![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/14/1.jpg\")
Copies of the new issue of Inside Front on a literature table in Budapest. This is like sighting a coelacanth in the wild.
\nOver three 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. One of the first projects they collaborated on was the hardcore zine Inside Front, the archives of which are available here.
\n\n\n\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.
\n
The last issue of Inside Front came out in 2003.
\n\nIn August 2025, as the hardcore band Catharsis was preparing to play their first shows debuting their album “Hope against Hope,” the team behind Inside Front suddenly came out of retirement and threw together a new issue of the magazine in a week flat.
\n\nAs a consequences of some wrongheaded notions about authenticity and immediatism, the issue never appeared online, though Catharsis distributed them from New York City to Budapest.
\n\nNever, at least, until now.
\n\nWe’ve added this new issue of Inside Front to our online archive, so you can print and distribute your own copies.
\n\nFrom the introduction:
\n\n\n\n\nWe hastily prepared this special limited edition of Inside Front in just a few days, scrambling to finish it in time for the record release shows for the Catharsis LP “Hope against Hope.” Although it has been well over two\ndecades since the previous issue, many people who contributed to previous issues of Inside Front sent new material for this one—not to mention at least one contributor who was not yet born when the first issues of Inside Front appeared.
\n
Copies of the new issue of Inside Front on a literature table in Budapest. This is like sighting a coelacanth in the wild.
\nFrom a review by Martin on the Counterforce site:
\n\n\n\n\nThe cover says “For anarcho-punks and hardcore anarchists” and I could just stop the review right there. This might be the epitome of “perfect zine” for me. The first non-meta content is “Like Weeds – A Dialogue about HIS HERO IS GONE’s Timeless Anthem” in which two thinkers trade increasingly deep and heady observations and anecdotes about the song and it’s context (even more impressive when you realize both parties are almost certainly completely sober).
\n\nThere’s also a relatable story about en EXTREME NOISE TERROR CD triggering scrutiny at the US border, a show review from someone’s first hardcore show ever, top-10 lists, a few reviews, ideas for a Stateless Fair, and a pair of parallel accounts from fighters in the Syrian civil war bonding over a Czechoslovakian hardcore song they all happened to know, and the struggle to finally download and listen to the song in the middle of a war zone.
\n\nIt feels like a special and unique zine, since it draws on energy built up over 20+ years since the last issue. I’m not sure if Inside Front will return in a more permanent way, but I hope this issue gets wider distribution than just the CATHARSIS tour so more of you can enjoy it.
\n
From the introduction to the zine:
\n\nIn the 1990s, in a time of social peace (at least in the United States), the hardcore scene was ahead of the times in that it was hyper-connected, internationally networked, and artistically experimental.
\n\nToday, the hardcore scene is increasingly conservative, artistically speaking (though we challenge you to prove us wrong!). It’s no longer any better networked than any other social milieu. But it is now old-fashioned in a potentially explosive way, because it involves physical collectivity, togetherness that unfolds on a slower time frame than the virtual reality of internet relations.
\n\nPeople have also become more aesthetically literate than they used to be. Whereas both a blast beat and a black bloc were completely foreign and incomprehensible to most people in 1999 (and both models derived both their strength and their limits from that fact), today, a much wider range of people can understand both of them. Yet as these reference points have become more widely shared, a crucial detail of the punk program has been lost: context is everything.
\n\nThe very same song can be meaningless in an expensive club and transformative in a squatted space of resistance. Banksy has demonstrated this in the field of the visual arts. Pussy Riot did the same when they performed “Punk Prayer” at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior in February 2012. Real, living art has to break the frame.
\n\nAs the social peace that used to exist crashes and burns, countless people are grasping for new ways of connecting and fighting. Hardcore and punk still have something to offer people today-perhaps now more than ever.
\n\nThe story goes that a participant in the defense of Weelaunee Forest once said that, proportionate to their numbers, punks were the most impactful participants in that movement. Those from any other walk of life could learn about the situation without necessarily feeling impelled to take action—but punks could not learn about anything without immediately asking how they themselves could take action in relation to it.
\n\nDo it yourself: this is still the key.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/14/2.jpg\")
\nOne of the enigmas of the second Trump administration is that the grassroots fascist activity of 2017 to 2020 has not returned with comparable force. But as Trump’s hold on power weakens, we will likely see the far right return to the streets. This makes it important to track what fascists are trying to do today and to block them every step of the way.
\n\nThe above illustration appears courtesy of Chris Veal. You can support Spider-Man in his efforts to resist fascism here.
\n\nBy contrast with the first Trump administration, Trump’s second term has not yet seen large-scale street mobilizations involving fascists and other white supremacists. Neo-Nazis, Proud Boys, and Trump supporters have attempted to disrupt anti-Tesla protests, No Kings rallies, and the recent demonstrations at Delaney Hall Detention Facility in New Jersey. Yet so far, these efforts have only taken place on a small scale and have met with massive resistance.
\n\nNonetheless, neo-Nazis like Jake Lang are testing the waters, hoping to revitalize mass far-right street politics, while groups like the Proud Boys have once more taken to showing\nup at Democratic Socialists of America events. Disgraced Trump official Greg Bovino has launched\na run for the presidency after speaking at a white supremacist conference in Portugal. The far right are attempting to regroup for the battles ahead.
\n\nWe should track the fascists as they endeavor to return to street action—especially as the midterm elections grow closer and the institutional far right becomes concerned about losing control. Various far-right ideologues are now attempting to stoke frustration about the administration’s slow rollout of repression targeting the opposition; some are argung that lethal street violence is the only path forward for the right. As Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio recently\nposted, “They’re still doing it because we didn’t hang them last time.”
\n\nTwo things are certain. First, the far right will continue to pressure the Trump administration to ramp up repression of anarchists and the left, from the DSA to autonomous anti-capitalist and anti-fascist groups. At the same time, they will claim that the Trump administration has not gone far enough, and will attempt to promote and normalize vigilante violence—which could be especially dangerous at a time when the state is providing cover for fascist terror. As the Trump era nears its end, the far right see a narrowing window of opportunity in which they can act before power changes hands.
\n\nAutonomous movements must monitor the far right and block their efforts while working to strengthen and support grassroots mobilizations against state violence and the fascists who cheerlead for it.
\n\nSince\nTrump pardoned him, no one has done more than Jake Lang to advance the cause of street-level far-right violence. Despite being denounced, laughed at, and sidelined by most of the existing fascist movement, including the leaders of the Proud Boys, neo-Nazi podcast grifters, and even Nick Fuentes, Lang has sought to draw together a coalition of white supremacists to take the offensive against those who oppose Trump’s rule. To that end, Lang has organized a series of ill-conceived rallies around standard MAGA grievances: supporting ICE, attacking Somali immigrants, and rallying against Muslim communities.
\n\nWhile Lang’s racist and Islamophobic stunts date to\nthe beginning of Trump’s second term, Lang entered the spotlight on a national scale in 2026. Last January, in the midst of Operation Metro Surge, Lang held\na rally in Minneapolis, aiming to capitalize on the Trump administration’s fixation on the local Somali community. Lang only managed to mobilize a handful of supporters, but hundreds of people rallied to oppose him, forcing him to flee the scene. Over the next several weeks, Lang continued to use Minneapolis as a backdrop for his stunts, receiving\na felony charge after vandalizing an anti-ICE sculpture erected by veterans and being filmed giving a Nazi salute while rallying in support of ICE.
\n\nLang then pivoted to attacking Muslims, attempting to hold rallies in New York against the democratic socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani. In August, Lang attempted to rally in Dearborn, only to be run\nout and attacked, then returned weeks later, gathering a crowd of several hundred, as Trump supporters seized on the primary victory of progressive democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed, a Muslim. Drawing a mostly older crowd of Trump supporters and far-right bikers, Lang confronted a comparable crowd of local Dearborn residents, who eventually\npushed Lang’s supporters off the street.
\n\nIn late August, Lang returned to Minneapolis to hold a march\nattacking Black people. Hundreds of Twin Cities residents came\ntogether in opposition. Lang’s rally lasted less than ten minutes. Hundreds of people confronted him and his handful of supporters. With the full support of the police, Lang and his supporters drove a truck onto a public sidewalk and into a crowd of counter-demonstrators. Lang was joined by a team of hired security, who pepper-sprayed many people in a failed attempt to hold back the crowd.
\n\nIn the ensuing chaos, a demonstrator dressed as Spider-Man jumped on top of Jake’s truck and punched him. Although police quickly arrested Spider-Man for his civic-minded effort, Lang and his small group of supporters were nonetheless forced to flee the area, only to themselves be arrested on riot charges.
\n\nBut while the city and local law enforcement made a grand show of arresting Lang, as Unicorn Riot later reported,
\n\n\n\n\nfelony riot charges against white supremacist provocateur Edward Jacob “Jake” Lang [were later dropped]… citing “extensive evidence of communication and logistical coordination between the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) and Lang’s security detail,” according\nto a press release.
\n
After a few days in jail, Lang was released, already promoting his next neo-Nazi rallies.
\n\nAlthough Lang walked free as a result of police collusion, in early September, over\n100 people rallied in solidarity with William Nicholas Love, the “Minneapolis Spider-Man” who is still facing misdemeanor charges of attacking Lang. Love’s attorney addressed\nthe crowd, arguing that Love pled “not guilty” because he had acted in self-defense and proclaiming, “Spider-Man and the rest of the people of this city have the right to defend themselves.”
\n\nSpeaking to the assembly in a full Spider-Man costume, Love told the crowd, “Black, white, Mexican—whatever race you are, we are in this together.”
\n\nIn a recent episode of the podcast Posting Through It, the hosts documented how Lang considers himself to be operating under the direct protection of the Trump administration, believing that Trump officials will intervene to protect him. And while Lang has managed to rack up charges across the US as a result of his various stunts, so far, law enforcement across the country has continued to roll out the red carpet for him. In Minneapolis, police were prepared to work directly with Lang to inflict violence on locals, despite the explicitly racist content of the rally and Lang’s recent history of violence against police in Washington, DC. It turns out that blue lives don’t matter after all, should they accidentally pose an obstacle to establishing an even more authoritarian order.
\n\nThis is the context in which Lang is traversing the US in hopes of finding issues that can mobilize the MAGA base to engage in street violence. So far, he has not succeeded. By contrast, the outpouring\nof support for the “Minneapolis Spider-Man” is reminiscent of the viral moment of celebrity for the masked anti-fascist who punched suit-and-tie white supremacist Richard Spencer at Trump’s first inauguration in 2017. Already, two crowd-funding\ncampaigns have raised almost\n$200,000 in support of Love, as supporters have flooded\nthe internet with supportive memes and costume\nlook-alikes.
\n\nThe state is allowing Lang to keep attempting to set off fascist street violence, but so far, the public has turned out over and over again to prevent that spark from catching.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/10/1.jpg\")
The original photograph by Chris Juhn.
\nJake Lang is not the only one seeking to catalyze a new wave of fascist street violence. After mass grassroots resistance forced ICE to draw down immigration raids in the Twin Cities, the Trump administration removed Greg Bovino from his leadership role within the Border Patrol. Bovino pivoted to openly embrace the white supremacist movement, posting photos of himself giving a Nazi salute and traveling to Europe to speak at a white nationalist conference alongside various neo-Nazis.
\n\nOn August 1, Bovino was scheduled to speak at an anti-immigration rally in Fishers, Indiana. Over a thousand people marched in opposition. As a consequence, in the end, the white supremacists and Republican bureaucrats held a gathering of less than a hundred people at a secret location—a muddy field.
\n\nThis outpouring of resistance in a city of less than 100,000 is encouraging. It shows what is possible in an era that has brought millions of people out into the streets in resistance to ICE, Flock cameras, and data centers.
\n\nFor precisely that reason, another section of the far right is attempting to create a wedge within the emerging movement against AI data centers. Humans\nFirst, a non-profit led by pro-Trump figures, recently called for protests against data center projects across the US. While Trump has been quick to\ndenounce the movement and offer his full support for data center expansion, neo-fascist\nthought leaders like Tucker Carlson and Steven Bannon have pivoted to attempting to co-opt opposition to data centers and Flock cameras. Carlson is now hawking\nanti-Flock merch complete with ski masks and anti-surveillance slogans. The far right exists to impose inequality and domination by force; it only masquerades as populist and libertarian in order to sell itself to the public. We have to drive these two fascists out of these growing social struggles and expose them as enemies of freedom.
\n\nAs opponents of fascism, we have several responsibilities. The first is to build a mass collective resistance to the state’s assault on anti-fascist and anti-capitalist movements. The second is to rally our communities against far-right attempts to take the streets, so they cannot rebuild their capacity to inflict violence. The third is to thwart fascist efforts to engage in entryism targeting the emerging social struggles against AI, data centers, and Flock surveillance cameras.
\n\nThese are massive tasks, but the good news is that a new generation of activists is getting involved in community organizing on a mass scale. Seasoned organizers are in a position to pass on their knowledge and analysis to communities fighting against fascism. There’s lots to do. Let’s get to work.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/10/2.jpg\")
\nAcross three decades, Russia has been at the forefront of the worldwide descent into authoritarianism. Vladimir Putin’s government has suppressed opposition in ways that aspiring autocrats like Donald Trump are still striving to emulate. Yet despite widespread repression, there is still resistance in Russia, and as Putin’s model proliferates, people everywhere around the world stand to benefit from learning about it. Likewise, we should support Russian anarchist and anti-war prisoners, both because resistance within Russia offers hope for the eventual end of war and totalitarianism and because, should autocrats consolidate power where we live, we will wish for people to support us, as well.
\n\nThe following text is based on a presentation Antti Rautiainen offered at the Baltic Anarchist Book Fair in Tartu on May 30, 2026. You can watch a video of the presentation here or listen to it via Spotify. The above photograph shows the consequences of an action carried out by the anarchist Ruslan Sidiki.
\n\nIn Russia, street protests against the war were crushed in 2022, the first year following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. According to the human rights organization OVD Info, 18,901 arrests for anti-war protests in year 2022 were followed by 274 arrests in 2023, 41 arrests in 2022, and just 13 arrests in first half of the year 2025. The reason for this sharp decline was the “Ilya Dadin” law of 2014, according to which “repeated offenses in following the established organization of protests” across a period of 180 days can result a prison sentence of up to 5 years. Thousands of people were arrested once or twice for taking part in anti-war street activities in 2022 and received either a fine or a prison sentence of a few days—but few risked being arrested for a third time.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/1.jpg\")
Detentions for anti-war actions by year, first half of 2025, according to OVD-Info.
\nRussian polls have been unreliable since spring 2022. After the criminalization of anti-war opinions, some polling companies reported that up to 60% of people queried refused to give answers. Before the polls became unreliable, 58-71% of Russians indicated a pro-war sentiment in various polls. However, opinions were intensely polarized between different groups. People in major cities were more anti-war than those in other locations; younger people were more anti-war, as were women. The greatest division was between people who watch television, the chief propaganda tool of the state, and people who do not watch it. Among people less than 30 years old who do not watch television, 80% were anti-war.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/2.jpg\")
\nThe general impression among critical Russians is that the majority of those in Russia still share a pro-war sentiment. However, a shift is visible even in officially tolerated opinion polls. According to polls by the Levada Center, over the past two years, the share of Russians supporting the continuation of the war effort has dropped from around 41% to around 28%, and share of those who support peace talks has grown from 51% to 62%. At the same time, the number of those who support making concessions to Ukraine is at 24%: people want peace, but on terms favorable to Russia.
\n\nOf course, this may simply reflect what people are willing to say to anonymous pollsters.
\n\nAnother difference is that now, people in small cities and rural localities are expressing more anti-war sentiment than those in major urban centers. Moscow is the most pro-war city. The likely explanation is that most of the frontline casualties are from small, peripheral communities.
\n\nWhy, after more than four years of war, with more than a million Russian soldiers wounded or dead, is anti-war sentiment still confined to a minority?
\n\nAs the saying goes, “It’s the economy, stupid.” During the first years of the war, salaries were growing even with high inflation rate. Starting in 2004, the Russian ruling class hoarded huge profits of the oil and gas trade in a fund currently known as the “National Wealth Fund.” Instead of raising the standard of living by investing in healthcare, social benefits and services, and the like, the money was stashed to be spent on wars and militarization. Now these billions are finally flowing into the economy in the form of wartime investment. The unemployment rate is negligible; in some cases, salaries have multiplied at factories in regions that were previously economically depressed. Generous monthly payments for contract soldiers are up to five times the average salary in poorer regions. At the same time, payments to widows and orphans are shifting the economy in the most destitute areas of the Russian federation, from which most of the enlisted soldiers come.
\n\nDuring the first months of 2026, the Russian economy contracted for the first time since the beginning of the war; but now, once again, it is on a growth trajectory, due to the oil price hike following the war in Iran. The Russian state budget is running on a deficit due to the costs of the war, but there are plenty of ways to solve that issue, such as tax increases, using what remains of the National Wealth Fund, cutting social spending and education, and forcing oligarchs to buy state obligations. The Russian economy will likely be able to sustain the war for several years yet, although the standard of living is stagnating now and drone strikes are causing increasing inconvenience.
\n\nAnother factor explaining Russian support for the war is the situation on the frontline. Russia’s advances have been very slow for years, but most weeks, Russia is still gaining more territory than it is losing. The traditional dream of socialists of all stripes is that soldiers will turn their rifles against the ruling class and finish the war. But throughout world history, this usually takes place in a situation in which a war has already been lost, as in Russia in February 1917 and Germany in November 1918. It is not certain that Russia will win this war, but as long as the chances are high, many people would like to be on the winning side.
\n\nThe third factor is that for a random person, the risk of ending up in the war remains low. The independent media project Mediazona, originally established by members of Pussy Riot, has been tracking Russian losses by monitoring social media and other sources, and they have been able dig up information about 239,000 dead at the front. Of these casualties, the service branch of 22.5% of the casualties is unknown. 36.7% are volunteers, 11% are inmates, 21.5% are contract soldiers, and only 8.3% are mobilized soldiers. Some of the volunteers, inmates, and contract soldiers have not signed their contracts voluntarily; inmates and conscripts are pressured to sign contracts. But the vast majority of them had a choice, and even those mobilized often had the option of not appearing in the enlistment office and leaving the country or dodging the draft by other means. Few people who have died in the front have genuinely used every means at their disposal to avoid this.
\n\nAlso, many of those who would otherwise have opposed the war have left Russia. The exodus that took place in 2022 involved up to 700,000 people. Many of them have returned due to the difficulties of life in emigration, but emigration is continuing.
\n\nAt the same time, the intensity of the repression targeting anti-war opinion is without precedent since the beginning of Perestroika in 1986.
\n\nYet there are still protests and social movements. Activatica is a project monitoring protests in Russia, and they are tracking several hundred protests and direct actions every month. The most popular topics are environmental issues; anti-repression events, such as letter writing events for political prisoners, are still tolerated. Activatica lists much fewer anti-war protests, and those are usually direct actions. In a few cities, lone pickets of stubborn pensioners are still occasionally tolerated without a resulting prison sentence, such as the pickets by Viktor Gilin in Perm.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/3.jpg\")
Protests and direct actions by type, monthly, year 2025, according to Activatica.
\nThe number of anti-war direct actions actually appears to be growing. In 2024, Activatica recorded 145 actions; in 2025, 233 actions. Activatica tries not to count actions provoked by Ukrainian internet scammers, who hack the bank accounts of (usually elderly) persons, then blackmail them into carrying direct actions, which often result in severe sentences. The internet scamming industry is widespread in Ukraine, and it is contributing to the war effort in this dubious way, perhaps also as a consequence of its links to Ukrainian security services.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/5.jpg\")
Direct actions by region, 2024, according to Activatica.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/6.jpg\")
Direct actions by Russian region, 2025, according to Activatica.
\nHowever, Activatica does not attempt to differentiate between actions carried out by activists and Ukrainian secret services—which is challenging in any case, because the secret services occasionally masquerade as activists. One may assume that actions involving explosives that occur not far from the Ukrainian border, or professional-level assassinations of Russian officers in major cities, are unlikely to be the efforts of activists, whereas small-scale Molotov cocktail attacks far from the frontline are probably the work of activists. Often, it is difficult to be sure who is behind what. Moreover, it is possible that people who genuinely oppose the war are contacting Ukrainian secret services in order to solve their own financial problems, or in order to combine their financial and a political interests. The model of Ukrainian secret service hiring civilians for money might be described as “Sabotage as Service”—the same model that is widely used by the Russian secret services in Ukraine and around Europe.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/7.jpg\")
Oil storage facilities burned in Kandry, Bashkokorstan, in an action claimed by Rospartisan on May 26, 2026. Rospartisan has a big-tent policy of covering any anti-war direct actions, from anarchists to the far-right.
\nThe vast majority of small-scale sabotage actions are not claimed by any group. During the first years of the war, the Combat Organization of Anarcho-Communists (BOAK) succeeded in conducting several major sabotage actions. BOAK was established before the 2022 invasion; it represents the direct continuation of the wave of insurrectionary anarchism that occurred in Russia from 2008-2013, inspired by the uprising in Greece in December 2008 after the police murdered Alexandros Grigoropoulos. Among the founders of the organization was Dmitry Petrov, an anarchist from Moscow who was killed by Russian forces while defending Ukraine in 2023.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/8.jpg\")
The logo of the Combat Organization of Anarcho-Communists.
\nNo one that the authorities have caught has been proven to be a BOAK activist. In one case, the authorities claimed that they had arrested a BOAK member for carrying out direct action, but an anarchist political prisoner who was held in the same prison confirmed that the activist had nothing to do with BOAK or anarchism. The case of another person who was arrested last year and accused of being a BOAK member still awaits confirmation or refutation, due to the secrecy of the court materials. BOAK cannot confirm or refute such claims because it does not preserve the personal details of its contacts.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/9.jpg\")
A photograph from a BOAK action.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/10.jpg\")
A photograph from a BOAK action.
\nBut although BOAK members have been able to evade the Russian authorities, several have been forced to flee Russia or to tone down their activities. This has largely reduced BOAK to a propaganda organization promoting direct action and anarchism.
\n\nAnarchists have established several organizations to support anarchists facing repression. Currently, the oldest is the Anarchist Black Cross of Moscow, established in 2003. For more than two decades, ABC Moscow has supported repressed anarchists, anti-fascists, anti-authoritarians and their supporters. As of now, ABC Moscow lists 23 anarchist and anti-fascist political prisoners in Russia, of whom 14 are in prison for alleged actions against industry or the military. Most of the rest were imprisoned prior to the full-scale invasion in 2022. During the first years of the war, ABC Moscow spread information about and supported diverse anti-war direct-action prisoners, but lately, their efforts have been confined to supporting anarchist and anti-authoritarian prisoners, due to the sheer number of anti-war prisoners.
\n\nIn 2025, ABC Moscow (and all the other ABC groups) were declared “undesirable” in Russia, which means that donating to them can result in a three-year prison sentence. Eventually, ABC Moscow moved all of its activities and members abroad; today, it focuses on spreading information and raising funds outside Russia. News about ABC Moscow activity appears regularly on the Avtonom website and via the group’s own Telegram channel. ABC Moscow can receive donations via Paypal and cryptocurrencies.
\n\nAs ABC Moscow’s activities inside Russia have become impossible, another organization has emerged to support anarchist and anti-authoritarian prisoners, named Fires of Freedom. You can follow its Russian-language Telegram channel here.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/12.jpg\")
Fires of Freedom.
\nSolidarity Zone is another initiative started by anti-authoritarians to support anti-war direct action prisoners of various political convictions (excluding the far right). It was established in 2022, at a time when mainstream human rights organizations were not willing to support those sentenced for arsons and “terrorist” charges. Since then, the situation has changed; now, Russian opposition and human rights organizations have a more positive attitude towards direct action. However, Solidarity Zone is still providing support for 15 prisoners serving lengthy sentences for allegedly carrying out direct action, and the organization is following the cases of many more.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/13.jpg\")
Solidarity Zone.
\nAlthough the mainstream democratic opposition has become more supportive of prisoners accused of direct action, in practice, the sheer number of prisoners has overwhelmed all prisoner support structures. The most significant Russian human rights organization, Memorial, has declared 1715 prisoners to be political, of whom 674 are anti-war prisoners. It has also listed 5608 people with “politically motivated charges.” Their process of identifying political prisoners has been slowed down severely by the number of cases. For example, Memorial designated the anarchist Alexandr Snezhkov as a political prisoner only two years after his case was submitted to them. In reality, the number of political prisoners in Russia is probably twice as many as they list.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/14.jpg\")
The growth of the number of political prisoners in Russia from 2012-2025, according to Memorial. Graph by Riddle.
\nIn the first half of 2026, 1234 people were sentenced for “terrorism” (including incitement)—an increase of 38% compared with the first half of 2025. The median prison sentence was 13 years. By the end of 2025, there were 5412 prisoners in Russia with “terrorism” charges, an annual growth of 40.9%. This number includes Ukrainian prisoners of war, who are routinely charged with ”terrorism,” sabotage as a service, provocateur victims etc. Motivations may also overlap.
\n\nAltogether, 21,600 people are listed as “terrorists and extremists” on the blacklist of the Rosfinmonitoring, the Russian Federal Service of Financial Monitoring. In addition to prisoners, this list includes people whose sentences expired long ago, and people who have emigrated. Ending up on this list means a lifetime ban on receiving almost any bank services. In practice, those on the list can only earn a living in cash.
\n\nAlthough supporting political prisoners has been a top priority for the Russian opposition, the avalanche of cases has caused prisoner support structures to collapse, and political prisoners have been reduced to statistics. More and more political prisoners have to face court without any financial support or lawyers.
\n\nAt this point, it is also worth asking what the point of such support even is, as no charges against political prisoners have been thrown out as a consequence of the efforts of lawyers, no matter how skillful. The outcome of every case has been decided long before they make it to the court. Nonetheless, lawyers provide a critical—albeit expensive—means of communicating with prisoners during the periods of investigation. Often, the authorities have stopped torturing prisoners after lawyers have become involved in their cases.
\n\nLegal work sometimes secures some minor victories. For example, in summer 2023, Ivan Kudryashov, who was supported by Solidarity Zone while imprisoned for putting up anti-war posters in his hometown of Tver, won a hunger strike after 40 days, gaining the promise that he would have access to vegan food and vitamins sent to him in parcels. Viktor Filinkov, who was arrested in January 2018 and sentenced to seven years in prison on the accusation of being a member of a supposed underground anarchist “Network,” was repeatedly placed in solitary confinement in his prison colony. But with help of lawyers, he managed to challenge these policies and spent last years of his imprisonment in general population.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/15.jpg\")
Ivan Kurdyashov.
\nDmitri Syutkin is a young anarchist, and as many of the younger anarchists, encountered with anarchist ideas online and was rather isolated from the anarchist movement. He is from a small city in the Sverdlovsk region, and he maintained a small telegram channel advocating anarchism and independent Ural region. Three years ago, at the age of 17, he was entrapped by the FSB, who deceived him, claiming to represent Russian volunteers fighting in Ukraine. Anarchist prisoner support groups only became aware of him this year. Accused of terrorism and other charges, he may face up to 10 years in prison.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/16.jpg\")
Dmitri Syutkin.
\nAnother anarchist prisoner who was discovered relatively recently is Alexey Grigorev from Novotroitsk in the Orenburg region. Accused of planning to burn an FSB building and military recruiting center and of having contact with the Ukrainian authorities, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison in February 2025, before any prisoner support group learned of his case.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/17.jpg\")
Alexey Grigorev.
\nPerhaps the most successful of the lone anarchist partisans is Ruslan Sidiki, who, unlike the prisoners listed above, had connection with the anarchist movement, having been active in a small and longstanding anarchist rural commune in the Leningrad area, close to St. Petersburg. He attempted to use drones to destroy strategic bombers, but failed as a consequence of electronic jammers. A second action against freight train was more successful, completely derailing a train transporting chemical ingredients. However, due to a small mistake, Ruslan was caught following a massive manhunt and sentenced to 29 years in prison in May 2025. This year, Ruslan’s lawyer was arrested, but Fires of Freedom managed to raise funds to pay for new lawyer to file his appeal.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/18.jpg\")
Ruslan Sidiki visiting the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in better times.
\nAlexey Rozhkov, another lone anarchist partisan, was one of the first people to attack military enlistment offices. He attempted an attack with Molotov cocktails on March 11, 2022, just two weeks after the war began. He was soon arrested, but because minor sabotage did not yet result in automatic terrorist charges during the first months of the war, he was released pending court and escaped to Kyrgysztan. Unfortunately, he was kidnapped there, brought back to Russia, tortured, and charged with terrorism. In May 2026, he received a sentence of 16 years in prison.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/19.jpg\")
Alexey Rozhkov
\nEventually, this and other actions against enlistment offices inspired a massive wave of arson attacks. Mediazone listed 94 such attacks during the first year and a half of the war. During that early phase of the war, many enlistment offices did not have their files digitized, so burning an office could protect everyone from an urban neighbourhood or rural region from being sent to war for several months. Eventually, the authorities began a hurried effort to digitize all the conscript files; although actions against enlistment offices still occasionally take place, the value of the target is now doubtful. Currently, most anti-war sabotage is targeted against transport and energy infrastructure such as railroads.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/20.jpg\")
Alexey Rozhkov with Molotov Cocktail. CCTV camera footage, scan from print of the court documents.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/21.jpg\")
Arson attacks against military enlistment offices and other administrative buildings during the first year of the war, according to Mediazona. Blue signifies before the August mobilization, orange signifies after.
\nCurrently, the most significant case against anarchists is the Tyumen case, which is still in court. Six anarchists from Yekaterinburg in the Ural region and Tyumen and Surgut of Siberia are accused of establishing a clandestine anarchist organization. In August 2022, Kirill Brik and Deniz Aydin were arrested in a forest in Tyumen, allegedly while attempting to test explosives. Arrests followed in Yekaterinburg and Surgut. All of the arrestees were brutally tortured; they confessed, but eventually all of them except Kirill Brik recanted their testimony. Still, with a cooperating witness, the situation of the others accused is dire. Nikita Oleynik, the founder of the anarchist library Burevestnik (“Storm Petrel”) in Surgut, is accused of being “a leader of a terrorist group” and is in a danger of receiving a life sentence.
\n\nThe life sentence was introduced in Russia in 1992 as a replacement for the death penalty. For 34 years, no one with a life sentence has ever been released in Russia. The other defendants in the Tyumen case face up to 25 years in prison each.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/23.jpg\")
Deniz Aidyn.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/24.jpg\")
Yuri Neznamov.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/25.jpg\")
Danil Chertykov.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/26.jpg\")
Nikita Oleynik.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/27.jpg\")
Roman Paklin.
\nAleksandr Snezhkov and Lyubov Lizunova were arrested in Chita in the far east of Russia in October 2022, while only 19 and 16 years old. Allegedly, they painted graffiti reading ”Death to the regime.” They were also suspected of administering a Telegram channel with anarchist and anti-war messages. Snezhkov was sentenced to six years in prison and Lizunova to three and a half years in April 2024. This year, Aleksandr received an additional sentence for “incitement” because he allegedly read his legal papers to other prisoners; he has been sent to a stricter prison for the remaining two years of his sentence.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/28.jpg\")
Lyubov Lizunova and Aleksandr Snezhkov.
\nSolidarity Zone tracked down the anarchist Roman Shvedov in the court system in autumn 2024. He was accused of anti-war arson. However, he refused the support that Solidarity Zone offered, insisting that there was nothing that could be done for him and emphasizing that he would prefer for the resources to be directed to other victims of repression. After being sentenced to 16 years in prison, he committed suicide in a Rostov jail in December 2024. The face of this fallen anarchist comrade remains unknown to us. Solidarity groups do not even have a proper photograph of him, only a pixelated face from Russian mainstream media.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/29.jpg\")
Roman Shvedov.
\nThe most straightforward way to act in solidarity with Russian prisoners is by spreading information—for example, translating news and carrying out banner drops, graffiti, and other forms of direct actions. A great deal of news about Russian anarchist prisoners is available on the English section of the website of Autonomous Action, the former Russian Libertarian Communist federation, which is now working as a media project.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/09/09/30.jpg\")
The logo of Autonomous Action.
\nWith automatic translation tools available for free online, it is easy to write letters even when the prison censors only allow prisoners to receive letters in Russian. It is possible to write to a number of anarchist prisoners via the prisonmail.online service at a small cost; the service also provides the opportunity to receive replies. It is possible to write other prisoners via snail mail. A full list of addresses is available via the ABC Moscow website.
\n\nPrisoner solidarity groups are in constant need of funds to pay for lawyers and other costs of imprisonment. You can donate to fundraising campaigns and projects that support prisoners—Anarchist Black Cross of Moscow, Fires of Freedom, and Solidarity Zone.
\n\nIt is also possible to donate to direct action initiatives such as BOAK using cryptocurrency. Last but not least, you cansupport the anarchists of Belarus (such as the Anarchist Black Cross of Belarus and Pramen) and Ukraine (such as Solidarity Collectives). All three countries are now locked in a common struggle against war and Russian authoritarian imperialism.
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2026/08/27/us-government-designates-host-of-noblogsorg-a-global-terrorist", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2026/08/27/us-government-designates-host-of-noblogsorg-a-global-terrorist", "title": "US Government Designates Host of NoBlogs.org a \"Global Terrorist\"", "summary": "The US government has classified the Italian collective Autistici/Inventati as a \"Specially Designated Global Terrorist,\" citing the collective's \"far-left\" politics. ", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/08/27/header.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/08/27/header.jpg", "date_published": "2026-08-27T08:30:51Z", "date_modified": "2026-09-04T02:52:35Z", "tags": [ "Censorship", "repression", "internet" ], "content_html": "On August 26, 2026, the United States government classified the Italian collective Autistici/Inventati as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist,” citing the collective’s “far-left” politics to justify the designation. They announced similar designations of the British group Palestine Action and the transnational Palestinian movement Masar Badil in the same statement.
\n\nFounded in 2001, Autistici/Inventati is a volunteer-run provider of privacy-oriented email, websites, mailing lists, blogs, and communications tools for users who prefer not to rely on corporate platforms. According to the US State Department, Autistici/Inventati hosts “roughly 16,000 mailboxes, 1,500 websites, 5,500 mailing lists, and 10,000 ‘blogs’ on its custom-built platform.”
\n\nAutistici/Inventati explain their values and goals in their manifesto:
\n\n\n\n\nWe believe that communication must be free—and for free—and, therefore, universally accessible.
\n\nWe try to accomplish all this by offering internet services (web sites, e-mail, mailing lists, chats, blogs, newsletters, and more) using our best skills and knowledge to defend both individuals or groups sharing our same aims or ideals. […]
\n\nWe believe that media and communication should not be the exclusive domain of information professionals. We believe in the value of self-management: this is why we have no sponsors or funding of any kind, apart from voluntary donations from those who believe that our project is important and must survive. None of us earns a cent from this project (in fact, quite the opposite).
\n
Many book fairs, radio programs, and other cultural projects rely on the Autistici/Inventati platform noblogs.org for website hosting. According to one anti-fascist research group, “Some of the most well-known NoBlogs sites belong to researchers who solely report on far-right hate and radicalization, never doing anything aside from showing you what exists.” Such researchers helped to identify the fascists who participanted in the “Unite the Right” rally in 2017, during which one Neo-Nazi murdered Heather Heyer in an actual act of terrorism.
\n\nThe US State Department is rationalizing this designation by alleging that Autistici/Inventati “provides encrypted tools and services to numerous violent far-left extremist groups,” including Portland-based Rose City Antifa. Their claim about Rose City Antifa seems to be false, however, conflating Rose City Antifa with another project called Rose City Counterinfo.
\n\nOn the basis of this error, the State Department rushed to proclaim an alleged “Portland Antifa connection to Hamas” and “Iran’s IRGC” [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], with the sole justification being the allegation that an unnamed “extremist media group”—which they do not allege had any relationship to Rose City Antifa—had republished statements from Hamas and the IRGC on a website hosted by noblogs.org. This is representative of the dishonesty and erroneousness of the State Department press release as a whole.
\n\nWhen a military force carries out an attack on a village, the first thing they do is attempt to cut the communication lines that connect it to the outside world. We have to understand the attack on Autistici/Inventati the same way. Now that tech corporations from Meta to the platform formerly known as Twitter have showed that they are willing to ban whoever the US government instructs them to, the US government is going after groups that provide web services on a non-commercial basis.
