On May Day 2017, anarchists participated in lively demonstrations all around the United States, from the heartland to the coasts. In the Northwest, Seattle witnessed a successful block party at the site of a juvenile corrections center, while in Olympia anarchists barricaded train tracks to oppose fracking and clashed with police. Support arrestees here. Yet Portland, Oregon may take the cake for the most creative and combative May Day. Demonstrators not only defended themselves from unprovoked attacks from police who declared the march a riot—they also introduced exciting new innovations into the aesthetic of the black bloc street presence. Here, comrades from Portland explain their goals with the giant spiders they created for May Day, and offer a helpful guide for those who wish to make spiders of their own.

In an effort to bridge the gap between art and activism, giant spiders were assembled off-site and pushed up the street to the demonstration, stocked with water bottles, snacks, earplugs, and other party favors. The idea was to narrow the divide between “us” and “them” that often exists at demonstrations, and it was a complete success. We performed community outreach, engaged in cultural development, boosted morale, provided crucial supplies, and created an amazing photo opportunity in the process.

The concept is multi-dimensional: it works on many different levels. The idea began from frustrations around attendance at local demonstrations. In Portland, where the majority of citizens seem to be white, middle-class, and apolitical on account of these privileges, they don’t show up unless a demonstration concerns their interests specifically. However, Portlanders are fascinated by their own love of art and “wacky” stuff as well as the commodification of protest as “funtertainment.” We decided to embrace this love of the “weird” to test whether a hyper-localized approach to engaging people could succeed.

Our tactical art enabled us to fill a supporting role for other participants in the march, helping challenge narratives that the black bloc is an “othered” or “othering” tactic. Whether this separation is intentional or not, the fact remains that the general public is often hesitant to engage with us. Bearing that in mind—as well the tendency of the Portland Police Department to brutally shut down demonstrations—we stocked our Spiders with fliers, water, LAW (liquid, antacid, water, the eyewash with which street medics treat pepper spray), ear plugs, and snacks. We also included a few other party favors, because anarchy needs revelry!

We intentionally engaged with the folks around us. A lot of people walked up to ask what the spiders meant! It was inspiring to see so much dialogue between folks in everyday garb and folks in black bloc. We explained the ideas behind our actions as anarchists and the creations themselves: the three spiders representing Mutual Aid, Solidarity, and Direct Action.

A word about symbolism. The idea of using the spider as an icon of resistance is that spiders are always there watching, waiting, and keeping the environment free of pesky insects and other parasites that consume resources without supporting their fellow beings. While we may look scary, we’re here with you and for you. We are the spiders, and the insects are the societal ills that we fight against.

The symbolism of the black widow spider is rich with history that guides our work. We want to contribute to that rich history, adding our own interpretations. Mutual Aid, Solidarity, Direct Action are our black widow’s cruses. (Crux? Curse? Cures?)

In regards to developing our own culture, there are many barriers we face in this process. State repression is the biggest threat, of course. The specter of state repression can complicate organizing, planning, and building trust in our communities. Portland has a history of repression and slander, ruining the lives of activists and anarchists; these horror stories reverberate throughout the underground. We can’t allow ourselves to be publicly disparaged and forced into hiding by our adversaries and their culture war, so we create as a political act. Creating is intuitively human: we plan, we build, we think, we conspire, we imagine. It is also an activity in which everyone can engage to some degree while building new skills. It enables us to get to know each other, build trust, and share time and company.

More globally, seizing the Spectacle is a step towards our goals, because it allows us to dictate our own narratives. With the development of Public Relations and Social Engineering, the visage of capitalism has come to define its delusional reality. To paraphrase Guy Debord, lived experiences are now taken in as a collection of representational images. We can tell our own stories and show the general public what these three principles mean in action. We can create our own mythos, speaking out on our own terms, in our own language, with our own symbols. The state and media dictate too much of what we’re allowed to say and how it’s spun—it’s time to spin our own webs to connect and fortify our relationships.

