Surf City Revolt!

"Prison Diary of a Mad Anarchist Arsonist"

2012-02-14T12:13:00.000-08:00

Miguel William Balderos started a fire at the city attorney's office on the 300 block of Church Street on July 2, 2010. He told police that he was an anarchist protesting the city's camping ban.

Miguel is currently at the CDC prison in Solano State Prison serving out his 10 year 8 month sentence. What follows is a statement written by Miguel that he wished to be distributed to comrades near and far. While various tendencies may, with good reason, take issue with parts of this statement, Miguel has proven himself to be receptive to debate and critique. Moreover, he has proven himself to be an ally in the social war. If you disagree or take offense, write him.

He can be reached at:
Miguel Balderos F81930
CSP Solano C-2-22-3 Low
2100 Peabody Road, PO Box 4000
Vacaville, CA 95696

He is currently asking that no one put money in his commissary, being that 55% of anything he has is put towards his restitution. Please enclose extra stamps with your letter.

From the Desk of Mad Mike (the wonder dog)
Prison Diary of a Mad Anarchist Arsonist

My Anarchist Brothers and Sisters:

I was convicted of being an anarchist arsonist by the fascist police state of the State of California. I got drunk and set fire to a recycling bin at the City Attorney's office (burning the doorway) of Santa Cruz, California, in protest against this Nazi asshole Barisone's oppression of the homeless of Santa Cruz (I had black out and didn't use a disguise and was caught on camera). The maximum amount of time I, by law, should have gotten for this arson is 4 years, but I was made an example of by judge Paul Maragonda (who was the Santa Cruz Deputy District Attorney that tried in vain to prosecute me for arson, burglary, and felony vandalism of city hall back in 1995). He gave me 10 years 8 months prison sentence. If I had to do it all over again, I would have done a better job of burning the City Attorney's office to the ground and City Hall too. I would have incinerated that entire block of offices (a nest of vipers) with all their asses in it successfully and would live to work on the courthouse next.

For over 40 years Santa Cruz, led by Mayors like Mike (the pseudo-progressive liberal) Rotkin, Neil (the fat fucking slob of Bookshop Santa Cruz) Coonerty and his son Ryan (the fat beluga whale forehead) Coonerty, Cynthia (the big bird looking cunt) Matthews and a buck of other maggots on the city council have made it a crime for the poor and homeless to sleep outdoors. Sleep is not a crime. Sleep, air, water, food--all the things a person needs in order to survive! Sleep is not a privilege for those who own a home, it is a fucking right irregardless of where a person does it. Animals have the right to sleep outdoors but homeless humans in Santa Cruz (and a lot of other cities in the United States of Amerikkka).

I am down but not out. I am relentless and fearless. I will not rest until the oppressed poor and the homeless get justice. I've been a rebel all my life. I am a revolutionary just like my great grandfather who fought with Pancho Villa during the Mexican revolution. I have only one regret in life: that I have only one life to give to the revolution. They call me an "Anarchist Arsonist." Ha! I am more than just a rebel, more than a revolutionary. I am a freedom fighter and a true patriot. The real homeland security! And, so long as those malfeasances in Santa Cruz, the pigs, the stinking rich, the free market capitalist pigs, the tea party maggots and those right-wing nazi punks in our government oppress, repress, exploit the poor, the homeless, the middle class, the working class, the proletariat--I will stand in the breach to fight those fucking nazis back, even if I fight them all alone. Fuck the police! Kill a cop, go to heaven! Long live the people's revolution. It's on, baby!

What motivated me to take action was that I was sick and tired of being sick and tired! All the oppression, exploitation, and injustice of the plutocracy, the oligarchy, the malfeasances in power and control with all the wealth made me so depressed that I just had to act, or commit suicide. I I couldn't take the shit anymore. I was also sick and tired of all the armchair revolutionaries (like Robert "the mouth" Norse) and the coffee shop anarchists (they know who they are . . .) talk about how pissed off they are and sick of it all but are afraid of getting their hands dirty doing the necessary dirty work (wet operations) of fighting the nazi assholes back. I may be crazy, a little foolish, but I am not stupid. I would rather be dead in hell for all eternity than to do nothing and let the conservative nazis win this fight over good and evil.

I could have gotten 25 years to life for my silly ass faux pas. Some people in this prison have actually killed people and are doing less time than I am. That BART pig Johannes Mehserle, who murdered Oscar Grant, got a slap on the wrist in comparison to setting fire to the City Attorney's door with a recycling bin. I didn't hurt or kill anyone yet I must do 80% of this 10 year 8 month sentence. I am due to be out of prison June 25, 2018, at the earliest.

I have found out this month that I have prostate cancer and I may die in captivity but I am still not afraid. God is on my side: I get strength from Allah and I absolutely fear nothing, especially from a nazi punk. Fuck 'em all in their necks and feed them refried cat shit! You gotta stand for something or you are going to fall for anything.

I am continuing The Struggle in this prison waking up the brain dead prisoners here. I am writing my book on revolution, the Agent Orange Manifesto. Also, I am writing the prison diary of a mad anarchist arsonist (a true story of my life) and a fiction comedy about prison life called Concrete Momma. I hope these books will inspire people to pick up the torch (literally) that I've dropped and get busy. I would like to see more people in Santa Cruz fight those evil assholes at City Hall, on Wall Street and our government. End the sleeping ban by any means necessary including general strikes, riots, arson, random vandalism, hosing, graffiti, vigils, critical mass, protests, smash and grab merchandise from capitalistic stores (like Bookshop Santa Cruz), malicious mischief, boycotts, and whatever else it takes to force city hall to stop oppressing the poor and homeless. Also, skateboarding is not a crime either!

I would like to see the younger generation stop wasting their time doing nothing and things like watching TV (kill your television!) I would like them all to get out and get more politically active. Get out and vote for Obama (the lesser of two evils). You guys need to vote those republicans in the house and senate out of office and any democrat that acts like a republican. We must not allow any of those republican nazis get into the oval office. Fuck 'em all! I would rather have Theodore Kaczynski as president than a republican. Tomorrow is your future, today is your destiny! Get off your asses and organize, plan and fight back (make sure to protect your identity; wear ski masks and gloves if you are going to do wet operations).

And protect and love one another (your comrades in arms), be ready to fight, kill or die for one another. Know your enemy! They are the Tea Party, the Capitalist Free Market pigs on Wall Street, the banks, the conservatives, the american nazi party, skinheads, Hells Angels, Aryan Brotherhood and yes maybe members of your own family and your next door neighbor. Don't be afraid to fight the good fight even if you lose your life. (remember: you are going to die someday anyway but might as well be on your feet fighting than on your knees . . .) You might not believe in God but God believes in you and He got your back. Remember Jesus was a rebel and if he was here he would pick up a sword and kill them all and let God sort them out. Fight the Nazis back before it's too late. No quarter!

Love, Your Brother in Arms,
Mad Mike the Wonder Dog

SCR on Permanent Hiatus

2012-01-15T15:59:00.000-08:00

For various reasons, this blog won't be updated any more. We may write some kind of retrospective, however.

New design of 'Desert', from the fine folk at SCAHA

2012-01-02T19:21:00.000-08:00

Other versions of this text are ugly and ridden with typos. The Santa Cruz Anarchist-Hooligan Alliance has re-designed the text, almost entirely for the better. Desert, a refreshing update to ecological anarchism, is a call to abandon myths of social or ecological transcendence. Nihilist Communism meets Do or Die.

Imposed 8.5x11 pdf

A perfectbound version of this design will also be produced in a small quantity. If you are interested in acquiring one or a number of those, SCAHA can be contacted through Serf City Revolt at serfcityrevolt@riseup.net.

75 Hours in #75River

2011-12-09T14:19:00.000-08:00

"Hopefully this group isn't representative of a new aggressive movement." Zach Friend, SCPD Spokesman

The march was called only a few days before, billed on fliers as a march to picket banks and then to occupy a building (in some places it was a "foreclosed home", in other it was merely a "vacant property'). The day of the march, November 30th, people began gathering at 2pm near the Occupy Santa Cruz camp. By 2:45, when the march left, about 75 people had assembled. A mobile sound system arrived, playing among other things, a lot of Lady Gaga. The march left towards Chase bank on Water and Ocean for a brief picket and speeches. The picket felt a bit tense, with a strong sense of anticipation for the announced occupation.

After the picket, the group moved back down Water, past the Occupy camp, and over the Water Street bridge. In the intersection of Water and River, the group paused. Then, instead of continuing down Water along the announced route, the group turned left on River. All of the sudden the doors of 75 River were open; people began elatedly yelling "We're in!" and a flier was distributed within the group to announce the new occupation.

"I don't think it's that we have the right to (take over property,) it's that we have the ability to do it."

Immediately, office furniture was re-purposed into barricades. A group of individuals had gained roof access from the outside and began hanging banners. One read: " Reclaim space. Reclaim Our Lives." The other: "Oocupy Everything" (sic and siiiick). Soon, roof access was gained from the inside out to let these people down into the building. The building itself is fairly labyrinthine and people immediately began exploring. A group of people took over the vault to smoke a celebratory blunt while others opened up a candy machine, netting about 50 dollars in quarters. The majority of the group began organizing the space, putting up signs and moving in furniture.

One person was arrested for allegedly moving a traffic cone.

Hours later, at about 6:30, the police showed up in force. They immediately attempted to gain entry to the building, but were repelled at the barricades. 20 or so people were inside with about 150 on the outside. The sound system from the march was still present, providing the soundtrack for the confrontation. People linked arms against the police, three or so lines deep. The cops fiddled with the barricade, trying to gain entry. They were unsuccessful. After much verbal harassment on the part of the protestors, the police left--nominally to protect against human harm. After this, the occupation took the form it would take every night for the next three nights: one part organizing, one part festival, and constant anxiety regarding a police attack. Shifts were organized to patrol the area for police, some making forays to areas that the police might be staging in. Organization and destruction of the space happened simultaneously, racing at about a dead heat.

The sound of traffic starting up again Thursday morning was the first sign that the occupation might have survived the night.

Thursday

The next day, which wasn't really demarcated from the previous day, started (continued?) with a clean up from the night before. Plans were made mid-day for a social gathering that evening. The idea was to have a potluck with small group discussions, followed by dancing. What actually happened that night was a bit different. DJs started spinning at around ten with the dubstep scene out in full force. More blunts in the vault, more moderately destructive exploration of the space. A community atmosphere prevailed, if only in a vague sense. A repeat sexual assaulter was ejected from the space. A favorite new activity was discovered: pretending to rob the bank. Groups of sometimes up to twenty people would play through different scenarios. Other individuals practicing jumping over the teller counters.

Late in the night, between two and five a.m., the windows along River Street were barricaded with sheets of plywood nailed to each other, backed with pallets and filing cabinets. After the first altercation at the barricades, people were fairly confident that they could hold the barricades at the doors. So the emphasis shifted to the bottom floor windows and a contingency plan for an attack from the roof. Barring extreme measures by the police, occupiers felt confident they could hold the space. Those who didn't sleep at the space trickled out at around 5am, sure the space had survived another night. At least one occupier had work as soon as 8am.

Friday

Meetings were organized to clean the space ("keeping the space clean felt like carrying water with a sieve" one occupier offered). The entire space was re-organized. Shifts were drawn up for scouting and copwatch. Mid-evening, the property owner shut off power, plumbing, and gas to the building. A call-out for flashlights went out over twitter. Later that night, a scare happened when cherry-pickers were seen assembled on Ocean Street, but it was later determined that they were there to repair power poles from the last fews days of heavy wind. Occupiers slept soundly--the occupied bank had a feeling of home and, counter-intuitively, safety.

Saturday

At the mid-day meeting people decided, less than unanimously, that it was time to leave the bank. The decision was multi-faceted and a bit controversial. A fear that a small group of peripheral (or just plain not-involved) individuals were going to be blamed for the whole of the occupation was central to the discussion. The incompatibility of the space with people's desires for the space seemed to underpin much of the dissonance in the discussion.

Mid-evening, one last blunt was passed in the vault. A circle of twenty or so people who hadn't already left sat in a circle and shared their feelings about the end of the space. A Plains Indian who was present sung a song and shared a prayer. Then, little by little, folks trickled out. Leaving wasn't at all climactic. Some people, upon leaving, would see others still within the building and go back in. By nine or so, everyone was out.

Uncontrollability

The old Coast Commercial bank at 75 River is a fucking beast. The vision of an orderly community center was completely at odds with the unmanageably large space. The same unmanageability was also one of the most beautiful attributes of the space. Almost immediately, every person in the space felt an ownership of the occupation. Every day, one could hear others calling their friends and referring to "our occupation" or "the bank that we took over." The sense of ownership over the space was contagious and took many forms, many of which were directly contradictory. Some felt the best thing to do was to hold meetings, some wanted to party, or to expropriate, or to vandalize. The root of many of the conflicts within the space was that everyone felt like the space was theirs to use as they wanted. Some people flipped out when others asked them not to smoke (cigarettes) in the main space, some flipped out when people didn't come to their meetings. An occasional individual showed amazing sangfroid amidst these conflicts.

Self-Management

An occupier activity that was fairly unpopular but overly vocal was the management of other occupier's activities. Obviously, it would be sophomoric to call every conversation about the boundaries or shape of the space "management." Moreso, it was the tendency of some occupiers to loudly judge the activity of others in some vague moral terms of "rightness", "wrongness", or, worst of all, "down-ness." This sort of behavior peaked early and had disappeared almost entirely by Friday.

Vandalism

One occupier activity that was widely popular and loudly condemned was vandalizing the space. Many people didn't want their future community center vandalized. Other people had a quite natural reaction to a bank (the most common interface with the violence of capitalism)--the urge to fucking destroy it. If people ever chose to occupy a vacant prison, it would be a travesty if people didn't rip out all the bars and write slogans on the walls. Of course, in a nonviolent political sense, vandalism might be bad strategy. In a human sense, it is one of many beautiful reactions to the misery of the world. Also, it's fun.

Forward!

The significance of the occupation is mostly unclear and individual analyses are widely divergent. Everyone, though, wanted 75River to inspire occupations in other locations. Some participants never wanted to set foot inside an occupied space again, many wanted to re-occupy immediately. Differences like this shouldn't be seen as frustrating future occupations. Future occupations, here and elsewhere, will depend on the autonomous actions of committed individuals.

Find a space. Find your friends. Do the damn thing.

8pm Tonight at #75River: Potluck Discussion Dancing

2011-12-01T15:15:00.000-08:00

from indybay:

The former bank at 75 River St. has been occupied and is being re-purposed into a community center and social space.

Tonight, we will gather as a community to discuss the future of our new social space and make plans for its future. There will be a potluck and discussions, followed by dancing. This space belongs to everyone who participates. Come tonight to make decisions about the future of 75 River.

Bring food, supplies to set up the space, and a desire to partake in the creation of the 75 River Community Space.

Questions to consider:
* In the current wave of austerity, what social services are no longer provided by the state? How could we provide them ourselves?
* What actions would we like to take in the immediate future? How can we use this space to organize those actions?
* How can the space remain open and inclusive?

75river.tumblr.com

75 River St. Occupation

2011-12-01T09:12:00.000-08:00

Update (12/1, 1430): A website has been established as a clearinghouse for everything #75River. There's also a twitter @75River. Check back for updates.

from indybay.org -

The formerly vacant building at 75 River St. is being repurposed by an autonomous group, in solidarity with Occupy Santa Cruz. Formerly a big bank, it was bought out by Wells Fargo. Subsequently, the building closed, and has remained vacant for nearly three years. Today this group has, without breaking & entering, taken the building with intentions of using the space in a productive way that benefits the community of Santa Cruz . The property will no longer be left open by big development companies as a sign of the economic despair in this county, but will rather be used to enrich and teach the local community.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

The Repurposing of 75 River St.

Santa Cruz, CA, U.S.A.- November 30, 2011.

The formerly vacant building at 75 River St. is being repurposed by an autonomous group, in solidarity with Occupy Santa Cruz. Formerly a big bank, it was bought out by Wells Fargo. Subsequently, the building closed, and has remained vacant for nearly three years. Today this group has, without breaking & entering, taken the building with intentions of using the space in a productive way that benefits the community of Santa Cruz . The property will no longer be left open by big development companies as a sign of the economic despair in this county, but will rather be used to enrich and teach the local community.

While the middle class quickly falls toward the poverty line, the big banks and the extremely wealthy continue to get rich at the expense of all. Across the United States 1.05 million properties were seized by banks in the year 2010. In Santa Cruz County alone 1,594 homes were auctioned off between November 2010 and October 2011. The foreclosed and vacant buildings in this country serve as a reminder of the ever-growing gap between the 'rich' and the 'poor'. As people are left without shelter and social space due to foreclosures and a declining economy; big banks and developing companies buy out space to simply leave empty.

An existing time-honored U.S. and California law allows for the transfer of a property title when a property is occupied and taken care of by an alternative party for an extended period of time. This law is called adverse possession. The law was born out of the belief that society's best interests are met when land and property are utilized productively rather than sitting vacant. Today, the building at 75 River St. has been adversely possessed. No longer will the property exist only as an empty parking lot and a vacant building with a sign re-directing people to Wells Fargo across the street. It will be repurposed and used to benefit the community instead of Cassidy Turley, the large-scale commercial real estate company currently leasing the building, and Wells Fargo bank.

Instead of an empty space, there will be a space for community teach-ins, an open library, and discussion forums. The space will be offered to Occupy Santa Cruz as an opportunity to have a roof over its head and allow for more organization to take place. The space will be safe, non-violent, non-destructive and welcoming. The building will be a forum for individuals in the community to learn from one another, and help the Occupy movement grow.

There is a hope to see community support for the reclamation of property and space from the very wealthy, the 1%, back into the hands and benefit of the community.

This action was not decided on by the General Assembly of Occupy Santa Cruz. This press release is not from the Occupy Santa Cruz media team.

This Wednesday: March to Picket banks and Occupy Foreclosed Home

2011-11-27T17:31:00.000-08:00

From indybay:

in solidarity with Occupy Santa Cruz

Join us to picket corporate banks around downtown Santa Cruz and then to march to a foreclosed property. While many people are denied basic needs like shelter and social space, capitalism forces many spaces to remain empty and unused.

Come at 2 for a march leaving by 2:30. Bring signs, all of your friends, and your own vision for a more beautiful world.

99%, rise up! Together we are unstoppable!

#N2: The day that was

2011-11-11T08:47:00.000-08:00

As a blogger on Alice@97.3 (a crappy contemporary radio station, for those who don't know) so adroitly put it: On Wednesday, shit got "really, really real." Instead of a list of events or a play-by-play, here's a collection of incidents, vignettes, and encounters. Hopefully, this can come a little closer to capturing the beautiful dissonance of the day's events.

* * *

In the morning, there is a small child walking around with a hand-drawn sign that says 'schools not prisons.' "Shouldn't that say 'schools are prisons?'" someone comments.

A crappy bakery in the banking district had threatened employees who had asked for the day off. Mid-morning, a group of thirty-plus people went into the bakery, chanting and yelling. The manager eventually promised to let people off with full pay for the day's work. Some people stayed to picket outside. Others moved on, roaming through the carnival of downtown Oakland.

Only a few blocks into the anti-capitalist march, a banner is dropped from a parking garage that reads: "This is Class War. Just win, baby."

At the last second, the Anti-capitalist march is redirected to go to Whole Foods, who had also threatened workers who tried to strike on Wednesday (which they later denied, which doesn't mean shit). Someone paints the word "STRIKE" in 8-foot-high letters on the front of the building. The conflict has four parties: the spectators, the black bloc, Whole Foods, and the peace police. Almost immediately, the peace police tackle a member of the bloc. This particular member of the peace police, later identified as Zach Voorhees of San Francisco, proceeds to get roughed up with some black flags and the bloc-er is able to get away. This is the same peace cop who earlier tackled someone who had smashed bank windows. The anti-capitalist bloc continues through town, making its presence known at various banks and other miserable institutions. While not everyone participated in the destruction, almost everyone cheered for it.

While other marches chanted "peaceful protest" and "we are the 99%", the anti-capitalist bloc chanted "Egypt was violent and so are we" and "we are the proletariat."

Even though the logical contradictions in progressive thought should be no surprise to anyone, it is still interesting to note that violence toward property was initiated by anti-capitalists, while violence against people, in defense of property, was initiated by the peace police.

The sun set that night across the bay, shining in through the cranes at the Oakland port. A banner had been hung from a signal bridge above the railroad. A gaggle of people with black flags sat atop a grainer. Someone had tagged a railroad car, with the caption "occupyin' the town 2011." At one point, the march stretched continuously from Oscar Grant Plaza to the end of the port.

Barricades of potted plants, dumpsters, and trashcans are set up around the plaza. Initiated by people in black bloc, many others stepped up to lend a hand. Two or three peace police flipped their shit when people were moving dumpsters. Once barricades went up, it was often only a matter of minutes before citizen-police moved them back out of the road.

Late in the evening, after the sunset but before the building occupation, a group of people were filming a skate video on the north steps of the plaza. Before Occupy Oakland, one probably couldn't skate in what was Frank Ogawa Plaza. In Oscar Grant Plaza, this and so much more is suddenly possible. However, the filming was interrupted by one man who sometimes does security shifts at the occupation. He sat down on the 4-set where they were filming in order to prevent what, to him, was a possibility of injury. A short argument followed, sucking people in from all around. Ultimately, they stopped filming.

A foreclosed building is taken over two blocks from Oscar Grant Plaza. The initial gathering of about 150 dwindles when the threat of a police attack becomes imminent and dwindles again when a barricade is proactively set afire to disperse teargas. The barricades and the building are left behind when the cops move in. The windows of the police substation at the plaza are all broken (but the building is boarded from the inside). As the police take space, general rioting ensues. Graffiti writers of all stripes are out in force and they all get ups. Businesses up and down Broadway get smashed. Fire extinguisher pieces go up at 14th and Broadway: "Smashy smashy." A statement from the building occupiers makes this situation (and its spectacular significance) clear:

We understand that much of the conversation about last night will revolve around the question of violence (though mostly they mean violence to “property,” which is somehow strangely equated with harming human beings). We know that there are many perspectives on these questions, and we should make the space for talking about them. But let us say this to the cops and to the mayor: things got “violent” after the police came. The riot cops marched down Telegraph and then the barricades were lit on fire. The riots cops marched down Telegraph and then bottles got thrown and windows smashed. The riot cops marched down Telegraph and graffiti appeared everywhere.

The point here is obvious: if the police don’t want violence, they should stay the hell away.

* * *

In the past few years in the bay, Anarchists have been acting autonomously, in the absence of a social movement. Now, a social movement is fermenting, one that isn't limiting itself to the demand-form and is actively avoiding political legitimation or recuperation. Far from cornering itself, the occupy movement has a wide open terrain for its varied trajectories. Keeping the terrain open and pushing the boundaries of what actions and opinions are acceptable are important goals of intervention into occupy. Two years ago, during the student occupation struggles, "occupy everything" was a radical and marginal slogan. Now it's standard fare. In years past in Santa Cruz, marching in the streets was often a matter of contention. Now it happens without a second thought.

