Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook

You won't need more than a couple of people to pick up the papers from the printer and chart the location of every newspaper dispenser in your town or borough, but you'll probably want to invite a couple dozen friends to join in the deploying?^you'll have to be quick and numerous to get it all done in the brief window of time between the delivery of the day's newspapers and the hour people start picking them up. Papers are usually delivered around four in the morning, but you'll want to check this for yourself in your target area. The people dehvering them are generally folks just like you, with vehicles not unlike your own (no, not the one wdth the stenciling all over it), so rest assured? chances are you won't look out of the ordinary carrying out your mission. They go from box to box, putting in a special key that opens them, taking out the old newspapers and putting in the new ones; you'll do the same, using quarters to open the boxes if you haven't managed to snag or replicate the special key, taking out the unwrapped papers and putting wrapped ones in their place. The most efficient method is three people to a car: one driver, one clean-cut person to go to each machine and exchange the pile of unwrapped papers within for a pile of wrapped ones, and one maniac in the back frantically wrapping away. At the very end of the trip, you can go back to the first box, where you got your first pile of unwrapped papers, and put in the last wrapped ones. Needless to say, this process works best if you're wrapping just one brand of newspaper; if you're trying to hit every one of a number of different newspapers, and there isn't enough space in the back seat to keep several separate piles going at once, you can either divide up the different newspapers between different vehicles, or just take each pile of papers back to the vehicle to wrap before returning them. It's been known to happen that people have participated in newspaper wraps on bicycles, leaving each box jammed open while they wrap its papers nearby; this is less efficient, however, and may be riskier, as

it requires two trips to each box?or one long stay at each, in full view. Whatever your method, chart your route so it'll be least likely that anyone will catch on to what you're doing until you're done.

Bicyclists are best suited to going driveway to driveway, adding the wraps to individually deHvered papers. Playing this role, they can round out the work of the drivers; in some areas, few people use newspaper dispensers, but if the wraps also appear in the front yards of the suburbs it will seem they are everywhere. If you can't hit every driveway in the city, pick out a few important neighborhoods?and perhaps the driveways of a few significant people (say, editors at the targeted newspaper or rival newspapers, key players in the issues you're addressing, etc.). This can help ensure your action will achieve the notoriety and reaction it deserves?just be especially careful while carrying out this phase, so you don't get caught red-handed.

Afterwards, if it won't attract the wrong kind of attention, your leftovers can be dropped off in coffee shops, dentists' waiting rooms, and so on. Congratulate youiselves on a job well done, and don't ever talk about such things again?until it's time to round folks up for the next activity.

At the conclusion of the second war with Iraq, we decided to do a newspaper wrap to push the citizens of our liberal college town toward more radical responses to our tyrannical government. We composed a satirical text with local reference points and photographs, including a redecorated stop sign across the street from the town council building. It cost us a little over a hundred dollars to make a few thousand papers, and we collected near that amount in change for the dispensers, as well.

We chose to spring into action the night before a well-attended downtown street fair, so our papers would be out during a period of especially high foot traffic. We'd soUcited volunteers through the usual channels, taking people aside at potluck dinners and soc-

Account

Newspaper Wraps 395

You can undermine political and

corporate campaigns by distributing

literature, doorknob iiangers, and posters

of your own making on their behalf,

clarifying matters the public might have

missed otherwise. Include their official

contact information, and perhaps a link

to a fake but believable webpage.