Report back and reflections on the Juneteenth anti-cop anti-prison noise demo in Philly

from Anarchist News

Even though there’s been active protests going on everyday here since May 30th, it feels like things for the most part are becoming more and more tame. There’s still a lot of momentum but with it is a strong fear it’ll be overtaken by the popular liberal agenda or suppressed by state repression. Nonetheless with a curiosity of what direction things will take, and with rather low expectations I showed up to the call for the ftp noise demo..

Most folks show up to the meet-up mad late. There were conversations around not having enough numbers, if the time was called for too early and if we should wait longer, make moves, or go home. Lots of hesitations and indecisiveness. Fortunately despite the demo being publicized on the internet, there was no cop presence at the start, and the 25 of us decided to proceed.

Even while moving, things started off a bit awkward and quiet. We rushed through the streets towards the federal detention center. Graffiti went up on the walls and some cop vans, and when we got to the FDC things got LOUD. There were tons of fireworks and smoke bombs, fuck prisons graffiti was written on the ground for the prisoners to see, there was yelling and banging on street signs. There were a few chants but for the most part they were pretty minimal. The folks inside were hype to see us, they were flashing their lights and banging on windows. Their reactions reassured a lot of the trepidations some of us had had about coming out after all.

Once we finished with the louder toys, we didn’t try to stick around since a small squad of cops had showed up outnumbering us. We had a hasty, sloppy dispersal but everyone made it out alright and in good spirits.

After the demo I was left with a few things on my mind:

Noise demos are really cool opportunities for people with less street experience to get their feet wet with a little more risk. Because they’re a slightly more escalatory than the common protest marches, but aren’t as scary as heavier attacks, they give folks a greater sense of power and practicality to navigate moving through the streets together in riskier situations.
Regardless of what type of action we show up to it’s important to come with our own personal goals and a readiness to adapt to the goals of others around us.

One way to stay ready is to always use best practices to conceal our identities. Whether that’s making sure we’re covered up before we’re near any cameras or cops, or wearing gloves whenever we use illegal objects that might get left behind. It’s important we stay off the radar, unrecognizable and untraceable.

When moving together we really gotta get better at keeping it tight and not panicking! When were too spread out at vulnerable moments it puts us more at risk. Cops trailing us doesn’t always turn to cops chasing us. When we run away unnecessarily we open ourselves up to being more vulnerable. It’s important to assess when it makes or doesn’t make sense for us to run.

Lastly, it’s exciting to imagine all the possibilities of what we could get away with in a group that big when there’s no cops around!

In times like this, where repression is coming down extra hard it’s especially important to show solidarity and counter isolation.

Shout out to all the angry ones turning their anger into action, directing it to revolt. Solidarity to all those recently captured by the state, you’re in our hearts and your actions were courageous.

I hope that we can spread and keep the momentum of the recent uprisings directed towards the police state and it’s prisons, because without their total destruction we will never be free.

Towards the destruction of the state, it’s cages and it’s reinforcers.

Towards the creation of something better than anything they could ever offer us.

Anarchy in the Streets of Philadelphia

from Mainstream Media

Ori Feibush remembers everything about the night an arsonist destroyed 11 townhouses he’d been developing in Philadelphia’s Point Breeze neighborhood. He was awakened by a neighbor banging on his door. He sprinted about two blocks from his home to the site, but firefighters wouldn’t let him near the blaze. “I was unfortunately standing as a bystander,” he said, “with all of my neighbors watching a project that I had worked on for half a decade burn to the ground.”
Mr. Feibush, 36, says he personally lost more than $1 million in the May 2017 fire, and his investors also took a substantial loss. Later that year, he says, someone unsuccessfully tried to set fire to another of his construction projects, in Fishtown. No one has been arrested or charged for either crime, but Mr. Feibush is convinced that local anarchists who consider themselves antifascist, or “antifa,” are to blame.
Point Breeze is predominantly black, and the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that between 2005 and 2009 roughly 1 in 3 residents lived in poverty. Mr. Feibush said the district had “seen 60 years of disinvestment, 60 years of drugs and crime,” but 12 years ago he decided to “take a chance on a neighborhood that a lot of developers didn’t want to take a chance on.” Mr. Feibush’s critics say he took advantage of the area’s cheap property and bad reputation, and that his market-rate developments drive up prices and displace longtime residents.

