid epidemic as a social crisis—but how to address it remains an open question.

Anarchists fight against the conditions that give rise to drug addiction, the ways that the authorities take advantage of addiction to inflict additional damage on communities, and also against addiction itself. In the following reflection, Angustia Celeste revisits harm reduction strategies through the lens of personal tragedy and grief.

Art by Rena Yehuda Newman.

It Was Not an Unexpected Death

When my best friend died of a fentanyl overdose seven years ago, it was not an unexpected death. It was the statistically probable outcome of her seventeen-year-long struggle with addiction, given the increasingly fatal turn of the opioid crisis.

In our youth, she and I imagined ourselves living outside of societal norms, but with her death, she landed solidly in the middle of the bell curve.

The fact that I had anticipated this did not soften the grief. There are recriminations and shortcomings that you only add up in hindsight. Once I finished considering what actions I might have taken to try to shift the course of events, or at least to take advantage of our time together—something that, in our youth, I had imagined to be infinite—I began to reflect on what the collective “we” did and did not do. I eventually arrived at the truth that my loss was not just an individual one: it was generational, determined by forces greater than those I initially considered in my despair.

I have a certain familiarity with death, both personally and professionally. Someone I care about has died every few years since I was thirteen. Yet grief is something that gets harder with each turn, not easier. This loss cuts back decades into my foundling years, as my friend played a significant role in crafting my worldview when we were teenagers.

Antecedence

Before I was politicized, she helped me find comfort in the existentialists and the artistic nihilism/hedonism of the Beat generation. Jettisoning the certainty of a higher power for the unknown abyss of human potential made sense to me. With no predetermined destiny, we were to live out our lives in trajectories of our own design. Success, failure, and how we realized our potential were not determined by any deity, but by the opportunities and oppression of our society. This was a different kind of social determinism. It was freeing because of my own privilege, and terrifying because it did not offer the comforting certainty of any specific outcome.

At her memorial, her father put out an archival display of her journals. With horror, I watched our friends and family read very private things about our adolescence. The discomfort was my own—I think she probably would have approved. Her family, to their great credit, had been forthright and honest about her death. Her obituary began poetically with the words, “Succumbed to addiction at 35.”

Her father, clearly still struggling with the loss, pulled me aside and asked me for the origin story of her addiction.

I told him what I could about when we started using heroin, but I did not touch upon why. He wanted to know about the why. Why had we felt so untouchable? Why hadn’t we known it was dangerous? There is a certain cruelty to such questions asked decades after the fact.

I know that we started something that became a bleak mythos and, eventually, a death cult. It began when I was thirteen, she was fifteen, and it was all theoretical: the dark literary proclivities, romanticizing the edges of human experience, the search for the profane and the ecstatic. It was initially a joyous endeavor, an exploration of the unknown, not a doubling down on pain—not at first.

I was struck by two things at her father’s question. First, I was all of nineteen when we began using heroin, and there were many things I had not known about addiction. Second, I had known that I didn’t want to feel anything, and narcotics were a method available to me to achieve episodic negation.

Negation

As to why I didn’t want to feel anything, without delving into traumatic experiences, I think the ways that we are taught to avoid pain in Western society are deeply damaging. The antidepressants and antipsychotics are intended to achieve a dampening of both the dark and the light, the highs and the lows—evening out life’s extremes to an acceptable middle ground.

Put on medication at thirteen, I learned to seek balance by using a cocktail of neurochemical inputs to manage my internal emotional life. Homeostasis wasn’t something you created by intentional practice in the external world; it was something chemically concocted from within. These drugs did quiet my mind for a few years. They also taught me that the way to deal with pain was to seek a state of hazy indifference. The things happening to me didn’t matter if I didn’t feel their full impact.

Heroin was a reasonable transition between psychotropic drugs and the more varied coping mechanisms I would learn in my mid-twenties. It is a method of dealing with pain that creates more harm, but also provides some emotional reprieve if you are in a very dark place. I don’t regret my use, but I was insulated from the worst consequences of it by class and race privilege. Conversations about drug use must include bodily autonomy, while also addressing the failings of negation as a long-term redress for trauma.

I quit using heroin at twenty-one after I became politicized and was able to contextualize my pain within a larger societal framework. I discovered perspective. Movement work made me feel less alone, and I found reasons to live beyond myself. Organizing helped me develop coping mechanisms and skill sets I had not had as a teenager.

Admittedly, I drew the long straw. I was lucky. This fortune was something that became increasingly apparent to me as I began to work at the needle exchange. If I didn’t know the dangers at nineteen, I had certainly discovered them by twenty-one. When I grew tired of being party to the extreme harm I was facilitating for the friends I used with, I stopped injecting.

At that same time, her father used to drive into the city to get suboxone that I had purchased off the black market to help her taper her use. Thus began the next period of trial and error, of bearing witness, the next decade of harm reduction. She never quit for very long, but I won’t say that we failed. We achieved something together—we lengthened her life. Only she could define the meaning of that.

But I understand now, in a way I didn’t before, the limitations of our approach.

Harm

In the early 2000s, we wanted to propagate the idea that IV drug use didn’t have to be a death sentence if you used clean needles, if someone showed you how to administer Narcan and you kept some at hand. We thought that if you met people where they were at, if you provided a space to discuss addiction that didn’t require abstinence, you could provide people with an eventual exit. If you got lucky, if your source was pure and your practices rigorous, you might be allotted the time you needed to really get clean one day.

It’s not that people didn’t overdose back then—they did. We had friends that died, but not at anywhere near the current rates.

Not everything had fucking fentanyl in it. Xylazine had not yet made an appearance. It was possible to pretend that in a few years, one might not need today’s crutch. Time provided us with tentative hope that with compassionate services, understanding friends, and a bit of breathing room it could be possible to figure out how to move past mere survival.

I eventually quit social work for sex work, and then, after a decade, I left that for the medical field. These various professions share a common labor: taking on other’s suffering. I have been party to many confessions and come to understand the myriad ways people try to survive our bleak consumer culture.

To maintain trauma stewardship, you have to cultivate a certain emotional distance, and this distance is perceptible in the dynamics that emerge within even the most horizontal solidarity model. Distance is all good and fine when the support you are offering is solely material—but what happens when the support people need is emotional?

Don’t get me wrong, material support is important. Thankfully, there are still needle exchanges, there are now fentanyl/xylazine test strips, there is suboxone to manage your use, and if you are fortunate, you might live somewhere where there is a monitored safe injection site. If you are especially lucky, you might even live somewhere that offers legal “safer supply.” Methadone treatment is one of the better ways to manage opioid use nowadays (though recent formulary changes have left many who rely on it struggling with relapse, as highlighted in the podcast Crackdown.)

I support all these interventions. But I also have to say that—if the goal is living and not just surviving—they don’t really get to the heart of the matter.

Harm reduction begs a question that it often does not address. Why do so many people feel indifferent about being alive? Meeting people where they’re at doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to discuss and change their emotional and spiritual position, if you can. Discussing the insanity of negation is not being judgmental, it’s just being honest.

Lethe

There is a cult of death that revolves around the hopeless cycle of addiction—and that spiraling trajectory is not as long as it used to be. Statistically, if you are using, even with test strips, even with clean needles, even with Narcan, even with management of use via suboxone, you are courting death. It is this drive to oblivion that I want to discuss.

In the other kinds of solidarity work I do, the desire to survive is very strong. It compels people to cross continents, to leave everything they know just to find a safer place to be. It is not as difficult to reach out in solidarity to people who desperately want to live. However, it is difficult to do so across the river Lethe, the river in Hades that the dead drink from to forget.

I am the way into the city of woe
I am the way to a forsaken people
I am the way into eternal sorrow

One of us wrote those words in a letter during a second period class at some point in the mid-1990s when we didn’t yet know how lost we would become and the ways we would abandon one another along the way.

I am touched both by how melodramatic we were, writing derivations of Dante’s Inferno to each other, and how deeply we felt, already, the suffering of the world. She did not dismiss the fundamental questions and ethical qualms I felt about human nature and the darkness of society. She was the first person, outside of my immediate family, to take my internal emotional life seriously and cultivate my intellectual proclivities.

When I really pause to consider that, it takes my breath away. That intimacy was hard to maintain through the years because it is hard to reach out to those mired in addiction, the trajectory of the illness is ever inward. In my early thirties I hit an emotional wall; I could no longer meet her where she was at anymore. I had tried, and it hadn’t worked.

Cessation

I remember the day our friendship ended. She probably didn’t realize it at the time, or perhaps ever, but that day was our last chance to renew that bond, to strengthen ties, to find a reason to be in one another’s lives in a meaningful way. We were in the same city for once and made plans to meet up for lunch. I took time off between seeing high-end clients downtown and sat in that diner for two and a half hours waiting. I figured she was using again, although she didn’t say. I figured she was trying to cop, and it was taking longer than expected, but she didn’t let me know why she was running late or if she was coming at all.

I couldn’t linger any longer over coffee wondering about the state of our friendship. As far as I could tell from our correspondence, she didn’t remember anything about my life anymore, where I lived, how things were with my kids and chosen family, what I was working on politically. She wasn’t present. She was wrapped up in mythos about heroin, art, literature, and aestheticism, and there was a level of self-involvement and dis-ease that had become bleakly narcissistic.

I left the café. When I got to the train platform, I saw that she had finally texted. She had arrived three hours late. That was my moment, my opportunity to forgive, reach out and make amends for all the things we hadn’t said to one another, all the things we hadn’t done. But I was angry, angry about the last couple years, about the shambles of our connection, about how selfish her addiction had made her. I was exhausted by cumulative losses and I couldn’t continue to invest in people in my life who didn’t reciprocate. I didn’t text back.

I still saw her father, mother, and brother on occasion, because I coparent with her cousin. I continued to get news of her life, but we never saw each other or spoke again. Five years later, she died, without our ever speaking about what had ended our friendship. Death became the final arbiter of our conflict. I was left to argue with myself about the rightness of the choices I had made.

I was being protective of my time, my energy, and my heart. But I was wrong. The continuation of our friendship probably wouldn’t have changed the outcome, but I missed those last five years. I never got to hear her version of things. We didn’t correspond, we didn’t share stories about our lovers, travels, writing, or artistic endeavors. Knowing I would lose her and she couldn’t be present, I gave nothing more and I got even less. It didn’t soften the loss when she died—it only made the grief worse. I couldn’t say I had done everything I could have, because I hadn’t.

I guess I imagined, until the day I got that phone call, that we would reconnect one day when she figured out how to get clean without me. That was the ultimate failure of my harm reduction practice, my empathy and my earthly obligation. I took the symptoms of her addiction personally, let them drain me dry, estrange us. Someone I loved had been in pain, and I had turned away.

Loss

It is said that no one gets clean until they themselves are ready. But this saying leaves out something essential. Love, family, friends, and social connections all provide a positive impetus towards the desire to be present, to live life, to bear the cost of trauma. These tendrils connected to our heart and soul make suffering worth it. These are the things people find reasons to live for.

She died alone, on her knees in the bathroom of her apartment in New Orleans, kit in hand, after breaking out of the DIY arrangements she had made to be locked alone in a client’s apartment to get sober. She died, like so many, trying to get clean and relapsing. The drugs she got that day were stronger than her tolerance allowed for. There was no poetic gesture, no allegorical final words. Examining the record she left behind, it seems that her last twenty-four hours were scary, haggard, hallucinatory, and dark, filled with suffering, a desire for a reprieve, and one final go at numbness.

A few years later, her partner also fatally overdosed. When I heard about his passing, it seemed to me that soon there would be no one left to remember their life together. I thought I had come to terms with the brevity of our time upon this earth, but I hadn’t.

Amnesia

A few times a month, when I worked the ER, I would cut someone’s homemade tourniquet off, rouse them from unconsciousness with Narcan, and wait. Wait for them to come around, wait for them to wake up, pensive and sorrowful or angry and resentful. Wait for them to inevitably tear out their IV and leave against medical advice. Or, even more depressing, they would try to leave with it in, which we didn’t accommodate. I always tried to talk people into staying to get IV antibiotics if they had abscesses, so that those won’t become septic. I would try to talk people into chatting with a social worker to see if we could connect them with rehabilitation services.

Every shift, I encountered people who had been conditioned to treat all kinds of suffering with opioids and now found that their doctors were unwilling to renew their pain medication. The rehab facilities only had so many spaces, the pain clinics even fewer. The pendulum has swung back and there is an entirely new generation of providers who don’t consider the consequences of the flawed treatment modalities of the last twenty years to be their responsibility.

The Department of Health and Human Services has had to release best practice guidelines for tapering high-dose chronic pain patients because doctors, fearing professional sanction from licensing boards, are cutting people off in unsafe ways. I try to remind providers of the historical trajectory that got us here, pointing out that commodifying suffering in this particular manner reaped fiscal rewards for those in power and that this has been the cost. Richard Sackler of Purdue Pharma, who brought us OxyContin, has now been given approval for a patent for a new form of suboxone to be used for the treatment of opioid addiction. His family is expected to pay roughly $6 billion dollars in a bankruptcy settlement in exchange for immunity from future opioid lawsuits. Slickly marketed nasal spray Narcan sells over the counter for $45 a dose, despite research showing that Narcan costs less than 5 cents to manufacture and exposing unethical profiteering. They’ve found a way to profit on both the illness and the cure—on both the living and the dead.

Many of my critical care colleagues don’t acknowledge these larger trends. When I have to, I reprimand them for their tendency to blame people for their own suffering. It is an uphill battle. We do not create spaces that are free of judgment—the emergency room is full of judgment. What is the point of saving people’s lives only to continue to burden them with stigma? Stigma still kills.

I’ve since quit the ER, after witnessing too much death during the pandemic, and now I run a community-based free clinic that embraces harm reduction. So, it seems, harm reduction still has a place in my life. I don’t want to abandon it, I just want to change its cadence.

The treatment landscapes haven’t changed all that much. I always used to wonder what the point of having an accepting users’ group at the exchange, when all of the rehab programs we referred people to were rigid and abstinence-only. We need a way to articulate sobriety as a good goal without being moralizing or punitive about it.

If trauma is the gateway drug to addiction, then treatment modalities that deal with the body’s inherent sympathetic and parasympathetic response to trauma should be part of treatment. I don’t have a clear vision of a way forward, but I recommend somatic therapies over talk therapy because treatment based on trauma response and physical recalibration makes sense to me.

I want us to talk more openly about death. Not in a harsh or insensitive way, not to shock or judge or scare people. We must not spiritually anchor our labors in darkness. But we also can’t take a neutral approach to the kinds of addiction that are a passive form of suicidal ideation, statistically speaking.

How do you qualify a death wish? Given the changing molecular structure of what you can purchase on the streets these days, can we agree that the opioids now in circulation will generally not give their user enough time to shift course? Expanding services for suboxone scripts is offering some hope to buy more time, to help people safely manage their use. But I still maintain that IV drug use is not a choice we should easily accommodate without other services. The ultimate destination for all our labors should be health—better health and a life you can show up for. Why stigmatize the symptoms and not address the real issues at hand? Housing, dignified work, social connections, a relationship to the earth—these should be the aspirations of our practice.

It is not enough to use clean needles, it is not enough to offer fentanyl/xylazine test strips, it is not enough to help manage use with suboxone, it’s not enough to provide medical supervision for maladaptive coping. Ultimately, if we don’t address the profound alienation at the heart of the capitalist system, we will be hard-pressed to convince those we love that life is indeed worth living, and worth being present for.

I remind myself every morning now, even on those mornings I would rather not wake up, that we make our amends through our actions. We reach for our highest aspirations by examining our failures. I do not think I could have brought her more clean needles; she knew where to get them. I do not think I could have bought her more suboxone, suggested a better rehab, or coordinated a plan for intervention more clearly with those who also struggled for her. We attempted some combination of all those things, however imperfectly. But there were conversations we didn’t have.

Absolution

I think our mistake came years before, in the way we tried to delineate our feelings of difference. A life lived in defiance of norms once seemed holy to me, but somewhere in the process of jettisoning conventions and differentiating our path we ventured so far off track that we got lost. Whatever the punk gods of our youth told us, self-destruction isn’t disruptive to the social fabric—it has been co-opted. We’ve been sold. There are many things about this carceral society worth resisting, but numbing the pain keeps us far from that struggle. My friend never made it to any place of social conflict because she lost the battle with herself years before.

Forgiveness

I forgive my thirteen-year-old self for my romantic delusions. I forgive my nineteen-year-old self for my destructive habits. I forgive my twenty-one-year-old self for my naïve belief in harm reduction practices that never got us closer to health, that just kept us treading water. The only thing I do not forgive myself for is walking away.

I should not have stepped off the platform and onto that train. I should have turned around, gone back to the café and told her that I wanted her in my life. I should have told her that I loved her, not the easy comforting kind of love, but the kind you suffer for, the kind that makes living worthwhile. Then, even if I had lost her later anyway, I wouldn’t have lost so much of myself.

You can reach Angustia Celeste here.

Russia: The Anarcho-Communist Combat Organization : An Interview with a Clandestine Anarchist Group

2022-08-22T19:13:52Z

When the Russian military invaded Ukraine at the end of February 2022, anarchists and other anti-war demonstrators defied draconian anti-protest measures to take the streets to express opposition. Over the months since those protests were crushed, resistance to the invasion has assumed new forms. Clandestine attacks across Russia have targeted railroads, military recruiting centers, vehicles belonging to pro-war zealots, and Russian state propaganda messaging in favor of the war.

One of the groups promoting these attacks is known as the Anarcho-Communist Combat Organization. In the following interview, they speak about how they see their predecessors in the regional history of anarchist movements, how the political situation in Russia deteriorated to such an extent that it was possible to suppress social movements and invade Ukraine, and what kind of organizing is possible under the prevailing conditions. We also asked them to go into detail about some of their operational protocol, in case this is ever useful for anarchists elsewhere who may be compelled to adopt similar strategies as state repression intensifies around the world.

We, not the author(s), have added the hyperlinks and the notes between brackets that appear below for the purpose of assisting the reader.

“We, the Anarcho-Communist Combat Organization, sabotaged the railway tracks (coordinates: 56 16’44”N 38 12’40.5”E) leading to the 12th Chief Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation—unscrewed a several bolts and dragged the rails apart…”

As we understand it, the Anarcho-Communist Combat Organization maintains various social media pages, maintains a fund to support groups carrying out clandestine direct action, and helps publicize direct action reports and information about prisoners captured in the course of struggle. Tell us how you see your publishing work, as that is the chief way many people encounter your efforts.

From some comrades, we have encountered critiques regarding social media activity as such: that it is an endless stream of short messages, which does not leave any impact in the readers’ minds.

We consider our social media efforts to be an important part of our media work, understood in the sense of our efforts to propagate our ideas. Our preferred platform for that purpose is Telegram, as it is less censored and it offers a somewhat more intellectual and politicized environment.

At the same time, we understand that the owners of any social media platforms, not to mention service providers, can cooperate with the repressive apparatus of any state. Therefore, is an important principle for us to ensure anonymity in our media work. We use an operating system based on Linux, which provides connection to the Internet exclusively through TOR. That goes for Telegram as well—we use it only this way. To register needed accounts for our activity, we use anonymous and virtual numbers and email at riseup.net, which is the project in the field of Internet technology that we trust most. We also consider it important to erase the metadata of media files—images, video, and texts. Some operating systems based on Linux allow you to do this within two clicks; with others, you need to install particular programs. In any case, it is always accessible and essential.

One of your roles is to report direct actions and the like in Russia. How do you confirm reports and news items that reach you before sharing them?

Regarding news items that we encounter online or which are sent to us—if the news is sent to us directly, we start by evaluating how plausible it is based on our own experience. We factor in the authenticity and clarity of the communiqué text (usually those who try to fake a communiqué are quite bad at pretending to be anarchists); the legibility of photo or video footage; and the precise coordinates regarding the place, date, and target of an attack. If the information we have received can be trusted according to these criteria, we consider it to be true and publish it. If the event is also reported on in mass media, including corporate media, that can serve as an additional confirmation that the event in question actually happened.

What process do you use to decide who to support with your action fund when there is no way to make direct contact?

Deciding who to support from the fund we have started is not easy, especially considering that it is rather small-scale. At first, we sent minor amounts to all who requested assistance. Soon, we discovered that in most cases, we did not receive in return any sort of confirmation that any real action was taken by these people. For this reason, we have now started to provide support from the fund post factum, when there is evidence that actions have taken place.

The transfers take place between BTC cryptowallets. With that, we send the recipients instructions regarding how to anonymize the cryptocurrency when buying fiat money for it.

We want to make one important recommendation to all future participants in partisan resistance: conduct preliminary tests of all the means of combat that you plan to use in your actions. Whether you are using Molotov cocktail or more advanced means, this will enable you to avoid unfortunate mistakes and problems in the moment of direct action.

Looking back at the history of Russia and the surrounding regions, what organizations and struggles do you consider to be your predecessors?

We see ourselves within the revolutionary anarchist tradition in Eastern Europe. We see the militant anarchist groups of the beginning of the last century as our predecessors: Chernoe Znamia [“Black Banner,” a federation of cadres founded in Białystok in 1903], “Beznachaliye” [“Without Authority,” the principal anarchist circle in Petersburg at the opening of the 20th century], and the “Southern Russian Anarchist-Syndicalist Group.” What inspires us in these organizations is their commitment to resolute militant activity and their desire to involve the broad masses of the people in combat work, to unite the political and economic struggle into a single struggle for social revolution. We also consider ourselves to be the successors of the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine (RPAU) [the forces associated with Nestor Makhno, also known as the Black Army] and the anarchists of the underground who, during the Civil War, opposed the reactionary and Bolshevik dictatorship with arms in their hands.

In regards to more recent times, our partisan anarchism brings creative approach to ideas and practice of New Revolutionary Alternative from the 1990s [a Russian insurrectionary anarchist group that carried out a series of attacks on government targets during the Chechen war] and groups organized around «Black Blog» around the end of the 2000s and the beginning of the 2010s. Besides that, we are inspired by heroic self-sacrifice of Mikhail Zhlobitsky, who bombed the FSB headquarters in Arkhangelsk on October 31, 2018, and we admire what he did.

Looking back on the experience and example of our predecessors, we conclude that successful revolutionary work requires a disciplined organization composed of determined, selfless, and dedicated comrades.

“When the anarchist movement revives, it will regularly face tactical and strategic tasks that can only be solved by armed means. You have to be ready for this.” -An article by Anarchist Combatant about the history of Russian anarcho-syndicalism.

Over the years of your activity, you have seen Putin’s government become more and more repressive. When the government tightens repression, the anarchist movement faces a dilemma: should we become more public, taking more risks, in order to try to prevent a backlash in society? Or should we go underground to prepare for repression? Is it possible to do both? How do we balance the need for community organization with the need to keep our projects secure?

We are aware of examples in which some comrades have managed to balance between publicity and the underground for quite a long time, and to be quite active in both. However, this is the exception to the rule. A certain division into “above-ground” and “underground” wings is inevitable. The experience of many revolutionary movements of the twentieth century attests to this.

It is important for both wings to exist and to be strong. At the same time, we insist that there must be ties between them, including the possibility for militants to transfer from one wing to the other. In the past, we sometimes heard an opinion that for “security reasons” the public and underground wings should be completely isolated from each other. In our experience, there are always transitional links and channels of communication of some kind.

What advice can you give to anarchists in other parts of the world who are not currently organized in underground structures, but who may have to organize them? What steps should they take now that might be more difficult in the future?

It is very difficult to answer this without being intimately familiar with the specific realities of the parts of the world that we are talking about. Consequently, we can only emphasize the most general points.

First of all, comrades need to agitate within the anarchist movement itself for the creation of underground armed structures—as far as we know, the anarchists in most countries have no understanding of the need for this at all.

Then, the primary organizations of such structures need to be created, and more broadly, a network of reliable contacts in different regions of the country—of course, taking all the necessary security measures.

At the same time, comrades need to organize training and drills in various military fields.

It is never too early to start saving up money, weapons, and equipment. And to prepare fully secure frameworks for both public and non-public information and media activity, as well as non-cash money transfers. These seem to be the basics.

A Russian military conscription office burns in spring 2022.

Looking back at the last fifteen years in Russia, could any sort of international solidarity and support have enabled anarchists in Russia to prevent Putin from gaining enough control over Russian society to be able to invade Ukraine?

Perhaps it makes sense to look back at an even earlier period—back to 1993 and 1996, when Yeltsin and the oligarchs consolidated power and crushed their political rivals. As unlikable as those rivals may have been, it now seems that the path to building an authoritarian state that could suppress any political alternative was already mapped out at that point. Putin only followed this logic, and he already faced fewer obstacles than Yeltsin. Then came the apolitical (or “satiated,” as people call them) 2000s, when there was hardly any possibility of rocking the boat. Perhaps, in theory, the political crisis of 2011-2012 could have ended Putin’s rule, if all the opposition forces had acted more cohesively and radically. The anarchists tried to radicalize the protest, but our forces were not enough, and the authorities decided to launch the first serious waves of repression.

It is hard for us to say what sort of international support could have made our movement stronger back then. The seizure of Crimea and the outbreak of war against Ukraine in 2014 caused a great upsurge of reactionary sentiments in Russia, and the country went straight to the current disaster.

In the US, some “anti-imperialists” (including a small number of alleged anarchists) believe that everyone who supports Ukrainian anarchists involved in military resistance to the invasion is fighting “side by side” with Ukrainian fascists, supporting the Zelensky government, and advancing the interests of NATO. Please explain your own position regarding how you think Russian and Ukrainian anarchists should act in this situation and what anarchists in other parts of the world should do in solidarity.

The defeat of Ukraine will bring about the triumph of the most reactionary forces in Russia—finalizing its transformation into a neo-Stalinist concentration camp, with unlimited power concentrated in the FSB [the Federal Security Service, successor to the KGB] and a totalitarian Orthodox imperial ideology. In occupied Ukraine, every sprout of civil society and political freedom will be destroyed and the very existence of Ukrainian culture will be called into question. On the other hand, if Russia is defeated, there will inevitably be a crisis for Putin’s power and a prospect of revolution. For anarchists, the choice between these alternatives seems clear.

In any case, we here in Eastern Europe see all this as much more urgent and real than the arguments (which people can have without committing to anything) about the geopolitical games of the United States and NATO, which we prefer to leave to Putin’s propagandists. So, solidarity with us means solidarity with Ukraine, with its victory.

You have had over half a year to evaluate the various anarchist strategies in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine in response to the invasion. What did you expect and what surprised you? For example, what do you think was the outcome of the public anti-war protests in February and March 2022? Can you share any thoughts on the effectiveness of Operation Solidarity, the Resistance Committee, the Feminist Anti-War Resistance, the Autonomous Action, or other organizations on both sides of the border that tried to respond to the invasion?

To be honest, in six months it is still unclear which combination of strategies is most effective. All the actions of the comrades have been of great importance, and still we cannot yet say that the anarchist movement in Russia/Belarus or Ukraine is on the rise, although in Ukraine we see an inspiring mobilization.

