CrimethInc.'s Blog, page 6

#38: Anarchism in Lake Worth, Florida

#38: Anarchism in Lake Worth, Florida – How do anarchists organize outside of major cities? In Episode 38 of the Ex-Worker, we offer a profile of anarchism in Lake Worth, a small coastal town in southern Florida with a surprisingly active and vibrant culture of resistance. Participants in the Everglades Earth First!, the Earth First! Journal, the South Florida Prison Books Project, the former Night Heron Infoshop, and Prison Legal News discuss some of the many radical projects that operate out of Lake Worth. We even hear from a former anarchist elected official discussing the contradictions and possibilities of that position! The episode also includes a CrimethInc. tour announcement, feedback from listeners about online crypto-anarchism, appeals for solidarity, plenty of news from all over the world, and more.

You can download this and all of our previous episodes online. You can also subscribe in iTunes here or just add the feed URL to your podcast player of choice. Rate us on iTunes and let us know what you think, or send us an email to podcast@crimethinc.com. You can also call us 24 hours a day at 202–59-NOWRK, that is, 202–596–6975.

To Change Everything US Tour

We’re organizing a US tour for this September and October including anarchists from the groups that have produced versions of To Change Everything in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans, as well as North America. Together, they will present a panel discussion comparing experiences from the recent global wave of uprisings and exploring the significance of anarchism in the 21st century. We’re excited to facilitate this exchange of perspectives across different continents and struggles, in hopes of helping to foster more global connections and solidarity.

But we need your help! If you are able to host an event, please contact us at rollingthunder@crimethinc.com. We’re especially interested in setting up events outside the usual venues. We would love to hear from student groups, community centers, and anyone else with a good idea.

Here is a description of the presentation:

To Change Everything: Anarchism and the New Social Movements

An International Panel Discussion

This panel brings together organizers from Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and North America to discuss the significance of anarchist ideas and tactics in the 21st century.

The participants will compare experiences from the wave of protests and uprisings that has swept the world since 2010—exploring the role of demand-based politics in both catalyzing and limiting movements, examining a variety of forms of repression, and critically evaluating experiments with direct democracy. They will conclude by assessing the prospects of contemporary struggles for self-determination in an era of globalized capitalism and state control.

All of the presenters are contributors to a recent outreach and dialogue project, To Change Everything, which appeared earlier this year in over twenty languages: tochangeeverything.com

#37: The Hambacher Forest Occupation

#37: The Hambacher Forest Occupation – In this episode, the Ex-Worker offers an in-depth profile of the struggle to defend the Hambacher Forest. In the Rhineland coal country of western Germany, a group of angry locals, environmentalists, anarchists and squatters have converged to challenge the destruction of one of the region’s oldest forests by the energy giant RWE’s brown coal mining. In these moving interviews recorded live in the Hambacher Forest in spring 2014, Clara gets a tour of the occupation and discusses the recent history of actions and broader political context. Through insightful and often hilarious informal conversations, the occupiers point out distinctive features of the forest, show the gritty and frequently comical day to day realities of squatter life, discuss their personal motivations for resisting the destruction of the forest, and offer poignant insight into the logic of resistance as a way of life. The episode concludes with recent updates from the occupation, ways to participate and show solidarity, and reflections on its significance for radicals across the world.

You can download this and all of our previous episodes online. You can also subscribe in iTunes here or just add the feed URL to your podcast player of choice. Rate us on iTunes and let us know what you think, or send us an email to podcast@crimethinc.com. You can also call us 24 hours a day at 202–59-NOWRK, that is, 202–596–6975.

The Secret World of Terijian zine

To warm the hearts of children and enivironmentalists everywhere, we present an imposed pdf of our children’s book, The Secret World of Terijian, ready for grassroots printing and distribution. The Secret World of Terijian tells the story of two children who set out to defend the wilderness in their back yards, and the comrades they meet along the way.

