CrimethInc.'s Blog, page 8

#31: Live at the Carrboro Anarchist Book Fair!

#31: Live from the Carrboro Anarchist Book Fair! – We’re always looking for ways to up the ante at The Ex-Worker, our twice-monthly podcast of anarchist ideas and action. So we decided to record our 31st episode in front of a live audience at the Carrboro Anarchist Book Fair! Clara and Alanis started off with our usual Hot Wire news, and then interviewed a wide range of participants from the book fair about workshops or presentations they did or projects they represented. Interviewees spoke about a writing project on southern insurrectionary history, the Can Vies eviction and riots in Barcelona, Spain, and rethinking prisoner support based on experiences with anti-authoritarian queer and transgender prisoners. A supporter read a moving letter by Luke O’Donovan sent from prison specifically to be shared at the book fair, while another shared an update about an anarchist injured and arrested at a Philadelphia solidarity demonstration. Participants from the New York City Anarchist Black Cross, the Durham Inside/Outside Alliance, and the UNControllables, an anarchist student group, each discussed their projects, followed by event announcements and prisoner birthdays to round out a lively evening of anarchy in the southeast.

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 Thin Blue Line Is a Burning Fuse

It should have come as no surprise yesterday when the grand jury in St. Louis refused to indict Darren Wilson, the police officer who murdered Michael Brown last August in Ferguson, Missouri. Various politicians and media outlets had labored to prepare the public for this for months in advance. They knew what earnest liberals and community leaders have yet to acknowledge: that it is only possible to preserve the prevailing social order by giving police officers carte blanche to kill black men at will. Otherwise, it would be impossible to maintain the racial and economic inequalities upon which this society is based. In defiance of widespread outrage, even at the cost of looting and arson, the legal system will always protect officers from the consequences of their actions—for without them, it could not exist.

The verdict of the grand jury is not a failure of the justice system, but a lesson in what it is there to do in the first place. Likewise, the unrest radiating from Ferguson is not a tragic failure to channel protest into productive venues, but an indication of the form all future social movements will have to take to stand any chance of addressing the problems that give rise to them.

Read the feature.

From Occupy to Ferguson

In early 2011, in response to austerity measures, protesters occupied the capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin. It was a localized struggle, but it gained traction on the popular imagination out of all proportion to its size. This clearly indicated that something big was coming, and some of us even brainstormed about how to prepare for it—but all the same, the nationwide wave of Occupy a few months later caught us flat-footed.

In August 2014, after white police officer Darren Wilson killed unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, a week and a half of pitched protests shook the town. Once again, these were localized, but they loomed big in the popular imagination. Police kill something like three people a day in the United States; over the past few years, we’ve seen a pattern of increasing outrage against these murders, but until that August it hadn’t gained much leverage on the public consciousness. What was new about the Ferguson protests was not just that people refused to cede the streets to the police for days on end, nor that they openly defied the “community leadership” that usually pacifies such revolts. It was also that all around the country, people were finally paying attention and expressing approval.

Like the occupation of the capitol building in Madison, this may portend things to come. Ferguson is a microcosm of the United States. Could we see an uprising like this spread nationwide? It seems almost possible, right now, as the governor of Missouri has declared a preemptive state of emergency and people all over the US are preparing demonstrations for the day that the grand jury refuses to indict Darren Wilson.

What limits did the Occupy movement reach? Why did it subside without achieving its object of transforming society? First, it offered almost no analysis of racialized power, despite the central role of race in dividing labor struggles and poor people’s resistance in the US. Second, perhaps not coincidentally, its discourse was largely legalistic and reformist—it was premised on the assumption that the laws and institutions of the state are fundamentally beneficial, or at least legitimate. Finally, it began as a political rather than social movement—hence the decision to occupy Wall Street instead of acting on a terrain closer to most people’s everyday lives, as if capitalism were not a ubiquitous relation but something emanating from the stock market. As a result of these three factors, the majority of the participants in Occupy were activists, newly precarious exiles from the middle class, and members of the underclass, in roughly that order; the working poor were notably absent. The simplistic sloganeering of Occupy obscured the lines of conflict that run through our society from top to bottom: “police are part of the 99%” is technically true, economically speaking, but so are most rapists and white supremacists. All of this meant that when the police came to evict the encampments and kill the movement, Occupy had neither the numbers, nor the fierceness, nor the analysis it would have needed to defend itself.

