4.30.2009

Mke: Solidarity Attacks with I-69 Arrestees

On Friday the State of Indiana arrested two people in connection with resistance to the construction of Interstate 69.

We are entirely unwilling to accept such actions by the State. To express our deepest solidarity with those arrested, we attacked four condominiums in Milwaukee's Riverwest neighborhood. We smashed windows and glued locks. In particular, we targeted "green" condo developments. Next time we will be even more dreadful. The most revolutionary form of solidarity is to deepen conflict. We have identified the same faults, and are glad to be the contradiction that will rip them wide open. We won't stop until we've derailed, burned and scattered the ashes of the "unstoppable train" that is this social order.

As always, eternal war on capital in all of its ugly permutations and forms.

Yours,
the wild ones.

from Milwaukee IndyMedia

4.28.2009

Woman tears up grass doing 'donuts' in Millennium Park with stolen ambulance

A northwest suburban woman allegedly stole an ambulance from a hospital in Park Ridge Monday evening and drove it into downtown Chicago, tearing up the grass in Millennium Park before she was arrested.

Estera Bulbucan, 25, of the 9100 block of North Lincoln in Des Plaines, was charged with damage to public property, a misdemeanor, and possession of a stolen motor vehicle, a felony, according to Central District police.

Bulbucan allegedly stole the private ambulance about 5:30 p.m. from Advocate Lutheran General Hospital, 1775 Dempster St. in Park Ridge, and was arrested about 7 p.m. at 30 N. Michigan Ave., near Millennium Park, police said.

A police report stated that Bulbucan was observed sitting in the driver's seat of the Advance ambulance, and as park security approached, she drove off in circles, tearing up the grass in the park before the security officers flagged down Central District tactical unit officers, who stopped her and determined that she did not belong in the vehicle. She was arrested and charges were approved about 10:40 p.m. Monday, according to police News Affairs.

from the Trib

4.24.2009

STFU

I don't mean to contribute to the hysteria that tends to develop in the immediate aftermath of someone's arrest, so first I'll recommend re-reading Harold Thompson's classic Staying Free by Shutting the Fuck Up: Anarchist Survival Guide for Understanding Gestapo Swine Interrogation Mind Games (that's a mouthful).

A couple folks in Indiana were arrested today related to anti-I-69 organizing, and folks at the Finding Our Roots check-in point here in Chicago have noted that a pig was asking questions and showed a photo of someone they are still looking for, although it is unknown if these two situations are related.

If you are an activist who has experienced harassment because of your political beliefs (or your perceived political beliefs) please call the National Lawyers Guild "Green Scare Hotline" 1-888-NLG-ECOL.

warrants & updates here

Boy calls pigs on their shit, gets ass beat

Chicago police are looking into an accusation that police beat an autistic 16-year old boy whose parents say got "scared" and ran from officers, WGN-TV is reporting.

The boy's parents said the incident took place about 10 p.m. Wednesday near their place of business in the Little Village neighborhood on the Southwest Side. They said he was standing outside when he was approached by two officers. The boy ran and police chased him, cornered him and one officer hit him so hard with his club that the boy required eight staples in his scalp, the parents told WGN.

"It's not nice hitting other people like that," the boy told the station. "Try asking more nicely."
from the Trib

Parking meter revolt continues

Over the course of the past few weeks, readers have sent us more photos of vandalized meters, and we've come across them, as well. Meters clogged with expanding foam and super glue, stolen meter heads and parking meters knocked over by cars.

A reader named Gary, who sent the photo of the bent meter, when asked if he thought it was the result of vandalism stemming from the meter rate increases said, "All I can tell you is that this meter was straight a few days ago, but after the rates went up, I found this meter like this."

pics and more at Expired Meter

Anarchist attacks around Chicago Wednesday

Why do we fight? Why do we even attempt to fight the totality of domination and exploitation? If what we seek is a world in which we are free to truly express our desires, then we must create it by destroying all relations based on power and commerce. These three targets were chosen for that reason.

Last night, April 22nd, an Olympic ad was defaced and altered in East Pilsen. This target was chosen simply because we refuse to allow the city and its corporate pals to celebrate the intensification of capitalism and the displacement of people.The three sided ad originally had glorified pictures of athletes and the word "Imagine". The largest side now reads "NEVER" and has a nice big circle A as well. The right side now reads "Imagine RIOTS".

The next target was a building owned by capitalist land lord Podmajersky. Podmajersky is a major force in the gentrification of Pilsen. Once you look, you can see his high rise condos and buildings that plague the area all around. Two windows were smashed on a building owned by Podmajersky near his headquarters on Halsted. A third window was smashed with a parking meter that bore a message. The message reads "Dear Racist Capitalist Scum, You and your tenants are displacing us. This is our response and it is only the beginning." And we left a winking smiley face at the bottom just for you, Podmajersky!

