MAY ZINE FEST FLYER & DATE JUST DROPPED !!! MAY 25th, 3PM AT CLARK PARK (every last Sunday of the month) 𫣠u guys already know the drill by now , WE WANNA SEE MORE FREE SHIT THO đŁď¸đŁď¸đŁď¸ no shade to those whoâs hustle is selling their art but weâre tryna create a little pocket of the world where not everything is gatekept and influenced by capital!! (The free groceries were sick af last time!!) We wanna see copies of any cool zines you picked up last month , prints of any art youâve been working on, keep coming thru with the emotional mini zines and crying punchcards that shit was so funny. See ya there ;)))
Vamos a pasar un rato conociendo a Châo Tinimit, un nuevo centro social anarkista en Xela, Guate. HabrĂĄ comida, juegos, musica, amigos y conversaciĂłn con unx de lxs fundadorxs del proyecto. Invitan a sus amigos, y traiga una mascara de covid!
Join us for a low-key kickback to learn about Châo Tinimit, a new Anarchist info shop in Xela, Guate. There will be food, friends, games, music, and conversation with one of the founders of Châo Tinimit. Bring your friends, wear a mask!
On a late summer day in 1906, a small group of newly arrived Jewish immigrants in Philadelphia took a streetcar across town to Fairmount Park. Several miles from the cramped row houses and oppressive sweatshops of the immigrant quarter of South Philly, the neighborhood now known as Queen Village, they enjoyed a sunny picnic.
They werenât there to make small talk, though.
Instead, they wanted to write ârevolutionary articlesâ that would spark the âstruggle against all that degrades and oppresses humanity,â as one of the leaders of the group, Joseph Cohen, later wrote in his 1945 memoir.
More specifically, the picnicgoers wanted to start a newspaper. It would be titled Broyt un Frayheyt â Yiddish for Bread and Freedom â the anarchist reminder that to live the good life, one needs both.
Iâm a professor of media and politics at Temple University in Philadelphia. For the past year Iâve been tracking the life and times of my great-grandfather Max, a radical Yiddish journalist in the early years of the 20th century.
To my surprise, I found he had lived here in Philadelphia, and his story is part of a largely forgotten moment in U.S. history: when Philly was an epicenter of the national anarchist movement, heartily supported by the cityâs burgeoning Jewish immigrant community.
Beyond the Russian pale
By 1906, thousands of people like Max had made their way to Philadelphia from the Russian âpaleâ â the only part of the Russian Empire where they could legally reside. They fled economic isolation and state-sanctioned persecution in search of a more stable life.
South Philly was better than where they had come from, but immigrant life then, as now, was by no means easy. They had escaped a legal regime of oppression and the perpetual threat of antisemitic mob violence. But in turn they found a world of dark alleys and dead ends. Their labor was exploited, their living conditions meager.
For some, the American promise of freedom and prosperity seemed to ring hollow.
They did, however, find one freedom they had not experienced before. They were able to speak, write and publish their ideas no matter how outlandish or against the grain.
The Yiddish press in the United States was experiencing extraordinary growth at the time. In New York, Philadelphia and other cities, newspapers quickly emerged â and often disappeared â month over month.
Max moved to Philadelphia in 1906 to work with another immigrant named Joseph Cohen. Cohen had arrived in Philadelphia three years earlier. He earned a scant living making cigars, but his real work was advocating anarchism.
At the dawn of the 20th century, anarchism was not the nihilistic chaos the term may bring to mind today. It was a heartfelt dream of a free and egalitarian society.
The anarchists believed that man-made hierarchies â political, economic and religious â were illegitimate and limited the full expression of humanity. They rejected the authority of the state. That particularly appealed to many Jewish immigrants, for whom laws in the old country had long served as vehicles of oppression.
Cohen had studied this philosophy of local autonomy and communal life with the Philadelphia activist Voltairine de Cleyre.
History may remember Emma Goldman, a Lithuanian-born New Yorker and perhaps the leading voice of American anarchism from that era. But de Cleyre was the heart and soul of Philadelphiaâs anarchist scene.
