Or you could contact our friends at Wild Nettle Distribution, who will freely send you STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY stickers to spread the word where you live. They’ll be sending out packs of 25-50 at no cost—all you have to do is email distro@wildnettle.com. Don’t forget to include a name and address; donations help, but are not mandatory. If you’d like more than 50 stickers, please help cover printing and shipping costs; for example, a $10 donation for 100 stickers would be great. Perhaps you could go in on a big package with others in your town? You can donate by sending money via Paypal to distro@wildnettle.com. Unfortunately, Wild Nettle can’t afford to send international packages for free, so contact them if you live outside the US.
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On Saturday, November 13, a new and experimental infoshop in Winona, MN, opened it’s doors to the public. The Burrow is one of the first new infoshops to open since the controversial essay “5 Steps to Reviving Your Failing Anarchist Bookstore“, and at a time when long-standing infoshops are throwing in their towels, this account offers insight into the new models still unseen.
This story begins where our coverage of small-town organizing left off in Rolling Thunder #7. What follows is not only an account and recipe for a new type of space, but a possible intermediate step in anarchist organizing in long-term communities.
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In early June, we announced our proposal for a month of anarchist outreach and visibility actions. Within weeks we received announcements of localized event schedules across the US and beyond. Tours are currently criss-crossing the country; dozens of Really Really Free Markets [RRFM] will assemble; convergences and reading groups will open their doors. This August, anarchists are stepping into visibility with mutual aid and resistance.
There are currently three publicly-announced touring groups on the road. The Conspiracy Tour is circling the country to build support for the targets of state repression in the anarchist community and presenting legal training for communities of resistance. The Emergency Tour is traveling through the midwest, visiting primarily small towns to present an introduction to anti-capitalism and mutual aid organizing. The Letters Tour is doing a short circuit mid-month to promote the new issue of their anti-political literary journal.
If you don’t see your event or action represented in this list, please email experimental.committee@gmail.com or announce it as a comment to add it to this list. If there isn’t anything happening where you live, go ahead and plan something!
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By now, anarchists and anti-authoritarians across the country have probably given up waiting for an announcement of the annual CrimethInc. Convergence. The truth is that as experienced organizers grow more weary of repeating themselves, and the emerging energetic anarchist communities are all tending to be less and less interested in organizing, few places seem to be appropriate candidates for this summer’s convergence. Moreover, by early spring it was already too late in the game for a community to come forward and offer to host the event, and interest simply had not surfaced.
In possibly the first great anarchist mistake of the decade, the CrimethInc. Experimental Committee was founded in late January. Their first assignment? To preserve and integrate the best elements of the convergence into a new model, adjust them to strengthen longstanding weaknesses, all the while upping the ante in a way that serves the anarchist community as a whole. At first, we thought their solution was a bad idea, so we commissioned a report and quickly changed our minds.
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Don’t carp, carpenters!
Don’t wait, waiters!
Let’s put the team in teamster!
Every steelworker a steal-from-worker!
Every hoodlum a Robin Hoodlum!
Raise the bar, baristas!
Raise hell, bellboys!
Wage war, wage slaves—
April 15 is Steal Something from Work Day!
Just in time for April 15, a barrage of new STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY propaganda is hitting the airwaves. This announcement covers a movie, a full-length journal, and a new hip hop track, among other things.
Just in time for April 15, we present Heist, “Journal of Workplace Reappropriation.” This full-length publication delves into the practice and theory of employee theft, presenting stories from dozens of workplace thieves and reflections from across the spectrum of workplaces, continents, and centuries. Read the tale of the hardware store cashier who paid for his entire college education by robbing the till–and find out why he wishes he’d spent the money differently! Read the reflections of Miklós Haraszti, a dissident who analyzed Hungarian workers’ practice of making and stealing trinkets from the factory in defiance of the Soviet “Worker’s State” of the 1970s! Find out what it means to go beyond stealing from work! It’s all here, in this 72-page journal!
Our favorite underground MC, Testament, joins fellow MC Illogik as Test Their Logik to deliver this hardcore anthem about stealing from the boss:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Alongside less sympathetic STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY coverage, the UK’s Dissident Island radio ran an interview with one representative on their April 2 show[starts at minute 53].
Meanwhile, warnings are now circulating for business owners to beware this April 15, and corporations focusing on “human resources” are also paying attention.
STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY postcards and trifolds are ready now. Email stealfromworkday@gmail.com to receive a box of the postcards; the trifolds are ready to print out and photocopy.
