Zine available for view on the zines page. read/print.
Submitted Anonymously
Category: ANALYSIS
UChi reportback…it’s looking like NU 2.0
Uchi’s encampment has been very disappointing. For starters, the community agreements are not community agreements. They are rules. One silly thing that they have decided for the quad is that no one can smoke or vape when it’s the norm. They have also decided to declare that people will not engage with any form of authority while they behave as such. Organizers and marshals have formed an internal divide within the encampment. On day one of the encampment, members decided to take down the israeli multi-flag display, and marshals chased them down and took pictures of them. It says on the community “agreements” that people are not supposed to take pictures of others without consent. Does that only apply to people who do what they say? Zionists eventually put them back up with UCPD guards. If marshals are supposed to “keep the camp safe,” wouldn’t it have been a great time to block them from taking the flags down?
It was stated that the unnecessary dichotomy between students and non-students is irrelevant and would not be applied here. However, undergraduate organizers have been silencing grad students, community members, and other radical individuals who came to support the cause. They say that they want people to escalate for Gaza. They don’t.
It was decided on day two that people could build certain kinds of barricades. When individuals decided to autonomously move the art installation a little to the left and stop people from walking within the encampment as if it ceases to exist, FJP came over. They policed and asserted respectability politics. They expressed worry about people walking through the flowers. As if they are not making that choice! As if people do not have free will! As if it is not a decision of the self! To blame community members for the actions of one is a pattern that has happened within this encampment. They expressed that they (they said “we” but there is no we here) want to lessen escalation, and we don’t want the university to retaliate against the camp.” This is not how the majority of the camp feels. The organizers agree with the faculty, as they have cemented the same points towards encampment members. The word autonomy has been abused tremendously within the last couple of days. Marshals have told people they can do things and they support autonomous action, but “we should all have a meeting about something before acting.” Organizers have said that autonomous actions need to be a group decision, autonomous actions are okay, and people want to escalate. But, individuals have to “assess the risk it causes the group.” People should “think about the safety of the group.” This is one example of how infantilizing yellow vests and organizers have been. This presumption that people taking autonomous action have no regard for the rest of the group is fatuous. The people escalating and taking autonomous action are thinking about the group. They are thinking about how to support the group with a diversity of tactics.
Autonomous actions do not happen after a “group meeting.” It seems like people do not understand what autonomy means. Autonomous actions do not need a damn coordinating meeting and a schedule. They happen whenever and wherever someone feels comfortable. Mind your business, and you’ll be fine. It feels like the organizers want this encampment for clout-chasing purposes instead of standing with people who deserve liberation. They do not want individuals who know what they are doing to spread their knowledge base throughout the camp. This could be a learning experience for all, but they are halting this educational process.
Another form of infantilization is the infantilization of Black people. Certain individuals within the camp have been advising people not to escalate because “there are Black people here.” They have expressed that people should not escalate because what if Black people get hurt?” “What if brown people get hurt?” They are not thinking about how historically Black people have escalated as a community. This is the same bullshit that happened in 2020. When Black people did what they autonomously wanted, white marshals and non-black organizers would try to shut shit down under the guise of protection. An organizer at the camp called a Black person antagonistic just for speaking to her about her actions. Community members should be able to converse with organizers without anti-black language thrown in their faces.
Back to autonomous actions being shut down, there are zine tables distributing different kinds of materials. People are passing out flyers, zines, and stickers all around the camp. One table was approached by marshals and was asked to leave because someone painted “Escalate for Gaza” in a breezeway and circled one of the As in an anarchist fashion. The autonomous table was told that they should leave because, obviously, this table did it because they’ve been distributing anarchist media. This particular table is not a collective or an organization. It has been random people holding the table down and putting out tactile information that has frustrated certain marshals. They want to act as if this is a decentralized community while forcing hierarchy upon others. Not all of the marshals wanted people to leave, but the sheer fact that people felt like it was okay to accuse others of illicit acts outside the camp is not cool. People around them did not want them to leave, and this is another instance of the internal divide, with marshals saying that they’re protecting the camp but choosing peace police instead. They say that they want to protect the camp, but they want everyone to focus on the respectability politics that they have encouraged. “We don’t want to look bad. We don’t want to give the university justification to shut us down.” The encampment already looks bad. The encampment is already antagonistic. These respectability politics help no one. It may give organizers and marshals peace of mind for everyone to contain their anger against the state by exhibiting passive behavior, but that’s not what everyone’s okay with.
