Originally posted to It’s Going Down, edited by Filler to include context. 

Early in the morning of February 6th, Pittsburgh squatters dropped a banner in solidarity with the anti-fascist, anti-capitalist squatters of the Autonomous Nation of Anarchist Libertarians (better known by their hilarious click-bait acronym, ANAL).

On January 25th, ANAL occupied a Russian billionaire’s £15 million mansion in one of the bougiest parts of London. The squatters converted the mansion into a multi-purpose community center, which operated as a homeless shelter and refugee-support space. The space also hosted public events, skill-shares, art galleries, and more. In their words, “If it would disgust the wealthy, you’re welcome here.”

Last Wednesday, after having spent the past few weeks working alongside marginalized communities to create an autonomous space and defend it from the occasional fascist attacks, the occupiers were violently evicted by the police. But later that afternoon, some of the squatters occupied another mansion just a few minutes down the road.

These comrades are proving to the world that we can create spaces outside of the capitalist system, spaces where we can build the autonomous communities that we want to see here and now!

Solidarity with ANAL, and solidarity with the anonymous Pittsburgh squatters!

Further reading on ANAL:

Squatters occupy billionaire’s mansion and convert it into a homeless shelter

Squatters evicted from £15m Belgravia mansion upgrade by moving into £25m property by Buckingham Palace

London: ANAL Belgravia squatters fight off fascist thugs

‘Anti-fascist’ squatters take over £15m London mansion

“No longer are we faced with Marx’s famous choice of socialism or barbarism; we are confronted with the more drastic alternatives of anarchism or annihilation”

– Murray Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism

Our Lives are Too Precious to Wait

The votes are in, and the oppressed, the students, the workers, the poor, the undocumented, and (most importantly) you,  lost once again. As if we had any chance of winning their games;  everyone knows the house stacks the deck (and we don’t just mean at Rivers Casino). Every four years, the ruling class offers us two representations of different ‘factions,’ where the capitalists back their choice via campaign funds. Many capitalists will back both candidates, just to be sure each will meet their will (Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs, etc). Historically, the winner of the US presidential race is whoever raises the most campaign money.

This year was an exception. Most of the left, anarchists included, resigned themselves to another four more years of neoliberalism under Clinton. How could she lose? She ran a typical campaign, talking about pragmatic “solutions” and policies she’d put in place, against a Republican whose own party barely wanted. While not everyone can agree on everything he is – he’s been called a rapist, a white supremacist, a misogynist, a fascist – it’s  worth considering Trump’s insistence on jailing the opposition party leader (1). Not your typical presidential campaign mudslinging. CrimethInc writes,

Those on the Left who have persisted in the naïve belief that the right government could solve the problems generated by global capitalism are partly to blame for this situation. The Democratic Party was foolish to back an establishment candidate at a time when so many people are desperate, angry, and rebellious. In legitimizing the idea that America is or should be great in the first place, Democrats smoothed the way for Trump to promise to make it great once more. Every tax dollar good liberals paid to the government hoping it would care for the poor, sick, elderly, and underprivileged has built the juggernaut that will now roll across their civil liberties. Every law they continue to obey will aid and abet that process. And if the media outlets and politicians that decried Trump as the candidate of the apocalypse accept him now in the name of the democratic process, this only confirms their complicity.

The problem is democracy itself: the form of government that brought Adolf Hitler into office. In response to the polls, we assert that no one should have the right to rule over anyone else. Neither Donald Trump, nor Barack Obama, nor Mother Theresa could ever use such power for good. We have to create horizontal structures and autonomous movements that can meet our needs directly, rather than continuing to feed resources into structures that will be used against us for the benefit of a few.

There is plenty of liberal clickbait (2) whining over the failure of neoliberalism and the Clinton dynasty. We have no interest in repeating the mistakes of the liberal-left, or of helping the Democratic party get itself together so they can continue derailing social movements with piecemeal reforms and recuperating our desires. To hell with Hillary Clinton, to hell with Trump, to hell with capitalist democracy!

Say good night to the old neoliberal order, long live the new fascist order.

We are not the only ones to realize the sham of democracy. Only half of all eligible voters turned out, and passive refusal can be a precursor to active refusal. Millions across the United States know that our representatives do not represent us, that they cannot represent us.

Maybe the problem has to do with democracy itself. Honestly, when has it fully delivered on its promises? In ancient Athens, when women and slaves were prohibited from participating? In the days of the Founding Fathers, some of whom also owned slaves? Today, when everyone supposedly has a say but self-determination feels further out of our hands than ever?

We keep blaming specific politicians and political parties, as if it were just a matter of personal failings. But any system that doesn’t work unless the people using it are perfect is a bad system. What if some politicians really do mean well, but there’s nothing they can do? All the good intentions in the world won’t help if the structure is broken.

Beyond this passive refusal, there’s been a spark lit under the ass of the Left. Talk of guns, talk of organizing, talk of the same talk but louder and more passionate, and no talk of why now is the best time to reach the People/the Masses/they-who-must-be-organized. Somehow the Left thinks it can repeat what it’s been doing the past 8 years but with more urgency, and suddenly the problems of the past are gone. Pass around your reading lists, get together your reading groups again, sell your boring as fuck monthly papers that we only buy so you’ll leave us alone.

Even for a crowd that knows full well in advance what may be coming there is a first-mover problem which prevents the riot itself from being a straightforwardly intentional act; no individual or group can simply decide unilaterally to riot, unless the riot is already in process. This is why the immediate trigger very often appears as some relatively minor act of the police which unites a crowd in indignation against them; but such tipping-points do not come out of the blue – rather, they are themselves produced from some escalating dynamic, in which a crowd can certainly play an active role.

 – A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats, Endnotes #3

On the ‘other side’ of the Left, the spark is still lit except its being used for warmth rather than a way out of the dark. Some anarchists, marxists, all stripes of radicals have resigned themselves to another 4 years of the same, as if Trump does not mark a change in US politics. Much of what Trump ran on were things already running. Mass incarceration was started by Clinton, mass deportations have peaked to historic highs under Obama, and there’s no need for a wall since a fence has been built since the 90s (3). While all true, this stance ignores the overall movement that got Trump into power. It ignores the emboldened far-right getting more active over the past year or so. Neo-Nazis, the Klan, and White Supremacists trying to launch one National Front in Harrisburg earlier this month, the anti-fascist battle of Stone Mountain in Georgia, the Nazis who stabbed several anti-fascists out in Sacramento, and all the violent attacks against individuals.

Many of our friends are torn between repeating the same failed activities, or just ceding more ground to the far-right thinking they’re no different from neoliberals. Maybe we need new friends outside the Left to deal with this ever changing political terrain.

The Left is Dead, Long Live the Post-Left!

The secret is to really begin.
–At Daggers Drawn

We could go on again about how the lines have been drawn, but this is obvious every time they are crossed or redrawn (4).­  It has never been about who has the right ideas or comes from the right background, revolution can only be made by those who revolt (5)! Movements can not survive being ideologically homogenous, movements survive by continuously being able to refresh itself with new ideas and tactics. We can not maintain momentum only working alongside those who use the same language as us, who use the same coffeeshops, and have the same haircuts. We learn this lesson every time the streets are taken back.

