How to defend yourself during a police interrogation

from Projet Evasions

“An interrogation is not a harmonious exchange between two individuals. It’s a conflict.
And in this conflict, our ignorance is our strength. Ignorance of the meaning of police work, ignorance of the manipulative techniques used, ignorance of the legal framework and, last but not least, ignorance of our means of defence.
In response to this observation, this book is intended as a tool for self-defense against police interrogation practices of interrogation.”

Preface to the English version

In summer 2022, 2000 copies of this book were printed in French and 2000 in German. The french version is now sold out, and the Publisher «Éditions du Commun» had now reissued the book.

The book was written with the intention of serving as a tool of self-defense against the manipulative interrogation strategies employed by the police. As stated in the introduction, “It addresses readers in various countries in which legislation may differ“. And indeed, we soon received feedback that the content conveyed by the book is equally applicable to countries such as Turkey, Morocco, Serbia, Italy, Denmark, and many more. And soon a number of supportive people were offering to translate the book into other languages. This is what happened with the English version, and we’d like to take this opportunity to warmly thank our translator and proofreader for their fine work.

As a consequence of imperialism and colonization, English is spoken today in contexts as diverse as Kenya, Australia and, of course UK and the USA. So many different places from which you may be reading these words, and where the contexts of repression are very different. Most of what is conveyed in the book applies to all these contexts, but, in case of doubts, it makes sense to keep an eye out for certain elements that differ and check them with your local legal team.

Our network lacks relays in the English-speaking world, so let us take this opportunity to pass on the message that we are looking for a publishing house or a collective that would be interested in printing and distributing the book in its geographical regions.

With these words, we wish you a pleasant reading.

Project-evasions – network of anarchist friendships

To the International Anarchist Movement: Three Security Proposals

from No Trace Project

This text is addressed to the international anarchist movement, which we’ll define as the sum of individuals fighting for anarchist ideas around the world. This movement is in conflict with its natural enemies — the State, fascist groups, and so on — and must protect itself if it is to survive in this conflict. In this text, we make three proposals for the international anarchist movement to consider in the coming years in order to allow anarchists to continue attacking while limiting their chances of getting caught.

1. Share knowledge internationally

Our enemies organize internationally through cooperation between police and intelligence agencies and new developments in science and technology — the increasing precision of DNA forensics and the proliferation of drones being just two examples. This means that a repressive technique used in one country may soon appear in another where it is not yet being used. It also means that an effective countermeasure used by anarchists in one country may be effective in another. We should therefore share knowledge of repressive techniques and countermeasures on an international level.

Ideally, any experience of repression or experimentation with countermeasures that might be of interest to other anarchists should be written up, translated into several languages, and made public. When anarchists are arrested and brought to trial, we can often obtain court documents that reveal how they were caught: we should exploit this and publish analyses of such documents, bearing in mind that information obtained in this way may be partial or distorted. We should experiment with new countermeasures and write and publish reports on these experiments (except in cases where the State might adapt and weaken the countermeasure by reading the report). We should try to collect information at the source: read police training manuals, steal police files, analyze data leaks from police servers.

A specific feature of the international anarchist movement is its decentralization. We see this not as a weakness but as a strength: in addition to preventing the hierarchies inherent in centralized organizations, it makes it harder for our enemies to target us because they cannot topple the whole movement by disrupting one part of it. However, this decentralization also makes it harder for us to share knowledge across borders. To overcome this, we see two options: developing informal bonds with other anarchists by meeting at international book fairs and other events, and using the Internet. We propose using the No Trace Project as an international platform to share the knowledge that is suited for sharing on the Internet, not as a replacement for informal bonds but as a useful supplement to spread information beyond existing informal networks.

2. Establish a security baseline

Anarchists who carry out direct actions should analyze the risks associated with their actions and take appropriate precautions: dress anonymously, be mindful of video surveillance and DNA traces, and so on. However, this is not enough. If only those who carry out actions take precautions, it is easier for our enemies to target these individuals. This is, firstly, because they stand out: if only a handful of comrades always leave their phones at home, for example, this could be an obvious starting point for an investigation with no other specific leads. And secondly, because our enemies can get information about them through their friends who do not carry out actions: if someone doesn’t use social media but is mentioned on their friends’ social media, for example, an investigation could query their friends’ social media to get information about them. We should therefore establish a security baseline that everyone in anarchist networks agrees to follow, including those who have never carried out direct actions and have no intention of doing so.

We can’t say what this baseline should be, as it will depend on each local context, but we can give some ideas. As a bare minimum, everyone should help hide information from our enemies by not speculating about who is involved in an action, not bragging about one’s own participation in an action, not talking to the police, and encrypting any computer or phone used for conversations with other anarchists using a strong password. Discuss sensitive matters exclusively outdoors and without electronic devices, and don’t make it obvious to your social environment who you are having sensitive conversations with (e.g. don’t ask someone to “go for a walk” in front of people who aren’t involved in the project being discussed). In addition, we think everyone should stop using social media (and definitely stop posting photos of other anarchists, even with their consent, because this helps the State map anarchist networks) and leave their phones at home at all times (not just during actions). Carrying your phone with you has security implications for everyone you interact with.

It can be difficult to convince people to follow such a security baseline, especially if they think they have no personal interest in following it. If someone is reluctant, we should remind them that it’s not just their security that’s at stake, but also the security of other anarchists around them who may be carrying out or planning to carry out direct actions. Everyone who wants actions to happen has an interest in making anarchist networks as difficult as possible for the authorities to repress.

3. Explore new horizons

Our enemies evolve over time as they refine their strategies and techniques. We should prepare not for the battles that already took place, but for those yet to come. We should therefore go beyond our current security practices, anticipate the evolution of our enemies, and develop new countermeasures.

Here are three issues we think the international anarchist movement should explore in the coming years.

Drones

Aerial surveillance is rapidly becoming cheaper and more efficient. How should we react to the presence of police drones at riots, anarchist events, and so on? How can we detect or take down drones? Should we prepare for the risk of drones being used for routine aerial patrols, and if so, how?

Facial recognition technologies

In 2023, a journalist tracked down German left-wing militant Daniela Klette, who had been in clandestinity for decades, by using facial recognition technology to match a decades-old photo of her with a recent photo from Facebook taken during a dance class. What can we do against this threat? How can we prepare for the increasing integration of facial recognition technology into public video surveillance systems?

Lack of insight into police activity

Until a few years ago, radio scanners were used by anarchists to monitor police frequencies, for example to learn about nearby police activity while carrying out a direct action. In most contexts, this is now impossible because police communications are encrypted. Can we develop new techniques to functionally replace radio scanners or, more generally, to gain insight into police activity in a given area?

About the authors

We’re the No Trace Project. For the past three years, we’ve been building tools to help anarchists understand the capabilities of their enemies, undermine surveillance efforts, and ultimately act without getting caught. We plan to continue in the years to come. We welcome feedback. You can visit our website at notrace.how, and contact us at notrace@autistici.org.

This text is available as a zine (in Letter and A4 dimensions).

Let’s prepare ourselves, and may luck be on our side.

In Contempt #46: Heritage Foundation Pushes for Repression of Anti-War Movement, Arrests Follow Raids on Fur Farm

from It’s Going Down

Mink releasers were connected to anarchist communes: FBI

from Mainstream Media

Sunbury, Pa. — Two Massachusetts suspects who released more than 600 mink earlier this month from a Northumberland County fur farm are involved in anarchist groups, according to FBI officials.

One of the suspects also was allegedly promised $50,000 to come to Pennsylvania to release the mink, according to police. More than 60 of the mink are still missing according to the farm owner.

