Social War Milwaukee

A "total destroy!" to the anonymous comrades who started Social War Milwaukee.

For SWC's rather small Mke archive, check out the milwaukee tag.

Milwaukee couple steals for fun

A doctor and his wife arrested for shoplifting at a Macy's store near Milwaukee told police they did it for the thrill. The doctor, who told officers he makes more than $150,000 a year, said his wife suggested they take what they wanted. So they took turns serving as a lookout while the other took items -- more than $1,500 worth -- from just about every department in the store, police say.

from the Sentinel Journal

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

UWM Teaching Assistant Arrested in East Side Vandalism

Police arrested a University of Wisconsin Milwaukee graduate student and teaching assistant on Monday after he turned himself in.

What police want to know: is he part of group of 20-to-30 anarchists intent on committing violence?

The vandalism was extensive and expensive for east side businesses. Windows were smashed late Friday night by an apparent anarchist group wearing black ninja costumes.

They did more than $25,000 in damage at five businesses near Prospect and North.

Alert eyewitnesses saw several people leave in a car that lead police to an east side home.

It's where the UW-Milwaukee teaching assistant lives.

He wasn't interested in talking to us about his arrest. But police searched his home and found black clothing including hats and gloves, a sling shot and some material on anarchism.

Police are now searching his computer.

The suspect's lawyer Robin Shellow said, "They have found nothing that distinguished him from tens of thousands of university and college students across the country."

So far, police have only one suspect but they are looking for as many as 20 or more. Are they students? Where they recruited? Is there an anarchist movement on campus? Those are questions police are trying to answer.

UWM student Nick Adams doesn't think there's an anarchist movement on campus but he says if the allegations are true against the teaching assistant it will another black eye for the campus.

"It doesn't make anyone look good at all," said Adams, "We already have enough problems as it is."

The district attorney is still reviewing the case - charges could come Thursday.

from TMJ

Ninjas trash Milwaukee businesses

Broken glass littered the sidewalks in the North Avenue area near Prospect and Farwell, as group of suspected anarchists left their mark in that section of Milwaukee's east side.

The vandals are accused of breaking windows late Friday night at a U.S. Bank Building, Whole Foods Market, Bruegger's Bagels, and Qdoba.

Witnesses told police that a group of about 20-30 vandals dressed in black and wearing masks committed the vandalism.

Police are looking into whether the damage was related to a protest earlier in the evening by a group of self-titled "anarchists" in the Riverwest area.

video here

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

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

Bash Back: Solidarity With All Cop Killers

On March 26th, Bash Back! operatives dropped a banner from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Union. The banner read only: "We (heart) Lovelle Mixon."

There have been a ton of Web arguments over the banner and the situation.

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.

Yes, we ARE ninjas!

I just thought this was cute (even with the weird typo in the last line), in regards to the Milwaukee vandalism the other day. Anarchists need more witty replies:

Nearing bar close Monday morning the 19th of January, as we walked a few wandering drunks asked us if we were ninjas. One of us quickly replied "Yes, We ARE ninjas" and then seconds later the group continued on forward and proceeded to smash both ATMs, smash at least 9 windows (some of them bullet proof), destroy one camera and spraypaint "This is war" on the drive up window facade of a US bank building in Milwaukee. The group then seemingly disappeared.

Our laundry list of solidarity is far too long. We recognize that what we are up against is not a series of mishaps, corrupt and evil corporations, the good gone bad, but a system of control, and to act in solidarity is to work toward the annihilation of this control through acts of willed connectedness (as well as the fracture of what separates us).

This broken bank is but one contribution toward the discourse we are building.

We would like to contribute that we start believing again in the myth that we are a force to be not to be reckoned with.

from Mke Indymedia

We become powerful in shared moments

Anarchist insurrectionalists in the U.S. seem to have been keeping themselves busy recently. In the Bay Area, numerous solidarity attacks took place in the wake of the Oscar Grant protests and riots.

In Milwaukee, even after two folks were arrested this weekend in connection with ongoing investigations into the RNC protests, a U.S. Bank was smashed up and tagged with an anarchist symbol.

