Category: Analysis

For pieces that have an analytical focus–whether its rhetorical, critiquing a certain policy or event, proposing a new ideological framework, or evaluating something like a piece of art.

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Goodbye Southby: The 1st Annual SmashXSmashWest in Review

Austin Autonomedia: Keeping Austin Criminal

Strolling down the thumping, plastered downtown streets that SXSW treat as its campus, you are likely to have a free can of “C4” shoved in your face. This energy drink named after an explosive is the perfect symbol of what the festival-conference has to offer: a cloying and too seamless blend of brand consciousness, work cultism, consumerist reverie, and militarism. The can is a bomb lobbed at you– but one you are meant to gleefully let blow you up to improve your status and efficacy within the capitalist-imperialist project.

Watching Southby’s lanyard wearing throng drink down these noxious narratives left us with a seething desire to knock the can out of their hands, to shout the truth to the heavens, to shake some sense into the world around us. And so we did.

Whether answering SmashXSmashWest’s call for Divestment and Disruption or following their own paths, autonomous crews of protesters, revolutionaries, and hooligans made their presence known downtown last week, ripping through layers of self-congratulatory spectacle to reveal the conference’s deep cynicism, moral bankruptcy, and harmful consequences within Austin and far beyond. Here are the interventions we know about.

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Zine: They Have Names and Addresses in Central Texas

Anonymous Transmission

This zine, “They Have Names and Addresses in Central Texas,” lays out a brief summary of the stakes of the fight to Stop Cop City in Atlanta, and discusses local actors involved in the construction of the project (such as Atlas Technical Consultants). This anonymously published zine has recently been in circulation at solidarity events and in activist circles in Austin, and we are republishing it now for broader accessibility and circulation. There are two copies imposed for printing, one in black & white and the other in color. There is also a digital reading imposed PDF.

For more information on how to plug in with Atlanta Forest solidarity events, go HERE

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Bodily Autonomy In The Streets

Anonymously published flyer circulated, in Austin and elsewhere, in May/June 2022 during the protests surrounding the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Published here for archiving, and easy future access and distribution.

Bodily autonomy is not just about abortion. It also includes things like expressing your chosen gender identity however you want, being free from non-consensual touching or sexual remarks, and deciding how to use your body at a protest.

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“How Far We’ve Come”: Austin in the Streets Against Attacks on Abortion Access

Anonymous transmission originally published on It’s Going Down. We have swapped out some of the media at the end of the article.

The memory of 2020 is still around and led to a pretty inspiring demo in Austin, TX. Crowds protesting the ascendance of patriarchal state denials of abortion access, have shown their boldness, and openness to creativity and confrontation. If the movement can produce new targets, confront the police, and disrupt the infrastructure of the anti-abortion movement, they may produce a crisis to which the State has to respond.

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You’re My Butt Hole: The Vandal-Artiste Speaks & A Brief History of Mural Defacement

 

Austin Autonomedia: Keeping Austin Criminal

In the early days of January, Austin’s “You’re My Butter Half” mural was modified to read “You’re My Butt Hole.” A picture of the vandalism was posted to reddit, where the original artist responded positively. Under his post, a user with the name “YouAreMyButthole” responded, claiming to be the vandal-artiste, and offering some commentary on their work. We’ve republished both statements here, and follow up with some commentary on the recent history & implications of mural defacement in Austin.

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The Rundberg Rebellion: A Retrospective

Austin Autonomedia: Keeping Austin Criminal

Revolt, of the sort that exceeds the form of permitted street marches and sign-waving rallies, has rarely manifested in Austin’s streets. As such, its occurrences–such as the wave of activity that came with the George Floyd rebellion–deserves attention and uplifting in our historical memory. Four years ago, at the beginning of the Trump’s term, one such revolt manifested in the Rundberg area in North Austin.

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Deep In The Heart of Texas: The Car Demo Form as Attack on Economic Circulation

An anonymous transmission from a participant in the Rent Strike ATX car demo on May Day

On May 1st, a caravan of around 30 cars proceeded down I-35 as part of a May Day car demonstration hosted by Rent Strike ATX. Some cars bore banners and signs reading “Rent Strike,” and “Justice for Mike Ramos,” while others amplified various parts of the 5 demands which have been popularized nationwide (including free healthcare, freedom for prisoners, no debt, and homes for all).

This communique offers a participant’s perspective on the events of this May Day demonstration—both evaluating its local significance and the contribution it makes to evolving national experimentation with the car demo form. It is a response and extension of the strategic conversation initiated by friends in Atlanta around the car demo form, with analysis that still speaks deeply to a local context. This piece aims to cultivate, deepen, and inspire forms of autonomous action that can strike directly at the settler-colonial economic system which, with each passing day, reveals itself more and more to be a death cult for many of us. May the experience of this demonstration offer strategic clarity to others seeking ways to intervene in our exceptional moment, whether in so-called Austin or anywhere else across this world.

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Autonomous Anti-Racists Disrupt UT Town Hall On Campus Climate (February ’17)

Students disrupt the townhall from within the crowd

Austin Autonomedia: Keeping Austin Criminal. 

On January 27th, UT will host its town hall on its sexual misconduct policies after months of protests and agitation against the University. This is the first time that the University has hosted a town hall in 3 years, in large part due to what happened the last time the administration tried to use the forum to quell and dispel student anger. This video and the following recap of those events will illustrate why. 

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When They Came For Me

By Rudy Martinez. Republished from Sybil. Read the original polemic against whiteness publication here.

Six months ago, I graduated with a philosophy degree from Texas State University in San Marcos, TX. What was promised to be a day of jubilation for my family, as I am a first-generation Colombian and the first in my family to ever attend an American institute of higher education, was instead welcomed with a reluctant sigh of relief. My parents both escaped a decades-long civil war in Colombia and met in Miami in the early-90s. They would marry in September 1991 and I would be born March 21st, 1992. We grew up in a predominately Latinx working-class neighborhood in Miami called Hialeah. The only thing my mother ever asked of my younger sister and I is that we go to college. Hialeah wasn’t exactly a place that nurtured my intellectual potential, but I managed to attend community college right after high school. Within two years, I had dropped out and decided to hitchhike around the country. After returning from the road, I made new friends and we all moved to Texas: This is how I found Texas State. After waiting a year to qualify for in-state tuition, I became a “Bobcat” in the fall of 2015. As a philosophy student at a “Hispanic Serving” institution, I was excited to synthesize my cultural past with an intellectual future.

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Your DNA is an Abomination

By Rudy Martinez. Republished from Sybil. Initially published in “The University Star,” the student newspaper of Texas State. This piece provoked massive right-wing backlash, resulting in the administration condemning the author and scrubbing the article from the publication. We republish it here for the crucial intervention it makes against white supremacy, and because fuck Texas State and angry whites. Read Rudy’s followup, detailing the backlash after this piece was initially published. Featured image by Alyssa Franks.

“Now I am become white, the destroyer of worlds.”

I hate white people. White people should hate white people. In fact, when I think of all the white people I have ever encountered, whether they’ve been professors, peers, lovers, friends, police officers, etc.—there are perhaps a dozen I would consider “decent.”

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