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!

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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
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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.

-

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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The article itself is supportive, having presumably been written by one of Brad’s countless friends, and even mentions Rolling Thunder. Thanks to such shining examples of journalistic integrity as Rolling Stone, it’s possible for revolutionaries outside the United States to get coverage—albeit only a few lines a year and a half late—in the US media. All they have to do is hope some sexy, well-connected US journalist gets killed beside the countless anonymous locals whose lives are ended by US-backed repression.

Let’s keep Brad’s memory alive by supporting all those who still struggle for freedom, in Oaxaca and around the world.

To keep up with current events in Oaxaca, try narconews.com.

Download Text PDF [140k]

Rolling Stone: Issue 1044 Jan. 24, 2008
Anarchist Superstar: The Revolutionary Who Filmed His Own Murder (front cover)

HE WAS AN ANARCHIST, AGITATOR AND JOURNALIST WHO WENT TO MEXICO TO DOCUMENT PEASANT REVOLT — AND HE ENDED UP FILMING HIS OWN DEATH by Jeff Sharlet

The Martyrdom of Brad Will

Even before he was killed by a Mexican policeman’s bullet, Brad Will seemed to those who revered him more like a symbol—a living folk song, or a murder ballad—than like a man. This is what the thirty-six-year-old anarchist-journalist’s friends remember: tall, skinny Brad in a black hoodie with two fists to the sky, Rocky-style, atop an East Village squat as the wrecking ball swings; Brad, his bike hoisted on his shoulder, making a getaway from cops across the rooftops of taxicabs; Brad, locked down at City Hall disguised as a giant sunflower with patched-together glasses to protest the destruction of New York’s guerrilla gardens. Brad (he rarely used his surname, kept it secret in case you were a cop) wore his long brown hair tied up in a knot, but for the right woman—and a lot of women seemed right to Brad—he’d let it sweep down his back almost to his ass. Jessica Lee, one of the few who spurned him, met Brad at an Earth First! action in southwestern Virginia the summer before he was killed. They skipped away from the crowd to a waterfall where Brad stripped naked and invited Lee in her swimsuit to stand with him behind sheets of cascading water. He tried to kiss her, but she turned away. She thought there was something missing inside him. “Like he was incomplete, too lonely,” she says. Maybe he was just tired after a decade and a half on the front lines of a revolution that never quite happened.

He was one of America’s fifty “leading anarchists,” according to Nightline, which in 2004 flashed Brad’s mug shot as a warning against the black-clad nihilists said to be descending on New York for the Republican National Convention. “Leading anarchist”—that was the kind of clueless oxymoron that made Brad laugh. Brad wasn’t a “leader,” a word he disdained; he was a catalyst: the long-limbed climber who trained city punks on city trees for forest defense in the big woods west of the Rockies, the smart guy you wanted in the front row when you gave your public report on the anarchist scene in Greece or Seoul or Cincinnati, even though he was also the dude who would giggle when he fumigated the room with monstrous garlic farts. In the 1990s, he’d helped hand New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani a public defeat, organizing anarchist punks into a media-savvy civil-disobedience corps that shamed the mayor into calling off plans to sell the city’s community gardens. In the new decade, he became a star of Indymedia’s anti-star system, an interconnected anti-corporate press that lets activists communicate—directly instead of waiting to see their causes distorted on Nightline.

Brad seemed to be everywhere: One friend remembers him in Ecuador, plucking his bike from a burning barricade; another remembers him in Quebec City, riding a bike into a cloud of tear gas, his bony frame shaking with happy rebel laughter later while a comrade poured water into his burning eyes.

Now, Brad has become most famous for the final minutes of his last day alive, October 27th, 2006, in the capital of the southern state of Oaxaca, Mexico. He’d gone to document a massive strike blowing up into revolt against the government. His video camera peers through broken glass at a smashed computer; holds steady on a strangely peaceful orange-black plume rising from a burning SUV; crawls under a truck to spy on a group of… well, most people who watch Brad’s video on YouTube don’t know who they are. Cops, probably, though they wear no uniforms. Brad feints and charges toward them along with a small crowd armed with stones and bottle rockets, improbably chasing men toting .38s and AR-15s.

With two minutes left, Brad inches toward the door behind which he knows men with guns may be hiding. “Si ves a un gringo con cámara, mátalo!” government supporters ranted on local radio around the time Brad arrived in Oaxaca. “If you see a gringo with a camera, kill him!” Then there are the last words heard on Brad’s video before he films a puff of smoke—muzzle flash beneath a gray sun—and his own knees rising up towards the lens as he falls, the cobblestones rushing toward him: “No esten tomando fotos!” (“Stop taking pictures!”) Brad didn’t hear.

He was scheduled to fly back to Brooklyn the next day.

