Anonymously submitted on 10/25/23
Tire fire barricade at the AirBnBs! Throw a molotov at the PowerPoint Presentations! Dump a smelly bucket of shrimp on the peaceful protest! We’re going to Stop Block Cop City!!
Why?
Because I’m mad that they wasted my time with their awful presentation/book-report/thinly-veiled-business-management-double-speak that tried to sell me and a bunch of other anarchists a program of non-violent civil disobedience to stop the police training facility from being constructed in the Old Prison Farm.
I had to sit through:
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Being told about the history of the movement in a few awful slides…know your fucking audience.
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Being told not only about affinity groups (again, know your audience), but also to FORM an affinity group with the randos sitting around me. Not only is this fucking dangerous (are the people around me feds? I don’t fucking know), but it is a COMPLETE MISUNDERSTANDING of what an affinity group is, which is a tightly knit group of people who are basically an extended family willing to do shit together.
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Being told that the way forward is civil disobedience because it is going to cause a “political crisis” for Andre Dickens. First of all, anarchists don’t want political solutions. We want to destroy the political. Second, this ignores the fact that the Atlanta liberals, along with the conservative governor Kemp, as well as the feds, all get a political win by beating up on people who are against the police. We are not on the verge of a “political crisis”. Even if you believe in the oxymoron of “political win”, this political approach failed miserably with the Beg the City Council movement and its 17 hours of testimony to not approve a couple more million for construction, and will fail miserably with the referendum.
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Being told that people won’t get arrested. The whole fucking purpose of NVDA is to get arrested and become part of the spectacle. Participating in spectacularization and representational politics can only undermine desire and initiative. Even if this NVDA completely shuts down construction, the means and methods used to “win” are a loss, because they legitimize existing government processes, and government more broadly.
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Being told to imagine a strategy for invading the forest as if there were no cops there, from people who have probably never been to the forest. How can an “affinity group”, formed in 1 minute, of people who have never been to the forest, come up with a strategy for invading the forest? They absolutely can’t. This is just an idiotic story-telling device that treats anarchists like children who get excited by play-imagining that they are generals of a fucking army.
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Being told that decisions will be made by a spokescouncil of affinity groups and ALSO that there’s a detailed plan with contingencies. Aside from the fact that anarchists are very familiar with the shortcomings of spokescouncils (Why don’t affinity groups just self-organize? What if they don’t agree with the other affinity groups? Is there going to be some top-down process for resolution?), it is IMPOSSIBLE for the spokescouncil to have any initiative and ALSO for the organizers to have a detailed plan with contingencies. As was the case during the forest occupation, the “organizers” have a plan and want people to agree to it, and they are using their business-management tactics from their work lives to get “buy-in” from all the “stakeholders” (anarchists conjoined with liberals, non-profits, christ-cucks, etc.). They are masters of charisma, making everyone in their “compositional” structure, all the groups of people who fundamentally disagree, play nice by making them feel like they’ve contributed to the planning and execution of a fait accompli, when really the decisions were made behind closed doors by the business-managementites in their nights-and-weekends off time from being on Zoom calls for their business-management jobs or running their pizza shops or maintaining their “commune” mortgages or taking credit for the work of others as long as it doesn’t tarnish their reputation. There is a double duplicity, of not giving a shit about anyone’s input on the NVDA, but also hoping for some VDA from the anarchist shock troops. Fuck that!
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Being told to imagine that there will be re-enactments of this glorious action in the future and how amazing it would be to say “I was there.” First of all, the only corny-ass-motherfuckers who do reenactments are Confederate sympathizers who want to replay the Civil War THAT THEY LOST. Nobody else does that corny shit, not even MLK NVDA cucks. Second, this asks anarchists to act as if there’s some clear cut victory that can happen, after which we can go back to our jobs and Netflix and feel good about ourselves. No way. We’re always walking toward anarchy, it is a method not a destination, and we celebrate life and adventure, not false victories that are just veiled collaboration with the government. Third, I can’t imagine a better way of destroying initiative and desire than to have anarchists prospectively wax nostalgic about a false victory organized from on high. The anticipation of the dopamine hit is meant to get people addicted to such tasty morsels of easy wins and easy living. It’s a fundamentally salvationist psychology, trying to bring to mind a heaven on earth, a holy land, a rapture if one only participates. But that’s the populist organizer’s way: if you can sneak in some satisfaction of religious desires to motivate people toward your aims, why not?
So “Oh fuck yeah, spread it” To Our Friends; this is a Call to Stop Block Cop City! Or whatever, do whatever the fuck you want. If you wanna be the foot soldiers for the-Program-that-is-Not-a-Program, so be it. But I sure as hell won’t see you at the AA meeting a year from now. And yes, I’m bitter about not being in the polycule.
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