Street Warfare In Portland

A manual of military strategy

“We are all responsible for our dream ofstorming the heavens. We cannot turnourselves into dwarves now, after havingdreamed, elbow to elbow, each feelingthe others' heartbeats, of attacking andoverthrowing the gods. This is the dreamthat makes power afraid.”

-Alfredo Bonnano

IntroductionHistorically, anarchists have (rightly) been hostile to andskeptical of formal militaries, both due to their rigid,authoritarian command hierarchies and because of thepurpose to which they are directed: waging war, enforcingstate and class rule, and committing mass murder.Nevertheless, when engaging in violent struggle, one cannotsimply ignore or dispense with military strategy; it is absolutelynecessary if one is to struggle effectively. Military doctrine isnot a mere ideological construct than can be overthrown alongwith authority, private property, patriarchy, religion, etc.Military doctrine is a practical application, as practical asengineering or chemistry. It can be applied to evil ends or goodones, and regardless of the ends, it is real whether you believein it or not, and it will be applied to you by the pigs whether ornot you choose to apply it for yourself.

The purpose of this brief manual is to lay out the basics ofmilitary doctrine and strategy for the benefit of street rebels,and to apply these practically to some events that haveoccurred recently in the city of Portland. This manual does notadvocate illegal/criminal conduct in any form or the use ofmethods described herein. This manual is a document of onlyacademic/intellectual significance.

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for the anarchists’ desired political objective—abolishingpolice—is extremely unlikely to be successful in the near term,either strategically or politically. Whatever the political orstrategic situation at any moment in time, there is value in“landing punches” on police, by disabling their vehicles,coating every wall with ‘ACAB’ and circle-A graffiti, makingtheir lives miserable generally. But none should foolthemselves that the police’s impending defeat is coming. Openconfrontation with the police appears to have exhausted itspolitical usefulness.

Some anarchists have suggested theredirection of covert sabotage tacticstoward other fruitful avenues, such asmonkeywrenching in service of ecologicalstruggle; fighting banks and landlords asthey try to evict people during thepandemic, and the police when theyattempt to enforce evictions; fightingagainst immigration enforcement and the

carceral system more generally; and anti-militarist and anti-imperialist action however it can be carried out. A guerrillastrategy of ecological monkeywrenching often has the mostdirect and achievable path to success. It is quite easy to inflicteconomic damage on the property, tools, and facilities ofEarth-ravaging corporations, and even to save animals, trees,and land from destruction.

It is easy for a loosely-organized anarchist movement in asingle city to become focused on its local enemy in the citypolice, and lose sight of the global struggle that anarchismadvocates. The drone strikes haven’t stopped, the Earthcontinues to be ravaged, new prisons and detention facilitiesare built every day. Street rebels have a duty to fight for theircause effectively. Proper strategy is not just a practical but amoral necessity. Deciding to fight is only the first part of along and a difficult process. One still has to figure out how towin.

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Overview of military strategyIn war, there are three primary kinds of objectives. These arethe things that two opposing sides are trying to accomplishwhen they engage each other in warfare. One needs always tokeep them in mind, and use them as the framework fordeciding every tactic one uses, if one is to fight effectively. Thethree types of objective are as follows:

1. Neutralization of enemy personnel – This primarilyconsists of killing the enemy’s troops, but also can beaccomplished by injuring or wounding them so theycannot fight, capturing them as prisoners, or inciting themto disloyalty: which means either they drop their weaponsand desert, or they mutiny in some form and change sides(sometimes covertly, sometimes only partially) to fightagainst your enemy instead of fighting for them.

2. Area denial – This consists of taking and holding physicalspace (land, buildings) so as to deny its use to the enemy.You fight the enemy to seize their territory, basically.Traditionally in warfare, this is the primary measure ofsuccess, capturing more and more territory until theenemy is surrounded or has almost nothing left and theymust surrender because they cannot fight anymore. But itis not the only way to win wars, and alone it is sometimesnot sufficient to win.

3. Resource denial – This consists of stealing, ruining, ordestroying the enemy’s necessary materiel and resources,such as their weapons, ammunition, and vehicles (trucks,tanks, ships, planes, helicopters), but also important lesssolely-military-purposed resources such as fuel, food,money, raw materials, construction materials, etc.

