The Revolutionary Cells (RZ) made their first appearance on November 16th, 1973 with an attack against ITT in West Berlin to point out the participation of this multinational corporation in Pinochet’s military putsch in Chile. In 1975, the first high-explosive attack was undertaken by the wimmin of the RZ against the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe, Germany, the day after it supported a new abortion law. The RZ wimmin naturally demanded the total right for every womyn to have an abortion, as a right to self-determination over their own bodies. In 1976, numerous wimmin broke with the RZ and formed their own splinter group and from 1977 onwards, the militant feminist anti-patriarchal urban guerrilla group Rote Zora (Red Zora) acted autonomously and independently, though some wimmin still participated in the Revolutionary Cells, which had by then shifted its focus to acts of clandestine sabotage in support of the larger anti-nuclear movement in Germany.

Red Zora attacked predominantly patriarchal institutes, companies, and persons representing and building up a male sexist society, which is oppressing and exploiting wimmin worldwide. They have conducted campaigns against porn traders, sex shops, international traders of wimmin (those who profit from importing Asian wimmin as “brides” for West German men), doctors who are carrying out forced sterilizations, the Doctors Guild (“We see the Federal Doctors Guild as exponents of rape in white trenchcoats” — RZ), as well as drug companies like Schering who produced the birth-defect causing drug Duogynon. Another popular Red Zora tactic was the illegal reprinting of bus and streetcar fares. In individual cases, the Red Zora worked to put together a critique of the peace movement in 1984. In this paper, they criticized the peace movement as a bourgeois movement with an apocalyptic vision. The Red Zora said that the major mistake of the peace movement was to concentrate their political goal only on the preservation of peace in the metropolis instead of discussing the imperialist context between armament and crisis: Third World misery and social cutbacks; sexism and racism.

In the first two or three years of the 1990’s, the RZ concentrated their actions on the issue of West German foreigner and refugee policies. Attacks such as the one on the Center for the Central Register in Cologne, or the kneecapping of Hollenburg — the Chief of Immigration Police in West Berlin — show the wide range of these militant politics. While those who were attacked were directly responsible for the racist refugee policies in Germany, the intentions of the attacks on the institutions involved in formulating these racist policies — whose documents, files and data were destroyed — was to procure a space which wasn’t controlled or regulated by the State.

Since the early 70’s, the RZ and Red Zora have carried out over 200 attacks against the infrastructure of patriarchal culture. Red Zora’s most comprehensive and successful attack campaign so far has been the planting of incendiary bombs in ten branches of the Adler Corporation, one of West Germany’s largest clothing manufacturers selling discount clothing in the FRG, produced by low paid wimmin in South Korean and Sri Lankan factories.

“The wimmin at Adler in South Korea struggle against the exploitation of their capacity for work and are putting up a fight against the daily sexism. They call for support from the FRG for their struggle. As a result, the shitty living and working conditions of wimmin in the vacuous production centers of the three continents and especially those of Adler in South Korea and Sri Lanka are becoming more widely known here through leaflets, events and actions at Adler’s retail centers. In these actions, anti-imperialism can be practical. So it was possible for the struggle there (by the wimmin in South Korea) and the struggle here (by Red Zora) are compatible: We aren’t fighting for the wimmin in the Third World, we’re fighting alongside them.”

— Quote from Red Zora, in their Adler statement

In 1987, when Red Zora and their sister group in West Berlin, the Amazonen, fire bombed ten Adler outlets throughout West Germany, they caused millions of dollars in damages. Because of this, Adler was forced to meet the demands of the textile workers, clearly proving that militant resistance can be very effective. Both the Revolutionary Cells and Red Zora have anti-authoritarian structures and a decentralized decision-making process for choosing targets. As well, they point out that militant direct actions are just one part of the revolutionary movement:

“Although we participate in far-reaching and extensive legal work campaigns and social movements through our militant actions, these actions aren’t of any more importance than handing out flyers or leaflets, going to demonstrations, having sit-ins, publishing newspapers, educating people, or squatting houses. We don’t have a hierarchical system for choosing actions. Thinking in hierarchical divisions puts actions in a perspective of privilege and makes it prone to a patriarchal way of thinking.”

