Steal Something from Work Day 2011 is just around the corner—this coming April 15! To prepare for it, you could print out copies of Heist, our full-length Journal of Workplace Reappropriation, to sneak into all the locker rooms and dish pits in your area. You could forward links to the original Steal Something from Work Day video and the impressive Submedia follow-up to all your friends and family, if perhaps not your coworkers. There’s even a Facebook page you could join.

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.

Stories from the Front Lines

Last year, we encouraged people to send in stories about workplace theft. Here are a few of the responses; you can read a great deal more in Heist.

Steal from Work for Education

The high school decided that to save costs, all teachers had to provide their own lined and graph paper for their students. Use of the copy machine is free, however. A single page of graph paper and a double-sided printer equals about 500 pages of paper for the math department. Sometimes making the teacher’s job easier at the cost of the administration is a genuinely philanthropic act.

–Small-Town Educator

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Steal from Work to Stay Hydrated

The man in the suit and his hostile smoldering eyes are on me. I’m standing in the corner of the movie theater lobby. After unloading the delivery, I hold the wooden palette in my hands. I have to bring it out to the dumpster in the ice rain. My hands sting from the splinters and the wind.

I come back in and bring a cold sweat on my forehead. I go for a cup of water.

“No drinking in the lobby,” the manager says.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

Since I can’t drink his tap water in front of the customers, then I’ll just mosey on down to the basement… where I just unloaded three cases of Vitamin Water.

In the basement, all the concessions and supplies are in storage. My hands feel burned and raw as I take the cap off a Vitamin Water.

I can sense the liquid energy hit my teeth, but it only makes my fatigue more vivid. I calculate the math of this steal. Minimum wage plus movie theatre overpriced drinks equals an almost living wage. Except the bosses are disrespectful and the job is dirty. Some of my immigrant friends tell me I’m so American—liking baseball, jeans, and quantifying things. But is financial oppression uniquely American?

I decide to hunt down some paper towels and a box of large garbage bags for my house. Time to get even, but this can’t be the end.

–Aspiring Author Dan Larkins

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Steal from Work to Party

Summer 2000 was the most enjoyable example of employee theft I’ve experienced at the workplace. I worked at an alcohol distribution warehouse where employee theft was common. There was so much theft going on that it had become a point of tension between the owners and workers. They even hired a manager specifically to tackle the problem. This manager was universally despised among all workers.

Some were alcoholics; some stole to sell beer and wine on the street. Still others simply stole to get drunk. In this particular instance, it was a bunch of teenagers barely out of high school looking to get beer for their party. I was working second shift in the truck, shipping; these new guys had been working there only a couple weeks and already had got the drift of how things worked.

If a case of beer had a bottle broken in it, it was no good to ship, so it would go to the breaker pile, from which employees and friends of employees could buy $1 wines and $5 cases of beer. Needless to say, I had a technique for loading cases of beer where the case would drop on a corner and only one beer would break, effectively ruining the case, sending it to the breaker pile. So these teenagers came up to me saying, “We heard you were the guy to talk to if we wanted to get a case of beer from the breaker pile.” I asked them their beer of preference.

About an hour later, sure enough, a case of beer fell, breaking one bottle, ruining the case. I quickly loaded it onto the pallet going to the breaker pile and rushed it over. However, the case had become so soggy that when I lifted it, it fell apart, and a second bottle fell, only to break, ruining the case. I said disappointedly, “Oh man!” and scrambled to gather the unbroken bottles from the ground. Half the workplace came over to see what was going on. The teenagers asked what was wrong, and I replied “It’s ruined.  It isn’t any good now.” Frustrated, I grabbed a bottle, cracked it open, and began to chug it down. The teenagers paused, watching me drink, then grabbed bottles and joined in. After they started, everyone else rushed over, drinking down the “ruined” beer.

I was on my second beer when the anti-theft manager came around the corner and saw the spectacle of all the workers drinking illegally. I looked him in the eye defiantly as I turned my bottle up in my lips, the beverage pouring down my throat in rebellion. He stood there for a second, realized it was a battle he could only lose, and walked away. We laughed about the incident and I promised the teenagers I’d get them a better case as soon as I could.

–Argumentative Midwesterner

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Steal from Work to Stay Focused on the Job

I got out of school and walked the 25 minutes to the Baskin Robbins downtown, passing my coworkers and heading to the back to grab an apron and a visor. As I got dressed, I checked the clock: 2:45, early. I was almost always on time, and always showed up for my shifts. While this may seem like the bare minimum expected of an employee, being where I was supposed to be when I was supposed to be there and not spending whole shifts on the phone shouting at my significant other qualified me as one of the best employees there. This is because my boss hired exclusively high school students. The advantage of that was that she could pay us very little (after nearly three years I was making 75 cents more than when I started); she even had a system for screwing us out of our tips from time to time. She could also mess with our schedules and push us around in all sorts of other ways. The disadvantage was that somebody like me, who was really quite bad at my job, could be a star employee.

I clocked in and went to deal with the line of customers extending out the door. It was like this all summer, every summer, from opening till close: never-ending lines of customers, each more disrespectful than the last. Kids upset that their Shrek cups didn’t look like the one in the picture, parents furious that buying ice cream hadn’t stopped their bratty kids from being upset.

I took the first order, two single scoops in cups. Those cost $1.80 each. I turned to the second register, the one facing away from customers: when you were using it, your back was to the web-cam which my boss watched from her home. I entered in one single scoop. The person paid with a five and I gave them back $1.40, making a mental note that there was now an extra $1.80 in the register. It wasn’t just that I thought that my time was worth more than I was being paid; this was how I kept from getting bored. This was how I kept from getting angry. I would do this over and over again throughout the afternoon and night. As customers verbally abused me and looked at me like I was an idiot, I smiled blankly, lost in the math of how much I could skim off their order. The real beauty of this trick was that even if one night there was no opportune time to swipe the money, few bosses will seriously investigate when there’s too much money in the register.

There were a dozen games like this one could play to stay entertained during a shift. My coworker, Devon, was staying interested by selling weed out of the store. Double cupping single scoops with a bag in between the cups, his customers leaving twenty dollars in a crumpled cup beneath the dumpster in back for him to fetch on his next cigarette break. I had taught him that trick back before I’d figured out my new tricks with mental arithmetic. I had no fear that he would notice what I was doing, as he was fully preoccupied and probably high as well.

Then there was the manager, Natalie, who happened to be my girlfriend and was no doubt in the process of doing the same thing I was. At the end of the night we’d compare figures, usually coming out with about $40 each. My friend, Wes, walked into the store and waited patiently for me to take a break. When I finally met him out back, I had a treat: “I finally figured out how to make the smoothies vegan!” I handed over the smoothie with a giant cup of granola from the toppings bar. This was my favorite part of the job, and of every food service job I’ve worked since: gift-giving. It’s so easy to be generous when you don’t actually own the things you’re giving away.

Natalie stuck her head out the back door: “We’re gonna swap the kids at Nice Slice some milkshakes, what topping do you want?”

I thought for a moment. “Broccoli and onions, and one that’s half no cheese for Wes.” We had relationships all over town. We traded ice cream products to the kids at Nice Slice for pizza, the kids at Starbucks for fancy coffee, and the kids at Bruegger’s for bagels; a couple of my coworkers had even swapped with the guy at the liquor store a couple of times. Food was the most common thing taken, given away, or traded, but it certainly didn’t stop there. Rubber gloves were in demand for those of us with graffiti habits; empty (and sometimes full) whipped cream cans were taken for recreational purposes (if they weren’t consumed on sight); for our friends who lived on their own, toilet paper, cleaning supplies, saran wrap and any other household items were always welcome. The thing about food service is that there’s so much waste that keeping track of supplies is extremely difficult, so the question about everything in the store was “Is this item useful to anyone outside of an ice cream shop?”

Wes thanked me for the food and headed out to write his name on other people’s stuff until I got off at 10:30. When the door had been locked, the last customer served, the floor mopped, the windows wiped, and the register counted—$42.35 for me, and similar adjustments for Natalie—I turned to her: “How many folks are coming over?”

“A lot.”

I opened the freezer. “Vanilla chocolate chip?”

“Sounds good,” she said, grabbing a sleeve of single scoop cups off the shelf beneath the counter. I pulled one of the 5 gallon tubs from the freezer in back and rolled it out the back door before setting the alarm—y’know, to stop burglars.

–Star Employee

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Steal from Work for Downright Dadaism

OK, so there’s your garden-variety stealing from work, which is basically about survival. Of course, it can never go past a certain point, since you also need the job for survival. Fair enough, right?

But there’s another kind of stealing from work for people who can afford to lose their jobs or who just don’t care anymore. People who are so fed up with wage slavery they’re ready to abolish themselves if no one’s gonna abolish it. This kind of stealing from work isn’t about survival, it isn’t about accomplishing goals—so it doesn’t have any built-in limits. It’s a kind of psychological terrorism to make sure the bosses never know what to expect. It doesn’t help the ones who do it—working class revenge almost never does—but it shows the war is still on.

Back in high school, I used to work in the dish room at a college cafeteria. We’d get three thousand, four thousand dirty dishes coming in on the conveyer belt every meal—people getting scalding water in their shoes, skin coming off, the whole nine yards. The only way I could handle it was to grab a dish about every half hour, go out the back door, and sling it against the trash compactor as hard as I could. Maybe that’s not stealing, exactly, but the only thing I wanted to do with anything in that place was destroy it. If we’d taken over our workplace, Argentina-style, I would have voted to burn it to the ground, not to self-manage it or whatever.

That same year, my buddy “Bill” applied at a grocery store. First day on the job the manager shows him around, gives him the routine, and then puts him in the back room to move stock or some shit. There are big boxes of whipped cream there, and as soon as the guy is gone Bill huffs all the whipped cream and passes out. The manager comes back and sees him there, with all the cans and everything. Can you imagine what he must have thought? Like, “I have to run a business with these fuckups?”

A few years later, “Chris” worked for a month behind the register at a gas station and spent the whole time calling Belgium on their land line. He ditched out just before the bill came in. He used to do shit like that a lot.

But my favorite story is when “Zach” worked graveyard at UPS. All night, he would unload boxes off a conveyer belt with this camera pointed right at him. He did that shit for months, getting more and more pissed off. One night he comes in and he’s the only one working in the room, lugging all these boxes. Finally he picks up one of them, carries it over to the camera and sets it down, and cuts it open with his pocketknife. Inside it’s chewing gum, case after case of the stuff. He takes one of them out, opens it up, unwraps a stick of gum, and puts it in his mouth, looking right into the camera the whole time, and starts chewing, real slow. Then he walks out.

–Class Warrior

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.

If You Build It . . .

Early on, the plan was to put a space in our home. Our friends and colleagues have known about our wild dreams for the last two years — that we’d be able to have a social space independent from the rest of our house. Now that we’ve finished most of the work, a community is waiting for us.

We knew from the start that making good on our promise would mean a lot of work and time. It would mean learning how to do things we’d never done before. Perhaps most importantly, it would mean we would have to care enough about the outcome to do things well.

The process was long, though. Visitors passed through to see the space in wholly different stages and shades. Before any work was done the wallpaper was sagging, the plaster dripping, like some paper street soap company.

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The walls were first to go. We had to tear down the old walls, swinging hammers and crowbars. Carpenters call this doing “demo” and it is similar, in many ways, to the anarchist sense of the word. Of course, it wasn’t all smash. We shoveled plaster and lath. We scooped armloads of asbestos vermiculite. It was dusty, disgusting, probably deadly, and it had to be done.

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With the inside of the walls exposed, we had lots of work to do. The framing of the walls had to be restructured. A wall and staircase were moved and supports were installed to brace the buckling structure of the house. We insulated the outside walls to protect the space from our frigid winters. We established a subfloor and a new ceiling to accommodate for a century of sagging and settling. Somehow, we found time between phases to host gatherings like this Really Really Free Market spokescouncil.

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New drywall meant new paint. We argued many nights over the exact colors to be sure that everything would be just so.

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We found used flooring at an extreme discount, and taught ourselves how to properly install it. It took about 45 hours to place all of the pieces and fasten them. Afterwards, we sanded the entire space with a very powerful expandable drum sander that a friend loaned us. Tragedy struck when we botched the seal job, on account of the frigid autumn temperature. And even though most people can’t tell, we will have to buff it down and apply a fourth coat of polyurethane.

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A member of our community happens to be a professional cabinet builder, so we called upon him to build the cabinetry for the infoshop’s kitchen. Amazingly, he manufactured a countertop out of wood pulled from a dumpster.

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Finally, we built the shelves for the infoshop’s library. This was a considerable undertaking, and another task we had never attempted before.

• 20x 8′ pine 1″x12″ boards = $260
• 5 lbs Tan Deckscrews = $18
• Jug of Woodglue = $8
• 5x 8′ pine 2″x2″ boards = $9
• 3x 8′ pine 1″x3″ boards = $10

At just over $300, our shelves store over 1000 books, a collection of anarchist magazines, and a display for anarchist primers and other critical material. Without the made-over interior, a sizable anarchist library can be a public resource for a third the cost of a month’s storefront rent. If you sacrifice your personal living room to it, there are no additional mandatory expenses. This does away with the tiresome obligation to fundraise month-to-month, and allows donations to go directly towards more features and services.

The construction work isn’t over — we still have to build shelves for our free food pantry, make other kitchen installations, trim the space, and build a projector mount and screen. Although, the space is open, welcoming, and usable, however incomplete. Building things from scratch complements the theories in our books — the sense of lasting commitment to anarchist resistance and transformation is embodied in the very process of creating long-term anarchist spaces. This is our propaganda by the deed.

. . . They Will Come

From the beginning, we wanted an explicitly anarchist space, even if we wanted to make it available to a community that was largely outside of the anarchist subculture. By waving this flag, we not only introduce and elaborate anarchist critiques and perspectives, we also can feel safe knowing that a thriving small-town community values and has affinity with anarchists who would otherwise be defined by the misdirected representations — or, and especially, those directed misrepresentaions — made in the newspapers and on the occasional newscast across the country. By flying the black flag, we put a face on the shadowy anarchists so that others can befriend or become them.

To these ends, we drafted the first version of a thorough Owners’ Manual, which details the policies of the space and articulates common anarchist intentions and tendencies. Additionally, this document spells out how to use the space, from the operating the audio system to borrowing books from the library.

It had been said before that it would be difficult to create a completely open space in a home. Although the duplex creates the illusion of separation, this obstacle is not completely overcome by architecture alone. To create neutral space in our home, we have committed ourselves to social communities larger than the anarchist subculture, and to sharing the reins with whomever will take them. In a small midwestern town with a modest anarchist population, this is a necessity. Wherever there are public anarchist spaces, they must connect with larger communities, or the anarchist scene will remain forever in adolescence. In this sense, we’ve created neutral territory on anarchist ground — a victory against subsumption and for communities of resistance.

Communities of Resistance

Today, mainstream society presumes that everyone who disagrees with its logic or authority will plead their grievances through established channels. This tendency is flawed in at least two ways: the first is that it presumes that anyone who doesn’t utilize those channels (write their elected representative, vote, peacefully demonstrate, etc.) has no wide-reaching grievances of their own; second, the established channels form a closed-loop circuit of speech-with-no-action.

For over than one hundred years, anarchists in this country have struggled against the narrow walls of these established channels—sometimes controversially—and because of that society has conceded ideas like the eight-hour workday and the term “birth control.”

