Cyprus Hartford Resists Federal Grand Jury + MACC Film Festival
This week we’re featuring three segments. First up, you’ll hear a conversation I had with Asphalt, a supporter of a recent federal grand jury resister in Charleston, South Carolina. [00:04:53 – 00:36:28]
After that Cyprus Hartford, the grand jury resister, speaks for herself and reads her statement of resistance. [00:36:28 – 00:40:39]
- Transcript
- PDF (Unimposed)
- Zine (Imposed PDF
Finally, you can find an interview that Ian did with Marisa Holmes and Molly of the Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Committee about their recent anarchist film festival. [00:42:32 – 01:01:29]
Then you’ll hear Sean Swain’s review of the presidential debate [01:02:06 – 01:09:16]
Past GJ Eps
- Steve Martinez resists NoDAPL GJ in 2021
- Jeremy Hammond resists Wikileaks-related GJ in 2019 & 2020
- Chelsea Manning resists Wikileaks-related GJ in 2019
- Katie Yow resists NC GJ in 2017
- Standing Rock GJ resistance in 2016
- Jerry Koch resists NYC GJ in 2013
- Resistance to GJ in Pacific Northwest in 2013 ( 1 & 2)
- San Francisco GJ with Ian Coldwater in 2012
Federal Grand Juries
By way of introduction to this first segment, I’d like to remind people that none of the people speaking about grand juries here are lawyers, but we are sharing information we’ve gotten from lawyers and legal experts to the best of our abilities. I’m going to read a bit from the website NCResistsTheGrandJury.Wordpress.Com:
What is a Grand Jury?
In the federal legal system, the grand jury is used to decide whether someone should be charged (“indicted”) for a serious crime. The grand jury hears evidence presented by the prosecutor: the U.S. Attorney. The grand jury uses subpoenas to gather this evidence. It can subpoena documents, physical evidence, and witnesses to testify. The “special” federal grand jury, created in 1970, can be used to investigate “possible” organized criminal activity rather than a specific crime. The California legal system also has grand juries, but it is optional whether criminal prosecutions are initiated by grand jury indictment, or by a complaint by the District Attorney and preliminary hearing before a judge.
How is a Grand Jury Different Than a Trial Jury?
Unlike the “petit” jury, which is used to determine guilt in a trial, a grand jury consists of 16 to 23 jurors who are not screened for bias. The purpose of the grand jury is not to determine guilt or innocence, but to decide whether there is probable cause to prosecute someone for a felony crime. The grand jury operates in secrecy and the normal rules of evidence do not apply. The prosecutor runs the proceedings and no judge is present. Defense lawyers are not allowed to be present in the grand jury room and cannot present evidence, but may be available outside the room to consult with witnesses. The prosecutor and the grand jury members may not reveal what occurred in the grand jury room and witnesses cannot obtain a transcript of their testimony.
How Has the Grand Jury Been Used by the State?
Because of their broad subpoena powers and secretive nature, grand juries have been used by the government to gather information on political movements and to disrupt those movements by causing fear and mistrust. The grand jury lends itself to being used for improper political investigation due in part to the prosecutor’s ability to question witnesses without regard for rules that prohibit irrelevant, unreliable or unlawfully obtained evidence. Those called before the grand jury may be compelled to answer any question, even those relating to lawful personal and political activities. That information has been used by the government as a basis to conduct further surveillance and disruption of political dissent. When used against political movements, the grand jury causes fear and mistrust because persons who refuse to answer questions about their First Amendment political activities, friends and associates may be jailed for the life of the grand jury: up to 18 months. If a witness asserts their Fifth Amendment right to remain silent, they may be forced to accept immunity or go to jail for contempt. Even a witness who attempts to cooperate can be jailed if minor inconsistencies are found in their testimony. Such a perjury charge may stand even when the grand jury fails to hand down any indictment for what it was ostensibly investigating.
The grand jury is a complicated and opaque process, by design. Our movements have decades of experience resisting grand juries, and there are resources available to learn more and support those who resist.
If you have been contacted by federal law enforcement, the National Lawyers Guild has a national federal defense hotline at 212-679-2811.
