The following piece was forwarded to us by a comrade in response to the article “The Center Cannot Hold” by K. & T., which we published in early February following the murder of Alex Pretti. If you want to submit a response to anything on our blog, send us an email! Better yet, host it […]
This essay is one in what we hope will be a series, based on our experiences in the Twin Cities, intended to tease out various aspects of the ongoing movement against ICE and the feds; it is by no means comprehensive. – S. W. & K. S. During recent visits to the Twin Cities, we […]
1. The movement against ICE in Minneapolis-Saint Paul (MSP) is a deeply insurgent mass movement. It is incredible and beautiful. You have probably seen dozens of videos on your phone of clashes between the ‘invading’ Federal forces and brave Minnesotans. The Feds seem furtive, swine-like, waving around military weaponry. Their adversaries, mostly armed with nothing but […]
YEAR ONE OF THE ANTI-DEPORTATION STRUGGLE IN CHICAGO DURING TRUMP’S SECOND TERM by the LAKE EFFECT COLLECTIVE On September 6th, President Donald Trump publicized an AI-generated image depicting himself as the fictitious Lt. Colonel Bill Kilgore of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 film Apocalypse Now. Kilgore, a genocidal maniac played by Robert Duvall, is best known […]
COMMUNITY SELF-DEFENSE FROM LOS ANGELES TO CHICAGO People of conscience across the so-called United States are outraged by the cruel spectacle of ICE kidnappings and racist terror. They want to do something about it. But what works? We believe we need more proactive tactics, offensive and defensive, that empower people to take intervention in and […]
Our group is a conscious experiment at bridging our earlier affinity-based organizing with a named, semi-structured organization. This has attracted questions from both intentionally-opaque affinity groups and people more at home in the world of public-facing activism. We’ve collectively authored this piece to clarify how we work together and why. And of course, we aren’t […]
Foreword Recently, some friends and former members of Bring the Ruckus, a revolutionary anarchist cadre organization from the 2000s, which we hold in high regard, reached out to share some of their internal documents with us to circulate as widely as possible. These documents include a selection from their 2005 political education packet, an assessment […]
[W]e have a conscious opponent, but one subject to a range of contradictions and resulting political limits—although not absolute ones. – Don Hamerquist, “Three Tendencies on Repression” After decades of defeat, the revolutionary left’s ability to provide prompt assessments of ruling-class composition and strategy has atrophied. The reader can be forgiven for being impressed that […]
YOUNG AMERICANS On August 25th, 2020, during the George Floyd Uprising’s Hot Summer, rebels in Kenosha set a used car dealership ablaze. And as those Civics, Camrys, and Altimas bathed in flame, white teenagers nationwide felt a stinging in their brains, as a feeling of immense moral sentiment activated at the sight of charred F-150s. […]
RANSOM AND RETRIBUTION Mahmoud Khalil, a participant in Columbia’s path-breaking Palestine solidarity encampment, has been abducted from his home, labeled a “national security threat,” detained and shipped to Louisiana pending deportation. This abduction and its justification distill four years of state responses to the movements to defend the Weelaunee forest and to end the genocide […]
Cops enter an occupied university building to arrest students: “You’re under arrest for trespassing.” “We’re not trespassing, we’re overthrowing the government.” “I don’t care what you’re doing. You’re under arrest for trespassing.” It’s hard to see yourself as Che Guevara when society tells you that you’re “trespassing.” Amerika tries to take the symbolic meaning […]
A COLLECTION OF REPORTBACKS FROM THE PALESTINE MOVEMENT by the LAKE EFFECT COLLECTIVE With the season of encampments unsteadily behind us and a great deal of mass struggle to come, getting clear on last year’s events feels more and more important. In the last year, two failures occurred simultaneously: first, the Democratic Party’s flagrant complicity […]
AUTHOR’S NOTE As a collective, our involvement in social struggles has not been indiscriminate. We recognize that in a deeply and consistently evil world, there are many, many opportunities to act—and that there aren’t enough of us to respond to every one of them. We direct our limited resources strategically, understanding that the task of […]
Foreword This reportback was submitted to us by comrades involved in the Northwestern Gaza solidarity encampment. Their encampment was the first in the Chicago area to go up and to come down, and its disappointing end informed the initial approach of many of us at UChicago; we felt that including this reportback alongside our own […]
REFLECTIONS ON THE DNC by the LAKE EFFECT COLLECTIVE The Democratic National Convention descended on Chicago during the last week of August, bringing with it swarms of police and politicians who quickly rendered the city uninhabitable. In response, Chicago’s major Palestine-sympathetic organizations coordinated marches and demonstrations, and seemingly thousands of out-of-town activists came to visit, […]
