Squatting, Rebellion, Movement: An Interview with Philadelphia Housing Action

  • January 31, 2021 1:11 am

from It’s Going Down

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On this episode of the It’s Going Down podcast, we speak with two members of Philadelphia Housing Action, about the ups and downs of 2020 that has been outlined in the recent piece, Occupy, Takeover: How Philadelphia Housing Action Turned Vacant Buildings Into Homes. It details how throughout 2020, members of the group moved unsheltered individuals and families into livable, unused homes owned by the Philadelphia Housing Authority. Moreover, in the midst of the rebellion that kicked off following the police murder of George Floyd, the group was also involved in setting up several encampments throughout the city, which often were marked by standoffs with the police and barricades in the streets.

While the eyes of the nation were centered squarely on the autonomous zone in Seattle, in Philadelphia, such encampments were able to leverage the city to turn over 75 homes to a land-trust, providing housing for multiple families and formerly unhoused individuals – including many who had been squatting in the months prior.

As extreme weather becomes the norm and building takeovers to provide shelter and resistance to sweeps of homeless camps become more widespread, the campaign by Philadelphia Housing Action remains an instructive example of what is possible.

More Info: Occupy, Takeover: How Philadelphia Housing Action Turned Vacant Buildings Into Homes, Philadelphia Housing Action on Twitter, and Philadelphia Housing Action homepage.

Occupy, Takeover: How Philadelphia Housing Action Turned Vacant Buildings Into Homes

  • January 30, 2021 1:48 am

from It’s Going Down

Following months of riots, building barricades, and stand-offs with police trying to evict encampments, in late September of 2020, Philadelphia Housing Action was able to claim victory, after the city of Philadelphia offered unsheltered families and individuals access to housing in formerly vacant buildings, a process which people had already begun in the months prior, as homes owned by Philadelphia Housing Authority were squatted. In the end, upwards of 75 homes were handed over by the city, which included many homes which had been previously squatted. Here Philadelphia Housing Action looks back at 2020 with analysis and a timeline on what all went down. 

On Sept. 26, housing activists and organizers from Philadelphia Housing Action declared victory after the city agreed to allow 50 previously unhoused families who took over a number of buildings to live in vacant, city-owned housing through a community land trust.

Philadelphia Housing Action has actually been many years in the making; grounded in struggles around gentrification, displacement, homelessness, police violence, institutionalization, family separation, legalized discrimination and more. All of us had been in the city for years if not our entire lives. OccupyPHA had been sweating the Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) for over five years around it’s rogue private police force and systematic displacement of neighborhoods through forced relocations under threat of eviction, selling of public land to developers, deliberate vacancy and eminent domain. In 2019 OccupyPHA had an encampment in front of the housing authority which lasted over 120 days focusing on these issues that laid a lot of the groundwork for what was to come. The issue of vacant public housing blighting neighborhoods and creating the pretext for eminent domain had long been a concern and the idea of occupying those houses as an act of protest and counter-gentrification had been discussed for at least a year.

Early on in 2020, the group of us who would go on to form Philadelphia Housing Action were finding each other in the same spaces as we challenged the city’s Office of Homeless Services around the ongoing policy of evicting homeless encampments. Like most places, nobody seemed to give a shit about homeless people and attempts to get media coverage or rally allies fell pretty flat. After a while, it became obvious that fighting the city on their terms wasn’t enough, we needed to take direct actions and force the issue; moving people into vacant publicly-owned houses seemed like the best way forward. Once COVID-19 rolled in and people were given stay at home orders, it just seemed like common sense for us to move ahead with take-overs, like a few other groups had already done around the country.

For several months as a small group we worked at that entirely under the radar and managed to occupy around 10 Housing Authority houses, primarily with families numbering a total of 50 people before the city erupted over the murder of George Floyd. Although Philadelphia Housing Action represented members from several groups, there were never more than 5 or 6 of us doing the work, none of us were getting paid and we got all the houses up and running with less than $1,500 from small donations or out of pocket. We had no legal or formal organizational support and relied entirely upon ourselves.

SOURCE: Philadelphia Housing Action

Within 10 days of the George Floyd uprising, we initiated a homeless protest encampment downtown and within the month we had made the announcement about the housing take-overs. Over the course of the summer hundreds of people became engaged in the encampments and the campaign while our group grew smaller, some members breaking away and one dying tragically of an overdose. We ended the year having housed 150-200 people, occupying 30 houses, continuing to fight the city for what we were promised and doing our best to weather the drama that comes after any upswing in mass movement activity inevitably tapers off and devolves into finger-pointing and competition amongst former allies.

We are proud that not a single occupied house was evicted and that there were no arrests in the largest organized and public housing takeover in the United States in more than a generation. We are gladdened that through the protest encampments and occupations the connections between homelessness, housing, and institutional/historical racism were put into much sharper focus while the racialised systems of domination, surveillance and control that permeate the homeless industrial complex, public housing, family court and more were successfully linked to the movement against police and state violence. We are hopeful that our demonstrated ability to link, cross-pollinate and grow movements for tenants rights, homelessness, public housing and foreclosures can be replicated by others across the country, for indeed they share a common enemy. Our campaign victory to win the transfer of vacant city-owned property to a community land trust for low-income housing was a big win for the national movements around housing and human rights and was built upon the shoulders of the many people and movements who came before us both here in Philly and abroad.

It is our assessment that in the year to come, we will see a great deal more in the struggles around housing as a mass eviction wave looms and the economy seems poised to fall off a cliff. We hope that in some small measure, we have done our part to set the stage for the fights to come and inspire others to take the bold and direct actions necessary to keep our communities safe and advance the struggle for universal housing.

Below is an incomplete and summarized timeline of our activities in 2020.

January 6th Philadelphia Housing Action protests encampment eviction at 18th and Vine St/5th and Wood streets along with members of North Philly Food Not Bombs (NPFNB),

February 12 Philadelphia Housing Action attends and contests meeting held by Office of Homeless Services about the coming planned eviction of the encampment at the convention center,

March 23 Philadelphia Housing Action and allies including NPFNB contest eviction of encampment at the convention center on the morning of City’s stay at home order, confronts David Holloman of Homeless Services with newly published CDC guidelines advising against evicting encampments. Later in the afternoon, Philadelphia Housing Action takes its first abandoned PHA property and opens it to the homeless community.

Throughout April and May Philadelphia Housing Action identifies and opens 10 more city owned houses for homeless families while city remains in lockdown.

April 10-17th Philadelphia Housing Action supports first protests/daily actions since lockdown led by no215jails coalition for the mass release of people from jails and prisons.

April 16th Philadelphia Housing Action supports action by No215Jails Coalition at CJC, chases Judge Coyle and her small dog who had denied every single case for release put before her down the street and blocked her exit from the parking garage.

April 17th Philadelphia Housing Action publishes Op-Ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer calling for the opening of empty hotels and dorms for the unhoused during the pandemic.

April 22nd Philadelphia Housing Action / ACTUP informs the City of Philadelphia about federal funding available that would pay for non-congregant housing in the form of Covid Prevention Spaces.

May 5th Philadelphia Housing Action contests encampment sweep on Ionic St w/ members of NPFNB. Delays sweep.

May 13th Philadelphia Housing Action supports ACTUP, ADAPT/DIA, Put People First, DecarceratePA, Philadelphia Community Bail Fund and March on Harrisburg pressing Managing Director Brian Abernathy to open non-congregant housing for people living in shelters, nursing homes and recently released prisoners. Demands universal testing in all congregant housing.

May 27th City of Philadelphia evicts homeless encampment from the international terminal baggage claim. Philadelphia Housing Action had visited the encampment several times throughout may and participated in advocacy work that delayed eviction for over a week due to legal action from Homeless Advocacy Project and attention from the press. First Covid-19 Prevention Hotel is opened in Philadelphia.

May 30th Philadelphia Housing Action joins the largest multi-racial uprising against police violence in the history of the United States in response to the killing of George Floyd. Uprising is city-wide and spills into the surrounding area with a week of street fighting, looting, riots and marches. The National Guard is mobilized to the city and occupies downtown, displacing the homeless population while people continue to loot and blow ATMs.

May 31st Philadelphia Housing Action / ACTUP / Put People First / Global Women’s Strike / March on Harrisburg demonstrate/hold funeral services at the home of Liz Hersh, Managing Director of the Office of Homeless Services.

June 6th OccupyPHA and Philly for REAL Justice lead a march of several hundred from PHA Police Department Headquarters to Temple Police Department Headquarters and back highlighting the impact of unaccountable private police departments on North Philadelphia and their connection to gentrification and displacement.

June 10th Philadelphia Housing Action and homeless activists initiate a protest encampment at 22nd and Benjamin Franklin Parkway under the banner of Housing Now. Encampment defies police orders, declares a no cop zone, bans homeless outreach, issues demands and expands rapidly. In the evening a small march blocks traffic and breaches the outer doors of Mayor Kenney’s apartment complex.

June 15th James Talib Dean, 34, co-founder of the parkway encampment, co-founder of Workers Revolutionary Collective and member of Philadelphia Housing Action dies at his home of an accidental drug overdose. Parkway encampment officially renamed Camp JTD.

June 22nd Marsha Cohen, executive director of Homeless Advocacy Project issues a public apology for her comments to the Philadelphia Inquirer about Philadelphia Housing Action being ‘insane’ and ‘using homeless people as pawns,’ amongst other vaguely classist/racist comments.

June 22nd Occupy PHA/Philadelphia Housing Action makes public announcement about its housing takeovers on independent media outlet Unicorn Riot.

June 23rd Philadelphia Housing Action taps water fountain, runs 1000 feet of pip to install running water, hand wash stations and a shower at CampJTD.

June 26th Philadelphia Housing Action and representatives from Camp JTD meet with city officials in an abandoned storefront. City makes no offer of permanent housing, denies having power over the housing authority or ability to convey other vacant city-owned property.

June 28th Philadelphia Housing Action / OccupyPHA open second encampment on an empty lot across from Housing Authority headquarters on Ridge Ave. The lot, taken through eminent domain by the Housing Authority is slated for of 81 market rate and 17 ‘affordable’ units, along with a parking garage and ‘supermarket.’

June 30th Housing Authority attempts to fence in Ridge Ave encampment and post no trespassing signs. Encampment residents resist, blocking bulldozers and tearing fenceposts out the ground, led by Teddy Munson. Managing Director Abernathy orders Housing Authority to ‘stand down,’ proving that city has power over the Housing Authority. Supporters immediately erect barricades around the entire perimeter of Camp Teddy, working into the night.

July 7th Philadelphia Housing Action taps into city power at CampJTD, installs outlets to power fridges, etc.

July 9th Philadelphia Housing Action breaks off negotiations with the city after several weeks of talks. Cites city’s refusal to offer any actual housing and refusal to bring the Housing Authority to the table.

July 9th PHA Police attempt eviction of occupied house. OccupyPHA/Philadelphia Housing Action and loosely organized Eviction Defense Network rush to the scene and successfully force the police to withdraw before they can enter the building. The house is the first of only 4 to be discovered by the Housing Authority.

July 10th City posts eviction notices for both encampments, cutoff date set for July 17th.

July 13th Philadelphia Housing Action rallies hundreds of supporters at Camp JTD, vowing to resist eviction and demanding permanent housing. Support for the encampment ratchets up all week with allies calling for supporters to sleep over to defend the encampment the night before eviction.

July 13th-17th OccupyPHA and Camp Teddy residents protest at Philadelphia Housing Authority President/CEO Kelvin Jeremiah’s personal home every day.

July 15th City of Philadelphia pressures porta-potty rental company National Rentals to cancel contract with CampJTD. Philadelphia Housing Action supporters cut locks to city bathrooms at Von Colln Field in response.

July 16th City backs down from eviction. Managing Director Brian Abernathy resigns. Mayor Kenney says he will become personally involved in negotiations.

July 20th Philadelphia Housing Action meets in negotiation with Mayor Kenney, other high level city officials as well as the CEO/President of the Philadelphia Housing Authority, Kelvin Jeremiah. OccupyPHA vows to continue occupying houses. PHA carries out raid of long standing land occupation, the North Philadelphia Peace Park, in the middle of negotiations.

