Steel City Autonomous Movement

SCAM aims to promote solidarity across campaigns and social groups.

[fillerpgh]

Filler Distro Presents: A SCAM FOR THE BIG IDEA

A SCAM FOR THE BIG IDEA is a Pittsburgh anarcho-punk compilation album benefiting The Big Idea Cooperative Bookstore & Cafe.

A SCAM FOR THE BIG IDEA is a Pittsburgh anarcho-punk compilation album benefiting The Big Idea Cooperative Bookstore & Cafe.

You can buy or stream the album on bandcamp. It’s also available for streaming on spotify, youtube, and a bunch of other sites. All proceeds go directly to The Big Idea.

https://filler-pgh.bandcamp.com/

Over the last 18 years, The Big Idea has become a second home for many Pittsburgh anarchists. The space’s rent got jacked up recently, and it’s likely to get raised again in the coming months. With that in mind, some Filler kids figured it was time we pay The Big Idea back for all the coffee, books, zines, pins, patches and vegan goodies that we’ve nabbed over the years.

We found some cheap recording equipment and decided to hit up our friends to see if anyone wanted to record a track or two for a benefit compilation album. Now that the album’s done, we’re offering free recording to anarchist bands/musicians living near the three rivers, so hit us up for free recording!

The accompanying zine will be released in the coming weeks, be sure to check it out! It’s gonna have art/lyrics for every track, as well as some perspectives on anarchy in the East End.

An excerpt from one of the introductions to the compilation zine.

Bloomfield remained relatively affordable throughout the last decade of gentrification in the East End, and it’s made us complacent. This supposed hub of radicalism has failed to meaningfully contribute to the ongoing struggles against cultural erasure and displacement in other East End neighborhoods. And now, as developers rapidly encircle Pittsburgh’s so-called “Little Italy,” the rent hikes are accelerating again. How many friends have already been priced out?

Anarchists cannot continue to passively rely on Bloomfield’s proximity to whiteness as a shield. The fact that fucking “Little Italy” is experiencing another wave of development is proof that the capitalist class has already outmaneuvered community resistance elsewhere. “We” have failed to materially disrupt revitalization, even now as everyone seems to be scoffing at Peduto’s “Most Livable City” propaganda.

Gentrification functions differently in every neighborhood. Here in the East End, the rent hikes threaten a budding inter-generational anarchist community(ies). We don’t all hang out in the same spaces or roll with the same crew, and this benefit album is not an attempt to cohere around a single space (sorry infoshop vanguardists) — but if we lose our infoshop, it’s safe to say we lose our neighborhood.

The Big Idea is a project that spans nearly two decades of Pittsburgh anarchy. In other words, it’s one of the few remaining places capable of retaining collective memory.

If it weren’t for the things I’ve read, the people I’ve met, and the boxes of old junk I’ve dug through at the Big Idea, I would have never heard of the Pittsburgh Organizing Group, East End Mutual Aid, the Greater Pittsburgh Area Anarchist Collective, Indymedia, Anti-Racist Action, Occupy Pittsburgh, The Yinsurrectionary Times, Landslide Community Farm, Fight Back Pittsburgh… on and on.

If it weren’t for The Big Idea, I would not know the names of our dead. I never met Mike Vesch, but The Yinsurrectionary Times is what inspired me and some other Filler kids to expand our fanzine into a local counterinfo website; I never met Daniel Montano, but I’ve read his writings about art and resistance nearly every day since I moved here in 2012—MF1 is still all-city, even after years of buffing and gentrification.

As the years went by and I began to lose some of my own friends and comrades, The Big Idea also became a place to remember them, to share stories about the life they breathed into Pittsburgh anarchy.

Stephie was a Big Idea collective member. If you drop by Big Idea and look at the wall above the comfy chair in the corner, you’ll see a black and red flag with an angry cat in the center. That’s Badcastki, that’s Stephie. Her art was subversive; her ideas as dangerous as she was kind. She organized at the intersections of anarchism and mental health during a time when few people in the scene seemed to recognize just how militant you have to be to fight on that front. Badcatski chose to commit suicide on May 5, 2016 at the age of 34. Knowing Stephie, her decision was patient, deliberate, conscious, intentional, necessary. Like all anarchists who have died in the social war, her act can also be remembered as martyrdom. Sometimes during quiet shifts at Big Idea I sit in the comfy chair in the corner, drink coffee from her favorite mug, and understand that she is here. That realization reminds me to take a minute to be honest with myself, to confront my feelings. She reminds me to take care of myself and my friends as if the fate of the movement depends on it—and she’s right, it does.

In acting and learning to act, we find that we can share stories, skills, lessons, memories, tactics, and ideas. We should never be content to just survive, to go through life as a passive spectator in the spaces you inhabit. There’s a difference between life and survival. We are at war. Every decision we make—from where we live and who we live with to what we do for fun and how we do it—might be better understood strategically, and taken with intent.

I often hear stories about the glory days of Pittsburgh anarcho-punk scene and wonder what the fuck happened. Of course, there are still some really good bands and cool spaces, but the reality of the situation is that anarchists and punx don’t really organize much together. It seems that when someone burns out from one scene, they turn to the other.

But if we think our scene(s) are lacking something, that shouldn’t mean we just drop out of them. Instead we might ask ourselves how we could contribute materially, artistically, and sincerely to all the shit that we can’t help but care about.

