Announcement received from the
Steel City Autonomous Movement on November 2nd, 2017

After a four-year run, our coalition of radical student crews and organizations was formally dissolved on Wednesday, November 1st. We originally began collaborating because we were sick of wasting our time seeking legitimacy through the dead-end channels provided by the Pitt administration and their police. But as much as we liked to position ourselves as inhabiting a space somewhere outside of Campus Life and its toxic social institutions and useless reformist activism, we now realize that we were merely carving out niche spaces within it.

The Pittsburgh Student Solidarity Coalition is dissolving in order to further decentralize and diversify organizing efforts, and to grant greater socio-political agency to the participating crews and organizations. Despite our best intentions, PSSC became an umbrella organization that assimilated (and sapped energy away from) the independent formations that comprised it. And so rather than continue to work together as a student coalition, we decided to re-prioritize our individual projects, crews, and organizations. But we’re not exactly breaking up! We still want to coordinate projects and share access to media platforms, but the PSSC general assemblies were definitely not the right forum for that.

In centering the student identity and its socio-geographic limitations, we effectively sidelined our non-student friends and comrades and self-isolated our struggles; in imagining ourselves and our scene as somehow being exterior (and superior) to Campus Life, we self-sabotaged our efforts to organize around student issues. As a result, we spent most of our energy organizing according to the artificial relationships and interests imposed by the University, or trying to construct “alternative” scenes with the same building blocks that Campus Life provided. But we cannot hope to build a movement by hopping back and forth between cookie-cutter countercultures, half-ironically adopting the aesthetics and politics of a given scene until we’re left with the choice between complicity in the guise of left unity, socio-political posturing, and dropping off to watch as another scene falls out of fashion. As aspiring truants, we must experiment with all available means of disrupting the routes by which Campus Life follows us into our spaces and relationships. Therefore, we can no longer passively identify with the infantalizing range of behavior and thought permissible to “students.”

Our truancy is oriented against the University as a site of separation – the separation of students from other youth, of students from faculty, of students from community, of education from public life, of the individual from self-identification/determination, of thought from deed. We recognize that we cannot take down the university-colony without fighting alongside the rest of the city: alongside our friends who never fucked with colonial education, our peers who are getting paid poverty wages by the university-factory, our neighbors who are being pushed from their homes by the rising cost of living, the land that is continuing its generations-old resistance to the economic crosshairs of corporate education.

In collaboration with autonomous radicals from across the city, we decided (in what will hopefully have been our last large-scale consensus decision) to participate in a new coordinating formation, the Steel City Autonomous Movement.

SCAM will utilize a spokescouncil model in order to encourage decentralization. The spokescouncil is a forum for mutual aid and coordination, not a decision-making body. Any individuals, crews, or organizations that have a relationship to the movement will be able to attend spokescouncils, share platforms for communicating and disseminating information, and volunteer to join the infrastructure crew. The infrastructure crew is responsible for bottom-lining at least two spokescouncils every month (one off campus, one on campus), inviting / screening / vouching attendees, throwing social events (public and private), and compiling the weekly event rundowns. Anyone participating in the infrastructure crew is empowered to use the SCAM brand/platform to promote their own events/workshops and endorse events as SCAM, without the need for consensus – SCAM is not an organization, it’s just the name for a specific autonomous forum/platform and therefore can be claimed by anyone that participates in it. The infrastructure crew will meet once a month for a tekmil to ensure shit doesn’t centralize into an organization and that no one’s acting fucked up or some shit.

Our friendships, houses, projects, crews, and organizations could be so much more than an edgier version of Greek Life. So fuck politics. Fuck professionalism. Fuck only building relationships with other students. Fuck living as if we aren’t witnessing the collapse of an empire.

We call on students and youth everywhere to join us in bursting the campus bubble. Let’s use our position as students to scam the University, just as it’s scammed us. Let’s take some time to venture off campus, chill in unfamiliar places, make dangerous friends. Let’s invite Pittsburgh back into Oakland. Let’s become ungovernable.

For an insurgent truancy,
– SCAM

Originally posted to It’s Going Down

Pittsburgh doesn’t have a police brutality problem. We have a police problem.

This problem won’t be solved by internal investigations, desk duty, body cameras, or – can you imagine? – community outreach, de-escalation training, and disarmament.

