Live from the Streets of Cairo

When we heard gunshots coming from the cabinet building, we were certain they were blanks. Despite having seen the military use live rounds earlier that day, we had a naïve sense of security amongst the thousands in the streets.

When the screams and panic erupted as one of the people standing next to me was shot in the neck and rushed to the ambulances at the back of the crowd, we stayed put, along with most of the crowd. The calm we felt was a testament to a feeling of strength in numbers we had never experienced before.

The scene was surreal: a few hundred people at any given time exchanging projectiles with Egypt’s military, while over a thousand more stood only a few meters away as the protest buffer zone. Among them, street vendors sold everything from snacks and tea to helmets and keffiyehs.

We’d been there since we woke up to the news that the army had burnt down the occupation at the Cabinet building. We knew that as night fell, things would get harder for us. Dodging the military projectiles from the roof would be tricky in the dark, and without media there, the military would fight even dirtier. But the determination of the crowd was contagious, and we couldn’t pull ourselves away.

A Year of Revolt

One year ago, millions of Egyptians took to the streets and occupied public squares as part of the wave of revolts popularly referred to as the Arab Spring. Inspired by the uprising in Tunisia, Egyptians overcame the paralysis of fear and met their oppressors head-on, clashing with the police on National Police Day. The people were dispersed, but confrontations continued in neighborhoods and streets across Egypt, spreading police numbers thin while systematically destroying police infrastructure and readying the masses for the Day of Rage. On January 28, the people of Cairo retook Tahrir square, breaking through police barricades with decentralized marches originating from neighborhoods throughout the city. With the police defeated and withdrawn, neighborhood patrols spontaneously emerged to protect neighborhoods, while Tahrir was transformed into an autonomous zone and tent city. Two weeks later, the streets erupt in joyful celebration as Mubarak surrendered power.

One year later, the third round of elections has just concluded, while the military still holds political power. They also hold over 12,000 political prisoners, who are being hastily sentenced in military trials. The streets of Cairo are filled with graffiti and the residue of political protests that became street fights. Walls made of huge concrete slabs block roads where the military and police faced off with protesters only months earlier; the marble sidewalks remain torn up where street militants recently improvised ammunition. Some neighborhood assemblies have transformed into “popular committees in the defense of the revolution,” working on issues ranging from basic services to local governance. Meanwhile, over 100 independent trade unions were formed, breaking the state’s former monopoly on organized labor.

From the Circle As spray painted on the sides of government buildings to the explosion of independent and federated trade unions, anarchist currents can be seen throughout Egypt as its people scramble to win revolutionary change following their great revolutionary moment. But this isn’t the first time that anarchist currents, both implicit and explicit, have been part of Egypt’s political landscape.

Greek anarchists based in Cairo and Alexandria were instrumental in establishing Egypt’s first trade union, the cigarette rollers’ union, in 1899. Italian anarchists were also involved in Egypt’s union movement until the 1950s, but the independent union movement was crushed following the military coup of 1952. The independent trade union movement re-emerged in late 2006, but only really materialized in late 2008. 

Unions played a key role in the success of the uprising of January 25. Starting on February 7, a public transport strike across Greater Cairo, coupled with labor protests along the Suez Canal—along with other industrial actions across the country—helped bring down Mubarak on February 11.

The revolution also led to the birth of the first independent trade union federation in Egypt’s history. Since its founding on the fifth day of the revolution, over 100 independent trade unions, syndicates, and professional associations have been formed, including one for public transport. It has also spurred authorities into dissolving the board of the state-controlled Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF), which had monopolized the union movement—by law—since 1957. 

But revolutions aren’t just confined to the workplace. While strikes and other industrial actions put economic pressure on the regime, the success Egyptians had in liberating the streets from police control is largely due to another organized group. The “Ultras,” Egypt’s extreme football fans, were some of the most well-prepared and coordinated groups in the marches toward Tahrir. They became the front line in the battle with police to regain access to the square. Organizing via online message boards after one of their own was killed at Tahrir, they came out in force on the Day of Rage. They maintained a strong presence within the square during the occupation, especially at times when the occupiers were most threatened by state and para-state violence. 

Before last January, “Ultras” were regarded as apolitical football hooligans who liked to cause trouble. However, they were one of the only social groups in Egypt with experience fighting police, and their central role in winning the streets has made their popularity skyrocket. Ultras groups have tens of thousands of members across the Egypt, many of whom identify as anarchists. Although Ultras organizations refuse to be officially placed on the political spectrum, their tactics and modes of organizing are extremely anti-authoritarian. They organize without leaders or hierarchies, refuse financial sponsorships, fight against the commercialization of sport, and live their lives in conflict with state security forces. “All Cops Are Bastards” is a central tenet of the Ultras, and through graffiti and chants they have popularized this slogan in Egyptian society. 

The Ultras were the first to use graffiti to discuss police brutality and freedom of expression, and this attracted supporters and members in the years before the revolution. Today, ACAB is the most common graffiti tag in Cairo and is scrawled on walls in other cities across Egypt as well. The Ultras continue to be a powerful social force giving teeth to the movement, showing up to protests with fireworks, Molotov cocktails, flares, and songs of defiance that have been widely adopted.

The revolutionary movement born out of Tahrir also attracted many who were traditionally excluded from formal political organizing: the millions who survive through direct action and subsist on as little as a dollar a day. The street kids and slum-dwellers that made Tahrir their home stayed there once the party was over. The conditions that led them to revolt had not changed with the fall of a politician, so their occupation continued. Street youth as young as six continue to be some of the bravest and dedicated fighters in this revolution, ripping out the paving stones and running to the front with makeshift shields, keffiyehs, and slings. Egyptian state media dismisses them as thrill-seekers without political motivations, or claim they’ve been paid or forced to fight. But seen dodging live rounds through clouds of tear gas, these young Egyptians bear a striking resemblance to the iconic rock-throwing Palestinian youth that many say inspire them.

In the sprawling expanse of informal neighborhoods surrounding Cairo, self-organization is a means of daily survival. Those without homes build on squatted land or occupy vacant structures. They seize water and electricity when the authorities turn them off, and clash with police when they raid neighborhoods to evict or shut off essential services. Pockets of gated communities inhabited by Cairo’s upper-class fence out the growing excluded class and make visible the intense stratification of wealth in Egyptian society today.

But some of Egypt’s growing underclass, emboldened by the revolution, are going on the offensive. They have begun highly orchestrated waves of occupations targeting empty apartment buildings in more affluent areas. A coordinated takeover of over 2000 housing units in 6th of October City only a few months ago forced a major confrontation with the thousands of soldiers deployed to evict them. The squatters defended their new homes with firearms and Molotov cocktails. Others stormed apartment buildings in Sheikh Zeyad City, occupying flats and demanding permanent housing. These high profile actions are a testament to the growing strength of different communities that organize horizontally and act collectively. 

And it’s not only in the slums. Examining the construction of much of contemporary Cairo, you can tell that informal development has occurred with minimal intervention or assistance from the state, mostly through either the organization of neighboring plot owners or just spontaneous development checked by the intervention and negotiations of neighbors. This has lead to a fairly high functioning system of neighborhoods, albeit with some common problems having to do with planning issues around green space, street widths, and building heights. Still, the outcomes have met a serious set of needs without any real action by government, and definitely display evidence of some planning and cooperation at the local level. 

During the original occupation of Tahrir, neighborhood self-governance again became a necessity. The already minimal functioning of government infrastructure ceased, and plainclothes police even took part in organized looting in attempts to terrify people. Popular neighborhood committees appeared throughout the entire country within the matter of a night. People came down from their apartments to the streets in the midst of a mobile phone and internet blackout and set up checkpoints and communications systems to defend their neighborhoods from police and other anti-social elements. 

Within Tahrir, an autonomous community also emerged. Clinics and logistics tents met the needs of the protesters, while discussion groups, lectures, concerts, a library, a school, and even a regular “Cinema Tahrir” ensured that the square became a space for political education and the forging of deep relationships. Like the Occupy protests it inspired, these initiatives were supported by donations and self-organized by volunteers. Mutual aid and voluntary association became the norm, and the logic of capitalism and power relations faded. But the occupation didn’t come without issues. Thieves and thugs were a persistent problem throughout Tahrir, one that led to the creation of jails and vigilante security and justice systems with varying degrees of respect for human rights. Still, many Egyptian anarchists rightly point out that the occupation of Tahrir and the subsequent Cabinet occupation were successful experiments in anarchy.

A year ago, the exploits of revolutionaries in Egypt turned Tahrir square into a household name. But a few blocks away another occupation shook the foundations of power more recently. People fed up with military rule and disenchanted with elections occupied the entrance to the cabinet building in order to prevent meetings from taking place there and to protest military rule. In the early hours of December 16, this occupation became the latest flashpoint of social war in Egypt. The military kidnapped and seriously beat an occupier, then burnt the entire occupation to the ground, kicking off five straight days of intense street battles. Unlike all the clashes that came before, the people were no longer facing off with the universally despised police forces, but with the army.

People woke up to the news that protesters were under attack and rushed to the scene where a once lively and blossoming tent city had been reduced to fires and rubble in the streets. Rocks were flying through the windows of the cabinet building at the soldiers who had retreated inside, and the numbers in the street continued to grow into the thousands. For the next five days, Tahrir became the convergence point and staging ground for a 24-hour-a-day battle with the military. First-aid clinics opened up and banks closed. Youth could be seen breaking ATMs and ripping marble off the walls and paving stones out of the ground to use as projectiles. The cabinet building was set on fire repeatedly with Molotov cocktails, while soldiers dropped huge chunks of concrete off the rooftop indiscriminately into the crowds, injuring dozens. At some points, the people seemed to be winning, at others the army looked as if it had the upper hand, but there was no mistaking this for a mere protest; this was full-scale conflict.

People were pushed back to Tahrir, but even though the military began using live ammunition and lethal force, their first attempt to clear the square failed. As rocks rained on them from every direction, they retreated back to the ruins of the cabinet building. To formalize the stalemate, a huge wall made of concrete slabs was erected, completely blocking the road between Tahrir square and the cabinet. But the fighting simply continued down a different street. The next day, the military succeeded in clearing Tahrir and burning occupation infrastructure to the ground. But new groups arrived to fight them and they were pushed back once again. While the State television was creating conspiracy theories about the protesters and showing child-protesters claiming that they were paid to fight in the streets, the independent media was documenting the abuses, the casualties, and the real reasons behind the conflict. The image of a woman being dragged and beaten by police as they lifted off her niqab to reveal her blue bra eventually led to the end of the street battle. In response to that image and reports of sexual abuse in detention, a women’s march of thousands gathered and decisively pushed back a humiliated army, ending the military confrontation in victory on its fifth day.

As has been the case for the last century, women have been on the front lines of this revolution leading marches and chants, writing and distributing leaflets, fighting police, doing independent media work, and serving in popular committees. Defying the culture of patriarchy that still exists in much of Egyptian society, women shattered sexist stereotypes with their actions and empowered themselves to push the revolution forward in all spheres of daily life.

