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Title: The Irrepressible Anarchists
Author: CrimethInc.
Date: August 11, 2006
Language: en
Topics: surveillance, repression, police, security culture
Source: Retrieved on 7th November 2020 from https://crimethinc.com/2006/08/11/the-irrepressible-anarchists

CrimethInc.

The Irrepressible Anarchists

The beast has been awakened—snarling—and wants to bite someone soon. We

fear, not without reason, that it may be us. At this moment the

Underground Armies of Barbarian Anarchists are getting scant attention.

Still, we are on a very short list. We have recently been considered a

genuine threat to national security. We have yet to be linked in any

manner to the hijackers and their supporters, despite the obvious

advantages that the reactionaries stand to gain by doing so. This will

not last forever. We are being given a grace period, to rally around the

flag and return to the fold, or else. They will connect the dots or

create the dots to connect, and just because many of us are Americans

does not mean we are safe.

Thus speculated the CrimethInc. Warbringer cell in After the Fall, an

analysis published in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Granted, the FBI has not seriously attempted to link the domestic

anarchist movement to actual Islamic terror organizations—that would be

too much of a stretch, even for the geniuses who testified at Daniel

McGowan’s detention hearing that CrimethInc. had published a book about

Emma Goldman—but they have taken advantage of the climate of fear to

equate sabotage with terrorism, initiating a new campaign against

environmental and animal-rights activists. The grace period is over—in

May, 2005, the FBI announced that it considers the Earth Liberation

Front domestic terror threat number one—and the government hopes to use

this opportunity to settle scores with the anarchist movement in

general.

This has been coming all along, of course. Every generation that has

succeeded in pushing its resistance past rhetoric into effective action

has borne the brunt of state repression. There was no way the FBI was

going to let the statute of limitations elapse on the old ELF arsons

without charging someone with them [1]. Anyone who thought there could

be eco-defense without eco-defendants hadn’t thought social struggle all

the way through yet.

The first thing we must do in coming to grips with this assault on our

community is recognize that it is not an aberration, but something

totally predictable and normal—at least, normal in the context of the

current absurd social order. Any effective struggle against the system

of domination is going to involve arrests, investigations, and prison

terms, not to mention violent attacks from both state forces and

vigilantes. These are an intrinsic part of our job description as

revolutionary anarchists, whatever tactics we employ on an individual

basis. Just as it didn’t serve us to throw up our hands in dismay when

the global context changed on September 11, alarmism can only hurt us

now. Let’s calmly familiarize ourselves with the possibility that some

of us are going to spend time in court and prison, while doing

everything we can to prevent this and maintaining a realistic sense of

the extent of the current threat.

The Story Thus Far

It is impossible to provide thorough or timely coverage of every aspect

of this subject here, so we urge readers to consult these websites:

ecoprisoners.org, greenscare.org, fbiwitchhunt.org, and especially

portland.indymedia.org. For basic context, we’ll present a short summary

as of this writing, but please don’t stop here.

Most activists date the latest wave of repression, popularly termed the

“green scare,” from December 7, 2005, when the FBI carried out a series

of raids around the US. Further arrests and indictments followed until a

total of fourteen people were charged with various counts of arson,

destruction of property, and conspiracy in the oddly-named “Operation

Backfire[2].” Of these, Joseph Dibee, Josephine Overaker, and Rebecca

Rubin are thought to be in hiding outside the US, while William Rodgers

allegedly committed suicide in his jail cell on the winter solstice.

Stanislas Meyerhoff, Kevin Tubbs, Chelsea Dawn Gerlach, Suzanne Savoie,

and Kendall Tankersley are believed to be cooperating with the

government—i.e., offering to testify against others in hopes of

receiving lighter sentences. The entire case of the FBI seems to have

initially been based on the testimony of one heroin addict, Jacob

Ferguson, so the decision of others to cooperate with the state is

particularly troubling. Daniel McGowan, Jonathan Paul, and Briana Waters

are currently free on outrageously high bail[3], while Joyanna Zacher

and Nathan Block have been denied bail as a result of the testimony of

informants. The trial is cartoonishly scheduled for Halloween, October

31, 2006.