According to an amended criminal complaint filed by PSP Stonington, police found that Christopher Jacob Legere (also known as Celeste) 25, and Cara Ashley Mitrano, 23, are part of the “Firehouse” and “Collective A Go Go” communes in Worcester, Massachusetts. The two suspects were charged for allegedly releasing 683 mink from Robert H. Stahl Sons in Rockefeller Township early the morning of Oct. 19.

Amended charges were filed to add one felony count each of eco-terrorism, corrupt organizations, burglary, and misdemeanors of theft and related charges. Both Legere and Mitrano had already been charged with felony counts of agricultural vandalism and misdemeanor cruelty to animals.

Police were called to the farm around 1 a.m. Oct. 19 after a camera sensor there was activated and alerted the owners of the break-in. Video footage showed Legere and Stahl inside the farm dressed in dark-colored clothing with head lamps. They appeared to be carrying bags and had their hoods up, according to the amended affidavit. The two suspects used bolt cutters to cut a lock off the fence and then released the mink. They also destroyed records on the pens.

The farm owners told police they saw Legere and Mitrano take off in a Subaru Crosstrek. The Stahls followed in their vehicle and attempted to block the road to intercept them, but instead the Subaru accelerated and hit their car. One of the family members got a picture of the Subaru and noted it had a Massachusetts registration plate. The Subaru continued south on Airport Road, and the Stahls followed them for a distance onto Seven Points and Captain Bloom roads. The Stahls told police they saw the suspects toss a backpack, work glove, and dark colored sweatshirt out of the vehicle.

Both Legere and Mitrano were pulled over a short time later by police in Ralpho Township. Legere and Mitrano were arrested and taken to Northumberland County Jail and their car was impounded. Police searched the two suspects and found a hand-drawn map in Mitrano’s pants pocket with directions to the farm.

Trooper Jacob Hook applied for search warrants for the evidence that was tossed on the road, a purse that was found in the car, and the Subaru. He also applied for and was granted a search warrant for the clothes Legere and Mitrano were wearing at the time they were taken into custody, which police described as having a “strong musky odor.”

During the search, police found cutting tools, work gloves, crowbars, a lock-picking kit, and anarchist propaganda literature. There also were directions on how to navigate out of Pennsylvania to the state of Vermont and a map with an “X” on Airport Road where the suspects were to park. Arrows illustrated where the two were to walk through the woods to the farm. Hook also found stickers that said “officer down” with a smiling star giving a thumbs up, and some that said “policy proposal” and depicted a police car on fire, according to the affidavit.

Police intercepted a phone call Legere made from jail on Oct. 20 in which he spoke with an unidentified individual about $50,000 payment he was promised, according to the affidavit.

As of Sunday, 619 mink had been recovered and 64 were still missing, according to Hook. Three of the minks died post-recovery. Farm owner Mark Stahl told police that each mink costs $50 and that approximately 25% of the minks recovered will die of a disease, while the others will be left to die of starvation or be killed on roadways or by wild animals, according to court documents.

A similar incident occurred Sept. 17, 2023 in which unknown suspects broke into the fur farm and released hundreds of minks. No suspect has been charged for that incident as of yet. Police could not say if this most recent incident was connected to last year’s event.

Legere and Mitrano remain in Northumberland County Jail in lieu of $150,000 cash bail each. Both will have a preliminary hearing Tuesday morning Oct. 29 at the office of District Judge Rachel Wiest-Benner.

 

graffiti and wheatpastes

from Mastodon

Some excellent graffiti and wheatpastes I ran into

Penn sent officers to raid a pro-Palestinian activist house off campus. They said it was in connection with a vandalism investigation.

from Mainstream Media

Residents of the house said a cell phone was taken and that the search warrant was issued in connection to a recent vandalism.

University of Pennsylvania police officers raided the off-campus home of several Penn community activists last week in connection to an alleged act of vandalism — a move that has deepened scrutiny into the Ivy League institution’s handling of dissent over the war in Gaza.

Around 6 a.m. on Oct. 18, residents said a dozen armed campus officers stormed their West Philadelphia home in tactical gear, corralling the pajama-clad residents at gunpoint. People who live in the house said police brought one resident, whom they did not identify, to the station for questioning and that their “personal device was seized on suspicion of vandalism.”

While no one has been charged or arrested, the group described the search as an unprecedented and “traumatic” show of force against pro-Palestinian activists on campus.

“This is a disgusting escalation from the University, and comes after a year of disciplining, arresting, and brutalizing their own students who organize for Palestinian liberation, and they made the deliberately traumatizing and threatening decision to invade our home,” the house residents said in a joint statement. The group provided written answers to The Inquirer, but declined to be individually identified as they have not been charged and feared further reprisal.

Penn police confirmed that officers executed a search warrant on Friday in connection with a vandalism incident, but did not specify details about the case or the underlying vandalism. Penn police defended the action by saying that, in the last four months, the university has experienced about a quarter million dollars in damages from vandalism, including broken glass and graffiti.

“Any legal action taken by the UPPD is based on the violation of laws in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, not the policies of the university,” said Kathleen Shields Anderson, vice president of Penn’s division of public safety.

While Penn did not elaborate on the alleged vandalism, the search warrant nonetheless marks an escalation in the school’s handling of the fallout from the war overseas. It also comes at the time when the university faces pressure to crack down on antisemitic speech as well as activity critical of Israel on campus. Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian student protests over the war continue to roil the campus and administers over what activists describe as biased and uneven treatment.

Penn police did not provide a copy of the warrant and the record has yet to be filed with the courts as of Thursday, meaning details of the investigation may remain unclear unless or until charges are filed.

A spokesperson for District Attorney Larry Krasner confirmed that the prosecutor’s office approved the search warrant based on an ongoing investigation led by Penn police. If the search leads the university to pursue criminal charges, the district attorney “will carefully review the evidence submitted by the appropriate law enforcement authorities and make a fair and just determination,” said spokesperson Dustin Slaughter.

It was not clear where the off-campus house was located nor how many people live there. The group described themselves as “members of the Penn community,” of varying ages.

Last week, Penn police and Philadelphia police officer entered the home, awoke the residents and moved the group into the living room “at gunpoint,” the group said in a statement. The Philadelphia Police Department declined comment and deferred questions to Penn police.

Residents described the early-morning sting as “the most severe act of university repression of pro-Palestine activism since last October” as well as “a staggering show of force unheard of at any other university.” The group said it has consulted with lawyers.

Anderson maintained that throughout the execution of the warrant, officers “took care to explain to all involved what was occurring and to treat them with respect.”

As with other campuses, vandalism has been a routine flashpoint at Penn since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, with messages calling for “Ceasefire” or “Free Gaza” scrawled on campus buildings across the region. Penn has been the site of a concentrated — and controversial — series of defacements, including several incidents within the last month alone, according to the student-run Daily Pennsylvanian.

More vandalism occurred this week, including one that said “Kill Zios” and another that said, “KILL YOUR LOCAL ZIO NAZI,” the student newspaper reported Thursday.

In July, doors and windows were damaged at the Pennovation Center, which houses the company Ghost Robotics, which is involved in the production of equipment used by the military and which critics have targeted in the wake of Israel-Hamas war.

But on a large, urbanized campus, few vandalism cases result in exhaustive police investigations, let alone warrant executions.

Yalile Suriel, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota who studies higher education and the militarization of campus police forces, said such departments only began conducting search warrants in recent decades, as universities dramatically expanded their law enforcement footprint. Many university departments now serve as supplemental extensions of the local police department — but often with less accountability.

“Unlike state institutions, where at least there is a sense of transparency and public record, private institutions and their police operate largely away from public view,” she said.

Suriel said that most high-profile raids that make the news involve narcotics on campus, though she could not recall another case like this focused solely on vandalism.

