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olling Thunde

UE NUMBER N INE / SPR ING TWO-THOUSAND TEN / AN OPERAT ION OF THE CR IMETH INC . EX -WORKERS COL LE

an anarchist journal of dangerous living

Jobs prevent us from working together,Schools from educating ourselves,

Hospitals from healing ourselves,Governments from self-determination,Police from seeing that justice is done,

Courts from sorting out our conflicts,Prisons from learning from our mistakes.

Newspapers keep us informed about eventsRather than involved in them,

Ensuring that public is precisely that which excludes.

Only in resisting can we find each other

And ourselves.

If you truly want to understandsomething, try to change it.

Kurt Lewin


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Setting the Tone

Introduction

Glossary of Terms

Masks, Gestures, Rupture

Breaking News

Breaking the Frame:Anarchist Resistance to the G20

Coast to Coast Occupations:Inside the Campus Occupation Movement in the US

Pulling the Fire Alarm in the Marketplace of Ideas:Anti-Fascism and Liberal Backlash

Analysis

Not Just Free Speech, but Freedom Itself:A Critique of Civil Liberties

From Our Overseas Correspondents

The Smash EDO Campaign:How Single-Issue Campaigns Can Build Movements

Scene Reports

Pittsburgh in Anarchism, Anarchism in Pittsburgh

Old news

Anarchists Traveling through History:Kropotkin Escapes

Reviews

The Autodidacts Revenge:Anarchy Alive!and Politics Is Not a Banana

And

The Professor

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4

8

14

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47

59

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95

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104

You can watch people align When trouble

Some prefer to be clAt the top and other

Close to those atIts a question of who frigMore and whom they wan

J

TableofContents

RollingThunder Issue Nine, Spring 2


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Rolling ThunderP.O. Box 494Chapel Hill, NC 27514

ROLLING THUNDER: A JOURNAL OF DANGEROUS LIVIssue Nine, Spring 2010

[email protected] text set in Whitman, titles and captions set in Flama,

combined with images by the Paul F. Maul Artists Group.Table of Contents photo by Medyan Dairieh

Note: No actual typewriters were used in the production of this magazine.

urruti meant this literallyit was the height of t he Spanish

vil War, and he was arguing that anarchists had to hold ontoeir arms at all costs. They might lose an engagement, butlong as they kept their weapons they could go on fighting.We can also read it as more general advice: stick to your guns,t stay mobile. If you want to take on capitalism and the state,

u have to preser ve your capacity to fight through all thenfrontations, calamities, and compromises that await you.olding territory isnt nearly as important as the circulation ofbversive currents throughout the entire social terrain. Dont

your enemies surround you; dont get trapped in privateudge matches with more powerful adversaries or in tacticsat produce diminishing returns.During the protests against the G20 summit in Pittsburgh,s meant turning away from the police lines around the con-

rence center to make for other parts of the city. It could alsoean rethinking where to take a stand in more general terms,justing strategies and frameworks to keep up with the times.might even involve choosing to lose some battles in order

intensify conflict in the long run. Sometimes the risk is notat you will lose the barricade but that you will hold it whilee struggle moves on without you.

uch of the material in this issue deals directly or indirectly

th questions of legitimacy. There are many kinds of legiti-acy: legitimacy accorded by the state, legitimacy in the eyesoutside observers who may intercede if they perceive anustice, legitimacy in the eyes of potential comrades who willn you if you seem to have your act together. If nothing else,

u have to viewyour ownconcerns and desires as legitimateorder to be able to act on them, and this is often the greatestallenge of all.Like everything else, legitimacy accumulates unequally inpitalist society. Suggesting that anarchists should simply build

legitimacy in the public eye is akin to saying we should justve up enough money to buy ourselves an egalitarian utopia.ot only is this impossiblethe whole reason money exists is

to make it impossible. The only kind of legitimacy we know is

based in languages of exclusion, languages written to shut us out.Yet like it or not, some kind of legitimacy is absolutely es-

sential for going head to head with the state: if you have neitherallies or visibility, if you cant explain why youre justified instepping out of line, the powers that be have no incentive not

to crush you outright.Legitimacy can also circumscribe your options, however.

Defending your right to march on free speech grounds may winyou the grudging permission of the police, but it wont make a

case for why you would want to live in a world without them.Likewise, certain identities may make it easier to get away withthings in a given context, but they often impose limits on whatyou can achieve. Student is a good example of this; localis another, protester yet another, citizen perhaps the most

classic example of all.As students, it may be possible to persuade a wide range

of people that you are entitled to occupy a building on yourcampus in protest. But by framing yourselves as students, you

determine the trajectory of your revolt; it makes sense for stu-dents to protest tuition hikes, but as soon as you start to fightfor something not proper to your social category youre backat square one. You also limit your relationships with allies:if your justification for why you are entitled to take over the

street is that you live nearby, that rules out the assistance ofoutsiders who would otherwise be happy to help you defendit. This phenomenon plays out in countless other ways; thosewho wish to make thoroughgoing changes must ultimatelydestabilize class, identity, and legitimacy themselves.

Legitimacy is like any other kind of territory: the more yougain, the more you stand to lose. This can really tie your handswhen it comes to picking the rifle over t he barricade. Coun-terintuitively, the same group of people can sometimes besignificantly more powerful when they identify themselves

with alesslegitimate category. As students, no one feels entitledto get too rowdy, not even the anarchists in a crowd: for theidentity of student is associated with a certain docility, and the

Its not therifle that you have

moment a person breaks that veneer she abandons the identitythat validates her participation and risks discrediting the entire

group. Conceiving of themselves as anarchists, however, themembers of the same crowd suddenly have nothing to loseonthe contrary, the skys the limit.

Groups that go beyond legitimacyin this way can end upwith more leverage on the authorities than those who play

by the rules. But this leverage comes with all the dangers oflegitimacy: it is yet another stake that must be risked before itcomes to stake us down.

For good or for ill, Rolling Thunderhas as much legitimacy as

any publication revolutionary anarchists are making these days.As the publishers ofDays of War, Nights of Love, we cant affordto be haphazard with our scholarship; you can be sure that if itappears in these pages, weve done our utmost to confirm and

corroborate it. For fear of bogging down the reader inwe dont always cite sources, but those who desire to

about the youth of Peter Kropotkin or the movemenduring the G20 should contact us.

Academia isnt only exclusive be cause of the hentry: the implication of all the painstaking researsiduous editing is that the voices of those who are l

or articulate are less worth listening to. Those are to reproduce in the anarchist movement. At the sthe good thing about blingingis that it can raise morcommunity and challenge your comrades to expethemselves. We want people to read this and say to t

if they can publish a glossy magazine about fighting thmuch more can WE do? We hope to do with legitimacaspire to do with all the currencies produced by capita

hijack it where we have to, and undermine it wher

barricade but theto hold on to.

Jos Buenaventura Durr

ROLLING THUNDER SUBSCRIPTIONS: Four issues in two years, $22 U.S. / $25 GlobalGet more info and order online at www.crimethinc.com/rt

RollingThunder Issue Nine, Spring 2010 SetSetting the Tone Issue Nine, Spring 2010 RollingThunder


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AddictionOne pictures a strung-out cokehead or a shud-dering junkie wandering the streets. But anyone

familiar with the industry knows that selling ismore habit-forming than usingand that goesfor every other racket as well.

BlingAn expression for expensive, ostentatious jewelry

or clothing that entered circulation via hip hop,expanding to cover status symbols of all kinds and

the flaunting thereof. As Audre Lorde might have

said, the masters jewels will never dismantle the

masters house. Hip hop is hardly t he only milieuin which status symbols are glorified, unfortu-nately, although the symbols themselves vary

widely from one context to another. For example,

anarchists may find this term useful to diagnosetheir comrades intellectual pretensions:

My new zine cites, like, Hegel and Butler and

Kristeva and Blanchot, too! From the singularity

to the totality, I got it all, know whatm saying?Crazy Kabbalistic references and shit!

