Announcing a new anarchist podcast, The Beautiful Idea. Follow them on Mastodon here.
We are happy to announce the first episode of The Beautiful Idea, a new project from a collective of several anarchist and autonomous media producers scattered around the world. We’re bringing you interviews and stories from the front-lines of autonomous social movements and struggles, as well as original commentary and analysis. We plan to put out about two episodes a month; one will be more focused on action news and include shorter interviews with front-line activists and organizers, and the other will feature longer, more deep-dive interviews on specific topics, including theoretical and historical analysis.
On today’s show we feature our Behind the Barricades roundup of movement news, events, and updates, along with a look at the recent explosion following the shooting of a United Healthcare CEO in New York. We then speak with someone involved in a new campaign to support Stop Cop City defendants facing both RICO and domestic terrorism charges. Finally, we speak with a long-time anarchist to look back on the historic mobilization against the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999.
Music: Seaside Tryst, Gary Lamaar, and Breakaway
Transcript
Behind the Barricades News Roundup
Welcome to Behind the Barricades on The Beautiful Idea, a roundup of action news and upcoming events across so-called North America.
In October in Austin, TX, anarchists and pro-Palestinian demonstrators rallied and marched against tech giants and their role in facilitating the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Counter-info site Autonomedia reported:
Such an escalation sets the stage for a real confrontation and challenge to the most important local ties to the genocide. This also forces the local movement into a confrontation with the economic forces that dominate the city and its economic interests–themselves aligned with a domestic project of displacement, development, and dispossession.
In Chicago, Unsalted reported on a mobilization against the Mid-Continent Gas Conference. A report-back wrote:
A group of people entered the hotel hosting the conference and crashed the attendee’s welcome reception of the 2024 Mid-Continent Gas Conference. A banner with the words, “Enbridge Out of the Great Lakes, Shut Down Line 5 Now!” on one side and, “Evil Enbridge, Fuck Off!” on the other side was unfurled at the cocktail hour reception. People sang, and chanted with a bullhorn, played instruments, and left messages for Enbridge and other gas companies inside the hotel. After causing a ruckus inside, the group walked outside to the bar’s patio overlooking the Chicago River, and less than one mile from Lake Michigan, to “greet” more LDC conference attendees with noise, banners, and rowdy jeers. One person was arrested by the pigs for allegedly trespassing and released onsite.
In Ypsilanti, MI, on Halloween night, a rowdy crowd held a “spooky” demonstration outside of a slumlord’s home. A report-back posted to Unsalted wrote:
Hark! Let it be known that on this 31st of October – Devil’s Night – we, the peasants of so-called Ypsilanti, have declared that we have HAD ENOUGH of landlords!…You have left us serfs with garbage, so we left you with our garbage. Eggs on your stupid giant windows, rotten tomatoes all over your door and porch, and remnants of our chamber pots in the form of toilet paper all over your trees.
The Ghosts of Christmas Past gave Scrooge a second chance, but the Ghosts of Devil’s Night and Halloween do not. [This slumlord] will know no comfort until he abandons his properties and makes reparations for his crimes…We do not need them. Until they are thrown off and everything they have stolen has been reclaimed… Every night can be Devil’s Night.
In November in Boston, clashes broke out when hundreds of pro-choice counter-demonstrators faced off against riot police and far-Right gender fascists holding a “Men’s March to Abolish Abortion.” Police made several arrests of counter-demonstrators, who attempted to block streets in the face of the far-Right procession. Check out a report back, here.
Clashes broke out today in #Boston, as a large pro-choice counter-demonstration faced off with police and gender fascists at anti-abortion "Men’s March to Abolish Abortion." Police made several arrests of counter-demonstrators.
— It's Going Down (@igd.bsky.social) 2024-11-17T05:29:03.370Z
Anger is rising in so-called British Columbia against the PRGT pipeline. An anonymous report on BC Counter-Info claimed credit for spiking “thousands of trees along the PRGT pipeline [route]…” It went on to state, “Its up to each of us to combat this project, we hope this effort poses one more obstacle.” Indigenous people are also currently fighting the project in a variety of ways.
In Cleveland, OH, around 100 people rallied outside of a jail in support of several people arrested for supposedly writing graffiti slogans in support of Palestine on a college campus. Also in Claremont, CA, over 100 people rallied in support of students being targeted for repression over ongoing actions in support of the anti-war struggle.
Hundreds protested in solidarity with Palestine at UT Austin against an appearance by former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. In 2013, Bennett claimed, “I have killed lots of Arabs in my life, and there is no problem with that.”
