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4 – Rage politics – Arm the skater boys

By Lola 

I showed up to People’s Park a day after UC Berkeley had erected their 17-foot wall of shipping containers and deployed what must have been over 100 fully armed cops to stand guard on all of the perimeters. I was with some friends, all of whom happen to be skaters. Some were there for the amassing protest, while others were just stopping by 510 (a skate shop on telegraph) on their way home from work. As the cops stood blankly in rows, tightly clutching their batons, a growing group of protesters began chanting, sharing food, and delivering speeches. I felt uncomfortable, caught spiritually between the mass of kindly activists shouting “whose streets? our streets!” and my friends, who were hanging back and debating snatching juice boxes from the protester’s snack tables and throwing them at the rows of cops. 

As keown announced he was going to go talk to a cute girl he saw standing alone in the crowd, I began to wonder about the distinct awkwardness i felt, and why it was so tied to the presence of my friends who, despite their seemingly apolitical behavior, hate cops and love people’s park just as much as anyone else present at the protest that night. What is this cringeyness, or embarrassment, that I so often feel when engaging in certain forms of activism? 

I thought about it for the whole drive back to our house in oakland, staring out the window from the freeway overpass, heading back in the direction of our well-rehearsed routines: drinking beer, and doing graffiti, and lighting christmas tree fires in the street, or watching dvds on our old tv from the living room floor. With every cell in my body, I despise the “united states.” The intensity of my burning hatred frequently brings me to tears, or makes me laugh, or fills me up with a kind of warming fire that I think is necessary for my survival. In my heart I’m an anarchist, and i try to be one in my daily life, too. So why can’t i be an anarchist when i’m at the protest? Why can’t the skater boys of the world, who are so ready to steal groceries and start trash can fires and flip off cops in the street, embrace a political identity?

I’m making generalizations here, but I do think this phenomenon —the depoliticization of punk/alt/skater antics (or in other words, the chaos that ensues when people hang out on the streets) — highlights a crucial flaw in our current protest methods. The flaw, put plainly, is that these protest methods are boring. And predictable. If you don’t feel called to chant “whose streets? our streets!” then nothing is going to come from your chant. If you don’t feel called to march down the street holding a cardboard sign, then no good will come from your cardboard sign. On the other hand, what if instead of using protest as a means-to-an-end, you seized the means themselves, acting in accordance with what brings you pleasure, excitement, and peace?

If activists were encouraged to act on impulse, act on rage, I think the benefits would be multifaceted. Not only would we be able to arm the skater boys of the world—by which I mean any and all people who are anarchists at heart, but feel turned off by politics—but we would also see far more successful protests. While I don’t think we should ever measure the success of a protest by what it achieves on paper (the real marker of success, after all, is whether or not you felt liberated) i do think that if we were to disperse, act more chaotically and in tune with our unique desires, the cops would have a much harder time shutting us down. 

Of course, there’s a lot of work to do, and not all of it is going to be fun or easy. Fighting against the state requires more than the relatively simple act of confrontational combat — there’s also all the internalized messages we have to work through and help our loved ones work through, painfully, slowly. With an abundance of thought and care. And yet, with that said, I don’t think we should ever get to a place where we view protest as a chore, or an embarrassment, or something you don’t want your friends to catch you doing. Protest should be an extension of yourself in the same way your artwork is an extension of yourself. Beauty that we can’t help but create in the face of all the worst the world has to offer us. 

And it goes without saying that dismantling the state is going to take more than throwing juice boxes. But as my favorite anarchist, Pat the Bunny, once put it: “i know there’s not enough windows on this planet to break us free…but maybe one will be just enough for some dignity.”

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3 – De-fencing People’s Park: a short history

By 2track

People’s Park was born in April 1969. But UC, not appreciating the free-wheeling ignorance of their property lines, quickly fenced the park. The National Guard was called in and violently fought protestors on “Bloody Thursday” — inspiring a mass march 30,000 strong, shortly thereafter. But the fence stayed up and a new approach was needed.
July 14, 1969: 

During summer 1969, protesters baked wire clippers into loaves of bread and detoured another protest to the park. Lo and behold — the fence came down for a joyful evening.

May 8, 1972:

The fence was finally torn down for good, during a protest against Nixon’s plan to mine Haiphong Harbor in North Vietnam.

November 1979: 

People rip up UC’s closed parking lot and create a community vegetable garden on the west end of the park. To defend it, they use pieces of pavement and logs to build a barricade on the sides of the park.

July-December 1991: 

Protests and riots rage for months against a volleyball court installed by UC. In December 1991, a vandal cut down the court’s main post in broad daylight. UC eventually concedes and the court is removed.

January 29, 2021: 

When UC installs fences to conduct soil testing on the park for the new housing project, students tear them down and cheekily deposit them on the steps of Sproul Hall.