The best review of The Secret World of Terijian is still probably the one penned by Kirk Engdall, United States Attorney for the District of Oregon, in his response to Daniel McGowan‘s Motion for Amended Judgment: “The story line of this children’s book romanticizes the criminal activities of the Earth Liberation Front and encourages children to become involved in similar criminal conduct…” We hope this zine version will be useful to everyone who is organizing events for the June 11 day of solidarity with Marius Mason and all long-term anarchist prisoners. Print some copies to raise donations for Marius and everyone else behind bars in the struggle for a better world.

Imposed PDFs for print reproduction (4.7MB): B&W : Color

Standard PDF for reading on screens (2.2MB)

This is at least the fifth edition of The Secret World of Terijian since it appeared a decade ago. It features the illustrations by Ingi Jensson that were originally published in the Icelandic translation, Hulduheimur Heiðarlands, in 2010. The photo above shows the Slovakian version, published earlier this year.

Announcing Rolling Thunder #12!

We are thrilled to announce the twelfth issue of North America’s premier anarchist journal, Rolling Thunder. As usual, this issue is the biggest and best yet, and we can’t wait to share it with you. If you have a subscription, you should be receiving your copy right about now—they were sent out last week. Yet another reason to support us by subscribing!

The centerpiece of this issue is a 64-page feature on the protests against police and white supremacy that spread from Ferguson, Missouri across the United States. It traces the conflict from its origins in the antebellum South, offering a timeline of the clashes vividly illustrated with narratives from the front lines. We especially urge everyone to read the transcript of a debrief discussion among anarchist participants from Missouri, reflecting on their role in predominantly black struggles and the ramifications of joining in street confrontations that include arson and gunfire.

Two more features elaborate an anarchist analysis of sex work, beyond the second-wave feminist discourse of victimization and the third-wave feminist discourse of empowerment. From across the Atlantic, we present interviews with Turkish anarchists who crossed the Syrian border to join Kurdish fighters in pushing the Islamic State out of Kobanê, and an analysis of the rise of new left parties in Greece and around Europe as a phase in the neutralization of autonomous social movements. Elsewhere in the issue, a testimonial recounts one daring individual’s efforts to rid his community of surveillance cameras by physically destroying them.

As for theory, this issue offers a critique of demand-based political organizing and an intimate look at how what Foucault termed biopower functions in jails and cancer wards. All this, plus poetry and graffiti from the Egyptian revolution—comics about Loukanikos, the celebrated riot dog of Athens—stories from the life of Biófilo Panclasta, the most mysterious and mythologized of anarchist vagabonds—the usual stunning photography, acerbic commentary, and strategic reflection—and much, much more! Altogether, this issue is 154 pages, which places it alongside the books we’ve published as one of our most ambitious projects.

Buy it here.

The Ex-Worker #36: The Rojava Revolution

#36: The Rojava Revolution – The Ex-Worker is back! We may have taken a break, but global resistance and social struggles have not. In this episode, we focus on the unfolding social revolution in Rojava, or western Kurdistan, where an ambitious set of political, economic, and military experiments are transforming the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. In the borderlands of Turkey and Syria, self-organized militias have successfully opposed the Islamic State while challenging gender oppression and securing autonomy for an emerging stateless society. Interviews with supporters from the Turkish group “Revolutionary Anarchist Action” (DAF) set the stage, complemented by a Kurdish refugee and activist’s reflections on the role of women’s resistance to patriarchy. We also review “A Small Key Can Unlock a Large Door,” a recently released anthology of texts describing the Rojava revolution, and continue our yearly tradition of a lively report of May Day actions across the globe. We also respond to a variety of listener feedback, with discussions of the Ross Ulbricht case, anarchist parenting, and how even spambots are impacted by recent revolutionary struggles!

