The following report-backs were sent in to Filler throughout September, 2021.
Each report is autonomous, meaning that it only represents the ideas and actions of the author(s). This rundown is comprised entirely of submissions and is not meant to be a definitive list of recent autonomous action. All reports were sent in anonymously. Dates represent the day that the report was received, and not necessarily the day the action took place.
09.02.21
“On Saturday August 28th, Pittsburgh protesters occupied the area outside the home of Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald in Squirrel Hill for most of the day to call for his resignation.”
Read the full report HERE.
09.11.21
“We wanted to test out a few methods for slashing tires, and so we went on a walk. We dressed in grey bloc, avoided main streets, left our phones behind, and enjoyed a meandering route. We targeted a CMU vehicle, a gentrifying developer’s vehicle, a corporate vehicle, and a good number of those stupid scooter things cause theyre not funny and it pisses us off that their cutting public transit in favor of “green” individualized data mining operations (btw the alarms went off on all of the scooters)
Theres two methods we liked best. First, the quick intuitive method which is just taking a knife and quickly slashing- grip so your thumb is over the hilt, thrust into the side of the tire not the top, then quickly drag in the direction of the sharp end of the blade. Keep your head away cause that burst of air is loud af. Second, the quiet and discreet method which is to puncture with an awl. Takes a while to deflate if you do it right, which means the release of air is much quieter. Punctured tires can be patched though so keep that in mind.
We know this shit isn’t going to make much of a difference politically or whatever. But we learned a lot about how we operate together, practiced a bit of sabotage, had some fun and got a workout in. Maybe someday we’ll do this again as part of a long term strategy or whatever but for now it sure as hell beats netflix.
– some dumb kids”
09.13.21
“An autonomous delivery robot got got. It was one of those stupid looking ones that makes faces and has some dude with an ipad following it from a block away, he was too far away to do shit about it lol.”
09.20.21
“Your chairman sucks and so does your wheatpasting. Fuck authoritarians.”
[An editorial note for context: Flyers promoting a demonstration commemorating the life of Shining Path’s leader, Chairman Gonzalo, were torn down around Pittsburgh. The legacy of Shining Path is homophobia, indiscriminate violence, punitive “justice,” simultaneous prohibition & drug trafficking. Filler agrees with the author of this brief report: the legacy of Shining Path has no home in Pittsburgh. We can still empathize, because no one should die in prison. That being said, anarchists should translate this sentiment into abolitionist action, and not into a fencewalker’s “Left unity” that would have us ignore the real political differences that we have with authoritarian communists.]
09.23.21
“Early in the morning of September 23rd, an autonomous activist dropped a banner off of the overpass along Tripoli Street. The banner was made to express solidarity with the climate strike happening on Friday, September 24th. Kill the cop/boss/principal in your head and stop participating in capitalist endevours for a day. Stop being complicit in the destruction of our only home; join the strike!“
09.30.21
“Some time early one morning, an autonomous person or group of persons dropped a banner on the fence of the ball field along Liberty Avenue. The banner reads “Fitzgerald Must Resign.” To the sides of the text are two red circles with a line that crosses out the words “Petro” and “Jail.”
The banner was hung as a sign of solidarity and encouragement for the recent collaborative efforts between local prison abolitionists and anti-petro activists to hold Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald accountable. Fitzgerald has been negligent in his responsibilites to the Allegheny County Jail (ACJ), where three people recently died and torture continues to take place. Fitzgerald has not been attending Jail Oversight Board meetings, as his position requires of him. He has the power to stop many of the heinous acts happening at ACJ. Yet, he does not.
Fitzgerald has also actively encouraged environmental violence to be inflicted upon the residents of the Southwestern PA region by championing fracking and petrochemical facilities. Both industrial practices infringe upon our basic human rights to clean water and living spaces that are free from toxic substances. Fitzgerald’s greed-fueled deeds can also be extrapolated to the entire human population as fracking and petrochemical facilities substaintially contribute to the climate crisis.
For these reasons, Pittsburgh activists are calling for the resignation of Rich Fitzgerald. His harmful (in)actions have proven him to be unfit for the position of power he holds and unfit to hold any future positions of power.“
Editorial side note / Filler Distro updates: Lately the distro crew has been busy with tabling and printing, so we haven’t been as active with Filler‘s web presence. As a result we haven’t been publishing all of the reports that we’ve received, but this rundown should catch us up. If you sent in a submission and are still waiting for us to publish it or reply, don’t hesitate to reach out and be like “yo what the hell is taking you posers so long” because chances are we either missed it or forgot. Thanks for your patience.
We’ve been distributing regional autonomous/anarchist news, ideas, music, zines and counter-information since 2012, but Filler Distro still isn’t an “organization.” So please keep in mind that we’re just an informal affinity group / network that does Filler (printing/formating zines, tabling, filling mail-orders, reading and study groups, publishing reports on the website, tweeting dumb shit, etc.) whenever we get around to it. Fuck work, fuck professionalism.
Also, we are aware of the situation with protonmail. For the time being, we will be continuing to use protonmail as our primary public email address. Filler does not retain any records or metadata of the original submissions that we receive via protonmail, except in cases of correspondence with zine authors. That being said, we encourage all potential contributors to consider their individual threat models before submitting their content to us.
You can send your report-backs, zine submissions, critiques, graffiti/action photos, demo tapes, hate mail, & memes to…
Filler_PGH@protonmail.com
We’ll try to get back to you in a reasonable amount of punk time.
Send reports in email form, as an attachment, or better yet, on an easy to use (and free) Riseup Pad or CryptPad.
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