We are building the bridges we need to move forward. The existing connections between art, activism, and anarchism are fiery and well-storied. The new wave of repression under Trump’s regime is still building steam, but it is already proving dangerous. We need to be more careful than ever. Art allows us to demonstrate and show our fangs, and we can use art to empower those around us.

NJ Hate Watch: NJ Proud Boys and Fascists Spotted at Rutgers

Since we last covered their appearance at the Candace Owens speaking event, the Proud Boys confirmed on their Telegram that it was indeed them we were dealing with that day. So this is just an update. (more…) “”

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man sometimes you fuck around and what you find out is There Is A Reason The Ancients Fucking Did It That Way

what does Adelaide find attractive about Aether, especially compared to her childhood crush on Nat?

Comparing Adelaide's attraction to Nat & Aether, I think apart from the few character traits that they share (like self-confidence and competency), the similarities lie in the narrative level of reflecting who Adelaide is at the time and what she thinks she needs. That is, Adelaide wouldn't have had any interest in Aether if they had met in high school (beyond, perhaps, a charged rivalry), and she wouldn't have any interest in Nat if they met now. But because of when their lives intersected, Nat represents for her safety and security and happiness, and Aether represents a means to that happy ending, which is appealing in its own right.

As for her attraction to Aether specifically (separate from me projecting), there's an extent to which it's predicated on self-recognition: Aether is a person Adelaide could very easily herself become. So, like, their verbal sparring and doublespeak and the veneer of gentility and plausible deniability in their conversations are all super alluring to Adelaide because she knows this game and she knows how to play it and she thinks she's good at it.

At the same time, she's envious of how... easy it seems for Aether: her ability to make inauthenticity seem authentic, when Adelaide is like perpetually one bad conversation away from shutting/breaking down. It's a game she knows, yes, but it's exhausting, and there's an appeal in the possibility of just... giving in, in many different senses.

And the last part of it is just like the pure power. Adelaide doesn't have any clue how important Aether is in within the Daybreak Corporation, but she's the face of the company for her, the company that she's staked escaping Harborview on. And Adelaide's own, personal interest in power is... narrower than I think many characters in her archetype. It's important to me that Adelaide maintains her magic as a means to an end, and not as an end in and of itself: there's a reason I chose callousness for her and not any of the other temptations like glory or addiction or even power. If it meant she got out of Harborview tomorrow, she'd give it all up. If she ever does get out of Harborview, I doubt she'd ever use magic again.

But Aether seems to her to just pursue power for power's sake, and that's both hot in a 'morally compromised sub' kinda way and useful for someone trying to escape a very powerful magical binding.

Anti-trans campaigners who threatened to bankrupt Dundee Women’s Festival with lawfare tactics were drowned out at their own event yesterday afternoon by a much larger crowd of queer people and allies, who danced, sang and chanted slogans in the City Square until the rather sad-looking gathering dissipated...

This is a really good reportback of the counter-demonstration against transphobic hate group "Women Won't Wheesht" that took place in Dundee yesterday

Saw a vid of some students doin a lil riot, pushing against cops and chanting

Even saw a dearrest attempt and most people present demanding an end to genocide were in masks. All of this a precious rarity. But

Y'all

Do not take pics or vids of riots and do not bring your fucking phone to a protest, not in any mode.

Everyone who was present for resisting genocide in that fashion is at risk from stingray intercepts, from voice recognition, and if they were unmasked, facial recognition--- and COVID.

We need to riot for Palestine but this cannot be done safely if people are unmasked or carrying notoriously compromised surveillance recording devices.

do not endanger others by recording actions the state will use against them.

Do not endanger others with a deadly pathogen.

Do not do the work of the state for it.

