Anti-fracking activists and anarchists are blocking rail tracks in Olympia, Wash. They don’t plan on leaving.

by By Kyle Swenson,  Washington Post, Nov 29, 2017

There was little sleep the first night. Everyone was too wired with nerves and excitement. They expected the police to barrel in at any moment.

The encampment went up on Nov. 17, a guerrilla whirlwind of tents, tarps, wooden pallets and two-by-four studs. In just a few hours, the intersection at Jefferson Street SE and Seventh Avenue in downtown Olympia, Wash., was transformed from a drab piece of asphalt into a hulking structure, somewhere between a refugee camp and a carnival tent.

Blockade Tactic: The Spike Board

In this video still, a car is forcing its way through the blockade at Mount Polley, BC, on Aug 4, 2016.

by Warrior Publications, August 5, 2016

On August 4, 2016, a land defender was injured during a blockade action at the Mount Polley mine site in central BC when a driver, reportedly a worker for Imperial Metals, drove through the blockade.  The blockade was comprised of people standing in the roadway to stop traffic, never a good idea in my opinion.  The fact is, people blockading vehicles will always be dependent on the driver not forcing their way through for the simple reason that a group of people cannot physically stop a car or truck.

Extremists could use peaceful pipeline protests in Canada as cover, intel report claims

Tyendinaga Mohawks block Via railway with bus, 2007.

By Jim Bronskill, The Canadian Press, December 6, 2015

OTTAWA — Intelligence officials are concerned that extremists might infiltrate peaceful anti-petroleum protests to “incite violence,” a newly disclosed assessment indicates.

The federal analysis of threats to the passenger rail system introduces a new twist to the often tense debate over state scrutiny of environmental demonstrators that otherwise harmless activists might unwittingly harbour dangerous terrorists.

Defend the Territory PDF

Tactics and Techniques for Countering Police Assaults on Indigenous Communities

A 24 page, 8×11, PDF document.  Download: Defend the Territory PDF Zine 

From the introduction: Communities that are effective in carrying out resistance will inevitably face some form of state repression, most often carried out by police forces. This text is intended as a review of tactics and techniques that have been used in countering police assaults on crowds and communities.

For police, these types of assaults are referred to as “public order” or “crowd control” operations. Communities targeted by such operations may face riot cops as well as armed tactical units, dog teams, armoured vehicles, the use of chemical agents and baton charges.

Elements of a Barricade

Myth of the Barricade:

The barricade is the myth of insurrection. To look back at past revolt is to reflect on the use of barricades. To see struggle today is to watch the burning barricades of the Paris banlieues, the walls of flame in Athens, the camp fires of the Native roadblock. A barricade consciousness was born in myth and spread as a symbol.

Anticipation of the future takes the form of those myths which enclose the strongest inclinations, which occur in the mind with the insistence of instincts in all circumstances of life; and which gives an aspect of complete reality in the hopes of immediate action.

BC Native Blockades

BC Native Blocakdes

A history of Native blockades in the province of british columbia, from the 1980s to 2006.