If anarchists reject capitalism, hierarchy, gender and sexuality norms, the subordination of other species, eco-devastation, imperialism, and other forms of authoritarianism, what then is the purpose of demonstrating through the established channels? And what exactly would we be demonstrating? It is in this spirit that communities of resistance can inform expressions of our dissent. Each member of such a community is free to act upon their grievances with society in whatever ways they need to.

Communities of resistance are creative places, full of invention, performance, freedom of identity, consensual relationships, and gift-giving. But they can be a destructive force, too; as each member confronts their domination by modern society on their own terms, little pieces of that world crumble away.

A community of resistance is a demonstration of the lives we want—individually, we may be stuck in the real world, but collectively, we inhabit another real world.

— From the Burrow Owners’ Manual.

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The Grand Opening

The night before our grand opening, anarchist comrades arrived from the region to celebrate the beginning of a new anarchist space. After a feast at our grand banquet table, we cleared space and dimmed the lights for music and dancing. One by one, our local friends arrived, too. Electro dance music sounded where only power tools had for a full year prior. It was lively and lovely; but it was solemn, too, when the oscillating rhythm of Test Their Logik’s No World Order filled the Burrow with fury and longing.

Saturday began with an open house. Carload after carload of supporters arrived with trays of treats and boxes of books. People were able to browse the Owners’ Manual, inspect the shelves, and admire the signage for the first time after months of waiting. Approximately 40 people visited the space in this first event of the day.

Later in the evening we threw a potlock. Dozens of dishes from different households, accumulated in the kitchen. Afterwards, some kitchenware was even donated to the space!

The Burrow collective presented a slideshow with before and after photos, and welcomed the crowded room officially to the first evening of the new community library and social center. One of the out-of-town guests courageously stood, and delicately opened a little blue book to recite a passage.

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It was then that famed author and filmmaker Bill Brown took the stage to present a short film on the subject of demolishing old spaces and read adorably idiosyncratic tales of the adventures in daily life. The evening’s events ended with the latest from Froseph, and the jar went around to cover Bill’s bus ticket.

Coming Soon to Living Rooms Everywhere

Now that the long stretch of labor is past us, we are left pondering how many other living rooms could transform this way. How many new types of long-term social spaces can emerge from the anarchist community? In the days following the grand opening, participants returned to their households with Owners’ Manuals. A woman walking a dog through the neighborhood brought us 30 books and kind words, because her friend’s mother had given the space such a warm review. A homeless man had found a copy of the Owners’ Manual at the Catholic Worker and came to share some anti-police poems he had written. In our first week of open hours, we’ve received over 300 book donations: from Žižek and woodworking manuals to The Red Tent and The Monkey Wrench Gang. What dangerous ideas lie on the shelves of your friends and neighbors? More importantly, what must be built for them to synthesize?

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To visit the Burrow with a touring anarchist presentation or on some other adventure, email burrow.booking@gmail.com. Send books, zines, or anarchist outreach materials for distribution to: The Burrow Library, PO Box 765, Winona, MN 55987

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!

We’re sending solidarity and love out to Testament and Illogik, among others, who cannot tour because of the absurd conspiracy charges brought against them in the wake of the G20 protests in Canada.

The Schedule

August 7 – Emergency Tour in Duluth, MN; Conspiracy Tour in Asheville, NC; RRFMs in Frederick, MD, Carrboro, NC, and Naples, FL

August 8 – Conspiracy Tour in Louisville, KY

August 9 – Emergency Tour in West Bend, WI; Conspiracy Tour in Bloomington, IN

August 10 – Emergency Tour in Milwaukee, WI; Conspiracy Tour in St. Louis, MO

August 11 – Conspiracy Tour in Omaha, NE

August 12 – Conspiracy Tour in Denver, CO

August 13 – Western Maryland Zine Fest begins in Frederick, MD; Conspiracy Tour in Salt Lake City, UT

August 14 – Conspiracy Tour in San Francisco, CA; RRFMs in Yellow Springs, OH, Olympia, WA, Lancaster, PA, and Parker, CO;

August 15 – RRFM + Regional Meetup in Winona, MN; Conspiracy Tour in Oakland, CA; RRFM in Olympia, WA

August 16 – Letters Tour in Cincinnati, OH; Conspiracy Tour in Santa Cruz, CA

August 17 – Emergency Tour in Madison, WI; Letters Tour in Chicago, IL;

August 18 – Emergency Tour in Champaign-Urbana, IL; Conspiracy Tour in Portland, OR; Experimental Lecture on Friendship in Carrboro, NC; Letters Tour in Milwaukee, WI

August 19 – Emergency Tour in Carbondale, IL; Conspiracy Tour in Tacoma, WA; Letters Tour in Champaign-Urbana, IL

August 20 – Letters Tour in St. Louis, MO; Emergency Tour in Carbondale, IL; Conspiracy Tour in Seattle, WA

August 21 – Letters Tour in Bloomington, IN; Emergency Tour in Cairo, IL; Conspiracy Tour in Missoula, MT; RRFMs in Fargo, ND, Baltimore, MD; Anarchist Bookfair begins in Seattle, WA

August 23 – Student Occupation Radical Convergence begins in Mankato, MN; Conspiracy Tour in Rock Island, IL

August 25 – Emergency Tour + DSM Mutual Aid in Des Moines, IA

August 26 – Emergency Tour + Conspiracy Tour in Minneapolis, MN

August 27 – Emergency Tour in Morris, MN

August 28 – RRFMs in Richmond, VA, Seattle, WA, Houston, TX; ARA call to action against Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin in Washington, DC. Also in Washington, DC, the DC Summer Anarchist Network is holding a day of workshops, tabling, fun activities, and more at St. Stephen’s Church, 1525 Newton Street Northwest, from 3 to 9 PM. Workshops include collective liberation, feminism, veganism, radical technology, prison abolition, silkscreening, practical anarchism, and TERRIBLE FREEDOM.

August 29 – RRFMs in New York, NY and Austin, TX

Additionally, some groups are planning a whole month of smaller activities. If you’re in South Florida, email S.W.A.M.P for a schedule of events in Broward County. If you’re near Frederick, MD, request a schedule. If your anarchist community has planned a similar month of scheduled events, please submit a contact email for calendar requests.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING THIS AUGUST?

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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You’re being invited to participate in CrimethInc.’s next big experiment: a decentralized convergence.

THE OBJECTIVES

To create and maintain points of entry everywhere. To demonstrate our ability to work together despite internal differences and external obstacles. To invigorate anarchist infrastructure rather than lean on it. To orchestrate a show of force in solidarity with anti-authoritarians all over the world. To inspire curious newcomers without exhausting our vigor. To illuminate the map like a starchart of constellations. To remind ourselves – everyone – that we are everywhere.

THE CHALLENGE

Can anarchists mobilize to achieve these objectives with a tight deadline? In an effort to test and strengthen our potential, we’re inviting anarchists of all stripes and contexts to participate in a widespread and decentralized demonstration of outreach and infrastructure. To get involved, all that is required is that you facilitate or organize one or more events that will occur simultaneously across North America throughout the month of August.

THE PLAN

During August, we make anarchist principles and activity visible and accessible at a scale never before attempted. Consider it an international month of action; the activities can be of any caliber and temperament, and can appear anywhere: in the news, in the library, in the bedroom, in the supermarket, at the Really Really Free Market, on the streets, and so on. Use this as an opportunity to explore and experiment: if you aren’t typically involved in local mutual aid projects, give it a go; if you’ve never gone on a tour before, plan one with your friends; if you write zines, write banners; if you author theory, stage a reading; if you occupy classrooms, teach one for free. Whatever you do, wherever you go, wave the black flag for everyone to see –including, and perhaps especially for, our friends and comrades – and let the world see that we are everywhere.

THE SKELETON

To supplement the individual events we’re inviting people who’d like to teach workshops, perform skits and puppet shows, and share music and videos, to organize tours with their friends. The troupe could be just one person – you – or as many friends and companions as you can pack into a vehicle: whatever is doable and exciting. You could schedule events in a few towns in your region over a weekend, or cross the continent in a month. Your theme could be acute, spreading awareness about specific campaigns against mountain-top removal, evictions, state repression, the tar sands of Canada, the oil spill, oppression, or for mutual aid projects, solidarity with struggles happening here or elsewhere, or obscure theory. Or it could be more broad – raising awareness about anarchism itself.

Decentralized tours could the most appropriate and safe way for the anarchist community to achieve the objectives of the nationwide convergence. Accessible points of entry can emerge in all of the places that anarchists already are. Inspirational experiences can be had with new people. The diversity of anarchist perspectives and positions can be celebrated and affirmed in a way that allows them to work together, allowing us all to hold our commonalities close and activate our solidarity.

We’re pleased to announce that several tours have already signed up as endorsers: The Conspiracy Tour [USA], The Emergency Tour [USA-Midwest], and Testament & Illogick [Canada]. If you already plan on touring with a project during August, you can plug into the strategy with almost no additional effort. If you haven’t planned anything during August, please consider organizing a tour in solidarity with all those who will be organizing events in their hometowns. This goes most especially for everyone who has participated in CrimethInc Convergences in past years, and is able and willing. To help offset the price of fuel, you might consider distributing free literature for donations, and selling books and screenprinted items – if you’re partial, the Literature Distro Kit is one of the cheapest places to start.

In the next few weeks, we’ll be maintaining a list of tour dates both organized within our challenging timeframe and scheduled for the month of August. To add your project to the itinerary, please email experimental.committee@gmail.com as soon as possible, and we can publish your public events as they unfold.

THE NERVE

Drawing from the lessons of Steal Something From Work Day, our work should effectively utilize modern modes of communication and reclaim their functions when necessary.

Twitter – We can use Twitter to announce your events and simultaneously contribute to the volume of the phenomenon. If you use twitter, tag your tweets with #AnarchistsEverywhere to let people locate it in a search of the entire campaign. If we remember that these tweets are public and can function as promotional work, we can contribute to the campaign 140 characters at a time.

YouTube & Vimeo – We can upload short vignettes that promote the campaign and will be relevant for years to come. Our current recommendation is the proliferation of short 45 second clips ending in the slogan “WE ARE EVERYWHERE”. To avoid the alienation that can sometimes be felt when watching high-quality video production, it is encouraged that these clips be shot with cell phones to remind everyone that they can make their own. To contribute your video to the campaign, simply tag it with “AnarchistsEverywhere”.

Social Networking – Share this blog entry, and when more web projects and videos emerge share those too. Announce local events to everyone that you communicate with through that medium. While you’re at it, be mindful of the networks you imply on facebook.

Of course, it is also important that we create signposts in the real world too. Design posters, t-shirts, stencils, stickers, and other folk-art projects and spread them everywhere. See this appendix for helpful slogans.

THE HEART

Of course, each tour will make this campaign exponentially larger, but this August won’t be about tours. More important is what is going on in each place they pass through; if you are part of an active community – even if that community is just you –you can make your town another mark on our constellation map, which is a substantial contribution. In the context of this campaign, doing locally what tours cannot is considerably more effective than an elaborate schedule of tours. You are a part of the everywhere.

Ultimately, this campaign is about doing what we do every day. In working together as a decentralized concert of actions and activities we can collectively establish visibility for our local efforts and global struggles. For inspiration, check out Recipes for Disaster if you haven’t already, or you could plan a workshop, block party, public discussion group – even a bike ride. Put quite simply: if you’ve got a black flag and the will to fly it, this August the world will be watching.

Whatever you do, your contribution will be a part of an experiment to determine our collective power-to and solidarity-with – no amount of participation is too small, and everyone’s efforts will be counted.

THE DETAILS

Please read the arguments for decentralizing the CrimethInc. Convergence and the implications of a successful August 2010. Whether or not your project is a tour complete with a list of dates and venues, or a single event open to the public, it is still valuable and worthwhile to promote as a part of this campaign. Please email details to experimental.committee@gmail.com for help promoting your event.

APPENDIX of SLOGANS {not just a big joke}

In reclaiming and reworking modern marketing and advertisement strategies, we can re-appropriate the elements of our social conditions. Opportunities to do so will be self-evident: wherever capitalist imagery and sentiment competes for our attention. To do so effectively we would benefit from maintaining relative consistency throughout this campaign. This campaign is already built on a concept that both demands participation and refuses to be homogenized by those with particularly concentrated resources; the message is that we are everywhere and therefore the aesthetic will naturally benefit from the wide spectrum of positions from which these messages can emerge. Additionally, we cannot successfully demonstrate our prevalence without communicating things that describe our politics and the widespread nature of our resistance. That these things are true does not mean we cannot create a consistent and circular front of visibility – this can happen by taking advantage of the strategies outlined above in the nerve section and by making prolific use of, and following the various style guides accompanying, the following slogans:

1. { for use wherever possible, and most appropriate }
2. { for use in pre-august promotional material }
3. { anytime you need a clever supplement }

These are appropriate for Anarchists without Adjectives and will work well in combination with any of the others. The use of any other slogans should be supplemented with these for best use of consistency:

1. WE ARE EVERYWHERE
2. WHAT ARE YOU DOING THIS AUGUST?
3. GET ALL OVER THE PLACE
4. { The Circle A }

These Insurrectionist slogans are sure to be attractively confusing:

1. DOING BEING EVERYWHERE
2. PARTY THIS AUGUST
3. MAKE TOTAL ALL OVER THE PLACE

The Anarchist People of Color who aren’t surprised that you assumed they weren’t involved in planning this campaign suggested:

1. NO ONE IS ILLEGAL – WE ARE EVERYWHERE
2. THE BLOCK IS HOT, AUGUST WILL BE HOTTER
3. STOLEN LAND IS ALL OVER THE PLACE

Efficient use of these slogans are sure to aid the Anarcho-Syndicalist platform:

1. AN INJURY SOMEPLACE IS AN INJURY EVERYWHERE
2. TAKE IT OVER THIS AUGUST
3. ONE BIG EVERYWHERE

If we would stop for a minute and listen for a change, the Anarcha-Feminist might recommend:

1. OUR PLACE IS ALL OVER THE PLACE
2. TAKE BACK THE NIGHT THIS AUGUST
3. MOTHERS WORK EVERYWHERE

Anarchist Queers can pack these with their strap-ons and glitter-bombs:

1. WE WANT YOU
2. ANARCHISM IS IN THIS AUGUST
3. BASH BACK EVERYWHERE

And lastly, if someone could tell the Anti-Civ folks about these slogans, that’d be great!

1. AGAINST CAPTIVITY EVERYWHERE
2. BREAK THROUGH THIS AUGUST
3. GROW BACK ALL OVER THE PLACE

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.

Steal Something From Work Day VIDEO!

Our comrades at Submedia have teamed up with Iconoclast Media to produce the above video short, an exciting follow-up to the first STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY video.

Steal Something From Work Day JOURNAL!

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!

Color Reading PDF (4.3MB) : Imposed B&W Printing PDF (2.3MB)

Heist is also available in paper form, including in bulk, from Wild Nettle Distribution.

Steal Something From Work Day ANTHEM!

Our favorite underground MC, Testament, joins fellow MC Illogik as Test Their Logik to deliver this hardcore anthem about stealing from the boss:

Download MP3 Here.

And More Steal Something From Work Day Coverage…

STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY has made it to the other side of the world, in more ways than one. For example, the in-house magazine of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church of Australia and New Zealand promotes it in the “Trends” section of their April issue to 45,000 devout readers around the Pacific rim.

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.

Finally, the STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY Facebook Site is more and more active.

