![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2021/12/22/8.jpg\")
Supporters of the striking Kellogg’s workers made these silent agitators to affix to grocery store shelf labels and cereal boxes. For use with Avery brand 8160 Address Labels or the equivalent. Click on the image to download a pdf for printing.
\nRoughly a quarter of workers in the United States quit their jobs in 2021. There has been a lot of talk about a supposed “labor shortage.” In theory, these conditions should be conducive to labor organizing—yet a real strike wave has not emerged. How have employment conditions changed, and what new strategies are likely to succeed in enabling people to stand up for themselves and each other against the capitalist economy? In a forthcoming series of articles, we will explore these questions.
\n\nThis week, workers at Kellogg’s concluded a strike, accepting a new contract that their union declared to be a victory. A notorious anti-work Reddit page played a role in preventing the company from replacing the strikers, pointing the way to a symbiosis between workplace organizing and anti-work subversion. Here, we present a narrative about the working conditions that laborers face in another industry served by the same union.
\n\nCongratulations to the Kellogg’s workers at the end of their 77 day strike! Their struggle is especially close to my heart, because I too was a member in good standing of the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers, and Grain Millers’ International Union (BCTGM) for nearly ten years during the 2000s, during which time I worked seasonally at a beet sugar factory in Minnesota. As a small show of solidarity, I’d like to share an account that I wrote about the job back in 2005, which was printed in the first issue of Rolling Thunder.
\n\nNeedless to say, much has changed since then—in the factory, the town, the union, and the world at large. My account is perhaps most interesting as a snapshot of industrial work at a particular time and place, and of a few of the frozen exploited maniacs who could be found laboring there at the point of production. What has not changed is that life under capitalism is nothing sweet, and that nothing is gained without struggle. Victory to the Kellogg’s workers!
\n\n Supporters of the striking Kellogg’s workers made these silent agitators to affix to grocery store shelf labels and cereal boxes. For use with Avery brand 8160 Address Labels or the equivalent. Click on the image to download a pdf for printing.
\nSo here’s the deal. Every fall I work in this beet sugar factory in western Minnesota. A whole lot of the sugar that goes into all kinds of processed food comes from sugar beets, and a whole lot of those sugar beets come from western Minnesota. The county where the factory is located is dead flat, except for the Minnesota River valley, and it contains precisely three things: corn, soybeans, and sugar beets as far as the eye can see. It’s completely rural, but at the same time, it’s every bit as unnatural as Los Angeles or Disneyland.
\n\nEvery year in September, the beet farmers start pulling their crops. They pull them out of the ground with a combine, load them onto a semi truck, and drive them down to the plant. It takes the plant until spring to process the whole harvest, so they have to store the beets outside in seven gigantic piles, and they have to hire seasonal workers to run the machines that unload the trucks. By the end of the harvest season each one of the piles is bigger than a football field, and up to thirty feet tall. It’s one whole hell of a lot of beets.
\n\nIt’s good money. The farmers pull beets all day and night, unless it’s too hot, or too cold, or too wet. Seasonal workers—beet pilers—work twelve hours a day, every day, as long as the farmers are pulling. This amounts to eighty-four hours a week if the weather cooperates, and the overtime adds up quick. Anything over eight hours a day or forty a week is time and a half, and Sunday is double time. If I live extremely frugally, I can make enough money there to fund my activities for the better part of the rest of the year.
\n\nThe town is exactly like every other agricultural town of its size. There is a bar, a diner, a hardware store, two gas stations, a post office, a library, and a police station. The faces behind the counters almost never change from year to year. The tallest building is the grain silo, and the town ends abruptly where the beet fields begin at the edge of the last family’s yard. If you walk the railroad tracks two miles east you’ll get to the factory. The whole place is ordinary in every way, except that once a year it is crawling with beet pilers.
\n\nThere are three kinds of people that pile beets: the Locals, the Latin@s, and the Kids. Western Minnesota was stolen from its original inhabitants in the nineteenth century, and has been populated almost exclusively by white people of Scandinavian heritage ever since. Recently, however, a lot of Hispanic folks have moved up there looking for work. There is a sizable Latino/Latina minority in both the town and the factory.
\n\nAnd then there are the kids. It’s a strange phenomenon, but every fall the town is overrun with wild looking young people from Somewhere Else with dogs and facial tattoos who work beets because the money’s good and they don’t ask many questions. I am one of them.
\n\nThere really isn’t anywhere in town to accommodate all of us in any conventional sense, so almost every year we end up staying somewhere different. There used to be a fleabag motel down the road that would rent to beet pilers, but they got shut down for copious code violations. Last year about forty of us occupied an abandoned farm just past the outskirts of town. It was sort of like a band of vagabonds descending on a medieval village. I was a little bit worried that babies were going to start turning up missing and that the townspeople were going to come after us with pitchforks.
\n\nOne year, the weather was terrible. Nobody was working or getting paid, and nearly everyone was camped out at the bar for days on end, getting ferociously drunk and terrorizing the town. Eventually the law got involved. But the hell-raising proved to be a surprisingly effective strategy. The next year the company tried really hard to work us no matter how bad the weather got, presumably just to keep us off the streets.
\n\nAnother time, the bartender went down to the farm to hang out with us after work. She rolled up on a grim horde of beet pilers, solemnly skinning and eating a puppy around the camp fire1. She was understandably horrified by this, even after someone explained that the puppy had not been murdered. It had been killed accidentally by one of the larger dogs, and the person who was responsible for it had decided that this was the most respectful way to deal with its death. She always seemed a little wary of us after that.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2021/12/22/2.jpg\")
\nWorking beets can be a positive experience in many ways. There is a real camaraderie and a kind of solidarity that can develop out of living and working and eating and sleeping collectively with a group of people under trying conditions. There are people who make a kind of circuit together throughout the year, piling beets in Minnesota, raking blueberries in Maine, canning fish in Alaska, and doing a variety of other things. It’s one way to make work, and life, a little less alienating and isolating.
\n\nIt can also be terrible. The extreme drunkenness and perpetual drug abuse can get to be a bit much, and working eighty-four hours a week in the freezing cold while sleeping on a pile of straw in a barn for a month and a half without any running water or electricity will really put you in the mood to not take any shit from anyone.
\n\nThe work is really easy. A well-trained orangutan could run a beet piler. You press the same buttons and pull the same levers over and over and over. It’s mostly just really loud and monotonous and cold.
\n\nIt’s also fairly dangerous. You have to keep an eye on all the tweaked out truckers so they don’t run you over. You have to make sure not to fall into the machine. Somebody gets killed on a beet pile somewhere in Minnesota or North Dakota almost every year.
\n\nThe inside of the factory is even crazier. There are unfathomable mazes of incomprehensible machines, catwalks and conveyor belts to nowhere, and ancient engines caked in a foot of beet pulp. There is the deafening racket of a thousand endlessly grinding gears, an entire floor of the factory that is always about a hundred and thirty degrees, and a place called The Pit where no supervisor will ever go. The whole place is completely inhuman. There is no shortage of opportunities to hide—or to get maimed or killed.
\n\nI work outside on the pilers unless the weather is bad, but sometimes I work inside the factory. Here’s a story. One day, I clock in and the bossman gives me a great big squeegee. He takes me to a particular pipe deep in the bowels of the factory which has sprung an enormous leak and is spraying massive amounts of half-processed syrup everywhere. “Mop up this juice,” he says, and then leaves, never to be seen again. So for twelve hours, the pipe runneth over, and I push the lake of juice—which never gets any smaller—down a drain. The drain feeds into a sump pump, which then pumps right back into the pipe!
\n\nAfterwards, while meditating on the absurdity of that task, I watched a couple of guys with a backhoe spend half the day digging a big hole in the ground, take lunch, and spend the rest of the day filling it back in. I started to imagine that everyone there was doing the same thing on some level. The welders cut slabs of steel in half, take lunch, and weld them back together; the mechanics disassemble engines, take lunch, and put them back together; and the whole place is actually a giant meth lab or loss leader for the Mafia. There’s the method to the madness of production for you.
\n\nThe factory is supposed to be owned cooperatively by the farmers, but the evil agribusiness giant Cargill has its hands in the management of it. There was a month-long lockout last summer, when the union overwhelmingly rejected a contract that would have left workers with fewer benefits and higher health insurance costs. The lockout was wildly unpopular, and was eventually resolved, but the town and the factory are behind the times in a lot of ways. I have no doubt that the next few years will see more attempts to bust the union, and more of the downsizing, automation, and outsourcing that have already decimated most of the decent paying industrial jobs in the rest of the country. The beet plant will be an interesting arena of struggle when this does inevitably happen. There is certainly the possibility there for profound alliances to be born out of necessity amongst workers of diverse racial and cultural backgrounds.
\n\nThe beet harvest works pretty well for me, and I keep going back, but I sure am glad to get the hell gone the minute I’m done. As soon as I get there, it feels like I never left, and it only ever takes about a week or so before I start having dreams about beets again. I can’t imagine how hard it must be to stomach working there every day for years on end. I do know that the company had to start making full-time workers clock in by scanning their retinas because so many people were scamming the timecards.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2021/12/22/3.jpg\")
\nLast year, someone started writing “BDTF!” everywhere. Burn Down the Factory! Remember that song by Fifteen? It started turning up on the pilers, in the factory, in town, scrawled in the dust on the sides of cars in all manner of different handwriting styles. Maybe it was just the kids who were doing it, but maybe not.
\n\nMake no mistake about it: sugar is evil. It’s addictive, it rots your teeth, and it’s largely responsible for an epidemic of diabetes among poor people in this country. The process by which it is produced wastes a staggering amount of water, is horrifically destructive to the environment, and is viscerally just plain gross.
\n\nYou can’t have your cake and eat it, too. If you want that sugar, you have to accept that huge amounts of land will be used to grow the beets, that enormous quantities of pesticides and fertilizers will be used on that land, that there will be a sacrifice zone somewhere on a totally denuded moonscape where the factory will go, that some folks will spend the best years of their lives inside that factory, and that a mountain of fossil fuels will be burned to power it. You also have to accept that some doped up crust punk is probably going to poop in the beet pile. In my opinion, it’s just not worth it.
\n\nWhen I first started working at the plant, I swore I would never eat anything with beet sugar in it again. Later, I started thinking about where cane sugar must come from, or corn syrup, or any kind of processed food, period. It all comes from some factory, somewhere. It’s sobering to realize that the whole way that food is produced and distributed in our civilization is so deranged and destructive. The problem is a whole lot bigger than almost anyone cares to admit.
\n\nThere are a lot of good people—including myself—whose livelihoods are dependent on that factory, or on others like it, or on all sorts of other messed up jobs. I wholeheartedly support workers’ efforts to better their lot within the confines of industrial capitalism, but I’ll be honest—ultimately, I’d like to see the beet plant wiped off the face of the fucking earth. I want to give the land a chance to recover, and I want to be part of a society where that would be possible. I know that’s not going to happen without some truly revolutionary change.
\n\nSometimes I will be sitting up in the booth running the piler, looking through the clouds of dust at the pillars of smoke and steam rising out of the factory, and it will hit me right in the chest: two hundred years ago, this was a tallgrass prairie teeming with buffalo, and now here I am like every other white person, trying to make a buck off of this land. I don’t exactly feel guilty about it; I am trapped in this heartless economy just like so many others, and I have to make some compromises if I am going to have any resources to fight it with. If I am going to make those kinds of compromises, though, I do feel a very grave responsibility to follow through on that commitment to fight. I’m willing to bet that I’m not the only one who feels that way.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2021/12/22/1.jpg\")
Burn down the factory.
\nDedicated to the memories of Oakle, Justin, Mosca, Jared, Steph, and Flee—fellow beet pilers who have passed away since this article was first published. You are missed, all of you.
\n\nAuthor’s note: Please let me take this opportunity to assure the gentle reader that I played no part in the puppy skinning. Thank you very much. ↩
\nAs students prepare to return to an increasingly dystopian learning environment, it’s a good time to revisit our assumptions about education itself. What is the purpose of our educational institutions? How deeply do the premises of those institutions shape the ways that we approach learning, even in our “free time”? How else might we go about developing and exploring our capacities?
\n\n“Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten,” B. F. Skinner put it. In other words, the function of education is not to enable the learner to acquire specific skills or knowledge so much as to inculcate certain habits and ways of thinking. In a hyper-capitalist society, in which educational institutions chiefly serve to rank and categorize job applicants, the role of schools is not just to prepare us for the working world, but to resign us to it, reducing our ability to imagine any other form of learning.
\n\nThe following text originally appeared in 2005 in the first issue of Rolling Thunder, our Anarchist Journal of Dangerous Living. In the years since, between declining employment prospects and “remote learning,” the horizon students face has only become bleaker. Today, as an alternative to formal commodified schooling, the internet offers a space in which self-directed learners can acquire information, albeit in an abstract and alienated form. But if we really want to depart from the model represented by authoritarian educational institutions, we have to rethink learning from the ground up.
\n\nTo speak of deschooling is to speak in favor of doing—engaging in self-directed, purposeful, meaningful activity—and against education—in the sense of learning directed from above, cut off from every other sphere of life and carried on under pressure of bribe and threat, greed and fear. It is to speak about people doing things, and doing them better, and the conditions under which this can be possible; about some of the ways in which, given those conditions, other people may be able to help us to do things better, and vice versa; and about the reasons why these conditions do not exist within compulsory, coercive, competitive schools or even so-called alternative learning institutions.
\n\nYour average music student thinks of music as a thing to learn, not a thing to do. Yet despite academies and conservatories, methodologies and method books, pedagogies and pedagogues and millions of rapped knuckles, the proper active verb in relation to the word music is still “to play.” You play music. You can also make music. Playing and making are the essential elements of being a musician. Yet instead of playing and making, the student practices compositions or works on assignments. If you practice, the implication is that you aren’t really doing it. You are always in preparation for when you’re really going to do it. Well, when are you really going to do it? At a lesson for your teacher? For an adjudicator in an exam or a judge in a competition? For parents or friends? Once you’ve really done it and your parent, teacher, or judge lets you know whether you’ve succeeded in making music or not, will you ever want to do it again?
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2021/08/03/2.jpg\")
\nIn a product-oriented society, performance (recording) and performer (persona) become the most important features of music, crucial because they are eminently marketable. The only real music is the stuff that passes the ultimate test of commodification. When you “perform” at a lesson or on request for relations, and you haven’t been practicing and doing the work you know you should have been doing and you fail to perform up to everyone’s expectations—real or imagined, including your own—you feel\nbad. You do not feel like a musician. You may feel like lying. You may dislike yourself and feel guilty. You may resent your teacher and parents for putting you through all of it. You may feel all these things even more intensely if you were the one who wanted the lessons in the first place! Whatever you feel,\nyou certainly won’t feel musical.
\n\nEnforced regimens cannot protect young people from the many failures and tragedies adults have lived through. Music can only be enjoyed on its own terms. The focus on performance initiates a complex of feelings: frustration at doing poorly, resentment that it takes so much work to be “good,” confusion about music not being any fun at all. Ultimately, the student may resist practicing altogether. All this runs counter to the other purposes of playing music: to be “a more well-rounded person,” to acquire another form of expression, to have fun. Outside pressure of this sort is antithetical to learning and living.
\n\nWhat most people call “education” entails the assumption that learning is an activity separate from the rest of life, that is done better when one is not doing anything else and best of all where nothing else is done—\nin learning places especially constructed for learning alone. Most use the term “education” as if it referred to some kind of treatment. Even “self-education” can reflect this: it can be seen as a self-administered treatment. But it is utter nonsense to say that people need to be taught how to learn or\nhow to think. We are born knowing how to do so. We are born with the inclination to play, and in doing so, we do not live a single moment without learning.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2021/08/03/3.jpg\")
\nThe structure of 20th century schooling in the United States dates back to 1806, when Napoleon’s amateur soldiers beat the professional soldiers of Prussia at the battle of Jena. When your business is selling soldiers, losing a battle like that is serious. Almost immediately afterwards, a German philosopher named Johann Gottlieb Fichte delivered his famous “Address to the German Nation,” which became one of the most influential documents in modern history. In effect, he told the Prussian people that the party was over, that the nation would have to shape up through a new utopian institution of forced schooling in which everyone would learn to take orders.
\n\nThus compulsory schooling arrived in the world—at the end of a state bayonet. Modern forced schooling started in Prussia in 1819, with a clear vision of what centralized schools could deliver: obedient soldiers to the army, obedient workers to the mines, well-subordinated civil servants to the government, well-subordinated clerks to industry, and citizens who thought alike about major issues. Thirty-three years after the fateful invention of the centralized learning institution, the US adopted the Prussian style of schooling as its own.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2021/08/03/4.jpg\")
\nCompulsory education is still meeting our superpower society’s need to train citizens for subservience. In addition, education now prepares people for careers in various industries that Fichte couldn’t have imagined in his time. The biggest surprise of all is that education has itself become an industry. In a progressively mechanized world, in which self-checkout at the grocery store and e-ticket computer check-in at the airport are replacing the jobs that once kept citizens busily integrated into society, what can be done with all the surplus workers except to postpone endlessly their entry into the workforce?
\n\nIt is said that today’s high school graduates can be sure that, if they are to have jobs at all, they will perform tasks we cannot even imagine yet. In the limbo between the known and the unknown, there is education. Teachers and administrators can always be employed when other jobs are scarce, and those taught to believe they won’t be ready to live life until they’ve been properly prepared form a ready mass of consumers. Would-be employees spend progressively more and more time competing with one another for an upper hand, an extra point, a longer list of credentials. This is an effective way to divert attention from the impending doom of unemployment and a ready explanation for why people some never get the dream jobs they thought awaited them—they just didn’t study enough.
\n\nOnce upon a time, only the rich and powerful sent their children to school. In today’s credit-based economy, in which everyone is expected to be middle class and most must live beyond their means to maintain this illusion, the education industry has made a killing with a new form of protection racket. In order to be equipped for employment of all but the worst kinds, people must pay thousands or tens of thousands or even more to go to schools that teach few of the skills the job market actually requires. This traps them in debt for decades, forcing them to go on to sell themselves wherever the economy will have them. It’s a highly sophisticated form of indentured servitude. Is there really no more “educational”—let alone worthwhile—way to spend that much money? And would so many students, fresh out of college and desperate to live freely for once, immediately seek employment if they didn’t have such crippling debts to pay off?
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2021/08/03/5.jpg\")
\nMost people born with a parent or two find themselves in the smallest and most immediate socializing institution—a family. From the perspective of the government, this old-fashioned institution is unreliable and unsurveillable. Schools and daycare systems, in complementary compulsory and voluntary models, ensure that children absorb certain values. Accordingly, a wide variety of families, interested in self-governance for any number of reasons, plan ahead to deschool.
\n\nIn pop culture, these homeschooling and non-schooling families are represented as hippies, religious fundamentalists, or extremist freaks. We are told that many of them are rich and white. We rarely see information about homeschooling families from targeted or marginalized demographics. Many of these families prefer to remain anonymous: many Black parents fear that if school authorities discover how readily they’ll remove their children from school, lawmakers will design laws to force them to bring their kids back. Black homeschoolers have cause to fear the government will enact truancy laws, like the fugitive slave laws, that will have a more serious impact on their families than on more privileged ones. It is also likely that, because of greater access to resources, tools, time, and a feeling of being entitled to bend the rules, wealthier and whiter families are more prevalent in the formal homeschooling world.
\n\nOf course, many of the unschoolers out there are isolated in their principles—not only from the system they refuse, but also from their parents. For the sake of deschooling, we should work to rid our minds of the prejudices that would have us view those who drop out of educational treatment as “failures” or “delinquents,” strays who must be caught and brought back into the fold. When we hear these things about school dropouts, we hear them from the point of view of the dogcatchers. Instead, we could view dropouts as refuseniks, conscientious objectors to a stifling and dehumanizing process. Many students whose caretakers defined them as dropouts have since redefined themselves as successful escapees from a useless educational career.
\n\nIn the USA, the vast majority of young people who drop out before graduation are Latino and Black. By the time they leave school, they have been attacked in both soul and body. Understandably, many refuse further “care” after suffering through intensive remedial programs that imply that they are unable to succeed within the system or to make it into society at large by any route approved of by their teachers. In schools that teach them nothing about themselves, they have been forced to learn to fake everything. Many have come to see school as a worldwide soul-shredder that junks the majority and hardens an elite to govern the others.
\n\nThis is the self-consciousness of the truant to which we all may aspire. Let us remove the stigma currently attached to educational underconsumers.
\n\nMost teachers are generous, intelligent, creative people. Some are very talented or knowledgeable in their fields and would be great mentors or friends outside the constraints of school. Many have given up chances to make lots of money because they believe in teaching even though it pays poorly. Especially if they are men, they sometimes endure years of being hassled by their families—“why don’t you find a real career?” Many teachers are terrific people. But the role they are forced to play in school keeps them from behaving as real people in their interactions with certain other real people, that is to say, students. Their talent and energy is drained by the task of constantly telling people what to do. As instructors, these good people scrape their sides against concrete barriers as they take the bureaucratic twists and turns any school requires them to. This is the nature of the fundamental restraints of institutional schooling.
\n\nWhen you have a knowledgeable, funny, or wise teacher, listening to that person weave stories and lectures can be delightful—assuming, that is, that she is “allowed” by the administration to be herself and say what she truly knows and thinks. Unfortunately, this is seldom the case, since most education officials have to worry about offending any of the parents who might not re-elect them, and therefore strive to keep their teachers as mute, mediocre, and middle-of-the-road as possible. Nearly all those employed in a school live in fear of their superiors, because their superiors live in fear of their voting constituency. Democracy! Therefore, all the interesting ideas get censored down to the very lowest common denominator. The teacher can’t say, “Wait a minute, what’s fueling this so-called war on drugs?” because Johnny’s father, outraged, might call the principal to protest that “a teacher, of all people!” is encouraging drug use. Johnny’s father may in fact have serious doubts of his own about the war on drugs, but he isn’t likely to accuse the administration of brainwashing, either, lest others brand him an unfit parent—and a big ship like the Educational Curriculum isn’t easy to bring around.
\n\nSome of the brightest and most radically inclined people you could ever meet become teachers or professors, trying to get their footing in this bureaucratic mud to take a stance. School is one of the few socially ascribed places for “free thinkers” to do their thing. Now that the soil has been poisoned and cemented over and almost all human beings randomly deposited into vehicles, offices, prisons, and hotels, to speak of friendship, god and godlessness, or joint suffering is to be an academic dreamer.
\n\nWhat would happen if, instead of becoming academics who train other would-be academics, we thoughtful folks sought out our peers and sought to engage in mutual influence in more immediate and intentional ways? While opposing all pleas for new forms of institutionalized relations, we can dream of niches, free spaces, and squatted social centers—of tents and plazas and perhaps even occupied schools in which people can gather in groups according to who wishes to take on a project or explore a specific thought together. We can seek to create spaces in which we meet on the basis of a common desire for self-governance, renouncing all integration into any system.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2021/08/03/6.jpg\")
\nLet us rethink discipline. One of the worst things about the arbitrary form of authority we see in the classroom is the way it makes us lose our trust in the possibility of learning from people who know what they’re doing and could share their wisdom with us. When they make you obey a cruel and unreasonable teacher, they can curtail your desire to learn from a kind and reasonable wise person. When they order you to pick up after yourselves in the cafeteria, they can undermine your own freely-occurring sense of courtesy. Imagine a room full of screaming people: truly, it is much easier if they quiet themselves than it is to forcibly quiet them. The way that today’s schools insist on the latter inhibits people from developing the ability to be quiet and attentive on their own.
\n\nLet us reconsider safety. Safety is always a dominating concern for everyone hanging out with young people. But the way to promote safety is to help kids to become stronger and more responsible, not weaker and more dependent. Whether you are a parent or not, consider that responsibility encourages strength, while surveillance and control can foster weakness.
\n\nLet us not discriminate against the uncertified. If we must assess competence for a given task, let us assess it as directly as we can, and not conflate competence with the length of time spent sitting in educational institutions. Those of us who have spent a lot of time in those institutions can do our part to deflate the value of educational currency by refusing to boast of our own “official” educational credentials. Strike these from your self-image; demand that others judge you by your actual talents and accomplishments, the way you would judge others.
\n\nLet us frequent libraries, cooperatives, museums, theaters, and other voluntary, less coercive community institutions. Where they are inaccessible, let us work to make them accessible. Let us create more spaces in our communities where the young, the old, and those in between can get together to pursue un-programmed activities of all sorts. Let us end the policy of shunting young and old into separate institutions “for their own good.”
\n\nLet us spit on exploitative labor of all kinds, not just child labor. For the first several hundred thousand years of human existence, young people meaningfully participated in many aspects of securing the collective survival of their communities. It is age discrimination that mandates that young people must be taught about the world before they are allowed to learn from it by participating in it.
\n\nLet us learn to think again—and make spaces that encourage it! Book culture depended upon stable social circles and spaces in which we could come together regularly, such as coffee shops and periodicals for writers and readers. Today, both books and dialogue itself are opposed by competing media. The screen dissolves the text. The picture and its caption triumph. Silent and sustained attention is constantly interrupted by programmed noises. Specialized school subjects and the school bells dividing them into regular fifty-minute intervals interrupt the thoughts of any individual attempting to think critically inside the school. Our ability to maintain a sustained thought is under attack from movies and social media, from the noise, speed, and information density of our time. Institutions that aim to prepare students for the insane world that exists—these can only smother the ability to think and feel freely.
\n\nWe all have observed ongoing conservative culture wars over “family values.” These “values,” of course, are about kids: precious, obedient, little spittin’ images of upstanding agreeable citizens. People wary of change often fear that the young, the heart of the nuclear family, represent a potentially disruptive force.
\n\nThis suspicion is well-founded. Young people—as anyone who takes them seriously can attest—often demonstrate an ability to draw attention to the political dimensions underlying everyday life: to the dubious pretenses by which authorities, often including parental authorities, establish themselves. Without censure, with the room to be confidently inquisitive and direct, young ones can discern the fundamentals of social relations by unearthing the root—that is, radical—details that betray the reality of those relations, reminding us of the hidden roots of power on which authority rests. Spying that loose edge, they may just pry it back to ask: Why? Why do my sneakers say “Made in Pakistan”? Why are the sidewalks in this part of town crumbling? Why are we supposed to go to school?
\n\nCheck your motives as you interact with those that you assume you know more than. The educator sometimes undertakes the education of the child with such zeal because jealousy of the child’s clarity spurs him on to try to make this other person more like himself. Likewise, he may be spurred on by resentment of the bravery that aids children in calling out incongruence and injustice.
\n\nBecause children are all too often not seen as individuals but as objects, as tofu for soaking up whatever marinade they are placed in, they have been used by people with all sorts of motives as testing grounds for a myriad of half-baked solutions to social problems. “Proper child rearing” techniques have been presented as the means to end poverty, crime, urban violence, and general disorder, among other scourges. The child is taught proper social values, attitudes, and work habits to this end; but if she forgets or refuses her teaching, she is shown that as an individual, she is the problem, not the social system responsible for both her lessons and the social problems against which she is supposedly being inoculated.
\n\nIf we agree that children are good at learning, let our attitude and dealings with young people bear that out. Let us resist the temptation to become educators, to rub the noses of the young in our greater experience by unthinkingly adopting the roles of teacher, helper, instructor. Let us trust people to figure things out for themselves unless they ask for our help. As it turns out, they will ask frequently. People whose curiosity has not been deadened by education are bubbling with questions. The toxicity inherent in education is precisely that so much of the teaching that goes on is unwelcome.
\n\nFurthermore, in support of not only young people but all people, we would do well to nurture more accessible everyday places where knowledge and tools are not locked up in institutions or hoarded as closely guarded secrets. It’s easy enough to offer, without imposition, to share our skills with others. Take on an apprentice. Hang a shingle outside your home describing what you do. Let your friends and neighbors know that you can make such an offer to any serious and committed person.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2021/08/03/1.jpg\")
\nWhen we enter an institution, whether we do so willingly or by force, we often believe we can extract the good things it has to offer and leave the bad ones behind. However, as one Lakota man famously said about schooling,
\n\n\n\n\n“The schools leave a scar. We enter them confused and bewildered and we leave them the same way. When we enter the school we at least know that we are Indians. We come out half red and half white, not knowing what we are.’’
\n
Compromise with institutional influence is usually a fool’s bargain.
\n\nIf you do not wish to institutionalize your mind and heart within the limitations of school, consider also questioning classic love relationships, transportation norms, and other things people take for granted. Accompany your second look at schools with a second look at all things, all the time. Let us not cede the responsibilities we have to one another to institutions. More and more of us consider it reasonable and virtuous to evade being diagnosed, cured, educated, socialized, informed, entertained, housed, married, counseled, certified, publicized, and protected according to the needs instilled in us by our professional guardians. More and more people are finding that the freedom to resist integration into many of our modern systems is sacred to them.
\n\nThough many of us who are hooked on public institutions find ourselves needing to escape entirely from their grasp, you might find you have the inspiration or delusion it takes to live creatively within the belly of the beast. Truly, we all find ourselves living in some chamber of that belly some of the time, regardless of our life decisions. If you are a young person whose parents have enough resources, and they expect you to go to college on their dollar and earn the credentials to open doors locked to less privileged people, think of clever ways to apply this privilege. Obtain the conventional training to become an MD so as to do transitioning surgeries or electrolysis for low-income transgendered people. Go to law school so you can represent people in court who have refused institutionalization and have been charged with crimes for it. Many a marginalized subculture would benefit from free or inexpensive access to the institutional educational training of someone who can do some of the tricky things that are strictly regulated in this society—helping fit someone for a prosthetic limb, for example.
\n\nBut should you be interested in receiving such an education, beware. Like Frodo and the ring, to put an institutional tool in your hand temporarily, even if with the goal in mind of destroying its power, is to risk falling victim to its allure and misguiding principles.
\n\nConsider other ways to use your access to higher education. Maybe you could take the money you would spend on schooling and channel it to another person for whom college is otherwise utterly inaccessible, who does not wish to—or cannot as easily—interact with the world without proving credentials. On the off chance that your parents support your analysis or respect your divergent viewpoints, ask if their money could be used to fund a brilliant project you have in mind.
\n\nTo think seriously about deschooling our entire lives, we can develop the habit of setting a question mark beside all discourse regarding people’s “educational needs” and supposed need for a “preparation for life,” reflecting instead on the historical context of these ideas. Let us question not only the notion that schooling is a desirable means, but also that education is a desirable end. The alternative to schooling is not some other type of educational agency, nor the integration of educational opportunities into every aspect of life, but ways of living that foster a different attitude toward tools.
\n\nEducational function is already emigrating from schools into other sites (on-the-job training, anyone?), and, increasingly, other forms of compulsory learning are being instituted in modern society. Of course, learning itself is not made compulsory by law. Instead, as is typical in consumer society, it is subtly enforced by other tricks, such as making people believe that they are learning something from television programs, or compelling people to attend employee trainings, or getting people to pay huge amounts of money in order to be taught how to have better sex, how to be more sensitive, how to know more about the vitamins they need, how to play games, how to breastfeed, and so on.
\n\nWhat could our lives be if we were to act as fresh waking people every day? Step out of bed to live every moment according to our own self-determination? Eating as we’re hungry, learning how to track down answers, not fearing intimidation from superiors, holding no contempt for the younger, experiencing no anxiety or feelings of inferiority around the older, suffering rarely from boredom, rarely looking to others for approval or critique, nourishing our capabilities to concentrate and carry sustained thoughts?
\n\nThe talk of “lifelong learning” and “learning needs” has thoroughly polluted not only schools but our whole lives. Potent living consists, as it always did, in a patient and steadfast search for truth, and in the unfolding of capacities that are good and beautiful in themselves, rather than simply because they can secure us financial gain. It takes place in a thoughtful shaping of our surroundings, in conversation, in hospitality. Whoever loves such living will not sacrifice the present to an endlessly postponed future.
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2019/03/01/the-battle-for-ungdomshuset-the-defense-of-a-squatted-social-center-and-the-strategy-of-autonomy", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2019/03/01/the-battle-for-ungdomshuset-the-defense-of-a-squatted-social-center-and-the-strategy-of-autonomy", "title": "The Battle for Ungdomshuset : The Defense of a Squatted Social Center and the Strategy of Autonomy", "summary": "12 years ago, the Danish police stormed the historic social center Ungdomshuset in one of the biggest military operations in Danish history—and lost.", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/header.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/header.jpg", "date_published": "2019-03-01T14:24:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:38Z", "tags": [ "squatting", "rapport du force", "Denmark", "rapport de force" ], "content_html": "Ungdomshuset was a four-story autonomous social center located in the Nørrebro neighborhood of Copenhagen. A stronghold of the workers’ movement since the end of the 19th century, it had served the community as a bastion of international squatting networks since the beginning of the 1980s. Twelve years ago today, on March 1, 2007, it was evicted and destroyed in one of the biggest police operations in Danish history. In response, supporters initiated some of the most intense rioting that Denmark had seen in generations. After a week of street fighting and a year of weekly demonstrations, the Danish government was forced to let the movement take possession of a new building. This stands as a major victory, illustrating the power that autonomous social movements can wield by means of uncompromising direct action.
\n\nUngdomshuset is Danish for “Youth House.” The original Ungdomshuset was located at Jagtvej 69—hence the prevalence of “69” tattoos among Danish punks of a certain generation. Most European countries retain at least one social center from the heyday of the squatting movement a few decades ago: Norway has the Blitz, Austria has the EKH, Germany has Kopi in Berlin and Rote Flora in Hamburg, Slovenia boasts an entire occupied neighborhood called Metelkova. Over the past two decades, European governments have mounted new attacks on these last redoubts. In 2007, Ungdomshuset was the first squatted social center of its stature in northern Europe to be attacked; politicians across the continent were watching to see what would happen.
\n\nThe stakes were high. Supporters rose to the challenge, wrecking Copenhagen and teaching bureaucrats around Europe a lesson that they would not soon forget. Today, the Blitz, the EKH, Kopi, Rote Flora, and Metelkova all remain free. All this underscores the importance of establishing a proper rapport de force with the authorities.
\n\nThe strategy of autonomy that we saw in the defense of Ungdomshuset represents an alternative to paternalistic top-down Scandinavian state socialism. In this alternative approach, grassroots social movements refuse all dialogue with institutional power, instead aiming to force the state to relinquish resources and territory so that people can experiment with meeting their needs autonomously. Today, when it has become patently obvious that the state cannot solve the problems capitalism causes, this model may suggest a way forward. Where the previous wave of autonomous movements sought to create preserves in which subcultural rebels could maintain their traditions, we aim to create ruptures throughout society, creating spaces in which it will be impossible for capitalists to continue profiting on exploited labor and the destruction of the environment.
\n\nAn earlier version of this article appeared in Rolling Thunder #5. Many of the photos are courtesy of nathue.dk, who continues to publish photographs from the new Ungdomshuset.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/ungdom.jpg\")
The classic picture of Ungdomshuset, complete with some of its defenders.
\nThe first time I visited Jagtvej 69, in 1998, the whole neighborhood around it was boarded up following riots protesting a racist extradition. Police patrolled the area in armored cars and kept the building surrounded. We were there to play a punk show. After the show, we slept in a room on the top floor that was reserved for bands to sleep in.
\n\nAll night, we heard the police exchanging threats with the punks standing guard on the roof. The pigs had some kind of loudspeaker and they were reading out the legal names and social security numbers of the people they thought were guarding the house. It was a classic intimidation tactic. They may have known that we were in there, too, but they didn’t know our names or social security numbers. We were unfamiliar with the terrain, but ready to fight for the network of squatted spaces that provided us a home everywhere we went across three continents. Worldwide networks like this were essential to making Ungdomshuset a living project—both in peacetime and in war.
\n\nThe last time I visited the old Ungdomshuset, it was fall 2005. It was my fourth time in eight years to perform there with a punk band.
\n\nThe show in 2005 was less tense—just a couple hundred old and new friends enjoying delicious food and rowdy music, everyone from veteran squatters to boisterous street kids cooking and eating and talking and dancing together. As morning approached, our hosts rolled out two long gym mats under the high ceiling of the theater room on the second floor and several dozen of us bedded down on them, sleeping in two long rows.
\n\nThe person sleeping next to me was a stranger, a traveler from Australia who had been to parts of the worldwide network I hadn’t even heard of yet. I stayed awake in the dark whispering stories back and forth with her, not wanting to miss a moment.
\n\nWhen our band played at a state-run center in Sweden the following evening, the contrast couldn’t have been starker. A glass cage was set around the drums to protect the precious hearing of young Swedes. State employees bustled about enforcing a host of Kafkaesque regulations, constantly checking the volume of the bands with a decibel meter. The teenage attendees stood awkwardly between metal barriers, not daring to violate the rules by dancing. We literally couldn’t turn our amplifiers above 1 without officials offering to cancel the show then and there. Everything was over long before midnight, the music consumers returning alone to their atomized individual lives, and the building emptied out and locked. That’s the top-down paradise offered by social democracy—a dystopia in which liability trumps liberty.
\n\nFortunately, not everyone is willing to follow the rules.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/truck.jpg\")
Support demonstration, September 23, 2006.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/dinner.jpg\")
Dinner party at Ungdomshus, October 25, 2006.
\n1897 - November 12. The building at Jagtvej 69 is completed with the name “Folkets Hus” (“The People’s House”) as a headquarters for Copenhagen’s embattled labor movement. Over the following decades, both Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg speak there. In 1910, the Second International holds an international women’s conference at the house, during which Clara Zetkin proposes an International Women’s Day. March 8 becomes International Women’s Day, celebrated worldwide to this very day.
\n\nSeveral historic demonstrations are organized in Folkets Hus, including the massive demonstration in 1918 in which workers storm the Stock Exchange. As late as the 1950s, the building is still used by associations and unions involved in the labor movement, hosting boxing matches, dances, and other activities.
\n\n1971 - September. Fifty activists squat Christiania, an old military compound in the heart of Copenhagen. Over the following years, it becomes home to nearly a thousand people.
\n\n1981. Punks and anarchists form a group called “the initiative for a youth house” to fight for an autonomous space for young people in Copenhagen. At first, they attempt to get a house through legal means, but they are turned down by the local council.
\n\n1981 - October. People squat the empty bread factory “Rutana” and, later, the empty rubber factory “Schionning & Arvé.” Police evict both buildings with tear gas and brutal violence. Next, Abel Catrine-stiftelsen is squatted, which lasts for three months.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/timeline.jpg\")
A banner displaying the history of Ungdomshuset in brief.
\n1982 - March. The former Musical Mechanic Museum is squatted along with the empty building next door Sorte Hest (“Black Horse”). The occupants make clear that they won’t give up without a fight. That spring, even more houses are squatted, including “The Little Feather,” “Bazooka,” and “Allotria.”
\n\n1982 - October 29-31. The city council caves in and hands over the keys to the building at Jagtvej 69 to the squatters movement, delivering them to an undefined group called “the users of Ungdomshuset.” (Rumor has it that when the mayor shows up to the opening party, squatters emptied a bucket of water on his head in front of the flashing cameras of the press.)
\n\nOver the following years, a vast number of musicians play at Ungdomshuset, including Nick Cave, Ice-T, Green Day, Einstürzende Neubauten, and Bjork. The house is in constant use by thousands of people, hosting festivals, dinners, theater performances, meetings, a bar, and a wide variety of musical performances.
\n\n1983 - January. Massive numbers of police storm the “Allotria” squat only to find it empty. For months, the occupants have been digging a secret tunnel; after dropping a banner reading “We decide when we fight” and yelling insults at the police outside, the occupants escape to a plumber’s shop across the street and make their getaway in a truck.
\n\n1983. - Ryesgade 46 and 58 are squatted and remain occupied for three years during negotiations with the local council and the owners of the buildings.
\n\n1986 - September 14. A popular protest stops police from evicting the squatters on Ryesgade. Hundreds of activists dressed in identical work suits and ski masks defeat the police in a series of street battles during which huge barricades are erected. The standoff continues until September 22, when the city government calls on the Danish army for assistance, and the defenders withdraw to pick their next battle.
\n\nNine days at the barricades—a German version of the classic Danish documentary about the battle of Ryesgade.
\n1996 - January 27. A fire damages Ungdomshuset. The building is renovated thanks to volunteer labor and funding.
\n\n1999 - May 6. The city council votes to close Ungdomshuset down. Note that the building was in operation for nearly eight more years after this, showing the extent to which the state had lost control of the situation.
\n\n1999 - June 17. Seven Ungdomshuset activists stage a takeover of the national television news station, spray-painting slogans on the back board of the set; after a few minutes, the news program goes to “technical difficulties.”
\n\n2000 - January 26. The city council puts the house up for sale. The squatters hang a tremendous banner on the front of the building reading, “For sale along with 500 autonomist, stone throwing, violent psychopaths from hell.”
\n\n2000 - November 16. The city council sells the house to a shill corporation called HUMAN A/S.
\n\n2001 - September 28. The extremist Christian sect Faderhuset (“house of the Lord”) buys up HUMAN A/S, after their cult leader has a dream in which God commands her to destroy Ungdomshuset by any means necessary. The squatters refuse to recognize the sale or to permit the self-styled “owners” to enter the building. The battle between Father House and Youth House is on!
\n\n2003. - Faderhuset sues the users of Ungdomshuset, demanding to take over the building.
\n\n2004. - The court rules in favor of Faderhuset; the users appeal the case.
\n\n2006 - The appeal fails in court.
\n\n2006 - May 11. Protest for Ungdomshuset.
\n\n2006 - June 22-25. Ungdomshuset hosts the widely attended K-town Festival and “Bike Wars.”
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/backyard.jpg\")
People hanging out in the back yard of Ungdomshuset during the K-town Festival, June 22, 2006.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/war.jpg\")
Bike wars, June 22, 2006.
\n2006 - September. A fund entitled “Jagtvej 69,” organized by Danes sympathetic to the squatters, attempts to buy the house from Faderhuset to hand it over to the users. Faderhuset refuses to sell. One final attempt is made to get an appeal.
\n\n2006 - September 23. Protest march from Ungdomshuset to Christiania.
\n\n2006 - September 24. Reclaim the streets for Ungdomshuset.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/charge.jpg\")
Police attack on September 24, 2006.
\n2006 - October. The court decides that the users must leave the house before December 14. The last attempt to get an appeal is denied. The chief of police promises that there will be no attempt to evict the house in 2006. Ungdomshuset supporters send out a worldwide call for assistance.
\n\n2006 - October 22. Users of Ungdomshuset visit the offices of Faderhuset.
\n\n2006 - October. Ungdomshuset celebrates the house’s twenty-four-year anniversary.
\n\n2006 - December 12. The fund “Jagtvej 69” offers to purchase the house for several times its market value. Faderhuset once again refuses to sell the house. Even capitalist press outlets express disbelief.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/candles.jpg\")
Support demonstration on December 14, 2006.
\n2006 - December 14. Thousands of people take part in a huge protest for more autonomous spaces in Copenhagen.
\n\n2006 - December 14. A pirate radio station begins broadcasting from inside Ungdomshuset.
\n\n2006 - December 16, evening. An unpermitted demonstration sets out from Ungdomshuset. People from all over the world have come to participate. They only get a few hundred yards from the house when riot police attack, resulting in hours of fighting in the streets and 273 arrests.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/banner.jpg\")
“Ungdomshuset stays.” The front of the march on the night of December 16, 2006.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/beating_vehicles.jpg\")
The police arrive on the night of December 16, 2006.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/smoke.jpg\")
The night of December 16, 2006.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/bikes.jpg\")
The night of December 16, 2006.
\n2006 - December 29. The mayor proposes to move Ungdomshuset to Christiania in the center of Copenhagen. The proposal is turned down, since there is no space available there.
\n\n2007 - January 3. Faderhuset receives permission to tear down Ungdomshuset.
\n\n2007 - January. Liberals protest against Ungdomshuset. Nazis join their protest. Fights break out.
\n\n2007 - January 8. The mayor proposes to move Ungdomshuset further down the street to an old firehouse that is owned by the state. The request is denied by the state.
\n\n2007 - January 13. A house is squatted on Dortheavej, not far from Ungdomshuset. Police evict the place 48 hours later.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/radio.jpg\")
In-house pirate radio at Ungdomshuset, January 23, 2007.
\n2007 - February 3. A house on Grondalsvaenge is squatted, but evicted the same day.
\n\n2007 - February 16. Morning traffic is blocked by protesters with banners for Ungdomshuset.
\n\n2007 - March 1, 7 am. Police and military units dressed as police attack Ungdomshuset in one of the biggest police operations in Danish history. Six officers are lowered from a Navy helicopter onto the roof through the barbed wire defenses the occupants have erected; two cranes lift containers filled with riot police up to the windows on the first and second floors, while fire-fighting equipment from Copenhagen airport sprays the entire building with huge amounts of foam to block vision and prevent the use of Molotov cocktails; one last group of cops breaks through the wall from a building next door.
\n\nThe police say it takes five minutes to secure the building, but in fact it takes them forty minutes before they have succeeded in violently incapacitating and arresting all thirty-five people inside. Within an hour, a hundred people have gathered and riots are breaking out; after another hour, there are 1500 people and barricades are appearing throughout the area, some in flames. The group Feminists for More Free Space is responsible for twelve barricades and for another one later in the afternoon.
\n\n2007 - March 1, 5 pm. A march starts moving towards the building at Jagtvej 69 and the biggest riots in Denmark’s history break out. Activists barricade the streets and set cars on fire to block police vans. The police shoot tear gas and protesters return fire with Molotov cocktails, rocks, and bottles. 217 people are arrested.
\n\n2007 - March 2. A group occupies the headquarters of the mayor’s political party. The police bring in cops from all over the country; police vans from Sweden and Holland are brought after protesters smash the local ones. That night, about 2000 people once again attempt to reach Ungdomshuset; when the police attack, they build barricades and set police vans on fire. The riots spread throughout the city to other parts of Copenhagen. 188 people are arrested.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/11.jpg\")
Anti-Eviction Riots, March 2007.
\n2007 - March 3. Police illegally raid places around Nørrebro; 130 arrests. 13 foreigners have already been expelled from Denmark. Members of the Anarchist Black Cross who had been organizing prisoner support are themselves arrested and their phones shut down; later that day, the Black Cross announces a new phone number. Despite the violence, the support group Citizens Group for Ungdomshuset is swamped with calls from people who want to join; its membership has grown to almost 700 in the preceding days. 2000 people gather for a march in the afternoon. Solidarity demonstrations are occurring all around Europe: over the following days, protesters occupy Danish consulates, shut down highways, and trade projectile fire with police. That evening, riots break out again all over Copenhagen. 76 people are arrested. The cost of the riots is estimated to be $2.7 million.
\n\n2007 - March 5. Masked workers start to tear down Ungdomshuset under heavy police guard; many companies have refused to participate, if not because they support Ungdomshuset, then because they can’t guarantee the safety of their workers.
\n\nVehicles belonging to the companies that tear down Ungdomshuset have their tires slashed, their windows broken, and acid poured on their seats. One of the companies sends its workers home and bills Faderhuset for the damages.
\n\nLate that night, two trucks are burned in the parking lot of the company that has been transporting material from Jagtvej 69. The company, “3x34 Transport,” announces that it is a politically neutral company and “will transport any order no matter the political, religious, or ethnic ground.” Despite this, they choose to stop working around Ungdomshuset: “3x34 Transport will at any time choose to not do work that will pose a threat to the people working in the company, and has, with this in mind, chosen to not take any more orders in connection with the clearing of Ungdomshuset at Nørrebro.”
\n\n2007 - March 6. The cult leader of Faderhuset gives a victory speech in which she announces that the young people of Nørrebro are possessed by demons, but that God was victorious over Satan. She says the next things to fight are homosexuality, pedophilia, pornography, abortion, and satanistic toys.
\n\n2007 - March 8. 4000 people celebrate International Women’s Day, which was first proposed at Jagtvej 69 almost a century earlier, with a march in support of the struggle for Ungdomshuset. The building has been destroyed, but the fight for a new house is gathering steam.
\n\n2007 - March 16. A vanload of police stops by Jagtvej 69 just to piss on the ground where Ungdomshuset used to be. Asked by a bystander if it is not illegal to urinate on private property, the police answer, “We have a very good relationship with Ruth” [the cult leader of Faderhuset]. Meanwhile, the police department admits to having “accidentally” attacked crowds with a potentially lethal form of tear gas.
\n\nAs soon as the smoke clears, Faderhuset puts the property up for sale for DKK 15 million (they’d purchased it for DKK 2.6 million). City councilors express irritation, since Faderhuset had refused to sell the house when “Jagtvej 69” offered to buy it for the squatters, and the riots that followed the eviction cost the state an estimated DKK 72 million.
\n\nIn all, more than 750 arrests took place during the eviction and resulting conflicts, including 140 foreigners. Solidarity actions occurred throughout Denmark and as far away as South Korea. Thousands of people joined the fight for a new Youth House and people from the 1980s squatting movement came out of retirement, organizing weekly protests as the Grey Bloc.
\n\n2007 - May 14. Police enter Christiania to demolish the abandoned Cigarkassen building. Hundreds respond, building road blocks and disabling construction vehicles; when the police retreat, people rebuild the house. By the early afternoon, a few thousand people have gathered in Christiania. Police are patrolling in large groups, sometimes arresting people, sometimes being pelted with bottles and rocks. The police are eventually driven out by a combination of squatting activists and hashish peddlers; they shoot tear gas into Christiania from outside, but a huge burning barricade is erected to keep them at bay.
\n\nIn the course of all this, somebody manages to pour a bucket of urine and feces on police commander “Bjarne Bonelock,” who always handles cases related to Christiania and Ungdomshuset. The fighting continues late into the night, but the police never regain the upper hand. There are 50 arrests; the prosecutor demands they remain imprisoned lest they participate in further disturbances in Copenhagen, which they say is “in a state of rebellion.”
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/empty.jpg\"){kind=spacer}
The empty lot where Ungdomshuset once stood, May 22, 2007.
\n2007 - August 30-September 6. A week of action occurs on the six-month anniversary of the eviction, including several massive demonstrations, a feminist day focusing on self-defense skills, the usual barricading and street fighting and property damage, and a group of children squatting a house at H.C: Oerstedsvej 69 and defending it from the police with pies and water balloons. After the riots on September 1, the US embassy sends warnings to all American citizens in Denmark to keep out of Nørrebro. At the end of the week, there are 69 simultaneous protests at 69 different locations that have the house number 69. Squatting activists have announced that an abandoned water pumping station at Grøndalsvænge Allé 13 will be occupied the following month, using tactics from the G8 summit protests in Germany.
\n\n2007 - October 6. Almost 10,000 people gather in Nørrebro to occupy Grøndalsvænge Allé 13; nearly 1000 have trained for months for confrontations with police. After the march sets out, it divides into four different blocs, each with its own themes and preferred level of risk. The chosen building and the entire surrounded area is full of barbed wire, police, and police dogs. The vast majority of the crowd is explicitly nonviolent, but the police still attack with tear gas, dogs, and batons, even gassing themselves and innocent families at various points. 436 people are arrested, apparently the biggest single mass arrest in the history of Denmark.
\n\nDespite all this, a few hundred people manage to reach the house and raise the Jolly Roger flag from the roof. In the end, they don’t succeed in holding the house, but the mayor announces that she wants to negotiate.
\n\n2008 - April. A massive demonstration called “Blok-R” is planned for April 3 in Copenhagen; the idea is for thousands of people to forcibly occupy City Hall. The action is canceled at the last second, on April 1, when Copenhagen politicians agree to hand over a new Youth House to the movement as soon as possible. The planned occupation becomes a victory party involving 3000 people.
\n\n2008 - July 1. The partisans of Ungdomshuset take control of the building at Dortheavej 61.
\n\n2008 - October 18. The new Ungdomshuset at Dortheavej 61 opens to the public.
\n\n2017 - March 1. A confrontational demonstration observes the ten-year anniversary of the eviction.
\n\nThe new Ungdomshuset at Dortheavej 61 still operates to this day. When we fight, we can win!
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/bannerparade.jpg\")
\nTwenty-eight people are crowded into a one-room apartment. For weeks, people have been meeting at night in parks, playgrounds, and secret places, under starlit skies and in the pouring rain, talking with silhouettes in the dark—making plans to take a house. Tools and materials to board up the building have been stored nearby. The scout group has been watching the abandoned building for weeks now. Three floors, entrance through the cellar.
\n\nSomeone is nervous. After the last meeting, a guy listening to police radio heard them talk about a large group of activists. Are they on to us, do they know our plans? People are drinking tea and coffee, getting ready to leave. We leave spare clothes and personal belongings at the apartment. It’s time. The scout group has already left to see if there are any police by the building. We get the call—the coast is clear. Let’s go.
\n\nWe meet up with the scout group in a back yard a few blocks away. The occupation of this second Ungdomshus has been planned to take place during a demonstration demanding that Ungdomshuset be left alone. The protest is set to start at 2, so we have a few hours to board up the house as well as we can. The protest will end at a nearby square; fliers will be handed out about the new squat, and the plan is that people will seem to disperse and then make their way up to the new second squat. The protest has started; we grab our gear and make our way towards the house. If the cops spot us now, they’ll just think we’re on our way to the protest. However, we’re carrying some pretty large stuff packed onto our bikes: banners, two-by-fours, tools and boards.
\n\nWe get to the house. No cops. Now! Go, go—the door into the cellar has been pried open a few days before. Inside, everybody knows what to do. Banner people upstairs, lookout to the window, barricade people to the doors.
\n\nEvery window was boarded up when the building was left behind, which gives us some cover, but the noise from the stolen power tools and swinging hammers gives us away. Once the house is boarded up, we wait. The giant banner is ready. Everyone has found a crack somewhere in the boarded up windows. A call comes in: the protest has “ended,” but the crowd has started moving towards our location together, not in small groups as planned. We wait.
\n\nOh no. The police have either found a flier or tapped someone’s phone. They arrive in their vans before the protesters do. They form a line, put on their helmets, and attempt to use a moveable fence there to block the entrance. Now the protest arrives. Banner out the window, reading “Now we have two.” Standstill. The cops have forgotten about the back side of the building, and we help people climb ropes to get in. Seconds later, police cars come racing around the corner; cops jump out, put on their helmets, and starts pushing people away.
\n\nIn front of the building, people have started to confront the police. They pull down the fence the police have put up—some make a run for it and get past the police line into the building. Fights break out between protesters and the police, and suddenly a tear gas grenade is fired. None of the cops have their gas masks on; some cop must have gotten trigger-happy. The protesters pull back, but after a few minutes everyone pushes forward again. The cops have given an ultimatum to us: if we leave now, we won’t be arrested. A handful of people with unpaid fines and arrest warrants start to get ready to leave. As the door is barricaded behind them, the cops suddenly get into their vans and leave.
\n\nToo good to be true! More than a thousand people scream in victory. Everyone rushes to the door. A party has started. This is Friday. We hold the house until the cops come back to evict us Monday morning. In just forty-eight hours, the house is transformed into a place with electricity, a concert hall, workshops, and info points. People work on reinforcing the barricades constantly, build chairs and tables in the workshop, and bring in furniture from waste dumps and food from the local supermarket’s dumpster. We held it for only forty-eight hours, but in that short period of time we witnessed the amazing results of what can happen when people work together.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/1.jpg\")
Anti-Eviction Riots, March 2007.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/2.jpg\")
Anti-Eviction Riots, March 2007.
\nI wake up to someone screaming: “EVICTION!”
\n\nFor the past months, people from all over the world have been on watch in shifts. Seven in the morning is the end of the night shift and people are tired from the strain of being on constant alert. We know that the house is going to be evicted at some point as both the police and government have promised, but the waiting game has drained a lot of our energy and in a strange way some of us are actually looking forward to it happening. The barricades separating each floor have been reinforced in every possible way we could think of. Huge plates of metal on wood, packed with wool to fuck up their chainsaws. Every window is boarded up with strong metal netting to prevent the pigs from shooting tear gas through the windows.
\n\nI’ve been living here since the international call went out announcing the protest in December on the original date of the eviction. The protest was a show of force, a taste of what was to come if they evicted the house. Thousands of people from all over the world came, and as the black bloc of two thousand people started to march, we only made it three hundred yards before the police blocked the road and all hell broke lose. The riots lasted for hours and several hundred people were arrested.
\n\nI sit up in my sleeping bag and almost immediately my eyes start to burn from the tear gas that has been fired from the roof. I reach for the gas mask next to me and get up. Some people are running up the stairs and some are running down them. People are yelling everywhere. Someone is fighting off cops on the floor above. I am having problems getting my mask on. I spot my friend coming down the stairs. It’s getting hard to see anything as grenade after grenade of tear gas explodes inside the building, now on every floor it seems. He helps me with my mask. My eyes burn and my lungs hurt. Last night, there was a concert, and a local band missed their train, so they slept in the house. We divide into two groups: a group that will sit and wait for the cops, since they are not really there to defend the house, and a group that will see what we can do to hold it as long as possible.
\n\nTo the roof! Not possible. OK. Barricades closed. Where are they? Explosions seem to be going off everywhere. Further down the back stairs, peep through the door on the second floor. Shit, they’re everywhere. Even further down: a hole in the wall—so we did hear something last weekend! To the basement, board up the door. Nowhere else to go. They’re outside the door. We can hear the group that sat down to wait behind the bar start to scream. Fuck, what are they doing to them? Fucking pigs.
\n\nThey start to break down the door. We back into a small room in the back of the basement and close the door. They have broken through the outer door. Final showdown. No way out. “Let’s give ’em hell!” Everyone screams as they start to break through the last door. Total chaos. A huge fight breaks out in a cramped basement full of tear gas. A cop screams. I can’t tell what is happening until I am being beaten to the ground with a blow to the head from what feels like police baton.
\n\nThey sit us down in a row and rip off our gas masks. People are starting to throw up, screaming for air; a few pass out. A young guy is being lifted up and carried out by four anti-terror police officers. He is no longer conscious; some of the cops beat him unconscious in the fight. They let us sit there in the basement filled with tear gas long enough for a few of us to sustain lung damage; more of us temporarily lose our sight.
\n\nThey take us one by one out to their transport police bus, which is parked in the beautiful trashed backyard behind the building. Police are everywhere. I look back at the house and I can’t even focus on the building. It isn’t until hours later that I regain my eyesight, and it’s several days before I can breathe normally.
\n\nI never saw the house again, only on television from my prison cell as they tore it down, my heart filled with anger and sorrow.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/3.jpg\")
Anti-Eviction Riots, March 2007.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/4.jpg\")
Anti-Eviction Riots, March 2007.
\nEveryone has their story about the days. I’ve heard the most amazing tales of victories and great escapes, and there is no way I can pass on all that happened during the first few days of March. We had two days in freedom, during which the police were fought off and we held the streets, even though we didn’t get to take back the house. I can only tell my own story.
\n\nI moved to Copenhagen in November to organize for a possible eviction. I’ve hoped all along that the city council would change their minds and find a solution to the situation—but since my faith in the state is really non-existent, I prepared for an eviction.
\n\nI meet with my friends as soon as I hear about the eviction. I have to get in contact with a lot of people and write some indy news updates, but my friends go as close as they can get to check out the situation. They come back a few hours later to tell me that so far it’s very unorganized, there are massive numbers of police, and they seem to have the upper hand.
\n\nSo we wait until 5 pm. We meet up with the rest of our group at Blaagards Plads, where the protest is to begin. I can’t believe my own eyes. For the past months, there have been more and more people showing up at the protests to save Ungdomshuset, but this is completely insane. I would say there are more than 5000 people gathered here today. Many masked and in their affinity groups. We have not been the only ones waiting for this. Let’s take back our house! Tonight we will celebrate in Ungdomshuset once again. We start to move down the small street that leads to the main road. As the protest turns the corner onto the main road, three police vans are parked across the road in an optimistic attempt to block 5000 people. We don’t even get into throwing range before the first stones and bottles fly through the air. The front of the protest starts to run towards the police vans, and they quickly turn around to get away.
\n\nWhat the fuck—there are Nazis on the sidewalk about a hundred yards down the street! 200 people charge the 20 Nazis, who run like they have never run before. The police vans have blocked off the street a little further down. The march speeds up moving towards them. Rocks and bottles smash down upon the front windows and they start to back up slowly down the street. Charge! A few hundred protesters from the front attack the police cars and chase them further down the street. Oh no, it’s a trap—police vans have been waiting in a street off the main road. “PULL BACK!” Everyone starts to run back, but the police capture about 70 people—mostly bystanders, press, and some young kids. Still, they bragged of this as a great success on the evening news, though afterwards they were not able to convict any of the people caught in this maneuver.
\n\nBarricades now! The cops keep driving straight through them, so set them on fire. Block the streets to the main road. Bounce cars out on the road. They are not going to catch any of us in a trap with that tactic again. Check out the graveyard along Jagtvej. Break the locks. Damn, there are a lot of cops in there. Police dogs. No good. Move back a little. Stash the bags. Get out the map. OK, two construction sites nearby. Three parks. Remember, in the back of every block of buildings there are big trash containers. Let’s get them out. Bottle recycling container: tilt it, get it open. Who has the screwdriver? Dig out the dirt around the paving stones. Let’s get them out there. Get some crates and shopping carts from that supermarket. OK. We can get through the blocks here and here. This building is locked, but X— has a key. Down this street, just ring the doors, people hate the pigs here—they will help us.
\n\nCan’t wait until it gets dark.
\n\nThe protest has been fighting the police back and forth for some hours now. Bouncing cars out onto the road is a great way to block off the street—but if tear gas is fired or people leave to go fight somewhere else, the cops just bounce the cars back and regain control of the street. People have started to set the cars on fire to prevent this. They may have 25 police vans, but they only have a couple fire trucks—and those have to be guided by police vans, and they can’t do anything until people are gone.
\n\nThey want us off the street. They have started shooting tear gas at every crowd of more than 20 people. On our way back to our bags, we are hit by a huge cloud of tear gas. No time for maps. We can’t run since we can’t see. We dive into a courtyard behind a building—the gate is locked. We can hear the cops exiting their vehicles. A door opens a few meters from us: “In here,” a man says. In this part of town you can almost always trust people, as most people living here really hate the police.
\n\nWe crawl through the doorway into a basement. All around us, people are lying on the floor with tears in their eyes and gas in their lungs. Break out the lemon water, pass it around. It helps a bit. We start to breathe again. After ten minutes, the guy leads us through the basement and into the courtyard. “Use these,” he says, pointing to the trash containers. We peek out of the gate at the main street: the cops are further down the street—busy trying to get away from a huge crowd! Into the streets with the containers. People everywhere. The containers are set on fire. From where we are standing now, we can see more than five burning barricades. We need a break. We go back and get our bags, then head for the park. We need to get something to drink, rest for a while, and make plans.
\n\nConstant sirens, exploding tear-gas grenades, fireworks being shot back. Back onto the streets. Fires everywhere. Flashing lights. It’s getting late. Tomorrow another protest is planned. We start to head back. All the streets connecting to the main street have flaming barricades and burning cars in them. We heard rumors that the fighting has spread to other parts of the city to draw the police away from Nørrebro. At Christiania, about a thousand people have built barricades and are now battling police. We need more information. Back to the house. Phones, internet, television. Constant updates; the news shows the police losing control of the situation. My favorite clip shows the chief of operations telling an interviewer that everything is under control while people are screaming in his face that he should get the fuck out of their neighborhood and explosions are going off in the background. We hear that people from all over the country are on their way. The protest tomorrow could be even bigger than the one today.
