Category: Articles

One sunny day in late August we found ourselves standing on the highway. As the sun beat down mercilessly we looked at each other doing our best to keep our good hitchhiking clothes smelling sweet for just one more ride.

Fifteen hundred miles later, we arrived in Minneapolis/St. Paul several days early for the PreNC, a gathering of anarchists hosted by the RNC Welcoming Committee with the purpose of developing a large-scale direct action strategy to shut down next year’s Republican National Convention. As delegates from the North Carolina faction of the growing Unconventional Action network, this gathering was the culmination of six months of networking, propagandizing, and strategizing in our own region.

Why organize early for the conventions? Why organize for them at all?

Many would point out that political party conventions are largely symbolic gatherings, where most of the major decision-making has already happened. Shouldn’t we focus on disrupting something more tangible? There is wisdom in this critique, but it could be applied to just about any single protest or event. The point of any single, coordinated day of action is to prove to the broader public, as well as ourselves, that we do in fact have the power to interfere with the rich and powerful on our own terms.

There are several factors that make the party conventions an excellent choice for such interference. In 2008 disillusionment with the endless war and the party system that refuses to end that war will reach a peak, just as the public visibility of anarchists in this part of the world is bottoming out. Many issues that anarchists work on locally will intersect with the diverse struggles of non-anarchist folks at these protests, and more of these people will be drawn to direct action than in many years past. We believe it is crucial that anarchists organize early on to set the tone for this direct action, in order to avoid being eclipsed by the authoritarian politicking and liberal marches of the last few years. Moreover, Denver (DNC) and St. Paul (RNC) have promising strategic vulnerabilities unsurpassed in recent years of mass mobilizations.

The Strategy

On the penultimate day of the pReNC, over 100 anti-authoritarians from around the country gathered together to distill their schemes and dreams into a formal stratagem. Smaller working groups of around 20 focused on nationwide communications, food/medical /legal infrastructure, media, coalition building, and action strategy. Pouring over maps, timetables, and photographs of the city, this last group hammered out the specifics of an action plan:

• On the first day, maximum disruption will be caused by a three-tiered direct action strategy. The tiers are, in order of priority:

Tier One: Establish 15-20 blockades, utilizing a diversity of tactics, creating an inner and outer ring around St. Paul’s Excel Center, where the RNC will be held.

Tier Two: Immobilize the delegates’ transportation infrastructure.

Tier Three: Block the five western bridges connecting the cities.

It was repeatedly emphasized that people plugging into this strategy will be free to shape their actions as they see fit, using tactics they find appropriate. As the specific blockade sites develop, there may be a system of delegating some sites as “red zones” (more rowdy, will fight back), “yellow zones” (feisty but peaceful), and “green zones” (non-arrestable) so as to accommodate a wide variety of creative tactics. Soon locals will be identifying the most strategic blockade sites, and will be available to answer questions about measurements, geography, etc. So get your comrades together, print out some maps, and start thinking about which site you want to cover now. Over the next six months groups will begin adopting specific intersections, streets, on-ramps, or bridges as their own.

The pReNC is calling for local and regional groups to organize their own planning consultas over the next few months, to be ready to reconvene in Minneapolis in summer 2008. They are also calling for a series of local actions against oppression and electoral politics leading up to and building momentum and experience for the RNC and DNC. More information on calls for local actions are in the works.

Eye to the horizon, ear to the ground

On October 5-7, radicals converged in Denver for the annual anti-Columbus Day marches to hold their own Unconventional Consulta to develop the strategy of direct action for the Democratic National Convention. (Slingshot went to press before the meeting – ed.) For info email unconventionaldenver@ riseup.net. The finalized strategies for both conventions will be published in a newspaper to be distributed throughout the country, and Unconventional Action groups will be doing road shows to publicize both strategies and facilitate direct action training. The website www.unconventionalaction.org will serve as an info point, networking tool, and research hub for folks around the country. While planning what roles you wish to play in these actions, be sure to start fundraising; the RNC Welcoming Committee estimates that it will need as much as 50,000 dollars for a two-month-long convergence center, legal costs, and other necessary expenses, and undoubtedly similar funds will be needed in Denver.

We have one year to prepare for the most extravagant theatre in this war on exploitation. That means one year to study maps, prepare blockades, run our sprints, climb fences, craft disguises, find press credentials, procure bolt-cutters, and most importantly, gather those close to us and devise our own plans. The political parties hope to rally their support with all the bells, whistles, lights and confetti that can be expected from a class that cares more about appearances than human life. But we envision a different outcome. We will be here to ensure that when the CNN cameras pan the Xcel center on the first night of the RNC, not one seat in the entire stadium is filled. Our actions will eclipse the RNC. We are going to shut the convention down.

Get ready — a year goes faster than a root beer float in August.

In July 2008, heads of the states that monopolize two thirds of earth’s wealth will gather at Toya Lake in Hokkaido Japan. Although the so-called Group of Eight does not have any legitimate right for deciding planetary affairs, they have self-appointed themselves world rulers. Thus the G8 has driven neo-liberal globalization at the same time as spreading poverty, violence, hatred, segregation, and environmental destruction.

At a very critical moment of world capitalism during the 1970s, the G8 was established to form a consensus among the imperialist nation-states. The ‘consensus’ signifies nothing short of finding out the most convenient means of driving global financialization, privatization, commercialization, and militarization and camouflaging these processes as if they were for the public well-being.

In the past the G8 has expressed concerns about human rights and poverty. German Chancellor Angela Merkel stressed the need for a human-faced globalization. But then, who is it that violates human rights on the pretext of the “fight against terrorism”? Who is it that is eliminating public education the world over? Who is it that privatizes almost all the resources left for humanity — land, water, and food — and preys on the increasing global poverty? Who is it that produces and exports more than 90% of the world’s weaponry? At the 2007 summit in Heiligendamm, one of the main themes was the poverty in Africa, but what they proposed as a measure to combat it was, shockingly, the deregulation of investment in Africa. From its behavior we have learned that for the G8, even human rights and poverty are just another opportunity for capitalists’ expropriation.

At the Toya Lake summit in 2008, the main theme will be environmental problems. What a deceit! It is the G8 that ravages the natural resources of the world–even resorting to arms–and discharges more than 40% of the planetary carbon dioxide, hence instigating the climate changes. Shinzo Abe, the just-resigned prime minister of Japan who was to have hosted the 2008 summit, invented a vain slogan: “Invitation to ‘Cool Earth 50’,” which proposes in substance the exportation of nuclear power plants to developing countries–nothing that counters capitalist interests and works for true enduring development.