August 3, 2022:

UC’s first attempt to begin construction in 2022 ends in humiliation. At 2am, contractors install military-grade fencing along the park’s perimeter. Park defenders can’t prevent the felling of many trees, but they do force the police to retreat by the afternoon. The “indestructible” fences are shoved down and stacked.

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3 – Overheard on the Street

Ever since the wall went up, everyone’s been offering ideas for knocking it down or getting over the top. Here’s a few ideas we’ve heard.

• We heard that some Burning Man artists already built a giant Trojan Horse Sculpture on top of a bulldozer for a recent burn and that it is stored at some industrial land in Richmond. During the upcoming Leap Day Action night protest (Feb. 29), we heard they’re going to bring it to Berkeley and drive it through the big metal gates of the wall!

• Someone said that what’s really going to happen is that on Earth Day, everyone’s going to bring buckets of compost and mulch to an event in downtown Berkeley, but then at the last moment they’ll all make their way to the Park, dump the buckets and form a big hill on Bowditch Street — Big enough to build a bigskateboard ramp and a slide.

• We heard that someone has figured out where all the rented security guards get their jackets and they’re going to bring a truckload to Berkeley — then at the Mardi Gras, everyone’s going to change into the jackets and rush the Park gates. The real security guards won’t be able to figure out what is going on and they’ll think it’s the relief shift so they’ll abandon their posts. Then people carrying guitar cases and other instrument cases seemingly on their way to a gig will unpack plasma torches, and cut through the fucking shipping container walls. 

• Another comrade claims that stilt walkers from the Shen Yun performance group will suddenly appear at the BART station and use extra tall stilts to make it over the wall. Or perhaps they’ll be pole vaulters?

• Then there’s the tunnel-proponents — they’ve suggested it would be easy to tunnel under the wall. The police will have to check under all the floors of buildings within a block of the Park to stop them.

• The Lake Anza surfing term has suggested hiding a ladder cut up into pieces in their boards so they can get close without being detected — then snapping it back together and climbing over. 

• There’s a lot of talk about creating distractions, disguises, pranks — dog walking parades, performance artists. 

• Some people want to put LSD in the water, but others don’t want to waste perfectly good LSD on a bunch of Berkeley-bourgeois-uptight-squares! 

• Someone else said that a volcano is going to erupt in the middle of the Park and melt the wall.

• On a more serious note, many people are plotting to occupy a number of important university buildings as a diversionary tactic. UC will have to bring police to dismantle the occupations, and then we’ll make our move to storm the gates. Or another version of this rumor is that we’ll trade the UC buildings hostage-style in exchange for the Park.

UC has said they will defend the wall 24/7 … forever? There’s cameras and lights and what look like loud speakers? 

Will the wall be the only place in the Bay Area without graffiti or vandalism? It’s ironic that while UC students’ bikes are getting stolen, while people are getting mugged, while cars are getting broken into — the police can’t help — but there will always be enough police for the wall. 

Has anyone ever attempted to build a $312 million building under armed guard? Will they send police to guard the cement trucks and the porta-potties? Will they do background checks for every subcontractor, every laborer, every delivery driver before they let them on the construction site? If the site ever becomes a dorm, is UC prepared to post armed guards around the perimeter 24/7 forever? 

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2 – Before the bulldozers

The place we call People’s Park used to be a different neighborhood. Starting in 1963 the University of California began acquiring homes in a 2.9-acre area boxed in by Haste Street, Bowditch Street, Dwight Way, and Telegraph Avenue. They raised 1.3 million dollars and used eminent domain to evict every single resident.

The Espresso Forum on the corner still stands, it’s Amoeba Music today. The beautiful Italianate homes, duplexes and colonial revival houses had been converted into boarding houses and apartments by the 1960s. The neighborhood was a mix of students and working-class people. If you look at maps, you can see they didn’t touch the retail frontage along Telegraph Avenue. The bulldozer only came for the 25 homes.

That community I described; their addresses appear in a 1965 California Legislature report from their Senate Subcommittee on Un-American Activities. It describes the neighborhood as home to Communists, the FSM (Free Speech Movement), Socialists, and yes even Trotskyites, and Maoists. There was even a civil rights protest at the Lucky’s Store No. 18 grocery at 2455 Telegraph Ave. It’s not surprising that community would take back the space from underneath the pile of rubble the University left behind.

The University of California has named its motivation as growth. They plan to add thousands more students by 2028. As we learned in 1968 and 1991, they are comfortable literally killing people to do it. All told, about 200 people were evicted from their homes in 1965. That’s the community that was lost, and why losing it again is such a travesty. This is what always happens when the monied class wants to take something; the rest of us lose something. 

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2 – Introduction to issue 139

Slingshot is an independent radical newspaper published in Berkeley since 1988.