\n\nWe go dumpster diving to get something to eat; we hear constant sirens and explosions from the other side of the railroad tracks while we visit out favorite dumpsters. We get back, quickly cook up a meal, and eat. We can’t stay here, we have to go see what’s going down. We check up on friends to see who has been arrested and who is still at large. Oh no—some of our friends were on watch as they stormed the house this morning, so a few of ours have been arrested.
\n\nWe hop on our bikes and ride the short distance to the Nørrebro train station at the end of the street. Even all the way down at this end of the street there are burning barricades. We park our bikes behind a building. The cops are once again driving up and down the street at top speed to confuse people. It’s not really working. We get some information from people coming down the street: further up, a group of several hundred people is trying to reach Ungdomshuset, and is fighting the cops close to Runddelen. Look out for undercover cops—they roam the streets in large groups. Luckily for us, those bastards are usually easy to spot.
\n\nThere are people everywhere. Many have come to see what is going on, and since it’s Thursday, also known as Little Friday, there are lots of drunk people out. They have quickly learned that the police only race back and forth, so they’ve joined in building barricades, throwing rocks, and bouncing cars.
\n\nThe police are mostly at Runddelen square, trying to fight off the many groups trying to get there. We have to take the backstreets. Every street we pass has burning cars and barricades in it or firefighters trying to put them out—but not much police. We turn off the streetlights as we advance by kicking the light posts so they go out—we might need to hide. We spot about 50 people running around the corner with three police vans close behind. In here! We have this building marked as having an unlocked gate into the courtyard. Everyone inside. Get out a bike lock: gate is locked. The cops come running bur they can’t get in. The tool they need to cut the lock is in a special van that is nowhere around. “Shit!” the cop at the gate yells. Someone throws a bottle at the gate; the cop shrieks and runs back to the van with his colleagues. They drive off. They might try to get around the building. Let’s go.
\n\nWe don’t get far before we spot a group of people sitting on benches at the far end of the courtyard. Some of them have gotten up to see who we are, and we see they’re holding clubs and baseball bats. “Too bad—it’s not the cops,” one of them says. These guys had locked three out of four gates and were waiting for police to enter the courtyard so they could beat them up. They help us out through the back of the building and out onto the street again. People have changed clothes.
\n\nThe street is dark. We head for the main road. There we go. More than a thousand people have reclaimed a large part of the main street between two barricades too big for the police vans to smash through. Banners supporting Ungdomshuset hang from windows, people are holding their ground, defending the barricades with pieces of pavement every time a police van comes too close. The police have changed tactics: instead of driving really fast up and down the street, they’ve now retreated to just defending the Runddelen square.
\n\nAfter hours, the fighting seems to have died out a bit. People share stories of the day, affinity groups huddle up, there is a people’s kitchen in the middle of the street. We help gather rocks by the barricades, handing out sweets we found in the dumpsters earlier. Someone is jumping around on a barricade that is not yet burning—on a unicycle! We pass out information about the info points to everyone we hear speaking languages other than Danish. We start to head back to our bikes, turning off the streetlights as we go. Almost every backstreet still has burning cars and barricades, not much police down here.
\n\nAs I lay down with the TV still on, there is a special bulletin: police have been fought back outside Christiania. Damn, I can’t sleep, I wish were there. The activist news ticker is constantly updated on the computer. I finally fall asleep.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/5.jpg\")
Anti-Eviction Riots, March 2007.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/6.jpg\")
Anti-Eviction Riots, March 2007.
\nGet up. We eat and talk about yesterday. We all have things to do this afternoon before the big protest this evening. On the television, the police chief of operations tells us that everything is now under control, hundreds have been arrested, he thinks people have given up. Oh my, if he only knew. They show scenes of burnt cars, bourgeois citizens talking about how horrible it was with big smiles on their faces. They loved it, you can see it in their eyes: finally something happened. I have to help out by the info point this afternoon and help out with the internet update afterwards. We plan to meet up later. Police are still everywhere. They look tired. The theme for today’s protest is “follow the green flag.” I can’t wait.
\n\nI take the bus, and I can’t help smiling every time the bus hits a bump in the road from where one of yesterday’s burning barricades left a deep scar in the asphalt. I hear amazing tales at the info point. Dozens of people were unarrested last night, even more made a run for it with their hands cuffed behind their backs with plastic strips. Three or four police vans were damaged by upside down benches with their legs at an angle. Cement in the exhaust pipes of other police vans. I help the Food Not Bombs group prepare for dinner. Thousands of people from all over the country and the rest of the world.
\n\nI meet up with my group at Sankt Hans Torv, not far from where Ungdomshuset is. We talk about the events that took place here in 1993, when the police fired 113 shots at unarmed protesters after a rigged second vote to begin the European Union. As we turn the corner, we can’t believe our eyes: we are a half an hour early, and the square is already filled with people. Police vans are all around down every backstreet. We share a beer; I brought some food from the kitchen for my friends.
\n\n5 pm. The square is not big enough to hold all the people that have arrived. The protest van is playing music. Suddenly, plainclothes cops are trying to arrest someone wearing a mask. They get bottles thrown at them and quickly make their escape. Police vans start to move in. Tear gas—plenty of it. Part of the crowd pulls back a bit; folks with kids are helped down the only backstreet without police in it and are given lemon water. The police van closest to the square is starting to move forward when a brave soul hurls a Molotov at the front windshield. Two more follow soon after. More gas. Rocks and bottles hit every van in sight. Bottles full of paint hit the police vans in an attempt to blind them. Even more tear gas grenades go off above the crowd. We run into the surrounding streets. There’s the green flag. Let’s go.
\n\nTowards the main street. If the cops thought the gas would make people give up and go home, they have another thing coming. Some people have scattered into the smaller streets behind the main street; we are in the main part of the protest that remains as we turn out into the main street.
\n\nThe second we get to the main street, a barricade of huge trash cans, a few bikes, and two benches turned upside down is built to block the police from attacking the back of the protest. We bounce two cars out onto the road just before we reach the main street. We walk towards Ungdomshuset. We can see it behind the trees of the cemetery just next to it. It’s right there, just behind those 500 police officers with helmets and batons at the corner of the street. We hear an explosion nearby. Is it gas? No, must have been fireworks or a car set on fire. More police vans speed in down at the corner. They know if we get past them, the house is ours again. The protest stops just in front of the police line. They are wearing gas masks. BOOM! Gas fills the streets. So do rocks from the pavement. Screwdriver between the stones of the sidewalk. Dig up the dirt; when one stone is removed, every other stone can be picked up. Folk science passed down for generations.
\n\nMasks on. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy. Someone spots plainclothes police inside 7-11. They always guard those fucked up shops. Rocks shatter the windows. More gas. People start to run. Cops move in. Let’s go!
\n\nWe run back a bit. Just as we pass a building, a women in her forties pops her head out the gate to the courtyard. “In here,” she says. Furniture that has been thrown out and about six garbage containers. Furniture into the containers—go, go. Out on the street. We smile and thank the woman for helping. “Give ’em hell boys,” she says before closing the gate again. A simple lighter won’t set this ablaze. Two people who helped get the stuff out on the street run to the next 7-11 down the street. “Be careful, check for cops!” we yell after them. The store has boards over every window but is still open. If someone steals a bottle of flammable liquid tonight no cops are going to come stop them. There are people everywhere. Mostly protesters, but also a lot of people using the riots as a night on the town. People nearby cheer as the flames ignite the living-room-themed barricade. We need to find a larger and tighter group of people so we can do what we came here for and take back Ungdomshuset.
\n\nBlaagards Plads, a square in the middle of social project housing—there we go. More than a thousand people have gathered here, burning barricades with flames reaching up three stories in the air. We snatched a few bike chains earlier. Time to turn out the streetlights. After a few attempts, the bike chain wraps around the wires on the pole. Sparks. Darkness. Here come the cops. The van stops, the door opens, and more than twenty rocks hit it. The door closes. “Don’t let them get out to fire gas,” someone yells. People move forward. Let’s get them out of here. More vans arrive. Same deal. The cops drive a bit down the road and turn to try to flank us.
\n\nIn this part of town, we have kids with cellular phones on every corner, so we are constantly updated on where the cops are, as it is shouted out whenever someone gets a call. We pass on the information in English, calling out directions in place of street names. They can’t get through the end of the street we’re on, so we head back as the cops try to get up to the other end of the road. As the first van turns the corner up the street, a Molotov hits the street right in front of it. It stops just long enough for rocks to start flying. They back off. No gas yet. A lot of the locals have no interest in taking back the house; they want to stay and fight the cops here. Fair enough.
\n\nBy yelling, we gather a few hundred people that want to try to take back Ungdomshuset. Where is everyone else? Some think people have gathered in Folkets Park (“People’s Park”) just on the other side of the buildings next to us. Some think they are out in the streets blocking them off, in smaller groups.
\n\nLet’s go. First Folkets Park. Sure enough, a big crowd has taken hold here. The streets are blocked by burning barricades and people are making plans around a big fire in the middle of the dark park. We can’t go trough the cemetery—earlier today there were hundreds of cops hiding in there, some with police dogs. All the gates are locked and we need to move a lot of people fast if we are to have a chance. No good. What’s left? There are the main streets on either side of the cemetery, with a lot of cops in them; their tactic is still to speed up and down the streets and shoot gas at crowds of people. The backstreets then. The lights are off in most of them. There are a lot of places to hide and escape through, and hopefully other people there as well. So far, we have mostly seen people building barricades and defending them when the cops come rather than gathering to try to take back the house.
\n\nOff we go. We pass the main street. Six or seven burning barricades have sprung up since we were last here. Down the backstreets. We meet smaller groups of people; most are doing their own thing and have no interest in joining us. We lose some people that want to stay behind, hoping for a larger group to show up. We need more people. No cops here. We can hear their sirens out on the main street as we move through the darkness. A trail of bounced cars and hasty barricades appears behind us as we move. We get to the other side of the Runddelen square right next to Ungdomshuset. Still no sign of the several thousand people that were in the protest when it started. Well, there are people everywhere, but not in a large group.
\n\nHere, police are using a different tactic: they drive their vans down the street, and when they get close to a large group they jump out and start to run towards them. Then people start to run—that is, at least the first couple times. We discover that they are not really doing anything but running a bit, then returning to their vans.
\n\nNo gas so far. We hope that they haven’t run out. Last time that happened, in 1993, they started shooting people instead. Still no sign of the crowd—until we get a call about people gathering back where we just came from. Damn. We hold a meeting in the middle of the street, mostly with people we’ve never met before. We share our information, as we’ve noticed that police are no longer driving up and down the street but instead have positioned themselves at Runddelen next to Ungdomshuset. In case some of the people we are meeting with are cops, we are all masked; some help out translating the meeting into English for the many activists from outside the country.
\n\nWe decide to take the direct route towards the place we just came from, hoping that the people gathered there are starting to move towards us from the other end of the main street. The cops have parked their cars front to front blocking the street; at least they won’t suddenly come speeding towards us. A few people stay at the corners of the streets we pass on our way to the main street, in case there are other cop cars trying to creep up behind us. We’re getting closer. BOOM! That was the gas. The wind is at our backs, so since they shot it over us it has no effect. I climb a street sign to see if there are people moving in from the other side of the police line. No luck. Now what? The cops outnumber us big time. From where we stand we can see some cops starting to throw something at us. They have been known to throw rocks before. But as their small tear gas hand grenades goes off, we know this is not the case. No escaping the gas this time.
\n\nHard to breathe, no eyesight. We know they have more than one kind. This kind is really bad. Back up. Stay together. People help the ones that were gassed the worst. The cops are staying put; guess they just thought we got too close. Time out. Breathe easy. Rinse with lemon water. We need to find more people. Don’t use phones. Some people want to go back to other rally points. We need a top view of the city. We find a scaffold down a street and climb to a rooftop.
\n\nMy heart skips a beat when I take in the view: there are barricades burning everywhere, all over the city. The blue flashing lights are now only down at the square near Ungdomshuset. We can see people everywhere, but no larger crowd prepared to follow the original plan of taking back the house. We share a beer and a cigarette here on top of the world. No one says much. We just take in the sight. Never before in my life have I seen something as beautiful as this. We are all tired. We head home for the night.
\n\nThe TV is on. Tonight people took back the streets all over the city. At the free town Christiania, the police were beaten back with rocks, paint bombs, and huge burning barricades. As I fall asleep, I think of my friends who were inside the house. I hope they are OK. The TV showed some images of unconscious people being carried out of Ungdomshuset yesterday by anti-terror police as they evicted the house.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/7.jpg\")
Anti-Eviction Riots, March 2007.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/8.jpg\")
Anti-Eviction Riots, March 2007.
\nI wake up late. My phone is ringing. The cops have attacked ten places looking for foreign activists. They kicked in the door and tear-gassed the legal “Bumzen” squat. More than a hundred arrested. The total count is more than 600 now.
\n\nThe cops lost a lot of police vans last night, so now they have brought in extra vans from Sweden and Holland and extra police from the entire country. Last night, the police really lost control. There was a chance—if only we had been able to stick together and take back the house. It seems the police are really organizing towards not letting people take back the streets today. All through the morning, we get more and more news. The police are now driving around the streets in masks and arresting anyone they think looks like an activist.
\n\nWe continue following the updates. So many people arrested, so many more cops. It doesn’t look good. Early in the evening, we head towards Folkets Park. We get a few kilometers up the main street and by that time we have already seen two people pulled into police vans. There are plainclothes cops everywhere. We decide that we don’t want to take the chance right now. We exit the main street, move across the railroad tracks, and head back home. Unless we know we have a gathering of some kind to go to, we will not go anywhere. The police are pissed about getting their asses kicked last night, so tonight they take it out on everybody they see. Some political parties want to put the army on the streets.
\n\nSaturday night brings a few rocks and barricades, more arrests, but nothing like the previous two days. Sunday brings a strange calm in the city. Images of charred cars, smashed windows, and broken police vans are all over the news. I return to help out at the info point. The stories people have to tell really scare me. The leader of Faderhuset went to inspect Ungdomshuset. Cops have already been tearing out windows and things from inside the building. The sect has decided to tear it down, and the demolition begins. The square nearby is filled with people crying, the cemetery wall has “REVENGE” written all over it.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/9.jpg\")
Anti-Eviction Riots, March 2007.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/10.jpg\")
Anti-Eviction Riots, March 2007.
\nWhen the building lay in ruins, everyone agreed that that was just the beginning. And it has been. Since the eviction, there have been weekly protests demanding a new house, and at the beginning of September, on the six-month anniversary of the eviction, the entire city was hit by riots again. The movement has exploded in numbers, and now counts thousands from all over the country and the world.
\n\nNothing is over. It has only just begun.
\nFootage of the resistance following the attack on Jagtvej 69.
\nWe carried out this interview with an anonymous organizer from Ungdomshuset in the months between the eviction of Jagtvej 69 and the establishment of a new social center at Dortheavej 61.
\n\nDescribe the organizing that went into the defense of Ungdomshuset. Was it centralized or decentralized? What was the security culture around it?
\n\nFirst of all, this is my version. Since the meetings are still going on and need secrecy now more than ever, I’m going to be very general. It’s kind of a touchy subject, but here goes.
\n\nThe organization grew out of the weekly Monday meetings, where most things are decided in large groups. They used to be mostly about who would handle the sound system and stand at the entrance for concerts, things like that. But as the situation got worse and worse, they ended up being almost only about the coming eviction and how to deal with it.
\n\nMany groups used the Monday meetings to present ideas and ask for help or advice. In the months leading up to the eviction, “touchy subjects” were brought up in the meetings by masked people, since the press had sneaked in a few times.
\n\nThe Monday meetings are closed meetings, in that you don’t talk about what is going on at the meetings unless it’s something really trivial. Such things are never spoken of on the phone or online. This is a level of security that has been generally agreed upon after years of experience. So the organization is closed, but still open to most people. Sometimes smaller groups meet separately, too.
\n\nThe Monday meetings are still going strong now without Ungdomshuset.
\n\nWere there conflicts over tactics? How were they handled?
\n\nThere were no conflicts inside the group itself. Everyone pretty much agreed upon the line that was chosen. The disagreements that occurred were handled in the Monday meetings. These sometimes took all night, when there were heavy decisions on the agenda.
\n\nWhat can you say about the defense strategy?
\n\nPlans were made for several scenarios of what might follow the eviction. I can’t get into the plans themselves or how people were organized inside or outside the house, as many are still on trial.
\n\nNo one thought the house could actually be defended—everyone agreed that if the cops wanted to get in, they would get in. All those who chose to stay and defend the house could do was buy people outside a little time. The fortifications were the best they could have been; they would have held off a “normal” eviction attempt long enough for people to show up and fight off the police, but it was the biggest joint police and military action in Danish history.
\n\nThe attempt to take the house back after the eviction got close. But there were more people distracting police and defending barricades than trying to get to the house. On the night after the eviction, the police lost all mobility for some hours and had to retreat to the square beside Ungdomshuset to keep it from being taken back. More “official” organization towards retaking the house after the eviction might have had another result.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/rocksinhands.jpg\")
\nOne German organizer, asked whether the defense of Ungdomshuset helped create momentum for the 2007 G8 protests in Heiligendamm, claimed that in fact the eviction was met with so much resistance because of the mobilization building up to the G8. What do you think about the connection between the two?
\n\nAny connection is news to me. The only connection I could imagine is that there might have been more people from outside Denmark to resist the eviction, although it was not my experience. My guess is that there were more people from outside Denmark at the big protest on December 16, 2006, the date originally scheduled for eviction, than during the eviction itself. There were many protesters from outside the country, but the vast majority of demonstrators were from Denmark.
\n\nWhat kind of preparation led up to the eviction? Why do you think so many people got involved? Is there is a new momentum for resistance in Denmark now?
\n\nThe movement around free spaces has exploded in form and numbers, but as far as I know it was not a planned event or strategy that got people involved. It was as if people had been waiting for a cause, and the threat of eviction was some kind of spark.
\n\nIn my opinion, a lot of different factors contributed to the resistance reaching the scale it did. Denmark has a long history of social-democratic rule. This in itself is not a good thing, but it did provide a sort of political vacuum, a standstill that was ended when the liberals came into power along with the most racist political party this country has ever seen. For years now, they have cracked down on alternative subcultures and spaces, “civil rights,” schools, welfare institutions, and immigrants and asylum seekers. This created a volatile social situation.
\n\nUngdomshuset had been used by thousands of people over its twenty-four-year existence. My older sister helped squat houses in the 1980s and was one of the people who received the keys to the building. I’ve spent many years of my life eating, socializing, and playing music there.
\n\nSo the building has been important to a great many people—and even though many of them now work high-paying jobs or have moved on in their lives, they never forgot that part of their lives. This was the majority of protestors: people from around sixteen to their early forties who had a direct connection to the house or a political opposition to the eviction. Another segment of the defenders were there not so much to protect Ungdomshuset as to get back at the racist and intolerant state and police—and they fought tooth and nail, too.
\n\nDenmark has a few freetowns, such as Christiania; they aren’t totally free, but they are self-controlled and self-organized. There is a connection between Christiania and Ungdomshuset, a sort of common counterculture. And even more people have a connection to Christiania than to Ungdomshuset, due to the fact that for many years marijuana was practically legal there. This is sad in that self-organization should be reason enough to form a connection with the place, but it’s better than nothing. The point is, there exists a popular understanding of and respect for places like Christiania and Ungdomshuset. Don’t get me wrong—most people are raised to work, buy, and die here as well—but it’s something.
\n\nPeople gained a lot of experience in the year leading up to the eviction. There was a series of pirate parties, in which abandoned buildings were squatted for a night to party in; every time, the police showed up after some hours and riots broke out. Many of the protests in the year leading up to the eviction had resulted in the same thing—so many people had learned, firsthand, a great deal about the slow and heavy arm of the law.
\n\nIn the months leading up to the eviction, a festival was held that included skill-shares such as how to build tripods and how to move cars into the road by “bouncing” them. I’m pretty sure it was an American that taught the workshop on tripods; one was used in a squatting action this past weekend, in fact. As for the cars, when people saw the police just got out of their vans and bounced them back, they started setting them on fire too.
\n\nSince the eviction, there is a protest every week. Just this weekend, hundreds of people went to stop the annual Nazi protest for Rudolf Hess, and hundreds more squatted a building two days in a row. The fight has become a battle of resources, and the police are having a really hard time. Some days ago, the spokesmen of the police unions said that they are having serious problems maintaining a constant state of readiness. Cops are having their days off revoked, and there are strict laws against that. They are also having problems keeping up with the massive manpower needed to control the weekly protests and the late-night actions organized by text messaging.
\n\nThe paper ran an article the other day based on a police investigation, stating that the movement for a new Ungdomshus and the anti-authoritarian counterculture has exploded since the eviction—so now it is thousands of people, whereas the police originally had believed that the movement would die out in a few months.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/show.jpg\")
Packed show at Ungdomshuset, November 2, 2006.
\nI’ve visited the new Ungdomhus at Dortheavej 61 several times now—once just to see the place, once to play a show, and a few times since then to speak on revolutionary politics. Most recently, I dropped by during the K-town festival to offer a presentation. With all the attendees around us fitted out in their best punk rock finery, my traveling companion felt awkward: “People are going to look at us and think we’re not punks!” It was true—anywhere else, we would have looked pretty punk, but in that company, we looked positively square.
\n\n“Are you kidding?” I answered. “There’s only one reason people who aren’t punks would be in a space like this. They’ll see us dressed like this, like we have nothing to prove, and they’ll know immediately that we’re dangerous anarchists!”
\n\nSeveral young punk rockers participated in the discussion following the presentation. There was also one older gentleman in a tie-dyed shirt who didn’t seem to have much in common with the others. At first, I assumed he had just walked in off the street at random.
\n\nAfterwards, I realized that no one just walks in randomly off the street during the K-town festival. I went back to find him and start a conversation. It turned out that he was part of the original generation that participated in the movement that won control of the building at Jagtvej 69 in the beginning of the 1980s. When it comes to judging people by their fashion, I should have listened to my own advice. Almost 40 years later, he was still involved, hanging out at the punk festival.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/3882546816_ab29f59ccd_b.jpg\")
For years, this classic graffiti could be seen near the old Ungdomshus.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/3379928525_7d994b8d9e_b.jpg\")
After the eviction, this new take on it appeared in the neighborhood.
\nThere are major differences between the Denmark of two decades ago and the US of 2019. Social movements in Europe benefit from relative continuity, in contrast to the disconnection between generations that characterizes the USA. Police repression in the United States also tends to be harsher than in northern Europe—not only because the punishments are more draconian, but also because the social fabric that supports defendants is looser.
\n\nIt’s important to understand that spaces like Ungdomshuset remain as the remnants of powerful autonomous movements that peaked decades ago, before the latest cycle of gentrification made the inner cities so valuable to capitalists. Many of these social centers are now situated in thoroughly gentrified neighborhoods, far from the underprivileged communities they exist to serve. Likewise, victory made the movements around some of these spaces complacent, leaving the participants focused mostly on maintaining their little bubbles of autonomy rather than attempting to change the world.
\n\nStill, now that most anti-authoritarian movements no longer focus on defending specific autonomous spaces but rather seek to attack elements of the ruling order, it’s a good time to see what we could learn from the past to strengthen our current practice.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/taunt.jpg\")
Supporters of Ungdomshuset taunt the police on September 24, 2006.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/throw.jpg\")
\nThe defenders of Ungdomshuset offered a broad array of options for those who wanted to participate. There were nonviolent marches, decentralized militant actions, and multiple organizing structures, and by and large these complemented each other. This meant that people from many generations and walks of life were able to participate without getting distracted by conflicts over tactics.
\n\nThe success they had in delaying the eviction and forcing the mayor to invite them to the negotiating table shows once again that direct action is the most efficient and effective way to exert leverage on governments and other unaccountable forces. By standing up for themselves, the occupants gave their claims to Jagtvej 69 a legitimacy they would never otherwise have had in the public eye. Had they politely asked to keep the building, they would have gotten nowhere; had they inquired of the general public whether or not it was OK to defend it with militant tactics, they would have been urged to submit to the rule of law, however unjust. Only by presenting militant defense of the building as a foregone conclusion were they able to compel others to take them seriously.
\n\nIn doing so, they bought themselves more time to make their case to the world, and forced the bureaucrats to figure the tremendous costs of a violent eviction into the city budget. This had the effect of winning public support for a peaceable, just solution to the conflict, rather than scaring away potential supporters the way hardline pacifists allege militant tactics always do.
\n\nSeeking leverage on governments doesn’t necessarily legitimize government itself—so long as such leverage is obtained by direct action and would-be leaders are not permitted to hijack it, this is simply a survival strategy in a world in which governments still hold a lot of power. We can halt the destructive effects of hierarchical power only to the extent to which we are able to manifest a horizontal counter-power. The more we do so, the more freedom we win for ourselves and others. The riots in Copenhagen not only secured the squatting movement another building—they also provided a deterrent for other European governments considering whether to evict other squatted social centers, protecting many other longstanding autonomous projects for several more years.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/foodprep.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/servingfood.jpg\")
The kitchen at Ungdomshuset, October 21, 2006.
\nThe story of Ungdomshuset shows the power of sustained radical projects in which people develop common reference points and trust. Long-running autonomous spaces offer positive examples of what we’re fighting for; many people find these more motivating than purely oppositional struggles.
\n\nBetween increasing reliance on the internet and a penchant for reactive one-off events, US anarchists often underestimate the importance of having consistent physical spaces to gather in. When such spaces incarnate generations of radical history, they can be incredibly focusing and inspiring.
\n\nSubculture and collective creative activity played a fundamental role in setting the stage for the defense of Ungdomshuset. It would be impossible to imagine the eviction riots without the preceding decades of Danish squatting, punk rock, hip-hop, and youth culture. The conventional critique of radical subcultures is that they isolate dissent, but in this case they provided fertile soil for it to germinate, ultimately catalyzing an upheaval that extended beyond their frontiers. Perhaps this was possible in this case because the subcultures in question draw the resources that sustain them from their confrontations with capitalism, not their participation in it. There’s a big difference between do-it-yourself punk shows in squatted buildings and would-be rock stars playing for-profit clubs.
\n\nAn idle critic might charge that by defining the terms of the struggle around the defense of a cultural center, the subcultures of the participants ended up limited the scope of the uprising. Even if this is true, people who have not had the empowering experience of using direct action in a specific struggle are unlikely to attempt to use it to change the whole of society all at once. Limited conflicts like the struggle around Ungdomshuset enable people to develop a sense of their own power so they will eventually be ready to fight for even more ambitious goals.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/emptystage1.jpg\"){kind=spacer}
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/emptystage2.jpg\"){kind=spacer}
Housecleaning, October 14, 2006.
\nThe battle for Ungdomshuset offers a localized example of the kind of mass confrontations usually associated with summit protests like the G20, yet it lacked many of the shortcomings critics cite in the latter. Summit protests often seem to occur in a vacuum, drawing people from disconnected communities to participate in a spectacle that doesn’t directly contribute to ongoing local efforts; in contrast, most of those who threw rocks and set fires in Copenhagen were building existing relationships, contributing to an ongoing project that continued after the smoke cleared.
\n\nThe organizers astutely used international support for Ungdomshuset to create a situation that radicalized local participants. By inviting anarchists from all around the world for the march on December 16, they succeeded in setting a tone for pitched confrontation that carried over to the eviction the following spring—even though fewer internationals were present then to swell the numbers of avowed anarchists.1 Just as the role Ungdomshuset itself played in igniting widespread social struggle shows that the cultivation of subculture can sometimes catalyze resistance, this demonstrates that radicals can sometimes help to trigger generalized revolt despite being quarantined in the “radical ghetto.”
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/nightcrowd.jpg\")
\nThe second time I visited Ungdomshuset, back in 1999, we arrived early, long before the show was to begin. My friend and I sat in the candlelit bar, listening uncomprehendingly to the squatters’ weekly meeting in Danish. At one point, the grizzled veteran nearest us noticed that the candle beside him had burned down to the mouth of the glass bottle that held it. We watched as he absentmindedly took a new candle and held the base of it over the sputtering flame until the wax was soft. Then he turned it around, lit the wick with the last dim flame of the old candle, and pushed the softened end of the new candle into the mouth of the bottle.
\n\nIt was a simple, distracted gesture, but the two of us watched in awe. We didn’t speak of it at the time, but years later we discovered that both of us had experienced it as a profound image of renewal.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/candle-bw.jpg\")
\nThe police reduced that building to dust, a vacant lot. From its ashes rose another autonomous space and new social struggles and new adventure stories—even here on the other side of the Atlantic, dear reader, if you so desire.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/03/01/ung_intro.jpg\")
A classic mural inside the old Ungdomshuset.
\nA Story of Punk & Resistance: The Battle for Ungdomshuset—The report from the #52/53 double issue of the classic anarch@-punk magazine, Profane Existence.
\n\nThe strategy of raising expectations with a series of escalating actions has been used effectively in the United States as well—for example, in 2005, in the series of anti-G8 solidarity demonstrations in the Bay Area. ↩
\nNearly thirteen years ago, we started publishing Rolling Thunder, an anarchist journal of dangerous living covering social movements, direct action, and creative experiments in autonomy around the world. Between 2005 and 2015, Rolling Thunder chronicled everything from the Danish squatting movement, immigrant labor in Canadian factory farms, and the origins of Nietzsche’s theory of the eternal return in 19th century French insurrectionism to anarchist participation in the Ferguson uprising and the defense of Kobanê. Whether you wanted to find an anarchist analysis of sex work or hour-by-hour maps documenting the street clashes during a global summit, Rolling Thunder was the ideal resource. You can download issues 1-7, 9, and 10 for free from our archives; issues 8, 11, and 12 are still available for purchase. Here, we explain why we are concluding the project, what the options are for subscribers, and what comes next.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/02/08/rolling-thunder-spreads.jpg\")
\nSeveral factors have contributed to our decision to stop publishing Rolling Thunder. The demands of responding to constant crises over the past couple years have played a part, as have shakeups in our collective. We’re busier now than ever before—but most of that energy is going into online publishing and preparing our next books. The biggest factor is financial: in order to keep Rolling Thunder affordable, we intentionally set the price well below the break-even point. That means we have lost money on every issue. More than a decade into the project, that eventually began to add up. We have never focused our energy on fundraising, so we need to conclude Rolling Thunder and figure out a better plan.
\n\nIf you are a subscriber, we can offer you three options:
\n\nIf you do nothing, we will accept your balance as a donation to CrimethInc. and use it to fund other projects.
\nSend an email to rtsubs@crimethinc.com and ask for the balance of your subscription to be turned into credit on our online store.
\nIf you’d like an actual refund, we can send it via PayPal. Email rtsubs@crimethinc.com requesting a refund and providing a PayPal email address to which we can send the funds.
\nWe would still like to produce high-quality print versions of all the material that we are publishing online. However, to make a print periodical like Rolling Thunder financially feasible, we would have to raise thousands of dollars up front for each issue. If you can assist us with this, please contact us.
\n\nThis decision doesn’t indicate that our commitment to this work has diminished one bit. We will use any resources that we can get our hands on to continue doing what we do. We have a lot of plans for the future and our most ambitious work is still ahead of us. Thanks for all your support, trust, and patience over the years.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/02/08/1b4.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/02/08/1b1.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/02/08/1b-2.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/02/08/rt9-collage-largeb.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/02/08/2b1.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/02/08/rt6download2b.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/02/08/rolling-thunder-6-close.jpg\")
\nBut how do we bring about these confrontations? How do we ensure that they strengthen us more than our enemies? What pitfalls await us on this road? And what else do we have to do to make our efforts effective?
\n\nOver the past few years, a small current has gained visibility in US anarchist circles prioritizing the themes of insurrection and social conflict. Like any ideological milieu, it’s a lot more diverse than it appears from a distance. Some strains emphasize confrontation for its own sake, rather than as a means of achieving reforms; others frame revolt as a means of building the power of the oppressed outside static organizations. The common thread is that all are critical of formal institutions and focus on attack as their central theme.
\n\nHow effective are these strategies at achieving their professed goals? To answer this question, we can’t simply study insurrectionist theory in a vacuum; we have to look at the activities associated with it in the US context. In practice, it’s not always easy to tell where strategic considerations leave off and matters of emotional and psychological temperament begin; in this case, both are relevant. Much of what we will discuss below is not so much a matter of what insurrectionists say but of what they do.
\n\nThis subject is of particular interest to us because we are insurrectionists of a sort, whether or not we use that adjective. For well over a decade, we’ve focused on confrontational struggle based in individual initiative, informal networks, and ad hoc organization. Starting with shoplifting and vandalism and working up to streetfighting and clandestine direct action, we’ve learned the advantages and disadvantages of this approach on our own skin. One is always most critical of what is closest to one’s heart: most eager to see it succeed, and most concerned about potential errors.
\n\nIn some ways, this is a very old line of thinking—perhaps older than some of its adherents realize. One genealogy traces its origins to the dispute between Marx and Bakunin over the organizational forms of the Paris Commune. Some insurrectionists see precedents in the propaganda of the deed carried out by Nineteenth-century assassins and the illegalism associated with Jules Bonnot and his fellow bank robbers. We can trace the lineage of current insurrectionist theory from Errico Malatesta and Luigi Galleani through the works of Alfredo Bonanno, Jean Weir, and others who attempted to distill lessons from the social struggles of the 1960s and ’70s.
\n\nAt the same time, the latest wave of insurrectionist ideas is something of a new phenomenon in the US, where the high turnover rate in most anarchist communities often dooms them to relearn the same lessons over and over. One can hardly blame the new generations for this—if anything, the older generations are to blame for dropping out or refusing to communicate. Seasoned anarchists have to be especially cautious not to be dismissive and hostile about the enthusiasms of their young comrades. Ten years ago, we were the upstarts whose new energy and muddled ideas provoked all the testy veterans; we were able to learn from some of their criticisms, no thanks to them, but their disdain contributed to our defensiveness and their marginalization. If we accept roles on the opposite side of this dynamic now, we may doom those who come after us to repeat the same pattern.
\n\nIn that spirit, let’s start with the advantages of insurrection as a point of departure.
\n\n\n\n\nAttack is the refusal of mediation, pacification, sacrifice, accommodation, and compromise in struggle. It is through acting and learning to act, not propaganda, that we will open the path to insurrection, although analysis and discussion have a role in clarifying how to act. Waiting only teaches waiting; in acting one learns to act.
\n
—“Insurrectionary Anarchy: Organizing for Attack,” in Do or Die #10
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/images/insurrect/insur2_b.jpg\")
The answer is always no.
\nMany organizations and movements, including some that are explicitly anarchist, promise to challenge the powers that be as soon as the groundwork has been prepared; but the world is always changing, and one may lay a foundation only to discover that the terrain has shifted. Once one gets used to waiting, even if it is only a matter of needing to prepare a little more, it is always easier to go on waiting. Revolution, like parenthood and everything else momentous in life, is something one can never be adequately prepared for.
\n\nOften, this preparation is framed in terms of the need to do more outreach and education. But until there is a clash, until the lines are drawn, there is nothing to talk about. Most people tend to remain aloof from theoretical discussions, but when something is happening, when the stakes are high and they can see concrete differences between opposing sides, they will take a stand. In forcing such ruptures, one can compel those who hide authoritarian and capitalist allegiances to show their true colors, while offering everyone else the opportunity to form other allegiances.
\n\nSometimes one has to aim beyond the target in order to strike it. Perhaps in the pacified US, some have to decry all compromise and deliberation to resist co-optation and paralysis. By interrupting the apparent consensus and social peace, confrontations make injustice visible and legitimize the rage others feel as well. When the fog of apparently universal submission is dispelled, those who wish to fight can finally find each other—and readiness to fight is a better basis for allegiance than merely ideological agreement.
\n\nThe form of one’s immediate actions should match one’s long-term goals. Theoretical elaborations give rise to more of the same. Focusing on winning reforms tends to contribute to the development of reformist logic. If you want to destroy all forms of domination, it’s best to confront them all from the outset.
\n\n\n\n\nInsurrectionary anarchism, therefore, places particular importance on the circulation and spread of action, not managed revolt, for no army or police force is able to control the generalised circulation of such autonomous activity… What the system is afraid of is not just these acts of sabotage themselves, but also them spreading socially.
\n
— ibid.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/images/insurrect/insur3_b.jpg\")
Every action that dispels the illusions of order and resignation is a spell cast for more of the same.
\nAlmost all strains of insurrectionist thought emphasize the importance of revolt spreading. This is one of the best standards, then, by which to evaluate insurrectionist efforts.
\n\nIf both postponement and action tend to give rise to more of the same, then in acting oneself, one extends an invitation to others. This is an argument for carrying out actions that others can easily emulate, in hopes that they will catch on.
\n\nThat’s the idea, anyway. Sometimes, of course, anarchists carry out an action others could easily emulate, but no one does. What other factors enable an action to inspire more actions?
\n\n\n\n\nWe are insurrectionalist anarchists… because rather than wait, we have decided to proceed to action, even if the time is not ripe.
\n
—Alfredo Bonanno, The Insurrectional Project
\n\nIt is an article of faith among most insurrectionists that one should not wait for the appropriate material conditions, but should attack immediately. As a defense against the sort of postponement described above, this makes perfect sense; as a moral obligation or an axiom to govern every decision, it can be dangerously counterproductive.
\n\nInsurrectionist theory allows for this, but in practice insurrectionists do not always make the wisest choices. This is one of the cases in which it can be difficult to differentiate between insurrectionism as a program with concrete goals and insurrectionism as a matter of disposition. To react immediately against oppression without thought for the consequences is beautiful, and perhaps a way to recover one’s humanity in a desensitizing world—but it is not always strategic.
\n\nThis does not stop some from posing it as strategic. People who grew up in a society founded on Christian notions of moral law often argue for their own preferences as universally valid prescriptions. It’s surprising how judgmental people who claim to reject morality can be!
\n\nSo is insurrectionism a religion, or a strategy? If it is a religion, its precepts are timeless and unconditional: categorical imperatives. If, on the other hand, it is a strategy, developed under specific conditions, we should think hard about how those conditions might be different from ours, and how we should adjust it accordingly.
\n\nWhen Bonanno originally formulated his analysis in the 1970s, Italy was in the midst of an upheaval that threatened the entire social order; authoritarian and anti-authoritarian currents intermingled and contended in the course of struggling against the government. He was not making an argument for precipitating clashes where there were none so much as proposing an organizational strategy to ensure that ongoing clashes would promote liberty and autonomy. Contemporary US anarchists reading texts such as Armed Joy do not always understand this, interpreting them instead as a challenge to escalate tactics on a personal basis.
\n\nOf course, in a society based on competition and exploitation, there are always clashes, however subtle. One doesn’t have to precipitate new ones; it is enough to fight where one stands. Unfortunately, the insurrectionist imagination is often limited by the most well-known models for attack. Imagine an insurrectionist who goes to work or school during the week but smashes bank windows on the weekends—hesitating to create a rupture in the fabric of her own daily life while willingly risking felonies to destroy things outside it. If such a lifestyle could make sense, it is an admission that one must still choose carefully when and how to “proceed to action.” We’re not convinced it does make sense, but that doesn’t mean the insurrectionist in question would be better off immediately smashing the windows in her own workplace.
\n\nIf “proceeding to action even if the time is not ripe” doesn’t mean picking up the closest heavy object and attacking the nearest person in a uniform, what does it mean? How do we decide what kinds of action are most worthwhile?
\n\nOn Mayday, several dozen masked hoodlums rampage through an upscale shopping district in downtown San Francisco, smashing windows and setting off fireworks. Afterwards an anonymous statement on Indymedia reads, in part:
\n\n“De Beers, Prada, Coach, Tumi, Wells Fargo, Longchamp, Macy’s, Armani, Crate and Barrel, Montblanc, Urban Outfitters and Guess were all targeted for all kinds of boring ass political shit, but primarily because fuck them. Exploitation is the norm of economic activity, not the exception. We see no need to reveal our laundry list of grievances and solidarity.”
\n\nMuch has changed since the communiqué from the ACME collective following the black bloc at the WTO protests in Seattle. In 1999, the ACME statement was widely read and debated, influencing the politics of a new generation that saw more sense in opposing corporate power with crowbars than with signs or lockboxes. A decade later, black-clad anarchists are miraculously still finding ways to smash windows, despite ever-increasing surveillance and repression—but the communiqué, if not the action itself, seems to be directed only to those who understand and approve of the tactic.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nParticularly to be avoided are the cultural and activist circles… All milieus are counter-revolutionary because they are only concerned with the preservation of their sad comfort.
\n
Historically, insurrectionist anarchism has centered around a rejection of static organizational structures. In the US, where long-standing anarchist organizations are not particularly common or powerful, it has recently come to be framed more as a reaction against cultural factors. Some insurrectionists conceptualize their position as a break with what they consider to be hopelessly passive and assimilated anarchist subcultures—bicycling as an end in itself, potlucks that never end in streetfighting, and so on. Some take this further, dismissing the very idea that subculture could have any radical potential.
\n\nWhat does it mean to dismiss subculture? Culture is as ubiquitous among human beings as language; you can challenge it, you can even destroy it, but you generate new culture in the process. In general, this dismissal does not seem to proceed from some mystical doctrine that we could escape culture per se, the way that John Zerzan preached a primitivist utopia without language, but rather from a reaction to the subcultural identifications of the preceding generation of anarchists. As explored in Rolling Thunder #8, by the time today’s young anarchists came of age, the punk scene that sired so many of their predecessors had come to be dominated by reactionary elements. Faced with this, rejecting one subculture was not enough—why not reject subculture itself?
\n\nYoung insurrectionists are not the first to attempt this: one can find similar rhetoric in books like Days of War, Nights of Love. Before an idea wins many proponents, it’s easy to declare that it transcends subculture, as it is not incarnated in any particular social context. Once it gains adherents, however, things get more complicated. In all likelihood, the proponents will share subcultural reference points—how else would they have encountered the idea?—and failing this, they are bound to create common points of reference in the course of attempting to put the idea into practice. Culture is simply a matter of points of reference, and the more obscure they are, the more “subcultural”—in this regard, ideological insurrectionism is a significantly more subcultural current than, say, the vegan straightedge scene.
\n\nActual insurrections can transcend subcultural boundaries in ways that theories do not, of course; likewise, cross-cultural spaces can sometimes create fertile ground for uprisings. There’s a lot to be said for forging bonds between different communities in struggle, demonstrating that resistance is not the sole province of any one demographic. Were it not for the homogeneity of most insurrectionist circles, it would be possible to read this criticism of subculture as an argument for cross-cultural spaces, rather than as an underhanded way to promote yet another new subculture. There is no such thing as a zone free of cultural identifiers—efforts to stay free of cultural limitations must begin by integrating multiple cultural contexts rather than pretending to be outside all of them.
\n\nPerhaps, like the authors of the aforementioned Days of War, some people have to espouse a grandiose opposition to culture itself just to feel entitled to get something new off the ground. But eventually, when that new something has gotten going and become subculturally identified, they will need a critique that acknowledges this—otherwise, they are bound to be quarantined and neutralized like their predecessors. Those who think they can discount culture entirely are trying to throw out the baby with the bathwater—an especially difficult project when you’re the baby.
\n\nThis dispute about culture parallels the much older dispute between insurrectionists and anarchists who believe in building long-term institutions. The latter argue that insurrectionist criticism of institutions is founded on the notion that formal structures are inescapably hierarchical, but counter that this analysis provides insurrectionists with no tools to challenge the subtle hierarchies that develop in informal networks. Decrying authoritarian tendencies and cultural complacency in competing ideological milieus is no proof against falling prey to them oneself.
\n\nSo, are all subcultures “only concerned with the preservation of their sad comfort”? Perhaps this is simply a matter of semantics, of calling social circles that are only concerned with preserving their comfort “milieus.” Is there a positive role that subculture could play in fomenting insurrections?
\n\nLet’s return to the question of how action proliferates. As pointed out above, simply doing things that “anyone else can do” is not itself enough to spread resistance. The premise of this approach is that others who share similar frustrations will see the actions and understand the strategy embodied in them, and that this alone will move them to action. But this takes for granted that the actions will be visible and the strategy comprehensible across cultural lines; it also disregards the ways that desire is determined by culture as well as class.
\n\nMany of the assassins who killed presidents and tsars over a century ago passionately believed that these actions would inspire the oppressed to rise up. Clandestine “armed struggle” groups have sometimes used the same logic. One common insurrectionist critique of these groups is that their actions are too specialized; but this does not explain why more easily reproducible tactics often fail to catch on. Another critique of armed groups is that they separate themselves from others so energy and ideas cease to flow; this seems more to the point. One could argue that the circulation of insurgent desires and values—essentially a cultural phenomenon—is as indispensable for the proliferation of revolt as gasoline is to a Molotov cocktail.
\n\nFor example, over the past few years, North American anarchists have carried out clandestine attacks on ATMs, bank windows, and other targets; this is currently one of the best-known templates for insurrectionist activity. Such nighttime attacks don’t seem to have spread widely outside the anarchist subculture in most of the cities in which they have occurred, but they have given rise to copycat actions in other anarchist communities. This indicates the importance of a common cultural context—shared values, points of reference, and venues for communication. Acting sincerely can be contagious, but our actions are always modeled on the examples we know and driven by the values fostered by our communities.
\n\nPeople seem to be most likely to join revolts when doing so can help them meet their needs. But needs themselves are socially produced: nobody needed cell phones to maintain contact with their friends until a decade ago, for example, and countless indigenous communities chose resistance over all sorts of amenities until their lifeways were destroyed. The existing power structure is generally at least as capable as radicals are of offering opportunities to meet the needs it produces, whether through individual competition or institutional reforms. A real counterculture fosters needs that capitalism and democracy can never accommodate, such as the desire for human dignity.
\n\nEfforts to spread resistance must take this into account. Over the past half century, insurrectionists overseas have frequently been subculturally identified—for example, the Italian insurrectionist milieu of the 1980s and ’90s was based in a network of autonomous social centers. In criticizing long-term infrastructural projects and countercultural milieus, some US insurrectionists reveal that they are unaware of the context behind the overseas rioting that inspires them.
\n\nIn response to the extravagant notion that we should jettison culture as a site for mobilizing resistance, we counterpose the project of building a culture of resistance, a space in which people of multiple cultural backgrounds can develop common reference points in order to attack hierarchy in all its forms.
\n\nA variant on the rejection of subculture is the rejection of anarchism as an identity. This calls to mind another old question: should we organize specifically as anarchists, or are other approaches more likely to produce anarchy?
\n\nThere is a lot to be said for resisting quarantine in closed circuits of the converted. Picture a molecule that bonds with other molecules by sharing electrons with them. If it has loose electrons, it is prone to creating new connections or disruptions; on the other hand, if all of its electrons are in stable bonds, it is unlikely to introduce new dynamics to the molecules around it. Similarly, anarchists who seclude themselves in the company of committed ideologues tend to become static and predictable, while those who limit their participation in explicitly anarchist circles to stay open to other relationships can sometimes catalyze waves of transformation.
\n\nAt the same time, organizing on the basis of a social rather than ideological position—for example, as queer youth, as a neighborhood, or as working class people who like to break things—can be extremely challenging. Anyone who has worked in coalitions knows how hard it can be to accomplish anything in the face of massive internal differences in goals and values. This is true even without centralized decision-making—think of the instances when presumed comrades have pulled newspaper boxes back onto the sidewalk during street confrontations. Perhaps the best approach is to organize at some intersection of social position and ideology: for example, a gang who grew up together discovers anticapitalist resistance, and sets out to introduce the possibility to other gangs.
\n\nOften the ones at the forefront of clashes with the authorities are not self-identifying anarchists at all, while anarchists with carefully articulated political positions avoid conflict or even sabotage resistance. People adopt political stances for all sorts of reasons, and these stances frequently have nothing to do with how they actually conduct themselves. This phenomenon corroborates insurrectionist skepticism about the importance of ideological positions, but it also means that those who identify as insurrectionists are no more likely to practice what they preach than anyone else.
\n\nDespite the fact that avowed anarchism does not always correlate with active resistance, there’s no reason to believe struggles that are not identified as anarchist are any more likely to produce anarchic situations or relationships. If you’re opposed to all forms of oppression, you may as well say so from the outset, lest you leave an opening for authoritarians to hijack your efforts.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n‘Armed struggle’ is a strategy that could be put at the service of any project.
\n
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/images/insurrect/insur4_b.jpg\")
Fans of the LA Lakers celebrate a sports victory.
\nIn the US, where militant political conflict is rare, it’s tempting to assume that clashes with authority are inherently antiauthoritarian. Insurrectionist websites and magazines appropriate images from a wide variety of contexts; some hail all sorts of antisocial crime as manifestations of social war, without knowing the motivations of the protagonists.1
\n\nBut rebellion and street violence are not necessarily anarchist. Resistance to oppressors is praiseworthy in itself, but much resistance takes place in support of other authoritarian powers. This is all too familiar in other parts of the world, where illegal violence on the part of fascists, paramilitaries, gangs, drug cartels, mafias, and authoritarian revolutionary movements is an essential aspect of domination. Aspiring authoritarians often take the lead in attacking reigning authorities precisely in order to absorb and co-opt popular unrest. Rioting per se is not always liberating—Kristallnacht was a riot too. Even if some participants have the purest intentions, insurrections can go any number of directions: remember what happened to the Russians following the insurrection of 1917, or the Iranians following the insurrection of 1978-79.
\n\nSo anarchists must not only provoke confrontations, but also ensure that they contribute to a more horizontal and decentralized distribution of power. In this regard, glorifications of the superficial details of militant confrontation—black masks, Molotov cocktails, and so on—are largely beside the point, if not actively distracting. The flow of initiative among the rebels, the ways decisions are made and skills are shared, the bonds that develop between comrades: these are much more important. Likewise, one must strategize as to how social uprisings will contribute to long-term revolutionary momentum rather than simply enabling reactionary forces to consolidate power.
\n\nA great deal has been said against activism: it is a specialized role that frames social change as the domain of experts; it is predicated on dialogue with the powers that be; it promotes inauthenticity and limits the scope of change. A lot of this is mere semantics—many people who do not deserve such accusations see themselves as activists. Some of it is projected class resentment: those who have time to mess around in everyone else’s business, “changing the world” rather than solving the problems of individualized survival, must have privileged access to resources, as the right wing has always alleged.
\n\nIt’s not easy to distill the kernel of truth in this flood of vitriol, but one thing is certain: activism that does not explicitly challenge hierarchy fortifies it. Reformist struggles can win adjustments in the details of oppression, but they ultimately help the state maintain its legitimacy in the public eye—not only by giving it the chance to redress grievances, but by reinforcing the notion that the power to effect meaningful change lies in the hands of the authorities. It is better to struggle in such a way that people develop an awareness of their own capabilities outside all petitioning and bureaucracy. Reformist activism also tends to build up internal hierarchies: as if by chance, the best negotiators and media liaisons often turn out to be college-educated white people with good skin and conciliatory tones. Of course, certain insurrectionist practices may simply build up hierarchies according to different criteria.
\n\nUnless it provides for the practical needs of the participants, insurrectionism is just an expensive hobby: activism with felony charges and a smaller base of support.
\n\nThe other lesson we can derive from a close study of activism is the importance of not overextending. Some activities produce more energy and resources than they consume; others cost more than they produce. Many activist projects ultimately founder because they fail to recoup the resources invested in them: one cannot carry on an exhausting undertaking indefinitely without deriving the wherewithal for it from somewhere. Of course, these resources can take a wide variety of forms: a Books to Prisoners group may consume a great deal of labor hours, but persist so long as the social connections it provides are rewarding; traveling around the country to participate in riots may be expensive in terms of gas and bail money, but if it is exciting and empowering enough, the participants will come up with the cash somehow. On the other hand, if a million dollars must be raised for court costs following every demonstration, this may prove prohibitive, unless each demonstration wins new allies with deep pockets.
\n\nActivities that cost more resources than they produce are not necessarily bad, but you have to strategize accordingly if you wish to participate in them. Ironically, despite insurrectionist hostility to activism, strategies that focus on confrontation are often at least as costly in this regard as traditional activist organizing. In dismissing goal-oriented struggles in favor of confrontation for its own sake, some US insurrectionists set themselves up for burnout. Symbolic clashes can help develop the capacity to fight for more concrete objectives, but not if they are so costly that they drain their social base out of existence. Breaking windows is a dead end unless it helps to generate a widespread social movement2—or at least provides access to enough of the commodities behind the windows to fund the vandals’ eventual court cases.
\n\nThe most sustainable forms of confrontation seize resources which can then be employed in further struggle. The classic example of this is the European squatting movement of thirty years ago, in which the occupied buildings were used as staging areas for further social struggles. This approach supersedes both self-defeating reformist activism and self-destructive insurrectionist dogma. Unless it provides for the practical needs of the participants, insurrectionism is just an expensive hobby: activism with felony charges and a smaller base of support. Insurrectionists of other eras have recognized this and robbed banks rather than simply smashing their windows.
\n\nRevenge is itself a need, but it is hardly the only need. People who face enough challenges just getting by will not be much more attracted to gratuitous vandalism than they are to activism that has nothing to do with their daily lives; on the other hand, tactics that enable them to sustain themselves may be more appealing. Insurrectionists who are frustrated with the lifestyle-oriented anarchism of those they perceive as “subcultural” actually stand to learn a lot from them. The latter remain involved in their version of anarchist community not because of moral or ideological imperatives, but because it sustains them. For insurrection to spread, it must do the same.
\n\nIn the US, militant struggle means taking on the most powerful state in the history of the world. It demands a strategy that takes into account the repression, legal support, and prison sentences that will inevitably result, and somehow turns them to our advantage. The absence of such a strategy is perhaps the most significant structural flaw in insurrectionist projects today. We have to engage with the issue of repression beyond the usual security culture, limited prisoner support, occasional solidarity actions, and wishful thinking. “Don’t get caught” isn’t a plan, it’s a prayer.
\n\nIt’s embarrassing to acknowledge, but the activists who practiced non-violent civil disobedience in the US during the 1980s and ’90s were miles ahead in this regard, integrating their arrests, court cases, and prison sentences into their campaigns as strategic moves. Their approach was predicated on privilege and glorified victimhood in the most noxious ways, but perhaps we can still learn something from them in order to make the most of repression and ongoing prisoner support in our own struggle.
\n\nThe current case of the RNC 8, in which anarchists have been targeted with conspiracy charges for organizing actions against the 2008 Republican National Convention, may offer one starting point. The defendants have used their case to delegitimize the government and win allies in other communities; as of this writing, they seem to have the prosecutors on the defensive, as the terrorism charges against them have just been dropped and the case is widely acknowledged to be an embarrassment. If they had simply been anonymous vandals, rather than highly visible organizers, this might not have been possible.
\n\n\n\n\nNo leaders to round up, no hierarchical organisation to wield power over us in our name, no membership lists to investigate, no manifestos to denounce, no mediators to meet (and then join) the power-holding elite. No public claims are made, no symbolic lines are drawn, no press statements to be deliberately misconstrued and trivialised by journalists. No platforms or programmes which the intellectuals can hijack as their exclusive property, no flag or banner to which to pledge a crass and sectarian allegiance.
\n
— “Insurrectionary Anarchy: Organizing for Attack”
\n\nNo membership, no statements, no public face. This might make it harder for the state to single out enemies, but it also sounds a little like the invisibility and isolation that make it so hard for comrades to find each other and get started.
\n\nIn the current atmosphere of repression, the insurrectionist approach is often framed as a question of security: with infiltrators everywhere and the legal repercussions of resistance intensifying, it is simply too dangerous to engage in visible organizing. However, it’s far from certain that less visibility is any more likely to make anarchists safer or more effective.
\n\nIt often happens that in attempting to correct old errors, people commit new ones; forsaking problematic strategies, they learn the hard way what advantages led their predecessors to adopt them in the first place. So it is that anarchists, who only came into the public eye a decade ago, are now fantasizing about returning to the shadows.
\n\nThe government would like nothing better than for anarchists to retreat to private scenes and cliques, leaving few opportunities for unconnected individuals to get involved. It is to the authorities’ advantage for small numbers of radicals to escalate to more militant tactics while losing connection to a broader social base; this makes direct action less likely to spread, while rendering it easier to justify repression. It might be harder to track down clandestine groups at first, but recent FBI investigations, such as Operation Backfire,3 show that closed, high-security structures are not impenetrable. One can also look at the case of the Tarnac Nine, French radicals who are currently being charged with terrorist conspiracy; they are also alleged to be involved in authoring the book The Coming Insurrection, which champions “zones of opacity” impenetrable to the authorities. In fact, such zones do not result only from proper control of information, but also from the appearance of so many insurgent groups that the authorities cannot keep up with all of them at once.
\n\nIf this is true, the most pressing task for anarchists is not to carry out secretive military strikes but to spread skills and practices. There is no substitute for participatory activities that offer points of entry for new people and opportunities for existing groups to connect. Likewise, refusing to interact with the public effectively means leaving it to the corporate media to tell one’s story—or else suppress it. Just as insurrectionists must tie the escalation of conflict to the pace at which it spreads so as not to overextend themselves, they must also balance the practical advantages of secrecy against the necessity of circulating new formats and rebellious energy.
\n\nThis also has a bearing on whether it is safer and more strategic for anarchists to act alone with the element of surprise, outside any conventional “political” framework, or to participate in broader campaigns and mobilizations. In the latter context, the state is often more prepared and vigilant, rendering successful attacks more difficult from a purely military point of view; on the other hand, arrestees are more likely to receive support from outside the immediate anarchist community, and their actions may be more visible and comprehensible to others.
\n\nAll this is not to say that anarchist organizing should be visible in the same way conventional political campaigns are. The point is to ensure that anarchist models of resistance are accessible to everyone, not to promote the popularity of a platform or spokesperson or party. The chief dangers of visibility are not posed by the police, after all, but by the possibility of being absorbed into the spectacle, performing for the cameras until one comes to mistake representations for reality.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/images/insurrect/insur5_b.jpg\")
No less dangerous than the police is the tendency to internalize the logic of spectacle, performing for the cameras until one comes to mistake representations for reality.
\nThe economy has just crashed, and the anarchists who have spent the preceding half decade building up various anticapitalist infrastructures are eager to assert themselves and their alternative in the public eye. Some friends have been tossing around the idea of a street party, and two dozen people meet to discuss it. The street party becomes A Funeral for Capitalism, intended to initiate a public dialogue on how to mobilize a grass-roots response to the crisis. Handbills and stickers appear everywhere; in planning meetings, the organizers picture themselves at the helm of a crowd of hundreds, tying together public merriment and resource distribution in a two-pronged assault.
\n\nBut the night of the street party is unseasonably cold, and only fifty diehards show up, finding themselves nearly the only pedestrians on the street. They barely make it one block before a lone police officer pulls over and charges into the crowd, seizing someone at random in hopes of setting an example to scare the others onto the sidewalk. To his surprise, he meets a rain of blows. These are not the hesitant activists of the previous generation, but a fiercer new breed.
\n\nHis intended victim escapes; he snatches another, but the same struggle ensues. Backup has arrived by now, and eventually the police manage to capture a single partygoer.
\n\nThe rest regroup at a nearby café. Almost everyone who was in the street is present; there is a new sense of common cause. Within a couple hours, they have raised enough money to bond the arrestee out of jail; a couple weeks later, a benefit show featuring a puppet show and a bake sale draws more participants than the street party did and raises all the funds necessary for legal fees.
\n\nEventually the defendant negotiates a favorable plea bargain. Just as the bond money comes back, a comrade in another community is arrested on conspiracy charges, and the idea arises to donate the money to his support fund: so in coming into conflict with the authorities, the community has actually become more capable of extending solidarity to other communities.
\n\nYet amidst all the hubbub, everyone has forgotten about engaging with the public at large, as the issue shifted imperceptibly from the economic crisis to the injustice of police repression. Bonds are tighter among the radicals, thanks to puppetry and baking no less than street bravado, but no tighter with the rest of the city.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe force of an insurrection is social, not military. Generalised rebellion is not measured by the armed clash but by the extent to which the economy is paralysed, the places of production and distribution taken over, the free giving that burns all calculation…
\n
The force of an insurrection is social, not military. The power of anarchist insurrection is determined not by military confrontations, but by how pervasive resistance is, how widely distributed tactics and resources are, how durable and extensive and genuinely liberating the relationships are that underpin the whole endeavor. If our goal is not simply to persuade others—or, let’s be honest, ourselves—of our defiance, then we have to prioritize forms of resistance that are either highly contagious or at least sustainable. Who is the social body that is to rise up? Whence is it to come?
\n\nThe force of insurrection is social, not military. This has long been an established tenet of insurrectionists, but in practice it is one of the most frequently forgotten. In focusing on attack, it is difficult not to end up unconsciously adopting the military logic of one’s enemies, gauging effectiveness by the numbers of targets struck or the number of dollars’ worth of damage. Perhaps this is an inevitable risk of conceptualizing attack not as a means but an end—if attack is valuable in itself, then isn’t a “bigger” attack better? This tendency is particularly dangerous for those who didn’t grow up with an example in their communities of what it looks like to wage “social war,” who must invent their models for it from scratch.
\n\nThe force of insurrection is social, not military. That means it depends on the strength, solidarity, and relationships of an entire social body—not just an affinity group or crew. Those who bake cupcakes for fundraisers are at least as important as the arrested rioters; the effectiveness of the fundraisers determines how much force insurgents can continue to wield in the streets. One can break a window with a single brick and the muscles of one’s arm, but one can only participate in a long-running social conflict as part of a community. Social force is absolutely a matter of culture, values, allegiances, priorities; social war takes place on this terrain, which is influenced by but distinct from the physical terrain of actual confrontations. How many people will support you in a conflict? How many will join in themselves? If you go to prison, will your grandmother support you? Will her community?
\n\nThe state often isolates rebels by means of a classic martial arts move: it pushes them in the direction they were already headed, provoking them into a showdown before they have built up the social force they need to survive it. It is essential to set the pace of escalation oneself, avoiding unfavorable engagements and resisting the temptation to focus on revenge. The ultimate target of insurrectionist attack is not just the state, but also the passivity of one’s peers.
\n\nTo return to our starting point, none of this is a reason not to act, or to wait for the proper moment to assume hostilities. Social war, like class war, is always taking place: like it or not, we are born into it, and decide at every moment how we fight. The point is to act strategically, so as not to fight alone.
\n\nThis is especially complicated in today’s context of surveillance and repression. One must engage in a certain degree of clandestinity to be capable of meaningful resistance at all. But if the most important aspect of resistance is the relationships that result, it is a mistake to choose forms of struggle that tend to produce smaller and smaller social bodies. Historically, except when resistance is spreading like wildfire, resistance movements tend to break down into smaller and smaller elements once they come into open conflict with the state: think of the transition from Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s to the Weather Underground in the 1970s, or the trajectory of the Dutch squatting movement over the course of the 1980s. If our social forms may become smaller as conflict intensifies, it might be more sensible to maintain low-intensity warfare that does not provoke the full wrath of the state, or else to start with the crowd as the unit of resistance rather than the crew or affinity group. This is not to say that we should not be organized in affinity groups, but that affinity group action should be a means of catalyzing crowd activity rather than an end in itself.