We support the decision of the anarchists in Ukraine to take up arms and join the military confrontation with imperialism. Any revolutionary political movement must be combative, must demonstrate its fighting ability in times of war and participate with society at large in its struggle. We are pleasantly surprised at the level of logistical success, the collection of material aid and necessary items, and the media resonance that the “civil wing” of the libertarian movement in Ukraine has managed to achieve.

However, we would like to see more organization and structure among anarchists on the Ukrainian side, as well as a more clearly and actively expressed political position. The manifesto of the Resistance Committee alone is insufficient for this.

As for Russia, we think that all actions—peaceful, violent, symbolic, and informational—are very important. Anything that can touch the minds and souls of people in our society. At the same time, we are supporters of partisan methods: sabotage, direct action, partisan war against the fascist regime. In our opinion, these will produce the greatest resonance and have the greatest political and revolutionary potential under the present conditions.

Do you think that people outside of Russia could have done something to make the first stage of the Russian anti-war movement go differently?

It must be said that although few believed that a full-scale invasion would take place, a huge international solidarity movement emerged within the first hours of the war. Anti-authoritarians who joined the armed resistance to Putinism in Ukraine were quickly provided and equipped with most of the necessary items. Volunteers, including members of anarchist initiatives, also helped Ukrainian refugees. There were solidarity actions, meetings, and discussions. A lot of work was done, and here we can only thank the comrades.

But there is almost always more we can do in the sphere of solidarity actions or fundraising for the libertarian movements in Ukraine and in Russia. We often hear that people in the West are gradually “getting tired of the topic of war,” and we don’t see the same consensus on the question of the international isolation of Putin’s regime that used to exist. What is important now is to maintain a “tone of solidarity,” to maintain a high level of awareness and activity.

Ever since Bakunin left Russia in 1840, and possibly before that, generation after generation of Russian radicals have had to flee Russia and organize outside of it. Can you share any thoughts on the problems of organizing movements that include political émigrés in exile? For example, how do you maintain connections between people inside and outside Russia? How do you balance between the influence of Russian comrades who “represent” the movement as émigrés in Western Europe and the perspectives of those who are still inside the country and are exposed to more risk as a result?

As far as we can see, one of the important problems in emigration is remaining politically active, maintaining a radical perspective, and finding a balance between integrating into a new community and staying connected to the realities and the movement back home.

The current community of exiles from Russia is, as far as we can see, quite dispersed. However, there are several groups of Russian anarchists abroad. This is a very positive thing, which needs to be developed.

In our view, we can only talk about “representation” if we are speaking of an organization with branches both in Russia and abroad. Otherwise, we are not talking about representation, but only about the opinions and perspectives of particular groups and individuals.

As for connections between emigrants and those who are active inside Russia—they do exist. The Internet and the means of anonymous communication contribute greatly to their existence. Here again, it would be appropriate to say that we need more organization in order for these connections to become systematic and politically significant, rather than sporadic individual communication. There are moves in the right direction, but we cannot reveal the details.

Upon close inspection, the viewer can see that someone has scratched the letters “BOAK,” for “Anarcho-Communist Combat Organization,” into the side of the sabotaged rail.

The split in Operation Solidarity has raised questions about conflict resolution and how people in the movement can cooperate with each other under intense pressure. How do the values and ideologies of the ruling order—such as capitalism, patriarchy and liberal individualism—manifest themselves in the activities and behavior of revolutionaries in the former Soviet republics?

It is difficult for us to judge the split we have not witnessed. However, we can share a common vision of the “culture of splits,” which flourishes not only in the anarchist movement, but in contemporary society in general.

Sometimes we hear from comrades: “Splits are good; if people have contradictions between each other, they should part their ways.” You can’t build a strong movement with that kind of logic. By experience, we can say that behind “ideological splits” there are always not only theoretical and practical differences, but also conflicts of ambition, a struggle for power and resources, and egoism. This is typical not only for novices who just have joined the movement, but also for old and seasoned revolutionaries who have been involved for many years.

We do not know of a surefire formula to prevent such splits. Unfortunately, every movement we know of has gone through dramatic conflicts, including some that were quite massive and successful. If anything probably serves to protect against splits, it is collective self-discipline—the understanding that the interests of the struggle are above individual desires and preferences, that collective decisions are not always what any particular individual would like, but that they are still important to keep the group together.

This may sound naïve, but comradely love and warm relationships in the collective can also protect against splits. But we know for a fact that these won’t guarantee anything, that they cannot completely eliminate conflicts. However, even if splits cannot be avoided completely, we should strive to minimize them.

Outside of Russia, we get the impression that Putin is drawing recruits from small towns in order to minimize the effects of the war in Moscow and St. Petersburg. What can be done to disrupt a political strategy that is designed to contain the impact of the war? How, in the face of powerful repression, can anarchists convey something to those who have reason to be outraged by the war?

This is a very correct impression, in our view. And here, the war itself, by its fatal inevitability, acts as the main agent of the regime’s overthrow. This role cannot be undone, cannot be rolled back, neither by the Russian government if it wanted to, nor by the opponents of the regime—no other factor will be able to overshadow this war.

As to how we might bring our message to the people in these conditions of repression… we are trying to put our vision into action. Supporters of Putin’s policy and those who are indifferent need to be shown that the war may be very close to them. Opponents of war need to be shown effective ways to fight it.

Do you think that the invasion of Ukraine is a sign of things to come around the world—a future in which war becomes more widespread, as capitalism enters a series of economic and environmental crises? What should people be doing now to prepare?

This is a very likely scenario. Of course, the universal answer we can give is that we should make an anarchist revolution as soon as possible :)).

The more “realistic” advice should still refer to the strengthening of democratic control of the broad popular masses over the authorities—the more effective such control will be, the more problems can be avoided in the future. But this is still a relatively optimistic scenario—it is likely that society will not be strong enough, and the elites will bring their peoples to disaster. What remains to be done here is probably to try as hard as possible to develop comprehensive horizontal ties, including among the ideologically motivated members of the anarchist movement, so that these connections are not confined to activism, but work in the economic sphere as well. Such groups based in trust can help greatly to survive difficult times, and people from outside, from the atomized social chaos, can gather around them.

Finally, please explain how you think people outside the region can best support anarchists in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine.

Participate in initiatives that support the revolutionaries of Eastern Europe materially and in the field of information. In particular, we encourage you to donate to our Revolutionary Anarchist Fund—this helps tremendously when it comes to to carrying out the struggle and covering its costs.

It is important that the anarchist revolutionary strategy is not limited to one country or region. The state and capitalism must be attacked all over the world.

You can follow the Anarcho-Communist Combat Organization on Telegram at BOAK and Anarchist Combatant.

Beneath the Concrete, the Forest : Accounts from the Defense of the Atlanta Forest

2022-08-09T18:15:56Z

In Atlanta, Georgia, the city government intends to destroy large swaths of what remains of the South River Forest—also known by the Muskogee name for the river, Weelaunee. In place of one stretch of woods, they aim to build a police training compound; they have sold the neighboring part to Blackhall Studios executive Ryan Millsap, who intends to build a giant soundstage. Yet for more than a year now, activists have protected the forest against their plans. In a previous article, we chronicled how this campaign got started and the strategies that have driven it; in the following collection of narratives, participants in the movement describe their experiences and explain what makes this fight meaningful to them.

The fight to defend the forest brings together locals whose neighborhood will be gentrified by the developments, environmentalists who recognize the importance of the forest in mitigating the impact of climate change, forest defenders who have been occupying the trees for months, abolitionists who oppose the expansion of racist policing in Atlanta, and young people who desperately need a free space to build community outside the high prices and profit imperatives of Atlanta corporate nightlife. These are not discrete issues, but aspects of a coherent whole.

The destruction of the tree canopy and the gentrification of neighborhoods are stages in the same process: the former paves the way for the latter. Forcibly displacing Indigenous peoples, carving up the natural world into private property, burying the fertile earth under concrete, and terrorizing the inhabitants with police violence are all expressions of the same logic. Catastrophic climate change is the large-scale consequence of a series of smaller steps that are no less catastrophic in the lives of individual human beings.

The defense of the forest in Atlanta is only one of many such struggles over land and housing across the continent, including People’s Park in Berkeley, Echo Park in Los Angeles, and the camp defending the UC Townhomes in Philadelphia. As investment capital floods the real estate market, it has become increasingly difficult for to afford housing, let alone maintain collective space in which to experiment and build a common context. These movements have responded by defending a shared space of life and struggle.

Most of the following accounts describe the events of the week of action at the end of July 2022, when people from around Atlanta and other parts of the United States gathered for a week of discussions, protests, and concerts. The week of action culminated with a festival during which DJs, bands, and speakers performed, showing how the forest serves as an autonomous zone beyond the constraints of the capitalist economy.

The forest is not just a particular concentration of trees; we can also understand it as a network of relationships between living creatures of all species. Life flourishes when it is liberated from control. This was palpable in the festival at the conclusion of the week of action. In a club, a breakdown or a breakbeat functions as a kind of lubricant to grease the gears of exploitation, bringing in business and (at best) advancing the career of a particular DJ or band. In a liberated zone, the collective experience of music can signify shared power, the joyous realization of potential, showing how each person’s creativity can contribute to the liberation of all.

The South River Forest is not an old-growth forest. If anything, this makes the movement to defend it more inspiring. This land was already brutalized—yet, given a few years of peace, it became a wilderland capable of sustaining spaces of freedom. Any patch of flowers growing out of the cracks in the concrete could become a forest if we defend it. The possibility of freedom awaits all around and within us, even in the most repressive environments.

The forest—which is to say, the web of life—extends beyond the bounds of any designated park, into each of our bodies. This web is what sustains our lives, not the extraction industries that are currently destroying the basis of existence for countless species.

Two decades ago, the authors of Fighting for Our Lives suggested that “The best reason to be a revolutionary is that it is simply a better way to live.” As state violence accelerates the catastrophes resulting from capitalist industrialism, it may turn out that it is also the only way to live.

“The Forest within Me”

The forest is a breathing barricade. Like any breathing mechanism, the boundaries continuously undo themselves. Inputs and outputs collide—between the city and the woods, the feral and the tame, the safe and the dangerous. What qualifies as violence becomes murky in the woods. Violence as negation manifests itself in the form of the state, helicopters flying overhead and cops on the edge of the barricade to arrest the forest dwellers, sometimes they dare to enter, with their machines and their armor. Violence as creation manifests in the destruction of this negation: playful sabotage and joyful tricks. Anarchic violence becomes a productive flux of becoming. For the police, the inputs and outputs are far clearer and qualifications are far more rigid: the forest is a dangerous place, unknown territory understood in opposition to their cosmopolitan terrain.

For us, the forest is a haven. The threat of the state is different than the peril of the woods. Stumbling upon a decaying coyote carcass feels like a blessing—to witness a transformation of flesh into soil in the soft fallen pine leaves is nothing like stumbling upon a clear cut where the limbs of trees lie severed, their torsos hacked up into discarded bits. The severing of trees is the precondition for the construction of the dystopian simulators through which the apparatuses of power will perpetuate their orgiastic fantasies of violence and capital. But this will not happen, because the forest is an ungovernable, indestructible, breathing barricade.

In the forest, the boundaries lapse between the content of space, how things were constructed—by machine or by hand or, often, a combination of the two—and to what degree things become consumed and consumable. But there are also lapses between different kinds of time. The time it takes to walk from one patch of woods to another may take minutes or hours. It’s easy to get lost under the trees, to lose yourself in movement and return to the slimier flows of collective being within the barricade. To lose yourself intentionally or try to make yourself unlocatable—from the helicopters overhead and what lies beyond the barricade.

Yet the barricade does not delineate a concrete edge. The edges of the forest do not indicate an end. The forest is indestructible because it is ever-expanding and constantly transforming. The forest here is a node that connects to many nodes and has many nodes within—including our bodies. The boundary of the body slowly erodes here. A viral outbreak reminds us we are perforated bags of water within perforated bags of water, including the forest.

Find ticks burrowed in your skin and you slowly become a deer. In our camouflaged garb we cosplay trees. It is something erotic to live in trees and to dress like them. We multiply ourselves through pseudonyms and costumes. We multiply ourselves by becoming deer, becoming tree, becoming decaying matter and waste. Eventually, in our deterioration and deterritorialization, movement and occupation, gathering and dispersal, taking up of space, and place taking us up, we become forest. We become barricade. Forever ungovernable and infinitely becoming.

“The Forest Is a Portal”

The forest is a portal. The concrete blocks spread wide, allowing entry into the graffiti-filled lot. Anarchist sprites and other mischievous spirits have painted, scratched, stapled, pasted, singed signs everywhere conveying our welcome, our allegiance to this new world that calls to the depth and courage of our hearts. As I walk the liberated path, purple swirls form messages that guide me like breadcrumbs. My fae kin appear around me in gauze, denim, and metal, resplendently eschewing gender. Entering the wild, I return to my stirring self: this intimate green.

“Letter from a Treesitter”

This letter originally appeared here.

I’ve been preparing myself for what feels like the inevitable: a raid, an attempted extraction—or will they choose to siege?

I’ve become attached to my treehouse, thinking of it almost as an extension of myself. I found myself questioning this, questioning the connection I feel to a temporary structure. But I realized that what I was feeling was beyond that. From my feet high above the canopy to the roots buried deep in the ground, I could feel it. I wondered if this energy was spiteful, a land so scarred and blood-stained, never given a moment to heal. Was I here because of spite? Yes. But the spite I feel toward the police is also born of love: love for the land and all of my friends here and beyond. This forest is not something I am going to give up without a fight.

Every delay opens up more possibilities. Every contractor that backs away brings us closer to victory. Each of our moves keeps them guessing. Whether or not they choose to destroy our homes, I’ll be here keeping up the struggle. I’ll be here for as long as I can, for as long as it takes. They can try to evict us, but they will never be able to make us stop fighting.

There’s joy in our fight. This spirit, this forest, will never be able to be contained. Everywhere you look, the police are trying to shrink our worlds, shrink our lives. But we have chosen to say no. Our fight extends beyond the borders of this forest—it extends through our expressions of collective and individual joy, incomprehensible to the narrow imaginations of the police and the ruling class that they protect. We laugh harder than them, we feel more pleasure even in the midst of their assaults. Falling in love with these woods has meant falling in love with one another and with the possibilities of this world—a love that the police will never understand, and therefore cannot crush.

“When the Barriers Came Down”

When the concrete barriers went up at the park at the behest of a local real estate baron, it felt so banal. What—another space in the city enclosed, forbidden, made concrete? Long before this struggle began—a struggle for my neighborhood park, my local forest—I could trace my life through a string of interactions with police in public parks, or a string of neighborhood parks and natural spaces closed, contaminated, forbidden. I could trace a line through this life: if you want to be outside, you have to pay or you have to trespass.

The concrete road barriers were standard issue, but the real punch was when I saw that they took the sign and replaced it with a much smaller one, a generic one reading “Park Closed.” As if the public park, the forest, our entitlement to the land could be made or unmade with a sign. As if we would abide by the sign, something so “neutral,” produced to justify the land grab as official. It might as well say Forget being outdoors, catch the forest on Netflix.

Like me, my neighbors didn’t stop when they saw the barriers. If they noticed that the park sign was gone, it didn’t turn anyone around. The stream of cyclists, trail explorers, and dog walkers continued, pushing through the small opening that immediately appeared between the barriers. Soon enough, just as I expected, the barriers were pushed open all the way, the parking lot effectively re-opened. People make the spaces they need. I smiled when I saw them opened up: a sign of complete indifference to the roadblocks in our way. A disregard for property lines.

A week has passed since the barriers went up. Today is the first Saturday of the fourth week of action. Hundreds of people stream into the forest to enjoy a free concert, a barbecue, the company of others in the movement.

As the day cools down, a crowd gathers around the front of the barriers. I notice that people are hoisting a new sign, painted with a new name. They welcome me in through the barriers. I help hold the sign, heavy in my hands, as it is affixed to the old sign stand. We drape a sheet over it. A few moments later, a Dekalb County police SUV slow-rolls by, but a crowd has already started to amass at the barrier entrance. Some shouts of mocking harassment from a crew of masked people send the cop down the road. “He won’t be back.” Maybe he will, but with a different kind of calculus.

The crowd murmurs, carrying plates of grilled chicken and vegan hot dogs to come perch on the barriers. Someone has strung a fancy red ribbon across the barriers, tied in a bow. It feels like we are saying: this forest is ours, and these barriers are a gift. We call to others in the lot to come watch the sign unveiling unfold. Some make speeches, reclaiming the park. Excitement in the air, true feelings of power, laughter at the exaggerated speeches.

Now the sheet is finally pulled off, revealing the sign: “South River Forest Park” reads one side; “Weelaunee People’s Park” reads the other. Within seconds, I hear loud pops and champagne sprays, covering us all, showering a 20-foot radius. Cheers rise from the people gathered, then a chant: “People’s Park! People’s Park!”

With a dramatic flourish, R— cuts the red ribbon, and everyone is yelling, celebrating, a burst of joy. Spontaneously, now we are running. Running past the new sign through the barriers, as if for the first time, as if something has been unveiled to us: a gift we’ve given ourselves.

“A Tour of the Forest”

At daybreak, the birds turn on as the music turns off. I’ve been dancing for almost twelve hours. It’s early Sunday morning, the end of my birthday. I feel blessed to have spent it in the forest with my friends and many strangers. This was the last day and night of the three-day Defend the Atlanta Forest music festival, an explosive culmination to the fourth week of action. We spent whole days and nights dancing, grooving, moshing to the rhythms of the free forest. My body is filled with an energy that I know doesn’t come from it, from the food or water or sleep that sustains it. It comes from a more diffuse and mystical power. A power that only emerges in the connection between many bodies engaged in freely creating a shared world.

The festival began with a friend speaking about the movement to the growing assembly of people standing under and around the massive tarp and stage that has been constructed here. It serves as a temporary venue, no less historic, for shelter, gathering, rage, expression, joy, communing. As she explained that this is a decentralized and autonomous movement, inviting everyone to repeat back those two fundamental words, I felt a buzz of excitement.

This is an almost 800 acre autonomous forest within the city of Atlanta. It was abandoned, then reclaimed, then sold, swapped, and again abandoned by the city. Now it is used and cared for by us—the people, the public.

When my friend wrapped up her welcome speech, another friend caught my attention through the crowd and asked me to lead some newcomers to the forest on a tour to a treehouse. I made an announcement and a couple dozen people followed me along a path through the trees.

I made stops along the way to point out where the kitchen is and the additional do-it-yourself kitchen where there are always snacks and sometimes people cooking special additional meals. I pointed out the sweat lodge that a Lakota comrade built during the last week of action. I told the story of how this movement became one of the many embers that were scattered when the boot of the state violently stomped out the sacred fire that was Standing Rock. I led them up the hill and encouraged everyone to look up. High above us, we saw a large platform in the tree covered by a domed tarp. There was a hanging potted plant with flowers; someone said, “Ooh, look, they are making it cute, like a home.” I answered, “That is her home.” Others asked, How do they get up there? How did people get everything up there? Everyone looked up at their childhood dreams come true.

At dusk, the sky glows out from the negative space, forming shapes between the thin pine trees. The sun is lighting up the the world from below. People roam around the Living Room, our name for the part of the forest where pine straw provides a clean ground for public gatherings, meals, meetings, events, music, and art happenings. Everyone is standing or sitting in circles, eating, chatting, scheming, encountering or reencountering each other; dogs run around us playing and chasing with abandon. It is dinner time. All the hard work of carrying boxes of produce, jug after jug of water, chopping vegetables, stirring massive pots, washing the dishes from lunch, carrying them and the fresh hot food from the kitchen (in the woods) to the serving area in the living room has paid off. Everything we do here, we do voluntarily—a labor expressing faith in abundance, creating a free meal, a free show, a free experience. This simple fact is more significant than I know how to explain.

One of the highlights for me, this week, has been seeing some coworkers from the restaurant I work at come out into the forest. At work, I’m always bringing fliers, putting up posters, begging my coworkers to come. The way we normally relate is always mediated by work—how miserable but resigned we are to be there, doing what we are doing, day after day, cleaning the bottles and floors just so we can clean them again when we close the next night. Out here in the forest, they ask me, Do you live out here? Did you put this all together? I say, Sometimes, I say, Yes, we all did.

“The Truck Became an Attraction”

When the first can of Dr. Priestley’s Seltzer Water flew through the air and exploded against the windshield of the excavator, temporarily blocking the view of its operator and complicating his attempt to destroy the parking lot gazebo at the newly opened Weelaunee Peoples’ Park, it felt to me like a small but important milestone had been reached—another indication that the movement to defend the Atlanta forest continues to grow and to outgrow its limits.

The sudden ubiquity of the cans of seltzer water themselves, cases of them sitting around the forest free for the drinking, felt like one such milestone in its own right. When an occupation reaches a certain level of power and prominence, resources begin to flow and strange abundances appear. I remember boxes of thousands of loose cigarettes arriving at Standing Rock and a small pious circle of chain-smokers forming to package them for distribution to the wider camp. Nobody knew where they came from. As far as I know, the seltzer water came to the Weelaunee Forest from the warehouse of a failed startup somewhere and quickly became the unofficial beverage of the week of action.

The confrontation with the excavator ended with its operator, a neighbor and henchman of Hollywood billionaire Ryan Millsap, fleeing along with the off-duty police working security for him. They left behind Millsap’s truck, a 2020 Dodge Ram 5500, which was soon set ablaze. This ended Milsap’s second attempt to close down Intrenchment Creek Park and establish his private ownership over it. His first attempt had occurred over a week before, when he sent workers to remove the official park sign, close the parking lot with concrete barricades, and put signs up around the area declaring it “private property.” Our response had been to paint the barricades vibrant colors, keeping them in place but open them enough to allow vehicles through, and to declare the opening of a Peoples’ Park.

The park feels different now. Millsap attempted to forcibly impose his private ownership but instead shattered it, and now the burnt-out husk of his $80,000 truck serves as visual proof of how easily such illusions can be dispelled. Instead of scaring away regular park-goers, the burned truck has become an attraction. People come just to look at it and take pictures of it. Something about it brings them joy; they leave visibly elated by what they’ve seen.

It’s also clear that nobody misses the police, who no longer feel comfortable circling the parking lot or coming at night to harass “suspicious looking individuals” despite the old park being open 24 hours a day. Unlike a public park, which is defined by a list of things you’re not allowed to do, the peoples’ park invites your participation on all levels. You can drive on the bike path. You can dig up the grass and plant a garden. You can put up signs asking people to drive slower on the bike path. You can get a piano on Craigslist and bring it to the woods and play it at 3 am. You can park your car and sleep here because it’s safer than the Walmart parking lot and the communal kitchen is cooking a meal every day. You can throw a huge dance party under the canopy and the stars and fall asleep on the soft pine straw.

“Deep into the Future”

When it started raining on the third night, I wondered how I would make it back to my tent. I also wondered what that truck looked like in the parking lot, soot washing off its charred remains, perhaps mixing with the paint and chalk that redecorated the iron frame. In the madness of the night, the status of the music was the only thing I did not question. One of my friends spun in circles, shoeless, in the downpour. I saw people kissing in the mud. The large blue tarp overhead, which just an hour earlier had almost come crashing down on our heads as reckless punks used it to facilitate stage dives and other antics, now shielded hundreds of people from the storm.

I was standing on the side, beneath a smaller tarp, next to the makeshift bar. The pulsing of the dance music wasn’t quite so loud that you couldn’t talk, but with the sound of the rain on top of it, I had to yell to be heard. My friend and I were discussing the morning. We had woken up with a start some 18 hours earlier to the sound of yelling: [self-described owner of the forest] Ryan Millsap had brought police to the parking lot and they were threatening to tow cars. Although we had only slept in our tent for a few hours, my friend and I pulled on our shoes and jackets and rushed through the forest to defend the newly christened Weelaunee People’s Park. In the parking lot, people were throwing stones and cans of sparkling water at the police. Elsewhere, someone was anxiously hiding the sound equipment in case a raid was imminent.

I still can’t believe we managed to pull this off. I shouldn’t be so surprised, but it’s hard to overstate the magic of what took place. There we were, perhaps 500 punks, dancers, anarchists, artists, partiers, rappers, indie rockers, forest defenders: if the police couldn’t stop us, if the developers couldn’t disperse us, the rain certainly wouldn’t. How many people had come over the previous days? There’s really no telling. The only thing certain is that on this final night, all of them walked through the cement barriers past the smoldering truck, deep into the forest, deep into the future.

“This Time, We Were There”

Rocking with the pines, air thick with cicadas, the first night, the night of my arrival. The breeze shakes the treetops, rustles their needles together, cradles me in the sway of this forest.

I miss my friends back home already. I wish they could be here with me, looking up at the cloud-mottled night—my last sight before shut-eye, giving myself over to the charming clicks of bugsong. A hammock can be a lonely place to sleep, but less so when you find that people you once knew in a past life are suddenly your neighbors once more, stepping through the portals of their tents and raising their arms to the sun.

As camo-clad demonstrators beat that truck mercilessly with a shovel, ripped its doors from their hinges, emptied its cab, I told the Rolling Stone reporter that what we were doing was building a new world. The music of these woods shows how we can find beauty in the scraps we’ve been handed, the cut cleared and replanted like the weeds growing from the old prison farm. Punk asks for no more than three chords, a rave no more than bass and bodies to populate the dance floor. In this world, we sway unbound by the weight of debt that is intrinsic to the success and poverty of city life. In this world, I find I can stretch my sleeplessness a few hours longer, waking life more nourishing than slumber. At night, our generations constellate with the stars.

Along the glowing trails, I find faces new to these woods. I see kids ten years my junior showing up bright-eyed and ready to mosh under the dusty rain tarp. I see friends that I have known for the past decade carrying guitars and speakers, noting that we have come to be the elders of this scene. We are weathering life’s seasons in this world that we are building. Spring and summer happen simultaneously; slowly, we are bringing fall and winter back into the fold.

By the time you get the notifications, it’s already too late. The forest has been sealed off by police or barricaded by protesters. You’re left pacing the hardwood floors of your apartment, wondering how you can help from afar. In the world we’re building, you just have to be there. News of the forest isn’t digested over breakfast, it’s made before a drop of coffee hits your lips. When morning comes and the cops raid, or defenders reduce construction equipment to rubble and ash, you’re either in the woods or you’re at your table. This time, we were in the forest.

“DJing Is an Extension of My Everyday Acts of Resistance”

All week the sun is beaming, sweaty bodies rustling through the woods, minds wondering what will come next, what will I need to do next? The threat of downpour loomed all week; it finally blessed us briefly on Saturday when the full rinse came. The darkening yellow sky, lightning pulses, damp pine starkly reminds me of early memories of Atlanta sunshine unveiling after afternoon showers. I worry how today will go after the downpour.

The tarp bowl quickly fills up as the day continues and the pines dry. Suddenly, it feels like a music festival. There are pockets of people laying down on blankets, dancing, moshing, talking, and looking at zines.

