April 8-9 Days of Action against State Violence

Organize protests and autonomous actions in your own city!

Early on New Year's morning, 2009, BART police in Oakland, California, shot and killed Oscar Grant as he lay unarmed on a subway platform. Only after community members rioted did the cop get charged with the shooting.

On March 22, 2010, Portland police shot and killed a homeless man, Jack Dale Collins, just two months after they shot to death Aaron Campbell, an unarmed black man. Anarchist and other community members responded immediately, taking to the streets in a riotous protest that marched on the police station, expressing anger at cops for the systemic killings, and at the media for covering up the prevalence of police violence. On March 23 there was another protest, at which police on motorbikes attacked the crowd. In a typical move, they charged one protester with attacking them. Joel Dow is currently sitting in jail, facing a felony charge and two misdemeanors.

The only times the police have ever been held responsible for their murders is when we take to the streets and halt business as usual. Following the law, being peaceful, being quiet, has never discouraged police violence, because it is the function of the police to use violence against the exploited, against the oppressed, against those who fight back.

Police violence is systemic. It is not a matter of isolated cases, or bad apples. For that reason, we are calling for two Days of Action, up and down the West Coast. The trial for Oscar Grant's killer has been moved all the way to Los Angeles, where the government hopes it can get an acquittal. The problem of state violence stretches across borders. Only by extending our solidarity from city to city can we gain the strength to fight back and show that this is not an isolated problem.

People have already started using a diversity of tactics to resist the police. After the killings of Oscar Grant and Jack Dale Collins, people rioted. After the most recent killing in Portland, anonymous anarchists smashed up the police union office. In the Bay Area, Oakland Peace and Justice is organizing a blockade of the Embarcadero BART station for April 8. In Seattle, people are organizing flyering and protests in the city center. All the tactics are needed!

When we recognize the need to stand up against state violence, we have to remember to support those who have been arrested in the struggle. Joel Dow is in jail for two felony charges and two misdemeanors for a counterattack against police at the March 23 protest in Portland. On April 5, Holly Works goes to trial for felony charges from the Oscar Grant riots. They need to be freed, not on the basis of their guilt or innocence, but because the actions that took place were a necessary response to the police murders. Without those riots, the killings would have been swept under the rug, like so many times in the past. The struggle is not over until everyone is free!

Solidarity protests, flyering, blockades, and other actions will take place in the Bay Area, Portland, Olympia, Seattle, and elsewhere. Take initiative! Organize your own action and publicize it on the internet!

Freedom for Joel Dow and Holly Works!
Oscar Grant, Aaron Campbell, and all the others: We Won't Forget!

Portland riots
http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/10921

Support Joel Dow
http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/10944

Support the Oakland 100
http://supporttheoakland100.wordpress.com/

Bay Area April 8th action
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/03/29/18643281.php

Seattle April 9th protest
http://www.seattlediy.com/?p=822

Sample flyers
Because the media will always lie, it's important to let everyone know, in our own words, why we protest, why we riot, why we fight back. Take these, change the date and time for your own events, and print off thousands!

The Police Will Always Murder

Let the politicians mince words about better training and community policing. The truth is, police will always murder. Our entire economy is based on exploitation, on wage-slavery, on violent blackmail: spend your life working for those who own everything, or sleep on the streets. The economy kills people every day. Our country is founded on slavery and genocide. Generations later, the divides only continue to deepen. How can there be peace between rich and poor, between those who profit off this state of affairs and those who have even had their futures stolen from them?

That's where the police come in. It's their job to keep people in their assigned places, to use violence against those who resist, those who fall out of line. That's why every week in this country, cops are murdering homeless people, murdering people of color, murdering transgender people, attacking protesters, spying on dissidents. It's their job. The problem can't be reformed away. It's useless to talk about freedom and happiness as long we live in a world based on isolation, coercion, and exploitation.

That's why we are not ashamed to talk about abolishing the police, abolishing prisons, abolishing the entire government. We can start right now by fighting back against police violence, against new laws of social control. We can start right now by reclaiming our communities, getting to know our neighbors, and building networks of self-defense without relying on the police. Society has organized itself many times before without hierarchy, without Authority. Suppressed stories of rebellion and freedom can be found everywhere.

If you're not afraid to take your life in your hands, if you're truly interested in the possibility of a world without police murders, here's one of many places you can start searching for ideas: http://theanarchistlibrary.org/
Otherwise, don't worry. If you do nothing, the police will continue to murder to uphold the world you rely on. Just don't let them catch you out of your place.

For Freedom, for Anarchy!

Enough is Enough!
March Against Police Brutality
Friday April 9th, 12pm at Seattle Central Community College

Protect Our Communities, Protect Ourselves!

On Monday, March 22nd another Portland community member, was brutally murdered by the police. Friday, April 9th we are calling a march in solidarity here in Seattle to recognize that Portland’s struggle against police brutality is also our struggle. Police brutality is a systemic issue that is effecting the entire country. We refuse to sit by and just shake our heads as police shoot down people here or in Portland or anywhere. We refuse to feel unsafe in our own neighbourhoods, streets and workplaces.

The police are one part of the prison industrial complex that is expanding rapidly, and more and more sectors of our society are gearing themselves toward promoting the proliferation of prisons– and profiting off it. They are not making us safer. They are killing us and locking us up at an exponential rate. Today the US has 5% of the world population and 25% of the worlds prison population. With the highest rate of incarceration in the world, we have been sold the idea that police and prisons are the solution to crime. Upon investigation of the prison system we find a system that targets poor people, people of color, transgendered people and the mentally ill.

Instead of turning to the prison industrial complex, we want to build networks of support and safety within our own neighborhoods and communities. Instead let’s defend each other to preserve community safety. Talk to your neighbours! Form community assemblies and phone trees to create immediate response to danger in your neighbourhood, from the cops and otherwise. Build an understanding of the root causes of crime and the capacity to think up solutions that could really work to create real safety and healing for all of our community.

Let’s stand up and be loud! Let’s build a community movement against police brutality.

A flyer from Portland with that hot new style: protest info on the front, our manifesto on the back
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2010/03/398059.shtml>