Underground Reverie
“Out of Isolation and into the Fray”
Four-Song Debut [27MB]

The release is free, of course—but if you can, please show your appreciation by making a donation to the legal fund of those arrested in last month’s building occupation in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. To do so, go to the defendant support site and donate to the arrestees’ legal fund; further inquiries can be addressed to ‘defendoccupychapelhillarrestees@riseup.net’.

One of these songs appeared in our video coverage of the aforementioned building occupation. Since this is the digital age, we can already offer a review of the release, courtesy of Seattle’s excellent Tides of Flame [PDF]:

“Underground Reverie’s debut album is throbbing, haunting, and completely amazing. Samples from helicopters, owlish flutes, various films (including Network), and eerie old songs flesh out a skeleton of delicate electronic beats. The music is as much about the horrors of civilization as it is about the raw beauty of struggle. In the liner notes, UR reflects on anarchist praxis and encourages us to keep fighting.”

Contact Underground Reverie: undergroundreverie@riseup.net

To commemorate Alexis’s life and the efforts of all who set out to avenge his death, we’re offering selections from an interview we did with comrades in Greece the following year, when the riots were over but momentum was still fresh. The interview serves as a sort of historical snapshot, documenting the heady optimism of the time but also the realization of how vast the barriers to revolution still were. A great deal has changed since then; Greece has witnessed a series of new tragedies and clashes, while Greek anarchists have simultaneously seen their tactics embraced by broad sectors of the population and lost the initiative as the shortcomings of their strategies became apparent. Yet this interview is timelier than ever, as it grapples with the question of how to make the most of a high point of struggle. This may be relevant in North America sooner than anyone expects.

December Revisited

[Void Network interviewed in 2009]

How much were the limits of the insurrection imposed from outside, by the power of the State?

The government trapped in scandals, economical crisis, and inner conflicts is unable to learn from all the ways it was beaten. An elite that tries to behave like nothing happened can do nothing but forget.

During the insurrection in the countryside, the towns and small cities, the external influences were much stronger than in Athens and Thessaloniki. For example, in Patras and Larisa, both big cities that experienced riots that the police were unable to control for days, small but well-organized groups of neo-Nazis together with riot police were searching for the young people, street by street, and following groups of high school students from the riots to their houses, frightening them and their parents as well.

In small cities and towns, undercover policemen were going from shop to shop to spread false rumors and to inform the owners that wild anarchists were on their way from the big cities to come destroy their shops in the same way the television was portraying an exaggerated destruction of small shops in Athens. So when young people, anarchists, and leftists came out onto the streets of their small towns with no intention to smash anything but banks, police stations, and government buildings, the shop owners treated them like vandals rather than their own children. However, in most small towns during the insurrection, the people generally had an attitude that these were “our own children” and the youth and comrades accomplished unbelievable actions on a local scale.

The influence of conservativism was also much stronger in some right-wing towns. Conservatism, the power that keeps our life “as it was,” our mind “as we know it,” and our activities “as we’ve always done them,” was the strongest factor for sustaining normality before, during, and after the riots all over the country.

Many people opposed the insurrection and they had the power to express their disapproval much more openly and effectively in the countryside. In some of the towns the majority of the locals were obviously against the “tendencies” of the anarchists and the leftists. In these towns it was very difficult for the small number of isolated participants to sustain an insurrectionary enthusiasm for many days, even though in such places actions still took place day after day for weeks, proving that the passion for freedom doesn’t fear any authoritarian conservative majority.

The power of the State existed mainly in radio interviews, TV programming, and riot police in the streets. The work of the State was to offer excuses and reinforce the conservative defenses of this society, to sustain normality even in the middle of chaos, and to express with certainty that nothing will change; also to suppress the total chaos without having another dead body on the streets. It was crucial that they do it without filling up the stadiums with thousands of detainees, in order not to create images of dictatorship within the spectacle of social life.

The work of the mass media, as part of the regime, was to offer simplistic excuses for the “children’s revolt,” so as not to alienate their parents, to avoid speaking seriously about the specific reasons behind many targets of smashing and burning, to feed the worst fears of the conservative majority, and to portray the anarchists as irrelevant to the phenomenon. In this way they were building a separation between the good children and the bad anarchists, immigrants, radicals, extremists-criminals.

How much did the limits come from the participants themselves?

In big cities and especially in Athens and Thessaloniki, physical exhaustion had a strong influence after all those days of tear gas, running around the city center, hours of assemblies and all kinds of direct actions, creating and sustaining street barricades and liberated zones, smashing, burning, and fighting the riot police, the undercover police, and the neo-Nazis over vast areas of the city… day after day and through the nights. The boys and girls sleeping inside the occupied universities for many days showed heroic physical strength.

When the schools reopened the students had to go back to class. Three weeks after the start of the revolt the university students started to think it was possible to lose credit for the whole academic year if the occupation of the universities continued after Christmas. After three weeks the students took to the streets less and less. Satisfied by the amazing personal experience of revolt and revenge against the State, they were tired from the street fighting. And they were pushed by their parents to return to normality. The students and youth who were not politically organized began to lose the feeling of togetherness of the first weeks, and started to express skepticism again towards the attitude, decisions, initiatives, and political analysis of the anarchists. Many continued to participate in different actions, but they began to keep a distance from the central occupations and riots.

And the workers had their jobs waiting for them. Most of the participants had to work all day and then they participated in the actions in the afternoons and evenings, also expressing an amazing physical strength. The worst moment of the assembly for the occupation of the General Confederation of Greek Workers was when the insurgent workers started to speak out against spending a long time forming a deeper analysis because they had to go to sleep so they could work the next morning. Work was a limitation before, during, and after the insurrection.

After the third day of the uprising the immigrants, many of whom lacked papers, faced a very strong backlash from the police and in public opinion. Police continued searching for them for months and in the following summer they arrested thousands of so-called illegal immigrants.

In the network of assemblies and conversations there began to reappear many different questions, debates, and the endless disagreements that characterize the Greek radical space. Many of these took the form of hostile dichotomies and enmities, like leftists vs. insurrectionists, anti-authoritarians vs. anarchists, artists vs. anti-artists, independent media journalists vs. anti-media activists, direct action vs. political messaging, naifs vs. extremists, hooliganism vs. anti-statism, anti-statism vs. criminality, anarcho-communism vs. post-anarchy, junkies vs. serious political revolutionaries, looting vs. burning… and so on. Many people felt this and made conscious efforts to combat it. But by the third week, many of the debates had become long and tedious distractions from the disappointment we felt when we saw that the whole society would not rise up, as many people hoped it would in the early days.

A major defeat came early when the syndicalist hierarchy decided to cancel the nationwide general strike scheduled for December 10. This strike had been announced long before the death of Alexis, but they cancelled it to avoid generalizing the insurrection. The historical meeting with the working class failed to happen once more. Never trust the workers. The “working class” followed their leaders, their political parties, their own syndicalist institutions, unions and organizations, their own idols and ghosts. The workers, the farmers, the petit-bourgeoisie did everything in their power to help the regime survive and bring everything back to normal.

So you see, normality was also hiding inside of us, not only around us.

The submission of the majority to the status quo and the habitual repetitive behavior of work and consumption kept millions of people off the streets. The inability of participants in the insurrection to explain politically the reasons for the actions and to expand this understanding on a scale that could address the problems of common people was a failure that kept the entire society from exploding, from taking up the revolt and continuing it with their own decisions and actions.

For sure, people were not ready for social change, not even for a general confrontation with their own realities. The death of Alexis fell like a thunderclap, but most of them were unable to understand what caused their own children, their own friends, their own neighbors to revolt. The society could feel it, they could express empathy but they were not ready to translate it into a political confrontation with the regime.

In an insurrectionary way of thinking, we can say that now, after the insurrection, the consciousness of millions of people has stepped forward and this is the main achievement of the revolt. The insurrection opens horizons. Many things that will happen in the future could never have happened before December.

All the thousands of people who participated offered an invitation to the others, the silent majority. When this silence fills your ears, echoing off the streets of a crowded city that wants to return to normality after four weeks of endless riots and all kinds of actions, an inner voice forces you to pack up all the inspiration and experience you have won for yourself, to go back to your collective and continue the struggle from there.

Even with most of the markets destroyed, Greek society generated a strange need to reproduce a pseudo-celebratory Christmas. Even though all the walls of the city were painted with the slogan “Christmas Postponed, We Have Insurrection” and the smoke of the tear gas and the smell of burned banks and the ashes of luxury shops still hung in the air, and the death of Alexis filled everyone’s thoughts, Christmas happened on December 25 just like every other year. The fucking mayor announced during New Year’s Eve from Syntagma Square, next to the brand new Christmas tree, this one protected by riot police, that we were all one, we were all the same, and we were happy! Thousands of poor immigrants were clapping their hands below the stage, though many hardly understood a word. The three central occupations in Athens (Polytechnic, Nomiki, ASOEE) dissolved one or two days before Christmas.

And you walk in the city center with your friends, four o’clock on New Year’s morning, and there are no riots anymore, and you want to smash everything around you and start again from the beginning. And an inner instinct says to you that there is still a lot of work to do before this world will explode. And the insurrection continues travelling in space and time, but still you feel that something is missing, and there are a lot of things we have to take care of.

In what ways were the limits of the insurrection determined by factors in place before it started, such as the infrastructure of anti-authoritarian groups and projects and the culture of resistance in Greece?

