IWW Olympia Branch
Train Riding Subcommittee
Black Hills Special Reportback 3
Good morning fellow worker! Gonzo Wobbly here, coming to you late, sitting with a broken leg in an upstairs public housing apartment with a raspy voiced old Indian from the AIM days of yesteryear. I got some hydrocodone so we’re taking those and smoking weed hanging out. You see, fellow worker, he’s the one who picked me up off the road after my accident, brought me to the hospital, etc. You see I crashed after my motorcycle had been SABOTAGED BY NAZI GOONS. But before we get to that my new roommate has a question:
“What the hell are you guys even doing out there, huh?”
“Uhh”
“You guys are just running around talking, no one knows what you’re saying.”
“Well, there’s the gold miners.”
“I tried to go out there to see what you guys are doing.”
“Yeah good thing too, otherwise I would have been coyote food.”
“I said, it looks like somebody’s sitting in the the road there.”
“Yeah”
“Good thing I found you.”
“Yeah.”
“But I don’t even know what you guys are doing.”
What were we doing out there anyway? As I start to tell the story, zoom into my head and start the flashback with a laser sound effect.
Pew pew pew
I’m laying naked in the dark next to Kiki after we just had that sex you have when you fall in love in the middle of a commando mission, in the middle of the most beautiful mountains, in the middle of a revolution.
That is to say, I was concerned it was too loud.
I trace her body with my fingers.
“Hey Kiki.”
“Yes, love?”
“Do you have to be so loud? I mean we’re trying to hide our location from the police.”
“Fuck if I can’t be as loud as I want in the woods I can’t do it anywhere.”
“Yeah ok.”
“Sex isn’t about inhibiting yourself. That’s the opposite of sex.”
“Ok. Hey what do you call anarchists having sex in the woods?”
“What?”
“Fucking in tents.” (read: intense)
We had just moved our camp after being harassed by federal cops specifically trained for dealing with rural anarchists. We were in a new location that was, actually, where we wanted to be anyway, so you know, fuck you.
It was the location of our build site. Our mission was to build a permanent structure, so that we could upgrade our kitchen, which at the moment was strictly forestpunk technology, to something more solarpunk and durable.
“Tell me more about the IWW.” Kiki asks as we bask in the afterglow and I smoke a joint.
“It’s the only union organizing prisoners and sex workers.”
“Oh yeah? I knew some girls that were in a union, that must have been it.”
“Yeah.”
“I should ask them about that.”
“There’s a national prison strike going on right now too, that we helped organize.”
The next morning we start work on building a new outhouse. The idea is, if we can get all our human needs met here, food, water, shelter, waste and warmth, and we can do it in a way that is sustainable, we can have it be an educational center for the Lakota and other tribes. People can come and see how to live in a healthy, sustainable way. That’s the vision. A school.
So first we need infrastructure. Today we begin work on something I am personally very excited about. Not only do I have an appreciation for the outhouse ever since I read The Vanishing American Outhouse: A History of Country Plumbing by Ronald S. Barlow, but here we are about to make a new step forward in this history.
You’ve heard of the mushroom that eats plastic, fellow worker? You’ve heard of Alchemists turning lead into gold? Well, amidst our band of commandos we have remarkable verbs from many diverse fields and walks of life. Our outlaw scientist knows how to turn shit into compost.
Yeah, yeah, “so what” you say fellow worker? Isn’t that what everyone does?
Fuck no it’s not.
Most people shit in the water supply. That’s what flushing your trumps amounts to. And rural communes with their “composting toilets” take a year to transform their piles of trump into usable compost material. However, with our cutting edge transmutation process, we can turn shit into compost in 2-5 weeks. Wob almighty, somebody call Amy Goodman, get Democracy Now, we got the fucking future right here.
Not only can we dispose of our shit in a sustainable way with a ridiculously short turnover, but the product at the end of those 2-5 weeks is a magical black fertilizer that never loses its fertility. It’s called Terra Preta and apparently it’s how the Amazon Rainforest was created. As a giant permaculture food forest project, made by ancient indigenous folks. And their turds.
It's an amazing feeling fellow worker. To take a trump and know you are fertilizing the earth rather than polluting it. It reconnects the human body to the natural life cycle. The circle becomes unbroken. Like the ouroboros, the snake eating it's own tail, if it was a snake made of poop.
Anyway expect a poopaganda zine explaining how to make your very own supersoil every time you gotta go take a trump.
Ok enough commercials, let’s get back to the action:
We’re up high in the hills, concealed by the trees, building the outhouse of tomorrow, when we all suddenly stop working simultaneously. We catch the sound of an engine. We drop down low. Silent. We crawl to a vantage point. Watch a pickup truck come down the grass road. It stops right at the bottom of the hill we’re at.
Fuck.
We hear the truck door open, close. The driver has gotten out, or his passenger. Hard to say. Commandos verb off to get more intel. Kiki and I keep watch on the truck. One recon unit returns. Hisses to us
“You guys gotta come back to camp quick!”
“What?”
“There’s a guy there with an ATV and a dog.”
“Fuck.”
We move through cover as fast as we can, staying out of sight of the truck, until we get to where we can openly approach our camp and kitchen. There in the distance we can indeed see a man with an ATV and a German Shepherd.
Wob damnit I’m going to have to kill a dog today. I’m always ready to fight a nazi, but a nazi with a dog? I wished I had forearm guards. I walk steadily on to my doom. Behind me, my comrade is sure it is a police k-9 unit and we are going to soon be busted for smoking weed. We don’t share thoughts.
My comrade goes left, I go right, getting uphill and behind this intruder.
“This is Joe Buck.” Someone says from the kitchen.
I relax somewhat. I won't have to kill a dog today.
“Hey JOE BUCK.” I say.
“Hey.”
Joe Buck is the man hired by the tribes to look over this section of the Black Hills which was purchased by the tribes. A section we ostensibly have permission to be on.
Joe Buck says we can’t be here. One of our Lakota comrades talks to him. Tries to convince him that we do, in fact, have permission to be here. Joe Buck insists that unless we have written permission, we need to leave immediately. He also says, with a little awe, that we can’t be out here, quote: “fighting the cops like wolverine renegades.”
Hey, your words Joe, not mine.
So, fellow worker, do you think we leave?
Find out next time on the next episode of Wolverine Renegades!