Rebel Girl: April 18, 2018: Squatters battle police over la ZAD, Texas State students occupy their university in San Marcos, a legal victory in the ten-year long Tarnac Nine case, and a slew of West Coast calls for decentralized May Day actions on this episode of…

The Hotwire.   A weekly anarchist news show brought to you by The Ex-Worker.   With me, the Rebel Girl.   AND YOU KNOW WHAT? FUUUUUUCK TAXES. DOWN WITH GOVERNMENT, DOWN WITH WORK, DOWN WITH MONEY! I DON’T KNOW WHAT’S MORE HUMILIATING, THAT EVERY FEW YEARS WE TOLERATE, IF NOT ENGAGE IN, THE FARCE OF VOLUNTARILY CHOOSING OUR OPPRESSORS OR THAT EVERY YEAR, UNDER THREAT OF FINES, COURT, AND IMPRISONMENT, WE HAND OVER MONEY TO THEM THAT THEY USE TO POLICE AND SURVEIL AND IMPRISON US, TO BAILOUT BANKS, TO SUFFOCATE OUR EARTH WITH CONCRETE AND STEEL, AND TO WAGE WAR ACROSS THE GLOBE. Let’s take all the money and put it in a pit and BURN IT. HA HA HA HA!!!!! IN THE ABRIDGED WORDS OF PIERRE JOSEPH-PROUDHON, “To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, and TAXED!!!!!!!

TAXED! TAXED TAXED TAXED TAXED!

“It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality."

And THAT is why WE are ANARCHISTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ahem…

A full transcript of this episode with shownotes and useful links can be found at our website, CrimethInc.com/podcast. You can subscribe to The Hotwire on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, just search for The Ex-Worker. You can listen to us through the anarchist podcast network Channel Zero, or on your radio’s dial in… Eugene, Oregon every Sunday at noon on KEPW 97.3, Fairbanks, Alaska Saturday mornings at 9 on KWRK 90.9 and in Tacoma, Washington every Friday at 9 AM on KUPS 90.1. Every Hotwire is radio ready, and in our shownotes you can download a twenty-nine and a half minute version of this episode for standard radio timeslots. If there’s a story or upcoming event you’d like us to include in a future Hotwire, just hit us up at podcast[AT]crimethinc[DOT]com.   And now for the headlines…  

HEADLINES

It has been a week of pitched battle over the ZAD, the squatted Zone To Defend in northwestern France, which has seen decades of struggle against a planned airport, and now, a battle over the very existence of the autonomous world created on the more than 10 square kilometers of land. We highly recommend reading the reports, complete with photos and video, on It’s Going Down, Enough is Enough, and CrimethInc., but we tried to summarize the most spectacular events during the first week of resistance to the government’s eviction operation.

Monday, April 9: 2500 gendarmes—military status police forces—begin arriving at 3 AM—three hours before they can legally evict! They obviously wanted to get a head start on the operation, but you have to get up pretty early in the morning to sneak up on a rebel commune of squatter-farmers, and apparently 3 isn’t early enough, because the police encounter numerous barricades that had gone up overnight, and in the darkness, the first barricades are set on fire. Before the operation has even begun, the police are already the target of numerous attacks, and the first tear gas explodes into the fresh country air. In addition, a helicopter, several drones for aerial surveillance, and four armored vehicles arrive at the ZAD to break through the barricades.

Just twenty minutes after the police were spotted, a call goes out alerting supporters of the operation. Throughout Monday, 200–300 inhabitants of la ZAD, armed with Molotov cocktails and slingshots, engage in pitched battle with the police, who gratuitously use illegal concussion grenades.

Police set up a controlled perimeter of about two kilometers, and bring in bulldozers to begin demolishing houses. In total, 13 locations are raided and evicted and six are completely destroyed.

