NYE Noise Demo in Minneapolis Celebrates Spirit of Resistance

Report back from New Year’s Eve noise demo in so-called Minneapolis, MN.

Sometimes it feels like the only trace left by uprisings are their prison sentences. The streets are cleared, the stores rebuilt, the graffiti painted over, but it could be years before the captured ones can taste fresh air. This seems to holds true for uprisings both near and far.

Yet, standing together outside the local juvie on a balmy winter’s night, I know this is not true. Uprisings live on in our gestures, in our friendships, in our hearts. Much of the ferocity may have faded, and the weight of the present may hang heavy on our shoulders, but we have been been irreversibly transformed by the experiences of potential of those days in May. Myself, my friends, and countless others who I may never meet.

It is this potential which the state intends to capture, to incarcerate. This is why the state of Georgia is currently embarrassing itself with charges of “terrorism” against a movement to defend a forest that has held the upper hand since its inception.

We are still here, shouting “happy new year” to the kids locked up in Hennepin County for yet another year. Can’t stop, won’t stop.

—One voice in the crowd