submitted anonymously –
“It is still from the anonymous mass that the unknown with the will to live arise in mutiny. To say we are the only rebels in a sea of submission is reassuring because it puts an end to the game in advance.” – At Daggers Drawn
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to write a report back from the Jan 18th people’s march, but seeing the other report that was shared I figured it’s important because I think a lot of it is self-righteous bullshit.
The day opened with speakers and in a lot of situations this causes me to roll my eyes and even here I was a little annoyed with how long it took but ultimately it was fine, I enjoyed a lot of what was said and it was great to hear the words of an incarcerated comrade – a gesture to break down the walls that seek to suffocate his voice and bury millions of other voices and heartbeats..
This time also gave the black bloc – which was about 30 to 40 deep – time to coordinate and figure out what we wanted to do, as well as my crew came with a small handout we were giving out that we made based on one that was floating around Seattle that explained what black bloc is. There were some fun and cute interactions that came out of this, a lot of people loved our banner which was a classic CLR James quote – “The Rich Are Defeated Only From Running For Their Lives”. A lot of people came up to us and asked us the usual questions – what are you doing, why are you wearing masks, and the funniest one – what organization are you with? It was really chill.
Which is why I’m confused where this alleged sense of hostility the others are talking about comes from. I saw much of the reverse, some individuals in the bloc taking an immediate and unwarranted stance of hostility to people asking innocuous questions – the same questions they ask every time there is a black bloc. Do you not expect this? If you act standoffish and hostile to people, they are going to react in kind. The black mask is a mirror and more often than not we will get what we give out.
While some may adopt a siege mentality seeing nothing but enemies in the face of a false Other that they have constructed (not in black, not one of us), I saw many old friends and comrades that I have struggled along side of for the past 10 years, as well as the faces of potential new accomplices in the struggles to come who are later to the party than I would have liked but greet with open arms none the less.
“Does a disdain for populist mass movements mean that we want to be alone in our struggle? That would certainly be a caricature of the insurrectionary. If the strongest motion of capitalism is the movement towards alienation, than the strongest attack would be the one that communicates, the one that connects us, the one that mixes us, the one that overcomes isolation. Burn everything but our bridges!” – A. G. Schwarz, The Riot or the Attack?
Well, anyway. From here once the march started there was a general consensus that individuals in the bloc wanted to split off from the march and we hit the street with two chants – “Deny, Delay, Depose! Kill More CEO’s!” and “CEO Down, Load Another Round!” in celebration of the assassination of the United Healthcare CEO. The bloc split off pretty early and immediately tags began going up. We snaked through the street and intersected the march where we burned flags and continued on our way leading the cops around while others did some tagging.
Looking at the police response, Olympia PD has always taken a more hands-off approach than other police departments, preferring to gather intel to identify individuals and networks to attack and prosecute later. Not all repression comes in the forms of immediate brutalization and arrest, especially more so now that they have body cameras and they are roving intelligence gathering tools. It’s important to keep this in mind, but we should also celebrate when we get out un-injured.
We eventually re-entered the march towards the Capitol and more tagging took place and a window got smashed. Most of the march was really supportive of this and when a few individuals from the march came to try to grab individuals from the bloc, other individuals from the march came to support us. There was also a brief de-arrest as one individual grabbed the camera a right-wing streamer who had been following the bloc was using to film. Both the streamer and the cop grabbed the individual and another individual from the bloc pushed our comrade out of the clutches and they disappeared into the crowd quickly. It was great!
I want to take a moment to address two fairly common points some of the unhappy people in the crowd expressed – one that destroying their community does nothing. Is your community a chain restaurant and government buildings? Mine sure as hell isn’t. And what does destruction do? Well, it’s building much neglected muscles of confidence and combat; and just as a window shatters so too does the image of passivity in the face of horrors. I personally don’t think marches as shows of power and solidarity are useless, nor do I think what honestly probably doesn’t even amount to felony property destruction is particularly effective in the realm of material damage. But there are well managed lines our movements are trained into not crossing, eventually we have to step out of the confines, out of the templates and safety nets and a little graffiti and one shattered window has certainly got people talking and showed clearly that it’s actually not the end of the world nor will the cops come rushing in arresting and attacking everybody.
Then there’s the other one – you all do all of this and disappear and then we (and it’s always to be asked – who is we?) face the repression. To which I would honestly ask, can you name a time this has actually happened locally? I hear this often, almost like a mantra of protection to try and keep the uncontrollable elements who don’t want to play the game of politics away. Yet no examples are ever given. Rather than taking time to study what our enemies do, I think people work off an image they have of how they think our enemies function. Unfortunately, they are good at their job; good at isolating and targeting radical and combative elements.
This is about the time the bloc dispersed.
Then came the more interesting part, the Festival of Resistance. To keep this part short, it was really cute and a nice time to get to see old comrades and meet some of the new faces. I’m really used to being in exclusively anarchist spaces so it was really cool to see such a mixed space. There was a lot of conversations about different struggles and some really cool presentations on anti-repression, direct action, the history of the artesian well and struggles for the commons and other such things.
I think the individuals who facilitated all of this and the individuals who came and make it all what it was did a fantastic job. My one big wish for the day was for the bloc to have specifically hit the Bank of America and/or Chase Bank. They were on the march route and I think would have been targets that particularly spoke to people. I could have made that happen but didn’t, but we learn and fight better next time.
There are a few more internal critiques I hope to circulate within the broader anarchist galaxy, but those are for another time and place.
