#BLM FTP ACAB

[callese]

[thistlepassboy]

It’s entertaining because it’s bees enacting karma. “Anyone could die from this.” you mean like the 1,176 people cops killed in 2022? The bees are showing how it feels to be “racially profiled.”

May 16, 2023 - A swarm of bees in the Encino neighbourhood of Los Angeles attacked an “LAPD volunteer”, which is a thing apparently. The bees are quoted as saying “ACAB includes volunteer cops!“ [video]

[kasimart1980]

Mouse Pad. $25. Dm to purchase. Free shipping. #home #decor #mousepads #computers #ftp #acab #accessories #mousepad #mousepads #hustle #create #occupyla #message #blm #cops #lapd #protest #cityhall #streetphotography (at Rancho Cucamonga, California) https://www.instagram.com/p/Clt-USDPDf1/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[hellofuckthepolice]

The more it changes, the more it stays the same

In April 2001, when police officer Stephen Roach killed Timothy Thomas, Cincinnati served as the stage for a classic American drama. Thomas, an unarmed teenager wanted for several misdemeanor warrants, was the fifteenth Black man the Cincinnati police had killed in six years. A few days later, protesters led by the victim’s mother occupied city hall for three hours. When they were forced out, the crowd marched to the police station, growing as it went.

-- Williams, Kristian, 2007, Our enemies in blue, South End Press, Cambridge.

Foucault mentions that prisons are only a component in the “carceral archipelago” of mental hospitals, youth centers, factories and police station watching the population to maintain discipline in the workforce, helping to sustain the insatiable growth of capitalism. I’m getting a bit farther away from mental health, but police brutality affects people with physical and mental health concerns more than the general population. Again, Foucault would say that these phenomenons cannot be separated, as they are only apparatuses for sorting and grouping people that capitalists aren’t able to profit of, and to make the rest of the population afraid.

Anyways, no one is free while others are oppressed, fuck the police, keep up the good fight.

[anarchopuppy]

Build an affinity group. An affinity group is a small group of 5 to 20 people who work together autonomously on direct actions or other projects. Affinity groups generally consist of like minded people who come together to get something done. If you already have an affinity group, link and cluster those groups!

Skill up. Delinking from capitalism and colonial apparatuses requires us to learn how to do things for ourselves and each other beyond buying, selling, working, or asking the state to help us. From self and collective defense, to gardening, building bikes, unschooling, and caring for each other- we can learn a skill and share a skill. We can change how we value skills and dismantle hierarchies of class and ableism.

Establish and practice good security culture. Security culture is necessary to survive state repression. We can stop a lot of infiltration and disinformation in its tracks by improving our ways of communicating and navigating conflict. We can still be horizontal and transparent without sacrificing security and safety.

Practice transformative and restorative justice. Strong communities make police and prisons obsolete. We can change our culture to prevent violence and abuse. We can build up our capacities to confront and resolve conflicts. We can strengthen our ties and detoxify our relationships so harm has no space to grow in our communities.

Mutual Aid. Start a mutual aid group and provide necessary support to those who are in need. Mutual aid organizing can ensure our communities are not dependent on corporations and the state. Shift your use of resources to things you can grow and make or procure from others in resistance. Build networks of aid and resources beyond capitalism.

Mutual defense. From arms training to street tactics to bystander interventions and safety teams, we need to have the skills and resources to defend our communities from fascist attacks on our people, non-human beings, and lands.

Build and sustain conflict infrastructure. Conflict Infrastructure is any structure we organize helps us be more effective in our fights. This is infrastructure that goes beyond solely providing awareness and services and instead builds our capacity to wage actual resistance. From community gardens and collectively coordinated farms to infoshops and independent media/communications.

Open squats for unsheltered folx. Rent is theft. Private property is colonial violence upon the land. Abolish rent and private property. Rematriate lands to original caretakers. Create spaces to live beyond landlords.

Defend and reclaim ancestral lands. Because #landback means ending colonial occupation and restoring Indigenous stewardship of our ancestral lands. Regenerate our sacred relations, and all that entails spiritually and materially, with our original homelands. Liberate the sacred.

Reparations. Seize what has been stolen from Black and Indigenous Peoples and liberate it back.  Radical redistribution is necessary.

