Thoughts on Extraction

from Dreaming Freedom, Practicing Abolition

When Ruthie Wilson Gilmore and I sat down for a conversation, we spoke about how the PIC not only exploits the labor of imprisoned folx (mainly via reproductive labor of the prison), but also extracts value from us. I came to this conclusion because I knew that our labor wasn’t the only or even major source of value the PIC was after. The PIC extracts our lives, our life time. Ruthie helped me to see each person as a territory that the PIC extracts value from via a time-space hole that imprisonment creates. Incarceration creates a mechanism through which money/capital can flow through a person and into the pockets of the PIC. This all sounds abstract. I know. But since coming to SCI Dallas, I clearly and concretely see how extraction, not exploitation, is the big game the PIC is using. And we need to get hip.

I am housed on a Veterans Service Unit (VSU). This is one of four blocks within the PA DOC prisons system that partners with the Veterans Services Administration (state and federal). Currently imprisoned people who have served in the military, no matter how they were discharged, are eligible for the services on these blocks. Most of these people don’t work. But they still provide value to the PA DOC/PIC. How? Programming.

The PA DOC receives state, federal and private funds for creating these types of programs and keeping them filled. Almost every prison in PA has a therapeutic community (TC) for drug/alcohol treatment. Money has been flowing to the PIC via imprisoned people in these programs for decades. But now, DOCs are getting hip and creating more programs (usually centering on mental health) in order to extract more value from imprisoned people. We don’t need to work to be of value to the PIC. Just being here and being “diagnosed” by their staff makes extraction possible and valuable.

PA has created an alphabet of solitary under the mental health programming name. Thousands of people are in these programs and capital/money is flowing through them and into the PIC. These funds could be and should be used to provide non-coercive, community based services. But the PIC is gobbling up more and more of them. Mental health, substance and alcohol treatment, reentry services, elder care programming is ramping up behind the walls. We don’t have to work. All we have to do is be imprisoned and we become of value.

Some of us are experiencing exploitation. We don’t program, but we work. Most imprisoned folx don’t work but those of us who do are being exploited. These places couldn’t run without us. But many more people are experiencing extraction. Remember, many programs are mandated for parole purposes. Working isn’t. Some of us experience both. And what is even more disturbing is that many of these new programs use the labor of imprisoned folx to succeed. On my block, there is a program almost everyday. Only once a week does a DOC employee run the groups! Every other group is run by a DOC trained imprisoned person. All sign ups and paperwork too! The staff don’t even have to show up!

Extraction is going to become the dominate game. With fewer jobs available (most of us didn’t work anyway) and less out of cell time since COVID, programming is the way to create value and keep imprisoned folx running. And what makes it more sickening is that many imprisoned people are fooled into thinking these programs are the way to success, happiness, peace and safety.

 

***

These observations help me to see extraction as the major mechanism of the PIC. While this is more easily seen and accepted outside the walls, exploitation has been the major topic behind the walls. Even though most people don’t work in here. And work is becoming less important. They are using fewer people to work. And they are giving us less hours. A shift in the kitchen used to be 6-8 hours. Now it’s 4-6 hours. It is a rare person who gets paid for an 8-hour shift.

People out there see how extractive the PIC is. Offender-funded punishments are common. Remember Ferguson? What do we think e-incarceration is all about? But people don’t realize extraction is happening in here too. And it is taking money, programs and services from our communities and sending them through imprisoned people and into the pockets of those vested in the PIC.

Besides capital, legitimacy is being bestowed upon the PIC. It continues to offer itself as the “solution” to social problems. State, federal and private funds are flowing into prisons. These death making spaces are passing themselves off as life enhancing. Besides state and federal money, I have witnessed nonprofits like LOOP get into the game, partnering with the DOCs in a number of states to provide programming, often dependent on imprisoned people’s labor.

We have to talk more about the role of extraction in all of this.

