Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook

I went up to the roof and filmed the carabinieri (Italian police) breaking into the school building opposite our building. Things were getting out of hand across the street: a pohce van smashed through the front gate, and the police began breaking windows with chairs and smashing down the doors with tables they found in the courtyard. Worried for my safety and for the safety of the video I had just recorded, I decided to head back downstairs to see if the police were coming after those of us in the IMC building as well.

Everything seemed calm down at the IMC. I wondered whether the police were going to invade this building. I decided to go flirther down and check. After two flights of stairs, 1 turned a corner and came face to face with a policeman dressed in fiill body armor, his truncheon drawn, panting his way up the stairwell. I turned and flew up two flights shouting, "They are in the building!" I scrambled past the barricaded door to the IMC and up to the roof Dodging the spotlight from the circling helicopter, I headed over to the window looking upon the water tower and lowered myself out, whispering, "Maria, it's me." No answer. Creeping in the darkness to the water tower, using only the infrared beam of my camera to light my path, I made my way down through the corridor of water tanks. I kept whispering "Maria, are you there," and started to panic that she was not. A small and frightened voice finally said back to me, "Turn that light off." She was hiding in the space behind the last water tank.

We waited. She had brought a bottle of water and supplies. We talked about what we

would do if the police came to our hiding place in the water tower. Would they come in

and search? Would they throw tear gas in.^ Would they smash our equipment and break

Independent Media ^^'^ bones? All of these possibilities were very real. Meanwhile, the helicopter circled

3S6 very low, its spotlight lighting up the water tower, the propellers shaking the building.

The screaming went for what seemed Hke hours. Maria remiembers, "I was sure there were people being murdered. It was not just screaming in pain, it was screaming in fear of death. So I sat there waiting for my turn to scream. Then the noises mingled into a frantic, maddening mixture of screams of fear, shouting of angry cries of "As-sassini," ambulance sirens, and helicopter motors just above our heads. Suddenly, we heard noises of movement outside. Police were searching the roof We kept very quiet and still for nearly four hours. When the helicopter finally disappeared, we dared to exit the water tower."

We met other survivors of the raid wandering across the rooftop in a daze. Grabbing our camera, we interviewed two English girls who had been in the Indymedia Center during the raid. Then we headed downstairs to survey the damage: doors smashed open, computers dismembered, hard drives ripped out and monitors smashed. Across the street, much worse was waiting. Blood covered the floor, congealing in puddles and sprayed upon walls. Trails of blood led into corners, clothes lay around in disarray, personal belongings covered the floor specked with bloodstains. Dazed people were searching through the piles as local reporters stood together in clumps. Up the stairs, bits of skin and clumps of hair stuck to the walls along a trail of broken doors and hasty barricades. The police had ransacked cupboards and overturned desks, searching all the places where someone could have hidden. Heads had been bashed against walls and the smeared bloody handprints left a distinct smell in the building. The carabinieri had left their mark. We escaped with the footage of it all, and it spread all over the world.

Independent Media 357

Media, Mainstream

How to Write a Press Release and Talk to the Mainstream Media

Whatever your feelings about the mainstream press, chances are that sooner or later you will be involved in something where you either want to draw or have drawn?desiring it or not?mainstream media attention. Once that happens, it's not a question of how you feel about participating in the society of the spectacle, but of how you will handle its attentions. It's surprising that people vidll spend weeks setting up a Reclaim the Streets or a banner drop, will plan legal support, medical emergency support, escape routes, and even the after-party, but will not do the basics to protect their control over the message they want to get out. Whether you like it or not, in the world of mainstream media it's spin or be spun?or duck out of sight.

IngrcdlBttts Press contact list

Dictionary or spell check Computer WITH internet access

Fax machine

An articulate and level-headed

PERSON to act as PRESS LIAISON