Submission
Simple flier for solemn remembrance
Submission
A Call for Gatherings the Weekend Before Trump Takes Office
Along with others around the country, we invite you to join us in organizing festivals of resistance on the weekend of January 18, immediately before Donald Trump takes office. This is a crucial opportunity to engage in outreach, education, and action ahead of what it is sure to be a tumultuous time.
Once Trump takes power, it will only become more challenging to make connections with our neighbors, create the networks that we will need to face down his assaults, and share the skills we will need to survive his reign. Right now, we have a precious window of time in which to prepare. Let’s make the most of it.
When Donald Trump enters office on January 20, he will order mass deportations, escalate the repression of protesters, dismantle the few judicial and legislative provisions that still protect ordinary people, and consolidate a propaganda ecosystem intended to stupefy us all into obedience. The Democratic Party is willingly handing power to an autocrat they say will bring democracy to an end; the Democrats show every intention of continuing to ratchet their own politics to the right. Authoritarian leftist groups are simply treating this as a recruitment opportunity.
But from Texas to the West Bank, millions of people’s lives are about to get even harder. We owe it to each other to meet the second Trump era side by side in solidarity.
The chaos that will accompany the return of the Trump administration represents an opportunity as well as a challenge. This is a chance to assert an autonomous pole of organizing, carrying forward the lessons of 2020 and the movement against Cop City while continuing the fight against patriarchal violence, white supremacy, and colonialism.
By organizing ahead of Trump’s inauguration, we can seize the initiative and set our own timeline rather than being caught flat-footed and forced to react. We need to welcome new participants into these struggles and foster a revolutionary perspective that can orient us through the challenges ahead. No amount of internet activity could substitute for gathering face to face. The most important battles ahead will not be fought online, but in the streets of our communities.
January 18 is observed as the Day of the Forest Defender. It will be the two-year anniversary of the murder of Tortuguita in Weelaunee Forest. It is an important date to gather, honor the memory of the fallen, and pledge ourselves to resistance and to one another.
How to Participate
You could start by calling for an assembly bringing together everyone who wants to participate in organizing. It could be a public gathering—if you think you can facilitate something on that scale—or an invitation-based conversation bringing together people who have already worked together or at least have cause to trust each other.
For the event proper, you could host workshops and distribute literature teaching security culture, digital security, protest safety and first aid, direct action, reproductive autonomy, forms of organization including affinity groups, and other skills that may be relevant in the years to come.
Local organizers could share stories and lessons from the history of resistance in your area during the first Trump era. You could facilitate discussions to identify what people need to do to prepare for the years ahead—both for their own safety and to ensure the safety of their communities—or to strategize about how to prepare to confront the Trump agenda in your region. You could do an art build for future demonstrations and an organizing fair to connect people to local projects. This will be a chance to expand rapid response networks for community defense and mutual aid.
In some places, the gatherings could conclude with public actions—a first salvo in the resistance to Trump’s plan for mass deportations. Elsewhere, there will be open assemblies, spaces for people to encounter each other and learn new ways of working together and sharing ideas. Small towns can screen documentaries or invite speakers to share their expertise.
It’s up to you and your community to decide what best fits your local context. The important thing is to create a space that can serve as a point of entry for everyone who needs to get connected ahead of the next round of struggles—a space where people can hone their skills and begin to think of themselves as a collective force.
No matter who Trump’s administration targets—whether immigrants, Palestine solidarity organizers, sex workers, schoolteachers, trans people, environmentalists, or people seeking abortions—we must show that we will love and protect one another. If we all pull together, showing everyone who wants to resist that there are movements that they can join, we can begin to build the strength that we will need to overcome the challenges ahead.
Events like this are already being planned in dozens of cities and towns. But time is tight. If we want to be ready, we have to get started now.
Submission
“Our group… called for active resistance. But public opinion was against us. The majority still thought such action provocative and maintained that if the required contingent of Jews could be delivered [to death camps], the remainder of the ghetto would be left in peace. The instinct for self-preservation finally drove the people into a state of mind permitting them to disregard the safety of others in order to save their own necks… the Germans had already succeeded in dividing the Jewish population into two distinct groups – those already condemned to die and those who still hoped to remain alive. Afterwards, step by step, the Germans will succeed in pitting these two groups against one another and cause some Jews to lead others to certain death in order to save their own skin.” – Marek Edelman, co-founder of the Warsaw Ghetto’s Jewish Combat Organization, reflecting on July 1942, when armed Jewish uprising was initially rejected.