As it gets darker and darker, I start hearing ”When are you DJing?” I’m the last to play to close out the Fourth Week of Action and the music festival. I’ve DJed in the Weelaunee forest before, but, this felt different. As I stepped to the stage, I stepped into the hips of the woods. Swaying, Jungle-infused pop and locking, and Techno bouncing between the bones of the forest. The bowl flowed into late-night freaks, dancing to the hard bass, fuzzy mids, and ethereal highs. An all-consumption by the woods, by the energy bouncing off the pine, by my love for dancing and grimey hardcore sounds. Two hours to release anger, anxiety about what will come in the next few days, weeks, months, years to the forest, to my friends, to my life in Atlanta.

The Weelaunee Forest is a land of resistance. The lineage of the land of Muscogee people, their forced removal, enslaved West Africans, incarcerated people in the Atlanta Prison Farm, and the fight to resist the state and colonialism continues in Weelaunee every day. DJing is an extension of my everyday acts of resistance, feeling true to the roots of Techno and Jungle that grew out of Black curiosity to find a place. DJing in a constructed money-maker will never compare to DJing in the fight for open spaces. My place is nuzzled between the pocket of trees.

“The Sweat Lodge”

Scrappin slop and tarps, frockling among carcass and debris, screaming songs of moto exhaust and white throated swallows, here among the Weelaunee.

Mudtracks of ATVs lead us to wheelbarrows, tarps, abandoned clothing, slashed and trashed camps. Above, glorious clouds threatening us with a humid breath. That same rain that, we fear, will revolt in the strength of the kudzu and multiplying mold spores is also the rain that we crave to feed our gardens and creeks. A humidity that encourages the vining reach capable of overpowering the forgotten billboard, tagged with evidence of an incredible feat. So high, we both reach. Palpating canopies alive with green lichen, expanding arms for a choking embrace. Waterlogged tarps fastened into a caved dome, slugs fling in every direction as we snip the paracord that held this forgotten structure in place. Spiders emerge from the folds, where mosquitoes breed in stagnant puddles. Not so long ago, this sweat lodge was sanctuary for the ritual of gathering—of celebrating this forest—this land that haunts us with tragic horrors of nightmares past and the future that may emerge without our presence. We break down and repurpose our leftovers, we dismantle sites of abandon and create through decay. With the speed of acceleration, the drops that were once tender, hit like pellets, blinding my ability to admire the canvas of lightning against the dank green horizon.

“To Defend the Forest, Everyone Has to Fight”

The first night of the music festival I had an affective epiphany. I was humbled by the glowing social atmosphere of everyone around me. Yet when standing still, I realized I felt out of place. When in movement, when busying myself with tasks, I felt necessary, like I was a part of something, but I found myself unable to relax, unable to dance with friends and strangers.

The second night, I examined the faces around me—so many unknown youth, people who are just coming into the Atlanta music scene or who have been occupying a different section of it. For a moment, the nostalgia for people and places long gone overtook me. My surroundings, my home, friends, were foreign. I started ignoring people, walking alone. An old friend who had performed the night before came up to me. He said he was looking for a familiar face. I felt massive roots pulling me back down to earth, to the moment.

Saturday morning, Ryan Millsap’s truck drove an excavator into the ICP parking lot. The driver slammed the excavator into the roof of the gazebo where people were standing. He dug a random hole in the path. He screamed profanities at people and threatened more violence. People fought back. They destroyed his excavator, chased him and the police out of the park, scavenged the good bits from the truck and burned the rest.

Encouraged by the exuberance of the morning’s win, my band played later that night. As a band, we are situated in realistic grief for our apocalyptic era, but we know that we can still fight for a freer future. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more grounded than when I took the stage that night. My goal was to portray the desperate reality: that to defend the forest, everyone has to fight. We can no longer be idle spectators of the state’s capitalist war on our bodies and our futures. Watching everyone move together in front of the stage, I felt a release of hopelessness. I felt the creative force of bodies moving and breathing together. There, we shaped a brief temporality, an energy that will live forever in us and in the forest as long as it stands.

During our set, I read this excerpt from Diane di Prima’s Revolutionary Letters:

Revolutionary Letter #34

[…]

hey man, let’s make a revolution, let’s
turn off the power, turn on the
stars at night, put metal
back in the earth, or at least not take it out
anymore, make lots of guitars and flutes, teach the chicks
how to heal with herbs, let’s learn
to live with each other in a smaller space, and build
hogans, and domes and teepees all over the place
BLOW UP THE PETROLEUM LINES, make the cars
into flower pots or sculptures or live
in the bigger ones, why not?

Revolutionary Letter #35

rise up, my
brothers, do not
bow your heads any longer, or pray
except to the spirit you waken, the
spirit you bring to birth, it
never was on earth, rise up, do not
droop, smoking hash or opium, dreaming sweetness, perhaps
there will be time for that, on the long beaches
lying in love with the few of us who are left, but now
the earth cries out for aid, our brothers
and sisters set aside their childhoods, prepare
to fight, what choice have we but join them, in their hands
rests the survival of the very planet, the health
of the solar system, for we are one
with the stars, and the spirit we forge
they wait for, Christ, Buddha, Krishna
Paracelsus, had but a taste, we must reclaim
the planet, re-occupy
this ground
the peace we seek was never seen before, the earth
BELONGS, at last, TO THE LIVING

Appendix: (Not) a Music Festival

The following text was distributed on a flier during the fourth week of action in the Atlanta Forest.

This Is Not a Music Festival

…because we are not here as consumers or as mere spectators. This is not another photo op, another “networking opportunity.” We are here because our need for a free forest, culture, and existence can’t be crushed by the police, nor can it be sold back to us as an image in an uninspired Hollywood rip-off.

In a cave called Divje Babe, located in present-day Slovenia, archeologists have recently discovered a 60,000 year old flute. The human need for music has been with us since the very beginning. We are here to affirm that this deep and timeless desire, which has survived an Ice Age, the rise of empires and states, the advent of borders; slavery, war, famine, and Holocausts, is an important part of the current struggle.

This movement is not just about a piece of land. It is not being fought between the police and their goons on one hand and some activists and their friends on the other. We are witnessing the collision of two competing ideas of life and the future.

If they win, they will pollute all of the rivers, destroy all of the forests, pave over everything beautiful, and they will use the police to assure unlimited profits as our civilization chokes out its dying breaths.

If we win: human needs will be measured against the imagination, against our collective ambitions and dreams, not held hostage by a system of artificial scarcity and waste. Our communities will not be held together by their ability to kill and maim enemies or heretics. They will be held together by music, and the ability to generate common luxuries.

So let’s not say, “Oh, THEY don’t really care about the struggle, they are only here for the party,” or, “This is not about music and festivals and all of that crap, this is about serious politics and organizing.” Instead, let’s say the truth; this is only a glimpse of what we could give one another if we manage to outlive the oil-based economics of the current world system. The emancipation of the senses, the free development of the imagination and the passions: this is precisely what we are fighting for.

No cop city, no Hollywood dystopia!

AntiJob: The Russian Anarchist Labor Site that Terrifies the Bosses : An Interview

2022-03-21T20:34:00Z

Since 2001, the collectively-run website Antijob.net has provided a “blacklist of employers,” offering a space for laborers in Russia to report on their negative experiences at work. As Russian media and labor organizing have come under increasing pressure, Antijob continues to provide a crucial resource for ordinary employees, even in an extremely repressive environment. Russian corporations and government agencies have repeatedly attempted to bribe the publishers or suppress the site, without success. The so-called “Great Resignation” and a popular Antiwork Reddit site have recently made waves in the United States; we conducted the following interview with Antijob to learn what anti-work agitation looks like in Russia.

Antijob has also played a role in supporting protests against the invasion of Ukraine, informing Russian workers of their legal rights on the job if they arrested while protesting.

As appendixes, we’ve included the Antijob manifesto, the Antijob statement against the invasion of Ukraine, and some examples of the reports workers publish on the site.

“Remember and tell others: your interests are opposed to the interests of the employer. This is a struggle that has been going on for centuries. The struggle between those who are trying to make a living and those who want to buy a new yacht.”

-Antijob, “No loyalty to the employer!”

Employers always write about Antijob. They say this and that—they slander, they claim that they were slandered, they talk about the intrigues of their competitors. Come on, they say, remove the story about the next LLC “Lepyoshki and Matryoshki,” otherwise we will sue you. Or, on the contrary, they offer money for us to remove the material…

To be honest, we don’t really want to make employers better. Conflict between employers and workers, whether acute or dormant, is an integral part of capitalism. It will be fully overcome only with the rejection of the wage labor system as such.

-Antijob, “The presumption of class guilt”

“No loyalty to the employer!”

First, explain what Antijob.net is and what it does.

Technically, we are a feedback web page where workers can leave negative feedback about their jobs. Also, we are a micro-media platform about work and labor.

Politically, we are an anarchist project highlighting the problem of wage labor, calling for workers to organize to fight for better working conditions and, of course, against capital and the state.

What inspires you to maintain Antijob?

Probably the main reason for the continuation of the project and its constant regeneration (as most of the original team has changed) is the tangible result that we can feel from it. We know how many users use our server and we know that it helps put pressure on employers at a relatively low cost of effort from us. We give employees a pressure tool and they use it effectively. As far as we’re concerned, it’s a success.

Tell us a bit about how the project has changed over time.

Antijob emerged in the early 2000s as a response to the emergence of job aggregators that targeted young people, who made up a large portion of Internet users at that time. These services romanticized the “careers” they promised, and then their users learned the hard way that these careers consisted of working temporary jobs for miserable wages, followed by being firing and cheated. That was the target of our criticism; the method was formed by direct statements from employees. Over time, the Internet expanded, but the problems remained the same. The audience of job search sites increased—and so did ours.

The original version of the web page and message was more aggressive; now we are somewhat less radical. But we have not descended into orthodox Marxism, which is usually typical of groups dealing with the subject of the labor movement in Russia.

“Blacklist of employers—Antijob.net. Add yours.”

What impact has Antijob had among workers in Russia? How has the political environment changed since you got started?

You could say that our web page has been a pioneer in the field of job reviews in Russia. Employers realized that opinions on the Internet could be a threat to their businesses, and the field of “reputation work” emerged, which has itself become a kind of business.

For the authorities, we do not seem to be an obvious threat. There are lawsuits against us and the authorities even block the web site, but these problems were initiated by employers.

Of course, the situation has become worse as control over the Internet has increased. The political situation has gotten worse, too. The authorities and the police have started to write to us more often, and we are sure that sooner or later we will be blocked for good, the way it is in Belarus and Kazakhstan.

How do you moderate submissions? Do you have a fact-checking process? How do you make decisions about what you publish?

All the materials are moderated manually. We have several levels of validation; the highest level is given to those reviews in which proof of working for the company has been attached, such as correspondence or documents. Then there are reviews that are confirmed by the person leaving their email address; these are the majority.

We filter out any positive reviews because they are not objective in principle. It is almost impossible to check the validity of a positive review.

We also have an automatic review checker that alerts us to suspicious activity and allows us to identify people who are trying to misuse our web page.

We don’t do detailed fact checking. It is technically impossible with 150+ reviews coming in every week. In any case, we are not trying to claim total objectivity. For us, there is an obvious disproportion of power in the relationship between the employee and the employer—so we trust the employee more, by default.

“Labor against work.”

We understand that there have been attempts to suppress Antijob.

They often try to hack us, and from time to time, we experience brute force DDoS attacks on our web page. These attacks are organized by employers: they are either getting revenge for the reviews posted, or they are trying to remove the reviews or find out who the author is. We do not remove reviews for money, so an angry employer chooses between spending money on legal fees or hiring hackers.

The second type of attack is from what we can call “competitors” in the field of commerce. They create copies of our site, buy similar domains, and try to hijack traffic in order to make money from skimming reviews. Recently, they began to act in a more sophisticated way and attack the behavioral factors of the site using bots, which reduce the average time of visits to the site and the rate of denials in order to reduce the visibility of our site in search engines.

A separate topic is the courts and RosComNadzor (the Russian digital control authority). Some companies go to court to claim that reviews about them are slanderous. If their effort in court is successful, then after a while we get a request from RosComNadzor to remove the information. If we do not remove it, we are blocked. This has happened several times.

Now we remove reviews at the request of the RCN, attaching an invoice and a link to the court decision, which often contains the text of the review. If we do not remove the feedback, we get blocked, the website traffic decreases by 70%, and search engine rankings drop, which accordingly makes the attack on the reputation of employers less effective. We are constantly looking for ways to circumvent this threat. Recently, we managed to change it so that the blocked reviews are hidden only for Russian IPs, while all others (including VPN/TOR users) can easily view them.

Sometimes the police and other authorities write to us demanding that we provide the data of the authors. To these requests, we answer by sending the data of disposable emails and the IP of a TOR node. It is an incredible coincidence that everyone that the police are looking for is using TOR and utilizing a high level of digital security, isn’t it =). The police are not very eager to find out what’s up.

“No salary—eat the bosses.”

Can you give advice to people who might try to start something similar elsewhere?

It must be said that starting such projects from scratch can be difficult. The weapon of our web page is its high visibility in search engines and the fame it has accumulated. Those who want to start should be prepared to work for free, but at a higher level than commercial companies. The reputation market appeared long ago and there are a lot of people who want to make a profit in it and are ready to invest resources. For example, we have to contend with commercial feedback pages, competitors intercepting users by advertising, bot attacks on the web page, etc.

We are inconvenient for our competitors and for employers because of our adherence to the principle of not removing reviews for money. However, if you have a team or a powerful movement, you need comrades who have technical knowledge in web development, who understand the basics of SEO [Search Engine Optimization] and security in the Internet, as companies are quite willing to pay hackers if you do not agree to withdraw feedback.

You have to be prepared to regularly spend time on moderation and on communicating with users, as well as confrontations with the state and the courts. In the Western countries, problems with the law may be even heavier than in Russia and the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States].

At the first stage, what is most important is not super-functionality, but publicity. In terms of distribution, stickers helped us a lot. This is a trivial method, and it often did not work well in other projects, but our stickers usually hang for a very long time. Shitty work is a very understandable problem for people of any political conviction. While the anarchist movement in Russia has been active, we have accumulated enough users from big cities thanks to stickers.

“Antijob.net—blacklist of employers.” These stickers have been essential to promoting the Antijob site as a resource.

How do you see the connection between different forms of labor resistance such as labor unions, stealing from your workplace, public pressure campaigns, etc.? Which of these tactics are viable in Russia?

For us, all methods are interconnected, and each has its pros and cons, as well as regional characteristics. Unions are a good organizational structure, but in Russia they can exist only in industries with large companies and are often overgrown with bureaucracy. Stealing is a good tactic for individual sabotage, but is not looked at well in the society and is unlikely to change the global problem of wage labor. Public pressure is effective on a big enough scale, but mobilizing people to fight thousands of small daily violations of rights involving hundreds of companies is impossible. Solidarity networks as an example of distributed pressure are good, but they require resources from regional activist groups (it is unlikely that anyone will initiate something like this in Russia except these kind of groups), and so far, we have not seen examples of such groups becoming sustainable.

All of these tactics require mobilization and a degree of political freedom, which are both lacking in Russia, perhaps apart from passive sabotage (such as refusing to work effectively) or active sabotage (stealing and intentional damage), and perhaps hacktivism as well. In our opinion, the future lies in tactics that do not fall under the scrutiny of repressive structures and cannot be clearly attacked by the bosses, but which are capable of inflicting tangible targeted damage. Sooner or later, the political situation will change and the road will open up for the other tactics.

How do you see the connections between labor resistance and other forms of political activity? Over the past 40 years, we have seen labor movements, unions, and workplace struggles grow weaker in the United States, while other fields of conflict (such as anti-police rioting) have intensified. Do you have an analysis about the ways that the terrain of labor struggles is changing and how workplace struggles can remain connected to other struggles?

We see work as a central concept that will be zealously defended on all levels, from direct attacks by the police to conceptual criticism by right-wing intellectuals. Unions have been the answer before, but the neoliberal turn has provided a broad toolkit for fighting them. Struggles against police violence, like some other mass protests, are younger and more mobile in their choice of tactics that the state does not have an effective response to yet. In addition, unfortunately, in many ways, peaceful forms of resistance do not pose a concrete threat until they develop into occupations. An organized labor movement is not just about occasional rallies, but about the state having to spend money on social programs and businesses having to shell out on decent wages and offer guarantees to workers under the constant threat of strikes. This is probably more expensive than maintaining a few riot police units.

But the labor movement is often very conservative, trade unions have their own structural problems, and new practices (like solidarity networks) have not yet become an effective instrument of struggle.

It seems only natural for us that the problem of work remains relevant. The people who suffer the most from police brutality, racism, environmental crises, and other problems are rarely businessmen. They work—officially or illegally—and they suffer the toxicity of the market system. The only question is to what extent we (who are essentially part of the same workforce) can make this agenda relevant.

In the United States, there has been a lot of news coverage of the so-called “Great Resignation,” discussing all the workers who have been quitting their jobs since the beginning of the pandemic. Has anything like this happened in Russia? Is quitting a job a form of resistance?

Russia has also had great resignations—even though these weren’t really resignations, it was more like businesses firing people to cut costs. Without benefits or any guarantees. The first lockdown made the atmosphere so tense that there were no more lockdowns afterwards. People were out of work, and since most Russians had no savings but did have credit debts, everything escalated. The state limited itself to a few cash handouts. If people were not allowed to go out to work and earn their bread, an uprising driven by hunger would have been unavoidable.

In Russia, quitting a job as resistance is relevant only for those spheres where there is a shortage of personnel and a sense of their value. Mass resignations are very unlikely because there is no broad self-organization; the resignations of a few employees do not cause any damage. People often work unofficially, so they will receive no compensation, and the benefits to the unemployed are very small. More often, a visible form of struggle will be the continuation or sabotage of work as an individual practice. We are not seeing the opportunity for mass organized action just yet.

One of several video shorts by Antijob.

Have you seen the Antiwork reddit page from the United States? How is it similar to your project, and how is it different?

Not only have we seen it, but we also have covered it, including a similar movement in China. In terms of its radical message, the movement is similar to the early Antijob, and we hope that at some point this will become more relevant in our country as well. For us, we see anti-work as a fatigue with the neoliberal work ethic (in the United States) and the pseudo-communist work ethic (in China). It seems that in our country, this ethic has not yet reached the peak after which a radical rejection of work will be perceived seriously.

Another problem with this framework is our audience. Some of them work for something like $300-400 per month, while living with children and credit debts. It would be somewhat awkward to urge them to refuse to work.

What can you say about the invasion of Ukraine from where you are positioned?

Before the war started, some of us doubted that such a turn of events was really possible. However, it did happen. We issued a statement condemning Russian aggression. Russia’s imperial policy is obvious to us. As usual, it is disguised as “security interests.” We have received several insults from patriotic users trying to prove to us that the war is being fought against “Nazis who spread LGBT propaganda,” but this is different from the patriotic frenzy of 2014 [when the Russian military seized Crimea from Ukraine].

“No salary—eat the bosses.” The sticker is in Ukrainian.

How is the invasion of Ukraine affecting Russian workers? How are the sanctions affecting workers in Russia, and how do you think they will impact the working class in Russia in the future?

There are definitely people in Russia who approve of the war, and there are quite a few of them. Many workers live in the information bubble of the state’s “fortress under siege” narrative. From their screens, they see the message “Everyone is against us.” This mobilizes them to support the invasion, shifting the focus to the idea that this is being done for the security of Russia.

Propaganda platforms use the international sanctions and condemnation to reinforce this narrative in order to draw support even among those who hesitated at first.

This mobilization will not continue indefinitely, of course. In a few months, everyone will feel the economic consequences, and if the war is lost, the reputation of the government will be damaged. This will not necessarily lead to an uprising, but we can hope that the social agenda will be more successful in mobilizing for the overthrow of the regime.

We plan to be ready for such a turn of events and, as a project directly related to labor issues, to support this process.

Finally, is there anything people can do to support your project?

The easiest way is to support us financially. The development of a project like this always needs resources with which to pay for hosting, or someone else’s work on the project. In addition to this, you can help spread awareness of the project. This is especially important in the CIS countries. Also, we always need people with experience in penetration testing to help find and fix vulnerabilities, and SEO experts to advise us on promotion in different regions in order to increase pressure on employers.

And on the macro-level, you could create an analogue of our project in your area and contact us to create a network of services like ours in collaboration.

Antijob participated in publishing this book, “‘Work Sets You Free’—Stories about Workers and Employers.”

Appendix I: Labor Resistance

This manifesto, which appeared on the Antijob site a decade ago, spells out their basic analysis and goals.

A significant part of life, we have to give work. Our capacity, time, ideas, successes and failures are reduced to rubles, dollars, and euros—empty bank notes that can never fulfill our desires and needs. Usually this work is accompanied by delays in paychecks, the machinations of employers, nervousness and humiliation from ridiculous rules and idiotic bosses.

We do not believe that the existing system of “commodity-capital” relations, which put the exploitation and destruction of people and the planet on the conveyor, can somehow be reformed “from above.” Real change can only come about if people recognize their plight and begin to seek better conditions for their lives on their own—without begging for anything from party bureaucrats or crooks from the bureaucracy.

History shows many examples of rebellious people sweeping away exploiters and thieves overnight, administering true justice and distributing public goods fairly among those who need them most. In this sense, we are closest to the libertarian (anarchist) philosophy and principles of direct action. You can read more about this in the “Library” section of our website.

We have no paid employees and no hierarchy. We focus on the use of a wide range of methods of struggle in labor conflicts. We deal with problems related to working conditions and payment, as well as problems that women, young people, and national, sexual, and religious minorities face at work.

Through our actions and propaganda, we are trying to develop class consciousness among employees and an understanding that, as a class, we have an interest in social revolution, the victory of which will offer us the opportunity to control our lives.

We see our site not only as a place where there is a black list of employers (and where you can leave feedback about employers), but also as a place for coordinating forces in the class struggle, promoting “direct action” in resolving labor conflicts—as opposed to the bureaucratic judicial system, which actually operates in the interests of our class enemies.

This site was created over sixteen years ago by several members of the organization Autonomous Action and has been actively developing all this time. This year, Solidarity Networks were created in various cities of Russia, which have already helped people to reclaim stolen wages (Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, St. Petersburg). Thanks to antijob.net, more than a dozen employees received a salary after publishing a review on the site, because many employers are afraid to be included in such lists—and even more so on our site.

“Labor against work.”

Appendix II: Antijob Statement Against the War in Ukraine (February 24, 2022)

This war is provoked by the stifled ambitions of the Russian elites. They try to disguise this by talking about the “national interest.” But the working people do not and cannot have any interests in the oppression of the people in Ukraine and the Donbas. Our interests are peace and decent work, not war with the Ukrainians.

This is military aggression initiated from the top of the Russian Federation. Yet we will be the ones who bear the consequences of this decision. The oligarchs and the president will not bear the brunt of military spending. Their children will not go to the front, their salaries will not be eaten up by inflation and currency depreciation. You and I have been set up.

The Putin regime is now taking revenge on the Ukrainian people for not wanting to live under the boot of the Russian Chekist [i.e., the Cheka, the Soviet secret police agency from 1917-1922, and its descendants, the NKVD, the KGB, and today, the FSB]. Tears and coffins await our mothers, too, but bombs will fall on the heads of our brothers and sisters, workers in Ukraine. We allowed this, but now our task is to stop it as soon as possible.

Today at 7 pm, anti-war actions will take place in Russian cities. Our antijob.net team calls on you to join them and demand an end to military aggression.

Antijob helped to publish a Russian translation of our book about capitalism, Work. Tragically, the artist who designed it took his own life this week in response to the dehumanizing experience of seeking asylum—first in Ukraine, then in Poland.

https://twitter.com/crimethinc/status/1505616538749050884

Appendix III: Worker Reviews

JSC RTK is the official retail chain of MTS. Why should it be blacklisted?

1) Management style: Feudalism with authoritarian and totalitarian methods of influence. That is: all retail is divided into divisions, regions, and sectors, at the head of each such division is a person who most often feels like the absolute ruler of the territory entrusted to him and thinks that he has the right to humiliate his subordinates, put strong psychological pressure on them, force his subordinates to deceive customers, without their consent, or assuring them that “It is mandatory” to add items to purchase receipts that: a) are very marginal, b) are absolutely useless for the client. All this is done under the fear of disciplinary action, fines, demotion, or dismissal.

2) Liability. Every month, inventories are carried out by the store and every three months—with the auditor. All employees must be present at these inventories, regardless of whether they have a work shift that day. Returning to work on the day of the inventory is paid only for those who have a scheduled shift. In case there is a shortage, the re-sorting most often does not overlap; in this case, the surplus is put on the balance, and the shortage is withheld from employees. The shortage is retained in full, and not at cost, as required by the labor code…

-RTK JSC MTS - retail

At work, they held a meeting at which they announced that the entire team was being transferred to minimum wage due to problems in the company… Naturally, I wrote a letter of resignation, but it turned out that none of the employees was going to quit anymore, everyone continued working as usual. While I was working for two weeks before my dismissal, I found a vacancy on hh.ru [headhunter, a popular job search site] for my own workplace, at the previous salary, and I was very surprised. Some time after my departure, the former director called me for a conversation and offered to let me return on the condition that I stop going to political pickets and covering my actions on social networks. Allegedly, there were complaints from my clients that I was against Putin. That was the reason for my removal. In fact, it turned out that no one’s salary had been reduced, everyone was quickly returned to their previous working conditions, but they decided not to inform me about this, so that I would quit of my own free will without scandal. And this whole performance was carried out in order to deceive me, one person, and force me to quit.

-“Forced to quit because I don’t like Putin”

This surprising story was confirmed with a photograph of the contract, which is available on the post on the Antijob site.

Every Storm Begins with a Single Raindrop : In Memory of Two Who Fell in Rojava

2022-03-17T15:55:00Z

This eulogy honors the lives of Lorenzo Orsetti and Ahmed Hebeb, who were killed during the last days of the fighting against the Islamic State in March 2019. For more background on the conflict, read this article and this interview with Tekoşîna Anarşîst.

Lorenzo Orsetti and Ahmed Hebeb in the vicinity of Baghuz in March 2019; the last known photograph of either of them.

Lorenzo Orsetti

Three years ago, on March 18, 2019, my friend Lorenzo Orsetti was killed in action during the battle of Baghuz Fawqani. He was fighting with the Syrian Democratic Forces against the last bastion of the Islamic State in Syria. Before any more time passes, I would like to say a few words in his memory.

Lorenzo was an anarchist from Florence, Italy. At the time of his death, he and I were members of Tekoşîna Anarşîst, a group of anarchist internationals participating in the ongoing revolution in northeastern Syria, otherwise known as Rojava.

I met Lorenzo on my first day in Syria and I was with him nearly every day of the last six months of his life. Until he died, I never knew his real name, nor where exactly he was from. To me, he was Tekoşer Piling—that was his nom de guerre. It means “Struggle Tiger” in Kurmanji Kurdish.

