Making this zine started for me as a vague desire to know how Assata Shakur escaped from prison. I had enjoyed reading her autobiography “Assata” and I was left wanting to know more. One chapter ends with her declaring that she was done with being locked up, and the next begins with her living in Cuba if I remember correctly. I mostly moved on, focusing on other things. More recently a friend mentioned that they had heard of a book about the Shakur family that went into the details of the liberation. The book in question was An Amerikan Family: The Shakurs And The Nation They Created by Santi Elijah Holley. I sought out the book and found a text that not only went into the details of Assata’s liberation but provided context about who all took part, the social movements and underground networks they were a part of and a whole set of histories that intrigued me.
I decided to only reprint the parts that explicitly deal with the liberation of Assata Shakur from prison and her transit to Havana, Cuba. The rest is worth reading in my opinion, as well as Assata’s own autobiography which gives context to Assata’s life path and freedom struggle, and Russel Maroon Shoatz’s I Am Maroon which also documents prison escapes, life on the run, and life underground from a Black liberation perspective. The idea that prisons are impenetrable, inescapable is demonstrably false and these histories are proof of that (as are the escapes that continue to take place today)! This bootleg reprint is only a snippet of a larger history of experimentation in collective and individual liberation that I feel Black anarchists and other revolutionaries could benefit from familiarizing ourselves with and learning from.
In the wake of the genocide taking place in Palestine at the hands of the zionist entity numerous calls have gone out for escalation and also — though less well circulated — for (re)building the underground in today’s movements for decolonization and liberation. Today’s undergrounds will look different from those of the 1970s and 1980s, yet there is still much we can learn from them. We are already seeing waves of political repression attempting to capture, pacify, eject, and domesticate rebels from the George Floyd revolts, the struggles to stop the construction of cop city in Atlanta, and the struggles in solidarity with Palestinians fighting for liberation. Unfortunately we are already seeing a new generation of political prisoners and exiles. Of course it is inevitable that some will be locked up as long as liberation struggles haven’t destroyed the cages. By learning from the struggles that came before us we can be better equipped to make the state’s work as hard as possible. Some of my goals for reprinting and circulating this account of Assata Shakur’s liberation from prison are to exercise our collective imagination of what is possible and contribute to dialogues about escalation, building undergrounds, and facing state repression.
Another goal of spreading this story is a fear that many stories of this kind, especially the illegal ones, will be lost. Either buried with the aging revolutionaries who made them happen, locked behind tight lips to ensure the safety and anonymity of the guilty, or neatly entombed in academic or historical literature that few will have the patience and position to read. To me these histories are not meant to be left in the dirt or hidden away in sleepy archives accessible with a student ID, they are part of our struggles today, weapons to be used to free ourselves, and by freeing ourselves free the dead who wrote these histories with their own sweat and blood. We can remember and tell these stories as part of our own race toward liberation and freedom now.
More selfishly, I am exciting to be adding a little something to a growing tendency of Black anarchist struggles. Anecdotally it seems there are more Black anarchists than before and that more approaches to Black liberation are imagining freedom through an anti-authoritarian lens. The former Black Panthers and Black Liberation Army soldiers who advocated anarchic visions of freedom and struggle, during and after the decline of the Black Panther Party have paved the way for Black radicals to understand anarchy as a vision of freedom we can hold as our own. Russel ‘Maroon’ Shoatz, Kuwasi Balagoon, Ashanti Alston, Lorenzo Komboa Ervin, and Martin Sostre are coming up more in the anarchist space, as well as the dialogues of Black revolutionaries. The last decade has seen a number of anarchically oriented Black liberation groups and projects that explore the synchronicity between Black freedom and anarchy. Salish Sea Black Autonomists, Afro-Futurist Abolitionists of the Americas, various zines, a handful of small gatherings, dialogues across geographies, increased interest in anarchists in Africa generally.
The text below is part of a longer book that goes into the history of the Shakur family. While I do not agree with the author’s position that the Shakurs aimed to improve amerika I have found the information useful nonetheless. I have added a few of my own notes to the text and added complete names in brackets to give context to readers who may not be familiar with the history of the Black Liberation Army, Assata Shakur, or other aspects of the struggles taking place at the time of Assata’s escape from prison. Again I encourage readers to dig deeper, to learn about the Black liberation struggles, guerrilla groups, and social movements that the people involved in Assata’s liberation were part of.
For distribution at protests, festivals, sporting events, waiting rooms, cookouts, libraries, dining halls, courtrooms, traffic jams, emergency rooms, corner stores, public transportation, sideshows, recreation yards, or anywhere else you may encounter others who’ve had enough.
