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Title: Under the Helicopters Author: CrimethInc. Date: September 1, 2003 Language: en Topics: convergences, media, police, reportback Source: Retrieved on 7th November 2020 from https://crimethinc.com/2003/09/01/under-the-helicopters
August 5 through 10, 2003, a gathering of touring theater troupes
loosely associated with the radical publishing collective CrimethInc.
took place around and within Louisville, Kentucky.
No, that’s no way to begin. Fuck the dry A.P. press release tone, this
has to really grab people, convey what it was like to be there — it
should put readers in our shoes, not just “inform” them, as if it was
possible to do so in an impartial manner in the first place. Maybe we
could start in medias res, at the high point of the action:
The roar of the helicopter grew deafening as it circled lower around the
house, the searchlight scouring the walls outside. Our host clasped her
baby closer to her breast; we all shuddered. At that moment, the wail of
a siren, the very sound we’d been fearing since the pigs had closed
their siege around our campsite, rose from the direction of the road —
the waiting was over, they were closing in for the kill. My companion
took me aside: “What are we going to do about the laptop? Should we
destroy it, rather than let it fall into their hands?”
But I can’t do that quite the way I’d like to, either. While the court
cases are still pending and the investigations in progress, who’s to
know what details are safe to divulge? That’s one of the greatest
tragedies of living in revolt: you can never speak openly about the most
important things in your life without a look over your shoulder and a
trembling thought as to who might be listening in. Think of all the
beautiful stories we’ll have for each other, all the exploits we’ll brag
of when capitalism finally falls! In the meantime, danger keeps our lips
shut, and all too often our sagas die with us. That’s the greatest
advantage our enemies have — the further we go in our resistance, the
less we can tell our stories, the less we can share what we learn and
suffer and achieve, while even the murderers among them can talk freely
and without fear, as if they have nothing to be ashamed of.
And so however afraid we are, we still must speak, we still must share
everything we can without doing their surveillance work for them. For
me, the primary lesson of our experience in Louisville was that we can’t
let ourselves be intimidated — the more we come under attack, the more
vocal we must be. Security culture is more necessary than ever today,
but misunderstood as a code of silence it can only defeat us. As the
showdown between power and people intensifies, only more visibility can
save us — less will just make it easier for them to pack us off to the
concentration camps one by one. So here, censored as little as possible
(but without any further references to laptop computers, or other, shall
we say, red herrings), follows the short version of what transpired that
crazy week in Kentucky. For the juicy, tell-all version, catch me
warming my hands at the last burning barricade on the final day of
judgment — I’ll be thrilled to fill you in.
We arrived at the convergence site, a private farm outside Louisville,
Kentucky, at the end of a long road of alternating catastrophes and
miracles. We had seen our van die a bitter death and our replacement
vehicle break down, leaving five of us crowded into a tiny pickup truck
with a van’s worth of gear; we had performed everywhere from a rural
intentional community to a teen center, had gone swimming in a lake
improbably owned by a high-ranking politician, and seen a spontaneous
anarchist street march break out and meet with police repression; on one
occasion, we had stayed up all night bailing our companions out of jail,
only to pack up and depart at dawn. Shellshocked as we were, we didn’t
dare expect the convergence to be more than a handful of us sitting
around a campfire — so you can imagine how overjoyed we were to be
greeted by a well-organized welcome center at the entrance!
We embraced our friends, old and new, and were just about to drive in
when another vehicle appeared from down an adjoining driveway, speeding
and swerving and kicking up gravel. Emblazoned on its side was a logo:
Channel 11 News. Our friends were chasing it, running to cut it off,
shouting at us to get ahead of it; we gunned our engine and sped
forward, blocking its path. From inside two angry and self-righteous
journalists were shouting accusations and demands at our friends,
threatening to call the police if they were not admitted; our friends,
covering their faces, adamantly insisted that they leave immediately,
until finally the car turned and drove away. At the time, we thought
this was just a freak occurrence, but it proved to be an ominous
indication of what was to come.
We spent the first night catching up with our old comrades, exchanging
accounts of the tangled trails and trials that had brought us there.
There were just shy of one hundred of us on the campsite, though I’m
afraid that, somewhat more than last summer, the proportions favored
individuals that had showed up for the event alone over groups arriving
from tours. All the same, it was a choice bunch — some of the cleverest,
freest, sweetest people I’ve had the good fortune to see assembled.
