The last week of Occupying has taken any number of
shapes and forms. From court support to
street actions with hundreds of bodies meandering against the traffic, it
reminds me of the power of movements to challenge social mores, make a point,
and fight entrenched interests. More
than anything, the bodies continue to push back against a sense that anything
is inevitable.
Throughout the previous week, I had gotten messages
about the action.
8:00 pm: March Against Repressive
Anti-Protest Laws Worldwide*
Meet in Washington Square Park [A, B, C, D, E,
F, M train to W.4 St. (at 6th Av.); #1 to Christopher St.-Sheridan Sq.; N, R to
8 St.-NYU; #6 to Astor; PATH to 9th St.; L to 6 Av. or 14 St.-Union Sq.; buses
via 6th Av. or Broadway or Houston -t.]
This Tuesday, May 22, marks the 100^th day of
the ongoing Quebec student strike, one of the largest student mobilizations in
history. Last Friday, the Quebec government enacted a draconian emergency law
(Bill 78) intended to break the strike. The law outlaws public assembly,
imposes harsh fines for strike activity and effectively criminalizes protest,
just as the movement is escalating to unprecedented levels.
On Tuesday in New York City, we will demonstrate
in solidarity with Quebec students and in defense of our right to protest. An
increase in the powers of the police and the state anywhere is an attack on us
everywhere.
WEAR RED!
/Organized by folks from Strike Everywhere and
Occupy Wall Street/
My friend Lorenzo St Dubois posted on facebook.
100 days
later, our New York rally would stand in solidarity with the activists from
Chicago to Quebec fighting back against those set on corralling, arresting, or
criminalizing the movement of bodies in public space. In Chicago, the City
Council passed a draconian bill supporting the controls of the streets,
requiring those wishing to even protest on the sidewalk apply for a permit or
risk jail time. Yet, still people turned
out, by the thousands and thousands for the Anti NATO actions taking place.
In
Quebec, a student strike over increased tuition ignited three months of street actions, protests
attended by hundreds of thousands, and efforts
to curtail the action. After months
of striking Quebec passed Bill 78. It
included called for mass restrictions on public gatherings including:
·
Fines of between $1,000 and $5,000 for any individual who prevents someone from
entering an educational institution.
·
The fines are higher for student leaders (up to $35,000) and for unions or
student federations (up to $125,000). Fines double with repeat offenses.
·
Authorities must be notified at least 8 hours in advance about public
demonstrations involving more than 10 people. Organizers must provide the start
time and duration of the demonstration, as well as the routes of any marches.
·
No on-campus protests. Protests outside universities must stay at least 15 feet
from entrances.
·
Encouraging someone, explicitly or tacitly, to protest at a school is subject
to punishment.
I had had
a class throughout the day, but heard about some of the 250,000
student protesters who marched through the streets of Montreal today in
defiance of anti-protest bill 78. “La
loi speciale! on s’en calice!” or
“We don’t care about this special law!” Colleagues from the Professional Staff
Congress joined the rally in solidarity
with the student strike earlier in the day.
I arrived at Washington Square Park
at 8:10 where a crowd of a hundred or so was standing.
Malav stood on the fountain to
welcome everyone just arriving and describe the scene. It was the hundredth day of the student
strike in Canada, he explained. “We’re
here to show support to our brothers and sisters in their struggle.”
 |
| Mic check at Washington Square photo by Stacy Lanyon |
The permit less
march kicked off at 8:15. “Shits fucked
up and bullshit” people chanted marching East out of the park. This is my favorite absurdist chant. But it
says something very basic out the visceral ambitions of the movement. We’re spending billions on wars and students
are told to take on more debt. "The
shit is fucked up and bullshit!!!"
 |
| Marching out. Photo by Stacy Lanyon |
"Dans
la rue, me and vous!" (trans – in the streets, me and you) others screamed
as we marched out of Washington Square, east, north up Broadway against
traffic, east against traffic, south against traffic, and back west against
traffic. Malav gave me a plain sign to carry. “You can write something on
it.” “No, its cool. I can photoshop my message in later.” We talked
about the student strike. He told
me that as the strike wore on the school year was canceled. So more and more people pushed into the
streets with little to lose and no classes to attend. Such measures rarely work.
 |
| Photos by Stacy Lanyon |
Recall
the Criminal Justice Act which spawned the Reclaim the Streets movement in
England in the mid-1990’s. Long time activist John Jordan recalled that moment
in 1994:
The Criminal Justice Act, which was
an attempt to pretty much kill all counter-culture in the UK... It was
targeting ravers, targeting direct action people, travelers, so there was all
this very resourceful DiY culture that was already there, very involved in
partying, all that stuff. So there was already a kind of everyday creativity, a
rave community, that was one of the bodies involved in this campaign. There was
all that influence coming in. There was a 100-foot tower built entirely from
stolen scaffolding with a sound system on top. It was all that party protest
stuff already happening. And that was the beginning of when it took off.
