An Invitation & Call to Action for the First Annual Smash By Smash West
March 8-16
Every Spring, South by Southwest brings a flood of tourists, celebrities, politicians, technocrats, venture capitalists, military officials, professional activists, and the elite, showcasing the cutting edge of Capital, its left and right wings fused in an unholy alliance to chart out the future of Empire’s hell-worlds. For Austin, this week is simultaneously the economic lifeblood of the City and a period of intensified exploitation and dispossession—homeless encampments swept away, neighborhoods colonized for South By-oriented development and hypergentrification, precarious workers pushed to their limit physically and financially. SXSW is a time when our enemies come together to connect, think together, strategize, and develop new ways of acting that consolidate their power.
We propose something different: Smash By Smash West, a week of action and counter-summit for those of us struggling against this world where we can connect, commune, conspire, think together, and develop new ways of acting that undermine the rule of our enemies and build our collective powers. While the conference is a show of strength for the ruling order, we believe that we can turn our enemy’s strengths into weaknesses, and their weaknesses into opportunities. For this week and beyond, we invite comrades and fellow travelers to begin gathering, hosting events, and taking strategic action with these shared goals in mind. We also invite the locals who, year after year, self-organize a plethora of “SXSW Unofficial” events to use those events to take action against SXSW’s most harmful effects, politicizing them as explicitly anti-SXSW instead of providing the festival with free advertising.
Smash By is not an organization, an activist campaign, a call to directly fight or end SXSW, or a platform to make demands from the powers that be. It is a radical alternative; an invitation to exploit the opportunities that are created by infrastructural overload, to engage in creative and courageous disruption wherever possible, and to plant seeds for more ambitious actions with more preparation in the years to come. Whether your plans feature cultural programming, education, care work, action, or anything in between, enact them without waiting for permission. Self-organize with friends to the best of your ability; and be co-responsible for the spaces we make together. Smash By Smash West is an open brand that you can use for all activities you take in the spirit of this invitation, that are not part of and express antagonism to SXSW.
Send either the announcement or reportback (depending on the activity) to SmashBySmashWest@protonmail.com and we’ll spread the word on our social media and calendar. We’ve provided logos and other materials in our drive for you to use as you see fit. Reach out at SmashBySmashWest@protonmail.com if you have questions or need support. We will do our best to assist you, though we offer no guarantees due to our limited resources and capacities.
Beyond South By And Its Future
SmashXSmashWest
Twitter & Instagram: @smashxsmashwest