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Featured Track:
- Setting Sun (instrumental) by The Chemical Brothers from Setting Sun
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Asphalt Transcription
Asphalt: My name is Asphalt, and I use it/they pronouns, and I’m from South Carolina.
TFSR: Awesome. Thank you. We’re speaking about Cyprus Hartford’s announcement to resist a federal grand jury. [Cyprus uses it/they/she pronouns.] Thank you very much for having this conversation, Asphalt. Listeners hopefully will have been able to hear Cyprus’ statement in their own voice, but I wonder if you could tell us a bit about her personality and her political commitments.
A: Yeah. I’ve been Cyprus’ friend for several years at this point, so I know her pretty well, and she really loves music. She’s a guitarist. She really likes NASCAR. She’s just really into NASCAR. It’s one of her favorite things to talk about, and she travels full time, and she’s an anarchist. And I would say, I’ve seen her grow as a person throughout our relationship, and she has shown a lot of resolve to me about this grand jury.
TFSR: Would you talk a bit about federal grand juries, what they are, and why they’re so dangerous?
A: Yeah, so federal grand juries are used to determine if criminal charges can be brought against a defendant. They generally last around 18 months, and witnesses are compelled to testify without a lawyer. They’re very secretive, and they’re designed to utilize fear to get people to snitch on each other and to expose information that the feds didn’t already have. There’s a common saying that a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich, which is essentially trying to say that basically if someone goes before a federal grand jury, they will be found guilty, unless it’s a white cop who’s shot a Black person, and then obviously the grand jury is not going to try and mess with the cops. Currently, only two countries still have federal grand juries, the United States and Liberia. All other countries have abolished them because they’re a violation of people’s rights to not incriminate themselves and not incriminate the people around them, and they’re essentially used as a mechanism for the state to coercively obtain the consent of the jurors to bring charges against people.
TFSR: It makes sense to me that it would be Liberia also since that was a colonial project of the US. It is crazy, and we’ve talked about grand juries a lot on the show over the years, so I’m very happy that you’re having this conversation with us. I keep saying federal grand jury because grand juries can happen at different levels of government, and in this case, it is a federal grand jury. What’s known about the current federal grand jury in Charleston, and when is Cyprus being requested or demanded to appear before it?
A: Over the past couple of months, there’s been increased federal activity in Charleston, and Cyprus was expecting something like this because she got a business card left on her front doorstep by a federal agent. She didn’t really know what to do at the time, and she knew that something was coming, but not what. Then she was subpoenaed on the highway in a very awkward situation by the same agent who left that note on her front step. After that, she was like, Oh, this is really serious, and I need to get into contact with a lawyer who knows anti-repression stuff and has dealt with federal grand juries before.
During this time, when she first started to consider resisting that, a Bible verse popped into her head, which is interesting. She said the verse that popped into her head was “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Essentially, at that point, she made the decision that she needed to protect her community and that she was not going to comply with the federal grand jury investigation. That’s the decision that she made. Actually, I was talking to her at the time of this decision. She seemed very resolved and determined to protect her community. At that time, she got a date on the subpoena, but because she decided to resist, she asked for representation, and because she requested representation, she successfully got the date pushed back to August 13th. So the date of the grand jury will be August 13th, and she plans on legally challenging the subpoena and refusing to comply with the investigation.
TFSR: That’s a big step, and as you said before, most countries have abolished this practice. In a lot of the uses of the grand jury system, traditionally in English law and also in the US, most uses are not around criminal stuff. It’s about whether is there interest in getting funding and hiring someone to change the traffic patterns in this place, repairing this bridge, or zoning questions, or whatever. But when it gets applied into what are considered criminal proceedings, people are coerced to come and speak and answer questions without the protection of their right to remain silent or also without the right to representation by a lawyer. If somebody requests a right to what would be their Fifth Amendment, the judge that is overseeing the grand jury can decide to offer immunity, which means that the person who’s speaking before the grand jury might have immunity in this specific hearing, but then what they say could be used against them in a different grand jury hearing. It could spawn a new one. Since these events have certain lifespans of however many months, they could just get renewed before they collapse, before they ends. Then people could be forced to wait, and people can be punished for going before and refusing to speak or even refusing to show up before these. Particularly the threat of being held in criminal contempt can be pretty overwhelming. Also, even if the grand jury isn’t about an individual, it’s hard to tell where the investigation is going. But even if, for instance—it’s bad to speculate—but whether or not Cyprus is the focus of this grand jury, the grand jury is a tool for collecting information, for mapping networks of affinity and connection. When you say that she said that about protecting the community and protecting friends, for me, that’s what pops out, not volunteering information, refusing to answer questions, especially when you don’t know what lies behind the question and you don’t trust the authority that’s asking that, seems the smartest and safest way for everyone involved to keep your community safe.