We are no longer silent. Neither do we intend to make a petition for a better G8 through conversation. By way of direct action, we will demand the termination of 2008 Toya Lake Summit and the decomposition of G8.

Also we will demand the immediate liquidation of the policies of the just-resigned Abe administration of Japan, the sole participant in the G8 from Asia. The Japanese government is in the midst of pushing for neo-liberalist reforms and the fortification of the security-state in Japan, while persisting in sending troops to Iraq as a simple-minded follower of the US strategy for its global military rule. At the same time, just-resigned Abe’s main objective was to amend Japan’s constitution in order to complete the long-lasting ambitions of imperialist Japan. Thus, to thwart the ambitions of the Japanese state is no longer a concern of Japan alone, but a must for the struggle against the neo-liberalist expansion and militarization in the entire Asian region. Our objective to terminate G8 is inseparable from these regional tasks.

We appeal to you, all the people struggling in different regions of the world, to join No! G8 Japan in July 2008 in Toya Lake, Hokkaido Japan. We consider our project as a continuation of the planetary anti-G8 struggles, especially those coordinated by Dissent network. We seek to add a new phase of it in the Far East. Let us organize together the widest possible global network and create an unimaginably varied, rich, and powerful spectacle of struggle. By so doing let G8 know that a world that is totally different from the one driven by the capitalist principles, a world that is based upon the principles of autonomy, mutual aid, and direct democracy, is possible.

For info, check http://a.sanpal.co.jp/no-g8 — parts are in English. Organizers are planning a tour of Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and Indonesia to promote the protest.

Nearly 100 people gathered July 13-15, 2007, in Oakland, CA to discuss and strategize around issues of police abuse. Representing over 20 organizations from around the country, the first National Copwatch Conference achieved its goal of bringing together organizers and activists who directly monitor the police on a local, grassroots level. From New Orleans to Portland, Chicago to Denver, Los Angeles to Winnipeg, organizers met face to face to learn from each other’s experiences while retaining a decentralized, grassroots organizing model. Throughout the conference, it was obvious that a movement is spreading across the country – and into Canada – based on the action of videotaping the police.

The first Copwatch organization started in 1990 in Berkeley, CA as a response to increased policing of the homeless community, people of color and activists on Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue. Copwatching — based on the organizing of the Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement and the Brown Berets — is a non-violent model of directly monitoring the police with video cameras to both deter and document police abuse. Nearly 17 years later, over 70 groups around the country – not to mention those in Canada, Australia and France – are actively on the streets monitoring local law enforcement. The need for a conference, a space to bring these groups together and see the faces of their struggling siblings, has been a long time coming.

After going to police accountability conferences lacking the space to discuss direct police monitoring, Berkeley Copwatch co-founder Andrea Prichett wanted to simply create the space for those invested in copwatching. At Friday night’s opening session, she acknowledged the bitter-sweet truth all of us face in our organizing: the beauty in the emergence of a national police accountability movement is based in the oppressive reality of systemic police abuse. The other key-note speakers, Big Man Howard from the Black Panther Party and New Orleans community organizer Greg Griffiths, spoke to the history and current need for a Copwatch movement.

The bulk of Saturday consisted of over 20 workshops with presenters representing over 25 different organizations. Topics included: immigration and local law enforcement, documenting abuse against women and queer communities, media messaging, video activism, working with natural allies, civilian oversight models, independent investigation, empowering homeless and poor communities, organizational security, copwatching techniques, alternatives to the police, training Know Your Rights workshop trainers, policing of gangs, disability and mental health issues, banning tasers, using technology in organizing and sustaining a Copwatch organization. The ability for organizers to see and discuss how they are not alone in the struggle was monumental.

A major strength of Copwatch is its dedication to grassroots organizing. Specific to the members and resources of a given community, no two Copwatch groups are identical. Factors such as communities being urban or rural, cities or towns, their proximity to the US border, the local use of federal law enforcement agencies such as ICE, FBI and Homeland Security and the existence of civilian oversight all shape the way Copwatch groups function within their community. Despite these and other differences, the gathering provided the space for Copwatch organizers to share techniques and experiences around similarities in national police trends, for example the growing number of local ICE raids, the role of the police in gentrification, violence against women and queers and state attacks on civilian review boards.

But the conference did not focus on the outrageous state of police violence as a hopeless reality; it also provided a space to share success stories and give hope to those dedicated to this growing movement. Attended by Conference participants as well as members of the community, Saturday night’s film festival called upon groups to share footage of their local organizing. Featuring the documentary Free Ya Hood from the Brooklyn chapter of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, as well as footage from Phoenix, Denver, San Jose and San Francisco, the night illustrated both the alarming reality of police abuse as well as local victories in ending such brutality. A necessary event for a movement based around video activism, the film fest was simply another moment to share and understand the national impact of police abuse and the need for a network, a movement, creating true safety in its communities.

A movement. A network. Not a national organization. While Sunday’s plenary resulted in the creation of a national list-serv and website to be used primarily for contacting other Copwatch groups, the building of a movement resulted primarily from organizers around the country meeting each other face to face, leading and attending workshops and understanding they are not alone in this struggle to keep their communities safe. The national network created at the conference was meant only to support the work of local community organizing; it is not a national headquarters or national organization creating a top-down model of organizing. Each community has its own specific needs and resources to best organize itself. The network will serve only as a way to share strategy, experience and create discussion around this decentralized movement known as Copwatch The First National Copwatch Conference was truly the first of many to come.

For more information on the National Copwatch Conference, check out the website at www.copwatchconference.org.For more information on Berkeley Copwatch, copwatching in general, or to get in touch with an existing group copwatching near you, feel free to contact us at: Berkeley Copwatch 2022 Blake St, Berkeley, Ca 94609 berkeleycopwatch@yahoo.com www.berkeleycopwatch.org 510.548.0425

The following are exerpts of the Copwatch Manual published by Berkeley Copwatch on how you Copwatch groups monitor police activity:

Our main tactic in Copwatch is to discourage police brutality and harassment by letting the cops know that their actions are being recorded and that they will be held accountable for their acts of harassment and abuse. To this end we will:

• Record incidents of abuse and harassment

• Follow through on complaints

• Publicize incidents of abuse and harassment

• Work with the Police Review Commission

• Educate those who don’t believe that police harassment exists.

Defuse Situations

People don’t want to be arrested. As Copwatchers, we don’t want to escalate a situation to where police arrest someone as a way of getting back at us. We want cops to treat people with respect and to observe their rights. Often, cops forget that homeless people and others actually have rights. We may need to remind them from time to time. We must learn how to assert our rights and to encourage others to assert their rights without endangering someone who is already in some amount of trouble.

