an anarchist journal of dangerous living

We know what a boot looks like
when seen from underneath, we know the philosophy of boots.

Soon we will invade like weeds, everywhere but slowly:
the captive plants will rebel with us, fences will topple,
brick walls ripple and fall, there will be no more boots.
Meanwhile we eat dirt and sleep; we are waiting under your feet.
When we say Attack
you will hear nothing
at first.

“Someday a real scum will come and wash all the reign off the streets.”

-Smedvig Robray

Welcome.

And congratulations.

Were delighted that you could make it. Getting here wasn’t easy, we know.

To begin with, for you to be here now trillions of drifting atoms
had somehow to assemble in an intricate and intriguingly obliging
manner to create you. It’s an arrangement so specialized and par-
ticular that it has never been tried before and will only exist this
once. For the next many years (we hope) these tiny particles will
uncomplainingly engage in all the billions of deft, cooperative efforts
necessary to keep you intact and let you experience the supremely
agreeable but generally underappreciated state known as existence.

Why atoms take this trouble is a bit of a puzzle. Being you is not a
gratifying experience at the atomic level. For all their devoted atten-
tion, your atoms don’t actually care about you — indeed, don’t even
know that you are there. They don’t even know that they are there.
They are mindless particles, after all, and not even themselves alive.
(It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart
with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of
fine atomic dust none of which had ever been alive but all of which
had once been you.) Yet somehow for the period of your existence
they will answer to a single overarching impulse: to keep you you.

The bad news is that atoms are fickle and their time of devotion
is fleeting — fleeting indeed. Even a long human life adds up to only
about 650,000 hours. And when that modest milestone flashes past,
or at some other point thereabouts, for reasons unknown your atoms
will shut you down, silently disassemble, and go off to be other things.
And that’s it for you.

Still, you may rejoice that it happens at all. Generally speaking in
the universe it doesn’t, so far as we can tell. This is decidedly odd
because the atoms that so liberally and congenially flock together to
form living things on Earth are exactly the same atoms that decline
to do it elsewhere. Whatever else it may be, at the level of chemistry
life is curiously mundane: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, a
little calcium, a dash of sulfur, a light dusting of other very ordinary
elements — nothing you wouldn’t find in any ordinary drugstore —
and that’s all you need. The only thing special about the atoms that
make you is that they make you. That is of course the miracle of life.

Whether or not atoms make life in other corners of the universe,
they make plenty else; indeed, they make everything else. Without
them there would be no water or air or rocks, no stars and planets,
no distant gassy clouds or swirling nebulae or any of the other things
that make the universe so usefully material. Atoms are so numerous
and necessary that we easily overlook that they needn’t actually ex-
ist at all. There is no law that requires the universe to fill itself with
small particles of matter or to produce light and gravity and the other
physical properties on which our existence hinges. There needn’t ac-
tually be a universe at all.

So thank goodness for atoms. But the fact that you have atoms
and that they assemble in such a willing manner is only part of what
got you here. To be here now, alive in the twenty-first century and
smart enough to know it, you also had to be the beneficiary of an
extraordinary string of biological good fortune. Survival on Earth is a

surprisingly tricky business. Of the billions and billions of species of
living things that have existed since the dawn of time, most — 99.99
percent — are no longer around. Life on Earth, you see, is not only
brief but dismayingly tenuous. It is a curious feature of our existence
that we come from a planet that is very good at promoting life but
even better at extinguishing it.

The average species on Earth lasts for only about four million
years, so if you wish to be around for billions of years, you must be
as fickle as the atoms that made you. You must be prepared to change
everything about yourself — shape, size, color, species affiliation, ev-
erything — and to do so repeatedly. That’s much easier said than done,
because the process of change is random. To get from “protoplasmal
primordial atomic globule” to sentient upright modem human has
required you to mutate new traits over and over in a precisely timely
manner for an exceedingly long while. So at various periods over the
last 3.8 billion years you have abhorred oxygen and then doted on it,
grown fins and limbs and jaunty sails, laid eggs, flicked the air with
a forked tongue, been sleek, been furry, lived underground, lived in
trees, been as big as a deer and as small as a mouse, and a million
things more. The tiniest deviation from any of these evolutionary
shifts, and you might now be licking algae from cave walls or lolling
walruslike on some stony shore or disgorging air through a blowhole
in the top of your head before diving sixty feet for a mouthful of deli-
cious sandworms.

Not only have you been lucky enough to be attached since time
immemorial to a favored evolutionary line, but you have also been
extremely — make that miraculously — fortunate in your personal
ancestry. Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of
time older than the Earth’s mountains and rivers and oceans, every
one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to
find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed
by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so. Not one of
your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved,
stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected
from its life’s quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material
to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the

only possible sequence of hereditary
combinations that could result
— eventually, astoundingly,

and all too briefly —

in you.

table of contents

Getting Started . . .

3 Introduction: Where Revolutions Come From

4 Return to the Valley of Glossary of Terms

Commentary

6 Mission Accomplished: Why Bush is Counting on the Islamic
Resistance

Brand News

9 The Emigres Strike Back: Making Mayday a Threat Again
13 The Irrepressible Anarchists: Federal Infiltration and Repression

Testimonials

19 “Hey you! Stop!” The Arrest, Interrogation, and Trial of One Anti-
War Activist

24 Anti-Nationalist Nationalism: The Anti-German Critique and Its
All-Too-German Adherents
29 Report from the Hothouse: The Tomato Pickers
34 The Craziest Walk Ever: A Tour of Washington, DC on September
11, 2001

41 Match-Strikers: A Personal Story
Features

48 Languages of Legitimacy: The Legal System, Anarchists, and
Violence Against Women
54 Interview from the Front Lines

Old News

60 For Every Time I’ve Been Called Faggot: Queer Resistance from
Stonewall to the White Night Riots

Comics

64 Barcelona, June 2001: The World Bank Conference that Wasn’t

Recipes for Disaster
74 Computer Security: IP Addresses
79 Going to College

Art

85 Borf Anthology and Interview
Eulogy

96 ... for Richard Williams, including a brief history of the United

Freedom Front

Reviews

98 The Fine Art of Writing Reviews

101 Reviews, featuring Creating Anarchy by Ron Sakolsky, Begin to Hope
by Regina Spektor, A for Anarchy, and The New World

And . . .

103 Activity Page: Ad Lib Polemic and Wheatpasting Poster

105 Fiction: The Astrologer

106 Catalog and Crimethlnc. Shareholder Report

The honorable orators, the gazettes of thunder,

The tycoons, bigshots and dictators,

Flicker in the mirrors a few moments

And fade through the glass of death

For discussion in an autocracy of worms

While the rootholds of the earth nourish the majestic people

And the new generations with names never heard of

Plow deep in broken drums and shoot craps for old crowns . . .

The people will live on.

The learning and blundering people will live on.

They will be tricked and sold and again sold
And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,

The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,

You can’t laugh off their capacity to take it.

The mammoth rests between his cyclonic dramas.

This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.

There are men who can't be bought.

In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.

In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for
keeps, the people march
“Where to? what next?"

-Carl Sandburg,

Rolling Thunder is a biannual journal focusing on passionate living and
creative resistance in all the forms they take.

It is our attempt to offer a wild-eyed, fire-breathing, militant periodical
that can cover the adventures of a dissident high school student skipping class
as easily as a riot that sets an embassy aflame:
that neither reduces the organic impulses of revolt to inert theory
nor prioritizes conventional activism over the subversive elements present in other walks of life
but instead focuses on sharing the stories of those who step out of line
(that is, of all of us, in our finest moments)
and sharing the skills developed in the process
(not to mention the poetry)
so that many more may do so
and do so more boldly

and so that liberty and community and all those other beautiful things
may triumph.

We're desperate to receive submissions of high caliber, of course, but
even more than that we want you to reconstruct the component parts
of this magazine according to your own needs. One of the reasons we
waste so much of the space herein on illustrations is so you can rip off
these images for your own posters, magazines, and illegal murals, and
the same goes for the text. Please, please don’t treat this magazine as
someone else’s property, the way the copyright warnings in the publica-
tions of your corporate enemies urge you to; you’ve got your hands on
it, now do something with it.

Found on the internet: “Crimethlnc., sometimes known as the Crimethlnc.
Workers’ Collective or the Crimethlnc. Ex-Workers’ Collective, is a non-hi-
erarchical anarchist organization that publishes anti-authoritarian writings
and videos and leaves vague hints that it is committing non-violent crimes,
most of which seem to involve leafleting. Crimethlnc. authors rarely sign their
documents, but you can check out their web page at Crimethinc.com."

Cover text from Margaret Atwood's You Are Happy, “Song of the Worms”

Printed on recycled paper with soy-based ink in Canada by Canadians.
They did a great job, didn’t they?

- Letters and images dutifully slopped together by
the Paul F. Maul Artists’ Group.

Crimethlnc. Free Association
P.O. Box 2133
Greensboro, NC 27402

rollingthunder@crimethinc.com

www.crimethinc.com

Page 2 : Masthead : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

Dream Alone, It’s Just a Dream . . .

Is it hardship that drives people to rise up against tyr-
anny? Can you count on people to revolt when things get
too tough?

No, that hasn’t been reliable: when mere survival under
the whip is demanding enough, revolt is stifled as often
as provoked 1 . All that speculation about Bush’s re-election
precipitating fiercer resistance turned out to be stuff and
nonsense — if anything, people in this country are more
demoralized now, even as life gets more difficult.

So is it improved living conditions, which give people
more time and energy to consider their situation and act
accordingly? In the 1960s, when the standard of living
increased along with leisure time, it seemed that people
became more rebellious rather than less. Does that mean
the first task of would-be revolutionaries is to be reformists?
Should we focus our energy on incremental improvements,
so one day things will be easy enough to undertake more
fundamental changes?

Unfortunately, that hasn’t proved effective either: many a
generation has been bought off with a share of the spoils of
oppression, even of their own oppression. As often as not,
reform campaigns consume more energy than they produce.
Worse, whenever revolutionary struggles come close to
victory, reformists rush to hijack them, negotiating peace
(i.e., a return to business as usual) between insurgents and
their former masters — perhaps accomplishing some of the
reforms that were impossible without open revolt, but at
the cost of that revolt and the greater objectives it might
have obtained. Reform campaigns are a pressure valve; at
best, the momentum they build up can carry over into more
thoroughgoing efforts, but it is the momentum that matters,
not the material gains won — that is, unless you’re one of
those people who thinks it’s fine and dandy for the world
to be reduced to strip mines, strip malls, and strip clubs, so
long as everyone can afford their wares.

1 “I have often heard reformers say that the working class does not revolt
because it is not yet wretched and starving enough, and that the sooner
economic conditions get worse the sooner they will revolt. This is another
wrong conception of men and conditions. Take the coal miners, the most
ill-paid and ill-treated wage workers in existence. To try to describe the
conditions of the miners of Western Pennsylvania is to attempt the impos-
sible. In many places grown men, with families, have not been able to earn
more than $1.50 a week. They are herded together in miserable, filthy
hovels, twelve or fifteen people occupying one room; for how else can they
pay the rent? Yet these men do not revolt, and never will.

But when I reached the districts where they earned $5 and $6 a week, I
found them carrying themselves with some pride and self respect, and open to
ideas. It is therefore an unpardonable mistake to sit with folded hands awaiting
the development of things to such a state that it will be too late to act. Men
with empty stomachs do not fight for freedom. They fight for bread; it is use-
less to appeal to the overfed, but still less use to appeal to the underfed.”
-Emma Goldman, “A Short Account of My Late Tour,” Solidarity, July 15, 1898

What fuels insurrections, then, if not suffering or its
alleviation? What inspires people to make dramatic changes
in their own lives and the world around them?

We’re betting our bottom dollar it’s contradictions. When
the tension between the lives people live and the lives they
wish they lived becomes too great, when they can imagine
alternatives and see proof that these are possible, things
start to happen. When discontent is brewing but few are
ready for all-out civil war, perhaps the most important
thing revolutionaries can do is emphasize those tensions,
intensify the contradictions with a propaganda of desire
that encourages people to demand more than the status quo
delivers. People are distraught and disappointed with the
disasters of capitalism and patriarchy by the restless billion;
everyone cherishes dreams of a better life that seems impos-
sible. By publicly validating those desires and offering small
examples of how to fulfill them, we can help each other
come out of hiding.

This is not particularly complicated in communities
that are overtly oppressed, although it is the most logisti-
cally difficult there: it requires demonstrating that some
of the challenges of survival can be solved collectively and
through collective resistance. But this approach can also
be applied in other contexts — wherever a secretary stares
longingly out the window, wherever a lover wishes she
could speak freely about her attraction to others, wherever
a grandmother languishes forgotten by her family. If our
critique of wealth and power is accurate — that is, that they
are not as fulfilling as sharing and partnership — everyone
in this society has a stake in transformation, not just the
losers of the power game.

Dear reader, don’t be bashful about your desires,
whether or not they make sense to those around you or fit
any established revolutionary paradigm. Confide them to
your friends and family as well as to strangers. Shout them
from the rooftops and in your school or office or church.
Paint them in bold letters on every wall and on banners for
parades. Proclaim them in anonymous communiques that
coincide with heroic acts of civic-minded sabotage. Detail
them in stolen photocopies and glossy-covered magazines.
And don’t stop there — whenever, in the course of all this,
you find a kindred spirit, get started immediately on making
everything you’ve fantasized about come true.

It’s a small enough world that we’ll probably run into
you out there in the course of all this. We’ll be the ones
with crazy hair and crazier ideas, giving out fliers for the
community garden or running from a flaming effigy in the
middle of what had been a placid shopping day. Hope to see
you soon.

. . . Dream Together, It Can Be Reality

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Getting Started : Page 3

Glossary
of Terms,
part III

Bohemian — Taste makes waste

Civic Duty — It is the responsibility of every
patriot to protect her country from its
government

Conformity — The reward for it is — everyone
likes you but yourself

Co-op — A cooperative venture, such as a
housing project or bulk food purchas-
ing group; alternately, a typographical
error for “co-opt”

Freedom of Speech — A device for condition-
ing people to speaking without acting;
once so conditioned, dissidents are
incapable of anything save a garrulous
impotence often characterized by over-
use of internet discussion forums and
a superstitious fixation on voting (see
also Free Speech Zone)

Heterosexual — Straight as in . . and nar-
row”

Hierarchical Status — A measurement of
worth that makes no reference to per-
sonal qualities, behavior towards one's
fellows, or capacity for self-determi-
nation, but only takes into account
how much power one has over other
people. In the death camps during
the Holocaust, Victor Frankl heard
a fellow prisoner say of a “capo” (a
prisoner given life-and-death control
over other prisoners by the Nazis):
“Imagine! I knew that man when he
was only the president of a large bank.
Isn’t it fortunate that he has risen so
far in the world?”

Journalism — The world's oldest profession

Mediatize — According to the Microsoft
Word dictionary, “to take control of
another country but allow its ruler to
retain his or her title and have some
role in governing the country.” No shit!
(see also Media)

Moral Indignation — Jealousy with a halo

Morale — The deciding factor between pas-
sivity and action. Too many would-be
revolutionaries underestimate the im-
portance of morale in strategizing for
militant struggle; in fact, it is usually
a more important factor than mate-
rial resources or speculative planning.
(see figure i.)

Nihilist — One who has ceased to care
about anything, i.e., one who carries
on with “normal life” regardless of
what is going on around him (see Ni-
hilism). Giving up hope doesn't mean
ceasing to respond to the forces acting
upon one — on the contrary, doing so
requires extravagant quantities of hope
(see Hunger Strike, Desertion, Resist-
ance) — but rather that one goes on
responding to them without investing
any of one’s actions with meaning.

Alternately, “nihilist” designates a
jaded malcontent who makes a pre-
tense of wishing to destroy everything
and having nothing to lose. Such pre-
tensions typically contribute to an un-
sociable individualism and dismissal of
collective struggle — though the project
of destroying everything will demand
more widespread participation than the
carrying out of mere reforms, as most
of that “everything” is cultural rather
than physical. A misguided nihilist
might retort that he wishes to destroy
everyone, as well — but that's fascism,
not nihilism.

Granted, there are many different
kinds of nihilism — many different
things one can say “are nothing,” many
different nothings to believe in.

Fear

Page 4 : Getting Started : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

figure i

Word of the Issue: Invincibility

The NATO bombing ofYugoslavia 1 in 1999 quickly decimated
most ofthat already battered nation’s defenses. We can imagine
the soldiers in their bunkers, sitting uselessly by their antiquated
weapons while undetectable airplanes rained bombs onto fortifica-
tions and hospitals alike. One night, one such soldier was killing
time at an anti-aircraft position when, to his surprise, a stealth
bomber appeared squarely in the middle of his radar screen. The
radar system was a full half-century old; it seemed like it must

l Gentle reader, please don’t misunderstand our recounting of this tale as
approval of the Yugoslav government or military, or any government or military.
Our sympathies lie with those who oppose all bombings, and with the unknown
wit who painted “Dear president, you were not at home when we needed you
most" on a Belgrade wall shortly after his residence was bombed.

be an error, but all the same, in total disbelief, he fired up the
obsolete surface-to-air missile launcher and took a shot at the
ghost in the sky. Overhead, the US Air Force pilot, fresh from
sowing the Serbian fields with blood, was jerked out of a pleasant
reverie by the shocking realization that two Soviet-era missiles
were headed directly at him. He ejected just in time to avoid being
blown to bits along with his 45-million-dollar aircraft.

Stealth bombers cannot be detected by modern radar systems,
but the only radar still working at that anti-aircraft outpost was
from the 1950s, and it turns out that systems from that era detect
them easily enough. The following week posters appeared across
Yugoslavia reading, “Sorry, we didn’t know it was invisible.”

Outside Agitator — A term of abuse, relying
on an unspoken distinction akin to the
one Malcolm X drew between the slaves
in the slaveholder's house and the
ones in the field. The term is generally
used by lapdog radicals who hope, by
smearing others, to retain their insider
status, their seat at the table.

Philanthropist — A capitalist sufficiently
intimidated by those he plunders to
return some of the spoils

Popular — Appealing to the lowest common
denominator (see Democratic). Alter-
nately, a political term meaning “of the
people,” always hotly contested as to
who, exactly, deserves the “the.”

This calls to mind the predicament
of contemporary autonomist Marxists
who, feeling the anarchist movement to
be too insular a social space, distance
themselves from it, only to become a
subculture within a subculture. There

is no returning to The Masses — once
your forays into theory have borne you
far enough away from them that you can
descry them and the benefits of being
one ofthem, the only return is through
the process of disillusionment, by which
one ceases to care about motivatingThe
Masses and thus can be reunited with
them. Likewise, there is no converting
them — no matter how many people
come to join you at your outpost, from
up close they will never look as impres-
sive as the distant crowds do.

Procrastination — We kill time and it kills
us back'

Property — We thieves had our revenge
when Proudhon convicted the bour-
geoisie of theft, (see figure ii.)

i “You want revolution now? I wish I had your

patience!”

Prudence — Better feel once than think twice

Terrorist — One who uses violence to intimi-
date, often for political purposes (e.g.,
police officers, heads of state, and all
who aspire to replace them); alternately,
a civilian brazen enough to defend her-
self or others from such violence

Weather — The pri mary su bject of conversa-
tion for those who don’t dare trust one
another. Populations cringing under
dictatorial rule are swept by discussions
of the weather as if by a hurricane.

Youth — Lack of experience in the art of
misspending one’s life — hence the pre-
ponderance of young people in resist-
ance and liberation struggles. If youth
is wasted on the young, think how it
would be squandered on the old!

“Get off this estate!”

“What for?”

“Because it's mine.”

“Where did you get it?"

“From my father.”

“Where did he get it?”

“From his father.”

“And where did his father get it?”

“He fought for it.”

“Well, we’ll fight you for it."

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Getting Started : Page 5

'"Today, an internet search for "Mission Accom-
plished” — the text on the banner that hung behind
Bush on Mayday, 2003, when he announced the
end of major military operations in Iraq — turns up
countless smug editorials from liberal and left-wing
pundits crowing about the bloody resistance to the
subsequent occupation. Don’t get them wrong, they’re
not enthusiasts of armed struggle — they're the first
to oppose even the mildest forms of resistance here
in the US; they just love to see things go wrong for
their political opponents. However many civilians die
in autonomous as well as state military operations,
the important thing is that rival demagogues get egg
on their faces, as this increases the chances of power
shifting into their willing hands.

Anarchists, too, have largely interpreted the civil
war in Iraq as a debacle for Bush and his cronies,
sometimes to the point of endorsing it without bother-
ing about what the insurgents are fighting for. Yes, it
is healthy for every person living under others' power
to resist; unfortunately, this does not mean that all
who do so struggle against “power over” itself. Over
the past year, the violence in Iraq has become more
reminiscent of the ethnic strife of twentieth-century
India than of an anti-imperialist liberation struggle.
Regardless, everyone still assumes that this violence
runs counter to Bush’s designs for the area.

At the risk of venturing into conspiracy theory,
let’s take a moment to consider an alternate scenario.
What ifthe Iraqi resistance is not unforeseen after all,
but a potential outcome the Bush regime took into
account — perhaps even the one they were counting
on? This seems counterintuitive, as every statement
they've made since the beginning ofthe war has given

nasty surprises we'd better allow for the
possibility that our rulers aren't as obtuse
and inept as they seem.

What, if anything, would the Bush admin-
istration stand to gain from replacing the
iron rule of Saddam Hussein over resentful
Iraqis with chaos, civil war, and resentment
against the US? The costs of this exchange
are obvious: it makes the US government and
military look incompetent, thus decreasing
the Republican Party’s chances of winning
the next election, and it facilitates Islamic
terrorist recruiting.

But perhaps the last ofthese effects is not
so undesirable. Bush’s regime derives much
of its popularity from the feeling that the
country is under attack; it's hard to imagine
where he’d be now if not for the terrorist at-
tacks of September n, 2001. It's not so much
of a stretch to hypothesize that, consciously
or not, he and his colleagues are pursuing a
course of action that will reinforce their posi-
tion by strengthening their enemies.

Islamic terrorist groups are certainly bet-
ter situated today than they were six years
ago. The September 11 attacks were the
work of a small number of people, and the
culmination of years of effort; now, with a
nationwide insurgency to participate in and
cull recruits from, not to mention a global
atmosphere of anti-Muslim persecution,
militant Islam is steadily gaining' stature.
At that time, it was difficult for such groups
to attract notice outside parts of the Mid-

dle East; now, they need only carry out one
major attack a year to remain the center
of international attention. Back then, they
had only managed to kill a few thousand
people; tens of thousands have perished
intheensuingwarsand inquisitions — and
for terrorists, it is the net total of violence
and horror that determines their power, not
the way their losses and gains compare to
those of their adversaries.

If further evidence were wanting, Hamas,
one ofthe most militant parties in the Middle
East, has now come to power in the Pales-
tinian government. This is the inevitable
consequence ofthe US government pursuing
a foreign policy that gives the Palestinians no
reason to trust its commitment to peace or
justice. The accession of Hamas to govern-
ment power gives the US and Israel further
excuses not to work towards peace, and in
turn pushes other Arab governments to take
sides against them. This feedback loop of
escalating conflict can only lead to more
and more violence.

Some years ago, I saw a survivor of the
Palestinian occupation speak. She maintained
that in their air strikes and assassinations,
the Israelis often deliberately targeted organ-
izers who were willing to negotiate towards
a peaceful resolution rather than the ones
most committed to violence 1 , presumably in
order to render diplomatic solutions impos-
sible. If her claims are true, they correlate well
with other policies of the Israeli right

wing, which also seem designed to provoke
terrorism by stomping out any other form
of resistance to Israeli injustices.

We must consider the possibility that
the long-term objective ofthe Bush admin-
istration is to provoke and promote Islamic
fundamentalist terrorism. This would explain
the otherwise senseless invasion of a crippled
nation governed by a secular dictator loathed
by Al Qaeda, and the otherwise botched han-
dling ofthe subsequent occupation, and the
current wrangling with Hamas and the Iranian
government: by destabilizing entire regions,
driving Muslims across the world to rage and
despair, and closing off all possibilities other
than autonomous acts of terrorist violence,
Bush and his colleagues hope to create a new
adversary for the sequel to the Cold War.

The Iraq war was not about oil alone;
as the hawkish party, the Republicans need
adversaries even more than they need world
domination. Like the Israeli right wing, they
benefit from conflict: they know that however
much people complain between elections, as
long as there’s a war on voters will fall in line
behind them when it’s time to cast ballots,
since the opposing party lacks the credentials
for wartime leadership. (Hence, it would be
most convenient for the current conflict with
Iran to come to a head in 2007, though this
may not be possible.) By a process of natural
selection, they have come to pursue

l Incidentally, in my years of experience in direct
action, I've often noticed a similar trend in the
United States: except in cases in which they ex-
pect to be able to deliver a decisive blow, police
and federal agents often go after liberal or pacifist
activists before militant ones. This holds true in
street confrontations and investigations alike: a
black bloc trashes a shopping district while the

police are busy beating up unarmed protesters in a
peaceful march; an Earth Liberation Front cell burns
down a condominium and the FBI shows up at the
doors of aboveground student environmentalists.
Perhaps this is because the security and self-defense
measures of militant activists make them less ac-
cessible or attractive targets, or because the top
priority ofthe forces of repression is to intimidate

newcomers out of long-term commitment to the
struggle — or perhaps our enemies believe that they
benefit from the escalation of confrontation, and see
militants as helping push things in this direction. If .
the last of these possibilities is the case, so much
the better — we also desire for everything to come
to a head; but we had better be more prepared for
it than they are, and that is a tall, tall order.

For further perspective on the way
adversaries help to prop up authoritar-
ian regimes, we can consult Orwell’s
1984, in which a totalitarian govern-
ment relies on a state of perpetual
war to maintain its control. The ideal
enemy is unable to win, but always
able to threaten, so subjects neither
feel too safe nor too fearful. The ideal
enemy is a mirror image of the govern-
ment, so subjects who might find fault
with their rulers are more outraged
by their enemies: if the government
is willing to sacrifice innocent life, the
enemy must be even more callous in
doing so; if the government promotes
a superstitious, repressive creed, the
enemy must fight in the name of an
equally superstitious and repressive
belief system. The ideal enemy must
provide excuses to justify the repres-
sion of internal foes, but must be
different enough from those foes that
there is no need to fear the two finding
common cause.

For the empire of global capitalism,
ethnic/religious terrorism is the
perfect foil. A rival empire would pose
an obstacle to global domination, but
terrorists can threaten everywhere
without ruling anywhere. Only cold-
blooded terrorism can make the humil-
iations of capitalist exploitation pale in
comparison; only terrorist aspirations
to power can make the rule of pluto-
cratic demagogues seem preferable.

policies that tend to get their supporters
shot down, blown up, and kidnapped, be-
cause these unfortunate effects drive more
supporters into their arms.

Mere world domination is no use to a
repressive regime. As soon as there are
no barbarians at the gates to point to as
the greater of two evils, the subjects start
getting restless — witness the decade fol-
lowing the fall of the Berlin Wall, when
internal resistance grew and grew in the
vacuum left by the Communist menace.
War-without-end may make people rest-
less, too, but it also keeps them busy
reacting to it, if not dying in it, instead of
cutting to the root of the matter.

Years of perpetuating the I srael i-Pales-
tinian conflict are paying off: militant Islam,
once a backyard startup company, is finally a
global threat, poised to replace the Commu-
nist Bloc 2 . Western-style capitalism has ex-
tended its influence and control so farthat
external opposition must now come from
previously peripheral corners of the world,
such as Afghanistan; a few fanatics from
that periphery were enough to inaugurate
the new era of Terror-vs. -Democracy back
in 2001, but it will take a lot more fanatics
to maintain, and the current US foreign
policy will produce them. The Republican
Party may lose the next election as the
result of public dismay over the untidiness
of the Iraq occupation, but so long as they
succeed in setting a long-term worldwide
conflict in motion first, they can count on
returning to power soon enough.

If all this speculation is correct, where
does that leave us anarchists, who also
struggle against global capitalism? First, we
should be extremely hesitant to cheerlead
militant Islamic resistance, except when
we have reason to believe it will produce
anti-authoritarian results. Solidarity with all

2 It's interesting to note that one of the factors
that helped bring about the end of the Soviet
Union was a protracted war with Muslim radicals
in Afghanistan, which the latter won in 1989 — the
year the Berlin Wall came down. In that regard,
militant Islam literally replaced communism as
the supposed antithesis to Western capitalism. A
year later, in a surprise decision to oust former ally
Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, the US moved forces
into the Middle East; predictably, this outraged Al
Qaeda — which had formed in Afghanistan during
thewarwith the Soviets — and the rest is history. It's
almost too convenient for the purposes of this analy-
sis that the CIA spent the ’80s funding and training
the same Muslim fundamentalists that immediately
went on to top their most-wanted lists.

who oppose oppression is critical for
the anarchist project, but the enemy
of our enemy is not always our friend:
as things stand right now, Osama bin
Laden and George Bush stand to gain
a lot more from this conflict than the
rest of us folks do. The specter of US
imperialism will no doubt enable
hierarchical powers in Muslim com-
munities to strengthen their hold over
others, just as terrorism has enabled
Bush to consolidate his power here.

We need to figure out who our allies
are overseas — who fights for liberty,
self-determination, and mutual aid
there as we do here — and do all we
can to support them.

To make it easier for people else-
where to feel that there is hope for
such a struggle, so they don’t settle
for joining up with the lesser of two
evils themselves, we need to fight hard
here at home. This is the anarchist
solution to the problem of foreign
terrorism and totalitarianism: if we
can sufficiently cripple ourown rulers,
foreign powers won't be able to justify
theirterrorand tyranny by pointingto
the threat our tyrants pose.

Above all, we must seize from
Bush and bin Laden the initiative
to define the contests of our day. As
long as the principal global conflict is
conceptualized as Democracy versus
Terrorism or the West versus Islam, it
will be increasingly difficult to mobi-
lize struggles on other grounds for
other objectives. If we hope to join
great numbers of people in the US and
abroad in a war against hierarchy rather
than each other, we will have to frame and
popularize new dichotomies.

In this sense, it is significant that the
US government is taking advantage of the
current climate to portray activists who
have nothing to do with militant Islam as
terrorists. Once enough US citizens who
have nothing to do with Al Qaeda are
branded with that epithet, the fault lines
of conflict will be drawn within this society,
rather than between it and another, and
it'll be a whole new ball game. Should the
overzealous FBI carelessly push things
past this threshold, their repression might
actually help make it clear to everyone
that the most important battles transcend
nationality and religion; but for that to be

possible, we’ll have to be tireless in sup-
porting our targeted comrades and fearless
in openly proclaiming our opposition to
the system. This is another function of
militant anarchist struggle in the US: to
bring the war home to such an extent
that it can no longer be framed as an us-
versus-them conflict with foreigners, but
becomes instead a confrontation between
classes within this country.

To prepare for the years ahead, we
should study the past decades of the Is-
raeli-Palestinian conflict, as it forms the
blueprint for the new world order. The fact
that it has proved irresolvable thus far
makes it a promising model for protracted
global war... but should anyone hit upon a
way of underminingthat impasse, however
so slightly, it might be a starting point for
an escape route out of this whole mess.

Page 8 : Commentary : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

The Emigres
Strike Back

Making Mayday a Threat Again

The Uprising Begins

The other day I was riding my bike through downtown
Tucson, on my way to write a story about recent indigenous
uprisings on a faraway island in Indonesia. My mind was
I occupied by mundane worries: low air pressure on the
rear tire, cars driving too close to me, wondering if I was
I getting skin cancer from so much sun.

I had nearly completed my daily pilgrimage to the
office when my trivial thoughts were interrupted by a sea
of people moving steadily in my direction from several
blocks away. There was joyful shouting, people carrying
indistinguishable flags and banners. “Wasn’t Saint Patrick’s
day last week?” I thought to myself. As I neared the energetic crowd,

I soon realized this was no state-sanctioned holiday, and it sure as hell
had nothing to do with the Irish.

Instead, I saw two or three hundred mostly Latino youth marching
defiantly down the street. Recalling the numerous record-breaking
protests against racist anti-immigrant laws of the past week, I realized
I had run into a student walkout.

As I neared the next block, I was amazed to find a group of three hun-
dred students already rallying in front of the federal building. In the next
half hour, the crowd swelled to over a thousand as more and more fugitive
students arrived in groups of ten, fifty, and a hundred. The energy and excite-
ment of these youthful rebels nearly overwhelmed me as their chants of
“Si se puede!” (Yes it can be done) rang through the air, at times drowned
out by the constant honking of supportive passersby. Others chanted “We
didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us!” in reference to the United
States’ arbitrary heist of the northern portion of Mexico over a century
ago. Still more carried signs reading “No human is illegal.”

The following day I was again riding my bike through downtown,
somewhat more prepared than before to run into a protest because I
had heard that students were planning another walkout. I was disap-
pointed when I encountered a small crowd of fifty kids walking on the
sidewalk. “I guess they let their steam out yesterday,” I thought pessi-
mistically to myself. As I rounded the corner onto Congress Ave, I was
forced to eat my words. This crowd was nearly double the size of the
previous day’s, overflowing the small plaza in front of the federal
building into the streets. The initial fifty were just stragglers. Soon
the massive crowd surged towards the federal courthouse, where
thousands of immigrants are deported every year, and proceeded
to block the entrance to this institute of oppression for half an
hour. Meanwhile, hundreds of other students cruised the streets

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Brand News : Page 9

of downtown in perilously overloaded vehicles, blasting the
music of their home countries, waving Mexican flags, and
carrying posters of Cesar Chavez. Whether or not it was
intentional, these cruisers, in conjunction with the sea of
protestors swarming downtown from all directions, brought
Tucson’s business district to a standstill.

The energy, defiance, and sheer power of these dem-
onstrations stands in stark contrast to the dreary, well-
behaved, state-approved parades put on by our country’s
numerous leftist organizations. “These are no mere
protests,” I thought to myself, “this is an uprising.” This
initial speculation was confirmed when I got back home
and looked at the news reports. Even the mainstream press
acknowledged that well over a thousand Tucson middle and
high school students had dropped their pens and paper and
taken to the streets to protest the government’s attempted
crackdown on immigration. At one school, someone pulled
a fire alarm after the principle attempted to direct students
into the gymnasium, ensuring their escape to the streets. At
another school, several dozen students scaled a barbed wire
fence after administrators locked the only exit shut . 1 Other
students took their anger out on the Border Patrol, notori-
ous for its rampant racism and sadistic abuse of detainees , 2
by throwing rocks at its Tucson headquarters.

Tucson was no isolated incident. In Los Angeles, thirty-
six-thousand students walked out three days in a row, shut
down four freeways, and several times found themselves
clashing with the LAPD when the latter attempted to break
up this spontaneous outbreak of rebellion. In Fort Worth, TX,
not exactly a hotbed of radicalism, several hundred students
walked out and proceeded to take over their city hall. The po-
lice responded by injuring several students, one of whom re-
quired hospitalization, to “restore order.” There’s nothing like
a group of grown, armed men beating the shit out of school
children! In Pasadena, CA police opened up on a crowd of
one-hundred-fifty students with pepper balls in an attempt
to disperse them. The students responded to this unprovoked
attack by throwing rocks and bottles at the police.

In San Diego, six thousand students took to the streets in
five days of class disruptions. On the final day they attempted
to take over the Coronado bridge which spans San Diego Bay,
but were stopped by a wall of California Highway Patrolmen.
In Santa Ana several government offices, including the tax
collector’s office, were shut down by student occupations.

I’ve Always Wanted to be an
Urban Guerrilla

This massive wave of civil disobedience on the heels of
the previous week’s pro-immigrant demonstrations that
brought millions into the streets is no doubt a sign of a
healthy and rapidly growing national rebellion. Where do
the predominately white anti-authoritarian and anti-imperi-
alist movements of this country fit into the picture?

1 Talk about dramatic symbolism.

2 Sound familiar?

First off, gringos need to understand that immigrants to
the US are for the most part fleeing the poverty, hunger, and
violent repression manufactured abroad by the government
of our country in order to ensure the relative comfort of our
lives here at home. It is no coincidence that the “flood” of
illegal immigrants from Mexico skyrocketed after the im-
plementation of NAFTA. The human beings who are risking
their lives (several hundred die every year) traversing the
arid borderlands are not doing so to steal people’s jobs. They
are trying to ensure the survival of their families by earning
slightly more than the starvation wages they find, if they are
lucky, south of the border 3 .

Radicals in the US should extend solidarity to the im-
migrant rights movement in every way possible. This is not
the time for professional activists to step up and “show the
masses the way.” The folks fueling the fire of this uprising
seem to have a pretty clear analysis of the situation and an
equally clear vision of how to win. The last thing they need
is some know-it-all honkies to come in and tell them what
to do. If you need further convincing of this fact, consider
that the immigrant rights movement has managed in a mat-
ter of weeks to mobilize an enormous and militant move-
ment that is already beginning to surpass what the anti-war
movement, with the “help” of all those well-paid profes-
sional activists, has accomplished in the past three years.

Sympathetic gringos can offer direct assistance by cook-
ing food for demonstrators, hanging posters, organizing
solidarity actions, offering rides to demonstrations and
meetings, acting as legal observers, raising hinds for legal ex-
penses (hundreds have already been arrested for acts of civil
disobedience), and of course showing up to demonstrations.

One role I believe we have a particular responsibility to
play is confronting racist boneheads such as the Minute-
men who have spearheaded the massive anti-immigrant
backlash. The shear idiocy of anyone of European descent
in North America complaining about illegal immigrants is
maddening enough — but when these bigots start walking
around with guns to protect, not so much the borders of the
US, but their racist ideals, and in return receive significant
backing from prominent Republicans and the media, we
have a duty to stop them . 4 Wherever these racist thugs hold
a rally, we should organize a larger counter-rally. Whenever
they organize a meeting, we should be there to disrupt it.
Those of us who live near the border can interfere with
their “civilian border patrols” by warning would-be crossers
of their presence. (A megaphone and a spotlight will help.)

We can show our solidarity by continuing to fight the im-
perialist policies that have impoverished other countries and
created this whole immigration “problem” in the first place.
Shutting down the WTO in Seattle was a good start, but we
totally dropped the ball on NAFTA and CAFTA. However, it

3 Even if they were just job-stealing, baby-making welfare leeches here for
a free ride, as the right wing asserts. I’d say good for them. After all we’ve
stolen from them and their countries, it’s merely a matter of them coming
and getting a little piece of the pie back — in other words, reparations.

4 Do you think if we show up to the next protest with assault rifles we’ll
get the media drooling all over us too?

is not too late to defeat the Free Trade Area of the Americas,
and resistance to it throughout the rest of the continent is
still fierce. I reckon it’s never too late to get the other two
repealed either. While welcoming economic and political
refugees into our country is a good start, if we want to create
a truly just world for everyone, we must destroy the policies
that force people to make the trek in the first place.

Radicals must address the anti-immigrant sentiment that
sometimes boils up within our own ranks — for example,
in certain sectors of the environmental movement. Groups
such as the Sierra Club have flirted for years with the
asinine notion that poor immigrants are somehow a major
source of ecological destruction in the US. The line of logic
proceeds thus: the increase in population is causing major
sprawl, and by moving to the US — hold your breath for this
one — immigrants start to consume at the rate that US citi-
zens do. If I understand this right, it’s OK for us to continue
consuming the world’s resources at a suicidal rate, but not
for anyone else to? Talk about blaming the victim! Instead
of scapegoating immigrants, we should be working first and
foremost to reduce our own consumption of resources.

Immigrants causing sprawl is an equally ridiculous
assertion. They are not the ones building the second and
third trophy homes that are eating up wilderness across the
country. On second thought, they often are the ones build-
ing these homes — not for themselves, but for the exorbitant
lifestyles of middle and upper class US citizens. Don’t even
get me started on the devastation that a massive border
wall, as some are calling for, would have on the ecological
integrity of the Sonoran desert ecosystem.

Radical immigrant groups that are fighting for better
wages and work conditions in the US also deserve support.

Groups such as the Farm Labor Organizing Committee
(FLOC) and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW)
have both launched numerous protests, boycotts, and
speaking tours to achieve better pay in the fields. During
FLOC’s boycott of Mt. Olive pickles, anarchists in North
Carolina helped by protesting at grocery stores (including
trashing Mt. Olive products in the store), painting banners,
and offering rides to FLOC organizers who did not have
documentation or driver’s licenses. The CIW recently won
in a boycott against Taco Bell to pay tomato pickers more
per pound, and have just launched a fresh boycott against
McDonalds hoping to achieve the same goal. I’m sure you
can think of a number of ways to help compel McD’s to
meet their demands.

Comida no Migra — “food, not border patrol” — is a new
take on the Food Not Bombs model that is catching on in
many communities across the US. Instead of serving lunch
or dinner in the park, participants get up early in the morn-
ing to bring food to immigrant day laborers at the places
where they wait for work. Not only does this provide folks
with a little sustenance and good cheer, it also puts observers
on site to make sure no one fucks with them. The Minute-
men, not knowing what else to do with their pathetic lives,
have started protesting at day labor sites to intimidate im-
migrants. Similarly, it’s not unheard-of for immigrants to get
picked up by some asshole, work all day, and then not get
paid; even worse, there have been incidents in which racists
have picked up day laborers and beaten or killed them.

There is a lot of work to be done in the fight for im-
migrant rights. Whether that means offering childcare
to families so that they can attend meetings, translating
information on workers’ rights into Spanish, or blockading

Page io : Brand News : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Brand News : Page 11

immigration detention centers, there are many fronts in
this battle and all of them are important. It would behoove
radicals in the US to study the solidarity work people in
Europe 5 and Australia have done around immigration and
asylum seeking. In Australia, activists have repeatedly bro-
ken political asylum-seekers out of detention centers and
provided them refuge. In Italy several years ago, a group of
activists actually dismantled an immigrant detention facility
while police looked on helplessly!

There is much we can offer. The fight for immigrant
rights is not about us and how radical our politics are. It is
about lending our solidarity to people in struggle.

Postscript: May 1 , 2006

I woke up this Mayday morning more excited then usual.
The air was clear and crisp but still warm enough to sport
only a t-shirt. It wasn’t the weather I was excited about,
though — I was anticipating this country’s first nationwide
general strike in several decades. The immigrant rights
movement had declared this fine spring day “A Day without
Immigrants.” They took the right wing rhetoric to the effect
that “we don’t need immigrants” and replied “Ok gringo, if
you don’t need us, we’re not going to go to work or school,
nor buy or sell anything on this day. Let’s see how well this
country runs.” Despite a number of spineless Latino “lead-
ers” condemning the strike, saying that it would create a
backlash 6 and send the wrong message, the strike was by
and large a stunning success.

Across the country immigrants and their allies walked
off the job, skipped school, shuttered the windows of
their shops, and refused to spend any money. In Phoenix,
thousands of workers took the day off and blockaded the en-
trances to various Wal-mart and Home Depot stores. Nearly
all the chain restaurants in the city had to close or slash
their hours due to the strike. Dozens of meatpacking plants,
employing thousands of workers, were closed down nation-
wide due to that industry’s reliance on immigrant labor.

Los Angeles was possibly hardest hit, with a good portion
of the city completely shut down. The port of LA, one of
the country’s largest, was ninety percent inactive thanks
to the overwhelming majority of truckers refusing to haul
goods that day. A small but rowdy portion of the more than
one million people who marched for immigrant rights in
LA chose to round off the day in running battles with the
police, throwing rocks and bottles, dragging debris into the
streets, and vandalizing outdoor advertisements. California’s
state legislature was forced to close when janitors, cafeteria
workers, and maintenance people did not show up to work
at the capitol building. Meanwhile, across the country, the
New York state legislature shut down mid-session when
Black and Latino legislators walked out in solidarity with
the protest. Back in California, the agricultural counties

5 Check out the No Border network — a massive European immigrants’
rights coalition — at www.noborder.org.

6 As if the bill then in Congress that would deport twelve million people
and militarize the US -Mexico border wasn’t a backlash!

were hit particularly hard, with major corporate farms such
as Gallo Wines being forced to halt production for the day.

A riot broke out in Santa Ana, CA when police tried to
disperse a crowd of fifteen-hundred that had taken over a
major boulevard. The crowd responded by raining bottles
and rocks on the cops, who were forced to retreat until a
riot squad was brought in to quell the revolt. In New York
City, scuffles broke out with police when a crowd thousands
strong attempted to take the Brooklyn Bridge.

Nearly half a million people marched through the streets
of Chicago, and another one-hundred-thousand marched
in Denver, where it was reported that scuffles broke out
between protestors and Minutemen counter-protestors.
Several hundred cities and small towns across the country
experienced demonstrations, many of them the largest
those cities had ever seen.

In a sign that the immigrant rights movement may be
diversifying, a Department of Homeland Security office
in Santa Cruz responsible for deporting immigrants had
its windows shattered overnight. According to a message
posted on the internet, dozens of banks and “financial insti-
tutions” had their locks glued and ATM machines sabotaged
in western North Carolina in an apparent move to support
the general strike.

South of the border throughout Mexico, hundreds of
thousands of people observed a sister day of protest labeled
“A Day without a Gringo,” in which Mexicans boycotted all
US business interests. Mexico City saw a crowd of several
thousand gather to listen to Zapatista leader Marcos speak
and to show their solidarity with their brothers and sisters
struggling north of the border. Afterwards, several hundred
demonstrators took a tour of the business district smash-
ing the windows of US-owned banks and restaurants. In
Monterey, a group of women gave out free tacos in front of
a McDonald’s in an effort to support the boycott. Mean-
while, every major border crossing from El Paso to San Di-
ego was shut down by groups of angry Mexican citizens on
their side of the border, preventing hundreds of thousands
if not millions of dollars worth of goods from crossing the
border that day.

All in all, this Mayday was no doubt one of the largest, if
not the largest, days of protest this country has ever seen.
Counting LA, Chicago, Denver, and DC alone, there were
nearly two million people in the streets, with an equal or
greater number joining in smaller demonstrations across
the US. It was a day of protest based on the principles of
direct action, the centerpiece of which was a general strike.
In many places demonstrators went further, blockading
businesses that exploit immigrants and engaging the police
in battles when push came to shove.

It is quite fitting that it is immigrants who have brought
Mayday back to its former splendor in this country. It was
here, in Chicago, that this international day of workers’
solidarity was born in the struggle for the eight-hour day.
And it was largely radical immigrant workers, many of them
anarchists, who gave their tears, sweat, and blood over a
century ago fighting for a better way of life.

Irrepressible

Anarchists

Federal Infiltration and
Repression — What It Means,
What to Do, What Not to Fear

cc

The majority sit quietly and dare to hope.
Since you aren’t guilty, how can they ar-
rest you? It’s a mistake! They are already
dragging you along by the collar, and you
still keep exclaiming to yourself: “It’s a
mistake! They’ll set things straight and let me
out!” Others are being arrested en masse,
and that’s a bothersome fact, but in those
other cases there is always some dark area:
“Maybe he was guilty...?” But as for you,
you are obviously innocent! You still believe
that the police and the judicial system are
humanly logical institutions: they will set
things straight and let you out.

Why, then, should you run away? And
how can you resist right then? After all,
you’ll only make your situation worse; you’ll
make it more difficult for them to sort out
the mistake. And it isn’t just that you don’t
put up any resistance; you even walk down
the stairs on tiptoe, as you are ordered to
do, so your neighbors won’t hear.

And how we burned in the camps later,
thinking: What would things have been
like if every security operative, when he
went out at night to make an arrest, had
been uncertain whether he would return
alive, and had to say goodbye to his family?

Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for
example in Leningrad, when they arrested
a quarter of the entire city, people had not
simply sat there in their lairs, paling with
terror at every bang of the downstairs door
and at every step on the staircase, but had
understood that they had nothing left to
lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs
hall an ambush of half a dozen people with
axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else
was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of
time that those bastards were out at night
for no good purpose. And you could be sure
ahead of time that you’d be cracking the
skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black
Maria sitting out there on the street with
one lonely chauffeur — what if it had been
driven off or its tires spiked? The Bureau
would very quickly have suffered a shortage
of officers and transport and, notwithstand-
ing all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine
would have ground to a halt!

If . . . If . . . We didn’t love freedom
enough. We purely and simply deserved
everything that happened afterward.”

-Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn,

The Gulag Archipelago

The beast has been awakened — snarl-
ing — and wants to bite someone soon. We
fear, not without reason, that it may be us.
At this moment the Underground Armies of
Barbarian Anarchists are gettingscant atten-
tion. Still, we are on a very short list. We have
recently been considered a genuine threat to
national security. We have yet to be linked in
any manner to the hijackers and their sup-
porters, despite the obvious advantages that
the reactionaries stand to gain by doing so.
This will not last forever. We are being given
a grace period, to rally around the fag and
return to the fold, or else. They will connect
the dots or create the dots to connect, and
just because many of us are Americans does
not mean we are safe.

Thus speculated the Crimethlnc. War-
bringer cell in After the Fall, an analysis
published in the wake ofthe attacks of Sep-
tember li, 2001. Granted, the FBI has not
seriously attempted to link the domestic
anarchist movement to actual Islamic ter-
ror organizations — that would be too much
of a stretch, even for the geniuses who
testified at Daniel McGowan's detention

Page 12 : Brand News : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Brand News : Page 13

hearingthat Crimethlnc. had published a
book about Emma Goldman — but they
have taken advantage of the climate of
fear to equate sabotage with terrorism,
initiating a new campaign against envi-
ronmental and animal-rights activists. The
grace period is over — in May, 2005, the
FBI announced that it considers the Earth
Liberation Front domestic terror threat
number one — and the government hopes
to use this opportunity to settle scores with
the anarchist movement in general.

This has been coming all along, of
course. Every generation that has succeed-
ed in pushing its resistance past rhetoric
into effective action has borne the brunt
of state repression. There was no way the
FBI was going to let the statute of limita-
tions elapse on the old ELF arsons without
charging someone with them 1 . Anyone who
thought there could be eco-defense with-
out eco-defendants hadn’t thought social
struggle all the way through yet.

The first thingwe must do in comingto
grips with this assault on our community
is recognize that it is not an aberration,
but something totally predictable and
normal — at least, normal in the context
of the current absurd social order. Any
effective struggle against the system of
domination is going to involve arrests,
investigations, and prison terms, not to
mention violent attacks from both state
forces and vigilantes. These are an intrinsic
part of our job description as revolutionary
anarchists, whatever tactics we employ on
an individual basis. Just as it didn’t serve
us to throw upourhandsindismaywhen
the global context changed on Septem-
ber 11, alarmism can only hurt us now.
Let’s calmly familiarize ourselves with
the possibility that some of us are going
to spend time in court and prison, while
doing everything we can to prevent this
and maintaining a realistic sense of the
extent of the current threat.

