from Anathema
Volume 4 Issue 8 (PDF for printing 11 x 17)
Volume 4 Issue 8 (PDF for reading 8.5 x 11)
In this issue:
from Radical Education Department
RED was founded approximately one year ago, and it has developed in myriad unforeseeable and exciting ways, while also confronting obstacles and limitations along the way. By providing an overview of what I consider to be our successes, as well as an outline of goals for the coming year, it is my hope that I can contribute to the autonomous process of collective education that is crucially important to the revolutionary Left. Just as we have learned and continue to learn from so many of the radical groups at work around the world, I hope that others can take inspiration from our model, and also help us reach our goals for RED Year II!
Doing Something with Nothing
The basis for RED’s success to date is the recognition that you can make a significant political impact with limited resources and no monetary support. We have, since the very beginning, been a small group, and each person has contributed according the their abilities and what their time commitments allow. Everything has been extremely shoestring, but there is a common egalitarian energy and anti-capitalist drive that invigorates us to pick up the RED torch whenever we can find time. This means—and it was an important lesson for all of us to learn experientially—that any tiny group of a few people can dive in and get things moving. There is no need to wait around until the time is ripe, the revolution is on our doorstep or the Establishment pushes things too far. The time is now!
In the coming year, it would be great if we could find a few more dedicated torchbearers. At times, we have been spread too thin, and it is important for our group to maintain a stable core, as well as concentric circles of dedicated, as well as more or less intermittent, collaborators. Some of our early members have had to step back for numerous reasons, but others are also stepping up. We look forward to integrating them into RED and building up our concentric circles of collaboration in the coming year!
A Focused Organization Not a Political Party
We knew from the very beginning that we did not want to develop a mass organization, and we conceive of our role more as a radical groupuscule that can push the envelope, work more flexibly and intervene incisively, while simultaneously working with and across other groups. Our mode of organization is neither strictly hierarchical, nor is it purely horizontal, as we discussed here. In order to maximize the autonomy of our members, we decided that RED activities would be those supported by at least two members, which does not require group consensus or a single leader.
As we develop, we would like to shore up and clarify our modes of organization based on our experiences thus far, and also in order to fine-tune our decision-making process. It is a delicate operation to move beyond the extremes of verticalism and horizontalism, and many of us are convinced that this is an extremely important tactical shift that needs to be further theorized and put into practice. Given our past experiences in various political groups and in Occupy, we recognize the enormous strengths of this transversal mode of organization and would like to be able, through experiential knowledge, to be able to model it for other groups, while also continuing to learn more about all of the interesting organizational models that are already in practice.
A Thinking Tank
As a revolutionary leftist organization, one of our projects has been to function as a research collaborative that collectively produces informative and insightful articles on contemporary politics and organizing. We have successfully forged collaborations with some of the most important venues for the radical intelligentsia and general public (such as CounterPunch and Truthout) as well as for activist communities (such as It’s Going Down and Enough Is Enough), which has allowed our articles to circulate in much broader circles. The content that we have collectively produced has arguably had an impact in at least two ways. On the one hand, we have diagnosed and conceptually dismantled the standard liberal framework used to make sense of contemporary media debates on such things as violence, antifa, direct action and free speech. On the other hand, we have increasingly been invested in asking and providing responses to timely tactical questions of organizing, encouraging our readership to always be thinking about how we can move our actions to the next level (see our work on anti-ICE mobilization, radical struggle in Philadelphia, insurrectionary councilism, the insurrectionary campus, antifa on a conservative campus and popular-front antifa). It is very difficult to know how much of an impact these interventions have had, but they have at the very least been extremely helpful for our own political education, and they have led to a series of productive discussions and interviews (like this discussion of revolutionary strategy on IGD, or this one on violence and antifa on KPFA).
In the coming year, we would like to continue doing this kind of writing, while also adding additional fronts of struggle and connecting to new publication venues and audiences across the hard Left. Our recent launching of a zine project has successfully brought together significant voices on timely issues, and we would like to continue to develop our zines, which will include printing and distributing them free of charge. We have also begun discussing the possibility of launching RED press with short booklets, and many of us are invested in the long-term project of seizing the means of intellectual and cultural production. In this regard, we would also like to develop the aesthetic contributions to RED by collaborating more with artists and creative cultural producers, which will also allow us to reach different types of audiences
Revolutionary Coalition Building
RED is not committed to a single party line, and most of us would identify—or be identified—as anarchists, communists or revolutionary socialists (or some combination thereof). This has allowed us to work broadly with numerous other groups in order to avoid the siloing that has sometimes plagued the revolutionary Left. Some of our most successful public events—like this one on revolutionary coalitions or this one on antifascist education—have brought together people who work with various different groups in order to share their experiences and brainstorm about the most productive models for future collective work. We have also enjoyed the opportunity to serve as a platform for activists around the world, and we have developed ties over time with like-minded groups with which we have begun collaborating, such as Cutting Class.
In RED Year II, we would like to see our project of revolutionary coalition building deepen and expand. Taking inspiration from Fred Hampton and other radical organizers, we would like to establish innovative but workable frameworks for coordinating between different radical groups in such a way that they can maintain their autonomy but maximize their impact by working with others. Much of this work will be local to the Philadelphia area, as we explore the options for creating umbrella structures, but it will also involve greater coordination with other groups around the country and the world for more expansive modes of solidarity and support.
Direct Action
RED emerged out of direct action and the joy of working together for a common cause when you have to put something on the line. It has continued to be important as an intermittent reference point for our struggles, but we have been less successful on this front largely due to time constraints and a concern for avoiding undue penalization.
Direct action is an area where we really need to develop our strengths by tapping back into some of our earlier work and finding the time to make incisive and important interventions that nonetheless keep our members safe. In the coming year, we would like to develop our abilities to immediately be present on the scene for important issues in our area, following the lead of our friends at the Philly Coalition for REAL Justice and others. We would also like to be more proactive in planning ahead for important moments and organizing significant contributions on the part of RED. This can range from participating in major marches or events like May Day to making contributions to the latest flashpoints of struggle, such as anti-ICE organizing or the prison strike. Finally, we plan on launching a guerilla education series that will bring radical education to the streets and corporate universities in and around the Philadelphia area. We are looking forward to blowing some minds!
Internationalism
RED has always recognized that the struggle against global capitalism needs to be international, and many of our group members work across various geographic regions. We have drawn on these experiences in myriad ways and made some important connections to groups abroad. However, this is also an area where this is ample room for growth.
In developing our international connections, we would like to collaborate and coordinate more with other radical groups around the globe. We would also like to forge connections to some of the most important reference points for radical Left organizing in our conjuncture, such as the ZAD in France and the Zapatistas in Chiapas. This will allow us to learn more from their experiences and also help us spread their major work to even larger audiences.
En avant!
It is remarkable for us to be able to celebrate so many accomplishments by such a small organization with no financial resources, which speaks to the radical anti-capitalist spirit that animates us. There is, however, much work to be done, and RED Year II will require energy, commitment and creativity. We are excited to move forward!
– ED
Submission
On August 25th, actions took place to counter a Blue Lives Matter march on occupied Lenape land, Philadelphia, PA. A robust description of the organizers for the Blue Lives March and their connections to and affinity with white supremacy, transphobia and anti-immigrant politics can be found here: http://archive.is/8CIpg. A pretty decent description of how the events unfolded can be found here: https://itsgoingdown.org/antifascist-rally-in-philadelphia-met-with-police-violence/.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgi6bekxjTc
Below are some (very incomplete and rushed) thoughts that feel relevant from one participant:
After the police violence we dealt with, several reportbacks and press releases framed the events as a situation where police needlessly escalated an otherwise non-violent and non-confrontational situation. While it is accurate that our team was unable to effectively attack either the fascist march or the police, and didn’t really have the opportunity to try at any point, it is decidedly inaccurate to assert that we did not have confrontational intentions. We should not play into narratives of innocence set up by our enemies when faced with state violence that we know is coming. We are in a violent political conflict with both the state and proto-paramilitary formations nationally and ought to recognize this and talk about it as it is.
In this vein, when we *do* successfully mobilize a confrontational action, we should hype that whether it goes well or not. That is the capacity we want to be building, and the 25th was another step in the right direction. Further, narratives about us being pure victims of unprovoked police violence erase the courage of those who took risks, arrests and blows in order to defend others from the cops. We had each others’ backs that day, and while it didn’t work out, that still means something. Let’s lift that up to encourage and normalize practices of immediate defense, de-arrests, and risk-taking.
Keep moving! We really need to work on both mobility and blockading. At one point, the bloc came out of an alley filled with dumpsters, saw a contingent of bike cops moving toward us, and allowed them to come up and form a line. Rather than use nearby obstacles to create space between us and the cops, we ended up in a futile standoff, dragged on longer than necessary largely by indecision.
Use what is around! At the spot where the initial arrests took place, a very large number of police barricades (left over from the most recent Occupy ICE/Homeless Against Stop and Frisk eviction) were ten feet from us. Using those to create space (as west Arch was undefended) rather than try an uncoordinated dart through bike cop lines could have been fruitful. And again, there are rolling dumpsters literally everywhere in center city.
Be ready to take advantage of opportunity! Early on, before a significant police presence had formed, we darted past the Criminal Justice Center. Aside from a couple bottles being tossed at the windows, nothing happened to the building. This would have been an especially good target considering the nature of the fascist march that day, and done well to emphasize solidarity with the prison strike. The same could be said for at least a couple empty and undefended police vehicles that we passed before the initial confrontation.