“Jews, you are being deceived… Do not let them take you to death voluntarily. Resist! Fight tooth and nail… Fight for your lives!” – The illegal socialist bulletin, Storm, of the Warsaw Ghetto.
I started writing this in response to an article and booklet put out by Jewish anarchists called “Don’t Just Do Nothing to Counter Fascism.” It is now a more general proposal for Jews and non-Jews to see the need and outlines of aboveground and underground resistance.
The basis of what I am going to be saying comes from resonating moments of Jewish anti-fascism. These moments include the Warsaw Ghetto uprising where hundreds of Jews killed their Nazi guards and defended parts of the ghetto for weeks against a far better armed SS fighting force. Warsaw combatants had been preparing for years through underground combat organizations with different detachments and commanders elected in the ghetto. They met regularly, coordinated counter-espionage and intelligence, procured weapons and explosives, forged alliances, and operated an illegal printing press. This was all within the confines of an extremely surveilled open-air prison. After the war, the 43 group and 62 group formed, made up of anti-fascist Jews with boxing, martial arts, and military experience in Britain, using street fighting and deploying combative counter-protests at fascist speaking events from the 1940s until the 1970s. And although limited in their success, there are groups like the 2000s’ direct action Palestine-solidarity group, Anarchists Against the Wall, based within the borders of the state of Israel.
Growing up, being Jewish meant a connection to these parts of history. I know like many Jews coming from union families or working class backgrounds, my family took the most pride and found its roots in the historical figure of the Jewish activist, resistance member, labour organizer, holocaust survivor, and artist, rather than any religious or Zionist tradition. A family member had participated in guerilla warfare against the Nazi regime in France. All the other old timers were survivors who had gotten lucky owing largely to chance run-ins with underground resistance. I know I really deeply internalized a lot of these stories, particularly their incredible violence that, from a young age, made me afraid, angry, and want to fight. I have nothing but disgust or rage for the rabbis and collaborators who encouraged six million Jews to, without resistance, walk into gas chambers, die as slaves, and be slaughtered in the open streets.
Already, there is little resistance to the far-right’s platform of attacks on reproductive rights or the mass deportation and internment of migrants. We need to start looking at the places and times where fascism was actually defeated. This includes the historic guerrilla movements of Yugoslavia, France, or China. Today, the revolution in Rojava largely eradicated the fascist Islamic State within Syria in favour of a libertarian feminist society. What all of these projects have in common is armed militias or cells, and combative solidarity based in above-ground mass organizations such as unions, explicitly far-left political organizations, and neighbourhood and town council structures.
Many of the suggestions outlined in “Don’t Just Do Nothing to Counter Fascism” are important, emphasizing our need to rest, develop our skill sets, create collectives based on deep relationships, and practice direct action & mutual aid. I consider its writers comrades and have no intention but a friendly response. Reading their text, I cannot help but feel that a study of our actual Jewish anti-fascist history would have stressed different lessons. This history teaches us that there are uncomfortable risks that we will need to take going forward, that there are disruptions to our usual lifestyles that are required, a necessity of underground fighting groups and sabotage, and the need for organizational infrastructure that can have massive outreach and participation. It is not that the “care culture,” popular among the Jewish Left, is wrong, it is just misleading and an incomplete proposal if taken on its own – as it has been by many. In line with the conclusion of some Black anarchists following the George Floyd uprising, there continues to be a need for “networks of aboveground and underground self-organized resistance.”
In this vein, I would like to respond to the tendency of many Jewish radicals, leftists and anarchists who I feel do not want to fight because they would like to preserve their comfort for as long as they can, and turn their nose up at fighting as though we are not submerged in a dramatic confluence of violence, crises, and hierarchy: fascism or not. We know from the Holocaust that this instinct to not throw ourselves into battle, leads only to prolongation of suffering and attempts to find ourselves within the lucky few who are saved while we leave others behind to suffer. I know it is difficult because many of us have been raised by survivors and working class Jews who fought to survive and now pressure us to live the American Dream. The benefits of our labour union struggles and communalist culture have made many of us, but certainly not all, privileged. Yet, for young people, there is still that desire for revolt, a deep-felt solidarity, and spirit of autonomy that needs encouragement and support, not recuperation and sedating.