You are waiting for the revolution! Very well! My own began along time ago! When you are ready — God, what an endless wait! — it won’t nauseate me to go along the road awhile with you!

– Renzo Novatore

Reportback from the Yinzurrection (11/8-9)

From “You Can’t Stop the Revolution, Late-Night March Against Trump“:

“To the hundreds of kids that spontaneously gathered in opposition to a Trump presidency last night, we’ve spent our entire college careers looking for you! It figures that we’d meet only briefly, sharing no knowledge of each other outside of a collective moment of militant passion and defiance. We don’t know where you hang out, or what you do for fun, or how you balance the uncertainty of the future with the anxiety of the everyday. But we want to. We hope that someday soon we’ll find each other again, if only to enjoy another chance at cheering each other on as we confront the political manifestation of a Fox News article’s comments section.
[…]

We could take over the lobby of Posvar and convert it into a Free Store, where we would share and exchange textbooks, toiletries, clothes, food, ideas, tactics, strategies. We could throw parties in Market, taking turns cooking free food for students, workers, and faculty alike, and then doing our own damn dishes afterwards. We could finally unclench our fists and pass around a fat-ass blunt on the rooftops of a newly autonomous dormitory, because this really could be our campus if we keep creating more situations that attract those that are ready to fight. If only for a few days, we could create another world here and now, become the long-awaited, uncontrollable crisis of priorities that forces those in power to make real changes—like students are doing in Montreal, Santiago, London, Oaxaca, Athens, Paris, Rome…

In the meantime, we look forward to screaming our hearts out by your side, laughing and crying because holy shit those ignorant fuckbois preaching hate actually won…”

Make America Great Again???? pic.twitter.com/XQW2935NEo

— The Fourth Wave (@the_fourthwave) November 9, 2016

Reportback from the East Liberty/Shadyside march (11/9)

Account from a straggler: I arrived at the march late, when the crowd had just taken the streets. Apparently they had gone for a walk already and came back to tell the cops how they feel. The crowd takes off, snaking around the neighborhood, the police stand with some distance to the protesters until around 9:30 when a few calls for the crowd to disperse comes from some police loudspeaker. The crowd mostly responds with laughs and snarky comments, how are you gonna disperse a crowd that hasn’t broken the law? The crowd turns the corner from South Graham to Centre Ave, when police in riot gear take up the front line of police.

Without warning, two smoke canisters were dropped in-between the riot police and protesters, who were corralled into the parking lot adjacent to Wendy’s. Words get exchanged between police and the crowd, and bystanders and police. Police start telling people around to go away as if nothing just happened.

“Can you believe this is happening in Pittsburgh? Pittsburgh! Police using gas in our city,” someone walking by said to me (6). Yeah, I can believe it, the police union backed Trump. I just didn’t expect it to be tonight of all nights. Cameras are out as half the bystanders start live streaming. After a tense ten minutes, the crowd breaks out through the Wendy’s parking lot and continues to snake around police cruisers. Myself and few others gather together and get distance from the rest of the march, fearing another kettle attempt. The march ends where it began, and we wait to see if any of our loved ones and comrades got snatched. Thankfully everyone got away and no arrests were made tonight.

Hillman Library Banner Drop 11/10

Yesterday, November 10th, three pissed-off queer women set out to do a banner drop and protest outside of the Hillman Library at the University of Pittsburgh. The banner read “Unite Against Fascism// Fuck Trump.” Two of us stood on the balcony behind the banner giving speeches and starting chants while a small crowd assembled below.

“We have to stop letting these fuckers control our lives. It may feel like we’ve lost, but we were never made to win. This government, this country, this society cannot survive without widespread violence and oppression… We can protect each other better than any policeman, government or authority. This is not about Trump, this is so much bigger than that!”

There were about 10 people chanting with us here and there, a handful of trump supporters shouting “Build the Wall,” and plenty of police.

Less than ten minutes in, a few police officers approached the people with the megaphone demanding that they take the banner down. They refused. As officers started gathering behind the banner, we started chanting “show me what a police state looks like,” followed by a few voices echoing “this is what a police state looks like,” and “Stand up, stand up, we want freedom, freedom, tell those racist-ass cops we don’t need em, need em.”
Around this time, a person who appeared to be a detective hand picked someone from the crowd who was not directly involved in the protest and ID’d them. Shortly after, a few officers took the banner down.

The three of us set out to do this spontaneously, not knowing how to do anything except act in the face of the fucked up reality that still feels like a dream. We didn’t want to lose any organizing traction that we seemed to have gained through the unfortunate circumstances, we wanted to maintain the energy of a pissed off campus, ready to revolt, that we witnessed the few nights before. We wanted to attract comrades, motivate people and make connections, and unite students on our campus against fascism. While we certainly had some supporters, and some people threw up their fists while passing, we were also met with plenty of head-shakes and laughs.

But what this action really gave us was an important reminder about surveillance. As the crowd was standing below, uniformed officials started photographing our faces, writing down our information and pointing microphones at us. A non-uniformed individual approached one of the people who was using the megaphone, asking questions about the protest and previous protests that happened that week, while someone in a uniform less than 10 feet away pointed a cell-phone at them. An undercover? Who can say.

What we know is that we’re being watched. Many of our friends or random students whose appearances fit the state’s idea of what a student protester looks like have been stopped and IDed, emailed, called and photographed. The police have been more and more aggressive since Trump’s election, which we shouldn’t be surprised by. This is state repression. If we ever had freedom (we didn’t), we certainly won’t now. It is more important now than ever to remember that we are being surveilled, and it is are important now than ever to resist, revolt, hold hands and fight back.

Fractions and Factions Run Deep

After the anti-Trump march on the 9th, Mayor Bill Peduto was reprimanded by the president of the police officers’ union for yelling at police officers and the commander for using smoke canisters.

“Police were there trying to keep control of a situation that was potentially spiraling out of control. They acted appropriately, and the mayor intervened. And in my opinion, that was unprofessional. and and dangerous,” Bob Swartzwelder said.

A little anxiety after four police officers were injured during the anti-Trump protests back in April. 

“These were kids that were marching and demonstrating the First Amendment of this country, and there was no need to use smoke and there was no need to use helmets,” Peduto said.

Peduto also admitted that he told officers on Wednesday, “If you think it was bad under Cam, it’s going to get worse.”

Looks like the mayor has a soft spot for soft policing strategies, unlike the police union that endorsed the candidate the crowd was against. Whatever happened to police chief Cameron McLay anyways?

Pittsburgh Police Chief Cameron McLay said he would step down on Tuesday (Nov. 8th), weeks after the union representing his department’s active and retired officers held a vote of “no confidence” in him.