For many decades, the uncompromising fight of anarchists against the State and capitalism has found its chief expression in confrontation with all the various bureaus and branches of police across the planet, for example in the clashes that occurred in Prague, Seattle, Genoa, Thessaloniki, Maastricht, Nice, Rostock, Berlin, Copenhagen, Paris, Cancun, Santiago, Buenos Aires, San Francisco, Mexico City, Hamburg, St. Paul, Turin, Johannesburg, Miami, Seoul, and many other places. Of course, as the State is not a castle, the police are not the major protector of the State. Social apathy, habit, acceptance of status, and fear of change are perhaps even stronger protectors of the State than the army, and comrades in Greece know this well. But during the “Days for Alexis,” the police were the primary target of the attack. The reasons were obvious this time even to the conservatives. The struggle was legitimate even for reformists. For once, anarchist common sense matched up with social common sense. Unfortunately, common sense is a great obstacle to wisdom.

The target of the struggle itself, the police, was the greatest limitation to the expanding of the insurrection to a general social insurrection. For most of the common people, police brutality was the target of this struggle, and the anarchists, long experienced in fighting against the police, fought hardest alongside the people who wanted to express their rage against police brutality, together with them, sometimes even following them.

But generally, they were unable to take the majority of the people with them in a total negation of the roots of the regime and against the real causes of this and all the other murders carried out by the State and capitalism. Most of the people were not ready yet to travel to the roots of their slavery. The society was not ready to face its own failures in the clear light of insurrection.

And the people in the struggle did not expand the dialogue as necessary to encompass all sides of everyday life. Of the hundreds of communiqués released, only a few could really offer an inspiring political explanation and a solid organizational solution. The affinity groups and the initiatives had the capability to offer high-quality analysis of the conditions and a hard critique of the regime, but they hadn’t enough experience to spread enthusiasm for a social victory—visions of a world that could appear from the ashes of the old world, practical escape routes from the dead-ends of neoliberalism in crisis, images from the future we are dreaming of, applicable plans for continuing the struggle once everything has been smashed and burned.

So when the rage started to fade, there were no solid answers as to what should come next. Not even in our craziest dreams had any of us come so far. We walked for days and days like shadows inside our own struggles, wondering, through the smoke of the tear gas, about each next step.

Who has the proper answers, who can even narrate this story, who can offer solutions and answers about the way to general social insurrection? No one wanted to force society to go further, and anarchists always dislike this role. Four weeks after the assassination of Alexis, everyone knew that the uprising was not a revolution, so nobody gave specific answers for what we had to do in order to go further. What could we do to keep the riots from ending? Is the never-ending riot the way to social insurrection?

Most people that participated in the insurrection say that it didn’t end. We find great truth in this, as thousands of us participate and stay active in many projects, struggles, and assemblies that were created after December in all the cities and towns. For most people Alexis is still alive. In today’s struggles you can find him smiling behind actions, demonstrations, creative plans, and destructive visions.

What conflicts have developed after the uprising between groups that participated in it together? Are there bonds and connections that were possible to maintain during the uprising that have broken down since then?

During the insurrection many old friends lost each other forever and people or groups that hated each other for decades worked in projects and actions together. Many old groups transformed into something completely different and many new affinity groups were created. As most of the Greek anarchists don’t like each other, and deep differences separate groups and people, no one can speak definitively about what is happening and nobody clearly understands what is prepared and by whom. This total fragmentation is very useful during periods of “social peace,” as it produces a vast variety of opinions, analysis, and initiatives. The police cannot infiltrate the movement, since such a thing does not exist. Hundreds upon hundreds of groups, people who’ve known each other for many years and share total trust and empathy, appear as if from nowhere and return to nowhere.

In a way, all this fragmentation created the strange situation: all these people, who knew each other for years but would never talk to each other, were suddenly speaking, spending time together, and fighting side by side. December produced strong feelings of solidarity and common struggle.

In the first months of 2009, huge assemblies, mostly staged in the university amphitheaters late in the afternoon, took place nearly every day. Sometimes people intending to join one assembly started to participate in the one taking place before it, as they waited for it to finish and for the next one to start. Some of them were gathering from 100 to 400 active people every week. To name a few:

• The Assembly for Solidarity with Immigrants
• The Assembly for Solidarity with December’s Prisoners
• The Fight for Worker Konstantina Kuneva
• The Assembly of the School and University Students
• The Assembly of Insurgent Doctors and Nurses
• The Assembly of Insurgent Artists, the Assembly of Unknown Artists
• The Assembly of The Ones Here and Now and For All of Us
• The Assembly of Workers and Unemployed
• The Exarchia neighborhood Initiative Committee

…and many other committees in different neighborhoods, as well as assemblies happening in other cities all over the country. And to all these general insurrectionary assemblies, of course, we have to add all the separate meetings of collectives and groups that were participating in these general assemblies.

Throughout these months there was a poster on the walls of Athens with a wildly naïve Dadaist monster saying: “Obedience Ended! Life is Magical!”—and for most of us living this magical life meant jumping from assembly to assembly preparing unbelievable things and putting them into practice with all those people. Those assemblies brought to life all different kinds of actions and projects and visions, the crazy dreams you had from when you were fifteen years old or from last week’s late-night talk with friends or some secret plan you had with your lover and now was coming true.

Most of the initiatives and assemblies of artists, romantics, non-ideological people, and creative activists soon shrank, losing the enthusiasm of the first week and becoming smaller and more solid creative groups. Various reasons forced people from these assemblies to go back to their individual creativity, but many of these groups are still dedicated to their projects.

Week after week, and as people were coming closer and closer, the old conflicts, the differences, the diverse political standpoints and the different needs, expectations, strategies, and methods started to appear again. This brought back to the surface the old separations and the old debates. It proved that the differences were not just ephemeral misunderstandings or personal distrust, but were based in deep analysis and long-term differences of practice and ways of thinking.

The interesting thing was that even though most of these general assemblies split or started to attract fewer people and to have less power and influence, new ways of organizing appeared. After months of meetings, the whole political space took new directions. The general assemblies were not useful any more as new coalitions, new friendships, and new contacts appeared. Different squats, social centers, and initiatives started to form after the end of the general assemblies. People and groups that had met during the insurrection and the period of open creativity and massive open meetings that followed December now had experience with each other—they knew where they agreed and disagreed, they knew what the directions and strategies of each group were—and so new projects, plans, and decisions took place. In this way, the anarchists and other insurrectionists and radical activists avoided conflicts. The melting pot of general assemblies broke into much more effective meetings, laboratories of creative chaos, squats, and direct actions.

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How effective has government repression been in weakening the movements that started the uprising? What have been the most effective ways to resist this repression?

A basic characteristic of the Greek anarchist space is that through the influence of insurrectionary practices it refuses to see itself as a homogenous “movement” and especially as a movement of “resistance” or “direct action.” The idea of direct attack is much more influential. The momentum of the attack is controlled by the groups and the initiatives and not by any collective central decision-making process.

Of course, in periods of social mobilization, such as the demonstrations against the privatization of education or of health and public insurance, or in big events like the European Union Summit or the G8, there is coordination and communication between the groups. But even under these circumstances, the initiative for the direct attack is taken autonomously by groups and individuals. This makes things very complicated for the state—and also for the people. No one can decide what will happen, no one knows what will actually transpire until it has already happened.

The anarchist space has the ability to appear very powerful and then disappear completely from the stage of confrontation for short periods of recovery. These short periods without riots hypnotize the government into believing it has other more important things to care about. In these periods of calm, the eye of authority is not focused on anarchists. Meanwhile, the arson groups commit unstoppable attacks against all kinds of targets. During these periods, hundreds of assemblies, events, public talks, film shows, free festivals, parties, lectures, workshops, and public non-confrontational demonstrations assure the visibility of anarchists, autonomists, and anarcho-libertarians. These political and cultural processes are also responsible for the never-ending arrival of new people, the replacement of burnt-out people with fresh ones, and the preparation of a new cycle of intense confrontation.

It is like a wave. When it’s up, you can see it in the news, on TV, in the streets, everywhere. When its down, you don’t see it but you feel it. You meet with the wave because it is coming to you and moving unstoppably through the initiatives of thousands of different people.

What are some of the way that people have had to “recover” from the uprising? Legal troubles? Emotional trauma? Exhaustion?

There was not any emotional trauma from December. The use of molotov cocktails heals a crowds’ panic and fear and takes back control of the streets from the police. Molotovs used as a defensive tool can keep the riot police away long enough for everyone to run safely away and recover from the tear gas or avoid arrest. When molotovs are used as offensive weapons together with hundreds of stones from broken pavement, they give courage to the crowds and spread a feeling of power and the belief that they can accomplish amazing things.

As a slogan from December put it: “Action replaces tears.”

Many people participated in the solidarity movement for the sixty-five that were arrested, who stayed in custody for two to eight months. Now all of them are free. The solidarity movement that took over the streets with massive demonstrations and counter-information, that held massive fundraising concerts and organized movement lawyers, has made clear to Greek anarchists that in the years to come solidarity must be one of the main methodologies of any movement that wants to participate in a serious confrontation with the regime.

There was no need for “recovering” after December. We also have to clarify that there was no end to the insurrection and especially no ending caused by legal troubles, emotional troubles, exhaustion, or repression. Rather, the anarchist space, in an instinctual and intelligent way, chose to disappear from the central highways and put into practice many other low-tension initiatives that enrich the struggle. This wise, self-preserving urban guerilla strategy also finds its expressions in the appearance of many different projects that started after December and now help the “movement” to deepen its roots in the society and in the local communities.

How has the government used the uprising strategically to strengthen its position, since December? Could this have been avoided?

