Violence

‘Fists Up, Fight Back’ Solidarity With Charleston

June 25, 2015 Maressa Simmons, www.popularresistance.org Resist! Racism, Violence, White Supremacy

By Maressa Simmons of Black Liberation Committee. Tallahassee, FL - After the June 17 white supremacist attack at Emanuel AME Church, in Charleston, South Carolina that left nine African American parishioners dead, the Black Liberation Action Coordinating Committee (BLACC), Students for a Democratic Society and the Trans Liberation Front held a rally, June 19 in front of the Old Tallahassee Capitol. 30 community members attended the rally and vigil, which started with nine minutes of silence, one minute for each victim. During the moments of silence, the Tallahassee Police Department interrupted the vigil, stating the candles were a fire hazard and those in attendance needed to move off the Old Capitol steps and into the grass. The emcee, Regina Joseph, stated it would only last nine more seconds, and, “The police care more about property rights than Black rights.”

Charleston & The South’s Sordid History Of Attacks On Black Churches

June 21, 2015 Chris Kromm, www.southernstudies.org Educate! Racism, Violence

By Chris Kromm for Facing South. Attacks on black churches continued through the Jim Crow era, and intensified again in the wake of the 1950s civil rights movement. The Sept. 15, 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama by members of the Ku Klux Klan, which killed four girls and injured 20 others, marked a turning point in the escalation of the Southern civil rights struggle. In the 1990s, black churches again emerged as targets in a wave of arsons and firebombings. As the Institute for Southern Studies reported in its magazine Southern Exposure in 1996 [pdf], fires damaged 230 churches in a 21-month span starting in August 1994, when young white men linked to the neo-Nazi group Aryan Faction threw a Molotov cocktail and shot bullets into a predominantly black church in Clarksville, Tennessee. The assailants left a note, saying, "AF wants you to leave our white community. You Coons! Coon hunting season is open."

Mexico: Election Violence, Boycott & Military Mobilizing ‘For Democracy’

June 8, 2015 Erin Gallagher, www.revolution-news.com Resist! boycott, Elections, Mexico, Politics, Violence, Wars and Militarism

By Erin Gallagher in Revolution News - Midterm elections are scheduled for tomorrow, Sunday June 7, in Mexico. Mexican citizens will be voting for 500 federal congressmen, 9 governors, and several hundred mayors and local legislators. Protests to boycott the vote have been taking place across Mexico. Police forces and military descended upon the state of Oaxaca last night to reinforce voting stations and “ensure democratic elections” take place tomorrow. As of June 4, 19 people had died who were connected with the electoral process in Mexico. Reports yesterday initially indicated that state police had beat to death magisterial leader, member of the Popular Guerrero (MPG) and activist, Juan Tenorio, in Tlapa, Guerrero. CETEG members (Coordinadora Estatal de Trabajadores de la Educación de Guerrero) and MPG were demonstrating to demand justice for the Ayotzinapa case and to promote the electoral boycott in the state.

Private Prison Sued For Putting Hunger Striking Moms In Solitary

April 25, 2015 Roque Planas, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! Dignity, Immigration, Mass Incarceration, Violence, Wars and Militarism

Three immigrant women who say they were punished for joining a hunger strike in a Texas family detention center on Thursday sued U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and GEO Group, the company that operates the facility. The lawsuit, filed in federal court against ICE Director Sarah Saldaña and personnel at the Karnes County Residential Center, seeks to prohibit ICE and GEO from putting women and their children in isolation as punishment for protesting, and from threatening to separate mothers from their children. “All we’re asking is that under the First Amendment, for ICE officials and GEO officials to stop retaliating against the women and allow them to peacefully protest,” said Ranjana Natarajan, an attorney with the University of Texas Civil Rights Clinic, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of the women.

Salvadoran Maquila Plants Use Gangs To Break Unions

March 25, 2015 Edgardo Ayala, www.ipsnews.net Educate! El Salvador, Violence, Workers Rights and Jobs

Textile companies that make clothing for transnational brands in El Salvador are accused of forging alliances with gang members to make death threats against workers and break up their unions, according to employees who talked to IPS and to international organisations. Workers at maquila or maquiladora plants – which import materials and equipment duty-free for assembly or manufacturing for re-export – speaking on condition of anonymity said that since 2012 the threats have escalated, as part of the generalised climate of violence in this Central American country.