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During the three weeks he spent in Mexico before he was killed, Brad would make fun of his half-assed Spanish by introducing himself as “Qeubrado” (“Broken”). He didn’t look it. Six feet two, with a frame broad as his father’s – a veteran of Yale’s 1960 undefeated football team— he was vegan-lean but ropy with muscle, “a little stinky and a lot gorgeous,” remembers his friend Kate Crane. Back during his twenties, when he’d bring a slingshot to demonstrations instead of a camera, he thought of himself as half-warrior, half-poet, a former student of Allen Ginsberg’s now specializing in crazy-beautiful Beat gestures recast in a militant mode— “sweet escalation,” he called it, protest not as a means to an end but as a glimpse of a world yet to be made.

By the time he got to Oaxaca, in the fall of 2006, he was calling himself a journalist. “His camera was his weapon,” says Miguel, a Brazilian filmmaker who has produced a tribute called Brad: One More Night at the Barricades. “If you survive me,” Brad told a friend after he’d battled cops at a protest in Prague, “tell them this: I never gave up. That’s a quote, all right?” In the end there was just a picture, his last shot, the puff of smoke of the bullet speeding toward him.

“Yo d,” he wrote to Dyan neary, an ex-girlfriend, three days before he died, “jumping around like a reporter and working my ass off—been pretty intense and sometimes sketchy.” The governor of Oaxaca had sent in roving death squads, pickup trucks of paramilitaries firing on the barricades. The bodies were piling up. Brad was getting scared. “I went back to the morgue—it is a sick and sad place—I have this feeling like I will go back there again with a crowd of reporters all pushing to get the money shot— the body all sewed up and naked— you see it in the papers every day—I am entering a new territory here and don’t know if I am ready.”

Ready for what? Revolution? Blood? Brad had seen both before, in Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil. Oaxaca was bigger, more exciting, more frightening. What had started as a strike by the state’s 70,000 teachers had exploded after the governor attacked the teachers with tear gas and helicopters. The federal government feared a domino effect, other states following Oaxaca’s example. In Oaxaca, every kind of leftist organization—indigenous groups, unions, students, farmers, anarcho-punks—came together in an unprecedented coalition and took over the city. The national government declared the entire state of Oaxaca “ungovernable.”

Brad knew what to do: Film it all. He’d send the tapes home, screen them in squats and at anarchist bookstores. Revolution is real, he’d say, here’s the proof. Burning tires, masked rebels stuffing rags into bottles full of gasoline, farmers with machetes; free kitchens, free medical clinics, free buses, commandeered by farmers and fishermen. At a street funeral, old women sing a radical anthem with their fists raised in the air; in a red tent at night a father pounds the silver box that holds his son. “La muerte as gobierno malo!” shout the mourners. (“Death to the government!”) “Viva Alejandro!” Alejandro García Hernández, forty-one years old, shot twice in the head by a group of soldiers who tried to crash through a barricade opened to let an ambulance pass. Brad wrote home, “And now Alejandro waits in the zocalo“—the city plaza—”he’s waiting for an impasse, a change, an exit, a way forward, a way out, a solution—waiting for the earth to shift and open—waiting for november when he can sit with his loved ones on the day of the dead and share food and drink and a song…one more martyr in a dirty war…one more bullet cracks the night.”

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Kenilworth, Illinois, isn’t a town that raises radicals. A mile wide, tucked away close to the beach on the North Shore of Chicago, Kenilworth is the kind of place in which the wrong side of the suburb means houses cost only a couple of million dollars. There were four African Americans in the most recent census, and if there were any Democrats around when Brad was growing up, says Stephanie Rogers, a family friend, they kept quiet. “If Kenilworth wasn’t the absolute height of preppiness,” she says, “it was only because we were Midwestern. Kids would study that East Coast model, towns like Greenwich, Connecticut. That’s what Kenilworth wanted to be.”

Not the Wills. They didn’t follow anyone. “The Wills were achievers, and leaders,” says Rogers. For Brad’s three older siblings, that meant good grades, sports and student government, Brad was different. “We were all active kids, curious, athletic, and we would roughhouse and play ball,” says his sister Christy, a graphic designer who lives in San Diego. “Brad was less interested in those kinds of things.” He preferred science fiction and fantasy, The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings. And Star Wars, one of the few passions he shared with his all-American dad: Hardy, an engineer who owned a small factory, liked to imagine how other worlds might work. Brad liked to build them. He’d arrange miniature societies with his action figures, write modules for role-playing games. It wasn’t the monsters that enthralled him, it was the struggles between good and evil.

