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Populist alliances of ‘cowboys and Indians’ are protecting rural lands

Waging Nonviolence -

This article was first published by The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

The sea of red on recent election maps make it look like rural areas are uniformly populated by Republicans. And conventional wisdom suggests that those Americans are largely conservative populists who question many government regulations and do not welcome cultural diversity.

But the growing influence of Native American nations in some rural areas is starting to change that picture. Empowered by their treaty rights, they are beginning to shift the values of their white neighbors toward a populism that cuts across racial and cultural lines to challenge large corporations.

I’m a geographer who studies the relationships between tribes and rural white farmers, ranchers and fishers. In my book “Unlikely Alliances: Native Nations and White Communities Join to Defend Rural Lands,” I relate what I learned through dozens of interviews with Native Americans and their non-Native allies who described how the tribes are fusing the power of their sovereignty with the populist grievances of the tribes’ historic enemies.

By teaming up to defend the place they all call home, they are protecting their lands and waters for all.

(Zoltán Grossman) Unlikely alliances

Ever since Native Americans began to reassert their treaty rights to harvest fish, water and other natural resources, starting in the 1960s in the Pacific Northwest, a far-right populist backlash from some rural whites has sparked racial conflicts over those resources.

But starting in the late 1970s, some Native nations across the country joined with their rural white neighbors — including people who had been their adversaries in treaty conflicts — to block threats to rural lands and waters, such as mining, pipeline, dam, nuclear waste and military projects.

The alliances joined tribes and rural, mostly white, Americans to confront common enemies. They helped whites in these areas learn more about indigenous cultural traditions, legal powers and ecological values. Tribal members also learned that their neighbors valued the local environment, and wanted to protect it from outside corporations.

In South Dakota and Nebraska, for example, a group called the Cowboy Indian Alliance has, since 2013, brought together Lakota and other tribes with white ranchers and farmers to stop the Keystone XL oil pipeline. The alliance drew from earlier coalitions that stopped uranium and coal projects and a bombing range in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Farmers and ranchers in these two deep-red states opposed the use of eminent domain to seize their private property for the pipeline. That land had originally belonged to the tribes.

As they worked together against the pipeline, the tribes influenced some white neighbors to protect sacred burial sites on their property.

“We come from two cultures that clashed over land,” Alliance spokeswoman Faith Spotted Eagle observed. “This is a healing for the generations.”

Fossil fuel and mining projects

In Washington and Oregon, Native nations are using their treaty rights to stop plans to build coal and oil export terminals. The same largely white fishing groups in that region that used to aggressively protest treaty rights now back the tribes in protecting fisheries from oil and coal shipping, and in restoring fish habitat damaged by development.

The Lummi Nation, near Bellingham, Washington, led the fight that staved off a coal terminal in a sacred burial ground. The Quinault Nation on the Pacific coast led an alliance that helped kill plans to build oil export infrastructure that would have threatened salmon and shellfish.

The mostly white working-class residents of former logging towns in the area, who have strongly opposed timber industry regulations, have worked more easily with local tribes than with urban environmental groups to protect their local economy from fossil fuels.

“The relationships we have with our neighbors arose out of a relationship of much division, strife, and conflict,” Quinault President Fawn Sharp told me. Through that, she added, “they’ve come to know who we are.”

Leaders of Washington tribes and fishing groups speak at Shared Waters, Shared Values Rally against Grays Harbor oil terminals in 2016. (Zoltán Grossman/CC BY-SA)

In Wisconsin and Michigan, Ojibwe and Menominee tribes are fighting to prevent new mining projects, joined by their rural white neighbors, because those projects threaten fishing streams, wild rice beds and burial sites.

As recently as the early 1990s, many white anglers in northern Wisconsin were violently protesting Ojibwe treaty rights to spear fish, harassing and physically attacking Native Americans after anti-treaty groups led to them to believe that tribal fishing threatened the local tourism economy.

But the tribes presented their treaties as a legal obstacle to the mines that both groups viewed as a threat to the fishery.

The Midwest Treaty Network convinced many anglers to cooperate with tribes and environmental groups to join in the effort to stymie plans to build a copper and zinc mine near Crandon, Wisconsin. They won a protracted fight in 2003. The anglers had realized that if they kept arguing with the tribes over fishing rights, there might not be any fish left.

More recently, the Bad River Tribe on the Wisconsin shore of Lake Superior led an alliance that stopped the Penokees iron mine in 2015, upstream from wild rice beds culturally valuable to the tribe.

And the Menominee Nation and its allies are trying to block the Back Forty zinc and gold mine in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

A 2014 protest against the Penokees mine near the Bad River Ojibwe Reservation in northern Wisconsin. (Flickr/Joe Brusky) Unity through diversity

One advantage that sovereign tribal nations have in these battles is that they can draw federal agencies and courts into the fray in a way that local and state governments cannot.