In some ways, Lorenzo and I knew very little about each other. In all the time we spent together, we rarely discussed our feelings, the future, or our past lives back home. Nevertheless, we were comrades in arms. We served in the same unit, slept in the same room, trained and exercised together every morning, alternated shifts on guard duty every night, shared hundreds of meals and thousands of cups of tea, rotated chores, cleaned up after each other, and deployed to the front line together twice, where we survived several firefights and various close brushes with death. I trusted Lorenzo with my life, and he never let me down.

Lorenzo Orsetti with the flag of Tekoşîna Anarşîst. “In this picture, he was being self-deprecating by being as over the top as possible.”

What can I say to do justice to Heval Tekoşer?

First and foremost, I will say that Lorenzo was a revolutionary in action and conviction, and that he was very brave. He did not come to Rojava to make money, to live off of the largesse of the movement, or to get famous on the internet. He took his duty as an internationalist seriously. For the year and a half that he served in Syria, he volunteered for every single assignment possible, from Afrin to Deir Ezzor, from one end of the liberated territory to the other. At various times and places, he fought with the predominately Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Turkish communist organization TIKKO, Arab units of the Syrian Democratic Forces, Anti-Fascist Forces in Afrin, and Tekoşîna Anarşîst. He wasn’t messing around. By the time he died, he was a seasoned and widely respected veteran, well known as the first in the line of fire and the last to leave. I had begun to believe that Lorenzo was bulletproof—until he wasn’t.

That said, Lorenzo was by no means a one-dimensional soldier of fortune. He did not love war for its own sake. He read and wrote constantly. He studied history, politics, language, theory, tactics and strategy. His Kurmanji was decent and he was learning Arabic. He knew what he was fighting for, and he truly believed in the principles of autonomy, ecology, and women’s liberation that we saw being put into practice in Rojava, however imperfectly. He lived by his principles and he died for them.

Lorenzo Orsetti at the front in the desert outside of Hajjin in Deir Ezzor at the end of 2018.

In addition to his considerable prowess as a freedom fighter, Lorenzo was an all-around remarkable human being. A chef by trade, he would regularly conjure up delicious meals from basic rations. On birthdays and special occasions, he would track down better ingredients and spend hours making gnocchi and delectable sauces from scratch. He spoke English well, if not exactly fluently, peppering it with fabulous malapropisms, Italian idioms, and peculiar turns of phrase. He could get his point across in a meeting with brutal precision, using half as many words as a native English speaker would. He was quick to anger and quick to forgive, capable of firing off a volley of hair-raising insults when provoked and of completely forgetting the incident within minutes. Lorenzo loved dogs and was especially kind to puppies. He had a thing for odd techno, jihadi nasheeds, and the song “Live By The Gun” by Waka Flocka Flame. He was short and stocky, covered in tattoos, and a ranked world-class master of the video game “Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III.” If there was ever a moment where there was nothing more important that he had to do, he could be quite content to wrap himself up in a blanket, stretch out on the floor, break out his phone, and do battle with the orks of Tartarus, a practice that—for reasons quite beyond me—he would refer to as “pumping my cannon.” He was a real one.

Lorenzo Orsetti in Rojava in 2018.

A lot of my most vivid memories of Lorenzo, and of Rojava in general, revolve around sleep and the lack thereof.¹ In my mind, he is the tiny glowing ember of a cigarette emerging out of the darkness, long awaited, coming to relieve me of my position and to tell me that I can finally rest. Şev baş, heval.

Lorenzo was killed on March 18, 2019, on the last day of the last battle of the last major engagement of the territorial war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. I had just returned from the front at Baghuz Fawqani. He left for the front there the night I got back from it. We said serkeftin, embraced, and that was that. Within a few days, Baghuz had fallen and Lorenzo was a legend and a martyr.

Lorenzo Orsetti with the red and black anarchist flag.

Three years have passed now. I go about my life in obscurity, surrounded by my loved ones. I wish that Lorenzo had made it home from Syria, as I did. I wish that I had his number in my phone and that I could hear his voice again. Nonetheless, I do believe that there are things in this life that are worth dying for. From the perspective of the civil society of Rojava, I do not think that there was anything to be done about ISIS except to defeat them by military means. Somebody had to do it. Lorenzo did his part.²

To his loved ones in Florence, I would like to say that I too cared for Lorenzo in my way. As my friends and I said in our first statement following his death: “A part of us died with him, and a part of him lives on with us.” We hope that you are proud of him, and that you can understand the choices that he made. I will leave the reader with Lorenzo’s last words, translated for posterity by his friends gathered around a bare table somewhere in northern Syria on March 18, 2019. Rest well, heval.

Lorenzo Orsetti in January 2019: “Just after we returned from the front in Deir Ezzor.”

Hello.

If you are reading this message, then it means that I am no longer of this world. Don’t be too sad, though, I’m OK with it; I don’t have any regrets and I died doing what I thought was right, defending the weak and staying true to my ideals of justice, equality, and liberty.

So in spite of my premature departure, my life has been a success, and I’m almost certain that I went with a smile on my face. I couldn’t have asked for more.

I wish all of you all the best in the world and I hope that one day, you too will decide to give your life for others (if you haven’t already) because that is the only way to change the world.

Only by combatting the individualism and egoism in each of us can we make a difference. These are difficult times, I know, but don’t give in to despair, don’t ever abandon hope, never! Not even for a second.

Even when all seems lost, when the evils that plague the earth and humanity seem insurmountable, you must find strength, you must inspire strength in your comrades.

It is in the darkest moments that we have greatest need of your light.

And remember always that “every storm begins with a single raindrop.” You must be that raindrop.

I love you all, I hope you will treasure these words for time to come.

Serkeftin!

Ⓐ︎

Orso,

Tekoşer,

Lorenzo.”

Tekoşer’s şehid letter. Every fighter in Rojava writes a letter like this for release in the event that they do not make it home.

“And remember always that ‘every storm begins with a single raindrop.’ You must be that raindrop. I love you all, I hope you will treasure these words for time to come.”

Ahmed Hebeb

Lorenzo Orsetti fell in battle side by side with an Arab fighter named Ahmed Hebeb. Those of us from Tekoşîna Anarşîst knew him as Rafiq Şamî. It was not a coincidence that they were together that day. Lorenzo and Ahmed knew each other well from Lorenzo’s previous four rotations to Deir Ezzor. During one of these occasions, Ahmed stripped down to his boxers, counting out for us from head to toe twenty-seven separate wounds that he had received while fighting ISIS over the years. Lorenzo wanted to be where the action was, and Ahmed always knew where to find it. They died together, in a hail of bullets with both guns blazing, providing covering fire to a group of their comrades who were retreating in the face of a desperate ISIS counter-attack. Ahmed was beheaded. For whatever reason, Lorenzo was not.

At Ahmed’s şehid ceremony, my friends and I helped carry his casket. His friends and family were at first confused as to why a group of foreigners had materialized at their loved one’s memorial. My Arabic is atrocious, but I pulled up pictures on my phone of Ahmed, Lorenzo, and I together in the desert of Deir Ezzor. “Şamî!” I said. “Tekoşer! Heval! Rafiq! Şehid!”

The revolution in Rojava and the war against ISIS in that part of the world have often been portrayed in the West in Orientalist and Islamophobic terms—especially by reactionaries, but also by some leftists and anarchists. Kurdish people have been fetishized and romanticized—they are portrayed as a bloc, as “the only sane people over there,” while Arabic people are dehumanized and portrayed as crazed terrorist sympathizers.³ This is especially galling to me because—while I cannot speak for other times and places during the war—the reality of what I saw in Deir Ezzor in the winter of 2018 to 2019 was that the overwhelming majority of the soldiers doing the worst of the suffering and dying to wipe ISIS off of the map were Sunni Arabs like Ahmed. Bigots and fools can say what they will about Arabs and people from Islamic societies in general, but what I saw was that when some of the most malicious jihadis in the entire world converged on northeastern Syria to pursue a program of rape and genocide, a great many Sunni Arabs including Ahmed Hebeb took up arms to stop them.

Ahmed Hebeb and Lorenzo Orsetti at the front outside of Hajjin in Deir Ezzor, December 2018.

Ahmed gave his life engaged in combat with people who war had turned mad, people who had chosen to make themselves into enemies of humanity at large. Many of these people were Ahmed’s own countrymen, people who spoke the same language and worshipped the same God. Today, the conditions that sent Syria spinning into war appear to be generalizing across the entire world. The defenders of the neoliberal status quo are showing themselves to be bereft of both vision and answers. As those of us in the so-called West reckon with our own versions of ISIS in this age of ascendant ethno-nationalism, only time will tell how many people of good conscience in Christian societies will be ready to do as Rafiq Şamî did.

On behalf of Tekoşîna Anarşîst, I would like to say to Ahmed and the countless Middle Eastern men and women like him: we have not forgotten you nor the lessons that you taught us.

In the spirit of Ahmed and Lorenzo,

An anarchist.

Ahmed Hebeb and Lorenzo Orsetti at the front in Deir Ezzor, in the vicinity of Baghuz, March 2019, not long before their deaths.

Lorenzo had to be woken up in a very particular way, a process that I eventually came to master. You see, some comrades will trick you when it comes time to wake them for guard duty, especially when they have been coping with chronic sleep deprivation for months. They will sit up and have a whole conversation with you. But they are not truly awake. As soon as you leave them, they will lie back down and fall asleep, extending your watch indefinitely and eating into your priceless sleep time. So you must insist, you must prod them until they are standing, until they are fully geared up, until they are actually walking with you in the direction of their post. Woe betide the person who attempted to wake up Lorenzo in this way.

Quite the opposite, as soon as you spoke a single word to Lorenzo, he would be fully awake. He would not move a muscle, but he would grunt one time. With this grunt, you could be certain that he would be at his post precisely ten minutes later, without fail. However, it was vitally important to him that he have this ten minutes to lie perfectly still, smoking a cigarette in silence and acclimating his mind to the horrible fact that he was not only awake but that he was going to have to get up. As I would come to learn, if you made the mistake of prodding him any further during this time, you would soon find yourself face to face with an enraged and frightfully profane Italian.

And yet, at any time of day or night, whenever anything legitimately alarming would happen, such as incoming fire, weird lights, the whir of a drone, or unvouched-for explosions, he could wake up out of a dead sleep and get into position with the speed of a cheetah. You could count on it. ↩
This does not mean that the military defeat of ISIS in Iraq and Syria has resolved any of the issues that gave birth to ISIS in the first place. It has not. Abdullah Öcalan himself once wrote that “military victories cannot bring freedom; they bring slavery.” In my observation, he was correct. ↩
In fact, the revolution in Rojava is not an ethno-nationalist project, but an ideological one, as practically everyone involved in the Kurdish liberation movement that I personally know there would agree. None of the ethnic or religious groups are monolithic. There are Kurds who bitterly oppose the movement and Arabs, Assyrians, Armenians, Turks, and others who participate in it. ↩

Letter from Paris

2015-11-25T18:55:00Z

We received the following report from the group that produced the French version of To Change Everything, Pour Tout Changer. They describe the situation in Paris before and after the attacks of November 13: the intensification of xenophobic discourse, the repression of homeless refugees, the declaration of a “state of emergency” as a way to clamp down on dissent, the preparations for the COP 21 summit at which demonstrations are now banned, and what people are doing to counter all this. It offers an eyewitness account from the front lines of the struggle against the opportunists who hope to use the tragedy of November 13 to advance their agenda of racism and autocracy. With demonstrations forbidden and the COP 21 summit around the corner, what happens in Paris will set an important precedent for whether governments can use the specter of terrorism to suppress efforts to change the disastrous course on which they are steering us.

Escalating Xenophobia

The attacks that took place in Paris several days ago, tragic as they are, are unfortunately not an isolated event. The capital city of France was simply another target in a string of bombings in Suruç, Ankara, and Beirut; it represents the continuation and expansion of the strategy ISIS initiated in the Middle East.

In France, these attacks exacerbate a political context that was already fraught. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the participation of the far-right party Front National in the second round of the 2002 presidential election, the political discourse has taken an increasingly conservative tone. For example, Nicolas Sarkozy, as Ministre de l’Intérieur from 2002 to 2007 and President from 2007 to 2012, openly adopted some arguments, topics, and symbols that were previously only used by the Front National. These discourses of “identity” and “security” have especially stigmatized Arabic and Muslim communities. In 2010, for example, a law was passed stipulating that it was forbidden to cover your face in public places in France. While not explicitly directed at those wearing a niqab or hijab, it resulted in more controls targeting Muslim women.

During this same time period, law enforcement groups were given new equipment such as Flash-balls (supposedly non-lethal anti-riot weapons) and Taser guns. The national DNA file, used since 1998 to collect the DNA of sexual offenders and abusers, has been extended to every person convicted of an offense. The “Plan Vigipirate,” a governmental anti-terrorism security plan established in 1995 after several bombing attacks in France, was also updated three times between 2002 and 2006, and more recently in 2014 under current President François Hollande.

Before the Attacks

For years, refugees have been fleeing their countries to escape death, military conflicts, and constant political instability. Until last summer, the French government and its European counterparts didn’t care about the refugee issue—witness the countless tragic deaths of people trying to cross the Mediterranean sea. In Paris, several groups of refugees have been living on the streets in precarious conditions for months.

Nevertheless, due to accelerating waves of immigration, the French government started to change its policy, taking part in the European political initiative “Welcome Refugees.” This was more of a political move than an expression of solidarity. During this period, refugees and migrants, left alone by authorities, began to create their own camps in several locations in Paris. They received some assistance from NGOs, collectives, activists, and others concerned about their difficult situation.

However, refugees faced aggressive state repression, as they still do. They are regularly harassed by police who intimidate, beat, evict, and arrest them or destroy their camps. In June 2015, the fascist group Génération Identitaire (Identity Generation) attacked a refugee camp in Austerlitz with stones and bottles. The Austerlitz camps were removed by the authorities in September.

At the end of July, another group of refugees and migrants decided to squat an old and abandoned high school in the 19th district of Paris: the Lycée Jean Quarré. Collectives and activists came to offer help; together, they began organizing demonstrations to defend refugees’ rights. On the morning of October 23, police evicted the squat. Some of the migrants who occupied it have been relocated to centers or shelters in the suburbs or even further outside Paris. Others remained without a place to sleep, so they camped in front of the Hotel de Ville, the City Hall of Paris.

Police officers and migrants at the squatted Lycée Jean Quarré.

The day after the eviction, demonstrations were planned at the same time in England and in France under the slogan of “Freedom for the three migrants imprisoned in England—Papers and housing for all—Freedom of movement, no borders.” At the end of the demonstration, some refugees were determined to block the streets until the Mayor found a solution to relocate everyone. They occupied a major intersection for approximately 45 minutes. Then, as usual, police showed up in riot gear. After discussing the possible consequences, the participants shifted to occupying a nearby theater. As they were forcing the doors, the police charged in a surprisingly disorganized and chaotic manner. Some demonstrators continued to confront the police as they were pushed back to a main street.

A few hours after the demo, some refugees and migrants, still without a place to sleep for the night, occupied the Place de la République, one of the major squares in downtown Paris. Since that day, they have been evicted several times and their camps and personal belongings have been destroyed and seized by the police. Several gatherings took place to help refugees and defend the square against eviction. The tension was always high during those actions and police forces were numerous. A few weeks ago, at one such gathering, an Afghan refugee explained to us that he and some of his friends have finally received housing for at least six months. Nevertheless, he also told us that newer refugees who had just arrived from Germany would sleep outside in the camp that night. On Friday, November 13, the police evicted the camp again just a few hours before the ISIS attacks took place in the same district.

At the same time, the authorities have been directing increasing surveillance towards anarchists and their spaces. Several anarchists have recently been arrested in the Paris area, demonstrating the European common political agenda of increasing repression against anarchists—as we have seen recently, on a larger scale, in Greece, Spain, and even Czech Republic. Members of La Discordia, a new anarchist library in the 19th district of Paris that opened in spring 2015, published an article in October showing that the police were monitoring and recording their activities. A device was found hidden in a room at the school facing the library, as its director had agreed to assist the police in their surveillance.

Meanwhile, the COP 21 was coming up. From November 28 to December 12, politicians from around the world will gather in Paris to pretend to discuss environmental issues; several demonstrations and events were planned by worldwide organizations to oppose this international masquerade. An appeal to participate to the anti-COP 21 in Paris has appeared in several languages and Paris is expecting an international mobilization.

The French government took steps to control and contain popular opposition even before the November 13 attacks. First, they decided to close the borders: contrary to ordinary Shengen practice, France will enforce border controls and refuse some people entry. The government has also refused visas to foreign activists and members of organizations. Furthermore, the police administration sent a message to all their employees at a national level asking them not to take vacations during the COP 21 in case they need to mobilize everyone against activists and “black blocks” (French media and politicians still misunderstand black blocs to be a distinct organization, not a reproducible tactic). In other words, the authorities fear that this international meeting will occasion fierce resistance.

After the Attacks

As soon as the attacks took place, and especially when people were taken hostage at the Bataclan, a major venue, Paris became an “urban warfare” zone: police forces were on alert everywhere along with special forces and tactical groups, while soldiers, emergency personnel, and firemen blocked all the streets around the sites of the attacks. Everyone in these areas was searched, had their IDs checked, and told to leave the streets and go home. Those who were at bars were forced to stay inside for hours before police ordered them to leave, some with their hands on their heads. In the moment, the violence of the images and events let us speechless, confused, and scared—not only about the attacks but even more so about what would come next.

Paris the night of the attacks: the army takes the streets.

Shortly afterwards, President François Hollande made an official statement on television saying that France was now at war against the terrorists, against ISIS. Hollande used the same rhetoric and vocabulary George W. Bush did in his speech after September 11, 2001. Hollande also explained that France was now increasing its emergency alert level to just below the ultimate level of war within the French territory. In the name of the “state of emergency” and in order to reinforce and maintain national “security,” Hollande asked to deploy about 10,000 soldiers to help police officers carry out surveillance and control.

The “state of emergency” is a peculiar law passed on April 3, 1955 that provides civil authorities of a specific geographical area with exceptional police powers to regulate people’s movement and residence, close public places, and requisition weapons. It enables the authorities to take all the decisions they want and to drastically reduce liberties and freedom. This law was created and used primarily during the war against Algeria. Between 1955 and 1961, the “state of emergency” was imposed several times on the Franco-Algerian territory. Later, it was used in New Caledonia in 1984-1985. Finally, and for the first time in the French metropolis, the state of emergency was imposed in 2005 after the uprisings that took place in our suburbs.

Once applied, this state of emergency can take several forms. The President and prefects can use it to impose curfews on their population. Car traffic can be forbidden in certain districts or zones at specific hours. Prefects can determine where people are permitted to go, establishing restricted areas and safety zones and even forbidding someone from going to or living in a specific zone if that person is considered a threat. Indeed, every person considered “dangerous” can be forced to stay at home without any option of going out, or only allowed to go out within extremely precise conditions such as being monitored by an electronic bracelet. Movie theaters, venues, or any other place where people gather like bars and restaurants can be forced to close. Police officers can stop and check you without a specific reason—something they already do anyway—and any opposition can be considered a threat. Demonstrations, marches, and gatherings can be forbidden; searches and house raids can be made day and night without warrants; every single person who contests this situation can be punished with financial charges or prison according to stipulations built into the “state of emergency” legislation.

During the three days of national mourning imposed by François Hollande, the government made their first decisions responding to the attacks. First, they decided to increase their military strikes on ISIS positions in Syria; they are trying now to form a coalition with the US, Great Britain, Germany, and Russia to wage a total war against “terrorism.” Then our Assemblée Nationale, the official building where our deputies discuss and make laws, voted almost unanimously (551 pros vs. 6 cons) to extend the “state of emergency.” Now it will last three months, until February 26, 2016. Of course, it could be extended again after that.

Moreover, the government decided to keep the COP 21 in Paris—at least its official meeting and discussions—but forbade the demonstrations and activities organized by anti-COP activists. This can be seen as an attempt to muzzle the people taking part in the social movement to counter these meaningless meetings and political negotiations. It is also interesting to note, considering the three-month extension of the state of emergency, that in 2016, the construction of the new airport at Notre Dame des Landes is scheduled to resume—the airport that has thus far been blocked by the occupation known internationally as la ZAD. The authorities might try to control the opponents of the airport under this supposedly “exceptional” law.

During the past few days, the authorities have made some other major decisions: starting now, our police officers are allowed to keep their weapons with them even after working hours in the name of national safety. The government has also asserted a closer surveillance of online activity. In addition, President François Hollande is trying to add new elements to the law governing the state of emergency, including policies such as stripping French citizenship from people recognized as a threat to national security, or closing mosques preaching a conservative interpretation of Islam.

People gathering at the Place de la République after the attacks.

Dark Days, Unwritten Futures

In the aftermath of the Paris’ attacks, we are sure to face even darker days than before between the increasing power of the government, the crushing of our liberties, and intensifying xenophobic and racist discourses among politicians and part of the population. Indeed, only a few hours had passed after the attacks before the first racist attacks took place in several towns around France. For example, on Saturday, November 14 in Pontivy, Brittany, while taking part in a demonstration, members of “Adsav,” a fascist group defending Breton identity, beat an Arabic man. The weekend following the attacks in Paris, mosques were tagged with red Christian crosses and racist sentences; some Halal butcheries have also been targeted. In Marseilles, a Jewish professor and a woman wearing a headscarf were assaulted.

Adsav demonstrating in Pontivy on Saturday, November 14.

The attacks also reinforced French nationalism. The “Marseillaise,” the French national anthem, has been sung during many gatherings since the attacks; the national flag has been ubiquitous, even on social media profile pictures. All this nationalist momentum produced a spike in applications to join the French military, as some recruiters explained to journalists. All these events offer a great opportunity for the Front National to increase its influence once more across the French political spectrum, and to gain more electors during the municipal elections in December.

It is alarming how readily the majority of the French population accepts the policies of the “state of emergency” and the restriction of their movement and liberties. For anarchists and activists, these emergency measures raise several questions: What will happen if we violate the state of emergency by demonstrating? How will the police forces react? Will the government end up using this “exceptional law” to repress anarchists and other radical activists and carry out mass arrests? One thing is certain: since the attacks of the past January in Paris, most of the police forces haven’t been able to take vacations due to a lack of personnel. Some high-ranking members of the police explain that their troops are exhausted and on edge, which means that the tension during future actions including the COP 21 protests will be extremely high.

Nevertheless, it is important to remember that nothing is ever written in advance. As individuals, we have the capacity to make choices that could change the current inertia of the world.

On Sunday, November 22, several hundred people gathered in the Place de la Bastille to express solidarity with refugees and to contest the “state of emergency” declared by the government, despite the gathering having been prohibited following the attacks. When we arrived, police forces were present but were standing back from the increasing group of activists. We took this opportunity and started walking in the middle of the road, determined to demonstrate no matter what. Police forces ran after us, faced us in a line, and tried to turn us away from our principal objective of taking a major boulevard to reach Place de la République. Their first attempt failed, as some activists got around the police line and kept walking on the boulevard, chanting “Solidarity with all refugees!” There followed a chase between police and activists. At one time, they succeeded splitting us in two groups, and clashes broke out as people tried to break through their lines of separation. They answered with tear gas and truncheon blows. Nevertheless, their attacks didn’t stop us. In the end, we succeeded in breaking their lines, and once again we were demonstrating together, heading to our objective. Finally, after approximately 30 minutes marked by clashes with the police, we arrived at the Place de la République, which was full of people who had come on that Sunday afternoon to lay flowers and pay homage to the victims of the attacks.

The protests of November 22 in Paris.

The success of this spontaneous demonstration in defying the “state of emergency” shows that we can still act on our own strength, refusing to surrender to the general state of fear and to the new laws imposed in the name of national security. More than ever, we must help and take care of each other, we must keep organizing, we must stay focused and continue defying authority. This is what we should keep in mind as the COP 21 will start in few days in Paris. The struggle continues.

Confronting the “state of emergency” on November 22.

Ukraine: How Nationalists Took the Lead

2014-03-12T22:03:00Z

While Putin tries to change the subject from insurrection to war (perhaps in fear that the contagion of unrest will spread inside Russian borders), we believe it is especially important for anarchists and others with a stake in social movements to learn from the revolution in Ukraine. Specifically, we want to study how nationalist and fascist elements were able to take the initiative, and how to minimize the likelihood of this occurring elsewhere in the future.

To that purpose, we present an interview here with a member of the Autonomous Workers’ Union in Kiev, who discusses why groups like Svoboda and Pravy Sector were positioned to take advantage of the social movement, and evaluates the effectiveness of the various strategies anarchists and anti-fascists adopted in this unfavorable context.

Shortly, we will present our preliminary hypotheses about what anarchists elsewhere around the world can learn the Ukrainian example, along with a reading list of primary source materials available in English.

How were nationalists able to establish themselves so visibly within the movement? Was it because they were there first? Was it because they had more resources? Or was it something about the issues and demands of the movement itself?

There were several reasons. First of all, nationalism is not rejected by the vast majority of protesters. Even people with liberal views haven’t said much against the party “Svoboda” (Freedom) and other nationalistic organizations. Most of them prefer to turn a blind eye to the aggressive actions of nationalists, imagining that nationalists will not follow their ideology. Surely, this is a delusion.

Secondly, nationalists from the Svoboda party started to infiltrate almost any social protest long ago. They have numerous activists while other parties don’t. These activists did a lot of organizing work during protests. During the clashes with police, boneheads’ support became even more valuable. This concerns also the “Pravy Sector” (Right Sector) group. On the other hand, Svoboda lost some support on account of aggressively infiltrating others’ activist space and brutal fights with other protesters.

Thirdly, other opposition parties need Svoboda votes in the parliament. Even though quite a large number of people still weren’t very happy about Svoboda (as well as some European politicians, who would prefer not to cooperate with nationalists openly), Svoboda was appreciated as a legitimate part of the protests because of their resources.

Hanging white supremacist flags in the occupied Parliament in Ukraine

Why were anarchists and antifascists not able to establish a similar presence? Would it have been possible if they had acted differently?

There are not so many anarchists and antifascists in Ukraine compared to nationalists. Also, a lot of anarchists were skeptical about the protest when it was all about Euro-integration, they partly joined in when “Maidan” changed mainly into a protest against police brutality. Nevertheless, it was quite dangerous to agitate about any social issue, as the far right could attack at any time.

Another reason for this was that anarchists and antifascists in Ukraine are divided because of several principal issues. Quite many “anarchists” and antifascists are rather manarchists, reject feminism and pro-choice movements as “bourgeois,” and cooperate with national-anarchists from “Avtonomy Opir” (Autonomous Resistance).

Can you imagine anything anarchists and antifascists could have done in the previous years that would have prepared them better for this situation?

In fact, the whole situation was quite unexpected for everyone—even for the Opposition leaders. It was the government who provoked the protest to grow larger with brutal violence of riot police squads.

