I wrote a few unexpectedly positive notes on the Pasadena #NoKings event:

At first it seemed like just a rehash of the last big liberal protest, which I won't describe here because everybody knows more or less what I'm talking about. Things got more interesting once the crowd grew too large to contain to the sidewalks. People spilled out into the streets, and the vibe became immediately more festive. I think the city and the organizers were both caught off-guard by the level of spontaneity. General milling about led to at least two contingents breaking off into seemingly unplanned marches around town, while the rest stayed behind and continued to block Colorado Blvd. As soon as we got more than a block off of Colorado, there were no cops and no protest marshalls to be seen.

We made it up as we went along. Nobody seemed to have a plan or strong opinions about how a protest *must* happen. I'd say mistakes were made, like letting the crowd get spread out too far, and pausing to let cars through at side streets, but it was nice to see people figuring it out as they went. An absolutely killing cumbia band on a flatbed truck helped considerably.

What I liked about this protest was the spirit of openness and improvisation. Watching people stretch out and actively create the kind of action that they wanted, rather than passively consume a pre-planned experience. I've been to militant demos that felt far more scripted. This is not to say: black bloc bad / funny signs good. It's about the extent to which the collectively realized spacio-temporal and affective dimensions of a protest facilitate a loosening of the constraints of rote behavior, and the invention of new modes of being and relating.

A protest is a space of #improvisation and experimentation, or it is, frankly, not a protest but a reenactment of the roles we already know and despise.

This improvisation is not in itself the revolution, but it is necessary to cultivating subjectivities of creative opposition, teasing out threads of rebellious potential, practicing the art of forging solidarities on the fly, and the art of responding to actual conditions in real time. Yes, this was ultimately a relatively tame protest at a moment when shutting down the machinery of state violence is the highest imperative, but it felt *generative* in a way that is both too uncommon and fundamentally necessary.

We've published a zine version of our report from the angry community response to an ICE raid in Minneapolis on June 3 that inspired resistance to ICE all around the country.

https://crimethinc.com/zines/minneapolis-to-feds-get-the-fuck-out-how-people-in-the-twin-cities-responded-to-a-federal-raid

Please print and distribute!