Tribes are in the fight for the long haul, because the survival of their cultures is at stake. They can’t simply move away from environmental hazards, because they have harvesting rights only within their treaty territory, and their identities and cultures are rooted in a particular place.

Some areas of the most intense treaty conflicts, where the tribes most strongly asserted their rights, developed the earliest and most successful tribal alliances with white farmers, ranchers and fishers.

In these areas, rural populists have begun to see the tribes as more effective guardians of their local economies from large corporations than their state, local or federal governments. Wisconsin fishing guide Wally Cooper had spoken at rallies against Ojibwe treaty rights. He told me he changed his mind “because Native Americans can stop” the Crandon mine that threatened the rivers that he loved.

The success of these unlikely alliances challenges political stereotypes. Some progressives tend to dismiss rural whites as recalcitrant and unwilling to treat people who are different as equals.

Many conservatives – along with some liberals – presume that highlighting cultural differences through identity politics gets in the way of unifying people who otherwise share economic or environmental goals.

But celebrating differences and unity can be compatible. Native sovereignty can protect land and water for all rural people, and help build an anti-corporate movement that crosses cultural lines. If even cowboys and Indians can find common ground, maybe there is hope for what I call cross-cultural populism.

Beats, rhymes and strife: how ravers raised the roof on mass protest

The Guardian | Protest -

A new film about Glasgow’s thumping 90s clubland traces a lineage of grassroots radicalism still thriving today

Beats is a gem of a film that has drawn attention not just for its exuberant depiction of early 1990s rave culture but the deeper questions it raises, 25 years on, about the legislation that criminalised the free party movement – and about how the UK pivoted from Reclaim the Streets, via Cool Britannia, to Brexit Britain.

Set in the summer of 1994, as the Criminal Justice Bill threatened to outlaw musical gatherings around “sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats”, the film charts the friendship – by turns madcap and tender – between teenagers Johnno and Spanner as they struggle to escape the restrictions of family and class on their West Lothian housing estate. With the help of a sisterly gang of older girls, the boys bounce into their local rave scene and soak up the ethic that “the only good system is a sound system, and if I can’t dance then it’s not my revolution”.

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'Especially relevant': Susan Meiselas wins 2019 Deutsche Börse photography prize

The Guardian | Protest -

From displaced Kurds to carnival strippers, documentarian praised for carving ‘a new form of socially engaged photography’ by getting close to long-term subjects

The prestigious Deutsche Börse photography prize has been won by Susan Meiselas, an American whose work over five decades has seen her engage deeply with her subjects, from the scattered communities of the Kurdish diaspora to the women in her still edgy Carnival Strippers series.

The award, which in the past has tended to favour more conceptually driven artists, is a vindication of sorts for this socially committed documentarian. At the Photographers’ Gallery in London, which hosts the prize, Meiselas chose to exhibit In the Shadow of History, her long-term engagement with the plight of the Kurdish people, which was part of her recent touring retrospective, Mediations. Begun in 1977, it traces the lives of ordinary Kurds living in exile across the globe using photographs, film, text and projections, all of which reflect the depth of her collaboration with scholars, historians and local communities.

Related: Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation prize 2019 – in pictures

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Environmental protesters barred from HS2 site in west London

The Guardian | Protest -

High court ruling extends injunction to include ancient woodland and London aquifer

Environmental protesters have been barred from land where they say HS2 is carrying out works putting almost a quarter of London’s drinking water at risk, following a high court ruling on Thursday.

The transport secretary, Chris Grayling, and HS2 Ltd were granted an extension to an existing injunction to prevent environmental activists from trespassing on the controversial HS2 site, a nature reserve in Colne Valley in Hillingdon, west London, which is an area of ancient woodland.

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'Dumping Trump' robot being sent to UK

The Guardian | Protest -

Model of Donald Trump on toilet could feature at protests over US president’s visit

A giant talking robot of Donald Trump sitting on a gold toilet is being shipped from Sichuan in China to London for protests to mark the president’s controversial state visit to the UK.

The 4.9-metre (16ft) “Dumping Trump” robot was inspired by the Trump blimp which was the focal point of the protests against last year’s visit by the president.

Related: To rage against Donald Trump’s state visit to the UK is simply childish | Simon Jenkins

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Bern (Switzerland): Fabrikool evicted

House Occupation News -

Since the early hours of the morning, the squatted Fabrikool house in the Länggass in Bern has been evicted by representatives of the canton and cops. The building is closed off on a large scale and surrounded by about 25 riot cops with dogs. All the trees around the building are cut down, a scaffold erected, all the windows screwed up from the inside with boards and everything outside, from pizza oven to trampoline to outdoor kitchen, is dismantled and cleared away. Again and again cops with bolt cutters and sledgehammers were sighted, eagerly working on their destructive work in the building. The highly motivated cantonal representative Beat Keller is, of course, personally on site and is not too sad to help clear away.
Many people in solidarity – also from the neighbourhood – are on site and observe what is happening. Throughout the morning, several people were subjected to person checks, district bans were imposed and two young people were arrested after being searched and detained by a bunch of robocops.
Just because the authorities think they can let off steam in our house is not the end of it! Therefore: Keep your eyes and ears open, more information will follow.

