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I shot an elephant in my pyjama's today.
by mattd 01 Jan '02

01 Jan '02

More than a few essayists and researchers on science fiction have noticed that science fiction is a little lacking in the humor department. This isn't for lack of trying: humor in our supergenre of science fiction, fantasy, and horror fails mostly because either the writers are too close to their subject matter or because it's hard to drop a few great jokes into a 4,000-word short story without it distorting the plot. A few examples exist of brilliant humor in the genre, including Fritz Leiber's "Lean Times In Lankhmar", Harlan Ellison's "I'm Looking For Kadak", and Paul Di Filippo's The Steampunk Trilogy, but comedy writing requires a completely different attitude than that of any other form of literature. (This may sound as if I'm belaboring the obvious, but you would be amazed at how many feeble attempts at humor are attempted by otherwise excellent writers who simply don't understand the basics; they're like the folks who write children's stories without understanding what a typical children's story needs for success.) The first thing to remember is that humor is dependent upon two things: the audience's level of knowledge, and its attitude. For instance, the humor in the phrase "Whitley Strieber still hasn't caught on that `Klaatu barada nikto' really means `Squeal like a pig, boy! SQUEEE!'" depends upon the readership being knowledgeable of (a) Whitley Strieber and his claims of being rectally probed by aliens and (b) the movies The Day the Earth Stood Still and Deliverance. All three are necessary to make the gag work: a passing familiarity with the three is all that's needed, but lack of knowledge of one component causes the gag to lose most of its impact. The worst feeling a humorist can experience is that horrible facial expression implying "Should I be laughing?", and the more time spent explaining the basics means less time to finish the story. (This isn't always true: Arlo Guthrie's song "Alice's Restaurant" goes on for 25 minutes with the details of the notorious Alice's Restaurant Massacree, and every last element is essential to explaining why ol' Arlo's potential sojourn into the Army was compromised by a charge of litterbuggery. Take out even five minutes, and the whole thing falls apart More at...http://www.hpoo.com/errata/humor.html

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Re: CNN.com on Remailers
by Bill Stewart 01 Jan '02

01 Jan '02

Depending on the recipient, you might or might not be encrypting the message. But the important security you're protecting is the connection between the sender and the recipient. Depending on the application, the sender may be trying to prevent the recipient from knowing his address, or the two of them may be trying to prevent outside eavesdroppers from knowing that they're communicating, but in either case, you only have that security if you can trust the remailer system not to divulge the relationships. If you let the sender's system do all the encryption, then the entire chain needs to be compromised for the connection to be revealed; otherwise any remailer along the way can rat him out. That doesn't mean that you can't gain some security by remailers in the middle also adding hops on their own, but the sender can't depend on that (at least unless he trusts the remailers that are doing that), and of course you risk routing loops, which are ugly things to detect in connection-obfuscating environments. At 10:02 AM 12/29/2001 -0600, Jim Choate wrote: >On Sat, 29 Dec 2001, Bill Stewart wrote: > > > > At 09:01 PM 12/17/2001 -0600, Jim Choate wrote: > > > The only way to get security is for the originator to do the encryption - > > otherwise, if ANY remailer in the chain is compromised, > >Actually this isn't the 'only' way. ALL (!!!) that is required to keep the >security of the email traffic is that it is source encrypted for the >destination; it's gibberish to all middle-men. What the remailer chain >does is break the causal connectivity, it provides plausible deniability. >.... > > the Bad Guys can read the message. > >At no point can anyone other than the recipient 'read the message', unless >it was sent in the 'clear' in the first place (silly thing to do). > > > If the originator does the crypto, > > then EVERY remailer in the chain has to be compromised to break it. > >ROTFLMAO. ONLY(!!!) if the source didn't destination encrypt to begin >with. A critical step you seem to not quite 'get'.

