![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/10/5.jpg\")
The penultimate issue of the zine Jen started as a teenager, Fucktooth.
\nWe mourn the passing of Jen Angel, a tenacious anarchist organizer whose efforts spanned the better part of four decades. Below, we’ll review some of Jen’s many contributions over the years and share some memories from those who love her.
\n\nYou can donate to a memorial fund for Jen here. You can read a selection of her writing here. Justseeds has published another tribue to Jen here.
\n\nWe were fortunate to know Jen. Her generosity and exuberance inspired us and we worked together in a variety of ways.
\n\nLike many of us, Jen got her start in do-it-yourself print media and counterculture at an early age, before the internet brought digital connectivity to the average North American household. Her career extended from the high point of the do-it-yourself counterculture through the turn-of-the-century movement against capitalist globalization to the Occupy movement, the Trump era, and the George Floyd uprising.
\n\nJen had an ampersand tattooed on her wrist. You could say that this represented her approach to organizing, taking on responsibilities, and addressing differences and conflict in her community: “Yes, and.”
\n\nShe was a dependable friend, affectionate and curious, who brought an even keel and considerable stamina to her projects along with an unpretentious Midwestern demeanor. She dedicated herself to a wide range of collective undertakings, providing thankless behind-the-scenes work and offering the kind of warm-hearted hospitality that enables people to put down roots together.
\n\n The penultimate issue of the zine Jen started as a teenager, Fucktooth.
\nIn high school, Jen started out as a classical musician. Although the punk scene was to play a central role in her life story, this was the closest she got to playing in a band.
\n\n\n\n\n“I played the bassoon. Nobody would let me in their punk band.”
\n\n \n
“I learned a lot from punk,” Jen later explained in an interview: “to assert myself, to express my opinion… those are all important things, things that are also inherent in independent media. Independent media outlets like Clamor allow regular, everyday people, not experts, to get their opinion out in the world.”
\n\nStarting in her mid-teens in 1991, Jen published the zine Fucktooth. Like many of us, she cut her teeth as an author and organizer by bringing out a publication of her own, learning by doing. This was how she developed the skills that she later put at the disposal of an array of social movements.
\n\nAs a teenager, Jen also explored non-monogamous relationship models, at a time when non-monogamy was unthinkable for many people of her generation, especially in the Midwest, where she grew up. She was at the cutting edge of a variety of experiments that later spread far and wide.
\n\nJen became involved with punk infrastructure where she lived in Columbus, Ohio, including the notorious Legion of Doom punk house and Columbus More Than Music Fest. In 1996, she participated in the Active Resistance gathering in Chicago, providing a counterpoint to the Democratic National Convention. Active Resistance was an important forerunner of subsequent anarchist convergences such as the mobilizations in Seattle during the protests against the 1999 World Trade Organization summit and, later, in response to the 2000, 2004, and 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions.
\n\nThat same year, Jen got involved with publishing the Zine Yearbook, drawing on her experience in do-it-yourself publishing to collect the best of the underground press. The Zine Yearbook appeared annually from 1996 until 2004.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/10/7.jpg\")
The third Zine Yearbook.
\nAt the invitation of Tim Yohannan—longtime editor of Maximum Rock’n’Roll, arguably the most influential do-it-yourself punk magazine—Jen moved to the Bay Area in 1997 to help coordinate MRR. At the time, the magazine had a monthly circulation of 14,000 copies. As Jen put it, “I’ve been doing zines for a really long time and Maximum is the biggest zine there is.”
\n\nYou can read a lively and entertaining interview with Tim and Jen here, and another interview with Jen from that era here.
\n\nDuring this stint in the Bay Area, Jen worked at Punks with Presses, another classic punk institution of that time. But Tim died of cancer in April 1998, and Jen was forced out of her position at Maximum Rock’n’Roll shortly thereafter.
\n\nJen published the 24th and final issue of her first zine, Fucktooth, in 1999. In the intervening years, the punk underground and the zine culture it helped sustain had developed into a massive global network interwoven with other movements worldwide. This culminated in riotous demonstrations against the 1999 summit of the World Trade Organization in Seattle, confirming the arrival of a new global era of protest. Jen moved back to Ohio, where her partner Jason Kucsma was attending Bowling Green State University, and the two founded a new magazine together, Clamor. The first issue appeared in early 2000, including—like every like-minded publication of that time—breathless accounts from the WTO demonstrations.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/10/3.jpg\")
Jen and Jason working on Clamor.
\nJen helped to organize the annual Underground Publishing Conference in Bowling Green, initially founded as the “Midwest Zine Conference” in 1999 and later rebranded as the Allied Media Conference, which continues to this day in Detroit. Jen and Jason moved to Toledo in 2002, where they continued working ceaselessly on Clamor.
\n\nUltimately, Jen and Jason published 38 issues of the magazine. When their distributor went under, Clamor collapsed; the last issue came out in fall 2006. Jen’s romantic relationship with Jason came to an end, as well, illustrating the risks for activists who afford themselves no breathing room between their relationships and their projects. You can read all the issues of Clamor on their website.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/10/4.jpg\")
Clamor magazine.
\nWith the end of Clamor, Jen shifted her attention to organizing publicity for authors. This developed into the collective Aid & Abet, through which she worked with David Graeber, Jacob Conroy of the SHAC 7 and Will Potter of Green Is the New Red, Margaret Killjoy, Frank López of SubMedia, scott crow of Common Ground, and many other authors, filmmakers, and organizers over the next several years.
\n\nJen moved back to the Bay Area in 2006, fostering a community through collective dinners and other traditional punk and Midwestern forms of conviviality. Though many radicals who experiment with alternative family structures withdraw to nuclear families later in life, Jen continued to invest her energy in living collectively and nourishing a dense network of polyamorous relationships; these remained important to Jen throughout her adulthood. At that time, the Bay Area was rapidly gentrifying, but it remained an epicenter of radical activity, including the movement responding to the murder of Oscar Grant in 2008 and Occupy Oakland in 2011.
\n\nIn addition to public organizing, Jen made her home into a space of encounter drawing together people of a variety of interests and walks of life. For example, when we published After the Crest, reflecting on the waning phase of the Occupy movement, dozens of the fiercest participants in the Oakland Commune crowded into her living room to discuss it. Years later, during the To Change Everything tour in the United States, participants in the tour got to inspect an early version of the game Bloc by Bloc at a salon Jen hosted.
\n\nRevolutionary potential blossoms when people give it space and resources the way that Jen did.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/10/9.jpg\")
\nJen became a core organizer of the Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair, the longest-running anarchist book fair in the United States. Behind the scenes, she helped several radical projects to balance their books, aiming to protect them from the fate that had befallen Clamor. From 2013-2014, she helped organize the Bay Area Radical History Project, a series of presentations focusing on Bay Area activism over the preceding three decades, seeking to connect the wave of people who became involved in radical politics through the Occupy movement with veteran activists from earlier movements.
\n\nIn October 2014, she joined Ryan Only in debuting Anarchist Agency, a project dedicated to interfacing between anarchists and mass media.
\n\n\n\n\nThe goal is to raise awareness of anarchism as a whole, and we are completely prepared to do promote diverse (and contradictory) parts of anarchism as long as the ideas, groups, and individuals we are working with identify publicly as anarchists and share our core beliefs…
\n\nThis is not an attempt to water down or make palatable the more militant parts of anarchism or of the community. Some anarchists run child-care programs and some anarchists smash windows and engage in sabotage. Sometimes the same individuals do both things.
