![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2016/10/26/2c.jpg\")
Move the doomsday clock forward another click.
\n\nWe were right about the direction things are heading, but wrong about the timeframe. We thought Clinton would win the election, and would then be discredited by new scandals and the challenges of preserving an increasingly unpopular status quo, producing a reactionary surge like the one that recently toppled Dilma in Brazil. Instead, the scandal broke before the election, with the announcement of further FBI inquiries into emails associated with Clinton. And, as with the Brexit vote, everyone underestimated just how desperate and reactionary the general public has become—at least the ones who still identify with the ruling order enough to vote at all. It’s later than you think.
\n\nIt’s significant that the news event that rescued Trump’s presidential bid was essentially an intervention by the FBI. This tells us a lot about the era we are entering: it is the security apparatus of the state that will be calling the shots, not the aspects of government that purport to improve the lives of citizens. Capitalism, long stabilized in the so-called First World by the compromises that produced the middle class, will henceforth be imposed by force. The surplus of the 20th century has run out; the velvet glove is coming off the iron fist. Sure, demagogues like Trump and Sanders will continue to promise us the moon every four years or so, but it won’t be peace treaties that will preserve the prevailing order—it will be police.
\n\nNews like this is bound to induce despair, but we must not let this election cause us to lose faith in humanity as a whole. Elections serve to represent us to each other at our worst, distilling the most offensive, cowardly, and servile aspects of the species. Many people who would never personally wrest a mother from her children are capable of endorsing deportation from the privacy of a voting booth, just as most people who eat meat could never work at a slaughterhouse. Were it not for the alienation that characterizes government itself, most of the ugly policies comprising the Trump agenda could never be implemented.
\n\nPresidential campaigns are calculated to promote apathy, giving the impression that all the important decisions in the world are out of our hands. That’s the point of state politics: to immobilize us outside the halls of power, distrusting each other and ourselves.
\n\nToday, even the most law-abiding liberal must realize that we cannot continue to watch from the sidelines. Against the spectacle of powerlessness, we must counterpose our own agency. But to what purpose? Surely not to prop up yet another political campaign. We have to think bigger.
\n\nThe fundamental problem is that power is structured into such vertical concentrations in the first place. If the President of the United States did not wield such disproportionate influence over the fate of humanity—if the free market did not enable businessmen to accumulate so much leverage over society—then Donald Trump could not be so dangerous, however despicable a person he is.
\n\nThose on the Left who have persisted in the naïve belief that the right government could solve the problems generated by global capitalism are partly to blame for this situation. The Democratic Party was foolish to back an establishment candidate at a time when so many people are desperate, angry, and rebellious. In legitimizing the idea that America is or should be great in the first place, Democrats smoothed the way for Trump to promise to make it great once more. Every tax dollar good liberals paid to the government hoping it would care for the poor, sick, elderly, and underprivileged has built the juggernaut that will now roll across their civil liberties. Every law they continue to obey will aid and abet that process. And if the media outlets and politicians that decried Trump as the candidate of the apocalypse accept him now in the name of the democratic process, this only confirms their complicity.
\n\nThe problem is democracy itself: the form of government that brought Adolf Hitler into office. In response to the polls, we assert that no one should have the right to rule over anyone else. Neither Donald Trump, nor Barack Obama, nor Mother Theresa could ever use such power for good. We have to create horizontal structures and autonomous movements that can meet our needs directly, rather than continuing to feed resources into structures that will be used against us for the benefit of a few.
\n\nLet us look for silver linings in this cloud of oncoming tear gas. Perhaps it is for the best that someone like Trump is coming to power now, rather than four years hence. Let the right wing demonstrate that their solutions are just as inadequate as those proposed from the Left. In a time of economic crises, ecological collapse, and spreading war, the state is a hot potato: no one will be able to hold it long. Those who voted for Trump will be disappointed indeed if they actually believe he will bring back the heyday of Fordist capitalism in a globalized world.
\n\nOf course, disillusioned Trump voters will not necessarily join our ranks. They are more likely to move further to the right, just as Sanders supporters may simply entrench themselves deeper in futile and antiquated fantasies of 20th century socialism. We should set out to debunk the arguments from both sides, keeping dialogue open with everyone we can while preparing for open conflict with those who are determined to bring about a more totalitarian world.
\n\nWe must not let the outrage that people feel today shift into a hopelessness that could become the new normal. Only in taking action, however small, can we come into a sense of our collective agency. This is the time to strengthen ties between communities in struggle and those who will be most affected by Trump’s policies. This is the time to dispense once and for all with hope for any solutions from above, any brighter future apart from the actions we take on a day-to-day basis in our immediate surroundings. This is the time to learn and practice proper online security—who knows how far the repressive operations of the state will go, or how fast.
\n\nThere will be new social movements, new uprisings, new fights ahead. This is the time to find each other and prepare to go resolutely forward into them.
\n\nCradle the seed, even in the volcano’s mouth. Good luck out there, comrades.
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2016/10/26/work-speaking-tour-on-the-iberian-peninsula", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2016/10/26/work-speaking-tour-on-the-iberian-peninsula", "title": "Work Speaking Tour on the Iberian Peninsula", "summary": "", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2016/10/26/1b-1.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2016/10/26/1b-1.jpg", "date_published": "2016-10-26T13:35:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:29Z", "tags": [], "content_html": "We published Work at the beginning of 2011, at the onset of the social movements precipitated by the economic crisis of 2008. The idea was to update the critique of capitalism for the 21st century, starting from lived experience rather than dusty theory. Over the following years, the authors traveled throughout the Americas and Europe, comparing notes with other participants in the demonstrations, riots, and revolutions that ensued.
\n\nThe book has since appeared in German, Russian, Serbo-Croat, Korean, and most recently, Lithuanian. Congratulations to our Baltic comrades!
\n\nNow, to mark the publication of the Spanish edition of Work, our comrades there have organized a speaking tour visiting ten cities around the Iberian peninsula. What is really new about capitalism today, and how should this inform the ways we organize to stand up for ourselves? What can we learn from the limits that previous movements have reached? Could we really do away with work, profit, and property, or at least make it possible to imagine a world without them? Join us for a lively discussion.
\n\nNovember 5: Aldarull, Ateneo de Gracia, Barcelona November 6: (18h) L’Ateneu Anarquista La Ruda, Manresa November 8: La Central, Barcelona November 9: La Pantera Rossa, Zaragoza November 10: La Fuga, Sevilla November 11: Bakakai, Granada November 14: Katakrak, Iruñea November 15: Louise Michell, Bilbo November 16: Biblioteca Subversiva Crimental-La Revoltosa, Gijón November 17: Cambalache, Oviedo November 18: Traficantes, Madrid November 19: 1314, Madrid
\n\nPublicamos Work a comienzos de 2011, con el arranque de los movimientos sociales que respondieron a la crisis de 2008. La idea era actualizar la crítica al capitalismo para el siglo XXI a partir de la experiencia del día a día, en lugar de basarse áridas teorías. En los años que siguieron los autores viajaron por América del Norte y del Sur y Europa, comparando apuntes con otros participantes en las manifestaciones, disturbios y revueltas que sacudieron el mundo.
\n\nDesde entonces el libro ha sido publicado en Alemán, Ruso, Serbo-Croata, Coreano, and most recently, Lituano. Enhorabuena a nuestros compañeros bálticos!
\n\nAhora, para señalar la publicación de la edición en español de Work, nuestras compañeras de allí han organizado presentaciones en diez ciudades de la península Ibérica. ¿Qué hay de nuevo a día de hoy en el capitalismo, y cómo debería esto influir en las formas en que nos organizamos para hacernos valer? ¿Qué podemos aprender de las limitaciones con las que se han topado los movimientos anteriores? ¿Podemos realmente vivir sin trabajo, lucro y propiedad, o al menos, lograr que sea posible imaginar un mundo sin todo ello?
\n\nÚnete a nosotras para un intercambio ameno de ideas!
\n\nNoviembre 5: Aldarull, Ateneo de Gracia, Barcelona Noviembre 6: (18h) L’Ateneu Anarquista La Ruda, Manresa Noviembre 8: La Central, Barcelona Noviembr e 9: La Pantera Rossa, Zaragoza Noviembre 10: La Fuga, Sevilla Noviembre 11: Bakakai, Granada Noviembre 14: Katakrak, Iruñea Noviembre 15: Louise Michell, Bilbo Noviembre 16: La Revoltosa, Gijón Noviembre 17: Cambalache, Oviedo Noviembre 18: Traficantes, Madrid Noviembre 19: 1314, Madrid
\n\n ![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2016/10/26/3b.jpg\")
bonus photo of Lithuanian edition
\nJohn Timoney is dead. “The world has lost a great man and a law enforcement giant,” says the Police Chief of Ferguson, Missouri, who learned his trade under Timoney in Miami. Well, that’s one perspective. For myself and many others across the world, his death is a relief. It would have been better if he had never been born.
\n\nTimoney held positions in the upper echelon of the law enforcement world for nearly thirty years. He was First Deputy Commissioner of the New York City Police Department, Police Commissioner of Philadelphia, Police Chief of Miami, and finally, private consultant to the kingdom of Bahrain. He played a major role in the repression of social movements in the United States during the summit protest era of the late nineties and early aughts, and a significant role in the suppression of the Arab Spring nearly ten years later. Those of us who were active in these movements came to know his methods well.
\n\nI am one of the countless people who suffered at the hands of John Timoney and the police he commanded. Although sixteen years have passed, I still prefer to tell this story anonymously.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2016/08/30/1.jpg\")
Timoney’s police in action during the FTAA protests of November 2003.
