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Our comrades in the Mysterious Rabbit Puppet Army are following up their summer shows with a short winter tour down south. Their 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. We highly recommend this excellent introduction for viewers of all ages.
Our newest feature tells the story of the occupation of a derelict building in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on November 12-13, 2011, drawing on accounts from a wide range of participants. While anarchists and corporate media have circulated news of this action far and wide, the experiences shared inside the building have remained a sort of black box. This report opens up that box, just as the occupiers opened up the building, to reveal a world of possibility.
• Breaking and Entering a New World
• Personal Accounts from a Building Occupation Movement
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To complement the Work book and poster, we’ve prepared a full array of additional posters and pamphlets expanding on the same issues. Print these out and cover your town with them! Used to transform public space, these will give yet another dimension to the Work project, starting conversations and foregrounding the possibility of anticapitalist resistance.
The archive currently offers 19 posters and 2 pamphlets, with more to come. If you see any of these in action, feel free to send us photos at hello@crimethinc.com.
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On May 20-21, anarchists and fellow travelers gathered in Milwaukee for a small conference about the ongoing crisis of capitalism. In the final discussion, people from around the US compared notes on recent anti-austerity protests, focusing chiefly on the student movement in California and the recent protests in Wisconsin. We’ve summarized some of the conclusions here in hopes they can be useful in the next phase of anarchist organizing.
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After so much technological progress, why do we have to work more than ever before? How is it that the harder we work, the poorer we end up compared to our bosses? When the economy crashes, why do people focus on protecting their jobs when no one likes working in the first place? Can capitalism survive another century of crises?
Our newest book, entitled Work, addresses these questions and a great many more. To answer them, we had to revisit our previous analysis of employment and develop a more nuanced understanding of the economy. We spent months studying obscure history and comparing notes about how we experience exploitation in our daily lives, slowly hammering out a grand unified theory of 21st century capitalism.
In addition to distilling our findings in this book, we’ve also prepared a poster to diagram the system it describes. The poster is based on the classic illustration of the pyramid of the capitalist system published in the Industrial Worker in 1911. With the assistance of Packard Jennings, we’ve created a new version, much more detailed than the original and updated to account for all the transformations of the past one hundred years.
In combination, the book and poster explore the positions we occupy within this pyramid and the mechanics that maintain it. From the industrial revolution to the internet, from the colonization of the Americas to the explosion of the service sector and the stock market, from the 2008 financial crisis to the upheavals taking place right now, Work offers an overview of how capitalism functions in the 21st century and what we can do to get beyond it it.
CrimethInc. Far East will be tabling with these books and posters and a whole lot more at the Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair April 9 and 10; there will be a presentation about the book at 4 pm on April 10. The following weekend, Test Their Logik will host a release party for the book at the Toronto Anarchist Book Fair.
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North Africa is in revolt. As usual, the most striking thing is how familiar everything is: the young man with the prestigious degree working at a coffee shop, the unemployment and bitterness, the protests set off by police brutality—for police are to the unemployed what bosses are to workers. These details cue us in that what is happening in Egypt is not part of another world, but very much part of our own. There are no exotic overseas revolutions in the 21st century. Make no mistake—though these events dwarf the riots in Greece and the student movement in England, they spring from the same source.
To keep up with events, we urge you to read our comrades’ dispatches from Egypt and anti-authoritarian perspectives from the Middle East in general. But for these uprisings to offer any hope, we have to understand ourselves as part of them, and think and act accordingly. To that end, we’ve solicited this analysis from a comrade in North Africa.
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November and December 2010 saw an unprecedented wave of student protest in the UK, touched off by an attack on the right-wing Tory party headquarters during a demonstration against tuition increases. With the assistance of members of the Last Hours collective, we’ve completed a belated overview of the causes and highlights of the UK student movement.
The events in the UK are significant in that they come on the heels of labor unrest in Spain and France, and coincided with fierce student protests in Italy as well. To the south, the government of Tunisia has just been toppled, sending shockwaves to Egypt. Broadly speaking, these are all reactions to the effects of the ongoing financial crisis that came into public consciousness in 2008; we will probably see more of these as disaffected youth take stock of the world they will be inheriting.
