Monday, June 5, 2017

The Radicalization of Evergreen: 3 Years of Anarchist Propaganda Literature from Evergreen State College Student Groups (2008-2011)

(Update 6/6/17: It's looking more like a decade under the influence but of course the roots go back farther. More to come.)

I just want to say, first, that I'm very sad that it's come to this point. The events at Evergreen State College are very distressing, not only to me personally as I see the value of my degree disintegrating, but also because I very much love the school I graduated from.

Evergreen is a wonderful institution, with a mostly wonderful staff. Their ability to provide a nurturing environment for students to take part in their own education is unparalleled. They are an open and diverse campus, and while I wish that they offered engineering classes, it's really my only curricular complaint.

However, there has for some years been a pervasive element to Evergreen in the form of the local Anarchist movement. It is unclear whether this anomalous collective ("anarchists" is probably the best term for them, although they variously call themselves marxists, anti-capitalists, anarchists,communists, antifascists, or revolutionaries) is made up of Alumni, failed students, both, or additional non-students, but what is clear is that they are centered in the Pacific Northwest from Seattle (several prominent Evergreen Anarchists were involved in the yearly Seattle May Day Events) to Portland (where the manuals were apparently printed -- or at least were in 2011.)

Recently, a gang of militant students accosted Biology teacher Bret Weinstein on accusations of being racist. During the videos, the students do not even appear fully aware of the text of the email, in which Bret had said "take this letter as a formal protest." Students accused him of using his attendance on campus during the event as a form of protest, a completely inflammatory accusation for an event that the organizers claim was voluntary to take part in. Even current Evergreen students are confused and caught in the backlash.

As I continued to explore the story, more disturbing facts came to light. The roving gangs of paranoid students (in my time, the students involved in the groups mostly called themselves "brownshirts") had apparently attacked some students erasing their graffiti after the initial protest -- a clearly violent act the administration should have condemned. Additionally, Bret had sent his email March 15, over a month before the event on April 12. On April 10,the school newspaper posted the contents of Bret's letter online. Despite this, the April 12th and 14th events came and went, and while the Day of Absence apparently went something like this, no one addressed Bret's being on campus..
It wasn't until over a month and a half later that the students decided to interrupt his class.

In the wake of the false allegations of racism, the Evergreen Administration has responded by giving in to the "demands" of the protesters. They have taken their Facebook page offline (at least there's still confessions), removed faculty access to their directory, and asked for the removal of a video of the Day of Absence the protesters say was "doctored" to make them look bad. In light of this response,  I feel compelled to come forward with evidence that the school has allowed student groups (at best) or domestic terrorists (at worse) to indoctrinate freshman into their extremist ideology. This documentation shows intent to corrupt the school by infiltrating its faculty and staff, and among other things, promotes theft/shoplifting/vandalism/arson, and celebrates violence, bank-robbing, and cop-killing.

While this book isn't available online anywhere (I assume they burn leftover copies) they did register it at LibraryThing. (EDIT: Found a copy of the 2013 manual.)


Every year Evergreen has an Orientation week, in which new students are invited to Red Square, where all of the student groups have set up tables and pass out information regarding their organization. The Sabot (short for Saboteur) Infoshoppe  hands out something called the "Disorientation Manual." They advocated the kinds of feel-good hippie stuff everywhere else in the campus did, but with a little more edge. A little less Reiki Healing Class and a little more DIY bikeshop stuff which was why I was into it at first. But over time I started to feel the tone was more subversive than enlightening. I took a class they offered one year on hacking techniques, but all they showed us how to do was DDoS websites and gave us .exe's like the (link is just to the wiki) Low-Orbit Ion Canon and told us how to coordinate attacks on sites. A bit too lawless for my taste. I'm a fan of open internet and file-sharing, but I have my limits. I would not steal a car. I kept copies of the DisMan because I envisioned re-writing it as a Re-Orientation Manual for veterans and people who actually came from backgrounds where they might not be open to other cultures, but instead I put them in a box and forgot about them.

The Weinstein Riots were not an isolated event. There has been dissent brewing in Olympia (The "All-America" City 86-87) for a long time, and Evergreen has been increasingly radicalized over the years by a small but ever-growing group of what I will call domestic terrorists.The Dead Prez riot of '08 was recently stirred up again in a 2014 opinion article posted on the Cooper Point Journal. The 2-part "article" specifically treats the event as if racial profiling was the sole cause, stirring the pot almost 6 years later with newfound speculation.

 I would rather denounce my education than be associated with these cretins if the administration won't denounce them.

Although the disclaimer in each book cautions that the views contained therein are those of "anonymous authors" and not any of the organizations associated with distributing the manual (SDS, Sabot Infoshoppe, or The Evergreen State College, which is missing from the 2008 disclaimer), I picked up my copy every year at their booth during Orientation week, and got the 2008 version as a replacement directly from the Sabot Infoshoppe's assigned section on the 2nd floor of the student activities office my last year. Considering that there were staff and faculty present among the angry mob at Evergreen, I can't imagine that the administrations didn't know about the Sabot Infoshoppe, SDS, or that the school is completely ignorant of a manual that litters the halls and offices at least a week a year and can be picked up next to the newspaper bins. They can't be completely unaware of the classes their student orgs bring to campus. I wasn't special. People knew about the DisMan.

Below are the images of the three manuals from 2008-2009, 2009-2010, and 2010-2011. They are quite lengthy, and comprise about 250 pages total for all three. The complete text of the 2008-2009 manual is the largest of the three, but the 2010-2011 manual contains the most violent rhetoric. The 2008-9 manual is about 20 pages longer, and includes complete contact information for many local social services. This information does not exist in the other two manuals, and the rest appears to be mostly copypasta from the previous year, with some minor editing. As I graduated in the Summer of 2012 I never received a copy of the 12-13, 13-14, 14-15, 15-16, nor will I receive the upcoming 16-17 version that is bound to be passed around in secret this year. But someone should, and they should put it online, because I bet my degree that it's a lot of the same shit with a more menacing glare.

Other notable changes from 08-11 include going from a single page dedicated to the "Treehouse Robber" to a two-page spread, the addition of "shoplifting" in the ways to get free food section (my mind goes for a moment to the two local boys who were shot for shoplifting beer and also happened to be black that stirred up protests these last few years as the BLM movement grew...), and the addition of the section on "White Privilege and Race."

I want to stress that the college itself is a wonderful institution, and many people, including Matt Groening (Creator of the Simpsons), Michael Richards (Kramer from Seinfeld), and Benjamin Haggerty, of Macklemore fame can all call Evergreen their Alma Mater, and whose careers were intimately shaped by their experience there. It is a wonderful school, with a generally excellent staff, but it is a bit lax when it comes to "policing" student freedoms. In many cases, like the above, this autonomy allows students to produce wonders. But after the actions of the students (pushing a false narrative, shouting pejoratives and invectives, disrupting other students educations), and the response of the administration now to restrict Brett's faculty access, remove their Facebook page, and try to remove the video of the actions of the protestors, this clearly is a case of the inmates running the asylum. And it's clearly drawing ire from the local community.

The college isn't bad. It just got taken over by a domestic terror cell.
















































































All linked archived on the Internet Time Machine and/or Archive.is for posterity. And also because it seems like the people Occupying Evergreen (let's call it what it is) like to get rid of the evidence.

2 comments:

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