The Story Thus Far

It is impossible to provide thorough
or timely coverage of every aspect of this
subject here, so we urge readers to con-
sult these websites: ecoprisoners.org,

1 In fact, the great majority of environmentalist
direct action cases still remain unsolved. The FBI
alleges that there have been over 1200 criminal acts
carried out by underground activists since 1990, and
150 “eco-terror" investigations are still open.

www.greenscare.org, fbiwitch hu nt.org,
and especially http://portland.indymedia.
org/en/topic/greenscare/. For basic con-
text, we'll present a short summary as of
this writing, but please don't stop here.

Most activists date the latest wave of
repression, popularly termed the “green
scare," from December 7, 2005, when the
FBI carried out a series of raids around
the US. Further arrests and indictments
followed until a total of fourteen people
were charged with various counts of arson,
destruction of property, and conspiracy in
the oddly-named “Operation Backfire 2 .” Of
these, Joseph Dibee, Josephine Overaker,
and Rebecca Rubin are thought to be in
hiding outside the US, while William Rodg-
ers allegedly committed suicide in his
jail cell on the winter solstice. Stanislas
Meyerhoff, Kevin Tubbs, Chelsea Dawn
Gerlach, Suzanne Savoie, and Kendall
Tankersley are believed to be cooperating
with the government — i.e., offering to
testify against others in hopes of receiving
lighter sentences. The entire case of the
FBI seems to have initially been based
on the testimony of one heroin addict,
Jacob Ferguson, so the decision of others
to cooperate with the state is particularly
troubling. Daniel McGowan, Jonathan
Paul, and Briana Waters are currently free
on outrageously high bail 3 , while Joyanna
Zacher and Nathan Block have been denied
bail as a result ofthe testimony ofinform-
ants. The trial is cartoonishly scheduled
for Halloween, October 31, 2006.

The following month, Zachary Jenson,
Lauren Weiner and Eric McDavid were

2 According to the Oxford American Diction-
ary, a backfire is “a fire set intentionally to arrest
the progress of an approaching fire by creating a
burned area in its path, thus depriving the fire of
fuel.” This seems to confirm that the FBI strat-
egy to suppress dissent is based on the use of
agents provocateurs and false allegations, as were
COINTELPRO and other programs that ended up
backfiring on them.

3 Daniel McGowan, for example, was released into
house arrest on $1.6 million bail. Before his arrest,
Daniel worked for a non-profit organization that
helps women in domestic abuse situations navigate
the legal system. In the rare circumstances in which
abusers are arrested and charged (see the article
on domestic violence elsewhere in this issue),
how high do you think their bail is set? This is a
classic example of the way the capitalist system
works: violence against individuals is practically
accepted, while alleged destruction of property
is met with the stiffest possible penalties before
even being brought to trial.

arrested in Auburn, California for alleg-
edly conspiring to commit actions on
behalf of the ELF. They were set up by an
FBI agent provocateur, “Anna,” who was
sleeping with one ofthem; apparently she
bought bomb-making materials and rented
a bugged house for them. “Anna” had
been traveling in anarchist circles since
summer of 2004, attending two Crime-
thlnc. convergences and a host of other
events 4 (in the muddled words of FBI flunky
Nasson Walker, “The s/he has provided
information that has been utilized in at
least twelve separate anarchist cases.”).
Lauren was released into house arrest on
Si. 2 million bail, and subsequently pleaded
guilty and agreed to testify against the
others — an infuriating development when
her codefendants were starving in isolation
cells. Two months later, the very night this
article was finished, Zachary was reported
to have just done the same thing.

In March, six activists associated with
the animal rights group Stop Hunting-
don Animal Cruelty, which has driven an
animal testing corporation to the brink of
bankruptcy, were found guilty on charges
of using their website to incite attacks on
Huntingdon Life Sciences and their busi-
ness partners. Some of them face up to
eleven years in prison for making use of
their supposed right to free speech.

All the while, grand juries — secretive
government interrogation organs estab-
lished to gather information about alleged
crimes — have been convened around the
country, indicting anyone with connections
to activist communities, jailingthose who
won’t speak, and nosing around forfurther
leads in the war on dissent. FBI agents
have announced that anarchist groups
such as Food Not Bombs and Indymedia
are near the top of their terror watch list.
Whether or not anarchists are ready for
it, we are now being targeted as public
enemy number one.

4 University of Miami sociology professor Linda
Belgrave reports that “Anna” was in Florida posing
as a medic at a protest on June 6, 2005; when an
elderly woman who was apparently suffering from
heat exhaustion approached her for aid, “Anna”
offered her a sip of Gatorade, then declined to
assist her further. The woman collapsed and an
ambulance was called. If any doubt lingered as to
whether the FBI is concerned about human life,
their insertion of incompetent frauds into medic
teams serving law-abiding protestors should set-
tle the matter.

Together, these various cases spell out
a cohesive message: Don't act, you will be
caught. Don't associate with dissidents, you
will be framed. Don’t trust your comrades,
you will be infiltrated. Don’t publicize others’
actions, you will be imprisoned.

This message is the most important
part of the FBI campaign. Even with all
the anti-terror funding in the world, they
can’t infiltrate every anarchist circle and
pin charges on every prominent activist.
They hope that, by staging this massive
display of force, they can intimidate the
rest of us into silence and passivity, just
as the excessive and unsustainable police
presence at the FTAA protests in Miami
November 2003 was calculated to put an

end to the era of anarchist mass mobiliza-
tions by giving an inflated impression of
the power of the state.

The Radical
Response

The responses ofthe anarchist media
can be divided into two basic camps. The
first camp, exemplified by the more theo-
retical journals such as Fifth Estate, reacted
by printing news about the arrests and
charges followed by vague afterthoughts
to the effect that one must not lose hope.
It could be argued that publicizing repres-
sion without offering concrete proposals
for howto respond assists the FBI in their

work. To their eternal discredit, Anarchy:
A so-called Journal of Desire Armed set the
low-water mark for this sort of thing in
implyingthatthe current situation is simply
the result of a “fetishization of security cul-
ture" in anarchist circles. Thankfully, more
action-oriented publications and websites
such as No Compromise and The New York
Rat have provided practical information on
howto support targeted activists through
letter-writing, fund-raising, and solidarity
actions. Sad to say, this issue of Rolling
Thunder falls into the former category,
but we hope to remedy that next issue
by sharing all the skills for prisoner and
defendant support that are being honed
in our community right now.

Participation in anarchist legal aid and
prisoner support projects has increased
over the past months, though not yet
enough to exert a great influence overthe
course of events. This increase is ironic,
given that a year ago some of those now
targeted by the state were trying to figure
out how to reinvigorate prisoner support
in North America. The pivotal question
now is whether or not anarchist organizers,
so used to working in the limited context
of their own communities, will be able to
muster widespread public outrage over
this witch hunt. Without that, this round
may end badly for the accused, and that
will encourage the authorities to initiate
another roundup.

What Does It All
Mean?

It is of the utmost importance that
those currently being targeted receive the
funding and community support necessary
for the best possible legal defense. As on
every other front, every inch should cost our
persecutors as much as possible, whether
or not we win individual battles. Good legal
support has proven indispensable in keep-
ing mass actions viable; for example, the
legal defense and countersuits following
the protests against the IMF meeting in
Washington, D.C. in 2002 not only cleared
hundreds of protesters of charges, but
also tied the hands of the D.C. police for
several protests to come. The struggle in
the courtroom is not the postscript to the
struggle in the street, but that struggle
conducted by different means; it is not
the end ofthe story unless we give up and

Page 14 : Brand News : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Brand News : Page 15

make it so. The same goes for the struggle
in prison, for those serving sentences: a
community cannot foster long-term com-
mitment to militant struggle unless it
supports its prisoners of war; conversely,
those prisoners have power to the extent
to which their comrades outside maintain
enough momentum to exert social and
political leverage.

While we’re at it, let’s postulate a few
other lessons from the initial phase ofthis
wave of repression. First, every activist
group should be prepared to be targeted,
with resources (a lawyer, money, a net-
work of potential supporters) and a game
plan ready. Second, in times of increased
surveillance and repression, we must be
cautious without letting fear immobilize
us. We're powerful because we act, and
because we’re connected to others; being
frightened into passivity and isolation can
only weaken and endanger us. Third, now
more than ever solidarity means construc-
tive criticism, not speculations (“That
arson? I bet that was Alphonse — he’s into
macho tactics”) or accusations (“She never
does anything — she’s just a lot of talk”).
You never know what situation a person
is in: she might be a wanted fugitive who
can't respond to your thoughtless words
without endangering herself. Likewise, “in-
nocent” activists may be accused of others’
actions, and even go to prison for them;
but this is the fault of the government, not
on the ones who act, so long as they don't
stupidly put others at risk. Finally, much
of the evidence in recent cases is based
on informants wearing microphones into
conversations. Activists should consider
the possibility that even trusted compan-
ions could be wired; don't ever reminisce
needlessly over past illegal actions, don’t
assume old cases are closed even after a
decade of silence, don’t work with people
you’re not sure you’ll trust ten years from
now. Meet a person’s family and friends
before joining in illegal activity.

And above all, DON’TTALKTO POLICE
ORTHE FBI. No matterwhat, it can never
help you. They wouldn't ask you in the
first place if they didn’t need your help
to ruin your life. Remember: “/ am going
to remain silent. I would like to speak with
an attorney.”

* • They can’t get inside you,” she '* »
had said. But they could get inside you.
There were things, your own acts, from
which you could not recover. Something
was killed in your breast; burnt out, cau-
terized out . . .

“Sometimes,” she said, “they threaten
you with something — something you can’t
stand up to, can’t even think about. And
then you say, ‘Don’t do it to me, do it to
somebody else, do it to so-and-so.’ And
perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that
it was only a trick and that you just said it
to make them stop and didn’t really mean
it. But that isn’t true. At the time when it
happens you do mean it. You think there’s
no other way of saving yourself and you’re
quite ready to save yourself that way. You
want it to happen to the other person. You
don’t give a damn what they suffer. All you
care about is yourself.”

“All you care about is yourself,” he
echoed.

He was not running or cheering any
longer. He was back in the Ministry of Love,
with everything forgiven, his soul white as
snow. He was in the public dock, confessing
everything, implicating everybody. He was
walking down the white-tiled corridor, with
the feeling of walking in the sunlight, and an
armed guard at his back. The long-hoped-for
bullet was entering his brain.

But it was all right, everything was all
right, the struggle was finished. He had
won the victory over himself. He loved
Big Brother.

-George Orwell at the bitter end of 1984

> -r •» » *

«• aw «■

Brutal assaults from the state should
come as no surprise. The most troubling
aspect of this story is that some of those
arrested — and even some who were not
arrested, who are not even facing the threat
of life in prison — have agreed to speak to
the authorities, putting others at griev-
ous risk.

Imagine the situation of an activist who
has agreed to testify against her former
comrades. All the experiences that made
her an anarchist, from childhood on, come
back to haunt her as she betrays her own
values and commitments, siding with the
bullies, the rapists, the snide executives
and sadistic police. Whatever tremendous
feats she has accomplished, whatever
personal qualities she took pride in, now
she will be remembered as a informant
and must live with the knowledge that
she is one.

In return for the potential of one day
rejoining the defeated herd she fought
so hard to escape, she must tell herself
the same lies that once outraged her:
that people are essentially selfish and un-
trustworthy, that complicity in injustice is
inevitable and acceptable, that one can
simply look out for number one in a dis-
astrously unsustainable world. She does
not even know how much leniency she

can expect; the government can hardly
let her off the hook when they’ve worked
so hard to find her. On the other hand, as
a snitch, she can be sure that if she goes
to prison her fellow inmates will terrorize
her. This gives the state even more power
over her. Perhaps she considers breaking
off collaboration, but to do so would only
leave her isolated from all directions; the
die is already cast. One can hardly imagine
a worse position to be in.

Let us phase out the masked figure
lobbing a molotov cocktail as the idealized
image of revolt; there is a time for that, and
the sooner it comes back around the better,
but it is not the ultimate stage of struggle.
Henceforth, when we think of resistance
at its most courageous and romantic, let
us picture someone like ourselves in an
interrogation chamber, not masked but
handcuffed, being threatened with life
and death in captivity and still refusing
to render herself and her fellows into her
enemies’ hands.

Facing the threat of incarceration, we
must redefine freedom and safety as fac-
tors under our control, not external cir-
cumstances. Freedom is not a matter of
how many fences happen to be around
you, but of following the dictates of your
conscience no matter what. Safety is not
the condition of being temporarily outside
the grasp of your enemies, but of trusting
yourself enough to know that your friends
will never come to harm because of you
and you will never become something
you despise.

We Can Win:

Success Stories
from the Struggle
against Repression

Not only is it critical to fight in the
courtrooms as well as the streets — it’s also
possible to win those fights. A brief look
at our own recent history shows count-
less cases in which activists have beaten
charges and even come out ahead in coun-
ter-suits. Such victories not only discour-
age our enemies from taking us to court,
they can also provide needed resources
for further organizing. Throwing up one’s
hands in panic as soon as someone gets
arrested is not only counterproductive,
it’s also needlessly pessimistic. To offset
the doomsaying ofthe inexperienced and

easily demoralized, let’s reflect on a couple
recent victories won by activists forced to
fight within the legal system.

At the Republican National Convention
in Philadelphia summer of 2000, Camilo
Viveiros and two others were beaten and
arrested by a group of police that included
John Timoney, then Police Commissioner
of Philadelphia. Charged with numerous
felonies (as a rule, you always get charged
by the police for whatever they do to you)
and demonized as violent extremists, the
activists came to be known as the Timoney
Three; Camilo himself faced more than
thirty-seven years in prison and $55,000
in fines. They awaited trial for four years,
while Timoney jet-setted around the world
giving presentations on how to repress
protesters and serving as Chief of Police in
Miami duringthe FTAA ministerial in 2003.
It seemed certain that anyone charged with
assaulting someone in such a position of
power was doomed to go to prison. Yet
when the trial finally came, Timoney and
the other officers made fools ofthemselves,
offering wildly conflicting testimonies; after
the defense presented a videotape that
revealed the testimony of the police to be
mere fabrication, the three were declared
innocent of all charges. In an excellent
article in the March-April 2006 issue of
the Earth First! journal, Camilo outlined
the lessons ofthattrial forthose currently
facing government repression.

One ofthe most important trials ofthe
preceding generation of environmental
activism ended in an unconditional victory
over the mendacious, murderous authori-
ties. In 1990, Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney
were nearly killed by a car bomb while on
a speaking tour to promote resistance to
corporate logging. Rather than investigat-
ing the bombing, the FBI charged the two
with making and transporting bombs. They
also took advantage ofthe opportunity to
carry out a nationwide smear campaign
against Earth First!, and sent agents to
create dossiers on over five hundred ac-
tivists associated with the organization.
To this day, it remains unclear whether
the bombing was the work of freelance
vigilantes or of the FBI themselves — in
the weeks before it, FBI agents instructed
the local police on how to make bombs
exactly like the one that nearly killed Judi
and Darryl. The charges failed to hold up
in court, and the two initiated a counter-

suit against the FBI and Oakland Police
Department. Although the FBI managed
to delay the trial for almost eleven years,
during which Judi, who was crippled by
the bombing, died of cancer, Darryl and
others continued pressing the suit. Finally,
in 2002, a jury found the FBI and Oakland
Police guilty and ordered them to pay $4.4
million in damages.

When the struggle in the courtroom
fails, there are always other means of
resistance. On November 2, 1979, after
giving birth in prison only to have her
daughter taken away in less than a week,
Black freedom fighter Assata Shakur man-
aged one ofthe most impressive jailbreaks
of the era. After almost a year in a West
Virginia federal prison for women, sur-
rounded by white supremacists from the
Aryan Sisterhood prison gang, Shakur
was transferred to the maximum security
wing of the Clinton Correctional Center
in New Jersey. There she was one of only
eight maximum security prisoners held
in a small, well-fenced cellblock of their
own. The rest of Clinton, including its
visiting area, was medium security and
not fenced in.

According to news reports, Shakur’s
escape proceeded as follows: Three
men — two black, one white — using bo-
gus driver's licenses and Social Security
cards requested visits with Assata four
weeks in advance, as was prison policy.
Apparently, prison officials never did the
requisite background checks. On the day
ofthe escape, the three met in the waiting
room at the prison entrance, where they
were processed through registration and
shuttled in a van to the visiting room in
South Hall. One member ofthe team went
ahead of the others. Although there was
a sign stating that all visitors would be
searched with a hand-held metal detector,
he made it through registration without
even a pat-down. Meanwhile, the other
two men were processed without a search.
As these two were being let through the
chain-link fences and locked metal doors
at the visiting center one of them drew a
gun and took the guard hostage. Simulta-
neously, the man visiting Shakur rushed
the control booth, put two pistols to the
glass wall, and ordered the officer to open
the room's metal door. She obliged.

From there, Shakur and her compan-
ions took a third guard hostage and made

Page 16 : Brand News : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Brand News : Page 17

it to the parked van. Because only the
maximum security section of the prison
was fully fenced in, the escape team was
able to speed across a grassy meadow to
the parking lot of the Hunterdon State
School, where they meet two more female
accomplices, and split up into a “two-tone
blue sedan” and a Ford Maverick. All the
guards were released unharmed and the
FBI immediately launched a massive hunt.
But Shakur disappeared without a trace.
For the next five years authorities hunted
in vain. Shakur had vanished. Numerous
other alleged BLA cadre were busted during
those years, including Tupac's step-father,
Mutula Shakur.

In 1984, word came from ninety miles off
the coast of Florida: the FBI’s most wanted
female fugitive was living in Cuba, working
on a masters degree in political science,
writing her autobiography, and raising her
daughter. She still lives there today.

This is a somewhat quiet phase of
resistance in this country, as everyone
waits out the end of the Bush presidency;
we can afford to focus a lot of energy on
benefit events, prisoner support groups,
and public outreach. When things heat up
again, we’ll benefit from having done this
work, and in the meantime it offers us a
rallying point.

In addition to supporting ourtargeted
comrades, we have to protect the infra-
structure of our community. In Italy, where
the brutal state repression of the past dec-
ade has succeeded in paralyzing many of
those who bottomlined anarchist projects,
police and fascists have been able to shut
down some of the social centers, publica-
tions, and protest campaigns that formed
the lifeblood of a vibrant anarchist move-
ment. We must not allow that to happen
here. The government will target those who
are most active and visible; when one of
us is immobilized by legal problems, it’s
up to the rest of us to take up the slack.
Our infrastructure is not just made up of
formally organized groups; it also consists
of and depends on our social networks
and culture of resistance. If people cease

to come together at politicized entertain-
ment events and community potlucks, or
cease to work through conflicts and share
emotional support, that will be just as
devastating as the loss of an infoshop or
Food Not Bombs.

As for our proactive tactics, how
should we adjust them in the light of this
offensive? It’s worth pointing out that, with
the exception of RobThaxton 5 , no anarchist
in recent memory has served more than
a couple years in prison for participation
in mass actions — this is impressive, given
the high level of confrontation these have
sometimes reached. It seems to be harder
to make charges stick in mass action sce-
narios, perhaps because they involve so
many suspects and so much chaos, and
also because investigating them at great
length would overextend the resources
of the state. The police are forced to grab
whomever they can — usually not people
who had any major role in the actions — and
charge them with crimes for which there
is little evidence.

Ironically, in the wake of September
11 th , anarchists backed off militant mass
actions in fear that they would meet stiffer
repression. Consequently, we have less
leverage and morale — and we are still be-
ing targeted as domestic enemy number
one! The FBI and the whole apparatus of
repression are after us whether or not we
skulk around in the shadows, so we may
as well organize openly. Ifwe’re all headed
for court anyway, we have little to lose, and
we stand to gain much-needed visibility
and momentum. If enough of us stick our
necks out, they can’t target us all, and the
more people of all walks of life are familiar
with our struggle the more allies we can
hope to find. Now is the time to form
accessible anarchist structures, to speak
publicly about our opposition to capitalism
and domination, to organize large-scale
anarchist actions. Far from endangering
us, this may actually make us safer.

As for those who prefer more covert
tactics such as arson and sabotage, the
clearest lesson of the current phase of
repression is that the government is in-

5 Rob just finished serving a seven year sentence for
throwing a rock at a police officer during a Reclaim
the Streets in Eugene, Oregon, June 18*, 1999.

terested above all in mapping networks
of resistance 6 . If you are not connected to
the current pool of suspects, doing as your
conscience dictates is no more dangerous
now than it was a decade ago, provided
you practice flawless security culture and
pick prudent comrades who will never
buckle under pressure. Indeed, as the
trials of the current defendants play out
overthe coming months, we will be given
valuable insight into how the FBI investi-
gates crimes of this nature. This should,
if anything, make it easier for activists to
engage safely in militant direct action.

Our enemies are wrong to hypothesize
that we can be frightened into passiv-
ity. If the prospect of living in a world of
domination and despairwas bad enough
to catalyze us into action, think how much
less appealing it is to be silent knowing
our comrades can be taken from us at any
time. As they escalate this conflict, we can
only respond in kind.

6 In January 2006, a fifty-year-old man was arrested
on suspicion of damaging over a dozen cars and two
buildings at an automobile dealership in Newport,
Oregon. The buildings were spray painted with
the letters "ELF,” and two local news stations had
received calls claiming the action in the name of
the ELF. However, as reported by the Newport News
Times, “Police could not establish any connection
between MacMurdo and the ELF organization. It
is believed his actions were retaliatory in nature
and not any kind of political statement.” He was
charged with criminal mischief and his bail was
set at $32,500, a miniscule amount by eco-terror
standards. What does a guy have to do these days
to get charged as an eco-terrorist? Obviously, he
has to have the right friends.

“Hey you! Stop!”

Those words marked the beginning of a year and two
month journey that will end in three days when I report to
the Fort Dix Federal Prison. In the dark, early hours of Janu-
ary 31 st , 2005, I found momentum pushing me to go ahead
with an action that I had very poorly prepared for. I had
come to the Bronx that night after having scouted out an
Army recruiting station next to Westchester Square in the
eastern part of the borough. With a few lighter-fluid-soaked
rags, I hoped to put some small dent in the huge military
machine. I failed pretty miserably.

I arrived that night with no lookout and a poorly thought
out escape plan. The feelings in my stomach, which I should
have seen as a warning to turn back, I interpreted as general
nervousness. I would just go ahead with the action and any
kinks would work themselves out. After hammering out a
section of the glass door of the building, I took out one of
the rags, lit it, and tossed it inside on the carpet. I like to
think it was the adrenaline that made me think that lighting

the carpet on fire would burn the place down. No matter
the reason, I was very, very wrong.

Quickly, but without running, I made my way across the
street and was walking down my escape route when I heard
those three aforementioned words. I turned, saw two cops
coming down the block towards me, and ran. I could hear
them running behind me and after half a block I looked
over my shoulder and saw both of their guns pointed at me.
In retrospect, I should have just taken off because they prob-
ably wouldn’t have shot me, but at the time it seemed like
I was in imminent danger. This seems like a problem more
mental preparation could have solved.

I’m cuffed and led back to the building. The fire depart-
ment gets called. Detectives get called. One cop, seeing my
tattoos, suggests the gang detectives get called (the others
ignore him). All the while, pigs were asking me “Why did
you do it?” or other questions that implied my guilt. I stead-
fastly said nothing and just glared at them. At this point,
they had taken my jacket and sweater so I was left standing
in the bitterly cold air with just a t-shirt and pants on. Even
though I was shivering violently and my teeth were chatter-
ing so loudly that I could barely hear anything else, no one
would give me my coat back.

Page 18 : Brand News : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Testimonials : Page 19

Within an hour the crime scene was crawling with
firefighters and pigs of all ranks, and I was brought to a cop
car to sit in. Two cops asked me more dumb questions that
I refused to answer, one of them sitting with his baton an
inch from my side. When he started talking about his rela-
tives being in the military, I got visions of him cracking my
ribs (he didn’t). We waited at the scene for a total of maybe
three hours before I was finally driven to some precinct
building in the Bronx.

After being patted down six or seven more times. I’m
finally put in a brightly lit cinder block cell with a single
wooden bench. More waiting. Cops sporadically come in and
out of the room that the cell is in, to look through paper work
relating to my case. Eventually my fingerprints and a photo
are taken. Then my stay began to get a bit more interesting.

“Hello David, I’m with the FBI.”

I had heard cops talking about my case “being trans-
ferred to the feds,” but most of them shrugged it off. I just
kept hoping and hoping that it wouldn’t be. I guess that
night wasn’t my lucky night. He came up to the bars of my
cell and asked if I wanted to talk to him. I said, very politely,
that I wanted a lawyer first. He tried to convince me for a
couple more minutes, I just repeated myself and he left.

This back-and-forth happened two more times. After the
second time, a couple regular beat cops came in the room
and opened up my cell door. “Come on out.”

I walked out to them and they led me to this smaller
room with the door already open. One of the two cops put
on latex gloves. We all walked into the room and they pulled
the door closed behind us. One turned to me and hesitantly
said, “Okay, take off your pants.” I looked up at them and as
I painstakingly slowly unbuttoned my jeans, I gave them the
most shocked/frightened look I could possibly muster up,
and just as I was undoing my zipper one of them said “Okay,
never mind, you can go back to your cell.” Success.

I don’t know if they specifically meant that incident as a
way to intimidate me, but not long after, the fed came back
again. I said I wanted my lawyer, as always, and then he
started to take the “bad cop” approach. He got a little angry
and let it be known that he was part of the Joint Terrorism
Task Force (JTTF) and that I was facing potential terror-
ism charges if I didn’t talk to him. When the “T-word” was
dropped. I’ll admit my heart rate quickened. He started
talking about prison sentences of 10 or 20 years, and that if
I talked now I would make it easier for myself.

Now, I had read so many different ’zines and articles
about how talking to the feds or police will never, ever
improve your situation. On an intellectual level, I knew
that for sure, but my gut was yelling out that I was fucked
if I didn’t. Before my arrest, I had never speculated about
what jurisdiction my crime would be under if I was caught.
It never occurred to me that I would have to face federal
charges with mandatory minimums. If I had thought out
the consequences of being caught, rather than ignoring the
possibility, I would have been in much better shape in that
prison cell.

After a bit more arguing with the fed, I finally capitu-

lated and was brought into the interrogation room. The fed
that I had met before and his partner asked immediately
about my connections with the Earth Liberation Front
(ELF) and Animal Liberation Front (ALF). I said I had none.
Additionally, there was a long line of questioning, that ap-
parently had come from Army Intelligence, about the group
Solidarity. They were asking because I have the word “soli-
darity” tattooed on my stomach, and they were convinced
that meant I was a member of some socialist group based
in New York. I hadn’t even known that it existed before
that. On an embarrassing note, their office ended up getting
harassed by the FBI a week after I was arrested, all because
of my tattoo. Sorry folks.

In the course of about an hour in this small, brightly lit,
windowless room, the feds played the “good cop, bad cop”
game a bit in the beginning when I was still talking about
my lawyer, but once I told them my story, they quit. I told
them about how I did all of the planning and execution of
this action alone, how I didn’t know anything about other
vandalism that had taken place at an army recruiting center
that night. They said how the only thing that could really
improve my situation was if I agreed to cooperate with them
in prosecuting other “radicals.” I told them I didn’t know
anyone else who had radical politics; that I was just a col-
lege kid.

If I had mentally prepared myself for the possibility of
being caught, I could have dealt with refusing that inter-
rogation a lot better. To understand the consequences of
your action and be able to deal with them is priceless. Also,

I can’t repeat this point enough: talking to cops or feds is
never, ever, ever beneficial. Never. The fact that I talked
with the feds didn’t prevent them from charging me with
the harshest crime that they could (Arson 3, with a manda-
tory minimum of 5 years). I spent the whole rest of my case
trying to work around the fact that the feds had a statement
from me admitting my guilt.

Once the interrogation was finished, I got brought back
to my cell. I stayed there for the next couple hours trying
unsuccessfully to sleep, because the light was so bright,
and the bench so uncomfortable. Luckily, I wasn’t there for
much longer. One of the feds (the “bad cop”) and one of
the cops who had originally arrested me came to my cell
and told me we were leaving. I turned around, they slapped
cuffs on my wrists, and we walked out of the precinct to the
fed’s beat-up, unmarked Crown Victoria.

The sunlight was glaring, so I figured it was about mid-
day, since they didn’t have clocks anywhere in the precinct.
The fed sat up front and the cop sat in the back with me. I
made some remark about not being able to get my seatbelt
on to the fed and he told me to shut up as he lit a cigarette.
Then we were off. We headed down the FDR and I looked
around at the city and tried to memorize everything I saw
because I had no idea when I’d get to see it all again. We
made it to the Jacob K. Javits federal building in downtown
Manhattan, and the fed parked on the street.

We went up into the FBI offices, where they put all of my
information into their computer, including pictures of all my

tattoos. It was sort of funny making up explanations for them,
like my answer regarding the meaning of my tattoo of a man
throwing a book with a fuse coming out of it at the Federal
Reserve building: “It means knowledge is power.” Right.

After going through the FBI’s offices, I was given to the
US Marshals and brought to their separate offices to be put
into more computers. All of this took a few hours, with all
of the waiting handcuffed to chairs. It was incredibly diso-
rienting, considering I was never told what was going to
happen next or where I was or what time it was. In fact, I
suddenly found myself handcuffed to a chair in this hallway
where I was to meet with a lawyer minutes before seeing a
judge.

Following my brief meeting with the attorney, I appeared
before a federal judge. The prosecution asked for bail to be
set at $250,000 and my jaw dropped (I didn’t realize you
only had to put up 10% of that amount). My lawyer coun-
tered with something significantly less, and it ended up
being set at $150,000. The Legal Aid lawyer I was assigned
was really sweet, so when I turned to him and asked “What
now?” he put a hand on my shoulder and said really softly
that I had to go to prison for that night. I was quickly led
away by the marshals after that.

I was moved from cell to cell for the next few hours,
neurotically thinking about the different paths my life could
have taken, imagining myself as a typical college student
just “playing the game” as my dad always called it. The
thought of how stupid it was not to have a lookout often
came up. It was frightening, but more because I had no idea
what to expect. That’s why the procedures for moving pris-
oners around are made to maximize the feelings of anxiety
that stem from not knowing what’s coming next. It makes
you feel really powerless.

I ended up in a cell with a group of maybe eight men,
most in their mid-twenties, all people of color. We were all
in shackles, our hands and feet cuffed with a chain con-
necting the two sets. No one looked angry or upset, even,
just exhausted. They all had that weary look in their eye,
like they were looking at something in the distance. No one
talked. A few people looked at the half-sleeve tattoo I have
on my right arm and gave me a half a nod. Then a couple of
marshals came and led us to a van with bars on the windows
that I found out later would be taking us to the Metropoli-
tan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

Pulling up to the jail was pretty ominous, given it was
the middle of winter, night, and there were high walls all
around us with spotlights shining down. Moving in our
shackles, we were led into more cold holding cells with
other people waiting. This whole experience is about wait-
ing. Then moving somewhere else to wait some more. Over
and over again. In one of the first waiting rooms, I was
stripped down, had my anus examined, and was given a tan,
ill-fitting, itchy jumpsuit and the cheapest shoes I’ve ever
seen. They then gave us the choice of donating our clothes
to the prison, or sending them home. I laughed when they
told me this, and said that they weren’t getting my clothes.

No longer in shackles, me and a bunch of other guys

were moved around some more, given ID cards with our
numbers on them, and then finally led up to the cell blocks
where we’d be staying. While I was waiting before we got
there, some guys in the cell talked to me a bit, I think
because I was one of the youngest guys there. They kind of
reassured me and said that I should just try not to cry, and
I’d do okay. I managed to do exactly that until I got to the
cell I was assigned to. The other guy in the cell was already
asleep on the bottom bunk, so I awkwardly climbed onto
the top bunk, buried my head in my pillow, and bawled
until I fell asleep.

Early in the morning, my cellmate woke me to tell me
it was time for a count. He was my age, maybe even a year
younger, and seemed as unsure about the whole experience
as I did. We both stood by the small window of our cell door
as we waited for the guard to come by and make sure we
hadn’t escaped. Then it was time for breakfast. I asked my
cellmate if I actually had to go and he shook his head, so I
just went back to sleep. Lunch came and I woke up, looked
around, and went to sleep again.

As dinner rolled around, I found that no matter how
hard I tried I could not sleep a single second longer. I man-
aged to rouse myself, jump down and use the toothbrush
that I’d been given the night before. I finally saw the cell,
and it was sparse. A toilet, sink, tiny window, bunk beds and
two small lockers giving not much in the way of comfort.

I ventured out into the main hall. It was a big, open
space with tables that had the food serving area on the left,
a basketball court in a connected room, and circling three
quarters of the room were two tiers of cells with two stair-
cases leading from the top tier to the floor. When I came out
of my cell, there was a line of inmates snaking around the
room waiting for dinner. I jumped in line and once I got to
the food realized that the only vegan options were corn and
white rice, neither known for their nutritional value. No
matter, I didn’t have that much of an appetite anyway, after
thinking about my legal predicament.

With little else to do after finishing, I pulled up a chair in
front of the two televisions, and read the subtitles that were
scrolling below. I was dying for something more substantial
to read but there was nothing in sight. The whole time I sat
there, I was hoping my name was going to be called to tell
me I had been bailed out. I had my lawyer’s business card
with me, so I kept leaving messages on the legal aid voice-
mail service asking him what was going on with my case,
even though he couldn’t have responded.

As I was watching TV, I heard somebody calling “Hey
you” in my direction, and when I looked up I saw this guy
beckoning me over. A little hesitant, I got up and sat down
at a table with him and three other guys. They all had been
looking at the tattoo on my arm and wanted to see it up
close. All of them were impressed, and started talking about
their tattoos. When they got around to asking me what I
was in for, I told them that I was accused of setting fire to
an Army Recruitment center. They all started cracking up.
“Yo, why’d you get your crime tattooed on your arm?” I
couldn’t help but laugh.

Page 20 : Testimonials : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Testimonials : Page 21

We bullshitted for a couple more hours (mostly them
spouting sexist rhetoric) and they gave me advice which
amounted to obeying the concept of “doing your own time.”
In other words, minding your own business and getting
through your sentence without causing a stir. Although I
was more interested in finding ways to radicalize prisoners,
I just nodded and agreed. While talking to people helped
get my mind off my situation, it all came rushing back once
it was lights off at ten. Then all I had to occupy myself with
was my thoughts, and I inevitably ended up crying into my
pillow again until I fell asleep.

By the next day, I had resigned myself to the idea of not
getting out on bail. I hadn’t had my name called to go to
court or anything, so I guessed that my parents had heard
what happened and were disgusted. Memories came rush-
ing back of the time my dad refused to pick me up after I
fell asleep at the wheel and wrecked my car. I started trying
to find ways to fill the time besides TV. I worked out a little
bit in my cell, borrowed a newspaper from someone, left
messages for my lawyer, and wandered in circles around
the cell block. As far as food went, I kept asking the guards
about vegetarian meals and they just ignored me, so I had
a tiny piece of breaded chicken along with the soggy, limp
vegetables at dinner. I didn’t understand at the time the
potential outside support that existed for vegan prisoners.

I just figured I was going to starve to death. That night I
managed to only cry a little, as I started to get used to the
idea of prison.

As it turned out, I wouldn’t have to get used to it. At
about five in the morning, the guard came into my room
and woke me up to tell me I was going to court that day. I
literally jumped out of bed, threw on my shoes and stood
in front of my door looking out the window waiting for the
guard to come and open it up. An hour later he finally came
back and I moved out into the main hall to sit with a few
other guys who were going to court that day. It took at least
another hour and a half before we were finally all shackled
and ready to load into the van to go back to Manhattan.

It was well past noon by the time I stood before the
judge. My lawyer informed me that my parents and my
sister had been cosigners to my bail and the terms of my
release were decided. When my next appearance date was
set, concluding the hearing, I figured I would be allowed to
go free. On the contrary, I ended up being led back to the
cell that I came from. Everyone else in the cell told me how
I was definitely going to have to spend the night in prison
again because that was normal procedure. Then I just had
to wait there, not knowing what was going to happen.

The guards would show up periodically taking someone
from the cell with them, and they finally came for me. All
of a sudden I was in a room where my literal and figurative
chains were taken off and I was given a pile of clothes that
my mom had brought from home. A marshal stood outside
and kept shouting at me to move faster, but I knew there
was nothing he could do to me since I was getting out, so I
just ignored him and it felt great.

Finally, as I stepped out of one last door, I saw my mom
standing there. I didn’t really know what to say so I just
gave her a hug and we walked out. Luckily, my attorney had
told her that she should never discuss the case with me so
I never had to have any awkward conversations about my
actions, which made the ride home a lot easier. Before we
could leave, though, we had to stop at my lawyer’s office.
There he laid out the whole situation for me. I’d be looking
at a mandatory minimum of five years under the federal
laws regarding arson. As he explained it to me, the only
way to get around that was to agree to inform on people for
the FBI. I told him what I had told the feds before: “I don’t
know anybody who’s into politics.”

So, when my mom and I left the office that day I was
facing a mandatory five years without any apparent way
around it. Over the next few months, I came down for vari-
ous status checks with the judge, but most importantly, I
was introduced to Marty Stolar. A friend of a friend called
me and said it would serve me well to have Marty as my
lawyer, instead of someone from Legal Aid. There was a lot
of wrangling with my parents over the issue since they were
afraid that Marty would turn it into a “political case.” I was
kind of at a loss to understand how it could not be a politi-
cal case, but I just said that with the Legal Aid attorney, I
was just waiting it out until I could start serving my five
years. With Marty, at least we’d have a fighting chance of
getting a deal.

So, with the tuition money my school had refunded me
after they kicked me out (at the request of the ROTC), my
family and I retained Marty as my attorney. It was the best
decision I’ve ever made. While I worked doing landscaping
in Connecticut, Marty was busy hounding the Assistant Dis-
trict Attorney for a plea bargain, which they were initially
refusing to even offer. At the same time, my friends from
New York were calling me and asking what they could do to
help, which at the time wasn’t a lot since Marty wanted to
keep everything as low profile as possible. The best sup-
port the anarchist community in NYC gave me, though,
was making me feel so welcome when I would come down
to visit on my days off. There is no way I would have been
able to stay strong throughout my case if I hadn’t had such a
supportive group of people. With my future being so unsure,
and me being isolated in Connecticut, I just wanted to feel
like I was not alone with this, which I never did.

After some failed attempts at getting a plea bargain, due
to intense resistance at the Washington level, Marty finally
had a breakthrough; I would plead guilty to felony “mali-
cious mischief” which didn’t carry a mandatory minimum.
The maximum sentence was ten years, though, which
would give the judge a lot of leeway. In order to help my
chance of getting a short or suspended sentence, Marty and
I put together a packet of letters from professors, teachers
and others speaking highly of me, as well as a psychological
evaluation that said I was on sound mental footing.

Once again, there was more waiting in the dark to deal
with in this portion of my case as well. It would be months
before I would hear of any new developments from the

government, so I would just do my best to live my life in
Connecticut, visiting NYC when I could (the only two re-
gions in which I was allowed to travel). While I was waiting
around, I kept hearing reports of anarchists being arrested
all around the country, including NYC, as part of the FBI’s
intensified campaign against us. Even though I was upset
over my own situation, when I heard of people having
possible life sentences levied against them, my case didn’t
seem so dire. Then, nearly a year after I had first broken the
glass of that Army recruiting center, I traveled to downtown
Manhattan to appear at my sentencing.

In the course of berating me for my actions, Judge
Richard Berman remarked that my plea bargain was the
“most extraordinary he had ever seen” and that I probably
deserved worse. I ended up receiving a six month sentence,
followed by four months of house arrest as part of three
years of supervised release, along with some assorted fines.
Additionally, we had the judge write that I needed to be
given vegan food. The entire time this was being read to
me, I thought of the others who had committed crimes not
much more effective than mine, but were in the process of
serving much more lengthy sentences.

I was lucky in a lot of different ways. I was lucky to be
both white and upper middle class, to have the resources
available to hire a private lawyer and a family that was will-
ing to let me stay with them as I was weathering this out. I
realize that these things are rare and that the outcome of my
case was dependent upon them. At the same time, I know
that had I not been supported by the anarchist community
not only in New York, but in Connecticut and Kansas and
other places, my sense of self and direction would have
been completely lost. If you are wrapped up in the legal
system for committing a politically motivated crime, and
you are without a group of people to help you sustain your
identity and beliefs, you’ll be adrift.

It’s easy to slip into tunnel vision and lose sight of the
bigger picture of worldwide resistance to oppression when
you are facing such specific repression. Without that greater
picture, though, it’s a lot easier to lose your hope and convic-
tion that led you to commit the act in the first place. Wheth-
er you are behind bars or free, you have to place yourself in
the context of a broader movement. That’s the only way that
you can stay strong when you are completely unaware of
what’s going to happen to you. I only hope that others who
have been subjected to the repression of the state have the
help of their local communities to do exactly that.

note to the FBI:

you cam catch an arsonist
but you can’t catch fire
(or can you?)

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Testimonials : Page 23

ITSCHlAMDnetJi

SriUSCHWIKM" 1

Ant*-Nat'onalist Nationalism?
The Anti-German Critique arid
I Its All-Too-German Adherents

Deutsch anti-fascism
— or anti-Deutsch

Back in the 1990s, answering mail for
the 'zine I used to publish, I noticed that
Germans — even German anarchists — re-
sponded strangely whenever the conflict
between Israel and Palestine came up.
Every time anything related to the issue
appeared in my 'zine, I got a lengthy let-
ter from an irate German accusing me of
Palestinian nationalism oreven borderline
anti-Semitism. I never once received such
a letter from citizens of any other nation,
even though the 'zine was distributed as
far as Israel, nor did I ever receive one
from a Jewish reader of any nationality.
From my perspective, the positions in
the 'zine on that issue were not particu-
larly controversial: like most others in
the anarchist community, I deplored the
violence and racism of the Israeli military
and the Zionist settler movement, while
remaining suspicious of those seeking
to capitalize on what I considered under-
standable Palestinian desperation. At the
time, I interpreted these letters as nothing
more than an overzealous effort on the part
of some Germans to be sensitive about
issues affecting Jewish people.

I returned to Europe last fall for the
first time in some years. In the course
of my travels, I discovered that what had
seemed like a minor blind spot in the Ger-
man radical milieu had evolved into what
I regard as a really problematic strain of
thought: the “Anti-German Critique,” a
reactionary nationalism that masquerades
as radical anti-nationalism. For adherents
of this ideology, the important thing is not
to oppose capitalism, racism, and hierar-
chy everywhere, but to oppose Germany

and anti-Semitism specifically, even to
the extent of supporting other capital-
ist nations and other forms of racism 1 .
Revolutions being unforthcoming, Anti-
German antifascists settle for supporting
the current government of Israel, all the
injustices it perpetrates notwithstanding,
on account of the injustices perpetrated
by its opponents.

At first, I only came across hints ofthis.
Climbingthe immense stairwell ofthe EKH,
Vienna's longstanding squatted social
center, I came upon a little exhortation
scrawled on the wall: "Support Zionism.”
That's strange, I thought to myself: here,
in an anarchist stronghold, graffiti urging
people to rally to a cause already receiving
more support from the United States than
any other government in the world, and
responsible for the displacement and re-
pression of an entire population of people
of color. In the ageless tradition of marker-
bearing squatters, I added a little message
of my own: “down with all isms — support
people, not nations.”

The following week found me staying

1 The word racism is used in this text to call at-
tention to the double standards so many white
people bring to their considerations of the Pales-
tine/Israel conflict. One must be a racist to com-
pare the living conditions of average Palestinian
and Israeli families today and not see injustice,
however things stand in the gang war. It’s also
impossible to describe the policies ofthe Israeli
government, which disenfranchise, dominate, and
humiliate Palestinians the same way apartheid
did native Africans in South Africa, as anything
less than racist. Some Palestinians might also
be described as having racist ideas, but they are
hardly in a position to subject Israelis en masse
to such dehumanizing treatment.

at a social center in Dresden. Among the
other occupants ofthe space were two Is-
raelis, who — like many young Israelis I had
met upon earlier visits to Europe 2 — were
traveling the continent in order to avoid
the draft that compels Israelis to serve in
the military. I fell to talking politics with
one of them. He declined to take a posi-
tion on the Israel-Palestine conflict — an
admirable enough stance for a person
coming from such a complicated situa-
tion, who had accepted exile rather than
risk killing or dying for a cause in which
he did not believe.

Others in Germany had not respected
his decision, however. He recounted to me
his experience traveling for a few days with
a German band; when it came out that
he was avoiding military service, another
person on the tour — a German gentile,
otherwise committed to revolutionary
politics — was outraged: “You mean you
wouldn’t serve to protect your people?
You coward!”

Scarcely two days later, during an
antifascist action in Leipzig, I had my
first brush with Anti-Germans. I’ll spare
you the details of my participation in the
event — suffice it to say my friends and I
spent hours wandering around peering
at photocopied maps, followed by a few
exhilarating minutes being pursued by
riot police through cordoned-off streets

2 Among others, I had spent time with members
ofthe band Dir Yassin, an anarchist and anti-Zion-
ist band from Israel. They were interviewed in the
anarcho-punk magazine Profane Existence in 1998,
and with luck you can still find the interview at www.
angelfire.com/il/deiryassin/peinter.htm.

In these pictures you see a. a Jewish parent and an innocent child

(circle all that apply): b. a Jewish parent and a prospective soldier

c. an Arab parent and an innocent child

d. an Arab parent and a potential terrorist

That night, sporting a limp that lasted

and over spiked fences, and in the end
the scheduled fascist march was thwarted.
After traveling throughout southern and
eastern Europe, where fascism is gaining
more and more power, it was a real relief
to see it being held at bay somewhere.
It was not so encouraging, however, to
see US, Israeli, and British flags being
unloaded at the departure point of an
antifascist march.

I went immediately over to the young
men unloadingthem. My German friend had
urged me not to waste my time, but whether
or notthey would listen to me I was curious
what they had to say for themselves.

“What are you doing with that flag?” I
gestured at the stars and stripes one young
fellow was pulling from the truck.

“We are going to march with it.”

“I’m from the United States,” I began,
“and I can’t fucking believe you would
march with a US flag at this rally. Don't
you know what this flag means?”

“But it is different here! Here, this flag
is a symbol ofthe antifascist struggle.”

“Listen, everywhere in the world that
flag represents the same things: Holly-
wood, Coca-Cola, the absolute power of
the capitalist market. What does that have
to do with freedom?”

His answerwas almost plaintive. “But
Britain and the United States beat the
German government! They were the only
ones who could do it. We carry their flags
to remember this.”

“They fought that war with their ar-
mies segregated into black and white divi-
sions, and Japanese citizens in internment
camps! They weren’t fighting for freedom,
but for their own national power — just like
in the genocidal wars against the Native
Americans! That flag is stained with the
blood of millions!”

“But they were the only ones who could
stop the Nazis here,” he repeated, almost
sheepishly. I hadn’t caught myself a par-
ticularly fierce Anti-German.

“That war only happened because peo-
ple were willing to march under flags in
the first place, and we could have won
it without flags if people like you didn’t
insist on them. If you're going to march
with that flag, count me out, and every
antifascist like me in the US would do the
same.” I left to find my own route to block
the fascists — hence the crazy chase scene
involving the spiked fence.

for weeks, I stayed at a squat in Erfurt. Here,
someone had gone around to every poster
that had read “Antifascist” and blacked
out “fascist” to replace it with “Deutsch.”
What kind of people thought it was more
important to take at stand against Deut-
schland than against fascism?

It wasn’t until Hamburg, my last stop in
Germany, that I got to have the discussion
I’d wanted with a real live Anti-German. It
was someone I knew: back in the '90s, he
had booked my old punk rock band at a
social center in Germany. He was thinner
now, with a more haughty, intellectual air
about him and a pencil-thin moustache.

“Yes,” he was saying, “but your new
band is... not so good, yes?” He nodded
to me, eyebrows raised.

“We’re a new band,” I replied, gamely.
“We've just learned new instruments. Over
time, I hope we'll improve. But yes, right
now, perhaps we are not so good.”

“Your last band” — he paused for dra-
matic effect — “did not improve with time,
I think. I saw you at the beginning ofyour
last tour, and then at the end. Do you
remember?”

“Yes, of course. I agree.” Humility is
the better part of celebrity, if you want to
last an hour in punk circles.

“You know," he said, leaning his head
back and looking into the middle distance,
“I think when I first started to lose interest,

it was when the record came out with the
song about Intifada 3 .”

“Aha!” I exclaimed, practically pound-
ing my fist upon the ubiquitous foosball
table — the game is known as “kicker” in
Germany, and heaven help any foreigner
who takes on even the drunkest of native
players. “An Anti-German! I've been waiting
for this! Let’s get down to business.”

3 The offending song, named “Called Terrorists by
Terrorists,” was explained thus in the liner notes:
“The title of this song refers to the well-known
murder of United Nations mediator Count Folke
Bernadotte, who was killed on orders from future
Israeli politician Yitzhak Shamir. Bernadotte was
appointed ini948to negotiate between the Palestin-
ian natives and the Zionists who were attempting
to establish an Israeli state in their homeland; he
was the former head of the Swedish Red Cross, and
had risked his life to save thousands of Jews from
concentration camps during the second world war.
After months of studying the situation, Bernadotte
concluded that in the interests of human decency if
the Zionists were to eventually be given sovereignty
over a part of Palestine, Palestinian refugees who
had been driven out by Zionist violence should be
given two options: they should be allowed to return
to their stolen lands, or else receive compensation
from the new nation of Israel for what had been
taken from them. The day after he made his pro-
posal, he was killed by Zionist terrorists carrying
out Shamir’s instructions. Years later, supported
by a media blackout on the past and the fact that
history is always written by the victors, Shamir was
able to join other world leaders in referring to the
Palestinians who still resisted the racist repression
of his regime as ‘terrorists’ without anyone bringing
up his own blood-soaked past."

Page 24 : Testimonials : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Testimonials : Page 25

“Yes, I think there is a lot where we do
not agree! But maybe there is no reason
even to talk about it.” He darted me a
sidelong glance. “For example, you said
you live in the woods — you are against
technology and civilization, yes? But for
us, you know, we think that technology
is just something that works. It spreads,
because it works.”

He had my complete attention now.
“And other peoples who are less, shall we
say, advanced...?”

“Ah, I see what you suggest. Yes, some
might say that this is a Western-centered
view. But people around the world are tak-
ing up this lifestyle as fast as they can.”

“But you really can’t argue that eve-
rything that spreads is a good thing. You
know, a plague also spreads. A plague
spreads because it works! And anyway, I am
not against all technology — just technolo-
gies that promote hierarchy or water down
our experience of life. Besides, if everyone
lived the way people in Germany and the
US live, the planet would be wrecked in
one generation."

“A plague spreads because it works,” he
repeated, nodding in slit-eyed appreciation
of my clever rejoinder.