It will only be solved by the total abolition of the entire state security apparatus – cops and cameras, batons and bombs, prisons, armies, mass surveillance, and drone strikes. Nothing less will do in service of total liberation.

***

A viral video, captured on a civilian’s cell phone outside the PPG Paints Arena, spread Pittsburgh’s shame and the events of September 19th across the web. Five cops, one victim. His face bashed against the hard concrete again and again and again. Torrents of profanity from the cops. One screams “don’t resist” at the man lying limp on the ground.

Giving Officer Andrew Jacobs desk duty was more than just a moral error on the part of the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police. They named the most violent cop in the video and gave us the name of the person responsible. Voter registration records gave us the address of the only Andrew Jacobs in a fifty-mile radius of the city. We spread the word to close friends and accomplices – offline, via text and in person. We made signs and flyers and brainstormed chants.

A group of around ten assembled downtown and took the train to Mount Oliver, meeting three of our friends waiting at the station near the cop’s house and a few more parked up the street. All told, over 15 people gathered on the night of October 2nd to condemn this bastard in blue. Standing on the sidewalk, we passed around a megaphone and chanted in what amounted to a half hour of targeted disruption.

At one point, a woman screamed at us from a neighboring window. We screamed back – “Police are violent! We will not be silent!” Her husband emerged and slowly crossed the street towards us. Our chants wavered. He was aggressive, but not hostile. His kid was trying to sleep. We apologized and expressed sympathy before asking if he knew his neighbor was famous. He didn’t. “It’s not a tight-knit community,” were his words. Once we told him who lived two houses down, he begrudgingly granted our request for a few more minutes. One friend gave a speech – “If Black lives don’t matter, no lives matter.” A few more chants and then we split.

It’s good we left when we did. Our walk back to the train station was interrupted by two squad cars – buddies of Officer Jacobs, no doubt. Had we still been chanting when they arrived, we would surely have been subject to greater harassment. Lucky us. Curious cops just asked some friends a couple questions before escorting our group the remaining twenty feet to the station. We caught our ride, made it downtown, and went our separate ways.

***

A friend, a little late to the party, drove by the house a few minutes after we left. A uniformed cop stood in the front yard patting a visibly distraught Andrew Jacobs on the back. Mission accomplished.

Cops aren’t afraid of their fellow cops, of their bosses, of courts or prosecutors or legislatures. But they’re afraid of us. A little research and some word of mouth is all it takes for us to bring the fight from our neighborhoods to theirs. Organizing against police violence challenges the separation of people from political power, the social logic of the badge made material by the physical force of the baton. Power insulates individuals from the consequences of their actions. This power must be seized through collective action and abolished, disorienting the powerful by rejecting the justification for their every misdeed.

We have a message for Officer Jacobs, for the cop comforting him, for the four who followed us home, for the four who assisted his brutality, for every Pittsburgh cop who thinks being the law makes you above the law:

You have names and numbers, just like us. Just like us, you have homes that can be surveilled, neighbors that can be turned against you, communities that will reject you if the alternative becomes too costly. Just like us, your actions have consequences.

Activists accept targeted retaliation as a basic fact of their work. It’s time the police reckon with something similar.

“When friends and neighbors are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!”

Submission from the Queer Coffee Run crew, received on September 21st, 2017.

On Wednesday morning, we dropped two banners at the University of Pittsburgh. They read, “From Pitt to Georgia Tech: Disarm the Police, Arm Your Desire” and “Solidarity with St. Louis and Atlanta: Fuck the Police.” The first was hung from student dorms, the second from condemned housing near campus – we hope the symbolism is clear. Later that night, after campus police arrested a student protestor during coordinated disruptions of a right wing “debate” on immigration, we linked up with two other crews to beautify campus with chalk and flyers [just a heads up, the link is from a right-wing student news site, and it’s kinda hilarious]. Another crew from the autonomous student network tells us they also tagged and wheatpasted the Oakland area on Tuesday night.

We are deeply saddened and angered by the murder of comrade Scout Schultz by Georgia Tech campus police. As a small crew of radical queer youth and accomplices, we recognize that Scout could have been any one of us. We too struggle daily with and against our mental health; we take these actions as part of that struggle. We will continue to answer the calls to fight in Scout’s memory [1, 2, 3, 4], one of which reads:

To anyone who is enraged, grieving, or who stands against the police and the murderous system they protect, we call for actions in solidarity with our fight here in Atlanta. To anyone who is fighting for liberation: in the coming days, fight with Scout’s name on your lips, on your banners, and in your hearts.