When a movement reaches its limits and subsides, it illustrates the obstacles future movements will have to surpass. It’s possible to understand the social momentum originating in Ferguson as an answer to the failures of Occupy. Where Occupy whitewashed the issue of race, the protests in Ferguson placed it front and center. Where Occupy confined itself to the unfavorable terrain of “political” physical sites and reformist demands, the people who rose up in Ferguson were fighting on their own streets for their own very lives. Whereas, with the temporary exception of Occupy Oakland, Occupy lacked the will to stand down the police, people in Ferguson braved tear gas and even bullets to do just that. Where Occupy sought to conceal all the different forms of hierarchy and strife that cut through this society beneath the unifying banner of “the 99%,” the conflicts in Ferguson compelled everyone to confront them. Even if it doesn’t arise in response to the grand jury verdict on Darren Wilson, the next powerful social movement in the US will likely have more in common with what we’ve seen in Ferguson than with Occupy (or its ersatz sequels, like the self-policing, pre-pacified People’s Climate March).

The momentum proceeding from the demonstrations in Ferguson has its own internal tensions, which will become more apparent the further it goes. Is the problem police brutality, or policing itself? Is the rightful protagonist of this struggle the local poor person of color, the respectable leader of color, the white ally, or everyone who opposes police killings? If it is the latter, how should we deal with the power imbalances within this “everyone”? How should demonstrators from outside the most targeted communities relate to conflicts playing out within them, such as disputes over tactics or risk? And do we really have to repeat the debate about violence and nonviolence yet again?

Right now, authorities of all stripes around the US are scrambling to capitalize on those fault lines to neutralize a potential second wave of unrest in response to the murder of Michael Brown. They intend to manage our rage and heartbreak, to channel it into contained protests that will function as a mere pressure valve—like the people who held signs at Occupy for a few months before returning to their lives as atomized individuals. If they succeed, it will embolden police departments nationwide to go on killing people, especially young black men, and it will take the question of transforming society off the table once more. The stakes are high.

The Ex-Worker #30: Anarchism in Chile, Part II

#30: Anarchism in Chile, Part II – The Ex-worker keeps our eyes to the south as we continue our in-depth exploration of anarchism in Chile. While our last episode sought to provide context and history, this episode delves into two recent cases of repression by the Chilean State against anarchists and discusses the importance of prisoner support in the anarchist movement. We interview Victor Montoya, an anarchist who was framed up and spent 16 months in pretrial detention, as well as Luciano “Tortuga” Pitronello, a comrade who faced terrorism charges after a bomb he was carrying prematurely detonated. While Tortuga’s body was damaged in the course of this ordeal, his spirit remains resilient, and he shares inspiring stories and sage advice over vegan sandwiches at the autonomous library Sante Geronimo Caserio in Santiago. We’ll offer a review of the Chicago Conspiracy, a documentary film which illustrates some of Chile’s radical history and present through music, celebration, memory and riot, tackle some thoughtful listener feedback about democracy and anarchy, and top it all off with news from struggles around the globe.

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: Final Countdown

One month ago, we announced the kickstarter for To Change Everything, our ambitious anarchist outreach project. The final hours of the fundraising campaign are upon us now. This is your last chance to help us get this project off the ground.

Since that announcement, we’ve confirmed translations in several more languages and arranged a separate printing of the English version for the UK and Europe. Programmers from Oregon to São Paulo are coding the websites; collectives from Russia to Maharlika (the so-called Philippines) are finalizing their renderings of the video and text. Altogether, the network producing different versions of To Change Everything spans twenty groups in as many countries.