The following month, Zachary Jenson, Lauren Weiner and Eric McDavid were

arrested in Auburn, California for allegedly conspiring to commit

actions on behalf of the ELF. They were set up by an FBI agent

provocateur, “Anna,” who was sleeping with one of them; apparently she

bought bomb-making materials and rented a bugged house for them.

Apparently “Anna” had been traveling in anarchist circles since summer

of 2004, attending two CrimethInc. convergences and a host of other

events[4] (in the muddled words of FBI flunky Nasson Walker, “The s/he

has provided information that has been utilized in at least twelve

separate anarchist cases.”). Lauren was released into house arrest on

$1.2 million bail, and subsequently pleaded guilty and agreed to testify

against the others—an infuriating development when her codefendants were

starving in isolation cells. Two months later, the very night this

article was finished, Zachary was reported to have just done the same

thing.

In March, six activists associated with the animal rights group Stop

Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, which has driven an animal testing

corporation to the brink of bankruptcy, were found guilty on charges of

using their website to incite attacks on Huntingdon Life Sciences and

their business partners. Some of them face up to eleven years in prison

for making use of their supposed right to free speech.

All the while, grand juries—secretive government interrogation organs

established to gather information about alleged crimes—have been

convened around the country, indicting anyone with connections to

activist communities, jailing those who won’t speak, and nosing around

for further leads in the war on dissent. FBI agents have announced that

anarchist groups such as Food Not Bombs and Indymedia are near the top

of their terror watch list. Whether or not anarchists are ready for it,

we are now being targeted as public enemy number one.

Together, these various cases spell out a cohesive message: Don’t act,

you will be caught. Don’t associate with dissidents, you will be framed.

Don’t trust your comrades, you will be infiltrated. Don’t speak about

others’ actions, you will be imprisoned.

This message is the most important part of the FBI campaign. Even with

all the anti-terror funding in the world, they can’t infiltrate every

anarchist circle and pin charges on every prominent activist. They hope

that, by staging this massive display of force, they can intimidate the

rest of us into silence and passivity, just as the excessive and

unsustainable police presence at the FTAA protests in Miami November

2003 was calculated to put an end to the era of anarchist mass

mobilizations by giving an inflated impression of the power of the

state.

The Radical Response

The responses of the anarchist media can be divided into two basic

camps. The first camp, exemplified by the more theoretical journals such

as Fifth Estate, reacted by printing news about the arrests and charges

followed by vague afterthoughts to the effect that one must not lose

hope. It could be argued that publicizing repression without offering

concrete proposals for how to respond assists the FBI in their work. To

their eternal discredit, Anarchy: A so-called Journal of Desire Armed

set the low-water mark for this sort of thing in implying that the

current situation is simply the result of a “fetishization of security

culture” in anarchist circles. Thankfully, more action-oriented

publications and websites such as No Compromise and The New York Rat

have provided practical information on how to support targeted activists

through letter-writing, fund-raising, and solidarity actions. Sad to

say, the current issue of Rolling Thunder falls into the former

category, but we hope to remedy that next issue by sharing all the

skills for prisoner and defendant support that are being honed in our

community right now.

Participation in anarchist legal aid and prisoner support projects has

increased over the past months, though not yet enough to exert a great

influence over the course of events. This increase is ironic, given that

a year ago some of those now targeted by the state were trying to figure

out how to reinvigorate prisoner support in North America. The pivotal

question now is whether or not anarchist organizers, so used to working

in the limited context of their own communities, will be able to muster

widespread public outrage over this witch hunt. Without that, this round

may end badly for the accused, and that will encourage the authorities

to initiate another roundup.

What Does It All Mean?

