Chicago antifa crush "White Pride" march

It was a beautiful Sunday Spring afternoon where the Illinois National Socialist Front were supposed to march for “White Pride World Wide”. But for the few Nazis that dared show their face in the city of Chicago, there was nothing but a barrage of blows raining on their parade.

Southside ARA had been scouting in the downtown area early on, watching out for neo-Nazi skinheads and other white supremacists. Within minutes of their pathetic march of four boneheads waving white pride flags, clandestine anti-fascists took formation and confronted them, successfully delivering U-lock justice to the unsuspecting Nazi trash with trained precision. In broad daylight on Michigan Avenue, Nazis helplessly had flags ripped from their hands and were beaten down as pedestrians watched in awe. Later, a police car pulled up and arrested the bewildered and injured boneheads while the anti-fascists swiftly dissapeared into thin air. Showing up seconds later, the pro-diversity / anti-hate rally laid the final icing on the cake by surrounding the humiliated and obviously defeated boneheads and taunted them with chants, holding a rally directly in the path of their march.

from SSChicago ARA

ARA call-out against Chicago White Pride World Wide rally

On March 21st, 2010 the Illinois National Socialist Front is planning to march in Chicago for what they call “White Pride World Wide.” South Side Anti-Racist Action is making plans to confront the march to let them know that they are not welcome in our city. ....

The INSF’s intention to march in Chicago shows that they are growing bolder and aren’t go away unless we take a stand.

South Side Chicago Anti-Racist Action is calling out for other groups inside and outside of Chicago to stand with us against fascism. Join us to confront the National Socialist Front’s march on March 21st!

Given some revious events and SSARA's targeting of several Chicago WP happenings, antifa momentum seems to be gaining power. The Chicago Branch of the Imaginary Party offers an analysis of these occurances and some possibilities for antifascism, however, they cryptically conclude that "anti-fascism may be doomed to run aground the same rocks as identity politics and single-issue struggles." Unfortunately, the CBIP doesn't follow this claim further.

Other endorsers of the call include the Four Star Anarchist Organization, a platformist group; News & Letters, a weird Marxist group; and the Gay Liberation Network, the largest and most activist gay rights organization in Chicago. We fondly remember the legacy of Chicago ARA, arguably one of the fiercest antfia crews among the Midwest ARA sections, themselves arguably the fiercest region during the 90s and early 2000s.

Whether this incarnation of Southside ARA can fulfill itself in the streets is yet to be seen; the company kept (within and without) is a strong symbol to others about what can be expected, whether they can be trusted, whether they can be strategic. Without the INSF having revealed its plans yet, a strategy of public head-to-head confrontation (with police in between) can only continue to seek supporters and then respond when the specific terrain is selected; the one location that can be assured is the political terrain.

The CBIP essay argues the strength of the Phoenix action lay in its framing of the discourse: "Anarchist/Fascist" rather than "Democracy/Fascism." It also recognizes the limitation of this discourse: the waging of private hositilities. Their suggestion is that the tactics of antifascism can be applied elsewhere, and this can generalize the struggle. Yet, we see this as an inversion -- to us, this is the logic of single-issue applied outward. Instead, generalization would mean the application of communizing tactics to the single-issue, such that it dissolves as a single-issue and cannot be resolved as such.

Can't stop chaos.

read Callout to Confront the INSF

Cabrini Green anti-eviction blockade announced

We are kicking off the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaing this Tuesday with an eviction blockade to stop Lenise Forrest and her family from being evicted from Cabrini Green for owing back rent. She had a payment plan under previous management but the new management has refused to recognize it and is trying to put her out on the street. She is appealing the eviction but the Sheriff is still scheduled to evict her Tuesday morning.

from Chicago IndyMedia

An evening with Liam Sionnach

What's better than the late '90s hardcore scene and early '00s anti-globalization activists traveling through your town and eating all the garbage at your so-called collective house?

IEF insurrectuals making it fucking rain.

“Social Justice or Social War?”
Friday | September 11 | 7pm
UWM Union | room 280

from the Institute for Experimental Freedom

Police from 68 DNC protests to hold reunion

eThe reunion, the policeman's son said, was simply for Chicago cops who worked together some 40 years ago -- something he wanted to do for his father and his father's friends.

