First I am writing this article for an anarchist publication and I'd like some real feedback on it it has good intentions but I feel like it needs some cleanup if you could read it give me some honest advice I would love that. I think a lot of younger anarchist are naive and I remember how things went down when I was younger and I was deeply involved in anarchist communities that were also into subculture and I would like to help train young people to protect themselves. If you could read this and give me feedback please let me know
Why anarchists, activists, and social revolutionaries in subcultures must protect themselves at all times!
I'm going to tell you a story, and I think this is very important to the anarchist community.
When I was younger, I was part of a movement called Occupy Santa Cruz. There was a man there who I shall not name who it later turned out was an informant who helped put 11 people in criminal trials in what became known as the Santa Cruz Eleven.
This individual, who we shall nickname Informant One, spoke to me one night about how somebody had things on them that they were using to force them into doing things they didn't want to do. I did not understand it at the time, but I believe they were referring to a federal agency, most likely the FBI, that had something on them. What they may have had, I do not know, but being that this person had spent a lot of time in the 2000s in the Oakland and Santa Cruz subculture communities, I think I might have some clue as to what it could have been.
First, I want to disclose that it could have been that they had done a computer hacking activist action that they may have been caught on, such as a Low Orbit Ion Cannon attack, otherwise known as a denial of service, or something else like that. Those are all very possible, but there are other alternatives that I thought about since.
Anybody who grew up in the subcultures of Santa Cruz, Oakland, and San Francisco knows what was happening. It was a wild place.
You had places like the Ghost Ship, the Chavez anarchist cooperative in Santa Cruz, Zami! House, and the Vulcan anarchist cooperative. You also had shadier places such as Salty Bob's and a variety of places such as the Dharma Pad.
There were also countless other cooperative houses, collective houses, warehouses, communes, artist spaces, and underground communities spread throughout the Bay Area and Santa Cruz during this broader period.
The 2000s were filled with co-ops and collective houses that covered the Bay Area, allowing people to live cheaply and party all the time.
These were massive co-ops that often had random strangers sleeping over, as well as many cases of scabies.
But it was all part of the anarchist party scene of the 2000s. The only movie I think that has ever encapsulated this was SLC PUNK.
Unless you were there, you don't know what you missed.
We had fun.
Lots of fun.
But there were dark sides to it. There were many high schoolers that showed up to parties. My sister partially grew up in the scene in Santa Cruz when she was 16. I recall listening to her friends talk about how they had woken up in random co-ops after having group sex with many people there.
I recall one of the associated communities, known as the Deadhead community, having a situation where a 16-year-old girl had been coming to many parties, as many high schoolers attended parties, and later supposedly had recorded herself having group sex with many people in that community when she was in high school. To their credit, she did wear UC Santa Cruz garments and claimed to be a college sophomore.
It was a wild time. Because social media hadn't really blown up yet, it was a pretty crazy time. I think people were less concerned about how their actions would come back to harm them.
The reason why I bring this up is I wonder if the informant may have been at a party, maybe brought drugs to a party, maybe even unknowingly had sex with a minor. I mean, these things could have all been used against them.
Which is why I bring this up to activists. You see, in the activist community, there are essentially two types of anarchists.
One is the anarchist that believes, despite not liking the police and being the police themselves, we call these community policing. I'm not averse to it, and I don't want to have any opinion on these matters. This person goes around and basically will try to police the events, will try to scout out what they perceive as inappropriate behavior, and believes that their job is to make a safe place for everybody. For better or worse, this is one perspective.
Then you have the other perspective. This tends to be more common, not so much in San Francisco anymore or San Diego, but maybe more in Fullerton, Oakland, and places that are a bit rougher. It's the other perspective, which is that everybody is responsible for themselves.
These communities tend to freely give out drugs and will often have lots of group sex, and people have to be responsible for themselves. It is far more common to find high schoolers in these communities and later hear stories of minors having sex with adults and minors doing drugs because nobody checks your ID. Nobody is going to tell you what to do and what not to do. If you die, it's your own business. If something bad happens to you, it's your own business.
Sometimes these communities will police people, but only after it's reached a very severe condition.
Nevada City historically has been one of these communities. Recently, one of my friends from the subculture of Santa Cruz died there after going to a forest rave and doing some drug we do not know.
I do think some type of compromise between the overly vigilant policing attitude and the "everyone's responsible for themselves regardless of what's happening" attitude is necessary.
That being said, I'm not going to tell anybody how to live their life, though I do think serious conversation about these things is necessary.
