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Mar 29, 16

All the News You Didn’t Even Know Was Going Down

Originally posted to It’s Going Down

There has been a lot of talk about the mass shut downs, disruptions, and protests of Donald Trump’s gatherings (one such event is set to take place in Southern California this weekend) in the last few weeks. We of course welcome these events, but also push against the spectacle of Democracy that acts as a veil over the functioning of this system, as well as recognizing that all the candidates seek to be the managers of only one nation in a global system of industrialized capitalism. Having said that, this week we want to give big ups to all the vandals out there. We now humbly present the often overlooked and completely hilarious vandalism wave against Trump owned properties, campaign offices, campaign signs, and even against Trump supporters.

In Virginia, the home of a Trump supporter has been the site of numerous acts of vandalism.

In Jacksonville, a campaign office had it’s windows busted, been attacked via tacos, and someone even threw a trashcan through the window. Also in Orlando, Florida, anti-Trump graffiti was found on the street next to the home of a Trump supporter.

In New Jersey, police are looking for someone who set fire to a large homemade pro-Trump sign. In New Port Beach, the area has been decorated by anti-Trump graffiti. Meanwhile in Milwaukee, people went after a billboard. Trump billboards also met a swift demise in Chicago, while a Trump building under construction in DC got a redecoration as well.

Here are some other gems:

https://twitter.com/LaraBaldesarra/status/705082985104740352

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Meanwhile in Mexico:

Hahaha…a taco. Now let’s get to the news!

ACAB

In Toronto, a tent city that has begun outside of the police station is going strong, although it remains to be seen what will come of it. As seen during the Occupy movement, the tactic can produce amazing results—or just as likely, completely banal ones. We would like to welcome anti-authoritarians involved to submit reports!

Meanwhile, protests continued in Minneapolis, as a decision is expected this week regarding the police murder of Jamar Clark in 2015, which kicked off the 4th Precinct shutdown and occupation.

Native Resistance

Lakota people continue to protest pipelines moving across their territory, a struggle which we hope people in the local area and in the region can get behind and get involved in. According to Indigenous Rising: 

On April 1st, 2016, tribal citizens of the Standing Rock Lakota Nation and ally Lakota, Nakota, & Dakota citizens, under the group name “Chante tin’sa kinanzi Po” will have a Horse Ride to celebrate the founding of a Spirit Camp that will be erected along the proposed route of the bakken oil pipeline, Dakota Access. This camp will be called Iŋyaŋ Wakȟáŋaǧapi Othí, translated as Sacred Rock, the original name of the Cannonball area. The Spirit Camp is dedicated to stopping and raising awareness of the Dakota Access pipeline,  the dangers associated with pipeline spills and the necessity to protect the water resources of the Missouri river.

Chante tin’sa kinanzi Po is a grassroots group with the following mission statement: “They claim this mother of ours, the Earth, for their own use, and fence their neighbors away from her, and deface her with their buildings and their refuse.” – Chief Sitting Bull. His way of life is our way of life–standing in opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline is our duty.

A call is then made for people to support this struggle:

Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), owned by Energy Transfer Partners, L.P., is proposed to transport 450,000 barrels per day of Bakken crude oil from the lands of  North Dakota to Patoka, Illinois. The threats this pipeline poses to the environment, human health and human rights are strikingly similar to those posed by the Keystone XL. Because the DAPL will cross over the Ogallala Aquifer (one of the largest aquifers in the world) and under the Missouri River twice (the longest river in the United States), the possible contamination of these water sources makes the Dakota Access pipeline a national threat. The construction of Dakota Access will threaten everything from farming and drinking water to entire ecosystems, wildlife and food sources surrounding the Missouri. The nesting of bald eagles and piping plovers as well as the quality of wild rice and medicinal plants like sweet grass are just a few of the species at stake here.