This is the south side of Chicago. You can tell who has left the UChi bubble and who hasn’t. People are going to do what they want. Shit is going to go down here this summer. When students leave, UCPD does not. They continue to police and harass the south side. On day two, the police were attending to something outside of the camp. Someone on the megaphone decided to alert people to not worry after individuals went to check it out and exclaimed, “It has nothing to do with us.” This is NOT true. It has everything to do with UChicago. UChicago is the reason why UCPD exists. This is a gentrified neighborhood because of this filthy campus. These rich kids and out-of-state attendees are part of the reason the south side is so policed. Anytime UCPD harasses somebody within the boundaries of Hyde Park and the surrounding neighborhoods, it is a student’s problem. UChi students need to hold themselves accountable for their sheer presence and understand the privilege that they have. The amount of displacement that the university has assisted with is disgusting. This encampment should be for everyone. This encampment should challenge the university to hold itself accountable for not only helping out with genocide but also the destruction and displacement of racialized people everywhere. They have helped displace people in Gaza and on the south side of Chicago.
Indigenous liberation includes Black people. Indigenous liberation is about embracing autonomy. Indigenous liberation cannot happen with white supremacist values. Indigenous liberation when others are trying to force respectability politics down the throats of radicals. This is bigger than the atrocious deaths of Hind and Refaat. The true radicals in this camp will not be silenced. We will continue to dissent. Escalate for Gaza. Give Palestine back to the Palestinian people. End the invasion now. Fuck a ceasefire! End the IDF and for the love of everything on this planet, BLOC UP!
Submitted Anonymously
Taking Deals and Selling Out: NU Organizers Betray The Movement
In a fantastic act of cowardice, a small handful of organizers from the Northwestern Occupation/Liberated Zone negotiated an agreement with the university’s administration to take down tents and scale down the protest. Here’s what happened, why it sucks ass, and what to do now:
On April 26, a team of self-appointed leaders met with NU administration. Less than fifty hours after the protest began, this group accepted the following concessions:
– Protests becoming authorized/normalized, i.e. agreeing not to send police
– Considering establishing a MENA/Muslim center on campus
– Looking into ending contracts with Starbucks and Sabra
– Starting a Gaza exchange student program
– Holding more meetings with the board of trustees and promising student representation in overseeing the endowment
All these empty gestures and backhanded bribes for the high price of the campus movement itself. The administration’s demands were the following:
– De-escalating and visibly reducing the encampment, which at its peak drew about 2,000 people and had more than 80 tents.
– Non-students can no longer sleep over or camp.
– Establishing “quiet hours” so that the encampment is not disruptive to the university.
The strategic flaws in these proposals are obvious to anyone who cares to look. Organizers of this defanged occupation have compromised the agency and autonomy of those they invited as supporters – while happily taking credit for their labor. Students acquired and coordinated supplies thinking they would be occupying the space for as long as it took to divest from apartheid. Protesters self-organized resources like a medic tent, zine table, art station, and more. While hundreds of people worked tirelessly to support the encampment, this tiny group of organizers conspired to fight for crumbs. Obsessed with a pre-existing narrative of how the occupation should unfold, they repeatedly took down parts of the camp going so far as to physically dismantle other people’s tents without their consent. It’s clear that they weren’t basing their actions on what it would take for the university to divest. Instead, these organizers made plans to negotiate the end of the encampment before it even began. They never intended to win.
What is more unnerving still is the lack of transparency around these agreements. Organizers have repeatedly withheld critical information about their negotiations from the rest of the occupation.
While there have been many students involved in planning efforts, it seems like only a small adhoc committee ever wanted and consented to these new terms. On the other hand, voices of dissent inside and outside meetings encouraged organizers not to yield. In fact, it is hard to tell who even wants this deal at the moment since decisions have been kept mostly under wraps. The broader community often only hears requests for support. How might people have reconsidered their involvement if they knew the truth about these backroom deals? How is any of this different from the way the administration treats its students, as dollar signs, bodies to be herded with no decision-making power?
The irony of these extractive requests is twofold. First, the occupation would not have survived it’s first morning without the brave students, faculty, and community members who ignored orders to stand down in front of cops. Meanwhile, the negotiators and marshals routinely overemphasized the risk of arrest and spread unnecessary fear. For example, when police threatened citations for trespassing and unlawful assembly, marshals communicated that arrests were imminent. While it is true that bigger charges are always a risk, a citation is as serious as a parking ticket, and in mass arrest situations charges are frequently dropped.
Nevertheless, people stood their ground and formed defensive lines to resist the cops. The university police were totally unprepared for this response. They were outnumbered, surrounded and pushed back and forth. These weak-ass cop maneuvers show us that protesters could have done so much more. Instead, whenever individuals acted autonomously, the yellow-vests came in and policed their actions.
The second, most obscene, irony is that the supplies and money that have poured into the occupation could have been better spent helping families get out of Gaza or supporting efforts to give direct aid to Palestinians. It’s simply embarrassing how much attention this protest has gotten for how limited its ambitions have become.
So what can be done?