\n\nBecause there is no “domestic terrorist organization” designation in the United States, the Trump administration began its criminalization of anti-fascists by designating European anti-fascist groups as “terrorists.” They are targeting an Italian tech project for the same reason: they aim to put the pieces in place to criminalize domestic protesters by associating them with designated “Global Terrorist” groups.
\n\nAccording to the United States Department of the Treasury, starting on September 25, 2026, any transactions with Autistici/Inventati will be “prohibited\nby the Global Terrorism Sanctions Regulations.”1 The press release from the Treasury stipulates:
\n\n\n\n\nViolations of US sanctions may result in the imposition of civil or criminal penalties on US and foreign persons.
\n
Autistici/Inventati have released a short statement about the designation:
\n\n\n\n\nWe deny all allegations included in the statements, while we strongly affirm our dedication to providing a platform of tools for digital self-defense, addressing the need of free communication for activists and other individuals, groups and associations.
\n\nWe will not back down, we will keep doing what we have been doing all these years and we will do whatever is in our possibility to counter the false allegations made by a politically desperate administration with the sole intention of swaying people and media attention away from their own violence and warmongering.
\n\nAnti-fascism and anti-capitalism are not terrorism. Protesting is not terrorism. And everyone has the right to speak out and to struggle for humanity.
\n
Building on the social media bans of the preceding years, the terrorist designation of Autistici/Inventati is an effort to suppress dissident media and a significant step towards state repression on the basis of ideology alone. This will not stop with anarchist projects, but will eventually extend across the political spectrum to everyone who does not fall in line with the administration—unless the administration is removed from power. The danger to all will increase until that occurs.
\n\nOf course, Donald Trump’s successors could keep repressive policies like this in place, much as Joe Biden did. In addition to mobilizing against the Trump administration, we must make sure that there is enough political pressure on any political formation that could succeed the Trump presidency to compel them to roll back the repressive measures that Trump‘s administration introduced.
\n\nFor a legal analysis of this designation, you could start here.
\n\nThe specific threat from the Treasury Department reads as follows: “As a result of today’s action, all property and interests in property of the designated or blocked person described above that are in the United States or in the possession or control of US persons are blocked and must be reported to OFAC [the Office of Foreign Assets Control]. In addition, any entities that are owned, directly or indirectly, individually or in the aggregate, 50 percent or more by one or more blocked persons are also blocked. Unless authorized by OFAC, or exempt, OFAC’s regulations generally prohibit all transactions by US persons or within (or transiting) the United States that involve any property or interests in property of blocked persons.” ↩
\nSince the George Floyd Rebellion of summer 2020, police have continued to murder people at a steady pace, largely without provoking a significant response. Public attention has shifted to the brutality of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, treating police violence as ordinary and acceptable. Yet when police in Madison, Wisconsin murdered Corey Ruiz, demonstrators established a weeks-long occupation in response—raising the possibility that the movement against police could return with a vengeance alongside the movement to abolish ICE. Here, participants in the response to the murder of Corey Ruiz recount their experiences and discuss what it would take to establish a movement capable of putting an end to police violence.
\n\nThe Madison Police Department murdered Corey Ruiz on the afternoon of Wednesday, July 22, 2026. They killed him in broad daylight on Williamson (Willy) Street. A crowd gathered in horror, recording the gruesome state-sanctioned execution. While this is certainly not the only murder that Madison cops have committed, the attention it received catalyzed a surprisingly large and long-running response for the town of Madison, Wisconsin—a city known for its supposed progressivism and the university’s history of student activism. In the course of these events, it has become abundantly clear that the narratives about social change and “radicalism” that fuel the egos of activists in Madison ultimately offer no way forward in the fight against police violence. We need a movement that is capable of improvisation and attack, not just a politics of grievance with a flashy show of numbers.
\n\nHere, we aim to review the larger context of the murder of Corey Ruiz, exploring the political tensions in Madison, the history of the city’s treatment of unhoused Madisonians, and how political organizers and non-profits have failed to get to the root of these issues by making impotent demands. Police violence towards the unhoused community in Madison and towards people of color is rampant in the city; the execution of Corey Ruiz is a continuation and escalation of that violence. Corey’s execution, recorded in cell phone footage, was horrific, and his blood will forever stain the hands of city officials, legislatures, and politicians, as well as the police who carry out their orders.
\n\nIn 2023, the city government intensified its long war with the houseless by raiding encampments while closing down shelters, defunding them, and moving them outside of the city in order to conceal poverty and struggle from tourists and wealthy residents. Sadly, Corey’s death is only one of many deaths. The names of many that we will never know; our eyes have met, walking to work, on our commute, at bus stations—who knows what has become of them?
\n\nThose of us who have witnessed this war unfold in Madison remember the 2020 uprisings, Reindahl Park, and the university occupations for Palestine. What do all of these have in common? They all share the erasure of the houseless and the imposition of a division between the houseless and activists, which short-circuit the logic of an identity politics that becomes incompatible with the moralism of activism.
\n\nCorey Ruiz was Black, he was houseless, and he was one of many.
\n\nOur opposition to police murder is not dependent upon the moral character of the slain or the identity categories they fall into; it is based in our opposition to police violence itself. If a crowd of 500 people cannot mobilize against the police in a meaningful way, then what the fuck are we doing? We must attack, not just for Corey, but for those who have not yet been killed, for ourselves. Focusing solely on the individual victim of each specific act of police violence leads only to moral positioning. Social movements against police killings and anti-Black violence are limited by their tendency to focus on martyrdom. We must develop a systemic analysis of policing as an institution and seek to act effectively against it.
\n\nWe do not care what Corey’s legal record is. We are concerned with the role of the police, which is to act as an extended arm of state violence. The law is founded on violence—its entire promise of safety rests on a monopoly of violence.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/08/20/4.jpg\")
The encampment around the memorial for Corey Ruiz on Williamson St. and S. Baldwin St., seen from the top of 328 S. Baldwin St. on Tuesday, July 28, 2026, featuring the fist statue from George Floyd Square in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Photograph by Owen Ziliak.
\nTo understand Corey Ruiz’s murder and the context in which the public response to it unfolded, we must look at the forces stripping people of their housing in Madison and the ways that activists and non-profit organizations are entangled with them.
\n\nIn 2020, when the state failed to protect and provide for its citizens at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, mutual aid projects proliferated across the country, particularly in the Midwest. The government did not deliver on its promises of protection and resources; eviction moratoriums eventually ran out, and the number of evictions skyrocketed. As various mutual aid projects focused on houseless encampments and resource distribution responded to this situation, this influenced the outcome of subsequent struggles.
\n\nWhen local politicians or non-profits—which are usually silently allied with politicians—try to perform radicalism, we must be prepared to show where they have been and what their true interests are. If they are able to convince their followers that they are “in it with the people,” they will be able to shape the trajectory of social movements to prevent them from pursuing real change. This is not a matter of political purism but a recognition of the political contradictions at play.
\n\nWhenever a social movement or occupation begins, pay attention to how people use the words “security” and “safety.” This rhetoric is often used to divide movements and suppress their radical potential. We have repeatedly witnessed how a certain core of activists have co-opted struggles in this city for themselves and their professional gain.
\n\nIn 2020, the Reindahl Park encampment on the East Side of Madison was huge. It was impossible not to notice it while driving down East Washington, one of the city’s busier roads. Social workers, non-profit representatives, mental health specialists, and mutual aid groups attempted to establish a foothold within it. At the time, many considered the park to be an autonomous community. Yet the encampment was not without problems: Madison police were known to take people who were under the influence or having a mental health crisis to the encampment and drop them off there, where they would provoke conflict among the residents. It also appeared that undercover cops were selling drugs to people staying at Reindahl.
\n\nThe city government shut down the Reindahl encampment in winter 2021, using rhetoric about “safety,” “risk” and “violence” to justify doing so, as well as alleging that the inhabitants were selling drugs. Those of us who were present during those struggles saw how the city began to redirect the social workers and non-profit assignments to a new location, Dairy Drive, which was outside of the city and beyond the reach of Madison public transportation at that time.
\n\nIn November 2021, emergency federal funds were allocated towards an Emergency Shelter on Dairy Drive. Yet due to the limited availability of places in the Dairy Drive shelter, Reindahl inhabitants became divided as to whether to remain at the park or leave. Those who chose to stay were given short-term vouchers by the city to stay in local hotels. One hotel on the East side, which was gutted and renovated after many unreported deaths of houseless people that winter, has since been turned into “lifestyle apartments.”
\n\nThe city’s Dairy Drive Emergency Shelter was comprised of an enclave of tiny homes—enclosed by a fence and heavily surveilled by cameras—that housed about 35 people (17 official residents) with pandemic-era emergency funds. The local non-profit Madison Street Medicine operated it. Unsurprisingly to anyone who has attempted to organize in Madison, the non-profits fell for the city government’s plan to push poor people out of the city, interpreting the Dairy Drive shelter as a dignified way of maintaining the community of the evicted Reindahl Park. The Dairy Drive Emergency Shelter remained open until October 2025, when it was shut down after Madison city alders decided by one vote not to renew its funding.
\n\nAt that time, many of us already knew that the only way to maintain community was to fight together in solidarity. There were many conflicts around the transition from Reindahl Park to Dairy Drive; unfortunately, little documentation of that social struggle exists for future comrades to learn from.
\n\nBefore Dairy Drive was evicted, in summer 2024, Madison police violently evicted the Palestine solidarity occupation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The attack on the encampment for Palestine illustrates how consistently houseless struggles and broader social justice struggles intersect in Madison social movements. Many who were present at the Palestine encampment witnessed how the student organizers struggled to handle the realities of the houseless population that showed up to support the encampment. The police were regularly called because of altercations and the University of Wisconsin-Madison police flooded student emails for weeks during and after the occupation with alerts about “dangerous activity” in the area. Without exploring the complexities of that particular social movement, we can summarize that the police and the city have consistently weaponized the language of safety and security whenever any semblance of autonomous organizing emerges in Madison.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/08/20/3.jpg\")
The night of August 4: protesters fought back, lighting fires and scattering trash and recycling bins to block the police.
\nMadison Police Officer Kiel Peterson executed Corey Ruiz on July 22, 2026 at the intersection of Willy and Baldwin Streets in Marquette Neighborhood—a gentrified, predominantly white area just east of downtown and the capitol district. Immediately after police left the site of the murder, people assembled there in grief, mourning, and anger, occupying the intersection. What began as a small memorial vigil with candles, flowers, and art quickly grew into an encampment; people brought in tents and started grilling food and building trash-can barricades.
\n\nThat evening, a large group of protesters marched to the capitol, disrupting the planned Concerts on the Square. Photographs of this protest were shared widely on multiple national news outlets.
\n\nThe encampment and vigil continued to grow over the following days. People hung several banners up, set up tents to sleep in, and expanded the barricades on all four sides of the intersection. The site of the murder itself was covered in flowers, candles, pictures, and paint, growing larger every day. Several more tame, controlled marches occurred over the following few days, and a fist statue from George Floyd Square in Minneapolis arrived at the site. Madison non-profits, community leaders, and representatives from political organizations including PSL, DSA, and Freedom Inc. increased their presence and pushed their platforms in an attempt to gain numbers for their groups, taking ownership of the marches. A city employee brought port-a-potties to the occupation—voluntarily, not contracted by the city government—and the city government lent numerous salt trucks to reinforce the barricades in the name of protester safety.
\n\nThroughout the growth and expansion of the encampment, the city seemed oddly complaisant. Police presence was minimal, although people spotted police drones doing flyovers almost daily.
\n\nOn Saturday, July 25, over 1000 people marched across the city. The organizers ultimately led them downtown to yell at bargoers around midnight to remind them that “No one parties till Corey’s killer is arrested.” Unsurprisingly, they began to lose numbers, and turnout for subsequent marches dwindled.
\n\nIn the absence of police and seeming indifference from the city government, the occupation maintained its presence but not its momentum. Though the encampment served as a relatively safe space for unhoused folks to set up their tents alongside activists, activists met this with palpable tension. As had occurred during the Palestine solidarity encampments and other local mobilizations, these activists were uncomfortable when forced to interact with the unhoused community. As the days passed, the vigil site became a site for feel-good white liberal and Black community leader activism rather than grassroots community organizing. People held yoga classes, concerts, and offered support for grieving community members.
\n\nBeginning on Friday, July 31, Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, a centrist liberal, started asking people to end the encampment voluntarily. This was unsuccessful. Mayor Rhodes-Conway continued to issue increasingly threatening demands for the encampment to disperse; these appeared on August 1, 2, and 3 to no avail.
\n\nOn Tuesday, August 4, almost two weeks after the murder, city vehicles began circling the encampment at about 3 am. The city government did not officially announce the raid, though activists echoing the mayor’s sentiments had implied that a raid was likely. The presence of city vehicles increased until 5 am, when the sweep began.
\n\nBobcats fashioned with bulldozer blades tried to circumvent the barricades by advancing on the sidewalks. Protesters who feared that they would run over people sleeping in the tents managed to stop some of them. Hundreds of police set up blocks away to prepare for the raid, while city street workers with CAT bulldozers cleared everything in their path.
\n\nSome people left, but a group stayed on site as more police arrived. They gathered around the fist statue, locking arms. Having fully prepared the raid, the police attacked violently and in huge numbers, tearing down and destroying the rest of the encampment and arresting several protesters. After the police cleared the encampment, officers maintained a massive presence at the intersection and in the areas surrounding it. They staged at nearby locations such as the City of Madison Metro Transit Office three blocks away, at which you could see between 20 and 40 police cars at any time, and maintained surveillance of the intersection with undercover minivans and drones.
\n\nFor the rest of August 4, a cat and mouse game played out between police and protesters. People stayed at the intersection of Willy and Baldwin the entire day. Protesters re-occupied the site, marching in a circle at the intersection and chanting with megaphones. Around 4 pm, apparently without provocation, police violently arrested at least two of the more vocal demonstrators. At least once officer deployed pepper spray, injuring several people—many of whom were complying with police orders. Police aggressively threw people to the ground as they shoved the crowd back.
\n\nAfter police cleared the occupation of the intersection, traffic continued to flow, though protesters remained present and tensions continued to rise. Protesters started taking over the curb and the street. Police violently detained one protester, shoving them to the ground and restraining them. Outrage and attempted intervention prompted further detentions, some of which led to arrests. At some point, mounted officers arrived. Police again seized the intersection and began writing citations for jaywalking in an effort to discourage any attempts to reoccupy it. Police also significantly escalated their responses to any homeless or drunk person, with ten or more officers swarming the individual and immediately arresting them.
\n\nThat afternoon, Madison Police Officer Alex Gonzalez, who killed Madison resident Richard Johnson while on duty in 2024, arrived on site. Protesters demanded Gonzalez’s immediate removal and another officer escorted Gonzalez away. As protesters followed Gonzelez towards the police car, Gonzalez threatened them with pepper spray. People then reoccupied the intersection and gathered around the car with Gonzalez in it. Police threw several protesters to the ground and cuffed and arrested them. One officer nearly fell off his horse in the skirmish. Officers refused to let bystanders collect the names of the arrested and forced protesters back.
\n\nThat evening, people gathered and marched, eventually reoccupying the intersection. Several trash can fires and at least one dumpster fire appeared in the street. Police arrested several more people.
\n\nThroughout Wednesday, August 5, and especially on the evenings of August 5 through August 9, a continuous presence of between ten and forty protesters remained at the Willy and Baldwin intersection, expressing ongoing antagonism towards the police, who made additional arrests whenever people got into the street.
\n\nOn the evening of Saturday, August 8, local clergy and Black community leaders collaborated with the local organization The Pressure Movement to hold a vigil on the theme of “standing together for justice and human dignity” at the Capitol building. Community leaders made speech after speech urging the crowd to pay attention, hold police accountable—with no suggestion as to how to actually do this—and vote in the primaries “like your life depends on it.” The low attendance at this event felt like the symbolic nail in the coffin for the movement.
\n\nOver the days and nights leading up to Corey Ruiz’s funeral on Friday, August 14, and for a few days after, small groups of protesters gathered sporadically at the Willy and Baldwin intersection. But the dwindling numbers of idling protesters assuaged the concerns of cops, who eventually ceased policing the area.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/08/20/2.jpg\")
The night of August 4.
\nWe must understand the murder of Corey Ruiz by the Madison police in the context of the long-running local struggle of the houseless. We are aware of the proximity between the murder of Tony Robinson in 2015 and Corey’s murder, and we understand the significance of the fact that Corey was a Black man. But activists and organizers failed to draw attention to the fact that Corey Ruiz was unhoused, which could have changed the nature and outcome of the occupation on Willy Street. This parallels the way that the “progressive” city of Madison, Wisconsin has failed to acknowledge its role in the rising houselessness in the city, where more high-rise apartments go up every day.
\n\nWe saw that a lot of young comrades, radicals, and anarchists who tried to engage in the struggles in Madison were ultimately used as foot soldiers to advance the agenda of a small number of activists and organizers. Grievance-based politics with empty demands almost immediately drained the insurrectionary potential of the occupation. The problem was not mutual aid. It wasn’t white liberals. It was the movement policing that started immediately and the egos of the organizers themselves.
\n\nTo the young ones we saw there, we want to say:
\n\nTrust your intuition, trust your friends, and, most importantly, trust your rage.
\n\nDo not listen to police of any kind, whether it be the police themselves or movement police.
\n\nFind others who are fed up with the endless marches around the capital, the megaphone wielding, the lifeless chants.
\n\nAct. Proceed under the assumption that others will, too. Do not hesitate out of fear that they won’t.
\n\nDo not trust the non-profits in the city, do not trust the careerist activists who seek to funnel your rage into their political platforms.
\n\nAnother lesson that we sincerely hope people have learned is not to entrust your plans to the non-profits and careerists in this city, or any liberal city like Madison. They are not our friends; our ideas and tactics should not be extracted into aestheticizing or reinforcing their vanity projects.
\n\nNext time the police kill in this city, locate their infrastructure. Block, attack, and show them we are not to be fucked with again.
\n\n—Some Madison anarchists
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/08/20/1.jpg\")
The night of August 4.
\nMy time at the encampment has shaped new perspectives and sharpened existing thoughts. Witnessing community come together how it did was something I never expected. Being already entrenched in the revolutionary space in Madison, I was shocked to see this pop up. This wasn’t the first time I had to eat my words, however.
\n\nAlthough I praise the space for what it was, I can’t help but criticize it for the same reason. First, it was a space for the houseless and housed alike to get together and mourn a member of the community that was lost to the ever-violent arm of the state. A space where food, water, and shelter were provided and mutual aid (although not glamorous) was prioritized. A space where rage and anger matched the sorrow and anguish that many of us felt, the revolutionary energy was immense, our potential was ready to come to fruition. Then… nothing, all that energy got channeled to endless marches to nowhere, with no goals or demands (or at least no demands backed by the threat of action). Chants were as unserious as they were catchy. The attitude shifted quickly to “How do we fix this incrementally?”
\n\n“We need to hurt they pockets!” is what I heard when yelling at someone with a bullhorn.
\n\n“Fuck that,” I replied. “We have five of them right here! Scared!”
\n\nThat was before we marched to the capitol square to interrupt an event that was being held there. Around five police officers were at the mercy of the growing crowd on Corey (what was Baldwin) and East Wilson, tensions were flaring and the potential for tangible action was upon us—only to be relinquished by a person who I can only describe as “a fed without a check.” That theme continued to the eventual end of the Corey street encampment.
\n\nBeing African American myself, I would often look to other AA activists and organizers for guidance, but what I found was that many AA organizers and activists in Madison were there for the wrong reasons. Many already had connections to the city government or were working for or with them directly, a traitorous act, but some did the city’s dirty work for free, which is even more unforgivable. Not to mention the attitudes that some of the “activists” held towards our unhoused community. The truth is, there will always be opportunities to be made from this, more orgs to be built, clout to be chased, and pockets to be lined. Unfortunately, I was naïve and had hoped that the patterns I recognized from 2020 were just in my head. Black leadership in Madison will always sell out to the highest bidder, or worse, for free.
\n\nAs the days went by, internal struggles and contradictions that were festering started to explode left and right. Rage that should be used against the state started to direct itself internally—we were eating ourselves alive.
\n\nThe time we had to mend these issues wasn’t enough, and the city knew it. Because it wasn’t a matter of if, but when they would raid us.
\n\nThe raid itself was violent, as many could guess. I myself had to block city vehicles from running over tents that were occupied. Many people chose to give it up without a fight, and who could blame them? The numbers weren’t on our side.
\n\nAs I watched the city workers and police advance, my eyes fixed on the fire started near the co-op. Behind it, the intimidating silhouette of a CAT bulldozer emerged. I instantly thought of the struggle in Palestine in that moment.
\n\nAs the police surrounded us, we linked arms and were steadfast in our commitment to protect the George Floyd memorial. Hundreds of officers from different departments were there to do what they love to do: brutalize and displace. I had my head pushed into the concrete by five or six officers. Still, that was tame compared to what happened to some people.
\n\nNothing to note about jail, it was boring. After the initial arrests, folks started to rally at the corner of Willy and Corey. After hearing about that, all I and the others I was with could think about was how fast we could get back out there.
\n\nOver the hours and days following the raid, there were much of the same sidewalk protests going on. There was one night where there was a “riot” (using that term very loosely). I was only present an hour or so after the initial spark, but it wasn’t much. Certainly not enough to get anything meaningful done.
\n\nWith all this being said, there is still no place I’d have rather been two weeks ago than at the encampment. It was a very powerful space with very revolutionary people. It’s just a shame that we couldn’t do more in those moments.
\n\nThe movement will live on, and the fight will continue regardless of the setbacks.
\n\nDare to struggle, dare to win.
\n\nACAB, Fuck ICE, 161.
\n\nCorey Ruiz was brutally murdered by Madison cops nine days after ICE officers shot Joan Sebastian Guerrero to death in Maine. Local police, ICE, sheriff’s deputies: simply different administrative layers of a single, murderous regime. Police killings are the sharpest expression of the violence at the heart of its operation, the same oppressive force that robs us of healthcare, puts us on the street, fills the bosses’ accounts, and compels us to sell ourselves daily for food and shelter. Blue and red public officials and members of the nearly 18,000 police agencies in the US have all sworn to protect this integrated order of dispossession.
\n\nPolicing is the enemy’s essential “solution” for the problems the regime itself is largely responsible for creating. Therefore, we are forced to acknowledge that it’s only a matter of time before the cops kill again. Given this state of affairs, what does it take to get killer cops off the street, or to make their peers think twice before pulling the trigger? Beyond that, what would it mean to actually stop police terror?
\n\nWe think an adequate answer to these questions will include two elements.
\n\nFirst and foremost, the authorities only go out of their way to avoid or effectively address these killings when they face a serious threat of popular retaliation. Experience shows they must be made to know such murders will really damage their rule. George Floyd’s killer, for example, was only arrested after the destruction of Minneapolis’s 3rd precinct. The timing isn’t coincidental. Until then, investigators had avoided taking action, saying they needed more time, despite having had days to review clear footage of an obviously heinous act.
\n\nWe don’t discount the genuine risks at play when we acknowledge the connection between militant direct action and police accountability. We’re simply pointing out that confrontation is a strategic necessity for anyone who would like to make these murders less likely and obtain a shred of accountability after the fact.
\n\nSecond, there is a need for community self-defense infrastructure that proactively monitors neighborhoods for all varieties of police presence, a network that lets the cops know they’re being watched and enables folks to mobilize quickly when necessary. The anti-ICE groups that have popped up in recent months are a step in this direction.
\n\nWithin these groups, priority could be given to community patrols that view all agents of state violence (Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Madison Police Department, Dane County Sheriff’s Office) for what they are: lethal threats to people’s well-being. Participants must understand that the anti-ICE and Justice for Corey movements are complementary aspects of a more general, anti-authoritarian struggle. Only then can individuals be clear-eyed about building the power necessary to keep the regime’s abuses in check.
\n\nBeyond patrols, this will likely include socializing with previously unfamiliar neighbors, educating them as to how to avoid unnecessary 911 calls, and developing autonomous methods for effectively addressing anti-social behavior.
\n\nThis is risky, difficult, unglamorous work, but no one can stop police terror without it. Given the gravity of the undertaking, we’d like to end this reflection by drawing attention to some pitfalls observed recently that undermine the movement. We do so from a place of solidarity and hope it will strengthen ongoing efforts in the long term.
\n\nForgoing debate while dismissing tactical suggestions as the likely work of provocateurs deprives the movement of beneficial conversation. Heated, good faith disagreement about the direction of a movement is necessary for a movement’s growth. Such disagreement should accordingly speak to the movement’s goals and capacities and the ways in which certain proposals (don’t) further them.
\n\nA corrollary point relates to snitch- or cop-jacketing. Vigilance is a must for everyone, but suspicion of someone’s being a cop or snitch should never be aired publicly without concrete evidence justifying the claim. Raising such accusations in the absence of compelling evidence not only sows unnecessary discord, it potentially paralyzes the movement. In short, it’s the enemy’s work.
\n\nLastly, we can’t help but be concerned by incessant calls to “follow Black leadership.” To state the obvious, Black people are not a monolith. They hold diverse and often divergent opinions. So who do you “follow?” Madison’s Shelia Stubbs? Alex Gee or Brandi Grayson? Barack Obama? Mumia Abu-Jamal? The fight against racist oppression is its beating heart, but the movement needs critical thinkers, not followers ridden with unhelpful amounts of white guilt.
\n\nIn solidarity,
\n\n—Some local comrades
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2026/08/17/you-are-under-surveillance-2026-a-sticker", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2026/08/17/you-are-under-surveillance-2026-a-sticker", "title": "You Are Under Surveillance 2026 : A Sticker", "summary": "As a movement against Flock cameras gathers momentum, we have reprinted a sticker attacking surveillance.", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/08/17/header.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/08/17/header.jpg", "date_published": "2026-08-17T12:08:00Z", "date_modified": "2026-08-24T20:04:57Z", "tags": [ "surveillance", "flock" ], "content_html": "As the movement against Flock cameras gathers momentum, we have reprinted a sticker attacking surveillance.
\n\nAround the country, momentum is growing against Flock cameras. People are disabling these cameras in their communities—for example, someone sawed off and removed every Flock license plate reader operated by the Winona Police Department. This is laudable, civic-minded activity.
\n\nNow that resistance to surveillance systems and data centers is gaining popularity, even far-right pundits like Tucker Carlson are selling merchandise cashing in on public opposition to Flock cameras while admitting that, as obsequious toadies of the capitalist class, they “do not endorse vandalism or the destruction of property.” In other words, they do not actually want to do anything about mass surveillance, they just want to exploit this backlash against it financially and politically, channeling popular rage toward support for the same elites that impose and benefit from surveillance systems.
\n\nThe conflict inside the movement against Flock cameras, which has already escalated to physical clashes at some anti-Flock demonstrations, represents a microcosm of the contest over what will succeed the Trump era: will it be an even more bigoted and violent strain of far-right populism in the service of elites, a milquetoast liberalism that uses rhetoric about “rule of law” to justify preserving the structures of oppression, or an ungovernable movement for liberation?
\n\nFlock is not the only surveillance company, and cameras are not the only form of surveillance. There are many other corporations waiting to fill the role that Flock cameras are playing, and many other means by which those who aim to dominate us seek to monitor and control our activities. It is good to compel local governments to cancel Flock contracts or directly disable Flock cameras, but the movement against Flock must become a movement against all of the interlocking structures of domination or it will only function as a pressure valve as those structures tighten their grip on our lives.
\n\nMany people use a discourse about “privacy” to explain their opposition to surveillance cameras, as if the problem were simply that the cameras interrupt the isolation of the atomized individual—casting light on what would otherwise take place in obscurity. But anyone who reflects for a moment can see that the real problem is that the cameras enable the powers that be to impose an authoritarian order that benefits the wealthy at everyone else’s expense. Ubiquitous surveillance is only “necessary” in a social order that concentrates power in the hands of an elite class while impoverishing everyone else. A profoundly unequal society requires continuous policing and violence to maintain the gulf between the wealthy and the poor, and surveillance cameras are just one aspect of the control apparatus.
\n\nThe danger is not only that rogue police officers will use Flock cameras to stalk their ex-partners, but that the state itself will be able to consolidate the abusive relationship that it imposes upon all of us.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/08/17/you-are-under-surveillance_front_color.gif\")
The sticker.
\nIn March 2004, we announced a sticker addressing the cause of mass surveillance. It remains relevant today:
\n\n\n\n\nWherever you go, whatever you do, whoever you are, you are under surveillance because you are a potential criminal. Perhaps you secretly doubt the sanctity of corporate property, or the validity of laws made by the rich to govern the poor, or the soundness of capitalism itself—we can’t afford to assume you don’t. That’s why there are video cameras pointed at every cashier and police cars circling every block. Left to itself, a state of disorder and inequity returns to equilibrium; our job is to perpetuate this one indefinitely.
\n
We have reprinted this sticker for today’s context. Put them up everywhere that they could help those who do not wish to be subjected to surveillance identify the root of the problem.
\n\nYou can order these stickers here.
\n\nWe will be sending out copies with all orders from our online store.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/08/17/1.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/zines/blinding-the-cyclops/blinding-the-cyclops_front.jpg\")
Click the image for a zine version of this text.
\nOn January 27, 2026, at the height of Operation Metro Surge and in the immediate aftermath of the murder of Alex Pretti, Dylan Alverson, the owner of a south Minneapolis café known as Modern Times, took to Instagram to make an announcement. He explained that Modern Times was changing their name and their business model. From that day forward, “until this occupation is over,” the newly named Post Modern Times would be “free to all.” The purpose of this change was to enable the café to refuse “to generate taxes under the guise of a functioning for-profit capitalist business aligned with government strategy.” Not long after, “border czar” Tom Homan announced the drawdown that came to pass in February, precipitating a decline in both ICE and partisan activity; yet the Post Modern Times continued in this capacity for a further six months.
\n\nThis retrospective is aimed at elaborating the lessons the Post Modern Times experiment has to offer aspiring revolutionaries. We examine the experiment’s successes and limits in building dual power economically and counteracting what we will call the viscosity of race, in order to explore what it shows us about the meaning of partisanship.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/08/13/5.jpg\")
\nIn the winter of 2026, the federal ICE occupation known as Operation Metro Surge met immense and widespread resistance. This insurgency is described in detail elsewhere; here, it suffices to say that one element contributing to its apparent strength—as well as its limits—was the emergence of a cross-class alliance. This tenuous coalition saw many business owners make crucial contributions, from the simple act of posting signs barring entry to federal agents to donating to “mutual aid” organizing and supporting\ntheir employees when they clashed with ICE directly. While revolutionaries should examine the limits that this alliance introduced into the movement, that is not the purpose of this text. Here, we aim to examine the successes and limits of a much-lauded yet under-analyzed situation that emerged as a consequence of this cross-class alliance, a singular action taken by one small business during Operation Metro Surge: (Post) Modern Times café changing their business model from regular pricing to functioning entirely on donations in order to stop paying taxes to the government oppressing their community.
\n\nThe decision to shift business models represented a significant experiment in economic resistance to state power. It offered us a glimpse of what it could look like to engage seriously in “re-organizing economic [life],” albeit one clouded by the experiment’s failure to spread.1 In a moment of significant upheaval in which private property went largely unquestioned and unchallenged, the refusal of a business to charge for meals in order to cease to pay sales tax could be understood as a kind of proto-communist measure. While obviously not without its limits, it anticipates communist social relations by setting the price of commodities at zero, at which point they cease to be commodities at all.2
\n\nOn July 24, Alverson announced the temporary closure of the café and the end of the business model he had introduced in January. While the difficulty of relying on donations from the public alone to fund the longstanding operation may have played no small role in this decision, it is far from the only factor. In fact, hardly a month prior to the announcement, the New York Times ran an article on the\ncafé, reporting that surprisingly, the model had provided a certain amount of financial stability. A subsequent report from the Star Tribune advanced a different narrative: despite the supposed altruism of the café’s usual customer base and surrounding homeowners, the influx of poor, racialized, and in many cases homeless people proved to be too much for their delicate sensibilities. In the Star Tribune article, one neighbor said that this experiment had created the “first time I don’t feel safe” in the same neighborhood where the state murdered George Floyd and Renee Good.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/08/13/2.jpg\")
\nOpened in 2011, Modern Times has long been humorously referred to as the place “punks bring their parents.” The fusion of hippie and punk aesthetics that define the café has cemented its place in the southside Minneapolis subcultural scene. In view of this, it should be no surprise that the customer base has been predominantly white. That makes it all the more noteworthy that the experiment succeeded in breaking through that relative homogeneity to some extent.
\n\nArun Saldanha, in his writing on trance festivals in Goa, India, developed the term viscosity to describe the racial dynamics within the festival. The accumulation of shared practices, aesthetics, and knowledge created a dense interiority that was difficult for outsiders to penetrate. Saldanha refers to examples such as the clothing they wore and the drugs they shared together as demarcating those who were habituated to the scene and those who weren’t. In the case of Goa, race shaped the differential access to these habits which created de facto forms of exclusion. Without any explicit or overt discrimination, viscosity tends to produce spaces of relative racial homogeneity.3
\n\nWhile the specific practices, aesthetics, and choice of drugs may be different, it is not difficult to recognize a similar pattern in punk and many left-wing social milieus. Subcultural spaces like Modern Times in south Minneapolis have accumulated a relatively dense racial viscosity and largely continue to retain it, including in organizing spaces. Addressing this problem is of vital importance to revolutionaries if we are to contend with the extreme alienation of capitalist society. For that purpose, the experiment offers us useful insight.
\n\nOver a long enough period of time, a material shift in structure, such as removing prices from the menu, could help to break down these racial barriers. The results at Post Modern Times were not immediate, but as word spread, the prospect of quality meals offered for free began to counteract the viscosity of race.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/08/13/3.jpg\")
\nAs this viscosity was challenged in one direction, it was reinforced from the other. As Post Modern Times began to bring in more racialized and homeless people, its familiar customer base started to disappear. While owner Alverson suggests that this new influx may have been “crowding out paying customers,” the café was notorious for long wait times well before any of this. The “crowding out” that seems to actually have occurred was the breaking of subcultural—and therefore racial—homogeneity within the space.
\n\nIt would be easy to chide the prejudices of café-goers and neighboring homeowners for their reactions to this demographic shift. However correct, that would be a moralistic critique, whereas this essay is concerned with the strategic possibilities that experiments such as Post Modern Times could point towards. Those who express existential fear at the mere sight of a person who does not have a home are likely uninterested in revolutionary horizons, but it would be a mistake to accept the narrative that this was the dominant reaction, or the only possible one.
\n\nPost Modern Times represented the possibility of creating a space of encounter between many different social worlds in a time marked by increasing stratification and alienation. There is no question that the experiment introduced new challenges and conflicts for workers and neighbors, but such challenges are an inescapable aspect of constructing a new society, even in the most embryonic forms. In response, rather than embrace this opportunity, many found themselves withdrawing from it. The explanations vary—wait times, racist biases, or moralism—but the consequences were the same.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/08/13/1.jpg\")
\nWith the removal of prices, Post Modern Times became a popular restaurant for those who could not otherwise afford a good, hot meal. As more and more homeless people joined the lines to be seated, the restaurant took on a dynamic that is familiar to anyone with any experience in “mutual aid” organizing in the Twin Cities and beyond.
\n\nThis dynamic is not mutual at all: the organizing is done by those with means for those without them. Pointing this out is not intended to dismiss how helpful those programs can be, nor how many lives they have improved or even saved. Yet as the turbulence of our era continues to intensify and dual power institutions become essential to sustaining all of us, it becomes more and more crucial to distinguish between these programs and geniunely mutual aid.
\n\nThe idea that some people (defined by their predicates, whether by their proximity to whiteness, financial stability, or something else) are less deserving of free food than others (e.g., the unhoused) is a purely moralistic argument. Not only does it vacate the mutuality of “mutual aid,” it also deprives us of any possibility of direct encounter across the barriers these predicates impose that isn’t mediated by a service relationship.4 It does not take a stretch of the imagination to conclude that many people can’t conceive of what a relationship across lines of difference could look like that doesn’t rely on service to mediate it.