By definition, each of these three offensive objectives alsoimplies an equivalent defensive objective that is the inverse ofthe offensive objective: preventing the enemy from doing allthese things to you. In war one aims to (1) prevent one’s own

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(and usually been lost). Tragically, a lot of radical movementsdwindle into shells of their former glory, their only continuingactivity being to try to support their imprisoned comrades longafter the particular struggle those comrades fought for hasbeen abandoned.

The purpose of this section of the manual is not to nag rebels,nor to encourage them to moderate of themselves and be lessmilitant. The purpose is only to draw attention to the criticalimportance of waging struggle in a tactically smart way. If oneis going to commit felonies, one should commit the right ones.

Conclusion: Grand StrategyAt the beginning of the George Floyd uprisings, there was astrategic and political opening. People and energy were in thestreets, there were police stations being burned, stores beinglooted, and governments were terrified enough that they wereseriously considering giving concessions to rebels’ demands.The city of Minneapolis even claimed they were going toabolish their city’s police department.

There was a war to be fought because victory of some kind,even if only minor and partial victories, was a viable possibility.Wars are fought to achieve political objectives. The 19th-century military strategist Clausewitz wrote that “war is thecontinuation of politics by other means”. Military doctrine, thethree types of objectives described in this manual, areultimately only means that are used to attain some end. Warshould not be fought for its own sake, pursuing these strategicobjectives is pointless if the winning army has no actualpolitical agenda to enact upon victory. And it is especiallypointless if the objectives cannot actually be achieved in thefirst place. The strategic opening seems to have closed, notonly in Portland but across the US, and while the politicalopening is still open, it has narrowed—people don’t hate thepolice as much today as they did in June 2020. Violent struggle

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side’s personnel from being neutralized; (2) to defend one’sown territory from being captured; and (3) to protect one’sown resources from being seized, destroyed, or (mostimportantly) wasted by ineffective or inefficient use.

Due to the low intensity of street warfare in Portland, thismanual will focus heavily on the third type of objective, as themost relevant to the Portland context, though there areimportant lessons to be learned about all six objectives (threeoffensive, three defensive).

Objectives of the first type – PersonnelFortunately, street warfare in Portland has stayed at a ratherlow level of intensity. Neither side is trying to actually kill theother (despite occasional exaggerations of enemy brutality byeither side). Militants whose primary experience of violentstruggle consists of minor vandalism, setting small fires, andkicking tear gas canisters back at the police should not imaginethat they have the capability to wage an active shooting warwith the state.

It is also inconceivable that street rebels could capture anycops or National Guard troops as prisoners of war or wouldeven want to.

However, street rebels have been observed engaging onoccasion with elements of the first offensive objective. Copshave occasionally been (lightly) injured with projectiles, laserpointers, Molotovs, or punches to the face. Some rebels alsoseem to be engaging in the last type of neutralization tactic:which is to incite the enemy to disloyalty, by desertion inparticular. Cops are encouraged to “quit [their] job”, andthough it is unlikely this was the spurring factor, many Portlandpolice have quit their jobs in the past year (since May 2020)due to what newspapers have reported is “low morale” in theface of a year of unrest, and dozens have gone into retirement,

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there is something worthwhile to be achieved. Many peoplethrow projectiles when it won’t accomplish anything, andmany people start fires that will quickly be put out. Somepeople will throw a punch (or throw a Molotov, apparently),when it serves no tactical purpose in defeating the enemy.There are some quite limited symbolic victories to be gainedfrom these types of things (and sexy riot footage and photosto be captured), but oftentimes it seems that the risk-to-reward ratio is completely lopsided. All risk and no reward.Many people who are the most enthusiastic about throwingthings are very lackadaisical about black bloc and coveringtheir face, making themselves easily identifiable, to be thesubject of a targeted arrest later and stuck with criminalcharges.

Especially in the waning days of an uprising, when the rebels’numbers have dwindled, the popular support and enthusiasmmostly dissolved, when there is no longer any chance of realvictories in open confrontations with the police, it becomesespecially unadvisable to go out and get oneself a criminalrecord willy-nilly. If the revolution has not yet arrived, it makeslittle sense to make oneself a revolutionary martyr.

