Another reportback from the Tacoma Block the Boat action

From Puget Sound Anarchists

On November 3rd, we got word of the inspiring action down in Oakland where people were blocking a Merchant Mariner ship delivering weapons to Israel, we were filled with joy and excitement! Not long after, we got word the ship was going to be coming to the Port of Tacoma on Sunday and a call went out for people to come block the boat. Our crews got together and began to plan what we were going to do, but many of these plans got thrown off by constantly changing times from the organizers and worries about peace policing based off an event in Olympia on Saturday, as well as people talking down “side organizing” and telling everyone to “just listen to the organizers”. Eventually the final call went out for Monday at 4:30 in the morning and we sighed a heavy sigh at getting up so early and got ready to do just that.

We got up around 3, got ready and headed out. Our crew trekked through Tacoma for an hour to arrive to the picket, it felt like walking into Mordor and along the way we breathed in what felt like a lifetime of cancerous materials. While we were expecting to basically walk into a trap as we rolled into the zone and saw all the people and just how chill it all seemed to be we were relieved. We went to go look around for other crews and by the time we all got together there was about a 30 person consolidated black bloc with probably another 30-40 of scattered individuals and smaller crews who came in bloc.

Much of the day was spent standing around in the cold and rain while running off 3 or 4 hours of sleep. At some point we all found a nice tree hide out to chill in and other people got a barrel fire starting, and hours later more long term infrastructure like hot food and drinks and tarps and tents began to appear.

Throughout the day the numbers didn’t dip below a couple hundred and at their height seemed close to a thousand, and even in the cold and rain the energy was really high and a lot of people seemed ready to throw down if something were to happen (and we’ll return to this point later). People literally walked in circles and chanted nonstop for hours, like not even new people the same people. Just seeing it exhausted me more but you know what good for them.

There was some graffiti that went up and from what we saw very minimal peace policing – though we have heard from others who did experience it more intensely – and when people began barricading the rails and gates and stashing rocks for a potential confrontation many people were excited and jumped in to help us and other people within the broader picket started advocating for more barricades.

Ultimately the day and all the present energy and excitement petered out. There was a lot of conflicting information coming from the organizers, first that we totally blocked the boat from getting loaded! Then the military was loading it! Then only 7 of the 20 containers could get loaded! Then it was all loaded okay time to go home. There was also lots of conflicting information about what we were actually there to do. We came to block a boat, and so did many others, but some organizers said that wasn’t realistic (the eternal excuse of cowardice) and then others say we were simply there to show solidarity with the workers? Either way, they called off the action and by the time we realized what was going on we tried to talk both with them and with others in the crowd to get people to stay – as far as we were concerned as long as the boat was there we should be there and the water blockade was on the way – but it was too late, numbers were thinning and the police who were stationed in their riot gear behind the fences were eyeing all of us and we had to retreat.

We affirm the objective that many came with in mind – to block the boat – and that we all failed to do so not only makes the action a failure but explicitly makes us murderers for not doing all we can to stop the shipment. We will not pat ourselves on the back and invent victories, especially not when we look at the genocide before us. If we are going to stop a genocide, we are going to jail, to prison, we are getting felonies, we are getting terrorism charges, we are going to ruin our lives and we must face these facts down, make peace with them, and do what needs to be done. All the “victories” are meaningless in the face of bombs, the excuses of “safety”, of “realism” of “you’re making us look bad” don’t mean shit when we let weapons get delivered to murder people.

But we cannot wallow in guilt and defeat. We accept our failure and we must think about moving the struggle further, in a combative direction that can secure material victories by stopping and physically destroying the infrastructure and materials that prop up the genocide. To this end we offer the following critiques of the organizers, but also of us who are just as much – if not more – to blame for those weapons that we we directly watched leave that port.

ON THE ORGANIZERS

The critiques of Organizers and Organizations have been repeated infinitely over the years, but this is for a reason and we will again repeat it here.

These groups put out calls with militant language, chant things like “resistance is justified” and “intifada revolution” and give people the impression that they are going to engage in militant direct action, yet all people find time and time again are highly controlled and marshaled events that pose no real risk to the war machine. This shouldn’t surprise anyone, these large organizations with very public organizers are under intense public and legal scrutiny and are structurally incapable of escalation – if they are interested in it at all.

