Disrupt (v) : to interrupt (an event, activity, or process) by causing a disturbance or problem; to drastically alter or destroy the structure of (something)
Subjectives of Refusal
This category describes social struggles of previous ascription by social kind, and redefinition on new terms.
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a national student activist organization in the US during the 1960s that sought to establish a New Left focused on civil rights, peace, and universal economic security. In 1965, SDS held a mass sit-in at the White House to protest the Vietnam War. This document is a flyer for the event, detailing the various demands, plans, and sponsors of the group.
This letter was released by Students for Justice in Palestine on April 21, 2024. In the document, SJP lays out its mission, sets forth various demands, expresses solidarity with SJPs across the country, and makes clear its determination to reclaim student power on campus to pursue justice and liberation for the people of Palestine.
This is the third edition of the newsletter written by a compilation of individual authors and published by the National Students for Justice in Palestine. The importance of discomfort, the global struggle against imperialism, information on the Palestine Solidarity Movement, accounts of personal experiences, various calls to action, and other important topics were included in the newsletter.
This is the second edition of the newsletter written by a compilation of individual authors and published by the National Students for Justice in Palestine. Smiling as an act of resistance, Palestinian educational institutions, the role of US students and workers in the struggle for Palestine, decolonization as a practice, recommendations for student organizing, and other topics were included in the newsletter.
The indigenous people of Sarayaku were faced with a devastating loss in 1996. The Ecuadorean state gave away a large part of their land to an oil company without consulting the people that were living there. In 2002, this company came into the land and set up massive amounts of explosives, which deeply endangered the community. The Sarayaku people took their case to the International Humans Rights System and substantially won their case. The explosives were removed and the company was censured. This is the link to the official website and below is the proceedings from the case.
The Battle of Blair Mountain is considered to be one of the largest civil uprisings in American history. Thousands of coal miners in Mingo County, West Virginia received terrible wages and horrendous treatment within the mines themselves. About 10,000 miners congregate at the edge of the country and refuse to budge. After threats of federal troops being sent in, four deputies of the local offices are taken prisoner and presumed to be killed. There’s five days of battling between troops and miners and eventually federal troops did come to intervene. This is considered to be a pivotal moment in the labor organizing history of America.
The Homestead Strike of 1892, centered at Carnegie’s steel plant in Pennsylvania, marked a pivotal moment in American labor history. It erupted over wage cuts and benefit reductions, leading to a violent clash between striking workers and Pinkerton detectives hired by the company. After Carnegie and his staff pushed workers out of the plant to replace them with non – union workers, they pushed back and barricaded within it. There was violent conflict between them and the Pinkerton detectives. Despite the workers’ efforts, the strike was ultimately suppressed. Nonetheless, the strike remains a significant event in the struggle for workers’ rights and fair labor practices. It became a rallying point for other labor activists.
During the Industrial Revolution in England, textile workers protested against the rise of machinery that took their jobs and reduced their wages. The factory heads and upper class started to push workers out and as a result, they pushed back. This was done through the sabotage of machinery and violently resisting against the people they felt were oppressing them. The PDF below includes pamphlets from this protest that detail the specific actions.
This is a guide that was distributed by anarchists during the 2012 student strikes and social conflicts in Montreal. The document provides step-by-step instructions on how to form crews, how to create paint bombs, how to occupy a space, how to conduct a street demonstration, as well as other important tactics.
This is a statement made by the Students for Justice in Palestine at Bucknell University (BUSJP), located in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. The group set forth four demands for the university including disclosing the identities of all donors and investment portfolios, divesting from companies that fund the Israeli government, denouncing Israel and the repression of university students across the country who support Palestine, as well as detaching from corporate partnerships that support the genocide. Additionally, BUSJP calls on everyone at the university to join the student movement and participate in the strike by withholding their labor.
This is the first edition of the newsletter written by a compilation of individual authors and published by the National Students for Justice in Palestine. The right to resist, a history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, information on the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) and the Palestinian Feminist Collective movements, accounts of personal experiences, various calls to action, and other topics were included in the newsletter.
This is a screenshot of an excerpt from a 1924 newspaper on the proposed May-Day strike by French postal workers. In an effort to obtain a raise in wages, these postal workers sought to disrupt the operation of the mail service by enforcing all minor regulations, thus slowing down the service.
