the Stranger, “Fuck Everything About May Day in Seattle”

Fuck El Comite.
Fuck another tame immigrants rights march parade, organized by local group El Comite and welcomed by police, while the federal government maintains a for-profit gulag holding immigrants just forty minutes away. Fuck doing the same thing over and over—protesting because you want to end deportations that rip apart families and send fathers, mothers, and children to impoverished, unsafe countries—instead of upping the pressure or focusing attention on the active monument to the injustice of the system in our neighboring city.

Fuck a bunch of the anarchists.
Not all of them. A bunch of them. Fuck their tired, overblown rhetoric: “destroying our enemies,” “let’s get wild and free!” etc.

Fuck their macho-posturing, their self-involved adrenaline rushes, their immature screaming and cursing, and, for all of their hyperbole, their failure to accomplish jack in the fight against capitalism, a rapacious economic system that threatens the planet. Fuck their laziness, their unwillingness to put in the organizing work between May Days to do something that ordinary working people in Seattle could get behind, something that isn’t stale and predictable. Fuck not utilizing the potent black bloc tactic to do anything more significant than crack a couple random windows. Fuck the way they confirm people’s worst stereotypes about anarchists and discredit anarchism.

Fuck the media.
Fuck me for taking the bait and giving one theatrical video more attention than it deserved. Fuck the TV journalists roaming around downtown with bodyguards, pretending they’re in a warzone. Fuck breathless coverage meant to titillate suburban soccer moms and fuck the gas-guzzling helicopters thwacking away overhead.

Fuck the police.
Fuck their macho-posturing, too. Fuck their arbitrary blockades—before any bottles or objects were thrown—preventing anticapitalist marchers from peacefully marching where they wanted to go. Fuck the way they ramp up tensions, not diminish them. Fuck the city’s Office of Professional Accountability for its toothlessness, for not sending observers out to the scene—putting the onus on random citizens and journalists with cameras to hold police accountable. And fuck the police for their violence, their reckless use of incendiary weapons on crowds of people, namely blast balls, which are sure to kill or permanently maim someone sooner or later (more coverage to come on that issue). Fuck their smugness.

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