CrimethInc. Ex-Workers Collective

Today is the anniversary of the beginning of the Hungarian uprising of 1956—a good day to revisit our text "There’s No Such Thing as Revolutionary Government." https://cwc.im/government You can’t abolish class society without abolishing the asymmetry between ruler and ruled. That means abolishing the state.

"She told me that she didn’t call herself an anarchist because she didn’t feel that she deserved to—she didn’t do enough. I asked her if it was OK for us to call her one. She said she’d be honored." https://cwc.im/LeGuin Happy birthday, Ursula Le Guin.

This article from The Intercept provides the previously concealed details about how Facebook equates anarchist publishers with armed militia groups—and how Facebook's policies disproportionately target already marginalized demographics. https://theintercept.com/2021/10/12/facebook-secret-blacklist-dangerous/

From Toppling Statues to Liberating Spaces https://cwc.im/TopplingStatues How do we ensure that what grows up in place of the statues of Columbus that people toppled last year will fulfill the emancipatory ambitions of those who toppled them?

Oakland, California, March 4, 2010

On the second week of October 2011, the Occupy Wall Street movement spread across the US and even the world. After NYC protesters agreed to a basic ethos of horizontalism, direct action, and self-organization, they managed also to withstand multiple attacks by the NYPD on their demonstrations and encampment. This movement emerged on the heels of struggles in the UK, in California, North Africa, Spain, and Wisconsin. https://cwc.im/Nightmares In the months and years following Occupy, many sincere activists and opportunists alike sought to recreate some of its bright enthusiasm and innovation. Today, it is likely that the same will occur in the aftermath of the 2020 George Floyd protests. Instead of memorializing what has been accomplished or bemoaning what has disappeared, it can be helpful to revisit the general sequences and contexts immediately preceding these moments, as we are more likely to recognize parallels in the previous chapters of rising action than in the peaks of revolt, which can often feel timeless and without parallel to participants and spectators alike.

Max Chafkin claims that In a secret meeting in 2019, Mark Zuckerberg made a deal with Jared Kushner that Facebook would not fact-check political speech in the run-up to the 2020 election—and in exchange, the Trump administration would not regulate Facebook: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/peter-thiel-silicon-valley-contrarian-max-chafkin.html This tracks with our experience. In 2020, Facebook claimed to be banning militia groups, but instead, they banned us and several other anarchist publishers: https://cwc.im/BannedonFacebook After the ban went into effect, militia groups used Facebook to mobilize armed vigilantes to Portland and Kenosha, where one of them shot three people. It's no exaggeration to say that Facebook is trying to create a brainwashed populace for the sake of tyranny.

Max Chafkin claims that In a secret meeting in 2019, Mark Zuckerberg made a deal with Jared Kushner that Facebook would not fact-check political speech in the run-up to the 2020 election—and in exchange, the Trump administration would not regulate Facebook: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/peter-thiel-silicon-valley-contrarian-max-chafkin.html This tracks with our experience. In 2020, Facebook claimed to be banning militia groups, but instead, they banned us and several other anarchist publishers: https://cwc.im/BannedonFacebook After the ban went into effect, militia groups used Facebook to mobilize armed vigilantes to Portland and Kenosha, where one of them shot three people. It.

Today, it's been 10 years since Occupy Wall Street kicked off, bringing anti-capitalist ideas to the mainstream in the US. In this twitter thread, we explore the history of Occupy: https://twitter.com/crimethinc/status/1438803505121316864 If you're not sure why anyone would be critical of capitalism, start here: https://cwc.im/work

Berkeley, California

RIP Scout Schultz, killed by Georgia Tech Police

On September 16, 2017 anarchist, anti-fascist, engineering student, and queer activist Scout Schultz was shot and killed by police on Georgia Tech campus in Midtown Atlanta. Two days later, a small revolt took place following a vigil on campus in which mourners clashed with police and burned a police cruiser. In the days to follow, law enforcement from across the city coordinated a sophisticated campaign of repression against the friends and loved ones of Scout, dragging people out of classrooms, and arresting people at their homes. This harassment eventually drove Scout’s ex-partner Dallas Punja to take their own life, as well as Kirby Jackson, who was arrested and charged for their participation in the revolt. We documented some of this repressive sequence as it was unfolding, a small contribution to help provide sense to a confusing and painful moment. In March 13, 2020 District Attorney Paul Howard decided he would not press charges on Officer Tyler Beck, who still works for the Georgia Tech police department. https://crimethinc.com/2017/10/05/scout-schultz-remembering-means-fighting-mourning-a-queer-activist-and-anarchist-murdered-by-the-police .

The Craziest Walk Ever https://cwc.im/CraziestWalk On September 11, 2001, two young anarchists who had come to DC to prepare for an anti-capitalist mobilization stood before the flaming wreckage of the Pentagon, looking into the disastrous future that we now inhabit. This is their story.

On the Fires in Greece https://cwc.im/GreeceSeptember2021… The Greek government has used both the pandemic and the wildfires as a pretext to clamp down on refugees and social movements. Yet ecological catastrophes may soon put many Greeks in the same situation that refugees entering Greece face today.

As the statue of Robert E. Lee comes down in Richmond, remember, the state is doing that because movements compelled them to via direct action—and those movements were fighting for much more. A chronology of statues toppled during the George Floyd revolt: https://cwc.im/StatuesDown

Instituted by conservative president Grover Cleveland to sap momentum from anarchist May Day events celebrating worker struggles, #LaborDay glorifies the process by which—every other day of the year—our labor alienates us from our potential. https://cwc.im/work Just a few hundred years of labor under the market economy have dramatically transformed the surface of the earth—destroying ecosystems, driving species into extinction, melting the polar ice caps. If the market really gave us self-determination, is this what we would be doing? The more unevenly distributed wealth is—and the bitterer the competition to hoard it—the less freedom everyone has. The poor, because they must serve the wealthy; the wealthy, because they must compete so that someone more ruthless can't take their place. Capitalism ≠ freedom.