\n\nWhile some aspiring white allies may have chosen to avoid Post Modern Times in a noble attempt to avoid crowding out its supposedly more deserving customers, they actively foreclosed the chance to make connections with the very people they claim to support. And now Post Modern Times is literally closed.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/08/13/4.jpg\")
\nOur takeaway from Post Modern Times is twofold. On the one hand, it was a reasonably successful experiment in the reorganization of the economic sphere, though admittedly at the scale of only a single restaurant. Refusing to charge for meals—and thus refusing to pay sales tax—proved not only to be possible for an extended period of time, but also to be a valuable effort towards solving certain challenges posed by revolutionary organizing. Of these challenges, the racial viscosity of organizing spaces is perhaps the most salient.
\n\nOn the other hand, this experiment also revealed how much further we have to go. Any success in diluting the racial viscosity of the space precipitated retreat in equal proportions. Whether this was due to thinly-veiled racism or to the valiant calculations of moral activists, the outcome was the same. What was comfortable won the day.
\n\nFor revolutionaries, this underscores the importance of partisanship. For us, partisanship means fidelity to revolution; it is our belief that whatever it takes to build towards a revolution that abolishes capitalism and the state is worth it. This includes, for example, the perhaps uncomfortable experience of making earnest and unmediated connections with people unlike ourselves. It also includes, in a context in which many businesses were satisfied to put up “no ICE allowed” signs, the refusal to charge money for service at a restaurant in order to subtract taxes from the government’s income stream.
\n\nAs with all experiments, the result was never likely to be unqualified victory. The important thing is to subject the outcome of such experiments to rigorous analysis and learn as much as we can from each one. We do not intend this essay as the final word, but rather a contribution to a broader understanding of the situation.
\n\nSee the analysis of dual power in Connor O’Callaghan, “Revolution, Dual Power, and the Twin Cities Rapid Response Network,” Ill Will, July 1, 2026. While the essay neglects to problematize the emergence of dual power—in particular its policing function—it is right to note the insurgency’s relatively tame interventions into the economic sphere. ↩
\nIt’s important to remember that Modern Times is owned by an individual whose employees’ labor is inherently exploited for surplus value. Refusing to charge for meals does not change the totality of capitalist society they operate within, either. Ingredients still cost money, as do wages, and it is unlikely that the business refused to pay property taxes as well as sales taxes. Post Modern Times relied on donations from generous customers and others to stay afloat, with unknown results due to a lack of public financial information—although a New York Times report vaguely suggested some amount of success. Of course, for measures like this to become truly sustainable and spread, a more general assault on capitalist social relations would be required. See Brett Anderson, “This Restaurant Stopped Charging for Food. And Profits Are Up.” New York Times, June 8 2026. Online here. ↩
\n“In basic terms, viscosity pertains to two dimensions of a collective of bodies: its sticking together, and its relative impermeability. At that Dolce Vita party, at 8 a.m. on January 6, 2000, there was a viscosity of predominantly white ravers. They stuck together in time and space because they all saw each other regularly, smoked chillum together, danced to Goa trance, wore flashy clothing, and had money to spend on LSD and Ecstasy. Others, especially domestic tourists, weren’t habituated to all this; they didn’t have the cultural or economic resources to join in. When the sun came up, most Indians felt visible and out of place between so many white bodies. The denser the collective, the more difficult to cut through it: these are the two dimensions of viscosity. There is no downright exclusion… still, the net effect is that there is a strong tendency of dancers to be white.” Arun Saldanha, Psychedelic White: Goa Trance and the Viscosity of Race, 2007, pg. 5. ↩
\nAmong the endless list of missed opportunities that follow all moments of social unrest is the dream of a Powderhorn Park encampment commune that would not have been exclusive to the unhoused, but to all who might choose to continue fighting for revolution in the aftermath of the largest uprising this country has experienced in several decades, à la Gota Go Gama Village in Sri Lanka. ↩
\nAt the border with Mexico in Arizona, for the first time in history, a tree sit is blocking the construction of the border wall that Trump promised his voters. The wall is the knife of Gloria Anzaldua’s metaphor, when she wrote in 1987:
\n\n\n\n\n“The US-Mexican border es una herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds.”
\n
The border fence is a knife that cuts through a “living tissue,” as she writes, leaving a ragged wound across the precious and diverse ecosystems that defy the myth that the border represents a natural division between worlds.
\n\nTwo weeks ago, one protester decided it was time to block the machine that was about to destroy the last of four ancient cottonwood trees that stood in the way of the wall’s construction. A sheriff arrested him; he was released twelve hours later with no charges filed. This arrest galvanized the community.
\n\nLess than two days later, friends installed a platform in the tree. Since then, it has been impossible to level this one part of the land because there is someone living in a tree and many supporters on the ground making sure everybody knows it. If the tree is felled, our friend in the tree is likely to be killed along with it. Knowing this, the general contractor, Fisher Sand and Gravel, as well as their private security, Vision Quest, the United States Army, Border Patrol, and the Santa Cruz County Sheriff have not yet been able to remove us from the shade of the old growth cottonwood that has likely stood here since before the land was acquired by the United States.
\n\nWe invite you to join us in refusing the border regime—whether that means coming here to Lochiel, Arizona or taking action wherever you are. The border is everywhere that their networks of violence extend.
\n\nWhat follows here is an account from within this emerging struggle.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/08/12/2.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/08/12/3.jpg\")
\nWe have been experiencing a moment of relative stillness within a historical eddy. This summer has been full of fleeting conflagrations, weather hotter than we remember last year, and the feeling, never quite departing, that all of this can’t stay as precariously stable as it seems. The stability of the United States project has felt suffocating. We hear whispers of true resistance and see photos of joyful rupture, but our day-to-day lives have largely remained the same, with perhaps a few more friends, commitments, and Signal chats to keep up with than this time last summer.
\n\nGathered under the last of four ancient cottonwoods in the path of the new double border wall construction, we have found a moment of possibility. For now, we have managed to stop the regime in its tracks. The wall cannot be built where this grandmother stands so long as we, too, stand here.
\n\nFor over a year, environmentalists and local community members have been spending time together in Lochiel, Arizona. This town is all but abandoned. Many buildings here are becoming ruins, illustrating Lochiel’s peripheral relationship to the metropolis just a few hours to the northwest. These gatherings have built a compassionate and cohesive network that stretches far beyond the roads, buildings, fences, livestock, and ecology of the valley in which Lochiel is located. A few individuals have brought together many people to witness the splitting of this valley, and our world, apart.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/08/12/1.jpg\")
\nLochiel sits directly adjacent to the US-Mexico border. One of the houses in the town, the old customs house for the now-closed port of entry, butts up so close to the border that the owner was concerned that it too would be demolished to make room for the double wall. People on both sides of the border fence live much the same way, raising cattle and singing together under the same shade of cottonwoods in the same valley, under the same bright blue dome of the sky. The many very old cottonwoods at the bottom of this valley used to reach across the border, creating a continuous canopy over the road. This high-elevation prairie ecosystem is one of the most biologically diverse in the world, with countless varieties of insects and grasses, flowering plants, and many threatened bird species along with coatis, coyotes, bears, and jaguars. All of this life is at risk here.
\n\nA few years ago, in the fall and early winter of 2022, in the Coronado National Forest, which lies east of Lochiel, a similar composition of people resisted another attempt to build a border wall. This effort to block then-governor Doug Ducey’s container wall was ultimately successful. The participants employed much the same rhetoric and similar tactics.
\n\nYet today, the political climate has changed dramatically. In 2022, during the Biden years, Governor Ducey broke many laws to use shipping containers to “fill the gaps” left by Trump’s first ineffectual effort to build the wall he had promised his voters. Miles and miles of national forest—where the state government does not have jurisdiction—were clear-cut and graded without any permits or concern for the law or the environment. The project cost millions of dollars and inflicted untold impacts on this precious ecosystem.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/08/12/4.jpg\")
\nWith protesters standing in front of the vehicles doing this construction, crews were forced to work through the night. Protesters responded by setting up a camp in the border road itself. But at that time, Ducey was only tacitly supported by the United States government. After two weeks of occupation, the courts finally moved to intervene. Ducey was stopped not only by blockaders, but by the authority of federal law.
\n\nToday, in Lochiel, there is no lawsuit, no salvation from the courts to wait on. This wall, which is no less monstrous than that one, has been engineered for its purpose, and the law has been re-engineered as well. Under Trump’s second term, what was recently mere illegal buffoonery has become a blunt force supported by the law. All of us in Lochiel now, regardless of ideology, see that the power consolidated in the last four years indicates the state’s absolute disregard for life of all kinds. We are fighting for life. The state brings only death.
\n\nA few hours west of Lochiel, in a place called Quitobaquito Springs or A’al Vaipia by the O’odham people, Indigenous communities and environmentalists are also preparing for struggle against imminent border wall construction. The springs are a sacred ceremonial site for the O’odham people, some of whom lived there until the 1950s, when the national parks service annexed the land to form Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/08/12/7.jpg\")
\nThis spring relies on ancient aquifers that the construction will likely deplete to such an extent that the spring will cease to exist. This desecration is an existential threat to the O’odham people’s traditional religious geography; it also spells extinction for wild populations of Sonoyta pupfish and springsnails, which can only be found in the waters of A’al Vaipia. Resistance is mounting in the form of O’odham-led prayer runs and endangered species lawsuits, among other efforts, but the sense of doom is growing as surveyors arrive and construction crews make preparations.
\n\nAdjacent to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument is Tohono O’odham Nation. The US border has divided O’odham land since the initial process of colonization. The government of Tohono O’odham Nation recently released an announcement declaring all border wall contractors trespassers. “No Trespassing” signs are being placed to notify contractors of their illegal entry of the land. The border has already desecrated O’odham land, and this wall would destroy sacred sites and make connection across the border even harder than it is already.
\n\nBefore, a construction project would have been compelled to address these issues, but the Real ID act has freed the government of the responsibility to conduct archeological and environmental studies. The border wall is materially dissolving all history, life, and culture that could get in its way.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/08/12/5.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/08/12/6.jpg\")
\nAs I write, the fence that marks the border near Lochiel is being removed, panel by panel. I watch as the same machine that tore up three ancient cottonwoods in this valley carefully stacks up the fence panels.
\n\nIn a collective daydream encouraged by the heat of the sun, we imagined that this could the last time the valley will be divided by violence. That the valley could one day become whole again. That the mythology of the state might give way to land, sun, soil, abundance, freedom.
\n\nThis daydream ended as quickly as it started. The double wall now reaches almost to the edges of the roots of the fourth grandmother cottonwood that has been marked for death to make way for this monstrous infrastructure. Dust clouds from construction billow over her leaves as her roots are crushed by countless trucks and drowned by water stolen from the aquifer below in an attempt to keep the disturbed soil on the ground.
\n\nOn Monday, July 27, a local person decided to stand in front of the machinery that is supposed to take this last of four border trees out of its soil and all of our lives. For this act of care, he was arrested by Santa Cruz County Sheriff Hathaway’s deputies and put in jail for the day. He was released without any charges being filed. This act of bravery resounded in southern Arizona.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/08/12/8.jpg\")
\nAs the news spread, many more people turned towards this small town with their hearts and minds alight. A window opened into the possibility of stopping the construction of the wall and properly grieving the ecosystem that is being split in two. Journalists, environmental NGOs, humanitarians, and anarchists flooded into the small town in response to this invitation.
\n\nIn less than two days, the network spread its roots far enough that it was possible to establish a tree sit in the arms of that last of four grandmothers. People rigged a platform in the top of the tree and raised a banner.
\n\nOld cottonwoods are huge—and fragile. At any moment, any limb could drop without warning; the stress that this tree is enduring only makes that more likely. But that risk is worth it to the tree sitter and those supporting from below. This moment of freedom is worth the risk.
\n\nThe tree sit is both a symbol and an intervention. It draws on the activists’ experience with historic forest defense tactics and environmental militancy—and on a commitment to the more-than-human world. The tree sit in this particular place has done what few other tactics have been able to, completely halting the progression of the border wall construction in this small part of the San Rafael Valley. On three sides of the tree, construction is continuing, but still she stands with one of us held in her wide arms.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/08/12/9.jpg\")
\nJust after the sit went up, the sheriff was called once again. An employee of a private security firm called Vision Quest attempted to intimidate the sitter and the camp that blossomed under the tree. The sheriff did not come. We are told that he is also against the building of this wall. That day, it appeared that there was nothing that the private security guards, border patrol, or even the marines stationed at this part of the border driving back and forth in a golf cart could do to us without the sheriff’s cooperation—at least legally, at least for now. Once we realized this, we walked the border road easement without fear.
\n\nIn the two weeks since then, construction nearby has been largely disrupted due to people’s commitment to standing in the way as well as the miraculously full and regular monsoon season that has made the San Rafael valley so lush this year. The summer rain still falls here, unlike in Phoenix and Tucson. Lightning, downpours, and high winds have blessed us with breathing space in this moment of opportunity.
\n\nNo one knows what to do with us. While I can still feel the sun on my skin, the pressure of the heat of summer has lifted. Finally, we can run, play, and learn to defend the world of the real within the small power vacuum that we have created together under this cottonwood. We are at the edge of the false world that we are told we belong to, piercing its thick rubbery skin and feeling the breeze of freedom in the midst of the violence of ever-escalating border fascism. The margins and hinterlands of capital remain places that can offer enough space to move for those of us willing to puncture the illusion of state control.
\n\nNews from the margins quickly reached one of many centers of control. On Wednesday, August 5, we received news from Phoenix that some “anarchists and troublemakers of the metropolis” had carried out an action at the office of the general contractor awarded with the border construction project, Fisher Sand and Gravel. This company has made a billion dollars on the wall construction contract. The “troublemakers” trashed the office and posted a people’s eviction notice on the door, sending a message that just as the border is everywhere, there is a way for anyone to push back against it anywhere.
\n\nThe reportback from this action, originally posted on a regional noblogs site, begins, “The border is like an open wound,” recalling Anzaldua. There is no truer statement. Everywhere that the border is developed, maintained, and expanded, there is blood. We are only trying to heal this wound.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/08/12/10.jpg\")
\nMuch of the mainstream media rhetoric around the tree sit relies on neoliberal understandings of what is possible. If only there were one wall under construction rather than two, these cottonwoods might have been saved. If only the border could be maintained more abstractly, it would seem less violent from afar. If only these cottonwoods could have all been saved, the ecosystem would have stayed intact. If only the construction would be stopped by active nests that Border Patrol stated would prevent the callous removal of the grandmothers standing in the way. The studies abound, and all of it is true. There is irreparable harm being enacted on this ecosystem by the wall and its construction.
\n\nOn the ground, many people have a simpler outlook. As the banner hanging on the still-standing tree reads, “BORDERS KILL.” We deny any line that divides us. We oppose any force that prevents people, animals, and water from moving and dwelling where they will. We refuse to believe that this wall will stand forever. We know that with our continued refusal, we can tear it down. We know that the roots of these cottonwood trees remain, although torn and slowly decaying, deeper than the wall is anchored by cement into the thick soil of the San Rafael Valley. The cicadas sing with us. They tell us that rain is coming to make the road too muddy for heavy machinery to pass.
\n\nIn this moment, we do not know how long the tree sitter will be able to remain in the grandmother cottonwood we’ve grown to love. Many leaves have grown yellow and fallen due to the stress, yet there is new growth at the tips of the smallest branches. At any moment, the sheriff may decide that it is time for him to do his job. Perhaps more willing arms of state power will be commanded to remove us.
\n\nBut we will be here to stop this intervention, to stop the extension of the wall from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean, to stop the real world from being separated by an imaginary line imposed through raw violence. We welcome you to join us here in Lochiel; we invite you into the freedom we have found here, to fight the border where you are. We need you to help us to expand this space of possibility that we feel so clearly in this moment from the margins to the whole world.
\n\nWe know you can feel it too.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/08/12/11.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/08/12/12.jpg\")
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/08/12/13.jpg\")
\nOn July 20, 2001, at the peak of the movement against capitalist globalization, hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Genoa, Italy to oppose the summit of the eight most powerful governments in the world—the G8. During the massive demonstrations that ensued, a police officer named Mario Placanica shot and killed a 23-year-old demonstrator named Carlo Giuliani.
\n\nThe following text was written by Tomas Rothaus, a fellow participant in the battle of Genoa.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/07/19/2.jpg\")
A memorial at the site where Carlo Giuliani was killed, not long after his death.
\n\n\n\nIf we are speaking seriously of revolution, then we need to take a serious look at history and see what the consequences are, not only if we fail, but even if we are triumphant. Revolutions mean blood, death, and suffering. If we are not willing to accept this, then we should not be calling for them.
\n\n—“The Lessons of Genoa.” Barricada #8. Summer/September 2001
\n
I wrote those words once upon a time, Carlo, when your blood was still fresh on the pavement and your name still in every newspaper and on every television. I published them in our anarchist journal, Barricada, and I continue to stand by them. But please don’t misunderstand them. I’m sorry you’re gone and I experience your death as a tragedy. I think about you to this day more than you could imagine. Hopefully, I’m not alone in that regard.
\n\nFor years and years, as long as I could, I made sure that every July 20, we directed the rage that we carried for you in our hearts against our enemies. In the random cities of whatever country I happened to find myself in, we made sure that Molotov cocktails lit up the night, that it rained stones in the dark against banks, that we ambushed cop cars, that we etched your name upon the walls of Boston, Goettingen, Paris, Berlin. Sometimes, to celebrate your life and not your death (as well as to throw off the cops), we chose to avenge you on your birthday, March 14, rather than the day of your death.
\n\nToday, decades after that 20th of July of 2001, I’m often reminded of you in the most unexpected ways. I’ll see a person in their forties. Decently dressed, tidy, maybe wearing a business suit or some kind of work uniform. A human just old enough to look worn from the inevitable stresses of life, love, and labor, but young enough that their youthfulness still shines through from behind the five o’clock shadow and incipient beer belly. Because when I see this random person, any random person, who is about the age you would be today, I’m reminded of the day when the cop’s bullet took away your life—and your future.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/07/19/3.jpg\")
\nI’m not as outraged by your death as I am by all the life you were robbed of.
\n\nWe had an affinity in battle, and it was only fate that put you in that particular battle, on that particular plaza—the one my friends and I happened to not be at. The one time on that particular day that the police aimed their bullets not at the sky, but at the head of a human being. Your head.
\n\nFrom what I’m told, if we had lived in the same city, chances are good we wouldn’t have gotten along very well. I’m told you were one of Genoa’s punkabbestia, which (from what I understand) is like the chaos punks or street punks we had in my cities. Not particularly organized, sometimes dropping in on political meetings but definitely not an activist, militant, or any kind of cadre. The Tute Bianche, whose words to this day I’m obviously still reluctant to take at face value, called you “not particularly political.” They said that you used to spend your time at the Piazza Delle Erbe, where you would “beg and hang out with friends and stray dogs.” All of which I have nothing against—but we all know that the street punks and the obsessive young orthodox anarchists often didn’t get along very well.
\n\nNone of that matters, though. What matters is that they froze you in time. You will forever be a young street punk, if that’s indeed what you were, robbed of the opportunity to do whatever it is that brought you joy and made you feel whole as a person in the years and decades that should have still been left in your life. Maybe your youthful rebellion would have eventually faded, you would have finished your university studies, gotten a degree, moved on, and looked back with disdain at your days on the streets as a rebel and an outcast. Or maybe you would have looked at them with wistful nostalgia, as a healthy chapter you went through in your life before assimilating, getting a good union job thanks to your dad’s connections, starting a family, and throwing a coin toward the next generation of punkabbestia as you passed them on the streets that used to be yours. Or, who knows, maybe you would have become an old punk, graying but still free, dog at your side, panhandling on the streets of Genoa to this very day.
\n\nBut you were robbed of a future, so you will never be any of those things. You won’t betray us, you won’t move on, you won’t walk among us. And, even if my adventures hadn’t exiled me from Europe and I could find myself in Genoa once more, we’ll never reminisce together about that hot, sunny summer day when you could have gone to the beach but instead, outraged at the police invasion of your home, joined us in battle.
\n\nYou’ll never have a chance to move on, regret your choices, denounce the excesses of your youth, or spend your entire life staying true to them. You’ll forever be, as your best friend Daniele remembered you just a few days after your death,
\n\n\n\n\n“someone who had that evil inside, the one that is here in the air, that we all have. He didn’t fit in the society, in the system. He suffered a lot, and since he was more sensitive than us, more generous and kinder, he was also more fragile.”
\n
Forever a twenty-three-year-old, just a few short years beyond a teenager, looking at us through an aging photo, or reminding me of the brutal price of rebellion as the picture of you lying in a pool of blood flashes constantly in my head.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/07/19/8.jpg\")
\nJust as I’m outraged that you were robbed of whatever future you were yet to choose, I’m alarmed as I see your memory fading in time from the collective consciousness of those who came after you. I don’t even know why I’m addressing you in a letter. I don’t believe in the afterlife, and I doubt you did either. Maybe it’s my desperate way of grasping at a sense of control over what seems inevitable: that time eventually devours us all. That, while the circumstances may be different, both death as well as the passage of time will one day come after me just as they came for you. Still—and here I assume we’re also similar in spirit—just because it’s inevitable doesn’t mean it’s going to stop me from trying to prevent it.
\n\nYet many years have passed, Carlo, and I’ve had to lay down my weapons as well. So, since I can no longer do my part to keep your memory alive with action, here we are: a godless anarchist writing a letter to a dead street punk. Hoping others will read it and inquire about you, and about the conditions, dreams, and adventures that led to the rising tide of our movement, and the wave that swept your life with it that day. It’s the only useful weapon I can find in my arsenal today to fight the idea that you will be forgotten, just a footnote in a distant clash of a long-forgotten movement. Your face, your hopes, your dreams, and eventually your name just fading into the history books.
\n\nWe’ve been fighting the battle for your memory since the day you were killed. We’ve tried our best to be fair to it. To not assign you roles or aspirations you might have rejected. But it hasn’t been easy, and I apologize if we didn’t represent you as you would have liked. In Barricada, we boldly and without hesitation branded you an anarchist, never knowing if you identified with the word. In our defense, you can’t imagine what those hours, days, weeks, and months after you died were like.
\n\nThere were some among us, well-intentioned but misguided, who hallucinated you into an organized anarchist militant. A frontline fighter of the black bloc. They wanted to turn you into a willing martyr who gladly laid down his life for the cause. But I know you didn’t choose this, because you were close to not even showing up that day. More importantly, because none of us do. Unlike fascists, we celebrate life, not death.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/07/19/5.jpg\")
“Carlo lives—it is you who are dead.”
\nThen there were the pacifists and the reformists. These days, I try to steer clear of the hyperbolic anarchist sectarian language of my youth, but when I remember them—their actions and their words when talking about you—it comes roaring back. If you could have seen the crocodile tears of the scum of that movement! They invoked your name, pretended to hold high your memory—but they celebrated and remembered you only because you died. Those of us who acted with you, like you, who were your comrades on that day but whom fate didn’t place in the way of a cop’s bullet that afternoon in Plaza Alimonda—they denounced us. They said we were responsible for the violence, that we had brought the rage of the state upon the good demonstrators. That indirectly, we were the ones who were responsible for your death, not the state, not the cop that fired the gun. They spread absurd conspiracy theories that the black bloc and the massive, generalized, dignified resistance were the work of undercover cops and fascists.
\n\nAdrift in the parallel reality that their narrative created, they tried to attack us, tried to expel us from the movement, pushing us out toward the cops, calling us fascists and hooligans. And the next day, as we set out to avenge your death, they directed their chants of “Assassini!”—murderers—at us just as much as at the cops. They, too, made every attempt to claim you as a martyr of their movement, but in their case with the incredible cynicism and hypocrisy of vindicating your memory while denouncing all the others who acted as you did. To them, you were better dead than alive. A hooligan in life, a martyr in death.
\n\nThe ATTAC folks, the Genoa Social Forum, the Tute Bianche, the parties, the reformists, and the whole alphabet soup of aspiring managers of discontent—all of them tried to make you into a victim. A hapless and misguided youth, murdered by the state. They wanted to deprive you of agency—as they often do with those whose choices they can’t understand or don’t respect. I’m still not sure how much of it is cynical opportunism and how much of it is that they actually can’t conceive of any form of struggle beyond political maneuvering and mediated clashes. So every time we put the cops on the run—every time we opened up enough fronts to keep them at bay, so that some of us had a chance to calmly deconstruct the landscape of capitalism and take much-needed and much-deserved breaks between battles, lounging on the bank furniture we had set up in the streets with the leisure of a backyard campfire—they hallucinated some grand police master plan to justify repression against the whole anti-globalization movement. Those of us who lived were fascists, hooligans, and provocateurs, while you, by virtue of dying, became a victim and a martyr. They simply could not accept that the rebellion in Genoa was not only organic and authentic but also successful.
\n\nYou died precisely because, on that day and in that moment, we were succeeding. The cops were retreating. I don’t know if you ever knew it, but it wasn’t just there on the Piazza Alimonda—they were on the run throughout the entire area. I know this will be controversial, but given the circumstances, I’m not even sure that it’s correct to say that they “murdered” you. I’ll spare us both the voyeuristic reconstruction of the minutiae of your final moments. There were years of endless discussions about whether the bullet hit you directly or ricocheted off of something, whether you were throwing the fire extinguisher or just holding it. The soldier who shot you was eventually found to have acted in self-defense and acquitted of any wrongdoing. I’m also not so sure that it matters, honestly, aside from the need of many comrades, even anarchist comrades, to seek out the role of victim of police brutality, as if positioning ourselves in the role of perpetual victim in the face of the big bad state would lend us some moral high ground in the eyes of broader society. It’s defeatist and I hate it, as I assume you would too. The justice we were looking for was never that of the state and its courts.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/07/19/9.jpg\")
Carlo Giuliani Park. Photo by Pinciolola.
\nSpeaking of fear, this is what the soldier who shot you, Mario Placanica, said to the judge shortly after killing you:
\n\n\n\n\n“I fired because I was afraid of dying. I don’t know what happened. I remember they were surrounding us, attacking us, that the jeep was an inferno. My hands were shaking and I fired without looking outside.”
\n
Don’t misunderstand me—I’m definitely no friend of cops or soldiers—but I don’t have any difficulty believing him. At the time, he was twenty years old, barely more than a teenager, sent out into the streets of Genoa that day after being told by his superiors to “be on the lookout” because demonstrators would be “throwing bags of infected blood” and that there would be “terrorist attacks.” He said, “The feeling was as if we were going to war.”
\n\nI’ve been in similar situations, including elsewhere in Genoa on that very same day. I’ve stood in the place you stood, but at a different time and in a different place, and looked into the eyes of the uniformed person in front of me. If I were the cop or soldier, I too would be afraid. Perhaps I too would pull the trigger, especially if I were a young soldier, a believer in God and country, facing an advancing and seemingly uncontrollable horde of masked anarchists.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/07/19/1.jpg\")
Carlo Giuliani Park. Photo by Pinciolola.
\nFor what it’s worth, the man who killed you is a shell of a human being now. Let go from the carabinieri in 2005 due to psychological problems, today he represents himself as a “destroyed, lonely, and consumed man” who battles depression.
\n\nUnsurprisingly, I have next to no sympathy for his plight. But is he personally a murderer? I don’t know. We could never really make up our minds about that—so much so that the back cover of the issue of Barricada that we published immediately after the battle of Genoa, which was dedicated to you, in which we vowed to avenge you, includes the line “Carlo was not a victim of police brutality” while also proclaiming, “They murdered an anarchist.”
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/07/19/7.jpg\")
“In Loving Memory of a Fallen Comrade.” Barricada #8. Summer/September 2001.
\nAs much contempt as I hold for the man who killed you, a few years ago, he said something that helps me to understand why I, like so many anarchists, identified so strongly with you and felt your death so personally and passionately:
\n\n\n\n\n“That day for me remains a trauma, trauma for the death of a boy like me, also a victim on that tragic day. I am not an executioner, I am not a vigilante. That day I did not hold the gun for Mario Placanica, I held it for the Carabinieri, for the Italian state.”
\n
For a moment, let’s ignore the wallowing self-pity and false equivalency of how he paints himself as a fellow victim, since we both know that he was a not a conscript but a professional who willingly chose his profession. He is nonetheless correct that it was the Italian state that put the gun in this child soldier’s hand and gave him free rein to fire it against whose who rebelled. They shot you because you were “one of us.”
\n\n“One of us.” We spray-painted that on walls for years. One of the thousands and thousands on the streets of Genoa that day who chose to rebel. One of us, one and the same, regardless of what political label we slap on ourselves, regardless of whether some spend their days editing anarchist journals and plotting actions while others spend their days panhandling and hanging out with their dogs on the streets of their city.
\n\nOne of us. All of us, regardless of our more specific motivations, were there on that day because we saw this world as broken and refused to stand idly. You chose to rebel, just like us, a rock in your hand, your face masked, unbowed in dignity. No intermediaries, no staged or managed or curated spectacle of rebellion catering to the imagined tastes of the masses. Just your body as a weapon and the comrades who stood by your side as your strength. You chose this path not to die, but to live. Because you wanted to live, free and unchained.
\n\nSo free, so unchained, that I know that our affinity probably only existed in the streets, in combat against those who we recognized as our common enemies. I won’t be striking any nostalgic notes here as to what a wonderful human being you were, although your dad says you gave him “the strength of your ideals” and taught him to not judge people by “a ripped shirt, holes in their pants, or colored hair.” There will be no grief voyeurism here; the press vultures did enough of that back in the day.
\n\nOne of us. Maybe not an activist or a militant, not a cadre of any organization or structure, but one of us because you chose to fight. To fight alongside us, side by side. One of us—and that’s why they shot you. We all know that the bullet that found you could just as easily have found any one of us. It was meant for any one of us, for all of us.
\n\nOver the months and years that followed your death, I came to understand just how painfully and viscerally true this is—as comrade after comrade fell to the bullets of the state or the knives of the fascists. The same year you died, the state unleashed a storm of bullets that killed dozens in Argentina. I couldn’t help remembering you as I took cover behind our improvised barricades, not knowing if the bullets speeding towards us were rubber or lead. Years later, when a cop murdered a fifteen-year-old anarchist in Athens, many of us who shared the streets with you in Genoa rained fire on the cops outside the occupied Polytechnic. You were on our minds then, as well.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/07/19/4.jpg\")
\nWhat I’ll say next might sound contradictory, but it will make sense to other combatants. After many years, I’ve concluded that that is what we are—combatants. Of course, we don’t go to war, and I don’t pretend that we are things that we are not. It is true that there is no comparison between the risks associated with the conflicts we participate in and the conditions of actual warfare. But my life experiences and the experiences of those around me involve constant proximity to death, prison, serious injury, exile. These are not the experiences, the traumas, that most civilians experience in this part of the world—at least, not yet.
\n\nAs a combatant, I believe two things simultaneously, even as they sound contradictory.
\n\nFirst, your death was tragic. I wish it had never happened. We have tried desperately to avenge you—both out of principle and also as a matter of basic self-defense. To send the message to the state that the blood of rebels, of anarchists, carries with it a steep price.
\n\nBut at the same time—and this is where a lot of people didn’t see eye to eye with us—was your death unexpected? Probably not. Should we call it murder? Maybe in the broad sense, but the question seems almost irrelevant. Above all: was your death a reason to stop our efforts? Absolutely not. Rebellion is important. But rebels die, particularly when rebellions start to succeed and the state begins to take its enemies seriously. And when the state takes their lives, I miss them, and love even those I never met.
\n\nIt sounds like demagogy to say you miss a person who you’ve never met, and who you probably wouldn’t even have gotten along with well. But I do. I miss you like I miss Dax and Carlos, taken by fascists’ knives in Milan and Madrid; like I miss Clement who fell fighting fascists in Paris; like I miss Pocho Lepratti in Buenos Aires, Alexis in Athens, and Tortuguita in Atlanta, all taken by the bullets of the police. Or like I miss that kid in Goettingen who came into our info shop one day, whose name I can’t even remember, who I’m ashamed to say I never took seriously, who went on to lay down his life fighting against Islamic fascism and for revolution in Rojava, like so many other international volunteers. I miss them and every other comrade gone, because those bullets and knives were aimed at all of us. I miss them because they were all part of the struggle for a common idea. I miss them, as I miss you, because while I may not know the person, I know the kind.
\n\nCarlo, I didn’t know you, but I’m sorry you’re gone. I never met you but I miss you. I’ll forever be holding high your memory and trying to avenge your death, because the blood of our comrades does not come cheap. And while I still can’t find the optimism to believe in a conveniently beautiful afterlife, I can’t help but hope that you’ve smiled down approvingly upon our efforts.
\n\nThis text is adapted from the book From Riot to Insurrection: The G8 Summit of 2001 & The Battle of Genoa by Tomas Rothaus.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/07/19/6.jpg\")
This mural in memory of those killed by police appeared during the George Floyd Rebellion of 2020 in south St. Louis, only a few miles from Ferguson, Missouri, the site of the historic uprising of 2014.
\nOver the course of the second Trump administration, people around the country have developed models for defending their communities from federal agents intent on kidnapping and terrorizing. We have shared guides from organizers in Chicago and the Twin Cities. In the same spirit, we present this guide to following Immigration and Customs Enforcement vehicles, developed in the Bay Area.
\n\nEmboldened by tens of billions of dollars of federal funding and effective impunity, ICE agents are murdering people in the streets at an accelerating pace. In the course of eight days, ICE agents have taken four lives—randomly gunning down men in Texas and Maine, neither of whom were even the target of their operations, killing another person in Georgia by denying him access to his medication, and chasing another to his death in Florida. They will keep killing people until there are significant consequences for them or those who direct them. We should organize to defend our communities, drawing together networks of people who are experienced taking action together, and look for opportunities to go on the offensive.
\n\nHey, you! Yes, you.
\n\nYOU can counter state violence by following ICE vehicles.
\n\nThings are bad. The government is kidnapping and killing people.
\n\nIt is going to get worse.
\n\nWe see in Minneapolis and every other place fighting fascism that average people taking direct action can hinder and stop state terror.
\n\nFollowing ICE is a concrete way to make it harder for them to inflict violence.
\n\nThis guide is a launching point for you to feel comfortable
\n\na) responding to an ICE sighting
\nb) doing ICE watch patrol.
This guide is for you even if you don’t have a car. Cars need passengers. ICE followers need offsite support.
\n\nThe Resistance needs YOU.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/07/16/3.jpg\")
You can download the original zine version of this article here. It is addressed to the Bay Area context specifically.
\nThis guide is intended to help you to be as confident as possible, not to intimidate you. In the Twin Cities, everyday people did this work without the luxury of being prepared. You can act even without taking any of the steps in this guide.
\n\nHowever, if you have time now, it’s better to become ready so you don’t have to scramble to get ready later.
\n\nUse Signal. You can find a helpful checklist for Signal security here.
\n\nDisable location services on your phone.
\n\nDownload a VPN. A good free option is Proton VPN.
\n\nDisable biometrics. Replace fingerprint and facial ID with a passcode of more than 8 random digits.
\n\nExtra credit: set up a secondary phone or burner phone. We recommend GrapheneOS on a Pixel 8+.
\n\nFor more security tips, start here.
\n\nRemember:
\n\nConsider:
\n\nGood things to pack:
\n\nFollowing ICE is not a crime. But it is better to be prepared for arrests just in case.
\n\nEach participant should make sure that a trusted person has the following information:
\n\nIf there is a local jail support hotline, memorize the number. Otherwise, memorize the number of someone that you can call if you are arrested.
\n\nThe ideal configuration is 3 cars with 3 people in each car, and 1 person offsite running dispatch. But people have done this with a lot less! At a minimum, you should aim for 2 people in 1 car and an offsite dispatcher.
\n\nYou can divide these tasks between two people (highly recommended) or, if necessary, one person can try to do both at once.
\n\nPhones Role:
\n\nIf the ICE vehicles park and multiple agents exit, or if you see other notable ICE behavior,
\n\nActivator Role:
\n\nDriver Role:
\n\nBest practices for call with dispatch:
\n\nFor maximum clarity, learn the phonetic alphabet to report license plates over the phone—e.g., “Tango Yankee Charlie 666.”
\n\nYou can run dispatch if you are
\n\nIf you are handling dispatch:
\n\nYou can check plate registration here—if there is a mismatch, that indicates that the license plates have been swapped out, which is an ICE tactic frequently seen in the Twin Cities.
\n\nPeople in the Twin Cities set up this interface to check license plates against their continuously updated database of ICE vehicles.