July 30th Final meeting with Mayor Kenney.

August 4th Both encampments weather Tropical Storm Isaias.

August 10th Philadelphia Housing Authority holds press event with employees posing as ‘community members’ speaking out against Camp Teddy. OccupyPHA and Camp Teddy residents counter-demonstrate, infiltrate event and get on the microphone.

August 11th Philadelphia Housing Authority announces the creation of a ‘Community Choice Registration Program’ in an effort to appear like it is meeting protest demands.

August 13th Deputy Managing Director Eva Gladstein breaks off negotiations with Philadelphia Housing Action in an email, saying protestors were not meeting the city halfway.

August 16th City posts 24 hour eviction notice for protest encampments.

August 17th Over 400 supporters turn out the morning of eviction to defend the encampments. City Council Members Gauthier and Brooks intervene and re-open talks between the city and the encampments Talks last for over 6 long hours. Lawyer Michael Huff files in Federal court for a restraining order and injunction against eviction, representing individuals from both encampments.

August 17th PHA Police attempt extrajudicial ejectment of occupied house late in the night. OccupyPHA arrives and forces PHA Police to leave mid-ejectment. OccupyPHA demonstrates at PHA CEO Kelvin Jeremiah’s home every day the rest of that week.

August 25th Federal judge rules in favor of the city, clearing the way for an eviction, but mandating 72 hours notice with protections and storage for residents property.

August 31st City issues ‘3rd and Final’ eviction notice set for September 9th.

September 1st Philadelphia Housing Action publishes Op-Ed in Philadelphia Inquirer detailing demand for the transfer of vacant city-owned properties to a land trust for permanent low-income housing. Philadelphia Housing Action meets again with the City despite eviction notice. City and Housing Authority finally admit to having the power to transfer properties to meet the demands, but claim they simply do not want to.

September 3rd Philadelphia Housing Action and encampment residents participate in blockading the reopening of eviction court. The courts are effectively closed down for the morning before protestors are cleared by riot police.

September 4th OccupyPHA and camp teddy occupy a many years vacant, but newly built PHA property around the corner from Camp Teddy. After holding the building for several hours, occupiers foolishly allow access to the PHA Police. PHA finally moves in tenants the same night. In an email, PHA informs OccupyPHA found Jen Bennetch they have requested a federal investigation of her and the housing takeovers under the Riot Act.

September 6th Philadelphia Housing Action, encampment residents and supporters rally and march to Mayor Kenney’s apartment building and hold intersection and rally for hours.

September 8th Whole Foods, Target and CVS board their windows in preparation of encampment eviction and possible riots. OccupyPHA and Camp Teddy visit the homes of senior managers of the Philadelphia Housing Authority.

September 9th In a repeat, roughly 600 supporters turn out to fight the eviction, barricades are massively expanded at Camp JTD, including the closure of N 22nd St next to the encampment. The street remains closed for the rest of the month. City attempts to send Clergy to both encampments in an attempt to persuade people to leave but they are shouted down and leave in humiliation. Although trash trucks and buses are staged on the parkway, police never appear. Both encampments remain in a state of heightened alert over the coming weeks. Police test response time and defenses several times but do not arrive in force.

September 10th supporting organizers at camp JTD invite Mayor Kenney to a brunch on September 14th, raise a banner facing the parkway with the invitation.

September 14th Mayor Kenney declines to attend brunch.

September 18th HUD Mid-Atlantic Regional Office formally confirms that the Philadelphia Housing Authority can legally transfer properties without the need for federal approval.

September 26th Philadelphia Housing Action announces that city has tentatively agreed to transferring 50 vacant houses to a community land trust in return for ending the encampments. City/PHA comments that the announcement of a deal is ‘entirely premature.’ In talks, City had confirmed with Philadelphia Housing Action that they were willing to transfer the houses and continue negotiations in exchange for removal of the 22nd st barricades, a decision ratified by popular assembly of Camp JTD residents after much canvassing and discussion over the next several days.

SOURCE: Twitter @PeoplesParty_US

October 1st Philadelphia Housing Authority proposes settlement with OccupyPHA for resolution of the Camp Teddy encampment. PHA offers 9 fully rehabbed houses, two empty lots, the transfer of any squats that have already been approved for disposition to the land trust, amnesty for all Philadelphia Housing Action squatters, an end to extrajudicial ejectments and evictions by PHA Police, jobs for encampment residents to rehab the houses, a 1 year moratorium on sales of PHA property and an independent study on the impact of PHA property sales, participation of PHA Police Department in City of Philadelphia reform initiatives and to fully implement the CCRP with up to 300 vacant properties.

October 2nd Camp Teddy residents ratify the agreement and OccupyPHA signs agreement to vacate by the night of Monday the 5th.

October 5th Camp Teddy vacates and clears encampment by deadline. PHA informs the City after the fact. City is reportedly furious.

October 8th OccupyPHA founder Jen Bennetch wins a PA Superior Court ruling setting a state precedent affirming the right to film DHS workers (Philly’s version of Child Protective Services) performing their duties. The case originated in 2019 when the Housing Authority and homeless service provider ProjectHOME brought a complaint against Ms Bennetch for having her children with her in the daytime during her 2019 124 day occupation of the PHA headquarters. Ms Bennetch denied DHS workers entry to her home and filmed them in front of her house. In the lower court ruling, the family court Judge Joseph Fernandes had ordered Ms Bennetch to delete and remove from social media all videos of the DHS workers and to never record them again. Ms Bennetch’s appeal to the Superior court was based on First Amendment grounds.

October 10th Managing Director Tumar Alexander approaches OccupyPHA with a ‘best and final’ offer for resolution of Camp JTD in exchange for 50 additional houses.

October 12th After multiple assemblies and extensive canvassing at Camp JTD, Philadelphia Housing Action signs agreement to vacate on a tight timeline in exchange for 50 additional houses. Over the coming weeks Philadelphia Housing Action, supporters, the Housing Authority and the City work to find people housing and clear the encampment.

October 21st A Camp JTD resident legally obtains a unit at the formerly occupied newly constructed vacant PHA property around the corner from Camp Teddy.

October 23rd Marsha Cohen officially resigns as executive director of Homeless Advocacy Project.

October 26th Camp JTD formally closes and is fenced in by the city. Upon closure Philadelphia Housing Action counted 30 occupied city-owned properties. In the final weeks, 35 residents were given rapid re-housing vouchers despite income requirements and 10 elders gained immediate access to PHA senior housing. Philadelphia Housing Action estimates that more than 200 people gained access to housing over the course of the encampment through housing occupations or various city/housing authority programs.

October 26th Philadelphia Police shoot and kill Walter Wallace Jr, sparking widespread riots.

October 29 November 1st OccupyPHA/Philadelphia Housing Action demonstrate nightly at Council President Darrell Clarke’s home forcing a meeting with OccupyPHA and allies on November 4th. The following week the Philadelphia Housing Authority confirms Clarke has dropped his opposition to Philadelphia Housing Action getting houses in North Philadelphia. By November 23rd Darrell Clarke procedurally kills his own initiative to give $14.5m to the Philadelphia Police Department and refuses to comment to the press.

November 11th Philadelphia Housing Action occupies lobby of 22nd district for several hours after receiving the MOU between Philadelphia Police Department and Temple Police Departments. MOU is read out loud clarifying the limits of Temple University Police jurisdiction and generally harassing the police working that night, a turkey was thrown across the lobby.

December 1st Philadelphia Housing Action visits Covid Prevention Site Hotels and occupies lobby, confronts security.

December 2nd Philadelphia Housing Action has call with Office of Homeless Services and hotel residents about impending closure of Covid Prevention Hotels on Dec 15th. Demands delay of closure and extension of program. Over the coming weeks it is revealed the city will be moving residents from the hotel into former halfway houses that do not have private rooms or bathrooms. Philadelphia Housing Action continues to organize with residents and other advocates for the permanent housing the city promised at the beginning of the program. Activity is ongoing.

December 23rd Philadelphia Housing Action successfully pressures PHA to get gas turned on to several properties that were being denied service by PGW. City moves first residents from prevention hotels to former halfway houses and Philadelphia Housing Action learns that the new facilities have no heat or hot water. Philadelphia Housing Action and supporters visit the home of Office of Homeless Services Director Liz Hersh at night, talking to neighbors and playing loud music to protest the closure of the Prevention Hotel and the placement of people with preexisting health conditions into congregant housing with no heat or hot water over the holiday.

December 28th Philadelphia Housing Action visits Walker Hall, the former halfway house owned by private prison contractor CoreCivic that is now housing residents from the Covid Prevention Hotels. Security denies access to the premises and calls the police. The location is in a remote industrial area and lacking services, transportation or access to food. Heat and Hot water are still not available to all residents, nor are they allowed to possess space heaters. Residents have windows in their doors and are not permitted to block them. Female residents complain about male guards looking into their rooms. No transportation was made available. Residents are searched upon entry and at least one resident, a disabled elder, has been expelled for possession of a marijuana cigarette.

January 1st Philadelphia Housing Action, pushing for corrections around the availability of federal funding in a Philadelphia Inquirer article on the closure of the Covid Prevention Hotels is able to confirm that the City of Philadelphia never applied to FEMA for funding that would pay 75% of the program costs of the program. The statement from a city official on record undermines the entire premise of closing the hotel due to a lack of funding and exposes a high level of willful incompetence at the Office of Homeless Services. Furthermore, Philadelphia Housing Action and ACTUP are able to confirm that the current facilities will not be eligible for FEMA funding due to their congregant nature.

Anathema Volume 7 Issue 1

  • January 19, 2021 1:12 am

from Anathema

Volume 7 Issue 1 (PDF for reading 8.5 x 11)

Volume 7 Issue 1 (PDF for printing 11 x 17)

In this issue:

  • Year In Review
  • What Went Down
  • Words Mean Things: Mutual Aid
  • Autonomous Delivery Robots
  • The Group Chat: Our New Social Hub
  • Comic
  • Philly Encampments: What We Lost When “We Won”
  • The Only News I Need Is On The Weather Report
  • Repression Updates
  • Poem

Cars, Riots, & Black Liberation: Philadelphia’s Walter Wallace Rebellion

  • November 18, 2020 1:35 am

from Mute

Image: ‘Looting rampant’ in Philly

The US saw some of the largest riots and protests in its history this year in response to police murder of black people. Yet there has been scant attention paid to the innovations in struggle specific to these rebellions. Shemon & Arturo take another look at the phenomenon of car-looting and argue that this tactic is inseparable from black liberation 

 

Glass shatters. Thick plumes of dark black smoke pour out of a burning police car stalled in the middle of 52nd street. Another black man shot dead by the police. Another rebellion in defense of basic human dignity.  ‘Sir, it’s chaos!,’ one of the officers yells into his radio as they retreat under a barrage of rocks, bottles, bricks. ‘Stop throwing shit!,’ an older black man on a bullhorn yells, but the young black militants keep throwing projectiles anyway. The police, outnumbered by the hundreds, can only watch from a distance as people begin to loot stores all along the ave. The cops concentrate on blocking off major intersections.

 

While sitting in a traffic jam, waiting for the red light to turn green, a car breaks whatever is left of the law and speeds away. Time and speed do not obey red, yellow, or green here. This is no ordinary traffic jam. It is the traffic jam of black liberation, where looting by car is the art form developed in response to the murder of Walter Wallace Jr. by the Philadelphia Police.

 

All of a sudden a group of black teenagers pop out of a car and walk down the street, to an unknown destination. Cop cars zoom past them in a panic of sirens, red and blue lights flashing through the darkness, probably rushing to another 9-11 call about looters at a pharmacy, Footlocker, grocery store, or liquor store somewhere else. Across the street, a gas station is filled with cars of young black people hopping in and out, discussions taking place, and music blaring. It is part music festival, part pitstop, and part modern day proletarian council where young people discuss what to do next.

