#occupy protests

[arctic-hands]

I remember my first real protest was during the Occupy movement. I was seventeen and obvs couldn't go to New York even if I had the health for it, luckily I had a liberal, borderline leftist and poor father who was also fed up with all the economic bullshit who could drive me to the solidarity protest in Indianapolis.

I was so excited. I made a protest sign that was painted over an old Hillary '08 sign we still had, with some years-old wall paint from a can we had after my mom repainted the bathroom, and some of her Apple Barrel acrylics. It talked about how I was worried about my future as a poor and sick (and gay? I don't remember if I put that on the sign) young person. This was still when I would be still denied health insurance since I've been diagnosed sick since age 8, and we didn't know what would happen to my Medicaid when I became an adult the next year.

Knowing what was going down in Zuccotti Park, my father took me to Lowes to buy some (much too small) zip ties as a symbolic gesture should we be arrested. "I brought my own!" I would defiantly say when the police arrested me. My father made a sign too, but I don't remember what it said. Anyway, the first day of Occupy Indy, we got up early (a chore for me in those pre-coffee days) and loaded up our signs into the truck and started the hour and a half drive to Indianapolis. My father said we couldn't participate in the planned overnight campout in front of the governor's mansion because of my health problems, but that we'd go back to Indy every day. My mom didn't come. She was worried that, since she was a immigrant (from Europe), she would be in more legal trouble than us even if she did have a green card.

Anyway, Occupy Indy was a complete cluster fuck. It was–and I say this as a white person and that I am in no way No True Scotsman'ing to set myself apart from this–completely white led and led by middle class whites, mostly women, who had no real stakes in the game and were essentially LARPing social justice. We were divided into groups, all of them led by white women of varying stages of adulthood. Mine was led by a middle aged white woman. This was immediately after the Obama government drone-striked anwar al-awalki, an American terrorist part of al-qaeda. Yes he was a terrorist, but he was also an American citizen and at the time even American terrorists were supposed to have due process, unlike their foreign counterparts. The drone killing of al-awalki and his sixteen year old son were loudly decried in the U.S. and abroad as extrajudicial killings.

Anyway, an older, taller Black man, with a sparse grey beard, in our group started talking about this, how if the Obama administration and the U.S. government at large could kill an American citizen, no matter how terrible, without the American having any legal protection or chance to prove their innocence, what's to stop the American government from killing or arresting any citizen, home or abroad, with no due process? Indeed, not too long after this Obama signed the National Defence Authorization Act 2012, which allowed for the indefinite detention without due process for any American suspected of terrorism, with no legal protection and almost certainly a one-way ticket to Gitmo. To my knowledge, that policy is still in effect.

Anyway, our middle aged, middle class white woman "leader" literally told this Black man to shut up, that it wasn't part of the conversation or protest at large. I could tell he was angry, but what could a Black man, even an older Black man, do to go against a white woman who could very easily claim he was threatening her? I didn't understand that fully, it probably took me until the murder of Mike Brown to fully comprehend that notion, that a Black person could be taken down with no recourse just because a white person felt threatened by their presence. But still, I was angry. I had been listening and nodding along to the man because I, having been a news hound since I was 8, knew about the drone strike and the abhorrent politics and illegality of it. I wanted the man to talk about it, because what he said was a warning that indeed came true.

I didn't speak up. I like to think I would have, had my now-self been there instead of my timid seventeen year old self. But maybe I would still be just as likely to kowtow, however reluctantly, to the middle-class white person who was our self-proclaimed leader. The Black man, whose name I never knew, on top of being angry also looked as disappointed as I felt. He walked away from the group and I didn't see him again. I wish I had followed him, either to leave the protest in disgust too or to keep talking to him, but I did neither.

Anyway it just for worse from there. I don't even remember what the woman said after that, it was completely meaningless and hollow. Eventually after our group discussions (where the woman dominated the entire "discussion" and nobody else spoke out), we all formed a crowd again to hear a younger middle class white woman speak at the podium, where she thanked Indianapolis P.D. for keeping us safe and for keeping order. This was at the same time the Zuccotti Park protesters were being brutalized on the daily. I don't remember if Occupy U.C. Davis had already happened, where the officer john "Sargent Pepper" pike had brutally pepper sprayed in the faces a group of protesters who had been peacefully sitting down. I don't remember what this other white woman, a college student, said, it was just as meaningless as our group leader's talk.