The first printing of the stickers flew; we’ve just printed 8000 more. They’re still available from Wild Nettle Distro: email distro@wildnettle.com. We’re still soliciting photos of STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY materials in action at that address.
Work disorienting you. Enslaves you. Alienates you. You tired. You disgusting. It makes getting up early. I fuck with both loose climbs. I kill that bitch shit coffee and eating makes you fucking evil. You down. It gives you headaches for things that should be crap.
Inspirational Quote of the Week
“The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that 75 percent of all employees steal at least once, and that half of these steal repeatedly. The Chamber also reports that one of every three business failures is the direct result of employee theft. According to the US Department of Commerce, employee dishonesty costs American business in excess of $50 billion annually.” Hire Power Associates
Call for Buildup Actions on March 15
We’re calling for actions a month before STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY to build up awareness of the campaign. Here are some options for what you could do, right now or on March 15:
-Tell a friend or coworker about the campaign
-See that trifolds, posters, and stickers appear everywhere
-Take photos of posters, graffiti, or banner drops
-Announce STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY over the public address system in a retail outlet
-Organize a flash mob in a shopping mall, or—better—an office building or warehouse district: march behind a STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY banner, or leaflet all the customers, or…
-Send an outraged email about STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY to a talk show or news program, or send your local paper a letter to the editor.
These classy black and red “silent agitators” are available for free or donation from Wild Nettle Distro, and will also be included free in orders from CrimethInc. Far East. They look great on a doorframe or coffee maker! To get a big package of them for your community, email distro@wildnettle.com.
Steal Something From Work Day PHOTO CONTEST!
We can’t urge you to steal from your workplace–and you don’t need our encouragement! But we can urge you to take a pocketful of STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK stickers and head to the nearest factory, office, housing development, shopping center, or school.
Keep your eyes open–and when you see a STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY sticker, take a photograph of it! Email your photos to stealfromworkday@gmail.com and they’ll go up in the gallery. If you’re the private sort, start a new email from a public-access computer to send your photos. The person who sends the best photograph wins a gift package–to be mailed after April 15, of course. [Sample photo here.]
A new Facebook group is promoting STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY. Invite everyone you can–let’s dispel the stigma around reclaiming the product of our labor! This is a great place to upload photos and video, and to promote the campaign in general. Be sure to use common sense whenever using social mapping technologies like Facebook.
Steal Something From Work Day GOES INTERNATIONAL!
Thanks to capitalist globalization, it’s never been easier to get exploited by some profiteering corporation–nor to steal from one! Comrades as far away as Spain, Russia, and Bulgaria are getting ready for STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY.
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Calling all angry wage slaves and anarchist subversives! You’re invited to participate in promoting an international day of action, STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY, scheduled for April 15, 2010. Following in the footsteps of Steal Something Day, itself a response to Buy Nothing Day, STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY focuses attention on the motivations behind employee theft and the horizons ahead of it.
STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY is a day of action, but it’s much more than that. The point is not so much to urge people to steal from their workplaces—employees of all ideological stripes already steal from their bosses without need of encouragement—as to raise awareness and promote dialogue about the means and causes of workplace theft. Imagine stickers and posters everywhere rendering the individualized action of workplace theft a topic of collective discussion. Imagine joking references to satirical websites spawning conversations about how coworkers can steal more and better together, and why they are entitled to. Imagine STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY.
This is an opportunity for anarchists to use the networks developed for mass mobilizations and summit protests to ignite class war on the terrain of daily life, where it matters most. Through humor and honesty, we can bring the contradictions present in practically everyone’s lives to the fore, forcing the issues our rulers and managers would rather brush under the rug. One website is already up, and more are on the way, along with videos, stickers, pins, posters, and more. For now, check these out:
Interviews and other inquiries are welcome to stealfromworkday@gmail.com. If you or your organization would like to participate in this campaign, please send in your endorsement, specifying whether you wish for your contact information to appear on the list of participants. Alternately, just make your own material and get it out there!
We’re pleased to present Cienfuegos’ Critique of State Socialism as part of our “From the Archives” series. Originally produced by anarchists in Belfast in 1981, this comic juxtaposes Bakunin‘s critique of statist revolutionary movements with the events that subsequently confirmed it. Please print these out, staple them at the side, and share them far and wide!
Anarchists have long argued that all statist approaches to social change are doomed to authoritarian results. This comic illustrates how Bakunin’s critique of state socialism, composed a century and a half ago, was borne out by the events of the 20th century.