\n\nHelping anarchists be more transparent about what they are doing and why, and with what goals, will make anarchist ideas more accessible in hopes of allowing more folks to understand that a different world is possible.
\n\n \n
With considerable support from the community that she cultivated around her, Jen also got her cupcake business off the ground and sustained it through a series of challenges. This ensured that she could make decisions in her activism on the basis of her values rather than financial pressures, even as life in the gentrifying Bay Area became nearly untenable.
\n\nOrganizing involves ceaseless challenges and, often, a tremendous amount of heartache. Despite decades of stress, disappointment, and grueling unpaid labor, Jen continued forward cheerfully. She helped to make the 2022 Bay Area Book Fair a success and was involved in the organizing for the 2023 Book Fair at the time of her passing.
\n\nReviewing Jen’s life, it’s easy to be reminded of Aragorn!, another Midwesterner who grew up making zines in the do-it-yourself punk scene, moved to the Bay Area, worked on Maximum Rock’n’Roll, and distinguished himself as a publisher and a fixture in the anarchist milieu. During Occupy Oakland and its aftermath, Jen and Aragorn! lived only a few blocks apart in Berkeley.
\n\nIt has been almost exactly three years now since Aragorn!’s untimely passing—three years that have seen such a spate of tragedies that it’s hard not to feel desensitized. But the losses of Aragorn! and Jen are linked, for both erode our access to the generation of anarchists who emerged from the crucible of the 1990s.
\n\nIn attitude and approach, the two could not be more different. While Aragorn! pursued confrontational critique almost as an end in itself, Jen focused on logistics nearly to the exclusion of ideology. Coming out of the motley crowds of the punk scene and the heady optimism of the Seattle WTO protests, Jen took for granted that theoretical cohesion was not as important as openness and inclusivity. While Aragorn! wrongly interpreted Jen as an appendage of his perceived rivals at AK and PM Press, Jen couldn’t see what there was to gain from sectarian debate—even when there were real strategic differences at stake.
\n\nThe important thing to understand is that Jen’s and Aragorn!’s approaches to anarchism evolved in continuous response to each other over a period of decades. Each sought to correct the shortcomings of the other’s strategy. Consequently, although neither would acknowledge it—or rather, precisely for that reason—their efforts add up to a complementary whole. Those who wish to learn from one of them must also understand the other.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/10/8.jpg\")
The credits for the June 1997 issue of Maximum Rock’n’Roll, listing the names of both Aragorn! and Jen Angel—but as far apart as possible.
\n\n\n\n“There’s this misconception that anarchism means chaos. But the term means ‘without rulers.’ We don’t expect people to organize for us. We organize for ourselves.”
\n\n \n
Jen’s untimely passing is a senseless tragedy. She lost her life as the consequence of an apparent robbery attempt. As her loved ones emphasized, she would be furious if anyone were to use this as an excuse to justify more police violence:
\n\n\n\n\nJen’s family and friends ask that stories referencing Jen’s life do not use her legacy of care and community to further inflame narratives of fear, hatred, and vengeance. We do not support putting public resources into policing, incarceration, or other state violence that perpetuates the cycle of violence that resulted in this tragedy.
\n
Anyone who has spent time in the Bay Area over the past decade knows that one of the primary forces driving violence in the East Bay is the skyrocketing cost of living. The real estate profiteers who have heartlessly filled the streets of Oakland with desperate evictees and the politicians who have funneled money into the pockets of the police with no concern for the processes that are immiserating millions bear the lion’s share of responsibility for the risks that Bay Area residents face today.
\n\nJen spent her life working to create a world in which everyone would have access to the food, shelter, medical care, and community that they need—a world in which there would be no incentives for anyone to do harm to others for the sake of material gain. No amount of violence from police, courts, or prisons could bring us an inch closer to such a world. We owe it to her to continue her efforts to abolish capitalism, the state, patriarchy, white supremacy, and all the other forms of hierarchy that contribute to violence and precarity in our communities. To the extent to which we make progress towards those goals, the world will be a safer place for everyone.
\n\nNothing we can do will bring Jen back, but we can honor her life and her unflagging commitment to social change by taking up the torch she passed to us.
\n\n\n\n\n“The core tenets of anarchism are autonomy, mutual aid, voluntary association, and direct action. These are all positive things.”
\n\n \n
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/10/2.jpg\")
Jen and Jason in the Clamor days.
\nI’m a teenager at our local infoshop. I overhear two of the volunteers debating the value of a new magazine, Clamor.
\n\n“I think it’s trying to be too accessible,” says one.
\n\n“Yeah, but it’s Jen Angel’s magazine. You know why she has that name right? Because she really is an angel.”
\n\nAccessible is a four-letter word to me, because I like punk rock. But, somehow, because I like punk rock, I’m also drawn to four-letter words and to that which is disparaged. Plus the magazine is for sale at our infoshop, and our infoshop is cool. So I pick up a copy. OK, I think to myself, it’s not dripping with sweat and slobber the way Slug and Lettuce or Profane Existence are, but the articles are provocative.
\n\nIt’s good. Because when Jen did things, she did them well.
\n\nI’m in my twenties. My best friend from that infoshop invites me to launch an anarchist communications collective with him and Jen Angel. I remember that name.
\n\n“Clamor, right?”
\n\n“Yeah, she’s got her shit together.”
\n\nShe did. They both did, but I didn’t. After a few years, I fell out of the project, but I remained friends with Jen.
\n\nI’m in the Bay Area and I need somewhere to crash for a couple nights. Last time Jen was in my town, on a speaking tour with a recently released political prisoner, she offered “Next time you’re in the Bay and need somewhere to crash…”
\n\nI hit her up and I get to sleep in a padded and mirrored room next to hers. She has always been kind to me, grounded, has had her shit together. But this is the trip we really become friends.
\n\nHer house is beautiful. You can tell how much intention and collectivity goes into how the house functions. Especially the kitchen.
\n\nI can’t believe it when she tells me that she was an editor at Maximum Rock’n’Roll—having been passed the torch from none other than Tim Yohannan. We had been friends for a few years at this point, but I had no idea.
\n\n“Maximum Rock’n’Roll?!”
\n\n“Yeah.”
\n\n“You’re punk as fuck!”
\n\n“I guess.”
\n\nWhat an angel. We spend an evening around the dinner table swapping dumb punk stories about stupid bands. My jaw dropped at the Maximum Rock’n’Roll reveal, but it completely detaches when I learn that she founded the punk house where I experienced my first kiss with the first girl I fell in love with: The Legion of Doom. She was the one who gave it that name.
\n\nThe next day, I pick my jaw up from the floor so I can munch on one of Jen’s cupcakes. It’s good, like really good. Because when Jen did things, she did them well.
\n\nI’m at the San Francisco anarchist bookfair. There has been hella online drama for the weeks leading up to it because the bookfair is huge—thanks, in part, to Jen’s role in the organizing collective—and the best venue they could find is a former armory belonging to a high-profile pornography company. Some threatened to boycott, others threatened worse.
\n\nThe day of the bookfair comes and I catch Jen for a second. She’s busy, I know it, but she barely seems it. “How are you doing with all the chatter?”
\n\n“Oh, it’s going fine. I put together a discussion later to talk about the decision-making that led to us choosing this venue, but frankly, we just needed more space, and they were happy to have us.”