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Flaccid sex:Twighlights last gleaming.
by mattd 01 Jan '02

01 Jan '02

Twilight rantings from the Champion of Fun..., November 10, 2000 Reviewer: A reader from Tucson, AZ Like many another of his kind, Hunter S Thompson has outlived his greatness. When he started out, he was the most dangerous man in his vocation; now, even the Secret Service considers the guy harmless. Sad, but true: when he places bizarre calls to the White House switchboard and hollers "I feel like killing somebody!" in a crowded bar at the Capital Hotel on election night, it's hard to escape the suspicion that he's no longer doing this for the hell of it, he's doing it to live up to a character - doing what's expected of him. A well-behaved, sober Hunter Thompson would be more genuinely subversive than the caricature that slouches through the pages of this shoddy collection of faxes, scrawled memos, pictures, and a less-than-riveting central narrative that fails to plug us into the momentum of the campaign, so that the pay-off of the election itself doesn't carry any zing. But that's not to say it's a bad book. It's simply not an uplifting one - not that Thompson's earlier works weren't gloriously sordid and deranged, but here there's a lingering sense of waste, of failure, and it's hard not to see why. HST is a spiritual anarchist not truly at home in any civilized environment, and the only decade for him was the Sixties. He chronicled the downward spiral of the next two decades fiercely, but this final decade of the twentieth century seemed impossibly dull and discouraging to him. "The standard gets lower every year, but the scum keeps rising," writes Thompson in the defining passage of the book. "A whole new class has seized control in the nineties. They call themselves 'The New Dumb' and they have no sense of humor. They are smart, but they have no passion. They are cute, but they have no fun except phone sex and line dancing...." There were no heroes in the '92 election. Thompson backed Clinton, but only because he had a chance to beat George Bush ("a raving human sacrifice," says HST of Geo. W.'s dad, and "a criminal fraud worse than Nixon") and considers Perot beneath contempt, a spotlight-crazed little runt with no good in him. As for Bill Clinton, HST has a few positive words but no illusions about his "low-rent accidental fascist-style campaign." It's hard to forget the story of his extremely weird encounter with the future President in a restaurant in Little Rock; it's laugh-out-loud funny all right, but also very creepy in a way it's hard to put your finger on. As with much of the guy's work, it's sometimes hard to distinguish fact from forgivable hyperbole from outright nonsense, and maybe it's more fun that way. But HST saves his knockout punch for the very end, almost as an afterthought: his Rolling Stone obituary for Richard Nixon. If this weren't also available somewhere on the internet, its inclusion would justify purchasing Better Than Sex. Much earlier in the book, he remembers his shock on first reading H. L. Mencken's vicious obituary of William Jennings Bryan - "I remember thinking...Ye gods, this is evil. I had learned in school that Bryan was a genuine hero of history, but after reading Mencken's brutal obit, I knew in my heart that he was, in truth, a monster." Mencken's piece was the standard HST held himself to when he prepared to write Nixon's eulogy, and he lived up to it: these few brutal pages are perhaps the most stunning he's ever written. If our 37th President is remembered by only one document, let it be this. If the tone seems strangely personal, it's because this piece, the culmination of HST's career as a political journalist, is as much a farewell from Thompson himself as it is to Nixon. As he writes, "I am poorer now...He brought out the best in me, all the way to the end, and for that I am grateful to him. Read it and weep, for we have lost our Satan."

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Technology Uber Alles
by mattd 01 Jan '02

01 Jan '02

Technology Tech-nol-o-gy n. According to Webster's: industrial or applied science. In reality: the ensemble of division of labor/production/industrialism and its impact on us and on nature. Technology is the sum of mediations between us and the natural world and the sum of those separations mediating us from each other. it is all the drudgery and toxicity required to produce and reproduce the stage of hyper-alienation we live in. It is the texture and the form of domination at any given stage of hierarchy and commodification. Those who still say that technology is "neutral," "merely a tool," have not yet begun to consider what is involved. Junger, Adorno and Horkheimer, Ellul and a few others over the past decades - not to mention the crushing, all but unavoidable truth of technology in its global and personal toll - have led to a deeper approach to the topic. Thirty-five years ago the esteemed philosopher Jaspers wrote that "Technology is only a means, in itself neither good nor evil. Everything depends upon what man makes of it, for what purpose it serves him, under what conditions he places it." The archaic sexism aside, such superficial faith in specialization and technical progress is increasingly seen as ludicrous. Infinitely more on target was Marcuse when he suggested in 1964 that "the very concept of technical reason is perhaps ideological. Not only the application of technology, but technology itself is domination... methodical, ascientific, calculated, calculating control." Today we experience that control as a steady reduction of our contact with the living world, a speeded-up Information Age emptyness drained by computerization and poisoned by the dead, domesticating imperialism of high-tech method. Never before have people been so infantalized, made so dependant on the machine for everything; as the earth rapidly approaches its extinction due to technology, our souls are shrunk and flattened by its pervasive rule. Any sense of wholeness and freedom can only return by the undoing of the massive division of labor at the heart of technological progress. This is the liberatory project in all its depth. Of course, the popular literature does not yet reflect a critical awareness of what technology is. Some works completely embrace the direction we are being taken, such as McCorduck's 'Machines Who Think' and Simons' 'Are Computers Alive?', to mention a couple of the more horrendous. Other, even more recent books seem to offer a judgement that finally flies in the face of mass pro-tech propaganda, but fail dismally as they reach their conclusions. Murphy, Mickunas and Pilotta edited 'The Underside of High-Tech: Technology and the Deformation of Human Sensibilities' , who's ferocious title is completely undercut by an ending that technology will become human as soon as we change our assumptions about it! Very similar is Siegel and Markoff's 'The High Cost of High Tech'; after chapters detailing the various levels of technological debilitation, we once again learn that its all just a question of attitude: "We must, as a society, understand the full impact of high technology if we are to shape it into a tool for enhancing human comfort, freedom and peace." This kind of cowardice and/or dishonesty owes only in part to the fact that major publishing corporations do not wish to publicize fundamentally radical ideas. Zerzan.(extract)

