A love letter to US activists from Puerto Rico, giving advice on barricades, assemblies, and wresting the street from police control.
A barricade makes a lot of difference too. The police’s job is to remove protestors and our goal is to protest as long as possible. A barricade makes them think twice about charging the crowd. Their job is to shoot tear gas and then thousands of people run and it’s a stampede.
Two articles – Self Management and Hierarchy and The Hungarian Source – by Castoriadis, leading member of the Trotskyite French radical libertarian socialist group Socialisme ou Barbarie that argue for the disruption of workplace hierarchy through worker self-management turning to the often overlooked 1956 Hungarian Uprising as example.
Ferreras, Méda, and Battilana Covid-19 inspired Manifesto subsequently published in 43 Newspapers in 36 countries, calling for a revival of the workers councils, the decommodification of labor, and the disruption of environmental degradation.
To join project or downloading manifesto in 27 other languages go to: https://democratizingwork.org/
“We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.”
Short documentary filmed at the height of the 2013 Turkish Uprising focusing on the liberated zone of Taksim Square and the neighborhood assemblies in its aftermath.
Tree-sits, ground blockades, scouting, tunneling, evading, and monkey-wrenching, the most up to date and complete Earth First! manual on defending the earth.
A collection of slogans spray-painted on the walls and halls of Paris in May 1968.
In the decor of the spectacle, the eye meets only things and their prices. We will ask nothing. We will demand nothing. We will take, occupy. Barricades close the streets but open the way. Be Realistic, Demand the Impossible
Classic anarchist text by Hakim Bey about creating temporary spaces that elude formal structures of control. From Pirate Utopias to Nomadic Bands, Poetic Terrorism to Ontological Anarchy, Hakim Bey draws on history and philosophy to think through spatial and mental liberation.
"The TAZ springs from the historical development I call “the closure of the map.” The last bit of Earth unclaimed by any nation-state was eaten up in 1899. Ours is the first century without terra incognita, without a frontier."
Step by step guide on organizing an eviction defense including direct actions against Banks, Police, Judges, and Corporate Property Managers.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Organizing Direct Actions Against Eviction
The Demands of the police-free Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone established in Seattle, USA on 8 June during the height of the 2020 Black Lives Matter Uprising. These included the abolition of the city’s police department and criminal justice system and the wholesale uprooting of Seattle’s racist economic, health, and educational structures.
Although we have liberated Free Capitol Hill in the name of the people of Seattle, we must not forget that we stand on land already once stolen from the Duwamish People, the first people of Seattle, and whose brother, John T. Williams of the Nuu-chah-nulth tribe up north was murdered by the Seattle Police Department 10 years ago.
Black Lives Matter — All day, Every day.
Account of the Young Lords occupation of a seldom used church to create space for free children’s breakfast program, a liberation school, and a people’s day care center.
In 1970, Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx was collectively occupied by local heroin addicts, revolutionary health organizations, the Young Lords, and the Black Panther Party. In her 2018 film The People’s Detox, Jenna Bliss uses documentary storytelling to explore the history of a revolutionary drug clinic in New York City in the 1970s that profoundly transformed contemporary notions of health and care.
Click link to video:
https://www.kunstverein-muenchen.de/en/program/schaufenster/2021/jenna-bliss
Account of and reasons behind the Young Lords barricading and occupation of the South Bronx Lincoln Hospital in Nov 1970 to set up a community drug program. The occupation aimed to: 1) Implement a drug program that would
serve the community effectively and be run by the community, 2) Provide an educational program that would teach the true nature of our oppression and the connection between capitalism, dope and genocide.
We must begin to ask questions about all the things that affect the lives of Puerto
Rican and Black people. Who can better determine what’s best for ourselves than us?
Essay arguing for the material and theoretical logic behind the disruption of the circulation of capital. A mapping of the logistical infrastructure of California with assessment of its major choke points
“It should be obvious by now that logistics is capital’s own project of cognitive mapping. […] We might imagine, then, a logistics against logistics, a counter-logistics which employs the conceptual and technical equipment of the industry in order to identify and exploit bottlenecks, to give our blockaders a sense of where they stand within the flows of capital.”
Now classic text by French collective – The Invisible Committee describing the present impasse through seven circles of hell and the way out through the insurrectionary commune
The goal of any insurrection is to become irreversible.
It becomes irreversible when you’ve defeated
both authority and the need for authority, property
and the taste for appropriation, hegemony and the
desire for hegemony. That is why the insurrectionary
process carries within itself the form of its victory, or
that of its defeat. Destruction has never been enough
to make things irreversible. What matters is how it’s
done. There are ways of destroying that unfailingly
provoke the return of what has been crushed.
How to occupy a building. Tips and tactics on entry, sealing the building, access, and defense against eviction.
Step-by-Step guide for covering your tracks including scouting, prep, CCTV evasion, DNA Forensics, and arrest.