It is of the utmost importance that those currently being targeted

receive the funding and community support necessary for the best

possible legal defense. As on every other front, every inch should cost

our persecutors as much as possible, whether or not we win individual

battles. Good legal support has proven indispensable in keeping mass

actions viable; for example, the legal defense and countersuits

following the protests against the IMF meeting in Washington, D.C. in

2002 not only cleared hundreds of protesters of charges, but also tied

the hands of the D.C. police for several protests to come. The struggle

in the courtroom is not the postscript to the struggle in the street,

but that struggle conducted by different means; it is not the end of the

story unless we give up and make it so. The same goes for the struggle

in prison, for those serving sentences: a community cannot foster

long-term commitment to militant struggle unless it supports its

prisoners of war; conversely, those prisoners have power to the extent

to which their comrades outside maintain enough momentum to exert social

and political leverage.

While we’re at it, let’s postulate a few other lessons from the initial

phase of this wave of repression. First, every activist group should be

prepared to be targeted, with resources (a lawyer, money, a network of

potential supporters) and a game plan ready. Second, in times of

increased surveillance and repression, we must be cautious without

letting fear immobilize us. We’re powerful because we act, and because

we’re connected to others; being frightened into passivity and isolation

can only weaken and endanger us. Third, now more than ever solidarity

means constructive criticism, not speculations (“That arson? I bet that

was Alphonse—he’s into macho tactics”) or accusations (“She never does

anything—she’s just a lot of talk”). You never know what situation a

person is in: she might be a wanted fugitive who can’t respond to your

thoughtless words without endangering herself. Likewise, “innocent”

activists may be accused of others’ actions, and even go to prison for

them; but this is the fault of the government, not on the ones who act,

so long as they don’t stupidly put others at risk. Finally, much of the

evidence in recent cases is based on informants wearing microphones into

conversations. Activists should consider the possibility that even

trusted companions could be wired; don’t ever reminisce needlessly over

past illegal actions, don’t assume old cases are closed even after a

decade of silence, don’t work with people you’re not sure you’ll trust

ten years from now. Meet a person’s family and friends before joining in

illegal activity.

And above all, DON’T TALK TO POLICE OR THE FBI. No matter what, it can

never help you. They wouldn’t ask you in the first place if they didn’t

need your help to ruin your life. Remember: “I am going to remain

silent. I would like to speak with an attorney.”

The Enemy Within

“They can’t get inside you,” she had said. But they could get inside

you. There were things, your own acts, from which you could not recover.

Something was killed in your breast; burnt out, cauterized out…

“Sometimes,” she said, “they threaten you with something—something you

can’t stand up to, can’t even think about. And then you say, ‘Don’t do

it to me, to it to somebody else, do it to so-and-so.’ And perhaps you

might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just

said it to make them stop and didn’t really mean it. But that isn’t

true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there’s no

other way of saving yourself and you’re quite ready to save yourself

that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don’t give a

damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself.”

“All you care about is yourself,” he echoed.

He was not running or cheering any longer. He was back in the Ministry

of Love, with everything forgiven, his soul white as snow. He was in the

public dock, confessing everything, implicating everybody. He was

walking down the white-tiled corridor, with the feeling of walking in

the sunlight, and an armed guard at his back. The long-hoped-for bullet

was entering his brain.

But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was

finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.

— George Orwell at the bitter end of 1984

Brutal assaults from the state should come as no surprise. The most

troubling aspect of this story is that some of those arrested—and even

some who were not arrested, who are not even facing the threat of life

in prison—have agreed to speak to the authorities, putting others at

grievous risk.

Imagine the situation of an activist who has agreed to testify against

her former comrades. All the experiences that made her an anarchist,

from childhood on, come back to haunt her as she betrays her own values

and commitments, siding with the bullies, the rapists, the snide

executives and sadistic police. Whatever tremendous feats she has

accomplished, whatever personal qualities she took pride in, now she

will be remembered as a informant and must live with the knowledge that

she is one.