 

Always,

Stevie

The Feminist Subversion of the Economy: Contributions for Life Against Capital

from Making Worlds Books

Making Worlds Book Launch and Discussion: The Feminist Subversion of the Economy, with Liz Mason-Deese and Maximilian Alvarez

Please register in advance here.

In the face of unending economic crises and climate catastrophe, we must consider, what does a dignified life look like? Feminist intellectual and activist Amaia Pérez Orozco powerfully and provocatively outlines a vision for a web of life sustained collectively with care, mutualism, and in balance with our ecological world. That vision is a call to action to subvert the foundational order of racial capitalism, colonial violence, and a heteropatriarchal economy that threatens every form of life.

The Feminist Subversion of the Economy makes the connection between the systems that promise more devastation and destruction of life in the name of profit—and rallies women, LGBTQ+ communities, and movements worldwide to center gender and social reproduction in a vision for a balanced ecology, a just economy, and a free society.

Newly translated and updated in collaboration with Liz Mason-Deese, who has won a PEN translation award for her work on feminist economics, The Feminist Subversion of the Economy shows the urgent need to radically and democratically discuss what we mean by a dignified life and how we can organize to sustain life collectively.

In addition to a dialogue with Liz Mason-Deese, Maximilian Alvarez will share from his recent collection The Work of Living: Working People Talk About Their Lives and the Year the World Broke

As COVID-19 swept across the globe with merciless force, it was working people who kept the world from falling apart. Deemed “essential” by a system that has shown just how much it needs our labor but has no concern for our lives, workers sacrificed—and many were sacrificed—to keep us fed, to keep our shelves stocked, to keep our hospitals and transit running, to care for our loved ones, and so much more. But when we look back at this particular moment, when we try to write these days into history for ourselves and for future generations, whose voices will go on the record? Whose stories will be remembered?

In late 2020 and early 2021, at what was then the height of the pandemic, Maximillian Alvarez conducted a series of intimate interviews with workers of all stripes, from all around the US—from Kyle, a sheet metal worker in Kentucky; to Mx. Pucks, a burlesque performer and producer in Seattle; to Nick, a gravedigger in New Jersey. As he does in his widely celebrated podcast, Working People, Alvarez spoke with them about their lives, their work, and their experiences living through a year when the world itself seemed to break apart. Those conversations, documented in these pages, are at times meandering, sometimes funny or philosophical, occasionally punctured by pain so deep that it hurts to read them. Filled with stories of struggle and strength, fear and loss, love and rage, The Work of Living is a deeply human history of one of the defining events of the 21st century told by the people who lived it.

  • Monday, October 3, 2022
  • 7:00 PM 8:30 PM
  • Making Worlds Bookstore & Social Center 210 South 45th Street Philadelphia, PA, 19104 United States (map)

 

Elite Capture, Identity Politics, and Solidarity with Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò

from Making Worlds Books

A book launch and discussion on Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò’s Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else)

Cosponsored by the Paul Robeson House & Museum

“Identity politics” is everywhere, polarizing discourse from the campaign trail to the classroom and amplifying antagonisms in the media, both online and off. But the compulsively referenced phrase bears little resemblance to the concept as first introduced by the radical Black feminist Combahee River Collective. While the Collective articulated a political viewpoint grounded in their own position as Black lesbians with the explicit aim of building solidarity across lines of difference, identity politics is now frequently weaponized as a means of closing ranks around ever-narrower conceptions of group interests.

But the trouble, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò deftly argues, is not with identity politics itself. Through a substantive engagement with the global Black radical tradition and a critical understanding of racial capitalism, Táíwò identifies the process by which a radical concept can be stripped of its political substance and liberatory potential by becoming the victim of elite capture—deployed by political, social, and economic elites in the service of their own interests.

Táíwò’s crucial intervention both elucidates this complex process and helps us move beyond a binary of “class” vs. “race.” By rejecting elitist identity politics in favor of a constructive politics of radical solidarity, he advances the possibility of organizing across our differences in the urgent struggle for a better world.

