Building a new world based on freedom, cooperation and environmental sustainability in the face of corporations and governments bent on maintaining domination is tricky. The system won’t topple on its own because a few of us refuse to participate or retreat to our gardens or coops — it needs our help. A wide variety of tactics and strategies — from strikes, protests, direct action, riots, street theater, community building and educational campaigns — may move us forward. Here’s tips unleashing disorder. 

General Theory

Order is when those in charge know where a crowd is and can manage the situation by re-routing traffic so business as usual can proceed everywhere else. From a police perspective, a bank occupation isn’t such a bad thing. There are a lot of banks so having one shut down for a couple of hours is tolerable. 

Disorder is the rare, exciting, spontaneous moment when internal and external systems of repression lose their grip. Suddenly anything can happen and no one knows what is going to happen next. Those in charge fear disorder because they’ve lost control.

When promoting disorder, the main goal isn’t to look tough confronting a line of riot cops. When you confront the police, it usually results in order, not disorder, because the police know precisely where you are and its only a matter of time before they can amass enough forces to surround and bust your ass if they so choose. 

For disorder, you want to avoid ever seeing the police but rather keep them guessing and confused while you’re free to cause chaos everywhere the police aren’t. Big protests often concentrate police forces and leave the rest of the city unguarded. The police are organized centrally so multiple mobile groups can scramble their hierarchical structures. 

Disruption and disorder can take many forms. The system loves a conventional war within traditional categories. Like guerrilla fighters, it’s our job to figure out forms of struggle where we have an advantage. Creating beautiful expressions of the world we seek to build — music, art, gardens, public sex, bicycle swarms, etc. — avoids the system’s us vs. them paradigm. 

What to Bring

To be mobile and maximize the area that gets disrupted, you want to travel light and avoid bulky signs, props or costumes that slow you down. Wear good running shoes. The black bloc uniform (black hoodie etc.) has become like wearing a huge target on your ass and serves the forces of order so consider less predictable options. If weather permits, water repellent clothes may help protect skin from pepper spray. Layers are good because they provide padding and can be used for disguise/escape. But in hot weather avoiding heatstroke and dehydration so you can run is way more important than protection from chemical weapons or a disguise. You can carrying water in a squirt bottle for drinking and to treat chemical weapons exposure. Use a fanny pack or bag that doesn’t get in the way in case you have to run. Don’t wear contact lenses, jewelry, long hair or anything the cops can grab. Think carefully about bringing drugs, weapons, burglary tools, sensitive information or anything that would get you in extra trouble if arrested. If you bring a cell phone, you may expose your personal information and your movements can be tracked — but on the other hand you can communicate with others and photograph stuff, so it depends what you’re up to. Gas masks, shields, goggles and helmets promote the types of confrontations the system can digest and manage and the protection they offer is often outweighed by the extent they make you a target and slow you down. Be fearless — being tear gassed isn’t the worst thing in the world. 

Affinity Groups & Action Decision Making

Affinity groups are small direct action cells — usually 4-8 people — who share attitudes about tactics and who organize themselves for effectiveness and protection during protests, riots or for middle of the night action missions. The best affinity groups are people with pre-existing relationships who know and trust each other intimately. Decisions can be made as collectively and quickly as possible depending on the circumstances. In a chaotic protest situation, affinity groups enable decision making (as opposed to just reacting to the police) while watching each others’ backs. Affinity groups with experience and a vision within a bigger crowd can take the initiative and start something when the crowd is standing around wondering what to do next. 

Some affinity groups use a code word which any member can yell if they have an idea for what the group should do next. Upon hearing the word, others in the group yell it too until the whole group gathers up and the person who called the huddle makes a quick proposal. The group can then agree to the proposal, or briefly discuss alternatives, and then move. A code word can also allow regrouping when the group gets separated in a chaotic situation. It is a good idea for everyone in the group to discuss their limits before an action. It can be helpful to scout locations and learn the area beforehand. During the action, taking time to check in about how everyone is feeling will keep the group unified. Don’t forget to eat and take pee breaks, which will be a lot easier when someone can act as lookout while you duck behind a dumpster. 

Some affinity groups have division of labor in which some member say away from the action to support members who might be arrested. An affinity group can send scouts on a bike to check out action opportunities. Affinity groups can be ongoing groups that last for years, or they can form just before a particular action. Before or after actions, socializing and celebrating with your group builds cohesion. 