This failure of Jewish radicalism is reflected in the present state of Israel. There was never a serious drive by Jewish anarchists and socialists to destroy the Israeli state and capitalism. Even worse, there was no serious effort to prevent the state from forming. The Jewish working-class accepted, passively or actively, ethno-nationalism above all else, a compromise with the Jewish bourgeoisie and political class rather than a revolutionary struggle to overcome them. This is despite the attractive alliances available, not to mention basic obligations of solidarity, with Palestinian revolutionaries. It is impossible to speculate on such a dramatic imaginary turn in history, but had such an anarchist spirit existed and prevailed in executing a revolution in Palestine, there could have been self-organization, communalization of property and workplaces, and cooperative multi-racial communities in the place of government authority. This is a mistake by the Jewish left of historic proportions. I do not see how the suggestions listed in “Don’t Just Do Nothing to Counter Fascism” would materially undermine states like Israel or have changed the course of this history. There needs to be a greater emphasis on guerilla, mass movement, and other attacks that would be required to overthrow a government. And for this to exist, there must be the structure and group cultures that can bring this insurrection about. Unless we follow this path, we’re just speculating on ways to carve out our own comfortable activist lives within fascism as Israeli leftists have done.
It is worth studying the success of the 1904-1907 Yiddish anarchists in Poland’s industrial city of Bialystok. There, anarchism became the dominant political ideology among the working class. The Bialystok groups were taken up as a tendency across the Russian empire due to their success, including by the anarchists of Gulyai Pole who would later liberate a territory of up to seven million people. Anarchists created neighbourhoods within Bialystok which the police dared not enter, ensured the victory of strikes (typically through terrorizing bosses into accepting strikers’ demands), and when a pogrom started in the city, it was anarchists who led its armed defence and street patrols.
These Yiddish anarchists organized through groups, usually based on affinity, with different sections for technical, agitational, propaganda, Polish-language outreach, and weaponry work. All combined, the anarchist groups never had more than a few dozen members, most aged 15 to 20. One account of a meeting of a group, done in a cemetery, counts just four members in attendance. Connected to the groups were federations of hundreds of workers organized along an anarchist basis and divided by industry. Furthermore, the small groups created spaces within the city where crowds could gather for political discussions, debates, and the distribution of anarchist flyers and newspapers. In this way, these numerically small anarchist groups developed an outreach and influence across a broad population. The confidence in the group was so considerable that they developed an arbitration board, being overwhelmed with people, including petitioners from villages surrounding the city, coming to them to settle interpersonal disputes and issues of daily exploitation. Anarchists stockpiled weapons for the complete takeover of Bialystok and the development of an “industrial-military commune,” something for which workers were ready to launch a general strike, only to abandon the plans due to a lack of joint revolutionary action from other cities.
We need answers that can allow us to similarly confront the state and capitalism. Past generations of Jews have developed these responses before. Based on this, here are some additional recommendations for our fight. These recommendations are for everyone in and outside of the US, in rural and in urban areas. Whether fascism seems on the distant horizon or a close reality, the violence of oppression in our current society – call it fascism, colonialism, capitalism, or whatever you want – requires active preparation for a revolution:
1. Create or join underground resistance : This resistance can deploy industrial sabotage, military sabotage, attacks against private property, black blocs, surprise or “whisper” demonstrations, riots, conduct expropriations, looting, seize property (also known as “squats”), execute untraceable online activity, and other combative offensive and defensive moves. They can equally coordinate safehouses for migrants facing deportation or confinement – such as was done by many Polish and French people for us Jews – or perform clandestine abortions – as was done by the Lodz Ghetto survivor, Henry Morgantaler in Montreal.
This resistance can be based in small groups of people who work well together, assist each other in meeting each others’ needs, and develop a robust culture of secrecy and security. There needs to be a focus on propaganda work, onboarding, skill training, critical discussions on short/medium/long-term goals, confederation with other such groups, and connection to above-ground organizations and struggles. There is never a bad time for an underground resistance. It is never too soon. It is only ever too late. Anarchist news sites across the US regularly broadcast report-backs on nocturnal attacks against military facilities, extractive industries, and businesses being targeted by public movements. This resistance work needs to develop further structures (as was done by Bialystok anarchists), courage, affinity, skills, deeper revolutionary analysis, broader propaganda efforts, and synergy with aboveground groups to become a more serious threat.