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Agent Faustine caught lying,coatdragging and flashing greased up anus.
by mattd 01 Jan '02

01 Jan '02

>>the absurdity of thinking you can ever be truly anonymous. Agent justine. BOLLOCKS! The fucking bungling idiots are cooking up virus's to scope and send passphases for FUN!? Give us a fucking break. Plenty are truly anonymous,more every day.The collapse of Govts is Imminent.All those posting here regularly are willing to be martyrs for crypto-anarchy.

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Backflow' water-line attack feared
by Dave Emery 31 Dec '01

31 Dec '01

---------------- Qoute without further comment --------------------- 'Backflow' water-line attack feared Terrorists could reverse flow in system to introduce toxins By Yochi J. Dreazen THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Dec. 27 - In St. Petersburg, Fla., water authorities are keeping a closer eye on system-wide water pressure. In Cleveland, officials are weighing whether to add more chlorine to their water so larger amounts of the chemical will linger in their pipes. In Portland, Ore., alarms are now triggered by smaller drops in water pressure than in the past. ACROSS THE COUNTRY, water utility officials are taking steps to prevent terrorists from reversing the flow of water into a home or business - which can be accomplished with a vacuum cleaner or bicycle pump - and using the resulting "backflow" to push poisons into a local water-distribution system. Such an attack would use utility pipes for the opposite of their intended purpose: Instead of carrying water out of a tap, the pipes would spread toxins to nearby homes or businesses. Water utility officials say the backflow threat dominates their post-Sept. 11 discussions with law-enforcement personnel. Although utilities have posted extra guards to patrol reservoirs and treatment plants, officials say the biggest threat to the nation's water supply may be from the pipes that carry the water, not facilities that store or purify it. "There's no question that the distribution system is the most vulnerable spot we have," says John Sullivan, chief engineer for the Boston Water & Sewer Commission and president of the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies. "Our reservoirs are really well protected. Our water-treatment plants can be surrounded by cops and guards. But if there's an intentional attempt to create a backflow, there's no way to totally prevent it." Most reservoirs hold between three million and 30 million gallons of water, which would dilute any poison so significantly that terrorists would have to release enormous quantities to do serious damage. And most poison would be destroyed when the water was purified at a treatment plant. A backflow attack, by contrast, could spread highly concentrated amounts of poison to a few thousand homes or businesses, making the toxin far more effective. So far, the only backflow incidents on record have been accidental. Four years ago, dozens of gallons of fire-fighting foam backed up through the hoses of firefighters in Charlotte, N.C., and made its way into the city's water system, prompting officials to order thousands of residents not to shower or drink tap water for several days. In 1998, workers at a United Technologies Corp. Sikorsky helicopter plant in Bridgeport, Conn., added chemicals to the facility's fire prevention system to guard against corrosion. Some of the chemicals backed into the town's water system, deluging area homes with contaminated water that residents were told not to drink or use for washing or bathing. There were no serious injuries in either case, but the incidents rattled many water officials. Even before the Sept. 11 attacks, fears of an accidental backflow incident led to the creation of a group called the American Backflow Prevention Association (www.abpa.org) which works with lawmakers, water officials and engineers across the country. The group publishes a newsletter and an educational comic book for children that features a character named Buster Backflow. Down the pipes? The federal government devotes little money to protecting the nation's water supply system, which many law enforcement officials see as a potential terrorist target. Amount of money spent by the Environmental Protection Agency to combat bioterrorism in fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2001: $2.5 million (the agency spent $10,000 on the issue in 1998, no money on it in 1999, and $100,000 in 2000). Amount that municipal and private water-system officials wanted to see the agency spend on the issue in the current fiscal year: $155 million. Amount the EPA will spend in the