Hiller Armament Company is selling these paper targets for training ranges.

An avalanche of smug racism has embraced the claims that Zimmerman had cuts and a broken nose.

So what? Zimmerman hunted a young Black man, like Trayvon Martin was an animal.

If Trayvon landed a punch, before Zimmerman murdered him, well, good for Trayvon.

There is a lot of talk about “let the system do its work.” Well, we have no choice — this system will do its thing.

This system did its thing when the racist Zimmerman was allowed to organize a racist “community watch.” It was doing its thing when Trayvon Martin was pursued, confronted and shot. It was doing its thing when the local police chief and other brass showed up over Travon’s body, to help protect Zimmerman the judge’s son, to accept his story, to let him go home unarrested.

The system was doing its thing when Trayvon was targeted in the media — portrayed as a drug user, wannabe gangster, a threat. When it was said in a thousand ways that Zimmerman had reason to be concerned, to be alert, and suspicious.

They think there are places where young Black men should simply not be allowed. They think that they have a right to patrol and control the movement of young Black men.

They think that is reasonable, natural and needed — and they have thought this since slavery times, since paddyrollers, since the Black codes, since the systematic racist profiling of Black people became integral to “modern policing.”

Now we will  see who this system punishes, who they protect, who they let walk free.

And we will see how much the wrath, horror and sorrow of Black people matters in their decisions.

We don’t care about the details of this system’s laws, its fucked up rules, statutes and authorities: We all know that an armed racist asshole pursued and hunted a young Black man who had done nothing. And he shot Trayvon to death — with the gun he had bought and brought for that purpose.

If anyone was “standing his ground” in self-defense, it was Trayvon.

A racist murderer like Zimmerman should not walk free. He should not be exonerated. He should not be celebrated.

He should be publicly repudiated, disarmed, punished and removed from society. And we demand that.

Everyone who defends him should be exposed for what they are.

Trayvon faced this armed racist. He was fighting for his life. And unfortunately he lost.

And now we will see. It is not just Zimmerman who is on trial. It is this system.

Children killed by US/NATO invasion forces in Afghanistan

The following appeared first on Counterpunch.

A Global Crime Spree

What’s NATO Ever Done?

The following is from Occupy Chicago.

This week, NATO, one of largest military organizations in the world and the armed wing of the global 1%, is descending upon Chicago.  Today, we at Occupy Chicago cordially invite you to join us and thousands around the world in a week of action in protest.  We will highlight the connection between our local struggles, global struggles, and the policies of the thieves and oppressors of NATO and G8. The G8 summit has fled to “Fort” David – far from public scrutiny – but its flight does not deter our indignation at its purpose, and we will still protest in absentia the agendas they put forth. The NATO summit remains in Chicago, and those who participate in G8 will fly to the Windy City as soon as their heavily fortified meeting adjourns. We will be there to meet them. We will make our fury known. We will show them that while they continue to impoverish and tear the world apart, we will not rest.

May 17 Environment: Planet Before Profits and War

http://www.facebook.com/events/446122835402400/

May 19 Occupy/Health: ‘Health Care Not Warfare’

http://www.facebook.com/events/226215884154772/

May 21 Democracy: ‘We Are the 99%/ We Are Unstoppable, Another World is Possible’ FEATURING *Boeing: Shut Down the War Machine*

http://www.facebook.com/events/352562164806601/

Follow us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/events/295772130492710/

If you are unable to stand with us in the streets of Chicago, you can join this truly international fight in other ways.

- Have your organization, or Occupation, endorse the week of action
- Draft a solidarity statement that we can deliver to NATO
- Plan a solidarity action on May 19th or 20th
- Stand against NATO and G8 wherever you are, spread the word, organize!

In solidarity,
Occupy Chicago

The following piece first appeared in the Greek weekly “Left Road,” a newspaper affiliated with the Communist Organization of Greece (KOE). The article appeared before the recent May election, but still provides some valuable background to the seemingly unresolvable crisis in Greece and the therefore-emerging possibility of a revolutionary way out.

The KOE is a member of the Coalition of the Radical Left and has been extremely active in the mass uprisings associated with the Arab Spring and the intense austerity imposed by the European Union and its finance capitalists. Thanks to Taki Manolakos and Sanhati for the English translation.

Previous Kasama discussions have gone into the crisis in Greece, the political forces there, and the possibility of revolution.

The necessity of transformation causes cracks in Greece’s political system

By Rudy Rinaldi

The Greek elections, the Coalition of the Radical Left,
the political stakes, and reactions to Tsipras’ proposal

The proposal of Alexis Tsipras, leader of the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) for a government of the Left has caused large cracks not only in the space occupied by political parties but also the central configuration of political and economic administration. Few believed that they would rise from their beds on May 7 to find a government of the Left in the country. But despite that, his proposal nevertheless caused a significant debate, triggered a strong reaction from the Establishment’s political duopoly of the establishment, and sparked curiosity from other Left forces.

Before the elections, the people’s choices had been posed to in a threatening, terroristic way “Anarchy or more rule by the old parties of  New Democracy and PASOK” (in other words pro-Troika forces). In a strange way, one week before the elections themselves, that supposed framework had been rendered useless, as another proposal has arrived on the political stage: that of the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA). And it took its place as the key demand of all….

What is the heart of the matter, beyond all this pre-election subterfuge ?

The ruins of the Troika and changing the  political landscape

In only two years, the parties that supported the Memoranda [the externally-imposed austerity agreements] are expected to lose roughly 3 million votes. In particular, on the basis of a study utilizing survey data from April 20, it was estimated that the Socialist Party (PASOK) alone will lose approximately 2 million votes, New Democracy (ND) will lose about 800,000 votes, and Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS) will lose approximately 150,000 votes [1]. This represents an important change and massive displacement of votes towards other political forces that emerged as anti-Memoranda in their character, did not support the Memoranda, or differentiated themselves on this question.

Consistent with this, the urban bloc of the Troika’s political forces failed to resonate. They await a decline in their power, fearing the depth and extent of their fall. The only thing left for the final hour is the exact extent of their punishment. The pro-Memoranda parties rhetorically emphasized the possibility of anarchy, “responsibility,” and the public good that would result from a “wise” vote. They avoided public rallies, periptera [2] especially in the case of PASOK, and generally engaged in a defensive campaign.

What now will be the orientation  of these 3 million voters liberating themselves from pro-Memoranda parties ?

Golden Dawn, a neo-Nazi party, will gain from the losses of LAOS and no small number of voters from PASOK (who have become disillusioned from the entire political world and believe that voting for Nazis is the best punishment for their previous party).

A large section of New Democracy (ND) voters will be collected by Panos Kammenos, the so-called “Independent Greeks”. Kammenos is a solution for the people of the Right who feel betrayed by Samaras, leader of ND, and wish an end to the Memoranda and regime of the Troika.

A large proportion of the votes lost by pro-Memoranda parties will now gather around the Lefts and the largest fraction of these will go to SYRIZA. SYRIZA has drawn huge energy toward itself throughout the country and it cannot be ruled out that the party will become the surprise of these elections — especially because  this energy is visibly increasing right into the final week before the election itself.

There are also no small number of former PASOK voters oscillating between SYRIZA and the Independent Greeks — and we can expect them to have a large impact on the outcome.

The Democratic Left of Fotis Kouvelis will receive a share of Socialist losses and his campaign promise maintains that the party would not support a pro-Memoranda coalition between ND and PASOK in exchange for ministries.

Moreover, all other formations that have been created, or existed and re-appeared on the scene, expected some growth at the expense of the pro-Troika bloc. But regarding their electoral decisions, the people’s criterion will not be the restrictive binary “Left-Right”, but on the basis of the appearance and logic either of parties or personalities.

Landscapes of the contest during the past two years

The cracks in the political system and the massive displacement of votes within two years can only be explained with reference to the struggles and resistance of the people during this period.

The general strikes, the Movement of the Squares, the people’s occupations, the mobilizations during the parades, the public jeering of pro-Troika political personalities, the endless “No!” of the people against the established order, the accusations from the new foreign occupation, the disgust towards the entire rotten political system — all these are the political levers that are creating substantial changes in collective consciousness and politics.

Such levers are determining political behaviors in the recent period in Greece. Within these struggles and resistance, there has emerged an awareness that no “one-way streets” exist, that cancellation of the Memoranda and loans is required for there to be a way out for the country, that there must be a change in government that will remove the “dirt” and superstructure of the pro-Troika regime in order to open different road.

Two considerations and the dynamic of Tsipras’ proposal

Tsipras’ proposal for a government of the Left and execution of his expected marching orders have caused a ruckus because it touches upon two considerations that we have raised : in the huge collapse of pro-memoranda forces and in the struggles and collective consciousness that these have created. It has, therefore, both substance and a dynamic even if it gives the appearance of being impossible (since the forces of the Left and the Socialists hurried to denounce the proposal as repugnant).

In order for there to be an exit for Greece, a political transformation is necessary, in other words, a formation of a political and social bloc capable of colliding with the Troika and its servants. This entails the creation a new social and political majority with the radical Left at its core, combining the social and patriotic duties required in this period. This political transformation will not result through electoral processes. Its womb resides in political conflict and in this sense electoral struggles constitute an aspect of such conflict. The emancipation of the Left from urban politics, the victory of the masses around certain theses and proposals, presupposes a transformation of the Left itself. It presupposes a dual unity in particular. Unity of the political Left with her diffuse social base and at minimum her voters. Secondly, unity of the Left with a popular, mass movement for the formation of a political and social front that will support governmental forms for breaking our collar and our encirclement, and will place the country on the path of an exit with the people as protagonist.