Why do so many of us find ourselves living in the East End? What would a new anarcho-punk movement look/feel like in Pittsburgh? What are the first steps? Here’s a collection of preliminary answers/thoughts/desires/filler from a few of the kids featured on this comp:

I want to know that my broke ass won’t be turned away by a $10 cover charge at the door, so I guess I could reach out to the promoter and put up a few flyers around town earlier that week.

I want to hit the bagel dumpster before my shift at the Big Idea so the staffers during the rest of that week can eat for free.

I want to know who the harm reduction distro kids are so I can cop more narcan without having to go out of my way.

I want to know what my friends’ basic boundaries are with strangers so I can understand when I’m expected to step up to a jag, when I just let the homie handle it, and when I should just chill out and stop being such a PC cop.

I want to write hyphy reviews on my friends’ bandcamp releases.

I want to learn to make tapes and record music and help my talented friends finally put that album out.

I want to be the designated driver and get my friends to the gig because I know the homies will buy me some merch from the touring band as a thank you.

I want to know that my skill set can help my friends save money (or at least keep it in the solidarity economy) because they won’t be overpaying some capitalist to repair their bike/car/phone/drywall.

I want to film my friends’ protests, shows, music videos, skateboarding—fucking whatever, honestly—cos I know I’m pretty good at making that shit look wayyy harder than it felt at the time, and I like to hype my friends up.

I want to know that my friends won’t judge me when I tell them that I’m in active addiction, again.

I want to start writing again because all my friends love sharing their zines with each other, and because I know they will actually read what I give them and invite me out to talk more about it over a coffee or a few beers.

I want to start going to shows again because I realized most of the people I run into are passionate about the music, the spaces, the ideas, the projects, the food…

I want to know every word to my friend’s band’s songs, and when that drop comes I want to rush to the front of the pit and shout I THINK THERE’S SOMETHING IN THE WATER!

I want to stop buying dumb shit online because I’d rather buy the clothing and furniture and jewelry and patches and art that my friends make, not just because I can save money though! I know that those earrings they made will turn heads.

I want to start tabling again because sometimes there’s honestly nothing hotter than a crew of six dekt queer punx rolling up to an event, nodding to the person running the door, and walking in for free with 3 boxes of zines, a foldout table, a bag of narcan, and a stack of flyers for next week’s show.

I don’t want this shit to feel like a job or duty. I can’t do everything I would like to. And I especially don’t want to have to prove my worth just to feel like I’m allowed show up to an event. I don’t have to do jack shit if I’m not feeling up to it. And I don’t find myself wanting to do this shit for the woke internet posturing, or to climb some scene’s social ladder. Sometimes I just want to throw a beer can across the room, or tag some toy shit on a condo, or toss a U-Lock through a windshield. And I sure as hell don’t feel like justifying that to anyone.

I’m a punk because I’m a fucking nerd. I’ve only ever had like 3 or 4 close friends at a time. I’m constantly cycling through tides of depression, anger, and mania. Most of the time, I feel like I can’t really hang, and so I don’t really go out much, unless it’s to a show or something. Socializing is a lot easier for me if there’s something creative or fun or useful I can bring that might make it easier to talk and connect with people. The lyric sheets I that grew up on told me that punk’s not a fashion show— it’s a fucking way of life. I feel like that punk should mean something more than whatever bullshit it is I find myself doing these days.

Find each other, because the Something we’re waiting for is never going to happen unless we become Something. If each of us acts on our own ideas and desires, a shared perception of our situation is temporarily understood every time we act collectively—every time we create spaces, projects, and experiences together. Which is really just a roundabout way of saying, what you do or don’t do makes all the difference.

It’s time we see ourselves for what we are and have always been: a movement. We’re an international web of relationships, held together by a few DIY spaces, bars, art collectives, bands, distros, niche skillsets, and the mutual aid that arises from common needs and interests, from the experience of building something together: from living communism and spreading anarchy.

Punx and anarchists cannot face down these monied developers alone, but together we can face these faceless profiteers and build something resembling a community in the process. With all the struggles in our own personal lives, the raging fires across the planet and our neighborhoods can seem like someone else’s problem. It feels like we don’t have the strength, the time, or the resources to face these problems, but your own resilience, endurance, and passion can surpass even your most arrogant self-confidence. Now is the time to come together in solidarity. Keep moving, keep fighting.

punx is weapons // punx is small town

– Filler Distro

“East End, the fashionable residence quarter of Pittsburgh, lies basking in the afternoon sun. The broad avenue looks cool and inviting: the stately trees touch their shadows across the carriage road, gently nodding their heads in mutual approval. A steady procession of equipages fills the avenue, the richly caparisoned horses and uniformed flunkies lending color and life to the scene. A cavalcade is passing me. The laughter of the ladies sounds joyous and care-free.

Their happiness irritates me. I am thinking of Homestead. In mind I see the somber fence the fortifications and cannon; the piteous figure of the widow rises before me, the little children weeping, and again I hear the anguished cry of a broken heart, a shattered brain….”

[fillerpgh]

[fillerpgh]

Filler Distro Presents: A SCAM FOR THE BIG IDEA

A SCAM FOR THE BIG IDEA is a Pittsburgh anarcho-punk compilation album benefiting The Big Idea Cooperative Bookstore & Cafe.