Beyond Stealing from Work

In the final analysis, stealing from our workplaces is not a rebellion against the status quo, but simply another aspect of it. It implies a profound discontent with our conditions, yes, and perhaps a rejection of the ethics of capitalism; but as long as the consequences of that discontent remain individualized and secretive, they will never propel us into a different world. Stealing from work is what we do instead of changing our lives—it treats the symptoms, not the condition. Perhaps it even serves our bosses’ interests—it gives us a pressure valve to blow off steam, and enables us to survive to work another day without a wage increase. Perhaps they figure the costs of it into their business plans because they know our stealing is an inevitable side effect of exploitation—though not one guaranteed to bring exploitation to an end.

On the other hand, the notion that stealing from our employers is not relevant to labor struggle enforces a dichotomy between “legitimate” workplace organizing on the one hand and individual acts of resistance, revenge, and survival on the other. So long as this separation exists, conventional workplace organizing will always be essentially toothless: it will prioritize bureaucracy over initiative, representation over autonomy, appeasement over confrontation, legitimacy in the bosses’ eyes over effectiveness in changing our lives.

What would it look like to go about labor organizing in the same way we go about stealing from our workplaces? First, it would mean focusing on means of resistance that meet our individual needs, starting from what individual workers can do themselves with the support of their comrades. It would mean dispensing with strategies that don’t provide immediate material or emotional benefit to those who utilize them. It would establish togetherness through the process of attempting to seize back the environments we work and live in, rather than building up organizations on the premise of an always-deferred future struggle.

A workforce that organized in this way would be impossible to co-opt or dupe. No boss could threaten it with anything, for its power would derive directly from its own actions, not from compromises that give the bosses hostages or give prominent organizers incentives not to fight. It would be a boss’s worst nightmare—and a union official’s, too.

We might also ask what would it look like to go about stealing from work as if it were a way to try to change the world, rather than simply survive in it. So long as we solve our problems individually, we can only confront them individually as well. Stealing in secret keeps class struggle a private affair—the question is how to make it into a public project that gathers momentum. This shifts the focus from What to How. A small item stolen with the knowledge and support of one’s coworkers is more significant than a huge heist carried out in secret. Stolen goods shared in such a way that they build workers’ collective power are worth more than a high-dollar embezzlement that only benefits one employee, the same way a raise or promotion does.

Remember the story of the hardware store employee who embezzled enough money to get a college degree, only to find himself back behind the cash register afterwards! When it was too late, he wished he’d done something with the money to create a community that could fight against the world of cash registers and college degrees. Even as he broke the laws of his society, he had still accepted its basic values, investing in status that could only advance him on the bosses’ terms. Better we invest ourselves in breaking its values as well as its laws!

Practically everyone steals from work, even if many people won’t admit it, even if some people would like to reserve the privilege of doing so for themselves. Let’s draw this practice out of the shadows in which it takes place, so all the world has to engage with it and its implications in the full light of day. Perhaps workplace theft could be an Achilles heel for capitalism after all: not because it alone is sufficient to abolish wage labor and class society, but because it is the sort of open secret that must remain suppressed to preserve the illusion that everybody believes in and benefits from the present system.

So if you find yourself coveting items in your place of employment, don’t just steal something from work—think about how you could steal everything from it, yourself and your coworkers above all. Stealing from work one thing at a time will take forever, literally—it would be more efficient to just steal the whole world back from work at once. That’s a daunting project, one we could only take on together—but it’s one we can begin right now.

Next April 15, we won’t just pocket a few items—we’ll show up at our workplaces with helmets and torches. Stealing something from work is not enough when work is stealing everything from us.

More STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY Materials!

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.

WORLD DAY OF STEALING FROM EMPLOY

Thanks to the mixed blessings of Google Translate, even the monolingual can enjoy endorsements of STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY from elsewhere in the world, such as Barcelona:

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.

If you want to warn corporate media outlets about Steal Something from Work Day, here are some appropriate venues:

townhall.com

Fox News has a drop-down list under “We love to hear from our viewers,” including email addresses like these:

glennbeck@foxnews.com
Hannity@foxnews.com
Oreilly@foxnews.com
Ontherecord@foxnews.com
Atlarge@foxnews.com

CNN offers a more limited contact list. MSNBC offers more contacts:

Today@NBCUNI.com
Nightly@NBC.com
Dateline@NBCUNI.com
rachel@msnbc.com
countdown@msnbc.com
hardball@msnbc.com
ed.msnbc@nbcuni.com

ABC news offers links to contact forms by show. CBS also offers a series of contact forms.

April 15 Isn’t Just Tax Day Anymore: Small-Town Texans Endorse Steal Something from Work Day

This appeared in a weekly paper in the small town of College Station, Texas:

Before anyone gets up-in-arms, this is not a call for you to steal from work. It’s an article saying that most of you already steal from work. It is a piece attempting to shine a light on why such a large percentage of the workforce breaks the law in such a socially unacceptable manner. Acceptable methods of breaking the law are running red lights and refusing to vaccinate children.

Steal Something from Work Day is a small movement. Its Facebook group has little more than five hundred members [*] and, regardless of how many are anonymous participants are out there, it would be naïve to think of SSWD as a mass movement. People that actually steal from work are the mass movement.

According to the US Chamber of Commerce, over 75 percent of employees steal from their workplace. And National Retail Security shows that almost 50 percent of lost retail merchandise can be traced back to employees. This raises the question:

Are workers in the United States just a bunch of thankless thieves?

CrimethInc. Ex-Workers’ Collective is trying to answer that question by spearheading an awareness movement through this new holiday. While, for some, the goal is to get their own few proverbial miles out of the corporate jet, for others, it is simply a symbol. It is a statement aimed at employers that are stealing from their labor pool by refusing to pay them a fair amount.

Why is this necessary? It’s necessary because many of you have forgotten that labor is a voluntary service and that a job interview is just as much an assessment of the employer as it is of the employee. It’s a mutual relationship that has been bastardized by bare-bones wages in a market where there simply aren’t enough jobs to go around. In a culture that prides itself on soul-sucking, endless labor that makes everyone feel guilty for every day that they don’t produce, produce, produce, employers know that you need the job more than they need to hire you. So, you get paid dirt and treated like eels.

Actually, eels get better treatment. They don’t have to work.

For example, Best Buy, as a whole, makes over $300,000 per employee every year. If one of those employees makes $20,000 a year, working 160 hours a month, they are not only getting less than 10 percent return on their labor, but they’re really only being paid for about ten to twenty minutes of the time they work each day, depending on how many hours they put into each shift. When it is acceptable for someone to work an eight hour shift and get paid for ten minutes of it, it’s pretty obvious that every day at Best Buy is Steal from Your Employees Day. While they’re not the only offenders, they are particularly egregious in their constant hunt for impressionable teenage minds that lack any knowledge of labor rights and legal consent.

[…]

My advice is, if you’re going to steal, aim high. While it might pay a little to get out the door at Wal-Mart with an armful of CDs, it’s just not smart to go to jail for a pittance when the real money is in legal theft. Try becoming a corporate banker. If you get into financial trouble, you can legally hold an entire nation hostage until its citizens pay you ransom. Start a hate group. The amount of money spent to stop gay marriage numbers in the tens of millions in California alone. Go into marketing for civilian defense contractors. You can make money by recruiting the next generation of non-military personnel that can murder without all those pesky laws and rules to stop them.

Take your pick.

[*the number doubled within a few days]

Steal Something From Work Day STICKERS!

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.]

Steal Something From Work Day GOES VIRAL!

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.

Meanwhile, here in the US, employee theft is reclaiming $40 billion from corporate bloodsuckers annually, and increasing by 15% per year. Keep up the good work, America!

-

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:

Frequently Asked Questions
Posters and Other Promotional Materials
Press Office

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!

Click here to download PDF [25 MB].

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!

Account 5

The disruption of the crimethinc convergence is, at the very least, a complicated issue. There are some very legitimate issues raised by the disruptors: the level of permissiveness and lack of internal critique or review surrounding matters of racism, racial privilege, and white supremacy within the anarchist movement for one. On the other hand, there is also the aggressive, impertinent, and peremptory character of the disruption.

The disruptors stated clearly and repeatedly that they were not interested in conversation, negotiation, or mediation; and they issued no demands except the immediate dispersal of everyone present. Even in their own statement after the fact they offer only a rambling account of what they did and why they chose this course of action, which demonstrates a marked lack of clear thinking other than creating controversy and spectacle.

Despite claims that “the convergence was ended effectively and efficiently” the scheduled events resumed the next morning and people slept in the building the next evening. In terms of effect on the surrounding neighborhood the disruption was only effective in creating a brief mob scene in front of the building and an increase in police activity in the middle of the night on day five of a seven-day convergence.

In recent conversations with a friend who considers himself a “member” of APOC since 2003, he explained to me that APOC was always supposed to be people of color organizing in non-authoritarian fashions within their own communities—not engaging white people or taking on the role of “racism police” (his words). The disruptors’ interest in not only having the eviction be a physical confrontation but claiming it as a revolutionary action betrays their purported disinterest in the attention of white anarchists.

I was as torn in the midst of the disruption as I am now wondering whether my voice has a legitimate place or value in this discussion. I have always identified as Nicaraguan, as I have always been aware of the privilege gained from my white skin. This placed me in a peculiar position as individuals walked around the room on the night of the eviction singling others out and yelling in their faces “Why aren’t you leaving?” I wondered whether it was better to aid in deescalating the situation by leaving or to stay on principle in order to demonstrate that the situation was not, in a variety of ways, as black and white as it was being framed. When the question was leveled at me I heard the words “I’m Nicaraguan, does that count?” leave my mouth and I decided to stay.

While I was trying to convince a particularly belligerent white male to leave I was chastised for even engaging him in discussion. I walked over to where people who knew each other, or at the very least were friendly acquaintances, had been forced on to either side of an argument. Initially the disruptors were using grandiose language claiming to be the voice of APOC, the entire neighborhood, and all gentrified neighborhoods; essentially representing a lot more than they probably had agency to discuss. When challenged about their right to representation they would fall back on the explanation of “autonomy” whenever they felt backed in to a corner. This clearly illustrated the absence of a logical foundation for the “action.” At this point I left feeling completely frustrated and helpless to improve the situation.

The next day there was a meeting for people to come and discuss what had happened. The meeting, though necessary, was frustrating for a variety of reasons. Most of the white people who had made the most egregiously offensive statements had opted not to attend the meeting, and missed the discussions and explanations of why those comments had been hurtful. A lot of time was spent painstakingly creating a record of what had happened and only an hour at the end was spent with an eye to the future.

I remain very upset and angered by defensive racist comments made during the eviction. I should have known better than to have trusted the level of understanding of privilege professed by some of the white people present. If anything can be gained from this experience it is the knowledge that as an aspiring counterculture we are much further behind in the depth of our discussion of racism (and many other forms of oppression) than is acceptable. We’re left with a lot of the same problems that radical communities have been attempting to address for decades. How can we foster a community that enables people to comfortably address instances of racism in a productive manner? How can we create and demand accountability for institutions as well as individuals?

Situations like these are unfortunate because they force many people to choose sides when they would rather not. There are clear and critical ways of engaging with each other around issues of racism, sexism, heteronormativity, etc. This was not one of them. Hopefully we can avoid the steps backward in all directions that our current situation invites. Hopefully we can have discussion instead of division.

- welch
-

Account 6

It took me awhile to put this together, but here is my account and response:

APOC Caucus

I attended the caucus this year, and had been a part of the APOC caucuses at both the Athens ’07 and the Milwaukee ’08 CrimethInc. Convergence. Like many of the organizing volunteers that year, I had been distracted from the convergence by dramatic dynamics in my personal life and the anxiety of having such a large gathering in a city. I had originally made the call for an APOC caucus, and put it on the workshop schedule. Sistah Souljah approached me about changing the time to something that would work better for their schedule, and I agreed. They moved it to the end of the day on Friday.

When the time came around for the caucus, I was overcome with all of the things I wanted to talk about. I was looking forward to the opportunity to discuss things with my peers-of-color, and had rushed to eat some food before dinner, should the discussion run late. I missed the first few minutes of the meeting because of that, and had missed the agenda discussion. When I arrived at the circle with a companion and fellow organizer, the group was sitting in a circle listening to Otto read a statement from the gentrification workshop that had gone on earlier in the convergence. After they were done, a report of the entire discussion was passed around, each member of the caucus was expected to read part of the dialogue. Essentially, we reenacted the conversation that happened during the gentrification workshop. Every time someone read something that someone had said that had implications of socialized racism, a few members of the caucus would scoff or chuckle. At first, I felt like people were taking the opportunity to decompress, but I slowly began to feel as if certain members of the circle were trying to stimulate this sort of response. I was frustrated that we were spending so much time accelerating our frustration with the whiteness of the space, and no time discussing how it was affecting us and especially take advantage of having a safe place to do that within the caucus. I tried to take a time out from the reading to ask if everyone wanted to use this time to discuss this. Otto shook their head assertively, saying that the group had already come to that decision. I looked around and didn’t see anyone that looked particularly excited about reading Otto’s gentrification notes for the entire caucus, and shortly thereafter people started sharing their experience. Several people broke down to explain how isolating the space had been. Otto attempted to characterize CrimethInc. as a force of white supremacy in the way they depicted the Rolling Thunder project. I’m assuming that they didn’t know that two APOCers in the circle work on that project regularly. My opportunity to open up and discuss things I had been holding on to for months, waiting for this particular group of friends and acquaintances to ask for help sorting out things that had been going on for me in my life as an anarchist. The caucus broke for dinner. I didn’t return to the second half, I didn’t feel like I had the space to make proposals to the agenda. It was clear that some of the APOCers present had an agenda of their own.

The Disruption

Screaming began in the back of the room. It was timely; the open-mic style Cabaret had just ended its roster and the floor was opened for anyone who wanted the space. My ears heard the language from the open letter, and I knew it had something to do with the APOC caucus that had happened earlier in the day. When I turned to look at who was doing all the screaming, my heart sunk. Thinking it was a skit prepared by some of the tearful APOC caucus-goers, I thought to myself: “Finally! Something prepared and practiced to call this shit out.” Then I saw Jordan.

I had come to appreciate Jordan’s attitude during APOC conversations that we had shared and caucused. Last year, In Milwaukee, Jordan swore to never attend another CrimethInc. Convergence, or anything else organized by white, able-bodied, cis-gendered, males again. I respected Jordan’s decision then, and felt empowered knowing that one could continue to be an anarchist and not have to be subjected to the socializations and out-right oppression that linger and evolve in anarchist spaces. I felt empowered knowing that one could do that; when they lost their patience, if it hurt them to go on forgiving ignorance and oppression, if they were hurt irreconcilably—knowing that there was a back door I could jump through should the time come when I just couldn’t take it anymore, when what I perceive as being good reasons to organize with other anarchists and attempt to work out our differences and privileges in the process aren’t worth the isolation of experience, the loneliness. Most of all, I took strength in knowing that I could walk away from that shallow space forever and be well-adjusted, and find an environment where people understood the privileges they had and didn’t have, and which ones I have and don’t have and work with them. When I saw Jordan screaming: “GET THE FUCK OUT, THIS IS NOT A JOKE. WE DON’T WANT YOU HERE!” in their full-bodied wind suit and sunglasses and gloves, I knew the myth of the “well-adjusted” abstinence jordan spoke of was gone. It was only a year after I heard that oath, and there they were, unable to move on. Still a stuck, bitter reactionary.

I looked around at people’s faces – white faces – confused and uncomfortable. I felt like there was a spotlight on me. Every time the disruptors shouted “APOC”, I felt like I was somehow implicated in the action for announcing the APOC caucus earlier that week, for returning from it earlier that day frustrated and confiding in my friends about it. So I stood up and left the room. I think that I was one of the first people to leave the room—it only took me about 30 seconds to piece everything together.