More descriptively, in 2009, the Left had roughly 1,000,000 voters. In the fights of the last two years, roughly 3 million were gained. It remains to be seen in the election what percentage the Left will actually assemble and what forces it will be in a position to direct. What framework will be created and what will be the breadth of the struggles and participation of the people ? In this vein, there is of course a role for political mobilizations, political compositionality, recommendations and resolutions, slogans, and so forth. The dynamic of Tsipras’ proposal lies exactly in the fact of being grounded on specific political terrain and not advertisement of the system. The proposal leads in the direction of the formation of a program of cooperation with concrete forces.

The position of the others Lefts

The speed at which almost all other Left forces distanced themselves from this proposal has been impressive. Instead of entering the forest of practical politics, they abandoned it completely, in favor of a general anti-capitalist rhetoric indifferent towards concrete political objectives.

For example, the Communist Party (KKE) based its entire campaign on the slogan “a strong KKE” and nothing more, on the basis of their belief that whatever happens will be harmful to the people and the solution only exists in popular power. How and when we reach popular power we will see in the next phase of the “class struggle.”

We do not know exactly where those who attempt to move and act within the plane of practical politics will end up and collide with the establishment. The possibility of bad luck and failure always exist. This interpretation, however, cannot be brandished as a demon [3] each time actions must be taken towards overstepping the political system familiar to us amidst a Greece in transformation. In particular, when the situation has become ripe for a transformation of the people, for proposals that have a real dynamic and a momentum in the conjuncture of social struggle, is it necessary for anyone to dare entertain a fantasy and fight for their fantasy ? Such fantasies lead to interference and not from afar, merely denouncing the system and whoever engages the correlation of forces. And all of this, when the proposal is simply a proposal for a “government of the Left” that could have easily been adopted or investigated to the extent it was ripe and possible, and not collectively rejected. What would happen if we had to navigate more complex and difficult proposals ? A national front of all the people, for instance, would not have been an agglomeration of Left forces.

But these questions after the general election of May 2012.

Translator’s notes

[1] The final results of the general election of May 2012 are available at at this link.
[2] Small shops where the people gather to buy cigarettes, newspapers, and other minor articles of mass consumption.
[3] The exact Greek word refers to an entity that popularly appears in bedtime ghost stories for children.

Seattle, May First: Chants led by Red Spark collective (Kasama)

We received the following from the Red Spark collective in Seattle.

Note from authors:  This summary is not meant to be exhaustive – we exclude several important parts of the day, leaving out details about the Seattle Central Walkout, the many great speeches and musical acts on stage, as well as the basic hard work of those who provided food and art supplies to the green zone.  For all the talk of property destruction and police repression, we should not forget that a completely safe, “family-friendly” area was maintained around Westlake Park for the duration of the day’s events. 

May Day in Seattle

The rain finally came in the evening.  Organizers of the permitted immigration rights march fought with a tarp on the stage as the rest of us looked around, feet sore, our scarfs and backpacks stinking of pepper spray, a few nursing bruises left by billy clubs or police bicycles.  All day there had been talk of rain.  In the morning, cold heavy clouds had strung themselves out across the sun.  They dropped between skyscrapers, swollen with icy water gathered up from Puget Sound.  But it had not rained then.  Then we were in the hundreds, black flags cutting in the wind like ravens somehow drawn to the ruin of this city from dew-soaked Cascadian rookeries and the red flags behind them like trailing embers—like bright worlds wrought of darkness.

Now the flags were gone, forcibly seized by the police after mayor Mike McGinn signed an official emergency order allowing police to detain anyone they wanted, search their bags and confiscate anything they deemed to be a potential weapon.  A few hours after signing, Mcginn missed his scheduled speaking spot at the permitted march, busy monitoring the protests from a special emergency command center.  He had been scheduled to start speaking around when the rain began, one of a list of local democratic candidates paraded up by progressive NGOs, each offering the same litany of meager promises, counting the number of crumbs that might be afforded a forcibly dispossessed population by those who had dispossessed them.  Instead of McGinn, we had the organizers fumbling with their tarp, a few words of Spanish drifting out before being crushed by the roar of the rain.

Over the last few decades, Seattle has been rebuilt to be nothing more than a sluice for water and circulating capital.  One of the first cities (alongside New York) to undergo rapid downtown demolition and gentrification in the last decades of the 20^th century, Seattle was consciously designed to facilitate the movement of enormous amounts of water and money.  Following the WTO protests in 1999, this redesign was increasingly geared toward riot-suppression.  The result is a downtown core which is heavily surveilled, gutted of movable objects and ruthlessly cleared of “undesirable” populations.  Streets are lined with enormous box stores such as Niketown or Nordstrom, whose goods are shipped in through the port an hour’s walk south by truckers who suffer some of the most abysmal working conditions in the city.  Topping these box stores are condos for the wealthy and offices for white collar management, hi-tech programmers or obscure financial corporations.  Above this there are private rooftop gardens for the rich.  There are Boeing jets beginning their descent under those same cold, heavy clouds.

We were below, in the part of the city that acts as a gutter for the rain when it comes and where the last scant drops of currency trickle down from those private gardens.  Westlake park was built after a 20-year controversy about the role of public funds helping finance private business.  Originally designed as a foot-traffic open market like Pike Place, it was soon cleared by the city with public funds at the command of Nordstroms, who wanted traffic to pass by their flagship store.  That morning, people milled about in front of See’s Candies making glitter bombs and dressing up for the pink bloc.  Someone went over to tell an old leftist to stop selling his newspaper in the money-free zone.  Nearby, the hot dog stand marketed cooked meat to tourists.

Soon the walkout from Seattle Central Community College reached the main body at Westlake, adding an extra hundred to the numbers.  Red flags were interspersed throughout the crowd, led by a large banner reading, “When Students Move Millions Follow: Everything for Everyone.”  Under the trees the black bloc began to form, people holding red and black flags in front of photographer’s cameras in order to protect their comrades.  The pink bloc unfurled an enormous banner with an image of a police officer skewered by a fire-breathing unicorn.

We began moving in a sudden burst of sunlight—when the sun comes out in this city you remember for a moment that something is possible outside of waterlogged monotony, that there can be explosions of light and in that light everything glowing rain-slick, blinded and alive.  Announced weeks ahead, this first march had been scheduled and advertised as an “Anti-Capitalist March,” even though the media later portrayed it as a radical “offshoot” from the peaceable “main event.”  This is hardly a surprise, given the difficulty news stations would have with depoliticizing a five-hundred strong march making explicit reference to class warfare.  In the end they blamed “thugs” and conjectured that most of “the anarchists” had been shipped in from other cities.

But when the first bank window shattered it seemed that the entire crowd of five hundred exploded in cheers.  There is hardly any way to describe it.  I can only emphasize that those of us there witnessed something that had not been seen for generations in this country.  It is likely that only a few people still living can even recall a moment when five hundred people cheered as a bank was attacked in America in broad daylight—no matter how disorganized or uncoordinated the attacks, how much more damage could have been inflicted or how quickly the march moved on even though police were nowhere to be found.  It was like discovering some species of ancient animal thought long extinct within these borders—some lineage of the genera of revolt rumored to have died off sometime mid-century now unearthed in the last place it could be expected, feral and fertile and starving for recompense.

The mood of the crowd could only be described as one of jubilation, a word denoting not only charge and excitement but also the lifting of debts.  An old hammer broke through the glass logo in the front of the bank.  Outside, five hundred stood together and no one stopped it.  Where the logo had once been there was now nothing, as if the tablet had been broken, the slate cleared.  If the media wants a simple message for the day it was said there, however inchoate—declared by our simple presence and witness of the act:  “We owe you nothing.”

The black bloc fits perfectly with this city, since its motion is liquid.  People broke off in spurts, attacking the rest of the building with paint-bombs and hammers.  The majority of these attacks were pristinely targeted—banks, courthouses and large corporate retail outlets known for union-busting and sweatshop labor.  A Porsche had its windows smashed.  For all the talk about no one explaining the property destruction, there are videos of unmasked protestors laying out the reasoning behind attacking Niketown to police and bystanders.  One black-clad individual slashed the tires of an everyday van and another in full bloc came over to apologize to the driver.  Then the police were there and the crowd atomized, splitting into three streams as everyone ran.  A glance backward showed the air filled with smoke and glittering droplets of pepper spray.  Someone had started a small fire in the American Apparel.  One cop, still hundreds of feet behind the fleeing march, swung his club at the air like he was trying to hit a swarm of bees.

On the streets behind, it was like a segment of the city had been dissolved—crystalized labor eroded by the coursing of some black liquid antithetical to capital though still flowing in its channels, as if living labor had here rebelled even against its definitive content as labor, becoming only living, only rage alembicized.

The black bloc evaporated back into the main crowd at Westlake.  The media would later complain that the bloc used this main crowd as a shield, infiltrating it in order to disguise themselves against the crowd’s wishes.  This is a joke.  It confuses the black bloc with only those individuals wearing black.  In reality, the tactic relies on an even larger number of individuals supportive of the action though unable or unwilling to take part in it themselves—these people provide necessary and consensual cover to help others disguise themselves.  I saw plainclothes protestors offer their jackets to people changing clothes on the plaza.  Others went over to civilian photographers and explained why they should not be taking pictures.

