Live from the Streets of Cairo

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

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

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

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

A Year of Revolt

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 With the police defeated and withdrawn, neighborhood patrols spontaneously emerged to protect neighborhoods, while Tahrir was transformed into an autonomous zone and tent city.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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Breathless Conclusion: To Be Continued…

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

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

Further Reading

• Coverage of the December Clashes

• Life in Tahrir

• Ultras in the revolution and at Tahrir

• Revolutionary graffiti in Egypt

Ongoing Coverage

• Occupied Cairo blog

• Egypt Independent

• Tahrir & Beyond blog

• Mosireen.org, Cairo’s independent media center

• Blog of Egyptian anarchist and independent journalist Jano Charbel

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

Bouazizi was not enacting a strategy. He was alone, as alone as a person can be. By drawing back the curtain from injustice so we could come together to fight it, he gave us a precious gift, but a costlier gift than we have any right to receive. The European Parliament awarded him the Sakharov Prize posthumously, but he died knowing only that he had acted on his humiliation and rage, to no end other than to express them. His death hangs in eternity as an irreparable tragedy. We might say the same of so many others who have thrown away their lives in the history of revolutionary struggle.

What can we learn, then, from this man who gave free vegetables to poor families, who had to buy his wares on credit the way many of us must, who reacted against the same policing that imposes inequalities in the US? First, that misery is the same the world over today, even if it assumes different forms. But we can go further: in Bouazizi’s example, we see what it takes to get out of here, even if we do not wish to ignite a worldwide conflagration but simply to change our own lives.

What would life be like after a revolution? The dishwasher pictures a dishroom without a boss. The renter imagines herself in the same little hovel, rent-free. The shopper looks forward to stores without checkout counters. We can hardly imagine beyond this horizon—yet surely it would be easier to change everything entirely than to build a version of this world in which the same institutions and habits magically cease to be oppressive. When what we are is intrinsically determined by capitalism, it’s not enough to try to better ourselves; we have to cease to be ourselves.

In the era of precarity, this is clearer than ever. Globalization has swept the entire population of the planet into one labor pool that competes for the same jobs; mechanization is replacing those jobs, rendering us more and more disposable. In this context, those who set out merely to defend their positions in the economy are doomed. Look at the student movement of 2009-2010, or the protests in Wisconsin last spring: these rearguard struggles to preserve the privileges of a particular demographic could only fail. Today we can neither found our strategy on incremental victories—we are in no more of a position to win them than our rulers are to grant them—nor on the fixed roles that once gave the general strike its force. We have to fight from our shared vulnerability: not on the basis of what we are, but of what we will not be.

The only thing that can bind us in this is our willingness to renounce, to defect, to fight—to abolish the system that created us. This means altering our lives beyond recognition. There are no guarantees in this undertaking; it takes self-destructive abandon. We must not celebrate this, but there is no getting around it.

Nothing is more terrifying than departing from what we know. It may take more courage to do this without killing oneself than it does to light oneself on fire. Such courage is easier to find in company; there is so much we can do together that we cannot do as individuals. If he had been able to participate in a powerful social movement, perhaps Bouazizi would never have committed suicide; but paradoxically, for such a thing to be possible, each of us has to take a step analogous to the one he took into the void.

We cannot imagine what Bouazizi went through, nor the hundreds upon hundreds of others who have lost their lives in the struggles throughout North Africa since—only a minute fraction of the casualties of capitalism this past year. Yet in embracing destruction on his own terms, he at least opened a path to something else. When a youngster hoods up for a black bloc or a middle-aged secretary moves into an encampment, departing from all they know, all they have been, they can hope to do the same.

Let’s make our despair into a transformative force. Perhaps we can give a positive meaning to the saying that is so chilling in reference to the gift Mohamed Bouazizi gave us: you have to be ready to die to be ready to live.

-

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

-

December 18
Lake Worth, FL – The Night Heron

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

December 21
Orlando, FL – Blank Space

December 22
Gainesville, FL – Camp True Love

December 23
Tallahassee, FL – NEED HELP!

December 24-25
Chinese food and a movie

December 26
Pensacola, FL – Sluggo’s

December 27
Mobile, AL – NEED HELP!

December 28
New Orleans, LA – The Mudlark Public Theatre

December 29
Houston, TX – Super Happy Fun Land!

