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The All Out For Gaza demo tonight was a genuine expression of love, solidarity, and rage for Palestinians experiencing genocide at the hands of the occupying forces of the state of Israel. While the spirit of this demo was more inspiring in some ways than most demos in Philly, there was a general vibe that the space was not open to more combative expressions of solidarity. This was due both to the crowd generally not taking part in that, but also the march route being relatively devoid of potential targets. However small though, we take victories where we can get them. During the march I punctured the tires of 2 Septa Transit Police vehicles that the marched passed by. Police are an occupying force in any form and are the enforcers of settler-colonialism. In expressing solidarity with those fighting for their freedom and lives in Palestine, functionaries of a colonial project in support of the state of Israel, such as the U.S, can and should be attacked. Destabilizing individual colonial powers can make the larger project of settler colonialism more and more vulnerable.
Love to and Solidarity with Palestinian people. Fuck the state of Israel and the entirety of the settler-colonial project.
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Conversation On Anarchist Solidarity With Anti-Colonial Resistance In Palestine
Sunday October 22nd
2PM
Clark Park by the chess tables
Bring a friend // Share widely
Flier: https://i.ibb.co/FDXFyJH/conv.jpg
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A military recruitment office in Upper Darby was attacked with paint. We wrote slogans and threw red paint on the facade. Born from our love, grief, and rage, this was a letter to Gaza and those in solidarity with the Palestinian uprising against colonial power. This wasn’t done to only send a message to imperialists, consider it an attempt to warm passersby chilled by the cold logic of genocide. In the face of massive non-disruptive protest, we hope we can inspire others to act more directly and confrontationally. Those pushing imperialism and islamophobia are being watche and can expect resistance.
RIP Ganda, killed by the same Amerikkan imperialism that feels entitled to exploit and kill without repercussion.
For Gaza with love
from downas
“Gaza just broke out of prison.” – مريم البرغوثي (Mariam Barghouti)
“A massive jailbreak this morning” – Radical Haifa
Many people are unaware that the u.s. government holds hundreds of political prisoners & prisoners of war captive for their participation in liberation struggles. Even fewer realize that among them are people caged for supporting Palestinians: the “Holy Land 5” are a group of people who the u.s. imprisoned for running a Palestinian charity after they were targeted by the zionist anti-defamation league & surveilled by the FBI.
In addition, many current u.s.-held political prisoners have made their support for the Palestinian cause clear. They include Mumia Abu-Jamal, Oso Blanco, Marius Mason, Malik Muhammad, Victor Puertas, Jessica Reznicek, & others.
Rather than get caught up in arguments about legitimate violence (or anything, really) with radlibs & zionists, we propose that opponents of colonial captivity worldwide seize this opportunity to support the antagonists of prison regimes, concentration camps, & police states. We can draw attention to their struggles through militant education, vocal public support, & attacks on the systems & structures that keep them prisoner.
If you’d like to share information or coordinate around anti-oppression prisoners held by nation-states other than the u.s., consider reaching out:
email username – dowwnas email domain – proton.me
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May Day graffiti was done on a settler colonial monument on Lenape Land. It says “May Day means Land Back!” – “Solidarity Means Attack” – “Smash colonialism!” – “Kill cops!” “ACAB” and more!
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from Philly ABC
Leonard was a member of the American Indian Movement active in the 1970s. It is his involvement in supporting rights for indigenous people that set the stage for the accusation that he participated in the killing of FBI agents. It’s unconscionable that he’s been left to rot in a federal penitentiary for nearly half a century after being convicted on false evidence . In 2009, Leonard had his first and only parole hearing. He was given a 25-year hit, an exorbitant length that is rarely, if ever, given. His legal team and many supporters worldwide are now seeking executive clemency for him. Let’s send him some love to fortify his strength and resilience, and lend support for his fight for freedom.
Snacks and letter-writing supplies will be provided. If you cannot make the event, drop Leonard a line at:
Leonard Peltier #89637-132 USP Coleman I P.O. Box 1033 Coleman, FL 33521
We will also send a birthday card to another elder political prisoner born in March: Ruchell Magee (the 17th).
from Scenes From The Atlanta Forest
In solidarity with the struggle against the police, entertainment and real estate industry in the Welanuee forest, the mainline belonging to the Norfolk Southern company in Lenape territory north of so called Philadelphia was sabotaged. Copper wire was used to connect the tracks, tripping the signal and potentially stopping train traffic until the wire is located. This action is incredible easy and simple to repeat.
