Our crew has noticed increasing infiltration of right wing grifter-streamers into protests, namely Frank Scales and his Cameraman/bodyguard Ian McGinnis. These people generate rage bait content for the right wing media landscape by conducting bad faith “gotcha” interviews and debates to farm and selectively crop clips that get injected into the right wing outrage ecosystem. They use this tactic to generate money for their operations and create propaganda. They are disruptive and destructive and demand a response.
It is not so simple as normal bash the fash tactics sadly- this is actually a strategy built into their program, similar to Christian hate preachers like Aden Rusfeldt or the Westboro Baptist Church that stoke conflict and then use legal warfare and press charges to go after those who oppose them. They do want you to hit them, so they can record content, dox you, sue you, and generate income streams from playing victim. Frank scales is already pressing charges against a woman who confronted him on a bus and is weaponizing police to seek a man who he claims maced him at a protest. We need to adapt to these tactics very strategically.
Our crew has found simple content denial and disruption to be the most effective deterrence. This has been observed to stop them from generating content during several specific incidents. We point to two specific instances that were effective in stopping these grifters from getting a foothold-
In one case, a grifter and his camera man were attempting to generate clips from an anti ICE protest. An operator observed from afar, made sure their identity was fully protected and they weren’t in view of the camera in question, and in a moment when the grifter was physically separated from police by a crowd and distracted by protest marshals physically walling him out, they quickly snatched the phone recording and threw it into the crowd, where it was not recovered. Phones can be smashed if there is time or thrown into storm drains (apologies to the Delaware watershed) or locked solar trash compactors. This immediately denies the material ability to generate content. It is an extremely easy point of vulnerability and can be quickly exploited with a few people acting as diversions. Operators can quickly change clothes and disperse from there with the mission accomplished. Flags and banners can also be used to block cameras and generate confusion and block visibility to ensure these operations go smoothly. Anyone can do this and immediately disappear into a crowd or into the city. Dedicated teams should be set up to ensure this security at every protest.
In another case, operators interjected at every attempted interview or debate to just sound bomb the stream with declarations of the streamer’s support for the Epstein-pedophile class- this is messaging that resonates with their intended audience that should be reinforced. No clips from this day were used in later content because of this disruption. Alerting speakers to the presence of these streamers and having them address the crowd and laying down specific disruptive tactics that deny them their rage bait content also seemed highly effective. We think speakers at rallies should identify the targets as bad faith actors and encourage people not to engage beyond physical interference of their ability to generate content.
Optics matter and these are delicate situations that must be approached with intention and specific tactics to ensure that their effectiveness is rendered inoperable. We cannot be doing solely a brute force approach, we need specific tactics. The simple denial of content generation seems to be the best move going forwards. By all means, bash those fash when feasible, but make sure the cameras are off first. It should be done quickly and quietly without turning into grand confrontations that they salivate for. We have the power to easily and decisively counter these tactics. They will suffer in a silence that we can easily enforce.
Expect counter measures like security details and securing vulnerable devices to persons. Find creative workarounds. Stay adaptable, This is an optics battle that we can win if we make sure to go straight for the eyes.
Bring some Black Radical literature, take some Black Radical literature. Come through to O.R.C.A on Saturday Feb. 28th from 4 – 6 pm. for a literature swap. Stay and chat about what text you brought, took and/or are currently reading. Left over books will be donated to the O.R.C.A library. Please wear a mask + mask will be available
This compilation is coming together in a moment when it feels that many anarchist ideas are losing their meanings. Dragged out of anarchy into leftism or activism, drained of their radical content. Mutual aid is giving away supplies, direct action is a more aggressive form of begging, anti-fascism is reduced to publishing personal details about our enemies, attack is left to gather dust or spectacularized as a social media aesthetic.
Lining up anarchist ideas and practices is not always easy, which is no reason to lower the bar. It’s with this in mind that it felt useful to compile these articles, to clarify just how radical anarchist ideas really are, to encourage people to keep imagining and moving toward absolute hostility with authority and anarchic relations with everyone else.
Submission
In honor of our fallen comrades Renee Nicole Good, Tortuguita Teran, and all others murdered by the police state, we dropped several banners along the vine street expressway on the morning of Jan 18th, on the third anniversary of the Day of the the Forest Defender.
