#autonomous zone

[noneedtofearorhope]

so there weren't many images of mother anarchy, but there was, uh, this

[rustbeltjessie]

Things I found while packing:

A multi-show review of the Midnight Creeps, from some zine or other. (Maximumrocknroll? Razorcake? IDK.) Anyway, I fuckin loved that band, and I saw them at that show at The Sidebar in Baltimore, c. early 2002.

Program from Ladyfest Lansing, c. spring 2002.

A show flyer for some rad bands (The Coughs!), c. 2002 or 2003.

A flyer for The Pink Bloque (a radical cheerleading squad) at the TABD protest in Chicago, c. November 2002 / a flyer for a vegan chili cook-off at the Autonomous Zone, c. 2002-2003.

A Fuck Your Gender sticker. (Honestly, yeah.)

Some more stuff that was part of my whole-wall collage, c. 2001-2003–A Sex Pistols/Anarchy in the U.K. postcard, the iconic Pennie Smith photograph of Paul Simonon of The Clash, a Rollins Band sticker, and some punkish blokes having tea from some fashion mag or other.

An envelope full of a friend’s hair, c. 2004. (There’s nothing written on it, but I know who and when it’s from just because of the color.)

A Delirium Tremens coaster with a note written on it: Jessica is the sexiest DJ EVER. I want to have 1 million of her punk rock babies—FOR DINNER!! (This would be a note from a girl I was seeing at the time, c. the first time I DJed on Punk Rock Monday at Delilah’s, April 2004.)

[lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers]

Update from the capitol hill autonomous zone in Seattle.

[radicalgraff]

“Let a thousand autonomous zones bloom”

Seen in Chicago, Illinois

[anarchopuppy]

Seattle Park Barricaded Against Potential Sweep; Vacant Buildings Occupied - It's Going Down

A proposed sweep by law enforcement of Cal Anderson Park in Seattle, Washington was halted Wednesday, at least for the time being, as those living in the park erected barricades and occupied a vacant house on the Northeast corner of the park. Many of those living in the park have done so since the end of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone/Capitol Hill Organized Protest earlier this summer and the park has remained a focal point for ongoing protests and mutual aid efforts that have continued since the start of the George Floyd rebellion in May of this year.

This is not the first time that police have attempted to evict those living in the park. In September, police repeatedly attempted to clear Cal Anderson, after those living in the area opened up one of the vacant buildings found on the grounds and turned it into a mutual aid center. Those pushed out by the police simply reconvened back at the park, and the encampment continued. Currently, City of Seattle is also being sued by “a woman who ha[s] been living in the park since the summer” and who has “filed a civil rights complaint in U.S. District Court in Seattle to stop the removal.” While the outcome of this lawsuit remains to be seen, it may legally delay the eviction on the ground.

In response to threats by law enforcement to raid the encampment and evict those living there, people fortified barricades and during Wednesday’s defense of the park, once again re-opened the vacant “Shelter House” building; the same space that was re-opened in September, so the area could be utilized for the distribution of mutual aid supplies. Mutual aid stations were also set up throughout the park, as was free food. Meanwhile, on the Northeast corner of the park, the home that had been occupied earlier in the day also remains open and people continue to stop by and say hello.

Despite what has been reported widely in some press, interactions with neighbors have been mainly positive, and in general people involved in the encampment have done their best to pick up trash and help keep the space clean. While the city at times has attempted to paint the encampment as a potential COVID-19 hot-spot, in reality its drive to evict those at Cal Anderson Park is based more around their desire to stamp out the last vestiges of the CHAZ/CHOP and push an increasingly militant encampment that refuses to budge, from the area.

While the future of the encampment at Cal Anderson Park remains unknown, those currently building barricades have no intention of leaving anytime soon.

Read more...

If you live in the area, please pay them a visit! More physical presence helps deter sweeps!

[listenthreetimes]

I welcome you to Free Cap Hill, CHAZ, the autonomous zone of Seattle. I went at two different points yesterday to shoot 35mm film (to be developed whenever my shop reopens), watch the murals be painted (a homie did the T’s!), and later in the evening I volunteered to do boom sound for some interviews and independent media documentation of the beauty happening here. Welcome to my Seattle. I live just over a mile south. This is my city. These are my streets. Watching the community come together like this is the most beautiful thing I have seen since I moved here. Community gardens springing up, art, people showed up and assembled a basketball hoop, food food food, supplies, medical tents, bathrooms, it is truly amazing. Wow.