A SCAM FOR THE BIG IDEA is a Pittsburgh anarcho-punk compilation album benefiting The Big Idea Cooperative Bookstore & Cafe.

You can buy or stream the album on bandcamp. It’s also available for streaming on spotify, youtube, and a bunch of other sites. All proceeds go directly to The Big Idea.

https://filler-pgh.bandcamp.com/

Over the last 18 years, The Big Idea has become a second home for many Pittsburgh anarchists. The space’s rent got jacked up recently, and it’s likely to get raised again in the coming months. With that in mind, some Filler kids figured it was time we pay The Big Idea back for all the coffee, books, zines, pins, patches and vegan goodies that we’ve nabbed over the years.

We found some cheap recording equipment and decided to hit up our friends to see if anyone wanted to record a track or two for a benefit compilation album. Now that the album’s done, we’re offering free recording to anarchist bands/musicians living near the three rivers, so hit us up for free recording!

The accompanying zine will be released in the coming weeks, be sure to check it out! It’s gonna have art/lyrics for every track, as well as some perspectives on anarchy in the East End.

An excerpt from one of the introductions to the compilation zine.

Bloomfield remained relatively affordable throughout the last decade of gentrification in the East End, and it’s made us complacent. This supposed hub of radicalism has failed to meaningfully contribute to the ongoing struggles against cultural erasure and displacement in other East End neighborhoods. And now, as developers rapidly encircle Pittsburgh’s so-called “Little Italy,” the rent hikes are accelerating again. How many friends have already been priced out?

Anarchists cannot continue to passively rely on Bloomfield’s proximity to whiteness as a shield. The fact that fucking “Little Italy” is experiencing another wave of development is proof that the capitalist class has already outmaneuvered community resistance elsewhere. “We” have failed to materially disrupt revitalization, even now as everyone seems to be scoffing at Peduto’s “Most Livable City” propaganda.

Gentrification functions differently in every neighborhood. Here in the East End, the rent hikes threaten a budding inter-generational anarchist community(ies). We don’t all hang out in the same spaces or roll with the same crew, and this benefit album is not an attempt to cohere around a single space (sorry infoshop vanguardists) — but if we lose our infoshop, it’s safe to say we lose our neighborhood.

The Big Idea is a project that spans nearly two decades of Pittsburgh anarchy. In other words, it’s one of the few remaining places capable of retaining collective memory.

If it weren’t for the things I’ve read, the people I’ve met, and the boxes of old junk I’ve dug through at the Big Idea, I would have never heard of the Pittsburgh Organizing Group, East End Mutual Aid, the Greater Pittsburgh Area Anarchist Collective, Indymedia, Anti-Racist Action, Occupy Pittsburgh, The Yinsurrectionary Times, Landslide Community Farm, Fight Back Pittsburgh… on and on.

If it weren’t for The Big Idea, I would not know the names of our dead. I never met Mike Vesch, but The Yinsurrectionary Times is what inspired me and some other Filler kids to expand our fanzine into a local counterinfo website; I never met Daniel Montano, but I’ve read his writings about art and resistance nearly every day since I moved here in 2012—MF1 is still all-city, even after years of buffing and gentrification.

As the years went by and I began to lose some of my own friends and comrades, The Big Idea also became a place to remember them, to share stories about the life they breathed into Pittsburgh anarchy.

Stephie was a Big Idea collective member. If you drop by Big Idea and look at the wall above the comfy chair in the corner, you’ll see a black and red flag with an angry cat in the center. That’s Badcastki, that’s Stephie. Her art was subversive; her ideas as dangerous as she was kind. She organized at the intersections of anarchism and mental health during a time when few people in the scene seemed to recognize just how militant you have to be to fight on that front. Badcatski chose to commit suicide on May 5, 2016 at the age of 34. Knowing Stephie, her decision was patient, deliberate, conscious, intentional, necessary. Like all anarchists who have died in the social war, her act can also be remembered as martyrdom. Sometimes during quiet shifts at Big Idea I sit in the comfy chair in the corner, drink coffee from her favorite mug, and understand that she is here. That realization reminds me to take a minute to be honest with myself, to confront my feelings. She reminds me to take care of myself and my friends as if the fate of the movement depends on it—and she’s right, it does.

In acting and learning to act, we find that we can share stories, skills, lessons, memories, tactics, and ideas. We should never be content to just survive, to go through life as a passive spectator in the spaces you inhabit. There’s a difference between life and survival. We are at war. Every decision we make—from where we live and who we live with to what we do for fun and how we do it—might be better understood strategically, and taken with intent.

I often hear stories about the glory days of Pittsburgh anarcho-punk scene and wonder what the fuck happened. Of course, there are still some really good bands and cool spaces, but the reality of the situation is that anarchists and punx don’t really organize much together. It seems that when someone burns out from one scene, they turn to the other.

But if we think our scene(s) are lacking something, that shouldn’t mean we just drop out of them. Instead we might ask ourselves how we could contribute materially, artistically, and sincerely to all the shit that we can’t help but care about.

Why do so many of us find ourselves living in the East End? What would a new anarcho-punk movement look/feel like in Pittsburgh? What are the first steps? Here’s a collection of preliminary answers/thoughts/desires/filler from a few of the kids featured on this comp:

I want to know that my broke ass won’t be turned away by a $10 cover charge at the door, so I guess I could reach out to the promoter and put up a few flyers around town earlier that week.