In antifascist news, a small protest was held outside of the yearly white supremacist ‘American Renaissance’ conference in Tennessee.
The community was able to surround and force the people at table to leave, while filling the air with chants of solidarity and love. Drowning out their mic and speaker.We saw many people along the outskirts of this crowd breaking in to tears as they felt the community stand together.
— SpicyCapybara (@spicycapybara.bsky.social) 2024-11-21T18:02:53.304Z
In Albuquerque, NM, hundreds mobilized in support of the LGBTQ+ community and against proposed book bans by gender fascists. Demonstrators also rallied against attempts by MAGA grifters to speak before the local school board. A post to BlueSky reported, “The community was able to surround and force [some of the gender fascists rallying outside] to leave, while filling the air with chants of solidarity and love. Drowning out their mic and speaker. We saw many people along the outskirts of this crowd breaking in to tears as they felt the [power of the] community stand together.”
Hundreds rallied at Penn State against a “Pray the Gay Away” event by washed-up white supremacist Milo Yiannopoulos, best known for promoting white nationalism at Breitbart before being fired for endorsing pedophilia and working with neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes.
In Columbus, OH, a group of neo-Nazis attempted to hold a small march with swastika flags, but quickly found themselves attacked by members of the community. While stopped by local law enforcement, white supremacists told police that “people pulled guns on them and threw cans and vegetables as they marched…” and they were also covered in pepper-spray by angry locals. The next day, a “…group of Black men organized a counter-march.”
Students at Lafayette, LA, organized a demonstration against gender fascists with Turning Point USA, who held an event attacking trans people on Trans Day of Remembrance.
More than 200 police in riot gear, on bikes, and on horseback were mobilized to defend the metal festival Messe des Morts tonight on Monk Boulevard. Around 150 counter-protesters still made their presence known, and two Nazi bands were struck from the lineup after being blocked at the border. (1/3)
— Clash Montréal (@clashmtl.bsky.social) 2024-11-30T03:28:36.704Z
In Montreal, antifascists held a large march and demonstration against a metal festival scheduled to feature several acts connected to the far-Right and neo-Nazi groups.
Antifascist researchers have also released doxxes and exposes on neo-Nazis in North Carolina, members of the Goyim Defense League, and the now defunct National Justice Party (NJP).
Anarchists reclaimed Montreal last night to resist NATO and the Palestinian genocide#palestine #gaza #freepalestine #escalate4gaza
— Euphoric Autonomy (@euphoricautonomy.bsky.social) 2024-11-23T18:55:25.353Z
Things are still hot on campus, as the student intifada keeps the pressure on university administrators to divest from Israeli apartheid. In Montreal, thousands of students took part in massive coordinated strikes demanding divestment as student strikers marched through the Concordia campus, picketing and briefly occupying buildings. The next day, a mass march took place against a NATO summit, as a large black bloc broke out windows at the event center holding the submit, as demonstrators clashed with authorities. A communique from the black bloc wrote:
The military interventions supported by NATO protect governments aligned with American interests and crush any alternative, keeping the global south under capitalist constraints. NATO’s alliance with the zionist entity is ideologically coherent, as a colonial enterprise, but Israel also provides technologies of control and weapons that NATO states use throughout the world, in their imperialist missions and on their own populations.
Our actions have had a symbolic and material impact: they have imposed costs financially, have disrupted and disturbed, have propagated our ideals and made visible this very legitimate and necessary struggle.
The media will focus on our violence, they will manipulate our messages, our messages confronting the atrocities perpetrated by Israel and NATO – responsible for millions of deaths. So it is crucial to say again that it is the brutality of the oppressive structures governing us that we fight, that the worst violence is the State’s…
Back in New York, students on the CUNY campus took over a floor used by administrators, naming it “Fatima’s Floor,” demanding divestment from the school. Students at the nearby Sarah Lawrence College also engaged in a sit-in and building takeover, dropping banners and demanding divestment. Students then set up an encampment outside the building to continue the protest.
They filled the lobby before marching to every floor, disrupting classes.Behind them, boarded up windows can be seen. These were smashed during a demo in late September that reportedly caused $600,000 in damages to the university, which has refused to divest from Israeli apartheid and genocide.
— Clash Montréal (@clashmtl.bsky.social) 2024-11-21T22:09:45.864Z
The 13th hunger strike this year has kicked off a the NorthWest Detention Center in Tacoma, WA, according to La Resistencia. According to the group, 40 people are taking part. Prisoners are demanding an end to solitary confinement, better food and conditions, and for ICE to end its contract with the GEO Group.
