Submission
A couple weeks ago, a friend sent me a flyer for a “work” party at Bartram’s Garden. Anarchists have been agitating around stopping gentrification of that area for a while after that zine came out…I forgot the name. Generally, one of the cooler things about anarchists in Philly is that we have a pretty long history of actually fighting gentrification through sabotage as opposed to just complaining about it on a megaphone. The flyer advised us to mask up, bring tools, that phones were bad and to bring trusted friends. It also advised for folks to keep off the internet and big threads. I was excited to have been sent a flyer for an action that seemed a bit more devious especially since all the leftist stuff going on in the city is very uninteresting to me. Yelling at buildings is very boring and doesn’t seem like a good way to adequately address gentrification in my view. As a Black radical, it is pretty disappointing that most of the Black organizations in the city are uninterested in attacking in ways that actually combat gentrification, materially.
Anyway, I sent the flyer to a few homies. Some were able to make it. Some weren’t. Anyway, myself and a comrade rolled down there a lil after the time it was supposed to start. We scoped it out. We weren’t sure exactly where everyone was meeting but after hearing cutting sounds, we went over. The action was pretty cool. People were just cutting this big ass fence that the developers had set up in Bartrams. Everyone was kinda just doing their own thing. My homie and I didn’t bring adequate tools to cut so we ended up just carring the fencing and throwing some of it into the river along with other attendees. The action was very chill and it was good to see a few familiar faces. We both had some shit to do early the next day so we peaced out a bit early after leaving a few tags. There wasn’t really much else to do though other than cut the fence…and I wish the action maybe had another goal or something. Despite this, it was pretty cool.
Either way, actions like this are cool because they are pretty low level and a good entry point for people that are interested in learning how to be more confident in doing attack with their own hands as opposed to asking some politician for help. I hope that this energy can continue into the summer. I’d love to get invited to more night demos or work parties. And I’d definitely bring my friends.
I guess I’m sorta a movement oriented person (which puts me at odds with a lot of insurrectos in the city) so I just wonder how a more aboveground anti-gentrification movement could interface with these more underground attacks in Philly. Is that something worth pursuing? What would it materially look like? I’d like to see attacks grow and I wonder how much of that means trying to interface and impose our will on the more leftist anti-gentrification forces in the city. Despite this, most of them are pretty liberal and against violence but maybe there are some openings. Who knows? It was refreshing though to take part in something that wasn’t liberal. I’ve love to get more invitations in the future.
More anarchy
More destruction
Fuck the Gentry
-a new afrikan anarchist in Philly