\n\nShe’s grounded, relaxed, and seems to be enjoying the event—not burdened by responsibility, just happy to be in the company of so many comrades sharing, communing, participating. I see friends from far away and long ago. I meet Gee Vaucher and Penny Rimbaud from Crass. I take my mom’s new boyfriend to a performance put on by some of my friends and collective-mates, and he’s wowed by it. It’s everything an anarchist bookfair should be. When Jen did things, she did them well.
\n\nI’m at Point Reyes, walking along the beach with Jen on her birthday. Her new boyfriend sees a pod of dolphins, strips down, and runs into the water to swim with them. We’re both like, “Whoa,” but I welcome it, because the dude is kind of, um, enthusiastic, and now we can really talk.
\n\nShe just seems happy. Another birthday, life is going well, she’s busy and entertained and fulfilled. I don’t remember her fretting or worrying about her life much in all the times we talked. She was never distracted when we talked, and she was purposeful in the projects she put her effort into.
\n\nJen Angel had a good life, because when she did things, she did them well.
\n\nI’ll miss you, Jen.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/02/10/1.jpg\")
\n\n\n\nI met Jen before I knew I was an anarchist. I already was one at the time, and on some level, probably always had been, but I didn’t have the words or even know it was an option until shortly before meeting her.
\n\nI remember her asking me what made me think I WASN’T an anarchist, and when I said that I didn’t agree with some of the things that a lot of other anarchists thought and did, she laughed and told me that disagreeing with other anarchists is probably the one thing all anarchists agree on.
\n\nShe helped me understand that agreement isn’t what makes us anarchists, so much as how we go about disagreeing, and whether we respect that other people are still free to do as they will even when we don’t agree with it.
\n\nIt still took me a while before I was ready to consider myself an anarchist, but I don’t know if I’d ever have gotten there without those early conversations with Jen.
\n\nJen and I worked together for a long time, but I’m struggling to find anything to say about those years because no matter how much of herself she poured into the bakery, she was bigger than the business she built to survive under capitalism.
\n\nJen wanted to live in a world where we could bake cupcakes and lovingly share them with our community because we wanted to, not because we need to sell them to earn a living.
\n\n-Elle Armageddon
\n
\n\n\nJen wasn’t usually the loudest person in the room or the center of attention in Bay Area anarchist and activist spaces. But she was almost always working behind the scenes to build, sustain, and promote the crucial infrastructure that we all relied on (and sometimes took for granted). She rarely let sectarian infighting distract her from her ongoing work or undermine her long-term vision.
\n\nJen was always a champion of the projects her friends and comrades pursued, a constant source of encouragement and sage advice. She was an early supporter of Bloc by Bloc (the board game inspired by social insurrection that I designed) and organized some of the first playtests of the game at her house in 2015. Jen’s optimism, perseverance, and consistency should be an inspiration to us all. She will be missed.
\n\n-T.L. Simons
\n
\n\n\nJen’s legacy to political hardcore punk started as a Midwest emo kid who made it OK to be emotional and passionate and political, but most of all, smart. She gave the best hugs. She was a writer’s writer, someone you could sit with discussing which word fit best here or there. She gave workshops in the 1990s at the Columbus More Than Music Fests and Chicago Active Resistance, drawing people in and explaining the most difficult things in everyday language. Perhaps her biggest impact came through publishing indy-media, anarchist and political punk zines and magazines, from the photocopied Fucktooth to the glossy hardbound Zine Yearbook and Clamor. Tim Yohannan even chose her to take over publishing Maximum Rock’n’Roll before he died. She used words to connect us and ideas as sinews for our community. For Jen Angel, it was always about more than music.
\n\n-Eric Boehme
\n
\n\n\nJen Angel was loving, was loved, and was love. She exuded a presence which was magnetic and powerful. It was an invitation for like-minded souls to join hands with her and together reach forward into a better world.
\n\nAs I’m typing, the very writing of this eulogy makes no sense. Jen isn’t supposed to be dead. This world isn’t supposed to go on without her in it. She is supposed to be here as she was last week, and every month and year before this one. I started typing this thinking that finding the right words would be possible, but all of this is wrong. All I can say is that connecting with Jen was pure fire.
\n\nI’m holding her close tonight. I’m in shock that all this has happened. And I am hoping anyone reading this feels, amidst the shared pain we are all experiencing, that you are not alone. We will remember her together. And mourn together. And we will hopefully, on whatever level we can, help make the world better together. This would be a fitting legacy. None of this makes sense. But knowing that Jen would want us all connected, does.
\n\n-Greg Bennick
\n
\n\n\nJen Angel believed in my work and took it and me seriously before I even really took myself seriously. She was always doing thankless behind-the-scenes work, but with an eye towards being strategic, towards building the better world we’re fighting for, and specifically, towards building each other up, providing venues for sharing ideas and coming to know one another.
\n\n-Margaret Killjoy
\n
\n\n\nOver the last 30 years, Jen Angel has been a visionary influence and pioneering participant within multiple movements and subcultures that have significantly informed and shaped our world in the here and now, from punk rock and anarchism in the 1990s, through the Global Justice and anti-war movements of the early 2000s to Occupy in 2011 and contemporary fights for racial justice, climate justice, economic justice, and beyond.
\n\n \n
As Anarchist Agency recounted, on her 48th birthday, a few days before her death, Jen posted this poem by Mary Oliver on social media:
\n\n\n\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2020/10/01/the-truth-about-the-truth-about-todays-anarchists-the-ex-worker-responds-to-the-new-york-times", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2020/10/01/the-truth-about-the-truth-about-todays-anarchists-the-ex-worker-responds-to-the-new-york-times", "title": "The Truth about “The Truth about Today’s Anarchists” : The Ex-Worker Responds to the New York Times", "summary": "A detailed rebuttal of Farah Stockman's poorly researched opinion piece in the New York Times blaming anarchists for countrywide unrest.", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/10/01/header.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/10/01/header.jpg", "date_published": "2020-10-01T17:04:48Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:46Z", "tags": [ "anarchism", "media", "Black Lives Matter", "violence", "Minneapolis", "new york times" ], "content_html": "“Tell me, what else should I have done?
\n
\nDoesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
\nTell me, what is it you plan to do
\nwith your one wild and precious life?”
Yesterday, Farah Stockman from the New York Times editorial board published an article claiming to be “The Truth About Today’s Anarchists.” It draws on the work of an amateur conspiracy theorist, a poorly researched report from a nonprofit including a former Republican state attorney general and a former NYPD chief, a couple interviews with politicians and reformers, decontextualized and misleading references to two of our own publications, and regurgitated right-wing talking points to argue that violent anarchists are somehow controlling the ongoing countrywide protests but don’t care about Black lives.
\n\nWhat follows is a detailed refutation of this dangerously irresponsible article. Fortunately, initial reactions on social media suggest that the reading public has largely seen through its distortions. Nonetheless, we want to take the opportunity to reply in full—because despite its absurdity, the article touches on critical issues that deserve to be addressed. This is an opportunity to set the record straight, to explain why many anarchists have participated in these protests, and to elaborate our vision for a freer world.
\n\nFor more on this subject, consult our earlier article, “This Is Anarchy: Eight Ways the Black Lives Matter and Justice for George Floyd Uprisings Reflect Anarchist Ideas in Action.” For our own account of how the uprising spread and why the authorities themselves were chiefly responsible for the widespread adoption of confrontational tactics, read “Snapshots from the Uprising.” If you want to know more about what anarchists believe and desire, start with To Change Everything: An Anarchist Appeal.