— Quote by members of the RZ in an interview that appeared in Autonomie in 1980

One reason for the tactical successes of the Red Zora is that in their direct actions — militant as they are — they address issues that many people are already educated on and sympathetic to. For example, Red Zora has gained wide popular support because their actions appeal to the massive feminist movement that already exists in West Germany, where the anarchist and radical media had been doing much work for a long time to educate the public on issues involving sexism, wimmin’s oppression and exploitation, and wimmin’s rights to the control of their own bodies. While the RZ doesn’t claim as much support as Red Zora, in 1987, supporters of the Revolutionary Cells published the book Der Weg Zum Erfolg (The Way To Success), explaining their strategies, politics, and actions. Less than a week after the book hit the shelves of radical bookstores, the entire printing(around 3000) was sold out.

The high degree of effectiveness of many RZ and Red Zora actions wouldn’t be possible without popular support. By themselves, their actions might only serve to alienate them from the more long-term struggle. However, with the support of the mass movements, members of the RZ and Red Zora are able to work among the numbers of people active in the above-ground struggle without exposing their underground identities. In their herstory, only one womyn has been arrested for membership in Red Zora, but due to lack of evidence against her, charges were dropped.

Interviewer: Let’s start with who you are.

Zora 1: If this is a personal question then we are women between the ages of 20 and 51. Some of us sell our labour, some of us take what we need, and others are “parasites” on the welfare state. Some have children, some don’t. We buy in disgusting supermarkets, we live in ugly houses, we like going for walks or to the cinema, the theatre, or the disco. We have parties and cultivate idleness. And of course we live with the contradiction that many things we want to do can’t be done spontaneously. But after successful actions we have great fun!

What does your name mean?

Zora 2: “The Red Zora and Her Gang” is a children’s book about a wild street kid who steals from the rich to give to the poor. Until today it seemed to be a male privilege to build gangs or to act outside the law. Yet particularly because girls and women are strangled by thousands of personal and political chains this should make us masses of “bandits” fighting for our freedom, our dignity, and our humanity. Law and order are fundamentally against us, even if we have hardly achieved any rights and have to fight for them daily. Radical women’s struggles and loyalty to the law — there is no way they go together!

Yet it is no coincidence that your name has the same first letters as the revolutionary Cells (RZ):

Zora 1: No, of course not. Rote Zora expresses the fact that we have the same principles as the RZ’s, the same concept of building illegal structures and a network which is not controlled by the state apparatus. This is so we can carry out our subversive direct actions — in connection with the open legal struggles of various movements. “We Strike Back” — This slogan of the women of May 1968 is no longer as controversial today regarding individual violence against women. But it is still very controversial, and most of the time taboo as an answer to the power conditions that steadily produce this violence.

What actions have you carried out and what was the background?

Zora 2: The women of the RZ started in 1974 with the bombing of the Supreme Court in Karlsruhe because we all wanted the total abolishment of Paragraph 218 (the abortion law). On the Walpurgisnight (last day of April, "Women Take Back The Night") 1977, we bombed the Federal Doctor's Guild because they undermined even this reduced abortion reform. Then the bombing against Schering during its Duogynon trial, and constant attacks against sex-shops. Actually one of these porno stores should burn or be devastated every day! Therefore we think it absolutely necessary to tear the oppression of women as sexual objects and producers of children out of the "private domain" and to show our anger and hate with fire and flames.

Zora 1: We don't limit ourselves to direct or obvious women's oppression. As women we are also concerned about social power conditions, whether it be urban or environmental destruction, or capitalist ways of production; the same conditions men are confronted with. We don't like the left's "division of labour" under the motto: the women for the women's question, the men for the general political themes. Nobody can take away from us the responsibility for changing our everyday life. Therefore, for example, we have set fire to the fancy cars of the lawyers of "slumlord" Kaussen, who were responsible for a series of brutal evictions. Together with the RZ's we printed pirate public transportation tickets and distributed them in the Rulo area to introduce a little bit of zero-tariff.

Zora 2: Our latest bombings were directed against Siemens and the computer company Nixdorf. They promote the development of new domination technology for more sophisticated possibilities of war production and counter-revolution. They also have the function of remodelling labour, especially on the backs of women world-wide. Women here will be exploited with the technology of these companies by working isolated from each other in part-time jobs, without social security. The women of the so-called Third World will be worn out by producing these technologies. At the age of 25 they are totally ruined.