Let people know what happens with anonymous reportbacks and use signal for encrypted messaging.

last day of nierrein today. regrettably my personal video archiving project was just not possible with all the other stuff going on this month (expect a serbia reportback once i'm home and I can get pictures off the camera lol). I never unlocked most of the Recollections of Dusk, nor a had the cubes for a bunch of Dark Memories. however other people have made videos, so I still want to make a text-and-video archive of how it all fits together. at least by playing the game I know what I should look for.

hopefully the fan reverse engineering projects by the gang at nierrein.guide will be successful in making something playable. it frustrates me that in this era of ~Games As A Service~, archival is such an impossible moving target. there were good stories in this game, unknowable hours of dev time devoted to polishing its interactions. but it's no longer profitable so away it goes.

i suppose it's true what they say... 祇園精舎の鐘の聲、諸行無常の響き有り。

It's really strange to see people on here talking about the police repression across american university campuses and how serious they are in such a spectacular-by-way-of-Bonnano manner - these liberals talking of voting whilst everyone around them with senses to know are rattling the bars, saying, hey, do you trust your water provider? are you safe from the borders? Do you have masks and medication and things to make art with, how much can the state fuck with you? Have you seen the brownshirts? (They were there before, already; this violent wave isn't exceptional, just a steady descent thru oft trodden roads.)

There's footage of a violent arrest on an american campus demo: a student is tazed and restrained. It seems like people filming are everywhere in shot - as journalists have shown where their interests lie, as ai is used to further mechanised slaughter and genocide across the globe, facial recog and data doppelgangers and all the rest - the camera flashes sting. Body cams and documentation have shown their place in societys prison industrial complex. dearrest work and legal observers take nothing away from the cameras if they must be there. Not to backseat analyse, but if i can soapbox about any issue it is about many cameras being cops. This is not to blame any of the brave demonstrators for state violence; it's just something that hurts to see happen again and again; many black and brown and racialised people have spoken about how turning state brutality into media for consumption by white supremacist media is further violence many times already, better than me. German arrests against conferences and other academic organising nodes are subject to legal, border, arrest and other violence; blood literally flies across the world.

I have seen reports of tear gas and rubber bullets (ar Emory) used (update: pepper bullet and spray seems to have been used instead of earlier reported munitions, but the violence at that campus is without question.) I have also seen two sniper's nests at Indiana and Ohio - the sheer brutality being wielded against many campus (here's Boston) demonstrators are not those of earlier in the campus demonstration wave; the escalation people like @ 3liza, @ intactics (and others) are noting as not unlike the ladder used in the escalation of violence that led to the Kent State state murders. american and german (as well as most of anglosphere and 'west europe') states continue to victimise jewish dissenters disproportionately (just as in the KS murders) thanks to the post IHRA-style zionist revisionist legalist shit definitions of anti semitism being used to repress huge numbers of brave people.

Here is an update on palestinian campus and school violence/repression, too. Update 28th April (28.04):

Join the American Campus Arrest Amnesty Phone Blast here! Calls are needed!

UT Austin Jail Call Support needed!

and to add to the spectacle of it all - hurry to attack capital before a new ideology makes it sacred to you! How does that old song go? - AOC is doing the old cooption enforcing, PR for cops, flashing her maskless face around a swarm of those Damn Cameras. May all journos politicians and bosses fuck off!

Guide to emory encampment.

reportback from emory arrestee

https://gomag.com/article/biker-butches-save-drag-queen-story-hour

PARKHILL,CANADA REPORTBACK

Introduction

(Written for the original edition, published by Solidarity In June 1968.)

This is an eye-witness account of two weeks spent in Paris during, May 1968. It is what one person saw, heard or discovered during that short period. The account has no pretence at comprehensives. It has been written and produced in haste, its purpose being to inform rather than to analyse — and to inform quickly.

The French events have a significance that extends far beyond the frontiers of modern France, They will leave their mark on the history of the second half of the 20th century. French bourgeois society has just been shaken to its foundations, Whatever the outcome of the present struggler we must calmly take note of the fact that the political map if Western capitalist society will never be the same again. A whole epoch has just come to an end: the epoch during which people couldn’t say, with a semblance of verisimilitude, that ‘it couldn’t happen here’. Another epoch is starting: that in which people know that revolution is possible under the conditions of modern bureaucratic capitalism.