\nTimoney oversaw the police responses to the occupation of Tompkins Square Park in New York City in 1988, the protests against the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in 2000, the World Economic Forum in New York City in 2002, the Free Trade Area of the Americas Summit in Miami in 2003, and the Bahraini uprising from 2011 to 2013. His calling cards were undercover infiltration of movement spaces, preemptive mass arrests, and the use of the courts as a tool to neutralize dissent.
\n\nIn the United States, he won important tactical victories in Philadelphia and Miami. In the streets, he liked bikes, clubs, and the liberal application of tear gas—and he knew how to keep the blood out of sight of the cameras. In court, he favored huge bails and trumped up charges against protesters. He perjured himself shamelessly, and he lost every case in the end. He truly hated anarchists, and by treating us just short of enemy combatants he toughened us up for the battles to come.
\n\nIn August of 2000, I was arrested in Philadelphia along with 420 others during the protests against the Republican National Convention. The policeman who arrested me cuffed my hands behind my back with heavy plastic zip-ties. He was a large man, and I think it’s fair to say that he tightened them down as hard as he possibly could. He then put me into the back of a police van along with fifteen other people. We were each cuffed with our hands behind our backs and chained down to the bench of the van. Someone in the front of the vehicle turned the lights off in the back, turned the heat up full blast, and left. We sat there in the sweltering heat for something between four and six hours.
\n\nWe spent those hours struggling to support each other, trying not to be consumed by fear and panic. This was during the hottest days of summer. The heat got so extreme and the ventilation was so poor that people were passing out from the bad air. Several people were bleeding as well—myself included. Worst of all, in my particular case, it seemed entirely possible that I was going to lose both of my hands from loss of blood circulation.
\n\nAt first, the pain became so extreme that I would scream if anything touched me. Then the pain gave way to a complete loss of feeling. The two people on either side of me were able to reach me if I turned my back to one of them or the other. They took turns massaging my hands ceaselessly. Eventually, though, no matter how hard they tried, I couldn’t feel anything at all. When I asked what my hands looked like, I heard fear in their voices. It was not possible for either of them to reach the cuffs with their teeth to chew through the plastic.
\n\nMany people in this van were in a bad state, but my hands were probably the single worst thing going on. These hours tested my sanity, and it was very difficult not to succumb to panic. Nothing can really describe how terrified I was that I would spend the rest of my life as a double amputee. My companions sang to me.
\n\nTimoney’s stint in Bahrain was a fitting end to his career. It was the culmination of everything that he had done before, and his crimes against the Bahraini people are conspicuously absent from the obituaries that have appeared lauding him.
\n\nThe Bahraini monarchy was the first American-backed government in the Middle East to demonstrate that it was not going to be toppled by civil resistance during the Arab Spring; the Assad regime in Syria was the first Russian-backed government to do so. The rationale for giving uncompromising support to these backward and repressive governments was the same on both sides: there is an American naval base in Bahrain and a Russian naval base in Syria. In both cases, the only options left open to the opposition were surrender or civil war. In Bahrain, the opposition eventually chose the former; in Syria, the latter, with notorious results.
\n\nNarrowing the field of possibilities down to this choice was John Timoney’s real life’s work. He was just never able to carry his vision through to its logical conclusion inside of the United States. His tactics were very effective at demobilizing people who weren’t ready to go to prison. They helped to bring about a world in which the only people with any agency appear to be those who are ready to die. Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable, as John F. Kennedy put it long before the heyday of suicide bombings and mass shootings. The longer you suppress revolt, the uglier it is likely to be.
\n\nIt’s not easy to ascertain all the ways Timoney served the Bahraini monarchy, or what his personal role was in the widespread torture and murder of dissidents there. But one thing is certain: in lending a hand to suppress the Arab Spring, he left his fingerprints all over the current mayhem in Syria and Iraq.
\n\nEventually, the police moved the van to the location where we were to be processed. After what felt like an eternity, they finally opened the door. I was bordering on hallucination by this time. Numerous people began vociferously explaining to the guards that it was of dire urgency that my cuffs be removed. One of the guards unchained me from the bench of the van. I literally saw his jaw drop when he looked behind my back. He cut the cuffs off immediately. Both of my hands were a deep black-purple from the wrists to the fingertips.
\n\nIt took a number of days for me to regain the normal use of my hands. Thankfully, I did recover fully. I think it’s likely that I only avoided permanent injury because of the actions of the two people next to me in the van. I still have the scars to show for this ordeal, although they have faded with time. I’m sure the policeman who cuffed me has long ago forgotten the incident. I remember.
\n\nTimoney usually won the battle. It looks like he lost the war. If his primary objective was to preserve the status quo, then he failed. Only sixteen years ago, the institutions that he represented seemed omnipotent and eternal. Now they are all in an advanced state of decomposition, like Timoney himself.
\n\nThe Republican Party is in complete disarray. Free trade policies are coming under fire from both ends of the political spectrum. The police have probably never faced such widespread condemnation. The Middle East is metastasizing chaos in every direction, and not in a good way. It’s only a matter of time before it reaches Bahrain.
\n\nNone of this is really what we were hoping for. It’s hard to be excited about the old world falling apart when the present is such a mess and the future looks so bleak. Even those who opposed us a decade and a half ago must acknowledge that the proposals we were offering at that time were preferable to the crises that have become inevitable thanks to our defeat.
\n\nNevertheless, we’re still here. We’re going to be all right. Although our new enemies are fearsome indeed, it’s good to remember that they too are mortal. Sixteen years ago, as hundreds of traumatized protesters faced charges from the Republican National Convention, it felt as though Timoney and his ilk would reign forever. In fact, all it takes to see our oppressors destroyed is to live long enough.
\n\nAugust 16, 2016: John Timoney, dead of lung cancer at 68. We got to write his obituary. He was never able to write ours.
\n\nSome of our bails were set as high as one million dollars; some of us faced an array of charges amounting to life in prison. Some of these cases dragged on for nearly four years. In the end, every single one of the 420 people who were arrested during the demonstrations was either acquitted or had the case thrown out of court. None of us testified against each other. Not one of us was ever convicted of any crime.
\n\nMy story is only one of many. In Philadelphia, I met people who had been waiting to go to trial for three years in Timoney’s jails, many of them for non-violent drug-related offenses (like those for which Timoney’s own children are known). I saw police and guards beat handcuffed detainees. They knew how to keep it away from the cameras. I’ve heard countless accounts like mine from Miami. I can’t imagine what people in Bahrain went through.
\n\nOn August 16, I heard the news and I couldn’t have been happier. John Timoney is dead. The struggle continues.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2016/08/30/2.jpg\")
The more of this, the better for everyone.
\nIn memory of Jordan MacTaggart, killed in action August 3, 2016 in Manbij, Syria, fighting a monster that John Timoney helped to create. In return for his courageous sacrifice, the US government betrayed MacTaggart’s comrades the moment they had fulfilled the US agenda. There is no honor in the institutions Timoney served and no safety in the order they seek to impose, but we will have to clean up the messes they make. Timoney was no hero. MacTaggart is.
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2016/04/15/steal-something-from-work-day-2016", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2016/04/15/steal-something-from-work-day-2016", "title": "Steal Something from Work Day 2016", "summary": "", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2016/04/15/1b-3.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2016/04/15/1b-3.jpg", "date_published": "2016-04-15T17:58:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:29Z", "tags": [], "content_html": "Today we take a break from our ongoing series about the anarchist critique of democracy to observe an annual day of action, Steal Something from Work Day.
\n\nToday is April 15—in the US, the day that taxes are usually due to the federal government. Ironically, this time tax day has been moved back to Monday so the IRS can celebrate Emancipation Day—which the rest of us have no opportunity to celebrate, chained as we are to the grindstone. Slavery has been abolished, but wage slavery persists.
\n\nThe government steals a part of our labor in the form of taxes. Our employers steal a part of our labor in the form of profit. And the necessity of working steals our lives, one day after another—it steals us from each other, forcing us to toil to keep the bills paid rather than being creative together or spending time with our children.
\n\nWe can build towards a worldwide movement to abolish the imposed scarcities and controls that force this situation on us. But in the meantime, we have to be pragmatic, to do the best we can with the opportunities available to us. That’s why people all around the world celebrate April 15 as Steal Something from Work Day.
\n\nBeing from the part of the world that is considered Eastern Europe in the West, you get paid a lot less for the same shitty jobs. I had a few of those jobs already, starting at the age of 14, usually sorting products on the shelves in the big hypermarkets. The theft prevention there seemed omnipotent, so however angry I was about getting paid the equivalent of $1.50 an hour (25% of which was taken by the contractor agency through which I found work), I had no idea how to do anything to improve my situation.
\n\nOne day, I told myself I couldn’t carry like that for the rest of my life. I would rather risk and even lose my job than never try, and instead lose myself. By then, I worked behind the counter at a KFC franchise; my salary was still less than $2 an hour. This was a decade ago, and I doubt much has changed since then.
\n\nAs a 16-year-old punk, before I even made a single crown, I had to buy my own fancy shoes to go with the ugly uniform, which had false pockets so the employees couldn’t steal. Although I already considered KFC to be an icon of pure evil, I never ceased to be surprised by the politics and regulations for workers. I couldn’t keep tips—they wouldn’t feed us for free—the leftovers were thrown into the trash, which was kept locked in a special room.
