Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook

Our conversation went on and on. After referencing obscure historical trivia ("You know, the first slave ship landed in the North, in Marblehead, Massachusetts") and confessing to bizarre fetishes ("I've always wanted a red shirt like our good Confederate general A. P. Hill"), I had so thoroughly won the favor of this local fascist that he invited me over to meet him at a bar for a few beers. I could almost see him salivating as he tried to turn my "honest" confusions to a more racist and fascist stance. Being a "quiet man," I refused his offer of beer for the time being, and asked him if there was some C. of C.C. event I could meet him at. I was hoping I wouldn't personally be required there, since as a fairly well-known anarchist, it would be riskier for me than it might be for someone else. Also, since this was an opportunity to slip in a long-term mole, I made sure to give him no exact physical description of myself Infiltration "Well, it's a bit of a drive, but there's this national conference coming up. I think you

318 would really enjoy it, and we can hang out there."

"Can I just get the thing off your website?"

"Oh, no. We gotta hide it from all those commies. But I'll tell you. It's at. . ."

Bingo. Mission accomplished. Never ask them for the information directly if you can avoid it. Have them give it to you out of their own free will. It will be a lot less suspicious.

A few days later, I sent out emails to nearby Anti-Racist Action chapters announcing this location and calling for a demonstration outside. I'd waited a few days so that the fascists, if they were monitoring our listserv, wouldn't necessarily connect the A.R.A. announcement to the strange new guy who'd called them up. As wiser and more experienced antiracist activists started planning the demonstration, I decided we could do better than demonstrate outside. We should not only be on the outside, we should be inside.

I sent a few emails and hung up fliers around tovra announcing the formation of a new chapter of Anti-Racist Action. Right before the meeting, a strange older white guy showed up. I got somewhat scary vibrations from him. He asked if he was at the right meeting location. Trusting my instincts, I told him I didn't know and that the bookstore the meeting was to be at was about to close, so he left?and just in the nick of time. Soon afterwards, about half a dozen people showed up, an interesting mixture of young white punks, black students, and one older white Southern woman. Although I was also a bit hesitant about this woman, who fit none of my cultural stereotypes of antiracist activists, I followed my instincts again, and decided to take the risk. It turned out she was a graduate student, writing her Ph.D. thesis on the radical right and antiracism in our state. I told everyone about the counter-demonstration, and after she recommended a few good books about the history of the Council of Conservative Citizens and the Klan to me, I decided to visit her in her ofEice.

After some chit-chat, I popped the question. While we were outside demonstrating, would she mind dressing up and going inside the conference as our undercover spy, inmration complete with camera and audio recorder? She was thrilled. After years of studying the 319

detrimental effects of racism in society, she could actually strike back. While the young kids were out there fighting or at least intimidating the racists, she could sneak in and do the more subtle but necessary intelligence gathering: she could get the names, faces, and personal details of every would-be white warrior there. All of her attributes?age, sex, harmless appearance?^would be advantages in this situation, and her encyclopedic knowledge of the far right would make her nearly undetectable as an antiracist spy. Her cover story would be that she was the wife of the character I had played during my earlier conversations. Later that day, she called up my previous local Council of Conservative Citizens contact and registered for the conference.

The day of the conference, we all met up in a parking lot before heading off for our separate tasks. Our undercover agent was dressed as the very picture of the genteel Southern woman, complete with broad-rimmed hat and a little umbrella with floral patterns. She took all the surveillance equipment, and we drove to the event separately. She arrived earlier than us, in order to disassociate herself from the activities outside.