Fear is a part of our tactics.
We do want Nazis to be afraid to organize in public.
It's our job to go out there and say: No,
we're not going to allow you to spread these ideas.
Philadelphia make it clear,
fascists are not welcomed here.
Politically, I'm an anarcho-communist
and I'm an anti-fascist.
And right now, I'm focusing a lot on that anti-fascism.
So what I'm doing here is mixing
half part water
and half part liquid antacid.
It makes something called L.A.W.
or Liquid and Antacid and Water.
You use it in response to pepper spray.
We get a lot of accusations that we're doing this for kicks,
that we're doing this because we're violent teens,
who just want to see violence happen.
I consider myself to be someone who's
very fed up with seeing protests that accomplish nothing.
I did a lot of marching and holding signs
and yelling in the streets and getting permits.
And it didn't really feel like I was doing enough.
I was aware that, you know, obviously there's plenty
of racists in the country,
but I didn't realize that they were organized and political,
and actively out to cause violence.
Seeing the state of the world and seeing the news
and seeing what's going on,
seeing how much danger people were in,
made me want to get involved.
The term Antifa is short for anti-fascist.
And as many people know, anti-fascism dates back to fascism,
so we can see anti-fascists battling Mussolini's Blackshirts in Italy,
standing up to Hitler's Nazis.
And today, a lot of anti-fascists draw from the European tradition.
And really, it's at the front lines of physically confronting
fascists and white supremacists
organizing in the United States today.
There's no one organization called the Black Bloc.
It's dozens, hundreds, thousands of autonomous organizations
all across the country, all across the world.
Black Bloc or Bloc is just what we wear.
It's entirely black, simple, non-identifying clothing.
You don't want to get identified by Nazis.
Or they're going to try and show up to your house,
try and contact your employer,
beat you up on the street if they get the chance.
So it's important they can't find who you are.
But it's also important that if you're doing something illegal,
if you're trying to punch a Nazi,
then you don't want police to be able to identify you.
And you don't want police to be able to tell you apart.
Antifa really exploded into the headlines in response
to the disruption of the Milo Yiannopoulos event
back at UC Berkeley in February,
where mass Antifa broke windows and created enough of disruption
for the the university to cancel the event.
This created a lot of debates around
different tactics for opposing the far right,
and questions around free speech.
Street violence is actually one of the last resorts for anti-fascists.
The first line of defense is just finding out who the local Nazis are.
People will post online with Nazi flags,
and post about the marginalized groups they want to kill.
And when we find those posts,
we save them and send them to employers.
Finding ways to disrupt their organizing online.
Track them down and figure out where they live,
and try and make sure that they don't feel comfortable.
There has been an increase in Neo-Nazi organizing
since the Trump campaign started.
And they've absolutely been more active.
The Jeremy Christian killings, the killings in Charlottesville,
those are not the acts of individual people,
those are the acts of a political movement.
Personally, I'm Jewish,
I'm a trans woman, and I'm queer.
And those are related.
Knowing we have someone in the White House,
who calls white supremacists
a side that has some good people,
is really frightening.
I do feel vulnerable and I do feel scared every day,
but that's why I'm in the Bloc.
When you're a queer person or a disabled person
or a person of color,
you don't get to really step back and say,
I don't want to be politically active,
because your life and your existence is constantly in dispute.
To suit up in Bloc and go out there with your comrades,
provides me a feeling of safety that I wouldn't otherwise have.
When we appear in the streets,
we're trying to stop these people from having
proud marches where they can recruit
and say it's safe to be a fascist.
And we want to go out and say, "no!
you can't do this." We're going to fight back.
We can make America great again!
Antifa knew before the Trump rally in Philadelphia,
that it was not just a Trump rally.
That American Vanguard who desecrated a Holocaust Memorial
with anti-semitic messages,
we're going to be there, with weighted motorcycle gloves,
trying to beat people up.
Anti-fascist.
Anti-Anti-Capitalista-A!
Anti-Anti-Capitalista!
One common tactic that you'll see being used is
we will have people who are actually at home
that are coordinating with the action.
And they'll be checking Twitter and whatever other news sources
that they can find, in order to be communicating information to us
via encrypted messaging.
It's important that we don't give the state a monopoly on violence.
The police are part of the executive branch.
The police serve Trump, who's a fascist.
Police violence is no more justified than anti-fascist violence.
Who do you represent? Who do you serve?