Public outcry over the raid has grown in recent days — with some describing the raid as a gratuitous show of force considering the nature of the alleged crime.

State Rep. Rick Krajewski, who represents parts of West Philadelphia, called it “completely unacceptable and disturbing that a dozen officers armed with tactical gear and assault rifles threatened the safety of unarmed young people who are not only students, but our neighbors.”

Police Raids at UPenn

from Unity Of Fields

🚨 On Friday, October 18th at 6am, 12 Penn Police officers and one PPD officer raided the home of pro-Palestine student organizers in full tactical gear and pointed rifles and handguns at the students. They refused to provide a warrant or share their names/badge numbers. The escalation of student repression nationwide continues.

The pigs are trying to scare people into obedience to the genocidal US war machine. Do not let them. We must become more bold, more audacious tacticians, more unified amongst revolutionaries…more uncompromising.

We cannot bow our heads and accept this or throw out radicals in an attempt to save our own skins. The hammer of the state can and will come down on any of us. We only get out of this together, as revolutionaries…not fractured, separate, weak, and reformist.

Even if it’s unlikely right now, it’s good practice for *all* of us to prepare for the possibility of raids, detainments, increased surveillance, subpoenas, etc – find educational resources at unityoffields.org

Source: Penn Freedom School for Palestine

Police Mural Vandalized in West Philly

Submission

We painted over a mural memorializing a dead cop. We took this action as part of the October 7 Week Of Rage in solidarity with Palestinian liberation. We recognize amerikkkan police as part of the same machine that kills and oppresses Palestinians across the ocean. In death as in life may no cop rest peacefully

-some anarchists

How to: fill fire extinguishers with paint

Not Liking Someone Doesn’t Mean They’re a Cop: On Bad-jacketing

from North Shore

Read the full text, including visuals, online as a PDF.

Find the full text ready for printing as an imposed PDF.

Since the commencement of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, millions around the world have taken to the streets in support of Palestine against the genocidal Zionist entity. We are, globally, in an unprecedented moment of anti-imperialist mobilisation, which threatens not only the Zionist occupation but the colonial powers that uphold it.

This text was written through the summer and early autumn of 2024 from Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee territory (so-called Southern Ontario, Canada), where people, many new to the left, have been facing intensified violence and harassment from both police and Zionists. Protests are regularly met with arrests and other attacks, which have created a climate of fear among attendees and organisers.

At the same time, that fear, combined with a disconnect from previous generations of struggle and an often-unchallenged fear of militancy, has led to practices that end up putting our comrades in more danger. This text hopes to address one such recurring issue.

 

what is bad-jacketing?

“Bad-jacketing” (or “cop-jacketing,” “fed-jacketing,” or “snitch-jacketing”) is the practice of accusing people of being a cop, informant, fascist, or other kind of bad actor on specious or non-existent evidence.

The term has been used since at least the 1960s, where it primarily described COINTELPRO operations that bad-jacketed legitimate members of the Black Panther Party and other organisations. It was, ironically, rumours from infiltrators consolidating their own positions that led to organisations not only isolating but, in some cases, severely beating or executing innocent individuals.

 

why is bad-jacketing a problem?

A 2015 text titled “No badjacketing: the state wants to kill us; let’s not cooperate” by the Twin Cities GDC, Local 14, says:

  1. At the least, it pushes away people who have, or are willing, to do work and make sacrifices for the movements.
  2. Worse, it silences entire groups by sowing mistrust within them and making discussion of strategy and tactics difficult.
  3. Very commonly, those accused of acting as informants become so alienated from their accusers that they actually become snitches.
  4. Worst-case scenario, people die. That worst-case scenario is all too common and real, and there is a famous regional history to it as well, in the case of Anna Mae Aquash, a Native American woman from Canada who had worked and sacrificed tireless for the American Indian Movement, or AIM.

Southern Ontario in 2024 is, of course, not the US in the 1960s and 1970s. Our contemporary movements do not act on false accusations of snitching by killing the accused. And while we know that the police are trying to infiltrate us and turn people into informants, the vast majority of these accusations are definitely not coming from people on the state’s payroll.

The biggest threat that bad-jacketing poses to us, here and now, is that it singles people out for state repression. Militants are more likely to be on the receiving end of these accusations, but also, anecdotally, people of colour, neurodivergent people, and anyone who “does not belong” (and, of course, people who fall into all of those categories). In doing so, the people who make these accusations in effect carry out the work of the state. They reproduce the oppressive dynamics of the outside world and push people out – often, the very people our movements are supposed to be fighting for. By pushing them out, bad-jacketing then denies support to people who are often already at heightened risk of criminalisation. It makes people into easy targets, signaling to the police that they can get away with brutalising, arresting, and jailing someone without outcry from the community.

During the 2020 Black liberation uprisings in the US, posts flooded our feeds, warning of “agents provocateur.” Decontextualised videos of police unloading bricks spread like wildfire among both far-right and far-left social media networks. Fascist fear-mongering about out-of-town “ANTIFA” inciting riots trickled down into leftist hyper-vigilance against “white outside agitators.” These warnings often ventured into the realm of conspiracy theories, where protests with unknown organisers or cop cars on fire were signs of a police set-up.

All this has had devastating consequences. The normalisation of this paranoid urge to see false flags around every corner has empowered people “on the left” to share images and openly work to identify individuals carrying out illegal actions. Contrary to what they may believe, these people’s efforts to “root out infiltrators” have in many cases now become the actual basis for the state to arrest and jail its opponents.

Beyond that, bad-jacketing leads to feelings of insecurity and distrust that can tear apart a movement – even without any real infiltrators being involved. Both online and on the ground, we can hear breathless accusations that someone at a protest is an undercover Zionist operative, often for no reason beyond that “they make us look bad.” Zionists, constantly on the lookout for ammunition against us, gladly stoke the flames. Projects like the “Shirion Collective,” a Zionist doxing campaign that claimed on social media to be training undercover operatives, see and celebrate when the left eats its own. We must be equally vigilant against these psychological attacks, which are more subtle and yet can do more damage than any one undercover’s testimony.

 

“professionally trained to make us look bad”
– Kristina Beverlin on Isaiah Willoughby

On October 5, 2021, Isaiah Willoughby, a Black man, was sentenced to two years in prison for lighting a fire outside an abandoned police precinct in Seattle in June 2020. Willoughby acted because of the murders of Manuel Ellis, his former roommate, and George Floyd at the hands of the police.

When it happened, Kristina Beverlin, a white woman who now wears a kufiya and a “Free Palestine” hat in her profile picture, immediately blasted out a photo of Willoughby. She tweeted that he “just tried to start a fire at the abandoned precinct” and called on “everyone in Seattle to retweet the photo of this man.”

In subsequent tweets, she stated her belief that “SPD wanted the precinct to catch fire to make the peaceful protesters look bad, after SPD had looked like monsters for days.”

It was her initial tweet that appeared in a court affidavit against Willoughby, and her photo that the police disseminated to identify him. In other words, it was this white woman’s insistence that the police wanted someone to set fire to the precinct, and that anyone who did so could only have been directed by the police, that sent a Black man to prison. Like any other white vigilante, the self-deputised liberal peace police will discipline, with violence if necessary, Black or people of colour who step out of line. Unlike any other, she does it in the name of anti-racism, with an hashtag in the same breath.

Similarly, social media users widely disseminated photos of a white woman suspected to have carried out the arson of the Atlanta Wendy’s where police murdered Rayshard Brooks. That she was white was proof to them that bad actors with no connection to the movement were behind property destruction during the uprisings, and that without those bad actors, the protests would have been peaceful. As it turned out, the woman in question was Natalie White, who Brooks had called his girlfriend on the night of his death. Two Black men, Chisom Kingston and John Wesley Wade, were later charged for the Wendy’s arson as well. As of December 2023, White and Kingston had accepted plea deals for probation, a fine, and community service, while Wade was scheduled to go to trial.