RTS London actually gained strength by organizing against
this law. “It was one of those wonderful moments where the government tried to
pass the act, yet it was an example of a law that created a movement,”
explained Jordan in an interview with this author. “It doesn’t happen very
often. It really brought together all
these different constituencies.” And
instead of cowering, activists responded creatively. “There was art and there were these
traditional forms of direct action,” Jordon explained. “The law called all forms of direct action
criminal. On the day itself that the law came in, we actually occupied one of
the building sites.” Not only a street
party, “it was also a direct action itself because it was a criminalization of
the body itself. All forms of direct action had become criminal.” So hundreds
and hundreds converged to flaunt the new rule.
“That day, the day that the Queen signed the law, we went on site. We’d
produced just hundreds and hundreds of signs which said “criminal” that people
just wore over their necks.” The group
used every tool they could to respond to the
police campaign to kill the group and the movement it represented. Still the group continued.
The actions of
the Canadian government around Bill 78 appear to be having a similar effect,
only adding energy to a movement hell bent on defying it. Marching up Broadway, some of us chanted
“Touts ensemble, touts ensemble, oui, oui, oui!” Others chimed in with “A ati,
anti capitalista!” Yet, an uncertainty
hung in the air.
I
ran into a friend who works in a harm reduction center for LGBT homeless
youth. He explained he was worried that
the movement had done an amazing amount of protesting but he wanted to see what
would come of it, what counter institutions could find shape. It is a question many movements face. In 1965, Civil Rights icon Bayard Rustin
argued the Civil Rights Movement should move
from protest to politics. A quarter century later, the AIDS movement moved
from protest to politics building an industry of AIDS groups. Many dubbed them, “AIDS Inc.” And the movement was institutionalized. It is never so easy to know when or how to do
this. Dynamic movements build an inside
outside approach pushing from the streets and the negotiating table. It is important to recognize both are
important.
As
the police moved to push us out of the streets, many ran ahead only to refill
the streets. For some reason, there were
only some 15 police. They not appear to
have enough to arrest us. So we found
ourselves running in the streets, only
to be pushed back or checked by the police, who were starting to get
angry.
“The
police locked
up Tompkins Square Park as the march approached,” noted my frend Elissa
Jiji. “9 PM, No one allowed in, and
people swept into the street. Preemptive
closing of public space, Creepy.” Others
questioned the legality of the police pre emptively shutting down the space.
A
woman handed me a flyer with the words: “Wild in the streets” on the
front. And “All Fucking Summer” on the
back. I recalled the old Circle Jerks song of the
same name.
With
Occupy, a great deal of anger has become part of the movement – some against
police and some against circumstances.
“The shit is fucked up and bullshit.”
Walking West on St Marks place a man on a bike screamed “fuck you’ at
me, presumably because I was wearing a tie.
“Whats up? Why did you say that?” I asked him.
He did not say anything. I asked
again. He said, “You are the third
person today to tell me to get a job.” I
told him I had not said that. He had a far away amped look. We talked about building a movement around
kindness and not prejudging people because of the way they dress. The 99% come
in many shapes and styles of dress. The
black bandana is just one, as is the coat and tie for the CUNY professor. We
all dress for our settings. As the years and distance set in between Occupy and
Seattle and the debates about black masks, many of the same debates continue
about diversity of tactics. We are
obliged to think strategically about the way we present ourselves. Each style of dress presents an opportunity. When one activist wears a mask, he or she
gives credibility to five undercover police who can come and provoke wearing
masks. Each action creates a reaction, in this case more of a police response.
I really wonder why people wear the masks at all. I certainly know it does not help when video
evidence is presented in court.
By the
time we passed Broadway again, the police started moving in to arrest people
after announcing the sidewalk was closed.