We could see this shift as a sign that these tactics and positions are less fierce as they become more palatable to progressives. In a sense, this is true. But it is also proof that the acceptable arena for popular protest might be expanding, at least partly as a result of more antagonistic projects. The left in the United States is still far from where it is in places like France, where a general strike is called every year just as a way for labor to flex its muscle (a gesture that has become increasingly toothless in recent years). While it would be foolish to think having a militant left really does anything to further our project of total liberation, hopefully we can at least use it to get over all this bullshit about nonviolence. Also, as the dialogue and tactics expand, we as social antagonists can better articulate ourselves beyond one or another signifier of militancy.

a total revolt for a total freedom,
scr

For further reading:
Insurrection, Oakland-Style
Bay of Rage

Occupy Oakland, Nov 2

2011-11-03T15:42:00.000-07:00

some snippets from last night after people took over a building.

#N2: Oakland General Strike, November 2nd

2011-10-28T18:17:00.000-07:00

Occupy Oakland evicted at both sites

2011-10-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

At around 5am this morning, Occupy Oakland was evicted from both Snow Park and Oscar Grant Plaza. At least one participant was shot with a "non-lethal" round from a shotgun after a bottle was thrown at the police. About 90 people in total were arrested. Right about now, Occupy Oakland is reconvening at the library at 14th and Franklin to decide their next steps. This set of photos was all over twitter after the raid.

Oscar Grant Plaza, Occupied

This morning, after the raid

On a brighter note, an artist in Los Angeles has done a beautiful series of oil paintings of banks on fire. The first elegantly entitled "Bank of America" and the second simply "Chase Burning."

Texts from Barcelona Assembly Movement

2011-10-22T10:31:00.000-07:00

These texts, written by anarchists involved in the occupation of Plaça Catalunya in Barcelona, are important contributions to social antagonist activity within the Occupy movement. Disseminate widely!

Perspectives from the Barcelona Assembly Movement - Imposed for booklet printing

By sharpening our critiques of democracy without alienating our current co-conspirators, pushing the Occupy movement to emphasize content over form (freedom over consensus), drawing lines against politicians and the police, and embracing autonomy, we can find our own struggle for total freedom within the current struggle. And we get to sleep in public parks.

One Week Strong at Oscar Grant Plaza

2011-10-19T22:58:00.000-07:00

from bayofrage.com:

Social rebels from around Oakland have descended upon Oscar Grant Plaza and have created a genuine, autonomous space free of police and unwelcoming to politicians. Whereas other occupations have invited the police and politicians, or have negotiated with them, Occupy Oakland has carved a line in the cement. That line of demarcation says: if you pass this, if you try and break up or over shadow this autonomous space, you are well aware, as observed over the last couple of years, what we are capable of.

This article is a report back on the first week at Occupy Oakland, a reflection on problems we have been facing and some thoughts on moving the occupation forward; onto some next level shit.

REPORTBACK
After much organizing, logistical coordination, joy, sweat and tears, we’ve managed to hold down the first week of the occupation of Oscar Grant Plaza (conservatively known as Frank Ogawa Plaza). The police have not stepped foot inside the parameter of the occupation without an impassioned, hostile response. Likewise, the people who do enter the space have not left without an inspired and rebellious spirit – a fever.

On the first night, there was concern about how many people would show up or if any of them would feel empowered enough to stay the night. Despite the rain, at least 1,000 attended the rally and about two dozens tents were erected. After food was served, the first general assembly took place in the amphitheater of City Hall. In the form of a speak-out, an amplified sound system and an open floor made way for those in attendance to passionately talk about why they were there – why they hate capitalism, its pigs and its prisons. Here, people could speak their minds without the obstacles of an agenda or decision-making.

Different from many other occupations in the occupation movement, organizing took place for a week prior to the plaza takeover. On the very first day, the camp had a fully functional kitchen, an info-tent and a supply tent. By the end of this week there was a medic tent, art supply tent, an insurrectionary library, a free store, the Raheim Brown Free School, a media tent, a POC tent, a Sukkah, a DJ booth, and not to mention hundreds of sleeping-space tents. In addition, the rotating kitchen crew has been feeding everyone consistently from 8am until midnight and throwing spontaneous BBQs. Despite a few hiccups, these designated areas and tents have been beautifully maintained and non-exclusive – functioning to attract new-comers, leaving little prospect for anyone to feel like a spectator.

Immediately, different logistical issues that had to be dealt with spawned various working groups, or committees. These committees are in constant rotation. This “beauty in chaos” allows for a loose, flexible structure. Simultaneously, people are freely organizing and interacting with the camp however they desire. A few crucial sub-committees that the occupation hasn’t necessitated until recently, but have since been created (and experimented with) are: security (dealing with outside forces such as police, who from the beginning were not welcome), mediation (dealing with internal conflicts and dynamics), a facilitation working group (which organizes the agenda and shapes the process of the general assembly), a POC caucus that has been meeting every day, and finally, a newly formed anti-authoritarian/anti-capitalist caucus and a queer working group. People are no longer spectating the increasingly rapid destruction of their everyday life, instead they are actively participating in breaching normalized boundaries – how people relate to one another in a way that empowers everyone involved.

The General Assemblies, or “GAs,” are places where the people of the occupation can get updates, have debates, plan for actions, and decide on proposals. The GA Facilitation Working Group came up with a modified consensus process where a 90% majority – instead of 100% – is sufficient to pass a proposal. However illusory or “democratic” this process functions, its strategic implementation strips power away from potentially authoritative individuals who might hijack or otherwise sabotage our ability to make decisions and move forward. Because there is a specific group working on the facilitation process, the GAs operate smoothly and are usually quite exciting. Additionally, a lot of people that speak at the GA are really fucking on point. Thus far the general assemblies (of 200-300 people nightly) have passed decisions to never endorse political parties or politicians, to send a solidarity statement to comrades at Occupy Wall Street and another to those on hunger strike in the Pelican Bay state prison. This is also a space where anti-state and anti-authority sentiments flourish, be they against the police or the city government.

As can be expected, some people say some really fucked up racist/sexist shit, but they are usually booed off stage. With what may be a perfect ending to the first week, a letter from the city (delivered en mass 30 minutes before the GA) was read aloud. The city detailed specifically what must be improved or taken care of “for our own safety” (when did the city ever care about our safety anyways?). Boldly (you could feel tension when the idea was initiated), some began chanting, “Burn it”. Without hesitation, someone took a lighter to the letter. Another person added lighter fluid to the burning, single sheet of paper. The flames raged wildly for a full minute. The crowd of at least 300 cheered and hollered with an enthusiasm unprecedented at any prior GA. For some reason, we feel that Occupy Oakland is different…

In addition to the amazing infrastructure and the excellent facilitation that has been set up, the organized events are extremely diverse and most of the time explicitly political. Each of the events throughout the first week nurtures the overall, vengeful tone of the occupation – performances, Hip Hop shows, poetry slams and movie showings. In each case, people find time away from hard work to enjoy each other’s company. In addition to planned events, numerous impromptu ciphers, dance parties and performances break out – accentuating a generalized desire to cultivate autonomous actions. One day a SambaFunk Band marched their way into Oscar Grant Plaza, proceeded to play for almost an hour – hundreds surrounding them, dancing. This beautifully unexpected addition to the occupation, along with others like it, demonstrates a recurring spontaneity. Multiple times throughout the day you hear people exclaim how inspired they are by this occupation and what is possible here. In addition to the more creative and fun events, workshops take place during the day and have been explicitly nonconformist. The workshops range from topics such as contemporary uprisings in Greece, Chile, and Oaxaca to Occupy Everything, which connect the student occupations to what is happening here. This upcoming week, everyday from 1-5pm there are more of the same: specific talks discussing particular political topics such as “Police/State/Prison” and “Oakland schools are being shut down! What are we gonna do?” Notably, the very first demonstration out of Occupy Oakland was an anti-capitalist march where over 200 people marched through downtown Oakland chanting, “1, 2, 3, 4 – organize for social war!” — among other things . This march attracted a diversity of people. Over 200 rebels chanting these radical slogans chill you to the bone. The following night, a queer march left from the occupation and went to Hella Gay, a queer dance party in Oakland. Upon reaching the club, marchers demanded to be let in for free and the venue acquiesced.

Incessantly, Occupy Oakland startles and excites many with its implicit radicalism. On Saturday, October 15th, MoveOn.org (a “grassroots” organizational front for the democratic party) organized a march and demonstration in conjunction with the national occupation movement’s day of action. They attempted to exploit Occupy Oakland when they announced that it would draw to a close in Oscar Grant Plaza with a series of speakers including several mayors from around the Bay. Upon this announcement, a proposal was brought to the GA: a refusal of special treatment and/or endorsement of politicians and political parties/organizations. It passed like a maple leaf in the wind. After negotiations with MoveOn, and based on our own policies, no politicians would be allowed to speak on behalf of their party at that event and thereafter.

Surprisingly, MoveOn eventually complied with our demand. When someone broke the agreement (rather, they took advantage of a loophole) and began reading a statement from Congresswomen Barbara Lee, someone from the occupation promptly told those from MoveOn how they broke the agreement and how the democratic party is “counter-revolutionary.” At this point those who were brought to the occupation via MoveOn’s march begun to disperse and explore the camp (perhaps because it was far more interesting than hearing all of the old boring democratic rhetoric that has been said time and time before).
ANALYSIS

Over the past few years, Oakland has demonstrated its uniqueness in social conflict and protest. This distinctiveness isn’t anything new; rather, it has just reemerged. To elaborate, a comrade wrote in The Occupation Movement: On Greed, Unity & Violence:

“Oakland is currently under occupation by the police. The form of this occupation varies; the situation is much different in Temescal than in deep East Oakland. We live in a militarized space. Whether it’s police executions of Black youth, police harassment of sex workers along International Boulevard, or the city council’s racist legislation in the form of anti-loitering laws, gang injunctions or the suggested youth curfew, this paramilitary occupation is a project of local government to pacify and contain the city so capitalism can go about it’s business uninterrupted.

But Oakland doesn’t just have a violent, repressive contemporary situation; we have a vibrant history of struggle and resistance. From the 1946 General Strike to the formation of the Black Panther party in 1966 to the anti-police rebellion following the execution of Oscar Grant in 2009, Oakland has long been a city full of people that refuse to sit down and shut up. Despite every attempt by the state to kill that spirit, it lives on and will be out in full force over the coming days.”

Occupy Oakland reflects Oakland’s radical history. Because of this, an overwhelming anti-police sentiment guides the conversation about and the reaction to police. The GA has refused to comply with the city’s demand that we apply for permits (which we were told would automatically be accepted without charge). This lawlessness has played out when police have attempted to enter the occupation. On several occasions, many surround the approaching police and in unison began chanting “Pigs go home!” and “Cops get out!” When the police officers realize their lack of power, they have no other option but to leave. This tactic of resisting the presence of the police started spontaneously, but has since been the usual response. We hope that other occupations will look to this practice and realize its significance.

Despite the brilliant infrastructure, there have been problems. Some extremely important committees have been slow to respond to the growing need of the camp. Some of this is due to the transient nature of the groups, where people come in and voice their disagreements and then take off, leaving the work to the people in the committees who are already stressing about getting things done. Although there is “beauty in the chaos,” it has become evident that to some degree, disciplined organization is imperative. Ideally, a harmony of chaos and composition will surface.
One of the biggest problems emerging in the camp is specific dynamics of racism, sexism and other oppressive habits. In the first several days, excitement and festivity ruled the commune. This slowly transitioned into over-frequent dance parties that spilled late into the nights. Excessive drinking, unwanted sexual advances, harassment, and fights persist daily. This behavior, it should be mentioned, also exists without the presence of alcohol, but takes on a different form with alcohol. [NOTE: we are beginning to see reports of delinquency, drug use and violence in the media that may begin to duplicate in other media outlets. This could be the beginning of a campaign against the occupation. We would like to mention that these problems exist everywhere, as this occupation is to some extent a microcosm of Oakland, and until there is incentive to unlearn these behaviors, “peace” cannot be actualized. Again, this is not to say that they are not serious or that they are tolerated.]

All of this has led to concern about the camp developing a Burning Man or Woodstock environment, devoid of almost all political content (other than the politics of culture, sub-culture and counter-culture which have a very limited potential and ultimately alienate people from one another). What is desired is a complete transformation (or destruction) of society, not just a cultural one. These dynamics are not unique to the occupation, but rather happen every day in Oakland and everywhere – they are symptomatic of a society that has broken all of us. In reaction, a mediation team has been set up to deescalate situations and allow for dialogue between those in conflict, resulting in much benefit. Despite all of this, Occupy Oakland is magnificently self-regulating – when a fool’s gotta go, a fool’s gotta go. This occupation is constantly growing and expanding – becoming more and more dissident by the day, pushing us all to our limits. Let’s see what else this occupation movement has to offer…

Beneath the internal conflicts lies an aching desire to externalize such wrath. Hundreds upon hundreds of people simply talk and mingle, discussing politics and life. You can almost taste a collective hostility towards each individual’s own socialization. People are learning how to be human beings without the mediation of capitalism and its apparatuses. Whereas alienation and isolation rule our every interaction, it has been replaced by the crisis of remembering the last 10 names of those you’ve met in the past hour. The war on alienation and isolation is fought through complex and voluntary social experiments, ultimately revealing the gaps of power relations that are facilitated, in part, by capitalism.

Another pressing issue is that of expansion. The plaza now hosts somewhere around 150 tents on the grassy areas alone. Sunday night, 30 minutes before the GA, a letter from the city was delivered en mass to people in the occupation. It detailed the city’s intolerance to many things, among them, camping in the concrete area of the plaza. Logistically, moving to the concrete would be the most immediate remedy to the growing population density of the occupation. Are we to push that boundary? Already, a small encampment has manifested in Snow Park, which is a few blocks from Oscar Grant Plaza. Almost all of the grass is taken up at this point and if we are to push the boundaries with the city, we must be prepared to defend the spaces we select to house us next. Expansion onto the concrete would only be a temporary solution. If we are to expand to another location, we must nurture the crisis of the occupation – population density – and encourage many more from the street find a home in the occupation movement and seduce others out of their homes to do the same. [NOTE: Those occupying Snow Park stand their ground against police who tell them they are not allowed to be there due to a school being nearby. Since then, to some extent, the school and its students have announced support of the occupations in OG Plaza and Snow Park. However, Snow Park is in need of a greater occupying force. As of tonight, we are unsure whether that extension of the occupation can be held through the following day.].

The recent letter from the City gives light to their attempt to stifle our capacity. With good reason, they are afraid. It is likely the occupation will attempt a diversity of expansion strategies through the coming week. Undercover police are naive to think we haven’t noticed their technique of dividing the occupation on already present tensions – some COINTELPRO type shit. The camp is vulnerable – bearing wide-open entrances in almost every direction. Do we look to barricades? Do we take the barricades into the street? These are questions that will be answered in either a collective, intuitive and organic response to police eviction or in much planning and preparation. One thing is certain: the people of Occupy Oakland are well prepared to defend their new home.

Occupy Oakland (as you may have gathered at this point) is unlike any other. We begin to appreciate this when we realize our potential and current condition – that we are a force to be reckoned with, a danger to the capitalist functioning of Oakland. Police attack is no more imminent than the all too likely opportunities of widespread insurgency. Strategizing in accordance to our immediate geography’s potential as well as its weaknesses is key. Unions, schools, libraries and more, they are already our allies, as we are theirs. An overpowering confidence saturates the air of Oscar Grant Plaza – a threat and a promise.
Occupy Everything! Demand Nothing!

-Autonomous individuals among the liberated space known as Oscar Grant Plaza.

Carlo viven!

2011-10-19T22:53:00.000-07:00

"a few thousand thugs from all over Italy, and possibly from all over Europe."

Tenants sets dogs, throw chairs at landlord

2011-10-17T22:44:00.000-07:00

From the Mid-County Post:

Corralitos- During an apparent landlord-tenant dispute, Kendra J. Jacobo, 29, set a pair of pit bulls on the landlord, said Sgt. Steve Carney of the Sheriff's Office. The landlord was bitten several times and as he fled, Brian W. Menges, 36, threw a chair and hit the victim. The suspects left before deputies arrived, but were contacted when they returned to the property and charged with assault. The victim was treated by paramedics and the dogs were removed by an animal control officer.

Blue Lights Come to Santa Cruz

2011-10-15T10:17:00.000-07:00

from santacruz.com

For a city whose violent crime history includes four serial killers during the ’70s and early ’80s and enough stabbings in recent years that one guy started a website to track them, it’s difficult to imagine combating violence without the police. But a few community-minded citizens in Santa Cruz are trying.

“I don’t think we are anywhere near a place where we are ready to take care of ourselves without police, but that’s where I’d like to see us get to,” says Wes Modes of the Santa Cruz Community Safety Workgroup, which began meeting last year. “There are lots of things the police have never done well, such as prevention of domestic violence and taking care of people who’ve slipped through the cracks. These are areas in which it is easy for us to make a difference.”

The Blue Light Safety Project is one decentralized, do-it-yourself effort for community safety that the Workshop has come up with, and the concept is simple: Put a blue light bulb on your porch or front window to let people know they are welcome to approach if they need help.

“Female-bodied people or youth walking alone at night, people escaping intimate violence, queer or trans people who’ve been threatened, or elderly people who need a brief rest might feel supported to have a house in their neighborhood where they know they can find a temporary safe space,” says Modes.

This police alternative to community safety is also based on the simple action of getting to know your neighbors.

“I think because we rely on the police we don’t know our neighbors as much,” says Kristen Swig, who recently installed a blue light in the house she shares with several others. “My experiences with the police have not made me feel safer, and I think it’s a common misconception that the police are a symbol of safety.”

The Blue Light Safety Project is similar to light programs used on college campuses across the country, as well as neighborhood watches or “citizen patrol units” that have proven successful in bringing down crime rates in cities like Philadelphia.

more info at bluelightsafety.blogspot.com

Solidarity Noise Demo

2011-10-12T09:48:00.000-07:00

As much as the State wants us to forget, we want to remember. We held a noise demonstration outside the Santa Cruz county jail on Saturday, October 8th in solidarity with the hunger striking prisoners across California. People walked through downtown passing out flyers of the prisoners demands and then met up with about 35 more people outside of the courthouse. We marched to the jail, chanting.

"Our passion for freedom is stronger than their prisons!"

"Santa Cruz to Pelican Bay, fighting back is the only way!"

"In every city, In every town, bulldoze prisons to the ground!"

We went onto the jail property. We hit the fences with black-flagged-dowels and read a speech while someone inside the women's detention center flashed her lights on and off in rhythm with the drums -- we were heard. We circled the jail to the front office, banging on the walls and doors while chanting and yelling. There were no encounters with the police and we left after half an hour.

text from flyer:

OVER 12,000 PRISONERS IN CALIFORNIA ARE PARTICIPATING IN A HUNGER STRIKE resisting the conditions of torture in the SHU (Security Housing Unit long term solitary confinement.) The strike has spread to over 14 prisons. Many people on hunger strike are willing to die for more liveable conditions.

THE PRISONERS’ DEMANDS:

1. End Group Punishment & Administrative Abuse

2. Abolish the Debriefing Policy, and Modify Active/Inactive Gang Status Criteria

3. Comply with the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons 2006 Recommendations Regarding and End to Long-Term Solitary Confinement

4. Provide Adequate and Nutritious Food

5. Expand and Provide Constructive Programming and Privileges for Indefinite SHU Status Inmates.

In July 6,000 prisoners were on hunger strike with the same demands. The CDCR (California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation) has since only made conditions worse for the strikers.

We want to let prisoners know they are not alone. We are inspired by prisoners collectively resisting the state's most brutal institution. This powerful act of defiance strengthens any struggle for freedom.

let's not forget whose land we're on...

2011-10-07T21:00:00.000-07:00

from http://dignidadrebelde.com

Occupy Santa Cruz, Occupy Everywhere

2011-10-07T00:44:00.000-07:00

A flier from "some individuals from within Occupy Santa Cruz". A .pdf is available here.

An occupation creates space for a new way of interacting with each other. Rather than only coming together as co-workers or neighbors, we are coming together as people with similar ideas. In this space, we can discuss and act on our vision of the world. We have the opportunity to participate in a new and spreading social movement together with people across the country, the globe, and throughout cyberspace.

The goal of the Occupy movement should not be to “speak truth to power” or to appeal for change from politicians and the rich. The goal is to speak to each other so that our ideas and sentiments can spread widely. The Occupy movement has done this well, with solidarity occupations starting across the country. There is no doubt that politicians have the power to improve the conditions of people’s lives, but through the occupation movement we have the chance to rediscover our own power. To embrace our power is to reject theirs. We aren’t making an appeal to politicians, we’re making an appeal to each other.

This movement belongs to all those who participate. We can be inspired by the events of the Arab Spring. In these uprisings, people came together against their common enemies. The people in Tahrir square were willing to defend themselves against the police and Mubarak supporters,and some people took it upon themselves to burn down police stations. Although the situation here is different in many ways, the function of the police is the same everywhere and conflict is bound to occur. The question worth asking is: In what ways are we willing to defend ourselves?

For total freedom,
some individuals within
Occupy Santa Cruz

Night of the Barricades

2011-10-06T22:01:00.000-07:00

from bayofrage:

updated with pictures & links 9:30am
On the night of October 6th San Francisco Police attacked the Occupy SF encampment at the Federal Building on Market and Drum. After a day in which 800 people marched through downtown San Francisco in solidarity with the occupation of Wall Street in New York and elsewhere around the country, hundreds gathered at the site of the occupation. However by evening the police had administered an eviction notice to the occupiers claiming that the police would move in at midnight alongside the Department of Public Works to clear the plaza. Roughly around 10pm the police began to gather a block away from the occupation. Word circulated quickly and as both the occupiers and the police prepared roughly 150 people assembled at the occupation. After a few hours of waiting, debate, and nervous conversations within the occupation the police finally made their first move. Marching down the street, adorned with helmets and batons, the police escorted a line of Department of Public Works Vehicles. Standing between the occupiers and the living spaces that had been created since the occupations’ beginning, Department of Public Works workers were then forced to begin eradicating the space of any materials related to the occupation. The trucks were quickly filled with the same rapidity as the mood in the air began to intensify.

Almost spontaneously a large wooden pallet that the vehicles had not yet managed to collect was brought in front of one of the trucks. Immediately others began to follow bringing bodies and all material left behind in the encampment and surrounded the police and Department of Public Works vehicles. People grabbed anything they could find – garbage cans, street signs, cones and even the police’s own metal barricades to prevent the trucks from leaving as well as corner the police. While the police had tried to encircle and intimidate the occupation those there quickly used the opportunity to encircle and intimidate the police. As the SFPD closed in on the trucks standing off with what was now hundreds of people on market street and beautifully constructed barricades, they began to make way for the vehicles to leave. This created a series of small scuffles. Eventually the vehicles left and the barricades stood proudly on market street between the starry twilight of 230am and the confused fright of the SFPD.

The night was an incredibly powerful reflection of not only what is possible but the emergent potential of the Occupy movement. After the police announced that the occupation was going to be raided the occupiers began to decide what to do. The conversation was disparate, timid and unstable. This was directly caused by a few dominant voices controlling a decision making process in a situation that needed immediate attention. As the police came in this timidity, instability and disparity disappeared as all collectively participated in activity that reflected the needs of the immediate situation. No longer was the conversation dominated, but all voices flourished in the streets. People also held together and refused to be the targets of police violence. Instead people collectively resisted the attacks by the police by directly interfering with their ability to function as police by constructing barricades. Their antagonism towards the police was a direct reflection of the immediate goal of responding to a police raid. This act of self-defense was also an offensive direct action and strengthened both the solidarity amongst the participants and the potential for antagonistic expansion.

If these occupations are to both survive and continue they must be protected from the police by any means necessary.

