Archive for category: IT’S GOING DOWN

Long-time anarchist organizer Suzy Subways discusses the struggle against Operation Rescue and the lessons it leaves us with today in a post-Roe world. Originally posted to Hard Crackers. Listen to an interview with Suzy Subways on IGD here.

by Suzy Subways

In the early ’90s, anarchists and other feminists defended clinics with our bodies and taught each other how to do abortion techniques such as menstrual extraction safely. As the Christian Right bombed hundreds of clinics, killed health care providers and patients, and mobilized its base to swarm clinics and shut them down, grassroots reproductive freedom activists stood against this terror, building a powerful and exciting movement. But liberal feminist nonprofits rejected this grassroots mass movement, choosing to rely on the police and courts for protection. Since then, the Christian Right has continued to attack and harass people at clinics, mobilizing its own grassroots activists to shame people getting health care and shut down clinics one by one. Their local, bottom-up strategy took the long view and is now winning at the highest levels of government. If today’s movement for reproductive freedom is to win, it must return to the grassroots.

The militant anti-abortion group Operation Rescue was founded in 1986 to mobilize thousands of people to physically block and shut down clinics across the country. This well-funded and well-staffed organization presented an image of the Christian Right as peaceful activists guided by a deep moral outrage, although some of its leaders had signed a pledge defending the assassination of abortion providers and were active in the right-wing militia movement. Reproductive freedom activists, led by people with the capacity to get pregnant, mobilized to protect clinics with our bodies. On the ground, Operation Rescue was aggressive, and sometimes the space in front of clinics erupted into hand-to-hand combat as anti-abortion activists shoved people and tried to crawl through their legs.

Clinic Defense: Using Our Bodies to Protect Our Lifesaving Spaces

I did clinic defense a few times, when I was 18 and 19. As a student at Antioch College in 1992, I went to Columbus, Ohio with some friends on a few Saturdays. We’d wake up super early and stand in formation in front of the clinic with dozens of others to protect it. We saw these health centers as precious places. People going through trauma after sexual assault and through abusive relationships, very young people, and married women trying to keep their lives from getting unmanageable were taking control of their health despite their vulnerability in those moments. As protectors we took our role seriously and we bonded with each other as we stood against the enemy. This was the source of the passion that grew a powerful movement from below.

My dear friend Kathy became a legend at Antioch one day for her response to a vile Christian Right protester who harassed her for hours outside the clinic. Kathy was a hot butch lesbian who grew up on a farm and didn’t take shit, although she was quiet most of the time. This man kept telling her, “You should be married and having children,” until finally, she pulled out her bloody pad, put it in his hand and said, “Put this in your petri dish and grow it!”

This was the vibe at clinic defense. We were taking back our power and control of our bodies, and the energy this ignited in us as a collective body grew exponentially. There’s something about being there when your life-giving space is under attack, being able to defend it successfully, and doing it together. Using our bodies to defend our bodily autonomy.

Operation Rescue targeted my hometown of Philadelphia during the summer of 1993. With at least a hundred people on our side—maybe hundreds—we kept the clinic open. Operation Rescue had about half as many people and stood on the sidewalk across the street. I remember following a crew of badass anarchist lesbians whom I admired around the corner and a few blocks away as they chased a male leader of Operation Rescue, yelling at him and surrounding him. They got in his face, and he cowered. Our power took a visible, audible, unstoppable form: Get out of our town.

Back outside the clinic, I saw a friend on the other side of the street, with the anti-abortion activists. She had been the first to welcome me to my new school when I’d moved to Philly. I felt my face get hot and looked away. I almost felt remorse for the confrontation along with my disappointment. Should I pretend I didn’t see her?

I decided to cross the street and say hi. Sheepishly but warmly, she returned my friendly greeting. It looked like she was there with a church group. A woman standing next to her cast me some snide vibes, saying, “Shouldn’t you be over there?” My friend and I ran out of things to say and I went back, but I felt better knowing she hadn’t rejected me. Decades later, we reconnected on social media, and she is living happily as a lesbian with a wife and kids.

Thinking of that day reminds me of the value of my brilliant, late comrade Joel Olson’s favorite saying, “Peace to the villages—war to the palaces.” A little kindness goes a long way with people we can win over, but we can’t let politeness and decorum get in the way of wielding our power against those who would take our power away.

A Betrayal: Liberal Feminist Nonprofits Tell Defenders to Go Home

In 1995, I moved to New York City and joined Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation. In the August/September issue of our national newspaper that year, Laura from Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights (BACORR), wrote:

Fight Back Network members from BACORR, Refuse & Resist Minneapolis, and Love and Rage went to LA May 25th-28th to try to keep the clinics open and to blast OR’s efforts to define themselves in the media as non-violent-peaceful-baby-lovin’-Christians. BACORR had been in touch with WAC LA (Women’s Action Coalition) and a Southern California NOW chapter that welcomed our support and involvement.

Unfortunately, the Fund for the Feminist Majority, a national nonprofit, was in charge at the scene. As reported by Laura, the Fund had put a lot of resources into electing Bill Clinton as president and lobbying for a law that passed in 1994 to make it a federal crime to block clinic doors. The Fund had decided to let Operation Rescue and a group calling themselves Missionaries for the Pre-Born shut down the clinics in LA that day, in order to bring the FACE law into the courts as a test case. Laura continued:

Saturday, the day of the hit, hundreds of pro-choicers were at the clinics around LA. Many had followed the OR caravan from its church meeting-point earlier in the morning. The Fund’s “official leaders” made it clear from the get go that they would offer no resistance to OR if they rushed the door, and were depending on the police to move the anti’s away and level federal charges.

In a nutshell, the anti’s were permitted to sit down in front of the doors, creating the image of non-violent anti-abortion protest. They kept the clinic shut down for two hours. The Fund’s main office lied to BACORR and to Palm Springs NOW, who they knew was working with BACORR, about OR’s whereabouts—telling us they had lost the caravan and had no idea where it was. … A local reporter told us that she had interviewed pro-choice people who were standing at the door when the hit went down who were told not to stop the anti’s and to move away from the door.

Operation Rescue got their dream media opportunity, and police beat and injured Laura and a friend after Fund staff told police they had nothing to do with the official pro-choice response. The Fund didn’t alert legal support that Laura and her friend had been arrested, and they implied to the media that the two had deserved it. Operation Rescue and Missionaries for the Pre-Born were arrested gently at their sit-in, creating a widely broadcast spectacle of peacefully praying dissent, but they were never even charged under the FACE law.

How the Christian Right Won

While the Fund and other liberal feminist nonprofits ordered clinic defenders to stop protecting clinics and simply hold a “Keep Abortion Legal” sign on the sidelines, the Christian Right supported and honored its grassroots movement. They energized large numbers of people, and they inspired many, many more who followed their actions. While the pro-choice establishment dismantled our movement, grassroots activists of the Christian Right have never stopped protesting outside clinics. Even in major liberal cities, they harass and shame people who are just trying to get health care. This grassroots, on-site shaming campaign has made abortion something people feel like they need to be ashamed of, feel guilty about, and not talk about—in contrast to the first decade after legalization in the U.S., when people interviewed about their abortions mostly talked about how relieved they felt. This grassroots movement in local areas across the country has grown stronger over the past three decades, getting clinics closed one by one, winning at the state level and now at the national level, proving to us on the Left what we already knew: Power comes from below.

Since the 1990s, any time there’s an upsurge in support of abortion access, it’s been brief and felt kind of abstract. Young people need an inspiring, direct-action movement to jump into with all their heart and their bodies—they won’t be inspired by getting told to carry a sign through the biggest street in their town. Maybe once or twice, but then it dies down. It’s hard to build a base when you’re not at the place where harm is being done and able to stop it, or at the place where lives are being saved and able to protect it.

There’s an honest argument to be made that health clinics should never have to be battlegrounds, that patients in moments of vulnerability shouldn’t have to walk through such a war. But they’ve been walking through a gauntlet of shame all these years anyway, because clinic defenders haven’t been there to shield them from the hate. And in the ’90s, clinic defenders used our creativity and joy as a buffer between patients and attackers. The Church Ladies for Choice brought their drag queen brilliance, and our queer kiss-ins outside right-wing churches freaked out the Christian Right activists to the point they would avoid getting near us.

As a strategy, anarchists and other revolutionaries in the reproductive freedom movement have consistently—as in for more than 50 years—demanded the repeal of all abortion laws. Not more state involvement from the police and courts, but a removal of all state power in our reproductive lives. We call it “reproductive freedom” because it’s about more than abortion. it’s about the history of forced and coerced sterilizations of Black, Latinx, and Native American women and other people with the capacity to bear children. It’s about the population control tactics used against poor people and those who use drugs.

People don’t have the ability to “choose” whether to have a kid or not when wages are too low, childcare is not accessible, and the rent is too damn high. Medicaid hasn’t paid for abortions since the Hyde Amendment in 1977. Giving a baby up for adoption—or being adopted—can be deeply traumatizing, especially under our current, unsupportive system. And it’s worse for children of color adopted by white parents. But “choice” has been our battle cry since the 1980s. Why? This “choice” versus “life” debate has allowed the Christian Right to control the narrative and make it about their idea of morality. It’s been a successful wedge strategy from the Right, dividing people who could be united in coalitions.

Can We Still Win Now?

If the Christian Right won by building their grassroots movement and letting its power grow across the decades, so must we. If our power is strongest at the location of our bodily autonomy—in the places where we are able to exercise our reproductive freedom—then we must build our movement there.

Abortion pills and menstrual extraction (which can be done in our homes by trained people who don’t have to be medical professionals) allow us to take care of ourselves on our own territory. This is our strongest position strategically and what the Right fears most. They are using surveillance by state power and vigilantes to track, hunt down, and punish whoever provides and receives these medications and treatments, because they can’t just rely on hospital and doctors’ records. Every home could be an abortion clinic. It’s a scary situation, but it also makes clear our advantage.

