crimethinc

[crimethinc]

While police around the country are raiding campuses and brutalizing student protesters, the authorities are once again trotting out narratives about "outside agitators."

They do this whenever a movement gets out of their control. It is one of the most basic tactics in their playbook, and they employ it indiscriminately.

As we wrote in 2014, during the demonstrations in Ferguson in response to the murder of Michael Brown,

"Rhetoric about 'outside agitators' is a military operation intended to isolate and target an enemy: divide and conquer. The enemy that the authorities are aiming at is predominantly black and brown, but it is not just a specific social body; it is also an aspect of our humanity, a part of all of us. The ultimate goal of the police is not so much to brutalize and pacify specific individuals as it is to extract rebelliousness itself from the social fabric. They seek to externalize agitation, so anyone who stands up for herself will be seen as an outsider."

http://crimethinc.com/texts/agitators

[crimethinc]

Day One: University of Texas Austin Students Take the Lawn

https://crimethinc.com/UTApril24

On April 24, students, faculty, and community members assembled on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin to demonstrate against the complicity of the university administration in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Fearing a repeat of the upheavals that have taken place at Columbia University and elsewhere around the country, campus authorities mobilized a massive number of police in response. Yet despite arrests and violence, the demonstrators ultimately outlasted and outmaneuvered the police. In this report, participants describe what they learned.

[crimethinc]

Report from within the Cal Poly Humboldt Building Occupation

https://crimethinc.com/SiemensHall

On April 22, 2024, students at Cal Poly Humboldt campus in Arcata, California occupied a building in solidarity with Palestinians, precipitating a showdown with police from throughout the region. After a six-hour standoff, the police were compelled to withdraw from campus.

In this report, participants in the occupation describe what took place and what they learned.

[crimethinc]

Campus Building Occupations from 2008 to Today

https://crimethinc.com/BuildingOccupations

Last night, students acting in solidarity with those suffering in Gaza successfully occupied and defended a building at Cal Poly Humboldt campus in Arcata.

In hopes of equipping today's student demonstrators to experiment more, we present a history of the wave of campus building occupations that took place from December 2008 to 2010—written by participants in some of the first occupations of that era.

[crimethinc]

Today, with the encampments at universities around the US in our thoughts, we are mailing out copies of our zine "Why We Don't Make Demands" in the packages of books people order.

You can read the article online here:

https://crimethinc.com/demands

Over a hundred zines are freely available for printing in our zine library:

https://crimethinc.com/zines

[crimethinc]

“It Is an Honor to Be Suspended for Palestine”

Dispatches from the Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University

https://crimethinc.com/Columbia2024

In this in-depth report, participants offer a blow-by-blow account of the events at Columbia, appraising the tactics that the demonstrators have employed and the challenges that they face.

[crimethinc]

The students occupying Columbia University in solidarity with Gaza are tapping into a long history of resistance.

In April 1968, at the high point of the anti-war and Black liberation movements, students and their non-student comrades occupied Columbia. The notorious anarchist group Up Against the Wall Motherfucker—"a street gang with an analysis"—made their public debut during this pitched struggle.

You can read about it here, along with a protest strategy game based on the events, which some of the participants designed afterwards:

https://crimethinc.com/Columbia

[crimethinc]

Yesterday, Columbia University brought in New York police arrest over a hundred students who were occupying the campus in solidarity with Palestinians. In response, a much bigger wave of student demonstrators occupied the university. On the night of April 18-19, the encampment continued, stronger than ever.

You can follow updates from their Telegram channel here:

https://t.me/cuadencampment

Students—you can do this, too, wherever you are. The governments of the United States and Israel are not going to stop the genocide in Gaza unless we compel them to.

[crimethinc]

Today, people in Oakland, California, Eugene, Oregon, and Chicago, Illinois have blocked major highways. Demonstrators in Minnesota blockaded an Amazon facility. Others from Canada to Australia have shut down ports and other infrastructure.

These courageous actions in solidarity with Palestinians are just one step towards stopping the genocide in Gaza, where the Israeli military has slaughtered over 34,000 people, the majority of whom are women and children.

