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

https://mtlcounterinfo.org/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.

NJ Hate Watch: S14, NJEHA, and WLM Member Andrew Takhistov of East Brunswick, NJ

from Jersey Counter-Info

Takhistov, aka Cossack, upon his arrest. Takhistov is pictured here without glasses, although he typically wears them.

Just a few days ago Andrew Takhistov, an 18 year old from East Brunswick, was arrested in a federal sting operation where he allegedly solicited an undercover federal agent to blow up two different electrical substations in Central NJ (CNJ). Takhistov is now facing one count of soliciting another individual to engage in criminal conduct, which could result in a maximum prison term of 10 years and a $125,000 fine if convicted. Idavox covered Takhistov’s arrest and charges in depth, more about the specifics can be read here.

Since the release of the federal complaint, Takhistov has been positively identified as a very active neo-nazi that has been a part of the Tristate (NYC, PA, NJ) nazi scene for at least the last two years. Takhistov who goes by the Telegram handles “Cossack” and “Taraz”, is highly dedicated, holding membership in WLM NJ/PA, S14, NJEHA, Atlantic Nationalist Club, and Embrace Struggle, among running his own projects dubbed “White Legion” and “Defend Europe” respectively.

Takhistov’s main Telegram handles. Prior to his arrest a few days ago he was primarily using the “Taraz” account, while his “Cossack” account was on the back burner.

Takhistov first became involved with the tristate nazi scene when he was 16 years old, starting off virtually and connecting with group leaders like S14’s Mark Kauffman and NJEHA’s Dan D’ambly. He quickly became immersed and began to get involved in-person during 2023. Throughout 2023 and 2024 Takhistov was a regular presence at actions and became closer with older more senior members and leadership.

Takhistov, circled in red, during a late December 2023 nazi rally. Mark Kauffman is to his right.

 

Takhistov at the December 2023 nazi rally. He is standing and is the second individual from the left. Nazis Mark Kauffman and Dan D’ambly are also pictured on the right hand side.

With Takhistov’s further entrenchment he began to reveal more information about himself in public Telegram chats. Specifically, Takhistov discussed his Ukrainian heritage and nationalism at length, often going on long diatribes.

Takhistov’s rant about Ukrainian nationalism. He also reveals personal details about his family history and status as a Ukrainian.

During this time Takhistov attempted to move his project, White Legion, offline into the real world but had limited success. Largely White Legion functioned as a showy propaganda group claiming to do physical conditioning and supporting nationalists in Ukraine. This is also verified by the press release from the federal government about his arrest.

Takhistov’s now dormant White Legion project.

Other than a few propaganda based photo ops across CNJ White Legion was not involved in or planned any independent actions, nor did it become its own individual group focused on recruiting or centralized goal like S14 or NJEHA.

Takhistov boosting his White Legion project. The pictures depict one of the few in-person activities the group did.

 

Takhistov further bragging about his White Legion project in an S14 chat.

 

A photo from one of the few activities White Legion did in CNJ at a baseball field in the middle of the night. Takhistov is pictured on the left with another taller (unidentified) nazi on the right.

 

Commentary from the federal government about Takhistov’s project White Legion.

In early 2024, Takhistov began to get more involved in nazi accelerationist ideology, reposting pictures from Injekt Division, a nazi accelerationist crew similar to Atomwaffen Division, and other Terrorgram channels. Takhistov also expressed his desire to go and fight in Ukraine and assist fellow nazis in propelling the country towards national socialism. It was at this juncture he created his other project/Telegram channel “Defend Europe”.

Takhistov’s new “Defend Europe” project he started in 2024.

Takhistov used this new Telegram channel to produce Ukrainian nationalist/fascist content. He centered Defend Europe around his supposed journey to Ukraine and claimed he was shipping out soon to help fight against the Russian invasion and push for a national socialist Ukraine. Takhistov’s Defend Europe content read more as a LARP fantasy than something that he was actually doing, given the way he went about posting and bragging.

Takhistov pictured holding a Ukrainian nazi flag “prior to shipping out”.