So it seems clear that the reproductive freedom movement’s strategy now is to protect these sites of health care and resistance by building powerful, anti-racist and queer-positive coalitions involving hundreds of thousands of people. We need as many people involved as possible in order to keep the most vulnerable safe and also to make this health care accessible. If it’s limited to those in the know—people who are already activists and people who are able to find out about the support networks they need—that will exclude the people who need it most.

Some of these coalitions and support networks need to be underground, and some need to be above ground. Some need to be sharing information with people who need abortions about how to get abortion pills and what to say if they need to go to the emergency room (“I think I’m having a miscarriage”—don’t mention abortion). Some need to be driving people to appointments, providing emotional support, following up and making sure people are OK. Some need to be talking to the media and educating, agitating, and organizing in our communities and workplaces. Some will need to fundraise for legal support and organize demonstrations in solidarity with reproductive freedom’s new political prisoners. This work is direct action, because you’re meeting a basic human need in defiance of those who’d prefer that we die.

photo: Edson Chilundo – (CC BY-ND 2.0)

This report was written and compiled between It’s Going Down editors and folks directly on the ground.

Over the last several days, police and local officials in Akron, Ohio, have carried out a counter-insurgency campaign of wide-scale repression against largely Black demonstrators, following the brutal police murder of Jayland Walker, 25, who was shot over 60 times after fleeing from police during a traffic stop. After being shot, police then handcuffed Walker before attempting to administer aid and transporting him to a hospital, where he was then pronounced dead on arrival.

Since protests kicked off following the release of police footage of the shooting, the city and its police have responded with tear-gas attacks, instituting a curfew, and savagely beating, gassing and arresting protesters outside of the local jail, police department HQ, and in the Downtown. Local officials, aided by mainstream media outlets parroting police talking points, have attempted to center the focus on the “violence” of several broken windows on Sunday night as justification for the widespread crackdown and ongoing attacks on journalists and protesters with batons and chemical weapons.

The brutal crackdown comes a little over two years since the George Floyd uprising, as anger against heavily militarized, unaccountable, and deadly police has only grown in the aftermath of the Uvalde massacre. Democrats, such as Akron’s mayor, Dan Horrigan, are keen to violently suppress these protests before they grow, spread, and strike a chord with the rest of the country.

Protests Begin

Everyone knew pretty intuitively Sunday was going to be a hard day. This was the day the body worn camera footage of Jayland Walker’s murder was released by the city, the cops and local government were fucking terrified and there was this general tension in the air. People had once again gathered in front of the injustice center, and things remained peaceful, but loud. Sunday had the largest gathering of people out of all of the previous events folks had seen. This allowed for a little bit of co-optation by liberal elements.

There was a heavy police presence at Akron mayor’s home when came to deliver our demands. Two of our activists were arrested while demanding justice!!#justiceforjaylandwalker #JusticeForJaylandWalker #SayHisName #blacklivesmatter pic.twitter.com/7RcZnMV0vs

— Freedom BLOC (@thefreedomBLOC) July 4, 2022

Large numbers of the crowd began to march up High St. and by the time they had been marching for a full hour, people back at the injustice center were starting to waver in energy. These marches to nowhere are a deliberate attempt to drain your protest movement of its energy. They drain the marchers, and they weaken the protestors at the main site. Eventually, the marchers returned and were led away a second time shortly after. This is when the police decided to come out with gas masks and tear gas launchers.

Anger grows on the streets of #Akron, #Ohio as riot police shoot off tear-gas and declare an unlawful assembly as crowds gather to protest the police murder of #JaylandWalker. #JusticeforJayland pic.twitter.com/EKxEDm4fLh

— It’s Going Down (@IGD_News) July 4, 2022

Protestors scrambled to let the marchers know that the police had come out of their den, as numbers were desperately needed up the road. As people began repopulating the streets in front of the injustice center, the pigs started firing tear gas, and slowly marching into the road. This began a mad scramble through the streets; medics washing out people’s eyes with saline and protestors seeking safe places to regroup. Meanwhile, a line of riot cops fired their launchers into the air, so the canisters would arc, putting them in striking range of the crowd. Were some windows smashed? Not until after the cops began their show of force. Were some dumpster fires lit? Sure, but if you can show me one person that got hurt by that dumpster fire I’ll give you a million dollars.

Noise Demonstration Attacked by Tear-Gas Outside of Jail

An interview with one of the peaceful protesters, who was arrested by Akron police. He talks about the treatment that protesters are getting from Akron police when arrested!

Watch Full interview here: https://t.co/1GyT7BKWjc #justiceforjaylandwalker #protest #AkronPolice #BLM pic.twitter.com/XmiK01vPxz

— Freedom BLOC (@thefreedomBLOC) July 6, 2022

49 people were arrested by the police that night, kettled off into unmarked vans, including medics, and including the family of Jayland Walker who have since been released, as of Wednesday. Many report that those arrested were not allowed to make phone calls or receive medical attention and faced brutal conditions. On July 4th, Mayor Dan Horrigan (D) decided then to institute a 9pm to 6am curfew in downtown Akron, even cancelling a July 4th fireworks display. Despite the clamp-down, protests continued throughout the day Monday; including a march and protest on Horrigan’s home, but died off before the curfew was to go into effect.

Reports from #Akron that police have tear-gassed those rallying outside the jail, demanding the release of the “approximately 50 adults” who have been arrested since the start of the #JaylandWalker protests. On Monday, police instilled a curfew + tear-gassed street protests. https://t.co/q8Tr6loSpu

— It’s Going Down (@IGD_News) July 6, 2022

By Tuesday, a bail fund was set up: $AkronBailFund on CashApp, so if you are interested in helping release protestors, please donate. A noise demonstration was also organized outside of the local jail in solidarity with those arrested over the previous two nights. In response, Akron police mobilized in riot gear and MRAPs once more, attacking protesters with tear-gas and breaking up the protest, despite it taking place outside of the official “curfew” zone.

According to The Enquirer:

The Summit County sheriff’s SWAT team used tear gas late Tuesday night to disperse protesters outside the county jail, where people arrested during demonstrations over the Fourth of July weekend were being held.

The protests were in response to the death of Jayland Walker, a 25-year-old Akron man who was shot 60 times by eight Akron police officers after he fled a traffic stop June 27.

“We were having a peaceful protest, the next thing I know, they were throwing tear gas at us,” James Crawl, a former wrestling teammate of Walker at Buchtel high school, told the Beacon Journal.

The sheriff’s department said as many as 75 people were protesting and banging on doors at one point outside the jail. The decision to use tear gas was made because protesters were disrupting jail operations, a spokesman said.

In a further effort to destabilize protesters, police began to drop off people whose bail had been paid in yet another unmarked van, at random sites around Akron; some inside of the curfew zone, in order to ensue general chaos among those attempting to do jail support. Again, from The Enquirer:

Sierra Mason, a 24-year-old organizer from Canton, said she followed a sheriff’s cruiser to a Sheetz gas station, where they dropped off bailed-out protesters. She helped take one of the men home. “Instead of releasing these people out front where they would be supported by community, they’re deciding to do this,” she said. “It’s intentional. Instead of being here, they got me driving all over town.”

Jennifer Rogers, a 40-year-old Akron resident, was standing in the parking lot worrying about her 18-year-old son with autism early in the evening. She said she had not been able to get him his medication since his Sunday arrest and had no contact with him. “My son was in there if they haven’t already dropped him off in the middle of nowhere,” she said. “I’m real angry.” She later found him at a Dairy Queen on the West Side, an organizer told the Beacon Journal.

Curfew Lifted, Police Declare Unlawful Assembly, Make Brutal Arrests

On Wednesday, people continued to mobilize in support of those that had been arrested. Despite the curfew being lifted over Downtown, at night law enforcement again brutally attacked protesters rallying outside of the local police HQ, proclaiming it an “unlawful assembly,” shooting chemical agents at protesters on the sidewalk, and beating protesters before arresting them.

cashapp for donations to Akron Bail Fund those arrested marching for #JaylandWalker $AkronBailFund #BlackLivesMatter

— Forest City Anarchists (@FCAnarchists) July 4, 2022

According to posts and videos on social media, both Bianca Austin, the aunt of Breonna Taylor and Jacob Blake, Sr, the father of Jacob Blake, who was shot and killed by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, were arrested by Akron police late Wednesday night, with Blake being reportedly hospitalized.

Full video on my TikTok or IG. Akron Police just assaulted and arrested Jacob Blake Sr. Mr Blake has been transported to a local hospital. #freejakeblake #freepressure pic.twitter.com/MbDcVVLlig

— jolly_good_ginger (@jollygoodginger) July 7, 2022

The actions by the Akron police show that the institution of policing has not changed since its inception during slavery as a force designed to capture escaped slaves and break strikes. Far from being a force of protection within the population against violence, the police exist to uphold the power and privilege of an elite class and the settler-colonial racial order of the American project, and are willing to use massive amounts of violence against the broader population to ensure that this ‘order’ stays protected.

On Friday and Saturday, tens of thousands hit the streets across the so-called United States in angry protests, after six Supreme Court judges rolled back the right to an abortion, marking a milestone in American politics and further signaling the growing fascistic drive of minoritarian rule over the vast majority of the population which rejects these policies.

The impact of the ruling was immediate and swift:

The 6-3 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is effective immediately. Abortion is now or will imminently become illegal in at least 21 states with a combined population of 135 million people. For the vast majority of working women, travel to the mostly coastal states where abortion remains legal will not be an option.

Moreover, this ruling will have far reaching implications, as Clarence Thomas has argued that this is just the start of rolling back decisions on gay marriage, anti-sodomy statutes, and other “right to privacy” laws. As anarchists in Olympia wrote:

The repealing of Roe v. Wade is just the start. The basis on which it is being attacked is the Right to Privacy, which is also the basis of many other decisions now in sight of the Supreme Court such as Lawrence v. Texas (protects against criminalizing homosexuality), Griswold v. Connecticut (protects buying contraceptives without government interference), Loving v. Virginia (legalizes interracial marriage), Meyer v. Nebraska (protects families teaching children a language other than English), Skinner v. Oklahoma (protects against forced sterilization).