A group turned around and started marching East again. And I ducked out as everyone moved up to
Union Square. Later on in the evening,
Gideon Oliver would report, “
 |
| Photo by Occupy Boston |
It
had been a wild few days. Activists had
rallied and clogged the streets throughout the weekend during the NATO Summit
in Chicago. Reports
of the actions filled the papers May 21st on the 33rd
anniversary of the White Night Riot in San Francisco in 1979 when thousands defied the state, burn
police cars, and retaliated against state controls. That night activists burnt police cars in
retaliation for Dan White’s light charge in the murders of Harvey Milk and
Mayor Moscone. "The night of the riot, I will never forget
any minute of it, ever," Cleve Jones recalled. San Franciscans remember it
as the White Night Riots. .From Chicago May 2012 to San Francisco
May 1979, there is a long history of people speaking up when the few in power
use it to squeeze the rest of us. “The riot was a declaration of existence,”
explained Cleve Jones in a 1995 interview with me. I interviewed Jones and several other
participants in riots. Jones recalled the
days leading up to the riots.
Harvey
and George were murdered in late November of '78. I think that we'd had very high expectations
because we'd won the Briggs Initiative and Harvey was in
office
and then he was taken from us and now we have so many martyrs that people maybe
lose
track of the power of martyrdom but though gay people certainly have a history
of abuses
directed
against us, Harvey was really the first public martyr whose martyrdom was
something
that
we had all participated in and shared in.
Of course it was a terribly dramatic situation and
people
were very shocked and the community were very mobilized by it. But then the winter
dragged
on and on and on. During that winter
there were two things that really increased the
tension
by quite a bit. One was Diane
Feinstein's delay in appointing Harvey's successor.
Diane
had been elevated to mayor. Harvey had
left a tape with the names of four, I believe four
people
who would have been deemed appropriate successors by him in case he was
assassinated
cause, you know, he always predicted he would be assassinated, the queen. So
Diane
just kept delaying and delaying and delaying on this appointment. We were all organized
for
Anne Kronenberg. At the same time the
delay in the appointment was happening, the police started doing shit that they
hadn't done in a long time.
All
of a sudden there was this police presence in the bars. They were coming in and
hastelling
people on Castro Street. I myself was
asked for ID sitting on my stoop in front of
my
apartment building and just weird, petty, bullshit harassment that we hadn't
seen from the
cops
in several years. And then a group of
police officers off duty invaded a lesbian bar off
Geary
street called Peg's Place. They went in
and beat up a number of women there including the owner, Linda Demaco. People were just really tense and
really
pissed off at the police. Also the trial
was going on of Dan White. The general
impression
of the District attorney, Joe Flavis, who that he was not perusing the case
aggressively. Others talked of the complexion of the jury
ending up all white, mostly Catholic,
all
straight older people. There was not a
black person on the jury or a gay
person. So the stage was set.
About
two weeks before the riots the riots, which was May 21st, I was on Castro
street. It
was
a weekend in which the Milk Club leadership had gone for a retreat up here at
the river and
I
didn't go. I was hanging out on Castro
Street. There were these patrol
specials, rent-a-cop
type
guys, and he was arresting somebody for putting up a flyer up on a telephone
pole. I was
standing
right there. I started yelling,
"Why the hell can't you go and prevent crime or
something? How many rapes and murders are going on and
you are arresting this guy for
putting
up a poster?" A crowd began to
gather to prevent the arrest. It was
just amazing
because
it was a sunny Saturday afternoon on Castro Street and all the boys were out
with their
shirts
off. This poor rent-a-pig just suddenly
found himself surrounded by hundreds of pissed
off
fags who began throwing bottles and cans and cigarette butts. He had to call in
reinforcements. Finally they had several cops. The police
withdrew down 18th street. We
strolled
in the street and people began cheering and laughing. Some people threw bottle rockets
out
there windows. So I knew then. He was going to get off and there was going
to be a big
riot
and that Harvey would love it.
The day of the verdict, Jones recalls: “I was sitting in my apartment on Castro
street. We were
watching the news or getting ready to
watch the news. I think it was about
four o'clock. It
came across the screen on the television:
"Dan White Convicted, Details at Five." And my
phone began ringing. I don't remember, I think they said what the
verdict was. My first
reaction was that I got violently sick to
my stomach. I don't know what the blend
of emotions
was and part of it was just disgust.
(Voice changes.) I just couldn't
believe it, (whispers) how
outrageous, such a slap. It was like someone spitting on Harvey's
grave, spitting on all of us.
It was just so clear what had
happened. This all American asshole cop,
Irish Catholic from the
old guard San Francisco. There's no proof of it, never will be, I
believe and most people
believe that Dan White was manipulated by
the Police Officers Association. I don't
think you
could ever prove any kind of conspiracy or
ever make any kind of real case for it but I don't
care.