I left the room. I knew that they were there to carry something out, whatever it was, and I didn’t want to be responsible for ending it.

I pulled myself together about 20 minutes later and walked back into the building to see chaos. Personal items were scattered everywhere, medicine bottles rolling on the floor. I walked past people crying, drinking rescue remedy out of the bottle. The space looked like it had been raided. When I entered the main hall, where the disruption began, I could see that the same rhetoric was being presented. Nothing had changed since I had left besides the atmosphere of the space. I walked around and asked the people that I knew who were involved in the action why they felt like an eviction was direct action, why they hadn’t asked me to participate, whether or not they had considered how their action was affecting the APOC present and participating in the convergence, whether or not they had considered their action as a breach of my consent—as they hadn’t included me because they knew I would have had reservations; is that really how anarchists should deal with the way their actions affect their comrades? I didn’t get satisfying answers to any of my questions.

A physical confrontation followed—admittedly paraphrasing here, an exchange of words between opposing APOCers along the lines of: “Some of the white people you’re evicting are my friends and family, you don’t have my permission to kick them out. ” // “We’re at war, x––, we want them out, and we’re not asking.” // “If you’re at war with my family, you’re at war with me.” \\ which initiated a push-of-war from either side of the door. Personally, I wasn’t interested in a physical conflict. As a sizeable man of color, I have been wrestling with the space I physically take up for a long time, especially in recent months, which was in fact one of the issues I had been intending to find counsel through the convergence’s APOC caucus. I don’t feel comfortable using my body, more my strength, to express my will. This has seemed like a white-privilege-discussion blind-spot for me in the past. I wish the white people around me could understand what its like to be a tall, strong, brown-skinned male in this world—especially in the anarchist community—and what it feels like to be an intimidating presence in the eyes of the white people around me. I can feel it, and the fact that it’s threatening really affects my sense of self, my confidence in my body. This is what made it particularly difficult for me to participate in the back and forth pushing that followed. Knowing that had I wanted to, I’d have been able to physically remove each of them using whichever intensity of force of violence I desired. It strikes me as ironic, thinking back on it now, that I had been looking to my fellow anarchists of color for supportive conversation earlier that day only to be shut out by the opportunistic use of legitimate disillusionment during the APOC caucus and that I was now wrestling with those issues alone, along side of my friends, while physically wrestling with those who I had hoped would be most helpful.

I was pushing the door against the disruptors only because people who I cared about, who I knew cared for me, felt so strongly that the disruptors needed to be forcibly removed. I wanted the disruptors to express some concern for my feelings, to incorporate my needs into their action enough so that we could feel like we were confronting white supremacy together. Eventually, I grew impatient with the “We’re not here to discuss anything” // “This is not a dialogue.” \\ rhetoric expressed by my former comrades to even the other people of color present. So I joined in the pushing. This was an opening experience for me. It felt good to draw a line—another admission is that as a person of color in a predominantly white community and circle of friends, I rarely draw such line—and feel safe in doing so. It also felt powerful to be checking in with the people I was pushing against—it followed the logic of “agreeing to disagree” in that I was able to say things like “I’m going to push the door now, really hard, and it might hurt.” It felt empowering to allow the disruptors an opportunity to brace themselves and consider their convictions rather than indulging in a reactionary physical confrontation. When the “White Allies” Marvel and Sand joined in, I lost my sense of productive conflict. They had been making me uncomfortable all convergence long with their obliviousness to the real struggles facing anarchist people of color. The couple had spent the entire convergence guilt tripping the mass of white folks with shallow rhetoric about gentrification and privilege, but never once helped the organizers communicate the policy information we had put together to lessen our impact on the community. It became clear what they were really there to do when they put their hands on the door opposite to me and pushed—they were agitators, doing the bidding of whichever force they felt redeemed their white mark of guilt. At some point it would be worthwhile to analyze how these two white folks were used by the agenda of the disruptors, and whether that is the model role the disruptors propose all “White Allies” play, if so, White Allies be warned.

This was the point at which I picked up a sheet of 4×8 plywood and rushed the disruptors. I wanted to smear them out of the space with the broad piece of lumber, to attack in a way that wouldn’t be striking. Of course, I had been thinking emotionally rather than logically and instead of reducing the engagement, it escalated. Later during this conflict I redislocated my right shoulder, and pulled a muscle in my left. I would be sore for the following week.

When the conflict finally ended hours later, the remaining people of color tried to have a conversation. During that conversation only two of the disruptors that had participated in the convergence expressed any remorse for the severity of the action. The others listed all the criticisms typical of the anti-CrimethInc. platform: too lifestylist, too white, drop out culture isn’t relevant to people of color, the project is too exclusive, dumpster diving is privileged, etc. As someone who has, on frequent occasion, contributed to CrimethInc. projects, I’ve never been particularly impressed by those who judge the entire project on their dislike of the book Evasion. I don’t feed myself shoplifting or dumpster diving, I’ve never hopped a train, I’ve worked as a carpenter for years, I dropped out of high school and can still contribute writing to the project, I responded to a call for volunteers and it was literally that easy to become a part of the group. All this is to say: the common critiques of the project have never spoken to me. They seem completely contrary to my experience. I knew many of the people at the convergence didn’t fall into this narrow view of CrimethInc., many of them my close friends; I was saddened to learn that the reason for this premeditated act was based mostly on these political disputes. The few who were recruited to participate in the disruption were misled by the ringleaders. I heard that Jordan said something to the effect of: “I’ve been searching for allies in the anarchist community for years and I haven’t found them here, but I’ve found them elsewhere.”

This begs two questions. Firstly, where has Jordan been for those years? How have they not found any allies? I live in a small community with only a few anarchist friends, I rarely travel or network within the anarchist scene and I’ve met dozens of amazing, supportive anarchists who are white. Secondly, where is elsewhere? I’m an anarchist partly because I’m convinced that anarchism offers the most proactive self-determined approach to overthrowing oppression. Socialism, Communism, Nationalism, none of these approaches seem at all appealing—I’m not saying that as a politician defaming opposing parties, I’m speaking as an individual seeking tangible paths and ways of organizing my life to better find my way out of modern life under capitalism and western civilization. I’m not convinced there is an elsewhere, not to say anarchists are the only allies—but if not anarchists…? I’m worried about Jordan’s intentions and direction.

Two of the most problematic things about this event for me involved the appropriation and presumption of locals. First, the presumption that our neighbors during the convergence were angry that we were there, identified us as part of the gentrifying force, or felt displaced by our presence. This was flat-out untrue in my experience. I had arrived days before the convergence began to offer assistance in making last minute preparations. Over those days and those of the convergence proper, I participated in many conversations with locals. Most of them were casual well-wishes. Some of them were discussions about what was going on in the building, which they seemed at the very least indifferent to. I had two conflicts, if you can call them that, out of maybe 30 interactions. The first was with an older black woman who asked us not to park in front of her house so her daughter could have a parking space when she returned from work. I apologized to her for taking up the space, and apologized about the space the convergence was taking up as a whole. She thanked me for the apology, and insisted that all she cared about was the parking space. The second was the night of the confrontation. I was dazed, sweaty, and upset, and I came down from the second floor to see people gathered outside planning the rest of the evening. A black man maybe a few years older than me was making small talk with the people hanging outside. He could see that I was upset and offered me a nod. I nodded back. He extended his hand for a shake. In my delirium—having just given long, heartfelt hugs and embraces to my friends after the disruption—I held his hand in mine, in a tight, folded grip, for a little too long. It was a humorous cultural faux pas. “Ey man, don’t be squeezing my hand like that,” he thought that I was making a pass at him. I explained that I had just been fighting with former friends, and was a little out of it, and he accepted that. When he continued talking to me, he outright refused to continue the conversation until I “jumped in some water.” I was stinky and sweaty and off-putting to him. I explained that I agreed that it was probably time for a shower. Even after our embarrassing handshake misunderstanding, and being sweaty and dirty and barefooted, he offered to take me to his brothers house to get showered up. I could tell that he meant it. Of all my interactions with people up until the disruption, these are the only two that suggested any kind of conflict with the neighborhood. I’m not dismissing that we had a tough impact on the neighborhood, just that the people of the neighborhood would need seven brave black-clad vanguards to step forward and confront the convergence, if they really wanted us out. In 2005, not more than 250 miles away, over 600 black and brown folks rioted in Toledo to intervene in a National Socialist Movement/white power demonstration and ended up setting fire to the bar frequented by local politicians and police. If the kind of anger and resentment the disruptors felt was really shared by the neighborhood, it seems likely that CrimethInc. would have been targeted similarly. It is disgusting that the disruptors tokenized the Garfield community the way it did.

My second major issue with the legitimization of the action was the way participants claimed it for APOC, specifically Pittsburgh APOC. During the POC discussion after the disruption, the disruptors began by proudly claiming that the action was called for nationally. Then regionally. Then finally, they retreated to say that Pittsburgh APOC called for the action. When I asked if I could hold Pittsburgh APOC accountable for the action, they said yes. But afterward they insisted that they were carrying out their autonomous will. I saw this pattern as a reflection of the poor communication they had with each other about the intentions and legitimacy of their motives. Regardless, admitting that didn’t excuse the fact that the disruptors mislead the convergence attendees about the support (read: lack there of) from the larger APOC community. They only admitted that the action wasn’t APOC sponsored, but led by individual autonomist people of color after all of the white people had left. It was clear to me that only two of the group really understood that the action was meant as a political attack against CrimethInc., not as a self-defensive action of people of color present at the convergence. I was satisfied with the answer they gave me about Pittsburgh APOC, and I intended to bring my complaints to them, as I was convinced further conversation with the disruptors would be fruitless. I came down from the upstairs where a local APOCista was waiting. They saw in my eyes that I was about to ask a question that had been asked many times already that night: “Do you have the contact for the Pittsburgh APOC?” her answer: “There is no Pittsburgh APOC, we haven’t had meetings in months.” Some part of me knew that this had been true all along. The puzzle pieces fit together—Otto had been the token local who the entire disrupting team could use to validate their action. Otto spoke for Pittsburgh APOC because there was none. The disruptors marginalized APOC by claiming it as an APOC action, for the remainder of the convergence most people who had been present for the action referred to the disruptors as “APOC”—APOC this, APOC that. “If APOC believes X then how can I support them?” “APOC wants all white people to go back to Europe.” This was perhaps the least productive repercussion of the action. In the days following, calls were made to APOCers all around the country, and I kept hearing that there was very little support for the disruption in the way that it occurred. I’d like to request that APOCers join me in maintaining the distance between APOC as a network and project and the “APOC” claimed by the disruptors by public censure of the “Smack a White Boy 2″ action. We need to hold the distinction or risk being pushed into further marginalization and isolation.
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Account 7

I don’t know what my account will contribute, as I feel as though much of what I am about to describe has already been documented by other ‘APOC against the action’. So I will keep it short and try not to repeat too much of what has already been said.

The 2009 Crimethinc. Convergence was the 3rd consecutive convergence I participated in. I arrived Thursday night into an environment I felt less than comfortable in. The first conversations I overheard were arguments about race and how ‘we’re all the same on the inside’ and that ‘race shouldn’t matter,’ by a very aggressive and dominant white male. This first impression of this years convergence made me feel quite alienated. Unlike previous convergences where I felt liberated and welcomed when I arrived, all I felt was anxiety, and incredible amounts of tension in the atmosphere in Pittsburgh. This was enough to make me decide to sleep in the car rather than in the convergence space.

Friday morning I started preparing my workshop about the 2010 Olympics and indigenous and anarchist resistance to it, which I planned on presenting on Saturday. While doing this and burning copies of my CD for my performance at the ‘Anarchist Dance Party’, which was also happening the following day I was approached by one of the disrupters who introduced themself as “Kill Whitey” and told me that they were supposed to be hosting a workshop on ‘anti-racism’ which nobody had showed up to. I thought it was pretty funny to see somebody who has given themself a name that advocates killing somebody because of their skin color, hosting a workshop on ‘anti-racism.’ In any case, we talked about gentrification, white privilege, and the “Smack A White Boy” ANSWER (distr)action. “Kill Whitey” told me they had participated in that action, and I asked how it went down and if they thought it was successful. I made no secret of my reluctance to support this action until I could learn more about what exactly went down and what the consequences of this action were. “Kill Whitey” agreed that “Smack A White Boy pt 1″ went over most people’s heads and that most of those who were ‘smacked’ had no understanding of the motivations or goals of this action, and still don’t have a clue. This confirmed my feeling that this was confrontation for confrontation’s sake.

After this we both walked to the APOC caucus, at which many important issues were brought up, including gentrification, unchecked white privilege, white dominance in the anarchist scene (crimethinc. in particular), and the lack of safe space and recognition of POC needs, but “smack a white boy pt. 2″ was never brought up for discussion, leaving many people of color in the dark about the pre-meditated attack that night.

That night, as the cabaret ended, and 6-8 folks stormed into the room yelling ‘get the fuck out of pittsburgh’, and ‘go back to europe’, while throwing people’s bags around and making people cry, I immediately knew lines were being drawn and which side I was on. This was not a performative disruption, this wasn’t calling people out, this wasn’t forcing dialogue about issues, it was a repeat of “Smack a White Boy”, and I wanted no part in it. I wanted it to stop.

I knew that most of the disrupters were from out of town, so their claim to be representing the neighborhood we were gentrifying fell on deaf ears. And their claims to be acting on behalf of people of color didn’t reach me either as I saw more people of color standing up to their senseless tactics than standing with them.

When the time came for physical confrontation between them and the APOC folks who disagreed with them I was ready. They declared war on Crimethinc. They didn’t care what the consequences of their actions would be. They didn’t give a fuck about kicking people out onto the street in an unfamiliar city in the middle of the night. They didn’t care who they hurt. They attacked people for being white who didn’t identify as being white. They attacked women, they attacked trans people, they attacked everyone in that room. They attacked other people of color and called them ‘race traitors’ who were siding with their colonizers.

They told all white people to leave, but told their ‘white allies’ to stay to back them up. One of these ‘white allies’ (they’re no allies of mine) punched me in the face after trying to physically pull me away from the door where I and other people of color were attempting to push the disrupters out. So I guess it’s OK for the disrupters to have their white friends back them up but not us?

The only feeling I had at this moment was “How fucking dare you! How dare you speak on behalf of POC. How fucking dare you speak on behalf of this neighborhood that none of you are from. How fucking dare you alienate us even more because we don’t agree with your tactics.”

After all the white people left, including their ‘allies’ we had a short meeting, and I asked if they took other people of color into consideration when doing this action. They obviously didn’t and made no attempt to claim they took us into consideration. We asked if we could hold APOC, Philly APOC, or Pittsburgh APOC accountable for this action but then they fell back behind the safety of having ‘acted autonomously as individuals.’ I remember thinking ‘what fucking cowards.’

Why not attack the real forces of gentrification while you’re in town? Why not rally us to attack banks, real estate companies, condo developments, and individuals who are profiting from the gentrification in Pittsburgh? Why prioritize attacking those who would back you up in the real struggle?

I confronted them about how much they had fucked me over. I explained that I had put lots of resources into coming down here in order to promote resistance to the 2010 Olympics, which is a massive force of gentrification and colonization. Their response was and that I need not worry, that ‘APOC’ would handle it, and that white anarchists are useless and that I shouldn’t try to find support or organize with them.

This was enough for me to disengage. I had nothing left to say. Their action personally fucked me over, alienated me, hurt my friends, and did serious damage to anarchist organizing.

