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In Memory of Basil al-Araj

Israeli occupation forces walk past a mural of Basil al-Araj in al-Aroub refugee camp near Hebron.

Shortly after arriving in Palestine in 2012, a comrade invited me to a demonstration in front of al-Muqata’a in Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank. It was a significant symbolic event, being the first protest against the PA directly in front of its headquarters with about 100 people holding signs on the sidewalk condemning PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ decision to hold negotiations with Israel. Nothing much happened, but that nothing much clearly irritated the PA.

Following the protest, several people met at a nearby café. That was the first time I met Basil al-Araj. Similarly, nothing much happened, but the more time I spent in Palestine, the more and more frequently I found myself in Basil’s company. He spoke passable English, and aside from translations by others, that was how we communicated given that I embarrassingly managed to live there for more than a year and not learn Arabic.

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Interview with It’s Going Down

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Originally published to It’s Going Down
Download and Listen Here

We recently caught up with Scott Campbell, a reoccurring translator and writer for It’s Going Down, as well as the author of the column Insumision, which details and analyzes unfolding social movements, struggles, as well as the overall political landscape in so-called Mexico. Beyond just talking about Scott’s contributions to IGD, we more over talk about his plans to launch a trip into Mexico for the purpose of interviewing collectives, groups, organizations, and individuals about what is going down in their regions and what they think of the current social and political landscape. The trip will serve to build bridges with anti-authoritarian, indigenous, anti-capitalist, and anarchist movements, groups, projects, and struggles, and also expand our understanding as to what is happening in Mexico and why.

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IGDCAST: Anarchist Organizing and Solidarity Inside and Outside of Mexican Prisons

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Originally published to It’s Going Down
Translated by Scott Campbell
Download and Listen Here


This is a special IGDCAST with Sofi, an anarchist compañera from Mexico City who is deeply involved in a variety of solidarity and organizing efforts with anarchist prisoners in Mexico. The audio interview is in Spanish, while below is an English transcription, along with two song MP3s you can download separately. If you want to see more in depth reporting on what is happening in Mexico, be sure to support our Mexico trip fundraiser.

We start off this episode with a recorded greeting from the Cimarrón Collective in North Prison in Mexico City. Then Sofi discusses the persecution and repression facing the anarchist movement in Mexico City as well as a review of the situation of four anarchist prisoners currently being held by the Mexican state. We look at the corruption, exploitation and neglect that occurs in Mexican prisons and what compañeros on the inside are doing to fight back. In particular, there is a focus on the Cimarrón Collective, a formation started by anarchist prisoner Fernando Bárcenas that has autonomously reclaimed space inside the North Prison and self-manages a variety of initiatives. For listeners, perhaps the most intriguing one will be their punk band, Commando Cimarrón. A couple of their songs are included in the podcast.

The interview then wraps up with discussion of a proposed amnesty for prisoners being put forward by “leftist” political parties in the Mexico City government and the response of our anarchist compañeros. Lastly, there are suggestions for how the struggle for their freedom can be supported from outside of Mexico. Throughout this post, we include links for more information, primarily in English, and photos of some of the art produced during workshops organized by the Cimarrón Collective.

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Interview with The Final Straw

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From The Final Straw
Listen and Download Here

Airs on WSFM-LP 103.3 in Asheville / streaming at AshevilleFM from 3am EST on December 18th, 2016, through December 26th podcasting soon at radio4all.net. Also airing this week on KOWA-LPFM in Olympia, WA, KWTF in Bodega Bay, CA, and WCRS-LP Columbus Community Radio 98.3 and 102.1 FM. Past episodes can be found at TheFinalStrawRadio.NoBlogs.Org and you can now subscribe to us via iTunes! You can email us at thefinalstrawradio@riseup.net and you can send us mail at:

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Insumisión: Community Self-Defense Against Narcos and the State

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Originally published to It’s Going Down
By Scott Campbell

As those of us in the U.S. come together to plan for the incoming Trump regime, hopefully we can find some inspiration and affinity with the ongoing resistance happening in Mexico. After this summer’s teachers’ strike and popular mobilizations collapsed, communities and organizations in Mexico have returned to the essential but none-too-glorious work of building community self-defense and organization to maintain their gains and prepare for the next uprising that will inevitably occur.

