On March 20th, 11 comrades were arrested during an demonstration outside of Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh, PA. They were joining in solidarity with the 80 inmates that had launched a 24-hour strike with demands for decent living conditions, including but not limited to having access to medical services, having their grievances heard and responded to, and requiring the DOC and Prison board to ensure that all administrative rules and DOC policies are made accessible to inmates. Police instigated violence and our friends were arrested and are now facing exorbitant legal fees. Please donate to this fund to help out with the high costs that follow arrest; Solidarity is everything and with help from everyone, we can continue to keep fighting!

CLICK HERE TO DONATE

Originally published on It’s Going Down
CLICK HERE TO DONATE to the arrestees

On March 18th, prisoners at Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania began a sit-in. Eighty prisoners took part in the action to demand more case workers, better medical services, and a legitimate grievance procedure. Last night, masked demonstrators converged on the jail in solidarity with those protesting inside and smashed windows of the jail, a security camera, and several police vehicles. The action was broken up after police arrested eleven protesters.

Allegheny County Jail (ACJ) imprisons more than 2,500 people, and its population has increased by 70% in the last two decades. ACJ has a long history of abuse and was the subject of a 2010 FBI investigation that found officials there were covering up abuse of prisoners. Health conditions at the jail are also notoriously bad; eleven people died while incarcerated at ACJ in just 2014 and 2015.

Eighty-one percent of the people being incarcerated at Allegheny County Jail haven’t been convicted of a crime and are in being incarcerated pretrial. Many of these people are being held on bail they cannot pay, meaning they are only incarcerated because they lack access to a certain amount of money.

In a monetary bail system, access to money determines whether someone will be released or detained pretrial. Someone who can’t afford bail will likely be incarcerated for the duration of their trial, which could be years. Even a few days of pretrial incarceration often means the difference between working and being fired or paying rent and being evicted. Right now, more than 450,000 people are incarcerated in US jails—most of them in pretrial detention and most of those people because they cannot pay bail. In effect, our legal system is punishing people for being poor.

In the past year, there has been a dramatic increase in action being taken by incarcerated people across the US, most recently at Vaughn Correctional Facility where prisoners demanding better conditions took over a wing of the prison. In August and September of 2016, 22 mothers held at an immigration detention center in Pennsylvania went on hunger strike to protest the ongoing incarceration of themselves and their children. Last September’s national prisoner strike involved at least 29 prisons in 12 states. The strike was organized by the Free Alabama Movement (FAM) with support from the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the Anarchist Black Cross (ABC), and a wide variety of anti-prison organizations. Tens of thousands of prisoners participated in the strike, affecting facilities across the country.

Especially as Trump and Sessions push for even more criminalization of targeted communities, it essential that we pay close attention to and amplify resistance inside US jails, prisons, and immigration detention centers.

Solidarity with those rising up and resisting at Allegheny County Jail.

Some Filler for the autonomous kids.

Hey, Democrats, we need to talk… hmu later?

In the aftermath of Hillary Clinton’s embarrassing loss to Donald Trump — someone who had widely been regarded as the most un-electable candidate in the history of presidential politics — millions of liberals have stepped out of their yoga classes and re-emerged in our social movement spaces. And they brought their bad politics with them.

– Return of the Liberals : The Tactic Police Strike Back

The Pitt College Democrats are holding a “solidarity rally” on campus this Saturday at 2pm. The event, which will provide a platform for multiple politicians, was ostensibly organized in order to “show support and solidarity with marginalized groups in a peaceful rally.”

Frankly, we call bullshit.¹
It’s Valentines Day, and the Pitt College Dems are still a little heartbroken after finding out that love doesn’t actually trump hate. In hopes of soliciting even the slightest interest in their failed neoliberal party, the PC Dems are now flirting with those Bernie-bros that they alienated mere months ago, probably dropping some shit pick-up line about the political realism of their “strategies” “against” Trump.

Struggling to maintain their relevance in the wake of the largest mobilization of our young lives, the PC Dems are now co-opting the (already opportunist) political aesthetic we typically associate with the alphabet soup of socialist and communist parties that hang around Pitt’s campus. Armed with some new slogans (occasionally substituting “resist” for “I’m with her”), a vague injunction to a moralistic do-somethingism (so long as there is no action plan that goes beyond talking to your politician of choice or asking politely for a march permit), and some sleek new fliers, the PC Dems are preparing an ambitious new campaign: BORE THE RESISTANCE TO DEATH.

At the end of the day, the Democrats still uphold the system we oppose, a system that is built on the violence of white supremacy, heteronormative patriarchy, imperialism, capitalism, and the myriad other hierarchies that dominate life here in the heart of the Empire.

But these are all things that anarchists have been saying for years. This bit of Filler is a call to inject some tension back into the political discourse on campus. Is it time for Reform, or Revolution?

In that spirit, Filler is excited to announce our very first public contest, a breakup story decades in the making, your new favorite Valentine’s Day rom-commie special… 

Breaking Up with the Democrats!