Goldman once described de Cleyre as a âpoet-rebel,â a âliberty-loving artistâ and âthe greatest woman anarchist of America.â
A tireless critic of the inequities of the industrial age, de Cleyre had taught herself Yiddish to better serve as âthe apostle of anarchismâ in the Jewish ghetto.
While de Cleyre could often be found speaking in front of city hall, Max, Cohen and their colleagues were more likely to gather at the corner of Fifth and South streets, the hub of Philadelphiaâs Yiddish press and its culture of rambunctious street debate.
By 1906, Cohen had co-founded the anarchist Radical Library in the upstairs rooms at 229 Pine St. This provided the Philadelphia anarchists a meeting space and reading room.
But âthe Jewish newspaper men, the radicals and the tireless talkers,â as the Philadelphia historian Harry Boonin wrote, still congregated in the ramshackle cafes lining the 600 block of South Fifth, where they would argue over anarchism and atheism deep into the night.
Competition with NYC comrades
Cohenâs goal was to publish a nationally influential anarchist paper that would give voice to the âcomrades from Philadelphia.â
That meant direct competition with the New York Yiddish press and the influential weekly newspaper Freie Arbeiter Stimme, or The Free Voice of Labor. Edited by Saul Yanovksy on Manhattanâs Lower East Side, FAS was the center of the Jewish anarchist movement and of the Yiddish intelligentsia more broadly.
âTo be able to say âI have written for Yanovsky,ââ wrote the sociologist Robert Park in 1922, âis a literary passport for a Yiddish writer.â
Although the FAS masthead said the paper was located in New York and Philadelphia, Yanovksy controlled the operation from New York, much to Cohenâs dismay.
Cohen had partnered with Yanovsky earlier in 1906 to publish a daily anarchist newspaper. He maintained a small office in the back of Finklerâs cigar store at Fifth and Bainbridge streets. But the paper was printed in New York and delivered back to Philadelphia each morning by courier train.
Cohen wrote in his memoir that he suspected Yanovsky intentionally sabotaged the effort by insisting that he personally write the daily editorial, but then turning in his copy too late for the paper to make the train. After two months the partnership, and the paper, fell apart.
For Cohen, the lesson was that to be the genuine voice of the anarchist movement, he had to print the paper locally in Philadelphia.
Bread and Freedom published its first issue on Nov. 11, 1906. The date was symbolic. It was the anniversary of the execution of the âChicago martyrsâ â the four men wrongly sentenced to death for the 1886 bombing at a labor rally at Chicagoâs Haymarket Square. The Haymarket affair galvanized the anarchist movement among immigrants, even as it accelerated the wider fear of foreign-born radicalism.
Over the next three months, the newspaper offered a weekly digest of anarchist arguments. It translated into Yiddish Voltairine de Cleyreâs critique of capitalism and what she called its âmoral bankruptcyâ â its hunger for wealth, power and material possessions. It attacked what de Cleyre called the âdominant ideaâ of the times â âthe shameless, mercilessâ exploitation of the worker, âonly to produce heaps and heaps of things â things ugly, things harmful, things useless, and at the best largely unnecessary.â
Almost as soon as it began, however, Bread and Freedom ran out of money. Its rhetoric was exciting but ineffective. The paper offered no real solutions beyond an impossible demand to dismantle the capitalist state.
Although two members of the group were briefly detained by the police in Baltimore for selling a radical newspaper, their fiery propaganda lit no revolutionary spark.
Instead, it disappeared quietly, folding in January 1907.
Shifting tactics
Even then, a different kind of immigrant was arriving in the U.S. from Russia. Their radical politics were coupled with organizational acumen.
Many of the older anarchists would join forces with these newcomers, and the effort morphed into something more pragmatic. They helped build the foundations of the 20th-century labor movement, which successfully fought for once-radical ideals such as the eight-hour workday and paid sick leave.
A few years earlier, though, the streets of South Philly had been home to a vibrant space of free speech and boundless political imagination. It would not last long, but it is a moment I believe is worth remembering.
In October 2019, protests against a transit fare hike in Santiago erupted into a nation-wide insurrection against the Chilean state. For six months, the streets were transformed into vibrant laboratories of self-organization, creativity and resistance, before ultimately being cleared by the promise of a new constitution and the spread of a global pandemic.