Aw, man, you dont understand any of thosemotherfuckers! Youre just blingin! Seriously,whats any professor ever done to get you upout of your job at the caf?

Blood Bank Is there any other kind?

CapabilitiesOne does not suffer nearly so much from onesinadequacies as from ones unfulfilled capabilities

CarsickSickened by the motion of a vehicle in which

one is riding; on a larger scale, sickened by themotion of the vehicles in which everyone elserides (see Global Warming)

Christmas

An ancient pagan holiday occurring around thewinter solstice, celebrating a variety of deitiesincluding sun gods, sons of God, and, mostrecently, Mammon

ConvictionA firmly held belief, or the quality of demonstrat-

ing that one is firmly convinced of what one be-lieves; alternately, the legal consequences thereof

Corner the MarketGenerally, its the other way around

DelegitimizationSelf-proclaimed, self-described, likewise

rambling. Of course, anyone with the atten-tion span fostered by modern corporate mediawould find War and Peacerambling.

EducationJust as some liberals seem to think everyonecould be a professor if only people would stay in

school long enough (see figure i.), some radicalsseem to think all that is lacking for revolutionis for the masses to be sufficiently educated inradical theory. On the contrary, it is practicethat teaches.

EntrapmentScrawled by an FBI agent on a photograph of aninexperienced activist: Suitable for framing

FreeganIn the 1940s, needing a term to designatecomplete abstention from animal products,Donald Watson gutted vegetarian to coin the

word vegan. In the 1990s, anticapitalists suspicious of theexpanding market for cruelty-free commodities adjusted this

neologism to freegan to describe total avoidance of exchangeeconomics. But in a world still dominated by capitalism, manyother marketplaces loom beyond the marketplace properthemarketplace of ideas, for example, in which some self-describedfreegans decided they should sell the idea of not buying things.

Fast-forward a decade, and freeganism has been covered indozens of newspapers, radio shows, business and fashion maga-zines, and television programs. Of course, in order to fit thestory into the narrative of the corporate media, it is necessaryto emphasize that freegans are neither homeless nor destitute:

freeganism is a political statement, a canny improvement onbargain-hunting, or simply another lifestyle preference, butin any case nothing that would discomfit bourgeois viewers.No desperate expressions of need here! It turns out that even

garbage is granted legitimacy and value sooner than the peoplethrown away by the capitalist system.

One can imagine an ocer of the NYPD, having seen one ofthese news programs, accosting a homeless person rummagingin a trash can: Heyget outta there, you! Dont you know

there are nice college students who depend on that for food?

Free WillEveryone who lives under capitalist democracy chooses toaccept it of their own free will. Of course, Your money or your

life!is a choice, too.

Global WarmingWho knew a few gas stations could turn the world into a gas chamber?

JargonThe first refuge of a scoundrel

Inevitability

Neither death nor taxes!IrrefutabilityThe hallmark of a useless point

LeftThat is to say, gauche

Leftism

Causes without effects

LeftistOne ensconced in left field

LibertarianIn the United States, a partisan of all the freedom money can buy;everywhere else in the world, a partisan of all the freedom it cant

Majority RuleA ruse to placate an otherwise unruly majority. The most stablestructure for a society based on coercion is to promise power ona rotating basis to whomever can assemble a majority: this gives

everyonean incentive to maintain such a society, in hop

will get to wield that force themselves one day. (See D

MaterialismA value system prioritizing material possessions aboIn certain ideological frameworks, this masqueradediose theory of history, complete with a messiaha

brought on by the proper material conditionspromasses all the possessions they desire.

MonoglotIts bad enough to know only one languagehow m

not even to know all of it!

Noble SavageA myth invented by, and serving the interests of, sav

NostalgiaAint what it used to be

Nouveau Riche

Waiter, Ive had soup du jour, and this is no soup du

OntologyThe study of the nature of being. Who says academia

PastA contested territory obscured by forgetting, whicand remembering, which transforms

PatriarchyIn the workplace, women start out as secretaries anmoted to lovers; in wedlock, the process is reversed

PrivatizeA word which, tellingly, has no opposite in the capita

publicize describing something else entirely

RomanceAn airborne STI. Symptoms include increased sensitiv

sound, and taste; decreased vulnerability to sleep depriva

elements; and general delirium, which in extreme cases can

a complete reevaluation of priorities. Like all STIs, new o

feared by those in both monogamous and polyamorous re

and associated with all sorts of threatening possibilities. I

circles this fear has been expanded into a religious creed, ch

by a general suspicion of all intense or transformative e

stick to bland foods, sleep dreamlessly, and stay out of th

ScreenA surface onto which pictures and movies are project

which data and images are displayed, e.g., on a televcomputer monitor; alternately, and perhaps not coin

a device to block or conceal

Smart BombTalk about a dumb idea!

Glossary of Termsdescent to the ninth circle of the

figure i.What a pity

not enough education.

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Word of the Issue:Entitlement

While the privileged generally feel entitled todo as they please regardless of the consequences

for others, the oppressed often find it moredifficult to justify asserting their own interests.Consequently, they sometimes contrive elabo-

rate legitimizations of their desires in the termsof their oppressors.

Following the death of Tsar Ivan the Terrible

in 1584, rule of Russia passed into the hands ofthe aristocrat Boris Godunov. All Ivans chil-

dren were dead by the end of the century; Dmi-tri, the youngest, died of a stab wound undersuspicious circumstances in 1591.* However,twelve years later, a young man appeared inthe west who claimed to be Dmitri, saying he

had escaped assassination and was returningto claim his rightful throne. Godunovs regimewas widely hated, and supporters flocked tothe standard of the new Dmitri; townspeopleacross southern Russia overthrew their lo-

cal governments and declared allegiance tohim, pinning all their hopes on his insurgency.After Godunov died in 1605, a great part ofthe armed forces changed sides; finally, the

population of Moscow rose up and toppledthe government, welcoming Dmitri as thenew Tsar. The mother of the original Dmitriaccepted him as her son, and many others

vouched for his authenticity.Less than a year later, Dmitri was assassi-

nated in an aristocratic coup, and his bodyexhibited in Red Square. Yet announcementsand letters continued to appear in the mur-

dered Tsars name, and the southern provincesreturned to rebellion. An escaped slave namedBolotnikov, carrying a lette r in Dmitris hand-writing proclaiming him commander-in-chief,took charge of the rebel forces; soon half the

nation was in their hands, and they laid siegeto Moscow. Dmitri himself did not appear,but captured rebels swore to the death thathe was alive.

* This marked the end of the dynasty founded by the legend-ary Rurik in the 9th century, though later Peter Kropotkincould trace his lineage to that chieftain. Kropotkins fellowrevolutionists teased that he had more right to the thronethan Tsar Alexander II of the ruling Romanov family.

At length, the siege was broken, and Bolot-nikovs forces were themselves besieged. In fall

1607, when they were on the verge of defeat,a man professing to be Dmitri appeared in thewest, convening another army. Bolotnikov ar-ranged to turn himself over to the authoritiesin return for his soldiers going free; he was

imprisoned and murdered, but his men flockedto the new Dmitri, and soon Moscow was onceagain besieged.

The siege lasted for a year and a half. In 1608,Dmitris wife arrived at the rebel camp and

recognized the new Dmitri as her murderedhusband. Even after this Dmitri was killed inDecember 1610, it was only a few months before

another appeared. The unrest continued until

Poland and Sweden invaded and the Russianruling classes were finally able to consolidatecontrol in the course of mobilizing a national-ist defense.