(Blackened/improved from a previous document shared early 2025.)
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REMEMBER 2020, 1968, 1878, 1791 — WE CAN WIN
Thousands of years of kings, queens, emperors, presidents, & ministers demanding obedience. 500 years of crackers enslaving & colonizing this planet. 250 years of anglo/yankee domination.
Trump this, Musk that. Democrats, Republicans, Zionists, Confederates, Fascists, Conservatives, Liberals, Progressives. So many flavors of the same expired bullshit.
2020: Cops executed George Floyd. A police station was burnt down. For a brief moment, the world opened up.
1968: White power executed MLK. Black communities erupted into rebellion. For a brief moment, the world opened up.
1878: Indigenous peoples in the South Pacific rose up in arms against european colonizers attempting to exterminate their communities & hijack their homelands. For a moment, the world opened up.
1791: Enslaved Africans & their descendants began an uprising in the Caribbean, destroying property, profit, & slavery. For a long moment, the world opened up.
Whether a handful of friends or a massive crowd, we know that the footsoldiers of every regime can be defeated. The secret is to begin.
« In Memory Of Our Fallen; Let us turn their cities into funeral pyres. In Memory Of Our Fighters; Let us honor your names with fire and gunpowder. Peace By Piece (A) »
NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE! ¡QUEREMOS UN MUNDO DONDE QUEPAN MUCHOS MUNDOS!
Look for those pushing and help them push harder.
Move together. Be water.
They can control a march of 10,000 — they can’t control 10 marches of 1000.
De-arrest. Don’t let people get grabbed.If they do, don’t let their cars or busses leave.
They only care about money, so causing monetary losses is your only vote.
On the inside, the demonstration is an organism of care and support.
On the outside, it is ferocious and uncontrollable.
Without their toys they are powerless.
No one is coming to save us. Everything is at stake.
There have been recent issues with the file upload webssite espiv — we received several file links that showed up as deleted. We received a suggestion from another counter-info site to use upload.disroot.org instead. We encourage you to reupload your files if you have recently submitted something that was not posted or was missing files.
In the words of Ghassan Kanafani, we must reject the “conversation between the sword and the neck.”
The footage you are viewing is contraband. It was smuggled out of Hind’s Hall and hidden from the NYPD in the band of a militant’s bra. Until now, the only footage to come out of the battle and raid was from the perspective of the pigs, but this footage is the worldview of the militant. We are releasing it in response to the latest wave of repression sweeping across amerika. The Student Intifada put the imperialist ruling class on its back foot. Echoes of 1968 and the threat of mother country militancy still loom over their heads—they remember the last time this kind of struggle erupted. They remember the last time youth in the metropole began to identify with the Third World guerrilla. The enemy is scared, and they should be. They’ve responded using every tactic of repression available to them, teetering on the edge of criminalizing all anti-zionist speech.
Yesterday, Columbia expelled another student for their alleged involvement in the Student Intifada. This is the first expulsion for alleged involvement in Hind’s Hall.
As reported in mainstream media, all outside visits have been cancelled to New York state prisons.
Around midnight on Thursday, there was a militant uprising at Riverview Correctional Facility in Ogdensburg, forcing correctional officers to retreat, vacate their posts, and call in police and emergency response teams to gain control of the situation. Last week there was another prison uprising at Collins Correctionnal Facility in Erie County.
Correctional officer pigs are currently on strike in 36 facilities across the state, so Gov. Kathy Hochul on Wednesday signed an executive order calling up 3,500 members of the National Guard for service in the remaining unmanned prisons.
A statewide prison uprising is brewing in New York. Long live the spirit of Attica! Attica means fight back!
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.
(For those who wish to print the newspaper, see the instructions below.)
The 3rd issue of the anarcho-nihilist/insurrectionary newspaper “Blessed Is The Flame” has been published. Its pages contain reports of direct actions, claims of responsibility, texts, poems, and news from anarchist prisoners and trials that were published in November and December 2024 in ten different languages across various parts of the world, or were sent to us via email and are being published for the first time. (Some of the texts published for the first time will also be uploaded as standalone posts on our blog, blessed-is-the-flame.espivblogs.net.)
Our goal is not only to break down the linguistic barriers that hinder information, solidarity, and the dissemination of propaganda by the deed on an international level but also to give counter-information a printed form. We believe it is crucial for counter-information to transcend the limits of the digital realm.