How important is the connection to the Third World, the exploitation of women there, for you?

Zora 1: In all of our attacks we've declared this context, also when we attacked the women traders and the Philippine Embassy last year. We don't struggle for women in the Third World - we instead struggle with them, for example against the exploitation of women as a commodity. This modern slave trade has its equivalent in the conjugal possession conditions here. The forms of oppression are different but they all have the same roots. Nobody can play cards with us any longer. The separation between men and women has its equivalent internationally between people of the First and Third World. We ourselves profit from the international division of labour. We want to break with our involvement with this system and understand our common interests with women from other countries.

You explained how you understand your practice, but you didn't explain why you organize yourself in the context of the RZ's.

Zora 2: First of all the main reason is that these politics were developed by the RZ's and we still think they are correct. During our development we determined our own content - therefore we organized autonomously as women - but we fall back on the experiences of the RZ's. We also think that the cooperation of radical groups can strengthen the militant resistance. There were productive forms of cooperation such as the actions against Reagan's visit or the discussion paper about the peace movement. But there are also stressful discussions. Sometimes men who otherwise transform their radical breaking with this system into a consequent practice are alarmingly far away from realizing what anti-sexist struggle means and what meaning it has for social-revolutionary perspective. Between us women it is also controversial where the limits are, when a cooperation strengthens or paralyzes our women's struggle. But we think our feminist identity unites us with some women of the RZ's.

Does that mean that you define yourself as feminists?

Zora 1: Yes, of course, we think the personal is political. Therefore we believe that all things social, economic, and political which structure and reinforce the so-called personal are an invitation for struggle, especially for us women. These are the chains we want to tear apart. But it is incomplete to make the oppression of women here in West Germany the only turning of politics and not to see other oppressive conditions such as class oppression, racism, or the annihilation of whole peoples through imperialism. This attitude never understands the base of misery: that the oppression of women and sexual division of labour are presuppositions which are fundamental for oppression of any kind - against other races, minorities, the old and the sick, and especially against those who revolt.

Zora 2: For us, difficulties start when feminist demands are used to demand "equal rights" and recognition in this society. We don't want women in men's positions and reject women who make their career inside the patriarchal structure under the guise of women's struggles. Such careers remain an individual act from which only some privileged women can profit. Women are only allowed to design and manage power in this society if they advocate the interests of men.

The women's movement was quite strong in the 70's. It achieved some things in a legal way. For example: the struggle against the abortion law, publicity about violence against women in the family, and rape as an act of power and violence, the building of autonomous counter structures. Why do you then maintain the necessity of armed struggle?

Zora 1: Of course, the women's movement achieved a lot and for me the most important is the development of a broad consciousness about women's oppression in this society. Also women no longer experience their oppression as an individual case or think they themselves are responsible for it, instead women come together and experience their strength. The things that were organized by the women's movement like women's bookstores, women's centres, women's newspapers, and meetings and congresses - all this has been part of the political reality for some time and is a strong part of the development of the struggle.

Zora 2: Some successes were rather an expression of the situation in a society which can allow women some leeway. Of course when they wanted women in the factories and offices they created more places in kindergartens, but this didn't lead to a basic change in the lifestyle of a woman. It requires a continuous movement whose aims cannot be integrated, whose uncompromising section cannot be forced into legal forms, whose anger and dedication to non-parliamentary struggles and anti-institutional forms is expressed without limit.

Zora 1: The legal route is not sufficient because the usual repression and structures of violence are legal. It is legal if husbands beat and rape their wives. It is legal if women traders buy our Third World sisters and sell them to German men. It is legal when women ruin their health and do monotonous work for subsistence wages. These are all violent conditions which we are no longer willing to accept and tolerate and which can't be changed solely by criticism. It was an important step to create a public consciousness about violence against women, but it didn't lead to its prevention. It is a phenomenon that the screaming unfairness which women suffer is met with an incredible proportion of ignorance. It is a tolerance which exposes male parasitism. This "typical situation" is connected to the fact that there is not much resistance. Oppression is only recognized through resistance. Therefore we sabotage, boycott, damage, and take revenge for experienced violence and humiliation by attacking those who are responsible.