Mayor Bill Peduto appointed McLay in September 2014 to head the Pittsburgh police force and work on improving relations between the department and the city’s many minority residents.
[…]
In speech at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in late July, McLay called for reforms of the criminal justice system to bring about greater fairness in policing across the country.
“Without question, the criminal justice system has had a disparate impact on our communities of color,” McLay said in his speech. “We can respect and support our police officers while at the same time pushing for these important criminal justice reforms.”
[…]
In September, the union representing the Pittsburgh’s 900 police officers and 900 retired officers cast a majority “no confidence” vote on McLay’s ability to lead the department.

The Post-Gazette writes,

Officer Swartzwelder said 459 officers — a little more than 60 percent of those who were eligible — voted on the no confidence issue. Of those 459 officers, 421 said they did not have confidence in Chief McLay. Sixteen officers indicated they do have confidence in the chief, and 22 abstained.

“We needed somebody, as Chief McLay called it, the wrecking ball chief to come in and be able to build reform and that helped to pave the way to where we are now with a data driven police force, a community relations police focus of community policing,” Peduto said.

And let’s not forget back in January 2015, McLay had his picture taken holding a sign saying “I resolve to challenge racism @ work #end white silence.”

The photo sparked outrage and accusations from some, including Pittsburgh police union president Howard McQuillan. “The chief is calling us racists. He believes the Pittsburgh Police Department is racist. This has angered a lot of officers.”

We don’t miss McLay. We don’t buy Peduto’s political posturing. However, the growing ideological schism between the police and the State is worth noting, as it’s not isolated to Pittsburgh. To do what we do best and quote CrimethInc yet again,

In response to the uprisings of the past few years, we are seeing police—and the subset of middle-class America from which many of them are drawn—beginning to conceive of their interests as distinct from the rest of the state structure. In 2011, during the peak of Occupy Oakland, Mayor Jean Quan wrestled with the Oakland Police Department, which repeatedly asserted a contrary agenda. Something similar occurred between the NYPD and Mayor Bill de Blasio in New York City last winter, when New York City police carried out an unofficial strike demanding more unconditional support from the government—in effect, demanding the freedom to employ violence with impunity. After the Baltimore uprising, there was a lot of grumbling among Maryland police who blamed their superiors for not permitting them to use more violence against demonstrators.

This kind of frustration could give rise to new racist movements that will understand themselves as needing to take the law into their own handsin order to maintain law and order and defend private property. Something similar has occurred in Greece with the emergence of the fascist party Golden Dawn, which now counts a great part of the country’s police officers in its ranks. That makes it especially ominous that the Oath Keepers, a paramilitary organization of former policemen and soldiers, have made repeated appearances at demonstrations in Ferguson.

We see a political landscape that has always been defined by factionalism and faux-unity through nationalism. We see the election as a spark that reveals this factionalism to those of us who aren’t perpetually pissed off. Let’s turn this spark into a wildfire. Across the United States riots, walkouts, vandalism, highway blockades, and refusals have taken place in almost every metropole (New Orleans, Philadelphia, DC, Kansas City, New York City, Chicago, Atlanta, Austin, Minnesota, we could go on). As always, we (the ones who turn the “not our president!” chants to “no one is our president!”) must keep up the tension and coordinate together. Not that any affinity group or organization should be subordinate or responsible to another, but to turn our spontaneous refusals and blockades into a unified revolt.

Not whether we accomplish anarchism today tomorrow or within ten centuries, but that we walk towards anarchism today tomorrow and always.

– Errico Malatesta, Toward Anarchism

For a university against itself,
Pittsburgh autonomous student network & Friends

Footnotes:
1: As if we could call the Democrats “opposition”, but the threat of jailing political opposition should alert everyone.
2: Let’s be honest, The Guardian is only good every now and then.
3:The wall Trump means does not have to be physical though. White nationalism and national trade-protectionism, two of main planks of the Trump platform, thrive on xenophobia and concessions to the white American working class.
4:Unless you’re among the classes who either don’t feel the violence of capitalism’s restructuring or are the new rising class of restructuring.
5: Must be noted that revolt is not just taking the streets. Revolt is personal and collective. Revolt is healing, love, rage, all kinds of cathartic expressions. Beyond retaking the streets and blocking traffic, we must care for each other. Collective dinners, venting sessions, bonfires, how that takes shape is up to you.
6: It should be noted that at the time, bystanders and passersby thought the police dropped tear gas not a smoke cannister.

There is no denying the severity of our situation. The systemic and violent oppression of women, people of color, the LGBTQ* community, the 99%, neurodivergent folks, and countless other marginalized identity groups is about to escalate. It’s time we escalate in return.

Late last night, around a thousand Pitt students and Pittsburghers flooded into the streets. Some of us answered The Fourth Wave‘s call to action, others gathered spontaneously. We built barricades to obstruct the police tails. We attempted to occupy the Cathedral of Learning and Hillman in order to shut down campus and create a hub for organizing sustained resistance. We wrote this shit mad drunk at 5am because fuck this noise about “tolerance” – it’s time to revolt!

We are three pissed off queers, and we do not speak on behalf of anyone but ourselves. We hope that many, many more of you release statements, communiqués, strategic proposals, and calls to action so we can build a dialogue and figure out where we go from here. That 1am march was lit af, but we have work to do. Change is not a television show where two racist millionaires desperately try to convince their audience that the other is more racist. Change is not a woke-ass facebook post. Change is a rupture in the spectacle of what they call peace.

To Our Friends,
To the hundreds of kids that spontaneously gathered in opposition to a Trump presidency last night, we’ve spent our entire college careers looking for you! It figures that we’d meet only briefly, sharing no knowledge of each other outside of a collective moment of militant passion and defiance. We don’t know where you hang out, or what you do for fun, or how you balance the uncertainty of the future with the anxiety of the everyday. But we want to. We hope that someday soon we’ll find each other again, if only to enjoy another chance at cheering each other on as we confront the political manifestation of a Fox News article’s comments section.

But we also hope to know you by more than our shared practices of self-defense and intolerance of bigotry. Imagine what we’re capable of should we meet again on our own terms? The administration and its police recognize the threat: that’s why cops have been profiling and harassing any students that even look like they might oppose Trump, that’s why Vice Provost & Dean of Students Kenyon Bonner sent out a super sexy photo of himself with a plea for students to tolerate the rise of fascism. There’s a question that they’re scared we might ask: what if instead of endlessly talking about tuition hikes and their inherent racism and classism, or the terrible wages of Pitt workers and adjunct professors, or Pitt’s investments in environmentally destructive industries, or the administration’s utter inaction in the face of campus rape culture, or the fact that this election is trash… what if we instead decided to do something about it ourselves? No more dead-end negotiations and debates, no more polite “thank-you’s” for the free t-shirts and the new recycling bins and the years of indentured servitude spent working off student debt and the promise of a stable life in a perpetually shrinking job market, no more wishing Bernie was here to save us. What if we started taking concrete steps towards actual fucking revolution?