Shut shit down. Intervene in critical infrastructure at the points where capitalism and colonialism are at their most vulnerable. Seize the streets, factories, ports, fracking pads, pipelines, power stations, smash the borders, be smart and be creative! It’s also an effective way to target those industries perpetuating climate change.

Be fiercely intersectional. ‘Cause we’re not taking those old shitty behaviors with us. Fuck anti-blackness, fuck orientalism, fuck islamaphobia, fuck anti-semitism, fuck transphobia, fuck heteropatriarchy, fuck white supremacy, fuck imperialism, fuck ableism, fuck hierarchy, fuck racism, fuck citizenship, fuck privilege, fuck everything fucked up!

Practice Radical Self & Collective Care. To remain dangerous to power we must care for ourselves and each other. Learn common triggers and how to communicate without being fucked up. Learn to communicate your needs, boundaries, and wants effectively and nontoxicly – remember that folks in the struggle and resistance have the hardest time accessing resources for mental and spiritual care. Movement work can be unsustainable to those with many experiences of settler policing and violence triggers – find ways to communicate and negotiate group norms and boundaries that accommodate peoples’ needs if reasonable. Identify toxic communication patterns and learn / create ways to dismantle them and communicate in more healthy and less harmful ways.Be honest about your limitations and care for yourself and each other. The christianized, capitalized colonial state has taught us to never rest or heal. Reject any attempts at coercing people to go beyond their limits. Radical self-care keeps us safe and invulnerable when consistently engaging in agitating governability by the state.

Make everything accessible for everyone. Reject ableism and objectification of our bodies and lives, establish community care networks with people equipped to provide first aid and care support to a full spectrum of needs. Challenge ableism in our language, how we organize, and how we value each other. We are all enough.

Abolish Rape Culture. Study rape and rape culture and how it relates to the desecration of sacred lands. Transform our culture and practices around dating, humor, relationships, sexuality, consent, parties, sex labor, and play to abolish rape culture. Hold mactivists, rapists, abusers, opportunists, and creeps accountable. Center consent and healthy relationships in everything we do everywhere.

Spread radical and militant joy. We can fuck shit up while we dance, sing, party, laugh, play, wonder, have deep conversations, tell stories, make art, make love, make magic, make brilliance, make awesomeness, and have fun.

[theboyfromipanema]

Sidney Amaral - Mãe Preta - Oil on Canvas

[radicalgraff]

Graffiti seen in Minneapolis during the riotous protests following the police murder of George Floyd

[noneedtofearorhope]

Monday, August 17th, 2020

Right now, 5 activists are blockading the entrance of Combined Systems Inc. with giant tear gas cans and gas masks, refusing to move.

[...]

By shutting down this facility today, we are here to put CSI President Jacob Kravel on notice that his company’s production of tear gas must come to an end. [...]

We’ve all seen the headlines: tear gas used by local and federal forces to repress Black Lives Matter protests. [...]

Combined Systems Inc. (where we are today) is one of the largest tear gas manufacturers in the U.S. [...]

[...] In 2017, Baek Nam-Gi, a South Korean farmer, was killed in a demonstration after being hit with a blast from a police water cannon containing tear gas. In 2018, an eight-month-old baby, Layla al-Ghandour, died in Gaza after tear gas inhalation. Osman Abubakir, a 62-year-old fruit seller in Khartoum, died after Sudanese forces deployed tear gas. Just this past week, Lebanese riot police fired tear gas against protestors in Beirut. And we’ve tracked tear gas from Combined Systems Inc. (the manufacturer we’re protesting today) to Guatemala, Hong Kong, Palestine, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and Tunisia.

Update -- Tuesday August 18th, 2020:

We are empowered by the messages of solidarity we received from folks in Jamestown & across the United States. Yesterday, our group successfully deterred a shipment from entering Combined Systems Inc. and had many meaningful conversations with neighbors and folks driving by. All five members of the blockade were arrested and we will share updates today on their status.

[...] After all the harm tear gas has caused on our streets, in prisons, at the U.S. border, and around the world, we need to confront those who manufacture this tool for repression.