In Olympia, an audacious bunch attacked a police station with torches and rocks, trashing at least one police car in addition. A fairly creative reportback offers motivations and a look into ostensibly the northwest anarchist scene, though the issues seem as though they would resonate beyond:

All of the ingredients are here. We have each other, we have our friends and the friends of friends. But we are usually consumed with our lives and the things which fulfill us. We know that insurrection would fulfill us, but that, of course, is something which will never happen here. Mobilizing those around us for a common purpose seems to be impossible. And when we actually get 25 or 39 or 76 people on the street, we are flooded with a cacophony of criticism for everything we should have done and did not do. Sometimes this criticism comes from friends. And when we ask why they were not there, they reply, “I did not want to be disappointed.” With these friends, we continue to go to parties and shows.

It's interesting that although there are numerous references to the Coming Insurrection, authored by "The Invisible Committee," the conclusion of the reportback suggests invisibility as a drawback:

But our invisibility, so far, has made us irrelevant. In the United States, our invisibility is no different than other invisibilities: invisible murders, invisible poverty, invisible misery. We do not grow stronger with our invisibility. We rot with it. And no one outside our circles knows that we exist.

The Invisible Committee take an opposite stance, seeking power in insivibility:

Visibility must be avoided. But a force that gathers in the shadows can’t escape it forever. Our appearance as a force has to be held back until the opportune moment. Because the later we become visible, the stronger we’ll be. And once we’ve entered the realm of visibility, our days are numbered; either we’ll be in a position to pulverize its reign quickly, or it will crush us without delay.

So, which is it? The Olympia authors equate invisibility with isolation -- for them, the invisibility of the U.S. anarchist scene is not a force gathering in shadows but an irrelevant subculture. Visibility is relevance, and relevance is reality: "we need to convince our friends that we are real and that our desires and rage our real." Ergo, the degree to which one is "real" is the degree of visibility one has.

This points to a tension within forms of clandestine action. The nature of the action demands degrees of silence on the part of the participants, yet the ability of the form to spread is dependent upon the degree of attention and mediated coverage the act receives. The value of insurrectionary acts lie in the nature of the relationships formed and transformed, not the particular acts themselves. But it is the particulars and not the relationships that are the focus of attention in the aftermath of such an act.

The emphasis on visibility as a pathway toward insurrection is a recipe for spectacular actions escalating in militancy without gathering the social strength to defend themselves. The desire to be visible may distort the reality of irrelevance and lead to dangerous and foolhardy measures taken by a minority with delusions of grandeur. I don't mean to speak ill of actions like those in Olympia, only to caution against the mindset this communique seems to encourage with lines like, "Everything is cumulative, and one expression of anger fuels the next one." Anger is fuel, but it burns hot and dies fast.

Be safe.

Petty criminality and the social war

Reprinted from Milwaukee Indymedia, some anarchists in Milwaukee put together a list of actions and things that happened in their area in 2008. It's a list of mostly minor vandalism and banner drops here and there, and as such its posting received some criticism of being a "social bore" for not being connected to wider social struggles.

For Chicago, a list this long of graffiti and vandalism throughout the city could probably be compiled on a daily basis -- none of it necessarily having the kind of 'political' or social intentions that many of these have, but the actual impact, perhaps, being more of a nuisance to city government and property owners.

Is this the central purpose these types of acts -- nuisance and economic damage? One suspects that if that were merely the aim, then it would be unnecessary to write messages or issue claims of responsibility and revolutionary treatises about them. Who is the intended recipient of these messages and who actually receives them? What is actually conveyed?

Portions of this blog are dedicated to being a "crime blotter" of sorts and seem to glorify (fetishize?) certain acts of criminal behavior -- even those without political intentions -- and while I can't speak to the motives of the Milwaukee anarchists, my own reasons for spreading news of such acts are directed both within and without the anarchist (or radical/activist/etc) milieu.

Anarchists are often suckered into the Leftist self-absorbed delusion that our acts are paving the way towards revolution. It's perhaps a reflection of our need to convince ourselves that we matter, that our ideas are the correct ones, and that we are productively using our time to achieve a fantastic goal. We see this in the distortions and fabrications of report backs from conferences, convergences and actions and the rhetoric posing as critical analysis and strategy. Even lists such as the one below can contribute to this, inasmuch as these activist gestures can be mistaken for signs of social conflagration.

We need to put our own actions into context and not be convinced that our having an analysis of capitalism and government makes what we do any more important or meaningful than the thousands of acts of subversion, revolt and empowerment that regularly take place in the lives of those who have never read Bonano and don't give a fuck about twinkle fingers.