The next day, we met in a great circle to decide what our plans for the
week would be, and that was when the first helicopter flew overhead. It
was a news helicopter; the bastards, refused entry to our campsite and
denied interviews with our number, had spent quite a sum to get (what we
later saw to be blurry, unimpressive) footage of us from the air. We
were outraged, of course, and some of us taunted the occupants of the
machine as it circled us three times, but after it was gone we got back
to the business of digging latrines, writing schedules, and preparing
meals.
The helicopters continued over the next couple days: Fox News, Channel
11, other local channels, and a couple that were — this was somewhat
more troubling — unmarked. We learned to ignore them as best we could
while getting on with our affairs: sharing skills from across the
anarchist spectrum, planning and networking for projects and actions to
come, entertaining each other with brilliant routines and inventions —
for example, one of our number demonstrated a mobile musical suit he had
constructed, which would blast beats from speakers on his body while he
freestyled effortlessly along in, say, a supermarket; others had driven
from Alaska in a school bus converted into a mobile home, which was
inspiring just to explore, let alone join in decorating with stencils.
In those two days, we accomplished a lot of the goals we had in mind for
the convergence — which turned out to be fortunate, as events were about
to develop in an entirely unexpected direction.
At a dinner meeting called to discuss our plans for downtown Louisville
the following day — a low-intensity demonstration to call attention to
the corporations that were polluting its land and exploiting its people
— we got word from friends in the city that we had just been on the
news. Not only had we been on the news, but, according to the rumors,
the headline item at five o’clock had been that an army of dangerous
anarchists was congregating outside of Louisville and preparing to
attack — but that, not to worry, unbeknownst to them the police had them
surrounded and were about to sweep in to foil their plans. Supposedly,
the television news story even concluded with footage of police crouched
in hiding places, lying in wait! Of course, as we joked then, unless
they (rightly!) guessed we were some of the only people in the city
without access to or interest in television, the stuff about the police
preparing to surprise us was mere sensationalism and scare tactics — but
all the same it was hard not to be a little shaken up. As night fell,
some of us got together at the house owned by the family hosting us, to
compose a communiqué to our communities about the harassment. It was
there that this first chapter of the convergence reached its tumultuous
climax.
In the middle of our discussion, the eleven o’clock news came on, and,
temporarily breaking our ban on mainstream propaganda out of tactical
necessity, we went to watch it. Yes indeed, we were the first item on
every news channel at the top of the hour. There was blurry helicopter
footage of us at the campsite, and the announcer referenced the episode
in Columbia, Missouri in which a “flash mob” covered a federal building
in graffiti and burned its flags as an example of what CrimethInc. was
all about — and why law-abiding citizens had to be protected from us. As
for what actually happened in Columbia, for now I’ll leave that to the
mainstream media to report (see the example at the conclusion of this
piece for starters), but it had apparently got law enforcement agents
and network media in quite a tizzy. Also, verifying the earlier rumors,
the announcer reported that police had occupied the neighboring lands:
we were surrounded.
It was time to work out how to handle the situation. We were on private
land, so they hadn’t been able to come in yet, but it seemed clear that
the police and media were working to create an atmosphere in which the
public would feel that repression of us “dangerous outsiders” was
justified. I’ve long known that the mainstream media are basically
police with cameras for guns, but I’d never been on the business end of
them quite as explicitly as this. I was a little vexed about it — I’m
not one of those anarchists who needs to provoke repression to feel that
my politics count as revolutionary; I’ve always felt myself most
effective flying under the radar, and prided myself on being good at
staying there. Now we were locked in a standoff with the pigs without
the masses anywhere in sight, like we were the Eugene Anarchists or
something. How embarrassing!
Before we got far into figuring out what to do if we were invaded, a
frantic report arrived from the welcome center: the car we had sent out
to dumpster food had been stopped and the occupants harassed, and the
police had now set up a checkpoint at the end of the one road leading
out of the campsite — two police cars and a special “Investigational
Services” vehicle. This was the opportune moment that the police
helicopter appeared over the farm, armed with a scorching white
searchlight and circling low. It seemed to us that this was either a
particularly high-intensity intimidation tactic, or an indication that
they were casing the campsite for an imminent incursion. Had the police
sirens not begun in the distance a minute later, we might have been able
to take the time to puzzle out just how seriously to take their
swaggering; but once they started up, we moved on to planning how to
evacuate the individuals and items in our midst that most needed to be
kept out of the hands of our enemies.