The government didn’t find ways to use the insurrection to strengthen its position. It was difficult to do such a thing as the insurrection was spread among all social classes and backgrounds. Only the immigrants were brought into a worse position as they faced a backlash and the police pogrom against those without papers, which occurred in June. The solidarity shown toward immigrants was strong but unable to protect them. A lot of effort is going into bringing the immigrants closer to the anarchist space, but this task is not easy at all. The immigrants have their own interests, their own fears and wishes. Many of them they have a very difficult life and very different cultural and political or non-political backgrounds.

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In what ways has the uprising put anarchists in a stronger position? In what ways has it used up energy without putting anarchists in a stronger position? Are there any ways it has put anarchists in a weaker position?

The anarchist movement in Greece underwent a lot of methodological changes over the last years in its efforts to come closer to society, to hear the problems of the people, to avoid an anti-social attitude without falling into reformism, and to try to find ways to participate in and radicalize the social movements of our times. All these efforts bore fruit during December.

The social centers that opened in all the major cities of Greece during the last years, rented or squatted, offered the best preparation for the creation of strong, active circles of fighters and assemblies able to produce and spread analysis and propaganda everywhere.

Anarchist participation in the social struggles of the students and workers during the last years was also very important, and it utilized two main strategies, changing according to the circumstances:

1) Separate, visible anarchist blocs, with flags, banners, posters, and pamphlets.

2) Radical direct action, smashings, attacks on the police with molotovs, sticks, and stones.

In this way the Black Bloc spread throughout the whole body of these mass demonstrations, even if only a minority were participating. The adoption of these two strategies by all anarchists according to the tension of the social struggle and the available momentum produced a common ground for different comrades and eliminated inner conflicts. And anarchist participation empowered those social struggles, gained respect from other political organizations, produced common ground with many different social subjects, and attracted many new people to anarchy.

The defence of Exarchia and other areas like it in Greece as autonomous public zones, including street corners and an everyday presence in “our own” cafés and bars, offered a constant meeting point that empowered the relations, the connections, and the coordination of actions. The creation of anarchists squats, social centers, occupied rooms in universities, concerts, events, film showings, and assemblies offered a sustainable ground for the cultivation of anarchist ideas and practices.

All these conditions are much more powerful now after December and it doesn’t seem that there is any way to put ourselves in a weaker position. As long as we maintain the ability to listen to the heart and understand the mind of the society the state cannot defeat the anarchists.

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What new tools and strategies do people have since December?

The most important characteristics are:

1) Consistency—efforts to offer answers and direct responses to all the moves of the state and to keep the fight alive with actions and events that take place almost every day. Also, there are conscious efforts to avoid suicidal or sacrificial moves that will cause arrests or hard defeats. The riots and the clashes with the police are well-organized and well-equipped, and they occur at the place and time when they’ll have the greatest possibility of causing the most damage without paying a high price or putting people in serious danger. With these victories the struggle attracts new people.

2) Political Work—which is based on direct connection with the problems of society and not on ideological abstractions. Efforts to listen to society enable anarchists to maintain contact with the worries and fears of the people, giving answers where it seems that there are no answers and attacking the causes of the problems, not just the symptoms. The ability of the movement to play a serious role in the political world of the country depends on the creation of deep roots in the social struggles and the ability to inject anarchist ideas and practices into the hearts of common people and young radicals. This happens through the personal cultivation of critical minds and the collective creation of open, all-inclusive, public confrontation with all forms of authority.

3) Cultural Work—the meetings, the assemblies, the squares, the parks, and the public life tend to include people who have the courage to fight and the capability to think and create. For the first time in many years, anarchists now are ready to achieve high visibility in this society and attract new people not only through their destructive power but also through the defense of public spaces (like the parks), and the creation of political spaces (like the squats and social centers). Also important is the collective culture that allows all individuals to benefit from the communes without losing their personalities within them, as happens in the Left tradition of organizing.

4) Constant Spreading of Counter-Information—not digital printing, but 70-cm-by-50-cm offset posters! Printing thousands of copies of these and sticking them everywhere is vital. As different groups produce many different posters, a whole spectrum of theory appears on the walls of the city. You don’t need to read anarchist books any more—the theory is on the walls! Of course, it is also very important to use offset machines to produce thousands of copies of communiqués and books that you hand out for free in your city. These practices go together with the unstoppable use of spray paint to write political slogans on every wall, signed with the circle-A, and to remove neo-Nazi graffiti. Also, comrades go frequently to the central square of their city with a small electric generator and small sound system to play music, read out communiqués, and pass out pamphlets. With this method of counter-information, they attract attention to specific social struggles, raising solidarity and initiating endless dialogues with passers-by.

Some important struggles and strategies, as examples:

- The neighborhood assemblies, organized with invitation posters from door to door, offer answers to local problems and connect them with general social problems.

- The occupied parks offer a direct connection between ecological problems and everyday urban life, and produce new liberated public spaces where different kinds of people can meet and coexist.

- The new squats enable all different styles of anarchist thinking to achieve visibility.

- The new social centers offer workshops, free lessons, free food, cheap alcohol, free books, lectures, film shows, DJ sets, concerts, and open social meeting points for all kinds of people. They connect political activists with common people and young students.

- The small urban guerilla arson groups continue fighting. Formed by people who know and trust each other, they continue to upgrade their weekly attacks against capitalist and state targets. The huge catalogue of arson attacks creates a map of institutions, corporations, banks, and offices that society has to eliminate from social life for the people to be free and equal. In this way, the arsonists offer the society a signal that elevates mistrust of these specific targets and encourages suspicion regarding the exploitive function of these targets.

- The active anarchist student groups don’t allow the bourgeoisie to control the university. These groups communicate day by day with each other and with all other students. They turn the university into a public space that can accommodate tons of public events every week, organized by comrades from other political and cultural collectives as well. Of course, leftist organizations and cultural groups also participate in the struggle to defend university asylum and the struggle for keeping the universities open to the public overnight.

- The defense of public autonomous zones like parks and urban hills, universities as well as urban areas, street corners, squares, and meeting points like Exarchia from police, mafia, drug dealers, neo-Nazis, and capitalist investors brings people together. Meetings in public space produce an explosive mixture of all kinds of people from all kinds of backgrounds. These day-to-day meetings empower groups and companies of friends to be ready and capable of fighting at a moment’s notice and to imagine that these areas are something completely different from the surrounding territory.

- The open public solidarity for all prisoners, both criminal and political prisoners, expresses the total negation of prison institutions, reveals the real causes of criminality in this society, and brings anarchist prisoners closer with all other prisoners, gaining respect and support for them inside the prison.

- The fight for Konstantina Kuneva and all other workers sends a direct message to the bosses that when they hit one of us they have to confront all of us. Also, it proves that the collective struggle can reveal issues and attract the attention of the whole society.

- All direct syndicalist struggles self-organized from the base prepare in the consciousness of the people, year after year, a deep-rooted, radical strategy that intervenes in the sphere of work.

- Indymedia works like a strategic center for the organization of the struggles and as a digital public space where all the announcements, debates, and invitations can gain attention. A great many comrades start their day reading the indymedia calendar to decide what social action or assembly they will participate in.

- The creation of pirate communal radio stations and digital radio stations in universities and social centers sends the message of resistance on the radio waves and creates cultural and political communities around them.

- The critical mass parades, the street parades, the free party movement, the illegal rave parties, the squat events, the DIY concerts, the socially aware hip-hop, punk, indie rock, drum’n’bass, techno, and trance scenes attract thousands of young people to temporarily liberated public zones. They offer an existential contact between underground cultures and radical movements. The gatherings of the underground cultures, when they are connected in solidarity with the anarchist political space, offer an experiential introduction to the political and social awareness that cannot be replicated in books.

- Demonstrations in malls and luxury areas or in the metro stations transfer the message of insurrection to privatized public spaces at the center of capitalistic illusions.

- The occupation of the National Opera Hall and interruption of the commercial shows created an example of an intersection between the spheres of arts and philosophy and insurrectionary practices and ideas.

- The occupation of the building of the General Confederation of Greek Workers created a public, visible negation of the role of syndicalist leadership in the failures of workers’ struggles over the last 100 years.

- The occupation of the offices of the newspaper editors by insurrectionary journalists and comrades active in the creation of underground media produced a lively meeting point for direct criticism to appear against the role of mass media in the building of social apathy.

- The occupation of the National Television Station studio by young artists and activists interrupted the speech of the prime minister, expanded mistrust of the mass media, and sent the message onto the screen of every house in Greece: “Switch Off Your TV, Come Into The Streets.”

- Occupations of government buildings and municipalities all over the country sent a message to society of a different understanding of public institutions and constituted victorious fights in different causes and struggles.

- The anti-Nazi demonstrations in solidarity with the immigrants made it clear to many of them that we are standing on their side.

- Videos and media work uploaded to the Internet and used by mainstream TV channels proved that the police are working with neo-Nazis against immigrants and the social movements. Also, they proved to everybody that the neo-Nazis are a tool, the long hand of the State against any kind of social resistance.

- Independent amateur videos, like the video of the assassination of Alexis or moments of police brutality, played a very important role in building a new kind of public opinion.

- The creation of hundreds of blogs offered a digital space for the direct expression of the motivations and theory behind each struggle, attracting thousands of readers and participants. The blogs have broken the authority and monopoly of mainstream mass media.