In the opening installment of Interrebellium, subMedia traces the history of the Estallido Social through the first-hand experiences of its participants, as they share battle-tested street tactics, and hard-won lessons about the lengths that the state will go to repress and recuperate challenges to its rule.
Come hear conversation about the ways that Signal may and may not be useful for your digital safety from surveillance by various entities. Hat will be passed to help activists in Michigan who have been facing increased legal attacks.
[At Wooden Shoe]
Great News! Join us for writing support letters, which can have a huge impact when seeing the parole board. Weâll have sample letters and comrades there to help you draft your own letter in support of Khalif!
It will never surprise us how much conservatives short circuit the minute they see Black people.
Over the weekend, the anti-Trump âHands Offâ rallies that have been held across the country over the past few months continued (the next big protest date is planned for May 1). Most were peaceful with few arrests, primarily from conflicts with neo-fascists like the Proud Boys who counter the protests. Participants of a small rally just outside Philadelphia, which happened a few days before the big weekend rallies, were also confronted by the racist son of a New Jersey judge who is also Trump volunteer with open criminal cases in Pennsylvania, Florida and Texas.
On April 15, Chester County Indivisible had posted that they were going on an overpass in Chesterbrook, Pennsylvania with banners in support of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last month, and who the Trump Administration is not returning to his home in Maryland. At least ten persons stood on the overpass spanning Rt. 206. Kadida Kenner of the New Pennsylvania Project, an organization that advocates for voting rights and works to expand the voter rolls in Pennsylvania, joined the protest after it was going on for a few hours. âI saw a pop-up pop up on my timeline, and I said, Iâm going to go because I want to be out there with this group. I want to support this group that is doing this,â she said.
There were no incidents until John McCarthy approached just minutes after Kenner arrived. He claimed he was a reporter for âFirst Right Media,â and immediately the group felt he was a bit off. âWhen he came, he just looked completely out of place,â Kenner recalled. âI mean, he was dressed in a suit, he has his own personal phone out and heâs cosplaying as and saying out loud that heâs an independent journalist and made-up a publication of some kind.â
Kenner advised the group to ignore McCarthy and not engage with him, which prompted him to become more irate, repeatedly suggesting that not wanting to speak to him is why they lost the last election. âHe wasnât getting the attention that he was looking for. He wasnât getting the soundbites he was looking for,â she said, noting that this was when McCarthy focused his attention on her, the only Black woman in the group. âHe came towards me and said, âI want to get your sign. I want to get a picture of your sign.â And as he came towards me to do that, I kept turning away from him because I didnât want to be on his camera. I didnât want my sign to be on his camera. And that is what was the final draw for him, the final straw for him, was me completely ignoring him.â
That last straw prompted him to fling even more invectives as he left the overpass, and as he walked away, he directed his last missive to Kenner; âGo back to Africa!â
As McCarthy was a bit away from Kenner and started a quicker walk to his car it wasnât until someone replayed the video of the racist comment that Kenner first heard it. âI didnât hear him say that to me and Iâm glad I didnât,â she said. âAnd I believe the ancestors protected me. (I) believe the ancestors protected me from hearing that!â
Kenner was not surprised by that response from McCarthy, as there seems to be a heightened hostility toward Blacks from the right, particularly when they are advocating for human rights. âWhenever black folks are out and about trying to defend democracy trying to protect the rights of everybody, we solicit such racist responses,â she said. âWhatâs interesting to me is I wasnât treating him any differently than anybody else was but he left, he only pointed to me on his way out. He only pointed to me, only me, to go back to Africa. I was the only black person there. There a Latina woman there as well, but I was the only one that he had to have a comment for.â
John Francis McCarthy VI is the estranged son of a municipal judge in Princeton, NJ. Online records note that he trademarked âFirst Right Mediaâ in September and the only other instance that could be found of that name being used is associated with McCarthyâs Twitter handle on an account where he mostly retweets other tweets. During the presidential campaign, he was interviewed by reporters while he was outside an appearance of then Vice-President candidate Tim Walz, where he expressed his support for Donald Trump. Also, his criminal record dating back five years shows that he has violence associated with his political leanings.