\n\nThe authorities understand themselves to be engaged in social war, perhaps more clearly than most insurrectionists do. They do not simply attack our bodies with batons, pepper spray, and imprisonment; they also set out to attack our relationships and social connections. It is significantly more cost-effective for them to intimidate, isolate, or discredit radicals than to imprison or kill them. In confrontations, we should recognize this intimidation and isolation as their top priority, and defend our relationships and our connections to others accordingly. They can beat or jail us as individuals without winning the social conflict—the question is whether our values and tactics take hold.
\n\nThe authorities understand themselves to be engaged in social war, perhaps more clearly than most insurrectionists do. They do not simply attack our bodies with batons, pepper spray, and imprisonment; they also set out to attack our relationships and social connections.
\n\n\n\n\nProperty destruction is not merely macho rabble-rousing or testosterone-laden angst release. Nor is it displaced and reactionary anger. It is strategically and specifically targeted direct action.
\n
— ACME Collective, N30 Black Bloc Communiqué
\n\nConsidering that insurrection depends on relationships, one would think that insurrectionists would be the most personable anarchists, the most eager to make friends and resolve conflicts. Ideally, insurrectionists would offer a welcome contrast to strident pacifists and domineering reformists. It should always be clear that militant action is not a macho performance but a well-reasoned strategic decision, or at least an honest emotional expression.
\n\nIt requires tremendous patience and social skills to lay the preconditions for insurrection. Unfortunately, some who gravitate to insurrectionist ideas have a predisposition for impatience and hostility. “Starting from attack” can be attractive to those who don’t want to have to talk through disagreements or be accountable. In glorifying their preferred tactics over those of their potential allies, such hotheads spread false dichotomies that cut them off from the resources and support they need to make their attacks effective, sustainable, and contagious.
\n\nOne could view this tendency as an overreaction to the ponderous coalitions of the antiwar movement. There is nothing good about enforced unity that paralyzes the participants and discourages autonomous action. But a knee-jerk rejection of everything that has made resistance movements possible in the past has little to recommend it, either.
\n\nIt is April 21, 2001, and a black bloc is methodically knocking out all the windows of a multinational bank in downtown Quebec City during the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit. Street confrontations have been going on for 24 hours straight; much of the city is awash in tear gas, and increasing numbers of protesters are responding with Molotov cocktails and other projectiles.
\n\nA crowd of local toughs watches the black bloc from a distance. They have looked on sympathetically as the foreigners scuffled with riot police; the locals have no great love for the police, and as Québécois they resent that much of the occupying army has been brought in from English-speaking provinces halfway across the continent. On the other hand, the activists are invaders too, and now they’re smashing up the city.
\n\nAs the bloc sets out in search of another bank, the locals follow them, picking up blunt objects and threatening them in limited English: “Fookers!” A bearded older liberal sees this unfolding and falls in stride with the toughs for a moment, pedantically explaining, “No, they’re not fuckers, it’s just a bad tactic.” Appropriating what they understand to be a term of biting abuse, the locals continue following the bloc, shouting “Bad tak-teek! Bad tak-teek!”
\n\nOne idealistic young anarchist falls back to reason with the pursuers. “We’re not against you—we’re here to fight the same institutions that dominate you, the multinational corporations and the neoliberal governments that—” He is answered with a punch in the face that drops him to the ground.
\n\nThis is the critical moment, in which the meaning of the whole mobilization is at stake. If the locals and the black bloc come to blows, the narrative of the weekend will shift from a showdown between People and Authority to pointless fighting between Marginalized Radicals and Everybody Else. The black bloc has a reputation for machismo; many other activists doubt their maturity, if not their sincerity. Having grown up bullied and baited, having become a militant anarchist in hopes of getting revenge, the young man must feel the temptation to fight back. If he does, his comrades will leap to his assistance. But he simply stands up and walks back to them, unsteady but deliberate.
\n\nTwo blocks further, the police loom into view: row after row of armored storm troopers firing concussion grenades and rubber bullets at the narrow lines of human beings before them. Both groups hesitate. The context has shifted.
\n\nThe locals eye the anarchists warily. “You are here to thrash our citéy?” one calls out.
\n\n“No!” shouts back a man in a ski mask. “To FIGHT THE POLICE!”
\n\n“To fight the police?”
\n\n“To fight them, not you!”
\n\n“Fook the police!” shouts back another local, auspiciously.
\n\nRepresentatives of the two groups approach each other with guarded gaits. Flash-bang grenades explode in the background as they hammer out a hasty truce and shake hands. As the sun sets over Quebec City, locals with shirts across their faces crouch alongside slingshot-wielding radicals in goggles and bandannas, peppering the police with chunks of broken concrete.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/images/insurrect/insur6_b.jpg\")
Insurrectionists coming from positions of comparative privilege cannot shrug these off simply by donning a mask.
\nResistance movements have collapsed again and again amidst conflict over accountability, privilege, and internal oppression—for example, in the US at the beginning of the 1970s, and in Italy at the end of that decade. This occurred on a smaller scale during the disintegration of the US anti-globalization movement after the turn of the century; the consequences of this in Eugene, Oregon are explored in “Green Scared” elsewhere on this website.
\n\nIn some circles, insurrectionists have a reputation for failing to focus on these issues. This is extremely problematic—the point of anarchist activity is to attack all forms of hierarchy, not just the targets that make for exciting riot porn. Accountability and awareness of privilege strengthen the relationships that make meaningful struggle possible; without these, an affinity group can fall apart in the same way a movement can. Nurturing healthy relationships is not an additional task anarchists must take on alongside the project of resisting domination—it is the basis of that project, and a way to safeguard it.
\n\nEven if the aforementioned bad reputation were only slander based on circumstantial evidence, it would still pose challenges to insurrectionists, for it enables their adversaries to paint them as irresponsible hypocrites.4 Whenever anarchists fail to take the initiative to address patriarchy, white supremacy, and other manifestations of hierarchy, they leave themselves vulnerable to the machinations of liberals and others eager to discredit militant resistance. Insurrectionists should take the lead to develop tools for understanding and undermining privilege, so it is clear to everyone that there is no dichotomy between confronting the powers that be and addressing more subtle forms of hierarchical power.
\n\nConfrontational approaches are bound to encounter opposition at some point, but if the opposition is coming from potential comrades, it’s a warning sign that one is on the wrong path. Unfortunately, defensive insurrectionists sometimes react to this by isolating themselves further from constructive criticism, wrongheadedly telling themselves that they don’t need allies on the path they have chosen.
\n\nBy all means, explode with rage. Refuse to reduce your raw anger to demands or suspend your emotional responses to the tragedies around you. Turn your years of pent-up anguish into a fearsome instrument of revenge. Don’t translate your grievances into the language of your oppressors—let them remain burning embers to be hurled from catapults. Attack, negate, destroy.
\n\nBut if it’s rage you’re feeling, why quote philosophy professors?
\n\nIf some strands of contemporary US insurrectionism seem to have given up in advance on the possibility of connecting with comrades outside their immediate cliques, this is especially apparent in their esoteric language and points of reference. Talk about “zones of opacity”—and the dangers of becoming trapped in a milieu!
\n\nPerhaps this is because so much insurrectionist theory has arrived from overseas in poor translation. Domestic insurrectionists emulate the obtuse style of their favorite texts, and the resulting gibberish highlights the absurdity of attempting to transpose an approach from its original context without reconsidering it. We’re not qualified to critique insurrectionist writing from France or Italy, where presumably every dishwasher enjoys Foucault and Negri—but in the US, words like “projectuality” make a lot of people stop listening.
\n\nAnother source of this tendency can be found in the influence of academia. In the ivory tower, which is predicated on exclusion, academics are rewarded for developing abstruse language and theory. For some insurrectionists, appropriating such language must seem the same as appropriating other status symbols, such as the hip American Apparel® outfits ubiquitous in certain scenes. But “every tool has a world connected to it at the handle,” and the exclusivity of academia comes with the terminology.
\n\nOf course, some people are attracted to exclusive language—especially people who desire to see themselves as part of an elect in-group. A milieu that attracts a lot of this kind of energy is not likely to make a welcoming space for a broad range of participants; it also might not have a lot of staying power. Capitalist consumerism depends on new trends every season, and that goes for ideas as well as fashion: what is hip one year is guaranteed to be passé the next.
\n\nThe alternative to this, amply demonstrated by other US insurrectionists, is not to communicate in dumbed-down prose like some communist splinter group, nor to affect the slang of imagined class allies, but simply to express oneself in a straightforward manner and not take common context for granted. Recovering obscurantists could try writing in the language they use when they talk with their neighbors or relatives. You can’t expect others to step outside their comfort zones unless you are willing to do the same yourself.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/images/insurrect/insur11_b.gif\")
\n\n\n\nWe can become our own riot porn production machine, but this is less important than ‘creating the conditions where an offensive can sustain itself without fading, of establishing the material solidarities that allow us to hold on.’
\n
— Total Destroy #3 [PDF, 2.3 MB]
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/images/insurrect/insur7_b.jpg\")
\nBy and large, people in the US—particularly white people5—have an especially mediated relationship to violence. This is not to say that we are never exposed to violence, but that proportionately, we witness representations of it more often than we experience it directly. The land beneath our feet was bought with the extermination of its former inhabitants, the commodities that sustain our lifestyles flow in on a sea of blood, but when we think of violence we generally picture stylized images on television and movie screens. Small wonder if radicals who attempt to integrate violence into their resistance find themselves acting out programmed roles.
\n\n“Riot porn,” the depictions of anti-authoritarian violence that abound in insurrectionist media, is only a subset of the representations of sex and violence surrounding us in this society. Pornography doesn’t just cater to desire—it also shapes and directs it; in the case of riot porn, it glorifies the moment of physical conflict, while removing the social context that gives it meaning. Pornography can promote roles that have little to do with the actual needs of the participants; those who have been influenced by corporate pornography sometimes make disappointing sexual partners. Likewise, a cynical observer might caricature some current manifestations of insurrectionism as a misguided attempt to distill a strategy from the aesthetic of riot porn: no difficult negotiations with allies, no intermediate or long-term goals, only the moment of attack, isolated in a vacuum.
\n\nActual sex and violence can be reclaimed from patriarchal society, but in some ways it is more challenging to reclaim representations of sex and violence.6 Anybody can shoot a motherfucker, but in this society the image of the gun is almost inextricably associated with notions of male power and domination. Anti-authoritarians who think spectacular representations of violence can be turned against their masters are playing with fire in more ways than they think.
\n\nOn the other hand, in a society in which so much privilege rests on violence that occurs outside our immediate experience, it is commendable that insurrectionists set out to establish a firsthand relationship to it. Perhaps insurrectionist activity should be evaluated according to how effectively it serves this project of deprogramming, no less than how much it costs the enemy or inspires potential comrades. To what extent does a given action enable the participants to achieve an unmediated and intentional relationship to violence? To what extent is it simply a reprise of all-too-familiar scripts? Just as we might judge erotic play or material by the extent to which it “queers” sex rather than reinforcing conventional roles and power dynamics, we might assess insurrectionist practice according to the extent to which it queers violence. This could mean anything from empowering demographics who do not normally have the opportunity to wield violence against their oppressors, to dispelling the influence of media representations of violence by replacing them with a familiarity based in lived experience, to making violence serve forbidden roles no one has yet imagined.
\n\nThe afternoon of the action, one older anarchist who hasn’t participated in the organizing expresses his usual irritation: “So the idea is to get the fucking cops called, wait till they show up, and then try to march around? These idiots have finally come up with a way to lose the element of surprise, which is practically the only advantage of the tactic!”
\n\nBut surprisingly or not, everything goes exactly according to plan. People gather in the park for food and games, then at the appointed time depart in small groups for the secret location. It turns out to be a spacious abandoned building in the heart of downtown, with a great banner hanging from the roof: “Reclaiming space to reclaim our lives: OCCUPY EVERYTHING.” Party favors are distributed at the door—condoms, masks, a precious little manifesto: “You see, here’s the deal. We’ve recently started to realize that we exist…” Inside, a dance party is in progress; the derelict post-industrial decor has been beautified with streamers and another banner, this one reading “PARTY LIKE IT’S 1886.” A couple gender dissidents have taken off all their clothes. Others are exploring the margins of the reclaimed building in ones and twos. Unlike the Reclaim the Streets actions that swept the state a decade earlier, this is a private party, but it has the same atmosphere of wonder.
\n\nAfter longer than expected, the news spreads from ear to ear: the police are inside! The sound system cuts out and someone pulls it out the back door just as an officer comes into sight, probing the crowd with his flashlight. Everyone trickles out the front door in a single-file line; this feels somewhat demoralizing, and the older anarchist grumbles that if they really want to have a march they should be exiting in one determined block. Instead, a hesitant crowd congeals on the sidewalk, dawdling as the outnumbered police struggle to figure out what’s going on.
\n\nThe sound system reappears and people rally around it. Just as the crowd begins to move down the street, a policeman rushes over and seizes it. Everyone else continues; turning the corner, they miraculously find themselves occupying the street in a world seemingly empty of authorities. There is no precise cause or rallying cry for the evening, so the participants—unable to dispense with activist traditions, despite some rhetoric to the contrary—find themselves chanting the first catchphrases that come to mind: “Swine flu!” “Wu Tang Clan ain’t nothin’ ta fuck with!” Two young men out on the town join in, clearly not interpreting this as an anarchist street party.
\n\nA block later hoods go up, masks come down, and the sound of grating metal rings out as newspaper boxes are dragged into the street. Everyone else around the country is abandoning corporate print media, but anarchists are still passionately invested in their conviction that the boxes prevent pursuit by police vehicles. The café district is around the next turn, and chairs are sent flying against plate glass windows, only to bounce off and fall to earth. There is an element of playacting in the demeanor of even the wildest participants: they are striking poses, acting out their favorite scenes without the grim determination to do damage that characterized the famous black blocs of the anti-globalization era.
\n\nThe legal risks, of course, are still very real—but the police are mercifully far behind, and the crowd disperses before they can catch up. Some participants are pleased with themselves; others are nonplussed. A young hippy tries to initiate a conversation with a stern-faced fellow tucking a sweatshirt under his arm: “Did you see those people throwing chairs at windows? That’s fucked, huh?” The one with the sweatshirt picks up his pace and does not answer.
\n\nAfterwards, all the discussions from five years earlier begin again. Was it irresponsible for some people to escalate to property destruction when others didn’t know it was coming? On the other hand, how are people supposed to initiate participatory vandalism? You can’t exactly put up fliers announcing it. Did anyone aside from the participants understand the point—and does that even matter? Is it pathetic that the would-be rioters couldn’t break the café windows? Or is it fortunate, as that might have provoked a more serious follow-up inquiry without achieving any meaningful objective? Few recognize these old questions—five years earlier, most people were living elsewhere or involved in totally different things.
\n\nThe grumpy older anarchist reminisces about the days when surprise marches like this used to take place in his own community. The first one involved hundreds of people, the majority of whom had never imagined themselves parading without a permit; to his mortification, they chanted “What do we want? PEACE!” when he would have preferred to raze the whole city to the ground. Over the following years, each march became a little more aggressive than the last; a small nucleus of committed clandestine organizers emerged, while conflicts deepened within the broader social base that made the format possible. The final action ended up on the national news, with tens of thousands of dollars of damage done to a high-profile target and several people standing trial for felonies. After that, everything dissolved in a mix of angry recriminations, exhausting legal support, and prohibitive security culture.
\n\nHis friend asks if it was worth it. “Maybe,” he allows. “Like, everyone blames the Spanish anarchists for losing the Spanish Civil War, as if a few kids in their twenties today could know the context better than they did—but perhaps they knew they were doomed from the start, and were holding it together as best they could in hopes of going out with a bang so they could inspire people like us. If the movement we were part of wasn’t going to last forever, maybe it’s for the best it ended the way it did, too. But should you cut right to smashing shit when you’re trying to get something started? I don’t know.”
\n\nSome contemporary insurrectionism affects a nihilist posture, proposing in an offhand manner that everything that exists must be destroyed. To indigenous or environmentalist ears, this project of universal destruction can sound suspiciously like the program industrial capitalism is already carrying out.
\n\nAs with the disavowal of subculture, it may make pretty rhetoric to say one is against “everything,” but it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Even opposing everything is still a position adopted in this world, shaped by and proceeding from the existing context. If we are against everything, how do we navigate? Where do we start, and how can we be sure that the results of our efforts won’t be even worse? Can we make any stipulations about which direction to set out in at all?
\n\nIt makes more sense, and is more honest, to say that we side with some existing beings and currents against others, and hope by doing so to effect a total transformation of the world. Not only does this approach offer concrete starting points, it also lends itself better to studying the intricate ways hierarchical and horizontal dynamics intermingle in both the enemy’s camp and our own.7 If you can’t see any good in your adversary, you probably won’t be able to recognize anything bad in yourself. By the same token, the idea that everything has to be destroyed anyway can make it easy to excuse oneself from criticism.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/images/insurrect/insur8_b.jpg\")
Clashes do not occur between groups so much as within societies. Every society is made up of conflicting currents, which compete not only within society as a whole but also within the individuals who constitute it.
\nLet’s return once more to the context surrounding large-scale insurrections such as the one that took place in Greece in December 2008. Militant resistance is sustainable in such situations not only because of the initiative of the immediate participants, but also because of the efforts of non-anarchists who oppose military intervention, organize against legal repression, and otherwise limit the options of the state. Many of these people may also oppose the insurrection, even while playing essential roles in making it possible. If social war were simply a matter of force meeting force, the Greek government could have bombed all the squats and occupied universities from which the revolt was organized; it could not do so because its hands were tied by liberals, and for fear of turning liberals into radicals.
\n\nThis is not to diminish the courage of those who meet the state in open conflict, but to emphasize that clashes do not occur between groups so much as within societies. Every society is made up of conflicting currents, which compete not only within society as a whole but also within the individuals who constitute it; the moments of rupture that take place within individuals are no less important than those that take place between classes. The most effective insurrectionist actions not only open up the fault lines that run through society, they also compel the undecided to take sides—and to do so according to their own interests, rather than those of their masters.
\n\nThe outcome of revolutionary struggle is not decided by revolutionaries or autocrats so much as by those who sit on the fence between them. The balance of power is determined according to which side of the fence they come down on when they are forced to choose. Revolutionaries ignore this at their peril.
\n\nIt is neither persuasion to abstract ideas nor class position alone that makes people invest themselves in the struggle against hierarchy. It is the experience of anarchist solutions to the problems of life, the development and fulfillment of anarchic desires. The need to revolt, to destroy, to get revenge is only one of many such desires.
\n\nLiberals and others who oppose revolutionary struggle often pose a false dichotomy between connecting with the community and engaging in militant confrontation. Some insurrectionists have accepted this dichotomy at face value, arguing for the latter in place of—perhaps in despair of—the former. Ten years ago, militant anarchists argued against the conceptual framework of violence “versus” non-violence; now the pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme, and it is insurrectionists who insist that attack is distinct from community organizing.
\n\nOn the contrary, “community organizing” and taking the offensive are at their most effective when they are identical. Permanent conflict, decentralized organization, and all the other insurrectionist precepts can serve quite well in local, community-based struggles.8 Combining infrastructural and confrontational approaches does not mean volunteering at an infoshop during the day and smashing bank windows at night, but rather synthesizing the two into a single project. This is not complicated—as the whole world has been taken from us, we need only seize back any one of the things that should be ours and we enter into conflict with the state. If anarchists do not undertake this more often, perhaps it is because it is always most frightening to attempt what one wants most, what one knows one should have been doing all along.
\n\nIs there an empty lot that should be a community garden? Turn it into one, and mobilize enough social force that the owner finds it most convenient to leave you be. Is a coworker being harassed or laid off? Bring the full power of your community to bear against her employer. Are there resources at the grocery store or the university that would be better off in your neighborhood? Figure out whom you can trust and how to distribute them, and take them. To win these engagements, you’ll have to spend a lot more time building up relationships and credibility than running around with masks on—but there are no shortcuts in social war.
\n\nThis is nothing less than the project of beginning our lives, eternally deferred with all manner of half-hearted excuses and tortuous theoretical justifications. In our real lives, we are warriors who fight for ourselves and each other, who seize back the territory of our day-to-day existence or else die trying. Nothing less is worthy of us.
\n\nIt is neither persuasion to abstract ideas nor class position alone that makes people invest themselves in the struggle against hierarchy. It is the experience of anarchist solutions to the problems of life, the development and fulfillment of anarchic desires. The need to revolt, to destroy, to get revenge is one such need; if insurrectionist approaches can fulfill it, so much the better. But we deserve a resistance that fulfills all our needs, and all our dreams besides.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/images/insurrect/insur9_b.gif\")
\nReturning from the riots in Gothenburg during the 2001 summit of the European Union, activists in Stockholm begin casting around for ways to initiate struggles closer to home. At first, the prospect is overwhelming: when you’re trying to confront the system in its entirety, where do you start?
\n\nMeanwhile, the rates in the Stockholm subway increase from 450 kronor to 500. One day, perhaps en route to a meeting, a young activist narrowly escapes being ticketed for fare evasion. Like most of her friends, she simply can’t afford the new rates, and has to risk her luck leaping the turnstile every time she goes out. Most of the time she gets away with it—but if they catch her next time, it will cost 1200 kronor.
\n\nShe reflects on how many others must share her plight, each waging an individual guerrilla war against the transportation authorities. There’s a union for everything in Sweden, it seems—but when it comes to the day-to-day tactics by which people actually survive, they still have to go it alone.
\n\nThere’s an idea. A fare-dodgers union.
\n\nHundreds of people join up. The dues are 100 kronor a month, a savings of 80% on the government rate for transportation, and if you get busted the union pays your fine. More importantly, fare dodging is no longer an isolated activity, but a collective revolt. Fare-dodgers see themselves as a social force, taking pride in their actions and inviting others to join in; the union also warns commuters of the movements of ticket enforcers, giving them added incentives to skip the fares even if they don’t become dues-paying members. Rather than trying to persuade others to join in their activism, the founders of the union have found a way to bring people together on the basis of the resistance they were already engaged in: now every fare-dodger is a potential revolutionary, and sees herself as one.
\n\nAfter a few months have passed and a few members have been busted for evasion, it turns out that the union is operating at a profit. With the extra funds, the organizers produce glossy propaganda urging the public to join them in an all-out war on public transportation fees, and begin brainstorming about their next step. What other fault lines run through Swedish society? How can other individual revolts be transformed into collective power—not in order to bargain with the authorities, but to defy them?
\n\n[For more on the fare-dodgers’ union, see planka.nu.]
\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThere are no such things as superior forms of struggle. Revolt needs everything: papers and books, arms and explosives… The only interesting question is how to combine them.
\n
If we have never called ourselves insurrectionists, it is not because we do not wish for insurrection, but because our own temperament predisposes us to an anarchism without adjectives. The important thing is to fight for freedom and against hierarchy; we imagine that this will demand different approaches in different situations, and that these approaches may need one another to succeed. We are anarcho-syndicalists on the shop floor, green anarchists in the woods, social anarchists in our communities, individualists when you catch us alone, anarcho-communists when there’s something to share, insurrectionists when we strike a blow.
\n\nAnarchism without adjectives not only refuses to prioritize one approach over the others, but emphasizes the importance of each aspect of anarchism to its supposed opposites. The riot needs the bake sale to be repeatable; the arson needs the public campaign to be intelligible; the supermarket heist needs the neighborhood grocery distribution to pass on the goods.
\n\nAll dichotomies are false dichotomies to some extent, masking not only the common threads between the terms but also the other dichotomies one might experiment with instead. On close inspection, successful insurrectionism seems to depend so much on “community building” and even “lifestyle anarchism” as to be virtually indistinguishable in practice. If we retired this particular distinction, what other distinctions might arise in its place? What other questions might we ask?
\n\nAll this is not to say that individual anarchists can’t focus on their particular skills and preferred strategies—simply that it is an error to frame anyone’s personal preferences as universals. In the end, as always, it comes down to a question of which problems you want to wrestle with, which shortcomings you feel most equipped to overcome. Do you prefer to struggle against invisible hierarchies in informal networks, or brave the stultifying inertia of formal organizations? Would you rather risk acting rashly, or not acting at all? Which is more important to you, security or visibility—and which do you think will keep you safer in the long run?
\n\nWe can’t tell anyone which problems to choose. We can only do our best to outline them. Best of luck in your insurrections—may they intersect with ours.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/images/insurrect/insur10_b.gif\")
Available as a PDF poster here.
\n“Anarchism, Insurrections, and Insurrectionalism” by Platformist Joe Black
\nInsurrection vs. Organization: Reflections from Greece on a Pointless Schism by Peter Gelderloos
\nAssuming common cause with others of unknown political commitments on the basis of their apparently subversive actions is risky on multiple levels. The Situationists used the Watts riots to argue that their ideas were “already in everyone’s heads”—at best, that was a stretch, and at worst a way to claim to speak for those who could only speak on their own behalf through action. We can celebrate rebellious actions from outside our communities, but meaningful alliances demand actual relationships. ↩
\n“It is better to loot than to shoplift, to ambush than to snipe, to walk out than to phone in a bomb threat, to strike than to call in sick, to riot than to vandalize… Increasingly collective and coordinated acts against this world of coercion and isolation aren’t solely a matter of effectivity, but equally a matter of sociality—of community and fun.” -War on Misery #3 ↩
\nIt’s worth noting that the only Operation Backfire defendants who conducted themselves honorably were the ones who were still involved in activist organizing or subcultural communities. ↩
\nSome critics challenge the right of a predominantly white or male demographic to initiate confrontations in the first place; but people of all walks of life are entitled to fight for liberation on their own behalf, so long as they don’t do so in a way that compromises others. The details of initiating confrontations without compromising others are complicated enough that it would demand an analysis even longer than this one to explore them. ↩
\nNot all insurrectionists fit this demographic, of course—but there might be a few who do. ↩
\nSpeaking of representation, white anarchists must be careful not to exoticize and eroticize violence in poor communities of color. This already occurs in hip hop consumerism, where racist capitalists kill two birds with one stone by profiting off representations of black people as violent and oversexed. Suburban insurrectionists pining for comrades may unconsciously picture stereotypical characters from hip hop videos as their class allies in the social war. ↩
\nContrast this with the facile opposition to “civilization,” case closed, adopted by hard-line primitivists. ↩
\nFor example, one of the classic cases of insurrectionist practice referenced by Alfredo Bonanno was a campaign to prevent the construction of a US missile base in Comiso, Italy. Anarchists helped form autonomous groups in the community, which were not ideologically identified but functioned according to insurrectionist principles, on the basis of a commitment to stop the construction by any means necessary. ↩
\nEver since the Seattle WTO protests, legal collectives have sought to counteract state repression by supporting participants in mass mobilizations. Even outside those contexts, legal workers can serve a valuable role wherever people face police harassment or arrest. Unfortunately, it’s notoriously hard to recruit people for legal support; it isn’t portrayed as sexy, it takes a lot of work, and many people wrongly fear that it requires special training.
\n\nThe RNC legal effort started with a small group of determined people; most had no previous experience with legal work. Some had met at the poorly attended legal breakout session at the first pRe-NC, where they agreed that there was a need for more legal resources in the radical community and discussed organizing legal support structures for the RNC and beyond. The challenge of doing legal support for such a large mobilization was daunting; even the group’s most experienced legal workers had never attempted anything near that scale. Ultimately, they pulled it off, with a lot of help from others who had done that work before.
\n\nIn January 2008, they formed Coldsnap Legal Collective with the intention of setting up a jail support hotline, composing materials and trainings, and preparing legal support infrastructures for the convention. After speaking with legal workers from around the country, they also decided to organize a jail vigil and street team.
\n\nMonths before the RNC, Coldsnap began offering trainings locally and regionally, teaching people solidarity tactics, their legal rights, and how to interact with police. These evolved from dry, self-prepared lectures to participatory role-plays drawing on materials1 from more established legal collectives.
\n\nColdsnap called the first national RNC legal support meeting to coincide with the second pRe-NC in May 2008. The more experienced national legal workers wanted Coldsnap to provide direction for the effort; to help, they offered support, resources, and access to pre-existing networks. They put on “trainers’ trainings,” established a database,2 and arrived weeks in advance of the RNC to help set up the office and other structures.
\n\nOne of the purposes of legal collectives is to bridge the gap between activists and the legal community, between whom there is often mutual distrust. Coldsnap’s attempt to navigate these relationships produced mixed results. Lawyers regarded Coldsnap with suspicion on account of their unprofessional appearance and lack of law licenses; this did not stop them from making dire predictions about what would happen at the RNC, which were poorly received by many radicals when Coldsnap passed them on. Though the lawyers, legal workers, and activists all needed each other to be effective, communication was difficult and continued to be throughout the subsequent events.
\n\nOriginally, Coldsnap intended to create a decentralized model of legal support, encouraging every affinity group to have its own legal support structure in place. They hoped that doing so would dismantle the perceived hierarchy of knowledge connected to legal work. This did not occur; most affinity groups did not make viable legal support plans for themselves, and Coldsnap ultimately did legal support for almost everyone.
\n\nUtilizing a web service that forwarded a single number to multiple phones, Coldsnap established a 24-hour hotline in spring of 2008, providing jail support for local events and encouraging everyone to memorize the number or write it on their bodies. For the convention, they set up shop in an office of NLG lawyers. The office included six phone lines connected to the hotline number and multiple computers sharing the central database. The hope was that occupying a legal office would protect against raids and subpoenas, due to attorney-client privilege issues.
\n\nThe jail support hotline was connected to the office on August 29, hours before the convergence space was raided; from then on, people staffed the space 24 hours a day. Legal workers were busy that whole weekend dealing with house raids, detainments, and arrests, as well as making last-minute preparations for the convention. Coldsnap sent representatives to the weekend spokescouncils, giving updates, helping affinity groups get connected to the legal support structure, and forming a jail solidarity plan in which arrestees would give the name Jesse Sparkles rather than their real names and refuse to be separated on account of gender or severity of charge.
\n\nOn September 1, the office was at maximum capacity. There were volunteers answering the phones and entering data, two information coordinators, one person handling media, and one person sending out reports via Twitter. Lawyers were constantly in conferences in the other room. The hotline received thousands of calls; information on police actions and arrests was verified and publicized, and arrestees spoke to caring people who listened to their stories, took down their information, and gave their loved ones updates and reassurance. A non-stop vigil outside the jail provided arrestees clean clothes, food, and hugs upon release. Legal observers were alerted of unfolding events and dispatched to the streets from a separate location; between missions, they dropped off reports at the office. The atmosphere was both exciting and exhausting—no one had slept, everything was happening at once, and not all the news was good. At times, tempers ran high. At one point on September 1, the lawyers became particularly irritated when an anarchist legal worker posted “black bloc make total destroy everywhere!” over the Coldsnap Twitter feed, fearing it might pose problems for future legal efforts.
\n\nThings did not improve from there. On the third day of the convention, a day still known to many legal workers as “Black Wednesday,” several things happened at once. The affidavits in the RNC 8 case were released to the press, with a number of Coldsnap members listed as members of the Welcoming Committee. Police came to the building housing the legal office, claiming to be responding to a hostage situation involving the videographers upstairs; then the landlord showed up, demanding an explanation and threatening eviction. The lawyers responded by banning everyone allegedly involved with the WC from the office and barring them from participating in RNC legal work, citing safety concerns. The blacklisted people, however, were the Coldsnap collective members responsible for bottomlining the office, which left out-of-town legal workers saddled with all the responsibility and confused arrestees calling a place where no one had any context for them. The fact that the banned legal workers were the ones most immediately connected to the anarchist community meant that the remaining legal effort lacked ties to that community—precisely the population most in need of support.
\n\nBy the end of the week, the police had arrested 818 protesters, downtown St. Paul had become a full-on police state, and almost everyone was exhausted, in jail, or both. Not everything had gone as planned. The street team was a literal bust, as members were immediately singled out and targeted for arrest. The jail solidarity plan did not get the desired results: the police brutalized arrestees rather than meeting their demands, and the separated and demoralized Sparkles eventually gave their real names. In the office, processing the massive quantities of information that came in proved significantly more difficult than anticipated; volunteers struggled with the data entry backlog for months afterward. And although the banned Coldsnap members were eventually allowed to participate again, relations between legal workers and lawyers remained strained for some time.
\n\nThe first meeting of RNC arrestees and supporters, two days after the end of the convention, evolved into CRASS (Community RNC Arrestee Support Structure), a spokescouncil of working groups dedicated to helping arrestees through the court process. CRASS provided a travel fund for arrestees,3 helped them file civil suits, and called protests and press conferences to put pressure on city officials. Coldsnap got a new office and continued to staff the hotline and conduct trainings, but the majority of direct arrestee support came to be handled by CRASS. This was consistent with Coldsnap’s original goal of arrestees handling their own support, although it occurred differently than first imagined.
\n\nCRASS devised strategies for court solidarity that achieved concrete victories.4 These included packing courtrooms, standing up when defendants’ names were called and wearing clothing expressing support; writing letters to judges regarding sentencing; and speaking on defendants’ behalf as character witnesses. Courtwatch volunteers attended every single hearing, maintaining contact with arrestees and taking notes to update the database. Supporters organized call-in days, letter-writing campaigns, and other forms of pressure to drop charges, including crashing city officials’ events. Fighting charges largely led to prosecutors dropping them, if they weren’t dismissed before trial. The first felony arrestee to be sentenced was given a stay of disposition rather than jail time, and the judge specifically cited the supporters packing the courtroom as one of the reasons; subsequent felony defendants were also given less jail time because of similarly visible support.
\n\nOther forms of legal work and support also achieved concrete results. In the immediate aftermath of the RNC, when police were visiting and threatening former WC members, legal workers called a community meeting to discuss the situation and brief the dozens of attendees on their rights; as a result, no one talked to the authorities, and the latter gave up their intimidation campaign shortly after. For many months, the Felony Working Group, an offshoot of CRASS, met weekly to share updates on cases and brainstorm ways to support those facing felony charges. Supporters produced propaganda, raised funds via secret cafés,5 attended and transcribed each other’s court dates, and offered each other emotional support.
\n\nSome of the felony defendants, such as the MK3 and the RNC 8, have their own support structures. Immediately after the RNC, the remains of the RNC WC coalesced into the Friends of the RNC 8; the Friends maintain a website and produce support material geared toward the radical community, as well as organizing events and coordinate national support and fundraising. In January 2009, the support structure of the RNC 8 expanded to include the RNC 8 Defense Committee, an umbrella group that works on political pressure campaigns with CRASS and other groups, including efforts to defeat the Minnesota PATRIOT Act.
\n\nProsecutors continue to persecute RNC defendants. New felony cases are still being filed, and new charges have been added to existing cases in a dubiously legal attempt to coerce guilty pleas from the accused. The RNC 8 started out with one felony charge, which later got raised to four; they are facing two as of this writing, their terrorism charges having been dropped as a direct result of political pressure from their supporters. Another arrestee started out with two felony charges before the prosecutor increased the number to six and threatened to add six more. It is clear that this fight is far from over.
\n\nPeople in the Twin Cities are still dealing with the aftermath of the RNC. The networks and friendships created during the mobilization have helped mobilize important support for those facing felony charges; many of the accused have moved to the Twin Cities for the duration of their cases, bringing new energy with them. At the same time, lasting trauma and the fear and tedium of long court cases with potentially serious consequences have taken their toll on many people’s mental health, especially through the bleak Minnesota winter. Constant meetings, court dates, and pending cases have sapped energy from the local radical community; they have also distracted organizers from their work, a situation that will only get worse if the latter end up in prison.
\n\nPolice tactics are intended to maintain isolation, silence, and fear. Mutual aid and solidarity strengthen our communities and discourage repression. When people are familiar with the legal system and confident that they will be supported, they are less likely to be cowed by threats or fall for trickery. Many participants in the RNC protests expressed that the legal support available to them helped them feel more empowered to take action; others reported that knowing they were supported kept them from cooperating with the state. Cross-movement solidarity has also proved invaluable. For example, two members of the RNC 8 had been members of EWOK! (Earth Warriors Are Okay!), a group dedicated to supporting earth and animal liberation prisoners; consequently, the 8 received support and resources from those EWOK had supported.
\n\nWe can no longer afford to leave legal work to the experts. This is more important than ever in light of the repressive response to the RNC protests. Whether or not we organize or participate in mass mobilizations, anarchists will continue to be charged with felonies; in addition to keeping the potential consequences of our actions in mind and mentally preparing ourselves for worst-case scenarios, we must plan and be equipped for legal support. In an age when anarchist organizing attracts federal attention and multi-million-dollar security budgets, all of us are at risk. The safety and security of our communities depend on our ability to respond and support one another.
\n\nLike it or not—these days, we are all legal workers.
\n\nMany of these can be found at midnightspecial.net. ↩
\nThe database began with affinity group support forms; it has enabled legal workers to track arrestees through the system, providing a record of the details of arrests, instances of police brutality, and other important information. ↩
\nThe travel fund, along with locals’ willingness to host out-of-town defendants, has helped people come back to fight their charges. This in turn helps with court solidarity, which can involve defendants coordinating and fighting their charges together, as well as people coming out in support. ↩
\nIt also gave a community of militantly unemployed people a 9-5 weekday schedule. ↩
\nSecret Cafés are a way to fundraise, socialize and build community; the idea is to turn an ordinary (or extraordinary!) space into a temporary restaurant with sliding-scale food and entertainment. ↩
\nWe’ve gone to some lengths to assemble and presume a variety of personal narratives from participants in the DNC and RNC protests:
\n\nDonning a black shirt and jeans, I raced down the street on my scooter, wind in my face, to catch up to my friend. It was the first day of the Democratic National Convention and we were running late for the black bloc protest in Civic Center Park. Having grown up in Denver, an overlooked bastion of liberalism in the Rockies, I never thought I would be able to get involved in a nationally publicized protest without moving to Washington D.C. or New York. This was the first major political action in which I had the chance to participate, and I wasn’t about to miss it.
\n\nMy friend and I locked our scooters up across the street from the park and made our way through the throngs of people who had come from around the country, and indeed the world, to my hometown. It was 6:30 p.m. and the crowd seemed docile. We sat in the amphitheater in the park watching Green Party Candidate Cynthia McKinney speak about revolutionizing American politics by banding together to vote for a third party en masse. As I listened to the speech I was struck by the banners and information booths flanking the stage. To the right hung banners that read “Recreate ’68” and “Obama – Send Bush-Cheney to: The Hague!” To the left sat a table littered with CrimethInc. literature, making me proud that my fellow dissidents were out in force.
\n\nSeveral minutes later there was an audible disturbance behind us in the park. We rose and walked around the corner to find a small group of about 10 people locking elbows and walking up the middle of Bannock Street, the road that divides the park from the City and County Building which houses the Denver courts. Within seconds the cops, in their “storm trooper” riot gear, were standing shoulder to shoulder to barricade the road.
\n\nIt didn’t take long for a few obstinate youths to start berating the police, some even deciding to single out one officer or another and scream into his obscured face. When it became clear there was no way through the police line, people began making their way off the street and back into the park, all the while chanting “Whose streets? Our streets!” As tensions rose and the police tried to keep us from returning to the asphalt, one demonstrator was maced, knocked to the ground, and arrested.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2009/05/05/dnc8b.jpg\")
\nWatching the spectacle kept my attention, and when I turned to share an off-hand comment with my friend, I discovered that we’d gotten separated in the confusion. I heard my phone ring in my pocket; it was him. As I was talking on the phone with him, I caught sight of him and pushed my way to his side. Just as we were discussing the apparent electricity that was flowing through the park that night, the crowd coalesced and we were off and running through the park and around the police barricade. Once again I was separated from my comrade.
\n\nMoments later, at the opposite end of the park, protestors spilled back into the street, blocking the rush hour traffic from exiting downtown and leaving behind their gratuitous office-job weariness. Among the mélange of people now marching down 15th Street, some old some young, some with exposed faces and some with masks, a young man pulled a “Road Closed” sign from the median and tipped it over in the center lane. Above the din of pounding feet and excited gasps and shrieks I could hear a steady voice urging us to lock elbows again, to show our solidarity, reminding us that they couldn’t raze us all at once.
\n\nWe marched for another block before we were fenced in again, this time by an equine unit. And though the officers were daunting on their high horses, we stood our ground. Or I suppose I should say, we sat, right there in the middle of a street I know to be a major artery into and out of downtown.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2009/05/05/dnc9b.jpg\")
\nHaving charged to the front of the march, I didn’t realize until much later that we’d been corralled between the Wellington Webb Building – a government administration building – and the Sheraton Hotel parking lot. The disorganized police presence pushed us this way and that, off the street then onto the street, and then back off again. At one point, I found myself flattened against the wall of the Webb Building behind several layers of other protestors. One of the demonstrators in front of me had his bike with him, and was almost toppled by a cop when his bike tire caught the curb as we were shoved backward by faceless, nameless officers with billy clubs and only a number showing on their uniforms for identification.
\n\nAs the cops closed ranks around us, they began to break off small groups of us, pushing the press back across the entry steps to the Webb Building. In an effort to document the silencing of the press surrounding our protest, I hastened to the police line to film the reporters being pushed back. The officer whose face I was now in growled at me to “STEP BACK!” He was an unimposing man with a gratified look on his face, as if he was relishing the opportunity to engage in riot tactics he’d only ever practiced at his precinct.
\n\nWith the press dissipated, the protest lost some of its luster and force. Before long there were fewer protestors blocking the street than cops. Some of us were crossing from one side of the street to the other reciting anarchist chants and trying to rally our troops to regain control of the street our tax dollars paid to pave. We briefly regained vigor, once again locking elbows to blockade the street and display peace signs to the police. A masked protestor bravely stepped out in front of the line to kneel and put his hands together in mock prayer, hoping to appeal to the innate religiosity of police service.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2009/05/05/dnc10b.jpg\")
\nAs the sunlight was waning, I spotted a young girl, collapsed and crying into the arms of her boyfriend who was shouting that the cops would not let her out of the police line despite her panic attack. Perhaps it was the camera I was holding, or perhaps it was my manner with the police, but when I asked if she could leave they hurried her out of harm’s way. Her boyfriend thanked me before disappearing into the crowd to find his friends.
\n\nI turned back to the street and heard someone behind me say the cops were beating and arresting another protestor. I tried to squirm around those of us who were watching to film the beating, but was only able to catch the end of the arrest. People were shouting, “Tell me what a police state looks like; this is what a police state looks like,” and “Look who’s violent!” As a herd of cops carried away the arrestee, another anonymous voice said, “That’s our boy! That’s our boy!”
\n\nWith my camera still rolling, I turned to my left where more cops were moving in toward us. Suddenly I felt the cold wet of pepper spray as it struck my arms, my face. The burn didn’t settle in for several minutes, maybe because my veins were already coursing with adrenaline. With that move my group of about two hundred was now severed from the rest of the protest.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2009/05/05/dnc11b.jpg\")
\nRaising our hands high in the air as a sign of passivity, we were marched down the sidewalk approximately one hundred feet to the loading dock of the Webb Building. The crowd was abuzz with a rumor that the cops were finally releasing us. But holding true to the nature of rumors, this was false. I checked my phone to figure the time when I saw I’d missed several calls from the friend with whom I’d begun the evening.
\n\nIt was about a quarter after 8:00 p.m. I called my friend back to find out that he’d managed to avoid being detained with the rest of us. We agreed that I would call him again when I was finally free, or when I needed him to come bail me out, whatever the eventuality. With no end to the conflict in sight, we sat again. Many of us held peace signs in the air attempting to communicate to the police line, now three policemen deep, that we meant no harm. We were easily outnumbered and posing no imminent threat, completely removed from the street which was now overtaken by men and women in dark navy riot gear with scores of bright blue plastic cuffs dangling from their belts.
\n\nI suppose I can understand that the local P.D. had to respond with their modus operandi of overwhelming force when a bunch of punks went rampaging through the streets of downtown Denver without a permit to do so. But by this point, we were no longer the ones barricading the street. Murmurs began to sweep through the protest that we were being detained so that we could each be arrested individually. And while it seemed an overwhelming task for the police force at hand, none of us put it past them.
\n\nWe sat for what felt like hours. We sat and shared water. We sat and shared cigarettes. We sat and tended to those more affected by the pepper spray than I. We sat and waited.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2009/05/05/dnc12b.jpg\")
\nIt was no longer dusk, it was now night. At 9:30 p.m., four cops approached a group of young friends seated on the sidewalk in front of me. They grabbed one boy by the armpits and hauled him away to cuff him. A bit of a hush came across us when the cops returned to drag away another boy from the same group. It was as though the second arrest confirmed in all our minds that we were indeed all going to be arrested.
\n\nAs I sat on a building vent at the corner of the loading dock, my face and arms now durably burning from the pepper spray, the police line ten feet to my right unexpectedly broke. Instantly we all rose and evacuated, glad to have our liberty returned to us. As I walked back toward Civic Center Park, I came across a journalist looking for someone who’d been detained. She was from a Boulder college paper. She asked me questions as her photojournalist counterpart snapped shot after shot of me. Another young man from Ohio Independent Media jumped in with more questions the moment she’d finished. He jotted diligently as I answered, then thanked me for my time and sent me on my way.
\n\nI cleared the crowd and called my friend who was now at a bar around the corner on the 16th Street Mall. When I arrived, he was waiting for me at the front door and chatting up the bouncer. As I showed my ID, my friend bragged to the bouncer that I’d just been released from the protest one block over. We sat with him and smoked a cigarette as I showed him some of the video I’d taken, including the video of the pepper spray coming at me. He leapt up and marched me upstairs into the bar to show his bartender, who’d wanted to attend the rally that night, but was working instead.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2009/05/05/dnc13b.jpg\")
\nI recounted my story to her and asked for some vinegar or lemon juice to mute the burning on my flesh. She gave me a glass of milk instead and sent me to the ladies’ room at the end of the bar to wash up with it. When I returned to my friend, he thankfully had a PBR waiting for me as remuneration for such a grand evening. We stayed for hours, going over and over the affair and praised ourselves for taking action and being a part of something truly historic, rather than sitting safely at home to absorb the events via the television and the local news.
\n\nOnce home, I sat at the computer and uploaded the best of my video to YouTube. It was not an explicit attempt to endorse YouTube, rather it was the best way I knew how to disseminate the video to the most people in the shortest amount of time. And sure enough, within days of posting, I heard from one of the boys arrested just before the rest of us were released. Through our week of correspondence I found out that he and his friend had been taken into custody because they were not yet 18, and their parents had been informed.
\n\nIn retrospect, I would not trade that night for anything. As I sit here on my 28th birthday, weaving this tale for you, I am inspired. I cannot say that I think what we did that night had a vast impact on the political process nor the convention itself. But I can say that it made a difference. It made a difference to everyone there, proving that we do have strength in numbers. It made a difference to the country by showing them that we, the modern counterculture – if you’ll permit me to borrow that moniker from the 60’s – have thoughts of our own beyond that which we are force-fed daily by the mass media. It made a difference to those with political power, showing them that nonconformists are here to stay. It made a difference to me. It empowered me to continue forward with action rather than apathetic discussion of possible future tactics. It proved to me that the ideals upon which our country was founded are still alive and relevant to our youth. It made me believe once again in the concept that questioning my government is not only my right, it is my duty.
\n\nStreet blockades are a common form of nonviolent protest in Europe and Latin America, and over a dozen members of the University of Iowa Anti-war Committee, a chapter of the Campus Antiwar Network, traveled to St. Paul on September 1 to implement the tactic during a peace march on the first day of the Republican National Convention.
\n\nThe results were mixed, but on the whole, moderately successful.
\n\nTwenty-two members of UIAC car-pooled together up to St. Paul, and fifteen joined CAN’s unpermitted “Mobile Blockade Brigade.” The Campus Antiwar Network’s direct action contingent, along with dozens of other affinity groups totaling between 800 and 1,000 people, attempted to shut down the RNC by blockading interstates, on/off ramps, bridges, and other key intersections to prevent Republican delegates from entering the Xcel Center. Our action was not a suppression of free speech, but an exercise in it. We were forced to listen to the Republicans for the last eight years, now it was time to force them to listen to us.
\n\nAbout 50 CAN members rendezvoused on the corner of 9th and Robert Street, about a dozen blocks Northeast of the Xcel Center, and immediately swarmed into the intersection to seize it. Several members took yellow police “caution” tape from their bags and began wrapping it across the streets. Traffic came to a standstill, and police began to arrive on the scene. Once the riot squads showed up, we took off for the most strategic intersection in our sector, 10th St and Jackson, which held an on and off ramp for Interstate 35E. But we couldn’t hold it for very long because our nonviolent brigade was not equipped to deal with riot police armed with pepper-spray, tear gas, tasers, and rubber bullets.
\n\nThe next three hours was like a game of cat-and-mouse. We seized intersections at random, halted traffic, and then dispersed when the cops started forming lines to rush us. At one point several people got out of their cars to give us high-fives. Once, we allowed an ambulance through our blockade on humanitarian grounds.
\n\nAt one point, we doubled our numbers because random crews kept joining us, and we held one intersection for nearly twenty minutes because Slate magazine, MSNBC, CNN, and dozens of other media outlets had swarmed into the intersection with us. The ensuing impromptu press conference allowed us to state our objections to militarism and war, articulate our vision of the peaceful world we wanted to see, and kept the cops from kicking the crap out of us. The police were almost as hostile towards the media as they were to us, but their assaults on the press were limited to verbal onslaughts, with the possible exception of Amy Goodman and the Democracy Now! crew, who were arrested on bogus felony riot charges.
\n\nAfter we were forced off the I-35E ramp, we moved south on Jackson Street to Kellogg Boulevard, due East of the Xcel Center, where one of the six “Loading Zones” for the Republican delegates was located. A squad of bicycle cops successfully divided our lines and our internal communication and coordination began to break down. Things got ugly after CAN members began linking arms and standing in front of the delegate buses. Ten of our members were sprayed in the face with pepper-spray, two were violently thrown to the ground by police officers, and one cop on a motorcycle drove right into our crew, hitting one person, who suffered minor injuries. Two of our members were arrested on misdemeanor charges and were later released.
\n\nUp the street, a “Funk the War” contingent of about 300 black-clad anarchists were having a dance party in the intersection of Kellogg and Wabasha. Police fired tear gas into the crowd, and also fired rubber bullets, tasers, and concussion grenades. Anarchists attempted to slow the police line by dragging newspaper bins, traffic signs, dumpsters, and sandbags into the streets. Skirmishes between protesters and police were widespread by 4 pm, when downtown St. Paul was clearly in the middle of a riot.
\n\nAccording to the Coldsnap Legal Collective, 256 people were arrested on Monday; 119 on felony riot charges. Between 20,000-30,000 people marched in the permitted peace march. Total arrests by Thursday, September 4 exceeded 800. Eight members of the RNC Welcoming Committee were arrested on conspiracy to commit terrorism charges the weekend before the protests began.
\n\nThe direct action blockades failed to shut down the first day of the conventions, but they should still be considered a moderate success for several reasons. First, nearly 1,000 people engaged in a mass direct action utilizing a diversity of tactics that projected a radical critique of the Republican agenda in a way that was not easily co-opted. We failed to shut down the Republican National Convention, but we still crashed the party. Second, and more specifically, the CAN mobile blockade brigade was able to operate on the streets for over three hours and only suffered two arrests. Our tactical approach was confrontational, but nonviolent. Our methods clearly contributed to the overall effort and demonstrated that our model of direct action has potential for experimentation and growth.
\n\nThe Campus Antiwar Network also mobilized a student and youth contingent in the permitted march and rally. The permitted CAN contingent marched with over 150 people, and we made dozens of new contacts and added over 40 new people to our email lists. Our holistic, dual approach to organizing proves that there is space in the Campus Antiwar Network for all levels of engagement and participation.
\n\nThese successes aside, much can still be done in the way of improvement. Most members of CAN’s mobile blockade brigade lacked basic direct action skills such as marching in coordinated formation and knowledge of soft and hard lockdown techniques to hold space nonviolently. More work can also be done to articulate political arguments in the mainstream and independent media spheres.
\n\nAll power to the people,
\n[name withheld by editor]
\nMidwest Regional Coordinator
\nCampus Antiwar Network
I ran with a student group called the Campus Antiwar Network for reasons I won’t get into here. The night before we had contact with another group that was in our sector and agreed to let them use us as a shield and distraction for their activities. Our plan was to occupy intersections until they got too hot and then bounce to anouther intersection and repeat. We agreed that we would go be a distraction when the cops were coming down on them and also a place they could dive into and lose themselves when they were pursued. It turned out that they dressed pretty straight and could change appearance pretty quick.
\n\nAfter marching 5 miles with a large group going to the permitted march we split up and met at a designated location and began to block an intersection. Other than an ambulance and an SUV that would have ran over those of us who were trying to block it we only let through an old couple with perishables that asked politely to pass. We held it for quite awhile while we watched riot cops arrive and then suit up. We basically ignored all day any cop not in riot gear and only moved when the riot cops marched on us.
\n\nWe did this for quite a while, occupying intersection after intersection, causing the police to close off more streets than we could ever have held without them. Then we hooked up with our comrades from the night before and proceeded to run bloc for their actions, which need not be discussed here. I’ll just say they were effective and elusive. It appeared to me that we picked up and lost different afinity groups as we went.
\n\nAt some point, it was suggested that we meet up with another student group that was having a wandering street party supposedly a few blocks away. We hussled towards where they were supposed to be, dodging lines of riot cops. Then things got funky, as we had stumbled across the breakaway march. Hundreds of masked people all in black were running down the street in front of a bunch of cop cars. People were throwing anything not nailed down into the street and the cops had officers ahead of the cars moving things out of the way. Barricades were being thrown up at every intersect to slow the police flank.
\n\nOur plan for the day had been to run with people and help where we could, but to run from any face-to-face contact in which we might get busted or beaten. At every intersection we took, our group had a plan beyond the greater group for escape; in the end, this kept us unhurt and out of jail.
\n\nMy 3-person affinity group rushed up for a good look; as the two others were dressed in black and masked up, they looked like everyone else I could see, and I lost track of them at once. Without an agreed upon plan, I ran for the place with no cops which was ahead of the bloc. I ran up the hill at a dead sprint, overtaking most of the bloc; but when I reached the top, I saw people jumping on cop cars in front of a wall of cops in two of the three streets I was facing, so I took the third one. I heard a smash and turned around to see a window go out of Macy’s and a cop car getting trashed.
\n\nSince I had my shirt off, I stood out, and my two comrades had followed me; we ducked into a pedestrian mall full of bourgeois cafes and began trying to change our appearances as much as possible before a herd of black bloc’ers swarmed in from a small alley, climbing over a wall or fence. We collected a stray Iowan and began trying to find our larger group through a maze of cops. This streaming horde of hundreds seemed to disappear right in front of the chasing cops as they disperced into a crowd of citizens and presumably all “cleaned up.”
\n\nWe found the CAN group and ran with them some more, until a friend had a heat stroke and we dropped out. I was more than ready, as we had begun to have to race riot cops who were trying to surround us. That was pretty much it for my affinity group and when we quit running the cops stopped chasing us. The Iowa City faction of CAN stayed out the longest, with a few others, and ended up pushed up against delegate buses by cops and getting maced; one CAN “leader” was arrested. Out of 30 or 40 of us that were in the Twin Cities that Monday, only one person from Iowa City got busted, in a different sector than us.
\n\nPersonally all my goals were met. We created a radical anti-authoritarian group that will continue to build on the comunity level and are all closer for our shared experience.
\n\nI wasn’t planning on going to the RNC. While my peers hunkered down in serious looking meeting for years, the whole concept just didn’t light my fire. I’ve attended dozens of major demos, most of them in New York or Washington DC, and the fleeting moments of action that captivated me as a 19-year old no longer hold my attention. In addition to my expectation of boredom, whether in the streets or in jail, the prospect of driving in an overstuffed van full of exuberant crusties from New Orleans to St. Paul extinguished any flickers of enthusiasm. I was a long way from the rowdy kid who used sneer at hesitant friends, “Get off the fence and into the streets!”
\n\nAnd then fate intervened. As the date of the RNC approached, a giant, seething hurricane named “Gustav” (meaning “Staff of God” in German) with sustained winds of 135-miles per hour took aim at my little house on the levee. Reports of the storm’s ferocity and expectation of its landfall near the Crescent City turned me into a useless lump, biting my nails while continually refreshing the image of the projected storm path on my computer.
\n\nStill, I vacillated. Emptying my house of its valuable contents would be a strenuous task, and I felt like a wimp for wanting to get the hell out of town at the first sign of water. But as it became increasingly clear that a mandatory evacuation would be ordered in the next few days, I decided to avoid the controlled chaos to come and get out early. I packed up as many of my valuable possessions as I could fit in my car and drove out of the city about 24-hours before the mandatory evacuation was ordered.
\n\nThe reports days later of bumper-to-bumper traffic for hundreds of miles, cars running out of gas on the highway, and all manner of absurd inconvenience made me feel more prudent than cowardly, even as I worried constantly about the fate of my home.
\n\nThere were a variety of places much closer than St. Paul I could’ve stayed to ride out the storm and its aftermath, but I figured that while I was leaving town I might as well check out the RNC. So I drove for three straight days through the dreary monoculture of Middle America to Minneapolis, not knowing where I was going to stay, who I was going to see, or what I was going to do. I felt particularly ill-prepared in comparison to those who had been plotting and scheming for months or years: here I was with a car full of my junk and no plan whatsoever, sure that I’d end up a bystander watching my friends get dragged away in cuffs.
\n\nI learned on the drive up that several houses had been raided and a number of preemptive arrests were made. This didn’t surprise me at all: the open organizing model virtually guaranteed repression of the most public individuals. Although obviously unfortunate, I found the news almost comforting. The police were showing their hand early, which meant fewer surprises once the action started. In reality, there were plenty of surprises, both good and bad, awaiting me in the not so distant future.
\n\nUpon arriving in St. Paul, I stayed at one of the few houses that hadn’t been hit by the cops. It was filled with people, some of whom I knew, some I didn’t. As people filtered in and out of the house, it became clear that there were lots of solid folks in town. I hoped they didn’t all get busted at the same house.
\n\nIt turned out that many of those solid folks also didn’t have any plans, which was both reassuring and confusing: wasn’t the supposedly unprecedented level of preparedness one of the main selling points of this whole thing? But the people who were the most prepared were also the most likely to find themselves in jail or otherwise neutralized by the truly well prepared police intelligence unit. Those that were leftover did what anarchists do at most summit actions: make vague last minute plans to hit the streets and hope for the best.
\n\nWell, as it would turn out, those vague plans went swimmingly. The next day, the first of the Convention, a bunch of shady characters convened around the sound system of the quirky Convention crashers calling themselves Funk The War. Apparently they planned to go on an unpermitted roving dance party through the streets of downtown St. Paul, hoping to shut down the convention with the sheer funkiness of their booty shaking. They agreed to let the Black Bloc jump on their psychedelic marmalade train, knowing full well that some serious gnarliness might ensue with the fuzz. Why they dug our groove, I have no idea, but the word was that they were down.
\n\nAs the funkalicious sound system kicked on, a handful of young looking kids immediately deviated from Black Bloc protocol and masked up far too early, which almost had me walking in the opposite direction. We were still mere steps from the state capitol building where the liberal yawner of a rally was taking place and cops, both in uniform and undercover, were everywhere. The idea that one might want to wait to put on masks until something shady was about to happen was completely lost on these youths, who also began dancing with the Funk The War hippies, attracting still more attention and making themselves look all the more absurd. Seeing this, my jaw slackened and I mumbled, “We’re fucked” to no one in particular.
\n\nThe crowd grew steadily and eventually departed through the park surrounding the capitol and down a street that lead right into the heart of St. Paul’s soulless financial district. Amazingly, not a single uniformed cop followed the loud, rambunctious mob, which only served to convince me that the group was littered with undercover snatch squads. Very cautiously, I continued with the group.
\n\nAfter meandering through the streets for about 15 minutes, terrible electronic dance music blaring from the speakers and not a cop in sight, someone ran up to a random car and whacked the window with a hammer, an act they had to repeat several times since it hardly made a scratch (note: Audi’s are equipped with anarchist-resistant glass.) The despondent individual finally gave up, a small mark on the glass the only evidence of their effort, which did nothing to prevent a small crowd of photographers from rushing in for the nonexistent money shot. Also left in its wake was a Funk The Warrior, stopped dead in her tracks, shrieking, “Oh my god!!!” Her mellow looked to be severely harshed.
\n\nThe crowd turned onto a street lined with banks and department stores and the sound of breaking glass immediately reverberated through the artificial canyon. Every loose object in sight, from newspaper dispensers to concrete garbage bins, was dragged into the street, leaving a path of detritus that both satisfied the need to fuck shit up and made it more difficult for the police to pursue us, whenever they got around to that. For several blocks, the Bloc, still accompanied by many dancing funksters and their two unbearably loud sound systems, rampaged through the St. Paul streets, smashing store windows and slashing the tires on empty cop cars.
\n\nA one point, a lone police officer a full half-block away sprinted toward the crowd. Alone and wearing a powder blue patrolman’s uniform, almost everyone saw him coming. He ran up behind the one kid with his back turned to him and grabbed him by the collar. The kid went limp and the cop began dragging him down the street with one hand while waving a can of pepper spray with the other. It was total suicide: he was surrounded on all sides by a hostile crowd with no back-up and was trying to drag 150 pounds of dead weight down the street. Clearly his instincts had gotten the better of his training.
\n\nOut of the crowd, a masked hero leaped at the cop and threw a perfect hockey-style body check, sending the cop flying awkwardly to the ground, his unshapely mass of blubber and stupidity sprawled out like a pig at the slaughter. The can of pepper spray farted out an ineffective arc of gas, mostly hitting the midsections of the faultless individuals in front of him. The kid was easily plucked away from the prone sow, who shamefacedly retreated back to his trough, and the crowd cheered its easy victory.
\n\nThe bloc’d up maniacs continued their rampage through the streets for what felt like ages by American protest standards. Windows were smashed with bricks, road signs, slingshots, and in one insane case, bare hands, which looked metal as fuck but was in reality incredibly stupid, as the window breaker was saved from a pair of severed hands by dumb luck alone. Several times a line of riot cops appeared in an intersection a block or more ahead of the crowd, which the group avoided without difficulty, obviously preferring to smash up a lame Midwestern city than engage in hand-to-hand combat with a bunch of the Empire’s Storm Troopers.
\n\nAt no point did the cops attempt to trap the crowd or seal off its exits, and whatever snatch squads had infiltrated the group succeeded in making a single arrest, and that of an individual prevented from staying with the crowd by a freak injury. All in all, the police response to this Black Bloc was almost impossibly inept: slow, disorganized, ill-trained, and less agile than a crowd of people who, for the most part, had no fucking clue where they were going. In sum, I have never witnessed a greater swath of destruction and less police repression at a Black Bloc action than that morning in St. Paul.
\n\nThe reasons for this particular Bloc’s success were numerous. Many people in the crowd came prepared with the tools necessary for an effective action. People watched each other’s backs and stuck together, responding effectively to the few police incursions. Close-in contact with the cops was avoided, negating the effectiveness of their weapons and capitalizing on their slowness. The group kept moving for the most part, crucial to avoiding traps.
\n\nAnd while I hate to flatter anyone, I feel that I can claim without exaggeration that the cops in St. Paul, many of whom were recruited from small towns in rural parts of Minnesota, were legitimately scared of us that day. Clearly the same does not apply to the riot police who opened up on another Black Bloc with a volley of rubber bullets later in the day, but for that wonderful morning, the streets were filled with the sound of shit breaking and the smell of swine fear.