Ps: Note from the Furia on the edge – the books are doing well in exile. Solidary greetings from your anarchist infoshop – on the next 50 years!

Fabrikool
Fabrikstrasse 16, 3012 Bern, Switzerland
https://squ.at/r/2v9c
https://fabrikool.ch/

Anarchist infoshop Furia
furia [at] immerda [dot] ch
https://squ.at/r/64sc
https://furia.noblogs.org/

Some squats in Bern: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/city/bern/country/CH/squated/squat
Groups (social center, collective, squat) in Bern: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/city/bern/country/CH
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https://fabrikool.ch/?p=268

Germany’s AfD turns on Greta Thunberg as it embraces climate denial

The Guardian | Protest -

Rightwing populists to launch attack on climate science in vote drive before EU elections

Germany’s rightwing populists are embracing climate change denial as the latest topic with which to boost their electoral support, teaming up with scientists who claim hysteria is driving the global warming debate and ridiculing the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg as “mentally challenged” and a fraud.

The Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD) is expected to launch its biggest attack yet on mainstream climate science at a symposium in parliament on Tuesday supported by a prominent climate change denial body linked by researchers to prominent conservative groups in the US.

Related: US is hotbed of climate change denial, major global survey finds

'Never too small to make a difference'

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A feral left that doesn’t play nice, or fighting for our future? GetUp on the campaign trail | Brigid Delaney

The Guardian | Protest -

There’s a cake, a giant papier-mache Peter Dutton head and a lot of waiting around

Activism is not just manning the barricades, it’s also wandering around brightly lit strip malls in outer suburban electorates wearing an enormous papier-mache Peter Dutton head, urging people to vote for candidates with the best climate policies.

I am with Jake and Chloe from GetUp and the plan is to spend a day observing the GetUp campaign in Greg Hunt’s Coalition-held seat of Flinders.

Related: Captain GetUp: conservative group's satirical superhero debuts to ridicule

Oh God, this whole thing is unbearable

Related: Climate change takes centre stage in Australia's election

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Sydney Harbour Bridge protest: 10 arrested in climate demonstration

The Guardian | Protest -

Greenpeace supporters abseil off bridge unfurling banners calling on political parties to declare a ‘climate emergency’

Ten people have been arrested after environmental activists abseiled off the Sydney Harbour Bridge to demand action on climate change.

The Greenpeace supporters launched themselves from a public walkway on the western side of the structure at dawn on Tuesday, calling on the major federal political parties to declare a “climate emergency”.

Related: The climate change election: where do the parties stand on the environment?

I am here under a symbol of hope - the Sydney Harbour Bridge - with seven of my fellow Australians who represent the hundreds of thousands of our nation’s people who have already experienced climate disaster.@ScottMorrisonMP it’s time to declare a #climateemergency pic.twitter.com/i0mNumOAYv

Activists on the #sydneyharbourbridge are calling for Scott Morrison to declare a climate emergency and take action. Coal is the biggest cause of climate change: we need 100% renewables, stat.

Follow the action >> https://t.co/8tjPOm5k6H#changeiscoming pic.twitter.com/E24VFbDz7w

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Alyssa Milano calls for sex strike as protest over Republican abortion laws

The Guardian | Protest -

  • Actor provokes storm with call to regain ‘bodily autonomy’
  • GOP-held legislatures in quest to overturn Roe v Wade

The actor Alyssa Milano ignited a social media storm with a call for women to join her in a sex strike, to protest against strict abortion laws passed by Republican-controlled state legislatures.

Related: Abortion: judge strikes down Kentucky restriction but governor to appeal

Related: Georgia's six-week abortion ban reveals the cruelty of the anti-choice movement | Moira Donegan

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London protest demands Israel end 'unprecedented attacks' on Palestine

The Guardian | Protest -

March included unionists, MPs and activist Ahed Tamimi, jailed for slapping Israeli soldier

Thousands have demonstrated in central London to demand an end to the “unprecedented attacks” against the Palestinian people at the hands of Israel.

Marching from Portland Place to Whitehall, a diverse crowd chanted “Palestine will be free” and called for the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, while holding banners calling on the UK to stop arming Israel, as part of a demonstration organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and the Stop the War Coalition, among others.

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Thousands march in Cardiff calling for Welsh independence

The Guardian | Protest -

Demonstrators say Brexit and austerity have increased support for leaving the UK

Thousands have demonstrated in Cardiff to call for an independent Wales in what organisers said was the first such march in Welsh history.

Some protesters said they had been lifelong supporters of independence, while others said they were converted by Brexit and austerity. A recent poll for ITV Wales showed that 12% of people support self-government.