You can download this and all of our previous episodes online. You can also subscribe in iTunes here or just add the feed URL to your podcast player of choice. Rate us on iTunes and let us know what you think, or send us an email to podcast@crimethinc.com. You can also call us 24 hours a day at 202–59-NOWRK, that is, 202–596–6975.

To Change Everything Eastern European Tour

This May, to support the Czech, Polish, and German versions of To Change Everything, a rotating cast of participants from the US, Czech Republic, Germany, and the Balkans are presenting a series of speaking events in Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Germany.

Coinciding with this, we have added the Polish and Czech versions of To Change Everything to the website, including PDFs of the print versions.

We are planning a full US tour for the fall, bringing together participants in To Change Everything from several continents. Email rollingthunder@crimethinc.com if you can help set up an event.

May 7 Berlin, Germany – Richardplatz, a public square in Neukölln, 20:00

May 9 Prague, Czech Republic – Anarchist Book Fair, 17:00

May 11 Bratislava, Slovakia – Photoport Gallery, 19:00

May 12 Brno, Czech Republic – Tři Ocasci Tři Ocásci, 18:00

May 13 Ostrava, Czech Republic – Ojero 18:00

May 14 Olomouc, Czech Republic – Galerie U Mloka, 19:00

May 16 Věžnička, Czech Republic – Fotbal Proti Rasismu, 14:00, FPR celý den

May 17 Most, Czech Republic – Ateneo, 17h komunitní veganská večeře/community vegan dinner

May 19 Bielsko-Biała, Poland

May 20 Kraków, Poland

May 21 Gliwice, Poland – CKN13

May 22 Poznan, Poland – Rozbrat with Next Victim, Zdrajcy Rządowi

May 23 Frankfurt (Oder), Germany – Backdoor Fairbunt eV

May 27 Flensburg, Germany – Luftschlosfabrik

Climate change, economic crisis, unrest from Sarajevo to Baltimore, and now the looming threat of war: the prevailing order is unsustainable in every way. Today, even the entrenched representatives of the status quo admit that it is necessary to change everything. But the best they can come up with is to appeal to the same authorities and values that caused these problems in the first place. What would it mean to change everything?

In this presentation, anarchists from across the world discuss the struggles that are unfolding around the world and describe the anarchist alternative to lives of servitude and strife. This tour is part of a worldwide initiative by the CrimethInc. collective supporting a free multimedia introduction to anarchism in 20 languages.

Why We Don’t Make Demands

On May 1, following a week of riots and demonstrations, Baltimore’s chief prosecutor filed charges against six police officers for the death of Freddie Gray—an almost unprecedented development in a nation in which police kill hundreds of people a year with impunity.

Does this prove that the system can work, provided we make our demands forcefully enough? One could conclude from these events that the best way to address injustice is a sort of hyper-militant reformism. Yet it is also possible to draw the opposite conclusion—that the only way to make any progress whatsoever is to stop petitioning the authorities and take action outside the structures of governance, as the courageous people of Baltimore demonstrated. The fact that it took such a massive upheaval simply for charges to be brought against Freddie Gray’s captors—to say nothing the fundamental changes that are desperately needed in this society—suggests that it is unrealistic to think we could reform the existing institutions one riot at a time.

In that case, what is promising about these moments of rebellion is that they could serve as steps towards determining what happens in our communities autonomously, in defiance of the state, its police, and hand-wringing newscasters. Perhaps the Baltimore Uprising doesn’t show us how to present demands to our rulers, but points the way beyond the politics of demands.

This is an old debate, but it has become more and more urgent through the global uprisings of the past decade. We present our contribution, the result of months of discussions with participants in movements around the globe.

Read the feature.

Episode 35: To Change Everything Audio Zine

At long last, the Ex-Worker is back! We hope all of you had a riotous May Day. Please send us reports on what you did to observe it at podcast@crimethinc.com so we can include them in our next episode.