Some women are now running for the highest levels of government. But like their male counterparts that abandoned the streets for the political process, they are about to realize the bitter truth about “democracy.” As the elections wrap up, it is clear that the winners of Egypt’s so-called “democratization” will be the once-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. This isn’t exclusively because so many revolutionaries decided to boycott the elections. The Muslim Brotherhood’s “Freedom and Justice” party had the financial capacity to pay for the big campaign that bought them the votes of many Egyptians. In Egypt as in other capitalist democracies, the axiom one dollar = one vote rings truer than ever. Although economic conditions were a major spark for the uprising a year ago, the MB have the exact same economic policies as their predecessors. So many Egyptians who simply voted for the party with the deepest and longest-running conflict with their previous rulers will have to take it to the streets to topple their government yet again in the near future.

Alongside the widespread implicitly anti-authoritarian currents, explicitly anarchist organizing has also been growing throughout Egypt’s ongoing revolutionary process. Individual anarchists have played key roles in the revolution from organizing protests and occupation logistics to doing independent media work. Meanwhile, anarchist conferences and assemblies are also being organized by a growing anarcho-syndicalist organization called the Libertarian Socialist Movement. With members in Cairo and Alexandria and connections to international anarchist networks, the LSM is starting to also attract enemies, entering into conflict with the Muslim Brotherhood and others.

As empowered protesters build organizations, coordinate direct actions, and become increasingly bold in demanding revolutionary change, institutionalized repression continues to rise. People drafted their own trade union law, while the military made laws criminalizing strikes; independent media has risen to new heights of popularity, while the state media has become more blatant in their lies against the protest movement; and people continue to fight authority in the streets, while 12,000 are locked up and denied due process in military tribunals. Egyptian society is experiencing diverging realities. On one hand, people are determined to finish the revolution that sparked a year ago; on the other, elections mask the continuation of state dominance and co-opt the potential of an emerging social order.

Breathless Conclusion: To Be Continued…

The revolution was alive in every moment. The determination of people in the streets to finish what they started last year was matched by the urgency we felt from our comrades to actualize the revolution within broader society. Every moment was an opportunity to seize the future, and everybody knew it.

Before the clashes broke out, we spent every night talking about revolution, analyzing the present and strategizing for the future. I could only imagine that there were thousands more conversations like these happening throughout Egypt. When we said our goodbyes—which we hoped would only be “see you laters”—there was a gravity to the moment. While my new friends may be celebrating victories in the streets and might even win this battle in the long run, some could be killed, injured, or taken prisoner by the military in the days and months to come. The same risks will apply to all of us once we each begin to “fight like an Egyptian.” The pyramids of power weren’t built in a day, and the epic task of dismantling them may take a little while yet, but it is well underway in Egypt.

Further Reading

• Coverage of the December Clashes

• Life in Tahrir

• Ultras in the revolution and at Tahrir

• Revolutionary graffiti in Egypt

Ongoing Coverage

• Occupied Cairo blog

• Egypt Independent

• Tahrir & Beyond blog

• Mosireen.org, Cairo’s independent media center

• Blog of Egyptian anarchist and independent journalist Jano Charbel

They still have a few dates open, so email them (mysteryrabbit at riseup dot net) if you can help!

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December 18
Lake Worth, FL – The Night Heron

December 20
Miami, FL – Churchill’s Pub with The Autonomous Playhouse Puppet Show

December 21
Orlando, FL – Blank Space

December 22
Gainesville, FL – Camp True Love

December 23
Tallahassee, FL – NEED HELP!

December 24-25
Chinese food and a movie

December 26
Pensacola, FL – Sluggo’s

December 27
Mobile, AL – NEED HELP!

December 28
New Orleans, LA – The Mudlark Public Theatre

December 29
Houston, TX – Super Happy Fun Land!

December 30
San Antonio, TX – TBA

December 31
Austin, TX – TBA

January 2
Dallas, TX – Smoke and Mirrors Art Gallery & Infoshop

January 3
Oklahoma City, OK – 218 NW 28th

January 4
Nashville, TN – Little Hamilton Collective

January 5
Carrollton, GA – TBA

January 6
Atlanta, GA – TBA

January 7
Chapel Hill, NC – Internationalist Books

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

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.

So far, anarchists have not been very successful in contributing to anti-austerity protests in the US. Starting in December 2008, anarchist participation in school occupations was instrumental in kick-starting a student movement, but by March 4, 2010 this movement was dominated by liberal and authoritarian organizing; it subsequently ran out of steam. More recently, anarchists participated in the occupation of the capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin in protest against anti-union legislation and occupied a university building in Milwaukee, without substantial impact on the course of events.

It’s troubling that we’ve had such limited success in a context that should be conducive to our efforts. Eleven years ago, during the high point of the anti-globalization movement, anarchist participants were essentially the militant edge of an activist movement addressing issues that were distant from many people’s day-to-day needs. Today, the livelihoods of millions like us are on the line; people should be much more likely to join in revolt now than they were a decade ago. If this isn’t happening, it indicates that we’re failing to organize effectively, or that the models we’re offering aren’t useful.

European anarchists have had more success, but they benefit from a richer and more continuous lineage of social movements. In the US, the birthplace of the generation gap, our task is not just to intensify ongoing struggles, but to generate new fighting formations—a much greater challenge. We seem to go through one generation of anarchists after another without any gains. Although our predecessors rightly caution us against measuring our efforts in purely quantitative terms, we can’t hope to overthrow capitalism by our own isolated heroics, turning the world upside down one newspaper box at a time.

A small fire demands constant tending.
A bonfire can be let alone.
A conflagration spreads.

We have to figure out how to connect with everyone else who is suffering and angry. To that end, here are some observations and proposals derived from the conversations in Milwaukee.

—The anti-austerity protests in Wisconsin are not the last of their kind; on the contrary, they herald the arrival of a new era. It is paramount that we learn from our early failures to develop a more effective strategy for engaging in these conflicts.

—In Madison, anarchists largely focused on establishing infrastructure for the occupation. This is not the first time anarchists have contributed their organizational skills to an essentially liberal protest. At the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City, about 100,000 people participated in demonstrations; this included thousands of anarchists, many of whom limited themselves to logistical roles. Afterwards, this was recognized as a tremendous missed opportunity—hence the efforts to take the lead in planning actions at the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Our task is not just to facilitate protests of whatever kind, but to ensure that they threaten the flows of capital—that they create a situation in which people abandon their roles in maintaining the current order. To this end, we have to seize the initiative to organize actions as well as infrastructure. Clashes with the state will be more controversial than free meals and childcare, but this controversy has to play out if we are ever to get anywhere.

—A wide range of sources concur that the occupation of the capitol building in Madison was undermined one tiny compromise at a time. First the police politely asked people not to be in one room—and they were being so nice about everything that no one could say no. Then they gently asked people to vacate another, and so on until the dumbfounded former occupiers found themselves out on the pavement. This underlines an important lesson: the first compromise might as well be the last one. Whenever we concede anything, we set a precedent that will be repeated again and again; we also embolden our enemies. We have to be absolutely uncompromising from the beginning to the end.

In popular struggles, anarchists can be the force that refuses to yield. We can also pass on our hard-won analyses to less experienced protesters—for example, emphasizing that however friendly individual police officers might be, they cannot be trusted as long as they are police. To do these things, however, we have to be in the thick of things, not looking on from the margins.

—A common complaint from the more combative participants in the Madison occupation was that leftist organizations had already gained the initiative and determined the character of the protest. Anarchists were afraid to act, taking the leftist control of the narrative as an indication that there was nothing they could do. Indeed, after the end of the occupation, liberal organizers channeled the remaining momentum into a recall campaign confined to the electoral sphere.

In fact, in circumstances like the capitol occupation, there’s nothing to lose. The solutions promoted by authoritarian leftists and liberals don’t point beyond the horizon of capitalism; even when they aren’t utterly naïve, they’re no better than the right-wing agenda, in that they serve to distract and neutralize those who desire real change. Where the field is split between left-wing and right-wing, we may as well disrupt this dichotomy by acting outside of it. Even if we fail, at least we show that something else is possible.

—One Wisconsin anarchist proposed that we should distinguish between two strategic terrains for action. Some events, such as the occupation of the capitol building in Madison, function as tremendous spectacles; the most we can hope to accomplish is to interrupt them, forcing a more challenging narrative into the public discourse. Other spaces that are under less pressure, like the occupation of the theater building in Milwaukee, offer an opportunity to develop new social connections and critiques.

In the latter, we can create new channels for discussion and decision-making that will serve us well in subsequent confrontations. We can measure our effectiveness by how well we accomplish this, not just by the material damage inflicted on targets or the numbers of people who show up to demonstrations.

In upheavals such as the one in Wisconsin, we can unmask authoritarian domination of resistance movements and debunk the idea that the democratic system can solve the problems created by capitalism.

—At no point during the buildup to the protests of March 4, 2010 or the occupations in Wisconsin did anarchists establish an autonomous, public organizing body to play a role such as the RNC Welcoming Committee played at the 2008 RNC or the PGRP played at the 2009 G20. This was a strategic error that enabled liberal and authoritarian organizers to monopolize the public discourse around the protests and determine their character and conditions in advance. In the Bay Area, the word on the street was that anarchists had established some sort of back-room deal with public organizers that the latter reneged on. This betrayal should come as no surprise: without the leverage afforded by public organizing of our own, we can always expect to be hoodwinked and betrayed by those who don’t share our opposition to hierarchical power.

We need public, participatory calls and organizing structures, both to offer points of entry to everyone who might want to fight alongside us and to make it impossible for authoritarians to stifle revolt by arranging the battlefield to be unfavorable for it. Public organizing can complement other less public approaches; often, it’s necessary to render them possible in the first place. Compare the 2008 RNC and 2009 G20 to March 4, 2010.

—As capitalism renders more and more people precarious or redundant, it will be harder and harder to fight from recognized positions of legitimacy within the system such as “workers” or “students.” Last year’s students fighting tuition hikes are this year’s dropouts; last year’s workers fighting job cuts are this year’s unemployed. We have to legitimize fighting from outside, establishing a new narrative of struggle. Who is more entitled to occupy a school than those who cannot afford to attend it? Who is more entitled to occupy a workplace than those who have already lost their jobs?

If we can accomplish this, we will neutralize the allegations of being “outside agitators” that are always raised against those who revolt. Better, we will transform every austerity conflict into an opportunity to connect with everyone else that has been thrown away by capitalism. Our goal should not be to protect the privileges of those who retain their jobs and enrollment, but to channel outrage about everything that capitalism has taken from all of us.

—Anti-austerity protests may offer a new opportunity to resume the practice of convergence so important in the anti-globalization era. Anarchists could respond to upheavals like the one in Wisconsin by converging on these “hotspots” to force things to a head. But this would require local communities to be ready to host visitors—to have the necessary resources prepared in advance. These resources include food and housing, but also a relationship with the general public and leverage on the authorities, such as the Pittsburgh Organizing Group built up in the years leading up to the successful demonstrations against the 2009 G20.

