Urban Ecosystem Disruption: Theory and Practice
Author: Zeno Citium (pseudonym) 1962
Page Count: 424 pages + 45 page unusable index with
incorrect page numbers and nonexistent topics
Publication History:
-1962: Originally hand-published and distributed by counter-culture
groups based largely in California, Chicago, and Toronto; first recorded
occurrence was at the conclusion of a “Guerrilla theater” performance outside
the La Brea Tar Pits by a group called “The Wonderworkers”.
-1964: (run of 250) the “Orange Edition”, published by
Calabaza Press, a now-defunct “alternative press” in San Francisco. This edition included a foreword by someone
claiming to be Jean-Paul Sarte; this “pseudo-Sarte” was actually proven to have
been Arnold Lee Westerfield, a philosophy graduate student at UCLA.
-1967: The entire book (sans index) is published as 10
articles in the February-November issues of “Ch!nga” (v.2, issues 2-11), a
radical leftist magazine published by Aleph Press (defunct).
-1971: 100 unbound copies of the “Orange Edition” are
discovered in a storage unit in Bakersfield, CA. These are bound and sold mail-order through
magazine ads by an individual identified as “G. O. D. Harp”, though without
“Sarte’s” intro.
-1976: Barzai Press (Toronto, Canada) publishes the “Black
Edition” in a run of 1000, with the “unusable index” bound upside down. Only ~500 volumes were ever distributed, as
the RCMP raided their offices and confiscated all remaining copies.
-1977: Direct Action Press (Chicago, USA) puts out a
250-page abridged version apparently taken from the Ch!nga articles, excising
most of the “theoretical” chapters in favor of the more “practical” methods
sections. An initial run of 200 volumes
sells out quickly at their Chicago area bookstore, and a second run of 600
volumes was ordered, though never delivered.
-1981 to 1986: Xeroxed, hand-stapled copies of the original
1962 “Wonderworkers” edition are advertised in the backs of numerous left-wing
and survivalist magazines and pamphlets, sourced from a P.O. Box in Bozeman,
Montana.
-1989: a text file edition of a work titled “Urban
Disruption” appears on-line on several different bulletin boards; these
editions quickly become intermingled with other author’s works and writings,
resulting in multiple iterations of less-than-faithful copies of the original.
-1994: The “Handbook on Urban Disruption” is offered from
Anachronism Press (Los Angeles, USA), a reprinting of Direct Action’s abridged
edition plus a collection of largely unintelligible essays on “occulto-anarchism”
written by a “St.-G.”.
-2002: digital copies in a variety of formats and of various
official and un-offical editions of “Urban Ecosystem Distruption: Theory and
Practice” are made available online.
HISTORY OF “URBAN ECOSYSTEM DISRUPTION: THEORY AND PRACTICE”
“Direct Action” methods are those that attempt to proactively
force social change, often through embracing Mao’s famous quote about power
growing from the barrel of a gun. The
history of the countercultural movement in America can be viewed as a constant
give-and-take between nonviolent, peaceful demonstrators and those for whom
violence becomes a means to an end. The history
of many individuals within the countercultural movement can also be seen as a
similar ebb-and-flow between these two poles, with some exhibiting greater or
lesser flexibility for the use of direct action over the course of their
careers.
The strategies, tactics, and methods employed by those
bringing direct action into their social movements are a relatively little
studied aspect of the history of the 1950s-80s.
To the FBI and CIA, it was clear that most of these techniques were ultimately
sourced at the Kremlin as soviet agitprop and covert disruption operations,
utilizing American-born counter-cultural warriors as tools for the spread of
communism. In some cases this may have
been the case; afterall, some of the countercultural groups were explicitly
communist, Marxist, or Maoist in political philosophy, and had contacts or
members with international ties.
However, it is similarly demonstrable that some direct action techniques
were gleaned from returning Korean and Vietnam War veterans who, having grown disillusioned
with American Imperialism and military adventurism, simply transferred their
government training to new spheres of operation. Finally, it is likely that a great number of
these techniques were developed experientially, hard won wisdom and skill
gleaned from years of battling with the authorities on the streets.