Also, there are not so many anarchists in Ukraine. For example, the 1st of May demonstration in Kiev gathered about 300-350 anarchists and antifascists in 2012, and their number decreased to about 200-250 the following year. Other cities have much smaller anarchist and antifascist scenes. A lot of people changed their views from anarchism to social democracy or national-anarchism. I think that the main reason was that we had very few workshops, discussions, book publishing, etc. Now the main issue is to increase the number of activists again and concentrate on workshops about theory.

What strategies have different anarchist groups pursued for engaging with this situation? What conclusions can you draw from the results?

When the “Euromaidan” had just started, different leftist and feminist groups, including the syndicalist student union “Priama Diya” (Direct Action), tried to infiltrate the protest in different ways with social and feminist slogans, criticizing the idea of Euro-integration at the same time. They were pushed out of the protest by the boneheads; activists of the communist party “Borotba” were even beaten very harshly. Some activists continued to infiltrate the protest in different ways, but not so openly—for example, organizing different workshops among protesters—but there ware almost no results.

Antifascist football fans of “Arsenal-Kiev” decided to join the protest against police brutality. They declared the “truce” with Nazis and joined the fights against the police. Also “Arsenal-Kiev” fans made a call for all anarchists and antifascists to join their struggle, while they were cooperating with national-anarchists from “Avtonomny Opir.” After anarchists spoke some criticism about such alliance, football fans threatened everyone criticizing them with violence. Of course, this proclamation made a reverse effect, as even more people turned their backs to football fans.

After extreme police brutality in January, different leftists, and anarchists in particular, initiated “Hospital Guard”—a group of people that was trying to prevent police brutality against injured people in hospitals. “Hospital Guard” was quite effective, and a quite lot of protesters with moderate views joined it. Now, after fights against the police are over, “Hospital Guard” activists are thinking about changing it into an initiative that would fight against neoliberal medical reform. Only time will tell how effective it was.

Which aspects of anarchist rhetoric and approach have nationalists appropriated? What can we do to prevent this?

Nazis from “Pravy Sector” and the Svoboda party have no need to appropriate anarchist ideas—they still stand for the strong state and have support with this idea. During the Maidan protests, they changed their rhetoric to be more democratic than before in order to get more sympathizers, but it still is very authoritarian and has no sign of anarchist influence.

The only fascist group that appropriated anarchist ideas was “Avtonomny Opir,” the former National Labor Party of Ukraine. Their ideology is a mix of anarchism, nationalism, and the Third Way. Some of leftists were quite happy to see that former fascists had started to change their views, but in fact this evolution stopped on that ideological mix. The evolution of “Avtonomny Opir” also had another effect—some antifascists and anarchists started to cooperate with them and appropriated their ideas. So now groups like “Narody Nabat” (People’s Bell) and “Socialny Opir” as well as Arsenal-Kiev football fans have basically the same views, including pro-life and rejection of feminism.

Svoboda’s Oleh Tyahnybok doing their party salute upon re-election to head of the party.

Members of Right Sector on the front lines.

Narody Nabat (“People’s Bell”), a group that describes itself as “social anarchists,” is reportedly cooperating with autonomous nationalists.

Anarchist Book Fair in Lima, Peru: Report

2014-02-08T20:56:00Z

Last weekend, a CrimethInc. operative participated in the first Anarchist Book and Propaganda Fair in Lima, Peru. Here follows his detailed report, including photographs and a few comments on the situation of anarchists in Peru.

Disclaimer: I claim—no, I exclaim!—that this account is incomplete and erroneous. It is brought to you through the lens of a North American traveler with a less than skillful mastery of the Spanish language. Nonetheless, this is how I experienced the First Anarchist Book and Propaganda Fair in Lima, Peru.

It’s been almost ten years since I came to Peru. The country was about to inaugurate a new president, only the second president to take office since the Fujimori dictatorship of the 1990s. Although “democracy” had arrived and the Shining Path had largely disintegrated, the country wasn’t in good shape. An incomplete 20-year-old monorail system loomed over the city, casting shadows of past leaders’ empty promises. The center of counterculture was a graffitied, three-block street called Jiron Quilca. It housed an anarcho-punk infoshop, Asko Social, a couple of anti-capitalist cultural centers, as well as bookstores and little shops with bootleg metal and rock paraphernalia. On Jiron Quilca, I was lucky enough to attend a celebration of the 70-year anniversary of the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.

Today, Jiron Quilca still has much of the same commerce, but its status as a countercultural hub has evaporated. Many of the bookstores, music bootleggers, and graffiti are still there, but Asko Social and the other anti-capitalist spots are gone, and with them much of the street life. A nearby church that owns much of the property has run these establishments out, hoping to cash in on the gentrifying downtown. While Jiron Quilca seems like a ghost town, the long delayed metro-rail project has been completed, and a speedy metro-bus system has been introduced. The neighborhood where Abimael Guzman, the leader of the Shining Path guerrillas, was finally arrested—a reputation that you might think would drive down property value—is now one of the fastest gentrifying parts of the city, with new luxury apartment buildings and a gigantic mall. This was not the city I had seen almost a decade ago.

But the anarchist movement has changed too. There is new blood—young blood—and there are new ideas as well.

One of these new ideas was to host Lima`s first-ever Anarchist Book and Propaganda Fair. The fair took place the weekend of February 1-2, 2014. It was hosted in the union hall of the Federation of Bakers, Star of Peru (Federacion Obreros Panaderos Estrella del Peru), a union with anarcho-syndicalist roots founded in 1887.

The day before the book fair, in exchange for use of the space, local anarchists and visitors helped repair furniture, fix the bathroom, sweep, and dust the space, and one gringo even gave the tall, decaying face of the building a new (albeit mediocre) paint job via an incredibly dangerous ladder! The day of the book fair, the space was transformed with beautiful, large posters expressing solidarity, impromptu art exhibitions, and red and black flags.

Over twenty different publishers and projects tabled. These included radical media projects, a DIY feminist craft collective, regularly published anarchist periodicals, authors with their own books on anarchist history, an anarchist hip hop journal, and plenty of anarcho-punk distributors. Our CrimethInc. cell was a proud participant, albeit with a meager selection of translations. However, many other distributors had translated CrimethInc. texts on their tables as well. If you want to help translate more material, please get in touch!

One of the most popular items on our table was a Spanish version of the Gender Subversion poster. An older, conspicuously non-punk woman insisted on paying one of the neighboring tablers for the poster even though the ex-worker staffing the table was not present. When this ex-worker returned, the neighbor recounted this woman’s enthusiasm and background. She grew up in a shantytown of Lima known for an especially high level of self-organization. The women of this area self-organized public kitchens, education committees, and sewage and electricity projects. In what became one of the highest-profile murders of the era, a socialist woman who led these efforts was eventually assassinated by Maoist Shining Path rebels who were suspicious of anyone organizing outside their authority. This book fair attendee had a granddaughter who raps and skateboards, who is criticized for not acting girly enough. The grandmother was excited to give her granddaughter the poster and to continue the tradition of strong, self-determined women that she grew up around during the Shining Path conflict.

Three kinds of presentations took place during the weekend: Talleres, which were more or less skillshares; Foros, forums for discussions of ideas and action; and presentations on current projects or newly published anarchist material. Many of the workshops and foros were also accompanied by newly published zines on their respective topics. The workshops included capoeira, wood and linoleum printmaking, and anarchist poetry. There were forums on intra-movement work and cooperation, anarcho-syndicalism, anarcho-primitivism, free love, revolutionary violence vs. terrorism, the anti-mining conflicts in Cajamarca, and anarchist internationalism in regards to the legacy of the war of the Pacific that pitted Chile against Peru and Bolivia.

Authors presented on a book about the history of Chilean anarchism between 1890 and 1990 and herbal healing and medical self-determination. There was also a brief but well-received presentation about the Ex-Worker podcast.

The space was drug and alcohol free, something anarchists in Lima seem to be experimenting with recently. This is a change from the Spanish Civil War anniversary during my last visit, at which many audience members had beer in their hands. To illustrate this trend, one local show space has been successfully hosting drug and alcohol free punk shows. One of the reasons for this is to avoid provoking repression, but many of the punks who live there have young children as well. This might also explain why the book fair had an enthusiastically attended childcare space with mats to play on, art projects, books, and fantastic volunteers.

In the middle of the first day, time was set aside in the tabling area for tablers to present their projects, explain why they were there, and express what they hoped to get out of the book fair. This turned out to be intimate and beautiful; perhaps book fairs in the US could try it. One presenter made a humble and touching speech: “I believe every anarchist is a propagandist, whether we are talking to people on the street, our family, or our friends. Just because I am behind a table with books and you are in front of it doesn’t mean you know anything less about anarchism than I do. We all have something to learn from each other.”

In an interview carried out by the ex-worker, one of the book fair organizers explained the idea behind holding this book fair: “We consider it very important to resist the whole set of distortions, defamations, and falsifications that are perpetrated by the means of power. This includes the press and even the realm of academia, which many times has attempted to silence, or make us forget, the history of anarchism, which has had a very important presence in Peru´s history. And also, to show that anarchists are involved in lots of different kinds of things. We’re hosting this book fair to promote the idea that people can assemble their own texts, edit their own texts, and disseminate them in spaces like this. Anarchists aren’t just involved in confrontations at demonstrations—I mean, they are doing that, but we’re doing other things too. So, we’re resisting this narrow view of anarchism and hopefully making people realize that anarchism is an alternative, one that can be fulfilled. Hopefully even more people can participate in the next book fair, and I believe were getting there, little by little.”

Another participant explained her enthusiasm for the event: “Many times when we have been in different conversations we have said ‘Well, we see the same faces’ and what we would really like is for other people, like young people like we see that are here, for them to be here, for them to be with us, sharing a different environment, a different type of thing that they don’t get to see in school, that they don’t get to see in the streets, that they don’t get to see in the TV or on the radio, nowhere. That’s the most important thing, for people that are not in these places to actually get to connect with these types events, these types of conversations, these types of talks, these types of relationships. Because the type of relationships we have is very much different from the type of relationship you see outside, which is mainly a type of mercantile relationship, an exchange, you talk to that person because you`re going to buy something or you talk to that person because you work with them. It’s all because of a capitalist relationship. What we’re harvesting here, in these places, is another type of relationship, a relationship of a different type of society that is not on a basis of money or exploitation or anything like that. And the thing is finding out how…”

At the end of the last day, a very old man from the Bakers’ Federation, the union who shared their union hall for the book fair, shared some words. He spoke for five minutes, and concluded, “This is a space that serves every comrade. It doesn’t belong only to our union, it belongs to anarchism… It animates me to see so many young people here. In you, the young, I put my faith that you will use this meeting as a step to reignite a revolutionary struggle. This is not the first anarchist meeting to take place here, and we hope it will not be the last. I can see that the libertarian vein runs through your bodies.”

After a loud round of applause and cheering, the book fair spontaneously transformed into an unstructured assembly for people to share their experiences, news about recent repression, and ideas for the future. Then someone took out a cajòn, guitar, and kazoo, and people sang, danced, and rapped until it was time to leave.

While cleaning up, my Peruvian hosts and I discussed the book fair. Overall, people left energized and inspired. They said that their only real complaint was that there were not more people from Lima who attended. As an outsider but also as a comrade who has attended my share of anarchist book fairs, I hope that I impressed upon them what a success their event was, and that they worked together spectacularly. From South America to North America, a la mierda la autoritad!

Daniel McGowan Imprisoned for Speaking Out

2013-04-04T23:15:00Z

This morning, environmental activist Daniel McGowan was taken back to jail despite his exemplary parole record, presumably in retaliation for his recent article on the secretive Communications Management Units the US prison system uses to silence political prisoners.

Daniel’s article cites court documents confirming that, during his incarceration for environmentally motivated direct action, Daniel was moved to a CMU to punish him for expressing his political views. Despite first facing the threat of a life sentence, and then serving years in the CMU with very little contact with the outside world, Daniel has never cooperated with efforts to incriminate other activists, nor ceased to speak his mind. The US government is determined to make an example of Daniel for this. We too might hold him up as an example, showing that no amount of threats and coercion can break the spirit of a person determined to stand up to oppression.

There are two and a half million people in prison in the US, more than there were in the gulags at the height of Stalin’s reign in the Soviet Union. As in the Soviet Union, the authorities do everything they can to keep this population invisible: to prevent them from communicating with the rest of society so most people never learn how much violence and coercion are necessary to maintain this social order.

We should respond to attempts to silence Daniel and others like him by listening to what they have to say about what is going on in America’s prisons–and by doing our part to make it impossible for the authorities to silence anyone.

Background

Daniel’s original article from within the CMU, “Tales from Inside the US Gitmo”

Our overview of Operation Backfire, in which Daniel was arrested, “Green Scared?”

Update

Daniel’s attorneys at the Center for Constitutional Rights just released this statement:

Daniel McGowan has been released from the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn where he was taken into custody yesterday and is back at the halfway house where he has been residing since his release from prison in December. Yesterday, Daniel was given an “incident report” indicating that his Huffington Post blog post, “Court Documents Prove I Was Sent to Communication Management Units (CMU) for My Political Speech,” violated a BOP regulation prohibiting inmates from “publishing under a byline.” The BOP regulation in question was declared unconstitutional by a federal court in 2007, and eliminated by the BOP in 2010. After we brought this to the BOP’s attention, the incident report was expunged.

CrimethInc. to Debate Chris Hedges in NYC

2012-08-16T10:25:00Z

Immediately before the one-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, we will meet Chris Hedges in New York City for a public debate about diversity of tactics. This debate will be free and open to the public, and livestreamed for those who can’t attend.

Occupy Tactics

Violence and Legitimacy in the Occupy Movement and Beyond: A Debate between Chris Hedges and the CrimethInc. Ex-Workers Collective on Tactics & Strategy, Reform & Revolution

Wednesday, September 12, 2012, 7:00 pm Free admission

Proshansky Auditorium Lower level, CUNY Graduate Center 365 Fifth Avenue (@ 34th street) New York City, NY 10016

Not in NYC? A free livestream of the event will be available online. Link TBA.

Why a debate?

Since Occupy Wall Street took Zuccotti Park in September 2011, there has been a resurgence of social movement activity in the United States. As momentum has increased, age-old questions over tactics, strategy, and goals have returned to the fore.

What is violence? Who gets to define it? Do illegal actions have a place in our movements? This discussion never takes place in a vacuum or on a level playing field; rather, it occurs within the context of a struggle that is already in progress, where every statement has immediate ramifications for the participants. Differing tactical approaches often reflect fundamental differences in strategy and goals.

At the core of these issues is the question: What are we fighting for and how do we get there?

This moderated debate will feature:

Chris Hedges, Journalist Chris Hedges is an American journalist, author, and war correspondent, specializing in American and Middle Eastern politics and societies. He will speak to the perspectives behind his controversial article “The Cancer in Occupy” regarding black bloc tactics and anarchist participation in the Occupy movement.

B. Traven, CrimethInc. Ex-Workers Collective B. Traven will support the case for a diversity of tactics in the Occupy movement and in broader anti-capitalist struggles worldwide, illustrating an anarchist critique of the status quo and a vision of social transformation. CrimethInc. has produced many books and articles, including “The Illegitimacy of Violence, the Violence of Legitimacy,” composed in part as a response to Hedges’ “The Cancer in Occupy.” Moderated by Sujatha Fernandes, CUNY Graduate Center Sujatha Fernandes is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. She is the author of several books on urban politics and culture; the latest is “Close to the Edge: In Search of the Global Hip Hop Generation” (Verso). She has written about the Occupy movement and recent global uprisings for The New York Times and The Huffington Post.

Opening remarks by Sarah Leonard, Dissent Magazine Sarah Leonard is an editor and writer living in Brooklyn, with particular interest in Left politics and the cultural effects of technology. She is an editor of The New Inquiry and N+1, Associate Editor at Dissent magazine, and a co-editor of Occupied!: Scenes from Occupied America.

Download posters and handbills promoting the event: Poster: Color : B&W
Handbill: Color : B&W

Co-sponsored by: CUNY Graduate Center, CrimethInc. Ex-Workers Collective, Aid & Abet, The Sparrow Project, Occupied Media, The Indypendent, PM Press, Bluestockings Bookstore

For more information: crimethinc.com/occupytactics

Every Prisoner is a Political Prisoner

2012-07-23T17:24:00Z

On July 19, Kelly Rose Pflug-Back was sentenced to eleven more months in prison for her participation in the 2010 G20 protests in Toronto. She remains unapologetic about her role in the black bloc that caused so much disruption during the summit, demonstrating that the forces that impose capitalism and patriarchy are not invulnerable.

To support Kelly and the millions like her who are imprisoned for the inconveniences they pose to the powerful, we are proud to present her eloquent and thought-provoking memoir of the time she spent incarcerated after her original arrest: “Every Prisoner is a Political Prisoner.” In this account, Kelly powerfully evokes the experience of captivity and the importance of understanding all captives of the state as political prisoners.

Our friends Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness are publishing a book of Kelly’s poetry as a fundraiser to benefit her during her incarceration. Walt Whitman argued that “to have great poets there must be great audiences,” but audiences is precisely the opposite of what there must be. To have great poetry, there must be people who are willing to act on their ideals rather than just watch from the sidelines. We are deeply grateful to Kelly for finding the courage to live her poetry as well as writing it.

Interview with Kelly Rose Pflug-Back

Write to Kelly:

Kelly Pflug-Back Vanier Centre for Women P.O. Box 1040 655 Martin Street Milton, Ontario L9T 5E6 Canada

Every Prisoner is a Political Prisoner: A Memoir

June 27, 2010, was uncharacteristically overcast for mid-summer Toronto. My head pounded from the humidity as I walked alone down Queen Street, through a cityscape teeming with riot police, and still dusted with shards of broken glass from the day before. Construction crews had already set to work repairing the trail of wreckage, attempting to get everything back to normal before anyone noticed.

When I reached Jimmie Simpson Park, where people were meeting for the day’s scheduled prison solidarity rally, I saw only a small crowd of friends standing under the drooping honey locust trees: some debriefing or consoling one another, others speaking with the reporters who swarmed like gnats around the gathering. This sparse group of about thirty was all that remained after the preemptive kidnappings and mass arrests. I can’t remember if I felt any particular sense of foreboding—any eerie apprehension of why I too hadn’t been taken away.

As our diminished group walked from the park to the detention center where our friends were being held, I hoped to be able to find some news of what had happened to my partner, or to anyone for that matter.

The gray sky sprinkled rain upon us, but we were happy and smiling. We chanted, sang, played instruments and shared whatever food we’d brought. Cops surrounded us, jostling the crowd to step farther away from the chain link fence surrounding the prison. I’d been there about half an hour when the unmarked van drove into the crowd. A group of men jumped out and forced their way toward me, yelling for people to move out of the way. One of them said my name, and within seconds they had dragged me into the van.

I can’t say I felt anything when my face hit the floor, but later in my cell I noticed a deep throbbing in my teeth and gums. The front ones were loose. My mouth tasted like blood.

One of the cops who’d pulled me into the van asked me if I was on welfare. He leered at my bare legs and told me I needed a razor. Another tied my wrists with zip ties and proceeded to rifle through my purse.

Inside, the building was a massive warehouse filled with wire cages, like some industrial chicken farm. The noise of other prisoners screaming protest songs and rattling the doors of their cages echoed off the concrete walls, making our numbers seem greater even than the 992 people occupying cells. They put me in a cage and locked the door. On the wall to my left I saw a guard scribble my name on a white board alongside the words “do not release.” I sat down on the concrete and anticipated the worst.

The following day I was hospitalized after losing consciousness from low blood sugar. All we were given to eat was a cheese sandwich every 12 to 24 hours with no alternatives for those who were vegan or had an allergy. I was unable to walk to the medical trailer; the guards informed me that this constituted refusing medical attention. Another prisoner who overheard this screamed at a guard who was busy amusing himself doing tricks in an unused wheelchair, and they brought it to my cell shortly after.

A female guard snarled at me to “close my fucking legs” while I sat sprawled inside the medical trailer with an intravenous glucose drip in my arm. I’d been arrested in a short skirt and tank top, and they had refused me, numerous times, pants or a blanket. It was freezing inside the detention center. There was no way to get off the bare concrete. My teeth chattered constantly, and I never stopped shaking. It was too cold to sleep.

After they took me back to my cell, I could hear a man nearby screaming that he needed his medication. He screamed for hours before stopping abruptly; I pressed my face to the cage door and I could see him convulsing on the floor of his cell with his tongue hanging out of his mouth. “Get up,” the guards told him, repeatedly, before finally acknowledging his unconsciousness. Then they dragged him away.

Countless people were processed and released, many of them with bruises, cuts and abrasions on their arms and faces from being slammed into the concrete. A number of the guards passed the time by spewing racist, homophobic, classist, and sexist harassment at prisoners, or threatening them with further brutalization. A number of women were threatened with rape.

Hours and hours passed, and it became increasingly clear that I would not be allowed to call my lawyer or let my family know where I was. As a matter of fact, I hadn’t yet been informed of my charges. I spent over two days in my cell, curled in a ball on the concrete or pacing the small vicinity of my cage, sometimes yelling to other prisoners or joining them in hysterical, sleep-deprived bouts of laughter.

I was unsurprised to see a few old friends from Toronto’s street community pass through the detention center. Were it not for the unfortunate situation, it would have been a welcome reunion. When an acquaintance of mine ended up in the cell beside me, we started talking about the circumstances that had brought us there. Only seventeen, he had spent the majority of his life being transferred from group home to group home. Since he had finally been appointed as his own legal guardian, his life had been plagued by poverty, class profiling, and prejudice in the court system. Although he didn’t consider himself an “activist,” he was obviously more steeped in the realities of social struggle than a large portion of the other detainees. We talked about our mutual experiences with police, shelters, group homes, and homelessness. We talked about how these experiences had politicized us, and how a person doesn’t need to understand party politics to be political. Every poor person is political, we agreed, just by nature of their experiences.

I realized at that point that I probably had more in common with him than I did with most of the other protesters. Unfortunate as it was, life had already acclimatized us to be treated like shit by the authorities. None of this surprised us. We were used to being beaten, having our rights stripped away.

After most of the detention center had been emptied, I was transferred to the general population at the women’s prison in Milton. While we waited to be processed in the holding cells, the other women and I laughed and joked, trading stories about how we’d ended up where we were. A lot of them were arrested and presumed guilty for unequivocal bullshit; for being homeless, poor, non-white, using drugs, working in the sex trade, or any combination of these factors. Others were arrested for crimes of necessity: for stealing food because they were hungry, or robbing a store to feed their young kids, for needing a way to pay rent. A few had been charged with assault after having fought back against abusive spouses. I told them my charges, and got a lot of hugs, high-fives, and congratulations. “Fucking right,” people said, slapping me on the back. “Fuck the rich bastards! Fuck the G20!”

Some people had been unclear as to what the summit had been all about, and we got into a long conversation about it. We all laughed, ranted, waited, and laughed some more. If these were the women with whom I’d be surrounded, I thought to myself, maybe prison won’t be all that bad.

My first days inside were largely spent adjusting to the prison environment, and as time went on, my new setting reminded me increasingly of the years I spent living on the street when I was a teenager.

On the streets, as in prison, you never get a decent night’s sleep or a meal that resembles real food. There are always a few arrogant people who think they run everything because they’ve been there the longest, and people in uniforms can do whatever they want to you and get away with it. In both situations, your status as a human being is revoked. Humanity is a privilege awarded to those who help perpetuate capitalism, and once you cease to do that, you’re a burden. You’re expected to express gratitude to the system that ghettoizes you, doling out a few table scraps and a thin blanket.

The first range I was sent to was renowned for being the least hospitable. We were locked in our cells for most of the day. Each had one bed, though the high volume of prisoners meant that two people usually shared a cell. The only windows were thin slats of frosted glass too opaque to see through, and we were allowed outside only once a week. “Outside” was a small walled concrete enclosure with metal grating for a ceiling. Through a small crack underneath the heavy steel door, I could see grass. It depressed me to look at it. I tried not to.

This was the range to which people were sent as punishment, for getting into fights, mouthing off to guards, being caught with contraband or generally failing to comply with prison regulations. If you were “good” you qualified for transfer to a medium-security unit, where you could go to a real outdoor exercise yard, have your own cell, and see visitors without a thick pane of Plexiglas separating you.

A lot of the women on maximum security had been on the same range for over a year. I met one woman who had been there for almost two; she’d never had a misconduct, but there was a note in her file stating that she would have to serve her entire sentence on maximum security. She came from a mafia family, she explained. Putting her on a medium security unit would have been an open invitation for any of her high-up friends to come break her out.

After visiting the classification office, I learned of a similar note in my file. “Apparently I’m a terrorist,” I shrugged, when people asked why I hadn’t been transferred yet.

I won’t say that I instantly got along with everyone on my range, or that I was the most popular prisoner. I didn’t pay attention to the hierarchies that existed between other prisoners, and some people had a problem with that. I wouldn’t join in when others ridiculed or ganged up on the less popular women. It was a total pecking order, and it reminded me too much of a schoolyard.

I became close friends with a woman named Rachel* whom I met in the common area during breakfast on a rare day when we weren’t on 24-hour lock down. She was violently ill from drug withdrawal, and the nurse hadn’t filled her methadone prescription. Apparently, her cellmate was a complete asshole, so we snuck her into my cell after the doors were buzzed open. The next guard that came by on her rounds started yelling at us, but we assured her that the other staff had transferred Rachel and forgotten to do the paperwork. I don’t think the guard believed us, but she didn’t seem to care enough to do anything about it.

When Rachel wasn’t too sick to make conversation, we passed the long hours of our confinement playing cards, singing tuneless renditions of R&B hits, washing our dirty uniforms in the sink and talking about life in general. She lived near Niagara with her partner, their four-year-old son, and their newborn daughter. She struggled with addiction, but still managed to keep her life together and be there for her kids. Her dad had been in and out of prison most of her life, and her mom had been drunk all the time. She’d spent her early teenage years working as a prostitute, and the crown attorney at her bail hearing had used this to argue that she was unfit to reenter society. It seems that when 13-year-old girls end up hooking on the streets it’s because they possess some moral defect, and not because life has given them no other choices.

Our cells looked out onto the common area, an oval-shaped concrete room. It contained five bolted-down tables, four showers at one end, a shelf with a few bad paperback romance novels, and three phones, only two of which functioned. When allowed into the common area, I went straight to waiting in line for the phones. Some women didn’t have anybody to call or only had relatives outside of the country; the phones only transmitted collect calls within North America. Other women gripped the phone receivers with white knuckles, trying to explain to their young children why mommy wasn’t coming home. Rachel said she had told her partner not to bring the kids when coming to visit her. “They’re just too young. They would only be confused by the Plexiglas in the visitor’s cubicle. Being able to see their mother, but not reach out and touch her.”

I thought of an article I’d read once about animal testing laboratories. One method the lab technicians used to create symptoms of stress and depression in mammals involved removing newborn babies from their mother, then placing the mother in isolation. I looked up at the florescent ceiling lights within their shatterproof wire cages. Soon, the nurse came and people lined up to receive their daily doses of sedatives and anti-psychotics—a precautionary measure, prescribed to virtually everyone, like cutting off the beaks of factory-farmed chickens to prevent them from pecking themselves, or each other, to death from the stress of confinement and isolation.

