CrimethInc. Ex-Workers Collective

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? Yet 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.

This is the Third Precinct in Minneapolis, today. https://cwc.im/ThirdPrecinct When we say abolish the police, we don't mean beg politicians to defund them. We mean take grassroots action to prevent them from continuing to do harm—until flowers grow in the wreckage of their system. Abolishing the police means developing ways to resolve conflicts and address crises that do not depend on concentrating all coercive force into unaccountable institutions. It is a project that extends from our interpersonal relationships to mass action against state violence.

Drawing on interviews with local anarchists and ecologists, we explore the colonial roots of the ongoing catastrophes that Hurricane Ida has exacerbated in Louisiana and discuss how communities of resistance can create truly resilient infrastructure. https://cwc.im/Louisiana2021

To directly support autonomous relief efforts in and around New Orleans, donate to New Orleans Mutual Aid Group and Lobelia Commons via Venmo: https://venmo.com/nolamutualaid https://venmo.com/lobeliacommons Be sure to set your Venmo to private if you don’t want your transaction publicly visible.

The View from New Orleans An anarchist nurse working at a hospital in downtown New Orleans reports on the impact of the hurricane—and discusses what it means for all of us. http://cwc.im/HurricaneIda “Coastal cities are home to the a large portion of the country's population and some of its most beloved culture—and they're probably going to become uninhabitable.”

Massive banners reading "prison abolition" hang once more at the Yerba Buena Island tunnel connecting San Francisco and the East Bay. One reads "8/21"—the date of the countrywide call for "Shut’Em Down" demonstrations: https://itsgoingdown.org/shut-em-down-roundup/ The other reads "9/9," recalling the prison strike of 9/9/2016: https://abolitionjournal.org/the-abolition-collective-solidarity-statement-with-sept-9-national-prisoners-strike/

As people flee Afghanistan, this is a reminder of where refugees come from: the majority of them are fleeing economic and political destabilization inflicted by Western governments and corporations. One way to act in solidarity with Afghans is to fight against laws criminalizing immigrants. http://cwc.im/borders

Read text here: https://crimethinc.com/posters/the-shadow-of-the-past-holds-the-future-hostage

America is an amnesiac, waking up from unconsciousness. Whose lands are these we’re living on, where did all this money in our wallets come from—and why are people trying to kill us? Can we work out our true identity before the end of the movie? What is the meaning of this image burned into our brains, the twin towers that fall over and over? Oppressed by their ominous absence, we can only conceive of the world in dualities: terrorism or militarism, danger or safety, peace or war. Our own lives, our own questions, whatever those might be, are unimaginable. Who built those towers, who trained the ones who brought them down? Who stands to gain from our fixation on them? What would it mean to reject the terms they offer us, to refuse our role in the story entirely and make for the horizon?

For the record—we mobilized against the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the occupation of Iraq starting in 2003. We oppose the Taliban and all authoritarian militarism, but we have always believed that only grassroots local resistance can defeat them. Military intervention can't create peace, only suffering and instability. It always leads to more reactionary violence—from the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq to the Taliban victory this week. Against state militarism—for a global network of autonomous resistance. These posters are nearly two decades old. You can find them, and countless others, in our poster archive: https://cwc.im/posters

Afghanistan: The Taliban Victory in a Global Context https://cwc.im/Afghanistan2021 A veteran of the US occupation of Afghanistan discusses this defeat for the US imperial project, framing both the occupation and the Taliban in the context of a worldwide wave of authoritarianism.

We Carry a New World in Our Riots https://cwc.im/SouthAfricaJuly2021… Should we understand the looting that took place in South Africa in July 2021 as the consequence of a clash between factions of the ruling class or as an expression of revolt in response to desperate conditions?

Brazil: Only Revolt Can Bring Down Bolsonaro https://cwc.im/Brazil2021 Ahead of the 2022 elections, Brazil is now reprising the same dramatic showdown that the United States faced in 2020. As the pandemic intensifies alongside corruption scandals and the unrestrained plundering of Indigenous lands, Jair Bolsonaro’s government faces pressure from the streets and the left wing of the state. But what will it take to unseat him and break out of the patterns that brought him to power?

Today marks seven years since a Ferguson police officer murdered Michael Brown, sparking a revolt that set the template for uprisings from Baltimore to Minneapolis. https://cwc.im/lootingback Thank you to all who have risked their freedom in the ongoing struggle against police. 🏴