Related: How an act of anti-Welsh vandalism is fuelling the push for independence | Michelle Thomas

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Observer archive: Students demonstrate in Paris, 10 May 1968

The Guardian | Protest -

David Newell-Smith covered the events in the French capital, which culminated in “the night of the barricades.”

Buy your exclusive print here

In a spectacular surrender, the French government late tonight bowed to student violence in an attempt to defuse what has become a state of near insurrection. After conferring with President de Gaulle, Prime Minister Georges Pompidou conceded the principal student demands. (He had flown back to paris from Afghanistan barely three hours before making a radio-television statement at 11.15 p.m.)

In a voice hoarse with fatigue and emotion, he declared first that the Sorbonne (which had been under the guard of armed police all week) would be open on Monday morning.

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Ljubljana: Open call of The Autonomous Factory Rog

House Occupation News -

Against violence of the City Municipality of Ljubljana – for Open Dialogue

The users of the Autonomous Factory Rog are observing the statements and moves of the management of the City Municipality of Ljubljana with concern. By denying dialogue, refusing recognition of users’ activities, with financial sanctions and open threats of eviction, it suggests that the repetition of the 2016 conflict is expected.

Let us remember, at that time the Municipality attempted to vacate the factory premises and establish a construction site in the middle of the night with private security officers, but encountered a large number of users who wanted to protect those premises, in which they developed alternative culture, social and political organization, a sports program and other activities free of charge since 2006. Following up, these users appealed to their adverse possession rights and did not want to leave. The rights were later acknowledged by the district court in Ljubljana. From that moment on until the conclusion of the property rights lawsuit the construction work had to be discontinued.

The core of the dispute lies in the Center Rog project, which MOL is planning in the area, a concept with which Rog’s users disagree. After the unsuccessful attempt at violent evictions, they tried to find a compromise in the negotiations, according to which new projects would include the contents and organizational principles that were established in Rog in more than a decade of operation, but MOL refused any such adaptation of the project and instead, by unclear criteria, offered 500 square meters in new premises. Since the offer would throw out numerous vital collectives, Rog’s users rejected it, after which MOL has refused any further negotiations and attempted to rid itself of the users with property claims and steep court costs – 8 individuals who performed voluntary activities in Rog were loaded with a fine of 50,000 euros. It is problematic that the largest, legally and financially most supported municipality, disproportionately punishes citizens who seek to act in the public interest.

Not only is such sanctioning and blackmailing of the users unethical, it’s also unproductive, as it doesn’t resolve the conflict in any sense. At the end of the court proceedings, which would ban the activities of eight individuals, more than 100 activists, artists, athletes, skaters, refugees and young and socially deprived individuals will still remain in Rog, to whom these activities and participation at Trubarjeva 72 represent an essential part of life, and who maintained the facilities and associated infrastructure with their own work. Likewise, there would be hundreds of works of art, installations, and a multitude of musical and recreational equipment owned by the aforementioned collectives, left in place. It is impossible to imagine that after all the work invested they would agree to an expulsion without compensation, nor that the municipality could empty the premises by force without serious damages. In addition, this mandate is not granted by the court. Without dialogue and compromise, therefore, the dispute can only escalate into physical confrontation again – a scenario that wouldn’t benefit anyone in Ljubljana, and one which both sides certainly wish to avoid. It is for this reason that we, the users of AT Rog, wish re-emphasize the need for dialogue between the municipality and Rog. Unfortunately, the municipality is rejecting this since 2016 and behaving as if the users in Rog are nonexistent or that they would dissolve into thin air after the court cases would conclude.

In order to avoid new conflicts, we call on MOL to suspend the legal persecution of individuals and to agree to an open discussion of the future of Rog and the solution of the situation. We are convinced that violence can not and must not resolve a political dispute, and that it is in the best interest of the inhabitants of Ljubljana to find a peaceful, transparent and collective search for a solution.

Autonomous Factory Rog
Trubarjeva 72, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
https://squ.at/r/634
http://atrog.org/

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Komunal http://www.komunal.org/teksti/494-poziv-avtonomne-tovarne-rog-proti-nasilju-mola-za-odprt-dialog

#FreeBlackMamas bails black mothers from jail for Mother’s Day

Waging Nonviolence -

In 1870, abolitionist Julia Ward Howe issued her Mother’s Day proclamation: a call for mothers across the United States to end war.
It was five years since the end of the Civil War and the passage of the 13th Amendment, which banned chattel slavery with one notable exception: involuntary servitude is allowed as punishment for a crime.

Nearly 150 years later, Howe’s dream of ending war has yet to become a reality. And the 13th Amendment has become more significant as, over the past 40 years, the number of people being sent to prison has skyrocketed. But accompanying these soaring numbers have been calls for abolition of another kind — to abolish prisons. It’s a call that’s been gaining traction and popularity over the past decade.

Among the numerous tactics taken by abolitionists is one focusing specifically on mothers, particularly mothers of color, who have been hard hit by both poverty and tough-on-crime policies. It also challenges the country’s bail system, in which people who cannot afford to pay bail must stay in jail for months — and sometimes years — as their cases slowly wind their way through the court system.