In an era of rapid developments, we unfortunately published the 3rd issue a bit later than we had planned, as this is the first time the newspaper is officially published in seven different languages: Greek, English, Spanish, Indonesian, French, Italian, and German. A new post will include links to all these translations, once they are published on the respective counter-information platforms.
We extend our heartfelt thanks to all comrades—both within Greece and abroad—who contribute by translating, offering financial support, and enabling the circulation of this newspaper in different parts of the world. Anyone interested in helping translate “Blessed Is The Flame” into even more languages can contact us at: blessedistheflame@riseup.net.
Printing Instructions:
For those interested in printing the newspaper, ask a trusted print shop to print it in A5 format as a colored booklet. In a few weeks from now, the English and the Spanish editions of the newspaper will also be available in an alternative format appropriate for the US paper sizing system.
For printing, please download the PDF directly from our website, as the download link may be updated in case we detect minor formatting errors in the file that may have overlooked.
THEMES OF THE 3RD ISSUE:
Counter-information for November – December 2024 (p. 1–11)
Luigi Mangione and political violence (p. 2–3)
Ampelokipi case: Memory and solidarity (p. 2–7, 17–18)
Italy: Words and actions against militarism (p. 7 – 10)
Statement from the Anarchist Union of Sudan (p. 10)
Anarchist news from Indonesia (p. 10–12)
Offensives against green capitalism (p. 12–13)
Responsibility claims with guides for action (p. 14)
Chile: Black memory, attacks, words from the prisons (p. 14–16)
Christmass offensive actions and anarchist wishes for the New Year (p. 17, 20)
Repression and counter-surveilance (p. 18–20)
EDITORIAL
When we conceived the idea for this newspaper a year ago, we could not have imagined that it would eventually take on such international dimensions so that, with the help of comrades from different parts of the earth, it would cross continents. The first issue was published only in Greek, but the second was also published in English and Spanish, and an effort is now being made to translate it into French as well. This issue is being published in even more languages and we hope that the translation efforts will multiply in future issues.
Comrades who are interested in contributing to this project can contact us in the email address blessedistheflame@riseup.net
Anarchy of action has always been a small but lively flame burning contemptuously in the vast gloom of apathy and compromise; let us make its blessed light reach the ends of the earth and kindle it with our destructive passion for freedom. Every attack born of this passion is a reminder that the resistance to the world of power is not alive only in certain historical moments with the approval of the masses, but is an everyday affair; that there will always be those who struggle to get out of the mire of oppression; every attack is a statement that there are black sheep who refuse the mutilated life offered to them by this rotten society.
Every unrepentant word that comes out of the mouths of imprisoned comrades is proof that repression does not break the rebellious spirits.
And finally, every death in action is an eternal call for struggle.
Regardless of whether nowadays the intensity of the anarchist offensive has dropped considerably, the above messages remain unchanged throughout the centuries, because this very intensity has always made circles, and it is in our hands to turn the wheel.
“Our group… called for active resistance. But public opinion was against us. The majority still thought such action provocative and maintained that if the required contingent of Jews could be delivered [to death camps], the remainder of the ghetto would be left in peace. The instinct for self-preservation finally drove the people into a state of mind permitting them to disregard the safety of others in order to save their own necks… the Germans had already succeeded in dividing the Jewish population into two distinct groups – those already condemned to die and those who still hoped to remain alive. Afterwards, step by step, the Germans will succeed in pitting these two groups against one another and cause some Jews to lead others to certain death in order to save their own skin.” – Marek Edelman, co-founder of the Warsaw Ghetto’s Jewish Combat Organization, reflecting on July 1942, when armed Jewish uprising was initially rejected.
“Jews, you are being deceived… Do not let them take you to death voluntarily. Resist! Fight tooth and nail… Fight for your lives!” – The illegal socialist bulletin, Storm, of the Warsaw Ghetto.
I started writing this in response to an article and booklet put out by Jewish anarchists called “Don’t Just Do Nothing to Counter Fascism.” It is now a more general proposal for Jews and non-Jews to see the need and outlines of aboveground and underground resistance.
The basis of what I am going to be saying comes from resonating moments of Jewish anti-fascism. These moments include the Warsaw Ghetto uprising where hundreds of Jews killed their Nazi guards and defended parts of the ghetto for weeks against a far better armed SS fighting force. Warsaw combatants had been preparing for years through underground combat organizations with different detachments and commanders elected in the ghetto. They met regularly, coordinated counter-espionage and intelligence, procured weapons and explosives, forged alliances, and operated an illegal printing press. This was all within the confines of an extremely surveilled open-air prison. After the war, the 43 group and 62 group formed, made up of anti-fascist Jews with boxing, martial arts, and military experience in Britain, using street fighting and deploying combative counter-protests at fascist speaking events from the 1940s until the 1970s. And although limited in their success, there are groups like the 2000s’ direct action Palestine-solidarity group, Anarchists Against the Wall, based within the borders of the state of Israel.
