Via NYC Anarchist Black Cross, as of October 2024:
NYC Anarchist Black Cross – US Political Prisoner and Prisoner of War Listing
Amtrak service between NYC and New Haven suspended due to transformer fire
An Amtrak transformer fire broke out near a Con Ed substation on the railroad’s Hell Gate Line Tuesday afternoon, suspending Amtrak travel in both directions along the Northeast Corridor between Penn Station and New Haven.
The fire, reported at a substation at Bronxdale and East Tremont Aves. in the Bronx, ignited around 2:30 p.m., causing a power loss for trains in the area, according to the FDNY.
The fire jumped from an overhead Amtrak transformer along the tracks to nearby brush, then to the parking lot of the adjacent substation, burning at least three cars.
Nearly 200 fire and EMS responders were deployed to the fire as of Tuesday evening, and the operations remained ongoing.
An Amtrak spokesman said Tuesday evening that the cause of the transformer fire was still under investigation.
Tuesday’s blaze is at least the third brushfire in the past week in New York City amid an ongoing drought in the city. There were two brushfires in as many days in Prospect Park this past weekend. On Saturday, a fire scorched a 2-acre wooded area as more than 100 firefighters, including special brushfire units, fought the fire for nearly three hours.
Electrification of the Hell Gate Line was completed in the 1920s, though some portions of the traction power system between New Rochelle and the East River tunnel were modernized in the 1980s.
The Hell Gate Line’s power system is scheduled to be upgraded as part of the MTA’s Penn Station Access project, which would send Metro-North trains to Penn Station via the line — but that work has not yet begun.
Found on Mainstream News
Some Initial Thoughts On Unity Of Fields
[I am writing as an insurrectionary anarchist in the u$a and speaking to that context]
Unity Of Fields is a counter-info project that emerged in August of 2024. They describe their project as “a militant propaganda front against the US-NATO-zionist axis of imperialism.” It used to be Palestine Action US and has since changed its orientation. It has a website and some social media accounts, some of which have are banned at the time of this writing, they seem to be most popular on Telegram. Although it links to mostly anarchist sources for technical knowledge, Unity Of Fields does not seem to be an anarchist project and their political reading and media suggestions are all over the map. They suggest classic decolonial texts by Fanon and Cesaire, Black liberation writings from the BLA and BPP, texts from various Palestinian resistance factions, as well as authoritarian communists like Lenin and Mao among others.
Mostly their website is a clearing house for news, action analysis, and communiques. Many of the communiques posted are original submissions though they also repost from other counter-info projects and from social media. They also post some of their own original writings to their website. The fact that they post sketchy criminal stuff and link to technical advice on how to better carry out insurrectionary forms of struggle is probably a large part of why they are discussed in anarchist circles at all.
What does the emergence of a project like Unity Of Fields mean for us as anarchists? For one thing Unity Of Fields expands some spaces we occupy as anarchists — the combative struggle space and the digital counter-info space. We are clearly not the only ones re-coloring walls, opening windows, and carrying out our little sabotages and then writing about it, though at least for now others seem to look to our collective knowledge and experience for technical guidance. We are sharing a struggle space, one which is not limited to riotous moments and combative demonstrations, with other rebels who have made themselves visible to us. We are being included (at least some of the time) in a dialogue with other rebels through the sharing of our words and news of our actions, and anarchists have shared writings from Unity Of Fields on our own websites.
Local struggles against zionism, imperialism, and colonialism are visibly taking on more destructive, decentralized, anonymous, and autonomous approaches, a long-term dream of insurrectionary anarchists, yet new questions arise for us. How do we want to contend with other rebels with whom we have ideological differences and tactical similarities? How do we avoid getting lost in the vanguardist, unifying, nationalist tendencies that often accompany revolutionary leftist approaches to combative struggle? Are we interested in conspiring with these others outside the spontaneity of spicy demonstrations, occupations (and potentially riots), and if so how?