I want to hit the bagel dumpster before my shift at the Big Idea so the staffers during the rest of that week can eat for free.

I want to know who the harm reduction distro kids are so I can cop more narcan without having to go out of my way.

I want to know what my friends’ basic boundaries are with strangers so I can understand when I’m expected to step up to a jag, when I just let the homie handle it, and when I should just chill out and stop being such a PC cop.

I want to write hyphy reviews on my friends’ bandcamp releases.

I want to learn to make tapes and record music and help my talented friends finally put that album out.

I want to be the designated driver and get my friends to the gig because I know the homies will buy me some merch from the touring band as a thank you.

I want to know that my skill set can help my friends save money (or at least keep it in the solidarity economy) because they won’t be overpaying some capitalist to repair their bike/car/phone/drywall.

I want to film my friends’ protests, shows, music videos, skateboarding—fucking whatever, honestly—cos I know I’m pretty good at making that shit look wayyy harder than it felt at the time, and I like to hype my friends up.

I want to know that my friends won’t judge me when I tell them that I’m in active addiction, again.

I want to start writing again because all my friends love sharing their zines with each other, and because I know they will actually read what I give them and invite me out to talk more about it over a coffee or a few beers.

I want to start going to shows again because I realized most of the people I run into are passionate about the music, the spaces, the ideas, the projects, the food…

I want to know every word to my friend’s band’s songs, and when that drop comes I want to rush to the front of the pit and shout I THINK THERE’S SOMETHING IN THE WATER!

I want to stop buying dumb shit online because I’d rather buy the clothing and furniture and jewelry and patches and art that my friends make, not just because I can save money though! I know that those earrings they made will turn heads.

I want to start tabling again because sometimes there’s honestly nothing hotter than a crew of six dekt queer punx rolling up to an event, nodding to the person running the door, and walking in for free with 3 boxes of zines, a foldout table, a bag of narcan, and a stack of flyers for next week’s show.

I don’t want this shit to feel like a job or duty. I can’t do everything I would like to. And I especially don’t want to have to prove my worth just to feel like I’m allowed show up to an event. I don’t have to do jack shit if I’m not feeling up to it. And I don’t find myself wanting to do this shit for the woke internet posturing, or to climb some scene’s social ladder. Sometimes I just want to throw a beer can across the room, or tag some toy shit on a condo, or toss a U-Lock through a windshield. And I sure as hell don’t feel like justifying that to anyone.

I’m a punk because I’m a fucking nerd. I’ve only ever had like 3 or 4 close friends at a time. I’m constantly cycling through tides of depression, anger, and mania. Most of the time, I feel like I can’t really hang, and so I don’t really go out much, unless it’s to a show or something. Socializing is a lot easier for me if there’s something creative or fun or useful I can bring that might make it easier to talk and connect with people. The lyric sheets I that grew up on told me that punk’s not a fashion show— it’s a fucking way of life. I feel like that punk should mean something more than whatever bullshit it is I find myself doing these days.

Find each other, because the Something we’re waiting for is never going to happen unless we become Something. If each of us acts on our own ideas and desires, a shared perception of our situation is temporarily understood every time we act collectively—every time we create spaces, projects, and experiences together. Which is really just a roundabout way of saying, what you do or don’t do makes all the difference.

It’s time we see ourselves for what we are and have always been: a movement. We’re an international web of relationships, held together by a few DIY spaces, bars, art collectives, bands, distros, niche skillsets, and the mutual aid that arises from common needs and interests, from the experience of building something together: from living communism and spreading anarchy.

Punx and anarchists cannot face down these monied developers alone, but together we can face these faceless profiteers and build something resembling a community in the process. With all the struggles in our own personal lives, the raging fires across the planet and our neighborhoods can seem like someone else’s problem. It feels like we don’t have the strength, the time, or the resources to face these problems, but your own resilience, endurance, and passion can surpass even your most arrogant self-confidence. Now is the time to come together in solidarity. Keep moving, keep fighting.

punx is weapons // punx is small town

– Filler Distro

“East End, the fashionable residence quarter of Pittsburgh, lies basking in the afternoon sun. The broad avenue looks cool and inviting: the stately trees touch their shadows across the carriage road, gently nodding their heads in mutual approval. A steady procession of equipages fills the avenue, the richly caparisoned horses and uniformed flunkies lending color and life to the scene. A cavalcade is passing me. The laughter of the ladies sounds joyous and care-free.

Their happiness irritates me. I am thinking of Homestead. In mind I see the somber fence the fortifications and cannon; the piteous figure of the widow rises before me, the little children weeping, and again I hear the anguished cry of a broken heart, a shattered brain….”

[scam-pgh]

https://scampgh.noblogs.org/

[fillerpgh]

The wild is everywhere, ceaselessly pushing back. All it needs from us is cracks…

and dumpster fires.

Check out our zine archive for a pdf of Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness’s “Rolling Dumpster” - a comic adventure that follows Skip, the dapper yinsurgent dumpster featured in this video.