We ask that everyone stands with us against this threat to our health, our culture, and our sovereignty. We ask that everyone who lives on or near the Missouri River and its tributaries, everyone who farms or ranches in the local area, and everyone who cares about clean air and clean drinking water stand with us against the Dakota Access Pipeline!

Secwepemc Elder ‘Wolverine’ Ignace, 84, passed away several days ago. Wolverine was a militant in the indigenous struggle for decades. As one report read:

While Wolverine was involved in multiple rights battle all the way to his last days, it was his role in the Gustafsen Lake standoff that presented him to a wider audience.

The standoff centred on land leased by the province to a rancher near 100 Mile House, B.C., that was used for Sundance ceremonies. The land, which was never surrendered, was reclaimed by the Ts’Peten Defenders in 1995 who refused to leave despite attempts by the rancher to evict them.

Rest in power!

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Also in so-called Canada, Mohawks are continuing to threaten to block energy projects on their lands, SWN Resources has pulled out of New Brunswick, and the LNG project at Lelu Island continues to face delays.

Ecological Resistance 

A hunger strike against a dam that would be constructed to provide power to LNG mega-projects in Canada continues. According to one report:

Standing on the doorstep of B.C. Hydro’s head office, a protester said Sunday she was tired and hungry, but in good spirits as she headed into the third week of a hunger strike.For the last 15 days, Kristin Henry has lived and slept in an encampment outside the power utility’s corporate offices in downtown Vancouver, with about six other activists, there to protest Site C, the $8.8-billion hydroelectric project in northern B.C.

Henry, 24, hasn’t eaten solid food since March 13, she said Sunday in an interview outside the tents grouped in the plaza near the intersection of Dunsmuir and Homer. Over the last two weeks, she has consumed only tea, water, and a once-a-day bowl of veggie broth with an iron supplement, she said.

“I’m still feeling pretty good, just really tired,” Henry said. “I’ve got no intention of going anywhere.”

Speaking of mega-projects, even as many liberals rubbed their finely lotioned skin together with glee that the Keystone XL Pipeline was stopped, anarchists were quick to point out that many more miles of pipe was being laid in other projects. Further still, this last week the Obama administration opened up even more offshore drilling in the gulf of Mexico and in Alaska. Meanwhile, many scientists are stating that global warming is hurdling along at an unexpected and unprecedented rate. This is even more of a reason that anarchists need to make clear and strong connections both in Native struggles against pipelines and in ongoing campaigns already happening on the ground against the pipes, fracking, LNG, and other mega-projects.

Waging Non-Violence reports on the recent victory against the Otter Mine:

Montana communities won a victory against one of the world’s biggest coal companies earlier this month, when Arch Coal abandoned the Otter Creek mine—the largest proposed new coal strip mine in North America. The story of how the project imploded is one of people power triumphing over a company once thought to be nearly invincible.

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To many observers, the Otter Creek project once seemed unstoppable. It certainly appeared that way in 2011, the year I moved to Missoula, Montana for graduate school. Then-Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer enthusiastically supported the mine, and coal more generally. Forrest Mars, Jr., the billionaire heir to the Mars candy fortune, had just joined Arch and BNSF Railways in backing a proposed railroad spur meant to service Otter Creek. Arch and politicians like Schweitzer predicted a boom in coal demand from economies in Asia.

But what they weren’t counting on was a vocal and active region-wide opposition. The coming together of ordinary people—first in southeast Montana, then an ever-growing number of communities throughout the Northwest—to oppose the Otter Creek mine says much about how land defenders and climate activists are learning to fight back against the planet’s biggest energy companies. The roots of this recent victory go back more than 30 years.

Capitalism vs. the Climate has released a new report about how the Governor Malloy of Connecticut is deep in bed with the natural gas industry. They write:

The good news is that politicians, crooked as they are, still sometimes buckle under strong grassroots pressure. Years of blockades and protests by groups and networks such as Marcellus Shale Earth First! pushed New York to ban fracking back in December of 2014. More recently, New York’s Governor Cuomo responded to unrelenting protests including road blockades and a vigil outside his house, by calling for a moratorium on Spectra’s construction. After dozens in Boston engaged in civil disobedience, the mayor announced plans to take legal action to challenge Spectra’s project.