—Between peaks of protest, we can attempt to connect with social circles that could be politicized. Punks entered the anti-globalization movement with a preexisting anticapitalist critique and antagonism towards authority, thanks to two decades of countercultural development. This enabled them to escalate the situation immediately, shifting the discourse from reform to revolution. The more people enter anti-austerity struggles thus equipped, the less time will be wasted relearning old lessons.

—In addition to exacerbating the contradictions inherent in the financial crisis, we should undertake to make life in upheavals more pleasurable and robust than workaday life. Those who participate in wildcat strikes and occupations should experience these as more exciting and fulfilling than their usual routines, to such an extent that it becomes possible to imagine life after capitalism. As many anarchists live in a permanent state of exclusion, making the best of it despite everything, we should be especially well-equipped to assist here.

In this regard, there is a real need for infrastructures that can provide for the practical needs of those who wrest themselves out of the functioning of the economy. But these infrastructures should not be simply ad hoc protest logistics; they must demonstrate the feasibility of radically different systems of production and distribution.

There is probably some new way of engaging, some “new intelligence” appropriate to this era that we haven’t discovered yet; the formats we retain from the past may not serve us now. There is much experimenting to be done. Dear friends, may you succeed where others have failed.

Further Reading

Early Spring for the Badger, a collection of communiqués and reflections related to the demonstrations in Wisconsin

Fire Extinguishers and Fire Starters: Anarchist Interventions in the #Spanish Revolution, an analysis of recent anti-austerity protests in Barcelona

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.

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.

The Revolution in Egypt: The End of the New Pharaohs?

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What is happening—first in Tunisia and now in Egypt—is the beginning of the wave of full-scale revolutions that will inevitably follow the global financial crisis of 2008. Taking place in the wake of the failed “War on Terror,” these revolutions combine the latent force of massive numbers of unemployed youth with the dynamism of modern communication networks. They signal the conclusion of the decade of counter-revolution that followed September 11, 2001. Although they continue the exploration of new technologies and decentralized forms of organization initiated by the anti-globalization movement, the form and scale of these new revolutions is unprecedented. Largely anonymous groups are using the ubiquitous World Wide Web to spark leaderless rebellions against the pharaohs of the global empire of capital.

The self-styled rulers of the world are truly at a loss as to how to understand the new social and technological forces at play; the aging dictator Mubarak is a perfect example of this, but he is hardly the only one of his kind. One can almost smell the fear, not only amongst the despots of China and Saudi Arabia but also the supposed leaders of representative democracies. The contortions the US government has been going through are the most grotesque of all; it isn’t lost on the Egyptian people that the bullets striking down their comrades came from the USA. Egypt receives $1.3 billion dollars of military aid from the US every year. The suppression of “democracy” in the Middle East has been a deliberate policy of the US government: they know popular sentiment would never support their agenda as the military enforcement of global capitalism.

The best efforts of Mubarak’s dying regime to put its fingers in the ears of the world have not silenced the people on the streets of Cairo. Even blocking cell phones and trying to turn off the entire Internet have proved futile. For generations, Arabs and Africans have been silenced, represented by various colonial governments and portrayed as “primitive” and “terrorist” in Europe and the US. Now the people of Egypt are speaking in thunderous unison for freedom—not for political Islam, as demagogues from Iran to Israel would have the world believe. In doing so, they are realizing the ideals to which the US government pays only hypocritical lip service.

Today, the common condition from Egypt to Tunisia is approaching universal unemployment—especially among the younger generations, which comprise the vast majority of population. This is increasingly the case in the United States and Europe as well. Unemployment is no accident, but the inevitable result of the last thirty years of capitalism. Capitalism reached its internal limits at the end of the 1970s; now the factories of every industry produce ever more commodities, while increasing automation renders workers less and less necessary. The only way to make profits off these commodities is to eliminate workers or pay them next to nothing. To discipline the skyrocketing unemployed population and prevent revolt, the police wage a never-ending war on the population. We live in a world overflowing with cheap shit, in which human life is the cheapest of all.

In these conditions, people have nothing to left to lose. Nothing, that is, but their dignity—and it turns out they will not surrender that. It was precisely this innermost core of dignity that led Mohammed Bouazizi to light himself on fire rather than face humiliation at the hands of the police, who in seizing his fruit-selling cart took away the only way he could feed his family. The blaze lit by Mohammed Bouazizi has spread, carried by other unemployed people who thereby transform themselves from abject beggars into world-historical heroes. The people of Egypt are not only burning police cars, they are organizing popular committees to clean the police and other trash off the street, and the streets of Cairo have never felt safer.

It is not surprising that a wave of revolutions should begin now. Not since the days of pharaohs and monarchs has the world been controlled by as senseless a force as the global financial market. As capitalists became less and less able to produce profit from industrial production over the past decades, they had to invent means of profiting based on expected future returns. But in a world of increasingly cheap commodities and poor consumers, how could capitalists keep people buying stuff and still make a profit? They had to invent a way for consumers to continue buying even when they weren’t paid living wages: thus the invention of mass debt. When the sale of real goods can no longer produce profit, profits must be made on increasingly fantastic expected future returns—in other words, on finance.

Yet like any house of cards, debt cannot be built up forever. Eventually, someone wants to be paid back—and so the entire house of cards collapsed under its own weight in 2008. The financial crisis signals a deeper metaphysical crisis of our present order: capitalism is unable to provide for the real material needs of the global population. The high poverty rates in Egypt are not simply the result of mismanagement by Mubarak, but the inevitable consequence of the contradictions of our era.

Their eyes hopelessly clouded by their own ideology and lack of vision, heads of state can only stand dumb and surprised as the crisis goes on and on. They lamely hope to re-start the financial markets through “austerity” or “green” capitalism, refusing to consider systemic change despite the fact that the system cannot even deliver jobs and affordable commodities to people—much less a good life. Just as it took an era of revolution to overthrow the divine right of kings, it will take new revolutions to overthrow the divine right of things: the power of financial capital and its puppet dictators.

Revolutions are never brought about by technology, but rather by the collective action of human beings who radically transform their relationships with each other and the world they share. However, one cannot deny what an important role the World Wide Web has played in Egypt and Tunisia. Especially among cybernetically skilled and predominantly unemployed youth, it enabled people to call for and participate in mass mobilizations without any need of leaders. The demonstrations in Egypt on January 25 were called for by a Facebook page called “We Are All Khaled Said,” named for a victim of police brutality much like Alexis Grigoropoulos in Greece. The page itself was set up by the anonymous “El-Shaheed”—that is, “martyr” in Arabic. Meanwhile, youth throughout the world are mobilizing as Anonymous; in the battle over Wikileaks and more recently in actions against the Tunisian government, Anonymous has showed itself to be a potent new international with an awakening political maturity beyond the message boards of 4chan. Demonstrators’ ability to communicate with large numbers of people and react immediately to events via mobile phones, Twitter, and Facebook is swiftly making previous forms of Leftist and industrial-based political organization obsolete, along with other hierarchical formations such as political Islam.

This revolutionary use of social media should come as no surprise. In the hands of an elite few, expensive communications technology will naturally be used for self-aggrandizement and consumerism. In the hands of unemployed youth and other excluded classes, this technology can be re-purposed to organize revolution. The Internet is the new global factory floor, and we are seeing its first workers’ councils form—a new kind of collective intelligence that enables people to organize themselves directly without representation.

The blank confusion of global capitalists as to who is “really behind” the mysterious resistance in Egypt and Tunisia is revealing. It’s obvious how desperately US politicians wish they had anyone, such as Mohamad ElBaradei, with whom to negotiate. These revolts are anarchist in form if not content—and even the content is becoming increasingly radical. The absence of any organized group or leader in the early days of the protests speaks volumes: increased information technology has not only destabilized the old Leftist forms of organizing, but also the justifications for having hierarchical government in the first place. When people can communicate, they can organize their own lives. Expanding such horizontal structures to a global scale no longer seems impossible, even if it is not yet well thought out.

To make things even worse for capitalists and nation-states, the massive secret apparatus of the state has been revealed in all its incompetence by sites such as Wikileaks. While Wikileaks had nothing to do with the Egyptian revolution, the cables describing Ben Ali’s pet tiger being fed a luxurious diet while Tunisians starved further stoked the flames in that country. Wikileaks has produced paranoia in the global state apparatus itself, as the state cannot function without the subjugated population believing that it is necessary and according it the right to exercise violent force. Now the empire has no clothes—and its naked corrupt power is disgusting to behold. There is a growing consensus that the state apparatus is an archaic holdover no longer worthy of respect.

The Mubarak regime made the classic mistake of conflating technological structures with the people using them, an error typical of Silicon Valley and certain theorists as well. In a poorly thought-out move, the regime shut down all four ISPs in the country, effectively turning off the Internet. In addition, cell phones have been intermittently blocked before major demonstrations. If anything this only enraged the Egyptian people more. It may even have interrupted their spectatorship—it is easier to watch a demonstration over the Net than to participate—and driven more and more people into the street.

The lesson here is clear: the supposedly decentralized Internet is quite centralized, and while it may be useful, it is a mistake to depend on it as long as it remains in capitalist hands. Yet rulers such as Mubarak face a no-win situation. If they keep communications technologies up and running, these will be used to organize against them—but if they take them down, it will provoke worldwide outrage.

How do you organize without the Net? You might start with existing social institutions; in Egypt, this meant the mosques. The “Days of Wrath,” characterized by street-fighting with the police far more intense than the Greek insurrection of 2008, culminated in the torching of the headquarters of Mubarak’s party. Afterwards, in a brilliant move, the protesters called for people to gather after prayer at mosques—where most Egyptians would be gathered anyway. In this regard, the mosques served the same purpose that social centers and squats did during the Greek insurrection, only for a much greater part of the population.

So while communications technology may be advantageous in the early stages of organizing, a movement must become powerful enough not to need the Internet once it takes to the streets. In Egypt, the revolt actually grew in intensity after the Internet was shut off.

If there is one regard in which the Internet is indispensable, it is in spreading the news of disorder elsewhere. As the Empire’s power has become increasingly spectacular, it has become more vulnerable to being damaged on the terrain of the spectacular. Obama’s first response to the uprising was to call for the “violence” to cease—even though his government routinely administers violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan and inflicts it on US citizens through the world’s largest prison system. He and Mubarak are not against violence, but they appear to be afraid of images of violence. If these images escape, they undermine the state’s cover story about maintaining order.

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At the same time, the state desperately needs people to distrust and fear each other. This explains why Mubarak released undercover police in civilian uniforms to pose as looters in order to justify his crackdown. When that failed, he turned off the Internet and denied media access in order to prepare the conditions for the kind of massacre it would take to restore his control. Yet now it seems doubtful that the army is willing to carry out such a massacre.