[ilfaitdusoleil]

Swung by to see the “Autonomous Zone” this evening

[rosarenn]

All things are ephemeral

I've been thinking a lot about the illusion of certainty and the way it holds us back from achieving great things.

There's this idea that if something is temporary, transient, that it isn't worth putting any effort into. That something is only worth your time if it endures, if it's permanent. That the investment must be followed by a payoff or why bother.

I am very much talking out of my own experience here, as a white settler/colonizer raised in a more or less middle class family. I know my experience is not universal, and I am still going to talk about "we" and "us" because I want to include myself in this group, and I'm noticing a pattern that I want to talk about. If you have never experienced certainty, or are in a stable position for the first time in your life, this is probably not about you, for example. Take what you need and compost the rest.

I'm reading Nine-Tenths of the Law: Property and Resistance in the United States by Hannah Dobbz, which discusses squatting in the US. One of the themes that comes up over an over again is the idea that because a squat is temporary, because the police could kick you out at any moment, because you don't have ownership or equity or any kind of title on your side and you could lose everything in a moment's notice, that it doesn't make any sense to improve the home you're living in. That the work would be wasted, and who wants to work their ass off and not reap the benefits? Why would you bother?

And this, to me, is so incredibly short-sighted, and represents an internalization of the logic of capitalism. Why would you bother? Because you are fucking living there. You're living there, you're passing your limited time on this planet in this space, and why would you live in a dump if you don't have to, if you don't like living in a dump, if you would feel better, be happier, enjoy your time there just a little bit more than if you didn't clean it up. It's the same reason I've painted countless rental apartments - even though I don't know how long I'll be there, while I'm there I eventually get sick at looking at plain white walls. It's why I'm planning to paint a mural in my rental apartment - it will bring me daily joy for as long as I am here. It's why I decorated my office when I still had an office. Because if this is where I am passing my time, I want it to be a little more pleasant.

We've so internalized the logic of the state and the market that we have this illusion that home-owning provides certainty, that it makes sense to invest in a home you own because it can't be taken away at a moment's notice. But it's a lie. The bank could repossess your home. The sewer could back up. A flood or a wildfire could make your home vanish in a moment. With climate change these events are only going to increase in frequency, as will the unrest and failed states and all the other forms of violent dispossession that that entails. The entire stock market could blow itself to pieces tomorrow, the currency we've all agreed to use could become worthless pieces of paper, anything can happen. I could die tomorrow. I could die today. There is no certainty, any where, ever. Anything I work for could be for nothing - nothing except for what I make of it here and now. I want to live before I die.

I think about the way I've been indoctrinated to delay gratification to the extreme. That's what the promise of capitalism to the middle class is, after all. Work tirelessly for all of your productive years, save your coins prudently, invest them in the stock market for the future and never take out your principle because compound interest is magic and you'd be a fool to forego that sweet, sweet "free" interest income. And then, and only then, you can retire for a few years and live a tiny sliver of your life free from the constant grind of daily waged labour. If someone is not able to make ends meet, I was taught, it's because they are too loose with their spending, they aren't able to delay gratification long enough for the real payout, the poor dears. Scrupulously saving, denying ourselves the momentary joys of right now in order to chase a possible future prosperity, is positioned as a moral good.

Of course this is a lie, and a terrible way to live (even as it is incredibly privileged). I lived this way for years and I'm only now beginning to come to terms with it. There's so much grief there. How much did I miss out on? Think of all the joy, vitality, and the things that make life worth living that I denied myself - and for what? To chase certainty in the future, because I couldn't accept the ephemerality of today.

There's a delicate balance needed here, of course. There's an argument to be made that what we need is more delayed gratification, not less. The constant churning consumption, the endless extraction from the earth and our bodies, putting today's profits ahead of tomorrow's, or even above the survival of our own children - these are features of capitalism and they are destroying us.

