Letter Writing for Rodney Hinton Jr.

from O.R.C.A.

We are gathering to write letters of support and solidarity to Black freedom fighter Rodney Hinton. Bring your friends, food and zines. We’ll provide the letter writing materials. Please wear a mask. If you can’t attend, we encourage you to write a letter on your own.

Rodney Hinton Jr.

Clermont County Jail

4700 East Filager Road

Batavia, OH 45103

2pm

June 8th

ORCA

O.R.C.A. Is Public

from O.R.C.A.

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.

For the Rebels of 2020: A Black anarchist letter writing event to commemorate the 5 year anniversary of the George Floyd Uprising

from O.R.C.A.

May 31st
2pm to 4pm
Black anarchists will be gathering at O.R.C.A. to write to incarcerated Black rebels and revolutionaries who were arrested during the George Floyd uprising that erupted five tears ago. We’ll talk about different Black prisoners from the uprising as well as reflect upon the meaning of that time five years out. As always, leave your white or non-Black partner at home! Paper, stamps, and envelopes will be provided. Bring zines, food and your homies. Please wear a mask.
We’ll be writing to the following Black prisoners of the uprising. If you can’t attend, we encourage you to write on your own time in the spirit of solidarity.
Khalif Miller
https://uprisingsupport.org/2024/08/12/khalif-miller-pennsylvania/
https://www.instagram.com/freekhalifphilly/
Malik Muhammad
https://uprisingsupport.org/2023/12/12/malik-muhammad/
https://malikspeaks.noblogs.org/
David Elmakayes
https://uprisingsupport.org/2023/12/12/david-elmakayes/
https://mongoosedistro.com/2021/07/02/this-land-by-david-elmakayes/
Mujera Benjamin Lunga’ho
https://uprisingsupport.org/2024/04/21/mujera-benjamin-lungaho-arkansas/
Christopher Tindal
https://uprisingsupport.org/2024/09/26/christopher-tindal-new-york/

CH’O TINIMIT SOCIAL

from O.R.C.A.

MAY 17th
6PM
ORCA

Vamos a pasar un rato conociendo a Ch’o Tinimit, un nuevo centro social anarkista en Xela, Guate. Habrá comida, juegos, musica, amigos y conversación con unx de lxs fundadorxs del proyecto. Invitan a sus amigos, y traiga una mascara de covid!
Join us for a low-key kickback to learn about Ch’o Tinimit, a new Anarchist info shop in Xela, Guate. There will be food, friends, games, music, and conversation with one of the founders of Ch’o Tinimit. Bring your friends, wear a mask!

InterRebellium 1: The Estallido Social Screening

from O.R.C.A.

In October 2019, protests against a transit fare hike in Santiago erupted into a nation-wide insurrection against the Chilean state. For six months, the streets were transformed into vibrant laboratories of self-organization, creativity and resistance, before ultimately being cleared by the promise of a new constitution and the spread of a global pandemic.

In the opening installment of Interrebellium, subMedia traces the history of the Estallido Social through the first-hand experiences of its participants, as they share battle-tested street tactics, and hard-won lessons about the lengths that the state will go to repress and recuperate challenges to its rule.

Trailer

Crowd Control: What police tactics teach us about the state

from O.R.C.A.

If you were bummed to miss a talk on police tactics, there’s another chance! Join us again for a brief lecture and a collective discussion about how police relate to and suppress protest movements. By looking at police tactics to street action and civil disorder, how can we better develop our own priorities and anticipate police response to movements for liberation?

Our aim will be to understand the logics behind how cops roll up on protests. Using authorities’ own playbooks as a starting point, we will build a top level picture of how states operate, and we will look at how that manifests to police tactics on the ground. Expect some discussion of state violence and police brutality.

Anarchist Letter Writing

from O.R.C.A.

Let’s support our incarcerated comrades and fighters! Our movement is only as strong as our support for the rebels behind the walls. We’ll be writing to the three following prisoners Hybachi Lemar, Mujera Benjamin Lunga’ho and Luigi Mangione. Bring food and homies. We’ll provide stamps, envelopes, pens, stamps and paper. Please wear a mask!
5pm
April 19th
ORCA
Information on who we will be writing to:
Hybachi Lemar (Incarcerated Black Anarchist Revolutionary)
Hybachi LeMar
c/o Midwest Books to Prisoners
1321 N Milwaukee Avenue PMB 460
Chicago, IL 60622
Mujera Benjamin Lunga’ho (Prisoner from the 2020 Uprising)
You can send money to support Mujera Benjamin Lunga’ho on CashApp at: https://cash.app/$JohnLungaho
Mujera Benjamin Lunga’ho
08572-509
FCI Forrest City Medium
Federal Correctional Institution
P.O. Box 3000
Forrest City, AR 72336
Luigi Mangione (Alleged Claims Adjuster)
Luigi Mangione (52503-511)
MDC Brooklyn
METROPOLITAN DETENTION CENTER
P.O. BOX 329002
BROOKLYN, NY 11232

film screening: The Gentleman Bank Robber

from O.R.C.A.