Advanced registration required, click here.

Friday, June 17, 2022
4:00 PM 5:30 PM
Making Worlds Bookstore & Social Center 210 South 45th Street Philadelphia, PA, 19104 United States (map)

Banks Attacked in Solidarity with Atlanta Forest Defenders

from Scenes from the Atlanta Forest

This month we sabotaged card slots of Wells Fargo and Bank Of America in Center City, Philadelphia. This attack was done in solidarity and complicity with those disrupting the construction of a police training grounds in Atlanta. Cops in Atlanta want to cut down a forest to build a mock city to practice squashing uprisings. In response, individuals are occupying, protesting, and sabotaging. People have started staying in the forest and fucking with the construction. The Atlanta Police Foundation is being funded by Wells Fargo and Bank Of America. We are excited to hear about construction workers being chased out and construction vehicles being messed up.

As proponents of self-directed revolt we decided to target the banks contributing to building the cop city. We hope that by communicating our action others feel encouraged or inspired to attack and disrupt the social order in their own context. While it would be preferable if the police project in Atlanta collapsed, for us destruction is an end in itself. We take pleasure in disrupting capital.

Our sabotage involved collecting plastic cards, which we cut into thirds. The purpose of this was to prevent the cards from easily being removed. Before going out we wiped down the pieces with gloves on and dressed anonymously. We inserted the pieces into atm and door card readers after putting a strip of super glue onto them. One benefit of this action is that it fucks up the machine without making a lot of noise or seeming out of place. We feel this is relevant to point out because the cop city is an example of the police preparing for mass unrest and we feel it is strategic to be able to act discreetly in light of increasing policing and surveillance.

Fuck cops
Fuck banks and money
Solidarity and complicity with the feral anarchists in Atlanta
Death to civilization
Long live anarchy
Chaos forever

People celebrating Jamie Dimon at outdoor event

Submission

In case you’re looking for an opportunity to peacefully protest Jamie Dimon and the establishment’s celebration of finance, there will be a partially outdoor reception hosted for him (by a taxpayer-endowed organization) next Monday October 11 at the Independence Visitor Center.

Details here.

Eviction Defense

Submission

On Wednesday March 31 individuals showed up to a call to eviction defense at the 13/15th & Locust PATCO Station, where some Philadelphians have created an encampment for themselves.

People started offering their support as early as 7:30AM (Food Not Bombs). Followed by other autonomous individuals who spent the day in the terminal to combat and resist the city’s planned “service day.” “Service days” are long known to be the misleading term the city uses for sweeps. This is widely understood amongst people plugged into housing issues and people living outside or on public property.

Defenders spent the day in the terminal monitoring the police presence, getting to know the people in the encampment, arguing with city workers to maintain possession of unaccounted for items, and guarding people’s tents and belongings to prevent them from being deemed trash or getting ruined while workers power-washed the terminal. Workers unsurprisingly had a host of disrespectful things to say about the Philadelphians living in the terminal and their belongings.

Housing services showed up to suggest that residents leave the terminal for other housing options. Supporters remained present and directly over-heard city services proclaiming that we were there to use the residents for publicity. An interesting interpretation considering no one was photographing, recording or otherwise taking it upon themselves to tell residents what to do. Some supporters checked in with residents after their conversations with city workers. Heard were sentiments such as “they’re trying to get us to go into rapid rehousing but I’ve been through this before and it’s a bunch of bullshit, we’ll be out of there and back on the street by next week.”

At the end of the day, several occupied areas were successfully defended and were untouched by city workers, who originally told residents they would have to at least remove all of their belongings. Unhoused people often lose their belongings in sweeps because they are unable to watch their things all day, unable to move all their belongings themselves, or unsuccessful at resisting city workers who are intent on proclaiming that any personal items that aren’t on private property or on ‘your person’ are trash.

