Immediately before the one-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, we will meet Chris Hedges in New York City for a public debate about diversity of tactics. This debate will be free and open to the public, and livestreamed for those who can’t attend.
We’ve noticed more and more of you are using mobile devices to access this site, so we wanted to point out the increased readability feature we’ve added to our reading library. On each library page, you will see the above icon in the far left menu column; click the icon and that page will be converted to a simple text version optimized for whatever device you are using, with tools to tweak the formatting to suit your tastes. Instapaper (a service we love the shit out of) users will find a link in the text underneath the icon that will save the article to your Instapaper account.
Of course, this is just a stopgap solution until we have time to create our own mobile versions, which is indeed on our very long to-do list. It was our bad luck we did our last major redesign in 2007, just before the iPhone was introduced and when no one was looking at websites on their phones yet—just five years later almost 10% of our page views are from mobile devices. So, we’re working on it.
As the momentum that originated with Occupy Wall Street tapers off, May Day 2012 saw anarchists on the West Coast consolidate their gains in the street with actions from Los Angeles to Vancouver. In a series of first-person vignettes from the Bay Area, supplemented by a photoessay from Seattle set to a song by Underground Reverie, we evoke the atmosphere of May Day 2012 and plumb the questions it poses.
We’ve added a new video to our Emergency Broadcast System, Ethan Silverstein’s Roses on My Table. This documentary short tells the story of the Wingnut Anarchist Collective in Richmond, VA, an organizing group and cooperative living space aimed at fostering mutual aid and grassroots resistance to authority. From maintaining a community center to carrying out occupations and disaster relief, the video illustrates some of the many ways a handful of committed people can transform their lives and their community.
We’ll be attending the 17th Annual Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair this weekend for our 13th consecutive time, and, as usual, will have thousands of posters, pamphlets and stickers to give away for free as well as our books and fancy posters for sale. We’ll be there both Saturday and Sunday, so stop on by.
We will also debut a new sticker and a brand new experimental publication, Vortext, a journal of philosophy, nihilist performance art, and MAXIMUM ULTRAISM. Vortext will be available for online orders afterwards if we have any left, and the stickers will be available here in bulk next week. We’ll have our new, free postcard, as well.
We’re thrilled to present the four-song debut release from Underground Reverie, Seattle’s premier anarchist electronic ensemble:
Underground Reverie
“Out of Isolation and into the Fray”
Four-Song Debut [27MB]
The release is free, of course—but if you can, please show your appreciation by making a donation to the legal fund of those arrested in last month’s building occupation in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. To do so, go to the defendant support site and donate to the arrestees’ legal fund; further inquiries can be addressed to ‘defendoccupychapelhillarrestees@riseup.net’.
One of these songs appeared in our video coverage of the aforementioned building occupation. Since this is the digital age, we can already offer a review of the release, courtesy of Seattle’s excellent Tides of Flame [PDF]:
“Underground Reverie’s debut album is throbbing, haunting, and completely amazing. Samples from helicopters, owlish flutes, various films (including Network), and eerie old songs flesh out a skeleton of delicate electronic beats. The music is as much about the horrors of civilization as it is about the raw beauty of struggle. In the liner notes, UR reflects on anarchist praxis and encourages us to keep fighting.”
Contact Underground Reverie: undergroundreverie@riseup.net
As police violence intensifies alongside the inequalities it exists to enforce, some communities are mobilizing to defend themselves, while others have yet to understand why this is necessary. In response, we’ve prepared a bulk newsprint version of our poster stressing the structural role the police play in maintaining capitalism.
These are available practically at cost; please order a pile of them to distribute in your neighborhood, school, or occupation or to decorate the walls of your city! Note that they have been added to the Poster Mix Kit as well.
In addition, we’ve prepared a new text for the back of the poster, Seven Myths about the Police. A full pdf of the print version is available here.
We’ve also yet again reprinted our Civilian’s Guide to Direct Action, which remains available in bulk as well. This paper offers a step-by-step overview of how to act directly to transform society, rather than bogging down in fruitless efforts to exert influence through bureaucratic channels.
Test Their Logik is currently on a ten-week tour of Europe promoting their new album “A”. They’ll be traveling everywhere between England, Greece, and Catalonia, stopping at the anarchist book fair in London and the G20 in Cannes and playing shows at legendary squats and social centers. Joining them at some of these shows will be some of the best European anti-authoritarian hip-hop acts, including Mary Read Collectif, DJ Malatesta, and Drowning Dog.
Starting with the occupation of a park next to Wall Street on September 17, a new movement is spreading across the country in which people gather in public spaces in protest against social inequalities. We’ll present a full analysis of this phenomenon here shortly; in the meantime, here’s an open letter to the occupation movement, engaging with some of the issues that have arisen thus far. Please forward this widely and print out versions to distribute at the “Occupy” events!
Dear Occupiers [online viewing version]
Dear Occupiers [print version]: A two-sided flier intended to be folded down the middle, longways.
Our friends in the Mysterious Rabbit Puppet Army, whose work we’ve shared here before, just embarked on a month-long tour to present their newest shows. The feature show, “What Are Prisons For?”, uses shadow puppets to outline the history of the Prison Industrial Complex from chattel slavery in the South to today’s exploding prison population.