As anarchists we both seek to expand and connect anarchic forms of struggle yet also hold a healthy skepticism of unity with people who don’t hold anti-authoritarian views of freedom. Our history includes many betrayals by the left and progressives, from peace policing at demonstrations to executions and imprisonment from newly established revolutionary governments. The question of who to coalesce with and why is not an easy one, and one that is best addressed on a case by case basis. The appearance of Unity Of Fields potentially facilitates the dialogues and understanding that can help us better decide if and how we want to team up. As anarchists can often find ourselves isolated from others who we may have some political parallels with, the opening up of a “militant propaganda front” is a bridge to dialogue and learn across. This is not a call to join forces with anyone on the basis of being anti-zionist or anti-amerikkkan, it’s simply a reminder to always be analyzing the changing terrain around us and to think critically as we carry forward our struggles.
“Towards The Last Intifada” and “Towards Another Uprising” seem to be the beginnings of a dialogue among anarchists that address some of these questions. I look forward to more.
Relevant Readings:
Unity Of Fields: Opening Up A New Front
https://unityoffields.org/?p=370
Towards The Last Intifada
https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/10/17/towards-the-last-intifada-a-statement-on-palestine-by-anarchists/
Towards Another Uprising
https://actforfree.noblogs.org/2024/10/21/towards-another-uprising/
Archipelago – affinity, informal organization, and insurrectional projects
https://resonanceaudiodistro.org/2017/06/08/archipelago-audiozine/
Voices from the Front Line Against the Occupation: Interview with Palestinian Anarchists
https://blackrosefed.org/interview-fauda-palestine/
PS: Some Thoughts On Spectacle
Many if not most of the actions posted to Unity Of Fields are accompanied by some visual media, usually photos, sometimes videos. I want rebels to consider some pitfalls of spectacularizing our struggles. Every photo or video is another crumb for the state to eat up as part of their investigations. Digital media can offer up metadata about where and when and what kind of device it was recorded on if not properly removed. Footage that shows rebels gives the state valuable information, such as number of participants, approximate time of day, whether any passersby were present, as well as biometric data even when a person is masked. Height, skin tone, gait, approximate weight, and other information can be determined from even grainy footage.
Additionally there are the downsides of understanding our struggles in a quantitative way. This approach may blunt the qualitative changes that participating in struggle can bring us individually and collectively. Of course propaganda is useful, the seductive appeal of revolt is made easier with imagery, and these things must be weighted out, no struggle will be pure. I want to remind us that though this is the path that is being worn into the ground, it is not the only one, and should we choose it let us choose it intentionally.
Submitted anonymously over email.
NYC trio charged with hate crimes linked to pro-Palestinian vandalism of museum officials’ homes
November 4, 2024
Three people have been indicted on hate crimes charges in connection with red paint that was smeared on the homes of Brooklyn Museum officials during a wave of pro-Palestinian protests this summer, prosecutors announced Monday.
[They] face a range of charges including making a terroristic threat as a hate crime, criminal mischief as a hate crime, making graffiti, possession of graffiti instruments and conspiracy.
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said the three — along with others who have not yet been arrested — specifically targeted members of the museum’s board of directors with Jewish-sounding names in the early morning hours of June 12.
Among the homes vandalized were those of the museum’s director, Anne Pasternak, its president and chief operating officer, Kimberly Trueblood, and board chair Barbara Vogelstein.
Using red paint, the vandals scrawled phrases such as “Brooklyn Museum, blood on your hands” and hung banners with the names of the board members, along with phrases including “blood on your hands, war crimes, funds genocide” and “White Supremacist Zionist,” according to prosecutors.
The banners also included red handprints, anarchy symbols and inverted red triangles that prosecutors said are associated with Hamas, which carried out the Oct. 7, 2023, surprise attack on southern Israel that sparked the ongoing war in Gaza.
Prosecutors say the group spray-painted security cameras so they couldn’t be identified as they defaced the properties, but were captured in other surveillance video carrying supplies to and from [Person 1]’s vehicle.
They also said a stencil found at one of the locations had a fingerprint covered in red paint that was identified as [Person 2]’s.
The most serious charge the three face is making a terroristic threat as a hate crime.
[Person 3]’s attorney, Leena Widdi, has said her client is an independent videographer and was acting in his capacity as a credentialed member of the media. She described the hate crime charges as an “appalling” overreach by law enforcement officials.
[Person 1]’s attorney, Moira Meltzer-Cohen, has criticized the arrest as an example of the “increasing trend of characterizing Palestine solidarity actions as hate crimes.”
