Strategy: Call for autonomous zones

Good strategies, however, they are essentially weak in impact and long term effectiveness, I think. Many have propose strategies but few have offer thoughts about what do you want to accomplish, in other words, if we agree that creating pressure is the goal, the question is what sort of pressure, do we want the ruling system and the status quo consciousness to change paradigms in favor of stopping the war, or do we simply want company in our rebelliousness and be part of the peace seeking status quo? The nuns that were recently arrested for their radical actions said: "we need to do much more." In San Francisco we do little because we are not connected to the pain of the Iraqi people, we just simply want to stretch a helping hand in the most status quo fashion, like madonna, martin sheen, and the rest of the hollywood dudes and dudas. We need to shut off specific media outlets, bridges, governmental locales, corporate headquarters, etc, utilizing something resembling your strategy. paz

yeah! these are decent ideas. i agree we need new tactical ideas. nice point about the hard signs...

then what should people do?

I think there's a purpose to this kind of action. when large groups of people go out to protest, as we saw in the past few weeks, they feel a lot of emotional energy which gets released in ways that are often controlled by the police and the media.

I agree about shutting down strategic points, but my ideas are coming out of aperspective that the very institutions and powers we'd want to "interrupt" are themselves very fluid and moadic and can easily disperse from any location we might choose to "disable". Notice how Bechtel bragged that because of it's shifting of work to telecommuting during its office's blockade by protesters, it experienced no significant loss in normal workday.

I'm suggesting that the powers that we need to disrupt in order to stop a war, or to acheive other democratic aims, are simply not there for us to disrupt. They are global and very liquid. That's why, for my part, the best strategy I can think of is disruption of the flow of communication between powerful entities, and as much as possible, disruption of the media flow of interpretation from power to the passive viewers whose inaction makes their control possible. ok, maybe i'm going off a little bit here, but -

the way these marches, and break-aways have gone is that they always get smaller from a basic climax point. people flow away from the march as they get tired, but people do not join or flow in to the march. for the police it's simply a matter of controlling this flow as efficiently as possible and it goes away eventually. what i'm suggesting is that protesters actually taking complete possession of a physical civic location, and what's more defending it, would allow us to not only maintain a longer and more visible action, but it would allow us a greater freedom to control how it is interpreted by the media, and by sustaining it and defending it from intimidation, we could actually create a "break-away" that people would want to join, check-out, see for themselves because it is stable, instead of run away from because it is dangerous. do you see my point? once we get it going, we can figure out the longer range impacts and strategies - but we can't have this kind of discussion, much less act on it, when our adrenalin is pumping as we are running from the paddy wagon.

it's a way to show, in public, connection between people, cooperation, a positive, encouraging and simultaneously sexy and possibly illegal face of protesting. people are bored by images of marchers holding signs, i think the marchers are too, if not for our convictions. we need to elevate our status, in the eyes of our polis, to temporary inhabitants of the streets, with a visible and fascinating infrastructure, rather than keep appearing to each other as hunted, endangered, prohibited animals

Many people are frustrated because the upsurge after the war didn't last but a few days. I see this, in a way, as a good sign--we're not satisfied with having participated in the biggest, most militant, and least ignorable street actions anywhere in the US. This is much better than resting on our laurels.

The fact is that the militancy that was seen on the streets came up against its own limits--it was a large-scale mobilization which didn't grow when confronted with police repression. Since whining about police repression is worse than useless, we need to step back, assess, and...build.

I see these days of relative quiet as not a bad thing in themself. I know I feel sickened and depressed by what's going on in Iraq, and assume others feel similarly. Yet another march can seem fruitless. But this sense of sadness and grief will give way to anger and collective action again--that I'm sure of. Just when the cops and the mayor begin to think everything's normal, they'll get a big surprise.

