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. You can access open source graphics, logos, & printable materials to use on your flyers or distribute at your events: tinyurl.com/smashby
Reach out at SmashBySmashWest@protonmail.com for questions or support around:
- Sharing your event (or post-event reportback) on our social media & calendar
- Connecting to venues, artists, or workshops
- Resources you have to offer (such as space, housing, art production)
- Questions about hosting and lodging for travelers
- More ambitious proposals you want help collaborating on
We will do our best to assist you, with the understanding that our capacities as a decentralized, grassroots network may be limited.
Beyond South By And Its Future
SmashXSmashWest
@smashxsmashwest on IG, Twitter, Bluesky, & Mastodon