Over the last 15 months, artists have mobilized against Israel’s attacks on civilians in Gaza, which organizations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have determined to be consistent with genocide. After multiple failed attempts, Israel and Hamas agreed to a mutually negotiated ceasefire deal that went into effect on Sunday, January 19, with an initial phase stipulating a halt in Israeli attacks on Gaza for six weeks. The deal will reportedly allow humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip as Palestinians are permitted to return to their locales and Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners will be released in stages. Still fragile as it unfolds day by day, the US-backed ceasefire deal marks a precarious break in the onslaught of violence and destruction throughout Gaza. On Monday, January 27, tens of thousands of displaced Gazans began to return north.
In their international push for a permanent ceasefire, artists have developed visual languages to demand institutional divestments from Israel and call for an end to violence against Palestinians in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank. Many have either foregone or been denied life-changing career opportunities in their public advocacy for Palestine, underscoring the importance of community, solidarity, and artistic freedom in the broader culture sector.
Below are some of the most impactful moments of artistic protest for Gaza since October 2023.
January 18 is the Day of the Forest Defender, honoring the life of Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán, who was murdered by Georgia State Troopers two years ago while protesting the construction of Cop City in Atlanta, and everyone else who has given their lives in the fight against those who would render the earth uninhabitable in the course of their pursuit of profit. This year, a call circulated for people to organize festivals of resistance in their communities on the weekend of January 17-19. Here, we share reports from some of these events.
The situation is grim. Despite acknowledging that Trump represents fascism, Democrats have nonetheless welcomed the arrival of despotism, dutifully voting for new legislation targeting immigrants and doing their best to keep protesters out of the streets. Tech CEOs have followed suit, pouring millions of dollars into his inauguration and crowding into St. John’s Church to worship at the feet of their new master.
Elon Musk made the Nazi salute twice from the podium during the inauguration, leaving only just enough plausible deniability to confuse the most naïve. Musk has posted fascist dog whistles on Twitter before, even before he purchased it in order to reintroduce Nazis to the platform, ban anarchists, and promote the fascist agenda.
From this point forward, nothing should surprise us. The incoming government has made it clear that they intend to inflict as much harm as possible on those who are vulnerable while concentrating as much money as possible in the hands of the ultra-rich. These are the central points of their agenda. Attempting to spread information about their misdeeds in order to provoke popular outrage is a waste of time. From here out, all that matters is developing the capacity to defend each other from their attacks while preparing to go on the offensive as soon as the opportunity presents itself.
The faces of the oligarchy looked craven and servile as they lined up at the inauguration to toady to Trump. Capitalism concentrates power in the hands of the most rapacious, but they can only hold on to power by being completely subservient to its demands.
Fortunately, not everyone is taking this sitting down. Anarchists around the country called for “festivals of resistance” the weekend before the inauguration in order to bring communities together prepare to resist. Here follow reports from a few of these. You can read the original call to organize festivals of resistance here, along with a list of dozens of events around the country.
January 11
Sacramento, Chicago, and a few other locations hosted events a weekend early, building up momentum.
Sacramento, California
On Saturday, January 11, well over 600 people came together in downtown Sacramento for a community gathering at a local Methodist Church featuring workshops, skillshares, info-tables, and a key-note address from anarchist author and mutual aid organizer Dean Spade. The previous night, people had gathered to write letters to political prisoners. On the day of the event, hundreds streamed into the building, dramatically outnumbering the nearby Trump rally at the capitol, which brought out only a hundred people.
The workshops included basic first aid, tenant organizing, food autonomy, anti-fascist organizing, community self-defense, and mutual aid. Dean Spade spoke for over an hour on mutual aid organizing with the recent fires in Los Angeles in mind, and also talked about how we need to change the broader culture in our movements, bringing in more people and creating a home for people to grow in through different cycles of struggle.
The event featured a well-organized security team and several zine tables and distros. No major problems occurred. So much pizza was ordered from a local business that the owner told one organizer, “This is bigger than Dave Matthew’s Band.” Crash into this, Dave!
January 17-19
Over two dozen cities hosted Festivals of Resistance this past weekend.
Brooklyn, New York
From noon until after 10 pm, the Interference Archive hosted a marathon of presentations and skillshares aimed at bringing people together and building capacity within New York City’s radical communities. The Archive collects and displays ephemera from social movements; it was covered in banners, posters, communiqués, and other material from the Stop Cop City/Defend the Atlanta Forest movement as part of its ongoing exhibit, “This is Not a Local Struggle.”