The ruling centers around the concepts of Constitutional Originalism, which is a school of legal thought embraced by justices such as Clarence Thomas, which argues against a vision of the Constitution which seeks to expand freedom and rights to those under attack and instead argues that the “Constitution…only protects rights that already existed in the distant past.” This legal approach argues that only things written into the Constitution or through “cultural practice,” as it existed at the time of the writing of the Constitution, are guaranteed as rights.

The first anti-abortion movement in the United States was explicitly white supremacist and patriarchal. Made up of mostly doctors who organized the movement for the purpose of pushing women (midwives) out of the medical field and to increase the birth rate among white women. 🧵

— Your Friendly Butch Anarchist (@butchanarchy) May 3, 2022

Not only does this absolutely absurd legal framework imply that life should have remained unchanged since the late 18th Century, it is a framework that is being used to set the stage for even further attacks on various communities across the US. This approach allows the Supreme Court to essentially take away any right they deem fit, as long as they can argue that it does not appear in the Constitution, and as long as they can engage in vulgar historical revisionism.

Most impacted by this decision will be communities of color and the working-poor, as sweeping abortion bans will not only cut off much needed access to reproductive healthcare, but increase the threat of police repression, economic instability, and potentially death and major injury from ‘back alley abortions.’

The Failure of Liberal Pro-Choice Organizing and the Core of the State

We need to be clear about what this ruling means. It is not a declaration of moral position, rather, this ruling makes the argument that the morality of some should be imposed on others – through police force. In other words, this is the State taking on its role, becoming the mechanism of imposing sovereignty through violence. As long as the State exists we will never be able to determine the conditions of our lives, and this is just one shining example.

Once we view this ruling through the lens of the State itself, all of a sudden our approaches must change. In the liberal legalistic framework that has been dominant since Roe, those advocating for this approach are demanding that we engage the State from within the position of its most unchallenged power, the courts. By forcing politics into the courts, the pro-choice movement fundamentally weakened the ability of people to fight back against restrictive legislation in the years prior to this ruling; outside of established organizations, polite complaint, acceptability politics, and legalistic strategies.

If you can see that a major aim of anti-abortion legislation is to limit people’s ability to make decisions about their bodies that do not conform to rigid gender roles and expectations you can understand how trans liberation and reproductive freedom are irrevocably connected.

— Your Friendly Butch Anarchist (@butchanarchy) June 24, 2022

At the core of the concept of reproductive freedom is a far broader call for autonomy: over our bodies, over our lives, and our choices. It is this demand for autonomy that separates the pro-choice movement, which is centered on actions of the State and courts, from the reproductive freedom movement, which centers our ability to take control over our lives – from the State.

The strategy of taking this to the courts with established organizations as part of a trajectory of polite and acceptable opposition has shown itself to have failed, as was inevitable. Rather than retreating back to the courts, we need to begin to push beyond the question of abortion and embrace a far more intersectional understanding of autonomy.

Beyond Rights, the Fight for Autonomy

The fight for autonomy begins with how we organize. Authoritarian socialists, liberals, and non-profits are all competing to see who can scavenge what is left for their own gain, using our tragedies as their recruiting opportunities. If we allow them to have this space, not only will reproductive freedom activists that have been doing work on the streets for years be marginalized, but direct action will be pushed back into these same controlled spaces of acceptability politics.

For every draconian step this country takes deeper into fascist hell we have increased police power to face off with. Guess who’s going to be ready to brutalize us when we fight back? And the police state has *bipartisan* support. None of this is an accident.

— William C. (@williamcson) June 24, 2022

As Spencer Beswick argued:

In place of the slogan “we’re pro-choice and we vote,” anarcha-feminists often marched behind a banner reading “we’re pro-choice and we riot!” Anarchists supported struggles to maintain legal abortion but argued that we must be ready to act on our own terms in the fight for bodily autonomy and self-determination. Establishing reproductive healthcare infrastructure is a key component of feminist dual power that challenges the hegemony of the state and capitalism. This kind of infrastructure prefigures—and concretely establishes—a world defined by mutual aid, solidarity, and autonomy.

Anarchists advocated expanding grassroots infrastructure and self-organization to gain the knowledge and skills necessary to perform their own reproductive care. They argued that this would produce true reproductive freedom and autonomy that was independent of the state and its laws.

We need to manifest the fight for reproductive justice and its wider call for autonomy, not only in our goals, but also in how we act. This may mean deciding to take action with just you, your friends, and a plan. Sometimes that means marching alongside others that we have differences with and not allowing the protest police to control our activity. Sometimes that looks like scheming to figure out how to source and distribute at-home abortion pills.

On this day, June 25, 2013, SCOTUS struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act (Shelby Co v Holder) and unleashed a flood of voter suppression and attacks on voting rights. Consider this in the context of the current moment to understand how delusional the “VOTE” response is.

— William C. (@williamcson) June 25, 2022

The fight for autonomy extends beyond abortion, and involves our entire relationship to policing. By allowing policing to determine the terms of engagement, whether that be in the courts or on the streets, we lose the very freedom that we are struggling for. It is only through our own actions that we can take our lives back, and it is only through autonomy that we can act.

Resistance Roundup

Across the Pacific Northwest, tens of thousands took to the streets in various cities and towns. In Portland, thousands rallies and took part in mass marches across the city. An anarchist bloc also wrote graffiti and later at night, took to the streets for a militant march. In Salem, Oregon and many smaller towns, people organized spirited marches and protests.

Hundreds of Black Bloc move under the sheath of night in Portland in the wake of the overturning of #RoeVsWade #portlandprotest
The night is young apparently pic.twitter.com/QUsrCBSV9L

— Grace Morgan (@gravemorgan) June 25, 2022

In Seattle, thousands marched, in Olympia a march followed a rally and in Eugene, over a thousand took to the streets and faced off against police and angry motorists who repeatedly drove into the crowd. Later at night, police clashed with protesters and made arrests after people “blocked Ferry Street Bridge and threw smoke bombs at officers.”

A sea of people and the end isn’t even in sight. pic.twitter.com/5kGkk4A9yr

— James Croxton (He/Him) (@jwcroxton) June 25, 2022

Across California, thousands took to the streets in San Francisco, Oakland and in Sacramento. In Los Angeles, thousands streamed into the streets and onto freeways, clashing with riot police and federal troops who violently tried to push marchers off the streets. Protesters responded with shooting fireworks at law enforcement and pushing back against police on the streets. Neo-Nazis in Orange County also put out a call to ‘defend’ Catholic churches and ‘traditionalist institutions.’

protest marchers have shutdown the 110 fwy in #DTLA pic.twitter.com/AtrOe1Q66c

— christina heller (@CHellerTVNews) June 25, 2022

Protesters surround a group of police officers and yell at them to go home and throw liquids on them. Police use batons and chase protesters down. pic.twitter.com/4GdP5XhGxG

— Samuel Braslow (@SamBraslow) June 25, 2022

cops and protesters clashing outside in DTLA on 8th and olive pic.twitter.com/u7Cg8Da0yu

— ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) (@adonaicaimoloch) June 25, 2022

In Arizona, thousands took to the streets in Phoenix, swarming outside of the capitol building, only to be violently repelled with riot police projectiles and tear gas. Ironically, the capitol building was previously the scene of numerous armed demonstrations by ‘Stop the Steal’ protesters who also broke windows and swarmed the building, but faced no repression. Meanwhile in Tucson, over a thousands protesters took to the streets and shut down freeways.

Firing teargas right into the crowd straight from the Capitol windows https://t.co/XeZ59XVotJ pic.twitter.com/NwBtpTrSCt

— AZ Right Wing Watch (@az_rww) June 25, 2022

Tucson march is attempting to take I-10. Young, angry, multiracial crowd. pic.twitter.com/D3fiFZezhK

— Autonomy Tucson (@autonomytucson) June 25, 2022

Mass protests also took place in Denver, Colorado and Cedar Springs, Iowa, where a motorist drove their truck into a crowd full of demonstrators. Antifascist researchers quickly doxxed the driver online.

New thread for the night “fuck DPD FUCK SCOTUS TOO THEY DONT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOU” pic.twitter.com/cz6lVvGfdj

— colorado peoples press (@colpeoplespress) June 25, 2022

In Texas, thousands hit the streets in Austin, Texas and antifascists held an armed march in Dallas against recent fascist and far-Right violence.

Friday 6/24 around 40 heavily armed antifascist activists assembled in the Gayborhood of Dallas to send a message to Christian Fascism: whether that be Influencers, Proud Boys, or SCOTUS. “We are not afraid. We will not go back. We will bash back.” pic.twitter.com/6gp8Yyv41I

— Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club (@EFJBGC) June 25, 2022

Marching on the Texas Capitol building for #abortion access. #AustinTX #RoeVWade pic.twitter.com/8oGhaxH7ms

— Kit O’Connell Is ✨So Queer✨ (@KitOConnell) June 24, 2022

In Nashville, Tennessee, Proud Boys were runoff by antifascists from harassing protesters while in Washington DC, the massive crowds kicked out white nationalist trolls.

They’ve successfully moved the white supremacists out. No police did anything. pic.twitter.com/pvTMvKivZn

— Renee Bracey Sherman (@RBraceySherman) June 25, 2022

In Atlanta, Georgia, thousands marched and wrote graffiti messages on the streets. The next day, armed members of the Wall of Vets also stood guard against a group of Proud Boys. In North Carolina, thousands hit the streets in Asheville, Raleigh and other cities, shutting down streets. Other mass rallies and marches took place in Jacksonville, Mississippi, Kansas City, Missouri, Miami, Florida and Richmond, Virginia.

