Following up on our J20 Protest Simulator, we raided the archives to find earlier examples of protest simulations. We found one from the 1960s, depicting the occupation of Columbia University in April 1968 at the high point of the anti-war and Black liberation movements. On the 50-year anniversary of its publication in the Columbia Spectator, we put this game at your disposal.
The occupation of Columbia University was a major flashpoint of the struggles that defined the 1960s. The two issues at the center of the conflict remain timely today: university-driven gentrification in predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods and the complicity of the educational system in US military intervention overseas. Inside this upheaval, multiple movemen... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) A year has passed since the uprising that threatened the government of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua—a largely left uprising against a nominally socialist government. Today, as the US government seeks to promote a civil war in Venezuela in order to expand its sphere of political and economic interests, the questions raised by the Nicaraguan insurrection are more pressing than ever. What should people do who oppose both Maduro’s authoritarian version of socialism and Guaidó’s authoritarian version of democracy? Does “anti-imperialism” just mean supporting governments connected to rival empires like Russia and China? What about the Sandinistas, feminists, indigenous peoples, environmentalists, students, and c... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Two weeks ago, we published a report from the uprising in Nicaragua that began in April. Since then, the situation has only intensified. Here is an update from our comrades in Nicaragua, describing the most recent developments and the stakes of the struggle. In Nicaragua, we see an uprising against the neoliberal policies of a “left” government in which a movement is attempting to resist right-wing cooptation in the absence of an established anarchist or autonomous movement. We are concerned about the prevalence of nationalist and rhetoric and imagery, but we believe that it is important to support revolts against authoritarian governments in order to generate dialogue that could open up a revolutionary horizon. Just as it will ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Dear Comrades,
Many months have passed since the beginning of the uprising in Belarus. The euphoria of August 2020 gradually turned into depression for some, but for many it became the basis for political organization against the dictatorship. And although the protests in the streets have so far disappeared and the dictator thinks he has won, daily resistance against the regime continues in Belarus. Neighborhood activists continue to hold one-off actions and organize themselves into small resistance cells. Telegram channels continue to push the revolutionary agenda.
Even though for the anarchists this repression is the most serious in all the years of the movement’s existence since its restoration in 1991, we continue to fight the... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) In early October, a wave of protests swept the streets of Ecuador against cuts in gasoline subsidies and, consequently, rising costs of living. This has become the country’s largest popular uprising in decades. Indigenous marches arrived in Quito, the capital, and occupied the Parliament building; thousands of protesters confronted President Lenín Moreno’s police forces, forcing the government to relocate its headquarters to try to escape the insurrection. Moreno is the successor to and former vice president of the leftist Rafael Correa, who rode to power on the momentum of the social movements of the 1990s and ruled the country from 2007 on, implementing the same neoliberal model for pacifying and co-opting social moveme... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) An ad hoc committee consisting of all the people at any given time who are having sex that either is broadening to their personal horizons, is socially prohibited, or takes place in a barely concealed public space. It often includes fresh young lovers, reckless life — artist types, and men and women of all ages entering into unexpected affairs; masturbating adolescents who live with their parents are always considered honorary members. Conquest-seeking “libertines” are excluded on principle, of course. Here is the V.S.R. manifesto, composed by Nadia C. in a library one night when she hadn’t made love for an agitating three days… or perhaps on a still Christmas morning after a night of passionate sex with a wom... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) At the close of 2016, Verso books published Revolutionary Yiddishland: A History Of Jewish Radicalism, by Alain Brossat and Sylvia Klingberg. Eager to learn more about Jewish radicalism of all stripes, one CrimethInc. agent sent away for a copy of this book. The results were surprising, as detailed in this full report to Verso.
Dear Verso Books,
I am sad to say that I recently received a defective book and I would like a full refund. The book I ordered was Revolutionary Yiddishland: A History Of Jewish Radicalism, but instead I received an incomplete version. It seems that any mention of anarchy, anarchism, anarchists, and even anarcho-communism has been left out completely from my copy. When looking in the index I found that my copy was... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) What I find sorely lacking in most of the discussions of veganism I encounter is any sense of economic context. Usually, the question of animal oppression is approached only in terms of compassion and prejudice: animals are exploited and destroyed, vegan activists would have us believe, simply because we see them as subhuman and are willing to abuse them in order to satisfy our greed.