The event opened with a moment of silence for Tortuguita. Then, over a dozen local groups and autonomous organizers gave trainings on topics including tenant and union organizing, protest and jail support tactics, and proposals for peoples’ assemblies and other new political formations, coalescing into a conversation about how to oppose the city’s prison expansion plan. The event ended with a community dinner, followed by a screening of several short documentaries about land defenders in Atlanta and Louisiana.
Elsewhere in Brooklyn, people courageously redecorated a billboard. Here follows their statement.
Today, thousands of people across the world organized events and took collective action in honor of Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán, who was murdered by Georgia State Troopers two years ago while protesting the construction of Cop City in Atlanta. Tortuguita died defending the Weelaunee Forest. January 18, the Day of the Forest Defender, commemorates their 26 years on this earth and their steadfast commitment to collective liberation. Their spirit is alive in our resistance.
We, the writers of this message, took over a billboard on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, one of NYC’s largest highways, used by 130,000 vehicles daily. We covered a CopShot police billboard—that recruits informants with a $10,000 bribe—with a tribute to Tortuguita and all land defenders. In the context of a city that spends $29 million dollars a day on policing, off the side of a highway that displaced thousands of families with a stroke of a pen, we replace the state’s cowardly propaganda with a commemoration of land defenders’ sacrifice and struggle. Collective memory animates our will to destroy this empire that is killing us and our planet. As the US funnels billions into building Cop Cities across the country in its latest attempt to repress us, they concede what we already know—that rebellion is inevitable.
Viva Tortuguita and all land defenders. We will destroy this empire, with Earth as our witness.
The billboard before it was improved.
Cleveland, Ohio
In Cleveland, dozens of people gathered in a snowstorm to occupy a park and demonstrate our determination to build a world that works for everyone. Gathering around a banner reading “No matter who is in power, we keep us safe,” we held space near a busy intersection where people freely shared their experiences of a failed system and imagined the better world that we can build. This occupation was preceded by an indoor direct action training, allowing folks to hone the skills required to move forward. After the occupation, members of the community gathered indoors to discuss our collective needs and ongoing efforts to meet them, forming new connections and deepening existing ones. The day concluded with a documentary screening by the IWW [Industrial Workers of the World].
These events were organized by a newly formed group of anarchists that includes both experienced folks and individuals new to the movement. While the formation of this group was occasioned by calls for a Festival of Resistance, those involved are determined to cultivate the connections formed, building a group that fosters ties within the community and facilitates future actions, building our capacity for future resistance.
A projection at the entry to the Festival of Resistance in central North Carolina.
Durham, North Carolina
The weekend opened with a concert and dance party on Friday night. On Saturday, the Festival of Resistance in Durham, North Carolina drew 300 people for four hours of workshops running two or three at a time. Visitors could take their fill of free material from a dozen literature tables representing various mutual aid and community defense groups; some of those have been around for years or decades, while others emerged out of the assemblies that followed the election in November. Food Not Bombs provided a full hot meal, there was a busy childcare space.
The events continued on Sunday with four more hours of workshops in Chapel Hill, followed by a screening of a film about Rojava that concluded with a discussion featuring the director.
Gary, Indiana
Following up outreach events in Chicago, more than 75 people gathered outside the Gary/Chicago International Airport to demonstrate against the role that it plays in deportations, which Trump has been threatening to ramp up as part of his program of doing harm to undocumented people.
You can read one report on the action in Gary here:
The Gary/Chicago International Airport has been used since at least 2013 to fly deportees out of the region. GlobalX, an airline company based in Miami, FL, subcontracts with ICE to deport people every Friday from Gary/Chicago airport to Kansas City, MO before taking them out of the country. More than 19,000 people were deported out of Gary between 2013 and 2017 according to public records obtained through a Freedom of Information request by a local organizer.
Demonstrators were leaving the airport on foot Saturday morning when around two dozen Gary police officers descended on them. Officers grabbed and arrested two protestors who were in the process of complying with police instructions. A photojournalist was also seized and arrested by the officers while documenting the other arrests, in what amounts to a violent attack on the freedom of the press.
The march, held two days before Donald Trump takes power for a second time, represents the Gary community’s commitment to their immigrant neighbors in the face of state violence, but builds on the diligent work of community organizers over the years. Since 2017, interfaith groups, immigrant rights activists, and rank-and-file union workers from East Chicago and elsewhere in northwest Indiana regularly held prayer circles and other peaceful protests, but had not been met with significant repression.