I learned later, in my research into Anti-
German thought, that indeed, some Anti-
German writers conceive of world history
in terms ofthe progress of civilization (i.e.,
Western civilization), with the implication
that other cultures are primitive. This is an
old-fashioned Marxist analysis, in which
capitalist technocracy is a stage of human
evolution that must be passed through on
the way to communist utopia; this was
the excuse the Bolsheviks and Maoists
gave for forcing millions to give up their
traditional lifestyles in orderto join the ma-
chinery of industrial communism. “There
is something worse than capitalism and
bourgeois society: its barbarous abolition,”
writes one Anti-German, and he goes on to
make it explicit that he is referring to Arabic
nationalism as well as German fascism.
Thinking this way makes it easy enough
to pose Israel and the United States as
the flagships of culture and progress, and
those dirty Arabs as the savages to whom
the torch of Nazi irrationality and brutality
has been passed.

But let’s return to the conversation in
Hamburg. “But what are the US flags for
in the demonstrations?” I demanded.

“Ah, they are a joke, to wind people up,”
he explained. “There are certain people it
is important to piss off with these flags.
You know, in Germany, the right wing
exploits the whole anti-American thing
for its own purposes.”

“But isn't it totally reactionary to car-
ry them just because they bother your
enemies? Does that mean you have to
embrace the flag of such a destructive,
oppressive nation?”

As I discovered later in my studies,
if he had been a true hard-line Anti-Ger-
man he would have explained to me that,
because the US provides Israel with the
money and guns to hold the entire Middle
East at bay and do to the Palestinians as
they please, it is not a destructive nation
at all, but the foremost protector of peace.
Instead, he opted for a more conciliatory
approach: “This is a German thing, special
to our German context. Here, where the
holocaust took place, our most important
job is to fight German power, and for this
the flags are good.”

I reflected a minute. “Isn’t it very Ger-
man to claim that in the German context,
you have a special privileged perspective
that justifies actions that don’t make sense
anywhere else?”

As their name implies, Anti-Germans
put quite a bit of energy into establish-
ing the special status of the German na-
tion-state as an evil more terrible than
any other. Accordingly, my companion
launched into an explanation of why the
Holocaust happened in Germany, why it
could only happen in Germany, and why
it was worse than any other atrocity in
history. To hear him tell it, the status of
the German state as perpetrator of the
most terrible of all crimes grants certain
special rights and powers of observation
to its citizens: knowing anti-Semitism bet-
ter than anyone else, they can see more
clearly than others that it is still the most
serious danger facing the world.

I wasn't able to follow his argument
this far, though, as I was still getting over
my shock at his dismissal of others’ rac-
ist oppression and slaughter. “Wait, what
about the extermination of the Native
Americans?”

“That was different: that was simply
a conflict over land and resources, and it
was concluded when the last ofthe Indians
surrendered. The Jews were law-abiding

“The idea that an understanding of
genocide, that a memory of holo-
causts can only lead people to want
to dismantle the system is erroneous.
The continuing appeal of nationalism
suggests that the opposite is true:
that an understanding of genocide
has led people to mobilize genocidal
armies, that the memory of holo-
causts has led people to perpetuate
holocausts. The sensitive poets who
remembered the loss, the researchers
who documented it, have been like
the pure scientists who discovered
the structure of the atom. Applied sci-
entists used the discovery to split the
atom’s nucleus, to produce weapons
which can split every atom’s nucleus;

nationalists use the poetry to split
and fuse human populations, to mo-
bilize genocidal armies, to perpetrate
new holocausts.”

-Fredy Perlman, The Continuing
Appeal of Nationalism

German citizens, and were singled out for
purely racist, ideological reasons. You'll
probably say that there were people in the
death camps besides the Jews; but the Jews
were the real targets of the Shoah 4 .”

“Of course, Jewish people now have the
means to talk about their experiences in the
death camps, whereas the Romani people,
who are still oppressed and dispossessed
everywhere, are unable to get a hearing.”

“Don't you think that sort of rhetoric
is a little anti-Semitic, like saying there is
a worldwide Jewish conspiracy?”

“It’s very convenient for a gentile like
you to call everyone who disagrees anti-
Semitic! You’ll recall that the last time I
was here with a band that talked about
Israel and Palestine, half of us were Jewish.
Anyway, what about my earlier question?
Isn’t it nationalist to consider Deutsch
culture a context unto itself apart from the
international context? What ever happened
to ‘no borders, no nations’?”

He answered me with a phrase that
summarized everything for me: “But that
does not take into account our special
situation. Here we say, ‘destroy all nations,
but Israel last.’”

In this formulation, we arrive at the
central fallacy ofthe pro-Zionist position:
the idea that nations protect their citizens.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of

4 “Shoah” is a Hebrew word for the Holocaust.

the way state power works. Each govern-
ment argues to its citizens that it exists
to protect them from other governments;
but when nations fight, it is not governors
that die, but their citizens. Thousands
upon thousands upon thousands of Is-
raelis have died since the formation of
Israel in 1948. Former terrorists such as
Shamir and Sharon have risen to power
upon waves of fear, assuring their con-
stituents that if anyone is to suffer, it
will be Arabs — but their policies have
continued to result in the loss of Israeli
lives, while they die of old age 5 .

Compared to the aforementioned
Romani people, who are still perse-
cuted across the whole of Europe, one
might even saythe Israelis have it worse:
thanks to billions and billions of dollars
from the United States, they are able to
maintain an artificially high standard
of living, but at any moment a suicide
bomber may kill them or their loved
ones. One must wonder if, given the
opportunity, most Romani people would
opt for power and luxury beneath the
sword of Damocles over their current
circumstances. Had they somehow been
chosen by destiny to force a people out
of their homeland and carry on a US-
financed war against their neighbors for
the past half-century, the results would
surely be similar.

Neither fate, of course, is desirable.
Ifjews today were in the same situation
as the Romani, that would also be a
terrible tragedy. But let us not imagine
that those are the only two possibilities
for survivors ofthe Holocaust. Such a
lack of imagination, that reduces all
questions to a matter of picking the
lesser of two evils, is at the heart of
all the impasses that face us across
the world today. It is the same lack of
imagination that led people to mobilize
around Kerry against Bush, rather than
opposing the US government itself; it
is the same lack of imagination that
induces the Anti-Germans to side with
the state of Israel against its enemies,

5 With the exception, of course, of Israeli prime
minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated
by a Zionist Jew for fear he might make progress
towards a peaceful and just solution to the con-
flict. One would think this, if anything, would
have turned the Israeli public against militant
Zionism — but no, he was succeeded in power
by a right wing hardliner.

rather than with us against nationalism
and enmity themselves.

To be sure, most of the Jews who
have been murdered worldwide over
the past six decades have been killed by
anti-Semites. Anti-Semitism has flour-
ished among Arabs; much is made of
this by the Anti-Germans, who trace
Arabic nationalism back to early con-
nections between certain Arabs and
German Nazis. But these few connec-
tions would have been meaningless if
Arabic anti-Semites had not been able
to make use of Israeli atrocities in the
years that followed to recruit converts.
The violence in the Middle East today
is not the direct successor to the Nazi
Holocaust; rather, it is the result of the
violence committed by survivors ofthat
Holocaust, who became abusers in their
turn — as survivors of trauma all too
often do.

Until now, we have barely touched
upon the number of Palestinians and
other Arabs who have suffered at the
hands ofthe Israeli state. If one is mak-
ing an argument for nations as protec-
tors of human beings, one must take
all human beings into account, not only
the citizens of certain nations — unless
one believes the others to be subhu-
man. Here we can see that the cost of
the establishment and perpetuation of
the state of Israel has been colossal in
terms ofthe suffering and death of both
Israelis and Palestinians.

As anarchists, we can find the expla-
nation for this not in the innate blood-
thirstiness and anti-Semitism of Arabs
(nor the imperialistic machinations of
Jews, for that matter), but in the way
nationalists and nation-states pit human
beings against one another. For us, the
answer is clear: we must struggle against
the governments of Israel and Palestine,
as well as those ofthe US, Germany, and
all other nations. So long as one intoler-
ant, violent, self-interested government
is able to carry on unchallenged, it will
be all too easy for rival governments to
muster frightened adherents to commit
murderous acts as well. So-called prag-
matists who insist that we must support
one or another of these gangs would
have us perpetuate the whole mess into
eternity. We can find our solidarity with
all Palestinians and Israelis who struggle

Page 26 : Testimonials : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Testimonials : Page 27

against their own rulers on the basis of a
recognition of each other's humanity 6 .

Before we conclude, let’s revisit the
origins and mentality ofthe Anti-German
ideology, as it exemplifies many ofthe po-
tential pitfalls for radicals in today’s global
context. Long before the Nazis came to
power in Germany, opposition to capital-
ism and the rich was often directed against
caricatures of “the International Jew.” Many
German nationalists considered the pro-
letariat to be composed of non-Jewish
Germans, who were supposedly preyed
upon by Jewish money lenders; the impli-

Look at all those Israeli flags! When you
hate your country for what it did to others,
and therefore must struggle with the ques-
tion of whether you should hate yourself,
identifying with the descendents of those
“others" is one solution— and maybe the
quickest way to accomplish that is to
choose the same enemies they have, even
if they did not choose those enemies.

cation was that by getting rid of the Jews,
the capitalist system could be symbolically
cleansed of its parasites. Anti-Semitism
was taken for granted in many revolution-
ary circles: Bakunin made anti-Semitic
remarks, and Mussolini himself started out
with an interest in anarchism. Revolution-
ary working class activism was co-opted by
national socialism such as that of Musso-
lini's blackshirts no less than by nationalist
socialism such as that of the Bolsheviks.
This checkered heritage makes it easy for
the Anti-Germans to read anti-Semitism
in the radicalism oftheircontemporaries,
whether it's there or not.

Today, fascists in Germany and other
nations have similarly muddied issues by
adopting environmentalist and anti-globali-
zation stances. It would be nice to stop at
the conclusion thatthe Anti-Germans have
simply been provoked by their enemies
into thoughtlessly adopting contradic-
tory positions, but the fact that they have
crossed into nationalism and borderline
racism suggests something more insidi-
ous: that in setting out to resist fascism,
they have been infected by it, perhaps as
a result of the same German predisposi-
tions they aim to oppose. In studyingtheir
example, we can recognize the importance
of developing a nuanced critique of power
relations, but we are also reminded of
Nietzsche’s dictum that those who do
battle with monsters must take care lest
they become monsters themselves.

Every holocaust justifies itself on the
pretext of protecting innocents. In the US,
during the extermination of Native Ameri-
cans (and, later, during the segregation era),
white women were said to be threatened
by colored savages; in Nazi Germany, citi-
zens of pure “Aryan blood” were fetishized
as victims of a worldwide conspiracy of
degenerates. In coming to see the Jewish
people as a category — “the” endangered,
“the” victims of oppression — rather than
committing to a struggle against injustice
everywhere and in all forms, the Anti-Ger-
mans set the stage for themselves to end
as abettors of racist, nationalist war. It is
easy to see how German radicals, eager to
distance themselves from their nation's
anti-Semitic history and desperate to op-
pose a resurgent fascist movement, might
prioritize Jewish concerns over others. But
this is sometimes how new atrocities oc-
cur: the survivors of persecution become

persecutors, and others, anxious to atone
for condoning their former persecution,
turn a blind eye.

Anti-German partisanship for Israel,
once set in motion, did not lack justifica-
tion and encouragement: there is an entire
propaganda industry given overto rational-
izing Israeli policy, just as there is another
given to taking advantage of it to mobilize
Arabic resistance groups. Zionist Israelis
are indeed victims in the Israel-Palestine
conflict, as are Palestinian suicide bombers;
the problem is that both fight not to end
the conflict but to win it. The Anti-German
phenomenon should remind anarchists
not to hurry to pick sides in national and
ethnic strife; we must, rather, side with
whatever parts ofthose struggling resonate
with our desires to supercede the terms of
such conflicts, however buried those parts
may be. We can intercede in the manner
demonstrated by Rachel Corrie, the US
activist killed by a bulldozer of the Israeli
Defense Force while fighting to protect
Palestinian homes: not so that one side
may triumph, but to help human beings
survive an inhuman conflict.

All this is complicated, for sure. In a
world in which seemingly everybody is lined
up on one side or another of such conflicts,
it seems those who would take sides with
everyone against conflict itself find them-
selves apart from everyone else, even at
odds with them. But again, let us learn
from the Anti-Germans: those who resign
themselves to the failure of revolutionary
prospects turn, defensively, into the very
monsters they so recently opposed.

6 In that spirit, I’d like to conclude this text with a
poem by leading Israeli author Aharon Shabtai:

t, too, have declared war:

You’ll need to divert part ofthe force
deployed to wipe out the Arabs —
to drive them out of their homes
and expropriate their land —
and set it against me.

You’ve got tanks and planes,

and soldiers by the battalion;

you’ve got the rams' horns in your hands

with which to rouse the masses;

you’ve got men to interrogate and torture;

you’ve got cells for detention.

I have only this heart
with which I give shelter
to an Arab child.

Aim your weaponts at it:
even if you blow it apart
it will always,
always mock you.

Page 28 : Testimonials : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

Report from the Hothouse:

The Tomato Pickers

Crimethlnc. Field Agent Guero Flaco spent four months working and living
undercover in a forty-two-acre greenhouse complex at the pulsing heart of
North America’s greenhouse tomato industry, which relies almost exclusively
on contracted laborers from Mexico and the Caribbean. Fie wrote these letters
by flashlight from his bunk inside the warehouse dorm room.

In order to protect the folks beside whom he worked, he asks that this article not be
reproduced without his permission. He can be reached at chupatinta@gmail.com.

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Testimonials : Page 29

Strange Dreams

This place breeds strange dreams. After my first week
of work, I dreamt that Sylvio, the owner of the greenhouse,
was showing me around. We were inside an enormous
warehouse. Sylvio was dressed like Laurence Fishburne in
The Matrix. His footsteps echoed as he escorted me towards
a large radiant doorway. Beyond the doorway was a vast
greenhouse that stretched to the horizon in every direc-
tion. I could smell tear gas, and the heat was stifling. I saw
stooped figures below, tending what I first thought were
tomato plants.

I looked more closely and saw that the vines were as
thick as trees, and what I thought were tomatoes were large
red sacks filled with fluid. Each sack held a human being
curled like a fist. They were all unconscious, and fed intra-
venously on the dreams of some giant machine.

One of the workers looked my way, and spoke to me in
a language I didn’t understand. He had darker skin than
most of the people inside the tomatoes. I looked again at the
people in utero and began to recognize friends and family
members. I spoke, but couldn’t hear my own voice. Sylvio
said, Welcome to the greenhouse of the real. And I woke up
before dawn in a room with twelve bunk beds, in the middle
of a warehouse. Someone was blasting norteho music, and it
was almost time for work.

Living Quarters

I live with forty-four Mexican men in one of the com-
pany’s three packing warehouses. The same number of
Mexicans live in a second warehouse, and Jamaican and
Vietnamese workers share rooms in a third. All forty-five
of us sleep in four bunkrooms upstairs inside the dimly lit
warehouse. There are no dressers in the bunkrooms; we
keep our clothes in crates and boxes, or hang them from
rods strung to the exposed heating and cooling pipes above
our heads.

To get to the washroom and the kitchen, we pass down a
long hallway, descend a metal staircase, and cross the ware-
house floor. The washroom sports a sign reading “MENS.”
Directly beside it is a door marked:

Chemical Room / DANGER / KEEP OUT
yc Poison / Chemical Storage.

There are forklifts and golf carts parked here and there
on the warehouse floor. Crates and flats are stacked to the
ceiling, two or three stories high. It’s hot and loud because
of the enormous boiler, and flies buzz all around. A single
picnic table is pushed against one wall beside two coca cola
vending machines that read THIRSTY? This is our living
room. When the phone on the wall (our only incoming line)
receives an incoming call, it automatically switches over to
a squealing fax machine after one full ring (it doubles as the
company fax line), and automatically hangs up after two.
Apart from the payphones in town, this is our only link to
the outside world.

The kitchen isn’t big enough to accommodate every-
one at once, so we take our breaks and our lunch hour in
shifts — half of us eat at noon, half at one o’clock. One wall

is lined with propane stoves; another with fridges, washing
machines, and dryers. A third wall sports a long trough sink,
and the fourth, rows of tomato crates stacked on shelves,
where we keep our food, utensils, pots and pans. There are
no cupboards, and due to the lack of space, about a third of
us have to keep our groceries and utensils on the floor.

Our kitchen, incidentally, is infested with cockroaches.
They nest under the tablecloths and packages of food on
the floor, and skitter over and through the crates where we
store our food. This morning one crawled out of my corn
flakes as I was about to pour the milk in. Not without sym-
pathy, my friend Kiko, who sits across from me at breakfast,
remarked that cockroaches have been around since the time
of the dinosaurs and would be here long after humans had
disappeared, so I might as well get used to them. Accepting
the wisdom of his remark, I ate my cereal, not wanting to
start the day hungry.

We work ten to twelve hours a day, except on Sundays,
when we usually work a half day. In the vines we chatter
back and forth as we move quickly up and down the rows,
picking tomatoes and clipping off the attached stems.

The Mexican workers teach me Spanish and I teach them
English — a few useful words and phrases here and there. As
the day wears on and the temperature rises, we gradually
fall into a silence broken only by the clipping of stems, the
rattle of carts, and the roar of the forklift engine.

This particular greenhouse, I should add, is nowhere
near the worst of the workplaces that employ migrant farm
labor. My co-workers aren’t hit, or kicked, or ridiculed at
work. We are almost always paid on time. As long as we
work fast, no one yells at us to work faster. We never have to
work a 20-hour day, or a 100-hour week. As many of my co-
workers can testify from first-hand experience, all of these
things have happened on other farms and greenhouses not
so far from here. Constantly reminding themselves of this
fact, my co-workers keep their heads down and endure the
overcrowding, the infested kitchen, and a host of other
small and great indignities. It could be worse is the constant
refrain, as I know it is on most farms. The knowledge that
they could be sent somewhere worse does more to keep
workers in line than any threat the boss could make.

Palm Pilot Panopticon

Maybe it’s the heat or the long hours, but it isn’t only
in my dreams that this place reminds me of The Matrix — a
place where computers have achieved complete and seam-
less control over human life. I feel like I’ve taken the red pill
and broken free of something, seeing for the first time the
gears of the machinery of modern life that usually remain
hidden from those of us privileged enough to be ignorant of
such things.

This is by far the most technologically sophisticated
workplace I’ve ever seen. The environment inside the
greenhouse is entirely computer-controlled, heated with
steam and hot water from an immense system of boilers and
pipes and cooled with fans and mechanized louvers. The
tomato vines grow unnaturally long, sustained by compli-

cated life-support systems: automatically watered by tubes,
rooted in “Horticultural Rock Wool,” doused in chemicals,
stretched and swollen by fertilizers, strung up on strings
and pruned of leaves, stripped of suckers and pollinated by
bees that live in cardboard box hives stacked here and there
like miniature condominium developments. The hives in-
evitably dwindle as the bees succumb to the pesticides; they
are replaced by new stacks of cardboard box hives.

The entire complex is effectively under 24-hour lock-
down. We use round magnetic “keys” to enter and leave the
warehouse, and a piercing alarm sounds whenever a door
is held open too long. Every employee is given a plastic
timecard, and we swipe in and out at the beginning and end
of every workday. A sign beside the time box warns us, NO
PUNCH NO PAY.

Most ominous of all, we are all issued palm pilots
sealed in aqua packs. We wear them on strings attached to
our belts or slung over our shoulders, and as we work we
record everything we do on them. Every morning I enter
my employee number, my task, and the greenhouse and
row number. The thing then starts timing me, and contin-
ues until I tell it I’ve finished the row, or taken a break, or
switched to something else. Then, if I’m picking, I enter
how many crates I’ve picked. Crate by crate, row by row,
every minute of the day is precisely accounted for.

After work each day we line up to place our palm pilots
on metal pads in front of the office, from which the data
we’ve generated is uploaded to some giant database. Our
machines (this is what we call them — nuestras maquinas )
then give us an “efficiency rating” expressed as a percent-
age. “109,” my machine might blip at the end of a particu-
larly hard day, meaning I’ve performed 109 percent of some
arbitrary measure of an acceptable day’s work, as deter-
mined by some English-speaker in a business suit.

When the “machines” were first introduced a few
months ago, before I started working here, the supervisor
told the workers that whoever had the best efficiency rating
each week would get a paid day off. It’s difficult to convey
how threatening this “incentive” was to the workers’ culture
of solidarity. In the vines, everyone moves at more or less

the same pace (except me — I bust my clumsy, privileged
ass and can rarely keep up at the best of times). The faster
workers slow down to help the slower workers with their
rows, and everyone emerges almost simultaneously, with
their crates full of tomatoes. It’s “even keel” like this on
every farm I’ve visited, whatever the task, and it makes a
lot of sense: in this strange land where few people under-
stand the boss’s instructions, and where anyone can be (and
occasionally is) sent back to Mexico, the last thing people
want to do is to draw unnecessary attention to themselves
by standing out as faster or slower than the rest.

But for a short while under the new palm pilot regime,
the protective anonymity of moving at even keel was
destroyed, and workers ran themselves ragged to improve
their percentage, or (more commonly) began to resent
those who were making the rest look bad by chasing unre-
alistic scores. Finally, everyone got together and refused to
use the palm pilots at all. An uneasy truce reigned for a few
days, until management retaliated by sending six suspected
leaders back to Mexico and revoking the prize for the fast-
est worker. Similarly, at another greenhouse nearby, the
workers went on strike when the palm pilots were intro-
duced, and 23 workers were sent home to Mexico. In both
cases, the workers who were sent home were replaced with
contract workers from Jamaica — a blatant (and effective)
divide-and-conquer tactic. And in both cases, the remaining
workers caved in and began to use the palm pilots again.

Curiously, though, the six Jamaican workers who now
work here were never given palm pilots. When I ask my
friend Christopher why not, he tells me bluntly that it’s
“because they know we would smash them.” Maybe so. It’s a
bloody shame the Mexicans didn’t do that.

The palm pilots are so effective that we rarely see (and
almost never hear from) the English-speaking white folks in
charge. Human supervision becomes almost irrelevant. The
control is complete, seamless, and practically invisible. A re-
gime like this is a corporate Human Resource department’s
dream. It’s Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, gone digital. And
sooner or later, I swear on my aqua pack, it’s coming to a
workplace near you.

Page 30 : Testimonials : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

The Only Guero in the Greenhouse
Considers His Career Options

I am the only guero (whitey) in the entire greenhouse. I
speak Spanish with the Mexicans, English with the Jamai-
cans, and French with a Vietnamese man in his seventies
everyone calls tio (“uncle”). Tio was once, long ago, an
officer in the French colonial army. He spent five years in a
Viet Cong prison. Every morning he and I greet each other
the same way: we say bonjour, I ask him comment fa va, mon-
sieur?, and he invariably replies, with a toothless grin, fa va
mieux — it’s getting better.

As more and more of the Mexicans finish their eight-
month contracts and return to their homes for a four-month
“vacation” with their families (most will return next year
because there is no work for them at home), the greenhouse
begins to hire more casual workers to take their places — of-
ten “illegals” brought in by contractors who skim a portion
of their wages. In the last few weeks, I’ve worked alongside
Indonesians, Somalians, Salvadorans, and a few others who
just stare right through me if I’m thick enough to ask them
where they are from.

It’s very hard for my co-workers to understand why an
English-speaking guero would work here at all — everyone
here is either a foreigner or a boss. I’m an anomaly. I’ve fre-
quently been offered sincere and kindly career advice: “You
should go look for work in the city; I bet you could find a
good factory job there,” or “Come to Jamaica — it’s beauti-
ful, and you could get a good teaching job there real easy.”
Or, when Christopher learns that I’ve been chosen to spray
pesticide on the tomatoes (with inadequate protection, of
course), he tells me with the same bitter irony he brings
to every situation, “Them no good, man; that’s black man’s
work.” And then, I suppose in an effort to console me, he
adds, “You keep working here for a couple of years, they’ll
make you a supervisor.” I’m having a hard time convincing
people that I never want to be a supervisor. It’s especially
hard to explain to the illegals what the hell I’m doing here,
someone with citizenship, spraying pesticide in a t-shirt and
a painters’ mask like the others do.

It’s a fair question, really, but a difficult one to answer.
I’m here, I suppose, to learn something about responsibility
and dignity — because the people around me exemplify them
all in ways I’m only beginning to understand.

Talking Babel

In the kitchen after dinner one night we got to talking
about languages — a worthy topic, given how many of them
are spoken in the greenhouse. Someone asked why people
speak so many different languages, so my friend Guada-
lupe told us the story of the Tower of Babel: how, once
upon a time, everyone used to speak the same language,
but then some, in their arrogance, tried to build a tower
to heaven, so God smashed the tower and scattered the
people across the face of the earth and made their words
strange to one another.

“And that,” Lupe concluded authoritatively, “is why peo-
ple speak different languages.”

Page 32 : Testimonials : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

It occurred to me that the Bible, as usual, had got it
backwards, so I asked my companeros if they had heard
the one about the Greenhouse of Sylvio. They shook their
heads no, unsure what I would say next. I told them how,
once upon a time, there was a very rich man who wanted to
build a greenhouse as big as the whole world. He brought
workers from every nation to work on it, and treated them
very badly. He tried to keep them divided with threats and
rumors, but the workers started talking and complaining
together, more and more each day, until one fine day they
all understood each other’s words. Then, with one voice,
they smashed the greenhouse to the ground and built a city
of laughing and dancing from its ruins. (Blame the silly
phrase a city of laughing and dancing on my patchy bunk-
house Spanish.)

In the silence that greeted my story, the propane burners
on the stove continued to throw their small, focused flames,
long after all the tortillas had been heated.

“No,” Lupe announced finally, with a grin. “I hadn’t
heard that one.”

A Possible Course of Action

The selective and temporary importing of cheap labor to
the affluent North has been accelerating rapidly for years,
and this invisible industrial workforce in the so-called “post-
industrial” North is increasingly the engine driving wealth
accumulation. Legal mechanisms limit their freedom of
mobility and enforce compliance with threats of dismissal
and deportation, while vast amounts of wealth are extracted
from their labor while they struggle, far from their families
and communities, against fatigue, depression, loneliness,
isolation, discrimination, and worse. At the same time, their
availability drives down wages for more established and
organized sectors of the working class.

I wish I could say that shutting down workplaces like
this one is as easy as a few bouts of direct action under the
cover of darkness. Greenhouses, made of thin plastic, are
stupidly easy targets for sabotage, and so are the electronic
systems used to run them. But as worthy a target as these
vegetable factories may be, cutting a few holes in a plastic
wall or dropping a few palm pilots into rain barrels barely
makes a dint in the company’s bottom line, and won’t
change either the structure of oppression or the economic
system that has workers from the global South (their local
economies decimated by neo-liberalism) clamoring for
work in the North. The precarity of their situation, carefully
manufactured at every step along the way, is precisely what
keeps the system humming.

Pardon my cheek for presuming to prescribe a possible
course of action, but if we hope to change any of this, that
precarity (as infuriatingly intangible as it is) must be our
first target. If you’ve got a few months to spare, and don’t
mind trading in your comfort for a glimpse of the reality
most folks can’t easily escape, here’s a suggestion for what
you can do.

Go where migrant farm workers or factory workers are
(hint: they’re everywhere, even if you’ve grown accustomed

to not seeing them), and spend a season planting
tobacco, plucking chickens, or harvesting field vegeta-
bles. Learn the language. Make friends with your co-
workers. For every minute you spend talking, spend at
least ten minutes listening. Think hard about what it
means to be an ally. Don’t take yourself too seriously;
remember that you experience things differently,
knowing you can leave at any time. Take note of every
time your privilege smoothes your way for you, of
every gift you are given. Don’t let your politics be a
filter for making sense of your experiences; let your
interactions with the people around you inform your
politics. Share what you learn with friends and family
back home. Sharpen your indignation at the injustices
you witness, and twist your useless First World guilt
into a vow to live differently. The workers — the ones
who are there because they have no choice — will do
the rest. You’d do well to learn to speak their language
so that when the time comes for them to call on their
allies, you’ll understand what they’re asking of you.

And I was addicted.

I began engaging in all sorts of lewd fantasies about my
upcoming breakfast. Orange juice and bagels — with those
little onion bits that I normally detest — would be perfect.
Some sugary smashed pastries would be perfect. I could im-
agine bathing in orange juice and building castles of bagels.
The noises next door finally came to a dramatic conclusion.
Despite their temporary nonviolent blockade of my route
to the kitchen, I was so overwhelmingly filled with feelings
of good will for my fellow woman and man (except cops
and politicians, fuck those bastards!), including the two
lovebirds next door, that I could not even hold my delayed
breakfast against them.

The woman in particular impressed me. I had previously
written her off as a sort of well-meaning yet utterly clueless
reformist who had been giving workshops on nonviolence a
few months ago, yet she seemed to have transformed over-
night into a bloodthirsty revolutionary with a plethora of
creative — and decidedly not non-violent — ideas about how
we could defend ourselves against the inevitable clash with
the D.C. police. Love and revolution were in the air, and I
tiptoed to the kitchen.

I am not normally a morning person. That day, I was so
brimming with happiness that I felt positively empowered.
After all, when in life is the mission so simple? People
were coming to try to shut down the center of neo-liberal
depravity that is the IMF, and we had to make sure they all
had maps to get to wherever they needed to get to. Thanks
to my magical Kinko’s free copy card, which a friend had
manufactured by drilling a little hole into it, and the benign
negligence — or was it complicity? — of Kinko’s employ-
ees, my job was pretty easy. My simple life was absolutely
overflowing with meaning — but I needed help. After all,
maybe fifty thousand people were going to show up to this
protest, and that was more photocopies than I could make
single-handedly. In the kitchen I concocted a fantasy in a fit
of anarchist evangelism: I would go to the Starbucks only
a block away, sit down next to the first pasty, tired, middle-
aged bureaucrat of the Global Capitalist Death Machine I
could find and say, “Look, buddy. I know you hate your job,
waking up nine-to-five and being a minor accomplice to all
sorts of nastiness. Secretly, you realize your life is meaning-
less. Drop that cappuccino right now, ’cause I got meaning
to spare. Forget this whole capitalist job deathtrap and join
me in Kinko’s.”

My reverie was interrupted by the dull roar of the trash
compactor. Fuck, and no one had taken out the trash! I
grabbed the black trash bag and stumbled out the door into
the bright sunlit morning. I waited by the trashcan, and
within a few minutes the smiling trash collector, wearing an
orange jumper, took the trash off my hands. He leaned over,
as if to tell me a secret:

“You heard, then? They just drove an airplane into the
World Trade Center!”

“No shit! Well, you know, things are crazy nowadays.”

I just smiled and waved goodbye to the trashman. Man,
the things people say in the morning. It was sort of inter-

While the details escape me, and in fact I’m pretty sure
I never knew them to begin with, I had somehow ended up
in this apartment preparing for total war against capital and
the state. It was a pretty big apartment, enough to fit about
a dozen scouts for the upcoming anti-IMF protests. Our job
was simple — we were making propaganda for everyone who
was showing up: posters, leaflets, wheatpasting material,
and the inevitable badly photocopied and confusing map of
downtown D.C. We hoped to improve that last one.

So, I was utterly fucking happy. Often life is a hard thing,
hill of difficult decisions, personal tragedies, and the dreary
weariness of a meaningless job. In more cheery cases there
was no job, and the task was figuring out where the near-
est dumpster with some vegetables was and a place to put
my sleeping bag that wouldn’t involve getting too wet. Yet
here I was, with both of those problems solved. The base-
ment apartment, offered to us through shadowy means by
a friend of a friend of a friend, was the perfect hideout. It
was within spitting distance of the White House and most of
downtown, and like all good hideouts had a distinct lack of
windows — it was camouflaged by anonymity in a dehuman-
izing tenement block. The food problem was solved by the
cornucopia of dumpsters in the nearby suburbs, where a cer-
tain organic food chain was literally overflowing with bread
products and vegetables that were barely beginning the
process of decomposition — and large amounts of decidedly
vegan-unfriendly sugary treats. Dumpster crack, we called it.

“Have you heard the news? Those motherfuckers just
killed somebody in Italy!”

“It’ll be our turn next in DC. And Genoa is nothing
compared to the heart of the beast. It’s fucking war, and
somebody’s probably gonna die.”

Time always gives one a strange sense of perspective on
events. Nothing has fundamentally changed. The enemy
is still the same, and so is what I want, which is of course
anarchy. Five years ago we were ready to die. We weren’t re-
ally sure what that meant but I’m pretty sure it was at least
a distant cousin to what embittered young men and women
in Palestine feel. I don’t know. Those who die for the cause
don’t come back to tell the tales.

Down to the nitty-gritty. It was September 11 th , 2001, and
I was hungry, dirty, exhausted, and utterly fucking happy. I
awoke in my dusty sleeping bag on the encrusted (in what, I
dared not ask) floor of an intensely strange little basement,
beside two of my comrades, who were still asleep. Not only
was I hungry, but I also had to piss, ideally in some sort
of vaguely hygienic container. Next door — although to be
exact there was no literal door, only a sort of a metaphysi-
cal door where a more corporeal door should have stood — I
could hear the rough grunting, panting, slapping, and
moaning of two people engaging in an extremely vocal act
of passionate revolutionary love. . . and blocking my path to
the bathroom and the kitchen.

esting how he, the legitimate morning trashman, had his
counterpart in me, the illegitimate midnight trashman. Our
jobs had the same slogan: Get the Trash. I only hoped that
I had lightened his load by removing enough of the trash
from circulation to make up for the trash that I had just
given him. Anyways, I was never one to let a good breakfast
or even meaningful anticapitalist activity get in the way of
going back to sleep in the morning. So, I tiptoed past the
post-coital embrace of my pals, and slithered back into my
sleeping bag.

“Get up, man! You gotta run upstairs!”

Just as I was about to get back to bed, the crazy tooth-
less landlord peers in and wakes me up, putting me in a
distinctly bad mood. I feign grogginess, and he all but drags
me out of my sleeping bag.

“They just blew up the World Trade Center! There’s
bombs going off!”

To think that I had doubted the trashman. There went
my peaceful morning. Not realizing the full impact of these
events, I grabbed another crusty bagel and shambled up-
stairs with my comrades to our landlord’s personal enclave,
where, surrounded by cigarette butts and porn magazines,
he had a small TV perched strategically on the file cabinet
across from his desk. Yes, the trashman was right. On the
screen there appeared to be some sort of James Bond movie
playing. Or perhaps War of the Worlds. Except that the news
reporter seemed to be actually panicking, uncertain how
to comprehend, much less provide an advertising-friendly
light chatter about a thousand people being incinerated.

The building was on fire, and there was definitely some sort
of gaping hole in the World Trade Center. Then I heard a
shriek from the news reporter. The tower just crumbled in
place, like a demolition. Except that it was full of people,
many of whom had been running the financial apparatus of
global capitalism, pushing the buttons that calculated the
numbers written in the blood of the poor.

Emphasis on the past tense.

I sat transfixed by the spectacle on the television. There
were undoubtedly any number of janitors and cooks and
window washers in there, even if they were in the minority.
No, this was not good. I wasn’t horrified, really, not sad, not
scared, not surprised; this was just not something that I had
expected to happen this morning. My brain was racing, yet
somehow a useful analysis of the destruction of a sizeable
portion of New York City evaded me. The landlord, still
in his boxers, just stood there slack-jawed. Behind me, the
two lovebirds started cheering, including the person I had
met just a few months earlier giving a nonviolence training.
How times change!

“Well, I sure don’t think that was us. I mean, no one told
me about that. That was someone who was really fucking
angry. Uh, Palestinians?”

My logic is less than razor sharp in the morning. My good
friend Colin had a serious and grave look upon his face.

“Those kids are not thinking clearly,” he said, rolling
his eyes in the lovebirds’ direction. “We’ve got to figure out
what to do, and quick. This definitely changes our plans.”

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Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Testimonials : Page 35

Before Colin could get another word in, a report came
across the screen that the Pentagon had been hit with an
airplane. There was a quick cut to the Pentagon, which now
featured a burning hole in its side.

More cheers erupted.

“Jesus Christ. That’s not too far away. I mean I can’t say
they didn’t have it coming. The Pentagon’s full of fucking
murderers. But this is getting a little too close for comfort.”

Suddenly my razor-sharp deductive powers put it
together that there might be even more planes in the sky
that could be crashing into other parts of the U.S. power
complex. It seemed quite logical that another plane was
going to crash into the White House, from which so much
sheer horror was perpetuated throughout the world. We
were literally a few blocks from the White House. Fuck,
the plane could miss and hit us! What about the debris? I
wasn’t exactly sure what happened when a plane crashed
into a city, but it seemed likely to hold ramifications for
everyone nearby. All of downtown D.C. was more or less
worthy of being destroyed in the eyes of many people on
the planet, and we were unlucky enough to be in the middle
of downtown. I wished I could put a black flag on the roof
so whoever the fuck was behind this would know we were
anarchists trying to fight capitalism and the state, who had
no great love for the U.S. government — so please don’t kill
us, thank you very much!

The television at this point was stuck on what appeared
to be an infinite loop of the planes ramming into the World
Trade Center, over and over and over again. Just in case we
had missed it. The news reporters were babbling and stam-
mering. They mentioned that the death counts could be five
thousand, ten thousand, fifty thousand. Another airplane
had apparently been shot down somewhere near Pittsburgh.
Fuck, we had friends in Pittsburgh. Then they mentioned
that there was something like thirty more planes flying
around unaccounted for somewhere.

“We’ve gotta get out of here.”

“Look, my family has some land out of state. We can go
there and just lay low,” suggested the former nonviolence
trainer.

“And I have a small car, we can fit everyone inside.”
someone else chirped up. The landlord was glued to the
screen, entranced by the images of endlessly repeating
explosions. He seemed oblivious to our conversation.

“Fuck, but we have to drive by the White House — is
there a way out of the city from here without going near it
or the Pentagon? Who’s got a fucking map of D.C.?”

Well, we had several thousand of them, albeit as photo-
copies with housing locations for out-of-town activists on
them. Oh yeah, and these maps also listed major corpo-
rate and government centers with little notes about their
heinous deeds and connections to corporate globalization.
There was going to be a clampdown.

“We gotta burn the maps.” Colin read my mind.

The news now had footage of how the collapse of the
World Trade Center appeared from the streets of New York.
There were people covered in grey dust, screaming, running

down the street away from clouds of debris bellowing from
the collapse. People were dying somewhere in those clouds,
and there was a lot of screaming on the television. Then, on
the blue scrollbar, it was announced that there were bombs
going off outside the State Department.

“Wait a sec, if we try to drive out of here, what if a bomb
goes off near our car?”

“There are going to be thousands and thousands of
people all trying to get out of D.C. — it’s gonna be a complete
clusterfuck. What if they target that?”

“Now we know how the Palestinians feel every day,” said
Colin. It was probably the most sensible moment of the
entire conversation.

After the hubbub had settled down, we decided it would
be best to stay put for the time being. One of us went down-
stairs to burn everything a police officer could hold against
us. It was unclear what the future held, but martial law
definitely seemed a none-too-remote possibility.

Lacking anything better to do, we all sat around and
watched television. The news reporters and television
commentators had gained some sense of composure by this
time, and had begun pointing fingers.

“The government suspects Middle Eastern terrorist Os-
ama Bin Laden, whose terrorist group previously attempted
to blow up the World Trade Center.”

It sort of surprised me that there was no commentary by
our esteemed leader George W. Bush, or really anyone at all
in a position of power. They must have all been hiding be-
neath their desks. The television just kept looping the seg-
ment of the World Trade Center falling, over and over again.
We started flipping channels, and the same picture was on
almost every channel. Death tolls varied widely, but seemed
to be in the thousands at least. There were more reports of
the car bombs going off outside the State Department and
maybe elsewhere in D.C. The news occasionally flashed an
aerial picture of the Pentagon pierced with a burning hole.
Apparently the corporate media had already realized that
even the American public had less sympathy with the Penta-
gon than with the World Trade Center.

“We have to do something other than just sit here.” Colin
growled.

“How many chances do you get in your life to see the
Pentagon on fire?” I asked.

“Let’s walk to the Pentagon,” said Colin, always a fan of
walking.

Not a bad idea. How many chances do you get to see the
Pentagon on fire? I had always sort of imagined triumphant
anarchists storming the Pentagon, driving out the murder-
ous number-crunchers and paper-pushers. Probably we
would light things on fire — I mean, how else to dispose of
a place that had caused so many affronts to human dignity?
Here we were and someone else had set the Pentagon on
fire. I wished that whoever had been behind the attacks
had at least noticed that we had a rather important — dare
I say penultimate, as the momentum for it seemed to be
increasing at an exponential rate in the wake of successes
in Seattle and Quebec — protest coming up in mid-October.

If they could have only waited a few weeks, we might have
overthrown the U.S. government in downtown D.C. itself.
Alas, the U.S. anti-globalization movement was apparently
not on the radar of whoever had done this.

“Yeah, I’ll go with you.”

Why not? After all, there was nothing we could do to
affect the situation by lurking about in the basement, and
given the number of sketchy characters that had been hang-
ing around, I would not have been terribly surprised if the
police knew it was there. This would be a great excuse to
clamp down on us anarchists. If they knew that a quorum
of us could be found a few blocks from the White House we
would be up shit creek — our little hideout was not nearly
as safe as my companions seemed to think. Or maybe I was
just being paranoid. Either way, a walk outside could only
help. So Colin and I got our things together, and headed out
into the light of day.

It was still pretty early, and the sun was shining. The
streets around our block were strangely eerie and silent.

I guessed that everyone was inside glued to their televi-
sions, as paralyzed as we had been just moments earlier. We
walked around the corner, and within minutes approached
downtown D.C. Total panic was in full swing. All sorts of
white men in suits, no longer drinking their lattes as usual
as they calmly ordered the full-scale rape of our planet,
were trying desperately to get the fuck out of their build-
ings. It was extremely bizarre watching out-of-shape capital-
ists trying to hoof it down the sterile streets, stumbling and

panting and heaving. Secretaries and the occasional woman
commissar were now hamstrung by their skirts and high
heels, unable to break into the full panicking run that some
of their male colleagues and females with more sensible
footwear had managed to attain.

We walked by the White House, and I half expected it to
burst into flames before my eyes. Instead I got to witness
the evacuation of the White House cooking staff. I saw a
chef with a huge Swedish Chef hat perched precariously
upon his head break into full gallop, presumably leaving
the Little Boy Prince of the World to finish cooking his
own steaks and foie gras. The whole thing didn’t look like
tragedy, it looked liked absurdist comedy. I half expected
Bush to come running out in his underwear clutching
hundred dollar bills in his hands. Whatever security forces
were supposed to be present were clearly also busy getting
the fuck out of there and were not in any way attempting to
maintain law and order. It struck me that now would also be
the perfect time to rob a bank.

We passed through downtown and kept walking. We
kept running into people panicking, and yet in other parts
of D.C. life was going on as normal. On blocks contain-
ing government buildings, it was like an outtake from the
Soon-To-Be-Upcoming Revolution with employees running
desperately down the streets. In the poorer neighborhoods,
however, it seemed like life was more or less continuing as
usual, although most businesses were shut as everyone was
home watching events unfold on television. Overall, it was

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Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Testimonials : Page 37

a fine autumn day, and the pure strangeness of the situation
seemed to dispel some of the inhuman gloom that lays upon
Washington, D.C.

We headed south until we finally arrived at the end of
the road. On the other side of the river lay the Crystal City,
the complex of glass-encased high-rise apartment buildings
and fancy hotels that served the military bureaucracy of the
Pentagon. On the other side, I could see columns of smoke
rising up from the Pentagon. Reaching in my pocket, I
discovered an old instant camera. I took it out and snatched
a picture of the Pentagon on fire. I thought to myself, damn,
this really is a once in a life-time event. Well, hopefully
twice in a lifetime. I asked Colin if he wouldn’t mind taking
our picture together in front of the burning Pentagon. So,
we snapped a quick picture. No one saw us. I later lost the
camera before developing the film, which is probably for
the best.

As we approached the dreadful hulk of the Pentagon,
full scale insanity became apparent around us. There was
absolutely no order here. From what appeared to be one of
the main doors to the building. Pentagon officials poured
out in a mad rush, grasping their suitcases with looks of
shock and awe upon their faces. At the center from which
the world’s most fearsome military was directed, no one
had any control. Smoke continued to billow ominously
from the wreckage; the building was clearly burning up.

Page 38 : Testimonials : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

and most employees appeared to have no fucking clue what
was going on and were basically pissing their pants. It was
sort of ironic seeing terror in the eyes of the functionaries
of an establishment that had inflicted so much terror upon
so many people throughout the world for so long. Were they
really surprised that their misdeeds had come back to haunt
them? Oh, how the mighty had fallen.

We watched the madness from afar at first, then crept
closer. There weren’t even any cops in front of the entrance
to the Pentagon, no barrier between us and the burning
building. We, two avowed anarchists, were only a few yards
from the Pentagon, an institution we had both committed
our lives to destroying. This institution was on fire, and all
of the people who worked there were running away from
it. A brilliant thought came upon us. This was our once-in-
a-lifetime chance. We could run into the Pentagon. Who
knows what we could find? We could probably destroy com-
puters, steal files, wreak all sorts of havoc. With no police
presence, we might even be able to get away. A quick look at
Colin and it was clear he was thinking the same thing. So, I
leaned over to his ear and whispered to him.

“Should we do it?”

“I’m not sure. It might be the only chance we ever get.”

We stood there mulling over the prospect. We took a few
deep breaths, taking in the destruction around us. Running
into the Pentagon to do something — anything — did seem

tempting, especially as one employee ran out with a handful
of papers and a laptop. It took all I had not to turn around
and punch him in the face. These fucking murderers were
actually surprised that they were getting a taste of their own
medicine! By this time the police had finally arrived and
started trying to cordon off the Pentagon. Our chance was
gone. It occurred to me that we were in a precarious posi-
tion, since we appeared to be the only people present who
were not running away.

“We don’t have the slightest excuse to be here. I mean,
fuck, we don’t even have an excuse to be in D.C.”

We really didn’t. What would the police do if they ID’d
us? We were both your proverbial out-of-town agitators
with arrest records at various anti-government events.
Wasn’t it a bit mysterious that we just happened to be hang-
ing around the Pentagon at the very moment it burst into
flames? If they put us in the back of a car would anyone ever
see us again? This moment would be a ripe time to pick off
two smelly weird-looking guys with Charles Manson beards
creeping around the Pentagon while it was on fire.

“Fuck, we should get out of here. They’re gonna shut this
whole fucking area down.”

That was observant — the police, who had been conspicu-
ous in their absence for the entire duration of the madness
around the Pentagon, had finally arrived. They seemed
dazed and confused, but I expected they were going to start
asking questions any minute, and I sure didn’t want my
name associated with any of this — much less my camera
with the picture of me in front of the burning building!

Fuck! We walked coolly away, until we were just out of sight.
What if we were stopped on down the road? Looking around
to make sure no one could see us, we began a mad sprint to
get as fucking far away from the Pentagon as we could.

The way back was not nearly as easy as the way there.
Like a beast that was slowly awakening from being dealt a
near-lethal blow while asleep, the machinery of the state
began kicking into action, confused and angry. The buzz of
police sirens could be heard in the distance. We could see
the road we had walked there in the distance, too, and it
was swarming with police.

There was an entrance to the interstate nearby, so we
ran up onto it as quickly as we could. What followed was
straight out of a post-apocalyptic zombie movie: not a soul
was on the highway, and we walked straight down the
middle of I-95 for what seemed to be an eternity without
a car in sight. In the distance smoke was rising, bodies
were burning, police sirens were wailing, but we had found
the straight and narrow road the fuck out of Dodge. The
highways crossed over each other like twisting snakes, and
again, we heard the sirens howling behind us. Did they see
us? Were they coming for us? Were they busy with some-
thing else? Maybe they were closing the highway down! We
scrambled off the road into the traditional hiding spot of
robbers, outlaws, and anarchists: bushes. We waited for the
coast to clear, hearts beating out of our chests and God-
speed You Black Emperor! blasting in our heads. When the
sirens passed, we ran out of the bushes and straight up an

embankment. At the top of the grassy embankment was a
fence, which we leapt over in desperation, only to end up in
Arlington cemetery! Judas Fucking Priest!

We ran, through the countless rows of white crosses
standing mute in the autumn sun. We ran through the flags
and the fields, with the lamentations of legions of restless
ghosts blowing in the wind beneath our feet. We ran until we
came to a hill, and we climbed the hill. We climbed the hill,
and there, sitting at the top, were two men. Their clothes
were even more tattered than our own. Their bodies were
even filthier than our own. Their beards were even more
Mansonesque than our own. They were swilling malt liquor
from a forty-ounce bottle in a brown paper bag. They were
homebums, and they were watching the Pentagon burn.

“Sit down, brother,” one of them suggested. The other
extended his arm, his meaty fist clutching the forty, word-
lessly offering me a swig from it.

I shook my head. “Thanks, man, but we’re lost. How in
fuck do we get out of here?”

The first homebum gave us surprisingly lucid directions
out of the cemetery, and we turned to leave. At the last
moment he looked me dead in the eye and intoned, “But be
careful. There’s guns, guns, GUNS IN THE GRAVEYARD!”

With this last piece of disquieting information ringing in
my ears, we fled back down the hill. The homebum — who
had filled a role in my afternoon comparable to that played
by the one-eyed oracle in ancient Greek tragedy — proved
more or less accurate in his assessment of the local geogra-
phy. We crawled through more bushes, jumped over more
fences, and somehow ended up in the idyllic backyard of a
suburban home.

At least now we just appeared to be two maniacs who
were getting ready to break into a house, as opposed to
two maniacs at the scene of a national catastrophe sur-
rounded by police. We crept around the yard to the road
and beheld a great crowd standing at the top of an embank-
ment overlooking the highway. Not a soul looked at us or
even seemed to notice us. Instead, with the air of a macabre
neighborhood barbeque, everyone from small children to
grandmothers was staring into the distance, watching the
Pentagon burn. It seemed almost festive; people did not
appear upset — perhaps surprised, if anything — and most
seemed happier than your average employees at work. It
was, after all, a pleasant autumn day. There seemed to be
a spirit of racial harmony that contrasted sharply with the
usual terrorizing racism of Washington, D.C. Black, Latino,
Anglo-Saxon — it didn’t matter, everyone was in their front
yards watching the Pentagon burn. In almost dead silence,
with a bit of small-talk here and there. After a moment, we
bid adieu to the assembled neighbors and continued down
the street.

We were totally disoriented at this point, with little
idea where we were or how to get home. It was getting
later in the evening, and I was still feeling a little paranoid.
It seemed that if we ran around the streets of Arlington,

VA too much longer while full-scale chaos was in motion,
we were almost guaranteed some trouble. While I usually

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Testimonials : Page 39

welcome a tussle with the cops, today was not going to be a
good day for that sort of thing. So, what to do?