A: Right. Another thing that’s important to emphasize is that even if you have information that maybe to you doesn’t concretely point to evidence of a crime being committed, that doesn’t mean that that’s the case for the federal agents who are looking at the case. For example—this is hypothetical and not at all related to any knowledge I have of Cyprus’s case—if you were friends with someone and you saw them in a location and you casually mentioned that during your grand jury testimony, that could be used to incriminate them, even if you had no knowledge that there was any crime committed or anything bad happening at the time. It’s something where you could go into a grand jury with the intention to not say anything that would be incriminating and protect your friends and still wind up being led in a direction that would hurt your community very severely and would be super incriminating for the people around you, just because you don’t know what information that the feds have collected on you and your friends. That’s why it’s really important to not comply at all and not to say anything, because anything in the correct context could become incriminating.
TFSR: Yeah, totally. Cyprus made this public statement about refusal to participate in the federal grand jury, which is a brave move and a way to hold yourself publicly accountable too, and also show an example for other people. To your knowledge, have others been called before this grand jury, and how have they engaged with it?
A: To my knowledge, others have been contacted and subpoenaed and given interviews in this grand jury. I don’t have any more information beyond that. I don’t think it’s a really good idea to speculate who has or who has not been contacted or subpoenaed, and I don’t know any of the people involved in this, so I’m not going to speculate about that. But in the context of this, in the context of all other federal grand jury trials, it’s important to understand that one of the main tactics that is being used by federal agents is a tactic of fear and paranoia. Essentially, they want to divide and conquer. They want people to testify against each other because they’re afraid of the repercussions for themselves if they don’t comply. If we can, as a community, take away that fear and turn around and protect the people who are being targeted and who the state is trying to control through fear, that’s a really strong tool against state repression. We know that fear is the tool that they’re trying to utilize. Various legal projects and different groups of anarchists have built up resources to prevent this method of repression from being used against people. If you are contacted or subpoenaed, you should contact an attorney. The NLG has an anti-repression hotline at 212-679-2811 that people can call if they’ve been contacted by federal law enforcement. I don’t know of any resources local to Charleston that people could contact. I don’t think there’s much local infrastructure, but I do know that the NLG definitely has a lot of resources around this issue, and there are a lot of previous grand juries, as you previously mentioned, that have been resisted successfully.
TFSR: Just so the audience is reminded, for anyone that’s living in a city with a lot of progressive legal or radical legal infrastructure, like Chicago or San Francisco, Oakland or Seattle or New York, or whatever, those of us that are involved in radical community organizing projects in rural and particularly, I would say, southern areas, this is a really common problem that we have to deal with. But you pointed to, and like I mentioned, there is a long history of grand jury resistance. The Puerto Rican independence movements were faced with grand juries. Black liberation struggles have been faced with grand juries. The American Indian Movement. Anarchists, animal liberationists. Just animal rights activists have been faced with this specific tool and have talked about during that time about all of the reasons why not to talk. It’s not a new phenomenon, and we’ll post some links in the show notes for folks to be able to find more resources, as well as some past chats that we’ve had with legal professionals on grand juries. But also to me, that’s an inspiring thing that we can pull from a legacy of resistance that connects those of us now to all those other movements, much of our struggles for social justice or for liberation tie us to those earlier times and activists.