Throughout 2023 and 2024 as Takhistov was engaging in nazi accelerationist activities, he began to connect more with those on Terrorgram, and ended up connecting with an undercover federal agent. Takhistov was essentially catfished by the federal government in early 2024 when he was trying to organically connect with other NJ-based neo-nazis. Takhistov met up with the federal agent several times, with other currently unidentified NJ neo-nazis.

This massive security blunder led to Takhistov being entrapped by the feds in a plot to blow up two different electrical substations in CNJ. The federal agent that Takhistov was in contact with from Terrorgram pushed for a way to get further involved, joining Takhistov and other nazis for a March 2, 2024 action in New Brunswick, NJ. Takhistov and the federal agent met up a few times after this and discussed different tactics used by national socialists, including electrical substation attacks. Takhistov told the agent that he had a trip booked for July 2024 to visit Ukraine and intended to join up with a pro-Ukraine Russian fascist volunteer group fighting against Russia. The agent asked for more details locally and Takhistov passed them off, noting that the agent could plan on doing an attack when Takhistov was over in Ukraine. For several months after that Takhistov sent the agent guides on industrial sabotage, further information on local electrical substations, and details on how to make homemade weapons. Takhistov, the agent, and another unidentified NJ nazi, then went around and scouted out different electrical substations, with the agent providing in-depth insight on how to access the buildings.

An excerpt from the criminal complaint filed by the federal government against Takhistov.

While the federal briefing detailed that Takhistov was arrested at Newark International Airport on his way to Ukraine, it is unclear if Takhistov was accepted into any kind of formal fascist volunteer force. Despite Takhistov’s bravado that he was set to join a group of pro-Ukrainian Russian fascist separatists fighting against Russia it has not been confirmed that Takhistov had solidified plans prior to his arrest. It is more likely that Takhistov intended to forge concrete connections on the ground once he got to Ukraine and try to meet up in-person with the group in an effort to join.

The federal government is famous for trying to entrap the far right, the far left, religious groups, and everyone in between often trying to convince individuals to engage in illegal activities. In this case, Takhistov was duped by the feds to help plan an attack on CNJ infrastructure to be theoretically executed by the federal agent. By no means is this a defense of Takhistov, he is nazi scum who was dumb enough to contact random accounts on a highly surveilled platform (Terrorgram) and got wrapped up in a would be terrorism plot. It is important however to acknowledge that it was the state who pushed the alleged crime and Takhistov.

S14 members: With addition of Andrew Takhistov, 9 of your people have been identified and doxxed including Alex Chubbuck, Benjamin Ryder, Jackson Bradley, Paul Minton, Daisy McGowan, Mathew Bair, Mark Kauffman, and Sara Sheaffer. If you continue to operate, more of your members will be exposed and the pressure will increase. You will be held responsible for the nazi filth that you are.


Send tips and information: njhatewatch@protonmail.com

Running Down The Walls

from Philly ABC

rdtw-2024-sugarbombing.jpg

Sunday, September 15, 2024
11 am sharp (Yoga warm-up at 10am)
FDR Park

RDTW 2024

Philadelphia Anarchist Black Cross invites you to our seventh annual Running Down The Walls (RDTW)! This year marks the 25th anniversary of this non-competitive 5K and political education event in support of political prisoners and prisoners of war. Every year we split the proceeds between the ABCF Warchest —which has provided over $240,000 in stipends and other material support to prisoners with little or no other financial means—and a specific political prisoner, organization, or movement we want to uplift. This year we’ll be supporting and amplifying the voices of people struggling for freedom in Gaza, the world’s largest open-air prison.

Resistance is a continuous endeavor.

– Bassel Al-Araj, Palestinian scholar and former political prisoner, martyred

How will proceeds go to support Palestine? If you’ve participated in previous years, you know that we announce the recipient from day one. We have to take a slightly different approach this year due to how rapidly the situation is changing in Palestine. Given the unpredictability, the exact recipient(s) are subject to change. For example, in our initial planning meeting we were in touch with people in Cairo gathering funds for evacuations. With Rafah crossing since closed, other potential beneficiaries include vetted mutual aid groups in the Gaza Strip, and we will coordinate with trusted folks on the ground to distribute resources appropriately after the event. More information will be made available in the reportback.