Cheap Chinese! There are few better things to eat after a
pleasant walk to watch the Pentagon burn than cheap Chi-
nese food. Usually vegetarian, often vegan, and sometimes
even without MSG, we also suspected that the restaurants
offering this fare might be ideal for laying low. And around
the corner was a classic Chinese restaurant in one of the
rundown strip malls that litter America, and the Chinese
joint was — miracle of miracles — still open for business
this September the 11th. I emptied my pockets, counted
the quarters and nickels, and managed to scrape together
enough for some vegetables and rice. The lone employee
seemed to be happy some customers had appeared, and
didn’t even appear to find us strange. An irrepressible fan
of Chinese hot mustard, I covered my portion in the yellow
tangy substance and turned around to watch the TV.

It seemed as if nothing had changed from this morn-
ing. Our dear President George W. Bush was still nowhere
to be seen. Instead, the footage of the falling towers (with
shots of the Pentagon infrequently intermixed) was being
played over and over again as if with the intention of induc-
ing hypnosis. The talking heads of the media seemed to be
somewhat more in control of themselves than earlier, and
were now repeating “Middle Eastern terrorists” and “Bin
Laden” over and over again, although there seemed to be no
concrete evidence yet.

I was relieved that they were not mentioning the word
“anarchists,” as this gave us a little time. However, it was
pretty clear over noodles and fortune cookies that this
would be the perfect excuse for a witch hunt against us and
anyone else the government considered a threat. Colin and
I sat, mostly in stony silence, trying to figure out the impli-
cations of this day for the movement — and how the hell we
were going to get home.

“We should eat slowly. Look, we’re pretty safe here. No
one knows we’re here. We can just sit here and eat until it
gets dark and we can get home.”

“Fuck, that’s going to be a while yet.”

“Well, better safe than sorry.”

When night finally began to fall, we bid a fond adieu to
our host at the Chinese joint and proceeded down the road.
We asked the few pedestrians we encountered for direc-
tions, and eventually found our way home through endless
alleys and bridges and back streets. When we arrived at our
little hideout, we looked around to make sure we weren’t
being followed, then employed various comical anti-surveil-
lance techniques that mostly involved walking in circles,
before finally stepping inside. Apparently the landlord had
gone back into his porn- and cigar-laden cocoon, and our
friends were inside chomping at the bit as they planned
their getaway.

Colin and I argued that we had to compose some sort of
anarchist response, and quick. There was only going to be
a short window of time between September 11th and the
inevitable government clampdown. If we could manage
to pull together a quick response, we could at least get our

views out there. People were confused and terrified, easily
manipulated by the heartless mindfuckers who were surely
going to launch some sort of war in the not-so-distant
future. Right at that moment, however, the US power struc-
ture was utterly paralyzed. If we had our act together, we
could do something inspiring and historic then and there
before the government even had time to respond with its
witch hunts and wars.

There were a host of practical questions to discuss:
should we carry on with the IMF protests, should we flee
underground before the roundups began, should we go to
the public with our own answers about why some people
had hated the US government and corporations enough to
ram a plane into their headquarters? There was so much to
do, and so little time.

“When those bastards declare war, we gotta march in the
streets of Washington, IMF or not, just to show people every-
where that we’re against the fucking U.S. government, too.”

“Then we really gotta get the fuck out of dodge.”

“Man, that was the craziest fucking walk I’ve ever taken.”

Five years ago we were ready to die. Or more precisely,
to be murdered in cold blood by the state, as had happened
to Carlo Giuliani in Genoa. That was a price worth paying
for our dreams of a more compassionate world. We thought,
not entirely without reason, that they were going to shoot
at us, and we were headed to the front lines anyway, to lay
down our lives if it came to that. And then history outpaced
us — not, I fear, for the last time — and our thunder was
stolen by people with drastically less concern for human life
than ourselves.

Is the world a better place? Are we any closer to the rev-
olutionary situation we dream of as a result of the decisions
we have made or failed to make? And at whose feet can be
lain responsibility for this sorry state of affairs, and for all
the bloodshed and sorrow that took place that day and the
days before it and the days after? Ours, theirs, the corpora-
tions’, the governments’? Five years ago we were ready to
die. For better or for worse, there is no doubt that the years
to come will provide us with many more opportunities to
ask ourselves if that is still the case.

Gentle reader, the rest is up to you.

Postscript

Shortly after September 11, 2001, a cell of the Crime-
thlnc. Ex-Workers’ Collective produced a text entitled “After
the Fall” in an attempt to analyze the causes and ramifica-
tions of the events of that morning. It can still be found in
the “Miscellaneous” section of the reading library at www.
crimethinc.com. Those days — and these — demanded much
more than words in a newspaper or on a computer screen,
but we still stand by this piece of writing as possibly the most
clearheaded and prescient statement to come out of the
anarchist milieu at that time. The future is still unwritten.

Page 40 : Testimonials : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

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a personal story

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Halfway through the tour, we thought we knew what we were
dealing with. The singer was battling pneumonia and had been
unable to make a sound for two weeks, the drummer was receiving
death threats by email from six countries, the guitarist, unable to
lay his hands on a razor, had resorted to scraping his head with the
pocket knife he’d inherited from his grandfather, and the roadies,
along with the bass player, had been drunk for a month and a half
straight. As for myself, out of respect for the mighty forces at work,

I had refused to bathe for forty days and nights, and now I was
stretching it on towards fifty. We looked like a gang the government
could’ve used to justify blowing up an elementary school in Bang-
ladesh. When we got there, the twelve of us, the poor guy who was
supposed to put us up only had an apartment of about thirty square
meters, and we occupied it like Christiania in ’71.

L\^_

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Testimonials : Page 41

/

Such was the state of affairs upon my arriving in Stock-
holm for the first time. The kid who let us crash at his place
was incredibly generous. We had been forced to cancel
almost two weeks of shows and he allowed us the use of his
flat in the meantime. It was November. Conditions were
ripe for pneumonia, or worse. The cold driving rain and
perpetual darkness kept us, for the most part, inside. We
were constantly on the edge of calling the whole thing off.
Beaten back by the pack ice, like polar explorers. People
were calling home nightly without calling cards, checking
out the possibilities of new housing arrangements and the
costs of changing flights; never mind that we had shows
booked across Europe all the way to New Years. The poor
singer, in his madness, had taken to staring at himself in
the mirror for several hours a day opening and closing his
mouth, trying to push air through his acrid, broken vocal
cords. After a week and a half of this behavior, I approached
him.

“Can I take a shit in here?” I asked.

“Did you hear that?” he looked at me with feral eyes, not
even whispering, barely breathing the words.

“Hear what?”

“I made a noise.”

“Oh,” I thought, “Okay.”

“I made a low note,” he said, and smiled. “Tve been in
here working on it for a little while.” His eyes sung a thou-
sand verses. When he wanted to say something, he would
lean in really close to your ear, breathing and moving his
mouth. Then he would step a few feet back and wave his
hands wildly for emphasis.

“Well,” I said, “that’s one small step for [name of indi-
vidual], one giant leap for [band in question].”

“No, for mankind!” he breathed and gestured excitedly.

“You know, we’re in a small bathroom near the end of
the world. . .” I said. Back then, Stockholm really was quite
close to the end of the world — that is to say, near Russia.

“Exactly!” he breathed, “give me my voice back and I can
move mountains!” and marched out into the hallway, pen
and notebook in hand, practically vibrating.

I sat down, thinking, “These are the good times. The
times when mountains move within people and one might
walk away a completely different person.”

He had spent the previous forty-eight hours coming
to terms with the permanent loss of his voice. I was so
wrapped up in my own world, I spent most of my time on
the living room floor, with my head under a pillow, listening
through headphones to recordings of Kerouac readings. Like
newborns, we sucked whatever teats were offered us.

Beneath this mangled exterior was a pure beating heart,
pumping raw, thirsty blood. We were out after the new
world, and having taken a beating, were now willing to en-
dure anything to get a closer look. We knew it was there. We
would’ve set ourselves on fire if we’d thought it would get
us a step closer to our goals. Living then was like standing
in the center of a mob, pushing forward. Pushing the people
in front of you, able only to see the small sliver of ground
at your feet, and if you were lucky the person behind you

“Having cleared the hurdle of problem definition,
we were in flight over solution. Some of us stumbled
and fell; I may be one of those who did. Whether
anyone is ever destined to land is another thing; but
that’s not what’s important, is it? There’s a joy and
a glory in the take off, I think, and a joy and a glory
in the fall too. The simple fact that our arcs exist is
enough to keep us facing forward, or at least it should
be. You never know what will catch, but you can damn
well keep your tinderbox tidy and keep trying.”

-the physicist Richard Feynman in a letter to Arline
Greenbaum, the love of his life, three years before
beginning work on the Manhattan Project

would have her hands on your back and you’d be pushing
together. And lo, if there were five or six people around you
pushing, you could feel like you were getting somewhere,
like the mob was moving. All the while you coveted the sa-
cred dream of the mob, the stone-faced mob, breaking into
an all-out run across a grassy plain like buffalo, or through
city streets like waters through a sluice. Beyond that, no one
could imagine anything.

The kid said — the kid we were staying with, I mean,

Sven we’ll call him — Sven said to me one night, “Let me
know if you get bored and I’ll drum up some excitement.”

“Okay,” I replied, “I’m bored.”

Sven scratched his head. It seemed for a minute like he
wasn’t really prepared for an immediate response.

Fifteen minutes later I was chasing him down a long
damp wooden staircase somewhere in Stockholm. “We’re
going to go down into the hole when we get to the bottom
of the stairs,” he had said, and we were off.

We were practically running down, but it was a long
way. I looked around at the ordinary Stockholm night.

Street lights, damp pavement reflecting, passers-by, stand-
ers-around, all quite normal. We neared the bottom of the
stairs; I didn’t see any holes. “I have no idea where this man
is taking me,” I said to myself, “I have no idea what is going
to happen next!” and the notion thrilled me. Sven turned
a quick corner after the last step and dashed into the wet
bushes; I followed. We kept low and moved quick, dashed
along onto a rooftop; I slipped and fell and covered myself
in slick mud. The kid behind me helped me up. Then we
came to the hole: the rabbit hole.

We were putting our backs into it. And as we labored, if
a labor it can be called, we were making friends. As anyone
who has ever truly invested themselves in a project knows,
the connections you make in these acts are of some of the
strongest and most durable stuff. Emboldened and in mo-
tion, we can ask things of each other and share things with
each other that would normally, in the kind of relationships
you can get away with under the system’s watchful eye, be
stopped at the gate. Daring and intimacy are confiscated
at the security checkpoint before you can even enter the
marketplace where our personal relationships are negoti-
ated. But we had broken through and were out now, and

the echoes of our old socialization sounded to us like the
croakings of dinosaurs. We were slitting connections as
quickly as we were making them, and whole foundations for
the choices of our lives were evolving. We were charging,
wielding a newfound power and control over our decisions
and over our lives that somehow seemed to encompass the
entire world. Our words and gestures were laced with an
authentic passion that in some ways resembled a fatalism.
Do not embrace us lightly; we will be with you forever. But for
godsakes embrace us!

And thankfully, there were some who did. So I was
never alone; through all the treacherous twists and turns of
the road, I was never without a hand to hold. And though
no one single person could have followed me the whole
way — indeed I shed the most meaningful relationships
of my life like they were sacks of sand — there was always
someone there willing to hold me for a time. And if I try to
trace the trajectory of my life, the boldest strokes across the
grid go back to those tremulous days with those maniacs
in those bread boxes of apartments, across Europe, across
America. More importantly, that epoch, the crazy time we
had in Stockholm, became the context for choices that truly
took me off the map and one step closer to the world we
craved, however undefined it remained. . . and the thirst in
my blood was quenched, for the time being.

Sven switched on his headlamp and went under first.

The “hole” turned out to be a gap between the soft wet
ground and the roof of a small underground chasm. I slid
myself between them and my feet dangled; I jumped and
landed square a foot or so below. It was dark and dirty;
there was various and sundry trash around, old spray-paint
cans and soda bottles. We peered out into the darkness like
little gollums. For a moment I thought I was surrounded by
stalactites and stalagmites, until I clicked on the flashlight
someone in the band had loaned me and saw that I was
standing in a thin chamber between a cinderblock building
and the rocky cliff that had been bombed to make way for it.
The gap above was covered by a tin roof, but kids had been
down there mining the place. It looked almost lived-in.

We followed the chamber, descending. I felt very much
like Alice. We followed a sort of path through holes and
cracks, boulders and crevasses. The shadows were deep
enough to contain god-knows-what. I felt everything with
my hands and feet, not really believing my eyes. We passed
walls of concrete, the only straight lines to be found, cov-
ered top to bottom with weird street-art posters. Now and
then a strange howling echoed softly through the cave, like
the death rattle of some forgotten Babylon. After a few min-
utes of twists and turns, we came to a ladder. When I poked
my head through the hole at the top of the ladder, I saw the
others standing on the first flat surface we had encountered.

Two years after my first visit, I returned to Stockholm. I
had kept in touch with the kid with the apartment and fol-
lowed his story through letters. I was tired of traveling with
bands. I wanted to get out into the space beyond tourism,
beyond the van, beyond the shows and the scene. Having
sensed the infinity out there, I wanted to cast myself into

it and find a spinning raw abandon that would take me out
of the world. By then Sven had participated in starting a
revolutionary collective which had as its specific goal to rip
out the dead heart of the world and electrify it. When he
invited me up to participate, I set a course for Stockholm.
Through a contact at a major airline, I obtained for myself a
companion-traveler ticket good for a return trip to Amster-
dam. I would hitch in three legs to Stockholm, by way of
Hamburg and Copenhagen. I would clear my inner vision,
open my third eye, I would use whatever postures available,

I would whirl. And when in the end I came face to face with
my reflection in the ice wall, I would dive into it and be
transformed. Whatever you are out there, bring it on.

We walked a few hundred feet into a space where the
cave opened up and there were wall paintings. Beautiful.
There was an old table with small candles. Sven lit them
and sat down. He told us the story of an artist who organ-
ized a show down there and got a hundred people into that
cave. He told us it was a “real art gallery.” I had the sensa-
tion of being buried under a million pounds of rock and
soil, at the center of a great mountain — but we were only in
the caves surrounding the subway in Stockholm, Sweden.
We sat for a while and listened to the trains.

Sven guided us around a little. We climbed up to a
platform from which we could watch the trains zoom below
us. We heard the echo of voices; we heard feet shifting on
the platform, people waiting for their trains, discussing and
joking amongst themselves. We were in the very meat of the
city, watching the black blood of civilization course through
its dirty veins. We smelled the drugs it ingested. We felt the
tremors of its secret longings. Then we crawled out through
a service duct into the bright backstage of the station. We
walked quickly through the gate and were out again on the
pavement. Then boom, the effect hit me. We sprinted out
through the street. There was a light drizzle. It was wonder-
land at last.

So I quit my job, which seems to be how all such jour-
neys as these begin. I was working nightshift at a hotel,
carrying bags and bringing people toothbrushes at two in
the morning. Thankless. The manager and I parted on good
terms: I told him he could shove his two weeks notice up
his ass and he told me to get the hell out. Perhaps at most
workplaces it would have seemed a trifle inappropriate to
address your boss as “shit face,” but at this particular hotel,
everyone was so constantly frustrated by the crushing
wheels of managerial hierarchy, including the managers
themselves, that it was simply part of the vernacular. The
general consensus was that the place would’ve been better
run by monkeys. After passing through this rite of passage
into the world beyond paychecks, I tidied up my home as
best I could and, making sure my sublet was installed and
comfortable, packed my bag with all the things a hitchhiker
might need — and set out.

Day One I spent hitching to Washington, D.C., without
incident. The airline let me on the plane after I handed
them the bundle of papers I had received from my contact
on the inside; after deliberating for fifteen minutes over

Page 42 : Testimonials : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Testimonials : Page 43

whether it was mildew or dust on my shoes, the flight
attendants finally agreed to let me into business class.
Shocked at how the rich have it when they travel, I stuffed
everything that wasn’t chained down into my satchel. I
knew the whole time I was getting away with something,
but I wasn’t quite sure what. So far all was fair weather and
the winds were in my favor.

Looking back on it, I have a hard time putting myself
back in the mindset of those fertile days, but I will try to
describe it for you as best I can. We were like match-strik-
ers. We threw out small flames of ourselves all over the
place, waiting for the ultimate bonfire upon which we
could finally pour our fuel. “Light it up” was our motto.

This is really the most authentic explanation I can give, and
it is accurate. But let’s be clear on one thing: this article
is a testimonial, a mythology, not a description of a time
passed. I want to romanticize the past only to the extent
that it empowers my present life. Let us remember we are
free to choose what colors we paint our histories with.

So when I write now about “back in the day,” let’s keep in
mind that it’s not a point on the line that extends infinitely
behind us, but a small piece of the ever-evolving character
of our movement, and as much a part of my present self as
it ever was.

Days Two through Six I hung out in a small Dutch farm-
ing community, shooting peashooters with my best friend’s
little brother and canoeing in the irrigation canals. I visited
a friend at his squat and we took in some punk shows and
scammed trains around Holland. I felt like a person on vaca-
tion; but I kept my eyes open for holes in the tourist fabric
of space time through which I could duck out of sight and
do some damage. When things seemed to have run their
course in The Netherlands I set my sights on Germany. I
had a few friends in Hamburg who promised me roofs and
sweet popcorn and more punk rock shows. And after all, I
was heeding the call and didn’t want to get distracted.

I don’t remember much about my stay in Hamburg
except that I saw a squatter outside the Rota Flora balance
on top of fourteen milk crates and that I had a hell of a time
getting out of the place. After being told to “get the hell off
the road” by an irritated gang of green-clad police, I made
my way to a street corner where there was a line of hitch-
hikers a mile long. “Just great,” I thought and sat down on
my bag. I think by this time it was already past noon. The
kid next to me was slick. “I’m a chimney sweep. You know
what that means?”

He had on a black button-up shirt with a sliver dragon on it.

“No.”

“Means that seeing me is good luck for you!”

He was flirting with the cars like hell.

“Oh yeah?” A car stopped and picked up a girl on her
way to a town in another direction.

“She was going to Kiel,” said the kid, and he started to
explain to me how the system of license plates works in
Germany. From the first two letters on the plate you can
figure out where the car is registered. “That way,” he said,
“you know which cars to really smile at,” and with that he

flashed me a grin that would make Chris Rock lose heart.
Soon the chimney sweep was on his way. I was glad because
his finesse and sense of ease was getting me down. When
he was gone I felt a little more capable, and I started trying
to flag down cars that seemed to be heading for mainland
Denmark. Eventually I got picked up by a reefer-head who
took pity on me and drove me to a gas station north of
town. From there I got picked up by a trucker who played
CCR and drove me all the way to Flensburg, and somewhere
around there I passed the boundary where backwards starts
to be longer than forwards; that felt good.

Waiting by the side of the road in Odense, I got picked
up by one of those enthusiastic types, folks that pick you
up so they can share things with you. . . you know the ones
I mean. When we stopped for gas, he came back from the
mini-mart (as far off the map as I felt I was, it was still a
long way from escaping mini-marts) with a colorful bag, and
out of it he put two small rocks in my hand that were black
and sandy like asphalt. He popped a couple into his mouth
and chewed, smiling, his teeth turning grey before my eyes.

I was game for anything. Hell yeah, I thought, and ate one. I
had never put something so disgusting in my mouth before.
It tasted like rat vomit. It tasted like horse ass. He watched
for my reaction. When I opened my mouth to reply it felt
suddenly like my throat was twisting in an acid-soaked
noose. My head shrank into my neck, my eyes teared up.

I swallowed the lump like a pill, just to put an end to the
torture. “Ikk. . . good,” I said, my brow wrinkled like I was
staring into the sun. “Ghq. . . yeah,” I nodded, “What the
fuck is it?” I stuck out my tongue and made a sound like a
cat coughing up a hairball.

“It’s Turkish Pepper!” he said, and held out the bag. “It’s
the most Danish thing you can do right now, I think.”

I thought I had been drugged.

“Here,” he said, holding out the bag, “have some!”

There I was in the common hitchhiker’s dilemma. Do
I dare refuse the man’s kindness? To what depths will we
degrade ourselves in order to keep the field level? Here the
man is, graciously driving me around Denmark for free,
totally without motive. . . the least I can do is eat some ass-
flavored candy for him.

“Aight,” I said, “Lemme hit dat shit.”

“What?”

“Nothing, it’s good!” I took the bag and ate another
piece and cringed. I thought My god! Turpentine! Turpentine
candy! and retched silently. Ants with needle toes crawled
along my tongue and throat. I was relieved when he finally
stopped staring at me and turned on the ignition. We pulled
out into the night and I put the bag on the dash. He ate
several pieces as he drove and we resumed our chat about
windmills or whatever. He told me about his job inspecting
the cleanliness of Denmark’s coastal waters. The man had
much to say. Then the strangest thing happened. The Turk-
ish Pepper had an aftertaste! And somehow, deep within
the aftertaste was a craving for another piece. I looked at
the bag. No, I told myself, don’t. It’s disgusting. The man
was telling me about pH levels and salt water and prawns.

Nasty, I thought, and found myself reaching out to the bag.

I ate another piece and felt like I was licking the sharp end
of a knife used to slice jalapenos. But this time, incredibly, it
wasn’t so bad! Before he let me off in Copenhagen, we had
eaten the whole bag between us. He gave me his business
card and I shouldered my pack for Norrbro. It was after
midnight. Since then I’ve always had a taste for that hot
salt licorice. It reminds me of grassy fields and broken road
signs. And windmills.

My state of mind was intense as I gradually made my
way up to the high latitudes. Stockholm seemed like a
roaring cauldron. I was receiving email messages telling of
great things to come. All the signs
I could possibly read, in the stars
and the leaves and in the wings
of birds, were telling me to Go!

Go! Whenever I showed my true
excitement and ambition to people
they backed away with looks of
bewilderment, which I was always
able to take as a compliment in
those days. I felt like a prophet,
though I was only preaching the
gospel of myself, to myself.

I left Copenhagen on a grey,
dreary morning. “Keep on,” I as-
sured myself and waited under a
bridge with my sign until I was
picked up by a dump truck on its
way to Sweden. We crossed the
strait together and he left me in the
middle of the city of Helsingborg. I
made my way by foot towards the outskirts of town, flashing
my Stockholm sign to cars that passed by. By this time I
was showing visible signs of, as they call it in the Bible, “the
Rapture.” I wore my feet like a set of wings. The closer I got
to Stockholm, the more I understood the possibilities at
hand. I had left orbit and was heading for unknown things.
The thousand distant suns beckoned and I was showered
with starlight and courage. Something in that country, for it
was still then an unknown country, was wrapping its arms
around me. And I relished the embrace of the world.

In the evening I was standing beside an on-ramp of the
A4 outside Linkoping. Stockholm was suddenly looming
large on the horizon. I looked over the directions that
Sven had given me. They were vague, filled with sentences
like “walk into the area of houses after the bus stop.” I
folded up the paper and put it back into my pocket. I
looked out across the farmland. The sky folded over on
itself in depths of grey upon startling white. Above the ho-
rizon there was a strip of fading blue and the clouds were
lined with golden light. There was a chill, damp wind. A
car pulled over.

The driver who picked me up was a pilot with a clean-
shaven head and a nice car. He was also a Yankee. “Yeah. . .

I changed my passport out,” he explained, “a couple of years
back,” and gave me an overview of the process. “You have to

renounce your American citizenship,” he said. I watched the
fence and the side of the road. He said he spent his time now
flying back and forth to the States for Scandinavian Airlines.

“Don’t sound too bad,” I said.

“The benefits are good.”

“I bet. . . ” I said, watching the fence. Like an endless
stream extending as far as I could see in both directions,
and nothing on it.

I’m no longer in the car with the pilot. It’s autumn now,
in another part of the world, in another time. I’m still
traveling. There have been no major problems. Getting the
car seat was the trick, finding one and having the wit to buy
it. Trips with Arwin. Arwin is
his name. I will be glad to arrive
home again. A welcome relief.

St. Etienne. Maintain concentra-
tion. After the plane, we drove a
long way to Angers. We stayed off
the expensive highways. When
we came to Angers the show was
about to start. We stayed there
with Arwin for a time, until the
first band began to sound-check.
Then Atilla, Arwin, myself, and a
friend of the promoter walked to
the flat where Arwin could stay
during the show and where he
and I and Atilla could sleep that
night. He was then quite tired. It
was raining outside.

Atilla had been smart enough
to grab some of the food from the
show; as he unpacked it I said goodbye to Arwin, who was
interested in the food. I had been thinking that he might
not want to be left there in a strange environment after
hours upon hours of travel with only Atilla to tie him to the
known universe; but he didn’t flinch. I ran back to the show
in the damp French evening just in time to be handed a set
list. And we commenced.

I’ve noticed that it’s almost easier for me to let myself go
and play my instrument when Arwin is with us on tour. I’m
not sure why. It could be that I feel things more acutely with
him around. Or I just want more than ever to transform the
world. But when I stand there before all those solemn-faced
people, I really want to grab them, make them understand,
make them feel how real and true this struggle is. I really
want them to choke with it and come up gasping for air,
ready to flip over cop cars.

After the show I stayed at the venue and waited for dinner,
which was served around 10:30 or 11:00. When I returned to
the flat, Arwin was asleep on the floor in his clothes. Atilla
and I folded out the bed and I changed Arwin into PJs and
a new diaper. Atilla reported no problems. The three of us
slept there in our sleeping bags and Arwin with his blanket
until nine. The next day we all went back to the club to eat
breakfast and it was still raining. We ate along with the others
and loaded in the stuff and set out for Bordeaux.

'4

Living then was like standing
in the center of a mob, pushing
forward. Pushing the people in
front of you, able only to see the
small sliver of ground at your
feet, and if you were lucky the
person behind you would have
her hands on your back and
you’d be pushing together. And
lo, if there were five or six people
around you pushing, you could
feel like you were getting some-
where, like the mob was moving.

■ 4- ■

Page 44 : Testimonials : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Testimonials : Page 45

across a grassy plain like buffalo,
or through city streets like waters
through a sluice. Beyond that, no
one could imagine anything.

“Okay if you just hop out at the light?” We were ap-
proaching an intersection. I looked around and saw the
lights of the station on the opposite corner.

“This’ll be great,” I said, “thanks alot!”

“No problem, good luck!”

“Alright . . .”

“Alright!”

I shut the car door and backed away as it rolled on into
the twilight of the city. I took the paper from my pocket and
read it again. The first direction was to get into the subway
system and head for a station called Duvbo. I heaved the
other strap of my bag around my shoulder and jogged across
the street.

Day 12 . 1 arrived at Sven’s house, the revolutionary collec-
tive known as the Demon

Box — at its peak, a boiling ;

cauldron of intense ideal- All the while you coveted the sacred

ism, a catalyst, an honest, dream r ^ ^ ^ stme _f aced

the hurdle. Powerful. And i ttiod, breaking into an all-out run

devoured the place. CtCTOSS £1 graSSy ph

Almost immediately, or through City StT

my pre-Stockholm life thrOUgh fl sluice. J

seemed distant and ° , j .

remote. The number of 0J16 COUlO 1771

resources was overwhelm- „

ing. The second day I

was there the doorbell rang while I was washing dishes
in the kitchen. I opened the door and was greeted by an
oddly shaped man of about thirty-five. “Konuget uamagott
foordonaapt,” he said, to which I replied “English, brutha,

English . . .”

“English,” he stated plainly. “A palette for you.” And he
handed me a piece of paper to sign.

I scribbled “Alexander Supertramp” on the dotted line
and looked outside. Stacked by the door was more soymilk
and oatmeal than I had ever seen in one place before. There
were also five boxes of books from Active distribution,
one box of error t-shirts from Fruit of the Loom, and three
mysterious boxes containing god-knows-what, simply and
elusively marked “MNW Music Network.”

It was warm outside. All the members of the collective
and I had been sleeping outside on the courtyard, huddling
in blankets through the cold night. We awoke to blazing
sun, took off all but the most necessary clothing, and lay
like crocodiles or whales on the beach, storing up vitamin D
for the dark winter ahead. It seemed to me that if I lay like
that in the sun back home I would be burned to a crisp in
fifteen minutes, but here there was so much atmosphere for
the sun’s rays to pass through before reaching our skin that
after nearly seven hours of direct sun my skin still retained
the pasty complexion of halibut flesh just behind the gills. It
was a different world.

I was treated to tours of the city. I discovered abandoned
buildings with people who wanted to take me exploring. I
walked the streets and conducted “drifts” before I was too
familiar with the city to be able to wander honestly. On

one such excursion I unconsciously made my way uphill. I
walked among cobblestones and warm-colored buildings.

I spotted a bridge high above the street that extended out
from the side of a mountain, towering over a populated
square where streams of people swarmed in lines among
buses and vegetable stands and advertisements. It went
straight out of the mountain and met an enormous building,
continued around the building, passed it, and on the far side,
joined with a tower consisting of an elevator running down
into the pavement below. Beyond the elevator was a vast
expanse of water specked by ships and islands, and I watched
as birds came and landed in nests at the apex of the tower.

I made my way up to the bridge and walked out. The
entire north end of the city could be seen. I studied the

horizon, seeing all the black chim-
neys and spires and church towers.

:ed the sacred m y s aze swe P l P ast the sc i uare and
ie stone-faced ,he sub ”>' T' 1 ” and ' h l end , leas

,, J trains ot the faithless and the plod-

171 all-OUt run ding and sordid crowd; I followed
n like buffalo, it in a line to the foot of the moun-
ts like waters tain -and saw it there at once! The

yond that, no s ! aircase ; Up * e , “ ain f e!

, . the very toot ot the bridge where 1

r ine anytnmg. was standing! And down at its base

was the back of the station. I saw

the bushes and the low tin roof, and
I felt like the evil and trepidation I had known in my life
up to then was parting before me like the Red Sea before
Moses. I walked down there at once and had a look at the
hole in the fresh light of day.

We organized a Reclaim the Streets and I helped Sven
jerry-rig a 500 -watt sound system on a flatbed truck. Well-
known hip-hop artists with revolutionary pretensions let it
bump as we paraded through the city two thousand strong. I
helped out by driving a smaller van with about fifty pounds
of pasta salad and a backup generator. I followed the crowd
in low gear until I was pulled over by the cops, who didn’t
quite know what to make of the situation when they saw
I was wearing a full-length bright pink evening gown. The
cop looked over my NC driver’s license and wrote down my
passport number and told me I couldn’t drive in the bus lane.

Fear couldn’t reach me. I wasn’t afraid, even in situations
where a little fear might have served me well. I was swept
away by a feeling akin to love, but more complex or perhaps
even beyond mere love. I felt like I was dealing in wares not
mentioned in the Bible or the Constitution of the United
States. There was a woman with me, and a relationship was
starting to take shape. What that relationship could mean
or which events would descend from it, no one could tell at
the time. But what was eternal at that moment was more
than enough to justify all blindness to the future.

We printed books and released full-length records. I sat
in the office for hours and hours, without restriction, learn-
ing how to use design software. Freaks were sitting beside
me with headphones plugged into computers, staring at en-
larged wave form displays of chord progressions and melody

Page 46 : Testimonials : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

lines. We had humongous parties. Punks, weirdos, and
miscreants of every sort came in droves to drink long-neck
bottles of beer and sit in the sauna until five in the morning.
The D]s pumped dance music at volume levels that denied
the laws of physics, and we always listened to The Bangles
while we were swabbing the decks after sunup the next day.

We went after gender in the house like monoclonal anti-
bodies on the hot scent of cancer cells. The women devised
a master list of issues to be addressed, and the men went
with it into the high towers of the house to discuss what
the hell was going on. We used role-play and storytelling
techniques to enlighten ourselves; we studied the works of
Simone de Beauvoir and Kajsa Wahlstrom. We confronted
each other in low-lit rooms and walked each other up
rooftops where we could sit and study and talk in honest
voices and watch the clouds in the evening.

Day 35 , we went on tour. There were high-profile
musicians living at the collective — the architects of entire
movements, called by higher voices to author entire genres.
Composers. Engineers. Filmmakers. Publishers. Demon Box
had more singer-songwriters per capita than Nashville. A re-
cording studio was under construction in the basement. The
office above housed the most powerful computers available
at the time, and also a full-scale screen printing operation.
I’m talking about the big machines professionals use, not the
little rigs we used in Greensboro. There were scanners, laser
printers, a xerox machine, drafting tables . . . World famous
street artists produced the landscapes of cities while we ran
around, sleep-deprived, photocopying manifestoes. Who
could sleep at such a hub? “Let’s take this show on the road,”
we said, and started making arrangements.

There were people living there who had connections.
They started making calls, dropping names, cashing in the
favors everyone owed them. Artists beyond the circle of the
collective were called in. The presses were running around
the clock, churning out buckets of proclamations and in-
cendiaries. We scavenged long cords of lights and flags; we
took the big diesel-powered generator and baffles to isolate
the sound. We took the vacuum cleaner, one of those big
industrial ones that have no filter and can suck up water
and aluminum cans. We gathered instruments from the
four corners: electric pianos and wind instruments, guitars,
drums, slide-projectors, movie cameras, gallons of paint, a
full PA system, turntables and crates of records inscribed
with the fattest beats known to man. We packed it all into
a fifteen-person van with a horse trailer and set out to raise
the fucking jams across northern Sweden.

For nine days we tried our hands at majesty. We went
from village to village like faith-healers, lighting matches
and spinning them flaming to the ground. We played to a
hundred kids at a youth camp in Ornsjoldsvik. They looked
at us fresh-eyed, wondering who we were and where the
hell we had come from. We played a punk show in Umea to
kids with long dreads and stretched earlobes, and we were
doing a harrowing cover of “Jolene.” The next night we
improvised a show at the top of a mountain in the middle
of nowhere, carried on till the sun came up at three in the

morning, and we sold cheap food and beer to recoup gas
expenses. At Hoga Kusten we shut ourselves in a tiny cabin
and played only to each other, sitting at all angles in the
room, letting our talents all the way out, stopping only for
meals and dips in the lake. Outside the Urkult Festival we
tore an old fire museum level with the fucking ground and
the thirty or so of us in the room came out baptized, ready
to put our clean feet on the earth and lift the sky. By the
time we returned to Stockholm, I was beyond in love with
one of the members of the band — and unbeknownst to us at
the time, we were having a baby.

I stopped counting the days about a month later, when
the news truly broke. I realized my adventure was only
beginning — and it would never end. Many things entered
my life at that time. I traveled farther down dark roads than
I care to disclose, and found courage beyond reckoning. The
words of poems long recited came crashing down around
me, falling like the bricks of bombed buildings. Life was
real, and it terrified everyone. I strode through a litany of
crushed hopes like a kid in a field picking flowers, or like
the Reaper collecting souls. The days were holy at last.

Here it was, after so many years. The great fire. The floor
of the Demon Box ignited; flames spread out from where
I was standing. And the ease with which it engulfed the
world was startling. Greensboro burned to the ground be-
fore my very eyes. The fire, when it finally catches, changes
everything. Nothing in my life went untouched by it. All
my friends and my family, everyone and everything I knew.
And as if all my experiences in life had secretly prepared me
for this moment and it was all finally coming true, I got up,
tied my shoes, and went out into the flaming heap like some
newfangled version of a Sufi priest.

My brother picked me up at the airport in Washington,
D.C. and we drove through the night back to Greensboro. I
felt like I’d been gone a thousand years. I should have had a
long beard with snow in it or an old worn-out robe or some-
thing, like a wizened monk back from a pilgrimage to the
ends of the Earth, casting harrowed glances at the triviali-
ties that surround us. . . Yeah, well, I’d been living in the lap
of luxury in Sweden and not paying for a cent of it!

Bigger hands than ever were reaching at my throat. Now
I needed to get my ass a job and collect my wits. It was
going to take more than garlic to keep the bad spirits away
and more than a punk show at the Handy Pantry to make
me feel like we were getting somewhere. I had a long list
of things to do. “Sell possessions.” “Call the Embassy.” I was
home from my trip. My friends were glad to see me. “Find
good parenting books.” “Learn Swedish.” It was a heavy
fucking list! Needless to say, I hit the ground running. I
had to get back there quick, to experience as much of the
pregnancy as possible, and to establish myself so I could be
ready when my son was born. There was no time to lose.

I carried with me everywhere the longing to return; I was
never for a moment unaware of Stockholm and the world
awaiting me there. I was driven like never before to get back
there, to shake my fists at the sky, make it rain, and see what
green things would grow in the new soil.

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Testimonials : Page 47

Languages of Legitimacy

The Legal System, Anarchists, and Violence Against Women

In the heart of the Midwest, a local news broadcast
reported that ten juvenile facility correctional officers were
accused of sexual misconduct and the rape of young female
prisoners. The news team briefly interviewed one woman,
now twenty-one, who was assaulted when she was fourteen
by some of these guards. After the standard five-second
sound bite about how the abuse haunts her life, another five
seconds were dedicated to showing her mug shot and a list
of her crimes: theft, shoplifting, something else.

Viewers are left with a hollow feeling. What message
have we been sent? Are we outraged at the abuse of these
children? Are we concerned by the oxymoronic “abuse
of power?” Are we or are we not supposed to believe this
young woman? Are we concerned about this woman being
loose on the street, considering her sticky-fingered history?
There are more signals here: in this racially charged city,
this young accuser (only one of many) is white, and all the
guards are black. Is this going to raise eyebrows? Are local
politicians going to have to figure out new ways to dance
around these sensitive issues? Which issue will prevail? Will
this city, like Durham 1 , get lost in racial politics over the
assault? Public defenders rush up to the podium to declare
that they don’t have enough funding to protect juveniles
accused of crimes; then they quickly step back down when
they realize they will be defending these guards. The pros-
ecutor announces the charges and states that this will not be
tolerated! But the prison superintendent has to step down

1 In spring of 2006 , an African American dancer was gang-raped by white
members of the Duke University Lacrosse team after she danced at a team
party. Political mayhem erupted around the crime, not because of the
sexual assault per se but more because of the races involved. Race may
have been an aggravating factor in the attack, but certainly, as in all rapes,
gender was also a prevailing motive in this hate crime. However, the cor-
porate media quickly lost sight of the issues of gender and violence against
women, which were seen as too commonplace next to the racial tensions
of the situation.

because, well, she had known about it for years and it actu-
ally was tolerated. There is a flurry of talk: people line up on
the sides they need to occupy to preserve their jobs or their
vision of the world. After all, a very public trial is coming.

Amidst all this, the young woman and what happened
to her, her experience, is lost. We can’t even remember her
name. The gruesome act of a hard penis pushing and tearing
a girl open, the handprints left on her upper arms from be-
ing held down, her face covered with tears, the soreness for
days on her cervix, her vagina. . . this is all gone.

Too dirty to speak of, too typical to care about.

It is hardly radical to say that the system isn’t fair. Judges
shrug their shoulders and apologize for “re-victimizing the
victim.” Scholars obfuscate behind terms such as “burden of
proof.” Feminist agencies rush in to stand next to those being
re-victimized, but never to get in the way. Still others say “I
told you so” and use a woman’s plight as proof of the need for
revolution or reform, but never offer a helping hand.

A collective sigh passes from our lips; what is to be
done? Meanwhile, the women who are trying to escape
abuse are left standing in the shooting gallery of the crimi-
nal justice system.

It is not just a matter of Kobe Bryant’s defense team
bringing up his accuser’s sexual history 2 in court and the
media, nor that “court is scary” and there are not enough
“hand holders” to go around getting survivors to court. It is

2 Kobe Bryant, a super-famous basketball player, faced rape charges for
the sexual assault of a concierge at a hotel where he was staying. Bryant
said he did have sex with the nineteen-year- old woman, but that it was
consensual. As soon as the charges were made public, a smear campaign
was launched on fan sites and across the media against the woman. Details
of her sexual history, mental health, and so on were broadcast publicly. The
charges against Bryant were dropped after the woman said that she would
not testify. A little later, a Bryant fan was convicted and sentenced to nine
months in prison for making more than seventy threatening phone calls to
Bryant’s accuser, threatening to kill her.

In PATRIARCHAL SOCI ETY, gender is constructed according
to a binary system in which men are seen as dominant and
women as submissive. Historically, this has been encouraged,
even enforced, by the legal system, the church, the media, and
more subtle social forces, and has been made concrete by the
power these structures have given to men and the constraints
they have imposed upon women. By confining people to un-
chosen categories, this binary construction does violence to
everyone, but specifically sets up one class of people — those
who don’t fall into the traditional understanding of “male” — to
bear the brunt of its repressive violence.

This article is written specifically about violence against
women with an understanding that gender is not rigid and
that even when the genders of people do not fit into the
"male=aggressor,” “female=submissive” formula, violent
interactions are influenced by the social construction of gender.
This article is not intended to belittle or ignore those whose
experiences with violence fall outside this male/female binary
(there are many of us!), but to encourage a focus on the roots
of violence within our society’s construction of gender.

The process of evaluating the impact of gender on our intimate
relationships must occur simultaneously with the dismantling
of gender.

that the legal system itself is cruelly against women. There
is a deadly patriarchal grip on the legal system that pro-
motes an ideology so utterly irrelevant to women’s lives that
it could be laughable if it weren’t partially responsible for so
many deaths.

A History of Paternalism
and Indifference

It should be no surprise that the legal system is not made
for women. United States law is based on English common
law. For a brief period in the Puritan colonies, the exist-
ence of “stable” family life was relied on to knit together
small communities, and the state was allowed to mete out
discipline and handle “family disputes.” After the American
Revolution, however, the stick was put back in the hus-
band’s hand. Thus, the legal dialogue over the last couple
hundred years has been a drawing and re-drawing of the
line of who gets to punish whom, with the only constant
being that that line consistently runs down the middle of
women’s bodies.

Under English common law a man was given the right
to punish his wife’s transgressions — more importantly, he
was given the power to decide what constituted a transgres-
sion — but by the end of the 19 th century, the Victorians were
turning their backs on the “rudeness” and “brutality” that
accompanied the privilege of beating one’s wife. Laws were
enacted that upheld a man’s right to teach his wife “duty
and subjugation,” but the more sophisticated implored those
less civilized to control their households with more dignity
and less primal aggression. Laws commonly known as “the
rules of thumb” were adopted, restraining men from beat-
ing their spouses with anything thicker than the width of

a thumb. Such laws helped men retain an air of sophistica-
tion 3 while never compromising the control they felt they
deserved over women.

So it continued. The legal system either encouraged,
enabled, or turned a blind eye to the acts of terrorism and
genocide that were occurring at the hands of the power-
hungry male populace. Rape and abuse became socially ac-
cepted and engrained, keeping all women — whether direct
victims or not — in their place through intimidation.

At times, the legal establishment expressed its benevo-
lence towards women by pursuing ridiculous remedies
like the “anti-seduction laws” of the mid-i8oos. These
laws punished men who “seduced” women into “relations”
without then marrying them. This benefited the jilted maid-
ens’ fathers who needed to marry off their daughters, but
still left unwed mothers to encamp in homes for wayward
women or, worse, in the seedy taverns where more such
“seductions” were bound to take place. The protections the
laws offered to women were not those of justice, but more
akin to draping sheets over bedding plants to protect them
from a spring frost.

Perhaps falsely empowered by the right to vote, or maybe
encouraged by Rosie the Riveter, but most likely just acting
out of a gut instinct to avert their own extinction, women
in the mid-igoos began to lay low in the trenches and
plan. Actions against abuse had been taken before. At the
turn of the century, the campaign for prohibition was led
by women trying to avoid drunken beatings. Knowing that
no one would care about their plight per se, these women
employed notions of “morality” and “purity” and Chris-
tian ideals to float their cause into the mainstream, where
it became the now deceased 21 st Amendment. Likewise,
Margaret Sanger 4 , Emma Goldman, and others promoted
birth control — in part to give women the ability to choose
whether or not to bear children, and in part to obtain for
women the right not to carry the products of marital rape.
But these movements were peripheral. They were designed
only to limit the impact of abuse and to de-escalate torture.
By the 1970s, women were ready for something else. They
were ready to leave.

Leaving an abusive man is not an easy task. The vast ma-
jority of the violent assaults and murders of women occur
when they are leaving or have left their abuser. This makes
sense if we understand violence against women as a means
of maintaining power and control. A man is most likely
to “lose control” and escalate his tactics when he feels his
control over a woman is slipping. It is not that leaving never
crossed the minds of Colonial, Victorian, or Depression-era
women; there was simply no safe way to do so. If a paternal-
istic legal establishment supported by the church is waiting
to return you to the hands of your abuser and your society
offers few or no options for you to survive on your own, you

3 They also helped to foster a class mythology that still infests our percep-
tions of abuse today — think of the typical depiction of the slovenly man in
a trailer park wearing his “wife beater.”

4 See the first issue of Rolling Thunder for a selection from her magazine,
The Rebel Woman.

Page 48 : Features : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Features : Page 49

“Abuse is the most
intimate form of
capitalism. When
we ralk about power
and control in partner
abuse, we are. discus sing
the same dynamics
that play out between an
individual and the state,
a worker and a boss, an
animal and a vivisecter.”

may well choose to try your luck at the age-old women’s
survival technique of “keeping him calm.”

In Phoenix in 1973, the first shelter opened for “families
of alcoholics.” In 1972, a group called Women’s Advocates
had started the first collective phone service offering
information about resources available to women; this same
group opened an early shelter called “Women’s House” two
years later. These services only made public what had been
developing for a very long time: an underground network
for hiding, supporting, and housing women on the run from
abusive men.

It seemed as if the nation suddenly had an “epidemic”
on its hands; in truth, women were just beginning to
say what was being done to them. Over a decade earlier,
feminist writer Betty Friedan had documented the drudg-
ery and consumerism of a suburban woman’s life in The
Feminine Mystique — a weighty volume and a good read. Yet
somehow, Friedan failed to mention that a near-majority
of women were being beaten and raped in the very same
home trap she painstakingly detailed down to every kitchen
gadget. In the 1960s, women had protested Ms. America
pageants and bras and argued for their turn in leadership
from the boardroom to SDS, but missed the violence that
was literally killing their would-be allies. It was only when
Ms. Magazine published a woman’s battered and bruised
face on their cover — giving a face to this violence — that the
feminist movement and the nation at large acknowledged
domestic violence as a substantial concern. Maybe some
suddenly realized that men were overwhelmingly, ritualisti-
cally violent towards women as a matter of privilege, but
clearly most people were already intimately familiar with
this. Perhaps for the first time in American history, there
was a movement that spoke to the experience of one in
three women — and thus one in three men, not to mention
millions of children hiding in their bedrooms at night. The
problem was always there, being silently suffered, but the
epidemic began when someone said it out loud.

One could argue that the importance of a movement
can be measured by how much repression and backlash it
must endure. Upon the appearance of the battered women’s
movement, psychologists and psychiatrists started trotting

forward a myriad of contradictory scientific claims from the
bizarre suggestion that women are masochists who enjoy
abuse to dodgy insinuations that women abuse men as fre-
quently as men abuse women. The scores of victimized men
failed to materialize out of the woodwork and allegations
of masochism failed to explain men’s violence, but it was
enough to muddy the waters. The judicial system adopted
such phrases as “domestic dispute” to remove gender from
the equation — though it was gender that made the equation
in the first place. Self-help gurus and psychiatrists came
forth to “treat” women, as if the real problem was a mental
condition of their own. Judges spoke of “anger manage-
ment” classes for abusers — ignoring the intimate relation-
ship between violence and control, not “anger.” Finally,
after a brief snooze to recuperate from the sixties, liberal
feminists pranced into the center of attention equipped
with the leadership skills they had fought for, coupled with
their egalitarian middle-class sensibilities, to guide what
would have been a grassroots movement under their much
more “professional” — that is to say, bureaucratic — gaze.

When you are dealing with a movement for which thou-
sands of potential allies are created daily by acts of murder,
rape and battery, you feel a certain urgency. This urgency
is not experienced by those who support victims that live
overseas rather than next door; it is unfamiliar to those
addressing long, slow processes such as global warming
that play out over decades rather than coming to a head in a
matter of seconds. Urgency spurs action and makes people
stand up and pay attention. This immediacy would be an
advantage, if we were not talking about a toll of human
lives. Unfortunately, that same sense of urgency pushed the
battered and raped women’s movement to attempt to work
within the structures that were already in place — namely,
those of the legal system. A great deal of energy was spent
begging police departments and lawmakers to help the
cause, and begging is rarely a means of empowerment.

But there wasn’t time to theorize or moralize when every
passing moment another woman was injured. The response
was a direct needs-based movement — a search and rescue
mission, if you will. Pressure was put on police depart-
ments, judges, prosecutors, and lawmakers to hold abusers
accountable. Many states didn’t even have domestic vio-
lence or marital rape laws on their books until well into the
mid-1980s, and when these laws did exist, they were often
accompanied by a no-arrest policy (break it up, tell them to
quiet down), or a dual arrest policy (if someone complains,
kids or no kids, they are all going to jail).

Surely many women were helped — the knowledge that
survivors could turn somewhere and that abusers were not
the only “authorities” in town must have helped in many
cases — but the “justice” system also laid out its claws. It
quickly became apparent that the rights of women and
children often come into direct conflict with the so-called
rights of the state.

Page 50 : Features : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

The Law Is Useless to Women

In Connecticut in 1983, Tracey Thurman left her
husband Charles after a brief and violent marriage. Tracey
took her son with her. Charles harassed Tracey for months,
and publicly threatened to kill her as he smashed her car
windshield with her inside. Charles was arrested and put
on probation for this act, but Tracey knew this was only
going to make him angrier. When Charles repeatedly vio-
lated his probation, the police refused to make an arrest,
stating that they had already “held him accountable” by
arresting him the first time. On June 10 th , 1983, Charles
stood outside Tracey’s apartment yelling. Someone called
the police, but the dispatched officer stopped by the police
station first to use the toilet, then sat in his car while he
watched Charles chase Tracey and grab her by her hair,
slash her cheek with a knife, stab her in the neck, and then
stab her twelve more times. Another officer came and took
the knife from Charles, but made no attempt to arrest him.
Charles attacked Tracey again. This time he crushed her
neck and then ran into the apartment to get Charles Jr.,
dropping him on Tracey’s limp body. As a finale, Charles
kicked Tracey in the head. A few more officers arrived,
and took Charles into custody as he had, finally, gone too
far — perhaps he had crossed the Victorian line between
“discipline” and “brutality”? The courts achieved their
“justice” for Tracey, though, and sentenced Charles to
twenty years.

Tracey Thurman survived, though partially disfigured
and paralyzed, and it was clear to her how perverse the
concept of institutionalized justice is. Tracey sued the
City of Torrington and twenty-four officers under the 14 th
Amendment with its clause, “nor shall any state . . . deny
to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of
its laws.” This amendment had successfully been used for
cases of racial discrimination on the part of police. Tracey
claimed that the police failed to provide the same protec-
tion to abused women as they would victims of a similar
assault outside a domestic relationship.

