Afghanistan: The Taliban Victory in a Global Context

https://cwc.im/Afghanistan2021

A veteran of the US occupation of Afghanistan discusses this defeat for the US imperial project, framing both the occupation and the Taliban in the context of a worldwide wave of authoritarianism.

For the record—we mobilized against the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the occupation of Iraq starting in 2003.

We oppose the Taliban and all authoritarian militarism, but we have always believed that only grassroots local resistance can defeat them.

Military intervention can't create peace, only suffering and instability. It always leads to more reactionary violence—from the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq to the Taliban victory this week.

Against state militarism—for a global network of autonomous resistance.

These posters are nearly two decades old. You can find them, and countless others, in our poster archive:

https://cwc.im/posters

America is an amnesiac, waking up from unconsciousness. Whose lands are these we’re living on, where did all this money in our wallets come from—and why are people trying to kill us? Can we work out our true identity before the end of the movie?
What is the meaning of this image burned into our brains, the twin towers that fall over and over? Oppressed by their ominous absence, we can only conceive of the world in dualities: terrorism or militarism, danger or safety, peace or war. Our own lives, our own questions, whatever those might be, are unimaginable.
Who built those towers, who trained the ones who brought them down? Who stands to gain from our fixation on them? What would it mean to reject the terms they offer us, to refuse our role in the story entirely and make for the horizon?

Read text here: https://crimethinc.com/posters/the-shadow-of-the-past-holds-the-future-hostage

As people flee Afghanistan, this is a reminder of where refugees come from: the majority of them are fleeing economic and political destabilization inflicted by Western governments and corporations. One way to act in solidarity with Afghans is to fight against laws criminalizing immigrants.

http://cwc.im/borders

Massive banners reading "prison abolition" hang once more at the Yerba Buena Island tunnel connecting San Francisco and the East Bay.

One reads "8/21"—the date of the countrywide call for "Shut’Em Down" demonstrations:

https://itsgoingdown.org/shut-em-down-roundup/

The other reads "9/9," recalling the prison strike of 9/9/2016:

https://abolitionjournal.org/the-abolition-collective-solidarity-statement-with-sept-9-national-prisoners-strike/

The View from New Orleans

An anarchist nurse working at a hospital in downtown New Orleans reports on the impact of the hurricane—and discusses what it means for all of us.

http://cwc.im/HurricaneIda

“Coastal cities are home to the a large portion of the country's population and some of its most beloved culture—and they're probably going to become uninhabitable.”

To directly support autonomous relief efforts in and around New Orleans, donate to New Orleans Mutual Aid Group and Lobelia Commons via Venmo:

https://venmo.com/nolamutualaid
https://venmo.com/lobeliacommons

Be sure to set your Venmo to private if you don’t want your transaction publicly visible.

Drawing on interviews with local anarchists and ecologists, we explore the colonial roots of the ongoing catastrophes that Hurricane Ida has exacerbated in Louisiana and discuss how communities of resistance can create truly resilient infrastructure.

https://cwc.im/Louisiana2021

This is the Third Precinct in Minneapolis, today.

https://cwc.im/ThirdPrecinct

When we say abolish the police, we don't mean beg politicians to defund them. We mean take grassroots action to prevent them from continuing to do harm—until flowers grow in the wreckage of their system.

Abolishing the police means developing ways to resolve conflicts and address crises that do not depend on concentrating all coercive force into unaccountable institutions.

It is a project that extends from our interpersonal relationships to mass action against state violence.

Instituted by conservative president Grover Cleveland to sap momentum from anarchist May Day events celebrating worker struggles, #LaborDay glorifies the process by which—every other day of the year—our labor alienates us from our potential.

https://cwc.im/work

Just a few hundred years of labor under the market economy have dramatically transformed the surface of the earth—destroying ecosystems, driving species into extinction, melting the polar ice caps. If the market really gave us self-determination, is this what we would be doing?

The more unevenly distributed wealth is—and the bitterer the competition to hoard it—the less freedom everyone has. The poor, because they must serve the wealthy; the wealthy, because they must compete so that someone more ruthless can't take their place.

Capitalism ≠ freedom.

As the statue of Robert E. Lee comes down in Richmond, remember, the state is doing that because movements compelled them to via direct action—and those movements were fighting for much more.

A chronology of statues toppled during the George Floyd revolt:

https://cwc.im/StatuesDown

On the Fires in Greece

https://cwc.im/GreeceSeptember2021…

The Greek government has used both the pandemic and the wildfires as a pretext to clamp down on refugees and social movements. Yet ecological catastrophes may soon put many Greeks in the same situation that refugees entering Greece face today.

The Craziest Walk Ever

https://cwc.im/CraziestWalk

On September 11, 2001, two young anarchists who had come to DC to prepare for an anti-capitalist mobilization stood before the flaming wreckage of the Pentagon, looking into the disastrous future that we now inhabit.

This is their story.

On September 16, 2017 anarchist, anti-fascist, engineering student, and queer activist Scout Schultz was shot and killed by police on Georgia Tech campus in Midtown Atlanta. Two days later, a small revolt took place following a vigil on campus in which mourners clashed with police and burned a police cruiser. In the days to follow, law enforcement from across the city coordinated a sophisticated campaign of repression against the friends and loved ones of Scout, dragging people out of classrooms, and arresting people at their homes.

This harassment eventually drove Scout’s ex-partner Dallas Punja to take their own life, as well as Kirby Jackson, who was arrested and charged for their participation in the revolt. We documented some of this repressive sequence as it was unfolding, a small contribution to help provide sense to a confusing and painful moment.

In March 13, 2020 District Attorney Paul Howard decided he would not press charges on Officer Tyler Beck, who still works for the Georgia Tech police department.


https://crimethinc.com/2017/10/05/scout-schultz-remembering-means-fighting-mourning-a-queer-activist-and-anarchist-murdered-by-the-police

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