Sometimes multiple affinity groups cooperate before or during an action using a spokes council. A spokes council is a meeting for making decisions involving large numbers of people more quickly in which each affinity group is represented by a single member. Often the rest of the affinity group sits behind the member who is the speaker so the group can let the speaker know the group’s views. 

Don’t let fear interfere with the free and independent life that you’ve got planned out in your organizer. You don’t have to be afraid to go out at night. Violence can limit both physical movement and the scope of our minds. Let’s get on with our lives, and learn how to defend ourselves. Women’s self-defense projects grew out of feminist consciousness-raising groups and incorporate personal experience with martial arts. Learning self-defense is empowering and liberating. Practice self-defense with friends, in classes, and in collectives. Support self-defense/domestic violence prisoners and learn about their cases. Share these brief tips and stories about what has worked for you.

1. Start by developing the habit of paying attention to your surroundings. Try to be alert and ready, without panic or paranoia. Examine your surroundings as if you were crossing the street. Be careful about being preoccupied while on a cellphone or headphones.

2. Check out what the people around you are up to. Are they disturbed or angry? Where are their hands? Are they reaching for a weapon? Are they following you? Do not allow your stereotypes and ignorance about a neighborhood / community to assess a situation poorly. Become familiar with the places where you live and travel. Consider possible escape routes, whether the area is inhabited or desolate.

3. Be aware of your own condition: are you upset, intoxicated, or sick? Take a deep breath and ground yourself before engaging in a situation. Relax your shoulders, bend your knees and truly exhale.

4. Be aware of your environment in public or unfamiliar territory, as well as in your home or on your stomping grounds. Most attacks occur at home, and most attackers are intimate with survivors.

5. When inappropriate or aggressive behavior surfaces, confront it before the situation escalates. Trust your feelings — examine your discomfort closely. Is someone crowding your comfort zone? A common barometer is whether they are close enough to kick or punch you. Start by setting boundaries with words and gestures.

6. Adopt a fighting stance — bend your knees and stand with one foot forward and your legs hip-width apart. Keep moving so you don’t freeze up.

7. Don’t be afraid to assert yourself, speak loudly, and yell. Learn how to say “No, get away from me, stop following me, leave me alone.” Practice role-playing situations. Practice yelling, if it doesn’t come easily. If you are on a short fuse, learn to manage your anger — don’t get baited into dangerous situations.

8. Avoid turning your back on an assailant.

9. Don’t carry weapons you don’t know how to use, and that an attacker could turn against you. Many items in your possession will be sufficient: keys, a lighter, a pencil, a bag of groceries or a comb.

10. If necessary, strike to disable: poke at the eyes, punch at the throat, kick at the knees or groin. Remember that you are not trying to win a fight, only do enough damage to get away. A difference in size and strength won’t keep you from escaping: consider how small a feral animal such as a fox can easily escape from a person’s grasp.

For women and trans self-defense in the Bay Area contact Suigetsukan, 103 International Boulevard, Oakland CA 510-452-3941 suigetsukan.org

In this political and historical climate, great sex can be a subversive, expansive, and radical mode of dismantling socializations and creating alternatives to mainstream drone culture. More and more, the Christian right’s morals and limits are seeping into the larger culture. This nauseating wave of puritanism and conservative values hangs in the air, like the stale salty grease cloud present when passing a McDonald’s. Subtle, toxic, bland, unhealthy, normative. 

Comfort in one’s skin and sexuality, consent, and self-care are an essential backdrop. There is no way to have freeing sex without actively checking in with all partners about emotional and physical comfort and openness. If folks are shutting down, disassociating, or not that into it, then how the fuck can it be any good? Knowing what one wants is not easy, as we are taught very boring and limited sexualities in this culture. Part of what can make sex so revolutionary is discovering what it is we like and pushing ourselves (consensually of course) to and beyond our limits. 

Role Switching

Many of us get stuck in sex roles or sex acts — butch or femme or top or bottom or daddy or slave. Switching up roles is exactly as it sounds; availing oneself the opportunity to receive when previously being the provider; taking turns sucking and being sucked, biting and being bitten, slapping and being slapped, holding and being held, fucking and being fucked. 