Beyond the personal costs of getting arrested and receivingcriminal charges, the result of large numbers of arrests andcriminal trials is a massive draining of movement and rebelresources. Money and time spent on jail support and legal billsare precious, and usually in short supply. And historically legalbattles resulting from direct actions have been known to dragon for years or even a decade after the actual battle has ended

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joined police forces in other cities, or left police work entirely.So that’s a job well done from a strategic perspective.

What should concern street rebels more is the first defensiveobjective. No rebels in this city have attempted to kill anyoneon the state’s side, but the cops and federal security forceshave come very near to killing rebels on several occasions.Their weapons and use of force routinely cause severe injuries.Obviously they capture rebels as prisoners all the time—that’swhat getting arrested is. And though it is difficult to measure,it is undeniable that, broadly construed, they have incitedmany to “disloyalty”. In this context, the word disloyalty doesnot carry any moral condemnation, it only refers to someonewho has quit the fight in any form, regardless of their reasons(which might be quite reasonable and justified). Plenty ofrebels have become demoralized or exhausted and arechoosing to stay home rather than continue to fight nightlyclashes with the cops; and in a few cases, some rebels havebeen encouraged or forced to become snitches, which is to sayserving the enemy in the capacity of a spy. Some personsamong the rebels’ ranks may have never been loyal to beginwith: undercover infiltrators.

Normally, in warfare, one is not at liberty to stop fighting andquit the army whenever one desires, even if one hasvolunteered to fight. Desertion, cowardice, and mutiny are allofficially-defined criminal offenses, often punishable by death.This compulsion, being forced to fight, is historically one of thethings anarchists find most abhorrent about militaries.

In war, having your personnel neutralized means they havebecome a “casualty”. A casualty is a person who has beenkilled, wounded, or captured. The defensive objective then,obviously, is to prevent one’s own side from taking casualties.

Most of the ways to do this are quite obvious and widelyknown, but some are not. Obviously wearing protective

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station, mostly only chanting, but also smashing a few of thebuilding’s windows and ripping out a light fixture before beingchased away when police reinforcements arrived to dispersethem. In the other case, on the other side of town, quietly andundercover, an individual militant or group of militants cutthrough a fence to gain entry to a police station’s parking lot,where they disabled several police cars by slashing their tiresand smashing their windows. In terms of financial costsinflicted, the latter was more effective for the rebels. And interms of reducing police resources, the latter was also moreeffective. As far as the authors are aware, though there were afew arrests at the former action, there were none for thelatter.

This brings us to one last type of abstract resource, thoughwhich might also be considered under the rubric of personnel,and that is the clean criminal records of street rebels. Bydefinition, street rebellion is criminal, and involves committingillegal acts, often major felonies. Felony riot charges have beenstuck to dozens, and one person faces attempted murdercharges for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at a cop. Thepetty vengefulness of prosecutors and the brutal length ofsentences being pursued are even worse in many other citiesthan in the relatively liberal jurisdiction of Portland, with its“progressive prosecutor” district attorney.

Most people joining street rebellions come to them havingnever been in trouble with the law before. Many in Portlandare only teenagers. A clean criminal record is an asset toaspiring revolutionaries, because it means they are likely notyet on the radar of the feds, not yet known by the governmentto be a threat. Many rebels are committed enough to theircause that they feel it is necessary and justified to break thelaw and risk criminal charges. Many are brave for doing so. Butmany rebels are not judicious (ironic) in their choice of whento break the law and when to hold off. If one is going to putthemselves on the line and in danger, one should do so when

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equipment like helmets, gas masks, and armor to preventinjuries is an important aspect here (that most rebels inPortland have already caught on to). Wearing clothing thatcovers the face and body, and participating in black blocsgenerally, is another important aspect, as it prevents rebelsfrom being identified and arrested later and locked up forlonger than just a few hours or days in jail.

Street rebels sometimes attempt rudimentary formationtactics to prevent arrests, though they usually do not succeedvery well. Chants of “stay together, stay tight” are anencouragement of the group to remain as a unitary mass sothat the group cannot be scattered or split into multiplepieces, and so that straggling individuals are not as vulnerableto being snatched and arrested. When police charge, however,most people’s instinct to run takes over, and no amount ofchanting will keep the crowd disciplined enough to hold aformation. One tactic for holding a formation together is thefamous locking arms that one might have seen in old photos ofthe civil rights movement. A line of people locking their elbowstogether cannot be so easily scattered.