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We have seen immigrants closed in concentration camps, we saw the revenge of normality expressed in threatening laws, we saw conservatism acting as the guardian and protector of the worst side of humanity, we saw greed and exploitation destroying our most beautiful dreams together with the forests, beaches, parks, squares, and hospitals. We saw apathy imprison our lives in fortress-like cities of commerce and mass stupidity…

Maybe now we are closer to the point of no return. To reach this point, perhaps we all should have resigned from our jobs last year in December… perhaps the unemployed should have replaced the uncertainty of “personal failure” with the pride of an insurgent collective risk. Maybe the students should have left school for at least a year of holidays, rediscovering the meaning of public education.

We have to live collectively again, redefining contemporary political philosophy and revolutionary art. Perhaps the affinity groups, occupied parks, squats, and social centers can become points for bringing all those dreams to life. We lost so much in the selfishness of our small, insignificant, individual illusions. We may have to fight against many fears, traps, deeply-rooted lies, psychological complexes, and insecurities. And then we will link our daily lives with the most magical secret desires to transform the streets of the metropolis in precious moments of freedom and happiness.

The insurrection never ends. The insurrection will never end.

Maybe we need to start thinking about how the world we would like to live in looks. We must use moments and images of our present life that we want to expand and activate in all their significance. We don’t need any science-fiction plan for our future—we have everything here and now. We have to liberate it all from the State and the market and share it.

Revolution is when all society takes life in its hands and everything that now is merchandise becomes a gift once more. Revolution is One Thousand Insurrections, nothing more, nothing less. Insurrections open paths, liberate space and time, reprogram Daily Life, change relations, invent new words, break hierarchies, and smash taboos and fears and limitations, achieving the highest possible public participation in projects and infrastructure that give us the chance to expand ourselves and share our abilities without limits. Insurrections are a never-ending fight, a constant struggle between desperation and self-restraint, apathy and action, fear and decisiveness, needs and passions, obligations and desires, obstacles and breakouts. Is it even possible to imagine such a thing? The experience of the 2008 insurrection showed us that those wild dreams we were too embarrassed to admit could actually become reality.

-Void Network [theory, utopia, empathy, ephemeral arts]

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Inflamed Appendix

For entertainment and context, here follows a list of groups that took credit for militant direct action in Greece in 2009. Possibly apocryphal and certainly incomplete, it still hints at the charming ingenuity of participants in the unrest that followed the riots of December 2008.

• Summer Entropy Commandos
• Summer Tranquility Disturbance
• Arsonists’ Collective
• Arsonists with Dirty Consciousness
• Anomie Cores “Carpe Noctem”
• “Zero Tolerance” Organization
• Solidarity Paths in Light
• Insurrectionary Consciousness
• Fighting Solidarity
• Conspiracy Cells of Fire
• Immoral Vandals
• Antifascist Attack Nuclei
• Commandos – Solidarity Memory
• Attack Groups for the Liquidation of the Nation
• Fire Path Group
• Non-Patriot Saboteurs – Cores for the Spreading Insecurity
• Fire Shadows (they sabotaged the HSAP city trains)
• Revolutionary Consciousness
• “Fire Solidarity” (Hania)
• Anarchist Attack Group “Alexandros Grigoropoulos”
• Anomie’s Contract / Erebus’ Ambassadors
• Comandos Husscheyn Zhachyndhoul Jhachanghir / Revolutionary Intelligence Agency
• Morning Sabotage Group
• Comando Mauricio Morales Duarte, Chile 22-5-09
• Syndicate for Short-Circuiting the System
• Antisexist Group
• Immediate Intervention Hood-wearers
• Coalition of Arsonists – Security Project / Night Arsonist Groups
• Council for the De-Structualization of Order / Coalition of Arsonists
• Wild Wolves
• Night Arsonists from Halkida
• Conspiracists for the Realization of Insecurity
• Immoral City De-Structuralists
• Revolutionary Cores Alliance – Speedy Arsonist Agency
• Fire Cores Conspiracy / Nihilist Commandos
• Night Attack
• Destroyers of Whatever Is Left of Social Peace
• Manières à la Liberté & Max Stirner Fighting Nuclei
• Consciousness Gangs
• Perama Extremists
• Revolutionary Match
• Arsonanarchist Strike
• Night Arsonist Groups
• Sectarians of Revolution
• Council for the De-Structualization of Order
• Happy Sleep’s Apostates
• Criminals of Thought and Action, 31/3/2009
• Delta Group (Disturbance of Order and Control)
• Arsonists’ Millennium Cooperation
• Attack Group “Catherine Gulioni” (she was a prisoner killed by the state)
• Practical Anarchists
• Revolutionary Action for Freedom
• Organizers of Night Entertainment
• CHAOS: Chaotic Groups of Sabotage
• De-Structruralization Cores
• Nikola Tesla Commandos
• Carnivalists in the Tune

This is a mere snapshot of the events unfolding around Occupy Oakland, which are still ongoing; much remains to be discussed and debated. We’ll present more material on the subject here soon.

In the meantime, suffice it to say–things are heating up.

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Get updates and information about specific shows here. Contact the puppeteers here.

July 6th- Richmond VA- The Wingnut

July 7th- Charlottesville VA-Random Row Books

July 8th- Washington DC- Dream City

July 9th- Baltimore- 2640

July 10th-Philadelphia PA-TBA

July 11th- Day Off

July 12th- NYC- (still need help booking)

July 13th-New Haven CT-TBA

July 14th-Providence RI-Libertalia

July 15th-Day Off

July 16th-Boston MA-(Still Need Help)

July 17th-Amherst MA-Food For Thought Books

July 18th-Ithaca NY- Green Star Food Cooperative

July 19th-Buffalo NY-TBA

July 20th-Day Off

July 21st-Pittsburgh-(Still Need Help)

July 22nd-Morgantown WV-(Still Need Help)

July 23rd-Cleveland OH-Whitman House Drop-In Center

July 24th-Chicago IL-TBA

July 25th-Milwaukee WI-Cream City Collectives

July 26th-Madison WI-Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative

July 27th-WinonaMN-The Burrow

July 28th-Day Off

July 29th-Minneapolis MN-Boneshaker Books

July 30th-Des Moines-TBA

July 31st-Champaign IL-Independent Media Center

August 1st-Day Off

August 2nd-Bloomington IN-Boxcar Books

August 3rd-Louisville KY-TBA

August 4th-Asheville NC-Firestorm Cafe

August 5th-Greensboro NC-Green Bean Cafe

August 6th-Chapel Hill NC-Internationalist Books

In the US, April 15 is also Tax Day. The government is stealing your money and turning it into overseas occupations and death tolls; nowadays they’re cutting the few programs through which they used to give a little of it back to you. The way they’re slashing university budgets these days, next they’ll be going to schools and ripping out the copper pipes to sell on the black market. Much of the tax money they loot from you goes directly back into corporate pockets–the same corporations that are exploiting people like you! And despite the record profits the corporate sector is raking in once again, politicians claim they have no idea how to resolve their budget crises.

In this web of theft, your only hope is to redirect some of these resources to more sensible ends. Surely you and your coworkers, friends, and neighbors could come up with better uses for them! Be careful, though–unlike other days of action, Steal Something from Work Day should go by without the authorities noticing anything at all.

If you have any exciting adventures stealing from work today, write up an account and email it anonymously to us at stealfromworkday@gmail.com. Here follows a premium example of such a narrative.

Steal from Work to Create Autonomous Zones

It was the late 20th century, back before the internet really took over, and I was trying to make a ‘zine but I didn’t have any money to pay for copying. I’d lost my last office job after I accidentally left my ‘zine masters in the copy machine when I sneaked in to use it one night. How embarrassing!

So I went to the local copying store – it was a chain, and this same story was playing out all over the country, but I’ll leave the name out just for good form – and hung around until I heard a song by the Misfits playing behind the counter. Back then employees were allowed to blast a stereo even during daytime hours; it was a different era. The employee who had put it on was this big skinhead-looking guy.

“The Misfits, huh?” From that moment, we were friends. It was an unwritten rule that if you were into punk or ska or other underground music, you got a discount. He copied my ‘zine for me, and in return I used to bring him food and other stuff I ripped off, since with the wages he was getting he had to sleep in the back of his friend’s truck.

Then they put him on night shift by himself, and things started getting interesting. Now instead of waiting for him to do a run of 100 for me when the boss wasn’t looking, I could join him behind the counter, doing runs of 200, 500, even 2000. I learned to use some of the big machines. Customers would come in and mistake me for an employee, and I would help them with stuff while my friend knocked out his jobs for the night. I probably spent three nights a week there, working and hanging out from midnight to 5:00 AM. I remember stumbling back to my apartment in the early morning loaded down with crates of photocopies, watching the street sweepers and paper delivery trucks pass – the secret underbelly of the city. Sometimes I made conversation with homeless people or other night owls like myself, up to no good. Surprisingly often, they would demand copies of the ‘zines I had made, as if sensing they were not part of the world of sales and bosses.

Despite all the copying he and I were doing for ourselves, my friend was still a more efficient worker than most of the other employees, because he was careful not to make mistakes and waste paper. For good or for ill, big-time workplace thieves usually make better workers. Much later, when he got promoted to management, I wondered whether there was a connection there – whether stealing from his employers actually helped prepare him to swindle wealthy customers. At the time, though, that was still far in the future.

We took smoking breaks together, standing out in front of the store at three in the morning comparing notes on music, politics, gossip, our philosophies of life. I never hung out with this guy outside the copy place – we were from different crowds – but our mutual commitment to photocopying drew us together, even if he was doing it for work and I was doing it to overthrow the government. There is a kind of camaraderie unique to those who labor together; I bet it predates wage slavery by a thousand generations.

