The Free

• From> The Big Feature at Mother Jones.. shared with thanks.. by Julia Lurie

The short life and sudden death of the Share-a-Ton.

The Saturday after George Floyd was killed, Abu Bakr Bryant, a 29-year-old from Minneapolis, found himself walking dazedly among the charred remains of Chicago Avenue, the street where Floyd took his last breaths. Shops and restaurants smoldered. Windows had been boarded up.

A melted stoplight hung midair like a piece of abstract art. He had on his person the entirety of his worldly possessions: a change of clothes, his cellphone, and his wallet. Bryant had been living out of his car until the previous evening, when he went to protest. The protests turned into firestorms, and when he got back to his car, he found that it was on fire, too.

Nine blocks north of the intersection that had turned into a memorial to Floyd, Bryant passed by a former Sheraton hotel with handwritten signs saying “sanctuary” taped on the windows. With the exception of a couple holes from rocks thrown at the double-paned windows, the building was miraculously unscathed. He walked in and asked to use the bathroom. The people inside offered him food and a hotel room—for free. “I thought it was a joke,” he told me.

The 136-room hotel had been transformed into a pop-up homeless shelter of sorts, with no staff and virtually no rules. The hotel’s typical guests had been ordered to evacuate when the protests in Minneapolis heated up. In their place now were between 200 and 300 previously unhoused people—no one knew exactly how many—with more arriving each day to be put on a waitlist.

Continue reading “They Built a Utopian Sanctuary in a Minneapolis Hotel. Then They Got Evicted.”

Translations from KurdisCat. shared with thanks

Turkey imprisons 9 Kurdish feminists for singing “Feminicide is political”
on Sunday, May 31, 2020
The women’s association Rosa (Rosa Kadın Derneği) shared the message of nine of its members arrested last week in Amed (Turkish: Diyarbakır). The nine women, including Kurdish politicians and elected officials, are among 12 people jailed last Sunday for “belonging to an illegal organization,” as part of an investigation opened by the Diyarbakır prosecutor’s office against the Rosa women’s association. .

From the Diyarbakir women’s prison, where they are detained, they sent this message, through their lawyers:

“Many thanks to all the women’s associations, our comrades, our lawyers and our elected officials who have shown solidarity with us, demonstrating the strength that is the struggle of women and how united we are. We know that no power cannot resist this solidarity and the struggle of women.

Let it be known that we will never stop singing: “Feminicide is political”, “Women want peace”, “Women are life, do not kill life” “Because we know how fair our struggle is. The future will be better. Don’t worry, we’re fine.”

Continue reading “Erdogan jails 9 Kurdish feminists and two more elected deputies… etc”

June 10, 20

Announcing the Uprise Daily podcast, a daily newsreel show covering the ongoing rebellion.

The Uprise Daily is a daily, city-by-city newsreel podcast covering the ongoing uprising in the US.

This is a grassroots effort from activists around the country to compile information about protests that have been happening in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

Tune in to hear news from big city protests as well as from small town and suburban actions that don’t always make the headlines.

• Subscribe at anchor.fm/uprise-daily or wherever you get your podcasts
• Find transcripts and an interactive map of updates at www.uprisedaily.com
• Follow us on Twitter @uprisedaily

This is a brand new project! If you find the Uprise Daily helpful, please share widely. We need help spreading the word!

 1,366 total views,  

Anonymous Contributor

This submission came to It’s Going Down anonymously through itsgoingdown.org/contribute. IGD is not the author nor are we responsible for the post content.

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Posted on Tuesday, June 9, 2020 – 11:32 am by jseattle SHARED WITH THANKS!

Protesters have made their own riot shields emblazoned with the pink umbrellas that have become a symbol of the demonstrations

With reporting by Jake Goldstein-Street and Alex Garland

The first night in the so-called Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone that has formed in the wake of police giving up the week-long blockade of the East Precinct was rainy and peaceful and full of speeches from activists, agitators, poets, and socialist city council members.

“I guess whatever the fuck we’re doing is effective,” one organizer identified as Magik said over a megaphone early in the night as police were still clearing the area. “They are going to move up. They are going to get everybody out of here and we are free to move through these streets and protest and march.”

“Yesterday we were on 11th and Pine. Today we have victory on 12th and Pine. They tried to stop us!,” another exclaimed.

The night brought tense moments but compared to the previous week of blast balls and clouds of gas and pepper spray, Pike/Pine was calm if not quiet — the county sheriff’s helicopter stayed circling overhead until midnight providing observations to SPD command on the ground and often drowning out speeches below. The only major reported conflict came when a TV news crew for the local Fox affiliate was temporarily chased from the scene and took up refuge in the nearby fire station.

The surprise pullback of SPD riot police and National Guard troops came together quickly Monday afternoon after a day of hastily clearing out equipment, moving trucks, and reports of a “mobile shredding unit” at the building at 12th and Pine that is home to the East Precinct headquarters as well as department office facilities. “The decision has been made to allow demonstrators to march past the East Precinct later today,” an announcement sent to department staff about the decision to close the building read. “Additional measures are currently underway to enhance our ongoing efforts to insure the security of our East Precinct and provide for the safety of all our officers.”

11th and Pine is a far different scene than last night. pic.twitter.com/D6e1zIeUbp

— Alex Garland (@AGarlandPhoto) June 9, 2020

“The East Precinct will remain staffed,” the announcement concluded. CHS observed officers being dispatched from mobile locations away from 12th and Pine. The building is empty and windows covered with plywood. By morning, the wood was covered with graffiti giving the precinct an unexpected continuity with much of the rest of the neighborhood as many businesses are still in the process of reopening after weeks of COVID-19 restrictions.

The pullback and boarding-up of the precinct follows a Sunday night conflagration described by many as the most aggressive show of crowd control firepower yet by SPD that came only hours after a Mayor Jenny Durkan speech on deescalation.

Continue reading “‘Welcome to Free Capitol Hill’ — Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone forms around emptied East Precinct — UPDATE”

FROM… — Wisconsin Bail Out the People Movement .. shared with thanks!

See below for a list of right-wing organizations in Wisconsin and the Bradley Foundations 990 information (who they fund).

By the Wisconsin Bail Out The People Movement “Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.” — Commandante Assata […]

After the horrific murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers, people of all nationalities have righteously taken to the streets in the millions around the world. When the people of all ages and nationalities defend themselves by any means necessary against the capitalist system that is literally killing them, as is their human right, the police in the most violent way attempt to crush them.

The rich, their political servants and the capitalist media howl in hollow indignation when some property might be destroyed, some goods are liberated by the masses or other forms of self-defense are employed by the people resisting. But what’s rarely mentioned in the area now known as the United States – even in the middle of a pandemic where well over 100,000 people (mostly workers) have died – is how the capitalists and imperialists violently plunder and loot the world 24/7. And even rarer still is when those racist Wall Street and Pentagon vultures are exposed person-by-person and their crimes against humanity detailed in depth.

The area now known as Wisconsin: A Right Wing Base & Model

During the so-called re-open “rallies” in the midst of the current pandemic, right-wing anti-worker racists attempted to organize white supremacist shock troop recruitment events in the area now known as Wisconsin and elsewhere. (Note: Indigenous Nations never agreed to the forced European invasion and carving up of their ancestral homelands. Thus the phrase the area now known as ‘Wisconsin’).

Continue reading “They Ain’t Peaceful: The Rich Violently Loot Wisconsin 24/7!”