 

What happened in Ferguson as an impromptu practice has developed into an art in Philadelphia: the art of looting by car. In the United States, black proletarians are constantly refining and sharpening forms, tactics, and strategies of struggle.

 

In the official record, these activities will be recorded as crime. Joe Biden has already left his statement for all of posterity to see. Biden, like all politicians, spews the great lie of our society: black rioters are criminals. Riots have nothing to do with politics. But there could be nothing further from the truth. Black rioters are the creators of new forms of struggle, new visions of liberation, and new types of revolutionary organization. The accomplishments of the revolt in Philadelphia were powerful, liberating and simply beautiful. While pundits want to dismiss the riots as apolitical or criminal, it is the revolutionary activities of the black proletariat which constitute the actual form of politics that put radical change on the horizon.

 

Ignoring the Uprising

 

The main people who take the uprising seriously are the rIght and a small layer of the ultra-left. For liberals and moderates the insurrectionary dimension of the uprising barely exists, since 93 percent of the protests have been baptized as peaceful. Using this statistical sleight of hand, liberalism transforms itself into an ally of black people, equating Black Lives Matter with respectable, non-violent, legal protest, while ignoring the remaining 7 percent of violent protests, i.e. the actual riots. Even socialists have stuck their heads in the sand when it comes to the tactical and strategic implications of the uprising. Everyone condemns racism and police brutality, but for all their claims of solidarity with black liberation, most leftists have fallen miserably short when it comes to actually participating in the riots that have swept this country. At best, most abstain from the insurrectionary aspects of the uprising altogether; at worst, they opportunistically leech off of it in order to build up their particular organizations, brands, and careers. Meanwhile, black proletarians are getting arrested and putting their bodies on the line in a battle of life and death.

 

At this point in the development of the struggle, any group that claims solidarity with black liberation, but has not been fighting the cops and rioting in the streets, or directly providing aid and support to such activities, is irrelevant. There are no excuses.  We have met women, children, parents, elders, undocumented people, people in wheelchairs, on crutches, coming from all genders, abilities, and races imaginable, all throwing down in one way or another during street riots. For those who engage the police in battle, the time for words and social media posts are over. This kind of symbolic anti-racism and solidarity – which has been the bread and butter of liberals and leftists for decades now – has been exposed for the joke that it really is. Solidarity with the movement requires risking your skin. This is not an abstraction; this is exactly what black proletarians are doing.

 

And it is not only the white, Asian, indigenous, and latinx left that ignores the most dynamic and militant aspects of this uprising, it is also the major black intellectuals and radicals of our time. This should be no surprise, as a similar split occurred among radical intellectuals during World War I in the Second International and again in national liberation struggles during World War II and after.

 

For all the radical rhetoric of marxism, in terms of its actual deeds and practice, most of the radical left has accommodated itself to the status quo. The law has expanded in response to class conflicts and anti-racist struggles to the point that plenty of harmless forms of activism can be engaged in, but they are simply a new prison for activists and movements. Previous generations have won victories and expanded the law so that we can safely denounce wars, march almost anywhere we wish, and say whatever we want. This range of legality seems like a victory, but has also become a trap that leftist organizations treat as a principle. The fact of the matter is that leftist organizations are simply not prepared to deal with the illegal nature of the revolutionary struggles and politics that are taking place in the present moment. The black proletariat continues to show a practical commitment to fighting the police, setting fire to carceral infrastructure, and looting the commodities of this dying capitalist system. When these are the tactics of the proletariat in motion, what kind of organizational forms make sense?

 

Organizational, tactical, and strategic clarity is emerging for the first time since the 1960s, but it is not coming from the left – it is coming from the practical initiatives and strategies of the black proletariat. Leftists run their mouths about organizational questions in abstract and antiquated terms, regurgitating a played out formula modeled on Russia or China that has been repeated ad nauseam for many decades now, but which has produced little more than sects and cults. They ignore the concrete forms of revolutionary organization that are already taking place in the uprising.

 

Revolutionary organizations are not built in the abstract, but are expressions of the real tactical and strategic challenges raised by the proletariat in the class struggle. The fundamental organizational question that revolutionaries face is how to contribute and relate to the uprising, specifically in terms of street fighting, looting, and other riot tactics. Those who are truly committed to revolution will have to push past the stale organizational forms of the past and begin to account for the diverse, illegal, and creative organizational forms that the black proletariat is developing in the present, the use of cars being one of the most innovative and effective tools in this emerging tactical repertoire.

 

It cannot be completely spontaneous that black proletarians went to Wal-Mart, looted it, and when the cops arrived, evaded them and went on to form caravans that targeted different shopping districts throughout the city. Much of the official prognosis of this moment is that the rioters are unorganized, lack direction, and leadership. In truth, the reality is that there’s a high degree of coordination and organization within the maelstrom of the riot. This should be obvious when caravans of looters swarm specific locations at the same time. To do so, people collectively decide on specific targets, coordinate movement to the target area, and often set up look outs who will warn everyone else when the police are coming.

 

New Dynamics, New Divisions

 

Organizations prove themselves in the battle of class conflict, often for specific purposes. In the case of Philadelphia, any organization had to deal with the dynamics of feet and tires. Most people destroyed property and looted stores in one manner or another by marching in the streets, and when the cops came along, they fought and evaded them on foot. But as the state has become more and more prepared for riots, prolonged street confrontations with the police have become more costly, and it has become harder to continue on foot. We first saw this in Chicago after the murder of Latrell Allen, where a caravan of cars looted the Magnificent Mile, and from there dispersed themselves throughout the city. This trend continued in Louisville with the Breonna Taylor protests in late September, where state preparation made an uprising in the city practically impossible. In response, people took to cars and spread the riots geographically by looting businesses throughout the city. This was a brilliant tactical and ultimately strategic innovation when facing the raw power of the state.

 

Car looting has clear advantages to looting on foot. There’s less peace policing, because there is not as much of an association with a specific geography, and what is often the same thing, a specific race. The most important aspect of car-looting, however, is that it disperses and exhausts the police forces. This strategy also creates a dynamic where those left on foot may find themselves in de facto police free zones, able to revel in freedom for extended periods of time, because the police are too busy trying to counter the looting caravans elsewhere. This is what happened in Philadelphia. The synergy of those on foot and those in cars creates a different geography and dynamic of struggle where police cars are racing from store to store trying to stop the roving bands of car looters, while those on foot find themselves pulling police resources in a different direction. There are simply too many rioters in different places and not enough police.

 

Looting by car is a strategic advancement, but the car is certainly not a perfect tool. The license plate is a huge security risk. With a few keystrokes police can use your license plate to look up your address and knock on your door. While this presents many dangers, what’s important to note is that many proles are finding ways to loot by car and not get caught regardless. Besides the risks that come with having a license plate, evading the police by car is oftentimes more dangerous and getting caught after a high speed chase is going to result in longer jail time.

 

Besides the security risks, the second problem is that you need a car in the first place, or at least need to know someone who has a car. While car ownership is widespread in the US, it is determined by race and class. According to a study from the University of California, ‘African Americans have the lowest car ownership of all racial and ethnic groups in the country, the researchers say, with 19 percent living in homes in which no one owns a car. That compares to 4.6 percent of whites in homes with no car, 13.7 percent of latinos, and 9.6 percent of the remaining groups combined.’ While not having your own car is probably not a total barrier, taking note of the unequal ownership of cars is important. At the same time, the fact that car-looting has so far been almost entirely black shows us the determination of black proletarians to use cars in the uprising.

 

The third concern is that the car simultaneously atomizes the struggle, where each car is a separate unit. While in a way, the car socializes small units of rioters, it does so in a very different manner than looting on foot. Each car is a ship unto itself. It’s not always clear if human beings are directly relating to one another or if it is the car as a commodity which emerges as the subject. This mask is torn off in the rush of doors opening, looters jumping in and out of cars. From the outside, however, car looting can be fairly mysterious. Drivers and passengers can hide behind tinted windows and it becomes difficult to engage them. Joining a random car caravan can invite suspicion, especially if the caravan is made up of friends who already know each other. New faces are correctly suspected. This is all very different from looting on foot, where there is much more of a social and collective atmosphere. Still, looting by car is almost impossible to do as an individual, and thus, entails its own kind of sociality.

 

If the initial division of the uprising was between legal and illegal protests, non-violent and violent protests, good and bad protesters, it is clear that another division has emerged: shoes versus tires. However, this division is not an obstacle to the struggle. Unlike previous divisions which reflected class and racial differences in the movement, this one emerges directly out of the tactical back and forth between the police and the black proletariat. This organic division arises in response to the maneuvers of the police, and therefore, reflects innovation and creativity, instead of containment and counterinsurgency.

 

New Geographies of Struggle

 

To understand car-looting is to catch a glimpse into the changing geography of struggle. The size of cities can give us a baseline reference point. Philadelphia is 134 square miles and Louisville 325 square miles. To put that in perspective, New York City is 302 square miles and Oakland is 78 square miles. This information gives us a sense of the specific size of the container we are dealing with, but if we want to grasp the full geographic dimensions of a city, there are particular infrastructures, densities, and social dynamics that determine why car-looting takes place where it does. In New York City, for example, looting by car was not a mass phenomenon. Why has looting by car happened in Chicago, Louisville and Philadelphia, but not NYC? The low car ownership rate (at about 50 percent), the high concentration of stores and people, coupled with an extensive subway system, all come together to militate against the use of cars in riots. This is not to say that some car looting did not take place, just that it was not the decisive element of the rebellion in NYC. But in cities like Louisville and Philadelphia, cars became major components of the uprising. Furthermore, if the initial phase of the uprising this summer was concentrated on the wealthiest portions of cities, in the fall the proletariat abandoned Market Street in Philly, and abandoned Jefferson Square Park in Louisville, and instead used cars to spread the rebellion throughout the city. Instead of fixating on territory in the way that activists tend to do, those who looted by car used the vastness of urban space to create a new territory of struggle. This is part of a qualitative development in the class struggle that still needs to be made sense of and accounted for.

 

A century ago it was factories which dotted the terrain of class struggle; today it is the shopping district, the cell phone store, the CVS, and the Apple store that reveals the new geography of struggle. Rioting and looting are a reflection of what capital looks like now: wealth in the form of commodities concentrated in key neighborhoods, often spread geographically throughout cities. While these commodities are not the means of production, they certainly represent a vast collection of wealth just waiting for proletarians to expropriate. The looting of Wal-Mart is an excellent example of this. Here capital has brought together a vast assemblage of commodities which proletarians usually have to pay for. The looting of Wal-Mart on the night of 27 October was the reaction of people who are forced to live and work alongside this hyper concentration of commodities. While precise data is not available of what kind of jobs rioters hold, an educated guess is that if they hold jobs at all, they are most likely in low-wage service sector jobs with little structural power to strike. Instead of critiquing rioters, then, it makes more sense to ask why proletarians in the United States are rioting more than they’re striking.

 

Weapons and Ethics

 

We’ve seen right-wingers use cars to attack protestors. The big pick-up truck and the Trump waving sedan has become a weapon to intimidate, injure, and kill BLM protestors.  In response, many activists formed their own car brigades for surrounding protests and blocking right-wingers from ramming protestors with their cars. While this has been an important development, another and much less noticed development has been the growing use of cars for looting. This turn in tactics raises more general questions about the tools we use, how we use them, and how these tools relate to liberation.

 

Reflecting on the use of guns in his recent text ‘Weapons and Ethics‘, Adrian Wohlleben tells us that the weapons we use and how we use them powerfully impact our struggles. We should be attuned to how specific weapons might increase collective power and mass participation, while others might limit them. Wohlleben throws some cold water on any romanticism about guns, and equally important, pushes us to think about how the use of guns changes the terrain of struggle. Most crucially, Wohlleben demonstrates a commitment to keeping the movement mass based and militant at the same time. Weapons and Ethics asks: ‘How does our use of weapons work behind our backs to define the meaning and limits of our power? How does this choice affect and configure who feels able to join us, and even what we think of as ‘winning’? How can we make this choice explicit to ourselves?’ While there is much to agree with here, we can also critique Wohlleben for not navigating the precise history of how guns have been used for black liberation. While it was not Wohlleben’s purpose to do such an analysis, in the context of the George Floyd uprising, and a potential civil war, it is clearly a task we must turn our attention to. And like guns, there is an ethics around cars, but one that is radically different. How do Wohlleben’s questions square with the use of cars for black liberation?