So: I'm not as pessimistic as TAZ about the future of militant street protest, but I think that his/her idea of forging a free/autonomous space against the war is a really good one. It's hard to conceive of such a thing in San Francisco, land of yuppies and their vigilant piggies. But I think that it could be done, not at first as a 24-hour/day action, but possibly once it became an understood free zone we could push it all day and night long. Dolores Park perhaps? Shanty-towns? Music?

I think it is a good idea. This kind of long term occupation of public spaces tend to generate a very different dynamic than the moving and time limited protests. Recent examples can be found in many places. I can speak of two I have witnessed in person.
One was in madrid, spain, in the early 90's. There was a campaign organized by many NGO's and mainstream lefties (which in spain would range from socialdemocrats and progressive catholics to greens and communists) to pressure the government to dedicate 0.7% of the national budget to development projects in the third world. Not a very radical thing, for sure. However, at some point, a group called the 0.7 Platform set up a few tents in the main avenue of madrid. (Think of a two- or three-mile long avenue with a very wide pedestrian way on its center and long lawn patches separating it from the traffic.) What begun as a small thing would become in two weeks a small town of tents, with hundreds of tents right in the middle of the city. The encampment lasted a month, maybe longer. Alhough I didn't camp out there - I wasn't really a big fan of the 0.7 campaign - we would all go hang out there, protest & party, talk politics, make out, get stoned, etc. The thing was run very smoothly, by general councils, assemblies, volunteer commitees, with food being collected and cooked, performances happening every few hundred yards, workshops, you name it... In the end, it didn't accomplish much towards its stated goals, but it did generate an incredible energy and brought a lot of people in contact with other, more radical ideas, and radical movements such as squatter groups, draft-resisters, anti-authoritarian collectives and so on, did get a boost from it.
The other experience comes from my homeland, Brazil. You might be familiar with the MST, the landless workers movement. They are known for its radical, direct-action, non-violent approach to land reform struggle. A typical action of the MST implies a few hundred people, families, taking over a ranch or big farm. But they also set up encampments along highways to pressure authorities to provide land for settlement, and sometimes they bring their actions to cities. In urban environments, their encampments tend to resemble things such as the ''dignity village" (ibelieve it's the name) from Portland, OR, or the homeless camp in SF's civic center (I don't know about this one, it is from before I moved here).

One problem with this kind of action is that it requires a good number of people to make the first "take over". Of course, camping out is illegal in city spaces, but so is blockin traffic, anyway.

It is also less spectacular, and causes much less disruption of business and routine than the kind of stuff we have seen so far.

In the other hand, it may have some advantages in other aspects. One is that it creates a kind of convivial experience that I don't see very often in this country. The other thing is thatit has a very positive impact on all people participating. The action becomes home for a while. I mean, in madrid, people managed to go to work or school and come back to sleep in the tents, while other would hang out during day time, protecting the space.

One thing that is interesting with these kind of experiences is that although they rarely suceed in achieving its imediate goals, they do have a great impact in the strength of the movement. Plus, they do not exclude other actions or portests, and actually serve as a base-camp or meeting point. They also tend to be seen with simpathy by the average citizen - those who the TVnews cry so much about being "inconvenienced".


Other alternative, although less fun and more likely to not last long, is to take over a city landmark and resist inside. That certainly requires more "militant" types, very well organized, and above all quiet - you can't advertise you're going to take over the Mission dolores, or the coit tower, or Alcatraz (the AIM's take over of the island was truly something that had serious impact in the native american movement, I'm told), or you won't even get close. If we were able to get one hundred, even fifty people to do something without telling everybody we are going to do it, maybe we could actually avoid facing a million cops waiting for us in the front door of the Bechtel building... I don't know, maybe it is just a culture clash, but sometimes Americans talk too much, too loud, no matter what side of the barricade they are.

Ha ha, I was thinking about Coit tower today too, that would be fun!

Yeah, I think that this peace movement, so far here in SF, for what it's worth, is not exactly "militant" - it's a diverse bunch of people, with older people, families, children, as well as agile young people who share a basic conviction, and who take it really seriously.