Minneapolis, Minnesota
About thirty people attended a movie screening of Fell In Love with Fire, including many new faces. In the discussion following the film, many participants related their experience in the George Floyd Uprising to the uprising in Chile, reflecting on how to fight the new Trump regime. The evening concluded with writing letters to prisoners. People were very engaged and took a lot of zines and posters.
Oakland, California
About 150 people, mostly anarchists, marched to an abandoned OUSD [Oakland Unified School District] building, broke in, and held an assembly in a courtyard inside the premises. A dozen people spoke about various existing projects and how to get plugged in. Then, there were six breakout groups to discuss strategic horizons related to
Antirepression 2, International Solidarity
Housing
Immigration
Community resiliency/disaster relief, and
Other.
Afterwards, at 5 pm, a dance party got underway at the amphitheater at Lake Merritt, and people reconstructed the George Floyd memorial there.
Olympia, Washington
In Olympia, a coalition of local organizations and people from different political scenes organized a big-tent “People’s March.” The more anarchist contingent within the group advocated to attach a Festival of Resistance directly after the march. Dozens of organizations sponsored the events.
The event was diverse, well-attended, and notably intergenerational. The rally before the march drew about 1000 people. There were several speakers, including a speaker for Palestinian liberation, a recorded speech from local incarcerated pan-Africanist Tomas Afeworki, and a speaker and translator from La Resistencia, the group dedicated to shutting down the Tacoma Northwest Detention Center. There was also a moment of silence for a beloved long-term organizer, a participant in the organizing group behind the event, who passed away a week earlier. The march began with a local Indigenous activist performing a drum song; in the back, a marching band kept time.
Because of the ties between anarchists and other local activists, there was a lot of good faith participation. It appeared that the black bloc of about 20-30 people designed its splinter march with consideration for the family-friendly march, diverting police attention elsewhere. A little vandalism and graffiti occurred, to only a few people’s dismay; most in the march seemed unconcerned.
The march ended at the capitol, where people promoted a brand-new announcements-only Signal thread modeled on Austin’s Sunbird. A couple more speakers closed out the march.
The Festival of Resistance started immediately afterwards at a location only a few blocks away. The building was packed from the beginning. Probably 150-200 people circulated through it. This was the real aim of attaching the two events. Food and drinks were served. Several organizations set up tables—letters to prisoners, the Emma Goldman Youth and Homeless Outreach Project, zine distros, and the like—and people mingled and ate for an hour before the sessions. Then, there were announcements, a toast to our dearly departed, followed by two rounds of discussions and workshops. The workshops included direct action 101 (with a local history flipbook collecting printed communiqués), resisting repression, and the history and culture surrounding the local Artesian Well and the struggle against its enclosure. There were topic-based facilitated discussions, as well.
Many people expressed the desire to keep the ball rolling and repeat this model in order to try to continue the conversations rather than having to begin again from scratch. In retrospect, it would have been ideal to have already planned a future event that people could put in their calendars, or an activity that could facilitate people generating something like that together.
Providence, Rhode Island
Following the Providence Festival of Resistance and words from Tortuguita’s friends and comrades, some people marched to the Atwells Avenue overpass and hung a banner over I-95 reading “Revenge for Tortuguita—No More Presidents.”
Richmond, Virginia
Up to 500 people attended the Richmond Festival of Resistance in the course of the day. Many contributed names, remembrances, or tokens of other martyrs to the altar honoring Tortuguita.
In addition to celebrating grief together, Richmond’s “Festival of Resistance,” advertised locally as the inaugural “People’s Assembly,” included a full day of tabling, workshops, panels, and free food. The gathering launched a new initiative, the People’s Assembly, a recurring venue for citywide coordination and strategy building.
The idea is to hold citywide assemblies in each season, building from the neighborhood assemblies that many people left this gathering inspired to begin.
Tucson, Arizona
Less than a week in advance, a handful of friends decided to hold a humble “Parade of Resistance” on the Day of the Forest Defender. With only three days’ notice on a busy weekend, 30-40 people gathered in a park while members of a local brass band played a short set.
The parade then took a one and a half mile route through the part of town with the most pedestrian traffic. The sound system was bumping a cumbia mix made by a comrade who recently passed away. The vibe was fun and playful, and generally very well received by bystanders, some of whom joined in, dancing in the street for a block or two. The cops arrived about halfway through, but people ignored their orders to vacate the street, and they resigned themselves to redirecting traffic for us. Their investment in a “progressive” image often complicates their efforts to assert control.