One of his favorite movies was It’s a Wonderful Life; lanky, amiable Jimmy Stewart provided a model for the way Brad would move through the world as he grew older, a Teen Beat-gorgeous geek–a dungeon master!—who was friends with jocks, preps, even Kenilworth’s tiny clique of stoners. With his feathered hair, his rugby-shirt collar standing proud and a broad smile sprawling beneath dreamy eyes, Brad looked like an extra in a John Hughes movie.

But he was slowly splintering away from the high-school-college-back-to-the-burbs loop that was the natural order of things in Kenilworth. “It was a struggle to open my life,” Brad would tell a Venezuelan newspaper years later. “I didn’t know much about the truth of the world, but little by little, I forced my eyes open, without the help of anyone.”

The Will children were expected to be athletes (Brad was a runner) and stick with an instrument. But one day Brad announced he was quitting trumpet to play guitar. Instead of joining clubs, he worked after school, as a flower-delivery boy, a library shelver, selling newspaper subscriptions. “Brad was perplexing,” says his mother, Kathy. “But he wasn’t a loaf.”

The one unbendable rule for Will children was college. His sister Wendy went to Stanford, Craig followed their father to Yale, and Christy went to Scripps College. Brad’s grades hovered between B and C, but after he aced his entrance exams he squeaked into Allegheny, a small school in western Pennsylvania. There he joined a frat, majored in the Dead and studied On the Road. Mostly he liked getting high, passing a pipe back and forth with his friend Matt Felix, an outdoorsman from New Hampshire who introduced Brad to the radical environmentalism of Earth First! That ethos of direct action and theatrical gestures drew Brad west when he graduated in 1992. He followed the hippie highway to Boulder, Colorado, where he began attending classes taught by Allen Ginsberg at the Naropa Institute’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics.

Even more influential than Ginsberg was Peter Lamborn Wilson, who under the pseudonym Hakim Bey was known for a manifesto called The Temporary Autonomous Zone, or T.A.Z., a study in “ontological anarchy” and “poetic terrorism,” and a guidebook to the life of Brad was beginning to lead. “What happened was this,” Wilson writes, “they lied to you, sold you ideas of good & evil, gave you distrust of your body & shame for your prophethood of chaos, invented words of disgust for your molecular love, mesmerized you with inattention, bored you with civilization & all its usurious emotions.”

Wilson wasn’t offering an indictment so much as a prescription: “Avatars of chaos act as spies, saboteurs, criminals of amour fou“—crazy love—”neither selfless not selfish, accessible as children, mannered as barbarians, chafed with obsessions, unemployed, sensually deranged, wolfangels…” Brad was becoming one of Wilson’s wolfangels. “Very high-energy, extremely bright, not so well-controlled,” Wilson remembers of the student who talked his way into class because he hadn’t bothered to pay tuition. “Loose at the edges, reckless, you might call it courage. Manic sometimes, charming everybody.”

“Brad liked being in a hotbed of ideas,” says his mother, happy, at least, that her son had a job. She didn’t know that he stopped paying rent. “My crazy poet roomies fled the scene,” he later wrote of his accidental introduction to squatting. “I stayed and didn’t even have the phone number of the landlord.” that suited Brad—cash, he was beginning to believe, was a kind of conspiracy, a form of control he was leaving behind. He wanted to write poems, but even more he wanted to become one, a messy, ecstatic, angry, sprawling embodiment of Wilson’s manifesto.

His first attempt came one summer when 50,000 members of a Christian fundamentalist men’s movement called the Promise Keepers descended on Boulder, distributing a pamphlet called “The Iron Spear: Reaching Out to the Homosexual.” Brad wasn’t gay, but he decided to reach back. The Naropa Institute’s lawn abutted the Promise Keepers’rally ground, so Brad put on a show: He married a man. He recruited Wilson to perform the ceremony and a poet named Anne Waldman to play his mother. Another student was the bride, in a white satin gown complete with a train, and Brad scrounged a suit and tie. “I actually am a minister in the Universal Life church,” says Wilson. “I married them in full view of the Promise Keepers.” Then Brad kissed the bride, a long smooch that provoked one Promise Keeper to hop the fence to find out whether he was really seeing two men making out. Brad declared the stunt a victory when the fundamentalist decided to stick around, apparently convinced that poets throw better parties than Promise Keepers.

That was Brad’s idea of politics and poetry at the same time: a party and performance. But Brad didn’t care for stages. He wanted the show to run 24/7. From Boulder he moved to West Lima, Wisconsin, a half-abandoned town that had become an “intentional community”—a commune—called Dreamtime Village. Dreamtime was like a surreal version of the town Brad had grown up in: There was a post office, a school building, little Midwestern houses and almost no rules. Then, in the summer of 1995, Brad became interested in the stories he heard from a group of New York squatters on a road trip. When they headed back east, Brad hitched a ride.