Read the Statement from Occupy SF regarding the attempted police eviction last night

As the barricades multiply almost everywhere, though within a limited perimeter, the security forces receive reinforcements from units that had until then been positioned outside the Latin Quarter and close down the area, which with each passing minute takes on an insurrectional air. - Le Monde, May 12-13, 1968

ANARCHY IN ATHENS: art show at subrosa

2011-10-06T21:49:00.000-07:00

Stories, analysis, and a slideshow about anarchism in the birthplace of democracy
at
6 pm SUBROSA 703 Pacific Ave

Greece is in the midst of a major social upheaval at the hands of ordinary
people. The economic crisis and rising social tensions are leading to an
explosive situation, with anarchists and other radicals at the forefront.
One anarchist and photographer from Santa Cruz spent a month in the
anarchist neighborhood of Athens called Exarchia. Come hear about his
experience with Greece's failing economy, squatted community parks, riots
against capitalism, university occupations, the general assembly model,
and much more about anarchist struggle in Athens.

10/8: Solidarity Demonstration with Hunger Strike

2011-10-03T22:59:00.000-07:00

Louden Nelson Park
Saturday, 10/8 @ 6:30pm
Bring Noisemakers

from indybay.org:

12,000 prisoners are on hunger strike across the state of California in resistance to conditions in Special Housing Units (SHU).

The prisoner's demands are simple:
1. End Administration Abuse & Group Punishment
2. Abolish the Debriefing Policy & Modify Gang Status Criteria
3. End Long Term Solitary Confinement
4. Provide Adequate and Nutritious Food
5. Expand and Provide Constructive Programming & Privileges

After a march through town to distribute information, we will have a noisy demonstration at the county jail to let the inmates hear that they are not alone.

Stand in solidarity with prisoners everywhere. Amplify their voices in the streets where we live.

Hunger Strike Continues While Prisons "Realign"

2011-10-03T20:26:00.000-07:00

Two lines running parallel here: a hunger strike in the highest security units in California prison reaches over 12,000 prisoners while state realignment pushes triple-non (non-violent, non-sexual, non-serious) prisoners into control programs outside the prison walls. As prisons themselves are increasingly brutal and isolating, society generally becomes more prison-like.

The five core demands of the hunger strikers:

1. End Administration Abuse & Group Punishment
2. Abolish the Debriefing Policy & Modify Gang Status Criteria
3. End Long Term Solitary Confinement
4. Provide Adequate and Nutritious Food
5. Expand and Provide Constructive Programming & Privileges

Anarchists on the outside, though, have only one demand to articulate: the total destruction of prison infrastructure, both social and physical.

"Disciplinary diet loaf" served at Santa Cruz County Jail to unruly inmates.

Communiques from 9/22 at Tolman Hall

2011-09-27T21:43:00.000-07:00

The day of action at UC Berkeley last Thursday may have been a failed occupation, a successful riot, or just another event in a laundry list of learning experiences. Whatever we choose to call it, the day seems to have filled people with a sense of power and a hunger for more, which are both beautiful things.

Book Bloc in full effect. Wut?

Here's a communique from some comrades (originally posted to indybay):

As with the inaugural event of the California occupation movement two years ago – when students barricaded themselves inside the Graduate Student Commons at UC Santa Cruz – the occupation of Tolman Hall was both an act of material expropriation (or attempted expropriation) and an act of communication, meant to signal, to warn, to threaten and raise the alarm. . . It was both a declaration of resumed hostilities against the university and a form of communication with comrades here and elsewhere, both inside and outside the university. It was a warning directed at the small clique of arrogant, befuddled bureaucrats who run the university, as well as their armed thugs. But also a message sent to our comrades. For our comrades, the occupation was meant to communicate first and foremost a kind of excitement: Let's do this! Let's occupy everything! But behind the initial thrill it should communicate, also, a few critical lessons:

1)The first lesson is as clear as a geometric proof: Violence works. As with the threat of a two thousand person riot which freed the Wheeler occupiers on Nov. 20, defensive violence works particularly well. Faced with a group of largely passive occupiers, a group which seemed in no way prepared to resist a dispersal order, the police decided to enjoy their own capacity for arbitrary displays of power and bar the doors without giving any verbal warning. The occupiers, correctly, rushed the doors and tried to get out, pushing the cops out of the way and dearresting those whom the police grabbed. With over half of the crowd outside, the police finally secured the doors, throwing one of the last people to try and flee to the floor, bloodying his face and nearly dislocating his shoulder. They had started a riot. Outside, fewer than five officers faced off against a crowd of 30 or more in total darkness. Someone threw a metal chair at the cops. Others threw chunks of concrete and traffic cones. They chanted “Pigs just fucking try it. There's gonna be a fucking riot.” The cops were forced back into the building, at which point it seemed like only a matter of time before the crowd tore down some fencing and smashed open the doors (someone had already smashed one door). Realizing the volatility of the situation, the cops released the detainees on the inside. QED: violence works. Violence, in this case, is one of the most intense forms of solidarity. Only because of the mystification that surrounds the police, can this appear as anything other than an act of mutual aid. When a group of thugs kidnaps your friends and starts beating them, you fight back. This is common sense.

2)Second lesson: the police are the enemy. They cannot be convinced, cajoled, manipulated. They have been given orders to treat every demonstration as a criminal matter, an act of burglary and vandalism. The administration has indicated in explicit terms that only the police will deal with such situations. There will be no discussion, no phone calls or visits from the Deans. It does not matter if we have the support of the inhabitants of the building. Police are the proxy owners of the campus; they will go in and militarize occupations immediately. Unlike other places where the police might wait outside for hours or days or weeks until given orders to attack an occupation, police at Berkeley act on their own initiative, autonomously, attempting to take control of a space even before they contact their superiors. The image of officers rushing into the crowd as if they were running backs pushing through defensive line would be absurd elsewhere, but here it is par for the course. This makes the “open occupation” – the occupation which attempts to claim space but allow for easy circulation in and out, creating a functioning autonomous space in which all kinds of activities take place – rather difficult. It is pretty obvious at this point: we cannot be free with cops in the room. There is no struggle against fees and debt, no struggle against austerity that is not, at the same time, a struggle against the cops. We will have to find ways to physically prevent the entry of police into our occupations, unless they are politically prevented from doing so. This is our message to the administration: restrain your attack dogs or expect more riots.

3)A final lesson. This occupation failed for many reasons – an inability to keep police out of the building, a lack of “planning for success” (ie, having clear ideas about what we wanted to do once we were inside). All of this meant, ultimately, that there were too few people to survive the first night without courting arrest. Still, as brief and disorganized as it was, the number of people entirely new to protest and occupation was incredibly encouraging. These new folks, of course, displayed a naivete that is no doubt frustrating – wondering, for instance, why the presence of cops in the building was even an issue (they learned the answer quite quickly). But instead of engaging them, and attempting to explain what was happening, instead of attempting to help them understand the practice they were engaged in, many comrades simply left them alone, preferring to congregrate with the likeminded. This is a real weakness, one we note in ourselves. It evidences a lack of patience, and a desire to avoid uncomfortable experiences that strikes us as rather prevalent in the Bay Area milieu (and prevalent, we note, in our own behavior). Our contempt for those who stand in our way, and who do so repeatedly, is good and important. But it seems we resort to contempt even when confronted with people who oppose us not out of some deep-seated ideological conviction but out of sheer lack of experience. Let's be clear: insurrection will not occur solely as the result of intentional action by a group of already committed radicals, a group of people who already display the “correct” thoughts and actions. It will occur as the result of transformative experiences – experiences that always involve new forms of knowledge and politicial discourse – and which drive people to do things they never imagined doing before. In short, we need to get better at talking. We're pretty good at fighting. We're pretty good at writing. We're pretty good at taking care of each other. But we're not so good at speaking publicly, it seems, under pressure, at the right moment. As a friend noted to us afterwards, perhaps this is because we hate leaders and fear becoming them, fear the banal acts of persuasion and oratory upon which the left thrives, and despise those who try to dominate others through such proselytizing. But saying what you think is not necessarily domination. Sometimes it's an act of friendship.

From Gazuedro, here's a response to the communique above:

Perhaps it’s just rhetorical poisoning that my mind has suffered through the years by the media and the movement police, but it seems reckless to say, carte blanche, that “violence works.” This is not an ethical criticism of the argument, but rather a concern for the lack of clarity portrayed by this rather brief statement. I would take it, the “critical lesson” is that given the imminent political force of the crowd outside, and the aggressiveness of the police, the use of violent force to circumvent further atrociousness from the police was effective, worth the risk, and justified. Perhaps more importantly, that as a tactic, it’s easily justifiable to a community critical of police brutality against students who were merely demonstrating, and was thus something that might help bring a community together. I bring this up only to say that this argument isn’t given a fair chance by the brevity of the original statement (i.e. violence works) or by the dramatic and defiance-infused description of events that took place. In short, does all “violence work?” No of course not, it depends on the situation. It’s clear that this statement is a reaction to the moral condemnation of what happened, but as you realize, the problem with moral condemnation is its outright ignorance of how nuanced the issue is; and how general sweeping statements (i.e. moralisms) are aggravating excuses for failing to think critically. The approach of this argument falls under that same trap of being too general.

Similarly, stating “the police are the enemy,” seems a little extravagant. Certainly they often hold the role as the enemy, and are physically present to disable you from being effective. But the police are not the capitalists. The police are (massive) obstacles that must be dealt with. They are often the racist fuckers that shoot unarmed black men face down on the platform, but they are not the ones that solely perpetuate the system of oppression. If you’re purpose is to explain to the uninitiated that the police are not our friends, then you’re a folly of your own third lesson: failing to engage a diverse crowd the right way. An argument like this won’t reach folks. This kind of message, by far, is a lesson best learned through direct action: through the realization that your attempts to make the world better (and thus by extension communize) will be struck down with a baton every time if you fail to organize yourself to resist. This statement does help justify the event for those who were present, but it stops short of contextualizing the power structure thats at fault. It’s most certainly frustrating to have people constantly defend the police and absolve them of any wrongdoing, but the medium to change that won’t be in a brief communique.

I think generally, insurrectionary rhetoric like this overuses hyperbolic language and exaggeration. It usually comes off as grating rather than evocative of romantic adventurism and adrenaline-infused, humbled righteousness. I really appreciate the perspective and analysis though — for which y’all should be much lauded.

Crime Analysis: Prostitution, Robbery, Class War

2011-09-26T20:50:00.000-07:00

From the Sentinel:

SANTA CRUZ - A 28-year-old Santa Cruz man was robbed Thursday night after a woman he picked up to pay for sexual favors took him to a nearby motel room, police said.

The man was near Ocean Street and Broadway about 10:40 p.m. when he met a woman on the street who agreed to sexual favors in exchange for money, Lt. Larry Richard said. When the man and woman arrived at a nearby motel room, another woman and a man jumped out, attacked the man and stole his money and cellphone, Richard said.

The three attackers beat him and left him in the room, police said. The man said he saw the three leave in a blue Dodge Durango. 

Law-abiding readers of this article will probably see the perpetrator as having committed two offenses against the moral order: first, that she is a prostitute and second, that she robbed a man. The man is twice a victim, first to his desires and second to a a prostitute whom he thought he had purchased.

Others, and with good reason, will defend the prostitute's actions because this robbery reverses the usual power dynamic. The prostitute, who is often considered powerless, is asserting her power against a potential john to whom she would usually sell her body and time. Here, the robbery is only an act of power because it assumes that she would otherwise be disempowered by renting out her body. In this analysis, the woman's power is limited by her identity as a prostitute.

However, we can read this incident in a more nuanced way by putting aside the assumption that the woman is a prostitute. Indeed, what if this was not a robbery of a john by a prostitute, but the robbery of a mark by a con artist assuming the identity of a prostitute? This robbery wasn't an identity asserting its power, it was the use of an identity as a weapon. Power in its multiple forms is not attached to the body of the prostitute, but rather to that identity of the prostitute. In this instance, the power of the identity is used to subvert the identity itself. Rather than interpreting this as an opportunity to celebrate a particular identity, we can see this event as the subversion of identity for criminal ends.

To understand this subversion of identity it could be useful to discuss how it functions in this exchange. The john believes he is fooling the prostitute into selling their body, a supposedly invaluable commodity, for some price per hour, per act, etc. He maintains this illusion in his mind that the prostitute belongs to him albeit briefly and he is assured that he's getting his money's worth. This is an imagined dynamic: the john only has access to this body for a moment in time and is offered temporary, reluctant, and feigned affections to assure the maintenance of the illusion. He is being tricked into thinking that he is purchasing something that in reality will never be for sale.

The question as to whether this is class warfare or broke-on-broke crime remains unanswered. Johns are not bosses and they are not employers; they do not demand labor but rather they consume it. They can be working class people whose alienated desires for sex and/or affection are transposed into the consumption of a commodity because this is how we are taught to obtain our desires. That being said, there are also johns who deserve none of that sympathy--johns whose class position grants them access to whatever they can pay for. These men live their entire lives sincerely convinced that what's inside of their wallets can free them. We thank them for their ignorance, because it is fools like this whose platinum bank accounts endow our criminal class of delinquents, outlaws, whores and crooks.

By embracing our natural tendency toward the criminal, the prostitute's trickery and the booster's slyness can become the raw material for social revolt. Though we don't assume to know the thieves' motivation, we can hope that next time it is an act of war. Not every crime is liberatory, but every criminal is a little more free than their law-abiding neighbors.

With love,
some whores and vandals

Post-script: On Identity
While appreciating identity as a weapon, the intention is not to discount the idea of identity completely. Identity politics gives us tools to combat the ways we have been disfigured by this society. Whatever increases our power in the social war, let's embrace it; whatever holds us back, let's cast it into the bonfire with the rest of society.

There's a pretty good zine analyzing (and not entirely dismissing identity politics) called Lines in the Sand. Read it here. And, just for kicks, here's Wolfi: Beyond Feminism, Beyond Gender.

Next Round of SHU Hunger Strike starts this Monday

2011-09-24T11:06:00.000-07:00

from Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity:

On Monday, September 26th, prisoners at both Pelican Bay & Calipatria will resume the hunger strike to stop the torturous conditions of Security Housing Units (SHUs).

Prisoners first went on hunger strike on July 1st for nearly four weeks, until the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation (CDCR) agreed to begin implementing some of the prisoners’ five core demands. The strike became one of the largest prison strikes in California history–stretching across a third of the California’s prisons (at least 13 State prisons), including more than 6,600 prisoners at its height. However, the CDCR’s response has been inadequate to say the least, giving prisoners & their families false hope of timely substantial change and an end to torture. For a detailed summary of the CDCR’s response to the strike, and why Pelican Bay prisoners are resuming it, read “Tortured SHU Prisoners Speak Out: The Struggle Continues."

CDCR officials seem to be preemptively cracking down on prisoners in anticipation of the strike and have publicly said they were preparing to take harsh actions against strikers. Illustrating the CDCR’s hard-line stance, Undersecretary of Operations Scott Kernan said in a recent interview, “If there are other instances of hunger strikes, I don’t think the Department will approach it the same way this time around.”

Lawyers who have recently visited Pelican Bay have taken testimony from SHU prisoners who have been retaliated against by prison officials for their participation in this summer’s strike. “Prisoners are receiving serious disciplinary write-ups, usually reserved for serious rules violations, for things like talking in the library or not walking fast enough,” says Carol Strickman, a lawyer with Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, “It’s clear that prison officials are trying to intimidate these men and to make them ineligible for any privileges or changes that may be forced by the strike.”

128 disciplinary write-ups have been issued to participants in the last hunger strike, which can result in denied parole, loss of in-prison employment, and more. In this write-up, the CDC acknowledges that the last hunger strike had over 6000 participants, which means there were probably many more than that.

Santa Cruz hacker arrested for shutting down Santa Cruz County website

2011-09-23T16:30:00.000-07:00

The Cyber-war touches down in Santa Cruz.

Two hackers, allegedly responsible for shutting down the County Government website last December, were indicted to appear before a federal grand jury on three counts. A .pdf of the indictment is available here.

The attack, which disabled the county wesbite for about a half-hour, was an act of solidarity with those arrested at Peace Camp 2010 (a homeless encampment protesting Santa Cruz City's sleeping ban) and happened a day after two of them were arraigned. One of the people arrested, Christopher Doyon, has an outstanding warrant from his participation in Peace Camp 2010.

The group that claimed the attack, the "People's Liberation Front" (PLF), traces its history back to telecom scams that were used to support underground groups in the mid-1980's.

Free them all, eh?

From the Sentinel:

SANTA CRUZ -- A homeless activist who appears to have been instrumental in last year's Santa Cruz camping ban protests was arrested Thursday for allegedly hacking Santa Cruz County computers in December, federal authorities allege.

A federal grand jury's indictment of Mountain View resident Christopher Doyon, 47, appears to be part of a nationwide crackdown on the hacker community. A second man also has been charged in the attack, which authorities say was planned as retribution for the breakup of a lengthy protest over the city's controversial outdoor sleeping ban.

According to the indictment, Doyon and Joshua John Covelli, a 26-year-old Fairborn, Ohio, resident, hatched "Operation Peace Camp 2010" on behalf of the Massachusetts-based group Peoples Liberation Front, which claimed credit for the attack and has been linked to the hacker group Anonymous.

Anonymous has been linked to a number of online hacking attacks worldwide, and played an instrumental role in a recent series of BART protests. Their members often appear in public wearing masks, particularly of the British 17th century revolutionary Guy Fawkes.

The county government computer attacks resulted in users not being able to access the county's website. No information was compromised or disseminated, county officials said.

The two-month protest over the camping ban began on the steps of the county courthouse and ended in front of Santa Cruz City Hall. Ultimately, the Sheriff's deputies moved in early in the morning to break up the protest. In letters posted on Peace Camp's blog, Doyon also described himself as homeless and some news reports on Thursday also described him as such, though federal authorities could not confirm it. Authorities provided no details on his arrest.

"All I know is that it went without incident," FBI spokeswoman Julie Sohn said.

A Chris Doyon of the same age was quoted in a Sentinel article last year about the camping ban protest, saying he believed people had the right to sleep wherever they choose.

Doyon was also one of five people ultimately charged with illegal camping, though he never showed up for trial. Prosecutor Sara Dabkowski said in May that a bench warrant had been issued for his arrest, but no further information was available Thursday.

Doyon once described himself as a spokesman for the group. At the time, he said he grew up in Maine and moved west to follow the Grateful Dead. He also vowed not to give up protesting the camping ban.

"This is a fight about aesthetics," he was quoted as saying. "One man's garbage is another man's belongings. I think millionaires are unaesthetic; I think Hummers are disgusting. You see the ridiculousness. This is class warfare."

The FBI and U.S. Attorney's Office offered scant information, but the indictments appear to part of a broader net cast by federal authorities.

Also Thursday, the FBI's Los Angeles office announced it had arrested a Phoenix man on charges he hacked Sony Pictures Entertainment's website.

Cody Kretsinger, 23, was arrested without incident, based on a Sept. 2 federal grand jury indictment unsealed Thursday. The indictment alleges Kretsinger carried out the attack as part of the group LulzSec, which has also been linked to Anonymous.

An FBI official told FoxNews.com that search warrants were being executed in Minnesota, New Jersey and Montana.

Covelli was previously indicted in July for allegedly hacking into PayPal. He was not arrested Thursday, and his next scheduled court appearance in the earlier case is set for November.

Both Doyon and Covelli were charged with conspiracy to cause intentional damage to a protected computer, which carries a maximum of five years in prison and a fine of $250,000, and aiding and abetting, which can carry a sentence of 10 years and a fine of $250,000.

Any sentence is subject to federal sentencing guidelines.

Doyon made a brief court appearance Thursday. His next scheduled appearance is Sept. 29.

City Council Member Throws Sandwich at Blogger

2011-09-20T09:11:00.000-07:00

Don Lane, who earlier in the day negotiated a compromise with a circle of Ohlone Elders to protect part of the sacred site of off Market St, threw a sandwich at blogger Alex Darocy in the minutes before a tense meeting about the proposed desalination plant.

From the press:

Lane apologized twice to community blogger Alex Darocy, who described himself as a paparazzi. Darocy shot pictures of everyone entering the meeting, but found Lane sitting alone a few doors away up Front Street eating a sandwich and shot a picture.

Lane asked him not to shoot him, saying he was on his own time. Darocy kept shooting pictures, inspired by the civil servant's uncivil anger. Lane then threw part of his sandwich at him.

The vice mayor apologized several times and Darocy said afterwards that he accepted it. Lane said he had been working on city business since early morning and just wanted a few minutes off. He said later that he was wrong to throw the sandwich.

"I guess I need anger management classes," said Lane. "That's what they tell me."

Police to Use Homeland Security Funds for CSI Equipment

2011-09-13T14:44:00.000-07:00

reposted from patch.com:

The department plans to spend $85,000 on a range of equipment to help fight crime and organize disaster scenes.

New digital fingerprint readers, computers, a new phone system that will immediately call officers in the event of an emergency and some street warning signs are on the Santa Cruz Police Department's shopping list this week.

The list will be presented for approval at Tuesday's City Council meeting. The department has $85,000 to spend from a Homeland Security grant.

"The funding is much broader than just for terrorism," said police spokesman Zach Friend.

The equipment will help in various aspects of crime.

TOMORROW: Ohlone Elders Speak at PCC

2011-09-10T16:26:00.000-07:00

The Ohlone people are recognized historically as the original inhabitats of this land-- as subjects of the mission and as a quaint, but extinct, culture. This is far from the truth. The Ohlone people are still here and their culture is very much alive. Developments like the one at Branciforte Creek destroy the places that hold the living memory of the Ohlone. Elders have referred to this destruction as cultural genocide.

Sunday, September 11th
1:00pm - 3:30pm
Pacific Cultural Center (Broadway and Seabright)
More info at savetheknoll.org

Fresno: Arson at Police Officer's Home

2011-09-05T21:59:00.000-07:00

from the Fresno Bee:

The second firebombing in recent weeks connected to the Fresno Police Department damaged an officer's northwest Fresno home early Sunday.

No one was injured in the attack, which happened about an hour after the officer ended her shift, but it prompted Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer to put all of his officers on alert.

Less than three weeks ago, a police pickup was burned at the Southwest Police District station.
Around 2 a.m. Sunday, the female officer had gotten off duty from the same Southwest Police District station, Dyer said, and arrived at her northwest Fresno home about a half-hour later.

Shortly after, at about 3 a.m., someone lobbed several Molotov cocktails at the home, igniting fires that caused minor to moderate damage to both the inside and outside of the house.

Another woman and three children also were in the home, Dyer said.

"We are looking into whether or not she was specifically targeted, and whether she was specifically targeted because she's a police officer," Dyer said. "That has yet to be determined."

Dyer said investigators will examine the officer's recent cases to look for any possible connections.

He declined to release the officer's name or where she lives.

Police officers frequently are threatened, Dyer said, and some officers' homes and vehicles have been broken into in the past, usually to steal guns or armor.

"But to my knowledge, I can't remember an incident where we had a police officer's house targeted and firebombed," he said. "It's very concerning for us if, in fact, this officer was targeted because she's a female police officer."

Raising suspicions further is a recent arson at the Southwest Police District station at Tuolumne and C streets, Dyer said. About 11:30 p.m. on Aug. 17, a marked patrol pickup was burned in the station's parking lot, which also damaged the personal vehicles of two officers. Dyer said none of the vehicles were connected to the officer whose home was targeted on Sunday.