As you probably know, in the middle of the night on January 3, the University of California (UC) called in about 1,000 police to seize People’s Park in Berkeley — arresting a handful of people who refused to move. UC then used about 150 empty steel shipping containers to build a 17 foot tall wall all the way around the Park — topped in places with razor wire and protected by lights and cameras. Police towed cars and sealed off several city blocks — requiring apartment dwellers within the cordon to prove they lived there. If you walk around and see the wall, it’s hard to believe it is right in an urban neighborhood with fancy houses and dorms across the street. UC is still in a Court case over their right to construct a $312 million dorm on the Park.

Why is Slingshot publishing an extra edition about People’s Park? Without People’s Park, there would be no Slingshot Collective. As a group starting in the 1980s and since, we met each other at the Park and the Park informed our lives and our activity. The wingnut direct action scene in Berkeley is woven up with the Park — everyone is going to have their own stories and their own connections there. 

So we decided to pull together a really quick zine — whereas normally it takes us months to write and edit articles, this zine came together in just one night. Please forgive the errors and omissions!

People’s Park is famous and controversial because of its dramatic creation story. In 1969 a diverse spontaneous coalition of radicals, visionaries and ordinary Berkeley people gathered to build the Park themselves, on land they knew they didn’t own, without seeking permission and without any formal planning. The action was provocative and radical but also peaceful, hopeful and simple. Building the park was a kind of protest without signs. Rather than beg for a new world based on less materialistic, more sustainable, more democratic values, people built a park that was the living embodiment of their dreams and alternative values. 

UC — which (disputably) legally owned the land and which had been fighting increasingly bitter skirmishes with radicals and the counter-culture in Berkeley for years during the 1960s — responded ferociously to construction of the park. After thousands labored over a period of weeks to build a park, police seized it back in an early morning raid, leading to days of violent protests. Alameda County Sheriffs fired live ammunition into crowds, killing James Rector, blinding Alan Blanchardand wounding many others. The National Guard occupied Berkeley. This violent, authoritarian overreaction may have done more to guarantee the park’s continued survival than anything activists could have organized. The park became sacred ground — the University’s land title forever stained with blood.

Slingshot is always looking for new writers, artists, editors, photographers and distributors. We are a collective, but not all the articles reflect the opinions of all collective members. We welcome debate and constructive criticism.

Thanks to the people who made this: Jack, Jesse, Josh, Lola, EP, Luca, Needle, Rachel, Robin & all the authors and artists! 

Volume 1, Number 139, Circulation 1,000 (?)

Printed January 14, 2024

Slingshot Newspaper

A publication of Long Haul

Office: 3124 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley CA 94705*

Mailing: PO Box 3051, Berkeley, CA 94703

510-540-0751 slingshotcollective@protonmail.com 

slingshotcollective.org • twitter @slingshotnews

instagram/ facebook @slingshotcollective

* Our office may be torn down in 2024 so check before you visit or you may just find a pile of rubble

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a13 – Journey to Honduras

By Layla

The air in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, was filled with fresh promise and passion for justice, freedom from oppression and self-determination August 29, 2023 as a sea of people, clad in red, waving banners and flags, and agitating with bullhorns, wove their way through the winding streets of the Capital on their way to the legislative palace where the National Congress was meeting to discuss of the fate of its attorney general. We had just begun our journey in Honduras as a small delegation of activists from San Jose, Calif., ranging from board members of Human Agenda, grassroots leaders and activists, academic researchers and hondureño citizens, when we landed into what turned out to be one of the largest demonstrations in the country’s history – the largest convergence of left-wing Liberty and Refoundation (LIBRE) Party supporters had come together to demand the ouster of the country’s attorney general and to denounce the corrupt system of impunity that has engulfed the country, which has long shielded organized crime, drug trafficking and violence against activists, journalists and everyday citizens from prosecution. Although it was the largest convergence of Libre Party supporters in the country’s history, with international and Libre Party estimates placing the number of demonstrators at 50,000, the mainstream media outlets grossly underreported the number, some reporting merely hundreds or thousands of participants. Regardless of the skewed numbers being reported, there were too many demonstrators present that day to be ignored and the message was clear – the people are united and would no longer accept a government that was not serving their interests. 

The people of Honduras have had to overcome great obstacles to get to the place that they are at now. To give some background information to the situation there, the Libre Party had swept through the country in the 2021 general elections, winning a majority of seats in congress and electing Xiomara Castro as the country’s first female president, who happens to be the wife of former democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya, who was overthrown in a 2009 military coup d’état. 

President Castro has faced an uphill battle with multiple instances of U.S. and international interference in the country’s politics in order to undermine her progressive platforms, which saw her repeal legislation that had opened the gate to international, investor controlled Zones of Economic Development and Employment (ZEDEs), or model cities, and her attempts to address the country’s high poverty rates, energy prices and poor labor conditions with the passing of an Energy Reform Law and Temporary Labor Law. In response, a Delaware-based company has attempted to use the Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement to seek $11 billion in damages from the country for repealing ZEDEs, while the U.S. Ambassador to Honduras has publicly stated, “Unfortunately, some policies are complicating your chances of success.” 