We are also enraged, but unsurprised, by the continued impunity of racist police in St. Louis. Rest in Power, Anthony Lamar Smith.

We’re profoundly inspired by the uncompromising militancy of the resistance in both these cities. There is no dialogue to be had with those who continue to write our murderers’ paychecks, nor are there negotiations to be made with the forces of hetero-patriarchal white supremacy, capitalism, the state – Power.

To quote This is Not a Dialogue –

Maybe you missed this, but you’re not in a dialogue. Your views are beside the point. Argue all you want—your adversaries are glad to see you waste your breath. Better yet if you protest: they’d rather you carry a sign than do anything. They’ll keep you talking as long as they can, just to tire you out—to buy time.

They intend to force their agenda on you. That’s what all the guns are for, what the police and drones and surveillance cameras are for, what the FBI and CIA and NSA are for, what all those laws and courts and executive orders are for. It’s what their church is for, what those racist memes are for, what online harassment and bullying are for. It’s what gay bashings and church burnings are for.

This is not a dialogue. How could you be so naïve? A dialogue—from which some of the participants can be deported at any time? A dialogue—in which one side keeps shooting and incarcerating the other side? A dialogue—in which a few people own all the networks and radio stations and printing presses, while the rest have to make do with markers and cardboard signs? A dialogue, really?

You’re not in a dialogue. You’re in a power struggle. All that matters is how much force you can bring to bear on your adversaries to defend yourself from them. You can bet that if you succeed, they will accuse you of breaking off the dialogue, of violating their free speech. They will try to lure you back into conversation, playing for time until they need no more stratagems to keep you passive while they put the pieces in place for tyranny.

This isn’t a dialogue—it’s a war. They’re gambling that you won’t realize this until it’s too late. If freedom is important to you, if you care about all the people marked for death and deportation, start taking action.

The early bird avoids the cops,
Queer Coffee Run – Autonomous Student Network [QCR-ASN]

REST IN POWER, SCOUT

IT’S A SIN TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

“Love and Rage to student rebels at Georgia Tech – RIP Scout – Fuck Cops (A)”

Click HERE to learn how to support Georgia Tech student rebels.

Flyer spotted on campus.

This report back is meant to show how protest marshals, imposed structure and hierarchically organized groups can prevent cohesive direct action, organic resistance, and collective decision making.

On July 6th, 2017, an attempt to escalate an action regarding an incredibly pressing issue was co-opted by socialists. During rush-hour traffic, about 40 people gathered to participate in a direct action against the Medicaid cuts and “Trumpcare.” Elderly people, disabled people, trans people, a few anarchists and plenty of socialists came together to stage a die in outside of Senator Pat Toomey’s office.

In the pouring rain, we blocked a busy intersection downtown, while laying in the street with tombstones symbolizing the deaths that Trumpcare may cause. While those who could were lying in the rain, 15 marshals in bright orange jackets, most of whom belonged to the DSA or Socialist Alternative (a top-down, nationwide organization that campaigns for policy reforms and is very eager to sell you their newspapers) scrambled to find people to order around. There was some confusion in the crowd that was seemingly caused by the unnecessary visual dichotomy of those with authority (orange vests) and those allegedly without it, (due to their lack of orange vests). Despite this, the die-in was a beautiful and powerful spectacle. After being told to get up, still charged with some adrenaline and energy, the crowd felt that the action shouldn’t be over. Led by elderly and disabled people, the crowd filtered into a lightly trafficked street. While beginning to start up chants, we heard shouts from the self designated marshals to stop the march. Even though there was absolutely no police presence, “leaders” with megaphones and socialist t-shirts shouted “You’re going to get arrested!,” ordering non-affiliated individuals to stay on the sidewalk.