Thanks to the generous support of hundreds of donors, we will be able to:

print 100,000 full-color copies of the English version of *To Change Everything*
send 2000 copies to prisoner support groups
produce 50,000 stickers promoting the online version
and donate $400 each to fund the print versions in Brazil, Argentina, Romania, and Slovenia.

We are still hoping to raise enough money to produce 10,000 copies of a full-color Spanish version for North America. We hope that in the remaining hours, enough last-minute donations will come in to cover this. If you’ve already donated, or you can’t afford to, please just do your part to bring this project to others’ attention. The limited edition shirts, stickers, and posters we’ve made for the fundraiser will not be available after Thursday evening.

We will be excited to put To Change Everything at your disposal, in its print, video, and web incarnations, about a month from now. Thanks to comrades like @thetinyraccoon and Mask Magazine for doing their part to support this project—and thank you.

Now Accepting Bitcoins

In response to a few folks who have requested it, we’re pleased to announce that we can now accept bitcoins as donations for To Change Everything. Click the button below to either pay with a Coinbase account or to get an address to send the ol’ bitcoins to. You’ll still qualify for the Kickstarter rewards: simply email us at ‘hello@crimethinc.com’ after sending the bitcoins and tell us the amount you sent, when you sent it, and what reward level you’d like to receive. Though your contribution won’t be added to the posted total on the Kickstarter page itself, we will dedicate those funds directly to the TCE project.

Donate Bitcoins

 

 

“We often thought that the French police were missing a splendid opportunity for ruining our paper by subscribing to a hundred copies and sending no voluntary contributions.”

-Peter Kropotkin, Memoirs of a Revolutionist

 

 

The Ex-Worker #29: Anarchism in Chile, Part I

#29: Anarchism in Chile, Part I: From Popular Power to Social War – It’s been a busy fall here at the Ex-Worker podcast: demos, illnesses, and catastrophes of all sorts have slowed us down, but can’t stop us! Against the odds, we’ve returned with our 29th episode, the first of a two-episode series exploring anarchism in Chile. From its roots in the popular power of the Allende years and militant resistance to the Pinochet dictatorship to today’s clashes between encapuchados and Carabineros across burning barricades, we explore the history and background context necessary to understand the distinctive and militant anarchist struggles of contemporary Chile. From the recent anarchist book and propaganda fair in Santiago, several anarchists speak with us about the importance of radical neighborhoods, the evolution of public anarchist organizing, and political imprisonment in Chile. And as if that wasn’t enough, we’ve also got a report-back from the marches and actions of New York City Climate Convergence, with several interviewees reporting on their experiences and sharing their reflections on how anarchists connect to broader environmental movements. Listeners weigh in on historical dates, pronunciation mistakes, and mind-controlled drones, and a big helping of news plus events and prisoner birthdays puts the icing on the cake.

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.

New Project: To Change Everything

For many months now, we’ve been hard at work on a new anarchist outreach project that picks up where Fighting for Our Lives left off—drawing on everything we’ve learned since then and updating the contents and format. Now that work is completed—we just need your help to get it into the world.

To Change Everything is a full-color 48-page booklet. In fresh, accessible language, it explores the virtues of self-determination, illuminates why authoritarian power structures cannot resolve the crises they produce, and discusses how to weave our personal revolts together into a collective struggle for liberation.

We want to print 100,000 copies and circulate it for free, so as to reach the generations radicalized by the global movements and catastrophes of the past few years. We’ve worked with Submedia.tv to produce an accompanying video; we’re coordinating with comrades around the world so the text will appear simultaneously on at least three continents in at least a dozen languages. The video and text will be available in all those languages on a fully responsive website. With your help, we can accomplish all this by the end of 2014.

We’re using Kickstarter to raise the funds to cover printing. If you aren’t familiar with Kickstarter, you can learn about how to use it here. If you’re curious why we’re using a fundraising platform for this project, read our explanation Why a Kickstarter? Why Now?. If you think we do good work, please help us—every little bit counts, and you’ll be ensuring that this project is available to everyone for free. To sweeten the pot, we’ve come up with some fancy rewards for donors, including our first-ever t-shirts.