For Stalinism too, a whole period is ending: The period during which Communist Parties in Western Europe could claim (admittedly with dwindling credibility) that they remained revolutionary organisations, but that revolutionary opportunities had never really presented themselves. This notion has now irrevocably been swept into the proverbial ‘dustbin of history’. When the chips were down, the French Communist Party and those workers under its influence proved to be the final and most effective ‘brake’ on the development of the revolutionary self-activity of the working class.

A full analysis of the French events will eventually have to be attempted, for, without an understanding of modern society, it will never be possible consciously to change it. But this analysis will have to wait for a while until some of the dust has settled. What can be said now is that if honestly carried out, such an analysis will compel many orthodox revolutionaries to discard a mass of outdated slogans and myths to reassess contemporary reality; particularly the reality of modern bureaucratic capitalism. its dynamic, its methods of control and manipulation, the reasons for both its resilience and its brittleness and — most important of all — the nature of its crises. Concepts and organizations that have been found wanting will have to be discarded. The new phenomena (new in themselves or new to traditional revolutionary theory) will have to be recognised for what they are and interpreted in all their implications, The real events of 1968 will then have to be integrated into a new framework of ideas, for without this developmental revolutionary theory, there can be no development of revolutionary practice — and in the long run no transformation of society through the conscious actions of men.

Alright, I’m calming down, managing my time better while drowning in SHOWS, and have reportbacks on Individual Circumstances and Candy Color Paradox:

1) Individual Circumstances: @bengiyo, I’m co-signed on your stray thoughts -- I also hope, and am looking forward, to the motif of their using the novel as a means of communicating their unspoken thoughts/feelings.

I mentioned in my first review of this show that the K-drama trope of going back and forth between the present and the past, to layer truth on truth non-chronologically, and have the viewer quilt it all together -- for me, it often creates this sense of confusion, almost a little spookiness, like what am I missing? I HAVE to be missing things. (Like the meaning of 1012 on the wine bottle label! I missed that until I read this post on @bengiyo‘s blog. With the last big K-drama I watched, Why Her? -- I am so sure that I am still missing a shit ton of plot lines, but it would be EXHAUSTING to track them all down.)

But I think the sense of missing things is the point of this show so far, and I think that’s what I kinda love about this show. In many ways, we are just as much in the dark as Woo Jae and Yeon Woo are about each other and their own feelings. I love that the novel writing is going (hopefully?!) to end up being Woo Jae’s method of processing the truth about his feelings towards Yeon Woo. I mean, the guy is both in admission AND denial of his feelings for Yeon Woo, all at once. And is drinking and mixing meds at the same time. He’s a walking conundrum. 

I loved sensing the fear that Yeon Woo had when he went back to Woo Jae’s house to find him. (Although I definitely had a WTF moment when Woo Jae just casually strolled in again.) 

I think, maybe, I’m okay with not knowing, yet, what’s up with Yeon Woo and his thoughts towards Woo Jae. I’m okay with being in the dark, and I think that this show is actually doing the dark somewhat beautifully. I feel moved by watching Yeon Woo and Woo Jae begin to open up to each other, even though their sentences (especially during the wine scene) feel a little stilted. I think that’s the point of this show -- the weaving back-and-forth that creates this sense of waiting and anticipation -- and I’m okay accepting it. I see some commentary on the tag about the guys needing to be more clearly communicative, and I agree, but I don’t think that’s the structure of the show that the creators are going for. I’m liking where the preview for the next episode is going, and I think it’s going to be a really good one. Fingers crossed.

2) Candy Color Paradox: This show. Honestly? I thought this was the best episode yet, because it didn’t try to do TOO MUCH. It was a very straightforward plot line -- Onoe tries to do something that Kabu has done in the past, and Kabu hates himself for doing it and doing it well. So Onoe tries to emulate Kabu, to try to make Kabu happy. And that pisses Kabu off and probably breaks his heart a bit. And then Onoe processes it with his homey at the bar. Simple!

