Open Anarchist Study Group
ORGANIZING FOR ATTACK
"The Best Defense is a Good Offense" - A common military truism that is no less true when applied to the field of social struggle and revolution. Our movements have largely been on the defensive for many years - reacting to the movements of our enemies and scrambling to pick up the pieces and hold so much together crisis after crisis. But a purely defensive posture, as has been the case in St̕č̓as (Olympia) for so long, will eventually give out. Reaction drains energy more than it builds capacity and the crises keep coming harder and with more frequency that more and more of us are the ones needing aid. If we keep on this course our movements and our lives will be swallowed up by march of capitalist progress and state terror. If there is going to be a possibility of relief, of freedom, of a future at all it's imperative that we develop an offensive revolutionary capacity - to strike before our enemies, to take rather than ask or beg, to flourish rather than slowly die off through barely scraping together a miserable survival.
If we truly want freedom, if we truly want to break the iron grip that capital and authority has around our throats, if we really want to win we need the courage to attack. But we need the knowledge, too. Assata Shakur rightfully points out that, "No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them." We have to be our own and each others educators and students, to break a life time of educating and socializing for passivity, submission, helplessness and petty authoritarianism.
As a small contribution to this effort we offer this study group - not as a platform for what organizing for attack is but as an exploration into what it has looked like at different times and in different places. The material presented in itself isn't important other than as collective history and conversation with comrades from different struggles. What is important is the discussion that comes from these pieces, what we take away from them, what expands our thinking and, more importantly, what moves us to action. Action is the fundamental component here, without the follow through to action all of this is nothing more than an exercise in intellectual self-satisfaction and, as much as we love knowledge for the sake of knowledge, knowledge alone doesn't break chains or deliver freedom. Only our actions can.
This study group is designed in a way where the sessions are largely self contained, meaning you should feel free to come and go as you please or only come for one of the later ones be able to jump into the discussion with no problem.
The texts and videos that were chosen were picked because of they offer first hand accounts of particular struggles, potentially useful analysis or frames for thinking about struggle, tactics and strategies that can be adopted and tweaked as needed, and offer a wide variety of practical advice. These by themselves aren't important, what is important is what the participants get out of them and how it moves the participants to action. Take what's useful and burn the rest. 🔥
Along with the main items, there are optional supplemental materials we suggest that help flesh out ideas, historical context of struggles, or offer different ideas or practices. We will generally try to have these on hand to be taken as desired.
We will be providing the printed material, but it would help if you can either print it yourself or contact us asking for a copy of it. We will still make sure to bring a few extras just in case but our printing is generally limited!
We recomend bringing something to take notes with, or at least a highlighter!
If you have any questions, comments, or accessibility requests, either DM us on instagram at @DistroFugitive or email us at FugitiveDistribution (at) PrivacyRequired (dot) com!
Unless otherwise stated here or on our instagram the sessions will be every Sunday, 6PM at Yauger Park. The sessions where the material will be a video will be at an as of yet undecided indoor location.
😷 Masks are required! We will try our best to provide extra masks! 😷
A short introduction to the study group where we will talk about it's structure, why some of the items were chosen, what we hope to gain out of it, etc. This will be followed by reading a short piece Some Notes on Insurrectionary Anarchism which gives a general point of reference for the idea of "Organizing for Attack" as well as a look into the broad principles that were organized around in some of the struggles we will learn about.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
↳At Daggers Drawn with the Existent, Its Defenders and Its False Critics: Text // Audio
↳A Wager on the Future: Anarchist Organization, the Islamic State, the Crisis and Outer Space: Text // Audio
The zine opens at a “low” period in the Seattle anarchist scene, and traces it’s rise over several months (winter 2010-2011) as they gain confidence in their ability to act together through a series of assemblies and combative demonstrations against the police. The role of anarchists during these demonstrations against a series of murders by the police is contextualized in the broader political context of Seattle. Contains an afterward of solidarity clandestine attacks after the ebb of the movement in the streets.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
↳One-Four-Seven Some Notes on Tactics and Strategy from Durhams Anti-Police Marches: Text
↳Excited Delirium A Protestors Guide to 'Less Lethal' Police Weaponry: Text
↳The Post-Ferguson Struggle Against Police & Fascism in the Pacific Northwest: An Incomplete Glimpse into a Dynamic and Unfolding Context: Text
This text explores some of the political context and the organizational forms and methods used by the anarchists in the 2008 Greek Insurrection. It contains excerpts from the book We Are An Image From The Future as well as few essays written by anarchists interested in exploring what Greece means for anarchists in the U.S.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
↳Signals of Disorder: Sowing Anarchy in the Metropolis: Text
↳From Movement to Space: The Anarchist Open Assemblies : Text
This text dives into the details of the little known 1997 Albanian Insurrection that quickly toppled the ruling government. What's of interest is how the text goes into an indepth play-by-play of the insurrection, how the state responded and how the international community responded. This also has some interesting thoughts and models on what an offensive international solidarity that explodes revolt beyond geographic & cultural borders could look like.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