When it comes to the prevention of injuries, many streetrebels have donned the role of medic, to provide first aid

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Wasting ammo like that is unconscionable. Ammunition is ascarce resource. Street rebels rarely bring their own supply ofrocks or glass bottles to throw. And they are unfamiliar withthe methods European comrades have used for decades tomanufacture their own by breaking up concrete. Prying outbricks and cobblestones with a crowbar, and using hammersand chisels to break up chunks of pavement are time-honoredmethods of producing perfectly-sized projectiles to throw.

Anonymity, privacy, and secrecy areabstract resources that armedforces rely on, but they are no lessimportant than material resources.Many rebels are versed well in theimportance of dressing properly ina black bloc, and leaving their cellphones at home—though manyother rebels could of course standto do a better job at this. Shooingaway photographers and streamersis another well-known aspect ofthis, as video being taken ofcriminal activity has led to criminalcharges. Less well-addressed is thematter of surveillance cameras.

Many surveillance cameras are highly vulnerable andaccessible, though rebels frequently ignore them. Paintingover them with spray paint or simply ripping them out of thewalls is a tactic that has been seldom utilized. Even when highout of reach, wrapping a rope or chain around the plastic armthat holds up a camera and then pulling it down would not bevery difficult, if one were so inclined.

From the offensive perspective, the third type of objective isnot always pursued most efficiently or effectively. Stated in theprevious section was the story of two direct actions. In onecase, a black bloc of two hundred protested outside a police

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treatment to their injured comrades. The medics haveapparently been quite helpful, though there are some thingsthat need to be remembered. Firstly, if an injured person isconscious, mobile, and not complaining of a neck or spinalinjury, it is crucial to move them away from the fighting to asafe distance, where they can receive treatment. A crowd ofpeople standing around an injured person lying on the groundare quite vulnerable to police charging at them to causefurther injury and to arrest people. Medics already know tourge gawkers and spectators to give a wide distance, so theyaren’t getting in the way; but medics themselves need to knowwhen it’s appropriate to move an injured person away fromthe police lines. And it’s almost always appropriate to do so,unless the person has a potential neck or spinal injury thatcould be worsened if they are moved.

Furthermore, a word on therole of medics: in the laws ofwarfare (in the GenevaConventions and customarylaw), medics are granted aspecial role. They areimmune from being targetedand attacked, and they areto be allowed to do their jobby all sides of the conflict

without being harmed or captured themselves. Thoughobviously each side’s medics will give priority to their ownside’s injured, medics are effectively neutral persons. Medicsthemselves are not to carry or use weapons or participateactively in violence. If they do so, this violates their neutralityand cancels their special status, making them valid targetsagain. For hundreds of years, in fact, it has been considered awar crime for combatants to impersonate medics so as to gainan advantage through fraud. Medics (or soldiers disguised asmedics) shooting guns or using ambulances to carry troopsand weapons is considered to be a war crime known asperfidy. Abusing this minimal trust that warring sides have to

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narrative that excessively valorizes the legacy of peacefulprotest in the civil rights movement. Property damage issought after for its own sake, not as a means to an end but asthe end in itself, and the goal becomes to maximize thenumber of opportunities to commit acts of property damage(no matter how trivial), rather than to inflict damage tomaximum effect. Everyone is encouraged to throw a waterbottle or get a whack in on a piece of glass (any piece),regardless of how little is accomplished. The satisfying soundof glass shattering is seen as the real goal, even if a large crackhad already effectively ruined the window and so furthersmashing is pointless.

Street rebels do not pursue the third offensive objective veryefficiently, nor operationalize it strategically. Objects arethrown at police without any concern even for whether theprojectile actually hits its target—or any target. It isastonishing the number of water bottles or little pieces ofassorted garbage that are thrown over rebels’ heads and thenland pathetically in the middle of the street, twenty feet awayfrom any cop. The goal seems more to be the emotionalgratification of the thrower, who wishes to express their angerand enjoy a certain militant credibility for having been braveenough to commit the felony of attempted assault on a cop.Actually achieving any strategic objective is of secondaryimportance. The rebels’ ammunition, the various projectilesthrown at the cops, is not stewarded very efficiently. Even ifthrowers could be forgiven for having bad aim or a weak armand therefore missing their target, oftentimes very lightweightprojectiles (such as water bottles) are thrown uselessly at solidwalls or police cars, with zero chance they could have brokenanything even if they hit their target dead-on. It is in manycases unclear what the thrower hoped to achieve. Conversely,sometimes extremely heavy objects (for example somethingheavy enough it needs to be held with both hands) are thrownuselessly from a distance so long that the thrower could notpossibly hope for it to reach its target. The result is a patheticheaving of an object onto the ground only a few feet away.