That night I slept in the convergence space with real comrades, both white and POC. The next morning the convergence went on as planned, although numbers had been cut in half. Still there were nearly 100 people who stayed until Sunday when it was scheduled to end. We were not evicted, we were not intimidated into leaving Pittsburgh, we will not grant you that sense of accomplishment. Once again, as was the case with “smack a white boy pt. 1″ you accomplished nothing.

P.S. You should consider smacking a cop, politician, or banker instead of anarchists and anti-war activists next time you decide to “Smack a Whiteboy.”

-Testament
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Account 8

Bad Move – Alternative Reportback from the ‘Smack a White Boy Part 2’ Attempted Eviction of the Crimethinc Convergence.

If I was an infiltrator I would have been laughing my brains out. I mean to a cop, what could be better? An anarchist conference attacked not by cops, not by white supremacists, but by other anarchists. A potential threat to the system divided and debilitated, not by race as the aggressors claimed, but by the egos of a few individuals.

What I experienced at the crimethinc convergence when a handful of people connected through Anarchist People of Color (APOC) interrupted and declared war, literally, on convergence attendees, was certainly the most obnoxious and absurd thing I’ve ever seen anyone do in the name of anti-oppression. The way I saw these individuals act – people I’d considered comrades moments before – was a manner of utter disrespect I would consider tactically appropriate toward neo-Nazis, maybe toward a board meeting of Lockheed-Martin, but never for anyone who I would consider a potential comrade, let alone an anarchist.

But I guess that was their point wasn’t it? This was an explicit act of anti-solidarity. During their so called action the disruptors repeatedly stated that they were “past” dialogue with white people. Communication with white people would now consist of belligerent yelling of hate-filled remarks in a relationship more akin to collies and their sheep herds than anarchists to their fellow humans.

With their declaration that they were beyond dialogue with whites they defined the terms of the confrontation, and compelled me to personal involvement as a person of color. Soon I was neck deep in an ugly confrontation with a few of the most obnoxious self-proclaimed anarchists I’ve ever dealt with. It saddens me that I am posting this for a number of reasons, the least of which is not giving those eyes in law enforcement a few extra minutes of bonus entertainment, but when a group of anarchists start acting completely below decency to other people in the name of anti-oppression, their mentality must be confronted.

Now, the grievance stated by the disruptors as the rationale for their actions was that the convergence furthered gentrification. This is a legitimate compliant, and I will address the issue a little further on in this article, but first I would like to hand back a few grievances I have with the disruptors and the stunt they pulled, sectioned conveniently for their response.

Please be clear on the following points when looking at this article:

1. I am speaking only for myself here, an autonomous Anarchist Person of Color who was present at the confrontation. However, I am not speaking only from my experience at the confrontation. I’ve known one of these individuals for well over a year, and I’ve had disturbing whiffs of their extremist mentality itching my nostrils for a while now. Before recently, I’ve tried to explain these qualms away to myself, giving them the benefit of the doubt because I respected them as a comrade and a friend. Now I feel there’s no choice but to confront their mentality head on.

2. These people did not represent APOC! These were a handful of self-declared autonomous individuals. I’ve attended a number of APOC caucuses and know this is not the dominant mentality. I’ll also note that in this “action”, it was two people really, who did the most talking (yelling). A third person was pretty vocal and obnoxious, but almost reticent in comparison with the loudest two, and three other folks largely refrained from yelling, mostly contributing their physical presence. Out of these three I believe at least two of them had some very mixed feelings about what they had gotten themselves into, and because of this I feel almost unfair for referring to the six of them together as “the disruptors.” On the other hand, if they were really autonomous as was claimed, they could have at any time called out any of the moronic things their cohorts said. If you two are reading this, read: better late than never.

3. Although you will hear complaints of borderline acts of violence from both sides, I think pretty much everyone would agree, there was no actual fighting. Explicit threats like “Get the fuck out, we’re not pacifists!” and some scuffle, like pushing and pulling, but none of them intending to knock people off balance or physically injure anyone. We even drank water from the same jug in the midst of arguing. Isn’t that nice?

4. This is by no means a comprehensive analysis of the attempted “eviction”s reprehensible qualities. In respect to the reader’s intelligence I will be pointing out only a few things which may not be quite as completely obvious to every single person reading this. Hopefully this will provoke discussion and be a positive effect of this most negatively minded aggression.

And now…

My Unhappy Grieviances With the “Smack a White Boy” Disruptors and Their Actions.

1. Cowardice

In the report back from the first “Smack a White Boy” “action” last March, in which autonomous APOC disrupted a large anti-war protest, writing off the anti-war movement in the U.S. as defunct by internal white supremacy, the writer/s warned of “even more ambitious direct action in the future”. Apparently these writers idea of “more ambitious” is attacking people closer in social proximity to themselves, and further from the apparatus of power where they should really be focusing their energy.

I don’t deny that it takes a special kind of audacity to walk into a room of over a hundred people trying to have a good time, and in the dead of seriousness, begin screaming your head off at them, but I do not call this brave. In truth, the crimethinc. convergence was one of the easiest and softest targets for a stunt of this kind: they knew it was an explicitly anarchist space so they wouldn’t get in trouble with the cops, they knew from first hand interaction that most of the people at convergences are generally nice folk and that they would not risk major physical injury, and they knew that as white anarchists who considered themselves anti-racist, most whites at the convergence could be easily intimidated by the threat of being called racist.

That’s just the truth.

2. Fatal Presumptuousness

Throughout the disruption, and particularly at first, the disruptors clearly implied that they represented people of color at large, and that they somehow spoke for the neighborhood. They later denied this when called on it, pointing out they never explicitly said “we speak for people of color”, “we speak for the neighborhood” – but the message was clear enough. At one point one of them insinuated to us POC who resisted them as they tried throwing people’s bags out the ballroom – with a surreal indignity – that we were somehow betraying them as people of color by resisting them. For the record none of the disruptors were native to Pittsburgh, let alone the neighborhood – but that didn’t stop them from yelling “Get the fuck out of Pittsburgh!” repeatedly as a chief demand. This kind of presumptuousness about their mandate as individual people of color is dangerously unaccountable, and in this case, absurdly self-serving. When somebody pointed out to one of the disruptors that their demand was unrealistic – it being around one o’clock at night and impossible to hitchhike, a disruptor said they could all head out, packs in hand, to the train yard.

A word really needs to be said now about the APOC acronym and its potential for insinuating more than it means. The acronym APOC, obviously, is not owned by anyone, and any anarchist person of color can take up the banner. This is a good way for Anarchist POC to consolidate with each other; also as individuals and small groups, the acronym APOC brings an additional clout to our statements, especially toward white anarchists. This is terrific when used by responsible individuals; the problem comes when an individual or group, pushing their own agenda, uses APOC coercively. If you oppose a certain APOC individual for example, you have to be very careful in how you declare it, especially if you’re white. Your opposition to this one APOC could be taken as opposition to Anarchist People of Color in its wider sense, which could then be taken as opposition to anarchist people of color in general.

In the case with the disruptors – and we have to keep calling them that, there’s no other name to call them by – they haven’t identified as anything other than autonomous APOCers, so those non POC who oppose them have to be super extra special careful not to refer to them as APOC. It’s easy for them to sound kind of racist if they do.

Of course, by pulling this stunt, the disruptors have created a rift within APOC, so hopefully this won’t be an issue in the future.

3. Bufoonery

The disruptors are particularly lucky crimethinc had a strict policy against cameras and recording without consent. A video or audio recording of the event would have entirely spoken for itself. You’d think at such a public stunt like this, one would put a bit more thought into her talking points, or, screaming points; instead they came with a bunch of slogans about getting your white faces the fuck out of Pittsburg, burying any potential for real communication under their rage, while the classic “Go back to Europe!” was repeated not once, not twice, but like, a lot.

4. Dogmatic Fanaticism

This entire stunt reeked of a kind of rigid one-sided thinking more appropriate to the Cult Of The Inverse Hierarchy or Ann Coulter Fan Club, than a group of supposedly independently thinking radicals. Of course, some of them would say similar things about me, and did, pronouncing that I must have been brainwashed by whites for opposing their stunt – then calling me a race traitor on top of it. Now personally I find the term race traitor to be particularly unforgivable among the genres of racial insults, because it’s not something that flies out of your mouth when you’re mad and stupid: you actually have to think about it before you say it. Race traitor. To anyone reading this who doesn’t already get why the concept of Race Traitor is so oxymoronic, simply think about it: to commit treason you must first give oath to the thing you are committing treason against (it’s called free will)… then you betray it; that’s what traitor means. To call someone a traitor based on how they were born is utter dogmatic ignorance. I was born with Filipino blood so I choose what that means for me, and to me it does not mean spraying Roundup on the stalks of interracial solidarity that countless people of all colors work long and hard to develop.

Response note: in their “Smack A White Boy Part Two” report back, the disruptors said this about their use of the term: “there are rumors afloat that the term “race traitor” was used towards mixed people and others who weren’t participating. this is untrue. the word was used towards specific individuals and their personal history of posturing a role in upholding, defending, and ultimately furthering white supremacy. for instance, by the spreading the idea that it is because we are not doing enough, that it is our fault that we are oppressed.” I don’t even know what to say to this except that I’ve NEVER said anything like that, and the person who called me that name had never met me before that night.

It is absurd to think that people should agree with you, or have any obligation to sympathize with your hateful stunts, based on the fact that they are people of color.

5. Rationalizing Cruel and Indecent Acts in the Name of Anti-Oppression

I also want to express this bizarre sense if irony I felt in the presence of people who could scream into other people’s crying faces, who could blatantly violate other human beings consent, and still felt qualified to scream-lecture people on any perceived lapses in anti-oppressive etiquette, or use of privilege, at the same time.

This just doesn’t make sense to me. If you really need to be a huge ginormous asshole, don’t castigate people for farting!

Favorite example: At one point nearing the end of the conflict when the disruptors were getting ready to file back in their car and ride back to Philly, one of the two most vocal of them saw fit to scream “Put your shirt on!” to a white guy about a hundred feet away, proceeding to call him both sexist AND racist for having exposed nipples in an “all black” neighborhood. Goodness gracious! Maybe if you’re so full throttle eager to scream at anyone who disagrees with you for anything having to do with privilege, that you can’t even get your ists straight, you might want to try breathing in between righteous call outs.

Look, all our work rooting out oppression in our interactions and mentality – to me, the whole purpose of it all, is very simply to not be an asshole. Can somebody please explain to me the important intellectual difference between being fucked up and being an asshole? Cause to me, it’s all the same beast. You could say I’m being over simplistic and that I’m over generalizing here, and yeah – you could be right, but you gotta admit, if you dedicate yourself to the cause of anti oppression, and strive to root out oppressive tendencies throughout your personality and lifestyle… and yet you still tower over people as a massive hyperalienating jerk – you must have missed something somewhere.

What could it be?

6. Enforcement of Hierarchy (in an Anarchist Space)

It is clear to me that this action was planned by people who want to turn hierarchy upside down, not level it. Cheerleading along to the attempted eviction were three or four “white allies” whose pre-arranged job was to help the disruptors move bags, and echo the eviction message to their white brethren.

Wait a second…

The disruptors repeatedly stated that they were beyond dialogue with white people… so if they’re relationship with these “allies” was not one of dialogue, what was it?

It’s one thing to tell whites to fuck off – I mean there, you’re at least cutting off your relationship with them honestly – but to keep some of them around to echo your demands and move luggage for you? They’re not worth dialoging with, but you don’t mind letting them do your bidding? (I guess in a historical sense, this is a pretty accurate use of the term “Allies”) Establishing a relationship in which one party defines all the terms and holds all the power, is damn hypocritical for anyone who claims to oppose hierarchy.

So I guess you’re not quite ready to break up with whites completely. In between insulting them you wouldn’t mind keeping them around some of the time, as long as you decide the where, when, and the how. I know I’m no Dr. Phil, but if that’s the only relationship you’re willing to maintain with whites, maybe you should follow your words to their conclusions and stick to an honest break up.

____, at earlier caucuses with you I had misgivings about the relationship you seemed to want to establish with your “white allies”, but I assured myself that what seemed to be hierarchy, was a relatively insignificant and understandable response to white oppression. Now it is plain to me that you’ve gone too far. The relationship you want to establish with white allies reminds me of the relationship of the Catholic Church to its pupils.

Church to the Catholic: You were born into sin, but if you repent to me and do what I say without question, some of your sin will be absolved and you will be a better Christian.

You to the “White Ally”: Based on the way you were born, you are racist, but if you kiss my ass and follow what I say, without question, some of your racism will be absolved and you will be a better anti-racist.

By pointing this not-so-hidden hierarchy out, I am in no way advocating symmetrical race relations. It is undeniable that this society – anti-establishment movements included – is entrenched with white supremacy, and to combat this without getting assimilated into a systemically racist structure, minorities must claim the autonomy to organize amongst ourselves. In white dominated movements we must structure our involvement as we choose – but this doesn’t give you some special mandate to establish hierarchy where it doesn’t belong.

Personally there are two things I consider indispensable to any working relationship, and you deny them both. They are:

Dialogue – the ability of each party to have their say – and Mutual Respect.

Without both of these attributes, agreed on both ends, a relationship is clearly hierarchical and should be restructured, ended, or taken outside the anarchist community.

7. Racism

Yeah, I can say pretty much anything I want to a white person and I still won’t be racist because reverse racism isn’t real. Please! If you want to talk seriously about racism, stop using the word like it’s a toy!

At one point during the confrontation, a white person responded from beneath a pile of racial insults that they thought the disruptors were being racist themselves. One of the disruptors responded by informing them that “reverse racism” doesn’t exist, or wasn’t real or something to that effect. They even cited some obscure etymology to support this argument. Impressive. This opinion that “reverse racism” doesn’t exist was expressed by a few whites at the convergence as well, and I’m pretty familiar with debate on the subject.

If you think about it for a few seconds though, it becomes clear that the whole argument on whether “reverse racism” is real or not is founded on a false binary. In the real world there are many different races and many dynamics of racism between them. The term “reverse racism” implies only two types of racism, normal and reverse.

So yeah, “reverse racism” isn’t real, in the sense the term itself is intellectually bunk, but that doesn’t make yelling slogans like “go back to Europe!” and “smack a white boy!” and then denying any racism on your own part any less moronic. Ultimately the idiocy of your statements stands on its own, whether or not you deny their racism. I’m more interested here in exploring the irresponsible way in which you use the term.

Obviously, RACISM as a word, carries a tremendous amount of political power, especially among radicals. My question for you is, why do self proclaimed anarchists feel the need to own a word that carries so much political clout but can only be wielded in one direction.

Think about it: words – as you clearly understand – can be used very powerfully as weapons. But there’s one thing about weapons: every person who takes up a sword or a gun, understands that the same power the weapon gives them, could be used against them if it landed in another person’s hand. You can’t have a gun that can only be pointed in one direction. Who would conceive of such a thing? (I mean, besides You Know Who)

We’ve all seen what happens when a group of people try to own and completely control a word as a weapon: look at the U.S. government’s use of the term TERRORISM. In corporate media, the term Terrorism is ascribed only to enemies of U.S. interest; nothing the U.S. or its allies do could ever be terrorism. If you point out that acts committed by our military perfectly exemplify our governments very own definition of terror, they scoff at you, call you marginalizing names, and say your supporting the terrorists. Essentially they’re taking an extremely powerful word and trying to keep all of its power to themselves. In doing so they preclude any use of the word, and its power, in a two way communication (dialogue), and monopolize it as a tool and weapon for one way dictation (monologue). What you’re trying to do with the term RACISM is essentially the same function on a smaller scale.

You unaccountably and irresponsibly throw “racist” at any white folk who don’t “ally” to you, but you won’t admit to racism even in the midst of catching your breath after a hateful “You People” rant? Give me a break.