 

We usually do not think of cars as weapons, but they have been for some time. The car bomb has been used for decades. Considering how widespread cars are in this country, it is not inconceivable that they will be used in such a manner as struggle escalates. While we’ve seen cops and right-wingers use cars against BLM protesters, there were also several incidents in Philadelphia in which cars were used as weapons against the police during the riots. Police were attacked with cars during the Walter Wallace Rebellion, during the George Floyd Uprising back in May, and also in NYC.

 

After guns, cars are probably the most American of products. The very origin story of the car is inseparable from the rise of the United States as an industrial and global power. And while many on the left correctly criticize cars as climate destroying machines, there is an alternative history of the car that we must pay attention to.  The car, commonly understood as one of the defining symbols of American capitalism, has been turned on its head, and repurposed as a weapon of black liberation.

 

From Ferguson to Philly

 

The use of cars for black liberation is not new. The Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955-56 is perhaps the most famous example. Civil rights activists, particularly black women who were domestic workers, organized an alternative public transportation system based on cars in order to boycott the segregation of the buses in Montgomery, Alabama. This history provides valuable lessons for our current moment, especially when it comes to the question of social reproduction. This movement was a large-scale challenge to white supremacy. However, cars were not exactly used as weapons of struggle, as they are today. The manner in which cars are currently being used in riots reflects an escalation of the class struggle. If we begin with Ferguson, we see cars being used as getaway vehicles, as barriers to create police free zones, and as shields to fire at cops. But cars in Ferguson were not used for the purposes of looting. The Ferguson uprising did not spread geographically in response to the police. Instead spaces were defended around several sites in Ferguson, most importantly the QT and Canfield and West Florissant. Compared to the 2010s, the riots happening today have escalated in intensity and expanded in geography. The caravan of looters is probably the best example of this.

 

Dozens of gas guzzling monsters roaring down the streets, tires screeching, tinted windows – this is the caravan of black liberation. This phenomenon is an important aspect of the moving wave of mass struggles. It can be understood through the framework of Rosa Luxemburg’s great text The Mass Strike. While many communists agree with Luxemburg today, it was a controversial argument that she was making at the time. Luxemburg challenged the widely held conception of how socialism would come about in the 2nd International: a peaceful evolution won by the vote. Instead, she demonstrated that the strike waves rolling through Eastern Europe were the key to socialism. While it would be foolish to claim that car-looting alone will get us to communism-anarchism, it is one response of the black proletariat to a variety of tactical, strategic, and political economic developments of our time. How this strategy will connect to communism is not fully clear, but it is communistic in the sense of its mass nature and its attack on the commodity form.

 

What we see from Ferguson to Philadelphia is the growing use of the car as a weapon of mass struggle. In Ferguson cars were used for defensive purposes, while in Chicago, Louisville, Philadelphia and elsewhere cars were used for offensive purposes: for looting, for attacking police, and for spreading the geography of the uprising. We should expect cars to continue to play an important role as riots continue to unfold and the uprising potentially mutates into other forms of mass struggle: blockades, strikes, and occupations. Undoubtedly, the state will respond with new forms of surveillance and repression, but how it will do that is unclear. In the meantime, black proletarians will probably take advantage of the state’s lack of capacity to deal with widespread car-looting.

 

Conclusion

Over the summer comrades and Crimethinc published an exciting text, ‘Tools and Tactics in the Portland Protests‘, which showed the creativity and dynamics of the Portland protests. Each move by the Federal Agents forced protestors to develop a counter move, creating a back and forth dynamic that defines the tactical pulse of any mass struggle. While the street tactics of the Portland protests are familiar to many people across the country, making sense of car-looting is much more difficult if you aren’t part of the caravans of looters. But none of the obscurity of car-looting should stop us from recognizing that cars are inseparable from a strategy of black liberation. While it can be difficult to forge bonds with car caravans, this is a developing form of mass struggle where many of the divisions of our society might be broken if non-black proletarians can figure out how to participate.

Armed Struggle

  • November 18, 2020 1:09 am

from Anathema

Comparisons to the worldwide uprisings of 1968 have been drawn over the last several years as we’ve seen a resurgence of revolt the world over. Finally, this year, the United States began catching up after the murder of George Floyd, followed by many more murders of black people by police – subsequently reinvigorating a mournful rage, time and again. What followed the previous revolutionary period of the ‘60s was a substantial leftist armed struggle, presenting questions in an already uncertain present of what the future will hold – especially when armed conflict is already taking place in our streets.

The initial riots in Minneapolis this year drew immediate comparisons to those following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, and then seemed to outpace them in some ways once a police precinct was burned to the ground – precipitating the only relatively sincere discussion of police abolition by any city government thus far. Meanwhile, conflict continues to escalate in the streets between Left and Right forces with weapons as varied as blades, automobiles, and guns. It’s amazing that Willem Van Spronson was martyred in his attack on a Tacoma ICE facility just last year, strapped with a ghost AR-15 – it seems like some far off dream at this point. Well before that, even, a Wobbly was shot by a Trump supporter as they argued within a demonstration in Seattle. This year, we note Michael Reinoehl’s defense of himself and friends from a Patriot Prayer member, shooting the patriot dead, followed by the extrajudicial execution of Reinoehl by police forces a week later. Others have begun firing directly on the police this year – whether on a patrol car in Philly, a private home in Camden, or other scenarios elsewhere. As Kenosha went up in flames after the police murder of Jacob Blake, notably reducing a corrections building to cinders, the far-right came out armed again – and young Kyle Rittenhouse killed two protestors and wounded a third.

White supremacists and other misogynists are the most frequent mass shooters in America, lashing out against marginalized groups for their own shortcomings – personally and institutionally. Now, some of the only large groups gathering are protests, posing the interminable question of how they can defend themselves from such unrepentant violence. We see an increasingly armed Left in response, with some debating the limitations of a visibly armed security apparatus at these demonstrations (who are often more concerned with getting their picture taken than anything practical) versus the more versatile concealed carry method (illegally or otherwise). Not only should we recognize concealed carry as a relatively common tactic in cities in general, which is unfortunately evidenced by the inter-community violence that appears to be on the rise this year, but has historical precedence for anarchists dating back beyond the turn of the twentieth century.

Meanwhile, anarchist guerrilla groups have been expanding and advocating armed action for well over a decade now. Groups like Revolutionary Struggle, Conspiracy Cells of Fire, and the Informal Anarchist Federation have been ac-tive in Greece, Mexico, Indonesia, Russia, Chile, Argentina, Denmark, and Italy in the 21st Century, with the IAF developing new cells in Indonesia and Los Angeles, California this year.

As this is the United States, it is popularly assumed that the guns are in the mix whether or not you see them, and we have little say in how or when they’re used. The question for us, as anarchists, is when and how do we utilize this resource that is so well within reach?

Initially, the intention of this piece was to draw on lessons from the “first world” guerrilla struggles that developed in the ‘70s; particularly, the Years of Lead in Italy. As Italian protests reached a sustained climax in 1968, protesters began being shot more often by police and civilian fascists. They armed themselves in self-defense and began returning fire – posing an argument in itself against the state’s monopoly on violence and its goliath strength, and nearly generalizing the armed struggle. Frame ups orchestrated by fascists and the state followed, with massive repression and arrests that continue to this day. At the height of the repression in the late ‘70s, though, the revolts then carried on from within the prisons – leading to the Italian state modernizing their prison system to better isolate and marginalize all those involved. Something worth noting given the increase in prison revolts in recent years as it is, and particularly during the pandemic (truthout.org reports more than 100 in 39 states in the first 90 days of the pandemic, alone).

Along with obvious similarities reside substantial differences in the underlying causes and developments, though, and the terrain in which they occur. Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi speaks to these in a recent interview to emphasize that his experience with Autonomia in Italy is not particularly useful strategically or tactically, as they did not anticipate the exhaustion of economic growth that is occurring today, particularly as a result of the ongoing climate catastrophe. This has merit, since the stakes only seem to grow due to that collapse, and it would benefit us to look beyond street battles with cops and fascists and toward resource extraction industries and energy infrastructure, in addition to other dangerous and vulnerable aspects of the economy. This realization also points to the benefits of a certain kinds of specialization that his contemporary insurrectionaries (i.e. Weir, Bonnano, and Passamani) warned us against – whether it’s through tactical maneuvers, computer programming, or other means of attack.

Still, the anarchists’ warnings of the divide sown by specialists in struggle (epitomized by communist guerrillas) and others interested in tearing down institutions of oppression is not to be ignored. Their experience and wisdom in and around street battles is still applicable, to the degree that we take such risks beneath the gaze of a smart-phone-surveillance culture. This type of social insurrection in turn brings up the uneasy gauntlet in the present between the harassment of anyone in black bloc attire in certain demonstration scenarios, and the post-demo rounding up of anyone involved in hostilities who did not go to great lengths to conceal their identity by the feds – and these current examples don’t even account for the armed escalation the insurrectionaries were advocating for in the ‘70s. We could all benefit from a renewed interest in advocating for an anonymizing attire as a means to keep everyone safer, in the meantime, along with the ethos that encourages such tactics in those communities that may lash out against us – perhaps best done by anarchists already involved in mutual aid efforts in those communities, thereby also further politicizing their aid efforts beyond any realm of charity.

Beyond that, the underground guerrilla tactic was still noted as having value by the anarchists, but the decision to go underground was always framed as a last resort. Not only did it physically divide the movement, but then it required further specialized support efforts in order to maintain the lives of those underground. It was the disintegration of such support infrastructure, in particular, that left the Black Liberation Army so vulnerable in the United States around the same time. The Greek factions of the Conspiracy Cells of Fire tried to maintain some balance of armed activities and social involvement in this last decade, too, but perhaps advertised their intentions a little too publicly – or so one hears.

All involved in the Years of Lead, anyway, could point to a wide rejection of institutions at the time – particularly, recuperative efforts of unions, and the communist and socialist parties, many of whom held power all the way up to the parliamentary level – and how that rejection helped propel the revolts forward. This is a sentiment we often feel in the streets today, though we are sometimes mistakenly grouped in with such institutions due to conspiracies about funding and outside agitator tropes. A mistake that might be best countered by being honest about our selves and our anarchisms.

Recognizing where that anti-institutional sentiment comes from is to our benefit, as is learning from our history. Even recognizing that our current moment is informed and influenced by our collective struggles in and around The Great Recession, Occupy, Standing Rock, Black Lives Matter, antifascist battles, and responses to the pandemic and other climate related catastrophes of our era can inform us how to best proceed.

In that sense, just as “anarchists must say what only anarchists can say,” it does us no favors to settle for doing what others are already doing – particularly if it’s neither immediately effective nor building capacity. Not that we are likely to normalize any behavior, either, but we can expand the imaginary as to what is possible. This is not a suggestion to simply grow our capacity for violence or join some sort of gun-worship culture, either, but to recognize arms as another tool among many that an increasing number of us are holding. We may incorporate arms as it seems feasible and helpful towards goals of rupture and insurrection, as well as expanding the physical and psychological capacities of our attacks. Some are already firing on the police – as was mentioned above – so as more of our ilk take on the increasingly serious tasks like arson, we find it helpful to look toward next steps in the revolutionary canon. If everyday people are increasingly moving toward armed attacks, we can certainly take a few cues from them.