Kickstarter To Change Everything

 

New anarchist outreach material is long overdue. Even entrenched representatives of the status quo are now admitting that it is necessary to change everything, but the best they can come up with is to appeal to the same authorities that are responsible for our problems in the first place. Meanwhile, the rise of the far right in Europe and the ongoing debacle in Ukraine show how high the stakes are and how bleak the future will be if fascists succeed in presenting themselves as the partisans of change. When the next round of uprisings arrives, it may be too late to reach out to people.

We don’t ask for much, but if ever there were a time for you to help us, this is it. Even if you can’t contribute financially, please send word of this project out on twitter or Facebook, yell it out from street corners. Thanks so much, dear friends.

 

Why a Kickstarter? Why Now?

For practically our entire existence, we have avoided using traditional fundraising drives and platforms. In the beginning, taking our cue from the bank robbers who financed the anarchist press a hundred years ago, we utilized nonstandard methods to produce and distribute our materials for free.

Once the scale of our operations grew too large to depend on inconsistent sources, we shifted tactics. We didn’t want our agenda to be dictated by funders, as in the case of so many non-profit organizations; we believe that this inevitably causes groups to water down their politics in order to pander to the wealthy. [For more on this, consult the excellent The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex by INCITE! Women of Color against Violence.] Nor did we wish to tire the patience of our grassroots supporters with constant NPR-style pleas. For a decade and a half, we have mass-produced materials to keep the cost per item down, sold them at close to production costs, and used any returns to fund free projects like Fighting for Our Lives—indeed, we sunk tens of thousands of dollars of our own money into that project. None of this would have been possible if we weren’t willing to work for free, living, in most cases, significantly below the poverty line.

This approach will remain the basis of our efforts. However, much has changed in the economy in the years since we set out on this path. As the majority of people get poorer, it is becoming more difficult to fund projects through sales alone, even as interest increases in our projects. It seems we are entering a sort of new feudalism, in which a small part of the population has disproportionate resources and leverage even when it comes to determining what materials are mass-produced: the question of patronage is almost inescapable. Today, some of our supporters can barely afford the materials they depend on us for, while others would gladly pay significantly more than we charge. Utilizing a crowd-funding model only acknowledges this already present reality. We don’t share the optimism of those who believe that crowd-funding is somehow liberating or “democratic”—it’s just the best sales system for an era of dramatic income disparities.

At the same time, we remain staunchly committed to setting our agenda with complete integrity and autonomy, regardless of financial incentives. We will not water down our politics to attract wealthier funders; we will not change the ways we speak and organize. The upshot of this is that if you appreciate what we are doing, we depend on you to help us to keep at it, even if your means are paltry compared to those big NGO foundations that are currently rendering toothless all the political campaigns they talk about in their press releases. Really changing everything will take a lot more than tax write-offs and paid publicity work. If you want what we want, help us however you can.

The Ex-Worker #28: Anarcha-Feminism, Part II

#28: Anarcha-Feminism, Part II: Early Critiques and Visions – Back in Episode 26, the Ex-Worker shared a panorama of dramatic stories from the lives and struggles of 19th and early 20th century anarchist women… but we didn’t focus much on their ideas. In the second episode of our three-part series on anarcha-feminism, we return our focus to the first generations of rebels who brought together anarchist and feminist currents, this time to explore their distinctive revolutionary visions. We survey the context of early revolutionary and feminist ideas, and the distinct perspectives of early anarcha-feminists on marriage, sexuality, economic and bodily autonomy, suffrage, revolutionary sexism, and strategies for women’s emancipation. The Chopping Block discusses Free Women of Spain, Martha Ackelsberg’s classic study of the Spanish anarchist women’s group Mujeres Libres. Listeners weigh in on sports, a special guest contributor offers a correction about indigenous resistance to fracking, and we begin a fascinating conversation on solidarity actions and anonymity amidst the news, event announcements, statements from political prisoners, and more.