11×17″ poster available for print out – Text reads “DONT LOOK NOW BUT/ YOU ARE STANDING UNDER AN AI CAMERA- Wait to Look Up/ These cameras are connected to the “Real Time Crime Center”- They have facial recognition software and the ability to zoom in far and track between cameras and blocks/ All this information exists in a cloud- your biometrics being collected are stored & unprotected, available to large tech vendors & nation wide law enforcement-there are thousands of data points across the city/ Cameras are used to gather info to capture immigrants, dissidents, traffic violators & strengthen the school to prison pipeline/ IN A MATTER OF SECONDS THE AVERAGE CITIZEN CAN BECOME AN ENEMY OF THE STATE/ Techno-fascism is here- Destroying the planet and eliminating privacy/Resist and Sabotage that which moves us away from sacred living/ Stay Wild”
The purpose of this campaign is to make individuals aware of how their movements are being tracked around a city and to note where these cameras are being installed- The camera featured in this poster is a Hikvision DS 2CD2385FWD-1, however, most IP camera can be integrated into the RTCC software- It is worth noting that body cameras are also used in these systems. One popular company making equipment for RTCCs and police is Axon. Real Time Crime Centers, aka “The Center” is an egregious new territory of surveillance with terrifying modular options for privacy protections in addition to blurred lines between jurisdictions. It is popping up in cities all over the so called United States. In addition to variables on how and where this information is being stored and who has access to it, it is unclear what data is being collected beyond facial recognition and location tracking and how that technology plans to advance (and how quickly it will advance). It is also unclear how this data will be paired with Shotgun Detection Equipment (discrete microphones placed around cities that are constantly listening and also have ambiguous tech and privacy protections) to further collect data on individuals. Some systems are using generative AI to analyze information and alert authorities/ deploy officers to specific areas. There is reasonable concern that content generate by AI will be used against children as a way punishing/institutionalizing, will deepen racist, classist, transphobic policing and accelerate systemic rights violations.
The following is not connected to RTCC systems but a very real example of AI policing that validates speculation on how AI policing & RTCC could easily be used against children.
<In 2021 the Pasco County School District entered into a secret data-sharing agreement with the local Sheriff’s Office, allowing police access to student information along with records of child abuse, crime victimization and even parental custody disputes. The data was entered into an algorithm developed by cops to predict “prolific criminal offenders”. At height, the program generated scores for 18,000 children. Students with high schools experience police interrogations, arbitrary home visits and exclusionary discipline.>
Let us not forget US administration has bullied public agencies to adopt artificial intelligence to the greatest extent possible through measures such as Executive Order 14179, Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence and Executive Order 14319, Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government as well as the White House AI Action Plan.
Techno-Fascism is no longer based suspicion nor sci-fi diaster fantasy, rather, it is an atrocious attack against autonomy rapidly shaping our everyday lives and strengthening the power of the state. May more people than those on the fringes start fearing Police AI. This technology is currently and widely being used to track immigrants for kidnappings. This is heinous and alludes the probability that it will be used to capture anyone who the states deems undesirable. To what you will with these posters and may you do much more. Burn the panopticon.
This text hasn’t seen much circulation in Philadelphia, despite going into a good bit depth about the anti-gentrification struggles that took place here. Although the text has some points I would personally disagree with, I find it to be a good introduction to both Philly’s history of anarchist anti-gentrification struggle and the influence of insurrectionary anarchism within it. The original text was published on Hypocrite Reader and then re-published on Philly Anti-Capitalist. These kinds of histories are important; to remind ourselves as anarchists and fellow travelers what is possible, to continue to strive to outdo ourselves moving forward, and to learn from our mistakes and shortcomings.
Announcing the second edition of Freeing Assata! This edition includes another account of Assata’s liberation as recounted by Abdash Shakur that sheds light on more details of how the escape went down and what made it possible for Assata to remain free and leave the country. I’m releasing this edition right before Black August so that anyone observing may read it as part of their study.
TL;DR – O.R.C.A. is public, don’t hesitate to share any events or media about the space unless it says different on the flier 🙂
We have heard of people being concerned that sharing fliers, posters, and invitations related to O.R.C.A. was not okay so we wanted to make clear O.R.C.A. is a public project 😀 While we appreciate people’s concern for the project’s security we are excited to welcome new people to the space, to host events and meetings, and keep open hours. We maintain a public website and twitter account. While we are happy to host private events, most of the programming at O.R.C.A. is free and public, and we welcome people sharing events that take place in our space. We do not publicly post our address but we try to be responsive and forthcoming about sharing our address and access information via email and direct message to those interested in attending. As always we would love to talk with interested individuals and groups about hosting your event or meeting. Though we do occasionally host private events the fliers or invitations to those events are explicit about how they are meant to be shared.