A lesson to really internalize here is that the police may escalate at any time. If, say, the above opportunities *were* seized, or our team escalated in any other ways, it’s likely that repression faced afterwards would be blamed on those actions. It’s important to keep in mind in the future, when we do go harder and actually crime it up better, that such actions are not to blame for repression. We’ve seen repeatedly that toning down our actions does not keep us safe.
And finally, the composition of the march appeared to me to be informed to some extent by its framing as primarily an “anti-fascist” event. Without going too much into the potential pitfalls of prioritizing a sort of narrow antifascism over emphasis on broader structures of domination (here is a very good starting point for that: https://itsgoingdown.org/beyond-bash-fash-critical-discussion), it seems plausible that placing more focus on the anti-police nature of our mobilization *may have* drawn more people and projects in the city into this action.
To be clear, these thoughts are all offered in extreme good faith, and I’d like to repeat that my main takeaway from the 25th is that we really had each other’s backs and did our best. Let’s do that more!
Let’s continue to care for one another in dealing with our physical and emotional wounds.
Let’s come back harder soon.
fire to the prisons & the cops,
death to fascism & white supremacy, and let’s be real, fuck democracy too,
– some anarchist living on occupied Lenape land
from Writings from Occupy ICE Philadelphia
What follows is a group statement from the OccupyICE encampment, currently occupying space in front of Arch St Methodist Church. This statement does not reflect the view of everyone at the encampment, however it is based on the general line of unity within the camp, arrived at through days of conversation and created through a cooperative writing and editing process.
We are writing to the coalition of organizations that inaugurated the OccupyICEPHL encampment at 8th and Cherry on July 2nd. We recognize the work and resources deployed to initiate that encampment and hold it for three days in the face of direct confrontation with the Philadelphia Police Department. There was also a great deal of political and press work done by the coalition in that time and over the following weeks and we are sure there were a lot of interventions behind the scenes to sustain the City Hall encampment to #EndPARS that we are ignorant of. We are grateful for this work and it is undeniable that we would not have gotten this far without it.
A lot has happened and many waves of organizers have passed through OccupyICE since those first few days. OccupyICE members who remain on the ground today have had very limited contact and few direct relationships with the coalition in that time, and there are real questions about who the coalition is and what its relationship to OccupyICE as an umbrella organizing body is given that distance. These questions have unsurprisingly also dominated discussions within the coalition meetings. Similarly, many difficult and problematic class dynamics have come up between coalition members who have largely decamped, organizers who have remained engaged with and close to OccupyICE but have access to housing and electronic communication with other organizers and access to other resources, and the many homeless and impoverished comrades living at the camp.
It may be confusing to some in the coalition what happened between the 2nd and 3rd encampment and why many in OccupyICE chose to support the continuation of the camp in a new location. We could spend a lot of time explaining the diverse political motives behind the move, but to put it most simply, at the time of the PARS victory, almost the entire camp of 30+ people were unhoused and had been self-managing camp for almost two weeks with bare bones logistical support, while participating and initiating a campaign of escalating actions during the final week of the campaign. In that time the comrades that joined and became the core of OccupyICE, and who ultimately pushed the PARS campaign over the finish line, rapidly developed a community, political consciousness, intitiative, strategy and leadership. In the final days of the city hall encampment, very few of the comrades on the ground were willing to stop the occupation and give up their organizational base. Additionally, members of OccupyICE who are unhoused had no option to “go home,” or even to vanish from the public sphere and enjoy the relative safety and anonymity that most residents of large cities can enjoy. These comrades are on the streets and are now known by the police to have participated in forceful and militant demonstrations for immigrant rights, in a very real sense, these comrades have committed to the struggle and there is no turning back for them as long as the continue living on the streets of Philadelphia.
The 3rd encampment has survived less than a week, and comrades are currently literally sleeping on the sidewalk, in the rain with no shelter and a very limited supply and support base. Without committed support from other organisations, Occupy ICE will not be able to set up a safe, clean and stable encampment — it should be considered that the more the coalition is stalled on a way forward, and the further it drifts from its street presence, the more real damage is done to the bodies and mental health of real comrades who have maintained that street presence despite feeling forgotten about, and even at times disrespected.
In fact, what some of you should find most startling is that these comrades are still committed to the fight. We are already mobilized around the Shut Down Berks and Abolish ICE campaigns and desire to continue waging that fight. Homeless organizers have also articulated and begun developing a campaign against Stop-and-Frisk and have many ideas around pushing politically on housing and other issues effecting the homeless. The camp is politically conscious, decidedly working-class and proletarian, multi-racial, multi-gendered and intergenerational.
Politically, we feel the camp has a great deal to offer any political alliance. We have demonstrated the willingness and skills necessary to occupy indefinitely with minimal material support. We have demonstrated the ability to sucessfully initiate militant demonstrations and disruptions with very little advanced planning or resources. We have demonstrated a great deal of tenacity, fearlessness, creativity and independence of action. We think the camp, in making strikes against the power of ICE and the PPD, and in its ability to accomodate a large diversity of tactics, is an invaluable base of operations for an ongoing street movement. We have persevered through the resourcefulness and initiative, at a small-group level, of small autonomous groups of highly-skilled and creative individuals taking whatever action seems politically or logistically best-suited to a given situation. What we have left over from losing our numbers, two homes, most of our shit and a lot of outside support has in large part been held together by these individuals, whose work in Occupy ICE has been a radicalising and motivating experience for everybody on the ground here, themselves included. In fact, far from needing political education or organisation by the coalition, we believe that any given coalition member could become a more capable, self-sustaining, initiative-oriented and radical organising force by learning from and working with these comrades at the street level. We have.
Organizers and cadre coming into prolonged contact with the encampment will have their class politics and analysis challenged and sharpened, should they be willing to listen and learn from comrades who have been actually living on the bottom, in the front lines of late capitalism. All of us have learned and grown tremendously, have been inspired, challenged, frequently uncomfortable, and (we hope) permanently changed by the experience. We have also demonstrated a strong capacity for doing street level organizing and outreach. During the last week of the OccupyICE city hall encampment, we demonstrated the ability to serve as a militant ally/umbrella for other left organizations, as we linked our demonstrations with ADAPT, MOVE, REAL Justice and the struggle for Puerto Rican independence. In that time we also distributed untold thousands of zines and fliers in direct street level outreach.
We understand that personal conflicts exist regarding drugs and alcohol use on site, and that for many open conflict can be disturbing, even triggering. We obviously support anyone in recovery from substance or mental health troubles that were stirred up by the camp. Perhaps this kind of support work is something the coalition, with its experienced organizers and its ties to non-profits, is perfectly positioned to provide and offer. But we do not believe that this is the only issue keeping people from the camp, nor do we believe it is a major political divide. We want to meet the coalition where it’s at, and interface with it as comrades.
However — this is not an offer to perform work narrowly in line with the strategy of organisations that are fully disengaged from the camp. The camp’s leadership has a level of political-strategic finesse that deserves to be taken seriously. The coalition, meanwhile, has not proven to be the most efficient deployment of the deep levels of creativity, power, organizational experience and revolutionary fire represented by its members. Meetings have seemingly become conflictual and demobilizing: after the last meeting, one of the central organizers in the coalition resigned in disgust and frustration, while the critiques that caused them to do so were treated as bad-faith “wrecking” behavior. This level of tension and burnout is not a desirable result from anyone’s perspective: we also think it’s unnecessary.
From the perspective of those of us still on the ground, there needs to be a renewed strategy about acheiving the remaining goals of the coalition (Shut Down Berks / Abolish ICE / making sure PARS expires / Ending Stop and Frisk). To date we have heard no proposals that includes a role for the militant core of the occupation. There seem to be limited opportunities to re-establish an occupation or blockade targeting Berks in Philadelphia and though we have had serious internal conversations about reestablishing the blockade or otherwise interfering with ICE, we have not heard it proposed from any other organized body. We are worried that the coalition is claiming OccupyICE in name only at this point and would rather continue the campaigns in a diminished and less intensive manner. We think that is an error, but by refusing to admit that such a diminishing is what the coalition wants, the coalition doubles down on this error by creating grounds for conflict, fragility and frustration in the gap between stated desires and actual actions. We believe that honesty and clarity of purpose, no matter what decision they lead to, from the total abolition of the coalition and refocusing on organizations’ autonomus projects to a commitment to totally reengaging with and rebuildling the camp, or anything in between, will greatly reduce tension, sectarian conflict and burn out among coalition organizers.
We are proposing moving forward with a strategy that centers occupation among other tactics around our political objectives, to both advance the campaigns as well as providing political cover and support for the autonomous working-class organizing coming out of the homeless community. If we do not re-establish an encampment that has the political backing of established organizations in Philadelphia we will lose all the political organization and momentum that we have built and the comrades who have put their lives on the line, believing in our cause, will be left to fend for themeselves and face the violence of the state, alone. Obviously we don’t feel that is a principled political or ethical option, but we also don’t feel it is a strategic one.
We ask that the OccupyICE coalition will seriously consider our proposal and do us the courtesy of giving us a straightforward response, in a reasonable timeframe, about its level of commitment to these campaigns, so that we may make our own decisions moving forward. Please remember that as these conversations wind their way through various organizations and commmittees, we are actually living on the street and our logistical support, our strength, our ability to organize and to mobilize is deteriorating with each passing day without sustained support from the activist community. We also want to raise the question to the broader coalition of whether or not it is justified to continue claiming the mantle of OccupyICE if occupation is not being discussed as a tactic for acheiving our campaign goals.
