![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/09/15/1.jpg\")
The good old days, when pirating copies was a collective activity and you never paid for toner.
\nWe’ve introduced a new option for printing our zines in case you need to go easy on the toner.
\n\nWhen you’re printing zines, do you pay for toner? We certainly didn’t, back in the day. But times change, and means of photocopying come and go. The one thing that doesn’t change is the necessity to mass-produce and distribute zines by the thousand.
\n\nIt has come to our attention that some of our zine designs burn through toner at an alarming pace. This could be an obstacle for those who are paying for toner themselves. What possesses a designer to fill a zine layout with vast swathes of pitch black? Probably, among other things, never having to be the one responsible for acquiring toner cartridges. Nice work if you can get it!
\n\nFortunately, as often happens, one industrious CrimethInc. agent had already solved this problem autonomously, preparing her own toner-lite versions of nearly three dozen of our zines. It only remained for us to make her solution accessible to everyone else.
\n\nSo we’ve added a new feature to the zine library on this site: Ink Lite. If you select this option when you are downloading a zine, it will take you to a version of the design that is modified to save ink.
\n\nDon’t sleep on our zine library! It includes 126 different titles—something for everyone. We’ve recently added the zine version of our classic Civilian’s Guide to Direct Action, which has existed since 2017 but somehow never made its way into the collection until now. We’ve also added a zine version of our coverage of the RICO charges in Atlanta.
\n\nInk Lite is not to be confused with the lite version of our site, which you can use if you don’t have a lot of internet bandwidth at your disposal and need to load this website without images. You can find the option to switch to the lite version at the very bottom of every page on the site, or just navigate directly to lite.crimethinc.com.
\n\n The good old days, when pirating copies was a collective activity and you never paid for toner.
\nOut of the box, we have almost four dozen titles ready!
\n\nNow get out there and distribute zines!
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2022/05/03/hands-off-a-poster-and-resources-supporting-reproductive-freedom", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2022/05/03/hands-off-a-poster-and-resources-supporting-reproductive-freedom", "title": "Hands Off : A Poster and Resources Supporting Reproductive Freedom", "summary": "The Supreme Court is poised to take away the reproductive freedoms of tens of millions. We've prepared a poster and some other resources in response.", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/05/03/header.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/05/03/header.jpg", "date_published": "2022-05-03T17:53:37Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:54Z", "tags": [ "abortion", "reproduction", "pro-choice", "anti-fascism" ], "content_html": "We’ve prepared a poster and a selection of other resources in response to the news that the Supreme Court is poised to give a green light to government agencies to take away the reproductive freedoms of tens of millions of people.
\n\nYou can find an array of useful information about how to gain or support access to abortion in each state here.
\nYou can find information about self-managed abortion using abortion pills here and information about how to access abortion pills online here.
\nSister Song is an organization that focuses on reproductive freedom for Indigenous people and people of color. Statistics suggest that these demographics account for two-thirds of those who seek legal abortion. Thanks to structural white supremacy in the distribution of resources in the United States, these demographics will be the hardest hit by restrictions.
\nAbortion Care Network offers a support network for independent community-based abortion providers.
\n“Bodily Autonomy in the Streets“—A handout to distribute at demonstrations demanding abortion access, opposing top-down control of street actions.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/05/03/hands-off_digital.jpg\")
\nThis catastrophe compels us to confront the law itself as something hostile to us. If you are a person who might ever need an abortion—or if you care about a person who might—or if you believe that people deserve bodily self-determination, the state is your enemy. This system has given a handful of individuals, including at least two unrepentant sexual predators, the power to block abortion access to millions of people across the country. This is consistent with the explicitly misogynist and anti-trans agenda of the Republican Party and the systematic complicity of the Democratic Party.
\n\n\n\n\nAs anarchists, we reject the idea that judges or politicians deserve the authority to determine the course of our lives. Rather than only trying to pressure leaders to vote one way or the other in a winner-take-all system that reduces us to spectators in the decisions that affect us, we propose solutions based in direct action: taking power back into our hands by enacting our needs and solving our problems ourselves, without representatives.
\n\nAs long as legislators and judges can determine the scope of our reproductive options, our bodies and lives will be subject to the shifting winds of politics rather than our own immediate needs and values. Instead of validating their authority by limiting ourselves to calling for better legislators and judges, we should organize to secure and defend the means to make decisions regarding what we do with our bodies regardless of what courts or legislators decree.
\n\nIn practice, this could mean networking with health workers who have the necessary skills, and sharing them widely; stockpiling and manufacturing the supplies we need for all sorts of health care; defending spaces where we can operate our own clinics; fundraising resources to secure access to health care and birth control options for all, regardless of ability to pay; and developing models for reproductive autonomy that draw on past precedents but address our current problems. We can do our best to render the decisions of would-be patriarchs like Kavanaugh irrelevant.
\n\nAll this has already happened before. For example, from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, the Jane network, a vast clandestine effort centered in Chicago, provided illegal abortions to thousands of women. The fact that abortion was already accessible to so many women was a major factor in compelling the US court system to finally legalize abortion access in order to be able to regulate it. The most effective way to pressure the authorities to permit us access to the resources and care that we need is to present them with a fait accompli. Unfortunately, when it comes to standing up to elites like the Supreme Court and the police who enforce its decisions, there are no shortcuts.
\n\n-Kavanaugh Shouldn’t Be on the Supreme Court—Neither Should Anyone Else
\n
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2022/05/03/hands-off_front.jpg\")
Click on the image to access the poster PDF.
\nSince 2017, we’ve distributed 50,000 stickers proclaiming “Immigrants Welcome.” Now, thanks in part to your support, we have printed 50,000 more copies. You can order them here for the costs of production and delivery alone.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/08/1.jpg\")
\nIn a time when digital media is the dominant form of communication, we remain passionately committed to print media and other forms of communication that intervene in the offline world. It is catastrophic that massive technology companies control so many of the channels through which we communicate with one another. While we acknowledge the importance of utilizing these channels, we recognize that it puts us in an extremely vulnerable position to depend on state-regulated capitalist institutions for our access to each other.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/08/2.jpg\")
We have always found it deeply fulfilling to encounter the materials we produce in the wild.
\nAlready this year, we’ve seen several of our posts removed from social media sites on the pretext that the material violated their content policies. Across the board, these content policies are hypocritical and incoherent—for example, providers claiming to prohibit advocacy of “violence” yet gladly providing a venue for the US military, among the most murderous and destructive institutions in human history. Obviously, we shed no tears when sites like The Daily Stormer and 8chan are refused a platform via which to recruit white supremacists. We believe that no one should be under any obligation to provide services to racists or other advocates of oppression. But while we celebrate the digital de-platforming of the far right, history shows us that the next thing that will happen is that these tactics will be used against those who challenge the state and capitalism in favor of genuine liberation.
\n\nAs a general principle, top-down control of communications infrastructure is chiefly useful for maintaining the status quo. The precedents set for de-platforming those who are trying to change things for the worse will also be used against anyone who wants to change things for the better. The vast majority of the agenda of the far right does not conflict with the hypocritical content policies of our digital overlords: they don’t consider it “advocacy of violence” to campaign for more state violence against immigrants, for example. If, indeed, those who seek liberation from capitalism and the state are the next to be de-platformed, the resulting vacuum will make it easier, if anything, for authoritarians whose proposals fall within the confines of those content policies to present themselves to the general public as the only ones who have any sort of proposals for social change whatsoever.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/08/3.jpg\")
In some places, you can see posters like this one that have hung there for years.
\nAs fascists shift their attention from maintaining their own publishing efforts to trying to force those who hold corporate and state power to shut down ours, we can expect more and more repressive clampdowns in the future. There are many things we can do to push back against this. We have to do everything in our power to popularize our perspectives, while de-legitimizing capitalism, the state, and anyone who would like to make it impossible to speak freely about radical social change.
\n\nOne of the ways we can prepare for this sort of repression is to continue to focus on print projects and other ways of communicating that do not depend on digital media services. We have been a print project from the very beginning. The first CrimethInc. projects took place before the prevalence of digital communication. We collaborated by means of the postal service and landline telephones. Even if one day we find ourselves entirely banned from online activity, it would be impossible for any corporation or government to track down and destroy every single one of the hundreds of thousands of books we have distributed, or the literally millions of posters and zines we have put into circulation.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/08/4.jpg\")
You, too, can be a publisher and distributor!
\nWe will continue to focus on print as a medium that is less vulnerable to the whims of capitalist gatekeepers. But we can’t do this without your help. While we produce books for sale, we also offer free digital versions of zines and posters with the hope that you will print and distribute them. If you have access to a printer, you are a micro-publisher—you can spread these materials and anything else that you consider important.
\n\nLikewise, you can order stickers from us and put them up whenever and wherever, on every lamp post, in every bathroom. In a strictly legal way, of course!
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/08/08/5.jpg\")
\nIn anticipation of April 15, the 10th annual STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY, we have prepared a brand new website collecting nine years of STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK testimonials, interviews, educational materials, and analysis—a treasure trove of first-person perspectives about stealing from work. This is the definitive resource for employee-led wealth redistribution.
\n\nGo to the new STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY website!
\n\nIf you need to gently test the waters to see which team a fellow employee is batting for in the class war, try bringing this to their attention without any indication of your position: “Crazy, huh?” How they respond will tell you everything you need to know.
\n\nHere’s a preview of what the site has to offer:
\n\nAnd a whole host of reading material, including…
\n\nThe site offers scores of anonymous first-person accounts of what they steal and why—offering considerable insight into the human condition (under capitalism). For example:
\n\nMy wife and I are both employed in Central Florida through a technical division of the largest American motor company. The location overstocks the restrooms with free hygiene products like tampons and pads, soaps, and first aid kits. We both fill our bags with these items a few times a week before leaving. We make waterproof bags and leave them in areas where homeless people congregate. We have done this for over a year and have redistributed thousands of items.
\n\n–Robin Hood of Hygiene
\n\nEnjoy and stay safe!