The messaging was an experiment in vagueness. The only banner read “Towards a Free World”; it was accompanied by colorful butterfly puppets. A few paraders distributed pamphlets with accessible language calling for revolutionary action and transformation. On the back, a flier promoted an upcoming “Festival of Rebellion” on February 15.
The march ended at sunset at a classic spot for punks and train kids. Across the tracks, there was graffiti honoring Tortuguita and our dear friend who has just passed away. The dance party continued into the night with a bonfire and more graffiti.
Ultimately, it was a nice morale boost and very worthwhile, considering what a light lift the organizing was. It gave some of us a chance to get out in the streets without demanding a bunch of work from an already overloaded network. Definitely better than doing nothing. Hopefully, it created some momentum to carry forward.
NO COP CITY IN QUEENS! FUCK YOU, ADAMS—THIS MEANS WAR.
In September 2021, the city of Atlanta leased 381 acres of Weelaunee Forest to the Atlanta Police Foundation for a $90 million dollar training facility, funded by bloodthirsty corporations. Atlanta’s Cop City is modeled off of the iof’s “Little Gaza” facility, which was built in 2006 with $45 million dollars of US aid. These mock cities are the training grounds in which the pigs perfect “urban warfare strategies” with the express purpose of stifling organized dissent, perpetuating gentrification, and increasing violence against our most vulnerable communities—particularly Black, Indigenous, and brown communities. As of July 31 2024, there are 80 cop city projects in the works in 49 of 50 states, all of this against the backdrop of a for-profit penal system.
In New York City, the concept of a cop city extends far beyond official training grounds, bleeding into all aspects of civilian life. Even before the greenlighting of Queens’ $225 million dollar pigsty, New Yorkers have been facing unpreccedented levels of state repression, and relentless surveillance by a police force large and powerful enough to be considered a standing army.
The purported goal of Queens’ cop city—set to break ground in 2026, in College Point—is to consolidate training for 18 city agencies, including the department of sanitation, homeless services, the administration for children’s services, parks enforcement, and the department of corrections, among others; essentially, it aims to militarize city government workers.
Meanwhile, eric adams is slashing hundreds of millions of dollars from homeless services, children’s services and other programs that New Yorkers depend on—SNAP, medicaid, libraries, and rental vouchers, for exanple—in order to pad the nypd’s already-bloated budget to a record-breaking $12 billion in 2025. 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 im Chinatown. We’ve seen an increase in violent sweeps of both street vendors and our homeless neighbors.
NYPD, KKK, IOF, THEY’RE ALL THE SAME.
As we heed the Palestinian resistance’s call, we must remember that the nypd and israel are two heads of the same snake. The “war on terror” of the early 200s led u.s. law enforcement (including the nypd) to attend official training expeditions to the zionist state in order to exchange “best practices” in “counter-terrorism”. After his 2023 trip to the zionist state, adams returned “inspired” by the iof’s use of drone technology, and subsequently implemented unmanned surveillance drones across nyc. In Gaza, drones are used to much deadlier effect. On numerous occasions, such as the Flour Massacre in Februarry 2024, drones have been used to kill unarmed civilians in densely populated areas.
We know by now that pigs do not keep us safe: 600+ people are killed and more than 250,000 civilians are injured by police annually in the united states. Reports of abuse at the hands of the nypd have surged since adams became mayor. Annually, an average of 9 New Yorkers are murdered by pigs—in 2022, that number rose to 13. That same year, 9 people were pronounced dead while in nypd custody, Since 2021, complaints filed with the Civilian Complaint Review Board have increased 51%, with New Yorkers filing 5,604 complaints—a ten-year record. The nypd spent $115 million on misconduct payouts last year alone. Not only that, but officers enjoy relative impunity within the nypd’s internal affairs process. adams’ first police commissioner, keechant sewell, reversed internal affairs’ discipline rulings at a record rate, reducing or annulling penalties for more than half of all pigs found to have committed misconduct at an administrative trial during her term.
What is this cop city for, if not training up masses of trigger-happy pigs? What can we do when these violent hordes are set loose on civilians as a means of protecting the interests of a rich minority? How do we respond to a state and system hellbent on the total suppression of any and all resistance to the capitalist, imperialist nightmare threatening all human and nonhuman life?
What does it mean for us when we’re faced with organized abandonment, dispossession, disenfranchisement, and the reality that our tax dollars are currently funding the Palestinian genocide?
THIS MEANS WAR.
