Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook

Be that as it may, in the next instant a line of poHce charged forward and met us in the middle of the street as we headed for the parking lot. A struggle followed, with them pushing on the banners from one side, and us from the other. A couple of us were struck or dragged by the hair at this point; it's worth pointing out, though this is no surprise, that the police were in fact the ones who initiated violence that day. All those they tried to grab for arrests were pulled back by friends. Partly owing to the general lack of experience in our numbers, at this point we had not yet developed a strong sense of what we could accomplish, so many were not as ready to push the limits as they would be later after they'd gotten accustomed to the situation. Consequently, we were pushed back across the street; but we held our ground there, seizing the comer of the intersection between the parking lot and the rally site and holding it in the face of further police pressure.

A standoff ensued. We stood on the comer, banners up on the outside, with a line of police in front of us and more police massing behind them. The fascists in the parking lot were hiding behind a dumpster, totally out of view and out of range of projectiles. Over the next few minutes, our numbers swiftly swelled, as protesters from a variety of perspectives and walks of life came to join us. In fact, in taking this comer, we had opened up a vast space around the rally site for those protesters who didn't want to remain in the permitted zone, and scores rapidly filled it. This was definitely one of our accomplishments for the day, that we made it possible for protesters to move around the area at will, exercising their freedom of speech beyond the restrictions of the police cordon.

We had failed to meet the fascists in actual conflict, but now, having demonstrated

our readiness for confrontation, we were between them and their rally site, and it was

A t'f ' tAi' clear to everyone that there would be trouble if they came within range. They remained

5S hidden behind their dumpster, with police around them for protection, and other police

conferred on how to handle the situation, while still others reinforced the line facing us. This went on for perhaps fifteen minutes, until it was time for their rally to begin. It continued for another fifteen minutes, and then another, and then another, until we had succeeded in delaying their rally by a full forty-five minutes?no small achievement, under the circumstances! By this time, our group was dispersed within the much larger group of protesters that had gathered at the comer, most dearly understanding that they were delaying the rally by amassing there. Many were shouting fhriously at the police for being willing to defend such opponents of Hberty. The atmosphere was heated, to say the least.

In acting as a small, self-starting group, we had opened up the option of militant resistance to many others, who joined in enthusiastically; but the downside to this was that our group lost coherence within the larger mass. Our banners and banner holders had been separated from one another in the chaos, and we never again that day formed a tight nucleus. A city bus protected by police finally showed up to collect the cowering fascists, and drove off in the opposite direction with them inside. We received reports from our scouts that it was headed to the opposite side of the rally site, on the far side of the permitted zone from where we were; we tried to move toward it, but moving in an even minimally organized manner through the assembled masses around the narrow perimeter of the rally site proved impossible. We didn't want to move through the permitted zone itself, anyway, so as not to draw heat to those seeking safety there or interfere with their chosen foim of protest. This was the point at which individual actions by scattered groups could have taken place to heighten the atmosphere of uncertainty; whether any did is unknown, but certainly not enough did. Best-case scenario, we would have had others ready to intercept the bus, but we had not prepared enough for that.

Surrounded by police, with us still hundreds of feet away, the fascists were able to leave the bus without being assaulted by anything more than the jeers of bystanders. Realizing that we had at last failed to prevent them from reaching the site, we changed

Antifascist Action 59

our strategy: at this point our only hope of stopping the rally was to create chaos that

seemed uncontrollable, so we attempted a full frontal offensive. The police barring our

path had been replaced by now with officers in full body armor, and officers with tear