Trigger warning: This episode includes a few passing references to sexual or domestic violence: nothing too graphic, but we wanted to give all of you a heads up. The references appear at 11:40, 35:50, 41:25, 1:04:50, and 1:33:44.

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.

CrimethInc. in Scandinavia and the Balkans

This coming month, CrimethInc. operatives will offer two presentations in Scandinavia about the new wave of global revolts and a three-week speaking tour in the Balkans on the theme “After the Crest,” discussing the life cycle of social movements. Catharsis, one of the flagship bands of passionate anarchic hardcore, will also be playing a rare handful of shows in northern Europe.

Hope to see you at one of these events!

Anarchy in the Age of Global Revolt

In this discussion, we will consider the causes of of the recent wave of global revolts, address the roles that policing, nationalism, and the rhetoric of democracy have played in limiting its horizons, and consider what anarchists could do to open up new possibilities.

August 27 Aalborg, Denmark 1000 FRYD

August 28 Gothenburg, Sweden at Bokkafé Vulgo

Catharsis in Scandinavia

August 29 Oslo, Norway: Blitz

August 30 Jyväskylä, Finland: Lutakko Liekeissä festival

August 31 Stockholm, Sweden: Cyclopen following the Stockholm Anarchist Book Fair in the same venue

September 1 Berlin, Germany: Köpi

After the Crest: What We Do between Upheavals

Over the past few years, many places have witnessed sudden eruptions of protest in which everyone pours into the streets. This has taken many forms: anti-austerity protests in Europe, Occupy in the US and elsewhere, transportation protests in Brazil, the Gezi resistance in Turkey, the uprising in Bosnia, and most recently—and problematically—the nationalist revolution in Ukraine.

But all of these have passed without solving the problems that gave rise to them. What limits have they reached, and what would it take to go beyond these limits? If a single upheaval won’t bring down capitalism, we have to ask what’s important about such high points of struggle: what we hope to get out of them, how they figure in our long-term vision, and how to make the most of the period that follows them.

In this presentation, participants in popular struggles in Slovenia and North America will speak about our experiences and pose questions. Please come ready to discuss!

This tour is part of an ongoing investigation on the theme “After the Crest.”

September 3 Ljubljana, Slovenia: [A] Infoshop, AKC Metelkova

September 4 Rijeka, Croatia: Masari

September 5-6 Mostar, Bosnia: 5th Antifascist Festival and 8th Balkan Anarchist

Bookfair, OKC Abrašević

September 7 Sarajevo, Bosnia: Kino Bosna

September 8 Tuzla, Bosnia: Klub Bunt

September 9 Belgrade, Serbia: Infoshop Furija, Inex Film

September 10 Timisoara, Romania: TamTam

September 11 Cluj, Romania

September 12 Bucharest, Romania: Claca

September 13-14 Sofia, Bulgaria: Be the Change festival

September 15 Skopje, Macedonia: AKS Centar

September 16 Thessaloniki, Greece: Yfanet squat

September 17 Volos, Greece

September 19 Athens, Greece: OCCUPIED THEATRE EMBROS, hosted by Void Network

Ex-Worker #27: Anti-Police Riots in Ferguson

#27: Anti-Police Riots in Ferguson – Since the murder of Mike Brown by police on August 9th, Ferguson, Missouri has been the site of intense riots, looting, and clashes with police. In this episode, we share first-hand accounts from participants and reflections on the rebellion, as well as an analysis which unpacks the designation of “outside agitators.” Two texts discussing other recent anti-police uprisings appear on the Chopping Block: “Unfinished Acts” a discussion of the Oscar Grant riots in Oakland, and “Unforgiving and Inconsolable”, a collection of texts about the response to the death of Chuy Huerta in Durham, North Carolina. Supporters of Luke O’Donovan update us on his trial and how to show solidarity. Clara and Alanis share a slew of listener feedback, exploring the origins of the term feminism, correcting some mistakes about the IWW, and getting into a testy debate over the politics of sports. News, prisoner birthdays, Contradictionary terms, and upcoming events round out another packed episode.

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.