Hundreds of protesters marched on the Brooklyn Museum in May, briefly setting up tents in the lobby and unfurling a “Free Palestine” banner from the roof before police moved in to make dozens of arrests. Organizers of that demonstration said the museum was “deeply invested in and complicit” in Israel’s military actions in Gaza through its leadership, trustees, corporate sponsors and donors — a claim museum officials have denied.
Found on Mainstream News
Targeting NY Pig Academy
3 November 2024 – Anonymous submission:
Stop Cop City. This Means War.
On September 15, pigs in Brownsville opened fire on the L train over $2.90. The pigs shot three people over fare evasion. In the following weeks, pigs across the city brutalized and mass arrested anyone who protested against police terrorism.
We’ve all seen the increase of pigs in our communities, the national guard at subway stations, private security firms such as Allied partnering with the MTA. We’ve seen the blueprints for a 300-ft. high jail in Chinatown. We’ve seen an increase in violent sweeps of both street vendors and our homeless neighbors. Now, we’ve seen the announcement of a $225 million dollar copy city in Queens set to break ground in 2026 in College Point. Its purported goal is to consolidate training for 18 city agencies, including the departments of sanitation, homeless services, and children’s services. This facility aims to militarize city government workers against our most vulnerable neighbors and we are the ones paying for it to be built.
This on top of the nypd’s already-bloated budget, a record-breaking $12 Billion in 2025. This on top of the $22 Billion dollars the u.s. has sent to the zionist entity to fund its sadistic genocide in Gaza and its state terrorism in the West Bank, 48, Lebanon and Yemen. This on top of centuries of extraction to fund and pervade ever-expanding empire. Let this small act be a drop in a wave of abolitionist action.
FUCK 12, FUCK THE EMPIRE, SINWAR LIVES, ALL GLORY TO THE RESISTANCE.
Source: Unity of Fields
Person charged with vandalizing Rep. Adriano Espaillat’s Manhattan office, which displays Israeli hostage posters
Police have charged [someone] for allegedly vandalizing the Manhattan district office of New York Rep. Adriano Espaillat last month.
Espaillat’s office in Washington Heights was splattered with red paint by two people, in an action similar to other recent incidents of anti-Israel vandalism. The two vandals also used hammers to smash the office’s windows, which displays fliers of Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
The incident took place in the predawn hours of Oct. 8, less than two weeks after the office had been hit with anti-Israel graffiti.
Security footage from the Oct. 8 incident showed two masked individuals carrying out the vandalism. The NYPD told the [news source] that police were still seeking the second individual.
The suspect who was arrested was charged with criminal mischief in the 3rd degree, a felony, along with two misdemeanors – making graffiti and possession of graffiti instruments. Court records showed that [the person] pleaded not guilty and has been released on bail.
The NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force had investigated the incident, but there were no hate crimes charges in the arrest report. Espaillat is not Jewish.
Espaillat is a Democrat representing Upper Manhattan and part of the Bronx. He has voted for additional aid to Israel and has spoken out in support of Israeli hostages, security funding for Jewish institutions, and Jewish students at Columbia University.
In the two days before the incident, he shared a message of solidarity with families of those held hostage by Hamas, attended the Oct. 7 memorial ceremony in Central Park, and stopped by a neighborhood commemoration event blocks away from his district office. The office is regularly picketed by small groups of pro-Palestinian protesters.
The New York Democratic Congressional Delegation condemned the vandalism shortly after it occurred, saying it came on a day of “solemn reflection” over the Oct. 7 attacks.
In the defacing of Espaillat’s office two weeks before the Oct. 8 incident, vandals scrawled “F— Israel,” “40k dead,” “genocide lover” and “terrorist” in red paint on the storefront office’s window and door. The graffiti also had an inverted red triangle.
Other pro-Israel New York congressmen have had their offices hit with anti-Israel graffiti since Oct. 7, including Reps. Daniel Goldman and Ritchie Torres, both Democrats, and Republican Rep. Mike Lawler.
Found on Mainstream Media
no peace
Reflections on Columbia, the Student Intifada and the Culture of Counterinsurgency
28 October 2024 – by Anonymous
“The concentration of violent power in the hands of the few can occur unopposed if it is done quietly, if unnecessary provocation, which can set a process of solidarity in motion, is avoided—that is something that was learned as a result of the student movement and the Paris May.”
