A Brief History
Winona is a small town of 30,000 in the south east corner of Minnesota, almost an hour north of the Iowa border and separated from Wisconsin by the Mississippi River. If you were on your way to Minneapolis from Chicago, or passing across the Midwest on Interstate 90, you might stop in Winona to take a break in the lush, prehistoric river valley. There aren’t any skyscrapers or music clubs, or much in the way of public transit or tasty restaurants; the pace of living is slow and steady. There is a state university, a private college, and a vocational school, but Winona isn’t a college town per se. Winona began as one of the larger European prairie settlements during the area’s colonization. Because of its position on the river, where freight trains from the north unload their cargo onto barges, it became a booming industrial town, devouring the massive hardwood forests. Accordingly, Winona is characterized by factories and a hardy working class population. Winona is the sort of place people spend their entire lives in. It’s hard for a local to pass from one part of the city to another without bumping into many familiar faces. The faces familiar to us are mostly part of a large community of big-tent dropouts: hippies young and old, back-to-the-land types, environmentalists, Catholic Workers, retired hobos, punk rockers, and aging radicals. Four decades ago, this town was a countercultural hub. One of the first food co-ops in the nation, Famine Foods, was born here in the late ’60s at a time when the legendary movement-founding co-ops in the nearby Twin Cities were beginning to implode and divide. Floating homesteaders built houses on docks to evade property taxes and formed an autonomous DIY village on the backwaters of the Mississippi river that still exists today. And, as bioregionalism began to come into the dialogue in the ’70s, an “off the grid” land cooperative developed into almost two dozen square miles of organic farms and hippie communes. By the early ’90s, many of the hippies had become professors and board members, and the boathouses had become a bureaucratic headache. There won’t be another generation to inherit the land co-op, and bioregionalism has been all but replaced by dry liberal trends.
Contemporary Anti-Authoritarianism
Compared to most towns of similar size in our region, Winona has a deeply rooted punk scene. In the mid-nineties, the punk scene here was teeming with kids; by 1997 local bands were touring the region and Winona had joined the network of scenes that stretches across the upper Midwest. Punk rock introduced all sorts of ideas and behaviors; youth and a few disillusioned adults began to participate in a horizontal social scene and adopt confrontational cultural customs. At the beginning of the new millennium, the city government banned punks from renting public facilities, accusing them of being a hate group—they hate cops, apparently! In response, punks initiated graffiti campaigns to pressure the City to change its tune. This was a formative experience for many involved, as it was an opportunity for collective effort beyond music-centered activities. The City changed its tune, then banned the punks again; this happened over and over. In those early years, lots of exciting small town things happened. Kids broke into aban- doned buildings to sing songs to each other. They made their own sidewalk chalk and covered the entire downtown district with snarly demands. Some dabbled in direct action: dumpster locks were glued, radical literature was distributed at shows, workshops and skillshares were hosted in living rooms. There were actions against the 2004 election, graffiti and wheatpasting, even some broken windows. Like most such scenes, Winona’s punk scene revolved around music. But even the concerts showed an earnest radicalism; some were benefits for political prisoner Sherman Austin, Books to Prisoners, various short-lived collective projects, and Food Not Bombs. Winona FNB never quite blossomed into large-scale free food servings, but it was swarmed with activity within the punk scene. At one point, a weekly anarchist round-table discussion group appeared with radical politics and the structure of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, called “Love, Learn, Teach.” It thrived for months but eventually fizzled away. Similarly, in May 2003, some people tried to set up an all-ages event booking collective, but it died after the first few shows because of poor social dynamics between local punks and other anti-authoritarians. There were also monthly Critical Mass bike rides on the last Friday's of every month for a few years. Some rides had over 60 participants, and it was often confronted by police. The Down n’ Dirty Bike Club (DDBC) was founded around 2003 in the backyards of punkhouses from within the punk scene. It has since evolved into a couple different accessible locations, and has given away over 100 bikes for free to Winonans in need of a bike. For a time, the Green Lantern Coffeehouse was the one space for Winona punks and other such crazy weirdos. It was a hole-in-the-wall late-night coffeehouse and cabaret theatre adjacent to one of the three punk houses in town, run by a wild puppeteer and local countercultural prophet. To this day, every August this guy and his pals host a festival in which punks, Renaissance Festival employees, and hobos gather to wrestle in a giant hay-bale ring of home-brewed cream corn. The coffeehouse also fizzled out with time, but the puppeteer remains a prominent member of the community. There were also a few rejuvenating months worth of weekly Capture The Flag games in downtown Winona. Often, it was comprised of a couple dozen high school kids ready to redefine the downtown as a battlefield. The legacy of 1997-2005 lingers. Some graffiti remains unbuffed, a relic of the active days. A conspiracy of three dozen secret, subversive paintings remains nailed just out of arm’s reach on all the wooden telephone poles downtown. “Big Action Records,” the college student punk label, dissolved and resurfaced in the nearby Twin Cities. At this point, the punk shows have simmered down to an annual Ciderfest featuring punk-rock bike Olympics, and the occasional benefit show.
