what the fuck is a pro police peaceful gathering.? the police are not peaceful. policing is not peaceful.
Make contingency plans in anticipation of police escalation. You can be at a rally and everything is okay, then police approach and get in riot lines. Have plans in case of a)riot lines b) snatch and grab teams c) dispersal orders d) kettle e) tear gas is deployed f)flash bang grenades are deployed g) rubber bullets are shot h) sound cannon.
The police do not ever need to be provoked. But we can try to be prepared. Make "contingency plans" with your affinity group/ crew. Have a meet up spot, what to do in case of arrest, who are your priority unarrestables (everyone) how are you going to get out? What to do if a driver is arrested? You can even intentionalize roles, create a communication system, have a buddy system and make sure someone is watching the police at all times.
This is so when police escalate we can stay organized, especially if you do not want to disperse. Preparedness can decrease panic, running and keep yall a little more safe. Fuck the police."
dystopiance reblogged
Dear White Protestors
As I walked through the streets of Berkeley tonight listening to the overwhelmingly white crowd chant things like “Whose streets? Our streets!” and “This is what democracy looks like!” I felt uncomfortable. I passed white people holding signs that said “I can’t breathe” and I felt uncomfortable. Then, when we were instructed to sit down in the middle of the main street that runs through downtown Berkeley and were made to listen to a white person on a bullhorn declare “All lives matter!” I felt invisible. Ignored. Forgotten.
Dear white protestors, this is NOT about you.
"Whose streets?" As a Black person in this country, I am well aware that the streets belong to white people. I am not empowered or made more safe by hundreds of white people chanting that the streets belong to them. The street in Ferguson where Mike Brown was murdered and lay dead for 4.5 hours should have belonged to him, but it didn’t. He’s dead. He’s not coming back. That’s because the streets belong to white people.
Dear white protestors, this is NOT about you.
"This is what democracy looks like?" You’re right. Democracy has always meant that (for reasons you’re well aware of but like to pretend you don’t remember or don’t matter anymore) black people are a consistent minority in this country and thus must petition white people for our basic human rights. Democracy means voter ID laws and poll taxes. Democracy in America is a white majority dictating whose voice matters. Democracy is white liberals telling black folks to calm down and go the polls (and vote for Democrat) as if Bob McCulloch isn’t a "democrat." As if Jay Nixon isn’t a democrat. As if our president isn’t Black and it hasn’t done shit to lower the ever mounting body count of Black people gunned down in the streets by police and vigilantes. As if any Black politicians in a non-majority Black district can get elected, much less reelected, without catering to white people’s feelings. I know what democracy looks like and it hasn’t done very much for people who look like me.
Dear white protestors, this is NOT about you.
"All lives matter?" NO THEY DON’T AND THAT’S THE FUCKING POINT! Black people’s lives don’t matter, that’s why I’m out in the streets, to get people to realize that my life has worth. I have to protest to get people to even think about the possibility that if the police or some vigilante gun me down, it’s not because the genetic defects believed inherent in my blackness finally manifested and I had to be put down before I became more of a threat to white america. White america doesn’t need a reminder that "all lives matter," it needs to be made to recognize and respect that Black lives matter.
It’s Black bodies that are bleeding and dying in the streets. It’s Black bodies that can’t breathe. It’s Black bodies that are seen and treated as threats to whiteness as we shop in Wal-Mart, play in parks outside our homes, walk home with a pack of Skittles, sleep in our beds. It’s Black bodies that have hung like strange fruit from the trees of this nation for centuries.
Dear white protestors, this is NOT about you.
Stop whitewashing our movement. Stop pretending that “All lives matter” means anything other than “HEY ME TOO! WHAT ABOUT MY WHITE FEELINGS! DISREGARD THE ACTUAL REALITY OF BLEEDING AND DYING BLACK PEOPLE AND CATER TO THE HYPOTHETICAL AND EXTREMELY RARE POSSIBILITY THAT POLICE OR VIGILANTES WOULD BE ABLE TO EXTRAJUDICIALLY MURDER A WHITE PERSON AND FACE NO CONSEQUENCES!” Black people know our lives don’t matter because white people’s hypotheticals matter more than Black people’s reality.