\n\nMy first idea was to invite couple of friends for lunch and give them a lot of food for free when the manager wasn’t looking, then try to take a lunch break so I could eat some of the food too. Eventually, I realized that if I went for supplies to the refrigeration room, I could eat there—but it was so cold, and anyone could open the door at any time. I started to see more and more employees eating in the kitchen, smuggling food to the bathroom and locking themselves there, or sneaking it behind the counter when the manager went out to smoke.
\n\nI started to build up to talking about it with the other workers; until then, it had been taboo to talk about getting back what we deserved. People got more conscious and started to help each other to get as much food as possible for lunch, like preparing a big bucket of food in the kitchen and then taking the manager out for a cigarette break so the one going for lunch could take it upstairs. From the counter, we would bring soda, coffee, muffins, and such back to the workers who had no access to those things.
\n\nI was new to working and still went to high school, so I didn’t work that often. I wanted to get some food and leftovers to bring home and to school, to share with my family and friends. We made a deal that my colleagues would make a bag of food for me and leave it in the back so I could grab it when I went to change while the manager counted out my cash register.
\n\nIt was nice to be able to eat for free and share with the others. But soon, everyone got tired of eating ultra-spicy steroid-filled fried chicken wings with fries and mayonnaise. I became vegetarian, and soon vegan. I felt like stealing food didn’t really pay me back for all the time I spent there in constant hustle and stress, sometimes without any breaks. Free wings didn’t pay for all the cigarettes I started to smoke when I worked there. It just wasn’t enough.
\n\nThinking about it every day and getting more committed to breaking the rules, I figured out that no one was watching the security cameras and they didn’t archive the records. I discovered that I could open my register by typing that I sold a small drink, fries, or even a helping of ketchup. I quickly learned how to keep track of the costs of different items; if a customer had money ready or was in a hurry, I would first make the whole order and count it in my mind, then take the money, typing that I had sold something much cheaper. By doing that several times a day, I physically kept much more money in the register than they expected according the system.
\n\nYes, this is simple and they knew about it—that’s why we didn’t have any pockets and they would check to make sure that we weren’t leaving with money in our hands or elsewhere. To bypass this control, I would ask some of my friends to come in for food, pretend we didn’t know each other, and pay with big bills. This time, I would type everything beforehand and correctly, in order not to be suspicious if the manager came around; but when giving the change back, I would give them all the money I knew I had saved during the day. In this way I would split the money with some friends who also had financial problems.
\n\nOnce, my manager told me I had to clean the tables in the lobby for the rest of the day as soon as I finished with my next customer. At that point, I had way more money in my register than I was supposed to, so I pretended to tie my shoelace and put some money into my sock. I was still over the expected amount in the register, but I explained that I got big tips that day. It was good to know that I could get the money out myself so I could steal a bit every day rather than a big amount once in a while when my friends came. After that, I started to make pretty good money for a teenager.
\n\nAll the same, working there became unbearable. The end of last shift felt so liberating. I couldn’t believe they didn’t catch me.
\n\nI started to work at a pizza window. Once again, we were not paid well. But in this new workplace, to my surprise, the workers had a system by which to multiply their income. In addition to selling weed alongside pizza, they figured out that the owner only kept up with the stock by counting the balls of dough. He was a busy man, opening more and more places; he never did any work besides coming in to take the cash at night. He always had a new car or fancy stuff. We sold big pizzas by pieces, so he wasn’t counting boxes, just the dough that we had to press into the pizza bases. My colleagues figured out that they could make seven pizzas out of the dough intended for six by setting a bit of each dough ball aside. Soon we were making four pizzas out of three balls, so our crew could sell every fourth pizza for the direct profit of the workers, and split 25% of the daily gross among ourselves.
\n\nSometimes the boss would say we were using too much cheese or tomato sauce. Then we would buy our own supplies to make the extra pizzas, and still come out ahead. It was a workers’ cooperative pizza shop within a capitalist pizza shop.
\n\nNowadays, looking back, I remember those times as less risky than my adult life has been, in which (like many people in this country) in order to survive I have to be officially unemployed while I make a living under the table, supplemented by shoplifting and insurance frauds. It’s too bad the customers had to eat those thin little pizzas, but hey, I’m not the one who came up with this social order or the incentives that drive it! If you want thick crust pizza, abolish capitalism!
\n\nA Theft or Work?—A grad student brings poststructuralist theory to bear on time theft, why the master’s degrees will never dismantle the master’s house, and how to resist work when it has spread so far beyond the workplace
\nOut Of Stock: Confessions Of A Grocery Store Guerrilla—A former Whole Foods employee recounts his efforts to run his employer out of business by means of sabotage, graffiti, and insubordination, reinterpreting William Butler Yeats’ line “The falcon cannot hear the falconer” from a bird’s-eye view.
\nSteal from Work to Create Autonomous Zones—The shocking true story of how a photocopy scam nearly escalated into global revolution.
\nWhat Became of the Boxes—An adventure in proletarian revenge.
\nAnd there’s more! Steal Something from Work Day videos, corporate media coverage, and even a journal (pdf, 4.3 MB).
\nTo warm the hearts of children and enivironmentalists everywhere, we present an imposed pdf of our children’s book, The Secret World of Terijian, ready for grassroots printing and distribution. The Secret World of Terijian tells the story of two children who set out to defend the wilderness in their back yards, and the comrades they meet along the way.
\n\nThe best review of The Secret World of Terijian is still probably the one penned by Kirk Engdall, United States Attorney for the District of Oregon, in his response to Daniel McGowan’s Motion for Amended Judgment:
\n\n\n\n\n“The story line of this children’s book romanticizes the criminal activities of the Earth Liberation Front and encourages children to become involved in similar criminal conduct…”
\n
We hope this zine version will be useful to everyone who is organizing events for the June 11 day of solidarity with Marius Mason and all long-term anarchist prisoners. Print some copies to raise donations for Marius and everyone else behind bars in the struggle for a better world.
\n\nUpdate: for a limited time, you can order print copies here.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2015/06/09/2b.jpg\")
\nImposed PDFs for print reproduction (4.7MB): B&W : Color
\n\nStandard PDF for reading on screens (2.2MB)
\n\nThis is at least the fifth edition of The Secret World of Terijian since it appeared a decade ago. It features the illustrations by Ingi Jensson that were originally published in the Icelandic translation, Hulduheimur Heiðarlands, in 2010. The photo below shows the Slovakian version, published earlier this year.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2015/06/09/1b.jpg\")
The Slovak version
\nOn April 17, a CrimethInc. agent will present at the Base in New York City about To Change Everything, exploring its most provocative themes and tying it into struggles taking place around the world. The next day, on April 18, we will table at the New York City Anarchist Book Fair. The following weekend, on April 25, we will be tabling for our fifteenth consecutive year at the Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair in Oakland. Come to any of these events for a heaping helping of free anarchist literature.
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2014/07/30/this-phone-is-tapped-stickers-retired", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2014/07/30/this-phone-is-tapped-stickers-retired", "title": "‘This Phone is Tapped’ Stickers Retired", "summary": "", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2014/07/30/1b2.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2014/07/30/1b2.jpg", "date_published": "2014-07-30T17:00:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:29Z", "tags": [], "content_html": "After eleven years in service with nearly half a million copies deployed by CrimethInc. agents around the world, we are sad to announce the retiring of our This Phone is Tapped stickers. Sad, because we had hoped to retire them after defeating the rule of ubiquitous surveillance on every form of remote communication, but unfortunately the only thing that has been defeated are payphones. As payphones have disappeared, so has demand for these stickers and as we sent out the last copies this week, we decided not to reprint them—partly because we have a more than capable replacement already in action.
\n\nThanks to everyone who helped cover payphones across the globe over the last decade, as well as achieving placement on the Wikipedia Phone Tapping page and helping out hapless blog editors forced to find images to go with unending stories of mass surveillance.
\n\nOver the years we’ve received dozens of emails from payphone owners containing threats both legal and otherwise that were, of course, never followed through on. We’ve collected the most entertaining ones below, verbatim and in their entirety, so you can enjoy their hilarity as well.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/2a.jpg\")
\nWhy are you encouraging people to place stickers on the back of payphone handsets telling people the phone is tapped? Your home phone could be tapped as well and is in fact more likely to be tapped. Do you place these stickers on your home phones? Do you realize what this does to people in the payphone business. Do you realize that some people will not use the phone because of that. Do you realize that is someone is caught putting that sticker on a payphone that I’m going to kick the living shit out of them and then shove a payphone receiver up their ass. What is the purpose of your web site? Are you trying to help people or screw them?
\n\nDo you realize that you are encouraging vandelisim. You are nothing but a peice of shit. I hope your family attacked by raving lunitic and beaten with a payphone handset.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/3b.jpg\")
\nI am the owner of several Pay Telephones and very recently your pay phone stickers have made their way to their handsets. I am concerned for the following reasons: Advertising on pay phones is not free defacing pay phones is illegal interfering with public access and my business is not tolerated. To that end I will give your company 24hrs to remove said pay phone stickers. Should you like to advertise on my pay telephones the cost is $35.00 per hand set per month.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/4b.jpg\")
\nI am the owner of a payphone company in upstate New York. Your stickers are appearing on my phones, it does not appear to be hurting my business, however, it is against the law in NYS. Any sticker, taxi, towing, work from home, weight loss, etc., etc. Please instruct your subscribers not to put them on public payphones. My phones are regularly inspected by the NYS Public Service Commission, and if they issue a citation to me for these stickers I have 10 days to remove them or be fined $1,000.00 per incident. I will have the citations forwarded to your company.