Many of the organizations that were involved were the usual scene of movement grifters – PSL, WWP, ANSWER, RevCom – who aren’t interested in anything but building their particular groupsicle and we still remembered how all over the country these groups explicitly played counter-insurgent during the 2020 uprising.

The other groups we are less familiar with and as such are going to operate under the assumption there there is some sincere desire to escalate and make a direct impact. Which is why we cannot understand why there was a call for everybody to go home. When we have a grasp on power, like shutting down a major port and doing economic damage, making the call for you as the organization to go home shouldn’t translate into a call for everybody to go home. Not only do liberation movements need to cultivate a sense of initiative for more and more people to get involved and take more decisive action, but so many people were still coming and excited about digging in. Even if the ship left, continued economic damage to the Port of Tacoma could stop them from shipping out military equipment again like what happened with the Port of Olympia during Port Militarization Resistance in 2006 and 2007, or how the rail blockades in Olympia in 2016 and 2017 failed to stop those specific loads of fracking proppants but sent the port into an economic death spiral from which it has yet to recover and led to the cancellation of future fracking proppant contracts.

We propose that liberation movements need to develop an explicit culture of when their organization or crew decides to call it, to leave it up to the autonomy of others on if they decide to stay or not rather than declaring an action over. People need to learn to accept the risks and make decisions for themselves rather than play the game of follow the leader which makes for passive, docile movements that cannot think on their feet.

ON US

It’s easy to critique others, but we also bare an intense blame for this failure and must do some intense reflection on ourselves to better fight in the future.

The first failure on our part was when organizers called off the initial start time, we should have put out a counter call for an occupation to block the port. While we don’t know for sure, its possible that the delay of the boat arrival allowed military scabs to preemptively come into the port and a full occupation from the start could have blocked their arrival in the port and if nothing else would have explicitly set a more confrontational tone.

Second, there was a failure in logistics and many supplies and tools that crews had prepared were unable to make it up. While we had defensive and offensive equipment for us we should have come prepared with more for others – more respirators, more goggles, more helmets, more black clothes. Passing out or leaving out extra equipment for others to grab could have also done wonders to build an energy of confrontation.

Third, we relied way too heavily on the organizers’ intel which proved to be wrong or questionable due to “trusted sources” that could not be verified. A comrade with a solid head on their shoulders repeatedly stated whenever we got info or heard rumors that we needed to visually confirm for ourselves before making any moves. On this point many of us lamented multiple times that we lacked scouts or binoculars. If we could have gotten visual confirmation of the boat being loaded – or not loaded! – that we could have shared with other people so they could see for themselves perhaps we could have actually gotten people to storm the port with us.

Fourth we were too okay with half measures. When people told us what was happening was blocking the port we were fine with not escalating. If it works, no point in escalating, fighting and risking arrest. However we should have been skeptical from the start that the police were not attacking. In all of our collective history of struggle when we are actually doing damage and blocking something critical the police will attack. Yet they didn’t, and then suddenly we heard that only 7 of the 20 containers were able to be loaded. At this point we should have begun agitating the crowd to attack, 7 of 20 is still 7 containers of weapons that will be used to murder people yet we accepted this half victory until suddenly they said everything got loaded and it was time to leave.

Fifth and most critical of all we were too docile. Who gives a fuck about the security team or the plan when there is a clear objective and an obvious way to achieve it that we all came prepared for. We should have yelled more, contested the security team and organizers, agitated more directly, spent more time talking to people that showed up to block a boat rather than trying to convince the organizers of what we came to do. This is probably what cost us the most.

FINAL THOUGHTS AND REFLECTION

We cannot wallow in our failures but take lessons from them and move forward. Autonomous rebels and people who left feeling dissatisfied must find each other, talk, strategize and act. We must be bold and ready to act to the gravity of the situation, we must build up autonomous networks of individuals, crews and organizations that have the capacity to coordinate and the drive to act. This is what the struggle demands of us.