current fiscal year, according to recently passed emergency spending legislation: $90.3 million. Total amount of money that water-system officials want Congress to devote to improving drinking-water and wastewater plants: $5 billion. Total number of municipal water systems across the country: 54,064. Total number of Americans served by the systems: 263.9 million. Amount water systems would receive for immediate security projects, according to a just passed Senate bill: $50 million. Sources: EPA, American Water Works Association, WSJ research Still, experts have long feared that a terrorist would try an intentional attack. As Gay Porter DeNileon - a journalist who serves on the National Critical Infrastructure Protection Advisory Group, a water-industry organization - put it in the May issue of the journal of the American Water Works Association, "One sociopath who understands hydraulics and has access to a drum of toxic chemicals could inflict serious damage pretty quickly." Utility officials say that it is difficult to fully prevent a backflow incident, but they are hopeful that they can limit the damage through early detection. The beginning of a backflow attack probably would be marked by a sudden drop in water pressure in a targeted neighborhood as terrorists stopped the flow of water into a home or business. The pressure would then climb as attackers reversed the flow of water and began using it to carry poison. Utilities regularly monitor system-wide water pressure, because a sharp and unanticipated decrease - at times other than, say, halftime of the Super Bowl, when tens of millions of American toilets flush - can indicate that a pipe has burst. Most utilities monitor pressure at water-treatment plants and inside the underground pipes that carry the water to nearby homes and businesses; some use advanced telemetric sensors inside pipes. In recent weeks, many utilities say they have increased the frequency of their checks. "A small drop-off would attract attention it wouldn't have even a short time ago," says Michelle Clements, a spokeswoman for Oregon's Portland Water District, which serves 190,000 customers. But officials concede that it might be difficult for them to actually spot the minor drop in pressure that could be the start of a backflow attack. Jeffrey Danneels, who specializes in infrastructure security at Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico, says that water officials might have a hard time detecting a backflow attack originating in a single home or apartment building. "The smaller the pipe, the harder it would be to notice," he says. Another way to protect the public is to increase the amounts of chlorine or other chemicals added to water so that more of the chemical will remain in the pipes, providing residual protection against some toxins, according to Tom Curtis, deputy director of the American Water Works Association, which represents 4,300 public and private water utilities. At the Cleveland Division of Water, officials are considering adding more chlorine in areas where residual levels are low, says Julius Ciaccia Jr., Cleveland's water commissioner. Even before the Sept. 11 attacks, some utilities had begun replacing the chlorine with chloramine, a related substance made from the combination of chlorine and ammonia that is believed to linger in pipes longer. Increasing the chemicals has drawbacks, however. "You can only go so far before people begin to complain about the taste," says Curtis. The only sure way of preventing a backflow attack, water officials says, is installing valves to prevent water from flowing back into the pipes. Many homes have such valves on toilets and boilers. But virtually none have them on sinks, in part because water officials long assumed that the biggest threat they faced was natural, such as an earthquake, flood or hurricane carrying debris into a reservoir or pipe. Water officials say retrofitting existing structures with the valves would be prohibitively expensive. "We're used to natural incidents. We're ready for them," says Sullivan of the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies. "But we've never really looked at what could happen if someone really wanted to come and get us. And that's a hard adjustment to make." Copyright ) 2001 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Dave Emery N1PRE, die(a)die.com DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass. PGP fingerprint = 2047/4D7B08D1 DE 6E E1 CC 1F 1D 96 E2 5D 27 BD B0 24 88 C3 18

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by D. Woodward 31 Dec '01

31 Dec '01

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Red stripe,goldeneye and the Gleaner.
by mattd 31 Dec '01

