RE: [Fwd: [sixties-l] Fwd: Organizing in the Face of IncreasedRepression]

["Lisa & Ian Murray" <seamus@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

uh, the buzz words of the 21st century would substitute-- how to --for --we
need.

Ian

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:owner-pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Carrol Cox
> Sent: Thursday, December 07, 2000 8:53 PM
> To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [PEN-L:5842] [Fwd: [sixties-l] Fwd: Organizing in the Face of
> IncreasedRepression]
>
>
>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: [sixties-l] Fwd: Organizing in the Face of Increased Repression
> Date: Thu, 07 Dec 2000 12:43:25 -0800
> From: radman <resist@xxxxxxxx>
> Reply-To: sixties-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> To: sixties-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
> Organizing in the Face of Increased Repression
>
> by Starhawk <stella@xxxxxxx>
>
> Since the very first morning of the Seattle blockade a year ago, the
> police forces of the world have greeted the antiglobalization movement
> with a high level of violence and repression.  As the international
> movement has continued on, the repression has fallen into a pattern
> discernible from DC to Prague and beyond.  This pattern involves:
>
> 1. A concerted media campaign by the police and government forces that
> begins long before the demonstration, painting the activists as violent
> terrorists.  All previous demos are equally characterized as violent,
> regardless of the actual facts.
>
> 2. Surveillance of meetings, email lists, phones, listservs, etc.
>
> 3. Attempts at pre-emptive control, which range from mass illegal
> arrests in DC the night before the action, shut downs of
> convergence centers and IndyMedia centers, and border closures,
> to declaring a 5-kilometer no-protest zone five months before
> the planned action in Quebec.
>
> 4. Less obvious violence on the street.  Seattle taught them that tear
> gassing whole sections of the city was a bad idea.  However, tear gas,
> pepper spray, beatings, projectile weapons, water cannon and concussion
> grenades, etc. are routinely used now from Prague to Cincinnati.
>
> 5. Random arrests and targeting of peaceful protestors, while those
> throwing rocks are often let go.  Maybe nonviolent protestors are
> easier to catch? Or maybe this is a concerted effort to discourage
> wider participation in these actions?
>
> 6. Use of provocateurs.  I am not saying that all who throw rocks are
> provocateurs.  However, there is a growing body of eyewitnesses and
> stories of 'protestors' seen one moment throwing a rock at a window
> and the next, being sheltered behind a police line to indicate that
> provocateurs are being used.  Along with them, we can suspect the
> whole range of fun Cointelpro tactics.
>
> 7. Intimidation and brutality in jail, which reached levels of outright
> torture in Prague.
>
> 8. Some sporadic attempts to identify and neutralize 'leaders' i.e.
> holding John Sellers of Ruckus on a million dollars bail for charges
> that were all later dropped.
>
> What fun!  It?s enough to make you think we?re being effective,
> especially when, as in Prague, the protestors still managed to
> disrupt the meeting and send the banksters home a day early.
>
> What can we do about it?  Are we doomed to have these actions become
> more and more dangerous, and smaller and smaller?  Or can we succeed
> in building a mass movement in spite of repression?
>
> 1. The greatest restraint to police violence during an action is the
> organizing and alliance building we?ve done before the action ever
> happens. We need to counter their disinformation campaigns with our
> own community outreach, to leaflet, to talk to people, to go door
> to door, to explain to the community what we?re doing and why long
> before we do it.
>
> 2. We need to build alliances with labor, churches, NGOs, all the
> groups who are fighting the same vested interests.  We don?t have
> to do the same work they do, we don?t have to change our hairstyles
> or analysis to accommodate them, but we do need to build bridges
> so that we can call on them to defend our.
>
> 3. We need to train and prepare as many people as possible.  The more
> people have had a chance to play out a dangerous situation, to think
> out possible responses and try out different tactics, the calmer
> and more resilient they?ll be on the streets.  Even a few centered
> people in a crowd can be enough to prevent panic and spark an effective
> moment of resistance. Trainings need to stress flexibility and
> developing a range of possible responses to widely varied situations,
> so activists are prepared in the moment to make choices about what to
> do.
>
> 4. We also need ever more flexible and creative tactics.  The more we
> can plan for orchestrated spontaneity, the harder we?ll be to stop.
> For example, in Prague part of the plan was for smaller marches led by
> flags of different colors to break away from the main march and go in
> different directions.  While this tactic had been discussed at open
> meetings for at least a month before the action, it still seemed to
> confuse the authorities.
>
> 5. We may need to focus more on preparation for surviving jail, for
> resisting intimidation and being prepared for interrogation, than on the
> classic jail solidarity tactics we?ve used in the U.S.  Those tactics
> focus on attempting to stay in jail where our strength of numbers allows
> us to pressure the system to drop or lower charges, and helps to protect
> individuals at risk.  These tactics were developed, however, in a very
> different time, when the authorities often were interested in releasing
> most and when jail experiences were often hard and uncomfortable but
> relatively decent.  At times those conditions still prevail and that
> kind of jail >solidarity has been effective in Seattle and DC.  However,
> if people are being chained to the wall and beaten, the focus needs to
> shift to getting them out of jail.  Solidarity then becomes what people
> outside jail do to put political pressure on the system, from calling
> on allies, phoning, faxing and emailing the authorities, to blockading
> the jail itself.
>
> 6. Organizing an action needs to include planning post-action and
> post-jail support, debriefing, trauma counseling, etc.
>
> 7. We need to continue building a broader, larger movement, to find ways
> to encourage participation at varied levels of risk, to support a wide
> variety of forms of protest that can mobilize different groups of
> people, to confront the racism, sexism, classism etc. in our own groups
> and reach out to more diversity.  Most of all, we need to clarify our
> vision of the world we want to create, so we can mobilize peoples? hopes
> and desires as well as their outrage.  And we need to be creative,
> visionary, wild, sexy, colorful, humorous, and fun in the face of
> the violence directed against us.
>