He was arrested in January 2022 in Tallahassee, Florida on a battery charge stemming from when he allegedly accosted television reporter Madison Glaser in an effort to get on live television to satisfy a âbountyâ put out by Infowarsâ Alex Jones, according to the police report, where he produced a video calling for his followers to, âGet on get on national live, or international live TV, legally and lawfully, to a COVID wake-up slogan of your choice,â while promoting his website. McCarthy followed Glaser into a police headquarters lobby but eventually was arrested the following days later after Glaser filed a police report. The case is ongoing with an active warrant for McCarthy who acknowledged the warrant in emails to local news outlets last month that is a misdemeanor battery charge. He also admitted to having a Texas warrant for unlawful restraint, which he claims was the result of a âdouble parkingâ dispute outside a laundromat. Records show that the incident occurred on February, 17 2022 in Texas Bastrop, TX with charges filed on May 20, 2022.
The emails were in relation to one of McCarthyâs more recent arrests two months ago in which he was charged with impersonating a public servant and harassment for identifying himself as law enforcement multiple times to people in Quarryville, PA. According to news reports, he approached two officers on patrol, identified himself as a âvolunteer with the United States Attorneyâs Officeâ and was investigating a drug case in the area and asked to assist him, saying that he worked with Lancaster, Pennsylvania police as well. He only had a Texas driverâs license and Uber driver business card as identification, and did not have the necessary security clearance. Lancaster city police said they never worked with McCarthy. McCarthy became agitated and drove away, according to police.
A few days later, a local Turkey Hill convenience store employee told police McCarthy two weeks earlier he told her he was an âundercover drug buster,â and inquired about certain employees, calling the store multiple times on Feb. 16. He was told they were there not at the time and became angry when he was told they were off, saying he would be investigating all of them and he hoped the womanâs unborn baby would be stillborn. In the emails he sent to news outlets, McCarthy denied the charges and said he is a concerned Uber driver who has âlegally and lawfullyâ volunteered information to law enforcement.
In March, McCarthy was arrested when it was learned that he had been at Morr Range in Lampeter, PA firing a weapon despite having the outstanding warrants as well as a restraining order against him in New Jersey. He was released on $50,000 bail but the charge was dropped. Records show that he is supposed to have a court appearance on Tuesday in Lancaster County Court on harassment charges stemming from the Quarryville arrest.
While the Hands Off rallies have been successful, there has been an equally successful effort by Black people to sit them out with the contention that it is ultimately not a fight Black and Brown people need to wage, at least not this way. Kenner will participate in the rallies as she is the CEO of an organization that fights for voting rights but her presence should not be taken by granted. âWeâve been saying for many, many years now whatâs going to happen if we donât get ourselves together, do the right things,â she said. âAnd we should be out here defending all of our rights and our freedoms and not just when itâs convenient or when itâs starting to affect certain people.â
Mark ur calendars 4 the 4th zine fest of the year babeyyyy !! The vibes were just so immaculate and the reads were just oh so sexy and subversive last time I donât wanna wait til Sunday, April 27th at 3pm to get my zine distro on!!!! 𤏠act autonomously wear a mask bring your neighbors or you friends from out of town (we need more pet appearances too come yâall on I wanna play with ur dogs). LETS KEEP THIS GOINGG âĄď¸đđŞđ
Philadelphia, PA â After a brutal stock market correction and new anti-trade tariff policies, more than 120,000 layoffs of federal workers, dozens of executive orders, and hundreds of immigrant arrests led by ICE, many Americans are reeling from political and financial upheaval caused by the Trump administration. Around 150 liberal groups, including unions, climate and advocacy groups like MoveOn, called for a wide set of #HandsOff rallies around the country on Saturday, April 5. The Philadelphia rally, one of several in the region, gathered at City Hall in Center City and marched down Market Street to the lawn near the National Constitution Center and Independence Hall for a series of speeches from politicians and people whoâve worked at institutions under threat like the Environmental Protection Agency and US Postal Service.