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2019/02/06/inside-front-international-journal-of-hardcore-punk-and-anarchist-action-archives-1997-2003", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2019/02/06/inside-front-international-journal-of-hardcore-punk-and-anarchist-action-archives-1997-2003", "title": "Inside Front: International Journal of Hardcore Punk and Anarchist Action : Complete Archives, 1997-2003", "summary": "We've added complete PDFs of the final five issues of Inside Front, one of the first projects that drew together CrimethInc. operatives.", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/02/06/header.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2019/02/06/header.jpg", "date_published": "2019-02-06T19:04:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:38Z", "tags": [ "punk", "anarchism", "music", "hardcore", "Inside Front" ], "content_html": "Two and a half decades ago, some of the first people to collaborate on CrimethInc. projects met via the international networks that had developed in the zine underground associated with the hardcore punk scene. We’ve finally scanned the last five issues of one of these zines, Inside Front, to add to our archives. Bear in mind, these are relics from a very different time. We hope, in putting them at your disposal, to offer new generations of anarchists—and punks?—some context for what came before. We’ve also added the hardcore compilations that came with issues of Inside Front to our music page for free downloading.
\n\nOnce upon a time, in another century—
\n\nWhen only doctors and lawyers had cell phones, and long distance calls were so expensive that punks used hacked phone dialers to trick pay phones into letting them place calls free of charge;
\n\nWhen zinesters secured freedom of the press by scamming photocopies on a scale today’s social media users cannot imagine;
\n\nWhen traveler kids sneaked onto freight train cars to ride for free, watching mountains and oceans whizzing by as the earth rumbled past beneath them;
\n\nWhen the singer of every hardcore band spoke earnestly to introduce each song, if only to entreat audience members to cause each other serious injury;
\n\nWhen punk itself was not an ossified tradition, but a living challenge to corporate aesthetics, in a process of constant challenge and change;
\n\nWhen DIY bands traversed a network of squatted social centers from Trondheim to Santiago, and you could play a hundred shows in a row without ever performing in a venue that was legally owned or leased;
\n\nWhen dropouts lived on bread alone in order to dedicate themselves entirely to lives of daring adventure;
\n\nWhen MAXIMUM ULTRAISTS committed to risk-tolerant experimentation organized guerrilla noise shows in convenience stores and mashed pies into the faces of corporate entrepreneurs;
\n\nWhen young people inspired by punk music set out to reclaim the streets and destroy the World Trade Organization, and everyone understood that anarchists were among the foremost threats to capitalist globalization;
\n\nIn those days, without the internet, how did people discover and pass on anarchist ideas and tactics?
\n\nBy embedding these values in rebellious subcultural milieus such as the punk scene—by reading dogeared books about the Yippies, the Situationists, and the Spanish Civil War—and by having adventures.
\n\nThese three elements—subculture, reading, and adventure—came together in the hardcore journal Inside Front, one of the first projects to bring together people who still collaborate on CrimethInc. projects today. We invite you to explore its pages, as if holding a candle up to the dusty walls of the past.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/journals/inside-front-14/inside-front-14_front.jpg\")
Click the image above to access the PDF
\nYou can download the CD compilation that came with the final issue of Inside Front here.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/journals/inside-front-13/inside-front-13_front.jpg\")
Click the image above to access the PDF
\nYou can download the CD compilation that came with Inside Front #13 here.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/journals/inside-front-12/inside-front-12_front.jpg\")
Click the image above to access the PDF
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/journals/inside-front-11/inside-front-11_front.jpg\")
Click the image above to access the PDF
\nYou can download the CD compilation that came with Inside Front #11 here.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/journals/inside-front-10/inside-front-10_front.jpg\")
Click the image above to access the PDF
\nJust in time for summer, we’ve added five new zine designs to our extensive zine library. Please print them out and distribute them!
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/05/16/why-we-dont-make-demands_front.jpg\")
Click the image above to access the PDF.
\nA revised version of our classic polemic, “Why We Don’t Make Demands,” explaining all the different reasons movements choose not to make demands of the authorities.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/05/16/why-we-break-windows_front.jpg\")
Click the image above to access the PDF.
\nA revised version of “Why Break Windows,” which we published in 2014 at the high point of the wave of revolt that began with the uprising in Ferguson.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/05/16/escaping-washington-for-freedom_front.jpg\")
Click the image above to access the PDF. https://crimethinc.com/zines/escaping-washington-for-freedom -shadow
\nA print version of our retelling of the era of the so-called “Founding Fathers” focusing on the lives of all the slaves who escaped from George Washington, “Escaping Washington for Freedom.” You can order color copies of this zine with a cardstock cover from our comrades at A Boulder on the Tracks.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/05/16/designed-to-kill_front.jpg\")
Click the image above to access the PDF.
\nOur classic text about the US-Mexico border, “Designed to Kill,” which was expanded to become our book, No Wall They Can Build.
\n\nWe’ve also prepared the Spanish-language version, “Diseñada Para Matar”:
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2018/05/16/disenada-para-matar_front.jpg\")
Click the image above to access the PDF.
\nTo accompany our new book, No Wall They Can Build: A Guide to Borders & Migration Across North America, and the poster accompanying it, “Borders: The Global Caste System,”, we have prepared a new sticker decrying the myths used to justify borders and welcoming all who cross them.
\n\nThanks to the generous assistance of hundreds of supporters, we’ve produced 50,000 copies of the sticker, offset printed at 3” by 5”. They’re available in bulk at $0.05 to $0.20 each (from 5 for $1 up to 500 for $25). We’re also sending them out free with each copy of No Wall They Can Build. Order a stack of these and let people know where your community stands!
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/09/2.jpg\")
\nIn response to popular demand, we’ve also prepared a poster version of the same design. Print these out, photocopy them, and wheatpaste them all over the walls of your town in English and Spanish!
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/09/1.jpg\")
You can download the English version of the poster here. You can download the Spanish version here.
\nThe border is not a wall—it’s a system of control.
\n\nIt doesn’t protect people; it pits them against each other.
\n\nIt doesn’t foster togetherness; it breeds resentment.
\n\nIt doesn’t keep out predators; it gives them badges and guns.
\n\nThe border does not divide one world from another. There is only one world, and the border is tearing it apart.
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2017/08/07/new-poster-borders-the-global-caste-system", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2017/08/07/new-poster-borders-the-global-caste-system", "title": "Borders: The Global Caste System : A New Poster Illustrating Why People Migrate, the Risks They Face, and Who Benefits", "summary": "Our new poster illustrates all the elements that make up the border, from the extraction of resources on one side to wage disparities on the other—and all the brutality and injustice in between.", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/07/header1.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/07/header1.jpg", "date_published": "2017-08-07T13:50:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:34Z", "tags": [], "content_html": "We’ve worked with some of our favorite artists to produce a new full-color poster in the same series as our classic “Capitalism Is a Pyramid Scheme” design. “Borders: The Global Caste System” illustrates all the different elements that make up the border, from the extraction of resources on one side to wage disparities on the other—and all the brutality and injustice in between. In visual narrative, the poster depicts the reasons people migrate, the forces ranged against them, and the ones who benefit from this state of affairs.
\n\nOrder copies of the poster here.
\n\nJust as the pyramid poster accompanied our earlier book, Work, this poster functions as a companion to our new book, No Wall They Can Build: A Guide to Borders & Migration Across North America. This poster illuminates the ideas set forth in that book, presenting them in a form that can appear on the walls of your town to stimulate conversation and show solidarity with everyone who is affected by borders.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/07/3.jpg\")
Click above for a downloadable PDF.
\nThis poster is 14 x 23 inches, full-color, double-sided, and printed on white book paper. It is equally suitable for hanging in a classroom and for wheatpasting downtown.
\n\n\n\n\nThe border does not divide one world from another. There is only one world, and the border is tearing it apart.
\n
The border is not just a wall or a line on a map. It’s a power structure, a system of control. The border is everywhere that people live in fear of deportation, everywhere migrants are denied the rights accorded citizens, everywhere human beings are segregated into included and excluded.
\n\nThe border divides the whole world into gated communities and prisons, one within the other in concentric circles of privilege and control. At one end of the continuum, there are billionaires who can fly anywhere in private jets; at the other end, inmates in solitary confinement. As long as there is a border between you and those less fortunate than you, you can be sure there will be a border above you, too, keeping you from the things you need. And who will tear down that second border with you, if not the people separated from you by the first?
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/07/2.jpg\")
\nSpeak of freedom all you like—we live in a world of walls.
\n\nThere used to be few enough that we could keep up with them—Hadrian’s Wall, the Great Wall of China, the Berlin Wall. Now they’re everywhere. The walls of the old days have gone viral, penetrating every level of society. Wall Street, named after a stockade built by African slaves to protect European colonists, exemplifies this transformation: it’s no longer a question of fencing out the natives, but of a market economy that imposes divisions throughout the entire world.
\n\nThese divisions take many forms. There are physical boundaries—the walls of detention centers, the fences of concrete and barbed wire, the perimeters that enclose private campuses and gated communities. There are boundaries controlling the flow of information: security clearances, classified databases, internet firewalls that cordon off entire countries. There are social boundaries—the privileges of citizenship, the barriers of racism, all the ways that money calibrates what each person can and cannot do.
\n\nAll of these divisions are predicated on ceaseless violence. For some, this means imprisonment, deportation, torture, solitary confinement, vigilante attacks, state-sanctioned murder. For others, it means police patrols, security checkpoints, traffic stops, background checks, street harassment, surveillance, bureaucracy, propaganda.
\n\nBorders don’t just divide countries: they exist wherever people live in fear of immigration raids, wherever people have to accept lower wages because they have no documents. The world isn’t just divided horizontally into different jurisdictions—it is divided socially into different zones of privilege, of access. The US-Mexico border is part of the same structure as the chain-link fence that keeps homeless people out of an empty parking lot and the price bracket that keeps day laborers from buying the “organic” option at the grocery store even if they were the ones who picked the vegetables.
\n\nThe purpose of the border is not to regulate migration. It is to control communities on both sides of the wall. The border regime enables the authorities to force down wages, suppress dissent, and channel resentment towards those who have the least power in society rather than those who have the most.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/07/1.jpg\")
\nWe’re told that borders protect us from outsiders. But how did they become outside in the first place? We are all joined in a single worldwide economy, in which resources are extracted from one country and sent to another, in which profits made in one country are hoarded in another. This isn’t new—it’s been going on since the colonization of the Americas.
\n\nSo who is invading whom? The corporations that plunder the south, or the migrants who go north, following the resources and opportunities that have been taken away? If anyone has a right to cross these lands, isn’t it the descendants of the peoples who lived here before European settlement?
