``` ------------------------------- cell. (noun). A small group of people forming part of a larger organization, often an outlawed one. Used to organize a group of people like resistance fighters, sleeper agents, or terrorists in such a way that it can more effectively resist penetration by an opposing organization (such as local law enforcement, a hostile government, or your mom). In a cell structure, each small group of people in the cell know the identities only of the people in their cell. Thus, a cell member who is apprehended and interrogated will not know the identities of individuals in other cells, unless they decide to like, tell each other or whatever, cuz obviously that sort of thing should be up to you and not me. Cuz I mean jesus I make mistakes all the time. Don't trust my judgment. Tell whoever you want. ~From, The Dictionary of the Standard Modern Dialect of Distributed Colloquial Vernacular. Plus a bit of Founder... Mostly at the end. ------------------------------- STONEWALL ========= The first cell is called Stonewall. The cell's name is an exercise (or joke, if you prefer) illustrating a simple example of an abstract structure known as a diversion triad, one of the elementary objects in the underground socio-mathematical subdiscipline known as Geometric Propaganda. Further examples are left as exercises for the members. What is Stonewall? ------------------ We will spread rumors that the name of the original cell was chosen by a local group of police, who named the location after the well-known communication tactic of the same name, in order to describe the tactics of diversion, non-cooperation, and self-shaming employed by the group in efforts to distract and confuse inquiry into its inner culture. In other words: they call us that b/c we don't talk, even though we do, and the rumor's not true. We will then spread further rumors, claiming that the above rumor is simply a propaganda tactic spread by members of the group to hide the real nature of the location's name, which we will claim was actually chosen in honor of Stonewall Jackson, the Confederate general during the American Civil War. (We're "racists," remember?) This second rumor will appear more plausible, since it acknowledges the existence of the original claim, but appears on the surface more juicy and shameful, and thus just the kind of secret that one would expect a mysterious group to hide. See above thing about self-directed insults as a diversion tactic. In fact however, the name is not chosen for either of these reasons. The name was chosen for the Stonewall Inn. We will spread no rumors to this effect. "site of the Stonewall riots of 1969, which is widely considered to be the single most important event leading to the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for gay and lesbian rights in the United States. the Stonewall Inn had no liquor license. It had no running water behind the bar; used glasses were run through tubs of water and immediately reused. There were no fire exits, and the toilets overran consistently. Though the bar was not used for prostitution, drug sales and other "cash transactions" took place. It was the only bar for gay men in New York City where dancing was allowed; dancing was its main draw since its re-opening as a gay club. Police raids on gay bars were very common, often happening once a month for each bar. Many bars kept extra liquor in a secret panel behind the bar, or in a car down the block, to facilitate resuming business as quickly as possible if alcohol was seized. Bar management usually knew about raids beforehand due to police tip-offs, and raids occurred early enough in the evening that business could continue after the police had finished. The Stonewall riots were a series of violent demonstrations by members of the gay community against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969 at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich neighborhood of New York City. Around 1:20 a.m. on June 28, 1969, Seymour Pine of the New York City Vice Squad Public Morals Division and four other officers joined forces with two male and two female undercover police officers who were already stationed inside the bar, the lights on the dance floor flashed, signaling their arrival. However, the raid did not go as planned. Because the patrol wagons responsible for transporting the arrested patrons and the alcohol from the bar took longer than expected, a crowd of released patrons and by-standers began to grow outside of the Inn. This number would swell to much larger numbers as the night would go on. Writer David Carter notes that the police officers eventually became so afraid of the crowd that they refused to leave the bar for forty-five minutes. The riots spawned from a bar raid became a literal example of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and trans people fighting back, and a symbolic call to arms for many people. Within two years of the Stonewall riots there were gay rights groups in every major American city, as well as Canada, Australia, and Western Europe. The Stonewall riots marked such a significant turning point that many aspects of prior gay and lesbian culture, such as bar culture formed from decades of shame and secrecy, were forcefully ignored and denied. The events that took place at the Stonewall Inn led to the first gay pride parades in the United States and in many other countries. On June 28, 1970, a march was led from Greenwich Village to the Sheep Meadow in Central Park. Each year during the Pride March crowds gather outside the Stonewall Inn to celebrate its rich history." ~The Dynamic Readwriteable Free-Encyclopedic Repository of The Modern State of Human Knowledge. That was Stonewall. This is Stonewall.[1] Like, a new one. A terrorist one. Get ready motherfuckers. Here we come... -------------------------- [Footnote 1: Or, it will be... I still sort of need to figure out where to put it. Anyone know how to rent, like, I dunno... a business building? I mean, I have the money. Still have some left over from the old textbook-ish thing I wrote. And like, I'll happily pay more than I need to. All my interests are pretty cheap. I'm not really using all this money stuff or whatever. It's just... I mean... I've never started a group before. I don't really know who to ask about renting a real actual building. Like, I've rented apartments and stuff plenty of times but that's not like an actual... wait, nevermind maybe this isn't as hard as I thought.] ```