Dear white protestors, this is NOT about you.
Stop cannibalizing our movements with hashtags about every other life but ours. Stop plagiarizing Black people’s actual struggles for fictionalized white pain (I’m looking at you Hunger Games, with your whitewashed protagonist. “The Hanging Tree?” For real?). Stop scrambling to stand atop the growing pile of dead Black bodies to use it as your makeshift platform to secure more privileges and status for yourself. Stop using protests that should be about Black lives to exercise your white angst, break shit under the cover of darkness, and then bask in the bright light of white privilege while Black lives are declared to be worth less than the windows you broke.
Dear white protestors, this is NOT about you. This IS about making Black Lives Matter.
Our streets shouldn’t be burial grounds for Black people. Black people’s rights shouldn’t be put to a vote. Black people should be allowed to breathe, walk, exist, without fear.
So, if you’re actually here for making Black Lives Matter, put down your “I can’t breathe” signs (because you can, and that’s the point) and pick up one that declares Black Lives Matter (because right now they don’t, and that’s the point). Get off the ground and stand in solidarity as Black people “die-in” (because it’s not white bodies lying dead on our nation’s streets, and that’s the point). Hand over the bullhorn to a Black person (because your voice doesn’t need a bullhorn to be heard, and that’s the point).
And please, stop saying #AllLivesMatter…until they actually do.
"In an economic crisis such as ours the reformists will talk and sometimes walk to the left, using radical language, engaging in symbolic “direction actions” (like the symbolic and stage-managed arrest of union brass during Occupy, achieved through the hijacking and disempowerment of the larger struggle), and generally seeking to harness the radical energy that a crisis moment produces.
Once added to the ranks of the SEIU, new union members go from having one boss to having two, and the union helps the capitalist manage the exploitation of the worker, while allowing the worker to sometimes blow off a little steam. The relationship of worker and boss is of course never challenged, as the union has agreed in advance not to strike, contracts get longer and longer, concessions are made in every bargaining session, and stewards are often indecipherable from management in grievance procedures. Even materially speaking, the union in 2014 can do little for the workers actively except prevent them from taking the kind of radical action necessary to build a society based on human needs, not exploitation.
This is a delicate balance which contemporary reformist groups, from immigration rights to alternative labor, routinely navigate when they attempt to harness the political energy of people who capitalism has no future to offer, into reformist efforts which will ultimately frustrate their struggles. Attempting to cynically use people whose needs can only be achieved by revolutionary struggle is a potentially explosive gamble, and the amount of muscle groups like the SEIU hire to manage the crowd demonstrates they are acutely aware of this. And on July 29th, things almost got out of hand. (In reference to fight for fifteen)”
Report Back from #ontheground #ABQ Albuquerque Protests against Police Murder of James Boyd
Okay, it's important to make this post in light of the wildly inaccurate things being said about Sunday's spontaneous march. I would like to keep focus on the victims and on systematic injustice and violence, but I must condescend to debating facts with people who were not there, so listen up.
I didn't want to go to the protest on Sunday because I didn't want to stand around APD HQ for a few hours in the sun and listen to bad public speakers. I was planning to stay home and work on some music. The demonstration spontaneously became a peaceful march *at which point APD escalated the situation by deploying riot police in full gear at 2 pm*. I saw this on Thomas MusicJunkie's live steam and my blood ran cold. My friends were in danger. I had to be there to bare witness and do what I could to protect them from the most dangerous police force in the US. I ran out of my house and met up with nearly a dozen other people who had seen what I saw and had rushed out of their homes to protect the protestors from APD escalation.