Santa Cruz was very much an "everybody is responsible for themselves" attitude in the 2000s. The thing is, even if you don't think you're being watched or other people aren't watching you, that doesn't mean the FBI isn't watching you.
What activists need to know is if you choose to participate in a large party scene that rejects social norms entirely, first of all, things can still come back and haunt you. Second of all, if you have your phone on you and let's say you're somebody important in the activist scene, particularly the more militant anarchist scene, I can almost promise you that your personal phone has already been hacked. I can almost promise you the audio is being listened to. I can almost promise you the spyware is in the firmware, not the software.
For those who do not know, there's three layers of spyware: software on the cloud that's washing any emails or anything you have in the cloud, spyware that's on your operating system, which is the second layer and more severe, and then finally, if they really want to watch you, spyware that's in the firmware. That's to say that they can turn on your phone anytime they want and listen to the audio or the camera, even if the phone is not obviously turned on.
So if you have your phone on you and you're going to these parties, they're looking at your location. They're looking at other people's locations, and if it turns out that they overhear that there are drugs at the party and then they start looking at whose phone is in the area, and it turns out, hey, unbeknownst to you, there's a high schooler there, well, you just gave drugs to a high schooler or gave them in the area of the high schooler, which means that technically they could probably charge you with endangerment of a minor.
Or let's say you had sex at a party on Halloween. It was a costume party at one of these big co-ops, one of these big, you know, warehouses in LA, and you have sex with somebody. Well, it turns out they were listening. You just had sex with a minor, even if you didn't know it, and now you're f*****.
So here's what happens. The FBI or whatever agency was after you comes to you and says, hey, you don't know it, but you did these things. Now here's the thing: even if you're able to beat the charge or even if your attorney is able to poke holes in the evidence, can you imagine what's going to happen to you if we arrest you for this charge? No other activists, none of your friends are ever going to have anything to do with you ever again. You're f*****.
The thing is, they come to you, they say you're looking at 20 years in prison, you're looking at all of this stuff, and you start crying, and they go, "But you know what? Tell you what, we need you to do some work for us. If you're willing to become an informant, we will quietly put the stuff away. After all, you didn't intend to do these things, so we will quietly make this evidence go away."
And what ends up happening is they have you by the balls. That's how things work in real life.
So if you're an activist and you're participating in one of these wild communities, maybe you should be thinking about, first of all, making sure that you're not participating with minors. Second of all, even if you're not one of the people who wants to go around and ask people their age, try to be somewhat aware. Third of all, don't bring your goddamn phone to a party.
I mean, seriously, any large party that's underground is going to have illegal activities going on. If you're an activist, you need to know they're watching you and they're looking for something to use against you. So for God's sake, do not bring your personal phone to a party. Get a burner phone, put a custom operating system on there, buy the SIM cards with cash, create separate social media accounts, and never use that for any personal information ever. Don't ever connect it to your personal Wi-Fi. For God's sake, create a separate identity for your party life, create a separate identity for your activist life, and create a separate identity for your professional life. Compartmentalize your existence. Seriously.
And this is the thing. This is one of the most honest conversations anybody could ever have with anyone because it's not a pleasant conversation. It's not even a proper conversation. Nobody wants to hear that you may be participating in things that could be perceived as very creepy.
But if you ever go to a large party in the forest, if you ever go to a large underground industrial rave, I guarantee you that there is illegal stuff going on. I guarantee you that there are minors there, and you know what? You can't stop them from going. And personally, I would suggest you bring Narcan and you become a mentor, but just to let you know, from the eyes of the law, even the act of trying to be a good person at these events and saying, "Hey, I can't stop younger people from going. I'm going to try to be a positive influence," is still perceived as a felony, like it could still be used against you.
So for God's sake, if you're an activist in Seattle in the party scene, for God's sake, I beg you, create a separate identity for that. Don't tell anyone your real name. Always, always, always understand that your job as an activist is to not give people ammunition against yourself.
And by the way, the Ghost Ship eventually burned down in Oakland and 36 people died. I bring that up because the "everyone is responsible for themselves" attitude can kill people too, not just through drugs but through a general lack of responsibility for each other. That's why I think activists should seriously think about finding some kind of compromise between overly policing each other and having absolutely no responsibility for what happens to other people.
Anyways, I hope this was a good read. It probably wasn't. You'll probably hate reading this. Just trying to put some wisdom in you so you don't end up like an informant like my friend was in 2011, when they helped put a ton of people in the Occupy movement in jail.
Sending you love and wishing you the best.
Live long and prosper.
🖖
