The Outside Agitator (206)
A Seattle Black Liberation Newsletter, 2015
Outside-Agitator-206_1_MLK-Day-2015
Outside-Agitator-206_2_March-2015
Outside Agitators (206) collective was founded during the first wave of Black Lives Matter protests following Michael Brown’s 2014 murder by the police. Their name referenced an old racist myth that protests for black liberation were driven by usually white “outsiders” rather than folks within the community. The group was loosely organized around four points of unity:
- We center Black voices to celebrate and affirm Blackness. We believe that any movement to end anti-Black racism must be led by Black people.
- We believe that everyone has a right to resist their oppressors and what resistance looks like varies for different individuals and different circumstances.
- We don’t directly speak to corporate media, nor do we need them. We are our own voice.
- Fuck the police: As an institution fundamentally rooted in white supremacy and anti-Blackness we reject the police presence in our communities, absolutely. It is our responsibility to hold each other accountable and keep each other safe.
OA206 organized several protests around Seattle throughout 2015 including large marches and walkouts at the University of Washington (also recounted in “State of Emergency” of the newsletter issue 2). The group also held various education events. Some controversial members made headlines for interrupting presidential candidate Bernie Sanders during a June campaign stop in Seattle; media reported OA206s involvement though the rest of the collective had apparently not even been informed.
The Outside Agitator (206) was OA206’s newsletter. Two issues were published in 2015, one for Martin Luther King Day (January) and the other in March. While short-lived the newsletter contains valuable content, from poetry and playlists to accounts of gentrification and past struggles with political co-option. Tales of black history sit alongside individuals accounts of police brutality, reportbacks from protests, and passionate appeals to fight for black liberation.
The same friend’s closet that produced our blog’s other recent digitized contributions held a copy of the OA206 newsletter. Finding a wayback archive was difficult until a little digging revealed the URL of their site to be different than that originally printed in the newsletter (outsideagitator206.com vs outsideagitators206.org). On the wayback machine archive of the site we found PDF copies of both issues of the newsletter. The site was also updated with new articles through early 2016, offering commentary on events like the police eviction of the homeless Camp Dearborn, an attempted march by Hammerskin Neo-Nazis, and various protests against gentrification and racist capitalism.