Come out to others demos’ and actions, yes, but also don’t wait for others – even us – to do what you can do yourself. Call for meetings, call for actions, carry out small night time actions. Expand the struggle. Lives depend on it and as someone once said, the future belongs to the daring.

There are 51 Comments

Shoulda woulda coulda.

Never once does this reconsideration of tactics leave the activist mindset of meeting enemies on their turf, where they have a decided tactical, experiential and material advantage, and where the activist's best weapons are Doing Right (stopping genocide) and the assurance of protections from the ol' Constitution (freedom of speech/assembly). To acknowledge direct confrontation with the US military is to recognize your political goals include using political theater. You seek to provoke the reaction you know will spawn media coverage and mainstream outrage. Sure, I'm sure you want to stop the bombs, but the US military gassing and beating you would have made this worthwhile to your goals too, I think, which are directly in line with the current form of regurgitated insurrectionary-activism from the late 90s.

"We affirm the objective that many came with in mind – to block the boat – and that we all failed to do so not only makes the action a failure but explicitly makes us murderers for not doing all we can to stop the shipment. We will not pat ourselves on the back and invent victories, especially not when we look at the genocide before us. If we are going to stop a genocide, we are going to jail, to prison, we are getting felonies, we are getting terrorism charges, we are going to ruin our lives and we must face these facts down, make peace with them, and do what needs to be done. All the “victories” are meaningless in the face of bombs, the excuses of “safety”, of “realism” of “you’re making us look bad” don’t mean shit when we let weapons get delivered to murder people.

But we cannot wallow in guilt and defeat. We accept our failure and we must think about moving the struggle further, in a combative direction that can secure material victories by stopping and physically destroying the infrastructure and materials that prop up the genocide. To this end we offer the following critiques of the organizers, but also of us who are just as much – if not more – to blame for those weapons that we we directly watched leave that port."

You're correct to criticize yourself alongside the organizers but you've missed the mark twice. The issue imo is not the quantity or degree of aggression of your "struggle." It's the alienated desires you've projected onto distant conflict you have no connection to other than through media trends and a screen. You've depicted yourself alongside the persecuted, using the state's tendencies against revolt to ease your guilt and ineffectiveness in fucked up "global" matters such as this. You've mistakenly turned to the media to use their microphone and cameras knowing they'll reduce you to terrifying rebels or charming victims (either options works, as long as it advances The Struggle!). I see you as organizers, still, but of the "decentralized" variety--to use your charitable words. You do nothing of consequence, call others cowards, then demand "we must" do more next time. You're stuck in between, my activist friends. You're searching for strength you lack, strength only a fool has at the best of times. But fools don't take themselves so seriously. Be more foolish and less heroic. Until then, you're only bad news to me.

You are basically just calling for clandestine action or none at all. This project of bizarre cope over the past 15 years has been a miserable failure in USA anarchism.

To give a direct example, a group of literal teens during the 2020 rebellion (youth liberation) anarchists by just calling for action and engaging in propaganda did more to grow the anarchist movement than literally anything the devolution into friend groups has in a decade. A literal decade.

What you are unable to realize likely because you have internalized failure and boredom is that both IGD strugglismo and purist circular firing squad scene groups are part of the same psychological failure that existed after the failed anti globalization uprisings.

To sum up: Your comments are as boring as an IGD article.

I don't think you've read the last paragraph of that comment, like at all. I ain't this commenter but they are spot-on with

Boring isn't exactly an argument or theory anyone can learn from. You wanna read fun stuff? Sure, okay. But maybe a "boring" statement ain't jn the way of doing actual fun stuff.

This just in: critical analysis and conscience is often found to be boring. Unlike MTV, tho!

U boring 2!

"...with the notion of making ourselves militant drones for global depersonalized issues that got little to do with our own alienated lives." So of course this system oppressing you has to do with the oppression of civilians in Gaza, yet it's also an internal conflict, that's all around you.

My issue is, if this war spirals and turns into something much larger over the next 6 months will anti systemic movements still be catching up even then? Will anarchists be unable to participate in a worldwide likely very radical anti war movement in the USA at all? Not to mention as liberalism is taking a huge blow in the USA. People legitimately are giving up on the Democratic process in the USA. Coupled with the likely breaking point of the housing crisis, there's a big window.

