APRIL 24 – MAY 1
Solidarity with Grand Jury Resisters
Remember that it was a year ago on May 1st, 2012 that anarchists so dramatically attacked Seattle, a city built on two hundred years of desecration. Anarchists organized with the clear and almost theatrical intent of acting on our disgust, sadness, and love of freedom. The holiday was to be a public display, in broad business daylight as part of the anti-capitalist march. We gave ourselves that arena for communal empowerment, a ritualized demonstration to exhibit our beliefs and attack our enemy. It was on that day that we evoked the spirit of our ancestors and comrades, risking the Everyday to give a tradition that lights our lives on fire room to play.
Then the grand jury emerged. We knew this was coming, or at least were not surprised when news arrived of raids, warrants, and subpoenas. This is what they do; and so while it is not necessarily a common place event, it is by no means exceptional. The federal grand jury convening in seattle merely illustrates the omnipotent presence of the State, its surveillance of our lives and activities, and its corrosive efforts to detail our intimacies and dissolve our intensity. The year since then has been a transitional time, changing from an ongoing and active public anarchist presence to a time to strengthen individual resolve, commitment, practice and projectuality. What ways are we to live out our contempt of this world and desires for a different one?
Society and its multitude of adherents -Politicians, Workers, Scientists, Students, Patriots, Priests, the list goes on- must know the bedrock of our beliefs to be on the reality of Everything, and that a world we desire is only possible through the destruction of this one, of this society. Things are not separate, but are related in causal and chaotic relationships. In May Day 2012’s acts of destruction we found a joy so wholesome and liberating; in those moments the Spectacle was so entirely put to shame, laughed at for its very nature and absurdity. Attacking these somethings that both subtly and notoriously control and commodify our minds and bodies is, at times, the exact medicine we need.
What we believe is more ancient than the State and Society; their superficial ways crumble amidst the rumblings of our primordial calling. When we listen, as we have been doing in seattle and the pacific northwest, we hear the voices of our ancestors echoing in our ears, pulling us to unbending action and contempt. We know that when we fight, when we love and are conspiring, that we are doing so in ways that make sense with pre-colonial and uncivilized ways. The desire to have a life of integrated practice and ideology pushes us to great lengths. We do not feel absurd or perverse in our undertaking, as the media and politicians illustrate us to be. We are in this for real though and they are sorely mistaken to think otherwise.
The State’s activity is, again, no surprise; they want to end our lives and to erase our ideas; if the Beautiful Idea spreads, Society would suffer, and they can’t have that. The power of the State, concentrated and unnecessary in its expansive control, takes over the geography of our minds and bodies, and of our land. Society wants an end to wildness and freedom for it is specifically those things that cannot live in or alongside Society. Wildness and freedom, these longings that make us alive, that make us animal, that make us anarchist, are against Society. Society necessitates the domination of place, whereas wildness and freedom flourish in their place.
In this place, there is a lingering stench of History’s repression against dissenters, anarchists and otherwise. We can still smell the green scare, and even most recently catch wafts of its affects with the reemerging of long time underground resister, rebecca rubin. The State has historically, again and again, used whatever judicial, political, economic, and cultural means necessary to both repress and recuperate any and all dissent, variation, rebellion, or social dis-ease. Anarchy comes through our bodies, brought about by its impulses of spontaneity, rebellion, disgust, and laughter. What a comedy this world is to suppress such great things!
Consider using the anger, pain, and sadness you’ve experienced because of this wave of repression or because of the State and its affects as momentum to express solidarity and continue on with the Beautiful Idea. Let’s use this coordinated week of action for the much needed joy, perseverance, and defiance. Yatta Yatta Yatta, get out there, do something, it’s easy to attack!
Solidarity with Grand Jury Defiance! Solidarity with the Silent Ones! May Our Resolve Against Repression of All Forms Strengthen Our Complicity.
If you live in the Pacific Northwest, please come to the Federal Detention Center in Sea-Tac for a demonstration outside from 9-10am and again from 6-7pm. Publicize, come out, and bring your friends, and noisemakers! Dress for the weather and festivity.
If you live outside the area, consider planning a solidarity demonstration in your place or an event about grand juries and resistance. Use this current wave of repression to build an ocean of dissent; this struggle is predictable and merely an entry point into anti-prison, anti-state, and anti-social ideas and action.