A federal court agreed with Tracey. Overnight, Connecti-
cut changed its domestic violence arrest procedure and the
following year domestic violence arrests increased 93%. For
a moment, it appeared that there was due process — that
so long as the laws could be created, the system could be
forced to protect people with them.

But if anyone believed a victory had come from Tracey’s
abuse and disfigurement, they didn’t for long. The same year
that Tracey sued the Connecticut cops, across the country
Randy DeShaney beat his four-year-old son into a coma.

This wasn’t the first such beating. After prolonged abuse,
little Joshua could no longer function, so he was put into
an institution and Randy DeShaney was convicted of child
abuse. So the system worked just as it was supposed to by
punishing the culprit. Surely there were plenty of hand-
shakes and pats on the back after the verdict, even as Joshua
lay in an institution never to recover. The handshakes
stopped, though, as word came that Melody, the little boy’s

mother, had filed a lawsuit against the Department of Social
Services for being complicit in Joshua’s abuse.

Randy had been given custody of the infant in 1980
because Melody was seen as “incompetent to care for a child”
due to the series of beatings she had endured at Randy’s
hands. Randy’s next wife warned the police about Randy’s
abuse of Joshua. Social Services investigated the case but then
closed it. One year later, Joshua was admitted to the hospital
after a beating. Joshua was put temporarily in the custody of
the state, but soon was returned to Randy. During the next
fourteen months, Joshua was seen in the emergency room
three more times — the final time was when he was in a coma.
Melody claimed that the state had failed to protect Joshua.

But the courts disagreed. They declared that the state
cold not be held responsible for the actions of individuals —
that even though they refused to give Melody custody and
repeatedly returned Joshua to Randy, they were not at fault.
Immediately, the Thurman case was overturned as well by
the DeShaney decision.

Last year, a US Supreme Court revisited these same
issues. Who is responsible to protect whom? A mother
whose boyfriend injures her child can be charged as an
accomplice, or with “failure to protect” her child — so what
happens when you have asked the state to help you pro-
tect yourself or someone else? In Colorado in 1999, Jessica
Gonzales obtained a protective order against her husband
to protect herself and her three daughters. When her
estranged husband kidnapped Jessica’s daughters out of her
yard, Jessica called 911 as she had been told to do. She told
them about the protective order, and was told to “wait and
see” if he brought the girls back. Jessica waited, and when
the children were not returned she called the police again.
She called them over and over as the night wore on and she
grew increasingly worried, but each time she was told that
the police would not enforce the protective order and she
should “just wait.” Late that night, Gonzales’ estranged hus-
band showed up at the Little Rock police department and
opened fire on the building. The police returned fire, killing
him. When they went to his vehicle, they found that he had
already murdered his daughters — their bodies lay lifeless on
the backseat. Gonzales sued the police department, arguing
that they failed to protect her children and failed to enforce
a court order. After she won the original suit, the town of
Little Rock appealed — and won the appeal.

Thus it happened that in spring of 2005 this case found
its way to Washington, DC, where the US Supreme Court
ruled that the LRPD was neither negligent nor at fault for
the murders of these little girls. Of issue was whether or
not Jessica’s concern was enough “evidence” for the police
to take action and whether or not the police had a “binding
contract” with Jessica due to the protective order.

The answer to all these questions was a resounding “no.”
The court argued that the police simply could not be re-
sponsible for all crimes occurring in their jurisdiction — the
burden was too much. In fact, the court stated that if a
police officer sees a person being injured in front of him,
the officer has no “duty to act” or intervene.

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Features : Page 51

What Do We Do?

For the millions of survivors of rape and abuse, it’s not
news that the police and courts don’t care. These cases
and legal precedents are detailed here not to bog the
reader down in legislative matters, but to provide concrete
evidence of how utterly useless and irrelevant the law is to
women — and, if I may expand, to all people. When we read
Thurman, DeShaney, and Gonzales, or even sit in our local
court on a divorce case, these jargon-heavy legal arguments
go against our gut instincts and sense of justice.

It’s a gut instinct to stop abuse. If someone is being hurt,
it makes sense to intervene. This instinct does not come
naturally to the legal system because the legal system is
not natural. Arguing that the state should protect people is
like arguing that the desert sun should water peonies. Not
only is protection not the role of the state, but further the
state strips the rest of us of the right to protect each other,
leaving no one able to care for anyone. (What the role of the
state is should be obvious by process of elimination.)

The law is unfamiliar and superfluous to everyone except
those who make their livelihoods from it. It has as much to
offer in terms of safety, problem-solving, and redemption
as a gentlemanly cockroach race. It is a binary response
to multi-faceted problems. The law operates like a sports
game: two sides duking it out to the end, with a few rules
enforced by a referee. The focus is on winning, and when
one wins the other loses.

This makes for a great spectacle, but it is insulting to
the very real trauma of abuse. Rarely does a woman feel
she is in an “either/or” situation. Women have known their
abusers as lovers and as assailants. They have felt hope and
compassion in those relationships as well as fear and pain.

A woman knows exactly what happened to her — but in a
not-guilty verdict, simply because certain levels of “evi-
dence” have not been reached, her experience is entirely
erased. In fact, survivors often begin to doubt their own ex-
periences after not-guilty verdicts. The court is not a place
many women would turn for true resolution.

So where does one turn? Where did the young girl who
was repeatedly raped in prison turn? She turned to the me-
dia, only to have her rap sheet aired. Gonzales et al. fought
to the very top of the legal system only to be tossed back.
Thousands of women dial 911 everyday, and occasionally the
police make arrests. Jailing abusers is helpful to the extent
that it gives women time to hide or rest, but the verdicts,
even when favorable to the survivors’ stories, do little to
heal wounds, empower women, or change what happened
to them, let alone put an end to the war against women.

It is hard to find anyone beyond the legal system address-
ing the issues of violence against women. (When I say “legal
system,” I am lumping in most domestic violence shelters
and such, as they are increasingly funded by and linked to
local criminal justice systems). Some communities that
have already developed a healthy disrespect and skepticism
for all things police and all things government have waded
into the shallow part of the waves and poked around for

some alternatives. Interestingly, however, radical commu-
nities and anarchists often imitate the legal system when
dealing with violence against women.

While the battered women’s movement spent most of the
1970s trying to convince the police to do more than mediate
“domestic disputes,” the anarchist community is obsessed
with mediation — perhaps because it seems to conflict the
least with ideals of collectivity and consensus. But when we
step back and look at the situation, what is there to medi-
ate? Mediation implies two or more parties sitting down to
“meet in the middle.” It is a good option for competing busi-
ness interests, not for gross violations of another person’s
body and autonomy. Should a survivor of violence have to
make concessions to her abuser? Should an abuser be able
to complain about what is “hurting” him after he has as-
saulted someone? Especially in situations of intimate abuse,
the abuser holds a disproportionate amount of power and
control over the mediation process, serving only to further
the abuse of the survivor. Mediation tends to downplay the
severity of the atrocity that has occurred — just as the court
system often relegates “domestic cases” to civil court, inter-
preting them as personal disputes rather than crimes.

When presented with an allegation of abuse, we insist
on interpreting it only as that: an allegation. We ask for
objective facts and evidence, and the burden remains on the
survivor to provide us with information we can evaluate. In
essence, the community decides whether or not to validate
her situation. The right to define what happened to her is
taken from the survivor, and she is forced to interpret her
experience through the eyes of those evaluating her story.
For example, if the abuse she has endured is most signifi-
cantly emotional but the community needs her to present
“evidence” they can understand, she may feel pressed to
focus on more physical elements of the abuse, or recant her
allegation altogether. She may come to feel that she didn’t
experience “enough” abuse to warrant the community’s at-
tention. Women dealing with the criminal justice system ex-
perience the same alienation, as very few elements of abuse
are actually arrestable crimes like battery. While an act of
physical violence can be reported, financial, emotional, and
frequently certain types of sexual abuse are non-issues to
the police and courts — and, more troublingly, sometimes to
anarchist communities as well.

Typically, in response to abuse, a band of individuals will
form around the abuser (acting as the defense) and another
around the survivor (the prosecution), and present the
“evidence” until a verdict of opinion crashes down. Com-
munities are often distrustful of survivors. This distrust is
another trait many radical communities have in common
with mainstream society and the legal system. The burden
is on the survivor to prove that the abuse occurred and that
she didn’t deserve it, instead of on the abuser having to
prove that it didn’t occur. This is bizarre, as study after study
show that false reports are extremely rare, while abuse and
rape are uncomfortably common. Why would we think it is
any different in our communities?

Still, the typical questions arise as to the survivor’s mo-
tives, her desires, her past, her behavior, her need for atten-
tion, her complicity. The level of suspicion is much higher
in this circumstance than in any other in a radical commu-
nity: how wary are we of an accuser’s motives when calling
out an “infiltrator” or a suspected cop? How skeptical are
we of allegations that someone “didn’t hold the line” at a
protest? Worse, however, there seems to be more discussion
of the survivor and her behavior than of the perpetrator.

The survivor has nothing to do with the abuse. Essentially,
we recreate the courtroom and criminal justice system in
cases of abuse within our ranks, just without donning robes.
By doing this, we render ourselves completely useless. If
we don’t mimic the state’s “trial” and “justice” approach,
we mediate. If we don’t use either, we cyclically discuss the
situation in small groups, until the issue slips back into the
“private sphere.”

What we are not doing is addressing the issue of violence
against women. The shortcomings of the current anarchist
discourse are exactly the same as those of the legal system.
We isolate our conversations about abuse into black/white
conversations about particular people in particular circum-
stances. Just like in a courtroom, a trial is held concerning
one abuser, one victim, and one act of abuse — and the
full scope of the oppression of women and the culture of
violence is lost. We need to be having these conversations
publicly, discussing abuse in terms of capitalism, statism,
and patriarchy. We get wrapped up in “responding” to situ-
ations — situations that undoubtedly need a response but
demand far more than that — and forget to discuss these
issues theoretically.

When we do talk about violence against women, we
often muddy the waters and distort the issues. We carefully
repeat that women can also abuse men, men can abuse
men, women can abuse women, trans folks can abuse trans
folks, and so on. And while all of these factors do need to
be discussed in our intimate relationships, it is important
not to lose focus on what is key here. There is a pattern of
accepted violence and abuse towards women so intense
that all women, whether survivors or not, are affected.

We have to address abusers’ actions beyond establishing
whether or not abuse occurred in the first place, and dis-
cuss why they chose to use their social power to dominate
others. We need to talk about patriarchy and authority. We
need to make it clear that abuse, sexual assault, and any
other form of violence as control are not mistakes or mo-
ments of poor judgment or phases men might go through.
We must clearly declare that abuse is not anarchist and
will not be tolerated.

Anarchist fumblings around abuse are largely due to the
lack of consideration the topic is given. There has been an
increase in the number of “Community Response to Sexual
Assault” workshops, but while important, these do no more
to eradicate abuse of women than “Shoot the Rapist” shirts
fire bullets. Not only do we have to change our focus from
“responding” to “preventing,” we must shift from a crimi-
nal-justice-centered interpretation of “crime management”

to understanding abuse in the context of patriarchy. This
change would allow us to confront abuse and confront abus-
ers, not mediate with them, not make excuses for them.
We’ve got to talk about abuse and deal with abusers like we
truly don’t want this to ever, ever happen again.

The good news is there are
no anarchist rapists or abusers.
That is not to say there are no
rapists or abusers who haunt
the anarchist community. It is
time, however, to step up and
realize that abuse doesn’t come
from social baggage and poor
coping skills, but is a decision
to attempt to dominate another
human being. Let’s focus and not
make excuses. Meat eaters aren’t
vegan. Vivisectors aren’t animal
liberationists. Stockholders aren’t
anticapitalists. Abusers aren’t
anarchists.

Page 52 : Features : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Features : Page 53

The Struggle Against Domestic Violence

Interview From The Front Line

How did you come to choose your current
line of work?

I’m a survivor. When I was eighteen
I married a man I had been living with.
Very soon after we got married, he be-
came abusive. He began losing his temper,
breaking things, and hitting himself. He
would get worked up, and demand sexto
calm him down. I don’t know where the
line was crossed, but soon the sex wasn't
consensual. Quickly, it became forceful and
violent. I didn’t know what to do — there
is no way to prepare a woman for a life
like this. We lived at a small farm college,
and I know others there knew what was
going on, but no one would say a word to
me. I was a feminist and raised by radical
parents, and I didn’t know how I ended up
in that situation. It was a long time before
I finally told someone and filed for divorce.
A year after the divorce, he attacked me
again — pushing his way into my apartment
and raping me. I moved out of the state
the next week. It was then that I realized
that if I felt alone, and I lived in such a radi-
cal, strong community, then other women
must be utterly isolated. So I have made a
life around advocating for survivors. You
don’t really have much choice but to fight
this once you realize what is happeningto
women's bodies and lives.

What is your job description, exactly? And how
does your actual work differ from that?

We call ourselves “advocates.” What
this means is we build relationships with
survivors of abuse. We advocate for them
in whatever fashion they ask, whether that
means talking to their bosses to make
sure they don't get fired, arguing with the
caseworkers at child protective services
or the food stamp office to protect their
benefits, or explaining the dynamics of

domestic abuse to the police who threaten
to arrest someone “if she calls them one
more time.” We help find safe places for
them to go, we help change the locks on
their doors. We are there to stand by her.
To advocate for someone is to allow her to
determine what she needs, and help her
achieve that. We can help her learn about
the systems she might be facing, but we will
never do anything to lead her or block her.
Regaining autonomy is the most important
thing to most of the women I work with.
The last thing I want to do is dominate
them like their abusers have been.

So I work in a tiny four-person not-
for-profit. I alone meet with about two
thousand women a year who are fleeing
abuse. I write the grants to keep our pro-
gram running, and coordinate our work as
best I can with other local groups that run
shelters and other counseling services. I
counsel women and children, I run a sup-
port group, I argue a lot with judges and
lawyers and cops.

A lot of our grants are from the federal
government. They ask us to “counsel wom-
en” and “assist them in going to shelter.”
This is bunch of shit. These women don’t
need counseling — there is nothing wrong
with them. And no one wants to go to shelter,
norshould they. Luckily I getto write ourjob
descriptions — they basically say “support
survivors and believe survivors.”

How do you establish contact with women?

At first, we didn't know how we were
going to find the women we wanted to help.
But we figured that if one in three of our
neighbors was being abused, it couldn't
be that hard. So we just started talking.
We started talking in the neighborhood
grocery stores, churches, we started hold-
ing awareness events, we went into the

women’s prison (where the vast majority
are survivors). We made a safety plan and
resource list and put it in tanning salons,
hair dressing shops, public restrooms. It
wasn’t hard finding people, but it was very
hard to find a safe place to talk to them
and help them. A lot of women can’t take
literature and bring it home, in case their
abuser finds it. To solve this, we made the
cards tiny — so you can hide them behind a
drawer or, as one woman did, in the linttrap
of her dryer. And a lot of women can’t just
come up to you and talk to you in public.

Finally, we realized that the vast major-
ity of these women were having interac-
tions with the police — either they called
911 or a neighbor did. The police would
say it was a “civil matter” and tell everyone
to get a protective order. So we went and
started hanging out in the halls by the
protective order court. Years later, the clerk
in the protective order court gave us an
old closet to work out of, so we can speak
to women in confidence. Now, we easily
meet twenty to thirty new women a day.
There have been times when it has gotten
so overwhelming, I have hid in that closet,
unable to hear any more, and cried.

But if you go out to a playground, or
a grocery store, or just your front porch
and announce loudly that you are against
abuse — shit, no one really says that out
loud except when they feel they are sup-
posed to (i.e., when asked) — someone
will come up to you. It may take a while,
or she may come back to you weeks later...
or she may turn to someone else. But you
break that wall, just by talking. If you see
a woman with a black eye — don’t pretend
it’s not there. If you know someone who
has been raped, don’t assume that it's
uncomfortable to talk about. Chances are,
the discomfort is yours.

Page 54 : Features : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

against women

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try to sell u

Given that "counseling" and shelters are use-
less or worse for most people in that situation,
what do you think a truly useful community
support system would look like?

I guess I wouldn’t say they are useless,
they are just a shitty concept. They shift
the blame from the abuser to the survivor.
And most women refuse to allow that. A
shelter can keep people physically safe
if needed. Many of the women I see are
facing homelessness as a result of physi-
cal and economic abuse, so sometimes
they just need a place to stay. But to put
a woman and possibly her children into
a multi-bed institution with “lights out”
rules and mandatory counseling? That’s
the sort of thing these women are try-
ing to leave. A more effective alternative
is to create housing, but based around
autonomy and community. The general
idea would be to get an old apartment
building — or, better yet, a whole neigh-
borhood — and make it into affordable or
no-cost housing. Depending on the safety
needs of those involved, it might have to
be a secret location. I have been hooking
up some women I know to live together
collectively . . . this way they can address
some of their common needs together.
They can help each other with transporta-
tion and child care so they can work, they
can share bills, they can share other tasks
like cooking, and, finally, they can build a
community based off of survivance. This
answers the “need” for counseling too, as
it brings built-in support. When we have
support, our abusers back off.

The most dangerous time for a woman
is when she tries to leave. Abuse is about
control, and when he senses he is losing
control, he can become very dangerous.
Think about the police at a protest, what
they do when they see all the protesters
whispering to each other. An abuser uses

the same power and control and coercion
tactics. If leaving is the most dangerous
time for her, we have to think seriously
about where she is going to be and where
her children are going to be. Shelters are
being built now with bulletproof glass and
huge security systems. If a woman stays at
my house, she is not getting that. So we
have to talk to her and see what she wants,
and what would make her most safe. There
is nothing worse than people who feel a
certain amount of bravado and machismo
saying "Come here, I will protect you” to
a survivor. I would choose to say “no,
thank you” to someone who thought they
alone could “keep me safe” — and then kick
them in the nuts. We can learn a lot about
survival skills from these women, we need
to just ask them what we can do.

Most women, obviously, want to stay
in their homes. This is why we need com-
munity support systems that simply don’t
exist right now. We need neighbors who
give a fuck about each other and come
out of their homes when they hear yell-
ing next door. We need friends and fam-
ily who speak out against violence and
don’t second-guess survivors. We need
men who stand up and tell other men
that they won't tolerate patriarchy. If our
neighborhoods were talking like this, if we
were letting men know before something
happens that the community will respond
to his actions... then they would be a safer
place for survivors, a safer place where
hopefully “survivor” and “woman” would
not be synonymous.

How does most of the money the government
throws at this issue get used?

Money is a huge problem in this move-
ment. Most people would say we don’t
have enough. But I feel it is the concept
of money that is the problem. When we

feel we need money, we create bureauc-
racy. Bureaucracy creates a dehumanized
systematic response that “controls” the
“problem” of abuse instead of fighting
to eradicate it. Money enforces top-down
hierarchies that simulate abusive relation-
ships. Sure, if you gave me money today, I
could call a hundred women and get them
moving trucks and move them out of state;
I could buy their kids food and clothing; I
could pay for their child care; I could hire
them lawyers so they don't lose their kids.
We use money because we are operating
within the systems that exist and we have to
save people's lives. Women are being killed
daily — scrap that, hourly — and we can't wait
until we have overthrown the system. But it
is imperative for us to understand the ways
in which capitalism and authority perpetu-
ate abuse. The reason the battered women's
movement needs money is because it is
marginalized and doesn't have community-
powered support. There is nothing we do
that “needs” money — if every woman just
had one sincere ally, she could be safe. But
the bureaucracy that has been created by
the grants and funding has also ordained
that “professionals” and “social controls”
are needed to handle this epidemic, and
friends and families use this to wipe their
hands clean of responsibility.

Most government funding comes from
the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).
You can only get this funding from the fed-
eral government ifyoureffort is sponsored
by a local government entity. Basically, the
federal government writes a check and
hands it to a local government person,
who disperses it to you. The problem with
this is that this “houses” a lot of anti-abuse
agencies with the local government — and
for some ridiculous reason, most ofthese
agencies choose the prosecutors’ office or
the police department. This creates a very

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Features : Page 55

We need commurnty
support .systems mat
4pn t exist r
We neea ne
, who come out
homes wJaen th

now.

rjs

eir

eynear

yelling next door.

unnatural “alliance”... and it really hurts
the women we work for.

I am working with a woman right now,
for example, called Tejuana. Tejuana is
the mother of three children, the younger
two with Mark. Mark is a piece of shit.
He is very abusive — the first time I met
Tejuana, her mother came in with her
because she couldn't see where she was
walking, since Mark had punched her re-
peatedly in the face, swelling both her eyes
shut. Tejuana left Mark emotionally years
ago, but she still lives with him physically.
She has complicated techniques to calm
Mark down — from taking the blame for
everything (recently including his wreck-
ing of their car while she was at home)
to giving him money to pay prostitutes
and buy drugs. Mark is sexually abus-
ing their six-year-old daughter. Tejuana is
sure of this. Mark’s abuse didn’t use to
be as severe — he would hit her and bite
her under her clothing, but nothing that
showed. But now Mark has found that
the police have become his ally in some
fashion, even though he gets picked up
here and there on PI charges and has spent
his fair share of life incarcerated. Tejuana
has a long criminal history. The last time
she called the police, they arrested her
for an open warrant and left Mark behind
(even though he had broken her arm) in
the home, because they didn't want to
“leave the kids unattended” by arresting
them both. Tejuana didn't go to court, so
she now has another warrant and cannot
call the police when things get violent.
She also cannot go to ANY of our local
shelters, because they are partners with
the police departments, and she can’t go
to counseling, because the only “openings”
are with a woman whose office is in the
prosecutors’ office. Tejuana is terrified of

her kids being given to Mark or being put
into foster care, so she doesn’t want to call
child protective services — they will report
her location and have her arrested too.

Oh, and by the way, her open warrant?
It’s for failing to pay a traffic ticket in 1998.

Describe your interactions with police, judges,
and lawyers. How do you see their role In
this society, as it relates to this issue? What
specific roles do you often play? How do they
see your activity?

If you had told me that I was going to
be dealing with all these people ten years
ago, I would have assumed you meant I
was going to be in prison. When I was with
my ex-husband it did not once occurto me
to call the police. I didn’t even know how
that would work.

My job is struggling with the system
that survivors are forced to deal with if
the community isn’t stepping up. As an
advocate, I do what my clients want and
I never second-guess them. It’s not the
time to promote pretty abstract-seem-
ing theory about anti-statism — not that
they would disagree with me (most of
them agree with my ideas), but it can
be irrelevant to immediate needs. If she
wants to prosecute the abuser, I will go
with her to the prosecutors' office and to
court. If she wants to fortify her house to
keep him out, I have a hammer and can
help. Unfortunately, we do live in a culture
based around submission and the lack of
self-sufficiency — abusers and government
both in turn reinforce this. We are told
that we have to call the police — if you
take matters into your own hands, you
are likely to get arrested. That’s the way
the system works.

So I deal with cops, lawyers, judges
every day. I have had to spend hours on

a friend's front porch with my cell phone,
citing all the legal reasons why a cop could
and should arrest one guy for violating a
protective order, and having to go on to
explain all the legal action I would help the
survivor take against the cop if he didn’t
(the cop finally arrested the guy — he was
released two hours later and burned down
my client’s garage). I have stood in front
of a paternity court judge and read a "Do-
mestic Violence 101’’ brochure explaining
why the father’s tying up the mother might
indicate that he shouldn't have custody
of the child (he got full custody, and my
client was locked up for contempt for yell-
ing “What the fuck?” at the ruling). I have
met with a prosecutor literally in a dimly
lit bar so she could explain to me how her
boss was trying to make her coerce victims
into signing papers saying they lied when
they wanted to drop charges against their
abusers. I have had to testify against a
police officer for stalking his ex-girlfriend
in his police cruiser when she was trying
to flee to my office.

What I mostly find myself doing is,
even though the “laws” on the books
denounce domestic abuse and sexual
assault, constantly trying to “prove” to
everyone that abuse occurs. I have to tell
the police — even those specially assigned
to domestic task forces or sexual assault
units — that it really does happen. I have
to explain to judges that my clients have
nothing to gain by lying. I have to explain
to my friends that this doesn’t have to be
the case, and that this is going on every
minute of every day. I am so sick of try-
ing to convince people that it actually is
happening when for all these women it’s
not even a question. I want to stop abuse,
but I’m stuck trying to tell everyone that
it matters.

Page 56 : Features : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

My role as an advocate meets a lot of
mixed reactions. I have one judge who
gives me the names and phone numbers
of survivors she has seen in her court so
I can offer them my support. There is a
deputy who has emailed me asking me to
come out to his beat and go door to door
with him, talking about abuse. But then
there are others.

Last fall, I had a nineteen-year-old girl
named Stephanie come into my office.
She was crying so hard, her sister had
to explain the situation to me. Stephanie
had been living with her boyfriend Brian.
She had a two-week-old son with him.
Since giving birth, Brian had cracked her
ribs and locked her in the bedroom. His
“reasoning” was that now that she had
regained her figure after the pregnancy,
she would cheat on him. So, she snuck
out the bathroom window, and went to
her sister’s house. They called the police,
who told her that they would not escort
her to get her son, and she had to get a
protective order. So, we got an order and
she went back to the police. The same of-
ficers showed up, and soon I got a call on
my cell phone from Stephanie. Stephanie
was saying that since she met the officer
back at the house where Brian and the
baby were, the officer was trying to arrest
her for violating the protective order. I got
on the phone to the officer, and kindly
explained that she couldn’t violate her
own protective order, and that Brian had
no legal rights to the child. The officer told
me to shut up and that he was going to
“take care of” Stephanie. Stephanie came
down to my office again, and I called a
missing persons detective, who agreed
to meet Stephanie near the house and
go get the baby with her. As Stephanie
pulled up to meet the detective, a squad

car pulled between her car and that of the
detective, and the same officer from before
got out and cuffed Stephanie. He asked
to see her license; she handed it to him,
and he broke it in two and arrested her for
driving without ID. Stephanie didn’t get
processed at the county jail because that
wasn't even an arrestable offense, and she
got to ride back to her car in the wagon
and get dropped off again.

At that point, three days had passed
since Stephanie had crawled out the win-
dow, and it had become pressing to find a
breast pump since she hadn’t been able to
feed her baby in all that time. After that, we
drove out to the house, and again called
the police. I was carrying a law book that
specifically stated that Stephanie was the
only one who had any legal rights to her
son, Brian’s extensive rap sheet including
multiple arrests for crack and meth, and
a car seat. The responding officer came
out and got the child for us. However, of-
ficer friendly from the days previous then
showed up and announced that Stephanie
smelled like marijuana, and, while he could
not arrest her, he declared both Brian and
Stephanie unfit and called Child Protective
Services to take their son to foster care.
Stephanie was then charged by CPS for
“failing to protect" her son because she
left him with Brian, who poised a potential
danger to the baby.

So, Stephanie is in jail, again, the child
is in foster care, and the last I saw Brian,
he was watching “Scrubs" on TV in his
home. I went to the police department and
requested to speak to the chief, and he told
me to wait outside the roll call room. Thirty
minutes later, after all the officers have
been briefed on what was described to me
as “a little situation that has arisen,” the
door from roll call opened and the officers

began to file out. One by one, about forty
officers passed me, each in turn muttering
“Cunt” to me as he passed, with a handful,
embarrassed, looking away.

/ understand that at one point you took it
upon yourself to date police officers as a kind
of anthropological field work. How did you
decide upon this project, and how did you
go about it? What did you learn?

Oh, yeah . . . that. I did do that, didn't
I! I think that one of the best ways to get
over our fears of authority, or to dismiss
the idea that any authority exists over us,
is to make fun of it. A lot of cultures have
done this — mocking their oppressors in
their art and theater, for example. Dealing
with police pretty regularly, I was struck by
how human and silly they all were, and I
became fascinated by the idea of these
guys’ “lives beyond the badge” and what
those might consist of. In truth, it all came
out of me tearing into this police officer
after he editorialized in court about how he
felt that my client must like the abuse since
she kept going back. I tore into him in the
hall outside the court; I don't remember
everything I said, but I remember it ended
with "... and that is why you are a bad per-
son.” So, a few days later, he calls around
to get my office phone number, and asks
me out to dinner! At first, I was pretty sure
he wanted to lure me some place alone to
dismember me, but then I started to think
that he might just hate himself, that in
some masochistic way he needed me to
insult and reprimand him. That was way
too intriguing to ignore.

So I went on dates with cops. Most
of them were pretty nice dates, if you are
into that sort of thing — you know, dinner
and a movie. On one date I experienced
my first-ever legitimate bar fight, which

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Features : Page 57

It is imperative that people
understand now capitalism
and auxhoritv perpetuate

aDUSerThe bait erea women s
movement only needs money
Because it is marginalized
and aoesn t nave ccwnmunrtv-

powerea support.

culminated in the officer telling me to wait
in his truck and letting me know that if I
needed it his service revolver was under
the front seat! What? Another date got a
key to the roof of the court building; we
stood on the roof at two in the morning,
and I convinced him to join me in spitting
on cop cars twenty stories below.

I did learn some interesting things,
sociologically speaking. I would prepare
questions that I wanted answered on the
date — sometimes my friends would help
me think ofthings. I learned that most cops
don't know much about statutes and law,
but do know a lot about police protocol.
So — for all those people who do legal
trainings, that's good, but we also should
be getting our hands on the protocol of
each local police department, so as to
find out exactly how a cop will react to a
given situation. As you might guess, they
are pretty big rule followers. I did find that
most ofthem, when trying to convince me
that they weren’t all law-and-order, would
tell me that they smoked a lot of pot. That
sort of thing hasn’t impressed me since
I was twelve.

My final thesis on this project was that
there are two types of cops: asshole cops
and Richard Scary cops. Asshole cops are
the majority. They want control. They are
the ones who push the domestic abuse
statistics up to a 40% perpetration rate
among officers. They thrive on authority;
they asked me out because they liked the
challenge of proving the feminist wrong.
Richard Scary cops are the cops repre-
sented in those children's books with the
worm and the cat family. They became
police to help people cross the road. They
expressed to me a big concern about lock-
ing people up because it didn’t prevent or

stop crime. They talked about how they
avoided hanging out with other cops. They
talked A LOT about their children and
their own childhoods, which tended to
involve trying to protect someone from
abuse. When I got arrested most recently,
it was one of these guys who walked my
bail through and got me out. Don't think
I wasn’t spared a typical “cop lecture,”
though. You all know how those go: “get-
ting off easy this time/consider this your
warning, blah blah blah.”

Finally, a friend came to me and said
he was scared for my safety doing this. I
guess I hadn't thought about that. I was
just enjoying pissing them off and refusing
to go on second dates. I'm glad I did it,
though, because on long car rides there
is always someone in the car who thinks
this shit is hilarious.

Since that time, I’ve worked with a
number of women who are abused by
police officers. What I can't do in those
situations is just shit-talk cops. Even
though they are being abused, there is
still a reason they got involved with an
officer. So it would alienate them for me
just to say, “Well, that’s not a surprise.”
I guess we have to remember that these
women have experienced these men as
officers and as abusers, but also at times
as lovers, as parents to their children, as
friends, etc. It’s important to remember
when talking to survivors that this isn’t a
simple question of good and evil, but it
is very complex emotionally.

What advice would you give to someone
starting from scratch hoping to focus on
supporting survivors and putting an end
to abuse? What do you think are the most
effective ways to apply energy? Are there

any things you know now that you wish you
had known when you first started working
as an advocate?

There are a million things I wish I had
known, but they aren’t things I could have
known not having spoken with the thou-
sands of women I have now met.

There are two things I would stress for
people who want to stop abuse. One is to
try to stay as grassroots as you can. This
is probably easier for people who don’t
have financial issues or who are doing
this sort of work part time. The biggest
problem facing the survivor's movement
is institutionalization. It is only healthy
for this to be a community issue, not a
government issue or social service issue
solely. People working in not-for-profits are
doing good work, but they are bound by
grants and by reputation (if you make the
courts really mad, for example, they may
take it out on the next woman you try to
help). So if you can, lend support to those
not-for-profits and shelters, but not as a
volunteer for their actual agency.

Collectives and groups of friends can
do amazing support work. You can collect
deadbolts and give a phone number to a
local agency so their clients can call and
have you come change the locks and keys
to their homes to keep their abusers out.
You can collect old cell phones to give to
survivors — any cell phone can be used
to call 911, even if its service has been
discontinued. You can start a location-
centered support group, non-affiliated
with any other group so it can proceed as
its participants want it to.

The second thing would a pretty obvi-
ous one: speak out. I know this is said
about every issue — but think about what
you are doing when you hang a flyer in a

Page 58 : Features : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

Bureaucracy creates
aenumam:

onse

rois, me

systematic rjesp*
that , controls,
problem oi,abuse

instead pTngntmg to
eradicate it. & &

grocery store or put abuse on a community
agenda. Not only are you opening dialogue,
but you are also affirming the experiences
of hundreds of women who will read that
poster. Communities need to establish this
conversation before something happens.
We have too many workshops about “com-
munity responses to sexual assault” (and
less frequently to “domestic violence”).
While a good discussion to have, all that
does it make it feel like what we can do is
respond to, not stop, abuse. Communi-
ties need to know what they are going
to do about abuse, in their community,
in their neighborhoods, before it comes
up — before people get uncomfortable
because they “know him, and he seems
like such a nice guy” or other irrelevant
distractions arise. If you and your family,
or you and your housemates, or you and
your infoshop, or you and your school, or
you and whomever, haven’t had this con-
versation, sit down and have it now.

If there is one thing I wish I had real-
ized when I started this work, one thing
that I would encourage others to think
about, it is that I wish I'd known I wasn't
going to have an answer. Once immersed
into the pain of these stories, you realize
what complicated beasts patriarchy and
capitalism are. Sometimes I feel like my
work is just running my head into a brick
wall trying to tear it down. My head is
bloody and throbbing... but the wall has
a few dents too. Too many people, myself
included, have insulted the experience and
trauma of survivors by saying, “This is
happening because of capitalism, which
is the real problem,” or “This is because of
class anger” (the most bogus statement I
repeatedly hear). These responses aren't
smart, nor are they answers to real peo-

ple’s problems. We need to be careful not
to superimpose other issues over abuse
to qualify it as relevant to revolutionary
struggle. Let these women speak for them-
selves. We don’t have the answer, but this
shouldn’t stop us from this work.

How does this work intersect with your other
undertakings as an anarchist and anticapital-
ist warrior? How are they relevant to it, how
do the two inform each other?

Not long ago, a close friend asked me,
“well, what does your work have to do with
anticapitalism?” I got really mad, then I
cried. To me, it is glaringly clear.

Anarchists are oddly concerned with
labels and qualifications. I often feel like
I am being asked to legitimize my work
accordingto an “anticapitalist” framework.
While I have no trouble doing this, I also
dream that one day “anticapitalist” work
will have to be legitimized as “feminist.” It
may not be in vogue, but it is crucial — you
cannot eliminate capitalism without elimi-
nating patriarchy (and visa versa).

Abuse is the most intimate form of
capitalism. When we talk about power
and control in partner abuse, we are dis-
cussing the same dynamics that play out
between an individual and the state, a
worker and a boss, an animal and a vivi-
secter. False notions of “authority” exist in
all these circumstances. I use the expres-
sion “violence against women” instead
of “intimate partner abuse” deliberately,
for very specific reasons — not to cover up
the fact that men can be victimized too,
but to refocus the discussion. We are not
talking about random incidents here, but
patterns of abuse that are endorsed by
our society to control an entire segment
of the population.

When we speak of abuse and violence
against women, we are discussing threats
and coercion that are nearly identical to
those used by the state or police to main-
tain “order.” More than half the women
incarcerated in the US are in there for
crimes related to abuse: crimes they were
forced to commit by their abuser, or that
they committed against their abuser in
self defense. At one point I was running
a prison support group for survivors. The
similarities between prison and livingwith
an abuser were not lost on those women:
their every move was controlled, they were
“kept in line” by threats of violence, they
were isolated and emotionally stripped.

Violence against women is sanctioned
and encouraged by the state because it
helps to normalize the restricted freedoms
governments try to sell us.

Abuse is not just a “woman’s issue,”
and neither is fighting it — it is intimately
connected to fighting the state and all
other forms of authority. We are in the
midst of a war against women. Women
are emotionally and physically terrorized
to maintain hierarchies that are conven-
ient for men, the government, and the
economy. Batterers are the footsoldiers
upholding the company line, and rapists
are the shock troops.

Working with survivors is crucial to my
vision of anarchy. I am able to give and
receive support. We create a community
based on shared experience. Don't under-
estimate what a powerful force this can be.
Unlike most people I know, survivors have
learned how to throw a punch. As Valerie
Solanas said in the SCUM manifesto,
someone had the dumb idea of trying to
relegate us to the kitchen, which is where
all the knives are.

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Features : Page 59

A people without a history can be made
to do anything. They will submit to any
degradation because they have forgotten
the possibility of something different. This
is why colonial powers have always hur-
ried to erase the history of those whose
resources and labor they wish to steal:
language and culture are either twisted to
fit colonial paradigms or eliminated entirely
by processes at once simple and ex-
tremely subtle. Ifthese processes ^ j
are successful, the billy club
need never be raised,

and the State ^ 0^0 'WBT

Over' SSanjj

^^0 also by th

maintain them. Effi

“a people”
all. We are many,

!*•

maintain
its image as a
£& neutral peacekeeper.

This is what is currently
happening with the assimilation
of queer people in the United States.
While we are not a “colonized" people in
the traditional sense, queers in this country
have historically been forced to the back-
alleys, brothels, and “bad” sides of town
of this culture.' It must be said that this
marginalization has never affected all of
us equally: there have always been lesbians
hiding in mansions while bull-dykes risk
their lives on picket lines and factory floors,
just as there are poor transwomen who sell
their bodies to buy hormones while wealthy
representatives ofthe Human Rights Cam-
paign flatterthe political parties who deny
free health care to those same women.
In this sense, not only are queers not a
“colonized people,” it can hardly be said

l In this article, the term “queer” refers to anyone
who identifies with or historically has been in some
form of opposition to gender and sexual norms.
This could include lesbians, gays, bisexuals, trans-

gendered people, two-spirit folks, sex workers,
polyamorists, and those opposed to the institution
of marriage. While the author recognizes that many
of these people do not personally identify with the
term “queer,” nor does this term mean the same
thing to all who do identify with it, it is used here
for its umbrella-like quality.

not one.

^ Nevertheless, “we” do

have multiple histories of resist-
ance, which have been created and main-
tained not only by those in the streets, but
also by those who continue to document
them. Efforts to cover up these histories
have recently increased — and they are no
longer just the work of Christians, politi-
cians, and text-book companies, but also
the most privileged of “us.” In order to
accumulate privilege and power for them-
selves, wealthier, predominantly white gays
and lesbians and the politically powerful
organizations that represent them are do-
ing their best to erase the rest of us. This
is certainly not new — but more than ever
middle- and even working- and lower-class
queers seem to be going along with it as
well. Not just national but also grassroots
groups all over the country are obsessed
with electoral politics, marriage, and mili-
tary service. Accordingly, they are distancing
themselves from their own histories, which
generally challenge these institutions and
have often run parallel to (or even “ahead
of”) various anarchist struggles.

This article can serve as a starting point
for those who need to rediscover radical
queer history and apply its lessons to the
problems anarchists currently face. I hope
it can also demonstrate to straight folks
who wish to act in solidarity with queer
people(s) that there is an alternative to
begrudgingly supporting gay marriage
or some other nonsense. Many queers
refuse to acquiesce to the assimilation and
submission being pushed by the privileged

sectors of the
~ gay “movement,”

k and I can only hope that

' anarchists will be on the fore-

front of this refusal.

Stonewall Was a Riot

Any look at radical queer history has to
include the Stonewall Riots. Queer resist-
ance did not begin with these riots: from
the female “support networks” within the
early settlement house movement to the
body language, style, and “camp” of early
gay performers and the quiet but courageous
protests ofthe early Mattachine Society, there
has always been a subtle resistance. But it
went public at Stonewall in a big way.

Throughout the early 20 th century,
and especially after World War II, bars
were increasingly the cultural and social
centers for Americans gays and lesbians.
While this was the case across the board,
it was especially true for working-class
gays and lesbians. Consequently, police
often focused their repression on these
bars, resulting in the extremely violent and
sometimes deadly raids described by Leslie
Feinberg. In New York State there was a
statute ordaining that women and men
had to be wearing at least three items of
clothing “appropriate” to their birth sex.
In other words, it was often those who
were the most gender-variant who would
receive the worst abuse.

In New York City, many gay bars were
owned by the Mafia, and it was routine for
the owners to bribe the police in order to be
informed when the raids would happen. On
June 28 th , 1969, though, an unanticipated
raid on the mostly male gay bar Stonewall
Inn resulted in riots that shook Greenwich
Village for five days. It’s not clear what
sparked it all, but according to some, a
dyke who “had to be more butch than the
queens" started to rock a paddy wagon
back and forth. Then, “a leg in nylons
and sporting a high heel shot out of the

Page 60 : Old News : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

back of the paddy wagon into the chest
of a cop,” and people began unarresting
those in the paddy wagon. According to
Martin Duberman’s account ofthe begin-
ning of the riots,

The crowd, now in full cry, started scream-
ing epithets at the police — “Pigs!” "Faggot
cops!" Sylvia and Craig enthusiastically
joined in, Sylvia shouting her lungs out,
Craig letting go with a full-throated “Gay
power!” One young gay Puerto Rican went
fearlessly up to a policeman and yelled,
“What you got against faggots? We don’t
do you nuthin’!” Another teenager started
kicking at a cop, frequently missing as
the cop held him at arm's length. One
queen mashed an officer with her heel,
knocked him down, grabbed his handcuff
keys, freed herself, and passed the keys
to another queen behind her.

The mob, made up largely ofthe queer,

“The cops picked out the most
stone butch of them all to destroy with
humiliation, a woman everyone said
‘wore a raincoat in the shower.' We
heard they stripped her, slow, in front
of everyone in the bar, and laughed at
her trying to cover up her nakedness.
Later she went mad, they said. Later
she hung herself...

I'm remembering the busts in the
bars in Canada. Packed in the police
vans, all the Saturday-night butches
giggled and tried to fluff up their hair
and switch clothing so they could get
thrown in the tank with the femme
women — said it would be like ‘dyin’
and goin’ to heaven.' The law said
we had to be wearing three pieces of
women's clothing.

I never told you what they did to
us down there — queens in one tank,
stone butches in the next — but you
knew. One at a time they would drag
our brothers out of the cells, slap-
ping and punching them, locking the
bars behind them fast in case we lost
control and tried to stop them, as if
we could. They’d handcuff a brother’s
wrists to his ankles or chain him, face
against the bars. They made us watch.
Sometimes we’d catch the eyes of the
terrorized victim, or the soon-to-be,
caught in the vise of torture, and we’d
say gently, ‘I’m with you honey, look at
me, it's OK, we’ll take you home.’

We never cried in front of the cops.
We knew we were next.”

-Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues

homeless, Latino youth who frequented the
bar, used bricks, broken bottles, and coins
from parking meters uprooted nearby to
force the cops back into the bar, which was
then set ablaze. Riot police came to their
rescue, but when they tried to disperse the
crowd it simply reformed behind them,
throwing bricks, lighting trash cans on
fire, and taunting them with chorus lines
of mocking queens kicking their legs in
the air and singing:

We are the Stonewall girls
We wear our hair in curls
We wear no underwear
We show our pubic hair
We wear our dungarees
Above our nelly knees!

Rioting and block parties went on for
four more days after the initial riots. Word
spread rapidly across the city and then
throughout the whole country — and before
long, the beginning of the gay liberation
movement was at hand. While straight
groups and individuals were slow to catch
on and often extremely homo- and trans-
phobic (one participant in the Stonewall
riots, Jim Fouratt, remembers calling and
asking his straight leftist friends to come
out, none ofwhom did), Stonewall helped
spark a new wave of groups like the Gay
Activist Alliance (GAA), the Gay Liberation
Front (GLF), and the Street Transvestite
Action Revolutionaries (STAR) and also
helped reenergize the already existing
“homophile” movement. These groups
forced tremendous changes in local laws
and police behavior, set up support net-
works and social services for gay youth,
established gays and lesbians as a visible
and unashamed presence in American
culture, fought side by side with groups
like the Black Panthers and the Young
Lords, and instilled a sense of pride and
self-esteem in a people who had been
taught all their life that they had no right
to exist.

“Tree Limbs,

Parking Meters, and
Pieces of Asphalt”

The White Night Riots occurred in San
Francisco on May 21 st , 1979 in response
to a verdict practically exonerating the
murderer of that city’s first openly gay

supervisor, Harvey Milk. Dan White, an
ex-cop, assassinated both Milk and Mayor
George Moscone on November 27 th , 1978,
but was let off with a four-year manslaugh-
ter sentence, largely due to the fact that
Harvey Milk was gay. l 2 According to one
participant, “the entire city was in shock.”
Over a thousand people took over Castro
Street shouting “City Hall!” and started
marching in that direction. By the time
the crowd reached the Civic Center it was
even larger; people began to attack the
building’s doors and windows with iron
bars, finally setting it on fire. According
to another rioter,

For some reason they had parked police
cars at the other end of the block. No one
really wanted to destroy City Hall. They just
wanted to make a statement. However,
when the activists went after the cars,
cheers of approval came from the crowd. A
dozen police cars were torched. Car horns
and sirens from the burning cars added a
chaotic note to the smoky night air.

Hand to hand fighting with police broke
out, with protesters using “tree limbs and
parking meters and pieces of asphalt” as
weapons. The street fighting continued
on into the night when police returned to
the Castro district, where it became clear
even to those who were not involved in
the fighting near City Hall that, according
to one participant, “We were at war with
the police! We had been pushed beyond
our ability to swallow any more hatred
and we did what we had to do.” Another
recalls, “I remember seeing a six-foot tall
drag queen in high heels throwing bricks
at cops, screaming, ‘This is for every time
I’ve been called faggot.’”

Only twenty-two people were arrested
that night, out ofthousands of participants.
Probably the best testament to the White
Night rebellion is the journal entry of Chris
Carlsson, who wrote,

The riot had progressed, as San Francisco
riots do, from the initial angry crowd (in
this case, of gays) to a gradual influx of
angry young black and brown men spoil-
ing for a chance to even the odds with the
cops. The amazing sense of community

2 Milk's openly gay sexuality was exploited by
White’s defense during the case in order to gain
favor with the jury. White's lawyer also presented
his habit of consuming large amounts of Coca-Cola
and twinkies as evidence of extreme depression and
therefore temporary insanity. This is now mockingly
known as the “twinkie defense.”

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Old News : Page 61

that had existed during the riot evaporated
within 24 hours. Many of us were confused
by the contrast: the riot’s euphoria tempo-
rarily intoxicated us with the sensation of
true community. The aftermath returned
us with a hard thud to a city full of barren
crowds of disconnected people.

A Legacy of Direct
Action

In addition to spontaneous insurrec-
tions like the Stonewall and White Night
riots, groups like the CLF, CAA, and es-
pecially ACT UP went on to create a tre-
mendous legacy of protest, community
organizing, and direct action. CAA, for
example, devised the tactic of the zap,
the predecessor of today's flash mobs.
Hoping to get hustling queer teenagers off
the streets and frustrated with the trans-
phobia of the Cay Activist Alliance, Sylvia
Ray Rivera helped found the Street Trans-
vestite Action Revolutionaries to provide
food and shelter to local homeless queer
youth. Their first collective house was a
squatted trailer in Greenwich village, which
was driven off in the middle of the night
by its owners (with people still inside!)
and had to be replaced by a Mafia-owned
building. STAR folks covered the rent by
hustlingon the streets nearby. In 1988, the
AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT
UP) formed to use direct action and civil
disobedience to focus attention on the
AIDS epidemic, which was being written
off as “the gay disease” by straight society.
We owe much of the medical progress in
fighting this disease to the amazing lock-
downs, human blockades, community
organizing, and social programs provided
by this incredible group that forced straight
society to take AIDS seriously.

This legacy continues in today's new
wave of radical queer organizing. Along
with groups like Queer Nation and the
Lesbian Avengers, who helped shut down
the WTO in Seattle in 1999, groups like
Cay Shame, the Pollinators, Queer Fist,
Fed Up Queers, FIERCE, and the Gender
Mutiny Collective have used direct action,
street protests, and community programs
to further local queer struggles. In addi-
tion to focusing on gentrification, police
brutality, and healthcare access, these
groups have increasingly found themselves
obliged to target gay groups like the Log

Cabin Republicans 3 , the Human Rights
Campaign, and the Cay and Lesbian Task
Force for their assimilationism and betrayal
of “the rest of us.”

Last fall, for example, the president of
the Log Cabin Republicans Patrick Guer-
rero was paid to speak at one university
by none other than the campus CLBTSA
group. To counter this outright betrayal,
activists from the Gender Mutiny Collec-
tive tabled the event with anarchist and
radical queer literature and handed out
hundreds of official-looking “An Evening
with Patrick Guerrero” pamphlets at the
door. While Guerrero began his speech,
audience members opened what they took
to be his official program to find fierce anar-
cho-queer critiques ofthe Log Cabin Repub-
licans and resources for local radical queer
organizing. Guerrero’s speech was then
deliciously interrupted by a pie to the face
followed by a well-coordinated fire alarm.
Forced by the alarm to leave the building,
the Log Cabin Republican president and his
bewildered audience were confronted by a
two-hundred-square-foot banner reading,
"Queers Bash Back” with a circle A.

Queers in Your
Neighborhood

Many of the individuals and groups
comprising this “new wave” of queer
struggle consider themselves anarchists
or directly acknowledge their anarchist
influence. There is a wonderful flexibil-
ity and anarchic character to the word
"queer”; both it and anarchism are labels
imbued with paradox. Just as anarchism
is a political movement of a fiercely anti-
political nature, so too is the label queer
the ultimate anti-label. Just as anarchism
simultaneously encourages both autonomy
and collectivity, so too does queer expose
social constructs such as gender roles
while refusingto allow them to dictate who
we are. In this way anarchism and queer
are able to exist beyond these dichotomies,
embracing these tensions as necessary
parts of each other.

Queer has also influenced anticapitalist
movements around the world. From the
pink fairies who used hockey sticks to slap-

3 The Log Cabin Republicans is an organization
of gay Republicans. Unfortunately, this is neither
a joke nor a contradiction in terms — but feel free
to laugh, all the same.

shot teargas canisters back at riot cops
in Genoa to the militants who catapulted
teddy bears over soon-to-be-destroyed
security fences in Quebec, it's clear that
queer camp and carnival have found a
new home. For many of us, it is less im-
portant to analyze whether anarchism as
an abstract ideology has all the answers
for queer people than it is to identify the
potential of queer youth tapping into the
global networks of resistance that can be
characterized as “anarchistic.”

