The lesser evil is getting more evil by the day.
Warrior Crowd Control and Riot Manual
Build an affinity group. An affinity group is a small group of 5 to 20 people who work together autonomously on direct actions or other projects. Affinity groups generally consist of like minded people who come together to get something done. If you already have an affinity group, link and cluster those groups!
Skill up. Delinking from capitalism and colonial apparatuses requires us to learn how to do things for ourselves and each other beyond buying, selling, working, or asking the state to help us. From self and collective defense, to gardening, building bikes, unschooling, and caring for each other- we can learn a skill and share a skill. We can change how we value skills and dismantle hierarchies of class and ableism.
Establish and practice good security culture. Security culture is necessary to survive state repression. We can stop a lot of infiltration and disinformation in its tracks by improving our ways of communicating and navigating conflict. We can still be horizontal and transparent without sacrificing security and safety.
Practice transformative and restorative justice. Strong communities make police and prisons obsolete. We can change our culture to prevent violence and abuse. We can build up our capacities to confront and resolve conflicts. We can strengthen our ties and detoxify our relationships so harm has no space to grow in our communities.
Mutual Aid. Start a mutual aid group and provide necessary support to those who are in need. Mutual aid organizing can ensure our communities are not dependent on corporations and the state. Shift your use of resources to things you can grow and make or procure from others in resistance. Build networks of aid and resources beyond capitalism.
Mutual defense. From arms training to street tactics to bystander interventions and safety teams, we need to have the skills and resources to defend our communities from fascist attacks on our people, non-human beings, and lands.
Build and sustain conflict infrastructure. Conflict Infrastructure is any structure we organize helps us be more effective in our fights. This is infrastructure that goes beyond solely providing awareness and services and instead builds our capacity to wage actual resistance. From community gardens and collectively coordinated farms to infoshops and independent media/communications.
Open squats for unsheltered folx. Rent is theft. Private property is colonial violence upon the land. Abolish rent and private property. Rematriate lands to original caretakers. Create spaces to live beyond landlords.
Defend and reclaim ancestral lands. Because #landback means ending colonial occupation and restoring Indigenous stewardship of our ancestral lands. Regenerate our sacred relations, and all that entails spiritually and materially, with our original homelands. Liberate the sacred.
Reparations. Seize what has been stolen from Black and Indigenous Peoples and liberate it back. Radical redistribution is necessary.
Shut shit down. Intervene in critical infrastructure at the points where capitalism and colonialism are at their most vulnerable. Seize the streets, factories, ports, fracking pads, pipelines, power stations, smash the borders, be smart and be creative! It’s also an effective way to target those industries perpetuating climate change.
Be fiercely intersectional. ‘Cause we’re not taking those old shitty behaviors with us. Fuck anti-blackness, fuck orientalism, fuck islamaphobia, fuck anti-semitism, fuck transphobia, fuck heteropatriarchy, fuck white supremacy, fuck imperialism, fuck ableism, fuck hierarchy, fuck racism, fuck citizenship, fuck privilege, fuck everything fucked up!
Practice Radical Self & Collective Care. To remain dangerous to power we must care for ourselves and each other. Learn common triggers and how to communicate without being fucked up. Learn to communicate your needs, boundaries, and wants effectively and nontoxicly – remember that folks in the struggle and resistance have the hardest time accessing resources for mental and spiritual care. Movement work can be unsustainable to those with many experiences of settler policing and violence triggers – find ways to communicate and negotiate group norms and boundaries that accommodate peoples’ needs if reasonable. Identify toxic communication patterns and learn / create ways to dismantle them and communicate in more healthy and less harmful ways.Be honest about your limitations and care for yourself and each other. The christianized, capitalized colonial state has taught us to never rest or heal. Reject any attempts at coercing people to go beyond their limits. Radical self-care keeps us safe and invulnerable when consistently engaging in agitating governability by the state.
Make everything accessible for everyone. Reject ableism and objectification of our bodies and lives, establish community care networks with people equipped to provide first aid and care support to a full spectrum of needs. Challenge ableism in our language, how we organize, and how we value each other. We are all enough.