But do we really need a campaign to attack all these oppressive institutions? Do we need any other reason then to destroy all relations based on domination and capital? To highlight this point, a large window was smashed and another window was damaged on a Standard Bank near the Sheridan red line. We did this for no other reason than to attack an institution that perpetuates our misery and feeds off our exploitation. Do we want the system to change or do we want its total abolition? Even if the city doesn't get its corporate circus and even if all the capitalist scum like Podmajersky stop gentrifying our neighborhood, we will continue to attack. Insurrection ends when domination does.

Towards a Spring Social War!
from Chicago IndyMedia

an interesting related article from the Sun-Times

4.23.2009

Finding our Roots, April 24 - 26

Finding our Roots has posted its schedule and descriptions of the workshops for this weekend's conference.

Saturday 11-12:15
Department of Space and Land Reclamation: 8 Years Later
Gentrification: Containment, Displacement, Yuppie Infestations, and the Resistance to Come Which Way To Nowhere? A Short History of Anarchist Spatial Theory and Practice

Saturday 12:30-2
“The Left is Dead”: “Ultra-Cutronism” and the “Anarcho-Autonomous” Milieu
Bash Back 101: Tactically Queering Environments
Let’s Organize the Hood: Organizing in Poor Communities of Color and Among Impoverished Populations

Saturday 3-4:15
The Politics of Nonviolent Action
Mad Liberation and Safe Space

Saturday 3-6
Collective Living Spaces: A Roundtable Discussion
Teaching and Organizing In, Around, Alongside, and Between the Spaces of Academia

Saturday 4:30-6
Spaciality and Transformation
Prison as a Liberated Space: Anarchism and The Revolutionary Prison Movement of the 1970’s

Sunday 11-12:15
Anarchist Alternatives to Coerced Living Spaces
Creating and Maintaining Anti-Authoritarian Queer Space
The Seizure of Space and the Public Sphere: Enduring Lessons from the Zapatistas

Sunday 11-2
Relationship Anarchism: A 3-part Workshop

Sunday 12:30-2
Creating Safe Space in an Unsafe World: Supporting Survivors Whilst Respecting Their
Autonomy
Grey Pollution and Electronic Toxicity
Leisure’s Role in Space and the Anarchist Movement

Sunday 3-4:15
Demilitarizing Space
Public Sex and Social War
Sobriety Within the Struggle
A Return to the Land

Closing plenary, Sunday 4:30-6
A History of Anarchist Spaces in Chicago

Tweens trash car dealership

MILWAUKEE--Surveillance video shows several suspects destroying dozens of brand new cars parked on the Don Jacobs car lot at night. The damage is severe... broken windows, ripped interiors, dents, and smashed windshields.

"We can't believe how much damage they did," Don Jacobs General Manager Andy Haros said.
from TMJ 4

4.19.2009

Chicago Insurgent Network's First Strike at the City Of Chicago and the IOC

There has been a recent spark of sabotage among Chicago's residents in regards to the coming Olympic bid, the economy, and gentrification in general. An Olympics 2016 "Imagine" billboard was altered near the intersection of Diversey and Elston Aves last night. The buildboard now reads a truer sentiment: "Imagine (A) Social War". To give them a taste of what we meant, 30 parking meters and 2 ATMs were disabled; later in the night, the locks were glued shut on a Chipotle and a T-Mobile store.

The infamous CPD have scared us into hiding for too long. Spring is here, a season of renewal, and the time to act is now. The city continues to demean us with their Olympic advertising and corporate pride, giving free 2016 shirts to the same members of our communities who'll be displaced if we recieve the bid; all the while using symantics like Obama's: "hope", "change", "imagine". The state won't wait to destroy our communities, so we can't wait to fight back.

The words echoed on the billboard, foretelling of SOCIAL WAR, are just the beginning. We will continue to strike, in the dead of night, when you least expect it. Though, there is one thing you can expect: an all out riot on the streets of Chicago in 2016, and continuous, more and more rapid struggles and direct action from us here in these communities, already ravaged so much with poverty, stricken with fear, and with (almost) nothing left to lose.

from Chicago IndyMedia

4.12.2009

Murderous Chicago pig confronted at courthouse


A melee broke out this afternoon after a bond hearing for a Chicago police detective charged with drunk driving and causing an auto crash two days ago that killed two people.

Joseph Frugoli, 41, was ordered held in jail in lieu of a $500,000 bail at the noontime hearing.

As the hearing ended, dozens of friends and relatives of the two victims spilled out into the halls of the Cook County criminal courthouse. Moments later, loud shouting could be heard echoing from the hallway near the courtroom and a fight then broke out, causing several Cook County sheriff's police officers to rush from the courtroom, their radios bursting with chatter.