From: https://anathema.noblogs.org/files/2020/11/NOV20.pdf

Anathema Volume 6 Issue 7

  • November 17, 2020 1:01 am

from Anathema

Volume 6 Issue 7 (PDF for reading 8.5 x 11)

Volume 6 Issue 7 (PDF for printing 11 x 17)

In this issue:

  • What Went Down
  • Repression Update
  • White Supremacy & The World’s Destruction
  • Heating Up & Cooling Down
  • Balancing & Burning Out
  • Armed Struggle
  • Living In Fast Times
  • Decentralized Action
  • Nigerian Revolt
  • West Philly Vs The Proud Boys
  • Sick Ass Poster

About to Explode: Notes on the #WalterWallaceJr Rebellion in Philadelphia

  • November 13, 2020 1:38 am

from It’s Going Down

The following analysis and reflection looks at the recent rebellion in Philadelphia following the police murder of Walter Wallace Jr.

by Gilets Jawns

Nearly every week over the course of this long, hot summer, a different city has occupied the center stage of this particularly American drama. Through this passing of the torch, the sequence of riots had has dragged on far longer than anyone could have expected. In the last days before the election, in perhaps the most significant swing state, in the Philadelphia’s turn to carry the torch.

Following the climatic violence of Kenosha, each subsequent riot has been less able to capture the public imaginary or mobilize wide layers of society. It is too soon to tell whether the spectacle of the election will tower over the spectacle of insurrection; if this summer of unrest has finally run its course, or if black proletarians will continue to carry forward the struggle on their own. The riots in Philadelphia none the less leave us with a set of questions about the composition and tactics of movement, and the role of pro-revolutionaries within it.

I.

On Monday, October 26th, Walter Wallace Jr., a father and aspiring rapper with a history of mental illness, was having a crisis and acting erratically. His family called 911, hoping to have him temporarily hospitalized. Soon the Philadelphia Police Department was on the scene, rather than ambulance they had expected. Officers on the scene were told by his family that Wallace was having a mental health crisis. Nonetheless, within minutes, Wallace had been shot at over a dozen times. He died soon afterwards in the hospital. Shakey footage of the incident, captured on a cellphone, ends with family members confronting and screaming at the police officers on the scene. Everybody knew it was about to explode.

As the video begins to circulate on social media, a demonstration is called for that evening at Malcolm X Park in West Philadelphia, not far from the site of the shooting. Several hundred people join a rowdy march from the park to the nearby 18th Precinct, then through the neighborhood, and eventually back to precinct. One section of the crowd breaks away to march on the University of Pennsylvania’s campus police station, breaking it’s windows.

On the blocks cleared from the police, fireworks are set off and the crowd begins looting. Most of the storefronts on that stretch of 52nd Street, occupied by small, black owned businesses, such as bookstores and beauty salons, remain untouched.

Clashes breakout at the 18th Precinct between between demonstrators and riot police and the crowd spills over onto 52nd street, the commercial strip in that part of the neighborhood, where a police car is set on fire and another one has its windows broken. Dumpsters are dragging into the street and also set on fire. On the blocks cleared from the police, fireworks are set off and the crowd begins looting. Most of the storefronts on that stretch of 52nd Street, occupied by small, black owned businesses, such as bookstores and beauty salons, remain untouched. When riot police eventually charged the crowd, people took off running down side streets, jumped into cars, and disappeared. Looting soon broke out all over the city, as groups drove around breaking into pharmacies, liquor stores, and chain stores.

In West Philadelphia meanwhile things began to take on the form of a classic community riot. A crowd fought back the police with bricks and bottles until they retreated. In the space opened up, a stretch of several blocks, much of the neighborhood was out in the streets or on their porches. Young people broke up bricks on the sidewalk, in anticipation of another battle with the police. Others drank, debated, enthusiastically greeted their neighbors, shared looted goods, and cheered on the youth as they fought with or ran from the police. Everyone shared in the revelry of the moment, even if they didn’t partake in, or even criticized, the pot-latch of destruction.

Older drunk men took on the roll of town crier, walking from block to block enthusiastically shouting the news from elsewhere in the neighborhood: what intersections were being looted; where groups were headed now.

The doors of pharmacies and bodegas were broken in. People calmly walked in and out, taking what they needed. “Is there any kid’s cereal left? If you don’t have kids, you might not know this, but that shit is expensive.” A whole range of people from the neighborhood walked the streets with trash bags with stolen goods slung over their shoulders. Older drunk men took on the roll of town crier, walking from block to block enthusiastically shouting the news from elsewhere in the neighborhood: what intersections were being looted, where groups were headed now.

When riot police inevitably tried to retake the block, most of the crowd, most either went back inside their homes, or ran down the street to their cars. A pattern emerged for the rest of the night: someone would yell out an intersection in the neighborhood, crews would drive there, regroup, and begin looting until enough police arrived that it was time to disperse and regroup at another intersection.

Tuesday, October 27th

The next morning it was announced that the National Guard would be arriving within the next 24 to 48 hours. The riot thus had a window of time to make the most of. A flier circulated for another demonstration at Malcolm X Park that evening. In an almost comically exaggerated form of what the movement has come to call swooping, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), a Stalinist sect, circulated a separate call for a march at exact same location, only an hour earlier. This confusion led to the crowd splitting, with some following the PSL towards Center City and others marching towards the 18th Precinct. The group gathered at the precinct steadily over the course of the evening to around 400 people, a significantly larger and more diverse crowd than the previous night.

In the meantime, a caravan of cars descended on a WalMart in Port Richmond, on the northern end of the city. Video footage from a news helicopter showed people running out of the store with flat-screen TVs and other home appliances into a parking lot densely packed with idling cars. PPD speculated that up to 200 people were inside the WalMart at once, and the caravan may have involved up to 1,000 people. For the next few hours, hundreds of people in dozens of cars marauded through Aramingo avenue, looting a Footlocker, furniture stores, kid’s clothing stores, and other box stores along the way. WalMart announced later that week that, due to the threat of continued social unrest, they would be taking guns and ammunition off of their shop floors.

When the crowd at the Precinct began to march, some people almost immediately began to build barricades and throw bottles at the police. Soon a group of riot police were being chased under volleys of bricks and bottles nearly back to the precinct. Most of the march though tried to steer clear of the street-fighting, but was nonetheless overwhelmed by the sheer size of the police presence. Along 52nd Street the march was cut off and then broken up, with much of the crowd either kettled, dispersed, or stuck in a stand off with riot police. Eventually two or three smaller marches criss-crossed the neighborhood. One of these groups marched away from the heavily-policed zone towards Center City, leaving a trail of burning barricades and a looted liquor store in it’s wake.

Around midnight, with the streets largely evacuated of activists, youth from the neighborhood began to gather around 52nd street. They hurled bricks at the line of riot police and set dumpsters on fire in the street until police eventually charged at them. They then led the police on a chase for the rest of the night, stopping occasionally to break up bricks and wait for their enemy to get within striking range, throwing as many as they could, and then running again.

At the head of the march, improvising the route, was a twenty-something-year-old in a wheelchair dressed in black bloc. Everyone behind him was carrying bricks. Improvised barricades were occasionally dragged into the street and burned. An ATM was set on fire, as well as several vehicles, including an Xfinity van. “That’s for cutting off my wifi, bitch!” The whole proceedings had a festive air to it. Almost everyone knew each other from the neighborhood and would crack jokes on each other as they went. A solidarity demonstration that night in downtown Brooklyn threw bricks at the police, broke the windows of a police car, a court building, and numerous businesses.

Wednesday, October 28th

The next morning, the FBI arrested four people, including a prominent community organizer, who are being charged with arson and accused of having a role in setting three police cars on fire during the uprising in May and June. The FBI made similar arrests and raids in Atlanta that week.

A curfew was declared for 9PM. No demonstration was called for that evening.

As soon as the sun set, looting started spreading all over the city.

That evening, a small crowd gathered outside of the 18th Precinct, composed of more journalists than protests. After being warned by community affairs officers that the gathering was illegal, most of the crowd went home. For the rest of the night, youth from the neighborhood sporadically clashed with the police and set off fireworks across West Philadelphia.

After being warned about the curfew by community affairs officers, most of the crowd dispersed. Throughout the night, small groups of people, mostly from the neighborhood, clashed with police and set off fireworks across West Philadelphia.

Along City Avenue in Merion Park, a caravan of looters ransacked strip malls and box stores. Groups of between three and a dozen cars swarmed the area, storming businesses, and then stopping at gas stations to regroup and discuss their next move. At times the swarm of looters was so dense that there traffic jams along the highway.

Dispersed looting continued for the next several days, as did the occasional daytime activists demonstration, but neither found a way to pick up momentum or relate to each other. Several days of bad weather didn’t help. This was perhaps the first time since rioting began this summer where a curfew was declared for a city and large crowds didn’t come out to challenge it. The national guard finally arrived on Friday, too late to prevent any of the rioting.

///

II.

Innovation

To stay dynamic and overcome the impasses they face, movements need to constantly innovate the tactics they use. In many cities, including Philadelphia as the large-scale riots and social looting of late May ran their course, the unrest was kept going through a turn to diffuse looting. Rather than struggling with police over a particular territory, groups spanned out by car throughout the entire city and surrounding suburbs. This often happened on such a large scale that it was nearly impossible for the police to contain it. Diffuse looting has reemerged sporadically in recent months, during the unrest in Louisville and Philadelphia, as a way to disrupt the city in the absence of large-scale protests.

Philadelphia’s unique tactical innovation has been the introduction of so-called “ATM bombings.” Groups will detonate small explosive devices at an ATM and, ostensibly, walk away with the cash. During the heady days of May and early June, the sound of explosions became part of the background ambiance of the city where American democracy was born. This tactic reemerged during late October’s unrest. There were likely a dozen ATM bombings each of the three major nights of unrest. This tactic has so far not spread elsewhere, likely due to the amount of technical knowledge required.

The fact that innovations, like the caravan, tend to leap from city to city indicates that proletarians are paying attention to how the struggle is unfolding elsewhere. It also shows that the choice of tactics isn’t arbitrary, but it is grounded in an intelligent read of the situation they find themselves struggling within.

The major innovation this summer has it’s origins in Chicago. After police shot Latrell Allen on Chicago’s Southside, a caravan of looters poured into the downtown Magnificent Mile, Chicago’s most famous shopping district,breaking windows and emptying out luxury stores. For the next few hours, this caravan marauded through the city, evading the police and looting luxury boutiques, pharmacies, and liquor stores. This tactical was repeated on a smaller scale in Louisville in September and on a perhaps larger scale in Philadelphia.

The looter caravans, in particular, highlight a much higher degree of coordination, organization, and boldness of action than is within reach of any activist, leftist, or revolutionary group. The fact that innovations, like the caravan, tend to leap from city to city indicates that proletarians are paying attention to how the struggle is unfolding elsewhere. It also shows that the choice of tactics isn’t arbitrary, but it is grounded in an intelligent read of the situation they find themselves struggling within.

These innovative tactics have so far allowed comparatively small groups to overwhelm police departments and disrupt the flows of the city. But there are clear limits to how much these high-risk actions might generalize. They, in fact, seem premised on the boldest layers of proletariat acting alone. This perhaps indicates that black proletarians no longer expect the large, multiracial crowds that joined them in the rebellion earlier this summer.

Composition

These recent nights in Philadelphia pose a challenge to the hypothesis that this is a multiracial uprising. Or rather, they seem to indicate that the “rigid lines of separation” that appeared to break down in May are quickly re-emerging. Throughout the country, the crowds that flooded the streets in May and June closely corresponded to the demographics of the city they were in. White people, in fact, were often over represented compared to their share of the total population of the given city. It was only during some of the most intense moments of looting that the participants were mostly black, but never exclusively so. The riots and demonstrations were also rarely confined to particular black or working class neighborhoods, but rather tended to envelope the entire city.

Instead, during the recent riots in Philadelphia, black proletarians stood largely alone. When multiracial crowds arrived in West Philadelphia in October, they were largely unable to overcome the separations that had been so easily dissolved earlier in the summer. If these activists had hoped to express their support for the rioting, they had the perhaps unintended inverse effect of stifling it, as black proletarians in the crowd hesitated to see how these newcomers might act. For moments on Monday and Tuesday night, a multiracial crowd worked together to build barricades and attack the police. But more often than not, even when different elements of the crowd took part in the rioting, they did so separately. Each night by midnight, almost no one was left on the streets that wasn’t black.