The insurrection that began by burning down police stations then shifted to massive peaceful demonstrations intended to win over the army. Pamphlets that have circulated indicate that Egyptian organizers planned from the beginning to pit the army against the police. Insurrectionists in Europe and the USA should take note of this clever strategic move. After the front line of the party of order was effectively defeated, the Egyptians clearly understood that the only force capable of stopping them was the army. Instead of attacking it directly, which would surely have resulted in a massacre, they undertook to win over the hearts and minds of the soldiers. Thus far they have been successful in this, demonstrating that they can self-organize and maintain a leaderless yet disciplined rebellion that makes the streets of Cairo safe and clean for the first time in years.

This leaves the army without a reason for existence, let alone any excuse for a massacre. Once an insurrection has reached a certain phase, as a friend has said, weapons are unnecessary. For a revolution to succeed in overthrowing the state, the army must refuse to shoot its own people and instead join them in revolt. In Egypt, the army is at least paralyzed enough right now not to start shooting; it may yet join the people, or more likely attempt to broker a transition to representative democracy.

All this shows that billions of dollars of military equipment can’t stop a revolution. Once things reach a certain point, military force is no longer the determinant factor. If the Egyptian people persist in revolt, the military can hardly bomb its own cities.

Yet even if a military defeat is avoided, the insurrectionary process begun on the “Days of Wrath” is more likely to be side-tracked into representative democracy than to end in a genuine communization of society—that is, in the immediate sharing of all production for the survival of the people. This is not to be pessimistic—already the neighborhood assemblies and defense committees resemble nothing more than the Paris Commune. But Mubarak is a dictator, and the youth of Egypt have not yet tasted the bitter fruits of representative democracy. They may have to learn about them the hard way. Even if a representative democracy is established, it will not be the end of the story—witness the continuing protests in Tunisia. There would inevitably be another insurrection sooner or later, although that could take years or decades.

In this context, it is promising that many young Egyptians seem aware that representative democracy will only limit their movement and redirect into yet another form of enslavement. This is visible in many ways—for example, in the message sent to self-appointed leaders like ElBaradei, “Shall we just call your mobile when we have finished the revolution for you?” The insurrection has also seen unparalleled action and power of the Egyptian women, who will not go back to being subservient under the Muslim Brotherhood after these upheavals.

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Yet the popular occupation of Tahir Square cannot last forever; there must come a moment when food will be produced, train lines reactivated, and the Internet turned back on. These are the real keys to the success of the insurrection and to preventing the return to capitalism, even under the mantle of representative democracy. It seems that the steps in this direction have not yet begun.

Let’s step back now and ask larger questions. If Egypt is not fundamentally different from Europe and the US, why haven’t such insurrections happened there as well? First, let us not be too hasty—the dominos are already falling, with massive protests in the streets of Jordan, Algeria, Yemen, and Mauritania. One reason the insurrection has such popular power in Egypt is that, as many Arabic-speaking countries, the Egyptian form of life has not yet been fully subsumed into capitalism. For example, in many cases one only pays as much as “one feels” one should pay for goods. Haggling is not so much a way to maximize micro-profits as to ascertain an affordable and ethical price for an exchange. The commodity exchange itself is often less important than the social relationships that the commodity symbolizes. The collective responsibility and power of the family knits people together over generations, in contrast to the alienated individuals of the United States and most of Europe. The vibrant and public street life of the Middle East is a natural fomenting ground for insurrection.

Yet are there not dark forces waiting in the wings? This seems unlikely, as the protest is clearly focused on “freedom” rather than Islam, with those wanting to lead religious chants being shouted down on occasion. This is not to say that Egyptians are not Islamic—indeed they are—yet there are subtle distinctions. Political Islam is effectively the Tea Party of Egypt, a hierarchical religious movement mostly of the older and conservative generation; but Islam exists in other variants, binding social relationships and promoting a collective ethics. One can even interpret the giving of alms in Islam as a ritual to avoid excessive centralization of wealth. “Allah” does not necessarily denote a commanding deity; the notion may also point to the ineffable, the invisible excess of life that denies reduction and resists the catastrophic harnessing of all to the imperatives of profit.

Of course, currents far older than Islam hold sway in Egypt as well. Unlike many in Europe and America, many Egyptians are profoundly aware of their history from antiquity onwards, and feel deep shame at their present state of impoverishment. The dignity and respect they show each other in the streets in midst of the insurrection attests that this revolution is not abstract, but rooted in everyday lives; it is the deep metaphysics of these forms of life that provide the subjective conditions for transformation.

Communism is older than Marx, just as anarchy is older than Proudhon. The age of revolutions did not begin with the Paris Commune, nor did it end with the fall of the Berlin Wall. As capitalism now encircles the earth, the one thing that could unite the world would be a common rejection of it and the police that defend it. The communism of Marx was trapped in the abstract metaphysics of economics and poisoned by a misunderstanding of the danger posed by the state; this sabotaged the revolutions of the early 20th century, bringing about the catastrophe of Soviet-era state capitalism.

But the age of revolutions is not over; on the contrary. In a song of the Tuareg—“the desert is our mother, and we will not sell her”—we can glimpse a form of communism far more alien and hostile to capital than anything imagined by Lenin. Many of the calls for “freedom” in Egypt have little to do with the freedom to elect a president or choose among commodities on the market, but resonate with a common desire to live with their heads high and not cowed to any ruler. For this they are ready to die, whether by self-immolation or in the streets together.

Yet one can sense a profound need at this time for a common international revolutionary purpose that resonates outside of the Middle East, for something truly universal to fill the void left by capitalism. The nationalist flags of the protesters were tactically effective at confusing the army, but they also reflect a lack of critique of the conceptual apparatus of capital and the state. While the conditions are right for revolution, over the last thirty years revolutionaries have largely failed to create and spread the organization and analysis necessary for insurrections to become genuine anti-capitalist revolutions. What does it take for people to realize that the true potential of their neighborhood defense committees is not as a means of temporarily replacing the police, but of prefiguring the abolition of all police, in every country?

No event occurs in a vacuum; events originate in concrete conditions, and consequently they tend to come in waves. The events in Egypt show that the center of revolutionary impetus is no longer “the West”; this new age of revolution will culminate first in areas where the living conditions are becoming unbearable and the ways of life are not yet completely colonized by capital. However, it would be a mistake to see this as merely the conclusion of an unfinished anti-colonial revolt. It is something much bigger and deeper. The financial crisis is a sign that capitalism is on a declining trajectory. The conditions that precipitated the events in Egypt are rapidly becoming universal across the globe, spelling another cycle of revolution and possibly war. Eventually these same forces will hit Saudi Arabia, Europe, China, and finally even the United States with the strength of a tidal wave.

Make no mistake about it, we are entering an era of revolt. These revolts will reject and attack capitalism in their concrete practice, even if the systematic destruction of earlier revolutionary currents has left a vacuum. Hopefully the participants will realize that freedom is impossible without the destruction of capitalism and the state, and a new generation of revolutionary thought will update the concept of revolution for the dawning era. We are at a point now where it should become clear to all that we can direct our own lives—that the state is a historical fossil holding us back. As shown in Egypt, the stranglehold of the state and capitalism must be broken in the streets; over the coming decades the results of this ultimate struggle will likely decide the fate of humanity itself.

All Power to the People!

-A dissident exiled in North Africa
with assistance from the CrimethInc. Workers’ Collective

Further Reading
Occupied Cairo: An excellent blog from comrades on the ground
Photos from Egypt
More Photos from Egypt

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.

“The Insurrection Has Begun”

On November 10, 2010, 52,000 people participated in a protest in London organized by the National Union of Students. As the main demonstration moved by Millbank Tower, a splinter group of hundreds, headed by no more than 30 black bloc anarchists, broke into the Tory Headquarters there.

Carrying red and black flags with their faces concealed, the small group of anarchists formed a bloc at a doorway to Millbank tower within eyesight of the main demonstration. The intention was clear but at first the crowd seemed reluctant to join them and passed on by. Then more people started to join the back of the bloc. This gave others confidence and the group soon grew to several hundred, at which point the front of the bloc entered the building. Then another entrance was taken as many more people left the proposed rout and the crowed filled the courtyard.

Protesters broke windows, flooded hallways, and scrawled anti-government graffiti across any available surface. The small number of police at the scene moved in to prevent anyone else from entering or exiting the building. An estimated 200 people were trapped inside Millbank tower as thousands waited outside.

Soon those inside the building attempted to break out by throwing furniture through the large lobby windows, while others smashed CCTV cameras. Some ran further into the building, even reaching the roof. People outside fought police with sticks and fists, trying to open a passage in and out of the building.

The corporate media immediately attempted to blame the invasion on a small group of troublemakers, focusing on an incident in which a fire extinguisher was dropped from the rooftop. However, these claims held little legitimacy juxtaposed against images of thousands of protesters gathered outside the building. Sky News reported a fringe group were taking part in violent protest, but their feed had to be suddenly cut when students and members of the public berated the reporter live on air, one shouting “the insurrection has begun!”

Others who had proceeded to the end of the march appeared to become bored of the National Student Union speeches and returned to Millbank tower, swelling the numbers there already. Students who had been dancing to Rage Against The Machine earlier in the day were now fighting side by side with others dressed in traditional black bloc attire.

This was one of the most militant protests the UK had seen in recent years. It concluded with approximately 50 arrests. In an attempt to play down student involvement, corporate media ran “exposés” on long-running anarchist institutions such as the Anarchist Federation and Class War. While it might be true that individual anarchists where among the first into the building and some even made it to the roof, not one of the few organized anarchist groups in the UK were out in any great numbers. The images of suspects circulated by the police and media didn’t show the faces of shady bomb-throwers but those of the countries’ youth.

These events ignited a wave of protests, occupations, and action across the UK involving more than 100,000 students over the months of November and December.

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Timeline

This is a summary of some of the more notable moments leading up to and during the months of November and December 2010. Many other actions, protests, and occupations occurred across the United Kingdom during this time, and each one was integral to maintaining momentum.
A more detailed list is available here.

May 2010 – General Election results in a hung parliament, the first in the UK since 1974. Liberal Democrats form a coalition government with the center-right Tory (Conservative) Party.

October 12, 2010 – The controversial Browne Review is published, an independent report on education funding. The government paper recommends the removal of caps on the upper limit to university fees.

October 20, 2010 – The coalition government announces the largest spending cuts since the second World War, including huge cuts to public services.

November 10, 2010 – An estimated 52,000 people attend a National Union of Students demonstration against raising tuition fees and scrapping EMA (Educational Maintenance Allowance). Hundreds of students follow a small group of anarchists into Millbank Tower, the Tory Government headquarters. Windows are smashed and the building is shut down for several hours.

November 15, 2010 – A wave of university occupations and sit-ins begins, starting with Sussex University in Brighton. Over the next few weeks at least 25 universities and colleges are occupied across the UK, some of them multiple times.