Members of the Wall of Vets take up the rear, creating a barrier between the Abortion-rights protesters and a group of Proud Boys during the second day of protests in Atlanta, Ga. For @wabenews pic.twitter.com/onIraVK4Bp

— Matthew Pearson (@justmattphotoj) June 25, 2022

“Abort the court” new art in downtown Kansas City. pic.twitter.com/YqfG4cPq7N

— BushRunner (@ethosss_) June 25, 2022

Chants of “Fuck Joe Biden” and “Fuck Glenn Youngkin” in Monroe Park as protesters for abortion access continues in Richmond, Virginia. pic.twitter.com/QCyAo1kjFV

— Goad Gatsby (@GoadGatsby) June 25, 2022

In Raleigh right now #SupremeCourtHasGotToGo pic.twitter.com/ghjlxG5Tmh

— Bernie Mamorbor (@BernieMamorbor) June 24, 2022

In Washington DC, a large black bloc led a breakaway march from in front of the Supreme Court where thousands had gathered throughout the city, pushing through police lines multiple times to finally come back to SCOTUS without arrest.

This shot shows the depth of #antifa/black bloc group headed toward downtown DC after Supreme Court abortion protest pic.twitter.com/O0nEUxqeuA

— Steven Nelson (@stevennelson10) June 25, 2022

Back on eastbound Constitution Avenue. Brief flare-up in tension earlier when protesters pushed their way through a line of bike cops who’d tried to block them on the march down 3rd Street. pic.twitter.com/6QIJl0Bsr0

— Alejandro Alvarez (@aletweetsnews) June 25, 2022

“STAND UP FIGHT BACK!”#RoeVsWade pic.twitter.com/XiENVj0Sas

— ChuckModi (@ChuckModi1) June 25, 2022

In the Midwest, thousands marched in Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Chicago, Boston, Cleveland, and Philadelphia. In Providence, Rhode Island, an off-duty police officer running for office attacked his opponent at a pro-choice rally. In Montpelier, Vermont, the State House was vandalized with the slogan, “If abortion isn’t safe, neither are you.”

Philly City Hall graffiti from tonight’s Protest against the Supreme Courts ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade #AbortTheCourt pic.twitter.com/JgOe25YDLA

— ConnorINTELPRO (@CoCoIntelPro1) June 25, 2022

In New York, thousands streamed into Washington Square Park and then took to the streets, vandalizing police cars, the Fox News building, and more.

Feminists against patriarchy & colonization shut down the Brooklyn Bridge tonight in New York protesting the US Supreme Court decision to overturn abortion rights.“Stop the war against women”. 💚💜🖤🔥📸IG:@semillas_collective pic.twitter.com/0tjHldC3ED

— Voices in Movement (@VIM_Media) June 25, 2022

“My body, my choice”

“Fuck NYPD”

“F12”

“Pigs”

“ACAB”

Here’s some pics of radical artwork spotted on NYPD vehicles during the march earlier tonite in NYC in response to SCOTUS overturning Roe v Wade. pic.twitter.com/oT6WArCK7S

— Ash J (@AshAgony) June 25, 2022

“Abort your senator”

“Abort fascists”

“Abort the court”

“My body, my choice
Fuck you”

A comrade sent me these pics of radical artwork spotted in the subway in Brooklyn. pic.twitter.com/efrcehCzqi

— Ash J (@AshAgony) June 25, 2022

A critical antifascist analysis of the unfolding January 6th Committee hearings and the neoliberal State’s response to the attempted coup.

by Sam Fisher

The January 6^th attack is often dismissed as not a coup d’état because the military was not used to seize the Capitol building, but according to the world’s infamous textbook on coup d’états, Coup D’état: A Practical Handbook, the type of internal security sabotage which occurred on January 6^th is the standard practice of every coup d’état.

In Coup D’état, defense intellectual Edward Luttwak explains that the main goal for coup operatives is to prevent defending forces from effectively defending. The method for accomplishing this is to “identify the key individuals within those units of the armed forces that are capable of intervening, for or against us, during the coup,” and “to prevent their possible intervention against us for the limited span of the coup.” [i] A number of events on January 6^th matched this type of internal sabotage by security forces.

Defending forces were prevented from deploying by unusual restrictions. On January 5^th, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy placed restrictions on the deployment of the DC National Guard’s Quick Reaction Force,[ii] requiring the personal authorization of Defense Secretary Christopher Miller. This occurred the day before January 6^th.

There’s no comparison between a coup plot between the Trumpian state and far-Right groups + a mass uprising involving millions of people that was violently suppressed across the country by the police, the military, far-Right vigilantes + the courts. https://t.co/AeRHJ9U2tY

— It’s Going Down (@IGD_News) June 10, 2022

Deployment of the National Guard was prevented by direct orders. During a 2:22pm conference call, officers on the ground requested National Guard support, and their request was denied by Pentagon officials. Army Staff Secretary Walter Piatt told the call participants “we don’t like the optics” of deploying the National Guard and he opposed their use, and General Charles Flynn supported his argument. This occurred at 2:26pm, after rioters had already breached the building. According to Quick Response Force Commander Walker’s testimony, everyone on the conference call was shocked by the two officials obstructing deployment.[iii]

Deployment was also prevented by uncommunicative commanders. During most of the afternoon, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy could not be reached,[iv] despite being part of the chain of command necessary to deploy the Quick Reaction Force. Similarly, Defense Secretary Miller at first claimed to have approved an operational plan for National Guard deployment at 3pm, but later admitted during a hearing that he did not really approve such a plan until 4:32pm.[v] According to Christopher Miller’s own written testimony, he was aware of the riot by 1:34pm, three hours earlier.[vi]

Moreover, there were inexplicable intelligence failures. In late 2020, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security produced a threat assessment discussing electoral instability between the election and inauguration, November 2020 to January 2021. However, the report did not mention January 6^th, despite the rally being publicly organized over Twitter, and standard procedure including the creation of a threat assessment by these agencies for all major capitol protests.[vii] The Civil Disturbance Unit Operational Plan used by Capitol Police focused entirely on countering a leftist counter-protest threat which never emerged, focusing on using police to clear a lane for Trump supporters to march on the Capitol building. This same operational plan claimed there were no plans by Trump supporters to disrupt the proceedings despite the fact that such plans had been reported.[viii]

Proud Boys, the American Guard + Trump supporters are still attacking counter-protesters + journalists while law enforcement sits by or even coordinates with the far-Right. Meanwhile, the FBI’s relationship with the Proud Boys echoes Greensboro. A thread. https://t.co/w65thez7FG

— It’s Going Down (@IGD_News) May 5, 2021

Equipment usage was sabotaged. Only two days before January 6th, Defense Secretary Christopher Miller implemented a measure restricting the DC National Guard’s Quick Reaction Force from putting on their riot gear without his individual permission. [ix] In a Capitol Police internal report, Inspector Michael Bolton found that leadership ordered the non-usage of various nonlethal riot control weapons.[x] The internal report was never released, so who in the leadership did this remains unknown. The same report revealed that the riot gear was also inaccessible, stored on a locked bus to which no one could find the key, placed too far away from the Capitol building to be useful. [xi]

While coup d’états rely heavily on internal sabotage, they also use some kind of force to take over. Often these are military forces, whereas on January 6^th it was Trump’s supporters instead. However, the breaching operation on January 6th still relied on small active teams of well-organized units provided by reactionary groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. It’s notable that the Proud Boys formed “Quick Reaction Forces” around the Capitol area, constructing the same type of mobilized tactical units as the official National Guard Quick Reaction Force which Trump officials sabotaged from within. It was later revealed that the FBI had been working with four members of the Proud Boys, using them to inform on Antifa, but should have used these relationships to predict and successfully prevent January 6th.[xii]

These revelations make the “three way fight” antifascist concept more necessary than ever. The anti-fascist movement has partially transitioned from street fights to research and exposure. This makes sense, as the enemy has evolved from small bands of hardcore reactionaries to an entire mainstream party, with sabotage operators who may be lurking across the ranks of government and law enforcement. Fascism may be in retreat at one level, but at another it has successfully ascended from subcultural marginalization to mainstream success, placing us in more of a Weimar scenario than we’ve ever been in. The two Army generals who delayed deployment on the 2:22pm conference call, Charles Flynn and Walter Piatt, retain high command and could participate in future coup attempts. In an effort to “return to normal” and re-cement social peace, the liberal State seems unwilling to dislodge and punish those that would over throw it.

A week before January 6th we spoke with antifascist think-tank @Three_Way_Fight about the storming of the #Oregon capitol and its implications. It would go on to become a blueprint for DC + showcase a solidified insurgent coalition in support of Trump. https://t.co/eExLA8eRJW pic.twitter.com/OzybhdSnV8

— It’s Going Down (@IGD_News) January 6, 2022

However, the real lesson is that while everything from street fights and voting may have slowed fascism down, neither street fights nor voting have ended the threat. The liberals of the January 6th Committee are unaware of the internal sabotage issue, or at least missing the point of its central importance to the incident, and thus we cannot count on the liberal state to defend us from fascism fully or consistently, if partially. Rather than viewing the overthrow of capitalism as a distant luxury, we must treat it as a short-term, near-future survival necessity, against the existential threats of literal fascism, accelerating impoverishment, and climate collapse, and militarization of policing, prisons, and borders. We must rapidly accelerate the revolutionary process against capitalism by creatively and relentlessly researching and implementing strategies and tactics, whether protest tactics, revolutionary strategies, or both.

The most important thing an anti-fascist could do at this time is simply spread awareness of the internal sabotage on January 6th, and educate people about its significance, as proving that Trump attempted a coup and is therefore an obvious fascist who must be prevented from running again. More than any other piece of evidence, internal sabotage proves January 6th was a coup d’état. This matters because coups are typically used by hard authoritarians, and while it’s easy for the energy against fascism to dissipate and be dismissed as partisan exaggeration, internal sabotage on January 6^th proves that there is zero exaggeration, and that Trump is a fascist whose remaining influence must be eradicated.

How much of a threat or priority is this? Moderation of intensity would probably be best – Trump may return, but also may not, and we also have other problems. The most effective antifascism will be to focus on overthrowing capitalism, but maintaining an antifascist movement in parallel with anticapitalist efforts, with at least a moderate level of attention, seems necessary. We must utilize everything from cultural and physical counter-pressure to legal disqualification from office, but mostly we must raise widespread awareness everywhere about the Capitol security internal sabotage.