6:30 PM
April 3
O.R.C.A.

The Gentleman Bank Robber delves into the life of bo brown, an ex-political prisoner, a white working class butch, and a former member of the George Jackson Brigade. Journey through recollections of bank robberies and life underground, alongside the day to day life of an unrepentant former guerrilla. Queer, witty, and serious all at once.

We’ll have copies of Queer Fire, a zine of writings and interviews with bo brown and other George Jackson Brigade members, available to $0-$99 sliding scale to raise money for the space.

46 mins
Directed by Julie Perini
English with subtitles

The Language Of Violence

from O.R.C.A.


How do we define violence, and who gets to decide? What is terrorism and what is harm? Language is not just a tool for communication between individuals, but a tool for social control under systems. Language shapes how we understand things like harm, justice, and oppression in general. The words we use influence policy, media narratives, and even the way we respond to acts of violence. But what happens when certain harms are dismissed, obscured, or legitimized through language?

This interactive workshop delves into the power of framing, drawing on George Lakoff’s work on cognitive linguistics and Johan Galtung’s theory of direct, structural, and cultural violence. We will examine how language constructs meaning, dictates public discourse, and reinforces or disrupts systems of power. Participants will engage in critical discussions and real-world case examples (Yes, we’re gonna talk about our boy Luigi) to explore key questions:

  • How does the framing of violence influence public perception, policy decisions, and shape a carcerality?
  • What forms of harm are ignored or minimized due to linguistic choices?
  • How do terms like “crime,” “terrorism,” and “security” shape narratives around state and interpersonal violence?
  • How can we harness linguistic awareness as a tool for social change?

Through group activities and reflective dialogue, attendees will learn to critically analyze the ways language frames violence in media, politics, and everyday conversation. Join us for an engaging and thought-provoking conversation on the intersection of linguistics, violence, and cultural perception.

  • Date: 2025/03/23 15:00

Book Release and Film Screening

from O.R.C.A.

  • Date: 2025/03/16 18:15

`The Unexpected Guest and a Section of Palestine, Mon Amour’ brings together a new, rough translation of L’Ospite Inatteso, written by Sicilian insurrectionary anarchist Alfredo Bonanno, with mostly previously untranslated sections from his book Palestina, Mon Amour. Diary-like, it’s a remembrance of his deadly armed struggle during the 60s and 70s, along Palestinians in the Levant (where he was tortured by Mossad in 1972), in Greece, Ireland, and Africa. Written during later-life prison stints, these poetic, intimate stanzas grapple with suffering, monstrosity, normality, death, killing, the quantitative and qualitative. Messy, flawed, but occasionally critical, clandestine warfare is considered along memory, knowledge, and the word. An accompanying pamphlet, “A Mano Armata (Excerpts)” collects topical sections from that book of his.
¡G.A.R.I! (2013, 1h 23 min., French with English subtitles), by Nicolas Réglat, is a documentary about `70s French and Spanish anarchists (the `Revolutionary Internationalist Action Groups’) in solidarity with Spanish anti-authoritarians threatened with execution. Kidnapping a banker among many other actions, GARI embraced armed struggle, situationism, and the autonomous movements, resisting vanguardism, fetishization, and campism. Réglat aims to save these stories, which include his family’s, from `the dustbin of history’. Through archival footage, present-day conversations, and expired statute of limitations, it’s a refreshingly human look into complex experiences which still ripple strongly today.

For more info and copies/free pdfs after event, visit reekingthicketspress.noblogs.org

Zine Prep + Open Write

from O.R.C.A.

  • Date: 2025/03/06 19:00 – 21:00

The cutty slutty queer anarcho spellbook you’ve been seeking is accepting submissions through mid-March 🔮 This thursday from 7-9pm we’ll gather to talk a little bit about this upcoming zine and enjoy some leisurely open writing time. Optional prompts including the chaos magic of militancy and the 5-year-plan of frivolity // Autonomous sharing and feedback groups encouraged.

