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We’re pleased to announce our first-ever sale of returned, imperfect, and slightly damaged books in our online store for 50% off the standard prices. We’ve been collecting them for almost a decade and have dozens of boxes stacked to the ceiling that we had no idea what to do with—not good enough to sell as new, and too good to simply discard. We’ve stumbled upon a groundbreaking solution: sell them for half as much!
Since our regular prices are as low as they can be, we’ve never had a way to have a sale on our books before, so we’re excited for this chance to make them available for less money. The wholesale price is also discounted 50%, so this would be a great chance to buy books to give away to friends, relatives and even local infoshops and libraries. The number of available books is limited and are available only on a first-come first-served basis—we don’t know how long they will be available, but we imagine it won’t be too long. Click here for the store sale page.
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Don’t carp, carpenters!
Don’t wait, waiters!
Let’s put the team in teamster!
Every steelworker a steal-from-worker!
Every hoodlum a Robin Hoodlum!
Raise the bar, baristas!
Raise hell, bellboys!
Wage war, wage slaves—
April 15 is Steal Something from Work Day!
Just in time for April 15, a barrage of new STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY propaganda is hitting the airwaves. This announcement covers a movie, a full-length journal, and a new hip hop track, among other things.
Just in time for April 15, we present Heist, “Journal of Workplace Reappropriation.” This full-length publication delves into the practice and theory of employee theft, presenting stories from dozens of workplace thieves and reflections from across the spectrum of workplaces, continents, and centuries. Read the tale of the hardware store cashier who paid for his entire college education by robbing the till–and find out why he wishes he’d spent the money differently! Read the reflections of Miklós Haraszti, a dissident who analyzed Hungarian workers’ practice of making and stealing trinkets from the factory in defiance of the Soviet “Worker’s State” of the 1970s! Find out what it means to go beyond stealing from work! It’s all here, in this 72-page journal!
Our favorite underground MC, Testament, joins fellow MC Illogik as Test Their Logik to deliver this hardcore anthem about stealing from the boss:
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Alongside less sympathetic STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY coverage, the UK’s Dissident Island radio ran an interview with one representative on their April 2 show[starts at minute 53].
Meanwhile, warnings are now circulating for business owners to beware this April 15, and corporations focusing on “human resources” are also paying attention.
“We love athletics” —anarchist contestants for the 2010 Olympics
We’re pleased to bring you breaking news from Vancouver, where united indigenous and anarchist resistance has disrupted the capitalist and nationalist triumphalism at the opening of the Olympic Games.
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We’re pleased to announce that the former restriction of needing a $10 minimum order to qualify for UPS Ground shipping has been removed, and there is now no minimum. With every day that passes we become more frustrated with the United States Postal Service losing and destroying our packages and being completely unaccountable for doing so. While UPS Ground often does cost (slightly) more, it has many advantages of great value to people who want to receive the stuff they order: $100 of free insurance, day-definite delivery guarantees, actual tracking, and far better package handling.
Therefore we strongly encourage everyone to select UPS Ground as their shipping option. Also, as a tip to reduce the cost of UPS Ground for your order, we suggest getting creative and having the package shipped to a place of business rather than a residence, doing so can often save several dollars.
In addition to the felony charges filed in Pittsburgh and the house raid, the Twitter defendants—and perhaps others?—are apparently being targeted by a secretive federal grand jury. Supporters have established an informative and frequently updated blog here. A rudimentary support page for David Japenga can be found here. The Twitter case will set important precedents about people’s legal rights to use modern communications technology—a matter that could determine the shape of protest in this country for decades to come. It is also important to support David Japenga, who is the state’s scapegoat for this mobilization.
Meanwhile, last Thursday, over 100 other defendants appeared in court for charges stemming from the G20 protests. A smug judge lectured college students who had been randomly assaulted by police, while prosecutors and public defenders attempted to intimidate brutalized arrestees into accepting plea bargains and thus giving up their opportunity to sue the authorities over the abuse.
Donations to the support campaign for those targeted by the Twitter charges, the house raid, and the grand jury can be made here; the Pittsburgh G20 Resistance Project is also taking donations for a legal fund to support arrestees.
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The dust has settled: a total of 193 arrests took place during the G20—a great number of those being random bystanders. 17 people face felonies; one young person is being absurdly scapegoated for $20,000+ of damage, while two alleged participants in the comms group are being charged with “hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility, and possessing an instrument of crime,” presumably in hopes of setting a precedent to suppress the use of communications technology to keep demonstrators safe in the future.
Indeed, several people have been charged with “hindering apprehension,” which is a new one to us here. It sounds more like an existential condition than a crime—picture Woody Allen in some sex farce, awkwardly explaining to his mother that he’s been suffering from hindering apprehension!
This report focuses on the events of Friday evening, when police and National Guardsmen gratuitously attacked students at the University of Pittsburgh.
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We’re pleased to present breaking news from the first day of the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, which has seen a great deal of spirited resistance and confrontation—perhaps as much as has occurred at any anarchist mobilization in North America in half a decade. This hastily composed account presents the context of the demonstration, attempts to convey the spirit of the day, and raises a few preliminary questions.
In short, the basic narrative of the day runs as follows. The protesters attempted to reach the summit site but were brutally forced back by police. They eventually turned around and marched through Pittsburgh neighborhoods and shopping districts, where the police pursued and attacked them. Property destruction intensified in response to these attacks, and the conflict culminated in a standoff between police and students during which a black bloc destroyed a business district.
While our last report focused on the controversial disruption, the 2009 CrimethInc. Convergence went on for five days and four nights before that incident, and many positive things occurred during that time. People exchanged skills and knowledge, built relationships that will last for years to come, and participated in a self-organized, affirmative event full of exciting and fun moments. What follows here are a few personal accounts focusing on these aspects of the convergence.