November 24, 2010 – A national day of action is called for by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts. Students use social networking websites to organise in cities and towns across the UK. In London a police riot van is destroyed when cops try to kettle the majority of the protest. Small groups of students run through central London starting fires and breaking windows. Italy sees similar protests, with an occupation of the Coliseum in Rome.

November 28, 2010 – A council meeting in Lewisham, South London is attended by several hundred protesters; 16 police officers are injured when scuffles break out.

November 30, 2010 – In London, 139 people are arrested for “breach of the peace” during a second national day of action. The word “Revolution” is sprayed across Nelson’s Column. Protests are held in 14 other cities across the UK; these are fast-paced, as students adopt new tactics to avoid kettling.

December 9, 2010 – The government votes on the raise in tuition fees while a national protest is attended by thousands. In London, 2800 police are deployed to protect Parliament. Protesters break into splinter groups to avoid being kettled. Thousands make it to Parliament and fight police; 43 protesters are injured. One protester is hospitalized, requiring surgery to treat “bleeding to the brain.” Several breakaway groups head into the city shopping district where windows are smashed and a car occupied by Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall is attacked. The windows of the Treasury are smashed. The government votes in favor of the rise.

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“We’re from the slums of London”

As with any mass movement, it’s impossible to identify every brush stroke that contributes to the bigger picture without making assumptions about individual motivations or simplifying the complexity of human behavior within a struggle. It would be improper to proclaim that a single series of events or conditions led to this outburst of protest, but we should identify factors that can aid our future manifestations of resistance. In particular, we can look at how momentum is created, maintained, and finally lost.

One feature of the protests was the wide range of social classes on the street. The United Kingdom has a rich history of class-based struggle, from the Diggers’ land occupations of the 1600s to the Miners’ Strikes of the 1980s. Many considered the latter the beginning of the end for organized working-class struggle in the UK when the previous Tory government, lead by Margaret Thatcher, brutally dismantled the trade union movement and paved the way for modern free-market capitalism. Up until 2010, celebratory proletarian culture had been notably absent from the wider public for the preceding 20 years. Consequently, the visible anarchist presence of recent years had lost some of its historic emphasis on class, instead playing a secondary presence in larger campaigns such as anti-war and anti-fascist movements. Many younger anarchists had become engaged through single-issue activism and later adopted an anti-authoritarian perspective.

Over a few weeks at the end of 2010, however, a new form of class struggle appeared. It manifested itself less in the conventional workplace struggles associated with unions and the traditional Left and more as an angry reaction against the alienation experienced by those outside the ruling class under 21st century capitalism. Debt, fewer education opportunities, fewer job opportunities, a stagnant political system, police violence, and general social ennui are all contributing factors.

After the protest on December 9, a video appeared in which masked individuals proclaimed “We’re from the slums of London, how do they expect us to pay £9,000 for uni fees?” “What’s stopping us from doing drug deals on the streets anymore? Nothing!” This video contrasted starkly with corporate media interviews with white middle-class teenagers condemning protester use of violence. This gives a good insight into the tension on the street, but also the growing class divisions within the UK and the tools used by state apparatus to delegitimize protests.

We surmise that struggles in which the participants aim to address their own conditions directly offer greater likelihood of sustained resistance and continued momentum than campaigns based on moral objection, which are easier for the state to neutralize. This is a common line of thought among many anarchists, but it’s worth reiterating as we choose how to focus our own energies.

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Anarchy in the UK

There are many signs that, in the UK, modern anarchist culture has put down roots within current youth culture; among young people, it may be on the way to becoming the prevailing stance outside of the conventional conservative-liberal spectrum. Anarchist flags, class war placards, and banners with anarchist symbols peppered the protests and occupations in towns that previously had no visible anarchist presence at all.

Anarchism remerged in the UK as a cultural mainstay in 1980s, then gained momentum during the 1990s with the rise of the anti-roads movement. That movement largely transformed into the anti-globalization movement, an often celebrated phase in anarchist history worldwide. There have been peaks and troughs since then, but campaigns and projects such as Smash EDO (see Rolling Thunder #7), the Camp for Climate Action, Earth First!, and a network of anarchist-run social centers have all contributed to an ongoing visible anarchist presence. In the last few years, a string of new book fairs and small press events has sprung up across the country, most with varying degrees of anarchist involvement. Since 2000 there has also been two summit protests against the G8 and G20, both a successful insofar as they created effective anti-authoritarian infrastructure and mobilized large numbers of people.

However, many recent protest campaigns had been largely organized and attended by “full-time” activists and dedicated anarchists, and most anarchist actions had been an appendices to campaigns that were not explicitly anti-statist or anti-authoritarian in nature. Consequently, an activist subculture has emerged. Though this subculture plays an important roll in fostering radical activity, creating infrastructure and providing protest experiences, in many ways it has been separated from broader forms of class struggle. Meanwhile, creating a movement based on political affinity rather than longstanding community also provides opportunities for police infiltration.

The student protests represent a re-emergence of a popular movement based largely in class issues, the likes of which have not been seen since the anti-poll tax movement that peaked at the beginning of the 1990s (see Rolling Thunder #6).

It would be disingenuous to suggest that anarchists represent more than a fraction of those involved in these protests and occupations. Yet it’s important to note that the actions of even small groups of anarchists such as the initial invasion of Millbank Tower can create huge waves of momentum and spark whole movements. Even in small numbers, well-planned or even spontaneous actions can catalyze momentum we couldn’t otherwise create ourselves.

Existing anarchist groups and networks have provided important infrastructure in the form of legal advice, communications, and independent media; they’ve also shared street knowledge such as how to remain anonymous and how to handle police violence. In one case, the police targeted FITwatch, a group set up by anarchists to encourage anti-surveillance tactics at protests, prompting their web host to close down their blog for “attempting to pervert the course of justice.” The group had simply distributed information on avoiding arrest after the invasion of Millbank Tower; the suggestions included tips on getting rid of the clothes you were wearing, seeking legal counsel, and so on. The actions of the police backfired as the information was quickly spread via social networks; the liberal press eventually picked up the story, spreading the information far wider than FITwatch could have ever managed.

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Anarchy in Action

A revolutionary movement may not be explicitly anarchist but nonetheless embody many of the values expressed through anarchist theory such as mutual aid, autonomy, solidarity, and distrust of authority. From the protests in towns with smaller populations to the largest in London, the rejection of traditional power structures was a running theme. The leadership of National Union of Students (NUS) was increasingly marginalized. To some extent, this was their own doing: for example, it didn’t help that Union President Aaron Porter condemned actions taken in the NUS’ own protest. This may have helped foster a distrust of leadership; when attempts where made to organize speeches from opposition politicians and the usual “movement leaders,” many moved off before the speeches even began.

Within the school and university occupations, the occupiers organised non-hierarchically, examining their own processes, structures, and effectiveness. One individual statement from the Goldsmith Occupation even expressed a sentiment common in modern insurrectionary texts, criticizing the “connivance of pseudo-radical academics, anxious union reps, obnoxious sub-Trotskyists and pedantic anarchist hangers on.” The text goes on to describe the frustrations of dealing with “a more academic faction of occupiers” and calls for action similar to that of the “Human Strike” discussed in the text “Preoccupied” produced after the New School occupation in New York City.

On the other hand, despite being the most explicitly horizontally organized element of the struggle, the occupations themselves created points of authority for the movement. The time, resources, and public attention granted to students involved in the occupations offered them a louder public voice than some of those on the street.

In addition to the occupations and protests, thousands of schoolchildren walked out of lessons or locked themselves in classrooms as an act of rebellion or mischief. The spontaneous and self-organized nature of these protests no doubt greatly contributed to maintaining momentum. Instead of carrying mass-produced “official” placards, most people made their own with varying degrees of comedy or political poignancy. Instead of being told where to go and at what speed, people chose to run and splinter from the proposed routes when it suited them. Sometimes this led to protests taking seemingly illogical paths, such as marching from one side of a city center, turning round, marching back, and then repeating the same pattern; but this atmosphere of autonomy and spontaneity gave the protests an energetic air and communal spirit. No one knew where we where going, but we were all going there together. When the front of the march took a bad turn, the middle would branch off and take the lead.

The protests were not self-conscious attempts to organize horizontally so much as they reflected the organic process of consensus seen in most friendship circles. This makes sense in that the largely youthful crowd on the street has more experience with this form of relationship than with bureaucratic and hierarchical structures. Disputes were dealt with by those involved rather than any authority stepping in. The only people asking “who shall lead us?” were those with longer experiences of being led.

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Smoke from the Prairie Fire

The events that took place during November and December 2010 are called “student protests” because so many students participated and because of the focus on education issues. But this shouldn’t suggest that it was only students involved. Corporate media demonized the non-students that attended the protests, labelling them professional protesters or outside agitators. This was intended to prevent the spread of popular protest, encouraging division and marginalization and implying a hegemony of self-serving individualism at the protest.

In fact, the protests were attended by many non-students acting out of solidarity, concern for their children’s education, or simply class anger. Many students expressed the importance of this solidarity. The most interesting event in relation to this occurred November 28, when a local council meeting to discuss general austerity measures was attended by 100 students and other members of the public. A mini-riot broke out and 16 police officers where injured when the crowd tried to force its way into the building. This was one of the first moments that the student protests could be seen outside of the context of protest for educational reform.

Further attempts were made to draw parallels between the student protests and other anti-cuts struggles; but as of this writing, most anti-cuts organizing has been small and directed at engaging the bureaucracies of local government. It is too early to tell how influential these protests may be when austerity measures begin to bite in full force; however, the bar has been set, and escalation may be inevitable.


After the Storm

The first stage of the struggle is now over. Groups like the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC) that once played a purely logistical role have begun to take conventional positions of power. As occurred during the anti-war movement against the invasion of Iraq, these groups are adopting the stance of “legitimate” protest.

As in the Greek riots of December 2008, the end of the year served as the closing of parentheses around a period of gained momentum. What can be done to ensure that moments of visible social upheaval are not for nothing? How can we ensure this momentum is not wasted?

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The 2008 Greek riots set the tone for further struggles. The efforts of Greek anarchists to build a culture of ongoing resistance have heavily influenced not only the current Greek strikes against austerity measures but many other acts of resistance around the world. The student protests can do the same. Where years of inaction had created a reputation of apathy, the UK now has a refreshed history of student organizing. Future struggles will begin from this new context. A new generation has its own personal experiences of resistance in addition to those inherited from previous generations.

The term “anarchist” has entered public usage once more with both negative and positive connotations. It’s impossible to gauge the effect this has had; while some have been introduced to an interesting set of ideas, others have probably adopted corporate media definitions and the prejudices that come with them. At this point anarchist book fairs, social centers, infoshops, and other explicitly anarchist projects have an important role to play.

We can also confront the discourses aimed at delegitimize our struggles. Government and corporate media propagate the ideology that the capitalist economy is directly linked to our very survival. If they succeed in this, the public will accept the necessity of additional neoliberal policies, further attacks on the lower classes. Resistance can polarize society, but we need strong alternative proposals for this to be a good thing.