Many historians regard the string of Dmi-

tris as nothing more than the repetition ofa cynical ploy, but one could also interpretTsar Dmitri as a collective identity, a mythany rebel could incarnate. For example, afterDmitri was assassinated in 1606, his friend

Molchanov became Dmitri just long enoughto inspire a new outbreak of resistance. Laterthat year, Tsarevich Petr, a poor cobblersson who assumed power among the rebels by

identifying himself as a fictitious relative ofthe slain leader, nonetheless set out in searchof himeven though Dmitri had been killedtwice by then, and doubtless would have known

that he had no nephew Petr! Likewise, when

Petr was killed, a Tsarevich Fedor appearedat the head of 3000 Cossacks, claiming to bePetrs younger brother; it also turned out thatthe nonexistent Tsarevich had an uncle, Tsar-

evich Ivan-Avgust. Dozens of other beggars,peasants, and escaped slaves became real orinvented noblemen via this kind of transub-stantiation, andmore strikinglywere ac-cepted by their countrymen as such.

Perhaps, in such a stratified society, it waseasier for an entire nation to convert to a sortof magical realism than for the oppressed anddisaected to rise up in their own name. Aspeasants and slaves, their agency was mean-

ingless, illegitimate; but as the Tsar, or at leastwarriors in his service, they became literallyentitled to it (see figure ii.). Despite their tribu-lations under the autocratic system, it came

more naturally to found a struggle upon theimpossible fantasy of a just, rightful Tsar thanto reject Tsardom altogether.

All this begs the questionwhat Tsar is notan imposter?How does blood lineage, or divine right, or for that matter the

electoral process, qualify a person to rule others? It may bethat, as faith in the validity of the Tsars power was itself super-natural, common Russians were open to further supernaturaldevelopments relating to the Tsarespecially if those happened

In a surreal bid to undercut the cult of personality around the dead leader,the aristocrat who seized power after Tsar Dmitris assassination presentedthe corpse of a dead child as the disinterred, miraculously preserved body ofthe original boy Dmitri, and ascribed additional miracles to the Tsarevich.He forced the Orthodox Church to grant sainthood to the Dmitri who haddied in 1591, and made Dmitris mother, who had so recently accepted TsarDmitri as her son, announce that this was her true sons body. Governmentforces were blessed in the name of St. Dmitri before going into battle; thus,in fall 1606, the rebels and the government faced off under the standards oftwo false, dead Dmitris.

I wish to be free.

Only the Tsar is free.

Therefore, I must be the T

to validate their own rebellious desires. On the otsome historians speculate that the first person to

the resurrected Dmitri was so persuasive because hraised from childhood to believe he was the rightfuof the throne. What would it take to raise an entirfeel similarly entitled to their agency, royal blood o

The idea of the rebel Tsar as a manifestation of divity among the common people, butchered by earthly yet miraculously surviving, echoes the story of Chrthis period of Russian history brings to mind the Auprisings in Western Europe of the preceding century

peasants justified armed struggle in apocalyptic religBoth upheavals attest to the power of myth to enablpass beyond self-imposed limits, but also reveal how m

framed in the rulers terms impose limits of their ownoppressed feel entitled to act for themselves withou

to divine ordainment, hereditary rights, legal statutetarian responsibilities, or grand historical narrativeonly be able to borrow the paltry freedom of their o

figure ii.

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But you both misconstrue that which is masked as something

outside and against the rest of society. On the contrary, masks

do not signify contradiction or opposition; those who hide

themselves do not necessarily serve subversive ends. The rul-

ing powers often don masks to further their agendaand what

mask is thick enough to prevent that agenda from filtering

through into the rebels who claim to oppose

it? When people mask themselves to carry a

program beyond the bounds of propriety, the

masks may serve as much to protect them

from acknowledging what they are doing

as to disguise them from their enemies.

The visible and the invisible are two frequencies

like wavebands on a radio dial; control competes w

subversion on both terrains. The subterranean wo

shaken by tremors, but it is mostly comprised of th

tions of the visible world, fixed and deep-rooted.

It is well known that the more power you have over a person,

the less likely it is that she will be honest with you. One can

know or control, never both. Yet from jealous husbands to sur-

veillance states, people seek to obtain knowledge by pursuing

more authoritarian power, rather than less.

The monotheists God is the product of these fantasies taken

to their natural conclusion: omniscient and all powerful, at

once informant and chief of police. No bedroom, backstreet,

or heart is safe from His prying eyes. This myth doe

to have habituated the public to full disclosure, how

populace used to concealing their sins from God ca

slip them past mere mortals.

In every shopping district, on every sidewalk, bare f

unknown intentions. Scanning their countenances

cover policeman looks upon an entire nation of sus

purposes inscrutable, their interests opaque. Ther

no black-clad ribbon of wrath unfurling down Libe

but the state sees every crowd as a masked mob i

An ominous black stripe cuts through the

shopping district: a crowd in identical masks

and hoods. It passes from block to block, an

abyss drawing everything to itself and leav-

ing a vacuum in its wake.

Seen from afar, the masked ones seem

to be erasing themselves, taking a stand

against individuality, against communication.

In a society in which everything is known,

named, measured, and appraised, in whichlife is determined by rsums and credit

histories and internet profiles, hiding ones

identity is indeed tantamount to erasing one-

self. Streetlights, background checks, gossip

columns, and intelligence agencies conspire

to drag everything into view; without an iden-

tity, one joins undocumented immigrants and

anonymous corpses in mass graves.

All along, somewhere out of sight, some-

thing has been growing. At first it was barely

a tremor, unidentifiable and inexpressible.

But in timeand perhaps this was the most

difficult threshold to crossit became a

secret: first shared between two people, then

between pairs, gangs, networks, spokes-

councils. Now it erupts into the public eye,

still inscrutable, illegible. Every continent

has long been discovered, every star in the

sky enumeratedyet at the heart of the em-

pire the commonplace suddenly reappears,

tauntingly concealed, flaunting its otherness.

Behind the curtain, the masked ones know

each other well enoughthey share another

kind of transparency, without norms or mea-

sure. This is a confrontation between worlds,

one hidden, the other insistently familiar. Theold story goes that the invisible will become

visible at the moment of its triumphwhen

the guerrillas finally pour, unmasked, into

the city center. But if the powers that be can

tear back the curtain to reveal the hidden

world while it can only be viewed in the light

of the prevailing ideology, that fairyland will

evaporate before it can usurp reality.

Even more than they wish to bring outlaws

to justice, the authorities long to tear away

those masksto show that there is no

uncharted path that could lead away from

the ordinary and mundane. The mask is

seductive: it suggests unknowns, promises,

threats. It is a chrysalis in which to become

something else.

I.

II.

No, you havent understood anything! Clandestinity casts a

spell, drawing in those who sample it deeper and deeper until they

can never return. What begins as a clumsy, undefined, open clash

concludes as a private grudge match between a closed vanguard

and an all-powerful state. What can we do without the masks?

That always determines the trajectory of what we can do with

them on. Perhaps it would be better to renounce them altogether.

III.

IV.

RollingThunder Issue Nine, Spring 2Masks Issue Nine, Spring 2010 RollingThunder


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d if it i s indeed impossiblewhat then? To solve the riddle

the windows, we have to get to the bottom of what gesture

What if gestures are not just symbols standing in for ac-

n, but are themeselves the fabric of our lives, the terrain on

hich we fight?

If our planet has seen some eighty billion people, it is

difficult to suppose that every individual has had his or

her own repertory of gestures. Arithmetically, it is simply

mpossible. Without the slightest doubt, there are far fewer

gestures in the world than there are individuals. That find-

ng leads us to a shocking conclusion: a gesture is more

ndividual than an individual. We could put it in the form of

an aphorism: many people, few gestures . . .

A gesture cannot be regarded as the expression of an

ndividual, as his creation (because no individual is capable of

creating a fully original gesture, belonging to nobody else),

nor can it even be regarded as that persons instrument; on

the contrary, it is gestures that use us as their instruments,

as their bearers and incarnations.

-Milan Kundera,Immortality

n this account, gestures are the real protagonists of history,

d humanity is simply the medium through which they move,

oliferate, and compete. Each gesture is coded with its own

hics and aesthetics, bearing them like DNA; we might even

agine dominant and recessive traits, natural selection.

