The old Albany landfill is a modern free state. Fennel, trash sculptures, and shacks cover this mound of trash and construction rubble sticking out into the San Francisco bay, an antisocial realm where people do practically whatever they want. Now East Bay bureaucracy is gearing up to subdue the Landfill into a municipal park. While some folks have organized to protect the Landfill in its current state, they are missing the point, as they advocate for free space in the name of public art and dog runs. The landfill cannot exist as a state-sanctioned space. It is inaccessible, dangerous and toxic, a complete liability. The Landfill represents the messy regeneration of life on top industrial collapse, and, for those who can appreciate it, it is beautiful. Because it is completely unorganized, anti-social, it can only exist outside of society. No amount of compromise with the state will allow the Landfill to continue as itself. The state must be forced to relinquish control. The land will be free.
Anarchists, crackheads, speed freaks, punks, partiers, weird creators, solitary souls, hippies, and any one else who gives a shit will form a militia to keep the organized state out of the landfill. Walls will be erected, the neck blasted out, and ferry lines run between the Berkeley Marina for transportation and supplies. While anarchists fight for community organization in the rest of the East Bay, here the chaotic, wild, free nature of anarchism, of life, will be demonstrated in a grand display of creation and force.
Dog walkers, ‘artists’, and other such liberal mandy-panderers will have to choose their side. They must realize that the reason their dogs run free and their paintings show unrestrained, perverted sex is not because the landfill is a dog run or an open-air Mapplethorpe gallery, but because both free dogs and free art are obvious indicators of wild, unrestrained life.
Liberals cannot bargain with the state and retain freedom. Both dog runs and sculpture gardens exist within the organized State, but they are regulated, and the spirit of the landfill will wither as soon as the state sanctions activity there.
The State believes the landfill will be a pleasant addition to the still-developing EastShore Regional Park, a native plant and wildlife sanctuary with paved paths and sports fields. But the landfill is acres of toxic fill, off-gassing PCBs, and heavy metals. The natural state of the landfill is, first, water—and second, the way it is now. Plants and wildlife native to regenerating polluted fill live there already, as do people. The landfill is a necessary result of western civilization. It is not pristine Bay shoreline, almost completely destroyed by the 1950s as developers dumped huge amounts of fill into the bay. (One of the few pristine East Bay beaches is south of the landfill—try focussing on that, fuckers!) It is not friendly to folks sensitive to toxins, to folks reliant on the friendly accoutrements of modern western civilization—paved paths, bathrooms, blue light telephones, drinking fountains, doggie poop collection bags. The State, however, must ‘disappear’ their trash, pretend that their industrial trash can be transformed into a social environment, in order to continue creating crap. Liberal Berkelians insist that modern society is completely and benignly recyclable – piles of refuse are really parkland, and pristine shoreline, art galleries, and purebred dog runs at that. This trash pile is worthwhile, but not because it is recyclable back into society. The landfill is an illustration of beautiful life beyond modern society, and as such, the State must destroy it.
If the State were smart, it would realize—as many governments already have—the benefits of this societal pressure release valve. Raucus stadium concerts, rowdy sports games, and raves all release social energy, but in places like the Landfill folks can make peace with their need to be away from society. Pristine and natural areas show land without people, but the landfill shows land and people in recovery from western civilization—subconscious yet necessary therapy for folks warn thin by the capitalist grind. This is why so many yuppies are drawn to the landfill, not only for their dogs, but for themselves.
Even as new IKEAS pop up, western society continues to overextend and decay. The Albany landfill is a particularly beautiful scene of anarchic regeneration, but even it the landfill itself is let alone, the whole ambiance will change as the proposed Target store and hotel/conference center are built a few hundred yards away. A massive off-ramp leaving I-80 has already been constructed, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, for these development projects. The landfill can’t simply be ‘left alone’—it must succeed from the United States.
Speed freaks, bottle-throwing disenfranchised youth, maladjusted loners, and antisocial wingnuts are joining ranks of regular anarchists to force this succession. As this is written, supplies are being amassed and catapults built. The People’s Park riots of the 1990’s are our inspiration, and we will take the fight one step further, to complete cessation of ties to the state of California. We will dynamite the land bridge, creating the island Landfill Free State. Natural cycles of degeneration and rebirth will continue, untouched by the bureaucratic hand of organized, enforced suffocation. Long Live the Landfill!