On our delegation trip, however, we saw time and again that people were willing to give up their lives for what they believe in and to fight for social justice in order to build sustainable and just alternatives to the neoliberal Capitalistic policies that were put in place by the previous governments.

One such alternative is the system of cooperatives, which more than one million people are members of in the country. For instance, we traveled to the fertile area of the Bajo Aguan Valley, where campesino activists have struggled for decades against mining and corporate farming interests that have seen the large-scale production of African palm oil, an unhealthy ingredient found in many processed foods. We visited the farming cooperative of El Chile, where a group of 248 families has reclaimed land, which once belonged to their parents, from the Dinant Corporation, which has been implicated in violence against and the disappearances of campesino activists and their families. These families are now living off of the land and producing chili peppers and other produce for market. Even though Dinant has intimidated and terrorized them by flying drones over their land and hitting them with rubber bullets, they refuse to leave, and have plans to further develop the land and become completely self-sufficient. Where before they were living in shacks, they now live on communal land, send their children to school, and grow food to feed their families. 

We also visited other cooperatives tucked away in the green, rolling hills of Santa Bárbara and Lempira. The Cooperativa Mixta Lempira Norte Limitada (COMIXLENL), for example, produces coffee and other products, and has established and is managing 10 farmer field schools that grow crops such as beans, soybeans, avocado, cardamon, ginger and cane sugar. They also shared with us that their members have never defaulted on any of their loans which they depend on to get through the growing season, and that they freely lend money to each other to help with the cost of fertilizer and tools needed to harvest their crops. They aim to be more independent and are looking for larger investments and microloans from external partners, as well as getting licensed to cut out the market’s middleman in order to directly sell their products to buyers. 

We met with Afro-indigenous Garifuna community members who are part of the nongovernmental organization of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH). We visited La Mariposa women’s cooperative which produces and sells coconut bread, and also met with community activists who are working to protect their natural resources and reclaim their land from investors that have illegally taken their communal land to develop resort hotels along the northern Caribbean coast. Shortly after we returned home from our trip, on September 19, 2023, an attempt was made on the life of OFRANEH leader Miriam Miranda by five armed men in her home. Thankfully, Miriam escaped with her life due to the protective measures that were put in place due to the previous threats and attempts on her life in the past. These threats have not deterred her from being active and she continues to speak out against the injustices that her community is facing. 

Another NGO that we met with was the Siria Valley Environmental Committee (SVEC). SVEC has been struggling for over two decades with the impacts of open pit gold mining in their community by a Canadian-based multinational corporation. Once a major supplier of food staples such as beans, milk, meat and other products, their community has experienced severe health impacts including cancer, birth defects, skin rashes, discoloration and lesions, hair loss, and gastrointestinal disorders caused by water contaminated with heavy metals and cyanide. Even though the gold mines have been closed, a geothermal project has been proposed on the site of the former mines. SVEC activists have met with the current government’s minister of the environment, who told them he was going to investigate the case of the geothermal project, yet they haven’t heard back from him in over a year, as the project is kept in bureaucratic limbo. SVEC is pushing for the state of Honduras to recover the 14,100 hectares given to Newmont, to halt the construction of the geothermal project within the area already damaged by gold mining, to protect the surface and subterranean water sources in the Siria Valley, and for national and international human rights organizations to use their leverage and energy to stop the threats against human rights and environmental defenders. 

In 2022, President Castro was able ban open-pit mining in the country, and with the help of Congress, repeal ZEDEs. The previous president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, was extradited to the U.S. that same year is currently awaiting trial, set for February 5, 2024, along with the country’s former head of police and a police official, for drug trafficking and weapons-related charges, adding some semblance of accountability to the country’s long history of narcotics trafficking and violence against innocent civilians. To be in Honduras at this time was extremely inspiring, as the people that we met were committed to working for social and environmental justice for their communities and families. It is a beautiful country filled with many natural resources and has a culture that is generous and community-based which is often absent in our Western culture. Most of the people that we met told us they wanted to remain in their country and for their countrymen to return home, however, the continued displacement of people from of their ancestral lands as well as the high poverty rates and violence were the driving forces which caused people to leave in search of a better life for themselves and their families. Whether the government will be able to uphold the progressive policies and reforms of the Castro regime remains to be unseen, however, the foundation has been laid for the people to build a better future for their country and their children.