In both these examples, the people who sought to identify state agents “instigating” at protests were ultimately the people who acted as cops. The gravity of these actions cannot be overstated – they, and we, already know that police kill and torture Black people on the streets, and prison guards do the same against their captives on the inside.

Following the May 2022 leak of the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Jane’s Revenge shared a communiqué about the fire-bombing of a predatory anti-choice “pregnancy centre” in Madison. The action sparked the usual uproar among the right about “woke ANTIFA terrorists” waging war against Christianity. But rather than defend the action’s righteousness, much of the left instead occupied itself with speculation about whether cursive graffiti and a “too-neat” circle-A meant that it was a false flag. The underlying logic here was that if something looked “too perfect,” if it made the right too angry, it couldn’t possibly be real. We may talk of rioting against the Supreme Court, but no one seriously means it.

In response to the right-wing outrage campaign about Jane’s Revenge, the FBI offered a bounty of up to $25,000 for information. Days later, in January 2023, the US Department of Justice indicted two people for graffiti on anti-abortion centres in Florida, actions that were also broadcast through Jane’s Revenge. The Florida investigation eventually produced in a total of four arrests, all but one of the defendants being women of colour. Worse, the Florida 4 were prosecuted under the FACE Act, a law intended to protect abortion access. Meanwhile, an investigation that involved 11 different state agencies and the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force culminated in the March 2023 arrest of Hridindu Sankar Roychowdhury for the Madison fire-bombing. Though the right jumped at the opportunity to gloat, widely publicising the defendants’ photos and personal information, charges against Roychowdhury and the Florida 4 received little attention from the left. Roychowdhury pled guilty after being denied pre-trial release and was sentenced to 90 months (7.5 years) in federal prison on April 10, 2024. Three of the Florida 4, after taking felony pleas that avoided convictions under the FACE Act, were also handed down prison time on September 12 of this year, ranging from 30 days to 1 year and 1 day. Popular support may not have prevented those prosecutions, but the significance of solidarity shouldn’t be understated. Instead, much of the left’s message to militants turns out to have been: “we’ll call you feds, and when it turns out we were wrong, we’ll abandon you anyways.”

Though we never had our own Third Precinct moment, left networks in Ontario fell victim to many of the same conspiratorial impulses. Reposted Instagram stories warned of “suspicious piles of bricks” left as bait near march routes and even “black blocs from Montréal” coming into town to start riots.

While, regrettably, no such riot materialised here in 2020, the bad-jacketing of the black bloc has a long history in Southern Ontario, as in other regions. A particularly egregious example came in the wake of the Toronto G20 in 2010, where liberals convinced themselves that the property damage was all an inside job and set out looking for proof. They singled out a muscular white man in combat boots and “cop-like” black pants for looking suspicious, digging up every image of him they could find. All of this crowd-sourced evidence built a convenient case for the police, who arrested and jailed the target of their suspicions.

A pattern emerges: subsequent repression draws only a fraction of the concern that the broad left had earlier put into interrogating the legitimacy of an action. This is one of the most insidious functions of badjacketing and disavowal – it aids the state project of disappearing people. Speculation about false flags, made exponentially worse by social media and algorithms that egg on endless engagement, steals away energy that could be spent preparing for the repression to come. It turns actions into abstractions ripe for every person to project their own arguments. That abstraction removes militants’ humanity from the picture, enjoining us to forget that real people, putting their lives on the line for the movement, must have lit the match or thrown the brick. The collective failure to adequately show up for each defendant and prisoner in this section – and many more not named – goes beyond a culture of disposability. It is a mass forgetting that makes each of us who partakes in it complicit in the work of the police, prisons, and the carceral state to not only extinguish our resistance but also erase our memory of its very possibility – and our memory and connection to the people who’ve sacrificed to keep that possibility alive.

 

when people are occupied, resistance is justified

The movement for Palestine has long been one of the most hyper-surveiled and attacked. Only when it comes to the Palestinian struggle will even the most mild, pacifist expressions of support land someone on McCarthyist blacklists like Canary Mission, extensive repositories of personal information stretching back years. It is no wonder, then, that people are – correctly – concerned about being targeted by our enemies, which include not just the settler colonial state itself but also Zionists who self-organise outside of it.

Unfortunately, this has once again meant a dangerous resurgence of bad-jacketing. In February 2024, social media posts from the “Shirion Collective” sparked mass outrage and panic among supporters of Palestine. Announcing an “Operation Global Insight,” the posts claimed to be launching an “undercover operation” in key locations such as Toronto. “Volunteers willing to wear keffiyehs and walk [masked] in these demonstrations” would “be provided an hour long basic training by one of [their] ex-Mossad team leads.” Further, “individuals with Arabic-sounding names and Middle Eastern appearance may be uniquely positioned for deeper infiltration and will receive cash compensation for their vital role in [the] operation.”

Though the collective is, without a question, real, there is plenty of reason to believe that the reaction to the post was disproportionate to their actual abilities. Sensationalist claims of Mossad ties in an emoji-studded public tweet do not paint a picture of a sophisticated intelligence operation. Neither do their existing “exposés” on social media, which, despite techno-babble buzzwords about AI, are largely limited to reposting other people’s footage and open-source information that anyone with access to Google could easily retrieve. The description of walking around at protests and “law enforcement presence” suggests no actual knowledge of how Palestine solidarity groups organise or bring in new members. A few people with bad intentions joining a march of hundreds or thousands, where every angle is already recorded and streamed live on Instagram, can hardly be characterised as “infiltration.”

If that were not enough on its own, the White Rose Society, an anti-fascist research group, shared internal screenshots from Shirion’s Telegram channel that confirmed the post’s real purpose was to sow fear and distrust. One Shirion volunteer is quoted as saying:

We won’t need to do anything. They will:

  1. Tone down
  2. Police their own
  3. Maybe even beat up their own just because they think those are us

That summary of their goals succinctly re-states the risks that bad-jacketing poses to our movements.

Even before the Shirion scare, claims that someone was secretly a Zionist or cop were already commonplace. People who wear the symbols or fly the flags of the Palestinian resistance have been accused of being “agitators,” sent by Zionist organisations like B’nai Brith to make protestors look bad. Over-the-shoulder glimpses of someone’s phone or poor fashion choices have been presented as evidence that a protestor is actually an undercover. Online, Palestinians have been accused of being Zionist sockpuppets off of little more than bad feelings. And, naturally, even minor disagreements or political critiques will end in allegations that so-and-so is a fed. While, thankfully, conspiratorial crowds here have not at least yet handed over one of our own to the cops, these accusations are sometimes accompanied by calls to act against someone. In one case recently, a queer person of colour known to other attendees was followed, harassed, and filmed aggressively at a protest because someone had decided for no clear reason that they were a Zionist in disguise.

As the police continue to crack down on us, it is all the more crucial that we learn from the mistakes of the recent past. We cannot let our rightful vigilance lead us to attack our own comrades. Nor should we water down our political lines, our demands, or our tactics for fear that the media and the right will smear us – they do that regardless. It may not be possible to eliminate some, faint chance that an infiltrator is behind a resistance flag, a punch thrown at a Zionist, a brick through a window, but far more likely is that some brave person, who has chosen to more boldly and unabashedly confront this genocidal system and its supporters, is responsible. For that, they deserve our support and our solidarity against whatever repression may come, not our condemnation.