Bringing Fanon’s “Concerning Violence” To Film

March 24, 2015 Alnoor Ladha, www.truth-out.org Educate! Colonialism, History, Modernization, Violence

Activist and author Alnoor Ladha interviews Joslyn Barnes, co-producer of Göran Hugo Olsson's film, Concerning Violence, which explores African liberation struggles of the 1960s and 1970s: As Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak says in her preface to the film, "The issue of colonization is a greed shared by humankind. No one is better than anyone; every generation must be trained in the practice of freedom, caring for others, as did [Frantz] Fanon, and that is what colonization stops. Within the greed for capital formation, colonization allows already existing ignorant racism to spread the markets in the name of civilization or modernization or globalization, as it does today. This film captures the tragedy of the moment when the very poor are convinced in the name of a nation, that is going to reject it once it is established on its own two feet, to offer themselves up for a violent killing. Fanon insists that the tragedy is that the very poor is reduced to violence, because there is no other response possible to an absolute absence of response and an absolute exercise of legitimized violence from the colonizers."

Netanyahu Won. Now What?

March 19, 2015 Avigail Abarbanel, www.mondoweiss.net Educate! Elections, Israel, Palestine, Violence

So he won and I have to say I am relieved. There wll be no more endless cycles of pointless ‘negotiations’ with Israel pretending that some day it will agree to a two-state solution while continually escalating both settlement (colony) building and the maltreament of the Palestinians. Now everyone will see that the Palestinians were right all along and that Israel has never been a partner for negotiations. There is no real political Left in Israel and if the other side got to form a government, all we would have seen is more of the same. Now we’ll see if the EU has the decency and conviction to enact proper sanctions. Then of course there is the US.

Right Wing Activist Fires Staffer Who Refused To Incite Violence @BlackLivesMatter

March 18, 2015 Liam Mathews, www.animalnewyork.com Resist! Law, Racial Justice, Violence

James O’Keefe, the right-wing’s garbage answer to both Michael Moore and Punk’d, is drawing attention again, this time for allegedly firing an employee who refused to strong-arm an operative into following a hidden-camera video script that would bait anti-police brutality protestors into making violent statements against police. His “investigative reporting”/propaganda organization Project Veritas recently used the same manipulative tactics against Eric Garner’s daughter. Rich Valdes, former Director of Operations for Project Veritas, is threatening to sue O’Keefe for wrongful termination “because [O'Keefe] was unhappy with me for being unwilling to strong-arm the guy to do his dirty work,” he told the Post.

Zimbabwe Activist Missing After Abduction In Unmarked Truck

March 16, 2015 David Smith, www.theguardian.com Resist! Activism, Human Rights, Law, Violence, Zimbabwe

Fears are growing for the safety of a political activist in Zimbabwe reported to have been abducted by five unidentified men almost a week ago and bundled into an unmarked truck near his home. The country’s high court on Friday ordered police and the state intelligence agency to search for Itai Dzamara, a former journalist who last year staged sit-in protests demanding the resignation of President Robert Mugabe. Dzamara’s disappearance echoes the darkest days of Zimbabwe’s political instability and has raised concerns of a fresh crackdown on political opponents, civil society activists and journalists. After his abduction on Monday, his wife approached the high court in Harare to force the police and the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) to search for her husband.

Organizing Against Feminicide In Mexico

March 15, 2015 Nidia Bautista, www.cipamericas.org Educate! Ayotzinapa, Police violence, Violence, Women's Rights

As the demand for justice for the 43 disappeared Ayotzinapa students continues in streets worldwide, the epidemic of violence against women grows and justice for its victims remains relegated to a labyrinth of impunity, inefficiency and government indifference. Yet the demand for justice and against feminicide has not only endured over three decades of violence, but continues to mobilize people across borders. At the end of the International Women’s Day March in Los Angeles on March 8, Carla Castañeda began a 72-hour hunger strike to demand justice for her missing daughter Cynthia Jocabeth Castañeda and all the daughters of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Carla, along with the mothers of the Ayotzinapa students and the thousands of other relatives of disappeared people, is seeking information on the whereabouts of her daughter kidnapped six years ago.