We do not attempt to interfere with officers as they make routine arrests. We document and try to inform the cops when we feel that they are violating policy or the law . . .

Shift Procedures

• Be sure your warrant status, bike or car is up to date. Don’t give the cops any opportunity to bust you. Assume that this could happen.

• Identification can be very helpful if the police detain you.

• Have a partner for safety as well as good Copwatching. It is very important not to confront the police alone. You must have a witness and someone who can verify your story in case of a problem

• Make sure that you are not carrying anything illegal! No knives, drugs, etc.

• Wear a Copwatch identification badge.

• Be sure that you or your partner brings things you will need to Copwatch: Incident forms, the Copwatch Handbook, Police Dept. complaint forms, Copwatch literature to distribute, tape recorder, police scanner, video recorder, cameras, copy of Penal Code

During Shift

As you observe a situation, one partner records what officers are saying or doing, while the other quietly gets information from witnesses. Consult and share information. Get a firm grasp of the situation first. Record as much information as possible. Witness names and numbers and badge numbers are important. . . . It also helps to write down when, where and what time the incident happened. If there has been an injury, encourage the person to see a doctor and take pictures of the injuries as soon as possible. Distribute Copwatch literature while you are observing a stop so that people understand that you are not just there to be entertained but are actually trying to help.

Remember that you have the right to watch the cops. You don’t have the right to interfere. . . .

When you observe police remember that you don’t want to make the cops more nervous than they already are. Keep your hands visible at all times. Don’t approach an officer from behind or stand behind them. Don’t make any sudden movements or raise your voice to the cop. Try to keep the situation calm. You don’t want to get the person in more trouble. If an officer tells you to step back, tell the officer that you do not want to interfere, you simply wish to observe.

More Assertive Style:

• Ask victims if they know why they are being arrested or detained. . . .

• If the stop is vague, ask the cop to name the Penal Code Section that they are enforcing.

• Have educational conversations with people standing around.

• Don’t piss the cop off if you can help it. Don’t let it get personal. No name calling!

• Identify yourself as “Copwatch.”

• Try to stay until the stop is concluded. Remember that Rodney King was just a traffic stop originally.

• If a person wants to take action, give them complaint forms.

• Don’t assume who is right and who is wrong. Observe and document before taking action.

Be Careful:

• Don’t inadvertently collaborate in a crime (don’t become a look-out, warning if police are coming, etc.) . . .

• Taking pictures or videotaping can be a problem if the detainee doesn’t want you to. Respect them. Tell them that you are working to stop police misconduct. If this doesn’t satisfy them, turn off the camera. . . .

• Don’t make promises that you can’t keep. Don’t tell people you will get them a lawyer or take the cops to court, etc.

• Don’t be afraid to say “I don’t know” if you are asked legal questions. Better than giving out wrong information.

To see the full manual or for other information, check out www.berkeleycopwatch.org. 

I wear black for the poor and beaten down… And for the prisoner who has long since served his time

(Johnny Cash)

The following text was written by people belonging to the radical left in Germany, who, like many others, have different perspectives on and opinions about the incidents of the 2nd June 2007 in Rostock during the protests against the G8-summit. One thing we do have in common is our will to resist, which in its practical realisations, with their different means of expression, is respected by all of us. Public denunciation and one-sided apportioning of blame are not our means. With this text we aim to engage in positive and negative criticism, of ourselves, and also of those with whom we have worked on a common concept of resistance over the past two and a half years.

By United Colours Of Resistance (with shortening by Slingshot indicated by “…”)

The demonstration on the 2nd June in Rostock was a success. Not despite but because of the Black Bloc and the massive resistance from the different blocks of the demonstration. The confrontation with the cops and the attack on the Sparkasse Bank produced images which unmistakably demonstrated a radical critique of current ruling conditions, as well as a disapproval of the official G8 meeting. There were so many people who didn’t want to “engage in a dialogue” with the rulers, who didn’t want to “be heard”, and who didn’t want to express “constructive critique” (i.e. take part in the organisation of capitalist exploitation).

The Rostock riots were one of the few actions against the meeting of the self-declared rulers of the world that could not be co-opted or re-interpreted. Symbols of the capitalist system were attacked directly, whether cops or banks, in order to say “no” to an unjust and oppressive world economic system.

“Attacking Capitalism” – On the 2nd June this slogan was actively brought to life as a non-conciliatory sign, carried by many international autonomous, left radical and anarchist groups and individuals. “We”, people from small or large organized groups, were not the only ones who took part in this; on Saturday many unorganized people furiously picked up stones.

The riot was not only an expression of anger at the arrogance of power, but also showed the force of our resistance to be incalculable to the police and state apparatus. This anger at the arrogance of power has to be understood against the backdrop of growing state repression, such as the raids on the 9th May 2007, as well as the massive restrictions on the right to demonstrate that have increased over the recent years, e.g. the banning of masks, police filming during demonstrations, snatch squads, regulations on the size of side banners, controls and searches before demonstrations, “walking kettles” (complete cordoning of demonstrations) and so forth.

This campaign has been strategically aimed at preventing, effectively blockading and making impossible the large meetings of rulers (WTO, G8, IMF). In our opinion, due to the militant clashes during the WTO conference in Seattle in 1999, the IMF/World Bank meeting in Prague 2000 and the G8 summit in Genoa 2001, the G8 states decided to hold future G8 summits far away from large cities and metropoles, instead meeting in rural areas where they mistakenly believed the potential for resistance to be weaker. If we can keep up the massive and intensive resistance over the next years, G8 meetings may only be able to held high up in the mountains, at the North Pole.

In Germany, many militant activists joined the “make capitalism history” block organized by the Interventionist Left (IL). This block was a “closed” Black Block, open to all autonomous and anarchist groups. With hindsight, this concept allowed for the joint militant actions that followed later, and made them easier. The character of this block was made clear in the mobilizing posters of the IL, which depicted masked up and helmeted demonstrators.

During and especially after the attacks on the police and banks, representatives of the different organizations who had helped organize either the large demonstration or the blockades planned for the following days made desperate attempts to distance themselves. Together with the mainstream press, they tried to depoliticize this militant form of resistance. The result of these distancing attempts was that the mainstream media reported exclusively about “violence” (that is naturally only acceptable if It’s exercised by the state). This is an old and well-known game, and from the German media organizations like “Spiegel”, FAZ and TAZ we don’t expect anything different. Thus the declaration “make capitalism history” went completely unheard in the media in the next few days.

. . . .