If we try to start now, there's a chance we can prepare and utilize this moment. If we are unable to it's very clear that anarchism in the USA is dead until something other than ourselves revives it. Simple as that.

Anarchism in the world is dead, ecological shit is going exponential and has hit the fan, it's not about a housing crisis it's about over-population and diminishing food stocks. The only consolation is that it's gonna ultimately bring down the elite aswell. Forget about politics, start preparing for hard times at the supermarket.

"overpopulation" found the malthusian psycho. Go back to the 70's where you belong.

Get ready for the zombie apocalypse it's world war Z not world war 3! But we're dance dance revolution.

We can dance if we want to
We can leave your friends behind
'Cause your friends don't dance and if they don't dance
Well, they're no friends of mine

Don't come dancing over to my ubermansch citadel basement begging for food when civ collapses brah, we only take in pragmatists and tunnelers, mmkay!?

Why call them organizers? You heard the same call from oakland and started planning, spreading the word. Ok They made one of the flyers. You maybe had a ride share for vouched ppl. They organized sketchy af parking. Im missing the difference. Is it more than bringing vests and bull horns? The response to a call like this might have ppl taking roles like jail support, medics, scouts, food. But its hard to say its their event like organizer implies and they act.

Why would the US deliever arms via shiproutes? It's incredebly ineffective and long to go from american shores to israel, either through the panama or suez cannal. Americans have always shipped to israel via aerial trains. Are we even sure that ship was carrying? Cause the other ship people tried to block ended up being a deliberate hoax..

If shipments are for real, I can only guess it's for heavy war equipment... but IDF has a lot of tanks and missile batteries already. Or is this to support a longer war with neighboring enemies of Israel?

Performative still stuck in the 1960s idiocy. You were never gonna succeed in blockading anything because you announced to the whole world what you were planning. People still think life is like some American teen movie that ends with a big party and everybody getting what they wanted and then the credits roll. And they still think that the powers that be are gonna see some huge bunch of protests and say oh no, traffic in some cities was disrupted for a few hours by some delusional idiots who think that's how the Vietnam was ended, we better call Netanyahu and get him to call the whole thing off. And then there's the people who think that writing melodramatic report-backs about the latest failed reenactment of the 1960s for their local blog subsidiary of It's Getting Dumber will inspire their fellow 1960s reenactment enthusiasts to do better at the next preaaranged shindig...

oh how I wish we could upvote, because this is brilliant! thanks for pointing out the numerous mistakes anarchoids insist on repeating, both practically and analytically.

"People still think life is like some American teen movie that ends with protagonists joining a big party and getting bureaucratic careers they wanted and then the credits roll."

FTFY

Though not a fan of that movie . to your comment I do say, Word! Bravo.

The part in the article that basically says that "we" will need to ruin our lives and go to prison, get felonies and terrorism charges to stop the genocide is peak strugglismo self-martyrdom bullshit. For starters, how about thinking of some serious strategies that don't involve a pseudo-blockade that is basically a police contained and surveilled trap "organized" by people you don't even know? And tell us more about the "inspiring energy"...so fucking cringe. Also, the idea that a blockade of ships carrying weapons to Israel is gonna make one iota of difference at this late stage of the game seems kinda delusional to me. I'm fairly certain they would already have enough weapons to wage war in Gaza and maintain the occupation indefinitely.

"a police contained and surveilled trap "organized" by people you don't even know" - spot on.

They love acting like they're actually doing something but in reality the police is just letting them jerk off a little before they decide time's up.

the self righteousness in teh story is almost matched by the self righteuosness in the comments.

anyone hear of diversity of tactics? anyone think they actually have the answer about what will work (if anything)

why is everyone acting (or sounding anyways) like they know the ansewr.

Yes, and also the good comments like mine are deleted because I'm a realist and understand that war came before society, and that it can only ever stop if mankind undertakes a critical mindful and disciplined self-analysis of its innate herd morality and the forces of indoctrination and myth based consciousness.

"Yes, and also the good comments like mine are deleted"
Will someone delete this whining piece of shite?!

