How-to

Staying safer in the streets

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Apr 082016

For the next time… Staying safer in the streets

Why wear a mask? It allows us to take action without fear of immediate identification. It’s not enough to cover half our face. Even if we get away, the police may use photos or video to charge us later. It’s best to cover our hair, face, arms, tattoos, and hands. Cloth gloves are best because they don’t transfer print, unlike plastic gloves. Make sure there are no identifying features on your clothes, shoes, or backpack; it’s nice to have a change of clothing. If we bring any materials with us, let’s wipe them down with rubbing alcohol to remove fingerprints. Bragging and storytelling are natural, but they’re easy to use against us. Don’t post anything on Facebook that we wouldn’t show a cop. The same goes for Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr. Remember that police will read our texts and call-log if they arrest us. If you are arrested, invoke your right to remain absolutely silent; name, address, birthdate and no more.

8.5 x 11″ | PDF

Paint bombs: light bulbs filled with paint

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Jul 192012

From Blockade, Occupy, Strike Back

First, put on your cloth gloves. This will keep your fingertips (and the paint bombs) clean. You should work on a soft surface (like a fold towel) to protect your bulb.

1. First, use needle-nose pliers to cut off the metal fitting. You can either cut two vertical slits in the fitting and wiggle it off, or simply cut around the entire thing.

2. Next, remove the glass tube and filament from inside the bulb. If they haven’t already broken in the process of cutting off the fitting, try gently poking them from the bottom with a screwdriver.

3. Fill the bulb with paint (use a funnel or dish soap bottle and add some water if the paint is thick), seal the hole with paper, clay or similar, and seal with electrical tape or melted wax. Mixing indoor and outdoor paint makes it much more difficult to remove.

4. Wipe down the bulb with rubbing alcohol to remove any prints.

Street Demonstration Tips

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Jul 192012

From Blockade, Occupy, Strike Back

While people can participate in demos with their crew, sometimes it makes sense for crews to act together in a contingent or a bloc. The form chosen should fit the context. Here is a collection of tips for acting within demos – some are applicable more broadly, others are more specific to a bloc.

The way a demo moves can determine its outcome. While there are situations where moving quickly can be strategic, running blindly in a panic is the worst thing people can do. The police often attempt to disperse rowdy demos, and being able to hold our ground, not panic, and fight back is crucial.

A snake march—weaving up and down different streets and changing direction often and unpredictably (but strategically) – is a good way for spontaneous demos to evade police. Marching against traffic on one-way streets makes it difficult for the police to control the march.

It is important to pay attention to what’s happening around you. Stay aware of your surroundings. Notice any police lines that are being reinforced. Kettling is another tactic police use in mass arrests wherein they try to surround a demo from all sides, either in a street between intersections, or inside an intersection. This is why, if the demo is large enough, it should always try to hold two intersections at a time to leave an alternate route open.

Structures for quick communication need to be developed. People can spread messages and plans quickly by going from crew to crew.

Never take photos of anything that can be incriminating. If putting media online, black out faces – police routinely use footage posted online as evidence. Placards, banners, and paint can be used to block unfriendly cameras.

Don’t come to a demo as a passive observer, hoping others have a plan. Come prepared to participate actively and have your own goals and plans.

The purpose of the bloc as a tactic is to have everyone look as similar as possible, so that no single individual can be identified within the anonymous mass. Blocs are not necessary for acting in the street – people can also self-organize into contingents, or act as individuals – but they can help to keep everybody safer. If only some people within a bloc take these precautions, the cops can more easily spot and target individuals and groups, which is dangerous both for those who are acting within the bloc and for those who are not. Those who make the effort to stay anonymous can draw extra police attention; those who don’t can be more easily identified, which can make them easier targets. Neither of these situations is desirable.

If you’re going to wear a mask, keep it on at all appropriate times. If you are captured on camera or witnessed at any point with your mask off, you can thereafter be easily identified with it on. Don’t just cover your face. Bandanas are popular and convenient, but they don’t conceal enough. Cover your head completely so your hair cannot be seen – especially if it’s distinctive. In a bloc, you can do this by wearing a ski mask or making a mask out of a t-shirt – stretch the neck hole across your eyes and tie the sleeves behind your head, with the rest of the shirt covering your head and shoulders.

Be extremely conscientious about where and when you change into and out of your mask and other anonymizing clothing; there should be no cameras or hostile witnesses. If possible, explore the area in advance to find appropriate spaces for changing. Remember that police are especially likely to target masked individuals who are not in a crowd that is similarly dressed.

Wear different outfits layered one upon the other. Ideally, you should have one outfit for getting to the site of the action without attracting attention, your anonymous gear for the action itself, and then another outfit underneath so you can look like a good citizen as you exit the area.

Do not march in a bloc wearing your regular clothing, especially if it’s distinctive. Cops may be stupid, but they can probably match the pictures of the masked-up person with the purple polka-dotted pants to pictures of the same person in the same outfit minus the mask – even if the pictures were taken on different days.

Backpacks and shoes are also used to identify people from demos. Rather than using the same ones you wear in everyday life, use different ones. Consider covering shoes with large socks if appropriate.

Cover or remove anything that can identify you: patches, piercings, and tattoos.

If possible, cover your eyes with goggles to protect from pepper spray or tear gas. If you wear glasses, wear non-descript ones. Contact lenses are not recommended in situations where you may come into contact with chemical weapons. If in winter your glasses fog up with a mask, you can wear contacts but have goggles on hand.