The sun stayed out.  Everyone rested on the bricks, calling friends and sharing sandwiches that had been made at home.  Someone started a boring fight with the old people in some half-forgotten pre-party formation and a few others wandered over to listen for a moment before wandering off.  There was music on the stage but in the back of the plaza you could only hear a dull, thumping roar pouring out of the speakers.  A homeless man with face tattoos had climbed up a blue-painted tree and was licking its bark.

Before anyone had had the time to fully recover, the next march began.  Walking re-activated people’s adrenaline, making the skin buzz.  It had been agreed that there would be no back bloc on this march.  Instead the pink bloc led.  Since the first action, numbers had begun to grow, probably totaling now around seven hundred.  We marched from downtown through South Lake Union, a rapidly gentrified area owned mostly by real estate firms tied to the local billionaire Paul Allen.

The theme of this march was “Honor the Dead, Fight for the Living,” and along the way we chanted out names of those killed by police violence.  Our destination was a totem pole that had recently been erected underneath the space needle in honor of John T. Williams, a native woodcarver murdered in cold blood by Seattle cop Ian Birk.  The murder sparked a series of actions that united the radical community in Seattle, laying the groundwork for the organizing core that has now formed in the city.

People stood under the totem pole and gave speeches through the people’s mic, detailing the history of genocide and police brutality in this country, the fact of mass incarceration and Seattle’s own unique methods of cultivating an ethnic caste system within the overarching class structure of capitalism.  Many sat on the grass, resting.  Clouds had moved in and people put on jackets.  Word went around that an emergency order had been declared and that police could detain anyone, search them and confiscate anything they deemed to be a weapon.

When the march moved out again, we tried to warn those carrying flags and signs to stay toward the front and center so that the police would have a harder time reaching them.  The first confrontation was in a deadzone just above Belltown.  Police in full riot gear appeared, snaking into the edges of the crowd and yanking red flags out of people’s hands.  We got a phone call saying that riot squads were also scouring Westlake, taking flags, sticks and banners.  The monorail screeched overhead.  Police tore the fabric off the poles and handed it back to people.

Over the course of the march several tense situations developed, people linking arms and yelling at the cops, but none of these reached breaking until we were just outside Pike Place, a few blocks from Westlake.   The police came in for another round of flag confiscation.  This time someone pissed them off sufficiently and they began making arrests, pulling people through police lines and slamming them on the ground.  Overall, however, the power of the crowd was immense.  Only a fraction of those the police attempted to arrest actually ended up in custody.  Fed up with the hypocrisy of police confiscating flagpoles from protestors and then proceeding to beat those same “disarmed” protestors with billy clubs, several people forcibly pushed back.  Others took faces full of pepper spray and held their ground.  We are becoming naturalized to the fear tactics employed by these domestic standing armies, learning to hold our ground against them.

It is important to note that these arrests began hours after any property destruction had ended.  The people picked up had no involvement in the property destruction earlier in the day.  One was a photographer well known to the movement, who had been seen taking pictures during the Anti-Capitalist march, likely targeted because of frequent association with Occupy.  The city is now pursuing trumped-up assault charges on most of those arrested that day, trying to squeeze as much symbolic punishment out of what few meager snatch-and-grabs they were able to complete.

We made it back to Westlake just as the final march was set to be starting, the skies now grey, police everywhere.  They forced the road open for a moment, allowing a few cars to trickle through.  The numbers had almost doubled now, nearing a thousand.  We spoke to people who had just come down, warning them about the mayor’s emergency order.  They said they had come down because of the emergency order—to stand against this soft, liberal version of martial law.

Those who claim that the property destruction earlier in the day scared people away must look carefully at this.  Our numbers grew.  In a city with frequent mass actions that are carefully planned and contained by the democratic party and its entourage of progressive NGOs, peaceful protest does little more than get a small bit of coverage on local media.  In this city, mass public marches and rallies never help to form a core for future organizing, they never help to advance the militancy of the underclass, and they certainly do not draw progressively more people out onto the street.  As for raising awareness, this is based on the assumption that people largely are not aware of how fucked things are.  But this is not the case.  We all know that things are fucked, though we may not know the detail of that fuckage, its rondure and every integument.  Even the “message” that is supposedly lost is already itself sterilized by the fact that it is just that: a message to the ruling class.  We have no need to send a message to the ruling class except that last message which comes in the shape of their palaces burning.

The disturbing thing about events earlier in the day for the traditional left is that the democrats and the NGOs don’t even want to touch it, much less contain that “message.”  It is poison to the democrats and the non-profits.  Though it may make certain actions less “family-friendly” (though not really, since we advertised and sustained a healthy green zone in the plaza for the entire day) it does not seem to actually turn people away on the ground.  Instead we have found a great resonance and immense pole of attraction.  It has sparked a public discussion on the streets here about the merit of directly attacking our economic masters—something not to be taken lightly.  This is the kind of discussion that never comes from peaceable, contained action.  It has also offered the opportunity for sustained discussion about the targets of the attack—primarily Wells Fargo, Nike and Nordstrom, all egregious violators of human dignity, whether through financing concentration camps for immigrants, running sweatshops overseas or using public funds for private gain.  Again, none of this discussion would have happened if a few thousand came out as they do every year, listened to party incumbents and well-paid managers of 501(c)(3)’s and then went home to await the accumulation of more nothingness in their own lives.

Soon a comrade from the Black Orchid Collective got on the microphone and encouraged people to start moving.  He reminded everyone that the city wanted us divided.  The city wanted to argue that the “official” struggle of immigrants was not connected to the events earlier in the day—that “capitalism” had nothing to do with it.  We pressed through the police line into the street, meeting with the other half of the crowd that had been pushed to the opposite sidewalk.  The march was slow and enormous.  Every time we went up a hill the people on the hill would turn around and cheer to those below them and those below would cheer back.

Police armed with tear-gas launchers stood in front of every bank.  Stores had closed, boarding up their windows pre-emptively, in case of attack.  But there were no more attacks that day.  We met up with the “official” march, roughly as large as our own, and we split again to let them pass before joining.  Someone pointed out that the camera crews had hired a security company notorious for patrolling the border in Arizona.  At the stage they erected an enormous banner reading “We the People” in Constitution-style font.  And then, like I said, the rain began.

Banner reads: “NO”

The following is a statement from the  Communist Organisation of Greece (KOE). Previous posts here on Kasama have explained more about the particular players (like SYRIZA, the Troika, etc.)

Their attacks will misfire

May 14, 2012 — The orchestrated attacks against SYRIZA from pro-memoranda parties, the Troika, TV stars, big media, and other elements will lead to an outcome contra their aspirations.  These attempts to depict SYRIZA as an “irresponsible” force, “adventurist”, a force that “cannot govern”, “does not speak truth to the people”, and much more, will misfire.

Their big fear is that there will be a continuation of what we see in progress : the conversion, in other words, of diffuse radicalisation that is developing in Greek society these past two years, into a political energy connected with the Left.  A political energy that will be acquired, in a whole and to a larger degree, into consciousness, organisation, and objectives.

Who are these elements introducing themselves today as “irreplaceable” because only they possess the high art of governing ?  They are the same ones who were engulfed by the elections precisely because they governed in recent years while driving the country towards collapse.

For this reason, intimidation, threats, covert propaganda, instead of terrorising, only accomplish one thing, that is, compelling the people to recoil from a political system that cannot look them in the eyes.  Whoever has not yet understood this, has not gotten the message of the May 2012 general election.

Several people have asked for a written text of this talk. We have added below the notes from which Mike spoke. It is not a transcript of the  talk… it is the prepared text, and so is somewhat different from the spoken talk itself.

Three revolutionary arcs & this moment for communists

Trayvon Martin is dead. Let’s start there.

He was stalked on the street like dangerous animal and shot in the heart by a crazed, armed wannabe cop.

That’s bad enough.

Then all the machinery of this society conspired to protect him. The police chief of Sanford arrived oversee it personally. Zimmerman was never arrested. He was released – obviously no danger to the community – and left to cook up elaborate lies with his father, a well-connected retired judge.

And (in ways amazing to many of us watching) Trayvon was killed again – portrayed as a drug user, wannabe gangster, as the violent aggressor, and someone who should be watched, suspected, and contained.

Or consider this: that in the United States, a central question in the U.S. election has become whether states should, once again, be allowed to criminalize birthcontrol – and if the availability of birth control to young women is only state approval of their right to carry out an immoral lifestyle. And while the Republicans pick over such madness, the Democrats celebrate – because this frees them of any necessity to defend the right to abortion, which is under massive assault by law, propaganda and budget.

Young women are blown away that their private parts and sexual choices are the target of wholesale attempts at reactionary social control.

Well don’t be surprised.

If you want a sense of the need for revolution in the U.S. – just look there. Or at the ongoing U.S. and Israeli threats at Iran. Where the phrase “nothing is off the table” means that millions of Iranian people go to bed each night wondering if tey will be incincerated.

* * * * * *

Human beings have over and over fought their enslavement – in countless uprisings of slaves and peasants, or by people running away and forming communities in the wilderness. variously called maroons, pirates, renegades or bandits.

Oppressed people do not want to be oppressed. Women do not want to be sold. Slaves do not want to be whipped. Workers do not want their lives crushed.

And yet here we are at a new beginning – where we need to reimagine liberation, and start over. So be it.

In our modern era there were three great arcs that rose and fell – through which people fought for their freedom, and a future marked by equality, empowerment and an end to grinding poverty.