We could take over the lobby of Posvar and convert it into a Free Store, where we would share and exchange textbooks, toiletries, clothes, food, ideas, tactics, strategies. We could throw parties in Market, taking turns cooking free food for students, workers, and faculty alike, and then doing our own damn dishes afterwards. We could finally unclench our fists and pass around a fat-ass blunt on the rooftops of a newly autonomous dormitory, because this really could be our campus if we keep creating more situations that attract those that are ready to fight. If only for a few days, we could create another world here and now, become the long-awaited, uncontrollable crisis of priorities that forces those in power to make real changes—like students are doing in Montreal, Santiago, London, Oaxaca, Athens, Paris, Rome…

In the meantime, we look forward to screaming our hearts out by your side, laughing and crying because holy shit those ignorant fuckbois preaching hate actually won…

[our lazy asses reworded most of this from “Fascist Scum, Off Our Campus!” after last night’s events…hopefully other people will take the time to write something original]

[photo cred to The Pitt News]

Originally posted to End The Institution! Convergence

Time to get the ball rolling….

We live in a civil war, fought on numerous social terrains. The opposing forces are well supplied with weapons from the establishment and their grounding hegemony. While we are skeptical of naming a core actor, in our own location this hegemony is built around West Virginia University and the spectacle it maintains.

While WVU promotes its #RespectfulMountaineer campaign as a patronizing reaction to the police-instigated Baylor Riots of 2014, it turns a blind eye to the systemic rape of women on campus . The Greek system, as on many other campuses, is allowed to run a campaign of social terror on women, queers, and anyone else not interested in their creepy bourgeois rituals and violent masculinity. Our current living situation is abysmal. Rents are skyrocketing and absentee landlords let houses fall into complete disrepair. The university flows public money into private hands and raises tuition for poor appalachian students every year. So what are we to do? Ask them for better policies, run for student government, or maybe even write up a petition?

We reject this completely.

We do not expect anything of the institution that we combat. This is not some idealized “conversation” occurring in a neutral space, a debate in an old french salon between two good citizens. We understand the immense powers of WVU and refuse to engage in a rigged conversation because of our own poor experiences and the well-documented experiences of others in this struggle.

No conversation on rape will end rape on campus. No conversation on gentrification will end the trend of rising rents. No conversation on police brutality will end police brutality. The only way forward is pointing out the perpetrators and destroying the apparatuses that allow for this to occur.

Who are these perpetrators? Landlords, frat bros, college administrators, cops, gentrifying entrepreneurs and the whole rotten lot. We know the buildings and spaces these people occupy. We know the property they own and the institutions they maintain. So we propose, what if it is time to go on attack?

Yet, to go on the offensive, to establish a forward stance, we have to make contact with others who also recognize their enemies. Abolition is on the table across our milieu; it applies as much to prisons as it does to the grand university. So many of us have been scarred by the institution of the university, it is paramount for us to organize this attack while proposing new forms, experiments, and alternatives. To this end, we are calling for a convergence of interested parties in April 2017 so we can discuss the next steps for people invested in ending the institution itself.

So we have to ask “which side are you on?”

[Trigger Warning – discussion of sexual assault, racist violence, anti-queer violence]

Weeks after Trump kicked off his campaign by falsely alleging that Mexican migrants are criminals and rapists, two brothers in Boston beat a 58-year-old houseless Mexican national with a metal pole, pissing on his limp body when they were done. “Donald Trump was right,” they explained to the police, “all these illegals need to be deported.”

Instead of condemning that brutality, Trump excused it by saying “people who are following me are very passionate. They love this country and they want this country to be great again.” But the problem is less about Trump, and more about the ideological mobilization that has put him in the position to legitimize, and thus encourage, such overtly racist, violent, and proto-fascist tendencies.

– PGH Student Solidarity Coalition (PSSC), in Reality isn’t Safe

Fascist Scum, Off Our Campus!

Resistance to school-sanctioned bigotry at the University of Pittsburgh

What’s the purpose of free speech, if not to foster a world free from oppression? Fascists oppose this vision; thus we oppose fascism by any means necessary.

– “Free Speech FAQ“

In the past two weeks at Pitt, we’ve shared ghost stories around campfires that we sparked with stolen electoral campaign signs from all political parties. We’ve cried in front of strangers and cheered each other on as we took turns shouting down the Pitt College Republicans outside of the library. We’ve kicked racists, sexists, and queer-phobes out of Halloween parties with both intelligent arguments and the occasional fist. We’ve graffiti-bombed racist propaganda and flipped over the tables of pro-Trump canvassers. We’ve seen glimpses of the future that’s offered to us, and then stumbled into an alleyway to piss all over it.

“We” don’t necessarily remember all of these stories, share a political disposition, or even know each others’ names. “We” is just a name for this sudden, transient inclination towards defiance, or some shit like that. Filler has heard a lot of inspiring anecdotes over the past few weeks, but we’ve also noticed that the far-right students at Pitt have monopolized the narrative over what is happening. On Halloween, we heard about yet another entirely spontaneous action and decided we’d try our hand at unpacking the situation. “We” don’t speak on behalf of anyone except those that resonate with our interpretation of their actions. To our friends we don’t yet know: keep turning shit up!

First things first: “But what about free speeeeech” is a hollow, vapid, bullshit argument against shutting down Trump supporters.

“Free speech” means the federal government cannot censor your speech; it does not mean consequence-free speech, and it’s a kind of just a sick joke anyway when we live in a society where nearly all media is controlled by the same corporate elite that bought out our government.

But that’s besides the point. What started last week with a few kids and a flipped table is now a recurring breach in the banality of midterms, personal drama, and social media echo chambers. On Monday, the haze of a Halloween hangover gave way to a brief moment of catharsis, of latent tension rising to the surface; a potential to confront more than just a racist student group, but also the larger framework of how we conceive of social change.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEJS0ShXBck

Change is not a television show where two racist millionaires desperately try to convince their audience that the other is more racist. Change is not a woke-ass facebook post. Change is a rupture in the spectacle of what they call peace.

To the Fence-Sitters and the Liberals,
No idea exists in some academic bubble. If the alt-right / far-right platform is not confronted, their hate speech and ignorance will be perceived as legitimate discourse—or worse, normalized. Last February in the WPU ballroom, rightwing students applauded as Milo Yiannopoulos claimed that rape culture doesn’t exist, that unwanted groping is just “normal human sexuality,” that the actual definition of assault is a liberal conspiracy. As of October, the well-documented sexual violence of their presidential candidate is now justified as “locker-room talk”—normal sexual behavior. We’re barely scratching the surface here. Let’s keep the pressure on, or else their rhetoric and actions will only continue to embolden and rationalize the already-existing violence of campus rape culture, racism, and anti-queer hate.

If Trumpers continue to embolden, politicize, and publicly organize the assholes that think that shit’s ok, then they might build the material force needed to turn their ideas into reality. With enough numbers, they could work to keep undocumented students out of the classroom, undermine police accountability efforts, ban practicing Muslims from campus grounds, discredit survivors of assault, push survivors out of school by eliminating safe spaces and trigger warnings, deny trans students what little they have gained… maybe even get a fascist elected to the presidency. 

As the kids at UNC remind us,

“Debate only has meaning when we are prepared to act on our beliefs, to take risks beyond those of the classroom… Debate has substance when it occurs in an honest context that reflects the daily, physical conflicts occurring inside and outside of the University. Discussion and critique must be imbued with the urgency of real life.”

