Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook

Instructions A newspaper wrap is a great way to get a message out and in the process lampoon the media who refuse to share the means to do so. It gives the lie to the rhetoric about freedom of the press by taking that freedom by storm from the cartel that monopolizes it?and simultaneously entertains, informs, and empowers witnesses. It gives the underdog leverage in social struggles, proclaiming: Don't think you can keep misrepresenting the facts ? well hijack your channels of dissemination if you won't tell our side of the story.

First, pick your target, accordting to your goals?is your wrap intended to front and thus confront a certain established newspaper, or is it an all-purpose broadside to wrap every paper in tovm? The former approach is more effective for subtle parodies, and provides an excellent opportunity for humor; if people begin reading your wrap v^dthout realizing it is not the "real" cover of the paper they picked up, they will at first accept what they see with the same attitudes with which they receive mainstream media reports?and the shock of figuring out they've been duped just might jerk them out of putting unqualified faith in any such paper again. The latter approach?making a wrap to go around every paper in town?is more straightforward, and at least has the advantage 3^2 of being universally applicable, if ubiquity is one of your objectives. Your layout will vary

according to your approach?the former option requires a much greater degree of precision, of course, if the wrap really is meant to be mistaken for the object of your satire.

You can do almost anything with the content: just think, what would you say to the world if you ran the newspapers? Or, for that matter, how can you reveal what the newspapers are really saying with every front page, how can you make the implicit explicit? Humor can help keep the as-yet-unconverted reading after their initial curiosity is satisfied, as long as it isn't so heavy-handed as to alienate them. Alternatively if you feel up for the challenge, you can try to make your content so convincing that it will not be recognized as a spoof, and thus precipitate a useful scandal around the resulting rumors, misinformation, and hysteria. It can help drive your message home to include as many local references as possible; better yet, you could illustrate some of the articles with, say, photos from recent actions or interventions, to emphasize the contestation of power that is taking place in your area. For example, if somebody managed to put some clever graffiti on a well-known, well-guarded public monument, but it unfortunately only stayed up for a day (as the local authorities were intent on not letting anyone see that such a challenge to their power was possible), a picture taken that day could make a lovely cover illustration for a newspaper wrap; many people take the media representation of their home streets more seriously than their actual experience of them, and you can help them to feel they live in a liberated territory (or a police state, or a war zone) by capturing that moment in time. A photograph of a beating the poHce deny ever happened would also go nicely on the front cover of a newspaper wrap.

Find a local newspaper printing company. You'll want to use a false name in your dealings with them, just to be on the safe side. Most of the cost of newspaper production is in the start-up fees, so you might as well make a lot, unless you're so lazy the extras will just sit moldering somewhere until they are seized as poHce evidence. You can make a single newspaper sheet to simply go around the front, or a two-page spread

You can confiscate the free newspaper dispensers that are full of real estate magazines, paint them with your own designs, stock them with radical literature, and return them to the streets.

Newspaper Wraps 393

You can establish an alternative news

service in the bathroom stalls ofyour

neighborhood?visit a selection of

stalls in gas stations, office buildings,

schools, libraries, and so forth every

seven days or so to write up that

week's unreported news.

Newspaper Wraps 394

to wrap the entire first section of the paper. Make sure you've got the dimensions right for your target(s)!