 

knowing our enemies

An over-emphasis on undercovers may lead to an under-emphasis on other security vulnerabilities. Rather than acting according to a one-size-fits-all checklist or, worse, reacting to threats only as they appear, it’s important to proactively identify and individually study threats in order to understand how to address them. That is to say, what – specifically – is your enemy trying to do? How do they do it? The process of answering these questions is known as threat modeling.

Accounts like Shirion, Leviathan, or StopAntisemitism are real threats, as any of their victims know all too well. But OSINT, as well as everyday acquaintances, are much likelier to be the source of their information.

Your personal Instagram or TikTok page might already give away your identity, the protests you attend, your work or school, and the identities of your friends and family members. Your employer might publicly share profiles, including photos, of all of their staff on their website. Tools like PimEyes and FaceCheck.ID allow anyone willing to pay for them to run facial recognition technology and search the Internet for a given face.

If you’re a student, a Zionist classmate could easily recognise you from criticising racism in class and look up your personal information in a school database. A right-wing former colleague could remember you for being politically outspoken at your shared workplace. Knowing the true identities of everyone at a march will do nothing to prevent doxing if, for example, that march is being streamed online, your face is exposed, and your social media is public.

 

what about the real infiltrators and provocateurs?

Infiltration – actual infiltration, where someone comes into our organisations and our lives, pretending to be our friend, only to hand information over to the state – should not be taken lightly. But our baseline understanding of it often takes the form of a few convenient tropes, reinforcing existing biases against militancy and justifying dismissiveness towards criticism. These tropes prevent us from truly knowing our enemies.

The late Matt Cicero wrote that:

[there is a] misconception that all infiltrators act as agents provocateurs who try to manipulate activists into taking illegal, violent, unpopular, and ineffective actions. But as Gary T. Marx points out in his theory of social movement infiltration, social movements are damaged by “opposing organizational, tactical, and resource mobilization tasks.” In other words, infiltrators suppress social movements by fomenting divisions and internal conflicts, diverting energies toward defending the movement rather than pursuing broader social goals, sowing misinformation or damaging reputations, obstructing the supply of resources (money, transport, meeting spaces), or sabotaging planned actions. Many infiltrators are thus better described as agents suppressants, who are there to gather intelligence and channel groups away from militant action. 

[…]Incidents of provocation can be high-profile and sensational, such as undercover police posing as members of the black bloc at Montebello. This can lead activists to paint all militant action as the work of agents provocateurs, even if there is no evidence that this is true. Conversely, because of the low-profile of most agents suppressants, activists are often unaware of their role and impact in pacifying and controlling social movements.

The spectre of the provocateur itself, then, carries out the suppressant role of “put[ting] a damper on evolving movement militancy.”

The single-minded focus on the agent provocateur often goes hand-in-hand with a short-term view of state repression as having only two main goals:

  1. Criminalising individuals in order to take them off the board while making an example out of them; and
  2. Smearing the movement in the media, stigmatising it to the public, by associating it with criminality.

But as Cicero describes, the state is additionally engaged in a long-term project of suppression and counter-insurgency. The police cannot arrest every dissident – but they don’t need to jail us all to successfully maintain the colonial order. The central goal of counter-insurgency is to preserve legitimacy and control.

To that end, some further goals of state repression include, but are not limited to:

  1. Exploiting existing tensions in the movement in order to sow discord and distrust;
  2. Defanging the movement by discouraging forms of action that exceed accepted norms of protest; and
  3. Collecting intelligence to inform repressive operations, for the purposes of criminalisation and suppression.

We should examine the issue of infiltration with all of these goals in mind. David Gilbert says, “[t]here is no simple litmus test to differentiate sincere militancy from provocation or honest caution from suppression.” The same extends to the search for infiltrators more broadly. Most of the time, the only truly conclusive proof that someone is a police infiltrator comes from seeing the evidence against you that they’ve handed over to the state after you’ve been charged. That isn’t of much help – by the time you have those court documents in your possession, the damage will already have been done. That is assuming that the information they collect ever goes to court at all. RCMP documents from the G20 suggest that there may have been as many as 12 undercover officers. Far fewer than that were ever exposed by name, and the remainders’ identities may never be known.

People who’ve experienced the profound betrayal of finding out that someone they knew was an undercover or informant often end up drawing conclusions that are diametrically opposed from one another. But a common thread persists through most of their takeaways: there are few ways to prove for certain that someone is a cop, and many ways that the hunt for infiltrators itself instead undermines our work and furthers the state’s goals.

Accordingly, we should turn our energies to proactively building a security culture that protects us from both infiltration and other security threats. Much has been written on this subject already. In short: solid security practices should mean that an undercover cop is prevented from gathering meaningful information even if we do not know who they are, and that security risks are dealt with regardless of whether an individual is specifically acting on behalf of the state. If you do everything right, a plainclothes still won’t know who among the bloc smashed that ATM, even if they saw it happen with their own eyes.

As the ever-green “Why Misogynists Make Great Informants” reminds us, many of the greatest threats to our movements may not officially collaborate with the police either. In the Toronto anti-fascist scene alone, multiple people accused of misogyny and sexual violence/gender-based violence later went on to renounce the left, consort with their former opponents, and attack (verbally, physically, and with legal threats) their former comrades. None of those people, to our knowledge, were undercover cops, nor were they secretly fascists all along. Looking for a non-existent smoking gun to show that someone was lying about their identity would – and did – only delay people from taking necessary action against them when the myriad of other red flags should have been more than enough.

 

naming our enemies

The epidemic of bad-jacketing is inseparable from the problem of peace policing. Many organisers advocate for a policy of de-escalation at all costs, even in the face of potentially deadly violence from police and Zionists. They speak of “agitators” who disrupt and “escalate” “peaceful protests” – a nebulous euphemism that they apply to both the Zionist who shows up with a knife and the militant who comes prepared to fight back.

We should be clear: our enemies are not “agitators.”

Our enemies are the police, who brutalise us and lock us away to enforce settler colonial order. Our enemies are Zionists and other white supremacists, who assault and harass us in the streets, and stalk and threaten us in our everyday lives. Our enemies are politicians and other establishment liberals, who carry out colonial and imperialist genocides, here, in Palestine, and around the world, all the while crying crocodile tears about a so-called humanitarian crisis that they created. Our enemies are legacy media institutions, who smear resistance as terrorism and mobilise support for each of these attacks.

We must take care to differentiate between antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions, and to distinguish between enemies and potential friends. Too often, we see organisers reject co-strugglers in order to appeal to liberal institutions that will never be on our side. They may frame the conservative path as the only strategic option, rejecting open support for armed struggle, militant direct action, and anything else that would create “bad optics.” Disagreements from co-strugglers are treated as threats worse than that of liberal media, who we must appeal to for sympathy, or Zionists and cops, who we must appease for our safety.

When our enemies attack us anyways, these organisers pin the blame not on the perpetrators but on the co-strugglers who deviate from their line. They forget that to be attacked by the enemy is not a bad thing but a good thing. Our enemies do not strive for unity with us, knowing that ours is an antagonistic contradiction, knowing that our collective liberation requires their annihilation. It is better that we, too, abandon any notions of conciliation and recognise our enemies as enemies.

For all these reasons, we urge people to draw a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves. Abandon the euphemisms and name our enemies. When we struggle through our differences, let us do so with a shared understanding of what we are for and what we are against.

 

by every means necessary

Not only is bad-jacketing dangerous, it is disempowering and demobilising. It forecloses entire realms of possibility, insisting that we limit ourselves to the same set of legal, non-violent tactics. It threatens state violence against people who do not comply with those limitations being imposed upon their actions. Many people cannot take the risk of arrest. But something being risky does not make it impossible. Just because some of us cannot act does not mean that no one should.