— The Urban Guerilla Concept, The Red Army Faction 1971
On 30 April 2024 — the 56th anniversary of the 1968 Columbia University mass arrests — the New York Pig Department besieged Harlem, locked down the entirety of Columbia’s campus, swept the Gaza solidarity encampment, and raided Hind’s Hall. This raid marked the end of the spring of the Student Intifada. Those of us who were at the barricades are still reeling from the experience. There are few moments in our lives where history opens its doors to us. Taking the leap through is disorienting, but the responsibility to make sense of this conjuncture falls squarely on those who take the leap.
Journalists and pundits have chimed in endlessly on the Student Intifada with a particular focus on Columbia University. Many of these pundits were nowhere near the action nor the partisans who made the action happen, thus they often get the basic facts of the action wrong. As one rebel once advised, “No investigation, no right to speak.” Additionally, the political orientation of the commentariat necessitated the silencing and erasure of the most radical flank of the movement. This flank played a vital role in not only the uprising at Columbia, but in the direction of the movement nationally. This essay is an attempt to both correct the record and offer up some political perspectives from a segment of this radical flank.
The next sequence of the Student Intifada remains elusive but it is important that interventions are made to push the movement in the correct direction. A minority with the correct revolutionary line is not a minority.
A Recipe for Birthday Cake <3
This recipe is meant to be as simple, reliable, and cost-effective as possible, and has been extensively field-tested. It does not require technical expertise, hopefully avoiding the specialization found in old manuals that would have the aspiring arsonist first become an amateur chemist or electrician. These devices are meant to be produced in bulk with extremely common and inexpensive materials. They are also designed for reliability in the field — even in wet and windy conditions — in order to minimize the possibility of an unignited device being left behind. Relight candles are very reliable but should technically be watched to ensure they do not go out and fail to relight within the first 60 seconds. This design does not incorporate any redundancy, so we recommend placing two complete devices next to each other if possible. The time-delay provided is about 5-7 minutes, which is sufficient time to leave the area in most scenarios.
Disclaimer: We are publishing this recipe out of context during a moment of potential social unrest, in hopes of saving our fellow anarchists and anti-colonial fighters some time and headaches when learning to construct an incendiary device for the first time. While there is nothing particularly original contained here, please use this information wisely, and always take appropriate precautions when planning attacks.
Towards Another Uprising
At the end of 2010 an individual act of despair in the town of Sidi Bouzid ignited a daring, enraged, and joyful upheaval that travelled through North Africa into the Middle East and beyond. People defied the oppressive systems they had been immersed in for generations and came together in the streets to topple the political elites at their helm. The authorities, at first stunned by this courageous spirit that they couldn’t understand, then unleashed a cynical and brutal response.
This defeat is still being inflicted on the people in the region, and is also felt all over the world by those who stood in solidarity with the uprisings but were mostly unable to overcome their powerlessness as the uprisings were massacred.
The horrors in the region during the last decade are many. To name some that stick most in my mind: Sisi has turned back the clock in Egypt to military dictatorship with the material support of the US. The regimes in the other North-African countries are paving over any sign of freedom while being coaxed by European countries to shut down the immigration routes over the Mediterranean. Without the murderous military campaigns of Hezbollah and the IRGC in Syria, Assad wouldn’t have survived the uprising. The Iranian regime itself brutally oppressed three different uprisings in the country in the last decade. Most people in Lebanon are in a daily struggle for survival because of the greed of its political leaders while mobs at the orders of Hezbollah beat down street protests. Early on in the uprisings, Hamas, who has shot political opponents in broad daylight on the streets of Gaza, culled attempts at an uprising by rounding up protest organizers and threatening them with murder. Leaders in the region understood once again that they can use any means against the populations under their control without real push-back from outside. Indifference, cynicism and opportunism trump moral appeals, and strategic alliances are always in play. The world churns on. For those of us who have not looked away, how can we not see a connection between Assad bombing Syrian cities into obliteration and Netanyahu razing Gaza?