This is why we’re seeing debates on Pitt’s campus around issues of speech, the election, capitalism, the environment, white supremacy, patriarchy, and borders grow in depth and analysis ever since the confrontations. It’s happening in between classes, at Halloween parties in South O, on Towers Patio, all across campus; finally, people are starting to give a shit about just how fucked up the global political climate is. Hell, this wave of debates almost broke through the routine of passive-aggressive irony found on forums like Overheard at Pitt and r/Pitt.

To Our Friends,
To the dozens of kids that spontaneously gathered in opposition to the Trump table outside Hillman, we’ve spent our entire college careers looking for you! It figures that we’d meet only briefly, sharing no knowledge of each other outside of a collective moment of (possibly cringe-worthy) passion and defiance. We don’t know where you hang out, or what you do for fun, or how you balance the uncertainty of the future with the anxiety of the everyday. But we want to. We hope that someday soon we’ll find each other again, if only to enjoy another chance at cheering each other on as we confront the political manifestation of a Fox News article’s comments section.

But we also hope to know you by more than our shared practices of self-defense and intolerance of bigotry. Imagine what we’re capable of should we meet again on our own terms?

The administration and its police recognize the threat: that’s why cops have been profiling and harassing any students that even look like they might oppose Trump, that’s why Vice Provost & Dean of Students Kenyon Bonner sent out a super sexy photo of himself with a plea for students to tolerate the rise of fascism. There’s a question that they’re scared we might ask: what if instead of endlessly talking about tuition hikes and their inherent racism and classism, or the terrible wages of Pitt workers and adjunct professors, or Pitt’s investments in environmentally destructive industries, or the administration’s utter inaction in the face of campus rape culture, or the fact that this election is trash… what if we instead decided to do something about it ourselves? No more dead-end negotiations and debates, no more polite “thank-you’s” for the free t-shirts and the new recycling bins and the years of indentured servitude spent working off student debt and the promise of a stable life in a perpetually shrinking job market, no more wishing Bernie was here to save us. What if we started taking concrete steps towards actual fucking revolution?

We could take over the lobby of Posvar and convert it into a Free Store, where we would share and exchange textbooks, toiletries, clothes, food, ideas, tactics, strategies. We could throw parties in Market, taking turns cooking free food for students, workers, and faculty alike, and then doing our own damn dishes afterwards. We could finally unclench our fists and pass around a fat-ass blunt on the rooftops of a newly autonomous dormitory, because this really could be our campus if we keep creating more situations that attract those that are ready to fight. If only for a few days, we could create another world here and now, become the long-awaited, uncontrollable crisis of priorities that forces those in power to make real changes—like students are doing in Montreal, Santiago, London, Oaxaca, Athens, Paris, Rome…

In the meantime, we look forward to screaming our hearts out by your side, laughing and crying because holy shit those ignorant fuckbois preaching hate are actually real people, wtf??

To Our Enemies,
To the Trump supporters and other fascists: there’s no point in mincing words.What’s most upsetting to us is that Trump is not acting outside of the ideology and practice of the liberal establishment. With every headline scandalizing his latest xenophobic comment, the Obama administration sets a new world-record in deportations. After every Republican’s warmongering, Washington expands the scope of the surveillance state. Every racist right-winger is matched tenfold by both the Clinton and Obama administration in mass incarceration and prison slavery. The neoliberal restructuring of the economy is increasingly leaning towards self-employment within the service and sharing economy, the techies are invading Pittsburgh, and yet somehow y’all don’t think the Democrats are capitalist enough for you?

We have two different visions of the future, and they are in direct conflict with one another. Y’all can snitch to the cops all you want—we’re not gonna stop disrupting your shit and kicking you out of parties.

To the editors of the new right-wing campus newspaper, the Maverick: Really? An Ayn Rand book review? And you call us cringey.

To the Pitt administration and the Pitt Police: Last December, a couple friends brought hot food, some boxes of clothing, textbooks, and zines into Towers lobby to give away for free. They were kicked out within half an hour of setting up, and Pitt Police tried to grab and interrogate two of them.

A Pitt cop chased everyone out the door, frantically squawking into his radio, flailing his free arm and demanding they come back to face the consequences. At the time, these friends lived in Towers. They had set out to use a communal student space to help their classmates, and they were greeted with the threat of police violence. 

Last February, the Pitt College Republicans hosted Milo Yiannopoulos with the aid of University funding and the armed protection of the Pitt Police. Milo is the de facto spokesperson of the “alt-right,” a white nationalist movement. Twice in the past week, supporters of a racist, misogynist, xenophobic presidential candidate called the cops on students, and the police were more than happy to profile and detain queer students, seize their IDs, and then present the seized IDs to the Republican organizers.

these trump bros can't table without having to call the cops to come save their asses every time lmao #FuckTrump #antifa

— SCAM 🏴 Pittsburgh (@scam_pgh) October 31, 2016

https://twitter.com/antigone1997/status/793161195536674816?lang=en

This comes as no surprise considering both the national and Pittsburgh local of the Fraternal Order of Police endorsed Trump. Of course the occupying forces of white supremacy will conspire with the fascists on campus, build files on leftist and anarchist student organizers, and repress counter-hegemonic social movements. But many of us are disappointed in the administration’s  apparent endorsement of alt-right and fascist organizing on campus, and those of us in the autonomous student network have lost all patience.

After Trump came to Pittsburgh last April, some friends released a communiqué that might contextualize the recent confrontations on Pitt’s campus. There is a global civil war unfolding, from the streets of Paris and Santiago to the warzones of Rojava and Standing Rock. We fully intend to put Pittsburgh on the front lines.

It is our belief that recent events have marked a shift in the political struggle of this country. More and more of the populace has fled mainstream political forces for “outsiders” seen as on the fringe, such as Trump and Bernie Sanders. We see a demarcation developing between the Left and the Right – between those who support corporate control of resources, the expulsion of non-Whites, and increased police militarization for urban pacification, and those who support individual autonomy, collective ownership of resources, and racial and socioeconomic justice…

As we saw inside Trump’s campaign event in Chicago, on the streets of Minneapolis, and in downtown Pittsburgh the other night, militant physical conflict between these two forces – between those who wish to maintain white supremacy, and those who wish to see its abolition, has come into the open and forefront of American political discourse. We see an opportunity here to forcefully attack both the dominant American political structures while at the same time fighting back the far-Right tendencies that we see with Donald Trump’s rise to political fame.

It is our hope that the threat posed by the white supremacist Right, as well as the exploitation of the opportunities that we speak of, can help our movements to more clearly place ourselves in the struggle for liberation. Militant self-defense from authoritarianism can help grant us the individual and collective autonomy necessary for any liberatory revolt to occur. We see this as a time for libertarian anti-capitalists to learn to take seriously the threat posed by the new Right and to take the steps necessary to forcefully fight the structures of white supremacy. This is not a time for the introspection and critical self-reflection of the popular anti-racist praxis, but a time for mutual self-defense and collective force against the American white supremacist system of apartheid.