In tenant news, a rent strike in Missouri has continued into its third month, with residents vowing to not back down until their demands are met, “including a rent cap among other priorities.”
Meanwhile in Sweetwater, FL, residents of a mobile-home community are taking in the streets in protest against a looming threat of eviction. In this episode, we present an audio report on the struggle from a member of the Black Rose Anarchist Federation.
In mid-November, thousands of residents at the Li'l Abner Mobile Home Park near Miami suddenly received eviction notices.Read about how they're choosing to organize and fight to stay in their homes.🏘️✊
— Black Rose / Rosa Negra (@blackroserosanegra.bsky.social) 2024-12-07T03:52:43.405Z
Since this report was recorded, tension ignited again after police violently arrested one woman who was protesting as homes were being destroyed. Check out a longer report and info on ways to support the struggle, here.
In the bay area, “75 people converged at Travis Air Force Base,” shutting down the entrance to the base with a blockade “…[in an effort to] block the weapons supply chain, from Travis to Israel, of US bombs and military supplies that aid in the ongoing horrors of genocide.” Close to 30 people were arrested.
Lastly, in Philadelphia, a communique claimed credit for flooding a home belonging to the CEO of Ghost Robotics, which “develops robot dogs that are used in occupied Palestine and [along] the US/Mexico border.” Another anonymous report claimed responsibility for writing graffiti slogans on the home of a University of Michigan police officer involved in repressing student protests against the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
A few updates to put on your radar:
Upcoming Events
December 31st: New Year’s Eve Noise Demonstrations. More info here.Asheville, NC: More info here.Chicago, IL: More info here.Brooklyn, NY: More info here.Montreal, QC: More info here.February 1st: Austin Anarchist Bookfair. Austin, TX. More info here.February 28th – March 2nd: Florida Abolitionist Gathering. Gainesville, FL. More info here.May 15th – 21st: Constellation Anarchist Festival. Montreal, QC. More info here.Finally, a call has been circulating for “festivals of resistance” the week before Trump takes office. Here’s an audio version of the call.
“I Hope That People Are Hungry”
On Wednesday, December 4th, Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare was shot dead by a masked assassin, as he walked into an investor meeting at a Hilton hotel in Manhattan, NY. While the motive at first remained unclear, writing on the bullet casings left behind at the scene read three words, “Deny, defend, depose,” a reference to the systematic way in which major insurance companies deny coverage to those seeking medical care.
A recent statement released by the press from a person arrested in connection to the shooting makes these sentiments only even more clear:
Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy.
It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.
As journalist Taylor Lorenz wrote:
When it comes to denying healthcare coverage, UnitedHealth stands above its competitors. The insurance company denies an average of 32% of claims, double the industry average. UnitedHealth does this through [a] myriad [of] ways. In one instance, according to a recent lawsuit, it has used a deeply flawed AI algorithm that generates wildly inaccurate predictions in order to deny health coverage to severely ill patients by cutting the time they can spend in extended care. The AI system has a 90% error rate, and yet it remained in use. [One investigation] found that UnitedHealth pushed employees to follow an algorithm to cut off Medicare patients… Meanwhile, UnitedHealthcare made $8.9 billion in profit through the first three quarters of this year alone.
Matthew Cortland went on to argue:
UnitedHealthcare makes its money by denying necessary care to people who need [it]. Brian Thompson was a mass murderer. He killed adults, he killed children. He murdered them with spreadsheets and contracts. He did it for money. Thompson was…a very well paid killer.
In response to the assassination of Thompson, there has been wide scale dejection and denouncement of the healthcare industry across social media – with many people on various platforms sharing their own horror stories about being denied coverage – along with mass indifference and even outright celebration in the wake of the murder of Thompson through memes, TikTok video, viral original songs, and shitposts.
Tech reporter Matt Novak of Gizmodo mused, “TikTok is pretty wild right now. I don’t think the ruling class is prepared for the cultural shift that’s happening this week. These aren’t edgelords. There’s a real shift in the way the average American is discussing this.”
Meanwhile, a collection of both neoliberal and far-right gatekeepers, pundits, and grifters have attempted to wag their fingers at the working class, who gleefully cheer on the masked killer, correctly pointing out the mass hypocrisy of a system that systematically murders people for massive profit, yet expects us to shed a tear when a CEO gets smoked.