\n\nThere are 11 million undocumented people living in the United States today. They are essential to the functioning of the economy; without their cheap labor, agriculture and construction work would grind to a halt. Many of them have lived in the US for many years or decades. Of those who cross from Mexico without papers, fully half of them are deportees attempting to return to their families in the US.
\n\nThe border is not intended to keep undocumented people out. The goal is to make sure that entering the United States without papers is dangerous, traumatizing, and expensive—but possible. The point of deportations is not to empty the US of undocumented people. It is to terrorize those who live in the US with the threat of deportation. This serves to maintain a caste system by blackmailing a captive population.
\n\nSo long as a massive part of the US population lives in constant danger and without any rights, employers have access to a vast pool of disposable labor that is easy to exploit. This drives down wages for workers with US citizenship, too. But it’s not undocumented immigrants who are “stealing their jobs”—it’s the border itself.
\n\nAccusing migrants of stealing jobs from US citizens is blaming the victim. If everyone were accorded the same rights, if national boundaries did not artificially create impoverished populations in countries that are stripped of natural resources and treated as garbage dumps, migrant labor could not undercut anyone else’s job opportunities. If not for all the risks and pressures undocumented workers face, they would be able to obtain the same price for their labor as everyone else. Time and again, undocumented workers have demonstrated their courage in struggles for higher wages, despite having to overcome obstacles other workers do not face. But border enforcement drives down wages across the board. That’s the point of it.
\n\nIn deporting people who have lived in the US for decades, the US government is using Mexico as a concentration camp to conceal unemployment and other problems. The desperation and the firearms produced in the US reappear in Mexico in a brutal illegal economy driven by the appetite of US consumers for narcotics. This is a way of exporting the violence that is essential to maintaining such tremendous imbalances of power. And as it has become more difficult and therefore more expensive to enter the United States without documents, the cartels have been drawn into the business, creating a feedback loop of brutality that the US authorities use to justify further the clampdowns.
\n\nThe cycle repeats and intensifies.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/08/07/4.jpg\")
\nThe border sends resources and profits one way, and human beings the other. This is how the rich amass great concentrations of wealth: not just by accumulating resources in one place, but also by excluding people from them.
\n\nIf a prisoner is a person contained by walls, what does that make us? Prisons don’t just contain the people inside them. When the border is everywhere, everyone is transformed into a prisoner or prison guard.
\n\nIt’s easy to be bribed by the advantages of citizenship: being able to travel more freely, being allowed to participate legally in the labor market, being able to access what is left of government assistance, being acknowledged as a part of society. Yet these privileges come at a terrible cost, for the documents one person holds only have value because others are without them. Their value is based on artificial scarcity.
\n\nAs long as there is a border between you and those less fortunate than you, you can be sure there will also be borders above you, keeping you from things that you need. Some people are deported, others are evicted, but the fundamental mechanisms are the same. And who will help you tear down the borders above you, if not the people separated from you by the borders below?
\n\nBorders are just social constructs—they are imaginary frameworks imposed on the real world. There is nothing necessary or inevitable about them. Were it not for the violence of the believers, they would cease to exist.
\n\nCrossing the border without documents is a way of resisting. So is getting to know people who are affected by the border in ways that you are not, setting out to understand and share their struggles. Together, we can make the border unenforceable—a step towards creating a world in which everyone will be free to travel wherever they desire, to use their creative energy however they see fit, to fulfill their potential on their own terms.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/books/no-wall-they-can-build/gallery/no-wall-they-can-build-01.jpg\")
\nTo learn more, order or download No Wall They Can Build: A Guide to Borders & Migration Across North America.
\n\nTo get involved in solidarity work, consider volunteering with a group like No More Deaths.
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2017/07/18/a-field-guide-to-wheatpasting-everything-you-need-to-know-to-blanket-the-world-in-posters", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2017/07/18/a-field-guide-to-wheatpasting-everything-you-need-to-know-to-blanket-the-world-in-posters", "title": "A Field Guide to Wheatpasting : Everything You Need to Know to Blanket the World in Posters", "summary": "A complete guide to mixing and applying wheatpaste to put up posters. Make the walls speak!", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/07/18/header-2.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/07/18/header-2.jpg", "date_published": "2017-07-18T17:00:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:34Z", "tags": [ "wheatpasting", "posters", "recipes" ], "content_html": "Like graffiti, wheatpasting is a direct action technique for communicating with your neighbors and redecorating your environment. Because it’s easy to mass-produce posters, wheatpasting enables you to deploy a nuanced, complex message at a large number of locations with minimal effort and risk. Repetition makes your message familiar to everyone and increases the chances that others will think it over. If you’re looking for posters to paste up, we offer a wide selection of poster designs to print out or order in bulk.
\n\nThis is excerpted from our book, Recipes for Disaster, which details a wealth of related tactics.
\n\nTo make wheatpaste, mix two parts white or whole-grain wheat flour with three parts water, stir out any lumps, and heat the mixture to a boil, stirring continuously so as not to burn it. When it thickens, add more water; continue cooking it on low heat for at least half an hour, stirring continuously. Some people add a little sugar or cornstarch for extra stickiness; don’t be afraid to experiment. Wheatpaste, once made, will last for a while if kept in sealed containers, though eventually it will dry up or become rotten—and sealed containers of it have been known to burst, to unfortunate effect. Keep them in a refrigerator if you can.
\n\nYou can also obtain wallpaper adhesive at any home improvement store; this comes in pre-mixed buckets or boxes of powder. Wallpaper adhesive is much quicker and easier to mix than wheatpaste, and not much more expensive even if you are paying for it. Don’t get the brands advertised as “easy to remove,” obviously—get the most heavy-duty adhesive available.
\n\nIf you’re wheatpasting to express information or ideas, good design is key to getting your message across. Remember, most people will see these from a distance, so make the headline huge and legible and use images that are simple, high-contrast, and equally large. Be sure the headline communicates the basic idea on its own. You can also include a paragraph or so in smaller print for the casually interested, and it’s always a good idea to add a webpage address or similar link for those who want to pursue things further.
\n\nDon’t limit yourself to pasting up standard-size photocopies; many photocopying franchises offer much bigger options. You can make huge posters to put up; if such printing technology is unavailable, you can paste up big images comprised of smaller copies. Be creative: you could also paste up old anarchist newsprint publications, or those police target-practice sheets with photos of masked men on them, or bus schedules screenprinted with artistic designs, or income tax forms stenciled with the appropriate messages about taxation, representation, and exploitation.
\n\nThis may seem counterintuitive, but the thinner the paper, the better—thin paper takes paste better, and will be more likely to rip off in tiny pieces rather than all at once if an art hater takes a dislike to it. Another way to foil such philistines is to run a razor quickly down and across each poster several times immediately after you’ve pasted it up; a pasted poster sliced in this manner will only come down one small piece at a time.
\n\nA new poster for you to put up!
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/posters/police-officer/police-officer_front.jpg\")
Click above for a downloadable PDF.
\nIf you’re pasting up a lot of small posters, carry them in a way that enables you to access them easily without it being obvious that you have them. A messenger bag will serve for this—just make sure you can reach into it and slide one out without much fumbling. If you’re posting great big posters, roll them up, top side out so you can swiftly unroll them down the wall, and rubber band them individually.
\n\nYou’ll need a container from which to apply the paste. Wheatpaste tends to be thick, so a vessel with a wide mouth such as a large plastic bottled water container is well-suited for it; wallpaper adhesive tends to be thinner and more consistent, so it can be dispensed out of smaller holes, such as that of a dishwashing soap container with a pop-up nozzle. It can help to have something to smooth the posters up on the wall—a window-washing squeegee from a gas station will suffice, or you could get a plastic wallpaper smoother from the same retailers that provide wallpaper adhesive. Big paintbrushes can speed the application of wheatpaste, too. You could do all of this with your hands, but it will leave you messy.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/07/18/1.jpg\")
\nFor each poster, pick a good location, and make sure it’s clean; most smooth metal, glass, or stucco will take pasting nicely, while wood or concrete will be somewhat less accommodating, and brick even less so. Next, apply the paste. The more wheatpaste you use, the longer it will take to dry, so use the minimum amount to make all of the poster stick. If you’re using smaller posters, spread paste over the wall, place the poster on the pasted area, smooth out all air bubbles and wrinkles, and spread some paste over the top to hold down the corners. If you’re using larger posters, unroll them flat on the ground and apply the paste to their backs there, then put them on the wall, smooth them out, and add another layer of paste. Starting out on the ground renders you less conspicuous while you’re making sure the paste is evenly applied.
\n\nWhen you think about where to paste, balance the length of time the poster will probably stay up against the amount of traffic the location gets, factoring in the question of which demographics will most appreciate your design. Often, it is better to put up a poster in an alley that will remain for six months than it is to put up twenty along Main Street that will be gone by noon.
\n\nBecause wheatpasting is somewhat less than legal in many places, it doesn’t hurt to go about it inconspicuously. Late in the evening can be a good time for it, when the streets are quiet but not yet empty and you can pass yourselves off as students going to a party or workers walking back from a bar. Behave as though what you’re doing is perfectly legal, while being careful not to do it before the gaze of the authorities; you’ll be surprised what you can get away with. Even in cities locked under the control of thousands of riot police, anarchists have still been able to decorate whole districts with posters.
\n\nA bicycle can be a useful accessory for postering. You can carry supplies in a basket on the handlebards, and it can function as a ladder to reach places where your art is more visible and harder to remove. It can also assist you in making a quick getaway, should the need arise. Also, bring something to clean up with—even if you wear latex gloves to keep your hands from getting sticky with wheatpaste, it can get all over your clothes, which is a dead giveaway that you’re the culprit.
\n\nA well-coordinated group can cover a city in posters in the course of a single evening: divide up the area, set the target locations in advance, and carry out the action quickly so you’ve all disappeared by the time people notice the new posters everywhere. Wheatpasting can also be applied to rework the images and messages of billboards. A group attending a mass mobilization could make wheatpasting kits including ready-to-use wheatpaste, posters, and maps showing vulnerable zones of the city to distribute to other groups with time and energy to apply.