But they need to sell us this lie, that if we work hard today we can be happy tomorrow, to keep us working. Because if we truly looked at horrors of this reality, if we truly knew in our bones that everything we have today could be gone tomorrow, that everything in life is fleeting - would you still go to work, day after day after day? I know I sure wouldn't. Even though I don't know what I would do to survive instead. Even though stepping into that unknown is terrifying. Even though I have no answers, I would have to take that leap.

I think, too, about the way I sometimes see people talk about revolution - and I include myself in this group. That until we are ready to make a global revolution, until we are all but guaranteed success, until the moment we reach critical mass, all we can do is wait. Maybe we agitate, maybe we form unions and organizations and try to spread the word, but until success is certain we can't act, not truly. I see this more in communist circles than in anarchist ones, and it was especially present in the critiques of the temporary autonomous zones that popped up in the midst of last summer's uprisings - they would never succeed, they would be quickly dismantled, and thus were doomed to failure and shouldn't even be attempted. As if there was no value in the experiences, however fleeting. As if the way we live our lives is irrelevant. As if a thing bringing you joy is not enough justification in itself.

Even though I skew more towards anarchism, I can still feel this attitude infecting my own thinking. I don't want to try to unionize my workplace because it will fail and I'll get fired and it won't matter, really, anyways. I don't want to talk openly about my politics when I know people don't agree with me, because what's the point when I already know I can't change their minds. What's the point of guerrilla gardening when the city can just come by with a weed whacker and destroy our labour. So on and so on ad nauseum, every endeavour doomed to be temporary and thus, automatically, a failure.

I think of my friend who spent the past two summers building up an incredible garden, who now has to move, suddenly, before the end of the growing season. My first reaction was that it was such a waste, that she had put in so much effort and time and money and now wouldn't even be there to collect the final harvest, that it would be better if she hadn't done the planting, somehow. As if she hasn't taken immense pleasure and pride in her garden for the past two years. As if she hasn't harvested throughout the whole summer. As if the harvest she planted suddenly winks out of existence if the benefits go to someone other than her. As if this somehow invalidates everything that came before. But this line of thinking is horseshit. Someone will still eat those vegetables. If nothing else, the birds and the beasties will love eating what she has grown. She learned so much and will be able to carry that knowledge forward with her. On and on, there was great value in this venture even if she will not be there to reap every last piece of the harvest. And if it wasn't a sudden move, it could have been a drought, or a violent storm, or an infestation, or theft. Or or or. The possibilities are endless, results are never guaranteed, and if we are only working to achieve an ends, we might need to take a good long look at what we're up to.

I wonder if the roots of this ideology stretch all the way back to the agricultural revolution. Ephemerality would have been the day to day lived experience of hunter-gatherers. Here today, gone tomorrow, pick the berries now, while they're ripe and before the birds get them. But agriculture? Prepare the field, plant the seeds, water, tend, wait. wait. wait. then finally harvest. Finally finally your labour has paid off and you can eat. Careful though because there won't be another harvest until next year, so be careful, ration, wait. Would you plant the field if you didn't know if you'd be around to harvest it? That's a tough sell, for sure.

I think of flatwormposting, on instagram, who announced suddenly that they would delete their account today. That they felt like they had accomplished what they wanted to accomplish, that they were complete, and ready to move on. The immediate response, of course, was no, don't go, or if you must go, please don't delete the account. Leave it up, to sit in perpetuity, an archive of your work and legacy. Please, you did good work, please let us keep it. As if deleting their account deletes their work. As if they won't carry it forward with them. As if people who interacted with the account while it was up weren't changed in some small way. As if a thing that is temporary - which is all things - is somehow less important than a permanent thing.

And their response was simply, all things are ephemeral. All things are ephemeral, everything could be gone tomorrow. If they didn't delete this account, instagram could. A hacker could take it. Nothing is certain, everything is a constant renegotiation. Given that, what now?

What now? How do we want to live before we die? What choices might we make if nothing was certain? What risks would we take? How would we live our lives if we knew, deeply, truly, in an embodied way, that another world is possible, as the Nap Bishop constantly reminds us? That the continuation of this one as it is, that the status quo is not and has never been certain? That each day we wake up we make this world again, and we could simply chose to make it differently, to paraphrase David Graeber. If we no longer privileged that which is over that which could be. If we no longer held onto the illusion of certainty and control and permanence.

All things are ephemeral. What now?