We were later to find out that we were being more uptight than our
friends; the kids on the other side of the farm, never ones to take
anything less lightly than need be, paused in their open mic circle to
dance in the searchlight, chased after it when it moved on, and one
level-headed fellow even used his digital camera to catch some hilarious
footage of this spectacle. It was tense in that kitchen, though: with
our host’s civilian mother talking about which of our communications
were tapped, the steady roar of the helicopter overhead, and the stress
of figuring out under duress exactly what we needed to do to minimize
the impact of an invasion, it felt a little like we were inside the next
Waco.
The police never did close in; the siren wailed for a little while, and
then was silent again. All the same, we put the process in motion to get
endangered people out — starting with a few space monkeys to test the
waters, then moving on to the ones in really precarious positions,
utilizing a complex system of code to receive reports at the house as to
how each expedition went. By dawn we had finished. Looking back, it
seems really unlikely that they were actually prepared to raid us — such
an undertaking would have cost them more police and preparation than
they could possibly have mobilized on such short order; all the same,
the harassment was becoming so distracting that, had we stayed, we would
have been badly distracted from everything we needed to focus on.
We woke up the next day at various houses in Louisville proper,
extremely exhausted. We were soon joined by the remainder of our number
from the campsite — that morning, our hosts had supposedly received word
in no uncertain terms that the farm was in fact going to be raided, and
everyone had departed accordingly. Oblique references were even made to
federal agents, who had supposedly been going to find bomb-making
materials on our site. Yeah, yeah — you morons find bomb-making
materials everywhere you raid, at least until your claims have to stand
up in court.
Now began the difficult process of regrouping a bunch of freaked out
people and deciding what to do next. Our planned event of the day, the
protest in the financial sector, was called off, for a variety of
reasons: people were afraid the police would take advantage of it to
pick us off, that the security in organizing it hadn’t been tight
enough, that we didn’t have a clear enough idea of what we were doing
there. This was disappointing to the people who had been preparing for
it, and reinforced the dynamic that we out-of-towners were coming in and
depleting local resources without contributing to local struggles — and,
for that matter, gave positive reinforcement to the cops for the scare
tactics they’d been using, assuming they did know we had planned a
protest; but with so many people still afraid, and the organizers having
failed to inspire broad-based confidence in their plan, there was
nothing for it but to cancel.
There was some discussion as to whether we dared act as a group in
public at all after the media smear campaign that presumably had the
whole populace thinking we were terrorists — and for that matter, how
safe were we in these houses? did we dare even talk over the telephone?
— but it was decided that the worst thing we could do would be to let
them intimidate us into silence and invisibility. For our first
tentative foray into public, we chose an art car show down the street
from the site of the originally planned protest — we reasoned that the
presence of presumably liberal art-lovers and artists would be a
deterrent to serious police repression, and figured we’d be in our
element among another creative fringe group, albeit car enthusiasts.
We showed up in small groups, and established a presence in the middle
of the on-street exhibition: an anarchic orchestra that could be heard
for blocks playing a variety of home-made instruments and found-object
percussion, stilt-walkers making balloon animals for children and
encouraging them to join in the chalk-decorating of the sidewalk, the
omnipresent free literature table, and a number of us walking around
starting conversations with the locals about the events of the past days
and the ways they connected with local issues. Some of us had contacted
the media to try to set things straight, but, revealing their true
colors, now that they’d secured their ratings with alarmist,
sensationalist tripe they didn’t even bother to show up. The police did
show up, however — first a single patrol car, then a number of them,
including unmarked cars. In the process of monitoring them, I met a
lovely old homeless guy, who, it turned out, had been running volunteer
surveillance on them on our behalf already: “That’s an unmarked car
right there, I know that guy — he arrested me twice. Don’t worry, he
won’t do shit unless his boss tells him to. You kids are good people,
I’m glad you’re here.” At that moment, I felt grateful again for the
open wounds on my hands, the tangles in my hair, the dirt on my clothes,
which had only seemed like liabilities over the preceding days when at
any moment I might have had to pass for a civilian: these were
signifiers connecting me to an entire world of other marginalized
peoples, folks with the same natural enemies and longings.
And as it turned out, at the very moment that the police were assessing
the situation, the organizer of the show was talking to one of us —
expressing gratitude to us for showing up and enhancing the exhibition!
