Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook

what could be in it for them? CoiJild it be that the conservatives in power were glad to offer the public the spectacle of these extreme groups, in comparison with whom they would appear moderate? Regardless, we decided it would be our job to make sure they had to work to earn every dollar they spent on security, and to cost them more than they'd bargained for if possible. This would discourage them from providing protection for future fascist rallies: if they knew the price tag would be even steeper than it had been this time, they might just tell the Klan and Nazis they'd have to go it alone, which would be fair enough. It would also highlight the willingness of the city to go to such great lengths to protect the fascists, which itself deserved public scrutiny. And in the course of our own efforts, we hoped to open a space for others to protest the rally as well, in whatever ways they saw fit.

When you engage in confrontational action, there's always the possibility you will step on a few toes in the process. There's a certain kind of activist organizer who gets really offended if everyone doesn't follow the guidelines his group has unilaterally set; in addition to that, though I'm not one to believe in the myth that the masses are so "moderate" that any kind of militant action alienates them, it can in fact happen that people are intimidated by a masked group whose goals and tactics aren't clear to them. We discussed the fact that we would be running this risk, and decided that in this case it was worth it: our first priority was not to convert people to our perspective, but to stop the fascists from getting a foothold for theirs. If we did make a bad impression on any other protesters, that wasn't going to turn them into fascists; and if everyone associated fascists with chaos and trouble, so much the better, I can imagine the Nazi "Commander" in city hall trying to get a permit next time, and the functionary explaining: "No, last time y'all came here you brought your friends the anarchists, and it was a big mess." Antifascist Action Finally, apart from discouraging the fascists and unmasking the city's allegiances,

52 this was a great opportunity for us proponents of direct action to put our experience at

the service of other rightfUUy angry people, and get to know each other better in the bargain. As it turned out, by the time the event was over we'd made a lot more new friends than the Klan or the N.S.M. had.

Publicly, we took advantage of shows and other social events to announce that counter-rally actions of some kind would take place, and used the lists we gathered at these events to send out reminders; we also wheatpasted fliers and posted notices on the internet to the same effect. Privately, we worked on strategy and structure. Those of us whose friends had been involved in some of the better-known antifascist actions of the preceding years contacted them and asked for pointers. Some of us explored the area and made annotated maps, which were distributed at meetings. We gathered what materials we could, and brainstormed about what approaches to take. We did our best to spread word of our plans to everyone who might want to participate, addmg specifics according to the degree to which we felt we could trust them, so as to prevent information from fallmg into the wrong hands.

Shortly thereafter, we learned that a permitted protest had also been scheduled. Some of us had mixed feeHngs about this. It meant, on the one hand, that there would be a safe zone for protesters who didn't want to risk police repression; on the other hand, in our experience in this city, whenever a permitted protest occurred it was some distance from the event being protested, surrounded by a thick line of police and metal fencing, and proved to be a disempowering experience for all who participated in it. As all areas except the permitted zone would be locked down by police, it was likely that the permitted protest would absorb all who showed up and the tone of the day would thus be set by the few who had organized it?which would mean all the energy we had put into our organizing was absorbed by their project, an outcome that would disappoint those who had accepted our invitation to the event in hopes of effectively contesting the fascist rally To top it all off, organizers of permitted protests sometimes take offense to

Antifascist Action 53

Antifascist Action 54

any other form of protest organized to take place alongside their own, so we had to be careful not to create discord simply by virtue of acting on our own initiative.