\n\nUse the “SALUTE” protocol to convey information instead of inciting panic:
\n\nSize—number of vehicles/agents
\nActivity—for example, “idling inside vehicles” or “surrounding a home”
\nLocation—with address if possible
\nUniform—tactical gear and “DHS/POLICE/ICE” identifiers
\nTime
\nEquipment—for example, weapons, armored vehicles
\nSupport needed—for example, “Community responders needed NOW!”
A good use of SALUTE protocol could read as follows:
\n\n\n\n\n3 ICE vehicles, including known kidnap van, spotted driving in the Mission at 8:12 am, Feb 10. Join this chat for more info or to help support. (INSERT LINK TO UPDATES CHAT). Do not forward after 10 am.”
\n
This role is difficult and complicated. Don’t be intimidated—just do your best. In some parts of the country, you should be able to connect with experienced dispatchers for training.
\n\nCreate two Signal chats:
\n\n1)\tActive Following: The first chat is for those who are actively following ICE agents. Choose an innocuous group name.
\n\n2)\tUpdates: This is to connect people offsite to information as it becomes available.
\n\nFollow up after the fact:
\n\nWhen you first start following ICE, they will know that you are behind them. They will be driving erratically, cutting across multiple lanes of highway to lose you. In a “handoff,” a dispatcher finds a second car to take over following the ICE vehicle. The second car gets behind you, and then you pretend to let ICE lose you. The second car can then follow the ICE vehicle undetected for some period of time. This is a key function of a dispatcher.
\n\nIn the Twin Cities, handoffs have been essential in enabling activists to follow ICE agents from their headquarters at the Whipple Federal Building to their destinations.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/07/16/2.jpg\")
\nHere are some tactics ICE has used when people are following them. Assess what risks you are willing to take and discuss everything with your crew in advance so you can respond in a coordinated way that works for all participants.
\n\nRemember, you are not alone—you have dispatch and your trusted team to help you make decisions. All you can do is your best. There is not always a right decision in these moments.
\n\nIt’s important to weigh the risks of the ICE vehicle getting away against the risks of continuing to follow them.
\n\nSome scenarios we’ve seen and decisions you should make in advance:
\n\nYou can find resources for recognizing ICE vehicles in the Bay Area here.
\n\nYou can stake out ICE at a building or garage and follow their vehicles when they leave. Doing so can also give you valuable information about how ICE operates.
\n\nIdentify good locations for:
\n\nLocate the nearby bathrooms, while you are at it.
\n\nA picture is worth a thousand words!
\n\nObservers should capture the following details about ICE vehicles:
\n\nSit or stand where you can see the cars moving in and out. Cover your body, face, and hair. Work in pairs so you can take breaks without missing anything.
\n\nTrack vehicle movements. Send messages immediately as they arrive and depart. Note the timestamps.
\n\nTrack people entering and exiting. You can find tips on how to identify ICE agents and vehicles here.
\n\nIf you see a vehicle leaving, enter the vehicle information in the chat immediately, including the direction it is driving.
\n\nContinue observing in case more federal vehicles come out.
\n\nA dispatcher can perform the following tasks to support those staking out ICE at a building or garage:
\n\nMake note of which vehicles have been seen at the scene of abductions and prioritize following those. Not every known ICE vehicle is tasked with Enforcement & Removal Operations. Some of them are for administrators, surveillance operations, Homeland Security Investigations, or other purposes. Prioritize following the ones that have been observed kidnapping people.
\n\nPosition your car where you can follow any vehicle exiting the facility, whichever way it turns. Take note of one-way streets in the area.
\n\nWait patiently: Keep track of the chat and be ready to move. Stay hydrated and well fed but take care not to need a bathroom break at the wrong time.
\n\nWhen you get a message that a vehicle is leaving, follow it! Join the dispatch call. From there on, carry out the regular follow process described above.
\n\nWhich vehicles are worth following?
\n\nHow many cars should follow them?
\n\nWhen should the stakeout end?
\n\nObservation is worthwhile even when there are no followers available, because it enables you to track patterns.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/07/16/4.jpg\")
\n If ICE agents approach you, record the interaction if at all possible.
\n\nThe law stipulates you have rights when interacting with officers. Unsurprisingly, mercenaries don’t always adhere to the law. Knowing and asserting your rights won’t necessarily protect you. But learning your rights can help you feel confident in asserting them, which could help in a legal case.
\n\nThe 4th Amendment protects against unreasonable search and seizure. The 5th Amendment protects against self-incrimination.
\n\nThe ICE officer says that they are not detaining me, but asks me for my ID or to step out of the car. Should I?
\n\nDiscuss these questions with your crew in advance:
\n\nDoes observing ICE put me at risk of being criminalized?
\n\nAll other daily legal risks apply here, including traffic laws and possession of illegal items. The additional risk is that the agents of the state will go out of their way to pursue any charges in retribution for your lawfully following and observing ICE.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/07/16/1.jpg\")
\n And finally, an important rule of thumb.
\nIn response to the statement we published from Fire Ant Movement Defense,1 we received the following submission from Eric King, an anarchist and former political prisoner who spent nearly a decade behind bars.
\n\nNonconsensually providing information to police, prosecutors, or others involved in the criminal justice industry is one of the most damaging things a person can do, because it exposes people to danger from a vast structure that exists for the purpose of systematically inflicting violence.
\n\nThose who have provided testimony incriminating others must never be trusted with information that can put anyone else at risk again. And because it is not possible to be sure which information falls into that category, that means keeping them out of a wide array of spaces and relationships.
\n\nWhen questioned by police or prosecutors, the only ethical decision is to refuse to incriminate others. When everyone does so, this limits the amount of harm that the state can inflict. Those who consider informing on others must understand that when they do so, they are crossing a line from which there is no return.
\n\nLikewise, no defendant should be compelled to depend on a support committee that supports anyone who informed on them.
\n\nAt the same time, we should trust non-cooperating defendants to decide how best to conduct their defense and how best to engage with those who provided testimony against them. Federal agencies are attempting to use the Prairieland case to both criminalize and divide all who resist. State repression is intended to inflict harm not only at the point of immediate impact but also via the ruptures it opens up.
\n\nControversy about the decisions of the support committee in the Prairieland case must not discourage people from supporting the non-cooperating defendants. Please donate to their support funds, write to them, and spread awareness about their plight.
\n\nWhat follows is Eric King’s submission.
\n\nI’m writing this response to Fire Ant Movement Defense’s recent statement, “Manufactured Betrayal,” not as a confrontation but in the spirit of opening dialogue and clarifying the values we stand on. This is not an attack. I’m sharing my personal views that are based on my personal experiences. I am not an expert or an arbiter on revolution, I am simply someone who has been directly impacted by a loose-lip piece of shit and have seen people I love experience the same.
\n\nPrison is a truly horrible place. It is a place where people can die, brutally. It is a place that forces violences upon you every second of the day. It is a place that activates your fight or flight reaction to the point where it never stops being fight. It is a place that changes you––how you view the world, how you handle stress, etc. It makes you do things that you cannot forget and have to live with. It takes your families’ hearts and smashes them over and over, every day, as they worry if you are OK, if you are still around. I have been free for two and a half years, and I still think about all the circumstances I was forced into and all the trauma that still lives within me to this day.
\n\nThe Fire Ant statement regarding Meagan Morris felt like a insult to everyone who has ever been impacted by the prison system. It was confusing, enraging, and painful. Fire Ant has done great work in regards to prisoners, which is why this statement confused me so personally and hurt me so deeply.
\n\nI will never understand, and I don’t want to understand, the need to be a snitch apologist. Meagan Morris having regrets, or anyone who cooperates with the police feeling regrets, means nothing compared to the lives she helped to destroy. The fact that Meagan ultimately chose not to testify means nothing. She gave the state ammunition to use against us, not just the Prairieland prisoners, but all of us. In every single case against leftists in the future, the state will be able to use her words to portray our friends, our comrades, as violent terrorists, doing the state’s job for them. She gave the state information for HOURS. What the fuck are we doing?
\n\nAs Fire Ant said, many new radicals will join the struggle after the horrendous state repression they are witnessing. And the conversations we are having now are ones that need to be had––but AHEAD of time. What risks are you willing to take? What are the worst possible consequences, even if you think you’re safe and no matter how legal those risks are at the time? What will you do if you get caught up? Who are the most vulnerable? Who are the most ready? These are conversations that should be had. But never should we plan to allow snitches back into the community, never should there be a path of understanding, never should there be the justification that they paid their price and their remorse is enough. Honestly, fuck that. As an abolitionist, I do not want snitches or anyone else to be in prison. I do not want them to be hurt or harassed, attacked online, none of that shit. I do not have time for it. But I also will never comprehend the idea that they should be allowed back into radical communities. Why on earth would we risk the safety of ANYONE, just to appease someone else’s betrayal and guilt? What is the point of that? That is the line I hold. If my best friend became friends with a snitch because the snitch apologized, I would never talk to that friend again.
\n\nMaking space for their re-entry means spitting in the face of every single captive and all of their families as well. It means looking at people who dedicated their ENTIRE LIVES to the movement and saying, “I know that someone selfishly destroyed your life and betrayed everything they said they stood for, but they feel bad.” Ask yourself, would Kuwasi Balagoon be OK with that mindset? Would Emma Goldman or anyone else? We are living at a moment in time where people who are established and in good graces with the movement are making space for betrayers. Those who snitch are cops. They are prison guards. They are judges and prosecutors. They took the lives of others in their hands and tore them to shreds. There is no space in any organization or movement I love for people who would do that. It is unfathomable. Would Fire Ant Movement Defense be able to look my family in the face and tell them that the person who assisted in getting me tortured, sexually assaulted, and hospitalized had actually suffered enough? That it wasn’t fair to have them removed for the safety of others? That their feelings were more important than the brutality they would allow to happen to all of us?
\n\nImagine if the FBI read that statement (we have to assume they read literally all of them), would they be happy that we were contemplating allowing cooperators back into the fold? They would be elated. 1) They already know that those who flipped are vulnerable to pressure and would probably do it again, but also 2) They could easily see it as a continuous open door, without fear of consequences. How much easier it would be to convince someone to “do the right thing,” when they can show folks there are no lasting consequences to their betrayal. It is a complete erosion of trust within our movement as well. How on earth could I ever trust a comrade who has a soft line on something so dangerous? These are life or death decisions they are making. This isn’t a small ideological stance, it is putting the entire community in jeopardy. The door to return after even the smallest cooperation needs to remain closed and people need to know that. It’s the bare minimum that should happen to those who aid the police in ruining our lives and maintaining their fascist status quo.
\n\nI don’t understand the thought process behind writing this statement. The “why” of it all makes no sense to me. It hasn’t even been two months since the Prairieland sentences and we’re already dropping statements of support for the snitches? People can have their own thoughts and live their own lives and I can disagree with that. It was almost triggering, though, picturing the people who alerted the cops to where I was hiding out, and picturing a comrade I cared about and trusted asking me to be the rat’s friend again. The scars on my head, the blood in my mouth, the pain in my heart, would never allow this to happen. Because I have empathy for those whose lives were ruined by snitches, I could never be friends with a snitch. To snitch is to decide that your comrades’ lives mean less than your own.
\n\nThese are my views. I hope I’m sharing them respectfully. But I am hurt. I want to scream, “WHAT WORLD IS THIS?” Some of my closest friends and people I admire and support have been snitched on, and I hope we never see or hear from those rats again. There should never be space for that, in my opinion. It is a betrayal of all I stand for to give them an inch when they took away decades.
\n\nLove and respect to everyone who supports prisoners. I’ve got your back if you’ve got mine.
\n\nTowards Liberation
\n\nEK
\n\nTo be clear, Fire Ant Movement Defense is not the Fire Ant prisoner solidarity collective from Maine, which is another group entirely. ↩
\nOn July 4, 2025, roughly a dozen people participated in a demonstration at the Prairieland Detention Center, a facility serving Immigration and Customs Enforcement. At the conclusion of the demonstration, a participant named Benjamin Song saw a police officer aim a gun at a participant named Nathan Baumann and fired warning shots at the ground in response. Since then, police have arrested 22 people on widely publicized conspiracy and terrorism charges, subjecting many of them to long-term solitary confinement and other pressure tactics. The first eight of the 17 non-cooperating defendants went to trial in March; they were found guilty and sentenced to between 30 and 100 years in prison each, with one of them receiving a 30-year sentence simply for having moved a box of zines.
\n\nThe Prairieland prosecution is a flagship effort intended to criminalize opposition to fascism per se in line with the Trump administration’s National Security Presidential Memorandum-7. The prosecution’s approach hinges on the idea that the defendants constitute an “antifa cell,” despite many of them not knowing each other at all.
\n\nThis is not unprecedented. On the contrary, it is a strategy of repression that is familiar elsewhere in the world, under even more authoritarian regimes. In Russia, for example, it has become common for officers from the Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the KGB, to use electrical shock torture to attempt to coerce arrestees suspected of anarchism into signing false confessions affirming the existence of invented conspiracies.1
\n\nThe playbook is to fabricate an association, then pressure defendants to plead guilty, manufacturing evidence of the supposed conspiracy. In Russia, they do this with cattle prods; in the Prairieland case, they are attempting to accomplish the same thing via less flagrant means, including solitary confinement and threats.
\n\nIn the year since the demonstration at the Prairieland facility, federal agents have tried to expand on this precedent. Prosecutors continue to indict new defendants in the Prairieland case; federal agents continue to raid houses. In May 2026, three people in Spokane, Washington were convicted on felony conspiracy charges for protesting against Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity. On June 16, federal agents carried out aggressive house raids across the Twin Cities, arresting twelve people and indicting fifteen on federal conspiracy charges.
\n\nWhat is possible in Texas will not necessarily work in Minnesota. In parts of Texas, far-right and outright fascist state officials control much of the judicial bureaucracy and police, and have the support of much of the population; in Minnesota and other parts of the country, ICE and other elements of the Trump administration are so unpopular that even grand juries, long known as a tool that prosecutors can use for any purpose, sometimes refuse to indict arrestees. The local culture that prevails within the judicial infrastructure of different districts, the amount of leverage that local social movements exert, and the perspectives of the available jury pool all make a significant difference in the outcome of cases like these.
\n\nThe outcome of the first Prairieland trial should not intimidate us out of organizing and taking action; rather, it shows how high the stakes are. Both direct support for the defendants and general efforts to organize, popularize, and legitimize resistance can play a role in blocking federal efforts to normalize the Prairieland model. Even if the appeals courts show themselves to be just as corrupt as the courts that have convicted and sentenced Prairieland defendants, if we build a strong enough movement, whoever succeeds Donald Trump in power could be compelled to commute their sentences.
\n\nIf we withdraw from organizing, if we shrink from resistance, this will embolden the Trump administration and its supporters and they will intensify their attacks. Rather than permitting them to frighten us out of trusting each other, we must build deep personal ties and widespread community support in order to endure campaigns of repression. We can win this fight.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/07/07/5.jpg\")
\nThis bears repeating over and over: Never talk to police or the FBI. They wouldn’t ask you in the first place if they didn’t need your assistance to ruin your life and the lives of others. Remember: “I am going to remain silent. I would like to speak with an attorney.”
\n\nWhat follows is a statement from Fire Ant Movement Defense. Fire Ant has revised it since the original publication. You can read a response Eric King wrote to the original version here.
\n\nOn June 23, witnesses across the country watched in horror as the non-cooperating defendants in the Prairieland trial were given staggering sentences in the most blatant case of political persecution in a generation. Like the Haymarket trial, the Red Scare, and the repression of the Black Panther Party before it, the Prairieland case has come to define a new era of state terror intended to crush dissent.
\n\nIt is critical to understand the conditions under which this trial took place. The defendants were humiliated, denied medical care, and repeatedly tortured by state officials throughout the duration of their custody. They were wheeled into court rooms shackled to chairs, forced to clean human feces off of cell walls, subjected to vile human rights offenses that reflect the complete immorality of the American judicial system. The point of these violations was both to punish and to coerce, in hopes that the defendants would turn on one another and abandon their values—the very existence of which this trial was designed to condemn. The majority of the defendants resisted these efforts, demonstrating incredible resilience in the face of overwhelming violence. However, others chose to forsake their values, reject their communities, and betray their comrades in acts of cowardly self-preservation. Without these cooperators, it is entirely possible that the Prairieland trial would have ended with almost all of the defendants winning their freedom.
\n\nMuch of the state cooperation in the Prairieland trial was manufactured through torture and motivated by fear. It manifested in different forms, occurred in different degrees, and, like all matters of political importance, resists simple moral categorization. Of the nineteen defendants facing federal charges, five of them—Seth Sikes, John Thomas, Nathan Baumann, Lynette Sharp, and Susan Kent—took the stand at trial and condemned others to years in prison for their own benefit. Two additional defendants—Joy Gibson and Rebecca Morgan—took plea agreements. While these were non-cooperating pleas, the text of the deals affirmed the existence of a fictional “North Texas Antifa Cell,” which some in the movement have characterized as potentially damaging to other defendants. One other defendant, Meagan Morris, initially gave hours of testimony to federal agents, before rejecting cooperation, refusing a plea agreement, and standing trial with her comrades.
\n\nAll of these cases are materially different from each other. Taking the stand in a courtroom is not the same thing as giving an interview immediately after arrest; full-fledged cooperation is not the same as taking a plea deal that affirms the state’s fabricated narrative. We reject simplistic generalizations that frame all mistakes as unforgivable, rendering it impossible for those who have previously cooperated with the state to change course and restore their commitment to struggle.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/07/07/3.jpg\")
\nWe believe that Meagan Morris made an indefensible choice in giving hours of testimony to federal agents. By corroborating John Thomas’s testimony, she contributed to the arrests of Rebecca Morgan, Benjamin Song, and Autumn Hill. After that, she ceased cooperation. She did not take a plea deal. She did not take the stand against her codefendants.
\n\nDespite her initial cooperation, the state was happy to punish her alongside the non-cooperating defendants after she chose to change course. For months, she has faced harassment, starvation, and humiliation like the other defendants. Other cooperators who continued betraying their values received sentences as short as 22 months—but she, rediscovering her courage, rejected that possibility. This does not erase what she did. The depth of her betrayal will be measured by the days, years, or decades that those who once called her a comrade spend in cages.
\n\nMorris has made the strongest course correction that is possible in her position. Her refusal to cooperate further landed her a fifty-year sentence. If we cannot offer those who have begun to cooperate any incentive to stop doing so, that all but ensures that once someone starts cooperating, they will become a permanent addition to the state’s arsenal against us.
\n\nThere are lines that, once crossed, render return impossible. Baumann, Thomas, Sikes, Sharp, and Kent chose their side long ago. There are revolutionary contexts in which totalizing zero-tolerance policies are necessary. But at this moment, thousands of inexperienced new participants are flooding into the fight for liberation. We probably won’t be able to educate all of them before they find themselves in confrontations with the state. Some of them will experience intense repression designed to scare them into cooperating before they fully understand the political implications, the options available to them, or their basic rights. When they find themselves staring down the barrel of a gun, some may well say something they shouldn’t. If we immediately make permanent enemies of everyone who do so, this may further endanger others.
\n\nWe face a serious question: do we make demands of those who cooperate, or simply cut them off immediately? Do we attempt to intervene and try to alter their behavior, or do nothing?
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/07/07/4.jpg\")
\nTwo defendants accepted pre-written plea deals confirming the state’s fictions. The text invents a fictional antifa cell, takes for granted that antifascist activity is “terrorism,” and argues that wearing black is proof of criminal intent, among other absurdities. After the defendants had spent months in torturous conditions, the state pushed a deadline for agreeing to the pleas under threat of still worse federal indictments. Both Rowan Gibson and Rebecca Morgan, who signed those pleas without giving interviews, have been sentenced to 15 years each.
\n\nOn an individual level, signing the pleas limited their options. Their potential defenses in regards to their state charges are weakened, and they could be more vulnerable to certain kinds of targeting in the lead up to the state trials, since the state views them as more pressurable.. The pleas could also be damaging for their codefendants. Some argued that the pleas would be levied against the defendants at trial, cited as proof that some participants agreed to language describing the fictionalized “antifa cell” and supposed plans for an “ambush.” As it turned out, at the federal trial, prosecutors relied more on the testimony of cooperating witnesses, but the pleas remain available to introduce when the state-level charges go to trial.
\n\nIn addition, the pleas are a liability for the movement as a whole. It has been clear since the Department of Justice’s first press release on July 8 that their chief goal is to use this case to set a precedent and establish a narrative. This is the core of their strategy, and these pleas help them to advance it. However, these deals came after the cooperating witnesses signed their initial pleas, which make the same claims. Undeniably, Baumann’s testimony furthers the fiction more than Rowan or Rebecca’s signature ever could.
\n\nRowan Gibson and Rebecca Morgan took these deals, despite the bleak outcomes, primarily because of vile jail conditions, mental and physical health problems, and pressure from their lawyers. In a desperate situation, with cops and feds lying to them and coercing them, they remained principled. They did not give up information, or agree to take the stand. And as of yet, their pleas have not furthered the state’s agenda. Their deals show what can happen in the worst circumstances when defendants do not have enough collective legal support. If their lawyers had been willing to work with the defense committee, take advice from legal experts with a better understanding of the politics around the case, or enter joint defense agreements, these pleas could have been avoided. Rowan’s and Rebecca’s plight demands that we reckon with the weaknesses in the legal infrastructure of our movements.
\n\nThe five testifying witnesses sold out their friends at their most vulnerable. They endangered people in their community who remain free for now, people who lie awake at night, fearing the crash of officers breaking down their doors. They damaged the precious faith built and tenderly guarded by all those brave enough to fight for a new world. They deserted the war against ICE as emboldened goons watch blood pool beneath their boots in the streets. At once shocking and mundane, they have thrown themselves in with all the despicable traitors that history is lucky to forget. Nothing more needs to be said about their morals, as there are no words that would make their ethical depravity and the depth of their betrayal clearer to the world than their actions already have.
\n\nHow the state rewarded them tells us something new. All five of the testifying witnesses have now been sentenced. Thomas and Sharp got just over nine years, Sikes and Kent got six, and Baumann got less than two. Across both of the courtrooms, on both sentencing dates, the conservative judges spoke explicitly about sending a message. As for the nine defendants who went to trial, their total of 500 years of prison time represents a clear threat: associate with this ideology in any way and we will bury you. But what message can we read in the disparities among the sentences of the five defendants who testified for the state?
\n\nSentencing for cooperating defendants has traditionally been based on the criminal acts they’re accused of, the timing and extent of their cooperation, and the amount of new and actionable information they provided. This case diverges from the historical precedent.
\n\nThomas was not present in Alvarado, Texas on July 4, 2025. He began cooperating very early in the investigation after his house was raided, and consistently provided evidence following his arrest. His interview on July 12 led to Sharp’s arrest on the 13th, and his subsequent interview on the 14th led to the arrests of Song and Morgan on the 15th, as detailed in the criminal complaints against Rebecca Morgan and Susan Kent. Thomas’s cooperation also contributed to the arrest of Dario Sanchez. Thomas and Sharp pled to one count of material support for terrorism for sheltering Song. Ordinarily, harboring a fugitive can land someone up to a year in prison.
\n\nIn contrast, Sikes was present at the demonstration, armed, and lit fireworks, which the state argued are explosive devices. He began cooperating with the state in October or November 2025. Based on the timing of arrests, it seems unlikely that Sikes’ cooperation provided much additional actionable information.
\n\nBaumann was present at the demo, stayed through the arrival of police lieutenant Thomas Gross, admitted to bringing spray paint, and is the only person on video damaging any property. He agreed to cooperate very early on, but knew none of the participants and could provide very little identifying information.
\n\nPrecedent would suggest that Baumann would get the heaviest sentence, while Sikes and Thomas would get less. In fact, the reverse occurred. Their sentences set a precedent overwriting the old norms, replacing the old criteria with a loyalty test. In testifying, both Thomas and Sikes willingly betrayed their values. Yet Thomas contradicted the state’s narrative under cross-examination, and Sikes held back on even the most basic key elements, such as the definition of anti-fascism. Baumann didn’t betray his beliefs; he apparently had none. Nor did he betray his comrades—he apparently had no comrades, either. Instead, he proved himself to be an enthusiastic vessel for the state’s most poisonous lies.
\n\nThe state’s legal argument for terrorism hinges on the property destruction that Baumann alone admitted to. In their flagship NSPM-7 test case, they were willing to let him off easy because he helped them to advance their agenda. NSPM-7 creates a carveout in the judicial system where thought crimes are more important than material acts.
\n\nEffective repressive strategies are designed to target specific tactics of resistance, such as the emphasis that our political movements place on refusing to cooperate. This era of authoritarianism introduces a form of repression in which action is practically irrelevant, for it is ideology that is on trial. Previous judicial norms, flawed as they were, are being abandoned in favor of litigating the thoughts, beliefs, and orientations that the Trump regime believes pose a threat to its reign of terror. In this legal purgatory, action becomes irrelevant, evidence becomes optional, and cooperators are not rewarded for contributing to investigations so much as for their readiness to affirm outrageous lies.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/07/07/2.jpg\")
\nThe pages of revolutionary history are full of ordinary people who chose to embody courage, fortitude, and commitment, no matter the cost. They are equally full of people—like the cooperating defendants in this trial—who once claimed to believe in freedom, liberation, and struggle, but later proved that they cared more for themselves than for justice.
\n\nWe are enduring some of the worst authoritarianism that this country has seen in the past fifty years. The actions that people have taken in Prairieland, the Twin Cities, Los Angeles, and elsewhere remind us that even in the midst of killings, torture, and life sentences, radicals across this country will continue to choose the path of resistance, rejecting fear, even if it means risking everything. We recognize that experiencing repression is an inevitable consequence of striving for freedom in a social order that is tightening its grip on us.
\n\nThe Prairieland trial has shown us the very best and worst of our communities. Benjamin Song could die in prison for potentially saving Nathan Baumann’s life. Baumann will soon walk free for betraying Song’s. Neither one of these things had to be. We must hurry to adapt to this new era of repression. We must educate as many people as possible about the crucial importance of refusing to answer questions from police or federal agents; we must build awareness about grand juries and how to resist them; above all, we must establish stronger legal support infrastructure, including media outreach, to put at the disposal of everyone who may end up in the crosshairs of the state.
\n\nFinally, we must continue to support the Prairieland defendants. This case is far from over; the appeals process remains ahead, and how that goes will shape state and federal policy. Repression destroys lives and rips apart families; it is designed to break us. But make no mistake—at its core, their system of violence relies less on what it can do to us than on what it can make us do to each other.
\n\nThis statement has been slightly edited for clarity and in response to appreciated feedback. In the interest of transparency, an archive of the original version of the statement before the edits can be found here.
\n\nFire Ant Movement Defense is an anti-repression collective made up of former political defendants and members of defense committees. We believe in mass defense strategies and advise defendants and their supporters on how to fight their cases from a political angle.
\n\nWe are not lawyers. Through repeated experiences, we have gained skills in media work and in synergizing political and legal strategies. In every case, we work towards building a response to repression that approaches the judicial system as an arena where we can fight—and win.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/07/07/1.jpg\")
\nIn August 2025, a powerful uprising shook Indonesia and spread rapidly throughout the region, helping to catalyze a revolution in Nepal. Yet even as it set off further explosions from the Philippines to Morocco, this momentum hit a wall everywhere as governments counterattacked with repression specifically targeting anarchists—in what some in the region have called the “black scare.” In the following analysis, Simoun Magsalin draws on the events in the Philippines to outline the challenges confronting today’s revolutionaries and explore what it will take to overcome them.
\n\nYou can read a full account of the confrontation that took place in Manila, the Philippine capital, on September 21, 2025 here.
\n\nYou can support the black scare detainees and defendants from the Philippines who were arrested at Mendiola on September 21, 2025 through Durian Distro, which is handling international donations via Ko-Fi. Please include a message noting that your donation is for the 9/21 prisoners. Salamat po!
\n\nYou can support Indonesian prisoners via Serikat Tahanan or the Serikat Napi Lintas-Lapas / Inter-Correctional Prisoner Union. Please use the “Donasi” button on their website. Terima kasih!
\n\nThis line of inquiry is equally relevant in North America, as anarchists confront intensifying repression from Prairieland to Minneapolis.
\n\nOn September 21, 2025, a host of leftists, socialists, and pro-revolutionaries marched at the fateful site where the Spanish colonial government executed José Rizal on December 30, 1896. Rizal was executed under false charges for an anti-colonial insurrection he had little to do with but which had proclaimed him as its north star. In 2025, a march of more than 80,000 Filipinos assembled by the monument where his remains are interred to express outrage in response to a massive corruption scandal involving the graft of funds designated for flood control infrastructure projects—the plunder of which through fraudulent projects caused numerous deaths across multiple tropical typhoons.
\n\nFor months before the march, the outrage had led nowhere, as the Philippine left was at an almost-historic nadir after years of opportunism, repression, and dynastic restoration from the previous Duterte presidency and the continuation of Dutertismo in the current administration headed by Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr. Morale was so low that a leftist attempt to organize a general assembly in an urban poor community facing demolition apparently drew almost no one. At a factory strike, the workers self-managed their picket to limit and pacify their own actions.
\n\nYet the insurrection that broke out in Indonesia at the end of August 2025 inspired something in Filipinos. Militants from National Democracy organized limited direct action at the beginning of September, involving publicized vandalism and minor street fighting. They hoped to arouse “the masses” from slumber and invoke spontaneity. Alas, such energy did not arise—at least, not at first. Then the insurrection in Nepal bloomed and then withered, and morale rose once again. To know that power is vulnerable elsewhere is to see that it is vulnerable everywhere.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/30/6.jpg\")
Photograph by Philippine Collegian.
\nSeveral groups announced a mass mobilization for September 21 at Luneta and at EDSA.1 The Catholic Church was one of the biggest forces that organized mobilizations, followed by various right-wing, liberal, social democratic, National Democratic, and socialist groups. Anarchists of various persuasions were there, too, in our own fashion. Banners of all kinds were on display: the National Democratic Mass Organizations (NDMOs) and Makabayan, the bloc of Sanlakas-PLM-BMP-Oriang, Akbayan, Kilusan, Kamanggagawa, Partido Sosyalista, the Spartacists, Partido Manggagawa, Manibela and other workers’ associations, and university fraternities. The right-wing Duterte Diehard Supporters (DDS)2 were there too, some projecting phrase-mongering into the military base to spontaneously induce a kudeta (Tagalog for “coup d’état”3) among the generals in a vain attempt to oust President Bongbong Marcos, catapult Vice President Sara Duterte to the highest office, and (somehow?) bring former president Rodrigo Duterte back home from his incarceration at the Hague by the International Criminal Court.4
\n\nOn the margins of all these parties was another: the party of anarchy.5
\n\nAfter the protest march program of the Makabayan bloc ended on the way to Mendiola, black-clad youth initiated violent direct action, attempting to set fire to a freight truck used as a police barricade and then lobbing rocks at the police. The police struck back with their own rocks, trapping the militants from Makabayan in the crossfire. At that moment, another wing of the party of anarchy revealed itself, opening up another front in the Philippines just as had occurred in Indonesia and Nepal. The same sigils of the One-Piece straw-hat skull-and-bones flag flew again, raised by those in anarchistic black attire.
\n\nThe spontaneous movement of September 21 (or 9/21) was no party of anarchists, much as we might wish they were. Neither were they self-identifying National Democrats, Maoists, socialists, or communists—nor fascists, though fascists want to appropriate the symbolism and significance of the 9/21 events.6
\n\nThe party of anarchy is not a particular organizational formation, but a spontaneous emergence that cohered at a time of high morale among our class. As in Indonesia and Nepal, it emerged outside the milieu known as the “left.” But how the self-ascribed left relates to this party of anarchy is of crucial importance, especially in view of how quickly some on the left sought to denounce the militants as “anarchists,” fascists, Dutertistas, or (Chinese?) saboteurs.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/30/7.jpg\")
\nThe party of anarchy that emerged at the battle of Mendiola was small. The majority of the (at least) 277 detainees at Mendiola were not involved in the direct action at all or else were not anarchists. Many were innocent bystanders, some of whom were colonized minorities within the Philippine nation-state who didn’t even speak Tagalog and were in Manila for less than a week. Another was a student journalist who just happened to wear black to the protest and was illegally detained only because he looked vaguely like an anarchist. Around or at least 91 of the Mendiola detainees were legally minors. All were beaten on the streets and then systematically tortured, denied legal representation, denied food and medicine, and denied access to their families.
\n\nYet despite not being partisanos of the party of anarchy, they were red-tagged7 (black-tagged?) as “anarchists.” By then, this was a familiar refrain, coming as it did on the heels of the black scare in Indonesia that saw the open hunting of anarchists by Prabowo’s decree, as well as Trump’s criminalization order targeting so-called “antifa” in the United States and the accusations of Nepali politicians that anarchists had “infiltrated” the insurrection there. In September 2025, security forces were conjuring whole parties of anarchists out of the air to explain various riots and insurrectionary episodes across the world, each imagined conspiracy more fanciful than the last. If only such revolutionaries could be born fully armored and ready to fight, like a hundred thousand Athenas born from the mind of Zeus!
\n\nConspiratorial baiting of this kind is not new. In the wake of October 7, 2023, whole battalions of Hamas were identified all across the world. Paragliders in the middle of Britain? Hamas. Students occupying campuses to protest investments in the genocide in Gaza and the occupation of Palestine? Hamas. Jewish anti-Zionists? Hamas. Random people on the train who don’t look like me and aren’t bothering anyone? Hamas! As with earlier waves of red-baiting, “Hamas-baiting” and the current black scare serve to delegitimize and criminalize protest and organizing, whether in response to the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza or the brazen corruption scandals in Asia and elsewhere.
\n\nWe’ve seen how black-tagging and the black scare has been deployed in Indonesia, Nepal, and the Philippines in much the same way that red-baiting was used in the past. It didn’t matter whether you were an anarchist or a social democrat—you will be red-baited and deported or imprisoned as a filthy godless communist! Non-state actors including liberals and yellow unions have used red-tagging to delegitimize their ideological rivals in the electoral or labor-union arena. Now, in a similar way, just being some kind of leftist, wearing black, or being at the wrong place at the wrong time can get you black-tagged as an anarchist and threatened with subversion charges. We saw this in Indonesia and Nepal and again at Mendiola. In a consistent, predictable way, the party of order uses the black scare strategy to suppress not only the party of anarchy, but all who criticize the prevailing order.
\n\nWhat is the party of anarchy, really? It is not something that can be constructed the way you construct a formal party. It is constituted and coheres on the basis of a social insurrection, or at least the beginnings of one. It is on this basis that the party of anarchy is not merely a threat to the dominant wing of the party of order—the caucus of the existent—but also to the caucus of the false critics, who conduct a two-line struggle within the party of order but remain its loyal opposition. The black scare, then, works slightly differently than the red scare in terms of how the caucus of the false critics uses it to target the party of anarchy.
\n\nIn the immediate aftermath of the police repression at Mendiola, another parallel narrative began to form. The direct actionists and the Mendiola detainees were at the pay of foreign agents, or of Sara Duterte—or so many commenters said. Liberals and leftists alike repeated this ad nauseam. The caucus of the false critics is constantly negotiating their place within the party of order and within the broader effort to reimpose normalcy. The black scare is used by these false critics to dissolve the party of anarchy in order to achieve that purpose. We have seen this before: for example, in the peace police who branded direct actionists “agent provocateurs” and handed them over to the police during the George Floyd rebellions in 2020. Through such actions, the false critics position themselves as a legal, legitimate, and loyal opposition within the prevailing order.
\n\nIn addition, the false critics also use the black scare to legitimize their own activism and organizations at the expense of the insurrection and the party of anarchy. They do this by tagging the party of anarchy as “saboteurs,” “provocateurs,” Dutertistas in disguise, and so on, but also by taking advantage of the efforts of the partisanos and insurrectos of the party of anarchy to build their own organizations using pragmatic pacifism and legalism.
\n\nThe black scare represents a dual threat: the obvious threat from the dominant caucus of the existent of the party of order, but more dangerously, an additional threat from the caucus of the false critics.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/30/8.jpg\")
Photograph from the report “Mendiola, September 21, 2025,” written by Kenneth Roland Guda and published by AlterMidya.
\nNormalcy is what we have today—the regime of work, gender, money, capital, the state, racism, ad nauseum. The party of order imposes and maintains normalcy by keeping our class dependent upon its functioning. If, as The Communist Manifesto proclaims, the workers of the world have nothing to lose but their chains, why do we cling so hard to them? The prospect of our chains loosening opens us to immense risk because normalcy renders us dependent.