Honestly, if you wanted to use the term in such an unaccountably one way function like this, you should have at least been way more subtle about it. Instead you bluntly flaunted the contradiction in front of people’s faces, time and again, thinking your irrefutable “no reverse racism” axiom protected you from being called on it. You have abused this power too much, and fatally, you were painfully obvious in how you did it! Now, like a little wanton child who’s played too loud, and too hard, and hurt too many people with a grown-up tool, it’s time your warped conception of racism was taken away from you.

Again, you cannot skew these arguments to say I am advocating symmetry in race relations within the radical community. The principle of equality is only an abstract ideal when not considered in the context of privilege inequity that is our society. White people do need to realize that having racism perpetrated against them does not suddenly give them any excuse to deny their privileges within the social framework of this society, nor does it mean they suddenly know what it means to be POC in the U.S.

There; that’s the long way to say it. The short way is this: You organize an “action” called “smack a white boy” in which you scream hatefully into a group of white people you don’t even know, and still try to hold that you’re not racist? You’ll have better luck convincing me that two plus two equals five.

Now, Some Words on Gentrification

Okay, gentrification is a very complex issue. It does nothing for anybody to oversimplify it and put it in black and white terms. Am I saying that’s what the disruptors did? Yeah, pretty much.

In the disruptors’ eyes they were taking this hard, line in the sand, don’t step across it, Whoops, you already stepped across it now you’re gonna get it, stand. I don’t know all of what they’ve learned about gentrification, but if my knowledge on the issue is remotely accurate, it generally takes months for gentrification to occur, often years. The convergence lasted for a span of about a week.

Gentrification in poorer, darker skinned neighborhoods generally occurs through permanent settlements, especially ones that bring capital into the neighborhood. The convergence clearly did not bring a lot of money into the neighborhood. One of the disruptors reiterated the talking point that white convergence attendees were the “pioneers” of gentrification. They seemed to have forgotten that pioneers generally stay where they pioneer to for more than one week.

I am not saying that the convergence didn’t contribute to gentrification. We know it probably did, but in an intangibly small way. Please read carefully here, I am not saying it contributed to gentrification in a negligibly small way, I say an intangibly small way – as in, whatever gentrification occurred as a result of the convergence, the damage is immeasurable because the convergence was such a minor and short term event.

Compare to spending money at a corporate establishment: when you buy some crap at Best Buy, you know you are feeding the beast. You also know you are not contributing nearly as much as if you owned the store and that this act of consumption alone will not keep the establishment going – but in the overall scheme of things, you know your doing something bad. While most of you know what I’m talking about here, I know there’s the few perfect anarchists reading this who are like, “well, I never give money to corporations, period.” To you folks, I can only earnestly hope that you never use the pedestal of your virtue to castigate us imperfect anarchists for our sins – and if you do that you won’t be such vindictive jerks about it.

Some might argue that this is a bunk comparison, that what the organizers did by planning the convergence in a mostly black neighborhood was much worse than spending X amount of money at X corporation. Maybe. Maybe not. One thing we should at least agree on is that it’s an immeasurable, incalculable crime, not because of its size and magnitude, but because of its lack of size and magnitude. Nobody really knows how bad it is.

I’m going to quote Jesus here alright? I’m not a Christian but this quote seems really apt: “Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone.” It seems to me that this quote is actually congruent with the disruptors rational for their stunt; as far as I can gather, in their minds they are without racial sin. But anybody within U.S borders who believes they are beyond race privilege is kidding themselves. The privilege that being “American” grants us is inextricably linked with race privilege: the global system of capital and governance itself is racist through and through.

If this is a precedent for future actions – which the disruptors made clear of – who is an unworthy target? Since we are truly all guilty does that mean we should all scream at each other endlessly to somehow be better activists because of it?

I wasn’t at the first half of the convergence. I know numerous discussions took place around race and gentrification. Although I wasn’t at these discussions I can pretty safely bet they did more to educate the white people at the convergence about gentrification than the eviction stunt did. Though screaming can be fun sometimes, it usually sucks as a tool for education. What I am saying here is that it was not unreasonable for the organizers to have hoped that more long-term good could have come out of bringing this discussion about gentrification to the forefront of the conference, than damage to the neighborhood done by the short-term spike in white faces visible on that particular corner of the neighborhood. Maybe they were wrong. Maybe the convergence should not have been there. Nobody really knows because it’s an intangible, incalculable sin. If somebody has credible data on how much a week’s fluctuation of white skin on a street corner contributes to gentrification in Pittsburgh, I’d love to see it. Until then my crucifix stays in the garage.

There have been various speculations on how people native to the neighborhood felt about the convergence, but most of us know it would be silly to think there was anything resembling an overall consensus. Nobody I talked to had a problem with it, but I’m sure some people were weirded out as well. As for disruptor’s reference to the area as an “all black neighborhood” – that is simply inaccurate. Nobody can speak for the entire neighborhood. As far as I can tell from their rhetoric, the closest thing they’ve offered as a coherent response to gentrification is hard-lined segregation. “Get the fuck out of all-black neighborhoods!” “Get the fuck out of Pittsburgh!”

Am I naïve for thinking it possible that some infoshops in minority dominated areas, like the one less than a block down the street from the convergence space, might actually contribute more good to the neighborhood than harm through the apparatus of gentrification? If the only response to gentrification is truly total segregation, the divisive mechanisms of capitalism have succeeded in dividing and dismantling us once again.

Conclusion

If I, at any time came off as kind of caustic during this article, it’s cause I’m fucking pissed. This is not about crimethinc. This is about human decency, about free thought, about knowing who the enemy is, and about not doing exactly what the feds want us to be doing by tearing each other apart.

To any fellow anarchist people of color who feel tempted, or obligated, to fall in line with this kind of hate-filled action – please consider how damaging and far reaching such explicit acts of anti solidarity will be to the real things we should be fighting for. Please, don’t subscribe to a mentality that buries reason and communication under the noise of vengeful group think – a mentality that throws fuel on the fires of racism rather than extinguishing it.

To those few aggressors who perpetrated this stunt, please, I ask you to consider the damage you are doing to a movement that could pose a real threat to your true enemies. Please consider what’s really at stake here and ask yourself if it’s really worth imposing yourself, so forcefully in gashes of division, upon spaces for potential solidarity. To make change happen you always have to work with people who are different than you, who have different values, different prejudices, and yes even different backgrounds – but if you cannot work with them it does not mean you have to directly work against them.

To those self-styled “white allies” who thought they earned some kind of anti racist points by assisting or endorsing to this action, I have very special note for you:

A Very Special Message for You – Aspiring Ally Who Supported or Endorced the Attempted* Eviction.

(*The convergence didn’t end, by the way. It’s simply a lie to say it did)

Dear Aspiring White Ally.

I see that you are very interested in listening and coming to terms with your white skinned privilege, by supporting people of color in establishing our ground in a largely white demographic. Awesome! I also see that you’ve aided or endorsed an “action” of outright anti-solidarity and ignorant buffoonery, that has disastrous repercussions far beyond crimethinc. to the below/left struggle against imperialism as a whole. Hmm… Did you think these two activities somehow go hand in hand? I find this somewhat disturbing.

I know some of you sometimes feel uncomfortable disagreeing with people of color, especially when the issue involves race. I have heard a few of you say “I don’t think it is really my place as a white person to object to the actions or tactics of a person of color”. To me, these statements sound like a young child saying “Since I’m a kid, I can’t really object to the things that grown-ups do.”

It’s hard for me to know how to react to statements like this, but one of the first questions that comes to my mind is: “What if two grown-ups disagree?”

To some of you, it seems the answer to this problem was to go with the more radical-seeming answer. Maybe to some of you this is what being radical means. Maybe some of you thought the disruptors would not call you racist if you supported them – or that they would only smack you once, and not very hard. Maybe you thought if you went along with their initial demands for eviction, you wouldn’t have to really go all the way back to Europe. Whatever you thought, I hope you’re thinking a little clearer now, and out of your sense of reason; not guilt.

The truth is, you don’t need me, or any other person of color to give you permission to question, and object to this stunt, this mentality, this ignorance, because you are a grown-up. You’ve already had years to explore the tortuous maze of implications that stretch out behind the Two Grown-Ups Disagree Paradox. You know there’s no easy answer.

You know that POC are not really as monolithic an entity as a small group of presumptuous individuals may construe us. We speak, think, and act for ourselves, and if any person of color claims that they represent the interests of real POC – as opposed to race traitors – they should be viewed with the firmest suspicion.

Why, as a person of color, would I be telling you this? One explanation is that I have been brainwashed by you, as one disruptor suggested.

Really, it’s simple. As a POC I can easily imagine a number of benefits to white people who are so willing to go along with what a POC says, concerning race issues, that they may be willing to put their ethics and critical thinking on hold to support them or stay passively out of their way; but, I can also think of at least as many negative consequences to such white people… especially if they share the same community with me. What if, for random example, they become influenced by POC of, say, questionable character?

Likewise, it does not comfort me as a POC to know that there’s white folks who will take hate filled insults like “Go back to Europe!” to the face, from a POC, and still condone their actions and act as apologists for them, any more than it comforts me as a male to know there are women who will take blatant verbal abuse from their husbands and still not leave them. It actually makes me kind of sad.

Before concluding, I would like to extend a plague on anyone who uses my words to rationalize their ignorance of white privilege, or their perpetuation of white supremacy. The distinction I try to draw here is really not all that complicated. It is the difference between listening without asserting yourself, and following; between respect and ingratiation; between being patient and letting yourself be blatantly disrespected.

I’m not trying to draw perfect fine lines here. The formation of more rigid lines and easy binaries is the last thing I’m hoping for. There are no easy answers when it comes to being a good ally, especially toward people of color. Being a good ally toward one person of color would be easy. A small group of POC with erratic internal dynamics – a little harder. Being an ally to people of color in the world at large: that is a long term objective worthy of the most ambitious anarchist – a goal that brings endless questions and paradoxes along with it. At this point, an essential step toward this goal is understanding that supporting the actions of a small group of POC, does not necessarily make you a better ally to people of color, it makes you a better ally to those People of Color.

It is possible, without extenuating the reality of privilege disparity amongst ourselves, to remember that beneath it all, nobody is immaculate of privilege. Unless you are dead, or about to die, you can be humbled by the fact that you live with privilege. And only a fool assumes they can know the privilege of someone they’ve never met before.

For me, the most important distinction, if we are all guilty, draws between guilt and humility. Guilt is heavy, opaque, and reactionary. Humility is buoyant, reflective, and proactive. Generally under the influence of guilt, people act more stupidly, while when humbled, the possibilities are endless.

Thanks everybody who took the time to read this,

Yours in revolution,

Dooiter

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.

Brief Statement

What seemed like an awesome, performative disruption—a reclamation of space, an expression of anger, an opening up of dialogue—shifted quickly into something else entirely. At the end of a night of Cabaret at the CrimethInc. Convergence in late July, about half a dozen anarchist/autonomist people of color—some who had participated in the convergence all week and some who came into town just for this “action”—stormed into a hall full of people, reading a statement about gentrification and white supremacy, while screaming slogans.

People watched in silence, uncertain of how to respond to such intense aggression from this small group of friends. With no provocation, the disrupters* started grabbing people’s backpacks and sleeping bags and throwing them out into the hallway, under a rallying cry of, “Get the fuck out of here! Get the fuck out of Pittsburgh! We’re not fucking kidding!” They cleared people’s bags from the shelves, from off the ground; they grabbed lamps, chairs, anything they could get their hands on. Tossing everything out of the room, people’s belongings were dumped into jumbled piles everywhere. The disrupters screamed that white people were gentrifying the neighborhood the Convergence was in—neighborhoods everywhere—and that they wouldn’t stop what they were doing until all of the white people from the convergence were out of the building, out of Pittsburgh. It was the middle of the night, and almost everyone had been staying in that building. With nowhere to go, many people started to leave.

The disrupters became increasingly aggressive with the people in the room. They got up in people’s faces, and yelled at them to leave, “Go back to Europe! I’m sick of looking at your white fucking face!” Provoked into fear and panic, many people left the room, tears streaming down their faces. Others responded with a variety of racist comments demonstrating just how far a lot of people have to go in terms of understanding white supremacy and privilege. The disrupters used thinly veiled intimidation and threats, like screaming, “Get the fuck out of here! I am not a pacifist!” while pulling bags out of people’s hands; they muscled past the people who tried to block the flow of backpacks and purses out into the hallway, thrusting the belongings into people’s heads, backs, and other parts of their bodies.

In an attempt to deescalate the situation, people eventually started encouraging everyone to leave. Convergence attendees poured out onto the sidewalks, and started organizing alternate housing and carpools. Many people’s belongings were still lost and strewn all over the convergence space, but with the police arriving to investigate the scene, everyone had to go somewhere. By nearly 2 am, all of the people who did not identify as people of color—and all those too traumatized by the aggression of the disrupters—were out of the upstairs, yet the disrupters still refused to leave. Some people of color from the convergence called a caucus with the disrupters, but after an unproductive attempt at dialogue, finally, the disrupters left.

Apparently, a few friends of the disrupters had known about the planned disruption beforehand, but afterwards, everyone apologetically explained that they had expected the disruption to have a radically different character. Some people mentioned the feminist disruption of an anarchist gathering in the UK where women hijacked a meeting to screen a movie about feminism when describing what they had imagined. We certainly hope people would have intervened if they had foreseen the aggression and violence the disrupters chose to employ.

–from people of color who attended the convergence and oppose the disruption

*We are referring to this group of people as “the disrupters” because the only way they referenced themselves was as people from APOC (anarchist people of color). However, they were certainly not acting on behalf of all APOCers. And like with any decentralized group structure, when a few people do fucked up things under a banner that many people feel affinity with, those people risk delegitimizing the whole movement rather than bearing the responsibility for their own actions. To be clear, this disruption was NOT an APOC action.

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Account 1

It seemed really complicated for many people of color who were not a part of the disruption to sort out their feelings about it that night because it was all too easy to relate to the legitimate anger and distress that seemed to motivate the disrupters. I talked with many other people of color that night about our own feelings of isolation, the pain of our own invisibility organizing in anarchist spaces dominated by people with more privilege. We talked about the intensity of the white supremacy we have faced in radical circles, and the serious need to address it. But we also talked about the ways the kind of coercive actions taken by the disrupters could obscures those realities, making it harder to actually work through this stuff with our potential allies

For me that night, though, it was simple to sort out what side I was on. Watching the disrupters tear apart people’s belongings, it was clear I had to intervene. Watching male-bodied disrupters scream into the faces of women with tears streaming down their cheeks, I had no choice but to put my body in between them. Really, watching the disrupters of any gender bring their rage upon my white friends of any gender, it was impossible not to get involved.

I am a small, woman of color. I have been assaulted—physically, sexually, emotionally. My whole life. The hatred in the voices of the disrupters as they screamed the absurd, “Go back to Europe,” was simply too reminiscent of the xenophobic slurs I’ve heard since childhood. The way they manipulated and controlled individuals and groups, screaming threats and rampaging through the room, felt just like life with my abusive ex-housemate. I will never watch that kind of violence and do nothing. Even if nothing that I did that night was useful, it was important to me that the disrupters could feel my opposition; it was important to me to resist.

Because people wanted to take seriously the concerns that the disrupters brought up, it also seemed really complicated for white people to figure out how to engage with them. Eventually, following the lead of people of color, some white folks started to passively resist the disrupters by blocking the doorways and removing stolen bags from the disrupters’ hands, but because the disrupters were anarchists, comrades, friends, no one wanted it to be a needless confrontation.