Gender-queerness

Sex can be a stage to play with the fluidity of gender and go beyond binary-gender or sex determined by gendered bodies. This may mean re-learning how to have sex and switching your focus away from genitals and genital contact. There is so much to play with and destroy, pervert, re-name. It is respectful and sexy as hell to ask people what they call their body parts and how they want them touched. When opening-up what we consider erogenous zones, more conversations about re-imagining bodies, gender, society may become possible. This can mean less focus on genitals and orgasms and more focus on nerve endings and what turns them on, and what works on an emotional level for a person. Expansion, re-defining and being aware of people’s boundaries are key in this realm and essential to sex.

Laughter

Try laughing during sex. It can be diverse; from a coy giggle, to a belly laugh, to laughing at oneself at an awkward moment or just as a way to communicate joy. Laughter is contagious and can put folks more at ease. One may laugh solo or in unison w/ sex partners. Laughing can help relieve tension – so you don’t get get so caught up in your “performance”. Doing sex is goofy and silly and in fact hilarious. There is a myth that we should act a certain way during sex: virile, coquettish, animalistic, blasé, submissive, dominant, alluring etc. Laughing helps hush those “you should be ____” voices. Noise in general during sex is a fabulous added layer to events. Sound can act as a reflection of what is going on and also act as a release for the sensations being experienced; crying, screaming, moaning, gasping are all marvelous additions to this sex symphony. Laughing enhances the intimacy and the experience in general.

Role Play

Adding some drama to the scenario can provide many things: lessen other social/psycho/dramas that folks tend to drum up when the issue of sex arises, keep things interesting and creative, help explore different identities, help approach taboo subject matters, and healing from past traumas. Role-play can be a great way to challenge one’s rigidities and discover hidden perversions in a safe context. 

This can include working up characters in a setting with a plot. It can get intricate with scripts or songs, drag, props or outfits, even a dance routine. Here is where many taboos can be explored. The more the merrier, sillier, nastier. These games could challenge political and social norms in positive and smarty-pantsed ways. Role-play scenarios set up safe consensual spaces for folks to go there consciously, critically, humbly and with an open mind. The important thing here is that everyone is okay with where the story goes.

The Babysitter at Rest by Jen George 

Cruddy by Lynda Barry 

Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien 

The Door by Magda Szabó 

Edinburgh by Alexander Chee 

In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje 

Just Above My Head by James Baldwin 

The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner 

The Overstory by Richard Powers 

Real Life by Brandon Taylor 

Space Invaders by Nona Fernández 

Stay and Fight by Madeline ffitch  

Turkish Kaleidoscope by Jenny White and Ergün Gündüz 

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler 

Weather by Jenny Offill 

Women Talking by Miriam Toews

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff 

Bruce Conner: It’s All True edited by Frieling/Garrels

Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber 

The Case for Degrowth by Kallis/Paulson/D’Alisa/Demaria 

The Communism of Love by Richard Gilman-Opalsky 

For All the People by John Curl 

Four Futures by Peter Frase 

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle by Angela Y. Davis 

Home Work by Lloyd Kahn 

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado 

The Man of Jasmine by Unica Zürn 

More Than Two by Veaux/Rickert

On Immunity by Eula Biss 

PRANKS! edited by Vale/Juno

The Spitboy Rule by Michelle Cruz Gonzales 

Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin

Citizen by Claudia Rankine 

The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers edited by Tim Hunt 

The Selected Works of Audre Lord edited by Roxane Gay 

Singular Pleasures by Harry Mathews 

We Want It All edited by Abi-Karam/Gabriel

Find our previous book lists on the Slingshot website!

Here are some ideas to consider that may be helpful for radical organizing or for surviving a Thanksgiving dinner with your family, humbly offered by some of the Slingshot Scoundrels (Hear emoji)

Do Research. Issues are multifaceted. Often we don’t invest the time to look into the arguments opposing what we are advocating. It doesn’t hurt to understand these views! And sometimes they are substantial because shit is complicated. The issues on our radar today most likely predate our own existence. There are people already working on solving any given problem. Find them.

Know your enemies. Know your friends. Respect for where people are coming from is a rarity. Maintaining genuine curiosity about other’s perspectives can be hard work! When we get lazy and make assumptions, we often create unproductive conflict and misunderstandings. Not everyone knows what you know and sees what you see. Understanding is an ongoing process for all of us, a direction we head in, and not a final destination we arrive at.