From @phlzinefest: HEY YALL WE ARE DELETING THIS ACCOUNT
I’m tired of having an instagram account specifically this one/ don’t have 2 energy to run it anymore nor do I think that it’s really even needed. Zine fest will be every last Sunday of the month at 3pm in Clark park and you’ll just have to come pop out or self organize to make shit happen there. We`re trying to plan something special for six months of zine fest in June
So keep coming to hang out !. Today was really fun.Buttt… We made these posters for zine fest that can be used every month!! Please screen shot for your future use! Send to friends who’ve just moved to ‘hillor zine distros that are oming thru town or print some out and paste them round vour neighborhood or hang them in your dorm hall
Please save our flyers and share that tshit around send friends and invite them every month or so , if you have friends who have shit they wanna distro send to your crew.
This is autonomously organized which means I can’t do all this shit by myself including getting the” word out about the event so screen shot that shit fr and keep it in your camera roll to print out or send to friends. We don’t need instagram.com fuck this shit fuck zuck fuck X and all social media the whole spirit of zine festis connecting in person so let’s make that happen
PEACE OUT
MAY ZINE FEST FLYER & DATE JUST DROPPED !!! MAY 25th, 3PM AT CLARK PARK (every last Sunday of the month) 🫣 u guys already know the drill by now , WE WANNA SEE MORE FREE SHIT THO 🗣️🗣️🗣️ no shade to those who’s hustle is selling their art but we’re tryna create a little pocket of the world where not everything is gatekept and influenced by capital!! (The free groceries were sick af last time!!) We wanna see copies of any cool zines you picked up last month , prints of any art you’ve been working on, keep coming thru with the emotional mini zines and crying punchcards that shit was so funny. See ya there ;)))
On a late summer day in 1906, a small group of newly arrived Jewish immigrants in Philadelphia took a streetcar across town to Fairmount Park. Several miles from the cramped row houses and oppressive sweatshops of the immigrant quarter of South Philly, the neighborhood now known as Queen Village, they enjoyed a sunny picnic.
They weren’t there to make small talk, though.
Instead, they wanted to write “revolutionary articles” that would spark the “struggle against all that degrades and oppresses humanity,” as one of the leaders of the group, Joseph Cohen, later wrote in his 1945 memoir.
More specifically, the picnicgoers wanted to start a newspaper. It would be titled Broyt un Frayheyt – Yiddish for Bread and Freedom – the anarchist reminder that to live the good life, one needs both.
I’m a professor of media and politics at Temple University in Philadelphia. For the past year I’ve been tracking the life and times of my great-grandfather Max, a radical Yiddish journalist in the early years of the 20th century.
To my surprise, I found he had lived here in Philadelphia, and his story is part of a largely forgotten moment in U.S. history: when Philly was an epicenter of the national anarchist movement, heartily supported by the city’s burgeoning Jewish immigrant community.
Beyond the Russian pale
By 1906, thousands of people like Max had made their way to Philadelphia from the Russian “pale” – the only part of the Russian Empire where they could legally reside. They fled economic isolation and state-sanctioned persecution in search of a more stable life.
South Philly was better than where they had come from, but immigrant life then, as now, was by no means easy. They had escaped a legal regime of oppression and the perpetual threat of antisemitic mob violence. But in turn they found a world of dark alleys and dead ends. Their labor was exploited, their living conditions meager.
For some, the American promise of freedom and prosperity seemed to ring hollow.
They did, however, find one freedom they had not experienced before. They were able to speak, write and publish their ideas no matter how outlandish or against the grain.
The Yiddish press in the United States was experiencing extraordinary growth at the time. In New York, Philadelphia and other cities, newspapers quickly emerged – and often disappeared – month over month.
Max moved to Philadelphia in 1906 to work with another immigrant named Joseph Cohen. Cohen had arrived in Philadelphia three years earlier. He earned a scant living making cigars, but his real work was advocating anarchism.
At the dawn of the 20th century, anarchism was not the nihilistic chaos the term may bring to mind today. It was a heartfelt dream of a free and egalitarian society.
The anarchists believed that man-made hierarchies – political, economic and religious – were illegitimate and limited the full expression of humanity. They rejected the authority of the state. That particularly appealed to many Jewish immigrants, for whom laws in the old country had long served as vehicles of oppression.
Cohen had studied this philosophy of local autonomy and communal life with the Philadelphia activist Voltairine de Cleyre.