We will have to make our own moves soon, and we hope that we can move together.
from It’s Going Down
Download Booklet HERE
By Redrick of the Radical Education Department
0. Overview
The nationwide rebellion against ICE is a pivotal moment in American radical struggle. It burst forth as part of a historic, massive wave of revolt that has been shaking the US for the past year and a half.
But the anti-ICE rebellion is helping to radicalize that struggle. In the face of the fascism that ICE embodies, the struggle combines some of the most radical currents of struggle in the US: antifascism, pro-immigrant and anti-xenophobia struggles, movements for police and prison abolition, and revolutionary socialism, communism, and anarchism.
Through that combination, radical struggle is intensifying. It is developing a combative and militant stance against cops, prisons, the state, and the capitalist class war they all exist serve. In their attacks on ICE facilities and beyond, they are spreading a recognition that ICE is a symptom of a systemic capitalist domination, and that the solution itself must be a new social order. We must not forget, though, that the explosion of anti-ICE actions in May, June, and July is only the latest in inspiring struggles against xenophobia, deportation, and white supremacy, struggles that have been led by detainees, immigrant-rights groups, and the anti-police and anti-prison movements for many years. Those uprisings have laid the foundations for this work and they continue to lead it in some of the most inspiring and powerful examples of solidarity.
But the anti-ICE movement is at a crossroads. It has won important victories, like disrupting the operation of ICE in many cities. Here in Philly a coalition has forced the mayor to end the city’s sharing of information with ICE as it hunts for undocumented workers. At the same time, occupations are under constant, brutal attack. They are being swept away, and the limits of occupation as a tactic are becoming painfully clear.
More importantly: the forces of revolt are running up against the limits of their too-narrow social relations. In other words: the rebellion being unleashed by the combining of revolutionary currents is more radical and more powerful than the movement knows what to do with. Its inner dynamics are pushing it further left: from legal marches and protests to illegal ones; from there to occupations, blockades, and clashes with pigs; from there to demands to transform structural elements of the police state. Local uprisings have found themselves, time and again, facing the possibility of overtaking ICE offices, overwhelming police forces, and spreading the disruption of capital across cities and across the country. But they usually stop short. The piece “Portland, OR: Report Back from #FamiliesBelongTogether March” below puts it:
We had the numbers to overrun, in that moment, and re-barricade the building. The crowd seemed confused about suddenly finding themselves in a situation where they have more power then police. As the police moved their cars into the street and got in formation the crowd just kind of gently moved back. the moment was gone, the spear tip of praxis had dissipated.
What possibilities are opening up for deepening radical struggle? How can the explosions of radicalism and militancy be developed and channeled into bigger, more powerful organizations? What can we learn from each other’s struggles so far? The first two volumes of this zine try to help ask and answer these questions.
First, Vol. 1 offers an introduction to the two volumes. That piece—“Combine, intensify, federate: Radical struggle and the anti-ICE movement”—places the anti-ICE uprising in the context of capital’s regressive, fascistic, and uneven development over the last four decades. It ultimately asks: what’s next? How do we shift into the next phase of revolutionary struggle?
The introduction points to two major possibilities: (a) multiplying local “direct action committees” to coordinate the struggle beyond occupations, (b) and—above all—building a nationwide federation of anti-ICE struggles to deepen, broaden, and intensify the attack on ICE and further our revolutionary goals.
Then, Vols. 1 and 2 collect some of the writings generated by those involved in the anti-ICE movement over the last year. The selection is explicitly from those expressing radical, and especially anti-authoritarian, perspectives. Our aim is to help share some of the inspiring and essential ideas and lessons that radicals are generating. The hope is that, more and more, we can move past this powerful but still fragmented phase into one in which our struggles are federated across the country.
This zine is radically incomplete. The anti-ICE struggle is producing an avalanche of powerful and important reflections—strategy, tactics, analysis—and this is barely a scraping. But I hope it contributes to developing the struggle.
With this in mind, the first two volumes of the zine are only a start. I hope to continue this work of sharing the voices of this crucially important struggle. But the project was never “mine” to begin with. I rely on my comrades across the country and beyond, known and unknown to me, to produce more volumes that can help collect and connect the ideas cascading out of this movement.
The combination of radical struggles in the anti-ICE revolt is intensifying and broadening revolutionary power in this country. Sharing the ideas, experiences, and strategies of the many disconnected parts of the movement will be essential if we are to transition from rebellion to a revolutionary movement. These zines hope to contribute to that transition.
I. Context: Capitalism in Crisis
ICE is a symptom. It is one of the most brutal arms of the emerging fascism in the United States that is driving towards a white ethnostate, escalating attacks on the working class, and increasing militarization and aggression of police forces so they can expand their attack, imprisonment, and murder of those deemed “threats”—all for the enrichment and preservation of the white supremacist, patriarchal ruling class.
But fascism is on the rise today only because capitalism is failing. In the 1970s and 1980s the ruling class tried desperately to halt falling profits and slowing growth—and the radical struggles that were shaking capital’s foundations: the global, overlapping, radical struggles of people of color, women, LGBTQ communities, indigenous people, and workers. The bourgeoisie used every economic and state weapon it could to restore profitability. It murdered and imprisoned members of radical struggles and invented mass incarceration to pacify Black community struggle. Over the next few decades, women, immigrants, and people of color were targeted for increasingly brutal control, rolling back the historic legal, political, and economic gains those groups had won through struggle. The state, managers, and capitalists attacked strikes, moved manufacturing away from unionized workers (inside and outside the country), and shattered unions. Bosses froze wages for the next forty years. They automate to cut jobs, shorten breaks, increase hours, eliminate pensions and full-time positions, and push workers ever faster and harder to maximize profit. And through a wave of deregulation, corporate and financial firms could unleash their blind, catastrophic drive to expand. It is no surprise that in the 1980s and 1990s profits jumped and the income and wealth of the ruling class skyrocketed while the working class languished.
This model—freeze wages, decimate unions and radical struggles, strengthen white supremacist and patriarchal social structures, deregulate capital—is called “neoliberalism.” It means class war. It is a program of regression. The ruling class tries to destroy what radical struggles have won over the past hundred years and concentrate more and more power and wealth in the hands of the white supremacist patriarchal bourgeoisie. This development was uneven. Feminist, LGBTQ, worker, student, and anti-police and anti-prison movements have mounted important and powerful resistance—though often fitfully and often in a disconnected way. All the while, the ruling class’ neoliberal project has continued to crush working people and the environment. The radical left has been left shattered and weakened by the violent onslaught of recent decades.
But capitalism failed to solve its most basic problems. The working class is the source of all profits. Firms compete with each other by pushing workers harder, faster, and longer. The goal is to increase productivity—automating production, cutting jobs, lowering labor costs. But the more this happens, the more profit rates fall. Capitalists turn to finance for salvation. Extremely risky gambling by finance firms, predatory lending: all this was meant to overcome the falling profit rate and slowing of growth. And this led to 2007: the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression.
And the more that the working class, with all the dominated communities that comprise it, are being squeezed, the more they are connecting and fighting back. Shattered by the 1980s, the working class has been slowly and unevenly developing its power to fight once again. We see that power growing fitfully in the Global Justice Movement in the 1990s, in Occupy after the financial meltdown, in militant feminist and radical LGBTQ revolt, in the explosion of anti-white supremacy struggles in Ferguson, Baltimore and beyond, in the drive towards police and prison abolition, and in growing waves of wildcat worker revolt by teachers. By trying to tame its exploited population, the ruling class is driving the working class to fight back. In the GJM, Occupy, Black Lives Matter, and well beyond, we see currents of struggle connecting and combining, developing the capacity for mass revolt.
Fascism comes from the failures of neoliberalism. The goal of fascism is to divert the anger and discontent that capitalism creates in order to save capitalism from itself. Trump’s push for a white ethnostate through ICE and anti-immigration policies are meant to rally white workers and small business owners, squeezed more and more by neoliberal capitalism, to support the ruling class that attacks them. Immigrants, people of color, women, activists, other countries become scapegoats. This sets Trump free to deregulate even more, and to offer historic tax cuts to the ruling class. We shouldn’t be fooled by Trump’s spats with companies. Fascism is good for business.
All this means that American fascism did not begin with Trump. It is a fundamental reflex of capitalism itself. The more its internal contradictions start tearing it apart, the more it tends to turn to fascism to save itself. State fascism’s roots lie deep in the desperate neoliberal project of the 70s and 80s. And it mobilizes a white supremacy and patriarchy that are certainly not new, and that have been a part of police and military attacks on people of color in this country and abroad for a very long time. ICE’s attacks on immigrants are a result of this fundamental capitalist dynamic. It is the most direct weapon—alongside the police and prison systems—of fascist capitalism.
But the revolt against ICE is a key development in US radical struggle. It is an important step in the intensification of working class rebellion that has been developing unevenly for decades.
II. Anti-ICE as Intensification of Radical Struggle in the US
In the anti-ICE movement, radical struggle is intensifying in a few basic ways.
1. Connecting and combining the forces of revolt
If the radical left was shattered by the ruling class by the 1980s, the anti-ICE movement is helping to connect and combine currents of revolt against fascist capitalism. In the attacks on ICE, antifascism, pro-immigrant and anti-xenophobia groups, and movements for police and prison abolition are coordinating with socialist, communist, and anarchist struggles. In the face of fascism’s attacks, the radical left is converging and combining its power.
