Author Archive
March 9, 2010 at 1:17 pm · Filed under Read All About It, posted by b. traven
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Anarchists in the US have been slow to respond to the economic crisis, missing many of the opportunities it has offered. One of the exceptions is the recent participation of anarchists in the student movement protesting budget cuts and austerity measures. This came into the national consciousness in December 2008 when students occupied a building at the New School in New York City. NYU followed suit in February, and the following fall students in California began occupying schools up and down the coast.
The most recent phase of the student movement came to a head on March 4, when protests took place all around the US. The Bay Area was perhaps the epicenter of this day of action, seeing thousands of people on the streets—but at this epicenter, the tensions and contradictions around anarchist participation in the student movement came to the fore. Here, we present an eyewitness report on March 4 actions in the Bay, and complement it with a set of discussion questions we hope will help anarchists and others in the student movement hone their strategies. We’re seeking responses to these questions—email answers to rollingthunder@crimethinc.com or post them in the comments section here.
Report from the Bay Area, March 4
Anarchists in the March 4 Protests: Discussion Questions
March 3, 2010 at 11:54 am · Filed under Hot Off the Presses, posted by b. traven
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Throughout diverse subject matter, Rolling Thunder #9 subtly explores issues of legitimacy. Who is entitled to speak, to act, to organize? How important is legitimacy in the public eye, and how can anarchists cultivate it? What are the drawbacks of pursuing various kinds of legitimacy? As usual, one must read between the lines of on-the-ground news coverage and analysis to seek the answers—and, more significantly, the further questions they suggest.
Following up on our coverage of the 2008 DNC and RNC protests, this issue of Rolling Thunder appraises anarchist action at the 2009 G20 summit, detailing the background of the mobilization, mapping conflict throughout the city, and analyzing the factors that determined the strategies of the police and protesters. The accompanying Pittsburgh scene report examines the decade of local organizing that prepared the ground for this and other confrontations, deriving lessons relevant to communities around the country.
Elsewhere within, this issue scrutinizes protest and resistance on campus—from the recent student occupation movement in the US to the campaign to shut down a fascist organization at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Overseas, we survey Smash EDO, a British anti-military campaign that tests some of the hypotheses advanced in coverage of the SHAC campaign in Rolling Thunder #6.
This issue also includes Russian history from the “time of troubles” to Kropotkin’s escape from prison, reviews of Uri Gordon’s Anarchy Alive! and the obscurantist publication Politics Is Not a Banana, and more of the reflections and witticisms that set Rolling Thunder apart as a peerless exemplar of “how beautiful anarchist journals can be.”
Starting with this issue, we’ll also be complementing each issue of Rolling Thunder with an online supplement offering additional information, links, and materials. Among other things, the supplement to this issue features maps of action during the Pittsburgh G20 protests, a PDF of the newspaper wrap anarchists used in their campaign against a fascist student group, and a FAQ flier answering objections to militant antifascist organizing commonly posed by partisans of liberal democracy.
Online supplement after the jump.
January 7, 2010 at 11:49 am · Filed under Read All About It, posted by b. traven
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So do we—a total break with domination and hierarchy in all their forms, involving an armed uprising if need be. Until that’s possible, we’ll settle for recurring clashes in which to develop our skills, find comrades, and emphasize the gulf between ourselves and our oppressors.
But how do we bring about these confrontations? How do we ensure that they strengthen us more than our enemies? What pitfalls await us on this road? And what else do we have to do to make our efforts effective?
Over the past few years, a small current has gained visibility in US anarchist circles prioritizing the themes of insurrection and social conflict. This analysis explores how effective these strategies are at achieving their professed goals, as well as the relationship between insurrectionist theory and the activities associated with it in the current US context.
Read full piece here.
December 22, 2009 at 12:07 pm · Filed under Read All About It, posted by b. traven
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On the heels of three new settlements in which the government of Washington, D.C. is paying protesters well over $22 million, we’ve completed a new feature and two-sided poster on the subject of payouts to survivors of police repression. Both black and white and color versions of the poster are available.
Over the past decade of mobilizations, CrimethInc. agents have repeatedly pulled off narrow escapes from mass-arrest situations in which all our comrades were captured. We felt pretty pleased with ourselves until we learned, some years too late, that everyone who didn’t get away was making thousands of dollars! How embarrassing—we’re such dropouts, we can’t even get a job getting arrested! This, despite the FBI defaming our milieu as the “top domestic terror threat.” What’s a ne’er-do-well supposed to do? So we read with sympathy the account from our comrades who followed in the footsteps of the Warsaw Ghetto fighters, crawling through the sewers to escape arrest and, little did they know, a whopping $18,000.