Other friends of his started spending their nights there, mingling with the eccentrics and insomniacs who came in to make copies and ended up making conversation. The place be- came a sort of graveyard-shift salon where the most unlikely cast of characters gathered to jest, scheme, and experiment. In the witching hour, we entered an alternate reality in which we ran the place, like the goblins that come out at night in fairy tales. The store had just expanded to offer personal computer stations, and a handful of high-school dropouts taught themselves programming between 2:00 AM and 5:00 AM every night. Some of them later made successful careers for themselves during the dot-com boom, defying the barriers of social class and education. Meanwhile, once his assignments and my projects were done, my friend and I would experiment with the cutting and binding machines, retracing Gutenberg’s steps as we lovingly handcrafted unique editions of our favorite books.

The company had recently switched their machines from a plug-in counter system to a primitive card system, in hopes of thwarting the various scams based around the plug-in counters: resetting them with pins or magnets, stealing an extra one, just slamming them against something and claiming you had no idea what had happened but you’d only made a couple copies. Of course, my friend could produce the new cards behind the counter at his leisure. Whenever I mailed out a ‘zine to someone, I threw in a $100 copying card with it: Now go start your own ‘zine.

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Corresponding with people around the country, we discovered this was going on elsewhere as well: it seemed that everywhere there was a night shift at one of these franchises, there were people like us. We heard about a branch in the Bay Area where they were so sure of their power they even had bands play late-night shows right in the middle of the customer service area! We’d already developed a feeling of ownership of the store my friend worked in, but now this came to extend to the entire chain. Everywhere we went we looked for one, and usually we clicked with the employees we met. When we didn’t, we fearlessly looted the places all the same, more brazenly than we ever would have anywhere else: we were discovering the feeling of entitlement normally reserved for the rich, that comes from the sense that one is on one’s own territory. We workers never feel like we’re on our own territory, so we never stand up for ourselves – but the night-shift salon had worked wonders for our self-confidence.

Across the continent, a network was forming, consisting of employees and volunteers like myself. Now, when one of us discovered the masters for an exciting new ‘zine, we made twenty copies of it instead of 200, and mailed those to twenty different stores around the country that would produce 1000 copies each. We believed in freedom of the press, god damn it, and the more photocopies we stole and circulated outside the exchange economy, the better we understood what that really meant. What had started as humble workplace pilfering was escalating into a full-scale insurgency as we spread from city to city like a virus. Like a virus, we proliferated by seizing the means of production and using it to produce more of ourselves: the ‘zines, it turned out, were the coded DNA of an alternate society.

What happened? The immune system of corporate America swung into action, and various people were fired or even led out of stores in handcuffs – but that clumsy show of force would have had little effect on its own. In some ways, we were victims of our own success. The most politicized ones gravitated to more direct forms of confrontation, which took them far at first but ultimately isolated them from everyone else – there’s always the danger of being seduced into direct conflict on unfavorable terrain before you’re ready for it. Meanwhile, new opportunities opened up for others among us, in the form of promotions and new career paths; even when these resulted directly from collective illegal activities, they ultimately tamed the ones who pursued them. But by far the most significant factor was the penetration of the internet into everyday life – that simply outmoded the territory we’d been fighting for, and everyone had to start over again to get their bearings. I think our story must be a fairly typical one.

A lot of water has passed under the bridge, but I’ll always treasure memories from the high point of the copying wars, when everyone except the manager himself was in on our secret society. I remember one night, I walked into the store at 7:00 PM with a friend visiting from the other side of the country. Behind the counter was an employee I had not yet been introduced to, and a new employee he was training. We could hear him explaining to her:

“You see those two people who just came in? Whatever they ask for, give it to them for free.”

On March 9, while Senate Democrats were absent in protest, Wisconsin’s Republican Senators passed a bill stripping public-sector unions of collective bargaining rights. In response, thousands returned to the capitol building, forcing open windows and pushing past state patrolmen to reenter and occupy it. Police eventually gave up attempting to control the crowds, and the announcement went out that they would not remove demonstrators from the building despite the court order that had forced the end of the previous occupation. At the high point on Wednesday evening, several thousand people filled the first three floors of the building entirely; after midnight, a few hundred still remained, despite the usual pleas from authoritarian organizers for people to leave.

Unions are legally prohibited from calling for a general strike, but there has been much talk of striking. In any case, a series of protests are planned for the next several days. In addition to this list of demonstrations Thursday morning, Thursday evening a flash mob is planned for the university library in Madison at 10 pm, Saturday farmers will drive their tractors into Madison in protest, and it’s rumored that teaching assistants will go on strike on Monday when the state contract with the Teaching Assistants’ Association expires.

Events are still unfolding in Wisconsin, and may yet escalate further. But we can already draw some conclusions from them, which can guide us in the months ahead–for Wisconsin is surely only the first of many states that will see public outrage over austerity measures.

The role that the capitol building has played in Wisconsin’s protest movement shows the importance of establishing a public relationship to physical sites that can serve as social centers during upheavals. Just as university occupations served as nerve centers during the December 2008 uprising in Greece, the capitol building offered a focal point for demonstrators to build up momentum over a period of weeks, and a space to congregate in response to new developments.

There are several other important points to make here. First, however devious the Republican Senators’ machinations, the bill was passed by democratic process, the same way countless other bills are passed. Those who protest against it are essentially proclaiming that representative democracy has failed them: they are asserting that there is more legitimacy in angry people occupying the capitol building than there is in Senators doing what they were elected to do. As anarchists, we wholeheartedly agree–workers deserve access to the resources currently being hoarded by capitalists regardless of what goes on in voting booths or politicians’ offices. The question is whether the movement will adopt this position outright, or remain mired in the contradictions of claiming to pose a democratic opposition to the democratic process.

Second, this is not simply a question of politicians being mean: from the capitalist perspective, these austerity measures really are unavoidable. The state budget director claims that Wisconsin faces a two-year budget shortfall of $3.6 billion—for comparison, that’s more than three times what the Canadian government spent for security at last summer’s fully militarized G20 summit. As far as the politicians are concerned, that money really does have to come from somewhere, whether from higher taxes or government cuts. Indeed, elsewhere in the US Democrats are proposing similar measures for their own states. This may legitimately break their hearts, but they see no other way.

From our perspective, of course, all this is despicable nonsense. Corporate magnates are sitting on the biggest fortunes in the history of the world. The net worth of just one of the planet’s 1210 billionaires—let’s say Bill Gates—could pay off a budget shortfall over fifteen times the size of the one in Wisconsin; distributed among Wisconsin’s 5.6 million residents, that would be $10,000 each. The problem is not that there’s no money—at this point money is simply created by the Federal Reserve whenever they choose—but that the vast majority of it is held hostage by a few rich people who don’t give a damn what happens to anyone else. If this is even causing trouble for governments, which work hand in glove with capitalists, that just shows the magnitude of the crisis.

In this context, it’s a mistake to expect a little protesting to achieve immediate results. Even if we manage to stop one wave of cutbacks and rollbacks, a thousand more assaults will follow. The state literally can’t back down—the politicians have nowhere to go. So rather than focusing on achieving “realistic” goals, such as blocking a particular budget or bill, we have to think bigger. How do we build a long-term movement that can fight against capitalism itself? How do we approach these protests as the starting point for the savage, years-long struggle that undoubtedly awaits?

Those considerations make it particularly dispiriting to come across attitudes like the one expressed by Wisconsin teacher Peggy Kruse, quoted as saying, “Most teachers are more than happy to take the 18% pay cut, to do anything that will help get the state back and running. We’re most concerned about the loss of collective bargaining rights.”

In other words, Kruse is willing to concede anything, so long as she retains her right to concede. Let Bill Gates keep his $56 billion while we get pay cuts or pink slips—just don’t touch the illusion that we choose this state of affairs!

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Accepting defeat in advance in this way goes along with a blind faith in “peaceful protest.” Signs in Wisconsin read “FIGHT LIKE AN EGYPTIAN,” but Egyptian protesters burned down police stations. Neither “peaceful” protests nor more assertive ones are likely to bring about the immediate repeal of the bill passed March 9–so questions about how disobedience plays to the media or affects the prospects of the Democrats are beside the point. The question, once more, is what will catalyze a fierce new movement that can go beyond single-issue defensive measures to push for a fundamental shift in the social order.

Anything the movement accomplishes, it will accomplish in defiance of the authorities, in defiance of would-be leaders who would tame and direct it, in defiance of union bureaucrats who don’t dare call for a general strike even as they are stripped of all power.

Thus far, everything that has given vitality to the movement in Wisconsin has come out of a spirit of rebellion. Those who broke into the capitol building the evening of March 9 did so in defiance of the court order that had concluded the previous occupation. In this light, it is particularly embarrassing that certain authoritarian organizers would enter the building illegally just to tell people to leave it politely. If police did not arrest or remove demonstrators, it was not because the demonstrators had the right to be in the building—police beat and murder people with no justification on a regular basis—but because the demonstrators have mobilized enough power to force the authorities to back down; politeness and obedience can only detract from this leverage. Anything the movement accomplishes, it will accomplish in defiance of the authorities, in defiance of would-be leaders who would tame and direct it, in defiance of union bureaucrats who don’t dare call for a general strike even as they are stripped of all power.

Some of the protesters understand this already. The chants of “OCCUPY!” and “GENERAL STRIKE!” that echoed in the capitol building Wednesday night recall the chants of more militant and deeply rooted overseas anti-austerity movements. As the conflicts generated by capitalist crises intensify, anarchists can expect to be outdone by other working and unemployed people.