It's true, people have been making a lot of complaints about blocked streets and I've noticed that most people I talked to who weren't at the more militant demonstrations here were scared away, and pretty much bought lock, stock, and barrel the cop-hating, rock-throwing image presented by those insufferable jackasses in our local corporate news media. and these were thinking people who normally wouldn't buy inot that spin, but the media message was *so* strong this time. Their message is very clear, I see it every day - "maybe the war in iraq is bad, maybe it isn't, but we shouldn't do anything about it, let's just watch and see what happens".

I think it's rubbed off on some of us. I think we need to shut the system down and so on, but if you think about it, people who are poor are so scared of being fired, especially in these times, they would rather turn on us than join us if they see us as forcing them to choose between their convictions and their immediate security. people would choose convicitons if only they saw some evidence that we have what it takes to actually win.

and damn, i'm tired of yelling at people i dont' know on the street. i'm tired of the total indifference and insatiable self-righteousness of the police, who think we are all out to get them or something. i'm exhausted explaining why we do street actions to people who would never do it in a million years for fear of getting "caught". i'm tired of walking away from "love it or leave it" conversations, and "support our troops" hoo-ha's. fuck it. fuck them. i don't want to beg and plead with people who have no morals or hearts, like the local press. if you have no morals, how are you going to fathom why people would be against war?

Ok, look, I don't think anyone is brought "over" to a political point of view by one-liners written on signs and chanted slogans. As cynical as it sounds, people who *are* convinced by such shallow expressions of ideas are exactly the people whose hearts and minds will always be won by whoever has more money.

I think the way people change their minds, and furthermore, make the decision to act upon their beliefs, is a more complicated organic process which requires the ability to exchange, to go back and forth, to have your arguments answered and addressed. The people who are afraid of rock-throwing will stay away until someone has addressed that point in such a way that they understand it for themselves. Ideas shouldn't be shoved down people's throats, not even just by the indimidating presence of overwhelming numbers, because convictions born from this kind of persuasion are shallow and shift easily.

There is huge momentum against this war. It has not died down at all. I watched Ted Koppel of ABC the other night deliver his verdict on national tv that the war is not just one, but a series of major mistakes.

The problem is not that people don't want to oppose it, we just don't have a place where our opposition can take root. People are basically learning how to protest - they're relying largely on images they've seen in documentaries, movies, newspapers, and so on. The problem of "do i want to get beaten by a police for my belief right now this very moment" is a big philosophical question which is difficult to answer in the heat of an action.

There is a lot of anti-war sentiment, and even more importantly, a lot of compassion and understanding of people of other countries. I think americans are getting totally demoralized by how isolated we are, especially young people, and i think we can be like a pilot light to ignite people's imaginations and give them the courage to make the millions and millions of little changes in their daily lives that really will stop this war. people will do it if they see other people doing it and doing it well. we're like chickens in that way i guess.

Here's a vision. Yes, a tent city sounds great, but we dont' have to go to tents right away. I think a plaza would be best, maybe something that incorporates both lawn-type terrain with paved terrain. We can't predict the rain after all. The obvious advantage of this is that there is no legitimate pretext to shut this down as long as it is peaceful. They can always say we're breaking the law, but while average joe will agree that blocking traffic is bad, average joe might not agree that a bunch of people hanging out in a place that was SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED to accomodate a lot of people congregating is too bad.

I think it would be quite a simple matter to erect the temporary city. All that's needed is one symbolic marker, like a flag. As long as the flag stands, the imaginary zone is officially real.

Imagine this: saturday, your average 80,000 strong march-rally in SF. tons of people are moving in a huge river towards some lawn somewhere where speakers are holding lectures. the movement of people is massive and slow, very leisurely. no one is watching, really, anyone who's around market that time of day is there to be in the protest. I've noticed a total absence of bystanders during these rallies. As the march moves on, some people just stop where they are, in the pre-determined location of the zone. A flag goes up, it blends inconspicuously with the sea of signs and poles and street theater. No one cares, no one really notices, people think it's part of the protest. everyone just goes around.

