Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook

A fimny, dramatic photo and a witty press release (see Mainstream Media, pg. 358) will get you a long way, whether your intention is to get coverage in the corporate press or just inspire your fellow radicals through underground reports. To this end, having your own photographers on hand can be a good idea?if you do succeed in acting with the element of surprise, they'll probably be the only ones ready to snap the pictures at the big moment, unless you've interrupted a photo session to make your hit. A good image of a successfiil pieing can make it into commercial outlets that would otherwise never publish anything compromising the dignity of dignitaries. If you're set on making this happen, get your image and press release out the instant the event takes place, and have a press liaison ready to answer questions immediately about why anyone would want to pie your chosen target. Even if you're trying to get media attention, don't rely on those deceit-spevnng mercenaries?make sure you're putting the necessary energy into supporting independent media networks that are ready to tell the truth for its own sake.

Pies on Prime Time

Pie Throwing 411

Account

A Pie Neuer Thrown

Pie Thromng

412

The President of the United States was running for re-election, and showed up at a city in our territory for a fundraising luncheon. Quite a few of the state's wealthiest and most conservative businessmen came to pay thousands of dollars a plate to hear him speak, a far greater number of angry protesters showed up to boo him, and the city brought in massive numbers of police to assist the Secret Service in protecting our Campaigner in Chief The stage was set for something to happen?but what?

The character of the pre-protest rally was dictated by the "opposition" party, which was as repugnant as the incumbent himself None of us had made it out in advance to beautify the terrain, and though there were some radicals present, there was no framework for militant action organized, either. Things only got a little interesting when everyone converged around the convention center at the end of the luncheon; finally, there was a little noise and spirit. The police had us lined up behind a metal fence on one side of the building, however, and it was still one of those disempowering, demoralizing situations where the best you can hope for is to perform your posed discontent for a camera crew.

I ran around to survey the area, and figured out which route the President's motorcade would be using to leave. The police had blocked all access to it except for an alley that could be reached by passing through a hotel parking garage. I slipped back to the main group, and let the drummers know about this; they proceeded there, to see the motorcade ojff. I was about to join them, when I spied a small group of men in expensive business suits. They were walking down the street in the opposite direction, right past the protesters and away from the police lines, receiving attention from no one. In twos and threes behind them, more such groups were leaving the building and walking out of the area, presumably back to their cars. These were the men who had paid to attend the fiindraiser. I decided to let the drummers handle the going-away party and investigate.

I accosted the next pair of businessmen, looked deep into their eyes, and raised my fingers in their faces in an insulting gesture. This did little to advance the struggle for

social liberation, though it did prompt the Muslim minister who had been the only even vaguely radical speaker at the pre-protest rally to point me out to his friends and give me his card. I took a different tact with the next capitalist who came along?I fell in beside him, and began interrogating him about his social role and political goals. Well-practiced as his kind have to be in evasiveness and prevarication, he was nearly a match for me in the rhetoric department, and I hadn't quite finished converting him to anarchism by the time he got to his car.