The authors of “Towards the Last Intifada” (Tinderbox #6) don’t acknowledge these experiences of the last decade. Instead, they propose to join the opposing side of an American geopolitical alliance (keeping true to American centralism in their own way). According to them, the Axis of Resistance shows the path forward for anarchists to struggle against empire. This article seems to confound resistance with ‘the Resistance’. That is to say, they collapse any form of resistance from people in Palestine, and more broadly in the region, into a particular representation, adopting an umbrella term used by states, militaries, para-state/para-military organizations to describe their own activities. The authors of the article warn anarchists against being too sensitive to hierarchy – as if that is the only aspect of ‘the Resistance’ anarchists might find difficult to accept.
It is now a year after the bloody incursion of Hamas into Israel. Apart from discourse, the accomplishments of the Resistance so far are: Hezbollah has launched ineffectual rockets that have only inflicted significant damage on a Druze village, Iranian leaders are busying themselves with making appeals to the West to reign in Israel, militias in Iraq attacked a couple of US military bases in the country early on and then fell silent, while only the Houthis seem to have taken Nasrallah’s “Unity of Fronts” seriously. They succeeded in disrupting global shipping routes and have carried out some unexpected aerial attacks on Israel. In the meantime, Israel has wiped out the leadership of Hezbollah, drops bombs on Lebanon on a daily basis, has regularly bombed sites in Syria without retaliation, and commits executions in Tehran. The Axis of Resistance and the Unity of Fronts are mere slogans that obscure the strategic dealings among political, authoritarian organisations and states with their own (often differing) interests. It’s delusional to see it as something else. And Israel is calling the bluff of ‘the Resistance’ with an exponential military escalation.
Israel’s massacres in Gaza, with the material support of the Western countries, are relentless. The apartheid regime in the West Bank and Israel has been built up for decades, leaving almost no oxygen to breathe for those living under its control. Faced with this bleak reality and an overwhelming powerlessness to put a stop to it, anarchists may be looking for an effective resistance (or rather, as it appears, an image of one). But if we want to fight against oppression, we can’t be content with any opposition. Choosing to join one authoritarian, militaristic system against another will not put an end to the horrors of this world – neither in this conflict nor in any other. It is neither inherently defeatist or a sign of privileged indifference to refuse to take sides between warring groups and states. That conclusion can only be reached if we would reduce reality to simplistic representations. Instead, by being open to complexity and specificity, anarchist action can be a liberating endeavor. It is here that we can find affinities, build relationships on a different basis, and muster the strength and courage – or perhaps, humility and passion – to attack. Anarchists find their effectiveness when they can undermine and destroy oppressive systems. We will not find it in a military prowess which, at the end of the day, produces more oppression and misery. And so those that have a spirit of their own and a memory of past rebellions will fight for another uprising.
From the northern coast of the Mediterranean, with a heavy heart and a soul on fire
Early October, 2024
Source: Act for Free | Submitted anonymously.
‘Zionists don’t deserve to live,’ suspended Columbia activist said. Now his group rescinds its apology and calls for violence
Nearly six months after Columbia University banned Khymani James, a Pro-Palestinian student activist, who said “Zionists don’t deserve to live,” the coalition that had apologized on his behalf rescinded its statement of regret – and advocated for armed resistance against Israel.
“Last spring, in the midst of the encampments, Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) posted a statement framed as an apology on behalf of Khymani James,” CUAD posted Tuesday night on Instagram. “We deliberately misrepresented your experiences and your words, and we let you down.”
In a since-deleted post on X, James acknowledged in April that he had said several months earlier in an Instagram Live video: “Zionists don’t deserve to live,” and “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.” In the now-deleted April post, he said, “I misspoke in the heat of the moment, for which I apologize.”
Columbia suspended James in April, and he since sued the university to get his ban overturned.
“I never wrote the neo-liberal apology posted in late April, and I’m glad we’ve set the record straight once and for all,” James wrote Tuesday in an X post. “I will not allow anyone to shame me for my politics. Anything I said, I meant it.”
CUAD helped ignite the protest encampments at Columbia in April that sparked a pro-Palestine and anti-Israel movement on campuses across America. In the months since that movement started, the group has taken an increasingly hard-line stance against Israel, advocating for violent uprisings against the country.
“We support liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance,” the group said in its statement. “Where you’ve exhausted all peaceful means of resolution, violence is the only path forward.”
Found on Mainstream Media