The domination of capital is total: Every person, object, and machine plays a role from the executives who order the destruction of the world to the waste receptacles that contain its remains…

But if this is so, then every person, object, and machine can reject their functions to become comrades in revolt:

Wrench and worker, dumpster and punk.

https://fillerpgh.wordpress.com/about/

[fillerpgh]

PITTSBURGH: Justice for Mark Daniels

Early Sunday morning, February 11th, Mark Daniels, a black man of the Homewood neighborhood of Pittsburgh, was killed by police.

Early Sunday morning, February 11th, Mark Daniels, a black man of the Homewood neighborhood of Pittsburgh, was killed by police. This is the same city that had to be taken over by the U.S. Justice Department to stem a pattern of civil rights abuses; the same city that paralyzed Leon Ford, that killed Bruce Kelley Jr. The same police department that is facing its second corruption investigation in five years.

The police started stalking Mark after he left a convenience store—why, exactly, the police have yet to say. Then, somebody shot a gun, police allege it was Mark shooting at them, while multiple witnesses in the neighborhood say it was unrelated fire away from the police. Regardless, the police shot Mark in the shoulder and he ran, likely fearing for his life. Mark arrived at the backdoor of a nearby house asking for a glass of water. Police followed him to the backdoor, threw him to the ground, and took him away. A half hour later he was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.

How could this happen? Mark was shot in the shoulder, a serious, but often survivable injury. After running down the block to ask for water, the woman who answered described him as alert and lucid. As the police were dragging Mark away, multiple witnesses say they saw officers beating him relentlessly. Officers contend that they were preforming CPR, but somehow no one seems to have seen this.

No gun was found at the scene, but after two days of putting the neighborhood on lock down and searching it with dogs, police did eventually turn up a .40 caliber hand gun. However, the coroner reports that there was no gun powder residue on Marks hands at the time of his death. And it’s unclear what caliber of gun was fired that night. So what does the discovered gun have to do with Mark?

As of this writing, Mark’s mother has yet to be allowed to view his body.

Mark was a father, a grandfather, a son, a brother, and a friend to many. His absence has left a hole in his community. His family has requested that as many people as possible attend a police accountability meeting to hold the police’s feet to the fire and raise questions.

Thursday, February 15th

Kingsley Center @ 6PM

6435 Frankstown Ave, Pittsburgh

Corporate media coverage:

http://www.wtae.com/article/suspect-shot-killed-by-police-after-chase-in-homewood-south/17011066

http://www.wtae.com/article/witness-speaks-after-fatal-police-involved-shooting/17236928

http://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2018/02/12/Pittsburgh-police-officer-involved-shooting-fatal-Homewood-gun-Mark-Daniels/stories/201802120114

[fillerpgh]

PITT: Gender is Dead!

Nightshade stands in solidarity with the autonomous actors freeing the University of Pittsburgh’s bathrooms from the gender binary.

Statement from the Nightshade Collective

We are queer and trans. Our existence clashes against the gender binary, and its crushing grip which polices our bodies and threatens our safety. The ways that we live—relate to one another, dress, gesture, and dream—are all in inherent subversion to that binary, which seeks to classify, erase, separate, and homogenize us. In turn, we fight for spaces free from gendered expectations, places where we can function and thrive in peace.

These demands are no different than what any person or creature desires: We wish to be ourselves without falling victim to demonization, violence, or death.

Nightshade stands in solidarity with the autonomous actors freeing the University of Pittsburgh’s bathrooms from the gender binary. For years students have been petitioning Pitt to institute consistent and widespread all gender bathrooms. But we lost trust in the University’s ability to protect us long ago—let’s not forget when they allowed Milo on campus, or condoned Pitt police officers beating student protesters (meanwhile continuing to place students in years of crippling student debt), or the countless occurrences where they have neglected acts of sexual and gendered violence on campus. The University seeks to serve itself. Thus what is needed must be taken—not asked for.

All gender bathrooms are needed. Places so overtly reserved for “men” and “women” are unsafe for those of us who do not explicitly pass, or do not identify as such. We take pride in the glorious uniqueness of our bodies, our gender expression and our personal identities. We do not wish to conform to the boring roles broader society assigns to ”men” and “women,” and we see how that order directly upholds patriarchy.

The requirement to assimilate in order to fulfill the basic need of using a public restroom denies us the ability to be safely visible, hence continuing this process of erasure and setting the stage for increased gendered violence on campus. While recent “diversity” measures push professors to ask students for their pronouns, in denying the proposals for all gender bathrooms, Pitt holds the needs of its trans*queer students hostage, and is still an active agent forcing those students to conform to gendered expectations.

We will not be fooled – Pitt is a blatant and knowing enemy in our fight for trans-liberation.

Nightshade beckons the University to respond: Why are you, University officials, holding this basic need of your trans*queer students hostage?

What a shit show it would become if you were denied safe access to bathrooms…

Nightshade supports the autonomous actors taking matters of trans-liberation into their own hands. We should not need to assimilate to normative gender presentations in order to use the bathroom, and we stand against anyone who forces that upon us.

Gender is dead! Trans-queer liberation, not assimilation! All power to the imagination!

- The Nightshade Collective

Separate statement / action, claimed by the “Bathroom Liberation Front - Autonomous Student Network (BSF-ASN)”

“Since gender is dead, it can be hard for some folks to remember which bathroom to use. We’d recommend that in confusing situations where you really have to go, it’s best just to poop on police. Or just use any bathroom, because toilets are for everyone. #ATAG - All Toilets Are Genderless”

[scam-pgh]

To celebrate the release of their new book, From Democracy to Freedom, folks from the CrimethInc. ex-workers collective are on tour. Come out to see them talk when they visit the Steel City. The talk will take place at 7pm The Mr. Roboto Project, Wednesday March 7th, and is co-hosted by The Big Idea Bookstore collective and the Steel City Autonomous Movement.