\n\nI will remove the stickers at this point in time for $25 per location, we have removed 71 as of today. I will send the invoice to your Greensboro NC address. If you wish to have the people you sent them to remove them, they must take care in using solvents to minimize damage.
\n\nLastly, I do allow advertising on my phones, however, the advertising must be in a framed plaque. There is a monthly fee associated with advertising. All advertising must also meet with the property owners concurrence.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/5b.jpg\")
\nSomeone is placing these stickers on public payphones throughout NC. These are privately owned payphones and should not be tampered with. PLEASE STOP THIS PRACTICE NOW!!!!!!!!!
\n\nThanks in advance for your attention to this matter.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/6a.jpg\")
\nI operate, and own a Payphone company in the PGH area. People are buying these stickers and plastering them all over my phones. I will find out who they are, and have them arrested, or taken to the Majistrate. Our phone lines are NOT allowed to be tapped without our Permission, period. They are classified as a different kind of line, and not subject to the same rules as a Residential line.
\n\nYou are giving out FALSE information, for which I will report to the INTERNIC, and any other agency that will hear me.
\n\nI would like to know WHY you would print this nonsense? Only a complete idiot would make up something like this in order to make money. It is VANDELISM, no matter who dies it, and you are giving them the avenue to do so.
\n\nI hope one day some jerk-off puts a bumper sticker on your car without asking, see how you like it. Or paint or post things on your home. You would not like that, I am sure, yet you could care less, as long is it does NOT happen to you.
\n\nYour web page is pretty sickening, if yo do not like it here, move to Iraq then. Watch him kill his people in experiemnts and what not. MAYBE not you personally, but your web site REAKS of trators. When war begins, I hope anyone who tries to stop the military is arrested, and shot for treason.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/7a.jpg\")
\nWe are elated to announce that in just a couple short weeks we’ll be shipping out Rolling Thunder #11 to subscribers—we received the unbound, printed samples last week (pictured above) and they were absolutely perfect. Issue #11 begins what we consider to be the second series of Rolling Thunder and we think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the small improvements we’ve made.
\n\nRolling Thunder subscribers: If you have moved, now is the time to send us your new address, if you haven’t already; shoot an email to rtsubs@crimethinc.com with your new address and we’ll take care of it. Also, if you are a subscriber and didn’t get our new issue notification email two weeks ago, it means either your email service marked it as spam, or the email address we have on record for you is no longer valid—if the later is the case, drop us a line and lets us know your preferred contact email. Our most sincere thanks for subscribing, it’s what makes Rolling Thunder possible.
\n\nIf you are NOT a Rolling Thunder subscriber: Now is a great time to subscribe—you’ll be sent the new issue the second it’s available (and weeks before it’s available to non-subscribers), and it’ll save you a ton of money (see below) compared to buying the issues one at a time. Subscriptions are essential to Rolling Thunder’s continued survival; if you believe Rolling Thunder to be a project worth supporting, please subscribe.
\n\nSubscription Cost Per Issue vs. Single Issue Cost:
\n\nFor us, this week started with a flurry of bulk book orders from people getting them as gifts for the holiday. It reminded us that outreach takes many forms—and giving books to close friends and family might be one of the most efficient and effective methods there is. Reflecting on it, we decided to try a little experiment this year: our first ever sale, with books 27%-50% off.
\n\nWe’ve made three simple gift packs designed for different types of recipients: Contradictionary, our most broadly appealing book, suitable for everyone, but an especially delightful Trojan horse for fans of the printed word; Work, an excellent introduction to anti-capitalist ideas for curious folks questioning the forces that shape our world; and Rolling Thunder, perfect for immersing radicals and free-thinkers alike in the contemporary anarchist milieu, providing an excellent base from which to begin exploring real-world projects and actions.
\n\nSo, if you find yourself caving to the gift-giving pressures of this time of year, or you simply want to share the ideas that are important to you with the people who matter most in your life, these could be a great place to start:
\n\nContradictionary: 5 copies for $20, 27% off regular wholesale price. All five books come with special release bookmark and pencil (usually limited to one per order). Add Contradictionary Gift Pack to cart.
\n\nWork: 3 copies for $15, 50% off regular price. All three books come with a copy of the bulk capitalist pyramid poster (usually just one per order). Add Work Gift Pack to cart.
\n\nRolling Thunder Bundle: 3 bundles for $15, 35% off regular price. Each bundle contains the 3 most recent issues of Rolling Thunder (#10, #9, #8); well over 300 pages per bundle. Add Rolling Thunder Bundle Gift Pack to cart.
\n\nEach pack comes with 10 PRISM stickers (which make excellent stocking stuffers), and are limited to three of each pack per person. Sale ends January 1st.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2013/12/05/2b.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2013/12/05/3b.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2013/12/05/4b.jpg\")
\nUpdate 12/13: Also, we just had some new mail order wrapping paper printed, replacing the previous design we’ve used for the last three years. All books in every order get wrapped in this paper to aid in protecting them as they venture across the globe to you. We’ve learned from experience and made a more modular design to support the various sizes we end up using—the end result being a more tailored final appearance. Who the fuck cares you may ask? Well, when you spend hours every day of your life making these packages for people, a new wrapping paper is a pretty big deal, so yay for us! Sometimes it’s the small things that get you through another long day. We hope you enjoy the new design a fraction as much as we do.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2013/12/05/5b.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2013/12/05/6b.jpg\")
\nTo accompany our in-depth interview on the history and context of Israeli anarchism, here are some of the CrimethInc. materials that have appeared in Hebrew, including translations of Dear Occupiers and Eight Simple Steps towards Revolution. A full translation of Fighting for Our Lives is available at mevakerhamedina.blogspot.com along with other texts.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/images/hebrew/pdf1.jpg\")
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/images/hebrew/pdf2.jpg\")
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/images/hebrew/pdf3.jpg\")
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/posters/wash-your-own-dishes-hebrew/wash-your-own-dishes-hebrew_front_black_and_white.jpg\")
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/images/hebrew/2b.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/images/hebrew/3b.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/images/hebrew/4b.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/images/hebrew/5b.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/images/hebrew/6b.jpg\")
A poster reading “Anarchy is an explosive concept” pasted in front of the police headquarters in Tel Aviv.
\nPutting the “latest” in “latest episode,” we present the fifth installment of our bimonthly podcast, wherein we turn our attention to police and the systematic violence they incarnate. Kristian Williams, author of Our Enemies in Blue, joins us to discuss the development of police tactics since 1968; other special guests include members of East Atlanta Copwatch and a comrade from Çarşı, a Turkish football-ultra group holding it down at Gezi Park in İstanbul. All this is filled out with news from around the world, and a review of “To the Indomitable Hearts: The Prison Letters of Luciano ‘Tortuga’ Pitronello.”
\n\nDownload the episode or stream it online or read the full transcript. You can also subscribe in iTunes here or add the feed URL to your podcast player of choice. Rate us on iTunes and let us know what you think, or email us at podcast@crimethinc.com. Episodes appear on the first and third Sunday of every month. No, really.
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2013/06/20/rolling-thunder-7-full-pdf-now-available", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2013/06/20/rolling-thunder-7-full-pdf-now-available", "title": "Rolling Thunder #7 Full PDF Now Available", "summary": "", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2013/06/20/header.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2013/06/20/header.jpg", "date_published": "2013-06-20T16:50:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:28Z", "tags": [], "content_html": "Hot on the heels of sending out the last copy of #6, we are now finally out of Rolling Thunder #7 as well. As a result, we’ve made the complete PDF of the issue available for free download. Packed more densely than any to that point, our seventh issue strained at it’s 114-page limit:
\n\n\n\n\nAnarchists coordinated mass mobilizations against the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, provoking major clashes; the global economy collapsed; Greece experienced an anarchist-organized insurrection in response to a police murder; and at the beginning of 2009, Oakland was shaken by similar unrest. Our coverage pushes beyond the surface of events to offer insight into the organizing structures and historical background, fleshing out timelines and analyses with personal narratives and cutting-edge cartography. In addition to all this, the issue includes an exploration of the relationship between the punk subculture and the anarchist movement, complemented by interviews with bands and collectives from beyond the white punk ghetto, and ends with a primer on small-town organizing using Winona, Minnesota as a case study.
\n
We’ve reduced the price to just $8 for our Rolling Thunder Bundle bundle containing issues #8 – #10. And, don’t forget, you can subscribe to Rolling Thunder to get future issues hot off the press, while also supporting the project and ensuring the journal’s continued existence. Our current plan is to release issue #11 this fall.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2013/06/20/1.jpg\")
\nAt long last, we’re finally out of Rolling Thunder #6, and accordingly, a free, complete PDF of the issue is now available. This issue is one of my personal favorites, filled with spectacular photography and a diverse selection of writings based around the theme of experimentation. From Swedish anarchists literally building a social center to a detailed look at anarchist organizing in NYC, this issue has many hours of good reading between its covers.
\n\nAnd as the print edition of RT #6 sails off into the sunset, the newest issue from this past summer, RT #10, has now been added to the Rolling Thunder Bundle, where you can now get the last four issues for just $10. Happy reading!
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2013/03/31/1.jpg\")
\nTwo decades ago, before the music industry had fully colonized it, the do-it-yourself underground was a space of exodus and experimentation, often in violent opposition to the rest of the world. This was the context in which Catharsis appeared, one of a new wave of bands to meld metal drama with the raw urgency of hardcore punk. They quickly distinguished themselves by an almost self-destructive intensity and uncompromising anticapitalist ethic. Inverting Christian iconography to champion the struggle of the individual against a hostile cosmos, they took up the centuries-old banner No Gods, No Masters, extending this project of total defiance into their increasingly tumultuous lives. This apocalyptic orientation in turn informed their music, as they sought to hit upon the magic combination of words, harmonies, and rhythms that could spark a global conflagration.