The cultural phenomenon that has erupted following Thompson’s murder; from a recent round of ‘look-alike contests,’ to thirst trap posts about how hot the shooter is, to the long screeds posted against healthcare in this capitalist hell-scape – points to the first collective eruption of working-class self-interest (albeit largely online) which has been able to manifest itself in a real way, in the wake of the election spectacle; which ironically was marked by the near total absence of discussion on health-care, apart from Harris going back on her 2020 call for universal coverage and the Republicans vowing to further slash social programs like medicaid and medicare and destroy the Affordable Care Act.
Like the viral celebrations which erupted after neo-Nazi Richard Spencer was punched in 2017 or the polls which showed that over 54% of Americans supported the burning of the 3rd precinct during the George Floyd uprising in 2020, the gleeful laughter and resignation following Thompson’s death shows the chasm that exists between people’s lived realities and that of the narratives produced by the technocrats in power and the media institutions they control.
But moreover, the elite rush to clutch their pearls over public sentiment following the assassination in Manhattan lays bare not only mass anger at inequality in this society and how violence is unevenly distributed in it, but moreover how it is unevenly mourned over. Millions are sacrificed on the altar of the capitalist economy, a reality that the pandemic made even more clear, yet we are supposed to shed tears for someone who made this slaughter possible and was enriched by it in the process?
To further illustrate this point, look at the reaction to the recent stabbing of two migrant teenagers, one fatally, in New York City literally a night after the shooting in Manhattan. The two teens were attacked in a racist assault by someone who approached them and asked if they “spoke English.” Predictably, this attack and murder did not generate the same police mobilization or manhunt. Clearly, the life of a CEO shot by an angry assassin is worth more than that of a teenage migrant killed by a racist vigilante.
To add insult to injury, on the same day that a suspect was arrested in connection to Thompson’s murder, Daniel Penny, 26, was found not guilty for the strangling to death a Black homeless man who was on a New York subway car. Here’s a clip from Fox News, decrying the outpouring of support for the CEO shooter, while also uplifting those who called Penny, “a hero.”
Meanwhile on the far-Right, interestingly enough, blowhards like Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh are being dragged by their own fans, as their recent reaction videos complaining about how the “Revolutionary Left” is cheering on the CEO’s murder, have been panned and mass down-voted on platforms like YouTube.
Thousands of comments are dunking on Shapiro. As one person stated, “Ben you’re a millionaire, you aren’t a “true blue collar conservative” you’re a rich guy that tries to appeal to working class republicans. You don’t understand what poor people go through.” Another wrote, “Ben Shapiro is the CEO of his company so it makes sense that he might see a little of himself in the victim.” These comments have thousands of likes.
This blow-back against the Right is interesting, and points to the reality that many people hold sentiments that run physically counter to whatever fixed partisan identity they might currently adhere to, or party they may vote for.
While I personally think it’s silly, and even dangerous, to imagine the “Left and the Right” coming together around some vague notion of ‘populism,’ this is a moment that shows talking and relating to people on the wavelength of shared material conditions and lived experience is powerful. An anti-capitalist position makes sense. It is popular. We should be thinking about how we can deepen these contradictions and break off working-class people who voted for Trump in the hopes he would improve their lives, along with people who thought that the Democrats would be a bulwark against attacks by the GOP, and bring them into social movements that are in conflict with capitalism.
This moment also gives us an opportunity to ask exactly how and why people end up supporting politicians and billionaires which are pushing through the very policies which allow corporations like United Healthcare to exist with impunity. How anti-Blackness, white supremacy, and transphobia all are weaponized in an attempt to sell white workers (and beyond) the bedtime story that they have more in common with the elites than they do other poor and working people.
As the holidays approach, and Trump continues to stack his cabinet with billionaires intent on looting the country, slashing taxes on the wealthy, deregulating corporations, and gutting basic safety net programs, it will be interesting to see how this “Eat the Rich” sentiment continues to evolve. I hope that people are hungry.
Supporters of Stop Cop City Defendants Launch New “Community is Not a Crime” Campaign
For more information on the struggle against Cop City, go here.
Looking Back on 25 Years Since the “Battle in Seattle”
For more history on the mass mobilization against corporate globalization and the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle, WA in 1999, check out this collection from CrimethInc. here and the film Breaking the Spell.
Thanks for Listening!
Thanks for listening to today’s episode of The Beautiful Idea, news and analysis from the front-lines of anarchist and autonomous struggles everywhere. Catch you next time.
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