What do you think about the contemporary women's movement?

Zora 2: We think it's wrong to talk about the women's movement. On the one hand the women's movement is understood as a result of long existing 11 structures, of projects, encounter centres, and of mysticism. There are many currents which do not reinforce each other very fruitfully, but instead partly exclude or fight each other. On the other hand new political impulses start from different contexts where women are becoming aware of their oppression and are radically questioning patriarchal structures and developing politics in the interests of women - for example women in Latin American solidarity groups, in anti-imperialist groups, in the squatters movement. Therefore the saying "The women's movement is dead, long live the women's movement!" is accurate. The women's movement is not one issue like the anti-nuke or squatter movements, which will not survive if no more nuclear plants are built, or no more property is available for speculation. The women's movement relates to the totality of patriarchal structures, their technology, their organization of labour, their relationship to nature, and it is therefore a phenomenon which won't disappear with the removal of some cancerous growths, but instead in the long process of social revolution.

Zora 1: The women's movement has never really analyzed its defeat around the abortion law and around the state financing of projects like shelters for battered women. It lacks a rejection of state politics. Also, it anticipated the turning point in family politics through the wave of the new motherhood in the women's movement. Also, the class question never existed; social differences were denied by the universalization of sexist oppression. This makes it difficult to find an answer to the worsening of labour conditions, increasing oppression, and reactionary family politics in the present crisis. The lack of a perspective for action in order to react appropriately to the attack leads to the dilemma of either going offensively against reactionary politics or solely preserving the unfolding of leeway for women. We can't solve this problem in theory, but we don't think the building of women's committees (in the Green Party) is an appropriate solution. The experience is that women do not come to power by ways which exist directly to exclude women and to stabilize and conserve patriarchal domination. Therefore, we consider women's committees which want to organize greater influence in parties and institutions the wrong way.

Zora 2: But in the meantime other important discussions and analyses by women which consider the future development of society have begun to develop. The increasing oppression, with the help of new technologies, is investigated from the point of view of the lowest echelons of our society, new wages and work structures for women are analyzed, the indirect structures of women are understood. Many women understand and reject the everyday war against women - the wave of hardcore porn and propaganda contemptuous of women - and the call of the society for increased motherhood and more femininity. They also understand that the setbacks in women's and family politics are presuppositions for the crisis and the new strategies of capital. The policy of population control, for example the change of the abortion law, is the attempt to have a qualitative influence on the development of the population. Among other things its aim is to multiply the "healthy" German middle-class together with state sponsored genetic technology, which is a development we have to prevent. Today we need more urgently than ever before a radical women's movement which has the power to prevent and break open the social and political encirclement, not only of women, but also of foreigners and minorities; a women's liberation movement which does not reduce the hope for revolution to a nice dream.

Do you understand yourself as being part of the women's movement, or of the guerrilla movement, or both, and how do you see the context?

Zora 1: We are part of the women's movement. We struggle for women's liberation. Beside theoretical commonalities there also exists another unity between our practice and the legal women's movement, that is the personal radicalization which can encourage other women to resist and take themselves and the struggle seriously. It is the feeling of strength if you see that you can do things which before you were afraid of, and if you see that it brings about something. We would like to share this experience. We don't think it has to happen in the forms we choose. For example, take the women who disrupted a peep show by drawing women's symbols and dropping stink bombs - these actions encourage us, strengthen us, and we hope women feel the same way about our actions. Our dream is that everywhere small bands of women will exist, that in every city, a rapist, a women trader, a battering husband, a misogynist publisher, a porn trader, a pig gynaecologist should have to feel that a band of women will find them to attack them and make them look foolish in public. For example, that it will be written on his house who he is and what he did, on his car, at his job - women's power everywhere!

How can you take responsibility for possibility endangering the lives of innocent people with your actions?

Zora 2: Why is it that people always assume that those who deal with explosives don't care about what is self-evident for yourselves, for the women's movement, or for the left? It's the opposite! Because of the possibility of endangering life we are forced to be especially responsible. You know as well as we do that we could give up if you were right with your question. It would be a paradox to struggle against a system for which life is only worthwhile as long as it is utilizable and at the same to become as cynical and brutal as that system. There were many actions we rejected because we couldn't eliminate the danger to innocent people. Some firms know this full well, which is why they prefer to move into residential buildings. They speculate with our morals if they move into residential dwellings to protect their property.