Had APD not escalated the situation by deploying riot police against a peaceful march, I fully believe the march would have dispersed around 2 pm. Instead the numbers swelled and for the next 8 hours (7 of which I was present for) we marched and demonstrated all the while accosted by police using military force.
They deployed a tank against us. They threatened us with arrest and tear gas. *They deployed two snipers, who were ostensibly prepared to kill protestors*. There were mounted police. Dozens of squad cars. ABQ SWAT team. Police marching in a giant phalanx which at several points boxed in the protestors. The police were all armed with weapons, many of those weapons were military grade. They drove their police cruisers into our formation to try to break us up at one point, endangering the protestors (had people sitting in front of the squad cars not peacefully ended that altercation by ending their ability to move who knows what would have happened). They kept trying to communicate with us through a weak loudspeaker system and none of us could hear what they were saying.
It was *not* a riot. It was a non-violent protest. It *should* have been a riot as the actions of the APD warrant a response of no less passion than a riot, however the protestors did not riot. The police are a deadly force, and they were out and full of violent threat all day.
The protestors were passionate about ending violence in this city and bringing national attention to the killing of our citizens. We talked about it the whole protest and kept trying to think of new ways to further that cause. We wanted to confront APD and we did. APD as an organization has stood behind killer cops even in the most outrageous of circumstances. They are all guilty of complicity through the shielding and protection of the murderers in their ranks. I have repeatedly heard people say "I am down with the cause, I just wish the protestors had not been so confrontational". If you don't think the murdering of members of our community warrants at least a non-violent confrontation, then you are not down with the cause. You are absolutely part of the problem.
There were no journalists for most of the duration of the march. They were not conducting interviews or investigating or asking questions. No one was writing anything down. They didn't show up because they knew they could just get a summary from the APD PR team, which is exactly what happened. If your opinion on what happened that day is based on a news report, I'm sorry to say, you are almost certainly misinformed. The media was used to spin the events and trick you into taking a position that is not in your best interests. It worked. You were tricked. And you have expressed more anger about a protest you were misinformed about than about the wanton murder and mistreatment of the homeless and mentally disabled in your city. If some of the things I've mentioned (like the snipers) shock you because you didn't know, that is simply more evidence that real journalism was not done.
I know it's easy to be an armchair critic and also to get things wrong. Hell, I do both all of the time (seriously, it happens a lot). But if you really want to know what a few of the protestors did that has resulted in the protest being called a riot, here's the list as I witnessed it.
1. When the police drove their cruisers into our column, a few people spit on the cop cars that almost ran them down. 2. Two individuals climbed street lights. 3. A sign was slightly dented but left completely functional. 4. A few instances of street art took place by a small group. 5. I-25 northbound was partially blocked, but traffic was directed through the lane that was purposefully left open and collapsed the human barricade when an ambulance needed to get through. 6. A few individuals threw doughnuts which did not hit police. When asked to stop, these individuals did.
I like street art. Even in non-desperate situations like the one we're in. I like urban climbing too. If that's what you call violence (thus comparing it to murder and other real acts of violence) I think you need to reexamine your personal definition of violence. I've been to vegan potlucks that were more violent. House show mosh pits are more violent. Inter-mural flag football is more violent. Shopping during the holiday season is far more violent.
I-25 was partially blocked in order to make headlines in an effort to not let these stories of murder disappear and be forgotten.
While a few were gently placing flowers on the police they were deploying armed snipers against us and you have the audacity to decry the violence of the protestors.
We *should* have rioted. But we didn't. When they tear gassed the protestors it was because the protestors refused to disperse. When they beat and arrested protestors you had already condemned them based on your gut fear of anything that disrupts a power structure you claim to oppose but secretly cherish.
The people who may have annoyed you by not acting 100% of the way you would have (but you didn't act because you weren't there, so who's to say what would have actually happened), *aren't the same people who were arrested and tear gassed*.
The tl;dr version is this: The protest Sunday *was* violent. The police attacked non-violent protestors with tear gas and batons.