\n\nThe Bloc eventually ran into a smaller group of riotous ne’er-do-wells who were being pursued by a line of patrol cars with lights flashing and sirens wailing, but the cops themselves were apparently too out of shape to leave their vehicles and pursue on foot. The now larger group dragged tons of garbage into the street to obstruct their pursuers, but it only served to slow them down. The crowd, for no real reason, started to run, and in my experience, when Black Blocs run, bad things happen. So I peeled off from the mob and disappeared into the crowd of slack-jawed conventioneers strolling the streets of downtown.
\n\nFrom that moment on, all the news was bad. Other Blocs formed that day and were punished, viciously, for our sins. Hundreds of arrests were made and nothing else was accomplished. It was more of the same in the days that followed. Many targeted arrests were made and lots of good people are now facing serious felony charges, likely taking most of them out of action for years to come. Infiltrators were unmasked far too late, and basic security considerations were ignored, leading to numerous preventable arrests.
\n\nJudging the actions of that week in hindsight, I believe they were not at all worth the cost. Although that one glorious morning was inspiring and motivating and beautiful, the arrests have revealed the bankruptcy of the open organizing model. The police gathered an enormous amount of useful intelligence that will substantially aid their trumped up prosecutions and serve as the foundation for their investigations in the future. The individuals arrested face tremendous legal, financial, and personal challenges, and the anarchist community will have to devote precious time and resources to supporting them.
\n\nAll in all, I think it’s long past time to bury the idea that direct action can be organized in the open. Anarchists are not activists, and organizing like them will only lead us into the waiting arms of the police. The street action described in this story was organized in secret, one day before it happened, and made no attempt to disrupt the convention itself. The fact that it met with so much success and only a single arrest speaks for itself.
\n\nThis account is now available as a zine, which can be download in PDF form here.
\n\nA Grudge Match Three Years and Three Days in the Making1 or How I Spent My Hurrication
\n\nIt was on the afternoon of the twenty-ninth of August that I brought my bicycle inside my humble dwelling in the Lower Ninth Ward, then, upon leaving, padlocked the door. I knew that I might never again see my home and the few possessions contained within, and I might have pondered this fact more deeply as I trudged two miles upriver to the rendezvous point, if there were not currents in the great ocean outside the island of my personal reality that demanded my attention.
\n\nThere was a last minute scurry to acquire the needed vehicles (the ones previously allocated being used by other Gustav evacuees). Once we were loaded and ready to go, we headed to the French Quarter to pay a short visit to a comrade in the employ of local media who was staying to keep computer systems working through the storm and aftermath. After his rousing pep talk, we began the long journey northward.
\n\nIt is quite unfortunate that, due to present conditions, there is little I can tell you about my comrades-in-arms without the fear that I might “incriminate” them. So, instead of the fascinating survey of our varying backgrounds, personalities, and passions I would like to include, I will tell you only two things we all hold in common: LOVE for our community and HATRED for the cadre of men who, three years ago, stood by, laughing, while the people of our city died by the hundreds.
\n\nWe drove through the night, the next day and well into the following night before reaching the home of our hosts in the Twin Cities. Due to similar concerns of “incrimination,” I thank our hosts and will mention them no further.
\n\nOn the afternoon of the thirty-first, we entered the Convergence Center for the first time. The air felt electric as I surveyed the flurry of activity: a loud and frenzied training exercise, a food line, groups involved in heated discussion. With the evening came the spokescouncil and decisions in my group concerning our involvement in the battle plans.
\n\nIt was during a lull that day that my group took a stroll to survey the terrain near the Xcel Center, and we inevitably stumble upon a feature missing on all the maps we had previously studied: a substantial fence with a concrete base, steel bars and a crown of barbed wire forming a wide perimeter and renegotiating the battlefield as I had previously understood it. It was my first encounter, over the course of this adventure, with the tangible presence of state repression and the resources at its command, but thankfully, in the same glance, was my first glimpse of tangible dissenting resistance and revolutionary analysis. Upon this fence had been hung a single handwritten sign:
\n\nMR. GORBACHEV, TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!
\n\nThe next morning, we, who had agreed to form part of the support element for a lockdown blockade, found a secluded spot near the targeted intersection and waited until word came that delegate buses were on their way. As soon as one of our number received the affirmative text-message, we pulled up our bandannas and dashed out of our hiding place toward the blockade site, creating a few improvised roadblocks along the way. There were eight people with “sleeping dragons” in a circle formation, and a supporting black bloc of around three dozen who formed a protective buffer zone and built a secondary blockade by moving large metal benches into the street and locking them together; we took control of the major thoroughfare for over two hours and forced an official closure of the road and (reportedly) rerouting of candidate bus routes. For the first time that day (but certainly not the last), I was overwhelmed by the bravery and determination of ordinary people (and the extraordinary power thereof).
\n\nOnce the lockdown was established, the black bloc linked arms and began chanting and singing. In short order, our small but vocal contingent began to dominate with our extemporaneous songs concerning our city and her dignity. At this point, I think I should mention that as we sang “You don’t wanna go to wa-a-ar with New O-o-orleans!” the hurricane was hitting the Louisiana shoreline with unknown consequences. In retrospect, I believe that if we had managed to bring enough more New Orleanians, people whose anger and fortitude has been forged in the fires of years of hardships and outrages with the motivation that, on that day, their actions might be the last remaining testament and legacy of the world they knew and loved, the events of that day would have gone very differently, and the stated goal of “shutting down the convention” may have been achieved.
\n\nAfter the blockade was established, most of the bloc headed downtown to join the roving groups while we stayed to witness and (if need-be) protect the lockdown through the inevitable arrests. As soon as the paddy wagon and two platoons of riot cops arrived, we were ordered to move to the sidewalk (or “face arrest”), and we complied. While one platoon moved to arrest the lockdown, the other surrounded and detained the group of us on the sidewalk including a clearly marked “green hat” NLG (National Lawyers’ Guild) legal observer. When we asked why we were being detained, one officer stated that the question could only be answered by the unit’s commanding officer; he refused to identify this ghostly “commanding officer,” then, later, after pressure from the legal observer, he admitted that, in fact, he was the commanding officer.
\n\nWe were informed that our bags and persons would be searched. Those who resisted would once again “face arrest.” We made a quick huddle, threw our bags in a pile, then, backed away. We were moved to the side while our bags were searched. Afterward, we were invited to came back and retrieve the bags. As our single group representative moved forward and scooped up the pile of bags, the commanding officer, now realizing the extent of our gambit, chuckled slightly in what appeared to be grudging admiration.
\n\nMost of our bags were missing from the pile, and we were given the explanation that all the bags containing “instruments of protest” (a short litany of examples was given including: goggles, bicycle locks, cameras, bandannas…) had been confiscated to be held as evidence. By this time, the lockdowners had already been hauled away without incident; the cops decided to forgo further searches and release us.
\n\nWe walked back to the vehicle, piled in and headed off in the direction of the Xcel Center. After parking and debarking, we wandered the perimeter of the strange cage that the savage beasts had built for themselves for some time. Finally, as we were nearing the State Capital Building, we encountered a sizable column marching behind a large metal shield painted like the red and black banner of the CNT. In the crowd, I recognized a few faces from the CrimethInc. convergence little over a month before (as I did on numerous occasions over those few days). I quietly moved behind one of these comrades and began to sing (in reference to a private joke between us), “Freude, schöner Götterfunken…”
\n\nHe spun around exclaiming, “Holy shit! No fuckin’ way!” and I replied, in my best Stephan of Ireland imitation, with the movie line:
\n\n“Ours is indeed a fashionable fight; it has drawn the finest people.”
\n\nThe column advanced to a perimeter gate guarded by a small contingent of riot cops. As some people started singing “Solidarity Forever” and apple cider vinegar was passed for soaking our bandannas, the terrible truth presented itself: we did not have a plan. Should we charge the police line? Should we take the street and block traffic? What is our objective? Do we even have one?
\n\nAs these points were being discussed, a senior member of my group (veteran of two previous RNCs and Miami 2003) deblocked and walked over to the middle of the street beside us to vent his frustration and disbelief. “They’re trying to have a meeting in the street! It’s too late now!”
\n\nThe gate opened and an empty delegate bus came out, stopping in front of my comrade, still ranting. Seeing the accidental blockade he’d created, he called for us to join him. As I and a few others entered the street to do so, a lone voice in the mob shouted, “He’s a cop! Don’t listen to him!”
\n\nThis is the point, of course, where things fell to shit. Whereas discussion up until then had been civil, if ineffective, there was an angry roar of argument as the crowd dispersed away from the gate. A small group was rebuking the accuser for “outing a cop” upon suspicion alone, and one of their number called out for anyone who would vouch for the accused.
\n\n“I do.” I said raising my hand, “I’ve known him over half a decade.”
\n\nThe accuser apologized but maintained that my friend “carries himself like a cop.” It took ten minutes or so for bad feelings to be smoothed over and the bloc to reconverge a block away—this time, with a plan.
\n\nThere was word that another roving band on the opposite side of the Xcel Center had been boxed in by cops, and it was reasoned that if we could make our way around to meet them, the tide would be turned. We set off and a dance of maneuvers began between us and the cops, each seeking to outflank the other as we moved counterclockwise around the perimeter. As the masses rushed through a ravine, I went on top of the ridge beside it to catch a brief glimpse of the formation of riot cops marching in our direction; for the moment, we had the advantage of speed and mobility.
\n\nFurther down the path, as we neared a bridge, a young middle class couple were watching our procession with marked interest. People in the bloc cheered, “Come along! Join us!” while making arching arm motions. In response, both shook their heads politely and made timid gestures.
\n\nThen, I jumped out of the bloc and yelled, “Someday you will tell your grandchildren that you were here on this day, and you did nothing but stand by and watch!”
\n\nAs strange as it may seem in retrospect, I did not expect what happened next. I had not meant my speech to be a persuasion or appeal; I was expressing my anger at the complacency of so many, and, without waiting for a response, I jumped back into the bloc. The two looked at each other, then, clasped hands and ran into the bloc after me. Upon reaching me, the man stated, “We’re coming with you.”
\n\nI replied, “Now, you’ll have a different story to tell,” and, perhaps, their decision and action at that moment changed all of their stories from that point onward. One can only hope. They asked about what we were doing and its significance, and I gave them adrenaline-fueled explications concerning the Spanish Civil War, Hurricane Katrina, and the frustrations of modern American life.
\n\nA dumpster with wheels was liberated from its mundane station and joined us in the march. The man, having been videorecording for the last few minutes, headed toward the front of the column, and the woman, anxious not to become separated in the crowd, politely took her leave.
\n\nWith the cops in lumbering pursuit, we continued to round the Xcel Center, and reached a street that I would later learn from my arrest paperwork is called Shepard Road. There was a continued reluctance to take the streets, despite my comrade and a few others making impassioned entreaties, and the column, confined to the narrow sidewalk, became dangerously stretched with stragglers a hundred meters or more from the front.
\n\nWe had entered an area filled with many high school and college students en route on foot to a concert on the other side of the river, and a few joined our ranks. One of these carrying a hastily scrawled sign reading, “McCAIN HATES MUSHROOMS” shared his malt liquor with me as we marched briskly along.
\n\nWe passed underneath a bridge and turned a corner to find our way blocked by a small contingent of heavily armed police and National Guardsmen. I took a few steps into the street to secure a good vantage point for what would happen next. In discussions afterward with my group, it was stated that the best strategy at this point would have been to quietly begin circulating through the crowd (of about fifty) a plan to charge on a prearranged signal, while giving time for the one to two hundred stragglers to arrive.
\n\nThis, however, is what did happen: Half a dozen people at the front suddenly charged with the shields. Perhaps, they assumed that the rest of the column would follow; it didn’t. Without, effective communication and coordination, we were reduced to confounded spectators. The State’s forces reacted immediately with a volley of less lethal weaponry.
\n\nThe rapid popping sound of rubber bullets and the thunderous rumble and bright multicolored explosions of the concussion grenades seemed like a Fourth of July pyrotechnics display but from the least comfortable angle. The chargers retreated back into the crowd, and, as the smoke in the no man’s land between us and the cops, began to drift upward, there was a moment of silence, then, another. In the third moment, I filled the silence with my voice. “Is that all you’ve got?” I screamed, “A fucking fireworks show?”
\n\nThe buzz of life returned to both sides of the street, and, pressing their advantage, the riot cops and soldiers began advancing and firing into the crowd. As the retreat began, enough people had the presence of mind to shout the mantra “Walk; don’t run!” every so often that our movement remained relatively safe and orderly. Although remaining calm and maintaining the integrity of the bloc is an obvious strategy, it requires a great deal of discipline, and I will admit that, when a grenade exploded next to me, I panicked and sprinted four or five steps.
\n\nAs we passed back under the bridge, there was a particularly loud and sustained barrage, and the grand old cheer of ‘68 erupted through the crowd. The chanting grew in volume and intensity, and I joined in even though I had serious doubt that “The whole world is watching.”
\n\nSomeone who had merged into the line of stalled vehicles beside us shouted, “Move into the street! They won’t shoot at the cars!” Finally, there was a general willingness to take the street.
\n\nOnce I had reached a safe distance from the advancing police line, I briefly assisted a medic performing an eyewash, then, went to search for the rest of my group from whom I had been separated in the confusion. After some minutes of unfruitful searching, I headed back in the direction from which the march had come and found that a line of riot cops (probably the bunch that had been pursuing us earlier) had formed, blocking my escape route.
\n\nI went to a small hill nearby and climbed to the top to survey the scene. There were police lines on both sides, the fortress wall in front and the Mississippi River at our backs. I scanned the crowd, looking for the middle class couple from earlier. Unable to find them, I assumed that they had managed to escape earlier in the fray, and, with that weight lifted, I snapped a few photographs, then, walked back down the hill. I had distributed disposable cameras among the group that morning with the hope that at least one would make it out. Mine was the only one that did. One reason for this was that I kept it in my pocket rather than a backpack or purse. When our bags were taken in the search and seizure, my camera remained safe and undetected. When I was arrested, it was placed in a bag with my wallet and other items found on my person. The bag was sealed during the arrest and returned to me when I was released. The outcome of the situation had become certain and inevitable. The lines of riot cops looked like Roman centurions, and I was reminded of the plight of Spartacus’s army two millenia ago, trapped with their backs to the ocean. I circulated through the crowd, informing the uninvolved locals of the gravity of the situation and telling them to use their cellphones to contact friends or family on the outside.
\n\nOrders came over the megaphone for us to sit on the ground and place our hands on our heads. A local newspaper article the following morning stated that the police had broken up and arrested people at a “sit-in.” I found a group of people I knew and got from them the phone number of a friend who was highly unlikely to get arrested over the course of the day (something I should have had when I walked out the door that morning). Then, I discarded my bandanna and pocketknife, and I found a place to sit next to the college students I had met earlier.
\n\nThe jagged perimeter moved methodically inward, and, as it approached the people seated on the ground in haphazard rows, here and there, that section of the line would stop. A small breach would be made for the arrest team to enter; the arrestees would be extracted, one by one, and, once the ground was clear for a few meters ahead, the advance began again. As the bunch in front of me were being hauled away, I began to sing, with as much sarcasm in my voice as I could muster,
\n\n“God bless America! Land that I love! Stand beside her and guide her…”
\n\nPeople around me took the cue and began to sing “The Star Spangled Banner” with taunting boisterousness. As soon as we finished the stanza, it was our turn.
\n\nOnce my hands were ziptied behind my back, I was told to stand and was directed through a long slow backward walk with a riot cop chaperon on each arm. After, perhaps, fifty meters of walking, I reached a processing station that had been set up in the street. First, I was searched, while the one of the two cops bureaucratically designated as my “arresting officer” filled out forms and asked to verify the information on my ID card. Once this phase was completed, my Arresting Officer said,
\n\n“I want to thank you for not resisting.”
\n\nI replied that I could not see anything that I would accomplish by doing so, and this seemed to be a satisfactory answer. Seeing no reason to believe my captor had any interest in my politics or why I had felt the need to travel over a thousand miles to end up in police custody in an unfamiliar city, I limited my speech to short, legally prudent responses and procedural questions. To his credit, Arresting Officer conducted himself in a polite and professional manner, and I was willing to suspect that he would rather have been protecting people from rapists and murderers or whatever he thought his job would entail back when he decided to join the police force.
\n\nOnce I was judged to be manageable, the other cop left to go arrest more people, and my arresting officer and I joined the slowly moving line to the bus. A very angry looking cop holding what looked like a shotgun, which I realized was a grenade launcher upon seeing the 40mm rounds he was porting as well, moved down the line, to our left, making pronouncements concerning each arrestee. He had apparently been one of the ones firing upon us earlier and was now identifying “troublemakers” for “special treatment.” His menacing tone could not hide his bubbling mirth as he derided the captives and chuckled out the level of their charges based upon arbitrary criteria. A certain criterion I noticed as painfully obvious was that all marked medics and people with journalistic paraphernalia were being assigned felonies. When he got to me, he suddenly fell silent and stared at my face. For a few seconds, we were both nearly motionless and expressionless.
\n\n“I don’t recognize this one at all.” he said and moved on down the line. My status was downgraded to “misdemeanor.”
\n\nAt the end of the line, my paperwork and personal effects were handed to an administrative worker. Arresting Officer and I stepped in front of a portable white background screen for my mugshot. It felt like a strange, fucked up family portrait, and, with the surreal absurdity of the situation, I had to smile. In stereotypical “Minnesota Nice” fashion, my arresting officer bid his farewell.
\n\n“Have a nice day!”
\n\n“Thank you! I hope you do as well!” I replied, as I stepped on the bus, and I actually meant it. Just as the conscripts of opposing nations have no personal quarrel, the tyranny of situation caused us to meet as adversaries. Despite their role as the foot soldiers of oppression, the police are still members of the working class, with as much stake in our struggle as everyone else. I do not place it beyond the realm of possibility that Arresting Officer and I will meet again, one day, on the same side of the barricades.
\n\nI was directed to my place and seated. There was a general mood of gloom and frustration until a single person began to sing,
\n\n“Don’t you worry ‘bout a thing, ‘cause ev’ry little thing is gunna be alright. Don’t you worry…” within minutes, the entire bus was swaying, tapping feet and singing along.
\n\nWe jovially welcomed each new arrival, as the bus was filled.
\n\nAfter a while, we tired of that song and began singing another. For the next hour or so that it took to load up the bus and journey to the jail, our “prison bus choir” continued without stop. Whenever one song came to an end, someone would start another, and all who knew the words would join him. These were mostly relatively apolitical songs chosen for their simplicity and general familiarity: pop songs often heard on the radio in years past, children’s songs, songs deemed to have an ironic connection to our situation. One exception to this was Against Me!’s “Baby, I’m an anarchist!” the singing of which was led by by a young man who, judging by his appearance alone, I would have assumed was just another “spineless liberal” like the one denounced in the song.
\n\nInside the jail compound, as the bus was idling in front of the garage door, we finished singing Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” and had a quick discussion in which an informal consensus was reached that, once we pulled inside, our final song would be “The Star Spangled Banner.” The door to the giant garage rolled up, and the bus went inside. To our right, was our welcoming committee. They were standing in rows next to their staged equipment. There was a very military smugness about them, and some were even standing at parade rest. Then, we began to sing.
\n\n“Oh, say, can you see…” Their expressions changed immediately. Some showed guilt at our implied accusation, frowning and hanging their heads. Others went berserk, scrambling to close the bus windows to deaden the sound. In the end, they resigned to the flagellation and held back until we had finished. We put extra volume and emphasis into the final lines, stomping our feet and shaking the bus during the fermatas. Then, the highly demoralized forces entered the bus to unload us.
\n\nMy experience at the Ramsey County Jail was much like a typical visit to the Jefferson Parish DMV, except I was processed more quickly and afforded more human dignity. In the final waiting area before the release, I found out, from other inmates, that my city had apparently survived Gustav and that the female arrestees, who had been immediately segregated from us, had received much harsher treatment. I conversed at length with a local real estate agent who had been caught up in the the same mass arrest as me and suggested that he should make rearrangements in his life, so that he can have more time for reading and other simple things he enjoys. I plan to be checking up on him soon, to see how this is coming along.
\n\nFinally, half a dozen of our names were called. We signed our release papers, were lead through the door, and loaded into an armored transport vehicle. After a short ride, we were released in the jail parking lot and given the plastic bags containing the items found in our pockets and some legal papers. There was, then, an invitation shouted from the prisoner support encampment at the end of the parking lot. There were food, water, and cigarettes for those who wanted any, and volunteers from the Coldsnap Legal Collective took notes on everyone’s case particulars.
\n\nWith my cell phone back in my possession, I called, first, my friend on the outside, then a Canadian journalist. Last spring, I hosted a bunch of Canadian activists who came to New Orleans for the SPP protests. This gave me friend-of-a-friend status with a TV reporter who was interested in doing an interview concerning the protests, Gustav, post-Katrina New Orleans, etc. It probably would have made for great television, but things kept popping up (my arrest, for example) that prevented us from meeting to do the piece. Oh well, you’re reading my story now; it had to get out somehow. Two comrades arrived, shortly thereafter, with my ride to the house. On the way there, I was told how the rest of the group had avoided my fate. Interesting tales, but they are theirs to tell (or guard the secret tricks for future use), not mine. When we got to the house, I was very glad to be spending the night on a living room couch, rather than a holding cell bench.
\n\nOn the morning of the second, we had breakfast at the Seward Café, one of several business in the Twin Cities run as a worker-owned collective, and got the photographs I had taken developed nearby. As it was judged best that I avoid a second arrest at all costs, I was dropped off at the Convergence Center, while the rest went to the Poor People’s March. I spent the day helping at the Seeds of Peace mobile kitchen. As I was finishing serving dinner, back at the Convergence Center, the others arrived for me. We made a visit to the Arise! Infoshop, then, continued on to the Bedlam Theatre for a show to benefit prisoner support.
\n\nHaving arrived before the bands started, most of us made our way up to the top floor balcony to enjoy the view and fresh air, while we waited. Soon after, police began arriving outside and employing intimidation tactics. I learned later that they had intended to raid the building, but agents of the NLG held them at bay.
\n\nAs the flurry of apprehension swirled among us, I noticed a familiar face. It was a notable folksinger whom I recognized from the photographs on his album covers. Some of his more famous songs concern: Hurricane Katrina, Irish immigrant fighters in the Mexican-American War and, ironically enough, being cornered in a building surrounded by cops. Preferring the adrenaline rush of picking up a conversation with a celebrity of sorts to that of worrying about the police, I went over and introduced myself.
\n\nI was rather flustered, at the beginning, but he was flattered that anyone recognized him at all and made reference to Utah Phillips’s joke of having “dozens of fans worldwide.” The conversation drifted toward Katrina, and he was quite amused to hear that I had weathered the storm in an abandoned strip club somewhere between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. While we were conversing, the situation downstairs diffused. Having other places to be, the folksinger took advantage of the window of safety and went on his way.
\n\nI set about to wandering through the crowd again; then, suddenly, a man with multiple facial piercings started yelling at me.
\n\n“What the hell are you doing here! You never leave New Orleans!” It was a trainhopper whom I had met the previous winter. He motioned me over to the table where he and his associates were assembled, inquired as to how my sister was doing, and proceeded to tell those present of the many gallons of beer we had drunk together in a bar known primarily for the cheapness of its drinks. There were other young hobos, that I had met before, there as well. It seems that, if you live somewhere that people from everywhere come to visit, wherever you go, there will be people you know.
\n\nThe concert had begun downstairs, and I went down to watch. As I mentally reviewed the events of the past few days, a very beautiful musing came to me:
\n\nIf our refusal to bow to any master, even God, prevents our entry to Heaven, then, the only suitable place for us in the hereafter would be something along the lines of a Valhalla for anarchists. In the morning, we would set about to gathering food from gardens, orchards and magically abundant dumpsters. We would all work together to make a magnificent feast which we would all sit down to share amidst lively conversation. In the afternoon, we would take to the streets. There, we would face the forces of the fascists with daring and innovative tactics, giving “all power to the imagination.” At sunset, our adversaries would scatter to the four winds as the injuries their weapons had inflicted would spontaneously become healed. The doors of the jail would swing open, and those within would rush out, into the embraces of their comrades. All assembled again, we would celebrate with song, dance, and playful diversions. As the fires dwindled, we would find our places to sleep for the night while excitingly whispering to one another our anticipation for the next day.
\n\nWord circulated through the crowd that, once the concert finished, people would take the public transit train to downtown Minneapolis for a spontaneous action. Our group separated into those interested and uninterested in participating (a close to even split) and made arrangements for meeting afterward. We, the non-participants, got drinks at the bar and went back to the top floor balcony.
\n\nBefore long, one of our cellphones rang. Things had gone horribly wrong! There had been a tipoff, and the police managed an ambush. Group members had scattered to escape arrest. Luckily, amidst the tense confusion, we managed to move through the neighborhood as an inconspicuous group to our friends’ hiding places; so they could deblock and blend in with us along our winding route back to the vehicle.
\n\nThe next day, we took a break from protest activity to split up and explore Minneapolis on foot. While sheltering from the rain under the awning of a large tenement building, my group of three met two residents, Somali immigrants named Muhammad and Ahmed. Muhammad found the political situation in America to be, in certain ways, even more confounding than that of his wartorn homeland.
\n\n“I saw you guys on TV last night. There is something I do not understand. You protesters are white people. The police are white people. I do not understand. Why are they shooting their own people?” We explained that, in this country, there are many factors which outweigh the bonds of ethnic kinship and that it was our ideas, more than it was ourselves, that the police were trying to kill. Muhammad pondered this briefly, but it did not seem to answer the central point of the quandary to his satisfaction.
\n\nAfter the rain subsided, we spent some time at a nearby playground, then wandered streets lined with businesses run and frequented by the city’s Muslim immigrant population. In this rambling, we stumbled on a stalwart fixture in the Twin Cities radical community, the Mayday Bookstore, where we lingered for some time.
\n\nAfter wandering further and becoming somewhat lost, we went into the Hard Times Café (another worker-owned collective featured in the famous RNC Welcoming Committee video “We’re Getting Ready!”) to ask directions. Inside, we found not only others from our group but also, at another table, the lockdowners from two days before. I gave them prints of the more interesting photos I had taken and discussed the possibility of traveling to each other’s cities for future actions.
\n\nOnce we were all reassembled, we went to the Ramsey County Courthouse to watch arraignments. We witnessed the proceedings for (among others) a New Orleanian friend who had moved to New York after The Storm and the people now known as “The RNC 8.” To learn about their cases and how you can help their cause, visit rnc8.org. The naked aggression of totalitarianism in that courtroom was the most frightening thing I saw on that trip (or, quite possibly, ever), and it fed my nightmares for weeks afterward.
\n\nWe spent the fourth sorting out problems with the vehicles and making other preparations and arrangements for the long journey home. On the return trip, we could afford a more leisurely pace. We spent to night of the fifth in Chicago. The day and night of the sixth were filled with the long journey southward.
\n\nAs night fell, and we came within a few hours journey from home, sending word to friends to herald our arrival, we began to receive phone calls and text messages concerning the state of the homefront: Despite Nature’s sparing the city, Katrina-style martial law was in effect. A gentle friend of ours had been beaten severely by the police for being found outdoors after curfew. Another hurricane, Ike, was in the Gulf and headed our way.
\n\nWe stopped at a gas station on the northern shore of Lake Ponchartrain to wait for the sunrise (and, with it, the lifting of curfew). Stark realization gradually shifted into grim determination, and we began to make plans. It was then that we knew: our battles were only beginning…
\n\nThis story continues here in DOCUMENT FOURTEEN as “The Beginning of Our Battles.”
\n\nDisclaimer: The following is completely a work of fiction. Any resemblence to real people, places, or events is entirely coincidental.
\n\nA NOLA Dispatch from the RNC
\n\nI’m not sure how I convinced myself to go on this trip. Oh yeah: that whole mandatory evacuation thing. The news stations announced yet another cataclysmic storm’s trajectory heading for New Orleans. The mayor, who had monumentally failed his citizens during the previous diasaster, appeared on TV announcing that anyone staying behind should not leave their house or face immediate arrest. Yeah, that was it. I could either go East with my family or head up North to Minneapolis with a merry band of radicals to disrupt the 2008 Republican National Convention. Tough call.
\n\nI’d originally had to babysit the week of the scheduled departure. But circumstances had changed, the stars had aligned, and I was now forced to leave town anyway—again, with the threat of not coming back to one. What did I have to lose? Although if anything went down, a couple of us decided, we’d make sure to head back early to take advantage of the city-wide anarchy, loot the shit out of chain stores and maybe have a standoff with National Guardsmen who’d been occupying our city for the last three years.
\n\nI couldn’t tell whether to read the warnings of looming disaster as destiny or a really bad omen. On the night of departure/evacuation, things got off to a rocky start. I say “rocky,” but actually the whole plan almost fell to pieces because of me. I’d had the lack of foresight to beleive my consistently non-supportive parents would—might—go complacently along with my lending out of their car in exchange for a van. As it were, Brannon had had a hard enough time convincing the van’s owner that, no, we would not set it on fire; we would use it strictly as a blocakde and shield—and of course we would flip it over afterward! Sheesh! Now we were out of the van, with only one small car to transport almost a dozen people, and instead our original trade-off car would sit parked in my parents’ driveway in the suburbs. Part of me hoped the flood waters would come and wash it away.
\n\nBut it all worked out—sort of. Sylvia was house-sitting for one of her co-workers and in possession of his two vehicles. She left him a dire phone message asking permission to borrow it, and without waiting for a reply, drove over to our meeting place around midnight with his Jeep! Technically I guess this is considered “theft”—but hey, this was also a state of emergency!
\n\nWhen he did call back, he told Sylvia we could take the Jeep under one condition: he wanted to come along. As a Republican supporter. Errr… Sylvia was somewhere between “stretching the truth” and outright lying: spouting off some nonsense about driving the car to “safety” a thousand miles away (into the midst of a mass protest) and some empty promise about getting the guy into the convention through a connection with her cousin. Sort of the opposite goal of the trip, but—you know—give and take. I welcomed his coming along out of the sheer, abusrd irony of the situation. A Republican aiding and abetting a group of hostile protestors across the country in his Jeep! In the end—much to my dismay—the Republican didn’t accompany us. But somehow we were still taking his car!
\n\nWe crammed our two vehicles with a motley crew: some radical college students, a couple insurrectionary anarchists, one lawyer, one loud and lovable drunk, and one objective kid on his way to his first protest to document and take it all in. After a twenty-hour, almost incident-free drive we reached the Twin Cities late the next night.
\n\nThe hour of reckoning drew nearer and still we couldn’t track down a wrench. Gas stations and shopkeepers either didn’t carry them or were just unwilling to help us subvert the RNC. Plus it was Labour Day. But after driving all around town in a panic, we found an open hardware store on the corner. The clerk questioned Sylvia and Harriet as to why they possibly needed both an enormous wrench and a bag of roofing nails.
\n\n“I dunno, that’s just what my dad told us to buy,” lied Harriet innocently, reinforcing that old stereotype about men and tools.
\n\nNow that we had what we needed, it was time for phase one to begin. Assessing that I was the only one in the car not dressed like a cat burglar, we decided I should be the Wrench-Bearer. They let me out a street over from the intersection where the blockade would ensue shortly. A cop car sat parked on the corner, waiting to pounce. I walked right past it along the pedestrian path toward the benches.
\n\nA couple were fixing an overturned bike not too far up. I recognized them as Ingrid and Alex, members of a seperate NOLA affinity group who’d driven up as well. I sat down on the bench and covertly slipped the wrench out of my pocket and into Alex’s hand. When each side of traffic was clear, he began turning the bolts of the benches loose. Ingrid sitting on the ground kept an eye on one side of traffic, while I watched the other as I casually munched on an apple.
\n\nInformants had infiltrated the aptly-named RNC “Welcoming Committee” in its planning stages and arrested its organizers, so they knew pretty much what to expect. Cop cars—marked and unmarked—swarmed the area, which hindered our progress. More than one jogger asked if we needed help.
\n\nAfter about twenty minutes of working in tandem like this—check each way, confirm the coast is clear, churn baby churn—a teenage couple sauntered up and decided to stop at the scenic overlook of the industrial yard where the benches lay. The boy took out a pad and began to draw. The storm came closer with every ticking minute and we wasted five just waiting for the two straggling kids to clear out. Finally Alex gave me a look and said, “Can you ask them to leave? Make sure to mention cops and danger.”
\n\nI walked over to the two adolescents. “Hey, something’s about to go down here, I think,” I told them, trying to give them some unpoken hint. “Lots os cops are about to descend on this area, so you might not wanna be here.” The blank stares told me they didn’t get it. “Are you serious?” the goth girl asked snidely.
\n\nRealizing that if we didn’t move we would miss our cue and hoping these kids were “down”—or at least as oblivious as they seemed to be—we continued. Suddenly a man in a tucked-in shirt with matching khakis and dress shoes came unassumingly walking by. We all stopped and picked up our bike-repair routine when out of the corner of his mouth he said, “I’ll give you the signal, across by the tracks.” It felt like a scene from Mission: Impossible!
\n\nAlex managed to unbolt the two benches completely from the cement right before Ingrid stood up. “It’s happening,” she said. The young couple ran off in the direction of the protesters took to the street on the route of the delegate buses. Like clockwork a heavy concentration of police had made their way there. As the activists began locking down in circle formation, creating a huge diversion, out of nowhere black-clad figures wearing bandanas over their faces charged toward us. The notepad boy and his girlfriend were running with them yelling “Fuck the RNC!” It’s true; anarchists are everywhere.
\n\nAs the police busied themselves a block away, we pulled the benches out into the roadway and U-locked them together. Cars honked, people hollered, and the cops quickly spotted what we were doing. But we managed to escape up the street to mingle with the onlookers and offer support for the blockade before they could arrest us.
\n\nAlthough the benches were quickly cleared from the roadway, the blockade lasted a crucial twenty or so minutes. A paddy wagon arrived filled with back-up and the demonstrators were asked to either leave the street or face being physically removed. We stood by as they complied. As soon as the most cumbersome individuals were dealt with and on their way to jail, the cops encircled our group and confiscated every bag, which they threw in a pile next to us and searched. Due to some of the more incriminating items they found therein—including but not limited to: dark clothes, locks, nails, and doe urine—we were returned only a few. The rest, as you can imagine, no one bothered collecting later from police custody. After Sylvia negotiated with the commanding officer (who, minutes before, was confronted by another legal advisor during the blocakde dispersion for covering his badge number), we were released. Off to a great start, I thought.
\n\nWe’d managed to narrowly escape with the pigs confiscating only a few of our possessions instead of any of us, so who in their right mind would have expected us shortly thereafter to drive across town and into another fray?
\n\nBrannon suggested we make our way to the Capitol Building and merge with the Anti-Capitalist Bloc. Actually, Brannon pretty much served as our tour guide and travel agent for the whole trip, recommending this march and that protest, this restuarant, that arraignment. He drove us around in his noisy stick-shift—that is, until he “donated” it to an interstate blockade. A seasoned anarchist veteran, I could tell how peppy he was to take part in another national protest, eager to challenge power, and I could appreciate that about him. Even—especially—when he made rash descisions like giving away his car to strangers for the good of the movement. Someone—maybe Sylvia, the “responsible” one of the group—piped the rational question: “So, how are we going to get home?”
\n\nBrannon didn’t even blink. “I’ll just rent us another car!” he declared.
\n\nAnd if the cops don’t give it back?
\n\n“I’ll just buy another car!”
\n\nWe caught up with the Anti-Capitalist Bloc as they marched toward downtown. As they reached the brink of the business district—and the Orwellian perimeter fencing that those in power had erected to keep us out—the cops were lined up to—uh—block us. The Capitalist Bloc, if you will.
\n\nThe anarchists were baffled. At this point I imagined someone at the front of the line pulling out their worn copy of Emma Goldman for reference on what to do next. They were so befuddled everyone began having little collective meetings in the street with their affinity groups, as if they were discussing nothing more than the dynamics of white privilege in a game of kickball. Brannon grew fed up and took to the streets, trying to incite the crowd who were having logistical discussions on tactics in the middle of a march. When this failed, he then just began verbally insulting sign-holding liberals in the median. “You’re the reason shit doesn’t change!” he yelled, taking out his anger on the easiest target. “You just sit on the sidelines and don’t do shit!” Someone criticized his method of “rallying comrades” and someone else called him an undercover.
\n\nI should have forseen the rest of the day unfolding badly. Like a sheep I followed the crowd around a circuitous route into a residential neighborhood. Two masked people pulled a dumpster into the road behind us and overturned it. We emerged on a long boulevard along the Mississippi river. And like good little sheep, we stayed on the sidewalk and never broke rank—as though this might make us look more favorable in the eyes of our oppressors. A few even went so far to tell people to take down their bandanas so we would appear more presentable and not “looking to cause trouble.”
\n\nWe’d also given the state’s foot soldiers plenty of valuable time to strategize and the fact that we were now walking unhindered seemed more like a dark foreshadowing than anything else. As we shuffled down the busy road, running parallel with us were the commuter trains chauffeuring in delegates by the dozens. It was an ironic slap in the face: that despite the months of planning and the mobilizing they were getting in almost entirely unharrassed.
\n\nFinally we reached the overpass which would take us into the heart of downtown. And wouldn’t you know it, there they stood in formation, those mannequins of power gleaming in their full riot get-up. Somehow I’d made my way to the front, where the red and black banner stood, obstinate to our foes. When we began crouching down behind the tin sign while the police across from us ready themselves, I knew in that moment the inevitable was coming. Our backs were against the river and I didn’t dare move for fear they would open fire.
\n\nTime stood still for a moment and all around grew quiet. The ones in front took a few steps into the intersection. And then—all hell broke loose. The police fired green pepper balls resembling large pieces of chalk which made me tear-up and choke. Someone next to me limped past screaming “They shot me in the fucking leg!” The crowd began pushing and shoving back from whence we came. Shots rang out behind me. People began running through the now-backed-up traffic yelling “This is your government! Look at your government!” as our “protectors” fired unmercifully in our direction regardless of civilians. One man proceeded to run over the hood and roofs of cars fanatically yelling “They’re coming!” I found Elsa briefly who was also crying from the gas and trauma before being seperated again.
\n\nThe protestors were dispersing; up the street a ways—once I began to feel a relative degree of safety—I found Ingid and Alex. We collapsed onto the sloping grass of a nearby park to bring our heart rates back to normal and assess what just happened. The sleek facade of “justice” had reared its ugly head for all to see and the protestors had realized this when they chanted “The whole world is watching!” Eventually Harriet—separate and dangerously apart from the crowd across the street—walked up huffing and beet-red in the face. She was tough. Only a few months before she’d been radicalized and now she was hyperventillating after an attack from riot cops.
\n\nI’m not sure exactly how it happened. Or rather, I’m not sure how we didn’t see it coming. One moment we were resting in a park resting, asking one another if we were okay, and the next bike cops had started herding and boxing us in. They dominated the circumference of the whole park, their bikes turned sideways and acting as make-shift barricades. Before any of us realized what they were doing, it was too late. Even the water was dotted with police and the National Guard—boats fully mounted with machine guns!
\n\nI looked around at the hundred or more people also realizing what was happening. What were they going to do, arrest us all?! Apparently so. I looked up from my position at two girls in bright skirts with designer purses, obviously not involved in the festivities. “Oh, my god,” one remarked. “Are they going to arrest us? I need to call—” she scrambled around in her purse for her cell phone and her face became stricken. Then the fit of panic and crying. “ Oh my, god, where’s my phone?! Where’s my phone?!”
\n\nNothing to do but wait. Diggory had strolled up nonchalantly as though nothing quite eventful were happening. Perhaps he was trying to pretend he didn’t have a clue what was going on, but the black coveralls he wore betrayed him. Those carrying anything that could remotely be construed as “incriminating” began setting them in the bushes and in the trash cans.
\n\nMeanwhile across the river we could see and hear the tents where Atmosphere and Mos Def played to a cheering crowd. The night before I left town to go on this adventure, I’d seen Mos Def play in New Orleans. All night I’d wandered around outside the show trying to get into the club for free. At about 1 am that night, precisely as Mos Def took the stage inside, they waved the $20 cover and I walked right in and caught his entire set! Midway through he asked the crowd to “do that Katrina clap” following which everyone in the audience did a synchronized clap, clap clap clap. Over the past hours, we’d been receiving mixed updates from family and friends about the condition of the city: some said parts would certainly be wiped out, others said they predicted it would pass us and opt for Cuba instead. Still up in the air. Now as I sat on the ground in the sunshine waiting for the cops to move in, I heard Mos shout “This is for the city of New Orleans!” What I wouldn’t have given to be on that side of the river. And the thought occured to me: after all I’d done, after all the mischief I’d caused and evaded being punished for, I was going down for this. For sitting in a park after a symbolic march against some delegates who were going to meet anyway. This was my first protest experience, and I certainly didn’t feel empowered or liberated.
\n\nWe listened to the “power to the people” shout for which applause rose into the air across the water, and at that moment it seemed so hypocritical. I imagined college kids pumping beer-clenched fists while just on the other side of the water people were being repressed. I guess that’s pretty analogous for more than just Minnesota.
\n\nI had resigned myself to the fact that I would get arrested in a few minutes. Alex passed around the last of his water and a few other kindred souls shared their Cliff Bars and trail mix with us. The cops had already zip-tied and led away some of us one by one. I looked at them closely as they stood like Robocops behind their gear, trying to detect some semblance of humanity. I looked at their skin, their faces, to confirm they were in fact flesh and blood human beings. I overheard two of them talking to one another. “Do you recognize him?” one said, referring to someone some feet away. “I saw him earlier…” the other replied.
\n\nIt became clear to me their motives. Mass detainment and arrest for the purpose of gathering key people and gaining a comprehensive list of everyone involved in the struggle. One officer snapped pictures; another held a video camera. I recognized one of the officers who’d been present earlier in the day when they’d surrounded us on the sidewalk and taken our bags. Well, so much for my “just taking a stroll in the park” stand-by…
\n\nGradually our numbers diminished and eventually they led my two NOLA comrades away. Around me foolish individuals had written the number for the legal collective on their arms—another piece of incriminating evidence for the police to deduce just who had been breaking the law. Instead I’d written them on the inside of my boxer shorts and prepared for what was next. Harriet who sat next to me, asked if I was okay. I felt really calm.
\n\nAn officer told me to stand up. He turned to one of his buddies and remarked, smirking, “Look at this one.” He faced me and asked derisively, “How old are you, Pee Wee?”\nI told him.
\n\n“What are you doing out here?”
\n\n“Just walking around,” I told him, cautiously.
\n\n“Just walking around, huh?” I could tell he wasn’t buying it. If I didn’t have a fighting chance of talking my way out of this, I wouldn’t answer any further questions. But after a minute he said, as an aside, “Get out of here, Pee Wee. And don’t come back.”
\n\nIt took a nanosecond to register before, stunned, I scrambled up the embankment to the street, to freedom. I couldn’t beleive my luck.
\n\n“Wait. Hold on a second, Pee Wee.” Really, do these guys get off at the station exchanging bad jokes? Another acquaintance later reported being called “chowder head” by one of them.
\n\nI guess they thought they could ring some more information out of me. “So who are you staying with?” he asked.
\n\nThis time I didn’t answer.
\n\nHe grew belittling. “What are you, scared? Or are you invoking your rights?”\n“I’m going to remain silent.”
\n\nNow his tone just became mocking. “You’re not under arrest. You don’t need to evoke your rights when you’re not under arrest, Pee Wee.” Another interrogation trick. I kept walking.
\n\nAt the edge of the park I reunited with Brannon, Sylvia, and Elsa. I think they were more surprised I’d gotten away than I was. Sylvia had managed to pass herself off as a “legal advisor,” and Brannon and Elsa had fled before they’d closed in. I informed them that Diggory had been taken away and Harriet was still in there.
\n\nA moment later Harriet strode up and described how she too had slipped by. The officer had asked her too why she’d come here. Applying her “dumb little girl” act, she told them she didn’t know.
\n\n“You don’t know?” the cop repeated.
\n\n“I was evacuating from New Orleans and this is where the car was headed.” Solid.\nHe asked what she had written on her arm. Lucky for her she hadn’t scrawled the legal collective’s number but Sylvia’s, a number they didn’t recognize.
\n\n“I dunno, this is my friend who I’m evacuating with’s number. They were pasing around a marker to write numbers on their arm and I just wrote my friend’s.”
\n\nHe just let her go. Unbelievable.
\n\nAfter our brushes with the law and subsequent non-arrests, it was high time for celebration. We spent the next half-hour on the sidewalk in downtown St. Paul bumming for “spare dollars.”
\n\n“Why would I give you a dollar?” said one smug man in a suit as he continued walking.
\n\n“BECAUSE YOU’RE A FUCKIN’ TOOL!”
\n\nHow to Avoid Mass Arrest
\n\n“This is your third and final warning.” It’s hard to make out the voice from the megaphone in the midst of all the noise and confusion; there must be a couple hundred of us now. “…order you to disperse, or you will be subject to—”
\n\nYeah, I know, I think to myself, or we will be subject to arrest—but he surprises me: “—chemical weapons.”
\n\nChemical weapons! My heart skips a beat. We’re in front of one of the most prestigious delegate hotels—if they gas us here, they’re practically admitting defeat! I haven’t been tear-gassed since Quebec City, and I have such fond memories of gas-masked anarchists throwing back the smoking canisters. Too bad I’m not really dressed for it.
\n\n“Whose streets?” I yell, hoarse but enthusiastic. “OUR STREETS!” everyone answers, making good on it by holding their ground as the first shots ring out. As clichéd as it sounds, I could do this all day. It beats gnawing my nerves in private rage, wishing for a chance to engage with the murderers who are destroying the planet.
\n\nOn reflection, it’s not surprising that they’re trying to force us back—with an open park to our left, there’s no way they could surround us. They need to get us onto terrain they can control.
\n\nWe fall back slowly, medics rushing to attend to the injured and get them out of harm’s way. Everything that isn’t bolted down is dragged into the street; the sound of scraping metal mingles with the explosions of concussion grenades and tear gas canisters. Eventually, rather than retreat from downtown, we turn the corner and begin to move north.
\n\nNow it’s a different ball game—the city is a grid of closed walls, and they could box us in and mass-arrest us in the middle of any block. My partner and I are constantly checking in, keeping abreast of police movements in all four directions. Every time we see a solid line of cops form, we make sure we have at least two escape routes open. A couple times, they form a line ahead of us when we’re between intersections, and we have about thirty seconds to run out the other end before they close the line there as well; as fast as their orders go out, our legs are always faster. It can be frightening to run right through forming lines of police, but riot police are extremely predictable if you can tell what their orders are. At one point I practically crash into one officer, but as his task is to block the way rather than to make individual arrests, he doesn’t react.
\n\nWe’ve been doing this for over a week now, first in Denver and now here. It’s worth noting how much less experience the officers on the street have than we do—for many of them, this is their first time, while I’ve been playing this game half my adult life.
\n\nNow they’re setting up lines at every intersection—closing down the entire area. We separate from the rest of the crowd, moving as fast as our legs will carry us, passing through line after closing line of riot cops. Finally we’re in the clear.
\n\nThe city around us is suddenly eerily empty. We walk arm in arm, letting our breathing slow. Later, we discover that police had sectioned off an area of several blocks, mass-arresting many of our comrades, and we were the only ones free inside it.
\n\nTurning a corner, we come upon a wagon upended in the street, its contents scattered everywhere along with a single lost shoe. “Is that the Funk the War sound system?” It is. We turn it back on its wheels, load the speakers and piles of fliers back in, and walk it right up to the line of police with their backs to us. They let us through without a thought.
\n\nAfter the first day of coordinated action at the RNC, we all wearily returned to the house where we were staying. Coming back one by one or in small groups, everyone excitedly shared stories and wild tales from the day, smiled to see that their friends were alright, cringed at the news that some hadn’t made it back, and started making plans for the days still to come.
\n\nAmidst all the conversation and commotion, someone turned on the TV to see what the local news had to say about anarchists wreaking havoc and swarming the streets of downtown St. Paul. When the news segment came on, it included a montage of clips from over the course of the day. The newscaster deadpanned a narrative as the video jumped from scene to scene: “Some protesters locked themselves to a car in the middle of an intersection”—cut to muddled video of riot cops starting to remove lock boxes—”some protesters dragged items into the street and confronted riot police”—cut to video of police charging horses into protesters wearing colorful clothing—”some protestors damaged storefronts”—cut to video of someone shoving a sign through the Macy’s window. The narrator then continued, “…and then there’s this man, Keith.”
\n\nThe video cut again to show a single teenager sitting cross-legged and completely alone in the middle of an intersection downtown, calmly beating out a feeble-sounding rhythm with a small jingle-bell stick, surrounded by a large circle of imposing but confused-looking riot police. The reporter managed to get into the circle of police to interview Keith, who simply said “Well, I just wanted to come up here and show them that they can’t get away with whatever they want.”
\n\nThe video dragged on as Keith continued sitting in the intersection, lightly shaking his jingle-bell stick amidst the otherwise-silent stone-faced glares from the police, having obviously been there quite a while. We watched with wide eyes at the gall Keith had managed to muster by himself, and laughed at the absurdity of so many unamused riot police standing around sweating through their gear in response to a single rogue teenager.
\n\nI don’t know anything about Keith, where he came from, or what compelled him to take his stand in that lonely intersection downtown. But I like to imagine that he lives in a small Midwestern town not too far from Minneapolis, and that somehow he came across an Unconventional Action paper or the RNC Welcoming Committee website which, for one reason or another, he found deeply inspiring. Maybe he read about the proposed plan: pick a sector, find an intersection, and shut it down.
\n\nAnd I like to think that, wanting to know what that felt like, but not really having any co-conspirators amongst his friends at home, he just fucking did it. He didn’t sign up for a ticket on an activist bus that would dump him into the march, and he didn’t give up on being a part of it because he was alone. He somehow traveled to St. Paul, found his intersection, and perhaps with some uncertainty of what was going to happen, sat down with his jingle-bell stick. And he stayed there.
\n\nKeith, wherever you are, I hope you keep following your urges—even if you have to start alone.
\n\nSo there we were, Z and I, in downtown Saint Paul, separated from the relative safety of the throngs of protesters, walking briskly out of a parking lot, breathing heavily and talking to each other about where we were headed next. The Mississippi River was two blocks ahead of us and it seemed like a good time to slip away into touristville. Walking close together the two of us were a block away from people leisurely strolling along the riverbank when I noticed a man biking a short distance behind us. He was a middle-aged male, scruffy, smoking a cigarette and watching us with a decidedly unfriendly consistency. I guessed him to be a loyal Republican local, and the way he seemed to be following us gave me an increased sense of urgency to disappear into the non-protesters. I pulled Z’s shirt slightly, but before I could explain my concerns, they turned from thoughts to threats. We had reached the riverbank and were waiting impatiently for the light to change when I saw the biking man approach two stout men with short hair and similar outfits. The do-gooder pointed towards us and my heart skipped a beat. I didn’t know if the men he was talking to were cops, but didn’t stick around to find out. “We gotta go,” I said as I grabbed Z by the arm and pulled him up the street, away from the men and parallel to the river. “What?” Z said, as we shuffled as quickly as possible without drawing attention to ourselves; but after only a few feet a loud “Hey!” came from the opposite corner, and the chase began.
\n\nI distinctly remember thinking “Okay, it’s happening. This is what you were preparing for. This is it.” All the jogging and talking, stretching and practicing was for situations like this: trapped in an unfamiliar setting, with enemies at nearly every corner and a few coming for us. My mouth went dry as we ran. I looked back to see the two men about a block behind us. Z and I were committed to staying together throughout the RNC, but hadn’t explicitly discussed scenarios such as this. We ran together, following each other’s lead in a fluid manner with little verbal cues, friends in struggle, in fight and flight. We took the first turn available, a right turn away from the river. A quick block and a left turn later I surveyed the scene: no friendly faces in sight, and delegate busses at the end of the block with accompanying militia… the reality really set in: we were alone and in danger.
\n\nLuckily, we found an alley to the right and ducked into it before the pursuers had made the previous turn. The alley was one block long with a dumpster on the right and cars parked on the left at 45° angles. We hid in a slight alcove made by the closest car and a cut away in the building and changed our clothes as best we could. We seemed to have lost them for the moment, but weren’t well hidden enough to stay where we were. I wanted to jump in the dumpster across the alley but hesitated because there was a camera nearby and I didn’t want to be so confined. I let my idea fall without sharing it with my friend, a decision I regret upon reflection. We could have similarly slipped underneath the cars we crouched next to, but without knowing where the thugs were or if and when any aid would chance to pass our way it didn’t seem to be a smart decision to hole up where we were.
\n\nOur best chance of escape was in anonymity, but we had to find a background to encompass us. Z was ready to leave and I, feeling indecisive, went with his lead. We popped out onto the street at the far end of the alley and found another wall of busses and police to the left. We turned and walked anxiously away from them. The walls of the buildings on either side of the street were made with the type of dark, reflective glass characteristic of downtown high-rises. I used them to check our surroundings and my heart sank deeper. In the window of the building across the street I saw one of the men from the corner running down the street towards us, no farther than half a block away.
\n\nAgain we ran, wide-eyed deer in a concrete forest trying to understand an incomprehensible landscape while fleeing imprisonment. We raced forward towards what I recognized with a tightness in my chest as the intersection one block above where all of this started. We ran across an empty lot and turned right, away from where we had been. Downtown seemed to be an endless ghost world full of hollow, metallic trees raised high to drown all shadows, antmen of blue or black hue carrying weapons and enmity, and a feeling of oppressive emptiness. The streets were void of the boisterous possibility carried by the thousands of individuals creating and redefining their lives. As we looked up the street only to find small groups of the antmen scattered here and there, it seemed we were going to have to risk proximity to them to make it out of the nowhereland we were in. As I processed what I saw and what I felt was possible, Z, a few steps ahead of me, stepped into a building and as the door closed behind him so did my hope. I saw the place as a box without an exit, only a doorway to another box—one with bars. I did not want to go in, but I didn’t feel comfortable leaving Z. In an excruciating few seconds I weighed my options and chose to stay with my friend over splitting up without communication.
\n\nThis is my second regret, and the one I have thought the most about since September. I know Z would have understood my decision to leave him in hopes of finding sanctuary. From the beginning of the chase, if we had split up we would have been less easily identified—no longer the pair the biking man pointed out—and would have been harder to follow going in different directions. The possibility of one of us getting caught would have still been high, but better only one than two. I knew that if we were caught it would be a lot easier to face jail and the legal system together, but I didn’t consider the fact that we would have support either way.
\n\nInside, I tried to find a rear or alternative exit but to no avail. The rest of the story goes as one might imagine and can be summarized in a single sentence. We lost this time.
\n\nThis time. There will be more opportunities in which we will confront the state face to face, and next time I will not make the same mistakes. The key to growth is to learn from experience; there is much to learn from the experiences of Saint Paul.
\n\nHere are a few conclusions I derived from this specific instance:
\n\nTalk over as much as possible with your friends. Be specific. Try to imagine as many potential challenges as you can.
\n\nDetermine everyone’s hard boundaries. When is it OK to break your basic guidelines or rules?
\n\nIt has been said before, but it begs repeating: take space to center and ground yourself before approaching conflict situations. Try to refrain from getting caught up in external factors and momentum to the point of forgetting your original intentions and thoughts. This isn’t to say one should hold back when feeling excited or inspired in a moment.
\n\nRiding in the back of the squad car, sweating in handcuffs and September heat, we speed through the St. Paul streets. Past broken windows and overturned trash cans, we reach the fortress of the Ramsey County Law Enforcement Center. The National Guard waves us on through the snaking barricades. They picked us up and spat us out, the Feds mingling with the sheriffs. Once the initial force of arrest has been exerted, I find myself pacified. They’ve got riot cops and National Guardsmen everywhere, thousands of burly white men with tear gas, guns, and a bloodlust for anarchists. I don’t want to submit to their brute force, but the fear of bodily harm is a strong instinct, so I let them order me around.
\n\nInside the jail there’s a motley assortment of protesters and thickly accented Minnesotan cops scurrying about. I look around for friends and find a few in holding cells across the room. I sit on a bench and wait to be booked. The people that the cops perceived as female are in a holding cell together, a rowdy bunch of Jane Does. They write messages on the window and wave at passing prisoners. I grudgingly get booked and decide to be vegan for my stay. Next I’m moved into a holding cell, friends old and new by my side. We share news from the streets, the frustration of custody. I get fingerprinted by a bumbling guard, then I’m shuffled to another cell. Someone I met recently on the outside speaks to me through the vents, and I quote a song he wrote back to him, “You may well put me in jail but you will never touch my heart.” As cheesy as it may be, it’s fucking true. Through the window I see a sweetheart in another cell, and we trace notes to each other. “Riot in sector three!”
\n\nEven behind bars we find bits of joy and camaraderie. In the midst of violent repression there are still ways to subvert authority. In the cell block with dozens of radicals of all stripes, there’s an atmosphere of rebellion that persists through our chains. The jail is on 23-hour lockdown, and we spend our free hour each day carousing about the cell block, going door to door to spread news and rumors, and secretly passing pens under doors. When I’m alone is sing every song I can remember, wishing the jail would come under siege—but I know this is one of the most fortified places in the country right now. They have an army of cops and all we have is spontaneity, and sticks and stones.
\n\nOn the second day, word spreads that not all the vegans are receiving vegan meals. Even though the meals are just PB & J in a paper bag, sometimes with a moldy orange, we’re taking any reason to put pressure on the jail and running with it. As the next meal comes vegans and non-vegans refuse their food, no one will eat until we all can eat. We keep up this solidarity until the guards cave and bring us more vegan meals. It’s important to recognize that we probably got treated, on the whole, better than most inmates at the Ramsey County Jail, due to the media attention and our skin and class privilege. But in a county that recently had an outbreak of tuberculosis in the jail workhouse and rents out beds to ICE, there’s plenty of reasons to pressure the system.
\n\nOne night, the television says protesters have reached the Xcel center. On the outside I wouldn’t care so much, but here this is big news. The noise begins with someone howling and banging on their door. The guards tell him to shut up and we all start making gorilla noises, a celebratory ruckus from every cell. At first I’m hesitant to join, but soon I’m yelling and kicking and the one guard in our cell block leaves. The panopticon is ominously empty. We keep on with our imprisoned festival.
\n\nQuickly, a dozen guards march into the cell block, spread out, and comb the area, silencing us and searching our cells. About two thirds of the guards encircle someone’s cell, targeting him for being an agitator. One guard lunges into the cell and I hear our friend shouting. I can’t see into the cell but the cop is clearly assaulting him. Others enter and after a few moments they drag our comrade out, one pig to each limb. He screams for help, but we can’t do anything besides feel our hearts drop and let our voices ring with his. Soon a calm settles over the cell block, a social peace imposed by the threat of violence. It’s clear who’s in control here, and our resistance dwindles down to scattered cat meows. Whenever the guards order us to be silent, we respond by meowing at them, like kittens with no respect for authority. Our friend doesn’t return; he must be in solitary. We later hear that he has been tortured.
\n\nAfter four days I’m bailed out and I know I’m lucky. As of this writing three people are still in federal custody from RNC-related charges, thanks to FBI informants. An entire class of our society remains behind bars, without the support that young white activists get when faced with state repression. As insurgents, the state will try to crush our dreams and lock us up. Dissent may not be a crime, but resistance is. The sooner we come to terms with the fact that we could all end up in jail, and that we could survive the experience, the more chance our resistance has to grow. The state considers us outlaws, so let’s wise up and act like it.
\n\nYours Truly,\nNobody
\n\nOn the afternoon of Thursday, September 4, dressed in our finest civilian attire, three of us took the bus to meet friends due to be released from jail near downtown St. Paul. Soon after we sat down, a woman across from us in her late twenties made a sound of disgust. She had sighted a cop car in another lane of traffic.
\n\nAn older woman on an adjacent seat chimed in. “I know, they’re everywhere. You can’t go anywhere without seeing a damn cop.”
\n\n“I was in St. Paul on Monday,” the younger woman replied, “and what I’ve seen those cops doing makes me ashamed. I saw one girl, beaten and bloody on the pavement, with three cops standing over her.”
\n\n“I believe it. And I haven’t read a thing about it in the papers.”
\n\n“And they just get away with whatever they want…”
\n\nThis dialogue continued for a few minutes as the bus slowly made its way through traffic. Gradually, other riders began offering their own accounts of police brutality. Finally, a man roughly in his sixties, with a white beard and a large Episcopalian Church pin on his hat, spoke up.
\n\n“I would never go to a protest without packing.”
\n\nAt this point, everyone on the bus, most of whom had been minding their own business, visibly shifted attention to the older man in the front.
\n\n“I’m serious, I don’t trust them cops one bit. I’m telling you, if you ever go to a protest, always be able to defend yourself.” The rest of bus was silent, but some people nodded. ”I was living in Chicago in 1968, in law school at the time. I remember the Democratic National Convention was going on, and Mayor Daley had the National Guard out on the streets. One of those days I was driving through town, trying to get to class, and got stopped by a National Guardsmen redirecting traffic. I rolled down my window and told him I had to get through. He refused, and then I refused to go the other way. Eventually he pointed his rifle at me, saying I better move my car down the other street. Well, I just pulled out my .45, pointed it right back at him, and said, ‘Mine’s loaded, how ‘bout yours?’ And then he let me right on through. So I‘m saying, always be prepared. .45 ACP.”
\n\nMy friends and I had been content to listen to the discussion in silence until then. But I couldn’t help smiling: “Naw, man, .40 Smith and Wesson, that’s where it’s at.” He smiled back, and the entire bus broke out in heated discussion about police brutality, little of which was actually centered around the unusual events of the preceding few days.
\n\nAs the conversations got more and more intense, we arrived in downtown St. Paul only to find our way blocked by a large contingent of cops and National Guard in riot gear. They were preparing to attack an antiwar demonstration, which later came to include many nearby residents angry about the police state around them. A audible groan was heard on the bus as we were forced to park on a highway on-ramp facing the wrong way. Five tense minutes later, a cop ran up to the bus driver and yelled, “You gotta get outta here, we’re gonna gas the whole area in a couple minutes!” People on the bus started yelling and cursing and, as this was the closest they would get to their destinations, getting off the bus. We did the same.
\n\nMy friends and I weren’t able to get into the downtown area, much less to the jail, but we did manage to pull off a banner drop from a nearby overpass, thanks to unused materials stashed earlier that week. We had been frustrated by feelings of helplessness as we watched the pigs suit up in their fascist uniforms, but were excited by the conversations we’d overheard. They reminded us how the discussions and desires of the broader public often parallel those of anarchists in remarkable ways, requiring only the right circumstances to come to light. As attested by the participation of Seattle and Quebec residents in riots during mobilizations in those cities, the police state created at protests can provide these circumstances. In this instance, levels of repression normally reserved for poor people of color had been temporarily extended to practically everyone, and the resulting tension and resentment was electrifying. Police harassment, and the potential for resistance, became unifying rather than dividing.
\n\nIt’s also worth pointing out that this police state, and the resentment it generated, was a direct result of the militant tactics used on September 1 and the embarrassment of the police after they were consistently outmaneuvered during the first few hours of the RNC. This serves as a reminder to anyone who thinks that street fighting, property destruction, and blockading alienate the public or reduce public sympathy for those who oppose authority. This conflict also shifted the focus for many outside observers from the Republican Party to the police and the state in general, demonstrating the importance of making sure our tactics match our desires.