We’ve talked a little bit about why someone shouldn’t participate, and you mentioned that fear is a big reason that people are pressed into doing it. Some people are offered the promise of either non-indictment or immunity in this specific grand jury that could come back and bite them later. Or if people are facing charges, the possibility of reducing their charges. There’s a long and documented history of snitches basically breaking their community support, which is what comes from our side. But also you can’t trust the state authorities in any of these instances to be honest about what their intentions are or that they aren’t going to continue doing this. You’ve got tons of examples if you look at the Earth First snitch wire list, where they have ecological-related and anarchist-adjacent movement individuals who have become snitches or who were nearby and started snitching, most of them have requirements from the state like “We will suspend your sentence if you give us information in this,” but at any point, that can be reversed. If you don’t continue applying, if you don’t continue providing information, you might have your suspended sentence reenacted. There are lots of really good reasons, not just because people are gonna not like you anymore and because you have been doing a bad thing, but also you can’t trust the authorities in this or many other instances.
A: Yeah, it’s really important to emphasize that federal agents and cops are never required to tell you the truth. Anything they say definitely can be a lie, and that’s true in the context of this as well. As I said previously, I’m not a legal expert. Maybe there are a couple of edge cases where they have to not lie to you, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t one of them. One really important thing to emphasize is that grand juries aren’t really justice. They rely fundamentally on suspending your Fifth Amendment rights, and so they’re also very undemocratic. Most jury-related processes can kick out jurors that are racist or have a clear bias that would make sure that they wouldn’t be really a good indicator of what should be done in the case, but in a federal grand jury, because there are no lawyers and because there’s no judge, no one’s really eliminated from the jury pool, even if they’re very clearly discriminating against the subject of the federal grand jury. It’s fundamentally a process that starts out by stripping you of your rights. In the context of the American legal system, if you’re someone who’s already in a vulnerable position, like you’re trans or you’re not white, that already sets you up to be in a position where the state is going to be acting against you, that makes the federal grand jury more scary, but that’s also a reason that it’s more important to not snitch because the deck of cards that is the state is already stacked against you, and complying with them, even though it may seem safer in the long run, isn’t really safe at all.
Also, at least my assessment as someone who’s lived in South Carolina and been an anarchist for a couple of years now at this point is that people don’t necessarily have drilled into them the same “Don’t talk to cops. The feds are not your friends.” Just because we have so few legal resources, it’s not something that has been as strongly emphasized to me in my time as an anarchist. People don’t even understand that resisting a federal grand jury is an option. There’s not the information in the South Carolina anarchist scene about how people could resist. That’s why Cyprus actually talking about this and being really open about it is good, because it lets other people know, like they’re trying to rattle up and shake people. You don’t have to be shaken. You can decide I’m not going to let this shake me, and I have something I believe in. I have a community that I want to fight for, and I’m not going to let this rattle me. Because that’s the tactic. As I said, it’s fear, it’s anxiety. It’s trying to induce pressure. I know a lot of times surveillance is used against people who are subpoenaed by federal grand juries. If we can use good OpSec and can have each other’s back, we can reduce that fear and reduce that anxiety.
TFSR: We talked about how there is a history of resistance to grand juries and a lot of people that have faced them, have faced at least immediate consequences. Otherwise, people just would refuse them all the time. As a non-lawyer, what could be possible legal outcomes for Cyprus and others who would refuse?
A: The major legal outcome that could be coming towards Cyprus is it could be imprisoned. You can be charged with civil contempt of court or criminal contempt of court, and that can result in you being imprisoned for the duration of the federal grand jury. In some cases, up to 18 months, which is a long time to be in jail. I know there are a lot of really extended and lengthy sentences in the United States, but 18 months is a long time to be in jail, and that’s really scary. A lot of times, there’s not actually a criminal conviction for people who resist federal grand juries. All the charges are civil, and it’s essentially the grand jury’s way of putting you in time out for a little while. It’s intended to be coercive and not punitive. That means that they’re essentially trying to force you to testify. If a judge decides that this is actually just a punishment on the person for not testifying, and it’s not going to work, it’s not gonna coerce them into testifying, generally then a lawyer can argue that you can be released, because, if it is clear that if you have strong anarchist convictions and you’re not gonna break or change your mind, then it’s not actually allowed for you to be punitively detained.
