F17 Tucson: Strike Is a Verb!

No Pipelines or Presidents on Stolen Land. Or Anywhere.

For a World Without Borders, Prisons, or Police.

                    To be sure, No Ban – No Wall.

Always Anti-Capitalist, Always Anti-Fascist,

                     Rowdy As Hell.

In response to the call for a national general strike on February 17th, a group of autonomous rebels hope to open up space for resistance here on occupied Tohono O’odham land, Tucson, Arizona.

Meeting at 6PM at the Ronstadt Transit Center downtown, we will gather with the intention of being as disruptive as possible. In order to not be complicit in the continued destruction of the earth, in the cycle of genocide and fear mongering and racist hate, we have to choose to disobey. We must make it impossible for this system to govern on stolen land.

Participants are encouraged to come organized to carry out whatever plans you can come up with – our intention is to open up a space to make varied forms of resistance possible depending on YOUR desires! Anyone without the capacity or desire to come with a prepared group is, of course, absolutely welcome and encouraged to show up! Some resources on organizing affinity groups to carry out actions in the safest and most effective ways possible can be found here and here.

The national call is for varied forms of action in response to the series of executive orders from the Trump administration, particularly the travel ban targeting Muslims, the expansion of border enforcement infrastructure both in the borderlands and the interior of the country, and the continuation of construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline on Standing Rock Sioux land. Locally, we’ve seen and struggled against these and similar policies for some time, from the desert to our neighborhoods, from the San Francisco Peaks to Moadag Thadiwa. We value and honor these struggles while aiming also to dismantle the entire system of domination from which these specific projects arise.

From our perspective, in the current context in this country, the notion of a general strike does not revolve primarily around withholding our labor from our workplaces (if we even have one), as much as a more general refusal of the dominant social order and attempts to disrupt the circulation networks that colonial capitalism needs in order to run.

This approach to the general strike is informed in part by our own experiences as non-union, precarious, and/or unlawful workers, as well as by the experiment of the 2011 Oakland General Strike and port shutdown which centered the disruption of capitalist infrastructure as a strategy of attack in this moment. More recently, but in the same spirit, we find inspiration in the numerous railroad blockades as part of the NoDAPL struggle, from North Dakota to Atlanta to Olympia and beyond, including efforts right here in Chukson and just south of us in Nogales. The most rebellious moments of the Black Lives Matter movement and related insurgencies against the police also point towards a strategy of widespread disruption and conflict against white supremacy and the police who violently maintain it, both institutionally and as individual officers. (Consider locally that Tucson ranked 10th nationally in the number of people murdered by law enforcement in 2016.)

All this is to say, to strike is to disrupt in whatever ways we can, the smooth functioning of the systems of domination we find ourselves surrounded by. This can be a railroad blockaded, a freeway shut down, a police vehicle overturned, a neighborhood barricaded to prevent ICE or BP from so much as entering, a caregivers’ strike, or a baseball bat to a klansman or rapist’s kneecap.

We echo some distant accomplices when we say,

                     BE THE FIST YOU WANT TO SEE IN A FASCIST’S FACE.

At the same time that we seek to disrupt and resist the oppressions we face we also hope to find one another to better build strong networks of care and support for one another. These efforts to both attack and defend, destroy and build, are part of the same movement toward real liberation and freedom.

But yes, we intend to aim for disruption. That said, we sincerely want, and believe it is possible, to open up such rebellious and uncontrollable spaces in which the crucial presence and participation of the most severely targeted individuals and communities is feasible. There will be people present who will do our best to actively and physically defend anyone targeted by either the police or by non-state enemies of freedom. Those on a similar page are encouraged to wear black, cover your faces, and if possible, come prepared with friends in an organized way. But no pressure!

This sort of mutual aid and collective self-defense while in open rebellion seems to us to be a promising way to move forward toward real liberation in the current context. The “legitimate” social and political structures have nothing to offer but further immiseration, despair and control. Together, we can fight back and begin to experiment with ways of organizing our own lives together.

From below and off of the fence,

– some ambitious and very, very serious anarchists