There is an upcoming solidarity delegation trip being organized for January 2024 by Cross-Border Network for Justice & Solidarity crossbordernetwork.org/january-2024-honduras-delegation.html

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a15 – Book Review – the ghosts still among us by ami weintraub

Review by IMP

Longing for place is a familiar echo to me. Home— both a concept a physical space. A place where trees and lakes remember you when people do not. This book wades deep into what it means to reconnect to home in our bodies and in our hearts, those spaces in us which carry the dreams and stories of ancestors, as well and in the physical places that our families lived and loved and played in for generations. 

This book explores home from the bone-deep longing of ami weintraub, an anti-zionist Jew living in and from the east coast. His lineage is one of brutal displacement and genocide. I’m also of this lineage. To read this book while the genocide of Palestinians splashes across my screen made the search for home and belonging on and to a land ring deeper yet. It is painful to see a desire for “home” distorted. To see the grief and pain of my Jewish ancestors used by the state of Israel to justify atrocities against the people of Gaza and the West Bank makes my stomach turn, and my skin crawl. 

Reading this book I unwound and rewound my Jewish heart. It felt like a healing thread in my own understanding of home. I want to curl up and reread it from the comfort and safety of the place I call home. 

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a15 -Review of Boots Riley’s new show, I’m a Virgo

By H-Cat

Philosopher Boots Riley’s latest work of absurdist cinema isn’t a movie at all, but rather a TV show, which is great because this means we get over five hours of Boots exfoliating his brain of a new, wacky alternate universe version of Oakland that pushes back against the propaganda while offering a tender vision of ways systemic oppression, policing, and the artificial scarcities of capitalism mess with our consciousness. This show is laced with symbolism (the good stuff) and as you watch it, you might ask yourself how each magical problem, ghost, or superpower is a parable for how the shit that goes down in Oakland (and everywhere) impacts the way we perceive ourselves and others. For example, how might being sheltered from systemic oppression cause us to act larger than life? How might exposure to it shrink us? Do we become ghosts when we are denied access to care? 

This show urges us to dig deep and to fight systemic oppression at every level, all the way on down to the (sub)consciousness-rising that needs to happen so we can seize the means from our inner oppressors. This is to say, Boots really leans into that old skool New Left jazz that never fully got its day back in the late ‘70s, like for example, how Stuart Hall once wrote that race is “media, mediated.” How are our everyday lives shaped by the stories that others tell about us? How do those stories become congealed and reified onto arbitrary aspects of our bodies? How might we resist? 

But make no mistake: Boots never lets go of the struggle on the streets in this show, a point emphasized by the way the character most skillful at de-programming oppressor-types is also the most active in on-the-ground resistance efforts. This is a party and Boots is the MC and he’s turning the Althusser down and cranking the Gramsci up, while Jungian freestyling. Is it just me, or are patchwork clothes about to become the next big thing? 

I’m a Virgo urges us to forgive ourselves our eccentricities, and to laugh at the strange ways we sometimes must sell out if we want to eat and have money to take cuties on dates. We also get a near-future glimpse at what Oakland will be tomorrow (…or will it?) while asking some hard questions, like: What happens when our very heroes treat us as the enemy, and guide others to do the same? Is it time to retire the superhero archetype? Can we still dance in the revolution — and also have awkward, tender, amazing sex and honest relationships? 

The only drawback to this show is it could have featured more worker co-ops. And housing co-ops. And union co-ops. Come on Boots, give us more media with co-ops! 

Many mainstream reviewers have given this show five stars. Fuck stars. May 10,000 shows like this bloom. 

—

Cosplay recommendations:

Beyond sewing multiple clothes together to create bigger patchwork clothes, another great way to do a cosplay of I’m a Virgo is to take part in local mutual aid efforts—something that is sorely needed right now as neoliberalism’s corporate colonialism continues to strip the populace of the ability to care for each other while pandemic era social services are all being cut all at once. A wave of evictions and escalating local social tragedies are unfolding everywhere right now, and during this time, we are all going to have to make hard, fast decisions about where to direct our attention. I think Boots is giving us a subtle warning with this show to be weary of superhero thinking that can lead us down big, eco-driven, nonsensical revolution-like events that don’t really have much of an impact. Late capitalism has taught us to look away from our neighbors who are struggling, but what might happen if we look towards them and work together to build strategies to make sure everyone has their needs met in a way that centers solidarity, mutual aid, and “paying it forward”? As anarchists, many of us are interested in raising the net autonomy within our society, in making sure that everyone can be free, and I think Boots lays out a vision that engages with some of the harder questions we must grapple with when we do this kind of work, questions many of us have been struggling with since the Occupy Movement was pushed inside. What strange radical, new worlds might emerge if we get better at seeing and listening to the needs of our neighbors? Even if we can’t solve their problems at this moment, even just holding space for what your neighbors are going through can plant the seeds of something big…

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a12 – Beautiful alternatives – radical spaces

Compiled by Jesse D. Palmer

Here’s some radical spaces Slingshot has heard about since the 2024 organizer was printed in June, 2023. It’s hard to push back against the killers, the oil companies and the authoritarians just by swiping on your phone. To build alternatives to  suicidal systems takes face-to-face, grassroots community spaces such as those listed here. Email Slingshot with your corrections and additions. Updates are at slingshotcollective.org. 