Occasionally, however, it appears that some proponents of
direct action took it upon themselves to organize and disseminate advice and
theory. Indeed, for some groups, their
entire purpose was seen as distributing manuals on social subversion; that is
to say, teaching direct action techniques became their countercultural
act. Often these were in the form of
hand-typed pamphlets, sometimes detailing the philosophical aspects of
rebellion, but more often providing brutally efficient treatises on one of more
“practical” fields of social disruption, including bomb-building, police evasion
techniques, and breaking-and-entering guides.
One text, however, produced only in intermittent, limited
runs, had a disproportionate effect on direct action groups. This text, “Urban Ecosystem Disruption:
Theory and Practice”, continues to be a source of information for anarchists,
radical groups on the left and right, and rank criminals today. A simple internet search provides numerous
digitized versions available for free download.
In part, this longevity may be ascribed to the text’s rigorously
tested practicality; unlike many so-called “cookbooks”, the techniques,
practices, devices, and plans provided in “Urban Ecosystems” largely work as
advertised. However, an additional
difference between it and its paler imitators may also explain its popularity,
specifically the fact that “Urban Ecosystems” combines its practical chapters
with intensely researched and well-written “theoretical” sections. Thus, in a copy of the book, one may learn
the art of lock-picking in one chapter, and then read a discussion on the
philosophy and history of infrastructural integration in fast-growing cities. Chapters on bomb-making are interspersed with
chapters on the similarities between tropical forest ecosystems and urban
ecosystems, complete with “trophic” energy flow charts and diagrams. To be sure, even the theoretical chapters
were written in the service of practical goals of social change and urban
chaos. For instance, the “trophic flow”
of Urban Ecosystems helpfully points out bottlenecks in vital services that
could be exploited, should one be so inclined.
Even so, these theoretical and academically rigorous sections provide a philosophical
and moral, albeit a twisted one, underpinning to practical direct action largely
absent in the other media on the same topic.
Similarly, while “anarchic-philosophy” tracts were thick on the ground in
the 50s, 60s, and 70s, few of them also provided useful, practical guides
alongside the bloviating. For these
reasons, “Urban Ecosystem Disruption: Theory and Practice” has remained the
gold standard in direct action manuals.
Authorship of the text is in some doubt; obviously “Zeno
Citium”, a reference to a famous ancient Greek Philosopher often touted as one
of the first true anarchists, is a nom de plume. Textural analysis of the chapters has
revealed that there must have been at least four authors, although there is no
clear pattern to who wrote what. In other
words, the same “author” is as likely to write about bombs and hotwiring cars
as they are to deal with the underpinnings of kinematic wave theory for traffic
planning.
Additionally, the anarchic nature of counter-cultural book
publishing as well as the subsequent explosion of digitally published versions
of the book has resulted in some rather dramatic “mutations” in the text. Some sections have been removed or edited or annotated
by subsequent authors, sometimes to point of producing an unrecognizable “edition”
of the book. For the purposes of this
brief history, however, we will adhere to the history of officially published
versions of Zeno Citium’s magnum opus, with one important exception.
The first instance of the text being publically distributed was as a hand-bound book at a performance art event in southern California. A “guerilla theater” group staged an un-licensed, un-permitted, and apparently sexually explicit performance of “Oedipus Rex” with live actors and puppets outside the La Brea Tar Pits. Preceding the show, members of the troupe handed out approximately fifty copies of the book. After the police arrived, a further fifty copies were tossed to the crowd and various bystanders along the troupe’s path of flight. It is to these first hundred copies that all subsequent editions of the book trace their origins.
Copies of this book, handbound with either thread or glue
and cardboard, soon began to show up in other major centers of the
counterculture, including Chicago, Toronto, and New York, and were similarly
subject to “guerilla” distribution techniques (themselves described in the Book
in a chapter titled “Spreading the Bad News”).
