Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook

The night before, we went over a map, including aerial photos (easily downloaded from the internet) and detailed maps. We didn't give away the precise location except to one driver from each of the cars. People were given an all-too-quick training on unarresting and bloc techniques, and communications equipment was distributed among the affinity groups. This lack of training, especially considering most of the participants had never been part of a bloc, was a great mistake. Still, affinity groups had come together naturally over the few days before the action, everyone joining groups with close friends who wanted to risk the same level of arrest and participate in the same type of action. Without any argument or coercion, autonomous groups had formed for a truly diverse range of actions; climbing on the roof of the building and dropping banners, digging up the front yard of the biotechnology company to plant seeds, doing independent media work, passing out fliers on the sides of nearby highways to the traffic that would be snarled by the spectacle we were to create, performing in a play involving the giant indigenous farmer puppet, acting as police liaisons (a police liaison is a person whose job is basically to delay the police by acting as the "spokesperson" for the group), and, of course, property destruction. Surprisingly, there was no predictable conflict about violence versus non-violence: everyone felt that they were participating in a collective action in which every group and every action was vital to the overall success of the whole project?the project at hand being to humiliate a biotechnology company that had counted on no one even knowing they existed.

At the crack of dawn, everyone put on their biotechnology suits, double-checked their props, and jumped into their cars. We parked in the parking lots of a nearby hotel and family restaurant, and ran into the front yard of the massive biotechnology complex. Im-

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mediately groups scrambled up onto the roof and dropped banners; other groups began spray painting "Fuck Biotechnology" and "Free the Seed" on the walls of the building. Giant banners were unfurled, and within minutes an unearthly play began, with groups of biotechnology-suited people and a traditionally-dressed farmer tearing up the carefully manicured lawn of the company, planting organic seeds, while giant biotechnology corn visuals were erected facing the highway. The employees of the company must have thought one of their own experiments had gone horribly awry, and fled inside, locking their doors and staring out the windows. The security guards, vastly outnumbered, just watched with mouths agape. This entire action was visible from the highway, and more participants dressed in biohazard suits handed out fliers and carefully talked through the issues with passing traffic?traffic that soon ground to a halt. Within fifteen minutes, our action had completely paralyzed one of the largest biotechnology companies in the world and had frozen traffic on one of the major highways in the United States. Of course, it was the cops that actually shut down the highway?maybe in fear the public would see the spectacle ahead.

Of course the cops did come eventually?although, due to the element of surprise, we had free run of the place for almost an hour. Even when the first cops arrived, they realized, as the security guards had, that they were outnumbered by a large mass of maniacs in biotech suits. They tried talking to our police liaisons, who repeatedly told them we had to consult with each other on any decision, a delaying tactic that enabled us to get more of the action done?a mistake in retrospect, since that was when we should have re-grouped and prepared for the inevitable police assault. Even after reinforcements arrived, the cops were afraid to act until some of the businessmen came out of the office and whispered in their ears. A few of the officers began trying to arrest people, starting by arresting the only person they could identify? the farmer. Unfortunately, all the affinity groups were so absorbed in carrying out the actions they had planned they

let some precious seconds pass before they could act?and by then the pohce managed to pepper-spray one individual in the face. However, through quick thinking, our white biotech suit disguises, and some ridiculously brave unarresting techniques (including giving cops wedgies and pulling people free from their grasp), we managed to protect almost everyone from arrest.