Gestures appear timeless, yet they offer a means of making

stract values concrete in any given moment. Breaking a win-

w is not just a symbolic protest against capitalist society, but

a way to step outside it, however temporarily. It may not always

be appropriate, but it gives the anticapitalist something todo.

To understand how persisent and seductive gestures are, we

can study them in the microcosm of subculture: fashions that

endure long after the political ideologies that spawned them,

dance moves that spread like wildfire, slang terms implying

critiques more precise than any academic treatise. These ex-

amples are easy to point out against the backdrop of the domi-

nant culture, but allculture is made up of gesturesthe most

common ones are invisible precisely because of their ubiquity.

One can try to saddle gestures with objectives, to make

them strategic, but this may be a step in the wrong direc-

tion. Lets contrast gesture against strategy as an approach

to revolutionary struggle.

Strategy focuses outward: the reference points by which to

gauge success are external, waiting in a future that is always

receding ahead. By contrast, gestures confer meaningthey

contain meaning within themselves, instantaneous and intrinsic.

With a gesture, one can render a lifewhichever life, however

humblethe center of the universe, a stage for timeless drama.

Strategy is predicated on efficacy, privileging product over

process and control over chance. Yet the universe is infinite

and ever-changing: no one can ever grasp the total context

enough to craft a foolproof strategy. On the other hand, with

or without the proper strategic acumen, individuals and groups

can popularize gesturesthat take on lives of their own, perhaps

precipitating dramatic upheavals when the time is ripe.

So what is more importantachieving carefully calculated

objectives, or spreading the practice of smashing windows?

Every means serves its own ends: gestures have their own

agendas, as it were, while our fragile hearts and bodies bear

the consequences. Perhaps this is the meaning of the Greek

conception of Hades, in which the shades of the dead repeat

the same gestures into eternity: they are mortal beings held

hostage by immortal acts. If gestures are the protagonists of

history, what are we?

In the era of mediation and mass-production, in which every

lived experience reappears immediately as a ghost shouting

down reality, the gesture has become as external to us as any

goal-oriented strategy. What was once a precious heirloom

passed from one generation to the next is now mere pornogra-

phy. We still let it play through us, but we no longer feel that we

are incarnating the absolutethe video screens ha

everything to a reference.

What is the ultimate gesture of our era? Hijacke

airplanes into the World Trade Center. Multiplied i

this image eclipsed our paltry human frames, blott

agency in its monstrous shadow and leaving its a

more liberated than the rest of us.

Is this the battlefield on which to martyr oursel

we given up entirely on the possibility that we cou

our own lives, with the testimony of our nerves as t

of success, rather than the triumph of any ideology

or ghost?

II.

But what does breaking a window have to do with liberation? Is

it not simply another way to make a statement, to take a stand

instead of actually seizing what we desire and defending it? If we

are struggling against a world of falsehoods and superficiality,

why spend ourselves in symbolic gestures? Or has that world

imposed itself upon us so thoroughly that it is impossible to dis-

tinguish between concrete actions and symbolic gestures at all?

IV.

Why windows?

Windows do not simply represent transpar-

encythey are invisible barriers. Like so much

in this society, they simultaneously present a

spectacle and block the way to it. They display

commodities we can never afford, status we

will never attain, social strata we cannot hope

to traverse. The gates of paradise are closed

to us. To smash a window is to contest the

boundaries between haves and have-nots, sacred

and profane, fantasy and reality.

Swinging a hammer into a storefront, the vandal

crosses this Rubicon as a mutinous army of one,

declaring herself an implacable foe of the world

that is: for there is no dallying with reformism once

one has shown that ones program isdestruction.

Every shattering pane is a hymn to defiance, a

cry in the darkness in hopes of an answering cry.

I.

RollingThunder Issue Nine, Spring 2010 Gestures Issue Nine, Spring 2010 RollingThunder


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week and a half later, the anarchist dreams that he is back in

tsburgh. Pepper gas fills the air, punctuated by the sound of

plosions and the crunch and ring of shattering glass. One of

e canisters rolls to his feet, undischarged, and he picks it up.

the dream, it is cool to his touch. He senses that all he has

do to activate it is to throw it against something.

He walks away from the mle, the canister heavy in his hand.

thout consciously articulating it to himself, he decides to

tend the terrain of conflict by detonating the canister nearby,

tside the zone of police violence. Block by block, he passes

rough successive settings as if in a film montage: children

a school playground, clerical workers filing in and out of

fice buildings, students lounging on the grass. Compared to

e tumult he has just come from, the exaggerated placidity

of each scene makes them all seem unreal and distant. It is

disquieting. Which one should he interrupt, which should he turn

into a warzone? Where should he rupture the faade of reality?

Suddenly, he comes to himself. He is walking around with a

tear gas canister, assessing everything as a potential target,

looking at the world through the eyes of a police sergeant.

Elsewhere on earth, armed clashes are as ordinary as shopping

malls, without liberation being any closer.

Now he is marooned in a dream that is without sense. Yet he

does not drop the canister; it is the only power he has.

In the monotony of our daily lives, its easy to forget that our

relationship to reality is negotiable. Streets are for faceless traf-

fic; crowds are impersonal assemblies of strangers studiously

ignoring each other; windows are for exhibiting merchandise,

or staring out of as we wait for shifts or classes to conclude;

decorative stones outside banks or fast food franchises are

inert objects without interest or possibility.

Suddenly all this is interrupted and the unknown opens

before us: the world becomes a magical place. In these mo-

ments, we discover new organs within ourselvesor perhaps

they are not new, but simply atrophied, atavistic

we are adapted for an entirely different way of lif

routines to which we are so accustomed. It turns

creatures made for another worldand made wellf

are barely getting by in this one. Changing world

from malaise and misery to weightless joy: final

at home in our own skin. Charging down the stree

rather than driving down it separately, fighting or o

police rather than submissively accepting their au

come to life.

No words can do justice to this experience, but it is

day of it is more real than a decade of rental contra

tickets, service work, and nights at the bar.

II.

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9/55

On September 24 and 25, 2009, the rulersof the twenty most powerful economies in the worldnineteen nations, and the European Unionmet in Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania. Dubbed the G20, this summit has recently cometo prominence over the G8 summits that occasioned such violentconflicts in Genoa, Gleneagles, and Heiligendamm. The Obamaadministration announced that it chose Pittsburgh to highlightthe citys economic recovery following the collapse of itsmanufacturing sector, implying that it presented a model fora world facing economic woes. Pittsburghs sizable anarchistcommunity saw this as an opportunity to oer a dierent model,based on grass-roots mutual aid and resistance.

The mobilization that followed was among the largest successful

anarchist-organized protests the United States has seen in years.Does it indeed oer a model that could succeed elsewhere?

BREAKINGTHE FRAME

Anarchist

Resistanceto the G20

Breaking News Issue Nine, Spring 2010 Rolling Thunder Rolling Thunder Issue Nine, Spring 2010 Bre


10/55

Local Groundwork

was already late May when anarchists learned that the G20 was

ming to Pittsburgh. A general interest meeting the weekendJune 13-14 produced the Pittsburgh G20 Resistance Project,anti-authoritarian organizing body promoting a diversity

tactics. The PGRP included working groups focused on me-a, legal and medical support, local and national outreach,d housing and other logistical issues; other working groupsaintained a website, coordinated student participation, andmmered out action frameworks. In all, the PGRP comprised

out forty people, many of whom had years of experienceorking together.Significantly, those who did not maintain the trust of the restthe group were not permitted to participate in the PGRP.

one case, a member of the action working group could notovide sucient evidence that he was who he said he was, andtually heightened others suspicions of him in the process;another, a person answered questions before a grand jury

ainst the wishes of his comrades. Excluding these individuals

ay have helped to protect the organizers from at least somerms of police sur veillance and provocation.