Gentrification

In Tempe, Arizona, an anti-gentrification community group put on a set of public concerts, a photo of which you can see on the main page of this week’s roundup, featuring the amazing radical hip-hop act, Shining Soul, in the face of city permits and the police. According to one article:

The way the Vanishing Show works is on the day of the show one of the organizers will announce the location of the first set in the Facebook event page. That set will be played on a front lawn or porch of a house within the MAFW neighborhood. Then once the set is over, the location of the next set will be spread by word of mouth through the crowd. The crowd will then be given about 20 to 30 minutes to disperse and then reconvene at the next location.

“The city was trying to domesticate the neighborhood for developers and yuppies,” [one organizer stated]. “In their ideal world, all music and celebration would be corralled into restaurants, bars, and other venues that are easily controlled and taxed. Yuppies are workaholics and early risers, so they don’t like to be disturbed. Too much vibrancy! But Tempe has never been that kind of town. Ironically, the city was busy celebrating Tempe music at the historical museum at the time. Many of the bands they featured had played house shows in the neighborhood when they were coming up. Plus, I’m a big fan of the house show. My friends and I used to throw them all the time. I don’t want to see that disappear.”

“The main thing was just agreeing with the cops when they showed up to shut us down. It really threw them off! They’d tell us the party was over and we’d just agree. ‘Okay, officer, it’s over! Don’t worry!’ Then move on to the next spot. It was a lot of fun to see it working. I consider this hedonistic anti-cop, anti-government, and anti-capitalist direct action.”

The sign on a new development site in Philadelphia was defaced with anarchist graffiti, as reported by Philly Anti-Capitalist.

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Sadly, in Santa Cruz, CA, a long-standing community garden was destroyed by developers despite an ongoing protest campaign, in the working-class Latino neighborhood of the Beach Flats. What would it take to win that land back?

Prisoner Resistance

A riot broke out in a youth correctional facility in Nebraska. One report said:

Windows, doors and sprinkler heads were broken. Ceiling tile was strewn around a living unit at the center, and the damage is estimated to be around $3,000.

“I would call it a riot, a full-scale riot in this unit,” Mike Marvin said. The union representing staff at the facility said it started as a dispute over food and then turned violent.

A handful of actions have taken place across the United States in solidarity with the Holman prison uprisings, but lets step our game up y’all!

In Tijuana, Mexico, posters and graffiti slogans were put up in solidarity with Monica Caballero and Francisco Solar.

Antifa

Anti-Fascist News brought us this report on resistance to the recent National Policy Institute gathering in Washington, DC.

Rose City Antifa wrote:

There have been a number of essays recently about building a material force that can counter the rising extreme right. We at RCA strongly believe that these skills are best built by action in the field rather than detached analysis. What we currently see is an increase in the use of the term “antifascist” and a number of projects and events that have adopted that title, which is a good sign in some ways that antifascism is too on the rise. However there is a sharp divide between those doing street action and those doing research and analysis, with far more doing the latter and typically temporary disorganized bodies doing the former. We of course believe such research and analysis is important however effective militancy does not spring from theory alone and must be practiced and developed. We believe it is best if antifascists can hone these skills simultaneously. This way opinions and decisions about strategy and tactics come from those that have had successes at actually dismantling fascist formations.