Naturally, authoritative commands from socialists in bright orange jackets split up the once unified crowd of people. But many of us were determined to go on. Among the crowd that kept marching were the most vulnerable people, as well as the people who were most likely to be affected by the new potential legislation: a person in a wheelchair, a person with a walker, a cancer survivor, many elderly people, and a handful of young people unaffiliated with any party. Trailing behind on the sidewalk yelling at us were the young, able-bodied members of Socialist Alternative and the DSA insisting that our marching and chanting was not worth the risk of arrest by the invisible police presence. While urging people that arrest was unlikely, an elderly woman annoyed with the crowd’s hesitance said to a friend of mine “I came out here for a protest, what the hell is this?” It was bureaucratic bullshit and an amazing example of imposed hierarchies thwarting the ability and power of natural, collectivized direct action. The members of SA and the DSA, with their megaphones, fancy jackets, and fancy well-printed signs were able to garner the support of more than half of the march.

In the end, about a dozen people stuck with it. The risk seemed pretty low since there was not a police car in sight, and no calls for dispersal, despite the socialists’ warnings. Perhaps it’s worth noting that even if there was a threat, a few people were prepared for arrest when going into the action, but could not even gain contact with the city police due to the aggressive over policing of the socialist marshals. While turning the corner to reach the starting point of the action, many of those still marching spoke of staging a sit-down occupation of the lobby of Pat Toomey’s office building. On the sidewalk, trailing just behind us were the frazzled socialists and their manipulated squad of people. Before we were able to enter the building, Socialist Alternative demanded that they be heard once again. At this point in time, they announced their official withdrawal from the action. “I gotta protect my people,” one member said. By the time they were done collecting their signs and megaphones, a singular police officer entered the building and assisted the lobby staff in locking the doors. The rest of us looked in each other’s eyes, defeated and fucking pissed off.

I actually pity the activists working under the authority of Socialist Alternative and similar organizations. They simply follow orders and conform to pre-established structures, which blinds their ability to see the reality of a situation. It prevents them from thinking for themselves, participating freely and experiencing that magic rush that comes from organic, collective power. And anyways, people who are manipulated, manipulate people, it makes sense.

It could be cool to have a discussion about what happened during this day, but members of Socialist Alternative spend more time selling their organization than talking with people about any campaign, ideology or personal/political matter. If they were to spend less time desperately trying to get me to sign an email list or a buy a paper, perhaps we could have meaningful conversations that would prevent things like this from happening. Perhaps we could have mutual respect and it would actually mean something when they repeat words like “comrade” and “solidarity.”

Anonymous Submission

From Pittsburgh to Washington DC:
DROP THE CHARGES

Anarchist banner dropped in solidarity with the ACJ noise demo arrestees and Dane Powell. (circle A pictured on the left side of the banner)

Today in Pittsburgh, the 11 comrades arrested for allegedly demonstrating in solidarity with striking inmates at the Allegheny County Jail are scheduled to waste a perfectly good Friday in court. We dropped this banner in hopes that a few of yinz might see it on your way downtown. We sincerely love you, even if we don’t know you. Stay strong! The bastards aren’t invincible, no matter how many cops they can get to lie under oath. Who knows, maybe you’ll even catch a glimpse of justice, like the one we celebrated just last week when former ACJ inmate Andre Jacobs won an abuse settlement against the jail for nearly $300,000. Fire the warden, fire to the prisons!

**UPDATE** Charges dropped to summaries for at least 9 defendants!

Today, Dane Powell is far from his home in Florida. As preliminary hearings take place here in Pittsburgh, Dane will be in another courtroom in Washington DC, receiving his sentence after having plead down to felony riot and felony assault on a police officer. Dane faced the choice between a plea deal and the possibility of never seeing his kids again. On January 20th, 2017 – Day One of the Trump Regime – Dane (allegedly) joined one of the largest black blocs in US history to directly confront the hetero-patriarchal, white supremacist, capitalist Empire on its home turf. He is one of over 200 comrades charged with multiple felonies for (allegedly) choosing to fight that day. While it may be too late to drop the charges, this banner is also for him. “We love you, stay strong, the revolution lives on!”

Solidarity with the rebel inmates at ACJ and everyone arrested at L&12 on J20. 

*disclaimer* there is a circle A on the other side of the banner! we promise!

In the video below, you can see Dane carry a child through the crowd in search of a street medic after police indiscriminately attacked with chemical weapons. Other black bloc comrades can also be seen defending and shielding protestors from police violence. Click HERE to watch a mini-documentary / video montage that includes footage from both the ACJ noise demonstration and the J20 riots.