Mothers For Justice Outreach Letter: Victims Of Police Violence

March 11, 2015 Maria Hamilton, www.popularresistance.org Organize! Criminal Justice, police brutality, Racism, Violence

In the wake of the recent unjust murders of Dontre Hamilton, Corey Stingley, Derek Williams, Brandon Johnson, Larry Jenkins, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and so many more at the hands of police officers and racist vigilantes, people in cities across the nation have risen up to demand Justice in their communities. For every individual killed, there is a mother who has suffered a loss greater than any one person should have to bear. We, the mothers of this movement, are calling on all concerned community members to join us in our fight. Together we unite to stand against police brutality and racial injustice and to demonstrate our love and determination to protect our children and our country. On May 9th, 2015, Mother’s Day Weekend, The Mothers for Justice United will march on the US Department of Justice in our nation’s capital, Washington DC. Will you stand with us? "

Five Months After Ayotzinapa, Resistance Remains Strong

March 2, 2015 Mackenzie McDonald, www.popularresistance.org Resist! Ayotzinapa, Police violence, Violence

It is clear that the massacre of these students was politically motivated, and involved both the state and federal governments. As is so often the case, the United States lurks behind the curtain of violence, having trained and equipped police in the region for decades. Since Mexico’s war on drugs began in 2006 there have been at least 40,000 people killed in the country. Many of these deaths are, contrary to police reports, unrelated to drug trafficking. Often, they are attacks on civilian protesters and indigenous peoples. Unlike other disappearances and massacres, Ayotzinapa has gained national and international attention because of the popular uprising in response, largely led by family of the dead and disappeared.

We Kill Our Revolutionaries

February 26, 2015 Chris Hedges, www.truthdig.com Educate! political prisoners, Revolution, Violence, Wars and Militarism

He hopes prisoners will organize to mount a coordinated nationwide work stoppage and hunger strike to improve conditions behind bars, including raising pay from the roughly $1 a day that prisoners now receive for eight hours of labor to the legal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. He would like to see coordinated boycotts of the overpriced commissaries. He said prisoners should purchase only the bare necessities, such as soap and toothpaste, and forego the “zoozoos and wamwams,” prison slang for junk food. He places no hope in the courts and the legislatures. Prisoners will have to start to carry out acts of mass civil disobedience for any justice, he said—that is the only mechanism left to them. “Prison authorities never give you anything without a fight,” he said, clutching white prayer beads.

U.S. Army Claims To Be Full of Liars

February 25, 2015 David Swanson, www.worldbeyondwar.org Educate! Afghanistan, Iraq, Violence, Wars and Militarism

“Lying to Ourselves: Dishonesty in the Army Profession” is the title of a new paper by Leonard Wong and Stephen Gerras of the U.S. Army’s Strategic Studies Institute. Its thesis: the U.S. Army is full of liars who habitually lie as part of a lying culture that has internalized and normalized lying to the point of unrecognizability. Finally a claim from the Army I’m prepared to take seriously! But the authors aren’t interested in the Army’s lying press releases or lying Congressional testimony or lying sound bytes promoting each new war, predicting imminent success, and identifying each dead adult or child as an evildoer. In fact, it seems pretty clear that the authors are in fact lying to themselves about the nature of the Army’s lying.

Canadian Police Documents: Carbon-Free Movement A Security Threat

February 18, 2015 Shawn McCarthy, www.theglobeandmail.com Resist! Canada, Environment, National Security, Social Change, Violence

In highly charged language that reflects the government’s hostility toward environmental activists, an RCMP intelligence assessment warns that foreign-funded groups are bent on blocking oil sands expansion and pipeline construction, and that the extremists in the movement are willing to resort to violence. “There is a growing, highly organized and well-financed anti-Canada petroleum movement that consists of peaceful activists, militants and violent extremists who are opposed to society’s reliance on fossil fuels,” concludes the report which is stamped “protected/Canadian eyes only” and is dated Jan. 24, 2014. The report was obtained by Greenpeace.

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