Importantly, these early editions included no forward or introduction,
but did include the famously unusable Index, with incorrect page numbers and
non-existent and bizarre topics making up the bulk (for example, “Lemuria” as a
topic is cited on dozens of pages, but never once is actually mentioned in the
text; similar treatments can be seen for such disparate topics as “Ethnobotony
of Leng”, “Political Necrophilia”, and “Yarn”, to name a few).
In 1964 Calabaza press, a small-run “alt press” based in San
Francisco, offered the famous “Orange Edition” with a Forward by “Jean-Paul
Sarte”. This dubious claim was immediately
doubted by anyone actually familiar with Sarte’s writings, although it did gain
the text some notice in the mainstream press as well as stern denunciations by commenters
on the right, who used it as further evidence of the decadent and ultimately destructive
politics of liberal higher education.
Eventually, authorship of the Forward would be determined to belong to a
philosophy graduate student who, a few years after publication of the “Orange
Edition”, would vanish in the Chihuahuan desert.
Calabaza Press would shut down in 1966, though one of its editors,
Jane Athene Pisaro, founded Aleph press in Los Angeles, a radical leftist publishing
house most famous for their magazine “Ch!nga”, which ran from 1966-1970. Working off her own annotated “Orange Edition”,
Pisaro would publish a series of 10 articles (under the penname Athene Loyolla)
in the ’67 run of Ch!nga on “Urban ecosystem Disruption”.
These were largely verbatim sections of the
original work, edited down and with some of the more dangerous instructions
removed, and often bookended by her own introductions and conclusions expanding
on her own ideas regarding direct action techniques.
In 1971, several boxes of unbound copies of the old “Orange
Edition” were found in a storage unit in Bakersfield California. Whose copies these were, and how they got
there, remained a mystery, although Pisaro did have family in the oil town of
Taft, not far from Bakersfield, and as such seems the most likely candidate. Similarly, it seems possible that Pisaro
herself was “G.O.D. Harp”, the individual who had the copies bound and offered
for sale in a variety of publications, although that is only speculation as her
movements after Aleph press folded in 1970 are unknown. Pisaro
died of a drug overdose in 1980.
Regardless, the “Harp Edition” was an important moment in
the book’s history, as up to that point it had mostly only moved through left-leaning
circles. Advertisements for this
edition, however, included journals and magazines on both sides of the
political spectrum, as well as the more politically neutral publications of the
then nascent green living/survivalist/primitivist movement.
Based on typographical errors and word choice, it is believed
that one of the “Harp Editions” served as the base for the 1976 “Black Edition”,
a volume put out by Barzai Press in Canada.
It is believed that this is the largest ever print run for the work, as
Barzai ordered 1000 volumes of the book (sans the “Sarte” introduction).
It was the “Black Edition” that brought the book to the
attention of the law enforcement community.
First, copies of it were found in police raids on suspected “subversive”
groups in both the pacific northwest and American south. Second, it played a part in the famous “White
River” murders, where pages of this book were used to wrap body parts and
organs sent to the police in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
The pages used for this grisly purpose were exclusively taken from the
more theoretical sections, including chapters on psychogeography, ecosystem
theory, and liminality in the urban landscape. At least nine individuals were murdered in the
still unsolved case, and the “weird” nature of the wrapping paper fueled
speculation about the murderer’s politics. As a result of the largely negative publicity,
the RCMP raided the offices and warehouses of Barzai Press and removed 500
copies of “Urban Ecosystem Disruption”.
It is believed that these copies were destroyed.
Direct Action Press put out a heavily abridged version of
the book in 1977, apparently taken from the 1967 Ch!nga articles. This slim volume was more concerned with the
practical lessons to be taken from the book, and excised most of the more theory-heavy
sections of the articles. The initial
run of 200 volumes sold out quickly, as “Urban Ecosystem Disruption” had by
that point become something of a collector’s item for the counter-culturally inclined. An additional 600 copies were order, but
never delivered, as Direct Action press was shut down as part of a large-scale
COINTELPRO operation in 1978, with most of its editors serving jail time for a
variety of drug trafficking and obscenity charges.