Oppositional organizing is fundamentally different than mass movement building or other types of organizing. We think it is valuable work indeed for people to put their efforts into trying to pull the larger discourse in a more radical direction, however we do not see that as the primary work of antifa. Internet opinion making, academic analysis, and doxing campaigns without follow-up on the ground are not enough to meet the challenge of today’s far right. To us antifa is not a lifestyle brand or a general term for people opposing Trump. We are the people that the fascists are afraid of. We are the ones waiting in the dark alley, the ones that know where they live, the ones that get them fired and evicted, the ones that destroy their peace of mind, ruin their lives, and blow apart their organizations. We are the ones that fight the ground war. We encourage you to join in.

They then go on to give a link to ‘How to Set up an Antifa Group.’ Check it out!

Fascists and white nationalists are planning upcoming events and rallies in the coming months, including the ‘suit and tie’ Nazis of the American Renaissance in May in Tennessee and in July in Texas, the KKK will gather.

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Also, people involved with All Out ATL, a mobilization countering the KKK and Neo-Nazi groups in Atlanta, have issued a statement in the run up to the event in April:

We are now one month out from April 23, when we plan to confront and stop a neo-Nazi and KKK-organized rally at Stone Mountain Park outside Atlanta GA. This is an update on how anti-racist organizing is moving along and how you can help to make it a success, with info for those travelling from out of town.

The goal of the All Out ATL mobilization is to shut down the KKK: to prevent them from rallying and from building their movement based on violence and intimidation. The anti-racist mobilization may involve confronting Klan members and the police who protect them, but there are plenty of ways to be involved. There is no single way to shut down the KKK; we encourage groups to arrive with their own plans of action.

All Out ATL will announce a meetup time and place for the morning of the 23rd at least one week in advance. To get the announcement, sign up for emails, follow @alloutatlanta on Twitter and/or join the event page on Facebook. Share the meetup information far and wide once it’s released.

We are asking people to:

  • Take April 23rd off work! Also, now is a good time to make arrangements for childcare.
  • Print outreach posters and flyers and distribute them in your neighborhood, school, workplace or anywhere people gather. Make the movement as visible as possible.
  • Raise funds. We are currently organizing an Atlanta Solidarity Fund for potential legal expenses from April 23rd.
  • Make materials, banners and signs with your friends. Also, talk together about how you will contribute to the action.
  • Organize discussions, presentations, film screenings and fundraisers in your community between now and April 23rd. If you’re hosting a public event, please let us know so we can spread the word.

There will be space for out-of-towners to camp. You should arrive with some basic needs already provided for. Bring a sleeping bag, clothes for marching in warm weather, and cash for supplies.

See you on the 23rd!

Class War

It appears that those in power, both in the unions and in the government of California, have come to an agreement. They agree that the minimum wage should be raised to $15 an hour. There’s just one problem, you won’t get it until 2023! According to one report:

Hoping to avoid a costly ballot fight, California lawmakers and labor unions on Saturday reportedly reached an agreement to raise the state minimum wage to $15 an hour gradually by 2023.

Governor Jerry Brown is expected to make a formal announcement on Monday, but a source close to the negotiations revealed the content of the deal to the Los Angeles Times two days ahead.

“According to a document obtained by The Times, the negotiated deal would boost California’s statewide minimum wage from $10 an hour to $10.50 on Jan. 1, 2017, with a 50-cent increase in 2018 and then $1-per-year increases through 2022. Businesses with fewer than 25 employees would have an extra year to comply, delaying their workers receiving a $15 hourly wage until 2023,” the Times reports.

A minimum wage initiative that would have raised the wage to $15 by 2021, which was championed by SEIU United Healthcare Workers West, had recently qualified for the November ballot forcing state lawmakers to take swift action.

“For Brown, it’s political pragmatism,” the Times reports, “numerous statewide polls have suggested voters would approve a minimum wage proposal—perhaps even a more sweeping version—if given the chance.”

The idea that in the current economy, $15 an hour is a living wage is ridiculous. But the assumption that $15 an hour 7 years from now would be a living wage is even more ridiculous (and probably would equate to an even lower wage). The cost of living, food, transportation, and housing all continue to rise – as does the anger of poor and working people. By working together, the government and the union bosses are able to appear “progressive” while hoping to keep down the militant sections of the Fight for $15 movement. In projecting these incremental raises over a long period of time, workers will further be trapped in poverty.