2. Create or join radical mass organizations or movements : These organizations should be based on individual autonomy, confederation, combativeness, direct action, the elimination of internal hierarchy, mutual aid/education, and solidarity. Anarchist labour unions, tenant self-defence, neighbourhood and student assemblies, and anti-fascist fronts have all been examples employed by Jews from the women working in the Shmata Business, to the New York mothers leading rent strikes from 1918-1920, to the striking students fighting antisemitism at Aberdeen elementary school.
For those not yet ready for underground resistance, these mass organizations are a place to start and one in which most skills of any sort prove to be valuable. But do not mistake an NGO, political party, or your institutional student or workers’ union as such an organization. This is just a recipe for losing time.
3. Create or join a specifically anarchist aboveground group : Potentially modelled in the same way as the anarchist affinity group: unapologetic and vocally anarchist public facing activity is often necessary. Organizations of anarchists, such as Food Not Bombs, are interesting projects, but not a replacement for a specifically anarchist group, just like starting a breakfast program for kids is not a replacement for the Black Panther Party. Public anarchist activity should incorporate infrastructure for meeting peoples’ basic needs through direct action, mutual aid, and social centres where people can gather to build knowledge and relationships. People should be given skills to not just fight fascism, but its roots: the state, capitalism, patriarchy, racism, and all other systems of oppression and authority. Aboveground anarchist activity, namely education, mutual aid, direct action, and social events, can be carried out by these groups.
“Murder us, tyrants, but new fighters will come and we will fight on and on, until the world is free.”
– In Kamf (In Struggle)
from Unoffensive Animal
Last month we released a pre-order only fundraiser, selling t-shirts and art prints to raise funds for Cara and Celeste, who are facing trial accused of being involved in a mink liberation in the USA.
We have received a few orders and reached the minimum to print t-shirts, but it would be great if we could raise extra funds, so please have a look and grab yourself a print, or a collection of prints, or a t-shirt or three! If you order both a t-shirt and a print collection, we will send some free stickers designed by Praxis with your order!
We’ve priced minimum payment for t-shirts at 20GBP, for the print collection 15GBP and for single prints 7GBP, but we are not a shop and simply collect donations, so if you can afford paying more for them please consider adding a few coins towards the fundraiser, you can name your price in the shop! Remember that if you order pre-order items alongside other bits from the shop, we will send them all mid December when the pre-orders are ready, so they will take a little while!
Grab a tee or a print here: https://unoffensiveanimal.is/product-category/mink-trial-solidarity/
If you want to donate but don’t want to grab any tees you’re also welcome to just send your donation to the Philly ABC fundraiser for Cara and Celeste. Find it on www.unoffensiveanimal.is/nu2
Remember that Cara and Celeste have not been found guilty of the mink releases and you should not imply they are guilty of anything! Just support them because the state bites hard on anyone they fancy and we should protect everybody as that is the very best self defence.
SOLIDARITY ALWAYS!
Submission
Early thankstaking morning* we flooded the home that Ghost Robotics CEO Gavin Kenneally is trying to sell. He used to live there but seems to have moved out after the home started getting attacked. In July his home was tagged and in October it was tagged again and windows were broken. To create more lasting damage we ran a hose from a wall faucet through a small hole we punched into a glass door and turned the water on. Ghost Robotics develops robot dogs that are used in occupied Palestine and at the US/Mexico border. We took the fox we saw slipping under a fence as a good omen and hope the water kept running all night.
Let us each be a small drop in a liberating flood that drowns all authority!
-some anarchists
*November 28th
from O.R.C.A.
from Philly Fash Watch
Today’s installment of name the nazi fuckface is someone we’ve been watching since he became active in February of this year, Charles Anthony Wilder II. We noticed a telegram account in the S14 chat called Moonmanmac1488 and began putting the pieces together. This identity gained importance when Charles was in the van and marching last weekend in Columbus, Ohio with “hate club”, a spinoff group from Blood Tribe. This article includes contributions from Kate Ross and some anonymous researchers.
Charles tweeted out that he was at the flash fash rally. Simple enough. He then self doxxed on givesendgo using not just his real name but also using the same profile picture as his telegram account. Thanks for making it so easy Charles! As of publishing, he has raised a whopping $10 for his “move to a new city”. Seems like he really needs his job; we’ll get to that in a bit.