Expect to be seen on camera during the action. Don’t
get too paranoid about cameras in the surrounding areaa standard CCTV camera has poor resolution in the
dark, if police even bother to get the footage before
it’s overwritten automatically. All surfaces of any tools
you’ll be using should be thoroughly wiped with rubbing
alcohol ahead of time to remove fingerprints, and cotton
gloves should be used during the action (leather and
nylon will retain your fingerprints on the inside). Do
not take your cell phone, or if you must, remove the
battery; it geo-locates even when powered off.
Tactics and Techniques for Countering Police Assaults on Indigenous Communities. Covers everything from evading police and crowd control tactics including chemical weapons, water cannons, and armored vehicles.
Introduction_______________________________ 2
Personal Security & Surveillance________________ 3
Personal Protective Clothing and Equipment_______3
Know Your Enemy: Police Crowd Control
Tactics and Weapons_________________________ 7
Chemical Agents____________________________ 8
Less-Lethal Launchers________________________ 9
Lethal Weapons / Firearms____________________ 12
Other Police Weapons________________________ 12
Armoured Vehicles__________________________ 14
Water Cannons_____________________________ 18
Blockades_________________________________ 19
Notes from “Shut the province down”_ 22
Operations manual_________________________ 23
Step-by-step manual on safety, sabotage, and blockades of rail infrastructure from France.
“The interruption of electricity, goods or data streams with the aim of disturbing the functioning of capitalist logic or the infrastructure of the ruling order has always been a form of resistance.” We hope this reading can be helpful as a “spark of inspiration” for your very personal blockade and sabotage experiences.”
A basic overview of scouting techniques including cover stories, useful equipment, and what to look out for when planning everything from a blockade to a banner drop.
A scout should provide information that will allow her to
evaluate site access, security, the kind of image
the action will provide (especially relevant if visual messaging
is important), safety concerns, and probability of success.
Thinking about weather, lighting, finding useful symbols or
signage, and understanding traffic and security patterns are
all concerns that are critical for action planning.
First off, understand that you CAN do this. For the last 18 months groups as small as 8 have been disrupting and occupying pipeline construction sites all over Turtle Island. It takes even fewer than that to accomplish more clandestine activities which can be equally [or more] disruptive. Download for full guide.
1. Identify Your Goals
2. Scout Potential Sites
3. Implications of Territory
4. Pick Your Target
5. get your shit together!
7. Create an Entrance Plan
6. Fill Roles
8. Get a System Going
9. Keep it Interesting
10. Make Several Exit Plans
Ingredients:
Full Guide Below:
Gerson discusses the transition of Occupy Movement from occupation of Public Squares to Port Blockades and the disruption of global commodity circulation.
On December 12th 2011, the Occupy movement shut down the major west coast ports of Oakland, Portland, Longview (Washington), and Seattle. There were partial shutdowns or support actions at the ports of San Diego, Vancouver, and Long Beach, as well as in Hawaii and Japan. Wal-Mart distribution centers were blockaded in Denver, Salt Lake City, and Albuquerque.
Luci Cavallero and Verónica Gago discuss the March 8th feminist strike in Argentina in both global and historical context. They argue that the strike disrupts multiple domains of patriarchal society – weaving together judicial power as a gear in patriarchal violence, financial-economic power, and the urgency of demands for economic autonomy as an indispensable part of any confrontation with sexist violence.
The feminist strike enables other meanings capable of responding to pain, but without becoming trapped in victimism.
The first written essay by Subcomandante Marcos serving as “tour guide” to the state of Chiapas, desecrated by years of extractive neoliberalism. Written a year and a half before the Zapatista uprising, it outlines all the reasons that prompted the revolt.
“Everyone is dreaming in this country. Now it is time to wake up…
The storm is here. From the clash of these two winds the storm will be born, its time has
arrived. Now the wind from above rules, but the wind from below is coming…
The prophecy is here. When the storm calms, when rain and fire again leave the country
in peace, the world will no longer be the world but something better.”
– The Lacandon Jungle, August 1992
Stirring poem by the EZLN describing the meaning behind the Zapatista mask. A mask that negates and raises their indigenous identity into a universal subjectivity gathering all who have been excluded, forgotten, beaten, and despised. A short and beautiful text given below and as PDF.
This is who we are.
The Zapatista National Liberation Army.
The voice that arms itself to be heard.
The face that hides itself to be seen.
The name that hides itself to be named.
The red star who calls out to humanity and the world
to be heard, to be seen, to be named.
The tomorrow to be harvested in the past.
Behind our black mask,
Behind our armed voice,
Behind our unnameable name,
Behind us, who you see,
Behind us, we are you.
Behind we are the same simple and ordinary men and women,
who are repeated in all races,
painted in all colors,
speak in all languages,
and live in all places.
The same forgotten men and women.
The same excluded,
The same untolerated,
The same persecuted,
We are you.
Behind us, you are us.
Behind our masks is the face of all excluded women,
Of all the forgotten indigenous,
Of all the persecuted homosexuals,
Of all the despised youth,
Of all the beaten migrants,
Of all those imprisoned for their words and thoughts,
Of all the humiliated workers,
Of all those dead from neglect,
Of all the simple and ordinary men and women,
Who don’t count,
Who aren’t seen,
Who are nameless,
Who have no tomorrow.