To the extent that those who desire to exacerbate social conflict can differentiate this desire with reality (as in the authors' description of these acts as "efforts over the last year to experiment with conflict"), the anarchist crime blotter serves the opposite function of the police crime blotter -- whereas the latter inspires fear, the former inspires (dare I say) hope. We feel all around us of the watch of panopticon, the sense of futility, the inability to achieve our desires. The anarchist crime blotter shows us that the state is not all knowing, all seeing, all powerful. Whether it's a bank robbery, a bricked window, a graffiti tag or an occupied factory, individual and collective acts of revolt against the alienation, violence and drudgery of capitalist life offer (to me, at least) the reminder that there are always cracks in this system, and the future is not necessarily bleak.

Beyond that I'm reminded of an explanation of the essay "Why I Love Shoplifting," and that its purpose was not necessarily to convince anarchists to start stealing but to encourage thieves to take a look at the social context of their daily activities, and perhaps to begin dreaming of larger adventures -- what's the line? Better to loot than 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.

As far as I know, Chicago anarchists do not have a collection of clandestine acts of 2008 to glorify this New Year's Eve. We speak to one another of our quieter victories, relish our survival for another year, and take stock of our possibilities for the future. And we have this cool banner from a Greek riot solidarity demonstration a couple weeks ago:

###

This is a compilation of some actions that happened in the Milwaukee area during 2008. It is in no way a complete list, nor does it give an accurate reading of all the resistances and conflict within the city (inherently permeated by them). The minor and major contradictions of everyday life within a city explode and take form in a multitude of effects, but what has been compiled here are what appear to be conscious efforts over the last year to experiment with conflict and build off of these experiences - to act in concert, in solidarity, for themselves or for fun, etc.

A more thorough analysis and elaboration of the direction things seem to be headed in is in order.

January 8th: two banners dropped reading "destroy the election" and "choose your own adventure" claimed by some milwaukee anarchists
http://mke.indymedia.org/en/2008/01/209003.shtml

January 17th: three banners dropped reading "whoever wins we lose", "9-1-08, st. paul, it's on!" and "let the end come: 9-1-08" claimed by some milwaukee anarchists
http://mke.indymedia.org/en/2008/01/209062.shtml

January 17th: anti-RNC graffiti on condo developments that read "shut down the RNC" and a circle A.
http://mke.indymedia.org/en/2008/01/209067.shtml

Febuary 5th: banners dropped reading "victory against politics", "9-1-08" and "shut down the RNC" on the national day of action against the elections called by Unconventional Action.
http://prod.milwaukee.indymedia.org/en/2008/02/209185.shtml

Febuary 5th: bannners dropped in osh kosh reading "Demicrans and Republicrats both fuck working class" and "8.24.08 Receate68.org / 9.1.08 NORNC.org."
http://prod.milwaukee.indymedia.org/en/2008/02/209183.shtml

March 18th: recruiting center on Oakland ave vandalized with spray paint and window broken for anniversary of the war in Iraq. http://mke.indymedia.org/en/2008/03/209413.shtml

March 20th: Anarchists and Anti-Authoritarians from around the Midwest blockade downtown Milwaukee and halt traffic for about 30 minutes leaving fences, news paper boxes and trash bins in the middle of the roads in wake of their path. 4 people were arrested.
http://mke.indymedia.org/en/2008/03/209446.shtml

March 24th: The CEO of Oshkosh Corporation, Robert Bohn, arrived at the Oshkosh Country Club to give a presentation to the future business leaders of the world finding a message for him painted across the front entrance and door. It read 'You're Days Are Numbered Bohn (A).'
http://mke.indymedia.org/en/2008/04/209595.shtml

March 31st: It was reported that early in the morning the intersection of Highway 21 and Sawyer Avenue was blockaded. Dumpsters and their contents, along with other debris, were strewn across the intersection effectively blocking it for morning rush hour traffic. An altered road sign was placed in front of the toppled dumpsters reading 'Road Closed Due to War.'
http://mke.indymedia.org/en/2008/04/209595.shtml

March 31st: Two banners were spotted within the city of Oshkosh. One was hanging from a security fence in front of an Oshkosh Corporation Defense factory. It read 'Oshkosh Says Fuck the War Truck.' The other was hung on a guard rail overlooking Highway 41. It read 'End the Slaughter in Iraq.'
http://mke.indymedia.org/en/2008/04/209595.shtml