About an hour after the station fire, Dyer said, someone published a blog on the website Indybay.org praising the attack. Dyer said he believed the blogger "either knows or was involved" because the blog post included details that had not yet been released to the public.

"We're trying to determine if these two incidents are related," Dyer said Sunday. "We are not certain of that."

The latest incident prompted Dyer to issue a message to all Fresno police personnel "making sure they're taking extra steps, being diligent and vigilant about their own safety in the event police officers are being targeted."

Dyer said the department is taking steps to ensure the officer's safety, and will conduct surveillance and provide other security measures to make sure no additional damage happens at her home.

Dyer said the incident is being investigated jointly by arson investigators from both the Fresno police and Fresno fire departments. No arrests have been made.

ADDENDUM:
Four days after the firebombing a communique was posted by 'the resistance' with a healtyh subtle critique of the firebombing of the officer's home. Between the lines, the authors seem to be saying that the firebombing of the police vehicles (which was political, an "act of war") was perhaps carried out by a separate group than the home attack. The communique issued by the resistance, which follows, is a subtle and beautiful statement on propaganda by the deed.

From Indybay.org:

Our group does not feel that things have come to the point where actions which put individuals in harms way are suitable. At the same time, we cannot condemn someone who does feel this way since many feel that we have committed actions which are not suitable. The real question is whether this action was political or not. If this was someone who has answered the call to war then we commend you, but was it? There are too many things that smell funny about this. The news reported that 6 months prior to this the same officer had her car burned up. Maybe an upset ex who came back? Also the house is for sale in a dried up market, fire insurance pays pretty well. Beyond anything it seems that this was the perfect opportunity for Dyer to gain support against those of us who fight back. FPD has been firebombed, now the public has no problem believing it happened again. From the beginning Dyer has focused on there being another woman and 3 children in the house. He is a pro at PR and knows how to get sympathy from the public, particularly harping on the officer being female. We all know Jerry is a sexist pig so I don't think there's any sincerity there, in fact this officer could be one of the officers suing Dyer; Dyer could have thrown the molotovs himself!

Then when the home caught on fire again, Dyer was quick to say that it was intentional while the fire marshall says most likely it was from wiring damaged in the previous fire but it's under investigation. Seriously, KMPH was set up across the street when the second fire started around 9:30pm, it's not a good idea to pull off clandestine actions that early in a residential area at what's already the scene of a crime with news vans across the street!

We're not sure what actually happened but Dyer is making the most of it and will use this to justify any further atrocities from him and his gang of thugs. Everyone needs to be careful out there no matter what level you are at. Watch your backs.

Once again, if this was a political or revolutionary act then we commend whoever did this for their action. But it seems much more complicated than that and people should keep an open mind.

Either way this is only going to fuel more action from more people. The system has failed us and people are thinking of revolution more and more every day.

Long Term Squatter Settlement Destroyed in Watsonville

2011-09-01T20:19:00.000-07:00

What used to be an annual effort to remove the houseless from their encampments is now a monthly effort by the city of Watsonville, which cites concerns over water quality. This small amount of human waste, of course, is a much larger problem than the massive amounts of agricultural run-off.

From the Sentinel:

Armando Carillo, 45, sat atop the levee with the other homeless men in front of shopping carts filled with fat black plastic garbage bags. He said he'd lived in the camp year-round for three years, hanging out under the bridge in wet weather. Asked why he didn't sleep at the Pajaro Rescue Mission across the river in Monterey County, Carillo said he and the other men didn't like having to get up early in the morning to leave. He said he didn't want to go anywhere else anyway, that he wanted to stay with the friends he called family.

Squatters watch as bulldozers destroy their camps

Indigenous Solidarity in Santa Cruz: What's up with the knoll?

2011-08-29T10:19:00.000-07:00

Although many political organizations make claims of solidarity with indigenous struggles, in practice there is not even a trace of it. In part, this is because political organizations are organizations of synthesis - meaning that they aim to integrate different individuals, groups and communities into a manageable and controllable whole, under their leadership They see their fundamental task as recruiting members, since an increase in membership is supposed to correspond to an increase in the political power of the organization. The struggle takes a backseat, and independent initiative and action are condemned. Orders and information are handed down from the top. The organization is an end in itself. [...]

If non-indigenous anarchists are to develop ways of interacting with indigenous peoples that are different from those of political organizations they must begin from direct communication, solidarity and trust. Anyone who really wants to act in solidarity with others does not stumble around inside their homes, uninvited, stinking of arrogance and ignorance, and taking up space. It should go without saying that cultural differences and the unique experience of colonization should be understood and respected.

-Insurgent-S, Colonization, Self-Government, and Self-Determination

A Little Bit of History


"Never Forget. Never Forgive."

Santa Cruz County is no stranger to indigenous struggles. In 1975, Natives led an armed occupation of an Ohlone burial site at Lee Road in Watsonville. "We are prepared to die for one and a half acres," a participant in the occupation was quoted as saying. Their bravery served them well, and the 1.5 acre site was protected, along with an adjacent 5 acres of slough land.

The current native struggle is taking place at the field and knoll at Market St. The field at Market St. has had a long rich history--from its community garden in the 1970s, to the discovery of an archeological site in 1986, to its squatters of all stripes, to its present incarnation as a site of resistance.

In April, after the development was finalized, an article was submitted to SCR called "Arguments Against Green Development in Santa Cruz," which used the KB Home development on Market Street as its primary example. This article showed the irony of destroying a wildlife corridor and greenspace to build "green" tract housing. It also connected developments such as the one on Branciforte Creek as part of the continuing assault on Santa Cruz's working class. Also in April, the gates of the development were locked shut and a banner was hung from a nearby overpass that read: "Market Street Field. Never Forget. Never Forgive."

At the end of July, an 109-day land occupation at Glen Cove ended in what was largely a victory. Glen Cove is a sacred gathering place and burial ground that has been utilized by numerous Native American tribes since at least 1500 BC. While Glen Cove is within Ohlone Territory, the deal was brokered by the Cortina and Yocha Dehe tribes from the central valley. These tribes are federally recognized and, because of that, were in a better position to broker a cultural easement with the city of Vallejo. The deal included a $100,000 payout to the city of Vallejo, the cancellation of bathroom construction (the most offensive part of the development), and the downgrading of a parking lot to only 2 handicapped spaces (down from 15 spaces).

Days later, preliminary site work at the KB home development on Market St. unearthed a partial skeleton of an Ohlone child. As those remains and cultural artifacts were removed, the remains of an adult were also found. While many warriors from the Glen Cove occupation were heading off to the struggle at the San Francisco Peaks, others began turning their gaze towards Santa Cruz.

Banner from encampment at San Francisco Peaks

Resistance Develops Anew

Immediately after the remains were found, a group calling themselves "Save The Knoll" sprung up to demand that KB Home and the city "respect the Ohlone burial and village site at Branciforte Creek."

Chris Apostopoulos receives demands.

The group has staged a series of actions in the short time it has existed. Two marches, a barbecue, and a delivery of demands to Chris Apostopoulos, the Northern California president of KB Home (in cooperation with Santa Cruz Solidarity).

The struggle for protection of the sacred site at Branciforte Creek, though limited in its demands, is still a worthwhile struggle for anarchists to demonstrate solidarity with in appropriate ways. The final deal brokered at Glen Cove may not have been ideal--it centered around a $100,000 payout and intervention from outside tribes--but it accomplished what was necessary for the site's protection. This victory, even in its imperfection, gives strength to the larger project of native sovereignty.

Native sovereignty struggles pose a direct threat to "progress" and are strongholds of anti-capitalist native culture. The idea of sacredness goes beyond anything that could be understood by economic logic; the defense of sacredness extends beyond anything that could be narrowly defined as politics. As such, solidarity extends naturally from the anarchist or insurrectionary project.

Save the Knoll may be written off by some as activist-y. This is a misunderstanding of native struggles and, for the settler elements of the struggle, no reason to write it off. Those drawn to activist campaigns (intermediate struggles) are often people who feel a sense of urgency about the state of the world and are drawn to "do something." This sense of urgency is a spark to be nurtured into a fire. The institutional (or progressive) left would love to suck these people dry to regain its power (a la Voldemort). Our relationship with the left should be purely subversive, moving people and resources out of activism and into resistance.

In broad-based struggles such as this, the participation of anarchist elements is important because the anarchist critique contains a rejection of recuperation. Direct action campaigns that don't contain an active defense against recuperation often leave space for other parties to come in to represent the resistant elements for a seat at the negotiating table.

Of course, a certain amount of sensitivity is required in these critiques. The power dynamics in indigenous struggles are often not a place for settlers to offer their opinions. Rather, it seems better to hold one's tongue as far as politics are concerned and to offer support to those native group that show the strongest spirit and least "political" aspirations. By adding our strength to indigenous struggles, we are able to live by our own principles of self-organization, solidarity, and direct action while augmenting our native comrades' struggle for self-determination.

for your further edification:
savetheknoll.org
protectglencove.org
I'm an Indian, but Who Am I? - Patrick Orozco's account of "Wounded Lee"

Fresno, CA: Molotovs Thrown into Police Substation Parking Lot

2011-08-22T16:00:00.000-07:00

Things are heating up in the no-no.

From indybay.org:

In Solidarity with Everyone fighting against police brutality and the police state, molotovs were thrown into the parking lot of the Fresno SW substation where police cars and pig's personal vehicles are parked. At least 2 cars burned.

This action is done in solidarity especially with those in the East Bay standing up against the murderous BART police who most recently executed Charles Hill. BART then used fascist type methods by shutting down all cell phones in stations where they thought protestors might be showing up. WE WILL NOT BE SILENCED!

All police are murderers. FPD recently executed Carl Maggioroni and have a reputation for executing people of color whether they are armed or not. The time to fight back is NOW! We live in a police state, this is all "business as usual" for them. We have to come together and fight back, FUCK THESE PIGS! This is war, play time is over, join the fight.

In solidarity with Oakland, Seattle, Chile, London, Greece...everyone who is fighting back.

See you in the streets.

Bummer, dude: predictive policing gains traction

2011-08-20T10:53:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, the SCPD are having a little bit of success with the predictive policing compstat. In the arrest mentioned in the article, the tip-off from the program was for burglary, but the arrests were for drugs and a probation violation. As expected, the predictive policing model is being used as an excuse for police to target those whom they would anyway--the underclass and the excluded.

Here's some news from across the country about predictive policing.
Santa Cruz Sentinel
NY Times
LA Times

BART Police Website Attacked, More Protests Planned

2011-08-20T10:35:00.000-07:00

from AnonOps:

The international group of hackers known as “Anonymous” continued to target the Bay Area Rapid Transit District Wednesday, hacking the agency’s Police Officers Association website and leaking the names, addresses and contact information for 102 BART police officers.

The leaked information included e-mail addresses and passwords for the affected transit police officers, according to a list posted online this morning. The leak was the second such hack of a BART-related website and unauthorized release of personal information in the past week.

On Sunday, the Anonymous group hacked a BART marketing website, myBART.org, and posted the private contact information for 2,001 subscribers — including their e-mail addresses, phone numbers and passwords — to the website. MyBART.org remained offline Wednesday.

“We condemn this latest attack on the working men and women of BART,” BART interim General Manager Sherwood Wakeman said in a written statement. “We are deeply concerned about the safety and security of our employees and their families. We stand behind them and our customers who were the subject of an earlier attack. We are deeply troubled by these actions.”

An unknown user calling themselves “Lamaline_5mg” claimed responsibility for the latest hacking. The hacker said “I just got pissed about what BART did” and infiltrated the BARTpoa.org website. After obtaining the contact information for 102 members, the hacker said they shared the information with the Anonymous group.

“This really was the easiest thing,” the hacker wrote. “They had zero security.”

The hacking group also revealed plans to organize another protest scheduled for 5 p.m. Monday, August 22 at the Civic Center BART Station, according to online messages from people who are purportedly with the organization.

A similar protest on Monday wreaked havoc on the afternoon after a boisterous group of demonstrators led transit and city police officers on an unpredictable cat-and-mouse game through Downtown San Francisco. The protest forced the closures of all four downtown BART and MUNI Metro Stations for varying amounts of time during the heart of the afternoon commute.

The protests and Anonymous attacks were triggered by a decision by the transit agency to temporarily cut off underground wireless service to thwart a planned police shooting protest in early August. The move angered free speech advocates and citizens, who said the decision inhibited their right to free speech and protest.

The transit agency has contended the decision to suspend wireless mobile phone service was done out of concern for riders.

“BART temporarily interrupted service at select BART stations as one of many tactics to ensure the safety of everyone on the platform,” the agency said in an online statement.

Members of Anonymous will gather again this Monday at 5pm at Civic Center Bart.

Expect us.

BART gets lulz'ed by Anonymous

2011-08-15T10:13:00.000-07:00

mybart.org gets a redesign courtesy of Anonymous

After BART shut down cell phone service in an attempt to avert a protest last Thursday, the group Anonymous made good on its promise to attack BART's web infrastructure. Yesterday, the group attacked mybart.org, releasing a shit-ton of user information, available here, and defacing the site, as seen above.

In an exciting show of solidarity, the Anonymous communique gives props to No justice, No BART, Bay of Rage, and UA in the BAY.

Today, at 5pm, there will be a protest at Civic Center BART (described by Anonymous as a physical protest). This is where, on July 3rd, 45-year-old Charles Hill was murdered by BART police.

CALL TO ACTION: March and Gathering to Demand Respect for Ohlone Burial & Village Site

2011-08-12T14:22:00.000-07:00

please forward widely

Save the Knoll - Respect Ohlone Sacred Places
Sunday, August 14th
March meets at 12:30pm at Laurel and Pacific
Ends at 2:00pm at Grant St. Park

On August 2nd, the burial of a 7-9 year old Ohlone child, dated to be 6000 years old, was disturbed during initial construction at the KB Home development at Market and Isbel. KB Home is planning on building 7 homes, with driveways, within a known archeological site on the knoll in the northern section of the 32-home development.

Ann Marie Sayers, the Ohlone woman in charge of the child's re-burial, has recommended that there be no more earth movement or development within the culturally sensitive area. We are gathering to demand that KB Home and the City of Santa Cruz honor Ann Marie Sayer's recommendation and take action to protect the knoll.

This Sunday, we will meet at Laurel and Pacific at 12:30pm to march through town raising awareness of the desecration. This march will be followed by a gathering at Grant St. Park at 2:00pm.

No development on the knoll!

http://savetheknoll.org

Save the Knoll!

2011-08-12T09:12:00.000-07:00

About the Knoll

Market Street Field is a beautiful place, one of few remaining wild enclaves within the City of Santa Cruz. For as long as anyone can remember, people have been visiting the meadow, admiring wildflowers, sitting under oak trees, walking their dogs, playing in Branciforte Creek and gathering medicinal plants at the creekside. As it turns out, Native Americans have a relationship with this place that dates back much further than most people can really comprehend. Archeologists have estimated through radiocarbon dating that the site is in excess of 6,000 years old.

The City of Santa Cruz first approved the Branciforte Creek Subdivision project in 2007 despite widespread opposition from local residents, environmentalists, archeologists and historic preservationists. KB Home, a Fortune 500 company headquartered in Los Angeles, bought the property from a previous developer in 2010 and in 2011 the city approved their revised plan for a 32 unit residential subdivision they are marketing as “Branciforte Creek – The Comfort of Green Living”.

That's the knoll in the background

A Place to be Honored and Protected

Both the City and KB Home are well aware of the cultural significance of the site. A 2006 developer-commissioned archeological study states that despite disturbance from historic house and road construction, “SCR-276 is possibly one of the sites least impacted by existing urban development within the City of Santa Cruz”.1 Former City Planning Commissioner Judy Warner stated just before voting to approve the Branciforte Creek development that “this is the oldest and most significant cultural area in the city”2 Despite this, the City has permitted KB Home to conduct digging, grading, and construction within the boundaries of the known culturally sensitive area.

Noting “significant impacts to the integrity of a recorded archaeological resource”, the Environmental Impact Report defines mitigation measures that are outrageously inadequate. The report reads, “Subsurface work within the boundaries of CA-SCR-276 will be conducted with the appropriate equipment and speed to allow for the recovery of archaeological materials.”3 Contractors are to be be given a “sensitivity training” and homes built on the cultural site will be constructed with a “special foundation” rather than a concrete slab.

In July, Archeologist Sarah Brewer wrote a letter to the City of Santa Cruz expressing concerns about the adequacy of the mitigation measures and the damage being done to the site by construction activities. She was subsequently fired from her position as an archeological monitor at the site by Michael Brandman Associates, a consulting firm contracted by KB Home.

Native American Remains Found

On or around August 2nd, the travesty of destroying a beautiful, ancient place sunk to another level when the skeletal remains of a young Native American child were dug up during initial work in the northern part of the site, known as “the knoll”. In compliance with California law, a stop-work order was then issued for this northern area, and the Native American Heritage Commission was notified, which in turn designated an Ohlone woman, Ann Marie Sayers, as the “Most Likely Descendant” (MLD) for the site.

An MLD makes recommendations to a property owner or developer regarding the treatment of their ancestors’ remains and the nature of any future development on a given site. In the case of the Branciforte Creek Subdivision, Ann Marie Sayer’s recommendations are that the unearthed individual be reinterred ceremonially, and that there be no more earth movement within the known culturally sensitive area.

Unfortunately, although the law allows an MLD to make a recommendation, it does not give them the power to enforce it or to stop a development project from proceeding. It is up to us–all those in the local community who respect the rights of indigenous people–to hold developers accountable for their decisions and actions.

Protecting Ohlone Sacred and Burial Places – An Ongoing Struggle
The Ohlone are the original inhabitants of the Santa Cruz area, who over thousands of years developed complex cultures that were sustained through a deep relationship with the wildlife and natural resources of the land. The Ohlone people and their ways of life were decimated first by the Spanish invasion and establishment of Mission Santa Cruz in 1791, and later by American settlement and genocidal Gold Rush-era policies toward Indians.

Contrary to popular belief, Ohlone people are very much still alive today, as is their deep relationship with the land of their ancestors. Hard fought battles have been waged and continue to be waged throughout Ohlone territory, to prevent the further destruction of Ohlone sacred places and burial grounds by developers and local governments.

In March of 1975, Ohlone people and other Native Americans carried out an armed occupation of a burial ground in Watsonville, successfully preserving half of the site that had not already been destroyed for the construction of a new warehouse.4 In April of this year (2011), Ohlone and Miwok elders led a 109-day unarmed occupation of a sacred burial ground in Vallejo, stopping the city from constructing bathrooms, a parking lot, and paved trails on top of their ancestors as part of a “park improvement” plan.5

Many Ohlone people today consider the widespread desecration and destruction of their burial grounds and sacred places to be a form of modern-day colonialism. In the words of Corrina Gould, a Chochenyo Ohlone woman who has been very active in protecting Shellmound burial grounds, “What I say about this development that happens all over the Bay Area, is that it’s a cultural genocide. They’re trying to wipe us out, in a different kind of a way. There’s no more monuments of the ancient people, of my ancestors, here in the Bay Area. When people go around to those places to try to find out, who were the native people here, what did they live like? There’s nothing here.” 6

No More Earth Movement

Not only is this development irreparably destroying our ability to know and connect with the past, it is yet another blow to our collective future, to the world that our children will inhabit. People have been coming for over 6,000 years to this knoll above Branciforte Creek for a reason. They gathered and lived there, because it has always been a place that nourishes living things. KB Home is now in the process of destroying this place to the point of it being unrecognizable.

The good news is that we still have an opportunity to prevent further desecration and disturbance at Market Street. While the southern part of the property has been obliterated and is currently a massive 25-foot deep pit, the northern part of the land, known as “the knoll”, remains largely intact. Many trees have been removed from the knoll and an old house has been razed, however, planned grading and construction of seven new homes within the known cultural site has not occurred.

Ann Marie Sayers states that, “…my mother believed, and I believe, that when a burial is disturbed, the spirit of that individual is left wandering.” Her recommendation to KB Home and the City of Santa Cruz is very clear: no more earth movement in the known culturally sensitive area. To honor this recommendation, KB Home will have to abandon their planned construction activities on the knoll.

Given the amount of money involved, it seems very possible that KB Home will disregard Ann Marie Sayer’s recommendation and continue with construction that is likely to further disturb Ohlone ancestors. As human beings, it is our responsibility to not allow this to happen. Together, we must demand that the rights and dignity of the indigenous people of this land be respected.

Final Archaeological Report and Archaeological Mitigation Plan for Portions of CA-SCR-276; Gary S. Breschini, February 2006.
Minutes from 4/19/07 Planning Commission Meeting; City of Santa Cruz, Page 4.http://www.cityofsantacruz.com/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=5654
EIR Addendum; Branciforte Creek Residential Subdivision, February 10, 2011. Page 82.
“I’m an Indian, But Who Am I?” by Patrick Orozco, a story about “Wounded Lee” from A Gathering of Voices: The Native Peoples of the Central California Coast, Santa Cruz History Journal, Issue #5.
See Protect Glen Cove website; http://protectglencove.org/
Audio recording of Corrina Gould speaking at the Oakland Intertribal Friendship House, 7/08/11. –http://protectglencove.org/

two simple demands

2011-08-10T14:49:00.000-07:00

Tensions with police and authority are expanding everywhere. It's exciting to see people's approach so close to home:

reposted from Bay of Rage:

COPS OFF THE TRAINS AND BUSES
FREE TRANSIT FOR EVERYONE

We can’t afford to pay the fare, and we have other shit to spend our money on even if we could. We jump the turnstiles, board through the back door, and buy transfers on the street.

We have places to go: jobs to get to, lines to wait in at the food stamp office, parole officers to see, charges to beat, streets to sweep, lonely parents to see. We need a ride because our legs can’t take us that far anymore, or because we just didn’t want to walk on the street wearing a skirt and heels, or because we’re black and brown and know the cops don’t need any more reason to fuck with us.

We sit on this overcrowded piece of shit day after day with our heads down, not talking to anyone. A message telling us to snitch on taggers plays on repeat. Pictures of cops and jail cells above our heads advertise one thing: give us your money, sit down, shut up, keep moving.

The transit system does not exist for us. We have a real need for free movement: a desire to get where we need to go, to see our sweeties, and take care of our business. But none of this is the purpose of the BART or the MUNI systems. The train lines exist to maintain an economic system within which we are simply statistics – bodies to be exploited, managed, moved, separated.

For some of us, the train lines exist solely to bring us to our miserable jobs on time; to deliver us as human resources to the bosses that steal our labor. For others, the system is designed to keep us in our neighborhoods – to keep us in line and ‘where we belong.’ For all of us, the system is in place to keep us moving stagnantly in circles, dying a little more each day. Around every turn, the ceaseless movement of the transit system exists to maintain the economic and racial order of capitalism and white supremacy. At every stop, the collection of fares enforces the racial and class divisions of this dying system.

II.

Last month, police killed two people on the trains in as many weeks. On July 3rd, BART police responded to a report of a ‘wobbly drunk’. Within 15 seconds of arrival, they shot and killed Charles Hill on the Civic Center platform. On July 16th, SFPD fired ten shots at Kenneth Harding after he ran from them during a fare inspection, shooting him through the throat and leaving him to die on the streets of Bayview. By now this story is all too familiar. We all remember the first hours of 2009, when a BART officer shot Oscar Grant in the back, while he was handcuffed and facedown on the Fruitvale BART platform. History repeats itself: the cops keep killing on these trains.

III.