I still think there was one and I think most people at the time believed
that too. It was a
coup-d'Etat. He took out the head of a city government and
the leading gay progressive ally.
Mayor Moscone had forged the coalition
that is now the progressive coalition in San
Francisco.
It was his novel idea to bring trade unionists and homosexuals together,
feminists
and environmentalists, Hispanics and
blacks, an unusual idea then.
Cleve Jones So I went into the bathroom and puked and
the phone started ringing.
Everybody came to my house because my
apartment on Castro had been an organizing center
for many of the demonstrations for the
last couple of years. So they came over
to my house.
Someone came running up and said that
there were news cameras on Castro Street and that
they were looking for me. I went and found Don Martin and Phyllis
Lyon. We arrived at the
corner of Castro and 18th at about 5 or
5:30, still light out. The thing that
was several months
prior, I had decided to celebrate Harvey
Milk's birthday, May 22nd, on Castro Street.
I had
permits from the police to close Castro
Street, put up a stage and have this enormous party. I
had booked Syvester and other fabulous
acts. People were really focused on
me. The
reporter said, "Well tomorrow is
Harvey Milk's birthday and it would take permits to hold this
party on Castro Street. Is that when the reaction will be and I said,
"No, I think the reaction
will be swift and it will be
tonight."
As I was doing this I was focused on the
reporter and answering the questions and looking
at the camera and the rest of it. Then
when the interview was done, which only was about three
minutes, I looked around and the crowd had
tripled. What had started as a knot of
people
standing around me and Don and Phyllis and
this camera had tripled. It was now a
couple of
hundred people. One thing I will never forget was scanning
the crowd and seeing someone
whose face was so twisted with rage that I
didn't even recognize him. It was Chris
Perry who
was the President of the Gay Democratic
Club. Chris, himself, is a very mild
mannered fellow.
I couldn't imagine that his face would
look so different, so enraged. He had a
sign; it said,
"AVENGE HARVEY MILK."
Then I told my friends not to let anybody
march down Market Street until I got back.
I ran
up back to my apartment to get my bullhorn. My apartment was packed. People were
shoulder to shoulder. All the rooms, the kitchen, the back porch
were just packed with people,
everybody just white with anger, very,
very strange. We got down to Castro
Street and there
were now about five thousand people. I'm not very good with crowd estimates but a
large
crowd was blocking traffic. People were honking their horns. But it was unlike anything I had
ever seen before because in the past these
gatherings had been, no matter how political the
purpose was, it was always very gay, this
odd blend of humor and sarcasm and camp that gay
people employ but this time (Laughs) there
were no smart remarks, no fancy dress.
People
were just fucking furious, a very, very
different feeling. So we marched.
John Cailleau The day the Dan White verdict came out for
his murder of Supervisor Harvey
Milk and Mayor Mascone I had just gotten
out of the gym or something and was on my way
home at the MUNI station over at Castro
and Market street when I saw a group of people
waving something, saying, "Lets go to
city hall." They were going to do
something about it.
The march to city hall is something that
is not a secret but it is not widely talked about. I saw
there was some potential not for some fun
trouble but some dangerous trouble when I saw the
kind of energy of the group coming down
from 19th street and Castro
Cleve Jones There was still some light. And we marched on Market Street. All I remember
really of this was to keep people from
running, to try to slow it down. I
figured that the death
penalty coalition was already at city hall
and in fact they were and had already set up a sound
system.
So as the crown swarmed down Market street I hopped on the back of a
friend's
motorcycle and went ahead of them down to
city hall. I met people from the Death
Penalty
Coalition and said, "Hi, have you got
a sound system?" They said yes and they had a generator
so they had an independent power source
and they had put up the cables going up the stairs but
they hadn't secured the front area. So as the marchers arrived, people
immediately pressed up
onto the stairs right up against the city
hall doors.
At this point the police became really
alarmed and sent in a line of officers in riot gear up
onto the stairs to try to come between the
demonstrators and the building. This
point there still
had been no violence, no rocks thrown,
only shouting. The police, as they came
up onto the
stairs, knocked over the generator,
knocked over the sound, no intentionally because in the rush
and the chaos and the press of all these people,
the generator was knocked over.
Actually, I
think the generator had to be moved
because it was going to fall or something.
So the result of
all this chaos was that there was no sound
system and I really had the only bullhorn.