December 30
San Antonio, TX – TBA

December 31
Austin, TX – TBA

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

January 3
Oklahoma City, OK – 218 NW 28th

January 4
Nashville, TN – Little Hamilton Collective

January 5
Carrollton, GA – TBA

January 6
Atlanta, GA – TBA

January 7
Chapel Hill, NC – Internationalist Books

December 10, noon
Humboldt County Anarchist Book Fair, 1611 Peninsula Drive, Arcata, CA 95521

December 11, 5 pm
E2 Art Space, 47B West 3rd Street, Eureka, CA

December 12, 5 pm
Garberville Vets Hall, 483 Conger Street, CA 95542

December 17, 6 pm
Sub Rosa Infoshop, Santa Cruz, CA

December 18, 4 pm
The Holdout, 2313 San Pablo Avenue, Oakland, CA

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.

-

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.

-

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.

-

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.

-

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]

-

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

Our newest feature tells the story of the occupation of a derelict building in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on November 12-13, 2011, drawing on accounts from a wide range of participants. While anarchists and corporate media have circulated news of this action far and wide, the experiences shared inside the building have remained a sort of black box. This report opens up that box, just as the occupiers opened up the building, to reveal a world of possibility.

• Breaking and Entering a New World
• Personal Accounts from a Building Occupation Movement

Now that the case is closed, it’s possible to speak freely about the campaign of infiltration and repression that produced it. We’ve received this analysis from comrades in Canada who are eager to pass on the lessons from this experience; the document offers valuable insight into how infiltrators managed to penetrate anarchist communities and which vulnerabilities they exploited. This concludes our comprehensive coverage of the 2010 G20 protests, which has also included an overview of the events and issues, an eyewitness account from the riots, a review of the legal fallout, and even a benefit album.

-

G20 Conspiracy Coverage on Hold

On November 24, we put up a text entitled “The Toronto G20 Main Conspiracy Case: The Charges and How They Came to Be.” Our intention was to share insight into how infiltrators managed to penetrate anarchist communities and what vulnerabilities they exploited. We’ve since learned from comrades in Canada that some of the claims in the text are extremely controversial. In response, we are withdrawing it until we can produce a version that draws on more perspectives. We’re no strangers to controversy–as a general rule, we cultivate it—but it’s important to us to be sure we can stand behind everything that appears on this site.

Covering the G20 conspiracy case has presented special challenges. Because of a publication ban and widespread government harassment and intimidation, we had to rely on anonymous contributors for reports such as the one we put up two days ago. Though we were careful to run it by trusted comrades first to check its authenticity, we were not warned of how divisive some would consider it. This has been a headache for everyone involved, but we remain convinced that it is imperative to formulate lessons from infiltration, and we hope to have a revised version available swiftly. If you can contribute to this process, feel free to get in touch.

The primary goal of repression is not to capture and imprison everyone who resists—there’s hardly room for all of us in their prisons—but rather to create fault lines within insurgent communities. In this regard, the struggle to resolve internal conflicts is identical to the struggle against the state. We hope that our handling of this controversy will aid our comrades in addressing and resolving their differences, making our communities stronger and more resilient.

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.

These are available practically at cost; please order a pile of them to distribute in your neighborhood, school, or occupation or to decorate the walls of your city! Note that they have been added to the Poster Mix Kit as well.

In addition, we’ve prepared a new text for the back of the poster, Seven Myths about the Police. A full pdf of the print version is available here.

We’ve also yet again reprinted our Civilian’s Guide to Direct Action, which remains available in bulk as well. This paper offers a step-by-step overview of how to act directly to transform society, rather than bogging down in fruitless efforts to exert influence through bureaucratic channels.

Gent Sept. 28
Leuven Sept. 29
Amsterdam Sept. 30
Leiden Oct. 4
Utrecht Oct. 5
Berlin Oct. 6
Hamburg Oct. 7
Gottingen Oct. 8
Milton Keynes Oct. 11
Basingstoke Oct. 12
Exeter Oct. 13
Bristol Oct. 14
Brighton Oct. 15
London Oct. 16
Nottingham Oct. 17
Leamington Oct. 18
Chesterfield Oct. 19
Leeds Oct. 20
Liverpool Oct. 21
London Anarchist Bookfair Oct. 22
Calais Oct. 24
Paris Oct. 25 (need help)
Dijon Oct. 26 (need help)
St. Etienne Oct. 27
Millau Oct. 28
Barcelona Oct. 29
Marseilles Oct. 31 (need help)
G20 at Cannes Nov. 1-5
9 November / Reggio calabria – Csoa Cartella
10 November / Palermo – Facoltà Lettere e Filosofia
11 November / Barcellona P.G – C.P:P. Il Pane e le Rose
12 November / Milan – C.O.A. T28 via dei Transiti 28

(help us fill this gap!)