But the span of four decades has not been long enough to eradicate the searing memories of the 1968 demonstrations during the Democratic National Convention. And when "Chicago Riot Cops Reunion" organizers wrote on their Web site that "the only thing that stood between Marxist street thugs and public order was a thin blue line of dedicated, tough Chicago police officers," the fight was back on.

"Are these guys nuts?" asked Marilyn Katz, a protester at the 1968 convention in Chicago and now a president of a communications firm here. "Do they think it's really good PR for them?"

Chicago Copwatch, an activist organization that tries to document police misconduct, swiftly organized a counter-rally at Ashland Avenue and Lake Street at 6 p.m. Friday, the same night as the reunion. They plan to a march to the Fraternal Order of Police lodge, where the reunion is being held.

from the Trib
see also Copwatch

Police Brutality at Bash Back! Convergence

Just hours ago [the night of Saturday, May 30], a bunch of radical queers took to the streets in Boystown Chicago, singing chants and dancing to music being blasted through a boombox. Minutes after we started marching, cops showed up. We proceeded to march and wait for them to tell us to get out of the street. But they didn't. Instead they ran a police car into the back of the march, running over one person. Then they proceeded to run out of the cop cars with their weapons raised high and chase down whomever they could. Randomly picking some people out of the crowd, they beat them continuously, dragging them through the streets, pushing people down, etc, yelling faggots as they hit them.

from Rusty's Blog, more to come as available

Finding Our Roots: Notes on an Impossible Meeting

“Ultra-Platypus is here to embrace the degeneration.”

A few friends met in Chicago this weekend to attend a workshop titled: “The Left is Dead”: “Ultra-Cutronism” and the “Anarcho-Autonomous” Milieu

The intended discussion (”Ultra-Platypus has been trying to figure out what this anarcho-autonomous milieu is”) was not to be had, for the Platypii caught wind of their own flatulence, though for once the stench was too hefty for them as they saw the modified “Ultra” attached and came running. The Platypii showed up in two large groups, one in the back left corner of 6 or 12 people (they all sat close and huddled together, but as more than half the room was immensely boring I wasn’t sure who was simulacra of leftist Platypii or not) and one in the front right corner of 3 others (they came in late). Throwing eye and hand gestures from back corner to front right corner of the room, whispering amongst their small circles, all to try to make the most ideological correct response at the oedipal moment when the name of the father (Platypus or Cutrone) is disgraced.

And disgraced it was, as the presentation, to the chagrin of anyone with a serious intent to revive the corpse of the left, was utterly absurd, hilarious, and a well-performed satire. As the slideshow of riot porn, naked boys, and S&M photos were rolling, the presentation switched from discussing the Tarnac 9, to violent denunciations of the leftists we still are (”We’re meager and pathetic.”), the three point program and strategy (see above), and a general silence and defiance from the presenter who knew to not engage with the Platypii on their own loopy ideological circular dialogue for any reason whatsoever.

Some snippets of words spoken by the presenter: “Demand for total social revolution falls flat…My individual actions do nothing…Our greatest hindrance to experimentation is the left…” and “What to do with your friend networks?…abnormality… Exert power. Be strategic…Build a war-machine…Attack the Left.”

Coining a non-existent splinter group only to see the Platypii show up was partly expected, it was their big day to show how smart they were! Well, to be honest, we actually knew they were coming from the stupid listserv discussions they were having. The Platypii showed up, went on a power trip, made everyone a little too tense, asked for a critique, and were answered by the presenter in a show of eloquence: “No, I do not give a fuck about Platypus."

excerpted from Principia Dialectica

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

NSM rally under the arch in St. Louis

The National Socialist Movement, America's Nazi Party[,] announces that it will rally under the Arch in St. Louis, Mo.[,] on Sat., Apr. 18th[,] from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.

This is the same group at the blunt end of the anti-fascist riots in Toledo a few years ago.

This week, Calgary saw a cat-and-mouse chase of a neo-Nazi by Canadian anti-fascists. Some wack claiming to be a spokesperson from Calgary ARA condemned attacks against the Aryan Guard, but we're hoping this was a slip of the tongue and not ARA going soft on fascism.