In return for the potential of one day rejoining the defeated herd she

fought so hard to escape, she must tell herself the same lies that once

outraged her: that people are essentially selfish and untrustworthy,

that complicity in injustice is inevitable and acceptable, that one can

simply look out for number one in a disastrously unsustainable world.

She does not even know how much leniency she can expect; the government

can hardly let her off the hook when they’ve worked so hard to find her.

On the other hand, as a snitch, she can be sure that if she goes to

prison her fellow inmates will terrorize her. This gives the state even

more power over her. Perhaps she considers breaking off collaboration,

but to do so would only leave her isolated from all directions; the die

is already cast. One can hardly imagine a worse position to be in.

Let us phase out the masked figure lobbing a molotov cocktail as the

idealized image of revolt; there is a time for that, and the sooner it

comes back around the better, but it is not the ultimate stage of

struggle. Henceforth, when we think of resistance at its most courageous

and romantic, let us picture someone like ourselves in an interrogation

chamber, not masked but handcuffed, being threatened with life and death

in captivity and still refusing to render herself and her fellows into

her enemies’ hands.

Facing the threat of incarceration, we must redefine freedom and safety

as factors under our control, not external circumstances. Freedom is not

a matter of how many fences happen to be around you, but of following

the dictates of your conscience no matter what. Safety is not the

condition of being temporarily outside the grasp of your enemies, but of

trusting yourself enough to know that your friends will never come to

harm because of you and you will never become something you despise.

We Can Win: Success Stories from the Struggle against Repression

Not only is it critical to fight in the courtrooms as well as the

streets—it’s also possible to win those fights. A brief look at our own

recent history shows countless cases in which activists have beaten

charges and even come out ahead in counter-suits. Such victories not

only discourage our enemies from taking us to court, they can also

provide needed resources for further organizing. Throwing up one’s hands

in panic as soon as someone gets arrested is not only counterproductive,

it’s also needlessly pessimistic. To offset the doomsaying of the

inexperienced and easily demoralized, let’s reflect on a couple recent

victories won by activists forced to fight within the legal system.

At the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia summer of 2000,

Camilo Viveiros and two others were beaten and arrested by a group of

police that included John Timoney, then Police Commissioner of

Philadelphia. Charged with numerous felonies (as a rule, you always get

charged by the police for whatever they do to you) and demonized as

violent extremists, the activists came to be known as the Timoney Three;

Camilo himself faced more than thirty-seven years in prison and $55,000

in fines. They awaited trial for four years, while Timoney jet-setted

around the world giving presentations on how to repress protesters and

serving as Chief of Police in Miami during the FTAA ministerial in 2003.

It seemed certain that anyone charged with assaulting someone in such a

position of power was doomed to go to prison. Yet when the trial finally

came, Timoney and the other officers made fools of themselves, offering

wildly conflicting testimonies; after the defense presented a videotape

that revealed the testimony of the police to be mere fabrication, the

three were declared innocent of all charges. In an excellent article the

March-April 2006 issue of the Earth First! journal, Camilo outlined the

lessons of that trial for those currently facing government repression.

One of the most important trials of the preceding generation of

environmental activism ended in an unconditional victory over the

mendacious, murderous authorities. In 1990, Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney

were nearly killed by a car bomb while on a speaking tour to promote

resistance to corporate logging. Rather than investigating the bombing,

the FBI charged the two with making and transporting bombs. They also

took advantage of the opportunity to carry out a nationwide smear

campaign against Earth First!, and sent agents to create dossiers on

over five hundred activists associated with the organization. To this

day, it remains unclear whether the bombing was the work of freelance

vigilantes or of the FBI themselves—in the weeks before it, FBI agents

instructed the local police on how to make bombs exactly like the one

that nearly killed Judi and Darryl. The charges failed to hold up in

court, and the two initiated a counter-suit against the FBI and Oakland

Police Department. Although the FBI managed to delay the trial for

almost eleven years, during which Judi, who was crippled by the bombing,

died of cancer, Darryl and others continued pressing the suit. Finally,

in 2002, a jury found the FBI and Oakland Police guilty and ordered them

to pay $4.4 million in damages.