It's up to us to create a world without colonial violence of any kind.

https://crimethinc.com/GazaSolidarity

[crimethinc]

April 15 is Steal Something from Work Day!

https://crimethinc.com/StealfromWork2024

Every April, millions of workers around the world observe this day as a chance to settle accounts with those who are profiting off their labor.

For us, it represents an opportunity to reflect on why so many people steal from their workplaces and what it would take to create a world in which doing so would be unnecessary.

[crimethinc]

Several organizations are calling for actons in solidarity with people in Gaza on April 15 under the hashtag #Strike4Gaza.

This is a good time to recall how demonstrators shut down a Raytheon arms manufacturing facility last November. They mapped out all the entrances, confidentially arranged for dozens of people to block them all at the start of the workday, and then drew hundreds more to the protest through social media posts.

https://crimethinc.com/Raytheon

This is a reproducible model.

[crimethinc]

On April 12, 1918, the newly-formed Cheka raided 26 anarchist centers in Moscow, murdering dozens and arresting hundreds. The Bolsheviks aimed to consolidate power over the revolution, and the anarchists represented the most radical force within it.

The Bolshevik authorities used reactionary rhetoric to justify this attack, accusing the anarchists of being “bandits” and “criminals” for taking over property belonging to the ruling class and turning it into social centers and collective housing. The Bolsheviks were seeking alliances with the privileged classes: on the day of the raids, wealthy homeowners came along with the Cheka to recover their properties and abuse the arrested revolutionaries.

The Cheka began to execute arrestees without trials; they organized the Gulag system that devoured millions, the vast majority of them peasants and workers.

When the Bolsheviks usurped the Russian Revolution, it was a disaster for anti-capitalist movements everywhere.

https://crimethinc.com/Counterrevolution

[crimethinc]

Tremors in Turkey

How the Resistance of Wan Defeated Erdoğan Twice

https://crimethinc.com/Wan2024

In the city of Wan, in the part of Kurdistan ruled by Turkey, the Turkish state has repeatedly invalidated election results outright, installing its own representatives in positions of authority without any pretense of democracy.

They tried to do this once again in response to the municipal elections of March 31. In response, demonstrators flooded the streets, ultimately forcing the state to capitulate. In this report, a longtime participant in the Kurdistan liberation movement explains how the political dynamics in Turkey are shifting in the wake of the resistance in Wan.

[crimethinc]

As the Arizona Supreme Court takes steps towards completely criminalizing abortion, it is a mistake simply to count on electoral politics for the solution.

We need to foster grassroots means of abortion access—both to address the immediate needs of those impacted by this attack and also because it will be more difficult to keep abortion illegal if massive numbers of people nonetheless continue to access it.

http://crimethinc.com/DefendAbortionAccess

[crimethinc]

In 1997, our collective generated significant controversy with a text entitled "Washing and Brainwashing," in which we responded to the arguments that Mary Douglas set forth in her landmark work "Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo."

For nearly three decades, our critics have systematically misrepresented this essay in order to smear anarchism as something "dirty." At last, we have revisited the topic, preparing a polemic that is sure to put an end to the controversy once and for all:

https://crimethinc.com/illumination

[crimethinc]

To build up momentum towards May Day, or else to put it in the context of a century and a half of struggles, you could distribute our zine "The May Days: Stories of Courage and Resistance":

https://crimethinc.com/zines/the-may-days

Just one of more than 130 zines ready to print from our online zine library! 🏴

[crimethinc]

On March 18, 1871, at the end of a disastrous war with Germany, Parisians drove the French government from the city and embarked on an ambitious social experiment in women’s liberation, workers’ self-management, and public education. Afterwards, this became known as the Paris Commune.

https://crimethinc.com/arch18

In this narrative, we present the experience of the anarchist Louise Michel at the moment the insurrection broke out.

***

A hush falls. The soldiers ready their weapons. They look pale. Someone cries, “Don’t shoot!” but the crowd does not fall back.

“Aim!”

A line of matching rifles goes up. A woman is trembling; another grips her arm, sneering at the young men in their army uniforms. Behind them, Michel and her friends raise their rifles as well. They see that some of the soldiers are shaking too.

“Fire!” There is an instant’s pause.