My views of the prison system solidified: prisons are little more than warehouses for concentrating the poor. Rather than being populated by the people most harmful to society, they are crowded with those who have been the most harmed by society. Rather than being “correctional” facilities, they are a method of ridding the streets of those who act as living reminders of the crisis of poverty, the widening income gap, the future of hardship which may very well await many more in the coming years if something does not change. Prisons are a way of sweeping people under the rug. They are a way of pretending that nothing is wrong.

Very few of the women on my range had been imprisoned for any kind of violent crime, and most of those who did have violent charges had been defending themselves against abusive partners or assailants. Most of these women’s attackers had walked away without charges, free to roam the streets at their leisure.

The small portion of women facing violent charges not involving self-defense were often the survivors of past traumas; a history rarely taken into consideration by the courts that sentenced them. Much like the homeless community, a large portion of the women with whom I spoke were survivors of the lifelong onslaught of abuse perpetrated against poor and disenfranchised women by our society, particularly women of color. Many had been arrested for not having full citizenship, while others had been in the process of applying for refugee status. A disturbingly high number also lived with (dis)abilities like Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, Fetal Narcotic Syndrome, Schizophrenia, and ADD/ADHD.

These are women who have been bounced between abusive foster homes and youth detention facilities, graduating at 16 as wards of the Children’s Aid Society only to become wards of the State, criminalized for doing what it takes to survive the minefield of poverty.

As the days turned into weeks, I began to erase from my mind the hope of being released. The health problems with which I’ve been living the last few years became increasingly severe, and I often found it difficult to stand up or walk around without fainting. My ribs stuck out. My stomach became concave. I became depressed.

Was it stress, overly-processed food, or a general lack of fresh air and exercise that made me unhealthy? Probably some combination of all these things. Without even examining me, the doctor put me on a liquid diet, which in jail consists largely of juice crystals, water, and MSG-filled soup powder. When I was finally sent to the examination room I was told that nothing seemed to be wrong with me, regardless of the fact that I’d lost close to 20 pounds, felt tired constantly, and was in serious pain and discomfort.

I talked to my partner on the phone, but his voice sounded distant and crackly through the receiver. He came to visit me, and we pressed our hands to the inch-thick Plexiglas between us. It was almost harder than not seeing him. My mom sounded stressed whenever I called her, and I could hear my dog howling in the background at the sound of my voice through the receiver.

I needed to talk to somebody, but the prospect of being force-fed Thorazine dissuaded me from applying to see the psychiatrist. So I went to the prison Chaplain, for the sheer novelty. He was a square-jawed man in a gray suit, with the bearing of a Televangelist. He told me I was in prison because I had sinned, and that I had to repent for these sins. I was in my current situation because the Devil had led me astray.

“But Jesus was a political prisoner!” I said. “The Devil didn’t tell me to do anything; I’m a political prisoner like Jesus!” He thought I was crazy.

I was released after about a month on conditions of strict house arrest and non-association with some of my closest friends. All I felt was numb. I walked into the parking lot with my family and my partner, squinting under the bright sunlight. We drove back to the house where I lived as a kid and I slept for days. At first I felt fine. I could leave the house, if I was with my parents, to take the dogs for walks in the last of summer’s warm weather. I drank coffee, read a lot. People I’d never met sent me stickers and zines and nice letters in the mail.

Two months later I started having panic attacks, insomnia, and nervous breakdowns on an almost daily basis. When I did sleep, I had awful nightmares. It seemed as though every past instance of trauma and violence I’d seen or experienced had been consolidated into a heavy, poisonous lump, slowly turning my insides black and rotten. I felt like the world was just too ugly to live in. I was suffocating under the weight of clear-cut forests and floundering, tar-drowned shore birds. When I closed my eyes all I could see was torture and war, droughts and chemical spills, napalm.

All I wanted was to move past the negative experiences I’d had and work towards piecing my life back together. But I realized that the pain I felt was trying to tell me something: I would not be able to forget and move on as though none of this had happened. In a way, I think the disgust and pain we feel when we see or experience something horrific can be the greatest catalyst for creating positive change. When we experience something firsthand we are better equipped to understand it—and with that understanding we can educate others and give real support to those who are also experiencing it. We can see its flaws and weak points, and we can use this knowledge to criticize, discredit, and eventually destroy it.

Although I never heard this said firsthand, others told me they overheard quite a few young people say they’d never go to another protest again after their experiences at the detention center. I felt not only disappointed that everyone hadn’t been able to see the ways to reclaim these experiences and use them as further motivation, but profoundly confused by this perspective. What we went through during the mass arrests at the G20 was only a small window into the everyday experiences of countless minorities in this country who suffer police profiling, brutality, and prejudice within the legal system on a horrifyingly regular basis. As hard as I try, I simply can’t understand the notion that anyone could propose to be an ally of any marginalized group, then give up and turn away when faced with a tiny microcosm of what that group puts up with everyday.

My experience in prison and the women with whom I shared it have reminded me of the reasons I became politically active in the first place. They’ve reminded me of the sorrow, the desperation, the heartbreak, the trauma, the unlivable realities of poverty that first spurred me to get my life together and dedicate myself to helping others rather than accepting the conditions in which I lived. Being in prison reminded me of the core of my politics. At the bottom of it, we were all inside that prison for the exact same reason. We were dangerous only in the sense that our existence discredited Canada’s status as a place of liberty and equality. We were a glaring reminder that this country doesn’t offer equal status and opportunity to everyone.

Some political prisoners are arrested for staging public demonstrations that address poverty, and some are arrested for living in poverty. Some actively protest social inequality, while others turn to drugs or alcohol because they can no longer bear the brunt of this inequality. Some choose to publicly draw attention to injustice by their words and actions, while others are swept off the streets because their very presence is a public exposure of this injustice. Now is the time for everyone in our community to think about what it really means to say that every prisoner is a political prisoner. The next time we’re shocked and outraged by an experience of being targeted, harassed, or otherwise mistreated by law enforcement or society in general, we should stop to recognize how much respect we owe to the people all around us who face much more than that every day of their lives. Every prisoner is a political prisoner.

*All names have been changed to protect the identities of those mentioned.

Underground Reverie Benefit Release

2011-12-22T19:24:00Z

We’re thrilled to present the four-song debut release from Underground Reverie, Seattle’s premier anarchist electronic ensemble:

Underground Reverie “Out of Isolation and into the Fray” Four-Song Debut [27MB]

The release is free, of course—but if you can, please show your appreciation by making a donation to the legal fund of those arrested in last month’s building occupation in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. To do so, go to the defendant support site and donate to the arrestees’ legal fund; further inquiries can be addressed to ‘defendoccupychapelhillarrestees@riseup.net’.

One of these songs appeared in our video coverage of the aforementioned building occupation. Since this is the digital age, we can already offer a review of the release, courtesy of Seattle’s excellent Tides of Flame [PDF]:

“Underground Reverie’s debut album is throbbing, haunting, and completely amazing. Samples from helicopters, owlish flutes, various films (including Network), and eerie old songs flesh out a skeleton of delicate electronic beats. The music is as much about the horrors of civilization as it is about the raw beauty of struggle. In the liner notes, UR reflects on anarchist praxis and encourages us to keep fighting.”

Contact Underground Reverie: undergroundreverie@riseup.net

Three Years since the Greek Insurrection

2011-12-06T07:48:00Z

Three years ago today, police in Athens, Greece murdered Alexis Grigoropoulos, a fifteen-year-old student. This touched off the first wave of unrest to follow the economic crisis of 2008, setting the scene for the upheavals that have followed since in North Africa, Spain, and elsewhere.

To commemorate Alexis’s life and the efforts of all who set out to avenge his death, we’re offering selections from an interview we did with comrades in Greece the following year, when the riots were over but momentum was still fresh. The interview serves as a sort of historical snapshot, documenting the heady optimism of the time but also the realization of how vast the barriers to revolution still were. A great deal has changed since then; Greece has witnessed a series of new tragedies and clashes, while Greek anarchists have simultaneously seen their tactics embraced by broad sectors of the population and lost the initiative as the shortcomings of their strategies became apparent. Yet this interview is timelier than ever, as it grapples with the question of how to make the most of a high point of struggle. This may be relevant in North America sooner than anyone expects.

December Revisited

[Void Network interviewed in 2009]

How much were the limits of the insurrection imposed from outside, by the power of the State?

The government trapped in scandals, economical crisis, and inner conflicts is unable to learn from all the ways it was beaten. An elite that tries to behave like nothing happened can do nothing but forget.

During the insurrection in the countryside, the towns and small cities, the external influences were much stronger than in Athens and Thessaloniki. For example, in Patras and Larisa, both big cities that experienced riots that the police were unable to control for days, small but well-organized groups of neo-Nazis together with riot police were searching for the young people, street by street, and following groups of high school students from the riots to their houses, frightening them and their parents as well.

In small cities and towns, undercover policemen were going from shop to shop to spread false rumors and to inform the owners that wild anarchists were on their way from the big cities to come destroy their shops in the same way the television was portraying an exaggerated destruction of small shops in Athens. So when young people, anarchists, and leftists came out onto the streets of their small towns with no intention to smash anything but banks, police stations, and government buildings, the shop owners treated them like vandals rather than their own children. However, in most small towns during the insurrection, the people generally had an attitude that these were “our own children” and the youth and comrades accomplished unbelievable actions on a local scale.

The influence of conservativism was also much stronger in some right-wing towns. Conservatism, the power that keeps our life “as it was,” our mind “as we know it,” and our activities “as we’ve always done them,” was the strongest factor for sustaining normality before, during, and after the riots all over the country.

Many people opposed the insurrection and they had the power to express their disapproval much more openly and effectively in the countryside. In some of the towns the majority of the locals were obviously against the “tendencies” of the anarchists and the leftists. In these towns it was very difficult for the small number of isolated participants to sustain an insurrectionary enthusiasm for many days, even though in such places actions still took place day after day for weeks, proving that the passion for freedom doesn’t fear any authoritarian conservative majority.

The power of the State existed mainly in radio interviews, TV programming, and riot police in the streets. The work of the State was to offer excuses and reinforce the conservative defenses of this society, to sustain normality even in the middle of chaos, and to express with certainty that nothing will change; also to suppress the total chaos without having another dead body on the streets. It was crucial that they do it without filling up the stadiums with thousands of detainees, in order not to create images of dictatorship within the spectacle of social life.

The work of the mass media, as part of the regime, was to offer simplistic excuses for the “children’s revolt,” so as not to alienate their parents, to avoid speaking seriously about the specific reasons behind many targets of smashing and burning, to feed the worst fears of the conservative majority, and to portray the anarchists as irrelevant to the phenomenon. In this way they were building a separation between the good children and the bad anarchists, immigrants, radicals, extremists-criminals.

How much did the limits come from the participants themselves?

In big cities and especially in Athens and Thessaloniki, physical exhaustion had a strong influence after all those days of tear gas, running around the city center, hours of assemblies and all kinds of direct actions, creating and sustaining street barricades and liberated zones, smashing, burning, and fighting the riot police, the undercover police, and the neo-Nazis over vast areas of the city… day after day and through the nights. The boys and girls sleeping inside the occupied universities for many days showed heroic physical strength.

When the schools reopened the students had to go back to class. Three weeks after the start of the revolt the university students started to think it was possible to lose credit for the whole academic year if the occupation of the universities continued after Christmas. After three weeks the students took to the streets less and less. Satisfied by the amazing personal experience of revolt and revenge against the State, they were tired from the street fighting. And they were pushed by their parents to return to normality. The students and youth who were not politically organized began to lose the feeling of togetherness of the first weeks, and started to express skepticism again towards the attitude, decisions, initiatives, and political analysis of the anarchists. Many continued to participate in different actions, but they began to keep a distance from the central occupations and riots.

And the workers had their jobs waiting for them. Most of the participants had to work all day and then they participated in the actions in the afternoons and evenings, also expressing an amazing physical strength. The worst moment of the assembly for the occupation of the General Confederation of Greek Workers was when the insurgent workers started to speak out against spending a long time forming a deeper analysis because they had to go to sleep so they could work the next morning. Work was a limitation before, during, and after the insurrection.

After the third day of the uprising the immigrants, many of whom lacked papers, faced a very strong backlash from the police and in public opinion. Police continued searching for them for months and in the following summer they arrested thousands of so-called illegal immigrants.

In the network of assemblies and conversations there began to reappear many different questions, debates, and the endless disagreements that characterize the Greek radical space. Many of these took the form of hostile dichotomies and enmities, like leftists vs. insurrectionists, anti-authoritarians vs. anarchists, artists vs. anti-artists, independent media journalists vs. anti-media activists, direct action vs. political messaging, naifs vs. extremists, hooliganism vs. anti-statism, anti-statism vs. criminality, anarcho-communism vs. post-anarchy, junkies vs. serious political revolutionaries, looting vs. burning… and so on. Many people felt this and made conscious efforts to combat it. But by the third week, many of the debates had become long and tedious distractions from the disappointment we felt when we saw that the whole society would not rise up, as many people hoped it would in the early days.

A major defeat came early when the syndicalist hierarchy decided to cancel the nationwide general strike scheduled for December 10. This strike had been announced long before the death of Alexis, but they cancelled it to avoid generalizing the insurrection. The historical meeting with the working class failed to happen once more. Never trust the workers. The “working class” followed their leaders, their political parties, their own syndicalist institutions, unions and organizations, their own idols and ghosts. The workers, the farmers, the petit-bourgeoisie did everything in their power to help the regime survive and bring everything back to normal.

So you see, normality was also hiding inside of us, not only around us.

The submission of the majority to the status quo and the habitual repetitive behavior of work and consumption kept millions of people off the streets. The inability of participants in the insurrection to explain politically the reasons for the actions and to expand this understanding on a scale that could address the problems of common people was a failure that kept the entire society from exploding, from taking up the revolt and continuing it with their own decisions and actions.

For sure, people were not ready for social change, not even for a general confrontation with their own realities. The death of Alexis fell like a thunderclap, but most of them were unable to understand what caused their own children, their own friends, their own neighbors to revolt. The society could feel it, they could express empathy but they were not ready to translate it into a political confrontation with the regime.

In an insurrectionary way of thinking, we can say that now, after the insurrection, the consciousness of millions of people has stepped forward and this is the main achievement of the revolt. The insurrection opens horizons. Many things that will happen in the future could never have happened before December.

All the thousands of people who participated offered an invitation to the others, the silent majority. When this silence fills your ears, echoing off the streets of a crowded city that wants to return to normality after four weeks of endless riots and all kinds of actions, an inner voice forces you to pack up all the inspiration and experience you have won for yourself, to go back to your collective and continue the struggle from there.

Even with most of the markets destroyed, Greek society generated a strange need to reproduce a pseudo-celebratory Christmas. Even though all the walls of the city were painted with the slogan “Christmas Postponed, We Have Insurrection” and the smoke of the tear gas and the smell of burned banks and the ashes of luxury shops still hung in the air, and the death of Alexis filled everyone’s thoughts, Christmas happened on December 25 just like every other year. The fucking mayor announced during New Year’s Eve from Syntagma Square, next to the brand new Christmas tree, this one protected by riot police, that we were all one, we were all the same, and we were happy! Thousands of poor immigrants were clapping their hands below the stage, though many hardly understood a word. The three central occupations in Athens (Polytechnic, Nomiki, ASOEE) dissolved one or two days before Christmas.

And you walk in the city center with your friends, four o’clock on New Year’s morning, and there are no riots anymore, and you want to smash everything around you and start again from the beginning. And an inner instinct says to you that there is still a lot of work to do before this world will explode. And the insurrection continues travelling in space and time, but still you feel that something is missing, and there are a lot of things we have to take care of.

In what ways were the limits of the insurrection determined by factors in place before it started, such as the infrastructure of anti-authoritarian groups and projects and the culture of resistance in Greece?

For many decades, the uncompromising fight of anarchists against the State and capitalism has found its chief expression in confrontation with all the various bureaus and branches of police across the planet, for example in the clashes that occurred in Prague, Seattle, Genoa, Thessaloniki, Maastricht, Nice, Rostock, Berlin, Copenhagen, Paris, Cancun, Santiago, Buenos Aires, San Francisco, Mexico City, Hamburg, St. Paul, Turin, Johannesburg, Miami, Seoul, and many other places. Of course, as the State is not a castle, the police are not the major protector of the State. Social apathy, habit, acceptance of status, and fear of change are perhaps even stronger protectors of the State than the army, and comrades in Greece know this well. But during the “Days for Alexis,” the police were the primary target of the attack. The reasons were obvious this time even to the conservatives. The struggle was legitimate even for reformists. For once, anarchist common sense matched up with social common sense. Unfortunately, common sense is a great obstacle to wisdom.

The target of the struggle itself, the police, was the greatest limitation to the expanding of the insurrection to a general social insurrection. For most of the common people, police brutality was the target of this struggle, and the anarchists, long experienced in fighting against the police, fought hardest alongside the people who wanted to express their rage against police brutality, together with them, sometimes even following them.

But generally, they were unable to take the majority of the people with them in a total negation of the roots of the regime and against the real causes of this and all the other murders carried out by the State and capitalism. Most of the people were not ready yet to travel to the roots of their slavery. The society was not ready to face its own failures in the clear light of insurrection.

And the people in the struggle did not expand the dialogue as necessary to encompass all sides of everyday life. Of the hundreds of communiqués released, only a few could really offer an inspiring political explanation and a solid organizational solution. The affinity groups and the initiatives had the capability to offer high-quality analysis of the conditions and a hard critique of the regime, but they hadn’t enough experience to spread enthusiasm for a social victory—visions of a world that could appear from the ashes of the old world, practical escape routes from the dead-ends of neoliberalism in crisis, images from the future we are dreaming of, applicable plans for continuing the struggle once everything has been smashed and burned.

So when the rage started to fade, there were no solid answers as to what should come next. Not even in our craziest dreams had any of us come so far. We walked for days and days like shadows inside our own struggles, wondering, through the smoke of the tear gas, about each next step.

Who has the proper answers, who can even narrate this story, who can offer solutions and answers about the way to general social insurrection? No one wanted to force society to go further, and anarchists always dislike this role. Four weeks after the assassination of Alexis, everyone knew that the uprising was not a revolution, so nobody gave specific answers for what we had to do in order to go further. What could we do to keep the riots from ending? Is the never-ending riot the way to social insurrection?

Most people that participated in the insurrection say that it didn’t end. We find great truth in this, as thousands of us participate and stay active in many projects, struggles, and assemblies that were created after December in all the cities and towns. For most people Alexis is still alive. In today’s struggles you can find him smiling behind actions, demonstrations, creative plans, and destructive visions.

What conflicts have developed after the uprising between groups that participated in it together? Are there bonds and connections that were possible to maintain during the uprising that have broken down since then? During the insurrection many old friends lost each other forever and people or groups that hated each other for decades worked in projects and actions together. Many old groups transformed into something completely different and many new affinity groups were created. As most of the Greek anarchists don’t like each other, and deep differences separate groups and people, no one can speak definitively about what is happening and nobody clearly understands what is prepared and by whom. This total fragmentation is very useful during periods of “social peace,” as it produces a vast variety of opinions, analysis, and initiatives. The police cannot infiltrate the movement, since such a thing does not exist. Hundreds upon hundreds of groups, people who’ve known each other for many years and share total trust and empathy, appear as if from nowhere and return to nowhere.

In a way, all this fragmentation created the strange situation: all these people, who knew each other for years but would never talk to each other, were suddenly speaking, spending time together, and fighting side by side. December produced strong feelings of solidarity and common struggle.

In the first months of 2009, huge assemblies, mostly staged in the university amphitheaters late in the afternoon, took place nearly every day. Sometimes people intending to join one assembly started to participate in the one taking place before it, as they waited for it to finish and for the next one to start. Some of them were gathering from 100 to 400 active people every week. To name a few: * The Assembly for Solidarity with Immigrants * The Assembly for Solidarity with December’s Prisoners * The Fight for Worker Konstantina Kuneva * The Assembly of the School and University Students * The Assembly of Insurgent Doctors and Nurses * The Assembly of Insurgent Artists, the Assembly of Unknown Artists * The Assembly of The Ones Here and Now and For All of Us * The Assembly of Workers and Unemployed * The Exarchia neighborhood Initiative Committee

…and many other committees in different neighborhoods, as well as assemblies happening in other cities all over the country. And to all these general insurrectionary assemblies, of course, we have to add all the separate meetings of collectives and groups that were participating in these general assemblies.

Throughout these months there was a poster on the walls of Athens with a wildly naïve Dadaist monster saying: “Obedience Ended! Life is Magical!”—and for most of us living this magical life meant jumping from assembly to assembly preparing unbelievable things and putting them into practice with all those people. Those assemblies brought to life all different kinds of actions and projects and visions, the crazy dreams you had from when you were fifteen years old or from last week’s late-night talk with friends or some secret plan you had with your lover and now was coming true.

Most of the initiatives and assemblies of artists, romantics, non-ideological people, and creative activists soon shrank, losing the enthusiasm of the first week and becoming smaller and more solid creative groups. Various reasons forced people from these assemblies to go back to their individual creativity, but many of these groups are still dedicated to their projects.

Week after week, and as people were coming closer and closer, the old conflicts, the differences, the diverse political standpoints and the different needs, expectations, strategies, and methods started to appear again. This brought back to the surface the old separations and the old debates. It proved that the differences were not just ephemeral misunderstandings or personal distrust, but were based in deep analysis and long-term differences of practice and ways of thinking.

The interesting thing was that even though most of these general assemblies split or started to attract fewer people and to have less power and influence, new ways of organizing appeared. After months of meetings, the whole political space took new directions. The general assemblies were not useful any more as new coalitions, new friendships, and new contacts appeared. Different squats, social centers, and initiatives started to form after the end of the general assemblies. People and groups that had met during the insurrection and the period of open creativity and massive open meetings that followed December now had experience with each other—they knew where they agreed and disagreed, they knew what the directions and strategies of each group were—and so new projects, plans, and decisions took place. In this way, the anarchists and other insurrectionists and radical activists avoided conflicts. The melting pot of general assemblies broke into much more effective meetings, laboratories of creative chaos, squats, and direct actions.

How effective has government repression been in weakening the movements that started the uprising? What have been the most effective ways to resist this repression?

A basic characteristic of the Greek anarchist space is that through the influence of insurrectionary practices it refuses to see itself as a homogenous “movement” and especially as a movement of “resistance” or “direct action.” The idea of direct attack is much more influential. The momentum of the attack is controlled by the groups and the initiatives and not by any collective central decision-making process.

Of course, in periods of social mobilization, such as the demonstrations against the privatization of education or of health and public insurance, or in big events like the European Union Summit or the G8, there is coordination and communication between the groups. But even under these circumstances, the initiative for the direct attack is taken autonomously by groups and individuals. This makes things very complicated for the state—and also for the people. No one can decide what will happen, no one knows what will actually transpire until it has already happened.

The anarchist space has the ability to appear very powerful and then disappear completely from the stage of confrontation for short periods of recovery. These short periods without riots hypnotize the government into believing it has other more important things to care about. In these periods of calm, the eye of authority is not focused on anarchists. Meanwhile, the arson groups commit unstoppable attacks against all kinds of targets. During these periods, hundreds of assemblies, events, public talks, film shows, free festivals, parties, lectures, workshops, and public non-confrontational demonstrations assure the visibility of anarchists, autonomists, and anarcho-libertarians. These political and cultural processes are also responsible for the never-ending arrival of new people, the replacement of burnt-out people with fresh ones, and the preparation of a new cycle of intense confrontation.

It is like a wave. When it’s up, you can see it in the news, on TV, in the streets, everywhere. When its down, you don’t see it but you feel it. You meet with the wave because it is coming to you and moving unstoppably through the initiatives of thousands of different people.

What are some of the way that people have had to “recover” from the uprising? Legal troubles? Emotional trauma? Exhaustion?

There was not any emotional trauma from December. The use of molotov cocktails heals a crowds’ panic and fear and takes back control of the streets from the police. Molotovs used as a defensive tool can keep the riot police away long enough for everyone to run safely away and recover from the tear gas or avoid arrest. When molotovs are used as offensive weapons together with hundreds of stones from broken pavement, they give courage to the crowds and spread a feeling of power and the belief that they can accomplish amazing things.

As a slogan from December put it: “Action replaces tears.”

Many people participated in the solidarity movement for the sixty-five that were arrested, who stayed in custody for two to eight months. Now all of them are free. The solidarity movement that took over the streets with massive demonstrations and counter-information, that held massive fundraising concerts and organized movement lawyers, has made clear to Greek anarchists that in the years to come solidarity must be one of the main methodologies of any movement that wants to participate in a serious confrontation with the regime.

There was no need for “recovering” after December. We also have to clarify that there was no end to the insurrection and especially no ending caused by legal troubles, emotional troubles, exhaustion, or repression. Rather, the anarchist space, in an instinctual and intelligent way, chose to disappear from the central highways and put into practice many other low-tension initiatives that enrich the struggle. This wise, self-preserving urban guerilla strategy also finds its expressions in the appearance of many different projects that started after December and now help the “movement” to deepen its roots in the society and in the local communities.

How has the government used the uprising strategically to strengthen its position, since December? Could this have been avoided?

The government didn’t find ways to use the insurrection to strengthen its position. It was difficult to do such a thing as the insurrection was spread among all social classes and backgrounds. Only the immigrants were brought into a worse position as they faced a backlash and the police pogrom against those without papers, which occurred in June. The solidarity shown toward immigrants was strong but unable to protect them. A lot of effort is going into bringing the immigrants closer to the anarchist space, but this task is not easy at all. The immigrants have their own interests, their own fears and wishes. Many of them they have a very difficult life and very different cultural and political or non-political backgrounds.

In what ways has the uprising put anarchists in a stronger position? In what ways has it used up energy without putting anarchists in a stronger position? Are there any ways it has put anarchists in a weaker position?

The anarchist movement in Greece underwent a lot of methodological changes over the last years in its efforts to come closer to society, to hear the problems of the people, to avoid an anti-social attitude without falling into reformism, and to try to find ways to participate in and radicalize the social movements of our times. All these efforts bore fruit during December.

The social centers that opened in all the major cities of Greece during the last years, rented or squatted, offered the best preparation for the creation of strong, active circles of fighters and assemblies able to produce and spread analysis and propaganda everywhere.

Anarchist participation in the social struggles of the students and workers during the last years was also very important, and it utilized two main strategies, changing according to the circumstances:

1) Separate, visible anarchist blocs, with flags, banners, posters, and pamphlets.

2) Radical direct action, smashings, attacks on the police with molotovs, sticks, and stones.

In this way the Black Bloc spread throughout the whole body of these mass demonstrations, even if only a minority were participating. The adoption of these two strategies by all anarchists according to the tension of the social struggle and the available momentum produced a common ground for different comrades and eliminated inner conflicts. And anarchist participation empowered those social struggles, gained respect from other political organizations, produced common ground with many different social subjects, and attracted many new people to anarchy.