History may remember Emma Goldman, a Lithuanian-born New Yorker and perhaps the leading voice of American anarchism from that era. But de Cleyre was the heart and soul of Philadelphia’s anarchist scene.
A tireless critic of the inequities of the industrial age, de Cleyre had taught herself Yiddish to better serve as “the apostle of anarchism” in the Jewish ghetto.
While de Cleyre could often be found speaking in front of city hall, Max, Cohen and their colleagues were more likely to gather at the corner of Fifth and South streets, the hub of Philadelphia’s Yiddish press and its culture of rambunctious street debate.
By 1906, Cohen had co-founded the anarchist Radical Library in the upstairs rooms at 229 Pine St. This provided the Philadelphia anarchists a meeting space and reading room.
But “the Jewish newspaper men, the radicals and the tireless talkers,” as the Philadelphia historian Harry Boonin wrote, still congregated in the ramshackle cafes lining the 600 block of South Fifth, where they would argue over anarchism and atheism deep into the night.
Competition with NYC comrades
Cohen’s goal was to publish a nationally influential anarchist paper that would give voice to the “comrades from Philadelphia.”
That meant direct competition with the New York Yiddish press and the influential weekly newspaper Freie Arbeiter Stimme, or The Free Voice of Labor. Edited by Saul Yanovksy on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, FAS was the center of the Jewish anarchist movement and of the Yiddish intelligentsia more broadly.
“To be able to say ‘I have written for Yanovsky,’” wrote the sociologist Robert Park in 1922, “is a literary passport for a Yiddish writer.”
Although the FAS masthead said the paper was located in New York and Philadelphia, Yanovksy controlled the operation from New York, much to Cohen’s dismay.
Cohen had partnered with Yanovsky earlier in 1906 to publish a daily anarchist newspaper. He maintained a small office in the back of Finkler’s cigar store at Fifth and Bainbridge streets. But the paper was printed in New York and delivered back to Philadelphia each morning by courier train.
Cohen wrote in his memoir that he suspected Yanovsky intentionally sabotaged the effort by insisting that he personally write the daily editorial, but then turning in his copy too late for the paper to make the train. After two months the partnership, and the paper, fell apart.
For Cohen, the lesson was that to be the genuine voice of the anarchist movement, he had to print the paper locally in Philadelphia.
Bread and Freedom published its first issue on Nov. 11, 1906. The date was symbolic. It was the anniversary of the execution of the “Chicago martyrs” – the four men wrongly sentenced to death for the 1886 bombing at a labor rally at Chicago’s Haymarket Square. The Haymarket affair galvanized the anarchist movement among immigrants, even as it accelerated the wider fear of foreign-born radicalism.
Over the next three months, the newspaper offered a weekly digest of anarchist arguments. It translated into Yiddish Voltairine de Cleyre’s critique of capitalism and what she called its “moral bankruptcy” – its hunger for wealth, power and material possessions. It attacked what de Cleyre called the “dominant idea” of the times – “the shameless, merciless” exploitation of the worker, “only to produce heaps and heaps of things – things ugly, things harmful, things useless, and at the best largely unnecessary.”
Almost as soon as it began, however, Bread and Freedom ran out of money. Its rhetoric was exciting but ineffective. The paper offered no real solutions beyond an impossible demand to dismantle the capitalist state.
Although two members of the group were briefly detained by the police in Baltimore for selling a radical newspaper, their fiery propaganda lit no revolutionary spark.
Instead, it disappeared quietly, folding in January 1907.
Shifting tactics
Even then, a different kind of immigrant was arriving in the U.S. from Russia. Their radical politics were coupled with organizational acumen.
Many of the older anarchists would join forces with these newcomers, and the effort morphed into something more pragmatic. They helped build the foundations of the 20th-century labor movement, which successfully fought for once-radical ideals such as the eight-hour workday and paid sick leave.
A few years earlier, though, the streets of South Philly had been home to a vibrant space of free speech and boundless political imagination. It would not last long, but it is a moment I believe is worth remembering.
Mark ur calendars 4 the 4th zine fest of the year babeyyyy !! The vibes were just so immaculate and the reads were just oh so sexy and subversive last time I don’t wanna wait til Sunday, April 27th at 3pm to get my zine distro on!!!! 🤬 act autonomously wear a mask bring your neighbors or you friends from out of town (we need more pet appearances too come y’all on I wanna play with ur dogs). LETS KEEP THIS GOINGG ⚡️😛🪕💕
.jpg){kind=link}