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place in each other would lead to warfare becoming evenmore brutal and savage than it already is, with no mercyshown even for medics or civilians or surrendering combatantswith their hands in the air.

In Portland, the police usually do not respect the rebel medics’self-appointed role, but it has been observed that medics arenot always honoring their own role either. Throwing projectilesis generally unacceptable if one has put a red cross on theirhelmet or their jacket to indicate that they are a medic, as thisis participating in the conflict as a combatant. Similar rulesapply to journalists and the press.

Objectives of the second type – AreaIn traditional warfare, the primary objective is to capture andhold territory, and/or to defend one’s existing territory frombeing invaded by the enemy. Guerrilla warfare and other non-traditional modes of warfare complicate this picture, assometimes combatants do not necessarily intend toimmediately capture and hold territory, and the side of theconflict that holds all the territory might still be losing: as inmany of the US’s imperialist wars, where insurgents harass,ambush, and inflict casualties on the occupying US army untileventually the costs and losses are too great and the US mustgive up and leave.

In high-intensity urban unrest, street rebels sometimes domanage to physically overtake the police, forcing the cops toretreat and allowing rebels to hold streets and buildings astheir own “territory”, at least for a little while. If all the forcethe cops can muster is insufficient to take the territory backand “restore order”, then the actual military is called in, in theform of the National Guard, and street rebels stand no chanceof holding out against them (if they did, then a mere riotwould be upgraded to the level of a true civil war).

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It is not always clear however that all rebels understand this istheir strategy. The authors of this manual would not presumeto give orders to the rebels or appoint themselves asmovement strategists (and to reiterate, do not advocatecriminal conduct of any kind), but it is unclear what the overallstrategy could be if this weren’t it.

Some rebels appear to view their role primarily in symbolic,discursive, or moralistic terms. They believe there is aspectrum of action one could take against police brutality,starting with the least militant in the form of legal peacefulprotests, then escalating to unlawful protests (billed as “directaction marches”) defying police orders, escalating further tocriminal acts of riot and property destruction, and thenperhaps (theoretically) escalating maximally to the mostextreme act, which would be to actually hurt or kill people.Many rebels rhetorically advocate this (in the form of painting“Kill Cops” as a slogan), though virtually none appear to ownguns or be prepared to actually do it. In the rebel milieu, minoracts of property destruction seem to take on the role of asymbol or a statement, owning the libs who condemn riotingas “going too far”, and perhaps arguing against a mainstream

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In the very first days of the Portland unrest, there were somevery brief moments when police were in retreat, when theJustice Center was invaded (and righteous fires set), whendowntown shops were undefended long enough that theycould be looted. But since then, rebels have not posed anyserious threat of taking and holding space against the police.Rowdy protests outside police stations and courthousesgenerally persist at the sufferance of the police, who can—anddo—choose to break up and disperse the rebels at basicallyany time they choose. Once the police make the decision togather their forces and march to push them away—sometimespushing them dozens of blocks away—rebels have never beenable to do anything other than retreat. This is not a criticism orindictment of the rebels, merely an acknowledgement of thereality: they are too poorly armed, too few in number, and toodisorganized to be able to seriously challenge police control ofpublic space, to actually push the cops back when they cometo push.