\n\nFinally, you could put up posters with this wheatpaste recipe on them and a call for submissions, encouraging others to participate in decorating your town.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/07/18/2.jpg\")
\nMost wheatpasting goes so smoothly that there’s not much to tell, but it’s always possible to push the limits, and this is the story of a time we did just that.
\n\nIt was the night before the one-year anniversary of September 11, 2001, and we had scammed over two dozen posters five feet tall and three feet wide from the local photocopying franchise with which to address the pressing issues of terrorism and war. We had cased our city and identified the prime locations for these, in the downtown shopping district and along a few major thoroughfares. We mapped out the area and established the best order for visiting these locations, so we could get the most done in each section of the city before police could take note of our activity, and then move to another zone.
\n\nWe divided five roles between us. One of us would ride a bicycle, doing reconnaissance in a radius of a few blocks around every site. The other four of us would travel in a vehicle. This vehicle would drop off a scout to stand lookout at one end of a street, as most of our targets were on one-way streets, then drop off the two people who were to do the pasting around a corner out of sight from the target, before driving down the cross street to keep watch from another direction. After the two had decorated the sites chosen in that area, they would meet the driver around another quiet corner, and the three would pick up the pedestrian lookout and move on to the next area, followed by the bicyclist. The driver, the bicyclist, the scout, and the pasting team were all connected by two-way radios with earpieces so news of the movements of police or others could be immediately relayed among us. The corporate news media had made a big deal about the extensive security precautions that had been made for this anniversary; accordingly, we were taking precautions of our own.
\n\nWe spent a couple of hours brewing wheatpaste, then went out around midnight. We hit all our targets downtown without any trouble to speak of; at one point, the bicyclist informed us that a police officer had stopped a motorist a couple blocks away, but we did our work quickly and were out of there before the police car moved.
\n\nHaving done some smaller-scale wheatpasting in which we were trying to pass as law-abiding citizens, it was actually a bit of a relief to be running around in all black with huge plastic jugs of wheatpaste and rolled posters. Everything was on the table and it was just a matter of moving fast and staying aware. We dashed past a civilian at one point, and I said hello—he just stared at us like we were Martian invaders.
\n\nThe last target was a freeway underpass, where eight columns held up the other highway. We were to put up eight posters, four facing each traffic direction. After so much success, we were starting to encounter some problems: our clothes had inevitably been covered in wheatpaste, and it was starting to clog the microphone and earpiece of our two-way radio. All the same, the scouts took their positions and we were dropped off next to the underpass to finish the job. Ducking down whenever cars came and jumping up to apply the posters between them, we did four columns, then leaped over the concrete guardwall to run across the freeway. In a scene out of slapstick comedy, I was holding the wheatpaste in one hand and the posters in the other, and so had to hurl myself over the wall, crashing absurdly on the asphalt without my hands to break my fall. My friend helped me over the other wall, and we began the fifth column.
\n\nAt this point our radio made some kind of noise, but it was impossible to make out the words through the wheatpaste. An instant later, headlights appeared, and we got down behind the column, moving slowly around it as the car approached and passed us. It was a police car. It kept going, so we set back to work wheatpasting, but no sooner had we done so than headlights appeared from the opposite direction, and we had to work our way around the pillar again, hiding as another police car drove by. This was starting to look bad. It was impossible now to get our radio to work, so, abandoning the posters, we set out walking quickly away from the underpass. As more headlights appeared ahead, I tossed the last jug of wheatpaste into the bushes.
\n\nWe turned down the first side street we reached. Wheatpaste stains more visibly on dark colors; in our black camouflage with paste stains all over it, we looked more than a little suspicious, especially so late at night in a district with no pedestrian traffic. Worse yet, it turned out the street we had turned down was a long corridor with no exits on the sides, running through a closed warehouse district—no alibi could adequately explain our presence here. At that moment, a police car turned onto the street, slowing to a crawl as it approached us. We kept walking, maintaining our conversation as calmly as we could, acting as though we were oblivious to the policeman as he inched past, blatantly staring at us.
\n\nStrangely, he kept going! Seeing that we had no posters or paste, he must not have felt that he had enough evidence to justify arresting us—though the stains on our clothes would have given us away on closer inspection. We made our way down other side streets and walked all the way back to our secret hideout, where the others were waiting, relieved that we had escaped and excited to tell us about the police cars that had started following them and forced them to abandon us.
\n\nWe slept a scant few hours, then went out shortly after morning rush hour to inspect our work.
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2017/06/05/poster-the-two-faces-of-fascism-how-police-and-fascists-work-together", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2017/06/05/poster-the-two-faces-of-fascism-how-police-and-fascists-work-together", "title": "Poster: The Two Faces of Fascism : How Police Are Complicit in the Rise of Fascism", "summary": " Fascist groups promote violence; individual bigots carry it out. The authorities use these attacks as an excuse to increase control. But the greatest threat is not fascists: it is the state itself. ", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/06/05/header.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/06/05/header.jpg", "date_published": "2017-06-05T17:52:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:34Z", "tags": [ "Portland", "fascism", "antifascism", "antifa" ], "content_html": "In May, Jeremy Christian, an alt-right proponent of so-called “free speech,” murdered two people on a commuter train in Portland who were responding to his attacks on two teenage women of color. In response, far-right organizers promoted a rally in favor of “free speech” to take place in downtown Portland on June 4. Portland Police, Oregon State Police, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and a host of other state forces mobilized to protect these “patriots” from the consequences of promoting hatred and violence. In response, we have prepared a poster articulating how police and fascists work together to hasten the rise of totalitarianism. Please print these out and deploy them everywhere.
\n\nPoster: “The Two Faces of Fascism” color pdf
\n\nPoster: “The Two Faces of Fascism” black-and-white pdf
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/06/05/1.jpg\")
\nThe events in Portland reflect a classic model we have already seen police and fascists employ in Berkeley. Police disarm and disempower demonstrators so fascists can attack them with impunity. In the aftermath of the clashes that took place in Berkeley on April 15, police carried out a series of raids in the Bay Area utilizing intelligence that had been provided to them by far-right internet trolls. This two-pronged assault enables reactionaries embedded in the state to disavow the elements of their agenda that are perceived as too extreme, while utilizing a variety of tactics to crush attempts at self-determination and self-defense.
\n\nIn creating a space for nationalists to promote violence and seizing weapons from those who need to be able to defend themselves from attacks like the one carried out by Jeremy Christian, Portland police are complicit in the rise of fascism. On June 4, police attacked demonstrators bearing banners reading MOURN THE DEAD and FIGHT LIKE HELL FOR THE LIVING. They utilized a variety of less-lethal weaponry to break up demonstrations against the far-right organizers, in order to preserve a space for the far right to continue recruiting.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/06/06/10.jpg\")
\nFascists and other nationalists support the police, in turn, by spreading narratives justifying their violence against those opposing the rise of fascism. Anyone who has experience in demonstrations knows that police manufacture their own propaganda to justify whatever they do. Yet reactionaries who consider CNN and the New York Times “fake news” are willing to believe anything they read on a police twitter account. This is the mindset that supports fascism: independent reporting and critical inquiry are derided, while the narratives spread by the authorities are swallowed whole.
\n\nAll this is part of a broader pattern in which police and fascists reinforce each other’s activities. Here’s how it works, in a nutshell. Fascist groups promote racist, sexist, and nationalist violence. Individual bigots carry it out—attacking people in the streets, shooting people in churches, stabbing people on trains. The authorities use these attacks as an excuse to increase control, promising to protect a fearful population. But the greatest threat is not individual fascists: it is the state itself. It is the state that deports and imprisons millions, that suppresses dissent, that imposes the tremendous imbalances of power that characterize this society.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/06/06/8.jpg\")
The state stands on a foundation of violence; fascism is never far away.
\nIf we count on the authorities to control fascist activity, granting them resources and legitimacy in hopes that they will protect us, it is only a matter of time until a more reactionary government takes power and uses those resources and legitimacy to carry out even more violence.
\n\nThis is why only grassroots resistance can stop the rise of fascism. We salute the courage of those who took the streets in Portland to oppose racist violence and the rise of fascism. In the end, if we want to put an end to all racist violence, we will have to come to grips with the state itself. We have to become capable of defending our demonstrations and communities from police as well as fascists.
\n\nDemonstrators chant “all cops are bastards” in Portland on June 4 after police attack them.
\nAs Donald Trump’s administration digs itself deeper and deeper into trouble, many people are looking to the corporate media, the FBI, the judicial system, or other recognized authorities to resolve this situation. Yet every effective measure against Trump and his cronies has begun with grassroots efforts. Even if he is deposed by other elements within the state, it will only further legitimize the structures through which politicians like him are able to do so much damage in the first place, setting the stage for other politicians to continue carrying out the same activities. Our freedom and safety will not be assured until we can defend them ourselves, through direct action, without need of leaders or representation. To drive home this point, we’ve prepared a poster, which we encourage you to print out, mass-produce, and put up in the streets where you live.
\n\nHope Is in the Streets poster, full color version
\n\nHope Is in the Streets poster, black and white version
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/05/30/1.jpg\")
\nWhen Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, anarchists and other opponents of the state swung into action. While liberals and party leftists were still reeling, anarchists immediately called for combative demonstrations at the outset of the Trump regime, and took to the streets alongside other angry people to show that business as usual would be impossible under Trump.
\n\nIn the first days of Trump’s administration, countless people came together in courageous acts of resistance, confronting the authorities and shutting down airports and other infrastructure. This succeeded in breaking the ruling class consensus around Trump, destabilizing his administration and undermining its efforts to shift the US government from a neoliberal strategy for managing capitalism to an overtly nationalist strategy. Had resistance continued at that intensity, neoliberalism, too, might have been in danger.
\n\nUnfortunately, this momentum was a victim of its own success. As soon as it achieved a few victories, good liberals began to stay home watching the news and “liking” things on Facebook rather than putting their bodies on the line. Meanwhile, realizing that his initial strategy had failed, Trump demoted nationalist advisor Steve Bannon, ordered an airstrike in Syria, and tried to cozy up to the neoliberal elements of the deep state. If he succeeds in doing so, he will be able to push through his racist, nationalist agenda under the cover of ordinary governance, just as Obama did.