`The Unexpected Guest and a Section of Palestine, Mon Amour’ Book Release Event and Screening of ¡G.A.R.I! (2013) – March 16

from Reeking Thickets Press

Join us on March 16th at 6:15pm at ORCA for the release of the book `The Unexpected Guest and a Section of Palestine, Mon Amour’, the pamphlet “A Mano Armata (Excerpts)”, and a screening of the film ¡G.A.R.I! (2013, 1h 23 min, French with English subtitles), by Nicolas Réglat, followed by a discussion if the mood strikes us. For location and accessibility info, email orca.philly@protonmail.com (note that ORCA is not wheelchair accessible and heating in the space can be spotty). There will be free books (somewhat limited quantity, somewhat crudely printed and bound) and pamphlets and the event is also free, with no RSVP necessary. Masking is encouraged and expected, and there will be an air filter running. There will be a box you can drop contributions to Reeking Thickets and ORCA in, but only if you really feel like it. After the event the full reading and printing pdfs will be uploaded, and a somewhat limited further quantity of physical copies will be available (email reekingthickets@proton.me) for $5 each to cover some of the costs of production, or, possibly, for slightly more at local radical bookstores.

`The Unexpected Guest and a Section of Palestine, Mon Amour’ is a 266pg. book from Reeking Thickets Press bringing together a new, rough translation of the 2010 book L’Ospite Inattesso by influential Sicilian insurrectionary anarchist, robber, poet, and philosopher Alfredo Bonanno (and as he reminds us, former motorcycle racer, professional poker player, and business executive) with similar, mostly previously untranslated sections from another book of his, Palestina, Mon Amour, and some relevant excerpts from his essay, “E noi saremo sempre pronti a impadronirci un’altra volta del cielo: Contro l’amnistia” (trans. – “And we will always be ready to storm the heavens again: Against the amnesty”).

An accompanying 51pg. pamphlet, “A Mano Armata (Excerpts)” collects more topical sections from that book of his (the title of which translates as `with armed hand’, or `at gunpoint’ and is part of the Italian legal name of offenses analogous to armed robbery or assault with a deadly weapon, with `a mano‘ also having the sense of a tool ready and available for use, or of `hand-made’, `manually’).

To our knowledge, The Unexpected Guest, A Mano Armata, and many of the included sections of Palestine, Mon Amour haven’t been properly translated into English, and this primarily machine-based translation – though we feel is sufficient for some purposes – certainly can’t be considered as such. Translation was carried out by Nim Thorn, a non-speaker of Italian, using various translation programs with the results then checked for apparent mistakes or divergences and the offending passages re-translated in context with dictionaries and using other translation programs. Short stanzas (such as the section “Untitled” in Palestine, Mon Amour) or metered sections (such as the Faust excerpts in The Unexpected Guest) were also translated word by word using comparisons of multiple tools. The introduction to the second edition of A Mano Armata is a particularly bad translation, of a difficult text in the first place, though some parts of it still shine through quite clearly, and the subject matter – in part about the desire to engage with the word backwards by constructing semio-cognitive labyrinths to reflect absence and help bypass the recuperating tendency of the will and language – feels ironically relevant.

Footnotes, selections, typesetting, back cover text for the book (the back cover text of the A Mano Armata pamphlet is taken from excerpts of the text), and cover designs are also by Nim Thorn. No authorization was sought for this project and, for our part, further printing or distribution is welcomed.

The sharply echoing, often numbered and diary-like stanzas that make up much of the book are a remembrance of the deadly, pro-liberatory armed struggle Bonanno took part in during the `60s and following decades, including alongside Palestinians in the Levant (relating also his experience of torture for this by Mossad in 1972), in Greece against the junta, in Ireland, Algeria, Uganda, and Italy. Written mostly during various later-life prison stints in Italy and Greece for robberies and seditions (both real and fabricated), these poetic, searingly honest tracings of formative, difficult memories grapple with suffering, monstrosity, humanity, and ghostly normality, the silent, irreversible and all-transfiguring singularities of death and of ending the lives of others, and the irresolvable tension between the quantitative and qualitative. The paradoxical, messy engagements with the often deeply flawed, recuperative, and quixotic but sometimes critical aspects of clandestine revolutionary warfare come deeply into play, alongside those with the projects of memory, theoretical and personal understanding, and the word itself. He refuses to shy away from the stark insights and puzzling question marks born of having closely shadowed and struck at torturers, informers, provocateurs, traitors, cops, and soldiers, and does so without hiding behind either moralism or trite anti-moralist cliches. Reaching us like an esoteric, late medieval folk heretic, Bonanno in these texts feels perfectly attuned to apprehend his and our current moments (in particular their real incomprehensibility), even through such unlikely lenses as his highly ambivalent exegeses of Saint Augustine or Goethe’s Faust.