I suspect that the problem runs much deeper than mere cruelty and avarice. Under capitalism, it’s not just animals that are exploited — it’s everyone and everything from farmlands and forests to farmhands and grocery clerks. The oppression of animals is just a little more obvious to us because it involves the murder of living things; but it&... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) People in the U.S. are preoccupied with voting to an unhealthy degree. This is not to say that everyone votes, or thinks voting is effective or worthwhile; on the contrary, a smaller and smaller proportion of the eligible population votes every election year, and that’s not just because more and more people are in prison. But when you broach the question of politics, of having a say in the way things are, voting is just about the only strategy anyone can think of—voting, and influencing others’ votes.
Could it be this is why so many people feel so disempowered? Is anonymously checking a box once a year, or every four years, enough to feel included in the political process, let alone play a role in it? But what is there be... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) “The future is already here,” Cyberpunk pioneer William Gibson once said; “it’s just not very evenly distributed.” Over the intervening decades, many people have repurposed that quote to suit their needs. Today, in that tradition, we might refine it thus: War is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed.
Never again will the battlefield be just state versus state; it hasn’t been for some time. Nor are we seeing simple conflicts that pit a state versus a unitary insurgent that aspires to statehood. Today’s wars feature belligerents of all shapes and sizes: states (allied and non-allied), religious zealots (with or without a state), local and expatriate insurgents, loyalists to f... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) On July 6, fascists attempted to hold a “Demand Free Speech”[1] rally in Washington, DC. Anarchists and DC Black Lives Matter mobilized in response. Although the massive police presence hampered what anti-fascists could do, the fascist rally was not a success, confirming that anti-fascists have largely succeeded in thwarting the street-level fascist movement that many feared would emerge in the Trump era. The question, now, is how we can employ the tactics we have popularized in the anti-fascist movement—black blocs, de-platforming, and investigative research—in other movements and contexts.
Here, we offer a short report from DC on how previous mobilizations in DC have informed the strategies they employ today and a... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) “The remaining noticeable characteristic of ‘Che’ is his filth. He hates to wash and will never do so. He is filthy, even by the rather low standard of cleanliness prevailing among the Castro forces in the Sierra Maestra. Once in a while, “Che” would take some of his men to a stream or pool, in order that they might wash. On those occasions “Che” would never wash either himself or his clothes, but would sit on the bank and watch the others. He is really outstandingly and spectacularly dirty.”
— slanderous description of Che Guevara from the 1958 C.I.A. dossier
Even in the most anti-establishment of underground circles, I’m amazed by how frequently I hear people complain about... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) “Coldsnap Legal—this line is not secure.”
Ever since the Seattle WTO protests, legal collectives have sought to counteract state repression by supporting participants in mass mobilizations. Even outside those contexts, legal workers can serve a valuable role wherever people face police harassment or arrest. Unfortunately, it’s notoriously hard to recruit people for legal support; it isn’t portrayed as sexy, it takes a lot of work, and many people wrongly fear that it requires special training.
The RNC legal effort started with a small group of determined people; most had no previous experience with legal work. Some had met at the poorly attended legal breakout session at the first pRe-NC, where they agreed ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) We Are All Very Anxious: Six Theses on Anxiety and Why It is Effectively Preventing Militancy, and One Possible Strategy for Overcoming It [1]
1: Each phase of capitalism has its own dominant reactive affect. [2]
Each phase of capitalism has a particular affect which holds it together. This is not a static situation. The prevalence of a particular dominant affect [3] is sustainable only until strategies of resistance able to break down this particular affect and /or its social sources are formulated. Hence, capitalism constantly comes into crisis and recomposes around newly dominant affects.
One aspect of every phase’s dominant affect is that it is a public secret, something that everyone knows, but nobody admits, or talks about.... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Landlords, property managers, real estate speculators, debt collectors, police and sheriffs, be warned—in this community, we defend each other. Home is not a private enclosure that separates us into tiny fiefdoms that can be divided and conquered one by one; it the collective solidarity that we build in the process of standing up for each other and intervening whenever we see harm being done.
The more each of us resists, the safer all of us will be.