While its meaning is sometimes lost, respecting a “diversity of tactics” means refusing to impose non-violence upon our co-strugglers and declining to condemn those that destroy property or take up arms. As a group of autonomous UCLA students writes in the wake of vicious assaults on their encampment:

We have noticed a trend of the desire to appear peaceful for the media taking precedent over the right of protestors to self defense, mirroring the world’s response to Palestinians’ right to self defense in the face of blatant fascist attacks and eliminationist violence.

We cannot allow our resistance movement to demand obedience over safety in the same way as western imperialist forces against the colonized.

Without drawing false equivalence with a people living under active bombardment and military invasion, the liberal urge that leads people to denounce burning precincts or fake clinics as “giving police an excuse to crack down” is the same that denounces the Palestinian resistance for “giving Israel an excuse to destroy Gaza.” We must refuse any invitation to distance ourselves as the “good,” “peaceful,” “innocent” ones. Instead, we affirm the right of Palestinians and all people to resist colonial domination by any means necessary.

We would remind our co-strugglers, too, that our enemies do not care about the truth, and they have no conscience. We see this in the viciousness with which the police enforce an unprecedented ban on overpass protests in Toronto, where people rallied on the sidewalk to wave flags and chant. We see it in the eagerness with which a long list of electeds, including the Prime Minister himself, leapt to denounce a protest of a Jewish hospital that never happened. We see it in the adamance with which Zionists call the very existence of Palestinians a terrorist threat against them, no matter how young, no matter how innocent, no matter how non-violent. Right-wing propagandists will fabricate scandals out of thin air, and the establishment will happily take up their version of the story. Even if each and every one of us swears to turn the other cheek to our assailants, as long as we challenge the colonial status quo, in our enemies’ eyes, we will never be peaceful.

Another path is possible, and the movement to Stop Cop City sets a powerful example. In February, a journalist asked spokesperson Mary Hooks of Vote to Stop Cop City whether organisers condemned arsons of police vehicles. She answered:

Hell no. No. Not at all, And to be honest with you, Atlanta deserves more than that. Real talk, they’re lucky, this city is lucky, this country is lucky. Atlanta has its hands in literally murdering Palestinians right now. You think we give a damn about some equipment? Not at all. Not at all.

But some of us, we cannot take that risk. And those who can, bless them. Bless them. I cannot take that risk. But Lord knows, I’ll sit with my lighter and be like, damn.

[…]We need every, every means necessary to deal in the police state we are dealing with. So I don’t care, no, and I would imagine my comrades would say the same. No, not gonna condemn nobody for doing righteously what they need to do when our city has silenced every quote-unquote proper, democratic process.

The movement’s aboveground and clandestine elements are two parts of a whole. Both are necessary for our victory.

 

Listen to Isaiah Willoughby speak in his own words on Kite Line Radio:

kitelineradio.org/tag/isaiah-willoughby/

 

Support defendants and prisoners from the George Floyd Uprisings:

uprisingsupport.org

 

Contribute to the Florida 4’s commissary and find other ways to support through the Anti-Repression Committee of South Florida:

linktr.ee/sfl_arc

 

more on peace policing

“ACAB Includes Peace Police: Three Report Backs from Palestinian Solidarity Actions” (November 2023) on Archive.org, online at archive.org/details/acab-includes-peace-police-en-print-8/page/2/mode/2up

“Peace Police are Police: How Protest Marshals Sabotage Liberation and Protect the State” (December 2023) on North Shore Counter-Info, online at north-shore.info/2024/03/11/peace-police-are-police-new-zine-classic-image/

 

more on security

“Confidence. Courage. Connect. Trust. A proposal for security culture” (November 5, 2019) on North Shore Counter-Info, online at north-shore.info/2019/11/05/confidence-courage-connection-trust-a-proposal-for-security-culture/

“Doxcare: Prevention and Aftercare for Those Targeted by Doxxing and Political Harassment” (August 26, 2020) on CrimethInc., online at crimethinc.com/2020/08/26/doxcare-prevention-and-aftercare-for-those-targeted-by-doxxing-and-political-harassment

The Threat Library by the No Trace Project, online at notrace.how/threat-library/

“Threat Modeling Fundamentals” by Håkan Geijer on Riot Medicine, online at opsec.riotmedicine.net

 

more on infiltration

Fuck the (Hamilton) Police, online at fuckhps.noblogs.org

“Infiltrated! How to prevent political police from undermining grassroots solidarity” (May 1, 2017) in Briarpatch Magazine, online at briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/infiltrated

“Living among us: Activists speak out on police infiltration” (July 1, 2011) by Tim Groves, online at briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/living-among-us

“Stop Hunting Sheep: A Guide to Creating Safer Networks” (2011) on Sprout Distro, online at sproutdistro.com/catalog/zines/security/stop-hunting-sheep/

“The G20 Main Conspiracy Group: The Charges and How They Came to Be” (2012) on the No Trace Project, online at notrace.how/resources/#toronto-g20-main-conspiracy-group

“Why Misogynists Make Great Informants” (Spring/Summer 2010) by Courtney Desiree Morris on Incite! National, online at incite-national.org/2010/07/15/why-misogynists-make-great-informants-how-gender-violence-on-the-left-enables-state-violence-in-radical-movements/

The massive Philly car meetup was dubbed ‘Project X’ online. One driver described the mayhem of the night.

from Mainstream Media

“As soon as they said City Hall, I knew all hell was going to break loose,” said a 19-year-old who “slides” in a black Camaro.

Just after midnight, Philadelphia police investigate the scene of a one-car crash at the intersection of Pattison Avenue and South Third Street.

Just after midnight, Philadelphia police investigate the scene of a one-car crash at the intersection of Pattison Avenue and South Third Street.

Dressed in banana suits, Donald Trump masks, and green alien costumes, hundreds of people descended on Philadelphia during the weekend for a series of car meetups — a night of mayhem participants have dubbed “Project X” online and that resulted in police officers being surrounded and, in some cases, attacked in their cars.

Law enforcement said the meetups, which included people drag racing, doing doughnuts, and exploding fireworks, spanned the city, with at least 11 events from the Northeast to Southwest to right outside City Hall. Across more than seven hours Saturday night and into Sunday morning, police trailed the groups in what they described as a game of “whack-a-mole,” arriving just in time for the crowds to rapidly disperse, then move to a new location.

In multiple instances, including around 4:30 a.m. in front of City Hall, responding police were greatly outnumbered by the crowds that in some places lit fires in the streets. Videos shared on Instagram showed dozens of people surrounding one officer’s car, jumping onto the hood and hanging off the back while filming themselves. People threw traffic cones into the officer’s windshield and at one point, opened the cruiser’s back door. Another video showed a small number of baton-wielding officers running through smoke-filled streets as people fled in all directions. Most appeared to have escaped.

The scenes quickly went viral online and became talking points for Republicans. The GOP-controlled House Judiciary Committee posted on X that “you’re not safe in Democrat-run Philadelphia,” and Elon Musk shared the video, saying it resembled a scene from The Joker.

In total, five police cars were damaged through the night, police said, and one 39th District officer suffered minor injuries after his vehicle was struck by another car, which then fled the scene.

Deputy Police Commissioner of Patrol Mike Cram (left) and Deputy Police Commissioner Francis Healy discuss illegal car meetups on Sunday.
Deputy Police Commissioner of Patrol Mike Cram (left) and Deputy Police Commissioner Francis Healy discuss illegal car meetups on Sunday.Elizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer

Car meetups, also known as “takeovers” or “slide shows,” aren’t new or unique to Philly and they’ve been going on for years. But police said the events this past weekend went beyond what they typically encounter in size, scope, and aggression and that they believe it was in retaliation for the department’s heightened efforts in recent months to arrest and fine those who participate.