When the struggle in the courtroom fails, there are always other means

of resistance. On November 2, 1979, after giving birth in prison only to

have her daughter taken away in less than a week, Black freedom fighter

Assata Shakur managed one of the most impressive jailbreaks of the era.

After almost a year in a West Virginia federal prison for women,

surrounded by white supremacists from the Aryan Sisterhood prison gang,

Shakur was transferred to the maximum security wing of the Clinton

Correctional Center in New Jersey. There she was one of only eight

maximum security prisoners held in a small, well-fenced cellblock of

their own. The rest of Clinton, including its visiting area, was medium

security and not fenced in.

According to news reports, Shakur’s escape proceeded as follows: Three

men—two black, one white—using bogus driver’s licenses and Social

Security cards requested visits with Assata four weeks in advance, as

was prison policy. Apparently, prison officials never did the requisite

background checks. On the day of the escape, the three met in the

waiting room at the prison entrance, where they were processed through

registration and shuttled in a van to the visiting room in South Hall.

One member of the team went ahead of the others. Although there was a

sign stating that all visitors would be searched with a hand-held metal

detector, he made it through registration without even a pat-down.

Meanwhile, the other two men were processed without a search. As these

two were being let through the chain-link fences and locked metal doors

at the visiting center one of them drew a gun and took the guard

hostage. Simultaneously, the man visiting Shakur rushed the control

booth, put two pistols to the glass wall, and ordered the officer to

open the room’s metal door. She obliged.

From there, Shakur and her companions took a third guard hostage and

made it to the parked van. Because only the maximum security section of

the prison was fully fenced in, the escape team was able to speed across

a grassy meadow to the parking lot of the Hunterdon State School, where

they meet two more female accomplices, and split up into a “two-tone

blue sedan” and a Ford Maverick. All the guards were released unharmed

and the FBI immediately launched a massive hunt. But Shakur disappeared

without a trace. For the next five years authorities hunted in vain.

Shakur had vanished. Numerous other alleged BLA cadre were busted during

those years, including Tupac’s step-father, Mutula Shakur.

In 1984, word came from ninety miles off the coast of Florida: the FBI’s

most wanted female fugitive was living in Cuba, working on a masters

degree in political science, writing her autobiography, and raising her

daughter. She still lives there today.

Our Strategy from Here

This is a somewhat quiet phase of resistance in this country, as

everyone waits out the end of the Bush presidency; we can afford to

focus a lot of energy on benefit events, prisoner support groups, and

public outreach. When things heat up again, we’ll benefit from having

done this work, and in the meantime it offers us a rallying point.

In addition to supporting our targeted comrades, we have to protect the

infrastructure of our community. In Italy, where the brutal state

repression of the past decade has succeeded in paralyzing many of those

who bottomlined anarchist projects, police and fascists have been able

to shut down some of the social centers, publications, and protest

campaigns that formed the life’s blood of a vibrant anarchist movement.

We must not allow that to happen here. The government will target those

who are most active and visible; when one of us is immobilized by legal

problems, it’s up to the rest of us to take up the slack. Our

infrastructure is not just made up of formally organized groups; it also

consists of and depends on our social networks and culture of

resistance. If people cease to come together at politicized

entertainment events and community potlucks, or cease to work through

conflicts and share emotional support, that will be just as devastating

as the loss of an infoshop or Food Not Bombs.

As for our proactive tactics, how should we adjust them in the light of

this offensive? It’s worth pointing out that, with the exception of Rob

Thaxton[5], no anarchist in recent memory has served more than a couple

years in prison for participation in mass actions—this is impressive,

given the high level of confrontation these have sometimes reached. It

seems to be harder to make charges stick in mass action scenarios,

perhaps because they involve so many suspects and so much chaos, and

also because investigating them at great length would overextend the

resources of the state. The police are forced to grab whomever they

can—usually not people who had any major role in the actions—and charge

them with crimes for which there is little evidence.