Tuesday, April 10: Thousands of police arrive in the wee hours of the day, by 7am they surround and begin gassing a small goat farm in the ZAD. Half an hour later barricades are set on fire in an attempt to stop the advance of the police. Local farmers arrive with tractors to help build barricades and protect squats. ZADist forces swell to nearly 500. Clashes ensue throughout the day as squatters defend the ZAD from the invasion, including 80-year-old Alphonse Fresneau, who is spotted on the front lines of the defense. 10 cops are injured and 30 protestors are reportedly hurt, 2 of them severely. The total destruction is 15 squats, including the goat farm.

Wednesday, April 11, day three: Police continue to fire hundreds of rounds of tear gas and concussion grenades toward anti-capitalist protesters who are defending the zone with molotovs and rocks. Four cops are self-injured by grenade, 70 ZADists attack police forces not far from one of the roads and set fire to several barricades and trailers before retreating. Confrontations then break out in a nearby field where about 150 ZADists, equipped with handmade shields, face off with police forces for much of the day. Overall about 29 squats are left in ruins and over 80 ZADists injured. Over fifty tractors have arrived at the ZAD to help.

A call goes out for international, even intergalactic solidarity.

Thursday, April 12, day four: President Macron announces the end of the evictions. The day begins with protestors blocking the fast track between Nantes and Vannes and a journalist encountered a burning barricade outside the ZAD, on a different route to Nantes. After a long night of a helicopter projecting a large spotlight on the land, the day begins quietly now that the government has almost reached its goal of destroying 30 squats. However, around 1:30 pm, a squadron of gendarmes fell into a trap. A group of ZADists allegedly attacked a truck, injuring 10 gendarmes; five had their legs burnt and another received multiple pieces of shrapnel from an artisanal explosive device. Several more confrontations take place towards the end of the day.

Friday the 13: The ZAD continues to be under attack as the state prefect, Nicole Klein, announces a simplified process for filling out the paperwork for agricultural projects in the area—a cynical attempt to essentially lure scab farmers. A call is put out from the ZAD to gather on Sunday to begin the reconstruction and repair of structures. More barricades are built and ditches dug in the road to stop vehicles. The state prefect announces that police forces will be at the ZAD for up to 3 weeks, despite an earlier government announcement that the evictions were over.

Saturday, April 14: Police are still present at the ZAD, using tanks to clear the barricades, only to have them pop back up, in the words of one ZADist, “like mushrooms.” Heavy fighting continues through the morning and the police are now using a new chemical gas weapon, which one ZADist says, “makes you very, very sick.” All roads into the ZAD are blocked.

10,000 people gather in Nantes, the closest large city, at a solidarity demonstration. Police prevent the march from meeting up with a striking train conductor and student demonstration elsewhere in the city. Shop and bank windows are smashed.

A solidarity march of 2,000 [in Montpellier]( http://www.midilibre.fr/2018/04/14/suivez-la-mobilisation-sociale-ce-samedi-apres-midi-a-montpellier,1655997.php) also ends in teargas and confrontations against the police.

Some bulldozers are sabotaged in Philadelphia in solidarity with the ZAD and Camp White Pine, while a Montreal meeting of French President Macron’s political party gets disrupted with playful chants, stink bombs, and firecrackers.

Sunday, April 15, day seven: There are still thousands of police in the area, clashes throughout the day, and 100 are kettled near a small farm, only to be released later. But against all odds, and in spite of both the massive police presence still at the ZAD, checkpoints around the area, and active discouragement by the police, 15 to 20,000 people make their way to the ZAD to begin reconstruction, at times moving in groups through the fields to get around police barricades. Thousands of sticks and spears are dug up that were planted in the ground in the fall of 2016, with the promise that they’d be used in defense if the ZAD was ever attacked again. The construction of several new buildings has begun. By the late evening, all police forces have withdrawn.

At a solidarity demonstration of thousands in a nearby city, several hundred demonstrators attack police, using molotovs and stones.

Anarchists from last year’s Olympia commune gather on the tracks they blocked in December and send a warm greeting of solidarity.

Reports are coming in fast about what’s up at La ZAD, and we recommend following Enough is Enough and It’s Going Down to keep up with everything happening there.

