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Tactics

Police Tactics Kettling, Mass Arrests Questioned In St. Louis

September 20, 2017 Doug Moore, www.sanfrancisco.stltoday.com , , , ,
By Doug Moore for St. Louis Post-Dispatch - ST. LOUIS • Police used a technique called kettling on Sunday night to box in about 100 people at a busy downtown intersection and arrest them for failing to disperse. It’s a tactic used to corral a group of people who fail to follow police orders. St. Louis police took the action after several windows were broken and concrete planters and trash cans overturned. But some of those caught in the box made by rows of officers said police overstepped their bounds, using excessive force and chemical spray on people who were not protesting, including residents trying to get home and members of the media. As police closed in from all sides, they struck their batons in unison on the pavement, in a cadence march. Tony Rice, an activist who goes by Search4Swag on Twitter, said he was shocked by the police behavior. “It was the most brutal arrest I’ve ever experienced in my life,” Rice said. “I thought I was going to die.” He said he could not lie prone on the ground, as ordered, because he had his bike with him. Rice said his neck was being pressed against part of his bike, and he told the officers: “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.” Those bused to the jail seemed confused by what was happening, Rice said. Pedestrians were arrested along with legal observers, protesters, a freelance photographer and a doctor, he said.

Beyond Voting: Skills You Need To Get Shit Done

April 12, 2017 Staff, www.theleapblog.org ,
By Staff of The Leap Blog - In my hometown of Billings, Montana, I was leading a training on effective public commenting last month at the local library. We had just finished watching a five-minute video I put together with a few examples of compelling speakers. I didn’t know if anyone would come, because I hadn’t done any active recruitment—just made an event on Facebook and waited to see who showed up. There was no specific issue I was pushing, no ask of the attendees. And to my surprise, forty people showed up. Before Trump, I doubt there would have been more than five or ten. As one political party ceded the driver’s seat to the other, tens of millions of people had been dozing on the passenger side

We Must Discuss Effectiveness Of All Tactics Including Black Bloc

February 16, 2017 Kazu Haga, www.wagingnonviolence.org
By Kazu Haga for Waging Noviolence - I admit, I laughed a little too. When I first saw videos of white nationalist Richard Spencer getting punched by a protester, I thought it was funny. And even now, I’m not exactly shedding a tear for him. I certainly pray that the attempts to find and target the person who threw the punch prove unsuccessful. As many of us expected, the election and subsequent inauguration of Donald Trump has given rise to a new movement of white supremacy and hatred. It has empowered an ideology that never really went away, but has been lying largely dormant for decades. But resistance to those ideologies has also been on the rise. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, “Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.”

Misunderstanding The Civil Rights Movement & Diversity of Tactics

June 25, 2015 Tactical Diversity, www.tacticaldiversity.wordpress.com ,
By Tactical Diversity - It’s gotten to be a pattern on the Left. When Black protest erupts into insurrection, as it did in Ferguson and Baltimore, most liberals and white radicals express empathy for the cathartic release of anger, but urge the oppressed that this is not the way. This is “not strategic,” says the leftist concern-troll. This is “what the police want.” Most of the time they manage to stop short of asking “why are they burning down their own neighborhood?” –if only to be mindful of clichés—but some can’t even help themselves there. In the aftermath, Amy Goodman(seemingly channeling Alex Jones) will spread conspiracy theories on how the government “orchestrated” the rioting.¹ The respectability politics of nonviolence will return. It’s hard to believe that anyone who has paid attention to Black Lives Matter takes these positions in good faith because, of course, the riots in Ferguson were objectively the best thing that happened to a movement that was already more than a year old.

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