[i] Luttwak, Edward N. (2016, pp. 66, 75). Coup d’état: a practical handbook (Revised ed.). Harvard University Press.

[ii] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/dc-guard-capitol-riots-william-walker-pentagon/2021/01/26/98879f44-5f69-11eb-ac8f-4ae05557196e_story.html

[iii] https://www.politico.com/news/2021/12/06/jan-6-generals-lied-ex-dc-guard-official-523777

[iv] https://www.politico.com/minutes/congress/02-4-2022/national-guard-questions/

[v] https://abcnews.go.com/politics/house-oversight-committee-chair-testify-government-unprepared-capitol/story?id=77639074

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] https://wamu.org/story/21/01/15/what-we-know-so-far-a-timeline-of-security-at-the-capitol-on-january-6/

[viii] https://truthout.org/articles/capitol-police-wrongly-worried-about-leftist-counterprotesters-on-january-6/

[ix] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/dc-guard-capitol-riots-william-walker-pentagon/2021/01/26/98879f44-5f69-11eb-ac8f-4ae05557196e_story.html

[x] https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-04-14/missteps-left-capitol-police-unprepared-trump-riot

[xi] https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-most-damning-parts-of-the-senate-report-into-jan-6-capitol-riot

[xii] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exclusive-before-jan-6-fbi-collected-information-least-4-proud-boys-2021-04-26/

photo: Geoff Livingston – (CC BY-ND 2.0)

A historical look at how anarchists in the 1990s mobilized against attacks on reproductive freedom and autonomy by taking direct action and building autonomous infrastructure.

By Spencer Beswick

As the Supreme Court prepares to reverse Roe v. Wade under a Democratic president, house, and senate, it is clear that action at the ballot box is insufficient to protect abortion. Reproductive rights were not won by electoral means, and that is not how we will defend them.

Anarcha-feminist traditions of grassroots struggle and autonomous abortion infrastructure offer alternative strategies. As the anarcha-feminist Liz Highleyman put it in 1992, “the day when abortion is again made illegal may come sooner than we like to think. We must be ready to take our bodies and our lives into our own hands.”

Anarcha-feminists were on the front lines of the struggle for abortion throughout the 1980s and ‘90s. They were convinced that Roe v. Wade would not last forever and that they could not depend on the state and the legal system to protect reproductive freedom. Anarcha-feminists took a three-pronged approach to abortion struggle: defense of abortion clinics, construction of grassroots reproductive health infrastructure, and an anti-state approach to building feminist dual power.

Defense of Abortion Clinics

Anarcha-feminists physically protected abortion clinics from the likes of Operation Rescue, which was formed in 1986 to act as anti-abortion shock troops. They assaulted abortion clinics and supported bombings and assassinations of abortion providers using the slogan “if you believe abortion is murder, act like it’s murder.”

Broad feminist and queer coalitions mobilized against Operation Rescue. Anarcha-feminists introduced black bloc tactics and a willingness to engage in physical confrontation. They used these confrontational tactics to successfully protect clinics in NYC, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and across the country.

When Operation Rescue attempted to host a summer training camp in Minneapolis in 1993, anarchists physically confronted them, blocked them in their church, disrupted their meetings, vandalized their materials, protected clinics from their attacks, and generally made them unwelcome. Although some liberals opposed these tactics, anarchists and other militants handed Operation Rescue a major defeat and ran them out of town.

Reflecting on the experience, a local anarchist named Liza wrote that “it seems like no matter how hard activists fight, we rarely win. Except this time we were victorious. We fought against these fascists … We saw the demise of Operation Rescue in the Twin Cities, partly due to our unprecedented aggressiveness and opposition, and partly because their movement is losing, big time.”

Poster distributed by anarchists in Minneapolis (Profane Existence 1993)

Construction of Grassroots Reproductive Health Infrastructure

Anarcha-feminists established autonomous infrastructure and self-help groups in which people learned to take care of their own bodies and induce abortions on their own terms. As one anarchist put it in a 1991 article, “medicine is something we must take into our own hands. Because how can you smash the state if you’re still walking funny from a visit to the gynecologist’s?”

Threats to legal abortion produced an urgent need, as Highleyman wrote in 1992, to “rebuild the network of feminist women’s health and reproductive resources that existed in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.” Anarchists called for the revival of groups like the Chicago Jane Collective that provided over ten thousand underground abortions before they were legalized. While anarcha-feminists supported abortions provided by accredited doctors, their focus on women’s autonomy led them to draw on alternative traditions of women-controlled health practices. This includes herbal and holistic methods which women have used “throughout the ages … to control their fertility and reproduction.”

Anarchists advocated expanding grassroots infrastructure and self-organization to gain the knowledge and skills necessary to perform their own reproductive care. They argued that this would produce true reproductive freedom and autonomy that was independent of the state and its laws.

Anti-State Approach to Building Feminist Dual Power

Anarcha-feminists did not appeal to the state to maintain abortion rights. They believed that the state was inherently patriarchal and was ultimately the enemy of reproductive justice. Thus, the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation (1989-98) argued in its draft political statement that “our freedom will not come through the passage of yet more laws but through the building of communities strong enough to defend themselves against anti-choice and anti-queer terror, rape, battery, child abuse and police harassment.”

Anarchists spread this analysis in the feminist movement, including by marching in blocs at reproductive justice demonstrations. In place of the slogan “we’re pro-choice and we vote,” anarcha-feminists often marched behind a banner reading “we’re pro-choice and we riot!”

Anarchists supported struggles to maintain legal abortion but argued that we must be ready to act on our own terms in the fight for bodily autonomy and self-determination. Establishing reproductive healthcare infrastructure is a key component of feminist dual power that challenges the hegemony of the state and capitalism. This kind of infrastructure prefigures—and concretely establishes—a world defined by mutual aid, solidarity, and autonomy.

As Sunshine Smith remarked in 1990, forming self-help medical groups and abortion infrastructure in the Bay Area “has, in very concrete ways, made our struggle against the anti-abortion group Operation ‘Rescue’ and the ‘Supreme’ Court stronger and more effective. We have learned that if the time comes, we can and will do home abortions. We are becoming physically aware of the invasion the government is conducting into our bodies. We are now able to repulse the state from our uteri because we are gaining the knowledge that enables us to control our own bodies.”

Both a report from an autonomous intervention and mobilization in so-called Asheville, North Carolina and a copy of a text that was distributed.

On the evening of Tuesday, May 3rd, hundreds of community members in so-called Asheville, NC turned out for an emergency rally in response to the US Supreme Court’s forthcoming decision to overturn Roe v Wade. Mainstream media coverage of the rally can be found here.

News from Asheville: On Authoritarians & Abortions

Promotional materials for the event, organized by the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), featured almost identical language to other party events taking place across the country. The trans-exclusionary framing of a “war on women” immediately generated objections on the local chapter’s social media, and during a public exchange on Instagram, one PSL organizer suggested that trans people are “collateral damage” and cautioned that being “inclusive” would “come at the expense of de-centering women from their struggle” (an alarmingly ill-informed assertion that reflects a lack of engagement with the theory or practice of reproductive justice). The comments were later removed, but in response, a trans-inclusive group of local organizations—including Mountain Area Abortion Doula Collective, We Keep Us Safe, OYE Collective, Asheville for Justice, Asheville Socialist Rifle Association, Hellbender, and Firestorm Books—chose to organize their own “Abortion Resource & Info Popup.” This popup took place in parallel to the PSL rally in downtown Asheville’s Pritchard Park.

Tonight in #Asheville! This event is taking place at the same time (6:30pm) and location (Pritchard Park) as the emergency protest announced by PSL. But it is independently organized by queer and trans folks. pic.twitter.com/ycBGZUr3z3

— Firestorm Books (@FirestormCoop) May 3, 2022

The size of the crowd ultimately made the two events indistinguishable and popup participants took the rally mic multiple times without incident. But a growing number of Asheville activists are expressing frustration with the space taken up by PSL and the organization’s history of asserting leadership in areas where it has no expertise and doesn’t do community organizing. To educate rally attendees about the PSL, anarchists distributed a flyer titled “Why Fascists, Authoritarians, and Theocrats Are the Enemies of Reproductive Freedom.” During and after the event we were able to hand materials directly to individuals who were being recruited, individuals who likely had no idea PSL is a Stalinist organization that operates in ways antithetical to liberation.

As we distributed our fliers we asked rally attendees if they were aware that Stalin had banned abortion—most were not. Asked the same question, one PSL member replied simply, “that’s unfortunate.”

Why Fascists, Authoritarians, and Theocrats Are the Enemies of Reproductive Freedom

Within hours of the publication of a US Supreme Court decision overturning constitutional protections for abortion, protests were announced in cities across the so-called United States. Many of these calls to action were issued by the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), a neo-Stalinist political organization infamous for both its abhorrent positions and its attempts to hijack grassroots social movements.* So what is the relationship between authoritarianism and reproductive freedom?

Although much of the “abortion debate” in the United States is framed around religiosity, legislative attempts to compel childbirth have always been driven by economics. Governments view pregnancy not as an individual choice but as the mechanism by which society produces future workers and taxpayers. When declining birth rates led Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to ban abortion in 1936, he was clear: compulsory motherhood was “a great and honorable duty” that was “not a private affair but one of great social importance.”

Such overt talk of individual sacrifice might not play well to a US audience, but anxiety over declining birth rates (and particularly white birth rates) is the quiet part that politicians occasionally say out loud. In the mid-1970s, as the birth rate began to drop, a new coalition emerged at the crossroads of white supremacy, patriarchy, and Christianity. Just as Soviet planners understood that the nation’s economic capacity was tied to population, capitalists saw a reduced and aging citizenry as a threat to their profits—and ability to pursue imperialist wars abroad. “Family values,” then, is not so much about morality as it is about the central role of the heterosexual family in reproducing a workforce and imprinting the values of the patriarchal state, be it capitalist or socialist.