31 Dec '01

JAMAICA: Island sets new record for homicides, with 1,136 slain in 2001 KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) - Jamaica reported a record 1,136 homicides this year, fueled by drug trafficking and gang violence, police said Monday. The toll was a 28 percent increase over last year's 887 slayings. The former record in the Caribbean country of 2.6 million people was 1,038 killings in 1997. Detective Sgt. Jubert Llewellyn blamed the increase on an influx of drugs in Jamaica and said the country is increasingly being used by traffickers as a transshipment point. Another factor was fighting between gangs with clashing political loyalties in the capital, Kingston. Defense Minister Peter Phillips announced the government plans to recruit 1,000 new police officers to the 10,500-officer force to implement anti-crime measures he plans to announce in January. The government also will be working to recruit an unspecified number of soldiers, Phillps said Monday. The army has about 3,000 soldiers, but the government will not give a specific number. Gang fighting in West Kingston flared in May, leaving 71 people dead in several weeks. In July, 28 others were killed in a few days of gunfights when police and soldiers moved into a neighborhood that is a stronghold of the political opposition KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) - Three Jamaican musicians face obscenity charges for allegedly using foul language during a concert last week, police said Monday. Oneil "Elephant Man" Bryan was charged Monday, police said in a written statement, and is to appear in court on Jan. 16. Police have not yet issued summonses to Rodney "Bounty Killer" Pryce and Desmond "Ninjaman" Ballintine, who also face charges. All three performed at a Dec. 26 concert in Portmore, a community on the outskirts of Kingston. They perform dancehall, a hybrid of reggae and rap. Pryce and Ballintine were convicted in November of using profanity at a concert in July. They were put on nine months of probation. It wasn't immediately clear what maximum penalty the musicians might face if found guilty.

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Some judges need Killing
by mattd 31 Dec '01

31 Dec '01

On June 6th a Eugene based newspaper, The Register Guard, reported that a man who killed a woman while driving drunk received a 10 year jail sentence. The man was given the sentence because the judge saw him as having no concern for the lives or well being of the other drivers on the road. Six days later, the same newspaper reported that my friend Jeffrey Luers, also known as Free, had been sentenced to 22 years and 8 months for causing a few thousand dollars worth of fire damage to some sport utility vehicles. This disparity in sentencing is one we should expect from a society whose values are so predominantly capital-centric. Even though the judge admitted that Free had taken precaution against harming people, the value of those trucks has become more important than the value of life itself. Free is now 22 years old. He will spend more time in jail than he has already spent on earth. The fire Free was convicted of setting was an act of compassion. The gas guzzling monstrosities known as SUV's slaughter more animals each year than the fur industry, emit fumes that harm the well being of plants and animals alike, and take us further down the path of a world without green spaces. As forests, grasslands, and other wild areas fall to make more room for parking lots and freeways, is it any wonder that people are beginning to attack the auto industry? I've known Free for about 4 years. In that time I have seen him do amazing things. His dedication to the protection of wilderness is almost without peer. He has lived much of the time I have known him outdoors, constantly protecting forests and the animals that live in them. When ever we saw each other he would tell me about his latest arrest, jail time, or the harassment he was undergoing for his beliefs and actions. It seemed like it was never ending, but he never stopped. Even from behind bars he has stood strong and continued to urge others to go on the offensive for mother earth. I know for sure that even if Free serves every day of his nearly 23 year sentence he will get out and continue fighting. He values life too much to ever give in and become part of a culture gone mad. While he is stripped of his freedom, it is up to us to continue fighting. His sentence cannot become a deterrent to us. If we quit protecting animals, wilderness, and each other out of fear of reprisal then we are cowards. Let Free's bravery stand as a testament to how hard our common will is to break. Don't give up, and dedicate your next victory to Free. Extract. Practise to kill the president on a judge.