While the defense on the ground happened in solidarity, the discussion online surrounding it beforehand raised relevant issues, especially as moratoriums end and eviction defense becomes an increasingly pressing issue and way to show up against capitalism and for each other.

On March 29th and 30th a flyer started to circulate on anarchist, housing-support and eviction-defense networks (such as Signal and Telegram), as well as on social media. The simple B&W flyer stated “Block the eviction” / “Stop the city from clearing the encampment at 12/13th & Locust PATCO station” / “Meet at 10am — Defend at 11am” / and “Share widely.”

The “action words” included “Block,” “Stop,” “Meet,” and “Share.” The flyer did not mention black bloc, nor did it suggest defenders “throw down,” or “fight the police.” A discrepancy that makes the critical comments following the flyer’s appearance important to question, analyze and address.

Visually it referenced the accidental blockade of the Suez Canal by the Evergreen ship — which is popularly known to have been a temporary (and celebrated amongst anti-capitalists) disaster for commerce. It was relevant (albeit somewhat tangentially) in that eviction defense/illegal occupation of city-owned property is inherently threatening to capitalism and often involves literally blocking government workers from carrying out sweeps.

When the flyer was shared on the popular social media platform Instagram (IG), Individuals and activists added commentary by way of clarifying “re-posts” and comments about the flyer. For example:

“Hey it isn’t an eviction, it is a sanitation event. Please don’t show up to fight the police. The department of Housing Services have promised that people’s belongings won’t be thrown away as long as their owner is with them.”
“Honestly delete this post (re: flyer/call to eviction defense). We’re worried about people showing up in black bloc to fight the police for an eviction that isn’t happening”
“Clarity: it seems that folks are *not* being evicted tomorrow. However encampment residents are asking that people are there ONLY to make sure they are not displaced. They have been told they will not be during tomorrow’s routine cleaning.

DO NOT ANTAGONIZE ANY POLICE. Showing up and being SUPPORT is fine, but anything else goes against the graces for brutality from the police. So show up, be kind to the encampment workers, protect them and their things if you HAVE to, and that’s it.

Do not put people’s lives in danger with your own agenda.”

“So so important that folks not antagonize or escalate on their own impetus with houseless  comrades in the crossfire.”

These statements, while not necessarily wrong or made in bad faith, are representative of misunderstandings, as well as misrepresentations of direct action and those who carry it out.

The intentions of the private networks who participate in direct action are frequently critiqued, often in bad faith, because the government, mainstream media and liberal agenda encourages a disdain towards them. This is tactical on the governments part, as these individuals often make a life-style out of resisting and combatting government oppression. The goal here is not to point fingers and declare which statements were from whom, but to discuss why the commentary was premature, misguided and harmful.

People claiming that the city does not mean to harm individuals living in encampments and squats —on any occasion — is, first of all, mislead. Secondly they are directly supporting the city government in being free to terrorize the housing-insecure population uninhibited. Even if an eviction is not happening at all, people showing up en masse to demonstrate their support and willingness to fight evictions in general deters the city from dishing out eviction notices.
When it comes to encampments or people living on public property, the best eviction defense is building relationships, sharing resources, and offering aid on a regular basis. This lets the government know who is in solidarity with them. This may include community aid, street art, combative action towards oppressive government programs/officials and much more.
However none of those things can stop evictions if we do not make a practice of showing up on the day and time that they’re rumored to happen AND demonstrate our willingness to not take the city government’s orders. Showing up to “support” only goes so far. At some point what matters most is who is prepared to keep standing and keep guarding belongings when city workers demand we back down. This is why we take issue with the cautionary language contained in the comments.

Eviction defense is anti-gov, anti-cap and anti-property. It ultimately involves combative/non-compliant action verses cooperative/lawful support. Participating in & defending encampments, squats, and even non-gov-approved mutual aid is conflictual, disobedient, and risky. It predicates a power struggle with the government and city services. Showing up to an eviction defense requires a willingness to not cooperate with the government and to possibly accrue legal penalties. It also potentially creates grounds for police to justify targeting, taking note of, and repressing you.

