Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook

We concluded that we had to find a point at which to confront the fascists ^at was far from the permitted protest, both for civility's sake and to make sure no one was at risk who did not choose to be. Fortunately, our research had revealed that they woiold be using a parking lot on the opposite side of the rally site from the permitted zone. Those of us who were prepared for potentially dangerous physical confrontation planned to form a group that would advance on the parking lot. There were residential neighborhoods nearby, which we hoped would be far enough outside the zone of police surveillance that we could gather there and approach with the element of surprise. Once in melee with the police and perhaps the fascists, this group would stick tightly together, and do everything possible to thwart arrests. As the police had no knowledge of our plans, we didn't expect they would be prepared to make mass arrests, so we figured our primary problem was to stop them from picking off individuals. If we were beset by serious pofice attacks, we would retreat into the residential neighborhood, maintaining our coherence on the way, and then disperse there where the greatest number of us would be able to escape. If all else failed, we decided we would break up into our affinity groups and act individually to cause disruptions. If we could create an unstable enough situation by any of these means, we expected the rally would be delayed or canceled.

A strategy alone is never enough. As things never go as expected, it is critical to have a structure that can remain useful when circumstances change. We divided into affinity groups, and buddied up inside of those; also, several individuals who were hoping to be noncombatants formed a communications team. Each of them was equipped with a cell phone or two-way radio, and chose an area to patrol or a task to fulfill?taking down license plate numbers from the fascists' cars, for example, or keeping abreast of areas free of police surveillance to which people could retreat if need be. They arranged an in-

temal network so that information could be circulated as swiftly as possible and passed on to one of two contacts in the action-oriented group. During the event, they not only monitored the movements of fascists and police, but also distributed information to all of us when we were spread out.

The night before the rally, some brave souls went out with spray paint, dressed as civilians. This was a role that could be played by those of us who felt more comfortable acting alone than in the chaos of a big demonstration, and an important one. By morning, the political district of the city, especially the aforementioned parking lot and the actual site of the rally, was covered thickly in antifascist graffiti. No matter that the city, clearly hell-bent on their chosen project of being welcoming hosts to the fascists, went to the surprising trouble of sandblasting all the graffiti off by the time the rally was to begin; they were our primary target readership, and now they have one more serious expense to factor into their budget next time they consider welcoming fascists.

Just before dawn, others went to a hiding place that had been scouted earlier and stashed our secret weapons: several 4' by 8' plywood banners painted with antifascist slogans. These had handholds cut into them {though after one of us had his hand smashed by a police baton while holding one up, we decided back handles would have been better), and could be tied together at the ends to form a massive, jointed, mobile barricade. Carrying these around our group would make it difficult for police to snatch or beat us, or for that matter easily identify us or gauge our numbers. They were also festive, and made our goals clear. In the future, well probably use plexiglass instead of plywood, since one of them finally snapped in half after too much pressure from police on one side and protesters on ffie other?but we'll get to that story shortly.

We held a final meeting the morning of the big day to fill in those who hadn't been present at eariier ones and make some last-minute decisions. We picked a convergence point out in ffie residential neighborhood, and a time we hoped would be just long ^^''f""'"'* ^'"'"