Within an anti-state orientation, the struggle for the acceptance of militant resistance is an important counter-hegemonic struggle. The struggle for the acceptance of militant resistance is at the same time also the struggle for the acknowledgement of how violent the circumstances are that we live in. To speak seriously of racist border regimes, the ruthless logic of capitalist exploitation and wars of aggression, can only mean militant resistance. Of course this is still only about a symbolic struggle. To throw stones at window panes or heavily armoured cops does not mean smashing capitalism. It’s about sending a non-conciliatory message to a system that holds human beings in contempt. No more, no less.

Well-meant but in the end just as distancing is to say “The cops started it”

We know that the police have many ways of manipulating situations: agent provocateurs, direct attacks for trivialities (like wearing a black baseball cap or black scarf), or they invent something. All of this happened in Rostock.

Added to that you have a media which at the first opportunity took on board and spread any lies the cops come up with. At the demonstration there had been 400 injured cops, of which 30 were injured severely – later it materialized that it was 30 injured, of which only 2 were severely injured. The Rebel Clown Army supposedly attacked individual police with acid; in reality this was soapy water, used to blow bubbles. The police denied having used agents provocateurs during the summit; as the police press officer stated: “There are no plain clothes officers at demonstrations”. The same day, many different videos appeared showing how a police officer from Bremen, all clad in black, was exposed as a plain clothes officer on duty. There are many more examples, but the fact that the cops often attack us must not be used at every demonstration as the sole explanation for militant resistance.

We don’t have to apologize for questioning the state monopoly over violence. We wanted to attack and we did so in Rostock, even if that particular time and place was not what we had had in mind! Already in 1999 at the time of the protests in Seattle against the WTO conference, which so many of the people in the anti-globalization movement refer to positively, an anarchist group, the ACME collective, issued a so-called “Black Block Communiqué” titled “Peasant Revolt.” It detailed reasons for the necessity and legitimacy of attacking capitalist symbols in Seattle and smashing windows of multinational corporations such as the Bank of America, US Bancorp, GAP, Starbucks, McDonalds, Nike Town, Levi’s etc.

At last, constructive criticism!

Other criticisms should be more important to us. Yes, not everything went well in Rostock. For example, it would have been much nicer if the “make capitalism history” block hadn’t dispersed at the end of the demonstration and before the attack on the Berlin police unit, but had collectively and resolutely moved into the center of town. There, there would have been enough capitalist targets that “uninvolved” people would have been less endangered. But seemingly this was neither wanted nor planned. Much later there was an attempt by a few hundred mask
ed up people to go to the town center. However, they only got the first bank, which was smashed.

With hindsight, we lacked a new meeting point to continue. The attack on the lone standing police car has to be questioned. Many militants criticize that after the windows of the cop car were smashed, the two unprotected police officers who were sitting in the front of the car were attacked with stones and poles. Severe injuries could not have been ruled out. Some of us believe that the limits of legitimate militancy were exceeded here, because it’s not our aim to (severely) injure police officers.

At the subsequent riot at the Rostock Harbour too many comrades and in some case “uninvolved” people were hit and injured by bottles and stones. We have to find ways to make sure that people are not injured by people throwing things from the back rows. For people that don’t want to be involved with these kinds of militant confrontations there has to be a way for them to retreat properly. Responsible militancy also means drinking the contents of the bottle the night before and not at the demonstration. Here everyone is called on to approach people who booze at demonstrations! We have to admit to ourselves that we haven’t yet reached a point of responsible militancy. This is difficult and was not necessarily to be expected in Rostock; all of us were amazed at the number of people that were there. Lack of experience, however, should not be a reason to not conduct militant demonstrations.

It’s much more the case that a new culture of demonstration is needed to make militancy 1. more accepted, 2. safer for everyone and 3. more successful. This can only happen if afterwards people don’t boast, “I was there and then I gave the cop…”. We need a debate about militancy. This can happen through texts like these, discussions at autonomous plenary meetings, during the preparations for the next demonstration etc. Criticism has to be taken seriously and has to be understood as a call for better militant organization.

Swords to ploughshares, stones to messages…

Not only the actions themselves but also the communication of their intended message has to be better organized. The dictum, “actions speak for themselves” might be true, if attacks on capitalist symbols are successful. Sometimes, like in Rostock, it’s not true. After Saturday, we didn’t manage to communicate the legitimacy of militant resistance against the violence of state and capitalist relations.

This certainly has something to with potential repression. There were numerous requests to get a participant to the riots in front of a camera. The possibility to communicate our motivations and reasons via the media was there, but on the whole there was nobody who had the courage or even thought it right to do so. This is also the case for the Campinski Press Group that was run by people from the autonomous spectrum. Even “our” press group ignored some of the press statements . . .

It has been shown how important it is to better use and support our own structures such as Indymedia, free radios etc. This includes a broad discussion within our radical left spectrum about how to deal with the press and the question of its role as the “fourth power of the state”. In the end it was well-known faces that appeared in the media, whose comments were a relief after the previous media smear campaigns, but they were given by individuals without the backing of groups.

Principally we think it’s more sensible to publish opinions of groups and associations that have been collectively discussed before hand, instead of individuals, mostly men, raising their own profiles with their interpretations of events. This is our starting point for an antagonistic movement. The goal should be to evaluate and publish the events of Rostock together, not to leave this to self-proclaimed or even designated spokespersons. Lamentably, this happened continuously.

Even the left scene newspaper “Analyse und Kritik” only gave space to male individuals to voice their views and comment. . . . This is a step backwards. Obvoiusly it’s neither a coincidence nor the product of anti-patriarchal analysis that primarily men were allowed to speak or wanted to speak. We don’t want to make blanket accusations in this respect, but we think that there was at the very least a lack of the necessary sensibility.

In the end, we have to look to ourselves too. We hadn’t only hoped for but had wanted riots. The media reaction was predictable. With our silence, we left the space to NGOs spokespersons, ATTAC and IL, which led to distancing. We have to face this dilemma and urgently need to discuss how to communicate militant praxis at demonstrations, as well as how to deal with the media.

Dress for the moment

Although he doesn’t want to know, Ulrich Brand’s suspicions can be confirmed: “I suspect (although I don’t know and I don’t want to know!) that people who march in the Black Block and even those who take action, are otherwise part of similar political contexts as many other demonstrators.” Being militant at a demonstration is not about identity – at least it shouldn’t be – It’s a tactic with strengths and weaknesses just like any other tactic. Sometimes it’s useful, sometimes it’s not. In Rostock it was useful in order to give the G8 resistance a non-conciliatory note.