Police are the manifestation of the state's monopoly on violence.
- Shared via firsthand account, not my own
Question the legal media state imposed narrative of "violence", "riots", etc. #ABQPD just shot dead another person today BTW.
It’s not hopeless, of course. We will continue to go to fight against police violence everywhere it happens. We Go. It’s what we do.
Assuredly – “the families” will go, too. They will often try to assert themselves as our anointed leaders. It’s what they do. But we will continue to ask those we meet there, as our comrade “Spies” did at the start of this post, “if building a movement around “the families” of victims (around victimization and grief itself) is so empowering, then why would the corporate media, police, and legal system all conspire to help us keep them the center of our movement?”
And we will offer what Brown suggested might help us build together:
We will be “democratic to the point of exhaustion” and we will work hard at “developing the skills and practices of postmodern judgment.” We will stand with every community that rises from their isolation and pain in order to help create necessary, radical spaces where we will work, collectively, towards Brown’s “complex and diverse we” by continuing to practice some simple systems many “Occupy” alumni know well.
We will try to do this by showing up. By going. By engaging with ideological enemies, with those like our friends the Brown Berets who seem to have lost their way – their belief in possibility, with our black and red (or black and pink or black and green, or black and purple – but never black and yellow) comrades alike, and more importantly – with those just becoming (re)politicized within this anesthetized state of injury. We may fail. We may be called “opportunists” or “outside agitators,” but – as Brown suggests – we will alway be working on the streets to continue to:
1. learn how to have public conversations with each other
2. argu[e] from a vision about the common (“what I want for us”) rather than from identity (“who I am”)
3. explicitly postulate norms and potential common values
We are going to take the “I” out of Nietzsche and become “Wetzscheans” together. And in that long and arduous process, we will continue to create, take, take over and go beyond good and evil in this “radically disenchanted, postmodern world” in order to truly, finally be free – from the state, from the kyriarchy, from our own inhibitions, from our egos, from our jealousies, from our fears, from the pigs, from the moralizing families and from the rest of the fetters that bind us – and the liberalism that blinds us from seeing the coming insurrection.
We will always go and we will keep trying! With despair or with hope, with fiery speeches or with quiet conversations, we will organize and fight. Together. We aren’t the first and we won’t be the last to try:
Our aim was to emphasize will in a country that aimed to destroy you. Our instinct was to move towards the unknown in a country whose instinct was stasis. We fought for a day, one day that would end without the suffocating certainty that tomorrow would replicate it as all days had been replicated before. All our ambition was that the authorities would spend the night anxious even if that disturbed everybody’s sleep — but even so we dreamed of a sleep and an awakening untroubled by the authorities. – Alla and Douma, Graffiti for Two
And when they ask us, as they invariably will: “What do you think taking the streets will accomplish?” Instead of answering. Instead of arguing. We will turn the questioning back on them.
“What do you think a honked horn will accomplish?”
http://anarchistnews.org/content/why-we-go-taking-i-out-nietzsche-and-becoming-wetzscheans-together
collective article project
i want to write an article on 'protesting the police' like addressing all the what-the-fuck excuses liberals give for peace and body policing people who they consider 'disruptive' or who don't align with their agenda. if anyone's IN for that let me know, we can include our personal experiences or keep it otherwise. featuring priceless gems like: 1. "what about the children?!!" 2. "showing respect for the organizers" 3. accusations of being a provocateur 4. "do you want them to brutalize us?" 5. UNITY usually for like, chanting differently or stepping into the street or some nonviolent shit. or asking if organizers are negotiating with the police (what/! requests for information?!) that's how you know it isn't even about nonviolence, it's about CONTROL and containment. in other news, for ourselves we could also brainstorm a list of ways to respond or support ourselves and each other when these control tactics are used to control.. other... tactics/ exclude and silence ideas and perspectives outside the dominant political framework. because it's discouraging, intimidating, apologist and i'm unsure it's the best way to use patience.