You are supporting people in resisting laws, zoning and city operations. For some, this warrants “bloc-ing up” and for others it might not. This can depend on countless factors, some of which might be if individuals are involved in other illegal activities and anti-state efforts, if they are already on the police’s radar or facing police repression, or if they are inherently targeted by police.

Eviction defense is about more than preventing people from losing their possessions and having to find alternate shelter. It’s a relevant fighting ground for undermining capitalism, state power and its entities – most notably, private and government-owned property, both being extensions of colonization.

Encampments are already illegal because they overwhelmingly exist on public property owned by city government. Encampments exist in the first place because the city hoards property, fuels gentrification and refuses to allow anyone to make shelter out of the countless vacant homes capable of providing it. The reason the city doesn’t allow these homes to be used is because all government systems are invested in capitalism.

Capitalism works by placing monetary value on the things people need to survive — like housing, food, and healthcare — making them unavailable to those without adequate capital. Capitalism is maintained by creating consequences like homelessness, hunger, loss of autonomy or death for those who do not acquire and maintain the level of capital needed to acquire those things.

As such, the city government, including the OHS has an obligation to make sure people are unable to “live for free” by occupying public spaces instead of paying for private property or surrendering their autonomy to be granted a spot in a shelter.
People made many anticipatory and presumptuous claims about those behind the flyer and the call for eviction defense. Critical responses to the flyer were based on a fear of black bloc, escalation, conflictuality, as well as the private networks that organize and plan direct actions. Publicly encouraging a narrow and uninformed understanding of black bloc is a fantastic way to bolster police repression. It alienates willing and active individuals who may already be on the police’s radar and need to obscure their identities to keep themselves safe in settings monitored by police.
A clear misunderstanding of what conflictual and combative tactics are for was also evident. The people in our networks seek to destroy systems of oppressive. Sometimes this does involve literal destruction of property but that’s just one of many tactics in the arsenal. Eviction defense is a defensive action that may or may not involve direct confrontation with the police. The goal (which was clearly communicated in the flyer) was to prevent eviction and protect the people in danger of being evicted. It is with a lack of understanding and solidarity that what occurred in response was an expectation for people to throw down, start a “street fight” with cops, and harm individuals in need of defense.
Lastly, a common thread in the critiques was for individuals to not show up “with their own agenda,” or act “on their own impetus.” Believing that people should not show up to eviction defense as part of their own struggle is disempowering. People commonly show up to actions because they are personally interested in seeing something through. This is usually because it is a part of their personal agenda for resistance against larger systems.

It is short sighted to think eviction defense and housing justice only concern those who are currently unhoused in a specific situation. Property is violence because the state owns and controls land and punishes people for trying to survive by making the things they need inaccessible through capital. Anyone with an interest in resisting or combating capitalism’s grip on our lives has a personal interest and agenda when it comes to eviction defense. Defending someone’s home, when their residency is illegal is joining them in their resistance. Defense isn’t a passive action. It is patronizing to not recognize that people living in encampments, squats and on public property are already involved in resistance, regardless of if it is only for themselves or part of a larger agenda against oppressive systems.

Really Free Market Philly

from Instagram

Happening every last Saturday of the Month @ Malcolm X Park, corner of Larchwood & 52nd Street, promoting a gift economy through mutual aid ????

https://linktr.ee/RFMP

[Last Saturday of every month
Malcolm X Park
Larchwood / 52nd side
10:00AM – 3:00PM]

Ben Fletcher: The Life and Times of a Black Wobbly Philadelphia virtual book launch

from Google Calendar

Join us for the Philadelphia virtual book launch of Peter Cole’s Ben Fletcher: The Life and Times of a Black Wobbly on Wednesday, January 13th at 7pm EST hosted by Wooden Shoe Books and co-sponsored by the Independence Seaport Museum and Philadelphia IWW. Peter will be joined by labor journalist Kim Kelly and Royce Adams, a Philadelphia native and longshoreman in ILA Local 1291. Details and free registration link to be announced.