2. Revealing radical opportunities
In the revolt against ICE, widespread outrage is connecting to revolutionary challenges to state power. Because the movement is so visible, it is helping to spread an awareness of the vulnerabilities of the state to mass struggle. It is obvious that the state is struggling to respond to barricades, blockades, occupations, various forms of civil disobedience, and beyond. The fractures in its power are becoming more and more obvious. With that awareness comes the potential to push further—to experimentally develop our power to destabilize capitalist and state power.
3. Increasing militancy
This revolt is moreover a step in an unevenly growing militancy. In Occupy and the Global Justice Movement, clashes with the police were generally marginal. In Occupy Philly, for example, many thought cops were part of the working class that should be respected. That is much less the case in the attacks on ICE. The collaboration between pigs and ICE is clear; cops are attacking protesters to ensure the deportation machine continues to function. And so cops are generally seen as the class weapon against workers, women, and people of color that they are. As a result, the wave of revolt is overall a more aggressive one than in the past; overall the movement is much less willing to passively obey, and even willing to clash with pigs to keep ICE offices closed.
In fact, the growth of militancy is outstripping the movement itself. In the piece “Portland, OR: Report Back from #FamiliesBelongTogether March,” the author points out that anti-ICE actions escalated more quickly and more powerfully than the movement itself was ready for. Protestors suddenly faced the prospect that they could overrun the cops and take over an ICE facility—and balked at that power. We see something similar in “Abolitionist Contingent Breaks Away from #FamiliesBelongTogether” and again and again in the movement: the struggle’s inner dynamics push it further and further left, making it more and more militant, but without a clear path for developing the new powers and orientation.
This contradiction—between exploding militancy and power and the retreat before it—is a sign of more radical things to come. But it is also a signal: there is much work to be done to organize and express that power more fully and more radically.
Another important part of the growth of militancy is a potentially widespread disillusionment with “progressive” politics. While radicals struggle on the ground for the safety of immigrants, the Democratic Party is wringing its hands in terror over whether the slogan “abolish ICE” will hurt its chances in the midterm elections. All the while, cops in “progressive” cities with democratic mayors are beating activists. The Democratic Party is more and more obviously bankrupt; it is increasingly clear that “progressive” politics is no solution to the problems of capitalism. Does it make a difference whether the cops beating you over the head to protect white supremacists are sent by a democrat or a republican? A popular outcry is giving rise to a growing sense of the need for a revolutionary challenge to the state and capital.
4. Revealing the systemic problem
Radicals are driving a popular realization about the systemic problem underlying ICE. The movement is pushing popular outrage significantly to the left. Calls to abolish ICE are being followed by popular discussions about the state’s long-standing white supremacy and about the corporations profiting off of ICE. The Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee points out below that ICE is merely one branch of a “prison-industrial-slave complex” inseparable from capitalism.
In other words, we’re experiencing a crucially important moment in the growth of revolutionary power. But where do we go from here?
III. The Writings Collected Here
The anti-ICE movement itself is at a crossroads. Occupations are under attack or have already been swept clear of the offices they were occupying. Important victories have been won, but the movement is reeling, trying to discover a path forward in disrupting and ending ICE. What have we learned and how do we make the struggle more radical, more powerful, and more effective?
This collection of writings aims to help spur the planning of the next stage of the movement. The struggle against ICE, while powerful, has also been largely disconnected. Occupations and other actions have developed locally and too often without formalized links of communication and resource-sharing across sites. This fracturing limits us in important ways. We tend to work in “silos” in which the vast and rich set of ideas from one site develops in separation from other sites. We’re often left reinventing the wheel or missing insights that could help groups or actions survive and grow.
The goal of this zine, then, is to help forge the links between people and groups—to help connect ideas and experiences, formalize lines of communication, and build a more federated and coordinated struggle. We provide links to each article, and where possible, to the names of authoring groups too. Like in a nuclear reactor, huge amounts of power can be released when we build machines to combine fissile but disconnected materials.
This zine also tries to help connect the anti-ICE struggle with a broader history. The collection below quickly makes obvious that the movement against ICE did not start in the summer of 2018. It includes statements by and about radical immigration struggles in 2017—though the history of such struggle stretches back much further. If we want to build the most powerful struggle against ICE possible, we need to learn from the vast storehouse of experiences, tactics, and strategies of groups that have been engaged in the fight against borders and xenophobia for decades.
With these zines, I don’t pretend to be “representing” the groups and individuals involved in the movement. The zines overemphasize writings from Philadelphia, since that is where they were created; and they overrepresent struggles in the Pacific Northwest, given the leading role played by detainees and activists there in the recent struggle. I also don’t pretend that these are even the most “important” that have been written. Much more has to be done to collect and share the work radicals are doing and to correct the inevitable limits of this zine. The pieces gathered here are only one possible selection, and many others can and should be made.
IV. Some Tentative Lessons and Possibilities
What have we learned? Where do we go from here?
Here are a few tentative reflections. They try to draw some lessons from the writings below, from my own experiences in the movement and in past movements, and from the movement generally. But they are experimental and incomplete. They await the additions and corrections of other comrades.
1. Increasing International Solidarity: Between Bars, Across Borders
In the fight against ICE, detainees, activists, and immigrant rights groups have led the way in creating possibilities for revolutionary international solidarity. This solidarity has taken inventive tactical form. Detainees are producing statements and exposés and engaging in hunger strikes on the inside, coordinating their efforts with political agitation on the outside. The terror of the detention centers is clear from the threats against detainees for their hunger strikes. (See the statement from detainees below in the piece “Tacoma, WA: At Least 170 Detainees Launch Hunger Strike Against Family Separations.”)
The solidarity between activists, detainees, and immigrant communities generally is one of the most crucial dimensions of the anti-ICE movement. International solidarity is essential in the fight against fascism. Fascist leaders like Trump need to appeal to white supremacy, nationalism, and the danger of foreign “hordes” so they can drum up support for the ruling class and weaken the working class’ ability to resist. And the ruling class needs racial and national divisions so that it can hyper-exploit some sectors of the workforce—like immigrants and women—thereby driving down wages and working-conditions for all workers.
The anti-ICE movement contains the germ of an emerging and growing revolutionary internationalism. It opens up new paths beyond the occupations, opening the possibility for strengthening and multiplying links across borders and through detention center walls. How can we develop these links more? How can we help create even more radical working class solidarity between immigrants and citizens?
2. Increasing the Combination of Struggles
Radicals are not just developing solidarity internationally. As noted above, the anti-ICE struggle combines some of the most revolutionary currents of struggle in the United States. The Anti-ICE movement opens the door to developing this kind of radical combination. And by creating physical spaces of radical combination, Occupy ICE is creating opportunities to experimentally build intersectional coalitions and organizations, moving us past the shattered state of the radical US left.
Can further experimental coalitions or coalition actions be formed in the coming months to deepen these connections and build the bonds between groups? For example: What can we do to coordinate anti-ICE struggles with the August 21st prison strike?
(One possibility is to create a coalitional and federated system of “direct action councils.” See below—“Beyond Occupation: The Direct Action Committee”—for more.)
3. Seeing the Power and Limits of Occupation
The revolt against ICE in 2018 is using occupation as its central tactic. In fact, occupation has been perhaps the most basic tactic of mass struggle in the radical US left for two decades (in the Global Justice Movement, in Occupy, in squatters’ struggles against gentrification, in the wave of student revolt in 2008, etc.).
Occupation can be a powerful tool. When done right, it can focus mass attention on an issue and temporarily disrupt the flow of business as usual in an office, school, business, or town or city. It can also result in real class gains. Students occupying of a cafeteria played a major role in saving a number of jobs at the New School; in Philly, the anti-ICE occupation of City Hall helped end the sharing of information between the city and ICE. And as a comrade pointed out to me recently, occupations can be important places for otherwise separate radicals and groups to mix, sparking new ideas and possibilities. For these reasons and others the occupations should be supported.
But as the articles below plainly show, this is also an extremely limited tactic.
First, it is basically reactive rather than active. After a group or coalition first overtakes a space, it then must defend it against an enemy that knows precisely where it is at all times. For this reason alone it is very difficult to consistently convert occupation into a project that builds radical power.
Second, occupation increasingly drains a movement. The first general law of occupation in the US is this: the longer it exists, the more resources and energy it will need to continue to function. The publicity that may have drawn larger numbers to a camp fades rapidly, along with the energy of comrades. All but the most committed tend to drift away. Police repression will tend to gradually ramp up—through undercover agents, direct assaults, and so on. And the collected writings below show the major problems that occupations bring with them. Combining long-term in public spaces with strangers often brings sexual, gender, and racial violence that must be shut down. The “prefigurative space” of the camp, for all its good intentions, is riven by these social forces.
Thus, a camp needs constantly increasing inputs of energy and resources to keep people there and to ensure their safety and well-being. The general law of occupation leads to the following conclusion. The longer an occupation exists, the more the purpose of that occupation will tend to become simply surviving in the space, rather than mounting revolutionary programs and actions.
An important lesson learned from the fight against ICE as well as from Occupy is occupation as a partial tactic to be seen developmentally: as a phase that should be paired with a plan with and beyond it for aggressive, active attacks on capital and the state.
4. Beyond Occupation: Direct Action Committees
One possibility of moving beyond the occupation phase is this: coalitional direct action committees (DACs) for the struggle against ICE. Such committees would help combine the radical groups working together in a locale, but remain largely independent from maintaining or creating an occupation. They might work to simply coordinate direct actions against a host of sites well beyond the occupation site—businesses and banks profiting from ICE, for instance.
