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Oct 3, 18

This Is America #33: Blood On These Streets

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Cover Photo From Femmes Strike Back PDX

Welcome, to This Is America, October 3rd, 2018.

We have an action packed episode for you today. After headlines and the news, we present to you a total of four interviews. The first is with someone from Tidewater IWW, who discusses their experiences while participating in Autonomous Disaster Relief efforts in the town of Lumberton, North Carolina, working alongside and in solidarity with Native organizations and networks. Next, we talk to someone in Denver, Colorado, who discusses the recent mobilization against the Proud Boys.

We then turn towards the east, where we talk with someone from the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement (RAM), who brings us up to speed with efforts to support the Vaughn 17, a group of prisoners going to trial next week that are facing serious charges for taking part in a prison uprising at the Vaughn Correctional Facility in early 2017. We talk about how people are mobilizing to support them and how you can plug in. Lastly, we speak with someone about this weekend’s past antifascist mobilization in Ohio that was successful in blocking a far-Right march at Kent State.

But first, let’s get to the news.

Trump That Regime

While the Trump administration has presented itself as “climate deniers,” or those who refute the idea of human caused climate change, a new report spells out that in reality the administration does believe in climate change, it just thinks things are too far gone to do anything about it. As The Washington Post wrote:

Last month, deep in a 500-page environmental impact statement, the Trump administration made a startling assumption: On its current course, the planet will warm a disastrous seven degrees by the end of this century.

But the administration did not offer this dire forecast, premised on the idea that the world will fail to cut its greenhouse gas emissions, as part of an argument to combat climate change. Just the opposite: The analysis assumes the planet’s fate is already sealed.

The report then argues that various pro-fossil fuel policies promoted by the Trump administration should be passed, because after all, they are just a drop in the bucket of the problem of global warming, which is already on a collusion course with oblivion anyway. This is not the first time that the Trump administration has commissioned studies which have affirmed the existence of climate change. For instance in 2017:

[In] one internal White House memo, officials wondered whether it would be best to simply “ignore” such analyses.

Since the Enlightenment and the spread of “democracy,” which by and large has only helped masquerade the nature of colonial class society and authority, we have been told a fairy tail of the “social contract.” In this bedtime story we are told that we trade certain freedoms for security from the State, but in reality, the people that are driving us off cliff literally know what is happening but have no desire to turn course. In doing so, in the eyes of everyone under the State’s rule, they should lose total legitimacy in having any say over our lives, and their authority should be seen as what it is: an occupation of force based on the threat of violence and imprisonment. 

According to a report from The New York Times:

In shelters from Kansas to New York, hundreds of migrant children have been roused in the middle of the night in recent weeks and loaded onto buses with backpacks and snacks for a cross-country journey to their new home: a barren tent city on a sprawling patch of desert in West Texas.

Until now, most undocumented children being held by federal immigration authorities had been housed in private foster homes or shelters, sleeping two or three to a room. They received formal schooling and regular visits with legal representatives assigned to their immigration cases.

But in the rows of sand-colored tents in Tornillo, Tex., children in groups of 20, separated by gender, sleep lined up in bunks. There is no school: The children are given workbooks that they have no obligation to complete. Access to legal services is limited.

In other news, Forbes reported on the first ever example of police with a warrant being able to force someone to unlock their phone using facial recognition technology, the Trump administration this week stopped giving VISAs to same-sex partners of foreign diplomats and UN officials, Amazon is hoping to dodge criticism by giving workers a meager raise to $15, the Trump administration is trying to weaken standards of how much radiation one can be exposed to, and NAFTA has been re-imagined between the US, Canada, and Mexico, and now is being used as another weapon in the ongoing trade war with China to out maneuver their global supply chains.

And now, resistance and repression news.

Living and Fighting

  • Neo-Nazis involved in the “Blue Bloc” we’ve seen at far-Right rallies in Providence, Rhode Island and Boston have been exposed by antifascists. Check out their report here.
  • Autonomous Student Media out of Austin, Texas continues with their weekly roundup column. Check it out here.

Michael “Rattler” Markus was sentenced yesterday to a 36 month federal prison term pursuant to a non-cooperating plea agreement, becoming the third Water Protector arrested in relation to the DAPL pipeline resistance at Standing Rock to be sentenced to a substantial prison term.