\n\nOn the plane back to CA, I was in a plane full of people from the RNC. I sat next to two delegates. They were mostly talking and trading business cards, that sort of thing. I noticed that the delegate sitting on the farthest away seat, who I thought might be from Nevada, was reading a book. I looked closer at it and realized it was Recipes for Disaster! He wasn’t just flipping through it, he was reading it. I knew he wasn’t a protester because he came on with a bunch of McCain and Palin stuff and was talking with other delegates.
\n\nI wanted to say something, or make some joke, but figured it was probably better to say nothing. Later in the flight the guy to my right looks down at the book and says, “What are you reading?” The other guy responded, “Just reading up on how the bad guys organize. I’m not a bad guy, I’m a good guy, but these are the bad guys.”
\n\nThis story is continued from “Bringing the Storm to St. Paul in DOCUMENT SIX.”
\n\nI had originally intended to end this story there, on the Northshore, with a literary cliché akin to “The Cliffhanger” or “The Hero Rides Off into the Sunset.” However, in real life, heroes tend not to have the luxury of riding off into the sunset but must, instead, stay and make a stand; if you ever find yourself hanging from a cliff, you can safely expect to have one of two possible outcomes: either you will fall to your death or you will summon the strength to climb up to the ledge. With anarchists across the United States asking a collective “What do we do now?” in the wake of the 2008 Party Convention Protests, what happened next may be the most important part of the story.
\n\nWithin a few days of our return, we held an affinity group meeting. Out of this meeting came the conception of four projects that would be implemented over the following weeks. First of these, we decided to create an educational pamphlet concerning the government’s opportunistic use of Hurricanes Katrina and Gustav to institute oppressive, militaristic policies. Second, we held an “RNC (and DNC) Reportback” event in which we showed video footage culled from various internet sites; then, we (and other locals and visiting travelers who had gone to the Convention Protests) talked about our experiences and answered audience questions. At this event, we passed out copies of our pamphlet, which had been completed by that time, entitled “End Homeland Occupation!” Third, we created an email listserve to discuss and coordinate future plans and events. Fourth, we put out the call for a citywide anarchist meeting (something which had not been done since before Katrina).
\n\nWith October, came the arrival of the Bay Area based activist, Kirsten Brydum. On her second night in New Orleans, she was murdered under mysterious circumstances. An informal memorial service was held near the home of her hosts. Had she not been killed, she would certainly have met most, if not all, of us who came to her memorial and, by all accounts, would have been well liked among us. Unfortunately, like most people who were there that night, the only time I had the opportunity to spend with Kirsten was a few moments in front of a candlelit altar on which were placed various mementos including fliers for the Really Really Free Market and other events she had helped organize, a few pieces of modest jewelry, and a neatly folded, black bandanna.
\n\nWhile we were assembled to mourn that which might have been, someone mentioned that some other cities, such as New York, have volunteer escort programs, so that people do not have to bike alone at night (Kirsten was shot on her way home from a show). Immediately, several people expressed a belief in the need for a similar progam here and, what’s more, a willingness to help make it happen. Material for writing was gathered, and contact information was collected. At the time of writing, this program, dubbed the Brydum Tandem Project, is nearing the end of its planning stages and, with a pool of over fifty volunteers, is projected to launch in early 2009.
\n\nWe scheduled the first Citywide Anarchist Meeting on the twenty-sixth of October, to coincide with the Starbucks Corporation Convention. In the early afternoon, we held a potluck in City Park which was attended by thirty to forty people, some of whom were people to whom we had no previous connection that were drawn by our flyering efforts. For the meeting portion, we held a round of introductions with a listing and explanation of each person’s current projects. There was a mediated discussion, from which the main point that arose was the need for continued and wider outreach. The meeting was drawn to a close, and thirteen of us went across town for an action on behalf of the IWW/SWU (Industrial Workers of the World, parent organization of the Starbucks Workers Union).
\n\nWith picket signs, leaflets, chants, and a giant banner bearing the slogan “Starbucks, stop your union busting now!”, we greeted the convention delegates as they arrived at the Sheraton Hotel. Then, we took the street and marched to the Ernst Morial Convention Center. Once we got there, waiting police threatened us with arrest for “trespassing” if we did not move away from the Convention Center. There was a Starbucks across the street, and we gladly moved our picket in front of it, much to the police’s confoundment. Deciding that we had made our point and were, now, greatly outnumbered, we moved down the sidewalk to peaceably disperse. As we were doing so, the police arrested one of our number, traveler who had stopped in town on his way home to Vancouver.
\n\nWithin an hour, we fired up an impromptu legal support operation. It took several days of work, but we managed his release and, later, the dropping of all charges against him. Our Canadian friend ended up staying in town much longer than we had anticipated and becoming very much a part of our community, but he hopes to be heading home soon to help plan and coordinate the momentous protests which will be happening in his city in February 2010.
\n\nIn the early hours of the sixth of November, on my way home from my job at a bar where, that night, TV election coverage had been projected on a screen, and the patrons reveled joyously as the results were announced, a coworker wanting to be in on the adventure and I went to newspaper distribution boxes and wrapped their contents with pages of counterfeit newsprint bearing the headlines “Capitalism Wins at the Polls” and “Anarchy Brewing in the Streets.” It was a small prank that received only slight, passing notice. However, it was an action of historical significance in that it was the first instance of an organizational network created to coordinate the activities of activists from various cities at the Party Convention Protest, Unconventional Action, directing simultaneous actions in, at least, twenty cities.
\n\nThat November was a time that stirred the imagination with the promise of infinite possibility. On the first, Prospect One, an international art exposition patterned after the Biennale di Venezia opened at venues across the city. In addition to the official exhibits, hundreds of independent displays could be found throughout New Orleans. The New Orleans Fringe Festival, a theatre and performing arts festival affiliated with an annual festival of the same sort in Edinburgh, Scotland, also made its debut that month. The energy of these two European imports merged with the growing energy of homegrown institutions, the Seventh Annual New Orleans Bookfair and the Third Annual Press Street 24 Hour Drawathon, to usher in a short season that was no less than a veritable Mardi Gras of Art. Just as the Lords of Misrule emerge from the wintery shadows each spring to achieve their whimsical conquest of the city, the spirit of boundless creativity laid siege to New Orleans, and people moved about with the constant risk of a beautiful and thought provoking assault upon the senses lying in ambush around every corner.
\n\nShortly before the arrival of Gustav, New Orleans was visited by the internationally renowned guerrilla artist, Banksy. The scenes he left on the walls of various buildings (such as two National Guardsmen looting a TV and stereo, a child with a refrigerator floating on the end of a string like a kite, and a man in coveralls painting grey over sunflowers) showed uncanny knowledge of and insight into our city’s recent history. This artistic rampage and its aftermath marked a turning point in what the Times-Picayune fondly calls “The Graffiti Wars,” a long standing conflict between the civic vigilante, Fred Radtke (commonly known as the “Grey Ghost”), and his group of protegés, Operation Clean Sweep, who paint grey primer over graffiti and street art versus advocates of freelance city beautification typified by the local artist, Rex, and his organization, Nola Rising, which promotes the use of public art to catalyze the city’s recovery. With public opinion swinging firmly to their side, the city’s many artisan ninjas increased the quantity and quality of their work. One day in November, while I was walking through the Bywater, I stumbled upon a larger than life image of two lovers embracing with meticulous detailing reminiscent of an Oriental woodblock print, on the side of an abandoned building. Two passing bicyclists screeched to a halt at the sight, and, upon closer inspection, pointed out that the wheatpaste was still wet. With the knowledge that the artist must have been standing in our places just minutes before, and we were the first to discover his work, we stared, transfixed with the kind of awe one might have at finding the visage of the Mother of God burnt onto one’s grilled cheese sandwich.
\n\nAs is typical with the City’s seasonal flux, many long-term projects were energized that fall. The New Orleans Independent Media Center increased activity; their coverage of the Starbucks Convention Protest was featured on the national Indymedia website. Louisiana Books 2 Prisoners has adjusted to the moving of their workspace from the 511 Marigny building to Nowe Miasto, in Midcity, and had great success with fundraising at the Bookfair. Many local community resource projects such as our local infoshop, the Iron Rail Book Collective, have received a fresh crop of volunteers among the influx of people who had spent the summer elsewhere.
\n\nPlastic distribution boxes for real estate publications and other pathetically disgusting wastes of our continent’s forests, such of those which were so famously thrown into the streets of St. Paul to make improvised barricades, have begun appearing at busstops in Midcity, repainted and filled with free radical literature. It is planned to make its first appearance soon after our second Citywide Anarchist Meeting on, this, the first week of December, where the manuscript will receive its final review before publication.
\n\nIn conclusion, having recovered much of the energy of the Summit Protest Era a decade past, American anarchists must carry on our momentum by establishing needed infrastructure in our own communities. To make lasting gains, this must be done in ways that engage and involve our neighbors and address issues important to community members—e.g. violent crime, homelessness, educational shortfalls.
\n\nAmerican anarchists have, of late fallen under the spell of idolizing the spectacles made by our European cousins without serious enough study of the methods by which they achieve their goals. We, as Americans, tend to speak with glib admiration of the “Battle of Ungdomshuset” in Copenhagen, Denmark, but, all too often, we gloss over the years of daily work by generations of Danes that made that epic struggle possible.
\n\nTo the extent that large public confrontations are useful, to show our strength and determination, to cement our sense of history and common purpose, to draw new recruits with the prospect of facing their oppressors, to practice and refine tactics, we must tap from the 2008 Party Convention Protests all that we can. As the memory of Seattle 1999 fades into nostalgia and subject matter for Hollywood, and the momentous events of 1968 become as distant and abstract as those of 1917-1921, our memories of this summer are still fresh and vivid, even as the chill of winter sets in upon us. Therefore, let us proclaim to all who would listen:
\n\n“Last summer, we fought in the streets of Denver and St. Paul, and we are still fighting!”
\n\nFive months had passed since the convention and I was sitting down for a pancake breakfast at the local anarchist community space. The local crew was there and dozens of folks from other cities had joined us for a weekend of play and mischief. I’d met many of the people in the room through the organizing and network-building leading up to the conventions. As we were enjoying the food and each other’s company, a friend’s phone rang; a few seconds later he was cursing and slamming his fist on the table. He hung up and informed the room that warrants had been issued for two of our closest friends. There were gasps and disbelief. My heart dropped. How many times now had I felt this since the RNC, the realization and fear that people I loved could be going to prison?
\n\nEveryone immediately shifted into crisis mode. Devastated, we informed our friends about their warrants. We arranged their rides to Minneapolis and made sure lawyers and loved ones would meet them there. We raised their bail within hours. And of course we cried, held each other, and cried more.
\n\nIt amazes me that a single day in September continues to shape our lives so dramatically. In the year before the convention, we declared our intention to build relationships and infrastructure that would live beyond September 1. That morning five months later proves to me that we won on that front. Despite the state’s continuing efforts to imprison our friends and lovers, the friendships and affinities that formed during the anti-RNC organizing continue to deepen, while our infrastructure for handling state repression—and attacking the state—is stronger than ever. So many of our people are currently in the clutches of our enemies, but it has become increasingly clear that we are all in this together.
\n\n29 August 2005 - 1 September 2008 ↩
\nFor good or for ill, the protests at the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions constituted the most significant nationwide effort anarchists have undertaken to organize militant action in the US in several years. Two weeks later, the global economy collapsed, followed shortly by anarchist-initiated rioting in Greece dwarfing anything in Denver or St. Paul. It’s easy to feel that the DNC and RNC mobilizations were inconsequential by comparison. But if US anarchists are ever going to be capable of contributing to insurrections like the ones in Oaxaca and Greece, we either have to figure out how to improve on the models applied at the conventions, or else identify their shortcomings conclusively so as to adopt more effective approaches.
\n\n(Click here for romantic introductory text.)
\n\nIn short, the convention protests were not a stunning victory, but they set valuable precedents in coordination, strategy, and infrastructure. Perhaps the greatest danger is that, because they were not an unqualified success, they will have been forgotten by the time of the next mass mobilization.
\n\nThe convention protests had limited effect primarily because of low attendance, though anarchists made a much better showing than practically any other demographic and were better prepared than usual. They provide a classic example of a movement learning from its mistakes too late: anarchists finally regained the initiative in the antiwar movement just as that movement breathed its last. But if those who organize future mobilizations also learn these lessons, this could set the stage for more significant victories. Ultimately, the importance of the DNC and RNC mobilizations will be determined in the future, according to how they inform the next phase of radical organizing.
\n\nIn terms of specifically anarchist participation, many aspects of the mobilizations were unprecedented. Nationwide preparations began well over a year in advance, and the majority of participants showed up in organized affinity groups. Anarchists took the initiative to determine and coordinate their own strategies and tactics, and made breakthroughs in establishing solidarity with other groups—as exemplified by the historic St. Paul Principles. They also debuted communications structures that had not previously been applied at mass mobilizations, which have since been cited by the US military [PDF, 6.9 MB] and utilized during the riots in Greece. Just as the global indymedia network came out of the Seattle WTO demonstrations,1 the DNC/RNC mobilizations produced the Bash Back! network2 and plenty of other projects and momentum that continue to the time of this writing. Proportionate to the number of participants, the mobilizations were surprisingly successful.
\n\nThe question, then, is whether they provide a model that can be expanded on. The conventions revealed the risks of initiating a mobilization so far in advance: by the time the event finally occurs, the context may have changed dramatically. Likewise, so much preparation can raise unrealistic expectations; it also invites serious repression and intelligence gathering from the authorities. One might ask whether the US anarchist movement can sustain such costs; on the other hand, one might also ask whether it can afford to remain a marginal participant in others’ campaigns, as it was throughout much of the past decade. This brings up the most fundamental question: was the explicitly anarchist character of the mobilization a fatally limiting factor, or a starting point towards building a bigger and more independent anarchist movement in the US?
\n\nCan we go it alone? Are we better off in the shadows? Or is there another way?
\n\n(This section is revised from a much larger analysis, “What to Expect from the Conventions,” which appeared on this site in May 2008.)
\n\nThe so-called “anti-globalization movement,” named by corporate media with a vested interest in obscuring the possibility of modern-day anticapitalist struggle, emerged as if from nowhere in the late 1990s. In fact, it was the convergence of a wide variety of smaller social currents ranging from indigenous liberation struggles to the do-it-yourself punk scene, all of which had been quietly developing over the preceding years. Perhaps the most surprising accomplishment of the movement was to revitalize street-level conflict, which many had deemed irrelevant in the postmodern era.
\n\nThe US wing of this movement was not prepared for the sudden changes wrought by September 11, 2001; although the militant anti-IMF protest organized for that month became the first antiwar protest, anarchists swiftly lost the initiative to liberals and communists more familiar with reactive single-issue organizing. To the glee of authoritarians of every stripe, between 2001 and 2003 the antiwar movement replaced the anticapitalist movement in the public eye.
\n\nThe antiwar movement of the following years failed to stop the war, but succeeded in taming protest itself. Considered as a whole, the worldwide demonstrations on February 15, 2003 comprised the most widely attended protest in human history—and yet they did nothing to hinder the Bush administration. One might say it was a triumph of co-optation that so much outrage and motivation was diverted into ineffectual rituals so soon after anticapitalists had demonstrated the power of direct action. To be fair, the effectiveness of the efforts of 1999-2001 did not become clear until years later when many were no longer paying attention. There were scattered efforts to apply direct action in antiwar efforts, such as the targeting of recruitment centers and ports engaged in military shipping, but these were too little too late. Imagine the effect if a mere tenth of the participants in the February 15 demonstrations had blockaded ports or smashed recruitment center windows!
\n\nSome have charged that the antiwar movement failed because it was not empowering for the working class or people of color. This is a half-truth: the antiwar movement failed because it was not empowering to anybody. The groups that dominated it did all they could to limit the tactics and strategies of participants to the lowest common denominator. Few will stick around in a movement that is not committed to or capable of accomplishing its professed objectives, and this is doubly true of people with limited resources who are all too familiar with being exploited for others’ gain. There were efforts to recruit laborers and people of color, but these rarely created mutually beneficial collaboration and dialogue. It could be charged that organizers sought to involve a wide range of demographics in order to present the movement as diverse, while still endeavoring to control its content and direction. Approaching the antiwar movement as an opportunity to create a mass under liberal leadership, rather than a means of fighting the war machine, actually undermined the possibility of it ever adding up to a durable, empowered mass.
\n\nBy the middle of Bush’s second term, public sentiment was acknowledged to be overwhelmingly against the war, and yet the antiwar movement had effectively collapsed. The tactic of mass mobilization, which liberals had hijacked from radicals, had accordingly been abandoned; protests still occurred, but none drew numbers worthy of the word “mass”.
\n\nAt the opening of 2008, liberal politics beyond the voting booth had been completely deflated by the failure of the antiwar movement. Liberal hopes were once again pinned on electoral politics, and the streets were as quiet as they had been in the mid-1990s when neoconservatives crowed that capitalism had triumphed as “the end of history”. This was the context in which anarchists prepared to go to Denver and St. Paul.
\n\nThe DNC/RNC mobilizations got started in a relative vacuum. In 2007, when organizers first decided to focus on them, few nationwide events were bringing people together for militant struggle or putting anarchism in the public eye. After the rise and fall of anti-globalization “summit-hopping” and the resulting backlash, reverting to the mass mobilization model was something of a failure of imagination. This goes double for those who had been saying for years that it was time to find something more effective, without ever presenting a concrete alternative that could fill the same role.
\n\nIt’s important to remember that when the conventions were first chosen as a target, it was not yet clear that the antiwar movement was on its last legs. The previous two election years had both included fierce protests at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, with plenty of anarchist involvement but little serious advance organizing. Hundreds of thousands of protesters, including thousands of anarchists, had participated in the 2004 RNC in New York, though there had been limited coordination or common strategy for anti-authoritarians. With this missed opportunity still fresh in people’s minds, it was not unreasonable to expect the upcoming DNC and RNC might offer another chance in a similar context.
\n\nTo this end, starting in a couple communities and spreading slowly across the country, small knots of anarchists began to discuss the conventions. In the host cities, these coalesced into the RNC Welcoming Committee and Unconventional Denver; nationwide, a network of ad hoc collectives emerged under the moniker Unconventional Action. From early on, most agreed that there should be a generalized strategy for direct action and an anarchist-organized infrastructure. Some also argued, drawing on examples from earlier mobilizations, that it was important for direct action to start on the first day of the conventions and coincide with other protests, rather than occurring at a separate time.
\n\n\n\n\nOverall, the RNC-WC’s early formation, comprehensive membership drives, strategic partnerships, and flexibility will likely result in a more robust and balanced effort than in recent conventions. Consequently, security will likely be more difficult to maintain than in previous years.
\n
— Department of Homeland Security Report [PDF, 359 KB], March 27, 2008
\n\nFor many, their first exposure to the organizing was a humorous video short from the RNC Welcoming Committee, depicting masked anarchists engaging in everyday activities throughout the Twin Cities and ending with the words “We’re getting ready”. Later, humorless state and federal investigators referenced this video during interrogations and presented it at felony trials. When it appeared in August 2007, it showed radicals around the country that organizers in the Twin Cities were already focusing on the RNC and were resourceful and clever to boot.
\n\nSimilarly, the first groups that appeared under the Unconventional Action banner didn’t just put out a general call for organizing against the DNC and RNC, but went ahead and held consultas in their own communities. Once it was clear that some people were already preparing for the conventions, it was easier for others to do the same.
\n\nTaking a cue from the Dissent network that had organized against the G8 summits in England [PDF, 208 KB] and Germany, the WC organized a “pRe-NC” planning conference exactly a year before the RNC. For many younger anarchists not yet entirely clear on the distinction between strategy and tactics, this was itself an educational experience; despite the resultant challenges, a blockading strategy emerged for the first day of the convention, relying on a diversity of tactics. Once this element was in place, the RNC mobilization gathered momentum steadily. Groups around the country signed on to the call to shut down the convention, and an Unconventional Action paper [PDF, 8.24 MB] circulated advertising the strategies for both St. Paul and Denver. All this helped build confidence in the protests.
\n\nThe DNC mobilization got off to a shakier start. Many Denver radicals were less enthusiastic about taking on the police state. Recreate 68, a leftist umbrella group,3 took the initiative to begin organizing, but it took longer for explicitly anarchist coordination to pick up steam. Early gatherings in Denver drew fewer participants than those in St. Paul, and the goals of the mobilization seemed less clear. As the DNC drew nearer, a split occurred in R68; meanwhile, Unconventional Denver gained momentum and local participants, and pulled together a week-long schedule [PDF, 789 KB] of themed events. The people who organized in Denver took on disproportionately more work, with less support than in those in the Twin Cities; but in fighting this uphill battle, they enabled anarchists to frame the mobilizations as a rejection of representational politics itself, rather than just the Republican Party.
\n\nBoth Unconventional Denver and the Welcoming Committee met regularly, establishing committees for logistical work and maintaining informative websites. Members of the WC undertook nationwide speaking tours encouraging groups to coordinate their own participation, and maintained interest with a series of witty pranks and press statements along the lines of their initial video. Like many public organizing bodies, the WC was beset by painful internal and external ideological conflicts; despite this, they managed to lay the foundations for coordination among anarchists and coalition organizing with progressives.
\n\nIn May, the WC hosted a second pRe-NC, at which organizers from around the country attempted to flesh out the blockading strategy. The participants opted against dividing the city into zones according to level of risk, as had been done in Quebec City and Genoa, on the premise that organizers could not determine how the police would behave. Instead, it was agreed that the permitted rally and march would be kept free of direct action, as per the St. Paul Principles; meanwhile, the regions surrounding the convention center [map PDF, 197 KB] were divided into seven sectors, so that different organizing groups could choose in advance where and with whom they would act. In the final months before the conventions, direct action trainings took place throughout the Midwest, while affinity groups from one coast to the other finalized their plans and organizers in the host cities rented convergence centers and scrambled to coordinate logistics.
\n\nNothing ever goes as planned, but if you plan and work hard enough, something will happen. The stated goal of blockading the conventions was probably unrealistic, but anarchists had set the stage for a confrontation.
\n\nFor years leading up to the conventions, mass mobilizations had been plagued by conflicts between advocates of direct action and other protesters; in some cases, pacifists and authoritarians had attacked militants or actively collaborated with the police against them. The RNC Welcoming Committee took steps to ensure that this would not happen in St. Paul. In February 2008, the Welcoming Committee and Unconventional Action Chicago joined a range of other groups, including the Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War and the Anti-War Committee, in drafting an agreement across ideological and tactical lines:
\n\nThis agreement helped to legitimize the anarchists in the eyes of other organizers—which in turn saved anarchists needless internal bickering over whether or not they were “respecting the local community,” a frequent stumbling block at mass mobilizations. Even after the RNC, organizers of many stripes respected the St. Paul principles, refusing to denounce or inform on militant activists.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2001/11/01/rnc2b.jpg\")
\nAfter all the promotion, where was everyone? The permitted march at the RNC was scarcely a tenth the size of the one in New York four years earlier; there may have been about as many hard-core militants as there had been at prior conventions, but nothing like the numbers imagined by those familiar with the high point of the anti-globalization era.
\n\nSeveral factors probably contributed to this. The conventions occurred away from the coasts, where the majority of radical communities were located. Some had hoped that the resurrected Students for a Democratic Society would organize a great deal of youth participation, but this did not occur on a national level. As anarchists had established their own social circles over the preceding years, their presence had decreased in subcultural milieus such as the punk scene, which may have resulted in lower attendance from those demographics. The high price of gasoline may have discouraged others.
\n\nThough some diehards showed up to play logistical roles, the generation of anarchists that had been instrumental in the mobilizations from Seattle to Quebec City largely stayed home. One might hypothesize that in this regard, the anarchist movement was still paying off bills from the anti-globalization days: many veterans of that era were still nursing their bitterness, or else tied down by new responsibilities, while many younger anarchists who never participated in a mass mobilization had been turned against them by the lingering backlash. In the buildup to the conventions, impressive new networks were established, but the failure to rebuild the old networks proved costly, as did the general lack of training and experience.
\n\nMeanwhile, the NGOs that had been so important in the anti-globalization movement were nowhere to be seen, and the liberal coalitions that had provided the bulk of the anti-war movement were drastically eroded. As mass mobilizations and traditional civil disobedience had produced diminishing returns, many NGOs had shifted away from them; now, without the older generation of anarchists involved, many connections with these groups had been lost.
\n\nIt wasn’t clear until months later just how dramatically the Obama campaign had affected the context, drawing people away from grassroots organizing and into voter registration and similar activities. Certain self-described anarchists who said they envied Obama’s campaign for its success in mobilizing the masses failed to point out that it flourished to the same extent that our fair-weather allies disappeared. Reformist co-optation is a weapon against popular autonomy and self-determination no less than the tear gas of riot police. On the other hand, this made it all the more important that anarchists emphasize possibilities beyond the voting booth, and in this regard we could have done worse.
\n\nAll this underscores the generosity of the longtime activists from outside our immediate milieu, such as those from the Pagan Cluster, who chose to bring their substantial skills to the mobilizations even as their compatriots stayed home.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2001/11/01/dnc1b.jpg\")
\nPeople began to trickle into the convergence center in Denver in mid-August. Saturday night, August 23, was the first thickly attended spokescouncil; Unconventional Denver spokespeople appraised a full room of predominantly young anarchists of the various permitted and unpermitted events scheduled for the week, noting to applause that all UD events were unpermitted.
\n\nThe liberal antiwar march the following day was unexpectedly small. An energetic anarchist-organized Reclaim the Streets march took off on its heels, however, crisscrossing downtown for hours and attracting a wide range of participants. Even after the march reached its destination, at which a standoff with police ensued, it spontaneously departed again; police eventually attempted to corral it between intersections, but the participants escaped through a parking deck. In retrospect, this was perhaps the only action of the entire DNC/RNC mobilization that was an uncomplicated success. The organizers had correctly predicted that police would be hesitant to attack a mixed crowd the day before the convention, when Code Pink and Iraq Veterans Against the War were also in the streets; this helped to get the whole mobilization off on the right foot.
\n\nBack at the convergence center that evening, people regrouped to plan an action targeting party fundraisers the following night. In a typical example of how large meetings can get stymied in irrelevant deliberations, it didn’t come out until well into the discussion that practically everyone involved also planned to participate in the black bloc called for 6 pm Monday. There had been no planning to speak of for the black bloc, and at that point it was too late.
\n\nR68 had reserved Civic Center Park downtown, which hosted ongoing musical performances and Food Not Bombs servings and generally served as a convergence area. This was also the starting point for the aforementioned black bloc, the fate of which is described in the introduction of Rolling Thunder #6. Suffice it to say the bloc didn’t get far before being surrounded by police, resulting in approximately 100 arrests; more thorough preparation and strategizing might have produced better results, but at least the attempt produced a situation of social conflict—albeit at the expense of the other scheduled action, which never occurred. That evening, rebellious young people seemed much more desirous of conflict with the authorities than organized anarchists seemed prepared to facilitate it.
\n\nTuesday saw anarchists scrambling to do jail support; arrestees’ court dates were all scheduled for September 2, an obvious attempt to paralyze those committed to both mobilizations. Wednesday, hundreds participated in an anticapitalist environmental march; meanwhile, at the convergence center, at which a police raid had been feared all week, warrantless police arrested people outside and used a bulldozer to destroy signs and banners in the parking lot. Later that day, Rage Against the Machine headlined a show that ended with anarchists supporting Iraq Veterans Against the War in an unpermitted march to the convention center. Further confrontations with the police did not occur, though perhaps this was for the best with the RNC around the corner.
\n\nAfterwards, one UD organizer regretted that the mobilization did not produce common cause with other locals against the inequities of capitalism and white supremacy; in this regard, it may have been a missed opportunity to test new strategies for resistance in the Obama era. Despite fears, however, media coverage did not misrepresent anarchists as racists, and locals on the streets seemed to be sympathetic—an important point of reference for future efforts. Whatever its shortcomings, the mobilization in Denver succeeded in achieving some visibility and built up momentum for the RNC without inflicting unsustainable costs. As the week wound to a close, vehicles packed with anarchists set off for St. Paul.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2001/11/01/dnc2b.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2001/11/01/dnc3b.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2001/11/01/dnc4b.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2001/11/01/dnc5b.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2001/11/01/dnc6b.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2001/11/01/dnc7b.jpg\")
\nLike Denver, the Twin Cities had never seen a mobilization of this scale; it was a new challenge for anarchists and city officials alike. Although government repression increased to new levels in the months leading up to the RNC, there were precedents within recent memory hinting at what to expect. A decade earlier, the Minnehaha Free State—a 16-month anti-road occupation in Minneapolis—had been infiltrated, harassed, and raided multiple times by hundreds of officers,4 In July 2000, during protests against the International Society for Animal Genetics (ISAG),5 over one hundred people were brutally mass-arrested, and organizers experienced violent house raids and snatch arrests. It should not have been a surprise when these tactics reoccurred eight years later.
\n\nAfter public outcry following the ISAG arrests, the Minneapolis City Council enacted new laws governing police treatment of protesters, but these were repealed in advance of the RNC. The cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul also passed a host of new laws regarding permits and protest, and broke out one that had never been used—the now-infamous “crimes committed in furtherance of terrorism” provision of the Minnesota PATRIOT Act, which defines terrorism broadly enough to encompass civil disobedience.
\n\nIn August 2007, the night before the pRe-NC began, police from several departments attacked the monthly Critical Mass bicycle ride in downtown Minneapolis, beating and arresting 19 people and exclaiming “See you next year!” The arrestees were bailed out and the conference proceeded as scheduled, but this was a foreshadowing glimpse of the repression to come. Though two arrestees pled guilty to minor traffic violations, the others’ charges were later dropped; as of this writing, one arrestee is taking the city government to trial after settlement negotiations failed.
\n\nOver the following year, the government sent multiple undercover police officers and federal informants to infiltrate the WC. The long buildup to the convention and the transparency of the WC enabled the state to gather tremendous quantities of intelligence. In the weeks before the RNC, police blatantly tailed and photographed organizers, staked out their houses, and attempted to question them. They also detained and harassed perceived anarchists, photographing them and searching and seizing their belongings and vehicles. Some of these photographs were later used to identify arrestees who would not give their names.
\n\nOn Friday, August 29, the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Department raided the WC convergence space. They detained several dozen people, including a five-year-old child,6 face down at gunpoint while they searched the building, taking everything from computers to children’s artwork. The following morning, police raided three houses, arresting four organizers, handcuffing and questioning dozens more, and seizing a great deal more material. The seized items were used as props in a press conference at which Sheriff Bob Fletcher implied that they were dangerous weapons. Two other houses were raided in the course of the RNC: in one case, a federal informant entrapped an unfortunate protester into making Molotov cocktails; the other raid was conducted on a space occupied by videographers.
\n\nThroughout the following days, undercover snatch squads roamed in unmarked cars, kidnapping organizers wherever they could be found. One legal worker stepped into a courthouse to support an arrested friend, only to be detained and interrogated by Bob Fletcher himself. Andrew Darst, the federal informant who had spent months inside the WC as “Panda,” invited an organizer to meet him in a public place and identified him to a snatch squad by embracing him—unwittingly mimicking Judas, who identified Jesus to the Roman soldiers by kissing him.7
\n\nTaken as a whole, this was a higher level of repression than had occurred at a mass mobilization in the US in several years. Convergence center raids are not uncommon, the total number of arrests had been higher at the 2004 RNC in New York, and the bail of targeted arrestees was initially set higher at the 2000 RNC in Philadelphia; the house raids and snatch squads were more unusual, though precedented by ISAG. But the felony charges brought against the organizers who became known as the RNC 8—all of whom were indicted on “conspiracy to commit riot in furtherance of terrorism,” among other charges—were unlike anything since the 1968 conspiracy trial following the DNC in Chicago.
\n\nNone of this could derail the momentum of the organizing, however. The strategy for September 1 had been established far in advance, and scores of autonomous groups had already prepared. If anything, the raids and persecution made the public more sympathetic to the anarchists on the eve of the demonstrations.8
\n\nDespite the raids and arrests, sleep-deprived organizers eventually forced the city to reopen the convergence center, and on Saturday night hundreds of anarchists from around the country gathered for a spokescouncil. As in Denver, the meeting ended in a tiresome circular discussion; but in this case, because the strategizing was already complete and even the start time of the blockading had been set at a less crowded spokescouncil the previous Wednesday, this focused harmlessly—if irrelevantly—on how the actions of September 1 would conclude.
\n\nPerhaps the most important thing that occurs at gatherings like this is not the centralized decision-making, but the experience of collective power and determination. There’s nothing like the feeling of being in a space with hundreds of comrades who have come to risk everything in the struggle against oppression; it is utterly unlike daily life in the US. At the beginning of the meeting, as the spokespersons of dozens of affinity groups introduced themselves and stated their intentions, the atmosphere was electric. After all the repression of the preceding days, just being present was an act of courage and defiance. Comrades who hadn’t seen each other for years, perhaps not since they had last fought side by side, embraced or nodded to one another in passing. Those moments of connection, and the indomitable will to resist that made them count, were themselves a sort of victory.
\n\nThe following day, everything was suddenly up in the air again. As news came in that another hurricane was headed for New Orleans and rumors circulated that the RNC might be canceled, preparations ground to a halt all around the city, as all eyes focused on the convergence center at which another spokescouncil was taking place. After the Republicans announced that they would hold only a shorter and less attended afternoon session, the spokescouncil agreed that the blockades would go forward, picked a new time for them to occur, and split up so affinity groups could hastily reorganize their plans. Throughout the Twin Cities, police cars prowled and sirens wailed, while paranoid activists wondered whether they would even be able to get downtown the following morning.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2001/11/01/rnc3b.jpg\")
\n\n\n\nThe initial law enforcement response downtown was primarily from individual Patrol Officers, who found themselves outnumbered and facing hundreds of anarchists. Because of radio communication problems, Mobile Field Force either did not respond or responded too late to assist the Patrol Officers.
\n
\n\n\nBetween approximately 12:30 p.m. and 3:00 p.m., the anarchists moved relatively freely through downtown Saint Paul. Loose items, including planters, refuse containers, newspaper boxes and traffic signs, became weapons of convenience for anarchists, who also used them to block streets. During their rampage, the anarchists broke windows on buildings and police cars, slashed tires on police cars and media vehicles, blocked streets and attacked individuals, including police officers, RNC delegates, and bystanders.9 They also attempted to prevent RNC delegates and delegate buses from entering the Xcel Energy Center. Throughout the day, the anarchist groups engaged police in a game of ‘whack-a-mole’, in which police were always chasing, but never controlling, the anarchists.
\n
\n\n\nShortly before 3:00 p.m., MFF units gathered south and east of the Landmark Center and began moving the anarchists out of downtown. This led to a large confrontation between anarchists and law enforcement along Kellogg. During these confrontations, MFF Officers used less-than-lethal weapons. Facing MFF pressure, the anarchist groups split at Kellogg and Robert, one group fleeing to the area of 9th and Temperance, where they were arrested or escaped. The other group fled to Shepard Road. The anarchists on Shepard Road were driven west to a park near Chestnut Road. At that location, the anarchists merged with a crowd of bystanders. The MFF units surrounded and detained the entire crowd”.
\n
— Report of the RNC Public Safety Planning and Implementation Review Commission
\n\nAt 11 a.m., the Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War rally kicked off at the capitol, while three miles away police prevented Macalester students from leaving to march to the rally site. Meanwhile, anarchists all over the city were getting into position and some of the first blockades were going up. By 12:30, the Funk the War march had left the rally area, encountering a confused police attempt to stop it, and the first hard blockade was in place on the I-94 off-ramp on the east side of St. Paul. At 1 p.m., the permitted march departed from the capitol; at the same time, there were major confrontations between police and the Funk the War march, the black bloc moving through northwest downtown, and the Bash Back! blockade. Protestors moved in and out of intersections evading the police; in the southwest and northeast, two new hard blockades were in place.
\n\nBetween 1 and 2:30 p.m., a breakaway march departed from the Funk the War march, while the black bloc was joined by many from Bash Back! All over town, windows were smashed, squad car tires were slashed, and delegate buses were swarmed. Police responded with horse charges, pepper spray, tear gas, and rubber bullets. By 2:30, the permitted march had returned to the capitol and the Macalester student march was finally on its way.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2001/11/01/rnc4b.jpg\")
\nShortly before 3, the police dispersed the breakaway march, and hundreds of anarchists headed to the capitol to regroup, quieting the north part of St. Paul. Meanwhile, near the Xcel center on Kellogg, protestors were roving from intersection to intersection in increasingly large groups; many participants in earlier actions joined the Pagan Cluster and Funk the War there.
\n\nAfter calls for reinforcement went out over the comms system, the anarchists who had regrouped at the capitol began to march west around the perimeter fence in the second Anticapitalist Bloc of the day. Within the hour, the police utilized tear gas, pepper spray, concussion grenades, and marker rounds to clear the area around the Xcel center, pushing the Funk the War bloc east and bringing out the National Guard to hold the ground they had retaken. Around 4 p.m., police illegally raided the communications office; the arrestees were originally held on probable cause for felonies, but were released without having been charged. Meanwhile, the new Funk the War bloc dragged barricades into the street in the course of its retreat, then split up; some participants were mass-arrested in northeast downtown, while others traveled west on Shepard and still others safely dispersed.
\n\nLate that afternoon, over 200 people were corralled at the intersection of Shepard and Ontario, and most were mass-arrested. Most of the detainees were simply there to attend the “Take Back Labor Day” concert on Harriet Island.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2001/11/01/rnc5b.jpg\")
\nIn all, downtown St. Paul witnessed over ten hours of running confrontations. After the initial blockades and marches were broken up, protesters repeatedly found new convergence points such as the Funk the War sound system. That night, at a spokescouncil hastily convened on a college campus, a few dozen exhausted participants compared notes and discussed plans for the following days.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2001/11/01/rnc_maps-1.gif\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2001/11/01/rnc_maps-2.gif\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2001/11/01/rnc_maps-3.gif\")
\nDownload Hi-Res PDF of the maps here [754 KB].
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2001/11/01/rnc10b.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2001/11/01/rnc11b.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2001/11/01/rnc9b.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2001/11/01/rnc8b.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2001/11/01/rnc7b.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2001/11/01/rnc6b.jpg\")
\nThe group that had formed to coordinate communications opted to use Twitter to distribute SMS messages to participants, as the txt.mob system used at the 2004 RNC had sometimes suffered significant delays.10 The comms team established user groups around themes such as food and police activity, including one for each sector, so people could sign up to receive information only about subjects that concerned them. Scouts on the ground reported back to a communications hub at which reports were verified and sent out.
\n\nAfter the raid on the comms space, the Coldsnap Legal Collective’s Twitter became the de facto comms system, as people called the jail support hotline to report unfolding events and legal workers passed these on to the public. On Friday, August 29, only 23 people were following Coldsnap Legal; a week later, over 1800 depended on it for news updates.
\n\nIn some situations, the comms system enabled groups to evade police attacks and disperse safely. Others users complained that the flow of information was overwhelming and it was hard to make practical use of it on the streets, especially after the comms hub was raided and everyone was depending on Coldsnap’s single feed.
\n\nParticipants in the comms team have since published an detailed analysis of their efforts.
\n\nAs hoped, the events of September 1 set the stage for the rest of the week, emboldening protesters and causing police to behave irrationally. On Tuesday, just as the permitted Poor People’s March was concluding, police shut down an attempted Rage Against the Machine concert nearby. The two crowds mingled; few avowed anarchists were present, but there was a rebellious atmosphere, as participants had presumably seen footage of the previous day’s events. Police eventually forced the crowd to disperse by attacking with smoke bombs, tear gas grenades, and marker rounds. A similar scene played out the following night after the Rage Against the Machine show in Minneapolis; there was a fair bit of rebellious energy in the crowd, but no organized initiative to get things off the ground, and eventually the police attacked, divided, and dispersed the small march that occurred, arresting 102. Some have speculated as to what might have occurred at these events had anarchists been present with a plan; many anarchists were in jail or busy doing arrestee support, but others did not show up because they had been so focused on September 1 as to be totally unprepared for the rest of the week.11
\n\nOn the final day of the RNC, there was a march organized by the Anti-War Committee, a group open to civil disobedience tactics. Police blocked all the bridges downtown with snowplows. A reporter who had called anarchists “hooligans” three days earlier said, “This city has never felt more like a police state”. After police canceled the march permit, over a thousand protesters spent several hours attempting to make their way out of downtown. Once again, there were few avowed anarchists present, but the crowd was not exactly docile. As night fell, police began tear-gassing and pepper-spraying indiscriminately, eventually forcing approximately 350 people—including reporters and civilians—onto Marion Street bridge and arresting them all. This flagrantly illegal mass arrest was a public relations disaster for the city.
\n\nThe blockades failed to prevent delegates from reaching the convention. This may have been in part because of the last minute change in plans on the part of the RNC: it must have been easier to get half as many people into the convention center as originally planned. The small turnout from outside the anarchist camp was also a contributing factor: had thousands more protesters showed up, many would surely have reinforced the blockades.
\n\nIneffective as they were at their stated purpose, the blockades created an unpredictable situation, stretching and distracting the police. By forcing the authorities to focus on protecting access to the RNC rather than controlling protesters, the blockading strategy opened space for other tactics which might otherwise have been impossible. Had there simply been a call for confrontational marches, the police might have been able to surround and neutralize them, as in Denver on August 25. This illustrates the strategic difference between what one calls for and what one actually hopes to do.
\n\nThe strategy also offered a point of entry for everyone who wished to participate in direct action. It gave anarchists something to plan around, which helped them feel invested in the mobilization. Without this, it might have been difficult to get people to come to the RNC in organized affinity groups, ready to act.
\n\nThere is a tension in mass action strategizing between concentrating forces for maximum strength and dispersing them for maximum surprise; if protesters are too concentrated, they can be trapped, while if they are spread too thin, they cannot support each other. The Seattle WTO blockades took place in a space of a few blocks; the blockades at the 2007 G8 in Germany were spread out over many miles. Though some protesters did spend hours wandering St. Paul looking for the action, by and large the blockading strategy resulted in an optimal distribution of forces.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2001/11/01/rnc12b.jpg\")
\n\n\n\nAs told to this Commission, the St. Paul Police Department’s approach to anarchist’s [sic] efforts to block a street was: ‘If we don’t need a particular intersection, let them have it.’ The SPPD believed, through this approach, they could prevent encounters with anarchists from escalating, thereby limiting violence and the need for large numbers of arrests. One consequence of this strategy, however, was a heavy emphasis on mass crowd control12 versus using extraction or targeted arrests when anarchists were conducting violent or unlawful activities.
\n
— Report of the RNC Public Safety Planning and Implementation Review Commission
\n\nThe police strategies at the 2004 RNC in New York and at the 2008 RNC in St. Paul were both typical of those police departments. The NYPD is one of the world’s largest standing armies. It is accustomed to crowd control, and was still benefiting from post-9/11 patriotism in 2004—hence it was easy to line the streets with thousands of police and make targeted arrests rather than depending on chemical weapons. St. Paul, on the other hand, is a smaller city unused to large events. The liberal public was not excited about the RNC occurring there, so the government hurried to reassure them that there would be no riots, oppressive policing, or traffic disruptions, promising a surge in shopping and emphasizing the $50 million security budget provided by the Republican National Committee.
\n\nThe Republican National Committee also hit on the innovation of offering $10 million to cover any lawsuits from police misconduct—acknowledging that, even with the repressive laws on the books, the desired level of repression would demand massive illegal activity from the forces of law and order. Thus, while the city was concerned about PR, the police had a free hand to break their own laws to the tune of $10 million.
\n\nIn the months leading up to the RNC, a conflict played out between Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher, on whose shoulders rested the actual dirty work, and the St. Paul Police Department, which was struggling to maintain its image. While the SPPD had promised a “St. Paul model” in contrast to the notoriously brutal “Miami model” from the 2003 FTAA ministerial, Fletcher let it be known that the police would be out to crack heads, predicting correctly that there would be at least 800 arrests.
\n\nYet despite millions of dollars and months of intensive training, the police were not prepared to control even a few hundred anarchists coordinated within a versatile framework. Most of the police had been positioned along the permitted march route; dispatch tapes reveal that between noon and 2 p.m. on September 1, a communications breakdown permitted anarchists to act freely throughout downtown. Fletcher later said, “We had 15 officers responsible for the conduct of 500 anarchists. They were outnumbered 40 to one”. This should dispel the myth of an invincible police state.
\n\nWith the inflexibility typical of authoritarian institutions, once the police escalated to more repressive tactics, they found it impossible to de-escalate even when it was in their interest. Anarchists were not actively organized after September 1, but that first day was enough; after that, the police inflicted defeat after defeat upon themselves, needlessly attacking and radicalizing civilians.
\n\nIf the RNC had occurred without direct action or police brutality, this would have signified that the resistance that flared up at the WTO protests had been definitively quashed during the Bush years, heralding a return to capitalist consensus. Instead, for the first time in years, militant confrontations set the tone for the protests and the police responded with indiscriminate violence—a major black eye for the government after all its assurances. Riot police filled the air with tear gas directly in front of delegate hotels and illegally arrested prominent journalists and at least one Republican delegate.
\n\nThe events of September 1 indicate that even against the assembled might of the state, a small organized group can escalate social conflict and produce a situation in which others join in. Comparing the RNC to the DNC, we can see that the authorities wouldn’t have responded with such intense repression if anarchists hadn’t done effective organizing.
\n\nThe Republican National Committee hit on the innovation of offering $10 million to cover any lawsuits from police misconduct—acknowledging that, even with the repressive laws on the books, the desired level of repression would demand massive illegal activity from the forces of law and order.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2001/11/01/rnc13b.jpg\")
\nWhatever victories occurred in St. Paul came at a great price, however. The few felony charges stemming from the RNC in 2000 had been a major shock to activists; in contrast, 159 people were arrested for supposed felonies during the 2008 RNC. Though most of those charges were dropped or lowered, as of this writing 15 face pending felonies, several more have pled, and new charges may still be filed. Between 2000 and 2008, anti-anarchist repression had escalated dramatically, as FBI witch hunts sent environmental activists and animal liberationists to prison for up to decades. No convictions from mass mobilizations had resulted in multiple-year prison sentences in the US since the 1990s, but Matthew DePalma, an inexperienced youth entrapped into making Molotov cocktails by informant Andrew Darst, was sentenced to 42 months after pleading guilty. The other two defendants in federal cases, Bradley Crowder and David McCay, currently await sentencing, and several other RNC defendants may do time as well.
\n\nThe RNC 8 case is perhaps the first instance in which public organizers have been charged with terrorism simply for coordinating the logistics of a mass mobilization. In this regard, it echoes the SHAC 7 case. It’s interesting how the concept of terrorism has evolved over the past decade; after the September 11 attacks rocketed it into prominence, the meaning of the term could only expand. At first, terrorism was associated with Al Qaeda, an exotic, distant enemy almost all America could agree to hate. Then it expanded to include eco-terrorists and animal rights extremists—a demographic somewhat closer to home. By the time of the 2008 RNC, the sphere designated by the term seemed to be broadening at an unstoppable pace. As of this writing, the terrorism charges against the RNC 8 have just been dropped, signifying that the terrorism bubble has perhaps reached the limits of its expansion; meanwhile, felony conspiracy charges against the RNC 8 remain, and their trial promises to be a major event.13
\n\nIf the authorities create a new generation of activists inured to the threat of prison time and the accusation of terrorism, they may regret it. On the other hand, the anarchist movement in the US is small and has very limited resources; there are only so many expensive and exhausting trials it can afford. Only time—and the outcomes of the pending cases—will tell if the repression resulting from the RNC mobilization is sustainable.
\n\nSome have pointed to this repression and the case of the RNC 8 in particular as evidence that it is foolish to organize resistance publicly.14 This is alarmist and misguided; the authorities would like nothing better than for anarchists to draw this conclusion and retreat into the shadows, losing track of one another and forfeiting the ability to coordinate their own large-scale initiatives. It’s important not to be careless, but effective organizing against the government will always result in repression, whether or not people choose public roles. In this regard, it’s noteworthy that one of the RNC 8 was not involved in the Welcoming Committee, but is being accused as an organizer nonetheless. The more public our efforts are, the more we can build up momentum and support, and the better equipped we will be to handle repression.
\n\nOne example bears mentioning here. In the months leading up to the RNC, the Pittsburgh Organizing Group, which first received national attention during preparations for the Miami FTAA protests in 2003, publicly announced that it would coordinate blockades in sector 1 of downtown St. Paul, going so far as to identify the intersection. This struck anarchists of a more clandestine bent as insane; some hypothesized that it must be a red herring to mislead the police. But come September 1, true to their word, Pittsburgh activists drove a car into the middle of the intersection at 7th and Wall, disabling it and shutting down the intersection for some time; all their charges were subsequently dropped. Let no one say it is impossible to organize resistance publicly.
\n\nDebates about public organizing aside, the WC’s approach made it easy to infiltrate. Some infiltrators were more competent than others; nevertheless, their appearance and behavior differentiated them from others in the community, raising suspicions. Realizing this, the FBI attempted to recruit at least one individual to infiltrate “vegan potlucks,” convinced he would be trusted as he “looked the part”. By and large, infiltrators seemed uninterested in radical politics and visibly uncomfortable with the lifestyles of some anarchists, and displayed classic informant behavior such as asking inappropriate questions while accusing others of being agents. It is important not to decide who is trustworthy solely on appearances, but it’s noteworthy that the infiltrators turned out to be the ones who looked like cops. The WC had identified most of the infiltrators in its midst long before they were outed, but did not expel them for fear of defaming innocent people. Good intentions are admirable, but we must also be able to protect ourselves—the WC might have saved themselves a lot of grief by doing so.
\n\nThe paranoia that often passed as security culture in convention organizing offered limited protection. Vouching systems failed to keep out informants such as Brandon Michael Darby, and taking batteries out of cell phones—as Darby did to create trust while wearing a wire—did not prevent surveillance. Real security culture depends on deep-rooted social bonds and shared context, not to mention trusting one’s intuition. Anarchists’ greatest strengths lie in solidarity and community—we can find risk-free ways to cooperate with people who are new to us, and take risks only with those we know and trust intimately. People in the targeted communities have since expressed that they find it difficult to trust anyone; this is exactly what the authorities want.
\n\nThe RNC protests received nationwide coverage, but not as much as many had hoped. At this point, anarchists have to accept that the corporate media is not going to cover every broken window. The setbacks following September 11, 2001 showed how important it is to be able to maintain momentum without media attention. Anarchist organizing has to be aimed at achieving something more lasting than airtime on the evening news.
\n\nAt the same time, it’s important to see how media strategies affect police repression and public response. Before the RNC, the police used corporate media to assure the public of their good intentions and smear anarchists as violent, waste-throwing invaders. This was essential to prepare the grounds for repression; police have been using these propaganda techniques since the Seattle WTO protests, when they learned to script a strategy beforehand lest the media accidentally focus on real issues.
\n\nUnfortunately, the WC’s approach to the media played into the hands of the police. The WC experimented with various media strategy, ranging from complete non-engagement to pre-written statements and theatrical stunts. However, they did not fully engage with corporate media until after the raids, when those who had not been arrested appeared unmasked at the newly re-opened convergence space and took questions under their real names. This initial reticence allowed the WC to retain its mystique, but it also permitted the police to gain the upper hand, leaving the WC constantly on the defensive.
\n\nThe corporate media is corrupt and vapid, and cannot be trusted to represent radicals—or anyone—fairly. At the same time, it’s important to see the media as the battlefield on which the police position themselves to attack. The WC did a brilliant job of using independent media to build excitement in the radical community; it is unfortunate that it did not also find ways to exploit the corporate media to outflank the police.
\n\n\n\n\nThe very use of the word ‘violence’ to describe the actions of protesters in the face of the police state we witnessed is ridiculous. Pepper spraying a girl repeatedly in the face after she attempted to hand a flower to a police officer is violence. A broken Macy’s window is not. And even though some activists don’t prefer property damage as a tactic, maintaining some amount of perspective is important. What is a broken window compared to a million Iraqis killed, or entire cities destroyed by the U.S. occupation forces? A whole lot of windows get broken when the U.S. drops bombs. Which is the bigger concern?
\n
— Katrina Plotz, member of the Anti-War Committee and the Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War
\n\nBy September 3, one could hear all the discussions from 1999 beginning all over again. Is property destruction violence? Is it strategic? What tactics can build an effective movement for liberation? To some extent, it’s good news when we have to start from scratch again about these issues—it means new people are involved in the discussion. Too much agreement on these questions is a sign of stagnation and insularity.
\n\nAt the same time, intra-movement bickering provides the authorities valuable opportunities, so it is potentially historic that the St. Paul Principles served to prevent it. It remains to be seen whether this agreement was a precedent for future mobilizations or simply an anomaly produced by a dwindling antiwar movement. Would other protest groups have sought mutual respect with anarchists if there had been more influential allies available?
\n\nAt the Seattle WTO protests, militant anarchists were a minority who exerted influence by acting outside the central organizing framework. In St. Paul, they were intimately involved in coordinating that central framework. Does this indicate that anarchism is shifting from the margins to become a significant force in political organizing? Or will the intensity of government repression in St. Paul discourage organizers from participating in future mobilizations based on diversity of tactics? Or, for that matter, did anarchists simply inherit the antiwar movement after everyone else had abandoned it?
\n\nAfter the MTV success of Nirvana and the explosion of “grunge” music, record labels sought for years to find the “next Seattle”. Radicals who grew up on footage of the riots outside the Seattle WTO summit have engaged in a similar pursuit throughout the past decade. The Seattle WTO protests have become a common point of reference for both protesters and police. For the former, they are a sort of creation myth, and a messiah some believe will come again; but you can never repeat the past, even if it inspires you to make new history.
\n\nLet’s compare the RNC protests in St. Paul with the WTO protests, then, since it is practically impossible not to. A great deal of the organizing for Seattle was funded by NGOs, while the DNC and RNC mobilizations came entirely out of grassroots initiatives. There were only a few hundred utterly unprepared police in Seattle, while over the past decade events such as the RNC have come to be defended by literally military occupations; in that light, it is a miracle any direct action occurred in St. Paul at all. Some New York anarchists who had participated in the 2004 RNC reported that they had a much more fulfilling experience in St. Paul. If it were possible to compose an equation charting dollars spent on security and policing against numbers of protesters, minutes of airtime, and degrees of disruption, we might find that the 2008 RNC scored fairly well compared to the WTO protests.
\n\nYet such an equation would tell us nothing about how effective the RNC mobilization was at actually bringing us closer to liberation. The critical difference between Seattle and St. Paul was that the WTO protests brought tens of thousands of people, including but not limited to anarchists, together in an unfamiliar and inspiring situation. The RNC mobilization was a much more limited affair. However successful our mobilizations are in themselves, they are useless if they do not ultimately enable us to generalize the struggle against hierarchy.
\n\nViewed as a means of breaking a few windows or obtaining television airtime, any multi-year organizing effort is extremely inefficient. But the year and a half of preparation was valuable in itself as a means of building networks, visibility, and experience; the same goes for the legal support phase afterwards. Regardless of whether the RNC was successfully blockaded, the real significance of the mobilization lies in the way it raised the bar for what it means to organize as anarchists. If those who cut their teeth preparing for the convention continue to mobilize nationwide networks, organized into autonomous affinity groups within a larger strategic framework, it will have been worth the trouble. Often it is events like the RNC, or for that matter the protests against the EU summit in Greece in 2003, that lay the groundwork for anarchist participation in more spontaneous and far-reaching uprisings such as the recent ones in Oakland and Greece.
\n\nSo intensive organizing is valuable in itself—but was the RNC the most sensible target? Probably not. As described, when it was first chosen, anarchists expected it to attract tens of thousands of protesters from other demographics. Once upon a time, the Republicans seemed invincible—by the time we finally built up the courage to take them on, they were so weakened that we could not build a long-term organizing strategy upon opposing them.15 Between the backlash against Bush, the hurricane, and the revelation that Palin’s unwed teenage daughter was pregnant, the RNC would have been a disaster even without anarchist resistance.
\n\nObama’s election marked the definitive end of the context that generated the RNC protests. Now that the Bush years are over, anarchists should congratulate ourselves on having survived a difficult era with at least some vestiges of continuity and collective memory intact. The Obama era poses its own challenges; we have to find new ways to mobilize and reach out to potential comrades. We must lay down a root system that can sustain us well into the 21st century, so we can build on experiences such as the DNC and RNC mobilizations.
\n\nAs mentioned above, a few self-described anarchists had been horrified that others were mobilizing militant resistance to both political parties rather than trying to emulate the Obama campaign.
\n\nIn November 2008, while many who had participated in the DNC and RNC mobilizations were busy coordinating legal support, these individuals resurfaced with a tortuous call to attend Obama’s inauguration in a spirit of “presence rather than protest”. The idea was to “gather as a bloc, unmasked and with open arms, respecting the celebratory spirit of the day” and “illustrate the many moments when people on this continent and across the world aspired to better approximations of freedom”. Perhaps because there was nothing else scheduled for the inauguration, a few respected organizing groups and a fair number of individuals signed on to the call, but its apparent rejection of militant opposition provoked vicious controversy. In the end, despite other calls, no other mobilizations came together for the inauguration, and scant few people participated in the “Celebrate People’s History & Build Popular Power” bloc.
\n\nIt’s hard not to interpret this call an as opportunist attempt to counteract whatever momentum towards militant organizing had come out of the convention protests. The originators of the call feared that if anarchists took a stand against Obama it would guarantee “irrelevance,” but the outcome showed that however limited the social base for confrontational direct action might be, the social base for a more conciliatory anarchism was practically nonexistent. Perhaps, in this era of reformism and co-optation, resistance will be militant or else will not be at all.
\n\nIn the buildup to the DNC and RNC protests, anarchists had emphasized opposition to all politicians and parties, including Obama. The absence of any visible protest at the inauguration, despite the precedents from the two previous inaugurations and the desire to maintain momentum from the conventions, indicates that the militant wing of the anarchist movement had exhausted itself. Perhaps if organizers had included plans to protest at the inauguration in the mobilization against the conventions, emphasizing that this would occur whoever won the election, things might have played out differently. There are risks to picking targets far in advance, but also to not doing so.
\n\nThis anecdote illustrates how militant victories, however modest, can provoke internal as well as external backlash. It also shows how reformist victories can divide and disable anarchist organizing. Although the inauguration may not have been the most strategic opportunity to manifest opposition, it is important not to forget how many other people have a stake in resisting the oppression they experience daily. Remember the diverse crowd that gathered in outrage in Denver, when the police mass-arrested the black bloc on August 25. Even with Obama on the ballot or in the White House, when the lines are drawn, people know where they stand in relation to authority.
\n\nWe Are All Legal Workers: Legal Support at the RNC and After
\n\nWe’ve gone to some lengths to assemble and presume a variety of personal narratives from participants in the DNC and RNC protests:
\n\nSome critics pose a false dichotomy between building radical infrastructures and focusing on mass mobilizations; in fact, the latter often produce the former. ↩
\nBash Back! came out of a Midwest anarchist consulta in November 2007, initiated by queer anarchists who felt that there hadn’t been sufficient space for radical queer and trans participants at earlier demonstrations. Months after the conventions, Bash Back! groups were making headlines with provocative actions, and the network continued to spread across the US. ↩
\nAs one cynic quipped, “A lot of different things happened in 1968—not all of them good!” ↩
\nThe Free State produced an entire generation of Twin Cities activists, some of whom later helped found the WC. ↩
\nComically, these were coordinated by the ISAG Welcoming Committee, a group promoting “decentralized actions” which foreshadowed the RNC WC by failing to engage with corporate media while police mobilized a massive campaign of repression. ↩
\nOne detainee who attempted to sing to the child to keep him calm was gruffly instructed to “Shut the fuck up” by a gun-waving officer. ↩
\nImagine the conscience of a person whose chosen career echoes that of the most hated traitor in Christian history. ↩
\nThis has continued since the RNC demonstrations. Older Twin Cities progressives in particular have mobilized around the RNC 8 case. ↩
\nThis is presumably disinformation, though there are reports of a conflict between anarchists and pro-war demonstrators. Compared to police officers, anarchists are extremely principled about not attacking civilians. ↩
\nThere were also security concerns, as txt.mob records had been subpoenaed in subsequent court cases. ↩
\nWhile organizers in Denver risked spreading themselves too thin between different events, in St. Paul it could have been advantageous to plan more past September 1; on the other hand, there may simply not have been enough time and resources for this. ↩
\nIndeed, at least 600 of the 818 people arrested during the RNC were captured in mass arrests. ↩
\nIt’s noteworthy that the conspiracy charges against the RNC 8 were brought by Ramsey County, not the federal government. Although it seems strange that a liberal local government would be more eager to press terrorist conspiracy charges than the federal government under Bush, this appears to indicate that the RNC 8 case may not be an indication of federal tactics to come so much as the initiative of overzealous local authorities. ↩
\nThose who glorify clandestine action over participatory militant organizing should ask Daniel McGowan, who participated in several major Earth Liberation Front actions and went on to play a central role in organizing the 2004 RNC protests, which he found to be more effective. His address can be found at supportdaniel.org. ↩
\nSee David Graeber’s “The Shock of Victory,” available at infoshop.org. ↩
\nOver the past decade, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty—SHAC—has waged an international direct action campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences, Europe’s largest contract animal testing corporation. By targeting investors and business partners of HLS, SHAC repeatedly brought HLS to the brink of collapse, and it took direct assistance from the British government and an international counter-campaign of severe legal repression to keep the corporation afloat.
\n\nIn the wake of this campaign, there was talk of applying the SHAC model in other contexts, such as environmental defense and anti-war organizing. But what is the SHAC model, precisely? What are its strengths and limitations? Is it, in fact, an effective model? If so, for what?
\n\n\n\n\n“We were aware of the activists, but I don’t think we understood exactly to what lengths they would go.”
\n
– Warren Stevens, on dropping a $33 million loan to Huntingdon Life Sciences despite having vowed never to do so, following rioting at his offices in Little Rock and vandalism of his property
\n\n\n\n\n“The number of activists isn’t huge, but their impact has been incredible … There needs to be an understanding that this is a threat to all industries. The tactics could be extended to any other sectors of the economy.”
\n
– Brian Cass, managing director of HLS
\n\n\n\n\n“Where all animal welfare and most animal rights groups insist on working within the legal boundaries of society, animal liberationists argue that the state is irrevocably corrupt and that legal approaches alone will never win justice for the animals.”
\n
– ALF Press Office
\n\nViewed from outside, the animal rights milieu can be confusing, even for other radicals. On one hand, the intense focus on this single issue can contribute to an insular mindset, if not outright myopia; on the other hand, there are countless animal liberation activists who see their efforts as part of a larger struggle against all forms of oppression. Those not familiar with the inner workings of the milieu often conflate the positions of opposing factions. At the risk of oversimplifying, it is possible to identify three distinct schools of thought:
\n\nAnimal Welfare – The idea that animals should be treated with mercy and compassion, especially when they are used for human benefit such as food production. For example, some animal welfare advocates lobby the government for more humane slaughter laws.