Intermittently, Xeroxed copies were made available for sale
in the backs of many “fringe” magazines, most of them coming out of Bozeman, MT
in the early to mid-80s. Most were
apparently based on the Barzai Press Black edition. The advent of Bulletin Board Systems in the
late 80s saw the book’s transformation into the digital realm, the first
instance of which was as a text file on a government conspiracy BBS titled,
simply, “Urban Disruption”. Subsequent
versions of the file, as well as other iterations, soon began to make the
rounds, culminating in the internet boom of the 90s, where heavily edited and
annotated “editions” begin to pour from a variety of websites.
The most recent physical iteration of the book was offered
by Anachronism Press out of L.A. in 1994, although its relationship to the
original versions is noticeable strained by a number of bizarre and heavily
occultic essays that have been added.
Most of these have a decidedly millennial or apocalyptic character, and
deal with the author’s (a “St-G.”) synoptic and highly idiosyncratic worldview
that ties government conspiracy, magic and occultism, and alien abduction phenomena
into one overarching master theory.
As mentioned above, the text has enjoyed a relatively long
life, a trend that will undoubtedly continue as we transition into a data-age
maturity. Indeed, it is largely this
book’s history that has given it its cultural capital on what is otherwise a
medium noted for its ephemerality. The
internet has also facilitated its sharing, well beyond the heyday of
do-it-yourself printing and binding in the 60s and 70s. It has been subjected to much editorial
control beyond its originators sight, although this seems appropriate given its
status as primarily a messenger of anarchy, both literary and otherwise.
Reproduced below is the table of contents from the original
Orange Edition, Calabaza Press, 1964:
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FORWARD by J-P. Sarte………………...……………………………………….vii
Psychogeography of the Urban Landscape: Reconnoitering the
Enemy’s Territory…1
Picking Locks 101.............................................................................…32
Tricks for Scaling Fences.................................................................................41
Urban Ecosystem Theory: Form…....................................................................48
Picking Locks 201……………………...……………………………………….65
Urban Ecosystem Theory: Function………………………………...……………………70
Infrastructural Analysis……………………………………………………………..……95
Building a Redbox…....…………………………………………………………………..111
Hotwiring a Car……….….………………………………………………………………133
Spreading the Butter Thin: Disrupting Emergency Services……………...…………136
Manufacturing KNO3 for Fun and Profit.………………………………………………145
Distillation……………………………….………………………………………………..150
Fuses, Primers, Fun………………………………………………………………………160
Lingua Legis: Police Codes and Terminology…..………………………………………164
Napalm, Just Like Mom Used To Make Back On The Farm…..………………………172
Institutional Aggression and The Individual………....………....………………………..180
Fake IDs…..………………………………………………………………………………..195
Chemical Equivalencies…..………………………………………………………………203
A List of Slang and Cant……………………………………………………………………209
Molotov Variants…………………………………………………………………………..214
Tennis Ball Bomb…………………………………………………………………………..225
Liminal Acts in Liminal Spaces: A Primer of Urban Decay……………………………….229
Forbidden Communications….……………………………………………………………..260
Gaming the System: Post Offices, Phone Booths, and Public Address Systems…..278
Smoke Bombs……………………………………………………………………………296
Improvised Weapons………………………………………………………………………313
Evading Surveillance………………………………………………………………………..330
Flash Powder………………………………………………………………………………343
Black Powder……………………………………………………………………………..346
Weird Drugs……………………………………………………………………………….350
Co-opting a Demonstration………………………………………………………………..357
Co-opting a Movement……………………………………………………………………369
Spotting a Narc………………………………………………………………………………377
Raiding a Lab…………….....……………………………………………………………….383
Spreading the Bad News…………………………………………………………………..387
Some Basic Tradecraft……………..………………………………………………………394
Urban Ecosystem Collapse……………………………………………………………….400
INDEX……………………………………………………………………………………..424
