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CHAPTER EIGHT
Government forces shot down a cargo plane carrying supplies to anti-Sandinista rebels last week, as it flew over Nicaragua… The survivor, Eugene Hasenfus, said at a news conference set up in Managua that supply flights to Nicaraguan rebels were directly supervised by members of the CIA in El Salvador.(1)
-The New York Times, Oct. 12, 1986
There had been an event—the graffiti was up for many years afterwards—“Minneapolis is revolting!” That was the War Chest Tour. And there was also a date: “October 16, 1986.”
-Dave Addington
EDUCATE, AGITATE, SMASH THE STATE
October 16, 1986, was the day the mad dog of Minneapolis anarchism finally bared its teeth. Dubbed the War Chest Tour (after a WWII-era domestic propaganda campaign), it was a walking tour of American militarism and white-collar crime.
“We had a march to some of the different loci of oppression in Minneapolis,” says War Chest organizer Whitney Clark. “We were trying to highlight the places in Minneapolis that were waging a war on people.”
Among the targets were the Bureau of Indian Affairs, U.S. Army recruiting stations, Honeywell Inc. (whose unexploded cluster bombs continued to maim and kill),(2) and Northern States Power (whose accident-prone Monticello nuclear power plant(3) had released over 50,000 gallons of radioactive waste water directly into the Mississippi River).
In the weeks leading up to the demonstration, anonymous graffiti and flyers began to appear all over town: “Minneapolis is Revolting on Oct. 16.” The protest had been scheduled to coincide with MEA Weekend (Minnesota Education Association) –the statewide teachers’ convention when most of the public schools were closed. With thousands of school kids already running amok, the organizers hoped to summon an army of teenaged politicos and malcontents.
Though few people took part in the actual “revolt,” the War Chest Tour garnered more media attention than major sporting events. “We had a press strategy,” says Clark. “It was much more comical than your typical demonstration. It focused a lot on using funny tactics.”
The downtown business community didn’t know what hit them. At Eleventh and Nicollet, the protesters smashed a TV set in front of the WCCO television studios. They burned $1 bills in front of First Bank. The offices of the Star-Tribune newspaper were subjected to repeated taunts of “Liar! Liar Pants on fire!” At the Pillsbury headquarters, people chanted: “Bake the Dough Boy!”–while people eating at McDonald’s restaurant were told “We drop the bomb in five minutes… have a Happy Meal!”
A woman on her lunch break reportedly ran away screaming from the sight of a burning American flag.(4) Others simply shook their heads in confusion: what the heck are they supposed to be protesting?!(5)
Six people were arrested, on charges ranging from setting-off illegal firecrackers, to disorderly conduct and vandalism.(6) The news media were completely flabbergasted, unable to make sense of what they saw as mindless chaos. The War Chest Tour didn’t fit the media’s preconceptions of what a political demonstration was supposed to look like. The idea of attacking consumerism for its own sake was almost unheard of.
Not since the days of Abbie Hoffman had so many people called for revolution for the hell of it. Compared to the genteel protests of the mainstream Left, the War Chest Tour seemed totally irrational: First they burned an American flag. Then they burned a Soviet flag. Then they burned a McDonald’s flag –my God, they even hate McDonald’s! Those crazy anarchists are just rebelling against everything!
Clark describes the War Chest demonstrations as “political theater.”
In the conservative 1980’s, few people had even heard of the anarchist movement, much less angry flag-burning anarchists. In an era where much of what passed for progressive politics was dominated by single issue / member-driven organizations (like the ACLU), such a broad-based critique of American militarism and structural violence was something of an anomaly. The public had no frame of reference. To the average American citizen, the only thing to the left of the Democratic Party was this mysterious thing called “Communism.” So what were people supposed to think of anti-American demonstrators who claimed to be anti-Soviet as well?
The next day, the War Chest demonstrations stole the headlines:
About 100 people claiming to be members of a local anarchist movement marched through downtown Minneapolis on Thursday denouncing government, corporations, the media and almost every major institution.(7)
Omnium Records impresario Drew Miller was among those who took part in the demonstration.