A certain amount of hesitation around whether or how to act in the streets likely result from anxiety around these “rigid lines of separation.” Debates abounded in the streets, on Telegram channels, and within activists circles about the proper way to relate to the black struggle. It is worth remembering though that this anxiety is often only one-sided. People from outside of the neighborhood who showed up for the riots were at times treated with suspicion until they made clear that they were there for the same reasons as everyone else. Then they were widely embraced. Those taking initiate in the streets were glad that others had joined them, especially if they had something to contribute.

It is not simply that separations reasserted themselves within and between the crowds. The riot did not spread from neighborhood to neighborhood, and only a minority of the immediate neighborhood ever participated in a significant way. No wider layers of the class ever came into the streets, and the activist crowd that mobilized never exceeded a few hundred people. Solidarity demonstrations, with the exception of the one in Brooklyn, were small and attended only by committed activists.

What Are We to Do?

If there is to be a collective leap from riot to insurrection, for this long, hot season stretch into an endless summer, people will need to find ways to contribute to this unfolding. Rather than being paralyzed by anxiety, pro-revolutionaries should consider what practical knowledge and capacities they have to offer.

This is often quite simple. One way in which pro-revolutionaries make themselves useful is by holding onto the memory of lessons learned in previous struggles and experiments. This can be as basic as reminding people to wear masks or showing them how to use Telegram to out smart the police. There are certain gestures, such as circulating a call for a demonstration, that can be necessary to keep things moving forward.

The balance sheet on this is fairly clear in hindsight. Despite their awkwardness, the two evening demonstrations spilled over into riots, while the other nights only saw more diffuse actions. This is because they provide a space for those who want to take initiative to find each other and for those who may not want to take initiative, but who nonetheless support the riots, to express that publicly in a way that provides cover for others. The evening demonstrations also provided cover for the looting happening elsewhere, by occupying much of the city’s police force along 52nd Street.

With the declaration of a curfew and the threat of the national guard, providing some basic container to act within, such as calling for another evening demonstration, could have created the conditions for the unrest to keep going for a few days longer. In this sense, a small intervention by pro-revolutionaries could have been significant.

Otherwise, pro-revolutionaries try to read what the dynamic of a given struggle is, and how to contribute to its unfolding. This can look like trying to take initiative in a way that may resonate and be taken up by other members of the crowd. Even if we may stand out from the crowd, when the gestures we take prove themselves to be sensible, people tend to recognize them as material contributions. Other times, simply having the foresight to bring tools, whether masks, fireworks, umbrellas, or a sound-system, can go a long way towards contributing to the dynamic of an event.

This point may seem banal, but it’s worth remembering. After the first days of the uprising in New York City, much bigger crowds began to come into the streets. In these moments, the rigid separations between different components of the crowd could be felt. Many of the new participants were inspired by the bolder acts of the uprising, but in person were as afraid of the specter of the riot as they were of the police. They desperately looked for people to appoint into leadership roles, who then tried their best to micromanage the demonstrations. Young black proletarians in the crowd began to sense their isolation, and, by the the end of the first week, stopped coming out. If others in the crowd had also tried to take initiative, it’s possible they could have contributed to a circumstance where the black avant-garde didn’t feel constrained, perhaps extending the uprising a bit longer.

In this sense, solidarity literally means attack. The more pro-revolutionaries have felt the confidence to act, they more they been able to meaningfully contribute to unfolding of this struggle set in motion by black proletarians.

These leaps forward in proletarian self-organization and tactics over this long summer present pro-revolutionaries with a particular dilemma. The role of pro-revolutionaries has been to contribute to the intensification and generalization of struggle, to push them towards their insurrectionary horizon. But when proletarian self-activity becomes much more daring and risky than many pro-revolutionaries are ready for, what then becomes our role? When these tactics already entail such a degree of coordination and intensity, then even if pro-revolutionaries are to participate, it is not clear what we have to contribute.

Some black proletarians seems committed to carrying the struggle forward and intensifying it, but unlike in May, they are almost totally isolated. To be able to struggle at all, they have thus had to be immensely creative in their choice of tactics. But these innovations seems to presuppose their isolation. This riddle may solve itself as struggles once again generalize and new tactics proliferate. The black avant-garde may continue to blaze ahead on its own, struggling with an intensity that many cannot participate in, and it will be important for revolutionaries to decide how to contribute.

The election is now in the rear view mirror. While the dust has not yet settled, it may turn out to the case that the left’s fascination with the possibility of a coup or civil-war only obscured from us the more difficult questions raised by this moment. The black avant-garde may continue to blaze ahead on its own, struggling with an intensity that many cannot participate in. We may be faced with the option of either joining them on this path, with neither a clear horizon or sense of how we can contribute, or of vacating the streets ourselves. This riddle may solve itself as struggles once again generalize and new tactics proliferate, but we cannot take that for granted.

PhillySprayWatch2020: Open Source Graffiti + Street Art Whitepaper

  • November 13, 2020 1:19 am

from Scribd

2020 has been an interesting year for people in Philly who put shit on walls.
From police orders to only make arrests of “violent crime” in the beginning of the pandemic, to the explosion of anti-cop and anti-state graffiti in the wake of the George Floyd Uprising of the late spring, to the proliferation of poorly-designed shitty MAGA stickers populating the streetlamps of Center City, Philadelphia writers, street artists, sticker kids, taggers, and general vandals have had experienced a shifting landscape of priorities this year on the part of the cops and the buff. When it comes to the pigs, the buff, and the heroes out to protect their local electrical box or bando from some rando with a can of Rusto, we’ll be tracing the data from the city itself on what the fuck happened with graff in our city this year.
Let’s take a look at some of the numbers to see what story they tell.
 The following analysis was sourced directly from OpenDataPhilly, which openly posts plenty of data for nerds like me to fuck around with and draw conclusions from. (Imagine what we could do with all the data we can’t get with a Freedom of Information Request with!)
[Document Here]

There’s Nothing Left but the Streets

  • November 10, 2020 1:12 am

from Rampant

George Ciccariello-Maher interviewed by brian bean

The recent rebellion in Philly against the police murder of Walter Wallace Jr. is rooted in struggles of the past and reflects the uprisings of the future.

This summer we took part in a rebellion across the country against racism and police brutality. Now, the nationwide scope of protest has diminished. However, since then we’ve seen more localized rebellions in Kenosha, and Chicago around the shooting of Latrell Allen, and around the release of the video in Rochester. Philly is the most recent. In that context, what’s going on with Philly?

The past weeks in Philly we have seen pretty significant rebellions around the police murder of Walter Wallace, about five blocks west of where I join you from. It’s important to understand that Philadelphia saw some of the most militant reactions nationwide to the killing of George Floyd. There was mass rebellion in Philadelphia that lasted several days and in June the National Guard was here.

This all takes place in the backdrop of a much longer shift in radical politics in the city, which goes back to around 2015, though it’s also bound up with much longer trajectory. We’re talking about a small group of organizers who were out there trying to raise hell around the police killing of Brandon Tate-Brown in late 2014 and 2015. As Ferguson and Baltimore were popping off we in Philly were struggling over this one particular case.

The militancy of those struggles, even if they were relatively small scale, really broke open the city, which has been a city of long-term resistance, a city in which Black struggles have been crucial, in which brutality and mass murder by the police, like in the case of the MOVE bombing, have been essential to understanding the political context.

In a way, Philly was primed to respond to the killing of George Floyd, and it did. I’ve never seen anything like what we saw in Philly on May 30th and into June. Not even during the Oscar Grant rebellions in Oakland—which was where I cut my teeth politically—did I see that scale of rebellion, looting, and mass resistance.

Now what’s happening today is interesting because it’s obviously more localized. We’re seeing a city and a population that’s really just had enough, that has a level of clarity around what the police do, that knows perfectly well that we don’t need to even entertain the lies about “Did he have a knife?” or that the police were just trying to do their job and keep people safe. We know that’s not true.

We know that police are trained cowards, who are taught from day one to put their life above anyone else’s life. This is why they shot and killed Walter Wallace. He was on a block full of people—neighbors, family members, none of them were trying to kill him because they didn’t think he was that big of a risk to their well-being. It was the police who decided to kill him, to fire fourteen shots.

We know that police are trained cowards.

You are seeing in the city that people just don’t buy the bullshit anymore, and they’re buying it less and less by the day. While the first night of protest we saw that the police were restrained by the police commissioner, who took a political beating back in June over the use of force, the use of teargas, rubber bullets, and extreme levels of brutality, they weren’t going be held back forever. They came back on the second night and really just beat the piss out of people for fun, because this is what the pigs do.

They thought they would get away with it like they always get away with it. But, as you probably have seen, there’s now a viral video of them smashing the windows out of a car, beating the passengers, and tearing a two-year-old child out of the arms of his mother. They then tried to take credit for rescuing him, saying that he was found wandering barefoot, which is an absolute lie. And then everyone saw the truth revealed, which is further confirmation of the embarrassment that the police represent, and that they are really just lying thugs who are out to protect themselves and no one else.

This, as a lot of other people have pointed out, is a deeply white supremacist and colonial idea that says: “The people that I’m brutalizing, I’m actually rescuing them. This baby whose windows I smashed out, who I stole away from his mother, I’m actually here to protect him.”

This is the veneer that policing has always had. No matter how bad the violence that is inflicted by the police on communities, they’re told they just need more police, and the police are really there to protect them. Policing is a form of psychological and physical abuse. And people really are just not buying it anymore.

What do you think has led to that level of clarity? I ask because in varying ways around the country, we’ve seen a shift towards people talking about defunding and even abolishing the police, seeing the institution as a problem in itself, not as something to reform. So in Philly, like you said, people have had enough and there’s this clarity. What do you think has led to that? Is it the ongoing organizing? Is it the national radicalization? Is it just people seeing it?

The first thing is that we live in a moment of global revolt and rebellion. This has been going on for well over a decade in the United States. I think the uprisings in Oakland in 2009 really helped kick things off, the Occupy movement followed just a couple years later, Black Lives Matter a couple years after that. You have this escalating spiral of struggles across the country, pin-balling around, and people are becoming more radical and they’re developing a better understanding of theory and seeing more of the way that theory plays out in practice.

They’re seeing that they have power in the streets, they’re seeing that struggles lead to actual change and transformation. This is all the context of what we now see occurring amid a devastating economic crisis and the continued impoverishment of not only poor communities of color, but also the indebtedness of students and the absence of a horizon of how to get out of this situation.  This is the generation leading the George Floyd revolts, who are nineteen, twenty, twenty-one years old. They have grown up with nothing but Black death at the hands of police, economic crisis, no options, and no future. The fact that they are rebelling should not surprise us.

These spirals of struggle move across the country, radicalize here and there, and bring us up to the level that we’ve reached. You can see this in the words of Kandace Montgomery, an abolitionist organizer with the Black Visions Collective in Minneapolis who said: “In 2015 [when Jamar Clarke was killed] . . . we were clear about the problem. Now we are clear about the solution.” This is why you have this really astounding uniformity of calls to abolish, or at the very least defund, the police. These calls are not brand new—they’ve been emerging over the past few years, but the fact that this is what people are reaching for in this moment of struggle says a lot about the level of consciousness that’s developed over the past ten years.

We just had a national presidential election that offered a choice between an openly racist president and a more veiled racist vice president in Joe Biden, who campaigned on a law and order, shoot-them-in-the leg version of police reform. So those are the choices, and there’s rebellion in Philadelphia where there’s still a National Guard presence and where the Democratic mayor only just lifted a curfew. What does all this say about the current political situation and context both in Philly and nationally?

When Gramsci talks about a time of monsters, this is what he’s talking about. While I’m not even a Bernie stan, it’s clear that we could have had a Bernie.  Instead, who do we get in the context of mass, nationwide anti-police rebellion? A segregationist and a cop. This was the Democratic ticket.