What do you say against the argument: armed actions harm the movement. They are part of the reason for increasing surveillance of the women's movement to denounce it as terrorist, that it's split and isolated from the majority of women in the women's movement.

Zora 1: To harm the movement - you talk about the installation of repression. The actions don't harm the movement! It's the opposite, they should and can support the movement directly. Our attack on the women traders, for example, helped to expose their businesses to public light, to threaten them, and they now know they have to anticipate the resistance of women if they go on with their business. These "gentlemen" know they have to anticipate resistance. We call this a strengthening of our movement.

Zora 2: For a long time the strategy of counter-revolution has begun to split the radical wing from the rest of the movement by any means and isolate them to weaken the whole movement. In the 70's we had the experience of what it means when sectors of the left adopt the propaganda of the state, when they start to present those who struggle uncompromisingly as responsible for state persecution, destruction, and repression. They not only confuse cause with effect, they also justify implicit state terror. Therefore, they weaken their own position. They narrow the frame of their protest and their resistance.

Zora 1: Our experience: to stay uncontrolled and to protect ourselves against state attacks, a strong unity is necessary. We can no longer afford to have every group repeat the same mistakes. There must be structures in which we share knowledge and experiences which are useful for the movement.

How can non-autonomous, non-radical women understand what you want? Armed actions do have a "scare away" effect.

Zora 2: Why doesn't it have a "scare away" effect if a guy sells women, but it does if his car burns? Behind it is the fact that traditional social violence is accepted whereas similar reprisals "scare away". Maybe it is scary if everyday reality is questioned. Women who get it pounded into their heads from the time they are little girls that they are victims get insecure if they are confronted with the fact that women are neither victims nor peaceful. This is a provocation. Those women who experience their powerlessness with rage can identify with our actions. As every act of violence against one woman creates an atmosphere of threat against all women, our actions contribute - even if they aim only against the individual responsible - to the development of an atmosphere of "Resistance is possible!"

In 1982, five Canadian anti-authoritarian activists, variously known as Direct Action, the Wimmin’s Fire Brigade, and the Vancouver Five, conducted a highly visible series of guerrilla actions against patriarchal, industrial civilization. When the five anarchists — two wimmin and three men — who comprised these cells were finally captured by the Canadian state in 1983, they were charged with a host of clandestine attacks on industries that represented some of the most notorious war criminals, environmental despoilers, and exploiters of wimmin and children.

The most serious charges that these anarchists faced when they were caught were related to three bombing operations, all conducted in support of massive public campaigns of protest: one against the Litton Systems plant near Toronto, where parts for Cruise missiles are made; another against the environmentally destructive Cheekye-Dunsmuir power project of British Columbia on Vancouver Island; and also a smattering against retail stores of Red Hot Video in Vancouver, where videotapes glorifying rape and other forms of savagery toward woman and children were sold. In addition, the Five were also charged with conspiring to hold up a Brinks armored car to finance their struggle (the hold-up never took place) and a variety of other weapon offenses.

Each of these actions produced very specific tangible results that assisted the above-ground campaigns they were meant to compliment : In the case of Litton Systems of Canada, there had already been an ongoing mass struggle of sit-ins and other forms of civil disobedience before their Toronto factory was partially destroyed by a bomb attack in 1982. These demonstrations escalated after the bombing resulting in Litton losing their contract to produce the guidance system for an advanced version of the Cruise missile being developed by NATO and the United States military.

But the actions that we most want to analyze — within the context of this article — are the actions carried out by Ann Hansen and Julie Belmas, two members of Direct Action who formed the Wimmins Fire Brigade and firebombed three Red Hot Video Stores in the city of Vancouver (Red Hot was an American chain that had built up an inventory of video tapes pirated from hard-core porn films). These actions are worth looking at because they are a powerful reminder that the physical dismantling of patriarchy is just as important and necessary as the dismantling of patriarchy in our minds. Wimmin’s groups had been fighting for six months against the Red Hot chain when The Wimmin’s Fire Brigade lit the way to victory with firebombs: Within a few weeks, scores of wimmin’s groups of all stripes had issued statements of sympathy and understanding for the action, demonstrations had been held in a dozen centers across the province, and six porn shops had closed, moved away or withdrawn much of their stock out of fear that they would be the “next target”.

