Long ago I noted:

Dedicated to New York City street art, International Graffiti Times – IGTimes (aka: Subway Sun, InterGalactic Times, GetHip International Times, Tight and IGT) announced itself with an image of the city’s Mayor Ed Koch covered in tags. After Koch, the arch enemy of “graffiti”, there were articles on artist Michael Stewart (May 9, 1958 – September … Continue reading "International Graffiti Times – 1884-1994" The post International Graffiti Times – 1884-1994 appeared first on Flashbak.

In this anonymously submitted report, participants in the occupation of the engineering building at the University of Washington explore their motivations and recount the events in detail. This courageous action comes as the Israeli military prepares to open a new chapter in its effort to exterminate the Palestinian population of Gaza. At the same time, millions around the United States are impatiently awaiting the emergence of tactics via which to resist the Trump administration’s efforts to consolidate power in the hands of an autocracy. Report from the Occupation of the Sha’ban al-Dalou Building Note from the Authors: We use the term occupation throughout this text. We mean this as the taking over and filling of a space, transferring control from one actor (in this case, primarily the state) to another (in this case, the revolutionary community). We cannot occupy anything within Turtle Island without recognizing that any real “people’s occupation” would necessarily entail decolonization: the return of all occupied settler colonial space to the resilient Indigenous communities of this stolen land. Palestine continues to resist under the harshest of conditions. Today, food supplies are cut to Gaza, while bombs rain down on refugee camps and resistance fighters alike. Yet none of this dampens the Palestinian somoud (صمود), the spirit of steadfastness. Palestine shines a bright light upon the walls and prisons of this world, directing us towards another. The route between the two worlds is escalation. As Palestine lays bare the colonial nature of this world, it becomes clear that so-called “peaceful” marches and rallies alone are not enough. Appealing to the mercy of this violent system is not enough. On Monday, May 5, students and community members took over a building at the University of Washington (UW) funded by Boeing, one of the world’s largest war profiteers, reclaiming it in the name of the martyred student Sha’ban Al-Dalou, who was burned alive when Israeli forces bombed the Al-Aqsa hospital on October 14, 2024. A banner hanging in the window of the Sha’ban al-Dalou Building on May 5, 2025. The Target Founded in Seattle, Boeing is one of the world’s largest war profiteers. The company hides the harm it causes by focusing its branding around commercial airplanes, but the reality is that Boeing makes over 50% of its revenue from weapons manufacturing with contracts supplying militaries around the globe. This includes missiles, bombs, military helicopters, fighter jets, and other weapons of war that are implicated in the genocide in Palestine and other crimes against humanity, such as Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen. The University of Washington has been collaborating with Boeing for over a century. UW President Ana Mari Cauce has described Boeing as “a close friend” of the university. In 1917, Boeing made its first donation to UW to build a wind tunnel, which is still operating today. This tunnel has been used to test almost all of Boeing’s war machines, including the B-29 bombers that were used in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Boeing has continued to provide institutional funding through donations and grants ever since. Their most recent donation of $10 million was designated for the construction of the Interdisciplinary Engineering Building (IEB), renamed the Sha’ban Al-Dalou building. Those ten million dollars are only a small percentage of the over $100 million Boeing has donated to UW since 1917. Boeing has already promised $40 million more in the near future. The University of Washington plans to use this building to deepen their relationship with Boeing, establishing a closer partnership to further the development of war technologies. Both the university and Boeing aim to benefit from this by sharing access to research facilities, establishing an AI educational institute for developing military technology, and securing Boeing’s influence of the engineering curriculum, which functions as a pipeline channeling UW engineering students into Boeing internships and contracts. These contracts promise financial compensation, yet often result in labor abuses and unsafe products. As students and community members of the University of Washington, we condemn this relationship and the intended use of the building. This is why we sought to reclaim the building and repurpose it as a much-needed community space. Graffiti at the University of Washington following the occupation of the Sha’ban al-Dalou Building on May 5, 2025. The Events To reclaim Boeing’s genocidal engineering building for Sha’ban al-Dalou, protesters moved into the building immediately before it closed, aiming to minimize potential escalation from those inside. (We keep us safe!) Outer defenses were set up on exterior entrances to the building, including lockboxes. The exterior walls of the ground floors are made up of mostly