For years, the state has been wielded as a weapon by the owning class in order to dispossess and subjugate those at the mercy of their predations, both within and beyond the borders of the united states. To those who put their faith in reform: you do not understand that the entire system is compromised, septic, unsalvageable. It is not enough to merely “kill the cop in our heads” or “decolonize our minds”. We must attack the physical strongholds of the colonizer, the cop, and all those who unjustly wield their powers, and we must strike from all angles. Leaving them unchecked allows the rot to spread; pig deputy mayor phil banks that he “hopes the academy will be a model for other cities across the country”. We must refute this.
This banner drop is not an action, but a call. May we heed the burning of Minneapolis’s 3rd precinct a thousand times over. We call on our allies to organize, escalate, to shake off the torpor, the weariness, the fear. Resist. As for our enemies—the false comfort and peace that you take for granted is bought with the blood of millions. When our time comes, we will make no apologies for what we do to you.
FUCK 12, FUCK ADAMS, FUCK THE U.S. EMPIRE, AND ALL GLORY TO THE RESISTANCE.
A group of Pro-Palestine protesters in black bloc marched in NYC and tagged MTA buses and storefronts including a T-Mobile and a Google Store. Streets were blocked with rolling trash bins and construction barriers.
Chants included “ELON MUSK MUST DIE” and “WHOSE STREETS/NO STREETS/TEAR UP THE CONCRETE”.
The bloc seemed unwilling or unprepared to either defend itself or disperse quickly, and several arrests were made.
🔻 ‘Fuck you Adams. No cop city in Queens. This means war.’
Massive banners dropped sometime recently declaring war against the mayor following plans announced in May to launch a ‘cop city’ training facility in College Point, Queens
In response to the call for action for Palestine, we put up this banner in Queens, New York to connect the struggle here to the valiant resistance in Palestine. While this may be a small symbolic action in comparison to what the fighters are doing in Gaza and the West Bank, we hope they will see this as a salute to their efforts. The work they are doing on behalf of the Palestinian people is felt around the world in struggles that have not yet blossomed, but see the potential in fighting for those who have been systematically oppressed by the United States.
Long live the resistance!
Let the flood of Al Aqsa drown all settler regimes!
We left Columbia University a little Juneteenth present.
They’ll have you believe this is the work of outside agitators in attempts to divide us, but newsflash- we are all outside agitators, and we are everywhere. Long live Hind’s Hall, every fascist state WILL fall.
“Columbia property” doesn’t exist when they’ve stolen everything they have. They will not see peace until they get the fuck out of Harlem, get the fuck out of Palestine, and stop funding genocide.
Disrupt. Reclaim. Destroy. The escalations have only just begun.
Action report: Autonomous NYC Activists target Magellan Aerospace Corp in Queens, which contracts with Lockheed Martin to manufacture F-35 jet parts to bomb civilians in Gaza and around the world. The Israeli military (IOF) just ordered more F-35s for Gaza using US military aid in a multi-billion dollar deal. With our tax dollars, Magellan and Lockheed Martin are profiting off the death and destruction in Palestine.
Art reads:
FUCK AN F-35
FUCK LOCKHEED MARTIN
FUCK MAGELLAN
FREE GAZA
Found on Palestine Action US Telegram | [Instagram link: https://www.instagram.com/pal_actionus/p/C8DmYQeNf5Q/]
For context about Monica & Francisco, see their bio on the June 11 website:
No strangers to repression, they were kidnapped by the Chilean state during the “Caso Bombas” until they were absolved of all charges related to a prior wave of incendiary attacks by anarchist groups. They were also charged for the bomb attack on the Basilica del Pilar in Spain in 2013, and were sentenced to 12 years in prison. After a number of appeals processes the two were allowed to return to Chile in 2017.
In December of 2023 Monica Cabellero was sentenced to 12 years in prison, convicted of being an accomplice in the double explosive attack against the Tánica building in February 2020. Francisco Solar received a total of 86 years in prison: two counts of sending explosive artifacts (54th Precinct and Hinzpeter) 12 years + 12 years. One count of attempted homicide of a carabinero: 15 years. One count of serious injury to a carabinero: 6 years. One count of less serious injury: 600 days. Five counts of minor injuries: 100 days (each). 500 days. One count of aggrivated damages (Commussioner): 818 days. One count of attempted homicide of Hinzpeter: 12 years. Two counts of placing an explosive device (Tánica): 12 years + 12 years. Appeals are pending at the time of this writing.
