Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook

The fiin and games group gathered lots of games and props to be used during the par-t)^?including multiple games of Twister, hundreds of water balloons, chalk, spray paint, jump ropes, and noisemakers. This group also spent some time diunpstering couches, chairs, road cones, and general junk for decorating the site and helping to block the road.

We probably should have had a fundraising group, since we did shell out a good deal of money and fundraising did not end up happening in a very organized way. We were able to collect quite a bit of money, though, by walking around the RTS with large trash-cans suggesting that people "throw their money away"! Reclaim the Streets ^ ^^S problem with our organizing that we have tried to address since our first RTS

428 is gender and experience divisions between the working groups. To illustrate, the tacti-

cal group was made up entirely of men who were experienced activists and friends, while the other groups were made up of women and many of the men who were less experienced in activism. This division, in which men do the "sexy" up-front work while women do the behind-the-scenes preparatory work, was fairly common in some of DCs activist groups. Having experienced people who know each other do high-risk actions together can make sense, but it can also be an excuse to avoid sharing skills, diffusing power, or taking on more thankless jobs. Each action should be an opportunity for new people to learn new skills and new challenges, and to challenge gender, racial, and other barriers to taking on new roles.

On the day of the event, between one and two hundred people met at Dupont Circle and walked en masse to our destination. During the walk, one Starbucks coffee shop window was broken. Our destination was a busy street with lots of pedestrian traffic, in a moderate-income neighborhood with a diverse population that included many people of our own demographic (so we weren't taking over someone else's neighborhood). The three-block area we occupied had lots of independent businesses and some corporate ones, and would be great as a pedestrian walkway?so that's what we created for one day. The ends of the street were blocked off with the cars, couches, and other "junk," but we left one alley open through which we could escape or at least get the DJ equipment out if the police came in, and which cars that were "trapped" in the area could use to exit.

From most standpoints this RTS was a great success. Pirate radio people set up a broadcast simultaneous with the action to announce the events, encourage participation, and provide music for the walk to the end point. We had perfect weather, a mobile sound system and DJs, drum circles, free food from Food Not Bombs, Twister games, chalk and spray paint art, stilt walkers, propagandists, literature inviting onlookers to join, banners proclaiming "Free the City, Kill the Car, Reclaim the Streets," skateboarders who used the old cars as ramps, children playing double-dutch, and more.

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of course, we also had some police nearby?but surprisingly, they did not break up the RTS or come inside our temporary autonomous zone. As this was the first RTS in DC, the police were totaUy confused by what was happening. I overhead some cops discussing the situation: "They must have a permit. I mean, they wouldn't do this without a permit... would they?" It took them a couple of hours to figure out that yes, we would and were holding a street party without a permit. They then informed the crowd that we had to leave at six p.m. or they would arrest everyone. Since our purpose for this action was to have a day party and we were not prepared to hold the area longer than that, we agreed, but said that we would walk together (in the streets!) to a park about eight blocks away so people who wanted to could continue to hang out there. So, after four hours of reclaiming that space, we went mobile again, walked to the park, hung out, and then dispersed at our leisure from there.

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How to Build a Rocketstove

15.1

This is an amazingly efficient way to extract the maximum amount of energy from limited stove fuel resources. In our final test before composing this, we made a large pot of old-style whole oat cereal boil for two hours with just a three-foot two-by-four that we yanked off a pallet.

Five steel food cans: Ingredients

Two 15-ouNCE CANS? the most common size of vegetable cans

One 26-ounce can ? this less common size is proportionately taller than regular cans;

beans ofien come in cans this size Two one-gallon cans ? these can be found in restaurant dumpsters, especially those of