\n\nExample: the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS)
\n\nAnimal Rights – The idea that animals have their own interests and deserve legislation to protect them. Those who believe in animal rights often maintain vegan diets and oppose the use of animals for entertainment, experimentation, food, or clothing. While they may participate in protests or civil disobedience, they also generally believe in working within the system, through lobbying, marketing, outreach, and use of the corporate media.
\n\nExample: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)
\n\nAnimal Liberation – The idea that animals should not be domesticated or held in captivity. Since this is not possible within the logic of the current social and economic system, animal liberationists often tend towards anarchism, and may break laws in order to rescue animals or to preserve habitat.
\n\nExample: the Animal Liberation Front (ALF)1
\n\nMany groups focused on animal welfare and animal rights have criticized those who engage in direct action, arguing that such actions hurt the image of animal advocates and alienate potential sympathizers. It’s also possible to interpret this criticism as motivated by the economic inducement of building up a wealthy membership base and the fear of running afoul of government repression. In addition to denouncing direct action, prohibiting their employees from interacting with those who countenance it, and pulling out of conferences including more militant speakers, organizations such as HSUS have gone so far as to laud the FBI for cracking down on animal liberation efforts. In 2008, HSUS ostentatiously offered a $2500 reward to anyone providing information leading to the conviction of persons involved with an arson alleged by the FBI to be the work of animal rights activists.
\n\nThe SHAC campaign originated in Britain, following a series of successful closures of laboratory animal breeders involving tactics from picketing to ALF raids and clashes with the police. Video footage shot covertly inside HLS in 1997 was aired on British television, showing staff shaking, punching, and shouting at beagles in an HLS lab. PETA stopped organizing protests against HLS after being threatened with legal action, and SHAC formed to take over the campaign in November 1999.
\n\nHuntingdon Life Sciences was a more formidable target than any individual animal breeder; the SHAC campaign constituted an escalation in animal rights activism in Britain. The idea was to focus specifically on the corporation’s finances, utilizing the tactics that had closed small businesses to shut down an entire corporation. Activists set out to isolate HLS by harassing anyone involved with any corporation that did business with them. The role of SHAC as an organization was simply to distribute information about potential targets and report on actions as they occurred.
\n\nIn January 2000, British activists publicized a list of the largest shareholders in HLS, including those who held shares through third parties for anonymity—one of which was Britain’s Labour Party. Following two weeks of pitched demonstrations, many shareholders sold their holdings; finally, 32 million shares were placed on the London Stock Exchange for one penny each and HLS stocks crashed. In the ensuing chaos, the Royal Bank of Scotland wrote off an £11.6 million loan in exchange for a payment of just £1 in order to distance itself from the company, and the British government arranged for the state-owned Bank of England to give them an account because no other bank would do business with them. The company’s share price, worth around £300 in the 1990s, fell to £1.75 in January 2001, stabilizing at 3 pence by mid-2001.
\n\nOn December 21, 2000, HLS was dropped from the New York Stock Exchange; three months later, it lost its place on the main platform of the London Stock Exchange as well. HLS was only saved from bankruptcy when its largest remaining shareholder, the American investment bank Stephens, gave the company a $15 million loan. This chapter of the story closed with HLS moving its financial center to the United States to take advantage of US laws allowing greater anonymity for shareholders.
\n\nMeanwhile, in the United States, the anti-fur campaigns that had characterized much of 1990s animal rights organizing had plateaued; the tactics of civil disobedience developed in those campaigns had reached a point of diminishing returns, and many activists were casting around for new targets and strategies. One faction of the animal rights movement, exemplified by groups like Vegan Outreach and DC Compassion Over Killing,2 moved on to promoting veganism. More militant activists sought other points of departure. Some, like Kevin Kjonaas, who went on to become president of SHAC USA, had been in Britain and witnessed the apex of the British SHAC campaign, just as anti-globalization activists visiting Britain in the 1990s had brought back heady tales of Reclaim the Streets actions.
\n\nThe US SHAC campaign came out of conversations between animal rights activists in different parts of the country. While the vegan outreach campaign sought to appeal to the lowest common denominator in order to win over consumers, SHAC attracted militants who wanted to make the most efficient use of their individual efforts. Some reasoned that it was unlikely that the entire market base for animal products would be won over to veganism, especially insofar as people tend to be defensive about their lifestyle choices, but practically everyone could agree that punching puppies is inexcusable.
\n\nSHAC USA got started in January 2001, just as Stephens, Inc. saved HLS from bankruptcy. Stephens was based in Little Rock, Arkansas, so a number of activists moved there to organize. In April, 14 beagles were liberated from the new HLS lab in New Jersey; at the end of October, hundreds of people gathered in Little Rock for a weekend of demonstrations at Warren Stephens’ home and the offices of Stephens, Inc. By the following spring, Stephens had ditched HLS, breaking off a five-year contract after only one year.
\n\nUnrivaled by any campaign of comparable scale and effectiveness, SHAC took off quickly in the US. Thanks in part to superior funding,3 the propaganda was colorful and exciting, as were promotional videos that juxtaposed heart-wrenching clips of animal cruelty with inspiring demonstration footage to a pulse-racing soundtrack of techno music. The campaign offered participants a wide range of options, including civil disobedience, office disruptions, property destruction, call-ins, pranks, tabling, and home demonstrations. In contrast to the heyday of anti-globalization summit-hopping, targets were available all around the country, limited only by activists’ imaginations and research. The intermediate goals of forcing specific investors and business partners to disconnect from HLS were often easily accomplished, providing immediate gratification to participants.
\n\nWhereas an individual might feel insignificant at an antiwar march of thousands, if she was one of a dozen people at a home demonstration that caused an investor to pull out, she could feel that she had personally accomplished something concrete. The SHAC campaign offered the kind of sustained low-intensity conflict through which people can become radicalized and develop a sense of collective power. Running in black blocs with friends, evading police after demonstrations, listening to inspirational speeches together, walking through offices yelling on bullhorns, reading other activists’ reports online, the feeling of being on the winning side of an effective liberation struggle—all these contributed to the seemingly unstoppable momentum of the SHAC campaign.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2008/09/01/megaphone_900.jpg\")
\n\n\n\n“Carr Securities began marketing the Huntingdon Life Sciences stock. The next day, the Manhasset Bay Yacht Club, to which certain Carr executives reportedly belong, was vandalized by animal rights activists. The extremists sent a claim of responsibility to the SHAC website, and three days after the incident, Carr terminated its business relationship with HLS.”
\n
– John Lewis, Deputy Assistant Director FBI Oversight on so-called “Eco-terrorism”
\n\nDirect action against those doing business with HLS has taken many forms, occasionally escalating to arson and violence. In February 2001, HLS managing director Brian Cass was hospitalized after being attacked with axe handles at his home. That July, the Pirates for Animal Liberation sank the yacht of a Bank of New York executive, and the bank soon severed ties with the lab. A year later, smoke bombs were set off at the offices of Marsh Corp. in Seattle, causing the evacuation of the high rise and their disassociation from HLS. In fall of 2003, incendiary devices were left at Chiron and Shaklee corporations for their contracting with HLS. In 2005, Vancouver-based brokerage Canaccord Capital announced that it had dropped a client, Phytopharm PLC, in response to the ALF firebombing of a car belonging to a Canaccord executive; Phytopharm had been doing business with HLS. All this took place against a backdrop of constant smaller-scale actions.
\n\nIn December 2006, HLS was prevented from being listed on the New York Stock Exchange, an unprecedented development that resulted in a full page ad in the New York Times portraying a masked, apparently leather-jacketed caricature of an activist declaring “I control Wall Street.”4 In 2007, eight companies dropped HLS, including their two biggest investors, AXA and Wachovia, following home demonstrations and ALF visits to executives’ houses. In 2008, incendiary devices were left under Staples trucks and Staples outlets were vandalized. About 250 companies altogether have dropped in the course of the campaign, including Citibank, the world’s largest financial institution; HSBC, the world’s largest bank; Marsh, the world’s largest insurance broker; and Bank of America.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2008/09/01/nyse_900.jpg\")
\nIt’s interesting to compare the arc of the SHAC campaign to that of the so-called anti-globalization movement. Both took off in Britain before catching on in the United States. SHAC was founded in England the same month as the historic WTO protests in Seattle; it got going in North America at the tail end of the anti-globalization surge, and maintained momentum after the US wing of the anti-globalization movement collapsed in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
\n\nHow was the SHAC campaign able to maintain momentum while practically every other direct action-based campaign foundered or was co-opted by liberals? Can we derive lessons about how to weather crises from its example?
\n\nSHAC activists differed from participants in most other social movements in that they neither perceived themselves to need positive press coverage nor regarded negative press coverage as a bad thing. Their goal was to terrify corporations out of doing business with HLS, not to win converts to the animal rights movement. The more fearsome and crazy they appeared in the media, the easier it was to intimidate potential investors and business partners. Activists in other circles feared that the terrorism scare would make it easy for the government to isolate them by portraying them as dangerous extremists; for SHAC, the more dangerous and extreme they appeared, the better.
\n\nAll this came back to haunt them in the end, when the most influential organizers went to trial and it was easy for the prosecution to frame them as representatives of a frankly terroristic underground. In this regard, the greatest strengths of the SHAC campaign—the relationship between public and covert organizing, the fearsome reputation—also proved to be its Achilles heel. The lesson seems to be that this approach can be effective on a small scale, so long as organizers do not provoke a confrontation with forces much stronger than themselves.
\n\nIn addition to the matter of press coverage, it may be instructive to look at the way SHAC organizers framed the issues. SHAC spokespeople never backed down from emphasizing the necessity of direct action for animal liberation, even when the rest of the nation was fixated on Al Qaeda; the historic mobilization in Little Rock took place only a month and a half after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Regardless of what happened in New York or Afghanistan, they emphasized that there were animals suffering at that very moment, who could be spared if people took a few concrete steps. Had organizers in other circles been able to maintain this kind of focus and urgency, history might have taken a different turn at the beginning of this decade.
\n\nIt’s possible, also, that with other forms of organizing at a lower ebb, SHAC picked up more participants than it would have if other direct action campaigns had maintained momentum. In contrast to the massive symbolic actions of the antiwar movement, the SHAC campaign was a hotbed of experimentation, in which new tactics were constantly being tested. For direct action enthusiasts concerned with making the most of their efforts—or simply bored with being treated as a number in a crowd estimate—it must have been seductive by comparison.
\n\nWhatever the cause, the SHAC campaign was able to maintain momentum until federal repression finally began to take its toll. Unlike many campaigns, which have faded due to attrition or cooptation, it took the full power of the state to check its advance.
\n\nAll the accomplishments of the SHAC campaign came at a price. The more businesses dropped relations with HLS, the more attention the campaign attracted from law enforcement agencies and right wing think tanks. SHAC organizers in general were not an easily intimidated breed; it was common for participants in the campaign to joke about all the lawsuits and injunctions they had racked up and how little it mattered if they were sued as they had no money anyway.
\n\nThe US and British governments ratcheted up repression steadily over the years, placing activists under surveillance, hitting them with lawsuits, blocking their fundraising efforts, intimidating organizations like PETA out of interacting with them, passing new laws against demonstrations in residential neighborhoods, and shutting down their websites. This culminated in the US with the trial of the so-called SHAC 7: six organizers and the SHAC USA corporation itself.
\n\nOn May 26, 2004, Lauren Gazzola, Jake Conroy, Josh Harper, Kevin Kjonaas, Andrew Stepanian, and Darius Fullmer were indicted on various federal charges for their alleged roles in the campaign. Teams of FBI agents in riot gear invaded their homes at dawn, threatening them and their pets with guns and handcuffing their relatives. The investigation leading up to the arrest was reportedly the FBI’s largest investigation of 2003; court documents confirm that wiretap intercepts in the investigation outnumbered the intercepted communications of that year’s second largest investigation 5 to 1.
\n\nThe defendants were all charged with violating the Animal Enterprise Protection Act, a controversial law intended to punish anyone who disrupts a corporation that profits from animal exploitation; some were also charged with interstate stalking and other offenses. The defendants were never charged with engaging personally in any threatening acts; the government based its case on the notion that they should be held responsible for all the illegal actions taken to further the SHAC campaign, regardless of their involvement. They were found guilty on March 2, 2006, sentenced to prison terms ranging from one to six years, and ordered to pay tremendous quantities of money to HLS.
\n\nThe SHAC 7 trial was clearly intended to set a precedent for targeting public organizers of campaigns that include covert action; its repercussions were felt as far away as England. In 2005, the British government passed the “Serious Organized Crime and Police Act” specifically to protect animal research organizations. On May 1, 2007, after a series of raids involving 700 police officers in England, Holland, and Belgium, 32 people linked to SHAC were arrested, including Heather Nicholson and Greg and Natasha Avery, among the founders of SHAC in Britain. In January 2009, seven of them were sentenced to prison terms between four and eleven years.
\n\nDespite all these setbacks, the SHAC campaign continues to this day, though it faces serious challenges in the United States. Some regional organizations are still active, and autonomous actions continue to occur, but there is no nationwide organizing body, no newsletter, no reliable website to publicize targets and action reports. Consequently, there is less strategic targeting, less outreach and networking, and a lack of national events. The upside is that it has become more difficult for companies to figure out who to subpoena or seek injunctions against—but that’s a narrow silver lining.
\n\nThis downturn can be attributed to government repression in general and the SHAC 7 trial specifically. Fear of legal repercussions has increased at the same time as key organizers have been taken out of action. With new local laws prohibiting residential picketing, and the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act of 2006 making interstate tertiary targeting illegal, many tactics that once involved little risk are no longer feasible. Now that more public forms of organizing are being more aggressively punished, it seems possible that the next generation of animal liberation activists will focus more on clandestine tactics. One of the strongest features of the SHAC campaign was the combination of public and clandestine approaches, so this is not necessarily good news for the movement.
\n\nIt’s actually quite surprising that HLS is still in existence; half a decade ago, SHAC organizers must have been banking on already having won by this point. When Stephens, Inc. divested, their loans were all that kept HLS running; it was only the British government intervening again that enabled HLS to negotiate a refinancing and continue. Essentially, SHAC did win, only to have its victory stolen away. The same situation recurred when SHAC forced Marsh Inc. to break off ties, and HLS was faced with the prospect of operating without the insurance mandated by law. Again, the British government intervened, and HLS was given unprecedented coverage by the Department of Trade and Industry. Without this protection from the very pinnacle of power, HLS would be long gone—but that’s precisely why governments exist: to protect corporations and preserve the smooth functioning of the capitalist economy. Perhaps it was naïve to believe that the governments of Britain and the USA would permit even the fiercest animal liberation campaign to run an influential corporation out of business.
\n\nOne can’t fight like there’s no tomorrow indefinitely, and the repeated return of HLS from the dead must have been maddening for long-term SHAC organizers who staked everything again and again on one final push. Participants disagree as to how significant a factor burnout has been, but it would be foolish to rule it out. The SHAC campaign has been oriented towards full-time activism from the beginning, the mindset being that, as HLS employees work full time, their opponents must work at least that hard. Newsletter articles such as the “SHACtivist workout routine” indicate a high-pressure approach that probably correlates with a high rate of burnout. In any case, as difficult as it may be to distinguish the effects of burnout from those of fear, many activists have indeed dropped out of SHAC without moving on to other campaigns.
\n\nSHAC is currently active in mainland Europe and Latin America, and unrelenting in Britain. The British SHAC campaign may offer a better model for how to handle federal repression; from this vantage point, it appears that British activists were prepared in advance for it, had people ready to take over for central organizers, and were more open to new people getting involved. But Britain is more densely populated than much of the United States and has a richer history of animal rights organizing, so it is unfair to compare the two campaigns too closely.
\n\nWill SHAC ultimately succeed in shutting down HLS? It’s still possible, though it looks less likely than it did a few years ago. Some still feel that the most important thing is to close HLS at all costs, to win an historic victory that will inspire activists and terrify executives for decades to come. Others think that, whether or not HLS shuts down, SHAC has served its purpose, demonstrating the strengths and limitations of a new model for anticapitalist organizing.
\n\nWhen people think of SHAC, they picture demonstrations at the homes of employees and investors; some anarchists mean nothing more than this when they refer to the “SHAC model.” But home demonstrations are merely incidental to the formula that has enabled SHAC to wreak such havoc upon HLS. To understand what made the campaign effective, we have to look at all its essential characteristics together.
\n\n• Secondary and tertiary targeting:5 The SHAC campaign set about depriving HLS of its support structure. Just as a living organism depends on an entire ecosystem for the resources and relationships it needs to survive, a corporation cannot function without investors and business partners. In this regard, more so than any standard boycott, property destruction, or publicity campaign, SHAC confronted HLS on the terms most threatening to a corporation. Starbucks could easily afford a thousand times the cost of the windows smashed by the black bloc during the Seattle WTO protests, but if no one would replace those windows—or the windows had been broken at the houses of investors, so no one would invest in the corporation—it would be another story. SHAC organizers made a point of learning the inner workings of the capitalist economy, so they could strike most strategically.
\n\nSecondary and tertiary targeting works because the targets do not have a vested interest in continuing their involvement with the primary target. There are other places they can take their business, and they have no reason not to do so. This is a vital aspect of the SHAC model. If a business is cornered, they’ll fight to the death, and nothing will matter in the conflict except the pure force each party is able to bring to bear on the other; this is not generally to the advantage of activists, as corporations can bring in the police and government. This is why, apart from the axe handle incident, so few efforts in the SHAC campaign have been directed at HLS itself. Somewhere between the primary target and the associated corporations that provide its support structure, there appears to be a fulcrum where action is most effective. It might seem strange to go after tertiary targets that have no connection to the primary target themselves, but countless HLS customers have dropped relations after a client of theirs was embarrassed.
\n\n• Complementary relationship between public and underground organizing: More than any other direct action campaign in recent history, the SHAC campaign achieved a perfect symbiosis of public organizing and underground action. To this end, the campaign was characterized by an extremely savvy use of technology and modern networking. The SHAC websites disseminated information about targets and provided a forum for action reports to raise morale and expectations, enabling anyone sympathetic to the goals of the campaign to play a part without drawing attention to themselves.
\n\n• Diversity of tactics: Rather than pitting exponents of different tactics against each other, SHAC integrated all possible tactics into one campaign, in which each approach complemented the others. This meant that participants could choose from a practically limitless array of options, which opened the campaign to a wide range of people and averted needless conflicts.
\n\n• Concrete targets, concrete motivations: The fact that there were specific animals suffering, whose lives could be saved by specific direct action, made the issues concrete and lent the campaign a sense of urgency that translated into a willingness on the part of participants to push themselves out of their comfort zones. Likewise, at every juncture in the SHAC campaign, there were intermediate goals that could easily be accomplished, so the monumental task of undermining an entire corporation never felt overwhelming.
\n\nThis contrasts sharply with the way momentum in certain green anarchist circles died off after the turn of the century, when the goals and targets became too expansive and abstract. It had been easy for individuals to motivate themselves to defend specific trees and natural areas, but once the point for some participants was to “destroy civilization” and everything less was mere reformism, it was impossible to work out what constituted meaningful action.
\n\nWhen the model pioneered by SHAC is applied correctly, its advantages are obvious. It hits corporations where they are most vulnerable: corporations do not do what they do because of ethical commitments or in order to obtain a certain public image, but in single-minded pursuit of profit, and the SHAC model focuses exclusively on making corporate wrongdoings unprofitable. In terms of building and maintaining a long-running direct action campaign, the SHAC model offers direction and motivation for participants, providing a framework for concrete rather than symbolic actions. The SHAC model sidesteps conflicts over tactics, offering the opportunity for activists of a range of abilities and comfort levels to work together. In establishing a wide array of targets, it gives activists the opportunity to pick the time, place, and character of their actions, rather than constantly reacting to their opponents. Above all, the SHAC model is efficient: SHAC USA has never had more than a few hundred active participants at any given time.
\n\nIn contrast to most current organizing strategies, the SHAC model is an offensive approach. It offers a means of attacking and defeating established capitalist projects—of taking the initiative rather than simply responding to the advance of corporate power. SHAC did not set out to block the construction of a new animal testing facility or the passage of new legislation, but to defeat and destroy an animal testing corporation that had existed for decades.
\n\nThe SHAC model demands and fosters a culture that not only celebrates direct action but constantly engages in it, encouraging participants to push their own limits. This contrasts sharply with certain so-called insurrectionist circles, in which anarchists talk a lot about rioting and resistance without engaging in day-to-day confrontations with the powers that be. Anti-globalization activists in Chicago sometimes asked SHAC organizers to lead chants at their protests, as the latter had a reputation for being boisterous and energetic: those who cut their teeth in the SHAC campaign, if they have not dropped out of direct action organizing entirely, are equipped to be effective in a wide range of contexts.
\n\nA subtler strength of the SHAC approach is that it draws on class tensions that are usually submerged in the United States. Activists from lower middle- and working-class backgrounds can find it gratifying to confront wealthy executives on their own turf. This also exposes single-issue activists to the interconnections of the ruling class. In visiting the houses of executives, one discovers that all the pharmaceutical and investment corporations are intertwined: they all own shares of each other’s companies, sit on each other’s boards, and live in identical suburban mansions in sprawling gated communities.
\n\nFinally, the SHAC model took advantage of opportunities offered by larger events and communities. Home demonstrations were often organized to take place after a conference or show; the ubiquity of potential targets meant there was always one close at hand. For several years running, SHAC demonstrations took place during the National Conference on Organized Resistance in Washington, DC, and they also occurred following anti-biotech protests in Philadelphia and Chicago. Though these sometimes provoked conflicts with other organizers, it only takes a couple dozen people to make an effective home demonstration, so it was always easy to pull one together.
\n\nSHAC itself tended to create and propagate a subculture of its own, complete with internal reference points and rituals. At conferences and major mobilizations activists compared notes about investors, local campaigns, and legal troubles. Sympathetic music scenes helped fund organizing and introduced new blood to the campaign. It would be difficult to imagine the SHAC campaign in the USA without the hardcore scene of the past two decades, which has consistently served as a social base for the militant animal rights movement. There are certainly drawbacks to identifying a campaign too closely with a specific youth-oriented subculture, but it is better to draw participants and momentum from at least one community than from none at all.
\n\nSome anarchists have thoughtlessly charged SHAC with reformism. This is absurd: SHAC’s goal is not to change the way HLS conducts itself, but to shut it down. It is more precise to describe SHAC as an abolitionist campaign: not being able to bring about the end of animal exploitation in one fell blow, it seeks to accomplish the most ambitious but feasible step toward that end. Similarly, certain idle critics deride animal liberation efforts on the grounds that they are “activism,” with the implication that this is a bad thing in and of itself. Those who adopt this position should go ahead and acknowledge that they are unmoved by the oppression of their fellow living creatures and see no value in attempting to put an end to it—that is to say, they are hardly anarchists.
\n\nSpurious critiques aside, the SHAC model has some real limitations, which deserve examination.
\n\nFirst, there are certain prerequisites without which it will fail. For example, the SHAC model cannot succeed outside a setting in which direct action is regularly applied. All the strategic thinking in the world is worthless if no one is actually willing to act. In the militant animal rights milieu, the issues at stake are felt to be concrete and poignant enough that participants are motivated to take risks on a regular basis; without this motivation, the SHAC campaign would not have gotten off the ground. Likewise, the SHAC model is powerless against a target that does not depend on secondary and tertiary targets, or has an endless supply of them to choose from. Above all, the secondary and tertiary targets must have somewhere else to take their business—the SHAC model relies on the rest of the capitalist market to offer better options. In this regard, while it is not reformist, neither does it provide a strategy for taking on capitalism itself.
\n\nSecondly, as effective as they might be in purely economic terms, secondary and tertiary targeting locate the site of confrontation far from the cause for which the participants are fighting. Generally speaking, the more abstract the object of a campaign feels, the worse for morale. Much of the vitality of eco-defense struggles in the 1980s and ’90s came from the immediate, visceral connection forest defenders experienced with the land they were occupying; when environmental activism began shifting to more urban terrain a decade ago, it lost some of its impetus. It is perhaps specific to the SHAC campaign that participants have been able to maintain their outrage and audacity so far from the object of their concern; it is risky to assume this will always occur in other contexts.
\n\nApart from these challenges, the SHAC model may be ineffective precisely because of its effectiveness. Is it realistic to set out to shut down powerful corporations, or will the government always intercede? It may be that in posing a threat to corporations in the economic terms they take most seriously, the SHAC model picks a fight it cannot win. Once the government is involved in a conflict, it takes more than a tight network of militants to win—it takes an entire large-scale social movement, and the SHAC approach alone cannot give rise to such a thing. In this regard, the SHAC model’s greatest strength is also a fatal flaw.
\n\nTime will tell if HLS was too ambitious a target; the corporation might still collapse. Even so, it would probably be wise for the next ones who experiment with the model to set smaller goals, rather than even more ambitious ones, since the SHAC campaign itself has yet to succeed. Perhaps some unexplored middle ground awaits between shutting down individual fur stores and attempting to close Europe’s largest animal testing corporation.
\n\nThis is not to say that the SHAC model is useless if it does not result in the closure of the target. Sometimes it is worth fighting a losing battle so as to discourage an opponent from starting another battle; other times, even in losing one can gain valuable experience and allies. Ironically, the SHAC model may be more effective for recruiting people to direct action organizing than for its professed goal—precisely because, in bypassing recruitment to focus on other goals, it attracts participants who are serious and committed.
\n\nBut if the point is to bring more people into direct action organizing rather than simply to shut down a single corporation, there are significant drawbacks to the SHAC model, too—for example, the high stress levels and likelihood of burnout. In this regard, it is not necessarily an advantage that the SHAC model teaches activists to think in the same terms as capitalist economists—efficiency, finances, chain of command—rather than prioritizing the social skills necessary to build long-term communities of resistance.
\n\nLikewise, in focusing on secondary and tertiary targeting, the SHAC model emphasizes and rewards an aggressive attitude that is less advantageous in other situations. What are the long-term psychological effects on organizers who spend half a decade or more screaming over a bullhorn at employees in their homes? What kind of people are drawn to a campaign that consists primarily of making other people miserable? It cannot go unsaid that some anarchists have reported frustrating interactions with SHAC organizers.
\n\nConsidering the model from an anarchist perspective—to what extent does the SHAC approach tend to consolidate or undermine hierarchies? The secure organizing necessary for clandestine direct action can promote a cliquishness than intensifies as repression increases, thus preventing a campaign from drawing in new participation when it needs it most. Informal hierarchies plague organizing of all kinds; in the case of the SHAC campaign, those who do the research often have disproportionate influence over the direction of a campaign and end up making judgment calls with far-reaching effects.
\n\nIt could be argued that the single-issue focus and goal-oriented nature of the SHAC campaign deprioritizes addressing forms of hierarchy other than the oppression of animals. It is no secret that some SHAC organizing groups have been wracked by conflicts over gender dynamics6 and some participants have not always been held accountable for their behavior. In a campaign that emphasizes victory above all else, this should not be surprising—if the most important thing is to win, it’s easy to put off addressing internal conflicts, especially with the added stress of federal repression. Inevitably, the people who have bad experiences drop out of the campaign, taking with them the criticism others need to hear.
\n\nThese questionable priorities have also manifested themselves in certain tasteless tactics. In one instance, a target who was struggling to escape alcoholism received a can of beer with a nasty note; in another, a woman’s underwear was stolen and reportedly put up for sale. Utilizing the power imbalances of patriarchal society to target accomplices in the oppression of animals hardly sets an example of struggle against all forms of domination.
\n\nThere are other ethical questions about secondary and tertiary targeting. Is it acceptable to risk frightening or injuring secretaries, children, and other uninvolved parties? What distinguishes anarchists from governments and other terrorists, if not the refusal to countenance collateral damage?
\n\nIn essence, the SHAC model is a blueprint for a campaign of coercion, to be used in situations in which there is no other possible accountability process. This does not conflict with anarchist values—when an oppressor refuses to be accountable for his actions, it is necessary to compel him to stop, and this extends to those who aid and abet him as well. But targeting people who are not themselves involved in oppression muddies the waters. When an organizer publicizes a target, there is no telling what actions others will carry out. Perhaps the value of ending animal exploitation outweighs these risks and costs, but anarchists should not get too comfortable making such rationalizations.
\n\nThere has been much talk of applying the SHAC model in other contexts, but few such efforts have produced anything comparable to the SHAC campaign. This bears some reflection. It’s worth pointing out that some of the hype about the far-reaching applicability of the SHAC model has come straight from HLS, and so should be taken with a grain of salt. HLS is not interested in promoting effective new direct action methods, but rather in creating enough of a scare that other members of the ruling class will come to their assistance; it follows that even if they claim that SHAC tactics can be used effectively against any target, this is not necessarily the case. The same goes for sensationalist analyses by organizations such as Stratfor, whose primary goal seems to be terrorizing the public into feeling a need for their “intelligence.”
\n\nIt may be that, because the SHAC campaign maintained momentum while other forms of organizing dropped off, it has exerted a disproportionate influence upon the imaginations of current anarchists, to such an extent that many now tend to imitate the SHAC model in their organizing even when it is not strategically effective. Failures can be more instructive than successes; unfortunately, as they are more readily forgotten, they are often repeated over and over. For this reason, any consideration of the SHAC model should begin with the example of Root Force.
\n\nRoot Force arose out of Earth First! circles a couple years ago with the intention of promoting a SHAC-style campaign targeting the infrastructure of global capitalism—an exponentially more ambitious goal than shutting down HLS. The organizers researched the corporations involved in pivotal infrastructural projects such as transcontinental highways and power plants. A website was set up to publicize this information and any actions that occurred; road shows toured the country to spread the word. It seemed that all the pieces were in place, and yet nothing happened.
\n\nEarly in 2008, Root Force released a statement entitled “A Revised Strategy” in which they acknowledged that their efforts had failed to produce an effective direct action campaign and described the difficulties of attempting to inspire action against infrastructural projects located so far away as to seem entirely abstract.
\n\nRoot Force misunderstood how direct action campaigns take off. Action and inaction are both contagious. If some people are invested enough in a cause to risk their freedom for it, others may do the same; but as no one wishes to go out on a limb in isolation, a sound strategy alone is not sufficient to inspire actions.7 Properly publicized, one serious direct action in the Root Force campaign would have been worth a hundred road shows.
\n\nThe Root Force campaign had other flaws as well. If the goal was simply to give demonstrators something to do, the strategy was as good as any other; but if they hoped to block the construction of the highways and power plants most essential to the expansion of the capitalist market, they would have had to mobilize a lot more force than the SHAC campaign. If the targets they picked really were of critical importance to the powers that be, it follows that the government would have mobilized every resource to defend them. Overextension is the number one error of small-scale resistance movements: rather than setting attainable goals and building slowly on modest successes, organizers set themselves up for defeat by attempting to skip directly to the final showdown with global capitalism. We can fight and win ambitious battles, but to do so we have to assess our capabilities realistically.
\n\nOther SHAC-influenced approaches have been characterized by an emphasis on home demonstrations. For example, over the past few years, protesters against the IMF and World Bank have experimented with targeting executives and corporate sponsors. In 2006, while Paul Wolfowitz was president of the World Bank, there were a series of demonstrations at his girlfriend’s home; eventually she moved. This does not seem to have impacted the IMF to the same extent as the worldwide upheavals associated with the anti-globalization movement. Sarcasm aside, there’s little to be gained from harassing people like Wolfowitz: unlike the tertiary parties SHAC targeted, they are not simply going to take their business elsewhere.
\n\nSimilarly, at the 2004 Republican National Convention, some organizers called for demonstrators to focus on harassing the delegates. The risk of this approach is that it can frame the conflict as a private grudge match between activists and authorities, rather than a social movement that is able to attract mass participation. Like Wolfowitz, Republican delegates are hardly going to retire because a few protesters shout at them—and even if some did, they would instantly be replaced. One proposal for the 2008 RNC protests involved activists targeting corporations that would be providing services to the convention. Targeting corporations providing services might have helped build momentum in the lead-up to the RNC, but it’s unlikely that it could have succeeded in depriving an organization as powerful as the Republican Party of necessary resources. The same probably goes for proposals to target weapons contractors serving the US government—it might give demonstrators something exciting to do, but no one should underestimate what it would take to make a corporation like Boeing break off relations with the US military.
\n\nSome see the Rising Tide and Rainforest Action Network campaigns against Bank of America as relatives of the SHAC campaign; these did use secondary targeting, although they were directly descended from environmental campaigns that preceded it. At the end of 2008, in a context of broader economic turmoil, Bank of America declared that they were pulling their financing from companies predominantly involved in mountain-top removal. However insincere this declaration may be, it at least indicates that the campaign forced BOA to take notice. Environmentalists in Indiana have had less success attempting to stop the construction of highway I-69 via a combination of home and office demonstrations and forest occupation tactics. In “A Revised Strategy,” Root Force cited I-69 as a pivotal infrastructural project; it will be interesting to see how the state responds if the struggle against I-69 ever becomes formidable.
\n\nAll this is not to say that the SHAC model cannot be applied effectively, but simply to emphasize that activists must be intentional and strategic about where and how they attempt to do so. There are probably some situations in which the model could accomplish even more than it has for SHAC; without a doubt, there are other contexts in which it can actually be counterproductive.
\n\nTo repeat, the SHAC campaign in the US has only involved a few hundred participants at any given time; a few thousand could possibly take on a bigger target. Even forcing the government to bail out a corporation, whether or not the target was successfully bankrupted, could still constitute an important victory. As of today, it remains to be seen where effective applications of the SHAC model will be found beyond the campaign that spawned it.
\n\nUnlike HSUS and PETA, the ALF is not technically an organization, but rather a banner taken up by autonomous cells which do not necessarily have any connection to each other. ↩
\nAccording to reports, the main organizers of this group have since joined HSUS. This is an example of the subtle conflicts and power dynamics that play out in the animal rights movement: SHAC organizers complain that HSUS absorbs committed activists by giving them paying jobs and forbidding them to collaborate with more militant activists. ↩
\nUnlike many social movements, the animal rights movement is supported by wealthy donors, and we can assume that some of them have contributed to SHAC. ↩
\nThis advertisement is all the more ironic in view of the role masked thugs in nations like Colombia continue to play in defending the interests of corporations who trade on Wall Street. ↩
\nSecondary targeting means going after a person or entity who does business with the primary target of a campaign. Tertiary targeting means going after a person or entity who is connected to a secondary target. ↩
\nIf there have not been corresponding conflicts regarding race and class, this may simply indicate that SHAC organizing has been predominantly white and middle class. Some have charged that the animal rights movement in the US attracts many from this demographic who are more comfortable protesting the oppression and exploitation of animals than addressing the power imbalances in their relationships with other human beings. ↩
\nCompare this to the critique of calls for “autonomous actions” at mass mobilizations in “Demonstrating Resistance,” available in the recent features section of the reading library on this site. ↩
\nFor years, the FBI targeted ecological activists as their #1 priority. This is one of the chief reasons environmental devastation has continued unchecked.
\n\nAt the end of 2005, the FBI opened a new phase of its assault on earth and animal liberation movements—known as the Green Scare—with the arrests and indictments of a large number of activists. This offensive, dubbed Operation Backfire, was intended to obtain convictions for many of the unsolved Earth Liberation Front arsons of the preceding ten years—but more so, to have a chilling effect on all ecological direct action. In the following analysis, originally published in Rolling Thunder in 2008, we review everything we can learn from the Operation Backfire cases, with the intention of passing on the lessons for the next generation of environmental activists.
\n\nOf those charged in Operation Backfire, nine ultimately cooperated with the government and informed on others in hopes of reduced sentences: Stanislas Meyerhoff, Kevin Tubbs, Chelsea Dawn Gerlach, Suzanne Savoie, Kendall Tankersley, Jennifer Kolar, Lacey Phillabaum, Darren Thurston, and, much later, Briana Waters. Four held out through a terrifying year, during which it seemed certain they would end up serving decades in prison, until they were able to broker plea deals in which they could claim responsibility for their actions without providing information about others: Daniel McGowan, Jonathan Paul, Exile (aka Nathan Block), and Sadie (aka Joyanna Zacher)1. Another defendant, William Rodgers (aka Avalon), tragically passed away in an alleged suicide while in custody shortly after his arrest. Fugitive Justin Solondz was captured in China in 2009 and completed his sentence in January 2017; Rebecca Rubin turned herself in in 2012, after many years on the run, and was sentenced to five years in prison. Joseph Dibee was extradited from Cuba to the US in August 2018 to face charges. One more defendant has been charged but not found.
\n\nThe months following the launch of Operation Backfire saw an unprecedented increase in government repression of anarchist environmental activists, which came to be known as the Green Scare. Longtime animal liberation activist Rod Coronado was charged with a felony for answering a question during a speaking appearance, and faced potentially decades in prison. Six animal rights activists associated with SHAC, the campaign against animal testing corporation Huntingdon Life Sciences, were sentenced to several years in prison, essentially for running a website. Animal liberationist Peter Young, who had spent seven years on the run from the FBI, was finally captured and threatened with double jeopardy. Tre Arrow, famous for surviving a 100-foot fall when police and loggers forced him out of a forest occupation, was fighting extradition from Canada to the United States to face arson charges. Innumerable people were subpoenaed to grand juries,2 and some did jail time for refusing to cooperate. Perhaps most ominously of all, three young people were set up by an agent provocateur and arrested on conspiracy charges without having actually done anything at all. Two of them, Zachary Jenson and Lauren Weiner, pled guilty and became government informants; the third, Eric McDavid, served nine years in prison before his conviction was overturned when it was finally acknowledged that the FBI had withheld exculpatory evidence.
\n\nTo this day, Marius Mason remains in prison.
\n\nIt’s important to derive lessons from this campaign of government repression, in order to equip the next generation that will take the front lines in the struggle to defend life on earth.
\n\nIn some anarchist circles, the initial onset of the Green Scare was met with a panic that rivaled the response to the September 11 attacks. This, of course, was exactly what the government wanted: quite apart from bringing individual activists to “justice,” they hoped to intimidate all who see direct action as the most effective means of social change. Rather than aiding the government by making exaggerated assumptions about how dangerous it is to be an anarchist today, we must sort out what these cases show about the current capabilities and limits of government repression.
\n\nThe purpose of this inquiry is not to advocate or sensationalize any particular tactic or approach. We should be careful not to glorify illegal activity—it’s important to note that most of even the staunchest non-cooperating defendants have expressed regrets about their choices, though this must be understood in the context of their court cases. At the same time, federal repression affects everyone involved in resistance, not just those who participate in illegal direct action; the Green Scare offers case studies of the situation we are all in, like it or not.
\n\nOperation Backfire took place against a backdrop of government investigation, harassment, and profiling of presumed anarchists in the Pacific Northwest. It is no coincidence that Eugene, Oregon was a major focus of the Operation Backfire cases, as it has been a hotbed of dissent and radicalism over the past decade and a half—although repression and other problems have taken a toll in recent years. We can’t offer a definitive analysis of the internal dynamics of the Eugene anarchist community, but we can look at how the authorities went about repressing it.
\n\nOne useful resource for this inquiry is “Anarchist Direct Actions: A Challenge for Law Enforcement,” [PDF link] an article that appeared in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism in 2005, authored by Randy Borum of the University of South Florida and Chuck Tilby of the Eugene Police Department. According to Jeff (“Free”) Luers, Tilby was one of the cops who surveilled Free and his co-defendant Critter on the night of their arrest in June 2000. Tilby has given presentations on the “criminal anarchist” movement to law enforcement groups, and was intimately involved in the Operation Backfire cases, even making statements to the media and providing a quote to the FBI press release at the end of the Oregon federal prosecution.
\n\nSurprisingly, the article does not explicitly reference Eugene, Oregon at all. Besides Tilby’s byline at the beginning, there’s no indication that the paper was co-written from Eugene. All the same, the article provides several important clues about how the government proceeded against the Oregon defendants and those who were perceived to support them.
\n\nThe authors centralize the importance of intelligence and informants for repressing criminal “anarchists,” while acknowledging the difficulty of obtaining them. In the case of grand jury subpoenas, anarchists regularly fail to comply, and support groups are often set up for those targeted; one of the more recent examples of this was Jeff Hogg, who received a grand jury subpoena while the Backfire prosecutions were underway and was jailed for nearly six months in 2006 as a result. The authors warn that “investigators and law enforcement officers should be cautious during questioning not to divulge more to the subject about the case (via questions), than is learned through their testimony.” Indeed, questions asked by grand juries turned up more than once in the pages of the Earth First! Journal, which was edited from Eugene for a time. It is extremely important to support those under investigation and keep abreast of investigators’ efforts. Some believe that the Backfire investigation only arrived at a position of real strength once such support started to weaken in Oregon.
\n\nRegarding infiltration, “Anarchist Direct Actions” advises that:
\n\nWhat we know of the early Backfire investigation points to a strategy of generalized monitoring and infiltration. While investigators used increasingly focused tools and strategies as the investigation gained steam—for example, sending “cooperating witnesses” wearing body wires to talk to specific targets—they started out by sifting through a whole demographic of counter-cultural types. Activist and punk houses as well as gathering spots such as bars were placed under surveillance—anarchists who drink should be careful about the way alcohol can loosen lips. Infiltrators and informants targeted not only the most visibly committed anarchists, but also bohemians who inhabited similar cultural and social spheres. Police accumulated tremendous amounts of background information even while failing to penetrate the circles in which direct action was organized. The approximately 30,000 pages of discovery in the Oregon cases contain a vast amount of gossip and background information on quite a few from the Eugene community.
\n\nA similar profiling methodology appears to have been used in nearby Portland, Oregon. In March 2001, for example, a large-scale police raid was carried out on a house party attended by Portland punk rockers. The attendees were photographed and questioned about the Earth and Animal Liberation Fronts. Some were arrested and charged with kidnapping and assault on an officer—a standard over-charging which eventually led to plea deals. The defendants from the raid were videotaped at their court appearances by officers later identified as Gang Enforcement Unit members. In the aftermath of this raid, cops routinely harassed punks on the street, demanding to be told whether they were anarchists.
\n\nIn retrospect, it seems likely that such efforts were not meant simply to intimidate Portland’s punks, but to uncover information relevant to the anarchist and ALF/ELF cases of the time.[]^4] This may have been a wrong step in the Backfire investigation; right now there’s no way to know. We do know, however, that “wide net” approaches by the state can be effective at stifling socially aware subcultures, even when they uncover no real links to radical action. Fortunately, in Portland those affected by the raid came together in response, aiding each other, limiting the damage done, and taking advantage of the situation to draw attention to police activity.
\n\nAnother point of speculation is the degree to which authorities fostered division and infighting within radical circles in Eugene. This was a common COINTELPRO3 tactic, and is probably still in use. Borum and Tilby hint at this in the final section of their paper, “Law Enforcement Strategies/ Implications”:
\n\nFor those familiar with Eugene radical circles, this brings to mind the heated conflicts over gender and feminism within that community. There is no concrete evidence that government operatives were involved in escalating such debates, and we should be careful not to jump to conclusions; such speculation can only assist the state by propagating paranoia. However, law enforcement from local to federal levels must have been aware of the vulnerabilities that opened up when real debates turned to groupthink and factionalism in Eugene. Tilby and his cohorts must have used such insights to their advantage as they devised anti-anarchist strategies. By the time Operation Backfire grand juries began following up on real leads in Eugene, many who could have come together to oppose them were no longer on speaking terms. While this does not justify the lack of integrity shown by those who assisted grand juries, it does offer some context for why the grand juries weren’t resisted more effectively.
\n\nBorum and Tilby close their paper by urging investigators to display “patience and persistence”—and indeed, patience and persistence ultimately paid off in Operation Backfire. This is not to lend credibility to the notion that “The FBI always get their man.” The investigation was riddled with errors and missteps; plenty of other actions will never be prosecuted, as the authorities got neither lucky breaks nor useful cooperation. But we must understand that repression, and resistance to it, are both long-term projects, stretching across years and decades.
\n\nAccording to some accounts, one of the most significant leads in Operation Backfire came from a naïve request for police reports at a Eugene police station. According to this version, the police deduced from this request that they should pay attention to Jacob Ferguson; Ferguson later became the major informant in these cases. It is less frequently mentioned that the police were accusing Ferguson of an arson he did not participate in! With Ferguson, the unlikely happened and it paid off for the authorities to be wrong. Later on, when agents made their first arrests and presented grand jury subpoenas on December 7, 2005, two of those subpoenaed were wrongly assumed to have been involved in attacks. Their subpoenas were eventually dropped, as the authorities gained the cooperation of more informants and eventually made moves to arrest Exile and Sadie instead.
\n\nThe investigation was not as unstoppable and dynamic as the government would like us to think, although the prosecution gathered force as more individuals rolled on others. The authorities spent years stumbling around, and they continued to falter even when prosecution efforts were underway—but they were tenacious and kept at their efforts. Meanwhile, radical momentum was less consistent.
\n\nLet’s review the arc of radical activity in Eugene over the past decade. The anticapitalist riot of June 18, 1999 in Eugene led to jubilation on the part of anarchists, even if one participant spent seven years in prison as a result. The participants in the June 18 Day of Action had put up a fight and fucked up some symbols of misery in the town, catching the police unprepared. The pitched battles on the streets of Seattle later that year at the WTO meeting only reinforced the feeling that the whole world was up for grabs. Most of the active anarchists in Eugene had never lived through such a period before. Despite the paltry demands and muddled analysis of much of the official “antiglobalization” movement, there was a sense that deeper change could be fought for and won. Being an anarchist seemed like the coolest thing you could be, and this perception was magnified by the media attention that followed. The ELF was setting fires all over the region at the time.
\n\nA series of reversals followed. In June 2001, Free received his initial sentence of 22 years and eight months. The following month, Carlo Giuliani was murdered on the streets of Genoa during protests against the G8 summit in Italy. While both of these tragedies illustrated the risks of confronting the capitalist system, Free’s sentence hit home especially hard in Eugene. In the changed atmosphere, some began dropping away and “getting on with their lives”—not necessarily betraying their earlier principles, but shifting their focus and priorities. This attrition intensified when American flags appeared everywhere in the aftermath of [September 11, 2001 PDF link. Anarchist efforts did not cease, but a period of relative disorientation followed. A year and a half later, the invasion of Iraq provided another opportunity for radicals to mobilize, but some consistency had been lost in the Eugene area. And all the while, FBI employees and police kept their regular hours, day in and day out.
\n\nLaw enforcement received its most significant breakthrough in the Backfire cases—even though it started as an incorrect hypothesis—just before Free’s sentencing, in the period between anarchist jubilation and the shift to the defensive. The same fires that were incorrectly linked to Ferguson were used to justify Free’s stiff sentence, which intimidated some anarchists out of action. There was not enough revaluation, learning, and sharpening of skills, nor enough efforts at conflict resolution; the retreat occurred by default. What would have happened if the Backfire investigation had continued under different circumstances, while radicals maintained their momentum? That would be another story. Its conclusion is unknown.
\n\nRepression will exist as long as there are states and people who oppose them. Complete invulnerability is impossible, for governments as well as their opponents. All the infiltrators and informants of the Tsarist secret police were powerless to prevent the Russian revolution of 1917, just as the East German Stasi were unable to prevent the fall of the Berlin Wall even though they had files on six million people. Revolutionary struggles can succeed even in the face of massive repression; for our part, we can minimize the effects of that repression by preparing in advance.
\n\nFor many years now anarchists have focused on developing security culture, but security consciousness alone is not enough. There are some points one can never emphasize too much—don’t gossip about sensitive matters, share delicate information on a need-to-know basis,4 don’t surrender your rights if detained or arrested, don’t cooperate with grand juries, don’t sell other people out. But one can abide by all these dictums and still make crucial mistakes. If anti-repression strategies center only on what we should not talk about, we lose sight of the necessity of clear communication for communities in struggle.
\n\nState disruption of radical movements can be interpreted as a kind of “armed critique,” in the way that someone throwing a brick through a Starbucks window is a critique in action. That is to say, a successful use of force against us demonstrates that we had pre-existing vulnerabilities. This is not to argue that we should blame the victim in situations of repression, but we need to learn how and why efforts to destabilize our activities succeed. Our response should not start with jail support once someone has been arrested. Of course this is important, along with longer-term support of those serving sentences—but our efforts must begin long before, countering the small vulnerabilities that our enemy can exploit. Open discussion of problems—for example, gender roles being imposed in nominally radical spaces—can protect against unhealthy resentments and schisms. This is not to say that every split is unwarranted—sometimes the best thing is for people to go their separate ways; but that even if that is necessary, they should try to maintain mutual respect or at least a willingness to communicate when it counts.
\n\nRisk is relative. In some cases, it may indeed be a good idea to lay low; in other cases, maintaining public visibility is viewed as too risky, when in fact nothing could be more dangerous than withdrawing from the public eye and letting momentum die. When we think about risk, we often picture security cameras and prison cells, but there are many more insidious threats. The Operation Backfire defendants ended up with much shorter sentences than expected; as it turned out, the most serious risk they faced was not prison time, after all, but recantation and betrayal—a risk that proved all too real. Likewise, we can imagine Eric McDavid, who currently awaits sentencing on conspiracy charges, idly discussing the risk factor of a hypothetical action with his supposed friends—who turned out to be two potential informants and a federal agent provocateur. Unfortunately, the really risky thing was having those discussions with those people in the first place.
\n\nConventional activist wisdom dictates that one must not mix public and clandestine activity, but Daniel McGowan’s case seems to contradict this. McGowan was not brought to trial as a result of investigations based on his public organizing, but rather because he had worked with Jacob Ferguson, who turned snitch under police pressure. Though the government was especially eager to convict him on account of his extensive prisoner support work and organizing against the Republican National Convention, McGowan received tremendous public support precisely because he had been so visible.5 Had he simply hidden in obscurity, he might have ended up in the same situation without the support that enabled him to weather it as successfully as he did—and without making as many important contributions to the anarchist movement.
\n\nConsidering how many years it took the FBI to put together Operation Backfire and the prominent role of informants in so many Green Scare cases, it seems like it is possible to get away with a lot, provided you are careful and make intelligent decisions about who to trust. McGowan’s direct action résumé, as it appears in the government arguments at his sentencing, reads like something out of an adventure novel. One can’t help but think—just seven years, for all that!
\n\nThe other side of this coin is that, despite all their precautions, the Green Scare defendants did get caught. No matter how careful and intelligent you are, it doesn’t pay to count on not getting caught; you have to be prepared for the worst. Those who are considering risky direct action should start from the assumption that they will be caught and prosecuted; before doing anything, before even talking about it, they should ask themselves whether they could accept the worst possible consequences. At the same time, as the government may target anyone at any time regardless of what they have actually done, it is important for even the most law-abiding activists—not to mention their friends and relatives—to think through how to handle being investigated, subpoenaed, or charged.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2008/02/22/green_scare_chart.gif\")
A chart showing that non-cooperating Operation Backfire defendants actually served less time in proportion to their original threatened sentences than defendants who became informants.
\nThe Green Scare cases show that cooperating with the government is never in a defendant’s best interest. On average, the non-cooperating defendants in Operation Backfire are actually serving less time in proportion to their original threatened sentences than the informants (see chart, as a GIF or PDF), despite the government engaging the entire repressive apparatus of the United States to make an example of them. Exile and Sadie were threatened with over a thousand years in prison apiece, and are serving less than eight; if every arrestee understood the difference between what the state threatens and what it can actually do, far fewer would give up without a fight.
\n\nIn the United States legal system, a court case is essentially a game of chicken. The state starts by threatening the worst penalties it possibly can, in hope of intimidating the defendant into pleading guilty and informing. It is easier if the defendant pleads guilty immediately; this saves the state immense quantities of time and money, not to mention the potential embarrassment of losing a well-publicized trial. Defendants should not be intimidated by the initial charges brought against them; it often turns out that many of these will not hold up, and are only being pressed to give the state more bargaining power. Even if a defendant fears he won’t have a leg to stand on in court, he can obtain some bargaining power of his own by threatening to put the state through a costly, challenging, and unpredictable trial—to that end, it is essential to acquire the best possible legal representation. When a defendant agrees to cooperate, he loses all that leverage, throwing himself at the mercy of forces that don’t have an ounce of mercy to offer.
\n\nAs grim as things looked for Sadie, Exile, McGowan, and Jonathan Paul through most of 2006, they looked up when McGowan’s lawyer demanded information about whether prosecutors had used illegal National Security Agency wiretaps to gather evidence against the defendants. The government was loath to answer this question, and for good reason: there had just been a public scandal about NSA wiretaps, and if the court found that wiretaps had been used unconstitutionally, the entire Operation Backfire case would have been thrown out. That’s exactly why so many members of the Weather Underground are professors today rather than convicts: the FBI botched that case so badly the courts had to let them go free.
\n\nNo matter how hopeless things look, never underestimate the power of fighting it out. Until Stanislas Meyerhoff and others capitulated, the linchpin of the federal case in Operation Backfire was Jacob Ferguson, a heroin addict and serial arsonist. Had all besides Ferguson refused to cooperate and instead fought the charges together, Operation Backfire would surely have ended differently.
\n\nIf becoming an informant is always a bad idea, why do so many people do it? At least eleven high profile defendants in Green Scare cases have chosen to cooperate with the government against their former comrades, not including Peter Young’s partner, who informed on him back in 1999. These were all experienced activists who presumably had spent years considering how they would handle the pressure of interrogation and trial, who must have been familiar with all the reasons it doesn’t pay to cooperate with the state! What, if anything, can we conclude from how many of them became informants?
\n\nThere has been quite a bit of opportunist speculation on this subject by pundits with little knowledge of the circumstances and even less personal experience. We are to take it for granted that arrestees became informants because they were privileged middle class kids; in fact, both the cooperating and non-cooperating defendants are split along class and gender lines. We are told that defendants snitched because they hadn’t been fighting for their own interests; what exactly are one’s “own interests,” if not to live in a world without slaughterhouses and global warming? Cheaper hamburgers and air conditioning, perhaps? It has even been suggested that it’s inevitable some will turn informant under pressure, so we must not blame those who do, and instead should avoid using tactics that provoke investigations and interrogations. This last aspersion is not worth dignifying with a response, except to point out that no crime need be committed for the government to initiate investigations and interrogations. Whether or not you support direct action of any kind, it is never acceptable to equip the state to do harm to other human beings.
\n\nExperienced radicals who have been snitched on themselves will tell you that there is no surefire formula for determining who will turn informant and who won’t. There have been informants in almost every resistance movement in living memory, including the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army, the American Indian Movement, and the Puerto Rican independence movement; the Green Scare cases are not particularly unusual in this regard, though some of the defendants seem to have caved in more swiftly than their antecedents. It may be that the hullabaloo about how many eco-activists have turned informant is partly due to commentators’ ignorance of past struggles.
\n\nIf anything discourages people from informing on each other, it is blood ties. Historically, the movements with the least snitching have been the ones most firmly grounded in longstanding communities. Arrestees in the national liberation movements of yesteryear didn’t cooperate because they wouldn’t be able to face their parents or children again if they did; likewise, when gangsters involved in illegal capitalist activity refuse to inform, it is because doing so would affect the entirety of their lives, from their prospects in their chosen careers to their social standing in prison as well as their neighborhoods. The stronger the ties that bind an individual to a community, the less likely it is he or she will inform against it. North American radicals from predominantly white demographics have always faced a difficult challenge in this regard, as most of the participants are involved in defiance of their families and social circles rather than because of them. When an ex-activist is facing potentially decades in prison for something that was essentially a hobby, with his parents begging him not to throw his life away and the system he fought against apparently dominating the entirety of his present and future, it takes a powerful sense of right and wrong to resist selling out.
\n\nIn this light, it isn’t surprising that the one common thread that links the non-cooperating defendants is that practically all of them were still involved in either anarchist or at least countercultural communities. Daniel McGowan was ceaselessly active in many kinds of organizing right up to his arrest; Exile and Sadie were still committed to life against the grain, if not political activity—a witness who attended their sentencing described their supporters as an otherworldly troop of black metal fans with braided beards and facial piercings. Here we see again the necessity of forging powerful, long-term communities with a shared culture of resistance; dropouts must do this from scratch, swimming against the tide, but it is not impossible.
\n\nHealthy relationships are the backbone of such communities, not to mention secure direct action organizing. Again—unaddressed conflicts and resentments, unbalanced power dynamics, and lack of trust have been the Achilles heel of countless groups. The FBI keeps psychological profiles on its targets, with which to prey on their weaknesses and exploit potential interpersonal fissures. The oldest trick in the book is to tell arrestees that their comrades already snitched on them; to weather this intimidation, people must have no doubts about their comrades’ reliability.
\n\n“Snitches get stitches” posters notwithstanding, anarchists aren’t situated to enforce a no-informing code by violent means. It’s doubtful that we could do such a thing without compromising our principles, anyway—when it comes to coercion and fear, the state can always outdo us, and we shouldn’t aspire to compete with it. Instead, we should focus on demystifying snitching and building up the collective trust and power that discourage it. If being a part of the anarchist community is rewarding enough, no one will wish to exile themselves from it by turning informant. For this to work, of course, those who do inform on others must be excluded from our communities with absolute finality; in betraying others for personal advantage, they join the ranks of the police officers, prison guards, and executioners they assist.
\n\nThose who may participate in direct action together should first take time to get to know each other well, including each other’s families and friends, and to talk over their expectations, needs, and goals. You should know someone long enough to know what you like least about him or her before committing to secure activity together; you have to be certain you’ll be able to work through the most difficult conflicts and trust them in the most frightening situations up to a full decade later.
\n\nJudging from the lessons of the 1970s, drug addiction is another factor that tends to correlate with snitching, as it can be linked to deep-rooted personal problems. Indeed, Jacob Ferguson, the first informant in Operation Backfire, was a longtime heroin addict. Just as the Operation Backfire cases would have been a great deal more difficult for the government if no one besides Jake had cooperated, the FBI might never have been able to initiate the cases at all if others had not trusted Jake in the first place.
\n\nPrompt prisoner support is as important as public support for those facing grand juries. As one Green Scare defendant has pointed out, defendants often turn informant soon after arrest when they are off balance and uncertain what lies ahead. Jail is notorious for being a harsher environment than prison; recent arrestees may be asking themselves whether they can handle years of incarceration without a realistic sense of what that would entail. Supporters should bail defendants out of jail as quickly as possible, so they can be informed and level-headed as they make decisions about their defense strategy. To this end, it is ideal if funds are earmarked for legal support long before any arrests occur.
\n\nIt cannot be emphasized enough that informing is always a serious matter, whether it is a question of a high profile defendant snitching on his comrades or an acquaintance of law-abiding activists answering seemingly harmless questions. The primary goal of the government in any political case is not to put any one defendant in prison but to obtain information with which to map radical communities, with the ultimate goal of repressing and controlling those communities. The first deal the government offered Peter Young was for him to return to animal rights circles to report to them from within: not just on illegal activity, but on all activity. The most minor piece of trivia may serve to jeopardize a person’s life, whether or not they have ever broken any law. It is never acceptable to give information about any other person without his or her express consent.
\n\nWe must not conceptualize our response to government repression in purely reactive terms. It takes a lot of resources for the government to mount a massive operation like the Green Scare cases, and in doing so they create unforeseen situations and open up new vulnerabilities. Like in Judo, when the state makes a move, we can strike back with a countermove that catches them off balance. To take an example from mass mobilizations, the powers that be were eventually able to cripple the so-called anti-globalization movement by throwing tremendous numbers of police at it; but in the wake of lawsuits subsequently brought against them, the police in places like Washington, D.C. now have their hands tied when it comes to crowd control, as demonstrated by their extreme restraint at the IMF/World Bank protests in October 2007. We’re in a long war with hierarchical power that cannot be won or lost in any single engagement; the question is always how to make the best of each development, seizing the initiative whenever we can and passing whatever gains we make on to those who will fight after us.
\n\nThere must be a way to turn the legacy of the Green Scare to our advantage. One starting place is to use it as an opportunity to learn how the state investigates underground activity and make sure those lessons are shared with the next generation. Another is to find common cause with other targeted communities; a promising example of this is the recent connection between animal liberation activists in the Bay Area and supporters of the San Francisco Eight, ex-Black Panthers who are now being charged with the 1971 murder of a police officer.
\n\nIn reflecting on Judge Aiken’s sentencing, let us put aside, for the time being, the question of whether executives who profit from logging, animal exploitation, and genetic engineering are “doing what they need to do to survive.” Let’s allow to pass, as well, the suggestion that those who run these industries are more likely to enter into a “real dialogue” with environmentalists if the latter limit themselves to purely legal activity. Let’s even reserve judgment on Aiken’s attempt to draw parallels between domestic violence and sarcastically worded communiqués—which parallels the prosecutors’ assertion that the ELF, despite having never injured a single human being, is no different from the Ku Klux Klan.
\n\nThere is but one question we cannot help but ask, in reference to Judge Aiken’s rhetoric about cowardice: if she found herself in a situation that called for action to be taken outside the established channels of the legal system, would she be capable of it? Or would she still insist on due process of law, urging others to be patient as human beings were sold into slavery or the Nazis carted people off to Dachau? Is it fair for a person whose complicity in the status quo is rewarded with financial stability and social status to accuse someone who has risked everything to abide by his conscience… of cowardice? Perhaps Aiken would also feel entitled to inform John Brown that he was a coward, or the Germans who attempted to assassinate Hitler?
\n\nOnce this question is asked, another question inexorably follows: what qualifies as a situation that calls for action to be taken outside the established channels of the legal system, if not the current ecological crisis? Species are going extinct all over the planet, climate change is beginning to wreak serious havoc on human beings as well, and scientists are giving us a very short window of time to turn our act around—while the US government and its corporate puppeteers refuse to make even the insufficient changes called for by liberals. If the dystopian nightmare those scientists predict comes to pass, will the refugees of the future look back at this encounter between McGowan and Aiken and judge McGowan the coward?
\n\nWe live in a democracy, Aiken and her kind insist: bypassing the established channels and breaking the law is akin to attacking freedom, community, and dialogue themselves. That’s the same thing they said in 1859.
\n\nThose who consider obeying the law more important than abiding by one’s conscience always try to frame themselves as the responsible ones, but the essence of that attitude is the desire to evade responsibility. Society, as represented—however badly—by its entrenched institutions, is responsible for decreeing right and wrong; all one must do is brainlessly comply, arguing for a change when the results are not to one’s taste but never stepping out of line. That is the creed of cowards, if anything is. At the hearing to determine whether the defendants should be sentenced as terrorists, Aiken acknowledged with frustration that she had no control over what the Bureau of Prisons would do with them regardless of her recommendations—but washed her hands of the matter and gave McGowan and others terrorism enhancements anyway. Doubtless, Aiken feels that whatever shortcomings the system has are not her responsibility, even if she participates in forcing them on others. She’s just doing her job.
\n\nThat’s the Nuremberg defense. Regardless of what she thinks of McGowan’s actions or the Bureau of Prisons, Aiken is personally responsible for sending him to prison. She is responsible for separating him from his wife, for preventing him from continuing his work supporting survivors of domestic violence. If he is beaten or raped while in prison, it is the same as if Aiken beat or raped him. And not just McGowan, or Paul, or Sadie or Exile, but every single person Aiken has ever sent to prison.
\n\nBut Aiken and her kind are responsible for a lot more than this. As the polar icecaps melt, rainforests are reduced to pulp, and climate change inflicts more and more terrible catastrophes around the planet, they are responsible for stopping all who would take direct action to avert these tragedies. They are responsible, in short, for forcing the wholesale destruction of the natural environment upon everyone else on earth.