“I moved to the big shitty as Giuliani-time kicked in,” he wrote in an essay for an anarchist anthology, We Are Everywhere. In New York, at least, anarchists were concentrated in a few dozen squats, buildings abandoned at the nadir of the city’s grim Eighties and rehabbed by whoever wanted to live rent-free. It was illegal, of course, which was part of the attraction for Brad—just living in a squat was a form of direct action, defiance of all the rules about property and propriety. Brad found himself an empty room in a squat on East 5th Street, home to around sixty “activists and destructionists,” in the words of Pastrami, a yoga teacher who befriended Brad. They hauled water up from fire hydrants and wired an electricity from a streetlight. Next door they cleared the trash out of an abandoned lot and turned it into a garden with a pear tree. They shared it with their Puerto Rican neighbors, eventually winning over even the nuns of the nearby Cabrini seniors home—their response to the squats went from one of horror to prayers for the wild but lovely young creatures who ate the trash and the toxic soil of the city. This was the life Brad had been looking for.

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Anarchist isn’t so much a singular ideology as a set of overlapping philosophies, and Brad wanted to explore them all. He’d haunt the anarchist store Blackout Books, in New York’s Alphabet City neighborhood, and then he’d disappear for days into volumes he had bought, borrowed or even dumpster-dived, his long, bony hands cracking the spines of old lefty tomes and the quickie compilations of the writings of Subcomandante Marcos, the leader of the Zapatista revolt in Mexico who was fast becoming the new model for anarchist panache. he read Kropotkin, the early-twentieth-century Russian biologist who gave to anarchism its core idea of “mutual aid,” the simple but radical premise that cooperation, not competition, is the natural condition of humanity, and he worked with movements like the Ruckus Society, Earth First! and Reclaim the Streets, leaderless networks of activists who put anarchist ideas into action through confrontational tactics—Brad was expert in the construction of “sleeping dragons” and “bear claws,” both methods of locking yourself down in front of a bulldozer or in the middle of a city street. The point wasn’t a set of demands but the act of disruption itself. In Brad’s world, action—direct, local, unfiltered—mattered more than ideology. In theory, anyway. In practice, the anarchist factions often succumb to purist notions, refusing even to speak to comrades they consider co-opted. Not Brad. he was tight with anarcho-primitivists, who view language itself as oppressive, and social anarchists, who write books and build schools. “He was the least sectarian person I ever met,” says Dyan Neary. “That’s what made it easy for him to introduce people to ideas. He was just sort of user-friendly.”

He had a sharp side, too. “Brad did his fair share of alienating people,” says Sascha DuBrul, who like Brad had migrated from Dreamtime to the Lower East Side. “He was so loud and outspoken, and he wasn’t always a big listener.” At the 5th Street Squat, he’d “talk really loud” about his building skills, but then, friends say, he wired his room incorrectly, resulting in a small fire. The fire didn’t threaten the building, but it gave Giuliani an excuse to tear it down. “When they came for our building,” Brad wrote, “there weren’t any eviction papers, and they came with a wrecking crane. I snuck inside, felt the rumble when the ball pierced the wall. I was alone. From the roof I watched them dump a chunk of my home on my garden…When it was all over: a rubble heap.”

“I almost feel like he wanted to die up there, he felt so guilty,” a friend told The Village Voice. Afterward, Brad undertook a freight-train tour of America, riding in boxcars from city to city, speaking to activist groups about Giuliani’s crackdown. “Brad got incredibly fucking riled up,” remembers DuBrul. “He was on fire, his hands were shaking.”

“He had a certain innocence,” says Stephan Said, a squatter and folk singer Brad admired. “What led him to his death was at the same time what made him so endearing.”

In 1998, Brad went out west to join Earth First! activists for a “forest defense,” which for Brad would consist of spending the summer on a platform built high up around the trunk of an old-growth Douglas fir in Oregon, an anarchist retreat from the laws down below. “I called it the Y plane ‘cause you’re up, up, up off the rules of the X plane,” says Priya Reddy, who’d become one of Brad’s best friends that summer. “The only rule you really have is gravity. It’s homelessness in the best sense.”

A city girl, Reddy–in Oregon she took the name Warcry, a not-so-subtle response to “hippie-ish” tree-sitters like Julia Butterfly—didn’t know how to climb, so at first she provided ground support, hiking from tree to tree in the murky green light, taking orders for supplies. Brad had a different concern. “I dropped a piece of paper,” he called down on her first day. “Could you find it for me?”

Warcry looked into the branches. The voice’s source, 200 feet up, was invisible. So was his piece of paper, fallen amid the thick ferns of the forest floor. When she found it, a folded-up scrap, she took a peek. A battle plan? No; a love poem.