What can you do to take a side in this struggle? If a general strike really does take off, that means—in the words of our comrades—NOBODY AND NOTHING WORKS. If you are in or near Wisconsin, you can support a strike by interrupting business as usual: calling in sick to work, occupying buildings, blocking streets. Look for ways you can connect with others in the process—what you can do on your own is not nearly as important as how your efforts become infectious.

The most important question of all is how to spread the action beyond the capitol. The capitol symbolizes “democracy,” which is to say top-down control. But capitalism is not simply maintained in government buildings. Initiatives like the university occupation in Milwaukee are important in that they offer a model for how to expand the terrain of conflict. Rather than everyone descending upon the capitol to be mere faces in a mass, people should go wherever they will be most effective proportionate to their numbers. An occupation of 50 people in La Crosse could have ten times the impact of 50 more people joining an existing occupation in Madison.

It’s also crucial to expand the issues beyond legislation affecting unions and state employees. Spontaneous high school walkouts already set a precedent for this in February, connecting the proposed cutbacks to the alienation of young people who have not yet even been thrown at the mercy of the job market. This isn’t just about government cutbacks or union rights—it is above all about self-determination. If you don’t have a union job or a state salary, if you’re unemployed or precariously employed, you’re already affected by the same conditions the Republicans in the Wisconsin government hope to intensify.

To say this once more, we shouldn’t evaluate efforts according to how effective they are in immediately achieving changes in legislation, or for that matter how many people they draw to rallies. The real question is their content: do they create new relationships between people, new ways of relating to material goods? Do they demonstrate values that point beyond capitalism? Do they produce new momentum, new ways of fighting, new unruliness?

If you live far outside Wisconsin, take this as a warning shot; don’t be caught off guard when the same things occur where you live. Think about how you can prepare so you’ll be ready to push things further when the window of opportunity opens up. This is not a fluke, but the first signs of a long war finally beginning in the United States.

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Further Resources

Video from the capitol building on the evening of March 9

General Strike pamphlet courtesy of the Industrial Workers of the World

Poster: General Strike Means Nobody and Nothing Works

Poster urging protesters to go all the way

While asking to “stay” the charges, a move which still gives them a year to look for new evidence and re-open the case, the prosecutor told the judge, “We know they did it but we don’t have the proof.” This is a ridiculous assertion given that the main reason they were targeted and warrants were sent out for their hip-hop aliases is their music video “Crash The Meeting” that is still circulating on youtube.

There were over a thousand arrests and hundreds of charges brought against G20 resisters on little to no evidence. Like most charges relating to the G20, the charges against Testament and Illogik were targeted political repression not even perfunctorily disguised as an attempt to enact justice. The picture of Canada as a police state gone mad is growing ever clearer.

Unfortunately, though hundreds have had their charges dropped or stayed, several dozen still face very serious charges and need support urgently. It is more important than ever to donate to the legal defense of those still facing charges, and to show solidarity by any and all means. All proceeds from the Test Their Logik benefit album offered here two months ago will go to current G20 defendants.

As for Testament and Illogik, the two are now legally permitted to perform together, record together, and tour together. They are currently on tour in Mexico with Submedia promoting their music and the new film End Civ. In December they’ll be back in the studio working on their debut album which they hope to drop in early 2011. Test Their Logik knows they’ve got talented and amazing people who dig their music and are looking for solidarity and mutual aid in the following ways: cover art, audio mastering, publicity/promotion, MC’s/DJ’s/producers to remix songs and circulate different versions, European booking contacts for a european tour, and assistance setting up “legitimate” gigs in the U.S. so the border guards will let them in for a tour once they finish the album.

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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.

All books are stamped with a “SUBSTANDARD” notice on an interior page towards the front of the book. This is just to ensure no one buys these books to turn around and sell them at full price to unsuspecting folks. The substandard nature of these books falls into one of three categories:

Imperfections – Occasionally we receive books from the printers that slipped past their quality control inspection and have cosmetic blemishes. These errors are almost always on the covers and do no effect the interior of the books. Examples of this include miss-registered color printing, misaligned spot gloss, lamination imperfections, folding errors, and particularly in the case of Expect Resistance, unevenly-folded cover flaps.

Returns – While we don’t accept returns from our online store, some of our larger distributors do, and when books have too much shelf wear they return them to us. The books usually have scuffing on the covers and/or other evidence of being handled. Also, these distributors put bar code stickers on the back cover, so these books either have stickers or a small amount of residue and scratches where a sticker used to be.

Damaged – Sometimes books arrive to us incorrectly packaged, and from time to time we accidentally drop a box or a book and it gets damaged. It’s very sad. These books usually have dented corners, creases on the cover or interior pages, or gouges in the lamination.

Overall the condition of the books varies wildly, some are pretty fucked up, and some are just 5% away from being mint—as far as which kind you’ll get, it’s pretty much the luck of the draw. However, we can say that there are many more books with minor imperfections than ones with serious damage, so the odds are on your side. We can guarantee though that all the books are completely intact and include 100% of the content in readable condition.

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.

Steal Something From Work Day VIDEO!

Our comrades at Submedia have teamed up with Iconoclast Media to produce the above video short, an exciting follow-up to the first STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY video.

Steal Something From Work Day JOURNAL!

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!

Color Reading PDF (4.3MB) : Imposed B&W Printing PDF (2.3MB)

Heist is also available in paper form, including in bulk, from Wild Nettle Distribution.

Steal Something From Work Day ANTHEM!

Our favorite underground MC, Testament, joins fellow MC Illogik as Test Their Logik to deliver this hardcore anthem about stealing from the boss:

Download MP3 Here.

And More Steal Something From Work Day Coverage…

STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY has made it to the other side of the world, in more ways than one. For example, the in-house magazine of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church of Australia and New Zealand promotes it in the “Trends” section of their April issue to 45,000 devout readers around the Pacific rim.

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.

Finally, the STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY Facebook Site is more and more active.

Beyond Stealing from Work

In the final analysis, stealing from our workplaces is not a rebellion against the status quo, but simply another aspect of it. It implies a profound discontent with our conditions, yes, and perhaps a rejection of the ethics of capitalism; but as long as the consequences of that discontent remain individualized and secretive, they will never propel us into a different world. Stealing from work is what we do instead of changing our lives—it treats the symptoms, not the condition. Perhaps it even serves our bosses’ interests—it gives us a pressure valve to blow off steam, and enables us to survive to work another day without a wage increase. Perhaps they figure the costs of it into their business plans because they know our stealing is an inevitable side effect of exploitation—though not one guaranteed to bring exploitation to an end.

On the other hand, the notion that stealing from our employers is not relevant to labor struggle enforces a dichotomy between “legitimate” workplace organizing on the one hand and individual acts of resistance, revenge, and survival on the other. So long as this separation exists, conventional workplace organizing will always be essentially toothless: it will prioritize bureaucracy over initiative, representation over autonomy, appeasement over confrontation, legitimacy in the bosses’ eyes over effectiveness in changing our lives.

What would it look like to go about labor organizing in the same way we go about stealing from our workplaces? First, it would mean focusing on means of resistance that meet our individual needs, starting from what individual workers can do themselves with the support of their comrades. It would mean dispensing with strategies that don’t provide immediate material or emotional benefit to those who utilize them. It would establish togetherness through the process of attempting to seize back the environments we work and live in, rather than building up organizations on the premise of an always-deferred future struggle.

A workforce that organized in this way would be impossible to co-opt or dupe. No boss could threaten it with anything, for its power would derive directly from its own actions, not from compromises that give the bosses hostages or give prominent organizers incentives not to fight. It would be a boss’s worst nightmare—and a union official’s, too.

We might also ask what would it look like to go about stealing from work as if it were a way to try to change the world, rather than simply survive in it. So long as we solve our problems individually, we can only confront them individually as well. Stealing in secret keeps class struggle a private affair—the question is how to make it into a public project that gathers momentum. This shifts the focus from What to How. A small item stolen with the knowledge and support of one’s coworkers is more significant than a huge heist carried out in secret. Stolen goods shared in such a way that they build workers’ collective power are worth more than a high-dollar embezzlement that only benefits one employee, the same way a raise or promotion does.

Remember the story of the hardware store employee who embezzled enough money to get a college degree, only to find himself back behind the cash register afterwards! When it was too late, he wished he’d done something with the money to create a community that could fight against the world of cash registers and college degrees. Even as he broke the laws of his society, he had still accepted its basic values, investing in status that could only advance him on the bosses’ terms. Better we invest ourselves in breaking its values as well as its laws!

Practically everyone steals from work, even if many people won’t admit it, even if some people would like to reserve the privilege of doing so for themselves. Let’s draw this practice out of the shadows in which it takes place, so all the world has to engage with it and its implications in the full light of day. Perhaps workplace theft could be an Achilles heel for capitalism after all: not because it alone is sufficient to abolish wage labor and class society, but because it is the sort of open secret that must remain suppressed to preserve the illusion that everybody believes in and benefits from the present system.

So if you find yourself coveting items in your place of employment, don’t just steal something from work—think about how you could steal everything from it, yourself and your coworkers above all. Stealing from work one thing at a time will take forever, literally—it would be more efficient to just steal the whole world back from work at once. That’s a daunting project, one we could only take on together—but it’s one we can begin right now.

Next April 15, we won’t just pocket a few items—we’ll show up at our workplaces with helmets and torches. Stealing something from work is not enough when work is stealing everything from us.

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.]

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.

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.