I come to this conclusion in part because of all the flashbacks that Onoe had at the bar, and I’m realizing -- there was a LOT of complicated STUFF happening in the earlier episodes, especially with Kabu coming close and pulling back, not admitting his feelings, and only moving forward in his feelings after Inami encouraged Kabu to do so. I’m not sure our young darlings were able to act through all that complicated stuff. But give them a straightforward plot line, and I think it came off as pretty successful. My heart sparkled for Onoe as he came to his realization -- I really felt for him, and I thought Kimura (FINALLY) acted it nicely. 

It totally moved me that both of them were looking at apartments. It was just..... TOO CUTE. This show! Like! It’s just too cute sometimes! IT’S. JUST. CUTE. The guys are dumb sometimes, and cute all the time! And I think that’s why I’ve stuck with it. 

ALRIGHT. BACK TO DIRTY LAUNDRY. Neon and Night, come to mama. I’m GOING to get this one and Bad Buddy finished before the 8th. I MUST. Moonlight Chicken needs my entire heart and soul totally empty before I fill it again!

my plan was to write up an Anthesteria reportback post tonight but instead i reread a fanfiction I wrote in 2015 and baked a cake for metamour housemate (aka the Technomancer)

Anime con reportback: there were three different people dressed as matt smith dr who dude what fucking year is it

Saturday 6th of April, a great clamour echoes down Princes Street. A mixture of music and furious chants and sirens interrupts the usual hum of tourists and traffic. By the gardens, a quiet metal pen is surrounded on both sides...

On one side, a large, noisy, dance party rages.  Queers, straight folk, trade unionists and allies mostly blotting out the hate speeches. Occasionally, an off-tempo chant booms out of the sound system, but mostly it’s playing queer classics.  Powerful women from the STUC black workers, disabled & LGBT committees gather and speak about real feminism, muffled somewhat by the noise. A message of support from Belfast rings out over the PA. On the other side of the transphobic bloc, antifascists and unaffiliated queer activists rage against the barrier. Chants of ‘No borders, no nations, trans liberation’ and ‘trans rights, women’s rights, one struggle, one fight’ blast out of megaphones...

A good reportback on the counterprotest against Posie Parker and her hate mob in Edinburgh last Saturday

A reportback by some anarchists who followed a lib "peaceful" protest and were then assaulted by the libs' "security team." The libs' volunter protest police force stopped some anarchists from entering an encampment with force and then hunted for others, claiming they were all "outsider agitators" and "possible undercovers." The security team even threw someone down some stairs and the anarchists got flak for refusing to show respect to a notoriously transphobic indigenous person who was peace policing and siding with the security team and the libs (though this detail was left out of the report back) Frankly I don't think these encampments are all that safe and welcoming to anarchists considering they focus so heavily on "nonviolence" and "peace" that they will actively fight those willing and able to take more radical actions to halt genocide. The encampments have all been self-obsessed with the spectacle and myth of passive non-violent resistance, and in this case, the footage of the security team assaulting someone was platformed by Andy Ngo. Unless and until they are willing to wholeheartedly support fighting cops, refusing self-appointed leaders and hierarchy, and embrace a diversity of tactics while being militant about masking and community care, they will achieve precious little except assuaging western guilt over participation in genocide. The peace of the liberal is the death and suffering of the entire world.

other news, I went to the Palestine demo at traf square today. something like a reportback.

if you're not familiar with the British protest scene, there's a few standard 'types' of political demonstration. there's the large scale gathering at Trafalgar Square or Parliament Square, which will typically march from one to the other and then stand about listening to speeches. (other popular destinations include the BBC HQ). these happen pretty regularly, and they serve as a recruiting ground for odious Trotskyist cults like the SWP, who print out hundreds of signs prominently displaying the name of their newspaper along with a slogan to unwitting protestors who never heard of Comrade Delta.