Be careful not to leave fingerprints. Wear cloth gloves—leather and latex can retain fingerprints and even pass them on to objects you touch. Wipe down tools and other items with rubbing alcohol in advance to clean fingerprints off them – you never know what might get lost in the chaos.

Banners along the sides and front of a bloc can function to obscure surveillance, and can also help to protect people from being snatched by police.

Placards and flags made with heavy wood can be used for self-defense in a pinch (and are longer than batons!). Barricades, fireworks, paint bombs, fire extinguishers, rocks, and other creative means can keep enemies at a distance.

Knowing the terrain can be invaluable.
• where are there barricade materials, action targets, and stash spots for tools to be picked up during the demo?
• where are there alleys, backyards, hiding spots, crowded areas, cameras, and public transit locations for dispersal?

Do not let any of this give you a false sense of security. Be careful. Assess your relationship to risk honestly. Make sure you know and trust the people you’re working with, especially when it comes to high-risk activities. Practice security awareness at all times. Know and assert your legal rights when dealing with police. Doing so may not make things better, but failing to do so will certainly make them worse.

The Formation of Crews: A Tactic in Expanding Our Strength and Autonomy

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Jul 192012

From Blockade, Occupy, Strike Back

Instead of hoping for a bureaucratic organization to do something for us, we can take our lives into our own hands by self-organizing. The formation of a crew is a step in this direction. A crew is a collection of close friends that trusts one another enough to organize together. This means having shared intentions, ideas, and practices, having each other’s backs, and never talking to police. In other words, this means sharing affinity. Some people refer to crews as affinity groups. While who is in your crew can be somewhat flexible depending on what you’re trying to do, it does imply having people with whom to consistently participate in social struggles and develop a more long-term term strategy. It often involves sharing your day-to-day life and knowing people well. This means knowing what is shared, but even more importantly, knowing where real political differences exist.

A crew is a small group of people who organize without hierarchy – there are no leaders or followers, and everyone chooses how to take part in the activity. Crews can form anywhere: in school, on the street, and on the job. This is an effective way of organizing because, in a small group, you are making decisions and setting goals with people that you already share affinity with, without needing to vote or use formal processes. Doing so sidesteps the alienation and stagnation that happens as a result of the bureaucratization of the student movement – however, self-organization requires a lot more initiative and creativity, since nobody will put your ideas into action for you. Another benefit is that the decentralization of action planning renders repression of social movements more difficult.

Larger endeavors that are beyond the organizational capacity of a given crew, such as occupations or demonstrations, may require assemblies or other means to coordinate with others. This larger coordination structure based on autonomy stands in contrast to the standard idea of general assemblies, which require voting or consensus, whose ultimate function is to control and limit the struggle.

As people realize their own power as individuals and communities, the power of those in authority (i.e. the administration, the politicians, the police, and the bosses) weakens. This is what happens in any community garden, any occupation, and any riot. Individuals see that they can grow their own food and help others do the same; they see what they can do with just a few others. They see that they can take and hold space, and make entirely new ways of interacting together possible, while fighting off the institutions that stand in their way. When space is liberated, when we fight authority, we see that capitalism is not absolute. We realize that most of the things around us that we value are of our own creation. Contrary to the widespread myths, authority is in fact unnecessary and harmful.

When more people realize their actual capacity to determine their own lives, they, along with others, become a material force. One of a physical nature, unlike the voting polls that only act as a means to confuse where our true power lies – in our own hands. Those who wish to play puppet master know this. The people who fancy themselves our rulers and keepers – politicians, bosses, police, judges, and many others – long ago organized themselves into a force that can in actuality change things, move things, and control things. Crews act as a counterforce to those whose goal is to profit by dominating us.

Crews, then, serve a role in protecting ourselves from those who would like to exploit us for the sake of the economy, from those who would like us to continue working for scraps and piling up huge debts. Crews can come to demonstrations prepared and with clearly formulated ideas and plans about what they want to see happen, opening up interesting possibilities in otherwise ritualized processions from point A to point B. Crews can organize to disrupt the functioning of the economy, both on campus and off, through blockades, sabotage, occupations, and other forms of action. Crews can get together and articulate their ideas on the walls of the campuses and city streets with graffiti and posters. They can make sure that advertisements never stay up for long, and that police stations, banks, and gentrifying apartments or restaurants are never safe. Crews can steal from big businesses, such as by expropriating groceries to pass out for free in their neighbourhoods. They can take money from capitalism and give it to social projects autonomous from the state, or initiate those projects themselves. Crews form to act as a force against those who would rather see us subservient or behind bars.

Crews can form to approach the police when they are hassling someone on the street or in the métro. They can attack the immigration machine that deports and imprisons. They can stop the landlord trying to evict their neighbours. They can de-arrest someone at a demonstration without hesitation, even if they don’t know them. They can smash banks and other spaces which exist to reproduce capitalism. They can build up their communities through solidarity, so that the police hesitate before following someone into a neighbourhood or a campus.

On campus, crews can extend the reach of the strike. Open up the universities as social spaces for students and non-students alike to come in and use freely. Appropriate the copy machines and spread news of the revolt to other sectors of society. Take over the cafeterias and bars and begin preparing the communal feast. Burn the debt records. In short, create not an ‘alternative’ that can easily be accommodated within capitalist society, but rather liberated space in which power is built to destroy capitalist society.

The point of acting is to gain control over our lives and to further our own power, as well as the power of those who have always been dispossessed in this society.

Crews strike back.