In this piece, Palestine Solidarity Groups at Harvard University take a stand against the violence committed against Palestinians and call on the Harvard community to take action. This is a part of a string of pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses across the United States against both the Israel-Hamas War and the financial ties these various universities have with Israel.
This is a press release from the Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine’s Twitter page. In the document, the organization demands their voices be heard, likens their quest for liberation to that of the Civil Rights Movement and other anti-war protests, as well as vows to remain in place until their demands are met. These demands include a complete divestment of all finances linked to the Israeli apartheid in Palestine, complete transparency of all of Columbia’s financial investments, and amnesty for everyone at the university who has been penalized for participating in the movement for Palestinian liberation.
This was a call to action posted on the social media accounts of the National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) on April 19, 2024. In the document, the National SJP criticizes the decision of the universities to choose profit and reputation over the lives of those in Palestine and the will of the students. The organization expresses solidarity with other chapters of SJP across the nation and calls on them for continued action.
Over the past weeks at various universities across the United States, students have erected encampments to demand action to end Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip. These protests have arisen on the campuses of some of the US’ highest academic institutions, including Harvard and Columbia. This document is a press release from The New School Students for Justice in Palestine, a student-organization at The New School in New York City. In the press release, they expressed their solidarity with other student protesters across the country, described why they established the encampment, detailed the rich history of student protest at the school, and set forth a list of demands for the university. Some of these demands included a complete divestment from all corporations that benefit from and are complicit in the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people, greater protection for pro-Palestinian protesters, a full academic boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions, among others.
The Berkeley Tenants Union was established in 1969 and sought to organize low-income tenants to join in protest against rent increases, eviction, and poor housing conditions. This document is a flyer produced in 1969 by the union explaining the reasoning, goals, and strategy behind the city-wide renters strike as well as the various risks activists might face for carrying out these direct actions. Flyers such as this one began distribution during the end of 1969 and continued up until February of 1970, when the strike formally took place.
In a newspaper article form the Young lords, Education Lieutenant Carlos Aponte discusses the colonization of Puerto Rican education. When the colonizers landed in Guancia, they destroyed puerto Rican history books and replaced them with American education. The Young Lords refuted this erasure of history by setting up their own educational programs to aid younger generations in learning their roots and especially keeping the spanish language alive.
This document, written by Native American Warriors from South Dakota, was addressed to Prairie Fire, the Weather Underground, and all third world and anti-imperialist allies. The Native American Warriors called on these groups to help them liberate their homelands and connected the Vietnamese victory in Vietnam to their struggle against US empire and imperialism.
In 1955, the African National Congress (ANC) sent out 50,000 volunteers to various townships and rural areas throughout South Africa to gather “freedom demands” from average people. The ANC was tired of the repressive government and its desire to quell dissent. The demands made by the people of South Africa were synthesized into a document that was adopted later that year and became known as the “Freedom Charter.” This document is significant in that it was the first time in which the people were actively involved in creating their own vision for an alternative society.
In December of 1970, Gloria Gonzales and Denise Oliver took a ten day trip to Puerto Rico. Their experiences, written in a newspaper article, underline the destructive impacts that western colonialism, specially from America, has on Puerto Rican communities. Oliver describes the psychological impact of colonialism and its devastating impact on young Puerto Rican populations. Oliver rejects the influence of western supremacy on the island, and advocates for a independent Puerto Rico.
In a newspaper from 1971, Richie Perez from the Young Lord’s Party discusses the Nixon administration’s policies on “drug control.” Perez argues that Heroine has been an issue harming the Puerto Rican communities for years, However “for the politicians, it didn’t become an “emergency” until heroin spilled out of our ghettos into white communities and into the amerikkkan army.” Perez defines the enemy as the United States government and exposes their negligence.
“Nixon is a liar, and he’s surrounded by other liars and hypocrites. Since 1969, the white house has known about the increase of drug addiction in the army. They have received many reports about this, but instead of being honest and presenting this problem to the people they are supposed to represent, they covered it up”
In a direct statement from CAM, they held a general meeting to discuss their organization’s updated goals and even there, they faced resistance from the Chilean government. They resisted against them successfully enough to finish their meeting in totality. In this statement, they address the allegations that they are terrorists without a motivation and other propaganda that the Chilean government has raised against them.