The Fight for Reproductive Freedom is a Fight between our Desire for Bodily Autonomy and the State’s Desire for Control

Domestic abortion bans aim to promote the economic well-being of elites at the expense of survival for working-class people, particularly BIPOC women and trans people who have less access to wealth and greater vulnerability to legal consequences (consequences that are all but absent for elites themselves). Whether for private enrichment or national ambition, we must reject attacks on our most foundational freedom—the freedom to make choices about our own bodies.

Governments can’t grant us bodily autonomy, they can only take it away. No politician or party is qualified for leadership in this struggle, least of all an organization like PSL that has proven itself ready to ally with the most reactionary and patriarchal political elements. Like their fascist and theocratic counterparts, authoritarians on the Left are no friend to our freedom.

Despite Justice Alito’s claim that “abortion is not deeply rooted in the nation’s history and traditions,” abortion care predates the settler-colonial state he serves and will persist long after it has crumbled. Effective action requires us to know this history, and differentiate between those embodying its legacy and those who seek to exploit it. Across the country, grassroots abortion funds and mutual aid organizations are already fighting back and creating infrastructure for a post-Roe reality. We hope you’ll join them!

Mountain Area Abortion Doula Collective – mtnabortiondoula.co

National Network of Abortion Funds – abortionfunds.org

Abortion Resource Kit – tinyurl.com/AbortionResourceKit

Abortion Pills Online – plancpills.org

Shout Your Abortion – shoutyourabortion.com

* The PSL consistently sides with “anti-imperialist” authoritarians against movements for workers’ power or democratic rights. In recent years, this has included support for Bashar al-Assad, Kim Jong-un, and Vladimir Putin. It is well documented that party leaders have engaged in genocide denial, collaborated with fascists, and conspired to cover up sexual abuse within their party.

Download PDF Flyer Here

Announcing the International Day of Solidarity with Marius Mason and All Long-Term Anarchist Prisoners on June 11th, 2022.

As time moves on and the seasons change, we approach once again the June 11th International Day of Solidarity with Marius Mason & All Long-Term Anarchist Prisoners. Another year has passed, and many of our dear comrades remain captives of the state, subject to its daily subjugation, isolation, and brutality. June 11th is a time to stop the ever-quickening rush of our lives and remember.

Remember our imprisoned comrades. Remember our own histories of revolt. Remember the flame – sometimes flickering, sometimes blazing – of anarchism.

WE ARE ALL POTENTIAL PRISONERS

With June 11th, we desire to deepen a critique of prison that challenges the distinction between prisoner and supporter. For us, these differences are conditional: we, as anarchists, see ourselves as potential prisoners. Some of us have been, some of us will be. This is the basis of our solidarity – a recognition of ourselves in the plight of those in prison.

Stickers are in! Let us know if you would like some mailed to you at june11th at riseup dot net pic.twitter.com/uLnl2bq3vv

— June 11th (@june11dotorg) April 21, 2022

The continuum of prisoner and supporter can only be seen as tenuous if one looks to the examples of imprisoned and formerly-imprisoned comrades: Marius Mason’s activity with the Anarchist Black Cross, Bill Dunne’s liberation of an anarchist prisoner, Pola Roupa’s attempted helicopter rescue of anarchist prisoners, Claudio Lavazza‘s actions to liberate prisoners. The connections deepen when one considers that numerous anarchist prisoners are locked up for attacks on prison, judicial, and police institutions; and that others connect us to prisoner uprisings from California and Alabama to Greece and Italy.

SOLIDARITY MEANS…

We have always said that “solidarity means attack,” but we must recognize that slogans do not offer us a way forward in our struggles. If “attack” becomes confined to a restrictive set of activities, we cut ourselves off from a more expansive vision of anarchist struggle. If we move beyond mere repetition of fetishized actions, what possibilities open up to us? Solidarity means attack, yes, but what else does it mean?

In this vein, we’d like to offer our suggestion: instead of doing what you always do for June 11th, try something new. If your focus is usually on offering material aid to prisoners, take up action against some tentacle of the prison system in your town. If you’re usually out in the night taking action, try doing something to directly support an anarchist prisoner. The point is not to further entrench the false dichotomy between direct action and care work, but to challenge our ossified roles. By trying new things, we may come to recognize that the walls that separate the dedicated supporter and the dedicated saboteur were always illusory, that our imaginations are more expansive than we thought, and that we individually and collectively are capable of more than we give ourselves credit for.

#Portland knows what’s up! It’s great to see banners like this on #June11 in solidarity with #anarchist prisoners! #PoliticalPrisoners #FreeThemAll @IGD_News @la_abcf @nycabc @phillyabc @AnarchistAgency @june11dotorg pic.twitter.com/Wq9i1FDEEH

— Portland ABC (@PDXABC) June 11, 2021

Central to our vision of solidarity is maintaining the lines that connect us to our companions behind bars. We should keep alive the projects, fights, and movements to which they’ve sacrificed so much of themselves. Our connections with anarchist prisoners start from a point of commonality – that we share a desire to directly transform the world in a liberatory and egalitarian direction. Thus, our solidarity should root itself in bringing prisoners into our projects and investing ourselves in theirs. We want released anarchists to come out into a world of vibrant debate, collaboration, and action; and we want to foster that as much as possible behind prison walls as well. This can be as simple as sending news of local struggles to a prisoner or printing prisoner statements to share at events. As with any aspect of solidarity, we are limited only by our imagination and commitment.

While we should support prison struggles when they happen, we should be careful not to put the burden of struggling against the prison system on prisoners alone. Those in prison – being in conditions of extreme control, surveillance, and restriction – are in many ways the least able to actively fight winnable battles against prison institutions. Those of us living in relative freedom have opportunities to think strategically about what actions and sites of struggle would have the most positive impact on the lives of people in prison and do the most work to dismantle the prison system. As prison is inexorably connected to numerous corporate and state institutions, enemies are everywhere: where can we win?

Supporting prisoners is also a way for different struggles to converge, as the last several decades have taught us. From the Black Liberation Army to the Earth Liberation Front to Grand Jury Resistors to anti-police uprising defendants to land and water protectors, all struggles for liberation will necessarily lead to state repression and imprisonment. By building up support infrastructure and culture, by making prison a less complete isolation and removal, we strengthen every aspect of challenging this society. We also find each other, learn from each other, enrich each other.

PRISONER UPDATES

Marius Mason secured his long-fought-for transfer to a men’s prison, likely being the first trans man to achieve such a transfer in the federal prison system.

Italian prison administrators began censoring Alfredo Cospito’s correspondences in October. Authorities charged him with incitement to commit crimes, citing his writings in the anarchist newspaper Vetriolo. This repression is part of Operation Sibilla, where Italian police have raided numerous anarchist spaces and shut down websites surrounding Vetriolo to prevent the publication and spread of its subversive ideas.

Marios Seisidis went to court in July to appeal charges against him, supported by anarchists who rallied at the court in solidarity.

Claudio Lavazza received a hit of five years to his twenty-five-year sentence. His legal support is trying to secure an earlier parole date.

Eric King went to federal court on charges related to a situation in which he was attacked and tortured by prison staff in 2018. The jury found him not guilty and his legal team is now filing a suit against the prison administration. As of this writing, Eric is the process of being transferred and the continued target of a vindictive prison system.

Michael Kimble was assaulted by a corrections officer in June and then sent to solitary confinement before transferred. He has again been denied parole, the stated reasons being disciplinary citations for refusing to work and an altercation with a corrections officer.

Sean Swain was also denied parole, which he argues is retaliation by prison staff for comments he made and civil suits he has filed against them. He has since been transferred from Virginia back to OSP Youngstown in Ohio. His supporters suspect he will soon be transferred again.

More and more defendants from the uprising of 2020 are getting sentenced, some have been released and other going on to serve their terms. Some are still pretrial and facing lengthy sentences. The effects of this repression will still be felt for many years. May the quality of our support for these defendants make us stronger than we were before.

Excited to have t-shirts available for pre-order from @akpressdistro !! https://t.co/V4abcTd3Hs

— June 11th (@june11dotorg) April 5, 2022

In Chile, anarchist Joaquín García was transferred along with several subversive prisoners to the Rancagua maximum security prison last June. In October, he along with 20 other prisoners were attacked by about 50 guards, after which he was put in solitary confinement for 24 hours. This followed their declaration of solidarity with Pablo “Oso” Bahamondes Ortiz, who was facing weapons and explosive charges, and was subsequently sentenced to 15 years. Francisco Solar, another anarchist locked up at Rancagua, was hospitalized last autumn due to the advancement of undiagnosed diabetes. He and Mónica Cabellero were accused of multiple bombings, after his DNA was surreptitiously taken during a graffiti arrest, and have been in preventative detention since July 2020. In December of 2021 he accepted responsibility for bombing police structures, in solidarity with the revolts beginning in 2019 and those harmed and murdered by the police because, “no one and nothing is forgotten.” Days later, Mónica was in a fight with another prisoner that her family called a provocation set up by the prison. At the time of this writing, information is not yet available on the sentencing or a release date for these two anarchists.

Siarhei Ramanau, Ihar Alinevich, Dzmitry Rezanovich, and Dzmitry Dubousky were sentenced early this year to 18-20 years each for direct actions against Belarusian government targets after preliminary incarceration since 2019. After sentencing it was revealed that they were tortured by guards, resulting in a confession. As anarchism has become criminalized under the ongoing dictatorship, at least two other groups are facing several years each for their dissent.

Russian authorities have sentenced teenage anarchist Nikita Uvarov to five years for a conspiracy to blow up the Federal Security Service in Minecraft (yes, the video game) and constructing small fireworks. Two of his peers received probational sentences for their alleged crimes at the age of 14. Moscow ABC has reported that repression has increased (though there are no new proceedings against anarchists and antifascists there) and they have begun reorienting resources toward humanitarian efforts as Russia continues its murderous invasion of Ukraine.

The Anarchist Black Cross of Dresden, too, has reoriented itself toward providing support to those fighting in and fleeing from Ukraine. This reimagining of their support means helping finance solidarity forces like “The Black Headquarter” that have assembled volunteers to oppose the Russian forces and also attempt to carve out autonomous space in opposition to the Ukrainian state itself. Under the banner of the black flag, Balkan anarchists and anti-authoritarians are uniting against nation-states’ concepts of war and peace. It’s worth noting that chapters of the Anarchist Black Cross were established in Ukraine in 1918 as an adjunct to the Black Army that was fighting both the Soviet and Czarist forces invading from Russia.