NS funds the Atlanta police foundation, and is also responsible for the large spill of toxic chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio. The spill of vinyl chloride is toxic when it leaks into the ground and air, but don’t forget that this chemical is being used in large scale production of everyday industrial products. Large shipping companies like NS are the circulatory system of industrial colonialism. NS is responsible for massive ecological and social devastation through disasters like the recent derailment but they do even more damage when they function with out derailments. So many destructive companies can not function with out NS and other shipping and logistics companies. How would the massive mono cultures of industrial agriculture move their soy and corn to processing plants and slaughter houses? How would Loggers transport lumber to and from mills? How would oil and other chemicals move from extraction to the industry that so readily consume them? How would Amazon get shipping containers from cargo ships to distribution centers with out NS, and the other rail roads?
Perhaps NS funds cop city because they understand both how crucial they are in building a dead world and exactly how vulnerable they are.
With love for Tort, and infinite hostility for cops who killed them.
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.]
Diversity of tactics is a concept that has been used to break the hegemony of non-violence in social movements. The term can be understood as a shared principle that advocates respect and solidarity across different approaches with the aim of breaking down moralistic and ideological divisions. Tactics, however, are often confused with methods, leading to a dangerous misuse of the idea of diversity of tactics to advocate for tolerance of or collaboration with authoritarian, populist, or democratic initiatives.
Since Night Owls focuses on sabotage, which is a tactic, and direct action, which is a method, we want to dive into these ideas and how they might relate to anarchist struggle more broadly. Tactics can be understood as what you do and methods as how you do it. Tactics change according to the moment and the needs of the struggle, whereas methods are stable and well-defined, remaining consistent across contexts, though how methods are understood and developed will vary.
Smashing something or lighting something on fire does not necessarily contribute to the struggle against domination if it is carried out using authoritarian or reformist methods. Pushing forward confrontational tactics while failing to be critical of the methods employed can lead anarchists to enact a sort of “leftism with teeth:” when conflictual efforts are subsumed by dominant political forces and used to grease the wheels of the democratic process. Among other reasons, many anarchists focus on developing autonomous methods of struggle to avoid becoming foot soldiers of the left—diverting a liberatory project into voting with bricks.
On the other hand, reducing the anarchist project to militant tactics can create hierarchies where some tactics are valued above others, instead of understanding how different tactics work together in an ecosystem of actions and ideas. This can lead to the uncritical valorization of militancy for militancy’s sake, fertile ground for the creep of militarism into radical struggles, risking the transformation of a dynamic social conflict into a conflict between isolated militant actors and the state.
Central to anarchism is the method of direct action, which is self-organized by definition. Direct action and sabotage are often used interchangeably, but this is a mistake—many tactics, including sabotage but also those considered “peaceful” such as wheatpasting posters around your neighborhood, can be approached through the method of direct action. The word ‘direct’ here means without mediation; without any intermediary, representative, central committee, union, or other leaders—formal or informal—between you and action. It is a refusal of the logic of democracy; of engaging in dialogue with power, of waiting, of compromise. Tactics such as collaborating with political parties or mass media are incompatible with an anarchist understanding of diversity of tactics: they violate the principle of self-organization, instead reproducing alienation and centralization. By using reformist methods, these tactics foment divisions between actors and spectators, representatives and represented, snuffing out self-organization and the potential for social contagion. Reformist mentalities can often even find their way into action claims, as Let’s Talk About Attack aptly proposes to do away with:
It’s not about bringing a mean company to better intentions, of forcing it to change its bad habits via punitive measures, nor of pressuring an institution to change its mind. […] when we’re talking about, for example, companies that build prisons, high speed train lines, airports, let’s refuse all forms of communication (even the radical ones) with the enemy; let’s refuse all forms of reformism. Better still: we don’t want to spread the logic of reformism, we want to destroy it. The goal is, then, not to convince (by way of damage, material or monetary); the goal is to sabotage and attack the entirety of the project on all terrains. Attack – not to convince, but because we are convinced we don’t want this project. Attacking, not to punish, but to make life harder for the enemy. From the construction companies to the security coordinators and engineers; from the civilian participants to the banks who finance the project.