While the crowds in many locations leaned towards an older demographic, it was a strikingly large mobilization and the largest one since Donald Trump was inaugurated in January; itâs the clearest indicator yet that the Baby Boomer generation hasnât checked out of political activity in retirement, especially as the systems of the Social Security Administration threaten to unravel. The turnout at the Philly event was both older and more white than the cityâs demographics.
Making this zine started for me as a vague desire to know how Assata Shakur escaped from prison. I had enjoyed reading her autobiography âAssataâ and I was left wanting to know more. One chapter ends with her declaring that she was done with being locked up, and the next begins with her living in Cuba if I remember correctly. I mostly moved on, focusing on other things. More recently a friend mentioned that they had heard of a book about the Shakur family that went into the details of the liberation. The book in question was An Amerikan Family: The Shakurs And The Nation They Created by Santi Elijah Holley. I sought out the book and found a text that not only went into the details of Assataâs liberation but provided context about who all took part, the social movements and underground networks they were a part of and a whole set of histories that intrigued me.
I decided to only reprint the parts that explicitly deal with the liberation of Assata Shakur from prison and her transit to Havana, Cuba. The rest is worth reading in my opinion, as well as Assataâs own autobiography which gives context to Assataâs life path and freedom struggle, and Russel Maroon Shoatzâs I Am Maroon which also documents prison escapes, life on the run, and life underground from a Black liberation perspective. The idea that prisons are impenetrable, inescapable is demonstrably false and these histories are proof of that (as are the escapes that continue to take place today)! This bootleg reprint is only a snippet of a larger history of experimentation in collective and individual liberation that I feel Black anarchists and other revolutionaries could benefit from familiarizing ourselves with and learning from.
In the wake of the genocide taking place in Palestine at the hands of the zionist entity numerous calls have gone out for escalation and also â though less well circulated â for (re)building the underground in todayâs movements for decolonization and liberation. Todayâs undergrounds will look different from those of the 1970s and 1980s, yet there is still much we can learn from them. We are already seeing waves of political repression attempting to capture, pacify, eject, and domesticate rebels from the George Floyd revolts, the struggles to stop the construction of cop city in Atlanta, and the struggles in solidarity with Palestinians fighting for liberation. Unfortunately we are already seeing a new generation of political prisoners and exiles. Of course it is inevitable that some will be locked up as long as liberation struggles havenât destroyed the cages. By learning from the struggles that came before us we can be better equipped to make the stateâs work as hard as possible. Some of my goals for reprinting and circulating this account of Assata Shakurâs liberation from prison are to exercise our collective imagination of what is possible and contribute to dialogues about escalation, building undergrounds, and facing state repression.
Another goal of spreading this story is a fear that many stories of this kind, especially the illegal ones, will be lost. Either buried with the aging revolutionaries who made them happen, locked behind tight lips to ensure the safety and anonymity of the guilty, or neatly entombed in academic or historical literature that few will have the patience and position to read. To me these histories are not meant to be left in the dirt or hidden away in sleepy archives accessible with a student ID, they are part of our struggles today, weapons to be used to free ourselves, and by freeing ourselves free the dead who wrote these histories with their own sweat and blood. We can remember and tell these stories as part of our own race toward liberation and freedom now.
More selfishly, I am exciting to be adding a little something to a growing tendency of Black anarchist struggles. Anecdotally it seems there are more Black anarchists than before and that more approaches to Black liberation are imagining freedom through an anti-authoritarian lens. The former Black Panthers and Black Liberation Army soldiers who advocated anarchic visions of freedom and struggle, during and after the decline of the Black Panther Party have paved the way for Black radicals to understand anarchy as a vision of freedom we can hold as our own. Russel âMaroonâ Shoatz, Kuwasi Balagoon, Ashanti Alston, Lorenzo Komboa Ervin, and Martin Sostre are coming up more in the anarchist space, as well as the dialogues of Black revolutionaries. The last decade has seen a number of anarchically oriented Black liberation groups and projects that explore the synchronicity between Black freedom and anarchy. Salish Sea Black Autonomists, Afro-Futurist Abolitionists of the Americas, various zines, a handful of small gatherings, dialogues across geographies, increased interest in anarchists in Africa generally.