The idea of a rent strike in response to the unemployment and economic crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic gained visibility in the United States when a longstanding anarchist housing collective in San Francisco, Station 40, announced that on March 16 that they would not be paying... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) After 12 years of fruitless searching, federal agents have captured Joseph Dibee, accused participant in the Earth Liberation Front. Dibee is charged with arson and conspiracy. The following statement from our collective, It’s Going Down, and a network of anti-fascist groups explores why his case matters today.
In the 1990s, environmentalists and animal rights activists engaged in campaigns to put a stop to climate change, animal exploitation, and the destruction of biodiversity. They shut down board meetings, interrupted construction projects, organized demonstrations and sit-ins, held public outreach events at punk shows and vegan potlucks, liberated animals from captivity, and occasionally utilized vandalism, sabotage, and arson a... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) A reflection on how to understand the anarchist project outside a post-Christian millenarian narrative of redemption.
“‘They are just ghosts, the ones who think people fight to win! They fight because they like it.’”
-And There Was Light, Autobiography of Jacques Lusseyran, blind hero of the French Resistance
It is not a question of whether we can win, but of how we wish to live.
I’ve participated in the anarchist movement for a quarter of a century. In the course of that time, I’ve seen us achieve inspiring victories against overwhelming odds. From local conflicts to international confrontations, we’ve forced the authorities to back down time and again, securing space in which to car... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Today, November 14, outgoing US President Barack Obama arrives in Greece. Speaking from both the United States and Greece, we call on every partisan of freedom to participate in the night demonstration called for Athens on November 15 / starts from Athens Polytechnic at 17.30 .
It is symbolic that Obama is visiting Greece on his farewell tour. The Balkans have served as a laboratory for neoliberalism and US military interventions since the late 20th century; Greece in particular has undergone a global experiment of crisis management and repression. As war draws closer and closer—Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, Turkey—the Balkans are expected to serve Europe and the US as a buffer zone while suffering the same abuse as the pe... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Supernatural Powers of Enjoyment
Not long after the convergence I went to a family function. Picture me in the pews at Catholic Mass, the priest wearing a robe straight out of the seventeenth century and quoting obscure theology as he holds forth on how to be a model of obedience to God’s will—and they say punk rockers’ subcultural baggage is alienating! A good part of the people present at this particular event are not Catholic or even Christian, but this one man is in control of the proceedings to such an extent that those of us who aren’t down with his program can’t even recognize each other. The paths that brought us here, the dreams and desires we carry with us, the relationships we might have with one ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) I’ve never liked the part of the story when the mentor figure dies and the young heroes say they aren’t ready to go it alone, that they still need her. I’ve never liked it because it felt clichéd and because I want to see intergenerational struggle better represented in fiction.
Today I don’t like that part of the story because… I don’t feel ready.
Last week, I lived in the same world as Ursula Le Guin, a grandmaster of science fiction who accepted awards by decrying capitalism and seemed, with every breath, to speak of the better worlds we can create. On Monday, January 22, 2018, she passed away. She was 88 years old and she knew it was coming, and of course my sorrow is for myself and my own l... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) During the inauguration of Donald Trump, police surrounded and arrested over 200 people in the vicinity of a confrontational march. Prosecutors brought identical felony charges against almost every single arrestee in one of the most dramatic escalations of state repression of the Trump era. For a year and a half, people around the United States mobilized to support the defendants and beat back this attempt to set a new precedent in repression. The J20 case was one of the most important court cases about the freedom to protest in modern US history. We present the full story here to equip readers for future struggles like it.
On January 20, 2017, tens of thousands of people gathered in Washington, DC to ring in the reign of Donald Trump with... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) A long-time anti-fascist was shot Friday night during a protest of alt-right racist and troll Milo Yiannopoulos, in the middle of a crowded square. The shooter, who later turned himself in, claiming self-defense, was released by UW police early Saturday morning. Somehow, this is barely newsworthy. Meanwhile, local news outlets condemn the violent protesters for throwing “potentially lethal” balloons filled with paint. This is our new reality.
It is somehow unremarkable and understandable for a protester to be shot, while it is beyond the pale for anyone to block the entrance to a fascist rally.
This should be extremely concerning to all people of good conscience.
Let us imagine, for a moment, that the tables had been ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Our forebears overthrew kings and dictators, but they didn’t abolish the institutions by which kings and dictators ruled: they democratized them. Yet whoever operates these institutions—whether it’s a king, a president, or an electorate—the experience on the receiving end is roughly the same. Laws, bureaucracy, and police came before democracy; they function the same way in a democracy as in a dictatorship. The only difference is that, because we can cast ballots about how they should be applied, we’re supposed to regard them as ours even when they’re used against us.