The woods were noisy with the music of the tree-sitters. CDs and tapes of Sonic Youth, Crass and Conflict blasted full volume. The most popular song seemed to be “White Rabbit.” After Warcry heard it for what seemed like the hundredth time, she took a stand. “Why are you people playing White Rabbit over and over again?” she demanded. “You don’t know?” came the answer. “It’s a warning.” White Rabbit meant the cops, spotted by Brad or another tree-sitter from their perches far above, were on their way.

Soon Warcry worked up the courage to join Brad in the trees, spending three weeks on a neighboring platform. She brought a video camera. One day loggers brought down a giant within fifty yards of Brad’s and Warcry’s video, but you can hear his raw scream: “Fuuuck!” The tree settles, and Brad shouts at the loggers below. “How old do you think that tree was? How old are you?” It was a question he might have been asking himself—up in his treehouse, there were times he felt like a child, powerless to respond.

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What set Brad apart from so many radical activists was that throughout it all, he remained close to his family, the buttoned-down Republican Wills of Kenilworth. When he was jailed for nearly a week at the WTO Seattle protests in 1999, one of his chief worries was getting out in time for his mother’s sixtieth birthday, which the Wills planned to celebrate in Hawaii. When he made it there, he didn’t tell them what had really gone down. “He didn’t want to burden us,” says his mother.

That’s how Brad kept his truce with where he came from. In 2002, when he and Dyan Neary were hopping freight trains from the Northwest to New York, he insisted they take a detour so that Neary—who goes by Glass—could meet his mother. Glass tried to talk politics, telling the Wills about South America coca farmers blasted into extreme poverty by U.S.-funded crop-spraying. Brad’s mom looked confused: “But, dear, how do you think we should deal with the cocaine question?” It wasn’t meant as a question.

“Later, I was like, Oh shit, they don’t really know what you’re doing, do they?” Brad giggled, proud of his ability to move between worlds.

The two had met shortly after 9/11, their first date a six-hour walk around Ground Zero. Brad was thirty-one; Glass was twenty, tall and skinny with big curves and big eyes and a smile like Brad’s, wide and knowing. But she was stunned by New York’s transformation from go-go to grief to warmongering. “What the fuck happened to my city?” she thought. They decided it was time to get out of town.
There were two complications. The first was monogamy. Brad didn’t believe in it. All right, Glass said, no sex. Brad suddenly discovered an untapped well of fidelity. The other problem was thornier: Brad was about to become a father. The mother was a French woman with whom he’d had a brief relationship while she was visiting New York. A month later, she called to tell him she was pregnant. Brad loved kids, but he’d sworn he’d never bring one of his own into a world he considered too damaged. Brad flew over to visit.
“Why don’t you stay?” she asked. “We can raise the child together.”

“I’ll help you out with money,” he said—a major commitment, given that he lived on food he found in dumpsters—“but I’m not moving to France.”

When the woman had the baby, her new boyfriend adopted him. That seemed to Brad like an ideal solution—he loved the family he already had, but he wasn’t looking to start one.

“He wanted to experience revolution,” says Glass. “He wanted to live that every day.” They spent much of the next two years in South America, returning to New York to raise funds by taking temp jobs–Brad was a lighting grip—and throwing all-night benefit parties. In Brazil, they worked with the Movimiento Sin Terra, landless poor people who’ve squatted and won rights to more than 20 million acres of farmland. In Buenos Aires, they joined up with a movement of workers who’d reclaimed factories shuttered by Argentina’s economic meltdown. In Bolivia, they met a radical coca farmer named Evo Morales who would soon become the country’s first indigenous president. This wasn’t the East Village, Brad realized, or a tree platform in Oregon. There was real power at stake.

Now he had a mission. He wanted to show American activists how to join the fight wherever they could find it, or start it. Video, he determined, was his best medium. In 2004, he scraped together $300 for a used Canon ZR 40 and headed back south, this time on his own. He was ready to start telling stories, ready to become a reporter.

In 2005, in a central-Brazilian squatters’ town of 12,000 landless peasants called Sonho Real (“Real Dream”), Brad filmed a police attack that resulted in two dead and twenty “missing.” Brad was the only reporter on hand. He hid in a shack, filming, and waited for the worst. The cops found him, dragged him out by his hair and beat him to a pulp. Then they smashed his camera and arrested him. “The U.S. Embassy refused to do anything,” says Brad’s friend Miguel. “They said, Yes, we know, but he is not an important person to us.” But his American passport still carried weight with the Brazilian police. They let him go. He’d managed to keep his tape hidden; soon, it would be broadcast throughout Brazil, a perfect example of Indymedia in action.

But it didn’t seem like a victory to Brad. “I feel like I am haunted,” he wrote to his friend Kate Crane. “I keep seeing a thin woman’s body curled up at the bottom of a well, her body in a strange position—I can’t escape it.”