Brothers and Sisters
You can see we are the rebellious mirror
that wants to be a pane of glass and break.
You can see we are who we are so we can stop
being who we are to become the you who we are.
General Command of the EZLN
Opening Ceremony of the First Intercontinental
Encuentro for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism
July 1996
(Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, 2001c: 111-112)
Thesis examining U.S. radical feminism as the arrest of patriarchal order, gaze, and time
Radical feminists were adamant about their overarching anti-establishment ethos and they believed that the liberal quest for concessions from the United States’ hierarchically, bureaucratically organized political system merely confirmed the legitimacy and dominance of a political order comprised by men and sustained by male values.
Mehmet Dosemeci questions why we have come to understand the history of social struggle through the category of movement and discusses the complicity of movements with the social order they are struggling against. Offers an alternate history of social struggle as the arrest or interruption of the existing order.
Why do we think of social struggles as movements? What is in motion and where is it going? Has struggle been thought and practiced otherwise? Not as movement but as disruption, arrest, stasis? If so, what are struggles trying to stop? Asking these questions pushes us to think about struggle kinetically: to analyze social struggle through the register of motion and its interruption.
Ben Harper weaves together Weil, Agamben, and Badiou’s thought to discuss disruption in the Age of Trump. Interesting take on use of disruption by the right and its capture by the status quo.
What emerges from considering Weil, Agamben, and Badiou, is how disruption—far from inaugurating any novelty or instability—remains internal to the overarching workings of force, sovereignty, and the dominant structure.
In which the rebel girl describes various forms of sabotage including limiting the over-supply of workers through contraception
It is my hope that workers will not only ‘sabotage’ the supply of products, but also the over-supply of producers. In Europe they are saying, “We are going to limit the supply of workers on the market. We are not going to have 10, 12, 14 children for the army, the navy, the factory, and the mine.”
Speech given by Bill Haywood in New York City on March 16, 1911 and subsequently published by I.W.W. in pamphlet form. Delivered on the 40th anniversary of the Paris Commune, Haywood traces the history of the general strike since 1871, its use as a disruptive tactic, and its relation with the ballot
When anything happens to disturb the profits, what do the capitalists do? They go on strike, don’t they? They withdraw their finances from that particular mill. They close it down because there are no profits to be made there. They don’t care what becomes of the working class. But the working class, on the other hand, has always been taught to take care of the capitalist’s interest in the property. You are always looking after the interest of the capitalist, while a general strike would displace his interest and would put you in possession of it.
A pamphlet giving the day by day account of the 1981 Brixton Uprisings, race tension/solidarity, and theoretical reflections on the rise of the “Impossible Class”. Written at the height of capital restructuring in the UK and articulated with Italian Autonomist flair, Here it is, in two parts.
We are interested less in how the working class suffers unemployment than in how the class becomes recomposed in ways which undermine the discipline of the entire labour market which tries to label us as the “the miserable unemployed” in the first place.
Where Naft (aka Arnold Roller) argues for the social general strike as the weapon come of age for the working class. Countering social democratic critics, Naft argues that the disruptive effects of the general strike would precipitate, if not be, the revolution itself.
The social general strike will completely interrupt production in the whole country, stop communication and consumption for the ruling classes long enough to totally disorganize the capitalistic society; so that after the complete annihilation of the old system, the working people can take possession through its labour unions of all the means of production.
The Social General Strike points to a thorough change of the present system: a social revolution of the world; an entire new reorganization; a demolition of the entire old system of all governments.’
French anarco-syndicalist Pouget‘s classic work on collective Sabotage as a critical disruptive strategy of the working class. The short treatise was influential in popularizing sabotage as a disruptive tactic for workers in Latin Europe and – through the IWW – in the United States.
Sabotage: A pestiferous epidemic, becoming to the body social of capitalism more dangerous and incurable than cancer and syphilis are to the human body
Carla Lonzi, leading member of the Italian feminist collective Rivolta Femminile, 1970 pamphlet against patriarchal thought, history, and time. In this text Lonzi attacks Hegel (and Marx’s) notions of antagonism, progress, and historical development and calls for a subaltern history of women through the recovery of her perishable traces.
We consider incomplete any history which is based on nonperishable traces.
The future of the world does not lie in moving continually forwards along a path mapped out by man’s desire for overcoming difficulties.
Not being trapped within the master-slave dialectic, we become conscious of ourselves; we are the Unexpected Subject.
Classic text by Walter Benjamin, Marxist Jewish-German philosopher loosely affiliated with the Frankfurt School. Written in 1940 shortly before Benjamin committed suicide at the Franco-Spanish border fleeing Nazi invasion.
In the text, Benjamin critiques the idea social progress and lays forth a revolutionary temporality that connects past and present struggles allowing for their mutual recognition and redemption.
Thinking involves not only the flow of thoughts, but their arrest as well.
[He] grasps the constellation which his own era has formed with a definite earlier one…blasting open the continuum of history…Thus he establishes a conception of the present as the ‘time of the now’ which is shot through with chips of Messianic time.