Part of this potential is the simultane-
ous reinvigoration and destruction of a
GLBT “movement” which is so stale and
stagnant that it has practically ceased to
exist. We may occasionally fall under the
shadow of the Human Rights Campaign
dinosaurs and the sexist corporate beer
sponsors of Pride marches, but our hearts
remain loyal to the riots of Stonewall and
the direct action of ACT UP. This is not just
a “political” loyalty; our radical past cre-
ated the very language by which we know
ourselves, and those struggles provided
the access to safety, warmth, and health
which kept us alive.

This overview is little more than a start-
ing point for those wishing to learn more
on their own, but it offers a glimpse of a
queer politics with a markedly different
orientation towards the “political,” in which
patriarchy is not met with ballots and
compromises, but blockades, bricks, and
broken bottles. Let us never forget that the
first brick at Stonewall wasn’t thrown by a
white gay man in a fashionable suit, but by
a pissed off Latina drag queen who turned
tricks to get by. These are our roots.

For further reading, try Stonewall by
Martin Duberman, That’s Revolting! Queer
Strategies for Resisting Assimilation edited
by Mattilda, The Trouble with Normal by
Michael Warner, and Virtual Equality by
Urvashi Vaid.

OI

'Hi SISTERS

m LIBERATION FRONT

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Old News : Page 63

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Page 64 : Comics : Rolling Thunder, Issue

In June of 2001, the World Bank was
scheduled to hold a conference in Barce-
lona. Previous meetings of the World Bank
and International Monetary Fund, notably in
Washington, D.C. and Prague the previous
year, had been disrupted by fierce direct ac-
tion, and thousands were expected to protest
in Barcelona as well.

In the decade since the 1992 Olympics had
been held in Barcelona, the squatting move-
ment had gained momentum as squatted
social centers proliferated throughout the city.
The squatters joined others in coordinating
preparations for the protests on an interna-
tional level. After reviewing the security plans
of the Spanish police, World Bank officials
announced on May 19 that the conference
was cancelled for fear of disruption.

This was hailed as a major victory for the
anticapitalist movement. In the UK, The Guard-
ian reported that “the World Bank was clearly
angry that its conference would now have to
be held over the internet,” adding that “the
Barcelona meeting had been meant to improve
the image ofthe World Bank.” Caroline Anstey,
head of media relations and chief spokesper-
son for the World Bank, whined that a violent
minority was taking away the World Bank’s
right to free speech — yet when questioned
by Indymedia reporters about the exclusion
and violent repression of thousands at the
meetings in Washington, D.C. and Prague,
she denied any knowledge of these, despite
having been present at both events'.

Many saw the cancellation as evidence
that mass mobilizations against capitalist
summits could actually impede the progress
of corporate globalization. Arguing that re-
sistance should be intensified now that their
opponents were on the run, organizers called
forthe demonstrations to continue as planned.
For the first time since the Reclaim the Streets
action in London on June 1 8 th , 1999 that in-
augurated the era of anti-globalization mass
mobilizations, there was to be a major mass
action without a meeting to protest.

l In D.C., police raided and shut down a convergence
center days before the protests were to begin, and
went on to beat and arrest some 1300 people. In
Prague, permits were revoked, people were detained
at the border and deported, and thousands reported
unbelievable torture and abuse at the hands of the
Czech police. All of this was thoroughly documented
by independent media and resulted in extensive legal
action against the police. The accepted norm for sum-
mit organizers and city officials is to instruct police
to use excessive force, turn a blind eye while they do,
then respond to the subsequent outrage with hollow
apologies and cover-up campaigns.

Three, Summer 2006

In retrospect, one could describe the can-
cellation ofthe World Bank conference as the
high point of the anti-globalization phase of
the contemporary anticapitalist struggle. For
a few months, state and capitalist summits
were met with massive and militant resistance
everywhere they took place. The protests at
the FTAA summit in Quebec City the previ-
ous month had reached the highest level of
mass confrontation seen in North America
since the Los Angeles riots in 1992, and the
protests against the European Union summit
in Gothenburg, Sweden were right around the
corner. At the G8 summit in Genoa in July, tens
of thou sands joined in shutting down the city
and decimating corporate shopping districts,
meeting police repression that did not stop
short of cold-blooded murder 2 . Demonstra-
tions planned forthe joint IMF-World Bank
meeting in Washington, D.C. scheduled for
the following September were expected to
escalate the conflict further, but the attacks
of September n, 2001 occurred first, shifting
the course of history 3 .

Even atthe time, the drawbacks of summit-
based resistance were obvious: as a strategy, it
was essentially reactive, and cost a great deal of
energy without doing much to build long-term
community or effect immediate change in daily
life. With several years' hindsight, we can also
identify the advantages ofthe model: it brought
great attention to the anarchist movement, it
won victories — however symbolic — that raised
morale for oppressed peoples everywhere, and
above all it provided a point of engagement,
an opportunity to join in collective struggle
and thus call into question the legitimacy
of the capitalist world order. Whatever its
shortcomings, the era of anti-globalization
mobilizations is part of our contemporary
anarchist heritage, and as such it can provide
us with both concrete lessons and a general
sense of what we can accomplish.

The accompanying comic and account
chronicle the demonstrations that took place
in Barcelona during a brief period when we
had the power to thwart the plans ofthe World
Bank itself. Let it not be the last.

2 R.I.P. Carlo Giuliani, shot in the face and then run
over by a police jeep while protecting lines of protest-
ers from police attacks. All charges against the police
officers who murdered him were dropped and no trial
ever took place.

3 See “The Craziest Walk Ever” elsewhere in this issue
for an eyewitness account.

Page 66 : Comics : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

poUCE

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Comics : Page 67

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tjurm-

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Comics : Page 69

Testimony from a
British Participant
in the Mobilization
against the Cancelled
World Bank Meeting in
Barcelona, 2001

“Another World is Possible”

Despite hangovers from the Sant Joan night festivities,
there was something unusually empowering and positive
in the procession down Paseo de Gracia and into Placa
Catalunya. The 40,000 strong crowd was a mass of jugglers,
bands, flags, costumes, a coffin (for capitalism, hopefully),
a cardboard “TV camera for Africa,” and banners proclaim-
ing everything from “No World Bank” to “The revolution
is today” and, in massive letters right at the front, “Another
world is possible.” Small teams of masked individuals
engaged in property damage as we progressed, and this es-
calated until the symbols of the old world were being thor-
oughly wrecked. The veneer of the legitimacy of business
was destroyed with their signs, the pretence of the inevi-
tability of capitalism shattered along with shop fronts, and
everywhere graffiti proclaimed the crimes of the old world
and our revolutionary alternatives. We should perhaps offer
thanks to the police agents who, evidently fearing imminent
revolution, switched sides and helped smash things. As we
arrived in Placa Catalunya, the atmosphere was relaxed yet
confident; we seemed to be in control of the massive square
and the surrounding area, and it felt as though, under that
blistering sun, we were winning.

The illusion was very brief.

“The choice is never between violence and nonviolence, but
about how and when to use violence. As long as there is a police
force, nonviolence, as an absolute, is not an option.”

The organizers had been determined that Sunday’s
events would pass off without any trouble. They had ap-
plied for permits; when I asked at the convergence center
if they could suggest a lawyer, I was told it wasn’t neces-
sary as Sunday’s events were legal and there would be no
arrests. We have to remember that the law is a device used
by the state to ensure the continuation of the existing social
order. Sometimes we need to use legal devices to protect
ourselves against the law, but it is a mistake to rely on the
law to protect us against the other devices of state control.
This was beautifully illustrated in Placa Catalunya. Agent

provocateurs staged a scuffle in front of riot police 1 , and this
provided an excuse for the police to attack the crowd with
an extreme degree of force. Firing rubber bullets and wield-
ing big sticks, they were able to clear the square in a matter
of minutes. In every direction, people stampeded trying
to escape the violence: parents ran with terrified children,
people dived into bars, others tried to erect barricades. Dur-
ing this rout, the police were able to injure scores of people,
including a tourist they apparently shot with a rubber
bullet. We returned to Placa Catalunya and found it filled
with riot police. People were holding up bloodied clothes
while others were being loaded into ambulances. The police
looked very satisfied with their work, but they really hadn’t
done anything to be proud of.

We joined a group that was pressing against police lines
at one entrance to the square. People raised their hands
and went very close to the police to try and stop them from
firing rubber bullets. In this way, they were able to push the
lines back, while on the other side of the square the police
came under fire from bottles. This state of affairs was short-
lived, however, and a fresh line of riot police turned up and
started beating those at the front of the crowd. Some brave
people sat down or lay down in front of the police, but they
were beaten until they had to move.

After a while, we took a breather in a bar. One thing that
was very strange compared to the UK was that even amidst
police charges, Barcelona continued as normal: bars stayed
open, often with people sitting at tables outside. We decided
to head to Universitat, where an anarchist demonstration
had been planned for four o’clock. On the way there, we met
a comrade who told us that the gathering had been attacked
with great force and dispersed before the demonstration had
even began. In light of this, we instead attended an open-air
meeting that was to discuss what had happened and what
to do next. The meeting, of perhaps a hundred people, took
place in a confined space with no escape routes. We didn’t
think it was a good place to meet, given the police behavior,
so we left and headed up to Universitat. We heard that this
meeting was attacked very violently after we had left, so we
regret not making our concerns more vocal, although it is
difficult when you do not speak the language.

1 According to one journalist, “Observers said the police appeared to
stage the scuffle in order to use the fighting as a pretext to storm the park.
The masked assailants, some apparently wearing earphones, had gathered
in groups on the fringes of the protest march as it arrived at the park. They
were wearing knapsacks and carrying sticks, but were able to walk freely
past police, pull on their masks, and position themselves between the edge
of the crowd in the park and the police lines twenty-five yards away. The
fight began when one man grabbed another and pulled him to the ground.
Others from the same group began kicking and hitting each other. When
demonstrators saw what was going on and joined the fight, the police
charged into the park. The men and women involved in the original scuffle
then walked through the police line and boarded the vans.”

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Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Comics : Page 71

The police spent the rest of the afternoon attacking and
dispersing any sizeable gathering of people. During the
disturbances, properties damaged included Deutsche Bank,
Banco De Santander, Caja Madrid, Halifax, Yanko, BBVA,
Ibercaja, Cymbeline, Pronovias, Chanel, Armani, Caixa de
Terrassa, Mango (two different ones), Marella, La Caixa,
Banco Pastor, Banc Sabadell, Zara, Furest, Dunkin Donuts,
Gonzalo, Cornelia, Burger King, and Swatch, among others.
Unfortunately, there were scores injured and dozens arrested.

In reflection, I think it is a mistake for anyone to organ-
ize a strictly legal, nonviolent event. That is certainly not
to say that every action needs to kick off; rather, it is to
recognize that no group can, or should, control what hap-
pens during an action. The police may create an excuse to
attack, as happened in Barcelona; likewise, a crowd might
spontaneously take the offensive. Our revolution will be
built on passion, not obedience. In organizing a non-con-
frontational action, our concern should be that those who
do not want to be involved in a physical confrontation do
not have to be, while others, should the need arise, are able
to defend themselves, other participants, and members of
the public at large who are trapped in the area. In Barcelona
on Sunday, those who didn’t want to be involved in a physi-
cal confrontation were attacked by the police, while those
who might have been prepared to defend themselves and
others were caught in an impossible situation — in a grid of
wide streets without bottles, sticks, stones, shields, masks,
padding, and cobbles, without an organized confrontational
bloc committed to self-defense.

“The liberal fantasy is that there could be some way to get
positive media coverage without the hassle of a demonstration.”

Spanish police are inclined to use a degree of violence in
public order situations exceeding that employed by police
forces in most wealthier countries. They really are a violent
bunch. A surprising number of them resemble the guy from
the Village People. More importantly, they are some of the
stupidest individuals I have ever encountered; for example,
their agents provocateurs openly fraternized with their
uniformed mates, and sometimes didn’t even manage to
conceal their earpieces. It’s a miracle these clowns remem-
bered to take their badges off. Consequently, the press broke
the conspiracy of silence that had long surrounded the
Spanish use of agent provocateurs, and pictured Barcelona’s
finest involved in various illegal acts.

The police being exposed in the media as having started
the trouble before attacking the crowd very violently is, of
course, every liberal’s dream. At some point on Sunday the
leadership decided to cancel Monday’s action. It is possible
that one of the reasons for this was that if we turned up pre-
pared for a physical confrontation and caused a lot of trou-
ble, the police tactics of the day before would seem more
justified. Who needs direct action when you can get sympa-
thetic press coverage? One day activists will learn that we
do not need to convince people that the police are violent

Page 72 : Comics : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

bastards because, believe it or not, the police don’t reserve
their violence for political activists. We need to demon-
strate that we can do something to stop their violence, and
canceling our actions doesn’t help achieve that. Regardless
of the reasons, any decision to cancel the action should have
been made collectively by all the participants in the action,
not by a totally unaccountable group. It is alienating to be
unable to participate in the decision-making process of an
event you are committed to participating in.

“While there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

On Sunday night we were able to gather back in Placa
Catalunya. It was good to be able to regroup despite the
events of the afternoon, and the mood improved significant-
ly as first the samba band entered the square, followed by
a sound system. As some danced around the sound system,
others made their way to the jail where those arrested dur-
ing the afternoon were being held. At about 11.30 pm, the
samba band began to lead people out of the square. It was
quite tense for a bit as there were only a few hundred of us
and we were followed by swarms of police vans, but we left
them behind by heading down into the metro station. Every
staircase and every landing was filled with people chanting,
dancing, shouting, and clapping to the samba music that
echoed powerfully around the station. The security guards
looked bemused as we danced over the turnstiles, packing
every carriage on the train. It was very empowering. We got
off near the jail and joined those already outside. Loads of
food and wine were available, thanks to a great organiza-
tional effort. Some people tried to get a little sleep, while
others continued to make noise, clapping, chanting, and
playing instruments. Hopefully this raised the spirits of our
imprisoned comrades.

“Sometimes you can do too much listening; then you want to
shout and scream until your voice is hoarse.”

At 8.30 Monday morning, the helicopter that had circled
relentlessly on Sunday took to the air once more. At nine
am, oblivious to the event’s cancellation, I turned up to
Universitat ready to take on the stock exchange. However,
by 9.30, there were still only about a hundred people stand-
ing around with banners and watched over by four vans of
riot police, so we headed into the convergence center where
there was to be an assembly. This took an age to get started
and was then dominated by discussion about making legal
claims against the police and holding a press conference.
You could see the frustration on the faces of many who
would rather have been participating in direct action than
listening to the leadership discuss every agenda item except
the possibility of autonomous activity.

Eventually, the question of a street action that day was
raised and received a very positive reception. In a little over
an hour, there were about two thousand of us assembled
outside, including about one hundred of the best equipped

white overalls 2 I’ve ever seen. Very slowly we progressed,
led by the samba band, to the stock exchange. There was a
bit of a standoff, but eventually we were able to surround
the exchange, though our reduced numbers and the huge
presence of riot police made any attack on the building
unwise. There was celebrating, dancing, and nudity. It was
a totally different situation from the previous day, and this
was partly because this time we had come prepared for
physical confrontation. About this time, a small group broke
away and we traveled some distance to a side street where
we painted slogans against the police and for revolution.
When we rejoined the carnival, people were dancing in a
fountain, spraying water over the crowd; it was a celebra-
tory atmosphere.

The white overalls left us to remove their protection. We
had seen a little glimpse of what the people on the street
were capable of; it is impossible not to conclude that we
were held back by an unofficial leadership preoccupied
with the media and the legal system. If our actions are not
to be frustrated repeatedly by self-appointed leaders, we
have to work harder to challenge implicit power structures

2 A sort of defense-oriented variant on the Black Bloc, consisting of a
coordinated group equipped with shields and body armor.

and demand that those in powerful positions — those with
the most resources, contacts, and time — respect the ideals
and desires of the participants in events rather than, as has
happened too often, repressing and distorting the struggles
of thousands according to their personal reformist agen-
das. On a similar note, there were apparently many groups
who, objecting to the liberal ethos of the organizing group,
dropped out of the weekend’s events. I think it would have
been more constructive for those groups to have articulated
their objections and challenged the aspects of the organiz-
ing that troubled them.

The carnival, led by the samba band which was so inspira-
tional throughout the actions, meandered through the center
of Barcelona and ended up by another building where pris-
oners were being held. We waited on one side of the build-
ing, where banners hung describing the police as fascists and
demanding the release of the arrested. Graffiti was sprayed:
“No World Bank,” “Police rob banks” (sic), and “Another
world is possible.” The actions were ending as positively as
they had began. On the other side of the building, hundreds
awaited the release of those arrested on Sunday while other
groups set off to embark on autonomous actions.

Computer Security : IP Addresses

Somewhere in this country right now there is an FBI branch office, and in this office is a
cluttered desk, and on this desk is an investigation manual, and in this manual is a chapter
entitled “Investigating Political Crimes.” And the first thing this section says is “Track the
communique.”

Since perhaps the inception of direct action, militants have composed and released, by vari-
ous means, statements explaining their actions. These communiques, which are of the utmost
importance to a campaign of “propaganda by the deed,” can be dangerous to the authors as
well as their opponents, and have often turned out to be fatal stumbling blocks in what might
otherwise have been ingeniously conceived and executed plans. The communique often serves
as the first piece of evidence directly connecting the individuals involved to the crime under
investigation. Because of this, the direct action enthusiast must be extremely cautious with
communiques, lest her words of inspiration to the masses become her downfall.

The methods by which communiques have been delivered have varied across the years.
Perhaps the first one was carved into the body of a fallen crusader and catapulted over a
castle wall. Who’s to say? Ever since, new technologies have provided new opportunities and
new risks for dissidents getting their message out. The internet is the most obvious modern
instance of this.

The internet offers many advantages to agents in the field (that is to say, our agents in the
field). Most obviously relevant are the internet’s capability of swiftly reaching a large number
of people and the sense of anonymity that it provides. It is this sense of anonymity that has
caused trouble for some. In this recipe I will explain why this sense of anonymity is little
more than an illusion, and then go on to show how — like many illusions — it can be made
real with a little effort.

IP Addresses Each time you open a web browser and type in an address, you’re asking your computer
to contact another computer and retrieve certain information. It’s like getting in a cab and
saying “Take me to Barthelemy’s Bar.” In order to get to the bar, the driver has to process
this information into something actually usable — such as an address, or an intersection.
Your computer does the same thing: it translates the domain name you typed in into what
is known as an IP address. Every computer connected to the Internet has an IP address. An
IP Address is a set of four numbers ranging from 0 to 255 separated by decimal points: e.g.,
64.128.0.14. Think of this like the street number attached to your house, or your telephone
number. Unlike street addresses and phone numbers, though, your IP addresses can change,
and in a typical setup will do so often.

Every time you visit a web site, send out an email, or carry out some other task online, the
IP Address your computer is using is logged. Even though this number might not be your
number in the sense that your phone number is your number, it can still be traced to you. If,
for example, you were using a dialup or broadband Internet account with someone’s name
attached to it, then the Internet Service Provider can determine whose account the address
was attached to at the time you visited the site. Even if you use a publicly accessible computer,
your activities can be traced.

Let’s say, for example, an anarchist writes a communique on a computer at a public library.
This library is a little less conservative than most these days and doesn’t require users to log
in with an ID or library card. So, the anarchist in question thinks she’s free and clear. She is,
of course, mistaken. The first thing the Feds would do is find the IP Address of the computer
that sent the email, or posted the message on a message board or whatever (this is a trivial
task). Next, they would check publicly available records and find out that the IP Address is
owned by the library in question. The Feds would then go to the library and ask their compu-
ter technicians which library terminal was using the IP Address in question at the specified
time. With this information, the Feds would probably proceed to confiscate and fingerprint
the equipment, and check any video surveillance to determine who was using the terminal
at the time. It may be that the Feds get nothing from this information, but did our anarchist
really need to take that risk?

Luckily, there are better ways. One of these came with the advent and prolif-
eration of wireless networks. They’re everywhere these days, in homes, cafes,
corporate offices, anywhere you can think of. Many of these networks are totally
wide open for public use 1 .

Using a wireless network offers some strategic advantages to someone seeking
anonymity online. First, because the user is not bound by wiring, they can be
physically distant from the actual internet connection. Right now, for example,
this author is using a homemade antenna to steal covert internet access from a
neighbor down the street. An additional benefit comes from the network archi-
tecture typically used in a wireless network. Remember how I said an IP Address
consists of four numbers ranging from 0 to 255? Well, this means that there are
a limited number of IP Addresses available. Considering that the internet is a
worldwide resource, this number is actually relatively low. Because of this fact, a
system was developed whereby multiple computers could share one IP Address.
For the record, this is known as Network Address Translation. A system set up
with NAT consists of a computer that has a real IP Address, known as the server,
and a number of computers that have fake addresses, known as the clients (these
addresses tend to be lO.x.x.x or 192.168.1.x with “x” being a number between 0
and 255, but they need not be). The server receives requests for internet content
from the clients and then requests that information from the internet, when the
internet responds with the requested content, the server determines which client
asked for it, and then sends it to that computer. The important thing to note is
that any client under such a system has no unique IP Address, and most wireless
networks use this kind of setup!

So, let’s revise our example above. This time the anarchist uses a laptop to ac-
cess an unprotected wireless network made available by a public library. In order
to avoid suspicion and detection she accesses the network from a bench in the
public park next to the library, well out of sight of the surveillance cameras. When
the Feds get wind of it, they will, once again, be able to trace the communications
to the library. This time, however, the library’s computer technicians won’t be able
to tell the feds much because they have a publicly available wireless network, and
the feds will gain little from surveillance footage. Quite an improvement!

Alas, this second scenario is still not good enough. That is because of a nefari-
ous little piece of information known as the Media Access Controller Address, or
MAC Address. The MAC Address — sometimes referred to as the Network Address
or Physical Address — is a number that is intended to uniquely identify the piece
of hardware you are using to connect to a network. If an IP Address were the
license plates on a car, then the MAC Address would be the VIN number 2 . Every
piece of network hardware, including your wireless adapter, has a MAC address,
and unlike an IP Address, this unique identifier is passed on and recorded even
across a network using NAT. Luckily, it is nearly impossible to track a known MAC
Address to the person that owns that piece of hardware. It is possible, however,
for an investigator to compare a known MAC Address to the MAC Address on
any Network Interface Cards a suspect might own.

So, in the example I just gave, our anarchist may not get off altogether. Since
the author of the communique made no effort to conceal her MAC Address, the
feds will learn it. Let’s say our protagonist lives in a relatively small town, and is
known to belong to a small community of anarchists there. Our anarchist may
come under suspicion for the actions claimed in the communique just by virtue of
already being on the law enforcement’s radar. If this is the case, the investigators
are likely to confiscate this person’s computer and compare the MAC Address to
the one used to issue the communique. When they find that the two match, our
friend could be in serious trouble. All is not lost though: with a bit of knowledge
and practice, one can learn to hide one’s MAC Address.

l Those that are password protected
are usually very easy to break into. I
encourage the reader to explore software
programs such as Airsnort and Kismet
for detecting and gaining access to hid-
den and protected networks.

Pro Tip: When writing a communi-
que, be aware that law enforcement
agencies have various methods at
their disposal for analyzing writing.
They can, for example, take some-
thing known to have been written by
a suspect and linguistically compare
it to a communique to determine
whether the language matches.

It may, therefore, be advisable to
attempt to vary the writing style you
use in a communique from the style
you use normally.

MAC Addresses

2 The Vehicle Identification Number,
which is more subtly and indelibly
marked into the car.

Page 74 : Recipes For Disaster : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Recipes For Disaster : Page 75

Hiding your MAC Address in The process for changing your MAC Address in Windows is relatively
Windows XP straightforward, but first-timers and/or those intimidated by computers may
find it baffling at first. I urge you, dear reader, to look over these step-by-step
instructions and the accompanying diagrams several times. After you think
you understand them, be sure to practice a few
times before you need to do this in a “real-world”
situation.

Step 1: To give you a feel of what we’re going to do,
go to Start-> Programs-> Accessories-> Command
Prompt. A box with some text and a blinking cur-
sor should come up. Type this command: ipconfig
/ all. You get a bunch of information regarding your
network connections. Somewhere in this informa-
tion will be a line that reads “Physical Address...” ( see
figure 1). This is your current MAC Address — write it
down for reference. It will be a series of 6 numbers
represented in hexadecimal format (this means that
a digit can be 0 through 9 or a through f — a through
f represent 10 through 15). Our goal is to replace
these numbers with different ones. In order to do

this, we need to edit the registry.

Step 2: The registry is a repository of data that is used by the operating
system. Typically the user needn’t worry about it at all. In Windows we can
edit this data by using the regedit program. Click Start-> Run. A text box
will pop up; type “regedit” (figure 2) and hit OK. The registry program will
open (figure 3).

Step 3: Look at figure 3. On the left side of the window, you will see various
expandable folders. These work just like the file browser included in win-
dows. Folders open up to new folders in an expandable tree. The difference

Fie E<* Vfew Favorite* Help

s UEEHZ3

'£ |_J KEY.CLASSE 5.ROOT
£ D KEY.CLRR ENT .USER
a Q KEY.LOCAL .MACHINE

3 C_J FKEY.USCR5
a D HtXY.CURRENT.CCWFKj

e jJEEHa

S □ HKEY.CLASSES.ROOT
ffl Cl HKEY.CURRENT.U5tR
B Cl HKEY.LOCAl.MACHINE
ffl Cl HARDWARE
l±J Cl SAM
Cl SECURITY
a Cl SOFTWARE
S Cl SYSTEM

3 Cl CortrdSetCOI
B C) Control
Cl AGP

S Cl Arbiters
S Cl BockupRestore
Cl Biosinfo

Cl BoctVerficdtionProgrem
B D Class

Cl <250BCESl-6C8f-4A72-BA6D-BSSC2B4FC835>
a D <38FC9E60<46S-nCF-80S6-444SS3540000>
Pi T4fiSflFF7F-Frffin-lini-RARn4nrn4FA17?A7V

____ is that these folders contain different keys, and each key contains
different data.

m* The data we want to change can be found in the key located at:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\
Class\{4D36E972-E325-llCE-BFCl-08002bE10318}]. To get there,

L click on the little plus sign next to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE,”

then the one next to, “SYSTEM,” and so on until you find the

{4D36E972-E325-llCE-BFCl-08002bE10318} folder. Click on the
plus next to this folder and you will see a number of subfolders that run in
sequential order. When you are done with this step, the tree on the left side
of the regedit window should look something like figure 4.

Step 4: Each of these folders represents a different network device. In
order to determine which one correlates to the network card you want to
change the MAC address on, you will have to click on each one. After you
click on each of these subfolders, examine the data that appears in the
box on the right. You should find some lines with descriptive information
such as the manufacturer’s name. Usually you can find manufacturer and
model information printed on your card 3 . Continue looking through the
sub-folders until you find a match. On my computer, under folder 0016
I find a string entitled “ProviderName” and its corresponding value is
“Lucent Technologies”; there’s another string called “VendorDescription”

3 If you are unsure of the make/mode of your wire-
less card, right click on the “My Network Places" icon
that is either on the desktop or in the start menu. Click
properties. A window will pop up with several icons. One
of them should say something like “wireless network
connection. ” Right-click this icon and click on properties.
Under the “General" tab click the “Configure” button.
Some information on your card should appear.

and its value is “ORiNOCO PC Card (5 volt).” These clues tell me that this
folder is for my Lucent Technologies Wavelan PC card which is based on an
ORiNOCO microchip.

Step 5: When you have found a match, look in the window on the right
under the “name” column for a string called “NetworkAddress.” If none ex-
ists, you will have to create it. Right-Click in the box on the right and click
New-> String Value. Name this string “NetworkAddress.” (figure 5)

Page 76 : Recipes For Disaster : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

IHJ

vorites Help
b Q {4D36E972-E *

& Cj 0000

Step 6: Now, all you have to do is give “Net- “9“"1 Mbusth*

workAddress a value, or alter the value already “ g jjjjj feS)coirw*«32

there. Double click on “NetworkAddress” and in the » □ ^
value field enter a string of 12 characters ranging a □ 0007 ©countrywo

_ , Y 00 S]Dtsife< 3SSID

from 0 to 9 and a through f — e.g., 022CDEAD4e2c. mQooot gicwverOMe

(figures 6 and 7) “ g

Step 7: Close the regedit program and restart

yOUr Computer. B 9 0014 S)Drivert«nOf

' r . . S Q 0015 (j^OriverVeriant

Step 8: Let’s see if this worked. Open a command a aEZI [jj^DriverVersion

prompt (Start-> Programs-> Accessories-> Com- bOnoi

mand Prompt) and type ipconfig /all. You should 1 § “le
see that the fake MAC Address you provided is
displayed, (figure 8) R SSSJ .

Step 9: If your MAC Address did not change, or * — ^ cw ^. har,r ' d

it your internet connection ceases to work, you may

have provided an invalid MAC address. Another

possibility is that there is more than one entry in the registry for your wireless
card; look through the subfolders under [FlKEY_LOCALMACHINE\SYSTEM\
ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4D36E972-E325-llCE-BFCl-08002bE10318}]
again and see if there’s another folder that describes your card. In either
case, repeat steps 2 through 8. Once you see that your “Physical Address”
has changed by issuing the ipconfig / all command in the command prompt,
you are done.

Step 10: Send your communique, or do whatever it is you don’t want
the feds to know about. Whatever sketchy thing it is you are doing, make
sure that is the only thing you do with your fake address. If you check your
email, myspace account, chat rooms, message boards, or any other place
you normally frequent on the web, the Man might be able to link your fake
address to you.

Step 11: Repeat steps 2 through 9 to change your MAC Address again.

Name

Type

Data

gkDefauk)

REG.SZ

(value not set)

g)BusType

REGJ5Z

8

[•^Characteristics

REG.DW0RD

0x00000084(132)

(j£)Colnstalers32

REG _MULTI_SZ

wdags48b.dl,WLDeviceCoInstaler

[jjJjComponentld

REG.SZ

pcmdaVucertf_technologies-wavelan/ieee-c9©8

[•^Configured

REG.SZ

1

[^Country Info

REG.SZ

dJ5C(EE]QELOdcYceebl&7V)‘8i:, , VF/(FR2)6'^5*’*8*W.. .

SjDesiredSSID

REG _SZ

Agere Systems

[j£)0rtverOate

REG_SZ

2-27-2003

[S^DriverDeteData

REGJ5INARY

00 00b7 2bf3ddc201

®Wverf)esc

REG_SZ

ORiNOCO PC Card (5voft)

liSDriverEneble

REG.SZ

1

[•*J)DrrverMejor

REG_£Z

7

SjDriverMinor

REG.SZ

82

l^DrrverVariarit

REG_S2

2

[•*•) Driver Version

REG.SZ

7.82.0.354

(*ginfpyh

REG.SZ

oem7.lnf

@]lnfSection

REG.SZ

DIXP39

[•^MalcNngDeviceld

REG_SZ

pc mciaVluc ent .tec hnoto^e-s- w avelao/ieee -c908

®NDT

REG.SZ

1

[•‘•'lNetCfolnstarKeld
[•H NetworkAddress

REGSZ

REG.SZ

fD64853A7-D94A-4765-8 1 E2-A972M9F666DV
022cdeadbela |

iSlOSType

REG.SZ

32

MownChannd

REG.SZ

0

)CAL_MAOflNE\SYSTEMyCortroIS«tOO 1 \Control\Class\{4D36E972-E32S- 11CE-8FC1 -08002bE 1 03 1 8}\0016

Value name:
Ne’.woikAddress

Value data:
022cdeadbe1a

Value name:
NetworkAddiess
Value data:
022cdead4e2c

For anyone using the Linux operating system 4 , the process of changing
MAC Addresses is fairly simple. I am going to assume that the reader already
has a running Linux machine with a functioning wireless adapter. If this is
not the case, there are numerous resources online that can help in this regard.
Please note, that some of these steps may vary slightly given different Linux
distributions and wireless cards 5 .

Hiding Your MAC Address in LINUX

This process may be somewhat similar on Macin-
tosh systems running OS X. I have not included
a section for Macs however, as I do not own a
machine to test on. Mac users should be able to
find similar tutorials online.

Step 1. Open a terminal. This process will be different
for all distributions of Linux. Most Linux distributions
now default to a graphical user interface that includes a
desktop, icons, and other doodads. Typically there will be
some sort of application menu. If you can find this, look
for terminal, xterm, lconsole, or something of the sort. If
all else fails, consult the website of the distribution you
are using. Once you have a terminal open, log in as root.
This can be accomplished by issuing the su command and
entering the root password when prompted.

Step 2: Type the iwconfig command in the terminal
window and hit enter. You will see various information
regarding your wireless device and any network it may be

connected to (see figure 9). Note the name of the device on the left side. In
my case, my wireless device is named “ethl”; this may vary depending on
your setup.

Step 3: Now type ifconfig <device name> (where <device name> is the
name we found in the last step) and hit enter. Ifconfig will display a variety
of network information (see figure jo), but what we are worried about is the

4 The author would like to take this time to strongly
endorse the use of Linux over Windows. This article
is proof of how much easier it is to do some tasks in
Linux than in Windows. Plus, it’s free! I won’t even
get into what a good thing open-source is.

5 The author is using the Sarge release of Debian
Linux and a Lucent Wavelan Gold PC card.

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Recipes For Disaster : Page 77

File Edit View Terminal Tabs Help

debian: /# ivconf ig

\o no wireless extensions.

ethO no wireless extensions.

ethl IEEE 802. 11-OS ESSID: “Apple Network a97cbd“ Nickname: "HERMES 1“

Mode: Managed Frequency: 2. 412 GHz Access Point : 00: 11: 24: A9: 7C: 81
Bit Rate:l Mb/s Tx-Power«15 dBa Sensitivity: 1/3
Retry liait:4 RTS thr: of f Fragment thr:off

Encryption key: off
Power Management : off

Link Quality 8 0/92 Signal level 8 132/153 Noise level 8 164/153
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt :0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries: 80 Invalid «isc:0 Missed beacon: 0

File Edit View Terminal labs Help

debian: /# ifconf ig ethl
ethl Link encap: Ethernet

inet addr: 10. 0. 1. 11 Beast : 255. 255. 255. 255 Mask: 255. 255. 255. 0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU: 1500 Metric:l
RX packets: 2328 errors: 0 dropped:0 overruns: 0 frame: 0
TX packets: 2292 errors: 237 dropped: 0 overruns: 0 carrier: 0
collisions: 0 txqueuelen: 1000

RX bytes: 1960153 (1.8 HiB) TX bytes: 634448 (619.5 KiB)
Interrupts Base address: 0x100

debian: /# Q

figure 10

File Edit View Terminal Tabs Help
debian: /# if down ethl

debian: /• if conf ig ethl hw ether 00: 02: 20: 00: 12: 2A
debian: /• if up ethl

Internet Software Consortium DHCP Client 2.0pl5

Copyright 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 The Internet Software Consortium.
All rights reserved.

Please contribute if you find this software useful.

For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/dhcp-contrib.html

Listening on LPF/ethl/00: 02: 2d: Od: 12: 2a
Sending on LPF/ethl/00: 02: 2d: Od: 12: 2a
Sending on Socket/fallback/fallback-net
DHCPREOUEST on ethl to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPREOUEST on ethl to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPDISCOVER on ethl to 255. 255. 255. 255 port 67 interval 7

OHCPDISCOVER on ethl to 255. 255. 255. 255 port 67 interval 8

DHCPDISCOVER on ethl to 255. 255. 255. 255 port 67 interval 12

DHCPDISCOVER on ethl to 255. 255. 255. 255 port 67 interval 10

DHCPOFFER from 10.0.1.1

DHCPREOUEST on ethl to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPACK from 10.0.1.1

bound to 10.0.1.12 -- renewal in 7200 seconds.

File S efit View Terminal Tabs Help

debian: /• ifconf ig ethl ^ ^

ethl Link encap: Ethernet iHWaddr 00 02: 20: 00: 12: 2A|

inet addr: 10. 0. 1. 12 Beast: 255. 255. 255. 255 Mask: 255. 255. 255. 0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU: 1500 Metric:l
RX packets: 2334 errors:0 dropped: 0 overruns: 0 frame: 0
TX packets: 2296 errors: 246 dropped: 0 overruns: 0 carrier: 0
collisions: 0 txqueuelen: 1000

RX bytes: 1962219 (1.8 MiB) TX bytes: 636502 (621.5 KiB)
Interrupts Base address: 0x100

string that follows “HWaddr”: this is the device’s MAC Ad-
dress. Write this down for reference.

Step 4: Turn off your wireless adapter. This is typically
done by issuing the ifdown <device name> command (see
figure li).

Step 5: Change your MAC Address by issuing the fol-
lowing command: ifeonfig <device name> hw ether xx:xx:
xx:xx:xx:xx where each x is a digit from 0 to 9 or a to f ( see
figure li).

Step 6: Turn on your wireless adapter. This is typically
done by issuing the ifup <device name> command (see
figure li).

Step 7 : Check your work. Issue the ifeonfig <device name>
command again. You should see that the MAC Address has
changed (see figure 12 ). If this is not the case, or if your internet
connection stops working, you may have entered an invalid
MAC Address. Repeat steps 4 through 7 until it works.

Step 8: Send your communique or do whatever you want,
But remember, whatever it is you want to do anonymously
online, do only this. If you check your email, or do anything
else you would normally do online, law enforcement agents
might be able to determine it was you using the fake ad-
dress.

Step 9 : Change your MAC Address again by repeating
steps 4 through 7.

With a bit of luck, some effort, and perhaps a little help,
you should be able to get the above instructions to work
satisfactorily. If the precautions I have mentioned are taken,
the likelihood of the government being able to pin you to
your online activities is very low. For an example, let’s look
back upon our fictional anarchist.

Let us imagine that our anarchist used the wireless network
from the park just as before. This time, however, she read this
article, and having done so, forged her MAC Address before
writing the communique. After she was done she changed it
back. The FBI huffed and puffed all over town. They dragged
in our anarchist and all her friends. They interrogated them
up and down, but no one snitched. Upset by this show of
solidarity, the agents seized our anarchist’s computer and
those of her comrades. Unfortunately for the state, none of
the MAC Addresses matched. Finally, the Bureau left town
with its tail between its leg, and our anarchist was — at long
last — free to plan another . . . IMPACT!

Page 78 : Recipes For Disaster : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

Going to College

Colleges and universities perform a vital role in maintaining a society
based on exploitation and hierarchy. Public universities take tax money from
a state’s base of poor people and use it to pay for extravagant educational
resources for a small, much wealthier minority. Private universities use
money exploited from working people by wealthy capitalists, who, through
a process called “philanthropy,” funnel it to an even more exclusive minority
of people, who in turn are trained to rule and maintain the current system
of exploitation. These institutions research and develop ever more efficient
ways to make war, destroy ecosystems, and maximize profits, channeling
people into those industries and infecting graduates with their ideologies.
The problems created by this system present a new niche for colleges to fill
by training idealistic young people to make careers out of addressing them in
isolated and piecemeal ways. Universities also specialize in the specialization
of knowledge, creating obscure academic jargon to increase dependence on
“experts” in everything from economics to medicine to “political science 1 .”
At the same time, these institutions offer little more than poverty wages and
miserable conditions to the janitors, kitchen workers, and groundskeepers who
keep them running, sustaining the legacy of colonial relationships between
wealthy institutions and the surrounding occupied territory.

Clearly, anarchists should attack universities on every front. The good
news is that some of these attacks can be rewarding. The glut of resources
can provide a clever trouble-maker like you with the tools to undertake
nearly anything, whether or not you look like a twenty-something college
student. Colleges won’t sell you the rope by which to hang them — they’ll give
it to you! Here follows an abridged compilation of tips, tricks, secrets, and
entry points into the wonderful world of college scams. If there is a college
or university near you, don’t hesitate to dive into the delights of free food,
computers, entertainment, funding, and whatever else you can find. Exploit
the exploiters!

1 If a science is a field in which objective
observation can yield truths, it seems an empiri-
cal study of politics would lead any unbiased
observer to conclude that every political system
based on centralized government by an elite is
ultimately destructive to human life and hap-
piness as well as ecological stability. Instead,
“political science” involves teaching an elite
group that elites are necessary — and howto con
the rest of us into believing it, too.

Free food is one of the key attractions of your standard college campus. The best
spots are the cafeterias, which are usually readily scammable. For all-you-can-
eat cafeterias, students usually have a card to swipe with a certain number of
meals programmed into it. If you stand by the cafeteria entrance and inquire
as to whether anyone has a meal to share, many college kids — whose guard-
ians have taken care to prevent them from ever interacting with poor people
apart from those in service roles — will be surprised enough to swipe you in.
Watch out for managers, who may hassle you — you can usually recognize
them by their ties and stern looks; in some places, they’re the only white
employees. If generosity is not forthcoming, it’s often easy to sneak in — try
running up a down escalator, taking a service elevator or side stairwell, or
entering through the exit 2 . Wear a backpack, explore, and if someone hassles
you look confused and say you’re trying to find a bathroom. You can often
expect sympathy from employees, who generally hate their bosses and don’t
care much for students either. Many workers won’t care if you steal or sneak
in so long as their bosses aren’t looking — they might even assist you.

Once inside, don’t hold back. With a good backpack full of tupperware
and smaller bags, you can do your or others’ grocery shopping for a full
week. Keep an eye out for industrial-size food containers, if you’re ready to
go pro — they may be in closets or even more accessible locations 3 . Here’s
another tip: if you find yourself inside without a bag and you have access to a
rest room, check under the trashbags in use in the trash cans or paper towel

Food

2 At one college, the cafeteria was on the
second floor but included a balcony that looked
out over a foyer on the first floor. Unbelievably,
one could access the cafeteria by climbing up
to the balcony from the foyer, in full view of
everyone coming in and out of the building and
the students already seated above — who would
often cheer and clap for climbers who had
hoped to avoid attracting attention.

3 Another heroic tale from your editor: at one
college cafeteria, the managers had the daft idea
of decorating the salad bar with multi-gallon tins
of peppers, onions, and like. Those all disap-
peared one evening, some to stock the local
Food Not Bombs pantry and others to be traded
to an independent burrito shop in return for a
lifetime subscription to their leftovers.

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Recipes For Disaster : Page 79

receptacles there — often workers will save themselves trouble by stashing
extra bags under the ones in use.

Events on campus frequently include free food, especially towards the
beginning of the semester when organizations are recruiting. Ten minutes
of Campus Crusade for Christ may be worth it for the three pizzas you walk
out with afterwards. You can also look for weekly discussion groups, fancy
public speaking events, and large department or organization dinners that
advertise free food. Some colleges even send out email lists compiled by
student activities offices or individual students announcing all the free food
events on campus.

Often students are permitted to check out equipment of various kinds on a
use-by-use basis. If you can befriend a student, you may thus be able to get
access to sports gear, projectors with which to show movies to the public (and
rooms in which to do so), and even more far-fetched items such as musical
instruments, amplification systems, and camping equipment. Teachers often
have access to yet more resources. It might not be impossible to impersonate
one just long enough to obtain something for a deserving community group
that lacks state funding; be sure to clean the item up beyond recognition once
you’ve got it. Alternately, it might suffice to learn where the administration
keeps all this stuff, and how well-guarded it is.

To maximize your printing ease, find a lab
or time of day free from supervision.

Educational Opportunities

Classes

By auditing classes, you can learn a
language, study transnational femi-
nism through film, or learn about
the history and practice of creating
free schools for kids!

Libraries

You don’t need to pay tuition or be au-
thorized by a professor to learn about
any subject that interests you!

Most colleges offer a tremendous number of classes every semester or quar-
ter — and it would be silly if they were just for students! Often you can sit in
on (or “audit”) classes without having to enroll or pay money to the university.
Start by scanning the college website for the course catalogue and browsing
by subject to find things that interest you. Many professors are more than
happy to have someone who actually cares about learning sit in, and if you
ask them on the first day of class or email them in advance, you can often
secure a spot. In huge survey classes of a hundred or more students, you
probably won’t even need permission — just hang out in the back, and try to
restrain yourself from throwing spitballs.

Perhaps the resource most unique to colleges is their phenomenal libraries.
At many, non-students can get cheap library cards that offer access to mil-
lions of books and other resources. Even if you can’t get a card, the extended
hours and comfortable seating make libraries ideal for hanging out working
on projects all day. Take the time to look into all the different libraries in a
university’s system and what each offers — often there are music libraries with
thousands of CDs, records, and printed music collections; huge selections of
US and international newspapers, journals, and magazines on every topic;
map libraries with local topographical and train maps; “media resource”
centers with thousands of videos and DVDs; and even children’s book col-
lections! Many libraries stay open up to twenty-four hours a day, but some
check student IDs during nighttime hours to keep out the riffraff.

Funneling Money and Other
Resources out of the Ivory Tower

Computers and Printing

4 The entire two-hundred-page reunion issue of
the ’zine Inside Front, which was in some ways a
precursor to Rolling Thunder, was designed with
pirated software on library computers.

Computers and printing comprise another major asset of college libraries
and universities in general. Most large libraries or student unions include
some public computers with internet access that do not require passwords.
For printing, you might need a student ID and password; you can either
make friends with a student, ask someone to sign you in, or wait in a lab until
someone leaves without logging out of the computer. Often you can print
practically limitless quantities of material — but watch out for meddlesome
computer lab employees. You should be able to find computers with most
any program you need to use 4 , and even free scanners.

Photocopies can be tough to get for free. You might be able to arrange
this through a connection to a student organization; alternately, you could
just use the scanners and free printing. One private college hosts a legendary
“student appreciation week” at the end of each semester, during which eight
free, unsupervised photocopiers are made available to anyone who can get
to the student union for seven glorious days. People have sustained entire
literature distributions through judicious use of college resources, without
ever spending a penny.

Liberal student groups tend to attract young idealists with a fervent desire to
get involved in meaningful projects; more often than not, those same groups
end up disillusioning them permanently with ineffective and alienating
brands of so-called activism. This tragedy can be averted through infiltration,
outreach, and shameless recruiting: fliering for unpermitted marches at the
meeting of an anti-war group, for example, or chatting about clinic defense
with liberal feminists after a film screening, or tabling with anti-civilization
’zines at an Earth Day rally. Such efforts can broaden perspectives and save
well-meaning students from apathy and liberal inefficiency.

Campus campaigns most frequently occur in reaction to specific outrages,
such as a gaybashing, a sexual assault, or the firing of a popular worker for
attempting to organize a union. Suddenly appearing, these campaigns spark
an immediate firestorm, burn with ferocious energy for a short time, then
blink out around exam time. With radical allies among students, workers,
and professors, anarchists in the community can provide valuable support
to meaningful campaigns, especially in times of low student energy, and
radicalize others in the process.

When the inertia of college activism seems to overwhelm the potential
for radical activity, remember that student groups frequently have access to
resources that can easily be funneled into more fulfilling, community-driven
projects. Student organizations can easily extend their opportunities to other
local groups: some literature distributors have flourished because student
groups have donated stacks of zines and even whole books provided by the
unlimited photocopying at their schools, while other groups have shared
their access to free long-distance phone calls and conference calls to facilitate
organizing across state lines. Colleges can provide a wide variety of practical
and logistical resources: space in classrooms and auditoriums to hold meet-
ings, shows, and performances; access to large vans or buses for traveling
to conferences and protests; all the supplies required to set up independent
workshops for community members on silkscreening, bike repair, and anything
else you can think of; and, of course, money itself! Student organizations
usually receive a budget, and they can request funding to pay for supplies or
bring in speakers. Student groups are constantly paying exorbitant quanti-
ties of money to bring organizations and individuals to their college to speak
on issues, facilitate workshops, show movies, or give performances — and
you don’t have to have a fancy website or a manager to qualify. If you’re not
a student, you can offer to be a speaker or guest performer and donate the
money you receive to local projects.

Students usually have healthcare plans covering many services for free or at
a low cost. If you can befriend a student and borrow his or her ID, or obtain
a student ID number 5 , you too can attain access to services from gynecology
and counseling to physical therapy and prescription drugs. Because most col-
leges get funding for sex education programs, condoms, lube, dental dams,
and all sorts of safe-sex supplies and information can be acquired on most
campuses in endless supply: check the student health building or student

Student Organizations and Activism

Student groups organized around par-
ticular ethnicities, sexualities, or obscure
interests can help anarchists find other
people who share mutual interests and
identities — whether you are South Asian,
transgendered, a Dungeons and Dragons
enthusiast, or all of the above!

Many universities, when issuing individuals
large sums of money through a student
organization, will request a social security
number for tax information. You can
either cash the check and then not give
that information — which can be a felony
and is not always an option — or have folks
who don’t make much money or don't file
taxes receive the money.

Health Care

5 We’ll leave it up to our ertreprereurirg read-
ers to figure out how to do so — although we’ve
heard that some people will tell you anything
when you’re doing a survey.

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Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Recipes For Disaster : Page 81

center. STI testing is also available on many campuses. Some colleges offer
confidential testing, and because ID can’t be required for these tests, anyone
who knows where to go — which can usually be ascertained by means of the
internet — can get tested. Additionally, at universities with medical or dental
schools, cheap or free medical services can be obtained from students in need
of practice patients. Schools often offer free teeth-cleaning and x-rays, while
more intensive procedures and surgeries cost a minimal amount.

Similarly, many college campuses with medical schools or large medical
research departments carry out medical studies which can be both lucrative
and informative. For instance, at many universities across the country, there
is a herpes vaccine study in which the first round of testing simply requires
one to fill out some paperwork and get tested for herpes. That’s a free STI
test that you get paid for! All kinds of other testing can be found — much of
which involves exposure to sinister drugs — advertised on department websites
or on fliers around student unions and university bathrooms.

Housing Most on-campus residences are dormitories; these are usually full of college
students, and thus make inhospitable living environments. However, on some
campuses, buildings not labeled for housing feature empty unlocked rooms
or even whole floors of unused rooms perfect for squatting. It’s different in
every place: building doors lock at different times, housecleaning staff make
different rounds . . . but if you can squat your own office (see the first issue
of Rolling Thunder), you can surely squat someone else’s college.

Entertainment

6 See “Pie Throwing” in Recipes for Disaster,
another Crimethlnc. publication.

Colleges work hard to keep their students entertained so as to perpetuate the
illusion that life in the college bubble is interesting and sophisticated. Movie
screenings are common, and often either free or require a borrowed or copied
student ID. Drama troupes stage plays throughout the year — one can gener-
ally get in free by impersonating a drama student or volunteering to usher
in return for a ticket. Dance performances, concerts, cultural festivals, and
more take place all the time and are often free or easy to sneak into. College
radio stations often have massive CD and record collections, which can be
burned or taped to your heart’s content if you can get into the studio. They
also give away concert tickets all the time, in predictable patterns — listen by
a phone in the late afternoons.

Also, all kinds of assholes give lectures and workshops on every subject
imaginable, and these events can be interesting opportunities to learn or
to hone your pie-throwing aim — but that’s a whole different recipe 6 ! Look
on the internet for event listings and calendars, and find spots on campus
where flyers are posted.