\n\nHow did Stockman learn this “truth”? She appears to have spoken to at least one experienced activist in the course of her research, though she didn’t use any of the information or contacts that person offered her. There are thousands she could have approached—but she didn’t include perspective from any of them.
\n\nInstead, the article’s primary source is Jeremy Lee Quinn, an amateur conspiracy theorist posing as an investigative journalist who has no more familiarity with anarchists than one can gain from standing around at a couple demonstrations. Admitting he has no prior background on the subject, he claims to have “gone undercover” during black bloc protests in several cities over a period of months, and has now posted a website full of videos and disjointed rants as “a non-partisan source of information on riot Direct Action [sic] and how it may succeed under the cover of protest.” Last week, this self-described “centrist” reached out to Enrique Tarrio, the head of the Proud Boys, the group of violent extreme-right thugs who Trump called on to “stand by” during his debate with Joe Biden on Tuesday. Addressing Tarrio, Quinn claimed that “the establishment media has completely dropped the ball” and implied that he had penetrated “a fog of propaganda that obscured how the insurrectionist Anarchists (Antifa) have worked.”
\n\nStockman bought Quinn’s story wholesale, casting him as the humble hero of a crusade to save a peaceful protest movement from violent mobs of white anarchists who are working to undermine it for their own agendas. In her account, these anarchists are actually coordinating the unrest through social media, “hiding in plain sight” and conducting a “violent insurgency” under the guise of the legitimate peaceful movement, while relying on the liberal media and duped public to minimize the threat they pose. Black protest leaders who are working for constructive change resent these efforts to appropriate their struggles, but are powerless to stop them. Unless they are checked, Stockman implies, they will not only delegitimize the movement in the eyes of the public, but escalate their violence and mayhem.
\n\nDoes this sound familiar? That’s because it comes directly from President Donald Trump—who began tweeting that anarchists were behind the protests within their first days—and Attorney General Bill Barr and Homeland Security Director Chad Wolf, who have worked tirelessly to divide and conquer the movement against police and white supremacy by continuously trying to change the subject to alleged anarchist criminals and antifa “terrorists.”
\n\nThe problem is that it’s nonsense. Worse, it’s a pack of lies. Any self-respecting journalist who repeats it should be ashamed.
\n\nPermit us to detail why.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/IGD_News/status/1311599760432721920\n\n\n
Our colleagues at It’s Going Down have published a lengthy thread going into many of the specific problems with Quinn’s reporting in detail, most of which we will pass over here.
\n\nSo why is a seemingly critical journalist repeating these absurd and harmful stories? On what basis does she make these claims?
\n\nRhetoric about the role of white anarchists as “agitators” surfaced in the first days of the rebellion in Minneapolis. It had existed as a trope for years before the Floyd protests, often used as a wedge to shut out militant participation and centralize control over tactics in protest campaigns. As the rebellion spread from Minneapolis across the US and beyond, participants actively discussed racial, political, and tactical dynamics in the streets. Despite initial reports blaming white agitators for violence, most subsequent accounts recognized that the riotous crowds have been multiracial; that “outside agitator” narratives were false; and that anarchists made up only a small part of most large demonstrations. Black anarchists have been actively participating in the rebellions from the very beginning, making it clear that neither Black reformists nor white anarchists are calling the shots. Even the government’s own reports acknowledged that their “antifa” bugaboo had no significant organizing role in the protests, while emphasizing that both countless threats and numerous acts of actual violence were carried out by Trump’s extreme right defenders.
\n\nOf course, some anarchists have participated alongside thousands of other people in black blocs that have confronted police and attacked symbols of state violence. The use of confrontational tactics continues to be a controversial issue as the movement evolves. But any moral calculation would recognize that the real issue here is the widespread and thoroughly documented violence committed against protesters, rather than by them. While a range of opinions exists in the movement over how effective confrontational protest tactics usually are and how best to respect our different approaches without undermining others’ goals, it’s clear that our most urgent shared need is to defend ourselves against the attacks intended to terrorize the movement. Protestors have suffered tens of thousands of arrests and countless acts of unprovoked brutality at the hands of police across the country, including the murders of over a dozen people by police, National Guardsmen, and right-wing vigilantes. For self-styled “journalists” like Quinn, these facts are unworthy of mention, eclipsed by a single-minded insistence on blaming the “violence” of the protests on anarchists.
\n\nStockman disingenuously reports that Quinn’s investigations were prompted by his concern that anarchists’ militant tactics “would set off a backlash that could help get President Trump re-elected.” It is unlikely that this was a sincere concern for someone so eager to collaborate with the Proud Boys. Quinn’s shocking conclusion, Stockman breathlessly reports, was that the “mayhem” following Floyd’s murder “wasn’t mayhem at all”—rather than the “spontaneous eruption of anger at racial injustice” that countless reports described, the uprising was “strategically planned, facilitated and advertised on social media by anarchists.”
\n\nThis claim is absurd—and frankly racist. To insist that a small group of white anarchists somehow managed to coordinate a multiethnic movement that brought tens of millions of Americans into the streets and direct it to their own ends smacks of the worst conspiracy theory thinking. Anarchists of various ethnicities certainly supported, promoted, and participated in the protests, and in some instances modeled confrontational tactics that became contagious. But the most spirited efforts would have been meaningless without the autonomous efforts of countless millions of others. Groups of anarchists planned their own participation, but none directed the movement as a whole. Anarchists provided material support and ideas—but they provided them to a horizontal movement drawing on the skills and energy of countless others. Anarchists advertised protests through social media, like most of the other participants, but by any reckoning the participation of self-identified anarchists, online or in the streets, was dwarfed by the crowds with whom anarchists shared many values and desires but no distinct ideology. To claim otherwise misunderstands the nature of leaderless movements, overestimates the power and influence of a single strand in a diverse web, and denies the agency and leadership of countless others without whom the movement could not have happened.
\n\nQuinn’s transparent agenda as an attention-seeking aspiring pundit explains his efforts to deceive. But why did Stockman fall for it?
\n\nShe cites an account CrimethInc. published describing the siege of the Third Precinct in Minneapolis—though she either failed to understand the text, or willfully misrepresents it. She summarizes the text as a prescription for “Asymmetric Warfare 101,” suggesting that black bloc property destruction was used to prompt police violence against “innocent demonstrators” in hopes that this would delegitimize police. In fact, the anonymously submitted text describes how, without central coordination, shared goals, or political ideology, a wide range of different people spread out over a vast area achieved one of the most memorable victories of the entire movement, inspiring resistance around the globe. In misrepresenting her sources, Stockman echoes Fox News, which also misrepresented this report as a prescriptive program to provoke violence, citing an account of an event marked by the diversity of its participants as evidence of a shadowy anarchist conspiracy pulling the strings.
\n\n\nhttps://twitter.com/crimethinc/status/1311791649505378310\n\n\n
So if Stockman did not talk to anarchists and did not pay much attention to the anarchist sources she cites, what information convinces her to believe Quinn’s account of the anarchists as puppeteers controlling the protests?
\n\nStockman uncritically repeats the conclusions of a report by the Network Contagion Research Institute, a non-profit that claims to have “no political agenda.”1 The report’s co-authors include a former Republican state attorney general, a former NYPD chief, and a handful of academics, none of whom have ever studied anarchism. It uses a range of dubious associations through word clouds and quantitative analyses of tweets and Reddit posts to imply that what it calls “militant anarcho-socialists” are “using social media to instigate widespread violence against political opponents and law enforcement.”