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Phoenix Anarchists Support Glendale Community's Struggle Against Police
by mattd 31 Dec '01

31 Dec '01

Phoenix Anarchists Support Glendale Community's Struggle Against Police posted by Brian on Sunday December 30 2001 @ 12:47PM PST Members of a largely immigrant Glendale community battling police brutality, other victims and families of victims of police brutality, the Phoenix Anarchist Coalition (PAC), the Arizona Anarcho-Punk Federation, Phoenix Copwatch, North Phoenix Anti-Racist Action and the Phoenix Industrial Workers of the World joined together for a march through downtown Glendale and a Know Your Rights Forum on Wednesday, December 19th, the one-year anniversary of an early morning police raid which left 23 young men arrested. The day was also coincidentally the one-month anniversary of another police shooting in nearby Peoria in which the cops killed an unarmed man when he reached for a cell phone. Phoenix Anarchist Coalition members first met the Glendale families at last year's Martin Luther King, Jr. march. The families had taken over a hill overlooking the event, carrying huge banners and signs denouncing the Glendale police as racist brutalizers. A conversation was begun there, and the families were eager to talk about what had happened to them. Over the course of the next year, several PAC members went across town to hear their stories and to offer any support that was needed. Despite some difficulties in communication because of the lack of Spanish speakers within our group, a special effort was made to keep in touch with these families to stay on top of developments and then, when this year's October 22 police brutality march was planned, the families were invited. We were definitely aware that it was up to us to be relevant to their struggle, not the other way around. Happily, they came and spoke at several points along the march, bringing with them the most passionate speakers and the most wonderful banners. The stories that the families told were brutal ones indeed. In a series of early morning attacks, officers of the Glendale Police Department (GPD) simultaneously raided 23 homes in Glendale, serving warrants on sons and brothers who were alleged by the GPD to be members of the Califas gang. The families vehemently deny this allegation. Instead, they complain about a pattern of harassment in which the GPD intimidated, categorized and photographed their sons based on a very loose set of gang criteria. They were effectively tried and convicted by the police merely because of their income, skin color and who they knew. When the police came, they blew down doors with explosives and charged into the houses with overwhelming force, including automatic weapons, surprising many of the residents in their pajamas and underwear. In one case, the GPD lay in wait outside a home and arrested two brothers as they left for work in the early morning, down the street, then waited for their father to leave as well. Then, when the house was almost empty, the police charged the door, knocking hard without declaring themselves. Thinking that one of her sons had forgotten something, the mother of the two newly arrested young men made her way towards the door with a small child in her arms to open it. Mere moments after knocking, the GPD set off explosive charges which blew the door to smithereens, sending pieces of the metal hinges and doorknob flying through the air like shrapnel. But for a second or two, this woman would certainly have been killed or seriously injured - the doorknob flew through the air, through the wall and into an adjoining bedroom from the force of the explosion. As a result, this family was left without a door in the middle of December. All the families, including small children and pregnant women, were held at gunpoint while police armed with automatic weapons ransacked their homes and arrested many young men. Police were rude, aggressive and uncooperative when residents asked to see warrants or for explanations. Eventually 25 young men were arrested, and 22 of them still sit in jail one year later. The attorneys for the police have pressured the young men while in jail to take plea deals. One sixteen year old boy who took a deal has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for illegal possession of a handgun. Gus, the father of one of those still in jail and one of the neighborhood organizers characterized it this way: "They [Glendale police] are pressuring these kids to sign plea bargains. They [the young men arrested] are not killers. They are not terrorists. Is this the law? Is this the civil rights for the United States? This is like Gestapo! They [Glendale Police] don't respect anything." As if that weren't bad enough, there is also some evidence that the GPD orchestrated this raid as a way to justify a new Federal anti-gang task force grant it was applying for. Two weeks after the raid, Glendale was approved for the money. Not that we should be surprised by this, but it certainly casts the GPD in a truly shameful light. A few weeks after the O22 march, the Glendale families decided that they wanted to have a march of their own on the anniversary of the police attacks. Explaining why, Gus said, "It has passed one year, but it still hurts me and the Mexican community. They do not need to commit police brutality. We still remember. That is the reason that we march. I will never forget what they did. It was four months of investigation and we have been waiting one year for evidence. Do you think it's fair? I don't think it's fair." PAC members were asked to assist in the planning, and so a hurried series of meetings took place in which anarchists and neighborhood residents decided cooperatively on a route, on a press release that was written and faxed out, on inviting groups, and on designing flyers to distributed in both