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In early June, we announced our proposal for a month of anarchist outreach and visibility actions. Within weeks we received announcements of localized event schedules across the US and beyond. Tours are currently criss-crossing the country; dozens of Really Really Free Markets [RRFM] will assemble; convergences and reading groups will open their doors. This August, anarchists are stepping into visibility with mutual aid and resistance.
There are currently three publicly-announced touring groups on the road. The Conspiracy Tour is circling the country to build support for the targets of state repression in the anarchist community and presenting legal training for communities of resistance. The Emergency Tour is traveling through the midwest, visiting primarily small towns to present an introduction to anti-capitalism and mutual aid organizing. The Letters Tour is doing a short circuit mid-month to promote the new issue of their anti-political literary journal.
If you don’t see your event or action represented in this list, please email experimental.committee@gmail.com or announce it as a comment to add it to this list. If there isn’t anything happening where you live, go ahead and plan something!
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In addition to supplying the above video, our friends Test Their Logik have written in with a note about the planned resistance to the upcoming G8 and G20 meetings which will take place in Huntsville and Toronto, Ontario, from June 25-27:
Toronto-based organizations of women, people of colour, indigenous peoples, the poor, working class, queer people, trans people, and disabled people are organizing an anti-capitalist and anti-colonial convergence to counter these fuckers. We in Southern Ontario Anarchist Resistance are calling on our friends and lovers, our comrades and co-conspirators, to join us in creating the most militant resistance that the city of Toronto has ever seen. The bankers and politicians who claim to run our world will not be allowed to run our town. In defiance of the largest military operation to take place on Kanadian soil in living memory, people are organizing everything from street parties to occupations, massive demonstrations to autonomous and targeted attacks.
The Toronto Community Mobilization Network is the network of the different communities, organizations, and individuals that are organizing the varying responses to the militarization of this city and to the systems of oppression and domination that a meeting of world “leaders” represents. The objective is to use the opportunity of the G8 and G20 summits to highlight and strengthen the diverse movements for social justice that already exist in the Toronto area. The full schedule of the events is available here. The TCMN, and all of its constituents, have agreed to respect a diversity of tactics as part of their statement of solidarity and respect.
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By now, anarchists and anti-authoritarians across the country have probably given up waiting for an announcement of the annual CrimethInc. Convergence. The truth is that as experienced organizers grow more weary of repeating themselves, and the emerging energetic anarchist communities are all tending to be less and less interested in organizing, few places seem to be appropriate candidates for this summer’s convergence. Moreover, by early spring it was already too late in the game for a community to come forward and offer to host the event, and interest simply had not surfaced.
In possibly the first great anarchist mistake of the decade, the CrimethInc. Experimental Committee was founded in late January. Their first assignment? To preserve and integrate the best elements of the convergence into a new model, adjust them to strengthen longstanding weaknesses, all the while upping the ante in a way that serves the anarchist community as a whole. At first, we thought their solution was a bad idea, so we commissioned a report and quickly changed our minds.
We’re excited to announce the release of a new hip-hop track to benefit the State Street 29 in Olympia, WA. This collaboratively produced song, titled “Great Lakes to Cascades,” is a free download for those who donate $1 or more to the State Street 29 Support Committee. To donate more than $1, simply increase the quantity in the shopping cart—100% of your donation goes directly to the Support Committee.
It features Testament & Illogik of Raised Fist Collective (Ontario) and Strife, MK Ultra and Unrest of Thought Crime Collective (Olympia) and recorded in Olympia in early February 2010 during Raised Fist’s Empowerment Tour. It’s a simple but fierce narrative on preparedness and strength emphasizing the aggressive spirit of mutual aid and collectivity. [256kbps VBR MP3]
The State Street 29 is a group of individuals who were arrested on the night of April 8th, 2010. They were arrested at a march consisting of over 60 people that took place in downtown Olympia. The march was done in solidarity with the West Coast Days of Action against State Violence to draw attention to the fact that police everywhere are perpetuating and fostering fear among our communities. Our goal as the State Street 29 Support Committee is to encourage others to view the arrestees, from the perspective of those who rely on and care about them, as loving, well intentioned, and active people concerned about the safety of our community.