It is worth noting that it costs more to enforce the fares than it costs to run the trains all together. Were it not for the cost of enforcement (the machines, the ticket readers, the fare inspectors, the accountants, the transit cops) the trains would be almost free. We pay in order to maintain these police apparatuses, and the police apparatuses exist to make sure we pay. This endless system of fares and fare-enforcement all points to one real purpose: control.

You’ve probably already heard the news: we are living through a crisis. The media and the politicians repeat it daily: the economy is falling apart. Whether they call it austerity or budget repair, management or restructuring, it always means the same exact thing: they’re going to make us pay for their self-imploding system. We will have less and less, so that they can continue to have more and more. Austerity means that food will rot on shelves while we starve, that houses will sit empty while we die on the streets, that the trains will keep running, and if we can’t pay the fare we are as good as dead.

IV.

Obviously we don’t believe in their system anymore. The politicians don’t give us hope because we know that they cannot offer us anything. It should be totally clear that there is no solution – no solution within capitalism. As long as houses are owned by banks and food is owned by grocery stores, we will continue to starve and to be thrown onto the streets. As long as the laws of property and ownership govern our lives, we cannot determine them for ourselves. At this point, no reform can solve the disaster.

This means that any action to improve our lives must come from us. In each instance we are faced with the same enemies: profit, control, police. The real answer to austerity is to immediately destroy each of these. If we want food, we simply need to take it. If we want houses, we need to take them as well. If we want to move freely – without fares or fear of death – we need to take direct action to eliminate fares and the police. If we want free trains, we simply need to make them free.

STOP PAYING FARES: board through the back door, jump the turnstiles. Keep one clipper card to swipe if you see the inspectors board. If you get caught, buy a transfer on the next bus and send it in with your ticket.

NO CONTROL: spray paint the cameras, smash the ticket machines, break the card readers, black-out the snitch-lines.

HAVE EACH OTHER’S BACKS: open the back door or emergency exit, share your transfer, and never snitch!

GET TOGETHER: Drivers, riders, poor people, unemployed people, those of us that are targeted and harassed by cops – we need to meet up, to make plans together, to fight together to get rid of the transit police and make public transit free.

I'll keep doing this every day until I get caught

2011-08-09T21:13:00.000-07:00

I don't call it rioting, I call it an insurrection...of the masses

of the people. It is happening in Syria, it is happening in

Clapham, it's happening in Liverpool, it's happening in

Port-au-Spain, Trinidad, and that is the nature

of the historical moment. - Darcus Howe

The words of one rioter, quoted by the BBC: I'll keep doing this every day until I get caught. Meanwhile, Scotland Yard combs through CCTV footage, identifying rioters and disseminating their pictures. And all over the world, people are following the events, sifting out the dismissive tone of the reporters, and see themselves reflected.

Events in Tunisia were the first sparks in a cascade of insurrections across the Arab world, a symphony of events dubbed the Arab Spring. Those events captured the hearts of people in places like Egypt, Bahrain, and Sirya who knew that the future they had been promised didn't exist. Events in the Arab world were recuperated into openings for western-style democracies (and western capitalism). In London, another group of people, whose future was also reneged, are coming together to express their rage, perhaps in ways that are less recuperable. As Darcus mentions, the parallels are clear. After the Arab Spring, here's looking towards the Fall of the West.

There is a context to London's riots that can't be ignored

2011-08-08T11:23:00.000-07:00

From the Guardian:

Since the coalition came to power just over a year ago, the country has seen multiple student protests, occupations of dozens of universities, several strikes, a half-a-million-strong trade union march and now unrest on the streets of the capital (preceded by clashes with Bristol police in Stokes Croft earlier in the year). Each of these events was sparked by a different cause, yet all take place against a backdrop of brutal cuts and enforced austerity measures. The government knows very well that it is taking a gamble, and that its policies run the risk of sparking mass unrest on a scale we haven't seen since the early 1980s. With people taking to the streets of Tottenham, Edmonton, Brixton and elsewhere over the past few nights, we could be about to see the government enter a sustained and serious losing streak.

The policies of the past year may have clarified the division between the entitled and the dispossessed in extreme terms, but the context for social unrest cuts much deeper. The fatal shooting of Mark Duggan last Thursday, where it appears, contrary to initial accounts, that only police bullets were fired, is another tragic event in a longer history of the Metropolitan police's treatment of ordinary Londoners, especially those from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, and the singling out of specific areas and individuals for monitoring, stop and search and daily harassment.

One journalist wrote that he was surprised how many people in Tottenham knew of and were critical of the IPCC, but there should be nothing surprising about this. When you look at the figures for deaths in police custody (at least 333 since 1998 and not a single conviction of any police officer for any of them), then the IPCC and the courts are seen by many, quite reasonably, to be protecting the police rather than the people.

Combine understandable suspicion of and resentment towards the police based on experience and memory with high poverty and large unemployment and the reasons why people are taking to the streets become clear. (Haringey, the borough that includes Tottenham, has the fourth highest level of child poverty in London and an unemployment rate of 8.8%, double the national average, with one vacancy for every 54 seeking work in the borough.)

Those condemning the events of the past couple of nights in north London and elsewhere would do well to take a step back and consider the bigger picture: a country in which the richest 10% are now 100 times better off than the poorest, where consumerism predicated on personal debt has been pushed for years as the solution to a faltering economy, and where, according to the OECD, social mobility is worse than any other developed country.

As Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett point out in The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, phenomena usually described as "social problems" (crime, ill-health, imprisonment rates, mental illness) are far more common in unequal societies than ones with better economic distribution and less gap between the richest and the poorest. Decades of individualism, competition and state-encouraged selfishness – combined with a systematic crushing of unions and the ever-increasing criminalisation of dissent – have made Britain one of the most unequal countries in the developed world.

Images of burning buildings, cars aflame and stripped-out shops may provide spectacular fodder for a restless media, ever hungry for new stories and fresh groups to demonise, but we will understand nothing of these events if we ignore the history and the context in which they occur.

Tottenham, Fullerton, San Diego: Recent Actions Against Police

2011-08-07T10:00:00.000-07:00

A big day in the world yesterday, with people's frustration with the police coming to a head in various ways. Events unfolded in Fullerton, CA, San Diego, CA, and Tottenham in the UK.

Closest to home, in Fullerton, people responded to the deadly beating of a man by a group of six police officers. The police claim to have been responding to car break-ins in the area. Kelly Thomas, the man murdered by the police, is the son of a Orange County Sheriff himself. His father feels embarassed to ever be affiliated with law enforcement. Yesterday, a group of Kelly Thomas's family and friends held signs outside the Fullerton Police Department, demanding "justice" and an end to police "misconduct."

In the UK, the police killing of Mark Duggan, father of four, prompted a protest march that bloomed into a fullscale riot. The protestor's marched from Mark Duggan's residence to the police station, demanding answers, presumably as to why he was killed. When the police refused to engage in dialogue with the group of 500 angry people, the crowd inserted themselves into the discourse anyway. According to eyewitness reports, the police were "running and hiding" as the crowd expressed their anger. Police cars were burned with petrol bombs (molotovs), stores were looted, and the crowd effectively defended themselves against the police with flaming dumpsters and improvised projectiles. This situation is the wet dream of every anti-police protest, but one that is rarely enacted.When the looting happened at the Mehserle verdict, we heard the complaint from left-anarchists or liberals that looting has nothing to do with demands for "justice." We agree that it doesn't, but we aren't asking for justice. The thin blue line of the police exists to protect property, to keep it in certain hands and out of others. In large part, it is the police that keep us poor. When a situation like the one in Tottenham is created, when shopping malls were, at least temporarily in the hands of excluded, expropriation isn't just rational--it's fun!

In San Diego, the police had the nerve (or the thickheadedness) to call the assassination of a police officer "unprovoked." A black Audi pulled up next to a police car in El Cajon and someone in the Audi shot the lone officer in the head. Later in the day, a police helicopter observed someone getting into a black Audi with what appeared to be shotgun. When police responded to that location, the man produced the shotgun and was shot dead by police.

No act of rage against the police can be considered unprovoked. The structure of the world keeps many of us excluded and the police protect that structure. As resistance expands, the first obstacle everywhere is the police. A liberatory social vision cannot be actualized in a world full of police, whether they wear a uniform or not.

Kelly Thomas, Murdered by Fullerton Police

Mark Duggan, Murdered by Metropolitan Police

SCR hits the streets!

2011-08-02T20:12:00.000-07:00

Ohhhhh snap . . .

as of earlier today, a print version of Surf City Revolt is being distributed around town. While having a presence on the internet, receiving traffic mostly from within a small network of anti-authoritarian/social antagonist sites is nice, one of the principal reasons that SCR exists is to insert anarchist perspectives into discussions happening in the place where we live. If you are interested in receiving a stack of 'em to give to your friends and co-workers, hit us up. Any input is greatly appreciated: We heart haters.

Here's the .pdf:

Protest Against SHU in Wabash Valley, Indiana

2011-08-02T08:47:00.000-07:00

A recap of events can be found here.

from indianaprisonersolidarity@gmail.com:

On the morning of 7/16, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood was stabbed
by other prisoners. The attack took place at Pendleton Correctional
Facility in the Maximum Security area of the prison. The
administration used the stabbing as a justification for putting every
prison in the state on lockdown and conducting system-wide searches,
raids, and beatings. Since the lockdown began, inmates at the Secure
Housing Unit at Wabash Valley had been denied access to water for
bathing, sanitation, and cleaning their cells.

In response, a protest took place at the SHU last week. Inmates initiated a
response to the administration's refusal of basic sanitation needs.
The inmates flooded the range and have begun a campaign of noise
disturbance. In response, the guards cut off all water and
electricity to the SHU...
Inmates threw a t-shirt over the security camera on the range and
bombarded the guard pod with feces and piss thrown from their cells:
“If we have to live in filth, so do you.” Electricity and water were
turned back on at 4 am, after many hours without either. Their demands
for sanitation and clean water were finally addressed later that
evening.

As a condition of coming off this brutal lockdown, the prisoncrats
have instituted an intervention by the Internal Affairs Security
Threat Group officers to subject the entire prison to interrogations
and forced debriefing, including photographing of tattoos and forced
declarations of organizational allegiances. The prison officials have
said that they won't come off lockdown until everyone has been
subjected to these measures.

Struggles in prison can't sustain themselves if, on the outside, they
only encounter the deadening silence of social submission. By
remaining passive on the outside, we give the prison system more room to do
whatever it wants to the prisoners in struggle. The inmates at Wabash
Valley are protesting to end the system-wide lockdown, to defend their
access to basic needs and their dignity. Without solidarity, this protest could be drowned in
beatings and blood, so let's break the social silence that allows the
Secure Housing (isolation) Units and prison to play their normal,
murderous role. Indeed, raids against the rebellious blocks are ongoing
right now.

Close the Secure Housing Units and isolation regimes – Isolation is
always torture!

Solidarity with the hunger strikers in California prisons and the
protests spreading in the Indiana prison system!

Down with prison-society!

******************************

In support of the prisoners' struggle, an Anarchist Solidarity
Initiative in Bloomington is making the following call:

For active and subversive solidarity with the prisoners, to be
practiced by whoever feels affinity with their struggles.

For specific call-in days on Monday, August 1 and Tuesday, August 2nd.
Wabash Valley administration can be reached at (812) 398-5050. The
Indiana Department of Corrections commissioner can be reached at (317)
232-5711

We demand, in solidarity with the prisoners:

-A restoration of access to water and sanitation.
-An end to the system-wide lockdown and brutal searches.
-An end to forced debriefing and interrogation.
-That no prisoner faces repercussions for their participation in protests.*

The Department of Corrections is constantly planning to expand the
prison system.  Last year, it contracted with GEO Group to build a new
private prison.

Boneheads on the Westside

2011-08-01T19:35:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, it should be no surprise that there is a white pride element in Santa Cruz, predominantly in the San Lorenzo Valley. Their recorded presence dates back to the 1920's, a particularly xenophobic time in Amerikan history. In 1926, a KKK banquet at the Odd Fellow's hall had over 400 attendees. More recently, in 2008, two men were walking down Thurber Ln. in Live Oak putting white-supremacist fliers on car windshields. The fliers were the usual fare of neo-fascists: immigration, cross-burning, and a "future for our white children." Just last year, some fool living above Pacific had hung nazi flags from his window. Beyond this string of more identifiable instances, there are numerous accounts of people being yelled at from car windows, of people giving the nazi salute on Ocean St., and of hideous white pride graffiti.

Most recently, last Friday night, dozens of vehicles on the westside were had their tires slashed and were scribed with swastikas. While vehicle vandalism is neither here nor there (and, properly, targeted, can be an exciting addition to the social war), this action is just another reminder of the neo-fascist presence in Santa Cruz.

A year or so ago, a website entitled Anti-Fascist 831 popped up, attempting to document past and present fascist and anti-fascist activity. While it is obviously important to spread information about fascist or racist activity amongst Anti-Racists, Anti-Fascists, and anarchists, there is also a need for active resistance.

Some suggestions:

- Spray paint over racist or fascist graffiti

- Gather and share information about fascists and fascist activity

- Disrupt and confront public gatherings of racists and fascists

- Don't allow racist crews in music scenes and the like

- Find ways to (more) safely kick the living shit out of them

Statue from Santa Cruz Mission Destroyed

2011-07-29T08:06:00.000-07:00

from KION:

The Chapel of the Holy Cross Church remained closed Sunday morning while church officials begin to pick up the pieces of a priceless statue destroyed.

"It's a priceless piece of artwork that came to us from the mission that was destroyed in the 1857 earthquake," said Betty Pedrazzi, Curator of the Mission Gift Shop and Museum. "So it's part of our collection that we can't replace."

The Statue of Saint Joseph is now in several pieces on the chapel floor. It was made around 1791 and normally sits in an archway, several feet off the ground. Santa Cruz Police said Lee Wilson, 54, climbed on top of the altar, knocked it down and stole a piece of it. He was later caught by police near Pacific Avenue and Cooper Street.

"I think it's like a stab in the heart because it's a holy object," said Pedrazzi. "People really have a lot of reverence and respect for it."

So much, in fact, people travel from around the world to see it. The Colbert family drove all the way from San Diego to visit the mission. "Tragic for that to happen to a place of worship," said Amy Colbert. "Any kind of worship. Terrible. It's really sad."

Parishioners told Central Coast News they're stunned Saint Joseph was vandalized but said they're not angry with Lee Wilson, instead, they're praying for him.

"I don't think it was a hostile thing to the church or to the community," said Francis Krebs, Parishioner. "It was an issue of his mental illness and I don't think he was probably very well in control of what he was doing."

Santa Cruz Police said Wilson admitted to trying to steal the statue. He's been charged with felony vandalism, grand theft and a probation violation and remains in the Santa Cruz County Jail.

Church officials said they're trying to fix the statue and expect it to cost thousands of dollars. They said beefing up security at the chapel is under consideration. They expect to re-open the chapel soon.

The first mission in Santa Cruz was built in 1791. Two years later, indigenous people from the Ano Nuevo area burned it down, presumably motivated by the kidnappings and forced relocations. Resistance to colonialism in Santa Cruz goes back to the very beginning.

19 years later, in 1812, Father Andrés Quintana was beaten to death and his body disfigured by natives angry over his use of a metal-tipped whip in the punishment of mission laborers. The book A Gathering of Voices contains the purported dialogue between Quintana and his assassins.

The padres were also concerned about the continuing catastrophic decline in the number of babies born to their neophyte charges. Often, the Ohlone (and other subjugated peoples) would refuse to procreate, knowing that their children would be born into near-slavery. When a padre at Mission Santa Cruz named Ramon Olbés came to the conclusion that one particular married couple was behaving with excessive sexual inhibition, thereby depriving him of another child to enslave and another soul to offer up to Christ:

At this point the woman resisted the padre's attempted forced inspection; for that impertinence she received fifty lashes, was "shackled, and locked in the nunnery." He then gave her a wooden doll and ordered her to carry it with her, "like a recently born child," wherever she went.

These anecdotes of genocide, torture, and resistance are only broad strokes on a large canvas. Santa Cruz is a town established by way of genocide and the mission is a living testament to that. The Catholic church has offered nothing in the way of apologies for this (which makes sense, they didn't forgive Galileo until 2008). Even if they did, our hearts would still be with the vandal. As has been said: “Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”

Banner Drop in Solidarity with Seattle Anarchists

2011-07-26T08:14:00.000-07:00

reposted from indybay.org:

Hey Seattle,

We dropped off this 18 foot banner for you before the morning commute. Hope it brightens your day. Glad you're out!

Special thanks to the SCPD for donating materials.

Solidarity with prisoners everywhere,
some santa cruz anarchists

From Santa Cruz to Seattle

2011-07-25T16:42:00.000-07:00

There is something deeply troubling about the events in Seattle over the past couple of days. 26 comrades, anarchists of all kinds, were arrested. The first night was in what seems to be a coordinated attack by the police during a social gathering at a private residence. The second in a solidarity noise demonstration in which friends and comrades of those arrested the night before stood strong outside of the jail their friends were stuck in, making noise to show that those locked behind bars were not alone.

These two nights of arrests may seem insignificant in the larger picture of contemporary policing, the brutality of prisons and the omnipresent exploitation of capital and the state upon the entire global population. However the contrary is true: this crack down on anarchists illuminates the basic reality of policing in an age of austerity. Capital is crumbling, showing its contradictions, its inability to continue effectively reproducing its own relations. For this reason any sign of resistance, especially in the United States, is taken very seriously by the state apparatus. Those who are deemed subversives or in any way exist antagonistically toward capital and the state find themselves literally and metaphorically under the gun (this includes not only anarchists but also excluded and surplus populations, inmates, those who pose any threat to the production of value). Recent events speak to this.

There is a connection between the tragic police murders in San Francisco of Kenneth Harding and Charles Hill, the hunger strike spread across California prisons and the arrest of comrades in Seattle. A general intensification of police activity is spreading to deal with the tumultuous consequences of a debilitating and ever more cruel capitalism. Prisons themselves are becoming overcrowded due to this debilitation: more and more of the surplus population must be housed in prisons and kept away from the labor market, there by making conditions within said prisons even more brutal than before. For this reason prisoners have begun (and those at Pelican Bay have won modest demands from) a hunger strike posing a threat to the legitimacy of prison from within. Others who show resistance, as comrades in Seattle (and the greater Puget Sound area) have continuously and bravely done, to capital and the state find themselves brutally suppressed (as history teaches this repression increases as the power and effectiveness of revolutionary activity increases). The general state of things, of capital itself, has produced new collectivities of resistance and new forms of repression. This is the ground upon which we walk, we talk and we act.

It is important throughout such unsettling and yet exciting times to critically consider what solidarity means. How we will lend support and simultaneously expand conflictual activity with the state and capital. For solidarity is not a narrow activity but the act of listening, of reacting, of conversing, of pushing forward, of picking up the pieces others have put in place. We must take care of one another through these difficult times however we can, however our resources and immediate situations allow. We must also realize our common project: the dismantling of the state, of capital, of prisons, of the police, of this entire society as is. Looking to each other and the enormity of this project can inspire solidarity in ways we never thought possible. We must pick each other up and never stop pushing forward.

until the last prison burns
and every inmate sees the sun.
war on the police and capital,
for anarchy and communism.

stay strong comrades, you're not alone.

More Arrests in Seattle

2011-07-24T11:25:00.000-07:00

Solidarity Noise Demonstration Ends in at least 15 Arrests

Tonight (Sunday July 23rd) at about 10:45, between 30 and 40 anarchists gathered outside the downtown jail for a noise demonstration in solidarity with the six still in jail from last night's arrests. (One of the seven arrested has been released.)

The noise demonstration proceeded around the jail for about 15 minutes, banging pots and pans, banging on road signs and walls with sticks, throwing fireworks, writing anti-cop slogans on walls, and blockading the streets around the jail.

At this point, cop cars came from all directions, including undercover cars and canine units. The demonstration attempted to disperse, but many people were chased down. At least fifteen people were arrested, and five more were detained and released.

This is a call for all kinds of solidarity acts--including an appeal for funds. Those who are not currently in jail need help to bail out and provide further legal support for their friends and comrades.

Paypal: seattlelegaldefense@gmail.com

from http://pugetsoundanarchists.org/node/813

Callout for Solidarity From Comrades in Seattle

2011-07-24T00:56:00.000-07:00

from anarchistnews.org:

Last night there was a party at an anarchist house. Things were fun and fine but around midnight two pigs came into the back yard of the house without permission. They called for reinforcements and around a dozen cops attacked the partygoers, hitting some with a shovel, a bottles, Tasers and batons, severely injuring several and arresting 7.

Show your solidarity.

SFPD: Don't Even Try To Front

2011-07-21T17:53:00.000-07:00

Some comrades put together an incredible text and image that was distributed in San Francisco on Tuesday. It focuses on countering the narrative that police "protect women". The link to the image and the text are both reposted below:

Original article and image here:

1. Last Saturday, a man who didn’t pay his MUNI fare ran away from the cops trying to ticket him. The cops took out their guns and shot Kenneth Harding in the back 6 to 10 times in Bayview-Hunters Point. In the aftermath, the police and the media first claimed that he had a gun, then began to expose Harding’s “misogynist past,” downplaying the fact that he was just murdered in cold blood for fare evasion.

The Police and the State consistently justify their systemic racist violence by saying they are protecting women. Patriarchy, the dominance of men over women, happens everywhere in our society, but the state tries to convince us that Black men are the main perpetrators. This racist lie helps the state justify their violent control over “uncontrollable” communities.

Patriarchy is one of the overarching structures of our world and therefore we should not be surprised that any man has a past that includes violence against women. The police’s shooting of Harding is one instance of the way the state terrorizes a community that is a threat to the current social order, that has been historically attacked and barred from access to stable employment, etc...

Its no longer politically correct to lynch Black men, but the police can shoot down Black and Brown people in the street and justify it through demonizing them.

2. Women in poor urban communites are often both breadwinners and housewives. They are the ones left behind in the wake of these murders, beatings, and incarcerations, to hold the funerals, pick up the pieces, and fight the fight against their sons’, husbands’, fathers’ murderers... all while still being subject to patriarchal violence, sexual assault, and the de-funding of social services, the cutting of the public sector particularly where it employs or supports women of color. The police targeting of young men of color is a phenomenon that ripples outward and effects the gendered structure of poor communities, that affects women as well as men, but in a different form.

2. Harding didn’t pay his MUNI fare on the Bayview T line, and was shot up to ten times. Two weeks ago an unarmed homeless man was shot and killed by the Police in the Civic Center Bart station. Two years ago Oscar Grant was shot in the back at the Fruitvale Bart station by a cop who is now in comfy retirement. The severe policing of Bay Area transport and the constant increase in fares shows us that the state wants poor people to stay in their hood and to remain isolated from the rest of society. Perhaps it shows us that mobility is a potential weapon. In every neighborhood in SF and the East Bay, we want a FREE public transit, FREE of PIGS. Until then, jump turnstiles, back door it! and MUNI and BART workers: look the other way, invite people to take the emergency exit, tell people to use the back door of the bus!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Another reflection has been circulating that accurately describes the events and the context in which they emerged:

On Tuesday July 19th, hundreds of people took to the streets of San Francisco in order to demonstrate their rage against the recent murders of Charles Hill and Kenneth Harding in the city by BART police and SFPD respectively. We marched behind a banner reading “they can’t shoot us all; fuck the police” as an expression of our intention that police murder will be met with resistance and retaliation every time they rear their ugly heads in our city.

