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From Sun Times

Several thousand protesters spent five hours peacefully chanting, singing and marching against war. At the end, nearly 40 young veterans dramatically took their military medals and hurled them toward McCormick Place, where world leaders met behind closed doors.

It was supposed to end there — at Michigan and Cermak.

But a “Black Bloc” of about 100 anarchists wanted something else. The group, which chanted “What do we want? Dead cops!” as it left Grant Park at 2 p.m., surged to the front of the protest crowd and tried to break through the imposing line of Chicago cops in riot gear blocking its path.

From Anarchist Federation (UK)

On the 11th of May Roberto Adinolfi, CEO of an Italian state controlled nuclear engineering company, was shot and wounded. A cell of the insurrectionist Informal Anarchist Federation have claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement, saying that it was an act of vengeance for deaths and environmental damage caused by the nuclear industry. Previous acts claimed by Informal Anarchist Federation cells include sending a letter bomb to the Italian tax collection office, almost blinding a worker at the office and risking the lives of the postal and clerical workers who unwittingly carried the bomb.

Although it adopts the same initials as our affiliated Anarchist Federation in Italy, the Informal Anarchist Federation has no affiliation whatsoever with them or with us. It is an entirely separate entity, and we consider its adopting of the same initials as a pre-existing anarchist group to be, at best, confusing and ill-judged, and at worst malicious. Whether or not the Informal Anarchist Federation intended that their actions would be associated with the Italian Anarchist Federation and other members of the International of Anarchist Federations, these organisations have now been mentioned in press reports relating to the actions of the Informals, and so we now feel it necessary that we, the UK Anarchist Federation, make our position on their actions clear.

Note: The following statement is being released on behalf of a group of organizers of Occupy/Decolonize Seattle's May Day events who have chosen to speak as a group regarding May 1st and the controversies in the media narrative since.

We are organizers and participants involved in this year’s May Day events. Many of us also participate in Occupy/Decolonize Seattle. We conceived the events of the May Day General Strike as a celebration of life in solidarity with the global uprising against economic oppression and the 1%. May Day is a day of pride for migrants and workers everywhere. It is a day of remembrance for the anarchists executed in show trials after the world’s first May Day in 1886, fighting for the 8-hour work day. Most powerfully, it is a day of struggle—of celebrating freedom and striking out against what hurts us.

“You can cut down all of the flowers but you cannot stop the spring.”
- poster circulating around the strike

THE LAWS
On Friday, May 18, 2012, two new laws came into effect in montréal. Their purpose is to stifle the anti-capitalist revolt that has emerged from the student strike that began in this province fifteen weeks ago, to restore order and clear the way for the implementation of austerity measures in this territory.

The first is a municipal by-law. It aims to discourage people from wearing masks at demonstrations by threatening them with fines from $1000 to $5000. It comes as the federal government is contemplating a law, to be implemented across the whole territory of the canadian state, that would punish those who conceal their identities “while participating in a riot” with a maximum of ten years in prison.

From Anti One

(translated from Italian)

To open the floodgates means “to unblock, remove the cap and let the liquid flow. In the figurative sense, it means to freely give vent to words, verses, insults…” This is the impression that one gets reading the many communiqués of condemnation and of taking a distance from the attacks that have taking place in the last several weeks against the people and structures of domination. That the floodgates have been opened. As if up to now the refusal to distinguish oneself in the eyes of repression, the contempt for those who want to make themselves pass for “good boys and girls,” maybe a bit unruly but over all pretty good, wasn’t at all a spontaneous and natural expression of one’s being, of one’s individuality, but merely an ideological imposition to one felt constrained to submit. A sort of abstract precept, a moral blackmail to bear, often with clenched teeth, with poorly concealed patience. And, as everyone knows, even patience has a limit.

