Bash Back! Collection
Administrative History
In September 2023, the anarchist network Bash Back! held an International Convergence in Chicago, USA. The Wikipage on Bash Back! [accessed 12-01-2023] explains the original organization “was a network of queer, insurrectionary anarchist cells active in the United States between 2007 and 2011. Formed in Chicago in 2007 to facilitate a convergence of radical trans and gay activists from around the country, Bash Back! sought to critique the ideology of the mainstream LGBT movement, which the group saw as assimilation into the dominant institutions of a heteronormative society. Bash Back! was noticeably influenced by the anarchist movement and radical queer groups, such as ACT UP, and took inspiration from the Stonewall and San Francisco’s White Night riots. The group arose out of anti–Republican National Convention and anti–Democratic National Convention organizing, and continued up to 2011. Chapters sprang up across the country, including in Philadelphia and Seattle. The organization’s model was a non-hierarchical autonomous network based on agreed-upon points of unity, such as fighting for “queer liberation” rather than “heteronormative assimilation,” and accepting a diversity of tactics, “including an individual’s autonomy to participate in actions deemed illegal by the government.” Bash Back! Chicago carried out a number of actions during their city’s Pride Weekend in 2008. The first was participation in the annual Chicago Dyke March in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. Bash Back!’s contingent in the march focused on resistance to gentrification in the Pilsen community. In addition, members of Bash Back! also took part in Chicago’s larger Chicago Pride Parade. Bash Back! Chicago wheeled a cage through the parade containing a member dressed as Chicago’s Mayor Richard M. Daley, whom the group charged was responsible for cutting AIDS funding, turning a blind eye to police torture and brutality, and supporting gentrification. Simultaneously, members of the group also distributed barf bags with slogans written on them, such as “Corporate Pride Makes Me Sick,” a statement about the commercial and assimilative intentions of mainstream gay culture.
A contingent from Bash Back! picketed in Lansing, Michigan, in November 2008 outside Mount Hope Church, a church that promoted anti-gay beliefs. Several members interrupted a worship service, unfurling a banner and showering fliers. In May 2009, Alliance Defense Fund filed a federal lawsuit against Bash Back! on behalf of the church, under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. The suit ended in 2011 with an agreement for the defendants to pay $2,750 in damages and refrain from future church demonstrations. Bash Back! dissolved by July 2011 due to internal politics.”
Before the 2023 event, organizers issued this call out for participants:
“In 2008, queer anarchists gathered in Chicago to plot a disruption of the electoral spectacle and cohere a network out of emergent youth crews in multiple cities. Fifteen years later, the proposals put forward then — criminality, autonomous self-defense, riots, and orgies — are needed more than ever. The intervening years have been marked by intensification — of crisis, alienation, loss, and struggle. The right wing no longer hides behind euphemisms: they want to exterminate trans and queer people. The left offers only false solutions: vote, donate, assimilate. A decade of representation, symbolic legal victories, social media activism, and mass-market saturation has left us worse off by all metrics. Our fairweather friends won’t save us from the consequences of their strategy of empty visibility. The inescapable conclusion is that we must come together to protect ourselves. History confirms the queer legacy of building connection in a world that hates us, the legacy of riotous joy—the legacy of bashing back. The attacks will continue on our nightclubs, forests, story hours, and siblings. To hold on, we need spaces—underground if necessary—to re-encounter each other, spaces to remember, build, share, and conspire. In this spirit, we are ecstatic to announce the return of the Bash Back convergence! Fifteen years from the original gathering, Chicago will host the 2023 convergence September 8–11. Comrades, old and new, are invited to discuss what’s still vital in the past and what’s needed in the present. In keeping with tradition, the convergence will include presentations, workshops, distros, parties, and other opportunities to make trouble.”
Scope and Content
The collection includes publications and other materials from the Bash Back! International Convergence 8-11 September 2023. This is a time capsule of items distributed for free at the event.