Notes:
IT DEFINITELY WENT DOWN:
The march began at Dolores Park where nearly 200 of us departed and began moving towards the Castro. The route followed MUNI rail lines, obstructing the functioning of the rail system as it proceeded. Upon reaching the Castro MUNI station, all hell broke loose. While approaching the intersection (home to the underground MUNI station as well as the crossing of several MUNI rail lines) a significant portion of the march had donned masks and hoods. What had now become a mob moved effortlessly past the bewildered cops and descended into the station. Down below on the mezzanine level, trash was set alight and thrown down onto the tracks below, followed by advertisements and signs. The ticket machines, the fare checkpoints and the agent booth were all smashed with hammers and flags – totally ruined. Smokebombs and fireworks were thrown throughout the station, adding to the chaos as the group resurfaced. The march then moved back through the Castro, hurling bricks over the heads of riot police and through the windows of Bank of America before heading into the Mission.

Those at the front of the march, made the spontaneous decision to continue onwards to the Mission police station on Valencia street. As the march approached, the pigs moved into formation to protect their sty. This didn’t stop us from throwing flares, a paint bomb, and a hammer at the façade of the building and at its defenders. The crowd, now swelled to almost 300, stayed in front of the police station for a while, screaming in the faces of the scum that patrols our streets and kills and imprisons the people we love. After making it abundantly clear that we wanted them the fuck out of our neighborhood, we continued through the Mission . At this point, the march dwindled slightly but continued down Mission St. Things escalated again when CBS news began harassing the crowd. People grabbed the big ass camera and smashed it on the ground. Police moved to make an arrest, but were repelled by the stick-wielding crowd.

After leaving the Mission, the crowd took Market St. and began moving through downtown toward Civic Center Station (the site of Charles Hill’s murder) and then onto Powell Station. At this point the number swelled again to more than they had been at any point, as countless onlookers joined the anti-cop demonstration. The crowd was big enough to block both sides of Market (a rare occurrence). The police began issuing dispersal orders from their sound truck tailing the march. Not giving a fuck, however, hundreds of us drowned out their orders screaming “SHUT THE FUCK UP” over and over. As the march turned up Powell (where we had intended to disperse) riot cops were able to surround and kettle about 30 people. As they filled in to enforce their kettle, hundreds of people pushed against them, hurling projectiles and screaming at them to let them go (and die). Skirmishes broke out as a handful of friends were unarrested and several more attempts were made to free those trapped inside police lines.

When it became clear that it would be impossible to free the 30 or so friends caught by the police, the strategy shifted to outright fighting. As the police began moving the vans containing the arrested, our crews and others did everything we could to stop them. The vans were chased and blockades attempted. The police and their vehicles were pelted with rocks, bottles, D-batteries and whatever else could be thrown against them. All-out brawls broke out leading to police injuries and a handful of arrests. Several police motorcycles were knocked over and stomped on. The night ended with a tense standoff against police. At this point, hundreds of people from the surrounding area had flooded the scene, screaming at the police or just looking on in awe. More shit got thrown at them and eventually people left, as we had word that several of the arrested were already being released.

It is the humble opinion of these participants that this last round of events was marked by some of the most wild physical fights with police at a demo in a long time. By the end of the night, all but one of the arrested had been released with misdemeanors (for disobeying orders and/or battery). One person remains in jail, being charged with Felony Assault with a Deadly Weapon and Felony Vandalism. (Updates soon)

RESISTANCE IS SPREADING:
Yesterday’s attacks come in the context of a growing campaign of diffuse attacks against the MUNI system in retaliation for the murder of Kenneth Harding. On Saturday, within moments of his murder, people on scene began attacking the police with bottles and trying to disrupt the T-train. In the subsequent days various crews of people in and around Bayview have spontaneously and diffusely taken up a campaign against the MUNI system: blocking tracks, breaking the windows on trains and busses, attacking agents, fighting with the police. Most of this resistance, of course, has gone unreported by the scum media. At a press-conference held in Bayview on Monday, many family-members of police victims and other angry people gathered to denounce the most recent murders, share stories about how much they fucking hate the pigs, and articulate a strategy of resistance.

The message at the conference and in people’s actions is clear: “We want pigs off the MUNI system and we want the system to be free, or there will not be a system at all.” People vowed to continue their attacks and blockades against the trains and buses operated by MUNI until they are fare-free and cop-free. As austerity takes its toll on poor people in the Bay Area, it is becoming increasingly clear that the only solution is attack, and that these attacks are the clearest way to demonstrate our solidarity.
It is in following the lead of those struggling for freedom in Bayview that we decided to trash the MUNI station in the Castro. This is only one contribution in what is mounting up to be a wave of chaos against a system that values a 2$ fare over our lives.

SYSTEMIC DISRUPTION AND SABOTAGE:
Last week, over 100 of us disrupted the BART system by blockading trains and vandalizing stations. This activity resulted in 3 hours of solid obstruction and delays through the BART system caused by several station closures. This was called for in response to the killing of Charles Hill on the Civic Center platform by BART police. Once again, we disrupted the transit system in an act of vengeance against the slaughter at the hands of the armed enforcers of fares. Last night, in addition to putting the Castro MUNI station out of commission, we blocked tracks, buses, and trains. Police went on to close at least three BART stations for fear of the destruction at the Castro station being brought on other stations throughout the system. Through our actions and the response of the police, we brought the transit system in the heart of the financial capitol of the West Coast to a grinding halt for the second time in as many weeks.

It should be noted that obstructing these systems and destroying their apparatuses takes very little effort. System disruption is a valuable tool, and should be considered for use as a response every time the pigs murder someone in our towns. The economic damage and the disruption to networks of control caused by these actions is deeper and wider than a brick through a window (however lovely the act may be).

WE DON’T CARE ABOUT THE PIG LIES:
Fearing full on rebellion, SFPD and their servants in the media have gone into full spin mode. Each day they make new justifications for their killings. They say Charles Hill had a knife. They say Kenneth Harding shot at them. They talk about Harding’s previous convictions and allude to his connection to the murder of a pregnant woman in Washington State. In each of these cases, it is important for the enemies of the police to not be tricked by these diversions.

The issue has never been the character of Kenneth Harding or what type of weapons the victims of police violence may or may not have been carrying. The issue is that the armed enforcers of Capital and the State have enforced a death sentence on the poor in this city; made themselves the judge, jury and executioner of anyone who cannot afford a fare, is homeless, or breaks their meaningless laws in order to survive. We don’t care if Kenneth Harding had a gun. In fact, we wish he had shot the men who went on to shoot him ten times in the back and throat. Any justification for his murder misses the point that the situation should never have happened in the first place. We shouldn’t have to pay for their trains and the cops shouldn’t exist to enforce fares (or anything at all). To blame Kenneth Harding or Charles Hill or any victim of police violence for the atrocities enacted upon them by the police is to side with the State, always. Kenneth Harding is dead for one reason: because officers shot him ten times in the back and throat and watched as he bled to death on the street.

It is also worth noting that the mythology of black male violence against women is consistently used by the police and other armed white people as a pretense for racist murder, whether at the hands of a lynch mob or by the bullets of a cop’s gun. To counter this narrative, and the entirely false idea that police exist to protect women, a feminist contingent within the march prepared a statement and distributed it, denouncing the police.

IN CONCLUSION:
When the police kill in our cities, we need to respond immediately and to continue and escalate that resistance. This has been the case so far in the response to the recent murders in San Francisco. People throughout the city – victims, family members, angry kids, anarchists, communists, hooligans – didn’t wait for the Left or any Non-Profit groups to begin. We acted without hesitation and constraint, in doing so setting the narrative of the struggle against the police. It is important that we not fall into the traps set out by the State. The struggle cannot be limited to one neighborhood or one “Legitimate” series of concerns or any one part of the population. We need to fight against SFPD throughout the city, against BART Police throughout the Bay, and against policing on a global scale. This weeks events have already demonstrated that angry people are willing to act against the police and the system they enforce in their neighborhoods, and to join the struggles of others and act in solidarity through attack. The struggle that began with the Oscar Grant rebellion is just beginning to emerge from hibernation. People here are just beginning – collectively and diffusely – to resist police terror in our streets. This is just a taste.
In sadness and in rage.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA
JULY 20, 2011

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The folks at Reclaim UC also have compiled many of the links, resources and videos surrounding the events in San Francisco on Tuesday. Check it out here.

And lastly, here is a video vividly depicting the anger of residents in the Bayview neighborhood of San Francisco. SFPD police Chief Greg Suhr attempted to hold a press conference at the Bayview Opera House and was boo'd off the stage. There is nothing Greg Suhr could say or do that would change the murderous function of contemporary policing and the residents of Bayview let him know it.

Hunger Strike Update

2011-07-21T13:43:00.000-07:00

Both in and out of prison, solidarity with the hunger strikers at Pelican Bay is spreading. Over the past three weeks there have been many solidarity actions including in Seattle and montreal. Now, the hunger strike has spread to 13 prisons and includes at least 6600 inmates.

Check it out!

I Told You We'd Be Back

2011-07-21T01:31:00.000-07:00

Dear SFPD and the BART Police,

Please do not consider yourselves special. We hate you this is true, but it does not come from our hearts. It comes from the entirety of our beings. Our lives our antagonistic to yours in every way shape and form. We did not develop a feeling of disdain for you over time but under capital and the state apparatus we were born enemies. This is why San Francisco was shaken like an earthquake on Tuesday. As police you exist to protect the relations of capital, the dominance of the state, the reproduction of apparatuses meant to enforce our subservience and docility. Capital depends on your existence for its protection. However we exist to see your total elimination. We are the ones who produce value for capital. Who work for others. Who pay rent. Who are unemployed. Who are students. Who are women. Who are queers. Who are brown. Who are hooligans looking for fun. Who evade fare and die trying. Who black out on BART platforms and get killed for it. Who are unarmed and executed on New Years just trying to get home. Who have nothing in this world. We are the elements you either must be scared of, prepared for or both. Confrontation is essential to our relationship. You stand between what is possible and what is horrible in this world of capital. And it is not just you, but all like you, police everywhere. We say this with the utmost seriousness and lucid consideration. This is not childish rage nor a mosh pit at a punk show, this is fact. You do not defend nor protect us, but kill us in cold blood for reasons out of individual officers control. There are no good cops and bad cops, only a social relation of submission, domination, and enforced value extraction. You are the material line of defense between us and another world beyond the tragedy we live in.

Stop playing stupid. You know exactly why paint, hammers, and fireworks were thrown. You know why 200 people from all over San Francisco and the Bay Area took to the streets angry. Why passersby stopped to yell obscenities at you in a fit of rage. There is no mystery - this is war. This is only the beginning, trust us there is more to come.

sincerely,
an autonomous working committee at Surf City Revolt!

This Tuesday: RAGE IN THE STREETS

2011-07-18T08:53:00.000-07:00

Tuesday. 5pm.
Dolores Park.
San Francisco.
Snake March.

On Saturday the SFPD shot a 19 year old man 10 times after he ran to avoid paying the MUNI fare. Now the pigs have claimed the deceased instigated the shoot out despite dozens of witnesses saying otherwise. Thousands of us refuse to pay MUNI every year but rarely do we assume the refusal will lead to our murder by ten police bullets.

Saturday saw two spontaneous demonstrations of rage and resistance in Bayview and the Mission. As this is being written San Francisco Police are attacking a speak out in Bayview.

If you have ever jumped the turnstile, walked on the back of the bus, or tossed fifty cents into the coin slot meet us in the streets. The poor, the pissed must stick together. Once again San Francisco has imposed a death sentence on the poor. This time we will not allow the murderous swine to get away with it.

The original indybay event can be found here.

SFPD kill man for fare evasion

2011-07-17T12:59:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, the pigs killed a young man in Bayview after a dispute about MUNI fare evasion. This is only the next escalation in a string of incidents resulting from this year's fare evasion crackdown. A crowd gathered at the site of the shooting on Third and Oakdale as the police cordoned off the area. Later on, the crowd starting throwing bottles at the police. Video is circulating of the aftermath of the shooting, much of it showing the kid's uncovered body next to a pile of blood.

Pile of bloody clothes marked "5"

Later that night, an angry crowd assembled in the Mission District in response to the shooting. The crowd took to the street, antagonizing the police as it snaked through the neighborhood.

Meanwhile, in Hayward, one of Oscar Grant's friends who was with him on the night of his murder, was murfed in Hayward. He had a $5 million dollar lawsuit pending against the BART police for "mental and emotional" injury over the murder of Oscar Grant. This isn't the first time a person has been murdered while their lawsuit against the police is pending. An article on SF indybay, found here, outlines other incidents with the same general character.

A New Era in Policing?

2011-07-16T18:00:00.000-07:00

News of "Predictive Policing" first surfaced around the new year. Hailed as the next generation of policing, it seeks to direct police resources to "times and places" where there is a greater likelihood of crime being committed. Sometime in January, the Santa Cruz Police Department finished submitting crime reports from the last eight years to George Mohler, a mathematics professor at Santa Clara University. Santa Cruz is the first city in the nation to embrace this model. In Mohler's own words: "The more you put police in areas where there is more crime, the more efficiently you're policing the city." The Sentinel article about SCPD's adoption of the program can be found here. In this article, rather than rehashing what has already been said, we will emphasize the unstated significance of predictive policing and point towards ways to frustrate, antagonize, or just operate within a town that will try to predict your crime before you commit it.

New Smell, Same Shit

Since at least some future police reports will be a product of predictive policing, while the analytics that power predictive policing are fed by prior police reports, it is likely that the predictive policing will create reinforcing feedback loops. As predictive policing recognizes a concentration of criminal activity, it will direct police resources towards that concentration. The concentration can be geographical, like the Bonesio's Parking Lot, and also have a temporal dimension, like closing time. By directing police patrols towards these locations, the police can harass, detain, or arrest people more efficiently. Their actions result in police reports that get funneled back into the predictive policing analytics, further concentrating crime in these already targeted areas.
By targeting places where crime is already reported, predictive policing increases social division: bad neighborhoods are further ghettoized, while pressure it taken off good neighborhoods. Kids in the upper westside take "d-methamphetamine" (marketed as Deoxsyn for ADHD) to get high and feel good, while those trapped in desperate circumstances smoke dirty crystal for the same reasons. One group is mostly ignored by police, while the other is criminalized. Predictive policing further concentrates police pressure on the more targeted group. This is not to say that the ideal solution is some equitable form of policing, only that existing social divisions are further sharpened by this program.

At least some of the inspiration for predictive policing comes from the success of computer analytics in determining the actions of consumers. As Police Chief Magazine reports:

Advanced analytics are used in almost every segment of society to improve service and optimize resources. Some examples include customer loyalty programs that track purchases and provide specifically targeted coupons that are based on recent or related purchases and algorithms that create models of customer preferences and recommend products to similar customer groups.

In every corner of our lives, data is being collected about us and our actions. These data storehouses have been utilized to sell us consumer goods tailored to our specific tastes. Now, these databases are becoming fodder for the predictive policing analytics. In a Department of Justice bulletin on Community-Oriented Policing, the first "tool" listed in a "predictive policing toolbox" was to: "Identify data from other agencies (e.g., schools and hospitals) that may be useful for predictive policing analyses". Predictive Policing might be the bridge between the warehousing of personal and relational data and the always-tightening clampdown of social control. Advanced analytics, of course, have always been part of the police toolkit, but until now they have been reserved for large operations, usually run by federal agencies. Now, the same techniques are becoming available at local levels.

As these techniques trickle down to local agencies, coupled with Jerry Brown's restructuring towards local government, police are realizing that "community" initiatives are of increasing importance. If the police are going to be on your block constantly, they want to do it with a smiling face. Put differently, they want to avoid being a target for the antagonism they deserve.

Defenders of predictive policing say that it doesn't target individuals, only locations. But you'd be blind if you couldn't see that different areas are defined by the presence of different social groups. For instance, one distinct group of people hangs out on the Pasatiempo Golf Course while another hangs out outside the laundromat on Barson St. This new advance in policing is only a new excuse to do what police have always done: reinforce class divisions and quarantine "undesirable" social groups.

Responding to Predictive Policing

One clear way to avoid or frustrate the mechanisms of predictive policing is to follow the good ol' criminal adage--Don't shit where you eat. By taking crime out of the neighborhoods where we live, perhaps we can lessen the pressure on those places. One study of predictive policing found a correlation with the number of housing code violations in a neighborhood and the amount of burglary. Basically, people were burglarizing poor neighborhoods, which rationalized a police presence in those places. By decreasing "broke-on-broke crime", we are also fighting an increase of police patrols. For an interesting primer on how rich people defend against burglary, we here at SCR would recommend Jack MacLean's Secrets of a Superthief. He robbed exclusively from rich neighborhoods and did it with mad style.

Beyond doing crime intelligently, we also have the capacity to disrupt the community aspects of policing. While there are infinite possibilities for this, here are three interesting departure points for you and your crew. The friendly face of community policing is sugary icing on a cake of shit. It's important to show the entire idea of "policing" as rotten at its core and to fight police attempts to insert themselves into neighborhood dialogue.

First, the local example. On March 13th, about 60 folks got together at Grant St. Park to barbecue "for a world without police." There was a free wall for graffiti, dank grub, and an awesome Know Your Rights workshop. By initiating conversations in the places we live, we can clarify our own position and make friends with our neighbors who feel similarly.

Secondly, we can disrupt the police department's attempts to legitimize itself. In Modesto, comrades staged a disruption of a police accreditation meeting. At a time when the MPD was attempting to pat itself on the back, people made sure everyone remembered that the MPD were murderers.

Lastly, comrades in Vancouver, BC, took space back from Community Policing efforts with a concerted vandalism campaign. Eventually, the community policing center lost its insurance policy and was temporarily forced into debt. To this day, it is the target of attacks and antagonism. Community police forces can often act as the vanguard of gentrification, making a place more digestible to yuppies. Here is one of many ways that activity directed against the police intersects with other struggles.

Obviously, different forms of resistance are applicable to different contexts. Santa Cruz is the pilot city for a program that has the potential to change the shape of modern policing. With our shoulder to the wheel, let's make it a failure.

Pelican Bay Hunger Strikers Reject Proposal: The Strike Continues!

2011-07-15T23:38:00.000-07:00

From prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com:

This afternoon leaders of the Pelican Bay hunger strike unanimously rejected a proposal from the CDCR to end the strike. In response to the prisoners’ five, straightforward demands, the CDCR distributed a vaguely worded document stating that it would “effect a comprehensive assessment of its existing policy and procedure” about the secure housing units (SHUs). The document gave no indication if any changes would be made at all.

Read the full article here.

Protests at BART in San Francisco Shut Down Stations

2011-07-12T13:51:00.000-07:00

Media coverage of the BART disturbances

Don't worry. We'll be back.

Reportback on Anticut 3: Austerity is Prison

2011-07-10T20:32:00.000-07:00

"I have kept this photo in my wallet to keep my hatred sharp."

Last night, 50 - 60 people met at Telegraph and Broadway in downtown Oakland to participate in the third Anticut action. Moving from that intersection, the crowd tried to take the street and was immediately directed back onto the curb by the police. What followed was some Tom and Jerry shit: We would move back into the street, be pushed back to the sidewalk, in a cycle of events verging, at times, on ridiculous.

Once we arrived at the Glenn Dyer detention facility, connected by a skyway to the courthouse, we blocked Clay St. at 7th to chant and make noise for the prisoners awaiting trial in the jail. People on the inside were heard yelling back. A few people read parts of the communique that was being distributed along the march. Statements were made about the hunger strike at Pelican Bay. As we left the jail chanting "we'll be back", a large mortar-type firework exploded a few blocks away. Coincidence, of course.

The crowd moved back to Broadway much the way we came, in and out of the street. Tensions with the police waxed and waned along the march, but no arrests were made and the crowd did a fair job of staying solid.

Once back on Broadway, people were told over a megaphone to "stick around". The reason behind this became clear as, ten minutes later, a handful of people appeared down 13th St. pushing a sound system towards the crowd. The sound system, always unpopular with the police, bolstered the mood of the crowd.

As the sound system began playing (Mac Dre, Don't Snitch), the police tightened ranks around the sound system and the thirty or so people who remained. Options got a bit scarce when people realized that they weren't being allowed to leave the kettle. After three songs and multiple "illegal assembly" warnings from the OPD, folks decided it was time to go. The police let people go a few at a time, hoping that we would disperse, and, unexpectedly, let the sound system go too.

Without the constant social upheaval present in places like Greece or Chile, social antagonists living in the United States have much to learn about how to roll in the streets. So, after the arrests made at Anticut 2, which were more or less the result of loose formation, a flier was distributed at Anticut 3 with some basic tips about how to hold oneself in the streets.

One implicit goal of the Anticut actions seems to be expanding our capacity as social antagonists. Some, still enamored with "mass movement" politics, see capacity correlated to the number of people on the streets. This is only part of the truth. Our capacity as a group is the result of our capacity as individuals. A strong handful people in the streets might have a capacity equivalent to a large mob, albeit on different terms. By participating in events such as Anticuts, we are able to develop both our capacities as individuals and as a group. By participating, we are able to practice confidence and confrontation with the police, becoming increasingly able to stand our ground, take risks, and have each other's backs.

As the anticut crew learns and develops their tactical abilities, so do the police. After the arrests at Anticut 2, the police seemed content to manage the march and stay on the sidelines as a threat. Their presence was heavy, but it seemed obvious they had been instructed not to arrest anyone. The police are seeking to neutralize the Anticut actions, allowing them as long as they are purely spectacular. The pitfall of this, as everyone in the Anticut crew probably already knows, is resistance that becomes a ritual. Keeping actions creative and fresh is one way to avoid recuperative tendencies. But it isn't enough to avoid recuperation, we have to also take space for ourselves and precipitate nascent conflicts. As we act in the absence of a social movement, we are not wedded to any form particularly, except the ones that suit us. A revolt against austerity is a revolt that can, even if it hasn't yet, become more generalized (that's sort of the point, isn't it?).

So, as we develop our capacity, how do we direct it? Two modest proposals: good conversation among friends and conflict with our enemies.

Tonight - July 7th, 5pm in San Francisco

2011-07-07T14:13:00.000-07:00

from comrades in the Bay Area:

take back the day…
…from the state and its police, who pretend to protect women so they can justify their racist, sexist violence. Policing is violence. We will not be “saved”, we will fight back, together.
…from rapists — they’re not just strangers who attack you in the night, they’re friends, husbands, bosses roommates, teachers, cops, co-workers, managers, partners, “comrades.”
…from managers – they are Not on your side. …from capital, where women are exploited alongside
men by the wage system, but even more intensely.
…from work – the paid work that wastes our lives and the unpaid work that we do in the name of “leisure” and “love”.
…from the shitheads on Montgomery street, facilitating the rape and exploitation of women everywhere.
…from austerity measures and budget cuts, so often targeted at women of color, poor women, working class women.
…from liberals who want to modify a broken system – who want a few good laws. We want total end to this entire racist, capitalist, heteropatriarchal system.
…from the Pro-Lifers. ‘nuff said. …from the depoliticized queer lifestyle….from the patriarchy.

Thursday, July 7, San Francisco Meet 5pm, Market & Montgomery

BART Police Kill Again; Inmate Hunger Strike Spreads

2011-07-06T14:35:00.000-07:00

Another person was murdered by the BART police. There will be a response Monday July 11th (repost from No Justice No BART) :

"Last Sunday night, BART Police attacked and essentially executed a man so drunk he could barely stand! 2 BART Police officers responded to a call of a homeless man with an open container of alcohol described as stumbling and wobbling around civic center platform. Within 60 seconds of getting out of the train and onto the platform, these cops managed to shoot the man 3 times in the chest and kill him.

