If the authors of this piece were so concerned the anarchist fair held this weekend was “organized by anti maskers”, I think that actually seeing the event, even just for a bit, would’ve alleviated their fears.
I was there for a lot of the event, mostly in a mask, and experienced no anti-mask sentiment. Throughout the event, some people wore masks, including people tabling and leading workshops, while others were unmasked, depending on their individual circumstances, or what they were doing in the moment, etc. To me, this made sense for an open outdoors event where people had food and hot drinks throughout. Someone brought a whole table full of stuffies dressed up in little black masks to give out, and someone else had some n95s available for those who wanted.
The evidence of the anti-anti-masker (?) activists’ visit the night before was clear; there were two tags as far as I could see- “real (A)s wear masks” and “anti maskers fk off” as well as some liquid mixture of shit (literally!!!) poured on the basketball court and next to the playground. No one seemed to take any issue with the messages, and the big banner hung on the wall of the elementary school was lifted high enough to avoid covering the “anti maskers fk off” graffiti. The shit was another story.
Some folks covered up the poop liquid with mulch and barkchips from the school garden and playground, and they found traffic cones to mark off the places where it was poured, but no one could really clean it up safely. The whole day I watched people warn parents bringing their kids to play so they could try to keep the kids out of the poop puddles, but of course a few toddlers managed to get into the shit-mulch before someone noticed. To be clear, this is disgusting and unacceptable. Even if the attendees WERE anti maskers, pouring shit all over the ground where kids play every day, where it will remain all weekend, long after the event is over, shows a complete disregard for any critical thinking or basic ethics, just a single-minded obsession with this one cause at the expense of caring about LITERALLY anything else, no matter who it might harm. Inexcusable. Obviously, spreading poop on a playground isn’t at all clean, safe, healthy; that’s far far more likely to get someone sick than the actual event. The activists who did it said they “wanted to remind attendees we actually can protect us”, but who can you protect with poop and graffiti slogans? Why not give out masks or covid tests or vaccine information or talk to people or anything at all?
In reality, we protected each other by cleaning up their shitty mess. We learned how we can protect each other at the Narcan training and at the anti-repression strategy workshop. We worked through how to care for each other better in the discussion about mutual aid. The poop-and-painters, whatever their intentions were, didn’t protect anyone.
Later on in the afternoon, a few people started a fight with the fair which I’ll do my best to describe.
I saw someone snatch several stacks of papers off a table and try to take them away, and someone else grabbed the stacks out of their hands. Then the first person yelled “Fuck you antimaskers!” and ran and flipped the fire pit. Someone wearing a helmet and big airsoft goggles pepper sprayed someone, which started a fight, and they (helmet + goggles) got shoved and hit by a bunch of people and pushed away from the fair into the playground. In the chaos, another fair attendee got pepper sprayed, but I didn’t see how it happened. In the end, there were three of them getting walked out of the park until they were across the street and left, while a lot of people were helping the folks who’d gotten hit with pepper spray. People came together to get water, soap and clean cloths to wash off pepper spray, to go talk to the confused parents and other people at the playground about what had happened, to clean up the fire pit and coals that got scattered, and generally get things back on schedule.
Before too long, the next workshop, about ageing as an anarchist, began with the person leading it asking (joking?) for the audience to let them know if any more people wearing helmets came up behind them.
Afterwards, I can’t help but think that those three, so ready to confront an antimasker event, would’ve seen what was happening at the fair when they first showed up, seen people wearing masks, and had a moment to rethink their assumptions before rushing in to pick a fight.
What if they’d tried talking to folks about it first?
Anti-maskers, those who are against masks being worn, often violently so, are absolutely worthy of hostility, even violence. The reactionaries who yell at you for wearing a mask, call you “sheep” or worse, spit on people, try to rip masks off peoples’ faces – they cannot be tolerated. Anyone determined to exert such control over someone else’s bodily autonomy should be unwelcome anywhere. I don’t think there was anyone like that at the event, and I wonder if the anti-anti-mask activists even do. Is the label “antimasker” even being used honestly? Maybe the rhetoric has become so warped that to them an anti-masker is just anyone who is unmasked in the moment, no matter the circumstances? It would help to see some sort of proposal alongside simplistic slogans and provocations.
At the fair, a COVID discussion had been on the schedule all day, and ended up getting skipped over because of the pepper spray, which, somewhat ironically, happened during its assigned time slot. I wish that it hadn’t been left behind, because clearly there’s a need for more real discussion of what a consistent anarchist practice of care should look like. I’m not sure exactly what it must include, and while I know masking has a valuable part to play, I can’t imagine there’s any place for slinging shit and pepper spray at every gathering of anarchists eating together in a public park.
submitted anonymously