Who do you protect? Who do you serve?
Two common tactics employed by cops are
snatching individual people and stragglers,
and then kettling or, like, surrounding the whole group.
Cops will kettle protestors,
and then arrest them for failing to disperse.
Don't do it!
Always be looking for side streets. Always be looking for exits.
Always make sure you stay moving.
Stop them! Stop them!
Spread out! Spread out!
Keep moving back!
Keep moving! Stick together!
You'll hear people shouting, tighten up, all the time,
and that means that you have to stay together as one cohesive body.
The most violent people at any protest are the police.
-Back off! Back off! -Back the fuck off!
Get back!
The police are the ones that are with batons,
beating people up, throwing them to the ground,
pepper-spraying them.
I've gone home with bruises.
I've had friends go home with broken arms,
dislodged eyeballs, brain trauma.
A non-violent resistance really works
when it can leverage the public opinion
to pressure oppressive regimes or leaders
to change what they're doing.
The question is when it's fascism,
when there is no room for public opinion to influence the decisions
made by government, made by leaders,
is that a viable option?
Almost all people agree with violence at some point.
Why do you support the violence of American soldiers
and American police, and not the violence of American citizens
to stop Nazis?
I actually personally really, really dislike violence.
I'm not comfortable with it at all, as I don't think anyone should be.
So for me, it's about minimizing violence.
So if that means occasionally being violent
against the people perpetrating violence,
I accept that.
It's... Pepe's become kind of a symbol...
Richard Spencer, who coined the term alt-right,
and whose website publishes articles calling for genocide,
after an Antifa protestor punched him in the face,
there's videos of him talking about how he's afraid to go out,
and they might need to get security,
and they don't know if they can afford it,
and how if they can't have a public movement,
they can't win.
We need to take very seriously the notion
that anti-fascists aren't just going to scream at us,
they're going to physically attack us.
And that's the point.
If we go out and punch Nazis in the face,
they won't appear in public.
And like they themselves admit, they can't win.
Punch a Nazi in the face!
This has been going on for a long time with... Antifa.
They've been terrorizing people,
intimidating people,
and when they can get away with it,
violently attacking people.
These are felons.
This is terroristic.
This is fascistic.
Fascists aren't people who shut down speech.
Fascists are people who want to commit genocide
and ethnic cleansing.
Fascists are people who are willing to scapegoat marginalized groups,
and destroy their lives, and their health and safety,
in order to accomplish political goals.
That's a fascist.
Antifa are not fascists.
We're fighting against people that have been walking into
black churches and killing people.
That's violent.
That's what the real violence is.
And so, to fight against that,
is... doesn't seem violent to me.
That seems like meeting people where we're at to defend ourselves.
When the tragedy in Charlottesville occurred,
when Heather Heyer was murdered,
the mainstream media acted like the presence of hundreds
of armed Neo-Nazis was a huge surprise.
But for those anti-fascists who've been monitoring the far right,
were well-aware of what this danger was.
Charlottesville was a really important turning point,
because it was the first time
that there was no choice but for the media to show what was happening
in a way that made the public understand
who we are as anti-fascists.
We have replaced you!
They saved our lives, actually.
We would have been completely crushed like cockroaches
if it would not for the anarchists and anti-fascists.
Because the police have pulled back,
and just allowing fellow citizens
to go at each other.
There was at least about a week in America
where anti-fascists were considered to be people that you could respect.
A lot of my friends are involved in the same type of activism.
And so, I don't have to hide it from them.
But from my family, absolutely.
I can't get into the details of what I'm doing,
and I do lead a double life.
It makes it hard to stay close to people in your life,
because there are so many things that I do
that I can't tell people about.
"Where were you last week?" I can't share that information.
It means that you end up forced into situations,
where you can't always be honest with people.
Fuck white supremacy! Fuck white supremacy!
My community is other anti-fascist people.
These are the people who help me through
some of my toughest struggles.
And so, I'm able to feel like I have a family.
There's a feeling of obligation
and doing what's necessary,
in order to make the world little less of a scary place.
After we got the Trump march shut down,
they haven't come back into Philadelphia.
This works.
The Trump election has invigorated
and empowered white supremacists and Neo-Nazis,
but it's also invigorated and empowered the left.
We are on the cusp of some change.
And what change that is, depends on who gets involved and who organizes.
We are the people! The mighty, mighty people!
The mighty, mighty people!