Pass the word around—resistance doesn’t always end in defeat, even when we get beaten and arrested. We may not believe in the legitimacy of the law any more than our rulers do, but we still ought to include the battle in the courts in our strategizing alongside the battle in the streets. By bringing lawsuits against our oppressors, we can increase the costs of repressing us, and sometimes tie their hands for future demonstrations—compare the behavior of the Washington, D.C. police at the 2000 and 2002 IMF protests to their conduct during the 2007 IMF protests. Unfortunately, some sectors of the current anarchist milieu have such short memories that by the time the lawsuits are concluded, many have stopped paying attention, and the initial thoughtless appraisal of protests as “a failure” is all that sticks in people’s heads. We’re only now learning the net results of mobilizations that occurred a decade ago. To mount an effective resistance to capitalism, we need to think in terms of decades, not months.
Read full text here.
December 10, 2009 at 11:24 am · Filed under Read All About It, posted by b. traven
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In the past few years, scientific consensus has finally emerged that global warming is taking place as a result of industrial capitalism and with dire consequences for life on earth. Corporate efforts to bribe scientists to argue otherwise are attracting fewer and fewer takers; this is especially telling in view of how many researchers depend on industry backing. But rather than engaging with the fact that capitalism itself is destructive, governments and liberal environmentalists are promoting corporate responses to the problems posed by climate change.
This week, representatives of governments around the world are meeting in Copenhagen for the COP15, ostensibly to make decisions on how to respond to the climate crisis. The results are bound to cater to the agenda of corporate interests hoping to legitimize carbon trading and other false solutions. Fortunately, anarchists and other opponents of self-inflicted extinction will be there to crash the party.
Comrades have published a full-length critique of the prevailing narratives around climate change, Introduction to the Apocalypse [PDF, 1 MB]. Likewise, we’ve added new material to our online reading library addressing the issues:
The Climate Is Changing & A Field Guide to False Solutions
November 5, 2009 at 9:11 am · Filed under Read All About It, posted by b. traven
I first saw Testament perform in 2007, following a small-scale riot in Athens, Ohio. It was exciting to see an MC delivering an explicitly anarchist message with the skills and charisma it takes to make real hip hop, rather than the well-intentioned imitation one sometimes finds in politicized circles.
Testament has since released a handful of recordings, some of which are freely available for downloading. His original work, such as “Get Into It” with Illogik as Test Their Logik, shows great promise, but thus far my favorite track is his interpretation of pop radio hit “Kiss Me Thru The Phone.”
Testament does with this song what we did with pay phones and the Situationists did with comic strips. Just as a minor billboard alteration can expose the sinister truths concealed in an advertisement, Testament’s cover version reveals the story latent within the original. No one can relate to the chorus more intensely than those separated from their lovers by prison walls—and with 2.3 million behind bars in the US, that may help to explain the song’s popularity.
Read on after the jump.
October 13, 2009 at 5:48 am · Filed under Read All About It, posted by b. traven
AK Press has just published a collection of interviews with anarchist authors who write fiction, entitled Mythmakers and Lawbreakers. The interviewees include Ursula Le Guin, Derrick Jensen, Alan Moore, Starhawk, and an anonymous CrimethInc. ex-worker. The interview references two children’s books, The Secret World of Terijian and The Secret World of Duvbo, that are neither published by nor available through CrimethInc. Far East.
Read the full interview after the jump.
September 30, 2009 at 9:20 am · Filed under From the Trenches, posted by b. traven
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The dust has settled: a total of 193 arrests took place during the G20—a great number of those being random bystanders. 17 people face felonies; one young person is being absurdly scapegoated for $20,000+ of damage, while two alleged participants in the comms group are being charged with “hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility, and possessing an instrument of crime,” presumably in hopes of setting a precedent to suppress the use of communications technology to keep demonstrators safe in the future.
Indeed, several people have been charged with “hindering apprehension,” which is a new one to us here. It sounds more like an existential condition than a crime—picture Woody Allen in some sex farce, awkwardly explaining to his mother that he’s been suffering from hindering apprehension!
This report focuses on the events of Friday evening, when police and National Guardsmen gratuitously attacked students at the University of Pittsburgh.
Read on after the jump.
September 25, 2009 at 9:32 am · Filed under From the Trenches, posted by b. traven
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We’re pleased to present breaking news from the first day of the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, which has seen a great deal of spirited resistance and confrontation—perhaps as much as has occurred at any anarchist mobilization in North America in half a decade. This hastily composed account presents the context of the demonstration, attempts to convey the spirit of the day, and raises a few preliminary questions.
In short, the basic narrative of the day runs as follows. The protesters attempted to reach the summit site but were brutally forced back by police. They eventually turned around and marched through Pittsburgh neighborhoods and shopping districts, where the police pursued and attacked them. Property destruction intensified in response to these attacks, and the conflict culminated in a standoff between police and students during which a black bloc destroyed a business district.