These judicial proceedings are an expression of the war that the authorities are waging on the bond between thought and action, which is the foundation of anarchism’s dangerousness. […] active solidarity is a fundamental element of our anarchist acting and relations of complicity aimed at the destruction of dominion. This form of solidarity goes beyond repression’s attacks, and is capable of not letting itself be suffocated by the specificity of the trajectories of struggle when we recognize ourselves in a common tension of attack. In particular, active solidarity is an essential instrument to respond to state violence and not take its blows passively but maintain a stance of attack, so as not to develop attitudes of victimization, which is what repression wants. Thinking in terms of offensive, of permanent and internationalist conflictuality beyond each one’s path, the risk of isolation can be reduced and one of the enemy’s most important goals can be made ineffective.

– Call for a Dangerous June

The insurrectionist’s response to state repression is to release the tension you feel, to find the frontline that weighs heaviest on your mind and attack. The frontlines are all around us: from the fucked up shit that the system pulls on us, to the fucked up shit that we pull on each other. Find a reason to get out of bed that offers something more than the day’s routine of work, school, court, addiction, or whatever other obligations we millennials face. Participation trophies all around. 

An excerpt from the call for an International Week of Solidarity with J20 Defendants:

We are calling for a Week of Solidarity with the J20 defendants from July 20 to 27, 2017. July 20 marks six months from the initial actions and arrests during Donald Trump’s inauguration, and on July 27, a motion to dismiss the charges will be argued in court. The case has finally begun to receive the media attention it warrants; with this court date approaching and the cases underway, this is a crucial time for a second Week of Solidarity.

On January 20, 2017, thousands of people came to Washington, DC to protest the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump. In the early morning, blockades shut down security checkpoints and discouraged people from attending the inauguration itself, while impromptu marches and direct actions occurred throughout the day. There was a spirit of defiance in the air.

Iconic images circulated almost immediately, from the punching of white supremacist Richard Spencer to pictures of a limousine on fire. These were only the most spectacular images, however, of a day that was characterized by generalized disruption.

Midmorning, an “anticapitalist and antifascist” march of several hundred people made clear its opposition not just to Trump but also the system that made Trump possible. Led by banners reading “MAKE RACISTS AFRAID AGAIN” and “TOTAL LIBERATION FROM DOMINATION,” the disruptive march took the streets of DC to the sound of fireworks and anticapitalist chants. After about half an hour, the march was brutally attacked by police, who used chemical and crowd control weapons along with physical force, then boxed in (“kettled”) and mass-arrested people. Everyone on an entire city block was arrested and given the same charge of felony rioting. Approximately 214 arrestees now face a total of eight felony charges, including conspiracy and destruction of property. All of the J20 defendants are now facing up to 75 years in prison.

A great deal has happened in the six months since the inauguration. Confrontational protests have taken place across the continent, challenging the political landscape shaped by Trump’s election. Participants have stood up to emboldened white supremacists, disrupted airports in the face of anti-Muslim bans, blockaded proposed pipeline routes, set up sanctuary spaces and rapid response networks against ICE deportations, and much more. In turn, states are passing legislation aimed at further criminalizing protest and limiting resistance.

The J20 case fits into this wave of repression. The police seized and hacked phones in an attempt to strengthen the government’s case, and subpoenaed social media accounts. They raided an organizer’s home in DC. Arrestees had their personal information leaked online. The prosecution filed additional charges, essentially accusing the entire group of breaking the same handful of windows. All this has disrupted the lives of the defendants in the J20 case, who have lost jobs, incurred legal expenses, and been forced to make repeated trips to DC. The majority of cases are now headed to trial, with a handful of trials set for November and December 2017 and the rest scattered throughout 2018. Despite the fact that the state forced a large number of strangers into this situation at random, the majority of defendants are working together, responding to the charges in a collective way.

In order to continue to build our capacity to counter state repression and strengthen our interconnected struggles, we are calling for a Week of Solidarity from July 20 to 27, 2017, to make support for the J20 defendants widely visible. July 20 marks six months since the initial actions and arrests; on July 27, a motion to dismiss the charges will be argued in court.

DONATE HERE to support and welcome back our friends Maxx and Shea.
Click HERE or HERE to read the report-backs from the action and subsequent arrests.

DONATE HERE to support the ACJ 10.

DONATE HERE to support Pittsburghers arrested on J20 at the intersection of L&12th streets. 

DONATE HERE to support Victoria and Phil, two comrades arrested during an action at the University of Pittsburgh. 