On June 21, 1990, U.S. political prisoners sent a statement to Nelson Mandela, who, at the time, was the Deputy Vice President of the African National Congress. In the statement, US political prisoners compared the criminalization of radical and progressive movements for social and political change within the US to what was happening in South Africa as well as contrasted the ways in which racism presents itself in both countries. They seek to relate to Mandela as because of his political views and activities on behalf of the African American community, he was a political prisoner himself. Additionally, they express solidarity with those in South Africa, who like them, are fighting a struggle for freedom against racial oppression.
In Chile, the Machupe people are an indigenous group that have been fighting off outsider invaders to their land and livelihood for years. The Lafchenke Machupe groups are a resistance group that use tactics like sabotage, arson, and violent resistance to push out the Chilean government, who they now see as invaders to their ancestral land, and protect their forests/land from destructive practices. Below, there is a statement the group released in which they take responsibility for sabotage and arson against corporations and government efforts.
In October 1968, Al-Fateh delivered a statement at the 23rd session of the General Assembly of the UN. In this statement, Al-Fateh compared the Palestinian resistance movement to those against German occupation during WWII, declared the continuance of this struggle against the foreign occupation of Palestine no matter the time taken, rejected the proposed Security Council resolution, called on the United Nations and the peoples of the world to take a stand in respect to the cause of the displaced Palestinian people, in addition to making various other demands.
The Iranian Green Movement, also known as the Persian Awakening or the Persian Spring, came to existence after the June 12, 2009 Iranian Presidential Election, in which activists demanded the removal of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from office. On February 4, 2023, the leader of Iran’s Green Movement, Mir Hossein Mousavi, released this statement, calling for a “fundamental change” in Iran based upon “Woman, Life, Freedom.” He argues for the drafting of a new constitution as well as a transition towards democracy led by an “assembly of founders.” Mousavi notes that Iranians have stopped believing in the government’s ability to reform itself, and instead calls for a referendum for Iranians to vote on both a new constitution and a new government rooted in democratic ideals.
This is a communique published by Occupy Oakland in solidarity with Longshore workers in Longview, Washington. Occupy Oakland strongly condemns the actions taken by Export Grain Terminal (EGT), as the company has engaged in union busting as well as repression and recrimination against Longshore workers. Additionally, Occupy Oakland cites these actions by EGT as the reason for why it mobilized to shut down the Port of Oakland and concludes by declaring its solidarity with Longshoremen and commitment to shutting down the 1%.
Occupy Oakland, a part of the larger Occupy Movement, published this piece calling for a blockade of all the West Coast Ports in order to shut down operations and disrupt the profits of the 1%. They reflect on the success of the Oakland Port shutdown that had occurred the previous month, highlighting the effectiveness of solidarity and uniting together in struggle.
As the quote below indicates, the Dalit Panthers were a group shaped after some of the ideologies of the Black Panthers. Dalits are know as untouchables and they are at the very bottom of the caste system. They were resisting the oppressive nature of the caste system and the marginalization that it caused these people, especially by the caste members at the top. The government at this point was run by the upper members of the caste system so Dalits felt as if their needs were being ignored by those in power. In their manifesto linked below, there’s a clear explanation of all the tiers of their organization and ideological aspects.
“Due to the hideous plot of American imperialism, the Third Dalit World, that is, oppressed nations and Dalit people are suffering. Even in America, a handful of reactionary whites are exploiting blacks. To meet the force of reaction and remove this exploitation, the Black Panther movement grew. From the Black Panthers, Black Power emerged . . . We claim a close relationship with this struggle.“
In this document, Tecumseh, a Shawnee chief and warrior, details a message of both resistance and spirituality. He writes to a community larger than just the Shawnee, calling on all the “red men” to unite and to reclaim the land that has been stolen from them by the “white people.”
“The way, and the only way, to check and to stop this evil, is for all the red men to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land, as it was at first, and should be yet; for it never was divided, but belongs to all for the use of each.”
During the aftermath of the Great Recession, between September 17 and November 15, 2011, the Occupy Wall Street movement occurred in opposition to economic inequality, corporate greed, money in politics, and big finance. This document was drafted by the Call to Action Working Group and ratified by the New York City General Assembly on September 29, 2011. The piece explained who the occupiers were and why they were taking up public space. A list of grievances are included in the document as well as a call to action for all communities to take action to assert their power.