\n\nWe all have material interests in maintaining normalcy and much to lose from its rupture. This dependence on normalcy constrains many from becoming active pro-revolutionaries. My own disabilities, for example, tie me to normalcy, forcing me to have a material interest in the stability and predictability of medicine and healthcare. Millions of people and their families likewise have similar material interests that ties them to normalcy. Even something as basic as access to food can be disrupted by the interruption of normalcy. Such dependence on normalcy constrains us in what we can do.
\n\nUnder these conditions, we can talk of revolution and insurrection all we like, but any act of violence against the party of order means risking harsh repression. Those partisanos who cling to illegality and illegibility find refuge in the rebel peripheries. On the margins of society, they cannot intervene in the heat of the class struggle, and must instead strive for revolution from their peripheries.
\n\nThose outside the rebel peripheries operating where the imposition of normalcy is most coherent often find that they can still do some good work through the framework of legalism. Legalism pushes the left and anarchists towards “pragmatic pacifism.” As pro-revolutionaries, we refuse to affirm pacifism as a principle of the class struggle, yet we find we must be pragmatic in our relationship to violence, and even in the extent to which we publicly endorse it. This is why, when we march, the leaders of marches must meet with the police to negotiate time and space for their protest, regardless of permits.8 Even without protest permits, the police understand that informal allowances for such illegal assemblies are pragmatic in the long term. This negotiation is part and parcel of the imposition of normalcy. If we don’t negotiate, we risk repression that will drain vital resources that will have to go towards prisoner support, driving away those with lower appetites for risk, and (perhaps most importantly) being identified as an enemy of order at a time of a lull and retreat in the class struggle. This is not a value judgment: it is merely the reality of normalcy.
\n\nOutside the milieu of leftists, militants, and anarchists, normalcy takes the form of mass apolitical passivity.9 Many a Marxist would cite ideology or hegemony to explain this—yet beyond the ways that commodity relations obscure and alienate the source of the power of our class, our class is not made of sheep, nor are we passive recipients of burgis10 ideology. Nor is this merely a matter of disinterest in politics. People know the world is fucked. This condition of mass apolitical passivity is not merely ideological, but material. Being apolitical is not so much a choice as a condition—the material and ideological imposition of normalcy. Reformers, activists, militants, and pro-revolutionaries establish themselves as such by overcoming the particular material and ideological limits that this condition imposes. But even overcoming these limits does not necessarily mean that one can overcome normalcy itself—hence the necessity of pragmatic pacifism.
\n\nThrough pragmatic pacifism, reformers and leftists can negotiate their position within normalcy and the party of order. This is how the struggle for reform galvanizes many to overcome their passivity. Circles of militants become movements, movements become political parties and NGOs, and political parties run for election while NGOs support reform, and—if all goes well—these parties and NGOs win reforms for their mass bases. This process of reform legitimizes these leftists and ties them to the reigning order. To remain legitimate, they must remain within the bounds of the law, and to do so, they must continue to be pragmatically pacifist. This is how the legal and legitimate left establish themselves as false critics to the party of order, as the “permitted left” and left wing of capital.11
\n\nTo retain this status, it often becomes necessary to denounce the party of anarchy and engage in the black scare.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/30/9.jpg\")
Photograph from the report “Mendiola, September 21, 2025,” written by Kenneth Roland Guda and published by AlterMidya.
\nThe party of anarchy has constituted itself many times over the centuries of the modern era, from the Reformation to the great revolutions in England, America, France, Russia, Germany, China, and elsewhere. Over the past decade, we have seen it emerge in the Yellow Vest movement in France, in Hong Kong, in the George Floyd Uprising in the United States, and most recently in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nepal, Madagascar, and here in the Philippines.
\n\nYet the party of anarchy is dissolved through the imposition of disorganization, by churches, liberals, self-appointed vanguards, the permitted left, social democracy, and other factions within the caucus of the false critics. In the People Power Revolution of 1986 (EDSA Uno), the church and the liberal oligarchs led the Filipino workers to support the kudeta plotters and install the liberal oligarch Cory Aquino as president. In the events of May 1968 in Paris, the Communist Party of France and several other left institutions demobilized the workers and radical students. In the Iranian revolution, the clerics undermined the shura councils of the working class until the Ayatollah was able to consolidate power. In Poland, liberals who wanted to negotiate a place within the Polish state apparatus undermined the self-organization of workers in Solidarność. In the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong himself rushed to co-opt and demobilize the very forces he unleashed to regain and retain control over the Party-state.
\n\nThe caucus of the false critics is fearful of mass spontaneity and self-directed activity, rushing to co-opt and demobilize the party of anarchy in order to arrange the resumption of normalcy under their rising caucus. Politicians target the party of anarchy so that the caucus of the false critics can be reconstituted as the new caucus of the existent and ultimately reconstitute the party of order.
\n\nThe logic of this organized disorganization is the crystallization of legality and legitimacy as tamang proseso. Literally meaning “correct process” or “due process,” tamang proseso is invoked in the Philippines as the “right way” or a “legitimate way” to do things, usually in the context of engaging with bureaucracy or procedure. This affirmation of legality and legitimacy permeates all under normalcy, even outside the reach of the state’s law, police, and courts. Harm, for example, has to be demonstrated and proven, if not in a court of law, then via the adjudication of peers. According to the apostles of tamang proseso, “both sides” have to be heard—and this obscures the inherent power relations, whether they be the gender dynamics of rape culture or the hegemony of Israel and Zionism over Palestine before October 7.
\n\nEven in civil war, there must be tamang proseso, with guerrillas both communist and Bangsamoro bowing to the legality and legitimacy of the peace table. The negotiations at the peace table fulfill two functions. First, they represent the negotiated merger and legitimation of a faction as it ascends into the party of order. Second, they serve to demobilize the force of arms of their own faction and delegitimize any participants in the struggle who refuse to accept the compromise. In this context, tamang proseso suggests that there are only two routes to reform: negotiated integration into the party of order, or armed struggle for the purpose of negotiated integration into the party of order. The possibilities of social insurrection, rupture, revolution—much less anarchy and communization—are excluded altogether.
\n\nTamang proseso is the “correct” and “legitimate” way of doing protest, organizing, and politics. It is the mediation and management of the energies that would otherwise have cohered into the grand party of anarchy and communism. The week after the events of 9/21, former presidential candidate and outspoken socialist Ka Leody de Guzman released a solidarity statement affirming the legitimacy of the anger, yet calling for the recruitment of disaffected urban poor into his particular tendency of organizations. Most notably, this statement implied a dichotomy between the organized and the supposedly not-organized—or, to be more precise, those organized under their command and those organized outside it. Never mind that the direct action against the police forces took place outside the command of legitimate left parties, while all parties at Luneta and Mendiola did not intervene to elevate the riot into an insurrection.
\n\nEven the Maoist insurgency of the Communist Party of the Philippines–New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) is structured within tamang proseso, despite the overt illegality of their insurgency. To mamundok (go up the mountain) and join the guerrillas is seen as the “highest form of struggle” within the Maoist milieu. To criticize the brave guerrilla is cowardice—what have you sacrificed that gives you the right to critique them? If they are fighting a guerrilla war, then they must be right! Never mind that the funneling of committed militants to mamundok drains the cities of cadres who could have intervened in the class struggle (setting aside, for now, the problems with Stalinist interventionalism).
\n\nArgumentum ad guerrilla, or the appeal to the guerrilla, frames ideological issues as beyond question because the guerrilla are making a costly, sometimes ultimate, sacrifice. This cult of action takes for granted that the correctness of a strategy can be proven through dramatic deeds and mass recruitment. Yet conservative forces such as Daesh also wage such guerrilla wars—shall we consider them correct because they managed to establish the so-called “Islamic State”? The argumentum ad guerrilla is the other side of pragmatic pacifism: the fetishism of “revolutionary” violence is the inevitable reaction to the timidity of such pragmatism.
\n\nIt is this argumentum ad guerrilla that constrains the choices of those who desire social change to a choice between reformism and armed reformism, between social democracy and social democracy out of the barrel of a gun. Only these options fall within the boundaries of tamang proseso. But when we conceive of revolution merely as one apparatus against another, the notion of class power constituted for the abolition of all classes disappears.
\n\nConsequently, while the Communist Party of the Philippines recognized the events at Mendiola as legitimate albeit badly channeled violence, they called for these partisanos of anarchy to be funneled into its New People’s Army. Similarly, the legal and legitimate left called for the recruitment of the angry partisanos and insurrectos into their organization—simply to build their membership. The idea that the solution to our woes is to “organize”—or even to “mamundok“—is the slightly more radical equivalent of the liberal mantra that the solution is “to vote.” The outcome is the same: the demobilization and dissolution of the party of anarchy and the subordination of its alumni to some apparatus of the caucus of the false critics—mediation, management, and integration into political life.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/30/2.jpg\")
Photograph by Philippine Collegian.
\nPolitical life and its notions of legality, legitimacy, and tamang proseso is the very lifeblood of normalcy. Negotiation for reforms or for a place within the hierarchy of normalcy is managed and mediated by political life. The party of anarchy, as a party outside all integrated political life, is resolutely anti-political. As such, the party of anarchy must be red-tagged, black-tagged, and subjected to the cruelest black scare because it is through the anti-political that the party of anarchy acts outside the bounds of legality and legitimacy, as it is the greatest threat to normalcy. The social insurrection and revolution abolish legitimacy, that ideology of hierarchy and class society.
\n\nIn this sense, the black scare takes place on three levels, all of which are intended to demobilize the party of anarchy. We have already discussed the first two levels. The first is repressive: the use of force to suppress the party of anarchy and in some cases opportunistically repress the caucus of the false critics as well. The second level is mediative: having dissolved the party of anarchy, to integrate its alumni into the caucus of the false critics under the general management of political life.12 The third level of the black scare is reimpositive: the restoration, resumption, and reimposition of normalcy under the old or new party of order. This reimpositive aspect of the black scare is the most insidious, for it emerges as a consequence of fear of anarchy on the part of the party of anarchy itself, which loses its coherence when the party fails to overcome the limits of insurrection.
\n\nThe repressive black scare is the task of the party of order, specifically under the dominant caucus of the existent. The mediative black scare is the task of the caucus of the false critics through their two-line struggle to become the dominant caucus. The reimpositive black scare emerges from within the party of anarchy themselves, as a consequence of the real material and ideological limits to the insurrection, limits that the insurrectos must overcome if they are to transform an insurrection into a social revolution that engulfs the whole world.
\n\nTamang proseso is the motor of the imposition and reimposition of normalcy. Against the reimpositive black scare, the insurrectos must struggle against the very power to legitimize, developing an anti-politics that rejects even (or especially) the democratic form and the legitimacy and citizenship it implies.
\n\nAside from the obvious repressive function of policing deployed against our class and the party of anarchy, policing serves the tamang proseso. The flood control scandals in the Philippines are being investigated by the Marcos-formed Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI). Such mechanisms affirm the legitimacy of the party of order. The state’s apparatus for policing corruption persuades citizens that the system works. This is how the state manages class antagonisms. That is the ultimate limitation of corruption discourse, via which citizens are reproduced and reaffirmed as such with all the passivity that implies under the regime of democracy. The abolition of legitimacy and tamang proseso starts with the failure of this discourse, the seeds of which can remain dormant for decades; there has been abject wanton corruption for a very long time, but its contradictions did not reach a breaking point until September 2025.
\n\nThe party of order proactively carries out the mediation and management of political life to prevent the party of anarchy from cohering. At crucial turning points within burgis politics, such as political revolutions or major elections, the reconfiguration of the caucuses and sub-factions of the party of order creates new avenues for mediating and managing political life. The People Power Revolution and the EDSA Republic brought segments of the Philippine left into engagement with the ruling liberal oligarchy. Consequently, the laundering of land grabbing under the administration of Noynoy “PNoy” Aquino (2010-2016) by those who called themselves popular democrats led to mass disillusionment, which contributed to the election of Rodrigo Duterte in 2016. In Nepal, the dissolution of the people’s governments by Prachanda’s decree and Prachanda’s own ascension to the premiership of Nepal led to the integration of his and other communist parties of Nepal into the caucus of the existent, while the official Maoists enriched themselves. In Indonesia, the contradictions and antagonisms that remained from the Reformasi gave way to the restoration of a son of the New Order through the election of Prabowo Subianto.13
\n\nThe party of anarchy coheres as the abject failure of tamang proseso becomes harder and harder to ignore. More and more become disillusioned, not only with the tamang proseso of the existent, but also of its false critics. Like the church invisible (a church of elect or future converts known only to the true believers of Christ), the party of anarchy first coheres as a party invisible, as affinities form between militants who recognize each other as elect but do not yet even know they are comrades and kasamas in struggle. Then, eventually, the pressure ruptures the dam. The police murder of Affan Kurniawan launched the August–September insurrections in Indonesia; the banning of Nepali social media (and therefore of criticism) launched the September 2025 insurrection in Nepal; and the long-simmering discontent from the flood-control scandals combined with the high morale from seeing insurrections elsewhere inspired the battle at Mendiola on September 21 in the Philippines. The failure to mediate and manage brought together the party of anarchy in all of these countries.
\n\nMarches overcome the limits of pragmatic pacifism and escalated into individual acts of illegalism. Acts of individual illegalism overcome the limits that block the way to collective acts of illegalism, and the riots of collective illegalism give rise to mass illegalism, then to insurrection, revolution, communization, and the unification of humanity. Each level of escalation must overcome its particular limits.
\n\nFundamentally, insurrection and revolution open the horizons to possibilities beyond the world we currently inhabit. Once we catch a glimpse of the possibilities beyond, why should we remain where we are? To remake what has been unmade? Yet our class does not make that choice, or if we have had to, we chose so with grief in our hearts as the ultimate limits of the insurrection broke up the party of anarchy.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/30/3.jpg\")
Photograph by Philippine Collegian.
\nReaction is inevitable. Revolution is not. As the party of anarchy coheres as a consequence of the failure of politics, pro-revolutionaries struggle to reconfigure themselves in relation to the party of anarchy. The repression from the party of order and mediation from the caucus of the false critics are not the only threats. The reimposition of normalcy becomes inevitable when insurrectos fail to communize social life within the insurrection and are unable to escalate towards revolutionizing the whole world.
\n\nThere will not be an invisible hand of the insurrection like there is an invisible hand of the market—or at least, not initially. Market forces are driven by the invisible hand of the totalizing logic of capital. In contrast, the logic of the insurrection emerges embryonically, as a seedling in an entire hostile ecology. Workers who become insurrectos and partisanos of anarchy stand to lose much by breaking with normalcy. Yet what we gain through that insurrectionary logic can reorganize social life during the rupture. That insurrectionary logic must fight to the death against the totalizing logic of capital, or else be smothered in counterrevolution. This is where the pro-revolutionaries must intervene to nurture and cultivate that seedling of insurrectionary logic of anarchy and communism. This is where revolution creates the revolutionaries.
\n\nIn Indonesia, the insurrection led to mass looting and mass arson of government buildings. Pro-revolutionaries convened parliaments of the streets, creating spaces for insurrectos to talk revolution. Yet they did not seize the arms before burning the police armories. In the end, the insurrectos could not defend themselves, their campuses, and their homes from goons from the party of order or opportunist looters and rapists. The insurrection did not expand into the countryside, nor did pro-revolutionaries link the different sites of insurrection together in a meaningful way. With neither the means to defend nor feed themselves, the insurrectos across the vast archipelago arrived at the same calculus with little coordination: to pacify themselves, to continue to mobilize but in a non-violent manner, to appeal for a compromise with the party of order. Self-pacification was driven by fear of reaction and counterrevolution. Yet the reaction was inevitable regardless. It was Prabowo’s reaction that became the vanguard for the global black scare.
\n\nMany in Indonesia who didn’t intervene or intervened only in a defensive manner found themselves stuck waiting for conditions to ripen, for the insurrection to develop into a feasible scenario for revolutionary intervention. Such attentisme, a “wait-and-see attitude,” is yet another form of tamang proseso—as if the proper order of operations is to consolidate a revolutionary organization before a revolution. In fact, ideal conditions do not exist, but opportunities do, and opportunities for revolution arise regardless of readiness or level of organization. Attentisme traps pro-revolutionaries in an endless loop of waiting for ideal conditions, endlessly organizing and building the movement—patience for patience’s sake. But our class is not weak because it is disorganized, our class is disorganized because it is weak. Patience and prudence were not rewarded at all, for the reaction was inevitable once the horizon for revolutionary action closed.
\n\nIn Nepal, the insurrectos armed themselves as they burned down the old order. The almost-total integration of the various official communist parties into the party of order ensured that virtually no organized pro-revolutionary force (or at least no legible force) intervened in the insurrection. Yet the insurrectos seized arms as they burned down the government, overcoming a crucial limit that the insurrectos in Indonesia had not overcome.
\n\nAfter the dust settled, it was alleged by many, including The New York Times, that a shadowy conspiracy had organized the mass arson. In political revolutions, like the one that occurred in EDSA Uno in 1986, the most organized and coherent political forces have the legality and legitimacy to take state power.14 Had a conspiracy to commit mass arson existed on the scale that many implied, that conspiracy would have been powerful enough to seize state power directly. Yet no such kudeta took power, nor did a Bakuninist-Tiqqunist invisible collective dictatorship prevent the resumption of normalcy. Nor did General Ashok Raj Sigdel use the moment to brazenly impose armed rule or restore the monarchy as many feared might occur. In the absence of a legitimate civilian government, nothing could have stopped Sigdel, not even the party of anarchy, which had failed to overcome particular limits and was in retreat.
\n\nBut while the party of anarchy in Nepal was able to pass from individual acts of illegalism to mass collective acts of illegalism, it failed to transcend the limits of legalism and legitimacy itself. Thus, when Sigdel and the army restored legality, law, and order, the army offered to confer legitimacy upon the infamous Discord election. Simultaneously, the de facto military government used the black scare to suppress the party of anarchy, shooting partisanos in the streets. The anti-political revolution became deeply untenable. How could it be otherwise?
\n\nAnti-politics may burn down the parliaments and the great mansions of the official Maoists, but how are insurrectos supposed to burn down the entire state apparatus without feeding themselves? Looting is only a temporary stop-gap solution, after all. Both Vladimir Lenin and Peter Kropotkin understood (and agreed with Karl Marx) that for the revolution to survive, it must feed itself, overcoming the distinctions between town and country. For Lenin, the solution was the great alliance between the proletariat (and the state) and the peasantry. For Kropotkin, it was free exchange between urban and rural workers. When the Bolsheviks could no longer appease and persuade the peasantry to participate in their class alliance, they resorted to open coercion, thereby triggering countless revolts by so-called “green armies.” The party of anarchy—whose primary weapons are not guns and force of arms, but the subversion of society through the “suicidal” rejection of themselves as men, as citizens, as workers—have no such army to coerce the extraction of food. Many anarchists and communists suggest that the revolution can only succeed only when it is international in character. They are correct—but how can revolution become international if cannot overcome the nearer divisions between town and country?
\n\nSo while normalcy was interrupted, as a consequence of the insurrection’s failure to sustain and socially reproduce itself, insurrectos found themselves with little choice but to seek a political solution in the restoration of the party of order. Sigdel and the army, functioning as a bastion of law and legitimacy, gracefully conferred legitimacy upon the greatest Discord poll the world has ever seen yet. Insurrectos found themselves satisfied with being citizens again, and normalcy returned, along with all the social reproduction that implies.
\n\nMany of the prisoners who escaped in the insurrection in Nepal, finding their squalid cells burned to ash, dutifully reported to other squalid cells elsewhere, for legality within the prison cell was preferable to a life of fugitivity under the weight of the party of order. The prison, including the prison that makes up the whole of society today, can only be abolished as a consequence of the abolition of the law and legitimacy. Without those, how could it even be conceivable to report back to prison? To the resumption of democracy and the order it maintains? Normalcy will be preferable to the harshest reaction. Citizenship will be preferable to uncertainty. And precisely because compulsion under capitalism is the freedom to work or starve (rather than the naked coercion of slavery or death), the grace conferred to legitimize the greatest Discord election is a wholly understandable choice. For the proletariat is revolutionary or nothing, and they are not revolutionary precisely when they reproduce themselves as workers, as proletariat, as the class of capital, persuaded to continue being loyal citizens of the party of order.
\n\nWithout overcoming these particular limits—the reimpositive black scare, reaffirming tamang proseso—things could not have turned out any other way. A grand secret conspiracy to burn down the physical manifestations of government is always insufficient—for the state, much like capital, patriarchy, and other hierarchies, coheres not in locations but in social relations. A parliament can burn down, but its legitimacy will remain intact. Reconstituted as citizens, the former insurrectos rebuilt the parliament on Discord. At that point, under the ever-watchful eye of the Nepali armed forces, the choice was clear.
\n\nHad we faced the same choices, would we be like the maquis who continued the fight against Francisco Franco after the defeat of the Spanish Revolution? Would we go on, like the Sabaté brothers who hid in the forests and mountains and persisted despite the victory and consolidation of Spanish fascism? Individual acts of illegalism, even small collective acts of illegalism—and especially such acts in the peripheries—rarely challenge normalcy enough to inspire mass collective outbreaks of illegalism like what we saw in Indonesia and Nepal.
\n\nInevitably, normalcy is reimposed. This is the result of the material and ideological limits that constrained the growth of the insurrection and smothered its embryonic logic. Tamang proseso triumphs, along with all the legality and legitimacy it embodies. The black scare takes place and insurrectos become citizens, prisoners, fugitives, or guerrillas—it matters little which as long as the party of order reigns supreme. The false critics reconfigure themselves within the new normalcy. The anti-politicized either become politicized or retreat back into passivity. “God is in his heaven. Everything is normal on Earth.”
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/30/4.jpg\")
Photograph by Philippine Collegian.
\nThe emergence of the party of anarchy at Mendiola on September 21, 2025 revealed the impotence of all the factions of the left and post-left in the Philippines, including this author. Even without a party conspiracy, urban poor youth took action where many others could not. It is the greatest irony that those involved with party conspiracies (some of which involve armed wings) remained limited to rebel peripheries or pragmatic pacifism. Militants and cadres from National Democracy had engaged in delimited acts of vandalism and light skirmishes with the police at the beginning of September, but it was only weeks later, on 9/21, that the so-called unorganized acted autonomously. In the intervening weeks, between the beginning of September and 9/21, the permitted left shifted from limited violence to pragmatic pacifism, while these direct actionists shifted from apolitical obscurity towards openly-legible violence.
\n\nIt is not a simple thing to demand of those who were present at Luneta and Mendiola last September that they should have thrown themselves into the fray of a riot in order to escalate it into an insurrection. Instead of asking what those on the ground that day could have done differently, we could ask—what would have been required to create a situation in which they could not have acted otherwise? That is to say: what constraints shaped what actions they could take? What material and ideological limits prevented them from intervening to elevate the riot beyond its limits?
\n\nThe skirmishes and vandalism by National Democracy in September 4 involved militants who understood the risk and committed to it. At Luneta and Mendiola, during the events of September 21, the composition of the crowd was different. Many had less appetite for risk, and indeed, were ordered to disperse by those who had convened the marches.
\n\nLegality has its uses. The National Democrats who marched under the banners of the Makabayan bloc acted as the permitted left. Had they made the decision to join the riots at Mendiola, their seats in congress could have been forfeit. To lose their position within normalcy would mean forfeiting their planned reforms. Again, this is not necessarily to pass judgment on their inaction, nor to call their socialist credentials into doubt, but to recognize the limits that normalcy imposes us and to recognize when we have been tied to preserving it.
\n\nNaming our demons is the first step towards exorcising them. We cannot overcome material and ideological limits that go unnamed or unrecognized. Studying why insurrections failed, we can arm ourselves with the knowledge of what to avoid. Intentionality is impossible without cognizance. Our revolutionary forebears provided us with the language to identify various limits: the division between town and country; feeding the revolution, or the Conquest of Bread; breaking with burgis ideology, whether that be workerism, the affirmation of proletarian identity, citizenship, legalism, or legitimacy; securing the logistics of healthcare and medicine; overcoming various divisions of labor, especially the gendered division of labor and social reproduction; defense and the military question; accountability and safety; overcoming peripherality and revolutionary isolation; overcoming ideological and sectarian divisions; overcoming separations, identities, and bigotry in the working class; expropriating the expropriators; dealing with the state; resolving the “crisis of revolutionary leadership”; and many more.
\n\nThe legitimacy of the party of order has its material basis in the smooth reproduction of normalcy: simple things like the logistics of food and medicine, keeping the lights on and the hospitals open, keeping homes and dignities safe from violation. Legalism flows from this, and tamang proseso from that. Experiencing the insecurity of rupture and insurrection, how else would one imagine engaging with the state other than through the legitimate processes? To break with the party of order, then, means to challenge the material basis of its legitimacy and legality—for the logic of the insurrection to answer the hard questions of how to overcome specific limits, communizing food, safety, and care.
\n\nUnder normalcy, yes, we are pacifist because we are pragmatic. But when does pacifism cease to be pragmatic? When the time comes, will our pragmatic pacifism have become so deeply ingrained in us that it is no longer pragmatic? Will we become so used to deferring to limits that we miss the chance to transcend these limits? Our relationship to pragmatism must never be raised to the level of a principle. Pragmatism is not a “value” to uphold or defend, precisely because it is merely pragmatic. It is tautologically true that pragmatism is not principle. Pragmatism itself becomes a material and ideological limit in the insurrectionary process.
\n\nPrevious revolutionaries have made a virtue of necessity and raised pragmatic proposals to the realm of ideology. “We had to do this” on the grounds of contingency and pragmatism became “we have to do this” on the basis of principle. That is ideologization. Many such cases exist: secret police and concentration camps (whether Gulag or Laogai) were justified as pragmatic in a given context, but now pro-revolutionaries have ideologized these and raised them to principle, arguing that the repressive functions of a revolution must necessarily be carceral. Similar examples of ideologization can be found in the revisionism of Eduard Bernstein, the vulgarization that is socialism-in-one-country, the dogmatism of democratic centralism. Ideologization is the legitimization of contingency becoming tamang proseso.
\n\nIt is also not the case that the “revolution,” “anarchy,” or “communism” will “solve” issues like the liberation of women—issues that some people wish to put off addressing until after power is won or the burgesya is defeated. This is because capitalism is an alienated system built on our own alienated agency. Market forces and the totalizing logic of the capitalist mode of production both structures our agency and depends on it. It is in this sense that revolution, anarchy, and communism are still conceived in capitalist terms, as alienated agency rather than the reclaiming of our own collective agency.
\n\nThis is why revolution will not “solve” anything, nor will anarchy and communism “eliminate” domination because we will be the ones in charge of our own fate. Revolution, anarchy, and communization are our agency no longer separated from us. The revolutionary process can and will fail if we ourselves fail to overcome the material and ideological limits we face. The revolution will not “liberate” women; women and all who are gendered must liberate themselves and abolish the gendered division of labor and gender itself—to name a single example—or else the revolution will degenerate. Rather than an invisible hand of the insurrection, our own hands will be very much visible in revolution. Consequently, we must have clarity on the mechanics of the material and ideological aspects of each limit we confront, so that we can overcome and surpass them.
\n\nIt is often said that “the end justifies the means.” To this, we reply, “But what if there never is an end? All we have is means,” to quote Ursula K. Le Guin. The distance of the end we desire—nothing less than the full revolutionizing and communization of society and the end of all forms of domination—and the unimaginable gravity of what we are up against forces us to consider that “all we have are means,” at least during periods of normalcy.
\n\nIf all we have are means, then our means ought to be prefigurative15 and generative, helping us to develop agency, autonomy, and ability for self-directed militancy. These tasks are not “revolutionary” in the sense that they can trigger rupture, insurrection, or revolution by themselves, nor achieve the ends we want during periods of normalcy. Rather, they are revolutionary in that they can enable us to organize, resist, fight, and build powers and capacities that will be of use in insurrections and revolutionary situations. The fact that these capacities were severely underdeveloped explains why the recent insurrections in Indonesia, Nepal, the Philippines, and Madagascar ended with the demobilization of the party of anarchy and the reimposition of normalcy. In this sense, certain kinds of pragmatism—such as the pragmatism of appealing to a different faction of the ruling class, as occurred after 9/21—are self-defeating, as they accustom us to subordinating ourselves, deferring our desires, and appealing to power.
\n\nFor the ends we want, maximalism is in order—fighting for a “maximum program,” for a maximum amount of change, for anarchy, communism, and the end of all domination. Maximalism is a muscle that we must continuously practice using. As means, maximalism allows us to strengthen our capacities for thinking beyond the current moment. If the ends we seek are not ambitious—if we merely call for reforms (reforms from whom?), for accountability (accountability according to whom?), for vague unities with a different section of the oligarchy—then whatever means we build will not be able to transcend the current moment. During periods of normalcy, maximalism is a practice of political imagination that challenges us to think beyond capitalism, the state, gender, patriarchy, and hierarchy. When normalcy breaks down, it is the clear-sightedness of maximalism that enables pro-revolutionaries to resist the return to normalcy. In this sense, maximalism embodies one of the demands of the French revolutionary episode of May 1968: “Be realistic, demand the impossible.”
\n\nAlongside maximalism, we must also cultivate bravery. In the sense that it is used here, bravery is the means by which our class becomes capable of participating in insurrections and revolutions. Bravery is the impetus that overcomes the material and ideological limits of pragmatic pacifism, that enables the party of anarchy to cohere beyond a riot in order to precipitate a social insurrection. Safety in an insurrection is obviously an illusion—it is not a dinner party after all. But like a dinner party, an insurrection must be a time and space for us to finally be ourselves—our rewilding, our self-abolition as proletarianized, alienated, gendered, and separated beings.
\n\nMaterially speaking, normalcy is legitimized is through our collective dependence on its reproduction. Ideologically, this manifests as mass apolitical passivity. The permitted left and the false critics politicize members of our class by cultivating their bravery only to channel it towards seeking meager reforms. Bravery enables our class to demand more and more from the party of order. Bravery is also necessary in escalation, enabling our class to break with the party of order and the imposition of normalcy.
\n\nTo raid an armory before burning a police station can carry greater penalties than arson. What kind of bravery would be required to take up arms at such a moment, rather than reveling in mere destruction, as in Indonesia? And when the reaction inevitably comes, what kind of bravery could enable our class-in-abolition to keep our arms raised against opportunists and goons rather than surrendering them to the party of order, as former partisanos did in Nepal? The assault on our class is what drives our class to yearn for the reimposition of normalcy for some semblance of safety. Cultivating bravery also means keeping food supplies and healthcare openly available while defending ourselves from opportunists and reactionaries. Inevitably, insurrectos will also have to find the bravery to forego money and division of labor altogether.
\n\nThis bravery has to be cultivated under normalcy. One deeply pervasive constraint on bravery under normalcy is rape culture, which forces countless women and queer people out of movements. Ableism and bigotry also drive people away and break up the unities required for more bravery. Will it be our insurrection, the unleashing of our agency, if it cannot include us dancing in it?
\n\nSimilarly, when militants and insurrectos become caught up in the repressive black scare, it is crucial to support them, lest the bravery of all shall be constrained if we see that we will not be supported when reaction comes. Likewise, the fight for carceral abolition, for defunding the police and decarcerating prisoners, is essential to cultivating the bravery of our class.
\n\nA similar capacity for bravery is required in food and goods. It is abundantly clear that solidarity economies and alternative institutional arrangements (so-called dual power) cannot and will not challenge normalcy nor overcome the totalizing logic of capital. But the partial manner of these alternative lifeways can still provide us bravery and foundations for generalization under a revolution. Our intentionality in such matters, then, requires us to be cognizant of the limits of what we can do under normalcy.
\n\nInsurrection will come again, just as it has ebbed and flowed since even before the Reformation. Intentionality, maximalism, and bravery will be required for the next to come.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/30/5.jpg\")
Photograph by Philippine Collegian.
\nWe are in a state of world war—from the Russian war on Ukraine to the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing in Palestine and Lebanon, the US-Israeli war on Iran, the Gulf, the Horn of Africa, the conflicts in the Sahel, the civil war in Burma and West Papua, and the threat of war on Taiwan and the Southeast Asian sea. All of the sides in all of these conflicts are united on the black scare. In the war on Iran, we have seen a new mode of imperial counterinsurgency, in which the imperialists preemptively bomb revolutionary Iranians to ensure that a revolutionary movement cannot cohere. World war signals two possibilities ahead: either the opportunity for rupture and insurrection, or an even more violent imposition of normalcy throughout the world. All governments belong to the same party of order, albeit as competing and even contending factions and caucuses. Our class is not of the party of order; ours is the party of anarchy to come.
\n\nAs partisans of the party of order organize international anti-antifa conferences and intensify the black scare, our task as pro-revolutionaries is to recognize our role in the struggle ahead. Despite the deficiencies of military analogy, one reference might still be useful. In military theory, the vanguard is not the commander of the forces in a field, but the unit that scouts ahead to meet the enemy, delay them, and lay the groundwork for the main forces to advance. In this analogy, the party of anarchy is that main force, but we can open the way by scouting the metaphorical terrain. Laying down the groundwork means cultivating the bravery we all need. But the class struggle is not a war between fronts or apparatuses; it is the proletariat struggling to abolish their roles as proletarians, as men, and women, as whatever identities normalcy imposed upon us.
\n\nAs the current world war intensifies, internationalism will be crucial. Yet, as the insurrections of 2025 have shown, if the insurrectos and pro-revolutionaries have been unable to interlink struggles between town and country—or even to feed themselves—how much more difficult would it be to interlink struggles across de jure borders and states? It is in bridging and partially uniting these various separations and peripheries that pro-revolutionaries can be most effective during periods of normalcy. “It’s not up to the rebels to learn to speak anarchist; it’s up to the anarchists to become polyglot.” It is our task to speak different languages of struggle and translate these into one another. It is in our struggles interlinked that the party of anarchy coheres, from the forging of solidarities before and during the insurrection. The grand unification of various peripheries cannot be done under normalcy, but the intention and bravery to pave the way for it may be possible, so long as we do not succumb to attentisme.
\n\nHere in the Philippines, the situation is critical. There may not be enough electricity to power the most economically productive parts of the national grid in this summer. Summer is expected to be particularly brutal as it is an El Niño season, so droughts, crop failure, and heat strokes may be common. Adding in a fertilizer and fuel oil crisis, the coming crisis could signal a breakdown of normalcy on a larger scale than the COVID-19 pandemic. The black scare in response to the events of 9/21 is still ongoing, with many of those detained that day still facing charges. Yet the party of anarchy can still cohere again. If the answers remain uncertain, we can at least be certain which questions we must ask.
\n\nI cannot presume to prescribe a mode of organization, whether formal or informal, to meet the tasks of cohering the party of anarchy at a point of insurrection. To argue that we must understand the black scare and other material and ideological limits is not necessarily to argue for formal or informal models of organization.16 Here, we have simply reviewed what it will require to overcome the particular limits we have encountered. How to build the organization to fulfill those tasks without being subsumed into normalcy again is up to the coming insurrections.
\n\nThe task of overcoming limits is one that all pro-revolutionaries must undertake as the self-conscious elect of the party invisible. As pro-revolutionaries, we can see this party invisible, the coming party of anarchy, everywhere we look—the jeepney chupers, the mambubukid, kadamay, kamanggagawa, kababaihan, kabaklahan, and kasama.
\n\nAll under heaven is in chaos; the situation is excellent for anarchy.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/30/1.jpg\")
Photograph by Philippine Collegian.
\nAll writing is autobiographical, more so with political theory. Dedicated to lovers, comrades, kasamasa, kaoomchies, and kaibigan—to all who persist. D—, K—, P—, T—, H—, N—, H—, I—, R—, H—, I—, A—, A—, M—, R—, B—, J—, K—, P—, A—, M—, A—, P—, L—, G—, J—, I—, M—, A—, A—, V—, A—, 1—, R—, R—, PM, ISE, BI, TDP, A!, PS, MF, and many more.