floor-to-ceiling glass windows, rendering it near impossible to defend every entrance of those floors from police battering rams. Consequently, protesters focused their serious defenses on the second floor. Artists filled the building with banners and flyers condemning Boeing’s violence and declaring the building renamed in honor of Sha’ban. Access to the second floor was cut off via the temporary disabling of elevators (jamming the doors) and the establishment of barricades to make it impossible to open the stairway doors. One staircase that had no doors to block or hinges to manipulate was left open, providing a safe exit for anyone wishing to leave. This became a site of confrontation later in the night. The occupation gets underway at the University of Washington on May 5, 2025. Within 45 minutes of the occupation, most of the previous occupants had left the building. Those who remained inside when the occupation began were invited to stay and enjoy the space or to leave of their own free will. Some students and community members who saw what was unfolding joined a rally outside. This rally also attracted a small contingent of participants in black bloc attire; this contingent played a critical role in the later defense of the building. Light barricades successfully repelled the first attempt that University of Washington police (UWPD) made to enter. They entered the basement floors but were unable to access the ground floor or any of the floors above it. As the black bloc outside used dumpsters to cover the access roads to the building via which UWPD retreated, UWPD dialed for support from Seattle police and the Washington State Patrol (WSP). (Ironically, they term this request “mutual aid.”) Their effort was hampered by incompetence from the beginning. Some protesters successfully misled lost police officers simply by pointing them in the wrong direction. Demonstrators walk back security personnel during the occupation at the University of Washington on May 5, 2025. The Fires Outside As the gaggle of third shift, overtime, ill-equipped police grew, so did the threat they posed. The black bloc contingent outside took on the tasks of reinforcing exterior barricades, scouting the growing police presence, and engaging in creative tactical landscaping to support the occupation inside. Our enemies are never going to give us the freedom and access to resources that we deserve. We have to take these for ourselves. To do so, we must understand the logistical flows that feed their violent system and the choke points at which those can be interrupted. On Monday, those choke points included the connection from the onsite police hub to the building itself and the nearby entry roads. The black bloc repurposed heavy bike racks and dumpsters, positioning them to block access to the building at the three main points of entry. Later in the evening, as police lined up to enter the building, the dumpster caught fire. Consuming multiple barrels and e-bikes, the conflagration effectively delayed the planned attack by over an hour. The protesters inside knew their allies from the bright reflection of the blaze off a nearby window. This is the true meaning of mutual aid. A burning barricade at the University of Washington campus on May 5, 2025. Police scrambled to find a way to get the Seattle Fire Department (SFD) to the scene to put out the fire. The black bloc held the line against them, as well. The fire posed no danger to the crowd; putting it out was unnecessary. Eventually, SFD moved around the campus to reach a location from which they could hose down the remaining embers. The black bloc succeeded in deterring the police for more than an hour after the police had demanded that the protesters disperse, buying those inside additional time. Taking the offensive can create more opportunities than simply standing our ground. Ultimately, after demonstrators had held the building for more than six hours, the police presence had increased and the number of supporters had dwindled to such an extent that the police finally obtained the ratio of 3:1 that they desired for invading the building. They used the fire department as human shields to advance on the crowd, pushing the few people who remained to the sidewalks. The barricades blocking access to vehicles remained in the street for several hours longer, as the police moved to invade the building on foot. The standoff outside the Sha’ban al-Dalou Building at the University of Washington on the night of May 5, 2025. Stronger Together Inside, after establishing a medical care center, a sleeping room, and a political discussion space, the demonstrators had shifted their focus to preparing for the inevitable police assault. Equipped with trash can shields, reinforced banners, and the spirit of Palestinian somoud, the protesters had sealed off all entrances to the second floor aside from a single open staircase. They designed a defensive formation to hold that staircase, toward which the cops would be funneled for the final confrontation. Energy waxed and waned throughout the night. By this point, the participants had worked hard to secure the building for over nine hours. However, when it became clear that a police assault was imminent, everyone sprang into action. Tactically, the situation left a lot to be desired. There was no easy route for retreat. The principles of guerilla warfare developed by