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Anarcho-punk warriors From the Depths will be touring the eastern half of North America this fall. They’ve also released the recording they completed earlier this year as a split CD with Colombian hardcore band Nagaf.
Here are four more accounts from people of color who experienced the disruption at the end of the CrimethInc. convergence in Pittsburgh. Further discussion of the convergence will appear here shortly.
This is a brief statement followed by personal accounts detailing the events of a controversial disruption that happened at the end of the CrimethInc. Convergence in Pittsburgh this July. These texts have been written by some anarchist people of color who participated in the convergence and were present the night of the disruption. There has been some discussion about it on the internet, but we hope to offer people more context from our perspectives about that night. Still, mostly questions remain about how to proceed. Hopefully at least, these accounts will provoke honest, open, humble conversations about all of the issues raised, so that we can figure out how to move forward as radical communities in struggle.
There is so much ground to cover to convey what happened throughout the weeklong convergence. Check back soon for further reportbacks about the rest of the convergence.
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At long last, we’ve completed our 35,000-word full report on last summer’s anarchist mobilizations against the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, complete with chronological maps and painstaking documentation. Updated from the feature in Rolling Thunder #7 and expanded to include the complete text of thirteen different participant narratives, this report offers a comprehensive history of the preparations for, events of, and aftermath following the protests, and an analysis of their context and implications.
Unlike virtually every other analysis yet published from the radical community, this one utilizes subsequent internal government reports, comparing them against a wide variety of other sources. We hope our investigation and the accompanying archive of personal testimonies will prove useful both to participants still trying to understand the events of this past summer and to organizers looking to derive lessons from them for the future.
In a nutshell, we hypothesize that the chief significance of the 2008 anti-convention mobilizations was in the precedents they might set for future organizing. Anarchists took the initiative to determine their own goals and strategies for the protests, establishing decentralized networks throughout the US far in advance. This enabled them to build relationships with other organizing groups and to coordinate their actions, effectively setting the tone for the protests at both conventions. At the same time, the protests were less attended than expected, perhaps as a result of the Obama campaign detracting from street-level participation in the antiwar movement. In this regard, they were the final act of an era that has now passed.
The RNC protests met with an almost unprecedented degree of state repression, which is still playing out today even as the political climate has changed. The federal government continued its strategy of gathering intelligence and entrapping stragglers, already familiar from attacks on environmentalists and animal rights activists. Local authorities focused on infiltration, profiling, and raids, ultimately arresting over 800 people and bringing conspiracy charges against organizers. Despite all this, they seem to have been remarkably unprepared to maintain order in the streets on the first day of the RNC, and their subsequent overreaction helped discredit them in the public eye. Most arrestees have gotten off scot-free; it remains to be seen how the ongoing felony cases will conclude. The outcome of the RNC 8 conspiracy trial in particular will indicate how sustainable we can expect the organizing model debuted at the 2008 conventions to be.
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Over the past three decades, Earth First! has waged a life-or-death campaign to halt the destruction of the natural environment. Right now, the Earth First! Roadshow is halfway through a five month revival tour across the United States, sharing direct action skills, ecodefense history, and opportunities to get involved in protecting the wilderness. Consult their schedule here to see if they’ll be passing through your bioregion before the tour ends at this summer’s Earth First! rendezvous in Cascadia.
One of the acts on the roadshow, a puppet show teaching basic security culture skills, is especially timely in view of recent government efforts to entrap and frame environmental activists. We’ve obtained the script and an audio file, and are sharing them here to equip you to put on the puppet show yourself if you so desire. If your community could use a refresher in protecting your privacy and safety against snooping, evil-intentioned G-men, just build some puppets and adjust the show to your local needs! You can even use the audio recording if you prefer not to memorize the script yourself.
Crap Hound has long been an honorary member of the Paul F. Maul Artists’ Group and part of the CrimethInc. design process, and recently they have come out with a new issue sure to be of unmeasurable value to us, and anti-American anarchists everywhere. Crap Hound collects an unbelievable amount of reproducible artwork in each issue based around themes, and this new issue, #7, is the first part of the Church and State theme. If that sounds like a true bonanza, it’s because it is. You can order it from, and see pretty pictures of the insides at, Buyolympia.com. Here is their blurb:
The first all new issue of Crap Hound in eight years! Featuring 96 pages of glorious religious and patriotic imagery! Despite the nearly decade stretch between new issues, editor Sean Tejaratchi has been dutifully culling the choicest hight-contrast art, lovingly lifted from vintage catalogs, advertising, obscure books, and found ephemera.
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As of September 2 practically all of the predictions in our most recent feature, “What to Expect from the Conventions” have been borne out by reality. Despite millions of dollars of security, thousands of riot police and national guardsmen, and a dramatic series of preemptive raids and arrests, authorities were powerless to prevent massive direct action from disrupting St. Paul during yesterday’s Republican National Convention. The day began with hard blockades all around downtown and several different marches, including a black bloc that destroyed police cars and corporate property. A full nine hours of street conflicts ensued, involving a broad diversity of participants and tactics.
At both the DNC and RNC, anarchists showed themselves to have seized the initiative to determine the character of street demonstrations. The US anarchist movement has survived several years of repression and attempted co-optation, proving that the upsurge associated with the anti-globalization era was not a flash in the pan: if anything, we are stronger today than ten years ago.
Read our predictions and analysis here; absurd local media coverage here; corporate media coverage here; and legal updates here.
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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![[Banner photo by Michael Thibault, Crimson Phoenix Photography, www.crimsonphoenixphotography.com.]](http://thecloud.crimethinc.com/images/riot2010/1_b.jpg)