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This week From the Depths depart for a two-month tour of Europe coinciding with the European release of their Germinate LP on the German label Fire and Flames. They’ll be traveling everywhere between Holland, Greece, and Finland, stopping at the anarchist book fairs in Paris and Stockholm and playing with some of their favorite bands, including Plague Mass and Next Victim.
Geoff, who has played drums in From the Depths, will not be joining the band on this tour, in order to focus on an accountability process he is participating in. More information is available on the band’s website.
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We’re soliciting stories about workplace theft for a journal that will appear in early April, in honor of STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY. Obviously, they should be anonymous and fictionalized. A simple paragraph will suffice, though if one of you sends in the War and Peace of employee revenge, we won’t complain.
STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY postcards and trifolds are ready now. Email stealfromworkday@gmail.com to receive a box of the postcards; the trifolds are ready to print out and photocopy.
The first printing of the stickers flew; we’ve just printed 8000 more. They’re still available from Wild Nettle Distro: email distro@wildnettle.com. We’re still soliciting photos of STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY materials in action at that address.
Work disorienting you. Enslaves you. Alienates you. You tired. You disgusting. It makes getting up early. I fuck with both loose climbs. I kill that bitch shit coffee and eating makes you fucking evil. You down. It gives you headaches for things that should be crap.
Inspirational Quote of the Week
“The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that 75 percent of all employees steal at least once, and that half of these steal repeatedly. The Chamber also reports that one of every three business failures is the direct result of employee theft. According to the US Department of Commerce, employee dishonesty costs American business in excess of $50 billion annually.” Hire Power Associates
Call for Buildup Actions on March 15
We’re calling for actions a month before STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY to build up awareness of the campaign. Here are some options for what you could do, right now or on March 15:
-Tell a friend or coworker about the campaign
-See that trifolds, posters, and stickers appear everywhere
-Take photos of posters, graffiti, or banner drops
-Announce STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY over the public address system in a retail outlet
-Organize a flash mob in a shopping mall, or—better—an office building or warehouse district: march behind a STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY banner, or leaflet all the customers, or…
-Send an outraged email about STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY to a talk show or news program, or send your local paper a letter to the editor.
These classy black and red “silent agitators” are available for free or donation from Wild Nettle Distro, and will also be included free in orders from CrimethInc. Far East. They look great on a doorframe or coffee maker! To get a big package of them for your community, email distro@wildnettle.com.
Steal Something From Work Day PHOTO CONTEST!
We can’t urge you to steal from your workplace–and you don’t need our encouragement! But we can urge you to take a pocketful of STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK stickers and head to the nearest factory, office, housing development, shopping center, or school.
Keep your eyes open–and when you see a STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY sticker, take a photograph of it! Email your photos to stealfromworkday@gmail.com and they’ll go up in the gallery. If you’re the private sort, start a new email from a public-access computer to send your photos. The person who sends the best photograph wins a gift package–to be mailed after April 15, of course. [Sample photo here.]
A new Facebook group is promoting STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY. Invite everyone you can–let’s dispel the stigma around reclaiming the product of our labor! This is a great place to upload photos and video, and to promote the campaign in general. Be sure to use common sense whenever using social mapping technologies like Facebook.
Steal Something From Work Day GOES INTERNATIONAL!
Thanks to capitalist globalization, it’s never been easier to get exploited by some profiteering corporation–nor to steal from one! Comrades as far away as Spain, Russia, and Bulgaria are getting ready for STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY.
The 2010 Winter Olympics will take place in Vancouver & Whistler, on unceded Indigenous land, from February 12-28 2010. We call on all anti-capitalist, Indigenous, housing rights, labour, migrant justice, environmental, anti-war, community-loving, anti-poverty, civil libertarian, and anti colonial activists to come together to confront this two-week circus and the oppression it represents. We are organizing towards a global anti-capitalist and anti-colonial convergence against the 2010 Olympic Games.
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Calling all angry wage slaves and anarchist subversives! You’re invited to participate in promoting an international day of action, STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY, scheduled for April 15, 2010. Following in the footsteps of Steal Something Day, itself a response to Buy Nothing Day, STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY focuses attention on the motivations behind employee theft and the horizons ahead of it.
STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY is a day of action, but it’s much more than that. The point is not so much to urge people to steal from their workplaces—employees of all ideological stripes already steal from their bosses without need of encouragement—as to raise awareness and promote dialogue about the means and causes of workplace theft. Imagine stickers and posters everywhere rendering the individualized action of workplace theft a topic of collective discussion. Imagine joking references to satirical websites spawning conversations about how coworkers can steal more and better together, and why they are entitled to. Imagine STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY.
This is an opportunity for anarchists to use the networks developed for mass mobilizations and summit protests to ignite class war on the terrain of daily life, where it matters most. Through humor and honesty, we can bring the contradictions present in practically everyone’s lives to the fore, forcing the issues our rulers and managers would rather brush under the rug. One website is already up, and more are on the way, along with videos, stickers, pins, posters, and more. For now, check these out:
Interviews and other inquiries are welcome to stealfromworkday@gmail.com. If you or your organization would like to participate in this campaign, please send in your endorsement, specifying whether you wish for your contact information to appear on the list of participants. Alternately, just make your own material and get it out there!
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
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This September’s protests against the G20 summit in Pittsburgh offer a rare strategic opportunity to reassert anarchist struggle in the new era of economic recession, ecological collapse, and liberal government. We’ve prepared a summary of why these demonstrations are important, who is organizing them, what is planned, and how to get involved.
We’ve also designed a poster promoting the unpermitted mass march to downtown Pittsburgh scheduled for Thursday, September 24, which we predict will be the high point of the mobilization.
Meet at the Northside Commons (W. North Ave. and Brighton) by the pond, on Monday, July 20, anytime between 12 pm and sundown. The opening ceremonies will occur immediately thereafter. For convergence attendees who can’t make it on the 20th, there will be someone at the meetup spot at 12 pm and again at 6 pm on the 21st. Attendees who are arriving even later and missing the inception of the fun should call 412-708-2583 when they arrive in Pittsburgh.
This year’s CrimethInc. Convergence is a mere three weeks away. In Pittsburgh we are busy stock-piling foodstuffs and getting together a child-care collective, amongst other numerous tasks, but we wanted to announce a few things we’ve got in store for this year; rest assured that these are just the beginnings of the mad schemes and maniac plots we’re devising for the end of July. Our aim is that this year’s convergence opens up the space for new and exciting experiences, inspiring conversations, and connections with new and old friends alike. To facilitate this environment, we have a schedule of workshops and events, to which much more will be added in the coming weeks. Of course, every one of these workshops and events is contingent upon the active participation of those who attend.
Anyone with questions about what they need to bring or what items could be useful to our organizing can consult the list here, and those who want to share ideas beforehand or are looking for rides can coordinate on the Convergence forums. Any queries, concerns about the accessibility of the space, or offers of help can be sent to info@crimethincconvergence.com. Our website will be updated frequently in the next three weeks.
What follows is a initial list of some of the workshops that will be offered this year. Don’t think this gets you off the hook. We ask that everyone who plans to attend, in fact we demand, that each and every beautiful and unique individual coming to Pittsburgh doesn’t sit passively listening to others talk or perform; we couldn’t bear not being graced with your exceptional talents or insights as well.The convergence is like a giant potluck of epic proportions, and it requires that every single person bring something to share. If you are used to talking a lot in front of crowds and being in charge, challenge yourself further by supporting the efforts of others, or even presenting or performing something that goes beyond the limits of what you’ve done in the past. If you have a workshop to present please post on the forums or e-mail cwc.booking@gmail.com.
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Once again, despite ourselves, we are thrust onto the front lines of history. In the midst of an economic crisis, the leaders of the wealthiest nations on earth are meeting in Pittsburgh to discuss how to preserve global capitalism and reform the loathsome International Monetary Fund—and we are hosting our convergence in Pittsburgh a mere two months earlier.
We hadn’t planned on this—perhaps we’d forgotten that we are in a war that is constantly unfolding, that doesn’t permit truce or respite. It’s hard to bear in mind at all times how much depends on us, to remember that we are responsible for making the kind of resistance we want to participate in come about in our lifetime. At the same time, we can’t only react to our enemies, even when they are constantly provoking us—we must also take the time to develop long-term relationships and projects, or else we’ll never be able to take the initiative.
So what will the convergence in Pittsburgh look like?
This blog functions as a clearinghouse for bulletins from participating CrimethInc. cells, enabling readers to keep abreast of their activities and coordinate with them.
$18.00
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Click here to donate and download the MP3.
