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Dec 20, 15

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

Originally posted to It’s Going Down

As we approach the end of the year, actions continue to against white supremacy and the police. Meanwhile, action in Mexico continues in the face of intense police repression and the growth of the narco state, workers across North American face down against union bureaucrats, and people take the streets in Canada against brutal police and austerity. Meanwhile, the global catastrophe of industrial civilization and the ramping up of far-Right forces continues full steam ahead. We’ll save some retrospective questions and analysis on this year for next week, but damn, what a week it was. For all of you that have submitted links and reports to us we thank you, but comeon’, don’t be stingy, send us some original analysis!

Police killed a man in Indianapolis this week, after which an angry crowd gathered that yelled at the police and even broke one of their car windows.

In Tucson, people took to the streets in solidarity with anti-police and anti-white supremacy revolts across the US. The main organizer, Tucson SDS, backed out after incendiary flyers were distributed. It goes to show you can’t trust official organizations, no matter how “radical” they claim to be. One mainstream media report wrote:

The group shouted “How do you spell racist? Tucson PD!” and “ACAB! All cops are bastards!” as it marched west on Congress Street around 7:20 p.m. Protesters held signs that read “The system isn’t broken, it was built this way – abolition not reform.” The majority was clad in black and wore masks, but a few left their faces uncovered. The demonstrators dispersed around 7:50 p.m. after returning to the Ronstadt Transit Center.

Tucson Students for a Democratic Society initially organized the event, but later pulled its support after some participants distributed fliers advocating tactics the group disagreed with, according to the Facebook event page….said the protest aimed to target an issue larger than just the Tucson Police Department. “The main point of this is that it’s not the individual police officers that are the problem,” he said. “The system is the problem.”

Protests continued in the face of the police killing of Laquan McDonald in Chicago, Minneapolis, and across the US. In both Chicago and San Francisco, people rallied for the resignation of their respective police chiefs. Unfortunately, there isn’t any possibility that a police chief resignation that will fix anything. They’ll just hire a new one, and everything will continue as it’s always been. Most of the time, calls for resignation originate from within the leftist groups and non-profits that try to take control of these movements, but seem to be easily picked up by anti-authoritarians as well. Instead of falling in line with the organizations that try to control or imitate social movements, we need to learn how to put forward real critiques of society and push struggles further.

In Philly, a rowdy protest stormed through restaurants and businesses against police killings. Also in Philly, a brand new bar in a gentrifying neighborhood was vandalized days after opening. Stay up!

 

In Montreal, another nighttime demonstration took the streets the night of the 18th. Protesters threw flares and fireworks at police who responded with tear gas. After multiple undercover cops were outed in the demo, they arrested at least one person and pulled a gun on the crowd in a scene reminiscent of Oakland last year.

In New York however, the fuzz-nuggets were doing a little rallying of their own. The NYPD’s “Strategic Response Group” readied itself for “terror” threats in urban settings and has already been a feature at past protests in NYC. The unit recently trained on Stanton Island, as top brass such as Bill Bratton looked on. According to the Gothamist: 

“We’ve lived in very interesting times over the last few years,” Bratton said as he explained the SRG’s three primary goals: crime reduction; terroristic, active shooter situations; and crowd and protest control.

“Safe from crime, safe from terrorists, safe from disorder,” Bratton promised the press who had gathered for the security theater demonstration.

While NYPD brass including Chief of Department James O’Neill and Counter-Terrorism Chief James Waters idealized the SRG’s mission, others have called the unit’s tactics into question. The SRG has already been deployed to suppress multiple Black Lives Matter protests in the past year and on multiple occasions police have used a military-grade LRAD noise cannon and aggressive arrest tactics against demonstrators, as well as members of the press. Early this year, facing outcry over the conflation of terrorism and constitutionally protected protests, Chief O’Neill pledged to separate the functions and not use the Group to police demonstrations, but the department evidently never followed through on that.

For the NYPD, and the State in general, all sorts of civil disturbances, whether popular uprisings or outbursts of anti-social shootings and terrorist attacks, are all considered to be a threat to the State. In short, anything that threatens the normalcy of everyday life needs to be put down with utmost force. Or course, for the rest of us, we experience things much differently. The alienation, poverty, technological addiction, and social control experienced in everyday life leads to continued outpourings of anti-social violence and mass shootings, while social struggle, revolt, and resistance to the State offers a potential way out.

At the time of this writing, 1,153 people have been killed by the police in the United States. But beyond continued killings, police in the US have continued to embroil themselves in scandal after scandal. In San Francisco, police there have bounced from racist embarrassment to racist embarrassment like a birthday party full of sugar enriched youth at a potato sack race.

Resistance to fracking has continued throughout the US. Check Hudson Valley Earth First! and the Earth First! newswire for some good updates.

In antifa news, the website AntiFascistNews.net has some great new pieces worth digging into, on the anti-police yet pro-capitalist website, CopBlock as well as the rise of the ‘Alternative Right,’ that is both White Nationalist yet also not (always) connected to previous generations of Neo-Nazis or the KKK types. In further far-Right news, the backlash against Muslim Americans continues, although resistance keeps growing in the streets. Fights broke out at a Death In June concert in San Francisco, and other shows saw protests as well.

In labor news, US autoworkers continued to face off against sell-out contracts imposed by union leaders, Chicago teachers prepared to go on strike, and in Mexico, teachers were forced into offering a truce with police in the middle of deadly clashes.

In Flint and Detroit, Michigan, anger continued to mount over water issues.

In Cleveland Park, residents protested against a slumlord, while in Denver police raided and evicted yet again the Resurrection Village in Denver in the dead of winter.

Protesters in Los Angeles stood on a sidewalk chanting and holding signs before sitting down in a circle as some sort of symbolic act against the continuing aggression of the Turkish state against Kurds and other marginalized groups in the country, as well as the state’s support for ISIS. If only they took a cue from how resistance in Turkey looks…

That’s gonna do it for us this week. We’ve gotta rest up and get ready to drop a big fat fucking Godzilla of a goddamn on you all next week! Expect more indepth roundups and even more surprises as well as your weekly installments of Bloc Party and Trumpism right here on IGD.

Before we sign off however, we want to give a shout out and encourage everyone to check out the No New Animal Lab Tour, which is poised to swarm NYC, the recently ended Rojava Revolution Bay Area Tour, a recording of which you can check out here, and the excellent podcasts everyone should listen to: SoleCast and Rebel Beat. We also encourage people to support our Cuban anarchist comrades below. Until next time!

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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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