Just as Bakunin’s concerns about power-hungry socialists and communists proved prescient, this comic retains its value today, when new politicians and parties are attempting to co-opt popular movements. We should never forget the hard-learned lessons of the Russian Revolution and the Spanish Civil War: those who would wield state power, whether in the name of the people or any other abstraction, can only be obstacles to liberation, if not actual foes of it.
Readers who lack context for 20th century history may find some passages a little perplexing—who was Oswald Mosley, exactly? But if nothing else, this comic provides points of departure to learn about many of the most fascinating and pivotal events of that era. There are plenty of other sources out there, should you wish to learn more about any of these!
Here are four more accounts from people of color who experienced the disruption at the end of the CrimethInc. convergence in Pittsburgh. Further discussion of the convergence will appear here shortly.
This is a brief statement followed by personal accounts detailing the events of a controversial disruption that happened at the end of the CrimethInc. Convergence in Pittsburgh this July. These texts have been written by some anarchist people of color who participated in the convergence and were present the night of the disruption. There has been some discussion about it on the internet, but we hope to offer people more context from our perspectives about that night. Still, mostly questions remain about how to proceed. Hopefully at least, these accounts will provoke honest, open, humble conversations about all of the issues raised, so that we can figure out how to move forward as radical communities in struggle.
There is so much ground to cover to convey what happened throughout the weeklong convergence. Check back soon for further reportbacks about the rest of the convergence.
- Tonight, the convergence space in the Twin Cities was raided by police officers brandishing a warrant to search for materials that they didn’t find. Afterward, they used the entry as an excuse to harass, invade, and repress the activists gathered there. This post was originally drafted to be a simple introduction to the logistics work done in Minnesota in preparation for the RNC — but as we were preparing it, news of the raid reached us (via Twin Cities Indymedia’s rss feed) and we had to quickly append this note. Read the RNCWC’s Press Statement for more info.
As tension builds in the Twin Cities, we thought it would be fun to share one of our contributions to the logistical organizing of the RNC Welcoming Committee. There should be no doubt that members of the RNCWC in Minneapolis/St. Paul have done an incredible job meeting the larger anarchist community’s enthusiasm for convention resistance. We were happy to pitch in by helping design some of their logistics literature.
We’re not trying to boast, though—we’re making these screen-readable .pdfs available to help those who can’t be there understand as much as they can about what’s going on there while events unfold.
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Froseph is going on tour this summer with the Wild Nettle Bookmobile, an anarchist literature and arts & crafts distributor from Winona, MN and his latest album “Deep Breath.” The usual CrimethInc. wares will be accompanied by harder-to-find arts & crafts projects, CDs, shirts, patches, and zines, along with monsterous amounts of free literature. Also available will be an exciting project put together by the CrimethInc. Gleeful Ludic Throng. It’s a new Hunter/Gatherer Audio Zine with a haunting sound and fancy letterpressed casing.
The purpose of the Deep Breath Tour is very simple: To stimulate the magic and intimacy already present in the communities being visited while teaching and learning with one another to build a stronger network of resistance to dominant culture — this is a big summer and there is a lot to talk about.
We’ve repurposed some of our favorite May Day propaganda to spread the word of the upcoming CrimethInc. Convergence (July 16-20, near Milwaukee, WI). Please, download the new materials and spread them widely—bring them to anarchist social centers and infoshops, on your music and speaking tours: invite everyone!
The convergence will be several days of self-organized workshops, presentations, performances, and other activities where everyone can be a presenter—so bring your own ideas, not to mention camping gear and whatever resources you can share. This year there will be a focus on coordinating for the demonstrations at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, as well as longer-range anarchist endeavors. Internationals will share experiences from overseas. Participation is free, of course, along with literature, food, child care, and camping space; the convergence will be a sober, consent-based space.
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Two years ago we hosted the CrimethInc. Convergence in our town, Winona Minnesota. During that gathering, we attempted to organize Winona’s first Really Really Free Market. Foolishly, we had only promoted this ‘Free Market to the local liberal scene and circulated the news amongst our DIY community. That was a mistake—out of town participants outnumbered locals 20 to 1, our local liberal community didn’t come through, and all the items available at the ‘Free Market would only have appealed to DIY kids anyway. Though we considered that a defeat, we knew we’d try it again sometime.
This blog functions as a clearinghouse for bulletins from participating CrimethInc. cells, enabling readers to keep abreast of their activities and coordinate with them.