Such committees likely already informally exist in many anti-ICE struggles. This is certainly true in Philly. Here, a shifting core of radicals bridge a number of groups, coordinating and connecting those groups and their resources. This happens in a largely ad hoc and accidental way. But there is a possibility to formalize one or more direct action council across a city or town. Councils need not be large or ambitious; just enough to connect a couple of members from sympathetic groups willing to share information and coordinate disruptive actions. Such committees could be highly unpredictable to and deeply destabilizing to the functions of ICE and the systems that support it.
Direct action councils also provide a base for the radical federation of struggles in ways not bogged down in the details of occupation. (See below, “Federation, federation, federation.”)
5. The Tactical “Toolbox”
The writings below showcase a wide array of tactics: occupying and/or blockading ICE offices; bailing out the detained; publicly embarrassing public officials; projecting anti-prison and anti-ICE messages on a wall at night; and beyond. Oftentimes, movements or sites will develop their own toolboxes in separation.
It is crucially important to share tactics with each other. Some of these tactics work better than others within certain situations. It can be extremely time-consuming to develop that toolbox for a group or location, and very costly to discover the limits of some tactics over others. The anti-ICE struggles point out the need to share information with each other, so we can minimize the amount each of us is reinventing the wheel—again, something that direct action councils are ideally designed for.
6. Federation, federation, federation
The major lesson I draw from the anti-ICE movement is this: the need for radical national federation. A national focus is essential since ICE itself is national, and because the broader enemy—capital and its state—coordinates itself not on a local but a national and international level. For example: a number of banks (like Wells Fargo) and corporations (like Comcast) profit from ICE. Attacking the profits of these firms requires something more than actions at one locale.
Loose informal networks of connections already exist between a number of sites through email, phone calls, websites, statements, and so on. These loose networks, though, are partial and fragile. The anti-ICE movement has a major opportunity to move beyond a merely local focus. Popular outrage is still high, though it is waning; the fight against ICE struggle is nationwide, though it is being swept out of a number of camps. The moment is ripe to more fully connect and coordinate the struggle on a national level—for example, via weekly national phone calls; national calls for action; websites or zines to share ideas, tactics, and strategies nationally; etc.
National federation (via direct action councils, e.g.) would mean moving the struggle beyond the focus on occupations, and developing a strategy for nationwide disruption.
V. Conclusion
The fight against ICE represents a major moment in the development of revolutionary power in the US. But it faces a turning point: attacked by the state and undergoing its own inner radicalization, the anti-ICE movement confronts the need to evolve. I hope these reflections, and the collection of writings that follow, can help connect some of those in struggle and help build towards the second, deeper, and broader phase.
No ICE! No cops! No borders! No prisons! No capitalism!
Solidarity forever!
This text belongs to a new zine that speaks to the current#OccupyICEPHL movement. This was not written by a Friendly Fire member.
Something incredible is happening at OccupyICE Philadelphia right now.
The encampment, which is in its third week at city hall, is developing in a truly revolutionary direction. Yesterday a crew of unhoused folks militantly and autonomously took to the streets around city hall in an unplanned spontaneous march, shutting down one of the busiest intersections in Philadelphia for almost an hour in support of immigrants. We talk a lot about solidarity and about unifying proletarian struggles: this is the real thing. At this point the encampment is primarily run by unhoused comrades and they are holding down a fully built out, autonomously run and organized immigrant solidarity occupation that is a beautiful eyesore on one of Philly’s most esteemed tourist attractions.
The Kenney administration is livid, although thanks to the beatings they took in the press for the beatings we took from police when they cleared the first encampment at ICE offices at 8th and Cherry, they’re playing friendly and looking to reconcile. Long term immigrant activist groups and people inside the administration expect the declaration of the end of PARS—the police information sharing agreement that has helped Philly’s ICE office become the highest per capita arrest and capture major city in the country—any day now. Ending PARS is the first of the movement’s three demands, the other two being shutting down Berks, a horrifically abusive “family detention center” in PA, and Abolishing ICE.
This would be a huge victory, and the culmination of almost a decade of hard work from the city’s Immigrant movement. But we haven’t won yet, and many in the Philly activist networks, tired from weeks of hard work, infighting, and social agitation, and having heard the news that Kenney is likely to give in, have stepped back and become demobilized (myself included): right as we are on the cusp of winning!!!
We need to keep fighting, keep pushing right now, because if momentum completely slips Kenney can waffle on PARS and we could achieve nothing for all our efforts.
Luckily for all of us, the unhoused community has held it down and kept this movement alive. Over the last two weeks activists of all ideological stripes, anarchist, socialist, Marxist, nihilist, ultra and whatever else, have almost entirely stepped back from living at the camp, and those that do come down rotate in and out for brief periods while the unhoused people keep it going. As one of those organizers, let me just say: this has been an incredibly good thing. Some of the unhoused folks have political experience from Occupy Philadelphia back in 2011, others from their day to day lives in the streets, others still 2 have very rapidly politicized within the OccupyICE encampment. They are maintaining a 24/7 protest and keeping attention focused on ICE, opening up room for people to join the fight on other fronts. They are asking us to take advantage of this opportunity!
In the shadow of the obscene monument to power that is Philly city hall, a majority Black coalition of unhoused folks add their voices in opposition to the mayor and the city and in defense of immigrants. Occupiers stay on the megaphone all day long. Today, Gramma Kim, an unhoused comrade living at the camp, spent three hours making heart-wrenching statements to the people of Philadelphia, soap boxing with the megaphone all afternoon:
“What would you do if your children were in a cage? Wouldn’t you fight? We have to stop this!”
Every morning the camp crew wakes up the marriott hotel across the street with humorous musings on the loudspeaker. By 9am, comrades from the MOVE organization drop off fresh vegetables grown in their garden, and Food not Bombs is dropping food for lunch and dinner while unhoused occupiers are staffing the kitchen to distribute it. Donations have slowed to a trickle, but there are still a whole lot of shared meals, cigs, and experiences.
To give you just one example of what I see down here: There was an unhoused man, I wont name him but folks from the camp will know who I’m talking about, that during the first few days at City Hall would come through camp and just overturn tables, yell and scream, he even shoved someone, and we had to physically remove him from the camp multiple times. We got him to a shelter one night, but when he came back the next night some concerned activists were considering sectioning him. I’m so glad they didn’t, because now he holds down the kitchen and is one of the people most concerned with keeping the camp tidy. He’s part of the movement, more a part of it day to day now than me or the other people who had to chase him out of camp those few times. OccupyICE has become a transformative space for people joining in struggle.
Of course, it’s not at all rainbows and gumdrops. As a comrade said: “…it’s certainly messy down here. There’s no way to keep your hands clean, figuratively speaking. You get pulled into some shit and some drama pretty quickly if you aren’t careful.”
It’s true. A lot of us occupiers have serious addictions, as well as physical and mental health problems. Often times there are moments of anger and conflict that can erupt in camp, which can feel scary to people, especially those of us who don’t come from working class/street/hood backgrounds, but it’s important to understand and know that these moments of conflict often lead to resolution, even if it doesn’t look the same as it would in 3 4 a more middle class or activist space. If for whatever reason people don’t feel they can be down here that’s totally legit: there’s lots of other ways to support the encampment and struggle in solidarity.
OccupyICE is demonstrating that the activist milieu’s tendency toward taking a social worker’s attitude toward unhoused folks —rather than a comradely and restorative one—is a serious political error. The fact is that unhoused people are keeping the movement alive. They are the movement right now.
The well-intentioned but misguided activists (I include myself here) haven’t been able to see this: some even keep insisting that we have to shut down the camp that they rarely go to and have little investment in anymore since it’s problematic and uncontrollable. But word inside the camp is that campers are ready to move after we win and continue the struggle, and even expand it to include police and prison abolition and other issues facing the unhoused.
Comrades, can’t you see, we’ve helped to build something truly uncontrollable?
Something proletarian, communal, autonomous and buck-wild?
From the first march called by the alphabet soup of socialist orgs to this moment, everyone has put their shoulders to the wheel and pushed. It’s been an amazing, inspiring effort. But comrades, victory is so close. We can’t stop now!
While there is a political and tactical advantage to the unhoused people running and keeping the camp, we still need to support it logistically with donations/supplies and politically with marches, actions, and keeping up the pressure on Kenney. We can do the things we’re good at: banner drops, direct actions, street marches, teach-ins. If we don’t, it’s possible the internal pressures of the camp will prove too much for our mostly-new-to-organizing-comrades.
Let’s stop thinking of the unhoused people as anything other than our core comrades in this movement and this struggle. Do you know their names? Have you gone down to camp and talked to them about the political prospects of the situation? If you did you would see they don’t need our help, they need our solidarity! They need us beside them fighting! We started this current wave of struggle, we can’t leave them to finish it alone!
Many of us have become so used to losing that we don’t know how to pull this thing across the finish line right now, right as we’re about to win—but the folks in the camp are planning on winning. As such, they have a firmly established plan— logistically, politically, strategically—to close the camp and relocate it as soon as the PARS demand is won.
This will be a reset for the camp and for the movement, and if the city ends PARS Kenney can have the occupation off his lawn today (you reading this Kenney?!) But it all hangs in the balance right now, material support is visibly receding. People 5 6 are donating less frequently, and most of the original convening organizations are sitting on their hands (and their piles of donated cash) waiting for something to happen.