The defence of Exarchia and other areas like it in Greece as autonomous public zones, including street corners and an everyday presence in “our own” cafés and bars, offered a constant meeting point that empowered the relations, the connections, and the coordination of actions. The creation of anarchists squats, social centers, occupied rooms in universities, concerts, events, film showings, and assemblies offered a sustainable ground for the cultivation of anarchist ideas and practices.

All these conditions are much more powerful now after December and it doesn’t seem that there is any way to put ourselves in a weaker position. As long as we maintain the ability to listen to the heart and understand the mind of the society the state cannot defeat the anarchists.

What new tools and strategies do people have since December?

The most important characteristics are:

Consistency—efforts to offer answers and direct responses to all the moves of the state and to keep the fight alive with actions and events that take place almost every day. Also, there are conscious efforts to avoid suicidal or sacrificial moves that will cause arrests or hard defeats. The riots and the clashes with the police are well-organized and well-equipped, and they occur at the place and time when they’ll have the greatest possibility of causing the most damage without paying a high price or putting people in serious danger. With these victories the struggle attracts new people.
Political Work—which is based on direct connection with the problems of society and not on ideological abstractions. Efforts to listen to society enable anarchists to maintain contact with the worries and fears of the people, giving answers where it seems that there are no answers and attacking the causes of the problems, not just the symptoms. The ability of the movement to play a serious role in the political world of the country depends on the creation of deep roots in the social struggles and the ability to inject anarchist ideas and practices into the hearts of common people and young radicals. This happens through the personal cultivation of critical minds and the collective creation of open, all-inclusive, public confrontation with all forms of authority.
Cultural Work—the meetings, the assemblies, the squares, the parks, and the public life tend to include people who have the courage to fight and the capability to think and create. For the first time in many years, anarchists now are ready to achieve high visibility in this society and attract new people not only through their destructive power but also through the defense of public spaces (like the parks), and the creation of political spaces (like the squats and social centers). Also important is the collective culture that allows all individuals to benefit from the communes without losing their personalities within them, as happens in the Left tradition of organizing.
Constant Spreading of Counter-Information—not digital printing, but 70-cm-by-50-cm offset posters! Printing thousands of copies of these and sticking them everywhere is vital. As different groups produce many different posters, a whole spectrum of theory appears on the walls of the city. You don’t need to read anarchist books any more—the theory is on the walls! Of course, it is also very important to use offset machines to produce thousands of copies of communiqués and books that you hand out for free in your city. These practices go together with the unstoppable use of spray paint to write political slogans on every wall, signed with the circle-A, and to remove neo-Nazi graffiti. Also, comrades go frequently to the central square of their city with a small electric generator and small sound system to play music, read out communiqués, and pass out pamphlets. With this method of counter-information, they attract attention to specific social struggles, raising solidarity and initiating endless dialogues with passers-by.

Some important struggles and strategies, as examples:

The neighborhood assemblies, organized with invitation posters from door to door, offer answers to local problems and connect them with general social problems.
The occupied parks offer a direct connection between ecological problems and everyday urban life, and produce new liberated public spaces where different kinds of people can meet and coexist.
The new squats enable all different styles of anarchist thinking to achieve visibility.
The new social centers offer workshops, free lessons, free food, cheap alcohol, free books, lectures, film shows, DJ sets, concerts, and open social meeting points for all kinds of people. They connect political activists with common people and young students.
The small urban guerilla arson groups continue fighting. Formed by people who know and trust each other, they continue to upgrade their weekly attacks against capitalist and state targets. The huge catalogue of arson attacks creates a map of institutions, corporations, banks, and offices that society has to eliminate from social life for the people to be free and equal. In this way, the arsonists offer the society a signal that elevates mistrust of these specific targets and encourages suspicion regarding the exploitive function of these targets.
The active anarchist student groups don’t allow the bourgeoisie to control the university. These groups communicate day by day with each other and with all other students. They turn the university into a public space that can accommodate tons of public events every week, organized by comrades from other political and cultural collectives as well. Of course, leftist organizations and cultural groups also participate in the struggle to defend university asylum and the struggle for keeping the universities open to the public overnight.
The defense of public autonomous zones like parks and urban hills, universities as well as urban areas, street corners, squares, and meeting points like Exarchia from police, mafia, drug dealers, neo-Nazis, and capitalist investors brings people together. Meetings in public space produce an explosive mixture of all kinds of people from all kinds of backgrounds. These day-to-day meetings empower groups and companies of friends to be ready and capable of fighting at a moment’s notice and to imagine that these areas are something completely different from the surrounding territory.
The open public solidarity for all prisoners, both criminal and political prisoners, expresses the total negation of prison institutions, reveals the real causes of criminality in this society, and brings anarchist prisoners closer with all other prisoners, gaining respect and support for them inside the prison.
The fight for Konstantina Kuneva and all other workers sends a direct message to the bosses that when they hit one of us they have to confront all of us. Also, it proves that the collective struggle can reveal issues and attract the attention of the whole society.
All direct syndicalist struggles self-organized from the base prepare in the consciousness of the people, year after year, a deep-rooted, radical strategy that intervenes in the sphere of work.
Indymedia works like a strategic center for the organization of the struggles and as a digital public space where all the announcements, debates, and invitations can gain attention. A great many comrades start their day reading the indymedia calendar to decide what social action or assembly they will participate in.
The creation of pirate communal radio stations and digital radio stations in universities and social centers sends the message of resistance on the radio waves and creates cultural and political communities around them.
The critical mass parades, the street parades, the free party movement, the illegal rave parties, the squat events, the DIY concerts, the socially aware hip-hop, punk, indie rock, drum’n’bass, techno, and trance scenes attract thousands of young people to temporarily liberated public zones. They offer an existential contact between underground cultures and radical movements. The gatherings of the underground cultures, when they are connected in solidarity with the anarchist political space, offer an experiential introduction to the political and social awareness that cannot be replicated in books.
Demonstrations in malls and luxury areas or in the metro stations transfer the message of insurrection to privatized public spaces at the center of capitalistic illusions.
The occupation of the National Opera Hall and interruption of the commercial shows created an example of an intersection between the spheres of arts and philosophy and insurrectionary practices and ideas.
The occupation of the building of the General Confederation of Greek Workers created a public, visible negation of the role of syndicalist leadership in the failures of workers’ struggles over the last 100 years.
The occupation of the offices of the newspaper editors by insurrectionary journalists and comrades active in the creation of underground media produced a lively meeting point for direct criticism to appear against the role of mass media in the building of social apathy.
The occupation of the National Television Station studio by young artists and activists interrupted the speech of the prime minister, expanded mistrust of the mass media, and sent the message onto the screen of every house in Greece: “Switch Off Your TV, Come Into The Streets.”
Occupations of government buildings and municipalities all over the country sent a message to society of a different understanding of public institutions and constituted victorious fights in different causes and struggles.
The anti-Nazi demonstrations in solidarity with the immigrants made it clear to many of them that we are standing on their side.
Videos and media work uploaded to the Internet and used by mainstream TV channels proved that the police are working with neo-Nazis against immigrants and the social movements. Also, they proved to everybody that the neo-Nazis are a tool, the long hand of the State against any kind of social resistance.
Independent amateur videos, like the video of the assassination of Alexis or moments of police brutality, played a very important role in building a new kind of public opinion.
The creation of hundreds of blogs offered a digital space for the direct expression of the motivations and theory behind each struggle, attracting thousands of readers and participants. The blogs have broken the authority and monopoly of mainstream mass media.

We have seen immigrants closed in concentration camps, we saw the revenge of normality expressed in threatening laws, we saw conservatism acting as the guardian and protector of the worst side of humanity, we saw greed and exploitation destroying our most beautiful dreams together with the forests, beaches, parks, squares, and hospitals. We saw apathy imprison our lives in fortress-like cities of commerce and mass stupidity…

Maybe now we are closer to the point of no return. To reach this point, perhaps we all should have resigned from our jobs last year in December… perhaps the unemployed should have replaced the uncertainty of “personal failure” with the pride of an insurgent collective risk. Maybe the students should have left school for at least a year of holidays, rediscovering the meaning of public education.

We have to live collectively again, redefining contemporary political philosophy and revolutionary art. Perhaps the affinity groups, occupied parks, squats, and social centers can become points for bringing all those dreams to life. We lost so much in the selfishness of our small, insignificant, individual illusions. We may have to fight against many fears, traps, deeply-rooted lies, psychological complexes, and insecurities. And then we will link our daily lives with the most magical secret desires to transform the streets of the metropolis in precious moments of freedom and happiness.

The insurrection never ends. The insurrection will never end.

Maybe we need to start thinking about how the world we would like to live in looks. We must use moments and images of our present life that we want to expand and activate in all their significance. We don’t need any science-fiction plan for our future—we have everything here and now. We have to liberate it all from the State and the market and share it.

Revolution is when all society takes life in its hands and everything that now is merchandise becomes a gift once more. Revolution is One Thousand Insurrections, nothing more, nothing less. Insurrections open paths, liberate space and time, reprogram Daily Life, change relations, invent new words, break hierarchies, and smash taboos and fears and limitations, achieving the highest possible public participation in projects and infrastructure that give us the chance to expand ourselves and share our abilities without limits. Insurrections are a never-ending fight, a constant struggle between desperation and self-restraint, apathy and action, fear and decisiveness, needs and passions, obligations and desires, obstacles and breakouts. Is it even possible to imagine such a thing? The experience of the 2008 insurrection showed us that those wild dreams we were too embarrassed to admit could actually become reality.

-Void Network [theory, utopia, empathy, ephemeral arts]

Inflamed Appendix

For entertainment and context, here follows a list of groups that took credit for militant direct action in Greece in 2009. Possibly apocryphal and certainly incomplete, it still hints at the charming ingenuity of participants in the unrest that followed the riots of December 2008.

Summer Entropy Commandos
Summer Tranquility Disturbance
Arsonists’ Collective
Arsonists with Dirty Consciousness
Anomie Cores “Carpe Noctem”
“Zero Tolerance” Organization
Solidarity Paths in Light
Insurrectionary Consciousness
Fighting Solidarity
Conspiracy Cells of Fire
Immoral Vandals
Antifascist Attack Nuclei
Commandos - Solidarity Memory
Attack Groups for the Liquidation of the Nation
Fire Path Group
Non-Patriot Saboteurs - Cores for the Spreading Insecurity
Fire Shadows (they sabotaged the HSAP city trains)
Revolutionary Consciousness
“Fire Solidarity” (Hania)
Anarchist Attack Group “Alexandros Grigoropoulos”
Anomie’s Contract / Erebus’ Ambassadors
Comandos Husscheyn Zhachyndhoul Jhachanghir / Revolutionary Intelligence Agency
Morning Sabotage Group
Comando Mauricio Morales Duarte, Chile 22-5-09
Syndicate for Short-Circuiting the System
Antisexist Group
Immediate Intervention Hood-wearers
Coalition of Arsonists - Security Project / Night Arsonist Groups
Council for the De-Structualization of Order / Coalition of Arsonists
Wild Wolves
Night Arsonists from Halkida
Conspiracists for the Realization of Insecurity
Immoral City De-Structuralists
Revolutionary Cores Alliance - Speedy Arsonist Agency
Fire Cores Conspiracy / Nihilist Commandos
Night Attack
Destroyers of Whatever Is Left of Social Peace
Manières à la Liberté & Max Stirner Fighting Nuclei
Consciousness Gangs
Perama Extremists
Revolutionary Match
Arsonanarchist Strike
Night Arsonist Groups
Sectarians of Revolution
Council for the De-Structualization of Order
Happy Sleep’s Apostates
Criminals of Thought and Action, 31/3/2009
Delta Group (Disturbance of Order and Control)
Arsonists’ Millennium Cooperation
Attack Group “Catherine Gulioni” (she was a prisoner killed by the state)
Practical Anarchists
Revolutionary Action for Freedom
Organizers of Night Entertainment
CHAOS: Chaotic Groups of Sabotage
De-Structruralization Cores
Nikola Tesla Commandos
Carnivalists in the Tune

Oakland General Strike Footage

2011-11-07T03:31:00Z

We’ve just received the above video, an anonymously-edited collection of footage from the general strike in Oakland on November 2, 2011. The 15-minute video includes scenes from the afternoon anti-capitalist march, the subsequent blockading of the Port of Oakland, and the occupation of the Traveler’s Aid Society building in downtown Oakland later that night.

This is a mere snapshot of the events unfolding around Occupy Oakland, which are still ongoing; much remains to be discussed and debated. We’ll present more material on the subject here soon.

In the meantime, suffice it to say—things are heating up.

Puppets vs. Prisons Tour

2011-07-08T06:44:00Z

Our friends in the Mysterious Rabbit Puppet Army, whose work we’ve shared here before, just embarked on a month-long tour to present their newest shows. The feature show, “What Are Prisons For?”, uses shadow puppets to outline the history of the Prison Industrial Complex from chattel slavery in the South to today’s exploding prison population.

Get updates and information about specific shows here. Contact the puppeteers here.

July 6th- Richmond VA- The Wingnut
July 7th- Charlottesville VA-Random Row Books
July 8th- Washington DC- Dream City
July 9th- Baltimore- 2640
July 10th-Philadelphia PA-TBA
July 11th- Day Off
July 12th- NYC- (still need help booking)
July 13th-New Haven CT-TBA
July 14th-Providence RI-Libertalia
July 15th-Day Off
July 16th-Boston MA-(Still Need Help)
July 17th-Amherst MA-Food For Thought Books
July 18th-Ithaca NY- Green Star Food Cooperative
July 19th-Buffalo NY-TBA
July 20th-Day Off
July 21st-Pittsburgh-(Still Need Help)
July 22nd-Morgantown WV-(Still Need Help)
July 23rd-Cleveland OH-Whitman House Drop-In Center
July 24th-Chicago IL-TBA
July 25th-Milwaukee WI-Cream City Collectives
July 26th-Madison WI-Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative
July 27th-WinonaMN-The Burrow
July 28th-Day Off
July 29th-Minneapolis MN-Boneshaker Books
July 30th-Des Moines-TBA
July 31st-Champaign IL-Independent Media Center
August 1st-Day Off
August 2nd-Bloomington IN-Boxcar Books
August 3rd-Louisville KY-TBA
August 4th-Asheville NC-Firestorm Cafe
August 5th-Greensboro NC-Green Bean Cafe
August 6th-Chapel Hill NC-Internationalist Books

2nd Annual Steal Something from Work Day

2011-04-14T04:18:00Z

Today is April 15: Steal Something from Work Day! Take those motherfuckers for all they’re worth. Goodness knows they’re doing the same to you! Perhaps, like countless other employees, you already do this every day; in that case, the thing that makes this day special is that today you know thousands of others are stealing in solidarity with you, imagining a better world.

In the US, April 15 is also Tax Day. The government is stealing your money and turning it into overseas occupations and death tolls; nowadays they’re cutting the few programs through which they used to give a little of it back to you. The way they’re slashing university budgets these days, next they’ll be going to schools and ripping out the copper pipes to sell on the black market. Much of the tax money they loot from you goes directly back into corporate pockets–the same corporations that are exploiting people like you! And despite the record profits the corporate sector is raking in once again, politicians claim they have no idea how to resolve their budget crises.

In this web of theft, your only hope is to redirect some of these resources to more sensible ends. Surely you and your coworkers, friends, and neighbors could come up with better uses for them! Be careful, though–unlike other days of action, Steal Something from Work Day should go by without the authorities noticing anything at all.

If you have any exciting adventures stealing from work today, write up an account and email it anonymously to us at stealfromworkday@gmail.com. Here follows a premium example of such a narrative.

Steal from Work to Create Autonomous Zones

It was the late 20th century, back before the internet really took over, and I was trying to make a ‘zine but I didn’t have any money to pay for copying. I’d lost my last office job after I accidentally left my ‘zine masters in the copy machine when I sneaked in to use it one night. How embarrassing!

So I went to the local copying store – it was a chain, and this same story was playing out all over the country, but I’ll leave the name out just for good form – and hung around until I heard a song by the Misfits playing behind the counter. Back then employees were allowed to blast a stereo even during daytime hours; it was a different era. The employee who had put it on was this big skinhead-looking guy.

“The Misfits, huh?” From that moment, we were friends. It was an unwritten rule that if you were into punk or ska or other underground music, you got a discount. He copied my ‘zine for me, and in return I used to bring him food and other stuff I ripped off, since with the wages he was getting he had to sleep in the back of his friend’s truck.

Then they put him on night shift by himself, and things started getting interesting. Now instead of waiting for him to do a run of 100 for me when the boss wasn’t looking, I could join him behind the counter, doing runs of 200, 500, even 2000. I learned to use some of the big machines. Customers would come in and mistake me for an employee, and I would help them with stuff while my friend knocked out his jobs for the night. I probably spent three nights a week there, working and hanging out from midnight to 5:00 AM. I remember stumbling back to my apartment in the early morning loaded down with crates of photocopies, watching the street sweepers and paper delivery trucks pass – the secret underbelly of the city. Sometimes I made conversation with homeless people or other night owls like myself, up to no good. Surprisingly often, they would demand copies of the ‘zines I had made, as if sensing they were not part of the world of sales and bosses.

Despite all the copying he and I were doing for ourselves, my friend was still a more efficient worker than most of the other employees, because he was careful not to make mistakes and waste paper. For good or for ill, big-time workplace thieves usually make better workers. Much later, when he got promoted to management, I wondered whether there was a connection there – whether stealing from his employers actually helped prepare him to swindle wealthy customers. At the time, though, that was still far in the future.

We took smoking breaks together, standing out in front of the store at three in the morning comparing notes on music, politics, gossip, our philosophies of life. I never hung out with this guy outside the copy place – we were from different crowds – but our mutual commitment to photocopying drew us together, even if he was doing it for work and I was doing it to overthrow the government. There is a kind of camaraderie unique to those who labor together; I bet it predates wage slavery by a thousand generations.

Other friends of his started spending their nights there, mingling with the eccentrics and insomniacs who came in to make copies and ended up making conversation. The place became a sort of graveyard-shift salon where the most unlikely cast of characters gathered to jest, scheme, and experiment. In the witching hour, we entered an alternate reality in which we ran the place, like the goblins that come out at night in fairy tales. The store had just expanded to offer personal computer stations, and a handful of high-school dropouts taught themselves programming between 2:00 AM and 5:00 AM every night. Some of them later made successful careers for themselves during the dot-com boom, defying the barriers of social class and education. Meanwhile, once his assignments and my projects were done, my friend and I would experiment with the cutting and binding machines, retracing Gutenberg’s steps as we lovingly handcrafted unique editions of our favorite books.

The company had recently switched their machines from a plug-in counter system to a primitive card system, in hopes of thwarting the various scams based around the plug-in counters: resetting them with pins or magnets, stealing an extra one, just slamming them against something and claiming you had no idea what had happened but you’d only made a couple copies. Of course, my friend could produce the new cards behind the counter at his leisure. Whenever I mailed out a ‘zine to someone, I threw in a $100 copying card with it: Now go start your own ‘zine.

Corresponding with people around the country, we discovered this was going on elsewhere as well: it seemed that everywhere there was a night shift at one of these franchises, there were people like us. We heard about a branch in the Bay Area where they were so sure of their power they even had bands play late-night shows right in the middle of the customer service area! We’d already developed a feeling of ownership of the store my friend worked in, but now this came to extend to the entire chain. Everywhere we went we looked for one, and usually we clicked with the employees we met. When we didn’t, we fearlessly looted the places all the same, more brazenly than we ever would have anywhere else: we were discovering the feeling of entitlement normally reserved for the rich, that comes from the sense that one is on one’s own territory. We workers never feel like we’re on our own territory, so we never stand up for ourselves – but the night-shift salon had worked wonders for our self-confidence.

Across the continent, a network was forming, consisting of employees and volunteers like myself. Now, when one of us discovered the masters for an exciting new ‘zine, we made twenty copies of it instead of 200, and mailed those to twenty different stores around the country that would produce 1000 copies each. We believed in freedom of the press, god damn it, and the more photocopies we stole and circulated outside the exchange economy, the better we understood what that really meant. What had started as humble workplace pilfering was escalating into a full-scale insurgency as we spread from city to city like a virus. Like a virus, we proliferated by seizing the means of production and using it to produce more of ourselves: the ‘zines, it turned out, were the coded DNA of an alternate society.

What happened? The immune system of corporate America swung into action, and various people were fired or even led out of stores in handcuffs – but that clumsy show of force would have had little effect on its own. In some ways, we were victims of our own success. The most politicized ones gravitated to more direct forms of confrontation, which took them far at first but ultimately isolated them from everyone else – there’s always the danger of being seduced into direct conflict on unfavorable terrain before you’re ready for it. Meanwhile, new opportunities opened up for others among us, in the form of promotions and new career paths; even when these resulted directly from collective illegal activities, they ultimately tamed the ones who pursued them. But by far the most significant factor was the penetration of the internet into everyday life – that simply outmoded the territory we’d been fighting for, and everyone had to start over again to get their bearings. I think our story must be a fairly typical one.

A lot of water has passed under the bridge, but I’ll always treasure memories from the high point of the copying wars, when everyone except the manager himself was in on our secret society. I remember one night, I walked into the store at 7:00 PM with a friend visiting from the other side of the country. Behind the counter was an employee I had not yet been introduced to, and a new employee he was training. We could hear him explaining to her:

“You see those two people who just came in? Whatever they ask for, give it to them for free.”

Spread the Chaos from Capitol to Capital

2011-03-10T16:28:00Z

Since February 15, the capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin has been at the center of a storm of popular protest against proposed austerity measures including anti-union legislation. Hundreds of people occupied the building until March 3, touching off other actions around the state, including an ongoing university occupation in Milwaukee that began March 2.

On March 9, while Senate Democrats were absent in protest, Wisconsin’s Republican Senators passed a bill stripping public-sector unions of collective bargaining rights. In response, thousands returned to the capitol building, forcing open windows and pushing past state patrolmen to reenter and occupy it. Police eventually gave up attempting to control the crowds, and the announcement went out that they would not remove demonstrators from the building despite the court order that had forced the end of the previous occupation. At the high point on Wednesday evening, several thousand people filled the first three floors of the building entirely; after midnight, a few hundred still remained, despite the usual pleas from authoritarian organizers for people to leave.

Unions are legally prohibited from calling for a general strike, but there has been much talk of striking. In any case, a series of protests are planned for the next several days. In addition to this list of demonstrations Thursday morning, Thursday evening a flash mob is planned for the university library in Madison at 10 pm, Saturday farmers will drive their tractors into Madison in protest, and it’s rumored that teaching assistants will go on strike on Monday when the state contract with the Teaching Assistants’ Association expires.

Events are still unfolding in Wisconsin, and may yet escalate further. But we can already draw some conclusions from them, which can guide us in the months ahead–for Wisconsin is surely only the first of many states that will see public outrage over austerity measures.

Hundreds of people force their way past state troopers into the capitol building in Madison.

The role that the capitol building has played in Wisconsin’s protest movement shows the importance of establishing a public relationship to physical sites that can serve as social centers during upheavals. Just as university occupations served as nerve centers during the December 2008 uprising in Greece, the capitol building offered a focal point for demonstrators to build up momentum over a period of weeks, and a space to congregate in response to new developments.

There are several other important points to make here. First, however devious the Republican Senators’ machinations, the bill was passed by democratic process, the same way countless other bills are passed. Those who protest against it are essentially proclaiming that representative democracy has failed them: they are asserting that there is more legitimacy in angry people occupying the capitol building than there is in Senators doing what they were elected to do. As anarchists, we wholeheartedly agree–workers deserve access to the resources currently being hoarded by capitalists regardless of what goes on in voting booths or politicians’ offices. The question is whether the movement will adopt this position outright, or remain mired in the contradictions of claiming to pose a democratic opposition to the democratic process.

Second, this is not simply a question of politicians being mean: from the capitalist perspective, these austerity measures really are unavoidable. The state budget director claims that Wisconsin faces a two-year budget shortfall of $3.6 billion—for comparison, that’s more than three times what the Canadian government spent for security at last summer’s fully militarized G20 summit. As far as the politicians are concerned, that money really does have to come from somewhere, whether from higher taxes or government cuts. Indeed, elsewhere in the US Democrats are proposing similar measures for their own states. This may legitimately break their hearts, but they see no other way.

From our perspective, of course, all this is despicable nonsense. Corporate magnates are sitting on the biggest fortunes in the history of the world. The net worth of just one of the planet’s 1210 billionaires—let’s say Bill Gates—could pay off a budget shortfall over fifteen times the size of the one in Wisconsin; distributed among Wisconsin’s 5.6 million residents, that would be $10,000 each. The problem is not that there’s no money—at this point money is simply created by the Federal Reserve whenever they choose—but that the vast majority of it is held hostage by a few rich people who don’t give a damn what happens to anyone else. If this is even causing trouble for governments, which work hand in glove with capitalists, that just shows the magnitude of the crisis.

Protesters inside the capitol building, 11 pm, March 9.

There’s another way to say this: capitalism has reached its limits and can only produce one crisis after another—war, recession, bailouts, austerity measures. Politicians are being honest when they say they see no other way, but only because they’re not willing to consider the possibility that the system itself is the problem. It’s up to us to point the way to another social system that could distribute wealth and power more sensibly.

In this context, it’s a mistake to expect a little protesting to achieve immediate results. Even if we manage to stop one wave of cutbacks and rollbacks, a thousand more assaults will follow. The state literally can’t back down—the politicians have nowhere to go. So rather than focusing on achieving “realistic” goals, such as blocking a particular budget or bill, we have to think bigger. How do we build a long-term movement that can fight against capitalism itself? How do we approach these protests as the starting point for the savage, years-long struggle that undoubtedly awaits?

Those considerations make it particularly dispiriting to come across attitudes like the one expressed by Wisconsin teacher Peggy Kruse, quoted as saying, “Most teachers are more than happy to take the 18% pay cut, to do anything that will help get the state back and running. We’re most concerned about the loss of collective bargaining rights.”

In other words, Kruse is willing to concede anything, so long as she retains her right to concede. Let Bill Gates keep his $56 billion while we get pay cuts or pink slips—just don’t touch the illusion that we choose this state of affairs!

Accepting defeat in advance in this way goes along with a blind faith in “peaceful protest.” Signs in Wisconsin read “FIGHT LIKE AN EGYPTIAN,” but Egyptian protesters burned down police stations. Neither “peaceful” protests nor more assertive ones are likely to bring about the immediate repeal of the bill passed March 9–so questions about how disobedience plays to the media or affects the prospects of the Democrats are beside the point. The question, once more, is what will catalyze a fierce new movement that can go beyond single-issue defensive measures to push for a fundamental shift in the social order.

Anything the movement accomplishes, it will accomplish in defiance of the authorities, in defiance of would-be leaders who would tame and direct it, in defiance of union bureaucrats who don’t dare call for a general strike even as they are stripped of all power.