\n\nCatharsis broke up in 2002, following relentless touring on three continents and a final catastrophic five months in Europe. After a decade of watching the old records sell for absurd prices while bootleggers profited off substandard editions, we’ve finally taken it upon ourselves to offer a proper collection of their work.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2012/12/17/lightcoverb.jpg\")
\nThis discography, “Light from a Dead Star,” includes their debut 7”, the “Samsara” and “Passion” LPs, and the split LPs with Gehenna and Newborn. It also includes the final Catharsis song, “Absolution,” recorded alongside “Arsonist’s Prayer” in their last session but never released. That totals two hours of music on four LPs, packaged in a box with oversize booklets offering all the original artwork.
\n\nThese will be back from the pressing plant in mid-January, just in time for a handful of Catharsis reunion shows. In the meantime, the discography can be pre-ordered from CrimethInc. Far East (North America) and Refuse Records (Europe).
\n\nAll records are now sold out. Pre-orders from CrimethInc. will come on limited-edition colored vinyl; they will include digital versions of all these songs and others, plus video footage, fliers, and other archival material. We’ll throw in some additional treats as well. These are unavoidably expensive, but the digital download of the discography will be available in January at a price anyone can afford.
[UPDATE: The colored vinyl, limited to 100 copies, has sold-out. All pre-orders from here on will include black vinyl, limited also, to 400 copies.]
\n\nIn addition, Catharsis is briefly reuniting to play four shows this January: January 17 in Raleigh, NC; January 18 in Baltimore, MD; January 19 in New York City; and January 20 in Washington, DC, at a benefit show for political prisoners as part of a counter-inaugural festival of resistance.
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2012/12/03/european-speaking-tour-reportback", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2012/12/03/european-speaking-tour-reportback", "title": "European Speaking Tour Reportback", "summary": "", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2012/12/03/radb.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2012/12/03/radb.jpg", "date_published": "2012-12-03T16:54:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:28Z", "tags": [], "content_html": "CrimethInc. agents have completed a speaking tour of northern Europe, offering 45 presentations in less than two months. We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to the countless organizers, hosts, and attendees who made this possible and inspired us so much in the course of our trip.
\n\nSome of the highlights of the tour included the Zrenjanin Antifascist Festival, attended by anarchists from over a dozen countries; radical history walking tours of Helsinki and several other cities; the candles filling Skogskyrkogården cemetery on the night of All Saints’ Day; and traveling with our comrade from Black Mosquito, whose hard work got the tour off the ground in the first place. We were struck by the large turnouts—peaking at almost 120, but regularly 50 or more. These seem to indicate a growing interest in anarchism throughout northern Europe.
\n\nAnd none too soon. Up to now, the nations of northern Europe have remained islands of relative economic stability and social peace as the continent burns from the south up, but this won’t last forever. Outside of Oslo, a European Dubai still buoyed by oil money, growing fascist power in the parliaments and on the streets attests to the general sense that it’s just a matter of time before capitalism fails its most historically privileged middle classes. As faith in the present system erodes, it’s especially important for anarchists to offer a vision of liberation, rather than simply preserving subcultural ghettos or taking a quixotic stand as the last defenders of social democracy. One of the reasons we chose to tour northern Europe at this time was to offer comrades there a preview of the context they may soon find themselves in, which is already upon us in the United States. What happens in northern Europe in the next few years may well determine the scope of what is possible in the rest of the world.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2012/12/03/rad2b.jpg\")
\nMessage in a Bottle, the collection of CrimethInc. texts in German we presented on this tour, is still available in Europe from Black Mosquito, along with a wide range of other CrimethInc. material. Black Mosquito is also working on a translation of our most recent book, Work, and would welcome assistance. The Serbo-Croat translation of Work is available from Što čitaš in Zagreb, among others. Although we were unable to visit Russia on this tour, both Work and our poster depicting the pyramid of capitalism are now available in Russian, as well as Recipes for Disaster.
\n\nRead on for a smattering of tour coverage, a summary of the tour presentation, and an invitation to participate in what happens next.
\n\nAn audio recording of our presentation in Laidak, Berlin
\n“Anarchie in den USA,” a review of Message in a Bottle in a German paper
\nJoin the Resistance - Fall in Love: ZAF 2012, jedno lično viđenje—a review of the Zrenjanin Antifascist Festival, including our presentation, a transcription of which is available in Serbo-Croat
\nAnarkistit retkellä and CrimethInc. kävi Suomessa – mitä sitten?, two articles in the Finnish paper Voima
\nA video illustrating an audio recording of our presentation in Tampere, Finland
\nWhat do we mean when we say we’re anarchists? Of course we want freedom and oppose the state, capitalism, and all hierarchy, but we also see anarchism as a more passionate way to live our lives. Overthrowing capitalism isn’t just a matter of reorganizing the economy, but of finding a new way to think about value. We don’t have to be experts to understand the economy; we can fight capitalism from any position inside or outside our roles in it. Capitalism isn’t the only system that makes us miserable, so we recognize the importance of struggling against not only the economy but all forms of hierarchy.
\n\nWe can conceptualize anti-capitalist resistance as beginning from three places: production (our workplaces and fixed roles in the economy), consumption (the things we buy, our subcultures, what we do when we’re not at work), and precarity (the instability affecting more and more people within capitalism today).
\n\nIn the classical vision of anti-capitalist revolution beginning from production, workers occupy the means of production and use them to create a proletarian utopia. This never panned out in the US. This is because the participants in these struggles were successfully divided into reformists and revolutionaries; one might date this division from Henry Ford’s compromise of paying workers enough to afford the products they produced, which established the foundation for the US middle class. That gave unions a role inside of capitalism, stabilizing it, rather than asserting the revolutionary demand to use our potential however we wish.
\n\nNot everyone was included in this compromise; in particular, women, immigrants, and people of color were left out. Thus, the racism and sexism at the foundation of the economy were tied into this peace treaty between capitalists and the new middle class. As the feminist and civil rights movements emerged to challenge these hierarchies, reformers could demand to be included in the compromise; by granting this demand to some while crushing the revolutionaries in these movements, the state managed to stabilize society without challenging the oppressions at its foundation.
\n\nBut many in the next generation in the US rebelled against this compromise, rejecting the promise of mass consumer society in favor of individuality and counterculture. Beginning in the 1960s, rebellion against capitalism increasingly began not from production but from consumption: from clothes and music, for example. But this rebellion simply identified something the market could provide, encouraging a new generation of capitalists to shift emphasis from conformity to diversity. Even the reforms demanded by social movements took on this consumer logic, enabling profits to increase without fundamentally challenging oppression.
\n\nPunk subcultures articulated seemingly radical anti-capitalist demands within this framework: to do it ourselves, to become the media, rejecting the consumer spectacle in favor of self-organized, horizontal, participatory networks to create and circulate culture and information. But today, in the era of Facebook and Youtube, we have all “become the media” without becoming any more free, as a few corporations have reaped enormous profits from meeting our demand to do it ourselves. Even the revolutionary potential of the communication tools that resulted from this demand—such as Twitter, invented by anarchists as txt.mob in 2004—has simply opened the door to a new era of surveillance and repression. When we make demands that can be met within the logic of capitalism, they cannot ultimately bring us closer to anti-capitalist revolution, but only expand and stabilize the market.
\n\nBut in just a few generations in the US, workers that had the privilege to be included in the Fordist compromise have seen their stable places in the economy vanish, as the aforementioned global telecommunications infrastructure integrates the entire world into one factory floor. Workplaces move across borders whenever “obstacles to trade” appear, rendering us all increasingly precarious. Now that most production is carried out by machines or workers in sweatshops, the majority of workers in the US labor in the service sector, at jobs that don’t produce anything useful and obviously couldn’t be the basis for a post-capitalist world. Many get by via temporary labor, which offers no security and compels us to compete against the entire precarious population; others are forced into illegal capitalism. Prisons also have expanded to unprecedented proportions in the precarious economy, as well as unemployment and homelessness. Here we see the final result of a globalized capitalism: humanity is being thrown away like garbage in the wasteland created by an economy that no longer needs us, but that we can’t escape.
\n\nSo what does resistance look like in this context? How will we overthrow capitalism in the 21st century? Let’s break this question into four parts.
\n\nFirst, who will be fighting? What will be the basis for coming together against capitalism in the years to come? Struggles based both in production and in consumption have reached limits. Although workers will still unionize and even occupy workplaces, and punks will still form bands and politicize people through music, we don’t expect these to grow as sites of resistance in the way they did in the previous century. Instead, we anticipate that people will increasingly come together on the basis of our precarity: our shared vulnerability to the changing economy, on our inability to rely on capitalism to secure a future for us.
\n\nWe’ve seen this in the social movements that have occurred in the US since the economic crisis hit. The 2008 workplace occupation in Chicago, the 2009-10 university occupation movements in New York and California, and the Wisconsin anti-austerity protests that occupied the capitol building all responded to conditions affecting more and more people, but none of them spread past certain built-in limits. Why not? Because we can’t build our struggles on positions in the economy we can’t hold. The Occupy movement spread like no preceding movement because it began outside of workplaces, schools, or any fixed place in the economy. This shows the direction resistance will likely spring from in the future.