Other innocuous looking items go up, which can be the basis of rough boundaries and fortifications later. As the crowd trickles through, more and more is added. Eventually, hours later, when the crowd has more or less dispersed, the waves of people have washed up a strange formation on the shore. It is installed, fortified, permanent, defensible, has fun stuff going on inside and already is staffed by its temporary residents. People attract to it and it grows, especially as break away groups come by and as people trickle out when the mass sermons are over.

You can't walk by without feeling the buzz coming from it. No one saw this actually being constructed, but somehow a general zone has appeared out of nowhere, out of the swarming mass of people. People leave, enter, hang out near. Cops are there of course, looking deadly, but really just making the zone more legitimate and exciting by contrast. There are no rules, no things you have to do. It is just a zone. Assholes who hassle the police (and thereby give the police areason and a will to close in and hurt people) are organically explained the basic principles of Sun Tzu's art of war in conspiratorial tones*(see note).

Fortification is very important, since a zone is not a zone until it has at least a rough boundary so you know when you're "in". However, the fortification can't be just a simple wall. People have to be able to get in and out very easily. Basically i'm thinking something like a cell wall. Several sheets of 4x8 plywood with rough murals would be great. it would be nice to provide ourselves a visual as well as physical barrier from the cops, so we don't get freaked out by them. the more "militant", brave types can man the cell walls, propping up the barriers with their own arms. everything is manned. you can't leave your sign out there by itself or it will get confiscated the second you step away from it. everything you use should be legally, legitmately an expression of protest which is protected. this is why i like plywood so much. it's hard to argue that a 4'x8' painting is a "weapon", isn't it? especially if it's got a big american flag splashed all over it.

the falg is maintained by some people also, nothing is nailed down or attached to the location except with rope. should the zone need to disperse immediately, it should be able to do so. the residents of the zone try to make it as fun and accessible place as possible. a reading area would be great, so people can catch up on *non-dogmatic* information (hopefully not more propaganda rags, but whatever). a sound system would pretty much lock it down and give it the public acceptance it could use to explode into a much larger community.

garbage bags to take away stray trash. water containers to keep people hydrated. performers. radios. cellphones. cameras. art supplies - sign making stations. soap boxes and 10 minute limits so people can rant and rave their particular political views to their heart's content for a change. heated political debates. interviews granted exclusively to the press. much confusion. hippies and their dogs. bike repair. information exchange.

most importantly, some of the people have to decide there and then - where will the next zone be and when, because every zone would carry with it the seed of its next incarnation. cops could come in, but they would be discouraged, and they would never be allowed to comein one of their military formation lines. because people on the barricades would stand fast and they would be backed up by everyone. at that point, it becomes our home turf which we have the advantage of defending.

breaking up such an installation, on the pretext of us breaking some jackass anti-homeless city ordinance about sitting on the sidewalk or other such nonsense would make the police look like absolute idiots, which they would be to pursue any kind of hostility towards something which, obvious to any passerby, is a totally san francisco scene and is totally ok and should be allowed.

again, consult the link at top for the breaking story of the maine TAZ, see what happens to them and how they are dispersed.

yes, with this kind of zone, if free flow is allowed in and out (and the zone is not totally surrounded by the paramiltary formations), it would be possible to keep it going peacefully for a while. right, maybe not 24 hrs at first, but i really really think, given the immense sense of political anxiety people need to let out, it will totally snowball.

food is a no brainer. music has to be cool enough to not make people leave cause it's too annoying or too belligerent or too whiny. i think this action would draw artists and extroverted media-hogging types who are really needed and useful right now. whenever i've been involved in this sort of thing it's always brought on for me a feeling of exuberance and that maybe things will get better. it builds strength, morale, and is a fertile ground for more ideas, all of which we really really need.

if anyone would like further discuss, let's keep it generic enough to keep on the site. to get into details people would have to meet. maybe with affinity groups, maybe by other means.