Out of the European struggle against medievalism, there arose a great popular and secular movement for communism, embodied in the 19th century by the most radical and insurrectionary edge of European workers movement.

Then after world war 1 another great arc, the anticolonial wave… India, China, Africa and Latin America. And there too, the most radical edge integrated a vision of egalitarian communism with their drive for development and independence.
And I think there was a third arc – of revolution within the revolution.

In post revolutionary societies (and I mean especially: Soviet Russia and China) people fought within the framework of existing socialism to press further, to prevent new oppression… to reach for classlessness and new degrees of liberation.

In many ways, for me, the most radical edge of that was the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China – where for the first time in history, literally for millions of debated directly, in its own right, how do we bring closer communism, …in radical new forms of popular control,

Overcoming of class distinctions, the enslavement of working people to production’s traditional hierarchies and to ancient traditions.

Those three great early arcs of modern liberation are now over –the European workers movement, the anti-colonial uprising against imperialist empires, and the revolutions within the revolution.

And we need to strain to understand our new arc – and reinvent a communist presentation for these times, and for future times. It is a theoretical process, and a process of preparing minds and organizing forces.

We have rich past experiences – and that body of philosophical, strategic, and economic controversies and insights.

But the frameworks and conjunctures of those three previous waves is gone. And we can’t proceed by looking backward – or transforming past methods into a series of settled questions or models.

Of course the reactionaries crow that the future is over. That communism is dead. But we have a responsibility to make sure we don’t blow our next changes, and the organized left we have inherited is often pretty exhausted, pretty grim, and pretty backward looking.

That’s the contradiction: a profound need for radical change, and a parallel need for a creative rupture in the ways revolutionaries think and speak and organize.

Let me end with these two points: About respect for novelty and the need for shocking and attractive radicalism.

We should embrace novelty. We need to be nimble and awake.

Most of the left responded to crankiness and hostility when Occupy Wall Street erupted – because it wasn’t the new movement or language they wanted. Many on the left went into Occupy to lecture, to complain, to instruct as if the people there were children and just needed to say the words “cap-it-alism” and “soc-ialism.”

Obviously people breaking into political life are filled with illusions, and naivity, and initial utopian ideas. But this was an eruption at distance from the state of affairs that refused to hustle itself into the framework of official politics.

Second point:
We need to speak with a voice that is shockingly radical and profoundly reasonable.

In the republican primary, Rick Perry declared he had three parts of the federal government he wanted to abolish – and when he forgot one, the others chimed in with what they wanted to abolish – Department of education, IRS, EPA, on and on.

How often does the left boldly speak of what it intends to abolish and replace?

In a society that demands radical change, how much has been ceded to the Radical Right?

The future offered by this system is austerity, a sharply tiered society of rich and poor, and that race to the bottom between workers in different parts of the world. And intensifying ecological madness – the destruction of the last old growths, the devastation of rivers and atmosphere, and the real danger of climate change..

Why don’t we speak boldly of what we want to abolish?

The CIA, nukes, the Marines, the White House, borders, prisons, schools that are like prisons….
U.S. corporations that are the modern equivalent of SS battalions.

And obviously we are not simply about negation…

We need a politics that represent a forbidden proposition:

That humanity needs to be freed from imperialist empire and the global policeman that enforces it. We need forms of life, production and consumption that are sustainable.

And in exchange for the abolition of mindless waste, automobile culture, suburban sprawl, the dog eat dog of privilege and atomized individuals, of anomie and senselessness, of garrison national borders and gated communities …

We should help promote a sense of a radically different road: of human solidarity, reenvisioned intimacy without domination, new forms of community,

It is increasingly possible for the first time in human history to really see the whole earth as an integrated whole, and see what is common for humanity as a whole.

What we need to fight toward, theoretically and then in the world of practical politics – is the way that the fight against a world of intolerable oppressions becomes wedded to a road that takes us ending all oppressions.

In another sense, it also represent a critique of a more general set of problems within the organized left. It is a critique of failure to deeply engage reality, and a corrupting sense of grandiosity.

Now these 9 essays are available in both main e-book formats.

Click here for the new e-book versions

• 9 Letters epub file for Nook
• 9 Letters mobi file for Kindle

Previously available forms:

• 9 Letters to Our Comrades (online pdf)
• 9 Letters to Our Comrades (print pdf)
• Order in Paperback
• Excerpts from the 9 letters
• The original web version

Preface

Standing at a lectern, young Omar looks into the camera.

The crisis in the communist movement, he says, “has given us the right to make a precise accounting of what we possess, to call by their correct names both our riches and our predicament, to think and argue out loud about our problems, and to engage in the rigors of real research.”

This moment has, Omar continues, “allowed us to emerge from our theoretical provincialism, to recognize and engage with the existence of others outside ourselves. And on connecting with this outer world, to begin to see ourselves better. It has allowed us to develop an honest self-appraisal by laying bare where we stand in regard to the knowledge and ignorance of Marxism.”

Omar scans his comrades scattered across the room and adds: “Any questions?”[1]

[1] La Chinoise, film by Jean Luc Godard,1967, Our translation from French. The crisis Omar was discussing was the great struggle that followed Stalin’s death and Krushchev’s denunciation.

Online Introduction

How do we make revolution in a world that seems to conspire against liberation?

With apparent singlemindedness, the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (RCP) has been insisting that its leader, Bob Avakian, has the answers for humanity. His new theoretical synthesis (this party says) is a major rupture with, and leap beyond, even the best of previous communism, including Marx, Lenin and Mao. And (this party says) this New Synthesis represents the best and even only hope for the future.

The “Nine Letters” unfold a detailed Maoist critique of Avakian’s synthesis. It engages and criticizes Avakian’s claims and methods. The main author is Mike Ely, a former editor of the RCP’s Revolution newspaper.

These “Nine Letters” excavate the RCP’s inability to establish any mass base or revolutionary movement over more than thirty-five years. They dissect the RCP’s escalating cult of personality around Avakian – with special focus on the cult’s theoretical assumptions, denial of practice, and implications for revolutionary strategy.

In a beginning way, these Nine Letters point to a different road for communists and call on others to join in a very presumptuous work of re-conception and new revolutionary practice.

About:

These letters emerge from a collective process. Mike Ely has been a supporter of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP,USA) since its founding in 1975. Over the last 25 years, he worked as staff writer and then an editor of the party’s press. Many comrades, inside and outside circles of the RCP, sharpened the work. Among them: J.B. Connors, Rosa Harris, DMC, JB and JS shaped and deepened the letters at every stage, fighting to go from perception to underlying dynamics.

Principled Restraint:

These letters attempt a critical excavation of political and ideological substance. However, they carefully avoid direct reference to internal events, documents, organizational structures and internal activities of specific personalities. This restraint means that potential documentation of some arguments remains submerged.

MONTREAL, QUE.: FEBRUARY 20, 2012– Students march up Sanguinet street south of Sherbrooke street in protest of increasing university tuition fees at Berri Square in Montreal on Monday, February 20, 2012. Students have been staging several demonstrations in the past weeks to protest the increasing fees. (Dario Ayala/THE GAZETTE)

The student strike in Quebec has been an extremely important event which has been virtually ignored in the mass media outside Canada.

The following first appeared on Signalfire. The introduction by Signalfire’s editor said:

“The following detailed report comes courtesy of a comrade in Montreal-Its a very useful summery though we must note that we disagree with the authors excessively pessimistic line on the potential for proletarian hegemony over mass movements in the metropole as the crisis of imperialism continues and deepens.”

Report back on the student strike on Quebec

We are now in the 13th week of a Quebec student strike against a 75% tuition hike – the longest student strike in Quebec history – the conflict has become a rallying point for any and all opposition to austerity here, and clearly represents a political milestone, perhaps (we can hope) a real turning point.

The following is an incomplete overview of what has happened so far. It is not a history of the Quebec student movement, or of protest in Montreal, or even a partially complete account of this strike. It is really just an attempt to provide a sense of what has been happening for comrades outside of the province, as well as a sense of the context in which some of this resistance has been occurring.

The three main student organizations involved in this conflict, the FEUQ (Quebec Federation of University Students), FECQ (Quebec Federation of CEGEP Students – cegep is an intermediary school system between high school and university unique to Quebec), and the CLASSE. (There is also a fourth, the TaCEQ, a split from the FEUQ, but it only represents 3% of the strikers, mostly in Quebec City.)

The CLASSE has the best demands of the three, it’s the group where anyone on the left would likely be found – it is in fact a “temporary” structure set up to deal with the struggle against tuition hikes this winter, by a smaller group the ASSA, which is left-wing in orientation, committed to fighting for universal access (i.e., free education), and has a structure inspired by syndicalist principles of direct democracy and decentralization. The media says that CLASSE represents almost 100,000 students, which is calculated by how many students are represented by the student associations which have voted to affiliate with it. There is a good background article (though the analysis is left-soc-dem) here: http://rabble.ca/news/2012/04/massive-student-movement-Quebec

The Quebec Liberal Party currently controls the Quebec government, with Jean Charest as premier. The Liberals are the most right-wing of the two main political parties in Quebec. It is also the province’s federalist party; that is to say, it opposes Quebec independence. The party is currently implicated in a variety of corruption scandals, heavy graft, etc.