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The Mexico to which Brad traveled in early October 2006 seemed like a nation on the verge. Of what, nobody could say. But something was about to break. It was an election year, and a new force in Mexican politics, the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), appeared certain to win the presidency. Vicente Fox, the Bush clone who had deposed the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in 2000, was constitutionally forbidden from running again. His anointed successor was Felipe Calderón, an angry bully obsessed with oil and secrecy, the Dick Cheney of Mexico. On July 2nd, Mexican television declared the race between Calderón and moderate Andrés Manuel López Obrador too close to call, and the next morning Mexico’s electoral authority made Calderón the winner. Only they hadn’t counted all the votes. Two million Mexicans poured into the streets to protest. Calderón’s only hope was to seduce the PRI, his right-wing party’s traditional enemy, into a coalition against the leftist PRD. In exchange for the PRI’s support, he promised that his party would bail out the PRI’s cash cow: Oaxaca.

Oaxaca is one of the poorest states in a poor nation. In 2004, the PRI installed as governor a rising star with a reputation for electoral fraud named Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. Ruiz was a cash machine, skilled at milking the state to kick funds up to the national party organization. What he wasn’t so good at, it turned out, was keeping a lid on the discontent that has been rippling across Mexico since the Zapatistas marched out of the jungle in 2004.

“If they want to kill our teachers,” Oaxaqueños declared after Ruiz’s police killed several striking teachers on June 14th, 2006, “they should kill us all now.” From that day on, Oaxaca City was in open revolt. “Con Ulises’pelotas, yo haré los huevos fritos,” women chanted in the streets. (“With Ulises’ balls, I’m going to make fried eggs!”). It was as if Louisiana’s poor converged on New Orleans, shoved aside the political hacks and ran the city themselves for months, even as National Guardsmen drove around shooting into houses.

And yet the American press ignored Oaxaca. That made it a perfect story for Brad. Friends tried to talk him out of it. “The APPO”—the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca, in effect its revolutionary government—”doesn’t trust anyone it hasn’t known for years,” Al Giordano, the publisher of a report on Latin American politics called Narco News, told him. “They keep telling me not to send newcomers, because the situation is so fucking tense.”

“I think I will go,” Brad wrote back. When he showed up at an Indymedia headquarters in Mexico City en route to Oaxaca, they told him his white skin would make him and anyone standing near him a target.

“You’re treating me like my mom,” Brad said. “What are you made of? This is what it’s about. This is the uprising.”

John Gibler, a radical print journalist with deeper roots in Mexico, remembers Brad showing up in Oaxaca City’s central square, a tall hipster American with a fancy camera—Brad had sunk his life savings into it—that made him look like a professional. “The media painted a picture of a gung-ho idealist who didn’t know which way was which, but the guy was not clueless,” says Gibler. “That first day I said, Hey, Brad, you wanna come along to the barricades tonight?” He looked at me, and he said, “I can’t wait to get out there, but people are getting killed. I need to get a feel of the place. Walking around at night without that is not a smart move.”

He found a place to sleep (the floor of the headquarters of an indigenous-rights group) and a place to stash his videotape—he’d learned from Brazil that a hiding place was a requirement for an Indymedia journalist lacking the protections of a big news agency. He ate with the APPOs, as the protesters were called, marched with them, slept on the ground beside them on hot evenings. He told them about his politics before he asked about theirs. He laughed a lot, his ridiculous guffaw. Slowly, the APPOs began to trust him. Brad was on the inside of what Rolling Thunder, an anarchist rag back in the States, would call “the closest our generation has come to seeing an anarchist revolution.” Mexican authorities evidently agreed—they were preparing to make an example out of Oaxaca.

-

Brad’s footage on October 27th begins on a suburban street, strewn with rocks and sandbags, a pillar of black smoke rising in the background. Minutes before, there’d been a battle, paramilitaries with automatic weapons versus protesters with Molotov cocktails. Brad zooms in on a silver van consumed by flames. Then he cuts back to the crowd, old men in straw hats, teenagers in ski masks, big mamas with frying pans. They begin to shout. “the people, united!” Bullets pop from a side street, and the fight careens onto a narrow lane of one-story buildings. “Cover yourselves, comrades!” someone shouts. The protesters advance car by car, lobbing Molotovs that bloom from the blacktop. The sky darkens, bruised blue over green trees. A dark-skinned boy in a black tank top kneels and aims his bottle-rocket bazooka. Bullets are cracking. Brad remembers a war photographer’s maxim: “Don’t get greedy.” That’s when you get killed. He turns of his camera.

When he starts shooting again, the protesters are crouching outside a white building in which they believe a comrade is being held prisoner. They batter the door, darting out into the open to deliver drop kicks. “Mire!” Brad shouts. (“Look!”) From down the street, more gunfire. Brad runs. Next to him someone is hit. “Shit!” Brad shouts. “Are you OK, comrade?” someone asks. Brad zooms in on an old woman fingering her prayer beads.