The BART police chief is... claiming he is 'comfortable' with this behavior. There is video that they are refusing to release. There are witnesses that contradict the police story (the lies they are using to try to cover this up). History does repeat itself, until we get angry enough to do something about it.

Join us to THIS MONDAY. ON THE CIVIC CENTER PLATFORM (yes, in the BART!). We will participate in a collective act of civil disobedience to demand:

1. The BART Board of Directors must shut down the corrupt, inept, disgraceful, and murderous BART police department, PERMANENTLY AND TOTALLY.

2. Both officers must be fired, and we demand an independent, PUBLIC investigation of this killing, and all applicable charges filed and prosecuted against the killers."

Killing is an inherent function of policing and in fact makes policing what it is. There will be no "justice", no end to police inflicted murder until the police and policing are totally destroyed. No settlement will ever bring us closer to this goal.

......................................

In an inspiring turn of events the hunger strike at Pelican Bay State Prison has spread to at least 11 of 33 of California's state prisons. This Friday there will be a solidarity demonstration in Oakland.

"Am I proud to have been involved in the Attica rebellion? I am proud to have been involved in it because I think it was a momentous historical happening and I daresay one of the most important events that happened in the 20th century. So I'm definitely proud to have been involved in it. More fortunate to have been able to survive and be able to share with people the experiences that happened then and some of the things that allow for me to do the things that I'm doing are predicated upon Attica. Because one thing I know for sure is that, although the rebellion and the massacre technically speaking ended in 1971, it didn't. It's a continual process... For me, it's a matter of trying to stay the course. Because it's a matter of trying to be able to take from the lessons that we learned at Attica, to be able to apply them on a day-to-day basis." - Akil Al-Jundi,

Up the Pups!

2011-07-06T14:27:00.000-07:00

Santa Cruz County deputy injured in dog attack
from The Sentinel

A Santa Cruz County deputy received several stitches and was put on medical leave after being attacked by a dog Saturday.

According to deputy April Skalland, the deputy was investigating a neighborhood dispute on Casserly Road about 12:20 p.m. when the golden retriever mix attacked and bit his leg.

Skalland said the deputy had gone to interview the dog's owner, a neighbor of the household involved in the original call.

She said the dog had bitten people twice before. In one incident, a Santa Cruz police officer was injured.

Animal control officers took custody of the dog, which is in quarantine pending an investigation, she said. The owner was cited.

Unfortunately, the puppy was then kidnapped by the police and is currently in custody. If Red's owner doesn't build a new enclosure for the dog, the Sheriffs will continue holding onto Red, possibly euthanizing him. It was later released that Red had not received his rabies vaccine.

Around here at SCR, we like to think of Red as the hometown-hero equivalent of the Greek Riot Dog.

Solidarity with the Hunger Strike at Pelican Bay

2011-07-03T10:18:00.000-07:00

On July 1^st, 2011, in an exciting show of racial unity, the prisoners at Pelican Bay went on an indefinite hunger strike to protest the inhumane conditions in the Security Housing Unit (SHU). They have five very reasonable demands:

1. Eliminate group punishments.

2. Abolish the debriefing policy and modify active/inactive gang status criteria  

3. Comply with the recommendations of the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in Prisons (2006) regarding an end to longterm solitary confinement. 

4. Provide adequate food.

 5. Expand and provide constructive programs and privileges for indefinite SHU inmates

Influenced by the panopticon, Pelican Bay state prison’s Security Housing Unit consists of 8x10 foot cells made of smooth concrete. Prisoners spend upward of 22 hours per day in these cells. An armed guard opens and closes the doors of the cell from a central control booth. Prisoners spend, on average, two years in the SHU, though some have spent as long as eighteen. The extreme sensory deprivation causes long term psychological damage, according to prisoners, lawyers, psychologists, people with common sense, and prisoner advocates.

“Mass incarceration is the product of the failures of society in terms of social institutions, economy, politicians, and state and federal governments. Prisons and prisoners are the cover-up and scapegoats of these failures. Prisons have become increasingly relied upon to hold back and stamp out social protest of the errors and tyranny of government, and the desire for people to be really free, by locking up anti-social and anti-government protesters and anyone who challenges injustice, inhumanity and tyrannical rule.”

-sister amazon, Corcoran state prison (also on a solidarity hunger strike)

The struggle against prison is not only for those incarcerated. Showing solidarity with prisoner struggles is not charity work. We all live with the alienation of police, laws, and networks of surveillance. If we step out of line, we live with the threat of imprisonment hanging over our heads. Their fight is our fight.

Showing solidarity to the strikers is to detract from their isolation. We can help amplify their voices through noise demonstrations, solidarity actions, facilitating communication between prisoners, or things altogether new and creative.

more info...

Attack on Sheriff's Department Vehicle

2011-07-02T18:25:00.000-07:00

reposted from indybay.org:

On the night of June 1st, a truck belonging to the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Department had all of its windows covered in etching fluid. The truck, parked outside the county jail, was attacked as an expression of solidarity with prisoners everywhere. Luciano and Amelia were also in our hearts when this action was taken; your strength inspires ours.

War on prison society, brah.

We can probably assume that it's supposed to say "July 1st". While it's not mentioned in the communique, July 1st was also the start of a hunger strike at Pelican Bay State Prison.

Self-Reflection

2011-06-30T14:50:00.000-07:00

The newly passed California state budget is one piece of a larger, international state of austerity. As mentioned before, austerity measures are necessary for capitalist social relations to save themselves in times of crisis, disproportionately effect excluded and marginalized populations (in the form of attacks on their already meager living standards or by subsuming more of the population into their ranks) and daily restructuring of social and economic life for all (reconfiguration of security mechanisms, unemployment figures, rates of incarceration, access to resources previously guaranteed by the state, construction of new collectivities or lack there of, etc...). This new budget is without a doubt the most austere the state of California has ever seen. However beyond the severity of the cuts what makes this historical moment interesting is that the lawmakers, politicians, and other managers of capital are admitting what was once taboo: the inability of capitalism to make good on its promises as a rationally functioning and prosperous system:

"The Legislature passed an austerity budget Tuesday night that would cut from universities, courts and the poor, shutter 70 parks and threaten schools but would not — by officials' own admission — restore California's long-term financial health." - L.A. Times, 6/29/11

This suicidal self reflection by the managers of capital presents an intriguing opportunity and inevitable obstacles. Reforms no longer make sense both to those severely affected by them and capital its self. Capitalism has historically created the conditions for its own negation in many forms. Presently this negation in one of its forms is that the basic reforms necessary to save capital are simultaneously destroying it. This is an unavoidable reality - capital's basic mode of life is prolonging it's miserable death.

Reference to the totality of capitalist social relations and its inherently degenerative qualities by the managers of capital presents a twofold situation. On one hand this illuminates basic contradictions, presents a situation where capitalism shows its self as what it is to many people - a system of the current historical epoch that is not natural but constructed historically. On the other hand capital also uses this self-reflection to its own advantage - by a reassessment of political and social mechanisms of control and surplus extraction to save its self. Capital will regenerate its self by any means necessary, even if it means elongating and sustaining it's own suicide.

How we act in this moment is important. We must not respond but attack and defend. Response insinuates a dialogue and conversation that has never existed. To undo capital will mean this attack must come in many popular forms, on all fronts, at all times. There is no path, no runway - only a matrix. We must constantly overcome our own limitations (right now Athens is a good example of why this is important. The street battles are inspiring and strategically necessary but what comes next?). We must always experiment.

"Trigger Cuts" and an Athenian Gesture

2011-06-28T16:40:00.000-07:00

Gov. Jerry Brown revealed a new budget plan today. A new mechanism called "trigger cuts" were introduced. These cuts put even more money for social services on the chopping block and attach their enactment to future state revenue. Newspapers and other media sources throughout California published this little diagram to explain:

Meanwhile in Athens thousands take to the streets against proposed austerity measures.

Inspiration from another corner of the capitalist totality in the form of a gesture.

We do not seek a fictionalized re-enactment of what we see but to feel and act upon what is common between us. We reject spectacular fantasies and stages. We must begin where our feet touch the asphalt.

With each UC cut, low-wage workers pushed closer to margins

2011-06-27T15:27:00.000-07:00

Repost from 6/25/11 Santa Cruz Sentinel:

SANTA CRUZ - As UC Santa Cruz has tried to stay true to its mission of education and research by targeting budget cuts away from academic areas as much as possible, the areas that have taken the brunt of the cuts house some of the university's lowest paid workers.

The custodians, maintenance workers, bus drivers and cooks on campus often work more than one job to support their families, and, when cuts are enacted, they are pushed closer toward the line that separates making ends meet from not knowing where rent money will come from on the first of the month.

"After years of reductions in state support, we've gotten to the point where every corner of the campus has been impacted by these cuts," UCSC spokesman Jim Burns said. "It's also true that units farther from the classroom have been particularly hard hit - not because the campus doesn't value those areas and the people working in them. But because we have tried to the extent possible to reduce cuts to the academic areas in an effort to protect student access to the courses they need."

The University of California has reopened its contract with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, which represents 20,000 UC employees, including about 650 at UCSC, seeking various concessions that reduce worker take-home pay.

During the past three years of budget cuts, UC has sought similar concessions from all labor groups, but the reduction in pay can have a greater impact on those closest to the margins.

Health care in particular is a touchy issue with the workers, because the nature of their work demands repetitive physical labor and can lead to injuries.

Rosario Cortez, a custodian at UCSC for the past 21 years, already has had one knee operation, and she fears the other knee will need surgery soon.

"A lot of us are in persistent pain while we work," said Cortez, 50. "It can be very hard. My health care recently went up from $30 to $90 (a month). We have the option to shift to a cheaper plan, but I was worried about the coverage and not getting what I need."

During her two decades at UCSC, Cortez has held several second jobs, including other custodial positions and a job at a bread factory. Currently she works five days a week at UCSC, eight hours a day, where she earns about $2,200 a month after taxes, then makes and sells tamales on the weekends for extra income.
Cortez's sentiments were echoed by Ernesto Encinas, a cook at UCSC who cares for his 86-year-old mother and 14-year-old son.

"Everyone I know has a second job," Encinas said. "There is no rest with the wages we make here. You can't make ends meet with just the one job with the way cost of living keeps rising. Any little change in our income can be devastating."

Jim Dunne, director of UCSC's physical plants department, which covers campus maintenance and custodial work among other duties, said his budget has been cut 26 percent and he has lost 50 full-time employees, about 15 percent of his workforce, since 2008.

In interviews, and at a May rally organized by the union, custodians complained that increased demands from the loss of workers have put an unfair burden on them. Dunne said while the custodians have been asked to clean more areas in a single shift in some circumstances, the depth of cleaning has been reduced and other tasks have been eliminated to maintain a similar workload to what was required prior to the budget reductions.

"I have heard [the complaints]," Dunne said. "We often only have a few months to implement changes and rework how we do things. We are making a lot of effort to communicate to custodians what that redesign is, but adjustment takes time. It is a difficult situation for both sides. Custodians take a lot of pride in their work. When you tell them to clean something less, that's hard for them."

Cortez said UCSC used to be a great place to work, but that working conditions have declined in the past few years as cuts have been made.She is a single mother with three kids, two in college. She tries to help them financially, but said she often has trouble making her own rent. "I don't want to see them working like I do," she said. "I want to see them go to school and do better."

First as Tragedy

2011-06-23T20:35:00.000-07:00

Kenny Green, tool

From the Sentinel: City of Santa Cruz Hires First Alarm to Harass the Homeless in Harvey West

It was only a year-and-a-half ago when another group of kooks and weirdos (Take Back Santa Cruz) set out to sanitize the Harvey West area. Now, it's First Alarm. The rent-a-pigs are unarmed and are trained to make arrests. Like surveillance cameras, the presence of police or security forces accustoms us to their presence and works to regulates behavior. If today Santa Cruz is used to seeing unarmed First Alarm patrols, then tomorrow (when it's "necessary") we might not raise an eyebrow when we see them strapped.

As the excluded are becoming further excluded, as those without find themselves with even less, police infrastructure is spreading and reinforcing itself. To have to say it again is practically embarrassing. But, as policing develops in Santa Cruz, it's important to stay abreast of the developments. Moreover, it is important to expand our capacity for conflict with the intensification of social control in fresh and exciting ways.

Cyber-War

2011-06-20T13:36:00.000-07:00

The war against capital is a war on all fronts. In this moment there is no Western Front, Eastern Front, or even a geographically defined belly of the beast. The total diffusion of capitalist social relations means ever more diffuse and decentralized reproduction, heightened speed of circulation (of commodities, capital, security, laborers, etc) and more repressive securitization in all moments of life. The internet is not the front for struggle and attack but a unique front for it embodies this diffusion, this contemporary totalization of capital par excellence. The internet may indeed be a perfect embodiment of capitalisms own self destruction, a cyber-contradiction of epic proportions.

Hackers of the world, unite!

when they kick in your front door,

2011-06-18T19:27:00.000-07:00

For three days last January, the county tried to evict Brian Wayne Tomasso from the house he rented. Tomasso had barricaded himself inside the house--screwing the doors shut from the inside and pushing back from the other side of the door against the sheriff's deputies. Finally, and unfortunately, after breaking down the front door and two interior doors, the Sheriffs arrested him. At the time, in court and in the press, Tomasso was dismissed as a crazy motherfucker. Back in 2006, he had been convicted of reckless discharge of a firearm (in the same residence that he defended four years later). Now, he was trying to affirm an impossible fact: That that place that he lived was his, not his landlord's.

Santa Cruz is the third most expensive place to rent nationwide. In an interview with the Sentinel, Ken Cole of the Santa Cruz Housing Authority declared:

We’re the perfect storm for high rents. We’re small urban county, almost completely built out from a zoning standpoint, and locked up by mountains, oceans and agriculture. It’s an extremely difficult market.

Rent in Santa Cruz isn't going to decrease any time in the foreseeable future. More likely, thanks to things like the rental ordinance, rent in Santa Cruz will continue to skyrocket. The sort of action taken by Tomasso is becoming more and more relevant. Liberal activists will tell you that the lesson to be learned from Tomasso is to avoid looking like a crazy motherfucker. They will argue that we need to legitimize our resistance to the world of wages and landlords. But the struggle is already legitimate to those who feel it or are in similar situations; conversely, we are already crazy motherfuckers in the eyes of the landlords and pigs.

“It is better to loot than to shoplift, to ambush than to snipe, to walk out than to phone in a bomb threat, to strike than to call in sick, to riot than to vandalize . . . Increasingly collective and coordinated acts against this world of coercion and isolation aren’t solely a matter of efficacy, but equally a matter of sociality—of community and fun.” -War on Misery #3

From the situation in Aptos last January, we have to learn tactical lessons. Events like Tomasso's eviction defense last January can be made sociable; and, in becoming sociable, will become more powerful. Evictions, like any other form of repression, are most effectively resisted when they are resisted collectively. The current wave of austerity and the perpetual clamping down of social control are opportunities to find and act with unlikely friends.

To survive inevitable repression, resistance must spread beyond the sites where it originates. Always having an eye toward expanding the struggle in all directions prevents recuperation (when a tactic gets confused with a solution) and keeps the struggle on our terms. If resistance to evictions takes the form of occupations, for example, the resistance needs to spread beyond the occupation and beyond organizing against evictions generally. A struggle that starts from a defense against an eviction can expand to include a critique of gentrification and the of wage relation; the same struggle can clarify its position against the left by refusing to organize in its predetermined forms; by ending an occupation by choice rather than waiting to get evicted can redirect our energies in a way that our enemies can't anticipate.

In short--roll deep, expand the struggle, and study the art of war.

Book Bloc vs. OPD

2011-06-18T11:29:00.000-07:00

From Bay Of Rage

Anticut 2 disrupted downtown Oakland Friday afternoon in an anticapitalist defense of the libraries. 75 people took the streets of downtown in the face of an ominous police presence that began issuing tickets and confiscating sound equipment before the demo had even started. Crowds walking by and waiting for buses cheered on the action as banks locked down in fear of the disruption. After shutting down a Citibank and Wells Fargo, police attacked the crowd and arrested multiple people but failed to halt the movement of the action. The mobile disruption ended at the downtown Oakland Library Branch where it was greeted by local librarians who addressed the crowd as cops and bystanders watched from the street. 14 out 18 libraries in Oakland are facing closure due to the proposed city budget.

Miguel Balderos Sentenced to 10 years and 8 months

2011-06-15T11:52:00.000-07:00

reposted from the Sentinel:

SANTA CRUZ - A 53-year-old man was sentenced Tuesday to more than 10 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to setting fire to the Santa Cruz city attorney's office.

Miguel William Balderos started a fire at the city attorney's office on the 300 block of Church Street on July 2, 2010, and he told police that he was an anarchist protesting the city's camping ban.

No one was hurt in the fire -- which began in a recycling bin -- but the blaze caused about $50,000 in damage and sent smoke through the office. The fire was started about 4:15 a.m. at the office of Atchison, Barisone, Condotti and Kovacevich, a private law firm that is contracted to work for the city.

Balderos has been imprisoned at least four times for convictions that include residential burglary and robbery, District Attorney Bob Lee said in a statement. Balderos pleaded guilty in April to three felony counts including arson and threatening a public official in the recent case, Lee said.

Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of 12 years and eight months in state prison. Tuesday, Judge Paul Marigonda sentenced Balderos to 10 years and 8 months prison.

"The community will not tolerate Mr. Balderos' outrageous and threatening conduct," prosecutor Nicole Ellen Jones said in a statement.

Its the Oscar Grant that happens everyday....

2011-06-12T18:35:00.000-07:00

Seen Around Town

2011-06-10T10:14:00.000-07:00

Mad ups

Murderers

2011-06-09T14:37:00.000-07:00

Police do not engage in brutality. Brutality implies a deviation from "standard" policing, that the police are not normally supposed to kill and coerce. Murder and the violent facilitation of imprisonment are part of their function, it is what in fact makes them police. If they were to abstain from these activities they would no longer be the armed wing of the state apparatus and capital. It is the threat of violence, of death, that allows the police to be in situations in which they are not present. However every police murder also opens a situation of direct hostility between the policing apparatus and the populations under their watch and occupation. It both reinforces the control of the police as a brutal security mechanism and yet exposes their true social relationship to society, to capital and to the state. The police are at odds with those most abused by capital because it is the police who at the end of the day enforce this abuse. It is this hostility that creates, more and more, the necessity and reality of confrontation.

Murder is an inherent function of the police that will only disappear with the eradication of the entire state-capital apparatus and the policing function it necessitates to continue its own reproduction.

Solidarity to all of those in the streets of Quebec.

We don't forgive, we don't forget

The Economic Crisis in Fact and Fiction - an interview with Paul Mattick

2011-06-08T22:17:00.000-07:00

Rail: Contemporary left-economists, often relying on Keynes, have criticized recent austerity measures as detrimental to the recovery effort. Yet you argue that reductions in deficit-spending, with all their consequences for living standards, would be a necessary element of any real recovery on a capitalist basis. What would you say, then, to the workers who occupied the capitol building in Wisconsin? Are they acting in vain, or even against their own interests, if they want to retain their jobs?

Mattick: I would say that they are acting in their own interests insofar as what they are really fighting for is not the economy, but their pensions, their food, their living standards, their rent, etc. They are under an illusion if they think that their welfare is concordant with the welfare of the economy. People have to learn that the welfare of the economy, in a moment like this, is in contradiction to their own welfare. In Wisconsin, workers apparently went along with their unions, who were willing to sacrifice their members’ living conditions in order to prop up the Wisconsin economy. A more rational point-of-view on the part of Wisconsin workers would be to say, to hell with the Wisconsin economy!—we want food, we want boats to go sailing on the lake, we want pensions, and we want nice schools for our children. The truth is there is now a real conflict between the interests of ordinary people, so-called—that’s to say the working class—and the interests of the capitalist economy. The preservation and future prosperity of capitalism demands the impoverishment of the population, and if they prefer to be impoverished to save capitalism, well then, they will be impoverished. The instinctual desire not to be impoverished seems to me a intelligent one, but the problem is that they don’t yet understand that capitalism is not going give them back their pensions and their wages.

Rail: Does that mean that it’s simply impossible to fight against cuts?

Mattick: I think that anti-austerity struggles have to become more radical. They have to concentrate on immediate material goods. For example, there are now millions of people who have been thrown out of their houses. There are a lot of empty houses, so people have to begin moving into those houses. There is a lot of food, so people have to take the food. If factories have closed, people need to go into the factories and start producing goods. But they cannot expect that employers are going to give them jobs. If they could be employed profitably, they already would be, as I say in the book. And they can’t expect the government to give them jobs. The government doesn’t have any money. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t important ways to fight austerity. This is still a rich country. There’s all sorts of stuff around. People have to begin to take the stuff that’s there. They have to demand the immediate improvement in their living conditions—very concrete things. So instead of asking for work, which they cannot get, they should just ask for food. A very intelligent move would be to say, OK, you can’t give us jobs—then just feed us, feed us for nothing. It’s not like there’s no food.

Read the whole interview.

Killer-Pig Johannes Mehserle to walk free in June

2011-06-07T11:40:00.000-07:00

New Years, 2009, a young unarmed black man is shot in the back by BART pig Johannes Mehserle. Almost immediately, folks all over Oakland starting getting together to respond with a series of protests and riots that would become the "January Rebellion".

Mehserle's trial was moved to Los Angeles, where he was the first on-duty officer to ever be tried for murder. The trial was mostly a sham, of course. His verdict, involuntary manslaughter, came down, in July 2010, prompting rioting and looting on a scale that hasn't happened in Oakland for a hot minute. Obviously, people were disappointed because the jury didn't charge him with murder. Moreso, though, everybody was angry that they have to live in world world full of police. A repeat of July was attempted in November, which unfortunately led to kettling and mass arrest (and some crazy times on the jail bus).

Sometime within June 12 -15, Mehserle will finish his token jail sentence.

On 3pm on the day of Mehserle's release, there will be a gathering at Fruitvale BART, where Grant was murdered.

At 5:30pm that same day, there will be a gathering at 14th and Broadway in Downtown Oakland (right across from Foot Locker).

This shit's on Facebook, too, if you play that game.

Why should anybody go up to Oakland from Santa Cruz? While all the nonprofits and police howl about the role of "outside agitators", we realize that there is nothing outside of capitalist relations regulated by police. The struggle against the police is a struggle that we all share.

Oakland, SC got your back.
See you in the streets.

Unemployment and the Austerity of Everyday Life

2011-06-06T16:01:00.000-07:00

Austerity measures imposed by local, state, federal governments and international monetary bodies (i.e. the world bank and IMF) are only one component of a more general state of austerity. This is most obvious in how social life is constantly restructured, readjusted and reconstituted as a consequence of crisis. Forms of employment and lack there of are immediate illuminations of this reality.

Since the post-WWII boom and the "golden age" of US capital, Capitalism has undergone a total transformation. What once was an economy grounded in industrial production has undergone a whole process of de-industrialization. Hollow corpses of industrial production such as Detroit and other American cities show the remains of an economy that was and never will be again. A time when workers could easily find employment with above subsistence wages is no more. Workers are now constantly thrown into the realities of precarity, unemployment and exclusion. While the long downturn of capital produces this situation the state then deploys austerity measures on top to protect capital accumulation and the production of value. This results in ever more insecurity and immiseration for workers both employed and unemployed alike.