\n\nIt’s naïve to hope that CNN, the FBI, or the Democratic Party will thwart Trump’s authoritarian ambitions. They are just as essential to the power structure as Trump himself, just as complicit in its functioning. Grassroots resistance has been the only thing that has succeeded in putting the brakes on Trump’s advance. Every victory against him has begun with people taking action on their own initiative. If we hadn’t blockaded the airports, would any judge have had the guts to block the Muslim ban? If we hadn’t flooded the streets, would White House employees have taken the risk of leaking information?
\n\nGoing forward, we must remember the lessons of the opening of the Trump era: that even in the face of the most powerful empire in the history of the world, we have tremendous power, as long as we don’t look to others to act in our place. Together, we can take back our lives and disable the institutions through which our rulers seek to dominate us. No party, politician, or organization can do this for us. Let’s become ungovernable and free.
\n\nThis text was submitted to the 2018 Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar in recognition of their important work to support political prisoners throughout North America for nearly two decades now.
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2017/04/19/new-poster-well-beat-em-again", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2017/04/19/new-poster-well-beat-em-again", "title": "New Poster: We'll Beat 'Em Again! : Take the Fight against Fascism to the Walls of Your Neighborhood", "summary": "Download and print this new poster reminding us we've already fought fascists and won. In color and black-and-white!", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/04/19/we-beat-em-before.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/04/19/we-beat-em-before.jpg", "date_published": "2017-04-19T17:00:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:34Z", "tags": [ "poster", "download", "fighting nazis" ], "content_html": "From Seattle to DC to Berkeley, everywhere fascists try to gather, we’ll be there to stop them. Raise morale with this reminder that we’ve been here before, and we’ve won. Print out color or black-and-white copies and decorate your neighborhood!
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/04/19/we-beat-em-before-color.jpg\")
Click above for a downloadable color PDF.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/04/19/we-beat-em-before-bw.jpg\")
Click above for a downloadable black-and-white PDF.
\nDirect action, simply put, means cutting out the middleman: solving problems yourself rather than petitioning the authorities or relying on external institutions. Any action that sidesteps regulations and representation to accomplish goals directly is direct action—it includes everything from blockading airports to helping refugees escape to safety and organizing programs to liberate your community from reliance on capitalism. Here we present a step-by-step guide to organizing and carrying out direct action, from the first planning stages to the debrief at the end, including legal support, media strategy, and proper security.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/03/14/direct-action-guide-1.jpg\")
\nThere are countless scenarios in which you might want to employ direct action. Perhaps representatives of despicable multinational corporations are invading your town to hold a meeting, and you want to do more than simply hold a sign; perhaps they’ve been there a long time, operating franchises that exploit workers and ravage the environment, and you want to hinder their misdeeds; perhaps you want to organize a festive, community-oriented event such as a street party. Direct action can plant a public garden in an abandoned lot or defend it by paralyzing bulldozers; it can occupy empty buildings to house the homeless or shut down government offices. Whether you’re acting in secret with a trusted friend or in a mass action with thousands of people, the basic elements are the same.
\n\nBrainstorming can start with a problem you want to solve, or a social contribution you want to make; it can be informed by the resources you have, the kind of experience you desire, or the people you want to work with. You can plot a single short adventure or a long-term campaign. Often, the best brainstorming occurs in the course of daydreams and informal conversations—it’s good policy to trust that your craziest ideas can become reality and try them out.
\n\nBy the same token, even when attending events organized by others, it’s best to bring a plan so you can contribute in your own way.
\n\nIf it makes sense for your action to be organized openly, establish a format, such as a public assembly, in which to work out a strategy and tactics. Invite friends, or circulate fliers, or go from door to door announcing it. Come up with your own proposals ahead of time, in case no one else does.
\n\nFor more clandestine actions, brainstorm in a secure environment with a trusted friend or two. Keep your ideas to yourselves as you hash them out so you won’t have already given them away when you’re ready to try them.
\n\nWho is your action for? Is it directed at on-the-spot spectators, corporate media viewers, the owners of specific corporations, their stockholders, the police and government, other members of the community, the participants themselves?
\n\nWhat is it intended to accomplish? Is it meant to communicate ideas, to call attention to an injustice, to inspire people, to secure resources, to set a particular tone, to inflict crippling material damages, to provide a deterrent, to demonstrate a model others can apply, to serve as a learning and bonding experience for those involved?
\n\nEstablishing a shared understanding of the goals of the action from the outset will save a lot of headaches later when your plans shift and potential conflicts arise.
\n\nOne of the most efficient and secure models for direct action organizing is the affinity group model. An affinity group is a group of friends who trust each other deeply and share the same goals; working together over a long period of time, they become efficient and effective.
\n\nFor a small action, the members of an affinity group can take on different roles. For a larger action, affinity groups can work with other affinity groups in a “cluster,” each group playing a role. This can make decision-making easier than it would be in one big mass, as each group can send a representative to a spokescouncil. Clusters of affinity groups can work together over long periods, building trust and effectiveness.
\n\nOnce you have a plan to propose, figure out how many people you need to accomplish it. If your plan requires secrecy, invite only people you trust to keep secrets and that you are sure will want to join in—everyone you invite who doesn’t end up participating is a needless security risk. Extend invitations one by one, or affinity group by affinity group, so those who decide against participating will not know anything about the others involved. Start by asking general questions about what a potential participant could be interested in, and don’t reveal critical details of the plan such as exact target or date until he or she is ready to make a commitment. As people are brought into a plan and go on to bring in others, make sure everyone has the same understanding of the appropriate degree of security.
\n\nAs more people become involved in the project, it’s important that everyone understands how much commitment is expected of them. Sometimes the group that first presents a plan will be more invested in it than others; if they do months of work preparing, only to have another group they depended on drop out at the last minute, all that work is wasted. Everyone shares the responsibility of being honest from the beginning about what is realistic to expect of them. At the same time, those who initiate a project should be careful to share ownership with everyone else involved.
\n\nMake all decisions in a participatory and consensual manner. If your group is large enough to warrant it, use an informal or formal consensus meeting process to make sure all voices are heard: set the agenda of each meeting together and pick a facilitator to keep things on track. The more that everyone participates, the better informed the decisions you make will be.
\n\nBe aware of internal dynamics that may be unbalanced, such as those between people with different backgrounds, or between local organizers and participants from out of town. The more everyone participates in planning and preparing for the action, the more invested in its success everyone will be. A group with good internal dynamics is smarter than any individual can be; individuals can bring in ideas, but together the group can work out the best way to apply them.
\n\nMake sure everyone feels supported and comfortable throughout the project; check in with each other outside of formal structures as well as inside them. Though often overlooked, maintaining morale is a critical aspect of successful direct action organizing. Keep level heads in the face of surprises and uncertainty.
\n\nSecurity culture is a way to avoid unhealthy paranoia by minimizing risks at all times. If you and your friends always conduct yourselves wisely, you’ll have less to fear from infiltration and surveillance.
\n\nThe essence of security culture is that information is shared on a need-to-know basis. In some cases, the whole town needs to know about your action for it to be a success; in others, it is crucial that the action is never spoken of outside the circle of those directly involved. Everyone privy to the action needs to share a sense of what level of security has been deemed appropriate, and to respect others’ needs regarding safety.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/03/14/direct-action-guide-2.jpg\")
\nConsent is as important in security as it is in sexual intimacy; it is never acceptable to violate another’s wishes regarding security issues. Make your own security needs explicit from the beginning; swear an oath of silence together if need be. Never talk about your or others’ involvement in past actions, however long ago, except with their express permission.
\n\nWhen a group comes together to work on a project, make sure everyone present is vouched for by others in the group as reliable and trustworthy. To protect each other, you should be prepared to remain silent under interrogation and legal pressure.
\n\nFrom the beginning of a project, you should operate according to the highest possible level of security it might require; you can always become less cautious later, but if you start out being careless you close off a lot of options.
\n\nBe aware of all the ways your actions can be monitored or tracked: the records of surveillance cameras, the purchases you make, the places you go and the people with whom you are seen, the location of meetings, the items you throw in your trash, the websites you visit, the files on your computer, the fingerprints you leave (on the batteries inside a flashlight as well as on the outside of it, for example), and virtually everything that has to do with a phone. Devise codes and prepare alibis as need be.
\n\nEveryone involved in the action should be aware of and prepared for the risks they are taking and the potential criminal charges associated with them. It’s important not to take things farther than you feel ready to go: if you get hurt or arrested while engaging in a level of risk for which you are not emotionally prepared, the effects can be debilitating. Far better that you get started slowly, building a sustainable involvement with direct action projects that can continue over a lifetime, than rush into an action, have a bad experience, and swear off all such activity.
\n\nIf your action may result in arrests, prepare a legal support structure for those who participate. This could include a legal aid number for arrestees to call, legal observers to monitor and document the actions of police, money for bail, lawyers to provide immediate support to arrestees and to represent them in court, and a circle of people prepared to offer emotional, financial, and logistical support throughout court cases.
\n\nThe legal aid number should be open to receive incoming calls at all times throughout the action; bear in mind that in some cases, you cannot call a cell phone from jail. The legal aid number should not incriminate the arrestees or the people who receive the calls—if part of your alibi is that you don’t know each other, don’t all call the same number from jail. If you fear you will forget the number, write it on a concealed part of your body in permanent marker. The person operating the legal aid number should know the full names of those who may be arrested, so as to check on their status.
\n\nTo bail someone out of jail, you can either give the entire amount of the bail to the court system, in which case you should receive it back after the legal process is finally concluded, or you can go to a bail bondsman and pay about 10% of that; in the latter case, the bondsman’s fees may cost you a significant amount of money. If no one can pay bail, an arrestee may sit in jail until the court date, although in the case of minor infractions it can happen that police release people on their own recognizance so as not to have to deal with them.
\n\nIf you are risking arrest, decide whether you want to have your identification on you to expedite processing, or to be without it, so they cannot identify you immediately. A large group of arrestees who refuse to give their information can tie up the legal process and sometimes gain bargaining power. If you need medication, consider hiding it on your person, or carry a note from a doctor explaining what you need.
\n\nFind a sympathetic and trustworthy lawyer—or perhaps a few of them, since a lawyer cannot represent more than one defendant on the same charges. You can research which lawyers have taken on similar cases in the past, or approach the American Civil Liberties Union or National Lawyers Guild. If you don’t give away anything sensitive, you can ask sympathetic lawyers about the charges associated with hypothetical acts, or specify the dates and times you may require their services—but don’t let them know anything that could implicate them.In order to do their job, they need to be able to prove that they are not connected to anything illegal.
