That Time I Was An Anarchist...

When I was 17, I started the Anarchist Party of Germany.

I didn’t know the first thing about starting a party. And come to think of it, I also didn’t know much about anarchy; I just decided one day this was something I was going to do.

Did I look into whether there was an Anarchist Party of Germany? No.

Did I officially register this “party”? Also no.

I did tell my two best friends. They agreed that this was a brilliant idea and joined immediately.

They told me that now that we were an official party we needed to meet frequently but more importantly, we needed to write a manifesto. That, to me, sounded like a lot of work, and so I decided to leave the party following our very first meeting.

The next day, I formed World Anarchy, which was not a political party but a loose organization. I told my friends, now the only remaining members of the Anarchist Party of Germany, and again they agreed that this was a brilliant idea.

Now that we had started World Anarchy, we decided that we had to make a grand statement. Not knowing anything about anarchy wasn’t going to stop us.

We hadn't decided yet what our grand statement was going to be. We just knew it had to be big. It had to be attention grabbing. The problem was, we didn't really have anything to say. After much brainstorming, we decided to put the message on the back burner and instead focus on how to get our message out there.

We decided that spray-painting our message across city hall was the way to go.

I very quickly started second-guessing this idea; after all, we were anarchists, not barbarians. I suggested we take it down a notch, or twenty, and instead we could put our message on a banner and tie that to city hall. Enthusiasm for this idea was muted but after heated discussions we decided to go ahead with my banner idea.

The next day one of my fellow anarchists proudly announced that he had asked his parents for a bed sheet for our banner and they gave him two. I can only imagine the story he must have told them.

We now had bedsheets. We had spray paint. The only thing missing was our grand statement. Fortunately, we still had time because it wasn’t the weekend yet and we had school. We were anarchists, not school skippers.

Saturday finally came and it was time to make history. We met at our friends’ place and got straight to work. We still had no idea what to say but after much deliberation settled on “WE DEMAND WORLD ANARCHY!”.

Was this the most exciting message? Probably not. But what it lacked in originality, it made up for in clarity.

Excitedly, we got to work on our banner. Unfortunately, our first attempt was illegible. Probably for the best because it also had a typo. We tried again with our second bedsheet and this time fared much better.

We looked at each other and nodded – we were no longer three boys trying to find their calling, we were activists. Activists for world anarchy as per our banner.

We waited until very late into the night and then rode our bikes to city hall. Once sure no-one was around we unpacked our banner, grabbed our duct tape and went to work.

Almost immediately we discovered what I can only imagine many activists before us discovered as well: duct tape is not strong enough to hold a bed sheet to a brick wall.

We needed a plan B and we needed it fast. I pointed at an art installation next to city hall and we all nodded in agreement.

Two minutes later our banner was up proudly announcing to the world that we demanded world anarchy.

We jumped on our bikes and quickly disappeared into the night.

I barely slept once I got home. The excitement over our achievement quickly made room for fear of what was going to happen.

I was on the lam now. I was sure it was only a matter of time before the police tracked us all down.

I got up early that morning and rode my bike to city hall. It was quiet. The few people that were already out and about paid next to no attention to our hard work. The lack of interest was palpable.

I watched people walk by our banner, barely looking up, and after a while decided to go back home.

A few hours went by and the police never showed up at my door. Instead, one of my fellow anarchists stopped by saying he had seen a city worker take down our banner.

And just like that my life as an anarchist came to an end. My friends and I never talked about this episode again.

Probably for the best.