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1992793380993669/

A brief description of the new work:

Democracy is the most universal political ideal of our day. George Bush invoked it to justify invading Iraq; Obama congratulated the rebels of Tahrir Square for bringing it to Egypt; Occupy Wall Street claimed to have distilled its pure form. From the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the autonomous region of Rojava, practically every government and popular movement calls itself democratic.

And yet it was democracy that brought Donald Trump to power, not to mention Adolf Hitler.

What is democracy, precisely? How can we defend ourselves against democratically-elected tyrants? What is the difference between government and self-determination?

Drawing on the latest book from the CrimethInc. collective, the presenters will explore these questions and more.

Join us for a lively discussion!

[fillerpgh]

Morgantown Anarchists Solidarity Statement For Pitt Student Occupation

While the rivalry on the football field between WVU and Pitt is well known, on the streets we declare our comradely support.

While the rivalry on the football field between WVU and Pitt is well known, on the streets we declare our comradely support. On Tuesday, November 14th a coalition of autonomous students occupied Pitt’s Cathedral of Learning. At the time that we release this document the occupation has been ongoing for 18 hours. Faced with federal, state, city, and university police intimidation, the occupiers face an uphill battle to have a list of 15 demands met.

We call on the university to immediately fulfill the 15 demands as written. We also call on WVU autonomous students and other Morgantown radicals to show solidarity with the occupation and equal commitment to similar goals in our city and campus. Occupations and the fulfillment of the demands are only the first steps in the development of an anti-capitalist struggle. Even after the demands are met, we and our comrades will continue to demand the impossible.

Why are students occupying?

https://fillerpgh.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/forauniversityagainstitself-imposed.pdf

More information on the occupations:

https://www.facebook.com/pittsburghsolidarity/

@morgantownultraleftnetwork

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Towards a Black November at the University of Pittsburgh

We demand a world without police so we can create a world for each other, so we might be able to gather and grow with one another in a less alienating way.

“We occupy in hopes that all students can feel empowered to organize and resist autonomously; in hopes that one day we will occupy the entire University, and finally set it free.”

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PITT: Nightshade Statement on the Murder of Alina Sheykhet

Rest In Power Alina Sheykhet. We give our deepest condolences to Alina’s family, friends and loved ones during this challenging time.

Rest In Power Alina Sheykhet.

We give our deepest condolences to Alina’s family, friends and loved ones during this challenging time.

On the morning of Sunday, October 8th, 2017, Matthew Darby murdered his ex-girlfriend, Alina Sheykhet in her Oakland home, according to District Attorney Stephen Zappala. Sheykhet was a 20-year-old Pitt student studying to become a physical therapist.

Just days before Alina’s death, she stood before a local judge and detailed the ways Matthew had previously abused her. She filed and received a Protection from Abuse order (PFA) against Matthew that day.

Alina complied with state protocols to keep herself safe. And her ex still killed her.

The law said Alina was safe. Yet, her death proves how vulnerable she remained. This contradiction makes clear what many of us already know: the state cannot and will not ever protect women from gender-based violence.

The state has no real interest in protecting women or others of marginalized genders. State apparatuses feed off of the decimation of femininity. State-related institutions like Pitt, where Alina conducted her daily life, actively subordinate women and gender variant employees, professors, workers and students. They do so to ensure that Pitt’s administration and highest paid positions remain dominated by cis-gendered men. Every day, the University shows those of us like Alina, that society is built on gender-based violence – and the institutions need it to stay that way.

The State, the University and their ensuing cultures keep women and those of marginalized genders in a constantly vulnerable position. Alina’s death is a tragic and extreme manifestation of the culture of patriarchal domination that creates daily acts of violence against women and those of marginalized genders.

Even though the state does not protect women, it maintains its power by crafting an image that it does and that it can. When women believe that they must rely on the state for protection, they don’t organize independent and autonomous methods to defend themselves. By uplifting the state as a protector, public opinion criminalizes women and trans folks who act in self defense against gender based violence, as happened in the case of CeCe McDonald. The logic goes: If the state claims it protects women with benevolent laws, any act to defend oneself outside of those laws is too extreme and too aggressive and thus should be seen as criminal and dangerous. Once this mindset is adopted by the public, the state is able to use this logic to incarcerate women and those of marginalized genders whenever they defend themselves against gender based violence.

Thus, the state needs to promote itself as a protector to become a hidden but active aggressor in the war against femininity. In this situation, women and people with marginalized genders have no way to defend themselves against acts of patriarchal supremacy. They can’t rely on the state and they can’t rely on themselves. Suddenly, the state and other individuals who rely on the institutionalized supremacy of cis-men have all the power to enact war on women and those of marginalized genders without fear of opposition.

Alina’s death shows clearly that the state cannot and does not protect women from violence. In efforts to encourage the public to keep trusting in the benevolence of the state, propaganda outlets are scrambling to keep promoting the state as a protector of women. Broadcasts assure the public that pending legislation will tighten the restrictions of PFAs. Articles write about the years of jail-time that Matthew will serve. Yet, more legislation and more jail-time will not solve the ubiquitous patriarchal violence that led to Alina’s death.