This column is especially interested in actions that inspire new conceptions of anarchists’ role and potential impact, in which tactics are innovated through creativity and experimentation. In a recent action against a police shooting range in Atlanta’s Weelaunee forest, some “chainsaw-wielding militants’” knocked out the power line feeding the range before going on to destroy the cameras. This action showed creativity both in its choice of target and the tactics used, in an intelligent and effective blow to the facility’s ability to operate. It demonstrates a shift in focus from the mere symbolic facades of power and reminds us that we are not just against Cop City, but the entire institution of policing.
Privileging tactical preferences over shared ethics, goals, and methods can be flimsy ground for collaboration. For example, people who use high-risk tactics but are motivated by a desire to impact public opinion can make unreliable and even dangerous co-conspirators. Many of those who snitched in the Green Scare “revered public opinion about an environmental movement rather than aiming to destroy anti-environmental forces.” More recently, two individuals confessed to having attacked pipelines in a statement to the media, demonstrating a similar desire to impact public opinion—one later became a cooperating witness, while the other, who stayed solid, regretted publishing her identity. People driven by such motivations are liable to change their minds as the tides of “public opinion” inevitably change. Understanding one’s goals and motivations for acting is indispensable, not only for deciding who to take risks with, but also for deciding what to target and how.
This does not mean that you have to be an anarchist to use direct action or to be trustworthy. We are less invested in more people calling themselves anarchists than in the spreading of practices of self-organization and conflict with authority, which were around long before anarchism was named. Our understanding of anarchist methods can grow and deepen by learning from other self-organized struggles and individuals who sabotage domination.
In compiling this column’s list of actions across the so-called United States, we include actions that were claimed with a communique as well as those that were not, with the assumption that there are lessons to be learned from both. The advantages and disadvantages of writing communiques have often been the subject of heated debate among anarchists. Many actions speak for themselves and do not have to be claimed to be understood or to significantly disrupt systems of domination. On the other hand, actions that are not claimed may be harder to find on the internet and so feature less prominently in counter-information projects (including this one), though such websites are rarely engaged with by anyone who’s not themselves an anarchist. In putting together this column, we try to consider the challenge of communicating outside of the anarchist space—which depends on our newspapers, posters, zines, social centers, and physical places of encounter within the struggle.
The torching of three police cars in Pittsburgh this fall was not accompanied by a communique, but the burnt-out shells of the cruisers spoke for themselves and the message could not have been clearer: Fuck the police. We feel it’s important not to speculate about whether this or other actions were carried out by anarchists or not, since that has the potential to aid the police in their investigations. Whatever the motivations of the anonymous one(s) who burned the cars, this action can resonate with anyone who has their own reason to hate and take action against the police.
On the other hand, communiques can also have their own very important place, and all the better when that place is not just the Internet! Although we chose this medium for our column in the interest of reaching a wider audience, we also include a zine version and posters so as to take these ideas and actions off the screen, with its inherent alienation, and spread them through our real world encounters.
This season’s posters feature a communique from occupied Anishinabewaki and Odawa territory (northern Michigan) which claims the arson of heavy machinery at an Enbridge facility. The fight against pipelines and the extractive economy is not restricted to occupations against their construction and is not defeated after they go into the ground. The communique reminds us that the extractive economy, along with the devastation it causes, is all around us, and that it’s possible to fight back.
Earth- and animal-liberation focused struggles continued to take major risks to defend land and life over the course of the fall season. Decentralized supporters of the Defend the Atlanta Forest campaign carried out at least ten known direct actions altogether against Cop City, all of them daring and impressive. Meanwhile, we saw a return of Animal Liberation Front fur farm raids, which according to reports released 15,800 mink in total, destroyed vehicles and machinery at one farm, and ultimately forced the closure of Lion Farms, the largest mink exploiter in the U.S. and the target of one of the actions.
As the recent commentary “On Mink Liberation” notes, “Whilst [mink liberation actions] behave like any other animal liberation action—freeing animals from their place of abuse—they are understood easier as a sabotage action.” It’s heartwarming enough to see these individual lives freed from captivity and given a second chance, yet these actors also took care to aim at the mechanisms of the fur industry itself—an industry that’s entirely intertwined with and made possible by the domination of this territory by capitalism and colonization. The most recent mink raid’s communique makes this connection as well, ending: “free all prisoners and give the land back.”