Even a few days in jail can result in losing one’s job, housing and even custody of one’s children.

When a person appears in court after being arrested, the judge has the option to release them, jail them until trial or set bail, which is a monetary amount that they or their family will have to pay. The reasoning behind bail is not that the person is deemed a risk to themselves or their communities. Instead, it’s based on the logic that, by paying a certain amount, the person is more likely to return for subsequent court dates. If they fail to appear, they forfeit that money. But in reality, bail serves as a two-tiered system in which people with money are allowed to prepare for their court date at home, while those without money must languish in jail.

On any given day, 462,000 people (of all genders and races) are held in jail pretrial, meaning that they are currently awaiting their day in court. The majority are jailed simply because they cannot afford to post bail — or a money amount assigned by the judge ostensibly to ensure that a person returns to court.

Being jailed can mean the difference between an acquittal or a conviction. Being in jail prevents a person from meeting with their attorney, showing up to court in their own clothes, or gathering evidence or witnesses that could bolster their defense. People in jail are more likely to plead guilty; 94 percent of state convictions (and 97 percent of federal convictions) are because of plea bargains.

But even a few days in jail can result in losing one’s job, housing and even custody of one’s children.

An action for #FreeBlackMamas in Nashville. (Twitter/SONG)

In the United States, #FreeBlackMamas is entering its third year. The idea started with Mary Hooks, the executive director of Southerners for New Ground, or SONG, an LGBTQ organization. Hooks proposed a mass bailout of black mothers in time to spend Mother’s Day with their families instead of languishing in jail cells. The call spread across the country and over a dozen organizations — from reproductive justice groups to organizations focused on mass incarceration and criminalization — took up the call. They raised awareness about bail, as well as funds needed to pay it. Then they sat in courtrooms, clerks’ offices and jail waiting rooms — sometimes for hours on end — in order to post the bail that would allow mothers to be home with their families in time for Mother’s Day.

Why black mothers?

The number of women in jails across the United States has increased 14 times between 1970 and 2014. Of those women, 44 percent are black (though black women make up only 8 percent of the country’s population). Eighty percent of women (of all races) are also mothers.

In 2017, #FreeBlackMamas organizers raised over $1 million in two months, enough to post bail for 106 mothers nationwide. Not only did they bail these mothers out of jail, but they also connected them with support services — such as housing and counseling — while also providing transportation to their follow-up court dates. Their efforts sparked other bailouts, including a Father’s Day bailout and a Black August bailout, which freed 71 other people. In October 2018, the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights launched a two-week bailout of women and minors held pretrial on Rikers Island. They spent over $1.2 million posting bail for 105 people, ages 16 to 62 with bails that ranged from $750 to $100,000.

Previous Coverage
  • How organizers raised over $233,000 in one day to bail hundreds out of jail
  • This year, groups and organizers in 17 different states — including New York, Georgia, California, Mississippi, Colorado and Texas — have committed to bailing out black mothers before Sunday. Each group has its own fundraiser and many have already raised tens of thousands of dollars. So far, 70 mothers have been freed in 22 cities.

    In New York City, VOCAL-NY — a grassroots organizing group of people affected by HIV, the drug war and mass incarceration — has already posted bail for three women. The group noted that one mother was five months pregnant and might have faced the possibility of giving birth behind bars. Another had a $2,500 bail set for shoplifting. The third had a bail that took 24 hours to process. In Philadelphia, organizers have bailed out seven black mothers.

    Bailouts aren’t limited to Mother’s Day or holidays. In some states, organizations have arisen to bail people out all year round. The Massachusetts Bail Fund has been posting bail for the past six years. In April alone, they paid nearly $48,000 to bail 100 people out of jail. Their efforts have also brought the need to eliminate cash bail into conversations about criminal justice, including in Boston’s recent prosecutorial race. The winner, Rachel Rollins, signed onto a letter calling for the end of cash bail. She also promised that her office would decline to prosecute 15 low-level crimes, though organizers say she has yet to keep that promise.

    In the neighboring Berkshire County, prosecutor Andrea Harrington has said that she would stop requesting bail for minor offenses. In Middlesex County, Marian Ryan, who has been the county prosecutor since 2014, issued a public memo stating that she would stop holding people for misdemeanors.

    “We’ve changed the conversation in Massachusetts, period,” said Bail Fund organizer Mallory Hanora. In other words, the collective and sustained effort of groups such as the Bail Fund and Families for Justice as Healing — an organization of formerly incarcerated women in the Boston area — has made cash bail impossible to ignore in criminal justice conversations.

    At the same time, organizers’ efforts have brought more people into conversations about bail. They’re teaming up with Wee the People, an anti-oppression education program for children, for this year’s Black Mamas’ Bailout. The collaboration isn’t just fundraising and posting bail. It’s also discussing with the program’s youth about the incarceration of mothers and grandmothers, as well as the federal Dignity for Incarcerated Women Act, drafted with input from formerly incarcerated women and aimed at improving conditions in women’s jails and prisons.  