Sooner or later, this outrage is bound to erupt in the US as well. Last year’s student movement is surely only a preview, though we can’t tell what form it will take next. What we can do is study upheavals elsewhere in the world, reflect on how we can best contribute to oppositional momentum, and keep up our experiments in catalyzing resistance.
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What kind of world do the G20 leaders want to create? They showed us a sneak preview at the G20 summit in Toronto last June: a billion-dollar security budget, 20,000 security personnel, secret laws, pre-dawn house raids, indiscriminate attacks with batons, tear gas, and rubber bullets. Over 1100 people were arrested, most of whom were never charged.
If this is the future, who can blame people for resisting?
Since the G20 protests, we’ve waited breathlessly for a comprehensive account of the charges and investigations stemming from the summit. Despairing of finding one, we finally prepared this report. It’s not all-inclusive; there is a tremendous amount to keep up with, and many important details are still being forcefully withheld.
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We’ve also designed a poster collection urging support for the arrestees.
Please print out copies and distribute these far and wide.
[6 PDF Posters : 705k]
We call on everyone who desires a better world to support all those charged, arrested, and brutalized in Toronto. Government repression need not spell defeat; it simply marks a new phase of conflict, offering an opportunity to counterattack in the field of public opinion and discourage future repression. Our ability to act tomorrow is determined by what we do today to help our targeted comrades. If you want to support the G20 arrestees, skip to the end of this report for a list of ways to do so.
This report is dedicated to David Japenga, found guilty August 25 of breaking windows during protests against the G20 summit in Pittsburgh in September 2009.
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Earlier this summer, From the Depths returned from an exciting, inspiring, and educational two-month tour of Europe. They brought back copies of the European pressing of their “Germinate” LP, which are now available from Stickfigure distribution.
In addition, now that the band has finally made enough money to cover the recording costs of the album, they are offering it for free downloading. Donations are still welcome to cover the costs of making this available.
“Germinate” is still available on CD via CrimethInc. Far East. From the Depths is scheduled to record another record this fall.
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Our last update offered an overview of what happened in Toronto during the anarchist actions against the G20 June 25-27. We’ve received the following blow-by-blow report from on the ground there, offering context and analysis from inside the riots that shook Canada’s largest city. Anarchists have fully emerged in North America as a force to be reckoned with following the events in Toronto, and it is important to understand how this came about. The black bloc has become a household name throughout the region, and we must use this exposure to our advantage by maintaining our visibility even in the face of repression. We must also look critically at the events of the weekend in order to make strategic advances toward our goal of completely dismantling the domination and hierarchy of the present world.
Information on the situation facing arrestees in Toronto is still sketchy at best, as most of those with serious charges have not received bail hearings yet and full coordination of support campaigns has yet to emerge. We will present an additional update on repression and arrestee support as soon as possible.
![[Banner photo by Michael Thibault, Crimson Phoenix Photography, www.crimsonphoenixphotography.com.]](http://thecloud.crimethinc.com/images/riot2010/1_b.jpg)
“We love athletics” —anarchist contestants for the 2010 Olympics
We’re pleased to bring you breaking news from Vancouver, where united indigenous and anarchist resistance has disrupted the capitalist and nationalist triumphalism at the opening of the Olympic Games.
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Two dear comrades, Carrie Feldman and Scott DeMuth, are subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury in Davenport, Iowa this coming Tuesday, November 17. The prosecutor has not disclosed the pretext for the subpoena, though it appears that it may be connected to the FBI investigation of an Animal Liberation Front action that occurred at the University of Iowa in 2004—when Carrie and Scott were barely in high school.
Grand juries exist to coerce civilians into providing information about themselves and others to law enforcement and intelligence agencies. They operate in secret; no judges or defense attorneys are present, and neither Constitutional rights nor conventional evidence-gathering protocol apply. Grand juries are frequently used to harass activists and dissidents; for example, a grand jury forced independent journalist Josh Wolf to serve 226 days in a federal prison simply for refusing to turn over a videotape he had shot at a demonstration.
Carrie was already called to appear before this grand jury on October 15, and refused to answer questions, reading a statement declaring that she had “no intention of testifying before this grand jury” on account of her personal convictions. It is possible that if she and Scott refuse to answer questions this Tuesday, they will be thrown in jail for up to a year.