Drew Miller:
I remember at one point, we went through City Center. And we had one part of the demo that went through the bottom half, and folks on the other half had printed up some fake money that we were throwing around.
Andrew Honigman was then a student at South High School in Minneapolis, one of the masses of teenagers who had (literally) seen the writing on the wall.
Andrew Honigman:
I was downtown wandering the skyway system trying to find where all of this was going on. I never did catch up with them. But I heard later that my friend Malcolm was in the march carrying a black flag. And he met Miles Lord—the former Minnesota Supreme Court Justice—while riding in an elevator. And I believe that Miles Lord told him that the flag was a weapon, and that they could charge him with a felony for that.
News reports focused on the “eccentric appearance” of the youthful protestors, “which included purple Mohawks, black lipstick, flowing beards, pantaloons, jackets with sleeves torn out, and a turban or two.”(8) The underlying message—be it cluster bombs at Honeywell, or the complicity of the corporate media in censoring news of American-sponsored death squads—was mostly lost in translation.
“You can’t count on the capitalist press to relay your message for you,” says writer Gordon Edgar. “They’re going to manipulate it.”
“I think that symbolic actions are better for that,” Edgar adds, “having some kind of media action that’s not a demonstration. Those work better in the newspaper, ‘cause they’re more about creating a spectacle.” The problem with big demonstrations is that “They’re always going to quote some tourist who’s complaining about how ‘This ruined my whole vacation!’”
Omnium’s Drew Miller tried to play against the stereotypes.
Drew Miller:
When I went to demos, I’d usually wear a suit just to screw with as many heads as possible. Downtown people would see someone in a suit coming up to them, and handing-out anarchist literature. But not only that. It also kind of screws with the heads of the people in the demo... Like, “What’s this guy with the suit hanging out with us for?!”
As an added bonus, Miller’s costume made it easier to avoid the police, “since I never intend to get arrested in those sorts of things!”
A NEW FORM OF PROTEST
Similar protests were happening in major cities all across the USA, part of a new wave of student activism whose militant street tactics mirrored those of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP). In The Death and Rebirth of American Radicalism, Stanley Aronowitz suggests that the discomfort caused by ACT-UP’s “out of control” protests was one its principle strengths:
Given the lopsided power equation, ACT-UP has effectively played the postmodern concatenation with adroit media politics to help level the playing field.(9)
New York University professor Stephen Duncombe is the author of a forthcoming book on “progressive politics in an age of fantasy.”
Stephen Duncombe:
I think that one of the things that excited me about ACT UP… was that ACT UP understood that performance (and packaging) and the object that they were producing was as much a spectacle as it was about the politics behind the spectacle. It was an exuberant protest.
Part of the problem with the politics of the 1980’s, during the Reagan era, is that it was a little dreary, and drab, and self-righteous. Whining and complaining. And ACT UP didn’t do that.
Even though ACT UP was directly, and instrumentally, trying to pressure the Federal government to put more funding into AIDS research… it was also an exuberant creation of an activist culture.
At first glance, these non-traditional protests might have seemed to be self-defeating and immature. And it’s true: the 80’s War Chest Tours did not achieve any of their immediate goals. But the cultural radicals were onto something:
ACT-UP’s tacit strategy was to force on public officials, church, and business leaders their most horrific nightmare: exposure by means of actions that signify disrespect…
Where unions representing tens of thousands of municipal employees had failed, a relatively small but highly vocal social movement succeeded in [preventing the elimination of the Department of AIDS services].(10)
Stephen Duncombe:
I just went to a protest a couple of days ago, and it could have been one of the same protests I went to in the 1980’s. Mass-produced signs (a little bit better produced than in the 80’s), chants… there just wasn’t anything that would catch my eye.
Now, part of the reason for that, is this mistaken notion that in order to appeal to a large audience, what you have to do is homogenize your look, homogenize your message and your expression.
To that I answer: “Look at MTV.”
MTV actually tries to cultivate quirkiness in order to reach a wider audience. They usually fail at the quirkiness, while achieving the wide audience. But I still think that there’s some attractiveness in that alternative that doesn’t guarantee marginalization.
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