none of what we're talking about is illegal. and quite frankly, nothing what we're talking is even possible to thwart with police activity since it basically a totally non-violent and politically charismatic activity which anyone would have a rat's chance of destroying in the public spotlight.

we are constitutionally protected to assemble peacefully. not to block streets, not to block buildings, but to hang out in parks or in plazas or by fountains or in squares - that is our right without question. we are protected by the fact that we are on the winning side. public opinion would be with us, and furthermore, the american culture has always favored the bold, the rebellious, and the non-conformist. look at the heroes of cinema, look at the most popular writers and painters. it's what america wants to see, and it's what america wants to be. people want to see us fucking in the strets and smoking dope in public, etc. they want to see flags burning. they don't want to see street actions which they could never see themselves participating in either cause it's too embarrassing or too scary.

i'd like to suggest the use of sneakemail.com to anyone out there. i'm using it with good success so far. this service allows you to generate an anonymous email address, which is valid, but which forwards to your real email account. this way you don't have to give out your real email on a public website, but people can still email you, get it? it's very easy to set up, read the instructions. you can also use it send mail when replying. this way keeping emails contacts nice and anonymous, and avoiding getting on any red squad lists. if you're worried about email snooping, you should be using PGP, which is free and easy to use, and is so damn effective the government will prosecute you if you take it to the wrong countries.

i'm not worried about cops monitoring me, i'm smarter than them because i'm working for myself and i understand what i'm talking about. i also understand the legal system and how to exploit it. if it's really gotten so bad, we have to accept government snooping, then all the more reason to speak out, by my reasoning. i think surveillance of political organizing is like those fake cameras in supermarkets. they're meant to scare you into believing someone's actually watching you and can stop you. it would suck to get targeted, yes, but wouldn't it suck worse to know you didn't organize with people because you were too afraid of being targeted. then they would have done you even worse.

the anti-war movement is so mainstream now it's not even a movement - i'm not scared of them. so drop me aline if you want explore this idea further. better yet, talk to your own affinity group about it and do your own thing.

-dumpy

hey tazmanian dumpy dude,

you know me, but i'm not 'bout to say who i am here in the land of federales con watchful oyos...shhhhh....why make their work easy? :-D

i hear ya...roving TAZes would be a beautiful thang, as would many of the other ideas described below. that being said, please be careful with the kinda stuff you said below, tho, k?

>>I think it's rubbed off on some of us. I think we need to shut the system down and so on, but if you think about it, people who are poor are so scared of being fired, especially in these times, they would rather turn on us than join us if they see us as forcing them to choose between their convictions and their immediate security. people would choose convicitons if only they saw some evidence that we have what it takes to actually win. <<

there's lotsa ways for poor folx to fight back -- don't think just 'cause we're not out there alla time, that we're not with you. the read i get from folx is more like what you said at the end, than "people turning on us". We *are* us, sabe? Or did you think that real change was gonna come from the middle class? ;-) think b4 you speak...

ok, criticism over, yadda yadda -- let's see all and everything keep happening (which it is anyway, once you take focus off of the post 3.20 message massagers and snitch-minded so-called liberals. may it never end, ya know? carry the revolution in our hearts so the revolution can occur...

anon

I was in Barcelona a few years ago and the firefighters were striking all over the place. One firefighter had squatted in an old, gothic church's antechamber. He was having a coffee, reading the paper and sitting next to a stack of supplies. Had a protest sign of course. Nuns were perplexed, tourists interested. No sign of police.

Further out of Barcelona's Gothic Quater, the center of a large roundabout had been TAZ'd by the local communist party. Very festive atmosphere: throwing frisbee, tents set up, large protest banners, all ages. Most of the signs were in Catalan so I can't remember what they were protesting for.

In American History, the most famous TAZ was the Hooverville in front of the Washington Monument. Thousands of WWI vets protested their lack of support within the Hoover Administration. The national guard came in and burned it to the ground.