This is a time of monsters because it’s a moment in which we know which way history is pointing, but on some level that path is blocked. Now, while it’s blocked on the level of formal politics, it’s not blocked in the streets. In the streets, things are moving forward by leaps and bounds, and I think that’s precisely what matters.

These struggles will explode no matter who is in power. There are ways that having Trump in power sets off struggles by drawing more left-liberals into struggle and radicalizing them to play a crucial role in a growing coalition of resistance. But there are ways that when Obama was in power, for example, we had the eruption of Black Lives Matter because of the dashed hopes and the crushed expectations. Nothing is going to change under Joe Biden; nothing would really change under Donald Trump. So that collision with reality has a shocking and radicalizing effect on people who realize that there’s nothing left but the streets.

We know that in 2021, police murder is going to be the story, and we know that because it is an old story. If you look at the history of mass resistance in this country, that resistance is almost always driven by Black and brown people, almost always against the police, almost always sparked by police murder. Why? Because the police are founded on that great betrayal of the Black struggle by poor whites at the end of slavery, those who chose the Klan instead of multiracial equality. Instead of abolition-democracy, they opted for white terror.

So we should not be surprised that now, more than 150 years later, we’re looking at the same forces playing out in the same way, because these are historical questions that we haven’t yet dealt with.

You mentioned a continuity of organizing in Philly. What would you say about the connection between what’s going on currently and the struggle around MOVE? Of course, the MOVE house was about four blocks from the shooting of Walter Wallace.

The MOVE struggle and the struggle around Mumia, not to mention other struggles like the struggle for freedom for Russell Maroon Shoatz, are essential to understanding the political landscape in Philadelphia. They’ve provided it with a radical backbone that leans toward two opposing poles. One is a level of kind of mass fear. It was just in 1985 when the City of Philadelphia dropped a bomb on West Philly, killed scores of people, and burned down the city block. That’s not that long ago; everyone remembers it. Even when I moved to Philly a decade ago and started organizing, people were like, “Thank you for doing this, this is amazing. But you’re all gonna get yourselves killed.” That fear is deeply embedded in the psyche. At the same time the recognition of what the police in the city actually stand for is undeniable.

And so you have a situation that gives rise to a willingness to engage in mass resistance. There are lots of material dynamics that play into this: who’s in charge, how it’s played out, and the way that these struggles are able to coalesce. You can see an escalating spiral beginning with struggles around Brandon Tate-Brown, in which small groups of people were constantly in the streets, constantly confronting the police commissioner. Bear in mind that this was Charles Ramsey, Obama’s top cop, the person in charge of the twenty-first-century policing reform report, who advocated civilian oversight and transparency but wouldn’t even tell us who killed Brandon Tate-Brown, who wouldn’t even give us that basic level information, wouldn’t release the video until we fought in the streets to get that, and until we frankly embarrassed him.

These are the cycles, the spirals of struggle. Around the same time, we had a solidarity rally with the Baltimore rebellion. That was the biggest thing Philly had seen in a decade. Thousands of people showed up, took over the streets, blocked the highway, and fought the police. They realized that what’s happening in Baltimore was exactly the same thing, essentially it is Philly’s twin city, and so we see it happen here, we see it happen there.

There were Black cops in 1890 and it didn’t make a difference.

The years since have seen just a consistency to this struggle, not just for demands for a better way of living and for equality, but a struggle against this consistency of police brutality. Philly, we should bear in mind, is a place that had an integrated police force in the 1890s. Du Bois wrote about this. There were Black cops in 1890 and it didn’t make a difference. There was so-called community policing in the 1940s and 1950s, and it didn’t make a difference.

I feel the realization that radical change is necessary is deeply embedded in the psyche of the city of Philadelphia.

So one of the strategic orientations that came out of the past wave of Black Lives Matter organizing is electing progressive prosecutors. Philly has Larry Krasner, who I think is considered one of the best examples of that. What is Krasner doing in this current rebellion and how has he oriented himself?

Absolutely nothing. Dead silence. I think it’s not hard to figure out why Larry Krasner won’t say anything about this until after the election. And even then, I’m not sure what he will say. He’s been very willing in recent weeks to assume a radical anti-Trump stance and to say he’ll prosecute people who show up at the polls to intimidate voters, and that’s fine. But there’s been dead silence on Walter Wallace. I say this as someone who’s pretty balanced in the sense that I think it’s good thing that Larry Krasner is in the DA’s office. We’ve seen hundreds if not thousands of people not sitting in jail as a result of that election, and we’ve seen important experiments in diversion and other strategies for keeping people out of prison, for not arresting people for certain crimes, and for decriminalization. These things are hugely important.

On the material level of movements, it’s been crucially important that, for example, when Occupy ICE was happening, all the people who were arrested were released within two hours with only citations. This is materially important for our movements and has made a huge difference. So I don’t think it’s about denouncing the district attorney. Though Krasner is also someone who’s sending people to jail and who’s not taking a strong enough position when it comes to people like Mumia. What we need to be thinking about is how to operate in a context in which things are getting easier in a certain way, but when it comes to the George Floyd rebellions, for example, the district attorney’s office is insisting on drawing a hard line between protestors and looters and prosecuting looters and releasing protestors. This is a division that, especially if we care about class unity and the unity of this class struggle, we have to refuse 100 percent.

But I think the question is less do we like or dislike Larry Krasner than it is: what does his presence in the DA’s office mean for people? Moving forward we need to push to have all charges dropped from May and June, and there may be some leverage for that after the presidential election.

Looting in Philly and elsewhere, like in Chicago, has been a major, divisive political question in which liberals want to divide the “good protestors” from the “bad protestors”, and people want to say, “Oh, that’s not the protest.” We at Rampant have written about this quite a bit as far as the viability and necessity of defending looting as a political tactic. What do you think the left should say around this specific question and what’s at stake?

I think a lot is at stake. The first thing I’ll say is the same thing I would say around debates around property destruction and violence in general as a tactic. There are certain people who approach social movements on the assumption that if they don’t want these tactics and they win the argument about them they’ll go away.

The reality is people are going to loot. In moments of mass uprising people are going to take things. We are obligated to start from an understanding that that’s going to happen regardless. It’s not like we can make it go away. And yet there are those people who say, “Well, looting makes us look really bad.” Well no, once we start from the understanding that it’s inevitable, a force of nature, you realize that what makes you look bad is not looting. What makes it look bad is losing an argument about whether or not this is something that should happen.

What makes it look bad is when people within the movement are denouncing other people for looting. This is what makes us lose these debates. However, if people stood together and said, “You know what? We’re not going to criticize people who are engaged in certain tactics during these moments of mass uprising in which our concern is the murder of this Black man.” And at that point, the debate goes away. The media of course will still run with it, and they’ll try to discredit people and the movement, but it doesn’t have the same effect.

People are managing the narrative pretty well in the movements now where people are correctly pointing out that Walmart doesn’t belong to us, Best Buy doesn’t belong to us. These big box stores are part of an oppressive capitalist system, and we know that they are stealing from us and stealing people’s labor every day. We shouldn’t give a shit about whether or not they’re looted and could even say that the direct redistribution of goods from them is probably a good thing in this context, under a pandemic, when people are not working and can’t access those things.

The debate does get a little more complex on 52nd Street, two blocks away from here, where some small stores were looted. If you ask people on the block, you hear very different opinions. On one hand, that’s a neighborhood store, it’s owned by this or that person. On the other hand, people will say, “I don’t know who that person is. I know that they racially profile me when I go in there.” And people will ask if those resources are really being dedicated to the community? These are complicated debates.

But the idea that there’s a uniform response to those debates within poor communities of color is just not true. What needs to happen and what does happen are people negotiating these questions in the streets and within movements, when people, for example, try to alert people to locations that should be left alone.

You know, there was an Indigenous youth center in Minneapolis that got smashed up during the rebellions. That didn’t lead people to denounce the looters, but it did lead to them to say, “No, let’s not do this. We’ll have a fundraiser,” and the America Indian Movement engaged in community patrols to help keep an eye on people’s safety.

Dealing with these things within movements is possible and necessary. But the main danger of course—that’s being actively stoked by the police, by the state, and its spokespeople—is that it is used to divide the movement. This has been incredibly dangerous, and in some cases, very effective.

You talked about the radicalization and cycles of resistance moving in leaps and bounds, particularly now. What do you see as the next jump? What’s the way forward, and what do we have to do?

These struggles have been, as everyone knows, popping off everywhere. One of the defining features of the George Floyd rebellions was their contagious ability to spread to the point where we see statues of colonizers being torn down in England as a result. One thing that is undeniably true about the history of Black struggles against the police in the United States is that you don’t know what’s going to set it off. There are all these structural reasons why this was a tinderbox ready to explode. But you never know when the explosion’s going to happen.

It’s going to be an incredibly dangerous time as the old world dies.

We do know that the powder and the spark are even more available today. In January when Joe Biden is in office he’s not going to do a fucking thing to change this deep-seated reality. We know that the history of police reform is the history of reforming the image of the police, not what they actually do. And we know that there is no way to reform away the actual function of the police, which is a repressive, brutal function. That is inevitable, and under this system it’s going to continue.

This continuity is the backdrop to a situation in which people’s lives aren’t getting better, in which there’s a continuing pandemic, and the economic crisis is deepening. People are ready to go at the drop of a hat. We’re going to see an escalation of these struggles, and that’s a good thing.

We also know that the far right is going to be engaging in organized and sporadic violence. It’s going to be an incredibly dangerous time as the old world dies.

October pt. II: Political Naivete

  • October 23, 2020 1:04 am

from Viscera

Join us on Friday, October 30th for our next anarchist bazaar and reading discussion. We’ll be celebrating the beginning of Halloween weekend with a discussion of the essay Political Naivete by Aragorn! We’ll be meeting in Rittenhouse Square from 6 pm – 7:30 pm to enjoy each others’ company at the beginning of Halloween weekend and in anticipation of the excitement of the next month(s).

Below is the essay in full. Read some of the related texts, if you dare!

Philly Proud Boys Rally With North Carolina Proud Boys, American Guard

  • September 30, 2020 1:11 am

from It’s Going Down

[This post only contains information relevant to Philadelphia and the surrounding area, to read the entire article follow the above link.]

One week after being humiliated at their own rally in Clark Park, where hundreds of counter-protesters gathered to face the fewer than five Proud Boys who managed to turn up for the rally. The Proud Boys who did show up were immediately identified by antifascist researchers, though they attempted to intimidate anti-racist protesters, threatening to dox them and stalking researcher Gwen Snyder’s house, where antifascists had posted guards.

The Philadelphia Proud Boys, led by President Zach Rehl, were joined by members of the North Carolina Proud Boys, as well as Brien James, founder of the Vinlanders Social Club, Outlaw Hammerskins, and the American Guard. James is also a former member of the Ku-Klux-Klan.

This represents an escalation for the Philadelphia Proud Boys. Prior to the summer of 2020, Rehl refused to publicly identify himself as a Proud Boy, telling the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2018 that a Proud Boys rally he organized was simply the members of a Facebook group, “Sports, Beer, and Politics.”

In the Spring of 2019, Rehl was among a group of Proud Boys, American Guard, and militia members who attempted to organize a string of violent rallies across the northeast, trading pictures of the weapons they planned to bring and the specific leftist activists they wished to assault at the rallies. However, the group was stymied when their chats were leaked and the members were doxxed, and the rallies were cancelled.

October anarchist bazaar and reading discussion

  • September 26, 2020 12:31 am

from Viscera

Enjoy some much-needed and rarely gotten face-to-face time with other anarchists on Saturday, October 3rd as we gather for a discussion of the essay Social War, Antisocial Tension by Josep Gardenyes.

When an old lady marches in a protest and imagines the street free of cars and full of gardens; when a young boy lights fire to a shopping center that he and his friends have filled with gas cans and imagines a forest growing out of the ruins; when a mother entertains the fantasy of conducting her own birthing with friends in a free community where her daughter will never know of prison, of marriage, of advertising that assaults her self-esteem, of pollution, of institutional education; when all those worlds flourish parallel to our own, we will be stronger than ever.

