As promised, subscription copies will be the first mailed out, so if you haven’t yet subscribed, now is the time to do it—if you miss the first bulk subscription mailing, the next one won’t be until a few weeks later. NOTE: Current subscribers should email rtsubs@crimethinc.com if they have changed their address.

The 2010 Winter Olympics will take place in Vancouver & Whistler, on unceded Indigenous land, from February 12-28 2010. We call on all anti-capitalist, Indigenous, housing rights, labour, migrant justice, environmental, anti-war, community-loving, anti-poverty, civil libertarian, and anti colonial activists to come together to confront this two-week circus and the oppression it represents. We are organizing towards a global anti-capitalist and anti-colonial convergence against the 2010 Olympic Games.

If you were planning to order and want to save a few dollars, the deadline for ordering with the old rates is Noon, Pacific Time, on Saturday, January 2nd. After noon, all orders will be shipped at the new rates.

Therefore we strongly encourage everyone to select UPS Ground as their shipping option. Also, as a tip to reduce the cost of UPS Ground for your order, we suggest getting creative and having the package shipped to a place of business rather than a residence, doing so can often save several dollars.

Current Availability (click on number to see list of all libraries with book):
Days of War — 192 Libraries
Recipes for Disaster — 57 Libraries (22 here, 20 here & 15 here)
Expect Resistance — 28 Libraries
Evasion — 112 Libraries (74 here & 38 here)
Off the Map — 62 Libraries

These numbers are great, and you can be sure almost every single one of these books was the result of someone requesting the library to acquire it. Of course, there is much room for improvement, so keep up the good work folks, and don’t forget: each request makes the next request more likely to be filled, so keep at it!

PS: For those with the old version, you aren’t missing anything—there is no new content on the discs themselves.

And, lastly, a hearty congratulations to Ms. Stephanie of Los Angeles, who won our random subscriber drawing for a Ne Plus Ultra copy of Days of War.

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Update: Shocking news—printer has missed yet another deadline of their own. We now expect to have them for mailing on Tuesday, the 15th. Grrrrr.

To celebrate our own giddy anticipation of the pending arrival, we’ve decided to spice things up by holding a drawing for one of the few remaining copies of the Ne Plus Ultra Edition of Days of War, Nights Love. To be eligible, you simply have to subscribe to Rolling Thunder by Midnight PST on the 31st of August. If you’ve already subscribed, don’t worry, you are eligible as well. The winner will be selected by a random number generator.

Unlike virtually every other analysis yet published from the radical community, this one utilizes subsequent internal government reports, comparing them against a wide variety of other sources. We hope our investigation and the accompanying archive of personal testimonies will prove useful both to participants still trying to understand the events of this past summer and to organizers looking to derive lessons from them for the future.

In a nutshell, we hypothesize that the chief significance of the 2008 anti-convention mobilizations was in the precedents they might set for future organizing. Anarchists took the initiative to determine their own goals and strategies for the protests, establishing decentralized networks throughout the US far in advance. This enabled them to build relationships with other organizing groups and to coordinate their actions, effectively setting the tone for the protests at both conventions. At the same time, the protests were less attended than expected, perhaps as a result of the Obama campaign detracting from street-level participation in the antiwar movement. In this regard, they were the final act of an era that has now passed.

The RNC protests met with an almost unprecedented degree of state repression, which is still playing out today even as the political climate has changed. The federal government continued its strategy of gathering intelligence and entrapping stragglers, already familiar from attacks on environmentalists and animal rights activists. Local authorities focused on infiltration, profiling, and raids, ultimately arresting over 800 people and bringing conspiracy charges against organizers. Despite all this, they seem to have been remarkably unprepared to maintain order in the streets on the first day of the RNC, and their subsequent overreaction helped discredit them in the public eye. Most arrestees have gotten off scot-free; it remains to be seen how the ongoing felony cases will conclude. The outcome of the RNC 8 conspiracy trial in particular will indicate how sustainable we can expect the organizing model debuted at the 2008 conventions to be.

Going It Alone: Anarchist Action at the Democratic 
and Republican National Conventions

We Are All Legal Workers: Legal Support at the RNC and After

Accounts from the Democratic 
and Republican National Conventions

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Some of us, however, felt limited by this flight. We dreamed of building an anarchist castle out of the derelict abandonment right under our enemies’ noses. Hundreds would arrive to help us paint a masterpiece upon our canvas of rubble: workshops, meeting halls, libraries, performance spaces, gardens, and orchards would be constructed out of ruins and wreckage. We’d supply food, shelter, and so much more; like before, we would exchange stories, ideas, laughter, and dance moves with the maniac nomads, eloquent criminals, and dedicated rebels who descended upon our city for a week of chaos and feverish activity. The beauty of this dream was that at the end of it all, some of us could stay; for another week, a season, a year, or maybe even the rest of our lives. It never had to end.

We held onto this plan in secret, believing it to be impossible. Our dream was fraught with complications and seemed doomed to fail. It remained a fantastical plot we lacked the daring to attempt. Until now.

Save the date, July 20-26, Pittsburgh, PA, and stay tuned for more details.

Download Rolling Thunder #3 PDF [9 MB]

International reports from last Mayday’s pro-immigrant rallies! Analysis of the Bush regime’s strategy to promote terrorism worldwide! Discussion of the latest wave of federal repression! Testimony from a convicted anti-war arsonist! Anarchist perspectives on and reports from the struggle against domestic violence! A tell-all interview with notorious graffiti artist(s) BORF! A shocking exposé on German pro-Zionist lunatics! A how-to guide to funneling resources out of universities! A spy’s-eye-view of immigrant labor in factory farming! A narrow escape from the flaming Pentagon on September 11, 2001! A history of direct action and rioting in queer liberation struggles! A cartoon recounting the riots at the canceled World Bank conference in Barcelona! A mad-lib for radicals with poor social skills! A satirical guide to writing reviews! Visionary storytelling, technical advice on computer security, eulogies and poster designs and more!