Coming Insurrection

A wave of refusal in Rome, an occupation in New York. The trashing of a factory in Dongguan, the mobile blockade of interstates in DC. Flames in Athens, riots in Oakland.

Every day we're moving farther from the total stupidity of all political and social milieus. The coming insurrection will be a revolt whose terrain is everywhere and whose weapons are blockades, strikes, sabotage, and solidarity: the inseparable embrace of building power and insurrection.

It is in new social formations and new forms of attack that our potential lies. This is the emergent threat of social war, our war.

Thursday March 5th 7pm at the CCC in Milwaukee there will be a multi-media presentation, talk and discussion touching on a veritable multitude of topics ranging from the ideas of the Invisible Committee's 'The Coming Insurrection', recent sustained rioting in Greece, the state-of-exception, the ever present yet new impending forms of global crisis of capital and a perhaps newly realized terrain of global civil war.

This event is free. People are encouraged to bring food and ideas to share. There will also be free literature available on topics relating to the presentation.

from Mke Indymedia

Insurrectionary discussion

I've been informed that someone from the magazine A Murder of Crows will be in Milwaukee on March 5 to speak about a synthesis of "The Coming Insurrection" and insurrectionalism in the U.S. Apparently they are working with semiotext(e) to publish an improved English translation of that text. Presumably the event will be held at Milwaukee's CCC but I'll post more info as it comes in.

Additionally, I don't think I've advertised it here yet -- Chicago Bash Back is hosting the second national Radical Queer Convergence May 28-30.

"We’re building a civilized space here"

Finding Our Roots is seeking workshop proposals for its third conference at the end of April. The first theme was "Theory" and the second theme was "Organization," this third year's theme is different in that it seems to offer more opportunity for different types of proposals (beyond simply presentation/lecture) -- "Space."

Why and how is space important to anarchists, and so often central to our struggles? What do we mean when we talk about “anarchist space”? What different spaces have anarchists created and struggled to keep and maintain; how have these spaces functioned and thrived, or failed to do so? What kinds of anarchist spaces exist currently, and how are they serving anarchist community as well as contributing to larger struggles for liberation and against capitalism? Examples could include infoshops, multiuse spaces, housing collectives, squats, farms, gardens, parks, free schools, workers’ collectives, or any other space dedicated to radical purpose and used by anarchists as a focal point or staging ground of struggle.

How are anarchists involved in struggles around space, both within and beyond our community? What kinds of spaces exist (or attempt to) within larger radical spaces: Why, for instance, are queer space, women’s space, or space by and for people of color important; how do these and other marginalized/oppressed groups use space as part of their struggles and organizing?

How does space operate within the social landscape and the machinations of capitalism? How can anarchists support and join poor and disenfranchised peoples’ struggles around space, such as fights against gentrification and displacement?

Potential workshop topics include but are not limited to: Gentrification and anti-gentrification struggles, squatting, community, Europe’s autonomous radical communities and their role in popular uprisings (ie, the recent events in Greece), self-sustainability in urban or rural environments, decolonization and resisting the police state, the relationship of anarchists to anti-imperialist/nationalist struggles for autonomy, Queer space, safe space, space as a human right, the use of autonomous spaces by oppressed groups, “spiritual space” - anarchism and non-hierarchical spirituality, the history and practice of anarchist spaces, problems of unity vs. fragmentation within anarchist space, collective living, workers’ collectives and non-hierarchical workplaces, reclaiming the commons, democratizing/infiltrating media space, the “infoshop movement,” reclaiming corporate and governmental spaces, “anarchist space” and its intersection with other spaces of resistance.

Yet, I also wonder whether such a vague theme will increase the likelihood of the same old cookie-cutter discussions and workshops, the same old activist outlines getting new names, annual NCOR presentations changing around a few words to fit the 'theme' but not changing in substance. This is kind of just my whining -- I'll of course go to FOR, and I'm not sure yet if I'll have anything interesting to contribute, I recognize how difficult it can be to put together an interesting presentation. But how much of the conference is going to be devoted to recycling the same old thing -- essentially working to reproduce anarchist ideology -- rather than using this gathering of anarchists, this "anarchist space," to learn and try new things together, to experiment with space?