The time has come to Burn the American Plantation.

Further reading:

The Divorce of Thought from Deed (UNC)

Written by students at UNC in the fall of 2009, The Divorce of Thought from Deed is a story about sustained student resistance to a racist campus organization called YWC, or Youth for Western Civilization. After a militant anti-racist campaign, the group was essentially driven off campus – despite the University’s best efforts to protect it for the sake of “free speech”.

On a most basic level, this piece asserts that the equality of actors intrinsic to the “marketplace of ideas” is a myth only made possible by the illusion of the University’s separation from the rest of society.

Filler #4 (Pitt)

The fourth issue of Filler explores the growing resistance to the patriarchy at Pitt and covers a lot of the same shit as this piece, but in greater depth.

“Why ‘No Platform’ is still relevant: the trouble with liberal ‘anti-fascism’” (LibCom.org)

An excerpt:
The other side of the coin, in terms of why anti-fascism cannot be boiled down to a battle of ideas is that fascism is an ideology rooted in violence. It is hard to reason with those kicking your head in or gunning you down as you run for your life. And of course it is the white, middle class liberal advocating freedom of speech for Nazis who is least likely to be on the receiving end of such attacks.

Bad ideas ought to be challenged, yes, and giving the state a mandate for repression is a bad idea in any case. However, this is not an argument against no platform but one in favour of it.

If this seems counter-intuitive, it is because outside of militant circles the concept of no platform has been boiled down to simply not letting Nazis air their views. To liberals, this means censorship. In practice, however, no platform is so much more – namely, direct action that prevents fascists from gaining a platform to organise.

Received on 9.27.16
Click Here for a print-ready zine

On Thursday, September 23rd, around 30-40 people (and probably just as many pigs) turned out for a last-minute action in solidarity with the uprising in Charlotte. The first chain text went out the night before, and a facebook event popped up shortly afterwords. In hindsight, making a facebook event called “Fuck a Police State” was pretty damn sus.

Honestly, we’re kinda lucky that we were able to pull off as much as we did without any immediate consequences. The University of Pittsburgh, and the surrounding Oakland neighborhood, is a fucking police state. City cops, Pitt police, Carnegie-Mellon police, Point Park police, and park rangers all have jurisdiction here (and this doesn’t include rent-a-cops like university security). The administration doesn’t even bother trying to cover up the University’s colonial project; Pitt raises tuition every single year, ensuring that each semester brings richer and whiter students to Oakland. Meanwhile, its legion of pigs occupies the remnants of the original community to stabilize the process. Student radicals are relatively isolated within the campus bubble, and so we’re left struggling to reinvent the wheel every few years. Thursday night was inspiring, but we also made some rookie mistakes, which will be the focus of this report back.

A little after 9pm, folks started gathering in Schenley Plaza, a commercial square disguised as a green patch in the heart of Pitt’s campus. Cops had the entire plaza surrounded with marked and unmarked cars well before anyone showed up. They kept a reasonable distance for the most part, but their scare tactics definitely succeeded in making people a little paranoid and anxious.

The majority of the crowd was in bloc, yet a lot of folks masked up smack-dab in the middle of the plaza—possibly even in view of cameras and police. Sure, the whole point is that you can’t be identified as “that person” beyond a reasonable doubt or whatever… but masking up in a public place still isn’t the greatest idea. Some of the more experienced crews had thought ahead and set up flashpoints, meeting in a secure location nearby before showing up in bloc together.

The callout originated from the autonomous student network, so the crowd consisted mostly of students and youngpunx, although a couple of Pittsburgh’s old guard were cool enough to show up. The few “veterans” brought some much needed street smarts; some acted as bike scouts, and one even provided the legal-support number they helped set up for the anti-Trump action that went down earlier in the day.

We spent like an hour chilling in the plaza, waiting for friends to show up, shooting the shit, chain-smoking, greeting new faces, trading stickers, fucking with the Pitt News journalists that showed up (“The organizers? You know, I’m not quite sure where they went, but just keep an eye out for a Mr. Alexander Berkman and a Miss Emma Goldman”), writing slogans in chalk, bonding with some down-as-fuck randos that happened to stop by and decided to join us, etc.

Just hanging out was a nice change of pace from the pre-action ritual of fancy speeches and political posturing we’re all so accustomed to, and it was pretty funny when the city pigs got bored and left, leaving the university pigs to monitor us all by their lonesome. But the informality also had its downsides:

1. A lot of people were casually masking and unmasking while they waited around for shit to start, increasing their chances of being identified with the bloc.

2. Some people don’t live on punk time; a few new faces left before the action even started.

3. A Pitt News photographer showed up and started taking pictures, and only a few people would occasionally confront him, or ask that he avoid photographing faces. Had more people decided to pause their conversations and stand with the folks that tried confronting him, we easily could have forced him to back down. Luckily for us, he was kind enough not to publish any photos with unmasked bloc participants.

4. Shit was impossible to get rolling. No one wanted to “start” the march, probably because no one wanted to take a leadership roll and be all like, “Hey yall, welcome to the protest, let’s get this party started!” Maybe there’s a way to balance the desire to be uncontrollable and the need for someone to hype up the crowd, but we ain’t found it yet.

The march finally started around 10pm, and omfg it almost went to shit within 20 seconds. We cut across Forbes Ave to get to the Cathedral of Learning—the university’s central building and prized phallic monument to gentrification—to put up some posters and chalk for students to gawk at on their way to class in the morning. The march was moving way too fast. The people that were breaking off to beautify campus had to jog to catch up, and the calls from the back to “slow the fuck down!” were drowned out by chants of “Oink oink, bang bang, every day the same ol’ thing!”

Several people broke off to chalk the Cathedral (which is against the student code of conduct or some shit), and two unmasked participants were immediately nabbed by university security. The rent-a-pig tried manhandling them until the cops could catch up, and only a couple people from the bloc even noticed or tried to help. Every time our friends tried to escape, the rent-a-pig would shove them against the wall. Meanwhile, the march was speeding away and the cops were closing in fast. Again, we got lucky; the two were able to get away mere seconds before the first cops got within arm’s reach.

Yeah, we’re young, but we should know by now that black bloc is not an aesthetic. It’s a tactic, and it only works when we have eachother’s backs and keep an eye on the folks that break off from the main group. And not to be that guy, but this was especially problematic since the two folks that were grabbed are people of color, and the predominately white black bloc failed to rally in their defense, let alone notice their absence. If we want to talk about being accomplices instead of “allies”, we need to take the same risks as our comrades of color, put ourselves in the line of fire, and use our privilege to physically disrupt state violence. 

That being said, everyone caught up to the march safely, and the cops that tailed us were greeted with chants of “pigs quit your jobs!” and “all cops are bastards, A-C-A-B!” Our friends listening in on the police scanner were happy to report that this made the cops super butthurt.