For an Emancipatory Militant Resistance

“There must be a better world somewhere” (BB King)

Throughout the city of San Francisco residents are returning nature to the public fabric. Unlike the vast, open greenery of Golden Gate or other city parks, these spaces are cultivated directly by members of the community, on a scale which makes sense to the particular needs of people living there.

These spots blossoming around the city are not locked away for private use; they are part of public and community life. They are part of the neighborhood. They are not the projects of ‘New Urbanism’ and don’t come from any planning department, nor are they official beautification projects, though they do make the city more beautiful. They are not administered through the city and do not have professional groundskeepers. There are no budgets, boards, permits, or lawyers.

They are evidence of an emerging viewpoint in which nature belongs as a part of the city, where urban residents have a direct connection to natural processes and reclaim some of the space that has been devoted to other enterprises such as commerce, industry, transportation, etc.

These micro spaces vary in scale from a cultivated windowsill facing a public street to a fully-developed community garden. Private and community gardens are, of course, an established part of the urban environment. Emerging now are the often contested spaces, where “guerrilla gardening” and creative use of parking spaces are gaining interest. Some folks are even making a “claim” on parts of larger parks. The claim they make, however, is not for private gain. They do have an agenda, but it includes notions of biodiversity, community involvement, native plantings, food security, soil sanctity, etc.

Urban residents are encouraging do-it-yourself green spaces to enter the public environment.

The Life and Death of an Urban Garden

At the corner of Fulton and Stanyan streets, there is a lot where corn stalks grow among discarded Starbucks containers. A graffiti on the pavement reads :

Where did the garden go?

I saw it go

I saw it taken away

Fucking Bastards!

If you watch the site carefully at night, you might even see someone harvesting potatoes or gathering ingredients for a salad. What is going on here?

There once was a lot here which, as some of the residents say, was merely “Collecting trash”. The residents complained for some time about the blight of the trash-strewn lot to a largely unresponsive landlord. The lot in question had been sitting for 20 years. The bounty of the lot included “weeds, trash, dog shit, and heroin needles.” So some folks neighboring the lot decided to use it in a different way.

A small group got together and cleaned out the space, removing weeds, cleaning up the trash and other refuse, and creating a space they would be able to plant in. An abandoned lot was fast becoming a fledgling community garden.

Within twenty minutes of the first planting, one of the gardeners remarked, people from the neighborhood became curious. And some folks became involved — after all, it was their community.

When it was clear that the garden was to be a reality, the gardeners made contact with a property-management firm that handled the lot for the landlord, who lived out-of-town (way out — Hawaii, actually). The property manager intimated that he couldn’t see any harm in what was happening, and didn’t deem that “official permission” from the land owner would be necessary.

So it looked to the gardeners as if they had been sanctioned to keep up their activity.

Meanwhile the garden flourished. Plantings included artichokes, garlic, fava beans, potatoes, strawberries, lettuce, chard, tomatoes, and quinoa. The gardeners had street parties, music, and barbecues in the new community space, but unexpectedly, the land owner became aware of the situation and demanded that the garden be destroyed. The landlord wanted everything ripped out.

The site underwent a complete transformation, but the owner wanted everything put back the way it was.

When the site was set for ‘removal’, the gardeners occupied the garden for five days. Members of the community also came out to support the garden. A neighborhood watch was formed to look after it. Three and a half weeks went by before the property management company paid a crew to remove the garden.

As one of the former gardeners remarks, “Gophers were our second-biggest pest in the garden. They did almost as much damage as the capitalists.” The gardeners have become galvanized to look for other spots in which to plant, but the community does not have its garden anymore.

But plants have a tenacity that no removal crew can easily overcome. Many of them are coming back even as the lot fills again with the wandering garbage that blows through the city.

Space Reclaimed

Streets used to be a lot like the living rooms of the city, available to all the public for a variety of uses. Now most streets are treated solely as traffic conduits for private automobiles. What’s worse is that even more space is required for the cars that aren’t being used, the ones that must “park”. The going rate for a few feet of downtown space in which to leave your car can be up to three dollars per hour. What a deal! Parking is the dominant land use in many areas.

But what would happen if you put in your quarter and instead of rolling a car into the space, you rolled out some sod?

Last September, the group Rebar (www.rebargroup.org) took several car parking spots throughout the city and made them into temporary green spaces. They transported their materials by bicycle and set up miniature parks in San Francisco’s downtown, in the South-of-Market area (SOMA), in front of city hall (in the Mayor’s parking spot, which was empty as the mayor wasn’t around) and several other locations.

The parks each had a different design and theme. Some were a basic public park with benches and trees, while others were elaborate garden paths or tea gardens.

The groups navigated their bicycles through San Francisco traffic, hauling everything they needed in trailers. Some items included fully-grown trees in large pots and full-scale benches. It is an inspiring sight indeed to see a tall tree squeezing its way through an urban traffic snarl without any hang ups.

The parks had an immediate positive effect. Once they were set up, they transformed the urban space dramatically. Passersby used the parks as places to relax, to have lunch, to meet and talk with others, to take the sun, and of course to think about how we treat urban space. When the meter ran down, they would just pop another quarter in and go back to reading, people watching, or laying on the grass.

Of course there is a two-hour time-limit for all downtown parking spots, so Rebar would take the trees and benches down, roll the sod back up, and move to another site once their two hours were up.

Rebar converted more than a dozen parking spots into parks in San Francisco, while other people did the same thing all over the world. It happened again this September as well. But arts groups aren’t the only ones reclaiming urban space for a green city.

Within the confines of the enormous Golden Gate Park, a gardener started a tiny native plant garden in a somewhat obscure corner of the park. This garden was accomplished by fiat, without going through the typical channels that community gardens often go through (after all, it’s already a green space — a park. Why make a garden there? Or so the thinking might go).

Green grass is great to play frisbee on, and big trees are very pretty and great for shade, but in terms of biodiversity, there isn’t much going on in the lawn. Ecologists have a pet-term for lawns: green deserts.

Over time, the gardener peeled back more of the grass as his garden grew. There is now a diverse mix of native plants in this little corner of Golden Gate park. And the amount of space in the park is
so vast that the native plant garden in no way diminishes the experience of the park, only adds to it. Plus, it is an in-tact seed bank for native varieties of plant life. A library of species, if you will.

The Garden in the City

Clearly people are thinking about urban space in new ways. There are even single-block neighborhood organizations dedicated to planting charming sidewalk gardens like the one on Fillmore street in the Lower Haight neighborhood. Residents are becoming emboldened to actively manage their own environment, whether publicly or privately “held”. There are even people planting seeds in soaked clay balls and throwing them over fences, planting gardens that way. Witness the “illegal” fruit-tree plantings or the vegetable-growing tradition of People’s Park in Berkeley.