If Cyprus is sent to jail, we’re going to have to start doing normal jail support stuff, which I’m sure several people listening are very familiar with, but that will be things like sending her letters, making sure she has access to money for things phone calls and commissary, and then, of course, all of the legal proceedings that are associated with supporting and advocating for someone from jail. Because Cyprus is a trans woman, being in jail is going to be an extra vulnerable position for her, but it’s also something that she has accepted about this situation as a possible outcome. That’s something that we’re very realistically preparing for, even though there definitely have also been people who have resisted federal grand juries and not gone to jail. Part of what we’re navigating right now is there’s a little bit of uncertainty about whatever annoying thing the state is going to try next. Because we just don’t know what the outcome is going to be yet, and we won’t know that until I guess, on August 13th, when the state starts to formally react to our resistance.
TFSR: There’s just one more question then. What sorts of support is Cyprus asking for at this point, and how can people follow their situation and act in solidarity?
A: Currently, it has a GoFundMe set up. The GoFundMe is gofundme.com/f/support-cyprus-against-state-repression, and that GoFundMe originally was intended to fund a lawyer, but fortunately, we found a lawyer who’s willing to represent her, so all of those funds will be utilized towards previously mentioned jail support, things like getting her access to commissary and letter writing materials, and other things like making sure that she can survive in the interim period. Any excess funds from that will be shifted over to mutual aid and other liberatory projects once this process is over. It’s very important that no one else complies with subpoenas wherever they are, and so if you’re being targeted in connection with this, or in general, you should, of course, reach out to the NLG and call the anti-repression hotline and get a lawyer as soon as possible, because it’s very improtant that we have solidarity with her resistance by also resisting.
TFSR: For sure. Asphalt, is there anything that I didn’t ask about that you wanted to mention right now?
A: I guess I would say I didn’t really expect this to happen to me. I didn’t expect to be in a position where I was giving an interview about one of my long-term friends being targeted by the state. I assumed that was something that happened to anarchists in Atlanta and Chicago and big fancy movements in really big cities. As someone who’s a little bit more rural and in the south, this is something that I’ve had to learn a lot about as I’ve been doing it. And as I’ve emphasized a couple times, I’m definitely not a lawyer. I don’t have much legal experience. This is not something that I’ve done before, but at the same time, with all of those things being the case, I still have been able to mobilize and support my friend, and that’s been a giddy feeling of just like hahaha. Even though I don’t know what I’m doing or have no experience with that, I still have all the tools that I need to help my really close friend resist the state, and I still have all the tools I need to either make a definitive stand here. And all of these friendships and connections and relationships that I’ve built over a couple of years of organizing and being an activist are just so valuable in this process. I wasn’t expecting how important those things would be. It’s really nice to see the skills that I’ve developed being an anarchist, not even specifically doing anything super intense, but how useful those skills are. And also the level of solidarity that she’s experienced in such a short time.
I announced this resistance initially at an ACAB, which is the anarchist bookfair in Asheville, and immediately, a room full of people was cheering for her. And that’s with very little explanation. That’s really incredible, that’s really powerful that people immediately want to throw their support wholeheartedly behind the person who’s doing the work to resist the state. This resistance, for me, is a manifestation of the way that we love each other and the way that we care for each other. For example, because we care for each other, we can’t leave each other vulnerable to an aggressive tactic like a federal grand jury. Because I care for my friend, that means that I’m going to be there for them when the feds come knocking on their door. And there are all these random people who I have never met before, and they don’t know who I am or even know if they should care about me, but they’re deciding to do that every single day, and they’re deciding to do that very full-heartedly and not without some extent of risk to themselves. That’s really powerful.
The longer we resist, the stronger our resistance will grow. This is the process that can end with everyone being burnt out and hating each other after it, but the group of people that I’m doing this with seem to know how to take care of each other and how to pace themselves. And that’s very unique to southern organizing because It’s such a hostile environment, and because there are so few resources in South Carolina, everyone who’s involved in this is used to dealing with repression, not on a federal level, but on some level. I am used to having people be really nasty and having things be really difficult, and so that continuing to happen has hardened me against this in a way that maybe other people might be vulnerable for. I’m weirdly thankful for that, even though being a queer person in the South is a traumatic experience. It has given me the tools to deal with this.