In a newspaper article from the Young Lords in 1970, Iris Morales writes about the genocide committed against Puerto Rican women. In 1947-1948, “7% of the women were sterilized; between 1953-1954, 4 out of every 25 Sisters were sterilized; and by 1965, the number increased to 1 out every 3 women.” Morales identifies the United States government and capitalist systems as the perpetrators of this genocide. She states that sterilization is a mechanism the racist government uses to control the Puerto Rican population. She calls on fellow Puerto Rican women and men to work together to raise awareness of this genocide and resist the demise of the future generation of Puerto Ricans.
Jeunesse Communiste Révolutionnaire, a French Trotskyist organization, wrote this piece, describing the transition from a student revolt into a general strike of workers contesting capitalist society during the May 1968 events. The organization included a list of demands and called on other workers and students to join them in the future actions they will take in their fight against the current system.
This document is a firsthand account of the events that occurred in Paris, France during the May 1968 time of unrest. The anonymous author describes the various strikes, occupations, and other actions taken by workers and students between the period of May 3rd to May 18th.
Paris, France, beginning in May of 1968, was a city filled with general strikes, demonstrations, and occupations of universities and factories by students and workers. In this piece, the Enragé-Situationist International Committee Council for Maintaining the Occupations calls for the creation of workers councils as the solution to gain working-class autonomy in the proletariat revolutionary project. They reflect on the way in which their occupation of factories and public buildings has brought the economy to a halt and led to a widespread questioning of society, calling on the international proletariat to join in the fight for this transformation.
“This is the beginning of a revolutionary movement, a movement which lacks nothing but the consciousness of what it has already done in order to triumph.”
On December 2, 1964, Mario Savio, an activist and key member of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, gave an address on University of California, Berkely’s campus at the Sproul Hall sit-in. Many students, including Savio, had spent the previous summer in Mississippi, participating in what became known as the “Freedom Summer” and helping to register Black sharecroppers to vote. These students then began fighting for the necessity of Free Speech on college campuses. In this address, Savio detailed two different ways in which civil disobedience can occur and previewed the direct actions that were about to take place in the storming of Sproul Hall to fight against the restrictions on political speech and actions on campus.
“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”
This piece is an excerpt from the book, Confessions of an Eco-Warrior, written in 1991 by Dave Foreman, a co-founder of Earth First!. In this excerpt, Foreman details the principles, practices, and goals of Earth First! activists.
“It is through becoming part of the wild that we find courage far greater than ourselves, a union that gives us boldness to stand against hostile humanism, against the machine, against the dollar, against jail, against extinction for what is sacred and right: the Great Dance of Life.”
On July 20, 2009, workers of the Vestas Wind Systems factory in Newport, Isle of Wight, occupied the factory after finding out that more than 525 jobs from both the Isle of Wight and the Southampton factories were moving abroad. In their statement, the occupiers called on the government to nationalize the factory, arguing that keeping it open is necessary for the livelihoods of the workers as well as for the health of the planet.
On February 6, 2020, Indigenous youth in Canada began their occupation of the ceremonial gates and steps to the B.C. Legislative Assembly in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en Nation, who were resisting an encroachment on their sovereign territories by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). The RCMP sought to seize the land to allow for the construction of Coastal GasLink’s new fracked gas pipeline. The Indigenous youth issued a statement on February 26, 2020, laying out their demands for Canadian officials and calling on them to stop the human and indigenous rights violations by the RCMP happening in Wet’suwet’en territory.
This document is a written account by Jorge Martin, the International Secretary of Hands Off Venezuela, of his November 2008 visit to PT Istana, an occupied and now worker-run factory in North Jakarta, Indonesia. The story of how employees of CV Melody occupied the factory in an effort to fight off attacks by the company for their decision to unionize as well as how they began worker-controlled production are detailed in the piece.
This is a communique from the occupation of a business administration building at San Francisco State University in the fall of 2009. Occupiers were protesting budget cuts and fee increases. In this communique, students connect their movement to anti-racist and labor movements, to the protests against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to the occupation of Alcatraz Island by the Indians of All Nations, as well as to the wider struggle against capital.
“Although occupation, or reclaiming space, is not a historically new idea, it is a new form of struggle for many of those disillusioned with the promises of lobbying, those too tired of petitioning “our” elected leaders, those who have lost all faith in politics as they know it. As direct actions like these redefine socially-acceptable modes of protest, occupations themselves redefine the power-relations at the site of struggle.”