In England, Toby Shone was sentenced to almost four years on drug charges related to psychedelics in his possession (during coordinated raids of collective anarchist homes) after terror charges failed to stick, related to the alleged operation of counter-info site 325. Despite the government’s failure to attribute membership to the the 325 collective, the Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front, the Earth and Animal Liberation Front, and involvement in related arsons and writings, he still must fight a Serious Organised Crime Prevention Order that would subject him to a heavily monitored five-year house arrest, expressing the evolution of incarceration by an increasingly digitized state apparatus.

ONWARD

The expansion of home detention and monitoring is not new, but still growing, as the prison society further invades the everyday through technological advances. Warfare too, grows increasingly digital from drone strikes to hacking, while government-sanctioned murder continues in all its finality. We may lack details regarding anarchists struck down or imprisoned in their pursuit of freedom in ongoing struggles in Sudan, Afghanistan, and Syria – still they also move our thoughts and actions. As the state persists in all its punitive perdition, killing and imprisoning, and we find common ground with those who fight in an effort to grow our power and destabilize those that seek to control us – carrying the fallen and imprisoned with us in our relationships with them and through a persistent conflict with the existent.

We sent out hand-drawn cards, letters, and books to anarchist prisoners all over the world for @june11dotorg like the elephant we never forget our imprisoned comrades! ✊📚💌 pic.twitter.com/rquTKtsZzs

— Midwest Books to Prisoners (@MidwestBooks2P) June 13, 2021

For ideas on potential activities, check out our blog for years of archived reportbacks. Those looking for materials to print and share can find them at the Resources page. And, most importantly: a list of anarchist prisoners to write to.

We eagerly await the events, actions, statements, and other contributions to this year’s June 11th.

For anarchy!

The following essay is taken from “Wildpunk: Black against Civilization,” the first English-language translation of writings by Elany, a Black anarchist from Switzerland. The entire zine is hosted and readable/downloadable at 1312 Press.

Unfortunately, the Swiss government kidnapped Elany while “Wildpunk” was being translated. She has been incarcerated since January 9 of this year on suspicion of sabotage and arson. The state has denied her medication, restricted her contact with the outside world, and forced her from veganism onto a prison diet of meat and grains.

We urge solidarity with Elany and all incarcerated in the shared struggle against the oppression of civilization. Updates on Elany’s case and opportunities to aid her can be found at feralfire.noblogs.org and the hashtag #FreeElany on Twitter and Mastodon. There is also an email you can contact, freeelany@riseup.net

While one part of the Earth is ravaged by fires and the other part struggles against being flooded, we are threatened from another angle: Covid-19. But the still-ongoing Corona Pandemic is really just the beginning of a new Era of Pandemics.

As climate change and demands for environmental protection become ever more “Mainstream,” the urgency of pandemics has increased. The current situation has taught the people a clear lesson: deathly pathogens are an equally big and global threat to human and other beings.

Over 15 years ago, the sociologist Mike Davis pointed out that due to mass livestock farming we are on the way to a global age of pandemics and it will lead us to catastrophe. Industrial livestock production is a sort of particle accelerator. More bodies in less space means more chances for the emergence of mutations or hybrid viruses and for their spread, regardless which virus it is. Global supply chains of giant transnational corporations with branches in half a dozen countries and markets in a thousand cities, alongside urbanization, do the rest. The most threatening ones are the Bird Flue Viruses, and we know today that we are only a single mutation away from one of the deadliest strains of Bird Flu becoming pandemic. These epidemics, created and spread by agroindustry, finally strike with particular devastation in the places which have already sunk into poverty through colonialism and capitalism. The combination of a lack of healthcare and high urbanization eventually leads to serious distress, in which pandemics can wreak devastation with full force.

Speaking of devastation: the consequences of climate change are being felt with full force all around us. The toll of the devastation is endless. Forests are turned to lumber, after which greater and more intense heatwaves lead to a rise in forest fires, droughts, and desertification. Soil is eroded and farmland is turned into desert. Fertilizer, herbicides, fungicides, and pesticides contaminate the food supply. Landfills overflow with synthetic waste. Power plants fill air, land, and sea with cancerous particles. A chemical smog fills the streets in the cities and poisons human and other beings at every turn. Plastic waste breaks apart into billions of tiny microscopic pieces, infecting every living organism. Chemicals are dumped in the oceans, seas, and rivers. Toxic waste oozes into the ground water. The rise and warming of the seas leads to stronger rainfalls, more powerful floods, more frequent mega-storms, and the inundation of coastal regions.

In addition to warming, the ocean is experiencing acidification and a loss of oxygen. A deadly trio which is steering us towards a sixth mass extinction of life on our planet, one where the rate of species extinction is 1000 times faster than usual. As the oceanographer Sylvia Earle held: “Our lives depend on the living ocean – not just the rocks and the water, but stable, resilient, diverse living systems that hold the world on a steady course favorable to humankind.” The ocean covers some 70% of the Earth and is central to enabling life. Aquatic plants produce half of the breathable oxygen in the world. If the ocean dies, we die too.

Agroindustry doesn’t just destroy communities, it spreads into the wild, destroying the diversity and balance of the natural ecology and replacing it with vast monocultures. Half of the habitable land on Earth is today used for agriculture, joined every year by millions more hectares. A majority of this cultivated area is used to produce feed for hundreds of millions of pigs, cows, sheep, and poultry, fattening them up for the world-spanning logistics chains.

Alongside this come ever greater social, economic, and political aggravations. Famines and water shortages. Heat-sickness and death. Epidemics and the destruction of more vital habitats. Wars over disappearing resources and usable territories. Climate change destroys livelihoods, strengthens sickness, and scatters people. Together with the Era of Pandemics, a global cascade of suffering results.

Wherever we find ecological destruction, we find industry. Industry is not neutral and there can be no adequate solution for climate destruction so long as industry still exists. Ending the suffering requires the complete collapse of industry. Or as it was aptly expressed in 2019 in the 43rd issue of Revolte, an Anarchist newspaper in Vienna: “For the destruction of Industry, Work, and Exploitation! For Sabotage and Direct Attack!”

Sustainable, Green Industry?!

While habitat destruction strides onward, industry (which is responsible for all of this suffering) wants to sell us the answer: sustainable and renewable energy.

At this point of ecological, social, and bodily catastrophe we need to critically question green solutions like the falsely named Renewable Energy Revolution and identify them for what they really are: a perpetuation of the status quo. Supposedly green energy sustains ecological devastation and global inequalities.

The destruction of human and non-human habitats is implied in the mass-production infrastructure of “renewable energy,” whether solar, wind, bio-fuel, hydro, nuclear power, or other alleged renewable energies. One destructive norm is replaced by another. These energies, like fossil fuels, have their roots in colonial extractive raw material industries. Once again the “solution” is exactly the problem.

For battery technology we can look to Bolivia (Lithium) and Congo (Cobalt). With both resources, the ecological and humanitarian costs are inexcusable: the destruction of habitat, child slavery, and death through dangerous work. Naturally, the E-waste is scattered everywhere in South America, Africa, and Asia. Lithium is today called “white gold” and its extraction requires massive quantities of water, drastically shrinking the available supply for Indigenous communities and wildlife. Vast quantities of toxic tailing are also produced. Chemical leaks have poisoned rivers, and with them humans and non-humans, time and again.

Massive dams for hydroelectric power have in the past likewise had catastrophic consequences on Indigenous peoples and their lands.

Industrial wind-parks, whose blades hack up migratory birds in the sky, require colossal resources for their production and implementation. Not just for the wind turbines but also the infrastructure. They destroy migrating wildlife like bats and birds, which are important for a healthy ecosystem and some of which are endangered.

Solar energy requires the erection of massive solar industry complexes, which lay bare the land by clearing out human populations and the migration routes of animals and people for giant solar fields, substations, and access ways. All of these require unusually high-carbon concrete. Wind and solar energy as well as the production of bio-fuels all require 100–1000 times the land area as the production of fossil fuels.

Fuck the Chinese subsistence farmers who have carcinogenic industrial waste dumped on their lands everyday from those solar panel factories. They’re just not thinking ecologically enough. And forget the Ghanaians who complain when worn-out solar panels are piled into mountains in their backyards with the rest of the West’s obsolete tech. They are just impeding ecological progress.

Whether oil wells, coal power plants, or megalithic “green” projects – all are rooted in an unprecedented destruction of habitats for human and other beings. Therefore it cannot be the goal to replace one destructive technology with another. The goal should be a massive and radical reduction in energy consumption.

Anarchists who only struggle to free industry from capitalism must finally face the brutal reality. Down with industry, down with work. To use the words of the Indigenous Anarchist ziq: Seize the Means of Destruction! And fucking burn it to the ground…

What comes next depends on what we do. The necessity of getting active has never been so great as today.

Statement linking the 77th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz with a call to support the ongoing hunger strikes happening within Rikers Island and Santa Rita jail.

Hunger Strikers still striking!

Today, January 27, 2022/25th Sh’vat 5782, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, is the 77th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps, where so many of our ancestors were incarcerated and enslaved, raped and robbed, maimed and murdered.

We are an anonymous collective of Jewish New Yorkers who are striking this day, across the five boroughs of NYC/across occupied Lenapehoking, in solidarity with the hunger strikers at Rikers Island and with all who are resisting this genocidal regime.

*Hunger Strike on Rikers Island*
Sound on to listen to an inside organizer announce the strike, list demands, and recount inhumane and deadly conditions in the RNDC jail. pic.twitter.com/Sp6D5zvcor

— Outlive Them NYC (@outlivethemnyc) January 18, 2022

This is a regime which took the lives of 15 fellow New Yorkers last year alone – a number which has continued to rise in the new year . Add that to the 44+ incarcerated people across New York State who perished after becoming infected with COVID in custody. We know a death camp when we see one, and Rikers Island is a death camp.