Unemployment is often characterized as fluctuating and that the possibility of a turn around in job creation is coming. However the real tendency and long term trajectory of capital says otherwise:

"Today many speak of a “jobless recovery”, but if the “general law of capital accumulation” applies then all capitalist recoveries are tendentially jobless. The tendency of “mature” industries to throw off labour, whilst facilitating expanded reproduction, also tends to consolidate a surplus population not fully absorbed by the subsequent expansion. This is due to the adaptability of labour-saving technology across lines, which mean that the manufacture of new products tends to make use of the most innovative production processes. Yet process innovations last forever, and they generalize across new and old capitals, while product innovations are inherently limited in their ability to generate a net expansion of output and employment. Here the problem is not merely that product innovations have to emerge at an accelerated rate to absorb the surplus thrown off by process innovations, it is that an acceleration of product innovation itself gives rise to an acceleration of process innovation." -Misery and Debt, from Endnotes #2

Unemployment cannot be understood as a deviation from the proper functioning of capitalist social relations but instead as an inherent component of, a structural necessity to capital's own reproduction. There is no turn around in job creation just minor fluctuations in a long term trend of higher unemployment. Without access to the wage relation or means of social reproduction, to exist in this historical moment of austerity becomes a day to day struggle for survival. A struggle for life its self.

The latest statistics on unemployment in Santa Cruz put the rate at roughly 13.1% as of April 2011. These statistics of course do not factor in the under employed, those no longer looking for work, the precariously employed or inmates however still this is roughly 1.4% higher than the state average. With inflated rent prices, austerity measures in the form of budget cuts, general economic restructuring, and the ever increasing diffusion of policing mechanisms, life in Santa Cruz, like elsewhere, becomes austere, unlivable and perpetually impossible to reproduce.

This situation is dire indeed however it produces a unique context for activity. Reform-oriented options no longer make any sense even for the sake of short term amelioration of immediate crisis induced hardships. In the end there is no longer a classical distinction between "reform" and "revolution", but an immediate need for activity that must be revolutionary, anti-statist, and anti-capitalist if it is to be activity at all. As comrades in the Bay Area have eloquently put it:

"The false opposition between austerity and welfare may lead some anarchists and anti-state communists to prejudge the fight, to conclude that it is rigged from the start, locked within the horizon of the liberal-democratic state. But history is full of examples of people who think one thing and do another, who make revolution for reasons of simple necessity. And in any case, we can no more choose to fight on some other terms than we can choose to start breathing carbon dioxide. In the near term, struggles against austerity are what we have. As with Egypt and Greece, Madrid and Madison – we should expect to see more conflicts between “the people” and “the state.” We should also expect to see struggles over matters of government policy take on a near-revolutionary intensity. This is because, in the present period – when corporations and capitalists find such extreme constraints on profitability – states are unlikely to yield any ground except in the face of the fiercest opposition. Because states are themselves radicalized by the crisis, because they are at war with their population, we live in a time of tremendous radicalization.

Every strength is, from one angle, a weakness, and every weakness a strength. If the present movements against austerity exhibit a purely negative character, if they can say nothing about the world they want except what it is not, if they are largely confined to describing, in letters of fire and broken glass, the world they hate, this indicates at the same time their unwillingness to accept any of the simulacra which past movements hung under the name of communism and anarchy. But it also means that, until something inhabits the space left vacant by the old programs and parties, we are left forcing reactions by the state apparatus. We are a statism by proxy.

We do not need a program. But what we do need are rapidly reproducible practices that focus on our non-possession of the things we need to live – in other words, our reliance on money, on employment and the state. The only possible response to the antinomies of anti-austerity politics – which break down all too often into a fight between anti-tax and pro-welfare populisms – is to say that if we had direct, immediate access to such things, we would need neither state provision nor its powers of taxation. Only when capital is a natural, unsurpassable horizon does this appear as a real problem. This is why the truest response to a round of austerity measures is the looting of supermarkets and the jumping of subway turnstiles, tax evasion and debt default, the squatting of houses and the establishment of free communal gardens and kitchens." -A Government So Small You Can Carry it Anywhere... from Bay of Rage

The New Culture of Resistance

2011-06-04T19:21:00.000-07:00

Anonymous has just released a small mini-film entitled "Generation OS13: The New Culture of Resistance". While at times the analysis is short-sighted (focusing heavily on tax evasion and banks as the direct cause for the current crisis as opposed to capitalist relations themselves) the film describes some of the interesting inter-workings of contemporary capitalism, debt and their relation to the immediacy of street-centric social explosion. With eyes towards the totality from the English Isles, the short flick is worth a watch. Enjoy.

Fight the Future: Mass Default as Anticapitalist Initiative

2011-06-01T10:11:00.000-07:00

reposted from bayofrage.com:

This grim present is marked by unremitting unemployment. Where did all the work go? It went into the future. And not in a cool science fiction way. Work has gone into the future in a way that assures our misery indefinitely. That’s what debt is. It is the guarantee that you will spend all the hours of your future laboring to make good on a promise you were forced to make by an economy that can’t provide either the minimum nor the maximum (for these are one and the same) of what we want from life: to live.

Debt has more faces than a yearbook. Some of them seem to face us from a distance: the sovereign debt of nations now perpetually at risk of default, precipitating crises across the Eurozone. The massive debt of corporations deemed Too Big To Fail. But all of this turns out to be our debt. The inherited debts of deficit spending and massive bail-outs. All the “personal” debt we have been compelled to take on, to make ends meet as real wages have declined since the Seventies. The mass of mortgages injected into the economy in fallow capital’s desperate search for alternate avenues of profit. The trillion bucks in outstanding student loans we have been pushed to “accept” as tuitions have ascended twice as fast as inflation. Our shoulders and backs are where this crushing weight of debt always comes to rest, we citizens of capital.

Debt is a book of years, not a fortune but a kind of fortune-telling: it knows what you’ll be doing three decades from now. You won’t like it. Debt will like it just fine.

Let us agree on three things about debt:

Debt is not natural. But it is native to the soil of capitalism, which must both intensify and extend itself ever further in both space and time. Globalization and financialization are the two vectors of this appetite for extension. There is no capitalism without increasing debt; this is logically necessary, and historically evident. An end to debt (and let us remember that “debt” is always a polite term for “your prolonged immiseration”) requires an end to capitalism.

Austerity is an attempt to solve the debt crisis with more debt. Confronting insolvency at every stratum from local libraries to the nation-state, austerity’s idea is to tighten our belts. But have they promised to lower the prices of everything correspondingly? Hardly. Instead, austerity’s lower pay, fewer jobs, and vanished services mean that we will have no choice but to indebt ourselves further so as to stay afloat so as to search for jobs that are even worse than the awful jobs we never wanted in the first place.

Capital requires debt to function. Capitalism is in catastrophic crisis. It can no longer sustain the accumulation it needs via the simplicities of buying and selling, the minimums of the marketplace. It needs to displace its contradictions in space and time. It needs credit and debt more than we do. In fact, we don’t need it at all. We don’t need a given rate of accumulation. We’re not capital, we’re humans. We’re too small to fail.

THE TIME HAS COME FOR MASS DEFAULT. Every debtor an Iceland! This is in some sense already happening as if by accident, as lives shudder under the unsustainable burden. It’s time for default as an organized, general strategy of self-defense and war on the owners of our present and future misery — a form of solidarity with strikes, sabotages, squats. It will require the organizing of communities to provide basic needs for the garnished, the liened, the excluded. This is both strategy and a renewed social order. This will be the practical meaning of a politics of friendship.

New Developments on the Austerity Front

2011-05-27T12:11:00.000-07:00

Santa Cruz city manager Martín Bernal has released the latest incarnation of the City of Santa Cruz budget, available here, detailing the cuts that will be made and warning that there are more to come. 1.2 million dollars of the 2.6 million dollar deficit is expected to come from increasing health care and pension costs for the city's service workers (60% of the city's workforce).

Meanwhile, the SCPD is throwing a hissy fit over a 3% furlough and an increase to their pension pay-ins.

"You can imagine what kind of dramatic effect these cuts will personally have on our police officers and their families," Conner said Tuesday.

What Mike Conner, head of the Police Officer's Association, fails to account for is the effect that these cuts are having on everyone else. Joe Hernandez, who's been with the SCPD for 8 years, has said that "his family is identifying cuts in activities for his children and other household costs" (from the Sentinel, 5/25). While disabled people and their working-class caretakers are wondering how to support themselves, while families on welfare or children on medi-cal are worrying about how they'll make ends meet, the children of police officers are having to chose between tennis and piano lessons (since Mom can't afford both).

Towards the eastside, Capitola is sweating bullets over its 350,000 deficit. The city was hit hard by the flooding of the village back in March, and is also losing $122,000 a year in police department grants. The city council has considered cutting discretionary spending such as their contributions to the homeless shelter, the arts and cultural commission, or beach lifeguards. Once again, the police are absent from the chopping block. The situation is a little more stark here than it is in Santa Cruz. In Capitola, part of the deficit is created by a decrease in grants to the police department. That means that money is being actively allocated away from other programs to support the police department.

While the situation in Copitola is no particular surprise, it clarifies one of the central facts of policing and of austerity. The police are in place to maintain divisions in society. As economic downturn and austerity exclude more and more people from the benefits of this society, possibilities for rage and resistance are also growing. The police are in place to protect those with power from this anger. In California, we cannot repeat the errors of Wisconsin, where police were allowed to express solidarity with the Capitol occupation, preventing the situation from developing a stronger anti-state perspective. Revolt against austerity must be revolt against the entire network of control and coercion, if it is to be revolt at all.

[the publications Early Spring for the Badger, about the anti-austerity struggle in Wisconsin, is now available online. Lessons from Wisconsin are important kindling with which to stoke the fires of The Coming California.]

They Don't Really Care About Us

2011-05-24T13:55:00.000-07:00

The Supreme Court has requested that California reduce its prison population by more than 30,000 inmates. While this may sound like an unforseen victory as a result of the current state budget crisis the reality of "inmate reduction" is quite grim:

         "State officials in California will have two years to comply with the order, and they may ask for
          more time. Justice Kennedy emphasized that the reduction in population need not be achieved
          solely by releasing prisoners early. Among the other possibilities, he said, are new
          construction, transfers out of state and using county facilities."

The result of this "release" of non-violent offenders from federal prisons will ultimately lead to overcrowding in local jails, increased ease of deportation, and defunding from other public services. In the words of Matthew Cate, the Secretary of California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation: “Our goal is to not release inmates at all,”

Regardless of what they say or how they say it, they don't really care about us.

Elaboration on Security and Austerity

2011-05-19T02:41:00.000-07:00

In times of crisis economic restructuring and political readjustment via austerity has an important relationship to both the content and form of policing and security mechanisms:

"Amidst the storm of the economic crisis, the state subsidies for the survival of the surplus workforce disappear and the result is the proliferation of informal labour and poverty. Proletarians have no other option but to work (mostly informally) in order to survive and at the same time, as a result of the crisis, they find it impossible to find a job or have an income that would cover the cost of the reproduction of their labor power. Proletarians demand their survival, so they demand the lowering of food prices, wage increases and jobs. Their demands desperately request from capitalists to save capitalism itself. When demanding stable employment and “decent” wages, proletarians in fact say to capitalists: “you need us, without us there is no extraction of surplus value, there is no capital”. Capital on the other hand responds that it cannot afford the survival of the proletariat, and makes it clear that a (significant) part of the latter is useless (in terms of value) and, most important, that the desired recovery does not include any re-integration of this over-abundant part of the proletariat; it follows that these proletarians structurally form a surplus population. Historically, then, the wage demand is produced as both necessary and (structurally, not cyclically) a dead-end. The uprising of this surplus, and thus without future, proletariat is confronted with the clearest, the most cruel form of capitalist domination, the police. It is precisely the fact that the exit from the crisis, from the capitalist point of view, does not include this surplus proletarian population which makes the police the general form of current capitalism" -Blaumachen, "The era of riots has started..."

As the contradictions of capitalism continue to develop more and more of the population becomes excluded. This exclusion comes primarily in the form of unemployment and mass worker subsumption into precarious labor. For capitalism as an economic system to reproduce it's own relations in times of crisis it must restructure its self politically and economically. Considering capitalist social relations are predicated upon the inequality of the wage relation, property and class domination the structural consequences of crises are inherently acts of class war. These acts of war are attacks by capital upon marginalized and excluded populations, the employed and unemployed alike. The political and economic form of these crisis induced restructurings are privatization and austerity.

In California the newly revised budget is imbued with elaborate austerity measures including cuts to services provided for the most marginalized and excluded populations: the elderly, ill, children, undocumented, unemployed, working poor, precarious workers, people of color and women. Education at all levels has also endured irreversable damage. What were once nominally public institutions, the University of California and California State University are now on their way towards even higher tuition and total privatization making them virtually unattendable and producing debt-ridden graduates with no hope of finding employment. California is now, due to a wider crisis of capitalism, engulfed in the tragic reality of austerity with the marginalized and excluded bearing the worst elements of a crisis they themselves did not create. This phenomenon is nothing new but an inherent component in the history of capitalist social relations.

Capitalism regularly endures crises due to structural contradictions. These cannot be ameliorated within capitalist social relations themselves. Attempts at alleviation do nothing more than exacerbate the impending severity of the crisis its self:

"Serious crises (such as the one we are experiencing since 2008) break out in situations where the capitalist class fails to guarantee sufficiently high surplus value production under bearable conditions for the producers of this surplus value (that which in bourgeois jargon is called combining growth with social considerations). The most abstract definition of a crisis for the capitalist mode of production is that its reproduction is being threatened, that is to say the continued reproduction of the antagonist classes. It is on the concrete level, however, that we can see the crisis develop before our eyes: banks and companies that are threatened with bankruptcy and workers that are losing their jobs, are evicted from their homes or that are subjected to wage cuts, reduced pensions, poorer health care and so on. When single capitals or groups of proletarians get into straits, the State can intervene in order to ward off an emergency, by bailing out companies or handing out a little extra money to the municipalities and thereby maintaining a certain level of service. But there are never any miracle cures. In such instances, the State indebts itself, and sooner or later the budget has to be balanced, which means that in the end it is the proletariat which has to pay for it. The only mercy that the capitalist class can offer the proletarians of a country in crisis is some form of installment plan (a mortgage on future exploitation), or that they let the proletarians of another country pay a part of the bill" - Peter Åström, "Crisis and Communisation"

Capital and the state apparatus necessitate policing and security mechanisms to enforce and reproduce their own social relations at all times. With the onslaught of crisis and austerity these mechanisms take on both new content and form. Even though policing is publicly funded, it has a special and reciprocal relationship to capital accumulation and surplus extraction. Austerity and crisis increase policing operations against excluded and subversive populations while simultaneously privatizing many functions of policing its self.

Here in Santa Cruz these transformations are quite apparent. While public services such as transportation are facing large cuts in both service hours and worker wages, the Santa Cruz Police Department's situation is nowhere near as drastic. One of the reasons for this is the ability for the function of policing to be privatized. The SCPD recently released an IPhone application that allows for civilians to immediately document and inform the Police of criminal activity, thereby the user acts as an unwaged privatized auxiliary to the Police. Diffusion and privatization of policing mechanisms during times of crisis and austerity allows for mild disinvestment in Police departments while simultaneously strengthening and proliferating policing activity.

In Santa Cruz undocumented people receive the worst end of police restructuring . In the "Secure Communities" program local policing of the excluded and marginalized undocumented population is subsidized with state aid in the form of strategic policing alliances between SCPD, ICE and the FBI. This alliance is better able to arrest, imprison and deport people seen as "surplus" in the eyes of capital. While Santa Cruz was once, if only by name, a "sanctuary city" that is also now a thing of the past. Those excluded by capital are imprisoned by capital: As these populations of the excluded grow and austerity measures increase brute forms of policing develop to ensure smooth extraction of surplus value, uninhibited capital accumulation and the constant reproduction of capitalist social relations.

In times of crisis police not only change form and content but also through increasingly brutal repression of both surplus populations and struggles illuminate their basic and timeless function as soldiers enlisted to defend capitalist social relations and the state apparatus. As the contradictions unravel and crisis deepens it becomes more and more difficult for capital to easily enforce austerity and prevent the imminent social explosion of excluded populations.

What then does all of this mean?

It is important to remember that along with the readjustment and diffusion of policing, crisis also produces other newly constituted political forces. There is now an emergent and organized reactionary populist neo-fascism in both parliamentary and extra-parliamentary forms. These forces must be resisted. As history has taught us capitalism and fascism go hand in hand, and there is no reason why the crisis cannot lead to new forms of fascism gaining power and popularity.

Despite the seemingly insurmountable obstacles people are relentlessly struggling against the onslaught of crisis and austerity. In The Middle East, Spain, Greece, England, Italy and across the world people continue to collectively confront austerity. These confrontations have forced the police to physically defend restructuring in the streets with the barrel of a gun. Resistance has put pressure on capital but unfortunately to actually undo the realities of austerity and crisis would take something more.

The end of austerity will come with the end of capital. This will necessitate a total social confrontation coupled with the complete undoing of capitalist relations. The antagonisms, confrontations and alliances to make this possible exist everywhere. Their coalescence will be insurrection generalized.

"There is great disorder under heaven, the conditions are excellent"

The Rental Ordinance and You

2011-05-18T12:51:00.000-07:00

The rental ordinance, passed in August 2010 by a 5-1 vote, spells bad-news-bears for those of us renting in Santa Cruz. The rhetoric around the measure was mostly about cracking down on illegal units and rentals that don’t meet basic habitability standards. At first glance, this might seem like a step towards a safer and saner rental market in Santa Cruz. Will this finally be the end of uninsulated garages listed as studios (at $800 a month) or two-bedroom bungalows crawling with rats and mold (at $1400-1600)? Maybe it will, but it’s going to cost us.

The rental ordinance was part of a deal made between the City and the University in 2008. City officials have debated it for years, and only recently has it taken its final form. The city has been asking the university to house more students on campus for a long time. Understandably so, since the city is under pressure from homeowners who feel like college students and their parties are ruining their quiet Westside neighborhoods. The ordinance is a response to this pressure.

The rhetoric behind the rental ordinance is aimed at “illegal units” or rentals that don’t meet basic habitability standards. The ordinance calls for periodic inspections of rentals, to be paid for by the rental owners. Rental owners must correct code violations that are found, which may lead to displaced tenants. Even Mike Rotkin admits that this displacement is inevitable. Property owners are angry that they have to pay while some renters are afraid of getting thrown out of the only rentals that they can afford.

Tenants are also worried, and rightly so, that the rental ordinance will drive up rental prices. There are two main reasons for this. The first is that the ordinance passes costs onto landlords, who will in turn pass them onto tenants. The second reason is that the most affordable rentals in this town are the obviously illegal ones. By eliminating these, many people will be priced out of the remaining rentals.

It would be naïve to think that the ordinance is actually about protecting renters. To understand who the ordinance actually serves, we can see who stands to benefit financially. The $322,000 budget for the rental ordinance is paid in half by UCSC. The rental ordinance is part of a push by UCSC to house two-thirds of the student population on campus in the next phase of campus growth. Connecting these facts, it’s obvious that the UC can make a significant amount of money by housing students on campus. By raising rental prices in town, the university can entice students to move onto campus. Sharing a room in a university apartment costs more than $1500 a person for the 2010-2011 school year. For that to be cheaper or more appealing than housing in town, rental prices in town will need to go through the roof.

Though this ordinance will address the concerns of homeowners, desperately clinging to their property values, and of the UC, which wants to capture student’s rental money in the wake of its financial implosion, ordinary renters in Santa Cruz will bear the brunt of its effects. As rental prices increase, our wages won’t. We will be forced to pay higher prices and, unlike some students, Mom won’t be footing the bill.

The proposed campus expansion to accommodate the students would develop 120 acres of previously undeveloped land around UC Santa Cruz. The very forests that attract students to Santa Cruz will be destroyed to accommodate them. Those of us who have nothing to gain from campus expansion are also losing a precious wild space. This may be ground for interesting alliances. Those of us who care about rental prices have common ground with those who want to protect wild places.

Capitalism is full of false choices. The rental market in Santa Cruz has asked renters to choose between pricey habitable rentals and less-expensive shoddy rentals. That we might want affordable and habitable rentals is, to them, laughable. Recent efforts by groups like Santa Cruz Solidarity, which bills itself as a “mutual support network for tenants and workers”, are interesting attempts at demanding both.

There is a pressing need for working class folks in Santa Cruz to stand up for themselves. I hope that this article creates conversations among friends, sipping 40’s or sipping coffee (or both, for a really crazy time), about the current situation in a new light. As working class folks, we need to come together to defend our interests. Those with money and those with power are organized to exploit us; we need to organize to defend ourselves.

5/14: SC Graffiti Fest!

2011-05-03T12:22:00.000-07:00

CALLING ALL AEROSOL ADDICTS! The Cesar Chavez Co-op in sunny Santa Cruz, California will be hosting a fucking graffitti/street art extravaganza. On May 14, from 12-9 pm.

This is a benifit for local Graffiti Artists/political prisoners who have been recently fucked over by the thought police in Santa Cruz, and have to pay thousands to the leeches in restitution.

There will be LIVE graffiti art and mural paintings by dozens of local... and bay area artists

WORKSHOPS on wheatpasting, stenciling, screenprinting, Graffiti technique and how to avoid heat!

AWESOME YARD SALE! w/ dope gear to boost your swag!
BBQ and 1$ beers. fucking tattoos! piggy pinata!

MUZAK by:
-DIESEL TYME- OAKLAND, 40oz RAPPER/DJ
http://www.myspace.com/dieseltyme

-BENNY 2 BARS- NEW JERSEY, Gutter RAP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbNdLPcYqwQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0NURmM9QZ8

-FORTINBRAS- SANTA CRUZ, AL BUNDY HIP-HOP
http://www.myspace.com/flawlessfortinbras

BUT WE NEED YOUR HELP! to organize workshops and discussions on all the fucking sick ass shit that you know about, and to perform/beat box/spit hot fire/turf it up. ALSO WE ARE STILL LOOKING FOR MORE GRAFF ARTISTS!!! wanna get involved? email us at:
pisces.swim@gmail.com

heres a brief outline of whats gona be fuckin crackin:

Workshops from 2-6pm:
-know your rights training
-screen printing
-wheat pasting
-stenciling
-graff basics: highlighting, fonts/lettering

Discussions from 3-5pm:
-cover your tracks, protect your neck (tips and tricks to evade Johnny Law)
-Creating a graffiti solidarity network
-Re-thinking graffiti/political graffiti

Pig Pinata with cop attire, 5:30pm!

MUZAK FROM 6-8PM!!!
tattoos and tagging and yard sale and bbq the whole tyme!

wanna perform? wanna tag? fucking do it and hit us up.
pisces.swim@gmail.com

Interviews With the Class Warriors PDF

2011-05-02T23:33:00.000-07:00

A .pdf of this zine, originally published in Australia in some wacky-ass A4 paper size, is finally together. An inspiring look at the class character of crime; full of exciting stories and intriguing ideas.

While some things about the zine and its analysis falls short of a total critique (the word "cunt" used as a term of derision, for instance), there is much to be learned in the United States now from Australia then. After UK Class War Federation broke up in the late 90's, Aufheben wrote this piece, criticizing class war for, in many more words, being poseurs--worth a read.

The .pdf is posted in the posters/pamphlets section of the site.