State Repression

How A New Supreme Court Decision Threatens Movements In Mississippi

May 24, 2024 Justin A. Davis, Waging Nonviolence. Strategize! Mississippi, Right to Protest, State Repression, Supreme Court

As local and state governments across the country continue to propose sweeping new policies that criminalize protests, a recent Supreme Court decision in the Deep South has sparked fears that it “effectively eliminated the right to organize a mass protest” in multiple states — setting a dangerous precedent for Southern organizers and activists. Back in 2016, prominent Black Lives Matter organizer DeRay McKesson led a protest in Baton Rouge, Louisiana where an unidentified protester seriously injured a police officer. The officer sued him, arguing that McKesson displayed negligence as an organizer.

Rise Of Militarized Policing In Response To Black Dissent

May 10, 2024 Dhoruba Bin-Wahad, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Black Liberation, COINTELPRO, Militarized police, State Repression, SWAT

Since the mid-1960s, the militarization of U.S. police, counter-insurgency, and the surveillance capacity of the civilian law enforcement establishment, then relatively new, has today reached extraordinary levels of sophistication and questionable degrees of constitutionality. The accelerated militarization of America’s police agencies began exponentially to explode during the later years of the Vietnam War, as widespread student anti-war protests of the late sixties reached their zenith. During the same period, the Civil Rights mass movement of Black people for social and political equality in the South began to be co-opted with symbolic government electoral concessions like the Voting Rights Act of 1964.

Will Prosecutors Charge Pro-Palestinian College Protestors?

April 28, 2024 Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg, Ethan Corey, Jerry Iannelli, and Meg O'Connor, The Appeal. Resist! Campus Movement, Israel, Legal System, Palestine, Police, State Repression, Student Activism

According to a nationwide review by The Appeal, students and their allies have built protest encampments or staged sit-ins on at least 53 college campuses during the past month to demand an end to U.S. military aid to Israel, that their schools divest from Israeli companies, and that Israel cease its attacks on Gaza, which have killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in what many human rights experts and international organizations have called a genocide. In nearly all cases, American law enforcement has responded to demonstrators’ concerns with threats or outright violence.

Colleges And Universities Collaborate With The State To Silence Protests

April 25, 2024 Jacqueline Luqman, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Higher Education, Israel, Palestine, Solidarity, State Repression

As we have seen over the past few months, colleges and universities across the United States have shown a dangerous willingness to punish their students for speaking out for Justice for Palestine on their campuses. The very institutions that claim to be the centers of intellectual rigor, freedom of thought and expression, and developers of critical thinking skills for America’s post-secondary school development, even claiming to be the groomers and shapers of America’s future generations of leaders, are today the institutions that call the police on student protesters.

Faculty At University Of Texas Austin Strike In Solidarity With Students

April 25, 2024 Olivia Wood, Left Voice. Resist! Higher Education, Israel, Palestine, Solidarity, State Repression, Student Activism, Texas

Faculty from universities across the country have begun to mobilize in solidarity with the student movement for Palestine. From NYU, where faculty linked arms to protect students from police; to Columbia University, where faculty engaged in a solidarity walkout with the Gaza Solidarity Encampment; to Barnard College, where faculty planned a sick-out in defense of their students — faculty are rising up in defense of their students. At the University of Texas Austin, faculty have announced a 24-hour work stoppage as part of the fight against student repression.

Threats To US Democracy Go Far Beyond Elections And Courts

April 21, 2024 Basav Sen, In These Times. Strategize! Democracy, Elections, Legal System, Money in Politics, State Repression

The idea that U.S. democracy is in danger is now widely accepted among the U.S. political class and increasingly by the American public as well. “Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault here at home as they are today,” President Biden said during his March 7 State of the Union address. Much of the media attention on the threat has focused on our electoral system and courts. These procedural elements of democracy are of course critical. But there isn’t enough public discussion of threats to substantive democracy — the degree of government accountability to the public, as well as the protection of free speech and the right to dissent.

Hundreds Of Students Occupy Columbia University In Solidarity With Gaza

April 18, 2024 People's Dispatch. Resist! Academic Freedom, Columbia University, Higher Education, Israel, New York City (NYC), NYPD, Occupation, Palestine, State Repression, Student Activism

At 4 am on April 17, hundreds of Columbia University students began to set up a “Gaza solidarity encampment” on the main lawn of campus, pledging to stay until the University divests from Israel. This historic occupation was coordinated by various student organizations such as the coalition Columbia University Apartheid Divest, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine, and Columbia Jewish Voice for Peace. The action was inspired by the historic 1968 occupation of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall by students in protest against racism and the Vietnam War.

The War On Protest

April 17, 2024 Adam Federman, In These Times. Educate! Congress, Free Speech and Assembly, Repression, Right to Protest, State Repression

Amin Chaoui had been in Atlanta less than 24 hours when things took an unexpected turn. Chaoui, then 31, drove down from Richmond, Va., to attend a March 2023 music festival organized by activists trying to stop the construction of the police training facility known as Cop City. The sprawling compound in one of Atlanta’s largest urban parks would require clearing at least 85 acres of partly forested land that abuts a predominantly Black neighborhood in DeKalb County. It faced growing opposition from racial and environmental justice advocates, including an occupation of the forest that began in November 2021.

