Report from A15 at the Port of Olympia

Report on solidarity blockade on April 15th in Olympia, WA. For a full roundup of actions, go here.

An international call went out for a coordinated economic blockade for a free Palestine [1] for April 15th. While many people probably decided to go north to Seattle, where they blockaded the Sea-Tac [2] international airport, a small group of us got together and decided to plan what we could to here in Olympia. It’s cool and important to go support other cities actions, but we also gotta fight on our turf because no one else will.

About 25 of us met up in Heritage park, we had 4 large banners, some Palestinian and black flags, buckets that were used as drums and a wagon filled with water and snacks. We also had a couple hundred print outs of the A15 statement and solidarity agreement which read as follows:

The proposal states that in each city, we will identify and blockade major choke points in the economy, focusing on points of production and circulation with the aim of causing the most economic impact, as did the port shutdowns in recent months in Oakland, California and Melbourne, Australia, as just a few examples.

There is a sense in the streets in this recent and unprecedented movement for Palestine that escalation has become necessary: there is a need to shift from symbolic actions to those that cause pain to the economy.

As Yemen is bombed to secure global trade, and billions of dollars are sent to the Zionist war machine, we must recognize that the global economy is complicit in genocide and together we will coordinate to disrupt and blockade economic logistical hubs and the flow of capital.

We will act in solidarity with each other in the face of attacks from the media, politicians and the police and the Zionist project. We will support each other in the following ways:

If one city faces police repression, other cities will extend or expand their blockades or initiate other actions in response if able to the best of their abilities and capacity

We will not attack each other or each other’s actions on social media or to the press. We will hold a post-action debrief so that we can raise principled critiques among ourselves in a constructive manner rather than publicly.

Every city will take responsibility for choosing and planning their own local actions. Fellow organizers will not discourage or denounce each others plans because solidarity means affinity, not ownership.

We will keep each other safe by not talking to the police, not coordinating with the police, and not talking to them about our actions or our fellow organizers.

We circled up and took turns reading from the statement. After this people started chanting and with good energy took the streets. We snaked through downtown at a steady pace – not too fast, not too slow – chanting while people banged out a steady beat on the drums. We headed off to the Port of Olympia and on the way some logs joined our procession.

We got to the main gate, formed a line blocking the entrance with ourselves and the logs and whatever else we could drag with us. Immediately port security and workers got physical with us and tried to push us out of the road, but people held strong, didn’t let each other get pushed around and did it joyously while laughing in their faces. Eventually they fucked off and when they did half the group split a little down the ways to go block the only other entrance for trucks.

We held both entrances for about an hour and a half and for the most part it was incredibly chill! Towards the end the second blockade started getting more trucks and vehicles trying to drive through them and while they won a couple games of chicken with vehicles, port security and workers began going up to the truck drivers and encouraging them to run over people. People decided to come consolidate back on the main entrance and we held that for another hour and a half before deciding to disperse.

In that time some people came and dropped off pizza for us, someone who was walking by stopped to talk to us about their experiences blocking the very same gate back in 2007 during Port Militarization Resistance to stop the shipping of military vehicles through the port – which succeeded! An old lady walked by, gave us some words of support and then handed one of us $20 which was really funny. And we intensely pissed off the owners of Dancing Goats Coffee because we wouldn’t let their car through and they had a really funny melt down over it even though they could have just parked somewhere else and walked in.

Dispersal was pretty clean and easy and there have been no arrests. Overall and despite everything it was just really fun and surprisingly easy.

WHY THE PORT? WHY A BLOCKADE?

What does the Port of Olympia have to do with the genocide of the Palestinian people? Nothing, but also everything. Every facet of american society and its economy is a cog in the genocide machine. All income tax, sales tax, property tax, industry taxes, etc eventually go to the war machine. A healthy economy supports the war machine and enables the US Government to send billions in aid and weapons to Israel. The more stable the american state, the more stable the Israeli state. For the Palestinians to live, the US must fall.

The halls of power are a smoke screen and stocked full of clowns, they’re a distraction. Power is in logistics, circulation/distribution, production and extraction. It’s ports, railways and highways. It’s the manufacturers of military equipment. It’s the places of extraction and refinement of the raw materials that make the equipment. It’s the places where the vehicles that transport the raw materials, intermediate and finished products are parked and refueled at. Power is the economy and our freedom is in its destruction.

What we did was a tiny pinprick, but it wasn’t just us, it was people blockading Sea-Tac, it was people blockading Intel in Portland, I-5 in Eugene, the 808 in Oakland, the Golden Gate Bridge in SF, and it will probably be a few days before we get the full scope of what other places were doing.

SOME TAKEAWAYS

Trying to blockade the Port of Olympia with just 25 people was a fucking audacious plan, and that we held both the truck entrances at all is wild, but people had the energy and confidence and made it happen. What would have helped would to have had more hard blockade materials. We’re proponents of not trying to fight trucks with our bodies. Pallets, old furniture, whatever random shit we can grab, and ideally caltrops and spikeboards should make more appearances.

Having more things to do to keep the energy up would have been cool – we did really well with chanting but maybe like some kind of sound system both for music and talking about what was going on and why would have been cool, a soccer ball to kick around in the intersection would have been cute. Stuff like that!

Thinking more to the future, having some sort of autonomous media group – autonomous as in not a fixed/named organization but an ideally rotating position for comrades who maybe don’t want to/can’t risk being in the thick of it for whatever reason to sound off about what’s going on and to safely take pictures/video of action in a way that is safe and also consistent with anarchist principles and applied in a way as to not make celebrities out of people, to not hollywoodify action, to not focus on aesthetic over substance, etc.

Similarly, there has been a consistent push by anarchists and other autonomous rebels to reject social media and return to offline means of organizing and outreach for all manner of actions and events. Doing more individually texting friends about things going on, inviting them to meet up and talk about it, going to other events and inviting people/handing them fliers, and throwing fliers up everywhere. The better we get at this, the stronger our networks are and the more we are able to mobilize.

One of the things we did really well was destroying the leadership position. The collective reading of the statement rather than one or two comrades reading it or saying something was really solid. There was a lot of checking in with each other, asking each other questions, encouraging each other to just do things but also people feeling comfortable to voice concerns when they thought something may not be a good idea. It was a breath of fresh air from some previous actions where people unconsciously take a follower position and thrust someone – often unwillingly – into a leadership position. I’m excited to see more of them and to see this extend outside the space of actions.

In conclusion, 25 people can do a lot. What can you do?

FREEDOM FOR THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE
LONG LIVE THE SPIRIT OF INSUBORDINATION
FERAL WAR AGAINST THE PORT AND ITS WORLD

(A) <3
[1] https://www.a15action.com
[2] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/sea-tac-airport-expressway-closed-due-to-protesters/

Photo by Ömer Yıldız on Unsplash