yo

I think that the Unconventional Action plan is (brilliant/insane/orange) and would like to (agree/disagree/dance) with it. I've been looking for one (forum/listserv/anything) where people (discuss/argue/burn) the plan, but it seems nothing like that exists. This forum looks like something close to what I'm looking for, but not if it's just MKE. Does anyone know if there is already a forum for my (brilliant ideas/crazy ramblings), or, if not, how one can be made? Preferably on the RNCWC site?

how's it going ran?!

I don't know of another forum, but there really should be. I figured that there was one for the UA main website.

You're still welcome to discuss as much as you'd like on this forum.

Are many people in your area planning on going?

Also some people in milwaukee are discussing the idea of organizing the crimethinc convergence this year in WI. This may or may not be happening, but a number of people are excited about it.

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"From a certain point onward, there is no turning back. That is the point that must be reached." Franz Kafka

I've been meaning to talk to the Winona crew, but right now my primary priority is getting us off this insane blockade strategy that is doomed to fail. I've synthesized another strategy from what I've heard from other people (a massive urban free-state, food/shelter/medical/media, building local anarchist infrastructure as a model, targetting arms industry corporations HQ'd in TC), but I don't know if I can get it a fair hearing with all the manarchy running around.

hell, even those four items-seperated-by-commas is about as detailed a plan as the UA three-tier mess, so maybe that's all I'll need to propogate.

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my primary priority is getting us off this insane blockade strategy that is doomed to fail.

You'll have an enormously hard time trying to convice people who have formed a national network and who have already been organizing based around an already developed stragety that upwards of thousands of people who have agreed to. Many people desire to blockade downtown st. paul and we need to respect that just as much as those who desire this should respect the possiblity of other situations. It's cool if you don't totally agree with it and want something else to do and then do it. I think there's tons of room for many different visions of what will happen to coalesce into something.

What do you mean by manarchy? I want anyone regardless of gender to be capable of all forms of resistance desirable to them. To gender resistance is to limit the possbility of our actions to the constraints of our genders.[/quote]

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"From a certain point onward, there is no turning back. That is the point that must be reached." Franz Kafka

I mean that I think the plan was originated in machismo, with little thought. The pReNC meeting was over 75% young males and there was a strong "lets fight the cops rawr" feeling. Now I'm all for confrontation, but by Sept. 5 the only thing that'll be different is that we'll have 3000 people in jail for nothing. We'll all just look like a bunch of idiots and a few dozen will get to spend the next 5 years in court or jail. If the UA plan goes through, it will set us back a decade.

What we should do instead is simply be a model of anarchist society. If hundreds of people can get shit done without hierarchy at a CrimethInc. convergence, then the next logical step is to try it with thousands of people, and the anti-conventions are the opportunity. "Anarchy" means "pandemoneum" to most people but we have a chance to change that, show that anarchist society is as ordered if not more so than so-called 'civil' society, and really get on the road to turning things upside-down.

It's not 1998. We need to adapt. Some people at the pReNC were talking about the G8 in Germany and I think they got the wrong message from that success- Yeah, there were blockades, but the summit still happened; the real success was the image: Anarchy is more fun. We need less black blocs and more clown blocs, less molotov cocktails and more beer. We need to set up shop and show that it works, because the UA plan will not.

sorry if that went on- it's been looking for an outlet for a while

I think its really bullshit to assert that because one is young and male-identified, that all of your ideas are laden with machismo. The trans/queer bloc is a perfect example. There are hundreds of people who intend to plug into the three-tiered strategy and have nothing to do with machismo.

Its also wrong to say that setting up anarchist infrastructure and a free state are mutually exclusive from the blockade strategy. The intention of the blockades is to "shut shit down, to open shit up". In order to create examples of the world we want to see, and to have space to do the things we want (free states / dance parties / confronting capital) we have to first stop the movement of those who'd stop us.

And while criticism is great, the three-tiered strategy isn't something that has been thought up by a group of testosterone crazed young boys; people all over the country have endorsed and fully support the strategy; people of all ages, queers, transpeople, women, and yes, even young men.

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"Down with a world in which the guarantee that we will not die of starvation has been purchased with the guarantee that we will die of boredom."

Quote:

I mean that I think the plan was originated in machismo, with little thought. The pReNC meeting was over 75% young males and there was a strong "lets fight the cops rawr" feeling.

I think it is pretty arrogant to assume that because people happen to be young or male or both, they didn't put thought in to their proposals and were thinking only with their balls (or wherever "machismo" comes from). The result of the meeting proves the exact opposite to me: a strategy based purely in ill-thought out machismo would've been "Let's go to the fence, tear it down and beat the shit out of everyone who gets in our way," ignoring the green march going to the same place. But what we have here is the exact opposite: the strategy pulls those interested in more confrontational or direct approaches well away from the main march (and the cops), to places where confrontation isn't even guaranteed.

The strategy developed allows for all types of action. We don't need less of A and more of B, we need more of A and B (especially if one of those letters is beer)! And this strategy allows for exactly that. If you want clown armies and everything else, plug in and start organizing them. There are plenty of people who are down for it and there was already talk of it at the convention. The entire point of the strategy is that we can all do what we want to make this as successful, by our own terms, as can be. So let's fucking do it!

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The Spectacle wished to make us appear dreadful. We intend to be much worse.

Yes! We need it all, we need dance parties, beer, insurgent clowns, but we also need blockades and black blocs. In fact, these tactics can all work together very cohesively and beautifully. A dance party can block off an intersection as well as a flaming barricade. And likewise, directly confronting those who seek to destroy us can be as amazingly fun and pleasurable as drinking beer and dancing.

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"Down with a world in which the guarantee that we will not die of starvation has been purchased with the guarantee that we will die of boredom."

or even being drunk on riot rather than beer.

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"From a certain point onward, there is no turning back. That is the point that must be reached." Franz Kafka