Both Carrie and Scott have contributed immensely to their communities and to the struggle for a freer world. Among other projects, Carrie has worked with EWOK!, a Twin Cities group supporting environmentalist defendants and prisoners, and the Coldsnap Legal Collective, which has been instrumental in supporting arrestees from the 2008 RNC protests. In addition to his own involvement with EWOK! and the Anarchist Black Cross, Scott participates in Oyate Nipi Kte, a group dedicated to the liberation of the Dakota people and the rediscovery of their traditional ways of life, and the editorial board of the Dakota community journal Anpao Duta. If these two are kidnapped by the state, it will be a tremendous loss.
Supporters are calling for a phone-in day to pressure the prosecutor to leave them alone. This Monday, call US Attorney Cliff Cronk and demand that he dismiss the subpoenas. Let them know this harassment is unacceptable and will be met by popular outrage and opposition at every turn. Feel free to take up as much of their time as you can—they clearly feel entitled to waste ours.
Monday, November 16, 9 am to 4 pm Central Standard Time
US Attorney’s Office
Cliff Cronk: (563)449-5432
Support Webpage for Carrie and Scott
General Purpose Poster against cooperating with police investigations [PDF, 576k]
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In our initial coverage of last month’s G20 protests, we challenged readers to imagine the offensive role dumpsters played in the conflict as a fable in which a tool refuses its prescribed social function:
Imagine, if you will, gentle reader, the animist version of this story in which dumpsters, long accused of complicity in anarchist “lifestylism,” step out of their social role to join the social war. Free food, even when distributed via programs like Food Not Bombs, is not enough—we want freedom itself, and the dumpster does too, and it gains momentum down the hill as it rolls, alone and magnificent, directly into a pair of oblivious policemen.
Our friends at the Super Happy Anarcho-Fun Pages, profiled earlier on this blog, have risen to the challenge, publishing a special issue of their comic delightfully lampooning our biannual Rolling Thunder. This sendup chronicles the adventures of one Skip, a dumpster who forsakes his place in a dropout community to make war on the ruling social order. It is available for downloading here:
web version [6MB PDF] : letter-size print [6.6MB PDF] : A4 print [6.7MB PDF]
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One month after the G20 protests in Pittsburgh, many still face felony and misdemeanor charges. Chief among these are the two people arrested for sending Twitter messages during the protests, whose home was subsequently raided by the FBI, and David Japenga, the young man ludicrously accused of being “single-handedly responsible for most of the $50,000 in damage” anarchists inflicted on corporations during the summit.
In addition to the felony charges filed in Pittsburgh and the house raid, the Twitter defendants—and perhaps others?—are apparently being targeted by a secretive federal grand jury. Supporters have established an informative and frequently updated blog here. A rudimentary support page for David Japenga can be found here. The Twitter case will set important precedents about people’s legal rights to use modern communications technology—a matter that could determine the shape of protest in this country for decades to come. It is also important to support David Japenga, who is the state’s scapegoat for this mobilization.
Meanwhile, last Thursday, over 100 other defendants appeared in court for charges stemming from the G20 protests. A smug judge lectured college students who had been randomly assaulted by police, while prosecutors and public defenders attempted to intimidate brutalized arrestees into accepting plea bargains and thus giving up their opportunity to sue the authorities over the abuse.
Donations to the support campaign for those targeted by the Twitter charges, the house raid, and the grand jury can be made here; the Pittsburgh G20 Resistance Project is also taking donations for a legal fund to support arrestees.
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The reports are coming in, and many participants are describing the G20 protests in Pittsburgh as a success. This is exciting news; the US anarchist movement hasn’t pulled off an unequivocally successful nationwide mobilization in half a decade or more. At the same time, success entails risks of its own: we may overlook the things we didn’t do well, take credit for things outside our actual influence, or fixate on attempting to repeat ourselves. Meanwhile the authorities, who often exaggerate our effectiveness to justify repressing us, appear to be understating the extent of anarchist damage and disruption in Pittsburgh, perhaps to downplay the possibility of militant anticapitalism regaining momentum.
This appraisal explores the triumphs and shortcomings of the G20 mobilization, in hopes that these lessons can be applied soon on a variety of other battlefields.
