The Foundation of Derrick Broze's Activism: Becoming an Anarchist

Later that year, September 2011 is when Occupy Wall street launched in New York City. A month Later, I think October 4th was when the individual local chapters launched all around the country. And the Houston Freethinkers we were already around. And then the Occupy Houston movement launched. And so we go up there, we start showing up and kind of collaborating, and we were making the news. It was a lot of big reports in the news, local news, that the Houston free thinkers and Occupy Wall street team up for this protest or this action action and this sort of thing. And so we. We weren't necessarily completely aligned with all the Occupy Wall street goals or concerns. Definitely their. I think their. Their concerns, not necessarily all their solutions, let's say. But we knew that this was an important moment, an important movement, and we wanted to go there and be involved in it in some way and at least try to peel off some people and say, hey, if you care about activism and you're also awake to conspiracies and, you know, you're asking these questions and you care about individual liberty, come check out what we're doing. We're the Houston Freethinkers. And so it was a big time as well, where we were making all the local media, we were making the television, and just, yeah, it was a great time. And then that led into September 2011, as I said, Occupy Wall street launches. That's a big moment. But then also that year 911 came around. It was the 10th anniversary of 9 11, and I went to New York City. I had already gone to D.C. the year before in 2010. That was another big part of my experience, going to the Pentagon and stuff like that, as I was starting to question 9 11. But it wasn't until the next year, 2011, the 10th anniversary, where I went to New York City, and there was thousands of activists in the streets. 9 11, truth now. 911 truth now. Oh, man. For my young activist, anarchist self, that was like, oh, my God, there's a movement. People from all over the world, from Denmark, Australia, the uk, Canada, of course the US I met so many amazing people, some of whom I'm still friends with to this day, and. And it really just, you know, it just lit up my activist spirit. I was on the ground passing out flyers, talking to people about 9 11, debating talking points, and just, yeah, just really getting out there. And that was such a beautiful, beautiful, powerful experience. And from 2011 till probably 2017, I went to New York every year for 9 11. I just haven't in years. I got busy doing other things. But I do want to go back there. Maybe this will be the year. And that was just another big part of the puzzle for me. As I said earlier, I threw Alex Jones and through architects and engineers for 911 Truth. Just questioning the whole event in general. It was opening my mind up. And then as I was realizing, first through Facebook, posting stuff on Facebook and social media and connecting with other activists around the world and then going in person to events like 9 11. It was also Liberty Fest NYC happening at the same time in 911 as 911 in New York City. And I just was realizing like, wow, I'm not alone. Like, I'm having my wake up experience and there's this whole world of other people who are paying attention to. It's not just me. And that was, as you guys probably know, it's such an important experience to have. When you're a young activist and you're a young person just waking up, or even if you're an older person, whatever your age is, I mean, young in the sense that like you're new to the, the, the game, to the movement. It's always helpful to realize, oh, I'm not alone. There are other people who care about these things and I can, you know, I can actually do something about it and be empowered. And so that's all. 2011, coming back home from the bike tour, diving into local Houston activism, getting really involved that summer with art events and music events and then Occupy and then 9 11. And then at the end of, at the end of 2011, going to 2012, we started hosting this big music and arts and activism festival called for the community. And that ended up becoming a big thing. The first time we had it, hundreds of people showed up, the cops showed up, they arrested me claiming that, you know, there was a noise complaint and the cop pulled a shotgun on a hundred unarmed people. That made the news, went viral everywhere. That led to my first interview on Alex Jones infowars show. And yeah, I mean, I was just like, I was diving in deep and quick in my activism. 2010, 2011, it was, it was already becoming part of my daily life. Now Fast forward to 2012 and would have been August, I think 2012. So at 2011, going into 2012, the activism continues. The Houston Free Thinkers has become a force now in the, in the, in the city of Houston. We're having monthly meetings, monthly protests, we're doing info jamming, passing out flyers, passing out DVDs, we're hosting teach ins, we're doing marches and protests when necessary. And we eventually get A house we called the Freethinker House, where me and another activist buddy lived. And that's where we started to have our meetings, we started to have our, our concerts and our fundraisers and all this kind of stuff. And I was already, you know, an anarchist, a volunteerist at the time, because a lot of the people I was learning