Ben Fletcher, an African American who helped lead the IWW’s most militant and effective interracial branch, epitomized the union’s brand of anti-capitalism and anti-racism. Fletcher (1890−1949) was a tremendously important and well-loved member of the IWW during its heyday, the first quarter of the 20th century. A brilliant union organizer and a humorous orator, Fletcher helped found and lead Local 8 of the IWW’s Marine Transport Workers Industrial Union. When founded in 1913, this union was a third African American, a third Irish and Irish American, and a third other European immigrants. Despite being hated by the bosses and redbaited by the government, Local 8 controlled the waterfront for almost a decade.

Peter Cole, a Professor of History at Western Illinois University and Research Associate in the Society, Work and Development Program at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is the author of Wobblies on the Waterfront: Interracial Unionism in Progressive Era Philadelphia and the award-winning Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area. He also is the founder and co-director of the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project (CRR19). He tweets from @ProfPeterCole.

 

Acts Against Goliaths

Submission

Carpet tacks spread in the police headquarters’ parking lot before a demonstration. More tacks dispersed at the local Amazon warehouse’s truck entrance. One valve stem cut on an Amazon truck’s tire. Two Amazon van tires slashed. Fiber optic cables cut where they hung low on three telephone poles in more affluent neighborhoods.

Small but unceasing acts against so many Goliaths. We hope to put a sling in many more hands while hunting for low-hanging fruit that might actual nourish our revolt.

The spectacle of the spell-out on the Regional Rail train is hardly worth mentioning without documentation, but our word is all we have. Those straight letters reading NO MORE PRESIDENTS taking up half the clean car in the earliest hours of somebody’s election day blazed bold in black and chrome. Maybe CLIP or Septa Police have the flicks to share from this earlier act. Either it ran and shared the message or was taken out of commission for cleaning.

We won’t stop. This world teeters on too many terrifying and enchanting precipices to stop. We invite you join us, with these recent acts as a minimum of examples. The greatest difficulty is in beginning, but once you’re out the door it gets easier. Take care and it gets easier.

“Let every act of repression visited upon us bloom infinite vicious resistance.”

Looking toward a winter of anarchy.

Transaction Denied

Submission

On the 20th day of Black December some pranksters gave to me, 12 banks sabotaged with glee! Sabotaging card slots is easy. We sabotaged some vestibule entrance slots and ATM card readers. We put gift cards with glue on them in the slots. We cut each card into 3 to have more and to make it harder to pull each out. We covered everything but our eyes because ATM’s have high resolution cameras. It looked like we were just using the ATM, no one suspected a thing. You can also use cardboard or the free business cards found at cafes. Make sure you wipe any fingerprints off the cards.

RIP all the homies we lost this year!
Here’s to hoping 2021 is more lit than 2020!
Long Live Anarchy!

– Transaction Denied ????

Anticapitalist group claims responsibility for West Philly unrest that left windows smashed, buildings vandalized near Penn

from Mainstream Media

An anticapitalist group taking part in what it called the “Summer of Rage” has claimed responsibility for unrest that erupted near the University of Pennsylvania campus Tuesday night, leaving windows smashed and prompting campus police to warn students and staff to remain indoors.

Roughly 60 people in black clothes and donning black masks gathered at Clark Park, near the intersection of 43rd Street and Baltimore Avenue, and began marching just before 9:30 p.m., campus police said. They quickly cut a swath of damage along 40th Street — building barricades, vandalizing several buildings and a marked Penn police car — before dispersing about 40 minutes later.