The key opposition party is the Parti Quebecois, which in the 1970s was social democratic in orientation, but now oscillates between right- to left-of-center, depending on which way the wind seems to be blowing on any given issue. The PQ is pro-independence and, as such, stakes out the nationalist vote; historically, it had tight connections to the three major trade union federations, though these have diminished over the past twenty years. The caveat to this right-left characterization is that on issues having to do with racism, the Parti Quebeccois is normally worse than the Liberals. There are two smaller third parties, Quebec Solidaire (which has 1 member of parliament, from Montreal’s Mercier riding in the heavily gentrified and trendy Plateau neighborhood) and the Coalition Avenir Quebec (7 MLAs). The latter is more stridently neo-liberal, pro-business, hostile to immigrants, etc., whereas the former is a left social democratic, soft nationalist party, with a sprinkling of trotskyists and others eager to pin their hopes to whatever.

Things have been escalating constantly throughout the months of March and April – daily demonstrations, militant actions of economic disruption, etc. In fact, many days have seen multiple demonstrations and actions in Montreal alone – as well as other things in other cities – and pickets at universities and cegeps.

This unparalleled student mobilization has been buttressed by unprecedented public support. For the first time ever, there have been non-student demonstrations in support of a student strike.

CLASSE organized two specifically “family” demonstrations, on March 18 and April 9, with as many as 30,000 people participating, and where students were in a minority. And of course, this has been accompanied by the regular left noise; i.e., i was at two events, very different, in the first week of April – a Filipino political prisoner event, and a memorial for Madeleine Parent, a feminist and labour organizer/icon who died in March – at both, everyone was wearing the student’s red square symbol, mention was made of the strike, and at Parent’s commemoration reps from the CLASSE gave the speech and got the loudest applause.
Within a context of daily protests and actions, on March 7 a student, Francis Grenier, was hit by a police stun grenade, and suffered a serious eye injury. (http://www.cbc.ca/news/Canada/Montreal/story/2012/03/08/Montreal-student-protest-eye.html).

That same day there were other more minor injuries and tear gas lobbed as students gained entry to Loto Quebec’s offices. (http://www.cbc.ca/news/Canada/Montreal/story/2012/03/07/student-protest-Montreal.html) This happened one week before the annual March 15 demonstration against police brutality, which police appealed to students not to join (see below).

Nevertheless, this advice was ignored, it was a large March 15th (perhaps the largest ever), between four and five thousand people, with police using more stun grenades, tear gas, baton charges, etc. and making 150 arrests. (http://rabble.ca/news/2012/03/police-violence-rise-Montreal and http://Montreal.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20120315/mtl_police_brutality_march_120315/20120315/)

(For some years now this has been standard fare at large militant demonstrations in Montreal: the police violently attack in order to divide the demonstrators into a few smaller groups, which they then chase around for hours throughout the downtown core.)

Actions aimed to cause economic disruption increased throughout the month; for instance, on March 21, Montreal’s Champlain Bridge (a busy connection to the south shore suburbs) was blocked during rush hour.

On March 22, there was a large demo – the largest in many years, at least since the 2003 lead-up to Iraq, perhaps even larger than those – of 200,000 people. The trade unions were involved in backing this demo. Personally, i saw very little organized left presence – i.e., no newspapers, fliers, or even banners from left groups – but it seems that this is because the march was just so big that it was possible to be there for several hours and yet not see any of them, as the CLAC (Anti-Capitalist Convergence), several anarchist groups, as well as the Maoist PCR-RCP were all there distributing literature and agit prop.

Already by this point, the strike had taken on dimensions not seen for decades. Hundreds of thousands of students were participating, and a majority of post-secondary institutions were affected.

Right-wing students opposed to the strike began going to court, asking for injunctions against the strike. Just like injunctions pertaining to labor strikes, these court orders are used to criminalize pickets, and to give police an excuse to arrest strikers.
The injunctions started arriving in late March. First, a community college in Saguenay was ordered to resume classes the college hired security guards to enforce the court order, and students trashed the college.

Next, Laval University in Quebec City received a similar injunction on April 3. UQAM is the francophone university in Montreal where working-class people are more likely to go; it has been a center of radical activism in this city since it was founded in 1969, and not surprisingly has been the militant core of the entire strike movement. On April 4, UQAMs administration obtained a similar court injunction.

Against these injunctions, the student unions upheld their right to strike with militant direct action (i.e., mass pickets) against the administrators, the cops and the private security guards. This is the first time this has happened since 1968, some of the best direct actions having now taken place on the picket lines (including fighting the cops to the point that they have had to retreat, on several occasions).

Indeed, the use of injunctions, while not affecting all striking students, contributed to an escalation, as strikers successfully met the challenge. As a member of Professeurs Contre la Hausse (Professors Against the Hike) warned, “This kind of judicialization may create an explosive cocktail among students, teachers and administrators”. (http://www2.Canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=6519058) Indeed, if anything, the injunctions have spurred on the strikers direct action tactics, and the strategy of economic disruption and mass street protest that has come to define this spring. (http://www.Montrealgazette.com/news/Roving+student+protesters+tackle+multiple+Montreal+targets/6442031/story.html)

On April 4, 71 people were arrested after the ritzy Queen Elizabeth Hotel was stormed; they knocked over buffet table and smashed dishes. Two security guards were apparently hurt in the melee. (http://www.Montrealgazette.com/news/UQAM+gets+injunction+against+striking+Montreal+students/6409104/story.html)
On April 5 (Passover!) locusts were released inside the University of Montreal, forcing classes to be canceled. (http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2012/04/05/19598226.html)

On Friday, April 13, students at the University of Quebecs Outaouais campus in Gatineau received an injunction to go back to class. The next Monday, the administration had to cancel classes after students barricaded themselves inside a building. Police brutalized one student, who was hospitalized. (http://ssmu.mcgill.ca/tuitiontruth/news/crisis-at-uqo-riot-police-enforce-injunction-160-arrests/) A few days late, on April 19,there were 151 arrests at the Outaouais campus, as students defied the injunction for the fourth day in a row; crickets were also released into this university’s library and walls got some red paint. (http://www.cbc.ca/news/Canada/ottawa/story/2012/04/19/gatineau-protest-Montreal-students-bus-to-join-arrests.html) More police brutality, some of it getting noticed, especially as one kid was photographed with blood pouring down his face.

On April 16, police would claim people shut down the Montreal subway system by throwing bags of bricks on the tracks. Police also claimed that molotov cocktails were left outside of a residential building which people incorrectly thought housed government offices. That same evening, several government buildings had their windows smashed, red paint thrown on them, and molotov cocktails found outside of them, unexploded. One can make of these claims what one will as people do make mistakes, people do sometimes make bad choices as to targets; but police also do plant evidence to discredit our side, both on their own initiative and as the result of orders from on high. Many comrades, not usually prone to conspiracy theories, feel that this string of events, especially so many molotov cocktails that all happened not to explode, was very fishy.
All the more so as the government moved in very quickly to make political hay from this, now framing its refusal to negotiate with CLASSE in terms of the latter not having denounced violence, even though there was no evidence tying them to these attacks. (http://www.cbc.ca/news/Canada/Montreal/story/2012/04/16/Montreal-vandalism-student-movement.html) In a show of unity, neither the FECQ or FEUQ agreed to negotiations unless the CLASSE was included – this was historic, nothing like it having ever happened before. Indeed, FEUQ lost thousands of members in 2005 because they broke solidarity with ASSA to accept a shitty deal. This time around, they made the political choice to stand solid with CLASSE, not so much because of some newly discovered political principles, but because they realised they would be completely gutted from the inside if they repeated that mistake.

If the solidarity with CLASSE represented a political breakthrough within the student movement, a breakthrough on the streets occurred in late April, as the government was hosting a big to-do about the Plan Nord, a massive development plan in Quebec’s north, where the population is mainly Indigenous (Cree, Inuit and Innu). Plan Nord promises to be a version of northern development in the tradition of the James Bay hydro dams, i.e., some people will oppose it on anti-colonial grounds, some on environmental, and then eventually some on colonial capitalist and nationalist grounds, based on the argument that “our” resources being sold too cheaply to foreign corporations.

There were demonstrations against Plan Nord on April 20 and 21, much of the mobilization for this being done by anti-colonial forces, green and insurrectionary anarchists, who were reinforced by student protesters. People got into the conference center and cops at one point were sent running. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=83SLtpBiJjg) As one comrade explains, “The first day was actually a momentous event, in that we started fighting back for real, fear had disappeared and we managed to kick some serious pig ass on that day. Also solidarity was felt in the street fighting to a level never seen before.”
Although the people who had gotten into the conference center were violently ejected by police, a victory had been won. After the premier gave his speech, the conference was delayed and the job fair that had been organized as window dressing was canceled for the day – and even this speech, an attempt at damage control, backfired, as Charest tried to joke that the protesters were welcome, after all, he would give them a “job in the north” (i.e., in his massive colonial ecocidal development project). Suddenly mainstream commentators started wondering if Charest himself might be to blame for the escalating tension on the streets; ever since, one of the most popular chants at demos has been, “Charest, get out! Were going to find you a job in the north!”.
This registered as a big step forward for the radical left, and a real black eye for the Liberals, with less than two dozen arrests on the Friday. Demonstrations continued on the next day, however not as aggressively, which led police to take advantage of the change in tone by making several dozen arrests, ostensibly to prove that they had “regained control” and to make up for the humiliating youtube videos showing them running away from protesters.

Sunday April 22 was Earth Day, which turned out to be the second demonstration of more than 200,000 people in Montreal this spring. Earth Day this year had become a place for all kinds of people on the left and all the various “causes” to gather, with everyone wearing red squares, the symbol of the student strike. The event has since been incorporated into the narrative of a “Quebec Spring” or “Maple Spring” that has emerged, of a spring of struggle that goes far beyond the issue of a tuition hike.