Making the Grade These are just a few of the innumerable ways we’ve found to squeeze re-
sources out of these bloated institutions. Student allies can provide insights
you might never find on your own, so make friends and ask. Depending on
the homogeneity of the student body, you may find it fairly easy or completely
impossible to blend in; if you wear a backpack and smile, people may look
at you funny but will rarely ever directly interfere with your scam-o-rama.
Find loopholes, dissatisfied employees, accessible rooftops, secret hideouts,
and other mischievous means of harvesting the bountiful cornucopia of the
university.

Extra Credit • Take a stroll through buildings on campus. Often, stacks of discarded
books, errant chairs and furniture, dry erase boards and markers, extension
cords, and other odds and ends are stashed in hallways and stairwells, waiting

for loving homes. New rolls of toilet paper can be found in most bathrooms.
Light bulbs, office supplies, projectors... the list is endless.

• Most campuses have courtesy phones scattered throughout campus,
especially in student centers and libraries, which often offer free calls to all
local numbers. Try dialing a “9” before the number if at first you don’t suc-
ceed. Such phones are perfect for contacting your comrades in illegal activity
without leaving your enemies any record of who talks to whom. (Don’t speak
about said activity on the phone, of course — just call your friend and express
that you’d like to meet somewhere.)

• Art departments often have darkrooms, screenprinting materials, and
other excellent resources available to art students and anyone else who can
get at them. Some art buildings are accessible twenty-four hours a day for
those late-night bursts of artistic inspiration.

• Most colleges offer exercise facilities ranging from soccer fields — weekly
community soccer! — to gyms that can be accessed by means of a borrowed
ID or a clever move. Likewise, most campuses have an indoor or outdoor
swimming pool, or both.

• If you’re looking for a target for some community-minded direct action,
you rarely need look further than the nearest college. Most campuses feature
National Guard offices or buildings, and many also have vivisectionists and
other ne’er-do-wells working on the premises. College campuses usually
have their own police, but ironically this sometimes makes them safer areas.
During the FTAA ministerial in Miami, when the entire city was infested
with riot police, the campus of the University of Miami was as placid as
ever — hence the massive amounts of wheatpasting and stickering that took
place there that week.

• At the end of every school year, when thousands of students move out of
their dormitory rooms, a week-long dumpster bonanza opens up with liter-
ally inconceivable bounty bestowed upon all wise enough to partake. Find
out where the dorms are, especially those populated by first-year students
or athletes, learn when exam week takes place, borrow a pickup truck if you
can, and go to town! Rugs, plastic furniture, packaged food, futons, small ap-
pliances, clothes, and books are especially common. We know a community
organization that nets about $400 every year by having a yard sale with their
post-semester dumpster finds. At the end of the year, abandoned bikes can also
be found in abundance across college campuses and can come home with you
for the cost of a pair of bolt cutters. All these resources can be redistributed
to the community at large at the next Really Really Free Market.

Some years ago, I myself was an accursed college student, sleepwalking Account

through my daily routine — or sleeping through it — unfulfilled by my classes

and uncertain of the necessity of it all. Nighttime found me alive and active,

invested in my friends and projects, but still I questioned my place at that

school... until I discovered the college scam. Slowly, I began to see all of the

treasures I could sneak out of that blind behemoth of an institution, all of the

ways I could steal and cheat my heart back and root it in the people around

me. I delved into all the secret sources: I found the dresser full of light bulbs

in the student center, the janitorial closet full of tools in the science building,

and the empty math department whose office supply cabinet never could

stay locked. I learned to find all the access points to hidden resources, how

to secure the supplies and money to drive the projects that were actually

making things happen.

I was a part of two or three or sometimes four student groups that applied
for money from the school; one of the groups was actually defunct, but served

Page 82 : Recipes For Disaster : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Recipes For Disaster : Page 83

as a front to ask for more money. Every semester we would get together over
a potluck or in the park and dream up the most fantastic, amazing things
we could do, then figure out how to ask the university for funding in such
a way that they would comply 7 . We helped fund our friends’ punk bands,
puppet shows, and health collectives, inviting them to perform at the school
or give workshops there while on tour. We also funneled resources into
our own local infrastructure. We started small, accumulating all kinds of
tools — silkscreens, paint, knitting and sewing supplies, bike tools, building
tools, speculums and more — by staging workshops to justify these needs.
We learned the slick language, describing events as drug- and alcohol-free
entertainment or highlighting the ways we were working with other groups.
We started a literature distribution, got hundreds of dollars from the school
to buy books, and gave them away or sold them at minimal prices. We built a
rapport with the money-givers, and had the newspapers report on our events
to add to the charade. We asked for more money to get materials and bring
in local “celebrities” — and the school gave us more.

At my school, the system for getting money was complex. Student organiza-
tions wrote their requests for all kinds of programming months in advance.
Then, interviews were held by some council to determine how much money
was to be allotted; we always asked for twice as much as we wanted and got
almost as much as we needed. All of this money was itemized, broken down
into speaker fees, travel expenses, this much for paint, this much for building
supplies, this much for fabric, and receipts were expected for everything. Then
at the end of the year, each organization was audited, and all the money that
hadn’t been used was returned. It was a bureaucratic clusterfuck. There were
forms and paperwork and signatures required. I learned to be the treasurer;
I knew all the players, had a sweet smile for each of them, and somehow we
skipped audit after audit. Every semester there was extra money, pleasantly
unaccounted for, building a little mountain in our bank account.

All the while, a new community space-infoshop-amazing collective project
was coming together just beyond the reach of the school. We were painting
and building, learning and teaching, working with all of our friends to set up
and use the tools and supplies we had acquired. We turned the distribution
into a library. We had shows, poetry readings, and community meals — we
built up momentum. The plans were laid and the potential created. Finally,
I knew what I was doing there, and by the time I left the school, we had
thousands of dollars set aside to sustain the new space.

7 This is not to insinuate that all the fantastic,
amazing things we wanted to do required
money. Many things look different with access
to money; I want to pursue all the options avail-
able to me and develop my abilities to make
wonderful things happen in any context.

Page 84 : Recipes For Disaster : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

United States of America K John Tsombikos

Throughout 2004 and 2005, BORF entered the public consciousness
as a sort of illegal, inscrutable publicity campaign. In addition to
being virtually omnipresent in the Washington, D.C. area, BORF
graffiti was sighted throughout New York City, North Carolina,
Florida, Indiana, San Francisco, and even Greece. The name and
associated face appeared in a myriad of forms: life-size BORF
“soldiers,” traditional graffiti pieces, twenty-foot-tall letters paint-
rollered onto seemingly inaccessible walls, smiling eyes staring down
from interstate signs above six lanes of speeding traffic, images
stickered, wheatpasted and stenciled on every imaginable surface.

BORF received coverage in independent and corporate media
including the Washington Post and the Raleigh News and Observer.
The images and enigmatic messages, not to mention the feats of
bravado by which they were presented to the public, were discussed
far outside the usual circles of graffiti aficionados. Was BORF an anti-
gentrification offensive? A secret cult? An elaborate surrealist prank?

After an investigation spanning over a year, the DC
metropolitan police finally made an arrest in the BORF case 1 . Shortly
thereafter, Rolling Thunder conducted a series of interviews with the
defendant to gain some insight into the BORF legend.

□ a

Can you start by telling us who you are?

My name is John Tsombikos. I was ar-
rested for BORF graffiti last July and I was
a close friend of BORF, Bobby Fisher.

Can you describe who and what BORF ac-
tually is?

BORF was a friend of mine, Bobby
Fisher, who killed himself in October 2003
when we were sixteen. Then it turned into
a graffiti campaign, which consisted of me
and some of his other close friends and
acquaintances putting up his face and the
name BORF wherever we went and on
anything. I guess it’s kind of a campaign
for us to deal with his death and to damage
things we identify as contributing to our
misery and loneliness. It also serves as a
tool for communication. It's a nod or wink
to all the other kids that feel as worthless
as we do because of the way our consumer
society is set up, and all the ways corporate

1 As reported by the spoilsports: “Fairfax County
Police Officer Gail Fernbacherwas recognized with
a certificate of appreciation by the U.S. Attorney’s
Office at the 26 th annual Law Enforcement Awards
Ceremony May 12 in Washington, D.C. Fernbacher
received the award for her efforts to bring the no-
torious “BORF” graffiti artist to justice. Fernbacher
gathered evidence against John Tsombikos for
felony destruction of property after investigating
graffiti in July 2004." Surely Fernbacher has an ad-
dress at which she can receive congratulations.

America takes what we make and sells it
backto us in fragments ofwhat it originally
was. And to communicate that destroy-
ing property can be a lot more fun than
destroying yourself or the people around
you. As Raoul Vaneigem says, “We've got
a world to win . . . and nothing to lose but
our boredom!”

How did this manifest itself as a graffiti-based
project? Was graffiti something Bobby was
into as well?

Back in the day, when we were in middle
school we would spend weekend nights
walking around the suburbs where we lived
vandalizing places, tipping over porta-
potties, TPing trees, egging cars, or just
throwing any combination of gross stuff at
cars and running away. So this delinquent
mentality had been prevalent — but, also,
the graffiti came out of frustration with
other ways of trying to be heard. When I
was in my junior year of high school, the
day after he died, I started this student
club at school called Responsible Individu-
als of Tomorrow, R.I.O.T. and we tried to
organize around how our 4 th amendment
rights, protection from illegal search and
seizure, were being violated at school. The
cars we parked in the spaces we bought
for the year were subject to search and
seizure without probable cause. We tried

to organize kids around that, but nothing
ever came of it because of the bureaucracy
in the school system and all the, you know,
compartmentalizing of resistance or what-
ever, and how they have all these things
set up to make it really hard to make any
change... so I figured instead of screaming
at a wall, why not vandalize it?

So this started out of a sense of frustration and
continued to grow. Would you say it started
with raw frustration, anger, and sadness and
then grew into something more intentional
and specific?

For sure. At first I was just doing it
because it made me feel better, but now I
think our motives have been established
and for the most part, we know what we
want. Now we're not limiting ourselves to
graffiti because basically, the court system
and my legal situation are forcing us to
move on to something bigger. For a while,

I got caught up in the graffiti aspect of it,
got caught up in stupid graffiti beef here
in DC. There were times when I'd go on
the Red Line [of the metro, the local public
transit system] to paint something and I’d
have to carry a nightstick to protect myself
from other writers who were painting over
my stuff and trying to kick my ass... I think
the graffiti was mostly just cathartic, the
same thing as when you’re angry and you
break some dishes or whatever, but instead
I was taking it out on property owners in
the belly of the beast.

So the project began in October 2003? When
was it that BORF started to appear more
prominently around DC, and when did the
public start reacting to it?

I don’t know about the other kids that
write BORF, but when I started getting up,
that was probably near the beginning of
2004, when it all started setting in — like me
realizingthat Bobby's death was something
real, that he wasn’t coming back, and look-
ing to my surroundings and seeing what
the cause of that was. Because our society
puts all this emphasis on the individual,
it’s the responsibility of individuals to
address their issues and it doesn't deal
with the environmental, or circumstantial,
reasons forthem havingthese emotional
problems or depression issues or whatever.
It’s the same in disability studies. People
with disabilities are pressured to overcome
them because they’re seen as undesirable;

there's a stigma attached to them. So in-
stead of people asking for societal change,
like putting in ramps for wheelchairs for
example, people are expected to learn
howto lifttheirwheelchairs and hop over
curbs and stuff, and the same is evident in
psychology and how we feel — we have to
overcome how drab our cities are and how
bored we feel in the suburbs, you know,
so I just looked around and tried to see
what needed some changing, aesthetically
at the very least.

What kinds of reactions did you see from
people?

Everything on the spectrum from ran-
dom people chasing me down the street
to try and catch me to people seeing me
put up a sticker and striking up a conver-
sation about why I was doing that and
how much they supported it. Some asked
me for copies of whatever I was putting
up. And then there were internet debates
where yuppies and others of that sort
would complain about this kid or group
of kids that was vandalizing their so-called
“community.”

You spoke of alienation and I think that’s
interesting, as far as the reactions you re-
ceived... I remember reading on the internet
about people I might describe as yuppies who
were commuting to work, whether it be the
Pentagon or their law offices or whatever, who
seemed to really connect with BORF graffiti
and felt it really livened up their commute,
that it took them — for a few seconds — out
of the drudgery of the everyday. Did you get
a lot of reactions like that from people you
wouldn’t have expected them from, or from
outside the scenes that have traditionally
supported graffiti or radical politics?

Yeah, I think the whole thing with this
BORF stuff, the BORF graffiti, is that it
reached beyond the usual suspects. Nor-
mal people, even tourists, would see it
and take pictures and post it on the net.
They’d think it was funny, from what I’d
read. But I think there is something in all of
us that is trying to escape the daily routine
of like, you know, go to work, fucking sit
in traffic, go to sleep, maybe watch TV or
whatever. And I tried to express that, as did
everyone else who did the graffiti, we tried
to express that in the whole grown-ups vs.
kids thing. Grown-ups are the ones who

try to destroy all the fun for kids, call the
cops on parties or report suspicious things
and people to the authorities, and the
authorities themselves, the bureaucrats,
you know, the people in the capitol, the
White House, those are all grown-ups. I
think there is a child in all of us. I've heard
this quote, probably from someone in
the Situationists; they say the moment of
revolt is childhood rediscovered. We are
just bringing out the spontaneity that we
have naturally in childhood.

You talked about some of the different people
who supported the BORF work they saw on
the streets. How much do you think that sup-
port manifested itself in people feeling inspired
to put up work of their own versus just being
entertained by the spectacle of it? Do you
think people outside the BORF crew started
tagging BORF, inspired by what they saw, or
doing similar things around the city?

It's funny, because most of the people
I inspired to do graffiti and take part in
shaping their surroundings were people
totally against BORF graffiti. I’ve seen
people write FUCK right over some ofthe
BORF tags around town, people crossing

r EXIT ONLY

Indepenc

Avenue

Page 86 : Art : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

it out. This one dude was caught last year
writing “BORF is a do...” He got arrested
by the MPD before he could finish and
spent a night in jail. It turned out he was
just some twenty-seven-year-old yuppie
trying to insult BORF graffiti.

Do you consider BORF to be a form of art?

Hell no. From the start, it was never a
crass artistic exploitation of our friend’s
death, but simply a group ofjuvenile delin-
quents engaged in a war on the culture of
alienation. One way to differentiate between
art and graffiti is that in graffiti there is
never a product to sell. Graffiti writers don’t
make paintings to put food on the table the
way most artists do; we don’t conform to
any bourgeois concepts of what “art” is.
All the BORF graffiti was the fruit of an
adventurous night or a walk to a friend’s
house or a bored wait for a bus.

What contemporary graffiti or street artists
are you inspired by?

I detest “street artists." I could prob-
ably even say that most graffiti writers
hate street artists. The streets are not a
tool for advertising! I’m inspired by people
who write for their own enjoyment and the
enjoyment of their community, people who
beautify and retool the landscapes where
they live and work. As far as writers I re-
ally like, I'd say KEGR from Denmark for
constantly changing names and raising
the standard of quality in style even in
the most risky and illegal of spots. Using
different names is a nice way of preventing
the fetishizing of one name. Other writ-
ers in the past have done this, too, like
DONDI in the 70s and 80s; but unlike his
predecessors, KEGR maintains his illegality
by painting on the streets, in a number of
cities around the world. I'm also inspired
by REVS, who destroyed both New York
City and the paradigm of spray paint as the
only medium used by graffiti writers. He
extended the arsenal of tools for getting
up to include paint rollers, wheatpast-
ing, and stencils. More recently he’s been
creating steel sculptures of his name and
installing them in public spaces, further
breaking down the paradigm of graffiti.
He also does graffiti just for the love of
it; in his words, “...once money changes
hands for art, it becomes a fraudulent
activity.” Instead of easily exploiting and
capitalizing on his notoriety as a legend in

the world of graffiti, he works as a union
ironworker for a living.

Is graffiti inherently political? What makes
it political?

I guess, in a sense, any criminal activity
can be construed as political. But I think
it’s a stretch to say that graffiti is inherently
political, especially with the new wave of
corporate marketing through stencil work.
I’d say the sense in which graffiti can be
political is a matter of individual motive. A
broken window isn't going to shut down a
corporation, but the catharsis and excite-
ment could change that person’s life. I think
it's important to remember, though, that
graffiti doesn't build movements. Any politi-
cal strength it can muster is limited.

Is BORF an anarchist project?

It’s a project of anarchists, but if you
are asking whether it was to promote the
political aims and message of anarchism,
then no. I think that would cheapen the
ideas and make them less personal for
both the people who participate and the
people who see the results.

I should clarify what I mean in describ-
ing BORF as a project of anarchists, as
well. I have, for the most part, been an
anarchist throughout my life, even before I
knew what anarchism was. The delinquent
impulse in all of us is anarchist. Children
do not have concepts of hierarchy, gender,
property, and so on — that’s why it takes
over twelve years of schooling and condi-
tioning to break their spirits.

In DC, the graffiti seems to have had an
impact on real estate developers and those
in the business “community, ” and perhaps
has even been a thorn in the side of gentri-
fiers and those who attempt to “beautify"
neighborhoods for their own economic gain.
What role do you think graffiti can play in
combating gentrification?

I think it's a minor part ofthe offensive
against gentrification. As long as it’s grimy,
everywhere, and the writers are determined
and come back after the city cleans it,
graffiti is pretty effective in pissing off city
officials, developers, and other uptight bu-
reaucratic types. Consider graffiti the visual
harassment of yuppies; its effectiveness
can be likened to strewing trash in the
street or yelling abuse at them, both of
which can be effective at scaring peo-

Page 88 : Art : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

pie away and lowering property values,
but don’t really change anything beyond
that. The only radically effective weapon
against the fuckers is community organ-
izing and agitation: protests and rallies
that publicize the effects gentrification
has on lower-income communities, lock-
downs that force evicting landlords to
remove you physically from your home,
support for those sorts of actions, even
just talking to the people in your com-
munity. I think the reason the fuckers get
away with gentrification so easily is the
degree to which we are alienated from
each other. The simple act of engaging
in friendly conversation with someone on
your block or in your apartment building
is dangerous to them. Graffiti is merely
a passive-aggressive means of personally
letting off some steam, and maybe letting
other people in the neighborhood know
that they are not the only ones that feel
a certain way.

On another note, the description of
speculators and developers as “those who
would attemptto ‘beautify’ neighborhoods
for their own economic gain” can also be
applied to careerist street artists.

Do you have a particular affinity for DC that
made it the landscape you chose to retool,
as opposed to the suburbs of Virginia where
you are from? What makes DC an area you
chose to work in? Do you feel an affinity to
the city?

Yeah. I think this is probably one of my
favorite cities. I’ve spent a lot of my time in
the area and I think I relate to it in that it’s
kind of alien from everywhere else in the
country — it’s not a state, people don’t have
voting rights — and in how run down most
parts ofthe city are. Well, that’s changing
now, I guess, with gentrification. But I can
identify with DC as a city... I don't know,
’cause I’ve never felt like I was a part of
this country, or part of a national identity
either. I’ve never felt, ever, that I was part
of anything at all, you know, I just felt like...
it’s hard to articulate.

I ask this because one thing that seemed com-
mon in the media coverage and court proceed-
ings is that you were called an outsider — you
were from Virginia, and how dare you come
into this city and deface property here.

I think it’s just one of their fallback
mechanisms or whatever, they just have

these ready to fall back on when they don’t
have anything else to criticize someone
for. The City Paper did this article about
this person they called “Borf’s Nemesis.”
He's this guy that comes in from Roslyn,
Virginia, to DC to paint over every piece of
BORF graffiti he sees; he’s my antithesis.
They wrote that whenever he passes a
piece of BORF graffiti he cringes and grinds
his teeth and cusses out loud. He comes
back later that day with some gray paint
and paints over it. So it’s okay if you're
coming from outside city limits to paint
over graffiti, but don’t come in here to do
it, that's just horrible, unthinkable.

There were a lot of contradictions in
what the judge said to me when I was
sentenced — like I’m a rich kid coming in to
DC to paint on property in poor neighbor-
hoods, when developers who happen to
own half of the city own these buildings.
It’s funny because the judge made it seem
like she was this mouthpiece for all the
disenfranchised and poor people of DC
that she sentences to years and years in
jail for non-violent drug offenses. All of a
sudden this white, affluent woman in a
huge position of power is telling me on
behalf of all these people she puts in jail,
whose oppression she perpetuates — she's
telling me that I’ve turned into what I hate,
which is basically her.

She's suddenly developed a class analysis.

Yeah, suddenly. It's very convenient.

I've heard you comment about how destruc-
tive drugs and drinking have been to the
graffiti scenes in specific cities, and mention
that you abstain from these things. Could you
expound on that, and speak to how it relates
to your beliefs as an anarchist?

Tupac said it best: “Think ofthe damage
we could do ... if we wasn’t high.” It's the
same for a lot of subversive communities,
and definitely isn’t exclusive to graffiti. In
DC graffiti, a lot of the best writers from
the early and mid-go’s came out of the
hardcore scene; a lot of them were straight
edge. The most prolific writers were either
straight edge or “party animals” who didn’t
give a fuck. The latter usually only got
caught because they were drunk or high
(not giving a fuck is an important quality
for any prolific graffiti writer). To have a
high-status, destructive writer arrested
is a serious blow to any graffiti scene.

That's one of the reasons BORF is good
for your liver.

The ironic thingabout the BORF graffiti
is that it kind of turned into my addiction;
whenever I was feeling bad or whatever, I
would just go out and write something.

Is that an example of how an addiction
can be healthy? How one can be high on
things that aren't harmful, and how you
can define for yourself what you can do to
get “high"? So when you're down, you use
that energy to . . .

Yeah, instead of destroying my health,

I refaced property and hopefully made
people laugh about it. A lot of the kids in
the DC graffiti scene do a lot of drinking,
they smoke and all that, while BORF was
one of the most destructive (or produc-
tive) writers in recent memory according
to some news outlets.

I remember asking you once how so much
BORF stuff got up, and your answer was that
because you don't drink, smoke, or waste
your time with other things, you just went
out and put things up instead.

Yeah, that's where most of my energy
went — to graffiti, to BORF.

Invincibility seems to be a common theme
in the BORF work. One thing I took this
to mean was that we can get away with so
much more than people in power want us
to believe we can... but with something like
graffiti, maybe with anything that involves
legal risk, maybe not getting caught can also
make us feel larger than we are. Can you talk
about that a little?

Yeah, I think that’s what got me into
trouble. That's what, you know, that feeling
larger than we are, kind of influenced my
talking to the Washington Post, which was
a stupid thing to do. But, yeah, whatever
you do, it's on the streets for people to
see, and every little thing you do is visible
to every passerby, drivers, pedestrians,
it’s kind of this “hey look what I can do”
thing — I climbed this building and spent
like two hours up there painting...

As far as trying to draw different lessons from
your experiences, what do you think was a mis-
take about talking to the Washington Post?
Do you think it was the way you did it, trusting
them at all, or what came out in it?

Trusting them at all was the biggest

mistake. Trusting anyone outside of my
friends is a big mistake. The whole point
of graffiti is getting your own message
out by your own means. You don’t need
anyone or anything but a can of paint to
get your message out. They’ll stab you in
the back without thinking twice; they don’t
give a shit, they’re just careerists. They’ll
do anything to forward their careers.

In July of 200 j you were arrested in DC. Can
you tell us anything about what happened
that night?

Basically, I was out painting with some
kids that didn't really know what to do
in that type of situation or how to carry
themselves on the streets without being
conspicuous as a suspect. One of the
kids I was with, this homeless person
asked us for change and my friend engaged
him in a conversation and asked him to
look out for him . . . and from there, the
homeless person used seeing my friend
commit a crime as leverage to try and get
more money from us. I didn’t have any
money and my friend, I don’t know, but he
wouldn’t give it to him if he did. And then
the guy flagged down a cop, and we went
up an alley. I ditched my paint, and then
a bunch of cops came and surrounded us
after we climbed a bunch of fences and
ran for a while; they had a helicopter and
motorcycles and trapped us.

Do you think that they knew you were related
to BORF when they were going after you? Heli-
copters and such seem a little excessive . . .

I think they knew that it was BORF.

I even overheard them talking to each
other, like “Man, what if this was BORF?
We could go district.”

What were some ofthe things you were feel-
ing when you were arrested, while you were
being held, waiting to be released, and going
through the booking process?

I was feeling like an idiot and, you
know, just basically regretting getting
caught, going over what I should have
done differently, the usual, but also fearing
what was going to come out of it.

And what followed the arrest?

The morning after my arrest, a lot of
media showed up at my doorstep ask-
ing for interviews, and asking me or my
parents to talk.

fglp

^ pg jgy t iSjj

Could you take us through the timeline of
your arrest? You were arrested — did you spend
the night in jail? What happened when you
got out? How did the whole media thing
come about?

Yeah, so we were in custody . . . they took
us to the hospital to see if we wanted treat-
ment because we had cuts on our hands
from climbing fences, and we refused. One
of my friends refused to give his name, so
I guess the procedure is that they keep you
overnight until arraignment, when you can
choose to give them your name. I don’t
know how that works. We stayed there
overnight and got shipped around three
times to different holding cells. Basically,
we were really bored. When morning came,
we went to the court building and waited
all day until the judge called us, which was
around five o'clock. Then we got out, had
to do a drug test, and went home.

When you got home, what did you discover
had transpired while you were in jail?

My mom had talked to the Washington
Post some more, which was bad — that
hurt my case a lot. She basically admitted,
or revealed, that I was connected to the
BORF phenomenon somehow, through
my friend who died. I didn’t get a call in
jail, so I couldn’t call her and tell her not
to talk to anyone.

Was that an issue you’d ever talked to your
parents about before? Are there any lessons
that other people who might be involved
with something similar could learn from
this? For instance, do you wish you ever
spoke to your parents about the possibility
of the media contacting them before this
and about the proper way to respond so it
wouldn’t jeopardize you?

I mean, my relationship with them
isn’t too good. But I just wouldn't tell
anyone anything about what you’re do-
ing. I wouldn't talk about BORF graffiti
at all with them, they just somehow con-
nected things.

Can you tell us a little bit about what hap-
pened between when you were arrested and
your next court date?

I went to arraignment right when I was
getting out of jail, and they basically read
my charge, which was a misdemeanor,
and then I went to a status hearing in
misdemeanor court . . .

What was the misdemeanor charge?

I guess it was “defacing public or pri-
vate property.” And I went to some status
hearings to get my trial date. Novem-
ber 18 came and I was indicted on two
felony counts, one “destruction of private
property,” and the other I guess was the
same, “defacing private or public prop-
erty.” The next week my house was raided
by the Department of Justice and fifteen
or so federal agents. They took whatever
was lying around, anything electronic, all
my computers, my camera, all that type
of stuff 2 . From there, in December the

2 Dear readers — ifyou'reever in a similar situation,
don’t leave this stuff lying around at home!

Page 90 : Art : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Art : Page 91

X

prosecution offered a plea agreement and
knowing that I had been arrested in NY
on November 15, on some more graffiti
stuff, I thought that it would be better to
take a plea than to go to trial. That plus all
the other pressure they were putting on
me, all the evidence they had just gotten
from my house, and threatening me with
federal charges for tagging highway signs.
My lawyer made a counter-offer for a plea
deal and I decided to take it and agreed
to pay $12,000 in restitution, do 80 hours
of cleaning up graffiti, and 120 hours of
community service. I pled sometime in
mid-December. A ‘show-cause’ hearing
was set up to show why my release should
be revoked because of my arrest in NYC.
They didn't have probable cause for that,
so the judge kept me on personal recog-
nizance but banned me from the District
of Columbia until sentencing, and I wasn’t
allowed to have art supplies on me except
when going to school. Come sentencing,
which was February 9, she put me in jail
for 30 days, gave me a suspended sentence
of 17 months, and put me on three years
probation. Right now I'm getting drug
tested twice a week.

And you still have to make restitution and
do the community service?

Yeah.

Before you made the plea, what was the
maximum sentence you were being threat-
ened with?

When it was a misdemeanor, the maxi-
mum sentence was 180 days in jail, and/or
a $5,000 fine. When it was a felony it was
ten years in prison and I dunno, a $10,000
fine, a $1,000,000 fine...

What were some of the things you had to
weigh specifically when you were consid-
ering the plea bargain? What were some
of the things that were helpful to you in
deciding whether to fight the charges or
take a plea?

Through this whole process I had a
lawyer doing this pro bono, for free. One
reason I used him was that I didn't want
to have a huge legal cost I couldn’t afford.

I didn’t want to go through my parents to
pay for a lawyer and whatever else, so I
was thinking about that and how much it
would cost to go through years of litigation
and probably new charges. Even if I won

this case, they could have brought even
more felony charges and maybe even tried
to move them up to federal charges. $0
that was in the back of my mind, and also
just wanting to get it over with. Being in
that situation is really stressful, there's
a lot of pressure on you. $0 wanting to
get it over with and trying to weigh what
would happen in the future if I won this
case, which kind of looked impossible at
the time. One thing my lawyer said was
that I'd probably be spending $12,000, if
not way more, on future legal fees if they
brought more charges back, but I could
just pay the same amount in restitution
now and get it over with. He also said that
I could possibly get what’s called the Youth
Act — if I completed my probation without
any problems, they’d erase my record and
the felony conviction.

Did you get that?

Yes.

So you served 30 days in jail. What did you
feel initially going in?

Basically the night before and the morn-
ing of court, that day, I was preparing to

times I'd start thinking about all the
fucked up shit the prosecutors
had done and all the bulls-
hit the judge said to me
before sentencing and all
the snitches and reporters
that fucked me over, which
got me feeling completely
powerless.

To overcome those things
for the moment, I would
draw or write and maybe
listen to the other guys on
my tier talk about what they
were gonna do when they
got out. There were things
everyone did to stay sane. I
would try as best I could to
live from meal to meal and
look forward to crossing out
another day on the calendar I
had made for myself. Reading
all the great letters I received
was the highlight of every week
night. Other guys would make fun
of guards or other inmates or pray
or write poetry, or throw their piss at
snitches and people they didn’t like.

go to jail, and even months before, I just
figured I was goingto jail automatically. $0 I
was mentally preparing mostly beforehand
to deal with this, to be comfortable with
going to jail for however long. The first
week in jail was the hardest — talking to
the other people in jail, they agreed that
the first week or two is always the hardest,
just adjusting, coming from the outside
into this highly regimented and controlled
living situation. Being processed into the
DC jail, a bunch of the guards and other
inmates recognized me or found out who
I was, why I was in there, and gave me a
lot of props for it, commending my work
and sizing me up to other inmates so I
wouldn’t get fucked with. Borne guards
even wanted to shake my hand ’cause they
liked my work so much. In jail I would do a
lot ofdrawings of people’s families for food
I could eat, like candy bars or vegetable
sides from dinner or lunch or whatever.
Overall no one fucked with me that much,
except for verbal harassment.

One thing you mentioned was that you didn’t
really get harassed or bothered that much.
Did you expect to get bothered more?

Yeah. They put me in protective custody,
where you’re locked down in a cell for
twenty-three-and-a-half hours per day, only
coming out for a shower and a phone call.
The deputy warden decided that I should
be there, against my will, so I couldn’t
interact with other inmates.

Did you have any preconceived ideas about
jail that changed after serving the time
you did?

The only things I knewabout jail before-
hand were what I saw in movies and on TV
and what friends and other people who’ve
done some time told me. What I gathered
was that, overall, it’s a scary and stress-
ful place with awful food. None of those
preconceived ideas have really changed,
although my time in DC jail wasn’t too
stressful or scary, I guess because of the
weird position I was in.

Tell us more about your jail experience,
share some things you felt, you learned,
you experienced. How did you deal with
the situation?

Mostly, I just missed my people and
breathing fresh air, seeing trees, hearing
birds, feeling the warmth of the sun. $ome-

In an interview while you were in jail, the
Washington City Paper said you ‘felt lucky
to have been able to meet the people" you
met in jail and then quoted you as saying:
“People with my background, my skin color,
and my age don’t get to talk to these people
and really get to know them. ” Can you explain
that more?

There are the economically and socially
marginalized, and then there are those
who are physically marginalized — people
physically taken out of society and forgot-
ten — and I got to talk with and listen to
them on an inmate-to-inmate level. There
are countless barriers set up to keep people
on the outside separate, no matter how
close we are geographically. I felt lucky to
have met those folks, because the majority
of them were people who've been beaten
down from all directions for most of their
lives and are only in there for trying to get
out ofthe gutterthrough their own means.
They are in the worst possible positions,
facing decades in prison, and somehow
continue to dream and keep their chins
up. The guys on my tier taught me how
to hang in there and how to not take shit
from people in power or people trying to

intimidate me. It made all of my self-doubt
and lack of confidence seem petty and
shallow. If they can do it, I can do it.

And what did you feel upon release?

It was a fucking beautiful day. When
they did the final I D verification and opened
the gates, the two guys I was released with
and I sprinted up the hill to the street as
fast as we could. The sky was blue, the sun
was setting, the birds were chirping, and
I felt nothing but relief and a newfound
excitement about life. To think I was only
in there for a month!

What have you been doing lately?

A whole lot of community service, and
trying to catch up on schoolwork I missed
while I was in jail, and trying to paint and
draw more.

Any idea what’s next for BORF, after all that
has happened?

Nope. The BORF Brigade has kicked
me out of the group for too much media
exposure and for losing my anonymity. It’s
all up to them now, I guess.

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Art : Page 93

,iP lOOKi^
'v»V>

.Vijj V^ofttS

The following text was used as evidence in a
motion by the U.S. Attorney to revoke the de-
fendant’s conditional release pending trial:

How to Be Invincible:
Tips for Not Getting
Caught

If you are under i8, you are already
invincible. If not, maintain the spirit.

DON’T ATTRACT ATTENTION TO
YOURSELF: Disguise yourself and your
materials. For example, cut stencils out
of the bottoms of pizza boxes or paper
bags.

HAVE CONFIDENCE: Always look like
you know exactly what you are doing, as if
you are “supposed” to be doing it. Most
people won’t think twice about you if you
display enough confidence.

WEAR CLOVES: Always keep your
hands and clothing clean. Hands covered
in paint or clothing with paint stains can
breed suspicion in cops or other passersby,
and may incriminate you in court.

USE LOOKOUTS: This is really im-
portant. With your friends keeping watch,
the chances of someone witnessing you
in the act are a lot smaller. If you are not
caught or seen, it is extremely difficult to
prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you
are the culprit.

KEEP MOVING: Never stay in one
area for too long. If you feel sketched out
by something and aren’t finished with
what you're doing, move on and come
back later. Painting fast is important on
the streets.

STAY CALM UNDER SUSPICION: Po-
lice approach to graffiti varies from city to
city. In Washington, D.C., if a pig slows
down his car and stares at you while you’re
walking or stops right in front ofyou when
you’re crossing a street, he's not necessar-
ily going to hit on you, so don’t run right
off. They do this sometimes to see ifyou’ll
run; running is the equivalent to yelling
“I'm a criminal!” During this frightening
period of being followed, you should be
preparing a story to tell if the officer gets
out of his car and detains you. It’s impor-
tant to be creative under pressure.

HAVE YOUR STORY STRAIGHT: If
you are out with other people, make sure
you have your stories straight with each
other in case you are stopped by police.
Remember, you don't have to tell them

anything, and it’s generally best that you
don’t. Sometimes, however, if they ask a
simple question, like what you’re doing out
so late or where you're headed, a quick and
straightforward answer might allay their
suspicions. Ifyou give a fake name, make
sure you don’t have ID in your pocket that
says otherwise, and that your pals know
the name you give.

BE PREPARED TO RUN: It is always
smart to run from irate citizens, secu-
rity guards, vigilante scumbags like the
“Guardian Angels,” and police when you
think you really need to.

DESTROYTHE EVIDENCE: Ifyou feel
like you are about to be confronted by a
lunatic vigilante or pig, dump your paint
and destroy or hide your stencil. If you
can’t dump your paint without drawing
attention to it, remove the spray caps from
the cans and dispose of those. Without
the caps, you can’t spray the paint, so
how could you have been the one that did
that graffiti? Also, keep your car and house
clean of any graffiti-related paraphernalia
in case of searches.

NEVER ADMIT TO ANYTHING: That
means never. Don't talk about your work
over the phone or on the internet.

SNITCHES GET STITCHES: This is
enforced. It is never okay to implicate
others in illegal activity. Even harmless
gossip can be very dangerous. Keep what
you know about the activities of others
to yourself.

How to

Make a Stencil

Choose an image and enlarge it to
the desired size. For life-sized prints, you
can go to Kinko's and use the self-service
enlarger that prints out onto paper either
24 or 36 inches wide. Fold up the big
sheet of paper and put it in your pocket
or backpack. If a Kinko's employee tries
to stop you, simply say “BORF sent me.”
Then run.

1) The easy approach is using Photoshop
and goingto lmage>Adjust>Brightness &
Contrast and move the Contrast bar all the
way to the right.

2) Glue the paper with your image
directly to the material from which you're
cutting the stencil. Cardboard is a common
medium because it’s easy to obtain, free,
and durable. Non-corrugated cardboard,

like that used for political posters or file
folders, is easiest to cut.

3) Use an Exacto knife to cut the stencil.

4) When your stencil is done, spray
through it from a distance of 8-12 inches,
moving quickly (sprayingtoo close or mov-
ing too slowly could mean lots of drips).
Make sure the stencil is flat against the
surface you are spraying. If any part of the
stencil comes off of the surface even a little
bit, underspraying will occur, makingyour
finished product look blurry. You can avoid
underspraying by using spray adhesive or
taping the edges of the stencil down.

Communique #1

Borf is not caught.

Borf is many. Borf is none. Borf is wait-
ing for you in your car. Borf is in your
pockets. Borf is running through your
veins. Borf is naive. Borf is good for your
liver. Borf is controlling your thoughts.
Borf is everywhere. Borf is the war on
boredom. Borf annihilates. Borf hates
school. Borf is a four letter word for joy.
Borf is quickly losing patience. Borf yells
in the library. Borf eats pieces of shit like
you for breakfast. Borf is digging a hole
to China. Borf is bad at graffiti. Borf is
ephemeral. Borf is invincible. Borf. Borf
ruins everything. Borf runs near the swim-
ming pool. Borf keeps it real. Borf writes
you love letters. Ol' Dirty Bastard is Borf.
Borf knows everything. Borf is in the water.
Borf doesn’t sleep. Borf systematically at-
tacks the infrastructure ofthe totality. Borf
is a foulmouth. Borf eats your homework.
Borf brings you home for dinner. Borf is
the dirt under your fingernails. Borf is the
song that never ends. Borf gets down.
Borf gets up. Borf is your baby. Borf is
neither. Borf is good for your heart, the
more you eat the more you. Borf is. Borf
destroys. Borf is immortal. Borf pulls fire
alarms. Borf scuffs the gym floor. Borf is
looking through your mom's purse. Borf
is M. Borf is the size of Alaska. Borf likes
pizza. Borf is in general. Borf ain’t nothin’
to fuck with. Borf runs it. Borf has reflexes
like a cat. Borf is immortal. Borf sticks gum
under the desk. Borf is omnipotent. Borf
is flawed. Borf is winning.

Art is dead. Long live Borf.

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Art : Page 95

army reserve centers, two naval reserve centers, a South
African Procurement Office, and the corporate offices
of Mobil Oil (three times), IBM (twice), the Honeywell
Corporation, the Motorola Corporation, General Electric,
and Union Carbide (twice). A succession of communiques
explained that these actions had been carried out to punish
these corporations and institutions for their complicity with
the regime that maintained apartheid in South Africa and
the covert wars in Central America, and also in support of
the Puerto Rican independence movement and in protest of
racism, economic injustice, and the prison system.

No one was ever injured during any of the UFF actions,
and property damage was extensive. Nineteen people were
injured, however, during the first SM]] bombing, at the
County Courthouse in Boston. The SM]] Unit accepted
responsibility for this mistake, stating that their warning
call had been ignored. Twice over these years members of
the group outmaneuvered police in firelights and success-
fully escaped capture; in one incident, a New Jersey State
Trooper named Phillip Lamonaco was killed following a
traffic stop.

Upon arrest, these people came to be known as the Ohio
7. They were three married couples and a single father,

A WORKING CLASS

HERO IS SOMETHING

TO BE

A Brief History of the United
Freedom Front and a Somewhat
Belated Eulogy to Richard Williams

There is a lot of talk these days about the “Green Scare,”
and about the FBI’s clumsy attempts to bully the anarchist,
environmentalist, anti-globalization, antiwar, and animal
liberation movements into inaction and passivity. Those of
us who struggle in the trenches of these movements would
do well to be reminded that history is replete with examples
of people who have remained steadfast in the face of far
worse repression than anything we are dealing with right
now. To that end, this is a good time to briefly pay our re-
spects to our brother Richard Williams, whose spirit passed
to the other side on December 7th of 2005.

Richard Charles Williams was born on November 4 th ,
1947, in Beverly, MA, the son of a seamstress and a machine
operator. He was arrested for marijuana possession in 1967,
and went to jail rather than go to Vietnam. He was arrested
again for burglary in New Hampshire in 1971, and was
sentenced to seven to fifteen years. He became politicized
while in prison, participated in food and work strikes and
protests for better conditions, and was elected chairperson
of the New England Prisoners Association. After his release
he was part of the Amandla Concert in Harvard Stadium
in 1979, which featured Bob Marley and raised funds for
anti-apartheid groups in South Africa. He also provided
community security, house-sitting for people when homes
were being firebombed by racists during the school integra-
tion and busing crisis in Boston and in the aftermath of the
murders of demonstrators in Greensboro, NC by the Ku
Klux Klan. In 1981 he disappeared from view.

On November 4 th , 1984 Richard was captured in Cleve-
land, OH, along with Raymond Luc Levasseur, Patricia
Gros, Barbara Curzi, and Jaan Laaman. On November 25th
of 1985 Carol Soucier and Thomas Manning were captured
in Norfolk, Virginia. These arrests brought to an end the
incredibly illustrious ten year career of a tiny clandestine
group known as the Sam Melville/Jonathan Jackson Unit,
and later the United Freedom Front, which had absolutely
bedeviled the authorities since 1974. The United States’
government labeled the pursuit of these seven people as the
largest fugitive hunt it had ever conducted up to that point.
During those ten years the group claimed responsibility for
no less than twelve bank robberies (netting some nine
dred thousand dollars) and nineteen bombings, mostly in
the vicinity of Boston and New York City, including those of
two courthouses, the office of the Massachusetts Commis-
sioner of Probation, the First National Bank of Boston, two

Page 96 : Eulogy : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

Williams — by all accounts devoted parents who had raised
several children during their years underground. In contrast
to many of the radical groups of the time, they were white
people from working class backgrounds who had cast their
bets with the oppressed and downtrodden people of the
world. Levasseur and Manning were Vietnam veterans. All
of the men had been to prison, and had worked much of
their lives in factories, logging camps, steel mills, construc-
tion sites and the like.

The Ohio 7, needless to say, spent much of the next few
years in court. Manning, Laaman, Levasseur, and Williams
were convicted for five of the UFF bombings in Brooklyn,
NY in 1986 and got fifty-three years apiece. Gros did three-
and-a-half years for harboring a fugitive, Levasseur — her
husband and the father of her three children. Curzi did
seven years. Manning and Williams were charged with
murder in Somerville, NJ in 1987 in the death of Phillip
Lamonaco. Manning was convicted, and got another eighty
years, but not before winning a hung jury for Williams
when, in what must be hailed as an extremely selfless act
of brinksmanship, he testified unequivocally that he had
in fact shot Lamonaco, and that Williams had not been in-
volved or present. It also came out in the course of this trial
that Mr. Lamonaco had been implicated in other shootings,
and that he had shot at Manning at least six times with
an unlicensed, unregistered “drop gun” (i.e., one which is
available to be planted at a crime scene) before Manning
killed him.

This was followed by one of the more epic trials in
American legal history, when all seven were tried in federal
court in Springfield, MA under the rarely applied charges
of Seditious Conspiracy to Overthrow the Government of the
United States by Force and of belonging to a Racketeer-Influ-
enced and Corrupt Organization. Another defendant at one
point in this case, Kazi Toure, was the first black person to
ever face these charges in this country. The trial lasted two
full years, involved testimony from two hundred witnesses,
saw one-thousand-seven-hundred pieces of evidence intro-
duced, and cost taxpayers an estimated sixty million dollars
between the prosecution’s legal expenses and the massive
daily security apparatus. Ray Luc Levasseur represented
himself, stood by everything the SMJJ and UFF had done,
and spoke movingly about his life and the experiences
which had transformed him into a revolutionary. On No-
vember 27 th , 1989 the jury refused to convict the Ohio 7 of a
single charge. Levasseur’s statements to the court have quite
rightfully been floating around radical circles in pamphlet
form ever since. In 1991 Williams was retried, and this time
convicted, in New Jersey in the death of Phillip Lomanaco.

Ray Luc Levasseur walked out of prison on November
2 nd , 2004 after more than twenty years in several of the
harshest penal institutions in the United States, much of
it in solitary confinement. He had written at one point
that “those of us convicted of United Freedom Front
activities were guided by our political commitment, good
conscience, moral obligation, and responsibilities under
international law, including the Nuremberg Principles. It

was the intent and purpose of the UFF actions to expose
U.S. government and corporate complicity with apartheid,
and encourage the American people to do everything
necessary to end this criminal partnership.” He stated on
release that he and his friends “stand on the side of history
that will vindicate our actions to alleviate the suffering of
those most used and abused by a system that prioritizes
profit over human needs.”

Tom Manning and Jaan Laaman can make a legitimate
claim to hold the distinct honor of being the last anti-
apartheid combatants held in prison anywhere in the
world. Laaman’s state sentence will run out soon, and he
has said that he will appeal his federal sentence. He would
be overdue for release if successful in this. He is trying to
raise money for this appeal. Assistance toward that end can
be made out to the Jaan Laaman Legal Freedom Fund, PO
BOX 681, East Boston, MA, 02128. Manning will undoubt-
edly spend the rest of his life in prison unless, as many of us
consider likely, the world changes soon enough to forestall
this eventuality.

Richard Williams died in the Federal Medical Center in
Butner, NC, on the very same day that the FBI’s current set
of roundups began. He had been in increasingly poor health
due to Hepatitis C and complications arising from cancer
treatment. His family has stated that the health problems
leading to his death were greatly exacerbated by the fact
that he was systematically denied adequate medical treat-
ment and exercise by his captors, who basically left him to
die in solitary confinement. There are no words or excuses
which can mitigate a crime such as this — that a man of
Williams’ caliber should die in prison while the murder-
ers who bankrolled the Salvadoran death squads walk free.
However, lest our enemies use his death as a deterrent to
those who would finish his work, let this never be forgot-
ten: Richard Williams outlived the apartheid system that he
fought against so bravely. Those currently under indictment
on Green Scare charges may also live to see the rapacious
industries that they are accused of opposing grind to a halt.
History has mercifully forgotten most of the despicable
names of the functionaries who managed the slave plan-
tations, but it has remembered those of John Brown and
Harriet Tubman. The day will come when it will honor that
of Richard Williams.

Following Williams’ death, the Los Angeles
chapter of the Anarchist Black Cross Network
wrote that “Richard went through life with open
arms but closed fists; prepared to embrace the
world but also to fight for what is right and just.
Richard can now relax his fists. It is time to close
ours.” These words, and the actions that they sug-
gest, seem as good a tribute as any to a man who
more than did his part throughout the course of a
truly epic life.

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Eulogy : Page 97

The Fine Art of
Criticism:

A How-To Guide
for Aspiring
Journalists

Those who can, write; those who can’t,
write reviews. Writing reviews is the surest
shortcut to a sensation of power for those
who lack the dedication necessary to cre-
ate something of actual worth. In passing
judgment on others’ work, the reviewer
experiences a fleeting high of self-impor-
tance cheaper than any other.

And fortunately for the next generation
of hacks, after squandering the best years
of our writing careers composing purple
prose for the throwaway tabloids of yellow
journalism, we’ve finally perfected this
most elusive of literary forms. Deceptively
simple and mundane, reviews are often
assumed to be easy to pen; in fact, it's
almost impossible to compose one worth
reading. To save you the trouble of suffering
through this learning process yourself (and
your potential readers the risk of suffering
along with you), we present here a surefire

failsafe handy guide to the
most rightly unappreciated
literary form of the twenti-
eth century. Mix yourself
a stiff metaphor, cultivate
an air of supercilious indif-
ference — a prerequisite for
any reviewer worth the salt
he hopes to pour in others'
wounds — and read on.

The Comparison

This is the most common
convention in the review-
er’s repertoire, and the most
swiftly, thoughtlessly trotted
out. It comes in three basic
varieties:

A is like B: “Orwell’s 1984
is basically a rewrite of Zamyat-
in's We, right down to the use of
punctuation marks.” “Like any other
band with guitars, bass, and drums,
Cannibal Corpse owes everything to
Chuck Berry. "

A is like B + C: “The sequel to
The Matrix is the bastard child of Nintendo
video games and MTV’s ‘The Daily Grind.
“Dragonforce sounds like Richard Marx with
double bass."

A is like B (perhaps + C) under ex-
tenuating conditions: these can include,
for example, drugs — “Jackson Pollock is
like, uh, Matisse on serious methampheta-
mines" — violence — " Baudrillard offers the
sort of insights Foucault would have hit upon
if he’d suffered severe head trauma at an early
age" — evocative locations — “Imagine Tol-
stoy’s War and Peace if it was set in a Soviet
gulag across only three days; there you have
it, Solzhenitsyn’s The First Circle" — or, for
maximum cliche action, all three: “Mup-
pet Burger’s new album “Fuzzy Massacre"
sounds like Sun Ra and Sinead O’Conner,
cranked out of their minds on cough syrup and
banana peel blunts, beating the stuffing out
of Morrissey in a dark alley while humming
La Marseilles to themselves.”

The Fawning Accolade

A critic should not tender a positive
review unless he believes he stands to gain
in some way. Sometimes demonstrating
one’s superiority by exhibiting prescient
taste can be as gratifying as the more direct
approach of simply declaring something

inferior. Of course, the power dynamics
shift as soon as the spotlighted upstart
gains a certain amount of attention: then,
glorification accrues to the artist rather
than the reviewer, so one must return to
scorn and ridicule.

Things are not usually even this com-
plex: a guest list and bar tab beckon, a
senior editor threatens, advertising dollars
await, Public Opinion counsels that this is
goingto be a Hot Item this year and those
who fail to get on board do so at their own
peril. One must give positive reviews to
something, after all, and it never hurts to
kill two birds with one stone.

Sometimes it does occur that a neo-
phyte, carried away by actual passion unbe-
coming ofthe serious journalist, expresses
honest appreciation. Please, resist this
temptation. We’ve all got mouths to feed
in this business, and a certain professional
standard of restraint and objectivity is only
common sense.