March 31st: Around a dozen people gathered at the headquarters of Oshkosh Corporation dressed as robots. They were accompanied by a shopping cart fashioned into an Oshkosh Truck which was devouring a young child while robot techno was blasting out of its mouth. The people played games and danced for a little over an hour bringing laughs, frowns, and looks of intense frustration and disgust to the faces of Oshkosh Corporation employees and police alike.
http://mke.indymedia.org/en/2008/04/209595.shtml

June 7th: Bash Back Milwaukee and Anti-Racists throw water balloons filled with glitter at Nazis who came to pridefest to protest.
http://mke.indymedia.org/en/2008/06/209763.shtml

July 4th: Army Recruiting Center vandalized again with "get the fuck out" as well as a circle A and circle e sprayed on the front of the building.
http://mke.indymedia.org/en/2008/07/210010.shtml

July 5th: Four Milwaukee area Starbucks had their locks glued and were closed for prime hours of business as an action for a international day of action against Starbucks.
http://mke.indymedia.org/en/2008/07/210009.shtml

August 14th: "A gang of anti-hipster hooligans trashed an Urban Outfitters in Milwaukee." Displays were flipped over and merchandise strewn into the street outside.
http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20080814231116379

September 1-4: Many autonomous actions happened throughout the city of St. Paul and Minneapolis, in attempts to "crash the convention" or simply experiment with possibilities for going wild.

November 5th: Police car attacked at Riverview dorms in Riverwest
http://mke.indymedia.org/en/2008/11/210468.shtml

November 5th: ATM attacked and vandalized in solidarity with people facing state repression
http://mke.indymedia.org/en/2008/11/210472.shtml

November 5th: USA Today newspapers throughout the city were wrapped with a false cover the claimed "capitalism wins at the polls" and "anarchy brewing in the streets."
http://mke.indymedia.org/en/2008/11/210469.shtml

December 13th: Two banner drops in solidarity with RNC Arrestees and Greek Rioters that read "Solidarity means attack: this is global social war" and "Burn Greece Burn: Alex was here"
http://mke.indymedia.org/en/2008/12/210552.shtml

December 13th: "At least 21 ATMs, banks, and businesses had their locks glued or were otherwise vandalized all across Milwaukee" in solidarity with RNC arrestees.
http://mke.indymedia.org/en/2008/12/210568.shtml

December 20th: Chase bank in Osh Kosh had its locks glued and paint thrown at it.
http://www.mke.indymedia.org/en/2008/12/210607.shtml

December 20th: "Vandalism claiming solidarity with greek anarchists, and denouncing police officers" reported to be seen all over Milwaukee.
http://www.mke.indymedia.org/en/2008/12/210604.shtml

Milwaukee Network for Social War Communique #1

Something I found posted on Milwaukee Indymedia. It's interesting to see the proliferation of the use of the term "social war" and the spread of insurrectionalist tendencies -- Santa Cruz, Olympia/Seattle, Vancouver, Portland and now Milwaukee are becoming notable hot-spots of, at least, insurrectionalist chatter. The contemporary expression of insurrectionalism deserves a look here at some point.

This is critique as attack from those who attack as critique. It is an attempt to make apparent what is evident to us: a separation between the ideology and practice of activism and those who seek a complete destruction of this world (domination in its totality) in search of the unknown world of possibilities that lie only in its ruin. Recent conversations have shown it to become more and more necessary to articulate this divide most importantly for ourselves and others still open to possibilities.

As capital has accumulated and thus reproduced the world, so have good intentions.

The ever constant activity of the activist in their efforts to petition this, reform that, vote, educate the masses, and always with the guidance of them and others as experts, perpetuate the logic of alienation. Theirs is a relationship managed and on the terms of the state, whose goal is always the maintenance of dominance by whatever means. And while they may have good intentions in their reactions to an always expanding set of outrageous issues, the many contradictions within capitalist social relations, they merely assimilate themselves into the disease from which no cure can be found within. To the extent that they adopt and perpetuate this ideology, they spread disease.

This disease is the same disease we've been building for thousands of years, dead yet alive in its spread of social decomposition and society as prison. It is the corpse of our social relations, conditioning the reproduction of the expert, hierarchy, and class division. This corpse in the mouth of the activist vomits out not only how life should be lived, but also how it should change, effectively changing nothing.

Always there is that feeling of unreality, estrangement, otherness, that stinking fucking smell underneath the stairs of our everyday lives.

To the pathetic calls for unity, mediation, compromise, restraint in our discourse with our conditions, our reply is "we'd rather not."

Our conditions are a social war.

Our social war is discourse.