In celebration of the resistance unfolding around the world from Baltimore to Milan and beyond, we’re releasing our first audio zine! Inspired by others’ contributions to the project, we at the Ex-Worker podcast have produced an audio version of To Change Everything to support the print and video versions circulating across the world.

Listen to or download the audio zine To Change Everything.

We’ll be back in mid-May with our next regular episode, exploring the unfolding social revolution in Rojava that came into the media’s attention during the defense of the city of Kobane by self-organized militias against the Islamic State. Stay tuned!

You can download this and all of our previous episodes online. You can also subscribe in iTunes here or just add the feed URL to your podcast player of choice. Rate us on iTunes and let us know what you think, or send us an email to podcast@crimethinc.com. You can also call us 24 hours a day at 202–59-NOWRK, that is, 202–596–6975.

Tomorrow Is Steal Something from Work Day!

Tomorrow, April 15, is tax day: the day by which you are required to file income tax returns so the US government can extort some of your earnings, the greatest part of which traditionally goes to funding the military and police without which such banditry would be impossible. Thanks to the tax breaks available to the wealthy, your employers may pay less in taxes than you, even as they take more profit home. Many corporations—like Citigroup and Bank of America—pay no federal taxes whatsoever.

In addition, April 15 is a nationwide day of protest under the banner Fight for $15, aimed at winning workers $15-an-hour wages and the right to unionize. Now, we’d love to think that a few protests would suffice to make corporations treat their employees better, or to make the government that exists to protect those corporations suddenly change sides… but we’re not holding our breath. If you’re participating in those actions, we wish you success; just don’t get so comfortable negotiating the details of our exploitation that you come to take it for granted. Even $150 an hour couldn’t justify the humiliating jobs many of us are forced to hold. Real dignity isn’t a question of getting higher wages to do the same thing; we deserve complete self-determination, not better compensation for squandering our lives.

April 15 is also the sixth annual Steal Something from Work Day. Whether or not your employer raises your wages or permits you to unionize, you can conspire with your fellow employees to expand your take-home pay yourselves. You can that do right now, on your own terms, without waiting for legislation, without opening negotiations with your enemies, without the assistance of paid organizers or condescending nonprofits, without struggling to get the attention of politicians who answer to the highest bidder. Sure, stealing from your workplace is dangerous, but it’s no more dangerous than the kind of pressure campaign it would take to win a living wage for everyone nationwide—consult the bloody history of the old US labor movement if you want to know how people won the right to unionize in the first place. And what is more likely to equip us to move towards a real revolution, collective illegal activity or legal reform campaigns? Not that you necessarily have to choose—try both, if you like.

This Steal Something from Work Day is dedicated to the memory of over 1200 Bangladeshi garment workers who lost their lives in the Tazreen Factory fire of 2012 and the Rana Plaza collapse of 2013—two factories that served Walmart, one of the targets of the Fight for $15 campaign. The same corporations and market forces that steal our lives piecemeal in the US steal them wholesale overseas. Rather than just negotiating for a better deal with these butchers, we should treat them the way they treat us—taking whatever we can by deception or main force, in hopes of one day getting rid of them entirely.

The law has never been on our side when it counts. Those who want to help should defend and expand the protest activity workers are already involved in, including forms as invisible yet pervasive as workplace theft. As Emma Goldman said, if stealing from your boss changed anything, it would be illegal.

Tomorrow, we’ll get what we deserve—thanks in advance. In the meantime, here’s an array of resources for those curious about Steal Something from Work Day.

Somebody buy this woman a drink.