Guerrilla gardeners are taking to the city with trowels and soaked beans, sowing new life into the urban environment with methods like those of graffiti artists.

All cities are built on top of what were once natural, intact ecosystems. But most cities, especially since industrialism, have kept an extremely tenuous relationship with nature — typically it’s a patch of green grass in a sea of development. Things got even worse after the automobile, when the streets themselves became largely devoid of life because life was too slow, too organic for the mechanized mobility that became an international obsession.

But as we all know, if we don’t constantly re-pave, things grow up through the cracks. Grasses grow inside of potholes; tree roots tear up pavement. Nature is still here demanding a reckoning. Perhaps the push toward “Garden Cities” should have been a push toward city gardens.

Many cities are now building their own soils, growing their own food, and rediscovering nature. Some have even argued that this is where the ever-elusive “frontier” is sprouting up once again.

www.rebargroup.org

People are mobilizing to prevent the construction of numerous liquified natural gas (LNG) ocean terminals around the US which will increase dependence on fossil fuels, contribute to global climate change and delay the development of alternative energy sources such as solar and wind power. Major fossil fuel corporations and their puppet, the National Petroleum Council, are currently pushing to develop a global trade in LNG similar to the current global trade in oil. Such a global trade is precisely the wrong direction to be heading given the environmental realities associated with the emission of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels. Concerned inhabitants of the earth need to do whatever we can to stop the construction of any new LNG infrastructure and channel the money that would be spent on this short-term, unsustainable technology into sustainable energy sources.

Direct action is already happening. Over a hundred people used fishing boats, sailboats and kayaks August 13 to cross the Colombia River from Wahkiakum County, Washington so they could occupy a beach at Bradwood, Oregon where NorthernStar Natural Gas is seeking to build a huge liquified natural gas import terminal. The action came at the conclusion of the West Coast Climate Convergence. If built, the terminal’s peak daily capacity would be twice the average daily use of Oregon natural gas consumers. There have been other protests against LNG terminal proposals in Vallejo, Calif; Tijuana; Harpswell, Maine; and Eureka, Calif.

LNG – A primer

Liquified natural gas is a technology for moving natural gas from areas where it is plentiful to areas where natural gas is scarce. Natural gas (mostly methane) is the type of gas people burn in gas stoves, water heaters, and dryers. It is also one of the major fossil fuels used to produce electricity. About one-third of the natural gas burned in the US is used to generate electricity according to the US Energy Information Administration. Oil companies drill wells to tap deposits of natural gas and then pipe the gas to the end user. Since natural gas is distributed fairly evenly around the world, most natural gas used in the US and around the world is from local sources. However, heavy US use of North American natural gas deposits for decades — plus ever increasing demand — are threatening to bring natural gas shortages to the US.

That’s where LNG comes in. Energy companies make LNG by super cooling natural gas to minus 259 degrees Fahrenheit until it becomes a liquid. Once it is liquid, it can be loaded on ships and moved around the world. A number of countries that have huge natural gas reserves — Algeria, Australia, Brunei, Indonesia, Libya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Oman, Qatar, Trinidad and Tobago — want to liquify their gas so they can export it to the USA. They can’t move it unless it is cooled — natural gas is usually moved via pipeline and it would be too expensive to build a pipe between, say, Indonesia and Los Angeles. When the gas is liquified, it only takes up 1/600th the space it takes in a gaseous form.

Liquifying natural gas is very expensive and uses massive amounts of energy. Although natural gas is frequently considered the “greenest” of the fossil fuels — because burning it gives off relatively less carbon dioxide (CO2) greenhouse gas than burning coal — burning natural gas still gives off billions of tons of carbon dioxide and contributes to climate change. Burning LNG is even worse because the process of liquifying the gas, moving it via ships, and then heating it to re-gassify it means that even more CO2 is emitted to get a particular job done. According to Powers Engineering, using LNG gives off 20 percent more CO2 than using regular natural gas.

But the world demand for energy is so huge that the transactional costs of making and moving LNG are overcome by the profits that can be made. Right now, the use of LNG is fairly limited. There are about 40 LNG receiving terminals located in Japan, South Korea, the US and some European Countries and about 136 ships which transport more than 120 million metric tons of LNG every year. About 70 percent of the world trade in LNG goes to Japan, Taiwan and South Korea which have limited domestic gas supplies. In the US, there are currently import terminals in Everett, Massachusetts; Cove Point, Maryland; Elba Island, Georgia; Lake Charles, Louisiana; and Peñuelas, Puerto Rico.

There are currently proposals on the table to build dozens of more LNG import terminals around the US — in Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Oregon, Maine, Georgia, Maryland, Florida, New York and California — according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the lead agency that approves the construction and operation of LNG terminals. If you are near a proposed terminal, you can join efforts to oppose that terminal.

In 2003, federal reserve chairperson Alan Greenspan said LNG was a “hot topic” and noted that LNG could play a big part in meeting the future energy needs of the US. The US Department of Energy predicts that US LNG imports will increase from 2 to 8 percent of U.S. natural gas consumption by 2010.

Building each new import terminal costs $500 million – $1 billion. The liquification plants built at the point of production are even more expensive — a typical one costs $1-3 billion. Dozens of each type are on the drawing board. That is a long term investment that could be made in solar or wind technology so that natural gas — in any form — wouldn’t have to be burned to generate electricity in the first place. Building a brand new, world-wide LNG infrastructure will lock the world into burning more and more natural gas for generations to come by making it possible for people in areas where natural gas supplies are being depleted to exploit overseas supplies.

The Green Alternative

If LNG terminals are not built in the US, the US will have to rely on its own, domestic natural gas supplies along with imports from Canada and Mexico. As these supplies get more scarce compared with the growing demand, the price of natural gas will gradually rise and alternatives to burning natural gas will become more attractive and will be constructed. US natural gas demand is predicted to increase as much as 30 percent over the next 10 years, most of it going to make electricity.

The most concrete alternative to natural gas — which is technologically available right now — is to generate electricity from solar, wind and other re-newable sources, rather than from natural gas. A quarter of the US land mass has sufficient wind to generate electricity cheaply and just seven southwestern states have enough solar power to generate ten times the total current US electricity consumption, according to the Worldwatch Institute.