Northwestern doesn’t need new leaders or a different negotiation team. What this fight needs is action. If you’re reading this and you’re feeling disappointed, pissed-off, confused – you’re not alone. It doesn’t have to be over. There’s still time to turn this around. You came to this protest because you wanted to do something to stop the genocide in Gaza, for a free Palestine. Think about what it will take. What will make the administration recognize our collective power and tremble? How can you jeopardize their money, time, reputation or anything else they actually care about? If you’ve got an idea for something you want to do, get a crew together and do it! You can carry out any number of actions like barricading buildings, scaling roofs, interrupting meetings, chasing off cops, re-decorating campus, or showing up at the homes of administration members. Not only do you already have the numbers, when people see what you’re up to more of them will join. Just remember: keep yourself and your friends safe, cover your face and identifiable features, don’t bring your phone, don’t brag or talk about what you do. You’ve got this!
Submitted Anonymously
Let’s Talk About Anarchy
the activist, the organizer, the temporary roles and identities thrown on in the heat of the moment, they’re all a plague. they stare starry-eyed at the potential for revolution while evading that threshold and invent ways of keeping “the organized” from crossing it themselves. what often holds social eruption at bay isn’t the state per se but the gutlessness of the politically savvy shouting revolutionary slogans from behind megaphones and banners paid for by hedge funds. fraudulent fronts of the university-educated, in fear of their own downward mobility, corral the blossoming anger of The Community and shovel it into campaigns and movements that ultimately lead to polling booths and job opportunities. victory is quantitative, measured by crowds and tempered by funding. these are the essentials of the activist method. direct action, insurrection, social war, these are all questions of method for the anarchist, and what sometimes gets misconstrued as anarchist method is actually easily controllable political activism that cannot, by it’s very nature, deliver us from civil society. the sit-in, the die-in, petitions, phone banks, door knocking, longwinded egomaniacal speeches before the march to nowhere, voting. civil in nature and never threatening to the social order. the activist is always down to plan the next protest without considering the near futility of it all, just to say they’re “doing something”. in attempting to change the world one often neglects to change themselves. *really* change themselves. politics becomes a new wardrobe to try on for a brief period before abandoning it for more familiar clothes: a house, a career, and the nuclear family. the necessary break from “straight life” never happens. and as quiet as it’s kept, many anarchists don’t experience that break, either.
amongst the social anarchists there’s always chatter about the action or the demo, but what largely goes undiscussed are anarchist ideas and anarchist desires, our cosmic make up, what must be understood *first* in order to experiment with truly freeing ways of being in the world. how we get there is a fair but useless question to ask if we can’t talk about where “there” is and what it consists of. while we should be cautious of incessant talk of efficacy and logistics (insurrections aren’t built upon the brains of military commanders nor on the backs of a self-appointed vanguard doing The People’s fighting for them), we should balk at those determined to never even express their ideas. those hungry for armed struggle but tongue tied about their desires are never comrades for long because, eventually, straight life (or marxist-leninism) calls them home.
so let’s actually talk about anarchy, the beautiful idea.
the emancipation of all from the strictures of mass social organization, economy and governance. liberation from total domination. propulsion toward a life without measure.
an almost 231 year old philosophical tradition that’s, for some, just another way to flirt with activism, and for others is what can best be described as a pure yearning for absolute freedom. how any of us arrived to this place is wide and varied and celebrated. the variety of perspectives is what makes the anarchist space so vibrant. 100 definitions per 100 anarchists is vital because it’s how we renew our ideas and avoid becoming staid and conservative. anarchy is not a rigid political program but a lifeway that should be put into practice at every opportunity. anarchism is that practice. the anarchist that practitioner. “nobody is free until we’re all free,” truly but, in the here and now, we must experiment with what our freedom can look like in the event we ever clasp our hands around it, and we cannot begin to experiment until we are able to articulate it.
so then let’s talk about actual anarchy.
this is not about the stone or the bomb. it’s about understanding what total refusal of authority means and how it further shapes our ideas and desires, which should then define our activity. it’s about starving for new ways to relate to one another, ourselves, and the earth; actual affinity. it’s about our principles, no longer the faint glimmers of a mirage racing a setting sun but that which becomes the sun itself. it’s what ushers us out of the shadows of daily life and into direct, meaningful conflict with it’s commodification. to fight against the capture and massification of the individual without sanctifying the hideous, alienated rendering of that individual under capitalism. where ‘we’ and ‘me’ are neither dialectical nor in contradistinction. this is about completely severing the imagined ties between the activist, the organizer, and the politician, and the anarchist. this is lines drawn between the liberal doldrums of the abolitionist and the impatient clamoring of the insurrectionist. it’s about denying the snails pace of the civil and political and embracing a chaotic immediacy lest the sun burn itself out and leave us in the cold grips of an authority we fight tooth and nail to destroy.
the activists will flounder and die when their movements lose steam and they run out of acolytes. in these instances it’s not up to the anarchists to sweep all of their refuse into our camp by smoothing our edges to seem appealing. soon enough, we will meet those that desire a break from the domination of the world we know, and from there we can begin to experiment, not only with what, but with how it means to be free.
– some anarchists