we can even make it into a zine and include excerpts from conversations or common misconceptions
parameters include *not interested in reforming the police because it is already an institution build on the idea of reforming the individual back into society - abolish the police * not negotiating with the police
im writing an article on local politics and the no public feeding ban and its the same politicians as the gang injunction and oh my FLIPFLOP im going to lose my shit.
like i get so angry it motivates me and then i want to organize to delegitmize these fuckers via. fuck them and nothing REALLY prevents you from going to these protests and meetings and like talking openly about how ineffective and oppressive reform and capitalism are it just isn't exactly encouraged now is it? i mean they keep putting forward shitty legislation our communities are not even fighting for reform for ourselves we're fighting against the reforms being put in by pro capitalist middle class privileged political assholes.
we're not allowed to speak out of turn or when the speaker and program are in order and nothing is participatory so you really gotta like roll up in to their meetings and be non apologetically questioning and critical and angry and direct and they can go fuck themselves with their polite public relations games.
i see you pigs. just saying.
dystopiance reblogged
Memphis, TN - Organizers, community members and activists from around the country converged on the city of Memphis, Tennessee on March 30 to protest the presence of the Ku Klux Klan, which held a rally on the courthouse steps. Anti-Klan protesters were met with an extreme show of force by the militarized Memphis Police Department who showed an extreme and flagrant disregard for free speech.
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) member Preston Gilmore said, “The Klan isn’t the only white supremacist terrorist organization here in Memphis today. The Memphis Police Department is a racist terrorist organization responsible for the deaths of many mostly Black Memphians and their open protection of the Klan and harassment of protesters demanding an end to racist attacks on the city is a testament to this fact.”
Response to the LA TIMES: on "Occupy Protests Ironic Legacy, More Restrictions on Protesters"
EXCERPTS FROM THE LA TIMES: “Governments now regulate with new vigor where protesters may stand and walk and what they can carry. Protest permits are harder to get and penalties are steeper. Camping is banned from Los Angeles parks by a new, tougher ordinance. Philadelphia and Houston tightened restrictions on feeding people in public. It’s an ironic legacy for a movement conceived as a voice for the downtrodden.
When Occupy protests first fanned across the country last year, themovement enjoyed widespread popularity, and politicians responded with resolutions of support. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa even had ponchos delivered to Occupy Los Angeles when it rained. But as demonstrations wore on and public sentiment shifted, cities got tougher with protesters.
As Occupy protests threatened to disrupt the May G-8 and NATO summits in Chicago, for example, lawmakers reduced park hours, installed more surveillance cameras, raised fees for protest permits and increased fines for violations. Large protest groups must now submit to a variety of conditions to get permission to demonstrate, including spelling out the dimensions of their placards and banners, and meeting insurance requirements.
Cheryl Aichele, an early member of Occupy Los Angeles, said it was never the movement’s intention to prompt stiffer laws. “If Occupy made those things tougher, it was only because there was a pre-existing push against these things,” Aichele said. But there are enough new restrictions to hobble the Occupy movement, said Todd Gitlin, a journalism professor at Columbia University and author of the book “Occupy Nation.” Membership is declining and protests rarely make headlines now, Gitlin said. When the San Marino City Council voted to confine protests to a city median in October, they made their arguments to an empty room. None of the groups who prompted the law could spare a member to speak against it.” http://articles.latimes.com/2012/dec/06/local/la-me-occupy-laws-20121206
RESPONSE TO THE LA TIMES:
Dear Frank Shyong,
If you check city council records people did speak out against the camping ban, CCA and numerous Los Angeles city ordinances. If you attended the trials of people wrongly accused of battery on officers, cops perjuring themselves on the stand, city prosecutors lumping together charges to intimidate and (no doubt) justify the harsher public space laws and more surveillance funding (DHS funding local police ’ general services’ because they carry authority over parks and city management) you would see. Articles like these make wild statements and never bother to think about why these politicians engaged in some grand orchestrated show of support for a social movement, just to oppress it as soon as it proved itself unmanageable by corporate party hegemony (democrats who wanted some steam for their election games).