I was just so confused and angry
myself. For the first time, I found myself taking this
position that my emotions were taking me
one way and my brain taking me the other way. I
gave some laim remarks. I don't even remember what I said, something
like, "Lets not be
violent.
Lets on be violent." I'm not
a violent person but I felt violent.
Then the bullhorn got
passed around. Everybody gave basically the same line: We don't want to be violent; Dan
White was violent; the police were
violent. we're gay people; we don't want
to be violent. And
non of it was really working cause the crown
was just seething. And then finally Amber
Hollibaugh, she's currently in New York
City doing AIDS work, she's a fabulous glamour and
dyke, film maker, a wonderful, wonderful
woman, she got up. I don't remember
anything she
said except the one sentence. She said, "I think we oughtta do this
more often!!!" (Laughs.)
Hank Wilson It was also very scary, they beat us up and
all that stuff but it was worth it.
Image wise, we knew this was being filmed
and we wanted that image of us saying we don't
have to just take this shit. We are going to fight back so then we did. And it was very scary
too. I remember being totally petrified of
police once we left the civic center area.
They were
hassling people and they were beating
people up. I remember being isolated and
losing all the
people that I knew cause we were all going
in different ways and then being totally terrified
until I got back to the Castro. I came from around the Tenderloin; the police
were going
through the Tenderloin hassling people,
basically driving people off the streets.
I came back
here and then went back there.
Cleve Jones My most vivid memory of the whole night, I
think, except for the moment when
I got pushed as far as east of McAllister,
Powell Street, I ended up down at Powell and
Market.
Market Street was trashed down from Powell Street to Van Ness. And I ran into Bill
Kraus, who was a wonderful man who died of
AIDS early in the epidemic. He was Harry
Britt's right hand man. At one point we were at Market Street in
front of the Bank of America.
I saw him and we just started laughing at
each other. (Emotional laughing.) It was
so weird. I
said, "Bill, have you ever broken a
window?" And he said, "No,
have you?" I said, "No. Not
since I was a Cub Scout," and we were
looking at this bank window. I said,
"Well, do you
wanna?" And he said, "God, just once in my life
I'd like to throw a brick through a bank
window." I said, "Go for it Bill. Go for
it." He picked up this rock and
throws it as hard as he
could and it bounced off the window. So I'm falling down on the sidewalk laughing
at him and
I said, "You nelly thing, you can't
even break a window. Let me show you how
its done." So
I pick up another rock and throw it as
hard as I can at the window and it bounces off.
So we're
both just rolling around on the sidewalk
just laughing in the flames and smoke and sirens all
around us and we're just laughing at the
fact that we're too nelly to break a window with a
brick.
And then this big butch bulldyke comes running around the corner, picks
up one of
those big garbage cans and threw the whole
thing smashing the window right in and then
reached in and set the curtains on
fire. So we all looked at each other,
"Shit, lets get out of
here!" (Laughs.)
May 18,
2012
Frday night, I stayed home with the kids watching movies. By 9 PM, I check facebook to find out that two of my friends were arrested during the Times Up film the police ride.
While
the charges has initially been for impersonating a police officer by the time
Barbara and Keegan were arrested the charges had been changed to impersonating
the police. I almost wish they had
kept the charges of impersonating an officer so we could watch the police make
their case that impersonating police was uncommon practice in the East Village. Instead the police charged two activists with
wreck less endangerment for riding their bikes.
Few drivers are even charged with this.
While the charges would probably not stick, they still represented a
part of the onging struggle over the streets of New York.
 |
| Members of the 99th precinct eating organic donuts. Photo by Times Up! |
 |
| Some of the cops took quite a liking to Keegan! |
That night on the subway, I watched the police
move in to arrest a young African American women, who screamed “I didn’t do
shit!” Her screams echoed through the
subway station.
It had been a great week for solidarity
work and court
support. Two
cases were thrown out when the city could not support their claim that
protesters had done anything wrong.
Monday morning, we had spent all morning in court supporting those charged with offences such as
breathing in public, trespassing in a park zoned for 24 access and standing on
the sidewalk. Many from the Occupy Broadway affinity group were there, as were
several others affinity groups. Some of
our friends face some real time, so make sure to try to accompany your buddies
to their jury trials this fall gang. Lets stack the system and let them know
we're all watching. We have to stack the
courts with our bodies and push our cases so the city is so overwhelmed, it can
do little more than dismiss their claims against us.