Also on Sunday, April 22, the FECQ passed a resolution that it would negotiate if the CLASSE did not renounce violence, as it claimed this would amount to the CLASSE “excluding itself”. At the same time, the FEUQ offered to allow CLASSE reps to join the discussions as FEUQ reps, with the understanding that once there they would speak for the CLASSE. Later that day, after a lengthy assembly, CLASSE adopted a resolution to condemn violence targeting people except in self-defense. The wording was obviously the result of a compromise between different political tendencies, and specifically did not denounce property attacks, fiercely defended civil disobedience and direct action, and framed things in terms of the greater violence being economic violence, and the violence of the police.

These first negotiations started Monday, April 23, with the Minister trying to impose a 48-hour “truce” while they were going on, meaning no actions of economic disruption, interpreted by her to include demonstrations of any kind. While CLASSE did not technically agree to this truce (to do so would have required a general assembly), spokespeople did state that they could go along with it as they had not planned any disruptive action within that time frame. This was somewhat disingenuous, as a night-time demonstration had in fact been planned, and members of the CLASSE executive now tried to use bogus reasons to have it moved to the Wednesday.

Defying this move, hundreds of people gathered regardless on the evening of Tuesday, April 24. This first night-time demonstration was organized largely by students at CEGEP du Vieux Montreal, a working-class CEGEP which has one of the most hardcore student unions, affiliated with CLASSE. It was clearly framed as a rejection of any truce, and the point was made that when CLASSE started making deals about how people were allowed to protest/resist, it was no longer representing the protesters. While newspapers talked of “dozens”, roughly 500 people attended, with some property damage, including a bank window smashed.

Wednesday morning there were allegedly smoke bombs set off in the Montreal subway system, while students joined with laid off Air Canada workers to block the street outside an Air Canada shareholders’ meeting. Despite attempts by union reps to have only their people speak, rank and file workers insisted on taking the microphone and then passing it to student reps. Around lunchtime Minister Beauchamp announced she would no longer negotiate with CLASSE because the truce had been violated, amongst other things by these latest occurrences and the demo the night before. FECQ and FEUQ left the negotiations in protest. That same day, three high schools voted to go on a three-day strike. At the same time, the call went out for another demonstration that night.

Roughly 10,000 people showed up Wednesday night, and the demonstration got off to a good and militant start, with extensive attacks on property: all the banks on the route had their windows smashed, the Apple store and other establishments received red paint – the police would say a car was set on fire, though that has yet to be confirmed. For their part, the police attacked people with stun grenades, pepper spray, and beatings, making over 80 arrests. (Later on, police station 21 had its windows broken.) Some good video footage: https://vimeo.com/41177705.com

Thursday night there was a third demo, again with thousands of people attending. There were fewer arrests and vandalism than on the previous night. At this point, it became clear that there would be night-time demos every night until the Minister returned to negotiations.

Friday (April 27) was the fourth night time demo. This time i decided to attend, and i was both surprised, heartened, and disappointed by what i saw. I will go into some detail here, not because this was a particularly important demonstration, but because it was one where i was there so i can give a bit more detail.

For one, it was not a warm night – just under zero (celsius), with occasional very light snow. Thousands definitely did show up when it started at 8pm, perhaps as many as ten thousand at first. It felt very un-left, which i mean in a good way, meaning just that it was not the left activist crowd i am used to hanging with, or who i normally see at demos. Obviously a lot of young people, but i definitely was not the oldest. Getting a slice of pizza before it started, a Black guy in line in front of me said, “It’s going to be a thousand white kids against two thousand cops, crazy!” – i asked if he had gone to any of the other demos and he said he wasn’t into that bullshit. Then i bumped into a woman i have known for years, a veteran of decades of various kinds of social justice/peace activism, who explained to me she had come to tell the students “how it’s done” – by which she meant nonviolently. I didn’t know what to expect.

The crowd was overwhelmingly white and francophone. Essentially, this was a Quebecois event. Which makes sense, as the entire official class-oriented apparatus in Quebec is Quebecois, from the trade unions to the student unions to the antipoverty groups. This strike is “historic” amongst other reasons, because the English universities and cegeps have not voted to participate in a strike in decades (or ever, depending on who you talk to) – yet even in this strike, the English universities have no solid pickets, and as a result many classes continue pretty much as usual. All a reflection of the fact that social democratic politics in this society is Quebecois. Plenty of exceptions, but that’s what they are: exceptions.

Given that, the April 27 demo had relatively non-existent visible nationalist politics (2-3 flags or signs), though some of the chants (“Whose Quebec? Our Quebec!”) could be understood that way. The complexion of the march was largely middle class, but the politics were of class struggle from below, i.e., the bulk of people there experience the tuition hikes as part of a process pushing them out of the middle class, endangering their future, whereas the political core (and thus the people formulating the slogans, etc.) have a clearly left-wing perspective and frame things in terms of working class struggle.
This is not an unusual situation in the First World, especially in North America the pitfalls are fairly well-known, even if the way to deal with these remains elusive. As such, in the future this is likely to split, along much the same lines as the Occupy movement and other swells in protest in North America. So long as we remain in this stage of the capitalist crisis, most people politically affected by such protests will initially end up lining up behind some kind of progressive, soft-nationalist social democracy, while a minority will be won to radical left positions. As international capitalism is pushing sections of the middle class (including the labor aristocracy), it is important to also recognize that a minority will develop a radical resistance that may oppose this, but along exclusionary and authoritarian even fascist lines. (Here, as in the United States and English Canada, we see signs of the potential for this in the attraction to conspiracy theories and exclusionary nationalist solutions.) The task at hand for our side within these metropolitan societies is to intervene politically from an anti-capitalist, anti-colonial, and internationalist perspective in order to increase the numbers who will take option #2, though we should not have any illusions about that ever being more than a minority.

In this regard i was shocked at how little – as in zero – organized left presence there was at this demo. Nobody handing out newspapers. Nobody with fliers for upcoming events. No groups with banners. Nothing, nada, zilch. This is an example of the fact that, while the radical left has been present at these events, its capacity to do outreach has at times been outstripped by the size of the upsurge taking place, by the sheer number of protests, as well as the number of people who attend them.

Despite – or perhaps because of – such a lack of organized left presence, at first it felt like a really big militant march, snaking through the city. It felt a lot more disappointing after the first half-hour, when police blocked an intersection (Ontario and St-Laurent) and would not let us pass. Someone had been arrested, and 20-30 cops, not rigged out in super-heavy riot gear or anything, were standing against 10,000 people, maybe 200-300 of whom were masked (though not a black bloc as such) and looking like in theory they’d have been in favor of rumbling – yet the arrested comrade was never rescued, and it took 20 minutes to even get the cops to move and let us pass. Worse, the main chant at that point was “We are staying peaceful!” Very bad.

As the demo snaked on, this happened a few times, and by 11pm it was a little smaller, but still many thousands. The cops then announced it had turned into an illegal assembly and had to disband, but this had no effect. Between 11pm and midnight there were a few more standoffs, increasingly tense, a bit of pepper spray, some kind of flashy thing shot into the air, and a few arrests. Although there was no black bloc, someone blocked up did throw a stone through the window of an army recruiting center – they were actually physically attacked by “pacifists”; although you can’t see it all, you can see some here: http://www.cyberpresse.ca/actualites/dossiers/conflit-etudiant/201204/27/01-4519835-une-marche-pacifique-malgre-la-tension.php. I also heard that people applauded when police made arrests, of which there were 34 in all that night. Although the media described these as the result of police making “surgical strikes”, what this really amounted to was retaliatory and often random arrests; i.e., see this youtube video showing a group of kids under arrest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiib7CVafw0

On the other hand, i did not see anyone intervene when the small unlucky contingent of cops who were assigned to accompany the demo had (empty plastic lightweight) bottles and marbles thrown at them. And i did notice that as the demo got smaller the “We are staying peaceful” chant was overtaken by “We are staying in one group”, meaning physically tight. Cool tankie chant of the night: “Charest, we’re not joking – we’re going to send you to the gulag!”

I left the demo at 1am; there were still thousands of people, but i was tired and wanted to get the last bus home. The next morning’s headlines were all about how the demo policed itself and was anti-vandalism. What several comrades have pointed out to me is that during the month of March and April things were escalating in the streets, but that many students who were not in the streets every day were experiencing this filtered through the media. When CLASSE was kicked out of negotiations, this led to thousands of people joining the nightly demonstrations and turning them into the main form of protest; however, when these thousands of people saw folks carrying out militant actions, they reacted based on their own understanding of “good students vs. bad vandals” that had been constructed in the media. So it is not that the protests turned against people carrying out more militant actions, so much as that they were swollen by thousands of new people who did not grasp the dynamic of what had happened before. (For mainstream media on the overall relationship of black bloc and student strike: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/05/04/graeme-hamilton-hard-to-claim-Montreal-violence-isnt-tied-into-wider-protest-movement/ and for a sympathetic explanation which appeared in the mainstream media but was written by a comrade: http://rougesquad.org/en/content/black-bloc-and-red-square)

In any case, talk of the black bloc,and militant tactics being marginalized, while puffed up by the media and social democrats, proved to be premature.