Crew-up, or go it alone! The individual, affinity group, or organization that pulls off the most creative, intersectional, funny, or disruptive intervention at the PC Dems’ rally this Saturday will receive their very own bag of goodies and a personalized Valentine’s Day card. All participants will get a love note, but only one direct action will get the goodies! If your crew wins the grand prize, so far you’re looking at some rare zines, free stick-and-poke tattoos, antifa stickers, gift cards, free meals, and more TBA!

Contest Guidelines:

1) Avoid taking actions that put bystanders at risk of police violence.
Obviously, there is no guarantee that any direct action won’t piss off the pigs, but keep in mind that this contest’s goal is to generalize conflictuality and subvert the Democrats’ attempts to pacify the movement – not to kick off the insurrection in a crowd full of liberal snitches and hostile media, let alone families with children or people who already experience a greater risk of violence in this system of (hetero-normative patriarchy, white supremacy, imperialism, capitalism, or any of the myriad other hierarchies that dominate life here in the heart of the Empire).

2) Seek accomplices, not allies.
Be conscious of the way liberals weaponize identity politics in order to pacify and exploit marginalized communities. Don’t let some “respectable,” self-appointed community leader silence you or speak on your behalf just because they share part of your identity and the oppression that comes with it – I sure as hell didn’t vote for Milo to be LGBTQ Nation’s person of the year. Likewise, don’t let liberals get away with snitching on you or delegitimizing your action just because you’ve decided to use your privilege to take the kinds of risks that some of your comrades might not be able to take.

We know that fronting as an “ally” to an entire group of people is absurdly problematic, as it assumes that everyone within that community shares the same beliefs, interests, capabilities, needs. We know that when Democrats call for “privileged allies” to follow the instructions of “community leaders,” they are really trying to tell you to obey their tokenized mouthpieces. Instead, we urge you to listen to (and deepen your relationships with) your trusted friends and comrades who are fighting this system all the harder just because of who they are.

3) Pics or it didn’t happen!
Don’t forget to claim your action in some way! You could take (non-incriminating) photos or video footage, or you could send us a communiqué to show off some of that sexy prose and radical perspective you’ve been working on, or maybe even just hand out and/or throw fliers in the air that explain your action – whatever works, just make sure to do it!

We recommend using Tor and guerrilla mail together if you want to submit your contest entry anonymously. Send your submissions to FillerCollective@riseup.net! 

Endnotes

1) Don’t get us wrong, it’s great that more students want to get organized and stand in solidarity with one another. What’s bullshit is that the Democrats are suddenly acting like they’ve been anything but a leech on liberation movements in this country, and students hoping for change are getting sucked right back into the system.

Democrats are responsible for breaking a new record in migrant deportations under the Obama administration. Democrats deployed the National Guard to suppress liberation movements such as the Movement for Black Lives. Democrats passed legislation expanding the power of the surveillance state and the executive branch, creating the authoritarian structures now wielded by an egotistical proto-fascist. Democrats bomb civilians and children just like Republicans do. Democrats gentrify our cities and unironically praise the socially-conscious business ethics of Starbucks and Whole Foods. On campus, the PC Dems also have a strange habit of publicly defending the Pitt College Republicans and denouncing direct action.

Their complicity with the Obama administration should speak for itself, but over the last few months the Pitt College Democrats have been fronting as if they represent some sort of relevant opposition to the system. Some really cool folks are getting involved, but their good intentions are continually sabotaged by the reality of our situation: the Democrats are part of the problem.

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

CLICK HERE TO DONATE

On January 20th 2017 Border-guards, modern day slave catchers, paramilitary, military, and armed vigilante groups converged to protect the swearing in of a new leader to the White Supremacist State known as The United States of America.

Tens of Thousands of bravehearts also converged upon our nations capital in collective defense, in resistance to oppressive everyday reality. Arm in arm, in solidarity, hundreds from our beloved Rustbelt city manifested beautiful acts of resistance and aligned themselves with fellow renegades and insurgents to strengthen vocal messages and make bold gestures of revolution.

Pittsburghers gathered in mass to protest our country that was never great and to unmake fascist America.

Efforts were made to end segregation and bring about emancipation in much the same way those who have came before us have – in the streets.

During the demonstrations many were arrested. We, the organizers of this fundraising campaign, pledge to supporter our local comrades. Regardless their perceived guilt or innocence, we have solidarity with them and their trajectory.

The confines of laws are set up against those who dare to dream and act upon another reality.

We ask you to take a moment and pause, to consider we are in this together, and that our sisters and brothers, our neighbors who grew up and live on the same streets as us, who pass over the same bridges as us, are under attack.

Contributing to this bail fund is an act of love and an attack on the proponents of a segregated society that would have us all rotting in jail cells or slaving away as subservient women and barbarish men.

We are not divided and we will not leave anybody behind. For some the thin vale of American Racism has been taken off, for others we have always known it to be true and we are glad you have joined us.

“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 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.