Speaking of It’s Going Down, a report there describes the success of the recent Anti-colonial and Anti-fascist Community Defense Gathering at the Táala Hooghan Infoshop in the occupied Kinlani land of Flagstaff, Arizona. Up to 80 people attended, discussions got deep and even challenging, but in a good way, and even though two comrades were arrested for allegedly painting some fairly agreeable NWA lyrics on a police station, support was mobilized instantly, with no less than 6 banners and 20 people rallying outside the jail.

Over the weekend, the British fascist Generation Identity group held their conference in the UK, while the alt-lite student group Turning Point USA held theirs in Chicago. Neither event went unopposed.

On Saturday, Generation Identity, which is the European counterpart to Identity Evropa in North America, originally planned to hold their conference in London, but after their venue received a slew of phone calls, they had to move it to nearby Kent. In Kent, once again, their conference was shut down by the venue itself after their conference was exposed for the fascist trash it was. And on Sunday the fash just spent the day getting chased around and booted from pubs by anti-fascists.

Meanwhile in Chicago, about 10 brave anti-fascists walked into the TPUSA conference like they owned the place. Preppy polos surrounded them, filming them and eventually getting them kicked out by police, but they report that, from being there, they observed, “extraordinarily low turnout and the disappointment of the organizers… and they ended their conference 3 hours earlier than their agenda outlined.”

Students at Texas State University in San Marcos staged a sit-in for three days last week, immediately after a student congress hearing that ended without the impeachment of the student body president, Connor Clegg, who, in February, was found out to have made racist and sexist Instagram posts, and who called to defund the student paper after it published an op-ed criticizing whiteness. Student congress was unable to impeach Clegg because not enough senators showed up, including some Turning Point USA members who almost certainly skipped the hearing on purpose. In response, between 40 and 60 students occupied the school’s theater for three days, blocked student congress members from leaving a parking garage, and showed courage and compassion for each other, stepping in to unarrest each other when the police put their hands on the rebel students. And Monday night, Clegg was finally impeached.

We just have to say again that we are excited to see this wave of student rebellion sweeping across North America—from the #NeverAgain student walkouts to the university occupations at the University of Pittsburgh, at Howard University, at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, and now at Texas State in San Marcos. Very little of this student organizing is explicitly anarchist, but we hope that the more that confrontational and conflictual tactics spread, the more students will broaden their critique to every kind of hierarchical oppression. For updates and analysis on student rebellion worldwide, check out cuttingclass.noblogs.org.

In Montreal, the group Solidarity Across Borders had been organizing around the deportation of Lucy Granados, a member of the Non Status Women’s Collective and Temporary Workers Association and a mother of three who was arrested at her home at 6 in the morning on March 20. After weeks of protesting, writing letters, and signing petitions for Lucy’s release, at 3:30 AM on April 13, folks gathered outside the immigrant detention center where Lucy was being held, and locked the gates and constructed blockades to prevent her deportation. Cops were called in, people held the space, and danced until sunrise. While folks were busy blocking the gate, police were forced to smuggle Lucy out of a hole they cut in the fence, away from the protesters.

Camp White Pine is calling for solidarity actions in response to an attack on their camp in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania last week. At dawn on Sunday April 8, crews from Energy Transfer Partners snuck in and removed three trees equipped with platforms, which were blocking the route of the Mariner East 2 gas pipeline. The camp, as well as the tree-sits, were on property seized through eminent domain from the Gerhart family, who have welcomed pipeline resisters to their homestead over the past two years.

In the preceding week, anti-colonial anti-capitalists sabotaged two of the tractors working on the pipeline. In their communiqué, they claim to have made the machines, “inoperative by cutting their hoses and electrical wires, cutting off valve stems to deflate the tires, introducing sand into their systems, putting potatoes in the exhaust pipes, using contact cement to close off the machines’ panels and fuel tanks, and a variety of other mischievous improvised sabotage techniques.”