She invited us to a parade they were holding through downtown Louisville
the next day. Then, when the police approached to mess with us, she
intervened, informing them that we were part of the event and not to be
bullied. A long argument ensued, at the conclusion of which the police
officers departed in frustration, leaving only a single car to circle
the block.
From the exhibition, we headed to Bardstown Road, the main commercial
drag in Louisville. It was Friday night, and the district was crowded
with bored teenagers hanging around, hip young professionals going
clubbing, and older folks dining out. We began a parade up and down the
road, complete with marching drums, singing, outlandish costumes, and
runners giving out free food easily dumpstered from behind local
establishments, much to the merriment of all. At the outset, there were
perhaps less than fifty of us, but that number swiftly doubled as more
and more passers by joined in off the street. We even came across a
couple backpackers who had just hitchhiked into town in search of us.
The police kept tabs on us, but again, under the eyes of a wide public,
were unable to do more. Passing drivers honked and cheered, a surf band
performing at a nearby nightclub came to join us with their great gong
in tow, shouting out their own quirky versions of Seattle protest
chants, and there was joy in the air as the urban environment everyone
had taken for granted was transformed. At the end of our second circuit
we quickly dispersed, and though some of us were followed by police we
all managed to lose them.
Asking directions back to the neighborhood where we were staying, my
friends and I had the most inspiring experience of the week. The
middle-aged, lower-middle-class couple we accosted gladly directed us,
then engaged us in conversation:
“Did you make that [impressive homemade musical instrument] on top of
your [vehicle]?”
“Yeah, it’s the fourth one I did, the first one that’s really audible.”
“Are you all from around here?”
“No, we’re visiting. We were staying on a farm outside town, but — ”
“Oh my god, you are! Are you — THE ANARCHISTS?”
“Uh, yeah, but — ”
The woman, practically jumping up and down: “We saw you on TV! You guys
are great!”
Us: ?!?!!
“Do you do graffiti, write on walls, things like that?”
“Um, no, we’re not really about — ”
“ — because I have to say, I love some of the stuff I see. I even do a
bit myself!”
I break in here, over my nervous friend: “Well, maybe just a little…”
“Don’t let them scare you with their bullshit, OK? Don’t let them get
you!”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying! Don’t worry, we’re gonna get them!”
“Yeah, that’s right!”
We drove off shouting and laughing and waving to our new friends, and at
that moment it dawned on me — all those people that had joined in our
parade that night, that had honked and waved or come out of the
restaurants to watch us go by, they had all seen the news coverage of
us, and they didn’t buy it, they didn’t care. If the networks said we
were monsters bent on the destruction of everything America holds
sacred, that just made us more interesting to them. Our enemies had
brought out the big guns to discredit us, and it hadn’t been enough.
I returned to our safe house ecstatic, and spent the next hours dancing
wildly to the soundtrack of Natural Born Killers, pausing to engage my
friends in impassioned conversation about the implications of the
evening’s events: “We were right to come out of the closet about wanting
to smash capitalism and so on — we aren’t isolated, there are millions
of us! All it’s gonna take is for some of us to get together and say
it’s on, and it will be!”
The next day, we showed up at noon and filled the streets in the middle
of the art-car parade, once again with drums and banners and free food.
It turned out we were parading down the same route we had the night
before. There was a problem with someone’s engine ahead — it would
overheat if they drove too slowly — so the cars forward of us ended up
driving quickly on, leaving us fronting the rest of the parade. Without
really meaning to, we led the main body of the parade off its permitted
route, along the commercial thoroughfare once again, to cheers and
clapping from the sidewalks. Eventually a police officer, his hands full
trying to supervise traffic, showed up to direct the drivers back to
their route, and we were left alone, still occupying the street. We
eventually regrouped in the parking lot where the art-cars had gathered
for one more exhibition, and established a presence there as we had the
day before, giving out massive quantities of literature and engaging in
numerous conversations with locals about the police, the media, and the
possibility of another world. Throughout everything, we felt
exceptionally well-received by the citizens of Louisville, excepting the
police, of course.