\n\nOver the past months of protest, no one has documented “widespread violence” by anarchists against political opponents or law enforcement, while the widespread violence by far-right groups and law enforcement against protestors has been widely documented. So how do they make this case?
\n\nTake Figure 4, a “word cloud” showing associations between different key terms on Reddit. The term cop, it turns out, is associated with “reactive outrage and violent depictions in terms like ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘gestapo.’” That’s right—when anarchists post online that cops are indiscriminately beating protestors and using gestapo tactics, according to these brilliant researchers, it’s the anarchists who are being violent. It would be less violent, presumably, to pretend that police never beat anyone at all.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/10/01/3.jpg\")
First of all, Chapo Trap House fans on reddit are hardly identical with the US anarchist movement. But what do you expect from throwing money at a former Republican state attorney general and a former NYPD chief to study a topic they know nothing about?
\nSection 2 warns that anarchists are spreading memes that include “tactical information” such as links that promote “the use of encrypted communication.” So when anarchists share information on how anyone can protect their privacy against surveillance, this is presented as proof of violent intentions.
\n\nSection 2.1 shows that during the protests, “anarcho-socialists” used online forums “to recruit support and followers like other extremist groups do.” Very insightful! Clearly, the fact that many people were curious to hear from radicals who want to see an end to police violence during a wave of protests against police violence is hard evidence that anarchists are equivalent to jihadi and white supremacist groups. Figure 14 shows that the number of tweets about July 25, which some had identified as a day of protest, peaked on—you guessed it, July 25. Brilliant work here, folks. Worse still, the hashtag in question, “#J25,” could have been used by anyone on the internet aiming to designate this date, not just protesters.
\n\nFigure 17 reproduces a tweet calling for the Seattle police chief to be “sacked,” like an earlier chief who was fired during protests in 1999; but the report’s caption falsely claims that the tweet “calls for sacking the police precinct,” then blames this tweet for having incited violence against the building. So when anarchists call for a public official to be fired, we are inciting violence? One might more precisely speak about the violence being done to common sense in a report of this caliber.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/10/01/2.jpg\")
This is particularly embarrassing—they misrepresent the explicit meaning of the tweet, conflating sacking—i.e., firing—a police chief with sacking—i.e., laying siege to—a police precinct.
\nThe report with “no political agenda” concludes by echoing Trump’s line equating white nationalists to anti-fascists, ominously predicting that “attacks on vital infrastructure” and “the possibility of a mass-casualty event” may be imminent if these nefarious anarcho-socialists are allowed to continue unchecked. There have been no precedents for “mass-casualty events” linked to anarchists in the United States for a full century, though white supremacists have carried out a large number of mass killings in the past decade alone.
\n\nApart from the willfully poor-quality “research” in this absurd report, its framing and conclusions are lifted straight out of Attorney General Barr and Fox News’s playbook. When anarchists call out state violence, accuse them of being violent for doing so; when anarchists share non-violent self-defense tactics, cite this as evidence of violent intent; make spurious comparisons between diametrically opposed groups based on superficial similarities to heighten fear; pack in some misleading numerical data, and conclude by projecting sensationalized fantasies of apocalyptic violence to justify repression.
\n\nThis is the report that New York Times editorialist Stockman urges us to “check out.” She is correct in noting that the report “will almost certainly catch the attention of conservative media and William Barr’s Department of Justice,” whose agenda she is apparently keen to promote.
\n\nSo shoddy research, copyediting, and argumentation are not the sole province of self-styled amateur sleuths like Jeremy Lee Quinn. These characterize practically all of the material available from hostile think tanks, as well. In both cases—as in the case of Stockman’s own work—the studies only exist to fulfill an external agenda, so there is no incentive to rigorous research.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/10/01/1.jpg\")
Would you look at that—the frequency of tweets with the hashtag “J25” peaked around… July 25. Clearly this must be hard evidence of central coordination and terroristic intent!
\nThen comes the strangest part of the article. In a rare moment of honesty, Stockman soberly assesses the impact of the riots, and concludes, “Anarchy got results.”
\n\nOf course, as we’ve pointed out, it would be absurd for anarchists to take credit for a widespread, wildly diverse rebellion that was not led by any group nor driven by any single ideology. But it would be accurate to describe the decentralized, leaderless, tactically diverse, direct action-based movement as “anarchy.” This is what anarchists have been calling for all along: egalitarian, horizontal, voluntary movements.
\n\nWhile lamenting the destruction caused by rioting in Minneapolis, Stockman acknowledges that she was wrong to think that “looting and arson would derail the urgent demands for racial justice.” In fact, media attention was captivated and public support soared precisely in response to the fiercest moments of struggle.
\n\nBut, Stockman notes, more recently, there has been a decline in public support (which is to say white support; Black support has held steady, according to the poll she cites) for the Black Lives Matter protests. What’s the reason for this?
\n\nFor Stockman, it’s because “insurrectionary anarchy brings diminishing returns.” In other words, it’s the fault of those who continue to courageously confront police in the streets. Apparently, the same public that once praised rioters now increasingly condemns them as time passes.
\n\nBut this doesn’t make much sense. The fiercest rioting by far took place in the first weeks of the uprising, when public support was solidly at its highest. While a few locations such as Portland have maintained continuous militant protest, they’re the exception; the widespread looting and property destruction that marked the early days in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, New York City, and beyond have ceased. It seems senseless to lay blame for any shift in support at the feet of the small number of militant protestors who are still involved.
\n\nWhat has changed, rather, is that Trump, Barr, and the right-wing media have conducted a relentless campaign to discredit the protests. It’s a classic counter-insurgency strategy: if you can’t repress a movement, try to delegitimize, divide, and conquer it. The primary tactic they have employed has been labeling anyone who opposes the status quo “anarchists” or “antifa,” spelling out the implication that they are all terrorists and criminals, and spreading the lie that anarchists are somehow in control of the whole thing. This has been surprisingly successful. They’ve managed to get everyone from Joe Biden to liberal protest leaders to join them in condemning the most radical participants, sowing discord and weakening the movement. This is the key reason why support for the protests has declined among white people specifically—and to be even more precise, only among white Trump supporters.
\n\nStockman’s editorial plays right into this counter-insurgency strategy. Her text perfectly exemplifies the dynamics that have led to a decline in conservative white support for the movement. It is a part of the exact problem she bemoans.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2020/10/01/4.jpg\")
\nAt that point, Stockman levies serious charges against anarchists: anarchists “complicate life for those working within the system to halt police violence.” She cites a few Black politicians and activists who disagree with or have been criticized by anarchists.
\n\nThis is important, and we should not sweep it under the rug. There are serious differences of opinion in the movement regarding strategy and tactics, regarding working within systems versus rejecting and dismantling them, and regarding whose perspectives should be centered in resolving these disagreements. In these debates, many white radicals, including some anarchists, have been obnoxious or arrogant, unaware of their privilege, and disrespectful to more experienced or directly impacted organizers. This is inexcusable, and it should be challenged. Anarchists’ desires for a world without hierarchies should inspire them to forge interdependent, accountable relationships with other communities in struggle, to listen respectfully and learn from others in the movement even when they disagree, and to be conscious of how their actions impact others. There is a long way to go to build the bonds of trust across lines of difference necessary to forge durable, powerful movements that challenge the dynamics of white supremacy within and beyond them.
