The storefront of Altitude Cannabis Club in Brooklyn, NY was attacked with three of its windows shattered and a message scrawled on its door.
The building that Altitude is located at is the former address of the Base, an anarchist political space that many of us revolutionaries held near and dear to our hearts and gave us a space to build community, make friends and comrades, sharpen our political knowledge, debate with others, and grow into the thorns in the side of the state and capitalism that we are today.
One thing that set the Base apart from other spaces in the city, which are run by fossilized Marcyites, hipster anarcho liberals, or bourgeois leftists of various shades, is the uncompromising focus on anti-imperialism, old school anti-capitalist radicalism, support for political prisoners, regardless of tendency, and promoting anarchism through the lens of the history of the struggle against slavery and colonialism.
The Base was the only leftist space with a preponderance of working class people in the collective or frequenting the space, many of whom were people of color, and not despite this, but because of this, they were always against liberal identity politics; which in essence is the politics of white university culture.
It was the only space that always welcomed neighborhood people and homeless folks without judgment, treated people as equals and assisted with day to day struggles.
Unlike other political spaces, the Base cared about providing us a constructive space, keeping bad actors and abusive personalities out, and became the space where those of us fed up with yuppie or cult run spaces and activist groups came to get to know each other and formulate our ideas and plans for the future.
When the landlords evicted the Base and Altitude took over, it was obvious that Altitude probably had no hand in the eviction process. However the stark contrast of what used to be and what now is was very symbolic.
An overpriced, gentrified weed club where yuppies go to waste their money instead of supporting locals, staffed by despicable hippies and hipsters.
And so in the dead of night we struck back. A last hurrah to the best anarchist space on the east coast. The space may be gone, but the ideas and bonds that were built and expanded upon there will never be broken until we all take our last dying breaths.
We will fight to continue the legacy they aimed to promote and will continue struggling against all that oppresses us.
Death to the state and capital!
US and NATO out of everywhere!
Death to every tyrant and oppressor whether big or small! And may all the landlords and the gentrifiers who sustain them be one day robbed of their ill gotten wealth and property and may it be distributed to the working class.
For revolution, we march onwards!!
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