Both solar and wind are economically viable, although a bit more expensive than gas fired electricity. Without LNG, natural gas prices will gradually rise and zero emissions electricity will eventually be cheaper than gas fired power. Currently, only economic crumbs are being invested in non-global warming alternatives — the big money is being spent on developing more fossil fuel infrastructure, like LNG. In 2006, about $4 billion was invested in wind in the US, vs. $340 billion on oil and gas globally in 2005.

Burning natural gas to generate electricity emits about 400 grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour of electricity, or between 480 and 560 grams of CO2 per kwh if LNG is burned — there are more emissions because of the energy required for liquification, transportation and re-gassification. Natural gas fuels about 19 percent of US electricity. For comparison, burning coal (which generates half of the electricity in the US) emits 770 – 830 grams per kwh. Using solar, wind, wave energy, geothermal or hydro emit no CO2 other than the CO2 emitted to initially build the generating facilities.

Of course the US needs to stop burning coal to make
electricity, too, but it is a false choice to say the only options for making electricity are either natural gas or coal. Both of these fuels are causing climate change. If all US electricity was made from gas, not coal, the climate would still change, just a bit more slowly. Zero emissions alternatives are the only true green technology.

If the money that is to be spent just on LNG infrastructure projects — import terminals and liquification plants — was spent on building windmills and solar farms, the US could switch its dependence on natural gas for generating electricity to climate neutral alternatives.

Contrast this to a future where untold billions are spent to develop LNG import terminals, liquification plants and ships to carry the LNG. All the gas moved around will be burned, making the problem of global climate change worse and worse. Eventually, the gas wells will run dry — natural gas is a finite resource — and the sustainable alternatives described above will have to be constructed anyway — assuming climate change hasn’t so damaged the earth’s life-support systems that human beings aren’t going extinct by then. Can’t we just build the alternatives now?

LNG expansion can still be stopped — people around the US are organizing to oppose specific terminals in their communities. Many of these efforts are effective because of strong “not in my backyard” politics based on fear of LNG accidents and pollution.

Understanding of the need to reduce burning of fossil fuels to avoid global climate change has increased dramatically over the last year or two. Now its time to move this consciousness beyond the armchair and into the streets. A few corporations seeking short-terms profits are making decisions that will change weather on the whole planet. Is one of these corporations based in your town? Will one of the LNG import terminals be built near you? What can you and your friends, neighbors and community do to stop LNG?

On January 23, 2007, eight men were arrested for the 1971 slaying of San Francisco police Sergeant John Young as well as participating in a conspiracy to “kill police” which allegedly occurred between 1969 and 1973. The case was originally dismissed in 1975 on the grounds that the only evidence was based on the “confessions” of three men, two of them among the defendants, which were extracted through severe and extensive torture. The third man was given immunity in the original trial and has since provided inconsistent, self-contradicting testimony which he himself has recanted. The only other evidence is mysterious forensic evidence consisting of a gun which was never produced and DNA which does not match that of any of the defendants. Were the circumstances of the case not so severe, one would be tempted to see this “investigation” as something more akin to a cross between the Keystone Cops and the CIA’s MKULTRA program than the FBI’s COINTELPRO (Counter-Intelligence Program), but incompetence, illegality, and a complete lack of human decency on the part of the police have never guaranteed an acquittal before, and in today’s “counterterrorist” environment, this is all the more true. Public displays of public awareness and militant action are highly crucial.

The eight men are Herman Bell, Jalil Muntaqim (formerly Anthony Bottom), Ray Boudreaux, Richard Brown, Henry Watson Jones, Richard O’Neal, Harold Taylor, and Francisco Torres. John Bowman and Ronald Bridgeforth were the ninth and tenth people implicated by the police in the case, but John Bowman passed away in 2006 and Ronald Bridgeforth, though still being sought, has not been seen since 1969. Bowman, along with Boudreaux, Brown, Jones, and Taylor, were indicted by a grand jury in 1975, all refused to testify and were subsequently imprisoned until the conclusion of the investigation later that year, whereupon they proceeded to form the Committee to Defend Human Rights and produced the video “Legacy of Torture” which describes the Grand Jury investigation as well as fairly graphic descriptions of the Guantanamo Bay/Abu Ghraib-like “interrogation techniques” originally used against Bowman, Taylor, and self-repudiated “witness” Ruben Scott. All eleven of these men were at the time Black Panther Party members or supporters; it is clear, they were arrested for who they are, not anything they’ve done.

Bowman, Taylor, and Scott were arrested in New Orleans by then-San Francisco policemen Frank McCoy and Ed Erdelatz, who were working in conjunction with the F.B.I., which was then in the midst of the now-infamous “COINTELPRO”, which relied heavily on illegal techniques such as warrantless surveillance, harassment, intimidation, occasional assassinations, keeping organizations swamped in court cases based on manufactured evidence, coerced testimony, and perjury. Bell and Muntaqim have been in prison as a result of another of these spurious cases since 1973. When Bowman, Taylor, and Scott didn’t give the answers McCoy and Erdelatz wanted, they were turned over to the New Orleans police whereupon they were “interrogated” with cattleprods, slapjacks, beatings, verbal abuse, various forms of water torture, and various other means for several days. Though the case was initially thrown out, nobody was ever charged for this. McCoy and Erdelatz now work for the Department of Homeland Security. It was McCoy and Erdelatz who came to Harold Taylor’s home in 2003 to question him as a prelude to the grand jury investigation in 2005. “I haven’t been the same since” says Taylor.

The Black Panther Party was ultimately identified very explicitly as the primary target of COINTELPRO and it was the extreme excesses of an already excessive program used against the Panthers which ultimately brought the program down, at least in name. Unfortunately, many of the illegal tactics used by COINTELPRO “back in the day” are no longer illegal as a result of the Patriot Act. Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. Some think we should sacrifice our civil liberties for security against the so-called terrorists, but as Benjamin Franklin said, “Those who seek to exchange freedom for security deserve neither.”

Bell and Muntaqim are not eligible for bail due to their continued incarceration on previous charges. The other six defendants were initially given $5,000,000 bail apiece but have since had it reduced on appeal and are, as of this writing, out. All eight, of course, face the possibility of spending the rest of their lives in prison and Bell and Muntaqim face the possibility of a second conviction in addition to the one they have spent the last 34 years behind bars for. It is of paramount importance to bring as much public scrutiny as possible to bear on this and all COINTELPRO-smelling cases as possible, not to mention the Patriot Act and government’s current disregard for whatever marginal adherence to international human rights law it ever had. What you do matters! Please do anything you can to help these brothers.

“MKULTRA” refers to a C.I.A. program in the 1950’s revolving around notoriously bizarre experiments and the use of hallucinogenic drugs as possible truth serums, Weapons of Mass Disorientation, etc.