While nightly demonstrations did continue, albeit with far fewer militant actions and arrests, the next major confrontation occurred on May first, at the annual anti-capitalist demonstration.
Unlike English Canada and the United States, where Mayday is mainly a radical left thing, in Quebec it is the main labor march, with trade unions, politicians, etc. jumping on board. Tens of thousands of people, sometimes more, take to the streets in Montreal.
In the 1990s, there developed a situation whereby younger anarchists were often getting vamped on by trade union security marshals, frequently because they would be chanting anti-nationalist slogans or else acting militant. This was both bad politics on the part of the unions, and also a bit of a generation gap as i remember hearing a security marshal at the first demo where this happened, he was panicked talking into his walkie talkie about how “nazi skinheads” had invaded the march when it was in fact a very disorganized proto-black-bloc of anarchist teenagers. This split with the trade unions was deepened every year, in part by the security marshals being heavy handed especially those from the FTQ (the Quebec Labour Federation), the least progressive of the three main trade union federations. With the rise in Maoism that culminated in the official formation of the PCR-RCP in 2007, Maoists became even more visibly present in the mix. (Prior to 2007, this group had been known as the PCR(OC); it had been founded in 2001 out of the group Groupe Action Socialiste.)
A few years ago, this process culminated in a decision on the part of a coalition of anarchists, Maoists and others to organize a separate march with an explicit anti-capitalist basis of unity. The demo took place in Hochelaga, a heavily Quebecois neighborhood, one of the poorest in Montreal and also the site of years of class-oriented organizing and activism by anarchists, Maoists, and other communists. The straw that had broken the proverbial camels back had occurred the year previous, when comrades who had occupied the office of then-FTQ president Henri Massa to protest against union corporatism were violently ejected i.e., kicked, hair pulled, etc. by union goons. (See pages 3 and 11: http://www.clac-Montreal.net/sites/default/files/coup_pour_coup_web.pdf ) As one comrade explains, “We split from labor to organize the anti-capitalist demo because they are just too pathetic and sold out in general, and extremely fucking pathetic when it comes to anti-capitalism and acknowledging the radical history of May Day.”
As a result, since 2008, every May 1st there have been two marches, a trade union march and a militant anti-capitalist march; while at first the trade union march was by far the largest of the two, for the past couple of years they have been roughly the same size. The Anti-capitalist May 1st has been another place where militant street tactics have developed; the demos have routinely been attacked by police and in 2008, boneheads seemed to be a part of a setup and people have been hurt and have received heavy charges.
In 2011, some police were roughed up and while some suspect this was a setup, it could have also just been pure stupidity, as some relatively unprotected cops felt they could enter the march and make arrests without anyone resisting and leading to a several-month covert investigation of the PCR-RCP, following which some peoples homes were raided and three comrades were arrested. It was initially reported that these arrests were carried out by the anti-gang squad, but it soon came out that the organized crime division had established a red squad (or maybe a black-and-red squad?) over the past year, named the GAMMA in order to respond to the increasing militancy of local anti-capitalist demonstrations. The GAMMA agents were accompanied by someone from the integrated national security unit, and amongst the subjects the comrades were questioned about was a bombing of a recruitment center in Trois Rivieres (a city about two hours from Montreal) in 2010 just after the G20 in Toronto.

On 2012s Mayday, the anti-capitalist demo was clearly larger than the trade union march with several thousand people. In fact, the trade union march was hardly even mentioned in the media. The tone was set before it even started, as police vamped on a Maoist comrade (who was arrested as part of last year’s GAMMA investigation) on the grounds that he was breaking his conditions.

Nevertheless, the demo started peacefully enough, however within an hour street fighting had broken out between the black bloc and police. The demo was declared an “illegal assembly”, and soon after the cops got pelted with some rocks, a massive police charge broke it apart. In fact, as we wandered the streets, we assumed it was over, although isolated standoffs between people and police, and tear gas and stun grenades going off, made the downtown area seem surreal. We trekked along for about a half an hour before, by accident, coming across the remnants of the demo, several hundred people, at St-Louis. More marching through the streets, anti-police chants, etc., ,ending at Place Emilie Gamelin, with some more tussles with police, a few more arrests, and then finally many of those who remained joined with that night’s student demonstration. In all, there were 108 arrests at the Mayday march. Sympathetic left report here: http://www.mediacoop.ca/story/what-really-happened-montr%C3%A9al-may-day-protest/10727 and video footage here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhQv-dDdHf4

Throughout this period of escalation, which started in March and has still not necessarily ended, a dynamic relationship has been created between one protest and the next. The people in the streets have been creating momentum, and a political crisis that the government has found itself unable to manage or reverse so far.
This is the context in which the Liberal Party was scheduled to hold its party conference in Montreal between May 4 and 6. This is where they were to decide upon their platform for the elections that will have to happen later this year. Due to the protests that have rocked the city every day, the week before it was to take place, it was announced that it would instead be moved to the town of Victoriaville, a couple of hours away.

The anti-cutback coaliton as well as a variety of student associations quickly organized buses to bring the fight to them. Which is what happened. Between two and three thousand people traveled to Victoriaville. Demonstrators quickly knocked over the police barricades, but then simply gathered in front of the line of police and listened to speeches. The police attacked the demonstration just ten minutes later, shooting tear gas and hitting people. As one comrade recalls, I was shot point blank with an impact projectile (pepper powder) and they started to launch CS grenades at the same time; then all hell broke loose. Some people resisted, throwing things back at the police, who had begun firing stun grenades and plastic bullets. See here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=A_6QnK1w1i4

During this initial attack, three demonstrators were badly injured by police projectiles; initially it was reported that one was at risk of dying, though this is fortunately no longer the case. Two men suffered severe head injuries; in one case, requiring 8 hours of surgery, and resulting in the loss of an eye. As police were firing various sub-lethal weapons at peoples heads, the most likely hypothesis at this point is that he was hit on the side of the head with a tear gas canister, as these explode upon impact, and his ear was sliced open. A woman also lost several teeth as she was hit in the face by a police projectile. There were also countless people who received leg injuries from plastic bullets.

In the case of one of the seriously injured, Alexandre Allard, there are several eyewitness reports of what happened, including video footage from CUTV (the Concordia campus television station, which has been providing live coverage of many of the Montreal protests). Police, when informed that someone was injured and possibly dying, refused to phone an ambulance. Demonstrators phoned for one, while street medics many of whom belong to a group formed out of the nurses’s union, who have attended several of these protests in uniform attempted to provide first aid. (Given the severity of his injuries, this likely proved critical.) Police continued to lob tear gas, and as people began to run, demonstrators had to form a human chain to protect Allard from being trampled. As police continued with the tear gas and moved in, people then had to move Allard, not once but twice, in order to protect him. Finally, as people cleared a path for the ambulance (which took over twenty minutes), police took advantage of the gap in the crowd to make another assault. Video footage of all of this here: http://cutvMontreal.ca/videos/1132 and a story in the Gazette, Montreal’s English-language mainstream newspaper:http://www.Montrealgazette.com/news/never+seen+police+like+this/6582164/story.html

The fighting continued for hours; there is heartening video footage of one cowboy cop jumping on a demonstrator to arrest him, only to receive a beating from other protesters. The cop was sent running, the demonstrator got to go home that night: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1MZMx7eN9w

Nevertheless, there were over 100 arrests, many of which occurred when people were already on their way back to Montreal. Three buses were intercepted by the police: as one comrade later wrote, we were forced to sit throughout the night over ten hours as police processed passengers in the station and armed guards stood watch on a bus transformed into a jail. (http://Montreal.mediacoop.ca/story/riot-police-turn-bus-jail-cell-victoriaville/10800) While this does point to a vulnerability in terms of travel logistics, it also indicates police were unable (or perhaps not trying to?) to get that many people during the demonstrations/riots themselves, and were instead taking advantage of these easy pickings for the sake of PR.

A first person acount: http://Montreal.openfile.ca/Montreal/text/first-person-account-victoriaville-protest-descends-violence
More media coverage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTQZ60AZ2pQ

On Friday night, in the wake of the riots, all three student federations, including the CLASSE, appealed for people to be calm. The three student federations had entered into marathon negotiations with the Minister on Friday: it would have been a media coup for the government to be able to come up with a settlement during the party conference, and so everything was likely timed this way on purpose – i.e., refuse to negotiate until right before the conference, then hold negotiations with an eye to getting some kind of resolution to put wind in the Liberals’ sails for the next election.

Indeed, less than 24 hours later, after almost three months of the students being on strike, on Saturday, May 5, there was word that an agreement or at least a tangible offer, had been agreed to or drafted or something (vagueness ruled!), between the three student federations and the government. Reports are making it clear that this came from heavy pressure from the trade unions, especially the FTQ, which had people at the talks, and which threatened the student reps that they would withdraw their support if there was not an agreement reached. (http://www.lapresse.ca/debats/chroniques/yves-boisvert/201205/06/01-4522604-la-contribution-syndicale.php)
Essentially what the “proposal” boils down to would be that the tuition hike would still happen, but would be balanced in the upcoming semester by an equivalent reduction in institutional fees, so the way it was being presented by the government was that the actual amount paid would stay the same. This has been denounced as a farce, as it would mean the hike would still happen but would in effect be paid for in the form of cuts to student services. While there may be a lot of waste (i.e., perks to administrators and such), the places to make these cuts would be decided by a committee comprised of 4 student reps, 4 reps from the trade unions, and 11 reps from school administrators, government, etc. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that even if the cut to institutional fees matches the tuition hike in the first year, that it would do so next year or the year after. This view has been buttressed by Minister Beauchamp’s making public statements over the weekend about how the government has won, has not given in, etc., which may prove to be an error on their part, as the agreement has not been ratified (as of May 8) by any of the still-striking student associations, and the latest media reports have student reps saying they doubt it will pass.