\n\nOn the wave of uprisings that spread from Sri Lanka to Bangladesh, then from Indonesia to Nepal, Madagascar, Morocco, Peru, and elsewhere:
\n\nMore material on the Philippines:
\n\nEDSA, pronounced “Ed-Sa,” stands for the Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, the same avenue where the First and Second People Power Revolutions, or EDSA Uno and EDSA Dos respectively, took place. Similar to Luneta, marching and mobilizing at EDSA is highly symbolic. ↩
\n“DDS” originally stood for the nickname of then-mayor Rodrigo Duterte’s private army, the Davao Death Squad, which Duterte is accused of using to terrorize the urban poor of Davao City. During Duterte’s campaign for president, the fascist Dutertista movement co-opted and embraced the acronym DDS as Duterte Diehard Supporters. ↩
\nWhere appropriate, Filipinisms (words specific to the dialect of Philippine English) are used in this text. ↩
\nFormer president Rodrigo Duterte finished his term of office without much fanfare, having been constitutionally barred from running for president again as a consequence of finishing his term of office. Political dynasties in the Philippines routinely endorse family members and allies to keep power within their circle. The Duterte and Marcos dynasty colluded to run for office, with Bongbong Marcos (the son and junior of the former dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr.) running for president and Sara Duterte (the daughter of Rodrigo Duterte) running for vice president as a tandem. It is highly rare for tandems to win, as a president and vice president are elected separately, yet both won. Nonetheless, the two dynasties began quarreling in public, with Marcos ordering the extraordinary arrest and extradition of Rodrigo Duterte to the International Criminal Court. ↩
\nThe term is borrowed from Karl Marx, who first used it in what became Class Struggles in France; in this text, we play on his meaning. See Marx’s most famous usage of the terms “party of order” and “party of anarchy” in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. ↩
\nThe Kilusang Setyembre Bente Uno (KS21) is a fascist entryist group that appropriated the symbolism of 9/21. We know they are fascist entryists because they are platformed by the usual fascist Telegram channels while claiming to be some kind of patriotic united front. Some of their members were arrested while challenging a Manila ordinance designed to prevent another 9/21. ↩
\n“Red-tag” is a Filipinism somewhat equivalent to “red-bait.” The use of “black-tagging” is a play on words, though that phrase is already sometimes used to refer to baiting or tagging individuals and groups by alleging connection to Daesh-aligned groups (the so-called “Islamic State”) like the Maute group. It goes without saying that I am not using the phrase to refer to Daesh. ↩
\nIn the Philippines, permits are required for most protests. ↩
\nThis discussion on apolitical passivity (which I term “apolicity” elsewhere) is also an intervention into the discussion in the Philippines about the notion that working-class people are “apolitical” and “passive,” which reduces individual agency to a choice rather than recognizing that individuals orient themelves in the context of their material and ideological conditions. ↩
\n“Burgis” is a Filipinism for “bourgeois,” and “burgesya” is a Filipinism for “bourgeoisie.” ↩
\nTaken from “izquierda permitida” (permitted left) discourse used in Bolivia to describe the transformation of MAS (Movimiento Al Socialismo) and other ruling left electoral parties from being a radical left (izquierda radical) to a “permitted left” (izquierda permitida). ↩
\nCompare with Phil A. Neel’s notion of an “anti-party” in his works such as “Theory of the Party.” ↩
\nAlmost literally so, since Prabowo is the son-in-law of Suharto, the old dictator of the New Order period, and Prabowo is an advocate of a return to New Order-style of governance. ↩
\nIn EDSA Uno, this force was the liberal-democratic oligarchy organized by the Church and the political-dynastic opposition to the dictatorship. The Communist Party of the Philippines failed to intervene at this crucial moment and lost the momentum for insurrection in what is now called as the “boycott error,” now understood by ideologues as a problem of “ultraleftism.” ↩
\nWhile I no longer believe in the theory of change that prefiguration and its adherents put forward, I still believe it has a place somehow, as suggested in the following paragraphs. This is not the place to expound on the subject in depth. ↩
\nNeither is informalism an inherently superior mode of organization in counterrevolutionary times. We have seen in the Philippines how informalist organization can constrain bravery no less than transmisogyny or manarchism. The dichotomy of formalism versus informalism (as also framed as pro-organizationalism versus anti-organizationalism) is a false dichtotomy. People have repeatedly raised the point against Murray Bookchin that so-called lifestylists (his referred term for informalists/anti-organizationalists) still take part in formal organizations. ↩
\nWhat can today’s rebels learn from the Stonewall riots? Why did the uprising have such an impact? To answer these questions, we explore the previously unacknowledged significance of anarchists in the rebellion and the movements that emerged from it. Along the way, we trace a queer genealogy of anarchist organizing methods in North America from the Stonewall Uprising through the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999 to today.
\n\nThis is a massive, meticulously researched historical investigation. It’s a deep dive! For a shorter introduction to the subject, see our previous article, “Stonewall Means Riot Right Now.”
\n\nYou can order a zine version of this article here in order to read it in print.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/1.jpg\")
This image designed by the artist Bum Lung appeared in a book collecting the works of the Mary Nardini Gang in 2019. In fact, it repurposes the same Thomas Nast cartoon as a flyer that the anarchist group Up Against the Wall Motherfucker made in the 1960s. This connection gives us a glimpse of a subterranean relationship between queer subversion and criminal anarchism that spans decades.
\n“Be gay, do crime”? Let’s be more ambitious!
\n\nIn 1969, gays and gender rebels were already criminals. At Stonewall, they became revolutionaries.
\n\nAnd if you’ve ever participated in an affinity group at a mass protest, you’ve got them partly to thank.
\n\nHere, we revisit the Stonewall Uprising and its aftermath to trace a queer anarchist history of riots and horizontal organizing. Despite Stonewall being the most famous moment in LGBTQ history in the United States, few have explored the anarchist dimensions of the uprising, nor its influence on subsequent radical organizing and tactics. Until now, queer anarchists who have invoked Stonewall have usually focused on it simply as an anti-police riot, an example of “queer ultraviolence” in which a wide range of sexual and gender rebels including trans people, people of color, and street youth fought back against their oppressors. This is accurate, of course, and were it only that, it would still be worth celebrating. But there is a specifically anarchist legacy at the heart of the rebellion, posing strategic and tactical lessons of interest to contemporary anarchists.
\n\nThe history of queer anarchism has yet to be told. This is one of its riotous chapters.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/2.jpeg\")
Queer anarchists around the world march to commemorate the Stonewall Uprising—let’s actually remember and learn from it.
\nIf you, dear reader, are a queer and/or trans anarchist, we hope you’ll find particular pleasure in this account. But there are no identity-based limits on this legacy. All anarchists and rebels should find useful insights in the story that follows. Looking back through this history, it’s surprising how much of it—the discourse about outside agitators, identity, and local knowledge in riots, the debates about leadership and representation versus spontaneity and affinity, the counterinsurgency methods—resonates directly with our own experiences in more recent rebellions across a wide range of contexts.
\n\nRadical history should go beyond simply cheerleading our ancestors and trancestors; we owe it to them to learn concrete lessons from their successes and failures. The best way to honor the courage of the Stonewall rebels is not by putting their images on our walls or social media feeds, nor by squabbling over the proper version of identity politics to govern our thumbnail accounts of history.
\n\nIt’s by drawing on their experiences to revolt more and better today.
\n\n—some queer anarchists
\n\nWe’ve researched this article using a range of primary materials (documents and accounts from 1969) as well as other historians’ writings about the events, plus interviews years later with folks who witnessed them. Where possible, we’ve included links to online sources that you can read yourself; otherwise, we have included footnotes to materials you can access in libraries. Many of the sources appear in the excellent anthology The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary Reader.
\n\nSome of the accounts directly contradict each other. We’ve done our best to sort through the various sources to pull together a well-supported overall narrative, acknowledging the limits of what we can know.
\n\nObjectivity is impossible. Yet our revolutionary aspirations will not be served by upholding mythologies that are emotionally satisfying but neglect the available evidence. A “usable past,” as we see it, isn’t an uncomplicated and inspiring fable full of hero/in/es to celebrate. It’s an analysis of history that offers lessons we can use to realize our own revolutionary dreams in the present.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/27.jpg\")
Yes honey, we know. But what can it teach us about revolt?
\nStonewall wasn’t simply a night when the cops raided a bar and people fought back. The Stonewall Rebellion spanned three nights of intense rioting throughout Greenwich Village over the course of six days. This is critical to understanding why it made such a difference then and why we still remember it today.
\n\nIt has become common to point out that Stonewall wasn’t the first queer riot. Commonly cited incidents include Cooper Do-nuts in Los Angeles (c. 1959) and Compton’s Cafeteria (1966). We can add to the list the Black Nite Brawl of 1961, also known as “Wisconsin’s Stonewall,” the gay community response to the Black Cat raid in 1967 Los Angeles, and various other pre-1969 rebellions.
\n\nYet our hunger for a usable riotous queer past may exceed what we can actually document. The Cooper Do-nuts incident might have happened, but novelist John Rechy is the only person who claims to remember it (and wasn’t even sure what year it took place). More people claim to remember a tussle at Compton’s, but neither police files, organizational records, media coverage, nor gay nor trans periodicals from the time offer any mention of such an incident. It may have happened, but the details and even the date remain hazy—some time in August 1966 is the best guess. While inspiring to recount as an early example of collective trans and queer resistance, whatever impact such a disturbance may have had at the time was limited.
\n\nOther instances that are better documented, while locally significant, did not spread beyond their immediate geographic or tactical limits. The Black Nite Brawl, while fierce, was essentially a bar fight on a single night. When the Black Cat was raided in 1967, the gay community didn’t riot, though they did organize a nonviolent protest. None of these were widely discussed outside the communities where they took place.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/3.jpg\")
After the Los Angeles Police raided the Black Cat bar in Los Angeles in 1967, the gay community assembled to protest… but didn’t riot.
\nSurely there have been many times when queer and/or trans people fought back against oppression, regardless of whether they were documented in traditional archives or community memory. But before 1969, none of those directly catalyzed a deeper transformation in the queer/trans world beyond the immediate participants.
\n\nStonewall was different. One of the reasons why is that it lasted so much longer. The entire neighborhood around the bar became ungovernable for nearly a week, with multiple escalating clashes that centered gay, trans, and/or gender non-conforming people but grew to include a range of neighbors, street kids, and political radicals. By sustaining the disorder for many days beyond the initial bar raid, the rioters shifted what it meant to be gay in the Village—and eventually, the world.
\n\nHad the 2014 riots in Ferguson died down after one night, they would not have catalyzed the international reckoning with police violence that became known as the Black Lives Matter movement. In the years before a police officer in Ferguson murdered Michael Brown, many one-night riots took place in response to police murders—but none lasted long enough to expand into a generalized rebellion. In Ferguson, locals kept coming back to the streets; this afforded supporters time to arrive, helping to sustain the intensity. The prolonged disorder caught the attention of the public, which eventually caused the protests to spread, making Michael Brown and Ferguson into household names. This is a useful analogy for what happened in the Stonewall riots.
\n\nNowadays, people love to debate who “threw the first brick”1 at Stonewall. Actually, the question of how the rioting continued is at least as important as how it started. While the courage of those who resisted on the first night is admirable, it was the persistence of collective militant defiance in the streets over the following week that transformed it from a disturbance into a revolutionary upheaval.
\n\nOne night, however fierce, could be a fluke. Stonewall was an uprising. Let’s see how it unfolded.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/4.jpg\")
The Stonewall Inn before everything exploded.
\nThe basic story of the first night of rioting at Stonewall is widely known, though certain details about who did what remain contested.
\n\nFriday, June 27 was an ordinary night at the Stonewall, a trashy gay bar on Christopher Street in the West Village run by the Genovese organized crime family. The door was staffed by Ed Murphy, an infamous Mafia tough, pimp, blackmailer, and police snitch who later rebranded himself as a gay activist. A mixture of mostly young gay men and trans/gender-nonconforming folks sipped watered-down drinks from dirty glasses and danced, while outside the bar, more queers (including many too young to get in) congregated in the park and on the streets, laughing and camping and cruising.
\n\nShortly after 1 am, police entered the bar and announced that they were raiding the premises. It was the second raid of the same bar that week, in addition to raids on other gay bars and the destruction of trees in a popular cruising area of a park in nearby Queens. As police sorted patrons for release or arrest, targeting trans people in particular, some begin to protest and physically resist. A crowd gathered outside, grumbling at the police and cheering and camping it up as people exited the bar.
\n\nWord spread through the neighborhood. As the police exited and began loading arrestees into a paddy wagon, tension built. A trans woman smacked an officer with her purse; a butch lesbian, struggling against her captors, yelled at the crowd to do something. From the swelling crowd, people shouted, threw pennies (a pun: “dirty copper!”), beat upon the police vehicles, pulled up cobblestones from the streets, and tussled with the officers. Losing control of the situation as the crowd grew larger and angrier, the officers retreated into the bar.
\n\nThe crowd tossed bottles, stones, trash, garbage cans, and whatever they else they could find. They smashed windows, unarrested some prisoners, and pulled up a parking meter to use as a battering ram. Rioters attempted to set the bar on fire. Cops pulled their guns. More police arrived; as riot cops squared off, the crowd camped it up, chanting and dancing a kick line. For hours, the crowds clashed with police, dispersed and reassembled, set trash cans on fire, chanted, cruised, and milled around discussing their previous experiences with police.2
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/5.jpg\")
Friday night: the police raided and queers fought back.
\nAs Martin Boyce recalled of the morning after:
\n\n\n\n\nMorning came on Christopher, and those broken windows and pieces of cloth inside and diamondlike glass all over. It was a riot, no doubt about it, and there were just exhausted survivors looking dazed. We knew what happened. We all did it… There was a certain beauty to the aftermath of the riot. It was a very extraordinary kind of beauty, something to make art out of later… The beauty of shattered glass and certain kind of fag decorations being blown in the wind, by the window. It was obvious, at least to me, that a lot of people really were gay and, you know, this was our street.3
\n
For all of the ink spilled debating who played what role on the first night, all accounts agree that there were no leaders. No organizations, no formal structures, no representatives: the rebellion was a spontaneous collective outburst of rage and joy. Even attempts to chant slogans such as “gay power” or to sing civil rights anthems like “We Shall Overcome” didn’t take hold in an atmosphere of arch camp irony and fury. While efforts to take control of the riot’s legacy and bend its meaning to serve different political agendas began soon after, the first night expressed an organic, unmediated defiance. An observer writing in the countercultural newspaper Rat remarked on the absence of any effort to exert leadership as the uprising unfolded: “Strangely, no one spoke to the crowd or tried to direct the insurrection. Everyone’s heads were in the same place.”4
\n\nMany of the statements that established activists made early in the rebellion focused on the bars themselves, lamenting the system of mafia control and police payoffs. Craig Rodwell of the Oscar Wilde Bookshop circulated a flyer on behalf of his organization Homophile Youth Movement in Neighborhoods (HYMN) that declared, “The only way this monopoly can be broken is through the action of Homosexual men and women themselves. We obviously cannot rely on the various agencies of government.” Despite this anti-state sentiment, the demands asserted—for gay businessmen to run bars with “competitive pricing,” a boycott of Mafia-controlled establishments, and an investigation by the mayor’s office—suggested a limited imagination.5 While these conditions created frustration and vulnerability for many adult gay people, young queer people—ironically, precisely the constituency that HYMN claimed to speak for—were excluded regardless of who owned them, and trans/gender-nonconforming people of all ages faced additional legal and social harassment both inside and outside of them.6
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/7.jpg\")
Craig Rodwell stands in front of the Oscar Wilde Book Shop in 1969.
\nHad the riots died down after one or two nights, such demands might have remained the thinkable horizon for many participants. However, the unrest persisted across many days despite the efforts of cops, politicians, and community representatives. The prolonged antagonism with police occupying the neighborhood and the ongoing congregation of angry, rebellious queers on the streets defying authority and sharing their experiences expanded the meaning of the uprising. Over the course of the week, what had begun as a grievance related to the bars became a window into a totally different world.
\n\nIn addition to expressing being fed up and determined to resist, participants began to articulate sophisticated political analyses. One young gay rebel explained to a reporter the function of anti-gay oppression: “We strike at the family, and we undermine all the bullshit about virility that keeps most men in line.”7 These insights emerged collectively in real time as the rioters chatted and developed a shared political consciousness. An observer of the first night recalled:
\n\n\n\n\nPeople hung around till after 4 am talking in little groups. People were excited and angry. In talking to a number of kids who had been inside, it was evident most understood at least rudimentarily what was happening to them. What was and should have always been theirs, what should have been the free control of the people was dramatized, shown up for what it really was, an instrument of power and exploitation. It was theatre, totally spontaneous. There was no bullshit.8
\n
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/6.jpg\")
Day one: the raid and the riots left the bar wrecked.
\nIn a 2019 interview, Jim Fouratt, a longtime gay activist and former Yippie who was present for the entire Stonewall Uprising, recalled a detail that hasn’t made it into the published accounts of the riots. In his account, few radical groups participated on the second night of the uprising, but the Motherfuckers were there:
\n\n\n\n\nDo you know about the Motherfuckers? Straight anarchists, black flag kind of group… I did a lot of community organizing with the East Side Yippies and that kind of stuff. And my friend Ren de Antonio called me and she said, “I want you to know that the Motherfuckers are gonna come tonight and they’re gonna try to start a confrontation with the police.” And I said, “How do you know that?” She told me that there was a closeted gay man that she was good friends with in the Motherfuckers named Superdrill… she said Superdrill told me they’re gonna come.9
\n
Did the Motherfuckers participate in the Stonewall Uprising? If so, what impact did they have?10 We may never be able to confirm with certainty what role the Motherfuckers played, but Fouratt’s recollection suggests a throughline connecting the forms of anarchist organizing on the streets of New York City in 1969 with the organizational forms that emerged out of the Stonewall Uprising. In any case, as we shall see below, multiple witnesses confirm that at least one other anarchist group was definitely involved in the riots.
\n\nWho were the Motherfuckers? Up Against the Wall Motherfucker (UAW/MF), also known as the Motherfuckers, emerged in the late 1960s out of organizing involving Dan Georgakas, Ben Morea, and several others. Inspired by Dadaism, Spanish Civil War veterans living in exile in New York City, and the Living Theater, Morea had launched a zine called Black Mask in 1966, turning the radical message of the avant garde against the corporate art world that had defanged it and reduced it to a spectacle. Over the months that followed, he and his companions carried out some of the boldest confrontational direct actions of the late 1960s while modeling a new form of horizontal organization.
\n\nMorea had attended meetings with Murray Bookchin at which they discussed how the Spanish anarchists of the FAI (Federación Anarquista Ibérica) had organized in grupos de afinidad during the revolution of 1936. Bookchin went on to circulate influential proposals about affinity group organizing through the writings and lectures of the Anarchos Group at spaces like Alternate U, a countercultural free school in Greenwich Village in New York City. At the same time, UAW/MF began to put a similar model into practice, organizing as a “street gang with an analysis,” forming cells that participated in confrontational actions against the art establishment, the police, and the military-industrial complex.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/26.jpg\")
Ben Morea of the Motherfuckers, c. 1968.
\nIn a leaflet titled “The Brown Bag Theory of Affinity Groups,” UAW/MF laid out their philosophy:
\n\n\n\n\nThe affinity group is the seed/ germ/ essence of organization. It is coming together out of mutual Need or Desire. Cohesive historical groups united out of the shared necessities of the struggle for survival, while dreaming of the possibility of love. For man’s nature is not bounded by necessity alone — Desire appears in all its forms & man desires to desire — he seeks to fulfill himself on every level of his complex life. & it is in this psychological sense that the affinity group is a pre-organizational force, it represents the drive out of which organization is formed & in so far as it fulfills men’s desires it becomes the post-revolutionary form, the organization of satisfaction.
\n
It is striking that the Motherfuckers articulated the logic of the affinity group not only as a response to political necessity or as a way to embody anti-authoritarian principles, but an expression of desire and the longing for love. Establishing collective living spaces, working together intensively, and sharing the risks and pleasures of life in revolt, UAW/MF formed a network they called “the family,” which, as Morea recounted, “shared a tribal outlook and lifestyle.” Deconstructing and replacing bourgeois structures of kinship was part of the group’s prefigurative vision. As the radical historian Caitlin Casey explains, “The Motherfuckers saw the nuclear family as a hopelessly outdated concept but their new family as presaging the postrevolutionary society.”
\n\nMorea later recalled, “The fact that we rejected the nuclear family model and lived collectively was never arrived at in a polemical fashion or laid out as a blueprint. We just had a sense that there were other roots to living other than what the West had to offer.” In this rejection of conventional family values in favor of new models driven by desire, love, and a vision of social transformation, the Motherfuckers—despite being a mostly heterosexual formation—promoted an anti-authoritarian vision that paralleled the queer practices that were emerging a few blocks west, where networks of street queens, queer teenagers, cruisers, and gay couples were building alternative worlds.
\n\nWhile these prefigurative models of alternative kinship overlapped with social realities in the Village, UAW/MF’s tactics were a far cry from any means of protest that organized gay groups had undertaken. Pre-Stonewall organizations such as the Mattachine Society of New York employed conventional hierarchical organizing models and limited their tactics to polite advocacy, which was undoubtedly bold for a time when same-sex sex was criminalized and police harassment bedeviled the community. The MSNY’s negotiations with Mayor Lindsay’s administration and the police department had managed to secure a reduction in anti-gay arrests in the years leading up to Stonewall. But while some individual gays and lesbians such as Jim Fouratt participated in more confrontational New Left or anarchist projects, the organized gay movement remained tactically conservative through 1969.
\n\nAt a time when a broad social consensus, particularly among young people and marginalized communities, strongly opposed the Vietnam War and the US military machine, the first gay protest to take place in the city had been a 1964 picket outside the US Army Building advocating for the inclusion of gay men and lesbians in the military. The famous 1966 “sip-in” at Julius’s Bar in the Village involved men in conservative suits identifying themselves as homosexuals and then politely asking to be served in order to challenge State Liquor Authority policies that rendered gay bars vulnerable to closure. While courageous and in some cases effective, the homophile movement showed little tactical innovation. Younger activists’ efforts to propose even minor changes in the scope of actions—such as relaxing the conservative gender-conforming dress code imposed on participants in the “Annual Reminder” picket at the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia—provoked fierce backlash.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/9.jpg\")
The famous “sip-in” at Julius’s Bar in the West Village, 1966. Dick Leitsch, president of the Mattachine Society of New York, is at center, addressing the bartender.
\nBy contrast, on the Lower East Side, the Motherfuckers were pushing the boundaries of protest with near-constant confrontations, property destruction, and street marches. As former Motherfucker Osha Neumann recalled,
\n\n\n\n\nWe would riot, throw rocks through the windows of the bank, and run through the streets chased by beat cops from the precinct reinforced by the Tactical Patrol Force. Those of us they caught got dragged to jail. Those of us who escaped rushed to our new storefront to churn out fliers calling for new demonstrations, which would invariably result in more riots and more arrests.
\n
UAW/MF organized their own protests, but also appeared wherever social tensions presented opportunities for insurrectionary escalation. According to Morea, “We didn’t operate from any plan, we just saw situations and took our chances. We were edge dwellers.” When entering into a conflict, they did not confine themselves within tactical limits: “Our response would include everything from peaceful protests to not peaceful battling depending on the situation. We were extremely volatile and it often depended on how hard we were pushed.” The city presented ample opportunities for escalation, especially as the temperature rose; as a Motherfucker communiqué titled “Liberation in the Streets” declared, “While the rest tremble, we look forward to the heat of summer.”
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/10.jpg\")
Black Mask, antecedents of Up Against the Wall Motherfucker, c. 1967.
\nYet as summer of 1969 set in, few straight radicals anticipated that the most successful confrontation with the city’s notorious riot squad would come not from seasoned movement “heavies” such as Motherfuckers, Yippies, or SDS militants, but from young gay people in Greenwich Village. Many tough radicals from the New Left viewed the latter with contempt or amused indifference.
\n\nIn fact, all accounts agree that in the Stonewall riots, it was specifically effeminate gays, street queens, and trans/gender-nonconforming people that took the most prominent militant roles. “People are beginning to realize,” one New York Post author quoted the doorman at the Stonewall Inn as saying, “that no matter how ‘Nelly’ or how ‘fem’ a homosexual is, you can only push them so far.” The author continued: “With a battle cry of ‘gay power,’ the Nellies, fems, gay boys, queens—all those who flaunt their homosexuality—have been demonstrating that they have indeed been pushed too far.”11
\n\nDick Leitsch, president of the Mattachine Society of New York, noted, “The ‘butch’ numbers who were around the area and who participated peripherally in the action remained for the most part in the background. It was the ‘queens’ who scored the points and proved that they are not going to tolerate any more harassment or abuse.”12 A graffito on the sidewalk in front of the Stonewall: “BUTCHES, WHERE ARE YOU NOW THAT WE NEED YOU?”13
\n\nAs word spread after the first night of rioting that a rowdy group of street queens and campy young gays with no formal protest experience had successfully squared off against the riot police, militants flocked to the Village to learn from their experience. As gay activist Bob Kohler recounted:
\n\n\n\n\nThe big thing on everybody’s mind, especially the police and movement people, was that these were the only rioters that had gotten the best of the police. So that gave them a special strangeness. I mean, people just [wondered], How could that happen? Because there’d been riots with Yippies and there’d been riots with the SDS and Abbie Hoffman, but nobody had ever gotten the best of the police before. The police were never put on the run, and suddenly they were put on the run by the fairies, so those people were very curious: did this really happen?14
\n
As the day unfolded, radicals and countercultural people of various sexualities and genders converged on the Village, mingling and discussing the events. One lesbian recalled, “Hippies joined the queers & straight places turned gay for the week-end—it was complete madness in NYC.”15
\n\nIn addition to the likely presence of the Motherfuckers, multiple participants confirm the presence of the Crazies, an anarchist cell based in Lower Manhattan that participated in street theater, confrontational protests, and—as came out a few months later—bombings of targets connected to United States militarism.
\n\nAuthor Edmund White reported, “A mad left-wing group of straight kids called the Crazies is trying to organize the kids, pointing out that [Mayor] Lindsay is to blame.” John O’Brien, a Marxist activist with links to various radical groups experienced in street confrontations with police, reached out to the group to ask them to come on Saturday.16 While it is not known which individual Crazies were at Stonewall that night, participants in the group included Robin Palmer and Sharon Krebs, who went on to join the Weather Underground, and Sam “Mad Bomber” Melville. Five months after Stonewall, Melville was arrested en route to a planned bombing due to information passed by George Demmerle, an FBI snitch involved with the Crazies. Melville became a leader in prison organizing at Attica; he died at the hands of police and National Guard troops in the massacre that concluded the Attica Rebellion.
\n\nAs night fell on June 28, the second night of the Stonewall riots, the crowd swelled to include thousands of people. The vibe was at once angry and festively campy. Participants surged into the streets and blocked traffic, chanted, confronted vehicles, and began to throw things. At the nearby Women’s House of Detention, which confined many Black and Latina lesbians and transmasculine folks, detainees cheered and dropped burning pieces of toilet paper out of the windows of the jail to show their support.17 Angry gay and trans people began attacking police cars. Marsha P. Johnson reportedly climbed a streetlamp and dropped something heavy on a squad car, smashing its windshield, while someone else tossed a bag of wet garbage into the face of an officer in another vehicle.
\n\nAfter 2 am, the TPF riot police arrived to reinforce the badly outnumbered officers, advancing in wedge formations in an attempt to clear the streets. Queer demonstrators confronted them with taunts and kick-lines and, when forced out, escaped along side streets to disperse and then reassemble elsewhere. Setting fires in trash cans, attacking police outnumbered by the crowds, and successfully unarresting and freeing some of those snatched by the riot squad, queers continued to flood the streets until after 3:30 am.
\n\nThe success of the crowd in evading police, holding the streets, and sustaining the confrontation for hours likely stemmed from the combination of different demographics that converged on the second night. Gay residents and street queens drew on their intimate knowledge of the local terrain to find escape routes around police blockades, enabling rioters to disperse and reconverge, outflanking police efforts to re-establish control. Anarchists and other militants drew on their experience in street protest to escalate confrontations and defend against police violence and arrests. The gays, Motherfuckers, and Crazies proved a formidable coalition.
\n\nFouratt was thrilled about how the second night went:
\n\n\n\n\nWe learned through the end of it when I, when our little group met again, full of ourselves because it had been more successful than we had expected, many more people came out, it was just wonderful. I remember marching across Waverly Place in the wrong direction, going by Julius’s and shouting, “Come out! Come Out! Come out!” And they’re all raising their drinks, but not coming out! … I don’t claim to be the first person to say, “Come out! Come out!” But on the second night, that was the mantra, the cheer that you heard.
\n
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/11.jpg\")
Saturday night: Stonewall belongs to the kids on the streets.
\nOn the third night, Sunday, June 29, large crowds once again turned out, but the fierce confrontations that marked the first two nights did not take place. As David Carter explains, the police had learned
\n\n\n\n\nthat in the aftermath of Friday night’s raid it would take many more police officers than were initially deployed on Saturday to discourage gay men and women and their allies from attempting to seize the area around the Stonewall, which the homosexual citizens saw as their turf; that the police needed to arrive early in large numbers to preempt the gay citizenry from seizing the initiative; and that such a maneuver must be executed in a low-key manner or their mere presence might precipitate the outbreaks they were hoping to end. (At least the police used this approach on Sunday night and it worked.)18
\n
A gay activist writing in the Berkeley Barb also claimed that activists from SDS had promised to lend their support, but failed to show up on Sunday night.19 If the Motherfuckers returned, their presence was not felt. Other factors contributed to muting the rebellion:
\n\n\n\n\nThe second factor working in the police’s favor was that the weekend had passed. Friday and Saturday nights’ events had begun late and lasted until the early morning, something most people could not do on an evening before a workday, especially if they had already done so on the previous night or two. Thirdly, some of the demonstrators felt that they had already made their point and nothing more was to be gained by again repeating what was becoming a predictable scenario. Was it worth risking more injuries and arrests, as well as damage to the neighborhood that gay people were fighting to claim as their own?20
\n
Furthermore, earlier in the day, Mattachine activists had met with representatives of the mayor and police department and attempted to dissuade the gay community from continuing the rebellion. At the Stonewall, MSNY members encouraged people who turned up to go home, posting a sign reading: “WE HOMOSEXUALS PLEAD WITH OUR PEOPLE TO PLEASE HELP MAINTAIN PEACEFUL AND QUIET CONDUCT ON THE STREETS OF THE VILLAGE—MATTACHINE.”
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/12.jpg\")
An attempt at counterinsurgency. It didn’t work.
\nMSNY’s actions reflect a familiar pattern of co-optation and counterinsurgency, in which the self-appointed representatives of an oppressed group attempt to pacify their constituency in order to maintain their status as intermediaries with the dominant power structure. This model is familiar from Ferguson to Standing Rock to Minneapolis; it represents one of the most serious threats to the revolutionary potential of social movements.
\n\nHowever, at Stonewall in 1969, the elation at the possibilities opened up by the riots, the limited influence that the Mattachine Society had upon the street youth who comprised the front line of the rebellion, and the hatred that the vast majority of the community felt towards the police combined to limit the effectiveness of this strategy. The crowds remained large, if less rebellious than the night before, and an array of defiant actions took place. As Carter recounts,
\n\n\n\n\nSeveral gay youths took daring advantage of the heavy police presence in the Christopher Street area to make a guerrilla raid on the Sixth Precinct’s headquarters. They went to the police station and slapped Day-Glo blue and fuchsia bumper stickers reading “Equality for Homosexuals” on the police cars, a patrol wagon, and the personal cars of cops who had left their vehicles parked while on duty.21
\n
While the crowds did not march and clash with police as on the first two nights, the attitude remained militant and defiant. One furious young queen tore into a well-meaning straight ally who attempted to defuse the crowd’s anger:
\n\n\n\n\nThe hell you say! You don’t impress me. You are straight and you are my enemy! Don’t give me that phoney liberal bull. You made the laws. Nixon’s silent army. Now we are gonna get you! I was in Vietnam, man, how does that grab you? Huh? Huh? And, man, I’ll screw your daughter. But I’ll screw your son first! 22
\n
While some non-gay radicals did join the rebellious crowds, queer participants remained skeptical of dogmatic leftists whose humorless attempts to impose their analysis on the situation attracted little sympathy. Several sources have remarked on a joke in circulation among the gay youth participants in the uprising: “I’ve become a left deviationist.” 23 The quip picks up on a common authoritarian leftist epithet that Stalinists and Maoists used to condemn a variety of positions, particularly those that promoted more freedom than the party apparatus trusted people with, as well as the Cold War term “sex deviate,” used to denote homosexuals. This rather niche pun indicates the extent to which leftist lingo had saturated youth subcultures and how an anti-authoritarian gay sensibility used humor to mock the pretensions of both homophobes and rigid leftists—groups that overlapped considerably in 1969 New York City.
\n\nWhile full-scale riots did not break out the following two nights, tensions remained high and continued building as riot police stalked the neighborhood, taunting gay residents with homophobic slurs. An observer recounted:
\n\n\n\n\n“Start something, faggot, just start something,” one cop kept telling people. “I’d like to break your ass wide open.” After saying that to several dozen people, one man turned and said, “What a Freudian comment, officer!” The cop started swinging and hauled the guy off to a waiting wagon.24
\n
One officer fell victim to the trolling of “a wildly ‘fem’ queen,” who “sneaked up behind him, lit a firecracker and dropped it between his feet.” The cop squealed and flailed at the crowd with his nightstick; in the succeeding mêlée, a gay rioter made off with his badge. Leitsch recalled:
\n\n\n\n\nThe next day, the badge turned up hanging on a tree in Washington Square Park, stuck into a string of pickled pigs’ feet. When the cops found the badge-stuck pigs’ feet, they didn’t take them down from the tree—they beat the pigs’ feet to the ground, then picked up the badge.25
\n
This mutual taunting reflected the war between gays and police that was generalizing throughout the neighborhood and beyond. The tension ratcheted up further on Wednesday when an offensive article penned by Lucian Truscott appeared in The Village Voice, mocking the protests and the gay community. As night fell on the Village and the crowds swelled, the tension once again reached a boiling point.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/13.jpg\")
Despite the lull, queers remained in the streets—and another explosion was soon to come.
\nWhile the early nights of the rebellion and the days of lull had involved anger leavened with wit and cheerful banter, the mood had turned ugly by Wednesday night. Days of homophobic police occupation, injuries and arrests, mocking news coverage, and efforts by respectability-oriented activists to defuse anger engendered a cold fury among the crowds that assembled on the night of July 2. Likewise, the police were even more brutal: one observer noted, “The cops, who had been caught off-guard and were on the defensive before, had taken the offensive and massive retaliation was their goal.”26
\n\nBy 10 pm, between 500 and 1000 people were seething in the streets. The arrival of a police motorcade to Christopher Street prompted a wave of shoving and bottle throwing. Shortly after, gay and trans/gender-nonconforming participants began to light fires in the street. The crowd discussed burning down the building housing The Village Voice in retaliation for its offensive coverage. Throughout the neighborhood, riot police attempted to snatch members of the crowd, who fought back fiercely, looting shops and smashing windows. A handful of people were arrested; a large number of people were injured, including some officers.27 Although the clash lasted a short time compared to earlier nights—the fiercest fighting lasted around an hour—its ferocity struck all onlookers. One participant concluded, “The word is out. Christopher Street shall be liberated. The fags have had it with oppression.”28
\n\nWhat makes a riot queer? One dimension involves the rupture of gendered expectations about who participates and how. Rioter Ronnie Di Brienza summed this up in a local paper a week later with an elegant audio metaphor: “Revolution is being heard on Christopher Street, only instead of guttural MC-5 voices, we hear it coming from sopranos, and altos.”29
\n\nThe MC5 were a Detroit-based rock band popular among militant New Left activists and Yippies; their manager John Sinclair had founded the White Panther Party and worked with the anarchist newspaper Fifth Estate. On tour the previous year, the Motherfuckers had started a riot at an MC5 show at the Fillmore East, leading to the band’s being banned from a range of venues. By invoking the gruff swaggering masculinity of the MC5 and the street militants associated with them and contrasting it to the effeminacy of the frontline rioters at Stonewall, Di Brienza showed how the uprising not only asserted gay and trans grievances, but deconstructed the entire notion of who could be a revolutionary.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/14.jpg\")
“Homo Nest Raided, Queen Bees Are Stinging Mad”—despite the mockery of local media, the effeminacy of the rioters stunned police and butch revolutionaries alike.