Our last column centered on the significance of our settler colonial context, not only for forest defense and other ecological struggles, but also with regard to how we position ourselves in relation to land, life, and collective survival—with the ultimate objective of destroying the settler colony and returning its territory to the continent’s original inhabitants. This autumn saw a heartening expansion of anti-colonial solidarity actions, from Washington and Oregon to Michigan and Philadelphia. Some of these actions happened in response to solidarity calls, one took place on the colonial holiday Columbus Day, one on Thanksgiving, and another responded in part to the brutal consequences of climate collapse in the Global South. In discussing the need to take apart elements of colonial industry and infrastructure, the communiques attest to the ways in which destructive acts, when paired with anti-colonial methods, can help empower people to move towards self-organization and action, nurture non-hierarchical relationships, and cultivate “communities of collective resistance and joyful militancy.”
Distribution of Night Owls is decentralized—don’t forget to print the column, bring it to infoshops, drop it in newspaper boxes, or just pass it to your friends.
10/12: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
A colonizer statue was vandalized on Columbus day. “Fighting colonization is a way to nurture a less hierarchical relation with the land and those that live on it.”
11/5: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Lenapehoking)
On the Wet’suwet’en day of action, “a small group of Anti-colonial Anarchist settlers in Lenapehoking blockaded a chokepoint of a high frequency railway.”
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On the Night of December 26th, We spray painted “Dakota 38 +2” and threw orange paint on a statue of the genocidal colonizer Abraham Lincoln. We did this to honor the 38 +2 warriors who were executed in the largest mass hanging that was signed off by Abraham Lincoln. We encourage more actions to dismantle and destroy colonial capitalist statues and institutions that perpetuate oppression and exploitation. We also painted “Lenape Land Back” and “Antifa Zone” to affirm that the struggle against colonial capitalism and fascism continues here in Lenapehoking and everywhere. Love and Solidarity to all our friends and accomplices globally.
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On the night of November 5th, a small group of Anti-colonial Anarchist settlers in Lenapehoking blockaded a chokepoint of a high frequency railway in Solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en resisting drilling in the Wedzin Kwa and all those resisting colonial capitalist development and infrastructure all across Turtle Island and the World!
It was a very simple and easily replicable action using commonly found blockade materials that were near the tracks already.
We hope to inspire many more and frequent railway blockades as an effective action to disrupt colonial and ecocidal infrastructure all across Turtle Island and Globally.
Shut down Canada, Colonialism, and Capitalism everywhere!
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On Columbus day, in the early morning we vandalized a colonizer statue on the Wissahickon trail. Phrases included: Decolonize, Land and Freedom, No Borders, No Nations, No More USA, (A)
We also covered the colonizer’s face, hands, and scroll in red paint.
Fighting colonization is a way to nurture a less hierarchical relation with the land and those that live on it.
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A few months ago Fairmount Park Conservancy put up 3 4-sided plastic strucures along the trail parallel to MLK BLVD. The signs advertise the park with a website, twitter, QR and IG, and feature a list of shows/activities people can get involved with. Prior to this there were no obvious signs along the trail specifying what the space “was”, who it was being maintained by or what it was for.
Early Friday morning we wrote anti-development, anti-colonization and FDR meadows solidarity graffiti on the structures. We also covered up the QR codes and some of the social media handles. Beyond the message in the graffiti we hope the paint ruins the signs.
These signs, the cutting of trees in Cobbs Creek, the development in FDR Park are all forms of domesticating the land and those who move across it. Domestication runs counter to how we want to relate to spaces, ourselves and each other. We want to live wild lives beyond the control of any authority and for that we need wild spaces.
The development and domestication of wild spaces makes them less hospitable to wildlife, plant life, people wandering and living outside and anyone who wants to enjoy a space in autonomous, unorganized and illegal ways.
We dislike the Fairmount Park Conservancy because we’re not interested in conserving spaces, freezing in time spaces that would otherwise grow and change. Despite their name, the conservancy has a clear objective of designating spaces for certain kinds of activities, for certain kinds of people, in a topdown manner. The clearest example of this is their contribution to the destruction of the FDR meadows.
Development and domestication are inseparable from issues of race, colonization, gentrification and class. Check out https://edgeeffects.net/green-gentrification/ for a way these things interact in spaces outside of residential neighborhoods.
Solidarity with the saboteurs at FDR, Cobbs Creek, the Atlanta Forest and everyone trying to widen the cracks!