Abolish Rape Culture. Study rape and rape culture and how it relates to the desecration of sacred lands. Transform our culture and practices around dating, humor, relationships, sexuality, consent, parties, sex labor, and play to abolish rape culture. Hold mactivists, rapists, abusers, opportunists, and creeps accountable. Center consent and healthy relationships in everything we do everywhere.
Spread radical and militant joy. We can fuck shit up while we dance, sing, party, laugh, play, wonder, have deep conversations, tell stories, make art, make love, make magic, make brilliance, make awesomeness, and have fun.
“think of this when people say voting doesn’t make a difference”—it doesn’t make a difference when the party you vote for is not interested in wielding power on behalf of their constituents and back down whenever marginally challenged.
As the elections approach, it's a good time to emphasize the importance of continuous local organizing and direct action.
Beyond the Rube Goldberg machine of representative democracy, what can we do together?
http://crimethinc.com/votingversusda
Whoever is elected, let's be ungovernable.
Trashcan libel
you can click on this button once daily to help palestine and support other causes in the middle east for free. it takes literally 5 seconds and could help save lives so please take the time to click and share this link.
“Drug raids conducted by SWAT teams are not polite encounters. In countless situations in which police could easily have arrested someone or conducted a search without a military-style raid, police blast into people’s homes, typically in the middle of the night, throwing grenades, shouting, and pointing guns and rifles at anyone inside, often including young children. In recent years, dozens of people have been killed by police in the course of these raids, including elderly grandparents and those who are completely innocent of any crime. Criminologist Peter Kraska reports that between 1989 and 2001 at least 780 cases of flawed paramilitary raids reached the appellate level, a dramatic increase over the 1980s, when such cases were rare, or earlier, when they were nonexistent. Many of these cases involve people killed in botched raids. Alberta Spruill, a fifty-seven-year-old city worker from Harlem, is among the fallen. On May 16, 2003, a dozen New York City police officers stormed her apartment building on a no-knock warrant, acting on a tip from a confidential informant who told them a convicted felon was selling drugs on the sixth floor. The informant had actually been in jail at the time he said he’d bought drugs in the apartment, and the target of the raid had been arrested four days before, but the officers didn’t check and didn’t even interview the building superintendent. The only resident in the building was Alberta, described by friends as a “devout churchgoer.” Before entering, police deployed a flash-bang grenade, resulting in a blinding, deafening explosion. Alberta went into cardiac arrest and died two hours later. The death was ruled a homicide but no one was indicted. Those who survive SWAT raids are generally traumatized by the event. Not long after Spruill’s death, Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields held hearings on SWAT practices in New York City. According to the Village Voice, “Dozens of black and Latino victims—nurses, secretaries, and former officers—packed her chambers airing tales, one more horrifying than the next. Most were unable to hold back tears as they described police ransacking their homes, handcuffing children and grandparents, putting guns to their heads, and being verbally (and often physically) abusive. In many cases, victims had received no follow-up from the NYPD, even to fix busted doors or other physical damage.””
— The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
Something that helps
If you blurt out something that you thought would be funny but it comes across as insensitive, just quickly say, “I’m sorry, that was rude, what I meant was…”
If you say something in anger or frustration, take a breath and say, “I’m sorry, that was hurtful, let me rephrase…”
If you say something heartfelt, but it comes across as insincere or ironic, say “That sounds like I’m just saying it, but I’m being truly honest…”
If you accidentally tell the waiter “enjoy your meal” just laugh and say a quick “so sorry, my brain isn’t working today!” and you will most likely get a commiserating chuckle in return.
Most of the time, the other person will accept your apology with no harm done. Sometimes they even insist they understood what you meant the first time and clarification was not needed. At times, maybe they have a right to be upset, but it never hurts to apologize again so they know that you’re taking their feelings into account.
Repeat after me. It’s okay to be bad at conversation. Knowing how to apologize makes it easier.