A brutal, nine-hour, multi-agency police assault against unarmed protesters at UC Santa Cruz shows the university would rather use violence against its own students than address demands to divest from genocide.
@mondoweiss@palestine@israel Those protesters facing those cops in the photo would benefit from the sort of riot gear we used to use in the Uprising.
Once things got sustained hot, one crew used to march in DC with a bike line first, then a shield line, then the body of the march, then another shield line, and finally the rearguard bikes. In at least one instance our bikers defeated the bike cops in a skirmish. Cops trying to push in, our bikers held the line. Also note that in a lot of DC actions in 2020, heavy fireworks and powerful lasers gave us an effective air defense and ranged attack/counterattack capability.
Note that a violent police attack on an encampment was what got the Portland Federal building a window smashing and molotov cocktail attack. They can hurt us, we can hurt them.
Also note that cops often think twice about this sort of brutality and torture when they are dealing with armed protesters or those who have an armed security element.
I know CA and the South are very different, but Stone Mountain, GA provides an example here. The KKK and its friends hold an annual event there. For years the cops and Klan beat up protesters, "working" side by side to do so. Eventually people decided enough was enough. Thing is, Georgia is an open carry state. When some of the protesters showed up with slung AR-15 rifles, the cops lost all interest in fighting and so did the Klan.
In April 2022 I was there. Instead of random protesters being armed, we had what amounted to an armed security contingent that was obviously one well trained and armed crew that had trained together. They fanned out to cover trouble spots.
The fash were armed too, but as random armed people, not a trained unit of fighters.
Result? Zero violence, the whole day turned into a quite literal walk in the park.
@mondoweiss@palestine@israel why listen and respond with a dialog to demands of a protest when you can ignore it for days, let it fester and then bring in the militarized riot cops? That's the strategy used by these chicken shit administrators and the state for maximum "WE are the victims" media exposure.
@mondoweiss@palestine@israel This is Joe #Biden's America, this is Gavin #Newsom's California. Disgusting, anyone who is still planning on voting for these fascist fiends needs to read every word of this.