Police said they arrested only three people across Saturday night and Sunday morning. Jhonny Martinez, a 19-year-old from Upper Darby, was charged with recklessly endangering another person after police said he crashed into a pole at Third Street and Pattison Avenue in South Philadelphia while fleeing officers. He has been released from custody on his own recognizance, according to court records.

Two teens were also arrested and issued code violation notices, police said. Officials declined to name them because they are juveniles.

Police said 15 spectators were cited and nine were fined under the city’s nuisance car ordinance — which carries a $2,500 penalty — in Southwest Philadelphia.

How the meetups work

The meetup was organized with drivers, or “sliders,” from across the region, from New York to North Carolina and Virginia, as a final ode to summer, said a 19-year-old from Long Island who drives a black Camaro. He asked not to be identified so he could speak openly about the illegal racing scene, which he has participated in for about five years.

The event, like most meets, was organized through Instagram stories, he said, and was called “Project X,” a nod to the 2012 film about high schoolers who host an unruly party.

“That was probably one of the biggest meets we’ve had on the East Coast in like two years,” he said of the turnout.

It was Philly’s spectators who sowed chaos, he said, adding that he and other drivers have tried to discourage people from lighting fires and fireworks. It gives the thrill-seeking hobby a bad rap, he said.

“We don’t like that, we yell at people. There’s been fights multiple times because of it,” he said of the spectators’ behavior. “In every other state, we do the same [stuff]. But these guys in Philly … we call them crash outs.”

He said that they moved to multiple locations through the night in their cars, and that he was surprised by the limited police response at each location.

“As soon as they said City Hall, I knew all hell was going to break loose,” he said.

Another man, who described himself as an independent journalist who films the meetups, said drivers “want somewhere to do this legally with no repercussions.” The man, who asked not to be identified to discuss events that are illegal, said many racing tracks have restrictions or are shutting down, making it “hard to find a place to keep this off the streets.”

Law enforcement wasn’t sympathetic, and said they were reviewing camera footage and social media posts to identify the people involved.

“This is not a victimless crime,” said Adam Geer, Philadelphia’s director of public safety. “They’re putting people’s lives in danger.”

Officers were attacked and their cars damaged trying to disperse chaotic, illegal car meetups, Philly police said

from Mainstream Media

Investigators say the illegal gatherings were reported over a span of seven hours late Saturday into early Sunday, and featured hundreds of cars drag racing and drifting, and several trash fires.

Philadelphia police investigate the scene of a one-car crash at the intersection of Pattison Avenue and Third Street in South Philadelphia early Sunday morning. This car was involved in a large meetup, and fled the scene as officers arrived to break up the illegal event.
Philadelphia police investigate the scene of a one-car crash at the intersection of Pattison Avenue and Third Street in South Philadelphia early Sunday morning. This car was involved in a large meetup, and fled the scene as officers arrived to break up the illegal event.

Multiple Philadelphia police officers were attacked and their vehicles damaged while trying to break up nearly a dozen illegal car meetups throughout the city late Saturday into Sunday morning, police said, causing mayhem and rattling the nerves of residents in nearby neighborhoods.

Investigators said there were 11 large meetups, some of which drew more than 200 cars, as well as a series of other smaller gatherings, scattered throughout nearly every corner of the city, from Northeast to Southwest.

The wild scenes unfolded over the course of seven hours, with the first reported to police at 9:30 p.m. on Bustleton Avenue near Bleigh Avenue in Rhawnhurst. During that incident, 50 cars gathered at the scene, which drew multiple spectators. An arrest warrant was issued for one of the drivers, whom police did not identify, after they hit an uninvolved car while attempting to flee. Officers issued nuisance citations to nine other drivers and 15 spectators.

Just after midnight on Sept. 22, Philadelphia police race east on Pattison Avenue in their response to multiple car meet-ups throughout the city.
Just after midnight on Sept. 22, Philadelphia police race east on Pattison Avenue in their response to multiple car meet-ups throughout the city. Elizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer

An officer responding to an assist call nearby was hurt after his vehicle was struck by a car fleeing that meetup, police said.

Other meetups saw attendees building bonfires, setting off fire crackers, and in one instance shooting a flamethrower as drivers revved and screeched through the streets, doing doughnuts, hanging out of their cars, and leaving massive scenes of smoke in their wake, according to investigators.

Deputy Police Commissioner Francis Healy said at a news conference Sunday that officials believe the aggressive behavior was in retaliation to the department’s increased enforcement against the meetups in recent months.

Investigators were poring over video and evidence, working to identify people involved, he said.

”We have your picture. We’re coming for you. If you think you got away last night, you didn’t,” Healy said of the drivers. “We’re coming with search warrants, and we’re coming with arrest warrants, so don’t think we’re going to lay down and allow this to happen in our city.”

Deputy Police Commissioner Michael Cram said Sunday that fireworks and fires have become a standard part of the gatherings, with drivers circling around the flames to hype up the crowd. The groups often even have camera crews with them, he said, and frequently make videos for their social media profiles.

Cram said that a team of officers is deployed each weekend to respond to and try to prevent the meetups from forming, but they’re difficult to police. As quickly as they form, he said, the groups disperse. Officers cannot chase after the cars for safety reasons, and when an officer is surrounded, their car sometimes being attacked, it’s not safe for them to even get out of their vehicle, Healy said.

”It’s like a game of whack-a-mole,” said Cram.

Other meetups were reported in South Philadelphia, Southwest Philadelphia, and Center City, according to police. At a 4 a.m. meetup at Island and Bartram Avenues, more than 200 cars were drifting — speeding and whipping the tail end of the vehicle around — and drag racing. Officers who responded were attacked and a vehicle was damaged, police said.

Additional officers were attacked just after 4:30 a.m. at 15th and Market Streets, where more than 100 cars were reportedly drifting, and spectators were setting trash fires, police said. Five police vehicles were damaged, their windshields broken and tires flattened by spectators.

Police made two arrests at 20th Street and Pattison Avenue after a car fleeing an 11:47 p.m. meetup there crashed into a pole. Investigators did not identify the driver or the passenger, a juvenile, but said they lived nearby.

City Council President Kenyatta Johnson, in whose district that meetup was held, said Sunday that events like it are a “matter of public safety that can have deadly consequences for unsuspecting drivers, pedestrians and neighborhood residents.”

“Philadelphia City Council members will continue to work with the Police Department and Mayor Cherelle Parker’s administration on solutions to this issue citywide,” Johnson said. “I also urge the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office to prosecute anyone arrested in connection with this weekend’s illegal car meetups, including the injuring of police officers, to the fullest extent of the law.”

Deputy Police Commissioner of Patrol Mike Cram (left) and Deputy Police Commissioner Francis Healy address illegal car meet-ups that took place over the weekend, on Sept. 22.
Deputy Police Commissioner of Patrol Mike Cram (left) and Deputy Police Commissioner Francis Healy address illegal car meet-ups that took place over the weekend, on Sept. 22. Elizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer

Car meetup culture has become a fixture of the city in the last few years, organized and advertised over social media. The unsanctioned, illegal gatherings block intersections and close streets, and have led to violence.

In June 2023, 18-year-old Anthony Allegrini Jr. of Glen Mills was killed by Pennsylvania State Police troopers after he struck two troopers with his Audi S4 while trying to flee a car meetup that shut down I-95 near Penn’s Landing. Two other assaults during that meetup were captured by bystander video.

Later that year, on Oct. 1, Cody Heron, 27, brandished a gun and headbutted Nikki Bullock near Philadelphia City Hall as she was delivering for Uber Eats with her children in the car. Heron pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated assault and one count of possession of an instrument of a crime.