Running is not required! You can also walk, roll, or cheer. We’ll begin with warm-up stretches at 10am (bring a mat if you can). At 11am, those who want to participate in the 5k will take two loops around the park; at a walking pace, this takes about 45-60 minutes. Afterwards, stay for socializing with speakers, tabling, and light refreshments.

Remote participation is encouraged! Every year we are joined by incarcerated comrades who take part in this by running, walking, or otherwise exercising at the same time as us–from behind bars. If you can’t attend the event at FDR Park for any reason, leave your shipping address in the comment box at registration, and we’ll mail you a t-shirt. If you would like to make an additional contribution beyond your own registration, please sponsor a participant either outside prison, inside prison, or one of each. Contact us for more information on sponsoring.

Due to the abominable conditions that political prisoners and freedom fighters are subjected to, let’s drum up support now more than ever. Join us as we celebrate our successes this last year, including the releases of Veronza Bowers and Eric King, and build momentum for the struggles ahead!

Next on the White Power Chopping Block: Two MORE Members of the Same NJ Group!

from Idavox

Andrew Takhistov and Steve V. Koshlyak (mugshot from Nov. 2021)

The Atlantic Nationalist Club (we are SO not calling them the ANC!) doesn’t have a lot of members and it seems like they won’t have a lot of members on the outside before long! Also, we have written about one of these guys before!

An 18-year-old member of a New Jersey White Supremacist group was arrested on charges that he solicited others to destroy energy facilities. A few days later, another member of the same group who has had run-ins with law enforcement in the past was also arrested on unknown charges.

On Andrew Takhistov, 18, of East Brunswick, New Jersey was picked up at Newark Airport as he was about to board a flight enroute to fight in Ukraine for the Russian Volunteer Corps, an organization he said was “openly National Socialist,” according to a Department of Justice press release. The release further stated that Takhistov was communicating on a social messaging platform with an individual who he did not know was an undercover law enforcement employee. In those discussions, Takhistov expressed a desire to advance his neo-Nazi ideology through violent means and said another reason why he wanted to join the Russian Volunteer Corps was not just gain paramilitary training but particularly because they specialized in assassinations, attacks on power grids and other infrastructure sabotage.

Takhistov’s arrest came after two visits in June and July to two different electrical substations in North Brunswick and New Brunswick, New Jersey where he instructed the undercover employee on numerous aspects of how to conduct an attack on an electrical substation. It was on July 5, during one of these visits that Takhistov reportedly instructed the undercover employee to take several photographs of the electrical substations so that Takhistov could send them to his Russian friend for additional advice on how to best sabotage the stations.

Takhistov, who was known online as “Cossack,” is a member of the Atlantic Nationalist Club (AnaC, not to be confused with the African National Congress of South Africa), a group with a small handful of members that started in May 2023 as a breakaway from the New Jersey chapter of White Lives Matter (WLM) The group is led by Claudino G. Petruccelli, who in November 2021 was caught by antifa, including members of One People’s Project, attempting to post WLM stickers around Princeton, New Jersey and the following week by police as he tried to do the same thing in Somerville, New Jersey with two others, Zackerji I. Ivanovic, who is reportedly currently with the neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe, and Steve V. Koshlyak, who is currently a AnaC member. The three were arrested.

On Saturday, an online notification indicated that Koshlyak, who celebrated his 37th birthday two days prior, had been arrested that day and online jail records note that he is currently being held at the Burlington County (NJ) Detention Center in Mount Holly, New Jersey with a jail ID of 117724. There is no further information about his arrest including the department that arrested him or when his first appearance will take place. In addition to his November 2021 arrest, Koshlyak also has a DUI arrest going back to 2014.

While AnaC have been attempting to be known for their flash mob rallies and stickering, often associating with Dan D’Ambly’s New Jersey European Heritage Association (NJEHA), they have been particularly displayed a violent over the past two years both as a WLM chapter and its current incarnation. A group of them including Petruccelli and another member Nicholas G. Mucci participated in the fights at Penn State University in October 2022 when Proud Boy founder Gavin McInnes and internet troll Alex Stein attempted to have an event there. It was shut down after those fights, where Mucci and Petruccelli allegedly pepper sprayed those protesting the event, got out of hand. Last month, Mucci pled guilty to attempting to smoke bomb and pepper spray a benefit show for One People’s Project at a church in Asbury Park, New Jersey three months  after Penn State, the smoke bombs purchased in Pennsylvania the day of the event there, and is scheduled to be sentenced on August 16. These latest two arrests will make three members of the small hate group currently imprisoned.