english and spanish. Once this was done, PAC mostly focused on getting out anarchists to the march. However, on one of the flyer distributions we assisted in out in Glendale, two Glendale neighborhood residents and two PAC members hit up shoppers at a local grocery chain and another nearby westside neighborhood that had recently seen an unarmed man shot and killed by police after reaching for a cell phone, leaving his young girlfriend widowed and their 2 month old baby without a father. When we got there, I was disturbed to find that it was a neighborhood in which I had spent a lot of time as a younger punk. I'd spent probably three or four days a week hanging out just a block from where the shooting happened. It was a mixed working class white and hispanic neighborhood. While handing out flyers, two interesting things happened. First, through asking around, the house where the young man lived was located. We knocked but no one was home and so we left Copwatch literature, along with a note expressing sympathy, information on the march and a contact number. We knew his girlfriend would be grieving, but we also knew that this was an issue she would have a personal connection to. We were a little unsure if this was appropriate or not, but, not having any other ideas, we did it anyhow. A few minutes later, while handing out flyers in the same neighborhood, about two blocks away, we ran into a man whose sister was now taking care of half a dozen kids orphaned when a mentally ill woman was shot and killed by police on May 1, last year. Most of us remember this event clearly because it came on the same day as our local May Day march in which 11 people were arrested. As part of its new strategy, Copwatch, a group I am involved with, had decided to increase its patrols of this neighborhood, and the week before the march there was a patrol in which the Glendale police stopped one of our cars after we pulled over to observe a stop. The cops were ticketing a hispanic man for a broken headlight at a corner gas station. After being detained for 20 minutes, it turned out that it was just a bad fuse. At one point the man, explaining to the cop, reached out and kicked the headlight - it came on immediately. Too late - he was still ticketed. While we were there the cops called out a bunch of unnecessary backup, including a sergeant, who promptly came up to us like the big man he is to tell us what we could and could not do (as if we don't know). He told us we made the cops nervous by the way we pulled up on the scene. When the stop was over, we drove off, only to be pulled over a few blocks down the road by a cop car that had immediately swung in behind us after we left the gas station. The officer who pulled us over demanded to know who Copwatch was, what it was doing, where it was based and various other information. When we were released, an unmarked car followed us out of Glendale. Clearly, the Glendale cops are nervous about being watched. When the day of the march came, everyone gathered on a street corner downtown. About 80 to 100 people eventually showed up and the march moved out. Copwatch shadowed the march, sporting their trademark orange shirts with cameras in hand while we proceeded down the street towards the police headquarters, stopping periodically to show the beautiful banners made by the Glendale families. The cops were trying to play nice by stopping traffic for us. People were generally very supportive, and many honks from passing cars followed us as we marched thanks to a "Honk if you hate the police" sign. At this point I'd like to make a critique of the way the march proceeded. Probably unconsciously the march had segregated, with mostly white anarchists up front and mostly non-white folks at the back. This was particularly distressing because it was not the anarchists' march. Several people tried consciously to remedy this and by the time we left the police station, the march mixed up more, although some anarchists continued to take the lead, which I found distressing, since our role was to be supportive and not co-optive. I was also a bit distressed by the number of anarchists wearing masks on the march. While I recognize the utility of masks, and have worn one on many occasions, this particular time it seemed inappropriate. For me, although I had a mask, I opted not to wear it for two reasons. First of all, I was just so impressed that these people could stand up, without masks, and denounce the very cops who had brutalized them that I just couldn't justify hiding my identity. How sad would that be if I, not even a resident of this community, and being white, felt I had to hide my face, despite all my privilege, while these people with so little and who had been so recently victimized refused to do likewise. Could I, despite being a victim of police brutality myself, honestly say I was in more danger than these people were? My answer was clearly, no. In fact, many times in front of the HQ I heard residents demand that the cops show themselves and come out of the building, chastising them as cowards for not doing so. Hiding behind a mask at that point seemed insupportable to me. Secondly, the Glendale cops were not filming the march, unlike they were in Phoenix at O22 or Mayday. So, even strategically, it made little sense to conceal my identity. I was glad to see most anarchists going unmasked, though. I was also glad to see most of the anarchists playing supportive roles and taking their lead from the residents themselves about what was appropriate behavior. Eventually we reached the police station. The bullhorn was passed around as people spoke, denouncing the police. A few cops guarded the building's entrance and were treated to condemnations from one angry resident after another. It was mostly women who spoke, often shaking with emotion, screaming about their sons' situations and the fascist, inexcusable