Many legal battles are about to begin that will decide the fates of those arrested over the last few months. Once again this highlights the importance of long-term infrastructure; between periods of state repression, we can concentrate on building up skills and passing on lessons. Although the initial momentum of last year seems to have dissipated, it’s possible that this energy will adopt other forms. If people remain engaged in the struggle, they may find themselves back in the street soon.

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Interview with Participants in the Occupations

Collectively answered in December 2010 by some students involved in the protests

Q: What factors have contributed to maintain momentum over the last few weeks?

A: I think there have been numerous reasons for the continued momentum, many of them being entirely beyond the reach of any “organizer” or “agitator.” To an extent, it feels as if Millbank awoke something in the student movement which has not faded yet. The kind of events that took place on 10/11/10 had not been experienced by most, and say what you like about its tactical significance or the political consciousness of those smashing the place apart, Millbank’s most significant outcome seems to be a huge sense of empowerment that has been built upon and refined in consequent protests rather than allowed to fade. It is a sense of empowerment which many students seem to have come to these demos to recreate simultaneously to expressing their anger.

On the other hand, there are some things which have actively been done by those involved in the movement—I’m reluctant to call them organizers because from my experience, it has not been the same bureaucratic organizations and individuals who have been calling for the demonstrations—which have helped build momentum. For example, attempting to engage college and school students on a wider scale was extremely important after Millbank, and it was an idea which succeeded, judging from the mass walkouts on November 24. I also think that switching the focus to local struggle after 10/11/10 has served the movement well also.

However, I feel that one of the major reasons for the continued momentum has been the fact that in people’s minds everything was building towards the day of the vote in parliament. Now that the vote has passed, it is unclear whether the movement will continue with similar levels of strength. Usually I would expect a movement not to, but the energy, atmosphere and sense that people have been radicalised by this struggle that I witnessed after the demo on Thursday [December 9] are keeping me optimistic.

Q: Do you feel students have rejected conventional protest institutions such as unions and even “professional” anarchist groups like the Anarchist Federation or Solfed? If so, why do you think this has occurred? How has this affected the struggle?

A: One of the most simultaneously disheartening and exciting things about the last few weeks has been the role that the NUS has played. After Millbank, the NUS clearly showed themselves to be unaccountable to the student movement, reformist at best and ultimately self-serving—a fact that some of us have known for a while. However, the backlash against Aaron Porter’s denouncement of the violence at Millbank has snowballed into a widespread disinterest in the views and actions of the NUS for many students. Rather than spend time and energy encouraging the NUS to back the movement, the movement itself has made the NUS largely irrelevant, which seems to be the best tactic when facing an organization that wishes to impose itself on others. Having said that, it is short-sighted to write off the NUS as useless. The union has the resources to contact almost every student in the country, making them particularly invaluable in universities in which there are no other political groups to publicize and engage in building for national demonstrations and such. The NUS could be a useful tool if they eventually decide to or are forced to represent the views of the students fighting these cuts, but they are not necessary and have been largely bypassed by the movement. Their plan for the day of the vote was to hold a vigil with 9000 candles on the bank of the Thames, a spectacle which seemed to be perfectly constructed to highlight their ineffectiveness and unaccountability while simultaneously celebrating the fact that the movement failed to stop the vote being passed. In the end, though, they chose to cancel the event in order to distance themselves even further from the “violence” that took place earlier in the day. This perfectly sums up the NUS’s role in the current struggles.

As for anarchist groups, I do not feel they have been rejected by the movement, primarily because they haven’t put themselves in a position to be rejected. From my experience working with these groups a little over the last few weeks, they have usually avoided putting their name to anything and instead focused on issues and activities that may be more related to anarchist ideas than others, but in no way conflict with the general feeling of the movement. For example, encouraging direct action, the use of face masks, engaging and networking with college and school students as well as worker movements, and occasionally offering up an alternative analysis of the cuts and the struggle so far. All extremely important, but none which involve attempting to alter the general direction of the movement.

Q: What role do you feel the occupations have played? Are there different dynamics than on the street?

A: I can only speak of the occupations I have experienced directly, these being the Sussex and Brighton University occupations. Each of these were very different, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. I feel that the Sussex occupation, which began 5 days after 10/11/10, was badly timed and implemented, but nonetheless allowed for a space in which to discuss Millbank and plan for the day of action on the 24th. The Brighton occupation however began on the day of action and continued for over two weeks acting as a productive and consistent space in which to organize. In part I feel that it was because the Brighton occupation more successfully captured the dynamics from the streets. It was the university’s first occupation in 18 years and began off the back of a demo. This excitement persisted through some organizational challenges, enabling the occupation to become an active hub of discussion and organization in the center of Brighton.

Overall, however, I feel that the effectiveness of occupations has diminished since last year when most local student movements were fighting the cuts being implemented on their own campuses. This year the issue has become much more national, and it could be argued that occupations serve less of a purpose. Despite this, many have been invaluable in organizing on a local level.

Q: What do you think are the paradoxes of being an anarchist involved with protests against cuts to state-funded education?

A: I don’t necessarily see any paradoxes as I do not see revolution and reform as polar opposites. While many local anti-cuts movements are protesting the cuts, they are also setting up or at least considering alternatives to the current system, such as the Really Open University at Leeds and the teach-ins which have been popping up at university occupations.

Further Reading

Geographies of the Kettle: Containment, Spectacle & Counter-Strategy: A critical appraisal of the police tactic of “kettling” demonstrations, and how to resist it

Movement beyond “Actions”: An insightful critique of the limitations of “activism” as the default setting for resistance movements in the UK, especially as we enter an era of widespread discontent

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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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General Overview

Some 1105 arrests were made in connection to the protests against the Toronto G20 summit. This is believed to be the largest mass arrest in Canadian history. The number is still growing as a result of ongoing police investigations, including the publication of pictures and videos of wanted vandals on the police website and YouTube channel. On August 26, the police released portraits of “the worst of the worst” of the vandals, most of whom they allege to be either from Montreal or from the US. Young men of colour have been disproportionately represented among those targeted in this way.

On August 23, Toronto police claimed they had been able to find 20 suspects thanks to these methods. They have since claimed to have found at least two more. If it wasn’t already obvious who is calling the shots behind the repression, it came out August 30 that the police are working with a facial recognition specialist from the Canadian Bankers Association to identify suspects from photos.

Of the 1105 arrests, about 800 resulted in no criminal charges. All arrestees were detained and processed in a temporary detention facility located in a former film studio on Eastern Avenue. The length of detentions in that facility ranged from a few hours to several days, in increasingly appalling conditions.

Those facing more serious criminal charges, including most of the 17 alleged anarchist “ringleaders” [sic] accused of having orchestrated the “mayhem” that occurred on June 26, were swiftly transferred to a provincial court where they were paraded before a Justice of the Peace and later transferred to Maplehurst Correctional Center, in Milton, pending their bail hearing.

Update as of August 23

On August 23, it was confirmed that a total of 304 people had had criminal charges laid against them, ranging from “Disturbing the Peace” and “Mischief” to “Weapons Dangerous” and “Conspiracy to Commit an Indictable Offence.” In Canada an “indictable offence” is equivalent to a felony in the US.

All 304 accused were summoned to Provincial Court on August 23 to be further processed. It was said to be the largest mass court appearance in the city’s history. The following day the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General presented this tally:

• 227 accused saw their cases remanded to later dates, ranging from the end of August to mid-October. The Crown failed to produce evidence in the majority of the cases.
• 22 had their charges withdrawn through a process called “diversion,” by which they accepted to donate $25 or $50 to a charity in exchange for exoneration. This is not an admission of guilt, but it does mean giving up the right to sue the State or police at a later date.
• 31 had their charges dropped unconditionally.
• 5 people signed a peace bond, by which they commit to “keep the peace” in exchange for exoneration.
• 6 people pleaded guilty.
• 9 cases out of these 227 turned out to be the result of administrative errors.
• 4 people failed to show up in court and had warrants issued for their arrests.

Of those whose charges were dropped, a few cases stood out:

• 2 photographers for the mainstream newspaper National Post, who were manhandled and detained on June 26.
• Washington-based media activist Lacy MacAuley, who was abducted on June 27 in the most brutal manner by a squad of plainclothes police. She is considering legal action.
• A Torontonian named Tammy M., who was also brutalized and sexually harassed by cops in detention.
• Natalie Gray, a Montreal-based environmental activist who was shot twice with rubber bullets at a solidarity rally in front of the temporary jail. Cops initially denied having used rubber bullets but retracted their lie the next day in the face of overwhelming evidence. Despite photographic proof, the mainstream media continues printing that she “claims” to have been shot. She is also considering legal action.

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Fake Laws, Illegal Harassment, and Liberal Naïveté

Much has been made in the Canadian media of the “bogus law” passed by the Ontario legislation under the Public Works Protection Act to provide police with sweeping extraordinary powers in and around the security perimeter of the summit. Several liberal commentators have complained that the law was passed in secret; in fact, it was passed discreetly June 2, and was only discovered by the media on the first day of the summit, June 25, three days before the temporary measure was scheduled to be revoked. They have also complained that Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair lied about its scope until the day after the Summit and that Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty did nothing to dispel the ambiguity surrounding the matter.

Blair did publicly state that the extraordinary law permitted cops to stop and search anyone within five meters of the fence, and to arrest and detain anyone who resisted or failed to comply. In fact, the temporary law only applied to the area within the security fence.

When he showed up in court on July 28, Dave Vasey, the only person who was arrested under this sham, was told that his papers had been “lost” either by the police or the Crown in what appears to be a clumsy attempt to make this embarrassing business go away.

The untold story here is that the cops were not only doing illegal searches and detentions within 5 meters of the perimeter, but throughout the entire Toronto downtown area. Thousands of incidents occurred in which people were randomly stopped on the sidewalk, asked for ID, and threatened with arrest if they did not comply. Illegal searches and arbitrary seizures were common throughout the week preceding the summit and continued until several days after it; friends and allies who stayed behind to support detainees were constantly stopped and aggressively interrogated.

So while liberals are focusing on the bark on the tree, everybody is forgetting the jungle behind. Anarchists, at least, are honest about not believing in the legitimacy of the legal system. It is absolutely despicable for the authorities to insist on the system’s legitimacy while disregarding it whenever it is convenient for them, and pathetically naïve that some liberals still believe in it despite all the evidence that they are alone in this.

Lawsuits

Sherry Good, a Toronto local who was corralled along with approximately 200 other people on June 27 at the corner of Spadina Avenue and Queen Street, launched a $45 million class action law suit against the police. She claims to act on behalf of the “800 individuals who were allegedly wrongfully arrested during the G20 Summit at various locations, and never charged with any wrongdoing.”

Another lawsuit was announced in Montreal on August 20 by two sisters arrested on June 27 and detained for 60 hours following a police raid targeting several dozen Québécois protesters sleeping in a gymnasium at the University of Toronto. This one is filed against the Montreal Police Department for being effectively complicit in the horrendous conditions and “psychological torture” at the Eastern Avenue detention center.