According to the Department of Justice press release, Takhistov is charged with one count of soliciting another individual to engage in criminal conduct that involved destroying a public service enterprise group circuit breaker and substation. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $125,000 fine. Charges are still pending for Koshlyak at the time of this posting.

Khalif Miller Given 1-10 Year State Sentence On Top Of Federal Sentence

from Mastodon

It’s been a little over a month since the upsetting news that was given a 1-10 year state sentence on top of the 61 month (5 year) Federal sentence that he has been serving since October of 2020.

Khalif is one of the five people indicted along with for his participation in the racial justice uprisings in 2020. He is facing a total of 15 years for attending a protest on May 30th, 2020. This is the new COINTELPRO!

We’re rehashing this 6/1 post from the @FreeAntPHL IG account to bring Khalif back to the top of your feed.

Send him some ♥️ at:

Khalif Miller -066
USP Big Sandy
U.S. Penitentiary
P.O. Box 2068
Inez, KY 41224

Neo-Nazi Cop Jason Dare Fired From NJ State Police

from Jersey Counter-Info

Jason Dare, the NJ State Trooper that went viral in March 2023 for both disappearing from rehab and having highly visible neo-nazi tattoos has been fired from the NJ State Police.

Jason Dare, pictured in both plain clothes and in his NJ State Trooper uniform.

Since 2021, local law enforcement agencies and the NJ State police have been compelled to put together yearly reports, that are accessible to the public, which detail all “major disciplinary” actions against police officers that have resulted in suspension or termination.

The 2024 NJ State Police major disciplinary report. A key is outlined displaying what action was taken against the officer in addition to the investigation’s findings.

After a year long “investigation”, the neo-nazi cop was quietly fired in May 2024, with NJ State Police citing multiple illegal actions and violation of division policies in their major disciplinary report which detailed Dare’s firing. Dare was originally placed on unpaid leave in March 2023.

A breakdown of Dare’s actions and what laws and division policies he violated.

As outlined in the report, prior to his admission into rehab for drug and alcohol addiction, Dare entered into some kind of plea agreement with NJ State Police, presumably for some illegal action he took while on or off-duty. The exact nature of what led Dare into this plea agreement is unknown, however, it should be noted that as the larger major disciplinary report details, as well as what national reports reflect, both on and off-duty cops have a habit of public intoxication and operating motor vehicles while inebriated.

After Dare entered into a plea deal with the NJ State Police he was sent to rehab in Delco (Delaware County PA), the same one he would eventually flee from. After fleeing the Delco rehab facility Dare reportedly broke into an unoccupied home in the area and was presumably on a bender for the next several days. At some point after he was found and returned to NJ, he used a shotgun he owned to shoot out a front window in his Vineland home. It should also be noted, that while not referenced in the description, the NJ State Police categorized one of Dare’s violations as a “uniform and grooming standards” violation. This can be surmised as a back-handed reference to his many visible neo-nazi tattoos.

Some of Dare’s neo-nazi tattoos, including his “blood honor” throat tattoo, iron crosses, and fascist inspired runes. In the picture on the right he is wearing a nazi death head shirt, or “totenkopf”, as he hangs out with friends from the NJ State Police in his free time.

 

Additional neo-nazi inspired tattoos including a pitbull that is identical to the PA neo-nazi gang Keystone United.

At the time in March 2023, the mainstream local media reported on Dare’s disappearance and return as copaganda, not referencing his neo-nazi tattoos or investigating the nature of his disappearance. Dare’s discovery and return to NJ was broadly covered by many local news outlets as a positive event. Since Dare’s firing however, there has been virtually zero local news coverage.

Despite Dare’s documented actions of violating a plea agreement, breaking and entering, trespassing, discharging a firearm in a residential area, putting residents at risk for serious bodily harm, and being a neo-nazi, he was only fired from NJ State Police and is not facing any criminal charges or barred from future employment as a state employee or police officer.