Maybe there are no concrete answers? Deliberately ruining your life and ending up in the so-called criminal justice system definitely isn't the answer and previous episodes such as the 2nd Iraq invasion have shown us that our political overlords aren't impressed by point A to point B protest marches, no matter how big they are. The uprisings in the US of 2020 taught us that non-stop rioting does gets the attention of the powers that be, however said uprisings were generally of a spontaneous nature - anger reached a critical mass and spilled out onto the streets, it's not the type of thing that can be "organized" by strugglismo sects. Maybe anger at what's happening to Palestine will eventually reach a critical mass in the coming weeks and months and this will lead to 2020 style open-revolt, or maybe it won't.

Commenter missed the whole desire part of what anarchists do. It turns out that anarchists like to strike out at the system and society because they enjoy it.

It begs the question whether commenter enjoys anything? Is someone forcing you to write these painful comments that change nothing other than the energy level of people reading them?

Palestine burns, but hey at least some anarcho-20something IGD LARPers are enjoying themselves. That's nice.

This is called "shifting the goalposts". One moment, the conversation is about "effectiveness" and what things people might do to help out the Palestinians. Someone suggests rioting, or whatever, and when its pointed out that looting gucci kicks has literally zero effect on what's going on overseas, you quickly change the subject to "YEAH WELL NEWSPAPER BOXES IN THE STREET IS WHAT WE DESIRE BROH!!"

Ok?

Whatever makes you feel better I guess.

The mass movement against the war is what will stop it but it's a race. The IDF will try to do as much damage as possible before the workers shut everything down and resistance reaches a critical mass. I think people should do what they do best and stick with what you know instead of trying to put a missile in just the right place to destroy the death star. It takes a Jedi.

Commenter again, in a seeming race to suck the life force out of their readers. Switches between guilt, false equivalences and strawmen all in one post

Commenter equates mass economic sabotage (what would work) with "stealing Gucci kicks."

One has to wonder if commenter is under duress.

so we are to conclude that the big circle a in the so called us has once again devolved into strugglismo sects. like herpes burying themselves back into human dermal cells after giving you a cute blister for a week. nice.

In the face of a possible world war we may see a return to mass organizations away from small unit Ewok action. We may have to form a power bloc to push through capitalist realism and act on the geopolitical stage.

not if anarchist couldn't learn to not pose egoistic dumb shit on "counter info" sites and learn to think everything firstly from feds perspective. it means hard learning and "uncool" choices.

I'm from the Montessori school of economics so not really into hard learning and uncool choices but I'd be willing to take a look at it.

To be honest if I'm a fed, I'd be infiltrating the radical milieu right now. And I would be EGGING them on to real shit like killing arms manufacturer executives or just middle managers. The reason is pretty self evident. 3 years after 2020, much of the milieu, especially the most strugglismo part of it, discovered voluntarily or involuntarily that conjuring a revolution into existence is hard, but hitting specific individuals is easy. It's what worked partially in stop cop city. So these segment simply isolated themselves from everybody else and increasingly adopted ever more aggressive tactics. Because they're not really succeeding, they're frustrated into internalizing ever more the demonization of state, capital, and most importantly tangible individuals associated with it. They're already 99% there, all it takes is a final nudge. And the war provide precisely such an opportunity. Once someone is foolish enough to do it -- drunk on their own supply of cool aid -- the feds will have a field trip cracking down everyone with real guns. Or even better. Now would be an excellent time for the feds to infiltrate the little sects. Don't tell me about opsec. It's all a probability game. If you try hard enough and often enough you'll crack any network. That's how the KGB infiltrated the Pentagon. Larping the military and adopting primitive counter intel practice won't help much against raw numbers. Can you imagine showing up at a demo that's called by the feds targeting their own facilities?

if you're a fed? well you don't sound much like an anarchist...

"internalizing ever more the demonization of state, capital"

why would anarchists not have internalized that? furthermore, can you "demonize" the state at all?

an anti-state position is fundamental anarchist theory?

