In honor of the coming SmashXSmashWest week of action & counter-summit, Austin Autonomedia offers this friendly challenge to those on our side. If SXSW is a time when our enemies innovate for their side of the war of social control, maybe we can challenge ourselves to innovate for our side of the social war.
To the Artists: Most political art activity has taken the form of benefit shows and awareness-raising events. Challenge your self, stretch your muscles, and break down the divide between art & action:
- Combine your show with some workshop or training that builds up community skills. Know your rights, direct action training, harm reduction, or more! Make the show free or cheaper for those who come to the workshop.
- Throw a renegade show that lives up to the name. Put your DJ booth in a box truck or a float and get mobile, blocking streets or buildings as your dance around the city. Pop up with a speaker system and throw a rager in front of some evil building (even better if it’s not downtown).
To the “Activists:” The protest circuit has been so stale for years! We’re yelling at empty buildings downtown in the most police and surveilled section of the city all for optics. Give your protests some seasoning:
- Plan protests outside the city core! Find targets like offices, major streets, the homes of the powerful, and go get rowdy where they aren’t expecting you to protest. You can announce your events publicly or organize them through word of mouth networks.
- direct action not demands! stop begging for scraps from politicians, bureaucrats, & companies. Start figuring out how you can maximize disruption to meet your objectives, apply pressure, or simply feel the power of striking successfully against this world: blockades, occupations, marching down streets that are actually busy, lockdowns, & more!
- respect people’s autonomy! stop peace-policing and repeating the cops orders to the crowd in the name of protecting people. Defanging your protest and encouraging compliance defeats the point of radical resistance; a courageous crowd is a crowd that can keep itself safe
- plan multiple simultaneous protests in different places, to maximize disruption, fluidity, & stretch thin the police’s resources.
To the crowd at protests: don’t come to protests as passive spectators or bodies in a crowd. Reclaim your agency and figure out how you can act at a protest to open up new disruptive possibilities:
- don’t fall in line unthinkingly behind protest martials or self-proclaimed leaders, and challenge them when they exert their authority over people
- organize in your crews to offer something to the action: bring medical supplies, masks, umbrellas, a sound system, shields, spray paint, & more.
- look for opportunities during the protest. A storefront that’s not being guarded while a big crowd passes by; lead a break-away march down an alley or side street; drag things into the street behind the protest to help protect the crowd and increase disruption.
In the spirit of this challenge, we’ve revived an old bingo game passed around the distroist milieu in 2020, with some updates to fit the theme for SmashXSmashWest.