    SONG leaders chained themselves to the Durham County Jail in North Carolina on May 9. (Twitter/@bear_peretz)

    Across the globe, in Western Australia, formerly incarcerated women and prison abolitionists have been challenging another way in which people, particularly Aboriginal women, are jailed for lack of money. In Western Australia, people are jailed for unpaid fines. These fines can be for actions as insignificant as not registering a pet dog or getting on public transportation without a ticket. But then there are additional fees and costs added to the original fine, which can bring it from the low hundreds to the low thousands of dollars. No payment plan is allowed — the debt must be paid in full. If a person does not — or cannot — pay, the fine becomes a warrant. Every $250 owed becomes a day spent in jail. Western Australia is the only state that jails people for unpaid fines, and the majority of people jailed are Aboriginal women.

    In 2014, the practice briefly made headlines when Ms. Dhu, a 22-year-old Aboriginal woman, died while jailed for $3,362 in unpaid fines. She would have had to spend 14.5 days in jail, but she died two days after her arrest.

    In January 2019, Sisters Inside, an organization that works with women in Australian prisons, began their #FreeThePeople campaign. Organizers identify women who are either currently jailed or at risk of being jailed for unpaid fines. Then, they pay those fines.

    How do they find these women? First, they put word about the campaign to Aboriginal elders, Aboriginal organizations and non-governmental organizations, asking them to help identify women with unpaid fines. Sometimes the groups will give them names — other times, the women will contact them directly. Once they have their names, they begin the process of paying the fines so that arrests don’t happen or the women can go free. (Unlike the U.S. bail system, payment for these warrants can be done over the phone or online.)

    As of mid-March, 10 weeks after beginning the campaign, Sisters Inside had already paid the fines for over 100 women. Some of these fines aren’t cheap: “It’s worked out to an average of $3,300 [to] $3,500 per woman,” said Deb Kilroy, the director of Sisters Inside and founder of the #FreeThePeople campaign. But some are much more. Kilroy recounted the story of one woman, a 23-year-old fleeing domestic violence with three children under the age of six, who had more than 10 fines adding up to $8,100. But with $9,500 in additional fees and costs, she was looking at paying $17,500 or spending 70 days in jail. Neither was an option she could afford.

    “I’ve spoken to Aboriginal mothers who’ve had their fines paid in full,” Kilroy tweeted. “I told them they can’t be arrested. They cheered, screamed & cried. They’re overwhelmed at donors’ generosity. One even asked, ‘What’s the catch?’ To which I said ‘No catch you’re free.’”

    #FreethePeople has raised over $391,000 over the past four months. But here’s the catch: In the United States, bail fund organizers can expect most, if not all, of the money posted for bail to be returned once the person completes their court case. (In some places, a non-refundable administrative fee is taken out of the bail amount.) In Western Australia, however, the court-imposed fines, fees and costs are non-refundable, meaning that Sisters Inside must constantly be raising money to keep women out of jail.

    That could be a Sisyphean task if not for the second prong of the #FreeThePeople campaign — advocating to abolish the practice, something that other Australian states have already done. People who donated to #FreeThePeople are encouraged to email the state’s attorney general, John Quigley, to repeal this law. Nearly every one of the 8,000 people who donated during the first two months did so. In response to the flood of emails and the media attention raised by the campaign, Quigley’s office has said that a set of reforms to the law will be introduced in July 2019. Meanwhile, Sisters Inside continues to raise funds and reach out to Aboriginal organizations to pay for women’s freedom.

    In the United States, black mothers who had been freed through #FreeBlackMamas in previous years traveled to Tulsa, Oklahoma, in September to participate in a convening of the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls. They gathered on stage for the Sunday morning plenary to talk about the importance of being bailed out of jail, of being able to fight the charges against them from the outside, and of not being torn away from their children and loved ones. One mother talked about finding a year-old flier about the Mamas Day Bailout. She called her mother and asked her to call the number listed. The following week, she was bailed out and came home one day before her son was murdered. If not for the bailout, she would not even have had that last day with him.

    Some had never been involved in political advocacy before being bailed out. Now, every one of the women on the stage was deeply involved in anti-prison work, including participating in and organizing this year’s bailouts.

    Thirty years on, the Tiananmen Square image that shocked the world

    The Guardian | Protest -

    Photographer Jeff Widener explains how a series of mishaps meant it was almost the picture that got away

    A solitary figure in a white shirt and black trousers clutches a bag and stands in front of a column of halted tanks, a cluster of street lights floating to one side like balloons. The man’s shoulders are rounded, almost passive in front of the four tanks whose gun barrels are raised as if in an ironic salute.

    Thirty years on from the violent crushing of pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, the man’s identity remains unknown; it is by no means certain he is still alive. But the photograph that captured his solitary moment of dissent in June 1989 remains one of the most memorable images of the last century, known universally as Tank Man.

