(10/26/2009)Denver ABC Releases FBI documents from 2004 investigation into Denver Anarchist Black Cross
Over the course of 2003-2004, a newly formed chapter of the Anarchist Black Cross in Denver became the target of an FBI counter-terrorism investigation.
Dozens of pages of FBI documents were released to the Denver ACLU in 2006. DABC is posting the documents online today, in an effort to provide the public a better understanding as to how the investigation efforts of the FBI are facilitated. We feel that with the growing actions of the state to repress social movements in the United States, that this issue is especially timely.
You can view pdfs of the documents at this link.
(9/23/2009) On the Colorado Democratic Party Headquarters Incident…
On August 24th, eleven windows at the Colorado Democratic Party Headquarters were purposefully broken. The media quickly took up the story, but only within a narrow framework that couldn’t explain the incident. As members of the Denver Anarchist Black Cross, we would like to offer a practical analysis of why someone might take such action against the Democratic Party.
The first question asked by the media, understandably, was why this was done. Unfortunately, the question was framed as all political questions are framed in our society—right or left? Whoever smashed the windows could either be a “Republican thug” attempting to intimidate the Democrats, or a Democrat provocateur trying to soil the image of the Republicans. After all, we do not want to exist in an oppressive world of either/or that dissects our freedom and happiness.
To frame the issue in the same old Democrat/Republican binary is to once again assume that those are our only options. This framework dismisses or simplifies the experiences of the vast majority of people. People have diverse understandings of the world, and unique desires and goals that do not fit perfectly into political party boxes. In the end, the framework failed as the suspect was identified as an anarchist, a “fan of no party.”
The political system was not the only binary imposed by the media coverage of the incident. Blog, radio, and newspaper reports all grappled to identify the gender of the arrested suspect when reports from the police came into conflict with communication from the individual’s friends. In the confusion, some reports claimed there had been two different people arrested. The media eventually reported that the arrestee is transgender.
Again, the attempts to understand the suspect in terms of simple binary categories was disrupted. The urge to pigeonhole the suspect into binaries—right or left, male or female—leads us to ask why. A person does not have to identify as a Republican or Democrat or even as male or female to feel the direct impact of foreign and domestic policies coming from politicians and bosses across the country.
Every day we are reminded of a long list of grievances we have with both of the major political parties. Many of those who mobilized to replace the previous political order with a fresh one promising “change” and “hope” have been left with nothing but a sour taste in their mouths. Wars overseas have not ceased but rather escalated. The trade agreements and economic strategy that put us into this recession are not being repealed but rather strengthened. Single payer health care has evaporated as even being a possibility and instead replaced with a health care package that only pleases the insurance companies. Over and over again, the vast majority of Americans have been sold out by the Obama administration.
Meanwhile, the occupants of the vandalized Democratic Headquarters play their part, along with the adjacent art galleries, of gentrification in the Denver neighborhood of Lincoln/La Alma, raising property values and displacing low-income people of color from their community. The justifiable anger that comes with being sold out might be one explanation for why it was easier to raise legal money for the alleged vandal than for the Democrats to raise money to replace their windows.
As the contradictions between reality and the promises of the Obama administration widen, anger will continue to grow and be expressed in many ways. The visions we have for our communities and our lives will not be realized by viewing our world through a system of binaries. We know that we should not be limited to two answers to each question, nor limited to the same old questions. Our goal is to build and defend social movements that can operate beyond these binaries so we can all open the scope of possibility in our lives, explore beyond either/or answers, and pose questions never asked on the 10 o’clock news.