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Jun 18, 18

This Is America #10: Anti-ICE Actions Growing Across US

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Welcome to This Is America, June 18th, 2018.

#MarchToTornillo

On Father’s Day, thousands marched in West Texas and converged on a site where undocumented children are being separated from their parents and then housed in tent cities.

Dallas News wrote:

Tornillo is about a 40-minute drive from El Paso, where temperatures have lately hovered around 100 degrees. Authorities say the tents where the minors are being held are air-conditioned.

About 200 children are in custody there now, but with the capacity for thousands, many more could arrive in the days and weeks ahead.

The initial protest was called by Beto O’Rourke, a Democratic challenger of Ted Cruz, who was also joined by Centrist Democratic politician Joe Kennedy. While the demonstrations showed the ability of the Democratic Party to tap into mass anger at the Trump administration, it also show showed the potential for that mass anger to potentially grow outside of the hands of the DNC, which of course has built up this massive apparatus of deportation and repression.

Across the US, there is an uptick of action against ICE, spread largely due to attacks on undocumented children. Anarchists should seize on this moment, calling for the abolition of ICE as an agency, and not just the end of a certain policy aspects. With more demonstrations being called every day, now is the time to come up with a plan, gather supplies, and crew up.

Always Tired

Do you always feel tired?

More and more studies point to millennials not getting enough sleep, as well as the mired of contributing factors which are causing us to lose it. A new study shows that 7 in 10 millennials wake up in the middle of the night worrying about stress factors in their life, from the state of the world to their bank accounts. Around 91% reported that stress negatively impacted their sleep routines, while 45% report that stress causes them to toss and turn throughout the night. A larger majority reported starting the day with a sense of fatigue.

Ironically, the hectic pace of modern capitalist life is also taking a bite out of worker productivity, as one study found that upwards of $411 billion is lost each year due to people’s erratic sleep patterns. Even more ironic and disturbing, is that other studies show that on average millennials are sleeping more than previous generations, but still can’t seem to get enough.

What is bringing us to this reality is both the pace of the modern world, as well as our drive to better manage it, as opposed to getting rid of it all together. One article for instance: Millennials: The Tired Generation, ends by suggesting what kind of apps we can download to better manage out time in order to get to sleep faster.

More and more, sleep, which many scientists now say adults need at least 8.5 a night of, is being putting off by milleannials until we can find time for it, as millions turn towards energy drinks, drugs, and coffee. All this is also happening at a time when already around 50% of the millennial workforce is working in “freelance” “gig economy work. With these trends only expected to grow and increase across the social terrain, the prospects for getting a good night’s sleep continue to drift away in a murky memory.

Thus, if we are to construct a vision of a world in common, where the means of existence are controlled and operated not by States or private for-profit firms, but instead collectives, communes, neighborhoods, and communities, where human labor goes towards need, joy, and creation, instead of profit, then we should also re-think our relationship to sleep. Not as something that can moved around at a whim – that we fit into our lives at the last minute, but instead an important and healthy part of our lives.

Workers of the world! Get some sleep!

5 Die Fleeing Border Patrol

In Big Wells, Texas:

Five people died and several more were injured near the US-Mexico border Sunday when US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and local police pursued a car full of immigrants at speeds of over 100 miles per hour. The driver of the large SUV carrying 12 immigrants lost control and flipped several times, throwing bodies across Highway 85 in Big Wells, Texas, fifty miles north of the border.

With body bags and the charred remains of the SUV nearby, Dimmit County Sheriff Marion Boyd told the press that the pursuit was “good police work” and called for the construction of a wall along the US-Mexico border. Immigrants, he said, are a “real problem.”

The crash is the latest link in a chain of escalating violence perpetrated by the government against immigrants both at the border and in the interior of the US. Yesterday was Father’s Day and some 2,000 immigrant children spent the day locked up in detention centers where they have been detained after being separated from both parents as part of the “zero tolerance” policy carried out by the Trump administration since May.

Alt-Lite Civil War

Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), on June 14th released an internal memo addressing its members, and warning them about the dangers of another youth based conservative group, Turning Point USA, led by pro-Trump trust fund culture warrior, Charlie Kirk.

In short, the memo alleges that TPUSA has greatly lied about it’s numbers of supporters, misappropriated funds, and also holds associations with members of the Alt-Right and neo-Nazis. It should also be pointed out that in the past, former members of YAF have also in turn gone on to become key players in the white nationalist movement.

According to an article from the SPLC:

In a May 25 memo released publicly by YAF on June 14, YAF attacks TPUSA and its founder, 24-year-old Charlie Kirk, on multiple fronts, not least of all accusing TPUSA of “Boosting Numbers With Racists & Nazi Sympathizers.”

TPUSA’s flirtation with racists and racism is well documented. In a December 2017 expose in The New Yorker, reporter Jane Mayer was provided screenshots of a text message from TPUSA’s (now former) national field director, Crystal Clanton, that read, “i hate black people. Like fuck them all… I hate blacks. End of story.”

Kirk himself has been criticized for his anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim tweets, and he habitually tweets out racist dog-whistles with statements like, “It would take 40 years worth of blacks killed by cops to equal the number of black [sic] killed by other blacks in one year.”

Living and Fighting

  • In Austin, anarchists dropped a banner outside of a prison facility against prison slavery.

On Tuesday, June 19, 2018 at 10 a.m., MOVE member Debbie Africa will make her first public appearance since being released from prison after 39 years and 10 months of incarceration. Debbie will be speaking at a press conference that will be held at Faith Immanuel Lutheran Church, in East Lansdowne, Pennsylvania.

  • In New Jersey, demonstrations took place against ICE.

  • In Portland, Alt-Right and homophobic goons with the “Hell Shakin’ Hate Preachers,” who have formed the backbone of support for Joey Gibson and Patriot Prayer in the Pacific Northwest, were at PRIDE once again, but so were groups of antifascists, who acted as security.

  • Lastly, this weekend, antifascists in Burns, Tennessee held a counter-demonstration against a white supremacist conference attended by Jared Taylor, David Duke, and former KKK organizers. Check Jam City Antifa for more updates.

https://twitter.com/JamCityAntifa/status/1008134916020817920

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