Steal Something From Work Day: Redefining April 15th

Introducing a new type of holiday!

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It’s been 5 years since subMedia released the short “Why I love shoplifting from Big Corporations.” A few months ago the folks who penned the text from which the film was inspired, asked us to create a video for their newest campaign: “Steal Something from Work Day“

We graciously accepted and with the help from Iconoclast Media, we rocked out this little promo. Now don’t get caught watching this at work!

Steal Something From Work Day Is Here!

Don’t carp, carpenters!
Don’t wait, waiters!
Let’s put the team in teamster!
Every steelworker a steal-from-worker!
Every hoodlum a Robin Hoodlum!
Raise the bar, baristas!
Raise hell, bellboys!
Wage war, wage slaves—
April 15 is Steal Something from Work Day!

Just in time for April 15, a barrage of new STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY propaganda is hitting the airwaves. This announcement covers a movie, a full-length journal, and a new hip hop track, among other things.

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The Dawn of the Crisis Generation

March 4th is over, but we’ve only just begun.

“Why the hell did you get on that highway?” asked the cops, our cell mates, our coworkers, our classmates. There are many responses that could be given that have been outlined by banners, occupation demands, student leaders, or budget statistics, but none of them really connect to why one would take over a highway. Obviously there are no libraries on a highway. The funding for schools isn’t going to be found on any one of those lanes of oncoming traffic. And, in fact, a lot of people who were arrested on the highway were not students or teachers. This is because the highway takeover is an action against a power structure that is much larger than this year’s budget crisis.

That morning we awakened to newspaper headlines stating the governor’s support for sanctioned student protests. We weren’t the least bit impressed by this patronizing rhetoric. Our motivations for walking up that on ramp to 880 were far deeper and broader than some piddly demand for a return of the same: An education system that has for a long time been the bedrock to our highly divided class system in the United States. The myth that change will come to this society by poor people reaching middle class status through the university makes no sense; a school degree does not impact the condition of the neighborhoods and families we come from. It should also now be clear to everyone that ritualized demonstrations that fail to break out of the normal functioning of society represent nothing more than the further consolidation of state power. What fails to concretely disrupt the system ultimately strengthens it. We know that if we “win” funding from Governor Schwarzenegger this is no victory, but a diversion of funds from one group of already-struggling people to pacify another, without changing shit. For example, plans are in the works that will take money from the health care of prisoners in order to fatten university administrators’ pockets. We refuse to accept a shallow bribe that places “our” interests in competition with the interests of our potential comrades.

Earthquake in Chile: Turning the Class Society into Ruins and Rubble

Translated text by anonymous author, Hommodolars

Greetings international comrades. We are facing difficult times in Chile after the recent earthquake. In the most impacted areas of the country, people are taking to the streets and looting. We support these actions. We only hope to see this practice generalized. The natural disaster is nothing compared to the violence that capital brings to us day by day. Today, we loot capital to meet our basic needs after a natural disaster. Tomorrow, we must loot capital to destroy a larger disaster: capital and its guardian, the state.

After accumulating tension for 25 years, the tectonic plates where the territory called Chile is located released an enormous amount of energy, which for humans amounts to an earthquake, a natural disaster.

We do not live in just any society, but instead capitalism, the most extreme and concentrated form of class society. Disasters may very well come from natural forces. Their effects are not natural, but instead social.

Steal Something from Work Day is Blowing Up!

Steal From Work Day – April 15th from Steal From Work Day on Vimeo.

April 15 is Steal Something from Work Day. GET READY!

Steal Something From Work Day STICKERS!

These classy black and red “silent agitators” are available for free or donation from Wild Nettle Distro, and will also be included free in orders from CrimethInc. Far East. They look great on a doorframe or coffee maker! To get a big package of them for your community, email distro@wildnettle.com.

A Note of Appreciation from the Rich

Let’s be honest: you’ll never win the lottery.

On the other hand, the chances are pretty good that you’ll slave away at some miserable job the rest of your life. That’s because you were in all likelihood born into the wrong social class. Let’s face it — you’re a member of the working caste. Sorry!

As a result, you don’t have the education, upbringing, connections, manners, appearance, and good taste to ever become one of us. In fact, you’d probably need a book the size of the yellow pages to list all the unfair advantages we have over you. That’s why we’re so relieved to know that you still continue to believe all those silly fairy tales about “justice” and “equal opportunity” in America.

Of course, in a hierarchical social system like ours, there’s never been much room at the top to begin with. Besides, it’s already occupied by us — and we like it up here so much that we intend to keep it that way. But at least there’s usually someone lower in the social hierarchy you can feel superior to and kick in the teeth once in a while. Even a lowly dishwasher can easily find some poor slob further down in the pecking order to sneer and spit at. So be thankful for migrant workers, prostitutes, and homeless street people.

Resistance Spreads Like Wildfire

Last month Guerrilla News brought you “Is America Already a Police State? An incomplete overview of police state legislation, domestic military deployment, and other fascist developments in the United States,” an article originally published on the now-closed Guerrilla News Network website. That article was in turn a follow-up to two previous articles published on GNN.tv by the same author surveying the global economic crisis and the revolts that accompanied its first phases. Below are both articles, combined into one, archived here for posterity, in chronological order of publication. As you can see from the embedded links, the decision on the part of the GNN™ owners to shut the site down effectively cut off access to vast swaths of information, which is truly a shame. In the coming days, your friendly local Guerrilla News editor will comb through the links and attempt to alter them to accessible sources. Thank you for your patience and patronage. Words are weapons. Write like war.

Urgent Communique from Athens Anarchists

“State and Capital assassinate every day and not with bullets alone. We live the causes, we don’t wait for any occasions. Everyone to the streets: For dignity, for freedom, for Anarchy.” —Open anarchist assembly for multiform action

These moments are more than historical. We are witnessing for the first time since 1967 an attempt to impose a fascist police coup. If a parliamentary democracy are able to commit those crimes, the junta is something different and we have all have begun to understand that. The anarchist slogans in the streets are beginning to say bluntly: “DOWN THE JUNTA”.

A collusion of prosecutors, rectors, the upper classes, TV media and police, and still we do not know what other local and foreign forces have been mustered. You hear of missing people. The climate is heavy like under the junta.

April 15: Steal Something From Work Day

Calling all angry wage slaves and anarchist subversives! You’re invited to participate in promoting an international day of action, STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY, scheduled for April 15, 2010. Following in the footsteps of Steal Something Day, itself a response to Buy Nothing Day, STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY focuses attention on the motivations behind employee theft and the horizons ahead of it.