At times, street rebels have appeared cognizant enough of thisto acknowledge the futility of even attempting to hold space indefiance of police orders. Rebels have occasionally chosen toplay to their own strengths, the crowd staying mobile,

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Objectives of the third kind – ResourcesTheoretically one could imagine a kind of primitive warfarefought entirely with fists, but in practice, all warfare relies onmateriel. An army needs arms, after all. And a group intendingto pursue violent struggle needs not only weapons to useagainst its enemy, but also the necessary supplies to maintainitself. They say an “army marches on its stomach”, whichmeans that if the troops are not fed, they cannot fight. Inmodern warfare especially, the protection of one’s owneconomic resources and the destruction of the enemy’seconomic resources become the primary objectives to pursue,almost more important even than killing the enemy’s troops.In World War II, Germany and Japan’s military strategy mainlyinvolved trying to cut off the supply of food and fuel to theirenemies, and the US and UK’s strategy mainly involvedbombing their enemies’ factories and railways so thatweapons could not be produced and supplies could not reachthe forces fighting on the front.

Street warfare in Portland is usually not so intense as that, butthe same principles apply. The objective of the rebels is todisrupt the orderly conduct of society and to inflict economicdamage on its many enemies. Anarchists in particular intendto inflict damage on the state’s facilities and on capitalistcorporations in the form of banks, chain restaurants, and retailoutlets. While there is something to be said for playfuljouissance and the delights of rebellion for its own sake; ingeneral, anarchist militants have, as a practical matter, the goalof retaliating destructively against the state for the policemurders of black people, as an act of revenge andintimidation, as well as slowing down the orderlyadministration of government and rendering it less efficientand effective. Wasting the police’s time and doing propertydamage is a way of doing that: of burning through their budgetand exhausting their bureaucrats.

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smashing and spraying graffiti as they move, rather thanchoosing a single place to try to have a showdown with theoverwhelmingly more powerful police. On rare occasion,rebels have dispensed with the mode of mass demonstrationsentirely, and have adopted methods of truly covert sabotage.One time recently, while a bloc of two-hundred were facing offoutside a police station, managing only to break a fewwindows before a riot was declared and they were forciblydispersed, at the same time on the other side of the city oneor a few anonymous individuals cut through a chain link fenceat a different police station, and slashed the tires and smashedthe windows of nearly a dozen parked police cars. Adoptingcovert guerrilla tactics is historically the methodrevolutionaries use when they face an enemy too powerful tofight head-on. We will return to this incident in the nextsection.

However, control of public space can be more fluid than theclassic lines on a map might indicate. It is not always as cut-and-dry as either holding or retreating. Sometimes a band ofrebels is mobile, as mentioned previously, and sometimes themob is not directly engaging the police but also notimmediately fleeing either. There are gray areas, and momentsof time where the situation is in flux. Though the disconnectedrebels are generally unorganized, there are some crudemethods of rallying group cohesion and communicating tacticsand strategy.

One method of doing that is the classic call-and-responsechant of “whose streets? Our streets!” This is not merely anexciting chant or an ideological statement. The point ofchanting it is not simply to make noise, nor simply to make acommunist ideological statement about the people’s commonownership of the street. The point is to gauge the temperature

of the crowd when entering an engagement with the police.When police order the crowd to disperse, starting up a chantof “whose streets?!” is a way of communicating to the policethat their orders to disperse will be defied, and rallying thecrowd to a collective strategy: “no surrender! We will beresisting and not retreating right now.” If the chant catches onwidely and enthusiastically, then the crowd is collectivelyvoting in favor of that strategy. If the chant fails to catch on orfizzles out, that means that morale is low and the crowd is notfired up and prepared for a defiant confrontation at thatmoment, and prefers to retreat. This is by no means afoolproof way of communicating, not everyone will be quite onthe same page. But unfortunately, the tactic has at times beeneffectively neutralized by ideological nitpicking, when peoplehave decided to change the callback from “our streets!” toinstead shout “stolen land!” The chant can no longer serve itspurpose very effectively, once it has been stripped of itsimmediate practical meaning, and only become an abstractpolitical slogan.

At any rate, the question of relative strength between warringsides, and the ability of one side or the other to take and holdphysical space is of paramount importance. Many times, rebelsengage in conflicts where they are seemingly attempting toinvade and occupy a particular space: a street, a park, a policestation, though they know they have no real chance of doingso, and are simply waiting to be chased away by superiorpolice force. In light of the third kind of objectives described inthe next section, this can sometimes make sense. Butsometimes the strategy is foolhardy and inefficient. It is crucialto military strategy to understand that the format of mostbattles is two sides battling to control space, and rebels mustkeep that format in mind at all times.

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