The New Modern Day Militarized Fort!

April 4, 2024 Shaka Shakur, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Atlanta, Cop City, Georgia, Police, State Repression, Wars and Militarism

This week represents the first year anniversary of the State’s attack and arrest of Amin Chaoui and others who were challenging its attempt to build another kop city, this time within the Atlanta, Georgia, area. It's important to look at the creation of kop city within the larger context of State repression and the creation of an expanded police State of hyper surveillance, pushing ever greater intrusion into the private lives of the people. The repressive State relies upon the use of poor or working class folks to police and dominate other poor, oppressed and marginalized folks.

Chairman Omali Yeshitela, Uhuru 3 Put State On Trial

April 3, 2024 Penny Hess, Black Agenda Report. Resist! African People’s Socialist Party (APSP), FBI, Free Speech, State Repression, Uhuru 3

In yet another political attack by the U.S. government against the African Liberation Movement, African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) Chairman Omali Yeshitela and two members of the Party’s Solidarity Front are currently under federal indictment and facing 15 years in prison on the basis of our constitutionally protected speech advocating for freedom, reparations and justice for African people. A trial date is set for September 3, 2024 in the federal court in Tampa, FL. As part of the attack on the Chairman, Jesse Nevel, 34, Chair of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement and myself, 78, Chair of the African People’s Solidarity Committee are also under indictment as two leaders of the Party’s solidarity committee tasked with winning white solidarity with and reparations for Uhuru Movement anti-colonial economic development programs for the African community.

FBI Storms African Liberation Movement With Fabricated Charges

March 8, 2024 Solyana Bekele, Black Agenda Report. Resist! African Liberation Movement, FBI, Legal System, State Repression, Uhuru 3

On July 29, 2022, the FBI carried out a violent pre-dawn raid at the homes of Uhuru Movement leaders, namely Chairman Omali Yeshitela of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) , and other Uhuru Movement offices. The APSP is a political party that aims to lead the struggle of the African working class and oppressed masses against U.S. capitalist-colonialist domination and all the manifestations of oppression and exploitation that result from this relationship. These raids were followed by a bogus indictment that charged Chairman Yeshitela, Chairwoman Penny Hess of the African People’s Solidarity Committee , and Chair Jesse Nevel of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement with being agents of Russia and acting on behalf of the Russian government.

Palestine Action US Activists Hit With Felony Charges Over Elbit Protest

February 29, 2024 Michael Arria, Mondoweiss. Resist! Elbit, Israel, Legal System, New Hampshire, Palestine Action, State Repression

Three activists have been indicted for participating in a protest at Elbit Systems of America in Merrimack, New Hampshire last November. Elbit is Israel’s largest private arms supplier. Sophie Ross, Bridget Shergalis, and Calla Walsh are facing charges of riot, conspiracy to commit criminal mischief, burglary, and conspiracy to commit falsifying physical evidence for climbing onto the company’s roof and defacing the building with paint. Each charge is a Class B felony and could carry a three-and-a-half to seven-year prison sentence. A fourth woman, Paige Belanger, was arrested in January over her involvement in the protest.

‘Democracies’ Deny The Popular Will While Suppressing Protest And Dissent

February 18, 2024 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Democracy, Freedom of Assembly, Popular will, State Repression

What is democracy? Dictionaries provide a variety of meanings but in general, they define it as “rule by the people,” which includes the election of representatives in a legislature or a parliament. This simple definition is easily understood but when one takes a closer look at the nations which call themselves democracies, it is clear that the word is now little more than a “get out of jail” free card to cover for what is, in fact, oligarchic rule. No one has to look very far to see the discrepancies between democracy as advertised and how states really function. Most people here in the United States, 61% according to one poll , want a ceasefire in Gaza.

Cop City: Federal And State Police Raid Three Homes In Atlanta

February 9, 2024 Sean Summers, Unicorn Riot. Educate! Atlanta, Cop City, Georgia, Legal System, Police, State Repression

Atlanta, GA — A multi-agency task force raided three homes in Atlanta early Thursday morning as part of an ongoing investigation surrounding resistance to ‘Cop City.’ At around 6:00 a.m., law enforcement agents with the Atlanta Police Department, Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Georgia State Patrol, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and FBI carried out search warrants at three separate homes across the city seeking evidence related to a July 2023 arson targeting police motorcycles at an Atlanta police precinct. One 30-year-old Atlanta local, John Mazurek, was arrested and charged with first-degree arson in connection with the 2023 sabotage.

Urgent Call To Defend The Uhuru Movement Against Imprisonment

January 26, 2024 the Hands Off Uhuru Fightback Coalition, Popular Resistance. Organize! FBI, Foreign Agents Registration Act, Legal System, New McCarthyism, State Repression, Uhuru 3

On July 29th of 2022, the FBI militarily raided seven homes and offices of the Uhuru (“Freedom”) Movement including the home of its founder and leader, Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party. This video shows footage from the violent, unjustified raids. The U.S. government has fabricated the bogus charge that Chairman Omali and the Uhuru Movement are “Russian agents” to justify putting the 82-year-old Yeshitela in prison for the rest of his life and to silence him and his lifelong fight for the liberation of Africa and African people worldwide. Chairman Omali Yeshitela’s official statement can be read here.

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

Daily movement news and resources