No one bothers to ask WHY majority democratic mayors moved together, at the behest of the CIA and DHS, to crack down on encampments that served as social forums for political thought. No one bothers to ask WHY in one fell swoop the media wrote off ‘the occupy’ and instead focused on cost to the taxpayers as soon as some political managers 'announced' the camps were closed although organizing continued in most areas.
Is no one willing to recognize the polarized party rhetoric and electoral machine that achieve nothing more than ratings, a few ballot cards, some facebook likes, a letter to representatives here and there.. all in the name of the middle class? A political establishment that ignores poverty and the working class, yet somehow manages to function as a nonprofit machine for ‘social justice’ while our civil rights are continuously violated.
I noticed you failed to mention HOW these new masses of ordinances are enforced and by whom, what the consequences have been. Instead, I’m not sure you are aware, but your article enables fear of dissent and reinforces the rule of laws whose role is very clear- social control, managing public dissent, criminalizing protesting and discouraging dissent. I don’t know what time and space you exist in, but any article written about the current political climate truly requires critical thought since so much of our perception is managed, as I’m sure you know.
At this point requiring a pretty extensive discussion on the rise of the police state, merger of corporation and state, and ever mounting fascism. OR did you think they were keeping us safe? Drones, anyone? The narrative of public safety must be challenged, though unfortunately it will probably continue be protected. These new city ordinances and police intimidation tactics are very clearly about the people assembling to discuss and address political issues themselves, having the audacity to rediscover interpersonal dialogue, instead of any privileged class of persons speaking for them.
In the wake of 911 (these discussions are not separate) since the Patriot Act in effect replaced the constitution, blatant fear mongering about terror, desensitization to war, humiliation tactics like TSA to urge compliance, Trapwire, grand juries (no rights apply), NDAA…. These are all tactics used by the state. Meanwhile, the LA TIMES writes article after article about city ordinances without any accountability, blaming protesters for grass, traffic, piss and shit.
What is more disturbing is the urge, somewhat, for observers and critics alike to victim blame those who dared speak out the last year in ways unimaginable to the status quo, which we know every mainstream vacuum of change caters to and creates.
The status quo doesn’t exist, you create it and you uphold it, take some responsibility. So to be clear, when you do comment on the political establishment, make sure you are honest about who is really responsible for the codification of laws limiting public dissent, or if we even have public space. (something tells me it falls under the jurisdiction of our so called representatives) Let alone challenge the narrative of what we can and should amass to do about it. And maybe, just one day, you’ll have the courage to question the governments authoritarian despotic regime. Whether abroad, or here with a carefully managed public relations based domestic policy selling us change and hope instead of direct action and community empowerment.
If not you will sit idly by forever catering your language and words in reflection as you watch countless terrors unfold here, in the United States, in the name of freedom, under the manta of democracy (which we don’t even have). Instead, perhaps consider yourself, OR EVEN SHARE THIS WITH YOUR COLLEAGUES, deliberately or critically engaging, researching and exposing the actions of the dominant narrative and elite. Don’t worry, I will not hold my breath. You, and the establishment you represent, cannot cover the revolutions of the Arab spring and celebrate them as some moral point while simultaneously enabling the narrative of suppression here. You have to be more responsible than that. We are not spectacle. You think we don’t know how it works by now?
We demonstrate. Police escalate. If they hurt us bad enough you show up, you immediately run the public comments released by the police. Which are all lies. Congratulations, tumblr is more reliable than you. Meanwhile, the impending crisis and shifting reality of resistance escape you. Keep selling ads, and don’t be surprised when not all of us are grateful when a ’ journalist’ who writes for a paper wants to get their two cents on occupy published.. without doing any type of comprehensive thinking. There is a reason safe spaces in Oakland exclude press, think about it. "Peace", love and resistance.