In February 2024 WLM-PA held a rally in Sunbury, Pa. This was the first time Charles attended a white power action in person. Although he is from Hamilton, NJ (near Trenton), he was excited to get active. In the early spring we received photos of him posting stickers in the daytime but his face wasn’t clear enough. It all went into his file we were slowly building. In the summer he attended a protest at the Israeli Consulate in New York City with NJEHA and their boomer civnat leader Dan Dambly. Charles lives about 15 minutes away from Andrew Takhistov, who we wrote about here S14, NJEHA, WLM and ANC Member Andrew Takhistov aka Cossack of East Brunswick, NJ | Philly Fash Watch. Andrew was arrested for plotting to shoot down power stations in New Jersey.
Ever ambitious Charlie made another move and began to stream for GDL, wearing a mask. Typical cringe nonsense, nothing to gain by linking (we promise you’re not missing anything). Our full identification came when he made the (stupid) decision to stream showing his face. Got him! From there everything fell into place. His real name, all his websites, all the details you wouldn’t want just lingering online for people like us to find.
At this point there was no rush to post him, until Columbus happened. Now we want your help to make his life as miserable as possible. Charles Anthony Wilder II currently lives at 13 Dover Drive, Hamilton NJ 08620 with his mom and stepfather. He works at the Amazon Fulfillment Center at 309 Cedar Lane in Florence, NJ 08518. We ask that you politely call that Amazon location at (800) 288-7914 and inform them about their employee. Charles drives a 2015 dark gray Dodge Dart, NJ plate T84JEG
If you’re not familiar with “moon man mac”, it was a character in McDonald’s commercials in the 1980s. Thank you so much for reading!
from Projet Evasions
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
from O.R.C.A.
This workshop will introduce tools to build emotional skills to further anarchist struggle and insurrection. It is crucial to approach emotional well being, constructive conflict resolution, and personal mental health as something that is not a private matter but a skill foundational to security and resiliency. We can only collaborate together if we can maintain respect for one another long term. Solidarity and affinity are our major weapons as anarchists, and like other skill, they must be honed and maintained with intention, rather than something we attempt to learn at a crisis point or when everyone is too burned out to do well or consistently.
The first half of this workshop series will discuss tools to help us better communicate and make better decisions under pressure and do mental health action support planning for before, during, and after being on the ground, and the second half will give us a structure to practice these skills and practice supporting one another so they are more accessible during times of high pressure. We view our collective emotional well being as a material limitation to deeping of combative anarchy. We seek to develop tools, an ongoing practice, and a constructive culture around addressing the intense conflicts, trauma, and joys which are inevitably part of a serious struggle against domination.
from Philly ABC
Every year, we raise money for the ABCF Warchest and a single designated political prisoner or organization through our biggest event, Running Down the Walls (RDTW). This year we dedicated the split of proceeds to support on-the-ground mutual aid work in Gaza, but for the first time, we did not announce any specific recipients. Early in our planning, we corresponded with people in Cairo who facilitated evacuations from Gaza, but then Israel seized and closed the Rafah Crossing, rendering this work impossible. Acknowledging that the situation on the ground would likely continue to be fluid and unpredictable, we decided to simply support “mutual aid in Gaza” and choose the specific recipients based on the reality on the ground following the event.
On September 15th, we ran with almost 400 comrades both inside and outside prison walls in the biggest and most financially successful RDTW ever. We’re now thrilled to be able to announce the recipients of the event. We will continue to accept donations and sell t-shirts through November 26th, so if you have not yet contributed to RDTW, or you would like to give a little extra, you can now you can see exactly who your money will be supporting. Since we have already raised record funds for the ABCF Warchest this year, all further funding will go to the following co-recipients in Gaza:
Thamra
Thamra is a new Palestinian organization that promotes food sovereignty in Northern Gaza through restoring water access, building urban food gardens, and providing fresh produce. It was created by farmer Yousef Abu Rabea, whose family has cultivated strawberries in Beit Lahia for generations, and photographer Leena Almadhoun. Yousef managed to hastily collect seeds and seedlings before evacuating his family farm earlier this year amidst heavy IDF shelling. Upon returning to the ruins, he scavenged dried-out peppers and eggplants. He and his brothers began planting anew in rooftop containers, and in the land between their home and a destroyed kindergarten. Once they could provide fresh produce for their family and surrounding community, they began traveling across Northern Gaza, sharing food, seeds, and water, and creating new gardens.