The Interpretation

The critic does well to cast himself as the
artist’s interpreter, a modern-day successor
of the priests who explicated the drugged
ravings of the Oracle of Delphi. This rela-
tionship places the critic in the more essen-
tial role: any damn fool can get hooked on
heroin and put a few chords together, but it
takes a Creil Marcus to construct meaning
out ofthe resulting cacophony and go on to
trace its lineage to the Anabaptists. Artists
are idiot savants who achieve greatness by
unhingingthemselves, as Rimbaud himself
insisted — that’s why the best of them die
young; does it make sense to allow such
people to speak for themselves? Besides,
as a dancer, asked by a journalist to speak
about her newest work, once rejoined, “If
I could tell you about it, I wouldn’t have
to dance it.”

For best results, select the most incoher-
ent and opaque artwork, rewarding artists
and movements that produce this with
positive coverage. Ideally, the public, know-
ing themselves unqualified to do, feel, or
think anything on their own, should bypass
the artwork completely, coming directly
to the critics. It goes without saying that
any creative person who makes concrete
statements — the musician who speaks
between songs, the poet who dares write
about a current war — should be decisively
ignored, or at least dismissed as superficial.

This policy worked fabulously for art critics
throughout the twentieth century, and in-
deed may explain the evolutionary trajectory
of Western art across that era.

The Personal Anecdote

When a reviewer feels the itch to hold
forth about his own extensive experience
as a widely traveled citizen of the world, he
need not stick to the matter at hand. Many
a frustrated travel writer, philosopher, reli-
gious mystic, and misanthrope has found
a lasting career as a reviewer — not least
because it is one of the few writing jobs
in which it is not important that anyone
actually read your work.

Hearsay and Speculation

Reviewers have to worry about their
facts being checked about as much as
federal agents at a bail hearing. Any old
thing you heard or might have heard is
fair game. It’s your job to keep things
interesting, so don’t hesitate to spice up
your review with a little scandalous gossip:
I used to be a card-carrying member of The
Anarchist Movement, until I heard Bakunin
was actually a paid agent of the Czar.

The Stream of Invective

This can range from a simple insult
(regarding Jack Kerouac’s claim that he
wrote On the Road in a matter of days,
Truman Capote quipped, “That's not writ-
ing, that’s typing") to a veritable torrent
of abuse — which, in some cases, may be
well deserved:

Imagine Def Leppard if Wesley Willis
was the principle songwriter and their
vocalist sounded like a character from
The Flintstones. Now imagine whatever
you just imagined, only worse. There
you have it, the debut from Andrew
WK, “I Get Wet.” This makes the stuff
they play over the public address sys-
tems at professional football games
seem bookish and highbrow. The lyrics
are pathologically tautological ("you
can’t stop what you can’t end”), the
riffs sound like cheap radio advertising
jingles with some of the notes played
wrong, the end of every song sounds
like a television being switched off. For
that matter, the beginning of every song
sounds like a television being switched
on! My friend Gabe says this makes

him feel like he’s at a keg party at a frat
house, but there are no women there,
just drunk, belligerent jocks and brain-
damaged football players wrestling the
furniture and shouting each other down
about the stock market. Myself, I can’t
help but imagine this blaring over the
speakers in the personnel bay of an
army helicopter as GIs are airlifted into
an Iraqi village to slaughter mothers
and children — and as if in anticipation
of this, Andrew has recorded a track
in which he sings over and over “You
better get ready to kill, get ready to die.”
Even if you didn’t have serious doubts
about the future of Western civiliza-
tion before you heard this release, one
listen will make you a revolutionary in
the tradition ofthe Dadaists and Situ-
ationists who set out to put an end to
art itself — that is, if it doesn’t reduce
you to utter nihilism.

Absurd Allegations

When it’s not possible to unleash a
well-founded Stream of Invective, but the
reviewer still desires to maintain the read-
ers’ attention, he must fall back upon what
philosophers call the straw man argument:
he must concoct the most ridiculous make-
believe version ofthe subject ofthe review
he possibly can, and display his great
strength and prowess by painstakingly
tearing it apart.

In ideological circles — including certain
anarchist camps, strange to tell, where so
much talk of solidarity would lead one to
expect constructive criticism to be the order
of the day — this approach is even more
common than the Comparison. Those who
believe — often correctly — that their ideas
can only be ofinterest if all other ideas are
entirely bankrupt must remain ever vigilant,
ready to pounce upon and discredit other
thinkers by any means necessary.

The Irrelevant Digression

The digression comes in two forms.
In the more common form, it is a sort of
verbal smoking break in which the writer
gets up from his desk, takes a breath, and
stretches his legs, all without ceasing to
address the reader. Reviewers who wish
to curry favor with discriminating readers
should throw in as many of these as pos-
sible: the less attention they pay to the

subject of the review, the more bearable
their writing is bound to be.

Alternately, the digression can be an
underhanded way to slip in Absurd Alle-
gations, when there is no more straight-
forward pretext for introducing them. For
example, in the midst of a review of the
thoroughly utilitarian Recipes for Disaster:
An Anarchist Cookbook, which is simply a
collection of direct action tactics, the Anar-
chy Magazine reviewer can, as if remaining
on topic, stray into such ramblings as:
Their interpretation of social change
seems to be that ‘good people’ can, and
should, be agents of social change. The
material conditions of that change, the
horrible consequences of ‘bad people,’
and the history of social change that
doesn’t conform to the ‘good people’
model are all outside the scope of
Crimethlnc.'s approach. It is as if they
have made a good and right choice and
aren’t goingto let reality interfere with it.

Sample Exercise

Dash off a review of this issue of Rolling
Thunder and submit it to Clamor (keith@
clamormagazine.org) for publication.
Whether you compose a Stream of Invec-
tive, an Absurd Allegation, or an Irrelevant
Digression, and regardless ofwhetheryou
have ever undertaken to write a single
word before in the English language (or
have even read any part of this magazine
other than this sentence), your review is
bound to be more balanced and informa-
tive than anything that would appear in
that publication otherwise.

Page 98 : Reviews : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Reviews : Page 99

Ron Sakolsky
Creating Anarchy

Fifth Estate Books, P.O. Box 6,

Liberty, TN 37095

In honor of the author’s taste for surreal-
ist play, rather than review this book in
pedantic abstractions I have picked four
sentences from it at random which serve
well enough to illustrate its
strengths and limitations.

First, my finger happens
to fall upon the opening
sentence ofthe publisher’s
preface: “The book you hold
is mind medicine to heal the
ills of social mediocrity. " Show
us, don’t tell us, why don't
you! The publisher means
well enough, but evidently
hasn’t mastered the fine art
of restraint; perhaps we can’t hold the
author accountable for this, but it does
say something that he keeps this sort of
company. (On the other hand, his work is
being reviewed in Rolling Thunder, so I sup-
pose little more need be said.) In this light,
anyway, the snatches of poetry and collage
art that illustrate the essays and occasional
interviews will come as no surprise.

Flipping to the center of the book, I
come upon another sentence, inform-
ing me that “surrealist Robert Desnos, at
seventeen, was involved with a band of an-
archists that included former Bonnot gang
members." Is this interesting to you? It is
to me — though I don’t know a whole lot
about Desnos, my punk band reworked a
line of his poetry to serve as the closing
lyrics of one of our songs (“we’ve raised
anchorforever — the world lies in our wake;
and that ache, there is nothing so sweet"),
and the parable The Astrologer that appears
elsewhere in this issue is ever-so-loosely
based on his life story. Despite this passing
acquaintance with him, I had no idea he
rubbed shoulders with the so-called Bon-
not gang, the anarchist bank robbers who
terrorized France with their invention of
the getaway car and who — as I never tire of
pointing out — prefigured many anarchists
today in their commitments to sobriety and
vegetarianism. If historical tidbits like this
fascinate you — and they might not, in this
context, unless you are already minimally
familiar with surrealist history, twentieth
century jazz and blues, and the recent

misdeeds of the FCC — Creating Anarchy
has much to offer.

My third arbitrary selection offers more
insight into the author’s personality and
background: “During the 1970s and 80s,

I had luckily been able to receive Cuban
records in the mail from a friend in Poland
in exchange for Chicago blues sides." This
is Ron Sakolsky in a nutshell: his tireless
curiosity and internationalist
anti-authoritarianism have
long inspired him to small-time
subversive activity, though this
largely takes the form of creative
investigation rather than con-
frontational militancy. He sees
the surrealist Eruption of the
Marvelous in early blues music
the way the Situationists saw the
revolutionary reappropriation of
life in the Watts riots — and the
former is more up his alley, it seems, based
on what he includes and omits.

Not to say Sakolsky isn't down for the
revolution. Flipping back to an earlier page
in the book, I come across the hypothesis
that “any resistance movement, in order to
attract large numbers of people, has to be ro-
mantic." This statement is noteworthy not
because it is typical of this author — he’s a
romantic, we already knew that — so much
as for the way it reveals an underlying
tension in an entire current of anarchist
thought. At first, it seems to extol roman-
ticism, but at second glance it turns out
that this romanticism is recommended for
very pragmatic reasons. A true romantic
would probably frame things the other way
around: for example, “any movement of
large numbers of people, in order to be
truly romantic, has to involve resistance.”
On the other hand, perhaps this hard-
nosed pragmatism is itself a symptom of
a deeper-seated romanticism: nowadays,
only quixotic dreamers are drawn to the
project of building a resistance movement
of large numbers of people.

I’ll close with what, to me, is the high-
light ofthe whole book, a passage in which
Sakolsky recounts the story of a Chicago
bus driver who “announced to his passengers
that he could no longer endure the monotony
of his job and was about to drive the bus that
they were on to Florida. Any of the nine or
so passengers who wished to accompany
him were welcome to stay on board. Two
passengers immediately exited, then another,

but the rest evidently decided to go to Florida,
or at least to see what would happen next.
Several hours later, in southern Indiana, the
bus was pulled over by State Police, and the
driver arrested and returned to Chicago. ”
Sakolsky goes on to quote his colleague
Franklin Rosemont at length, and I can’t
resist doing so myself as well:

“Notwithstanding its disappointing
conclusion, this story has remained for
me an unendingsource of reverie and in-
spiration. Here were seven people casting
aside all the fetters of everyday routine,
pursuing every risk for the pleasure of
realizing, however feetingly, something
of the splendor hinted at by fairy tales
and heroic adventures. Is not all that
we have in the way of hope founded on
the premise that some day, and perhaps
not such a distant day, thousands and
even millions will come to approach
life with this same ardor for discovery,
this readiness to abandon everything
but the consequences of desire? Some
day there will be no State Police, or any
other police, to obstruct the free play of
the walking dreamers! Some day the
Halsted Street bus will reach Florida
and will set out from there to new des-
tinations! From Halsted Street to Easter
Island to the Carden of Eden!”

Bus riders and authors alike, one more
effort to be revolutionaries! It's one thing
to long for, write of, and even seize upon
such points of departure; it’s another thing
entirely to fight off the State Police and keep
that bus on the road. On the back cover,
the publisher touts this book as “a brick
for hurling through the windows of despair, "
but today those windows are made of real
corporate plate glass; trading the real bricks
of anarchist vandals for the conceptual
bricks of anarchist pundits is a step back-
ward, not forward. One can't help but long
for a Robert Desnos who stuck with the
bank robbers, so he didn’t have to go to
the death camps and die of typhoid fever.
None ofthis is Sakolsky’s fault, exactly — on
the contrary, he deserves great praise for
sticking with the anti-authoritarian project
for so long, and contributing such visionary
history and prose to it; but carried away by
those visions, a heart such as mine (talk
about romanticism!) can't help but grow
impatient for more discussion of how we
can defend and extend them.

CREATING

ANARCHY

RON SAKOLSKY

Regina Spektor,

Begin to Hope CD

Begin to Hope is Russian-born, partially-
American-raised Regina Spektor’s fourth
album, second widely-released record-
ing, and first major label
release. 1 She has made a
name for herself over the
past several years with her
virtuoso piano playing and
dynamic vocal presence
combined with delight-
fully eclectic lyrics as part
ofthe ‘anti-folk’ movement
in NYC.

While many indie musicians hide behind
the fuzz of lo-fi recording, Spektor shines
here in the lavish production afforded
by her label’s deep pockets. While not
abandoning the spare songs consisting
primarily of piano and voice, she does
take advantage of having more access to
resources to craft an entirely new sound for
many of her songs; of the twelve on Begin
to Hope, six are composed with additional
instrumentation and samples. This has
caused controversy among her audience,
but, well, sometimes people want you to
stay the same way forever, for them. Regina
isn't making music for them.

She masterfully walks the line between
creating art to please an audience and
creating art that is satisfying for the artist
to create. Too much of either can sink
the best of efforts, but the songs here
range from spontaneously engaging to
rewarding a decent amount of effort on
the listeners part, and all shine with the
lustre of pure joy and gratification found
in their creation. She is having fun, but
not at our expense.

A classically trained pianist, hammer-
ing away at the keys since the age of eight,
Spektor creates songs that have an ef-
fortless complexity. She doesn’t settle for
the simple verse-chorus-verse structure,
and her songs never lower themselves to
repeating the same melodies over and
over again. Nearly every song is dynamic
and constantly modifies its refrains and

1 While an artist’s decision to go the major-
label route is always a little sorrow-inducing, on
the plus side it enables one to pirate the record-
ing with no guilt, as the only alternative is to
support the RIAA and their legion of extorting
lawyers. Begin to Hope is very much available
free of cost on Bittorrent.

melodies as it goes, tweaking, adding,
subtracting, discovering what else is pos-
sible in this or that direction. This is evident
also in her amazing vocal phrasing, where
even choruses with the same words are
sung totally differently within the same
song — most musicians are
lucky to find a single good
phrasing, while Spektor can
devise new ones that fit per-
fectly at every intersection.
As a songwriter, she clearly
doesn't believe in “good
enough.” The dynamicqual-
ity found in her songs also
extends itself to the content
of the entire album.

Spektor explores the various timbres
of her voice, including a breathy, angelic
high register and a Billie Holiday-like lower
register that she often allows to break into
a trumpet-like tone quality. She often uses
a jazzy vibrato and sliding tones in her
voice's middle register. 2

Her lyrics also vary highly by song, each
to fit it’s own unique purpose, from oblique
to personal to fanciful. She is wise without
resorting to cleverness, and
often tells stories that resolve
in unexpected ways. It is a love
affair with the world and she
tells it like this, “Now this is
how it works / You peer inside
yourself / You take the things
you like / And try to love the
things you took / And then you
take that love you made / And
stick it into some / Someone
else’s heart / Pumping some-
one else’s blood / And walking arm in arm
/ You hope it don’t get harmed / But even
if it does / You’ll just do it all again.”

In Lieu of a Review:
“A for Anarchy”
Responds to
V for Vendetta

Whenever Hollywood stoops to cash in
on discontent with movies such as Fight
Club, certain elements ofthe radical milieu
paralyze themselves in spectators' debates
about whether this can help breed and
mobilize opposition. Hollywood wouldn’t
make any money on these movies if they
didn't speak to something in people, but

2 Thanks Wikipedia!

the capitalist media won’t organize a revo-
lutionary struggle for us, either — there
are few less empowering activities than
sitting in collective isolation with your
fellow consumers watching your dreams
disfigured on a silver screen. It’s pointless
to debate the revolutionary potential of
corporate depictions of resistance — the
important question is what we do to take
advantage of whatever op-
portunities our foes give us
to organize ourselves.

When Hollywood re-
leased its adaptation of Alan
Moore’s comic book V for
Vendetta, a small network
of anarchists set out to seize
that opportunity. In the book,
a masked insurrectionary
anarchist, “V,” takes on a
fascist government and in-
spires an anarchist revolution. The movie
dispensed with the explicit anarchism and
much of Moore's finesse, but retained the
essential storyline of a lone genius strug-
gling to topple a totalitarian regime. In
the current climate of intensifying state
repression, this plot could be expected
to draw people with a bone to pick with
those in authority.

As moviegoers exited Manhattan theat-
ers on opening weekend, they were met by
“V” — an individual in a tall hat, smiling Guy
Fawkes mask, black clothes, big belt, cloak,
and daggers — who handed them anarchist
propaganda complete with panels from the
graphic novel. Throughoutthe city, posters
for the movie were decorated with word
balloons declaring “V For Vendetta? A For

Page 100 : Reviews : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : Reviews : Page 101

Anarchy!" The handouts were posted on-
line along with tactical tips for distributing
them, so others could try this approach in
their own communities.

In cooperation with Spanish anarchists
who had initiated their own campaign,
the “A for Anarchy” group went on to
coordinate an international day of action
timed to coincide with the release of the
film overseas. This happened to be tax
day, providing a point of departure for
street theater in downtown New York City.
These and other actions received corporate
media coverage; one participant spoke
about anarchism fortwenty minutes on a
Canadian radio station. Inspired by their
experiences, some participants took to
staying in costume on subways and buses
to provoke further discussions.

If the review section of every anarchist
periodical was full of stories like this one,
we might stand a chance of getting the
anarchist alternative out there as the pri-
mary opposition to capitalism. This kind of
engagement with mainstream culture will
get us a lot farther than reviews of other
anarchist projects, which degenerate all too
often into insular bickering. The latter are
important insofar as they sustain today's
anarchist community, but we have to be
thinking a lot bigger than that if we’re go-
ing to save the world.

For further information on this par-
ticular project, visitwww.aforanarchy.com.
Moore’s book is also worth reading, or at
least passing on to your nephews.

The New World

At the most simplistic level this is a retelling
of the Pocahontas legend, though loosely
followed to such a degree that the female
lead is never called Pocahontas or by any
other name. But the film is not plot driven,
and though there is a plot to follow, the
focus of the movie is on the characters and
the ways they interact with circumstance.
It is a movie about loss, decay, and death,
and also of course about life
and birth — and perhaps most
of all about the ambivalence
of the natural world towards
all of these things.

Director Terrence Mal-
ick’s films ( Badlands , Days of
Heaven, The Thin Red Line) are
genuinely unlike those of any
other filmmaker, and this is
especially true in regards to the
movies that played alongside
this one at your local multiplex.

With each film he gets closerto rendering his
vision, deftly defying genres and the tradi-
tional expectations of feature films.

The story-telling skips from moment
to moment, not always showing the path
from a to b. It shows the tiny details, nearly
always disconnected from the linear events
that would proceed or follow, as if to say,
the procedure is not important: this, here, is
what happens, and here, it is happening. The
films begs you to meditate on what you
are seeing, to fit what you see into your

life and your world, to see how its beauty
and horror reflect on your own. Malick
desperately wants you to consider the film
as an indistinguishable part of everything
else. He tries valiantly to get out of the way
of his movie; he wants the movie to tell
itself as truly as possible, and to shape it
himself as little as possible.

For this film, Malick and cinematog-
rapher Emmanuel Lubezki shot over one
million feet of film, ofwhich 12,000 made
it into the final cut — just
oven%. I would guess that
Malick’s style of filmmaking
is to get all of the elements
assembled, throw them to-
gether, and film everything,
using the editing process to
create the narrative and to
take advantage of every hap-
py accident and unplanned
synergy. A story from the
set supports this: during a
scene between two of the
leads, a grasshopper leapt into frame and
Malick told the actors to forget about the
scene, directing the female lead to chase
the grasshopper around while the hand-
held camera followed her until the film
ran out. The grasshopper chase made it
into the final cut.

As in The Thin Red Line, the natural world
is a major character and the film constantly
reminds us of the setting of all the events
with magnificent, flowing shots ofthe land
and equally rigid and arranged shots ofthe
English capital and royal gardens.

Malick does not hide behind irony or
use unnecessary cleverness to appear
more unique than he is — this film is not
about unique ideas, but primal ones. As
with any great truths, elemental notions
about life cannot be narrated or dictated
but only evoked, as with a poem.

We anarchists tend to analyze failure,
sadness, and dysfunction as symptoms
and look for solutions as well as places
to lay blame — someone needs to do that,
right? — but this movie is best viewed with-
out that political eye. The loss here is not a
political loss, but the inevitable loss of life.
At the end, when the protagonist says to the
mutineer during a sober and sad reunion,
“Did you find your Indies, John? You shall,”
and he replies, “I may have sailed past
them,” we know what he does not — that
there was no other way for it to be.

Fill in the blanks according to your infighting needs.
Guaranteed to provoke endless sectarian bickering
wherever applied! Not for use with mutual aid, constructive
criticism, or intelligent debate. Keep out of reach of those
freshly exposed to anarchism. For best results, apply in
conjunction with extended internet use.

AdLib
Polemic

Once again, another (1) from (2). Will these (3) s(4)

ever cease spewing their brainless endorsements of _

_(6), but that doesn’t justify their descent into total
_(8) with (9), deviously misrepresenting the case for

(5)? Perhaps

(7). As usual, they equate

_(io). But from (11) to

(12), we’ve seen that all who espouse (13) end up (14). Those who deny the centrality of

(15) will always end up serving the enemies of (16); any intelligent (17) must concede that

there is no (18) but the (19) (18, again).

Instead of learning from their mistakes and profiting from the criticism of those more intelligent
than them, these misguided s(2o) persist in (21). How any principled (22) could still con-
sider them to be part of the (22, again) milieu in the first place is inexplicable.

(23) and (24) will never change the world, and neither will (25) s(26). The kind of

(27) professed by (2, again) only alienates (28). As (29) once said, only a (30) made

up of (31) (32) can possess the (33) (34) necessary for the triumph of (35).

ALL (36) TO THE (37)! (38) (39)! FOR (16, again) AND (10, again)!

1. Project or undertaking

2. Adversary of choice

3. Synonym for “privileged”

4. Invented category (e.g., “lifestyle anarchists,”
“organizationalists”)

5. Noun with “ism” fastened incongruously on the end

6. Statement of obvious fact

7. Deplorable or untenable philosophical position

8. Worthwhile activity

9. Indefensible activity

10. Ideological position ending in “ism”

11. Distant historical event or era

12. Recent historical event, identified only by the name of
the city in which it took place

13. Invented creed (referring back to “4,” above)

14. Gerund signifying unconscionable lifestyle choice (e.g.,
“working on Wall Street”)

15. One aspect of current human relations (e.g., “the
market,” “gender”)

16. Abstraction guaranteed to receive applause

17. Synonym for “person”

18. Synonym for “struggle”

19. Adjective relating to “15,” above (e.g., “economic,”
“sexual”)

20. Insulting noun

21. Gerund phrase signifying particularly barbarous and
stupid behavior (e.g., “running with scissors,” “conflating
Marx’s critique of capital with Hegel’s phenomenology of
the spirit”)

22. Noun ending in “ist,” signifying a believer in one’s faith
of choice

23. Embarrassing activity

24. Pointless activity

25. Insulting adjective

26. Insulting noun

27. Synonym for “nonsense”

28. Social demographic one glorifies above all others

29. Man whose analytical writings or military deeds are
more widely known than his sexism and pomposity

30. Synonym for “army”

31. Adjective denoting the quality one most prefers in one’s
followers or employees

32. Member of “28,” above

33. Adjective sure to be incomprehensible to readers (e.g.,
“ontological”)

34. Synonym for “force”

35. Some group, doctrine, or state of affairs that, should
it gain ascendancy, will sow misery for generations to
come (e.g., “communism,” “wild nature”)

36. Noun denoting something one wants all for oneself
(e.g., “power”)

37. Front group or abstraction representing oneself

38. Imperative verb associated with violence (e.g., “smash,”
“destroy,” “abolish”)

39. Abstraction with negative associations

Overleaf: A poster design, ready to be
copied and pasted around your town! Just
follow the instructions on the poster itself.

Page 102 : Reviews : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : And . . . : Page 103

POLICE

OFFICER:

IT IS YOUR
JOB TO STOP
PEOPLE FROM
PUTTING UP
POSTERS
SAYING
WHATEVER
THEY WANT

CAN YOUZ

You can post your own messages with paper and wallpaper paste!

Freedom of speech — it’s up to you, America! Mcrimethinc. '""l&r* www.crimethinc.com

I

HE ■

• » * • .

• * * •* •*»**
*»*•«*

• * *

\

I

\

/>.

• /

• •

\7 \ :

i ;

- - \ ' '

•• \ •• i

/ V. The Astrologer

\

\

From the first years of his childhood,
his attention is drawn upward (o the sky.
When night falls and the otherVoungsters
drop off to sleep or become crablm he sits,

adul

staring into the stars for hours; adults who
look closely at these times see two bright
stars reflected in his eyes.

Growing into adolescence, he learns the,
names of all the constellations, studies cur-
rent theories about galaxies and meteorites
and the life cycles of suns. He goes camping
in the hills to see showers of shooting stars
professors predict; he persuades his parents
to take him to visit observatories on his sum-
mer vacations. His mother and father, simple
working people, are encouraging, and for his
thirteenth birthday, a friend of the family
gives him a rudimentary telescope.

Soon he is the most promising of a new
generation of amateur astronomers. Every
night, he is out scrutinizing the heavens
through squinting eyes, filling notebooks
with observations and interpretations. He
writes to professionals in the field, and
attracts attention for his precocious skill.
Institutions pay travel fare for him to present
his research at their junior symposiums. Eve-
ryone is excited about the career that awaits
him: he will be the first of his family to leave
the village and enter academia.

fl

But a sudden change occurs when he
reaches the threshold of adulthood: without
warning, his interests shift dramatically to
the occult. Within weeks, he has practically
abandoned astronomy for its anachronistic,
universally derided predecessor, astrology.
This new passion cuts through everything he
had made of his life, it consumes him like as-
tronomy never did. His teachers, his parents,
and their friends gnash their teeth in frustra-
tion, beg him not to throw his life away for
superstition and hocus pocus, but he is deaf
to their disapproval. And so he grows up to be
a minor figure in this small and obscure field,
rather than the celebrated and successful sci-
entist he was to become. His mother shakes
her head sadly whenever she hears news of
the schoolmates who pursued the calling in
which he should have eclipsed them.

Years later, in the death camps, the stars
these astronomers studied so scientifically
look down upon their plight in silence; gaz-
ing up, the learned men see nothing above
but the smoke of their murdered colleagues,
hanging like a guillotine’s blade over them
all. But the astrologer, using the arcane arts
he has mastered and remembers, tells the
fortunes of each fellow inmate every morn-
ing, giving them futures to live for when all
hope seems gone.

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : And . . . : Page 105a

On April Fool's Day, 2006, we announced the third printing of our free
anarchist primer Fighting For Our Lives. This printing of 150,000 brought
the total print run of that pamphlet to 500,000 copies, the target we’d set
for the project three and a half years earlier. Some of us took advantage
of the occasion to compile a review of the activity that had taken place
under the Crimethlnc. moniker in the preceding decade.

That report is reproduced here in its entirety in hope of inspiring or
outraging others into ambitious activity of their own. As an account-
ing, it is necessarily incomplete; it only covers the most obvious and
quantifiable activities that could be discerned from the vantage point
of the Crimethlnc. Far East distribution hub. All the same, it may help
to establish the scope of what has been accomplished and of what yet
remains to be done.

r, Issue-Three, Summer 2006 ^And

Crimethlnc. Far East
Mailorder Catalog

Recipes for Disaster: An Anarchist Cookbook

A 624-page handbook for do-it-yourself subversive activi-
ty, illustrated with photographs, technical diagrams,
and firsthand accounts. The sixty-two recipes
run the gamut from Affinity Croups to
Wheatpasting, stopping along the way
at topics as disparate as Hitch-
hiking, Sabotage, Behavioral
Cutups, and Supporting
Survivors of Domes-
tic Violence.

ish band
of all time. Fea-
tures sworn enemies
of Catharsis. $9

The Spectacle “Rope or Guillotine”

CD — This album picks up where Catharsis,
His Hero Is Gone, early Gehenna, and God-
speed, You Black Emperor! left off. $10

Zegota “Reclaim!” CD — The third wide-
ranging full-length album from these expatri-
ate artistic geniuses. $8

Face Down In Shit “Passing Times” CD —

These tortured maniacs twist the punk and
stoner rock traditions into something some-
how at once ugly and beautiful. $10

Sandman “The Long Walk Home” CD —

Chris Sand plays achingly personal country
folk music, sweet and pure and simple. $6

Countdown to Putsch “Interventions in
Hegemony” double CD — C-to-P blends punk
rock, free jazz, and radical theater to create
one ofthe most daring experimental works to
come out ofthe do-it-yourself milieu. $10

Blacken the Skies CD — This was Stef’s
band between Catharsis and Requiem; imag-
ine early Zegota as a d-beat crust band. $9

Zegota “Namaste” CD — Seventy-one min-
utes of improvisation, medley, and soul.
Many still consider this the defining Zegota
recording. $10

Catharsis “Passion” CD — Even seven years
after it was recorded, what can be said about
this album? We hoped it would destroy the
world and remake it utterly, and for some,
it almost did. $10

Prices include postage.

Crimethlnc. Far East
P.O. 80x73998
Salem, OR 9730 7 USA

www.crimethinc.com

Rolling Thunder #2,
winter 2006: The preced-
ing issue of this magazine
featured an extensive critique of
dropping out as revolutionary strategy,
coverage of last summer’s protests against
the G8 in Scotland and mountaintop removal
in West Virginia, a retrospective on squatting
in northern Europe, and a couple heartrend-
ing works of fiction. $5

Rolling Thunder #1, summer 2005: Our

first issue included a massive analysis ofthe
past decade ofdirect action at demonstrations,
feature articles on consent in sexual relation-
ships and alternative conceptions of education,
and testimonials from maniacs who squatted
their own workplaces and set themselves on
fire while fighting police, inter alia. $5

Crimethlnc. Guerilla Film Series, Vol.

One — Our first DVD release features two discs
loaded with some ofthe best films in modern
anarchist filmmaking: three feature-length
documentaries ( Pickaxe , Breakingthe Spell, and
The Miami Model) and five short films (three
documenting various thinktank experiments
and two Crimethlnc. essays brought to life by
SubMedia). New commentary tracks recorded
by the filmmakers are included for the films
Pickaxe, Breakingthe Spell, and Auto-Revision.
(312 Minutes). $10

Days ofWar, Nights of Love: Crimethink
for Beginners — Yourticket to a world free of
charge: the famous invitation to the adventure
of overthrowing capitalism, hierarchy, and
everything else, by turns wild-eyed, romantic,
and prophetic. $8

Evasion — The controversial chronicle ofone
boy’s saga of willful unemployment, crime,
and vagrancy. $6

Off the Map — A punk rock vision quest in
the form of a travel narrative, detailing the

Crimethlnc.

Shareholder

Report

exploits oftwo women squatting, hitchhiking,
and dreaming their way across Europe. $3

Rusty String Quartet — Raegan Butcher’s
new collection, several hundred poems long,
chronicling the first few months following
his release. $10

Stone Hotel — Raegan Butcher’s poems
from prison: straightforward, harrowing,
and sometimes uplifting. $10

Requiem “Storm Heaven” CD — In nine
songs ranging from mournful, muted beauty
to operatic hardcore punk to the apocalyptic
marching drums of street rioting, they pit raw
fury and yearning against everything ugly in
a desperate bid to rescue punk rock from its
own inertia — not to mention the rest of us
from ours. $10

The Spectacle “I, Fail” CD — This is the
brand newrecordingfromthe Norwegian band
we consider to be the best playing hardcore
today. It's slower, darker, and even more care-
fully refined than “Rope or Guillotine.” $io

Zegota 7” — Two new songs from the long-
running flagship band of eclectic and ideal-
istic hardcore punk: an unabashed street
protest anthem entitled “Anarchist Cheer-
leader Song,” and a spine-tingling cover of
the traditional spiritual “Sinner Man” a la
Nina Simone. $4

Umlaut “Total Disfuckingcography” CD —

38 songs and 80 pages of depraved terrorist
punk rock and propaganda from the most

Page 106 : And . . . : Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006

A Mediocre Record

As of April l, 2006, to our knowledge,
Crimethlnc. operatives produced, distrib-
uted, and/or organized:

Free Material

-500,000 copies of the free pamphlet Fight-
ing For Our Lives

-5 issues of the free paper Harbinger at up
to 100,000 copies each
-at least 6 other free newspapers at up to

35.000 copies each

-at least 3 newsprint booklets at up to

40.000 copies each

-at least 4 23”xi5” double-sided newsprint
posters at up to 75,000 copies each
-at least 6 n”xi7” printed posters at 5000
copies each

-at least 10,000 photocopies each of
the ’zine versions of Off the Map and
Evasion

-countless copies of innumerable other
‘zines and posters, almost all at the
expense of corporate franchises
-an unknown number of cassettes and
burned CDs and DVDs
-at least 500,000 stickers for anti-corporate
vandalism

Commodities

-at least 10 books totaling over 100,000
copies, ranging from a children's book
to a tactical direct action manual
-2 issues of the journal Rolling Thunder at
3000 copies each

-the final 7 issues of the magazine Inside
Front, each with an accompanying CD
or vinyl record, at 3000 copies each
-at least 30 CD or vinyl music releases at
up to 5000 copies each for bands from
three continents; some of these bands
have toured those continents extensively,
distributing literature in the process and
sometimes offering workshops
-at least 1 videocassette and 1 two-disc
DVD (the latter compiling several films
previously released individually) at 1500
and 2000 copies, respectively

Outreach and Engagement

-at least 12 multimedia tours, in which
over 75 people participated
-4 national convergences, the last of which
attracted approximately 200 partici-
pants (and at least 1 FBI infiltrator,
whom we count neither as a participant
nor as a human being)

-an unknown number of festivals, speak-
ing engagements, gatherings, pres-
entations, workshops, guerrilla “book
signings," and other events
-involvement in several nationwide cam-
paigns, including the protests against
the Iraq war and the FTAA agreements,
as well as the “Don’t Just Vote, Get Ac-
tive” campaign that culminated during
the 2004 elections; ELF actions were
also claimed by Crimethlnc. splinter
groups, though no other Crimethlnc.
operatives have had knowledge of or
involvement in these actions

Accessibility

-at least 10 websites, the most widely used of
which received at least 2 million unique
visitors; of the 25 posters, pamphlets,
and papers available on it as of this re-
port, the most frequently accessed was
downloaded over 150,000 times
-corporate coverage from the San Francisco
Bay Guardian to Newsweek, despite
a policy of non-cooperation with the
capitalist media (granted, this coverage
dealt with the supposed threats Crime-
thlnc. poses to civil society as often as
it focused on specific projects)
-contributions to countless other inde-
pendent media projects; in the punk
underground, for example, this included
pull-out sections in Slug and Lettuce
and Profane Existence and a column
that appears regularly in Maximum
Rock’n’Roll for 6 years running
-Crimethlnc. material appeared in at least
12 languages, either as new material or
in translation; Harbinger alone has ap-
peared in German-, Portuguese-, and
Spanish-language versions, each in a
print run of thousands and the last of
those being a collaboration between
groups spread across three continents
-Crimethlnc. material has been stocked
by well over 150 US libraries and used,
ironically enough, in countless high
school and college courses

This is what you call mass produc-
tion; some of these figures really put the
“Inc.” in Crimethlnc. An economist might
say that by distributing our wares free of
charge or for the production costs alone
and operating with a highly motivated
staff that works entirely without pay, we
are breaking new ground in free market

competition. Ironically, we oppose mass
production, economists, markets, and
competition — but we’re not interested in
simply keeping our hands clean.

Nor are we interested in personal gain.
To this day, no participant in any of these
projects has received a dime for his or her
efforts'. Everything that can possibly be dis-
tributed for free is, and all proceeds from
sales go immediately into further projects.
All our projects are either funded by their
own sales, the sales of other projects,
criminal activity, or donations 2 . This is a
stark contrast to radical publishers who
must give away much of the press runs of
magazines they hoped to sell, not to men-
tion miserly communist splinter groups
that sell even their outreach material.

We do almost all our own distribu-
tion, working out of a few main hubs and
a scattering of other nerve centers; this
enables us to make sure that our material
is always available through independent
channels before we use corporate and
institutional means to get it to those who
might not otherwise see it 3 . We produce
everything without barcodes, regarding
them as a noxious concession to the cor-
porate market 4 .

The limited accounting above, of
course, leaves out the best endeavors,
the unique and irreproducible ones. I recall
a letter from a young person in a small
town in the Midwest, reporting on the
activities ofthe local Crimethlnc. cell over

1 That Reagan Butcher, whose poetry first ap-
peared in the Crimethlnc. Letters series while he
was in prison, has received $253 in royalties (as
documented in his poem “My Publishers") — hardly
enough to ease the difficult transition from incar-
ceration to wage slavery, we fear — simply identifies
him as a fellow traveler who contributes to projects
without actually acting as part ofthe collective.
This should be clear anyway, as he writes under
his own name.

2 Rumors that Crimethlnc. is financed by trust
funds or foreign governments are malicious fab-
rications.

3 Forthe record, Wal-Mart has Crimethlnc. books
on their website not because they stock them but
because they list as “available” all books they
can order through corporate distributors. After
initially balking at working with such distributors,
we eventually had to compromise so that libraries
that do not work with independent distributors
could obtain our books.

4 Approximately 5% of our books have been sold
with barcode stickers on them, to make things
easier for distributors, such as AK Press, who
have requested this.

ViUHVVtS, Vi

the preceding months: these included
distributing free pirated CDRs of Rage
Against the Machine and Ani DiFranco
to middle school students and pushing
over a bike cop (and getting away with
it!). Likewise, the “workshop” atthe Youth
Liberation conference in Florida at the end
of 2000 that ended in the participants
dancing naked around a fire in the rain,
while remembered by many as a high water
mark of excitement and transformation,
remains invisible to history.

These are just the projects that have
taken place underthe Crimethlnc. moniker,
not to speak of all the other activities of
those who have sometimes participated
in these. Everything described here has
been achieved in collaboration with count-
less other groups and individuals — to be
precise, it is all the result of the collabo-
ration of various groups and individuals,
sometimes underthe Crimethlnc. name
and sometimes not. Some have accused
Crimethlnc. of being elitist or alienating,
but it is precisely the radically participatory
and decentralized aspects of the Crime-
thlnc. experiment that have enabled it to
be this far-reaching.

This is not to say there is no room for
improvement — far from it! But this record
should satisfactorily refute the charges of
certain ideologues that informal networks
and autonomous cells are incapable of sus-
tained, effective activity. Whatever anyone
might say against decentralization and
voluntary association, they work for us.
Likewise, our work over the past decade
attests to the tremendous power individu-
als can discover in themselves and their
communities when they extract even a part
of their lives from the machinery of capital-

ism to invest in the liberation struggle. You
can accuse us ex-workers of many things,
but idleness is not one of them.

Abject Failure

All this productivity and activity, of
course, indicates only one thing: the cata-
clysmic defeat of the Crimethlnc. project
thus far. We set out to raze Western civiliza-
tion to the ground, and stocked its librar-
ies instead. We began as iconoclasts, and
became icons. Our first forays into the
media were calculated to cast doubt upon
themselves as well as all other media (hence
the misattributed quotes, recontextualized
images, and vicious sarcasm); our more
recent mass-produced tracts unironically
adopt a tone of earnest proselytizing, as
if the ideas and skills thus conveyed could
somehow outweigh the negative effects
of mass production and mediated com-
munication. Starting out free of ideological
commitments, we eventually settled into
anarchism because it seemed the most free
of dogma, only to become a mainstay of that
milieu with all the usual responsibilities of
good citizenship. Our quixotic assault on
history has become a part of history — and
now here we are making it easier on the
biographers with a retrospective!

We have achieved moments of libera-
tion in which we leave behind the world
of hierarchy and powerlessness and de-
spair; these cannot be discounted. But
thus far, when the dust has cleared after
each such departure, the old order has
reestablished itself — and we have accrued
more inertia, slowly becoming a part of
the world we wish to destroy. Today, an
internet search for “Crimethlnc.” turns
up more results than “crimethink”: like so

many other organs of resistance, we run
the risk of supplanting the original object
of our struggle.

Of course, this is not necessarily forthe
worst. Destroying Crimethlnc. will be no
more difficult than destroyingthe capitalist
system that gave rise to it. The Crimethlnc.
vehicle — a memberless underground, a
front group for those opposed to front
groups but in need of anonymity — was
created to be abandoned, and none of us
is foolish enough to conflate this fabrica-
tion with the unique and amazing human
beings we all are in real life. Unfortunately,
as capitalism, hierarchy, and miserablist
indifference still hold sway across the world,
all no less noxious than Crimethlnc. itself,
we are not ready to set fire to our Frank-
enstein’s monster just yet. The perfect
murder-suicide, to extend the metaphor as
far as our reluctant pacifist hearts permit,
will require long and careful planning.

Besides, every numbskull announces
that “[fill in the blank] isn’t like the old
days!” as soon as he learns to talk. Black
Star North, an obscure and short-lived
splinter group that otherwise would prob-
ably never be mentioned again, once issued
a demand that Crimethlnc. disband — an
appeal akin to calling on Food Not Bombs
to quit serving, as if it was just a matter of
beseechingthe board ofdirectors to call the
whole thing off. That was at the beginning
of 2001, when we had accomplished so little
ofwhat lay before us! However disillusioned
we are with our own efforts, we are even
more disillusioned with disillusionment and
capitulation — strategies which, sad to tell,
have been tested over and over in radical
circles, always with the same effects. No,
we are not done yet — we have hardly com-

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Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : And . . . : Page 109

pleted the first phase of this experiment,
and distributing 500,000 papers is hardly
comparable to the full-scale revolutions in
which we hope to participate.

Going Through the
Motions

Resistance as a whole is an ebb and
flow of movements that replenishes itself
from the undifferentiated masses 5 through
the same processes by which Crimethlnc.
has been assimilated into today's anarchist
milieu. All who have thus far constituted
the Crimethlnc. experiment emerged from
this uncommitted mass; we have made our
ways to resistance individually or in small
groups, developing certain skills (and fail-
ingto develop others) in this process, even-
tually finding one another and establishing
common cause and reference points as
part of a broader social current.

Unfortunately, just as the masses from
which we appeared are characterized by
inertia, circles of resistance suffer from
inertia oftheir own. This symmetry does a
lot to explain the persistence of the status
quo: as long as a society is divided cleanly
into opposing camps, each rigid and pre-
dictable, it remains essentially static.

When contradictions deepen between
the lives people lead and the lives they
desire and believe to be possible, the result-
ingtremors dislodge new dissidents from

5 For the purposes of this analysis, the only com-
mon quality that unites this mass is the fact that
none of its constituents consider themselves to
be revolutionaries. This is precisely the formless,
infinite mass that certain organizers so ardently
wish to win over to the revolution; by definition,
this is impossible, for whenever an individual or
group joins the resistance they step forward out
of that mass. No wonder whenever one of those
organizers looks around a meeting, he fails to see
The People he believes to be the proper object of
his efforts.

the ranks ofthe complacent; transforming
themselves, they wash in waves into the
camps of resistance. The fundamental goal
of most Crimethlnc. projects, accordingly,
has not been to fortify one camp, but to
deepen the widespread contradictions that
give rise to social instability. One might
argue that it is not resistance movements
themselves that make social change so
much as it is contagious examples of trans-
formation; working from this proposition,
one might further hypothesize that those
actually in the midst oftransformation have
more to offer to the project of revolution
than partisans of revolution who have not
changed in thirty years. The former may
not have thought through all their politics
and tactics yet, but their inconsistency and
awkwardness are balanced out by flexibility,
momentum, and optimism, notto mention
the relationships they retain from their
former lives. Once their new identities as
radicals have crystallized, the roles they
play in social upheavals are likely to be less
and less dynamic: they can still fight, of
course, perhaps with increasing expertise,
but only from a fixed position 6 .

Hence the antagonism towards the
established radical milieu that character-
ized early Crimethlnc. projects: it was
the bravado of rebels savoring weightless
freedom while they still possessed it, know-
ing they were doomed to be isolated and
immobilized within that milieu eventually.
For good or ill, that phase is over now.
Crimethlnc. is a known quantity. The origi-
nal vague inclinations towards liberation
have solidified into a concrete program,
and in the process much that was muddled

6 Earth First! is one of many radical institutions that
began as unique, if problematic, manifestations of
discontent only to be slowly absorbed into a more
homogeneous culture of resistance.

or just plain juvenile has been dispensed
with — but from this point on, Crimethlnc.
must do without all advantages save those
of perseverance and pervasiveness, or else
somehow defy the chains of causality to
wrest free from history and repeat the proc-
ess of development all over again.

This is one of our hard-won lessons: in
order that resistance remain diverse and
organic, upstart dissidents should preserve
as long as possible all that is autonomous
and anomalous about their revolts. When-
ever a new dissident individual, group, or
tendency appears, established radicals rush
to engage them in dialogue; in the course of
this dialogue, however contentious it may
be, the reference points of the neophytes
shift slowly towards those ofthe old guard
and away from those of the rest of the
population. Those who desire to resist
being quarantined in the existing radical
milieu should be sure that the bulk oftheir
dialogue takes place with others who do not
yet have rigid political commitments.

Above all, it is necessary to pick the
right enemies. One's enemies determine
one’s actions more decisively than any
other factor, and there are always petulant
radicals ready to incapacitate others by
locking them in irrelevant debates. Those
who wish to keep their hands free for the
struggles that really matter must learn
when to protect themselves by refusing to
defend themselves, just as they must learn
to benefit from criticism even when it is
not intended constructively. Crimethlnc.
exists to engage capitalism in a fight to the
death, notto battle it out with other radical
splinter groups in a war of attrition.

We have learned to keep the radical
community behind us, as it were, to draw
ideas and inspiration from it while facing
outward to the rest ofthe world. Experience

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ca

has shown that little constructive criticism
can be expected from ideologues with fixed
agendas — their critiques of Crimethlnc. ma-
terial, which almost always bypass content
to focus on reputation, show that they liter-
ally cannot read — but it is still of paramount
importance to learn from and coordinate
with others, and to collaborate whenever
possible. Even the most entrenched can
create unpredictable situations by joining
forces with unlikely allies.

Low Points

Among other things, Crimethlnc. has
been an experiment in structure. In adapt-
ingthe decentralized, radically participatory
approach of Food Not Bombs and the
Earth Liberation Front to the project of
propaganda outreach, we have attempted
to put whatever notoriety we win for our-
selves at the disposal of all. The objections
oftraditionalists that this approach could
not provide enough control over who acts
as Crimethlnc. have not been borne out
by reality: neither fascists nor communists
nor liberals have attempted to hijack the
Crimethlnc. bullet mid-trajectory 7 .

On the contrary, while thousands have
associated themselves with the Crimethlnc.
banner, comparatively few have taken own-
ership of it to the point of carrying on long-
term activity beneath it. To some extent,
we are victims ofthe success of a few well-
known Crimethlnc. nuclei, whose efforts
have raised the bar so high as to obscure
the efforts of other Crimethlnc. cells and
the possibility of more such efforts. While
our decentralized structure and emphasis
on anonymous participation have served
to protect participants from the various
hazards of celebrity, they have not sufficed
to collectivize Crimethlnc. entirely. This
should not come as a surprise: it is not an
insignia that enables people to do things,
but access to resources, experience to draw
upon, and above all the feeling that one is
entitled to act. Until the more established
Crimethlnc. cells are able to do more to
extend these resources to others, it will be
optimistic to expect anything different.

So, like most other revolutionaries to
date, we have failed to decentralize power

7 Perhaps those who are still concerned about
this issue should suspend their notions about
intellectual property long enough to publish some-
thing as Crimethlnc. themselves, to show us the
error of our ways!

within our own ranks as well as within
society at large. Fortunately, unlike the
Bolsheviks afterthe Russian Revolution, we
hardly have a monopoly on power — most
of the power in this society is still in the
hands of capitalists and, less obviously,
the dutiful citizens who serve them. Our
strategy is not to seize that power ou rselves
in naive hope of redistributing it, but to
share tactics by which others can seize it
themselves. Whatever we're doing wrong,
others can do better.

And now (drum roll, please), the single
greatest shortcoming of all our efforts thus
far. No, it hasn’t been our contention that
those who can should experiment with con-
frontational unemployment as a means to
focus on revolutionary struggle — seriously,
would it have been better if we’d spent all
these years working/orthe man? Nor has
it been our failure to address the needs of
“the” working class: those who desire a
monopoly on the political organizing of
working people would hardly waste so
much bile on us if our efforts were of no
interest to their target audience.

Far worse: all too often, we've failed
to follow up our outreach efforts with
concrete opportunities for people to con-
nect with one another. Of the scores who
have traveled to various Crimethlnc. ad-
dresses hoping to join a standing army
of revolutionaries, of the thousands who
have written letters to those addresses
beseeching the recipients to direct them
to radical communities in which to take
control of their lives, few have received
more than words of encouragement for
their pains; our resources were stretched
thin enough as it was just collating stolen
photocopies. Nobody can save anyone the
trouble of developing initiative and expe-
rience for herself or himself; but people
develop their abilities in communities,
and more often than not we have failed to
bring people together so this could take
place. Whenever we have been able to do
so, the results have been explosive; this
makes all these missed opportunities all
the more tragic.

We have counted on anarchist com-
munities at large to be available to those
who are inspired by our projects, but all
too often this has not been the case. The
focus on lifestyle as an end in itself among
passive consumers of Crimethlnc. litera-
ture, which has maddened its authors as

well as their critics, has probably stemmed
from this dearth of other points of de-
parture. This is the great failure of the
past ten years, the one that has perhaps
made the difference between agitation
and insurrection. Simply publishing and
agitating is not enough; those of us who
are already active need to put more energy
into fostering networks and keeping them
accessible to new participants. This must
be an even higher priority than propaganda
and outreach if the latter are to be of any
use — that is to say, if the efforts ofthe next
ten years are to produce different results
than those of the past ten.

The Anti-Climax

Overthe past decade, Crimethlnc. has at
some points been literally one person alone,
abandoned by all, desperately struggling
to crack the code for collective liberation
before starving to death — and at other
times, a crack team of seasoned comrades
maintaining long-term projects, a crowd
of hundreds suddenly erupting into the
street, a vibrant international network of
thousands. If anything, we have learned the
value of dreaming big, of patiently maintain-
ing our spirits through difficult periods and
going all out when the time is right.

We still have some tricks up our
sleeve — perhaps we've lost the element
of surprise, but we never thought we’d
live to see the opportunities we have now.
Even so, we won’t be the ones to win this
struggle. The weapons we’re fighting with
cannot win it. 500,000 unique anarchist
projects could pose a real threat; the fact
that we have to make 500,000 identical
copies of a single one is an admission of
defeat, albeit an optimistic one. The only
real value Crimethlnc. can have is as a
challenge to provoke others into more
ambitious revolutionary action. This is
our plea to you, if you care one whit for
liberation, whether or not you've ever been
fond of any of our projects: put everything
we’ve done to shame. Don’t waste your
breath criticizing our efforts — there's work
to be done. Demonstrate approaches that
work better than the ones we've employed,
and we’ll gladly take them up.

Perhaps it is necessary to put all this
in plainer language for those who are still
reading as spectators and critics rather
than comrades-in-arms. So if you please,
dear friends:

Rolling Thunder, Issue Three, Summer 2006 : And . . . : Page 111

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