Action Framework

e action framework constructed by the PGRP was modeled on

me of the precedents set by previous anarchist mobilizations,th one significant departure: they took it upon themselves to

ordinate the primary action for the first day of the summit.In most regions of the US, anarchist organizing had been suc-ssfully marginalized by liberal groups during the antiwar era.narchists carried out breakaway marches and other peripheralions but repeatedly failed to take the initiative to determine the

ndamental character of mass protests. In hopes of breaking thisttern, anarchists got started well over a year before the 2008publican National Convention, emerging as one of the major

ayers in the organizing. Decentralized marches and blockades

ere called for the first day of the RNC, coinciding with a permit-d march sponsored by antiwar activists. This decision was based

rtly on the reasoning that the most successful direct-action-ented protests of the preceding decade had been coordinatedcoincide with other events, spreading the police thin.

To set the tone for the G20 protests, the PGRP called for anpermitted march on the first day of the summit. Pittsburghs

nti-War Committee discussed scheduling its permitted marchr Thursday as well, but some prominent participants statedat they were convinced that the story of t he day on Thursdayas bound to be the PGRP march. Rather than repeat the format

the 2008 RNC, the AWC chose to hold its march on Friday.So it happened that the main event opening the G20 protestsas organized primarily by anarchists. This was an ambitiousmble, and it made some out-of-town anarchists uneasy. It raised

e stakes: if anarchists and their allies were solely responsibler the first day of action, they could hardly aord to go it alone,ling to bring out other demographics. In fact, this approach

may have made some aspects of the mobilization easier; for ex-ample, liberals who might otherwise have attempted to discredit

the PGRP were hesitant to do so, knowing that many membersof their groups would be participating in Thursdays march.*

The PGRP called for another action on Friday morning. Asin the calls for autonomous actions at the 2004 Democraticand Republican National Conventions, they circulated a list oftargets in Pittsburgh embodying various objectionable aspects of

global capitalism. Some local organizers who were pess imisticabout the potential of mass mobilizations saw the Friday call toaction as a way to connect the G20 protests to local issues; forothers, it was a fallback plan in case Thursday was a washout,

and a way to draw attention to the targets through advance me-dia coverage. Following the Friday morning actions, anarchistswere encouraged to join an anti-authoritarian contingent inthe permitted march.

The Battle of the Story

Advance media coverage is the terrain in which police lay the

groundwork to justify raids and violent repression. To the extentto which activists can counteract these smear campaigns, theycan tie the hands of policealthough the corporate media ishardly a neutral playing field.

The police started out with their usual scare tactics, an-

nouncing that anarchists posed a major threat to the city andthrowing around the same spurious allegations about urine andfeces that had circulated since the 1990s. They also attemptedto blame a string of house robberies in Polish Hill on foes of the

G20, and framed other random local events as evidence thatanarchists were planning illegal activity. The groundlessnessof many of these accusations eventually provoked a backlasheven in the corporate media.

Anarchists didnt take this lying down. For example, two

months before the summit, the Pittsburgh Coalition For Home-land Security, a partnership of public and private groups, an-nounced a press conference for businesses and security per-sonnel regarding security planning for the summit. Pittsburghanarchists called for a protest at this event, using the opportunity

to decry police misinformation and harassment. The eventwas canceled and never rescheduled; apparently the privatesector participants were hesitant to be publicly associated withcontroversial police repression.

This minor event illustrates the importance of seizing theinitiative to frame public discourse around repression. The firstencounter in the streets often has a disproportionate influenceon how the rest of a protest plays outif people prevent policefrom making arrests or controlling their movements early on,

this discourages ocers from continuing to try to do so andinspires others to defend themselves. Likewise, framing policepreparations as assaults on civil rights may have helped limit the

repressive tactics the authorities were willing to employ later.

The PGRP organized a local outreach operation improvingon the door-to-door eorts the RNC Welcoming Committee

* Only a minority of liberal organizers saw themselves as at odds with thePGRP; many participated in or donated money to PGRP efforts.

had carried out in the Twin Cities. For $400,they printed 10,000 copies of a newspaper in

plain language connecting the G20 to local is-sues such as transit, war, and healthcare; thisreached the majority of houses in Greenfield,Bloomfield, and Lawrenceville, among otherneighborhoods. This approach took advantageof the G20 to build momentum that would

last beyond the mobilization. It also aimed tocultivate community support and awareness,postulating that the safety of organizers andparticipants depended on these. For example,

the convergence center was located in Green-field, and it would be politically costly to raidit if the neighbors were sympathetic; likewise,the state would be more reluctant to make ar-rests and press conspiracy charges if the general

public understood the motivations behind theprotests. The majority of this door-to-door work

was carried out by older community organizers,

some of whom did not identify as anarchists.

The PGRP also did its best to coordinate acounterattack in the corporate media. Onemember gave dozens of on-camera interviews,repeating talking points consensed on by themedia working group; a pseudonym was used

by various members to reply to telephone andemail interviews. While refuting police fab-rications, representatives of the PGRP nevershied away from the politics or intentions ofthe group; this may have helped legitimize

Thursdays unpermitted march in some eyes.Shortly before the demonstrations, the

authorities were attempting to backpedal ontheir original story about anarchists coming

to destroy Pittsburgh. The spin had gotten outof control, and the city government was ea-ger to reassure businessmen and consumersthat anarchists did not pose such a dramatic

threat after all. This was the context in whichPGRP spokespersons emphasized that the localpopulation had nothing to fear from protesters,who would only be going after corporate andgovernment targets. In the end, according tocorporate media reports, barely 20% of the

people who normally work in or travel throughdowntown did so during the summit.

Immediately after the demonstrations, the

Pittsburgh Post-Gazetteadmitted in the first sen-tence of a front-page article that anarchists

werent stockpiling human waste to throw atpolice. This kind of honesty is almost unheardof in the world of corporate journalism. Otherstories were comparably favorable, at least com-

pared to the usual flood of mendacity.Its possible that obtaining fairer coverage

was easier this time around because, for once,

anarchists were part of a story the media wantedto tell. Corporate reporters generally have a story

ready in advance to feed to interviewees, in or-der to make their own job as simple as possible;perhaps, in this case, anarchists happened to beuseful for the spin journalists planned to put onthe summit, with the recession on and discontent

simmering. In any event, we cantcount on being fairly represented by

the corporate media in the future,even if others emulate the work of

the PGRP.

The Climate

Convergence Fiasco

The G20 summit was booked inthe David L. Lawrence Conven-tion Center, promoted as theworlds first and la rgest green

convention center. Meanwhile,as if to dramatize the connec-tions between liberal govern-ments, ecological devastation,and working class suffering, the

International Coal Conferencewas scheduled to take place inPittsburgh the three days im-mediately preceding the G20.In response, eco-activists con-

ceived the Three Rivers ClimateConvergence.

The idea was to bring to-gether a broad array of groups

concerned with climate changeand environmental justice. With its history ofindustrialism and environmental racism, Pitts-burgh is directly impacted by these issues; parts

of Pennsylvania and nearby West Virginia arecurrently being decimated by mountaintop re-moval and other mining practices.

In the UK, a powerful social movement hasgrown up around climate change issues, organiz-

ing a series of climate camps to carry out direct

action against those responsible for the destruc-tion of the environment. The organizers of theClimate Convergence hoped to do somethingsimilar, establishing a permitted occupation

from which actions might take place aroundthe city. But the United States does not yet haveanything comparable to the social movementbehind the UK climate camps. The coalition

that came together had little theoretical or tac-tical unity, little experience working together,and few connections to the local community.Over time, it became increasingly dominated by

helmet

goggles

ski mask

earplugs

gloves(insulatedfor thgas canisters)

running shoes(black duover brandlogo)

black sweatshirt andje

motocrosspadding

layerofcivilian clothing

black backpack

hammer andprojectileswithrubbingalcohol fingerprints)

paint balloons (inziploc

bandannasoaked in vineziplockbag)

unmarkedmap (memoritionsoftargets, mateescaperoutes)

water bottle,energy sna

first aid kit

prepaid cellphone connecomms system(noprcall history)

Anarchists arrive

Pittsburgh ready

RollingThunder Issue Nine, Spring 2010 Bre Breaking News Issue Nine, Spring 2010 RollingThunder


11/55

liberal NGOs who refused to countenance anykind of illegal activity. This proved especially

problematic when the government refused togrant permits to the proposed climate camp,leaving organizers with no leverage on the cityand no alternatives.