It's May 2012 and we anarchists are occupying a very crucial position in the ongoing struggle against Control. The position of violently attacking and dismembering it! I'd like to throw in here that when I use the term violence I also mean property destruction. While it has been argued over and over again that property destruction isn’t violence, I simply don’t care anymore, I’ve come to realize that logic frames the debate in a way I don’t agree with. It’ s surely violent when the Israeli State bulldozes a Palestinian home, or when a bomb explodes in a Judges car, even if no one was injured. I’ve also consciously left out some of the other ways anarchists influence culture and resistance movements as this article will instead focus on the element of violence in todays' anarchist movement.

Anarchists around the world have been awake and restless.

On today's Deep Green Philly podcast: Undercover police using sex as a way to gain entry into activist circles; The Ohio “bomb plot” entrapment case, and what to do if the fuzz try and get you to turn snitch.

excerpt from the audio which can be found by clicking here:

That the police have paranoia inducing methods of infiltrating activist organizations and inciting people to commit illegal activities should come as no surprise. Spying and creeping and slinking around in the shadows are simply par for the course when you're engaged reprehensible activities. Unfortunately, surveillance, or the threat of surveillance, is one unavoidable aspect of living in a police state, and since the advent of Homeland Security, many of us take it for granted that our phone conversations and electronic communications could be intercepted and monitored at any time. It's somewhat more disconcerting however to consider the following: we're sitting in a meeting planning our next political action with people we know and trust, and meanwhile, right next to us or across from us could be an agent or informant, someone contemplating how to undermine, negate, and frustrate our efforts to save the world and society from slipping into the abyss.

From AshevilleFM - The Final Straw

This week's show features an interview with Abrasha Blum and Ruth, who work with Anarchists Against The Wall. AATW is a coalition of Israeli Anarchists doing solidarity work alongside Palestinians who are struggling against the aparthied wall and system in and around the West Bank. As the 45th anniversary of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War approaches (June 5th-10th), we talk about Zionism, the Settlers, solidarity and how folks can support the popular struggles for Palestinian autonomy and dignity. If you have the ability to help them cover legal fees, check out awalls.org and donate.

An archive of this show, as well as an extra segment on the Birthright Program and the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) movement can be found on www.archive.org by searching the show title.

Barcelona: March 29, 2012
London: March 26, 2011
Seattle: November 29 – December 2,1999
Paris: May, 1968
Cairo: January 28, 2011
Athens: December, 2008
Oakland: November 2, 2011

These are the days my dreams are made of.


After May Day, the internet was flooded with impassioned defenses of the black bloc. It was apparent that this all-too-brief rampage of destruction had reignited some previously dormant passion within the Puget Sound anarchist milieu. People who had glumly trudged through winter were more excited than I'd seen them in months. But what will happen now, after the “riot”?

From Profane Existence

On May 28, Kelly Pflug-Back will stand in front of a Toronto courtroom to be sentenced.

I first met Kelly when she was a 16 yr old traveler kid who had just arrived in Victoria. We hung out on the streets, at drop in centers, and did Food not Bombs together which developed a lasting friendship. Over the years Kelly became quite the well known community organizer and activist. So it was a surprise when her picture went out across the internet, TV news, and newspapers last year following the G20 as police released pictures of their most wanted suspects in their sweep of 1100 activists who arrested, most of which would be released with no charges.

This interview was conducted by email.

PE: You have been active in community organizing for many years preceding this arrest? Can you tell us a bit about how you became involved in the struggle and what types of organizing or activism you have done?

KELLY: I’ve always been most interested in long-term, sustained efforts to build networks of social support so that people don’t have to rely on the state. I’ve done a lot of work with Food Not Bombs in a few cities, worked with needle exchange programs and anti-stigma AIDS resource centres, and facilitated workshops for queer youth and street-involved youth on self-esteem, safer drug use and sexual health. I’ve also participated in a couple of land occupations opposing developments on Indigenous territories, and I’ve recently been doing a lot of journalism for magazines.

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