But the disrupters made it clear to me that they were there for a confrontation. “This is war,” they told me. “People get hurt in revolution.” “We are not afraid, and we are not pacifists!” For some reason, though, the disrupters had decided that their conflict was only with the white people at the Convergence. They consistently screamed at every white person to leave, while leaving the people of color alone, and so the people of color left in the space were uniquely positioned to try to deal with the mess. The disrupters tried to argue that it wasn’t about us—it wasn’t about the people of color left in the space. But for me, if you fuck with people I love, even if you never do anything to me, than, yes, your fight is also with me.

I spent much of that night trying to get the disrupters to leave. I tried to talk to them. I tried to stop them from destroying people’s personal belongings. I put my body in between them and other people—tried to stop the yelling and screaming, faces inches away from each other. I tried to stop the fight. I tried to physically remove individual disrupters from that space. I tried desperately to stop the fight.
That night I felt so alone. So isolated. It was clear to me that I needed to resist the abuse that was happening. But I didn’t want to be fighting these people that were trying to say everything I also needed to say. I should have been standing along side the disrupters, we should have been speaking our fury together, but they made that impossible. The disrupters made no space for dialogue. They made no space for me—or other people of color who needed room for their rage. They told us all that we could talk later. When everything was over. But even now, everything is far from over.

We tried to reason with the disrupters, to get them just to leave. I asked them how they felt about how shitty they made people feel, and they quickly defended that they “gave people warning” to leave. (That warning was them entering the room yelling and throwing people’s bags out.)  Another disrupter responded, “Don’t you support queers bashing back?” And I told them, I’m all for queer people—anyone, really—attacking their attackers, but that I didn’t equate that with indiscriminately attacking a room full of strangers. I asked them how they felt about all of the women, queer people, trans people, and otherwise marginalized people they were pushing out onto the street in the middle of the night. The disrupters responded that they’d be safe wherever they had to go because of their white faces. Back and forth, we tried to get the disrupters to respond genuinely, but they gave up only rhetoric and nonsense.

After literally hours of this, after every bag was cleared out of the room, after almost every person was gone and the disrupters were just standing inside of one of the doorways, refusing to leave, I totally broke. With nothing left to do, I told them all to get out. I told them it was over, it was time to go. They just looked at me. I had been saying this all night, but this time I needed it to be real, I needed it to be done. I was done. I went behind the door that two of them were leaning against to hold open and started pushing with all my strength to close it. It closed halfway, and then the struggle really began. I don’t remember everything that happened. The disrupters were screaming at me. I was screaming at them. Tears were screaming down my face; every muscle in my body cried out. At some point other people of color started helping me push on the door. Everything hurt. Everything was pain. Everything was broken.

That night, you broke me.

I am crying still as I write this one week later. All of the complicated pain and heartbreak won’t let go. I want to be talking about white supremacy in our movements. I don’t want to be talking about you. I don’t want to be watching us self-destruct, taking sides, falling apart. I want to be talking about the ways our privilege and internalized oppression make us hurt each other. I guess that’s what this is, but it all feels so needless, so thoughtless. I don’t want to deal with your shit just because you didn’t think through your actions, because you thought that everyone would just come back in after you left, that all of the panic attacks and pain could just be erased, that when people’s hearts stopped racing they wouldn’t feel the lingering fear.

* * * * *

Somehow, there was a moment of stillness when everyone else was gone, and some people of color called for a conversation with all of us, the disrupters and all of the other people of color that were left. We closed the doors to that upstairs room, and everything was quiet for a moment. Folks of color started trying to ask the disrupters about why they did what they did, trying to reason with them. It felt pointless to me. The disrupters were spouting the same rhetoric and absurd defenses they had been saying all night. They expressed feeling good about displacing people for the night because they wanted people to get a taste of how gentrification displaces people permanently. When I asked how they felt about being a force of domination, just like gentrification, they responded only that gentrification is a greater force of domination than they were that night. I’m glad at least that the disrupters were less of a force of domination than gentrification, but that sets the bar pretty low for how we interact with one another. Even oppressed groups of people can dominate people with more societal privilege than they have.

People also brought up how dangerous and irresponsible it was for the disrupters to do something that could bring so much extra police attention to this political event. With the high level of surveillance of the convergence, the police certainly could have taken advantage of this opportunity to raid the space or otherwise intervene. Perhaps that didn’t happen only because with some kind of intelligence on the inside, it was clear that the disrupters were doing a better job of creating division, panic, and controversy than the police or Feds could have. Someone later said to me that if the police had raided the space, it probably would have brought people together against the police, but this kind of drama will ensure schisms far wider-reaching and longer-running than anything the police can do to us.

In this conversation with the disrupters, we also tried to talk more specifically about why they did what they did. From this vantage point, I honestly think that the rhetoric about gentrification was somewhat of a ruse for the aggression. None of the disrupters were from Pittsburgh. Three of them had arrived that day and not spent any time in that neighborhood. They claimed that the neighborhood didn’t want the convergence there, but in our conversation, they couldn’t offer a single story about talking to a neighbor with complaints. Whereas I had dozens of interactions with people in that neighborhood who were ambivalent to excited about the convergence being there—and I know many others did, too. I met neighbors who were curious about what we were doing, neighbors who offered us food, neighbors who helped out with copwatch, and neighbors who came to the convergence space to hang out.

When further pressed for information about why they were taking that action, the disrupters said that they came there only because they were asked to do this by “Pittsburgh APOC.” According to one APOCista in Pittsburgh, there isn’t an active APOC group there, but it seems like a couple of individual APOC folks likely asked the group to come. When asked again to try to defend why they were acting they way they were, the disrupters explicitly said that anyone could hold “Pittsburgh APOC” accountable for their actions. The disrupters said also that they were acting with the full support of Chicago and Philly APOC, as well as people in Milwaukee.

I want to make it abundantly clear that supporting this “action” is not just supporting a militant action taken by people of color; it is supporting abuse. Using intimidation, threats, controlling people’s belongings and their movements is violence. The violence people of color feel in their daily lives and in anarchist circles is real and legitimate, but that in no way justifies this indiscriminant use of violence among friends and potential allies. It’s like a woman, who distraught at the expression of patriarchy in her every day life, forces herself on her lover. It is fucking abuse, and we shouldn’t ignore it just because it’s complicated.

As for what happens next, I’m not sure. The way the disrupters acted is a totally unacceptable way to treat comrades or potential comrades, and the only model I have for sorting out how to move forward through this is some kind of perpetrator accountability process—although, that kind of accountability can only happen within communities of friends. That night, the disrupters said they wouldn’t call any of the white anarchists there comrades, and maybe that is something they want to stick by. For now, I know that I don’t want to organize with or interact with those disrupters until some kind of serious accountability process can take place.

That night was intensely triggering for many people. For me. For hours, I was under this consistent, medium level attack. I came out of that night with cuts and bruises, torn clothing and trauma that one week later, still won’t relinquish my body back to me. I don’t get to be neutral or pretend it didn’t happen. I hope we all take this seriously.

-monica

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Account 2

I am puertorican.  I too am fed up with the subtly alienating sub-culture of CrimethInc. and many other radical spaces with their ignored hierarchies and cold, individualist behaviors. If it were entirely up to me and if I had no one to care about in the convergence, I would’ve probably grabbed bags just the same and screamed just as loud.  But liberation is not that simple, and thank goodness it isn’t, or else a flashy vanguard might’ve been all it took for the oppressed all along. And we’re definitely not into that vanguard bull after seeing the harm it’s done (…right?).

Watching the disruption unfold and the split widen in the main room was like watching my own family fight with each other.  I don’t know which side I should take or if there are sides to take, and that made me feel all the more powerless.  You’d think that watching fellow APOC act in autonomy and against white supremacy would make me feel emboldened to take further action… but I felt I couldn’t do anything else but to sit there frozen and try to take all the surfaced conflicts in by force.  I don’t know if it’s just a trigger of mine to freeze up in these situations, or if I was just plain afraid to join anyone.  Some people’s faces looked like that of white tourists back in PR who just got their luxurious vacation ruined.  Some of the disruptors were completely ignoring the triggers the violent behaviors in the space set off for many with an abused past.

At a point where I was feeling the crack too much, I pleaded to speak to a disruptor face-to-face.  The reasoning for the action was much of what I expected: fed up APOC who want to teach a lesson the loud way.  As I listened on, it started to sound like some individual disruptors weren’t all that sure about their action after all.  While on the sidewalk a squad car raced by with sirens blasting and sped off.  I thought to myself that the infiltrators must be laughing their asses off about this back at the station.  I spoke then with a Latino friend that came back on the bike who was glad that finally people were taking this convergence seriously.  Yea, true, it did wipe out a lot of the rose tint, but it could also create a whole new blindfold.

After the conflict settled down, the disruptors were outside and I confronted the loudest of them (at least) who explained they were acting as individuals (so much for their talk about white people oppressing the nearby neighborhood, apparently they weren’t speaking on their behalf) and talked about some history of these POC groups and mentioned a very troubling term: “anarcho-nationalist”.  The fact that “anarcho” and anything that means could ever be related to “nationalist” is confusing enough, but I find the simple upholding of “nationalist” to be fucked up. Puerto Rico’s nationalist groups, though greatly mythologized, have their own history of very, very fucked up shit in the name of national power for the “puertorican” so many people still revere.   From Albizu Campos’s correspondence with Nazis to constant and still going talks of “cleansing” the puertorican culture (whatever our culture is, anyways, esos son otros veinte pesos), nationalist goals didn’t exactly conjure the liberated, autonomous communities we all strive for.

I talked with people of all sorts of contrasting experiences and conversations during the disruption but there’s a very unique one that I wish to share.  Shortly after finally calming down and walking without trembling, a male-bodied person who I had only met briefly before approached me.  They asked for advice.  They were part of the organizing for the disruption but completely changed their mind at a moment they felt no identity.  The person was of mixed-race.  They didn’t identify as a person of color though because of their experiences of having just as much privilege as any white person but in other ways, like class and gender. And their skin was light, and complexion could be judged as white as well. Did that mean they were gentrifying and oppressing just as much as white people?  Neither of us knew an easy answer.  But to me, it does show that gentrification isn’t as simple as just race, as I myself have many privileges that could be easily ignored were I to take a quasi-nationalist stance based on race (I am male-bodied, middle-class, and my Americanized upbringing in the colony, including knowing the language well, has made it easier to be “accepted” in North American “culture”). And also, we need to be constantly evaluating what it means to be a “person of color” and what role do both, our apparent and our identity race/races play as oppressor or as the oppressed.

On my ride back from the convergence, I thought to myself of how it could’ve ended if there were no disruption.  Maybe internalized white supremacy would’ve gone ignored.  Maybe, after all, we could’ve finished the conversations in something productive and concrete.  We’ll never know and it’s actually unproductive to think of whether or not it was necessary.  It made cracks and it create some bonds while shattering others.  It got a ball rolling or at least made the ball bigger on confronting our own spaces’ racism.  It hurt some people and caused some damage that a mere “sorry” won’t help.  It brought out some fucked up statements (some random person claimed “you can’t kick me out, this is MY space”…).  If anything, let’s not ignore what discussions need to happen face-to-face, whatever side we were on.  No causing a mess within own friends and then leaving the city like nothing happened (isn’t that what we blame so many corporations and cops so much for?).  I want to speak with all y’all and make honest connections.  Anarchist people of color are all I have, because we reflect the complexities I need to confront so badly and need help with, in a world that enforces a single “normality”. And I sure as hell don’t just wanna impose some other kind of simple and separatist “normality”.

Entre amor y lucha,
Luis
hacktiffler[at]riseup.net

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Account 3

There is a lot to be said as far as I am concerned around the disruption that happened during the CrimethInc. Convergence, but maybe this is not the forum in which to say it all. This is a short (relative to everything I want to say) account of my experience around the disruption.

When the disruption started, I didn’t really know how to respond. In its beginning it seemed that the disruption was a performative protest against issues involving gentrification around the convergence, a more rebellious show that is a part of the cabaret, something that was done more to make a point than anything else. Very soon it became clear to me that the disruption was aimed towards something else entirely.

In the days before the disruption I was emotionally exhausted by several mediation processes I was involved in, and specifically by work around gentrification. When the disruption started I had no emotional capacity to take in any of what was going on. I stood there, watching friends try to stop the disruption, taking bags and belongings out of the disrupters’ hands, without the ability to react or to get involved. Someone approached me and asked me to get involved, to do something, but I couldn’t. If I am really honest, even though I was protected by my identity as a person of color, I did not feel safe. I had a personal relationship with some of the disrupters, but not with the two most aggressive ones. I actually felt that an intervention from my side might end with a punch to my face.

A white friend of mine was sitting in the corner crying, and I went to them and hugged them, trying to give them support. Their tears and sadness brought my emotions to the surface. I felt overwhelmed by the sadness that came with the recognition that apparently we cannot all just get along. Even though we are a part of a movement, it seems like some of us feel like aggression is the only way to get results from our comrades, and there is something so heartbreaking about that.

While me and a friend were comforting another friend, one of the disrupters came to us and asked if we were going to leave. The other comforter replied rather cynically, “Well, I am Colombian, is it ok for me to stay?” The disrupter, not noticing the tone in which the words were said, replied that we could stay. When I think about the disruption I keep going back to that moment. There is something so ironic in the disrupter approaching a group of mostly people of color with a request to leave. When you are at war, maybe there is no space for distinctions—and so people of color turn into white as you assume everyone around you is the enemy. And even if we weren’t people of color, it seems so heartless to approach people in tears you caused in order to promote your interests. At that moment the disrupters made it clear, some vague political idea was more important than us, the people who sat with them in gentrification workshops all week.

A few moments later one of my white friends approached me and offered me a hug. I don’t remember exactly what they said to me, but there was something in their words that felt liberating. Through the whole disruption I felt so dehumanized, as if I was erased, completely unpresent and unrecognized. The contradiction that such a friendly moment offered helped me suddenly notice the dehumanization I felt for so long. This was a bitter-sweet experience.

Soon after I went downstairs. There I was again greeted by many concerned friends offering hugs and asking what I needed. I left the space a little later, I felt drained and worried and wanted to be in a space that felt safe.

The day after I felt very concerned about going back to the space. I was worried that the conversion about yesterday’s events will focus mostly on the fucked up way in which the disruption took place, and not enough on the feelings that motivated it. To me the disruption was mostly a wake up call, and I wanted others to take it as such. Happily, I think that most of the particles of conversations that have reached my ears were focused on the breach of trust people of color felt towards their white allies.

After the really really free market we all met and went through an accountability process around some racist reactions some white people had towards the disruption. The process caused me to feel a lot of anxiety. In the moments before it I took many emotional supporting tinctures, and drank tea. I was scared of how I would feel about the things that would be said, and was worried I would not have the capacity to contain myself. The beginning of the process was very frustrating for me. There was a lot of discussion around how the process should go, what people can or cannot say, etc. To me, a lot of the discussion seemed like an attempt to evade the actual accountability that needed to be taken. My feelings about the conversation shifted completely when we actually started going through the list of racist reactions to the disruption. I was surprised by the fact that people actually admitted when they did not know why something was wrong or offensive. Things were not just brushed under the carpet, but each act was examined by the whole community and explained. The strongest part of the process was when people actually stood up and identified themselves as the ones who took some of the offensive actions, and recognized their mistakes in front of the whole community. It felt like a very deep process started in that conversation, one that will hopefully have long term affects on our community as a whole and on each of us as individuals. To me, this proves that we have the potential to protect each other and fight for one another. I can get you to think about my oppressions without breaking you.