The Wimmin’s Fire Brigade (WFB) actions were so successful because it was so well-integrated into, and complimentary to, the public campaigns. As B.C. Blackout, a biweekly autonomist newsletter put it, “the action of the WFB could only have the impact it did because of the months of spade work by many groups and individuals educating themselves, doing research, making contacts, pressuring the authorities, documenting their case — in short, building the infrastructure for an effective, grass-roots movement.” Since Vancouver already had a well-organized and militant campaign at work in opposition to the merchandising of violence against wimmin, the support was there when the WFB struck.

The support was also there when Ann Hansen and Julie Belmas went to trial the following year. Every day hundreds of female and male supporters rallied on the courthouse steps carrying banners with messages like “Ann Hansen is a Freedom Fighter Not a Terrorist!”. In her final court statement just before her sentencing, Ann Hansen concluded with the comment: “Businesses such as Litton, BC Hydro and Red Hot Video are the real terrorists. They are guilty of crimes against humanity and the earth, yet they are free to carry on their illegal activities while those who resist and those who are their victims remain in prison. How do we, who have no armies, weapons, power or money, stop these criminals before they destroy the earth? I believe if there is any hope for the future, it lies in our struggle.” As expected Ann was given life (she’s now out) and Julie was given 20 years. At her sentencing, Ann got one more opportunity to express herself, and she did just that by picking up a tomato she had smuggled into the courtroom and heaving it in the direction of the judge. It splattered on the curtain above his head, and he ducked out of the courtroom before he was called on to witness any further disruption of the courts decorum. In May 1983, the long-running canadian anarchist paper Kick It Over published a statement by Ann Hansen and Julie Belmas that was written from their jail cells. We would like to conclude this article with a passage from this prison statement titled, “We Are Not Terrorists”...

“Being womyn identified, politically conscious, environmentalists and determined to challenge the power and profit motives of the patriarchal society that insures the rape and mutilation of our mother earth, we refuse to accept their labels of us as terrorists. We know that there are many sisters who share our radical analysis of the issues around the charges laid on us. For centuries the authorities have reacted violently to womyn who resisted; they used to brand us as “witches” and burned us, now they label us as “terrorists” and will try to bury us in their cement tombs.

The State and its media are portraying us as elements of a “lunatic fringe” so that people will be frightened of us instead of relating to us with their rebellious spirits. We must not allow the liberalism of this society to hide the sickness of the rulers and rapers behind their institutions, laws and lies. We are always threatened with their violence, whether it be through nuclear power plants, nuclear weapons, industrialism, prisons or sexual terrorism in our everyday society. We will face their horrors boldly and challenge their corporate interests with the determination and strength of womyn warriors. We will see a resistance movement building, in an attempt to rid the earth of further corporate destruction so that future generations can survive.

It is not possible in this society to be a “liberated” womyn without being in a constant state of conflict and struggle. However, if our conflict and struggle is not guided by a consciousness of the magnitude of the problem, then our energies will be misdirected and futile. The womyn’s movement can not be a one-issue oriented struggle, but must understand and embrace the ecological struggle, indigenous peoples resistance and anti-imperialist liberation movements because the same patriarchal institutions that perpetuate our oppression also oppress the animals, the indigenous peoples, the third world peoples and the earth.”

In Total Strength And Resistance

Continually spinning through sisterhood

Ann Hansen

Julie Belmas

Once Again, this article is nowhere near as comprehensive as it could be: herstory is full of innumerable examples of strong, defiant wimmin who have utilized revolutionary violence in their own struggle for liberation, and to deny this or attempt to discredit revolutionary violence by branding it “male identified” is bullshit and an insult to wimmin everywhere. Political oppression can only be ended through resistance, and quite often this resistance will have to take on “violent” forms. Every real freedom fighter — whether they are female or male — recognizes this at some point, and stops wasting their time engaging in irresolvable philosophical debates and instead channels their energies towards the destruction of that which oppresses us all.