Anaheim: Community Outrage Against Police Killing

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Category: Race & Liberation

Created on Monday, 23 July 2012 08:14

Written by @RobtheIdealist

This comes from Orchestrated Pulse.

Everyone in the community lived that day, if only for a few moments, as if they themselves had the power to stop the police from terrorizing their neighborhood. The key for liberation isn’t protest, but it’s acting as if we already live in the world we want to see. Kids were with their parents, neighbors joined neighbors, and the whole community found themselves in the street together. “If you want real insight into love, participate in a riot”, and love took the streets Saturday afternoon in Anaheim. Love pushed a dumpster and trash can into the street and set them on fire. Love threw rocks and bottles at the police to force them from the neighborhood they had just recklessly shot up. Love is a riot.

The Anaheim Anti-Police Riot, A Love Story

Posted by @RobtheIdealist on Jul - 22 - 2012

Do we need to start a riot? Ordinarily we focus on the police after they kill someone, but I’m not going to do that. Fuck them. The central figures in this story are the friends, neighbors, and community members that came together and stood up against the latest act of murderous police aggression. This story is about community, specifically a neighborhood filled with people of color (Shout out to the Latino homies). They watched the police kill a man, a member of the community, and their anger swelled as he lay motionless in a grass-covered yard.

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Everyone in the community lived that day, if only for a few moments, as if they themselves had the power to stop the police from terrorizing their neighborhood. The key for liberation isn’t protest, but it’s acting as if we already live in the world we want to see. Kids were with their parents, neighbors joined neighbors, and the whole community found themselves in the street together. “If you want real insight into love, participate in a riot”, and love took the streets Saturday afternoon in Anaheim. Love pushed a dumpster and trash can into the street and set them on fire. Love threw rocks and bottles at the police to force them from the neighborhood they had just recklessly shot up. Love is a riot.

For those who believe this moment wasn’t for kids, the children were there when the police burst into the neighborhood while firing the shots that killed a man.  I applaud their parents for bringing them out so that their voices could join their community in the struggle to stop the reckless and needless police violence. Children know pain, they know anger, and they know injustice; the insurrection is theirs as well. .