As antifascists we understand why this is, the state protects its agents even if they are compelled to sacrifice them in some manner. Even with this knowledge though it is still baffling to see the stark difference between how average NJ residents are treated in comparison to agents of the state. We all understand that if this was anyone else other than a cop that they would facing decades in prison and character assassination in the media.

At the time of publishing, Dare’s current employment details are unknown, but it has been confirmed that he has relocated from his prior residence in Vineland, NJ to Galloway Twp, NJ.

Drexel Students Set Up Palestine Encampment, Call for Divestment From Israel

from Unicorn Riot

Philadelphia, PA — Students at Drexel University established an encampment in support of divesting from Israel on May 18, following a rainy Nakba Day commemoration march from Center City that started around 4 p.m. Philadelphia and Drexel police officers quickly surrounded the encampment with a ring of metal barricades and largely barred additional people from entering; this was apparently at the orders of Drexel’s campus police chief.

There was a brief struggle over the metal barricade components, and at one point an officer brandished a Taser at the crowd but was pulled back by another, shortly after our reporters got onsite. As of late Monday the encampment was still in place.

Our livestream from inside the barricade ring ran for almost 3 1/2 hours until shortly before midnight Saturday (YouTube). The night before, nearly 20 demonstrators were arrested just blocks away at the UPenn campus which we also streamed live. Students and other observers we interviewed discussed everything from Philly’s protest culture and law enforcement practices to the Samidoun Prisoner’s Solidarity Network. Full livestream:

In a tense confrontation at the beginning of the stream, Philly officers in riot gear wearing “Counter-Terrorism Operations” badges briefly assembled inside the perimeter but withdrew.

A protest sign on Saturday night.

In interviews on-site students said that they were pushing to get Drexel to pull its investments from BlackRock, which does business with Israel, as well as other divestments. They also said that Drexel administrators have claimed it is illegal to disclose specific investments, but this is apparently not illegal at all. The Drexel Palestine Coalition has a list of demands posted online.

Tents late Saturday night.

Drexel announced that it would switch to online learning for Monday.

During late Saturday night, police were largely a static presence while dozens of students milled just outside the perimeter discussing politics and playing music. A lengthy know-your-rights training with Up Against the Law and National Lawyers Guild members also took place with most of the camp participants.

Camp supporters regularly handed supplies including stacks of pizza, large tent structures and medic supplies over the barricades without much interest from the police. A Unicorn Riot reporter stuck around until the morning as a police sweep seemed possible (UPenn’s encampment was cleared in an early morning maneuver).

While the encampments might seem like a typical exercise in campus politics it should be noted that these activities are regarded as a strategic threat to Israel because they could shift the intellectual climate in the United States, which is Israel’s main international patron. A series of articles by James Bamford in The Nation has shown that groups like the Israeli-American Council and Canary Mission are closely coordinating with Israeli government agencies to crush student protests in the United States by harassing protesters.


Plethora of Police Forces in West Philly since 1970s

Police from multiple units including Drexel and Philadelphia PD on milled around Saturday night southwest of the encampment.

After the shocking events at Kent State and Jackson State, in September 1970 President Nixon’s Commission on Campus Unrest, chaired by Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton, dropped its report (418 page PDF). One result was the rise of campus police departments.

As the Penn Disorientation Guide outlines, police forces multiplied during the campus crackdowns of the 1970s, until today:

“If you walk west down Market St. from 30th St. Station, in 1.5 miles you pass through the jurisdictions of six police departments: Philadelphia, Amtrak, SEPTA, Penn, Drexel, and Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA).”

A Brief and Violent History of Campus Policing, 2023

Campus police in this side of the city (Drexel & UPenn) have demarcated “patrol zones” which extend into the city.

Cover sheet for Nixon’s 1970 Campus Unrest report (large PDF)

Related: UPenn Students Arrested at Palestine Demo After Building Occupation Attempt [May 18, 2024]

Philadelphia Police Department in with “Counter-Terrorism” badges and riot gear earlier on Saturday night.

Social media clips and camera operation in latter sections of the livestream by Chris Schiano.