\n\nAiken might counter that the so-called democratic system is the most effective way to go about halting that destruction. It sure has worked so far, hasn’t it! On the contrary, it seems more likely that she cannot bring herself to honestly consider whether there could be a higher good than the maintenance of law and order. For people like her, obedience to the law is more precious than polar icecaps, rainforests, and cities like New Orleans. Any price is worth paying to avoid taking responsibility for their part in determining the fate of the planet. Talk about cowardice.
\n\nSo—if McGowan and the other non-cooperating Green Scare defendants are not cowards, does that mean they are heroes?
\n\nWe should be cautious not to unthinkingly adopt the inverse of Aiken’s judgment. In presenting the case for the government, Peifer described the Operation Backfire defendants’ exploits as “almost like Mission Impossible.” It serves the powers that be to present the defendants as superhuman—the more exceptional their deeds seem to be, the further out of reach such deeds will feel to everyone else.
\n\nSimilarly, lionizing “heroes” can be a way for the rest of us to let ourselves off the hook: as we are obviously not heroes of their caliber, we need not hold ourselves up to the same standards of conduct. It is a disservice to glorify McGowan, Exile, Sadie, Peter Young, and others like them; in choosing anonymous action, they did not set out to be celebrated, but to privately do what they thought was necessary, just as all of us ought to. They are as normal as any of us—any normal person who takes responsibility for his or her actions is capable of tremendous things.
\n\nThis is not to say we should all become arsonists. There are countless paths available to those who would take responsibility for themselves, and each person must choose the one that is most appropriate to his or her situation. Let the courage of the non-cooperating Green Scare defendants, who dared to act on their beliefs and refused to betray those convictions even when threatened with life in prison, serve as reminders of just how much normal people like us can accomplish.
\n\nAfter this writing, it came to light that Sadie and Exile hold both racist and transphobic views. The anarchist community has parted ways with them. ↩
\nIn theory, the task of a grand jury is to examine the validity of an accusation before trial. In practice, grand juries are used to force information out of people: by granting an individual immunity regarding a specific case, a grand jury can compel him or her to answer questions or else go to prison for contempt of court. ↩
\nThe FBI’s Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) existed officially from 1956 to 1971 and probably continues to this day in some form. Aiming to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” the activities of groups like the Black Panther Party, the Program utilized a wide variety of dirty tricks. Houses and offices were searched and documents stolen without any warrants having been issued; rumors were spread in order to foster mistrust and even violence between different organizations or factions within them; group members were harassed through the courts or even wholly framed for crimes they did not commit; infiltrators and agent provocateurs were distributed within target constituencies; no act of psychological warfare or blatant violence was ruled out. The program was finally exposed when radicals broke into an FBI Office and seized documents relating to the secret program, circulating them to various sources under the name of the “Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI.” ↩
\nIt does appear that Operation Backfire defendants could have done better at limiting the flow of information inside their circles. Rather than organizing in closed, consistent cells, the defendants seem to have worked in more fluid arrangements, with enough crossover that once a few key participants turned informant the government had information about everyone. ↩
\nThis is not to say that all visibility is good visibility. Media attention was a significant factor in the conflicts that wracked Eugene. Such visibility can divide communities from within by creating the appearance that spokespeople have more power than everyone else, which provokes jealousy and stokes ego-driven conflicts whether or not what’s on the screen reflects reality on the ground. Those who fall prey to believing the media hype about themselves become dependent upon this attention, pursuing it rather than the unmediated connections and healthy relationships essential for long-term revolutionary struggle; the most valuable visibility is anchored in enduring communities, not media spectacles. There are reasonable arguments for using the media at times, but one must be aware of the danger of being used by it. ↩
\n[Preface added October 15, 2023] When this text was published in Rolling Thunder #3 in 2006, it was received as imaginative speculation. Seventeen years later, it looks prescient in several regards. It foreshadows the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, predicts the extension of the label “terrorist” to ordinary ecological and social justice activists in the United States, and foresees how the situation in Palestine presaged further ethnic conflicts and the mass repression of oppressed populations around the world. While the central thesis of the text remains unproven in regards to the administration of George W. Bush, there is adequate evidence that the government of Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel did indeed cultivate the power of the Islamic fundamentalist party Hamas. “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” Netanyahu told a meeting of the Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019.
\n\nWhen this text originally appeared, it was described as a follow-up to “Forget Terrorism: September 11 and the Hijacking of Reality,” which appeared in Rolling Thunder #1.
\n\nToday, an internet search for “Mission Accomplished”—the text on the banner that hung behind Bush on May Day, 2003, when he announced the purported end of major military operations in Iraq—turns up countless smug editorials from liberal and left-wing pundits crowing about the bloody resistance to the subsequent occupation. Don’t get them wrong, they’re not enthusiasts of armed struggle—they’re the first to oppose even the mildest forms of resistance here in the US; they just love to see things go wrong for their political opponents. However many civilians die in autonomous as well as state military operations, the important thing is that rival demagogues get egg on their faces, as this increases the chances of power shifting into their willing hands.
\n\nAnarchists, too, have largely interpreted the civil war in Iraq as a debacle for Bush and his cronies, sometimes to the point of endorsing it without bothering about what the insurgents are fighting for. Yes, it is healthy for every person living under others’ power to resist; unfortunately, this does not mean that all who do so struggle against “power over” itself. Over the past year, some of the violence in Iraq has become more reminiscent of the ethnic strife in mid-twentieth-century India than of an anti-imperialist liberation struggle.
\n\nRegardless, everyone still assumes that this violence runs counter to Bush’s designs for the area. At the risk of venturing into conspiracy theory, let’s take a moment to consider an alternate scenario. What if the Iraqi resistance is not unforeseen after all, but a potential outcome the Bush regime took into account—perhaps even the one they were counting on? This seems counterintuitive, as every statement they’ve made since the beginning of the war has given us to believe that they expected the post-Saddam opposition to be short-lived. But if we want to avoid nasty surprises we’d better allow for the possibility that our rulers aren’t as obtuse and inept as they seem.
\n\nWhat, if anything, would the Bush administration stand to gain from replacing the iron rule of Saddam Hussein over resentful Iraqis with chaos, civil war, and resentment against the US? The costs of this exchange are obvious: it makes the US government and military look incompetent, thus decreasing the Republican Party’s chances of winning the next election, and it facilitates Islamic fundamentalist recruiting.
\n\nBut perhaps the last of these effects is not so undesirable. Bush’s regime derives much of its popularity from the feeling that the country is under attack; it’s hard to imagine where he’d be now if not for the attacks of September 11, 2001. It’s not so much of a stretch to hypothesize that, consciously or not, he and his colleagues are pursuing a course of action that will reinforce their position by strengthening their enemies.
\n\nIslamic jihadist groups are certainly better situated today than they were six years ago. The September 11 attacks were the work of a small number of people, and the culmination of years of effort; now, with a nationwide insurgency to participate in and cull recruits from, not to mention a global atmosphere of anti-Muslim persecution, militant Islam is steadily gaining stature. At that time, it was diffcult for such groups to attract notice outside parts of the Middle East; now, they need only carry out one major attack a year to remain the center of international attention. Back then, they had only managed to kill a few thousand people; tens of thousands have perished in the ensuing wars and inquisitions—and for terrorists, it is the net total of violence and horror that determines their influence, not the way their losses and gains compare to those of their adversaries.
\n\nIf further evidence were wanting, Hamas, one of the most militant parties in the Middle East, has now come to power in the Palestinian government via the 2006 elections. This is the inevitable consequence of the US government pursuing a foreign policy that gives the Palestinians no reason to trust its commitment to peace or justice. The accession of Hamas to government power gives the US and Israel further excuses not to work towards peace, which in turn will push other Palestinians and Arab groups to take sides against them. This feedback loop of escalating conflict can only lead to more and more violence.
\n\nSome years ago, I saw a survivor of the Palestinian occupation speak. She maintained that in their air strikes and assassinations, the Israelis often deliberately targeted organizers who were willing to negotiate towards a peaceful resolution rather than the ones most committed to violence, presumably in order to render diplomatic solutions impossible. If her claims are true, they correlate well with other policies of the Israeli right wing, which also seem designed to provoke terrorism by stomping out any other form of resistance to Israeli injustices.
\n\nWe must consider the possibility that a long-term foreign policy objective of the Bush administration is to provoke and promote Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. This would explain the otherwise senseless invasion of an incapacitated nation governed by a secular dictator loathed by Al Qaeda; it could explain the seemingly botched handling of the subsequent occupation, and the current wrangling with Hamas and the Iranian government. By destabilizing entire regions, driving Muslims across the world to rage and despair, and closing off all possibilities other than autonomous acts of terrorist violence, Bush and his colleagues hope to create a new adversary for the sequel to the Cold War.
\n\nThe Iraq war was not about oil alone; as the hawkish party, the Republicans need adversaries even more than they need world domination. Like the Israeli right wing, they benefit from conflict: they know that however much people complain between elections, as long as there’s a war on, voters will fall in line behind them when it’s time to cast ballots, since the opposing party lacks the credentials for wartime leadership. By a process of natural selection, they have come to pursue policies that tend to get their supporters shot down, blown up, and kidnapped, because these unfortunate effects drive more supporters into their arms.
\n\nMere world domination is no use to a repressive regime. As soon as there are no barbarians at the gates to point to as the greater of two evils, the subjects start getting restless—witness the decade following the fall of the Berlin Wall, when internal resistance grew and grew in the\nvacuum left by the Communist menace. War-without-end may make people restless, too, but it also keeps them busy reacting to it, if not dying in it, instead of cutting to the root of the matter.
\n\nYears of perpetuating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are paying off: militant Islam, once a backyard startup company, is finally a global threat, poised to replace the Communist Bloc.1 Western-style capitalism has extended its influence and control so far that external opposition must now come from previously peripheral corners of the world, such as Afghanistan; a few fanatics from that periphery were enough to inaugurate the new era of Terror-vs.-Democracy back in 2001, but it will take a lot more fanatics to maintain, and the current US foreign policy will produce them. The Republican Party may lose the next election as the result of public dismay over the untidiness of the Iraq occupation, but so long as they succeed in setting a long-term worldwide conflict in motion first, they can count on returning to power soon enough.
\n\nIf all this speculation is correct, where does that leave us anarchists, who also struggle against global capitalism? First, we should be hesitant to cheerlead militant Islamic resistance, except when we have reason to believe it will produce anti-authoritarian results. Solidarity with all who oppose oppression is critical for the anarchist project, but the enemy of our enemy is not always our friend: as things stand right now, Osama bin Laden and George Bush stand to gain a lot more from this conflict than the rest of us folks do. The specter of US imperialism will no doubt enable hierarchical groups in Muslim communities to strengthen their hold over others, just as terrorism has enabled Bush to consolidate his power here. We need to figure out who our allies are overseas—who fights for liberty, self-determination, and mutual aid there as we do here—and do all we can to support them.
\n\nTo make it easier for people elsewhere to feel that there is hope for such a struggle, so they don’t settle for joining up with the lesser of two evils themselves, we need to fight hard here at home. This is one of the anarchist solutions to the problem of foreign totalitarianism: if we\ncan sufficiently undermine our own rulers, foreign powers won’t be able to justify their terror and tyranny by pointing to the threat our tyrants pose.
\n\nAbove all, we must seize from Bush and bin Laden the initiative to define the contests of our day. As long as the principal global conflict is conceptualized as “Democracy versus Terrorism” or “the West versus Islam,” it will be increasingly difficult to mobilize struggles on other grounds for other objectives. If we hope to join great numbers of people in the US and abroad in a war against hierarchy rather than each other, we will have to frame and popularize new dichotomies.
\n\nIn this sense, it is significant that the US government is taking advantage of the current climate to portray activists who have nothing to do with militant Islam as terrorists. Once enough US citizens who have nothing to do with Al Qaeda are branded with that epithet, the fault lines of conflict will be drawn within this society, rather than between it and another, and it’ll be a whole new ball game. Should the overzealous FBI carelessly push things past this threshold, their repression might actually help make it clear to everyone that the most important battles transcend nationality and religion; but for that to be possible, we’ll have to be tireless in supporting our targeted comrades and fearless in openly proclaiming our opposition to the system. This is another function of militant anarchist struggle in the US: to bring the war home to such an extent that it can no longer be framed as an us-versus-them conflict with foreigners, but becomes instead a confrontation between classes within this country.
\n\nTo prepare for the years ahead, we should study the past decades of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as it forms the blueprint for the new world order. The fact that it has proved irresolvable thus far makes it a promising model for protracted global war… but should anyone hit upon a way of undermining that impasse, however so slightly, it might be a starting point for an escape route out of this whole mess.
\n\nFor further perspective on the way adversaries help to prop up authoritarian regimes, we can consult Orwell’s\n1984, in which a totalitarian government relies on a state of perpetual war to maintain its control. The ideal enemy is unable to win, but always able to threaten, so subjects neither feel too safe nor too fearful. The ideal enemy is a mirror image of the government, so subjects who might find fault with their rulers are more outraged by their enemies: if the government is willing to sacrifice innocent life, the enemy must be even more callous in doing so; if the government promotes a superstitious, repressive creed, the enemy must fight in the name of an equally superstitious and repressive belief system. The ideal enemy must provide excuses to justify the repression of internal foes, but must be different enough from those foes that there is no need to fear the two finding common cause.
\n\nFor the empire of global capitalism, ethnic/religious terrorism is the perfect foil. A rival empire would pose an obstacle to global domination, but terrorists can threaten everywhere without ruling anywhere. Only cold-blooded terrorism can make the humiliations of capitalist exploitation pale in comparison; only terrorist aspirations to power can make the rule of plutocratic demagogues seem preferable.
\n\nIt’s interesting to note that one of the factors that helped bring about the end of the Soviet Union was a protracted war with Muslim radicals in Afghanistan, which the latter won in 1989—the year the Berlin Wall came down. In that regard, militant Islam literally replaced communism as the supposed antithesis to Western capitalism. A year later, in a surprise decision to oust former ally Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, the US moved forces into the Middle East; predictably, this outraged Al Qaeda—which had formed in Afghanistan during the war with the Soviets—and the rest is history. It’s almost too convenient for the purposes of this analysis that the CIA spent the 1980s funding and training some of the same Muslim fundamentalists that went on to top their most-wanted lists. ↩
\n\n\n\nThe beast has been awakened—snarling—and wants to bite someone soon. We fear, not without reason, that it may be us. At this moment the Underground Armies of Barbarian Anarchists are getting scant attention. Still, we are on a very short list. We have recently been considered a genuine threat to national security. We have yet to be linked in any manner to the hijackers and their supporters, despite the obvious advantages that the reactionaries stand to gain by doing so. This will not last forever. We are being given a grace period, to rally around the flag and return to the fold, or else. They will connect the dots or create the dots to connect, and just because many of us are Americans does not mean we are safe.
\n
Thus speculated the CrimethInc. Warbringer cell in After the Fall, an analysis published in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001. Granted, the FBI has not seriously attempted to link the domestic anarchist movement to actual Islamic terror organizations—that would be too much of a stretch, even for the geniuses who testified at Daniel McGowan’s detention hearing that CrimethInc. had published a book about Emma Goldman—but they have taken advantage of the climate of fear to equate sabotage with terrorism, initiating a new campaign against environmental and animal-rights activists. The grace period is over—in May, 2005, the FBI announced that it considers the Earth Liberation Front domestic terror threat number one—and the government hopes to use this opportunity to settle scores with the anarchist movement in general.
\n\nThis has been coming all along, of course. Every generation that has succeeded in pushing its resistance past rhetoric into effective action has borne the brunt of state repression. There was no way the FBI was going to let the statute of limitations elapse on the old ELF arsons without charging someone with them 1. Anyone who thought there could be eco-defense without eco-defendants hadn’t thought social struggle all the way through yet.
\n\nThe first thing we must do in coming to grips with this assault on our community is recognize that it is not an aberration, but something totally predictable and normal—at least, normal in the context of the current absurd social order. Any effective struggle against the system of domination is going to involve arrests, investigations, and prison terms, not to mention violent attacks from both state forces and vigilantes. These are an intrinsic part of our job description as revolutionary anarchists, whatever tactics we employ on an individual basis. Just as it didn’t serve us to throw up our hands in dismay when the global context changed on September 11, alarmism can only hurt us now. Let’s calmly familiarize ourselves with the possibility that some of us are going to spend time in court and prison, while doing everything we can to prevent this and maintaining a realistic sense of the extent of the current threat.
\n\nIt is impossible to provide thorough or timely coverage of every aspect of this subject here, so we urge readers to consult these websites: ecoprisoners.org, greenscare.org, fbiwitchhunt.org, and especially http://portland.indymedia.org/en/topic/greenscare/. For basic context, we’ll present a short summary as of this writing, but please don’t stop here.
\n\nMost activists date the latest wave of repression, popularly termed the “green scare,” from December 7, 2005, when the FBI carried out a series of raids around the US. Further arrests and indictments followed until a total of fourteen people were charged with various counts of arson, destruction of property, and conspiracy in the oddly-named “Operation Backfire2.” Of these, Joseph Dibee, Josephine Overaker, and Rebecca Rubin are thought to be in hiding outside the US, while William Rodgers allegedly committed suicide in his jail cell on the winter solstice. Stanislas Meyerhoff, Kevin Tubbs, Chelsea Dawn Gerlach, Suzanne Savoie, and Kendall Tankersley are believed to be cooperating with the government—i.e., offering to testify against others in hopes of receiving lighter sentences. The entire case of the FBI seems to have initially been based on the testimony of one heroin addict, Jacob Ferguson, so the decision of others to cooperate with the state is particularly troubling. Daniel McGowan, Jonathan Paul, and Briana Waters are currently free on outrageously high bail3, while Joyanna Zacher and Nathan Block have been denied bail as a result of the testimony of informants. The trial is cartoonishly scheduled for Halloween, October 31, 2006.
\n\nThe following month, Zachary Jenson, Lauren Weiner and Eric McDavid were arrested in Auburn, California for allegedly conspiring to commit actions on behalf of the ELF. They were set up by an FBI agent provocateur, “Anna,” who was sleeping with one of them; apparently she bought bomb-making materials and rented a bugged house for them. Apparently “Anna” had been traveling in anarchist circles since summer of 2004, attending two CrimethInc. convergences and a host of other events4 (in the muddled words of FBI flunky Nasson Walker, “The s/he has provided information that has been utilized in at least twelve separate anarchist cases.”). Lauren was released into house arrest on $1.2 million bail, and subsequently pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against the others—an infuriating development when her codefendants were starving in isolation cells. Two months later, the very night this article was finished, Zachary was reported to have just done the same thing.
\n\nIn March, six activists associated with the animal rights group Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, which has driven an animal testing corporation to the brink of bankruptcy, were found guilty on charges of using their website to incite attacks on Huntingdon Life Sciences and their business partners. Some of them face up to eleven years in prison for making use of their supposed right to free speech.
\n\nAll the while, grand juries—secretive government interrogation organs established to gather information about alleged crimes—have been convened around the country, indicting anyone with connections to activist communities, jailing those who won’t speak, and nosing around for further leads in the war on dissent. FBI agents have announced that anarchist groups such as Food Not Bombs and Indymedia are near the top of their terror watch list. Whether or not anarchists are ready for it, we are now being targeted as public enemy number one.
\n\nTogether, these various cases spell out a cohesive message: Don’t act, you will be caught. Don’t associate with dissidents, you will be framed. Don’t trust your comrades, you will be infiltrated. Don’t speak about others’ actions, you will be imprisoned.
\n\nThis message is the most important part of the FBI campaign. Even with all the anti-terror funding in the world, they can’t infiltrate every anarchist circle and pin charges on every prominent activist. They hope that, by staging this massive display of force, they can intimidate the rest of us into silence and passivity, just as the excessive and unsustainable police presence at the FTAA protests in Miami November 2003 was calculated to put an end to the era of anarchist mass mobilizations by giving an inflated impression of the power of the state.
\n\nThe responses of the anarchist media can be divided into two basic camps. The first camp, exemplified by the more theoretical journals such as Fifth Estate, reacted by printing news about the arrests and charges followed by vague afterthoughts to the effect that one must not lose hope. It could be argued that publicizing repression without offering concrete proposals for how to respond assists the FBI in their work. To their eternal discredit, Anarchy: A so-called Journal of Desire Armed set the low-water mark for this sort of thing in implying that the current situation is simply the result of a “fetishization of security culture” in anarchist circles. Thankfully, more action-oriented publications and websites such as No Compromise and The New York Rat have provided practical information on how to support targeted activists through letter-writing, fund-raising, and solidarity actions. Sad to say, the current issue of Rolling Thunder falls into the former category, but we hope to remedy that next issue by sharing all the skills for prisoner and defendant support that are being honed in our community right now.
\n\nParticipation in anarchist legal aid and prisoner support projects has increased over the past months, though not yet enough to exert a great influence over the course of events. This increase is ironic, given that a year ago some of those now targeted by the state were trying to figure out how to reinvigorate prisoner support in North America. The pivotal question now is whether or not anarchist organizers, so used to working in the limited context of their own communities, will be able to muster widespread public outrage over this witch hunt. Without that, this round may end badly for the accused, and that will encourage the authorities to initiate another roundup.
\n\nIt is of the utmost importance that those currently being targeted receive the funding and community support necessary for the best possible legal defense. As on every other front, every inch should cost our persecutors as much as possible, whether or not we win individual battles. Good legal support has proven indispensable in keeping mass actions viable; for example, the legal defense and countersuits following the protests against the IMF meeting in Washington, D.C. in 2002 not only cleared hundreds of protesters of charges, but also tied the hands of the D.C. police for several protests to come. The struggle in the courtroom is not the postscript to the struggle in the street, but that struggle conducted by different means; it is not the end of the story unless we give up and make it so. The same goes for the struggle in prison, for those serving sentences: a community cannot foster long-term commitment to militant struggle unless it supports its prisoners of war; conversely, those prisoners have power to the extent to which their comrades outside maintain enough momentum to exert social and political leverage.
\n\nWhile we’re at it, let’s postulate a few other lessons from the initial phase of this wave of repression. First, every activist group should be prepared to be targeted, with resources (a lawyer, money, a network of potential supporters) and a game plan ready. Second, in times of increased surveillance and repression, we must be cautious without letting fear immobilize us. We’re powerful because we act, and because we’re connected to others; being frightened into passivity and isolation can only weaken and endanger us. Third, now more than ever solidarity means constructive criticism, not speculations (“That arson? I bet that was Alphonse—he’s into macho tactics”) or accusations (“She never does anything—she’s just a lot of talk”). You never know what situation a person is in: she might be a wanted fugitive who can’t respond to your thoughtless words without endangering herself. Likewise, “innocent” activists may be accused of others’ actions, and even go to prison for them; but this is the fault of the government, not on the ones who act, so long as they don’t stupidly put others at risk. Finally, much of the evidence in recent cases is based on informants wearing microphones into conversations. Activists should consider the possibility that even trusted companions could be wired; don’t ever reminisce needlessly over past illegal actions, don’t assume old cases are closed even after a decade of silence, don’t work with people you’re not sure you’ll trust ten years from now. Meet a person’s family and friends before joining in illegal activity.
\n\nAnd above all, DON’T TALK TO POLICE OR THE FBI. No matter what, it can never help you. They wouldn’t ask you in the first place if they didn’t need your help to ruin your life. Remember: “I am going to remain silent. I would like to speak with an attorney.”
\n\n\n\n\n“They can’t get inside you,” she had said. But they could get inside you. There were things, your own acts, from which you could not recover. Something was killed in your breast; burnt out, cauterized out…
\n
\n\n\n“Sometimes,” she said, “they threaten you with something—something you can’t stand up to, can’t even think about. And then you say, ‘Don’t do it to me, to it to somebody else, do it to so-and-so.’ And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn’t really mean it. But that isn’t true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there’s no other way of saving yourself and you’re quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don’t give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself.”
\n
\n\n\n“All you care about is yourself,” he echoed.
\n
\n\n\nHe was not running or cheering any longer. He was back in the Ministry of Love, with everything forgiven, his soul white as snow. He was in the public dock, confessing everything, implicating everybody. He was walking down the white-tiled corridor, with the feeling of walking in the sunlight, and an armed guard at his back. The long-hoped-for bullet was entering his brain.
\n
\n\n\nBut it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.
\n
— George Orwell at the bitter end of 1984
\n\nBrutal assaults from the state should come as no surprise. The most troubling aspect of this story is that some of those arrested—and even some who were not arrested, who are not even facing the threat of life in prison—have agreed to speak to the authorities, putting others at grievous risk.
\n\nImagine the situation of an activist who has agreed to testify against her former comrades. All the experiences that made her an anarchist, from childhood on, come back to haunt her as she betrays her own values and commitments, siding with the bullies, the rapists, the snide executives and sadistic police. Whatever tremendous feats she has accomplished, whatever personal qualities she took pride in, now she will be remembered as a informant and must live with the knowledge that she is one.
\n\nIn return for the potential of one day rejoining the defeated herd she fought so hard to escape, she must tell herself the same lies that once outraged her: that people are essentially selfish and untrustworthy, that complicity in injustice is inevitable and acceptable, that one can simply look out for number one in a disastrously unsustainable world. She does not even know how much leniency she can expect; the government can hardly let her off the hook when they’ve worked so hard to find her. On the other hand, as a snitch, she can be sure that if she goes to prison her fellow inmates will terrorize her. This gives the state even more power over her. Perhaps she considers breaking off collaboration, but to do so would only leave her isolated from all directions; the die is already cast. One can hardly imagine a worse position to be in.
\n\nLet us phase out the masked figure lobbing a molotov cocktail as the idealized image of revolt; there is a time for that, and the sooner it comes back around the better, but it is not the ultimate stage of struggle. Henceforth, when we think of resistance at its most courageous and romantic, let us picture someone like ourselves in an interrogation chamber, not masked but handcuffed, being threatened with life and death in captivity and still refusing to render herself and her fellows into her enemies’ hands.
\n\nFacing the threat of incarceration, we must redefine freedom and safety as factors under our control, not external circumstances. Freedom is not a matter of how many fences happen to be around you, but of following the dictates of your conscience no matter what. Safety is not the condition of being temporarily outside the grasp of your enemies, but of trusting yourself enough to know that your friends will never come to harm because of you and you will never become something you despise.
\n\nNot only is it critical to fight in the courtrooms as well as the streets—it’s also possible to win those fights. A brief look at our own recent history shows countless cases in which activists have beaten charges and even come out ahead in counter-suits. Such victories not only discourage our enemies from taking us to court, they can also provide needed resources for further organizing. Throwing up one’s hands in panic as soon as someone gets arrested is not only counterproductive, it’s also needlessly pessimistic. To offset the doomsaying of the inexperienced and easily demoralized, let’s reflect on a couple recent victories won by activists forced to fight within the legal system.
\n\nAt the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia summer of 2000, Camilo Viveiros and two others were beaten and arrested by a group of police that included John Timoney, then Police Commissioner of Philadelphia. Charged with numerous felonies (as a rule, you always get charged by the police for whatever they do to you) and demonized as violent extremists, the activists came to be known as the Timoney Three; Camilo himself faced more than thirty-seven years in prison and $55,000 in fines. They awaited trial for four years, while Timoney jet-setted around the world giving presentations on how to repress protesters and serving as Chief of Police in Miami during the FTAA ministerial in 2003. It seemed certain that anyone charged with assaulting someone in such a position of power was doomed to go to prison. Yet when the trial finally came, Timoney and the other officers made fools of themselves, offering wildly conflicting testimonies; after the defense presented a videotape that revealed the testimony of the police to be mere fabrication, the three were declared innocent of all charges. In an excellent article the March-April 2006 issue of the Earth First! journal, Camilo outlined the lessons of that trial for those currently facing government repression.
\n\nOne of the most important trials of the preceding generation of environmental activism ended in an unconditional victory over the mendacious, murderous authorities. In 1990, Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney were nearly killed by a car bomb while on a speaking tour to promote resistance to corporate logging. Rather than investigating the bombing, the FBI charged the two with making and transporting bombs. They also took advantage of the opportunity to carry out a nationwide smear campaign against Earth First!, and sent agents to create dossiers on over five hundred activists associated with the organization. To this day, it remains unclear whether the bombing was the work of freelance vigilantes or of the FBI themselves—in the weeks before it, FBI agents instructed the local police on how to make bombs exactly like the one that nearly killed Judi and Darryl. The charges failed to hold up in court, and the two initiated a counter-suit against the FBI and Oakland Police Department. Although the FBI managed to delay the trial for almost eleven years, during which Judi, who was crippled by the bombing, died of cancer, Darryl and others continued pressing the suit. Finally, in 2002, a jury found the FBI and Oakland Police guilty and ordered them to pay $4.4 million in damages.
\n\nWhen the struggle in the courtroom fails, there are always other means of resistance. On November 2, 1979, after giving birth in prison only to have her daughter taken away in less than a week, Black freedom fighter Assata Shakur managed one of the most impressive jailbreaks of the era. After almost a year in a West Virginia federal prison for women, surrounded by white supremacists from the Aryan Sisterhood prison gang, Shakur was transferred to the maximum security wing of the Clinton Correctional Center in New Jersey. There she was one of only eight maximum security prisoners held in a small, well-fenced cellblock of their own. The rest of Clinton, including its visiting area, was medium security and not fenced in.
\n\nAccording to news reports, Shakur’s escape proceeded as follows: Three men—two black, one white—using bogus driver’s licenses and Social Security cards requested visits with Assata four weeks in advance, as was prison policy. Apparently, prison officials never did the requisite background checks. On the day of the escape, the three met in the waiting room at the prison entrance, where they were processed through registration and shuttled in a van to the visiting room in South Hall. One member of the team went ahead of the others. Although there was a sign stating that all visitors would be searched with a hand-held metal detector, he made it through registration without even a pat-down. Meanwhile, the other two men were processed without a search. As these two were being let through the chain-link fences and locked metal doors at the visiting center one of them drew a gun and took the guard hostage. Simultaneously, the man visiting Shakur rushed the control booth, put two pistols to the glass wall, and ordered the officer to open the room’s metal door. She obliged.
\n\nFrom there, Shakur and her companions took a third guard hostage and made it to the parked van. Because only the maximum security section of the prison was fully fenced in, the escape team was able to speed across a grassy meadow to the parking lot of the Hunterdon State School, where they meet two more female accomplices, and split up into a “two-tone blue sedan” and a Ford Maverick. All the guards were released unharmed and the FBI immediately launched a massive hunt. But Shakur disappeared without a trace. For the next five years authorities hunted in vain. Shakur had vanished. Numerous other alleged BLA cadre were busted during those years, including Tupac’s step-father, Mutula Shakur.
\n\nIn 1984, word came from ninety miles off the coast of Florida: the FBI’s most wanted female fugitive was living in Cuba, working on a masters degree in political science, writing her autobiography, and raising her daughter. She still lives there today.
\n\nThis is a somewhat quiet phase of resistance in this country, as everyone waits out the end of the Bush presidency; we can afford to focus a lot of energy on benefit events, prisoner support groups, and public outreach. When things heat up again, we’ll benefit from having done this work, and in the meantime it offers us a rallying point.
\n\nIn addition to supporting our targeted comrades, we have to protect the infrastructure of our community. In Italy, where the brutal state repression of the past decade has succeeded in paralyzing many of those who bottomlined anarchist projects, police and fascists have been able to shut down some of the social centers, publications, and protest campaigns that formed the life’s blood of a vibrant anarchist movement. We must not allow that to happen here. The government will target those who are most active and visible; when one of us is immobilized by legal problems, it’s up to the rest of us to take up the slack. Our infrastructure is not just made up of formally organized groups; it also consists of and depends on our social networks and culture of resistance. If people cease to come together at politicized entertainment events and community potlucks, or cease to work through conflicts and share emotional support, that will be just as devastating as the loss of an infoshop or Food Not Bombs.
\n\nAs for our proactive tactics, how should we adjust them in the light of this offensive? It’s worth pointing out that, with the exception of Rob Thaxton5, no anarchist in recent memory has served more than a couple years in prison for participation in mass actions—this is impressive, given the high level of confrontation these have sometimes reached. It seems to be harder to make charges stick in mass action scenarios, perhaps because they involve so many suspects and so much chaos, and also because investigating them at great length would overextend the resources of the state. The police are forced to grab whomever they can—usually not people who had any major role in the actions—and charge them with crimes for which there is little evidence.
\n\nIronically, in the wake of September 11th, anarchists backed off militant mass actions in fear that they would meet stiffer repression. Consequently, we have less leverage and morale—and we are still being targeted as domestic enemy number one! The FBI and the whole apparatus of repression are after us whether or not we skulk around in the shadows, so we may as well organize openly. If we’re all headed for court anyway, we have little to lose, and we stand to gain much-needed visibility and momentum. If enough of us stick our necks out, they can’t target us all, and the more people of all walks of life are familiar with our struggle the more allies we can hope to find. Now is the time to form accessible anarchist structures, to speak publicly about our opposition to capitalism and domination, to organize large-scale anarchist actions. Far from endangering us, this may actually make us safer.
\n\nAs for those who prefer more covert tactics such as arson and sabotage, the clearest lesson of the current phase of repression is that the government is interested above all in mapping networks of resistance6. If you are not connected to the current pool of suspects, doing as your conscience dictates is no more dangerous now than it was a decade ago, provided you practice flawless security culture and pick prudent comrades who will never buckle under pressure. Indeed, as the trials of the current defendants play out over the coming months, we will be given valuable insight into how the FBI investigates crimes of this nature. This should, if anything, make it easier for activists to engage safely in militant direct action.
\n\nOur enemies are wrong to hypothesize that we can be frightened into passivity. If the prospect of living in a world of domination and despair was bad enough to catalyze us into action, think how much less appealing it is to be silent knowing our comrades can be taken from us at any time. As they escalate this conflict, we can only respond in kind.
\n\nIn fact, the great majority of environmentalist direct action cases still remain unsolved. The FBI alleges that there have been over 1200 criminal acts carried out by underground activists since 1990, and 150 “eco-terror” investigations are still open. ↩
\nAccording to the Oxford American Dictionary, a backfire is “a fire set intentionally to arrest the progress of an approaching fire by creating a burned area in its path, thus depriving the fire of fuel.” This seems to confirm that the FBI strategy to suppress dissent is based on the use of agents provocateurs and false allegations, as were COINTELPRO and other programs that ended up backfiring on them. ↩
\nDaniel McGowan, for example, was released into house arrest on $1.6 million bail. Before his arrest, Daniel worked for a non-profit organization that helps women in domestic abuse situations navigate the legal system. In the rare circumstances in which abusers are arrested and charged (see the article on domestic violence elsewhere in this issue), how high do you think their bail is set? This is a classic example of the way the capitalist system works: violence against individuals is practically accepted, while alleged destruction of property is met with the stiffest possible penalties before even being brought to trial. ↩
\nUniversity of Miami sociology professor Linda Belgrave reports that “Anna” was in Florida posing as a medic at a protest on June 6, 2005; when an elderly woman who was apparently suffering from heat exhaustion approached her for aid, “Anna” offered her a sip of Gatorade, then declined to assist her further. The woman collapsed and an ambulance was called. If any doubt lingered as to whether the FBI is concerned about human life, their insertion of incompetent frauds into medic teams serving law-abiding protestors should settle the matter. ↩
\nRob just finished serving a seven year sentence for throwing a rock at a police officer during a Reclaim the Streets in Eugene, Oregon, June 18th, 1999. ↩
\nIn January 2006, a fifty-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of damaging over a dozen cars and two buildings at an automobile dealership in Newport, Oregon. The buildings were spray painted with the letters “ELF,” and two local news stations had received calls claiming the action in the name of the ELF. However, as reported by the Newport News Times, “Police could not establish any connection between MacMurdo and the ELF organization. It is believed his actions were retaliatory in nature and not any kind of political statement.” He was charged with criminal mischief and his bail was set at $32,500, a miniscule amount by eco-terror standards. What does a guy have to do these days to get charged as an eco-terrorist? Obviously, he has to have the right friends. ↩
\nThose who can, write; those who can’t, write reviews. Writing reviews is the surest shortcut to a sensation of power for those who lack the dedication necessary to create something of actual worth. In passing judgment on others’ work, the reviewer experiences a fleeting high of self-importance cheaper than any other.
\n\nFortunately for the next generation of hacks, after squandering the best years of our writing careers composing purple prose for the throwaway tabloids of yellow journalism, we’ve finally perfected this most elusive of literary forms. Deceptively simple and mundane, reviews are often assumed to be easy to pen; in fact, it’s almost impossible to compose one worth reading. To save you the trouble of suffering through this learning process yourself (and your potential readers the risk of suffering along with you), we present here a surefire failsafe handy guide to the most rightly unappreciated literary form of the twentieth century. Mix yourself a stiff metaphor, cultivate an air of supercilious indifference—a prerequisite for any reviewer worth the salt he hopes to pour in others’ wounds—and read on.
\n\nThis is the most common convention in the reviewer’s repertoire, and the most swiftly, thoughtlessly trotted out. It comes in three basic varieties:
\n\nA is like B: “Orwell’s 1984 is basically a rewrite of Zamyatin’s We, right down to the use of punctuation marks.” “Like any other band with guitars, bass, and drums, Cannibal Corpse owes everything to Chuck Berry.”
\n\nA is like B + C: “The sequel to The Matrix is the bastard child of Nintendo video games and MTV’s ‘The Daily Grind.’” “Dragonforce sounds like Richard Marx with double bass.”
\n\nA is like B (perhaps + C) under extenuating conditions: these can include, for example, drugs—“Jackson Pollock is like, uh, Matisse on serious methamphetamines”—violence—“Baudrillard offers the sort of insights Foucault would have hit upon if he’d suffered severe head trauma at an early age”—evocative locations—“Imagine Tolstoy’s War and Peace if it was set in a Soviet gulag across only three days; there you have it, Solzhenitsyn’s The First Circle”—or, for maximum cliché action, all three: “Muppet Burger’s new album “Fuzzy Massacre” sounds like Sun Ra and Sinead O’Conner, cranked out of their minds on cough syrup and banana peel blunts, beating the stuffing out of Morrissey in a dark alley while humming La Marseilles to themselves.”
\n\nA critic should not tender a positive review unless he believes he stands to gain in some way. Sometimes demonstrating one’s superiority by exhibiting prescient taste can be as gratifying as the more direct approach of simply declaring something inferior. Of course, the power dynamics shift as soon as the spotlighted upstart gains a certain amount of attention: then, glorification accrues to the artist rather than the reviewer, so one must return to scorn and ridicule.
\n\nThings are not usually even this complex: a guest list and bar tab beckon, a senior editor threatens, advertising dollars await, Public Opinion counsels that this is going to be a Hot Item this year and those who fail to get on board do so at their own peril. One must give positive reviews to something, after all, and it never hurts to kill two birds with one stone.
\n\nSometimes it does occur that a neophyte, carried away by actual passion unbecoming of the serious journalist, expresses honest appreciation. Please, resist this temptation. We’ve all got mouths to feed in this business, and a certain professional standard of restraint and objectivity is only common sense.
\n\nThe critic does well to cast himself as the artist’s interpreter, a modern-day successor of the priests who explicated the drugged ravings of the Oracle of Delphi. This relationship places the critic in the more essential role: any damn fool can get hooked on heroin and put a few chords together, but it takes a Greil Marcus to construct meaning out of the resulting cacophony and go on to trace its lineage to the Anabaptists. Artists are idiot savants who achieve greatness by unhinging themselves, as Rimbaud himself insisted—that’s why the best of them die young; does it make sense to allow such people to speak for themselves? Besides, as a dancer, asked by a journalist to speak about her newest work, once rejoined, “If I could tell you about it, I wouldn’t have to dance it.”
\n\nFor best results, select the most incoherent and opaque artwork, rewarding artists and movements that produce this with positive coverage. Ideally, the public, knowing themselves unqualified to do, feel, or think anything on their own, should bypass the artwork completely, coming directly to the critics. It goes without saying that any creative person who makes concrete statements—the musician who speaks between songs, the poet who dares write about a current war—should be decisively ignored, or at least dismissed as superficial. This policy worked fabulously for art critics throughout the twentieth century, and indeed may explain the evolutionary trajectory of Western art across that era—not to mention recent developments in the punk rock scene.
\n\nWhen a reviewer feels the itch to hold forth about his own extensive experience as a widely traveled citizen of the world, he need not stick to the matter at hand. Many a frustrated travel writer, philosopher, religious mystic, and misanthrope has found a lasting career as a reviewer—not least because it is one of the few writing jobs in which it is not important that anyone actually read your work.
\n\nReviewers have to worry about their facts being checked about as much as federal agents at a bail hearing. Any old thing you heard or might have heard is fair game. It’s your job to keep things interesting, so don’t hesitate to spice up your review with a little scandalous gossip: I used to be a card-carrying member of The Anarchist Movement, until I heard Bakunin was actually a paid agent of the Czar.
\n\nThis can range from a simple insult (regarding Jack Kerouac’s claim that he wrote On the Road in a matter of days, Truman Capote quipped, “That’s not writing, that’s typing”) to a veritable torrent of abuse—which, in some cases, may be well deserved:
\n\nImagine Def Leppard if Wesley Willis was the principle songwriter and their vocalist sounded like a character from The Flintstones. Now imagine whatever you just imagined, only worse. There you have it, the debut from Andrew WK, “I Get Wet.” This makes the stuff they play over the public address systems at professional football games seem bookish and highbrow. The lyrics are pathologically tautological (“you can’t stop what you can’t end”), the riffs sound like cheap radio advertising jingles with some of the notes played wrong, the end of every song sounds like a television being switched off. For that matter, the beginning of every song sounds like a television being switched on! My friend Gabe says this makes him feel like he’s at a keg party at a frat house, but there are no women there, just drunk, belligerent jocks and brain-damaged football players wrestling the furniture and shouting each other down about the stock market. Myself, I can’t help but imagine this blaring over the speakers in the personnel bay of an army helicopter as GIs are airlifted into an Iraqi village to slaughter mothers and children—and as if in anticipation of this, Andrew has recorded a track in which he sings over and over “You better get ready to kill, get ready to die.” Even if you didn’t have serious doubts about the future of Western civilization before you heard this release, one listen will make you a revolutionary in the tradition of the Dadaists and Situationists who set out to put an end to art itself—that is, if it doesn’t reduce you to utter nihilism.
\n\nWhen it’s not possible to unleash a well-founded Stream of Invective, but the reviewer still desires to maintain the readers’ attention, he must fall back upon what philosophers call the straw man argument: he must concoct the most ridiculous make-believe version of the subject of the review he possibly can, and display his great strength and prowess by painstakingly tearing it apart.
\n\nIn ideological circles—including certain anarchist camps, strange to tell, where so much talk of solidarity would lead one to expect constructive criticism to be the order of the day—this approach is even more common than the Comparison. Those who believe—often correctly—that their ideas can only be of interest if all other ideas are entirely bankrupt must remain ever vigilant, ready to pounce upon and discredit other thinkers by any means necessary.
\n\nThe digression comes in two forms. In the more common form, it is a sort of verbal smoking break in which the writer gets up from his desk, takes a breath, and stretches his legs, all without ceasing to address the reader. Reviewers who wish to curry favor with discriminating readers should throw in as many of these as possible: the less attention they pay to the subject of the review, the more bearable their writing is bound to be.
\n\nAlternately, the digression can be an underhanded way to slip in Absurd Allegations, when there is no more straightforward pretext for introducing them. For example, in the midst of a review of the thoroughly utilitarian Recipes for Disaster: An Anarchist Cookbook, which is simply a collection of direct action tactics, the Anarchy Magazine reviewer can, as if remaining on topic, stray into such ramblings as:
\n\n“Their interpretation of social change seems to be that ‘good people’ can, and should, be agents of social change. The material conditions of that change, the horrible consequences of ‘bad people,’ and the history of social change that doesn’t conform to the ‘good people’ model are all outside the scope of CrimethInc.’s approach. It is as if they have made a good and right choice and aren’t going to let reality interfere with it.”
\n\nDash off a review of this How-To Guide and submit it to libcom.org. Whether you compose a Stream of Invective, an Absurd Allegation, or an Irrelevant Digression, and regardless of whether you have ever undertaken to write a single word before in the English language (or have read any of this text beyond than this sentence), your review is bound to be more balanced and informative than anything that would appear on that site otherwise1.
\n\nFrom The Do-It-Yourself COINTELPRO Handbook:
\n\nIn the end, our most dangerous enemies are not the subversive operatives themselves, who can be isolated and exterminated if it becomes necessary; they are, rather, those who offer constructive criticism of their efforts, for constructive criticism strengthens revolutionary endeavors and sharpens insurgent tactics. Fortunately, such criticism can be buried beneath an avalanche of hostility and impertinence.
\n\nMake every discussion into a debate with two opposed sides, pro- and anti-. This distracts attention from the ideas and subjects in question; it also compels all parties to entrench themselves in rigid positions. Always refer to your opponent’s ideas as if they constitute a fixed, disembodied ideology; always address your opponent as if he is an automaton serving this ideology, not a complex being with a life history behind him.
\n\nNever approach involved persons with questions; always take your criticisms directly to the public. Do not offer any strategy other than your own the benefit of the doubt. Focus on the very simplest, stupidest, weakest points in any material; emphasize these. Disregard subtleties. Pick a simple accusation and stick with it, repeating it over and over until everyone is so fed up that they leave the entire arena of discussion to escape your negativity.
\n\nMake your objections simpler than your target text or tactic; it must be easier to be against it than it is to understand and interpret it. Unblushingly judge books by their covers. People should be able to take a stand with you without having to learn anything about the subject. Make it a style to dismiss as a style; make it a trend to accuse of being a trend.
\n\nAttack egos, exhaust patience, be as incoherent as possible. Make it impossible for anyone to derive anything positive from your tirades, despite their best intentions and efforts to get past your aggressive tone. When speaking of aspects of their work which make you feel alienated, for example, be as alienating as possible yourself. Defensiveness is what you want to provoke, above all—it discredits like nothing else.
\n\nWhatever demographics your opponent is reaching successfully, demonize. Utilize hot potato terms such as “sexist” and “classist”—use them over and over, with as little specific reference as possible, until it is impossible to have constructive discussions about the important issues these accusations raise. Assume you can represent the views of individuals from backgrounds other than your own—especially demographics that “need” representing, as if they cannot do it themselves. Refer to bona fide representatives of these demographics, when they appear in positions you didn’t expect, as “token.”
\n\nLower the level of discussion with pointless personal attacks, sarcasm, and self-righteousness. No depth is too low to stoop. Become obsessed with your crusade; calculate your blows to hurt feelings and offend bystanders. Everyone who has grown up in this vicious world has built up a certain amount of frustration and resentment; utilize this, learn how to trigger it in others. In every discussion, set negative energy in motion and make sure it wins out over constructive thought and respectful dialogue. Even if no one is persuaded by your arguments, this creates an environment that frightens off all outsiders.
\n\nAbove all, be afraid. Be afraid of your own well-hidden doubts and vulnerabilities, and of others’ reputed superiority—and spread that fear, that shame, that guilt and resentment like a plague. Paralyze yourself and everyone else with blame for supposed imperfections. Hate yourself so much that you can only find respite in attacking others.
\n\nThe original version of this Guide included a dig at Clamor magazine, which had just uncritically published an authoritarian Marxist’s atentát on_Recipes for Disaster_. (With little reference to the content of the book or anything else, he utilized the majority of the review to slam CrimethInc. for not being authoritarian Marxists, ending with a quotation from Mao.) To our great dismay, Clamor ceased publication the following week, and several other small publishers to whom they had owed money perished with them. It is with great trepidation, then, that we train our poison pen on a new target. ↩
\n\n\n\n“The idea that an understanding of genocide, that a memory of holocausts can only lead people to want to dismantle the system is erroneous. The continuing appeal of nationalism suggests that the opposite is true: that an understanding of genocide has led people to mobilize genocidal armies, that the memory of holocausts has led people to perpetuate holocausts. The sensitive poets who remembered the loss, the researchers who documented it, have been like the pure scientists who discovered the structure of the atom. Applied scientists used the discovery to split the atom’s nucleus, to produce weapons which can split every atom’s nucleus; nationalists use the poetry to split and fuse human populations, to mobilize genocidal armies, to perpetrate new holocausts.”
\n
— Fredy Perlman, The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism
\n\nBack in the 1990s, answering mail for the ’zine I used to publish, I noticed that Germans—even German anarchists—responded strangely whenever the conflict between Israel and Palestine came up. Every time anything related to the issue appeared in my ’zine, I got a lengthy letter from an irate German accusing me of Palestinian nationalism or even borderline anti-Semitism. I never once received such a letter from citizens of any other nation, even though the ’zine was distributed as far as Israel, nor did I ever receive one from a Jewish reader of any nationality. From my perspective, the positions in the ’zine on that issue were not particularly controversial: like most others in the anarchist community, I deplored the violence and racism of the Israeli military and the Zionist settler movement, while remaining suspicious of those seeking to capitalize on what I considered understandable Palestinian desperation. At the time, I interpreted these letters as nothing more than an overzealous effort on the part of some Germans to be sensitive about issues affecting Jewish people.
\n\nI returned to Europe last fall for the first time in some years. In the course of my travels, I discovered that what had seemed like a minor blind spot in the German radical milieu had evolved into what I regard as a really problematic strain of thought: the “Anti-German Critique,” a reactionary nationalism that masquerades as radical anti-nationalism. For adherents of this ideology, the important thing is not to oppose capitalism, racism, and hierarchy everywhere, but to oppose Germany and anti-Semitism specifically, even to the extent of supporting other capitalist nations and other forms of racism.1 Revolutions being unforthcoming, Anti-German antifascists settle for supporting the current government of Israel, all the injustices it perpetrates notwithstanding, on account of the injustices perpetrated by its opponents.
\n\nAt first, I only came across hints of this. Climbing the immense stairwell of the EKH, Vienna’s longstanding squatted social center, I came upon a little exhortation scrawled on the wall: “Support Zionism.” That’s strange, I thought to myself: here, in an anarchist stronghold, graffiti urging people to rally to a cause already receiving more support from the United States than any other government in the world, and responsible for the displacement and repression of an entire population of people of color. In the ageless tradition of marker-bearing squatters, I added a little message of my own: “down with all isms—support people, not nations.”
\n\nThe following week found me staying at a social center in Dresden. Among the other occupants of the space were two Israelis, who—like many young Israelis I had met upon earlier visits to Europe2—were traveling the continent in order to avoid the draft that compels Israelis to serve in the military. I fell to talking politics with one of them. He declined to take a position on the Israel-Palestine conflict—an admirable enough stance for a person coming from such a complicated situation, who had accepted exile rather than risk killing or dying for a cause in which he did not believe.
\n\nOthers in Germany had not respected his decision, however. He recounted to me his experience traveling for a few days with a German band; when it came out that he was avoiding military service, another person on the tour—a German gentile, otherwise committed to revolutionary politics—was outraged: “You mean you wouldn’t serve to protect your people? You coward!”
\n\nScarcely two days later, during an antifascist action in Leipzig, I had my first brush with Anti-Germans. I’ll spare you the details of my participation in the event—suffice it to say my friends and I spent hours wandering around peering at photocopied maps, followed by a few exhilarating minutes being pursued by riot police through cordoned-off streets and over spiked fences, and in the end the scheduled fascist march was thwarted. After traveling throughout southern and eastern Europe, where fascism is gaining more and more power, it was a real relief to see it being held at bay somewhere. It was not so encouraging, however, to see US, Israeli, and British flags being unloaded at the departure point of an antifascist march.
\n\nI went immediately over to the young men unloading them. My German friend had urged me not to waste my time, but whether or not they would listen to me I was curious what they had to say for themselves.
\n\n“What are you doing with that flag?” I gestured at the stars and stripes one young fellow was pulling from the truck.
\n\n“We are going to march with it.”
\n\n“I’m from the United States,” I began, “and I can’t fucking believe you would march with a US flag at this rally. Don’t you know what this flag means?”
\n\n“But it is different here! Here, this flag is a symbol of the antifascist struggle.”
\n\n“Listen, everywhere in the world that flag represents the same things: Hollywood, Coca-Cola, the absolute power of the capitalist market. What does that have to do with freedom?”
\n\nHis answer was almost plaintive. “But Britain and the United States beat the German government! They were the only ones who could do it. We carry their flags to remember this.”
\n\n“They fought that war with their armies segregated into black and white divisions, and Japanese citizens in internment camps! They weren’t fighting for freedom, but for their own national power—just like in the genocidal wars against the Native Americans! That flag is stained with the blood of millions!”
\n\n“But they were the only ones who could stop the Nazis here,” he repeated, almost sheepishly. I hadn’t caught myself a particularly fierce Anti-German.
\n\n“That war only happened because people were willing to march under flags in the first place, and we could have won it without flags if people like you didn’t insist on them. If you’re going to march with that flag, count me out, and every antifascist like me in the US would do the same.” I left to find my own route to block the fascists—hence the crazy chase scene involving the spiked fence.
\n\nThat night, sporting a limp that lasted for weeks, I stayed at a squat in Erfurt. Here, someone had gone around to every poster that had read “Antifascist” and blacked out “fascist” to replace it with “Deutsch.” What kind of people thought it was more important to take at stand against Deutschland than against fascism?
\n\nIt wasn’t until Hamburg, my last stop in Germany, that I got to have the discussion I’d wanted with a real live Anti-German. It was someone I knew: back in the ’90s, he had booked my old punk rock band at a social center in Germany. He was thinner now, with a more haughty, intellectual air about him and a pencil-thin moustache.
\n\n“Yes,” he was saying, “but your new band is… not so good, yes?” He nodded to me, eyebrows raised.
\n\n“We’re a new band,” I replied, gamely. “We’ve just learned new instruments. Over time, I hope we’ll improve. But yes, right now, perhaps we are not so good.”
\n\n“Your last band”—he paused for dramatic effect—“did not improve with time, I think. I saw you at the beginning of your last tour, and then at the end. Do you remember?”
\n“Yes, of course. I agree.” Humility is the better part of celebrity, if you want to last an hour in punk circles.
“You know,” he said, leaning his head back and looking into the middle distance, “I think when I first started to lose interest, it was when the record came out with the song about Intifada.”3
\n\n“Aha!” I exclaimed, practically pounding my fist upon the ubiquitous foosball table—the game is known as “kicker” in Germany, and heaven help any foreigner who takes on even the drunkest of native players. “An Anti-German! I’ve been waiting for this! Let’s get down to business.”
\n\n“Yes, I think there is a lot where we do not agree! But maybe there is no reason even to talk about it.” He darted me a sidelong glance. “For example, you said you live in the woods—you are against technology and civilization, yes? But for us, you know, we think that technology is just something that works. It spreads, because it works.”
\nHe had my complete attention now. “And other peoples who are less, shall we say, advanced…?”
“Ah, I see what you suggest. Yes, some might say that this is a Western-centered view. But people around the world are taking up this lifestyle as fast as they can.”
\n\n“But you really can’t argue that everything that spreads is a good thing. You know, a plague also spreads. A plague spreads because it works! And anyway, I am not against all technology—just technologies that promote hierarchy or water down our experience of life. Besides, if everyone lived the way people in Germany and the US live, the planet would be wrecked in one generation.”
\n\n“A plague spreads because it works,” he repeated, nodding in slit-eyed appreciation of my clever rejoinder.
\n\nI learned later, in my research into Anti-German thought, that indeed, some Anti-German writers conceive of world history in terms of the progress of civilization (i.e., Western civilization), with the implication that other cultures are primitive. This is an old-fashioned Marxist analysis, in which capitalist technocracy is a stage of human evolution that must be passed through on the way to communist utopia; this was the excuse the Bolsheviks and Maoists gave for forcing millions to give up their traditional lifestyles in order to join the machinery of industrial communism. “There is something worse than capitalism and bourgeois society: its barbarous abolition,” writes one Anti-German, and he goes on to make it explicit that he is referring to Arabic nationalism as well as German fascism. Thinking this way makes it easy enough to pose Israel and the United States as the flagships of culture and progress, and those dirty Arabs as the savages to whom the torch of Nazi irrationality and brutality has been passed.
\n\nBut let’s return to the conversation in Hamburg. “But what are the US flags for in the demonstrations?” I demanded.
\n\n“Ah, they are a joke, to wind people up,” he explained. “There are certain people it is important to piss off with these flags. You know, in Germany, the right wing exploits the whole anti-American thing for its own purposes.”
\n\n“But isn’t it totally reactionary to carry them just because they bother your enemies? Does that mean you have to embrace the flag of such a destructive, oppressive nation?”
\n\nAs I discovered later in my studies, if he had been a true hard-line Anti-German he would have explained to me that, because the US provides Israel with the money and guns to hold the entire Middle East at bay and do to the Palestinians as they please, it is not a destructive nation at all, but the foremost protector of peace. Instead, he opted for a more conciliatory approach: “This is a German thing, special to our German context. Here, where the holocaust took place, our most important job is to fight German power, and for this the flags are good.”
\n\nI reflected a minute. “Isn’t it very German to claim that in the German context, you have a special privileged perspective that justifies actions that don’t make sense anywhere else?”
\n\nAs their name implies, Anti-Germans put quite a bit of energy into establishing the special status of the German nation-state as an evil more terrible than any other. Accordingly, my companion launched into an explanation of why the Holocaust happened in Germany, why it could only happen in Germany, and why it was worse than any other atrocity in history. To hear him tell it, the status of the German state as perpetrator of the most terrible of all crimes grants certain special rights and powers of observation to its citizens: knowing anti-Semitism better than anyone else, they can see more clearly than others how it is still the most serious danger facing the world.
\n\nI wasn’t able to follow his argument this far, though, as I was still getting over my shock at his dismissal of others’ racist oppression and slaughter. “Wait, what about the extermination of the Native Americans?”
\n\n“That was different: that was simply a conflict over land and resources, and it was concluded when the last of the Indians surrendered. The Jews were law-abiding German citizens, and were singled out for purely racist, ideological reasons. You’ll probably say that there were people in the death camps besides the Jews; but the Jews were the real targets of the Shoah4.”
\n\n“Of course, Jewish people now have the means to talk about their experiences in the death camps, whereas the Romani people, who are still oppressed and dispossessed everywhere, are unable to get a hearing.”
\n\n“Don’t you think that sort of rhetoric is a little anti-Semitic, like saying there is a worldwide Jewish conspiracy?”
\n\n“It’s very convenient for a gentile like you to call everyone who disagrees anti-Semitic! You’ll recall that the last time I was here with a band that talked about Israel and Palestine, half of us were Jewish. Anyway, what about my earlier question? Isn’t it nationalist to consider Deutsch culture a context unto itself apart from the international context? What ever happened to ‘no borders, no nations’?”
\n\nHe answered me with a phrase that summarized everything for me: “But that does not take into account our special situation. Here we say, ‘destroy all nations, but Israel last.’”
\n\nIn this formulation, we arrive at the central fallacy of the pro-Zionist position: the idea that nations protect their citizens. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the way state power works. Each government argues to its citizens that it exists to protect them from other governments; but when nations fight, it is not governors that die, but their citizens. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of Israelis have died since the formation of Israel in 1948. Former terrorists such as Shamir and Sharon have risen to power upon waves of fear, assuring their constituents that if anyone is to suffer, it will be Arabs—but their policies have continued to result in the loss of Israeli lives, while they die of old age.5
\n\nCompared to the aforementioned Romani people, who are still persecuted across the whole of Europe, one might even say the Israelis have it worse: thanks to billions and billions of dollars from the United States, they are able to maintain an artificially high standard of living, but at any moment a suicide bomber may kill them or their loved ones. One must wonder if, given the opportunity, most Romani people would opt for power and luxury beneath the sword of Damocles over their current circumstances. Had they somehow been chosen by destiny to force a people out of their homeland and carry on a US-financed war against their neighbors for the past half-century, the results would surely be similar.
\n\nNeither fate, of course, is desirable. If Jews today were in the same situation as the Romani, that would also be a terrible tragedy. But let us not imagine that those are the only two possibilities for survivors of the Holocaust. Such a lack of imagination, that reduces all questions to a matter of picking the lesser of two evils, is at the heart of all the impasses that face us across the world today. It is the same lack of imagination that led people to mobilize around Kerry against Bush, rather than opposing the US government itself; it is the same lack of imagination that induces the Anti-Germans to side with the state of Israel against its enemies, rather than with us against nationalism and enmity themselves.
\n\nTo be sure, the Jews who have been murdered worldwide over the past six decades have been killed by anti-Semites. Anti-Semitism has flourished among Arabs; much is made of this by the Anti-Germans, who trace Arabic nationalism back to early connections between certain Arabs and German Nazis. But these few connections would have been meaningless if Arabic anti-Semites had not had been able to make use of Israeli atrocities in the years that followed to recruit converts. The violence in the Middle East today is not the direct successor to the Nazi Holocaust; rather, it is the result of the violence committed by survivors of that Holocaust, who became abusers in their turn—as survivors all too often do.
\n\nUntil now, we have barely touched upon the number of Palestinians and other Arabs who have suffered at the hands of the Israeli state. If one is making an argument for nations as protectors of human beings, one must take all human beings into account, not only the citizens of certain nations—unless one believes the others to be subhuman. Here we can see that the cost of the establishment and perpetuation of the state of Israel has been colossal in terms of the suffering and death of both Israelis and Palestinians.
\n\nAs anarchists, we can find the explanation for this not in the innate bloodthirstiness and anti-Semitism of Arabs (nor the imperialistic machinations of Jews, for that matter), but in the way nationalists and nation-states pit human beings against one another. For us, the answer is clear: we must struggle against the governments of Israel and Palestine, as well as those of the US, Germany, and all other nations. So long as one intolerant, violent, self-interested government is able to carry on unchallenged, it will be all too easy for rival governments to muster frightened adherents to commit murderous acts as well. So-called pragmatists who insist that we must support one or another of these gangs would have us perpetuate the whole mess into eternity. We can find our solidarity with all Palestinians and Israelis who struggle against their own rulers on the basis of a recognition of each other’s humanity.6
\n\nBefore we conclude, let’s revisit the origins and mentality of the Anti-German ideology, as it exemplifies many of the potential pitfalls for radicals in today’s global context. Long before the Nazis came to power in Germany, opposition to capitalism and the rich was often directed against caricatures of “the International Jew.” Many German nationalists considered the proletariat to be composed of non-Jewish Germans, who were supposedly preyed upon by Jewish money lenders; the implication was that by getting rid of the Jews, the capitalist system could be symbolically cleansed of its parasites. Anti-Semitism was taken for granted in many revolutionary circles: Bakunin, one of the most famous early anarchist thinkers, made anti-Semitic remarks, and Mussolini himself started out with an interest in anarchism. Revolutionary working class activism was co-opted by national socialism such as that of Mussolini’s blackshirts no less than by nationalist socialism such as that of the Bolsheviks. This checkered heritage makes it easy for the Anti-Germans to read anti-Semitism in the radicalism of their contemporaries, whether it’s there or not.
\n\nToday, fascists in Germany and other nations have similarly muddied issues by adopting environmentalist and anti-globalization stances. It would be nice to stop at the conclusion that the Anti-Germans have simply been provoked by their enemies into thoughtlessly adopting contradictory positions, but the fact that they have crossed into nationalism and borderline racism suggests something more insidious: that in setting out to resist fascism, they have been infected by it, perhaps as a result of the same German predispositions they aim to oppose. In studying their example, we can recognize the importance of developing a nuanced critique of power relations, but we are also reminded of Nietzsche’s dictum that those who do battle with monsters must take care lest they become monsters themselves.