Ironically, in the wake of September 11^(th), anarchists backed off

militant mass actions in fear that they would meet stiffer repression.

Consequently, we have less leverage and morale—and we are still being

targeted as domestic enemy number one! The FBI and the whole apparatus

of repression are after us whether or not we skulk around in the

shadows, so we may as well organize openly. If we’re all headed for

court anyway, we have little to lose, and we stand to gain much-needed

visibility and momentum. If enough of us stick our necks out, they can’t

target us all, and the more people of all walks of life are familiar

with our struggle the more allies we can hope to find. Now is the time

to form accessible anarchist structures, to speak publicly about our

opposition to capitalism and domination, to organize large-scale

anarchist actions. Far from endangering us, this may actually make us

safer.

As for those who prefer more covert tactics such as arson and sabotage,

the clearest lesson of the current phase of repression is that the

government is interested above all in mapping networks of resistance[6].

If you are not connected to the current pool of suspects, doing as your

conscience dictates is no more dangerous now than it was a decade ago,

provided you practice flawless security culture and pick prudent

comrades who will never buckle under pressure. Indeed, as the trials of

the current defendants play out over the coming months, we will be given

valuable insight into how the FBI investigates crimes of this nature.

This should, if anything, make it easier for activists to engage safely

in militant direct action.

Our enemies are wrong to hypothesize that we can be frightened into

passivity. If the prospect of living in a world of domination and

despair was bad enough to catalyze us into action, think how much less

appealing it is to be silent knowing our comrades can be taken from us

at any time. As they escalate this conflict, we can only respond in

kind.

[1] In fact, the great majority of environmentalist direct action cases

still remain unsolved. The FBI alleges that there have been over 1200

criminal acts carried out by underground activists since 1990, and 150

“eco-terror” investigations are still open.

[2] According to the Oxford American Dictionary, a backfire is “a fire

set intentionally to arrest the progress of an approaching fire by

creating a burned area in its path, thus depriving the fire of fuel.”

This seems to confirm that the FBI strategy to suppress dissent is based

on the use of agents provocateurs and false allegations, as were

COINTELPRO and other programs that ended up backfiring on them.

[3] Daniel McGowan, for example, was released into house arrest on $1.6

million bail. Before his arrest, Daniel worked for a non-profit

organization that helps women in domestic abuse situations navigate the

legal system. In the rare circumstances in which abusers are arrested

and charged (see the article on domestic violence elsewhere in this

issue), how high do you think their bail is set? This is a classic

example of the way the capitalist system works: violence against

individuals is practically accepted, while alleged destruction of

property is met with the stiffest possible penalties before even being

brought to trial.

[4] University of Miami sociology professor Linda Belgrave reports that

“Anna” was in Florida posing as a medic at a protest on June 6, 2005;

when an elderly woman who was apparently suffering from heat exhaustion

approached her for aid, “Anna” offered her a sip of Gatorade, then

declined to assist her further. The woman collapsed and an ambulance was

called. If any doubt lingered as to whether the FBI is concerned about

human life, their insertion of incompetent frauds into medic teams

serving law-abiding protestors should settle the matter.

[5] Rob just finished serving a seven year sentence for throwing a rock

at a police officer during a Reclaim the Streets in Eugene, Oregon, June

18^(th), 1999.

[6] In January 2006, a fifty-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of

damaging over a dozen cars and two buildings at an automobile dealership

in Newport, Oregon. The buildings were spray painted with the letters

“ELF,” and two local news stations had received calls claiming the

action in the name of the ELF. However, as reported by the Newport News

Times, “Police could not establish any connection between MacMurdo and

the ELF organization. It is believed his actions were retaliatory in

nature and not any kind of political statement.” He was charged with

criminal mischief and his bail was set at $32,500, a miniscule amount by

eco-terror standards. What does a guy have to do these days to get

charged as an eco-terrorist? Obviously, he has to have the right

friends.