anarchists, communists, and anti-colonial revolutionaries alike emphasize the advantage of striking an opponent’s weak points and getting out with minimal losses. The people have the numbers against the state, yet the state has the weapons, military training, and legal apparatus to win most direct confrontations. It is much easier to use the element of surprise to strike blows unpredictably across the vast terrain controlled by the enemy than to defend fixed territory. In fact, the staircase that would serve as the final fighting ground was a logistical nightmare. The open space enabled officers to advance in rows against a line that had no anchor points for barricades. Finally, there was the question of attrition. At the beginning, the protesters had enough numbers to repel the police, but any arrests would result in a reduction in numbers. The police faced no such risk. As police in riot gear entered the building, armed with rubber bullets and tear gas canisters, we initially registered their presence by the crashing sounds as they began to throw the furniture around. The protesters set up in formation: those with lockboxes attempted to hold a line at the front, while those with mobile trash can shields prepared to defend their heads and any gaps in their line, and those with reinforced banners formed a harder line behind them. Those who did not wish to be in one of these positions stood at the back, arms locked together. The riot cops remove the light barricades in front of our front lines. Then they quickly moved to throw the participants who were connected by lockboxes down the stairs, a tactic we hadn’t been expecting; we had been too kind in our assessment of what they were likely to do. This opened up space for them to charge our shield lines. At first, our line held strong, but as the police concentrated on grabbing one or two people from the line at a time, it began to weaken and eventually collapsed. The night ended with protesters being dragged or otherwise forced down the stairs. At the bottom, a supportive crowd cheered for them as they were loaded into paddy wagons. The participants using lockboxes managed to delay their arrests, with some remaining in the building a couple hours longer. Predictably, the corporate media slandered the protesters, decrying them as violent—though three protesters were hospitalized as a consequence of police violence during the arrests and many more were severely bruised, whereas the protesters did not injure anyone. It appears that out of the over $1 million in damages that the university claims to have assessed, much of it was inflicted by police officers as they removed protesters. Dispelling any illusions of a progressive university, the University of Washington leadership spread a similar message, condemning the burning of dumpsters as violent. Those who control our institutions clearly care more about the burning of trash than the burning of the bodies of their own Palestinian students. Police conduct arrests at the University of Washington on the night of May 5, 2025. Confronting the State The police state of late-stage colonial capitalism poses hard choices to revolutionaries of all stripes and colors. Going after the violent, repressive apparatus staffed by weapons companies like Boeing and reinforced by the neoliberal university requires fluidity, mobility, and creativity. The state has so many fronts and places of weakness—it is large, but shallow—that it might be possible to dismantle it via concentrated attacks on its most critical organs. At the same time, we need ways to meet our needs and each other, to pursue mutual aid. Community and relationship are the heart of resistance—they form the root structures of a beautiful new, communal ecosystem. When the state sells public lands for profit, when rent becomes too high for commmunity spaces to afford, when the places that host our daily lives (like cafés and bookstores) are optimized for business, we lose the space for joy and experimentation. One of the aims of the Sha’ban al-Dalou occupation and of community occupations in general is to take back this space, meeting our needs and creating this joy! Fundamentally, we need places in which to develop food sovereignty, engage with each other in real education, and help house one another. To put it another way, we need greenhouses: places to experiment with and practice communism. When we are dangerous enough to the state, direct action is the only way to create these. Like the liberated zones of 2024, like the occupations of Tahrir Square, Standing Rock, Daybreak Star, and the Yellow Vests, the Sha’ban al-Dalou Building could have been a seeding and strengthening hub for revolution. Building occupations both inside and outside the ivory towers have successfully created community spaces before, such as the ongoing occupation of the Che Guevara Auditorium (OkupaChe) in Mexico that has lasted for almost 25 years and the Indigenous occupation of Daybreak Star (formerly Fort Lawton) in occupied Coast Salish lands. We can look to occupations that have created Indigenous cultural centers and autonomous spaces for self-organized work, education, and mutual aid for inspiration; they illustrate how direct action can meet community needs. One way to connect the tactic of occupation with the need to take the offensive is to plant occupations at the key logistical points of our enemies. This can deprive