That night was the show for the barnstorming tour groups, which had been
clumsily attached to a local punk rock benefit show. This was another
trying, awkward situation: there had been some trouble with the show,
only partly owing to our involvement in it and the subsequent attention
it had received, and it had been moved over and over from venue to venue
— finally coming to rest in a suburban family’s basement. We set up our
literature table, started some good conversations and so on, but it soon
became apparent that the hosts weren’t interested in making it possible
for us to participate after all. Still hoping to make something of a
difficult night, we scrambled to find another venue, and eventually
relocated everyone to another house. Exhausted but buoyed by the feeling
of being among friends, the various remainders of the barnstorming
groups showed off some of the agitational performances they had been
doing around the country, to much rejoicing. The show ended up being
mostly for us, the “converted,” but it was still important that it
happened under the circumstances, as an affirmation of our indomitable
determination — and I think all of us there knew that the real deal is
to get our artwork and activity out of the radical ghetto and into the
public arena, whenever it is possible.
On the final day, ready to take it easy, the remnants of our group
gathered at a popular Louisville park known for its unlicensed swimming.
In the Fellini version of our story, the movie ends there, the camera
panning from the “NO WADING — NO SWIMMING” signs to the fountains
overflowing with laughing people of all ages and backgrounds — the
everyday anarchists, taking their rights by storm without need of a
manifesto for justification, the ones we can count on to ensure the
success of the revolution once we manage to set its wheels in motion.
When you’re a revolutionary, of course, real life is always better than
any movie, and so we still had time afterwards to hold a dumpstering and
cooking competition that culminated in a great feast and dance party. It
was not exactly confrontational politics, but we felt we’d earned the
right to “indulge our desires” (as the straw men in the anti-CrimethInc.
myths and rumors always do — boy, must they live high on the hog!) a bit
after the harrowing situations of the previous days.
We exchanged contacts and oaths that we would meet again for further
adventures, one of our number made one more useless attempt to contact
the media (which was rewarded with a helicopter visit to our safe house,
absurdly enough), and we were on our way to the next stop in tour —
where we found the police waiting for us, once again. But that’s another
story!
So what worked this summer, and what didn’t? Let me say this, first —
our enemies fucked up royally by threatening us without following
through. Being in a situation like that is intensely frightening — not
that I haven’t been under helicopters and surrounded by police over and
over at demonstrations and so on, but this was the first time I’d
experienced them coming for us — but next time it happens, I’ll be calm
and collected: “Sure, we’re under siege and they’re preparing to attack,
but last time this happened everything worked out. Keep cool but don’t
freeze, as my friend always says.” Any time they give us the benefit of
a practice run without the usual costs, it’s a gift — it’s not easy to
get field practice being an embattled revolutionary! Being able to gauge
actual levels of risk and resist intimidation tactics is important, and
now a hundred of us are better equipped to do so.
And despite everything, we did accomplish the greater part of our goals
in converging: skills and ideas were exchanged, plans were laid, some
crazy adventures of the kind you can’t organize in advance took place, a
little more visibility for the anarchist perspective was achieved (and a
few more crazy stories entered circulation), and, perhaps most
importantly, the bonds of existing and new relationships were forged in
fire, to stand us in good stead in the future. In addition, we did
reclaim a couple streets, our hosts and some others to experienced
firsthand what the police state is like in action (a radicalizing
experience if there ever was one!), and we got away without a single
arrest during the whole week, despite intensive surveillance and the
fact that perhaps more than half of our number were career criminals of
some kind or another.
Things that could have been done better? There are some obvious ones.
This year’s format certainly didn’t do much to enable the participation
of anyone from outside the traveler-kid cultural context, that’s for
sure. And I think the witch-hunt could have been fended off early on if
an experienced group had been doing police and media liaison work —
those of us experienced enough to do so were unprepared and already
overworked. The fact is — as much as we can turn the experience to our
advantage — they did succeed in intimidating us, and we should have been
able to resist such tactics. If the local organizers and the organizers
of the barnstorming groups, especially the ones with the most previous
experience in such situations, had worked more closely together in
advance of the gathering, we would have been much better equipped to
deal with such crises, and could then have concentrated our energy on
precipitating crises for our foes rather than coping with them
ourselves. Hell, things can always benefit from being better organized —
there’s never any shortage in room for improvement there.
But enough about the past — let’s get out there and put these lessons to
use. No longer particularly impressed by helicopters, but thinking more
than ever about how they might be brought down to earth. –CrimethInc.
Secret Agent F.G. Markem
“One must always aim to act in the full light of day, bearing in mind
that the best way to obtain a freedom is to take it, facing the
necessary risks; very often a freedom is lost, through one’s own fault,
either through not exercising it or using it timidly, giving the
impression that one does not have the right to be doing what one is
doing.”
— Errico Malatesta, “Anarchist Propaganda”