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Kink.com orders brutal police attack against trans and queer activists during SF Pride

by Gay Shame
At least seven people were initially arrested including a National Lawyers' Guild Legal Observer; several protesters were clubbed,tackled, bloodied, and beaten after a protest numbering several hundred marched to the Armory at 14th and Mission Streets in the Mission District,from a 10 p.m. gathering at the 16th Street BART Station. Four of the arrestees have been released.
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Kink.com orders brutal police attack against trans and queer activists during SF Pride


For Immediate Release: June 29, 2014

contact: gayshamesf [at] yahoo.com


Kink.com orders brutal police attack against trans and queer activists during SF Pride


San Francisco's Mission District – Three trans and/or queer people of color remain in custody on trumped up charges following a protest against a prison-themed Kink.com party.


At least seven people were initially arrested including a National Lawyers' Guild Legal Observer; several protesters were clubbed,tackled, bloodied, and beaten after a protest numbering several hundred marched to the Armory at 14th and Mission Streets in the Mission District,from a 10 p.m. gathering at the 16th Street BART Station. Four of the arrestees have been released.


According to witnesses a Kink.com security guard followed the protesters back to 16th street and approximately 30 minutes after the protest ended began targeting people who were casually standing on the sidewalk getting ready to return home. The arrests and police violence were reportedly in retribution for the night's protest.


“Like the Stonewall rebellion 45 years ago, last night’s attack reminds us how trans and queer people of color are criminalized and arrested for simply gathering in public space, like the 16th St.BART plaza,” said Mary Lou Ratchet, a Gay Shame (http://www.gayshamesf.org)representative. The march was organized by Gay Shame and LAGAI (http://www.lagai.org).


Organizers are asking supports to call both District Attorney George Gascón (415553-1751) and Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi (415554 7225) and demand their immediate release and that all charges against Rebecca Ruiz-Lichter, Prisca Carpenter, and Sarai Robles-Mendezare dropped.
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by Patrick
Gay Shame should STFU and stop telling gay people what they should find sexy. And stop harassing partygoers.
by Joseph
Maybe the long history of police violence against the queer community IS sexy to you and you'd rather bury your head in the sand and ignore the ongoing violence than use your brain.

Learn some history. Look at what SFPD did just the other night brutalizing people in a so-called gay mecca.
by Ian
Never thought I'd see the day when a supposedly progressive group is protesting the sexual expression others, all in the name of lgbti liberation, and during Pride no less! Yea folks, you should be ashamed of yourselves, for becoming so myopic and insular in your oh-so-politically-correct thinking that you could seriously view this as the correct action to take.

Why isn't Gay Shame out there taking action against the real perpetrators of state violence - at penal institutions like San Quentin and the CA department of corrections, if the concern is actually about incarceration of queers and prison rape? This looks to me like little more than an attempt to garner some attention, the easy way. It is insane to be attacking members of your own community for their fetish interests. Should we now be expecting to see Gay Shame protesting our uniform parties, or kinky dungeon events, or even Folsom fair? I hope not because it's just plain stupid to claim that being turned on by uniforms or handcuffs or bdsm and roleplay is equivalent to supporting state violence and rape against gay people. If you are looking for support from the community, it wont be coming from me.
by Phone time
Call the DA today at 415.553.1751. Demand he drop the charges and immediately free
Rebecca Ruiz Lichter, Prisca Carpenter and Sarai Robles-Mendoza. We have a legal right to protest and all police brutality is completely illegal. This outfit, Kink.com, is obviously a police front. See below for the quote from above:

"According to witnesses a Kink.com security guard followed the protesters back to 16th street and approximately 30 minutes after the protest ended began targeting people who were casually standing on the sidewalk getting ready to return home. The arrests and police violence were reportedly in retribution for the night's protest. "

ANYONE who glorifies prison-concentration camps in any way is insane and viciously anti-workingclass. The prisons exist to terrorize the entire workingclass, the 80% of us who sell our labor for less than $80,000 a year. The goal of any serious movement must be total ABOLITION of the entire prison system and the ABOLITION of poverty, a goal that can only be realized by organizing labor for a general strike for the total ABOLITION of the private profit system, the cause of all our grief.

City and County offices open at 8 a.m. Make those phone calls today.
by Ian
'ANYONE who glorifies prison-concentration camps in any way is insane and viciously anti-workingclass.'

True enough.
It is also true that protesting kinky sex because you think it glorifies prison or concentration camps is insane and ignorantly anti-sex. Your politics do not belong in my bedroom or my dungeon or at any sex party/club I attend. What was Stonewall about, if not freedom from harrassment for who and how we choose to love.

If you really care about state sponsored violence against poc and others, you should be taking it to the street against the police, the courts, the prisons, instead of an easy target like a party at kink.com and all those supposedly 'middle/upper class white cisgender gay male clientele', people that you clearly have other issues with besides kinky sex given the language with which you describe them.

And gee, what will you do now that those fascist cops and sheriffs have released those arrested, will you do some self examination perhaps, take stock of what you did or did not accomplish this week other than garner publicity? I'm thinking you wont, given the stridently elitist explanations offered for targeting kink.com.

The truth is that the protest failed on so many levels; it was at the wrong time and against the wrong target, and I doubt it did much to encourage many not already in the group to join with you, but most relevant, it failed completely in terms of educating the public and your own community about REAL state violence against poc and queers and other gender variants. Gay Shame's protest became the topic instead. Perhaps that was your true goal eh? FAIL
by N I
Why do we forget? The police are historical oppressors of the LGBT community. Why this love for police and the prison-industrial complex at Pride? http://paper-bird.net/2014/06/28/policing-pride/
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