2006 CrimethInc. Convergence
In July of 2006, Winona hosted the fifth annual CrimethInc. Convergence with the help of a handful of locals and regional anarchists. It was our first real group project, and could easily be considered the formative endeavor for us. The convergence preparation was the first test of our commitments to each other and future projects. Planning such a gathering proved an incredibly useful exercise—for instance, organizing volunteer shifts and shuttles for the redirect point tested our ability to bottomline the specific mechanisms of a much more complicated larger machine. The convergence itself was in- credible. It was tremendously motivating to see other anarchists excited about a place we had come to see as dull and disappointing. Thanks to the efforts of the local bike collective, Critical Mass rode boldly through the newly constructed Walmart one hundred strong—more than twice the size of any other Critical Mass in Winona before and since. We disrupted the local Shakespeare festival with a guerrilla theater performance including pitchforks and torches, coordinated dancing, over two hundred people in peasant costumes, the beheading of a 30-foot-tall puppet king, one of Brad Will’s last legendary firebreathing displays, and the Serf’s Up Drum Corps. We took over downtown Winona to play capture the flag and invited participants to document that part of their experience in a zine (which you can find on this site!). The convergence also marked our first attempt at a Really Really Free Market, which was not a success in terms of community participation—though that itself was instructive.
What's Been Happening These Days
Some of the above mentioned projects are still active or at least somewhat active. Some have evolved into other projects.
Wild Nettle Distro
Years ago, when we were in high school, a couple of us distributed radical media in Winona—we brought zines, music, books, patches, and other anarchist paraphernalia to punk shows, and this sparked our interest in networking with the broader anarchist community. We experimented with screenprinting and making zines, and designed our first website; we would fill orders out of our parents’ houses. When high school ended, these endeavors faded into history. Years later, we dusted off the leftovers of the distro we did in high school, phased out what we weren't interested in anymore, and started being more strategic about what we'd distribute. And so, Wild Nettle Distro was born! We bought a photocopier for $25 and other exciting printing opportunities, and our free zine selection grew and grew. We’ve sold many books, other anarchist publications and projects, shirts and patches, and given away countless free zines, posters, and advice to the idealistic youth and middle-aged dropouts of Winona and beyond. Lately, we’ve been setting up at legitimate events outside the anti-authoritarian community; we’ve been enthusiastically accepted there, despite the extreme sentiment of most of our literature. We’ve also taken Wild Nettle Distro on tour to the East Coast and back and to various regional anarchist events.
Long Weekend
Our first project as a working group was to initiate our long-term strategy with a three-day festival dubbed “Long Weekend: Neighborly Discussion for a Free Winona.” Our ulterior motive was to determine whether or not there might be community support for a free newspaper. We also wanted to create an intimate town meeting atmosphere in which people could talk candidly about mutual aid in Winona. The three of us brainstormed, contacted friends, and prepared a schedule of exciting events. We compiled this information and a manifesto about gift economics and mutual aid into a program and distributed it everywhere: in mailboxes, on doorsteps, directly into people’s hands. Soon, the little booklets had infiltrated conversations all around town. The weekend opened with a potluck in the basement of the Winona Arts Center. As people were finishing their meals, a scripted dialogue was heard above the conversation and the room quieted to listen to the words from the program text: “The gift economy means presents for everyone. It is how information travels through our community. How we feed ourselves. It is a warm meal on a cold night...” In the course of the weekend we showed a few films and held a number of conversations about subjects specific to Winona. A critical discussion on the rise and fall of Food Not Bombs resulted in a series of monthly potlucks and planted seeds for a possible Really Really Free Market. There was a DDBC panel at which five members talked about their experiences and entertained questions. During a discussion of electoral politics and their role in small town local organizing, people weighed in from very different social circles and perspectives. Many people threw around ideas for a community newspaper. Only two months later, a free monthly newspaper appeared featuring an article detailing all that went on during the event. This provided a solid point of reference for the establishment of intentional mutual aid networks and won us many people’s support.