The authors go on to state, “It was surprisingly easy and brought us so much joy,” And “For those restless, angry warriors out there, we hope you find similar happiness in destroying little by little the tools of this capitalist settler-colonial nation.”

The Earth First! Newswire reports that, “In West Virginia on April 9, construction crews attempted to clear trees on Bent Mountain.” In response, locals organized themselves into “people’s patrol units” and stood the clearing crew down. According to Farmlands Fighting Pipelines, the people’s patrol units intend to keep defending the land from the construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

Trump bombed Syria some more on Friday. Sorry to not sound over-indignant, but with many supposed anti-Trump liberals transforming overnight into missile attack cheerleaders, and with both far-right fascists and anti-imperialist authoritarian tankies coming to Assad’s defense, the whole thing is just a demoralizing non-sensical jumble of geo-political jenga. We do find some truth in the denouncement of the attack from the Internationalist Commune in Rojava: “The global powers make a display of their military industry, testing their weapons without considering the consequences of their actions on the civil population. The launch of high tech missiles under the pretext of a chemical attack which has not been proven abuses the instability in Syria making it testing grounds for the latest weaponry advances. The increase in market value of the companies building the missiles, which have increased their capital in over 5 billion dollars in a matter of hours, lays bare what war means for capitalism: profit.”

And we’ll replay an excerpt from last Hotwire’s interview with a participant in the Syrian Revolution, which rings even truer now:

Salam: Last year there was a U.S. response for the chemical weapon attack in Khan Sheikhoun, this was the first time they responded out of hundreds of times – last year– around this time of last year. So after this response, the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons dozens of times – dozens of times, actually, without any response.

So, as I said, it’s not about humanity or regime change, as I said, it’s about enforcing international law- norm, by imperial powers. And the regime, the Syrian regime, is permitted- is still permitted to kill the Syrian people by all kind of weapons, and by using starvation tactics, and siege, but not sarin gas, and this is really obscene. So, conducting a strike right now driven by these norms just illustrates how cheap Syrian lives are. Syrian people have been upended since 8 years, and we need to stand with them and support their legitimate right of self-determination, and of living in freedom and dignity. There is definitely a geopolitical rivalry between imperial powers, especially the U.S. and Russia, but both want stability, both want authoritarian regimes allied to them, in our country, in Syria. The Syrian people, however, want something very different: they want freedom and justice. Something that can only be achieved through a struggle against all authoritarian murderous parties, whether Assad or Islamist jihadists on the one hand or Russia and the U.S. on the other hand.”

REPRESSION ROUNDUP

  Rebel Girl: In this week’s repression roundup…

Ten years ago, over a hundred French police swept through the rural village of Tarnac, raiding a communal farm and arresting nine people who they charged with terrorism for alleged sabotage against a rail shipment of nuclear waste, in which no one was injured.

After ten years, the legal proceedings for the Tarnac Nine are finally over. The terrorism charges were dropped a while back, and last week the judges acquitted all nine defendants on their charges of sabotage, rioting, and conspiracy. A few defendants were found guilty of refusing to give DNA to the authorities and possession of a fake ID, but weren’t sentenced to anything more than a few months’ probation and a small fine. Considering how many resources the French state had invested in this case, this represents a massive victory for the defendants. Bravo!

We’re going to quote at length from a full report about the trial and verdict:

“In every court case, there are certain roles: the solemn judges, the defendants pleading guilty or innocent (but above all, pleading), and a well-paid supporting cast of parasites, from lawyers to journalists, who stand to profit from the case. The entire procedure requires everyone to play by the rules… But when the court case opened on March 13, it became clear that the defendants were not playing the game.

“[T]he defendants subverted the justice system… by neither denying the charges nor validating them. While the act of sabotage itself was clearly defensible as an anti-nuclear ecological measure and the French court attempted to suppress the fact that police had received a communiqué from German groups claiming responsibility for it, the defendants never denounced the action…

“More importantly, the defendants never refused their cause. While the defendants proclaimed their support of the autonomous project of Tarnac in public, the police and intelligence officers hid their identities behind masks, referred to by numbers rather than names.