He was sentenced to one to four years in state prison and five years’ probation. Prosecutors have said Heron, of Frankford, was part of an ATV and motorcycle meetup that illegally drove through Center City.

People who live near the site of some of this weekend’s car meetups say they are frustrated over inaction by the city. The city’s Nuisance Car Ordinance, which carries a hefty $2,500 fine, has been an effective tool for the last month, according to police officials.

But some residents, including Drew Murray, say the city needs to find a permanent solution to the issue.

Murray, vice president of Logan Square Neighborhood Association, said Sunday that he expects to field multiple phone calls this week from frustrated neighbors after a meetup was held this weekend at 23rd and Spring Garden Streets, one of many in recent months.

”It’s clearly becoming an issue,” Murray said. ”It’s extremely dangerous for people in the community. It’s a quality-of-living issue.”

Murray, who ran as a Republican for City Council last year, says he plans on bringing his neighbors’ concerns to their local police district.

”Police don’t want to make a situation even more dangerous by chasing these cars or doing something that could put other pedestrians and other people in danger,” he said. “But we will absolutely be in contact with the district and work with them to hopefully see what we can do going forward to prevent this.

Three Way Fight: Revolutionary Politics and Antifascism

from Making Worlds Books

ADVANCED REGISTRATION RECOMMENDED (CLICK HERE)

Three way fight politics argues that the far right grows out of an oppressive capitalist order but is also in conflict with it in real ways, and that radicals need to combat both. We’ll discuss the history of this perspective and how it can help us navigate today’s struggles, from anti-police riots to confronting the MAGA movement, drawing on the new collection of essays and interviews from PM Press and Kersplebedeb Publishing.

Matthew N. Lyons is the author of Insurgent Supremacists: The U.S. Far Right’s Challenge to State and Empire and coauthor with Chip Berlet of Right-Wing Populism in America. He has been a contributor to Three Way Fight since 2005, and his writings have also appeared in several other leftist and mainstream publications. Matthew is co-trustee of the Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust, which stewards the literary legacy of the late playwright and activist Lorraine Hansberry.

Arturo Castillon is a writer and substitute teacher living in Philadelphia. With Shemon Salam, he is the coauthor of The Revolutionary Meaning of the George Floyd Uprising (Daraja Press, 2021) and has published work in The George Floyd Uprising (PM Press, 2023) as well as in Black Quantum Futurism: Space-Time Collapse II (The AfroFuturist Affair/House of Future Sciences Books, 2020).

Philip V. McHarris in Conversation with Hiram Rivera: A Book Launch for “Beyond Policing”

from Making Worlds

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER (RECOMMENDED)

Join us on August 14th at 6 PM for a compelling conversation between Philip V. McHarris and Hiram Rivera, Executive Director of Community Resource Hub for Safety and Accountability. They will discuss McHarris’s new book “Beyond Policing,” which reimagines a world without police and explores innovative community-based safety models. This event offers a transformative vision of safety, moving beyond policing towards a society where people have the resources to thrive.

Philip V. McHarris is an assistant professor in the Frederick Douglass Institute and Department of Black Studies at the University of Rochester. McHarris was a presidential postdoctoral research fellow at Princeton University in the Department of African American Studies and the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab. He earned his PhD in sociology and African American studies at Yale University. He was named one of the Root 100s Most Influential African Americans in 2020. McHarris has appeared on MSNBC, CNN, and PBS and in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, and more.

Hiram Rivera is a longtime organizer and organizing trainer with 20 years experience professional experience. His work has been rooted in social justice movements, the struggle for Puerto Rican and New African independence, and campaigns to free political prisoners. He’s the former director of the Philadelphia Student Union and is the founding director of the Community Resource Hub, a national organization providing training, research and technical assistance to abolitionist organizations across the country. He is a co-founder of the organization Black Men Build and the Hub’s George Jackson School.

Monday July 29th: Letter-writing for Stop Cop City Defendants

from Philly ABC

stop-cop-city-letter-writing.jpg

 

Join us on Monday July 29th, 6:30pm at Wooden Shoe Books as we send letters to comrades incarcerated for their support of the movement to Stop Cop City. In 2017, the Atlanta Police Foundation proposed the destruction hundreds of acres of Weelaunee forest to build a massive compound that would train cops from around the world in militarized tactics, urban warfare, and putting down social movements. The full Cop City proposal came in 2020 after national uprisings around the police murder of George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks.

In 2021, forest defenders and community members established a long-term encampment in the Weelaunee forest. Shortly thereafter, a multi-agency task force began arresting and charging them with domestic terrorism. January 18th, 2023 brought more raids, arrests, and the murder of Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán. This was the first police killing of an environmental activist during a protest in modern U.S. history. Autopsy results indicated that the police shot Tortuguita 57 times while their hands were up. On April 19th, the DeKalb County Medical Examiner’s office ruled Tortuguita’s death a homicide. On October 6th, a Georgia prosecutor announced that there would be no charges for any of the troopers involved in the murder.

Opponents of Cop City, however, have increasingly faced charges of unprecedented severity. On September 5th, 2023, Georgia’s Attorney General filed an indictment against over 60 individuals under the Rackateer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. On May 31st, 2023, a heavily-armed SWAT team raided the house of three bail fund organizers, arrested them, and charged them with money laundering and charity fraud. The intensifying repression has also extended to the general population of Atlanta, with police targeting four neighborhoods for purposefully invasive, round-the-clock surveillance.

The resistance to Cop City has also escalated, resulting in numerous delays and, according to Atlanta city officials, almost $20 million in damages. Communities across the country rallied against the targeting of activists and the killing of Tortuguita, and have supported activists held without trial, sometimes for upwards of a year.

Even before its completion, Atlanta Cop City’s militarized approach to social movements has already become a model for how to train police across the U.S.; between the George Floyd Uprisings and today, planning or construction has begun on 66 new Cop Cities around the United States. Similarly, the unprecedently fierce legal and extralegal measures taken against those resisting Cop City in Atlanta—domestic terrorism charges for civil disobedience, RICO charges for bail fund organizers, generalized harassment, and murder—can be understood as a localized experiment for broader application. These tactics of repression are being auditioned in Atlanta; if successful, you can bet they’ll be generalized across the U.S. For these reasons, it’s incumbent on all of us support those on the front lines of stopping Cop City, and especially those who’ve already paid the price of their freedom for this struggle.

We’ll also be sending birthday cards to U.S.-held political prisoners with birthdays in August: Bill Dunne (August 2nd), Hanif Shabazz Bey (August 15th), Ronald Reed (August 31st).

We Keep Us Safe: Building A Culture of Solidarity In the Face of Repression – Part of the Philly WAWOG Summer Movement School

from Making Worlds

REGISTER HERE (RECOMMENDED)

As our movement gains strength, it will inevitably encounter state repression. How do we respond collectively to this repression? This workshop will discuss some of the tactics most commonly used by police and federal agents to target our movements, and offer suggestions on how to respond. Topics covered will include: what to expect when being arrested in Philadelphia; the role of the FBI in movement repression and how to deal with federal agents; social media “best practices”; and how to support arrestees and political prisoners.

In the past year, the movement for Palestinian liberation has attained unprecedented levels of mobilization. But strategic reflection and study is necessary to keep the movement moving. Writers Against the War on Gaza offers a series of workshops this summer to deepen the knowledge of five elements of the struggle for Palestine: “PACBI,” “Anti-repression,” “Black and Palestinian Solidarity” and “History of Palestinian Resistance.” All are free to attend.

Laura Martin is a labor historian and a member of the Bay Area Anti-Repression Committee, a bail fund and political education collective.

Tori is a legal worker at Up Against the Law Legal Collective, a Philadelphia-based group that supports local activists.