  • Protests in Carbondale, Illinois against a former member of the Traditionalist Worker Party caused the Nazi to flee the campus.

  • March in NYC was repressed by police during People’s Monday as people took to the streets to remember Botham Jean.

  • The L’eau Est La Vie camp blockaded the entrance of the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources against the Bayou Bridge pipeline. One arrest was made and one person was injured by the police.

  • On September 29th, League of the South had a small unannounced rally after cancelling their public rally. Their inability to hold public demonstrations would be lampooned later that night on Saturday Night Live.
  • In Portland, Rose City Antifa held a successful fundraiser, netting over $1,000.
  • At Kent State in Ohio, over 300 antifascists and antiracists held it down in the face of heavily armed militia members, Proud Boys, and far-Right goons. See our audio report on the mobilization later on in the program.

  • In Brooklyn, Mass Bailout NYC held a rally held a prison abolition rally and march.

  • On September 30th, the Front Range John Brown Gun Club held another free food and hard reduction event, which was attended by over 300 people. They wrote of the event:

Thank you to everyone who came out today. Roughly 300 community members came to hang out, share a meal, and get some supplies. To those who were present when one of our neighbors had a medical situation: we administered narcan, brought her back to the point where she was moving and making noise, and her pulse came back. The paramedics came and took her to the hospital. We don’t have an update but feel confident that she’s ok. We have narcan at distros for this reason. Harm reduction works, harm reduction saves lives.

  • Protests broke out in Portland, Oregon in the face of the police killing of an African-American man, Patrick Kimmons. Demonstrations remain ongoing.

  • On October 1st, rent strikers in Flemingdon Park held a rally outside of the Landlord and Tenant Board. Tenants continue to push for demands for landlords to make needed repairs and are also fighting evictions. Follow: #FlemingdonParkRentStrike for more info.

https://twitter.com/colefwebber/status/1046816429020917760

  • The anti-police occupation calling to #DisarmPSU remains ongoing and is entering its second week at Portland State University.
  • In Philly, around the same time that neo-Nazis generally hold a rally around a Lief Erikson statue, persons unknown pulled it down – and right literally into the river. As Idavox wrote:

Last night, the Viking Statue had been pulled from the pedestal it stood on for almost 98 years and is now submerged in the Schuylkill River, just a week before the Columbus Day weekend, which is often the weekend that KU holds their event. According to 6 ABC, the statue was pulled down by a rope by unknown persons into the river. It remains there as police investigate.

  • In Chicago, vigils and demonstrations continue outside of migrant children detention centers operated by the “Heartland” non-profit.

  • Mass rallies in New York against Kavanaugh take to the streets, many chanting anti-capitalist slogans. One person on Twitter wrote:

a thousand people chanting “eat the rich” outside of the fucking Yale Club best day ever

  • In the Hellbender Autonomous Zone, the tree sit is now 29 days old and continuing. Check out Appalachians Against Pipelines for daily updates.

  • In Philadelphia, anarchists and antifascists helped organized an anti-Trump march as the fasheeto made a brief appearance.

  • In Mexico City and Oaxaca, anarchists and antifascists took part in mobilizations marking the 50th anniversary of the 1968 student massacre.

https://twitter.com/UTBarstool/status/1047181423420084224

Upcoming Events

  • Thursday, October 4th: Mass mobilization in solidarity with PSU occupation and to demand police be disarmed at PSU. 8:30 AM to 12: 30 PM. Academic and Student Recreation Center (ASRC), University Boardroom, Suite 515, 1800 SW 6th Avenue, Portland.
  • Saturday, October 6th: Mobilization against Alt-Right ‘Resist Marxism’ group returning to Providence, Rhode Island. More info here.
  • Sunday, October 7th: Mass anti-racist and antifascist mobilization in Montreal at 3pm, Berri Square. More info here.
  • Monday, October 8th: Trial for the Vaughn 17 begins. The first trial will begin at the Leonard L. Williams Justice Center in Wilmington, DE. More info here.
  • October 15th – 18th: Anti-Colonial Land Defense Action Camp in NW Lake Superior Bio-region. Apply or ask questions at: [email protected].
  • October 19th – 22nd: Gathering in West Virginia to discuss ongoing resistance to pipelines in Appalachia.
  • Saturday, October 20th: Celebrate the 20th anniversary of the LA chapter of the Anarchist Black Cross federation. Going down in La Puente, CA.

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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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