Also, it’s really cool to learn about the legal aspects of this. Going into this, I didn’t know that federal grand juries were a thing. I, essentially, was starting from nothing. Now only a very short time into mobilizing around this, there’s a bunch of people, both lawyers and not lawyers, who have done a really meaningful job of explaining this to me and giving me the tools to help advocate for my friend and advocate for myself. The people doing that work are really valuable, and the fact that I have people there who have dealt with this before has really lifted a massive weight off my shoulders. It’s very different from other organizing projects I’ve done, where it’s all self-started and I maybe don’t have anyone helping me. That’s been really amazing and really great.
I guess, the last thing that I would say is a lot of anarchism is acknowledging and being aware of the responsibility that we have to each other, in a way that’s very consent-based and voluntary. It can be hard to feel a sense of responsibility for other people around you, but also that is part of what freedom means. And it is our responsibility as anarchists and as people to resist things like this when they come our way.
TFSR: Cool, that was wonderfully spoken. Thank you so much for supporting your friend and for taking the time to have this chat.
A: Yeah, thanks for chatting with me as well.
TFSR: Yeah, it’s my pleasure.
MACC Film Festival
Ian: Hello, Welcome to Final Straw. Today, we are joined by Molly and Marisa from MACC to discuss the recent film festival that they hosted in New York. Before we begin, would you mind introducing yourselves and speaking to any pronouns or background or affiliation information that might be relevant to our discussion today?
Molly: Sure. I’m Molly Guillermo. I joined MACC in December, and my pronouns are she/her.
Marisa: I’m Marisa Holmes. She/her pronouns are fine. I was part of starting MACC eight years ago, so I have been around a while.
Ian: Can you speak a little bit about the background of MACC?
Marisa: Sure. In 2016, in the midst the presidential campaign, a lot of anarchists in New York were watching what was unfolding in terms of confrontations in the streets and the rising fascist threat, and of course, how that was emboldened by Trump, and felt it was really needed to have some organization that would pull together all of our relationships and experiences and prepare for what was ahead. That was the initial impetus for starting MACC, which, of course, is the Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council. We are a council of working groups. We have a mutual aid working group and a direct action working group. There’s MIOP, which does educational events and outreach and things like the film festival and creative projects. Then we have an assembly. We have an organizing assembly, the internal decision-making assembly. We also have a care assembly that is for community building mostly. There we have education, we have bike training, we have a community meal where people share requests and offers, and that’s really a chance for people to get to know each other better and support each other doing mutual aid.
Ian: I was looking at your calendar, and it’s a pretty packed calendar. Did it take a few years to ramp up to that level of activity?
Marisa: Well, we’ve had different waves of people coming through MACC and different interests over the years, which often happens, but right now we have a lot of active members, and there’s a whole new wave after 2020, newly radicalized and looking for a space like MACC.
Ian: Awesome. Can you tell me a little bit about the film festival? The impetus for the film festival, how it came together?
Molly: I was in line for the bathroom at Spectacle, which is a movie theater in Williamsburg, and it’s run by a non-hierarchical co-workers collective. It has an anarchisty vibe. They had a MACC sticker on their bathroom wall. I thought, “Oh, there’s a relationship here. Maybe we should do something.” Then the guy next to me was like, “Have you ever been to their movie marathons? They’re really fun. I’ll go to anything they play.” I was like, “Okay, they have a built-in audience. They can do the marketing. I should do my own movie marathon.” I know amongst anarchists in general, there’s an aversion to money. It’s viewed as this tool for evil capitalist wackies or something. But we need it for our project, that fundraising is really important. I thought, “Okay, I’ll just do it.” I pitched it in December, and then we had it in May.
Ian: You did all the programming. Is that correct?
Molly: Yes, me and five other people. I wanted to keep it small. I felt it would be more stable and effective to do it that way.
Ian: Can you talk a little bit about the programming, how you went about selecting the films, and the hows and whys of all that?
Molly: I only had two criteria. The first was it had to be made by an anarchist. It could be about anything, but the person has to be an organizer. The other one was, I wanted a transgender filmmaker, but I didn’t want a depressing thing about surgeries. With a lot of transgender media, the focus is on biology. I was like “I want trans women with guns. I want badass trans women.” That’s how we got Spirit Riser.
Ian: It sounds like Spirit Riser was the highlight of the bill. Is that accurate? Maybe no the highlight but the headliner. Is that a fair way to put it?
Molly: Yeah, it was our midnight movie. It was our least political, I think. But there’s lots of martial arts. It’s very campy. It was fun.