“As the trial closed, the judge struggled to maintain order… Julien Coupat, [accused by police of having authored the best-selling book The Coming Insurrection,] took the stand and noted that it was indeed their privileged roles as intellectuals that saved them: ‘The peculiarity of this trial is that the judicial apparatus has come up against people who are prepared to defend themselves and determined not to let themselves be crushed. We are conscious of having had the chance to defend ourselves, of being able to speak, of having three weeks in which to do so. Since we’ve fought, we have benefited from certain privileges. Having spent a little time in prison, I would like to dedicate this trial to all those who haven’t had the means to defend themselves, who are not listened to and who are convicted in silence.’ The court broke into a final applause for the alleged terrorists.

“So what can we learn from the Tarnac case? First, that with a little luck and perseverance, it can be possible to face down the full force of the state. The Tarnac case could have turned out much worse had the defendants not stood together uncompromisingly. At the beginning, the situation must have looked grim indeed.

“Some have criticized the way the Tarnac Ten engaged with the media and with the public notions of legitimacy represented by the intellectuals who came forward to speak in their favor. We should never make the mistake of believing that media exposure or social legitimacy are tools that can in themselves serve to advance the cause of liberation; but nor can we always afford to do without them entirely when the forces of repression use those tools to set the stage to destroy us. As anarchists, we are always fighting against the terrain itself as well as against our adversaries. This is not a reason not to fight on the terrain of media or perceived legitimacy; it simply means that we must find a way to operate in that territory that enables us to outflank the authorities without absorbing their logic. Every blow they strike against us must cost them double: in this regard, the explosion of interest that the Tarnac arrests produced in The Coming Insurrection sets a good example for how revolutionaries can prepare to make the phase of repression just another step in our plans—a phase in which we can continue to advance.”   Last week, a judge granted the prosecution’s motion to change the date for both of the April trials in the J20 inauguration protest case, so now the next trial is scheduled for May 14. After the judge denied the possibility of the government’s so-called “expert” witness from testifying under an alias, the prosecutor whined and pleaded for more time to seek out another expert. However, there is reason to believe the May 14 trial will proceed as scheduled, as the prosecutor stated that they won’t need an expert for that group. So consider coming to DC in the middle of May to pack the courthouse—and as it stands now there will be trials all summer long and into the fall, unless we put on enough pressure for the government to actually drop these chilling charges. You can help do that by drawing attention to the case with our new poster, The J20 Prosecution: Trumped Up Charges.

We finally have an address for writing letters of support to Cedar, the comrade who was arrested last week after a house raid targeting organizers of the Hamilton Anarchist Bookfair, which took place the same weekend as a rowdy march that left broken windows and anti-gentrification graffiti in downtown Hamilton. The day of their arrest, Cedar was interrogated for over an hour about their gender expression and their body, and are now being kept in segregation on the female side of the prison, though that could change. Segregation can be incredibly lonely, so please take a few minutes to write a letter to Cedar. We have their address posted in this episode’s shownotes at crimethinc.com/podcast.

NEXT WEEK’S NEWS

  Rebel Girl: We’ll close out our episode with political prisoner birthdays and next week’s news.    April 24 is the birthday of Mumia Abu-Jamal, perhaps the world’s most famous political prisoner. Mumia is a former Black Panther Party member, former death row inmate, and world-renowned prison radio journalist.

And April 25 is the birthday of Janine Africa, one of the MOVE 9: imprisoned black eco-revolutionaries each serving 100 years after being framed for the murder of a Philly cop in 1979.   Writing to Mumia and Janine Africa will only take you a few minutes, but it could be the highlight of their week. We have their mailing addresses in this episode’s shownotes at Crimethinc.com/podcast, as well as a guide to writing prisoners from New York City Anarchist Black Cross.   And now, next week’s news, our list of events that you can plug into in real life.

There’s an emergency solidarity demonstration with La ZAD TONIGHT, April 18, in San Francisco: 5 PM at the Civic Center BART Station.