\nIn the US today, many leftist commentators presume that people who are disproportionately vulnerable to state violence need to be sheltered from it in militant protest. This can lead to contradictory conclusions. Some assert that those insulated by some degree of privilege should take the front lines and actively participate in militant resistance in order to absorb the brunt of confrontations; others claim that those who have more privilege should refrain from participating in escalatory activity because its effects will disproportionately impact those who have less privilege. Critics of the latter approach respond that only by taking collective risks to defy state power can we do away with the conditions that render targeted communities vulnerable to state violence in the first place. Even well-meaning efforts to police the scope of militant tactics are generally premised on the patronizing assumption that targeted communities have no agency to resist on their own behalf. Ultimately, this framing supports the state monopoly on power.
\n\nThese issues were the subject of strident debate surrounding the Stonewall Uprising, focusing most acutely on the night of July 2. Commentary on the final day of conflict focused on the demographics of the participants, and specifically the relationship between (presumably or predominantly) straight rioters from crews based outside the Village, such as the Motherfuckers and the Crazies, and the gay/trans/gender-nonconforming rebels in the streets. As Dick Leitsch from the Mattachine Society of New York observed shortly after,
\n\n\n\n\nThe composition of the street action had changed. It was no longer gay frustration being vented upon unsuspecting cops by queens who were partly violent but mostly campy. The queens were almost outnumbered by Black Panthers, Yippies, Crazies and young toughs from street gangs all over the city and some from New Jersey. The exploiters had moved in and were using the gay power movement for their own ends. A lot of them were looking for a fight, and had the police not come, they probably would have started the old game of street gangs everywhere, “beating up a queer.” The blacks and students who want a revolution, any kind of revolution, were there to exploit. They swelled the crowd and tried to recruit, but “graciously” let the queens take all the bruises and suffer all the arrests. (If they have no more courage than they displayed on Christopher Street, their revolution is a long way off.)30
\n
This narrative bears uncanny similarities to the accusations lobbed at (and within) many 21st-century North American social movements. An array of presumed outsiders—if white, coded as political radicals, and if Black, coded as apolitical criminals—are portrayed as a threat to whatever demographic is presumed to bear authentic political grievances and entitlement to local terrain. Note the invocation first of the Black Panthers and then of “young toughs” from “New Jersey.” It is almost certain that Leitsch did not interrupt rioters to ask them where they lived and that New Jersey residents were not visually identifiable as such. On the heels of the Black-led Newark riots of 1967, invoking “New Jersey” in contrast to the residents of the almost entirely white Greenwich Village neighborhood served as a racial code for white gay readers.
\n\nIn an effort to prevent people from interpreting diverse participation in the rebellion as an expression of solidarity, Leitsch even concocts a fantasy of gay-bashing gang members so intoxicated by violence that they temporarily forget to attack gay/trans/gender-nonconforming people and instead attack the police alongside them. While anti-queer street violence was a reality in New York City at this time, Leitsch rejects the far more plausible explanation that a wide range of young people, including Black and brown kids, political radicals, and others, had suffered at the hands of the police and came together to fight back against them on account of shared interests and desires.
\n\nObservers who were more connected to the city’s marginalized communities and social movements, while noting the less visibly queer composition of the streets that night, arrived at different conclusions. Bob Kohler, a white gay radical and active supporter of the civil rights movement and the Black Panther Party, agreed that the crowd was different, but framed this in a broader context:
\n\n\n\n\nYes, there was a difference in the makeup [of the crowd on July 2]. There were more people rioting that could not be easily categorized, and a lot of that had to do with people that came over from other areas. The straight movement moved in heavily that night as a support. I’m assuming it was as a support. They were, of course, using it for their own ends, too… You had, for lack of a better word, provocateurs who were seeing an incident that could be used for the good of their movement or a different movement or a coalition of movements. This was one more. It was the last. There was nobody else left to riot, so people with some foresight, more foresight than I [had] at the time, could see that this could again strengthen the radical movement, that people they hadn’t really thought about were now up there in the front. 31
\n
Although referring to presumably non-gay rioters as “provocateurs” (while questioning his own use of the word), Kohler recognizes the broader participation in the night’s events as a form of solidarity oriented towards building a broader radical coalition that could resist the forms of oppression that multiple targeted communities experienced.
\n\nNeither activist specified how they knew that the rioters on July 2 were not “queens” or members of the gay community. For Leitsch, race certainly played a role, as well as gender presentation; to his credit, although not a “queen” himself, he insistently named and praised the role of effeminate gay/trans/gender-nonconforming people on the front lines of the uprising. Kohler was more familiar with the landscape of multiracial activism in the city; he may have recognized people from elsewhere. But both appear to have relied on a narrowly gendered, and to some extent racialized, interpretation of identity in reading the crowds.
\n\nAt a time when gay identity was still publicly associated with effeminacy and functioned for many as a specific subculture with distinctive cultural styles, many homosexually active men did not register to other gay people as “gay” in a cultural sense. John O’Brien, a white gay left-wing activist who was present from the first night of the uprising, remarked that his more masculine presentation aroused suspicion that he might be a provocateur or police informant when he participated in gay demonstrations.
\n\nAs one commenter on more recent queer riots has argued, one of the radical possibilities of street rebellion lies in how it can open up new ways of being in the world, weaponizing otherwise static identity categories as tools for revolt. We will never know exactly who comprised the crowd around Stonewall on July 2. Rather than asking who they had been, it might be more interesting to ask what they were becoming. Leitsch crafts a narrative in which the most marginalized members of a rebellious mass disproportionately bore the brunt of physical violence and legal consequences due to the combination of escalatory provocation and cowardice on the part of outsiders or more privileged participants. But there is another way to tell the story.
\n\nWith the benefit of historical hindsight, it is clear that the participation of non-gay radical rioters in the Stonewall Uprising constituted a vital act of solidarity. By adding important tactical knowledge, swelling the crowds, helping to free arrestees, escalating and sustaining confrontational energy, and spreading word of the uprising beyond the confines of the Village, they helped to transform the events from a fleeting expression of long-suppressed rage to a rebellion with world-historical significance. Had the Motherfuckers, the Crazies, and other anarchists and rebels subordinated themselves to the prescriptions of contemporary identity politics and stayed home, the riots might have petered out sooner and with less impact. The Stonewall Uprising illustrates the meaning of the slogan solidarity means attack.
\n\nSetting aside the question of whether observers such as Leitsch and Kohler could infallibly read the sexual and gender identities of the rioters, we must ask—were those identities fixed and static? Should those identities have been primary in determining the rioters’ relation to the rebellion? Even in Leitsch’s paranoid fantasy of otherwise homophobic “toughs” temporarily turning to fighting homophobic police in order to slake their thirst for destruction—wouldn’t that be a good thing? Instead of “be gay, do crime,” the Stonewall rioters inverted the script: by doing crime together, regardless of what previous desires they felt or sexual subcultures they frequented, people across a wide range of identities made it easier to be gay. We might even say that they invented a new way to be gay together. What affinities, erotic and otherwise, might previously unconnected people have discovered in the streets? What new possibilities might the ostensibly heterosexual participants in the riots unlocked within themselves?
\n\nThis destabilization of identity through revolutionary struggle became a hallmark of the emerging gay liberation movement, if only briefly. The earlier homophile movement’s major conceptual innovation lay in seeking civil rights for a “minority” by means of interest group politics. In that framework, a more-or-less fixed number of homosexuals existed alongside “other” minorities with their own distinctive issues (rarely, in those pre-intersectional times, did the implicit whiteness of this framework trouble white gay or lesbian activists). However, as one Gay Liberation Front activist explained in 1970 at a gathering of radical movements, gay people were coming to understand gay liberation not “as an oppressed minority fighting for rights but more the process of [creating] a society in which people can come out and be all that it’s possible to be” while rejecting “the false categories of homosexuality and heterosexuality.”32
\n\nAt Stonewall, rioters put this into practice: rejecting the false categories that divided them, they fought side by side against the police who oppressed them, and in the process changed history.
\n\nWith the Fourth of July weekend pending, both gay residents and police anticipated that crowds would be massive and the riots would intensify. Riot police continued to assemble in the Village, redirecting their attention from the Motherfuckers’ usual rebellious turf, as a local left-wing newspaper observed:
\n\n\n\n\nThe calling in of the TPF had the incidental benefit of taking the heat off the Second Avenue and St. Marks Place area of the Lower East Side, the TPF’s usual stomping grounds, allowing street people there an unusually relaxed July 4.33
\n
However, although large numbers of people assembled in the streets of the village and sporadically confronted police, major clashes did not break out. As Leitsch described the following days:
\n\n\n\n\nSporadic efforts were made to start trouble—by people who can best be described as “outside agitators,” by gay people, and too often by uptight cops who tried to start trouble to give them an excuse to start bashing heads again. Despite those efforts, no major outbreak erupted. It was almost as if everyone had decided that the point had been made and any further action would only bring on a backlash.34
\n
It is not surprising that Leitsch, as a white moderate, adopted the “outside agitator” language first deployed by white supremacists in the South against civil rights and labor organizers and later generalized to target all forms of protest. During the civil rights struggles of the early 1960s, this language was so widespread that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spent much of his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” addressing it.
\n\nFollowing another half century of seeing this language weaponized to divide and discredit radical social movements, it is easy to recognize such rhetoric as purely reactionary. We should understand that Leitsch’s subsequent accounts of the uprising were shaped by his experience of being marginalized by the younger and more radical participants. Rejecting his attempts to position his own organization, the Mattachine Society of New York, as the head of the gay movement in the uprising’s aftermath, radicals went on to found the Gay Liberation Front, which continued to pursue a confrontational approach and worked to form alliances with precisely the radical groups Leitsch had condemned as “outside agitators.”
\n\nBearing this in mind, let’s consider Leitsch’s description of the looting that unfolded on the night of July 2:
\n\n\n\n\nObviously, little of it was done by people who live in and frequent Christopher Street and environs, because all the most unlikely places were looted. The first shop to get hit was the “Gingerbread House,” a toy shop run by a delightful little lady who is a friend of everyone on Christopher. The other shops broken into were also run, for the most part, by nice people, sympathetic to the gay cause and the plight of the street queen. The really likely places, the “fag shops” that overprice their wares and bleed the gay market for exorbitant prices, were left alone. Shops whose managers complain the loudest about the cruising and swishing in the neighborhood were also, surprisingly, left alone. Observers in the know doubt if the looting was done by gay people.35
\n
Leitsch did not condemn property destruction or looting out of hand; rather, he criticized the looters for the specific targets they chose. His response includes a critique of the economic exploitation of the gay community and the petty bourgeois norms of respectability preached by business owners. While stopping short of validating property destruction as a tactic in service of these critiques, he cites the pattern of which businesses were attacked as evidence that looters lacked intimate knowledge of the neighborhood’s gay geography and the grievances that might prompt radical action.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/15.jpg\")
Queer rioters’ intimate knowledge of the West Village helped to sustain the revolt.
\nLeitsch’s critique anticipates the debates over property destruction and “diversity of tactics” that have saturated the anarchist movement over the past three decades—particularly during the mobilizations of the so-called anti-globalization era, from Seattle to Miami to Adams Morgan. On occasion, anarchists who have become exasperated with these debates have dismissed valuable good-faith critiques of confrontational actions. Perhaps, had the Motherfuckers and other rebels who converged on Stonewall taken the time to confer with local gay residents, they might have been able to pick their targets more thoughtfully, thereby achieving an even more seductive riot.
\n\nBut was Leitsch’s representation of the looting of July 2 accurate? Lacking other sources that comment directly on which businesses were attacked and how, it is difficult to say. His rhetoric reflects a common pattern in moderate critiques of property destruction during times of widespread unrest. Knowing that the rebellion was widely popular and reflected deeply felt anger, Leitsch identified the righteous fury that queer residents felt at their economic exploitation, at the scorn targeting femme and gender-nonconforming people, and at the repression of cruising and public sex—but he attempted to redirect some of this fury against imagined “outsiders.”
\n\nPerhaps, then, we should not uncritically read the looting as poorly targeted militant action, but as an expression of outrage so popular that it forced even committed opponents of militant action to frame their critiques as a matter of targets, not tactics. Today, we need not look far to find pundits eager to defuse and recuperate popular anger by praising “our right to resist” in the abstract while criticizing every concrete action as the wrong place, the wrong time, the wrong target.
\n\nLeitsch himself and other homophile groups had been organizing for years without qualitatively shifting the sense of possibility in the Village or beyond. Without downplaying their accomplishments, which included a significant decrease in police harassment and entrapment from 1966 forward, we can see that it took a dramatic break with existing forms of activism and the norms governing queer people’s relationship to public space to make the quantum leap into the era of gay liberation. Only by defying the demands of city officials, police, and established gay activists—by remaining in the streets and fighting back over an entire week while refusing to accept the tactical limits that leaders attempted to impose—did young queer people and their comrades render a deeper shift possible.
\n\nWhatever so-called “outsiders” participated in the rebellion, it is clear that the gay, trans, and other assorted members of the community around the Stonewall were ready to embrace more militant tactics. As Ronnie di Brienza, a self-described freak who participated in the first night’s riot, put it:
\n\n\n\n\nI have had a lot of shit thrown my way, but until Friday night, June 27, I was basically a pacifist. However, pacifism is fast going out the window. How many times can one turn the other cheek. There is a limit, and Friday night was it… Poof, it starts. The fags have gone revolutionary… The fags, like the true revolutionaries, have become resigned to fighting for their cause, if necessary by force and with heavier weapons.36
\n
Members of the established homophile groups reacted with ambivalence to the militancy of the riots, which many younger gays saw as a harbinger of their irrelevance. The Insider, the newsletter of the Mattachine Society of Washington, exemplified this discomfort in their coverage of the riots:
\n\n\n\n\nThe Insider does not see this exhibition of militancy as a fluke. Militant open defiance has become the most characteristic mark of the sixties’ protest movements. First used by the blacks in irrational riots, and later used more systematically by hippies and campus protestors who shut down their own universities, militancy has never been characteristic of the homophile movement. Militant protestors rationalize their destructive methods by pointing out that knocking on doors is useful only to a point. When it becomes clear that the doors are never going to open and that door knocking is only a pacifier for the masses, then it is time to knock the doors down. In these terms, the homophile movement is behind the times. It is quite possible that the homosexuals in the streets may well make obsolete much of what the present homophile is doing. For better or worse, militancy is here.37
\n
The conventional racist characterization of Black revolt as “irrational” and anxiety about the “destructive” methods of militants reflected the racial, class, and generational positioning of many homophile activists. Self-described “gung-ho right-winger” homophile activist Foster Gunnison, Jr. lamented, “It is common knowledge that the Commie-pink-anarchist fringe tries to take over any minority cause it can latch on to, and for us it had to come sooner or later.”38
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/16.jpg\")
Conservative homophile activist Foster Gunnison, Jr. condemned the “Commie-pink-anarchist fringe.”
\nWhile less reactionary, Don Jackson of the Los Angeles Advocate scolded the rebels and urged activists to rein them in:
\n\n\n\n\nHomosexuals simply cannot afford rioting and violence. Such incidents solidify straight opinion against them and will surely bring a reaction… It is essential that rational leaders appear who will redirect the anger into more peaceful and successful methods. Otherwise, history and sociology indicate, gay riots on a vast scale with needless loss of life and property damage may occur. This is not the road to equality. Such disturbances will increase the irrational hatred the straights feel toward homosexuals. Every educated reasonable member of the gay community must aid in redirecting the anger and frustrations of the more violent and emotional members.39
\n
In historical hindsight, Jackson could not possibly have been more wrong. In fact, the rioting and violence at Stonewall catalyzed an international militant movement that helped transform the lives of millions of queer and trans people, and remains better known and more widely praised than any other act of protest or resistance in United States LGBTQ history. Yet today, self-proclaimed leaders across a wide range of communities persist in saying the exact same thing.
\n\nOthers, however, broke free from the constraints of homophile timidity and enthusiastically embraced the riots. Jack Nichols and Lige Clarke, a prominent gay activist couple who had participated in Mattachine organizing since the mid-1960s, penned a column in Screw that offered a full-throated endorsement of militant gay resistance to police:
\n\n\n\n\nThe revolution is taking to the streets, and it is high time that it did… We were thrilled by the violent uprising in Sheridan Square in which homosexuals put police on notice that they’d no longer accept abuse. For many decades gay people have been afraid to stand up for themselves and have allowed policemen to run over one of their most basic civil rights: the right to assemble in public. Today, however, a new generation is angered by raids and harassment of gay bars, and last week’s riots in Greenwich Village have set standards for the rest of the nation’s homosexuals to follow.40
\n
Over the years that followed, Nichols and Clarke continued to radicalize, while remaining critical of authoritarian leftists who they described as “just as unbalanced on the gay issue as is the far right. Gays get it from both ends, so to speak.”41 By the 1990s, Nichols would be authoring a column titled “The Homosexual Anarchist.” Through the crucible of Stonewall and gay liberation, some homophile activists developed a far more radical critique of the existing world.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/28.jpg\")
Jack Nichols: from polite homophile… to “homosexual anarchist.”
\nThe energy unleashed by the Stonewall Uprising produced a wave of organizing that quickly rendered the existing gay activist infrastructure irrelevant. Under pressure from fired-up radicals, Dick Leitsch agreed to form a Mattachine Action Committee, and flyers circulated for a meeting on July 9, one week after the last night of rioting. Around a hundred people, mostly younger gay and lesbian radicals, turned up and made plans to organize a march against police harassment.
\n\nAt the next meeting, a week later, the young radicals made a definitive break with the old guard. When Leitsch attempted to lecture the angry crowd about the importance of pursuing progress slowly via accommodation with the straight establishment, Jim Fouratt denounced him:
\n\n\n\n\n“We have got to radicalize, man! Be proud of what you are, man! And if it takes riots or even guns to show them what we are, well, that’s the only language that the pigs understand! All the oppressed have got to unite! The system keeps us all weak by keeping us separate.”42
\n
His speech received wild applause. Leitsch’s attempts to regain control of the meeting failed. The radicals agreed to form a new organization that would sustain the energy of the Stonewall Rebellion. This became the Gay Liberation Front (GLF).
\n\nOver the years since, the GLF has often been described as “anarchic” or “anarchistic,” but little attention has been paid to the role that anarchists and anarchist ideas in its founding. The founders who assembled in late July 1969 at Alternate U were radicals from across the left-wing spectrum. As Karla Jay recalled, the crowd of around forty at the first meeting included “drag queens, bar dykes, street people, feminists, radical students, leftists, socialists, Marxists, Maoists, anarchists, libertarians, hippies, and former Yippies.”43 As gay liberation organizing blossomed across the city over the following years, regardless of whether its participants used the language of anarchism to describe themselves, the movement relied on anarchist infrastructures, engaged with anarchist concepts and tactics, and adopted a distinctly anti-authoritarian ethos.
\n\nThe location of the GLF meetings is revealing. Alternate U was a radical educational project that hosted a wide range of workshops and teach-ins, classes on a variety of radical topics, social and cultural events, and activist meetings. Located on the second floor of a warehouse at West 14th Street and 6th Avenue, it sat on the northern edge of the West Village, a short walk from Stonewall and the core of the gayborhood where the riots had occurred.
\n\nFounded in 1965 as the Free University of New York, as the Interference Archive explains, it had been launched as “a free university, with no exams or degrees, where they could learn about social struggles and everyday life,” whose participants “strove for a revolutionary experience in education.” By 1969, it had changed its name to Alternate U and was attracting participants from a wide range of movements, from radical psychologists to media collectives to women’s theater groups. The project was coordinated by a collective of radicals that included anarchists and Marxists; the space hosted the Anarchos Group and featured talks by Murray Bookchin and other anarchist thinkers.
\n\nStonewall rioter John O’Brien—a Marxist who had been expelled from the Socialist Worker’s Party’s Young Socialist Alliance for his homosexuality—served on the project’s board; this provided the initial connection that helped enable the GLF meetings to find a home there. After the GLF’s founding meetings in the space in July 1969, Alternate U continued to host many of the group’s activities, including their gay dances, the most popular and widely attended GLF project. The weekly gatherings offered the first public alternative to Mafia-controlled bars at which same-sex couples and trans/gender-nonconforming people could dance freely; this, in turn, provided a critical source of revenue for the fledgling group. Holding meetings and dances at Alternate U brought a wide cross-section of activists and the gay population at large into contact with anarchist and radical ideas.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/33.jpg\")
GLF members prepare for a gay dance at Alternate U, 1970. A poster from the May 1968 uprising on the wall behind them reads “Borders = Repression.” A message for all movements based around identity.
\nPolitical differences emerged within the GLF from the beginning, but a loose anti-authoritarian consensus determined the organization’s structure and culture. A political scientist who interviewed many of the group’s members and offered the closest early reading of the group’s politics characterized the GLF as dominated by “radicals” who “championed anarchy.” These participants coexisted with doctrinaire “revolutionaries” who “looked forward to socialism,” with whom the radicals sometimes collaborated and sometimes found themselves at odds.44
\n\nThese values were reflected in the group’s decision-making practices. According to an observer of the early meetings, “When a decision had to be made, voting was unpopular. After sufficient discussion, a “consensus” was arrived at—the membership, undivided, coming to an agreement. Time-consuming often, but solidarity-building.”45 There were no officers and no formal leaders, though informal hierarchies did solidify around those who were popular, perceived to have revolutionary cred, or sometimes, as critics noted, simply spoke loudly. While the exhilaration of being together exploring radical ideas carried the participants through the early meetings, as more political differences surfaced, clarifying the group’s structure and priorities became urgent.
\n\nMost of the participants in the GLF were gay men, but a few lesbians played prominent roles. One of them was Lois Hart. In her thirties, Hart was older than most members; she had left her life as a nun to explore lesbian identity, radical politics, and alternative spirituality. In the months before Stonewall, she had participated in courses on feminism and anarchism at Alternate U, where Murray Bookchin had spoken about anarchist organizing and affinity groups.46
\n\nIn the fall of 1969, Hart proposed that the GLF adopt a decentralized structure in which the GLF weekly meetings would serve as spaces for autonomous groups to report on their activities and coordinate efforts, while individual cells retained the freedom to work on projects independently.47 The group agreed to adopt this anti-authoritarian structure; separate clusters formed to organize the weekly dances, publish the newspaper Come Out!, study gay oppression through a Marxist lens, and pursue other goals.
\n\nJohn Lauritsen, who brought a dogmatically Marxist approach to gay organizing, dismissed the cellular structure as “some Murray Bookchin inspired notion.”48 Indeed, Bookchin had been a direct influence on Hart through Alternate U. As a gadfly critical of the authoritarian turn of SDS and the New Left, Bookchin represented an anarchist alternative that appealed to many in the feminist and gay liberation movements who were critical of traditional organizing models.49
\n\nOver the following year, fifteen cells developed under the auspices of the GLF. Some eventually broke away to become fully autonomous groups, including Third World Gay Revolution, Gay Youth, and Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries.50 Some of these groups outlived the GLF itself, which ceased to function by early 1972. While the GLF proved short-lived, its influence rippled out across time and space, as the model of horizontal autonomous organizing based in cells and affinity groups generated new collectives and spread around the country.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/32.jpg\")
Murray Bookchin, who helped translate the concept of affinity group organizing from anarchists in the Spanish Revolution to the GLF’s cell structure.
\nGLF participants reflected critically on the model as it unfolded, arriving at different conclusions about its efficacy. In January 1970, Hart explained in the GLF newspaper Come Out! that “the many mentalities, dispositions, and persuasions of GLF activists and dissenters are finding expression in small groups structured after the needs, goals and philosophies of the participants.” The cell structure, she explained, reflected a commitment to direct action and active participation that necessarily required breaking with the conditioning into passivity that hampered radical movements: “In the knowledge that growth and change occur within individuals and that individuals develop only through active involvement in projects and goals of their own choosing, GLFers chose the rocky road of fluid cellular organization rather than perpetuate older, oppressive structures of Follow the Leader and passive participation by voting.”51
\n\nAs the group grew, attracting a wider range of participants beyond its initial radical core, some who were accustomed to more centralized forms of organizing became frustrated when they could not dictate the activities of the entire group according to their own ideological or tactical preferences. This became particularly pronounced with the arrival of more “well-meaning establishment types who could not conceive of something democratic that did not involve everyone being controlled by the consensus of a voting membership.” As Hart explained, “For them GLF was the Sunday Night Meeting, not groups of activists for homosexual liberation. They did not realize that we are a movement, not a static organization.”52
\n\nThose of us who participated in the Occupy movement may smile with rueful recognition here.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/31.jpg\")
Lois Hart (second from right) prepares to participate in a “Lavender Menace” action at the Second Congress to Unite Women with her fellow Radicalesbians, May Day 1970.
\nNot all participants agreed that the flexibility and autonomy of the cell structure served to build the movement for gay liberation—indeed, not even all of the anarchist participants did. One such critic, Arthur Evans, became famous in the late 1970s for his book Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture, which called for a gay anarchist revolution in which decentralized affinity groups would use witchcraft and direct action against patriarchy and the military industrial state. In 1970, however, his frustration with the group’s chaotic structure and dispersed focus led him to join with others seceding from the GLF to form the Gay Activists Alliance, a resolutely single-issue organization with a more traditional structure.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/29.jpg\")
Arthur Evans lets the straight world know exactly what he thinks.
\nRalph Hall, an artist who was to author a series of gay anarchist zines in the following years including Faggots and Faggotry and Revolutionary Limpwristed Faggot, wrote in late 1969 that the GLF’s “structureless structure” granted too much power and influence to unscrupulous authoritarians. Criticizing the members of the 28th of June cell, which took over the publishing of Come Out!, as “a flighty crop of revolutionary dogmatists,” he took them to task for glorifying authoritarian communist regimes (“What does the sexual revolution in Cuba have to do with homosexual oppression in Amerika?”) and for taking advantage of the loose consensus process to “shrewdly manipulate and brainwash the membership.”
\n\n“I thought,” Hall lamented, “we had no leaders or followers, but all participants.”53
\n\nDespite the challenges of the cell structure and participants’ internal critiques, the model spread to other cities. Dozens of GLF chapters appeared across the country over the following months; while not all of them modeled their internal structure on the New York group, many did. As NYC GLF participant Bill Weaver recalled, “There was a real struggle to establish cells. New York went through this ‘cellular’ struggle, and now, when Washington GLF or Walla Walla GLF has it, they assume at the very beginning that they’re going to have cells.”54
\n\nThe Washington, DC GLF’s adoption of the cell structure proved influential far beyond its members—indeed, beyond the entire gay liberation movement—because of the role its participants played in what was to be the largest mass mobilization in US history up to that time, the 1971 May Day protests.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/17.jpg\")
A Gay Liberation Front meeting at Alternate U in 1970.
\nThe centrality of gay organizing within the 1971 May Day anti-war mobilization did not come out of nowhere. From its inception, the nascent gay liberation movement had overlapped with the movement to end the US war in Vietnam. The pre-Stonewall homophile movement had largely remained silent on the war, while advocating for an end to the US military’s ban on homosexual service members. By contrast, gay liberationists donned T-shirts reading “Suck Cock to Beat the Draft,” joined anti-war marches, and, according to an account from the notorious queer performance troupe The Cockettes, hung out outside of military induction centers offering blowjobs to draftees in order to help them secure deferrals.
\n\nAfter Stonewall, members of the newly formed GLF took an active role in the anti-war movement. The first non-gay-organized action that members participated in with the GLF banner was an anti-war, anti-draft protest late in the summer of 1969 at Central Park. Television cameras circulated images of the group’s members and materials nationwide.55
\n\n“Through a lot of 1970,” recalled Perry Brass, a member of the GLF cell that produced the newspaper Come Out!, “I must have gone to at least six different antiwar marches where we [gay people] were all joining hands and marching up Fifth Avenue or marching in the park.”56 In the months following Stonewall, gay liberationists in California circulated a flyer riffing off of a famous quote from Muhammad Ali, titled, “No Vietnamese Ever Called Me a Queer.” The flyer advertised a performance by the Berkeley-based Gay Liberation Theatre, putting both the US military and the homophobic anti-war movement on notice:
\n\n\n\n\nSo we’re not going to fight in an army that discriminates against us, fucks us over, sends us to the front lines or jails us and throws us out dishonorably when we are ourselves and love our brothers. Nor are we going to fight for a country that will not hire us and fires us when we are ourselves and loving our brothers, that puts us out of and puts us down in every phase of its every institution. Nor are we going to fight in a revolution that puts us down.
\n
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/34.jpg\")
“No Vietnamese Ever Called Me a Queer.”
\nAs the gay liberation movement blossomed in 1970, activists in the anti-war movement were beginning to question their model of holding mass marches in Washington, which attracted large numbers of participants and ample media attention but appeared to have little impact on the war machine. In fall of 1970, a range of anti-war groups assembled under the umbrella of the People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice began coordinating plans for actions in the nation’s capital the following spring. While members of the PCPJ timed a lobbying week for the end of April to plead with politicians to end the war, more radical participants assembled in an informal coalition dubbed the May Day Tribe, including a range of Yippies, anarchists, and other radical protesters determined to shut the city down. The May Day Tribe adopted the slogan, “If the government won’t stop the war, we’ll stop the government.”
\n\nAs the mobilization approached, a small core of DC-based activists who staffed the office and worked on coordinating logistics for the demonstration began calling themselves the Gay Mayday Tribe. Participant John Scagliotti recalled, “There were about five of us who were gay, and we sort of ran the office. We immediately became very close and out of that was Gay Mayday.”
\n\nThe group functioned partly as a political collective, partly as an underground cell undertaking a range of illegal activity, and partly as a polycule—with participants organizing, partying, and sleeping with each other. At a time of rampant FBI infiltration of radical groups, the Gay Mayday crew remained impervious to snitches because of its emphasis on queer sexual as well as political affinity. As Scagliotti explained, “They couldn’t infiltrate it, because we were all sleeping with each other. And we were doing a tremendous amount of illegal things, that they could have gotten us all for.”
\n\nBe gay, do crime indeed!
\n\nLike the Stonewall rioter who analyzed the roots of homophobia in the threat that gay men posed to a social structure based in rigid masculinity and the nuclear family, the DC organizers framed gay opposition to the war not in a paradigm of identity politics, but in a broader analysis of how patriarchy, capitalism, and imperialism form a single interlocking system. As L.A. Kaufman explains:
\n\n\n\n\nThe Gay Mayday Tribe viewed its participation in the 1971 antiwar action as more than just a matter of mobilizing gays as a constituency or contingent, along the lines of “schoolteachers against the war” or “physicians for peace.” Instead, it sought to draw connections between militarism and social constructions of gender. One Gay Mayday leaflet called the Vietnam War “a straight man’s game,” created by “men who need to gain their masculine identity through the killing of women, children, and their own brothers.” A call to participation elaborated, “We know that the men running the country are very deeply sexist—they relate to each other and to situations in an uptight straight male way. These men make decisions in order to satisfy their male egos and their needs for competition with other men.” The Gay Mayday Tribe offered up an expansive radical vision, in which gay liberation could not only transform laws or lifestyles, but also undermine the very foundations of war. For, they promised, “an army of lovers would not fight.”
\n
The loose collective included members of the Washington GLF, which had adopted the New York group’s horizontal cellular structure. Kaufman attributes the GLF’s structure to the influence of the women’s liberation movement: “The radical feminist influence was also felt in the GLF’s ‘structureless’ organizational form, comprised of decentralized collectives (called, in this case, ‘cells’) with no formal decision-making process, membership requirements, or bylaws.” While Lois Hart, whose proposal had played a significant role in shaping the GLF’s structure, was certainly a feminist and active in the women’s movement, Hart also named anarchist ideas, in particular the notion of affinity groups emerging from the Spanish anarchist movement conveyed via Murray Bookchin, as central in shaping her approach to revolutionary organizing.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/30.jpg\")
Members of the Washington, DC Gay Liberation Front, 1971.
\nThe GLF’s approach represented one of the two major influences on the affinity group structure adopted in May 1971. The other had reached the New Left via the Motherfuckers. Kauffman connects the dots:
\n\n\n\n\nMorea and the Motherfuckers soon introduced the idea of affinity groups as teams for street combat to Weatherman, the faction of SDS that aspired to be a revolutionary fighting force and to “bring the war home” to the United States. It was during the October 1969 “Days of Rage,” perhaps Weatherman’s most notorious action, that affinity groups made their true American debut.
\n
The Days of Rage had turned out disastrously, owing in part to the centralization and authoritarianism of the Weatherman leadership. Yet activists who rejected vanguardist militarism but remained intrigued by the possibilities of decentralized and mobile formations at mass demonstrations revisited the approach in the 1971 organizing. As Kauffman summarizes:
\n\n\n\n\nBy the time the Mayday Tribe put out its call to protest, the concept of affinity groups had begun to blend with the other small-group forms that were rapidly growing in countercultural popularity: collectives, communes, cooperatives, consciousness-raising groups. “Affinity groups at Mayday,” recalls John Froines, another Chicago 7 defendant centrally involved in the action, “were both a tactical approach in terms of the street and also something more, connected to people’s linkages to one another.”
\n
In an effort to prevent the demonstrations from completely paralyzing Washington, DC, police and National Guard troops mass-arrested 12,000 people across three days of disorder—the largest mass arrest in US history. In addition to partially shutting down the city and damaging the Nixon administration’s standing, the format of decentralized affinity groups acting autonomously in coordination with each other proved enormously influential. Afterwards, it remained the preferred means of organizing mass direct action from the anti-nuclear movement of the 1970s to the queer-led civil disobedience of ACT-UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) in the 1980s to the global justice movement that exploded onto the world stage with the protests that shut down the Seattle summit of the World Trade Organization in 1999.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/18.jpg\")
An affinity group blocks traffic near the Washington Monument, the week of May Day 1971.
\nThe fact that anarchist ideas and models rapidly proliferated in the movements that emerged from the Stonewall uprising lends weight to the hypothesis that anarchists played a meaningful role in the uprising itself.
\n\nThe GLF and the Motherfuckers both drew on the affinity group organizing model that they had absorbed from the Spanish exiles and Murray Bookchin, but each employed it in their own way. Setting out to create a new way of life on the chaotic Lower East Side, the Motherfuckers devised insurrectionary approaches to social conflict while seeking to prefigure a revolutionary society by exploring new conceptions of the family. Gay liberationists, operating in a criminalized sexual subculture involving people linked by desire rather than shared politics, also developed alternative modes of kinship, networks of mutual aid, and flexible organizational formats that facilitated horizontal collaboration across lines of difference.
\n\nOver the course of a week in the hot summer of 1969, they collided with each other as they fought the police side by side. While the Motherfuckers dissolved shortly thereafter, gay liberation exploded and spread around the country. At the 1971 May Day protests, the two threads that converged at the Stonewall Uprising—gay liberation and anarchist direct action—came back together to transmit the affinity group model to posterity, setting the template for affinity group-based mass mobilizations for decades to come.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/25.jpg\")
A march in 1970. Marsha Johnson is holding the trans sign at the left.
\nEvery June, queers around the world celebrate Pride—the co-opted consumerist shell that remains of the celebrations in memory of the Stonewall Uprising of 1969.
\n\nThe first “Pride” was the Christopher Street Liberation Day March, launched in 1970 by radical gay and lesbian activists intent on breaking with the moderate homophile movement of the 1960s. Thousands of marchers convened in Greenwich Village and marched north through the city, chanting “Gay power! Gay power!”—”Gay, gay, all the way!”—”Out of the closets, into the streets!” The march was non-commercial, open to everyone, trans-inclusive, and radical, concluding in a massive “Gay-in” in Central Park. As lesbian historian Lillian Faderman summed up the day, “Never in history had so many gay and lesbian people come together in one place and for a common endeavor.”’
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/19.jpg\")
Christopher Street Liberation Day March, 1970—the first “Pride.” Yes, there was a black flag there!
\nToday, looking out over the landscape of contemporary Pride, we could say that rarely have so many LGBTQ people come together in one place while managing to accomplish so little. Depending on where you live, you may be charged admission for the privilege of wandering around and spending more money in a sea of commercial vendors, corporate sponsors, and tables of polite community groups. Despite the waves of resistance to racism and police violence in the late 2010s and early 2020s, you’re likely to see cops marching in the parade. In some states, organizers’ pre-emptive compliance with drag bans has gutted even the playful apolitical entertainment that we used to have.
\n\nOf course, the anti-LGBTQ and specifically anti-trans backlash of the past decade has caused many corporations that opportunistically sought out gay consumers via Pride sponsorships to dial back their efforts. Should we be nostalgic for the days when we had the luxury of complaining about being a target market rather than a target for bigotry, scapegoating, and violence?