Just as this update was posted, Mike Barber and Miranda McQuade launched a $115 million class-action lawsuit against the Toronto Police Services Board, federal Attorney General Rob Nicholson, and the Peel Police Services Board.

More class-action lawsuits are expected to be filed in the coming months.

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Lies, Damn Lies, and Police Press Conferences

On June 29, Toronto police organized a media conference to showcase all the weapons supposedly seized from protesters over the Summit weekend. It was soon revealed that most of their “evidence” was comprised of random items seized under various circumstances, some not even related to the protests. This includes arrows and chain mail taken from Brian Barrett, a medieval revivalist on his way to a joust; a chainsaw and crossbow taken from Gary McCullough, a woodsman who carried all his belongings in a makeshift roof-rack on top of his Hyundai; and camping equipment, some wooden katanas, and a copy of the anticapitalist publication Upping the Anti seized from the house of an organizer before any ruckus even started. These items were displayed next to some helmets, gas masks, and an assortment of rather lame-looking defensive gear.

It was quickly admitted that the chainsaw and crossbow were seized from a man who had nothing to do with the protests.

SOAR Conspiracy Charges

Of the remaining accused, 17 believed to be “executives” [sic] of the Southern Ontario Anarchist Resistance (SOAR) are charged with counts of Conspiracy to Commit Mischief over $5000, Conspiracy to Assault Police, and Conspiracy to Obstruct the Work of Police. Some of them also face several more counts of “Counselling” to commit indictable offences including mischief, assault, and others, as well as counts of mischief and various other charges. Details are still scarce due to a publication ban.

All of the 17 have been released on bail and are now under house arrest on very stringent conditions. These conditions include house arrest at the residence of their respective sureties; non-association with any of the co-accused or anyone reasonably known to be a member of SOAR or AW@L (formerly Anti-War at Laurier); and a “no protest” condition preventing any of them from “organizing, participating in, or attending any public demonstration.”

A few more people from southern Ontario believed to be close to anarchist networks are also charged with “Counseling” and other serious charges, and are out on similar conditions. This makes the “17″ tag somewhat arbitrary and subject to change.

Here is an incomplete summary:

• Erik Lankin, from Kitchener, has only just now been released from Maplehurst Correctional Center more than two months after his arrest in an early morning raid of his apartment on June 26. His bail was denied on July 6 by a particularly awful and evidently constipated Justice of the Peace.
• Sterling Stutz was released on $30,000 bail on July 6.
• Syed Hussan, organizer with No One is Illegal Toronto and spokesperson for the Toronto Community Mobilization Network, was released on $55,000 bail on July 8. He had been arrested in the early morning of June 26 on his way to a press conference.
• Patrick Cadorette and Jaggi Singh, both Montreal-based organizers with the Anti-Capitalist Convergence (CLAC), were released on respective bonds of $47,000 and $85,000 on July 12. Cadorette was arrested on June 26 while on his way to the main action. A well-known activist, Singh turned himself in on July 6, the first day of the collective bail hearing, after learning of a warrant for his arrest.
• Peter Hopperton of Hamilton, said to be a “ringleader” of SOAR, was released on $75,000 bail on July 14. He had also been arrested in an early-morning raid on the Toronto apartment where he was staying.
• Alex Hundert and Leah Henderson, of Toronto, said to be “ringleaders” of SOAR, were released on bail on July 19. They were both arrested in the early morning of June 26 by a police team from the “guns and gangs” unit who battered down the door of their Toronto apartment, guns drawn. The Crown has appealed their release. The judge will render a decision on the Crown’s appeal on September 13.
• Mandy Hiscocks, from Guelph, also said to be a “ringleader” of SOAR, was released on $140,000 bail on July 27. She had been arrested with Hundert and Henderson in the same June 26th early morning raid.
• Julian Ichim, of Kitchener, charged with Counseling, was released on bail on June 28. He was charged with Conspiracy as well a few days before this report.
• Kelly Pflug-Back, of Guelph, who was not among the original 17 alleged conspirators but is accused of participating in the widespread destruction of property that occurred on June 26, was released on $80,000 bail on August 12. Pflug-Back faces 13 different charges, including 8 charges of mischief over $5000 and one count of conspiracy. She turned herself in on July 21, having learned of a warrant for her arrest.
• Another man from Hamilton, Ontario was arrested August 26 and charged with conspiracy as part of the SOAR case, in addition to the 17 original defendants. He was released the following day.

Others among the original 17 have not been publicly named yet. They will all be back in court on September 27, at which point it is expected that the evidence will be disclosed and the details of their prosecution will be negotiated.

The conspiracy case stems from an undercover police operation which started back in April 2009 to monitor anti-Olympics and “extreme anarchist” [sic] activity in Southern Ontario. Photos of police infiltrators have been posted here and here.

More details about this investigation will appear soon.

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Still in Jail

Some people are still in jail on G20-related charges:

• Indigenous sovereignty activist Ryan Rainville is charged with causing mischief over $5000 and for assaulting a police officer; he has been denied bail.
• Byron Sonne, a Toronto-based computer expert, was arrested on June 22 on several charges including possessing explosives for an unlawful purpose, possessing dangerous weapons, and mischief. His bail was denied on July 20.
• Gary McCullough, a 53-year-old man from Whitby, Ontario, was arrested on June 25 near the security fence after cops were alarmed by the roof-rack on his car. After they pulled him over, they discovered McCullough was carrying several hazardous items in this rack including a chainsaw, a crossbow, and a few gas cans. Cops said his charges were “not related” to the G20 summit, but this did not prevent Chief Bill Blair from adding the chainsaw and crossbow to his mendacious display of seized “weapons.” McCullough’s case is further complicated by his alleged “mental health issues.” He was denied bail on June 29 on “secondary grounds”: no doctor has said that he is dangerous or needs to be committed, but the Crown is alleging that, based his history with the mental health system, Gary poses a threat to the public. He is still being detained at Maplehurst.

Criminalizing Hip Hop: Testament and Illogik

Testament and Illogik, the duo behind the exciting music video correctly predicting that people who would confront the G20 in Toronto, were arrested June 27. Both are charged with Conspiracy to Commit an Indictable Offense, Council to Commit an Indictable Offense, and Disguise with Intent to Commit an Indictable Offense; bail was set at $20,000 each. Testament was also charged with breach of bail as a result of being arrested wheatpasting posters about the G20 in London, Ontario a week before the summit; the charges from that arrest were dropped immediately afterwards and the London police chief went on record saying they had only charged him so he would be out on bail conditions during the G20.

The release conditions for the two include not associating with each other, not associating with members of “Black Bloc” [sic], not possessing anything that could be used as a disguise including bandanas and scarves, and not associating with various people from Quebec they’ve never even met.

Targeting the Québécois

A group of more than 70 people, most of whom are Québécois, who had been traveling to Toronto with CLAC-organized transportation were arrested in a morning raid of a University of Toronto gymnasium which had been offered as an accommodation to CLAC by the student union. This somewhat soft target consisting primarily of young students was violently awakened with kicks to the back, blows to the head, and drawn guns. There were several incidents of beatings, brutal treatment, and theft of money, all accompanied by anti-Québec slurs and insults. Everyone in this group has been charged with Conspiracy, as police claim that they were the “foot soldiers” who made up the rampaging Black Bloc on June 26.

This flimsy assumption is thought to stem from faulty intelligence gathered through the undercover investigation and police infiltration of SOAR meetings.

In fact, Québécois were systematically targeted throughout the summit and over the following days. Cars with Québec license plates were stopped and searched and the passengers aggressively interrogated. A bus carrying people back to Québec was stopped and its passengers searched and temporarily detained on the afternoon of June 27, near the convergence center. There was an immediate spontaneous show of support from protesters and local residents, which resulted in more abuse and arrests. Video coverage of the subsequent kettle is available here.

As of the June 23 hearing, Québécois make up more than a third of the accused. Most, if not all, of these defendants will be back in court on October 14.

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How to Help

A legal support team calling itself “247 Support Committee” formed in the wake of the summit, mostly through the impetus of the Toronto Community Mobilization Network and the support of Movement Defense paralegal activists. A legal defense fund has also been established.

To offer support to the hundreds still facing charges, including the 17+ living under house arrest and threatened with serious prison sentences, please write to 247.g20@gmail.com and visit both the Movement Defense and TCMN websites:

http://movementdefence.org/
http://g20.torontomobilize.org/

To donate to the legal defense fund, you can:

1) Transfer funds to:

OPIRG York
transit number 00646
institution number 842
account number 3542240

Use your online bank account or contact your bank directly to transfer funds. Please put “G20 legal defense” in the memo.

2) Write a check. Checks payable to “Toronto Community Mobilization Network” OR OPIRG York, with “G20 legal defense” on the subject line, can be mailed to:

Toronto Community Mobilization Network
360A Bloor Street W
PO Box 68557
Toronto, ON M5S 1X0
Canada

3) Donate by PayPal

Follow the link on the TCMN website

The Montreal Anti-Capitalist Convergence has also put together a legal defense fund for Québec-based protesters and organizers who are charged with conspiracy and other serious charges. To offer support or donate to the fund, please write to claclegal2010@gmail.com.

Benefit ’Zines

Supporters are soliciting contributions to two zines documenting the Toronto protests—one for the beautiful stories and one for the less beautiful ones. All proceeds will go to legal defense for G20 political prisoners. Any kind of writing is welcome, as are pictures; real names are welcome but not necessary.

Please send all inquires or entries to zineG20@gmail.com.

For More Information

toronto.mediacoop.ca
www.clac2010.net/en/legal
www.g20justice.com/prosecute.html [we can’t vouch for the accuracy or politics of this website, but the timeline is interesting]

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Earlier this summer,

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.

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.

Full report here.

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.

Anti-Olympic Riots and Militant Actions Rock Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories

The following report was collectively produced by several participants in this past weekend’s militant resistance to the 2010 Olympic games. This is not a full analysis of Olympic Resistance but rather an in-depth account of what just went down. For more background on why people are resisting these games, check no2010.com and olympicresistance.net.

This was not “just another summit”—this was the culmination of several years of direct action by indigenous people, anarchists, anti-poverty activists, environmentalists, and others against the 2010 Olympics. One of the most inspiring aspects of this convergence was the framework that created it. Unlike many summits, which lack an anti-racist and anti-colonial analysis, indigenous sovereignty and decolonization was front-and-center this time. Indigenous people called upon their allies to help defend their territory against further colonization, and solidarity activists answered that call. An anti-capitalist analysis permeated the entire movement and it was a radicalizing force among the broader activist community. This was not a showdown in which local issues were left on the back burner; as far as the authors know, this was the first summit in North America that was entirely focused on local issues.