Instead, those of us with marginalized gender identities must defend ourselves. The state betrays us, the University betrays us, brothers and fathers betray us, friends who benefit from gender privilege betray us. We can only fight the war against femininity if we fight it ourselves and for ourselves. We must create collectives of women and those of marginalized genders that actively fight against manifestations of patriarchal violence. We must build a counter-culture of care, autonomy and horizontalism, that opposes the University’s production of patriarchal domination. Together, with trusted allies, we must all oppose the idea of the state as any sort of protector.

Let’s not let Alina’s death be in vain. Let’s fight for a world where no woman or person of a marginalized gender must die from gender-based violence.

To support Alina’s family with the unexpected loss and the expenses that come along with it, consider donating here: https://www.gofundme.com/paiges-college-fund-2v8j7u2k

Rest In Power Alina Sheykhet.

– Nightshade Collective October 18, 2017

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****full description posted in event**** Last year on November 17th, students, workers and community members marched together in the streets of Oakland...

Last year on November 17th, shortly after Trump’s election, around fifty students, workers and community members marched together in the streets of Oakland to demand an end to student debt and protest Trump’s election. Together, the group entered and exited Towers Lobby to give a few speeches and sing a song. The group was met by Pitt Police officers who brutally beat, injured and arrested multiple students right outside of their dorms. Many of our friends sustained physical injuries, emotional trauma, and two of them spent the night in jail. Shortly after this incident, Dean of Students Kenyon Bonner released a statement regarding the protest which condoned the acts of the police officers and condemned the student protestors. Since last November, student’s demands for a more just University have routinely been ignored. Our voices have been silenced, student debt has grown, workers are still making poverty wages, and the police are more antagonistic toward student protestors than ever before.

We refuse to let our stories of this day be silenced and replaced by the blatant lies from the University administration. On the one year anniversary of this event, we will gather once again to demand an end to student debt, the rise of fascism on our campus and unfair wages for workers. But this time we must also demand that the Pitt Police be disarmed. We will walk out of class to demonstrate that our classes can not be as important as the safety of our friends and demanding a more just campus and world. We will walk out of class to show that our we can not be educated in an institution that silences the people who make it up. We invite everyone – all the people that make this university our place for learning and growing – to join in this walk out and together we will share a space for our collective visions for making this university a just & safe space that belongs to the people that make it up.

We recognize that the struggle to disarm campus police at the University of Pittsburgh is linked with the necessity of disarming the campus police that murdered queer activist Scout Shultz on Georgia Tech’s campus. We recognize that the policing on our campus is part of the same policing, but in no way equal to or as devastating as the policing that terrorizes and murders innocent people of color every year. We understand that the presence of police on our campus upholds an atmosphere that continuously disregards student safety and is an extension of the violent policing throughout the city of Pittsburgh.

Come out to commemorate this day, and demand that the University disarms campus police & meet the demands of students:

1. That all student workers should be paid a minimum, living wage of $15 an hour. 2. That the University freezes tuition hikes and advocates for federal cancellation of student debt and free tuition. 3. That the University vocally endorses a grad student union. 4.That the University immediately stops spending money, time and resources on union busting tactics, and creating intimidating environments that prevent workers from having free choice 5. That the University divests its financial holdings in fossil fuels. 6. That the University takes a firm stance against private prisons. Any investments or connections between private prison corporations and the University of Pittsburgh should be made transparent, and terminated. 7. That the University declares itself a sanctuary campus and actively works to create spaces where students feel safe. 8. That gender neutral bathrooms are accessible in every campus building. 9. That the University promises a real commitment to diversifying the student body (in class, race, gender/sexuality), investing in cultural organizations, rather than merely advertising itself as diverse institution. 10. That the University prioritizes and provides affordable housing and living for all student tenants (mental health, food security, health insurance) 11. That the University sustainably invests in the interests of the Pittsburgh community, rather than its own interests, or those of the board of trustees. 12. That all campus cops are disarmed and that city cops are banned from campus. 13. That the University commits to increased transparency in its investments, and that students, faculty, staff and alumni know exactly where Pitt’s money is going. 14. That the University commits to switching to renewable energy. 15. That Chancellor Gallagher takes a 10 percent paycut to hike employee pay and a pay cap enforced on all highly paid positions (admin, coaches).

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Polish Hill turf war escalated last week, here’s some info on the fash responsible. #Antifa #pittsburgh anonymous submission, please share!

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PSSC is a SCAM!

We call on students and youth everywhere to join us in bursting the campus bubble.

After a four-year run, our coalition of radical student crews and organizations will be formally dissolved on Wednesday, November 1st. We originally began collaborating because we were sick of wasting our time seeking legitimacy through the dead-end channels provided by the Pitt administration and their police. But as much as we liked to position ourselves as inhabiting a space somewhere outside of Campus Life and its toxic social institutions and useless reformist activism, we now realize that we were merely carving out niche spaces within it.

The Pittsburgh Student Solidarity Coalition is dissolving in order to further decentralize and diversify organizing efforts, and to grant greater socio-political agency to the participating crews and organizations. Despite our best intentions, PSSC became an umbrella organization that assimilated (and sapped energy away from) the independent formations that comprised it. And so rather than continue to work together as a student coalition, we decided to re-prioritize our individual projects, crews, and organizations. But we’re not exactly breaking up! We still want to coordinate projects and share access to media platforms, but the PSSC general assemblies were definitely not the right forum for that.