On October 22nd―shortly after we first learned of Yousef and Leena’s work but before we were able to make contact with them―we learned that Yousef had been martyred alongside another team member, Zakaria Abu Sultan, by a targeted IDF airstrike in the Al-Shemaa area. Yousef was 24 and Zakaria was 30. Their work is being continued by Thamra, which means “fruit” in Arabic. We extend our support and solidarity to Thamra in Yousef and Zakaria’s memory.
Operation Olive Branch’s Family Encampment
Since July, the Operation Olive Branch Family Encampment has faced down evacuation orders and the closure of humanitarian corridors to provide food, water, medical care, and other necessities to 300 residents requiring urgent perinatal care in Gaza. It is currently expanding to provide the same level of support to 1000 residents with disabilities and urgent medical needs. OOB is an international organization that links on-the-ground mutual aid projects with international support. The Family Encampment is coordinated by PAL Humanity, two Palestinian doctors and sisters who provide field visits and distribute medical aid; Palestinian dentist Dr. Zayn Eldeen, who distributes infant formula and hot meals; and Palestinian cook Amani Alkahlout, who cooks for hundreds of families in Rafah and runs supply deliveries.
The Sanabel Team
The Sanabel Team is a Palestinian-led mutual aid initiative launched in 2018 to help families in need in Khan Yunis. It has since expanded to provide food, clean water, and basic needs to families displaced internally in Gaza and externally to Egypt. The Gaza team continues to provide daily hot meals despite constant threat of violence and repeated displacement. On at least on occasion (October 7th), the team has been forced to flee their mobile kitchen under Israeli bombardment. On May 27th, Sanabel worker and video editor Muhammad was martyred during the Israeli bombing of a refugee camp that killed 44 other people and wounded more than 200, most of them women and children. Muhammad was 27. We extend our support and solidarity to Sanabel in Muhammad’s memory.
The Sameer Project’s Refaat Alareer Camp
The Sameer Project is a grassroots aid organization led by four Palestinians in the diaspora. Originating in an informal mutual aid network linking an extended Palestinian family, it expanded as the genocide wore on to coordinate shelter and medical aid in central and South Gaza, and food, water, diapers, and medical aid in north Gaza. We are supporting their most recent initiative, the Refaat Alareer Camp, which will provide shelter in central Gaza for perinatal and neonatal people, children with disabilities, and adults with special needs and mobility issues, war injuries, and chronic diseases. Relocated in early September after an Israeli quadcopter came to the camp and shot two of its children, the new Refaat Alareer Camp will include an independent medical clinic, will supply food, diapers, and formula, and will provide mental health support to traumatized children via a virtual reality tent.
The Sameer Project is named after the father and uncle of two of its organizers. In the words of his niece Hala Sabbah :
[Sameer] passed in Gaza in January. … My uncle was a lover of Palestine, a lover of giving, and so we wanted to honor him.
The Refaat Alareer Camp is named after the professor, writer, and cofounder of the organization, We Are Not Numbers, whose last prophetic poem written to his daughter Shaimaa, “If I Must Die” has become a touchstone of Palestinian resilience both in Gaza and internationally. In December 2023, after months of death threats, Refaat was martyred in a deliberately targeted Israeli airstrike that also killed his brother, sister, and four of his nephews. In April 2024, another Israeli airstrike killed Shaimaa, her husband Mohammed Siyam, and Refaat’s infant grandchild Abdul Rahman in their Gaza City home. We extend our support and solidarity to the Sameer Team in their memory, and in the spirit of Refaat Alareer’s final printed words: “If I must die, / you must live.”
Again, if you have not already done so, please consider donating or buying a t-shirt before November 26th to support Thamra, OOB’S Family Encampment, the Sanabel Team, and the Sameer Project’s Refaat Alareer Camp. As we do every year, we will release a detailed reportback outlining the money in, and the disbursement of funds.
