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Feb 15, 19

This Is America #59: When Worlds Collide

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Welcome, to This Is America, February 15th, 2019.

We have a jam packed show today. First, we talk with several people who report on the struggle at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, where over the past two weeks, people have fought to get electricity and heat turned back on for prisoners.

At the start of the struggle, people began camping out and holding ongoing noise demos. One group was pepper sprayed heavily when they attempted to enter the building in order to talk to prisoners inside. Guards have also taken to beating and attacking prisoners accused of attempting to communicate with the outside.

Our guests include a member of the Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council of NYC or MACC, who was briefly imprisoned at MDC, along with two organizers involved with prison abolitionist organizing out of CUNY Law School. For more info on the ongoing struggle, check out No New Jails NYC as well as MACC.

During our discussion segment, we touch on ongoing revolts, insurrections, and strikes happening in Haiti, France, and in Matamoros, Mexico. Broadly speaking, we discuss the insurrections in Haiti and France, as a response to both austerity measures and the looting of the country by elites, and compare it to the current situation in the United States.

We also discuss the success of the strike growing in Matamoros among maquiladoras workers, a strike which has rejected union leadership and is pushing for an international response from workers in the US and Canada.

Lastly, we touch on just want the hell has been agreed upon by the Democrats and Republicans, and what this means for the possibilities for a State of emergency, another shutdown, and Wall construction – as Trump has announced on Friday he will use emergency measures to push for another 8 billion in border wall funding.

All this and more, but first, let’s get to the news!

Living and Fighting:

  • At the Unist’ot’en camp, people are protesting the continued presence of RCMP and gas pipeline workers. Recently, the gas company constructing the pipeline has begun to build a “man camp,” or housing area for almost exclusively male workers. Historically, such concentrations of male workers on Native land, or close to it, has led to an increase in missing and murdered indigenous women.

No Man Camps on Unist'ot'en Yin'tah!

SHARE WIDELY – On February 15, the day after vigils and marches for missing and murdered Indigenous women across the country, Coastal GasLink intends to transport a number of trailers to Unist’ot’en yintah. The trailers are the first infrastructure in their proposed man camp—a space defined as a “multi-use site” in the affidavits for their court injunction. The proposed man camp directly threatens the well-being of Indigenous people who have returned to the land to heal. It directly threatens the work of the Unist’ot’en Healing Center. We cannot have a man camp lurking behind us in the yintah; we cannot have a space of violent settler masculinity festering in the heart of this territory. It threatens everything we are trying to rebuild. It threatens our survival as Indigenous peoples. It is an extension of state violence. It is a continuation of colonial trauma. We cannot heal in an atmosphere of colonial violence. We will not consent to the invasion of our lands and bodies.As clearing for the man camp has been underway, RCMP have begun daily “patrols” through the territory. Citing “safety concerns,” and security, they intimidate and harass Healing Center residents. The officers who commanded militarized RCMP to point sniper and assault rifles at our unarmed women have strolled through our territory like they own it. They are a constant reminder of the violent potential of the state. We have been threatened with arrest for checking our traplines, for participating in our ceremonies. They are not here for our safety. They are a private security detachment for Coastal GasLink. They are here to expedite construction of the pipeline, nothing more. We reject their false narratives of safety. Police forces and industry have always tried to legitimize their illegal occupation of unceded and unsurrendered Indigenous territories by insisting they have our “best interests” at heart. But their projects have been extractive, destructive, and exploitative since the beginning. The entire history of colonization teaches us not to trust them. Our ancestors teach us not to trust them. Our missing and murdered Indigenous women teach us not to trust them. The Coastal GasLink man camp is proposed just off the Highway of Tears, where dozens of Indigenous women have been abducted or murdered. While Coastal GasLink attempts to make Unist’ot’en yintah into an industrial work site, the RCMP illegally extend their jurisdiction into our space of healing. Both incursions increase our risk of gendered and sexualized violence. In an area already prone to increased violence against Indigenous women, this is distressing, alarming, traumatizing, and unacceptable. We must respond. Rise up. Push back. The twin faces of industry and state will continue to inch their way into our unceded lands. They will exchange our trauma for the “national interest.” They will attack our land, our bodies, our spirits. We have given enough, and enough has been taken from us. No pipelines on Wet’suwet’en territoryNo man camps on Unist’ot’en yintahNo sexual violence against Indigenous womxn, girls, and two spirit peopleNo colonial violence against sovereign Indigenous nations.#UNISTOTEN #MMIW #MMIWG #NOPIPELINES #WETSUWETENSTRONG #NOTRESPASSDonate to our legal fund: https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/unistoten-camp-legal-fund/Supporter toolkit: https://unistoten.camp/supportertoolkit

由 Unist'ot'en Camp 发布于 2019年2月14日周四

  • Members of IWOC joined family members outside of Corcoran prison in Central California to hold a rally in support of a recent hunger strike organized by inmates.

  • In so-called Parkdale, tenants started a flyering campaign against their landlord.

https://twitter.com/colefwebber/status/1094966754319757312

  • Members of Workers’ Liberation and Defense were out in force in Denver, showing solidarity during the recent teachers strike and also providing free food.

  • Students in Denver self-organized and carried out a series of walkouts and protests in solidarity with the teachers strike. This swelled numbers of the strike, shut down schools, and showed that students and teachers have common interests.

  • In Charlotte, the trial began for Rayquan Borum, who is accused by police of killing someone in the midst of the riots that broke out in 2015, in the wake of a police killing. Local activists and residents state firmly that the trial is a set up and that police themselves are to blame for the shooting.
  • Jason Van Dyke, the police officer doing time for killing Laquan McDonald, was severely beaten in prison.
  • A trolley bus was stopped in protest of the police murder of Stephon Clark in Sacramento.

  • Political prisoner Jay Chase has been moved. Write to him here:

  • Neo-Nazi and Alt-Right posters were found and destroyed across the US in recent days. This includes Stamford, CT, Berkeley, CA, and Boston. Also, in Salt Lake City, community members are mobilizing and fighting back against Identity Evropa, who has been putting up posters on the campus and dropping banners.

  • Water Protectors in Minnesota disrupted an event put on by the Governor, unfurling a banner and chanting.

  • It was announced that Amazon is pulling out of its proposed HQ from Queens in New York due to continue dopposition.
  • Local news outlets in Portland report that a treasure trove of text messages between far-Right organizer Joey Gibson and Portland police show a close and working relationship between the two. Police are seen to be giving information to Gibson about antifascist protesters, explaining how their members with warrants can avoid being arrested, and in general, coordinating to help facilitate Gibson’s event.

Support:

  • Autonomous kitchen to be used as more caravans arrive on border is in need of support. Donate here.
  • Help Jason Walker, prison journalist often targeted by state for repression. Donate here.
  • Show solidarity with queer and trans comrades in Portland who have recently been attacked while on the street. Donate here.
  • Stand with Native resistance camps on the border who are resisting border wall construction destroying sacred sites and animal habitat. Donate here.

Further Readings Mentioned In Our Discussion:

A Brief History of Neoliberalism

Capitalism and Freedom

20 Thesis on the Subversion of the Metropolis

Haiti: Prelude to Revolution

We Are the Yellow Vests

Matamoros Strikes

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