Find the whole text here

We’ll be meeting in Clark Park again, this time at the dog bowl – discussion starts at 1:15, come around 1 for social time. As usual, we’ll have some books and pamphlets for viewing and purchase.

Anathema Volume 6 Issue 6

  • August 25, 2020 1:58 am

from Anathema

Volume 6 Issue 6 (PDF for reading 8.5 x 11)

Volume 6 Issue 6 (PDF for printing 11 x 17)

In this issue:

  • Black August
  • What Went Down
  • New Projects
  • What Next?
  • Repression Updates
  • Die-Off Debate
  • DIY Defunding
  • Back to School
  • PSL, Occupations, & Some Better Possibilities

August Anarchist bazaar and reading discussion

  • August 23, 2020 1:17 am

from Viscera

Join us for our first incision into Philly with a reading discussion and social time in person (!) in Clark Park (tentatively) on the last Sunday in August!

Discussion starts at 1:30 with some hangout time beforehand, we’ll also have some books and pamphlets on hand for sale.

This month’s reading will be Monsieur Dupont’s “Your face is so mysteriously kind,” which you can find on the anarchist library here.

We look forward to seeing all of your mysteriously kind, masked faces! See you there!

interview

  • August 13, 2020 1:23 am

Submission

At the beginning of the summer some Philly anarchists were interviewed by some German comrades regarding recent events in the States. This is the transcript of that interview.

How do you explain that the riots and social unrest spread and
intensified so fast in the last month? Do you think the lockdown had an influence on it?

0: I think that coronavirus had a lot to do with it. Before corona people around the world were in revolt and the US was just watching. Hong Kong and Chile and Canada seemed to be going off and people were paying attention to that and learning and talking about it. When the pandemic hit people here lost a lot of work and there was not as much for anyone to do. The protests and riots were a much appreciated break from the quarantine, people got to finally go outside and be together after months, and it was more accessible than if everyone had to be at work.

In other circumstances people would be tied up in work, school, and a larger social life. When the uprising started there weren’t too many places you could be, you could stay home, go for a walk, or go to a riot or protest.

X: I agree, and also think the tension has been building up for some time; and I mean that in a bigger sense than the usual upheaval as pressure release. Many have said that these have been the biggest riots in the States since Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in the 60’s – so I think in addition to the obvious white supremacy, and the stagnation and poverty under quarantine, there is a growing existential dread from the very real threats of global pandemics, climate catastrophe, fascist terror, rape culture, and many other such things that similarly propelled those global revolts several months ago.

&: Yes, I agree coronavirus was part of the building up. It was a strange, nonlinear build up where many people spent the weeks before trying to figure out how to adapt to isolation and social distancing. Under normal circumstances, you can fantasize about what you would do when the time came to rebel and even speculate about likely time to act. For me, anyway, the virus creates circumstances where it was almost impossible to imagine regularly leaving the house, let alone taking the streets. The virus laid the groundwork for some of the conditions of the riots, creating almost strike-like conditions. But at the same time, there was no clear path to take advantage of them. On the one hand, I think this meant that the activist organizers were not immediately positioned to channel the events in Minneapolis into an ongoing campaign or strategy – allowing for better conditions for a riot. On the other hand, when people watched the news coming out of Minneapolis from their “pods,” they saw these massive self-organized crowds as if they were seeing them for the first time. The sudden, renewed ability to imagine being in the streets together was like realizing how thirsty you are when someone offers you a drink.
It didn’t hurt that, once everyone met up in the streets, many of them were wearing masks. The riot happened right around the time that masks became a normal precaution. Wearing masks took a while to catch on and then kind of went out of style once it got really hot. I hope it gets normalized again.

How was the experience in your local context?

0: In Philly things went wild the last Saturday of May. Center City had intense rioting and looting. People set fire to police cars and stores, fought with the police, and broke into and took merchandise from so many stores. Graffiti against the police was everywhere and many banks were smashed. That night and the next day the rioting spread to other neighborhoods. Stores and malls around the city were looted for the next few days and nights. 52nd St – a main commercial street in West Philadelphia – was the site of clashes with the cops and looting. After that the National Guard came to the city and things slowed down some. There are still protests everyday all over the city but they are calmer and less combative than the first weekend.

Other struggles also escalated briefly while the rioting happened. A labor struggle at a cafe in West Philadelphia was intensified when the cafe was vandalized multiple times and had to end up closing. Gentrifiers in West and South Philly were attacked during the nights immediately following the riots. Mutual aid projects related to homelessness and coronavirus continued while shifting their attention to the uprising.

Housing and homelessness related organizing has seen a big escalation. On one hand a tent camp has been set up right outside of Center City and is growing everyday. On the other hand individuals and families are squatting in city owned properties as a reaction to corruption in the Philadelphia Housing Authority. Both the camp and the squatters are asking for permanent low income housing. This kind of thing would have seemed much more difficult without the context of the uprising.

X: Yeah, there were a few wildcat strikes happening at different businesses that seemed to fit into the slow reduction of combativeness, with at least one still happening. The farther we get from the initial rupture, for that matter, the smaller and more trivial noted actions become.

&: In a similar vein, healthcare workers, anarchists and others tried to occupy an abandoned hospital the other day. It was to be an occupation of the exterior of the building and provide a free clinic. The Hahnemann hospital notoriously remained closed during the pandemic because the investment banker who owns it refused to rent it for an affordable price. The demonstration was more aggressive than most pre-riot demonstrations: the crowd shouted anti-police chants and barricades were rapidly set up to block police in the street leading to the hospital. However, the turn out was much smaller than expected and the police response came swiftly. The occupation was abandoned before the riot police got into formation. So, there are continued attempts at escalation even while crowds are dwindling.

You think anarchists were ready (analytically and materially) and could seize occasions to escalate the revolt?

0: I think many anarchists were surprised at the speed and intensity of the revolt. Many anarchists participated and brought their special knowledge and skills to the table, but I do not think that anarchists were the ones escalating the revolt for the most part. Anarchists out during the revolt were fighting and rioting shoulder to shoulder with other people, many of whom were much more prepared to escalate the situation than anarchists were.

X: We were in the mix, sharing some practical on-the-ground skills, but to some degree I think we were just chasing the intensity. I agree we largely weren’t the ones escalating the revolt, and in fact some participants seemed distrustful of us. There’s also not much of a culture of rioting here, in part because of the whitewashing of history that we’ve long contested, but we don’t have enough of a reach for that to make a significant impact. I think those combination of things, too, meant we weren’t always thinking strategically about our strengths or the state’s weaknesses – though again, in the grand scheme of things, this wouldn’t necessarily prolong the revolt nor significantly weaken our opponents.

&: Yes, I agree. The riot unfolded in a way that exceeded many anarchists’ skills and experience, including my own. At first, the major demonstration followed a familiar – if unforeseen – pattern: a large march made it possible for small groups to fight police and destroy cop cars. I was actually surprised by the amount of cop cars burned and the number of people taking part. At the same time, it was the kind of action – a combination of march and riot – that anarchists are known for in America. It is impossible to say if anarchists were responsible for some of the initial escalations during the demonstrations. What’s clear is that the riots quickly became too decentralized for any one group to be at the center. The looting began, to my knowledge, in the streets near the initial demonstration. But once it began there was a proliferation of flashpoints. It was sometimes difficult to find out where things were happening and, for some time, things were happening at multiple sites at once. The riots took on a shape unlike anything I had been in before.

What forms of recuperation are used and by which actors? And are they successful to channel the uprising back into reformist/democratic discourses?

0: The police and activists sympathetic to them were seen kneeling during demonstrations, a symbolic gesture against police brutality. Many liberals and people on the left are using the popular dissatisfaction to advocate for voting, as though a new politician will change the police. Less often but still present are families of some of the victims of those killed by this racist society who ask that the police investigate and bring to justice the killers.

More insidiously there is a recuperation that masks itself as anti-racism. There are people (black and not) who urge white and non-black people to follow black leadership. The black leadership these people are talking about is always more conservative than the uprising itself. The leadership is always moderate, riotous youth or black revolutionaries are of course never referred to as leadership by these people. This kind of narrative is effective at stopping people who would otherwise take radical or combative action (alongside black people who are already doing the same) by pushing them to feel guilty for not obeying the wishes of black moderates.

&: Not only are riotous youth and black revolutionaries not considered “leadership,” they have been intentionally excluded from the narrative. One way this happens is by replacing them in the narrative with agent provocateurs. Every time something gets broken, burned, or out of control, there’s a corresponding movement to blame it all on agents, provocateurs, outside forces etc. This is in some ways a strategy of recuperation since it seems to be motivated by the desire to separate these bad actors from the respectable protests and their demands. Yet, it’s not exactly a strategy since the there really isn’t a fully-formed activist strategy to recuperate the riots yet. Instead, this attempt to recuperate recent events treats the rioters as a confusing mish-mash of conspiracies. These conspiracy theories stand in for the absent recuperation strategy. Conspiracy theories are spread by a variety of actors–they are not a cohesive group. They are a reserve army of a yet-to-be-initiated activist campaign.

What role play abolitionist ideas (to abolish the police, prisons, etc.) ideas that may be in favor of riots since they bring a topic into focus but at the end of the day pursue a /political/ goal? Is there also a discourse (on the street) around destruction of all power structures?

0: Abolitionist ideas have played a strong role in the uprising. Although the initial cry rang out as “fuck 12” it was quickly turned to “defund/disempower/disband/abolish the police”. Many of the abolitionists imagine on one hand asking people around them to pick up strategies for dealing with life without the police (transformative justice, not snitching, bringing in social workers, etc) and on the other hand asking the government and institutions to disempower police (less money for police, no police in schools, less equipment for police, etc). Many abolitionists understand the rage of people attacking the police but do not imagine that people will remove police themselves and rely on making demands.

Much of the graffiti that came out of the revolt was more pointedly for the destruction of the police. Slogans like “fuck 12,” “acab,” “kill cops,” and “fuck the police,” were all over the walls. The people who push to destroy as opposed to abolish the cops are less present in the discourse but were very present in the street during the rioting. The anarchists continue to push an anti-police anti-prison narrative via a recent noise demonstration outside a prison and via posters and graffiti.

What does it mean that individuals or groups be they militias, gangs or maybe even revolutionaries are armed that heavily in such a situation?

X: We don’t see a lot of it, by our standards, and a lot of it is posturing for the sake of an image. Gun culture is also far less of a thing on the left, or even in anarchist circles.

Much of the “gun control” legislation that has been passed historically serves to disarm the most marginalized people, not least of all Black militants. In the state of North Carolina, for that matter, where it is legal to walk around carrying a gun, a group of black men were recently arrested for doing so at a protest, while there were many instances of white conservatives showing up armed and shaking hands with police.

When it is more than a symbolic gesture toward militancy, though, it often shows how much of a disadvantage those against the establishment are at, since even civilian establishment supporters are much better armed than us and often more willing to use violence. In a larger sense, we see a far-right tendency among mass shooters who obviously cannot be reasoned with. As such, it should mean that anarchists should be better armed and trained, but there are also a lot of hurdles to legally being allowed to carry a weapon most places – including police approval in our city (for which you can be denied based on “character” alone).

What comes next: generalized insurrection, civil war or smart dictatorship?

X: The United States has been extremely successful in pacifying its citizens over the last century; even those moments of rupture that do occur usually serve as more of a pressure release valve followed by reforms that sneak in additional criminalization of protest tactics (i.e. The Anti-Riot clause of the Civil Rights Act of 1968). The surveillance state continues to expand, furthering a smart dictatorship as democracy, but tensions continue to build.

The proliferation of radical ideas (i.e. abolition) in the mainstream is a useful basis of discussion, but as always it’s coupled with a demonization of anarchists, limiting our impact.

Unfortunately, even though I never want to defer to politicians or their lackeys (voters), I think the presidential election in November will be a deciding factor. If the incumbent is reelected we might see attempts at insurrection, whereas if he loses we might see armed white supremacists take the streets trying to kick off a civil war – barring other significant crises derailing everything before then.