The Beautiful Idea – Charlottesville, VA

A queer market and community hub that hosts events. Features a bookstore and the F12 infoshop. 411 E. Main St. Charlottesville, VA 22902

People’s Solidarity Hub – Durham, NC

New radical hub that serves grassroots groups, cultural workers, political organizations, and local community members by providing an affordable event space. “People’s Solidarity Hub prioritizes partnerships with low-budget or no-budget projects or organizations that have shared values and seek to advance the Movement by building leadership and power among those most impacted by oppression and repression.” 1805 Chapel Hill Rd. Durham, NC 27707 Solidarityhubs.org

Book Club HQ – Los Angeles, CA

A community library and office space of the Noname Book Club, which is a “Black-led worker cooperative connecting community members both inside and outside carceral facilities with radical books. Each month, we uplift two books written by Black, indigenous, and other people of color. We believe building community through political education is crucial for our liberation.” They have 12 book club chapters across the US and send books to hundreds of incarcerated comrades from the HQ. Open Thursday – Saturday noon – 6pm. 2304 W Jefferson Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90018 323-840-2055 Nonamebooks.com.

I’ve Read It In Books – Charlotte, NC

An independent books and zine shop. 2902 N. Davidson St. Charlotte, NC 28205 readitinbooks.com

Lefty’s Records – Lincoln NE 

A record store with independent music and books. “struggling to fight the daily grind of spoon-fed conformity.” 2776 South Street Lincoln NE 68502 402-438-0038 

Autumn Leaves Books – Ithaca, NY

A bookstore with new and used radical books that hosts events. HQ for radical publisher PM press (pmpress.org). 115 East State Street Ithaca, NY 14850 607-273-8239

Blackbird Infoshop – Kingston, NY 

A cafe, store and event space that sells radical books, zines and has a library. Food is sold on a sliding scale with no one turned away for lack of funds. They host a free fridge and sell local and ethically-sourced goods. 587 Abeel St. Kingston NY 12401 201-621-3813 blackbirdinfoshop.com

Mother Foucault’s Bookshop – Portland, OR

A used bookstore featuring philosophy and foreign language that hosts author readings. 523 SE Morrison St. Portland, OR 97214 503-236-2665 motherfoucaultsbookshop.com

Daisy Chain – Eugene, OR 

A community center that offers free doula, lactation, pregnancy, birthing, and parenting resources addressing all pregnancy outcomes including birth, postpartum, termination, loss, adoption and more. Their Dandelion Street team focuses on folks who are pregnant or parenting while unhoused, experiencing housing instability and/or current or past substance users. 1270 Charnelton St. 2nd Floor Eugene OR 97401 541-505-1139 daisychainlane.org

Lazy Cow Bakery – Seattle, WA

Worker-owned vegan bakery that hosts a free community fridge and food pantry for La Casa Del Xoloitzcuintl. 3418 Fremont Ave. N, Seattle, WA 98103

Espacio Migrante – Tijuana, Mexico

A cultural and community center for migrants, with educational programs, cultural events, and health and legal services and a shelter for migrant families. Av. Negrete 8350, Zona Urbana Rio Tijuana, 22010 Tijuana, B.C. espaciomigrante.org/copy-of-quienes-somos

Corrections to the 2024 Organizer

•  What’s Left Records has moved to 2217 E. Platte Ave. Colorado Springs, CO 80909.

• Peace & Justice Center in Burlington, VT has moved. The new address is 239 S Union Street Suite 3 Burlington, VT 05401.

• Gallery Aferro in Newark NJ wants to be removed from the list because they have very limited public hours and activity going on.

• Oops – we left out Andrými located at Bergþórugata 20, 101 Reykjavík, Iceland.

Projects without a physical space

The contact list in the organizer and on-line only lists projects with a physical space because that is an objective way to figure out what projects to include — having a space usually means a project isn’t just one person with an email but rather a community with enough energy to get a space. However this criterion means a lot of good projects get left out. For cities and towns with no physical spaces, it may make sense to include radical groups with only on-line contact info so long as they’re doing stuff. Such as: 

• Community Not Cages – Winona, MN – winonacommunitynotcages.org.

For a new Anarchist Center in Lisbon, Portugal!

The space that the Centro de Cultura Libertária (CCL) has rented for almost 50 years finally — after years of eviction processes that they resisted — must close in March 2024. In response, CCL along with the 100 year old newspaper A Batalha and Observatório dos Estragos da Sociedade Organizada Library are raising funds to purchase a joint space for an Anarchist Center in the Lisbon area with a library, archive, bookshop and meeting place. Contact culturalibertaria.blogspot.pt / ccl@ centroculturalibertaria.info if you can help.