In their wake, several businesses were left damaged along 40th Street, including a PNC bank, a coffee shop, a pizza parlor, a bar, the Free Library branch at 40th and Walnut Streets, and a university residence hall that was spray-painted with the phrase “Nerds Call 911.”

A post that appeared Wednesday morning on Philly Anti-Capitalist, a clearinghouse for local antiauthoritarian and anarchist groups, and submitted by a person claiming to be an organizer of the demonstration, declared the event a success.

“Over 45 people marched through the streets chanting and smashing windows of banks, business and developments,” the post read. “There was a surprising amount of destruction.”

It went on to describe demonstrators using barricades to elude police intervention and covering identifying tattoos and facial features to avoid detection by authorities.

Philadelphia police declined to comment on whether their investigation of the vandalism was focused on the “Summer of Rage” group, saying only that the probe continues. Penn police didn’t respond to requests for details.

But as business owners and university staff boarded up windows, cleared broken glass from sidewalks, and power-washed antipolice and anarchist graffiti off building walls Wednesday morning, many were still trying to figure out exactly what had happened. Most of the businesses along the corridor were closed when the destruction began.

The shattered windows at a PNC Bank branch on 40th Street near Walnut. The windows were destroyed by a group of protesters marching in response to the Jacob Blake shooting in Wisconsin.

Security footage at Allegro Pizza & Grill near 40th and Spruce Streets showed a crowd of people walking north on 40th just before 9:30 p.m., flanked by people walking their bicycles and halting traffic. People in the front carried a banner that read: “F— the police.”

Louie K., a part owner of Allegro who asked that his last name be withheld over safety concerns, said members of the group spray-painted on the wall of his business and a man took a baseball bat to its ATM, causing more than $10,000 in damage.

Another local business owner, who asked to remain anonymous because he didn’t “want [his] windows broken, too,” said he saw a crowd of about 25 people in black clothing ransacking a construction site near 40th and Sansom Streets.

The group threw traffic cones and toppled trash cans, he said while noting he didn’t see any violent behavior. At one point, he said, police approached the crowd near Chestnut Street and the group shouted profanities at officers but kept on walking.

A worker power washes graffiti off of a construction barrier outside of a University of Pennsylvania residence hall Wednesday morning after a night of unrest saw demonstrators vandalizing buildings and breaking windows along 40th Street in West Philadelphia.

The gathering that led to the unrest came together quickly through mostly private messages and social media posts. A graphic shared on Instagram directed attendees — “in solidarity with Kenosha” — to meet at Clark Park at 9 p.m. and wear black. “Screenshot & share on IG story only,” the graphic read. (Instagram’s “stories” function is not easily searchable.)

The post early Wednesday morning on the anticapitalist blog said the group was marching in solidarity with Philadelphia sanitation workers, Black Lives Matter, and protests in Kenosha, Wis., over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, the 29-year-old man seriously injured by officers Sunday as he leaned into his car in front of his children.

Organizers involved in previous protests on behalf of those causes have disavowed property destruction in their pursuit of social justice goals.

But a group donning similar dark clothing and masks and also claiming to be associated with the “Summer of Rage” drew attention in 2017 after causing more than $100,000 in damage to new buildings and high-end cars in North Philadelphia.

Those demonstrators said they were marching against gentrification in the neighborhood.

Neighbors at the time described the masked demonstrators smashing windows, spray-painting messages like “Leave!” on new buildings, and throwing Christmas ornaments filled with paint. Two protesters were arrested after area residents surrounded the group and kept them penned in until police arrived.

No arrests have been reported in connection with Tuesday’s unrest.

Garbage cans thrown in the street by a group of protesters marching in response to the Jacob Blake shooting in Wisconsin. Numerous windows were shattered at the University of Pennsylvania.

Summer Skillshare Convergence

from Facebook

An all-day event of skill building workshops to strengthen our
individual and collective capacities to survive, heal, build, attack,
imagine, and live in anti-cop, anti-capitalist, and anti-authoritarian
ways.