We’ve retreated to a back street; a cacophony of sirens, gunshots, and explosions echoes off the walls ahead of us. With our experience, this isn’t exactly frightening—it all seems to be happening in slow motion; but the irrationality of the authorities’ behavior is unsettling. A tremendous cloud of white smoke is filling the air above the roof of the dormitory, and a familiar acrid scent is beginning to mingle with the sweet stench of tear gas: is something on fire? Two more tear gas canisters soar high into the night sky, trails of poison billowing behind them, and land on the same roof. It’s like the Fourth of July, only with crying, bleeding college students fleeing beneath the fireworks.

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According to reports, the authorities assembled a force of nearly 5000 for the G20, including 2500 National Guard troops, 1200 state troopers, 875 Pittsburgh city police, and small groups from other agencies. It’s a potentially significant precedent that the National Guard comprised more than half of the total force; it may point to greater military involvement in domestic policing in the future. It’s also important to note that the original plan had been to utilize more police and fewer National Guard, but it appears that only the National Guard was available—one more sign of overextension among our foes.

According to Cindy Sheehan and others, the National Guard troops in Pittsburgh had recently returned from duty in Iraq. This may explain their behavior the night of Friday, September 25, when they pointlessly brutalized a gathering of students at the University of Pittsburgh in downtown Oakland.

Earlier that day, a flier had circulated reading “Go Pitt; Fuck the Police; 10 p.m., Schenley Plaza,” the location of the previous night’s standoff between police and students. By ten o’clock, hundreds of people had gathered in and around the plaza. A small minority were avowed anarchists; perhaps a greater proportion had participated somehow in the previous day’s events, but the vast majority appeared simply to be curious students.

The university had sternly instructed students to stay away from Schenley Plaza that night, but this backfired, making the Plaza irresistible. Police and National Guard were already present in the area in tremendous force, parading in full riot gear. Helicopters combing the ground with searchlights intensified the atmosphere of military occupation.

No protest ensued: no march, no banners, no chants, no confrontations or property destruction. All the same, the police soon forcibly cleared the square. Not content with this, they then began to shoot tear gas canisters at spectators on the sidewalk across the street. Eventually, they advanced further, shooting tear gas and projectiles at hapless, fleeing onlookers and beating and arresting anyone they could catch. This continued for hours; in the end, 110 people were arrested, mostly passers-by and medics who stayed behind to treat the injured. The National Guard pacified Oakland the same way they pacified neighborhoods in Iraq.

Despite years of police brutality and “Bring the War Home” rhetoric, witnessing this was downright dumbfounding. Anarchists always decry police repression, arguing that every use of coercive authority is illegitimate. But it is difficult to imagine how even a statist conservative could justify this particular exercise of repressive force; there was no resistance to repress. The events of Friday night show that the authorities can produce a “riot” simply by ordering people not to do something that they don’t even realize they are doing; this is the heavy-handed stupidity that helped generate the Iraqi resistance.

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No outrage was capable of igniting resistance among the students, however. The flier had cast them as the protagonists in a struggle against the police; some radicals came hoping to support them in this conflict, their hopes buoyed by the clashes that had taken place on the same terrain the previous evening. But the students refused to see themselves as protagonists; despite 36 hours of other young people in hooded sweatshirts confronting the police, they still saw themselves as inert and helpless. This underscores the foolishness of pinning one’s hopes on another demographic as the revolutionary subject. Instead of waiting for others to take the initiative, those who wish to struggle against this society must cast themselves as protagonists in that struggle and find common cause with all who join in.

Some anarchists took the dim view that the students were carrying their apathy to a sadomasochistic extreme, paradoxically asserting their right to be spectators of their own repression: “Why are you tear-gassing us? We have the right to be here watching you tear-gas us!” Conversely, one might argue that, by being present in defiance of the decrees and threats of the university, the students were already challenging their social roles—perhaps more so than the anarchists who were just there to do what anarchists always do. In that light, simply in coming out, the students were protesters: not politicized protesters like those who elaborated their critiques of the policies of the G20 into indymedia cameras, but protesters all the same against the authority of the school administration and the tedium of college life.

For their part, though they set out to break up a presumed protest, the police had no method by which to identify protesters. They began by threatening everyone; those who did not immediately flee they assumed to be protesters. They tear-gassed everyone; those who covered their faces were obviously protesters. As they claimed territory block by block, they shot projectiles at anyone in view; those they struck were marked as protesters by their own blood. They charged anyone who remained on the street; those who ran away were protesters, and were chased, tackled, and beaten accordingly.

At one point, word went out that the police were about to raid the dormitory towers in search of protesters. Had this occurred, it would have been a bloodbath. All this illustrates how those serving authoritarian power can only see—and thus produce—enemies everywhere they look. Coercive force can never resolve conflict, only intensify it.

Following Thursday’s clashes, it turned out that a mere flier sufficed to provoke a full-scale police state. Once again, the apparatus of repression causes a great deal more disruption than the protests to which it responds: the tiny sting of the anarchist mosquito provokes an intense allergic reaction that can be disproportionately costly for the state. In some ways, the events of Friday night were strategically fortuitous for anarchists: the police discredited themselves, and this is bound to help the cases of those who were arrested on Thursday.

At the same time, it’s possible to be overly optimistic about this. Manifestations of the violence inherent in state power don’t necessarily persuade people of the possibility or value of the anarchist alternative. The police didn’t win any new friends Friday night, but nothing empowering occurred either. It will take months of serious follow-up work from Pittsburgh locals if the events of September 25 are to attract new people to anti-authoritarian struggle.

In this regard, the invisibility—dare we say the mythological character—of actual anarchists Friday night was a loss of ground. Anarchists were at once everywhere and nowhere. Everywhere—or else why were the police attacking everyone?—yet nowhere, in that there was no explicitly anarchist presence. This indeterminacy implies a tremendous potential—Are those people over there anarchists? Might I be one, myself?—but usually ends up serving the interests of the state. As the underdogs, anarchists generally have to stay in the shadows for security reasons; we can hardly speak honestly about our intentions in our own spokescouncils, let alone to the public at large. We remain utopian ghosts, shadows pursuing something otherworldly, while the police prove again and again that they are the only reality, writing this on the skin of civilians in a Morse code of rubber bullets when need be.

This is why moments of visibility and togetherness like those we experienced Thursday afternoon are so important. When enough of us join in action, we are no longer isolated lunatics pursuing will-o’-the-wisps; brought into reality, our dissident desires are legitimized in a such a way that we can finally believe in them, so that others will be able to as well. Suddenly, fighting capitalism is more realistic than knuckling under to it. Nothing makes more sense than pulling masks over our faces, linking arms, and charging our oppressors. Dumpsters cease to be organs of denial about the wastefulness of our civilization and become mobile barricades; corporate windows cease to display merchandise and sing instead the uproar of social transformation. The world itself becomes something different.

Now that the G20 protests are over, let us not retreat into obscurity, but lay the groundwork for other battles in which we can give our dreams flesh together.

[First Photo by Foo]

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.

One might interpret all this as legitimate acts of revenge for the police murder in London at last spring’s G20 summit; but it also signifies the survival of militant street resistance in the Obama era.

Read full piece here.

Learning, Growing, Failing: One Organizer’s Perspective

The first night of the CrimethInc. Convergence, around ten o’clock, I descended into a furious assembly of everyone who had arrived prepared to give a workshop or decided five minutes prior that they had something to share. Fifty to seventy people had gathered and were buzzing with conversation; the room almost seemed to have an electric charge. I had written emails for months encouraging friends and contacts to present creative, relevant and challenging workshops, and now the moment had arrived to make the schedule concrete. It was more hectic than I can describe; I was completely overwhelmed at the task of figuring out where and when everything would happen. People began shouting out how things should proceed, and the word “chaotic” can only begin to describe that moment. But somehow we feverishly wrote down the titles of the workshops, assigned them to times and spaces during the week, and managed to leave space open for folks to add more as the week progressed and their courage increased. Over fifty workshops were scheduled on topics as diverse as one could imagine: intercepting secure communication, eating disorders in the radical community, social war, radical religion, G20 resistance, cultural appropriation, terrain analysis for demonstrations, the biopolitics of BDSM, acting, herbalism, critiques of insurrectionism, survival skills, gardening and plant identification are just the tip of the iceberg.

We created a skeleton for the next few days—needing some familiar structure to know how to come together and feel productive. As someone who has learned much about the world and our conflict with domination through workshops at gatherings like this, it was fulfilling to see this come together. As someone who has also felt the limitations of the workshop model, I saw how this framework fell into many of the same trappings. Many people expressed over the next few days that there were too many “101″ or introductory workshops; at a convergence lasting a week we should have stressed that skillshares and trainings could build over the week in order to be more in depth and ambitious. I gave three workshops without ever having presented one at an anarchist gathering before. It was a tremendous learning experience and allowed me to connect in invaluable ways to people who came to the Convergence.

Many things flowed beyond this structure, even though it may seem to be at the center of what went on. Late night parlor games and post-midnight games of Go, evening soccer games, and an inventive combination of basketball and dodgeball. Three free and glorious meals every day—it must be stressed that the cooks this year really raised the bar and deserve mountains of praise for their hard work. Handfuls of people learned to fix the plumbing as the toilets broke or started leaking. Letters were written to prisoners, masses of free literature given out. There were bicycle rides to the magical and abandoned secret spots of Pittsburgh. On quiet walks through the cemetery and the streets of Bloomfield, I felt my connections to friends and comrades strengthen as we discussed our shared frustrations, joys, histories and desires. All this helped to make me feel surrounded by others who are also trying so very hard to live anarchist lives despite the resistance we all face.

