WASHINGTON: Queer "Anarchists" Wreck DC's Human Rights Campaign Shop

From Anarchist News:

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) gift shop in Dupont Circle in Washington, DC is a god awful monstrosity. We were in there yesterday and between wiping our genitals on the clothing and discovering that the snow globes wouldn't properly fit up our bums, we got to thinking: "This place would look great with a bit of shattered glass and splattered paint." So we strapped on our riot chaps, poured pink paint into light bulbs, grabbed hammers, and went party party party! all over that tacky testament to the transformation of radical queer liberation into consumer junk.

The New Gay has a statement from the HRC:

“HRC’s DC Action Center and Store was vandalized last night with paint on the front windows and an LGBT group has claimed responsibility for the crime. It’s unfortunate that after a marriage win in New York that represented an unprecedented coming together of LGBT groups, some are more interested in fostering division in the community.”

[Photo Credit: The New Gay]

More On Seattle's "Queer Anarchists"

The so-called "queer anarchists" who rampaged through the streets after Seattle Pride have issued a statement.

Last night, some queer hooligans had the audacity to take the streets for the third year in a row. It was a smashing time! Queers Fucking Queers, a free, all-ages street party, erupted on the corner of 12th and Madison at midnight last night. The party quickly breached the confines of what’s tame and legal during Pride weekend when somebody smashed the window of a Ferrari dealership near the meeting point. Then the homo hoards charged down Pike, the windows of two cop cars left shattered in their wake. Rainbow flags became weapons as the queers raged on down Broadway, the cops sniffing along after like rabid dogs on the prowl. But these fascist prudes were too slow to protect a Bank of America ATM and American Apparel from this hot mob of style vandals. The hood of a cop car briefly transformed into a dance floor, and queers fought the cops in the streets. One person was hauled off to jail for "pedestrian interference", but others fought off the pigs and escaped their nightsticks with the help of friends.

At the top of this post is the front of the flyer handed out before the dumbassery began. Download the rest of it here (PDF).

Assholery After Seattle Pride

According to KOMO television, several hundred so-called "anarchists" rampaged through the streets of Seattle last night in an action that some said was in protest of the commercialization of gay Pride. Police cars and storefronts were destroyed by rock-throwers.

Several hundred people swarmed through the Capitol Hill area overnight, noisily vandalizing stores and smashing windows before dispersing into the darkness. Police say the drama began shortly after midnight Sunday when a flash mob gathered, passing out flyers, during a dance party. But the mob soon went out of control, creating havoc, said Renee Witt of the Seattle Police Department. The mob marched down 12th Avenue and Broadway, yelling and chanting. Some carried rainbow flags, while others carried red-and-black flags and wore masks.

Eventually some people started smashing store windows, damaging property, spray-painting slogans and bashing in the windshield of a patrol car. "It was just a walk down the street - it was a dance party down the street - and some idiot started throwing things," said one young woman who was there. Some people in the group, described as anarchists, apparently chose to use Gay Pride Weekend to send to message of protest - upset at how much gay pride is now part of the commercial mainstream. "There are some anarchists, gay activists, that don't want to be assimilated into capitalists' culture, and they feel like they're being exploited by companies like American Apparel," said Endresen Evans, who lives on Capitol Hill. That's why it appears protesters specifically targeted the store. A rock was thrown through the window and then vandalized with black spray paint.

Other say the melee had nothing to do with gay Pride at all and that only a handful of those on the street were with the group of "anarchists."

Queers Against Equality

Apparently they've been around for a couple of years, but I've only just learned about them via Slog. From the Against Equality about page:

Against Equality is an online archive, publishing, and arts collective focused on critiquing mainstream gay and lesbian politics. As queer thinkers, writers and artists, we are committed to dislodging the centrality of equality rhetoric and challenging the demand for inclusion in the institution of marriage, the US military, and the prison industrial complex via hate crimes legislation. We want to reinvigorate the queer political imagination with fantastic possibility.