Also, from a short twitter thread from War Resisters League @ resistwar

https://twitter.com/resistwar/status/1295319351789330432

.@CombinedSysInc is one of five tear gas manufacturers in the United States. That's five too many. Find out more about the rest -- is one in your backyard? http://bit.ly/MapRiotControl 

[fuckyeahanarchistposters]

‘Blue Lives don’t Matter’

[callese]

[lionfloss]

Designer Lydia Cambron Transforms Brand Logos into Protest Messages

[anarchopuppy]

How Portland organizers are mass-producing cheap protest shields

Taken from this twitter thread (link is to a mirror on nitter)

Two weeks ago, these shields were getting built by 3 people in a garage. Today, an assembly line of over 25 volunteers (and two dogs 🐶) gathered at Clinton Park in Southeast Portland to help put them together. Using Twitter to coordinate, volunteers gather 3 times a week (location announced the night before) to build these shields. All materials – including duct tape, power tools and pool noodles – are donated (along with everything on this extremely packed snack and supply table).

So how does a protest shield get made? 🤔

Step 1.) Acquire a 55-gallon barrel. (In the beginning, Ghost (@ghostmobpdx) was buying these barrels – which once carried liquids like soy sauce and canola oil – off of Craiglist. Now all of the barrels are donated.)

Step 2.) Remove the barrel lid. Using a circular saw, a volunteer slices the barrel into four sections. You now have five soon-to-be shields! 🛡🛡🛡🛡🛡

Step 3.) Using a hand drill, a different volunteer makes 6 holes in the center of the plastic. (Shield building sessions are BYOPT: Bring Your Own Power Tools.🛠️🧰)

These holes will be used to attach bolts, padding and straps so the shield can be carried like this:

(A plan is in the works to upgrade to drilling 8 holes so the shields can have backpack-style straps. This will help protesters avoid dropping their shields when they have to move fast.)

Step 4.) A volunteer adds the aforementioned bolts. 🔩BOLT FACT🔩 Since starting, Viv (@viv______) estimates they’ve used over 1,200 bolts. That’s a lot of bolts. 😮 (Can you spot the faded NLG number on this volunteer's arm?)

Step 5: Another volunteer adds foam and straps. The straps are made from strips of sturdy ratchet tie material. Foam also gets added over the bolts on the front of the shield to protect people from hard edges.

Step 6: It is ~noodle time.~ A different group of volunteers slices pool noodles lengthwise and fits them along the rough edges of the shield material. This is to protect the protester and anyone they might bump into.

NOODLE FACT: The volunteers who do this part of the process are called the “noodlers.” (!!!) Here is a noodler in action:

Step 7: Another group of volunteers adds a layer of duct tape around the entire shield (except for the foam/strap section). Each shield needs about 2 rolls of duct tape, and Viv estimates they’ve used 400-500 rolls so far.

After volunteers have attached the pool noodles, bolts, foam, straps and duct tape to the plastic barrel material, you arrive at the final step of shield building…

Step 8: Spray paint and stencil the shield. Ghost spray paints the surface of each shield black. From there, individuals can add their own unique designs. One volunteer brought these handmade stencils that included images of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery.

As a final touch, this message is spray painted onto the interior of every shield: “THIS SIGN WAS PROVIDED FREE OF CHARGE AND IS NOT INDICATION OF ANY GROUP AFFILIATION” (sometimes accompanied by a protective sigil from local witches or a stencil of Portland's elk statue).

In total, each shield takes about 3 hours to make and requires passing through multiple groups of volunteers before it’s finished. All materials and time to produce them is donated, and the shields are offered free of charge to BIPOC protesters and $10 for everyone else. Ghost, Viv and the volunteers have made about 250 shields so far, and build between 30 and 55 shields per session.

How does it feel to see the shields in action? Ghost: “My heart is so warmed, just every time. I’m so proud. There was one time – God, it was beautiful -  where a tear gas canister full on exploded off the damn thing and the person is still running away. And the shield was fine."

While y'all are here, have you heard of Portland's Black Resilience Fund? BRF is a 100% volunteer-led organization providing Black Portlanders with relief from financial burdens for basic living expenses and life emergencies. Here's a cool story: https://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2020/06/19/28554154/the-portlanders-behind-the-black-resilience-fund-are-young-black-queer-and-hopeful

[sunbvrnt]

some good bois at the blm protests ✊🏼💕

[radicalgraff]

ACAB on the New York County Courthouse in Manhattan, following a protest on July 18, 2020

[hellyeahanarchistposters]

‘Defund the Police’

[lichen-thr0pe]