Convergences
Since the summer of 2002, CrimethInc. has hosted annual conventions, termed "convergences", open to anyone. Typically featuring the performances of traveling theatrical troupes, musicians, direct-action and mutual-aid workshops from individual participants, the few-days-long camping trips have attracted coverage in newspaper articles, initiated multiple Reclaim the Streets actions, mobilized large Critical Mass events, and catalyzed many other activities.
The 2007 convergence in Athens, Ohio, saw an impromptu street party which resulted in arrests on minor charges.[24] The Athens News characterized the convergence as "a sort of networking, resume-swapping opportunity for would-be radicals, free-thinkers, Levellers, Diggers, Neo-Luddites, and other assorted malcontents."[25] It is typical of these gatherings to require that all attendees have something to contribute to the momentum: whether it is bringing food or equipment to share, leading a discussion group, or providing materials with which to write to political prisoners. There has been a pattern of promoting convergences as festivals, reminiscent of barnstorming flying circuses and travelling sideshows.[26]
Harper's journalist Matthew Power described the 2006 convergence in Winona, Minnesota, as follows: "Several hundred young anarchists from around the country had train-hopped and hitchhiked there to attend the annual event known as the CrimethInc Convergence...Grimy and feral-looking, the CrimethInc kids squatted in small groups around a clearing...[they] were in the middle of several days of self-organized workshops, seminars, and discussions, ranging from the mutualist banking theories of the nineteenth-century anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, to an introductory practicum on lock-picking, to a class on making one's own menstrual pads ... CrimethInc's adherents had come together there because they wanted to live their lives as some sort of solution. They saw 'the revolution' not as a final product but as an ongoing process; they wanted not just to destroy the capitalist system but to create something livable in its place.[15]"
These convergences have been hosted by different groups within the collective each time, typically based on the initiative of local enthusiasts. Every year a different set of policy requests is released from locals in the field, typically encouraging a sober, consensus-based space in which no financial transactions are made. The one firm rule has been "No police informants", a regulation which has been ignored by the FBI. Information gathered by FBI informants at CrimethInc. convergences (in 2004, 2005, and 2008) contributed to the convictions of Eric McDavid and his associates, as well as 2008 Republican National Convention protester Matthew DePalma.[27][28][29]
In 2010, CrimethInc. announced the We Are Everywhere campaign of national tours and events in lieu of the traditional convergence.[30] In 2015, CrimethInc. embarked on the similar To Change Everything two-month tour of the United States.[31][32]