This edition looks at communities around Mexico creating and defending autonomy, taking matters into their own hands to provide for their security from the state, organized crime and corporations. There are also updates on prisoners, community media and Ayotzinapa. This will probably be the final Insumisión of 2016. Since starting in March, we’ve put out 14 of them and appreciate that people find them useful. In 2017, we are hoping to expand our Mexico coverage and part of that will be a trip I am planning to take in a couple of months to connect face-to-face with many of the organizations you read about in these columns and to produce exciting original content. To help make that happen, please contribute to and spread the word about our fundraiser for the trip.

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Mexico: Teacher and Community Police Leader Disappeared and Murdered

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Originally posted on It’s Going Down
From Desinformémonos
Translated by Scott Campbell

Chilpancingo, Guerrero | According to local press reports, the body of teacher Irineo Salmerón Dircio was found the morning of November 25. The teacher and coordinator of the Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities (CRAC-PC) was kidnapped by an armed group on November 23.

According to state press reports, one of the two bodies found in bags near the community of Amate Amarillo in the municipality of Chilapa de Álvarez belonged to the coordinator of the CRAC-PC, who had been kidnapped by an armed group the previous Wednesday.

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Trumping Fear, Finding Safety in Resistance

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Originally published on It’s Going Down
By Scott Campbell

Following a calamitous event such as the election of Donald Trump, the first reactions are often visceral. Those who view it positively gloat and interpret it as greater permission to act according to their more base impulses, seen in the increase in anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and racist attacks since November 8. Those who view it negatively experience a kind of shock and anger. In an attempt to process the unexpected, those emotions frequently are vented in the form of projection, utilizing shame and blame in an attempt to shore up a challenged worldview. Social media exacerbates this by permitting us all to become unfiltered pundits, clicking the “post” button to bestow legitimacy upon any thought that may pop into our heads or trying to acquire social capital by presenting oneself as the holder of the correct analysis.

I’m of course of the opinion that Trump’s election is a negative occurrence. The thousands who have been militantly taking the streets all around the United States are an encouraging sign, especially heartening are the youth, disenfranchised by this system yet perhaps the most at risk from it, organizing walkouts of their schools. The immediate and spontaneous rejection shown in the streets establishes an important oppositional framework for the long road that lies ahead and serves as a way to communicate to one another, to those most at-risk under a Trump regime, and to the rest of the world that the fight back is already underway. But as we are all aware, street actions are never enough. From an anarchist perspective, this moment calls for reflection along with action. In my view, I see three main tasks: a) problematizing electoral politics; b) understanding Trump’s victory; and, c) planning for the long haul.

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Insumisión: Refusing Fear, Choosing Resistance

Originally published to It’s Going Down
By Scott Campbell

It’s been several weeks since the last Insumisión. Apologies for the break, but now we’re back at it and as always there’s a lot of ground to cover. Before diving in, I’d like to share that in the next couple of months, an It’s Going Down contributor will be spending a chunk of time in Mexico with the goal of producing lots of original content. If you value the work we do here at IGD and would like to see it continue to grow, please consider contributing to the trip fundraiser or making a donation in general. We also recently published a call for translators to help put out even more content from Mexico. If you’re interested, get in touch! And now let’s take a look at the latest from Mexico…

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Update and Letters from Anarchist Prisoners on Hunger Strike in Mexico

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Mexico: Anarchist Prisoners End Hunger Strike but Remain Fasting
From Anarchist Black Cross – Mexico
Translated by Scott Campbell

Day 15 of the anarchist prisoners’ hunger strike.

After two weeks on hunger strike, due to the health of some and in order to avoid serious complications, anarchist prisoners Fernando Bárcenas, Luis Fernando Sotelo and Abraham Cortés, as well as activist Jesse Montaño, have decided to continue their collective struggle inside the prison with indefinite fasts and have ended the hunger strike.

We are reposting the text signed by Fernando Bárcenas.

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Combative October 2: On the Institutionalization and Autonomy of Social Protest

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Originally posted to It’s Going Down
From Radio Zapote
Translated by Scott Campbell

Forty-eight years after the Tlatelolco massacre we continue demanding justice for the murdered, disappeared, persecuted, tortured, defamed, and imprisoned, as even though the killers and masterminds have not been tried and punished, those compañeros who fell in the militant struggle remain present in the popular and social struggles today as part of our memory, solidarity, guidance, dignity, strength, inspiration, rage and courage. Today, no one doubts that IT WAS THE MEXICAN STATE who planned and carried out that mass murder, just as it did with the disappearance of 43 teaching college students on September 26, 2014, as from Tlatelolco to Ayotzinapa one can trace a historical continuity that affirms the totalitarian character of the state that today we can characterize as “narco and terrorist.”

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