\n\nSecond, what will people do together in these movements? What tactics and practices will allow movements to continue and grow? The Occupy movement died down quickly after the camps were evicted in many places, as people learned that simply having meetings and holding signs wasn’t enough. But there are two examples of local movements that went from symbolic protest to interrupting the economy; these both thrived and expanded, and this indicates the direction anti-capitalist struggles will have to take today to keep growing.
\n\nAfter the Occupy Oakland camp was evicted, they called a general strike. Today, when so many have constantly changing or inconsequential jobs, or else no employment at all, this can’t simply mean not going to work; instead, people blockaded the ports and the business district, preventing the economy from functioning from outside their roles within it. Likewise, after student strikers in Montreal were prevented from occupying their school buildings, they shifted towards a campaign of economic disruption, interrupting business as usual and fighting the police. This type of action may be the only way for movements to wield power in today’s context, giving people cause to participate.
\n\nThird, what is our overall strategy against capitalism? The traditional strategy of the left relies on helping groups organize to win small reforms, linking these groups together to build power through incremental victories until they achieve the biggest reform of all: revolution. Today this seems unlikely to succeed, both because the reforms of previous struggles stabilized rather than threatened capitalism, and because many of these reforms aren’t even possible in today’s precarious economy. Even a kind and generous capitalist wouldn’t be able to offer higher wages and more stability, as the economy would simply withdraw capital from his company at the first sign of a threat to profits. Of all the movements we have discussed, almost none of them won any reforms at all. If we can’t expect to build to revolution through little victories, we need a different strategy.
\n\nToday, revolution may be more realistic than reform. In Egypt, workers’ movements weren’t able to win reforms in decades years of struggle, but a mass movement succeeded in toppling the entire government in weeks. It’s nearly impossible to imagine further revolutions today, but it seems even more certain that capitalism cannot be reformed. When we can’t count on winning the smaller battles, what counts is how we fight. If we act in ways that demonstrate the possibility of a world without capitalism, creating new precedents for struggle in the process, then even if we don’t win any reforms we can open the space to imagine revolution and shift the context. The most interesting thing about the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt is not that those countries are now anarchist utopias—far from it—but that the struggles that began there spread around the world. Today, we should evaluate our effectiveness not by the reforms we win but by whether our ways of fighting demonstrate new possibilities, and by whether they spread.
\n\nFinally, what can anarchists accomplish in anti-capitalist struggle today? Two things: we can change the sense of what’s possible in these struggles, and we can change the sense of what’s legitimate. We can experiment with new tactics and push them further, opening up a space of possibility where people can participate in actions that may be more radical than the ideas they claim to support. We can explain our actions in an analysis that challenges all authority, preventing social movements from being co-opted by authorities from the left or right. We’re not a vanguard, but we can make an important contribution when we move past trying to win victories for anarchists into innovating and circulating anarchist tactics, ways of fighting that spread power horizontally rather than vertically. When these tactics spread beyond self-proclaimed anarchists through the vast population of precarious people who have less and less stake in maintaining capitalism, we can make a real contribution to revolutionary struggle.
\n\nWe want to continue to build on the connections we’ve made with comrades around Europe. Here are some forms this could take:
\n\nEveryone is welcome to translate existing CrimethInc. material, adjusting it as needed to make it more relevant in other contexts. If you’re interested, contact us and we will assist however we are able.
\nWe would like to receive anarchist analysis, reports on contemporary struggles, illuminating histories, and other material in languages besides English, and perhaps to circulate these among English-speaking audiences. For this, we need assistance from native speakers who can translate into English.
\nWe will do our best to help collectives from Europe and other parts of the world to set up tours and other events in the US.
\nFinally, we welcome any news about anarchist organizing outside the US, including upcoming gatherings and demonstrations, information about repression, and calls for solidarity.
\nWe’re excited to announce our collaboration with Minneapolis rapper P.O.S in distributing over 600 copies of our Work book and several times that many “Capitalism Is a Pyramid Scheme” posters in preorders for his excellent new album, “We Don’t Even Live Here,” on Rhymesayers Entertainment.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2012/10/23/POScollageb.jpg\")
\nP.O.S approached us some time ago about including our material in this release, his fourth solo album, which deals with some of the same subjects. We were flattered to receive this invitation from someone whose music we appreciate so much. His razor-sharp wit opens windows on startling vulnerability; his insouciance comes off a thousand times realer than garden-variety hip hop posturing. And we think it’s high time that someone in his position reached out to combine art with radical points of departure: music should offer emergency escape hatches out of this world, not just temporary vacations from it.
\n\nWe’re interested in future collaborations with other musicians, artists, and anyone else who wants to shake things up. But P.O.S got there first, and he deserves credit for that.
\n\nA big thanks to him and his team for making this happen. We’re looking forward to making contact with everyone who learns about our projects via his album.
\n\n[Banner photos courtesy of awesomely enthusiastic folks on Twitter.]
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2012/10/03/crimethinc-european-speaking-tour", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2012/10/03/crimethinc-european-speaking-tour", "title": "CrimethInc. European Speaking Tour", "summary": "", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2012/10/03/bottletourbig.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2012/10/03/bottletourbig.jpg", "date_published": "2012-10-03T04:25:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:28Z", "tags": [], "content_html": "For the next two months, CrimethInc. operatives are conducting a speaking tour in Europe to support the recent publication of CrimethInc. texts in German, Serbo-Croat, Russian, Finnish, and other languages. The discussions will draw on the past decade and a half of CrimethInc. activity to discuss liberation and anarchist strategy in the changing context of the 21st century.
\n\nEmail rollingthunder@crimethinc.com with questions or suggestions.
\n\n2.10. – Bitterfeld (Infoladen „von unten“)
\n\n3.10. – Salzburg (INFOladen Epizentrum)
\n\n4.10. – Zagreb (infoshop Pippilotta)
\n\n5.10. – Zrenjanin (Anarchist Bookfair)
\n\n6.10. – Zrenjanin (Anarchist Bookfair)
\n\n8.10. – Wien (Das Bäckerei)
\n\n9.10. – Linz (AZ Linz)
\n\n10.10. – München (Kafe Marat)
\n\n11.10. – Zürich (Autonomer Beauty Salon)
\n\n12.10. – Basel (Infoladen Magazin)
\n\n13.10. – Winterthur (Infoladen Rabia)
\n\n14.10. – Karlsruhe (Viki)
\n\n15.10. – Nürnberg
\n\n16.10. – Leipzig (Gieszer Lesecafe)
\n\n17.10. – Münster (SpecOps)
\n\n18.10. – Düsseldorf (Linkes Zentrum Hinterhof)
\n\n19.10. – Amsterdam (vrankrijk)
\n\n20.10. – Brüssel (Acrata)
\n\n21.10. – Bremen (Infoladen)
\n\n22.10. – Göttingen (Flaming Star)
\n\n23.10. – Braunschweig
\n\n24.10. – Magdeburg (Libertäres Zentrum)
\n\n25.10. – Rostock (Cafe Median)
\n\n26.10. – Greifswald (ikuwo)
\n\n27.10. – Hamburg (LIZ)
\n\n28.10. – Flensburg (Infoladen Subtilus)
\n\n29.10. – Copenhagen (Ungdomshuset)
\n\n29.10. – Malmo (Amalthea Bokkafé)
\n\n31.10. – Stockholm (discussion of anarchism and sobriety)
\n\n01.11. – Stockholm (regular presentation)
\n\n05.11. – Tampere
\n\n06.11. – Tampere
\n\n07.11. – Jyvaskyla (Vakiopaine)
\n\n08.11. – Turku
\n\n09.11. – Helsinki (University)
\n\n12.11. – Jönköping
\n\n13.11. – Gothenburg
\n\n14.11. – Oslo
\n\n16.11. – Aalborg (1000Fryd)
\n\n19.11. – Berlin (Laidak)
\n\nSince the mid-1990s, CrimethInc. has been one of the most prolific and ambitious anarchist projects in North America. Participants have crisscrossed the continent for countless tours and actions; produced books, magazines, and other literature, including 650,000 copies of the primer Fighting for Our Lives; and reported from the front lines of summit protests, riots, anti-repression campaigns, and other adventurous experiments. Always controversial, CrimethInc. has earned the ire of leftists and government agencies while challenging the general public.
\n\nIn these presentations, longtime participants will reflect on these experiences, presenting material from different eras of CrimethInc. activity and discussing how the context has shifted in the United States. Examining why US anarchists have followed a trajectory from subcultural rebellion towards generalized insurrection, they will conclude with hypotheses about what the future holds. Please join them for a lively conversation.
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2012/09/25/detailed-look-at-recipes-second-edition", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2012/09/25/detailed-look-at-recipes-second-edition", "title": "Detailed Look at Recipes Second Edition", "summary": "", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2012/09/25/rfdcollagebig.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2012/09/25/rfdcollagebig.jpg", "date_published": "2012-09-25T01:01:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:28Z", "tags": [], "content_html": "I’ve wanted to reformat and redesign Recipes for Disaster for more than five years. Shortly after the dust had settled from the second printing, I had enough distance from working on the first edition to start noticing its flaws, or, more accurately, the mistakes I’d made. However, recognizing imperfections and failed objectives isn’t the same as finding solutions, and for years I’ve lived with the book, handling it nearly every day, sending out tens of thousands of copies to people and coordinating subsequent printings—all the while feeling like it wasn’t the absolute best version we could make. I made notes, registered feedback from readers, tinkered with prototype templates in InDesign, and—more than anything else—fretted. Today we announce the availability of the newly redesigned second edition, and holding it in my hands fills me with more than just relief, but also the sweet feeling of satisfaction. We really got it right.