Mutual Aid Disaster Relief continue their speaking tour on Communities in Resistance to Disaster Capitalism and Community Organizing as Disaster Preparedness.   This week, you can find their tour at… the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee on April 18, at the University of Wisconsin – Rock County on April 19, at Angelic Organics Learning Center in Caledonia, Illinois on April 20, and at Youth Initiative High School in Viroqua, Wisconsin on April 25.

Go to MutualAidDisasterRelief.org to find details on all the tour dates from now through May.

April 20 is the anniversary of the mass shooting at Columbine, and another round of high school and middle school walkouts is planned for that day. You can find one list of planned walkouts at Indivisible.org, but considering Indivisible is a straight-up front group for the Democratic Party, we wouldn’t rely on their walkouts to be disruptive enough on their own. Students, make your own plans for what you want to see happen on April 20, and if you want zines or other printable literature to pass out that expand the debate about gun control to discuss the real roots of gun violence in our culture, check out the text, “We Don’t Need Gun Control, We Need to Take Control,” available at Crimethinc.com.

April 21 marks the end of the 25th anniversary of the 1993 Lucasville prison uprising, when prisoners came together across racial lines to rebel against their prison’s oppressive conditions. This Saturday, protesters will hold a 3PM noise demo outside the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville in solidarity with the uprisings’ survivors, some of whom are facing the death penalty for their alleged participation. Check out episode 50 of The Ex-Worker for an interview that goes in-depth about the Lucasville prison uprising and how it informs contemporary prison rebellion and organizing.

There’s also a call from the Atlanta IWW and GDC to oppose the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement in Newnan, Georgia on April 21. Follow @afainatl on Twitter for updates.

From April 26–29, the Southeast Trans and/or Women Action Camp will take place in the smoky mountains of western North Carolina. The action camp is open to all trans and/or woman identified folks and will offer a bunch of different workshops and skillshares. You can find out more by e-mailing setwac@protonmail.com.     The Revolutionary Organizing Against Racism Conference (ROAR) returns to Ohlone land, the so-called Bay Area, California on April 28 and 29, and will take place in both Oakland and San Francisco. ROAR is a free two-day conference focused on revolutionary anti-racism, solidarity, and strategy, rooted in the legacy of anti-colonial, anti-fascist, anti-imperialist, feminist, and queer movements and fighters who have come before us. To find out more, go to roarconference.net.

There are calls up and down the west coast for decentralized actions this May Day.

Anarchists in Los Angeles are calling for actions that disrupt the passivity and liberalism of the traditional LA May Day, and instead proposing a direct-action oriented march. You can e-mail contraautoridad@protonmail.com to get connected.

2 PM on May 1 in Eugene, Oregon, the Neighborhood Anarchist Collective is hosting its monthly Solidarity Share Fair, a Really Free Market, in downtown Eugene’s Park Blocks.

The Portland Anarchist General Assembly has announced a Portland Anarchist Weekend from April 28 through May Day. Affinity groups are invited to a masked meeting at 8 PM on April 29 to coordinate what autonomous actions they have planned and what needs they have. They recommend that any participating affinity groups contact their page at facebook.com/pdxaga with a sock account to find out more.

Since January there has been a call for Seattle organizations and affinity groups to spread police across the city on May 1 by planning a host of activities. “Whether it is a block party at the juvie, a march against gentrification in a neighborhood facing mass-displacement, or a less public form of direct action, we want to see it all.” The call ends by inviting those interested in coordinating May Day actions to contact TIOLEO at protonmail.com.

Seattle’s IWW chapter recently endorsed the May Day call, and anarchists in nearby Olympia have already begun planning decentralized actions. In their own call, anarchists from Olympia argue that, “All over the Pacific Northwest the police are preparing to repress this year’s May Day. No doubt they have devoted significant hours and money toward training and supplies to prevent a repeat of last year’s events in Olympia and Portland, and previous years’ [events] in Seattle. We must adapt our tactics and strategy. This year we will not advertise our specific plans ahead of time or gather only in one place but instead take autonomous strategic direct actions throughout Olympia and beyond. Let us be unpredictable and uncompromising – let’s fight on our own terms.”