In the month before the first arson attack, posters went up in the neighborhood, including one urging locals to “smash back” against developers who are “displacing the black and brown people.” The posters singled out OCF Realty, Mr. Feibush’s company, and called for “direct action.” Anathema, which calls itself a “Philadelphia anarchist periodical,” noted the fire in its May 2017 issue under the heading “What Went Down.”

No one responded to my inquiry sent to the contact email for Anathema. The newsletter has no byline or masthead, so it’s unclear for whom it speaks. The Philadelphia Police Department declined a request for an interview, but a Federal Bureau of Investigation official answered affirmatively when asked if, over the past five years, Philadelphia had seen an increase in property crimes the agency interprets as protests against gentrification and capitalism.
“I don’t have an official tally,” Mr. Feibush said, but since 2015 “we experienced what I call ‘nuisance vandalism’ more frequently than monthly but less frequently than weekly.” That includes the fires as well as “slashed tires, paint on cars, graffiti on buildings.” Masked activists have fired paintballs at his employees, and someone shattered a window of Mr. Feibush’s home in July 2019.

“Philadelphia has long had a strong anarchist and antifascist scene,” says George Ciccariello-Maher, a local academic and the author of the forthcoming book “A World Without Police.” He notes that “a lot of the movements here recently” have targeted developers that activists deem “main drivers” of gentrification, including Mr. Feibush.
Not all of Philadelphia’s antifascists and anarchists engage in violence or vandalism, though many support a “diversity of tactics” and won’t denounce attacks on property. Some run food banks and organizations offering legal support and mutual aid. Others research and expose alt-right activists or agitate for the disinvitation of public speakers they consider fascist. Many shun electoral politics, but their ideas—including that capitalism is destructive and that police, prisons and immigration enforcement should be done away with—have become increasingly mainstream on the left.
Witness the 2017 election of Larry Krasner as Philadelphia’s district attorney. As a candidate, he claimed that “policing and prosecution are both systematically racist.” Since taking office, he has embarked on “an effort to end mass incarceration” by reducing sentences. His website trumpets dramatic declines in the number of charges brought by his office and a steep drop in the overall number of years the city’s convicted criminals will spend behind bars.

In Philadelphia, radical politics seem to have allowed radical leftists to destroy property with impunity. Mr. Feibush says Philadelphia police have dutifully investigated the property crimes against him and his business, but to his knowledge no one has been charged or prosecuted: “The feedback I receive is they can send over [the evidence] they have, but they don’t believe the DA’s office will prosecute.” Mr. Krasner’s office, he says, harbors an “unwillingness to do anything to these groups.” As a result, “they’ve clearly become more and more emboldened over the years.”
I asked Mr. Krasner’s office to respond. In an email, spokeswoman Jane Roh described Mr. Feibush as a “highly controversial/politically motivated developer.” (Mr. Feibush unsuccessfully ran for City Council in 2015.) She also noted that the August 2017 arson attempt predated Mr. Krasner’s tenure.
When I pointed out that a property crime against him occurred this month, Ms. Roh responded: “Did Mr. Feibush say that he deserves special treatment compared to the numerous other property owners who have been victimized over the past week or so? . . . It is unlikely that a crime involving any one individual, no matter how important or prominent they believe themselves to be, would require review by the District Attorney himself.”

