Submission
Happy Twenty-Nine Guillotine! As many huddle around the television, all dressed up in their most glitzy and glamorous attire in anticipation of the clock tick tocking to midnight, those rowdy neighborhood anarchists have taken to their own NYE ritual. Instead of popping bottles of champagne, we pop bottle rockets at prisons. This year was no different. A rowdy noise demonstration took place in center city on NYE, full of noisemakers, fireworks and spraypaint. It was quick, well executed, and everyone got away ok! I sincerely hope that those inside were able to hear/see a bit of the show before Philly’s Swinest had to show up and ruin our fun :(. It was a well executed demonstration from rushed start to the final dumpster dive. Some cute tags went up, the demo at the FDC started with a very large fireworks display, followed by many bottle rockets, and once too many cops showed up we made a timely exit. I would like to touch on two observations though and pose some questions pertaining to them.
Firstly, I’m not one to try and tell people what to chant. In my personal opinion, however, the amount of flexing that goes on in Philly’s chant game is pretty corny. There were many “aggressive” chants pertaining to cops. They reminded me of middle school and listening to Leftover Crack. Love the sentiment and if people feel empowered by these chants that’s fantastic, but the degree of flexing in these statements is so extreme. Out in the streets we are most certainly not in a place to be performing these actions, nor are we even armed. Empty threats and talking too much potentially puts you and others around you in danger. Security culture is important, even in our chants. Essentially don’t talk about shit you are gunna do in public and don’t talk about shit you’re not gunna do in public. Sure these chant’s are cute and fun, but are they entirely realistic both in expressing ones desires and current possibilities? Furthermore, are they smart chants to be saying, or could these messages be conveyed in a more secure fashion?
Secondly, I would like to touch on the ever present monster in our modern lives that is the smartphone. Scouring the interwebs I saw photos that were taken at the demonstration last night. None of them were of people doing anything, however, does insta really have to know about this tonight? One can’t come back tomorrow or another time to catch a shot of the tags? Taking your smart phone to the demo and taking photographs at the thing poses a risk for yourself and other individuals. It can definitively place you at the demo via location data and track the march route. If police were to get a hold of someones phone, they could find cameras on the march route and the footage on those may potentially catch people a case. Furthermore, your microphone is always on, recording everything that you say and that is said around you…see the previous paragraph. Another thing with taking photographs, the image files have data encoded into them when you take them. This data includes the time, date, and location the photograph was taken and data pertaining to what phone took the image. These images can then potentially be synced with icloud or google photos where these companies now presumably have some sort of record of the photographs. I guess what I am trying to say is that a lot can go wrong with bringing your phone to the demo and using it. It’s typically a better idea to leave it at home, or if you must bring it, password protect everything, encrypt your SD card, uninstall any apps that have a profile linked to you, turn off location data, and turn it off. Your friends don’t need to know what you’re up to for social media clout, it’s actually better if they don’t.
None of these ideas are meant to be proposed in a fashion asserting that anyone did anything “wrong”. These are just a few points that I think could be beneficial for people to think about and talk with their respective affinity groups about. Stay safe and stay smart so we can continue to be dangerous in the streets together.
Love and Solidarity to those locked up for daring to take on law and order!
Till all prisoners are free and all prisons are ash!
Go Birds!
Be Crime Do Gay (Come up with a fresh catch phrase 2k19)
