|  | Friends, lovers, (ex-)workers, comrades!
It's only March, and it's already been a hell of a year. Conditions are getting grimmer across the United States and beyond, with state repression and gender fascism drawing battle lines that none of us can avoid.
Hypocritical politicians in the United States are competing to promote the most outrageous assaults on trans and queer people. The failure of Silicon Valley banks shows the instability of the tech and data-driven capitalist economy, the failures of which will inevitably hit the poorest people hardest. Meanwhile, a Democratic president proposes to destroy more wilderness to keep fossil fuels flowing cheaply. Keep the party raging on the deck of the Titanic, they're telling us— at least, so long as no one's in drag!
Among these tragedies, last month we lost our longtime comrade, Jen Angel. For decades, Jen participated alongside us in the anarchist movement as a writer, publisher, organizer, and media worker. Her involvement spanned from the punk subculture and the anti-globalization movement of the 1990s through to the present day. In a society that dubs us criminal, extremist, terrorist, naïve, or insane for refusing to accept the status quo, it's important for us to honor our own and remember our legacies of resistance. |  | In Italy, anarchist political prisoner Alfredo Cospito has been on hunger strike since October against the solitary confinement regime. We discussed the implications of his case in this article and in audio form here. Today, Cospito is on his deathbed. The fascist-ruled Italian government would rather kill him and deal with the blowback than give an inch.
This sort of willful state heartlessness has been a theme all around the world. In Turkey and Syria, the despotic governments of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Bashar al-Assad have done precious little to assist those impacted by the earthquakes of February 6, while utilizing the opportunity to target their political adversaries with active neglect, blockades, and even bombings. In Greece, the far-right New Democracy government sought to use the fatal train accident of February 28 as an excuse to delay elections. In France, Macron has just forced through legislation to raise the age of retirement by executive diktat.
Yet wherever there is oppression, there is resistance, and that resistance has been ferocious. Many voices continue to speak out against the nightmare of policing, surveillance, impoverishment, and ecocide that our enemies aim to normalize. From the embattled forest of Atlanta to the rebellious streets of Paris, and likewise on the digital terrain that both links and divides us, the past several weeks have seen escalations in a wide range of conflicts that will determine the meaning of freedom in the twenty-first century.
These lines are drawn starkly in the Weelaunee Forest of Atlanta, one of the largest remaining urban forests in the US, which is the target of a nefarious plot by scheming politicians, entertainment executives, and police who want to destroy it to build a police training facility, popularly known as Cop City, and a soundstage for making cop dramas. Setting new precedents for combative resistance, a fierce coalition of anarchists, environmental activists, abolitionists, indigenous communities, and outraged neighbors has thus far thwarted their efforts. In 2022, we covered the struggle extensively from its origins through earlier weeks of action. This January, in response to the horrific murder of forest defender Manuel “Tortuguita” Teran, we participated in circulating a solidarity statement that was signed by many hundreds of groups.
Earlier this month, supporters converged in Atlanta for a week of action beginning with a music festival. After participants in a march destroyed the against the surveillance and construction infrastructure intended to destroy the forest and the movement, police attacked the festival, detaining dozens of concertgoers and campers at random. They released the locals while indiscriminately slapping domestic terrorism charges on anyone without a local address in order to craft a deceitful press release about “outside agitators.” The arrestees have since been denied bail. While frightening, the mendacity and cruelty of this strategy show how desperate the powerful forces behind the project are to clamp down on a movement that is growing larger and harder to control. |  | Over the past month, we've published three new texts to support the movement to Stop Cop City:
To stay updated, follow Defend the Atlanta Forest and the Atlanta Community Press Collective on Twitter. You can find zines related to the movement in the Defend the Atlanta Forest library. Check out the Defend Atlanta Forest linktree for more resources, and if you can, please support forest defenders facing legal charges by donating to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund. We urge you to learn all you can and find ways to take action in support of this vital struggle, which links so many different movements and will set an important precedent for future efforts to defend land and freedom. |  | We've continued our robust international coverage, including reports from several frontline struggles that echo themes we are confronting in the United States. In Germany, the battle to defend the small village of Lutzerath from destruction by a coal company ended in defeat, but dramatized the courage of direct resistance while forcing a global audience to confront the collusion of the state and capitalists in accelerating the climate crisis; we published a powerful photo essay documenting the events. Don't miss the mud wizard hexing police! In Peru, a countrywide rebellion headed by campesino and indigenous movements exploded in December and January; we published an interview with Peruvian anarchists about the revolt. In Iran, over the past several months, a powerful uprising against the theocratic government has foregrounded feminist resistance to gender tyranny alongside movements for Kurdish self-determination, economic justice, and political freedom; for International Women's Day, we published a text tracing the history of the movement's key slogan, “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” (Women, Life, Freedom).
If you're connected to horizontal movements for freedom whose voices we haven't highlighted yet, get in touch! |  | For those of you who appreciate the old-school earnestness of classic CrimethInc., you'll enjoy our recent poster, “We'll Go Where Flowers Grow.” As grim as things may seem-as heavily as they weigh on our hearts-it's crucial to remain connected to the passion, wonder, and joy we experience in the struggle for a free world. Not just in some distant future, but here and now.
In addition to everything we've published on the website, the Ex-Worker Podcast crew has been hard at work on the audio front. As we announced a few weeks ago, our newly-formed audio affinity group is producing versions of most of the articles we publish for your listening pleasure. We've released seven episodes since the new year, with several more in the pipeline. If you like receiving your radical news and ideas in audio format, you might enjoy our releases on elections, fascism, and popular resistance in Brazil; our 2022 year in review; or our collection on the Twitter ban and the crisis of social media, including four articles we published between October and December on Twitter's anarchist origins, our ban and response, and the future of social media in relationship to social movements. You could also listen to our account of the “Battle of York,” revisiting an antifascist counterdemonstration of 2002 in the context of the 2017 fascist rally in Charlottesville. Finally, you can listen to history, analysis, and accounts from the movement to Stop Cop City and Defend Weelaunee Forest.
More audio episodes are on the way, including texts mentioned above about the movements in Iran and Peru and the latest articles about the struggle to defend the forest in Atlanta. Stay tuned!
This winter has been brutal-but spring is around the corner. And no politicians, no police, no developers, no fascists, no one can stop the warmth from surging anew, nor prevent the seeds we've sown beneath the snow from bursting forth. We'll go where the flowers grow-and we'll see you in the streets.
With love and rage, Your comrades from the CrimethInc. Ex-Workers' Collective | | |
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