While we at the Hotwire agree that we need to adapt our tactics in response to police repression, we would caution our comrades not to depend solely on clandestine actions, lest we give up the space carved out to find each other on May Day. Repressable actions may need to consider whether to go up against the state, sure, but we shouldn’t just be choosing between confrontation and hiding in clandestinity—there are plenty of possibilities. One of the inspiring things about the Olympia Blockade last fall was, on top of its conflictuality, the way people came together and demonstrated how to live by anarchist values. May Day is one of the only regular times we’re public and visible as anarchists, and especially so over the last few years in the northwest. May Day is OUR DAY. Be visible, be angry, be loud, be celebratory, be uncontrollable, be fierce, be vivacious, be audacious, be anarchist. But no matter how you participate in May Day, please make sure to send us a report by May 2 at Podcast [at] CrimethInc [dot] com so we can include it in our May Day roundup.

Right after May Day, from May 2 to the 6, there’s a call for a two spirit, trans, and womxn’s action camp in the occupied Anishinaabe territory of Minnesota. The camp’s struggle is not just against the Line 3 pipeline up there, but, QUOTE “it is to build a liberated future for trans and two-spirt, black, indigenous and POC folks.” E-mail twats@riseup.net if you’re interested in attending, setting up, or hosting a training or workshop. And remember, no cis-dudes please.

From May 10 to the 13, the Chaos Tage, or Chaos Days, that used to bring thousands of punks to Hannover to wreak anarchy and disorder upon the city, are coming to Berlin! This year’s Chaos and Discussion Days aim to, “fill the streets and their hearts with life, organize resistance, [and] cause decentralized chaos on those days and nights.” This will immediately precede the May 14 court proceeding for the Rigaer Strasse 94 squatted social center, from which the judge could order an eviction of the squat. When Rigaerstrasse 94 was raided by pigs back in 2016, the protests that followed were dubbed by the cops and the media as “the most aggressive and most violent protest in the past five years.” Three days after the fierce protests, the court gave the space back to the squatters who run it. So, it’s looking like the chaos days could turn into a chaos week, or longer. Could be an exciting time to be in Berlin!

For the rest of May and going into June, there will be a solid month of anarchy in Quebec. It starts with the Montreal anarchist film festival May 17–20, then there’s the Montreal anarchist theatre festival May 22–23, the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair May 26–27, the North American Anarchist Studies Network Conference is June 1–3 also in Montreal, and the grand finale will be the mobilization against the G7 summit, which will feature fierce anti-capitalist protests in Quebec City on June 8 and 9.   There’s a bunch of other great stuff coming up this summer too.

June 8–11 is the third annual Fight Toxic Prisons convergence in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

And June 11, of course, is the international day of solidarity with long-term anarchist prisoners. It’s a day for letter-writing, solidarity actions, fundraising, and raising awareness about our comrades on the inside—it’s a day to remember that imprisoned comrades are still a part of our movement, and we should do what we can, across the walls that separate us, to include them in our struggle.

And lastly, the Libera Infoshop and Cafe in Yogyakarta, Indonesia is fundraising for a new space. The project has been running successfully for a couple of years, and now they want to move to a larger space so they can host self-defense classes, start a garden, and be able to host traveling anarchists from elsewhere. They’re only looking to raise $1,800 dollars, so PayPal some extra funds to DeliriousInk16@gmail.com to help them out.

OUTRO

  Rebel Girl: And that’s it for this episode of The Hotwire. As always thanks to Underground Reverie for the music, and thanks to our comrade from Charlottesville for the update. You can get in touch with us by e-mailing podcast[AT]CrimethInc[DOT]com. Don’t forget to check out all the links, mailing addresses, and useful shownotes we customized for this episode at CrimethInc.com.   Stay informed. Stay rebel. Plug into The Hotwire.