Officers eventually pushed the crowd outside the main entrance of the courthouse, then across California Avenue onto a grassy area. Tense moments ensued, as people in the crowd hurled epithets at the police.

As of about 12:45 p.m., 10 officers stood guard in front of the courthouse and much of the crowd remained.

Cook County Sheriff's spokesman Steve Patterson said the family and relatives apparently became infuriated at the bail amount, and left the courtroom talking loudly. Once outside, they confronted passersby "insisting this was a travesty, that the police are covering this up, that because he's going to be released it's all a conspiracy," Patterson wrote in an e-mail.

from the Trib

4.08.2009

Direct action against potholes

What to do when there are potholes on your street and the city won't pave them fast enough?

Patch them yourself.

That's what a West Side organization did today. Residents from the Austin neighborhood bought four bags of Quikrete from Home Depot for $50 and used shovels, rakes and a roller to fill about seven holes on the 4800 block of West Van Buren Street.

"The city's not doing it so residents need to take the matter into their own hands," said Elce Redmond, organizer with the South Austin Coalition.

The group fronted the $50 for the bags of asphalt mix. Neighbor Ernest Roberts luckily had a 50 pound roller in his garage -- left behind by a previous owner.

Roberts complained about Mayor Daley's slow efforts in repairing potholes in the neighborhood.
"He's too slow to getting around to here," he said.

Chicago Department of Transportation spokesman Brian Steele said that the agency plans repairs based on the volume of 311 pothole complaints and the amount of traffic streets experience.

CDOT received just one call about potholes in the 4800 block of Van Buren in the last two months, he said. The agency has repaired about 300,000 potholes since Dec. 1 and hasn't received state funding for resurfacing since 2006, he said.
from the Trib

4.07.2009

FYI

New sport-utility vehicles arriving in Chicago police districts have officers concerned after discovering gaps in the cage between the back and front seats.

The gaps have been covered with a heavy-duty plastic and secured with Velcro, police sources said. But some officers are concerned a detainee could still break through.
The gaps have been covered with a heavy-duty plastic and secured with Velcro, police sources said. But some officers are concerned a detainee could still break through.

Greg Bella, a Fraternal Order of Police official, said he worries a detainee "could push the plastic, reach around and choke the guy in front."
thanks to the Trib

Protestors to convince IOC Olympics are bad

A small group of protesters has gotten the attention of the International Olympic Committee inspection team that’s in Chicago to take a closer look at the city’s bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Nine people from the group No Games Chicago carried a banner that read "Shut Down the Olympic Bid" this morning outside the Fairmont Hotel in downtown Chicago, where the IOC evaluation team is staying.

Soon after, a spokeswoman for the protesters said they’d gotten word that the IOC team would meet with them later today.

from the Sun-Times

4.06.2009

New Midwest anarchist zine

Although I disagree with their assertion the Midwest is a dead-zone of radical activity, a neat little zine has come out called Words & Letters. It seems to be based more toward the Great Plains areas and is a welcome addition to the developing activity in the Midwest.

4.03.2009

Anarchist Olympics: Chicago 2016 mural defaced

Someone defaced a 2016 welcome mural on the Mural Building in the 1700 block of North Ashland Avenue, in an incident that was discovered this morning. Police were called to the building about 7:55 a.m, authorities said.

The damage appeared to have been inflicted with paintballs and workers were already on the scene about an hour later, painting over the splatters.

The former warehouse, which faces the Kennedy Expressway just south of Armitage Avenue, was the site of traffic-stopping ads featuring then-Chicago Bulls player Dennis Rodman for now-defunct clothing retailer Bigsby & Kruthers.

from the Trib

4.02.2009

Anarchist Olympics begin: Local Artist Collective Welcomes the IOC

This past week has left us feeling inspired. The bus stops ads, corporations supporting the bid, flags everywhere, buses themselves, the Olympic spirit has gripped the city. Never have we felt such a sense of pride in our greater community. We owe it all to these fine people, who have been kind enough to grace us with their presence for the week. Word got out about the soiree they were having last night, and we felt the need to do something to show them how the city feels, much more than dinner and drinks ever could. We couldn't hide our passionate pride for one more day.

April Fools you fucking idiots!

Last night we paint bombed two billboard monstrosities overlooking the Kennedy expressway. They were Olympic advertisements, just like the ones you see every time you turn your head. Except bigger. We kindly suggest fellow citizens to find friends, some eggs, or paint and bombard the advertisements that are trying to sell gentrification, police oppression, profits for the rich, and annoying tourists.

We Won't Pay!

Fuck the corporate circus, Sabotage the Olympic bid.
edited for readability, from Chicago IndyMedia