Banner Drop In Olympia WA

Submitted to It’s Going Down 

We dropped a banner over a busy street near the state capitol in Olympia, Washington. It reads “Olympia – Oakland – Oaxaca – Fuck the police (A).”

Here in Olympia it’s been a year since officer Ryan Donald shot Andre and Bryson, two unarmed black men, over a case of stolen beer. Ryan Donald is facing no consequences, while Andre and Bryson are awaiting trial for assault charges stemming from getting shot. Meanwhile the city of Olympia continues moving forward in gentrifying downtown; one condo is completed and two more are under construction, and poor people and people experiencing houselessness are swept into fewer and smaller areas in which they are incessantly harassed by police.

The city of Oakland, California has gone through four police chiefs in 10 days after news broke of over two dozen cops in the area fucking an underage sex worker. The criminalization of sex work creates a climate in which the police and johns – not mutually exclusive – can hold power to coerce sex workers into all sorts of unwanted acts out of fear of arrest or worse. This won’t go away with the decriminalization of sex work or with citizens’ oversight of the police (although decriminalization is important to improving the lives of sex workers), rather the police and policing must be completely done away with.

And in Oaxaca, Mexico, police broke through barricades and killed seven protesters in an uprising stemming from a teachers’ strike, one of the largest since 2006. We mourn the death of the protesters, while also celebrating the injury of 55 police officers in the clashes. We wish the combatants in Oaxaca strength and fortitude as they face down mounting police and paramilitary repression.

Police violence won’t end until the police and the institutions they serve have been utterly destroyed.