The Police, Functioning As They Were Intended.

 

      The illusion that is peddled by the establishment and its propaganda mouthpiece, that babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, that the police are there to protect us, the ordinary people, grows thinner and thinner to the point of evaporation. Every act of police violence and corruption, remember Hillsborough, every brutal attack by police on protestors, the violence heaped on strikers, remember the 1984/85 miners strike, every miscarriage of justice by police lies, should by now have made it perfectly clear where their loyalty lies.  According to the establishment the police are doing what they were set up to do, protect the rich and wealthy from the poor and the desperate, to protect them from those who would challenge their privileged position. The only modifications the state will make to the police is to give them ever greater power and to see they are more heavily armed. The police are not the friends of the people, they stand in the way of justice, equality and freedom. They are the first line of bodyguards of this system of inequality and exploitation, with the troops standing in the background if needed. It is the same story the world over.

This from Anarchist News:

 

        On October 20^th, 2018 around 1am, cops showed up to a call at an apartment above a King St. Shop in Hamilton, Ontario. Inside they found Robyn Garlow, 30yo mother of one, with a knife. They electrocuted her with a taser and, as she was falling to the ground, shot her four fucking times.

     Garlow was known to the police. She was a drug user and was recently out of jail. These details have no relevancy to her worth, her inherent right to freedom from state oppression. Yet, they already have been and will be used to justify her murder. Because the police are a violent organization meant to protect property of the rich, they have no humanity for the poor and the working class. Because the police are a patriarchal organization meant to enforce laws that privilege masculinity, they have no room for women who do not submit to their authority.

        This was not a tragic mistake, this was murder. Badge or no badge. This was not a case of one bad or inexperienced or over-worked officer, this was an officer carrying out the mandate of the police. Just as, earlier this year, police murdered 19yo Quinn MacDougall in his own apartment after he called the cops for help. And so, on October 28^th, Feminist Action Hamilton called a demonstration to protest the ongoing oppression of our communities by this violent organization. Not to demand justice for Garlow – as we know none exists within this judicial system, let alone the SIU – but to mourn and fight for all victims and survivors of police brutality. And to dream of a world without cops or cages.

     Around 40 people met and marched down King St, holding up traffic on a busy downtown street for over 20 minutes. We held a banner that read FEMINISTS AGAINST POLICE: COPS DON’T KEEP US SAFE. We stopped to acknowledge a moment of silence at the scene of the murder and then circled around the block for a moment of screaming rage at the Hamilton Police headquarters. We had a marching band in full effect and we handed out over 300 flyers to passersby that listed 12 things you can do besides calling the cops.

       As feminists, it is important for us to draw attention to the fact that the police repress, harass, and attack Black, Indigenous, and racialized communities more intensely in order to uphold white supremacy. This is a continuation of the legacy of the police as institutions that, in the United States, were born out of slave patrols to protect white people from Black slaves and, in Canada, were created in order to help put down Indigenous revolt in order to secure white settlement of the plains.

      As feminists, it is important for us to draw attention to the fact that the police make sex work unsafe. And that queer, non-binary, and trans people – specifically transwomen – are met with more violence by the police than others. And that the police criminalize and abuse those of us with mental illness and use the prison system as though it were a hospital.

      As feminists, it is important for us to draw attention to the fact that police officers often use their undue authority to coerce and rape women on the job. And that police officers go home and extend their undue authority to their households where nearly 40% of them abuse their domestic partners with impunity.

Every assault, rape, or murder of a person by the police is an attack against us all.

Because the authority of the police breeds monsters…
Because all people deserve to be free from state oppression…
Because the system is working exactly the way it was designed to work…
We cannot call for reform or review, but only the abolition of the police and the world it creates.

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      Feminist Action Hamilton is an autonomous collective of women, trans, and non-binary persons which organizes along anarchist principles both within our communities – forming systems of mutual aid – and outside our communities – empowering ourselves to fight back against patriarchy in all its forms.

Visit ann arky's home at radicalglasgow.me.uk

Sympathy Where Sympathy Is Due.

       I can understand the sympathy for the two injured police who were deliberately run over by a vehicle, it is always painful to see anther human being suffer, let’s hope they recover and look for another job. This may have been a pointless violent action, for whatever reason, but we should not, as the babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media would have us do, allow that sympathy to overflow onto the police as an organisation. We should always remember that the police are the minders, the street thugs, of a system of unearned privilege and wealth for the few, a system of greed and corruption that breeds poverty, alienation, deprivation, anxiety and stress for the many. The police are the systems hounds, with blood on their teeth, trained to keep control on the streets for fear that the people may change the system. The illusion that they clear our cities of “crimes” conceals the fact that the “crimes” that they are are proposed to be cleaning up, are the direct result of this exploitative system they defend. 

       What have the police ever done for the people? Their history is one of a litany of miscarriages of justice, brought about by their brutality, false statements, lies, incompetence and corruption, in conjunction with a biased judiciary, remember the Birmingham six 1975. Let’s not forget the part the police played in the Liverpool transport workers strike 1911, the forty hour strike and Glasgow’s bloody Friday 1919, move forward, and their doing the bidding of the greedy and powerful in the 1984/85 miners’ strike, remember Orgreave? Of course we have to list Hillsborough 1989, and so the list goes on, an organisation that was put in place to defend the indefensible, a system of festering greed, corruption and privilege, that perpetuates oppression, poverty and misery.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

 

Solidarity Is Our Weapon.

 

       In this country, we all know that the justice system is served by police, who have given us the Birmingham 6, Hillsborough, and Orgreave, to mention a few. We also know that this is not unique to the UK police, but pans out across the globe as part and parcel of the way the various states do things. In Greece there has been the long running case of anarchist Grigoris Tsironis and comrades. Held in prison on a serious of robbery charges, which  have now been dropped, thanks to the international support and the fact that it was obviously a frame-up. Of course the state doesn't give up easily, the robbery charges dropped, he and his comrades are now roped into the anti-terrorism laws, and under investigation about terrorist organisations. If you're a nuisance to the state, they will keep after you and keep trying to silence you. That is why we must always show our solidarity with those who stand up and face down the system. It is obvious that they don't do it for their own well being, their fight is our fight and demands our support.

This from Act For Freedom Now:

        I call, therefore, the solidarity movement to rally up forces with its strong and mass presence in the judicial battles of all the comrades whose cases are now underway. Solidarity and support by the movement cannot be given partially or selectively.
      Comrades who refuse the charges attributed to them and fight for their collapse, deserve our solidarity. Comrades who claim responsibility for their acts and with dignity and political arguments fight their battle inside the court rooms, deserve our solidarity.
Finally, comrades who discredit civil justice and spit in the faces of judicial employees, do not bargain for their freedom and they themselves create the preconditions in order to regain it, deserve the same solidarity.
       Let us perceive, even if it sounds romantic, that we are different pieces of the same puzzle, that when connected, our vision for the revolution will appear.
        Let’s look ahead and gaze this vision and let’s leave the mistakes and hostilities in the past.
Solidarity is our weapon
Not a step back…

NO COMRADE HOSTAGE IN THE HANDS OF THE STATE
FREEDOM TO POLITICAL PRISONERS
AND IMPRISONED FIGHTERS
STRENGTH TO THE WANTED COMRADES
Grigoris Tsironis
Koridallos Prisons
4/6/2016

Read the full article HERE: 

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk