Abbie Hoffman - Steal This Book

Women should not wear earrings or other jewelry and should tie their hair up to tuck it under a helmet. Wear a belt that you can use as a tourniquet. False teeth and contact lenses should be left at home if possible. You can choke on false teeth if you receive a sharp blow while running. Contact lenses can complicate eye damage if gas or Mace is used.

If it really looks heavy, you might want to pick up on a lightweight adjustable bullet-proof vest, available for $14.95 from Surplus Distributors, Inc., 6279 Van Nuys Blvd., Van Nuys, California 91401. Remember what the Boy Scouts say when they go camping: “Be Prepared”. When you go to demonstrations you should be prepared for a lot more than speeches. The pigs will be.

Ever since the Chicago pigs brutalized the demonstrators in August of 1968, young people have been read to vent their rage over Amerika’s inhumanity by using more daring tactics than basic demonstrations. There is a growing willingness to do battle with the pigs in the streets and at the same time to inflict property damage. It’s not exactly rioting and it’s not exactly guerrilla warfare; it has come to be called “Trashing.” Most trashing is of a primitive nature with the pigs having the weapon and strategy advantage. Most trashers rely on quick young legs and a nearby rock. By developing simple gang strategy and becoming acquainted with some rudimentary weapons and combat techniques, the odds can be shifted considerably.

Remember, pigs have small brains and move slowly. All formations, signals, codes and other procedures they use have to be uniform and simplistic. The Army Plan for Containment and Control of Civil Disorders, published by the Government Printing Office, contains the basic thinking for all city, county and state storm troopers. A trip to the library and a look at any basic text in criminology will help considerably in gaining an understanding of how pigs act in the street. If you study up, you’ll find you can, with the aid of a bullhorn or properly adjusted walkie-talkie, fuck up many intricate pig formations. “Left flank-right turn!” said authoritatively into a bullhorn pointed in the right direction will yield all sorts of wild results.

You should trash with a group using a buddy system to keep track of each other.

If someone is caught by a pig, other should immediately rush to the rescue if it’s possible to do so without sustaining too many losses. If an arrest is made, someone from your gang should take responsibility for seeing to it that a lawyer and bail bread are taken care of. Never abandon a member of your gang.

Avoid fighting in close quarters. You run less risk by throwing an object than by personally delivering the blow with a weapon you hold in your hand. We suppose this is what pigs refer to as “duty fighting.” All revolutionaries fight dirt in the eyes of the oppressors. The British accused the Minutemen of Lexington and Concord of fighting dirty by hiding behind trees. The U.S. Army accuses the Viet Cong of fighting dirty when they rub a pointed bamboo shoot in infected shit and use it as a land mine. Mayor Daley says the Yippies squirted hair spray and used golf balls with spikes in them against his innocent blue boys. No one ever accused the U.S. of being sneaky for using an airforce in Southeast Asia or the Illinois State Attorney’s office of fighting dirty when it murdered Fred Hampton and Mark Clark while they lay in bed. We say: all power to the dirty fighters!

These are a very effective and educating method of property destruction. If a liberated zone has been established or you find yourself on a quiet street away from the thick of things, pretty up the neighborhood. Slogans and symbols can be sprayed on rough surfaces such as brick or concrete walls that are a real bitch to remove unless expensive sandblasting is used.

This is probably the ideal street weapon for the swarms of little Davids that are out to down the Goliaths of Pigdom. It is cheap, legal to carry, silent, fast-loading and any right size rock will do for a missile. You can find them at hobby shops and large sporting goods stores, especially those that deal in hunting supplies.

Wrist-Rocket makes a powerful and accurate slingshot for $2.50. The Whamo Sportsman is not as good but half the price. By selecting the right “Y” shaped branch, you can fashion a home-made one by using a strip of rubber cut from the inner tube of a tue as the sling. A few hours of shooting stones at cans in the back yard or up on the roof will make you marksman enough for those fat bank windows and even fatter pigs.

A sling is a home-made weapon consisting of two lengths of heavy-duty cord each attached securely at one end to a leather patch that serves as a pocket to cradle the rock. Place the rock in the pouch and grab the two pieces of cord firmly in your hand. Whirl the rock round and round until gravity holds it firmly in the pouch. When you feel you have things under control, let one end of the cord go and the rock will fly out at an incredible speed. You should avoid using the sling in a thick crowd (rooftop shooting is best). Practice is definitely needed to gain any degree of accuracy.

The boomerang is a neat weapon for street fighting and is as easy to master as the Frisbee. There is a great psychological effect in using exotic weapons such as this. You can buy one at large hobby stores. On the East Coast you can get one from Sportscraft, Bergenfield, New Jersey, for $2.69, and on the West Coast from Whamo, 835 El Monte St., San Gabriel, Calif., for $1.10.

Electric battery-operated flash guns are available that will blind a power-crazy pig, thus distracting him long enough to rescue a captured comrade. Check out camping and boating supply stores.

Personalized tear gas and mace dispensers are available for self-defense against muggers. Well, isn’t a pig just an extra vicious mugger? Write J.P. Darby, 8813 New Hyde Park, New York, N.Y. 11040 for a variety of types and prices.

Tear gas shells are available for 12 gauge shotguns and .38 Special handguns, but it is highly inadvisable to bring guns to street actions. A far better weapon is a specially built projection device that shoots tear gas shells. Hercules Gas-Munitions Corp., 5501 No. Broadway, Chicago, Ill., sells compact units complete with cartridges for $6.95 that will fire up to 20 feet. Penguin Associates, Inc., Pennsylvania Avenue, Malvern, Penn., also has a variety of tear-gas propellant devices including a combination tear gas-billyclub item. All these companies will supply a catalogue and price list on request. Some states have laws against civilian use of tear gas devices. New York is one of them, and unfortunately these companies will not ship to states that forbid usage. If you want any of these items, and your state has restrictions, have a sister or brother in a neighboring state order for you. Just latching onto these catalogues can be a trip and a half in terms of getting your imagination hopping. For example Raid, Black Flag and other insecticides shoot a 7 to 10 foot stream that burns the eyes. You can also dissolve Drano in water and squirt it from an ordinary plastic water pistol. That makes a highly effective defensive weapon. A phony letterhead of a Civil Defense unit will help in getting heavier anti-personal weapons of a defensive nature.

Don’t believe all those bullshit tire ads that make tires seem like the Superman of the streets. Roofing nails spread out on the street are effective in stopping a patrol car. A nail sticking out from a strong piece of wood wedged under a rear tire will work as effectively as a bazooka. An ice pick will do the trick repeatedly but you’ve got to have a strong arm to strike home. Sugar in the gas tank of a pig vehicle will really fuck-up the engine.