Ian: Can you tell the listeners a little bit about the concept of the movie?
Molly: It was based on an Edgar Allan Poe poem, I think, and it’s about two sisters who lose each other, and they’re finding their way back to each other. There are all kinds of spirit worlds, lots of weird weapons, very strange humor. Patty Harrison is in it. She’s a transgender comedian. It’s odd. [laughs]
Ian: Cool. Would you say that anarchist subject matter in contemporary filmmaking is robust enough, that it has enough depth and breadth to constitute a scene in itself, or would you say that these are aberrations or outliers in film?
Molly: I’m gonna claim it and say there is a scene, a robust scene, in New York City, because right now things are so bad in our society in general and arts, that there’s a need for innovation, new ideas. I was surprised by how many filmmakers were in MACC already. That made it very easy. Like Marisa. We played Marisa’s movie on Saturday.
Ian: Festivals can provide a level of interaction that standard movie-going might not have. Can you talk about how you made use of that sense of community and sense of interaction in this festival, and maybe speak to what you wanted attendees to take away from the event as far as your goals for the event?
Molly: Spectacle is so small. That’s where we held it. It was basically like watching a movie on your couch with 50 of your friends. It’s very intimate. People were yelling stuff at the screen, that kind of stuff. But I wanted people to feel empowered. I want them to feel like “I can do my film festival or a music festival” or whatever because, with anarchism, you’re not waiting for experts or leaders to tell you what to do or what media to consume. I want people to feel like they can make a movie with an iPhone and play it at a local theater.
Ian: Are you all already planning to have one next year, and if so, are you going to do it the same way? Anything different?
Molly: Yes, some of us, actually, Jay, one of our directors, is already planning next year’s. I want to take submissions next year. We didn’t have time this time, but we got some unsolicited submissions that were pretty good, so I have faith.
Ian: Would you say that this dovetails with the larger goals of MACC or do you think this was just an aside? Were the folks who attended folks who also attended MACC events? Do you think that you brought people in from outside of the general crowd?
Molly: These kinds of cultural events are a good way of modeling the world that we want to see. They’re people’s entry point to talking about bigger political issues and topics. In terms of the broad goals, yeah, maybe. But I don’t know. There were a lot of people from MACC who joined us and a lot of strangers who came in off the street at Spectacle.
Marisa: That seemed a good mix of people that we already knew and also people who were drawn in for the event. It’s probably not an accident that a lot of anarchists are filmmakers or creative in some way. We were joking the other day that all of us are theater kids and play different roles. Some of us are actors, some of us are stage managers, but we all have different backgrounds in the arts. Anarchists envision new worlds into being. It totally makes sense that you would have a lot of creative people as anarchists doing this work. Of course, it’s not the only thing that we do, but it is an important component.
Ian: I wanted to segue into that. You touched on the beginning where you spoke about your busy calendar there. What are some of the ongoing campaigns and concerns for MACC right now? Is there thought given to balancing local and immediate concerns with the wider concerns of the anarchist movement? Or are you trying to get material stuff into people’s hands?
Marisa: MACC doesn’t do traditional campaigns with demands on politicians or corporations. We’re not looking for concessions. We’re really embodying this idea of prefigurative politics and building alternative institutions, alternative spaces for people to meet their needs. The focus has largely been on mutual aid. Of course, defending these spaces that we create. We support different struggles that are going on. We support Palestinian Liberation. We supported Black Lives Matter in the past. If there are requests for help, we show up as part of this larger movement, but we’re not really doing campaign work.
Ian: In looking at how you organize some of your events, it seems that you make attendance at introduction events a prerequisite to participate in certain groups. That was very interesting to me, the idea of an introduction to this stuff. Can you talk a little bit about how that has worked out, and are you seeing a lot of interest from people, new faces in organizing with MACC?