Then the final footage played around the globe half a million times: a red dump truck used as a barricade and a battering ram, a wounded man led away, gunfire answered by bottle rockets. “Diganle a este pinche wey que no este tomando fotos!” somebody shouts. (“Somebody tell this fucking guy to stop taking photos!”) Brad keeps shooting. He steps up onto the sidewalk, his camera aimed dead ahead. The compañeros are crouching; Brad rises, a pale white gringo above the crowd.

“I watch this, and I say, Brad, stop! Don’t do this!” says Miguel, the Brazilian filmmaker. “I ask myself if he really knows where he is. I ask myself if he knows he can die.”

Bang–a bullet hits Brad dead center, just below his heart, exploding his aorta.

“Ayúdeme!” he screams. (“Help me!”)

“Tranquilo, tranquilo,” someone says. (“Take it easy, take it easy.”) A photographer gives Brad mouth-to-mouth, and he gasps and opens his eyes. There are last words, but nobody knows what they are; the men who rush him to the hospital don’t understand English, and Quebrado has forgotten how to speak his mind.

-

His old girlfriend Glass was in Hawaii when she heard. She’d been e-mailing Brad a lot. She missed him, and it seemed like he missed her too. She’d been in New York right before he’d left for Oaxaca, and they’d gone on a pub crawl. He’d had a girlfriend with him, but in the pictures from that night it’s Glass on Brad’s arm. The day he died, she was sitting in a park, singing songs she learned from Brad. She sang the anarchist anthems, then Woody Guthrie’s “Hobo Lullaby.” Most of all she wanted to sing his favorite, “Angel from Montgomery.” She tried to hear Brad’s voice. He’d be John Prine, she’d be Bonnie Raitt.

Just give me one thing that I can hold on to/To believe in this living is a hard way to go.

“I have to e-mail Brad,” she thought. “This is so great!” Then her phone rang. “This is Dyan, right?” a stranger’s voice said. “Can you call Brad Will’s mom? He’s hurt.”

“What? How?” The stranger wouldn’t answer. “I’m not calling his mother until I know what happened,” Glass said. The stranger gave Glass another number. She dialed. “I was told to call this number about Brad?” she asked.

“Yeah, it’s been confirmed,” said the voice on the other end, another stranger.

“What’s been confirmed?”

“Oh, he’s dead.”

All Glass remembers after that is screaming.

-

In Oaxaca, the APPOs combed Brad’s long hair and dressed his body in white. They draped a gold cross around his neck and laid him in a coffin. There were no fiery speeches, just weeping. Then-president Fox used the death of the gringo as an excuse to invade Oaxaca with 4,000 federal police. The U.S. ambassador, a Bush crony from Texas, blamed the violence on schoolteachers and said that Brad’s death “underscores the need for a return to law and order.” In the coming months, the APPO would be crushed; Calderón would slam through a Mexican version of the Patriot Act, allowing police to tap phones and make arrests without warrants or charges; and, this past fall, the Bush administration proposed a $1.4 billion military aid package for Calderón’s regime, ostensibly to fight drugs and “terrorism.”

And Brad’s killers? It seemed like an open-and-shut case—a Mexican news photographer had even taken a picture of the men who appeared to be the shooters, a group of beefy thugs in plain clothes charging toward Brad and the APPOs with pistols and AR-15s. The Oaxaca state prosecutor, a Ruiz loyalist, grudgingly issued warrants for two of them, police Commander Orlando Manuel Aguilar and Abel Santiago Zárate, known as “El Chino.” But at a press conference two weeks later, the prosecutor announced a new theory: Brad’s murder had been a “deceitful confabulation” planned by the APPO. In this version of events, Brad was only grazed on the street. The fatal bullet was fired point-blank by an APPO on the way to the hospital—a physical impossibility, according to the coroner. No matter. At the end of November, a judge set the suspects free.

Last March, Brad’s parents traveled to Mexico to request that the investigation be turned over to federal authorities. They won that fight, only to be fed the same story with a half dozen variations. Believability wasn’t the point. “In political crimes in Mexico,” notes Gibler, who came to act as the family’s translator, “there’s an impeccably neat history of immediate obfuscation and destruction of evidence. The authorities immediately flood all discussion with conspiracy theory. There’s a tradition of exquisite incompetence, so that later only speculation is possible.”

The Wills are not, by nature, speculative people. At age sixty-eight, Hardy is a solid, fit man with white hair worn in a boyish curl. He still drives more than an hour each way every day to his factory in Rockford, Illinois. Kathy Will bounces like a loose electron around the Wisconsin lake house in which they now live. Designed and built by Brad’s great-grandfather, the home is a mansion of broad, dark cypress beams, spotless, disturbed only by neat stacks of documents, arranged at the great oak dining table, like settings for a seminar on Brad’s achievements as a boy, Mexican politics and ballistics.