22 November / Austria – EKH
23 November / Koper (TBC)
24 November / Ljubljana
25 November / Zagreb – Attack
26 November / Zadar – Studentski Klub
27 November / Belgrade
28 November / Zrenjanin
29 November / Kraljevo
30 November / Nis
01 December / Thessaloniki (TBC)
02 December / Volos
03 December / Athens Nosotros social center Exarchia sq.

After Athens, Testament plans to continue on to Egypt.

Contact testtheirlogik@gmail.com to offer assistance booking shows, and also for media requests or to propose collaborations.

Dear Occupiers [online viewing version]

Dear Occupiers [print version]: A two-sided flier intended to be folded down the middle, longways.

Dear Occupiers

A letter from anarchists

Support and solidarity! We’re inspired by the occupations on Wall Street and elsewhere around the country. Finally, people are taking to the streets again! The momentum around these actions has the potential to reinvigorate protest and resistance in this country. We hope these occupations will increase both in numbers and in substance, and we’ll do our best to contribute to that.

Why should you listen to us? In short, because we’ve been at this a long time already. We’ve spent decades struggling against capitalism, organizing occupations, and making decisions by consensus. If this new movement doesn’t learn from the mistakes of previous ones, we run the risk of repeating them. We’ve summarized some of our hard-won lessons here.

Occupation is nothing new. The land we stand on is already occupied territory. The United States was founded upon the extermination of indigenous peoples and the colonization of their land, not to mention centuries of slavery and exploitation. For a counter-occupation to be meaningful, it has to begin from this history. Better yet, it should embrace the history of resistance extending from indigenous self-defense and slave revolts through the various workers’ and anti-war movements right up to the recent anti-globalization movement.

The “99%” is not one social body, but many. Some occupiers have presented a narrative in which the “99%” is characterized as a homogenous mass. The faces intended to represent “ordinary people” often look suspiciously like the predominantly white, law-abiding middle-class citizens we’re used to seeing on television programs, even though such people make up a minority of the general population.

It’s a mistake to whitewash over our diversity. Not everyone is waking up to the injustices of capitalism for the first time now; some populations have been targeted by the power structure for years or generations. Middle-class workers who are just now losing their social standing can learn a lot from those who have been on the receiving end of injustice for much longer.

The problem isn’t just a few “bad apples.” The crisis is not the result of the selfishness of a few investment bankers; it is the inevitable consequence of an economic system that rewards cutthroat competition at every level of society. Capitalism is not a static way of life but a dynamic process that consumes everything, transforming the world into profit and wreckage. Now that everything has been fed into the fire, the system is collapsing, leaving even its former beneficiaries out in the cold. The answer is not to revert to some earlier stage of capitalism—to go back to the gold standard, for example; not only is that impossible, those earlier stages didn’t benefit the “99%” either. To get out of this mess, we’ll have to rediscover other ways of relating to each other and the world around us.

Police can’t be trusted. They may be “ordinary workers,” but their job is to protect the interests of the ruling class. As long as they remain employed as police, we can’t count on them, however friendly they might act. Occupiers who don’t know this already will learn it firsthand as soon as they threaten the imbalances of wealth and power our society is based on. Anyone who insists that the police exist to protect and serve the common people has probably lived a privileged life, and an obedient one.

Don’t fetishize obedience to the law. Laws serve to protect the privileges of the wealthy and powerful; obeying them is not necessarily morally right—it may even be immoral. Slavery was legal. The Nazis had laws too. We have to develop the strength of conscience to do what we know is best, regardless of the laws.

To have a diversity of participants, a movement must make space for a diversity of tactics. It’s controlling and self-important to think you know how everyone should act in pursuit of a better world. Denouncing others only equips the authorities to delegitimize, divide, and destroy the movement as a whole. Criticism and debate propel a movement forward, but power grabs cripple it. The goal should not be to compel everyone to adopt one set of tactics, but to discover how different approaches can be mutually beneficial.

Don’t assume those who break the law or confront police are agents provocateurs. A lot of people have good reason to be angry. Not everyone is resigned to legalistic pacifism; some people still remember how to stand up for themselves. Police violence isn’t just meant to provoke us, it’s meant to hurt and scare us into inaction. In this context, self-defense is essential.

Assuming that those at the front of clashes with the authorities are somehow in league with the authorities is not only illogical—it delegitimizes the spirit it takes to challenge the status quo, and dismisses the courage of those who are prepared to do so. This allegation is typical of privileged people who have been taught to trust the authorities and fear everyone who disobeys them.