\n\nAny community whose members may suffer arrest would do well to establish a bail fund in advance; this can save a lot of running around in the middle of emergencies. Throw benefit shows, sell t-shirts, solicit donations from wealthy sympathizers, have your friends at the university book you speaking dates at their school in return for student funds. Make sure the bail fund stays with someone who is even-handed, trustworthy, and always easy to reach.
\n\nLikewise, consider what your media strategy will be—whether it will be wise to direct public attention and support to arrestees.
\n\nLong before an action, when you are establishing and prioritizing goals, work out exactly how much media coverage you want, from which sources, and how you are going to obtain or avoid it. This could mean composing and sending out a press release (Who, What, When, Where, How, Why) or a communiqué, electing a spokesperson to represent your project to the press, inviting corporate or independent reporters to the action or to a press conference, faxing announcements or making press calls, offering interviews (in person or anonymously over a burner phone), or having members of your group cover documentation themselves. If you want to avoid certain kinds of coverage, it could also mean assigning a participant to make sure photographers do not aim their cameras at you.
\n\nIf you are communicating with the media, compose talking points, sound bites that your spokesperson repeats to be sure they get in the media coverage. Give representatives of the press as little material to work with as possible so they will have to use the part you want them to. Keep track of which reporters tend to provide positive coverage, and approach them personally. If you have a website, get this address into corporate media coverage to reroute their viewers to your media. You can also provide information to the public yourselves by postering, pirate radio, speaking events, or starting conversations door to door.
\n\nIf your action warrants high security, send your communiqué securely: for example, from a public computer that leaves no record of who uses it. Be aware of how the devices you use can incriminate you.
\n\nProper planning is the essence of safe, effective direct action. Keeping your goals and priorities in mind along with the resources you have to work with, plot and compare different strategies. Weigh out the risks and potential rewards of each: always pick the safest way to accomplish a given objective, and make sure you can afford to take the risks you choose. It sometimes happens that as the planning process goes on, a project will get more and more ambitious and hazardous, until some of those involved start to have doubts; at that point, it may be necessary to work out a safer or scaled-down version of the plan, so it can still take place.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/03/14/direct-action-guide-3.jpg\")
\nThere are countless factors to take into account in planning. You must pick the most effective tactics in the context of the current social and political situation. You must pick the best location for the action and take into account all its attributes; you must pick the best date and time of day. You must bear in mind the others who will be in the area, and how they will react—will they be sympathetic, or may hostile vigilantes interfere with your activities? You must coordinate the timing of different parts of the action, predicting how long each will take, and figure out how those involved in the action will communicate.
\n\nWhen predicting the responses of others—say, for example, the police—consider the factors influencing them: Are they expecting what you’re planning, or do you have the element of surprise? If you have the advantage of surprise, how long will it last? Will there be a lot of attention focused on the event? Will it be immediately apparent what you are doing? Will there be middle-class citizens or reporters around, and will their presence put a damper on the authorities’ response? What is their strategy likely to be, based on previous precedents for police behavior in this context? Do their bosses want them to come down hard on you—or to avoid provoking a scene? How well do they communicate, how fast do they move, where are they located, what routes will they take?
\n\nDon’t underestimate the challenges of simple logistical matters, such as transporting people or communicating in stressful situations. Don’t forget to plan an exit strategy, either.
\n\nBecause plans rarely come off exactly as they are laid, it’s important to have backup plans worked out for different scenarios: “If ____, we’ll ____; if ____, we’ll ____.” Have a few different objectives in mind, in case your first choice turns out to be impossible. Having a basic structure for communications and decision-making in place will help you to be prepared for situations that play out differently than any of the scenarios you had imagined.
\n\nBe careful not to put others at risk for your actions; the authorities will probably charge whomever they get their hands on with the worst crimes they can, so it’s important both to get those who take risks out of the area safely and to make sure serious charges can’t stick to anyone else. In some cases, you can bring together multi-leveled groups in which everyone knows the general goal but only a few know critical details such as what the target is or who is to carry out the riskiest activity.
\n\nBe prepared for the best-case scenario as well as the worst. New ideas, if they are good ones, tend to fail because people don’t take them far enough, whereas older ideas usually fail because they are too familiar to everyone, including the authorities. Sometimes the best results come from applying familiar tactics in entirely new settings.
\n\nLook back in time for precedents, occasions when similar actions were attempted in similar contexts. These can be very instructive. As you gather years of experience and learn from others’ successes and failures, you’ll develop skills for predicting and preparing for a wide variety of situations.
\n\nOnce your plans are laid, draw up a timeline until your action, counting backwards from the big day to establish the deadlines for all the pieces that must be in place.
\n\nEarly on in the planning, work out what funding, materials, and other resources you will need and how to obtain them. If security is a priority, obtain what you need in such a way that it cannot be traced to you; affinity groups from out of town can acquire potentially incriminating materials far from the site of the action.
\n\nMake sure everyone has appropriate clothes for the action, including different outfits in layers if necessary. Take security issues into account as they relate to clothing: if everyone is dressing in black for anonymity, be sure no one’s clothes have unique identifying features; likewise, if you’re going to be posing as random passers-by, remember that civilian dress is different in Miami than it is in Seattle. If timing is important, make sure everyone’s watches are synchronized.
\n\nDouble-check to make sure everything is ready by your deadline. Go through a practice run, verbally if not physically. If participants are unfamiliar with the area, distribute maps. If need be, plant necessary materials in the area in advance of the action—being careful not to give anything away in the process.
\n\nBefore the action, study the area carefully. Chart safe routes in and out; look for hiding places, obstacles, potential targets, and surveillance cameras (including those in ATMs and stoplights). Note how long it takes to travel key distances, and be aware of the visibility from and of key locations. How close are the authorities, how long will it take them to arrive? Can their approach be delayed? Who else is in the area?
\n\nWhile scouting, be careful not to call attention to yourself or leave an obvious record of your passing. Be sure to do at least some of your scouting at the same time of day as the planned action, and if possible do a quick check immediately before it to make sure nothing has changed. If your action calls for daunting tasks, such as climbing a steep rooftop, it may be good to make an actual practice run at some point.
\n\nInformation can also be gathered from photos, maps, and brochures; aerial maps or blueprints may be available. In some cases you can obtain information from a tourist center, or call and ask questions on a pretext (as a student doing a report, for example), or even receive a guided tour. Once you’ve collected a lot of information, it can be helpful to consolidate the important parts into a map suited to your needs. Be careful to dispose of all files and paperwork securely.
\n\nIdentify all the roles necessary to pull off your plan, and make sure every one of these is filled. Some potential roles include:
\n\nIn some situations, it is wise to have understudies for important roles, in case it turns out at the last minute that someone can’t participate. This is especially true if you don’t know in advance what the date of your action will be—for example, if it is to coincide with an event that you cannot predict in advance, such as the announcement of a verdict or a declaration of war.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/03/14/direct-action-guide-4.jpg\")
\nIf your action is taking place during or as part of a larger event, there may be large meetings at which different groups try to coordinate their efforts. These can be useful, but they tend to consume a lot of time and energy, so make sure you go into them knowing exactly what you hope to accomplish.
\n\nWhether you’re acting in the midst of thousands of other activists or far away from anyone, take into account the way your actions will affect other people. Will they endanger others? Will they provoke police repression? If so, will others bear the brunt of it, and is it possible to offset this? Will your actions make it more difficult for other people to do important work in a given community? Are there negotiations or reassurances you should engage in before, during, or after the action?
\n\nHonor all agreements you make with other groups; some might be willing to help you, with or without knowledge of the specific details of what you’re doing. Over time, if you prove reliable and considerate, you’ll build alliances with them.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/03/14/direct-action-guide-5.gif\")
\nAwareness is key to the success of any action. Often, the atmosphere can change very quickly. It is important to keep up with what is going on around you, and to have established in advance how you will react to a given scenario. For example, is the arrival of a single police car a big deal? How about ten? Is it common for police to tail marchers in this city? While you can never be certain of exactly what will happen, going over possible scenarios in advance and having an idea of how your group wants to deal with them will give everyone a more solid idea of how to react—and how not to overreact—as the situation develops.
\n\nWhen informing others of a development, announce the raw information, not the conclusions you may have drawn from it (“The police are putting on gas masks,” not “They’re going to gas us!”), so others can draw their own conclusions. Resist the urge to panic, and the tendency to get carried away as well.
\n\nDuring the action, scouts can keep track of changes in the terrain such as arriving police, crowd movements, others’ activities nearby, and safe zones. They can use communication systems such as burner phones, encrypted text messaging, two-way radios, or whistles to keep in touch; audio or visual signals such as car horns or fireworks can also serve. A police scanner can be used to monitor police communications.
\n\nTo make communication more efficient, scouts can report to an individual or sub-group in the center of the action; in a larger setting, they can phone in their findings to a central information hub, which others can call with questions.
\n\nJust as communications equipment can make you more efficient and effective, it also increases the risk of surveillance. You can use codes and code names, but be judicious—complicated codes are easy to forget, and prosecutors can argue that your codes meant something more drastic than they actually did. Even if no other communication system is used, it can be useful to have the option of an “abort” signal for emergencies.
\n\nA safe escape is the most commonly overlooked part of direct action organizing. Be sure to have an exit strategy worked out in advance. If you’ll be in a large group, especially with others who haven’t been part of the planning process, think about how to avoid the herd mentality that keeps crowds together after it would be better to split up. Know when to press your advantage, and when to quit—when to run as fast as you can, and when to walk nonchalantly. Discard anything that could incriminate you, if possible in a place it will not be found; wait to change your appearance until you’re sure you’re no longer under observation.
\n\nIf need be, gather in a safe place afterwards and make sure everyone is accounted for; collect bail money, seek outside assistance, write press releases. While everyone involved is still around, get contact information for anyone who might be able to testify or provide documentation to assist arrestees.