90 years after Rikers Island Correctional opened its doors, more New Yorkers than ever are waking up to the horrors which continue to be inflicted every single day upon the more than 4,000 detainees (at least 90 percent of whom are Black, Brown, and/or Indigenous) held captive in this 21st-century concentration camp.

Solidarity with hunger strikers at Rikers Island! #FreeThemAll #ShutEmDown https://t.co/Ui8QBNVEsA

— RevAbolitionNYC (@RevAbolitionNYC) January 11, 2022

We are the bearers of an abolitionist tradition, steeped in the spirit of militant resistance to fascism in all its forms. In our time, there is nowhere that fits the bill quite like Amerikkka’s prisons, precincts, jails, juvie halls, and detention centers.

Amerikkka’s ruling class will never close the death camps of its own good will. All of us, wherever we are, whether inside or outside the walls of Jericho, must do that ourselves. Together we can tear down the walls once and for all, along with the investments in police and prisons that make them possible and profitable for the 1%.

Today, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we can hear our one million dead cry out for justice: for decarceration and for liberation, for abolition and for revolution against this genocidal regime (a regime which formed part of the inspiration for the Nazi system/the Final Solution in the first place).

*STRIKE AT RIKERS* Incarcerated individuals are still striking at Rikers. Their demands need to be met NOW. *Share widely* (format updated)@RAPPcampaign @LegalAidNYC @paroleprepny @nonewjails_nyc @NYCCoronavirus @AOC @IWOC_NYC @NYCMayor pic.twitter.com/FjqF0WMbzm

— MACC NYC (@macc_nyc) March 23, 2020

OK PEOPLES
Time to throwdown for the hungerstrikers!
Family have already been calling the county supervisors and want some help.

Put aside some time this Friday to takeover their phonelines!

Please BOOST!

All details here and in THREADhttps://t.co/nhdl89v8GD pic.twitter.com/OhxKw9wU5l

— Oakland Abolition & Solidarity (@OaklandAboSol) January 26, 2022

As Comrade Baldwin wrote in his open letter to Comrade Angela, published 1/7/1971:

If we know, and do nothing, we are worse than the murderers hired in our name. If we know, then we must fight for your life as though it were our own – which it is – and render impassable with our bodies the corridor to the gas chamber. For, if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.

In solidarity with prison rebels everywhere, from Rikers to Santa Rita!

Close New York’s death camps, abolish the Department of Correction!

Stop killing Black people, abolish the New York City Police Department!

Close Rikers NOW! No New Jails! Free Them All or Else!

New editorial from Indigenous Action on the need to confront root ideologies and structures of colonialism and capitalism.

Global warming is a direct consequence of war against Mother Earth.

Unless the root ideologies and structures that precipitate this crisis are confronted and done away with, we condemn ourselves and future generations to non-existence.  ”Big Green” non-profit corporations and so-called non-governmental organizations (even the Indigenous ones) have set the terms for dissent and triage of this crisis in such a way, that through the claims of foresightedness where we can supposedly see a better future ahead of us, manifest as a shallow and short lived mirage blowing back at us the inevitable ends of our own extinction, or an existence in a desolate and decimated hellscape, what else can be expected from a series of cookie cutter tactics that keep us marching in circles?

In contrast to the genuinely lethal, even existential crisis that the whole of the earth and the species who depend and reside upon it face, the current tactics of Non-Violent Civil Disobedience fail precisely because those who employ it consistently misunderstand the urgency of catastrophe on the horizon and embrace the safety of a positional, tactical, analytical, strategic and structural half measure as “protest”, that materially manifests itself as a decorated acquiescence in the form of continually more symbolic protests and adventures in the comfort zone politics of a march toward catharsis, as if that will stop glaciers from melting and entire species from going extinct. This failed posturing of so-called “protection,” “preservation” and accumulation of “political power” (lobbying) instead serves to reinforce the State and its monopoly of violence more than challenge them. One can only assume a psychology behind this is one of creative exhaustion and conceptual blindness or more simply a reticence that is the fear of being labelled “alarmist” or “too radical.” While nearly the whole of the Neo-Liberal Environmental Movement for Climate Justice (and have no doubt it is “NeoLiberal” or does Green Capitalism and Green economics mean something else?), has been sounding the alarms for the absolute necessity of radical change. In our case, as Indigenous People, we’ve been sounding it out since before Columbus, to one another, and to the settler invaders when we reminded them that you can’t eat money.

The Climate Justice Movement’s tactics are limited in that they all are expressed fundamentally as some form of aggressive lobbying (on National and International levels). But we can’t expect much more when they wield strategies that rest on damage control through political and economic reforms to the very people, forces, powers, interests and institutions that created this crisis in the first place. Although the appearances of systemic issues like capitalism and colonialism may be addressed in press releases and written across banners on the streets, the underlying strategic aims rest on the reconfiguration of the dominant social order towards a more ecologically oriented environmentally conscious nation state, against the totalizing all encompassing force that is Capitalist Colonialism and Imperialism.   “Just transition” is a strategy of economic redemption to further preserve ways of being that are unsustainable by design, you can’t Lobby away Colonialism and Capitalism, no matter how hard you try.

The “Green New Deal,” like its parent “Green Economics” are meant to sustain the U.S. settler colonial project and the capitalist relations whose interest lay within the specificity of continuing the ongoing “exploitation” (destruction) of the whole of the Earth, while cashing in of course. In the case of The Green New Deal, which in many ways begat its own child, that of the Red New Deal, who aside from outright plagiarizing, fronting, and co-opting longterm Indigenous Climate Justice work, the Red Nation’s “Red New Deal,” proposes an anti-capitalist and woefully limited anti-colonial response that not only reinforces industrialization but ultimately leads to the ongoing participation in Capitalism proper, just “renamed” and “reformed” under a “transitional” Socialist Rubric, that leads to their Marxist organization’s propositions for a “decolonized” authoritarian worker-run state as the best solution. So while we’re collectively dying from the air we can’t breathe, the water we can’t drink, or both priced out of accessibility in the here and now we are meant to await the building of yet another Socialist Utopia. A utopia built upon the current dystopia of growing wastelands and climate disasters on every continent.  From deadly nuclear power to lithium and rare earth mineral mining, and the privatization of water, the greening of any economy is still a war against Mother Earth and all existence. But yeah, sure “we can transition program” our way out of it, you can’t. This isn’t a solution, this isn’t even intervention, let alone interdiction in or upon Global Disaster Capitalism, this is group fantasythink. It is accelerated death by suicide.

We don’t want an ecologically friendly settler colonial State, we seek to abolish its very existence.

The forefront of Indigenous Climate justice groups proselytize a narrative of their own victimhood, in terms that increase funding streams to their non-profit corporations to pay their bloated salaries and climate action protest-cations aka PR stunts with a legal team on retainer. All while they compete for the spotlight and rally with celebrities to build organizational recognition, and a homogeneity of popular purpose, not to mention a standardization of rote tactical and strategic stagnation.

The assertion that we protect 80% of the world’s biosphere has become a twist on the colonial idea of the “White man’s burden,” but here it is merely shifted to “the burden of the colonized.” This is the twisted colonial logic of climate activism: to reduce our ways of being and complex ongoing struggles to campaign talking points, only to prove we deserve “a seat at the table,” it’s “Change” through arithmetic by way of better self marketing, branding and advertising. Through ceremony, and a myriad of tactically dynamic direct actions we protect all of existence – not just percentages. Our power is not to be found at the colonizer’s table, it is to be found and rekindled in its well fed flames.

By calculating that Indigenous resistance to 20 fossil fuel projects has “stopped or delayed” carbon emissions equivalent to approximately 25% of U$ and KKKanada’s annual overall emissions, climate activists reveal the power of direct action, yet they also assign their campaigns more credit than is due. Particularly by citing significant losses such as DAPL and Line 3 projects in their reports, this statistic tends towards a deluded climate optimism that we view as a path fraught with peril and death. If we’re not being honest with and about the failings of our movements, what does shifting tactics, and more importantly adjusting our overall strategies, toward the end of yet more changing statistics matter? It rings as a dishonest sales pitch and sidesteps the important conversations of what is actually working to stop climate catastrophe. It also still provides a leeway, by which the prevention of climate change and the related catastrophic disasters it brings, as “optional.” Not existentially necessary, which it actually is. Every species residing on this planet is literally under threat of extinction and mass destruction. We’re not convinced about making this a numbers game to celebrate the disrupting of 25% of an industry, when we’ve lost over 98% of the battles in a war with such high stakes. Particularly when those activist campaigns have spent hundreds of millions of dollars with thousands of our relatives jailed and dragged through racist court systems.

We are not (entirely) pessimists, we want to have honest conversations about what is working and what is not. The crisis is urgent and the moment is desperate. It isn’t “pending,” the crises are here, now, everywhere and everywhen. If we ignore the failings and downplay or ignore the lessons we can learn from them, how can we shift and grow strategies and tactics that are more effective?

It is not our responsibility to sustain unsustainable ways of existence.

In point of fact it IS our responsibility to destroy them. Their maintenance as “sustainability” is the assumed burden of the current climate justice movement, the one in dire need of radical change in and of itself, which has become as project the “burden of the colonizer,” built upon the continued genocide of the colonized as resonating back to the beginning lo those 500 plus years ago. If we wish not to be enemies of Mother Earth, it is up to us to shift, and own our responsibilities and mutuality to the Earth and take action accordingly. This has always meant that we must seek to assert the ways of our ancestors through spiritual and practical interventions (from growing food to burning their forts and everything in between). It is the contention of harmony and disharmony that has always challenged us in this world.

To fully stop these mines, power plants, dams, and pipelines we have to stop the political machinery and systems that generate them at their root.

Our power is not in the spotlight with more talking heads negotiating for recognition and performing for the colonial gaze. It is not confined to social media word limits or shouting through a megaphone on a permitted march. Our power is in the shadows cast by the flames of this system burning to the ground, while we light another match.

photo: Klee Benally on Instagram