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    Same-sex selfie kiss kickstarts Matteo Salvini photobomb protest

    The Guardian | Protest -

    Far-right Italian deputy is hounded by photobombers after image goes viral

    When two Sicilian women shared a same-sex kiss on 26 April, they kickstarted a “selfie-guerrilla’’ photobomb protest against Italy’s populist far-right leader and anti-LGBT minister, Matteo Salvini.

    Matilde Rizzo and Gaia Parisi, both 19, approached Salvini, the leader of the League party and deputy prime minister, for a selfie after a rally in Caltanissetta, Sicily. While Salvini was preparing to smile for the photo, the trap was set by the two young women who kissed in front of the camera.

    Related: Women photobomb Matteo Salvini with same-sex kiss

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    Wassenaar: Rust Vreugd Terreur, benefit festival in support of legal costs

    House Occupation News -

    May 17th & 18th 2019, Rust Vreugd Terreur at Huize Ívicke, Rust en Vreugdlaan 2 in Wassenaar, a benefit festival in support of legal costs for WH7 Amsterdam, AC Den Haag, and K19 Zeist in corporation with ]LAG(

    With legal fees and bills to pay and anniversaries to celebrate, Rust Vreugd en Terreur brings together an eclectic coagulation of visual and sonic experiences. Analogue and digital conjoin in outbursts of DIY and antifascist spirits, resonating sweet harmonics and harsh noises. Two days of performances, workshops, bands, vj’s, dj’s and more in the subverted pinnacle of bourgeois decadence that is Huize Ivicke. All capital accumulation will be redistributed towards the below three court cases.
    Two arrestees of the Wijde Heisteeg are in threat by time in jail, fines and DNA samples. Four arrestees of the Autonomous centre in The Hague are still proceeding against fines and probation. Five arrestees of Zeist are summoned.
    All arrestees of the above cases were temporarily taken into custody for squatting and are now being prosecuted. Their living spaces remain empty, or partly used by anti squat. They were evicted from places in which active autonomous subculture was thriving without any governmental support or interference. Instead of being grateful for their social function, they are put aside and criminalized

    Meanwhile, the wet kraken en leegstand (squatting and vacant property act) is not being used to attempt a real fight on emptiness, which actually was a condition of this piece of trash act. Instead there seems to be a hard-lined choice for the neglecting owner. Hence the gross of the places are left empty, sad, alone and deserted, sometimes with one or two anti-squatters, renters with no renting rights and shitty privacy. Obviously, placing anti squat after an eviction means eviction for emptiness, an event of which the governance claims is not happening.

    This non-corrective behavior from the law is clearly a sign of trias politicas (separation of powers) failing, the so called pillar of the democracy. The (according to many of us failing) system is vividly declining. But, not for the rich house speculants and owners, the ones to have had a huge champagne and caviar orgy when the anti squat law got accepted, a law totally undermining the positive effects that squatting has have had on the society.

    Now it looks like it is being used to suppress us, local authorities are taking an active role in addressing only the side effects of emptiness and not as they should be doing, to focus the problem of emptiness itself. And whilst the housing shortage thrives prices exorbitantly high, instead the authority would rather prosecute in hope to stop autonomy and make us slaves of the system.

    Let us feast on the rich in terreur. Rust, vreugd en terreur.
    https://terreur.squat.net/
    https://squ.at/r/72w2

    LAG
    info [at] laglab [dot] org
    https://laglab.org/
    https://squ.at/r/6q9y

    Radio Papillon
    papillon [at] adm [dot] amsterdam
    https://adm.amsterdam/radio/
    https://squ.at/r/63mz

    Huize Ívicke
    ivickeautonoom [at] riseup [dot] net
    https://squ.at/r/64fv

    Some squats in the Netherlands: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/country/NL/squated/squat
    Groups (social center, collective, squat) in the Netherlands: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/country/NL
    Events in the Netherlands: https://radar.squat.net/en/events/country/NL

    Athens: Open Discussion of Bouboulinas squatters with the neighbours

    House Occupation News -

    As an open structure and community, aimed at strengthening and developing the co-organization of our daily life and common struggles, we invite all residents of this neighbourhood and beyond to join us in putting our visions into practice. In the end it is everyone’s responsibility to take sides either with the word of community and of free self-organization or with the side of fascism and repression.

    We are living in a time of war. Terror, poverty, political and economic violence, those are the consequences. By closing borders, persecuting and massacring at the borders, and mass incarceration and isolation into concentration camps with no prospect of freedom, Europe is waging a war against migrants.

    Since February 2019, a mass eviction operation of squats has began, with the migrant squat Arachovis 44 in Exarchia being the first one to be evicted. At 11/4, at 6 in the morning, an army of cops evicts the housing squats Azadi and New Babylon, from where 120 people are detained. Just one week later, another operation takes place against the migrant squat Clandestina, and the anarcho-feminist squat Cyclope.