The police quickly realized that we were gonna be rowdy, and so they remobilized the units that left and started closing in on the march. Except instead of taking the same A to B route that every single protest on campus has taken since time immemorial, we ditched the police by cutting into the quad outside of the student dorms. By now, the bloc realized how fast we were moving, so we took our time while decorating the dorm buildings with posters, chalk, markers, and graff mops. Some students opened their windows to cheer us on, joining in chants of “No Justice, No Peace, Abolish the Police!” A few kids even ran out of their dorms to join us. Of course, the Trump bros shouted their generic racist taunts, but no one dared come anywhere close enough to pick a real fight.

By the time we had ransacked the dorms and emerged back on Forbes Avenue, we realized there wasn’t a cop in sight. One of the campus police stations is conveniently located on Forbes. High-five to whoever planned the route.

We plastered the station in stickers, posters, and chalk slogans, and by the time the police caught back up we were already snaking through South Oakland. Some folks stayed behind to explain the action to passers-by, but around 30 of us were still going strong. At this point, we were able to hold the streets with confidence, slapping stickers, tagging shit, and chalking slogans all over the roads.

We went about our merry way for a bit, getting into more shouting matches with Trump bros, hugging the occasional randos that joined us, and using the maze of one-ways that is South O to our advantage. After one of our scouts informed us that the cops thought we were going for the freeway and had started building a presence on every street in an effort to kettle us, we made a 180 and went up Dawson Street. Once our police tail got uncomfortably close, we booked it to a staircase that leads into Panther Hollow and Schenley Park.

Shit was hype. We were cheering and hugging each other as we crossed the tracks into the park, where we went on a lovely evening stroll in our fresh new outfits. Our numbers stretched out on the park trails, we looked and felt five times our size. We shared spliffs and cigarettes, played word-guessing games, and soaked up some of dat first-night-of-Fall moonlight. After about a half an hour hike, we started saying our goodbyes as small groups took their different paths out of the park. I was in one of the last crews to leave, since some friends and I stumbled across a few bewildered stoners and decided to hang for a bit.

There were tons of young kids up to no good hanging around Schenley Park that night, so the undercovers that tried following us home no doubt followed just as many confused, turnt-up freshmen as they did anarchists. Sorry y’all, didn’t mean to drag cops into your beautiful night – stay uncontrollable!

For me, the night march is demonstrative of a broader learning curve in the autonomous youth scene. Sure, our numbers were small, and our street politics need practice. But if this is what we’re capable of with less than 24 hours of prep, the future is looking a tad less bleak. So long as we don’t ossify into another activist spectacle, occasionally taking the streets while changing nothing, I genuinely believe we’re capable of pushing the university struggle to its limits. But first, we need to learn to look out and care for one another, on and off the streets. And it couldn’t hurt to find ways to break out of the campus bubble; the OG Pittsburgh anarchists probably have some knowledge to pass on.

Still riding the comedown,
– some queer from the autonomous student network

RIP P. – you’re in our hearts

RIP Bruce Kelley Jr.
RIP Keith Lamont Scott
RIP Justin Carr

Solidarity with Prison Rebels
Solidarity with Standing Rock
Fuck ALL Police

Originally posted to It’s Going Down on 9/10/16

On Tuesday 9/6, kids with the autonomous student network chalked the University of Pittsburgh campus police station with messages of solidarity with the prison strikers and anti-police slogans.

On Wednesday 9/7, 12 or so people from Pittsburgh Anarchist Black Cross and the Pittsburgh Student Solidarity Coalition brought hot meals, coffee, and cigarettes to serve outside of the Allegheny County Jail. However, unlike the last time we did this, no one was released while we were there, and so we left the food in a public square frequented by houseless folks.

On Friday 9/9, a rowdy noise demo of around 50-60 people from a variety of community organizations and informal crews marched on the Allegheny County Jail. The crowd sounded twice as large as it looked, as participants brought instruments, pots and pans, songs, and words of solidarity and support. Hundreds of inmates could be seen flickering the lights in their cells, banging on windows, and raising their fists in the air.

After a number of participants lit road flares, a small group broke away from the main march and vandalized a memorial dedicated to dead prison guards, smashed out several windowpanes on the back side of the jail with rocks, and damaged at least one parking meter. Police surveillance was disrupted with well-placed banners and flags.

In a remarkable display of respect for a diversity of tactics, the crowd opted to stick together until dispersing at a safe location several blocks away from the nearest pigs. Militants and pacifists gave each other ample time and space to carry out their preferred modes of action, and there did not appear to be any infighting. We hope to continue building these relationships and expanding our capacity to take action across sectarian lines.

– 2 kids from the autonomous student network

Originally posted to the IQP facebook group.

Illegal Queers Pittsburgh is a collective of Pittsburgh-based queers organizing benefit dance parties for our prisoner & formerly imprisoned trans & queer comrades who are under attack by the racist, trans & queer-phobic, misogynist, ablest, classist so-called justice system. We are feeling sad, terrified and angry about the mass shooting this past weekend. We are also feeling very motivated by our commitment to queers and people of color in Orlando and around the world who are now and have been under attack and fighting for survival and liberation.

We understand the attack in Orlando as being a result of a long history and culture of exploitation and repression of queers and people of color, and part of this history is state-enforced racism, misogyny, transphobia, and homophobia enacted by the legal system and its agents. We reject the dominant narrative that police presence makes everyone safer. We reject this narrative based on the experiences of tens of thousands of trans and queer people, most often people of color, who have been unsupported, attacked, and imprisoned, suffering grotesque atrocities at the hands of police and the legal system.

We recognize that the hateful violence against Pulse nightclub is directly linked to sovereign violence and US imperialism at large. We will not be complicit in the racist fear mongering from the right, framing this as a “terrorist attack” committed by an outsider. We will not be complicit in the homonationalism from the left, which endorses white and middle-class lives, seeking to integrate these as “model citizens,” while rejecting and attacking people of color and poor folk.

We are reaffirming our commitment to making our events safer for queers and people of color by not collaborating with police or governmental forces and, instead, seeking alternative ways of defending our communities and spaces. We strongly encourage other organizers of Pride events, queer-friendly dance parties, and all other events to do the same. We seek to support queers and people of color through our organizing efforts.

Please consider reflecting further on the terrible events in Orlando through further researching and amplifying Latinx queer & trans voices.

Originally posted to Three Rivers Rising Tide

Disruption comes in advance of major rally outside ALEC Spring Task Force Summit

PITTSBURGH—Two dozen Pittsburghers stormed into the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) Spring Task Force Summit meeting on Thursday evening, disrupting the lobbying group’s Board of Directors Dinner.  While ALEC’s Summit is taking place at the Omni-William Penn, the dinner was held a few blocks away at Heinz Hall.

Hoisting yellow umbrellas with anti-ALEC slogans, a common prop from the 2014 pro-democracy mobilization in Hong Kong, participants rolled out ‘crime scene’ tape and shouted, “This is a crime scene! ALEC is killing us! With private prisons and attacks on workers fueled by greed and hunger for power ALEC is killing us!

