Anarchists March in Tucson St. Patrick’s Day Parade

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A small group of Tucson anarchists decided, after years of meaning to, to participate in the local St. Patrick’s Day parade. The core aims included drawing connections between the struggles of Irish prisoners and prisoner resistance on this land, connecting the Irish experience of anti-colonial struggle and anti-immigrant oppression to current, parallel conflicts on this land today and, especially for those of us with Irish backgrounds, to challenge whiteness itself from a race traitor perspective.

With these things in mind, we registered in the parade as the Bobby Sands Reading Group, constructed an anti-prison float, and compiled, designed, printed and distributed hundreds of copies of a small magazine titled “Memory, Solidarity, Liberation: Embracing an Irish History Against Colonialism, Nativism & Whiteness.” A reading version can be found here, and you can get in touch with us if you’d like the print and/or layout files to modify and distribute however you wish! It was put together way more hastily than we would’ve liked, and there are definitely some things that aren’t addressed that should have been. Feel free to add more, and adjust it to local stuff if you’re elsewhere.

Generally speaking, the float was well received during the parade. We were positioned between the local shriners (the tiny car guys) and the roller derby, which was a very good spot indeed. Copies of the zine were passed out as the parade went, and several people went out of their way to offer words of encouragement and solidarity. This included a few people asserting, “We don’t forget Bobby Sands! We were there and we remember all of them!” At least one person, totally unsolicited, explained to their kids that we were part of the ABC International – didn’t see that coming! Someone else told us that we were the only part that made them feel like they were in a real Irish parade.

Near the end of the parade, a real goofy TPD officer named T. Mueller came up to us and said something like, “Oh, so you snuck into the parade?” Thinking he was joking or something, we just sort of stared. But no, he really thought we’d snuck into the parade, which would’ve been a cool thing to do, but we were actually “legitimate” participants. He didn’t believe this, and tried to force the truck and float to pull over, which we didn’t, so he stood in front of it, effectively halting the parade while he called the parade organizers.

It is pleasing on a shallow level any time a cop is proven wrong following smug assertions (cop on phone: “These people are claiming they’re in the parade? They have a cage on a truck…”), but especially while being heckled by us and the rolly derbyers (cheers!) next to a prison cell with birds flying out of it in the middle of the street. It was also beautiful timing because this was right as each float was being introduced by the parade emcee on its way into the park for the festival part of things. So after this cop waved us along, the shit-eating grin long since gone from his face, we rounded the corner and passed the stage as the incredibly enthusiastic emcee read our statement:

“Greetings from the Bobby Sands Reading Group, live on Tohono O’odham land! This group of Irish-Americans and friends who tolerate them would like to give a small offering to the centuries long struggle against colonization. They find inspiration in the heroic resistance of Bobby Sands, who in turn inspired political prisoner Bomani Shakur, currently fighting for liberation under similar conditions to those Bobby wrote about when he was alive. Being Irish here in 2017 means that we are duty bound to support local indigenous struggles. It means supporting people who are caged, like Bobby was, by a colonial government. But don’t fret! The Bobby Sands Reading Group believes in us! And they would like to close with the reminder that our history can give us guidance if and when we dare to confront it. May we never throw our neighbors under the bus for crumbs. And may we long remember and love our caged and fallen. Sláinte!”

Many threw fists in the air and cheered as the statement was read. Mueller stood, stunned, facing the void of his impending and inevitable obsolescence and defeat, as those tiny little cars whirred around. The parade wrapped up and we were sort of surprised that no one tried to fight us, considering the explicitly anti-white supremacy, multi-issue extremism we’d been peddling to their sunburned kids. Later, however, one participant in our float noticed the police (specifically Sergeant J. Woolridge) grab an indigenous man and force him out of the park.

This person proceeded to follow them, filming the officer and asking why the man was being removed. To be clear, the festival took place in Armory Park, a site where houseless folks regularly spend time – during the festival this space was taken over to the exclusion of its usual inhabitants. The police tried at least once to assert that the person was being removed for public drunkenness, in a situation where the park was occupied by 500 sunburned white people drinking lukewarm Guinness in 100 degree heat.

At some point, while arguing with police about the man being forced from the park, the cop called over to the “president” of the parade, John Murphy. He defended the police, eventually tried to fight one of us, and defended his position by saying, “I AM this parade”, which was really weird. After a while the police were arresting someone (we believe to be, but not definitely, the same man who was kicked out earlier), leading to another similar situation. The people filming at this point were white and were able to pretty flagrantly antagonize the cops involved, surely due in part to a PR fear that it would look bad to haul away irish people from the St. Patrick’s day thing. Of course when they arrested the native guy a white person went out of their precious way to thank the police. Cops will often do a lot to maintain working relationships with white people because they need collaborators – this is largely the core of whiteness itself.

There were a lot of people at this parade who identified with the sentiments on our float, and a lot of people who took particular anti-colonial histories seriously. The overpowering effects, however, of whiteness, of centuries of assimilation into/participation in a colonial project, were revealed and maintained here in the class and racial violence the police carried out with parade organizer collaboration.

At the end of the day, the float, our efforts to share information, and our relatively tame interventions with the police at the very least attempted to interfere with the narrative of collective embrace of and participation in white civil society and support for its primary enforcers – the police. We entered a space that was marked as white in a more particular way even than the dominant society as a whole and tried to mess with that framework itself, predicated as it is on collaboration with the racist, colonial state. None of us are sure how best to do this but the The Bobby Sands Reading Group was one of many steps toward figuring it out. Besides that, it is an honor any time we are able to walk with the names of our dead on our tongues, and whenever we celebrate the still-thriving resistance of our captured. The parade was fun and we got to wave at kids from a float. Maybe next time we’ll throw them candy. Would recommend.

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