Hopefully the fast food and low-income workers mobilized by these union backed movements will see through this bullshit and keep the pressure on. Regardless of what Bernie Sanders, the Democrats, or the unions try and sell us.

Students involved in an occupation at UC Davis have released another video that calls for the firing of Chancellor Katehi. Check it out here on indybay.org. Also in California, faculty in the California State University (CSU) system are set to go on strike in a matter of weeks across the state over issues of pay. This classes out, seems like a perfect time to take a building and hold classes for ourselves! Nurses in LA also just finished a week long strike over conditions.

Also in Chicago, teachers there are set to walk out over horrible conditions in public schools. Hopefully kids can join them, or better yet, take over their schools and fix the problems themselves!

In Michigan, Obama is set to cut emergency aid to Flint. According to one report:

The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) assistance being provided to Flint as a result of the Obama administration’s limited declaration of an emergency over the lead poisoning of the city’s water was due to expire in mid April. On March 25, FEMA sent a letter to the state of Michigan informing it of a limited four-month extension, at which point “no further extensions will be granted.”

This is a slap in the face for the people of Flint, who have been fighting to have their complaints and concerns heard for almost two years after the city’s water source was switched to the corrosive Flint River. Five months after the city’s water source was finally switched back to the treated Lake Huron water supplied by Detroit, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is still advising Flint residents not to drink, cook or brush their teeth with the still-toxic tap water.

Shout-Outs

Our comrades Sole and DJ Pain 1 have completed their kickstarter and have started to put out the music from their new album, Nihilismo. They’re about to go on tour, so go see them!  One of the first singles, ‘Capitalism is Tearing Us Apart‘ appears at the top of this post. Listen to it and then curse us for making the song stuck in your head. “…Like a John Mayer sing along…”

Rose City Antifa has some new items in stock, from those kick-ass big scarf things people hold up at soccer events looking all tuff-n-stuff, to little buttons and shirts. Support them and check it out!

Militants on Lelu Island need your support to keep their encampment against an LNG mega-project going! They write:

Since August 25, 2015, we have been occupying Lax U’u’la, “place where the seals are,” also known as Lelu Island and Flora Banks, territory of the Gitwilgyots Tribe, House of Gwishawaal, to practice our Aboriginal rights and title. By doing this we legally prevent and slow surveying, work, and construction of the Pacific Northwest LNG/liquefied fracked methane project proposed near Port Edward, BC.

We’re continuing to build structures on the island and have plans to build a smokehouse; a traditional longhouse; gardens; and a workout/training stage; and places to hold cultural workshops and traditional dance events. We continue to harvest foods, medicines from the island and waters and are preparing to harvest our spring cedar bark for weaving.

Kick em down some cash here.

It’s Going Down

Thanks for sending tweets and pictures of the IGD magazines people have gotten. If you haven’t already, please do so! If you want to print your own copy, check out the PDF here.

We’re already 9 months into the website! By June 2016, on our 1 year anniversary, we hope to conduct a site relaunch and redesign, but we want to remind people that this is an open project. If you like what you see and you want to help out or you want to make IGD better, get involved! We need people to write columns, edit articles, translate things, and also be involved in the day to do tasks of making this project happen. But above all, send stuff to us! Tell us what is happening and going down in your town! As you can see in this round up, it doesn’t matter if you are out in a rural town or in a big city, we want to hear what is happening. If you feel like you want to step up to the plate, email us at: info [at] itsgoingdown.org

Until next time, stay up with us here.

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In search of new forms of life. It's Going Down is a digital community center and media platform featuring news, opinion, podcasts, and reporting on autonomous social movements and revolt across so-called North America from an anarchist perspective.

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