A few blocks away from the march and where the bloc was there was a larger swath of destruction. Rumor has it that while the cops were focused on us, there was a whole other bloc doing its own thing. But that’s just a rumor.
submitted anonymously –
“It is still from the anonymous mass that the unknown with the will to live arise in mutiny. To say we are the only rebels in a sea of submission is reassuring because it puts an end to the game in advance.” – At Daggers Drawn
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to write a report back from the Jan 18th people’s march, but seeing the other report that was shared I figured it’s important because I think a lot of it is self-righteous bullshit.
The day opened with speakers and in a lot of situations this causes me to roll my eyes and even here I was a little annoyed with how long it took but ultimately it was fine, I enjoyed a lot of what was said and it was great to hear the words of an incarcerated comrade – a gesture to break down the walls that seek to suffocate his voice and bury millions of other voices and heartbeats..
This time also gave the black bloc – which was about 30 to 40 deep – time to coordinate and figure out what we wanted to do, as well as my crew came with a small handout we were giving out that we made based on one that was floating around Seattle that explained what black bloc is. There were some fun and cute interactions that came out of this, a lot of people loved our banner which was a classic CLR James quote – “The Rich Are Defeated Only From Running For Their Lives”. A lot of people came up to us and asked us the usual questions – what are you doing, why are you wearing masks, and the funniest one – what organization are you with? It was really chill.
Which is why I’m confused where this alleged sense of hostility the others are talking about comes from. I saw much of the reverse, some individuals in the bloc taking an immediate and unwarranted stance of hostility to people asking innocuous questions – the same questions they ask every time there is a black bloc. Do you not expect this? If you act standoffish and hostile to people, they are going to react in kind. The black mask is a mirror and more often than not we will get what we give out.
While some may adopt a siege mentality seeing nothing but enemies in the face of a false Other that they have constructed (not in black, not one of us), I saw many old friends and comrades that I have struggled along side of for the past 10 years, as well as the faces of potential new accomplices in the struggles to come who are later to the party than I would have liked but greet with open arms none the less.
“Does a disdain for populist mass movements mean that we want to be alone in our struggle? That would certainly be a caricature of the insurrectionary. If the strongest motion of capitalism is the movement towards alienation, than the strongest attack would be the one that communicates, the one that connects us, the one that mixes us, the one that overcomes isolation. Burn everything but our bridges!” – A. G. Schwarz, The Riot or the Attack?
Well, anyway. From here once the march started there was a general consensus that individuals in the bloc wanted to split off from the march and we hit the street with two chants – “Deny, Delay, Depose! Kill More CEO’s!” and “CEO Down, Load Another Round!” in celebration of the assassination of the United Healthcare CEO. The bloc split off pretty early and immediately tags began going up. We snaked through the street and intersected the march where we burned flags and continued on our way leading the cops around while others did some tagging.
Looking at the police response, Olympia PD has always taken a more hands-off approach than other police departments, preferring to gather intel to identify individuals and networks to attack and prosecute later. Not all repression comes in the forms of immediate brutalization and arrest, especially more so now that they have body cameras and they are roving intelligence gathering tools. It’s important to keep this in mind, but we should also celebrate when we get out un-injured.
We eventually re-entered the march towards the Capitol and more tagging took place and a window got smashed. Most of the march was really supportive of this and when a few individuals from the march came to try to grab individuals from the bloc, other individuals from the march came to support us. There was also a brief de-arrest as one individual grabbed the camera a right-wing streamer who had been following the bloc was using to film. Both the streamer and the cop grabbed the individual and another individual from the bloc pushed our comrade out of the clutches and they disappeared into the crowd quickly. It was great!
I want to take a moment to address two fairly common points some of the unhappy people in the crowd expressed – one that destroying their community does nothing. Is your community a chain restaurant and government buildings? Mine sure as hell isn’t. And what does destruction do? Well, it’s building much neglected muscles of confidence and combat; and just as a window shatters so too does the image of passivity in the face of horrors. I personally don’t think marches as shows of power and solidarity are useless, nor do I think what honestly probably doesn’t even amount to felony property destruction is particularly effective in the realm of material damage. But there are well managed lines our movements are trained into not crossing, eventually we have to step out of the confines, out of the templates and safety nets and a little graffiti and one shattered window has certainly got people talking and showed clearly that it’s actually not the end of the world nor will the cops come rushing in arresting and attacking everybody.
Then there’s the other one – you all do all of this and disappear and then we (and it’s always to be asked – who is we?) face the repression. To which I would honestly ask, can you name a time this has actually happened locally? I hear this often, almost like a mantra of protection to try and keep the uncontrollable elements who don’t want to play the game of politics away. Yet no examples are ever given. Rather than taking time to study what our enemies do, I think people work off an image they have of how they think our enemies function. Unfortunately, they are good at their job; good at isolating and targeting radical and combative elements.
This is about the time the bloc dispersed.
Then came the more interesting part, the Festival of Resistance. To keep this part short, it was really cute and a nice time to get to see old comrades and meet some of the new faces. I’m really used to being in exclusively anarchist spaces so it was really cool to see such a mixed space. There was a lot of conversations about different struggles and some really cool presentations on anti-repression, direct action, the history of the artesian well and struggles for the commons and other such things.
I think the individuals who facilitated all of this and the individuals who came and make it all what it was did a fantastic job. My one big wish for the day was for the bloc to have specifically hit the Bank of America and/or Chase Bank. They were on the march route and I think would have been targets that particularly spoke to people. I could have made that happen but didn’t, but we learn and fight better next time.
There are a few more internal critiques I hope to circulate within the broader anarchist galaxy, but those are for another time and place.
A few blocks away from the march and where the bloc was there was a larger swath of destruction. Rumor has it that while the cops were focused on us, there was a whole other bloc doing its own thing. But that’s just a rumor.