The movement was mostly local, as well. Although the numbers may seem small in comparison to mobilizations in Europe and the US, Vancouver is a very isolated city and is not easy to travel to—as many who have tried know. A border separates it from every other major urban center on the West Coast, and the guards turned away countless people hoping to join us. It takes several days of traveling by car to reach Vancouver from Canada’s other major urban centers. Although many people did travel here from across Turtle Island [North America, in the colonial lexicon] and even Europe, the majority of the participants were from the immediate vicinity.

Anarchist hurdles

Anarchist bowling

February 12: First Day of Action

The first official day of action for the Anti-Olympics Convergence was quite a busy day. After the torch run was successfully blocked in two different neighborhoods, thousands of Anti-Olympics dissidents marched on the opening of the games.

8:30 a.m.
Hundreds of downtown Eastside residents, including native warriors, anarchists, and other supporters successfully blockaded the intersection of East Hastings and Cambie Street. When police attempted to disperse the crowd by force, some stood their ground while others sat down in the middle of the intersection, refusing to comply with the police orders. Unable to clear the street, the police were forced to tell the torch relay to change its route and not travel down Hastings into the downtown Eastside.

A fascinating bird’s-eye-view of this blockade from start to finish is available here.

9 a.m.

Local residents and other protesters successfully keep the Olympic torch off Commercial Drive.

Hundreds, including many anarchists, took the streets and used barbed wire and boulders to block the torch from coming through their neighborhood. Once word came in that the torch was being re-routed, they moved up Commercial Drive to ensure that it would not get around them and up the Drive. They met a line of mounted police (chant: “Get those animals off those horses!”), but ran through an adjacent alley to take the streets again. A minor confrontation occurred with a few Olympics enthusiasts. The torch was successfully kept off Commercial Drive, and when torchbearer Carrie Serwetnyk arrived she was chased out of the neighborhood and had to be escorted into the back of a police cruiser with torch in hand.

3 p.m.: Take Back Our City Mass Mobilization

Traffic cone contends for the high jump gold medal at the opening ceremonies.

Several thousand protesters, including one hundred in a black bloc, assembled at the epicenter of the Olympic circus at 3 p.m. Led by indigenous elders, they marched from the Vancouver Art Gallery to disrupt the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Olympics at BC Place. The participants respected the call that this be an all-ages, family-friendly demo. However, in contrast to many demonstrations, “family-friendly” did not mean imposed pacifism. This march respected the autonomy of all, and there was a great deal of communication between various groups in order to mutually support each other.

In response to a request for people to move to the front in order to protect indigenous elders from police harassment, the black bloc and native warriors faced off with the pigs. The black bloc contingent was organized, closing ranks and holding police at bay. Members confiscated officers’ hats, vests, and flashlights while tossing orange pylons, tires, and other debris their way—simultaneously mocking the display of state force and inspiring, supporting, and defending those around them. After a long pushing match during which police officers and protesters exchanged blows, it was clear that the conflict was in a stalemate and the crowd began to disperse. Police managed to kidnap three people who were charged with breach, and one with assault.

February 13: Heart Attack!

Black bloc intent on “clogging the arteries of capitalism.”

8:30 a.m.
400 anarchists arrived bright and early at Thornton Park at 8:30 a.m. for the “Heart Attack” demonstration. Calling for a diversity of tactics to “clog the arteries of capitalism,” the march was intended to cause mayhem and attack the corporate heart of downtown Vancouver. After giving time and cover for everyone to “block up” and practicing a turn-around drill in case it was necessary to reverse direction, the march immediately took over both directions of Main Street and moved north towards East Hastings. Things got off to a slow start, with only minor debris being dragged into the street. A marching band arrived and joined the ranks of black-clad militants chanting “What’s the direction? Insurrection! What’s the solution? Revolution!” Marchers tricked the police into thinking they were heading towards the police station. As police scrambled to protect their fortress, the march headed west on East Hastings—through Canada’s poorest neighborhood—towards the intended target: the heart of Vancouver.

As people gained confidence, they started dragging everything that wasn’t bolted down into the streets in order to block police vehicles from following in their wake. Some began spray-painting buses and attacking luxury cars. No damage was done to any buildings in this neighborhood, however. Heart Attackers were received with popular support, and many downtown Eastside residents felt inspired by our presence and joined in.

Arriving at Victory Square, the scene of the previous morning’s successful Olympic Torch blockade, the march took a left up Cambie Street. The energy intensified as it entered more opulent territory, and more property being damaged. A dumpster was dragged out of an alley, spray-painted, and overturned in the middle of the street, as police nervously looked on. Officers kept their distance from the unruly crowd, however, which was now smashing parking meters, defacing billboards, and continuing to obstruct intersections with newspaper boxes.

What dumpsters were to the Pittsburgh G20, newspaper boxes were to the Heart Attack march in Vancouver.

The party really got started as the ungovernables turned onto Georgia Street and made their way closer to Vancouver’s Olympic celebration zone. This hub of capitalism features many flagship stores of Olympic sponsors and is the central gathering point for Olympic tourists and enthusiasts. The streets were crowded with these consumers, and the arrival of the march was hardly met with the same level of support it had received in the downtown Eastside. At this point several belligerent individuals attempted to interfere with the march, leading to physical and verbal confrontations. Some of these vigilantes tried to unmask demonstrators, but were met with overwhelming resistance and forced off the street. One man attempted to incite other Olympic supporters to confront us but couldn’t garner any support and had to settle for urging police to “go get these guys.”

We were made for this.

The march made it fourteen blocks down Georgia Street, wreaking havoc upon the Olympic spectacle. As newspaper boxes continued to appear in the street, chairs, lumber, a ladder, and other instruments were seized from our surroundings in order to escalate the conflict. Having pierced the pericardium, the bloc attacked the aorta, smashing in the windows of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Olympic department store in front of thousands of shocked upper-class spectators. At this point newspaper boxes ceased to function merely as passive blockades, as anarchists gave them wings and sent them flying through the windows of Hudson’s Bay and a TD bank. This attack on the intersection of Granville and Georgia—the pulse of corporate Vancouver—broke the spell of the Olympic delusion.

As the march proceeded west towards the Lions Gate bridge and the Westin Bayshore hotel, which housed the International Olympic Committee, riot cops appeared in greater numbers, attempting unsuccessfully to flank the crowd on the left. One demonstrator blocked the path of the police and was shoved, initiating hand-to-hand streetfighting. The pig who had initiated the conflict was immediately punched in the face by a member of the black bloc, and was forced to retreat as he realized he was surrounded by militants ready to defend their comrades. Soon after this confrontation a line of riot cops blocked the street ahead. Boxed in with nowhere to go but through the line, many of the black bloc ran, kicked, punched, and scrambled their way to the other side.

Unfortunately, not all were able or willing to fight their way through. As cops attempted to make arrests, all hell broke loose with anarchists on both sides of the line coming to defend and de-arrest their comrades, fighting the police for control of the intersection. This intensity of hand-to-hand conflict between anarchists and police has not been seen in “Canada” for nearly a decade. Several of the de-arrests were successful, but a handful of arrests were effected. In the end, the police held the intersection, successfully fragmenting the rioters into smaller and more vulnerable groups. Many dispersed at this point, but a group of approximately one hundred, including a festive marching band, were able to continue south, looping around to head west on Robson. Over an hour later, this group was surrounded and detained by riot cops; the police were eventually forced to release them by bystanders and supporters chanting “let them go.”

Subsequent Repression

Immediately following the dispersal, police attempted to use any excuse they could to harass, detain, and arrest suspected rioters, legal observers, media, and organizers. Several people were snatched off the street while leaving the intersection of Robson and Jervis. A few hours later, Gord Hill was given a $115 ticket for swearing at a police officer who was making an arrest outside of the Vancouver Media Co-op. Another known organizer was arrested on E. Hastings for “riding a bike on a sidewalk.” He was then charged with obstruction as he stood up for a homeless man who was being hassled by Police in Pigeon Park. Two legal observers were also ticketed for jaywalking on E. Hastings.

A reconvergence of the Heart Attack march had been planned for Robson and Granville at 5 p.m. that evening. However, it was canceled due to a variety of factors including the arrests, the increased repression, and the fact that police knew about this reconvergence point and would likely be eager to make more arrests. Those who did appear were illegally detained by riot police in front of thousands of Olympic spectators, but were released after a short period of time.

The following day, several people were snatched in relation to the Heart Attack demo, and police are still investigating videotapes and looking for more victims. We hope they won’t find any.

Also on Sunday, about 5000 participated in the 19th annual Women’s Memorial March, honoring missing and murdered women from Vancouver’s downtown Eastside. Led by indigenous women, this event was not an explicitly anti-Olympic protest, but many anarchists and other protesters participated.

Post-Action Debrief

As some had predicted, the primary tactic of the police was fear. They did not use the LRAD they had purchased; they never used tear-gas, rubber bullets, or any other form of long-range combat tactics. When they did attempt to control or arrest protesters, they used a hands-on approach. It was clear to some of us that they desired to avoid images of Vancouver engulfed in tear gas during the first day of the Olympic Games. The Olympics are all about nationalist propaganda, and the whole world actually is watching, unlike at most other demonstrations. Even with their billion-dollar security budget and high-tech crowd-control weapons, the police were unable to prevent a riot that had been announced years in advance. They effectively had their hands tied.

The black bloc relied heavily on what was readily available to them in the streets instead of bringing their own materials into the demo. Unfortunately, there were no mass supplies—no hard banners, paint bombs, projectiles, batons, or bandanas—to share with others who wanted to join.

One criticism was that people kept attacking the same windows, even throwing paint bombs at them after they were already smashed, instead of using that energy and opportunity to destroy additional property. A window that is smashed, has paint on it and a newspaper box through it does make a great photo-op, but smashing windows at a protest can be quite risky. If you’re brave enough to take that kind of action, make sure it counts!

The original target for the Heart Attack march had been the intersection of Denman and Georgia, in hopes of blocking traffic in and out of the Lions Gate Bridge, a major artery leading to the Olympic Games. Blocking the bridge turned out to be unachievable, but the march did succeed in clogging the arteries of Vancouver commerce in general. Considering the scale of militant confrontation, anarchists suffered very few arrests—at least thus far.

On the other hand, yet again the call for decentralized actions didn’t produce widespread resistance—at least as far as we know at this moment. Many anarchists argued that it would be easier to act in cells in their respectful communities and target corporate sponsors as the security apparatus would be concentrated in Vancouver. However, it is undeniable at this time of writing that the most effective resistance yet has been at the convergence itself.

This is only a preliminary assessment of this convergence. There are many other actions and demonstrations planned, and we won’t know the full scale of everything until the dust settles. The Olympics continue in Vancouver for two weeks. There is still time to plan solidarity actions. A list of corporate sponsors can be found here. A full assessment of this movement, the involvement of anarchists, and what it means for the future of militant struggle in “Canada” will appear in the near future.

Anarchists to pigs: Get the fuck out of our community!

Further Coverage
Vancouver Media Coop
Friendly Fire Collective
Insurgent Photo

[Banner photo by Michael Thibault, Crimson Phoenix Photography, www.crimsonphoenixphotography.com.]

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]

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]

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.