Call for Decentralized, Autonomous May Day Actions!

A flyer of white background with black text. Text reads: "Decentralized & Autonomous Action. Against Displacement, Police, & Property. Find your COVID Pods, Affinity Groups, or Vaccinated Friends. Act Together. May Day 2021. Center of the flyer has a black & white photo of someone dancing in frot of a burning car during a protest.

An Anonymous Transmission

The Message

More than a year and a half into a set of escalating crises–a global pandemic that has bled the poor and working classes dry while enriching the ruling classes, a globalizing insurrection against anti-Black police violence, a State whose violence has not ceased with a simple change in the figurehead–we remain at a crossroads. The way things are is not sustainable. We feel this deeply in every aspect of our lives: physical, spiritual, social, emotional. We reject the tyranny of working long hours to barely meet our basic needs. We denounce the extraction, exploitation, and hoarding of the land’s precious gifts. We deny the manufactured necessity of police, prisons, and surveillance.

The experiences and struggles of the past year–from mutual aid networks & rent strikes to riots & autonomous zones–have fundamentally transformed us and our local conditions. One the one hand, the growth of local organizing networks and the explosion of insurgent strategies has expanded the window of possibility for autonomous activity in the city. On the other hand, the weight of over a year of furious organizing, the heigtening of internal contradictions and conflict amongst organizations, and the slowing down of the waves of local insurgency have sapped much of the energy that propelled us last year. Finally, we look ahead to an oncoming struggle around multiple proposals to criminalize homelessness, heigtening antagonism to the police and the regime of property they serve, and a summer which many predict will be hot and riotous. It is amidst these conditions that we offer this proposal for May 1st.

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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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What We Know About Logan Bucknam

Austin Autonomedia: Keeping Austin Criminal

On the evening of June 27th, a group of protestors who had assembled to counter a “Blue Lives Matter” demonstration was attack by a white man in a car who aggressively drove into the crowd. Witnesses reported the man pointing a gun at protestors as well. While no shots were fired and nobody was injured, APD briefly took the man into custody and then let him go (while, shortly afterwards, arresting a Black protestor). Here’s a collection of information about the man believed to be responsible, selected from a handful of tweets and information collected by Bat City Antifascist Front.

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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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Rally Against APD in Response to Murder of Michael Ramos

Anonymous submission. On the afternoon of April 25th, a small group of people showed up at the APD headquarters with signs and a megaphone. The protest came in response to APD’s murder of Michael Ramos in Southeast Austin on the evening of April 24th. This brief statement was sent along with the photos.

Witness neighbors of the shooting tell us that Michael Ramos was unarmed, was already totally blocked into the parking lot, so the dirty kkkiller police didn’t need to shoot him.
They could have shot tires without killing him.
Cops looked for a weapon, nothing. For 24 hours they looked.
But hey, chief Manley says the man needed to be shot because they train officers in Austin to kill you if you don’t stand there and let them shoot you with a ball in a shotgun.
Nonlethal failed. Cops kill then lie. This is how Austins genocide escalated during Covid Emergency 2020. Sick
 

Protests Against “Proud Boy” Dustin Casler Continue

Communique republished from Texas Antifascist News

Editor’s Note: In recent weeks, focus has been placed on the AT&T Conference Center Hotel near UT for employing a Proud Boy named Dustin Casler. As we have said in a previous article, The Proud Boys are a fascist, “Western chauvanist” group founded by Gavin McInnes. They’ve frequently been found to have connections and overlap with outright Neo-Nazi groups. One of the defining features of the Proud Boys is a thirst for violence, expressed in things like calls to attack immigrants and attacks on anti-fascists, people of color, queer & trans folks, and others in the streets. After this news initially came out, antifascists began flyering and calling in attempting to get Casler fired. This article follows up on recent events surrounding that campaign and includes instructions on how to call in to pressure the Hotel.

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UT Works Because We Do: Grad Student Grade-In

Austin Autonomedia: Gestures Towards the Ungovernable. Follow Underpaid at UT on Facebook or Twitter.

On Monday, May 13th, around 50 graduate student workers joined Underpaid at UT in a “grade-in,” occupying the office of Maurie McInnis, Executive Vice President and Provost at UT Austin. The graduate workers held the space from around 10 AM until 1 PM. The grade-in came as a followup to the organization’s May Day rally, where a large group of graduate students, professors, and other allied students & community members delivered a petition to the UT administration and marched around campus in solidarity with the demands.

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Texas State: Students Confront Fascism, Arrested, & Launch Sit-In Against Police Brutality

Banner dropped at TXST on May Day. Picture Credit: to YDSA @ TXST (@TXSTYDSA)

Press Release published by Resistance TXST. Resistance TXST is a coalition of Texas State University students advocating for the rights of underrepresented students on campus.

Background: On May 1st, Texas State students prepared for a confrontation with members of violent fascist group Texas Nomads, who planned to travel down from Austin and stage a rally in support of “free speech.” Members of Texas Nomads have repeatedly harassed liberal & leftist events in Austin, sometimes stalking people leaving these events. Members have assaulted anti-Trump protestors. Nomads member Christopher Ritchie was at the Charlottesville Nazi rally and has repeatedly gone to Portland to fight alongside Patriot Prayer. Their presence came as a response to a campaign & student government vote to ban Turning Point USA from campus.

Texas State University Police Department Brutally Arrests 4 Students of Color During Peaceful Protest

SAN MARCOS. TX – On Wed. May 1, four students were brutally arrest. by Texas State University Police Department while peacefully protesting threats of organized white supremacist presence on campus. Two of the students arrested are vocal, queer students of color that have been previously targeted by the university administration

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#TexasFightBack: Turning Point Brings White Nationalist To UT

Submission from some anti-fascist longhorns

On Tuesday, November 13th, the UT chapter of Turning Point USA will host a speaking event by white nationalist British “journalist” Katie Hopkins. While the choice of speaker is not surprising, it is a bold escalation from the more disguised racism that TPUSA typically traffics in under the banner of conservativism. Katie Hopkins’s racism is not disguised.

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