But comrades, something is happening. Something big, something real. We’re very close to significantly damaging ICE’s ability to round people up in the city, and from there, to building something even bigger.
OccupyICE is creating a working model for how we can open an umbrella organizing space in Philly that breaks through the inaction caused by sectarian turf battles. We can win real victories for the movement while materially and politically supporting Black-led autonomous revolutionary organizing of the unhoused. By its very existence, OccupyICE is realigning the terrain in Philadelphia and pulling activists kicking and screaming into winning demands and sewing the seeds of an insurgent and revolutionary street culture. This is what revolutionary street organizing looks like!
-PAJ (Philly Anarchy Jawn), Monday, July 23, 2018
COMMUNITY ALERT: ALEX STEIN
[CW: SA, misogyny, racism]
(Written content contains brief references to sexual assault, harassment, and predatory behavior.
Images contain examples of misogyny and feature course language; images have been edited for hate-speech and to protect uninvolved individuals.)
It is our hope that this information may serve as a warning to others of the dangers posed by the individual known as Alex Stein; a predator with a history of sexual assault, and a supposed “anarchist” with fascist associations who has repeatedly attempted to organize, infiltrate, and recruit in leftist spaces.
Alex has been known by many names. In the fascist’s circles, where Alex appears to spend much of his time, he may be known as “Brandon Woods” (aka “Brandon W PA”) or “Sam Specter” (aka “Sam Specter PA”). While attempting to purport himself as a “leftist” Alex has operated under numerous aliases, including: “Alex Stone”, “Terry”, “Felix”, “George Bailey”, “Woody”, and “slyalex”.
He is the creator & primary author of the Twitter account “Anticommunist Action Philly” (@AnticomPHL) and the page “WolftrapAF”, which operates on multiple social media platforms under the usernames “WolftrapAF”, and the associated account, “TwolftrapAF”.
Alex is also believed to utilize numerous additional accounts under his various personas -ranging from democratic socialist to insurrectionary anarchist, which may be listed in locations across the country- using multiple social media platforms. Evidence suggests that this is done in order to continue to attempt to cultivate new relationships with leftists; and <b> <i> to avoid accountability for his history of abuse, including multiple accounts of sexual assault and predatory behavior, repeated attempts to incite dangerous and high-risk situations against the consent of others in the area, volunteering information on activists to far-right groups [and the state,] and his wide-spread banishment from spaces.
While living in New York, Alex’s reported history included harassment, abuse, and aggressive behavior which resulted in his expulsion from radical spaces.
After moving to Pennsylvania in late 2016, Alex quickly attempted to insert himself into activist spaces, almost immediately acting with a complete disregard for the safety of others.
In late 2016 Alex began using his social media accounts to repeatedly make public posts calling for people to engage in “antifascist” organizing, tagging unaware individuals across the country, and encouraging others to form local organizations operating under his personal guidance.
Over the holiday season he launched an online fundraiser for an action in Montana using his legal name, along with the name of a legitimate local activist group. As an individual publicly raising money for an antifascist cause he was almost immediately doxed. The funds, which were intended to support local activists on the ground, were never accounted for and numerous reports suggest they were stolen. During this time he participated in media interviews, purporting himself as a ‘representative’ of various local groups and organizations as it suited his cause and as he perceived it would be of interest to each particular news agency.
In early 2017, Alex began to attempt to force his way into radical spaces claiming to offer expertise gained through membership in groups he was never a part of, and taking over control of tasks and events being organized by others against their wishes. Playing off his youthful appearance and lying about his age, he targeted spaces occupied by younger activists and consistently attempted to push others to engage in actions they did not consent to participate in. He employed these forced associations, along with the city-wide success of a MAGA counter-demonstration in the spring of 2017, to further establish his credibility within local activist circles. Over the following months, Alex used this notoriety to commit multiple acts of sexual assault. Using his position in the local community and his strong manipulation skills, he quickly created an environment of fear to silence his victims through threats of danger to themselves and of ostracization from their community.
From March through June of 2017 Alex’s intermittent presence and consistently toxic behavior in various local spaces persisted, as did the demands for him to be accountable for his actions. To avoid expulsion from the community he continuously ‘took accountability’ for smaller indiscretions and offensive behavior- making superficial motions towards responsibility while insisting that his inexperience, heavy alcohol use, and lack of understanding of social cues relieved him of any ‘guilt’. Instead, he repeatedly created ‘roles’ for himself in order to force his way back into spaces, while he continued to intimidate his victims and engage in abusive and predatory behavior. During this time he befriended an individual working at a local crisis center who cited their experience as a victims’ advocate to justify their championing of Alex’s continued presence.
In June an individual confided to fellow community members about a specific instance of Alex’s predatory behavior which had left them feeling extremely unsafe and requested support to eliminate any possible future situations where he may be able to approach them while alone. The public recognition of the need for this safety measure created a space for additional victims of his abuse to come forward. Following an extensive review of all presented accounts of experiences Alex was held accountable by the community for r*ping a local activist along with a series of additional instances of predatory behavior, expelled from the space, and banished from all future events. Warning calls were immediately made to contacts and other local groups Alex had been known to engage with to urge that steps be taken to ensure the safety of community members in any spaces where he may be present. Hours after Alex was informed of his expulsion from the local community a large-scale public campaign of extreme harassment began against an individual acting as an advocate for his victims, and their family, which placed them in personal and legal jeopardy. This resulted in some local groups hesitating to formally ban Alex from their events out of fear of similar retaliation against themselves and their loved ones.
In July it became publicly known that Alex had begun associating with local fascists, as well as with the white nationalist group, Vanguard America, while they engaged in the planning process for “Unite the Right” in Charlottesville, Virginia. During this period Alex attempted to contact numerous groups and organizations in an effort to build connections and networks by exploiting the promise of information regarding these plans, which was needed to ensure the safety of the local community, in order to create relationships of dependency with activists from around the country.
For the next month Alex leveraged these awaited critical details, and his unique ability to provide them, to avoid further censure for his actions as the word of his history of abuse and the resulting calls for him to be banned from additional communal spaces spread widely. Having failed to ever provide the information as promised, Alex actively participated in the events of “Unite the Right” all the while continuing to subject activists on the ground to rapidly escalating levels of danger in an attempt to maintain the indispensable role he had created for himself with activists and organizers.
Shortly after “Unite the Right”, Alex was arrested in the company of local fascists following a[n alleged] ‘fight’ and charged with possession of a retractable baton. Afterwards, he told local activists that he had been released from custody after [reportedly] telling police that despite appearances, he was in fact “an antifascist infiltrator”, and had information he wished to share regarding the nationalist group, Vanguard America. Following subsequent court dates he once again attempted to enter local spaces, despite repeatedly being told that he was unwelcome due to his history of abusive and predatory behavior.
With his abusive and predatory history now widely known, Alex found himself barred from more and more spaces upon his return to the Philadelphia area. In late August he attempted to contact members of the local community once again, claiming to have been ejected from the group Vanguard America where he had participated in chats under the alias “Brandon Woods” aka “Brandon W PA”, accusing respected local activists of “outing him” to Vanguard America leadership and demanding they be banned from future local events, in an attempt to once again force his way into the community.
Upon finding himself still unwelcome, and his claims quickly and easily disproven, Alex sought to once again create a role for himself and engineer relationships by reaching out and offering information to activists around the country who had not yet learned of his history of assault. Promising that his help would better ensure the continued safety of their local communities, this time he purported to offer information regarding the actions of the newly-formed white nationalist group, Patriot Front, which he had gained entry to through his new alias, “Sam Specter” [aka “Sam Specter PA”].
Throughout the fall Alex strived to find a place for himself in small regional circles, attempting to exploit their decreased access to the larger community and its resources. When he was instead confronted with knowledge of his past actions he offered elaborate falsified accounts of events and circumstances, customizing the details to suit each audience.
When efforts to hold him accountable continued and he was denied acceptance into spaces he attempted to garner sympathy for his exclusion, and when that failed, he resorted to threats, intimidation, and sexually-predatory behavior. -Once again, individuals were forced to go to great lengths in attempts to block his access to their spaces and warn their communities of his danger in an effort to maintain their own personal safety.
In Winter of 2018, it came to light that Alex had been in ongoing contact with an individual who was engaged in gathering personal information on individuals whom they considered to be ‘activists’. This information was later published and used for targeted harassment campaigns against those identified. Additional reports suggested that while Alex had been engaging in outreach to individuals to offer information and build relationships, he may have also used the opportunity to request additional details and contact information during these conversations. The exact purpose of these inquiries, and whom, if anyone, that information may have been shared with, cannot be conclusively confirmed. The majority of these [known] attempts were quickly shut down and rumors began circulating that he had begun spending a significant portion of his time in New Jersey despite retaining his official residence in Philadelphia.
Despite claims in Spring of 2018 of leaving the left in May, Alex once again began reaching out to leftist spaces. After claiming to have participated in May Day actions in NYC, he also attempted to reach out to radical organizations in the Philadelphia area in June, though these efforts were quickly rejected. Recently, it was reported that Alex had begun attempting to build new relationships and connections in an effort to create a role for himself in the response to Unite The Right II events to be held in D.C. this year.
This information is an open warning call; this individual poses a danger to all communities. Due to nature of his tactics, his extraordinary manipulation skills, his enjoyment of “playing a character”, and his use of multiple aliases both in real life and online, protective steps should be implemented across all spaces and platforms. In addition to ‘activist’ spaces, Alex frequents burlesque, film, theater/performance spaces, and sideshow spaces. He particularly enjoys “haunted attractions” and may seek employment in these venues. He appears to spend most of his time in the Northeast and is most frequently in the Philadelphia, South Jersey, and New York City regions.
