Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook

You can use a remote-controlled model airplane to sabotage a speech by a war hero or otherwise objectionable personage at an open-air graduation ceremony or similar event. Imagine the little aircraft, trailing a tiny banner, repeatedly flying at the speaker as he cowers behind the podium!

Hijacking Events

weeks in advance, approaching them with all the reverence and sense of limitless possibility that pagan religious festivals once occasioned. To the hardened revolutionary, this can seem pathetic; but the excitement itself is authentic enough, and all that remains is for it to be re-directed back to a subversive, liberating engagement with the total social environment.

This could mean inciting a crowd exiting a concert to a Reclaim the Streets action (pg. 421), setting up an open mic circle around a campfire outside a predictably alienating music festival, even turning a post-playoflF victory celebration into a street riot in which rival sports fans unite to fight the police. Rather than struggle to create a radical situation from scratch, one can take advantage of ejdsting opportunities, adding whatever elements are missing to set off the bombs everyday events conceal. Rebellious tendencies diverted from revolutionary possibilities into institutionalized rituals can be redirected back to them; the "real meaning" that punk rock, dance parties, picket lines, and action movies have had all along suddenly becomes clear to those who have enjoyed them, and the desires they inhibited through programs of carefully controlled indulgence are realized as these forms are superceded.

Let's talk specifically about one of the more challenging examples of this, turning the end of a show into an unpermitted march. It's not easy to organize unpermitted marches?if you announce them publicly, the police will be there from the beginning, making everything difficult, and only those who think of themselves as proponents of direct action are likely to show up. Taking advantage of an existing crowd to offer the opportunity for an unpermitted march, on the other hand, offers not only the benefit of surprise, but also can mean that many who would not otherwise have joined in get the opportunity to have an empowering, exciting experience. The police can't watch every single show and public event for signs of "spontaneous" crowd activity; even if they could, it would only provoke more resistance.

Rumors can be spread before the event that "something" will happen afterwards, to pique interest; make sure that no one cites specific individuals as the origins of the rumors. It helps a lot to have the band (or performers, speakers, etc.) in on it; they can announce that something will happen, or let others do so, or, best-case scenario, at the end of their performance, when they have everyone's attention and an atmosphere has been created, lead everyone out into the street.

The moment when people leave the sanctioned performance area is the critical juncture: the group must develop momentum, morale, and cohesion before malaise or law enforcement can intervene. If a core group can be playing and distributing drums and other musical instruments, as well as masks and banners and so on, as people come out into the street, this will help get things going; as the materials are distributed, it v^U quickly become difficult to tell who the originators of the action were, protecting them and helping everyone present share a feeling of ownership of the situation. The march should leave as soon as most people have made their way out to join the crowd, and to make this quick it helps if people inside exit the venue en masse or at least in rapid succession. Have a route planned in advance, if possible, perhaps with a surprise somewhere along the way: a crowded district of thrilled onlookers who might join in, or a place where fireworks can be set off or fires set, or a target worthy of a little property destruction. Lay plans according the comfort level you anticipate in the participants? this should be a positive experience for them, especially the ones who would never have thought they'd do this.

As soon as illegal activities commence, begin a mental countdown to the time the police can be expected to arrive. Chances are, if they are unprepared for the event, they'll have to hang back, at least for a while, but count on this at your own risk. Make sure you don't fail to think about where to disperse; if a march breaks up in a place where there are few escape routes, the police may take advantage of the opportunity to pick off