Workshops all day…….BYO seating
Free screenprinting…..BYO fabric
Open grill…………..BYO food

Email us with any accessibility questions: hereandnowzines@riseup.net

~*Schedule*~
1-2 Screenprinting, Anything But Obedience
2-3 Authentic relating games, Prop Werks, Boosting 101,
3-4 Reimagining consent, accountability, and justice, Graffiti
4-5 Demo safety & tactics, Guerilla Gardening 101, The Anti-Capitalist and Anti-Colonial Roots of Harm Reduction
5-6 Discussion on fear & uncertainty, Parkour, Slingshot making
6-7 Trains, Introduction to herbal first aid, Political Prisoner Support
7-8 #!/bash/back, Trauma Support for Anarchists
8-9 Invisibility, Internet Security 101 & Intro to Tails OS

[Saturday, July 25, 2020 at 1:00 PM – 9:00 PM EDT
Bartram North]

Mid-July virtual anarchist discussion: land and freedom

from Viscera

Join us Sunday, July 19th for our next virtual reading discussion and hang-out! We’ll be reading Seaweed’s Land and Freedom:

Drawing from histories of rebellion, Seaweed begins a conversation with fellow anarchists about struggle, strategy, subsistenence, or past, and our future. What kind of communities do we need to exist to support long-term rebellion against Capitalism? What would it mean to create insurrectionary movements for subsistence? What kind of relationships might arise from long-term ecologically-based struggles? This book is an invitation to explore these ideas.

(Note that this is the full version, not the excerpts uploaded to the anarchist library – you can also buy the book in full from us or Little Black Cart)

Related, optional pieces to consider are Seaweed’s appearance on The Brilliant as well as Bellamy Fitzpatrick’s An Invitation to Desertion for comparison (or here for the pdf).

As usual, we’ll be meeting on jitsi in room Viscerapvd – the password changes each time, so contact us beforehand! Casual discussion from 1:30-2:30, reading discussion until 4!

Amazon Truck Sabotage

Submission

On a recent rainy night, some companions found an Amazon truck lurking in the shadows of a residential building, and with a quick and quiet scope of the scene, damaged and immobilized the truck in under a minute before melting back into the shadows.

An attack of this scale can sometimes feel futile against this many-headed corpse, as more often than not, a new head grows back in its place. But in reality, these small acts are a much larger part of prefiguration and the practice of embodying the world we want to live in now, rather than waiting for the right conditions for a popular uprising to storm all Amazon warehouses and end them once and for all. Even an uprising of that size would not stop the capitalist machine and society that brought them into being.

These small daily attacks, while fucking up a driver’s day and costing Amazon a set of new tires, also builds a culture of rejection that goes much much deeper than an occasional boycott. What may be blown off as insignificant inconveniences that are easily fixed and replaced, for us is a building of techniques and tactics, affinities and affirmations of an embodied rejection of the society that allowed Amazon to exist in the first place.

These seeming inconsequential acts teach us how to show up and look out for each other, act on our own accord, and in that process naturally create a culture that openly opposes the death cult of capitalism.

What are the small gestures and attacks that can teach us to act on our own and run as a pack?

Acting autonomously is not as out of reach as we have been taught to believe.

MayDayFun

Submission

In a time where COVID-19 is sweeping it’s way through workplaces, shelters, and prisons.. wholefoods, amazon, and other large corporations are silencing their workers and trying to think of ways they can capitalize off of this pandemic. Houseless folks are being evicted from encampments regardless of the logical recommendations of the CDC. Prisons are death camps and our friends in cages are making masks in crowded conditions without the privilege to even wear one.
As a gesture of solidarity and an expression of our rage, we drop this banner for those on the inside fighting to get out, for the workers under the boot of the corporate masters at amazon and elsewhere, and the importance of practicing mutual aid. Not just now, but always.

Open squats!
Loot the Wholefoods!
Free the prisoners!
#Mutualaid