↳Anarchism and the National Liberation Struggle: Text
↳Covid, Capitalism, Strikes & Solidarity: Text
↳For An Anti-authoritarian Insurrectionalist International: Text
↳Towards a Citizens Militia - Anarchist Alternatives to NATO and the Warsaw Pact: Text
A documentary looking into the struggle and organizing around the 2012 Quebec Student Strike which consisted of mass demonstrations, university occupations and militant clashes with the police ultimately ousting a government and bringing the province to it's knees.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
↳Blockade, Occupy, Strike Back: Text
↳Blocs: Black and Otherwise: Text
↳Do It Yourself Occupation Guide: Text
Confidence, Courage, Connection, TrustWhen we talk about security culture, people tend to have one of two kinds of experiences. The first is of building walls and keeping people out, the second is of being excluded or mistrusted. Both of these come with negative feelings – fear and suspicion for the former and alienation and resentment for the latter. They are two sides of the same coin, two experiences of a security culture that isn’t working well. This proposal for security culture is based on reframing — on shifting our focus from fear to confidence, from risk-aversion to courage, from isolation to connection, and from suspicion to trust.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
↳Why Misogynists Make Great Informants: Text
Nothing Is Finished: Essays from Anti-Prison Struggles in BelgiumThe zine chronicles an attempt at crafting an insurrectionary practice around a specific goal, with reflections on the actions, successes, and challenges faced by such a project. Along with the analysis on the specific struggle, the zine also includes a piece titled “Archipelago: Affinity, Informal Organization, & Insurrectional Projects” which provides a theoretical foundation for understanding the ways in which anarchists chose to act.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
↳Seven Years Against Prison: Text
↳What Is Prisoner Support: Text
↳Attacking Prisons at the Point of Production: Text
Trouble: Inside-Out - Against Prison SocietyPrison is the foundation of state authority and the anchor of capitalist social relations. It’s the baseline threat that coerces us into accepting a daily regimen of exploitation and abuse. It’s a shrine to power and a monument to futility. It’s cameras, motion sensors, and walls of thick concrete wrapped in concertina wire. It’s an ongoing experiment in regimentation and psychology. It’s a sweatshop run on reclaimed slave labour. It’s a forced separation that rips up families and tears loved ones apart. It’s the last shitty stop before you’re deported back to the life you fled. It’s a sprawling job site, where unionized guards earn a living by keeping human beings in cages. It’s a sterile time capsule, where individuals are kidnapped from the present and thrown into limbo for years on end.
For those inside, the struggle against prisons is often a struggle for survival; it’s a constant fight to preserve whatever dignity you can in a place that’s designed to grind you down. For those on the outside, it is a struggle to break through the barriers of institutionalized isolation – whether physical, technical, or bureaucratic. It’s a battle to build and maintain relationships with those the state would have you forget. Prisons are constructed to be impenetrable fortresses. The fight for their abolition is a daunting one. But no matter if you’re on the inside or the outside, their continued existence is an affront to the very notion of freedom… and one that demands resistance.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
↳Experiences in Thurston County Jail and Some Thoughts Towards Tearing the Motherfucker Down: Text
Dangerous Spaces: Violent Resistance, Self-Defense, and Insurrectional Struggle Against Gender*CONTENT WARNING* This text deals heavily with patriarchial/sexual violence and abuse.
This text explores the theory and practical application of violence and self defense against patriarchial and gendered violence and breaking the reproduction of the roles that put us at the mercy of that violence.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
↳Betrayal - A Critical Analysis of Rape Culture in Anarchist Subcultures: Text
↳Learning to Exhale: Text
Trouble: Destroying Domination - Revolutionary Feminism in an Age of Misogynist ReactionThis documentary takes a look at patriarchy as an enduring system of social, economic and political control, and shares stories from some of the front-line struggles being waged by women around the world – from Indigenous communities fighting against the colonial dispossession of their lands, to the challenges faced by migrants forced from their homes by economic inequality, climate change, and war.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
↳Sex, Race and Class: Text
We All Float Down Here: RAM's "Floating Tactics" and the Long Hot Summer of 1967This zine looks at insurrectionary theory and practice through the lense of the Long Hot Summer of 1967 and the informal tendencies in black power groups at the time with a primary focus on Revolutionary Action Movement and the Black Liberation Front.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
↳Black Fighting Formations: Their Strengths, Weaknesses and Potentialities: Text
We Are Now: The Story of an Armed No-Cop Zone in AtlantaAt the high point of the 2020 riots after the murder of George Floyd, cop-free zones sprung up from coast to coast. As they were unfolding, Atlanta police killed Rayshard Brooks, a black father of four. Angry demonstrators torched the Wendy’s where Brooks was shot, occupied it, and defended it from police and Klansmen for 24 days. We Are Now is a small window into the delicate moments of freedom—joyous and tragic—that filled the autonomous zones of summer 2020.
Outro + General DiscussionA closing discussion for anyone who participated in the group - even if you only came for one section. Discussing what we took away from the study group, ways our thinking changed, things we were excited about, things we disagreed with or didn't find useful as well as any critiques of the study group itself.