Treat everyone as a potential ally. It’s not easy to set aside our strident views long enough to engage with people who think differently from us. Making change usually means organizing with others, so relationships and connections are key. Alienating people from our work is the quickest way to assure failure. That is to say, patience and humility are essential features of successful organizing.

Don’t Get Caught. Avoid making mistakes that will get you snarled in the legal system. This applies to things done in the heat of the moment as well as much later when things have cooled down. It’s not worth it to get bragging rights or revel in past achievements. Don’t talk about illegal activity. Don’t write about it in emails, texts. Don’t post videos or photos of illegal acts.

Know Your Enemy Pt.2. When you hear “Don’t support corporations,” this also means in the insidious way we become reliant on corporations that try and shape social reality. “Google it” has become synonymous with “look it up”. Challenging them is not only about withholding our money; let’s not hand them our energy, attention, our creative endeavors either. Ask yourself: How else are we giving away our agency and independence to those ugly corporations? How do we use the tools available without unwittingly becoming tools in the hands of capitalists? And most important, what networks & resources out there that are not corporate that need uplifting?

Don’t burn out. Don’t get bitter. Don’t be afraid to act. DON’T GIVE UP.

Make your resistance sustainable —  one-legged stools don’t work. Pace yourself and make sure to keep your life outside of activism healthy. That might look like spending time & energy with family, friends, and the other facets of your world instead of being committed 150% to solving society’s issues. It’s not useful to think in slogans. They may be a good rallying cry, but they make people of conscience seem wooden and two dimensional in actual conversations. That said, this thought does have some currency: “None of us is as smart as all of us.”

This slogan references the martyr complex that seeks to go at it alone and not work with others to solve the issues of the day. Find allies, build trust, practice solidarity and commitment to each others growth as thinkers and doers.

******

The social issues we engage with can change us in good and bad ways. A lifetime of struggling against an oppressor may make us part of what we struggle against. In some ways, our resistance feeds these beasts. We can over-identify with challenging the status quo and forget that creating something better takes even more effort and insight. This is why wise activists direct some of their energy towards creating what we are FOR. We likely won’t reach that ideal place we are advocating for, and the horizon may seem forever just out of reach, but by being engaged, we can keep walking toward a new reality.

What could the world be like without calendars? Without clocks and cops and money? Without all the hierarchies and artificial categories that detach us from each other and from our connection to the earth? We’re trained into a system that fucks everything up for a few people’s gain. How can we step outside this system? 

Empire, consumerism and oppression feel inevitable, inescapable — permanent. But they are not. The path we are on is not sustainable — not just ecologically, but because the weight of colonialism and injustice is sinking our ship.  We’re on the verge of either catastrophe or maybe swift, radical and positive changes. Who knows? But the status quo? — probably not gonna remain. 

We offer this organizer as one tool to inspire and to conspire.  Born of direct action, it is made by and for people coming from another place. What else are we going to seize and create anew, based upon genuine connection? We need something visionary and forward thinking. What could possibly go right?? What beautiful rad collective experiences are waiting for us? Can we create different ways of being in the world? What would winning look like? Taking up the historical thread of activists, getting beyond paralysis and engaging with the world; that’s what we’re offering this organizer for! Creating visions together informed by our shared vulnerability, grief and solidarity!

This is the 28th year our collective has amused itself by publishing the Slingshot Organizer. Its sale raises funds to print the quarterly, radical, independent Slingshot Newspaper. We distribute the newspaper for free everywhere in the US, often at the places listed in the Radical Contact List. Let us know if you can be a local newspaper distributor in your area. Also please send us content for the paper. Thanks to the volunteers who created this year’s organizer: AJ, Alexis, Alexandra, Amy, Ana, Ash, Bolton, Christy, Clara, Cleo, Coco, Dov, elke, Fern, Forest, Francesca X 2, Gina, HB, Isabella, Jacquelynn, Jemimiah, Jenna, jesse, Joey, Jonathon, Jules, Juhlz, Justin June, Karen, Katie, Kei, Kyle, Lew, Marie, Mariko, Matt, MissZits, Molly, Nadja, Nat, Niki, Noelle, Olivia, Peter, Rachelle, Rachel, Robert, Sean, Sylvia, Talia, Talia, Taylor, Tiffany, Vincent & those we forgot. 

Slingshot Collective

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Physical office: 3124 Shattuck Avenue Berkeley, CA 94705

Mail: PO Box 3051, Berkeley, CA 94703

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