Marisa: Yeah, the care assembly is really the first experience that most people have with MACC, because it’s open and publicly listed, and that’s where you get a sense of what we’re about. There’s education and there’s community meals, as I said. Community building is the base. From there, if people are really interested in helping organize events or joining working groups, they can come to an orientation, they can do a one-on-one conversation with a current MACC member, and decide for themselves if it’s something that they want to commit to, and then they can participate fully in the organizing assembly. We’re really trying to be as transparent as possible about what the process is. Often in anarchist spaces there’s this subcultural approach where it’s very opaque, and people don’t know how to get involved. We’re trying to give people ways of being involved, doing a lot of training. We’ve done the Summer Liberation School, a mix of different education. The goal is to create a participatory and democratic organization from the bottom up.
Ian: Do you find that there’s any resistance to passing through those initial checkpoints?
Marisa: It seems pretty fluid to me. Of course, I’ve been around for a while, so maybe for me, it’s obvious. I’m not sure what it’s like for everyone else. How is it for you, Molly?
Molly: It’s pretty fluid. It makes me think of how Goldman Sachs or whatever makes their employees go to mixers to discourage whistleblowers. I feel we need to spend a lot of time together to bond and be together. We say we keep us safe, but that’s not just from the cops. It’s also from everything.
Ian: Does MACC often find itself in collaboration with other organizations or other groups?
Molly: Recently, we’ve had a lot of collaborations. We had two pride events. It’s a youth-led queer group Stonewall Was a Riot. We’re working with some of the Fulani, Ghanaian refugees. We’re doing a teach-in with them. Queer’s Gambit, Bay Chess, that’s a popular event the MACC tables at. I like this outreach work because I want a more diverse MACC. I want the community to reflect my community, so I need to reach out to other groups sometimes and pull them in. Because MACC is different because it’s more about assemblies. It’s a different way of thinking about a revolution, going to different assemblies and stuff. But I like that MACC has this very structured meeting base.
Ian: I’m not sure what your experiences and other groups were or would have been, but it sounds to me like it’s more social if that makes sense. There’s a bigger social component than just agenda-based stuff. Is that fair to say?
Molly: Yeah, I feel at times as a Jehovah’s Witness or a member of a cult when I talk about people in there, because I talk about them so deeply, with so much emotion. But that’s how it feels. It feels like everything is against you. You only have each other, and you need to go to this organizing assembly and talk about Jitsi, Zoom, or Signal etiquette, whatever the topic is.
Ian: What’s coming up beyond film festivals? What else is on your all’s radar?
Molly: We have a film screening on June 23nd. It’s Moscow Mutiny, a movie about this guy, Dmitry Petrov. We have a live band and a DJ. It’s June 23nd, 7pm at Selva in Brooklyn. Do any listeners want to come to that? We have a care assembly, on July 21st, where Eric King is coming virtually to speak to us, if you’re familiar with the former prisoner.
Ian: Where can people find more information about MACC events and how they can get involved or help out?
Molly: Probably Instagram, MACC_NYC. I also run Instagram, so send me a DM. We can talk about events. I’ll be announcing more stuff soon.
Ian: Sounds good. Is there anything either of you would to speak to or plug or anything that I didn’t get to?
Molly: The Summer Liberation School!
Ian: Talk about that.
Marisa: Some of us in MACC who are educators thought it would be a good summer project to have a school, especially after the encampments, the Student Intifada that just happened. There are a lot of young people who could learn some things, or talk to each other, learn together. So we put together this Summer Liberation School. Actually, the name Summer Liberation School comes from SDS. It comes from Students for Democratic Society in the aftermath of the ‘68 occupation of Columbia. There’s that reference. But really it’s a collective liberation framework through an anti-authoritarian lens, weaving together Black anarchism, Black and women of color feminisms, decolonial approaches, and struggles from all over the world. We just did a Rojava week, and we’ll do a Zapatista week later in the summer. The idea is to really build this politic against all forms of domination and look at shared practices, like direct democracy and mutual aid, that are not just anarchist explicitly, but are overlapping with what anarchists want. There’s a certain synergy or affinity there. So we meet every week and have readings or other materials and sometimes guests. It’s a horizontal approach to education. We try to rotate discussion leads and encourage people to bring things to the space, we have agreements. It’s all the things that I wish that I could teach, but I can’t always teach within a more hierarchical institutional setting. I think people are getting a lot out of it.
Ian: That’s great, awesome. That is everything that I needed. I just wanted to thank you all for taking the time to talk to me.
Molly: Thank you.
Ian: Take care. Bye.