Steal Something from Work Day: Theory

Frequently Asked Questions about Steal Something from Work Day—A classic, along with the Submedia video

A Theft or Work?—A grad student brings poststructuralist theory to bear on time theft, why the master’s degrees will never dismantle the master’s house, and how to resist work when it has spread so far beyond the workplace

I —Also available as a ’zine from our comrades at Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, How to Justify Workplace Theft

Indie Rock arguments for stealing from work

The Church of Christ in Galway, Ireland argues strenuously against Steal Something from Work Day

Steal Something from Work Day: Practice

Out Of Stock: Confessions Of A Grocery Store Guerrilla—A former Whole Foods employee recounts his efforts to run his employer out of business

Steal from Work to Create Autonomous Zones—The shocking true story of a photocopy scam that nearly escalated into global revolution

What Became of the Boxes—Another story of working-class revenge

…and here’s a new brand narrative for this year’s Steal Something from Work Day:

Like Most Workplace Thieves, I Am an Exceptional Worker

My name is Ann and I am a successful small-time career criminal. I’ll start the story with some background information about my lifestyle. I have lived out of my car and in squats alternately for the past several years. I live remarkably cheaply, but I do use some money. My main expenses are my car, my storage unit, my gym membership and my coffee and cigarette addictions. Nobody’s perfect. I have more affluent tastes than the vast majority of homeless people but after having been on the streets off and on, I’ve learned to live without a lot and how to source a lot of things for free.

My last job was at a (relatively) small corporate retail chain specializing in greenwashed products for rich people to appease their consciences over their consumption habits. My boss was a sexist jerk who knew way less about the products we sold than I did, but had a background in management (in another field) so he got to be in charge. I am an artisan craftsperson who’s seeing my trade being completely industrialized and my skill being made obsolete and relegated to being a niche curiosity for wealthy people. The main push from management was on sellership and creating ambiance, which I hate. Efficiency increased dramatically when I was alone in the shop.

It took a little while to gain the trust to be left alone in more often, but like most workplace thieves, I am an exceptional worker. Part of this is obviously in the MO, but I think the joy of padding one’s own paycheck helps combat the lethargy and meaninglessness that most low-level employees feel from their job. Part of it may also be that clever, hard working people are more inclined to combat their own class oppression than apathetic people are.

The register setup was perfect. I could cancel a transaction and pop the drawer open without customers seeing anything. I have a natural aptitude for mathematics and just kept a tally of how much in cash transactions I had canceled out until the shop was empty and I could take it from the drawer. I started out small, like $5-$15 per day but as the ease of it hit me, and as business picked up through the summer, I eventually moved to taking as much as they were paying me. I gradually learned some issues this posed to me regarding money management. The first was with the supply of change in the register. Even though the balance at the end of the day matched the register tape, the change would be drastically depleted. I started carrying a wad of ones and fives and a handful of coins in my purse to refill the drawer at the end of the day. The second issue was when I noticed that I had been depositing all of my paychecks without withdrawing any money for anything and just living off the cash I took. I started withdrawing some money from the bank just so my records wouldn’t look so strange, but this was leaving me with a quickly growing bail of cash. Paranoia set in just a bit. I took out a storage unit to keep my money (and a few possessions) in.

Business (and therefore my cash flow) was declining towards the winter. The boss installed a new POS [point of sale] system in the register to keep track of inventory. The next day a customer came in and bought something really expensive that we only had one of and paid in cash. I think it might have been a setup but I couldn’t resist. One time I worked somewhere where the supervisor was stealing and the boss knew it but didn’t fire him. He wanted to catch him in the act so he could press charges and he made me participate in trying (unsuccessfully) to trap him. I stayed up late into the night wondering if there would be cops there for me the next day. I decided to call in that morning with some bullshit story about having just been injured in a bicycle accident and never went back.

At the end of my employment, I had saved up about ten grand in six months, roughly half of it stolen cash. I’ve been unemployed for eight months now. I’ve volunteered at a local youth drop-in center, and started a Food Not Bombs chapter and another free grocery distribution project. Giving back to my street community is important to me. I do a lot of resource sharing—clothing, sleeping gear, etc. I’ve taken up several hobbies, started a regular workout routine, traveled, and read lots of educational literature in that time. I bought myself a few nice toys, but mostly just lived modestly off the money. As I write this today, I am still sitting on five grand.