\n\nWhat follows is a beyond-nerdy breakdown of the changes made in the second edition, the reasoning behind the changes, and a look into what led to the shortcomings of the first edition. To do that we’ll have to travel back to 2004, but first we’ll show off a few of the improvements …
\n\nComprised of the same content as the first edition, the second edition has been completely reformatted, starting with its larger page size of 7” x 10”, resulting in a reduced page count from 624 down to 400, and culminating in a book that has a natural balance and is easier to handle and read. In addition, it’s bound using the Otabind method which allows it to lay flat effortlessly, particularly helpful when used as a guide for a task that requires your hands to be free. Both the new size and binding also help make the book extremely durable.
\n\nThe larger images are perhaps the most noticeable improvement: the 152 standard photos and diagrams are 77% and 164% larger, respectively; additionally, a dozen images have been blown-up to half-page size.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2012/09/25/rfd-image-size-diagram-big.gif\")
\nDespite using 4% less paper than the first edition, not only does the second edition include larger images throughout, it also adds twenty-one new photos and a new introduction. It was possible to add content while reducing the overall size by using a more efficient page size with column widths better suited for the task at hand.
\n\nWhile the second edition is a total reformatting of the book, the redesign is only an iteration and refinement of the original design. The primary text has been re-set with improved typography in a narrower column to make for a more readable text. The secondary column has also been narrowed to use the space more efficiently and provide a more complimentary visual presence. The larger page size also allows for more flexibility and discretion in the placement of images and sidebar tips for a less cluttered look and more relevant placement of these ancillary items.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2012/09/25/rfd-page-size-diagram-big.gif\")
\nFirstly, as a self-taught designer my only instruction has been through experience and reflection, both of which I’ve accrued a lot more of in the past eight years. In 2004, Recipes was the second large book I’d ever designed and the first with the complicated set of technical requirements demanded by this content—it’s quite the opposite of the first book I worked on, Days of War, both in it’s rigid structure and the role the design itself was to play in the final presentation. The challenge was to present the information as clearly as possible with minimal distraction and maximum utility while still being visually appealing, with the task of conveying a certain energy and mood being completely secondary. With no budget and a desire to make the book available as soon as possible, I figured things out as I worked on the final, and only, design stage. When I was done, I had learned quite a bit, but I was also finished—unless I wanted to start over at the beginning (which, in fact, I decided to do eight years later). In hindsight, I stuck too rigidly to a format that was also too rigid itself; prioritizing uniformity and grid-like structure at the price of failing to impose a bolder, more expressive style.
\n\nSecondly, it was the first project I’d done with the ‘new’ Indesign CS 1.0 (previously I had used PageMaker, which had been killed off by Adobe), and both I and the program were very raw. There was a steep learning curve, and InDesign itself lacked many of the features that today I take for granted—such as the Adobe Paragraph Composer, which looks at all lines in paragraph when deciding how to split each line in a justified column of text to minimize disruption of letter spacing and reduce the number of hyphens. By simply using the current version of InDesign, the entire 200,000+ words of the text are set in a much more legible and efficient manner, greatly enhancing readability. And by taking advantage of various subsequently added capabilities, the design can be implemented with increased precision and ease, leaving more time and energy to devote to the nontechnical aspects of the work.
\n\nLastly, and most consequentially, I committed a classic novice error: I became focused on a single design concept, committed to the idea beyond any pragmatic concerns, leading me to ignore that the concept wasn’t fully compatible with other principles that were equally, if not more, important to producing the best version of the book.
\n\nOne of the design requirements was to have two vertical columns on each page, one primary column for the main text, and a second, smaller column on the outside edge of the page, home to section titles, tips, footnotes, and the running footer. This meant we could not do the portrait-oriented 5.5” x 8.5” format like our first book Days of War because the page would be too narrow to accommodate two columns. We brainstormed the idea of doing the book the same size, but making it landscape orientation by binding it on the short side (instead of the long side as books are traditionally bound). The unconventionality was too delicious for us to pass up, and we were thrilled to try something that we’d never seen done before. Plus, it’d be the shape of a brick.
\n\nOnce we decided on that format, I never again considered another until this redesign, even when I ran into serious limitations during the design process. We finished the book, and it was good enough and people have seemed to like it. In fact, we’ve never received a single complaint about the design or format. But I can’t look at the first edition without seeing compromises on every page, the product of a stubborn designer just learning his craft.
\n\nOver the last decade I’ve learned to be able to discard a good idea if it isn’t right for the project being worked on, even if tons of time and energy have been invested in it already—it’s a hard lesson to learn, but one that is essential for a designer. Some ideas require much hard work just to reach the point of consideration, but the hardest part is to look at the result honestly, and be ready to discard it if it doesn’t feel right. Finding yourself saying “Aw, fuck. Well that didn’t work like I thought it would,” is the truest sign that you are on the right track. It means you will recognize Good when you see it, and that you aren’t going to settle for less. The following list documents an occasion where I was too attached to an idea to discard it.
\n\nIn our quest to use a wider page by switching to 8.5” x 5.5” in landscape orientation, we ended up with a page that was too wide for the two-column scheme we had decided upon. Needing to utilize the full width of the page, we ended up making the main text column too wide. I was concerned with this even at the time, but felt as though I couldn’t make it any more narrow than I already had without making the secondary outside column too wide itself, and thus wasting too much space on each page. At the optimum size for the typeface we were using, the five inch column width was simply too many characters per line, a basic typesetting mistake that hinders readability. Research shows that our eyes have a difficult time navigating from the end of one line to the beginning of the next when they are too far apart, so our brain has to spend a few extra nanoseconds figuring out where the next line starts and our reading slows and comprehension decreases.
\n\nAnd by attempting to make the main text column as narrow as I thought it needed to be (which ultimately still wasn’t narrow enough), I made the secondary column too wide also. Much space was wasted here as the section titles did not utilize the full width, and there was plenty of unused space in the secondary columns on 99.5% of the pages. This meant that a narrower secondary column would have been adequate and much more efficient; having the secondary column so wide ended up wasting tons of space.
\n\nHaving the wider-than-it-needed-to-be-or-should-have-been secondary column combined with an over-the-top devotion to the grid structure of the book led me to decide that the photos in the books had to be contained entirely in the sidebar. Which meant they had to be small. Very small. Too small. Same things goes for the diagrams, but with even more disastrous results.
\n\nLastly, the page size was too small for a book of such length. As page size decreases, the percentage of the page taken up by margins increases because larger pages don’t need proportionately larger margins. This means that for a book that is naturally going to be very long— where the design aim would be to actually reduce the total volume and weight—a larger page size is better, because it is more efficient.
\n\nThe final problem with the format was only discernible after the book was produced—with its unusual, oblong shape and having more than six hundred pages of heft, the book had poor balance and was simply unwieldy to hold and read. A book that’s hard to read? Why, I do believe that’s a book due for a second edition.
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2012/09/17/recipes-for-disaster-in-english-and-russian", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2012/09/17/recipes-for-disaster-in-english-and-russian", "title": "Recipes for Disaster, in English and Russian", "summary": "", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2012/09/17/rfdbig.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2012/09/17/rfdbig.jpg", "date_published": "2012-09-17T06:19:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:28Z", "tags": [], "content_html": "For many weeks now, our classic all-purpose anarchist cookbook, Recipes for Disaster has been out of stock. We’ve just received a flawless printed sample and are relieved to report that on September 24, a reformatted and enhanced second edition of the cookbook will be available.
\n\nMeanwhile, our Russian comrades have published their own version of Recipes for Disaster, which is available for free downloading. They have added many of their own recipes and adjusted others based on experience. Here, in their own words, are the contents of their version, which provide as entertaining a glimpse into the Russian anarchist context as the time capsule of our 2004 version offers into our own past:
\n\nVariety of Tactics Hitch-Hiking Antifascist Action Affinity Group ATMs - Sabotage Banners Behavioristic Collage Butane Bomb Ventilation as a Way to Hurt Bad People Water Communications as a Way to Hurt Bad People Cell Towers - Sabotage Urban Gardens Graffiti Homes and Offices - Sabotage Smoke Bomb Food Not Bombs Railroads - Sabotage Baked Potato and Mushroom - Dish Incendiary Devices Locks and Other Security Ambush Health Infiltration Infoshop Camera and Film out of the Box (Pinhole Camera) Camera Surveillance and Traffic Radars Collectives of Affinity Groups and Informal Networks Communal Housing Consensus Gig Purse from a Package of Juice Critical Mass Lecture at the University - Capture Power Lines - Sabotage Magic Machinery - Sabotage Mental Health Molotov Guerrilla Theater Planning for the Shares Support for Victims of Domestic Violence Polyamory Decision-Making during the Campaign Opposition to Oppression Ratatouille - Dish Samba Band Self-Defense Sex The Signals Squat Solidarity Caches Technique - Sabotage Stencils Destruction of Asphalt with Trees Falafel - Dish Festival Flash Robes Friganism Really Free Market Protecting Trees with Spikes Shoplifting
\n\nPermit us to emphasize that наши русские намного смешнее, чем их английский язык. We are told that a future version of their book will also include “print-saloon and book making, city gardening, and garbage separating.”