This document contains excerpts from the zine created after the occupation of Wheeler Hall at the University of California, Berkeley on November 20, 2009. The occupation was the apex of three days of demonstration after the University of California’s Board of Regents had voted to raise student fees by 32%. Rather than issue a communique, the occupiers chose to have their individual statements gathered into a zine composition.
“We will take buildings, streets, and all that is necessary until we are free and rid of this bureaucratic, authoritarian, and unjust structure…We will occupy, we will appropriate, and in turn, we will liberate.”
Following the creation of the Young Lords in 1969, two members of the party were murdered by American officials due to their resistance. For years Puerto Rican citizens have been “dying mysteriously” at the hands of United States institutions. In this newspaper article, Young Lords member Juan Gonzalez identifies the enemy of the party: privatization and authority. In order to protect themselves and reject their marginalized position, Gonzales influences members to arm themselves in order to reject the hierarchy of power within United States institutions.
In October 1970, Hundreds of Young Lords members occupied the People’s Church, waving Puerto Rican Flags, chanting their support, and demanding that the murder of Julio Roldan be avenged. After the dissatisfaction with the official reports and response to the murders, the Young Lords took the People’s church to create a community space where Puerto Ricans could seek support that was previously denied to them by the United States government. They showed up armed to protect themselves from the mass murder of Puerto Rican citizens by U.S. officials. In their occupation, they set up bail funds, offer draft counseling, and provide lawyers and counseling.
From the Newspaper Palante, in July 1970s, the Young Lords revealed the death of 31-year-old Carmen Rodriguez, who went to Lincoln Hospital to receive an abortion. When Rodriguez entered the operating room, doctors neglected to view her medical history, which revealed she had a heart condition. The medication the doctors gave her during the procedure was unsafe for people with heart conditions, and Rodriguez passed shortly after receiving the dosage. The Young Lords expose capitalism for gatekeeping food, clothing, and shelter from Puerto Rican communities, which led to Carmen’s necessity for abortion. The neglect in healthcare is an additional example of how American systems fail and murder Puerto Rican communities.
Carmen was forced to go for an abortion because under this capitalist system that which is our right—food, clothing, and shelter—is kept from us. Instead we become the drug addicts, the prostitutes, the ill, and the hungry. What choice does a sister have when she is pregnant, thinking of providing for her child? Will he or she grow up to be a junkie or maybe die in the wars created by amerikkkan greed and madness? We know there is but one choice. Armed self-defense and armed struggle are the only means to liberation.
This document was produced by the same group that wrote the Alcatraz Proclamation. In this piece, the occupiers demanded ownership of Alcatraz Island in the name of the Indians of All Tribes. They described the many injustices forced upon them by the “Whitemen” and made it clear that they are there to stay on the island. Through this piece, the authors redefined both what it meant to be “Indian” as well as their subsequent place within society.
Birthright Unplugged is an organization that aimed to give people a perspective on what the Palestinian people endured throughout their occupation. During this program, participants meet with Palestinian activists and other members of the community while visiting different sites. This organization is partially a response to Birthright Israel, that offers young Jewish people a free trip to Israel. Birthright Unplugged’s symbol is a form of cultural jamming by using the same symbol as Israel’s program with the colors of the Palestinian flag. Travel has become a way to disrupt a powerful institution’s injustices by creating awareness and inviting people to learn the full story. Oftentimes, these sponsored trips only offer specific narratives from a Zionist, occupier perspective. Below are just a few pictures from the very first trip. To explore more, this is the link to their website!
“When oppressed, silenced, and marginalized communities tell us their story, they are asking for something in return, asking us to take a stand as they have. To speak out as they have. To take risks, as they have. To truly listen is to know that we must truly act.” — June Jordan
Movimiento Sin Tierra (MST), also known as the Landless Workers Movement, began in Brazil and has since spread across the Americans to places like Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia. MST fights for access to land for poor workers. Due to unresponsive governments, high levels of poverty, and the elite’s monopolization on land ownership, MST forms groups to occupy land and create settlements. This document provides an inside look into Bolivia’s Landless Workers Movement based upon interviews conducted with those involved in MST Bolivia.
“We no longer ask the authorities to give us the land, because when we do that, they cut us off. We go directly to lands…We enter, we work, we occupy the lands.” – Wilfor Colque Caceres, secretary of the MST Bolivia National Coordinating Committee