\n\nAfter the action, destroy any evidence that could be used against you; keep tools that could be tied to the action in a hiding place outside your home. If you may have to testify in court at some date in the far future, consider writing down all the details you might need to remember on a piece of paper and concealing it in some place where you can be sure it will never be found. Get together in a secure setting and go over what happened. Follow up on ongoing matters, such as supporting those with court cases, providing further clarification to the public as to the goals of and ideas behind the action, and sorting out conflicts. Celebrate your victories, offer each other constructive criticism, learn from your mistakes, and lay plans for the next project.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/03/14/direct-action-guide.jpg\")
From Washington, DC to Melania Trump’s hometown in Slovenia, the police form the front line in every assault the state carries out against us. Without a professional force of mercenaries, tyrants like Trump and Putin could never implement their agendas. Yet we’re told that police are indispensable, that we should be grateful for the intimidation and violence they inflict on our communities.
\n\nAfter police officers in Oakland murdered Oscar Grant on New Year’s Eve, 2008, we distributed a poster expressing outrage at their systematic brutality and servile obedience. Sadly, this poster has only become more and more relevant over the passing years. Since then, many tens of thousands of copies have spread around the world, and versions have appeared in German, French, Portuguese, and most recently Slovenian and Spanish, all of which we present here for your convenience. Let’s create a world in which people answer to their consciences rather than the orders of their superiors—in which life is more precious than property—in which no gang of uniformed thugs can boss the rest of us around.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/02/07/slovenia-police-posters.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/02/07/the_police_color.jpg\")
English
\nYou can order print copies of the English version of this poster here.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/02/07/la-police.jpg\")
https://cdn.crimethinc.com/pdfs/la-police.pdf French / Français
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/02/07/die-polizei.jpg\")
https://cdn.crimethinc.com/pdfs/die-polizei.pdf German / Deutsch
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/02/07/a-policia.jpg\")
https://cdn.crimethinc.com/pdfs/a-policia.pdf Portuguese / Português
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/02/07/police-poster-polish.jpg\")
https://cdn.crimethinc.com/pdfs/police_poster_polish-1.pdf Polish / Polski
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/02/07/policija.jpg\")
https://cdn.crimethinc.com/pdfs/policija.pdf Slovenian / Slovenščina
\nThis text has been adjusted to match the Slovenian context. In English, it reads:
\n\nThe ones who stop you for no reason, write you fines, harass you on the sidewalk and throw you in jail. The ones who in the name of law and order brutally beat people from Izola to Maribor, from Jesenice to Novo mesto. The ones who defend the machines that tore down occupied buildings, the ones who violently arrest those who are putting their bodies in the line of fire to save families that are being evicted for petty change. The ones who track us through surveillance cameras and phone taps. The ones firing tear gas whenever our anger gets out of hand at a demonstration. The ones who defend our rulers, who back the bosses in every strike. The ones who stand between all of us and the grocery shelves stocked with food for the rich, between every homeless person and the buildings standing empty. The police are the ones who are chasing migrants out of the country in the middle of the night. Do you really want them to have more power over us?
\n\nIn every country, in every age, they tell us they’re indispensable, that without them we’d all be killing each other. But we know who they protect. You can’t suppress our desire to be free.
\n\nPOLICE EVERYWHERE, JUSTICE NOWHERE
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/02/07/la-policia.jpg\")
Spanish / Español
\nLos que masacraron a cientos de estudiantes en la Plaza de las Tres Culturas, los que asesinaron a Carlo Giuliani en Italia, a Amadou Diallo en Estados Unidos, a Nicolás Neira en Colombia, a Lucrecia Pérez en España y a Claudia López en Chile, justo después del “retorno de la democracia.” Los que rompieron las manos de Víctor Jara en Chile, y el cráneo de Steve Biko en Sudáfrica, los que hicieron desaparecer disidentes desde Argentina hasta Zaire, los que sirvieron a Josef Stalin, quienes reforzaron y refuerzan el apartheid en Sudáfrica y Palestina, y la segregación racial en Estados Unidos. Quienes interrogaron a las Panteras Negras y a los sacerdotes de la teología de la liberación, quienes llevaron registros de 16 millones de personas en Alemania Oriental, quienes nos controlan con cámaras de vigilancia e intervenciones telefónicas, quienes disparan el gas lacrimógeno y las balas de goma cuando las manifestaciones se les salen de las manos, quienes defienden a los patrones en cada huelga. Quienes se paran en medio de una persona con hambre y estanterías llenas de comida, entre una persona sin techo y edificios que permanecen vacíos, entre cada inmigrante y su familia.
\n\nEn todos los países, en todas las épocas, nos dicen que son indispensables, que sin ustedes nos estaríamos matando entre todxs.
\n\nPero sabemos bien quienes son lxs asesinxs.
\n\nNo vamos a aguantar mucho tiempo más.
\n\nPolicía en todas partes, justicia en ninguna.
\n\nLa policía ejerce autoridad legítima. Lxs policías promedio no son expertxs en leyes; probablemente conocen los protocolos generales, pero saben muy poco de las leyes en sí. Esto significa que su aplicación implica una gran cantidad de engaños, improvisación y deshonestidad. La policía miente con frecuencia: “Recibí un reporte de que alguien con su descripción estaba cometiendo un crimen por aquí. ¿Quisiera mostrarme su identificación?”
\n\nCon esto tampoco queremos decir que debamos aceptar como legítimas las leyes, sin pensarlo. El sistema judicial entero protege los privilegios de las personas con más dinero y poder. Obedecer las leyes no es siempre lo moralmente correcto, incluso podría ser inmoral. La esclavitud era legal, ayudar a esclavxs que escapaban, ilegal. Los Nazis llegaron al poder en Alemania por medio de elecciones democráticas, y leyes aprobadas a través de los canales prescritos. Habríamos de aspirar a la fuerza de la conciencia para hacer lo que sabemos es mejor, sin importar las leyes o la intimidación policial.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/features/policemyths/images/police1.gif\")
Protegiéndote y sirviéndote, hasta romperte la cabeza
\nLxs policías son trabajadorxs como nosotrxs; deberían ser nuestrxs aliadxs. Desafortunadamente, hay una gran diferencia entre lo que “es” y lo que “debería ser”. El papel de la policía es el de servir a los intereses de la clase dirigente; cualquiera que no haya tenido una mala experiencia con ellxs, probablemente sea privilegiadx, sumisx, o ambxs. Lxs oficiales de policía de hoy saben exactamente en que se están metiendo cuando ingresan a esa institución. Las personas uniformadas no solo bajan gatos de árboles. Sí, muchxs toman el trabajo por presión económica, pero necesitar un cheque de paga no es excusa para desalojar familias, acosar jóvenes de color, o atacar a manifestantes con gas lacrimógeno. Quienes venden sus conciencias son enemigos potenciales para cualquiera, no aliadxs.
\n\nEste cuento de hadas es más convincente cuando se expresa en términos estratégicos: por ejemplo, “Cada revolución tiene éxito en el momento que las fuerzas armadas se niegan a luchar contra sus pares; de modo que debemos centrarnos en seducir a la policía hacia nuestro lado.” Pero lxs policías no son trabajadorxs cualquiera; son quienes escogieron basar su subsistencia en la defensa del orden predominante, así que son lxs menos propensxs a aliarse con quienes quieren cambiarlo. En este contexto, tiene más sentido oponerse a la policía, que buscar su solidaridad. Mientras sirvan a sus amos, no pueden ser nuestrxs aliadxs; denunciando a la institución policial y desmoralizando agentes de forma individual, les animamos a buscar otros medios de subsistencia, para que algún día podamos encontrar una causa común con ellxs.
\n\nTal vez haya manzanas podridas, pero algunxs agentes de policía son buenas personas. Tal vez algunxs agentes de policía tengan buenas intenciones, pero una vez más, en la medida en que obedezcan órdenes en vez de a sus conciencias, no se puede confiar en ellxs. Es importante entender la naturaleza sistemática de las instituciones, en lugar de atribuir todas las injusticias a las deficiencias de los individuos. ¿Recuerdas la historia del hombre que, atormentado por las pulgas, logró atrapar una entre sus dedos? Él la examinó durante un largo tiempo antes de colocarla de nuevo en su cuello, de donde la había tomado. Sus amigos, confundidos, le preguntaron por qué razón lo había hecho. “Esa no era la que me estaba mordiendo”, explicó.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/features/policemyths/images/police2.gif\")
Marionetas de la clase dominante
\nLa policía puede ganar cualquier confrontación, por lo que no debemos combatirla. Con todas sus armas, equipos y vigilancia, la policía puede parecer invencible, pero esto es una ilusión. Están limitadxs por todo tipo de restricciones invisibles, la burocracia, la opinión pública, fallas de comunicación, y un sistema judicial sobrecargado. Por ejemplo, si no tienen vehículos o instalaciones disponibles para transportar y procesar un gran número de personas, no pueden hacer arrestos masivos.
\n\nPor eso una multitud variada, armada solamente de las mismas latas de gas lacrimógeno que le dispararon, puede mantener a raya a una fuerza policial más organizada y mejor equipada; los conflictos entre la agitación social y la fuerza militar no siguen las reglas del enfrentamiento militar. Quienes han estudiado a la policía y predicen para lo que están preparados, (lo que pueden y no pueden hacer), a menudo responden con más astucia y logran superarla.
\n\nEstas pequeñas victorias son especialmente inspiradoras para quienes están bajo el yugo de la violencia policial a diario. En el inconsciente colectivo de nuestra sociedad, la policía es el último bastión de la realidad, la fuerza que asegura que las cosas sigan como están; confrontarlxs y ganar, aunque sea temporalmente, muestra que la realidad es negociable.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/features/policemyths/images/police3.gif\")
Juntxs, somos más fuertes que ellxs
\nLa policía es solo una distracción del verdadero enemigo, no merece nuestra ira ni nuestra atención. Ay, la tiranía no solo es asunto de políticxs o empresarixs; ellxs podrían perder su poder sin quienes cumplen sus órdenes. Cuando cuestionamos su dominio, también cuestionamos la sumisión que lxs mantiene en el poder, y tarde o temprano nos enfrentaremos con quienes nos someten. Dicho esto, es cierto que la policía no es más integral a la jerarquía que las dinámicas de opresión en nuestras propias comunidades; solo es la manifestación externa de los mismos fenómenos, a mayor escala. Si combatimos la dominación en todas sus formas, en vez de especializarnos en luchar contra ciertas formas de ella, dejando otras atrás, tenemos que prepararnos para confrontarla tanto en las calles como en nuestras habitaciones; no podemos esperar ganar en un frente, sin luchar en otro. No debemos convertir los enfrentamientos con enemigxs uniformadxs en fetiche, no debemos olvidar las relaciones de poder presentes en nuestro lado, pero tampoco hemos de conformarnos solo con gestionar los detalles de nuestra propia opresión, de una manera no jerárquica.