from, Adam Kokesh back in the day, John Bush and others, they were coming out of that Libertarian school again, coming out of the Ron Paul school. But we're already like, look, politics isn't going to save the day. So I kind of already knew that politics wasn't the answer. But if there was any little bit of hope inside of my young self, and this would have been 13 years ago, so I would have been in my 26, 27. If there was any little bit of hope of me. That act that politics was going to help in any way, it died in August 2012 at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida. I was there, myself and two other members of the Houston Freethinkers. We did a crowdfunding campaign, the first ever crowdfunding I'd ever did, and said, we want to go to Florida and document what's happening. We want to show you guys the protests, the marches, the rallies. We want to show you what's happening with Ron Paul. If you. We're going to make a documentary out of it. And we did. And so help us raise some money so we can rent a car and drive and pay for all of our costs and do these sort of things. And we did just that. And it was a. It was a fun time, especially again, for, like, a burgeoning activist. I remember being there in Tampa and we're witnessing the whole chaos of the RNC and the protests. We actually got detained by the Department of Homeland Security briefly, and it was all live streamed. And this is what led to my second appearance on the Alex Jones Show. And then, yeah, one other thing. Before I get to this even, actually let me take a step back. Before the RNC, in April of that year, 2012, the TSA with the Department of Homeland Security, they announced that they were launching this program called Bus Safe, where they were going to start putting TSA officers, you know, the people who grope you at the airport, they were going to put them on the Metro line, all the buses, which, as I mentioned earlier, I was a bus rider. And so this was something that was going to affect me. A lot of people, they didn't ride the bus, so it wasn't going to affect them directly. But they still thought it was a bad idea to take the freaking TSA from the airport and start having them randomly searching and bothering people on the buses just because they choose to ride a bus. And so we quickly rallied together. We went to the Houston Metro board meeting and, you know, gave all these fiery speeches, and basically within two or three weeks, we got the entire program shut down. They went from saying they're going to have TSA officers searching people. They did one day of searching, which made the news, where they caught a prostitute and some people with small amounts of drugs or something. Definitely not keeping us safe from terrorists, as they claimed. And then the Houston Freethinkers and a local group of lawyers and other activists, we just showed up at these board meetings, took it over pretty much. Then they organized another meeting. Two weeks later, we came there with more people, and by the end of that meeting, they announced they were going to shut down the program and it wasn't going to happen. And it's been 13 years now, and they haven't brought the program back. And that was another time that the Houston Free Thinkers made the news, and it felt like a real victory. Like, holy crap. Our activism actually shut down some potential tyranny in our community. That was another time. I was on the Alex Jones Show. And then fast Forward again to August 2012. We go to Florida for Tampa for the RNC. We're there, we're documenting things. We get detained by the Department of Homeland Security. We also have friends who are delegates for Ron Paul, who inside the convention and who are feeding us information. And we're like, reporting on this live streaming. Okay. We're getting word from inside that the. The. The lights have been turned off when the delegates are supposed to vote for Ron Paul. The buses were sent to the wrong places. For those of you who are around, you know what I'm talking about. Or if you lived through the Bernie Sanders thing, and if Bernie Sanders was more your guy and you watched how the DNC screwed him over in 2016, it was the same thing with Ron Paul in 2012. And I remember just sitting outside and we're literally getting phone calls of people like, yeah, they're. They sent the Ron Paul delegates who were on a bus to the wrong. They turned off the lights during the vote, and in the end, they literally just changed the rules so that Ron Paul's delegates couldn't use their strategy. They were going to try to. To. To, you know, get Ron Paul to be the nominee. And, you know, Ron Paul had such support, though, that the RNC couldn't completely ignore him. So they tried to get him to endorse Mitt Romney and offered him a speech at the rnc. He declined. But next door was kind of cool, was there was an entire festival dedicated to him, just called Paw Fest. And it was just all kinds of people, conservatives, Republicans, you know, libertarians and. And kind of more radical, politically homeless people like me, coming together to celebrate his ideas and to, you know, kind of champion him. But by the end of it, Ron Paul got screwed. We went home from Florida, and I was a committed voluntarist anarchist, as I have been since then. And so that. All of that, though, that, what I just described here, that's kind of like the foundation of my activism.