Growing up, being Jewish meant a connection to these parts of history. I know like many Jews coming from union families or working class backgrounds, my family took the most pride and found its roots in the historical figure of the Jewish activist, resistance member, labour organizer, holocaust survivor, and artist, rather than any religious or Zionist tradition. A family member had participated in guerilla warfare against the Nazi regime in France. All the other old timers were survivors who had gotten lucky owing largely to chance run-ins with underground resistance. I know I really deeply internalized a lot of these stories, particularly their incredible violence that, from a young age, made me afraid, angry, and want to fight. I have nothing but disgust or rage for the rabbis and collaborators who encouraged six million Jews to, without resistance, walk into gas chambers, die as slaves, and be slaughtered in the open streets.
Already, there is little resistance to the far-right’s platform of attacks on reproductive rights or the mass deportation and internment of migrants. We need to start looking at the places and times where fascism was actually defeated. This includes the historic guerrilla movements of Yugoslavia, France, or China. Today, the revolution in Rojava largely eradicated the fascist Islamic State within Syria in favour of a libertarian feminist society. What all of these projects have in common is armed militias or cells, and combative solidarity based in above-ground mass organizations such as unions, explicitly far-left political organizations, and neighbourhood and town council structures.
Many of the suggestions outlined in “Don’t Just Do Nothing to Counter Fascism” are important, emphasizing our need to rest, develop our skill sets, create collectives based on deep relationships, and practice direct action & mutual aid. I consider its writers comrades and have no intention but a friendly response. Reading their text, I cannot help but feel that a study of our actual Jewish anti-fascist history would have stressed different lessons. This history teaches us that there are uncomfortable risks that we will need to take going forward, that there are disruptions to our usual lifestyles that are required, a necessity of underground fighting groups and sabotage, and the need for organizational infrastructure that can have massive outreach and participation. It is not that the “care culture,” popular among the Jewish Left, is wrong, it is just misleading and an incomplete proposal if taken on its own – as it has been by many. In line with the conclusion of some Black anarchists following the George Floyd uprising, there continues to be a need for “networks of aboveground and underground self-organized resistance.”
In this vein, I would like to respond to the tendency of many Jewish radicals, leftists and anarchists who I feel do not want to fight because they would like to preserve their comfort for as long as they can, and turn their nose up at fighting as though we are not submerged in a dramatic confluence of violence, crises, and hierarchy: fascism or not. We know from the Holocaust that this instinct to not throw ourselves into battle, leads only to prolongation of suffering and attempts to find ourselves within the lucky few who are saved while we leave others behind to suffer. I know it is difficult because many of us have been raised by survivors and working class Jews who fought to survive and now pressure us to live the American Dream. The benefits of our labour union struggles and communalist culture have made many of us, but certainly not all, privileged. Yet, for young people, there is still that desire for revolt, a deep-felt solidarity, and spirit of autonomy that needs encouragement and support, not recuperation and sedating.
This failure of Jewish radicalism is reflected in the present state of Israel. There was never a serious drive by Jewish anarchists and socialists to destroy the Israeli state and capitalism. Even worse, there was no serious effort to prevent the state from forming. The Jewish working-class accepted, passively or actively, ethno-nationalism above all else, a compromise with the Jewish bourgeoisie and political class rather than a revolutionary struggle to overcome them. This is despite the attractive alliances available, not to mention basic obligations of solidarity, with Palestinian revolutionaries. It is impossible to speculate on such a dramatic imaginary turn in history, but had such an anarchist spirit existed and prevailed in executing a revolution in Palestine, there could have been self-organization, communalization of property and workplaces, and cooperative multi-racial communities in the place of government authority. This is a mistake by the Jewish left of historic proportions. I do not see how the suggestions listed in “Don’t Just Do Nothing to Counter Fascism” would materially undermine states like Israel or have changed the course of this history. There needs to be a greater emphasis on guerilla, mass movement, and other attacks that would be required to overthrow a government. And for this to exist, there must be the structure and group cultures that can bring this insurrection about. Unless we follow this path, we’re just speculating on ways to carve out our own comfortable activist lives within fascism as Israeli leftists have done.