What had been intended to be a vibrant

occupation ended up as a handful of peoplestang two tents at the top of a hill in SchenleyPark, until the Department of Public Worksconfiscated the tents and tables. They received

practically no media coverage. Greenpeace stillmanaged to drop a giant banner, but the op-portunity to expand the G20 protests by tyingthem to a broader movement against climatechange was utterly missed.

So much went well in Pittsburgh that it iseasy to forget about this fiasco, but we can oftenlearn more from failures than from victories.The lessons here are familiar ones. No amount

of media attention or funding can substitute fora grass-roots base actually invested in takingaction. Likewise, the state will only bargainwith those strong enough to defy it: committing

unconditionally to playing by the rules puts youat the mercy of those who make them. Finally,organizers shouldnt promise things they cantdeliver, lest others be forced to clean up afterthemfor example, when PGRP organizershad to scramble to house protesters who had

counted on staying at t he climate camp.

The Tension Mounts

The first out-of-town anarchists arrived inPittsburgh apprehensively. The protests at the2008 Democratic and Republican National

Conventions had been almost the only nation-wide anarchist mass mobilizations in years, and

they had hardly been unqualified successes.Many around the country seemed skeptical ofmass mobilizations, including some who weregoing to Pittsburgh.

In the antiwar era that concluded with the

2008 DNC and RNC, it had been standard forpolice to allege that about 5% of expected pro-testers would be bad apples, and to craft theirarrest estimates appropriately. But this time,

while Pittsburgh police said they anticipated3000 protesters, they announced that they ex-pected to make up to 1000 arrests, ratchetingup the proportion of bad apples to 33%. Policearrest estimates in advance of the 2008 RNC

had proved accuratedid that mean that prac-tically every anarchist who attended the G20protests could expect to be arrested?

On top of this, the story circulated that up to

200 nonviolent inmates were being releasedfrom Pittsburgh jails to make additional spacefor protesters. This was an advance victoryfor the mobilization, but it sounded ominous.Downtown Pittsburgh was practically a military

occupation zone, with assault-rifle-wielding

soldiers stang roadblocks and helicopterscircling overhead. Thousands of police and Na-tional Guard had been assembled from acrossthe country. Tension was thick in the air.

The weekend before the summit, police ha-rassment increased, with police paying visits inforce to local collective houses thought to be

occupied by anarchists. Several aggressive raidsand preemptive arrests had preceded the 2008RNC; this time, the police didnt force their way

in or make arrests, but the visits still broughtback bad memories. Police also repeatedly

detained and harassed the Seeds of Peace bus thatwas to help provide food to protesters.

Tuesday afternoon, there was a picnic for protest-

ers at Friendship Park, a mile east of Arsenal Park.Numbers seemed low, though some locals insistedthere would be many more by Thursday. It appeared

that some planned buildup actions werent comingtogether. The Climate Convergence had collapsed.No one knew what to expect next.

Eve of the Storm

On Wednesday, September 23, anarchists and other

protesters were scrambling to prepare for the fol-lowing day. How many people would come to theunpermitted march scheduled to leave Arsenal

Park at 2:30 p.m.? Would the police block themarch in the park, or attack it as it proceededsouthwest towards the site of the summit at thetip of the peninsula of downtown Pittsburgh?

Some people were concerned that the presumedmarch route was a disaster waiting to happen; thetwo-mile corridor between Arsenal Park and theconvention center passed between a river and

a cli, oering only a couple parallel roads andlong stretches without exits that seemed perfectfor blocking in crowds. The area was sparselypopulated, marked by empty lots surrounded by

barbed wire; a full twenty blocks separated theconvergence point from the shopping district out-

side the convention center. Surely thousands ofpolice would be able to contain and mass-arrest amarch that made it far enough southwest towardsthe summit. On the other hand, locals arguedstrenuously against marching east away from the

summit, on the grounds that this would lack clearmessaging and could create tension with working-class residents of the neighborhoods any otherroute would have to pass through.

The geography of Pittsburgh is challengingclis, steep hills, and gullies break up the cityin such a way that there are few routes betweenneighborhoods. The northern part of central Pitts-burgh, where the march was to begin, is sharply

divided from the southern part, where many ofthe major universities and shopping districts arelocated. Any route, whether towards the summitor away from it, would involve a variety of risks.Some anarchists were only expecting a few hun-

dred participants, a number that would be easyfor the police to control.

Adding yet more suspense, Wednesday nightsspokescouncil barely concluded in the midst ofpolice intimidation; participants had to scatter

as riot police and undercover agents surroundedthe space, threatening a raid. All night helicoptersand police cars roamed the city.

The RNC Welcoming Committee had over a year and a half

to prepare for the 2008 Republican National Convention;

tsburgh anarchists had barely four months to prepare for the

G20. Estimates of anarchist participation in the RNC protests

ary, but most peak around 1000; at the spokescouncil the day

fore the action, something like 500 people were represented.

At the spokescouncil the night before the G20 protests,

perhaps 300 people were represented, provoking some

distress; but the following day over 1000 people gathered

at Arsenal Park for the unpermitted march.

Must we st

that the G2

safeguard y

Breaking News Issue Nine, Spring 2010 Rolling Thunder Rolling Thunder Issue Nine, Spring 2010 Bre


12/55

September 24, 2009

A student march arrived at Arsenal Park around2 p.m.; by 2:30, the park had over a thousandpeople in it, a veritable sea of protesters dottedwith black flags and banners. This was a consid-erably different scenario than some out-of-town

participants had anticipated.Who were all these people? A few hundred

were militant anarchists from around the US, but

a great number of them were Pittsburgh locals.

Some of the latter were liberals and radicals who

had developed relationships with anarchists in the

Pittsburgh Organizing Group in its seven years

of activity; some were students, out in greaternumbers than expected because the school dis-

trict cancelled classes during the summit; others

were simply people who had stumbled upon the

PGRP call to action. They came out despite the

eorts of the government and corporate media to

intimidate them and discredit anarchist organiz-

ers, and many stayed in the streets despite thewaves of repression that ensued.

Once an unpermitted event reaches a cer-tain critical mass of participants, everythingchanges. A crowd that extends further than

a city block is much more dicult to pen in;even if police can pen them in, they may lackenough vehicles or maneuvering space to ar-rest and transport them all. A broad diversity

of participants, such as generally exists in largecrowds, can also discourage police violence.And while both police and protesters can layconcrete plans for an unpermitted march of up

to a few hundred participants, past a certainthreshold no plans can take into account all theunpredictable factors that result from so manypeople acting autonomously at once.

One might extend this metaphor further todescribe movements as a whole. So long asthey remain small, they can be predictable and

limited; but past a certain point of exp ansion,their energy and diversity give rise to a feed-back loop that produces more energy, diversity,and expansion. Anarchists in the US are not

used to organizing events that draw more than1000 participants; sometimes it even seemswe hesitate to try, whether for fear of beingimmediately quarantined by the police or outof lack of imagination. This can contribute t o

our own self-marginalization. The experienceof being together in such numbers at ArsenalPark and throughout the remainder of the daywas unfamiliar and exciting.

First Movement

As large as the crowd was, leaving the park stilllooked diceyriot police were blocking it to the

east on 40thStreet, and it appeared they couldmove in to block 39that any point. Shortly after2:30, a small segment left the park, moving up39thtowards Penn and Liberty, the two paral-

lel avenues leading toward the summit to thesouthwest and into the Bloomfield neighbor-hood to the east. The rest of the crowd slowlyfilled the street behind them.

