We are opening a Call for Divestments & Disruptions at SmashXSmash West. If you need some inspiration, here are some friendly challenges:
- To fellow travelers across the South and Southwest: meet and share knowledge, experience, and skills relevant to the challenges we are all facing: desertification and climate chaos, militant right-wing reaction, escalating repression, border militarization, trans eliminationism, and more.
- To artists and the DIY scene: stop giving SXSW free advertising and start seeding antagonism to the conference. Change your “Unofficial” showcases into SmashBy showcases.
- To the local activists: plan your own actions, workshops, and gatherings to boost ongoing campaigns and projects. Seize the opportunity provided by SXSW to mobilize the bold action to level up your efforts.
- To the fighters: Take bold action with respect and awareness about the political context you’re entering, but don’t be restrained by anxiety. Every bold action adds to our collective courage and contributes to a culture of fierce resistance in a city that so often lacks it. SmashBy is nothing without its cutting edge.
- To those dependent upon SXSW but hating it: locate your contradictory position in relation to SouthBy, find potentials in your position, and amplify them. Organize those around you to make demands of the conference or bring it to a halt. Coordinate strikes, walkouts, and pickets for the week of SXSW. Steal away resources beyond the walls of the conference, and make connections with others who want to make their escape and imagine different ways of sustaining ourselves and our passions beyond the economy.
- To everyone: find the small acts of delinquency that can undermine the conference and increase your own confidence and capability. Throw up stickers & tags, steal lanyards, drag a couch into the street.
Austin Autonomedia is hosting the call and other resources for Smash By Smash West. We are not the organizers of the conference–please direct inquiries to the contact information given in this call. You are welcome to submit information about events, research reports relevant to the conference, or reportbacks from actions to us at austinautonomedia@autistici.org