Thus far, everything that has given vitality to the movement in Wisconsin has come out of a spirit of rebellion. Those who broke into the capitol building the evening of March 9 did so in defiance of the court order that had concluded the previous occupation. In this light, it is particularly embarrassing that certain authoritarian organizers would enter the building illegally just to tell people to leave it politely. If police did not arrest or remove demonstrators, it was not because the demonstrators had the right to be in the building—police beat and murder people with no justification on a regular basis—but because the demonstrators have mobilized enough power to force the authorities to back down; politeness and obedience can only detract from this leverage. Anything the movement accomplishes, it will accomplish in defiance of the authorities, in defiance of would-be leaders who would tame and direct it, in defiance of union bureaucrats who don’t dare call for a general strike even as they are stripped of all power.

Some of the protesters understand this already. The chants of “OCCUPY!” and “GENERAL STRIKE!” that echoed in the capitol building Wednesday night recall the chants of more militant and deeply rooted overseas anti-austerity movements. As the conflicts generated by capitalist crises intensify, anarchists can expect to be outdone by other working and unemployed people.

What can you do to take a side in this struggle? If a general strike really does take off, that means—in the words of our comrades—NOBODY AND NOTHING WORKS. If you are in or near Wisconsin, you can support a strike by interrupting business as usual: calling in sick to work, occupying buildings, blocking streets. Look for ways you can connect with others in the process—what you can do on your own is not nearly as important as how your efforts become infectious.

The most important question of all is how to spread the action beyond the capitol. The capitol symbolizes “democracy,” which is to say top-down control. But capitalism is not simply maintained in government buildings. Initiatives like the university occupation in Milwaukee are important in that they offer a model for how to expand the terrain of conflict. Rather than everyone descending upon the capitol to be mere faces in a mass, people should go wherever they will be most effective proportionate to their numbers. An occupation of 50 people in La Crosse could have ten times the impact of 50 more people joining an existing occupation in Madison.

It’s also crucial to expand the issues beyond legislation affecting unions and state employees. Spontaneous high school walkouts already set a precedent for this in February, connecting the proposed cutbacks to the alienation of young people who have not yet even been thrown at the mercy of the job market. This isn’t just about government cutbacks or union rights—it is above all about self-determination. If you don’t have a union job or a state salary, if you’re unemployed or precariously employed, you’re already affected by the same conditions the Republicans in the Wisconsin government hope to intensify.

To say this once more, we shouldn’t evaluate efforts according to how effective they are in immediately achieving changes in legislation, or for that matter how many people they draw to rallies. The real question is their content: do they create new relationships between people, new ways of relating to material goods? Do they demonstrate values that point beyond capitalism? Do they produce new momentum, new ways of fighting, new unruliness?

If you live far outside Wisconsin, take this as a warning shot; don’t be caught off guard when the same things occur where you live. Think about how you can prepare so you’ll be ready to push things further when the window of opportunity opens up. This is not a fluke, but the first signs of a long war finally beginning in the United States.

Further Resources

Video from the capitol building on the evening of March 9
General Strike pamphlet courtesy of the Industrial Workers of the World
Poster: General Strike Means Nobody and Nothing Works
Poster urging protesters to go all the way

Test Their Logik G20 Update

2010-12-15T17:39:00Z

Nearly five months after being charged with conspiracy and other indictable offences during Toronto’s G20 protests, both members of the southern Ontario hip-hop group Test Their Logik had their charges stayed and release conditions withdrawn. Although the prosecutor originally said the government would be seeking jail time, it turned out they had very little evidence and didn’t feel capable of bringing the case before a judge.

While asking to “stay” the charges, a move which still gives them a year to look for new evidence and re-open the case, the prosecutor told the judge, “We know they did it but we don’t have the proof.” This is a ridiculous assertion given that the main reason they were targeted and warrants were sent out for their hip-hop aliases is their music video “Crash The Meeting” that is still circulating on youtube.

There were over a thousand arrests and hundreds of charges brought against G20 resisters on little to no evidence. Like most charges relating to the G20, the charges against Testament and Illogik were targeted political repression not even perfunctorily disguised as an attempt to enact justice. The picture of Canada as a police state gone mad is growing ever clearer.

Unfortunately, though hundreds have had their charges dropped or stayed, several dozen still face very serious charges and need support urgently. It is more important than ever to donate to the legal defense of those still facing charges, and to show solidarity by any and all means. All proceeds from the Test Their Logik benefit album offered here two months ago will go to current G20 defendants.

As for Testament and Illogik, the two are now legally permitted to perform together, record together, and tour together. They are currently on tour in Mexico with Submedia promoting their music and the new film End Civ. In December they’ll be back in the studio working on their debut album which they hope to drop in early 2011. Test Their Logik knows they’ve got talented and amazing people who dig their music and are looking for solidarity and mutual aid in the following ways: cover art, audio mastering, publicity/promotion, MC’s/DJ’s/producers to remix songs and circulate different versions, European booking contacts for a european tour, and assistance setting up “legitimate” gigs in the U.S. so the border guards will let them in for a tour once they finish the album.

Substandard Book Clearance Sale

2010-06-09T22:04:00Z

We’re pleased to announce our first-ever sale of returned, imperfect, and slightly damaged books in our online store for 50% off the standard prices. We’ve been collecting them for almost a decade and have dozens of boxes stacked to the ceiling that we had no idea what to do with—not good enough to sell as new, and too good to simply discard. We’ve stumbled upon a groundbreaking solution: sell them for half as much!

Since our regular prices are as low as they can be, we’ve never had a way to have a sale on our books before, so we’re excited for this chance to make them available for less money. The wholesale price is also discounted 50%, so this would be a great chance to buy books to give away to friends, relatives and even local infoshops and libraries. The number of available books is limited and are available only on a first-come first-served basis—we don’t know how long they will be available, but we imagine it won’t be too long. Click here for the store sale page.

All books are stamped with a “SUBSTANDARD” notice on an interior page towards the front of the book. This is just to ensure no one buys these books to turn around and sell them at full price to unsuspecting folks. The substandard nature of these books falls into one of three categories:

Imperfections – Occasionally we receive books from the printers that slipped past their quality control inspection and have cosmetic blemishes. These errors are almost always on the covers and do not effect the interior of the books. Examples of this include miss-registered color printing, misaligned spot gloss, lamination imperfections, folding errors, and particularly in the case of Expect Resistance, unevenly-folded cover flaps.

Returns – While we don’t accept returns from our online store, some of our larger distributors do, and when books have too much shelf wear they return them to us. The books usually have scuffing on the covers and/or other evidence of being handled. Also, these distributors put bar code stickers on the back cover, so these books either have stickers or a small amount of residue and scratches where a sticker used to be.

Damaged – Sometimes books arrive to us incorrectly packaged, and from time to time we accidentally drop a box or a book and it gets damaged. It’s very sad. These books usually have dented corners, creases on the cover or interior pages, or gouges in the lamination.

Overall the condition of the books varies wildly, some are pretty fucked up, and some are just 5% away from being mint—as far as which kind you’ll get, it’s pretty much the luck of the draw. However, we can say that there are many more books with minor imperfections than ones with serious damage, so the odds are on your side. We can guarantee though that all the books are completely intact and include 100% of the content in readable condition.

Steal Something From Work Day Is Here!

2010-04-13T06:18:00Z

Don’t carp, carpenters!
Don’t wait, waiters!
Let’s put the team in teamster!
Every steelworker a steal-from-worker!
Every hoodlum a Robin Hoodlum!
Raise the bar, baristas!
Raise hell, bellboys!
Wage war, wage slaves—
April 15 is Steal Something from Work Day!

Just in time for April 15, a barrage of new STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY propaganda is hitting the airwaves. This announcement covers a movie, a full-length journal, and a new hip hop track, among other things.

Steal Something From Work Day VIDEO!

Our comrades at Submedia have teamed up with Iconoclast Media to produce the above video short, an exciting follow-up to the first STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY video.

Steal Something From Work Day JOURNAL!

Just in time for April 15, we present Heist, “Journal of Workplace Reappropriation.” This full-length publication delves into the practice and theory of employee theft, presenting stories from dozens of workplace thieves and reflections from across the spectrum of workplaces, continents, and centuries. Read the tale of the hardware store cashier who paid for his entire college education by robbing the till–and find out why he wishes he’d spent the money differently! Read the reflections of Miklós Haraszti, a dissident who analyzed Hungarian workers’ practice of making and stealing trinkets from the factory in defiance of the Soviet “Worker’s State” of the 1970s! Find out what it means to go beyond stealing from work! It’s all here, in this 72-page journal!

Color Reading PDF (4.3MB) : Imposed B&W Printing PDF (2.3MB)

Heist is also available in paper form, including in bulk, from Wild Nettle Distribution.

Steal Something From Work Day ANTHEM!

Our favorite underground MC, Testament, joins fellow MC Illogik as Test Their Logik to deliver this hardcore anthem about stealing from the boss:

“5 Finger Economics” by Test Their Logik Download MP3 Here.

And More Steal Something From Work Day Coverage…

STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY has made it to the other side of the world, in more ways than one. For example, the in-house magazine of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church of Australia and New Zealand promotes it in the “Trends” section of their April issue to 45,000 devout readers around the Pacific rim.

Alongside less sympathetic STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY coverage, the UK’s Dissident Island radio ran an interview with one representative on their April 2 show [starts at minute 53].

Meanwhile, warnings are now circulating for business owners to beware this April 15, and corporations focusing on “human resources” are also paying attention.

Finally, the STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY Facebook Site is more and more active.

Beyond Stealing from Work

In the final analysis, stealing from our workplaces is not a rebellion against the status quo, but simply another aspect of it. It implies a profound discontent with our conditions, yes, and perhaps a rejection of the ethics of capitalism; but as long as the consequences of that discontent remain individualized and secretive, they will never propel us into a different world. Stealing from work is what we do instead of changing our lives—it treats the symptoms, not the condition. Perhaps it even serves our bosses’ interests—it gives us a pressure valve to blow off steam, and enables us to survive to work another day without a wage increase. Perhaps they figure the costs of it into their business plans because they know our stealing is an inevitable side effect of exploitation—though not one guaranteed to bring exploitation to an end.

On the other hand, the notion that stealing from our employers is not relevant to labor struggle enforces a dichotomy between “legitimate” workplace organizing on the one hand and individual acts of resistance, revenge, and survival on the other. So long as this separation exists, conventional workplace organizing will always be essentially toothless: it will prioritize bureaucracy over initiative, representation over autonomy, appeasement over confrontation, legitimacy in the bosses’ eyes over effectiveness in changing our lives.

What would it look like to go about labor organizing in the same way we go about stealing from our workplaces? First, it would mean focusing on means of resistance that meet our individual needs, starting from what individual workers can do themselves with the support of their comrades. It would mean dispensing with strategies that don’t provide immediate material or emotional benefit to those who utilize them. It would establish togetherness through the process of attempting to seize back the environments we work and live in, rather than building up organizations on the premise of an always-deferred future struggle.

A workforce that organized in this way would be impossible to co-opt or dupe. No boss could threaten it with anything, for its power would derive directly from its own actions, not from compromises that give the bosses hostages or give prominent organizers incentives not to fight. It would be a boss’s worst nightmare—and a union official’s, too.

We might also ask what would it look like to go about stealing from work as if it were a way to try to change the world, rather than simply survive in it. So long as we solve our problems individually, we can only confront them individually as well. Stealing in secret keeps class struggle a private affair—the question is how to make it into a public project that gathers momentum. This shifts the focus from What to How. A small item stolen with the knowledge and support of one’s coworkers is more significant than a huge heist carried out in secret. Stolen goods shared in such a way that they build workers’ collective power are worth more than a high-dollar embezzlement that only benefits one employee, the same way a raise or promotion does.

Remember the story of the hardware store employee who embezzled enough money to get a college degree, only to find himself back behind the cash register afterwards! When it was too late, he wished he’d done something with the money to create a community that could fight against the world of cash registers and college degrees. Even as he broke the laws of his society, he had still accepted its basic values, investing in status that could only advance him on the bosses’ terms. Better we invest ourselves in breaking its values as well as its laws!

Practically everyone steals from work, even if many people won’t admit it, even if some people would like to reserve the privilege of doing so for themselves. Let’s draw this practice out of the shadows in which it takes place, so all the world has to engage with it and its implications in the full light of day. Perhaps workplace theft could be an Achilles heel for capitalism after all: not because it alone is sufficient to abolish wage labor and class society, but because it is the sort of open secret that must remain suppressed to preserve the illusion that everybody believes in and benefits from the present system.

So if you find yourself coveting items in your place of employment, don’t just steal something from work—think about how you could steal everything from it, yourself and your coworkers above all. Stealing from work one thing at a time will take forever, literally—it would be more efficient to just steal the whole world back from work at once. That’s a daunting project, one we could only take on together—but it’s one we can begin right now.

Next April 15, we won’t just pocket a few items—we’ll show up at our workplaces with helmets and torches. Stealing something from work is not enough when work is stealing everything from us.

RIOT 2010

2010-02-16T03:21:00Z

“We love athletics” —anarchist contestants for the 2010 Olympics

We’re pleased to bring you breaking news from Vancouver, where united indigenous and anarchist resistance has disrupted the capitalist and nationalist triumphalism at the opening of the Olympic Games.

Anti-Olympic Riots and Militant Actions Rock Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories

The following report was collectively produced by several participants in this past weekend’s militant resistance to the 2010 Olympic games. This is not a full analysis of Olympic Resistance but rather an in-depth account of what just went down. For more background on why people are resisting these games, check no2010.com and olympicresistance.net.

This was not “just another summit”—this was the culmination of several years of direct action by indigenous people, anarchists, anti-poverty activists, environmentalists, and others against the 2010 Olympics. One of the most inspiring aspects of this convergence was the framework that created it. Unlike many summits, which lack an anti-racist and anti-colonial analysis, indigenous sovereignty and decolonization was front-and-center this time. Indigenous people called upon their allies to help defend their territory against further colonization, and solidarity activists answered that call. An anti-capitalist analysis permeated the entire movement and it was a radicalizing force among the broader activist community. This was not a showdown in which local issues were left on the back burner; as far as the authors know, this was the first summit in North America that was entirely focused on local issues.

The movement was mostly local, as well. Although the numbers may seem small in comparison to mobilizations in Europe and the US, Vancouver is a very isolated city and is not easy to travel to—as many who have tried know. A border separates it from every other major urban center on the West Coast, and the guards turned away countless people hoping to join us. It takes several days of traveling by car to reach Vancouver from Canada’s other major urban centers. Although many people did travel here from across Turtle Island [North America, in the colonial lexicon] and even Europe, the majority of the participants were from the immediate vicinity.

Anarchist hurdles

Anarchist bowling

February 12: First Day of Action

The first official day of action for the Anti-Olympics Convergence was quite a busy day. After the torch run was successfully blocked in two different neighborhoods, thousands of Anti-Olympics dissidents marched on the opening of the games.

8:30 a.m. Hundreds of downtown Eastside residents, including native warriors, anarchists, and other supporters successfully blockaded the intersection of East Hastings and Cambie Street. When police attempted to disperse the crowd by force, some stood their ground while others sat down in the middle of the intersection, refusing to comply with the police orders. Unable to clear the street, the police were forced to tell the torch relay to change its route and not travel down Hastings into the downtown Eastside.

A fascinating bird’s-eye-view of this blockade from start to finish is available here.

9 a.m.

Local residents and other protesters successfully keep the Olympic torch off Commercial Drive.

Hundreds, including many anarchists, took the streets and used barbed wire and boulders to block the torch from coming through their neighborhood. Once word came in that the torch was being re-routed, they moved up Commercial Drive to ensure that it would not get around them and up the Drive. They met a line of mounted police (chant: “Get those animals off those horses!”), but ran through an adjacent alley to take the streets again. A minor confrontation occurred with a few Olympics enthusiasts. The torch was successfully kept off Commercial Drive, and when torchbearer Carrie Serwetnyk arrived she was chased out of the neighborhood and had to be escorted into the back of a police cruiser with torch in hand.

3 p.m.: Take Back Our City Mass Mobilization

Traffic cone contends for the high jump gold medal at the opening ceremonies.

Several thousand protesters, including one hundred in a black bloc, assembled at the epicenter of the Olympic circus at 3 p.m. Led by indigenous elders, they marched from the Vancouver Art Gallery to disrupt the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Olympics at BC Place. The participants respected the call that this be an all-ages, family-friendly demo. However, in contrast to many demonstrations, “family-friendly” did not mean imposed pacifism. This march respected the autonomy of all, and there was a great deal of communication between various groups in order to mutually support each other.

In response to a request for people to move to the front in order to protect indigenous elders from police harassment, the black bloc and native warriors faced off with the pigs. The black bloc contingent was organized, closing ranks and holding police at bay. Members confiscated officers’ hats, vests, and flashlights while tossing orange pylons, tires, and other debris their way—simultaneously mocking the display of state force and inspiring, supporting, and defending those around them. After a long pushing match during which police officers and protesters exchanged blows, it was clear that the conflict was in a stalemate and the crowd began to disperse. Police managed to kidnap three people who were charged with breach, and one with assault.

February 13: Heart Attack!

Black bloc intent on “clogging the arteries of capitalism.”

8:30 a.m. 400 anarchists arrived bright and early at Thornton Park at 8:30 a.m. for the “Heart Attack” demonstration. Calling for a diversity of tactics to “clog the arteries of capitalism,” the march was intended to cause mayhem and attack the corporate heart of downtown Vancouver. After giving time and cover for everyone to “block up” and practicing a turn-around drill in case it was necessary to reverse direction, the march immediately took over both directions of Main Street and moved north towards East Hastings. Things got off to a slow start, with only minor debris being dragged into the street. A marching band arrived and joined the ranks of black-clad militants chanting “What’s the direction? Insurrection! What’s the solution? Revolution!” Marchers tricked the police into thinking they were heading towards the police station. As police scrambled to protect their fortress, the march headed west on East Hastings—through Canada’s poorest neighborhood—towards the intended target: the heart of Vancouver.

As people gained confidence, they started dragging everything that wasn’t bolted down into the streets in order to block police vehicles from following in their wake. Some began spray-painting buses and attacking luxury cars. No damage was done to any buildings in this neighborhood, however. Heart Attackers were received with popular support, and many downtown Eastside residents felt inspired by our presence and joined in.

Arriving at Victory Square, the scene of the previous morning’s successful Olympic Torch blockade, the march took a left up Cambie Street. The energy intensified as it entered more opulent territory, and more property being damaged. A dumpster was dragged out of an alley, spray-painted, and overturned in the middle of the street, as police nervously looked on. Officers kept their distance from the unruly crowd, however, which was now smashing parking meters, defacing billboards, and continuing to obstruct intersections with newspaper boxes.

What dumpsters were to the Pittsburgh G20, newspaper boxes were to the Heart Attack march in Vancouver.

The party really got started as the ungovernables turned onto Georgia Street and made their way closer to Vancouver’s Olympic celebration zone. This hub of capitalism features many flagship stores of Olympic sponsors and is the central gathering point for Olympic tourists and enthusiasts. The streets were crowded with these consumers, and the arrival of the march was hardly met with the same level of support it had received in the downtown Eastside. At this point several belligerent individuals attempted to interfere with the march, leading to physical and verbal confrontations. Some of these vigilantes tried to unmask demonstrators, but were met with overwhelming resistance and forced off the street. One man attempted to incite other Olympic supporters to confront us but couldn’t garner any support and had to settle for urging police to “go get these guys.”

We were made for this.

The march made it fourteen blocks down Georgia Street, wreaking havoc upon the Olympic spectacle. As newspaper boxes continued to appear in the street, chairs, lumber, a ladder, and other instruments were seized from our surroundings in order to escalate the conflict. Having pierced the pericardium, the bloc attacked the aorta, smashing in the windows of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Olympic department store in front of thousands of shocked upper-class spectators. At this point newspaper boxes ceased to function merely as passive blockades, as anarchists gave them wings and sent them flying through the windows of Hudson’s Bay and a TD bank. This attack on the intersection of Granville and Georgia—the pulse of corporate Vancouver—broke the spell of the Olympic delusion.

As the march proceeded west towards the Lions Gate bridge and the Westin Bayshore hotel, which housed the International Olympic Committee, riot cops appeared in greater numbers, attempting unsuccessfully to flank the crowd on the left. One demonstrator blocked the path of the police and was shoved, initiating hand-to-hand streetfighting. The pig who had initiated the conflict was immediately punched in the face by a member of the black bloc, and was forced to retreat as he realized he was surrounded by militants ready to defend their comrades. Soon after this confrontation a line of riot cops blocked the street ahead. Boxed in with nowhere to go but through the line, many of the black bloc ran, kicked, punched, and scrambled their way to the other side.

Unfortunately, not all were able or willing to fight their way through. As cops attempted to make arrests, all hell broke loose with anarchists on both sides of the line coming to defend and de-arrest their comrades, fighting the police for control of the intersection. This intensity of hand-to-hand conflict between anarchists and police has not been seen in “Canada” for nearly a decade. Several of the de-arrests were successful, but a handful of arrests were effected. In the end, the police held the intersection, successfully fragmenting the rioters into smaller and more vulnerable groups. Many dispersed at this point, but a group of approximately one hundred, including a festive marching band, were able to continue south, looping around to head west on Robson. Over an hour later, this group was surrounded and detained by riot cops; the police were eventually forced to release them by bystanders and supporters chanting “let them go.”

Subsequent Repression

Immediately following the dispersal, police attempted to use any excuse they could to harass, detain, and arrest suspected rioters, legal observers, media, and organizers. Several people were snatched off the street while leaving the intersection of Robson and Jervis. A few hours later, Gord Hill was given a $115 ticket for swearing at a police officer who was making an arrest outside of the Vancouver Media Co-op. Another known organizer was arrested on E. Hastings for “riding a bike on a sidewalk.” He was then charged with obstruction as he stood up for a homeless man who was being hassled by Police in Pigeon Park. Two legal observers were also ticketed for jaywalking on E. Hastings.

A reconvergence of the Heart Attack march had been planned for Robson and Granville at 5 p.m. that evening. However, it was canceled due to a variety of factors including the arrests, the increased repression, and the fact that police knew about this reconvergence point and would likely be eager to make more arrests. Those who did appear were illegally detained by riot police in front of thousands of Olympic spectators, but were released after a short period of time.

The following day, several people were snatched in relation to the Heart Attack demo, and police are still investigating videotapes and looking for more victims. We hope they won’t find any.

Also on Sunday, about 5000 participated in the 19th annual Women’s Memorial March, honoring missing and murdered women from Vancouver’s downtown Eastside. Led by indigenous women, this event was not an explicitly anti-Olympic protest, but many anarchists and other protesters participated.

Post-Action Debrief

As some had predicted, the primary tactic of the police was fear. They did not use the LRAD they had purchased; they never used tear-gas, rubber bullets, or any other form of long-range combat tactics. When they did attempt to control or arrest protesters, they used a hands-on approach. It was clear to some of us that they desired to avoid images of Vancouver engulfed in tear gas during the first day of the Olympic Games. The Olympics are all about nationalist propaganda, and the whole world actually is watching, unlike at most other demonstrations. Even with their billion-dollar security budget and high-tech crowd-control weapons, the police were unable to prevent a riot that had been announced years in advance. They effectively had their hands tied.

The black bloc relied heavily on what was readily available to them in the streets instead of bringing their own materials into the demo. Unfortunately, there were no mass supplies—no hard banners, paint bombs, projectiles, batons, or bandanas—to share with others who wanted to join.

One criticism was that people kept attacking the same windows, even throwing paint bombs at them after they were already smashed, instead of using that energy and opportunity to destroy additional property. A window that is smashed, has paint on it and a newspaper box through it does make a great photo-op, but smashing windows at a protest can be quite risky. If you’re brave enough to take that kind of action, make sure it counts!

The original target for the Heart Attack march had been the intersection of Denman and Georgia, in hopes of blocking traffic in and out of the Lions Gate Bridge, a major artery leading to the Olympic Games. Blocking the bridge turned out to be unachievable, but the march did succeed in clogging the arteries of Vancouver commerce in general. Considering the scale of militant confrontation, anarchists suffered very few arrests—at least thus far.

On the other hand, yet again the call for decentralized actions didn’t produce widespread resistance—at least as far as we know at this moment. Many anarchists argued that it would be easier to act in cells in their respectful communities and target corporate sponsors as the security apparatus would be concentrated in Vancouver. However, it is undeniable at this time of writing that the most effective resistance yet has been at the convergence itself.

This is only a preliminary assessment of this convergence. There are many other actions and demonstrations planned, and we won’t know the full scale of everything until the dust settles. The Olympics continue in Vancouver for two weeks. There is still time to plan solidarity actions. A list of corporate sponsors can be found here. A full assessment of this movement, the involvement of anarchists, and what it means for the future of militant struggle in “Canada” will appear in the near future.

Anarchists to pigs: Get the fuck out of our community!

Further Coverage Vancouver Media Coop Friendly Fire Collective Insurgent Photo

[Banner photo by Michael Thibault, Crimson Phoenix Photography, www.crimsonphoenixphotography.com.]

No Minimum for UPS Ground Shipping

2009-11-19T17:49:00Z

We’re pleased to announce that the former restriction of needing a $10 minimum order to qualify for UPS Ground shipping has been removed, and there is now no minimum. With every day that passes we become more frustrated with the United States Postal Service losing and destroying our packages and being completely unaccountable for doing so. While UPS Ground often does cost (slightly) more, it has many advantages of great value to people who want to receive the stuff they order: $100 of free insurance, day-definite delivery guarantees, actual tracking, and far better package handling.

Therefore we strongly encourage everyone to select UPS Ground as their shipping option. Also, as a tip to reduce the cost of UPS Ground for your order, we suggest getting creative and having the package shipped to a place of business rather than a residence, doing so can often save several dollars.

G20 Legal Support Update

2009-10-25T14:38:00Z

One month after the G20 protests in Pittsburgh, many still face felony and misdemeanor charges. Chief among these are the two people arrested for sending Twitter messages during the protests, whose home was subsequently raided by the FBI, and David Japenga, the young man ludicrously accused of being “single-handedly responsible for most of the $50,000 in damage” anarchists inflicted on corporations during the summit.

In addition to the felony charges filed in Pittsburgh and the house raid, the Twitter defendants—and perhaps others?—are apparently being targeted by a secretive federal grand jury. Supporters have established an informative and frequently updated blog here. A rudimentary support page for David Japenga can be found here. The Twitter case will set important precedents about people’s legal rights to use modern communications technology—a matter that could determine the shape of protest in this country for decades to come. It is also important to support David Japenga, who is the state’s scapegoat for this mobilization.

Meanwhile, last Thursday, over 100 other defendants appeared in court for charges stemming from the G20 protests. A smug judge lectured college students who had been randomly assaulted by police, while prosecutors and public defenders attempted to intimidate brutalized arrestees into accepting plea bargains and thus giving up their opportunity to sue the authorities over the abuse.

Donations to the support campaign for those targeted by the Twitter charges, the house raid, and the grand jury can be made here; the Pittsburgh G20 Resistance Project is also taking donations for a legal fund to support arrestees.