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Police bring weapons and attitude to anarchist gathering

Image from a video shot by Will Dean, of a police officer attempting to gain entrance to the North American Anarchist Studies Network Conference in Toronto on Jan. 15, carrying a shotgun. He and another officer were denied entry by attendees.

The second annual North American Anarchist Studies Network (NAASN) Conference was held in Toronto at the Steelworkers Hall on January 15 and 16. 

The conference was a chance for anarchists or activists interested in anarchism to meet post-G20, with opportunities for sharing wisdom and education taking place between new and old anarchists, including those radicalized at last June's summit. It was a non-violent, private event.

But the police, riding on a post-G20 high, showed up by the dozen, with some officers not revealing themselves right away, but clearly knowing the event was happening and monitoring it. So goes activism and organizing in a post-G20 world.

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anarchist anarchism police g-20 police accountability
Columnists

The G20's symbolic violence

This week's mass processing inside (and outside) a Toronto courthouse helped clarify June's Jailapalooza festival during the G20, the largest mass arrest in our history. Of 1,100 detained, all but 227 had the charges dropped or were never charged. Most had no links to burning police cars or battered bank machines. They were picked up while protesting peacefully or looking on.

Why? Police say they wanted to prevent recurrences, after the dramatic events. Some intimate they were embarrassed by criticisms of their earlier inaction, and overreacted. Why had police gone missing at the crucial time? There's been no clear answer. One possibility: to justify the vaulting security costs via shocking images of violence.

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Toronto violence anarchism security surveillance G8/G20 G20 Policing G20 mass arrests

G20 police let rioters run amok and then struck back hard at all activists

This is what a rubber bullet wound looks like. Photo: Yee Guan Wong.
Police waited over 30 minutes, until major damage had been done to property. I have been in demonstrations in Canada, the U.S., Europe and South America, I have never seen such a dereliction of duty.

Related rabble.ca story:

G20 police let rioters run amok and then struck back hard at all activists
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protest civil rights police brutality anarchism police G8-G20 G20 riots
rabble news

The 'Sacco and Vanzetti' of Ottawa's bank arson case

On Aug. 23rd, 1927, Ferdinando Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in Massachusetts. The two were convicted of a double-murder committed during an armed robbery. The trial and media coverage focused on the political ideology of the two men, treating as secondary the material evidence related to the crime itself. The two men were members of the Galleanist Anarchist movement, and the trial was a watershed moment in the campaign to delegitimize the global anarchist movement as a whole.

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excerpt

Anarchists in the boardroom

Anarchists in the boardroom

by Liam Barrington-Bush
(Concrete Solutions ,
2013;
)

'The Left' has a funny relationship with the world of management.

On the one hand, it can be a dirty word; something the 'bad guys' do, a tool of 'the system.'

There's good reason for such associations.

Since its birth, the management field has largely served to reinforce the social and political status quo, manipulating the vast majority of those who fall victim to it, to work ever-longer hours and give up any sense autonomy, as well as both literal and symbolic ownership over the fruits of their labour.

One doesn't have to look far to find 'management' at the core of a range of problems, from labour disputes, to plain ol' soul-sucking bureaucracy.

In traditional leftist working class politics, 'management is the problem.'

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Intersections: Why animals are excluded from many liberation struggles

Date: Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - 6:30pm

Location

Camas Books & Infoshop
2620 Quadra St.
Victoria, BC
Canada
48° 26' 17.2392" N, 123° 21' 32.274" W
See map: Google Maps

Oppression is something that many beings face, regardless of race, color, gender, sexual orientation or species. Why is it that animals are so often left out of radical liberation struggles? Join Mya Mayhem and Tim Rusmisel as they facilitate a discussion about how anarchist, feminist, environmental and other struggles are intertwined and how we can move towards uniting in the fight for total liberation.

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animals animal liberation anarchy anarchism

Bored but not broken: random musings - October

By
Mandy Hiscocks
| November 16, 2012

october 2, 2012

today i started training as a laundry worker.  how did this happen?  and am i going to regret it?

about a week ago one of the two laundry workers, who is being sentenced to pen time soon, told me that she'd overheard guards saying i might be a good person to take her place.  strange that for seven and a half months i was considered too much of a security risk to even let off of maximum, and suddenly i'm considered a good candidate for a jail job.  but there it is: Vanier logic.

so. . .would i be interested?

i told her i'd think about it.  i weighed the pros and cons.

cons

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Columnists

Rethinking democracy, part three: Spain's 15M movement links assemblies to politics

Photo: Antonio García Rodríguez/Flickr

I went to Spain last fall hoping to find vigorous remnants of its bold anarchist tradition, homages to the spirit Orwell depicted during the anti-fascist civil war there in the 1930s, though this time the cause worth giving everything for would be democracy, rather than socialism.

I was attracted by the lingo: Real Democracy Now -- it didn't mince words, it combined disgust for the fake thing claiming the name with a sense of urgency to give it reality. Protesters were called Indignados, their bald passion a key to creating a democratic rebirth.

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15-M movement 15M anarchism assembly democracy m-15 protest social movements Spain Spain protests

Bored but not broken: Reflection, part two: The best revenge

By
Mandy Hiscocks
| July 22, 2012

Friday, June 22


Today is my halfway day. In a few hours I'll have served exactly five and one third months and will have exactly five and one third months to go. 162 days. It's time to assess and reflect. In a post entitled liberation I talked about my right to apply for early parole and my reasons for waiving it. Had I applied and been approved, I could be walking out of here today. I know I made the right decision but I can't lie, I've been thinking a lot about it lately especially now that Leah is so close to getting out and I'll be stuck here until winter.

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Krystalline Kraus

Activist Communiqué: The Carre Noir Manifesto

By
Krystalline Kraus
| May 18, 2012

The CARRÉ NOIR Manifesto

On co-optation and infiltration:

We are students. We are workers. We are the unemployed. We are angry. We are not co-opting a strike. We have been part of the movement from the beginning. We are one of the forms this movement has taken, a form as valid as any of the others. We are not extremists, we have a radical critique of this society of which we are a part. We do not infiltrate demonstrations, we help organize them, we bring them alive. We are not sabotaging the strike, we are one with it, we are helping organize it, we keep its heartbeat alive.

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