Philly’s long time organizer and radical journalist will address the WSA’s 40th Anniversary Congress, with reflections on group democracy, journalism and anarcha-feminism! Helping us look to our future!
to attend, write to us at
philly-metro-wsa@proton.me
from Unoffensive Animal
Cara and Celeste were arrested back in October after a mink farm was raided in Pensylvania. They spent a few weeks in jail until the judge agreed to a reduction to 10% on their bail as well as dropping a few other bail conditions, and they were able to come out a few days ago. Whilst a reduction from 150k USD to 15k each for bail is an amazing drop in costs, Cara and Celeste are now facing such massive legal costs that they need all the help they can get.
They are facing multiple charges including felony eco-terrorism, accused of the release of 600+ mink from a fur farm. Their support team is fundraising 75k USD to help cover sots of legal, transportation and other outgoings for the long road ahead.
We have launched our own fundraiser, supported by artists @praxis_vgz, @daisy.lotta, @zerofoursixeight and @steveortiz_art.
Grab yourself a tshirt, a print (or a full collection if you fancy!). If you grab both a collection and a tshirt, we will add some free stickers to your order which have been specially designed for this fundraiser!
This is a pre-order item only. The preorder starts today and it stops 12th December, we will not print any more t-shirts than the ones you order, so please go grab one now, support the initiative. Every single penny in profits will be sent to Philly ABC’s run Cara&Celeste fundraiser.
As always, our site is not a shop, it is a pay as you feel style donation where we send you cool itemz when you drop some coins, so please if you can afford it donate more than the minimum for tshirts and prints! We’ve set the minimum price at 20 GBP for tshirts, 15GBP for the full print collection and 7GBP for individual prints. If you can donate more, please do!
Prints are A4 size, on thick, recycled luxury paper. The tshirts are printed on NoSweat garments, who run a campaign against sweatshops and produce garments that are organic, eco friendly and only made in cooperative factories.
Grab them here: https://unoffensiveanimal.is/product-category/mink-trial-solidarity/
If you grab other items on the same order, please understand they will all be sent together with the pre-order items, so you might now receive them for a little while.
Please, grab a tee and a print, share it around and spread the word. let’s support folks when they face the system, prisoner support is our biggest weapon!
If you don’t want to buy shit to clutter your wardrobe, please just donate some coins to the legal fundraiser: www.unoffensiveanimal.is/nu2
PS: Please use your head. Cara and Celeste HAVE NOT been found guilty of any crimes. Don’t thank them for crimes, don’t tell them they are heros, being charged does not equate guilt. Do not treat them like they are guilty of a crime they have not been sentenced for. Just support them throguh the fucked up road that is navigating the judiciary system.
Submission
skip your boring ass lecture to come meet some rowdy punks ready to challenge the university in its entirety. I promise you we’ll learn more from each other than we ever did in class. leave the classroom – or better yet, drop out – and come join us in clark park near the chess tables @8pm every sunday (beginning dec 1st)
“Drexel is John Fry threading his way thru underpaid Aramark workers in the mot expensive suits money can buy. Penn is the enforcement of exclusionary elitist ideology. Temple is the ongoing gentrification and displacement of Black people in North Philly. The University, all over the globe, is the repression of student dissedents and the proliferation of the capitalist death cult that kills us all.”
DEC 1st READINGS: Welcome to NYU – by some student anarchists in the 1960s
Arrival Survival – by Filler Distro, 2015
(readings also available in print at discussion)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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?
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.
from Making Worlds Books
How do we solve the housing crisis? Two L.A. Tenants Union co-founders wrote Abolish Rent to answer that question, guided by the expertise of LATU members, who are organizing to take back control of their housing, their neighborhoods, and their lives. At Making Worlds, we’ll bring together author Tracy Rosenthal and organizer and scholar Sterling Johnson to reflect on their struggles in their building and citywide, and talk about how our work right now shows us the future of the tenant movement, moderated by Max Fox and co-presented by Pinko Magazine.
Advance registration is appreciated.
SPEAKERS:
Tracy Rosenthal is a cofounder of the L.A. Tenants Union, a frequent contributor to the New Republic, and the author, with Leonardo Vilchis, of Abolish Rent, published by Haymarket Books. They organize with Writers Against the War on Gaza and are now on rent strike in New York City.
twitter & IG: @tracyrosenthal_
Max Fox is a writer, translator, and founding editor of Pinko Magazine.
Sterling Johnson is a doctoral candidate in Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University and organizes with Philadelphia Housing Action.