    During the operations, the police violently and forcefully entered people’s homes in the early morning, kicking in doors and entering people’s rooms with weapons. After arresting residents, including crying children trembling in fear, and taking them away to police stations and prisons, the police proceeds to enter their homes once again, humiliating the residents further by throwing their belongings into disarray. As we recaptured the ground of Boumboulinas squat and cancelled the events of the state, we found people’s homes destroyed and their belongings spread all over the floors of the building. The state left the former residents not only homeless, but also without any of their possession, including their papers and whatever little money they might have had. The state’s centralized organization of matter devoid of life is exposed in its full cruelty in the condition of dehumanisation, which the squatters experience through their forced exile and dispossession. The separation of the human beings from their space, time and material references, otherwise known as naked life, is the way in which the manipulation of life, as a financial and logistical matter, is forced upon the oppressed. While the state, in the warehouses of biopower, suspends all the inherent tensions of society in terms of self-organization, the reality of liberation begins with the experience of a naked life that poses the common potential for realizing our aspirations for liberation.

    The continuing repression of squats, which means the closing of self-organised spaces, the displacement of the residents away from the neighbourhoods, and into concentration camps, is a part of this war.

    The operations against the housing squats were accompanied with operations in houses that were known to be drug smuggling spaces, so that the state could legitimise these squat evictions as part of the ‘war on drugs’. This is hardy a new practice. The state has always pushed drugs into poor neighborhoods, and particulalry into neighborhoods where the radical grass-roots movements are the most vibrant, so as, on the one hand to control these areas, and on the other to have an excuse to pursue its war against the opressed.

    Criminalisation of migrants is an intentional state practice, through keeping people in an illegal and underclass status. This demonstrates how Europe is turning towards fascism. This repression is part of the state terrorism against the struggles and the self-organisation of the oppressed. It is in this context that the recent governments, both left and right, make their polemic announcement to the squats of the movement, that “we will take all the ground away from you.”

    At the core of this repression of migrant housing squats is the intention to isolate and separate migrants from locals, to cut any contact with local radical struggles, to prevent the common organization of the proletariats. Because the common struggle of the oppressed is a threat to authority. This is why our decision to reoccupy the embattled ground of Bouboulinas 42 is the answer that we, locals and migrants together must give to the violence of the repression, so as to house our common struggle for a free life.

    Here in this house, we have already began to build a new community. We, migrants, squatters and internationalist comrades gathered in the aftermath of the recent squat evictions in the neighborhood of Exarchia, with the goal to organize the resistance to this state repression. As a response to the immediate need for housing, we took the initiative to occupy Gini building in Polytechneio. Our intent is to build community, as a co-organisation of heterogenic subjects, which reflects the open diversity of our practices in this neighbourhood and in other struggles. This community is based on the common agreement of struggle of the oppressed people against the state, against exploitation, and against mafia organization and control, which is in fact complements the segregation policies of all other state agents. The commitment to horizontality and mutuality targets the core of the authoritarian and patriarchal structures which form the foundation of the state and its mafias. Here we intend to house our common struggles, but also, a number of structures, open to the neighborhood and to the movement: a school for learning languages and skills, the self-organization of women, the self-management of food, and more.

    Our aim is to create a space for sharing and exchange through our diverse cultures and languages. A space for defending the oppressed: migrants, proletarians, women, and for freedom from sexual and gender opression. We fight against racism, sexism, patriarchy, rape culture, and the business of mafias and NGO’s that profit from the condition of weakness of migrants.

    As an open structure and community, aimed at strengthening and developing the co-organization of our daily life and common struggles, we invite all residents of this neighbourhood and beyond to join us in putting our visions into practice. In the end it is everyone’s responsibility to take sides either with the word of community and of free self-organization or with the side of fascism and repression.

    Open Discussion of Bouboulinas squatters with the neighbours + Free food, Saturday 11 May 7.30 pm

    Bouboulinas & Metsovou, Exarcheia

    Self-organized Community of Squatters, Migrants and Internationalist Comrades from the Ground of Squatted Bouboulinas

    Some squats in Greece: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/country/GR/squated/squat
    Groups in Greece: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/country/GR
    Events in Greece: https://radar.squat.net/en/events/country/GR

    https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1597796/

    Queen's meeting with king of Bahrain prompts protests

    The Guardian | Protest -

    Campaigners say British monarch should not host king who has led crackdown on political opponents

    Campaigners have condemned Buckingham Palace’s invitation to the king of Bahrain to attend the Windsor horse show this weekend, arguing that the UK should not provide a public relations opportunity to what they say is an increasingly repressive regime.

    King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa met the Queen at the event on Friday, demonstrating a warmth of official ties despite the Middle Eastern’s state’s outlawing of political opposition and repression of its Shia majority since a failed 2011 revolt.

    Related: I’m fasting in protest outside Royal Windsor Horse Show to save my father in Bahrain | Ali Mushaima

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