\n\nEvery holocaust justifies itself on the pretext of protecting innocents. In the US, during the extermination of Native Americans (and, later, during the segregation era), white women were said to be threatened by colored savages; in Nazi Germany, citizens of pure “Aryan blood” were fetishized as victims of a worldwide conspiracy of degenerates. In coming to see the Jewish people as a category—“the” endangered, “the” victims of oppression—rather than committing to a struggle against injustice everywhere and in all forms, the Anti-Germans set the stage for themselves to end as abettors of racist, nationalist war. It is easy to see how German radicals, eager to distance themselves from their nation’s anti-Semitic history and desperate to oppose a resurgent fascist movement, might prioritize Jewish concerns over others. But this is sometimes how new atrocities occur: the survivors of persecution become persecutors, and others, anxious to atone for condoning their former persecution, turn a blind eye.
\n\nAnti-German partisanship for Israel, once set in motion, did not lack justification and encouragement: there is an entire propaganda industry given over to rationalizing Israeli policy, just as there is another given to taking advantage of it to mobilize Arabic resistance groups. Zionist Israelis are indeed victims in the Israel-Palestine conflict, as are Palestinian suicide bombers; the problem is that both fight not to end the conflict but to win it. The Anti-German phenomenon should remind anarchists not to hurry to pick sides in national and ethnic strife; we must, rather, side with whatever parts of those struggling resonate with our desires to supercede the terms of such conflicts, however buried those parts may be. We can intercede in the manner demonstrated by Rachel Corrie, the US activist killed by a bulldozer of the Israeli Defense Force while fighting to protect Palestinian homes: not so that one side may triumph, but to help human beings survive an inhuman conflict.
\n\nAll this is complicated, for sure. In a world in which seemingly everybody is lined up on one side or another of such conflicts, it seems those who would take sides with everyone against conflict itself find themselves apart from everyone else, even at odds with them. But again, let us learn from the Anti-Germans: those who resign themselves to the failure of revolutionary prospects turn, defensively, into the very monsters they so recently opposed.
\n\nThe word racism is used in this text to call attention to the double standards so many white people bring to their considerations of the Palestine/Israel conflict. One must be a racist to compare the living conditions of average Palestinian and Israeli families today and not see injustice, however things stand in the gang war. It’s also impossible to describe the policies of the Israeli government, which disenfranchise, dominate, and humiliate Palestinians the same way apartheid did native Africans in South Africa, as anything less than racist. Some Palestinians might also be described as having racist ideas, but they are hardly in a position to subject Israelis en masse to such dehumanizing treatment. ↩
\nAmong others, I had spent time with members of the band Dir Yassin, an anarchist and anti-Zionist band from Israel. They were interviewed in the anarcho-punk magazine Profane Existence in 1998, and with luck you can still find the interview. ↩
\nThe offending song, named “Called Terrorists by Terrorists,” was explained thus in the liner notes: “The title of this song refers to the well-known murder of United Nations mediator Count Folke Bernadotte, who was killed on orders from future Israeli politician Yitzhak Shamir. Bernadotte was appointed in 1948 to negotiate between the Palestinian natives and the Zionists who were attempting to establish an Israeli state in their homeland; he was the former head of the Swedish Red Cross, and had risked his life to save thousands of Jews from concentration camps during the second world war. After months of studying the situation, Bernadotte concluded that in the interests of human decency if the Zionists were to eventually be given sovereignty over a part of Palestine, Palestinian refugees who had been driven out by Zionist violence should be given two options: they should be allowed to return to their stolen lands, or else receive compensation from the new nation of Israel for what had been taken from them. The day after he made his proposal, he was killed by Zionist terrorists carrying out Shamir’s instructions. Years later, supported by a media blackout on the past and the fact that history is always written by the victors, Shamir was able to join other world leaders in referring to the Palestinians who still resisted the racist repression of his regime as ‘terrorists‘ without anyone bringing up his own blood-soaked past.” ↩
\n“Shoah” is a Hebrew word for the Holocaust. ↩
\nWith the exception, of course, of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated by a Zionist Jew for fear he might make progress towards a peaceful and just solution to the conflict. One would think this, if anything, would have turned the Israeli public against militant Zionism—but no, he was succeeded in power by a right wing hardliner. ↩
\nIn that spirit, I’d like to conclude this text with a poem by leading Israeli author Aharon Shabtai:
\n\nI, too, have declared war:
\nYou’ll need to divert part of the force
\ndeployed to wipe out the Arabs—
\nto drive them out of their homes
\nand expropriate their land—
\nand set it against me.
\nYou’ve got tanks and planes,
\nand soldiers by the battalion;
\nyou’ve got the rams’ horns in your hands
\nwith which to rouse the masses;
\nyou’ve got men to interrogate and torture;
\nyou’ve got cells for detention.
\nI have only this heart
\nwith which I give shelter
\nto an Arab child.
\nAim your weapons at it:
\neven if you blow it apart
\nit will always,
\nalways mock you. ↩
In the past six years, the North American anarchist movement has gone through all the stages of a turbulent love affair with mass actions, including messy breakups and attempted reconciliations. In the process, some anarchists have taken up with other approaches to demonstration activism—including, most notably, an emphasis on more autonomous, decentralized actions. In this review of the past year’s demonstrations, we’ll discuss the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches, and analyze how these have played out in the streets.
\n\nIn considering how to evaluate both mass and autonomous actions, we should begin by establishing what it is fair to expect of them. Most anarchists thoughtlessly describe them as direct action, but, technically speaking, demonstrations—even confrontational, militant ones, in which police are forced out of neighborhoods, corporate property is set afire, and bureaucratic summits are shut down—are not direct action. Making love, growing or stealing food, providing free child care—these are concrete actions that directly accomplish their goals. Militant demonstration tactics, on the other hand, may qualify as direct action to the extent to which they circumvent liberal or police control to make a point or create an atmosphere outside the dictates of the powers that be, but most anarchists who participate in them would argue that their primary purpose is to bring closer the abolition of the hierarchies and institutions against which they are staged, and viewed in this light they are generally more symbolic than direct. 1
\n\nThis is not to say that they are never worthwhile. Even if a demonstration doesn’t serve to solve immediately the problem it is staged to address, it can contribute to this process by spreading awareness, raising morale, exerting pressure on those opposed, and providing useful experience for participants. Not even a whole city of smashed windows could suffice to stop any one multinational corporation from wrecking the ecosystem and exploiting workers; but if a broken window serves to focus attention on an issue and inspire others to mobilize themselves, it at least qualifies as highly effective indirect action.
\n\nThe protests against the meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle in November 1999 remain the most popular example of effective mass action in our time. Though countless pundits have typed themselves blue in the face on the subject, it is possible that anarchists have not yet finished refining the lessons of Seattle regarding the advantages of the mass action model and the elements that must be in place for it to work. The very fact that no mass action since Seattle has been as successful should make it easier for us to evaluate what made it a success, now that we have plenty of experience with actions that lacked those qualities.
\n\nWhat worked in Seattle and the mass demonstrations that followed it? When they were effective, what exactly did they accomplish, and how?
\n\nFirst, it’s important to understand that, unlike every mass action that followed it, the protests in Seattle benefited from the element of surprise. The powers that be had no idea what they were in for, the police were correspondingly unprepared, and, just as significantly, the corporate media didn’t know better than to broadcast the news of the victory far and wide. When subsequent protests failed to succeed in actually halting summit meetings, decimating shopping districts, or receiving international news coverage, this should not have come as a shock: the forces of repression were thoroughly prepared for them, and capitalist media moguls had learned it was not in their best interest to advertise anti-capitalist resistance as effective and exciting.
\n\nAll the same, even without the element of surprise, subsequent mass actions were effective in some ways. They brought attention to anarchist ideas and resistance, enabled radicals to gain experience in militant tactics that were impossible in other contexts, and continued to build momentum and connections in insurgent communities.
\n\nThe chief strengths of mass actions are due to the opportunities accorded by the concentration of many radicals and activists in one space. When a broad range of groups who regularly employ different tactics to address different issues come together, all can benefit from the ways their different approaches complement one another; not only this, but what they accomplish can easily be recognized as a part of a broad-ranging program, rather than a single-issue campaign. For radicals who are used to feeling like a powerless minority lost in a sea of apathy, the presence of many others of like minds can be intensely empowering. In large groups, people can inspire one another to find the courage and sense of entitlement necessary to act in ways they otherwise would not, and there is no shortage of potential comrades with whom to collaborate. When great numbers are present, radicals can plot large-scale strategies and achieve ambitious goals, and the achievement of these goals serves to attract future participants. So many beautiful people concentrated in one space can create a temporary real-life example of an anarchist society, something practically unimaginable for those who grew up in the sterile, colonized, hopeless environments of modern day capitalism.
\n\nThe other really advantageous aspect of mass actions is that they are accessible and participatory. Because they can incorporate a wide range of tactics, they offer space for participants of a wide range of capabilities and comfort levels; and as they are announced openly and take place in public settings, people can join in without need of special social connections. Thus, they serve to create new connections between people and communities, and to provide points of entry for atomized individuals into a mass movement. Additionally, because so many people, both intentional participants and chance witnesses, experience them firsthand, news about mass actions spreads easily through word of mouth and other non-corporate channels. This makes it difficult for the corporate media to ignore them entirely without risking a loss of popular credibility.
\n\nThe limitations of the mass action model also became clearer and clearer as the years passed after Seattle. Organizing events on such a large scale, not to mention traveling to them from a great distance, demands a lot of energy and resources, which must be drawn from the same pool of energy and resources upon which ongoing and locally-based projects depend. If a demonstration results in mass arrests, as the less militant civil-disobedience-oriented mass action models are wont to, this can consume time, money, and attention that might be more profitably applied to some constructive end; the same goes for the felony charges and arduous court cases that can result from individual arrests at more militant actions. The connections made at mass actions are more often between spatially distant, culturally homogenous communities than between local, culturally dissimilar ones that could benefit from continuing to work together outside the mass action format. It has been charged that, though they demand a lot of organizing from those in the host city, mass actions often drain more from local communities than they give to them. More insidiously, because the mass action model focuses on exceptional events that largely take place in well-known cities, it can foster the unhealthy impression that history is determined at special occasions in Washington, DC rather than in the decisions people everywhere make in their daily lives.
\n\nBecause each mass action demands so much from so many, organizers who seek to put on major demonstrations must compete with one another for the privilege of getting to stage one of the few that can happen in any given period; under these conditions, it is easy for authoritarians to seize the reigns, or sabotage the labors of many with a few bad decisions. Because traveling great distances to events and risking arrest is not feasible for people of many walks of life, the mass action model has been criticized as the domain of privileged activists; this does not necessarily undercut the possibility that it can achieve worthwhile goals, but it does indicate certain limits to its effectiveness as outreach and as a participatory form of resistance.
\n\nFinally, and most significantly in the post-9/11 era, the mass action model enables authorities to prepare extensively, making every demonstration into a spectacle of their intimidating might. This gives the misleading impression that people are powerless in the grip of an all-powerful government, when in fact the state must draw troops from far and wide to stage these shows of force. It is especially convenient for intelligence-gathering departments to have so many radicals concentrated in one place, working on one project. Working publicly, in great numbers and under constant surveillance, it is very difficult for radicals to disseminate new tactical ideas without infiltrators and police apprehending them.
\n\nKnowing these limitations all too well, but not wishing to retire into inactivity, some activists argue in favor of more decentralized, autonomous actions. Generally speaking, an autonomous action is an action on a small enough scale that it can be organized without coordination from a central body, below the radar of the authorities. A classic modern day example of autonomous action is an attack on an army recruiting station, in which its windows are broken and slogans are spray painted across its walls. Throughout this discussion, we will be addressing three basic kinds of autonomous action: actions carried out by individuals or individual affinity groups that take place entirely apart from mass actions; actions carried out by individuals or affinity groups that coincide with mass actions; and larger mobilizations, such as impromptu street marches, that are organized and initiated autonomously by small groups.
\n\nThe autonomous action model has many advantages that mass actions lack: such actions almost always benefit from the element of surprise, they require significantly less infrastructure and preparation, and those who organize them can choose the time and terrain of engagement, rather than simply reacting to the decisions of the authorities. Autonomous actions are perfect for those with limited resources who do not desire to act in a high profile manner. They are practical and efficient for striking small blows and maintaining pressure on a broad range of fronts, and provide an excellent learning opportunity for small groups who wish to build up experience together.
\n\nIn choosing to focus on this model, however, activists should also take into account the ways in which its advantages are also limitations. It is easy to maintain secrecy in preparing for an autonomous action, but it is often correspondingly difficult to spread word of it afterwards—let alone carry it out in a manner that offers those outside the immediate circle of organizers the chance to join in. While the autonomous action model is useful for those already involved in the direct action movement, it is rarely useful for helping others get involved or develop more experience. Without participatory, accessible forms of resistance, a movement cannot be expected to grow.
\n\nThe essential idea of autonomous action—that individuals can organize their own activity, without need of direction or superstructure—is also the essence of anarchism. The problem here is that the essential challenge of spreading the autonomous action model is also the essential challenge of the anarchist revolution: most people are not used to acting on their own—without direction, organization, and the energy and sense of urgency that special events and large numbers of comrades provide, many find it difficult to cross over from hesitation into action. Even for those who hope to act autonomously, mass actions provide momentum, morale, crowd cover, legal support, numbers, media attention, and many other important elements. Outside the mass action model, we have to figure out how to do without these, or provide for them some other way.
\n\nFocusing on autonomous actions is a strategic retreat for radicals if it means dropping out of the public eye. Merely material blows, such as financial losses to corporations, will not suffice to topple the powers that be, at least at this juncture in the struggle; the hurricanes that struck the southeastern USA in the summer of 2004 did literally tens of thousands of times the financial damage of all the direct actions carried out that year combined, without posing any threat to the stability of the capitalist order. What is truly dangerous about anticapitalist resistance is not the actual effects of any given action, but the danger that it might become contagious and spread 2; and for this to be possible, people have to hear about resistance, and know how to join in. Too often, autonomous actions that are prepared and carried out in secret depend entirely on the media to publicize them. With the corporate media determined to limit coverage of direct action and independent media struggling to reach any audience beyond a few subcultural ghettos, this can be a serious flaw.
\n\nEven when they do attract attention, autonomous actions do not necessarily mobilize others. In the worst case, a direct action movement oriented around the autonomous actions of a dynamic few can degenerate into a sort of spectator sport. This is one of the many reasons most anarchists reject terrorism and other approaches that depend on the actions of a vanguard: for an action model to stand a chance of being useful in the project of revolutionary struggle, it must be possible for others to adopt and apply it themselves—indeed, it must promote and encourage this, it must seduce people into using it who might otherwise remain inactive.
\n\nFinally, while mass actions by their very nature involve and benefit from large-scale coordination, it is more difficult to coordinate effective decentralized actions. Clearly, as the past few years have shown, it’s not sufficient for some lone maniac to issue a “call for autonomous actions” for them to take place everywhere—or, and this might be even worse news, if they have been taking place everywhere, it doesn’t seem to have made any discernible difference. We need a model for autonomous actions that actually enables them to take place, and to be effective when they do. In the discussion that follows, we’ll analyze the lessons of the past year’s attempts to develop such a model.
\n\nIn considering these issues, it’s important to emphasize that neither mass actions nor autonomous actions represent the only possible form of radical activity—they don’t, and shouldn’t, represent even the primary one. If a total moratorium on both could enable an accordingly greater focus on other activities such as the development of community infrastructure and alliances, it might be for the best for the anarchist movement; some have argued in favor of just that. If we continue to invest energy in demonstrations of any kind, it should be because they can, as part of a broader strategy, enable us to make gains on other fronts as well; this author, for one, feels strongly that this can be the case.
\n\nWatershed events like the aforementioned protests in Seattle don’t just come out of nowhere. Throughout the apparently quiet 1990’s, direct action groups like Earth First! and Anti-Racist Action were acting on a smaller scale, building up experience and momentum, while previously apathetic milieus like the punk rock scene and college activism were politicized by lifestyle politics and the anti-sweatshop campaign, respectively. Once Britain’s successes with the Reclaim the Streets model demonstrated that mass anti-capitalist action was still possible in the post-modern era, it was only a few months before activists tried to do something similar in the USA at the meeting of the World Trade Organization.
\n\nThe results surprised everybody. Suddenly, everyone had a working example of anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist resistance as a reference point. Anarchists, among other radicals, came out of the woodwork, and everyone was itching to have a go at repeating that success. Because the Seattle protests had not been a mere fluke but rather the culmination of a long period of growth and development, there was a root structure in place to sustain further such actions—the most notable being the protests against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. the following April, against the Democratic and Republican National Conventions that summer, and against the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit in Quebec in April 2001. And because each demonstration attracted new attention and additional participants to the anarchist movement, the root structure quickly deepened and spread. The movement, focusing much of its energy on these convergences and mass actions, rode a wave that sometimes made it appear to be an unstoppable historical force.
\n\nBy summer of 2001, when great numbers of people participated in streetfighting at the G8 summit in Italy and planning was underway for more protests against the IMF in Washington, DC, some felt that the movement had reached the crest of that wave. Many were exhausted from the demands of constant organizing, long-distance traveling, and court cases; at least as many felt that the anarchist movement was on the verge of a breakthrough that would change the nature of resistance in North America. We’ll never know whether or not the effectiveness of mass mobilizations had already reached its peak, for before the planned protests in DC could take place, hijackers flew airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the entire context changed. The anarchist response to the new situation was, for the most part, embarrassing: rather than seizing the opportunity to emphasize that now even U.S. citizens were dying as a result of their rulers’ foreign policies, many hesitated to speak out in fear that they would be attacked or seen as insensitive, and thus ceded all the gains made by anarchists over the preceding years. Fears ran rampant that new anti-terror legislation and enforcement would be used to imprison and suppress the anarchist movement, a concern that has since been shown to be unfounded 3. Now that most activists did not believe that positive revolutionary change could be around the corner, all the internal conflicts and burnout that had been building up over the preceding years of constant action came to the fore, and over the following months anarchist communities saw the worst infighting in recent history.
\n\nIn retrospect, it is possible to argue that mainstream media attention was responsible for a significant part of the high morale and sense of entitlement that enabled anarchists to act so effectively in the period between the Seattle demonstrations and the 9/11 attacks. Few if any in the anarchist milieu have addressed this irony. In Western society, everyone is raised to desire, however secretly, to be famous—to be on television — because what is on television is “real,” is important. Although at the time many anarchists insisted they didn’t care whether or not they received coverage in the corporate media, it could be said that the simple knowledge that they were “famous” as a movement if not as individuals sustained their spirits and sense of urgency. When this attention was withdrawn, morale plummeted immediately. The corporate media is unlikely to return the spotlight to anarchist activity in the foreseeable future, and the motivation of anarchists should not be dependent upon other’s representations of them in the first place. Anarchists now must find ways to maintain momentum and energy even through a total media blackout.
\n\nAs the anarchist movement struggled to regain its footing throughout the year following the 9/11 attacks, some tentative attempts were made to apply the mass action model again, notably at the protests against the World Economic Forum in New York City and then at the “People’s Strike” protests against the IMF in DC a year after the terrorist attacks. These were admirable efforts, and if nothing else they served to give those seriously committed to demonstration activism a way to stay involved, but they showed that for the most part the large numbers and high morale previously associated with large mobilizations were no longer available. Older activists were demoralized, younger ones were unsure how to proceed, and people on the fringes of activism and radical politics were too distracted by the spectator sport of the so-called War on Terror to refocus on the struggle against capitalist globalization on other fronts.
\n\nWhen the Terror War shifted into a new gear, demonstrations became popular again, but anarchists were no longer in the forefront of the organizing. Liberal and authoritarian groups attempted to appropriate all the mystique radicals had recently given mass action, while only taking on the superficial aspects of the organizing models that had made protests before 9/11 exciting, participatory, and thus dangerous to the established order. The first two major demonstrations to protest the impending war in Iraq, in DC on January 20 and then worldwide on February 15, were dominated by liberal single-issue politics and models. The protests in New York City on February 15 became a little more raucous when the police attempted to block the march and rank-and-file protesters fought back, but for the most part consciously radical militant tactics seemed a thing of the past at mass actions 4. This was all the more disappointing in that the February 15 protests were perhaps the most heavily attended protests in history; because militant activists had surrendered the mass action context, millions of people marching in the streets neither helped to sway the opinions of the masters of war nor to obstruct their preparations for it—nor, for that matter, to build a movement capable of disarming them.
\n\nThings changed when the United States attacked Iraq on March 20, 2003. On this day, and over the months that followed it, countless cities were struck by demonstrations that went beyond the limits liberal organizers try to impose. San Francisco was entirely paralyzed; more importantly, radical communities appeared in more surprising locations such as Saint Louis, Missouri, conceiving and carrying out their own disruptive actions as the militant core of the anti-war movement. A new generation of activists, many of whom had not participated in the post-Seattle phase of demonstration activism, gained experience during this time.
\n\nAs that phase of the war in Iraq died down, activists also slowed the pace of their activity, taking time to recover from such a demanding period of organizing. Anarchists nationwide began to focus their attention on the Free Trade Area of the Americas ministerial that was to take place in Miami the following November. Many believed that, thanks to the new momentum generated in the anti-war movement, this could be the first really effective, exciting demonstration against capitalist globalization since September 11; some hoped this would be the triumphant return of Seattle-style protest activism. Consultas were held around the country at which plans were hashed out, posters were designed and distributed, groups disseminated calls for various forms of action.
\n\nUnfortunately, Miami was a poorly chosen playing field for this grudge match. It was the most militarized police state North America had ever seen: there were so many police, equipped with so much destructive weaponry, that any kind of militant confrontation would have been doomed to failure. The protestor turnout was bound to be limited: the majority of potential participants were still distracted by the Iraq war, not thinking about corporate globalization, and Miami was a great distance from most active communities. Consequently, there wasn’t a wide range of diversity among the protestors, which can otherwise temper police repression: this made it easy for the police to pigeonhole protesters as either law-abiding union members or unruly anarchists, so as to ignore the former and attack the latter.
\n\nThese factors alone might not have spelled doom for the protests, but there were also several strategic errors in the organizing. The plan organizers put forth, to attack the fence surrounding the meetings, was exactly what the authorities expected 5—and while the latter were thoroughly prepared for this scenario, few activists arrived mentally or physically equipped to undertake this. Even worse, certain organizers cut an unbelievably foolish deal with the labor unions—which, it must be noted, were closely collaborating with the police—to the effect that no direct action would take place during the permitted union march on the afternoon of the primary day of demonstrations. Thanks to this agreement, the police were free simply to maintain order during the union march, with little fear of having to divide their attention; then, as soon as the march was over, they steamrolled across the entire city, beating, gassing, shooting, and arresting everyone who remained, confident that everyone they attacked was acting outside the law and therefore a safe target. The only way anarchists could have turned the tables would have been by acting unexpectedly and en masse outside the occupied district of Miami, but the initiative necessary for that kind of autonomous, covert organizing was painfully lacking. The consulta model, while it indicated an admirable commitment to decentralized organizing, failed to provide intelligent strategic decisions, adequate security for planning, or commitments on which participating groups actually followed through. These may all have been incidental failures, but each one cost dearly.
\n\nThis is not to say nothing of value was accomplished in Miami. People still came together and acted courageously, with all the benefits that entails, and the police state was revealed for what it was, at least to eyewitnesses and through the few venues that ran coverage of the events. But coming away from a protest with a martyr’s tale of police violence and abuse, or, at best, a story of heroic narrow escapes, is a poor second to actually feeling like one has struck blows and made gains.
\n\nIn the wake of what many felt to be a debacle, some anarchists began to emphasize the importance of acting outside mass models in smaller, more autonomous groups with the element of surprise. Some had been promoting this idea for a long time; it had even been tested to some extent in mass actions, such as at the People’s Strike in Washington, DC, September 2002, when the organizers distributed a list of targets and intersections and announced that actions would take place throughout the city. Others, notably environmental and animal liberation activists, had been acting in clandestine cells for decades. So it happened that, as the election year approached, the war in Iraq wore on, and political matters came back to the fore of public attention, anarchists were preoccupied with the question of whether mass actions could ever be effective again, and what forms of decentralized action might be able to replace them.
\n\nThe year 2004 was ushered in by a midnight march in downtown Washington, DC, commemorating the ten year anniversary of the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico. More than one hundred masked anarchists bearing banners, torches, and percussion instruments took over a major thoroughfare for a full hour, leaving spray paint and stencil designs in their wake. This march appeared as if out of nowhere in a crowded business district, on a night when the police department was so overextended that it took over a half hour for even one patrol car to show up. There were no arrests. Clearly, some anarchists had learned the lessons of Miami, without withdrawing from public actions altogether.
\n\nAll the same, the first months of 2004 were quiet ones for direct action. March 20th, the anniversary of the declaration of war on Iraq, saw largely peaceful mass demonstrations along the lines of those before the war, lacking the urgency and militancy of the actions carried out during it. In April, there was another protest in Washington, DC against the IMF and World Bank; the extent to which it was a ritualized, placid affair revealed just how far anarchist attention had drifted from the formerly prioritized terrain of mass actions opposing corporate globalization. It was followed immediately by the March for Women’s Lives, a rally in support of abortion rights that drew over a million people. Although there were hundreds of anarchists present, if not more, the possibility that militant action of any kind might take place was never broached. People of militant perspectives were still coming together when liberal organizers solicited their participation, but without a sense that it was feasible to organize events on their own terms.
\n\nThis impression was sealed by the G8 summit in Georgia that June. The protests at the G8 summit in Genoa, Italy in the summer of 2001 had been the high water mark of the anti-globalization movement: hundreds of thousands of protesters had converged on the city, engaging in tactics of all kinds that had left entire financial districts in wreckage. Eager to avoid another such catastrophe, the powers that be picked a secluded island off the coast of Georgia to host the G8 meeting in June of 2004, and set aside tens of millions of dollars for security. Not only the island itself but much of the coastline around it was thoroughly militarized; as has become customary, the media ran a series of articles demonizing predicted anarchist protestors while emphasizing the invincibility of the police and military forces that would be waiting for them.
\n\nDemoralized by the Miami experience, most advocates of direct action assumed from the outset that nothing would be possible in Georgia. In retrospect, it was wise to let the G8 summit pass rather than squandering the last optimism of the movement on a doomed venture, though at the time this resignation seemed to be a troubling symptom of general cynicism. Many brushed off mass actions as obsolete; in the end, there was only one protestor for every sixty-seven security officers at the G8 summit. Much of the energy of those few who did take the trouble to go to Georgia was invested in the “Fix Shit Up” campaign, in which anarchists provided volunteer labor supporting disadvantaged families in the areas of police occupation. The name of this venture, which could neither successfully solicit media coverage nor appeal to liberal sympathies nor inspire the punk rockers whose slogan it referenced, speaks volumes as to its long-term effectiveness as an insurrectionary strategy. When no actual blows can be struck against the system that creates and enforces poverty, anarchists should at least do what they can to alleviate its effects—but many anarchists are already doing this where they live, and traveling long distances to do so has all the disadvantages of traveling to carry out more militant actions without most of the advantages. In every aspect, the G8 summit was the nadir of the general slump through which mass action activism passed following 9/11, notwithstanding the renaissance during the Iraq war.
\n\nSome had called for widespread autonomous actions around the country to coincide with the G8 summit. A little-known example of one such call was the “Insurrection Night” proposal, which was circulated via email listservs. In incendiary language, it called for people everywhere to carry out militant, confrontational direct actions the Saturday night preceding the week of the G8 summit. The advantages of this approach over going to Georgia to get tear-gassed and arrested in the middle of nowhere were obvious: it allowed radicals to plan their actions in familiar, unguarded terrain and with the benefit of surprise. On the night so designated, however, nothing happened—or if anything did, news of it was never circulated. If all it took to get people to rise up and strike blows against the apparatus of control was to issue a call to action, this revolution would have been over a long time ago; and even if such calls were to work, it seems clear that the system can survive a burning dumpster here and there—the problem is how to concentrate such blows, and strike them in such a way that they give rise to wider uprisings. From this example, one can surmise that both calls for autonomous action and autonomous actions themselves must proceed from an already thriving culture of resistance if they are to offer any results 6—and neither, alone, are sufficient to give rise to such a culture. If the G8 summit in Georgia was the nadir for mass action, the “Insurrection Night” prototype represents the weakest version of the autonomous action model.
\n\nA few days after the proposed night of insurrection, on the final day of the G8 summit, activists in North Carolina shut down an entire corporate business district with steel cables, smoke bombs, and banners decrying the G8 and corporate power in general, causing a massive traffic jam in the center of the state. Local newspapers and television gave this more coverage than they gave the protests in Georgia against the G8 summit, and local residents experienced it far more immediately. This took place only two days before a public outreach event, the “Really Really Free Market,” in the state capital, at which people gathered to share resources and entertainment freely. As a result of the direct action that preceded it, the police and media both paid a great deal of attention to this event: the nightly news showed hundreds of people happily dancing, eating, and exchanging gifts, while police helicopters circled overhead and a hundred riot police waited nearby. Thus, this combination of tactics resulted in free publicity for the effectiveness of covert action, the munificence of community activism, and the heavy-handedness of the state. In contrast to the “Insurrection Night” prototype, this can be seen as an effective integration of autonomous action into a wider strategy for building radical communities and gaining widespread attention.
\n\nAnother example of effective autonomous action occurred a month later in Maine, following an Earth First! gathering, when approximately 150 people converged on the Governor’s Mansion to protest a proposed liquid natural gas pipeline. First, a few activists erected a thirty-foot tripod with a protester locked atop it, blocking the driveway. Once this was accomplished and all but the police liaison and the woman on the tripod had escaped unseen, a small masked group arrived and took advantage of the distraction occasioned by the tripod to dump hundreds of pounds of foul lobster guts across the lawn. They disappeared as other protesters showed up with food, games, and other festive forms of entertainment, further confusing the slowly responding authorities. Two communiqués were delivered: one a serious one for the mainstream media, the other a hilarious statement on behalf of the “lobster liberation front” for activists and others with a sense of humor. The event helped keep opposition to the pipeline visible, gave those opposing it more bargaining power, and demonstrated an alternate model for autonomous actions.
\n\nThe Maine action was organized in secrecy by a small circle of people who nonetheless managed to open it up to great numbers of participants; in this regard, it possessed many of the advantages of both the mass and autonomous action models. As the target was three hours’ drive distant from the gathering at which participants were recruited, and its identity was never openly revealed, the action retained the element of surprise. At the gathering, two preparatory meetings were held at which organizers described the general nature of the target and affinity groups formed to focus on different aspects of the action. The morning of the action, a caravan left the gathering; the bulk of the participants did not know where they were going until they were led onto the site. This negated the risk of informers being present.
\n\nThis kind of organizing demands a careful balance of security and communication, for those invited must learn enough about the action to be excited about participating and equipped to do so effectively. This model requires a large number of people to place a high level of trust in a few individuals; thus, it often works best in tight-knit or culturally homogeneous communities. While it is not as accessible to broad ranges of people as the mass action model, it is more participatory than other forms of autonomous action, offering introductory roles for less experienced activists.
\n\nThe events in North Carolina and Maine were only two of several local actions in mid-2004; but for radical activists and well-behaved citizens alike, the central political events of the summer were the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. At these, the possibilities and limitations of the anarchist movement’s preoccupation with autonomous actions were tested.
\n\nThe Democratic National Convention took place in Boston at the end of July. It was not heavily attended by radicals; many were saving their time and energy for the Republican National Convention. Regardless of theoretical matters such as whether anti-authoritarians should focus on contesting the most powerful political party or all political parties, activists laying plans for mass actions must take into account practical questions such as how many people will actually show up. Perhaps if thousands of anarchists had converged on Boston to show their opposition to the false alternative represented by the Democratic Party, it would have made an important point, but this was not to be. As many learned in Miami, anarchists must always devise strategies that take into account the number of participants an event will draw and how much militancy can realistically be expected of them.
\n\nTo get perspective on the protests at the Democratic National Convention, we can compare and contrast them with the People’s Strike protests against the International Monetary Fund in DC September 2002, with which they shared many features. Both protests were less attended than organizers hoped; both included calls for autonomous action, as well as organizing for more centralized, accessible events; both took place in cities that are known for having police that show restraint during protests. At each event, the main day of action featured a critical mass bicycle parade, a march, and decentralized actions around the periphery. Both protests were organized by explicitly anti-authoritarian groups that made media coverage an integral part of their strategy.
\n\nThe organizers of the People’s Strike had emphasized the confrontational character of their action, declaring explicitly that the city would be shut down; the unapologetically militant tone of their rhetoric was one of the most salient features of that mobilization. Although it turned out that not enough militants, and not militant enough ones at that, turned out to follow through on this threat, the media and police accomplished it themselves by spreading hysteria in advance and clogging up the city in their attempts to defend it. After most of the actions planned had been accomplished, the police, still unnerved and always most likely to go after defenseless sitting targets, mass-arrested everyone present at a non-confrontational action in Pershing Park. This mass arrest, though somewhat inconvenient at the time, proved to be the most important legacy of the action: it ensured international media coverage for the protest, made the police look absurd, and ensnared the city in lawsuits that kept the demonstration in the news for years afterwards and forced the police to be more hesitant to make arrests during future protests.
\n\nBy contrast, in Boston, the organizers—the “Bl(A)ck Tea Society”—were careful to distance themselves from violence, striving to offset the media campaign of extreme misinformation about anarchists that had become typical by that time [7]. Presumably, they hoped that by doing so they could attract more participants; unfortunately, as the prevailing sentiment in liberal circles was that getting “anybody but Bush” elected president was the first priority, participation in protests against the Democratic Party was bound to be limited to radicals. The Boston organizers were also kept on edge by a campaign of police and FBI intimidation, but this never panned out into the raids and arrests they feared. The fact that there were so few arrests in Boston indicates that, however intimidating the police made certain to be before and during the event, they themselves hoped to avoid illegal raids and mass arrests that would draw more attention to the protests. Had the organizers figured this out in advance, they could have strategized accordingly.
\n\nFollowing the People’s Strike model, the organizers in Boston distributed a list of targets throughout the city suitable for autonomous action. However, in preparing the People’s Strike, the organizers had also covertly coordinated many actions, so as to be sure that something would happen—consequently, there were freeways shut down by burning tires, bank windows smashed, locks glued, and a major avenue barricaded by a giant inflatable, though many of these actions went unnoticed by the media or other activists because they took place over such a broad area. In Boston, the organizers don’t seem to have been as proactive, and neither, apparently, were many of the other activists who came to the protest—the most militant action of the event seems to have been an incident in which a dozen people turned over shelves in a Gap clothing store, leaving spray paint in their wake.
\n\nJust as the “Insurrection Night” model failed to yield results, simply distributing a list of targets is hardly sufficient to enable militant action to occur. If they hope to see militant autonomous actions carried out to the extent that mass actions have been in the past, organizers must provide some of the prerequisites that enable people to apply militant tactics in the latter context. These include crowd cover, communications and scouting, media attention, and, above all, the reassurance that somebody somewhere has actually invested energy in making sure something will happen. The Bl(A)ck Tea Society attracted the necessary media attention; they provided a text messaging communications system, though it proved vulnerable to police surveillance, resulting in a few arrests after a botched attempt to assemble following the “Really Really Democratic Bazaar”; they seemed to have done little else to facilitate autonomous actions. This is not to disparage their organizing efforts—in addition to media and outreach work, they also organized a convergence center, prepared legal infrastructure, and staged a variant on the Really Really Free Market model that attracted thousands of participants. But if autonomous action is to rival mass action as a model for militant activity, anarchists have to learn that the “clap your hands if you believe in Tinkerbelle” approach, in which organizers call for decentralized actions and then cross their fingers and hope an army of maniacs will show up to plan and execute them, does not produce results.
\n\nThe Democratic National Convention was not an opportune setting for a doomsday showdown with the forces of law and order, and it’s important that a movement limited in numbers and experience not overextend itself. Perhaps anarchists should have concentrated all their energy on accessible, non-confrontational approaches in Boston; it certainly doesn’t pay to make empty threats too many times. If effective militant action of any kind was to happen there, given the massive police presence and small numbers of protesters, it would have had to have been decentralized and autonomous: twenty such actions as happened at the Gap, for example, could have caught the police by surprise, generated media attention, and raised morale in anticipation of the Republican National Convention. Failing that, it would have been more sensible to focus on more outreach and community-building, in which the Boston protests were already superior to the People’s Strike. In trying to have it both ways by calling for militant action while neither preparing it nor tricking the police into making it unnecessary, the organizers played into the hands of the authorities, who hoped to show that they could easily thwart anarchist attempts at disruption. This had negative consequences for Boston locals as well as the anarchist movement. While the long-term effects of the “People’s Strike” were that local police became more hesitant in dealing with crowds, the millions of dollars of funding that the Boston police received to prepare for the convention paid for an arsenal of semi-lethal weapons—one of which was used to kill a woman during a post-game sports riot a few months later.
\n\nA month after the protests in Boston, the Republican National Convention was held in New York City. Unlike every other demonstration since the invasion of Iraq, this was a historic opportunity for anarchists to apply the mass action model effectively. All the necessary pieces were in place: the local populace was furious with the Republicans for invading their city, and enthusiastically supportive of the protesters; radicals were coming by the thousands from all around the country, hoping this would be the event of a lifetime; and there was to be a wide range of people involved in the protests and a great deal of media attention focused on them, both of which would help deter the police from a violent crackdown such as the one in Miami the preceding year. The attention of the whole world was concentrated on New York City, and while many liberals feared that a serious confrontation there would undermine the chances of the Democratic Party’s presidential hopeful, countless others longed for one.
\n\nIf all that wasn’t enough, there was a struggle going on between the liberal organizers and the city police department as to whether the giant permitted march would be allowed to go to Central Park. This was the same situation that had precipitated the street confrontations during the anti-war protests in New York a year and a half earlier; if the city was unable to reach an agreement with the organizers in time, everyone knew that the march could turn violent. The leaders of the liberal organizing coalition backed down on their demands on one occasion, only to be forced by their grassroots membership to reinstate them. This conflict provided a perfect opportunity for anarchist organizing. A nationwide call for a black bloc on the day of the main permitted march would have taken perfect advantage of this conflict, giving those frustrated with the city government and its liberal accomplices a rallying point. Had the first major day of protests ended in streetfighting, it would have changed the entire character of the protests and perhaps of opposition to the Bush regime in general. The very last thing the police department of New York City wanted was to have to use tear gas in the crowded streets of the most populated city in North America; this would have been a public relations debacle for both the city government and the Republican Party, and it would have shown that anarchists could pose a real threat to the imposed domestic peace that enables wars overseas. Even if this had resulted in massive numbers of arrests, it could have been worth it—hundreds, if not more, of the anarchists who went to New York ended up getting arrested, anyway.
\n\nAlas, anarchists were so caught up in solving strategic problems from past actions that they failed to apprehend these possibilities. While a heavier focus on autonomous actions would have been the only hope of enabling effective militant tactics at the demonstrations in Miami and Boston, New York was a perfect setting for a large-scale, centrally organized strategy, and anarchists passed this chance up in favor of a focus on decentralized, autonomous actions. Perhaps older activists were still shell-shocked from the protests at the Republican National Convention in 2000, at which a poorly planned mass action had ended in a lot of pointless, demoralizing arrests; perhaps it was just too difficult to coordinate actions centrally between groups from around the world in such an enormous and complicated city; perhaps it really was the legacy of Miami frightening anarchists out of using their heads. Regardless, as the communiqué delivered weeks before the demonstrations by the NYC Anarchist Grapevine admitted, there was no “Big Plan” for militant action in New York.
\n\nUnfortunately, what anarchists fail to coordinate themselves will be coordinated by authoritarians, and so, while anarchist labor was central to the infrastructure that enabled them, the character of most of the actions planned for New York was non-confrontational, even liberal. At the last minute, the organizers of the main march finally accepted the conditions of the city, agreeing to march in circles rather than follow through on the desires of the rank-and-file who wanted to go to Central Park with or without a permit; likewise, though anarchists and militants swelled the numbers of many other actions, these were largely orchestrated to avoid actually challenging the activities of the Republicans or the occupation of the city.
\n\nTo be fair, some anarchists, notably including many who had traveled from San Francisco and other parts of the West Coast, organized a day of direct action late in the protests, but they focused only on enabling symbolic tactics of civil disobedience. Worse, they made exactly the same mistake that had been made in Miami and at the Republican National Convention four years earlier: they arranged for their action not to coincide with any others and to take place after most of the less radical protesters had left the city, so the police had free hands to focus on repressing everyone on the streets that night. This resulted in over one thousand arrests, without any concrete objective being accomplished besides the news coverage these attracted and the harassment of some Republican delegates.
\n\nOne of the most important lessons that can be drawn from the aforementioned action is the importance of different kinds of actions taking place simultaneously. In Seattle, Quebec, and Genoa, legal marches, civil disobedience, and confrontational militant action all took place at once, and the division of the city into zones according to level of risk made it possible for protesters to pick the form of engagement with which they were most comfortable. In the Republican National Conventions of both 2000 and 2004, as well as the FTAA protests in Miami, organizers did exactly the opposite, senselessly endangering those committed to militant action and undercutting the effectiveness of the protests as a whole. The costs of this could have been offset had militants organized a major mass action themselves, but none dared do so.
\n\nIn the absence of a unified approach, the hundreds of different actions that took place in New York never quite added up to the insurrection they could have. As a demonstration of the possibilities of localized autonomous action, New York was unparalleled, but it was also a missed opportunity in an era that provides few good chances to apply the mass action model.
\n\nTwo groups did attempt to organize actions on the day of the main march; ironically, one applied the mass action model as if carrying out an autonomous action, while the other did exactly the opposite. The former of these groups was a militant contingent, apparently organized by word of mouth, that took part in the main permitted march; this might be the first case on record of a black bloc going undercover by mixing with civilian protesters and leaving their faces uncovered until the moment before the action. When this group approached the point at which the march turned around to march away from Central Park, right in front of the building hosting the convention center, an enormous green dragon puppet was set afire, and streetfighting broke out; however, there were not enough numbers or preparation to maintain this. Within an hour, the police had reestablished control and the march proceeded as before; only a few impressive photographs of the fire remained, one of which ran in one especially poorly informed tabloid with a caption describing it as the work of “the anarchist group ‘Black Box’.” 7
\n\nThe other notable militant effort that day was a call for anarchists to intercept Republican delegates on their way to their evening’s entertainment at several Broadway shows. However, because this call was promoted in such venues as the New York Times, these actions lacked the element of surprise, the most important aspect of the autonomous action model. Many anarchists showed up, but as there was no strategy for mass action and few participants brought individual plans of their own, there were many arrests and little more was accomplished than a few delegates being shouted at.
\n\nWhatever strategic miscalculations anarchists may have made, it was still thrilling to be in New York with so many others determined to change the course of history. The Critical Mass bicycle parade, which took place before most of the other events, offered a moving illustration of just how many people and how much energy were gathered together that week; to stand at a corner and watch groups of thirty and forty surge constantly past for a full half hour was simply breathtaking. Most who went to New York left with new energy and inspiration, which helped to catalyze further action as the elections drew near.
\n\nThe election provided a matchless opportunity for nationwide autonomous actions. Unlike any summit or local issue, it happened everywhere at once, focusing public attention on a wide range of issues that could be addressed on a variety of fronts. Among others, a nationwide campaign on the theme “Don’t (Just) Vote, Get Active” urged people to take action on election day to demonstrate all the possibilities for political engagement beyond the voting booth 8.
\n\nThe diversity and scope of the actions anarchists carried out around the election make it worth recounting some of them here. In Washington, DC, fifteen polling stations were decorated the night before election day with a stencil design fifteen feet long and four feet high reading “Our dreams will never fit in their ballot boxes.” In Baltimore, the following afternoon, a Reclaim the Streets action on the same theme attracted sixty people.
\n\nIn Portland, Oregon, one thousand people struggled with police to march through the streets. A “Don’t Just Vote, Take Action” march of two hundred people in Tucson, Arizona was attacked by police employing pepper bullets. A spontaneous march of almost two hundred people in downtown Philadelphia blocked a major bridge to New Jersey; everyone escaped arrest except a reporter from a local television news station who was inexplicably attacked by police while marchers chanted “We don’t need no water, let the motherfucker burn!” In New Orleans, a radical Day of the Dead march featuring a marching band, seventy-five skeletons, and an alter screamed and moaned its way through the French Quarter to the riverfront, at which the alter was filled with remembrances of deceased loved ones and then set afire as a naked attendant swam it out to sea; on the return route, participants dragged newspaper boxes and garbage cans into the streets and smashed the window of a stretch-SUV deemed too revolting to ignore.
\n\nDuring Chicago’s “Don’t Just Vote Week of Resistance,” which included several demonstrations and other events, police tried and failed to prevent over one thousand people from taking the streets in a massive unpermitted march. At another incident in Chicago, a rock was thrown through the window of a GOP office in which Republicans were gathered to watch election results, sending glass flying all over the room. Large rocks were also thrown through the windows of the Republican headquarters in downtown Buffalo, New York and a nearby army recruiting center, and the local news station received a letter claiming responsibility.
\n\nIn Red Hook, New York, 250 Bard college students shut down an intersection in the center of town for almost an hour until police forcibly dispersed them. In northern Los Angeles county, a group carried out what they suggested might be the first banner drop in their area, with a banner on the “Don’t (Just) Vote” theme reading “Workers: Which Millionaire Will You Vote For?” In Vermillion, South Dakota, a town of only 10,000 residents, fifty people maintained a presence outside a voting booth, stretching a volleyball net to bear a variety of signs, sharing food, and inviting all with grudges of their own against the system to join them. The same town was to host another such demonstration two and a half months later on the day of the Inauguration, attracting media coverage from as far away as San Diego, CA.
\n\nThe day after the election, a march in downtown Washington, DC on the theme “No Matter, Who Won, The System Is Rotten” attracted one hundred people. Equipped with a powerful sound system, it snaked through the streets, disruptive and rowdy, evading police repression. In San Francisco, five thousand people marched against Bush; afterwards, a breakaway group built a bonfire out of US flags and an effigy of Bush, then marched through the city pulling urban debris and newspaper boxes into the street and smashing the windows of two banks. In San Diego, fliers posted the preceding night on UCSD campus reading “Where’s the Riot?” attracted one hundred people to an impromptu forum as to what forms resistance could take next. When the question “Who’s willing to get arrested today?” was broached, many raised their hands.
\n\nTwo days later, in perhaps the most militant participatory action of the week, a surprise march of over one hundred people bearing torches, drums, anarchist banners, and a two-headed effigy of Bush and Kerry took over downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, decorating the streets with graffiti and destroying bank machines until it reached the state headquarters of the Republican Party. The windows of the building were smashed, its walls were covered in spray paint, fireworks were set off inside, and the effigy was set afire in the front yard. The following day, over fifty-eight major media outlets ran a story covering the event, in which the state GOP chief of staff was quoted as saying that campaign offices and party headquarters were being vandalized throughout the nation. “They have a right to disagree,” he pleaded, “but to do it agreeably.”
\n\nThe following night, yet another spontaneous march occurred in Washington, DC, leaving spray paint in its wake and meeting with enthusiasm from locals. From one side of the country to the other, by day and by night, militants were carrying out actions that demonstrated the seriousness of their discontent and invited others to express their own. This was the autonomous action model, which had evolved over the preceding year, finally being used to effect in circumstances for which it was appropriate.
\n\nIronically, as the Inauguration approached in January of 2005, it was activists from New York City that insisted protests be organized on the mass action model and called for a massive anti-authoritarian march, while others called for autonomous actions. This time, both were right, and it was only tactical errors, not errors in strategy, that prevented the protests from shutting down the spectacle. Presidential inaugurations provide a rare opportunity for centrally-organized anarchist mass actions: they can attract large numbers of anti-authoritarians, they offer an obvious target, and the risk of arrests and police brutality are forestalled by the presence of diverse crowds and media and the desire of the authorities to maintain the illusion that everyone is pleased with the ruler being sworn in. At this particular inauguration, the ongoing legacy of the mass arrests of the People’s Strike a full two and a half years earlier also served to tie the hands of the police. At the same time, Washington, DC, being the nation’s capital, provides an excellent field for autonomous actions, which could only serve to heighten tensions, distract and confuse the police, and emphasize popular discontent.
\n\nThe massive anarchist march was wisely planned to coincide with the other protests of the day, so as to benefit from the crowd cover they provided and the divided attention of the police. Hundreds of people participated in the march, even though, as a result of some strange misunderstanding or internal conflict, it left the convergence point early, before many would-be participants had even arrived. At the previous inauguration, a black bloc had successfully broken through one of the checkpoints surrounding the parade route, and the organizers planned to repeat this feat and go on to block the route. This was the major tactical error that prevented the march from being really effective: a basic rule of thumb in planning for an action is not to count on being able to repeat the past. Had the organizers prepared a back-up plan, such as a way to maintain the coherence of the bloc if it could not penetrate police lines and a secondary target outside the immediate zone of police control, it would not have been such a misfortune that the police blocked the path of the march before it arrived at a checkpoint. As it was, having no backup plan, the march bogged down at this point, and broke up; a smaller company of anarchists regrouped and succeeded in reaching and charging a checkpoint, but lacked the numbers and equipment to break through.
\n\nOther problems afflicting the march included an apparent loss of contact with the scouting team and poor internal communication dynamics that led many to accuse one participating group of hijacking the march. Aside from these, the fact that the march did not succeed in its professed objective can be attributed to the hesitance with which most participants approached it, as it was the first militant mass action of its size since Miami. There were enough people there to break through the police lines, had more of them been ready to put their all into it; next time, assured by that experience that mass actions are indeed still possible in the post-9/11 world, perhaps activists will arrive better equipped and more psychologically prepared. Speaking of equipment, it’s worth pointing out that the black bloc that broke through the checkpoint in 2000 used an appropriated industrial wheelbarrow to spearhead their charge, while the march at the 2004 inauguration had only a banner reinforced with PVC pipe. PVC pipe is notoriously fragile, and has failed militant marches several times now; the beginning convergence point was so free from police control that participants could have brought in massive wooden shields and other fortifications, which would have served much better in the ensuing mêlée. Likewise, the march passed several construction sites that less hesitant militants would have raided for materials.
\n\nJust when it seemed the day’s events were over, the crowd leaving a packed show by punk band Anti-Flag filled the street in a surprise march of hundreds. Bearing torches, drums, anarchist banners, spray-paint cans, and shopping carts full of useful materials, the throng marched through Adams Morgan, an ethnic neighborhood suffering rapid gentrification. The results surprised everyone, presumably including those who initiated the march. A vast banner reading “From DC to Iraq: With Occupation Comes Resistance” was dropped from the top of a Starbucks coffeeshop, along with a great quantity of fireworks. Demonstrators smashed the windows of several corporate outlets, including Citibank, Riggs Bank, McDonald’s, and KFC, as well as those of a police substation and the windshield of a police car following the demonstration; police reports estimated the damage to corporate and police property at $15,000. Anarchist graffiti covered walls, and many pulled newspaper boxes and dumpsters into the streets. Locals who witnessed the march were supportive and encouraging to an almost surprising degree, honking car horns and cheering; a worker at a local Ethiopian restaurant raised his fist and shouted “Down with Bush! We have to shut this city down!”
\n\nMassive numbers of befuddled riot police arrived before the march could reach a hotel hosting an Inaugural Ball to which Bush had just paid a visit. Most participants dispersed safely; approximately seventy were trapped in an alley and arrested, but almost all of them were released without charges after paying $50. Even factoring in the subsequent backlash from those who always oppose confrontational tactics, as militant actions go, this was a raging success. It received support from unusual quarters, too, including members of Anti-Flag, the representative of Iraq Veterans Against the War who had spoken at the show, and parents of minors arrested in the alley.
\n\nSo this is where we leave our heroes, escaping from downtown Washington, DC in the middle of the night, helicopter spotlights flashing overhead and sirens wailing nearby. Is this only a momentary anomaly in a world of consolidated state control, or a precursor of things to come? Will they manage to find common cause with dissidents of other demographics, so a real, broad-based insurrection will be possible? How can they hone their tactics and strategies to fit the current political and social context?
\n\nFrom the events of the past few years, we can derive some basic lessons about both mass and autonomous actions. We had better do so—if we don’t, the anarchist movement may have to go through this learning process all over again.
\n\nFirst of all, let’s address once and for all the question of whether mass actions are still effective in the post-9/11 era. The answer, in the opinion of everyone involved in the development of this analysis, is a resounding yes. The examples of the Republican National Convention and the recent Presidential Inauguration both indicate that it is still possible to act en masse, according to widely disseminated, publicly coordinated plans; we have only to be more judicious in choosing when and how to do so.
\n\nWithout at least occasional mass actions, anarchist communities risk losing the ability to combine forces, not to mention the visibility and influence that are critical to their proliferation. At the same time, anarchists must pick the mass actions in which they invest themselves carefully; every time anarchists call for a mass action, it should be a resounding success, so people will feel safe investing themselves in participating in the next one.
\n\nWhat elements make for a perfect mass action? First, and most obviously, a mass action must be massively attended. The model should therefore only be employed when great numbers of people can realistically be expected to show. Organizers should promote far in advance, and seek to collaborate to this end with as wide a range of other groups as possible; just as importantly, they should be skilled in reading the zeitgeist, so they can pick the right occasions to call for mass actions.
\n\nSecond, a mass action must be attended by a wide range of people, and receive a lot of media attention. When diverse crowds are present and television cameras are running, police almost always hesitate to use extreme force; when they choose to do so under those circumstances, it costs them a lot, and can even end up being a tactical victory for protesters. Organizers must nurture their ability to predict the factors that determine police strategy: Will the police want to show their control of the situation by making a lot of arrests, or will it be more important to them to avoid this and instead focus on bluffing and intimidation? What will police be expecting, and how will they respond to the unexpected? How quickly can they apprehend new information, and how concentrated will their attention be?
\n\nThird, a mass action should have an objective that is immediately comprehensible and attractive, and offer a strategy that people can easily adopt for themselves. The demonstrations against the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit in Quebec City spread from a few hundred militants to the population of the entire city because the tactics employed—masking up, throwing back tear gas canisters, blocking roads—were easy to apprehend and apply, and because locals were already angry about the police occupying their city. This question determines whether a militant engagement ends up as a vanguardist group slogging it out in a private war with the government or a generalized popular insurrection.
\n\nFourth, militants in a mass action should make sure their plans are intelligently coordinated with those of others. As described above in the analysis of the protests at the last two Republican National Conventions, it is almost always better for dissimilar actions to take place simultaneously rather than consecutively. In a best case scenario, actions employing different tactics can be arranged to complement one another. Healthy relationships between activists partial to different tactics facilitate this; these require a lot of nurturing between actions, and a lot of patience when conflicts arise.
\n\nFinally, organizers must take matters such as morale, momentum, and crowd dynamics seriously. Under some circumstances, all it takes to turn a passive mass into a militant force is for a few maniacs to step forward and show what is possible; in other cases, an entire militant bloc can be intimidated into inactivity by police bluffing. In learning what factors enable people to take action, organizers can formulate strategies based on realistic expectations.
\n\nIn planning a mass action, organizers should look back in recent history for similar precedents from which they can determine what to expect. At the same time, attempting to repeat the past—especially when one’s enemies have learned from it—is almost always a doomed venture. Organizers should consider, instead, the opportunities that have been missed before, and try to take advantage of these. When employing a strategy for the first time, it is important to be prepared for the possibility that it will succeed as well as the possibility that it will fail. New strategies generally work, and fail only because people lack the assurance to follow them through completely; old strategies, on the other hand, usually fail because opponents are all too ready for them, however ready people are to apply them. Employing an old strategy in an entirely new context can be tremendously effective; this is something at which the anarchist movement, being internationally active and interconnected, should excel. Also, both organizers of massive events and individual participants in them should formulate backup plans for different scenarios, so they can turn any development to their advantage.
\n\nThe communities in which militant activists develop must share basic skills such as how to read a volatile situation, how to work in affinity groups, and how and when to disperse. Activists of all demographics and backgrounds must be encouraged to feel entitled to participate in planning and carrying out militant actions. In addition, when conditions are not opportune for confrontation, radicals must not pressure themselves to do anything rash, but rather save themselves for better opportunities.
\n\nDuring the lulls between mass actions, decentralized, autonomous actions can serve to keep activists’ skills sharp and to continue the struggle on other fronts. As they did during the 1990’s, small-scale local actions can give activists the practice they need to be comfortable acting in more challenging mass action scenarios; they also connect activists to one other, building experienced, dangerous groups linked to broader communities. To this purpose, the best forms of autonomous action are the ones that, rather than striking the most grievous material blows, bring in new participants and build solidarity between different circles so that militant activity may take place more widely.
\n\nOne of the most important challenges of the coming years, during which we can be sure police repression of all forms of resistance will continue and perhaps increase, will be to develop ways to act socially and publicly yet with the element of surprise. Without this capability, participatory militant action will become impossible except once or twice a year at mass actions, and it will be impossible to spread militant tactics in our local communities. To this end, we have to cultivate sites of social interaction and channels of communication that are accessible to all but the authorities: these can include local communities bonded by potlucks and other face-to-face contact, cultural milieus such as politicized music scenes, and connections between committed activists and formerly apolitical social circles. In these, we can get to know and trust one another, and stage assaults on the capitalist nightmare from unexpected directions.
\n\nThe preceding analysis offers three successful prototypes for autonomous yet participatory action. The first is the model employed by the activists who carried out the G8 solidarity action before the Really Really Free Market in Raleigh, North Carolina, in which a small, clandestine group acts to augment the efforts of an open, accessible group; this is perfect for carrying out complicated, high-risk plans, but offers little opportunity for new people to be brought in and gain experience. The second is the model employed by the activists who conceived the protest at the Governor’s Mansion in Maine, in which a core group takes advantage of a social setting to invite a larger number of people to help plan and participate in an action without revealing the most sensitive details of the target; this is a less secure, more participatory model, offering roles for those not yet sure enough of themselves to organize their own major actions, but still limiting participation to an in-group. The third is the model employed by the activists who instigated the march in Adams Morgan after the Presidential Inauguration in Washington, DC, in which a participatory action is initiated by a small group within a larger mass; this offers the greatest number the opportunity to witness or participate in an action, even an extremely confrontational one, but it also can endanger participants, especially as collective planning is impossible. Hopefully, over the years to come, many more activists will make use of and expand on these prototypes, refining and combining them in the process.
\n\nIt may be some time before the next period of intense struggle. While it sometimes seemed during the months immediately preceding and following the election that the country was slipping towards civil war, the atmosphere now is somewhat more subdued, as liberals lick their wounds and radicals adjust to the post-war, post-election context. This is not necessarily a bad thing; the anarchist community is not yet ready for an all-out war to the death with the rulers of the world. Let’s make use of this interval to put down firmer foundations and develop new skills. When the next opportunities arrive to take on the powers that be, let’s be ready, our communities strong and closely linked, our courage and confidence in each other tried and true.
\n\nWere a reading list to accompany this analysis, it would include “Hot Town, Summer in the City: Anarchist Analysis of the 2004 RNC Protests” by Alexander Trocchi, CrimethInc. International News Agent Provocateur, and “FROM DC TO IRAQ: WITH OCCUPATION COMES RESISTANCE—What happened in Adams Morgan on January 20; a report, analysis, and response to criticism,” by the Circle A Brigade, both of which can be located on the internet by means of google.com.
\n\nSetting out to shut down a capitalist summit and succeeding in doing so may qualify as direct action in the most immediate sense, but an anti-capitalist movement that succeeded in shutting down summit after summit without bringing any closer the abolition of capitalist social relations would be a failure, not a success. Hence, such feats ultimately have their greatest value as demonstrations of what is possible. ↩
\nThis is not to say that widely publicized but purely symbolic actions are sufficient to build a movement that can pose a threat to capitalism! To inspire others and attract future participants, militant actions must actually strike blows and accomplish immediate goals. ↩
\nThis was probably more of an irrational emotional reaction than a miscalculation. To the extent that it was a judgment call, it indicates that activists overestimated either the ability of the government to identify and repress them or the threat the government perceived them to pose. ↩
\nAnother notable exception to this generalization occurred during an otherwise placid liberal march in Washington, DC when a small group of anarchists broke away, marched to the World Bank, charged into the building, and trashed it from the inside. ↩
\nProtestors had applied this tactic at the previous FTAA ministerial in Quebec City, and met with some success, as it was fairly new at the time. By the time of the ministerial in Miami, however, fences had been attacked from Genoa to Cancun, and it was exactly what the authorities were expecting. As a general rule of thumb, it’s a bad idea to try an approach that worked or almost worked in a similar previous confrontation, assuming your opponents are in as much of a position to learn from the past as you are. ↩
\nOne person or group calling for others to act is little better than a vanguard, and can be expected to meet with as much success as the various communist splinter groups currently do. Calls for decentralized actions work best when activists who are already organizing themselves call upon others in their networks to join in, offering the opportunity to be part of an effort that already has participation and momentum in its favor. ↩
\nIn another hilarious and ironic development, it turned out that there was a theater group in New York for the protests under the moniker Greene Dragon Society. Scrambling to give the impression that they were in control of the situation, the FBI announced that it had infiltrated the “Green Dragon Group” over a year earlier and were abreast of all its nefarious plans; this could only be to the misfortune of both the aforementioned liberal group and the FBI, however, as the Greene Dragon Society doesn’t appear to have been anywhere near the puppet that went up in flames, nor to have had anything to do with its construction. A more likely story was circulated by Starhawk of the pagan cluster, who was engaged in a spiral dance a block away when the dragon caught fire; she speculates that it was the energy released from their ritual that triggered the conflagration. ↩
\nSome few anarchists, mostly of the persuasion given to hyper-radical rhetoric and little action to back it up, were critical of this campaign on the grounds that it was too soft on voting. Indeed, insofar as people conflate it with actual political participation, voting is extremely pernicious—as every text circulated by the “Don’t (Just) Vote” campaign emphasized. That being the case, these critics seem to have been raising a new and daring question: entirely apart from the dangerous superstitions associated with it, can voting itself, taken in a vacuum, be harmful? Your humble editor, anxiously concerned about such safety issues, has done quite a bit of research on this subject and has finally turned up some evidence that this may be the case, if only in extreme situations. A dissident account of the untimely death of Edgar Allen Poe, advanced most recently in the amusing miscellany Why Americans Zigzag When They Eat, suggests that the renowned author was killed by being voted to death. In those days, political gangs would rig elections by shanghaiing vulnerable gentlemen and liquoring or doping them up to make them agreeable. On election day, these unfortunates would be frog-marched around to all the polling stations as fast as possible; once one circuit was completed, their handlers would change their clothes, trim their mustaches, and run them around again. The faster the pace they kept, the more votes they were worth, so it must have been a grueling process. (Nowadays, political gangs bypass such clumsy methods and accomplish the same thing with advertising and voting machine fraud.) Poe was known for his stylish dressing, but when he was found—drunk, delirious, and in the process of dying of exhaustion, at a Baltimore bar that doubled as a polling station—he was wearing a very cheap suit that didn’t seem to belong to him. It was an election day. So there you have it: voting, horror of capitalist horrors, killed the greatest horror writer of all time—and might kill you, too, if you put too much stock in it. ↩
\n