July 7, 2008

POG was born in the summer of 2002 and began organizing around the fall meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. We did outreach and held teach-ins, organized local marches through the streets of Oakland, and coordinated transportation for over 60 people to the D.C. demonstration against the IMF and WB. Streets were blocked, marches took place with and without permits, and many of us were arrested that fall. We’ve been around (and growing!) ever since.

Through the years we’ve organized education and direct action efforts around global economic justice issues. Notably throughout 2003, we held rallies and marches around the Free Trade Area of the Americas including a regional gathering for anti-authoritarian collectives to plan direct action for the FTAA ministerial meetings in Miami that November. POG worked to coordinate a Padded Bloc to resist the police violence at the summit (which was ultimately unable to deploy due to logistical problems). Members of POG worked with the Thomas Merton Center’s Stop the FTAA campaign to coordinate transportation for almost 100 people from Pittsburgh to Miami for the meetings.

We’ve coordinated transportation for folks to attend large demos in other cities. In August 2004, a cluster attended the Republican National Convention protests in New York City. We took part in the massive United for Peace and Justice march of a half a million people before heading to Times Square to take part in “Chaos on Broadway,” a series of protests at theater shows that were specially arranged for RNC delegates. We even embedded a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette photographer and scored a huge photo in the local paper of POG taking the streets in Times Square! In January 2005, POG affinity groups traveled to DC to take part in a variety of the many planned events protesting the Presidential Inauguration.

We have also pulled off inspiring, creative resistance. Some of those activities have included a couple PLA (Peace, Love, Anarchy!) Bucket Brigade infiltrations of the St. Patrick’s Day parade inserting anti-war messages with chants between cadences; public art projects, such as planting dead baby dolls around town with facts about the Iraqi civilians our country continues to massacre; and a Carnival of Greed in Market Square in which we created games such as Spin the Wheel of Misfortune and Pin the Missile on the Country. We created a “Rock On Mr. Rodgers” wall of bed sheets to hide Fred Phelps’ hate group while they protested the memorial service for Mr. Rodgers at Heinz Hall. We’ve flyered against the Promise Keepers in the Strip on a busy Saturday morning dressed as barefoot-and-pregnant ladies to create public awareness of the group’s dangerous and deceptive patriarchal mission. We’ve visited malls in West Mifflin, home of Bechtel, wearing coveralls labeled “Biohazard” with the corporation’s logo on the back to create public awareness of their horrendous record of environmental, health and safety infractions and war profiteering. Some members of POG were also members of RESYST, a radical queer project, and we joined together in annual Pink Blocs as a Pride Fest invasion to challenge the corporatization and classism within the mainstream gay movement. In November 2004, we organized an election offensive to emphasize that the problem isn’t just Bush, it’s the system. We held a Corporate Victory Party (no matter who wins, the corporations win!) on the eve of the elections with bands, speakers, poets, radical cheerleaders and tons of “beyond voting” information.

We’ve done environmental outreach about Alcoa’s role in the destruction of Iceland’s undeveloped highlands (November 2002). Over the years we have promoted and participated in local group Voices for Animals’ various campaigns and numerous Save Our Transit efforts to push for reliable, sustainable funding for public transit. We’ve hosted regular letter writing nights to support political prisoners. We’ve engaged in international solidarity efforts, sending some of our members to Oaxaca, Mexico, in 2006 when, what began as a teachers’ strike calling for better wages and working conditions, broadened into an all-out struggle against a repressive and corrupt government. Tens of thousands of people from all walks of life banded together in popular organizations to fight for a new society based on justice and dignity. We raised money for the groups and called more attention to the struggles.

Working class solidarity is also alive and well in Pittsburgh. In 2004 and 2005, POG members stood up for local janitors under attack, using the resources of the Thomas Merton Center to coordinate a very successful campaign against Center City Towers and Sky Bank. In May 2008, we organized a May Day eve dinner in support of Calgon workers struggling for affordable family healthcare coverage and pensions on the picket line at Neville Island.

POG has joined many People Against Police Violence actions to bring attention to police brutality. We’ve held our own additional marches and rallies in our neighborhoods and aided high school students in Edgewood and Swissvale to organize a march addressing police harassment and intimidation in their communities. When our actions have been attacked by cops, we’ve responded by bringing attention to the situation. In the spring of 2007, we held a well-publicized vigil at an officer’s home, calling for accountability from the police, and emphasizing that, while deplorable, the manifestation is just a product of a systemic problem.

We’ve also called attention to racism in our city by picketing a local bar owned by a white supremacist trying to spread his hateful ideas through his business with bigoted happy hour specials.

POG has held dozens of trainings on non-violent direct action and civil disobedience since 2002. More recently, in 2007, members organized a Tactical Training Initiative to continue sharing our skills and resources with the community-at-large. TTI workshops have included Participating in a Mass Action, Lockboxes and Lockdown Devices, Strategic Corporate Research, Working the Media, and the Recent History of the Global Justice Movement. Members are working on future workshops that will include Self Defense, Anarchism 101, and Intro to the Global Political and Economic Frameworks. We are also committed to internally building our own group members’ skills. In February 2008, we brought in Autumn Brown of the NYC Signals Collective to strengthen our public speaking and facilitation abilities.

Anti-war work has been a big focus of our group. In January of 2003, while the U.S. government was gearing up to wage war on Iraq, we organized the framework for the Pittsburgh Regional Anti-War Convergence. In conjunction with the Thomas Merton Center’s Anti-War Committee, we helped put on the largest anti-war event in Pittsburgh in over 30 years. Three thousand people marched in the Saturday Parade and five thousand took part in Sunday’s events. The events of the weekend that we coordinated included street theatre, concerts, medical and legal trainings, direct action trainings and workshops (in addition to the Saturday parade).