As soon as the crowd reached the top of the

hill, the divisions over the march route thathad simmered over the previous days came tothe fore. A small but spirited black bloc headedeast toward the neighborhoods and shopping

districts away from the summit, while othersbehind them shouted that they were goingthe wrong way and directed everyone south-west. Some of the latter shouted Dont take

the bait!perhaps alleging that the attempt to go east wasa provocation. Realizing that they were about to go it alone,

the bloc returned to the crowd moving towards the summit.Minutes later, only a few blocks west of Arsenal, the march

came up against a line of riot police. A prerecorded dispersalorder could be heard playing over a loudspeaker, soon punctuated

by the crack of pepper gas canisters; this eerie refrain was to

repeat over and over throughout that day and the next, lendingan Orwellian atmosphere to all confrontations with police. Insuch a large crowd, it was dicult for those towards the back totell what was going on ahead; the sight and scent of pepper gasin the distance was enough to send many moving down a side

alley. Some anarchists emerged from the alley with trash cansand a mobile dumpster. At the foot of the hill ahead of themwas another line of riot police and military vehicles, shootingpepper gas and attempting to force them back with blasts from

a sound cannon mounted on an armored car. This was a LongRange Acoustic Device (LRAD), a sonic weapon not previouslyused in the United States; it sounded something like a car alarm.*

Imagine, if you will, gentle reader, the animist version of thisstory in which dumpsters, long accused of complicity in anarchist

lifestylism, step out of their social role to join the social war.Free food, even distributed via programs like Food Not Bombs,is not enoughwe want freedom itself, and the dumpster doestoo, and it gains momentum as it rolls down the hill, alone andmagnificent, directly into a pair of oblivious policemen.

There followed a period of chaos, as various contingents at-tempted to make their way forward without being boxed in bypolice. This was further complicated by the chaotic atmosphere,the fact that many groups had already lost track of each other,

and the unfamiliarity of many protesters with the terrain.In such a high-pressure situation, decisions take place anarchi-

cally, and not necessarily in the best sense of the term. Neithervotingnoxious as many of us hold it to benor consensusprocess are possible. Instead, it is as if the hundreds of people

involved are collectively operating a Ouija board, upon whichall their individual movementsconscious or unconsciousstrain against or flow into each other, becoming somethingdierent and unfamiliar, even supernatural. A person or group

can occasionally have agency, but this is often arbitraryforexample, when one persons voice happens to be heard abovethe uproar: GO LEFT!!! That person may be well-informed, orhe may be a police agent; usually, one hears so many conflictinginstructions that it is impossible to choose rationally between

them. The crowd surges to one side, then to another. One mayhave personal goals, but as the context is constantly shiftingaccording to what others are doing and where they are going,it is often simply impossible to define and carry out a programof ones own. This may explain the sensation of losing one-

self described by rioters and psychology professors alike: it issimply a fast-paced microcosm of the way individuals struggleto make their own history as infinitesimal components of amuch larger society.

* As one well-known comedian reported, the LRAD was not particularly effectiveagainst anarchists, many of whom willingly subject themselves to similarlyunpleasant noises at comparable volumes as a result of their musical tastes.It did contribute to a dramatic atmosphere, however, which may have helpedparticipants in the march feel justified escalating their tactics.

The role of the stressful discussions that often before these events, then, cannot be to plan out exthey will go, but simply to familiarize the partici

some of the questions and possibilities.

Second Mov

Protesters remained in the neighborhood for over an

making it more than a few blocks further southweby police at every turn. At the very furthest, some m

reach 32ndStreet where it intersects Smallman and Pthey met a final impenetrable line of riot police, whforced them back as far as Friendship Avenue.

Another body of marchers, numbering 200 or m

more swiftly out of the area, returning east along smaand soon ceasing to encounter police. Many low-indents came out to watch and shout support from thei

The march emerged from the neighborhood onto Mand shortly arrived on Liberty Avenue where it turninto Bloomfield. One way to view the events of Thur

noon is as a process in which t he idea of going east rwest slowly gained legitimacy. At first, participants hit outright as a violation of the goals of the march;retreating group reluctantly accepted it as inevitabnot particularly desirable.

As Liberty Avenue makes its way southeast throufield, it passes through a shopping district of small rebars, and banks. Although there were no police aroucally no property destruction occurred until a PNC b

north side of the street had its doors and ATM attachave attributed this restraint to participants desirewhat locals had described as a working-class area.

Police cars eventually appeared at the back of the mdid not act until t he sirens of an ambulance approa

the front were mistaken for police reinforcements, ccrowd to panic and begin to disperse or move onto thThe police seized the initiative, and the march was

Meanwhile, in a hotel outside city limits,the com

was being raided. Thanks to backup structures set cities, however, the comms system continued to fu

Third Mov

At this point, it was almost 4 p.m. Friendship Parkhinted at in earlier discussions as a potential recopoint, and now a call went out over the Twitter regroup there. Those who had marched east dow

were already nearby and moved north and west tocomrades at the park, who were filtering in from thto the west.

Some of the latter had escaped from a confronta

and Mintwood, where riot police had attempted toin an alley. Using banners, they had forced their wthe line in a shoving match that left them free but thin the hands of the enemy.

Young anarchists in the

permitted contingent in

Fridays march.



13/55

Soon the crowd at Friendship Park was hundreds strong.me of those present had not expected the days events to

as far as they already had. Now they were inspired by theperience of taking the streets together, but not yet satisfied.In contrast to earlier in the day, the general consensus seemed

be that there was no sense in attempting to go west to thenvention center, and that instead people should head south-st towards the plush shopping districts of Shadyside and

akland; the G20 leaders would be gathering there soon too,Schenley Park. This was still a risky proposition, as thoseighborhoods were separated from Friendship Park by sig-ficant geographical barriers.

And the police were no longer concentrated to the west, either.ow they too were gathering at the park and in the surroundingea. Before they could gain control of the situation, the crowd

out due south towards the intersection of Millvale and Lib-

y. Past Liberty, Millvale spans a long bridge south into Northakland; but such a bridge would oer an easy opportunity forlice to trap the march, and a police line was already waiting ate intersection. The crowd continued east down Liberty, pickingwhere the march an hour prior had left o.

Speed was of the essence at this point, and for a short time thearch outdistanced the police. Had the participants moved anyower, dire consequences would surely have ensued; had theyoved faster, things might have turned out better. Despite this,ere were still some who insisted on shouting Walk! when

hers, aware of the imminent danger, were yelling MOVE!Riot police appeared in force at the intersection with Baum,asting a dispersal order. The front of the march cut through the

rking lot around them and onto Baum; those behind found

e way blocked. On Powhattan, one black-clad protester wasckled by police but successfully unarrested by an unmaskedan in sandals. Some in t he front contingent doubled back tofend their comrade by pinning the attackers down under an of projectiles; ocers responded with beanbag rounds,

using injuries. Meanwhile, a little further down Baum, pro-ters dragged a large section of chain-link fencing into the

ad to obstruct pursuit.Seconds later, those who had passed the police blockade

ok o south again, now at a run. Around the corner, a Bos-n Market franchise appeared. Everyones adrenaline wasmping from the police attack; it lost ten windows in a hailrocks. Regrettably, customers could be seen inside fleeinge windows; no one was injured.

Now the bridge into North Oakland came into view, ande march crossed it at full speed, finally penetrating into theealthier districts of Pittsburgh. A brand new Fidelity bankas waiting on the other s ide, scheduled to open the follow-g Monday; its grand opening had to be delayed on account

its doors, windows, and ATM being destroyed. Aware thatlice were swooping in from all directions, the march splitto smaller groups, ultimately dispersing and disappearing.me participants continued south to Pittsburgh University,

here the final clashes of the day were to occur.Meanwhile, many of those who had been blocked at Baumade their way further down Liberty t o Centre, then crossedck over to Baum, where the windows of a KFC and a BMW

dealership were smashed. They managed to reach Enfield Street,

where police attacked them with pepper gas at the intersectionswith Baum and Centre. Widely circulated video footage fromthis area shows thugs in fatigues kidnapping a protester andforcing him into a car; this was one of very few snatch arrests,and its noteworthy that police choreographed it to minimizethe risk to ocers.