The text below is part of a longer book that goes into the history of the Shakur family. While I do not agree with the authorâs position that the Shakurs aimed to improve amerika I have found the information useful nonetheless. I have added a few of my own notes to the text and added complete names in brackets to give context to readers who may not be familiar with the history of the Black Liberation Army, Assata Shakur, or other aspects of the struggles taking place at the time of Assataâs escape from prison. Again I encourage readers to dig deeper, to learn about the Black liberation struggles, guerrilla groups, and social movements that the people involved in Assataâs liberation were part of.
If you were bummed to miss a talk on police tactics, thereâs another chance! Join us again for a brief lecture and a collective discussion about how police relate to and suppress protest movements. By looking at police tactics to street action and civil disorder, how can we better develop our own priorities and anticipate police response to movements for liberation?
Our aim will be to understand the logics behind how cops roll up on protests. Using authoritiesâ own playbooks as a starting point, we will build a top level picture of how states operate, and we will look at how that manifests to police tactics on the ground. Expect some discussion of state violence and police brutality.
Peppy DiPippa is a Pittsburgh community activist currently serving a 60-month sentence for events revolving around a demonstration against an April 18th 2023 event at the University of Pittsburgh. The invitation of noted transphobes Michael Knowles and Brad Palumbo to the University to debate the question âShould Transgenderism be Regulated by Law?â sparked protests outside, during which one firework and two homemade smoke bombs were discharged. One month later, heavily armed federal agents raided Peppyâs home. He and his wife Crystal were federally indicted, and on June 30th, they surrendered to court. Krystal was charged with conspiracy and obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder, and sentenced to 3 years of supervised release and 80 hours of community service. Peppy was charged with conspiracy, obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder, and use of use of explosive to commit a federal felony. He has been incarcerated since his capture. The couple were jointly sentenced to pay $50,225.03 in restitution.
While the demonstration at the University of Pittsburgh forms the context in which Peppy and his wife Krystal were charged, it is crucial to note that the FBI began stalking the couple well before April 18th, and that their charges intersect with national trends in state repression . In their affidavit for a search warrant, the FBI describe following the DiPippas a week before the demonstration. While searching the coupleâs trash, federal agents found a pamphlet from the movement to Stop Copy City , which they described as a âzine⌠discussing anarchist ideology.â During their trial, the prosecution focused on Peppyâs âstrongly held belief system that embraces anarchismâ and âsense of community among anarchists.â The judge cited Peppyâs âsentiments supporting anarchismâ in his decision to hold Peppy in pre-trial detention with no possibility of bail. This attempt to criminalize the ideas and beliefs of what the state calls âAGAAVEâ (anti-government and anti-authority violent extremists) aligns closely with repression of the Stop Cop City movement, in which defendants were charged with racketeering simply for sympathizing with anarchism .
We hold in our gravity a deep reverence for love beyond the limited words we have. We know the devoted embrace of solidarity â people leaning in to one another against involuntary servitude and for a world of mutual aid. If we are convicted, it is of love for each other, and for our community, to which all brave hearts beat devotion to the impossible task of liberation. We are grateful for those who care take, for without you, freedom would be even more distant.
If you are unable to join us at Wooden Shoe for this event, you can still write to Peppy:
Brian DiPippa #66590-510
FCI Elkton
Federal Correctional Institution
P.O Box 10
Lisbon, OH 44432
When I read your letters, my soul escapes this place to walk alongside you, to commune; and with a big inhale I share our smiles with others experiencing incarceration. Thank you for reaching through these windowless walls. Respect and solidarity to all the bravehearts!
Letâs support our incarcerated comrades and fighters! Our movement is only as strong as our support for the rebels behind the walls. Weâll be writing to the three following prisoners Hybachi Lemar, Mujera Benjamin Lungaâho and Luigi Mangione. Bring food and homies. Weâll provide stamps, envelopes, pens, stamps and paper. Please wear a mask!
5pm
April 19th
ORCA
Information on who we will be writing to:
Hybachi Lemar (Incarcerated Black Anarchist Revolutionary)
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