No government—that is to say, no centralized power—will ever willingly put the needs of common people before the needs of the powerful. It’s naïve to hope for this. The center of gravity in this movement has to be our freedom and autonomy, and the mutual aid that can sustain those—not the desire for an “accountable” centralized power. No such thing has ever existed; even in 1789, the revolutionaries presided over a “democracy” with slaves, not to mention rich and poor.

That means the important thing is not just to make demands upon our rulers, but to build up the power to realize our demands ourselves. If we do this effectively, the powerful will have to take our demands seriously, if only in order to try to keep our attention and allegiance. We attain leverage by developing our own strength.

Likewise, countless past movements learned the hard way that establishing their own bureaucracy, however “democratic,” only undermined their original goals. We shouldn’t invest new leaders with authority, nor even new decision-making structures; we should find ways to defend and extend our freedom, while abolishing the inequalities that have been forced on us.

The occupations will thrive on the actions we take. We’re not just here to “speak truth to power”—when we only speak, the powerful turn a deaf ear to us. Let’s make space for autonomous initiatives and organize direct action that confronts the source of social inequalities and injustices.

Thanks for reading and scheming and acting. May your every dream come true.

In addition, on the strength of the success of our earlier events presenting on the issues discussed in the Work book, we’re booking two more short tours: one in October that will traverse the South as far as Texas before returning east via the Midwest, another in November to New York City, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. Whether or not you’ve read the book yet, please join us for one of these discussions.

If you have questions or would like to volunteer to set up a speaking date, email help@crimethinc.com.

-

Promotional Materials

Tabloid (11″x17″): Color[2.9MB] | B&W[1.4MB]

Letter (8.5″x11″): Color[2.3MB] | B&W[1.2MB]

Quarter (4.25″x5.5″): Color[8.7MB] | B&W[4.5MB]

Tour Dates

Monday, October 17, 3:00 pm
Occupation, intersection of East Broad Street and College Avenue, Athens, GA

Monday, October 17, 6:30 pm
WonderRoot, 982 Memorial Drive SE Atlanta, GA 30316 / http://www.wonderroot.org/

Monday, October 17, 9 pm
Occupation at Woodruff Park, downtown Atlanta / occupyatlanta.org

Tuesday, October 18, 7 pm
Underground Books, 102 Alabama Street, Carrollton, Ga 30117

Wednesday, October 19, 5 pm
Iron Rail anarchist infoshop, 503 Barracks St (corner of Decatur St.), New Orleans, LA 70116

Wednesday, October 19, 7:30 pm
Nowe Maisto, 223 Jane Place, New Orleans, LA 70119

Thursday, October 20, 4 pm
Occupation, New Orleans, LA / http://occupynola.org/

Thursday, October 20, 7:30 pm
Seminar Room 4 (2nd floor), Monroe Library, Loyola University, 6363 St. Charles Avenue, New Orleans, LA

Friday, October 21, 7 pm
Sedition Books, 901 Richmond Avenue, Houston, TX

Saturday, October 22, 12 pm
Southwest Workers Union, 1416 E. Commerce St., San Antonio, TX

Sunday, October 23, 7 pm
Treasure City Thrift, 2142 E 7th Streeet, Austin, TX 78702 / http://www.treasurecitythrift.org/

Monday, October 24, 7:30 pm
Smoke and Mirrors Art Gallery & Infoshop, 1920 N.Haskell Avenue, Dallas,TX 75204

Tuesday, October 25, 7 pm
Downtown Sound, 115 S. Crawford, Norman, OK 73069

Wednesday, October 26, 10 am
Oklahoma State University: 3rd Floor Village D, Green Lounge, on the corner of W. Farm Rd. and N. Cleveland St., Stillwater, OK

Wednesday, October 26
Whoop De Doo (studio), 1735 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri

Thursday, October 27, 7 pm
Occupation, downtown St. Louis, MO

Friday, October 28
Boxcar Books, 408 E. 6th Street, Bloomington, IN 47408

Saturday, October 29, 6 pm
Cannon Lounge, 701 Warren Wilson Road, Warren Wilson College, NC

Tuesday, November 15, 7 pm
Book Thug Nation, 100 North 3rd Street (between Berry Street and Wythe Avenue), Brooklyn, New York

Wednesday, November 16, 7 pm
ABC No Rio, 156 Rivington Street New York, NY 10002-2411
http://abcnorio.org/ (212) 254-3697

Thursday, November 17, 7 pm
Wooden Shoe Books, 704 South St, Philadelphia, PA 19147 / http://woodenshoebooks.com/

Friday, November 18
Big Idea Bookstore, 4812 Liberty Avenue (in Bloomfield), Pittsburgh, PA / http://www.thebigideapgh.org/