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a11 – The Lorax is armed – From Weelaunee River to the Mediterranean Sea: the land will all be free

By Will Lonnie

In the aftermath of the nation-wide Black Lives Matter riots of 2020, the Atlanta Police Foundation proposed the construction of a new police militarization facility — essentially, a training ground for urban warfare. The facility was conceived with the intention of boosting cop morale. It was set to be built on 381 acres of the largest green space in Atlanta — the Weelaunee Forest. Stop Cop City, the movement that has emerged in militant opposition to the new facility, recently had its 7th week of Action in the Weelaunee Forest. 

The week started at the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta, on behalf of 61 forest defenders arraigned on charges of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act. Hundreds turned out to show love and support for the long list of members of the Stop Cop City / Defend The Atlanta Forest movement. These individuals are being targeted by the state for actions such as “collective care,” “mutual aid” and “solidarity” as stated at length in the indictment itself. 

Clearly, they’ve been reading some theory, and we must say, we were a little flattered about their obsession. However, they either ignored or were ignorant of the fact that solidarity is how we win. Their attempts to divide and silence us will only make us grow bigger and stronger, as we proved by our presence on the courthouse steps early that brisk fall morning. 

In addition to RICO charges, many face “domestic terrorism” charges as well. Both charges are weak with very little substantial evidence to back up the claims and will not likely hold up after scrutiny. Prosecutors don’t necessarily need a conviction or even a trial, and these would likely be very expensive and time-consuming. A strong case isn’t needed to create the idea of “terrorists” in the minds of the public with the help of media outlets like the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, its parent company Cox Enterprises, and publisher Alex Taylor, a member, donor and fundraiser for the Atlanta Police Foundation (APF).

After arraignment, many of the RICO defendants were jailed at Fulton County Rice Street Jail, notorious for overcrowded, unsanitary and violent conditions that have claimed the lives of 10 people in police custody so far in 2023 and 15 in 2022. Many are being held by the county indefinitely without trial, in some cases for years without even an indictment, held on cash bonds. 

The week of action was supposed to be when City of Atlanta residents would take to the polls, on November 7, to vote on the Cop City referendum. However, this legal means of democratic participation has been stalled by the mayor and a private legal team hired by the city, who are finding ways to invalidate the grassroots democratic effort. Not even a resolution to put the vote on the ballot as proposed by a council member was permitted to be introduced according to the attorney’s advice. 

On September 11, the vote coalition delivered over 116,000 signatures to the clerk’s office which were subsequently stuffed in a closet and have yet to be counted. However, the clerk’s office did scan each petition sheet and publicly shared unredacted personal info of organizers and petition signers including full names, addresses, and personal cell phone numbers, a state sponsored doxing. The scans were completed so that the clerk’s office could perform “signature matching,” a historically discriminatory policy decried by Georgia Democrats when Georgia Republicans and Governor Kemp, who was Secretary of State at the time, used it as a means of voter suppression. 

The petitions were delivered less than a week after the RICO indictments were made public and only four days after a coalition of activists and faith leaders temporarily halted construction on the Cop City site. Five protesters, including faith leaders, chained themselves to construction equipment to temporarily halt construction while dozens more protested outside the fence in the public right of way. The purpose of the action was to deliver The People’s Injunction to contractors and property owners as well as signal to the state, the city and the public that no amount of political repression by police would sway our determination, and that it would only strengthen our resolve. The five were charged with trespassing and released on signature bond, a departure from the state’s previous responses to protests on site.

This undying dedication was also displayed by a group of elder activists who once again blocked the entrance to the construction site on November 8. Atlanta Police arrested 4 elder women who sat in folding chairs at the entrance with a banner demanding that The People’s Injunction be respected and that the petition counting process begin immediately. 

These four were also charged with trespassing and released on signature bond, a trend that might reflect varying opinions within law enforcement on the prosecution of protesters. In June, DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston recused herself from the prosecution of domestic terrorism charges due to a difference of opinions between her and Georgia Attorney Chris Carr, who refused to drop the case against the clearly identified legal observer arrested at the music festival on March 5. 

This week of action also occurs while the Israeli military, backed by western nation states, relentlessly continues its fifth week of dropping US-made guided missiles on civilian populations across Gaza in a genocidal rampage against “terrorism.” Meanwhile, Israel continues its 75-year settler occupation and apartheid rule in the West Bank with top of the line, highly sophisticated surveillance technology. 

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens often repeats APF talking points and touts the “state of the art” training facility as some kind of technological savior that will prevent police brutality and eliminate crime. Atlanta police and other nearby agencies are already militarized and yet, for nearly two years, forest defenders kept cops and contractors at bay with simple blockades, sticks, stones, and bottles in ways similar to the Palestinian resistance. 