As a local organizer at the center of it all, I won’t deny we made mistakes. Many mistakes. We have a lot of difficult questions now to face, a lot of consideration and reflective work to struggle with. There is some uncertainty about our collective ability to continue to participate in anarchist activities. But I for one would still rather have failed, and continue to fail, at something monumental than succeed at mediocre endeavors. The routines and roles of our milieu are easy to fall into and become content with. My lasting impression of the CrimethInc. Convergence, however, does not make me want to retreat from new projects into a place of security and safety. Instead I believe we must try harder still to reinvent and experiment with what it means to be an anarchist and the ways in which we can act to confront hierarchy and domination in our lives and in the world at large.

Free Clinic and First Aid

With the help of many others, I organized a temporary free drop-in clinic in Garfield that ran concurrently with the CrimethInc. Convergence, but was located down the street at the Greater Pittsburgh Anarchist Collective’s community space. The aim of the free clinic was to offer accessible “alternative” healthcare to the broader Pittsburgh/Garfield
community. People who were attending the convergence were also invited to drop in. The clinic offered consultations and treatments with a qualified acupuncturist and herbalist. People came to the free clinic with a variety of questions and needs. Acupuncture was done on site using a “community clinic” setup, which allows one practitioner to treat multiple people at the same time. Herbal remedies were suggested, and sometimes formulated on site free of charge. The clinic ran for four consecutive days, and was well-received by locals and convergence attendees alike.

This year I also helped to coordinate the first-aid space at the convergence. This was located in a small nook in an upstairs room, and was used by a variety of people for many different things—counseling, acupuncture, herbal consultations, treatments for acute symptoms, massage, and as a sleeping spot when necessary. The first-aid space was well stocked with herbal medicines, and personal formulas were put together by herbalists as needed. I felt there was a good balance between treating both chronic and acute symptoms using a variety of “alternative” medicine and standard first aid. I thoroughly enjoyed helping with the first-aid space, and I hope to see more multi-disciplinary health
care spaces at future convergences/gatherings as well as longer-term projects in our communities.

I Am, but It Was Not, a Bummer: 2009 and the CrimethInc. is Easy

At its best, the CrimethInc. Convergence is a last-chance saloon for weirdoes who can’t find a place at any other gathering: those too sober for Rainbow, too useless for activist conferences, too shy for book fairs, too confused for academic seminars. Anarchist schlemiels. In a world without movement or community, it is one place where we can find each other to hook up and talk for a few days. I go to see a dozen friends from far-flung places and meet a few more, to present a new idea and stir things up. I have realized those desires every year.

At its worst, the convergence is a boiling pot of frustration and poor communication. This year we saw the worst very clearly on Friday night when accumulated anarchist (and—it needs to be said—nationalist) insanity exploded into a mess of shouting, lost bags, and tears. That night casts a shadow on our memory, but there were other moments too.

I was tied to a St. Andrew’s Cross and beaten with a book while shouting straightedge lyrics. I discussed Pynchon and literature with a wonderful stranger (Luca, whenever we meet again, I plan to make up for not having coffee with you that Friday night). I played many games of Go. I heard my poetry read aloud before a crowd and even read a bit myself. I solved a math riddle. I met a few new friends. I embraced old friends and found solace in their intelligence. I wrote hidden messages in the daily workshop schedules. I urged my compatriots to write fiction, or at least annotated editions of their favorite texts, rather than just recycling the same writings again and again. We were young, and the city was not ours, nor the building. The streets of Pittsburgh made as little sense as the content of the workshops. Tasks were organized by the usual organizers; workshops given by the same presenters. Though we lived those few days amongst the falling petals of disappointment and purple prose, I must say it was a fine summer week, despite everything.

A few ideas for next year: more collective activities, a game learned by all at the very beginning or a convergence-wide reading group of an original text never before seen; more problems, mysteries, and tasks that must be taken on in groups; more weakness, less hardening; a confusing series of five rendezvous points arbitrarily directing people to either of two convergence spaces that are near each other but unconnected; expanding the exclusion policy to include those who neglect their imagination; anything that will shift our definition of success away from reproducing earlier results; a dirtier sex party.

Romance and Strength

It is true that when it comes to the convergence, a big chunk of my heart is dedicated to thinking about identity politics. I don’t want this account to be perceived as undermining the happenings around oppression during the convergence. But I want this account to be dedicated to other things I experienced during the convergence, and I think there should be a space for that as well.

Two other themes kept revisiting me during the convergence. The first was sweet romance. I live in a town where the activist community is very small. So when it comes to smooching, I have two choices, either to kiss someone who is not a radical—and deal with having a relationship with someone who have not thought about issues like sexism, homophobia and polyamory—or smooch a radical with whom I share a very small community. The trip up north meant growing excitement about going out of my usual radical dating pool.

Sex has always been something that felt very serious to me. As a female-bodied sexual assault survivor, sex often feels dangerous and unsafe. Being sexual with others often feels like opening the door to subjecting myself to objectification or worse. So before deciding to share my body with someone, there is always a long process of thinking about the pros and cons, and negotiating the terms of that decision with my potential partner. I went to the convergence with a recognition that sex should be a little lighter. I decided that during my trip I will follow my lust without fearing the consequences, and so I did. During the convergence I felt I had space to develop crushes and even fall in love. The convergence gave me a really good space in which to discover that sex doesn’t have to be very serious, it can also be something goofy and fun. I feel like even now, after weeks back home, I have managed to let go of my fears and see the beauty in people around me.

The relationships I created during my trip also helped me remember that sometimes love can be easier than we think. Sitting on the grass with my grrrlz, having a crush debrief, I was reminded again how romantic relationships should look. We are all connected to one another until we decide to put boundaries between us. And so I share with my ex’s lover my difficulties with that new established friendship, and they sit there and listen, giving me support. Another person in our circle declares how important it is for them to have the back of their lovers’ lovers. Yes, polyamory is possible, in the best way there is. I am reminded that relationships are not something that happens between two people, but something that happens between all of us.

The second theme that reoccurred during my trip was rediscovering things that have been hiding under my nose all along. During the convergence I felt so much pride, pride of who I am and where I am from. I felt joy every time I got to introduce myself and say “NC pride!” Before going to the convergence I was scared of what it would be like. I imagined a scenario in which I would be alone, and have difficulty making friends. Instead I found myself feeling like a part of a crew, and feeling like I have a group of friends that have my back. It felt so good to see my friends perform in the Cabaret and I was able to say “those are my friends” with a proud grin on my face. It felt so amazing to be held in my friends’ arms when I was having a hard time. I definitely feel I am where I want to be, surrounded by people I truly love. It’s funny to travel that far just to rediscover how amazing my home is, but one of the main lessons I am taking from the convergence is that as far as I am concerned is that NC is the place to be.

Understanding the importance of my community is strongly linked to rediscovering what kind of person I am. The one cannot have happened without the other. I moved to the U.S. not so long ago, and have had a hard time ever since. I cannot explain the hardship of having to express yourself in a language that isn’t your own, or trying to figure out what it means to be an experienced activist thrown into a totally new political context. It is walking around feeling like you don’t belong, always feeling the pain of the culture you have left behind, but not being able to share that life with anyone. It feeling like there is never enough space for you, that you are crushed. I feel like since that change in my life, I was changed as a person and become someone else. I feel like I was erased.

Being in the convergence was the first time I felt like myself in a long time. I was loud, friendly, and talkative. I was aware of how strong and awesome I am with every step I took down the halls of the convergence space. I was able to show my love for others and to be open with them. I took space, but not for the sake of taking space, but for the sake of existing as I am. I was able to be completely myself, completely honest. And now, there is no way back. The convergence reminded me how it felt to not compromise on being and doing what I want, and I am not willing to give that up. Ever. I am going to live to the extreme, to be as strong, as great, as loving and connected, as honest and as myself as I can. I am so grateful that I had a space to remember who I am, to remember how it feels to walk proud.

Defeat

Skirting the perimeter of the D.H. Lawrence Convention Center, moving quickly from car to car in an effort not to be seen by the opposing team, I knew my time was precious. I had scoured the enemy territory for the flag and found nothing, and began to make my way to their jail to free my captured teammates.

Every object on a street looks different when you play Capture the Flag; a dumpster becomes a place to hide, an alley becomes an escape route, a doorway becomes a place to wait momentarily as an opponent runs past you. I inch forward, moving up the street from the convention center and crisscrossing between doorways that could conceal me. Around a corner and ducking behind the bushes in front of a hotel, I peer out to make sure the coast was clear. Carefully beginning to get up, I notice someone coming around the corner behind me. I break into a mad dash and the player wearing an orange arm-band is close at my feet. I jump over hedges and run between parked cars, the jail a mere block away. Panting and sweating I fly around the corner to see almost all of my team stuck in jail, and they look at me with wide eyes and begin to jump and shout. I’m so close, so tired, but I find some hidden cache of energy and run even faster, now followed closely by three or four others. “Run! Run!” they shout, “We know where the flag is!” I’m almost there, and it is my moment of glory: if I make it our victory is assured.

Mere seconds before I reach the jail, a mass of the other team emerges from an alley way, running in unison. I’m crushed to see that one of them holds our flag in her hand—the game is done, our team has lost. Exhausted I sit down and stare for a second at the dark streets of Pittsburgh and think about returning to this very spot in two months or so, after it has been transformed into a more serious battleground. I know these streets a little bit better now, and when I return in September that knowledge will likely prove invaluable. After the game’s conclusion we walk over to a huge downtown fountain and go swimming as it thunders down rain. Against all logic and reasonable odds, the authorities don’t even show up, and we splash and play with a fragile sense of invincibility.