During the 2014 “Umbrella Revolution” in Hong Kong, yellow umbrellas became a global symbol of popular resistance as pro-democracy demonstrators used the umbrellas to protect themselves from pepper spray and police violence. “During the Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong, protesters used yellow umbrellas to shield themselves from tear gas. Here in Pittsburgh we’re using yellow umbrellas to shield Pittsburgh from ALEC’s harmful and undemocratic policies,” said Emily Simons, an event organizer.  The umbrellas used at the ALEC meeting were covered with anti-ALEC slogans like “ALEC OUT of Black Communities,”“STOP Stealing Jobs and Union Busting,” and “Corporate Corruption Poisons Democracy.”

Demonstrators cited ALEC’s role in drafting legislation that hurts workers, people of color, the environment and public education.  “We’re rising up for workers, Black lives, the environment and quality education,” said organizer Julia Johnson. “We’re here to take back our corrupt government and take control of our community,” Johnson continued.

The corporate lobbyists and politicians gathered for the dinner were shocked and frustrated at the disruption. Some took photos while others hurled insults at demonstrators.  After several minutes the demonstrators left the hall.

Hundreds are expected to attend a permitted rally against ALEC in Mellon Square, outside of the William Penn at 12 noon on Friday, May 6^th.  More information on Friday’s rally is available online at https://www.facebook.com/events/214842928893443/.

video footage 

Originally Submitted to It’s Going Down

On April 13^th Pittsburgh anarchists participated in an attack on a Donald Trump campaign rally. This is a message from some of the organizers of this anarchist contingent as well as thoughts on our current situation.

On April 11^th, the Trump campaign announced plans for two events on the same day in different neighborhoods of Pittsburgh. Earlier in the day he would participate in a “town hall” with Sean Hannity in Oakland, a college neighborhood, and in the evening would hold a large campaign rally in the downtown area. Almost immediately, different factions of the Left issued calls for actions and began planning demonstrations. Shortly thereafter came the all-too-common threats from the Right of armed confrontation with demonstrators.

Actions against Trump’s Oakland event were called for by various student activist groups on the University of Pittsburgh campus as well as by WHAT’S UP?!, a local anti-racism group. ANSWER, a front group for the Pittsburgh chapter of Party for Socialism and Liberation, issued a call for a rally and march to Trump’s main campaign event in downtown.

Anarchists and autonomous anti-fascists knew from the very beginning that our goal was full disruption and confrontation with both Trump and his supporters. We felt that established organizations such as WHAT’S UP?! and ANSWER would both work to disrupt this goal in favor of their own visions of what a successful anti-racist action should look like. We chose to organize our own contingent so as to maximize our autonomy and control of our actions and desires.

Actions against Trump’s events began in the early afternoon in different parts of the city, but for the purposes of this piece we will focus on the events surrounding his main campaign rally in the downtown area of Pittsburgh. We choose this focus because it was here that the main energies of anti-authoritarian organizing were placed, and also because we feel that it offers a road map for the fight against the white supremacist Right.

The main gathering of anarchists was a few blocks from Trump’s event and was timed to coincide with the arrival of other marches from different parts of the city. We weren’t aware of other groups’ intentions, numbers, or desired level of disruption, but we thought that our best bet was to time our march to meet the other crowds after they had already arrived at the convention center. This would allow us to bring a surge of our energy and numbers while at the same time pushing forward with our momentum into the crowd of Trump supporters to achieve our primary goal of confrontation.

We were successful with this tactic. Our contingent came prepared with a dozen black and Anti-Fascist Action flags on strong poles and a large black banner. As we arrived at the convention center, we marched and pushed straight through a crowd of Trump supporters, knocked aside barricades, and pushed to the main entrance of the building. Many other demonstrators had already made it that far and were blocking the roads; others followed us through the hole in the crowd we created. Once our contingent arrived at the entrance, immediate physical confrontations erupted as we marched directly into the line going into the building. Trump supporters were tackled, punched, and pepper sprayed as we attempted to fight our way inside.

During these fights the police moved in, made some seemingly random arrests of those not involved in the fighting and pepper spraying, and formed a line between us and the group of Trump supporters. People then lit flares and began to throw objects over the police into the line of supporters and repeatedly attempted to push through. At this point it was clear that the rally inside had already begun and the people we were fighting were those stuck outside, unable to get in.

After about an hour of this, Trump’s rally ended and attendees began to leave out of the exits. The crowd rushed the exits, following, screaming at, shoving, and pepper spraying people as they left. The exits were blocked and police inside the convention center redirected the supporters to doors out of our reach. Despite this, stragglers continued to find their way into our crowd and were heckled and attacked. The city and county police eventually donned riot gear and formed a line to clear the streets. Without any more arrests the crowds dispersed and the event ended.

Our Situation:

We see the rise of Donald Trump as a major aspect of the Right’s direct response to the Black Lives Matter movement, Barack Obama’s presidency, and what they see as an existential threat to white supremacy in this country. This reaction from the right wing has taken other forms, as we have seen with the armed Bundy Ranch standoff, the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, and the non-fatal shooting of demonstrators during an anti-police violence demonstration in Minneapolis by white nationalists.

According to The Atlantic, aside from the demographic markers of lower class membership, whiteness, and low education attainment, the main factor tying Trump’s base together is support for authoritarianism and white supremacy. The main policy points of Trump’s campaign have been rooted in the widespread criminalization, detention, and expulsion of Muslims, Arabs, latin@s, blacks, and other non-whites from the United States.

Support of Donald Trump and by extension these aims is enough to justify oneself as a target of anti-racist violence.

It is our belief that recent events have marked a shift in the political struggle of this country. More and more of the populace has fled mainstream political forces for “outsiders” seen as on the fringe, such as Trump and Bernie Sanders. We see a demarcation developing between the Left and the Right – between those who support corporate control of resources, the expulsion of non-Whites, and increased police militarization for urban pacification, and those who support individual autonomy, collective ownership of resources, and racial and socioeconomic justice. The inherent bilateral structure of the American political party system leaves us with bastardized social and political movements – the “Left” must abandon its Marxist tendencies to fit into a Democratic narrative, while the “Right” must attempt to fit its authoritarian Judeo-Christian white supremacist ideology into the Republican establishment.

As we saw inside Trump’s campaign event in Chicago, on the streets of Minneapolis, and in downtown Pittsburgh the other night, militant physical conflict between these two forces – between those who wish to maintain white supremacy, and those who wish to see its abolition, has come into the open and forefront of American political discourse. We see an opportunity here to forcefully attack both the dominant American political structures while at the same time fighting back the far-Right tendencies that we see with Donald Trump’s rise to political fame.

It is our hope that the threat posed by the white supremacist Right, as well as the exploitation of the opportunities that we speak of, can help our movements to more clearly place ourselves in the struggle for liberation. Militant self-defense from authoritarianism can help grant us the individual and collective autonomy necessary for any liberatory revolt to occur. We see this as a time for libertarian anti-capitalists to learn to take seriously the threat posed by the new Right and to take the steps necessary to forcefully fight the structures of white supremacy. This is not a time for the introspection and critical self-reflection of the popular anti-racist praxis, but a time for mutual self-defense and collective force against the American white supremacist system of apartheid.

The time has come to Burn the American Plantation.

– Your comrades from the hills and valleys of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.