In centering the student identity and its socio-geographic limitations, we effectively sidelined our non-student friends and comrades and self-isolated our struggles; in imagining ourselves and our scene as somehow being exterior (and superior) to Campus Life, we self-sabotaged our efforts to organize around student issues. As a result, we spent most of our energy organizing according to the artificial relationships and interests imposed by the University, or trying to construct “alternative” scenes with the same building blocks that Campus Life provided. But we cannot hope to build a movement by hopping back and forth between cookie-cutter countercultures, half-ironically adopting the aesthetics and politics of a given scene until we’re left with the choice between complicity in the guise of left unity, socio-political posturing, and dropping off to watch as another scene falls out of fashion. As aspiring truants, we must experiment with all available means of disrupting the routes by which Campus Life follows us into our spaces and relationships. Therefore, we can no longer passively identify with the infantalizing range of behavior and thought permissible to “students.”

Our truancy is oriented against the University as a site of separation – the separation of students from other youth, of students from faculty, of students from community, of education from public life, of the individual from self-identification/determination, of thought from deed. We recognize that we cannot take down the colonial machine without fighting alongside the rest of the city – alongside our friends who cannot afford school, our peers who are getting paid poverty wages by the university, our neighbors who are being pushed from their homes by the rising cost of living.

In collaboration with autonomous radicals from across the city, we decided (in what will hopefully have been our last large-scale consensus decision) to participate in a new coordinating formation, the Steel City Autonomous Movement.

SCAM will utilize a spokescouncil model in order to encourage decentralization. The spokescouncil is a forum for mutual aid and coordination, not a decision-making body. Any individuals, crews, or organizations that have a relationship to the movement will be able to attend spokescouncils, share platforms for communicating and disseminating information, and volunteer to join the infrastructure crew. The infrastructure crew is responsible for bottom-lining at least two spokescouncils every month (one off campus, one on campus), inviting / screening / vouching attendees, throwing social events (public and private), and compiling the weekly event rundowns. Anyone participating in the infrastructure crew is empowered to use the SCAM brand/platform to promote their own events/workshops and endorse events as SCAM, without the need for consensus – SCAM is not an organization, it’s just the name for a specific autonomous forum/platform and therefore can be claimed by anyone that participates in it. The infrastructure crew will meet once a month for a tekmil to ensure shit doesn’t centralize into an organization and that no one’s acting fucked up or some shit.

Our friendships, houses, projects, crews, and organizations could be so much more than an edgier version of Greek Life. So fuck politics. Fuck professionalism. Fuck only building relationships with other students. Fuck living as if we aren’t witnessing the collapse of an empire.

We call on students and youth everywhere to join us in bursting the campus bubble. Let’s use our position as students to scam the University, just as it’s scammed us. Let’s take some time to venture off campus, chill in unfamiliar places, make dangerous friends. Let’s invite Pittsburgh back into Oakland. Let’s become ungovernable.

For an insurgent truancy, – SCAM

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This Week in Solidarity: 9.25 – 10.1

Here’s this week’s rundown of ways to connect with the movement in Pittsburgh!

Here’s this week’s rundown of ways to connect with the movement in Pittsburgh!

Please let us know if there there’s an event that is not listed that you would like us to promote through our Facebook, our blog, our Twitter, and through flyers or email.

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This Week in Solidarity: 9.18 – 9.24

Here’s this week’s rundown of ways to connect with the movement in Pittsburgh!

Here’s this week’s rundown of ways to connect with the movement in Pittsburgh!

Please let us know if there there’s an event that is not listed that you would like us to promote through our Facebook, our blog, our Twitter, and through flyers or email.

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For a University Against Itself

For an education that liberates. For a campus culture that terrifies Pitt’s board of trustees. For a campus that celebrates life.

Our material environment arranges life into a procession of neat little rituals. All that is possible or desirable is administered according to the routines built into Campus Life.

No one is quite sure why the lobby of Litchfield Towers is first and foremost a place to glide through in passing, to dodge the solicitations of student clubs, or to purchase coffee. Nor is there much reason to question such fixtures of everyday life; these structures are simply taken for granted as part of our unspoken consensus on reality.

And who really even gives a shit in the first place?

Well, try using a university space for even slightly different purposes and you’ll find out pretty quickly. After all, there are people whose paychecks are predicated on having to give so many shits that they will physically retaliate against any breach in routine. But uniforms are easy targets, rhetorically speaking. The relations encoded in the blueprints of the places they are paid to defend, on the other hand, are what reproduce normalcy.

For an education that liberates. For a classroom that no longer spectates. For house parties where Pitt students, workers, and faculty can throw down together. For a campus culture that terrifies Pitt’s board of trustees. For a campus that celebrates life.

For a University Against Itself 

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This Week in Solidarity: 9.9 – 9.17

Here’s this week’s rundown of ways to connect with the movement in Pittsburgh!

Here’s this week’s rundown of ways to connect with the movement in Pittsburgh!

Please let us know if there there’s an event that is not listed that you would like us to promote through our Facebook, our blog, our Twitter, and through flyers or email.