Anonymous Submission

Banner hung at the foot-bridge of Duquesne, the private university that overlooks the county jail. It reads ABOLISH PRISONS. FUCK ACJ.

ALLEGHENY COUNTY JAIL IS A DEATH TRAP.

Since April of 2017, three inmates have died at the hands of Warden Harper due to abuse, neglect, and horrible health conditions. ACJ is Pittsburgh’s segment of the modern day slave plantation, murdering people while profiting the state.

In March, 80 inmates participated in a sit-down strike to protest the conditions inside the jail. On the outside, noise demos were organized in solidarity with the strikers which led to 11 arrests. Protesters are still facing charges.
You can donate to the legal funds for the arrestees here:
https://www.fundedjustice.com/71Dss1?ref=sh_b6YOs8

Although not affiliated, we stand in full solidarity with The ACJ Health Justice project, a local campaign fighting the conditions of the jail.

FIRE WARDEN HARPER.
ABOLISH ALL JAILS. ABOLISH ALL PRISONS.
THE FIGHT CONTINUES UNTIL EVERYONE IS FREE.

Originally posted to It’s Going Down

Pittsburgh anarchists held a march in solidarity with anarchist prisoners on June 11th, 2017. Full marching band in tow, the group disrupted traffic patterns and whatever the fuck else gross yuppie shit goes down on Butler Street, Pittsburgh’s “hipster” strip. Banners in solidarity with Eric King, Marius Mason, and Fernando Bárcenas were on display, along with other anti-prison banners.

After the march, a picnic and info fair was held near by, where t-shirts and buttons were traded in exchange for commissary funds for Joseph Buddenberg, Nicole Kissane, Eric King, and Marius Mason.

Until Every Cage Is Empty

 

Originally posted to It’s Going Down

MF1, Daniel Montano, pictured on the right, has passed away at 30.

Possibly Pittsburgh’s most well known graffiti writer and a life long anarchist, MF1 had an absolutely unique and thoughtful style that even many who dislike graffiti had trouble not being inspired by. While he could certainly look intimidating, you’d be hard pressed to find anybody who knew Daniel who doesn’t describe him as warm, caring and joyful.

In 2008 Daniel went to prison for committing over $713,000 in 79 instances of property damage stemming largely from a graffiti campaign targeting the rapidly gentrifying East Liberty neighborhood where he lived. He and his friend HERT were made examples by the city and were both sentenced to multiple years in prison, during which Pittsburgh ABC helped them release the zine Now Serving Felonies in which Daniel tells us:

“When I was 12 years old I decided to become an anarchist… Graffiti, for me, was one of the ways to reshape the world. It was my voice to stand up as an individual for my own individual freedom, to express my own personal idea of freedom, and to stand in direct and deliberate opposition to the existing social norms/the state. What I did was about human and world development. To me, it placed importance on the spirit that exists in all of us over the material world and possessions. It was like putting what was inside of me on the outside and saying “People matter! Fuck property!!!” It is a shame that my friend Ian (HERT) was put in prison for cosmetic property damage when there is real suffering going on in the world! Walls do not have feelings, walls do not suffer, walls do not starve, and paint does not kill people. I would like to see a society free of money, capitalism, material property. A society that is free to govern itself, built on the principles of non-violence and equality. The crimes for which I am currently serving my sentence were in no way violent. To me these actions are a symbol of what true freedom means to me and they represent even the slightest possibility of something different than what currently exists. Simply, they represent change. In the state system there are hundreds of thousands who are imprisoned solely for their beliefs and their own personal ideas of morality. I am proud to say that I was imprisoned for being one who stood up against the state, and for making it clear that I will not abide by a rule I do not believe in. I remain a voice that identifies itself with liberation, equality, pacifism, truth, justice, and above all else love.

Free the creative hands and minds suppressed by prisons. Freedom for all people.

-Daniel Joseph Montano”

Daniel would unfortunately get caught up in the all too common cycle of parole violations and spend the next 9 years in and out of jail and prison. In his most recent trip back, he was also charged with 40 more counts of graffiti because he was an unfuckwithable bad-ass. In a city that literally always succeeds at scaring writers into taking deals with menacing 30-65 count indictments, Daniel decided to fight all the charges. They were dropped and he walked free earlier this month. Our city has lost somebody truly special.