Over at least the last year, Alex focused the majority of his recruiting energy on engaging with those he perceived as liberal. In doing so he attempts to offer guidance and create dependence on his involvement to access additional resources and educational opportunities. This also allows him to control not only his own narrative, but to ensure new contacts remain isolated from the larger community where they may learn of his history. In reality, Alex uses his new friends not only for access to new spaces and for the creation of networks under his control, but also for his personal entertainment.
Please help to ensure others in your area are alerted to this risk by sharing this information in local activist and performance spaces as able. If Alex has attempted to organize or is involved in burlesque or other community spaces in your area, to report additional accounts/aliases, or for a shareable flyer version of this alert, please contact KeepOurSpacesSafe@protonmail.com. Thank you.
from Philly Antifa
from Anathema
Volume 4 Issue 7 (PDF for printing 11 x 17)
Volume 4 Issue 7 (PDF for reading 8.5 x 11)
In this issue:
Thoughts on the current #OccupyICEPHL and moving forward to #EndPARS
We are two weeks into #OccupyICEPHL. We have ceased occupying the ICE offices since July 5 and the current encampment at City Hall has lost a lot of its original momentum. The Left in Philly united on July 2nd for the original occupation, but it has been fractured by burnout and internal conflicts. A lot of us are wondering, how did we get here and how do we move forward?
The encampment at City Hall
After the camp was dismantled on July 5th by homeland security and Philly cops, a meeting took place in the evening. Hundreds gathered, sharing reflections and potential strategies for moving forward so that we could effectively pressure Mayor Kenney to not renew the Preliminary Arraignment Reporting System (PARS) contract, which allows ICE access to the PPD’s database.
Following the meeting, an autonomous group decided that one strategy in continuing the fight was to begin a camp at City Hall in order to be a confrontational presence for city officials, and to educate the public about both PARS and ICE. Within minutes, they set up at City Hall, bringing yoga mats, signs, umbrellas, chairs, and food.
Picking up on the momentum of the previous camp, many came around to provide support. The camp was quickly built up with a medic and food storage tent, as well as a table of leftist literature, including flyers on both #EndPARS and #AbolishICE. Participants were flyering; workshops and teach-ins happened throughout the day; food and water and other supplies were consistently being dropped off; chants were constant; and general assemblies were held twice a day (and they still are).
That being said, within the past week, the energy at the camp has been fizzling out. I was at the camp this morning and counted around 15 present.
Skepticism of the new camp
A number of leftists in Philadelphia have expressed skepticism of the camp.
This is fair.
More than half of those present at most general assemblies are white, and a majority of the principal organizers are white. Whiteness is a destructive force for all, with material consequences for those that cannot access its privileges. For those who are white or can access whiteness, it hinders empathy and results in moral deterioration to those who reap benefits from whiteness. We need to see and combat the way whiteness operates among us, making it a priority to center the needs and the voices of POC. In my experience, this is a constant struggle in leftist spaces, and in this sense the encampment is not unique.
It seems that a major reason why people have either backed away or have chosen not to support this camp is because they see the occupation as ineffective and believe greater action is needed. What should be noted is that this camp began with this in mind. A diversity of tactics is sorely needed and this camp was never envisioned as THE tactic for all to take. This camp was started to agitate at City Hall as part of a larger project which would include the continuing work of the original #OccupyICEPHL coalition as well as autonomous actions.
There is also skepticism because of the camp’s independence from the original coalition. Those in the camp desire to work alongside the coalition but are intentionally not bound to the coalition, structured so that those on the ground and actively involved decide the direction of the camp.
Some skepticism feels neither political nor strategic, but personal.
Infighting among leftists has been present throughout the whole occupation, even prior to the new camp. The first night of the occupation included coalition organizers squabbling with a few anarchists of a more illegalist, insurrectionist tendency. This was aired out very publicly through a zine that was published online and passed out at the final assembly at the previous occupation.
Tensions between those of a more anarchist orientation and those of a more Marxist orientation were heightened.
Some smaller orgs, especially those with a more autonomous bent, have expressed that they felt unheard and even shut down by the larger coalition.
A skepticism of anarchist organizers continues, leading some to view the new encampment as an anarchist project. Though the organization of the new camp is more horizontal, it is not solely anarchist-organized. Such thinking dismisses those houseless folks who are actively flyering, chanting, and keeping the camp smoothly operating – that do not identify as anarchists – as well as the presence of Marxists.
Again, I think some of this skepticism is a projection of people’s personal issues with specific organizers.
The stress of the original occupation, where participants were constantly surrounded by cops and federal officers, exacerbated disagreements among organizers. I cannot blame individuals for withholding their support because of being made to feel unsafe by certain organizers, but it would be strategically unwise to fully dismiss this camp because of that.
In the past week hundreds have come together to publicly agitate at City Hall. This camp is not meant to last forever, but it would be wise to not let it sputter and die out on such a sour note in such a public space. The forces-that-be want our inactivity and burnout so that the PARS contract can be renewed without a fight.
This occupation ending in such a way will reflect badly on all of us, and even more importantly, could hinder and even sabotage the campaign to #EndPARS.
Moving forward
Last week, running off the energy of the first encampment, the camp became a base for activity.
Occupiers were constantly talking to those passing by, providing information on the PARS contract and getting folks to sign the petition put out by Juntos. Media and public attention on the camp highlighted the PARS contract. Mayor Kenney and other officials were flooded with phone calls.
This base is limited, as action-planning cannot occur in such a public space. That said, it has been a space for educating, connecting organizers and people of good conscience, and most importantly, a very public way of getting Kenney’s attention.
I don’t think as much energy needs to be put into this project as the first encampment, but I think it is worth actively supporting this camp in order to strengthen our message. If more people were out on the ground, more people could take shifts. The burden of this camp would not remain on the same 20-30 people, many of which have slept in their own beds only a handful of times since the original occupation.
But, again, we need to do more.
We need to continue calling city officials, handing out flyers, flooding social media with information on PARS; but we also need to begin agitating with more creativity. Perhaps also at other strategic locations – maybe not to the point of occupation, but at least picketing. We need to be creative in finding ways to get our message out to the public and to our so-called “leaders” as well as hinder ICE operations. We cannot afford to waste time on infighting. We cannot lose sight of the goal, and therefore we must not lose sight of our current moment. Upset over ICE continues, despite the media trying to move on. The time is ripe. We must act.
from Radical Education Department
“Anarchists, Communists, Socialists: Bridging the Divides in Philly”
Part 1 of RED’s series on “Building a Revolutionary Coalition in Philly”
With Activists from IWW, Philly Socialists, Food Not Bombs Solidarity, RED
Wooden Shoe Books, Philadelphia
July 11, 2018
Event Description:
In Philly, like in many other cities, radical groups often work separately. We come together for certain events, or anniversaries like May Day, but beyond these we can tend to stick to our own projects. How can we create more radical support for, and coordination with, each other? How can we build a radical, durable, and broad-based coalition in Philly?
This summer, the Radical Education Department (RED) is working with other radical groups in the city to coordinate a series of three discussions—building off of our Wooden Shoe discussion this past spring on “Antifascist Education.”
The overall theme for this summer series is “Building a Revolutionary Coalition in Philly.” The first talk, at the Wooden Shoe, will be around the theme “Anarchists, Communists, Socialists: Bridging the Divides in Philly.” One goal is to discuss ways to create more solidarity between groups in the city, exploring the deep history of radical coalitions—among anarchists, communists, and well beyond—along the way.
Download the flyer for the event here.
Submission
[Zine Web]
from Radical Education Department
Arthur Burbridge
Intro
On July 2nd, a coalition of groups in Philadelphia occupied the local ICE office. In what follows I offer a few quick sketches of the occupation. I was there at the opening of the march at City Hall at 5PM until I had to leave at 9, and then again the next day (July 3rd) at 9:30, leaving just after noon. Today, July 4th, the occupation enters its third day. The account and ideas below are therefore cobbled together from my own experiences, from Unicorn Riot’s live feed, and from reports from comrades who were there when I couldn’t be.
These sketches are partial, and they need to be filled out and corrected as the struggle continues. But I hope they can add to our reflections on the ongoing ICE occupations and help us to continue building and developing radical power.
A loose timeline
The occupation was a planned escalation out of an anti-ICE rally at City Hall. After the rally, about 500 of us took to the streets. The cops were clearly expecting this to some degree—they had shut down a number of roads leading from City Hall to the ICE office—but they were also unprepared. We waded through traffic, turning suddenly and sending the police scrambling. A section of bikers darted ahead to help find a path. When we reached the ICE office at the corner of 8th and Cherry, we set up a two-part camp. The first one was in front of ICE’s van garages on Cherry. The second was on the 8th street side of the building in front of ICE’s main doors.
Tents popped up immediately and people threw down their gear to block the garages. At the other entrances, a bike loaded with food and water blocked the doors. Someone brought in a massive red van with a PA system, and parked it to block Cherry and keep out cop cars. The van started blasting tunes, and people started dancing. Somehow a couch made its way in front of the fenced parking lot for ICE vehicles. Banners swung across the streets
The cop presence was large and growing at this point. I was with the 8th street crowd guarding the building doors. I couldn’t see what was going on around the corner at the garage. But dozens of bike cops were lined up across from us. Within 15 or 20 minutes they rushed the crowd, swinging their bikes as weapons for maximum effect. They broke through the occupiers to cut the 8th street crowd in half and secure the building entrances. But the priority was obviously the van garages (we later learned there is an entrance into the building, shared by a women’s center, that ICE employees are exploiting). The pigs backed off and left the 8th street doors to us. Almost immediately the bike brigade stood wheel to wheel and people jumped into the street to cut the road off from the cops.