Democracy means police.
Democracy doesn’t just mean public participation in making decisions. It presumes that all power and legi... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) As the fires in the Amazon rainforest continue to burn, our comrades in Brazil have sent us this analysis of the causes of the catastrophe and how it should inform our vision of the future.
“I worry about whether the whites will resist. We have been resisting for 500 years.”
—Ailton Krenak
Living Dystopia
The scene is gloomy. On August 19, 2019, smoke covers cities across the state of São Paulo, turning day into night at 3 pm. The previous day, in Iceland, people organized the first funeral, complete with a gravestone and a minute of silence, for a glacier declared dead. The smoke that engulfed São Paulo is caused by forest fires in the Amazon Forest far away in the North of Brazil; the glacier h... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) A security culture is a set of customs shared by a community whose members may be targeted by the government, designed to minimize risk. Having a security culture in place saves everyone the trouble of having to work out safety measures over and over from scratch, and can help offset paranoia and panic in stressful situations—hell, it might keep you out of prison, too. The difference between protocol and culture is that culture becomes unconscious, instinctive, and thus effortless; once the safest possible behavior has become habitual for everyone in the circles in which you travel, you can spend less time and energy emphasizing the need for it, or suffering the consequences of not having it, or worrying about how much danger you&rsqu... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) “I’m committed to making sure the forces of peace and justice prevail,”Missouri Governor Jay Nixon said in Ferguson on Saturday, August 16, after a week of conflicts sparked by the police murder of teenager Michael Brown. “If we’re going to achieve justice, we first must have and maintain peace.”
Is that how it works—first you impose peace, then you achieve justice? And what does that mean, the forces of peace and justice? What kind of peace and justice are we talking about here?
As everyone knows, if it weren’t for the riots in Ferguson, most people would never have heard about the murder of Michael Brown. White police officers kill over a hundred black men every year without most of us hea... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Prepared as a contribution to In the Middle of a Whirlwind: 2008 Convention Protests, Movement and Movements, a project coordinated by Team Colors and published by The Journal of Esthetics and Protest
The Short Answer
If you plan to attend the demonstrations at the Democratic or Republican National Conventions, you should already know what you intend to accomplish there and how you will go about it. If, for example, you intend to blockade a street, you should already be in a committed affinity group, have picked out a location, and be hammering out the details. Things never go as planned, but preparation helps get things off on the right foot. If you haven’t done any of this yet, there’s still time, but get a move on—o... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) We’ve reached a breaking point. The murders of George Floyd—and Breona Taylor, Tony McDade, and the other Black people whose lives were ended by police just this month—are only the latest in a centuries-long string of tragedies. But in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the state is openly treating Black communities as a surplus population to be culled by the virus, the arrogance and senselessness of the murder carried out by Officer Derek Chauvin crossed a line. Supported by hundreds of thousands across the US and beyond, the people of Minneapolis have made it clear that this intolerable situation must end, no matter what it takes.
Since the Ferguson uprising of 2014, considerable attention has focused on racist ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Every campaign season, political parties publish platforms detailing their promises plank by plank. These platforms are not binding—politicians rarely fulfill their promises, and it’s often worse when they do—but they do offer an outline of the vision each party claims to represent. Anarchists take a different approach: rather than offering a prefabricated blueprint, we propose to work things out together, dynamically, according to the principles of self-determination, horizontality, mutual aid, and solidarity. Still, whenever people encounter anarchist ideas for the first time, there is a certain kind of person who always demands to see a clear template. In response, one of our contributors has put together an example of ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Over the past week, nearly 700 people have been rounded up in a wave of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sweeps across the US. In response, people have blockaded roads and ICE vans and organized massive demonstrations. But what would it take to stop the raids altogether?
The Assault
In some parts of the US, the ICE assault involved brutal militarized raids in which officers smashed windows and set off flashbang grenades inside residential homes. In other places, everything happened so quietly as to go virtually unnoticed: here a bureaucratic change in the status of a prisoner, there the transfer into indefinite detention of an arrestee who was about to be released.
The raids come on the heels of a set of executive orders from ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)