RTS A Smashing Success!
http://nolarts.wordpress.com/rts-a-smashing-success/
Six people were arrested Monday night at the Reclaim The Streets event
organized to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the WTO protests that
rocked Seattle in 1999.
The event was advertised a way to call attention to the fact that the same
police and prison system that brutalized people at the WTO is also sending
Louisiana rappers to prison, failing to make our communities safer and
instead defending with violence the policies of the WTO around the world.
The event was intended to create a space where these failed institutions
that destroy our lives are not allowed to operate, a space of freedom and
liberation.
The event kicked off when about 40 people began hanging banners, throwing
confetti, and launching party streamers over light poles on Canal St.,
near Royal St. The banners read “Abolish Prisons” and “Free Lil Wayne!
Free Lil Boosie! Free All Prisoners!” and they were strung between light
poles and the palm trees that line Canal St. A sound system blasted bounce
rap from a bike cart, people got in the streets, and the party started!
The few locals who were outside, rather than watching the Saints whip the
Patriots on Monday Night Football, were very supportive, and a handful
even joined in the action. Flyers were distributed to people and bars
along the route and thrown into the cool northeasterly winds whipping
through the French Quarter. A banner on poles was hoisted into the air and
carried with us, reading “No Justice, No Peace” on one side and “End
Poverty! Smash Prisons! Take Back the City!” on the other side.
The atmosphere was festive and joyful. Barricades were dragged into the
street to block automotive traffic, intersections were occupied and
dancing began. On such a massive boulevard as Canal Street, it was
difficult to hold the street for very long with 40 people, so the party
made its way up Canal, heading for Dauphine Street, to turn into the
narrow streets of the French Quarter.
One angry driver tried to mudge his way right through the midst of the
party at an intersection, and he ran into a participant, who got knocked
onto the hood of his car. The homicidal driver sped up, carrying the man
for some 300 yards across Canal Street before he finally stopped the car.
Friends came running, yelling at the car to stop. A Sheriff came out of a
store where he was doing security guard duty and pointed a gun at one of
the partiers, screaming at him to get on the ground. The Sheriff
eventually realized that the incident between the driver and the man on
his hood was more urgent, and left to deal with it, allowing the person on
the ground to get up and run back to the party. The incident resulted in a
court summons for the person who was hit and carried by the car, while the
suit-wearing upper-class man who almost killed one of our friends was
allowed to go free. How much plainer can it be that the police are
worthless at protecting people?
The party continued up Canal Street. A cop ran up to the march from behind
and started yelling at everyone to stop littering (!). When a participant
attempted to engage the cop in conversation, the cop tried to chase down
and arrest him. The cop was thwarted; he tripped and face-planted onto the
street. The crowd cheered, but when the ogre got back up he was even
angrier. He went up to the nearest person and full-on slugged him in the
face! This cop was a foot taller than the person he punched, and the
person was obviously not expecting it. The officer didn’t try to arrest
anyone else, and the march sped up to make it to Dauphine Street and into
the narrower alleys of the French Quarter.
The French Quarter was largely deserted– everyone was inside watching the
Saints game– but as bottle rockets sailed through the air and popped, a
sound system blared music, and people continued dragging objects in the
streets (both to create a liberated zone and protect themselves from the
gun-pulling and punch-throwing cops) a sense of common purpose took hold
and people felt strong, defiant, and triumphant in the streets, if only
for a few brief blocks.
The party wound its way through the French Quarter. It crossed Bourbon
Street, home to scumbag restaurants like Tony Moran’s that refuse to pay
their workers and steal their tips, operating under police protection
while workers get no protection from their bosses. By this time the party
had only about half the numbers it began with, and 3 amped-up cops on
Bourbon decided they would sprint after the party and try to tackle
people. The entire march began running through the streets, past the
Louisiana Supreme Court building, that giant marble monolith to injustice,
and people split down 3 different streets. The largest group ran back
towards Bourbon Street on a side street, with the police in close pursuit.
Three more officers waited like linebackers with their arms out at Bourbon
Street for the sprinting crowd of rebels, and tackled a few of us by
throwing people against the wall and kicking them in the face. Others
managed to get away.
The protest dissolved into the chilly night, but not before reminding
ourselves and those in power that we are everywhere, we are angry, and we
will not settle for anything less than autonomy and freedom.
Epilogue:
That night, the cracks in the old world were emerging once again: action
is possible, resistance is necessary, our lives and our world could be so
different, so much better, if only business as usual could STAY disrupted.
