Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook

The drivers parked their cars at an angle to take up as many lanes as possible, hopped out, moved to remove the license plates that had enabled them to drive around safely, and ran like hell to get away. Unfortunately, there were hundreds of cops on the DC side of the bridge, some of whom started chasing one of the drivers immediately. They eventually caught up to him, punched him a couple of times, and threw him in the back of a paddy wagon. They also picked up one of the scouts who was doing communications on the bridge and mistook her for the guy that was driving the other car. In custody she heard over the radio that the cops realized their mistake. The cops then suddenly opened the doors to the pohce van and said, "Get out, we don't want to deal with you right now," and let both people go!

Three people were arrested on the Virginia side of the bridge; we had a bail fund and legal support team ready to go to get them out. They were out in a couple of hours, and thanks to the coordination of the national lawyers guild and DCs local direct action legal collective, a local lawyer took the cases for free.

Let's back up and talk about how we put this together. This action posed several organizing challenges because of the uncertainty of when the war would start. Because of this, we took steps to ensure we had all the needed action roles sorted out weeks in ad-

You can disable cars and trucks quickly and easily by using a stick to push a large raw potato into the exhaust pipe and out of sight (figure 0.2). This technique can baffle even skilled mechanics, and once the potato is removed the automobile will work again.

Blockades and Lockdowns V5

vance. We even had understudies for some of the roles, in case certain people happened to be unavailable the day we needed to carry out the action.

In the planning for the action, we secured two junker cars that would be used to help stop traffic from reaching the bridge. The two cars, one of which was a minivan, were also loaded up with big scraps of wood and metal (including a bed frame), chains, and locks that would be used to form barricades that would fill in the areas around the cars. In the vicinity of the site of the action, there were also road signs and other construction-related barricades that could have pulled into the street. The plan was for an affinity group in the march to open up the cars and pull out all the materials to set up the barricades?but it happened that the folks who were going to do this were tied up on ffie other side of ffie bridge by a heavy police presence. By ffie time ffiey got near ffie cars, ffie police had blocked them off and made them inaccessible.

In addition to geffing drivers for ffie vehicles and people to assist in building ffie blockades, we secured volunteers for several offier key roles. We had a loop of communications You can permanently disable people within the bike ride, ffie march, and on ffie bridge as scouts, as well as folks on an automobile by pouring site in advance to check for any early police presence. Cell phones were used to insure ffie sugar in 1 s gas tan . simultaneous arrival of boffi ffie march and ffie Critical Mass ride. We also had a couple of people set to lead ffie various risk levels of ffie march: ffiose who couldn't risk arrest followed one color flag to a support rally across ffie street, while ffiose who could engage in blocking ffie street followed anoffier. While our ultimate goal was for no one to be arrested, we wanted to make sure ffiat ffiose for whom arrest was not an option were able to participate as well and feel comfortable participating. Action medics and legal observers accompanied ffie march, and the variety of roles allowed for those who could not engage directly in ffie blockades to take on equally active and important roles. Blockades and iockdowm "^^^ P^^^ ^^^ largely organized in public, so the police presence awaiting us was

176 unavoidable. Only a handful knew the full details of where we would end up, but un-

fortunately that must have been leaked. Had we done a better job of keeping the target point a secret, we might have had more time to get things in place; on the other hand, the bridge we picked is one of the main entrances to the city, and it may have had a large police presence regardless.

However, the bridge was completely shut dovm. for about 30 minutes, and partially when puncturing tires, aim for the shut down and made into a spectacle for hours after that. It was a nasty day cold and ^idewali; if you want to be sure the ?rn ^- j-j ;^ ..? 7 1 11-1 IT 1 , spare won't help, you can puncture