I do remember at some point the crowd started to get a little riled up and started chanting at the police officers "protecting us", and the crowd was pushing me along and I was a bit scared, either of potential police brutality or a crowd crush. But then some older white man dressed straight out of the hippie movement started singing "Give Peace A Chance" and that was enough for the crowd to disperse.

Anyway my father and I were so disgusted by the "protest" that we left well before the march to the governor's mansion and stopped for a bite to eat at some restaurant I don't remember before making the drive home, and we didn't go back.

This regaling of the story isn't about Poor Timid White Person guilt, or as said above a No True Scotsman "I'm the real white ally" thing. I wanted to talk about it because I've seen a lot of discussions about white/upper class/upperclass white people co-opting protests in the name of a being allies (some of which I didn't reblog because they were image-heavy and difficult to caption), and it reminded me of this. Hell, even in Zuccotti Park itself, the encampment was divided through the middle within a week or two between the poor and disenfranchised who spent their last few dollars to get to New York City to support the movement they believed could make a change, and the middle and upperclass protesters who had less to lose when N.Y.P.D sent in N.Y.F.D to destroy the encampment and everyone's tents and possessions.

Anyway, I kept following Occupy Indy's facebook page for a while afterwards. Within a year it gear shifted to Tea Party claptrap before I unfollowed. Make of that as you will.

[documenting-apartheid]

Demonstrators wave Palestinian flags in front of Israeli troops as they protest against Israel's plan to demolish the Palestinian Bedouin village of Khan Al Ahmar. September 30th 2018. EPA

[readytoescalate]

Buildings are easier to defend than outdoor camps AND they can be more disruptive. For anyone ready to escalate for Gaza, check out this re-issue of a text that has been used in previous movements.

[workersolidarity]

🇵🇸 🚨

PROTESTS IN RAMALLAH

📹 Footage from protests in Ramallah, in the central occupied West Bank, demonstrating in solidarity with their brothers and sisters in Gaza, under continuous siege and bombardment.

#source

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[thepeopleinpower]

source

“companies that ‘support’ israel” …no idea what they meant by the use of quotations here but…

Yes, boycotting is a legitimate form of protest, for reasons both ethical and tactical.

No, boycotting colonizers who are committing genocide in the name of the Jewish people is most certainly not antisemitism, in fact it falls in line pretty well with Jewish values.

Ffs. Why do I even google things anymore.

[splosh-crime]

Israel trained our police. Let that sink in. Israel is and has been training American police officers for years. The same Israel that is currently committing a genocide and denouncing a humanitarian organization as terrorists have been teaching our police how to approach protesters and “suspected terrorists.”

[good-old-gossip]

[runalongprincevaliant]

It’s so obvious why they’re trying to ban Al Jazeera. Isra-hell trying to hide their evil deeds and war crimes.

[karinyosa]

reminder that you can email congress for a ceasefire here and the white house here. don't forget to mention/also email about us government ending funding to israel and sanctioning them, and holding them accountable for war crimes, but the immediate need right now is a ceasefire. there are other online writing actions on the first link including calling the white house

[galmiahthepigeon]

Massive protest in Buenos Aires against severe budget cuts for free public universities. People sing "And now you see, and now you see, those who don't jump voted for Milei".

[dremilioastutoworld]

Plestia Alaqad: End The Occupation! Support Gaza Press Freedom! Song by É Roscha!

[readytoescalate]

[workersolidarity]

🇵🇸⚔️🇮🇱 💀 🚨

PROTESTS IN TULKARM AFTER ISRAELI FORCES EXECUTE THREE YOUNG PALESTINIAN MEN

📹 Protesters storm the streets of Tulkarm in the northwest of the West Bank after video emerges detailing the execution of three young Palestinian men in the city by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF).

After shooting the three men, IOF soldiers ran over their bodies using occupation trucks and then blocked emergency crews from reaching the scene, leaving the three to bleed out in the streets to death.

#source1

#source2

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[news4dzhozhar]

[the-lady-maddy]

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[queerism1969]