What has become clear in the month of Israeli genocide of Palestinians is that our freedom in the US is inherently tied up with the freedom of Palestinians. We will not be free ourselves in the belly of the beast until Palestine is free from Israeli occupation. The Palestinian resolve is unmatched and an inspiration to resistance groups all over the globe, particularly indigenous resistance to land theft, ecological devastation, and settler colonialism as result of western capitalist imperialism. 

In a fashion not dissimilar to the way the State of Georgia seeks to label dissenters and protesters as “domestic terrorists,” Israel, with the help of western state departments and media companies, seeks to label anyone that dares stand up to defend themselves from brutal occupation and the crushing reality of life under apartheid as radical religious extremist “terrorists.” Not only does this completely dehumanize Palestinians, but it serves as justification for all-out war on a besieged population.

The mayor, the APF, and their copaganda media team have long decried protesters as “outside agitators” but on March 5, the detention of 22 protestors without Georgia ID’s and the release of 13 local residents reveals that this rhetorical strategy is weak and baseless. Fear mongering surrounding pro-Palestine protests has caused the same political propagandists to spread unfounded anxiety about a non-existent threat of infiltration by foreign resistance groups, a move intended to resurrect post-9/11 Islamophobia in the minds of white Americans. 

The intent behind pressing these outlandish charges against protestors and forest defenders is not only to dehumanize them and reduce them to a type of “other” that the public might expect to be targets of state repression, but also to dissuade any type of dissent or the exercise of free speech. These RICO and domestic terrorism cases are only a testing ground to see what the state can get away with – a type of repression we can expect to see again elsewhere. 

Open records requests have revealed that the Biden administration indicated that Cop City is “exemplary of what President Biden would like to see other municipalities emulate,” a major concern abolitionists have voiced since Cop City’s inception. Similar proposals have popped up across the country from Boston, MA, to Nashville, TN, to San Pablo, CA. It becomes clear that the only plan presented by politicians for any of the prevailing issues in our society is a militarized police force. 

Atlanta Police Foundation has admitted that nearly half of the police departments that would train at Cop City would come from out of state, which draws into question the legitimacy of claims by APF and the mayor that the facility is intended for Atlanta Police and Fire Rescue. Judging by the sheer scale, we can see that this is intended as a destination training location and a money-making venture for the private APF that would be constructed and operated with public tax dollars. They would then turn around and “gift” surveillance equipment, police vehicles, and bonuses to officers like the 2020 “blue flu” when Atlanta police claimed officer morale was low. 

Police departments across the state participate in a program called the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange, GILEE, which is hosted by Georgia State University and partners with Israeli police. Tactics taught to Atlanta police by Israel include high tech surveillance, drone operations, protest kettling, tear gas dispersal, and knee-on-neck restraints such as the one used by Minneapolis officer Chauvin that killed George Floyd. 

Israeli training in what is described as “urban policing” and “counterterrorism” serves to reinforce racial discrimination against Muslims and Arabs in occupied Palestine, but also against Black and Brown communities here in the Atlanta and the U.S. Advanced video surveillance techniques practiced by Israel that disproportionately target people of color are being taught and exported to police departments in the U.S. Atlanta’s Operation Shield video integration center was directly modeled after Israel’s apartheid security apparatus. Israel even has their own Cop City nicknamed “Little Gaza.”

With all the parallels between US and Israel laid out in the open, we start to see that Israel is to the western neo-liberal capitalist hegemonic empire what Cop City hopes to be for the domestic militarized police within US borders. It is both our right and our duty to defend ourselves and our friends in Palestine from state-sanctioned violence and environmental devastation. Now is the time to intertwine our solidarity with resistance movements across the globe and show our strength as the global majority. 

Some movement protesters have formed a new coalition of activists called Block Cop City. BCC organizers recently completed a cross country speaking tour visiting police abolitionists and climate change protesters to inform them about what to expect on site during the action. Organizers encouraged protesters to form affinity groups of trusted individuals to plan their courses of action and take precautions against police retaliation. 

According to their website, “this action will employ non-violent tactics not because we accept the state’s false dichotomy of legitimate and illegitimate protest, but rather, because we believe that a commitment to non-violent tactics will best allow us to stick together and overcome the police’s attempt to isolate and divide us.”

Palestinian American citizens and immigrants, Jewish anti-Zionist Americans, Holocaust survivors, and many more organizers across the country dedicated to the liberation of the people and the land are protesting the Biden’s administration’s unabashed support for Israel’s genocidal rampage. Others are blocking ships loaded with weapons shipments heading to Israel and defacing weapons manufacturers’ facilities. With the voter referendum effort indefinitely stalled, on-going construction of the facilities, and the indefinite closure of Weelaunee People’s Park (Intrenchment Creek Park) under Dekalb CEO Thurmond’s executive order, collective resistance answers the question: If not now, when?