SO, if you do in fact plan on creating an affinity group to create a TAZ in SF, plan on police force to end it. That being the case, take a high profile park like Union Square (there are baracades there already if you clip the chains locking them down). Use your own chains to lock the baracades together. I wandered by there today and saw no cops. Last Friday during Critical Mass the park was blockaded and manned by SFPD.

I assume the SFPD will use tactics like they have for squats. I doubt they'll let a fortified TAZ exist for too long.

On the other hand, Justin Herman Plaza felt very TAZ'ish during the Shut Down actions several Thursday's ago. No cops, resting protesters, Food Not Bombs, Medics, Organizers, etc. were all there and free to move about the cabin.

Maybe if the TAZ was created in a more subtle way like the Justin Herman experience, you'd be on to something.

ok, maybe it was a dumb-ass comment, about "poor people", and the whole them vs. us implications of it. no i don't think any class is going to liberate the other classes, or any of that. dumb-ass comment on my part.

i guess i was trying to say that the TAZ thing could be more attractive to those who don't want to compromise their job security - and i am one of those too. not because people dependent on their jobs are too scared or not committed or not part of the struggle, but just because, if you're going to make a sacrifice in terms of not going to work or risk getting arrested, you're only going to do it if it looks like it might actually work, not if it looks like about a couple hundred people who are going to get arrested. in that case, i might be supportive, but i'd rather stay on the sidelines and watch.

"So: I'm not as pessimistic as TAZ about the future of militant street protest, but I think that his/her idea of forging a free/autonomous space against the war is a really good one. It's hard to conceive of such a thing in San Francisco, land of yuppies and their vigilant piggies. But I think that it could be done, not at first as a 24-hour/day action, but possibly once it became an understood free zone we could push it all day and night long. Dolores Park perhaps? Shanty-towns? Music? "

So, if it is so hard to conceive of an autonomous zone in San Francisco, then how had is it to conceive of the same type of area in, say, Atlanta? Sometimes I wonder if you guys ever get out of Northern California....

My point is, though you guys are close to a majority from Santa Cruz to Humboldt, you're still a small minority overall in this country. You're gonna have to appeal to the moderate, temperant masses if you ever want to make an impact. The middle is too comfortable to be revolutionary.

so would've you preferred if I had lied and said that maintaining a free zone in SF will be a piece of cake?

the difficulty of mounting such an action doesn't flow so much from the political proclivities of people in SF (vs. Atlanta, let's say) as from the fact that America is a capitalist police state and highly valued pieces of territory like SF are vigilantly surveilled by capital's cops.
appealing to the "temperant" masses won't change that fact.

capiche?

ok ok, so who's dick is bigger, atlanta or sf? who cares. this could be so fun and exciting. never mind if it will be difficult. i'm not saying it would be easy. i'm saying it owuld be easier than what we've been doing at mass marches. we're more suited to making this kind of space, in SF, than we are to conducting police-evasion campaigns on foot. it makes us look like we're being agressive and offensive when we take the streets. we would deal form a stronger positon to work defensively and make the police into the agressor role. so far, the story has been, the streets and businesses and highways must be kept safe or everything will suck. the noble cops defend it for us.

with the taz story i think it could be: what a wonderful and interesting response to the war appears in SF - it's a sign of how great SF is, and the mean, self-righteous cops all they can think of is to destroy it. we didn't even get to see what it was.

one idea i think is the taz could totally decide to voluntarily disperse. this would really show its power to "command and control" - the taz decides when it appears and disappears, it doesn't just hang on doggedly until cops beat people up. it is magic, it is a secret society, when you're in it, you just "know" there's no rules.

god, i'm really getting hyped about it. the ideas are coming, but we need people to make it happen. and to carry their own little piece of it around - i don't have a truck or anything, etc.

bring something. if it happens, it happens, if it doesn't, well, you just lugged around a slightly heavier than normal protest sign at the peace march, nothing lost - no biggie. -dumpy