The rest of the crowd managed to escape. Some made theirway back to Bloomfield across the Millvale bridge, while oth-ers joined their comrades near Pittsburgh University. At thispoint in the afternoon, there had only been a handful of arrests.

For the following several hours, armored vehicles and riot

police overran North Oakland, roving the streets and blockingo areas seemingly to no purpose. When a person experiencesan allergic reaction, it is often not the poison that causes thenegative eects so much as his bodys reaction to it. Likewise,

the relatively small actions of anarchists triggered a dispropor-tionately disruptive police response. Everywhere an unpermitted

march passed, lines of police cars and military vehicles followed;

everywhere a window had been broken, trac was halted bypolice blockades. All evening Pittsburgh locals could be heard

on street corners and city buses decrying the police presence,the hassle of the summit, and the hypocrisy of their rulers.

Fourth Movement

Less than a mile south of the final confrontation on Enfield,protesters were beginning to gather near the bridge to SchenleyPark, where the Obamas were hosting dinner for other heads of

state at Phipps conservatory. More and more people joined inover the following hours, and heavy-handed police repressionensued, including the usual electronic dispersal order and pep -per gas; but this only attracted more protesters and onlookers,and soon the crowd numbered up to 1000. Reports describe

students with t-shirts wrapped around their faces chantingbeer pong! and LETS GO PITT! as well as more explicitlypolitical slogans.

Meanwhile, many participants in the days protests had gath-

ered nearby at the Public Health Auditorium at 5 thand De Sotofor a radical cabaret. The news came in during a particularlyinspiring performance that the police were raiding the Well-ness Center at which injured and traumatized protesters werebeing treated. It was later announced that the police had not

actually raided the space, but only threatened it; regardless, atthis point no one present would have been surprised by anyoutrage on the part of the police.

A Bash Back! march celebrating queer resistance had beencalled to depart from 5thand De Soto at 10 p.m.; at the spokes-

council the preceding night, one organizer had emphasized thatit was to be a nonviolent event. As people exited the PublicHealth auditorium, someone could be heard addressing thecrowd, asking that no property destruction occur at least until

the march reached Forbes Avenue. At first, this sounded like aplea to refrain from confrontational activity, perhaps the resultof a compromise hashed out between disputing organizers; infact, Forbes was only a block away.

Moments later, a black bloc over a hundredstrong arrived at the intersection of Forbes and

Atwood pushing half a dozen dumpsters. Thesewere upended to block the single police van atthe corner while the crowd proceeded north-east, smashing the windows of practically everycorporate business in its path. Another dump-ster was rolled further down the street and setalight in the intersection with Oakland Avenue.

We can imagine the atmosphere of thoseinstants: the running figures, the explosions ofshattering glass reverberating o the buildings,the dim streetlights on masked faces, the nearby

sirens reminding everyone that militarized riotpolice were on their way from only a coupleblocks distance.

Pamelas Diner, Panera Bread, McDonalds,

Brueggers Bagels, Subway Sandwiches, RiteAid, FedEx Kinkos, American Apparel, the PittShop, and other businesses suered damage.One dim-witted young man addressed partici-

pants in the march as faggots and was dousedwith pepper spray. The bloc moved north,

encountering a police substation on which aparticularly bitter revenge was exacted. Policevehicles were already in pursuit and presum-

ably speeding ahead to surround the march;however, the terrain of the college district wastoo open, and too populated by civilians, forthem to easily entrap their prey.

Some participants broke o from the marchat this point, merging into the nearby crowdof students. Others cut through the university

property across from Schenley Plaza, attackingan animal testing facility at 5 thand Bellefieldand proceeding as far as Craig Street, whereQuiznos Subs, PNC Bank, Irish Design Center,

BNY Mellon, and Citizens Bank were damagedbefore the bloc finally dispersed.

Immediately thereafter, the police issuedanother prerecorded dispersal order to thestudents inSchenley Plaza and around theso-called Cathedral of Learning, then firedseveral dozen pepper gas canisters at the crowd.

The following hours saw massive police oc-cupation of the university area and ongoingclashes with students; ocers attacked stu-

dents attempting to flee into their residencehalls and shot gas canisters onto dormitorybalconies. As in St. Paul after the first day of theRNC, comparatively modest anarchist actionprovoked such a powerful police overreaction

that the police ended up precipitating conflictwith the public at large.

By midnight at the end of September 24, twothousand or more anarchists, students, and

people of other walks of life had participated inunpermitted protests causing well over $50,000

damage to corporations and police. There hadbeen only sixty-six arrests.

Confrontation at

Street and Butler

afternoon.



14/55

Friday Morning and Afternoon

The PGRP call for decentralized actions on Friday

morning had an unintended effect: by Wednes-day, a great number of the establishments onthe list had boarded up their shop fronts andannounced that they were closed for the week.

This forced organizers to rethink the strategy, asit made little sense to hold actions at boarded-uptargets. Some actions still occurredincludingan Iraq Veterans Against the War march and ac-tions outside a recruiting stationbut it would

have taken a great deal of street activity to haveinterrupted business as usual to the extent thatthe call to action did on its own.

The decentralized actions model was not

held to be particularly successful at the 2004DNC and RNC, and its far from certain thatit would have been a success in Pittsburgh ifthe preemptive response had not rendered ac-tion superfluous. Perhaps this model is at its

strongest as a way to direct attention to localperpetrators of injustice and stretch the forcesof the state thin, rather than as a way to bringpeople together in protest.

That afternoon, a raucous anarchist contin-

gent swelled the march organized by the Anti-War Committee. The march drew thousandsof people from a wide range of demographics;some said that it reminded them of the anti-globalization era, before such protests were

homogenized under the anti-Bush banner. Thefact that many of the participants had run inthe streets the previous day lent an edge to

the atmosphere: for the moment, they wereunmasked, accepting the lines of police that

circumscribed the marchbut they knew theyneednt alwaysaccept them.

Friday Night

Earlier Friday, a flier had circulated: Go Pitt;Fuck the Police; 10 p.m., Schenley Plaza. Byten oclock, hundreds of people had gatheredin and around the area. A s mall minority wereavowed anarchists. Perhaps a greater proportion

had participated somehow in the previous daysevents, but the vast majority appeared s implyto be curious students.

The university had sternly warned studentsto stay away, but this backfired, making thePlaza irresistible. Police and National Guardwere already swarming the area in large for-mations; helicopters combed the ground withsearchlights, intensifying the atmosphere of

military occupation.No protest ensued: no march, no banners,

no chants,* no confrontations or property de -struction. All the same, the police soon forcibly

* A couple young people did attempt to get a chant off thegroundthe old sports standby Lets go, Pittsburgh, lets go!One sweatshirted anarchist could be heard quietly singingalong in the same cadence: My lifemakes nosense at all!

With one exception: a communiqu later announced that,in the center of hundreds of riot police, anarchists some-how succeeded in dyeing the fountain in front of SchenleyPlazas Frick Fine Arts building blood red, in memory of

Alexander Berkmans attack on Henry Clay Frick.

Weve retreated to a back street; a cacophony of sirens,

gunshots, and explosions echoes off the walls ahead of

us. With our experience, this isnt exactly frighteningit all

seems to be happening in slow motion; but the irrationality

of the authorities behavior is unsettling. A tremendous

cloud of white smoke is filling the air above the roof of the

dormitory, and a familiar acrid scent is beginning to mingle

with the sweet stench of pepper gas: is something on fire?

Two more pepper gas canisters soar high into the night

sky, trails of poison billowing behind them, and land on

the same roof. Its like the Fourth of July, only with crying,

bleeding college students fleeing beneath the fireworks.

[Opposite]

A student feeder march

makes its way throughBloomfield on its way to

Arsenal Park, passing the

PNC bank that was later

ttacked; the crowd gathers

in Arsenal Park.

Breaking News Issue Nine, Spring 2010 RollingThunder RollingThunder Issue Nine, Spring 2010 Bre


15/55

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