On marriage equality:

Gay marriage apes hetero privilege and allows everyone to forget that marriage ought not to be the guarantor of rights like health care. In their constant invoking of the “right” to gay marriage, mainstream gays and lesbians express a confused tangle of wishes and desires. They claim to contest the Right’s conservative ideology yet insist that they are more moral and hence more deserving than sluts like us. They claim that they simply want the famous 1000+ benefits but all of these, like the right to claim protection in cases of domestic violence, can be made available to non-marital relationships.

Against Equality also opposes the repeal of DADT, because nobody should be in the military.

Is it the uniforms? The always flattering navy blue of a seaman’s uniform? The adventurous khaki of a soldier in the desert? Or might it be the rituals of military life, the sado-masochistic infliction of rules and tortuous drills, which drive today’s gays and lesbians to insist that they ought to be allowed to serve freely and openly in the military?

There's a Facebook page for an upcoming speaking engagement by the group at Seattle's Cornish College.

Would This Be An Ate Crime?

This is how they roll in the strange "anarchist-vegan" world.

An ex-vegan who was hit with chili pepper-laced pies at an anarchist event in San Francisco said Tuesday that her assailants were cowards who should direct their herbivorous rage at the powerful - not at a fellow radical for writing a book denouncing animal-free diets. Lierre Keith, a 45-year-old Arcata resident, was attacked at 2:15 p.m. Saturday at the 15th annual Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair while discussing her 2009 book, "The Vegetarian Myth." A 20-year vegan, Keith now argues that the diet is unhealthy and that agriculture is destroying the world. As Keith stood at a lectern at the Hall of Flowers in Golden Gate Park, three people in masks and black hooded sweatshirts ran from backstage, shouted, "Go vegan!" and threw pies in her face. While they fled, some in the audience cheered or handed out leaflets.

How does one hold an anarchist convention?

Sonic Weapon Used On Protesters At G20 Summit In Pittsburgh

Police used a sonic weapon to drive back the protesters at the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh on Thursday afternoon. It's believed to be the first time such a weapon was used on a crowd in the United States.

Is Bash Back The New ACT-UP?

Details Magazine has published a profile of Bash Back!, the "queer anarchists" who last November provided the right-wing with oceans of anti-gay ink when they invaded a Michigan church during services, shouted slogans, pulled the fire alarm, and threw leaflets at parishioners. In May, the Alliance Defense Fund filed a federal lawsuit against Bash Back. From Details:

The group's website features images of activists wielding clubs. They seem theatrical given the pranksterlike tenor of the protests, but members insist that their threats to use force are genuine. Real or not, their hard-line stance has struck a chord. Bash Back! has 15 chapters, in cities like Denver, Milwaukee, and West Palm Beach. Such rapid growth troubles the gay establishment. "This looks too much like something I don't want to be involved with," says Sue Hyde, a director at the National Lesbian and Gay Task Force. "Seeing weapons in the hands of gay folks in the U.S.? There's plenty of hate in the world."

But Bash Back! doesn't need the support of movement leaders to make headlines. The chapter in Olympia, Washington, glued a Mormon church's doors shut to protest the Latter Day Saints' financial support of Proposition 8. To avenge the 2008 shooting death of Duanna Johnson—a transgender woman who, months earlier, had achieved a measure of fame when the vicious beating she'd received in the custody of two Memphis cops was broadcast on YouTube—Bash Back! launched a nationwide campaign. Though the officers were fired, her killer remained on the loose. In Philadelphia, members blocked traffic and wrote STOP TRANS MURDER in pink chalk on streets. In Milwaukee, they dropped a banner at the University of Wisconsin that read R.I.P. DUANNA. The Memphis chapter sent a hearse and coffin to one of the cops' houses with a note that read SEE YOU SOON . . . —DUANNA BB!

"We're not trying to change people's minds, we're not trying to bend straight people to give us freedom—we're fighting back," says Milwaukee member Tristyn Trailer-Trash. "We're going to stop them from preaching hate, stop them from creating an environment that's unfriendly to gay, queer, and trans people. We're not going to be nice about it—they're not being nice about it!"

In May I had this to say about Bash Back's Michigan protest: "It was a dumbass, pointless, unfocused action directed at hapless nobodies. Nothing but a black eye for our movement." My opinion on that incident is unchanged. I'm all for confronting our enemies a la ACT UP, but I'm unconvinced, so far, that Bash Back has helped the movement at all.