I guess that the main things I am left with from this experience are questions about the integrity and honesty that we have towards one another. Throughout the convergence I was closely involved with some of the attempts to confront the convergence’s gentrifying effect on the city. Often, it seemed like those attempts were very constructive and successful. After hours of conversations on this subject, I felt like we were getting somewhere. From my post-disruption perspective, I am not too sure what to think about those conversations now. Some of the disrupters participated in those conversations, and I am left to wonder what their intentions were in doing so. A part of me fears that they used those conversations in order to have a one-way conversation, in order to educate others as to their feelings around gentrification without really trying to come to a resolution around the problem. I want to believe in the honesty of the dialogue we had, because doubting it will have heartbreaking consequences for me, but at the same time, I do not want my naiveté to help anyone get off the hook too easily.

I think that I am standing in a unique position towards what has happened. I have close personal relationships with the convergence organizers and some CrimethInc. writers, and at the same time I am a person of color who understands the rage of the disrupters and often feels disappointed with white “allies.” In many ways, I feel I am in the middle of this. Throughout the convergence I heard some of the disrupters (as well as others) criticize CrimethInc., critiques I shared as well. At the same time I was surprised. My experience with having the exact same conversations with individuals who are involved in CrimethInc. or the convergence have always been positive. I’ve always found listening ears to my difficulties, and have always received invitations to step in and create space for what I want and need. When I tried to convey these feelings to others they replied that they would not participate in a dialogue because it would be fruitless. This despair is actually based on legitimate past experiences, and it is so depressing.

I hope that people will take the disruption as a sign as to how people of color specifically feel in this community. There is a huge breach of trust when it comes to how we respond to white supremacy. So many times in the past this community has not responded to abusive or oppressive individuals, and now many of us feel like other anarchists do not have our back. How are we supposed to stand together against the threat of prison time or pepper spray, when we don’t stand together in front of the mirror? I need this community to have a very clear zero tolerance policy towards oppression. I need us all to make it very clear to each other that we are in this together. I expect nothing less from us.

I hope the disrupters know what they’ve done. I hope they understand they have torn this community apart. And now, I do not know how to go back home, how to deal with friends who are traumatized, how to think about my identity as an anarchist person of color, what to do with one of the disrupter’s phone number that is still in my phone book, how to deal with “friends” who have supported your action. Now, I am not traumatized, because this fucked up shit has broken my heart to a point where I have no space to be traumatized. I have no space to feel anything. Our identity as people of color is meaningless when your actions bring tears to our eyes.  Maybe it will seem rude or inappropriate, but I have but one thing to say: fuck you.

Maybe you should consider the struggle as a two-way road. For me the disruption is a wake up call to how we communicate with each other as a community, around white supremacy as well as other issues. We need to cut each other some slack and take more leaps of faith. We are all a part of a common struggle for liberation, and maybe we need to trust that others will be interested in hearing what we have to say and go through an accountability process with us when needed. It is something that is hard to do, but assuming that other anarchists are fundamentally on our side will help us create a stronger community. The alternative is what brought the disrupters to play an abusive role towards others. Admitting that we do not share common interests and in fact do not function as a community is something I am not willing to even consider at this moment.

-L.

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Account 4

The account below is a personal, partial, and situated perspective on the disruption that took place at the 2009 CrimethInc Convergence. I claim to be speaking on behalf of no one except myself, although I am speaking from the position of a queer woman of color who attended the convergence, participated in the APOC caucus that took place at the convergence, and was present during and after the disruption. Here is my account of what happened. Although I cannot claim to be more “right” than anyone else, I can try to offer an honest perspective.

About a week has passed and here I sit, trying to sort through notes, thoughts and feelings, but feeling little motivation to pull it all together because what gets written here will just be one piece amidst the War of Representation which has already begun. But something needs to be said; because there are people out there claiming to be speaking on behalf of APOC and people of color in general, and it needs to be known that they are not speaking on behalf of me. It needs to be known that although I share the rage, frustration, and hurt felt by the “disruptors,” I do not agree with their actions. Not only because white people were hurt and forced onto the streets without warning, but because other people of color were hurt and felt silenced by the disruptors’ actions.

I can’t talk about the disruption without first talking about the shit I was feeling and all the things that happened leading up to disruption. I woke up on the same morning as the disruption thinking, I need to get out of Pittsburgh. Something about the space felt alienating—I didn’t know many people there, conversations often felt dishonest and polarized, and I was often the only woman of color in various workshops. I felt small and unmotivated to speak. It would be unfair to say that an atmosphere of hostility toward people of color is what caused this feeling. Although I did hear racist comments get thrown around by a small group of ignorant folk, it was largely the result of being outnumbered by white boys, and feeling like there was no place or entry point for my perspective.

The morning of the disruption I sat waiting for a discussion on cultural appropriation to begin. I sat next to another person of color, who later was a participant in the disruption. They engaged me in conversation and we exchanged contact information. It felt good, especially after feeling invisible for much of the convergence. When they asked me how I was feeling at the convergence, I started crying and quickly left the room.

Later that day the APOC caucus met. The discussion revolved mainly around the issue of gentrification, and racism/alienation in the radical community. Toward the end of caucus I started crying again, and walked back to the convergence space with another woman of color. We had an awesome conversation, and she asked me if I wanted to be the MC at the Cabaret, which was the event happening that evening. At dinner I talked briefly with another person from the APOC caucus, who later was a participant in the disruption. Although an action/intervention had been planned, nothing was mentioned to other APOCers during the caucus. A few people from Philly, who were not at the caucus, met in private with a few people at the convergence who were in on the plan, but other APOCers were intentionally excluded.

So I was one of the MCs at the Cabaret, the event that was taking place when the disruption happened. When the last planned act finished, the outburst happened. The disruptors started yelling at white people to get the fuck out, screaming “We’re not fucking kidding! We are not pacifists!” A person of color from the caucus came up to me and whispered, “Are you with us? Help us get people’s bags out of here.” This is what really pissed me off. What the fuck was I supposed to do? These people did not attempt to talk to me at all, left no room for dialogue with other folk of color and yet expected us to join their action. When this person asked me to join I felt pressured to choose allegiances. In some ways, I did feel like it was my “duty” as a person of color to participate in the “eviction,” but at the same time I knew that what they were doing was fucked up—that the indiscriminate eviction of and aggression toward white people (many of whom were survivors of abuse and queer, trans, and womyn identified) was not okay. So I did not participate. But part of me felt guilty. Because I shared their rage toward racism, but felt alienated by their tactics and exclusionary approach.

It should be known that none of the people who actually participated in the eviction were from Pittsburgh. Yet the rhetoric used by the disruptors was a rhetoric of extension, and by this I mean that people who declared war on the white people at the convergence were claiming to speak on behalf of “the neighborhood” and people of color in general. I felt infuriated by the sense of entitlement and arrogance of the language used during the eviction, because when you speak on behalf of other people you essentially silence them. And I know from talking to other people of color that many other perspectives were silenced by the action.

Although the “smack a white boy part 2″ statement released by the disruptors framed the others as the aggressors, what actually took place was a two-way aggression instigated by this small group. Emotions were fucking high. Yelling, pushing, and offensive comments were exchanged back and forth between white people and the disruptors, people of color and the disruptors, white people and white people. The chaos went on for what must have been a couple hours. Eventually, it was just a few white people and a group of people of color from both sides. One of the last white people in the room was an arrogant white boy who was acting cocky, making inappropriate comments, and sitting shirtless on a chair. I yelled at him to get the fuck out of the room, and he left.

Some fighting took place between people of color and disruptors and they made it clear that their war was not with us (other folk of color). They told us we could stay, but when they were asked to leave by a woman of color as some fighting was happening, those who were people of color not participating in the action were called “Obama,” a race traitor, and accused of siding with the oppressors. One mixed person was accused of siding with “the part of him that was a colonizer.”

The conflict among people of color was starting to really wear me down emotionally. Both sides did not want to talk. I started to cry as people were pushing on both sides of a door and asked if we could sit down and have honest conversation about what was happening. A few of the disruptors knew from the caucus how alienated I had felt that day, but I made it clear that I felt equally alienated by their actions. I could tell by the look on the faces of the disruptors that they genuinely felt bad about this, that their intention was not to hurt other people of color. When I asked them why they excluded myself and others from discussion about the action, one person said “We didn’t tell X and X because we knew they wouldn’t approve, and we didn’t tell you because we didn’t know if you’d be with us.” This approach and the intentional exclusion of people who may disagree seemed suspiciously vanguardist to me, especially when acting on behalf of APOC.

When participant and non-participant people of color finally sat down to talk, the first thing I asked was, “Is anyone here actually from Pittsburgh?” Sadly, not one person was. Here we were, arguing about the feelings of a community that was not ours, and I wondered, why do we feel entitled to speak and act on behalf of a neighborhood we are not from? The whole thing felt embarrassing and insincere.

But that’s not to minimize the issue of gentrification. What kind of impact would a 6-day convergence have on a neighborhood? How did the neighborhood residents feel about the outsider presence? I imagine the response was varied and incapable of being reduced simply to positive or negative. When I walked around I smiled and spoke with people, one person offered me help as I was fixing my bicycle, another person asked me if we’d be coming back next year. But who knows, maybe my personal positive interactions with locals was the result of also being a person of color who doesn’t look particularly punk. I know there were also concerns raised about increased police presence, and this is definitely a legitimate concern. But a meaningful and productive response to the issue of gentrification is not one sheathed in dishonestly and dogma.

Over a week later I sit here contemplating the significance of it all, besides feeling slightly traumatized and drained. I feel somewhat disillusioned with our capability as people of color, as anarchists/anti-authoritarians/autonomists, to speak from a place of honesty and not ideology, to act on an ethic of care and not entitlement, to let our rage be known without alienating the people we claim to be fighting for. I feel angry about what took place (both the disruption and the response of some white people), confused about my allegiances, but ultimately, I can’t hate the people who participated in the disruption. Because these are the same people who had reached out to me earlier that day as I sat alone feeling invisible, the same people I’ve talked to at other APOC caucuses, the same people who share my disdain for white supremacy, the same people I will probably be fighting with in the future. But there needs to be accountability taken for how their actions rendered other people of color invisible, and hurt both ally white folk and people of color.

-Jackie
bitte_ein_kuss@yahoo.com

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.

RNC Welcoming Guide (.8MB) .:. Need To Know Basis MN Legal Primer (.9MB)

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.

Follow Along
twincities.indymedia.org — up-to-the-minute updates from people on the ground.
infoshop.org — for communiques and news coverage

Logistics Support
nornc.org — RNC Welcoming Committee Central Branch
tincancollective.org — RNC Communications Collective
coldsnaplegal.wordpress.com — Jail Support and Legal Collective
northstarhealth.wordpress.com — Medic and Healthcare Collective

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.

The following dates are either confirmed or pending — still needing help with those! — and, as you can see, many are still open. If you live in any of the pending stops or between any towns listed below and would like to host this, email froseph@crimethinc.com to start collaborating. An intimate house show in a basement, living room, or backyard with other DIY acts from the area and/or traveling through would be ideal. But any park, infoshop, or community center would be great, too. Also, this tour would like to visit as many small towns as possible.

THE ITINERARY:

June 30th – Winona, MN DDBC Bicycle Co-op, 129 Walnut St. 8pm w/ preceding benefit art auction for the Down N’ Dirty Bike Club

July 2nd – Viroqua, WI The Shack, 607 E South St. 8pm

July 3rd – Madison, WI Lothlorien Co-op, 244 LakeLawn 8pm w/Thistle. This will be a benefit show for the GrassRoutes Caravan, a bicycle village of resistance traveling to the RNC protests in St. Paul, MN.

July 5th – Minneapolis, MN TBA

July 6th – St. Cloud, MN TBA

July 7th – Bemidji, MN Gypsy Cabin, 11413 Lumberjack Rd NW 5:45 fancy dinner followed by campfire & music w/ Shannon Murray & friends Call Shannon at (218) 368-8002 for directions

July 8th – Duluth, MN (pending)

July 9th – Appleton, WI (pending)

July 10th – Oshkosh, WI TBA

July 11th – Manitowoc, WI The Treehouse 8pm 806A Buffalo St. w/Saddleshoes

July 15th–20th – Milwaukee, WI CrimethInc. Convergence

July 21st – Chicago, IL (pending)

July 22nd – Fort Wayne, IN (pending)

July 23rd – Kalamazoo, MI (pending)

July 25th – Buffalo, NY w/ From The Depths

July 27th – Pittsburgh, PA (pending)

July 28th – Punxsutawney, PA (pending)

August 1st – Warwick, NJ Stanley Demming Park w/ Shoelacetown Anarchist Black Cross, Passionate Existence Distro, A Longing for Collapse Press, G.U.T.S Distro, and Easy As ABC. Also, a potluck dinner and a game of Manhunt.

August 3rd – New York, NY TBA

August 4th – Easton, PA Riverside Park, Larry Holmes Dr. w/ TBA

August 5th – Philadelphia, PA TBA. Will be here for at least a few days on break.

August 11 – Baltimore, MD (pending)

August 12th – Washington D.C. (pending)

August 13th – Richmond, VA (pending)

August 15th – Athens, OH (pending)

August 17th – Lexington, KY TBA

August 21st – Des Moines, IA w/ The Rice & Bean Underground

Download 2-Up Flyer PDF : Download Poster PDF

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.

Locals on the ground in Milwaukee, putting in work for this summer’s CrimethInc. Convergence, have announced a public redirect location at Gordon Park (Locust St. & Humboldt Blvd) in Milwaukee, WI.

RSVP to crimethincbooking@yahoo.com

After years of planning, we finally threw our first Really Really Free Market! Organizing and promoting it was a long, arduous task. We live in a small town: Winona has only 27,000 people, and has the largest radical community of any place within 100 miles from us. It has always been tough for us to make things happen here—small town outreach work is always hard. All but one of our anarchist community are originally from Winona, and owing to our slim population, we’re fortunate enough to have a very wide social network. When we started a monthly community newspaper—think of a hybrid of a local indymedia project and Harbinger—we knew it would help us reach people that we had been struggling to connect with for years. We began promoting the ‘Free Market in the first issue, albeit subtly, and by the third issue, we had warmed up to the subject enough to devote an entire two pages inviting people to participate in the event.

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We invested a lot of energy into connecting with new social circles: we made close friends with the local homeless shelter; we knew the administrators at the food bank well enough to solicit their help distributing fliers; the punks were down to give away free bicycles; even the local food co-op was putting food aside for us. Representatives from all of these different social circles and more met four times before our first ‘Free Market to discuss logistics—we devised promotional schemes and dreamt up ideas and dispersed. When the day came, the first organizer arrived at the park 30 minutes early, to find to his surprise that over two dozen people were already there, waiting for the market to start. An hour into it, that number had grown to 200, and the event was a huge success. It went on that way for four hours: people giving away carloads of clothes, furniture, food, a box of hundreds of toothbrushes! A trash-bag full of condoms, starter plants for a garden, and five kids bikes were given away via a free raffle. We were all really inspired and pleased with the event, knowing that most of the work was out of our hands.

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We plan to bring the lessons we’ve learned to this year’s CrimethInc. Convergence in Milwaukee, WI. We’ll have plenty of examples of our community newspaper and plan to hold a workshop instructing anyone how to produce an effective, high-quality newspaper to nourish their radical community for under $250 a month. We know how difficult it can be for small midwest towns to get things off the ground—we’ve been struggling to for years. Hopefully, news of our successful ‘Free Market will motivate other small-town anarchist communities to attempt similar feats.

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