\n\nThe history we have explored here offers a different perspective on the legacy of Stonewall, pointing to a long-running cross-pollination between anarchist organizing and queer culture and sexuality. Consulting this, we see that queer anarchism is not just an intersection of discrete identities, but a transformative force that has played a central role in half a century of direct action and revolutionary ferment. Looking at Stonewall through this lens, we see how the queer riots of 1969 offer lessons that are directly applicable to today’s movements for liberation.
\n\nThis account of the Stonewall Uprising leaves no room for consumerism, cops, or hierarchical leaders. According to this version of the story, we celebrate the rebels of June and July 1969
\n\n\n\n\nWhen we help to push riots beyond a single night of disturbances into an ongoing rebellion against the ruling order;
\n\nWhen we resist the efforts of community representatives to defuse our anger and send us home;
\n\nWhen we mingle in the streets against the instructions of riot cops, politicians, and official activists, communicating and finding common cause;
\n\nWhen we evaluate our strategies and tactics to find ways to revolt more effectively and joyously;
\n\nWhen we organize horizontally, rejecting representation and leaders, making space to collaborate while insisting on autonomy;
\n\nWhen we form affinity groups to undertake our creative and destructive projects;
\n\nWhen we prefigure the horizontal worlds we desire beyond the workplace, the party, and the nuclear family in the ways we organize, riot, party, and fuck.
\n
When we do these things, we are truly honoring the legacy of Stonewall.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/20.jpg\")
The spirit of Stonewall: gays smash City Hall during the White Night Riots in 1979.
\nFor oral histories with Stonewall participants and GLF members, see The Gay Liberation Front Foundation and the LGBTQ History Project. Some elders are still living—reach out and talk to them!
\n\nYou can find digital uploads of the GLF’s newspaper Come Out here.
\n\nAdam Nagourney Dudley Cleninden, Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America—This is largely anti-radical and obnoxiously transphobic, but includes some useful material.
\n\nHugh Ryan, The Women’s House of Detention: The Queer History of a Forgotten Prison—A queer abolitionist history of the jail a few blocks from the Stonewall.
\n\nFor more about the Motherfuckers, see:
\n\nFor more about the Crazies, see Leslie James Pickering’s Mad Bomber Melville.
\n\nOur analysis of the 1971 May Day actions draws considerably from the brilliant research of L.A. Kauffman in the article “Ending a war, inventing a movement: Mayday 1971”.
\n\nFor a narrative account of May Day 1971, see Lawrence Roberts, Mayday 1971: A White House at War, a Revolt in the Streets, and the Untold History of America’s Biggest Mass Arrest. You can also consult the 1971 May Day protests tactical manual.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/22.jpg\")
Gay Liberation Front Marches on Times Square, New York City, 1969.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/23.jpg\")
Marsha P. Johnson Hands Out Flyers in Support of Gay Students at New York University, 1970.
\nAs Jim Fouratt, a young gay radical who participated in the riots, later pointed out, the question itself betrays a lack of awareness about the material conditions of the bar and its surroundings: “And who threw the first brick? Where would you find a brick on Christopher Street, unless you brought it in your purse, you know?” Danny Garvin, another participant in the riots, recalled finding a construction site on Seventh Avenue South where retreating rioters found a stack of bricks; in any case, brick throwing was not among the first acts that catalyzed the rebellion. See Carter, Stonewall, 155. ↩
\nThis summary derives from a range of accounts, including Carter, Stonewall, Duberman, Stonewall, and several primary sources. ↩
\nCarter, Stonewall, 181. ↩
\n“Queen Power: Fags against Pigs in Stonewall Bust,” Rat, 9 July 1969, 6; in The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History. ↩
\nHomophile Youth Movement, “Get the Mafia and the Cops Out of Gay Bars,” ca. 29 June 1969, Craig Rodwell Papers, Box 5, New York Public Library; in The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History. ↩
\nAccording to Jefferson Fuck Poland of the Sexual Freedom League, NYC police claimed that when they raid bars, “they are not picking on homosexuals,” but focused on bar employees and on trans/gender-nonconforming patrons: “generally men dressed as men, even if wearing extensive makeup, are always released; men dressed as women are sometimes arrested; and ‘men’ fully dressed as women, but who upon inspection by a policewoman prove to have undergone the sex-change operation, are always let go.” Poland called for direct action against cross-dressing laws through a “Switch In,” in which “a large group of males and females, of all sexual orientations, should appear in clothing unmistakably of the opposite sex. Daring the cops to bust.” Jefferson Fuck Poland, “Lady Inspectors,” Berkeley Barb, 16 July 1969, 17; in The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History. ↩
\nJohn Gabree, “Homosexuals Harassed in New York,” National Guardian, 12 July 1969, 14; in The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History. ↩
\n“Queen Power: Fags against Pigs in Stonewall Bust,” Rat, 9 July 1969, 6; in The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History. ↩
\nInterview with Hugh Ryan, 2019. ↩
\nIn discussion with the authors in June 2026, Osha Neumann, one of the few living New York Motherfuckers, wasn’t sure: “I have no recollection of any MF being involved with Stonewall. That doesn’t mean some folks didn’t go there, but I somehow doubt it. By June 1969, I believe the core of the MFs were already heading to New Mexico.” But digging a bit deeper, it’s clear that the question is still open. In 2006, Motherfucker Ben Morea explained that the Motherfuckers were not a membership organization, but a network of affinity groups that acted independently and a label that any of them could employ: “We never called ourselves Up Against the Wall Motherfucker, although we signed our posters and leaflets UAW/MF, which anyone in the group could produce, with that name… It was essentially a loose confederation of affinity groups.” In fact, a wide range of people, from Mark Rudd and Spain Rodriguez to the Jefferson Airplane, dallied with both the organization and its tag line; there appear to have been autonomous chapters of Up Against the Wall Motherfucker as far away as Austin, Texas. Some people outside Motherfucker circles likely used the term to describe a wider range of people than Osha Neumann did. All of this is squarely within the anarchist tradition of informal organization. Regardless of whether members of the affinity groups specifically associated with Morea or Neumann directly took part in the Stonewall Uprising, it is certain that anarchists took part, and probable that some of them overlapped with the crews that identified—or were identified—as Motherfuckers. ↩
\nJay Levin, “The Gay Anger behind the Riots,” New York Post, 8 July 1969, 36; in The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History. ↩
\nD. L. [Dick Leitsch], “Gay Riots in the Village,” Mattachine Society of New York Newsletter, Aug. 1969, 1–2, 4; in The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History. ↩
\nBob Kohler, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” Come Out! 1, No. 2, (January 10, 1970). ↩
\nCarter, Stonewall, 202. ↩
\nCarter, Stonewall, 183. ↩
\nCarter, Stonewall, 302, note 21. ↩
\nHugh Ryan, The Women’s House of Detention: The Queer History of a Forgotten Prison. ↩
\nCarter, Stonewall, 196. ↩
\nLeo E. Laurence, “Gays Hit NY Cops,” Berkeley Barb, 4 July 1969, 5; in The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History. ↩
\nCarter, Stonewall, 196. ↩
\nCarter, Stonewall, 197. ↩
\nTom Burke, “The New Homosexuality,” Esquire, December 1969, pp. 178, 304–18. ↩
\nLucian Truscott IV, “Gay Power Comes to Sheridan Square,” Village Voice, 3 July 1969, 18; John Gabree, “Homosexuals Harassed in New York,” National Guardian, 12 July 1969, 14; in The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History ↩
\nD. L. [Dick Leitsch], “Gay Riots in the Village,” Mattachine Society of New York Newsletter, Aug. 1969, 1–2, 4; in The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History. ↩
\nLeitsch, “Gay Riots in the Village.” ↩
\nLeitsch, “Gay Riots in the Village.” ↩
\n“Cop Injured 5 Seized in Village,” New York Post, July 3, 1969. ↩
\nCarter, Stonewall, 205. ↩
\nRonnie Di Brienza, “Stonewall Incident,” East Village Other, 9 July 1969, 2; in The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History. ↩
\nLeitsch, “Gay Riots in the Village.” ↩
\nCarter, Stonewall, 201-205. ↩
\nKiyoshi Kuromiya quoted in Marc Stein, City of Brotherly and Sisterly Loves: Lesbian and Gay Philadelphia, 1945–72, 334. ↩
\nJohn Gabree, “Homosexuals Harassed in New York,” National Guardian, 12 July 1969, 14; in The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History. ↩
\nLeitsch, “Gay Riots in the Village.” ↩
\nLeitsch, “Gay Riots in the Village.” ↩
\nDi Brienza, “Stonewall Incident.” ↩
\n“Gay Power Explodes,” The Insider: Newsletter of the Mattachine Society of Washington, Aug. 1969, 1–3; in The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History. ↩
\nDonn Teal, The Gay Militants, 95. ↩
\nDon Jackson, “Reflections on the N.Y. Riots” The Los Angeles Advocate, Oct. 1969, 11, 33; in The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History. ↩
\nLige [Elijah Hadyn Clarke] and Jack [John Richard Nichols], “Pampered Perverts,” Screw, 25 July 1969, 16. ↩
\nClarke and Nichols, I Have More Fun With You Than Anyone, 147. ↩
\nCarter, Stonewall, 216. ↩
\nKarla Jay, The Lavender Menace: A Memoir of Liberation, 77. ↩
\nToby Marotta, The Politics of Homosexuality, 90. ↩
\nDonn Teal, The Gay Militants, 101. ↩
\nMarotta, The Politics of Homosexuality, 87. ↩
\nDudley Cleninden and Adam Nagourney, Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America, 43. ↩
\nTerence Kissack, “Freaking Fag Revolutionaries: New York’s Gay Liberation Front, 1969-1971,” 116. ↩
\nLate in life, immediately before renouncing anarchism, Murray Bookchin published a screed excoriating what he described as “lifestyle anarchism,” even sneering, in passing, at “gay faery circles.” Ironically, the queer liberation movement did more than any institution to spread what is useful in Bookchin’s contributions to anarchist practice. ↩
\nDavid Eisenbach, Gay Power: An American Revolution, 127. ↩
\nLois Hart, “GLF News,” Come Out 1, no. 2 (January 10, 1970), 16. ↩
\nHart, “GLF News.” ↩
\nRalph Hall, “Gay Liberation News,” Gay Power 1, no. 9 (1969), 8. ↩
\nDonn Teal, The Gay Militants, 101. ↩
\nDonn Teal, The Gay Militants, 52. ↩
\nL.A. Kaufmann, “Ending a War, Inventing a Movement: May Day 1971.” ↩
\nFor June 11, the day of International Solidarity with Long-Term Anarchist Prisoners, we want to offer a glimpse of the repression that the anarchist movement is facing in Greece and the ways that people are resisting it. For that purpose, we present interviews with members of two groups, the Solidarity Assembly for Imprisoned Fugitives and Persecuted Combatants and the Squatted Community of Koukaki.
\n\nThe neoliberal immiseration of Greece is taking its toll. The descendants of those who collaborated with the Nazis are in power once again here.
\n\nThey are out of touch with the lives that most of us lead in these precarious lands. They imitate the fascist narratives that are at work in the United States, pushing for the same “quality of life policing” and “law and order” doctrines while enjoying corruption and excess at our expense.
\n\nThis is taking place all across the world, and everywhere, relentless judicial repression plays an integral part.
\n\nBecause of this, for the sake of our integrity, it is critical that we engage in solidarity, learning from each other’s struggles and preserving our revolutionary communities and bonds. These are victories in and of themselves that we can grasp, even if they don’t always leave us smiling.
\n\nSolidarity is not just a means of self-preservation, but a thread connecting everyone across the world who seeks liberation rather than settling for a society dictated by domination, exploitation, and an unrelenting death cult.
\n\nSolidarity is our weapon!
\nAll we have is us!
—Anarchists
\n\nIntroduce the project you’re involved with.
\n\nWe are members of the “Solidarity Assembly for Imprisoned Fugitives and Persecuted Combatants.” Our group is an anarchist assembly, in the sense that it functions according to the principles of self-organization and without hierarchy. We are also open and have met publicly every week for the past seven years.
\n\nOur aim is to provide political support to comrades who find themselves in the hands of the state and to elevate the various battles that take place in the courts and prisons against false indictments, abuses from the guards, or for general political solidarity.
\n\nWe strive to make the demands of those inside the prisons known and to show the inherent connections they have with struggles that take place in other spheres of society. We also try to put a stop to the repressive mechanisms that the state uses against the anarchist movement. We do this by distributing political texts, fliers, and posters, but also by planning direct actions and demonstrations.
\n\nIn 2024, Kyriakos Ximitiris passed away due to a tragic accident in Athens. This also resulted in the arrests of others, who now have been taken to trial. The trial has become known in local media and by many around the world as the “Ampelokipoi case,” with some of the defendants recently being acquitted and released and others convicted and sentenced to many years in prison. Could you explore what this case was about, what happened with the loss of Kyriakos, and the arrests, prosecution, and recent verdicts that followed?
\n\nThe Solidarity Assembly was one of the main support structures that was involved in the “Ampelokipoi case,” with Kyriakos being a member of the assembly up to the point of his death and Marianna Manoura and Dimitra Zarafeta continuing to be members to this day from inside prison.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/11/2.jpg\")
\nConsequently, it was very important for us to preserve the memory of Kyriakos Ximitiris, show solidarity to all the prosecuted comrades, and build a general political wall of solidarity for struggle, armed struggle, and the choices some of our comrades made and continue to make.
\n\nKyriakos was a dear comrade and friend. He was active in many parts of the movement. He actively demonstrated revolutionary solidarity with political prisoners, engaged in anti-imperialist and pro-Palestinian demonstrations, and was active in the anti-gentrification movement in Exarchia as well as the anti-fascist movement in general.
\n\nHe had also chosen to participate in armed revolutionary struggle. It was this choice that led to his tragic death at an apartment in Ampelokipoi (a neighborhood in Athens), where an explosion took place under unknown circumstances. This explosion seriously injured his comrade in the movement and in life, Marianna Manoura, and prompted the anti-terrorist unit to devise a non-existent terrorist group, arresting Marianna Manoura, their friend and comrade Dimitra Zarafeta, and three other comrades: Nikos Romanos, Dimitris, and A.K.
\n\nThe loss of Kyriakos and the subsequent hospitalization and imprisonment of Marianna Manoura were grave incidents for the anarchist movement in Greece and abroad. The deeply divided anarchist movement of Athens came together, after many years, to grieve our fallen comrade Kyriakos, and to support Marianna Manoura, Dimitra Zarafeta, and the other three arrested in the case.
\n\nThe movement tried to deal both with the difficult issue of the political defense of armed revolutionary struggle and with critically intensifying state repression. There is a discussion to be had about what went right and wrong in all this, but as the daily mass solidarity gatherings at the courts showed, Kyriakos’ death and the Ampelokipoi case in general remain issues that deeply concern us all.
\n\nFrom the beginning, Marianna Manoura assumed responsibility for helping Kyriakos find a place to process explosive materials that would be used for the revolutionary cause. She made clear there was no terrorist organization and that the other four detained people had nothing to do with the case. Dimitra Zarafeta declared that the accusations by the state against her were false and that she was being persecuted politically, as an anarchist, as a comrade of Kyriakos and Marianna Manoura, and as a person who ideologically supports the choices and actions of Kyriakos. Dimitris, Nikos Romanos, and A.K. all declared their innocence and repudiated any connection with the case.
\n\nThe actual information that the state presented as evidence was either false or completely insufficient even by their own standards. There was none supporting the existence of a terrorist organization. The state presented some normal exchanges of apartment keys and phones between friends and partners relating to Dimitra Zarafeta and Dimitris, and claimed that partial fingerprints of Nikos and A.K. were discovered, among many others, on a plastic bag containing a gun.
\n\nNevertheless, all the accused were detained for 17 months and in the end, Marianna Manoura and Dimitra Zarafeta were convicted, resulting in a 19-year prison sentence for Marianna Manoura and 8 years for Dimitra Zarafeta. The large sentences, especially for Marianna Manoura, were chiefly due to the application of anti-terrorist legislation. Dimitris, Nikos Romanos, and A.K. were declared innocent and released.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/11/3.jpg\")
\nIs there an appeal? Will the sentences be served in full?
\n\nMarianna Manoura and Dimitra Zarafeta were recently transferred to the women’s prison of Thiva, since Korydallos prison, where they were held during their pre-trial detention, is only for those awaiting trial. This is an expected but bad development, as they are now much further away from the movement, their families, and their friends.
\n\nAn appeal has already been made, but the second-degree court is not expected to take place any sooner than one to two years from now. Depending on how the secondary court goes, we will then be able to make a better guess as to how much actual time our comrades will have to serve in prison. In general, it is standard that three- to four-fifths of the actual sentence will be served, but there are many legal factors that could affect both the actual sentence and the percentage of it that they will need to serve in prison.
\n\nThe main factor that makes these computations difficult is that since the final days of the SYRIZA administration in 2019, the penal and correctional codes have been constantly changed, making it confusing to determine how each law will affect each individual case.
\n\nWhy did Greek media report differently on Nikos Romanos than on the other defendants in this trial?
\n\nWe do not know if there was a clear intention or plan from the state in this. The comrade, Nikos Romanos, is an important figure not only for the anarchist movement but for large parts of the Greek left as well. His close friendship with Alexis Grigoropoulos, whose murder by a cop in 2008 inspired the biggest insurrection in recent Greek history, and his hunger strike in 2014 made him a point of reference for the broader “progressive” movement. This creates a social pressure that the state takes into consideration, for better or worse.
\n\nAnother aspect that makes his situation different is, in our view, the fact that he proclaimed his innocence, in contrast with the positions that Marianna Manoura and Dimitra Zarafeta expressed in court. This enabled some parts of the left, which long ago lost its ability to affirm any political choice and stance that the state deems illegal, to support him. In conjunction with the lack of evidence against him, that forced some of the more left-leaning media to try to be a bit more “objective” or considerate of his case.
\n\nAn action in solidarity with the defendants in the Ampelokipoi case.
\nDoes this case have broader implications regarding the Greek state’s approach to repression?
\n\nWe do not think that there was anything really new in how the Greek state handled this case, considering the recent years of escalated repression. Solely because there was an explosion and there were two anarchists in the place where it happened, the Greek state concluded that there was a “terrorist organization.” A pure fabrication. To invent the other members of the supposed “terrorist organization,” they accused the close comrades of the deceased or known individuals in the movement.
\n\nThis is a common method of the Greek anti-terrorist unit, with the courts following suit and engaging in an almost routine pattern: the first-degree court is usually harsher, convicting at least some of the accused for terrorism with lengthy sentences—at least by Greek standards—and the second-degree courts refine the sentences or acquit. There are, of course, notable exceptions.
\n\nOne thing of particular importance in this case are the very high sentences the court handed down, especially for Marianna. This was a direct result of the court convicting both Marianna Manoura and Dimitra Zarafeta for all the charges, including the one concerning “the supply of a terrorist organization with arms and explosives.”
\n\nThis is an accusation that even the prosecutor argued could not logically be proven for a member of this supposed “organization.” This will be a very important legal and political battle for the second-degree court, in order to shorten our comrades’ sentences.
\n\nWhat is the 187a law? We have seen the Greek state fabricating narratives and creating groups, as they did with the “comrades” case which was recently dropped after five years in the courts. Is this law enabling the state to engage in more repression without evidence?
\n\nFirst of all, the essence of this law is political. It is the law that the state uses to repress the armed struggle movement as much as possible. Using specialized courts with no jurors, harsher sentences, and an ever-growing list of crimes that can be prosecuted under the 187a law, the state aims to suppress and silence the “internal enemy.”
\n\nWith this goal in mind, the anti-terrorist law is intentionally vague, giving both the anti-terror unit and the courts enough leeway to adjust it for each case and fabricate evidence as needed.
\n\nThe law was a direct byproduct of the attacks of September 11, 2001 in the United States. Infamously, it was first used against an accused member of the N17 (November 17th) revolutionary organization. Since then, the Greek state continuously revises and expands it according to the European anti-terror law standards, just like the 129b law in Germany.
\n\nAlthough it began as a law targeting those who enter armed revolutionary struggle, over the last few years, it is used more and more to target a wide range of practices.
\n\nAre many of these cases postponed, or are charges fabricated, in order to drain the movement of resources and time or use trauma and pre-trial detention as a means of punishment without conviction?
\n\nFirst of all, the postponement of cases has been a reality in Greece for as long as anyone can remember. Many times, the defendants choose this, so that the trial will take place long after the event it concerns, in order to make it more difficult for the state to use the trial in a retaliatory way.
\n\nOther times, trials are postponed because the prosecution does not wish for them to happen. In general, the courts are overburdened with cases, and even though the ruling New Democracy party (ND) has taken measures to force the courts to close up cases faster—at the expense of course of what the state calls “due process” and the “rights” of the accused—this is not always feasible for the judges.
\n\nHowever, it is undoubtedly true that the state uses a number of other tools to make life difficult for the accused, with pre-trial detention, restrictive pre-trial conditions, and court bonds being the most prominent of these. And it is also true that since ND returned to power, these are becoming stricter and are used more often.
\n\nAs for fabricated cases, this strategy has been used to target people of interest to the authorities; Nikos Romanos’ involvement in the Ampelokipoi trial is a case in point. We cannot say whether this indicates a broader plan to deplete the movement’s resources; there is certainly a difference of opinions regarding how organized the state and the police are, as well as how much interest they have in long-term operations against the anarchist movement. But again, what is certain is that the legal consequences of both political activism and low-level crime are becoming harsher by the day—thanks to the new repressive laws that ND passed, which are more aligned with European standards, and the “zero-tolerance for crime” slogan that brought ND to power.
\n\nWe have comrades accused of forming a criminal organization to throw paint at government buildings, people appearing many times a month at the police department because they were arrested at a demonstration, and, at the same time, the prison population is at a breaking point due to petty theft and small debts in broader Greek society.
\n\nAn action in Heraklion in memory of Kyriakos Ximitiris.
\nTwo comrades are on hunger strike to defend Prosfygika, a large squatted complex in the center of Athens. Can you explain these hunger strikes? We have usually seen hunger strikes as a last resort. Are these hunger strikes a sign of critical times and heightened repression?
\n\nWe are not the appropriate assembly to discuss this issue, as there are open assemblies to stop the eviction of the Prosfygika community. For our part, we see the squatting movement as an integral part of the anarchist and anti-authoritarian movement; this is why the state has become fixated on destroying it with ever increasing intensity over this past decade.
\n\nAristos and Souzon, the two hunger-strikers acting to resist the demolition and development of the Prosfygika squat complex, know this better than anybody. That’s why they put their lives and their bodies on the line, so it is shown in every perspective that they mean what they say, what they believe, and what the community means to them. As an assembly, we support the struggle to defend Prosfygika and we stand in solidarity with our comrades.
\n\nHave surveillance and repression increased in recent years? Has the state readjusted its priorities? Did the COVID-19 lockdown play a role in this, or is it simply a reflection of the times?
\n\nAs we said, repression has increased swiftly over the last decade, coming to keep pace with the European standards. Cameras, drones, and cops are everywhere, with new divisions of police appearing all the time—for public transportation, courts, universities, immigration, and more. Low-level crime and political activism are also punished harshly, and the scope of the anti-terrorist laws expands with every new piece of legislation. Not to mention the additional repressive capabilities that the AI frenzy may provide in a future just around the corner.
\n\nCOVID-19 is one of the big issues that divided our movement. Despite the different takes on how this whole issue was perceived, which we cannot get into here, it is evident that the lockdown was at the very least, a perfect opportunity for the state to take complete control of public space and to accustom society at large to a broad scale of repression. The safety of the population has supposedly become the number one priority, with the police always somehow being the answer to every question.
\n\nThe discourse that was emerged in the COVID period, enhanced by the far-right and aggressively neo-liberal government of ND, seeks to overcome the historically deep mistrust with which Greek society regards the state. At the same time, the pace of economic and legal scandals has risen to an extreme. The state presents itself as the only thing standing between the population and chaos—demonizing anyone who disagrees or “poses a threat to the society.” In the new era of warfare that we have entered, these same arguments are used more and more to justify military equipment upgrades and the direct involvement of the Greek state in the NATO-Israel mass killings and bombings in Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/11/1.jpg\")
\nHouse raids for small charges seems to be frequently be in the news. Are they occurring more often in Greece? How should we understand this?
\n\nHouse raids have always been a tool in the hands of the state, and for good reason. The pressure and fear that they inflict on the people whose privacy is attacked, along with whatever circumstantial evidence and intelligence they can collect inside our houses, are obviously beneficial for the police. They also exert financial pressure on the movement, since in most house raids, the police steal our electronic devices. Again, it is a matter of discussion how well planned or thought out these raids are, especially when they are not organized by the anti-terrorist unit.
\n\nNevertheless, we should mention some recent developments that, if they are permitted to become normalized, will certainly have a grave impact on the movement. On one hand, we have seven comrades who are suspected of “forming a criminal organization that destroys government property” due to some paint that had been thrown many months ago at a government building in Kipseli, a neighborhood in Athens. Usually, when you are a suspect, the cops call you to the General Police Department of Athens to give a statement, under threat that if you do not comply, they will charge you. This is usually an empty threat. This time, however, the cops decided to enter our comrades’ houses, in some cases by force.
\n\nIn another case, three comrades are accused of attacking a court building with hammers and paint. Again, even though there was evidence collected at the scene which, by the cops’ standards, would be more than sufficient to proceed to trial, the cops decided to raid to their houses.
\n\nWhat do you think is behind the Greek state shifting so many resources towards repression, including pushing to expand the Greek military and tighten conscription laws? Is this a broader tendency in the European Union?
\n\nYou answer the question by pointing out that these are issues in modern societies all over the world. War is everywhere, closer to us (as “Europeans”) than it has been since the Second World War, and it seems that will continue. All Europe is re-arming, as the program informs us.
\n\nIn Greece, this is constantly present due to the construction of tension between Greece and Turkey at the eastern borders and the Aegean Sea. That’s how Greece has ended up being one of the countries that contributes the most to NATO financially. [Greece is one of the top defense spenders in NATO, consistently spending around 3.1% of its GDP on defense, which is among the highest in the alliance.] The goal of the Greek state, and every state, is to construct a society that believes in it and is ready to fight for the nation and the bosses. Maybe this also explains the repression directed at many parts of the movement in Greece.
\n\nIt is obvious that Greece is still in an economic crisis (although the government pretends otherwise), so the large amount of money that is spent on the military and police does not address other social needs that are not as interesting to those in power. For example, we have understaffed hospitals and universities, lacking basic provisions and in many cases closing; we have deteriorating public transport infrastructure that is causing more and more “accidents,” with the worst one in recent times being the Tempi train crash.
\n\nThere is also a serious problem with the cost of housing, as well as with the costs of basic needs and products. Life in Greece is difficult, and it will continue to be so unless we come together to fight back.
\n\nIt has been seven years since New Democracy abolished the university asylum policy that originated after the fall of the Junta in the 1970s. How has this impacted the anarchist movement and broader radical communities in Greece?
\n\nAgain, this is a subject regarding which political opinions vary. On one hand, it is true that now it is easier for police to enter university grounds to hunt for people after clashes at a demonstration or to break up a university occupation established by students or political groups. But there is an argument that this is a more general issue that is only exacerbated by the end of the asylum policy.
\n\nSince the right-wing government of New Democracy came to power in 2019, the state has been carrying out an attack on the movement and its symbols; this is much broader than the anarchist movement. The remnants of the left have proven themselves to be completely incapable of defending the political and symbolic ground they won after the fall of the Junta in 1974. To put things in perspective, anarchists always threw Molotov cocktails from inside the universities and the police always had the legal right to enter the universities when this happened, even with the asylum policy in place.
\n\nOne can argue that the main thing that kept police from entering the universities was not a public misconception about a piece of legislation (that obviously would never cover Molotov cocktails being thrown at government workers), but rather what strong and broad political and ideological support there was for the clashes with the police, which was merely represented and symbolized in the idea of the university asylum. It is that support that the New Democracy government has successfully put into question.
\n\nRegardless of how we analyze this subject, this has caused a big problem for the anarchist and student movements. Apart from taking a powerful political tool—university occupations—from the students’ hands, this enabled police to apply repressive measures inside the universities with ease, taking advantage of the cameras, barriers, and private security already in place. Now, discussions about a special police force for the universities are advancing, even though the first attempt to put them in place failed.
\n\nThis also impacts the anarchist movement, which uses universities for assemblies and various kinds of political events, such as events to raise money for persecuted comrades and various political causes.
\n\nLast year, the Trump administration placed multiple revolutionary groups allegedly in the European Union on its terror watch lists, equating anti-fascists and anarchists with fundamentalist groups such as the Islamic State. Two of these alleged groups allegedly originate in Greece. Has that had any effect in Greece?
\n\nThese moves haven’t made a noticeable impact here in Greece until now. Of course, the United States has always offered the Greek state a paradigm for repression, but for now, only extreme far-right groups make these analogies.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/11/4.jpg\")
\nAre there any other cases that you would like to mention?
\n\nThere are a number of cases affecting many comrades, relating to defending squats, solidarity actions with imprisoned comrades, and clashes with the police in demonstrations or in Exarchia. Here, we select, almost at random, a few that have or might have a serious impact on the comrades involved.
\n\nThe newest big case involves eight arrests that took place on May 11, 2026, with the arrestees being accused of various robberies. The case is still open, so the charges—and perhaps the list of defendants, as well—are not finalized. Six of the eight comrades are in pre-trial detention in various prisons in Greece, while two were let out under restrictive provisions.
\n\nThere is also the case of the comrades Yannis Karatsolis and Sofoklis Toutziarakis. The state accused them of forming a criminal organization with five other people in order to perform robberies. Even though the allegations of criminal organization did not stand up in court, as the other defendants were acquitted, Yannis Karatsolis and Sofoklis Toutziarakis received extreme sentences—21 and 23 years, respectively. The aim is now to pressure the second-degree court to reduce these vindictive sentences when it hears the case in October.
\n\nFinally, there are the arrests from the first big demonstration in response to the mass murder of immigrants by the state, when the Greek coast guard sank a boat transporting more than 500 immigrants close to the town of Pylos. The trial was set to take place in May, but was postponed until spring 2027.
\n\nHow can people outside Greece express international solidarity?
\n\nEvery move, intervention, text, poster, or post could make people here feel the solidarity. The continuation of political struggle in every place is inspiring for everyone. And of course, even though the Greek state is not a big one, there are related targets of economic or political interest in many countries, which is a traditional way of showing international solidarity in this movement.
\n\nFor financial support, the main fund is Tameio, which provides economic support to political prisoners on a monthly basis. Over the years, it has become one of the most important structures of the anarchist movement in Greece. In addition, there are many specialized funds for specific cases, usually to cover the legal costs of arrested comrades. These funds can be found on websites like Athens Indymedia and Firefund.
\n\nOne active Firefund campaign concerns the appeal trial for an act of solidarity during the last hunger strike of our anarchist comrade G. Michailidis.
\n\nFinally, to stay up to date with what is happening in Greece, the counter-information options are sadly not very good. The main website that the anarchist movement uses to publish its positions and actions is Athens Indymedia, which is in Greek and does not formally offer non-Greek translation, though you can use a translation-friendly browser to navigate it. The best way to keep in touch is probably by establishing direct contact with the assemblies and individual comrades that participate in the movement.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/11/6.jpg\")
\nIn addition, we spoke with one of the “Koukaki Squatted Community” defendants about their situation.
\n\nAround the same time as the conclusion of the Ampelokipoi case, members of the “Koukaki Squatted Community” were also facing trial; however, it was postponed. Could you explain the case and its implications for the broader anarchist movement?
\n\nOur project consisted of three anarchist squats that acted as a revolutionary community in the Koukaki neighborhood of Athens. The reclaimed spaces helped to foster multiple assemblies, various organizing efforts towards the broader anarchist movement, and local mutual aid projects. Our community also offered housing to members of the squat’s assembly and comrades and also to houseless individuals, refugees, struggling migrants, trans people rejected by their communities, and those who are deemed “excluded” by capitalist society.
\n\nThe houses acted as a sort of intentional community, eliminating the need to work to pay rent, so that we could direct all our efforts to resistance and organizing. This brought together an array of revolutionary individuals who were committed to rejecting property and ensuring that having “free housing” via liberated space would enable us to further the struggle for liberation.
\n\nUnfortunately, one comrade was lost in 2018 while hanging a banner in solidarity with political prisoner Marios Seisidis. His death resulted from the general commitment that defined many of those involved in the Koukaki squats. But while we all still face trial and the endless bureaucracy and opportunism of the state, I want to mention our lost comrade, Dimitris, who was an incredible and passionate comrade, to give recognition that his struggle lives on in our commitments and actions today.
\n\nThe Greek state violently evicted the squats in a coordinated assault. One of the three spaces, “Panaitoliou,” was resquatted twice, and “Matrozou” was resquatted three times.
\n\nThree of my comrades and I have been convicted for the defense of the Panaitoliou squat, but will likely not face jail time. We continue to have court obligations, and the constant stress of not knowing our fate takes its toll. At the same time, as the final defense of the Matrozou squat involved a more intense defense effort, multiple comrades remain on trial facing small charges that could potentially add up to years in prison if the state gets its way.
\n\nThis escalation of repression is the result of our efforts to defend our revolutionary community, while having sought, through our actions, to inspire the broader anarchist movement at a time when the state was attempting to destroy all the squats. The state wants to make an example of us in order to discourage the militant defense of occupied spaces. They are trying to break our will. They are dragging us through the courts with charges of using less extreme resistance than that which brought imprisonment prior to the escalated campaign against the squats that the New Democracy administration started when they came to power in 2019.
\n\nFive comrades on trial for militantly defending Matrozou were convicted of two misdemeanors each and originally sentenced to 77 months in prison. However, the sentence was suspended, and imprisonment will depend on the outcome of the current appeal. The prosecution is demanding that that the defendants serve the full sentence. Facing such a sentence for two misdemeanors is legally unprecedented in Greece. The reality is that the two misdemeanors would typically not bring imprisonment. However, because this is related to defending a squat, they will try to make an example of the comrades to demonstrate that the action itself is not what the prosecution seeks to repress, but rather the motivations and revolutionary desires behind the actions—criminalizing their goals and ideas.
\n\nIn the lead up to the most recent trial, multiple demonstrations took place across Greece to support the Matrozou defendants. However, the appeals trial was postponed until November 9. This is the second postponement of the second trial of the appeal.
\n\nNot only is postponing the trial a way of exhausting the defendants, they also hope that it will make the waves of solidarity leading up to the trial fizzle out. The state seeks to isolate the defendants, outwaiting solidarity and public attention, and then to prosecute to the fullest extent possible. They are waiting for a moment when the movement is quieter, when repression is out of the headlines, when people are overwhelmed responding to other repression.
\n\nThe momentum building up to trial was substantial, and this type of solidarity organizing does not come without effort. They aim to continue to force the defendants and the movement supporting them to constantly act in a defensive anti-repressive approach rather than engage in offensive revolutionary organizing, in order to drain our resources and consume our energy.
\n\nThe two misdemeanors are related to paint that was thrown on police officers, damaging their uniforms and allegedly inflicted bodily harm against police. Yet the police did not even bother to show up to the first trial, in December 2025; that is why it was postponed. All the Matrozou defendants face the same charges, accused by eight officers.
\n\nThis case is of political interest to the New Democracy regime. The original prosecutor is a member of New Democracy and in the law firm of Plevris; she also unsuccessfully ran for parliament as an aspiring ND politician. After the original trial, she wasn’t able to continue in the appeals court due to bureaucratic reasons. Yet she continues to escort the police who show up as witnesses and guide them as to what to say—free of charge, and without a formal legal position. She also defended the cops who faced neglect charges for doing nothing to save the queer activist Zackie Oh from being murdered. She even went on television, on a mainstream national morning talk show, and claimed that the defendants went straight from court to prison, despite the fact that the appeal actually prevented imprisonment. Once again, the point of this case is to make an example.
\n\nHowever, the hearts and revolutionary integrity of the defendants remain intact. While we lost our housing years ago, our community lives on in our revolutionary relations and committed support to one another as we overcome repression.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/11/5.jpg\")
Fire to the prison cells.
\n![flyer](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2026/06/17/35.jpg\"){kind=link}