A call was recently made by a coalition of leftist organizations in Seattle to mobilize to disrupt this conference on its opening day, Tuesday March 12th.
While A large and visible opposition to this conference is important, it will take lots of small crews with individual plans for disruption to actually make it significantly harder for the war profiteers inside the convention center to do their networking.
This is a call for autonomous disruption and a combative response to the Defense Supplier Summit. It is a call to gather a crew, talk about how you will help disrupt the summit, and then make that plan happen on March 12th.
What do we mean by autonomous disruption?
This call out is an invitation to be more intentional about attending a large public rally with unique contributions – recently this has looked like people wheat pasting, doing graffiti, chalking, stickering, handing out flyers.
Other options to consider include what can be accomplished away from the big public demo that might cause disruption inside. This could include but is not limited to sneaking in and yelling at the presenters, flipping over tables, making the toilets unusable, stealing their catered lunches and distributing them to your houseless neighbors. There is an infinite amount of possibilities for disruption when a couple of friends get together for a scheme. Choose something that feels within you and your crew’s comfort level and that you feel like you have an appropriate ammount of trust with your crew to actaully pull off, and make it happen!
Working together, Not against each other.
Many groups are currently organizing against the Defense Supplier Summit. It is inevitable that organizations and crews with different tactics and ideologies will be present at this mobilization. People are doing a particularly good job of creating space for a diversity of tactics in their organizing in Seattle recently.
As autonomous groups are organizing around this summit, it would be helpful to think about the Saint Paul Principles, which were created in 2008 during the mobilizations against Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota in order to facilitate cross-ideological organizing with the shared goal of shutting down the RNC.
The Saint Paul principles:
- Our solidarity will be based on respect for a diversity of tactics and the plans of other groups.
- The actions and tactics used will be organized to maintain a separation of time or space.
- Any debates or criticisms will stay internal to the movement, avoiding any public or media denunciations of fellow activists and events.
- We oppose any state repression of dissent, including surveillance, infiltration, disruption and violence. We agree not to assist law enforcement actions against activists and others.
We encourage those organizing autonomously and those within the large organizations planning the mobilizaton to think of these principles not as rules but as tools to help brainstorm what successful actions might look like. The goal is to create as much disruption as possible while building solidarity and our power to continue disrupting and shutting shit down. We as anarchists uniquely understand the role of autonomous organizing and direct action, and have a legacy of experimentation in our toolbox to implement.
See you in the streets,
Some anarchists
source: https://pugetsoundanarchists.org/
On March 12th to 14th Seattle will host the 2024 Aerospace and Defense Supplier Summit at the Seattle Convention Center. This conference will bring together suppliers and subcontractors from around the world, including Boeing, to network and show off products that will be used to build weapons that will murder people in wars of colonial expansion in Palestine and around the world.