Every day that we choose passivity, negotiation, mediation,
representation, or restraint, more people die, our lives get worse, the
appartus of control becomes tighter, and we live one more day of our short
lives without freedom. On this night, in these streets, people sided with
the future instead of the present. They sided with those who are in
prison, who wish every day for business as usual to end. They sided with
the world we want, not the one we have. They occupied space, transformed
it, and attempted to seize it… a little earth in which to germinate the
seeds of the new world, seeds that can grow into plants that break up the
concrete of prisons, shopping malls and police departments, of Niketowns
and Starbucks stores, a forest to break up the machinery of imperial wars
and ecological devastation.
Occupations are just beginning here in New Orleans. The suffocating logic
of capitalism will be pushed out of spaces, so that we may breathe and
live and grow.
We’re going to destroy this world and create a new one, want to join us?
Keep updated with future plans at: http://nolaRTS.wordpress.com
Organize!
Occupy!
Resist!
RTS A Success! Report #2
This was a lively rolling New Orleans street party highlighting the
imprisonment of hometown hero Lil Wayne and Baton Rouge’s Lil Boosie
as examples of how the police and prison industrial complex do not
work. There are a thousand reasons to love the best rapper alive;
besides inspiring and keeping a much-needed focus on New Orleans, Lil
Wayne (along with Atlanta’s Gorilla Zoe) was also instrumental in
breaking Goblin Awareness into the hip-hop mainstream. He and Boosie
have brought happiness, hope, and strength through music to people
around the world. Think about it: how does putting them in prison make
anyone safer? Furthermore, why is marijuana illegal? Why do we allow
people to tell us what is or isn’t permitted? And Weezie’s arrest was
bullshit… “attempted weapons possession?” What does that even
mean?… Where was the NRA or other mainstream so-called “rights”
groups to stick up for him?
The whole system is broken. The police and courts system is fucked,
not just here in Louisiana, where we have the highest arrest and
incarceration rates AS WELL as the highest crime rates, but
everywhere– this is the same “free” country where Antavio Johnson
went to jail simply for writing a song about his frustration with
police & the courts.
Prison is nothing but repackaged slavery, with poor, mostly minority
folks given NO chance from the get-go. Poor people are denied
educational opportunities and surrounded by hopelessness. Is it a
coincidence that those who see the injustice of the police and legal
system all around them every day adopt outlaws as role models? Then
bam! you’re thrown into prison where you perform mandatory labor for
pennies an hour, on a farm or in an assembly line, to make products
sold in Walmart, Victoria’s Secret and elsewhere for huge profits…
and once the legal system gets ahold of you, it does NOT let you go
until you’ve been ground into dust.
On the evening of November 30, we came out to raise hell, not to beg
for “change” or request “reform” from those in power. We are not
addressing or petitioning the authorities. We are speaking to the
people, to each other, and we aren’t stopping. There are no lists of
demands that the would-be rulers can grant or deny; our demand is that
they no longer exist. These streets and this life don’t belong to the
cops or the government. Their courts, their laws, their politicians
and their prisons are part of an out-of-date world that’s crumbling
out from under them; we’re here to celebrate the overdue end of their
control.
About forty people gathered on Canal St. for the party, including a
number from New Orleans’ vast homeless community. It was a
particularly impressive turnout considering the undefeated Saints were
at that same time whipping the asses of the New England Patriots… it
takes a lot to drag a Saints fan away from the TV at a time like that.
We had a nice loud sound system playing good music– including New
Orleans bounce– and hung several big banners along the streets. The
initial interest from the New Orleans Police Department was limited to
one big thickneck cop who parked, made a show of whipping out a giant
knife (compensating for somethin’ there, buddy?) and cut down some of
the streamers people had draped around, although for whatever reason
he left the banners alone. Then he got in his car and peeled out. See
ya! At that point the party moved from the sidewalks into the street
itself, blocking traffic, shutting down major intersections, erecting
barricades, drinking, dancing and carrying on.
Some old man in a Lexus didn’t want to stop for the party. He pulled
right through the middle of the crowd, knocking a banner-holding
participant up onto the hood of his car and continuing through the
intersection to the next block over; a wild ride of maybe 100 yards. A
lot of the partiers frowned on this conduct and let the driver know of
their disapproval. Then the police showed up again, this time with
guns drawn! Another Oakland incident was narrowly averted, and
everybody got away except the unlucky hood rider, who (in spite of
being hit by the car!) was cuffed up and tossed in the back of a
cruiser.
It was the word of the old uptown white guy in a nice suit with a nice
car vs. the word of the gold-toothed downtowner, and the police
automatically took the driver’s side in spite of multiple witnesses
contradicting his version. The guy hit by the car was charged with
“disturbing the peace.”
Meanwhile, the street party had turned into a running battle in the
narrow streets of the historic French Quarter, with big fat cops
chasin’ kids all up and down the alleyways. At least three people were
arrested, charged with being responsible for graffiti, though it’s not
clear if they were even involved in the party; they were most likely
just poor people in the wrong place at the wrong time…
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