It is worth studying the success of the 1904-1907 Yiddish anarchists in Poland’s industrial city of Bialystok. There, anarchism became the dominant political ideology among the working class. The Bialystok groups were taken up as a tendency across the Russian empire due to their success, including by the anarchists of Gulyai Pole who would later liberate a territory of up to seven million people. Anarchists created neighbourhoods within Bialystok which the police dared not enter, ensured the victory of strikes (typically through terrorizing bosses into accepting strikers’ demands), and when a pogrom started in the city, it was anarchists who led its armed defence and street patrols.
These Yiddish anarchists organized through groups, usually based on affinity, with different sections for technical, agitational, propaganda, Polish-language outreach, and weaponry work. All combined, the anarchist groups never had more than a few dozen members, most aged 15 to 20. One account of a meeting of a group, done in a cemetery, counts just four members in attendance. Connected to the groups were federations of hundreds of workers organized along an anarchist basis and divided by industry. Furthermore, the small groups created spaces within the city where crowds could gather for political discussions, debates, and the distribution of anarchist flyers and newspapers. In this way, these numerically small anarchist groups developed an outreach and influence across a broad population. The confidence in the group was so considerable that they developed an arbitration board, being overwhelmed with people, including petitioners from villages surrounding the city, coming to them to settle interpersonal disputes and issues of daily exploitation. Anarchists stockpiled weapons for the complete takeover of Bialystok and the development of an “industrial-military commune,” something for which workers were ready to launch a general strike, only to abandon the plans due to a lack of joint revolutionary action from other cities.
We need answers that can allow us to similarly confront the state and capitalism. Past generations of Jews have developed these responses before. Based on this, here are some additional recommendations for our fight. These recommendations are for everyone in and outside of the US, in rural and in urban areas. Whether fascism seems on the distant horizon or a close reality, the violence of oppression in our current society – call it fascism, colonialism, capitalism, or whatever you want – requires active preparation for a revolution:
1. Create or join underground resistance : This resistance can deploy industrial sabotage, military sabotage, attacks against private property, black blocs, surprise or “whisper” demonstrations, riots, conduct expropriations, looting, seize property (also known as “squats”), execute untraceable online activity, and other combative offensive and defensive moves. They can equally coordinate safehouses for migrants facing deportation or confinement – such as was done by many Polish and French people for us Jews – or perform clandestine abortions – as was done by the Lodz Ghetto survivor, Henry Morgantaler in Montreal.
This resistance can be based in small groups of people who work well together, assist each other in meeting each others’ needs, and develop a robust culture of secrecy and security. There needs to be a focus on propaganda work, onboarding, skill training, critical discussions on short/medium/long-term goals, confederation with other such groups, and connection to above-ground organizations and struggles. There is never a bad time for an underground resistance. It is never too soon. It is only ever too late. Anarchist news sites across the US regularly broadcast report-backs on nocturnal attacks against military facilities, extractive industries, and businesses being targeted by public movements. This resistance work needs to develop further structures (as was done by Bialystok anarchists), courage, affinity, skills, deeper revolutionary analysis, broader propaganda efforts, and synergy with aboveground groups to become a more serious threat.
2. Create or join radical mass organizations or movements : These organizations should be based on individual autonomy, confederation, combativeness, direct action, the elimination of internal hierarchy, mutual aid/education, and solidarity. Anarchist labour unions, tenant self-defence, neighbourhood and student assemblies, and anti-fascist fronts have all been examples employed by Jews from the women working in the Shmata Business, to the New York mothers leading rent strikes from 1918-1920, to the striking students fighting antisemitism at Aberdeen elementary school.
For those not yet ready for underground resistance, these mass organizations are a place to start and one in which most skills of any sort prove to be valuable. But do not mistake an NGO, political party, or your institutional student or workers’ union as such an organization. This is just a recipe for losing time.
3. Create or join a specificallyanarchist abovegroundgroup : Potentially modelled in the same way as the anarchist affinity group: unapologetic and vocally anarchist public facing activity is often necessary. Organizations of anarchists, such as Food Not Bombs, are interesting projects, but not a replacement for a specifically anarchist group, just like starting a breakfast program for kids is not a replacement for the Black Panther Party. Public anarchist activity should incorporate infrastructure for meeting peoples’ basic needs through direct action, mutual aid, and social centres where people can gather to build knowledge and relationships. People should be given skills to not just fight fascism, but its roots: the state, capitalism, patriarchy, racism, and all other systems of oppression and authority. Aboveground anarchist activity, namely education, mutual aid, direct action, and social events, can be carried out by these groups.
“Murder us, tyrants, but new fighters will come and we will fight on and on, until the world is free.”