For more information, contact the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights at freethesf8@riseup.net

Trevor Paglen, author of Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA’s Rendition Flights, and the upcoming book I Could Tell You But You Would Have to be Destroyed By Me, delivered a lecture to a standing room only crowd at Krober Hall on the UC Berkeley Campus on Monday, September 17, 2007.

Paglen lists his job titles as: geographer, artist, and an amateur anthropologist. He has a flair for social engineering and research reminiscent of 1980s computer hackers.

I saw his exhibit of fake passports used by FBI agents last year, at an art show about terrorism and surveillance, that showed his imaginative and sensitive approach to these questions eating everyone but discussed by no one.

The talk opened with photographs of McCone Hall, home to Trevor’s office, also named after a former CIA chief. In a chance encounter with a pilot outside his office, Trevor learned of the restricted areas where pilots are forbidden to land. The pilot referred to these areas as “The Box” and collectively as a “Black World.”

Trevor’s obsessive research focuses on the Pentagon Budget, tracking aircraft flight patterns online and visually, and dogging, outfoxing, and cornering personnel involved in these operations into giving up information. He also collects and studies peculiar patches worn by military personnel with mottos related to secrecy.

Pentagon Budget

The Pentagon Budget allows $30 billion dollars for secret projects. Trevor claims much of this money is spent on projects in the American Southwest. The first secret military project to be disclosed was tests of jet planes, followed by the nuclear bomb, which required more labor and materials than the entire auto industry.

Trevor went through the Pentagon Budget line by line, highlighting projects with secret budgets. With names like Pilot Fish, Chalk Coral, Retract Maple etcetera, it sounds like we should ask the Pentagon planners what kind of drugs they are on and where we can get some.

Tracking Flights

“Geography pays off like a loose slot machine.” Trevor demonstrates this in his book Torture Taxi, where his careful research shone light on the abominable extraordinary rendition program, the practice of transferring prisoners from the US to other nation states whose governments commonly practice torture as law enforcement. He discovered the front companies being used for these flights and tracked the individual planes as they criss-crossed the world carrying torture victims. He visited sham offices and traced dozens of corporate directors to a single PO Box in Virginia (which is also shared by a pilot indicted in Italy). Trevor’s research into these extraordinary rendition flights is used by anti-torture activists internationally, and provided solid facts that added thrust to the growing movement to end this abhorrent violation of international law and human rights.

Trevor went to great lengths to unravel the secrets of these flights and even join alumni organizations during their reunions. He found absurd commemorations of operations they would like to celebrate but are not permitted to openly acknowledge, such as awards for “Significant Achievements in a Remote Location.”

Patch Collecting

He suspects the military patches he collects were associated with secret operations. His research is fascinating and gives insight into the peculiar military culture of hazing, abuse, secrecy, and brainwashing. Secrecy is ubiquitous in military culture, especially research and development, but Trevor’s particularly nauseating examples show clearly how disturbed, sick, and damaging military culture can be.

The “Bird of Prey” patch is associated with a secret aircraft declassified in 1992, and the “Desert Prowler – Alone and On the Prowl” brought out a Southwestern association he is fascinated with. Other mottos directly reference a nightmare world of secrecy: “A Secret Squadron”; “A Lifetime of Silence Behind the Green Door”; “National Reconnaissance Office, We Own the Night”; “Don’t Ask – None of Your Fucking Business”; “Let Them Hate So Long As They Fear” and “I Could Tell You, But Then You Would Have To Be Destroyed By Me.”

In a less mysterious vein, he showed a University of California patch whose motto was “In Bombs We Trust, Let There Be Nuclear Light.”

Trevor ended with this defiant note of opposition to militaristic culture and support for revolution: “Their [the military’s] motto is ‘Let them hate so long as they fear,’ and those are the guys running the show until we take over collectively.” Trevor’s research is shedding light in a black world, if only there were a million like him.

Leap Day Action Night 2008 — Friday, February 29, 2008 — is only a few months away and affinity groups and individuals all over are laying plans to disrupt business as usual. Leap day is an extra day — a blank slate waiting to be transformed into a spontaneous, inspirational rebellion against dreary business as usual. Every other day, the wheels of global industrial capitalism spin around, running over our freedom and the earth in the process. Leap day offers an opportunity to go beyond protest — merely decrying what we’re against — and focus on living life in a positive, creative, loving, cooperative, sustainable fashion without domination of others or the earth.

This will be the third Leap Day Action Night. The first was organized somewhat as a joke in 2000 in response to too many boring, scripted, single-issue protests. It was raucous — a mob of finger puppet-armed radicals with a bicycle sound system re-enacted the Seattle WTO protest by shutting down local banks and chain stores, smashing TVs, and simulating sex acts on dumpstered mattresses in the street. The police were too confused to control the mayhem! In 2004, Leap Day went global with protests in the UK and several US cities.

The ideal Leap Day Action is not organized and does not take months of planning, lots of meetings or e-mail lists. What it takes is inspiration, creative proposals that have never been tried before run amok, and a dash of recklessness. It takes some word of mouth, fliers or some way to invite both your friends and folks you’ve never met. Oh the joy to finally be in the streets with no police around — because this isn’t a ritualized confrontation at a well-policed World Bank meeting or two-party convention.

Let’s stop just talking about freedom and start creating chaos in real time — getting back to the roots of rebellion instead of running our activist efforts like we’re trying to replicate the computerized, bureaucratic structures of “the man”!

Leap Day Action Night is local — fitting the local needs each of us knows best. This avoids the need for airline tickets, hitchhiking and road trips. Every single town and neighborhood has corners that need beautification with a garden, a flaming barricade, a free market, a bicycle drive-in. Every business district has a slumlord, chain store, bank or corporate headquarters crying out for exposure and outrage.

It is amazing that with the war, global warming, corporate speedups, homogenization of culture — a million oppressions — there are so few outbursts of rioting, strikes, protests, sit-ins, direct actions. Maybe this is because people are convinced that resistance doesn’t work anymore — or because people feel too isolated to rebel. Maybe we’re all waiting for someone else to start it. Well, at this point, resistance is our only hope. The system won’t reform itself. Nothing is going to change because people sit around and complain in the privacy of their own armchair.

On Leap Day it is up to each of our individual initiative. This is primarily a joy — an opportunity for freedom, self-determination, courage, innovation, community and love. What will you do? What have you never thought of before — or what have you always imagined but never had the excuse to try? We can’t let the grind of daily life make us forget the spark of being alive, and we can’t let the systems of oppression crush our spirit. Leap for it!

Check www.leapdayaction.org for info.