Proposal and other information is available through the link above.

We must abandon all models, and study our possibilities

The anarchist reading & discussion group on the Comiso Dossier is being held this Wednesday, November 19, 7pm, at the Lichen Lending Library: 1921 S. Blue Island. Bring questions, answers and energy.

Anarchist Reading and Discussion Workshop

Discussion around the Comiso Dossier (from Insurrection magazine). I'm not the host but volunteered to be a contact.

Pick up print copies of the Comiso Dossier at anti-Olympics meetings and at the Lichen Lending Library (1921 S. Blue Island). Or write to this address [xxx], and we can get you a copy. Articles for discussion will be highlighted or marked.

The actual discussion will happen sometime around November 19. Be in touch to get the time and location.

We're reading this because we think it presents some vital ideas for anarchist organizing here, especially in the wider community and with opposition to the Olympics, though we're certainly not proposing a fixed model. Here's a description of what the Dossier covers:

In the early 1980s, Italy was in the grip of repression and state-sponsored terror, as the forces of order worked to violently dismantle the massive and inspiring social movements of the previous decades. While many revolutionaries were hopelessly demoralized and disoriented, others pushed ahead without pause.

In Sicily, some of these anarchist comrades moved to oppose the installation of American cruise missiles in the rural community of Comiso. Refusing to play the game of negotiation or compromise, they worked directly with other local people to organize rebellion against the construction of the base. The form of struggle was the self-managed league- autonomous groups that brought together anarchists with the wider population, while excluding all the parasites of the Left.

These experiences are not so far removed as we might sometimes think. They reflect is an entirely different model of anarchist organizing, one constructed against overwhelming odds, but which contain many lessons for us. While we have frustratingly little access to these experiences, the Comiso Dossier is an important and inspiring collection of historical and theoretical documents. Our reading group will cover the basic history, but we want to move on to practically discuss anarchist strategy today in light of past transformative moments.

Anarchist Halloween Parade

Friday, October 31st
4:00pm gather, 5:00pm step-off
Wicker Park

Take to the streets dressed as your (least) favorite capitalist monstrosity this Halloween for our fourth annual "Capitalism Gives Me The Creeps!" Halloween march.

We will gather at 4:00pm in Wicker Park (the park itself - one half block south of the Damen Blue Line stop). Step-off will be NO LATER than 5:00pm.

Bring props, banners, and fun as we take a slightly different route this year!

Who's Treats? Our Treats!

A Chicago Really Really Free Market

BashBack, a queer & feminist anarchist group, is hosting a 'Free Market at the end of the month. Some laud the concept as an example of how an anarchist "gift economy" might work; I have mixed feelings about the degree to which a 'Free Market is a worthwhile long-term project or an anarchist model for the future.

Nevertheless, a 'Free Market can be a good place to score some free stuff and spend a pleasant afternoon. 'Free Markets have seemed to follow a similar path as Food Not Bombs as a place for anarchists to meet up and share with one another and extend that to others.

Having lost Kirsten Brydum Bash Back wants to start a long over-due Really Really Free Market.

We recently lost an amazing activist. Close friends report that the body of San Francisco activist Kirsten Brydum was found Saturday in New Orleans, where Kirsten had traveled as part of a popular education tour. Kirsten was known locally as an organizer of the Really Really Free Market in Dolores Park, a monthly gathering to freely exchange goods and services with no money, trade or barter.

In memoriam Bash Back would like to put on a Chicago Real Really Free market!

October 26 from noon to 5pm
The triangle in between Ashland Milwaukee and Division

What is a really really free market?
It’s a market where everything is in fact free. But it’s more then that. Everything can be traded and bartered for, or just given. It’s also teaching people skills so they can care perform services for themselves in the future.

What can you do?
Sign up for a table! Is there a good or service you and folks in your community can offer for free? Then email bashbackchi (at) riseup.net and tell us what you can provide.

Things we’d like to see:
Literature
Food
Clothes
Bike maintenance and repair workshops
Haircuts and lessons
Silkscreen workshops
Massages and lessons
Theater workshops
Crafts
Art
Music
Anything! Everything!