It’s on this last matter that the case still turns. If the Wills are ever to be able to say, “This is what happened, this is how Brad died, this is the man who killed him,” they must determine what sort of bullet killed him and where, exactly, it came from. The initial coroner’s report said the bullets were 9mm, which would rule out the .38s carried by the cops Brad filmed. But a re-examination of the evidence has revealed that the bullets were .38s after all. Hardy shows me a photograph of them, two squat slugs hardly dented. “They only passed through soft tissue,” he says. But from how far away? The government says Brad was shot nearly point-blank. The Wills are certain he was shot by the policemen at the end of the street. Proving that, they believe, may start the wheels of justice turning. I’ve come bearing what passes for good news to the Wills these days: a frame-by-frame analysis of Brad’s last minute made by his friend Warcry, who has entrusted me to act as her courier.

“This is what we’ve been waiting for,” says Hardy. We gather in a TV room. “That’s it!” Hardy exclaims. There, on the left side of the screen, above the hood of the red dump truck, in the green of the trees, a tiny white starburst appears, expands, drifts like smoke, visible for a fraction of a second, blown up into giant, pale pizels—very possible the bullet that’s about to hit Brad.

“Should we watch it again?” Hardy asks. Kathy’s head drops, and she backs out of the room. Rewind, pause; Brad falls down, over and over. “Yes,” says Hardy quietly, “this is what we need.”

He’s excited, his face flushed. It’s 11:30 at night. I call Warcry; she’s up, waiting for the Wills’ response. Hardy wants to see a still she’s isolated of a man who appears to be holding a sniper rifle, more potential evidence for a long-distance kill shot. “This could really change everything!” Hardy says. We gather around his computer in his study, a dark room filled with hunting trophies and memorabilia from Hardy’s Yale football days. I pull up the image, a man in a yellow shirt at a distance, a long gun barrel rising above his left shoulder. Hardy sighs. He walks over to a well-stocked gun cabinet, removes a rifle and turns around, posing perfectly as the man Warcry believes is his son’s killer.

“It’s not a sniper rifle,” he says, looking at the gun in his hand. “It’s a carbine.”

The puff of white smoke is the best piece of evidence they’ve seen in the year since Brad died, but they still can’t explain how he was shot twice at long range by such a clumsy old weapon. Hardy slumps into a seat in the corner, thinking of one more theory—one more chance at certainty—dashed.

Kathy brings us tea. Like Brad, she has soft, sleepy eyes and a broad smile. “I like talking to people,” she says. “I’ll talk to anyone. I guess that’s where Brad got it from.” Hardy is exhausted, but Kathy sits up, watching Brad’s old videos—Brad fleeing tear gas in Miami, bullets in Brazil. Hardy was always the skeptical one, shielding his wife from the ways of the world, but now it’s Kathy who’s gaining a worldly wisdom, grasping the roots of her son’s political discontent. She still doesn’t get the politics, tsk-tsks when she sees Brad sitting in front of an upside-down American flag—a crisp Stars and Stripes snaps on a pole outside the house, and there are three bands of red, white, and blue stones on her finger. It’s not anything that Brad said that has changed her point of view. It’s what the Mexican government says, the lies they told her to her face.

“It’d be laughable if they weren’t serious,” she says. “What they’re really telling me is that Brad was there for a very good reason. Believe me, I didn’t want him there. But he was absolutely right. He was right about all the injustices. I didn’t know it then. I really didn’t know. I know it now. In spades.”

One of the most common clichés about radicalism in America is the myth that it’s all about the parents, activists rebelling against or proving themselves to Mom and Dad before they settle down and become Mom or Dad. That wasn’t what Brad Will was doing. Had he come through that fire-fight on October 27th, 2006, he probably wouldn’t have mentioned it to his mother. Instead, he’d tell her about the great Mexican food he’d had, and she’d say that the lake was flattening in the cold, that soon it would be frozen, that maybe when he came home for Christmas he could go ice-skating. His footage likely would not have been seen outside activist circles in the United States, the echo chamber of the already persuaded. Yet the bullet that killed him ended up broadcasting what he had learned far beyond his usual channels, all the way back to where he’d begun. With Brad’s death, knowledge came to Kathy Will. It was the most awful kind of knowing: a new understanding of the world as it is, almost blinding her to the glimpse she had caught, maybe for the first time, of the world as Brad had imagined it could be.

“The last possible deed is that which defines perception itself,” writes Hakim Bey in the long and wild poem that turned Brad Will on to those possibilities, “an invisible golden cord that connects us.”