\n\nNecesitamos que la policía nos proteja. Según esto, aunque podríamos aspirar a vivir en una sociedad sin policía en un futuro lejano, la necesitamos hoy, porque la gente no está dispuesta a vivir junta, pacíficamente sin actores armados. ¡Como si la desigualdad social y el miedo mantenido por la violencia policial fueran la paz! Quienes argumentan que la policía a veces hace cosas buenas, llevan la carga de probar que esas mismas cosas no podrían lograrse así de bien, por otros medios.
\n\nEn todo caso, no es como si una sociedad libre de policía fuera a aparecer de repente, de la noche a la mañana, solo porque alguien escribió un graffiti que dice “Al carajo la policía” en una pared. La lucha prolongada que se necesita para liberar a nuestras comunidades de la represión policial, probablemente continúe hasta que aprendamos a convivir pacíficamente; una comunidad que no puede resolver sus propios conflictos, no puede esperar triunfar contra una fuerza de ocupación mucho más poderosa. Mientras tanto, la oposición a la policía debería ser vista como el rechazo a una de las fuentes más atroces de la violencia opresiva, no como una afirmación de que sin policía no habría violencia. Pero si alguna vez podemos derrotar y desmantelar a la policía, seguramente vamos a ser capaces de defendernos contra amenazas menos organizadas.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/features/policemyths/images/police4.gif\")
Asume tu responsabilidad, maldito cobarde
\nResistir a la policía es violento -no te hace mejor que ellxs. Según esto, la violencia es inherentemente una forma de dominación, y por lo tanto, incompatible con oponerse a la autoridad. Quienes emplean la violencia juegan a lo mismo que sus opresorxs, perdiendo así desde el principio.
\n\nEsto es peligrosamente simplista. ¿Es una mujer que se defiende de un violador, igual que su agresor? ¿Fueron lxs esclavxs que se rebelaron, iguales a los esclavistas? Existe la legítima defensa. En algunos casos, la violencia refuerza la desigualdad; en otros, la desafía. Para las personas que aún tienen fe en un sistema autoritario, seguir las reglas, -independientemente de si son morales o legales-, es su prioridad más alta, a cualquier precio: creen que obtendrán una recompensa por hacerlo, sin importar lo que pase con el resto. Si estas personas se autodenominan conservadoras o pacifistas no hace mayor diferencia al final. Por otro lado, para quienes asumimos responsabilidad por nosotrxs mismxs, la pregunta más importante es ¿qué necesitamos para hacer del mundo un lugar mejor? A veces esto puede incluir la violencia.
\n\nLxs policías también son personas y merecen el mismo respeto que todos los seres vivos. El punto no es que ellxs merezcan sufrir o que debamos llevarlxs ante la justicia. El punto es que, en términos puramente pragmáticos, no debemos permitir que maltraten a la gente, ni impongan un orden social injusto. Aunque podría ser revitalizante para quienes han pasado sus vidas bajo el yugo de la opresión, contemplar finalmente un ajuste de cuentas con sus opresorxs, la liberación no es una cuestión de venganza, sino de hacer que esta sea innecesaria. Por lo tanto, aunque a veces puede ser necesario prender fuego a la policía, esto no debe hacerse con un espíritu vengativo de justicia propia, sino desde un lugar de cuidado y compasión, si bien no por la policía, al menos por quienes de algún modo podrían sufrir en sus manos.
\n\nDeslegitimar a la policía no solo es beneficioso para quienes experimentan la represión policial, sino para las familias de estxs oficiales de policía, y lxs mismxs oficiales. Lxs agentes de policía no solo tienen tasas desproporcionalmente altas de violencia doméstica y abuso infantil, también son más propensxs a ser asesinadxs, suicidarse y luchar con adicciones, que la mayoría de los sectores de la sociedad. Cualquier cosa que anime a lxs agentes de policía a dejar sus empleos, es para su bienestar, el de sus seres queridos y el de la sociedad en su conjunto. Creemos un mundo en el que nadie oprima, ni sea oprimidx, en el que nadie tenga que vivir con miedo.
\n\n“Averigua qué es a lo que cualquier persona se somete en silencio, y habrás encontrado la medida exacta de la injusticia y el mal que se le impondrá; y estos continuarán hasta que haya resistencia, ya sea con palabras, con golpes, o con ambos” - Frederick Douglass
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2012/05/01/democracy-is-bankrupt-vote-here-stickers", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2012/05/01/democracy-is-bankrupt-vote-here-stickers", "title": "Democracy is Bankrupt : Vote Here Stickers", "summary": "Why do we talk about changing our rulers when we really want to change our lives? Because our rulers have more control over our lives than we do. Changing rulers won't fix that. We need a real change.", "image": "", "banner_image": "", "date_published": "2012-05-01T17:00:00Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:35Z", "tags": [ "democracy" ], "content_html": "What happened to all the optimism of the last election season, all that business about hope and change? For decades, we’ve pinned our hopes on one candidate after another, but now it seems like people are finally giving up on the whole charade. The only ones who still take it seriously are the protesters playing democracy in the street.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2012/05/01/vote_header.jpg\")
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\nWhy has democracy failed us? Is it the Electoral College, voting machines, gerrymandering—the sort of thing that could be remedied by electoral reform? That wouldn’t explain why we’re still disappointed with the results even when our favorite candidate gets in.
\n\nIs it corporate influence perverting politicians’ agendas and controlling the media? Sure—but when power is distributed according to who rakes in the most profit, that can’t help but affect politics. As long as private property exists, the rich will always have more leverage over our society, whether or not they can literally buy votes.
\n\nIs it just a matter of scale? Would the same procedures work if we only practiced them at town hall meetings and general assemblies? Anybody who has lived in a small town knows that while small-scale politics may be more personal, that doesn’t keep them from being alienating. Likewise, letting an arbitrarily constituted general assembly determine what you can and can’t do feels even more ridiculous than getting bullied by cops and tax collectors.
\n\nMaybe the problem has to do with democracy itself. Honestly, when has it fully delivered on its promises? In ancient Athens, when women and slaves were prohibited from participating? In the days of the Founding Fathers, some of whom also owned slaves? Today, when everyone supposedly has a say but self-determination feels further out of our hands than ever?
\n\nWe keep blaming specific politicians and political parties, as if it were just a matter of personal failings. But any system that doesn’t work unless the people using it are perfect is a bad system. What if some politicians really do mean well, but there’s nothing they can do? All the good intentions in the world won’t help if the structure is broken.
\n\nSo let’s try another question:
\n\nThe answer is obvious: because our rulers have more control over our lives than we do. But changing rulers isn’t going to fix that. Is getting to choose the lesser of two evils really the best of all possible worlds?
\n\nImagine if we could have complete control over our own lives. That’s something that will never appear on a ballot. What kind of decisions can be made by voting—and what kind of structures does it take to impose them?
\n\nThink about what goes on in the Pentagon and the Kremlin and the offices of every town hall. Those day-to-day activities are the same under Democrats as under Republicans; they’re not much different today than they were a hundred years ago. Whoever happens to be operating it, the machinery of the state imposes its own logic: administration, coercion, control. Politicians promise us the world, but their job is to keep it out of our hands—to govern it.
\n\nOur ancestors fought hard to overthrow the kings who ruled them. When they finally succeeded, they kept the structures the kings had established—the same ministries and courts and armies—imagining that these could be run for the common good. But whoever is on the other side of that apparatus—be it a king, a president, or an electorate—those on the receiving end of governing experience the same thing. The laws, administrators, and police of a democracy are just as impersonal and coercive as the laws, administrators, and police of a dictatorship. The problem is the institution of government itself, which keeps the governed at a distance from their own power.
\n\nAs Oscar Wilde put it, democracy is “the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.” The essence of democracy is not just collective participation in decision-making, but also the apparatus to force decisions on everyone whether they voted for them or not. If we make our ideal a miniature version of this—“direct democracy”—it will never deliver the freedom we desire. We have to dream bigger, looking back to how our ancestors did things before they were ruled by kings, and around at all the parts of our lives that are still free from top-down political control.
\n\nLet’s do away with representation; the gulf is always too wide between what we would do ourselves and what is done in our name. Let’s do away with the idea that there can only be one legitimate decision-making body, one bottleneck through which all decisions must pass. Let’s build new structures that promote autonomy and free association, making decisions by consensus where we choose to come together and retaining our independence otherwise. Freedom means nothing less.
\n\nDecentralizing power means that all of us can take our lives in our own hands and realize our potential as we see fit. When our social structures are voluntary, only the ones that are truly in everyone’s best interest will persist. This might not be easy at first, but it beats pandering to the fear-mongering of those who benefit from control and hierarchy.
\n\nAll this sounds great in theory, but doesn’t it leave us on the sidelines? Maybe democracy is rotten to its core, but it’s the only game in town. How can we have any influence in our society if we refuse to participate?
\n\nAgain, let’s ask this question the other way around. What incentive do politicians have to grant us what we want if we only ask nicely? Corporations will always have more money with which to buy them; back-room deals will always be more appealing. The only way we can get leverage on the ones who hold power is by threatening to take that power away from them.
\n\nThis has to mean more than shuffling back and forth between different parties. When we build our own grassroots momentum, developing the capability to make the changes we need directly, politicians are forced to hurry to keep up with us, scrambling to grant our demands before they lose legitimacy altogether. If we want to have leverage on the government, the most effective way for those of us who aren’t millionaires or party bureaucrats to do that is to bypass the established channels and contest their authority. So the same principles that could take us beyond democracy—direct action, mutual aid, liberty and autonomy—are also the only ones that can help us wield any real power while it persists.
\n\nBeggars can’t be choosers. When we only petition, we give up the power to determine what the choices are in the first place. Let’s stop reacting to our rulers and set our own agenda.
\n\nMade for deployment over trashcans, toilets and other waste disposal locations.
\n\nOne sticker is included for free in every order from our online store.
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