\n\nBut Stockman’s discussion does not help us to do this constructively. It ignores the many important conversations that have happened in the streets, community meetings, and online regarding how best to resolve political differences. It neglects how the movement’s divisions over strategy and tactics do not break down neatly as a split between white anarchists and Black peaceful protestors, but between older and younger Black activist generations and along other lines as well. And Stockman’s account champions a single path to social change around racism and policing—reform in collaboration with police and local government—which has proved remarkably ineffective at actually stopping racist police violence.
\n\nFurthermore, it assumes that all anarchists are white and that we are not directly impacted by police violence or white supremacy. Vanessa Taylor’s brilliant article on Black anarchists in the recent protests explains how the presence of Black anarchists
\n\n\n\n\n“complicates the notion of an ‘outside agitator’—to describe anarchists as random white people outside of Black and otherwise oppressed communities is to erase Black anarchists—as well as the ‘peaceful’ protester narrative that others try to conjure to oppose Trump.”
\n
But, she provocatively asks, “Why is there an obligation to be peaceful if you are dying?” According to a Dallas anarchist named Tina,
\n\n\n\n\n“Trump labeling protesters as anarchists is another form of white supremacy at work. Blackness is already anarchy in white folks’ minds. I don’t think a Black person necessarily has to call themselves an anarchist to be one, because in the land where whiteness is law and order you are already one.”
\n
Centering Black anarchist experiences breaks down the binary logic of Stockman’s article, forcing us to understand political differences in a multiracial movement through a different lens.
\n\nTo Stockman, because anarchist approaches aim to prevent the consolidation of power in the hands of politicians and activists, they can only be destructive, never constructive. On this basis, she accuses anarchists of being “fickle allies,” since even “if they help you get into power, they will try to oust you the following day, since power is what they are against.”
\n\nThis is as close as she gets to the truth. Anarchists are not trying to get anyone into power over anyone else. Anarchists are trying to get everyone into power at once—to create egalitarian relationships based on cooperation and mutual respect, not force and domination. This is a real difference between Stockman and the anarchists she smears. The question is how to resolve it.
\n\nStockman’s concluding assessment accuses anarchists of being “experts at unraveling an old order but considerably less skilled at building a new one.” Yet had she actually spoken to a single anarchist in her exposition of “the truth” about them, she would have gotten quite a different picture. From the first moments that the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in North America, anarchists immediately mobilized to form mutual aid networks, drawing on extensive experience doing disaster relief and protest support. These became some of the most popular and urgently needed institutions helping to ensure community survival while our rulers bickered and dragged their feet. Beyond their immediate practical value, mutual aid networks model an anarchist vision of a self-organized world of freely shared resources rooted in an ethic of solidarity—a vision anarchists have been promoting for decades through Really Really Free Markets, Food Not Bombs meals, and many other institutions meant to build a new world.
\n\nStockman did not trouble herself to learn who anarchists are, what anarchists actually believe, or how anarchists put it into practice. It was easier for her to copy and paste from Trump’s playbook, backed up by her source—who, his claims to be an “infiltrator” notwithstanding, clearly knows even less than she does.
\n\nBut Stockman has saved the worst for last. The article concludes by claiming that for anarchists, “it’s not really about George Floyd or Black lives, but insurrection for insurrection’s sake.”
\n\nThis kind of demonizing, divide-and-conquer language is offensive and harmful to all who are striving to cooperate across lines of difference. It’s also absurd and inaccurate.
\n\nFirst and foremost: Stockman herself acknowledged just a few paragraphs before that anarchy got results—her words, not ours! How can she possibly justify claiming that anarchists are only interested in insurrection for insurrection’s sake? Given that the reforms she praises have been tried many times without making a dent in police killings, it might be more accurate to conclude that reformers are the ones who are only interested in reform for reform’s sake—perhaps because they want to preserve the positions of the reformers in the power structure. By contrast, one could argue that the people who rioted after George Floyd’s killing, including the handful of insurrectionary anarchists among them, apparently did so because that was the most effective thing they believed they could do to force a national reckoning with racist police murder. As Stockman herself admitted, so-called peaceful protests didn’t attract media attention, didn’t result in institutional changes, and didn’t compel the country to confront the racist brutality that characterizes Black experiences with police every day.
\n\nIf Stockman had the courage to take her own observations seriously, then, she might be in the streets rioting, rather than drawing a salary trying to sow division in movements that have finally started to push back effectively against police violence.
\n\nInsurrectionary anarchists believe that disrupting the normal functioning of the state and the economy can open up spaces of possibility for people to relate to each other differently, to imagine a different world, to experiment with new ways of organizing daily life. The uprisings have shown that this is possible. From protests to autonomous zones to police-free neighborhoods, the spaces that confrontational tactics have opened up over the past year have helped transform abolition from a pipe dream to a possibility that warrants serious discussion and debate. They’ve served as laboratories for freedom—obviously not utopias, but places we can start to remake the world together. There are serious problems, including how to preserve safety and resolve conflict, how to accommodate differing visions, and how to meet everyone’s basic needs outside of the economy. But it’s a start—rather than repeating the old rituals endlessly, always reaching the same dead ends—and it’s only possible as a consequence of making a dramatic break with the present.
\n\nWe can’t speak for other anarchists, but we can speak for ourselves. Yes, we have goals that extend beyond obtaining justice for George Floyd alone. We want to see a world in which all Black lives are valued and no one need fear being killed or terrorized by police—and we believe that to get there will require directly confronting the violent systems of power responsible for Floyd’s death, everywhere, not merely securing criminal charges for the latest killers. We live in a world in which the capitalist economy keeps almost all poor people under the heels of bosses and landlords—particularly Black and brown poor folks. So we’re fighting to transform the economy, too—because Black Lives Matter is just an empty slogan if we ignore the poverty that makes so many people’s lives a constant struggle. And while we’re at it, we can’t forget the ways that the same structures of policing hold our borders in place, dehumanize migrants, and inflame xenophobia—or the role of the US military in policing the entire globe to secure access to oil and raw materials—or how incipient fascism in the United States imitates similar authoritarianism from Brazil to Turkey to Russia.
\n\nThe point isn’t to distract from the central issues that prompted the uprising. The point is to tackle these problems at their roots, we have to understand that there are no single issues, and truly systematic change involves more than charging a few killer cops or passing a few local reforms. To change anything, we have to change everything.
\n\nOn the subject of insurrectionary anarchism, Stockman cherry-picks two sentences from Episode 9 of the Ex-Worker podcast, released seven years ago:
\n\n\n\n\n“We are not sure if the socialist, communist, democratic, or even anarchist utopia is possible. Rather, some insurrectionary anarchists believe that the meaning of being an anarchist lies in the struggle itself and what that struggle reveals.”
\n
She takes these lines out of context to accomplish her purpose: implying that anarchists only care for destruction. In context, however, this quotation describes the process of how movements grow and evolve. As the Zapatistas say, we make the path by walking. That is—what shows us how to move forward isn’t an abstract utopian vision, but the concrete experiences of people resisting oppression together in the streets and in our everyday lives.
\n\nThis doesn’t mean that we don’t fight to win or that we don’t care about the outcome. Of course we do! Our lives and the lives of our loved ones, our dignity and our freedom, our most cherished ideals—we know that all of these are at stake and more.