That my friend is called seeing yourself from 30000ft. In a war, which is what is happening now and for the forseeable future, those believing they're righteous and have no use to study sun Tzu or von Clausewitz and merely BELIEVE in their cause will be slaughtered like the Zulu vs Maxim gun. It's the illiterate zealots, that whenever you politely (or impolitely) tug at their shirts (or grab them by the collar) and ask them what their strategy and tactics are, simply recite their laundry lists of dogma and good deeds like the neoliberal elites recite their supposed ones ("put down the pitch fork and enjoy austerity you peasants") whenever facing down a riot or election results they don't like. Knowing thy enemy is, to such creatures, a sign of impurities, a sin to be purged or exorcised. It's a sign of intellectual weakness that in a brutal adversarial situation, one cannot think and instead reach back to the holy X book, recite a few prayer/self reflection section/restorative justice meeting/polemics/riots and expect an implicit God to reward their good deeds with victory.

We Contenptuous agree!

But

In our own Contemptuous way.

We strike with uncaring razor claws against our enemies and then fade away into the night.

We Contemptuous hate these tiny touch screen keyboards that do not take into account the claw we have at ready. Death to iOS!

nope, it's not. your mental health issues don't have much to do with actual anarchist theory...

Isn't that why illegalism is only to be practiced by affinity groups and not promoted to randos showing up for mass demonstrations and people who do agitate for illegalism are suspect themselves? I'm not talking about illegal acts that take place spontaneously in riots and such by people who choose to do so.

Illegalism must always only be a discrete individual intention devoid of organization and be a spontaneous expression for Machiavellian means to a profitable gain. Groups only evolve hierarchical inequality and drain any act of its passionate vitality and imagination. That's what mom always told me.

You concluded this? This is not new. Anarchists don't even want to put together events for themselves that are fun. This isn't some problem with ideological choice, it is clearly coming from within.

Here's what strugglismo don't get. Shattering windows and hurling rocks and/or Molotov are not by themselves radical or proxies of strength. These acts are powerful because the raw strength, which can only be proportional to the numbers (temporarily) behind an ephemeral cause, that produced the action, like extremely energetic molecules in a lump of hot chaotic gas, NOT vice versa. When the cause recedes and the self styled revolutionaries become without revolution, these acts ceased to be powerful and instead became admissions of weakness, of going through the motions. It's the same as thinking bringing an umbrella will make it rain. The biggest problem of strugglismo isn't that they're isolated and lazy (they certainly are), but that they have a certain brand of hubris that's truly shocking. They think they "owned" 2020 the way a smart high school student thinks they "aced" school and got suckered punched by the GRINDING reality, the mere yet to them unbearable passage of time, the way the hubristic high schooler got slaughtered by the first math course in college. Both mistook the good fortune of lacking discipline and perseverance yet not being punished for it as their own inherent strength. They lack understanding of the very dynamic they profess to dominate and benefit from, and are royally surprised when it turned against them.

all of the idiotic individualists in this thread denouncing "strugglismo"

If yous keep doin' the same freakin' shit Over and Over and Over again for the same result, then you are a nincumpoop!

Other than some of the original article, I have seen people calling comments strugglismo that really aren't. Basically accusing any above ground organizing strugglismo is the strangest fear cope out there.

Like that is not what we meant by the term at all. You think anarchist movements in other countries that actually have cool shit going on and large cultures are just clandestine cells of friend groups? Lmao.

Is it idiotic to not put yourself in federal jail over manufactured wars that you can't even influence? Really?

You really don't get it. You are incapable of even thinking about what might be positive aspects of actually trying. I completely understand strugglismo and why it is nonsense. But, you are arguing for what is essentially the abandonment of an IRL anarchist movement and culture.

Honestly your voice is not needed. There's like a million people out there right now advocating abandoning tired as typical protests. Focusing on shit that is at least somewhat impactful. At least inspiring for people. And not to mention, this is a new phenomena.

You are just blowing shit out into the ether.

What's IRL mean? I don't spend my entire life online and only dip in occasionaly so I'm unsure what you mean...

Guess I should have known that; problem is, I probably spend too much time in "real life" (my bad)

It depends on your mentality. If you're trying to stay safe then yeah stay at home. Radicals tend to think outside the box and act outside of societal norms. Everyone has to do their own risk management.

Asking them to stop the strugglismo is like asking cats to stop meowing.

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