Free Winona Newspaper
Shortly after the “Long Weekend,” we began publishing a monthly newspaper about mutual aid called Free Winona. The first issue was published for February 1st, 2008. We wanted a newspaper that would connect different social circles and invest this interconnection with a broad sense of community self-determination. Our goal was to promote conversation about ongoing adventures in gift economics by analyzing different projects in our community. Starting the newspaper with a small affinity group was a wise choice: we were able to create exactly what we wanted, balance the workload according to a consensus process, and lay the groundwork for bigger plans in terms of ideas and rhetoric. Focusing on a specific theme in each issue enables us to connect the newspaper to the other projects we are working on and use it as a supplement to our other efforts. By our fifth issue, we were prepared to open the editorial collective to other people. We began having formal meetings and before long we’d doubled our work power. With the basics covered in the Free Winona newspaper, we can be confident that the anarchist principles referenced in the zines we distribute and the character of our festivals won’t be lost on the “masses." 14 different issues were made in the first 14 months of the project. In February 2009, we celebrated our one year anniversary with another "Long Weekend", and have revamped the Free Winona model to fit our financial and emotional situations.
DDBC Bicycle Co-op
In spring of 2008 the bike club signed their first storefront lease downtown—a substantial change from the punk house backyards from whence they’d come. Let’s back up to 2003, when the bike club got its start. Castle Greyskull, one of the few punk houses at the time, was a swarming hub of activity: there were always people working on bikes, sharing tools, and teaching each other about bicycle maintenance. Immediately thereafter, the Far East House hosted an era of ambitious freak bikes. In these formative years, the Bike Club learned to roll together as a group and developed an understanding of what they wanted for Winona. Meanwhile, the bikes kept accumulating. The club hoped to start a free bike program, and began distributing free red and black bicycles and racks. Eventually, city inspectors complained about the bicycles in the yard, and it was clear that the group needed a permanent space. The DDBC located a home for the project: the basement of a nearby thrift store. It wasn’t a space that invited foot traffic, but it was a step in the right direction. While the basement lease lasted, the club searched for other spaces. Finally, a space became available in arguably the most beautiful historic downtown storefront. So it was that in 2008 the DDBC Bicycle Co-op launched several new programs: bike maintenance workshops, free bike rentals, a cheap bike parts thrift store, and a space offering tools for fixing and building bicycles. No bicycle has ever been sold by the DDBC, and over 100 have been given away since the space opened. They have since moved out of that space and still offer free bikes to the community.
Really Really Free Markets
Regular Really Really Free Markets began in April 2008. We held two open group meetings weeks before the first one to determine the loose organizational tasks that needed covering—things like publicity, food, and cleanup duties. Thanks to our work with the newspaper, we already had connections to various social groups interested in demonstrating mutual aid in action. The first 'Free Market was attended by over 250 people! We asked some of the town’s charitable organizations to help distribute fliers—an ironic venue through which to promote self-determination and mutual aid rather than guilt-induced charity—and initiated a rigorous promotional campaign with posters and radio call-ins. The DDBC pitched in to raffle off kids’ bikes for free. Our local puppeteer planned something different for each ’Free Market: he gave away free tacos from his taco bike, hosted a talent show, performed with his puppets. A few volunteers from the Catholic Worker group brought surplus supplies of soap, shampoo, and toothbrushes. Community Harvest, a local revision of Food Not Bombs, served hot meals made with reclaimed food. The event has been advertised in the mainstream newspapers as a free yard sale one month, and a block party the next; this ambiguity has kept it populated with all the best sports in town. It has been heartening to see participants come back month after month with a greater sense of how they’d like to participate.
Regional Networks
It was becoming apparent that we had a lot to offer to and a lot to learn from anarchists in neighboring towns and cities. We began making ties with kids in the cities around us: Des Moines, IA, the Twin Cities of MN, Milwaukee and Madison, WI. We met a lot of new friends at convergences and consultas including gatherings preparing for the Republican National Convention, various CrimethInc. Convergences, and other regional events. We met kids from small towns like ours—Brainerd, MN, Bemidji, MN, and Oshkosh, WI. Comparing notes really paid off in our local organizing, and discussing small town dynamics with others from the region has helped us form a loose network of anarchist communities in the upper Midwest. We shared our observations formally at the 2008 CrimethInc. Convergence in Milwaukee, and informally elsewhere; one of us went on a tour the summer of 2008, visiting small towns with Wild Nettle Distro and a musical act. Our region put a lot of effort into facilitating resistance to the Republican National Convention in September 2008. Participating in that work helped solidify Winona’s place in a network of anarchist communities, and we were happy to contribute time and energy to the grunt work. May the networks we build last generations.