Ms. Roh added that “the District Attorney has opened approximately 1,000 criminal cases since the period of unrest began, the majority of which are related to commercial burglaries and property destruction.” She said that “for there to be prosecution the police have to make arrests.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Feibush’s woes continue. On June 5, a security camera captured footage of three people bashing away at his office windows, he says, and this past weekend, someone slashed three tires of an OCF Realty truck.
Ms. Melchior is an editorial page writer for the Journal.

Cameras Sabotaged for June 11

Submission

On June 11, international day of solidarity with anarchist prisoners, as a small act against policing and imprisonment we cut the wires of nine security cameras in a concentrated area. We want to remind prisoners that they are with us in the struggle against white supremacy and police.

Let’s keep things conflictual, forever fuck cops, towards a world with no prisons!
(A)

The Riot Manual

Submission

Definition. A riot is a form of popular warfare in which a crowd engages in a variety of illegal and violent activities. These can include property destruction and looting; disrupting lines of transportation; street fighting against the police and/or military. Like all forms of revolutionary warfare, those who participate in riots assume the risk of injury, imprisonment, and/or death.

[Full text here]

Philadelphia: Anarchist Group ‘Bristling Badger Brigade’ Burns Cell Tower (U$A)

from 325

Another May Day, another cell tower set alight. A small act in the earliest hours, but an escalation beyond the norm. And we never want to return to ‘normalcy.’ We don’t know the difference between 4G and 5G. All we know is we want none of it.

The tower’s proximity to a train yard, a major pharmaceutical company’s office, and other military/mercenary enterprises in the Philadelphia Navy Yard was intended to interfere with their operations, however small the impact. It should also be a reminder that no one is untouchable if you have the appropriate determination. And this particular act was quite easy.

The first flame was a warm hug for the comrade Badger, allegedly on the run after a series of similar incidents in Bristol. Stay free!

The ensuing smoke a signal to the comrades undergoing the Scripta Manent persecution in Italy… we stand with you!

For freedom,
for anarchy!


Bristling Badger Brigade

may day

Submission

Just before our May holiday began someone cut comcast cables beneath an access panel in the sidewalk outside of the “Real Time Crime Center.” Located in the Quartermaster Plaza in South Philly, these chumps sit around watching us, monitoring police cameras all over the region. Get a life! Stop trying to suppress ours!

No way to confirm or deny the impact, but we hope it poked them in the eyes and blinded them to the life-affirming actions that anarchists may or may not have taken that night.

Lucky 13

Submission

Who knew this anarchist would be so excited to stumble upon a luxury car?! The other night I took a walk to a rich part of town. There I went hunting for luxury vehicles, and punctured 1-4 tires on 13 cars. Tons of Mercedes, BMWS and a brand new Range Rover (heart eyes). Cover up, use an awl for quiet flattening, and make sure to scan the surrounding cars, as people like to hang out in their cars these days.

Until next time,
Bingo Baller

Flatten The Curves

Submission

Did you know that school is mandatory in the United States of America? wtf right? School here has a really nasty history if you think colonialism totally sucks. That’s why two school police cars got their tires slashed and their windows scratched. Also an under construction condo had its windows scratched up and a doorbell camera was scratched up too. If you don’t have super sharp claws you can use a drill bit, compass, piece of flint, tungsten pen, or sandpaper to scratch glass and plastic. It’s more quiet than rocks and hammers.

Bingo Bandits

Late-night fun

Submission

Recently I gifted one OCF Realty van: four punctured tires…PLUS a bonus of two tires on a Comcast van.

Those spearheading gentrification make our lives increasingly unliveable, and will always be an enemy. Comcast has a contract with ICE; and they contribute to technological infrastructure and its web of surveillance, policing, ecological destruction and alienation. All things that continue to shape our daily lives into a suffocating prison of a world.

NOT being masked is suspicious these days, and I maintained 6ft of distance from another human the whole time! As what is ‘normal’ is changing rapidly, it’s important to think about how power will use our fear to keep us subdued. Shelter-in-place or not, are our lives really that free?

