[lbo-talk] anarchist/commie soccer results

[Chuck0]

joanna bujes wrote:
> I know, I know: you've been waiting with baited breath!
> 
> Some of you might remember a posting on LBO a few weeks back, announcing 
> a soccer match between the anarchists and the commies at Piedmont high 
> school (the Beverly Hills High of Oakland). Well that match, between the 
> Left Wing Football Club (commies) and the Kronstadt Football Club 
> (guess), ended up in a 2-2 tie when police arrived to break up the game. 
> The match was reported to the police by a Piedmont resident, who 
> complained of players shouting slogans like: "Agitate! Agitate! Score a 
> goal and smash the state!" (Piedmont is THE upper-class enclave, 
> situated in the north of Oakland. I believe that like all such, it uses 
> Oakland's infrastructure but keeps its schools separate.)
> 
> The teams played again last Sunday in Berkley, when the anarchists beat 
> the commies 4-2. The commies were reported to have won the fashion 
> contest, sporting real red soccer jerseys featuring a clenched fist, 
> compared to Kronstadt's "cheap sweat-shop T-shirts," which bore a logo 
> that incoporated the anarchist "A" and a soccer ball. The referee was 
> impressed by the anarchists: "The anarchists are so well-behaved. 
> They're playing respectably!...I didn't expect them to play by the 
> rules..." Both teams were reported to have used very inclusionary 
> practices, giving everyone a chance to play, irrespective of color, 
> gender, or sexual orientation. Bay area residents can check out the full 
> story in this week's "East Bay Express."

It's kind of strange that organized anarchist soccer in the laid back 
Bay Area has teams and uniforms, whereas anarchist soccer in uptight 
Washington, DC was always been a laid back affair. Anarchist soccer in 
DC allowed anybody to play and we just divided the people who showed up 
into arbitrary teams. We always played with goals, but no boundaries. We 
were so hostile to the idea of taking our soccer more seriously, that 
one time we agreed to play a local club team who wanted to scrimmage, 
and later we were amused to find out that they had posted the "score" of 
the game on their website. That incident has been a source of amusement 
for us for several years.

Our anarchist soccer was the subject of some police surveillance around 
the time of the A16 protests in 2000, but that was because ASL had been 
profiled in the Washington Post and because the cops were scouting how 
many radicals were in town for the protests.

The Chicago anarchists organize their soccer like the Bay Area folks. I 
think I prefer the laid back style of ASL-DC.

Chuck0