(Francis Grenier, the guy who lost his eye to police in March, had this on his facebook status: “For myself and many other of those injured in the student conflict, the strike of 2012 is never going to be over with, so we cannot be content with so little”; for a good left response to the offer: http://ucl-saguenay.blogspot.ca/2012/05/mouvement-etudiant-cette-entente-est.html )

At the same time, in the wake of the months of increasingly militant protest here, the State is responding, and not just with violence on the streets.
On May 7, it was announced that CSIS – the internal spy agency, unlike the FBI, but like the German Verfassungschutz, unable to make arrests but with a focus on infiltration/surveillance – has begun investigating the Union Communiste Libertaire (anarchists), the PCR-RCP (Maoists), the CLAC (Anti-Capitalist Convergence, mainly anarchists but also some others), and the RRQ (Quebecois Resistance Network, nationalist) and their activities in the riots. (http://tvanouvelles.ca/lcn/infos/national/archives/2012/05/20120506-183028.html)
That same day, referring specifically to events in Quebec, a (federal) private member’s bill was drafted to criminalize the wearing of masks at riots or “unlawful assemblies”, with jail time of up to five years – given that the Conservatives have a majority in the federal parliament, it would be difficult, and would require a militant extra-parliamentary struggle, to stop this from passing. Such a law will apply Canada-wide. (http://www.680news.com/news/national/article/359688–conservatives-back-private-members-bill-targeting-masked-protesters). (It should be noted that all it takes for a demonstration to become an “unlawful assembly” is for the police to say it is one; i have been at dozens such “unlawful assemblies”, often the police make the call right at the beginning and then attack. One gain of the past few years is that demos are sometimes able to withstand this attack, and indeed during the strike many such illegal assemblies have proceeded, with the police not feeling sure enough of their position to make a move.)

This was followed, on May 7, by Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay announcing that a series of bylaws will be passed to counter the rise in militant protest. Organizers will have to tell police the route of their demonstration beforehand, or else the demonstration will be automatically classified as an illegal gathering. Wearing a mask at any demonstration, whether it has been declared an illegal assembly or not, will likewise be criminalized; however police will be given wide latitude to decide how to apply these rules, as the mayor has indicated he only wants demonstrations that are likely to get out of hand to be targeted. What’s more, fines for being present at such illegal gatherings are to dramatically increase, to $500-$1000 for a first offense up to $3000 for repeat offenders. (No crime need have been committed, simply being at the scene will be enough as there are literally thousands of cases of people who have been swept up by police in this context simply for having been walking down the street at a time when a protest is being kettled or smashed.) (http://www.Montrealgazette.com/news/Montreal+masked+demonstrators/6580627/story.html)
Repression is both predictable and inevitable when we go on the offensive, and as such these legislative moves are the logical result of the escalation that has taken place over the past months. That said, it always remains an open question whether repression will end a cycle of struggle, or fan the flames in and of itself, all it does is confront people with a choice to either push ahead further still, or else back down. Backing down always leads to demoralization, the fragmentation and scattering of our forces, and in the long term plays into the rise of exclusionary and right-wing forces, not only pro-State, but also (and separately) pro-fascist. At the same time, escalation comes with its own risks too, for every step on our part will be matched by steps taken by our opponents. Historically, there are no long-term blueprints for success (that’s why we are still stuck with capitalism), though in the medium-term maintaining political focus while extending the scope of the struggle, both geographically and in terms of the issues mobilized around, seems the best way of keeping one step ahead of the State.

When i saw the youtube footage of kids chasing cops outside the Plan Nord conference, throwing sticks and stones at them, i was elated. On a gut level i felt “they don’t know that they’re supposed to be afraid to do that” – my kind of activism, and most people I’ve known who have been activists for a long time, would not have tried that, because it looked tactically unwise, and likely to lead to arrest. So, at first blush, it could look like a strength of spontaneous radicalism. Indeed, i can think of other examples where something tactically unwise that people with more experience would “know” could not work has not only worked, but became an element in a breakthrough. I think what we accumulate as mental baggage may always seem to us subjectively to be “knowledge” and “experience” and “good”, but in actual fact we may be learning wrong lessons, or the lessons someone else wants us to. In which case, outside repression is not even necessary.

However, my initial reaction was simplistic, and inaccurate. The militant street tactics here have not appeared sui generis. For one, i know many people who were there, and they are people who have been active for years. There were also people who have been active but part of a younger crowd, who have eschewed the demo-etiquette that developed over the past ten years here, and have been consciously developing a more militant praxis in Montreal for a couple of years now. But even they have been doing this on the basis of ideas and debates that existed prior to April 20.

For ten years now, the ASSA has been doing groundwork on campuses across Quebec, providing a radical reference point for students, and developing an analysis that is militant, feminist, and clearly anti-capitalist. Over the past three years in particular, there have been repeated blockades, occupations, and the like carried out by students working in coalitions with community groups and even trade unions. Many activists got their training, as it were, at these actions.

More broadly, anarchists, Maoists and others in Montreal have nurtured specific experiments in militant street protests for over a decade now. The oldest such “tradition” is the International Day Against Police Brutality, organized by COBP (which came out of repression against the anti-HLI protests in 1995) on March 15, which has been going on since 1996, and which routinely involves vandalism, some street fighting (or at least violent arrests by police), and an organizing collective which refuses to condemn this or to give the police their demo route in advance. This year police publicly appealed to students to not join the COBP march; this advice was ignored by many, thousands showed up, and there were heavy police attacks, a cop car was flipped, etc. (The week before, Grenier had almost lost his eye due to a police stun grenade, which helped set the tone.) And even March 15 built upon militant tactics developed in the struggle against the first round of neoliberal cutbacks, the Axworthy reform in the early 90s, and a series of militant antifascist mobilizations later in that decade.

Although not annual events, all of this has also existed in a positive feedback loop with occasional summit-style events, such as Quebec City Summit of Americas in 2001, the WTO Montreal mini-summit in July 2003, the Montebello meeting between Bush, Calderon, and Harper in 2007, and the Toronto G8/G20 two years ago.

Similarly, persons unknown have engaged in sporadic acts of protest of a less open nature – police cars have occasionally been torched, etc.. Nothing incredibly big, but enough to have an effect on the consciousness of people who self-identify as activists.

All of which is to say, my initial somewhat romanticized notion of “these are kids who are avoiding the errors of the activist scene” was just that, a romanticized and incorrect notion. What is happening is more complex, and i have no way of measuring it objectively, but it builds upon previous experiments in militancy, is fueled by the spontaneous and fresh wave of protest from people who feel they are being pushed out of the middle class, and occurs in a global context defined by the Arab Spring of 2011, the Occupy phenomenon, and resistance in Greece, Spain, and elsewhere.

It is the best thing i have seen in Quebec in a long time, and the biggest thing of its kind i remember ever seeing here. I say that aware of the much heavier, and more important, Oka standoff in 1990 – but the difference is that at that time the mass mobilizations in Montreal and the suburbs were of a racist, even pro-fascist, nature – this time around, for the moment, it feels like an offensive rather than a rearguard engagement.

And things are far from over, the above is just an overview of what’s happened so far. Definitely incomplete, but hopefully useful for some of you.

For more information in English:

* Rouge Squad Tactical Translation Team: http://rougesquad.org/
* CLASSE: http://www.stopthehike.ca/
* CLAC Montreal: http://www.clac-montreal.net/en
* Sabotage Media: http://www.sabotagemedia.anarkhia.org/category/english/
* Revolutionary Communist Party (PCR-RCP): http://pcr-rcp.ca/en/

And on Facebook, News from the 2012 Quebec student general strike: https://www.facebook.com/pages/News-from-the-2012-Quebec-student-general-strike/332377376800387

Kasama received the following troubling news from José, a wonderful comrade, revolutionary activist, creative musician based in Oakland. Please read this, circulate it, support the work of solidarity.

We also urge everyone reading this to make sure they understand well the repressive nature of grand juries — and how they have been used to attack radical organizations and attempt to force activists to inform on each other.
by José Palafox

I HAVE BEEN SUBPOENAED BEFORE A GRAND JURY

5/10/12 — On Friday May 4th, I was approached by two FBI agents at the BART Station at 19th and Broadway in Oakland. They asked my name, identified themselves as Carrie and Matt from the FBI, and served me a subpoena to testify before a federal Grand Jury.

They informed me that I had been served and left without asking me any other questions.

From the face of the Grand Jury Subpoena, it appears related to an animal rights action that took place in Santa Cruz in August of 2008. I believe this is a political repression and part of a government attempt to gather information on activists and the animal rights movement.

I will be getting a lawyer and plan to exercise my rights to the fullest extent. The National Lawyers Guild in San Francisco can help people subpoenaed before Grand Juries.

This is the second time I have come into contact with the FBI. A couple of years ago, I had to deal with the Oakland Police Department regarding a private criminal matter, unrelated to activism, and without my knowledge was interviewed by an FBI agent. He began to ask me questions about my activism and political affiliations. I asked what agency he was from and I immediately stopped answering any questions. Probably unrelated but you never know.

I feel that it is important to let folks know about this political repression and to let people know that I will be needing support.
However, please don’t ask me to speculate about the FBI’s investigation. I can talk about the government’s accusations and what is happening with court appearances but I can’t answer questions about the facts, so please don’t ask. I will update the community if I learn anything further.

I