them of essential resources while reminding us of our strength. Occupations in public spaces often hold out much longer, encouraging the participation and radicalization of a wider and less risk-tolerant community, yet they often have less direct impacts than occupying a factory, or in this case, a location for genocidal AI weapons research. We share the following conclusions for your consideration. After direct confrontation with the state at Sha’ban Al-Dalou Building, we consider our relationships with one another much strengthened. We also consider our skill sets and capabilities to have expanded. As argued in “Why We Don’t Make Demands,” the development of capability and community is much more important than the granting of temporary concessions. We are actively reflecting on the lack of a retreat plan, which limited our tactical horizon. This is something that should be considered in any building occupation in order to minimize losses and enable us to engage in repeated assaults on the enemy. While risk of arrest should not narrow our tactical horizons, jail support and aftercare require significant resources and the emotional toll can be high. If you can achieve the same goals while escaping arrest, you should always have a feasible plan to do so. The occupation of Sha’ban Al-Dalou Building did not achieve one of its primary goals, to create an open space for non-protesters to enter. Police repression made that infeasible. However, it did foster a beautiful community among the protesters inside, who were able to connect with one another and expand their skills both emotionally and tactically. Demonstrators face off with a security vehicle on May 5, 2025. </figcaption> </figure> Towards Revolt: Reflection and Relationship The University of Washington was the site of one of many occupations for Palestine in May 2024. The occupation ended—disappointingly for most—when a small contingent in leadership agreed to a lackluster deal with the administration, “winning” demands such as partial academic sponsorship for a small number of Palestinian students and the formal consideration of divestment from companies connected to the genocide in Palestine. This “formal consideration” led to a “formal vote” against divestment in early 2025. The UW protests of 2024 largely avoided escalation and confrontation, such as the occupation of buildings, the application of financial pressure tactics, and direct action against specific UW administrators complicit in the genocide. While the liberated zone on campus represented a beautiful expression of community strength and solidarity with Palestine and a space for relationships to grow, it was also a space of political division in which many participants spent time spinning their wheels. Since then, the movement seems to have split into a faction disengaging from confrontation and a more hardcore wing that is interested in direct action. Consistent dedication to direct action has developed the necessary skills and “pollinated” the space with a confrontational mindset. It is in this sense—through the building of community relationships and propaganda of the deed—that the occupation of this school years’ first university Board of Regents meeting, a series of escalations and protests against tech companies complicit in the ongoing genocide, an assault on the UW presidential mansion, and the occupation of the Sha’ban Al-Dalou Building have all strengthened each other, though the participants did not know each other. Demonstrators face off with a security vehicle at the University of Washington on May 5, 2025. Silence Won’t Keep Us Safe Why escalate now? In many ways, the lessons of the UW 2024 protests are similar to the lessons of the current Trump regime. Just as the demobilization of 2020 and counterinsurgency of the Biden regime cleared the way for Trump to cancel the last of the concessions that remained from that uprising, the demobilization of the 2024 Palestine occupations almost universally led to failure. Some universities made big promises, but as soon as the pressure of the occupations had dissipated, they all went back on their word. Yes, we are in a moment of extreme repression. The consequences of action can be significant. Nonetheless, we believe that the consequences of inaction will be greater. Liberal petitions to political leaders will not save us, nor will an apolitical retreat from struggle. That will leave us weaker for next time—and leave most of us increasingly less safe right now. Revolt and uprising were possible and effective during the first Trump regime. They are tools worth applying today. Resist however you can and must. Mutual aid is a form of resistance; it can entail defense, protecting our communities from ICE or alleviating the consequences of the financial crisis wrought by the fascist and neoliberal coalition. Direct action is a form of resistance; it can undermine the violent apparatus of the state. “Occupation,” understood as a decolonial practice, is resistance. Palestine demands resistance—and so does your community. More than a hundred people rally outside the UW Seattle administration building on May 8, 2025 to protest the suspension of 21 students accused of participating in the IEB occupation on Monday. Further Reading In Their Own Words: Messages From The Pro-Palestine Protesters Arrested In UW Occupation

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