One might interpret all this as legitimate acts of revenge for the police murder in London at last spring’s G20 summit; but it also signifies the survival of militant street resistance in the Obama era.
Read full piece here.
September 14, 2009 at 9:53 am · Filed under Hot Off the Presses, posted by b. traven
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At long last, Rolling Thunder #8 is back from the printer!
Balancing out the previous issue’s focus on breaking news, this issue steps back to reflect on the priorities and relationships that can make resistance effective and infectious. The centerpiece of this issue is a critical examination of the strengths and shortcomings of contemporary insurrectionist theory and practice, spanning 24 pages and a wide range of lines of inquiry. Elsewhere herein, one can find a guide to crafting constructive accountability processes, a survey of the past four decades of anarchist activity in Chile, and a report from San Francisco exploring the broader context of anarchist organizing leading up to and following the Oakland riots covered in Rolling Thunder #7. We’ve also turned up a retrospective by a member of the legendary clandestine prison abolitionist group Os Cangaceiros, distilling the lessons of years of underground struggle. All this is rounded out by inspiring accounts, entertaining anecdotes, magical realist fiction, and a whole lot more. Also, just a reminder that subscriptions are now available, and starting your subscription now, beginning with #8, is an option.
We’ve also composed a new poster to celebrate its arrival and convey one of the themes of the issue.
September 3, 2009 at 11:57 am · Filed under Hot Off the Presses, posted by b. traven
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The workers who operate the means of production have power;
The bosses who tell them how to use it have authority.
The tenants whose rent maintains the building have power;
The landlord whose name is on the deed has authority.
Armies have power;
Generals have authority.
A hurricane has power;
A meteorologist has authority.
Anarchism is not a rejection of power itself. There are so many kinds of power we affirm: the power to provide for ourselves and one another, to defend ourselves and sort out conflicts, to perform acupuncture and steer a sailboat and swing on a trapeze. We prize the freedom to develop our capacities and capabilities, especially in ways that increase others’ freedom as well. Every time one of us acts to achieve her full potential it is a gift to all.
Authority over others, on the other hand, always comes at the price of power over one’s own life. It is always derived from outside oneself:
The authority of the Constitution, the president, the general, the soldier—
Of the law, the judge, the attorney, the police officer—
The economy, the executive, the manager, the customer—
The scripture, the pope, the cardinal, the bishop, the priest—
The text, the critic, the professor—
The bluest eye, the deepest voice, the thinnest waistline.
Just in time for Rolling Thunder #8, we’ve produced a new sticker on this subject. Screen-printed on vinyl and 4” in diameter, they are going out free in every single order.
For a nuanced discussion of various forms of power and authority, one could try Uri Gordon’s Anarchy Alive; an expanded version of the relevant chapter is available in pdf form here. Uri is currently touring North America.
September 1, 2009 at 1:01 pm · Filed under From the Trenches, posted by b. traven
While our last report focused on the controversial disruption, the 2009 CrimethInc. Convergence went on for five days and four nights before that incident, and many positive things occurred during that time. People exchanged skills and knowledge, built relationships that will last for years to come, and participated in a self-organized, affirmative event full of exciting and fun moments. What follows here are a few personal accounts focusing on these aspects of the convergence.
Read on after the jump!
August 25, 2009 at 8:00 am · Filed under From the Trenches, posted by b. traven
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Anarcho-punk warriors From the Depths will be touring the eastern half of North America this fall. They’ve also released the recording they completed earlier this year as a split CD with Colombian hardcore band Nagaf.
Details after the jump.
August 20, 2009 at 8:28 pm · Filed under Read All About It, posted by b. traven
People are going to be talking about the 2009 CrimethInc. Convergence for years to come. As usual, ready or not, we end up at the center of every storm.
This full report offers a summary of the events and a discussion of the issues, prepared with input from several convergence organizers after countless conversations. If you’re already familiar with the basic story, skip right to the analysis.
For a basic discussion of some of the issues around privilege, power dynamics, and identity, try “Undermining Oppression” in our online reading library.
July 19, 2009 at 6:55 am · Filed under Calling All Anarchists, posted by b. traven
Meet at the Northside Commons (W. North Ave. and Brighton) by the pond, on Monday, July 20, anytime between 12 pm and sundown. The opening ceremonies will occur immediately thereafter. For convergence attendees who can’t make it on the 20th, there will be someone at the meetup spot at 12 pm and again at 6 pm on the 21st. Attendees who are arriving even later and missing the inception of the fun should call 412-708-2583 when they arrive in Pittsburgh.
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