\n\nRather, it means that we recognize that the struggle for freedom was going on long before we were born and will continue long after we’re gone. If you think the US is a fundamentally just society and all that is needed is just to make a couple tweaks to keep cops from killing quite so often, then you can imagine political struggle as a simple means to a simple end. But for those of us who intend to spend our whole lives working towards a freer and more egalitarian world, we have to find meaning in the struggle itself lest despair consume us. Like the fighters in the French resistance to the Nazis, we don’t need hope to keep fighting; resistance to tyranny is a way of life. The anarchist hypothesis is that we can still find ways to forge meaningful lives in the struggle against police brutality, racial injustice, economic exploitation, ecological destruction, encroaching fascism, and worse. This does not come from believing that total change is just around the corner—though we cherish the moments when it feels that way. It comes from believing that acting against oppression is always ennobling and worthwhile, and provides the most meaningful foundation we can imagine for our relations with others.
\n\nSo let the New York Times side with Trump, Barr, and other right-wing conspiracy theorists. It won’t stop us, and it won’t stop the movements that we have always supported without ever seeking to control. We know what matters. We have not forgotten all the lives lost to the everyday violence of American policing, nor the sacrifices of those who came before us.
\n\nAs we head into the frightening weeks ahead, with fascism or civil war looming closer than ever, we don’t know how things will turn out. But whatever happens, we will be in the streets, fighting for freedom while there is still breath in our lungs. To all the readers of the Times who have the sense to see through Stockman’s shoddy journalism—who seek the real truth about today’s anarchists—we look forward to meeting you there.
\n\nIncidentally, the NCRI is funded by George Soros’s Open Society Foundation. Not only have anarchists never received the checks from George Soros that right-wing media assured us he would be sending, he’s actually underwriting “research” intended to justify the repression of social movements. ↩
\nAnarchists have appeared in the corporate media a lot this year, from the first breathless reports on resistance to the rise of the far right to recent appearances in the fashion pages. But not all visibility is good visibility. The Trump regime is looking to popularize an image of anarchists and other activists as a major threat to public order in order to legitimize further crackdowns; fascist organizations have worked hard to capitalize on a media profile of “antifa” as violent and mysterious in order to draw more people into their ranks. Corporate media outlets like the Wall Street Journal are notorious for catering to the reactionary politics of their owners, while even the most sympathetic media coverage can be useful to law enforcement agencies seeking information to use against activists.
\n\nAnarchists and others have long been critical of the function of the media itself. Yet it’s not always possible to avoid press coverage; in the information age, it’s spin or be spun. When we act effectively in pursuit of social change, media outlets will seek to represent us to the general public—and unless we can disrupt their narratives, most people will see us through their eyes.
\n\nCorporate media is not a neutral space in which we can present ideas the way we can in direct conversation with our coworkers and neighbors. It is a strategic terrain on which the authorities position themselves to legitimate the use of force. To step in front of the cameras is to enter a hostile territory controlled by a class that is determined to use our images against us. If we enable media outlets to depict us as violent, alien, or extreme—no matter how strong the arguments we make in favor of our tactics or ideas—the ultimate result will be that the authorities are emboldened to step up their attacks on us.
\n\nWhen we engage with the media, we must not imagine that they will promote our ideas; we have to accomplish that on our own through our own channels. (At best, we can use media appearances to direct people to those channels, like the organization that insisted on only answering interviews in front of a banner displaying their website.) Rather, we are engaging in a subtle war of position in which we seek to prevent the authorities from alienating others from us and to undermine the narratives that legitimize their violence. We must always balance the possible gains to be made in legitimacy and visibility against the risks of making ourselves a higher profile target.
\n\nWe should never forget the example of the SHAC campaign, which sought to shut down an animal testing company. At first, the campaign made great headway, gaining momentum as the media publicized the effects of their organizing—yet ultimately, law enforcement was able to use this menacing image to orchestrate a crackdown that sent many people to prison for years. We offer the following suggestions in hopes of helping you navigate your interactions with the media safely.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/12/12/1.jpg\")
\nConsider whether there is another person or group better positioned to make public statements on a subject. Consult others who may be affected by what you say to get their feedback before participating in an interview.
\nConsider how you will be viewed by the reporters, the editors, and their audience. Are you the best person to convey this information?
\nConsider the risks to activists currently facing criminal charges or others who might face them in the future. Even the most innocuous statements can be manipulated to smear and discredit activists, especially those already facing criminal charges. Everything said in a press interview can be used:
\n(1) in criminal prosecutions
\n\n(2) to indict the person being interviewed or anyone else implicated in the public statements
\n\n(3) to subpoena the person being interviewed to testify for the prosecution and against his or her comrades and fellow activists.
\n\nEstablish clearly defined goals in advance. What specific gain do you stand to accomplish by appearing in this media outlet? How will you accomplish it? For example, if you are attempting to draw additional participants to an upcoming demonstration, it may make sense to obtain coverage in a paper read by people who may join you, but it probably will not make sense to appear in a paper read chiefly by reactionaries who wish to see such protests suppressed.
\nCompose your talking points and practice presenting them concisely. Reporters will often ask leading or hostile questions in order to trap you into providing the material they need to tell a predetermined story. If you have limited experience with the media, speak to those who have more experience.
\nIdentify the agenda of the outlet you will be speaking to. What do they hope to accomplish? What are the basic terms of the discourse that they utilize? How can you disrupt the narratives that they are propagating?
\nWhat leverage do you have on this reporter? What leverage do you have on the venue in which the story will appear? If you have no basis for trust, be very cautious.
\nWhen you speak with reporters, make agreements in advance about how they will identify you and what information they will publish. Emphasize that you do not represent a political constituency and are not acting as a “leader for the movement.” If you use a pseudonym, be careful to ensure that no one will be able to work out your legal identity; law enforcement officers have compelled journalists to reveal the “true identities” of media spokespersons as a way of endangering and discrediting them.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/12/12/2.jpg\")
\nThis originally appeared in the fourth issue of Rolling Thunder as part of “Report from the Press Box: MSM Confidential.” If some of it contradicts the above advice, take it with a grain of salt.
\n\nBe direct at all times. The person with the tape recorder considers you suspect. He believes you have fallen victim to an intellectual trap of your own making: an inability to appreciate nuance or identify with your enemy. As he sees it, his job on this unfortunate assignment is to present your information without getting suckered into mainlining lefty propaganda into the information bloodstream. He will ask you many, many questions (Who is funding this organization? Isn’t it true that you are all college graduates? Did you ever consider taking your grievances to the Community Police Board? Can I see your membership lists?); you should answer them in full, where appropriate. It’s more important to be upfront if your enterprise is loosely coordinated than to present yourself as a stable coalition or single entity when that’s not the case. No one likes to be interrogated, but it’s better for you if he feels that you’ve held nothing back from him.
\nIf you challenge her, don’t back her into a corner. Journalists don’t like to be reminded that we don’t know everything in the world. (You might think that the beginning of journalism is a recognition of that basic fact, but there you have it.) As a result, spewing jargon or citing obscure texts will make her feel ignorant, exposed, and angry. She will portray you as aloof elitists playacting at something important. If she draws an improper conclusion during your conversation, it’s far better to clarify what you’ve said than to jump down her throat. If she continues to misrepresent you, call her office after the story is published, and warn her editor that there’s a fabulist on staff. (Remember that word—“fabulist,” that is to say, liar. Those three syllables make editors break out in a cold sweat.)