But police started massing forces to retake 8th. There was a commotion around the corner (since then, I heard a cop just tripped and fell down). The cops on our side panicked and tried to break through the bike line to get across. But the bike crew and the other occupiers around them refused. The line was two or three bikes deep across the street; bikes collided and people pushed back, forcing the cops to retreat.
By 9, there were over 50 cop cars lined up down the street, and rumors of riot gear being unloaded. Over the next few hours, a cop or two started appearing wearing some heavy-duty gear (vest, helmet, gas mask, etc.) that was marked “Counterterrorism Unit.” Around the corner from me—on Cherry—cops apparently tried to bum rush the crowd to break through. They were forced back again and occupiers locked arms to prevent another attack. Occupiers threw up barricades to separate the tents and occupiers from police on the north end of 8th and to create a barrier in front of the garages—wooden pallets, trash, other city debris.
As the night dragged on, more whiteshirts. Ross, the police commissioner, Ross, appeared. Cops demanded the removal of the barricades, the couch, and the banners stretched across the streets. Occupiers allowed these to be carted away. To get rid of the couch, though, the cops had to haul it up into a trash truck. People were screaming at that the police were scabbing the municipal services. By 1 the cops backed down and started trickling away. The threat of an immediate raid lifted. A number of people—maybe 50, I’m not sure—stayed the night. The cops turned on the building floodlights to fuck with people trying to sleep.
But by 6 a.m., police forces were regrouping. By 11, the camp was building its numbers, along with its cop presence. Dozens of beach umbrellas are popping up. It looked like a beach. Chants started up again in earnest. People—many otherwise unconnected to the event—were unloading car after car of food, water, ice, coolers, food.
But the pigs were biding their time for a noon assault to secure the garages. They marched out the mounted police and dozens of regular officers, along with about a dozen or two whiteshirts. Occupiers closed ranks and linked arms. Bike cops charged, shoving people aside along the wall and garage. A dense mass of occupiers refused to move. There were apparently about two dozen arrests. The pigs took control of the garages. They put up and are guarding metal barracades to make sure ICE can keep on working as efficiently as possible. It’s not clear what the future of the occupation will look like from here, but the site is still occupied without any plans to leave.
The event represents one more episode in the growing militancy and radicalism of hilly, and it offers some important lessons as radical struggles continue to grow.
The developing tactic of occupation in Philly
The actions around ICE are a reminder of the Occupy encampment a few blocks away. But this action is different. Occupy was flooded by liberals and libertarians alongside a number of radical individuals and groups. More militant actions, like confrontations with the police, were infrequent and did not occur on a large, coordinated scale. And in Occupy, the strategic plan was extremely unclear. In this vacuum, it seemed like the site was being held simply for the sake of occupying it, regardless of its tactical or strategic value.
Little of that applies here. Militancy is built into the plan. The bike squad was part of a design to keep cops away from the building and clashes between them were inevitable. The strategic aims of the occupation are clear: disrupt as far as possible the operation of the ICE office; create official and unofficial refusal to cooperate with ICE. These goals are paired with broader demands: stop deportations, end family detention in Berks Family Detention Center, and end Philly’s cooperation with ICE.
The militancy here seems to be building off of the growing energy and numbers of radical antiauthoritarian struggles over the past couple of years here, in the Summer of Rage Anarchist Crew, the actions around J20, in Antifa on the national and local level, etc. I think the militancy of anarchists as well as police abolitionists have laid some of the important groundwork. In other words, we’re witnessing a kind of accidental but powerful collaboration between groups that is building Philly’s radical power.
Is it possible for this kind of collaboration to be developed, going forward, in a more deliberate way? For anarchists and radical Socialists to deliberately coordinate successive militant actions, or actions that are different but complement each other—creating groundwork for each other, building on each other, even despite major differences?
The Cops
There is no question that the cops are working for and coordinating with ICE. This isn’t just obvious from their violent protection of the building. I’ve heard from a reliable source that on Tuesday morning, the cops helped clear occupiers out from in front of the parking lot to let in an employee car.
This opens up more space for developing local radical politics. The police are very clearly aligning here with white supremacist and fascistic forces in the state. This isn’t a shock to many of us. But the radical left has here a chance to emphasize the links between the police, the state, capital, and colonial violence. In this situation, it can become very clear why calls for police abolition, prison abolition, and radical anti-capitalist politics need to be connected.
To the barricades?
As far as I know, barricades have not been a particularly popular tactic in Philly in recent years. On the very last night of Occupy Philly, in the face of overwhelming police power, occupiers threw up a hasty barricade without much result. But barricades have played an important part in the occupation of the ICE office so far.
As police were gathering forces and preparing to invade last night, the barricades signaled a militant defense of the occupation that was unusual for the city. The dumpster rolling down the street—that was the signal of an even higher level of struggle, it seems, the threat of a pitched battle. All this seemed to spook the cops. And so it played another unexpected role, too. The cops were hesitating to raid the space. The barricades became a point of negotiation. It’s like pigs need to save face; all that hyper-masculine bullshit needs to convince itself it’s forced people to obey. The cops took the couch and the barricades. The people kept the office.
How do we up the ante and expand our use of barricades in the future? Can we set them up in advance to fuck with the way police will try to guide marches? Are there techniques we can learn to build them bigger, higher, stronger, more durable? How could they tactically help us resist repression—maybe buying us time to stay at a location, or giving us a few minutes to fly to another one while cops are stumbling over trash?
Some tactical possibilities
It’s clear the police are blundering to try to deal with this tactic and its new level of aggression. Cops were panicked and swarming us during the march, and within an hour or two at the ICE office there were easily 60-75 cop cars gathered up. But cops made an enormous traffic jam. We can use this confusing and this overwhelming show of force against cops in a two (or more) stage operation.
If a large crowd is moving towards occupying a key spot, like ICE, cops will swarm. But if we plan things right, and have the numbers, this could be followed up by getting another, separate crowd mobilized blocks away to take another major target. With so many of them tangled up at the first spot, the chance for embedding in that second location would be much higher.
And the more that we use two stage actions, the more paranoid the pigs will get. They’d be extremely hesitant to launch a massive force against an occupation for fear of the next steps—and we could use that to our advantage. Or they’d try greater shows of strength (riot gear etc.). That could be a problem, but it could be a real opportunity, too, in a city like Philly that claims to be progressive. It’s clear this city wants to shed its well-earned image of police violence.
Coalition work
The occupation is also an important experiment in radical coalition-building. The event emerged through the efforts of the following official endorsers (but many other groups were also present at the event and probably helped in various ways): Philly Socialists, Socialist Alternative, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Montgomery County Socialists, Liberation Project, Philly DSA, Reclaim Philadelphia, Green Party of Philadelphia, International Marxist Tendency, POWER, and IWW Philly.
The list shows that the event emerged out of the socialist scene here, connecting more radical groups with more reformist and traditional groups. This kind of project isn’t unusual in Philly, but the scale and militancy seems to me to be a serious step up.
The occupation acts as a kind of “estuary” where currents from different traditions, especially the more radical anticapitalist kind, are combining, and where a space for new, less ideologically rigid projects and ideas to develop. Even though the “official” planning of the event was largely socialist, many other far left groups and tendencies appeared, too: a strong police abolitionist presence as well as at least some anarchists. This kind of combination crucial as the fascistic state in the US grows in power and audacity. Developing and deepening connections among radical groups are essential today if we’re going to build an effective (and therefore, necessarily, mass) response to fascism in a still deeply fractured radical scene.
But the event also raises an important question for Philly anarchists and the other parts of the radical left beyond the socialist scene. Is this event worth throwing support behind? What about the major differences in ideology between anarchists and groups like the PSL or Philly Socialists? The occupation is mounting a clear challenge to a key local branch of fascistic power in this country. And it’s helping build radical militancy and connections among anticapitalists here. For anarchists or other radical anticapitalists to sit this out would be an important missed opportunity.
We can’t just wish away major ideological differences. They are real and create tensions that can’t be ignored. But there are also levels of coalition, the lowest being merely tactical unity without strategic or ideological agreement. This is highly limited. But it is still important, even as a first step, particularly if we’re going to go on the attack against an increasingly audacious state.
And the occupation shows the importance of different kinds of coalitions. A single Philly wide coalition right now for all anticapitalists would be too internally divided and weak. If the differences are just too big between some groups, they are much smaller between others; we see this principle at work in Philly’s current occupation. What would it look like to create more “nodes,” or sites where closer segments of the revolutionary left experimentally build together? Philly’s occupation is a coalitional project driven mostly by socialists. Something similar, maybe, could be developed across different but still close sectors of the radical scene in Philly—the most anarchic wing of socialist groups with sympathetic anarchists and prison abolitionists.
And finally, the occupation is a reminder that building revolutionary power is a process and an experiment. Connecting at least some of the revolutionary forces in a city will come step by step, by connecting some individuals across groups that share a liberatory anticapitalism, and building outward from there. We’re laying the foundation for many more struggles after this one.
Radical Education Department
radicaleducationdepartment.com
radicaleducation@protonmail.com