It is clear that
Occupy is having an impact. On May 15th
the New York Times would report:
SOLIDARITY
WITH QUEBEC STUDENT STRIKE GOES ON
INFINITE
SOLIDARITY WITH A CALL FOR INFINITE GENERAL STRIKE
ACTIONS IN NYC ON WEDNESDAY, MAY 23, 2012:
6pm: Night School in Solidarity with the
Quebec Student Strike
Washington Square Park,
Manhattan
8pm:
March Against Police Oppression
Meet in Washington Square Park,
Manhattan
(reconvergence at Union square)
10pm: Night School at Union sq.
WE
MARCH AGAIN!
May 22 marked the 100th day of
the ongoing Quebec student strike, one of the largest student mobilizations in
history. Demonstrations against the massive tuition hikes (which would increase
tuition by 60% over five years) occurred daily across Quebec, with over 160,000
students on “infinite strike.” Last Friday, the Quebec government
enacted a draconian emergency law (Bill 78) intended to break the strike. The
legislation in effect outlaws public assembly, imposes harsh fines for strike activity
and criminalizes protest, just as the struggle is gaining popular support and
escalating to unprecedented levels. Many are questioning the law's
constitutionality.
No More “Good Faith”
The government of Quebec has
conceded the power of the students by suspending the current semester, while
the education minister has been forced to resign amid the crisis. The Quebec
Premier Jean Charest claims that the government has negotiated in “good faith,”
but the student unions say that the government has refused to budge on the
central issue: TUITION HIKES. Students are fighting to maintain affordable,
accessible higher education for all the people of Quebec. The crisis has put
into question the political future of the Premiere’s Liberal Party and his own
career. Civil liberties in Quebec are being fundamentally undermined. “Good
faith” is dwindling between the people and the government.
What Is An Infinite General
Strike?
The infinite strike is a
voluntary and collective cessation of activities in order to assert claims that
would not be addressed otherwise. The word “infinite” points to a
confrontational stance with the government. It does not mean that the strike is
limitless, but that its length is undetermined in advance. This means that the
strike goes on until demands are met or until the body decides to stop the
strike. In the case of Quebec's student mobilization, the students meet every
week to decide whether to continue the strike. The educational system is
a crucial part of the economy and it requires human capital in order to
function. Only through a strike is it possible to create the
institutional congestion generated by a whole cohort of students that may not
graduate. That is why an open-ended general strike is such a powerful weapon.
Why the Quebec Student Strike
Matters For NYC
We are all in the red! In Quebec
strikers, demonstrators and sympathizers
alike have shown their solidarity through the emblem of a red square,
signifying a state of “being in the financial red”—untenable student debt. In
the United States, the Federal Reserve recently stated that student debt stood
at $870 billion, while the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (a new
government agency regulating private student loans) estimated that it had
already surpassed $1 trillion. As more and more students stand up and organize
against exorbitant escalations in tuition and debt, similar draconian laws have
been passed in the US. Unprecedented levels of police brutality have been
perpetrated against student uprisings across New York City—at Baruch College,
Brooklyn College and the New School, just to name a few. The state seeks to
silence these students, many of whom have been arrested on trumped up charges
that reek of biased intimidation.
It would appear that we too are
in the red, both financially and politically. This
is untenable. It is time that
we stand in solidarity with students in Quebec and across the world to fight
for our right to free education. On
May 23rd we in New York City continue our solidarity and stand with the
infinite strike. Our
demonstration in solidarity with Quebec students is also in defense of our
right to assemble and protest. An increase in the powers of the police and the
state anywhere is an attack on us everywhere. State repression exists globally
and it is unjustifiable. We will not stand by and watch our already limited
voices be silenced even more. The warnings and fear mongering of new protest
laws being enacted in Frankfurt, Chicago and Montreal will not deter us. The
new laws only prove that our mass mobilizations are a threat to the powers that
be. We will be heard. We will take part in our own lives and not be pawns for
the workings of capitalism. Our rights are not given to us by governments but
established by us. OUR LIVES ARE NOT NEGOTIABLE!
Call to Students, Workers and
Debtors of New York
With call on students, workers
and debtors from all walks of life to stand with us in our right to assemble
and dissent in our commons, against police brutality and intimidation. There is
nothing to fear or be ashamed of in this. There is only strength and solidarity
for us to find each other. As we stand with the students of Quebec, we
acknowledge their grievances, and join their chorus with our own. As Quebec
does not stand down, neither will New York. We are not afraid, and see no limit
on the horizon. All we
see is red!
WE
ARE ALL IN THE RED!
—New York, May 21st,
2012
Organized by folks from Strike
Everywhere and Occupy Wall Street
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