That spring of 2003, we continued our resistance with a series of anti-war rallies and marches, every other weekend from February to April. Hundreds of people came out to these events and at one of them (March 16) over a thousand people took part in a day of action. The day the war began (March 20) we held a snake march through downtown with another thousand participants. Rush hour was forced to begin early that day as we made our point that business would not continue as usual when our government began to (officially) kill thousands of innocent people. Approximately 150 people were arrested when they attempted to disperse.

On the anniversary of the start of the war the following year, we mobilized for a non-violent sit-in at Carnegie Mellon University aimed at exposing and confronting their involvement in military research and development. Since then, we’ve held marches on CMU’s campus, sometimes conveniently coinciding with graduation ceremonies, other times as a culmination to a march after one of our pickets at the Oakland recruiting station.

In the spring of 2005, POG launched a campaign to counter military recruitment as a way to directly confront the local manifestations of the war right here in our own city. We feel that we have a chance to influence these local places and institutions and ultimately have a significant affect on our government’s ability to wage unpopular wars. We want to stop military recruiters from being able to fill their quotas and provide more fodder for this, and other, imperialist wars. We’ve held more than a hundred pickets outside our local recruiting station, we’ve done counter-recruitment presentations and skill shares in other cities, we’ve done educational outreach at local high schools, distributed tens of thousands of flyers dispelling the myths of military recruiters, held a conference in Pittsburgh that brought together counter-recruitment activists from other cities all around the country, organized direct actions that have shut the station down, and worked to confront recruiters on campuses and in the streets. Our large rallies and marches have brought together other groups working on anti-war and counter recruitment issues (such as Codepink, Black Voices for Peace, the American Friends Service Committee, Conscience, etc.). And we’ve maintained that confrontation is necessary with rowdy, disruptive actions through the streets of Pittsburgh when atrocities by the U.S. military, like those in Falluja and Haditha, have occurred.

In August 2005, our Zombie Bloc shut the Oakland military recruiting station down (again) but cops responded by brutalizing and tasering a number of protesters. This catapulted anti-war and military recruitment resistance into the public spotlight for weeks following the incident, and brought attention to the indiscriminant use of “less lethal weapons” by the Pittsburgh police.

On March 2, 2007, we organized a day of civil disobedience and direct action against the war machine in Pittsburgh. We successfully barricaded the National Robotics Engineering Center, a branch of CMU, that develops robotic vehicles and weapons delivery systems for the U.S. Army and Marines. Highlights of the day included a blockade of the facility front gate involving a lockdown and a tripod, a blockade of NREC’s back entrance on 43rd St. that resulted in 14 arrests, and a banner drop on the 40th Street Bridge.

In September 2007, we held a month-long fast (“End War Fast!”) and encampment in front of the Oakland recruiting station marked by police harassment and lawsuits, yet overwhelming community support. That winter, we again targeted the Robotic Engineering Center by picketing the home of director John Bares. On the 2008 anniversary of the war, we held a Cage the Recruiters action, tricking war supporters, locking a metal cage to the front of CMU’s administration building to contain the war machine and leading a rowdy march through military-funded halls at university. Despite the overwhelming police presence, no arrests were made, the action enjoyed extensive press coverage and Right Wing war supporters were left angry and confused, in the rain, in front of an empty, closed military recruiting station.

In March 2008, POG officially became an explicitly anarchist group. Our goal is the creation of a directly democratic, free society capable of maximizing human potential and freedom within a framework of collective responsibility, mutual-aid, and solidarity. In short... Anarchism. We have called attention to the failings of representative democracy. The previous December, members held a “Ravenstahl is Rotten, They All Must Go!” action at the young mayor’s inauguration to let politicians know that we’re not interested in letting them take control of our lives. Throughout the spring, we held an Anarchist Speaker Series bringing notable anarchists to town such as author, organizer and founder of the annual Renewing Anarchist Traditions conference Cindy Milstein; 90-year-old Spanish Civil War veteran George Sossenko; “Anarchist Panther” Ashanti Alston; and writer and member of the Northeast Federation of Anarcho Communists (NEFAC), Wayne Price.

In 2007, POG joined the Northeast Anarchist Network (after attending meetings in Syracuse and New York City) to increase ties with other like-minded groups in the nearby region. We attend seasonal assemblies of the network and even hosted a gathering in Pittsburgh in February of 2008 with members of NEAN and the Midwest Action Network for a weekend of networking and strategizing around plans to disrupt the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, in September. POG continues to work on RNC organizing; we are committed to blockading an intersection as a part of the RNC Welcoming Committee’s three-tiered strategy to shut the convention down.

POG has also made a commitment to working against oppression within our own group. Gender caucuses first met in the spring of 2007 and again in 2008 with a renewed commitment to dealing with all the “isms” society has instilled in each of us. The groups have decided to meet on a regular basis and there is also an anti-oppression working group that is in the process of organizing readings, a discussion and proposals for future trainings around anti-oppression work.

Finally, POG continues to foster local anti-authoritarian and anarchist community, holding the Annual Anarchist Picnic every July since 2004 to reclaim radical traditions and celebrate the too often forgotten history of people's struggles in the United States. We also put on the Annual Anarchist Ball, starting with Somewhere Over the Barricades in 2007. Our anarchist quarterly publication, the Steel City Revolt, is in the works with an estimated debut later this fall.