then there are smaller demos by the anarchist/antifa/etc. set, which often aim to be more disruptive. these have a bunch of standard tactics associated with them - black bloc, flag lines etc. - but because they're riskier, it tends to be a much smaller group. sometimes this will be a mobilisation against a fascist demonstration, other times it will just be marching about and making noise for the sake of it. these are sometimes called 'spiky' protests. they tend to end up in a police kettle, or yelling at the fash from the other side of a cop line. usually the police make a few arrests and let the rest go. although they are definitely more exciting, they are rarely ever much more effective at changing shit than the former category of demo.

finally there are direct actions of various types which aim to actively disrupt something like an immigration raid, deportation flight, arms fair, weapons factory etc., often accepting the price that the participants will likely be arrested and imprisoned. but that's way too broad a subject to get into.

this demo was of the first type. so numbers were impressive, but by the same token, it was a pretty static demo - the speeches and chanting kind, not even an A to B march. very few people wore face coverings. a lot of police were present, but mostly did not attempt to kettle us, just hovered at the sidelines.

so, it was a huge gathering of people wanting to express in some way that they do not stand for what is happening in Gaza, demand the politicians call for a ceasefire, wave the Palestinian flag, and chant. here, some chants I caught:

"from the river to the sea" / "Palestine will be free"

"free! free!" / "Palestine!"

"1, 2, 3, 4" / "occupation no more!" / "5, 6, 7, 8" / "Israel is a terror state"

"in our thousands, in our millions" / "we are all Palestinians"

and of course the usual standards - arse treats, no justice no peace, etc. the protest signs were pretty to the point in general - inevitably you had the SWP signs but there were a lot of handmade signs expressing the hypocrises and ironies or just showing faces of the dead.

there were a couple of weird pro-israel guys behind a triple line of cops, I couldn't really hear what the hell they were trying to accomplish by showing up to the Palestine demo over all the 'shame on you'.

the most spiky part was when some people did a sit-in in charing cross station, which is just a street away from trafalgar. by the time I got there the cops had it blockaded and were closing the shutters to the station, so it was pretty successfully shut down for that hour or so.

after a while, when people started to leave, and the cops abruptly grabbed a young black guy out of the crowd. people reacted fast but not really fast enough, so it became a stalemate with a triple line of cops surrounding the guy against a van, and us surrounding the cops, yelling at them to release him. some white trot guy took the opportunity to propagandise on a megaphone about how a young black guy speaking in solidarity with palestinians represented a threat to the state, which seemed a bit like he'd already given up on a de-arrest or release. it was a pretty surreal situation, the cops had cameras pointed at us (to identify and arrest people later) and we had phones pointed at the cops (to make sure they behaved themselves and maybe help the guy when things get to trial, in theory).

unfortunately they weren't fully surrounded, so the pigs got him out of there around the back of a van, with our group following. hopefully somebody knows where he was taken to do arrestee support. honestly, it felt pretty frustrating - I think a bolder crowd could probably have pulled off a de-arrest, or even kept a tight bloc to stop him getting grabbed in the first place, but it wasn't that kind of demo.

numbers died down into the evening, but by the time i got too tired to continue, there were still sizable groups in the square drumming and chanting. cycling past it was quite a sight. of course, a few streets over in Soho you would see similarly massive crowds of people going for a night out between theatres and nightclubs. that's the thing that always gets me, how you can have no idea that there's a massive protest going on a short walk away. big cities are weird. (hell, on the way up there I passed a pub with a small crowd of dress-uniformed navy guys drinking and chatting. p sure they were navy, they had the little hats.)

I'm glad I went, I feel ashamed for not making it out in previous weeks - but that said I do still feel like neither sunak (the current prime minister, representing the conservatives) nor starmer (the leader of the ostensibly left-wing labour party) will give two shits if this is where it stops. Sunak is mostly using these protests as a chance to score culture-war points as we saw this morning. they are bringing in cops from as far as Wales, but I'm not convinced they really see the Palestine movement as a credible threat, more an inconvenience to manage. I don't know what it will take to shift that balance of power.

next week the protest falls on the 10 November, the weekend of Armistice Day. it seems unlikely there will be a ceasefire by then - and perhaps tactics will evolve.