\nDon’t insult his intelligence. It’s not that this reporter isn’t intelligent. Rare is the reporter who doesn’t exhibit at least basic intelligence, since his job depends on either inquiry or diligence. Flattery will get you nowhere, since he doesn’t like to be bullshitted. But politeness and attentiveness are appreciated in what is very often an exhausting job for little pay. If you treat him with respect and openness, he may even reconsider his condescension. Don’t bet on it, but stranger things have happened.
\nBe extremely concrete. She wants facts. You want things to change. During your interview, explain in detail what you intend to do, how, and why. If this involves illegal activity, describe the motivations for your actions very clearly. Don’t expect all this raw information to make it into the story. But the more you give her, the more she will have to fill up her column inches or her word count or her airtime—and all of that will come from your side. Remember, you are giving her access. The IMF or the local police precinct will not. That is an advantage to you.
\nRemain accessible. I have never written a story for which I had no further questions to ask when I sat down in front of my keyboard. The reporter you’re dealing with will probably want to ask some follow-up questions. If you’re not around to answer them, he is going to make inferences and assumptions about what you’re about. If you complain to his editors, he’ll be able to argue, credibly, that you weren’t answering your phone or your email, and he had a deadline to meet, so what else could he do. He will win that argument. Don’t let him.
\nHave extremely low expectations. Remember, you are a carnival freak for Homo Journalisticus. Her inclination is to print only as much of your story as is necessary for her to get back to the office and put in for a more interesting assignment. This is as true—if not more so—for young reporters than older ones: the young reporter is clocking time until a better job or a better bureau opens up, and your penny-ante revolutionary antics are the tick of her clock. Following the above instructions will get your message out inasmuch as that is possible through this medium. You may, of course, choose to supplement your efforts in the mainstream press with your own account on a website or elsewhere, but that’s your domain and not mine.
\nFind out who his editor is. This is cunning, and it pays off. Ask him what desk he’s on (Metro? General assignment? National?), who he works for, how long he’s been there, and how he finds it. Take notes. He’ll interpret this as a sign of your diligence as a press liaison, and, at best, a polite recognition of his importance. In reality, this is a tool to use for your advantage. If you are dissatisfied with his coverage, contact his editor and itemize your grievances. Some caveats: do not rant, and be prepared to be specific about errors of fact or sloppiness. It is in this area that the editor on the other end of the phone or e-mail will be prepared to act—either by running corrections, assigning another reporter to cover you and putting him on a leash, or by actively punishing your malicious interlocutor. If you try to correct interpretation, the editor will consider you a crank and stick up for the reporter.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/12/12/3.jpg\")
The camera is a weapon of the state.
\nDonald Trump has taken to his soapbox to carp about “fake news,” as if the corporate news media were a subversive force. On the contrary, while biased or outright dishonest reporting is the rule rather than the exception, it almost always serves those in power. The interests of the corporate news media cannot be disentangled from the advertisers who fund them and the authorities they count on for scoops. In this eyewitness report from a demonstration in Philadelphia last Friday, participants relate how police attacked them with batons and pepper spray, then persuaded local media to report that it was the demonstrators who pepper-sprayed them.
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\nLast night in North Philadelphia, four people were arrested and many were injured by batons and mace during a march organized by a local militant Black Lives Matter group, Philly Coalition for REAL Justice. The flier described it as a “Black Resistance March.” The online description expanded on this:
\n\n\n\n\n“All are welcome as long as they make space for black people at the front of the march. The issues contained in the assaults on LGBT folks, on Muslims and refugees, occupation and militarization abroad are intersectional. Today we center our black women, our black immigrants, black LGBTQ family, and our black Muslims. Dress warm and be vigilant.”
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The march kicked off with a line of Bodyhammer-style shields made from large city traffic cones. Each one had a letter painted on it so that together they read “U-N-G-O-V-E-R-N-A-B-L-E.” Even the protest chants had an air of militancy. “Bullets Trump Hate” resonated throughout the streets as the march headed north on Broad Street. One person with a megaphone paid homage to the words that became a rallying cry after police officers murdered Eric Garner. “They say ‘hands up, don’t shoot,’ but we have another one for you… ‘guns up, shoot back.’”
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\nThe march made its way north towards the Temple campus. We stopped at the bustling intersection of Broad and Girard, a main artery for traffic and public transit. The crowd blocked the streets and burned American flags while people of color talked about police repression and terrorism through a megaphone. “This is not my flag. It has never been my flag. We’re burning this flag for Emmit Till. Trayvon Martin. Michael Brown. Freddie Gray. This is for Brandon Tate Brown.” There was more talk about the current racist stop-and-frisk policy, and, of course, the MOVE bombing of May 13, 1985. The list went on while the fire grew.
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\nAfter it began to burn out, the march started to move again. The group wasn’t half as large as some anti-Trump demonstrations that brought out thousands only a few weeks ago. In a fashion typical of Philadelphia Police, the march was followed by dozens of squad cars and at least two police helicopters, and surrounded on either side by bike cops who seemed to outnumber participants by at least two to one. The strategy for policing mass mobilizations in Philadelphia is heavily influenced by former Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey; usually, the police avoid making arrests, while oversaturating the area with officers. This approach is informed by the “Vancouver Model” as outlined in the police manual Managing Major Events: Best Practices from the Field by the Police Executive Research Forum.
\n\nAs soon as we neared Temple University, the march became confrontational. Those with megaphones tried to rush into the campus dining hall. Uniformed officers tripped over each other as they hurried to block the entrance and exits, using their bikes to shove people who stood in their way. They formed a line in front of the doors with their bikes as blockades.
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\nSomeone noticed a Bank of America across the street and everyone rushed in that direction. Only one officer stood guard before all the shielded protestors formed their own line at the entrance. Bike cops rushed over, clumsily tripping over each other again as they scrambled to catch up with the crowd. A scuffle broke out. Someone threw black paint over the bank window and perhaps an officer or two. Cops extended their batons. Shielded protesters stood their ground and moved forward, chanting “Kill the Rich.” Police pepper-sprayed a large portion of the crowd, then began swinging their batons and hitting many people. Four arrests took place. There was an unsuccessful attempt to de-arrest someone. I saw at least one person bleeding from the head after being hit by police. Street medics took care to help flush the pepper spray out of the eyes of those struck.
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\nAll the local news media outlets that covered this event reported that protestors pepper-sprayed the police and that police were hospitalized with injuries. No one I spoke with has witnessed anything other than the police pepper-spraying protestors. One person’s account is as follows: “Here’s what happened. We wanted to get inside Bank of America. A bunch of cops started beating people up with bikes and batons because they care more about capitalist institutions than people. One of them started spraying us with pepper spray. I got it in my eyes. The cops started shouting to their own guy, “Who’s spraying? Stop spraying!” Now, in order to cover up their incompetence, the press is implying that we were the ones who injured them.”
\n\nEight more people were arrested outside the precinct the next day while doing jail support. It took over 24 hours before everyone was released. The Up Against the Law Legal Collective worked nonstop to find out where everyone was being held and when they would be eligible for bail, while the local Food Not Bombs chapter fed the gathering crowd of people expressing support outside the jail. The charges being filed against the arrestees are outlandish, but we plan to fight the system with solidarity.
\n\nThe courts and the police want us to feel scared and isolated. Yet all of these long-term groups working together have helped make Philadelphia a place where a lot can happen. Those networks will be crucial in this new era. If you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready.
\n\nAs long as we have each other’s backs in the mounting resistance to come, we can win. And we will win.
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