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2012/08/27/notes-on-the-delay-and-the-future-of-rt", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2012/08/27/notes-on-the-delay-and-the-future-of-rt", "title": "Notes on the Delay and the Future of RT", "summary": "", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2012/08/27/9b.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2012/08/27/9b.jpg", "date_published": "2012-08-27T19:39:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:28Z", "tags": [], "content_html": "We won’t mince words, this issue of Rolling Thunder is very, very late. All we can offer is our sincere apology, and an assurance that it was not due to negligence—in the past year we’ve had both a death and a birth here at Far East HQ as well as truly dark times in our personal lives, and our operation, already pushed to the limits of human capacity, suffered greatly. While we’ve managed to keep on top of mailorder and the website, other projects like Rolling Thunder, the Recipes for Disaster redesign and reprint, and others yet to be revealed, have suffered setbacks and delays. Throughout it all, y’all have been very patient and understanding, and for that you have our true gratitude—it made a trying situation more bearable. Thank you.
\n\nWe’ve struggled to find an equilibrium and while not there yet, the thread is in our grasp. We’re beginning to catch up and we can promise an action-packed last third of 2012 beginning now. To begin, we are releasing Rolling Thunder #10 today, which you can read about above. As a token of appreciation and thanks to all of those who subscribed to Rolling Thunder, we are sending this issue free to all current subscribers; in other words, if you subscribed to Rolling Thunder before today, your four issue subscription has just turned into a five issue subscription. It’s the least we could do to reward you for your support in light of the delay.
\n\nSpeaking of transitions, Rolling Thunder is undergoing one itself. Our initial vision was a mass-distributed, inexpensive but high-quality journal that would come out in a timely manner and be a project that simply broke even for us financially. We tried to will it into existence by mass-producing it right from the get go, and offering it at a break even price, however sales never reached the needed levels to be sustainable—as the currently available ancient back issues will attest. RT is still very important to us, so rather than give it up, we’ve decided to print 33% less copies, at the same high-quality, and charge more, which is necessary because as the print-run lowers, cost-per-issue goes up. We believe this model will enable us to keep publishing it until there is no need for RT in this world.
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2012/07/03/mobile-readability-feature-added-to-library", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2012/07/03/mobile-readability-feature-added-to-library", "title": "Mobile Readability Feature Added to Library", "summary": "", "image": "", "banner_image": "", "date_published": "2012-07-03T17:44:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:28Z", "tags": [], "content_html": "We’ve noticed more and more of you are using mobile devices to access this site, so we wanted to point out the increased readability feature we’ve added to our reading library. On each library page, you will see the above icon in the far left menu column; click the icon and that page will be converted to a simple text version optimized for whatever device you are using, with tools to tweak the formatting to suit your tastes. Instapaper (a service we love the shit out of) users will find a link in the text underneath the icon that will save the article to your Instapaper account.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2012/07/03/1b.jpg\")
\nOf course, this is just a stopgap solution until we have time to create our own mobile versions, which is indeed on our very long to-do list. It was our bad luck we did our last major redesign in 2007, just before the iPhone was introduced and when no one was looking at websites on their phones yet—just five years later almost 10% of our page views are from mobile devices. So, we’re working on it.
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2012/03/29/crimethinc-at-bay-area-anarchist-book-fair", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2012/03/29/crimethinc-at-bay-area-anarchist-book-fair", "title": "CrimethInc. at Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair", "summary": "", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2012/03/29/1b.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2012/03/29/1b.jpg", "date_published": "2012-03-29T17:21:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:27Z", "tags": [], "content_html": "We’ll be attending the 17th Annual Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair this weekend for our 13th consecutive time, and, as usual, will have thousands of posters, pamphlets and stickers to give away for free as well as our books and fancy posters for sale. We’ll be there both Saturday and Sunday, so stop on by.
\n\nWe will also debut a new sticker and a brand new experimental publication, Vortext, a journal of philosophy, nihilist performance art, and MAXIMUM ULTRAISM. Vortext will be available for online orders afterwards if we have any left, and the stickers will be available here in bulk next week. We’ll have our new, free postcard, as well.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/images/bookfair/2b.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/images/bookfair/3b.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/images/bookfair/4b.jpg\")
\nThis fall and winter, our operatives will be appearing around the country to speak on the subjects covered in the Work book: the ways capitalism has changed, the new forms resistance is taking, and how to formulate anti-capitalist strategies in the 21st century. If you would like to set up a speaking event, please email help@crimethinc.com.
\n\nTuesday, August 16, 7 pm Reading Frenzy, 921 SW Oak Street, Portland, OR info@readingfrenzy.com (503)274.1449 / more details
\n\nWednesday, August 17, 7 pm Autonomia, 600 24th Avenue South, Seattle, WA / more details
\n\nSaturday and Sunday, August 20-21 Tabling at the Seattle Anarchist Book Fair
\n\nThursday, August 25, 5:30 pm Random Row Books, 315 West Main Street, Charlottesville, VA
\n\nFriday, August 26, 7:00 pm Dream City Collective, Dream City Thrift, 5525 Illinois Avenue NW, Washington, DC / more details
\n\nSaturday, August 27 Frederick DIY Fest at United Church of Christ, 15 West Church St., Frederick, MD
\n\nSunday, August 28, 1 pm - 5 pm Baltimore Free School, 1323 North Calvert Street, Baltimore, MD This will be a full four-hour seminar exploring the subjects brought up in Work in greater depth. Posters for the event are available here.
\n\nMonday, August 29, 7 pm Flying Brick Library, 506 South Pine Street, Richmond, VA 23220 / more details
\n\ncrabgrass.redemmas.org/baltimorefreeschool/crimethinc-seminar-poster+882
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2011/05/22/more-bad-news-about-work", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2011/05/22/more-bad-news-about-work", "title": "More Bad News About Work", "summary": "", "image": "", "banner_image": "", "date_published": "2011-05-22T07:49:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:27Z", "tags": [], "content_html": "The good news is we hope this will be the last update about our difficulties bringing our newest book, Work, into the world, and our next announcement will be that they are finally ready to ship out. The bad news is all the intermittent disasters and disappointments that got us here: we’ve had numerous setbacks and failed attempts to repair the books we had printed, all of which took an absurd amount of time to deliver untenable results to get us to where we are now—basically, right back at zero.
\n\nWork is now being reprinted, and we expect to have copies to mail out mid-June. For the hundreds of you who have back-ordered the book—anticipating, as did we, that they would be available by now—we offer our most sincere apologies. Never did we imagine this fiasco would be extended for so long. You have three options: 1) Do nothing and your book will be among the first ones sent out a month from now, 2) Cancel your order by emailing us, or 3) E-mail us to remove Work from your order, and we’ll ship out the rest immediately (send emails to house@crimethinc.com). Details of the exchange/credit program for people who received defective copies will be announced once we have the new copies in hand. Thanks everyone for your patience during what has been a genuine nightmare for us!
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2011/04/20/work-binding-calamity", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2011/04/20/work-binding-calamity", "title": "Work Binding Calamity", "summary": "", "image": "", "banner_image": "", "date_published": "2011-04-20T06:03:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:27Z", "tags": [], "content_html": "We’re absolutely heartbroken to have to announce that the print run for our new book Work has been discovered to contain a high number of books with a production defect where the front cover can easily become detached from the rest of the book. We’ve fielded enough reports over the last few days to be sure the problem is not isolated, and thusly, we are suspending shipments of the book immediately. We are currently in negotiations with the printer as to how to fix this problem, and it is likely to take several weeks to resolve. You can be sure that until we are certain we have books in hand that do not have the defect, we won’t be sending any out.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2011/04/20/cover1b.jpg\")
\nWhat We Know So Far About the Problem
\n\nFor books that contain the defect, it manifests itself thusly: Initially the book seems fine and by all tests and measures appears to be in good health; the cover is solidly attached, and nothing indicates trouble. However after spending some time actually reading the book and putting stress on the cover, it will simply pop off. The adhesive meant to attach it will be exposed and there will be no tears in the paper or any trauma—it is simply detached as seen in the above photo. At the moment, we still don’t know exactly what happened for this to occur on some books and not all of them, and are waiting to hear back from the printers as to what precisely can cause this to occur. The trickiest part of this defect is that it can’t be detected until the book has been handled for several hours, making book-by-book quality control impossible. Fortunately, because we have a fancy Otabind binding on this book, a cover failure isn’t catastrophic, and the actual book binding remains 100% intact.
\n\nNot all copies are affected, in fact, we believe that most are not—we’ve found more books that are rock-solid than those that aren’t, so if you’ve spent some time reading yours and it still is in great shape, then you have nothing to worry about.
\n\nWhat Happens If You Already Bought the Book
\n\nWe’re particularly sad that this problem will affect our most enthusiastic supporters and early adopters of the new text—it seems incredibly unfair to all involved. You can be assured that if you are affected by this problem, at the very least you will receive a free replacement copy as soon as they are available, at no cost at all to you. We will post an update as soon as we have a system set up to deal with exchanges and credits. Thanks so much for understanding, for your patience, and for supporting us at the first opportunity.
\n\nIn the meantime, there appears to be a simple solution that at least temporarily solves the problem: simply close the book and align the cover properly with the edges of the book, place it on a hard, flat surface and press down firmly on the spine-edge of the cover, running your fingers from the top of the book to the bottom; somehow this appears to bind the cover to the book more solidly than they initially came, and should last through an entire reading of the book, and beyond, judging by our experiences here.
\n\nMoving Forward
\n\nWe are still accepting orders for the book, but they now become backorders. If your order contains a Work book, the entire order will be held until the corrected printing of the book is available, which we expect to be approximately 3 weeks from now. Your card will not be charged until the order is shipped. All paper mail orders we receive for the Work book, starting today, will be held also, even if the order was mailed prior to this announcement.
\n\nUPDATE: New info here.
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