behavior of the cops. About 20 people spoke, probably more, each followed by supportive applause from those assembled. The most moving part for me was when the sister of one of those incarcerated stood, a few feet from the cops, screaming, "My brother got ten years for having a gun in our house! How much time are you guys going to get for bringing your guns into my house and pointing them at us?! How many years are you going to get?! Fuck you!" Another inspiring moment came when it was revealed that the girlfriend of the man shot with the cell phone had come to the march. She had called our house the night before the march asking about it. She brought with her their small baby and a photograph of her boyfriend. Shaking tearfully, she told her tragic story. When she was done, one of the anarcha-punks rushed up to comfort her and the two embraced. The cops stood there without expression, unmoved. More peeked from behind the glass doors, cravenly taking in the scene on the street. After about 20 or more minutes of loud denunciations, while some of the media took pictures and filmed (only one english-language media outlet bothered to come - the rest were all spanish-language), we began to move out. Suddenly, however, half the march stopped and started running back to the entrance. One of the cops had gone inside, apparently, and a group of people started chanting, "Chicken! Chicken!" over and over at him. This continued for a while, along with a few more angry words from demonstrators. Eventually, though, the march moved out again. As we headed down the street some of the residents moved into the streets. Following their cue, so did some of the anarchists. The cops were busy blocking off streets and one lane of traffic. This continued off and on for a little while until we reached the library and turned around, heading back along the other side of the street. The police ignored it, unlike on Mayday where they attacked us, armed to the teeth. There were some attempts to get some chants going, but it was difficult. One failing is that during the actual march the bullhorn was rarely in the hands of the residents. At the stops it was, but in between it wasn't, most of the time. Further, we hadn't prepared any spanish-language chants, and neither had the families. As a result, most of the chants that were started petered out pretty quickly. We should not make this mistake again. In the future we need to have printed out, english and spanish language chants to distribute in case no one else does. PAC has a regularly meeting spanish class, so hopefully this is something they will take up - they recently translated our anti-police flyer. Finally, as the march was about to reach the end, it came across an unmarked police car in the parking lot of Pete's Fish and Chips, occupied by four fat and arrogant pigs in long-sleeved dark blue shirts emblazoned with "POLICE" across the front. Gus, stopped and called for the megaphone. It turned out that one of the cops in the car was one who had raided his house. The megaphone was handed over to him and he let loose on that cop, denouncing him for his role in the raid, and asking him whether he was ashamed or not and if he understood the consequences of his actions. Things were really heating up as the crowd began to mass around the cop car. The pigs were visibly nervous as the crowd grew bigger and began moving on them. The car slowly began to move backwards down an alley, unable to turn around. The crowd, encouraged, began to advance and cheer, following as it went. It began to retreat faster as it called for backup and cops on bikes and motorcycles moved in to surround it so it could make an escape. The people surrounded these cops, who seemed scared and began blaring their sirens and revving their engines to intimidate us. Some anarchists locked arms on one side of the cops while the neighborhood residents carrying the banner used it to block off the cops from the other direction. Everyone else closed in from the other sides. Partially surrounded, the cops beat a hasty and disorganized retreat. Cheers and curses went up from everyone as they fled. We regrouped and several people took the megaphone and spoke while the cops eyed us from a distance. A female PAC member spoke about solidarity and communities standing together in spanish, and there were cheers. Gus spoke again, this time standing on something. He attacked the cops as worthless, finishing off with a loud "Fuck the cops!" Another woman, also a PAC and Copwatch member, spoke about the strength that occurs when different communities stand in solidarity together and about her commitment to seeing an end to the shoot-to-kill policy of the police in the Phoenix-area. Everyone cheered. Slowly everyone dispersed, making their way to the Know Your Rights Forum a couple miles away. At the KYRF, a spanish-fluent lawyer answered questions about rights, with the assistance of an interpreter. Most the questions, predictably, centered around the recent events in Glendale and the way the police handled themselves. People were very interested in telling their story, venting and asking about their rights. They were also very aware that this kind of harassment does not happen in wealthy white neighborhoods (unless one of them happened to stray into one late at night). One of the obvious points that several people have made coming out of this forum in particular is the necessity for an all spanish forum. It sounds like several people are committed to working on this for the future. Hopefully by then the number of anarchists who speak spanish will have increased as well. There is also the upcoming March 15th international day against police brutality which is coming up. Perhaps there will be another march. Additional story in Spanish: Reclaman castigo Link: http://www.phoenixcopwatch.org

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