¡G.A.R.I! (2013) by Nicolas Réglat is a documentary about the affinity groups of French and Spanish anarchists who briefly gathered under that acronym (trans. – `Revolutionary Internationalist Action Groups’) in France from 1973-1974 for revolt and to join with Spanish anarchist and autonomous rebels in combat with the far-right dictatorship of Franco and the broader capitalist, authoritarian order, who were then under real threat of judicial or extra-judicial execution. It included the participation, alleged in some cases, of many influential figures including Jean Weir, Lucio Urtubia, Floréal Cuadrado, Jean-Marc Rouillan, and Octavio Alberola. Operating between various regions of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, and coordinating with rebels in or exiled from Spain, and with groups across Europe, GARI carried out a kidnapping of a Spanish banker and numerous non-lethal arsons, bombings, acts of infrastructure sabotage, machine-gunnings, robberies and fraud, while carrying out creative counter-information and aiding in the smuggling of arms and fighters to and from Spain. In the ambit of groups like the Angry Brigade or the First of May Group, GARI embraced an aggressive and strategic transnational armed struggle while remaining in touch with the spark of situationism and the autonomous movements, and resisting the vanguardism, organizational fetishization, and authoritarian variants of anti-imperialism so prevalent then and now. Though only existing as such for a short period before diffracting in countless directions across the constellation of struggle in Europe (including some arguably non-anarchist directions, such as the later path of Action Directe) which they contributed to spreading, GARI was an important node and precedent in the experimenting millieu from which contemporary insurrectionary anarchism was then emerging. Taking as point of departure a never-published comic book created by the GARI kidnappers in 1976, Réglat sets out to `save from the dustbin of history’ the stories of those involved, which includes that of some of his own family members. Consisting of archival footage and present day conversations with people involved in the events, and made possible by the expiration of statute of limitations, the film is a refreshingly human look into complex experiences from a chapter often glossed over, yet the consequences of which still ripple strongly in our struggles today.

One Year Of O.R.C.A.!

from O.R.C.A.

O.R.C.A. has officially circled the sun! We’re celebrating a year of aquatic anarchy by hanging out, and screening a fun feminist deep cut, Girls Town (1996).

It’s been an interesting journey running the space for a year and we’ve learned a lot, feared a lot, and felt immense joy! Thanks to everyone who has made this space what it is, hauled trash, painted walls, booked events, held meetings, attended an event, hung out, sent us emails, gave zines, or threw cash or supplies our way. We appreciate you all! <3

We’re looking forward to continuing to hold down our strange little water world for another year. Unfortunately O.R.C.A. isn’t free to run (anymore 😉 and we do have to cover the cost of rent ($525/month). If you, too, want to see O.R.C.A. stick around, consider sending us some $$ and/or sharing our fundraiser. Or for our friends in the cash business, come in and check out our irl donation box.

https://givebutter.com/LPm7Na

Girls Town (1996) is a cathartic and underrated feminist coming of age story that’s sooo 90s. The film follows four girl best friends in their senior year of high school as they wrestle with loss, smash misogyny, and show everyone who underestimates them just how powerful a girl gang can be. (90 mins)

March 9th
Doors 5PM
Film 7PM

Love In A Fucked Up World Reading Group

from O.R.C.A.

Love in A Fucked Up World
A valentimes reading group

 

Sunday 2/23
noon-2pm @ O.R.C.A.

Sunday 3/2 @ O.R.C.A.
noon-2pm

An affinity group of lovers cannot lose!     ….right?

Join friends, comrades, exes, & crushes at O.R.C.A. for a two-part discussion of Dean Spade’s book, Love In A Fucked Up World: How to build Relationships, Hook up, and Raise Hell Together.

Too many projects and resistance groupls crumble under interpersonal conflict. No matter how radical our politics may be, we often treat each other poorly. Here’s to unlearning our messed up patterns and navigating desire, breakups, jealousy, and friendship better– leveling up so we can throw down together.

Children’s Liberation: The Liberation of Us All

from O.R.C.A.

  • Date: 2025/02/09 13:00

No matter who you are or where you come from, in one way or another, the boot of adult supremacy is unavoidable.

This conversation is one for all ages, as we all struggle to remove the boot from all our necks. Let’s imagine a world where the inner child doesn’t need to be healed, but can flourish from the beginning.

Discussion will include the universality of adult supremacy, the history of the movement, and how we can start to give the youth their autonomy back.