Killing time as high art during quarantine

Submission

In times like these, no work to be found even if we want it, not enuf weed and acid in the world to make time pass fast enuf, we must dig deep and remember play as a method of killing time. You could fill your night with such activities as: 1. Walking around your neighborhood til you find a nice banner
2. Cut it down and bring it to your sacred spot
3. Smoke weed until you come up with a cool thing to say on it
4. Remember There’s a bridge over the trader joe’s That’s good for dropping stuff
5. Make a banner encouraging looting of said trader joe’s
6. Bike over and drop that banner

7. Make your way over to the property Joel Freedman owns on 21 and locust.

8. Add your words to those of the crew who got there the night you originally wanted to
9. Steal some snacks to keep you sustained
10. Spray over a security camera at a Wells Fargo
 11. Engage in a low effort cat and mouse type game with a police car

12 haviing come to a spiritual awakening

As a result of these actions , become resolutely committed to sharing the stories of them as well as the tactics involved
 in solidarity with every laid off restaurant worker, and with everyone who’s ever turned a trick,
the anticapitalist contingent of the philly mural arts program


Disturbance at Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center During COVID-19 Quarantine

from Perilous Chronicle

Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
April 3, 2020

Nine prisoners under quarantine at the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center threw commissary containers at the windows of their cells in an apparent effort to break the glass. Guards responded in riot gear and used pepper spray on the prisoners. According to city officials, no prisoners or staff were injured during the conflict.

The description of the confrontation was related to media by two corrections officers who were not authorized to discuss the incident publicly. The event comes in the midst of the city frantically trying to manage the spread of COVID-19 inside the city’s jails. And as of April 3, the day of the disturbance, 31 prisoners in Philadelphia’s jails and an unspecified number of guards had tested positive for COVID-19 disease. This makes the rate of infection in the city’s jails four times the rate of the rest of the city.

Brian Abernathy, the Managing Director of Philadelphia, told media that the jails have adopted some measures to address the health of prisoners and prison guards and staff, such making masks available and enacting a “shelter in place” policy where prisoners must remain in their cells except for access to showers and phones.

Citations:

As the coronavirus gains strength in Philly’s jails, panic and fingerpointing mark efforts to avert crisis by thinning inmate population“, The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 4, 2020.

Philly inmates in quarantine create disturbance as coronavirus concerns spread through jail“, The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 4, 2020.

Article published: 4/4/20
Header photo source: Sign of the Times

studies in breaking glass

Submission

Attaching a graph I put together from a little study I did one night a couple of months back. Enjoy!

tacks

Submission

Following the example of someone in Hickory, North Carolina, tacks were spread around several Philly police station parking lots. Hopefully we have been as successful in flattening their patrol car tires.

News that the cops began disrupting homeless encampments at the Philadelphia Convention Center the morning the Covid-19 stay-at-home order was to be observed provided a catalyst, but it is not the reason. The very existence of the police is a reason to target them. Cops are violent antagonists of the living and enemies of freedom, in collusion with judges, prosecutors, bosses, landlords, and politicians.

We have no demands short of their destruction, and know that such a victory will never be handed to us. We react for now, but look forward to taking the offensive.

Rail Sabotage in Solidarity with Wet’suwet’en and Land Defenders

Submission

This week we used copper wire to disrupt rail traffic on two different tracks here in occupied Lenapehoking. Solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en nation, and all those blockading and sabotaging the economy and the state.

They are trying to extinguish our spirits. Keep a strong heart. Keep your heart burning bright. Reconciliation is dead, insurgency is alive!

Anti gentrification

Submission

When I couldn’t find my intended target late one evening, I found a new one (and many more all around). I splattered red paint across 4 new (inhabited) condos in south philly. The owners will have cleaned it away in no time, but I hope they felt a least 1/10th of the rage I feel encountering such ‘progress’ all around. I used a squirt bottle to keep things quiet, and a little extra time to scan the area, as I was on my own. Happy february! Live it up!!