WTF is an Anarchist Free School?
••• This talk presented by the Bay Anarchist Free School will cover: What is an anarchist free school? Why should each one teach one? What are lessons learned from past anarchist free school projects in the Bay Area 90s-present? We will presentation the BAFS 2024 summer offerings. Come hear about our project and find ways to participate!
Bay Anarchist Free School Kick Off Picnic
••• Come through for free food, games, and fun. We’ll have a free store, zine distro, screenprinting station, soccer ball, slingshot range, and more. Hang out, make friends, enjoy the sunshine. Bring some drinks, bring some zines, bring some stuff for the free store, bring your A game!
What to Expect When You Get Arrested
••• In this class we will discuss the following: anti-repression infrastructure in the Bay Area, the history of anti-repression organizing, legal information about interactions with law enforcement and the arrest process including what to expect in jail up to arraignment, and anarchist/autonomist organizing and anti-repression. Masks are required.
Protesting Safely 101
••• As our struggle against domination escalates, so does the potential for violence at protests. The risk of violence by police has been consistently present inside and outside of demonstrations, but with the rise of the far right, the threat of violence at protests has skyrocketed. This class will teach students basic concepts developed over the last decade that can increase the likelihood of keeping them safe.
Parkour for Beginners
••• Come learn the basic moves for moving around urban environments in stealthy and fun ways! Supportive learning environment, all skill levels encouraged.
Warlike, Howling, Pure
••• To celebrate the publication of his book Warlike, Howling, Pure by Contagion Press, Areïon will be speaking on spiritual anarchy, insurrectionary millenarianism, and Dionysian holy war. In the face of the crises we live within and the despair that accompanies them, there is more strength and clarity to be found in our insurgent ancestors and the miraculous than in tepid anarcho-liberalism or the failed secular dichotomy of voluntarism and determinism. Ritual space will be held to honor the summer solstice, the anarchist and anti-colonial martyrs, and the spirit of Anarchy.
The Mountain Splits from Its Vicinity: Poetry Gathering in the Rift Zone
••• In this transmedia, translingual creative gathering, we undertake a radical exploration of a human-free world-in-ruins, examining the technofossil record. In the high-tech palatinate on the Pacific coast, this workshop interrogates the concepts of monument, memory, and data centers. We will reflect on the green memory of a dry world, examining the legacy of the Anthropocene and envisioning beyond-state futures to recover reciprocity with our ecosystem dismantling the exploitative approaches to create a new lexicon for resistance.
The Third Hand: Collaborative Bookcraft
••• Rooted in the concept of dîwan (as a book and community gathering), this creative gathering explores the book as an extension of the body, as bodily expressions of language. This gathering will be an exploration of the book as an organism in perpetual transformation and contestation, not unfinished but open to all optics and to the intervention of other hands. We’ll accompany the book as an ever-evolving organism, a space where bodies transmorph into text, carrying on with the gathering as memory form. Participants will co-create unique, handmade books using various tools and materials. This is an improvisational, experimental, and collaborative creative gathering negotiating a “Third Hand” to advance the final form. Bring your own blanket, media (text/visual), and any tools you might need -scissors, glue, fabrics, cardboard, colors, thread and needles, and in the meantime, we will be sharing our tools with each other.
Herbalist Plant Walk
••• Come take a walk at Sibley to learn the names and medicinal uses of common plants in the Bay Area. We will also discuss flower essences and do a plant sit to learn the ‘personalities’ of plants.
caring for our nervous system <3
••• we’ll practice presence and explore engaging with our nervous system through guided partner and/or self touch, grounding exercises, and breathwork. we’ll briefly go over the components of the nervous-system, the fascia and vagus nerve, and basic skeletal and muscular anatomy as well. you’re encouraged to bring a yoga mat/blanket/pillow/seat cushion, a small/thin towel or washcloth, water, & journal, and wear comfy clothes.
Investigative Techniques
••• This will be a three-ish hour seminar-style course. The first half of class will be devoted to techniques drawn from investigative journalism–how to figure out the scope of your inquiry, gather and find documents, and interpret your findings. The second half will be a workshop where you can bring your own investigative project (a person, a development project, an organization, etc.) and co-work with others. If you don’t have your own project, no worries, we’ll have a few options for you to practice the skills.
Operational Security Workshop: Practices to Keep Yourself & Your Community Safer
••• An introductory workshop on operational security including opportunities to ask questions. Learn how to keep yourself and your community safe by making informed choices about your behavior and security culture. Learn how to create a threat model or risk profile for yourself and your community, and understand better how to use tools like Signal to achieve your goals more safely. OK to bring laptops and phones.
Mexican Abdominal Massage
••• We will be learning some fundamentals in mesoamerican bodywork, including how the cosmovision is applied to technique, tuning in to the body’s pace and knowledge, abdominal organ palpation, scar tissue remediation, and somatic release of trauma patterns.
Knife Sharpening
••• A sharp knife is a safe (for you) knife. Learn about what makes a sharp knife and fundamentals of knife sharpening with stones. Bring your own knife and stones if you have them, otherwise some will be provided.
Street Medic Training
••• We will be going over street medic response and treatment to chemical weapons like pepper spray; supplies needed, treatment protocol and safety practices. We will also talk about what to pack in a basic street medic pack and show you some examples of our packs.
Bike Scouting
••• Meet at OGP with your bike and we’ll bike through downtown Oakland in groups, working on situational awareness and communication in a game setting.
dance, play, healing for anarchists
••• This is a movement lab that mixes queered somatics with improvisational play guided by anarchist and Black feminist ethics/poetics. Yes. All that. What happens when Gustav Landauer meets Octavia Butler meets you in an experimental dance class with comrades? How are physical play and communal care connected to empathy connected to solidarity connected to movements for healing and justice? All bodies and experiences welcome. Let’s play there.
Stop the Bleed
••• We will cover basics of external hemorrhage control, in other words uncontrolled bleeding you can see. We will go over some basic info about the circulatory system in the body and signs of hemorrhage. Then we’ll get you hands on with some techniques like: pressure, tourniquets and junctional packing. No experience required!
Stealth Games for Skills and Glory!
••• We’ll be playing games in the forest around sneaking up on someone without them hearing you, stealing things from/putting things on someone without being caught, and hiding while still being able to see who you’re hiding from. If there’s momentum after the course we might go on to plan a nighttime big group stealth game for the future. There will be some short traversing of bushy areas/uneven ground but there isn’t much athletics involved.
Take Aways from Republican Platforms Project 2025 and Agenda 47
••• We will review Republican Platforms Project 2025 and Agenda 47 and discuss how to prepare and organize against them. Slides available here: https://cryptpad.fr/file/#/2/file/jOdIHM75CJ3aYYh67Be8+KuQ/
Zapatismo Practices for the Apocalypse
••• This meet-up will be an informal, group discussion facilitated by members of the Love & Disorder Project. We will be having conversation about the EZLN Zapatista Movement of Southern Mexico— depending on the needs and desires of attendees, we will do a brief collective reading (no more than 700 words) on how the Zapatistas organized during the 80s before their inaugural uprising in ‘94, as well as going into short selections of their most recent communiques on the 30th anniversary of their struggle. We hope to discuss what is relevant in their 30 and 40 years of resistance, and what this means in the face of compounding global crises. The purpose and hope is that attendees can connect with other attendees and collectively reflect on our roles and practices in light of Zapatismo’s struggle against extinction.