Amerikkka: The World is NOT Your Toilet or Garbage Dump!

Oakland Residents Confront Police Chief: "Justice for Alan Blueford!"

The Fight for a Life Worth Living: A Statement on Seattle’s 2012 May Day Events.

 

Originally posted on occupyseattle.org

We are organizers and participants involved in this year’s May Day events. Many of us also participate in Occupy/Decolonize Seattle.  

We conceived the events of the May Day General Strike as a celebration of life in solidarity with the global uprising against economic oppression and the 1%. 

May Day is a day of pride for migrants and workers everywhere. It is a day of remembrance for the anarchists executed in show trials after the world’s first May Day in 1886, fighting for the 8-hour work day. Most powerfully, it is a day of struggle—of celebrating freedom and striking out against what hurts us.

Reports that May 1st was “hijacked by anarchists” are inaccurate and insulting. May Day was an inspiration to us all. The crowd was multiracial and multigenerational, and included many working class students who walked out from multiple high schools and colleges. Over 40 local artists took the stage during the day of music and community Hip Hop Occupies to Decolonize planned at Westlake Park. Organizers also scheduled three marches over a month in advance: a No Borders March, to join the May 1st Coalition march to the Wells Fargo Building; an Honor the Dead, Fight for the Living March, in honor of Trayvon Martin and all those killed by police and by white supremacist culture; and an Anti-Capitalist March. Thousands took the streets during these actions and disrupted commerce in downtown Seattle.

During the Anti-Capitalist March, participants in a black bloc smashed windows and damaged businesses and cars. Among the businesses targeted were a Wells Fargo branch, a Niketown, an American Apparel, and a Bank of America. There is tremendous anger worldwide directed at these institutions. Each of the corporations and banks that own the damaged stores inflict real economic and social violence on the planet and on poor people everywhere. Wells Fargo, for one, is complicit in enormous direct and structural violence through its 3.5 million shares in GEO Group, the nation's second-largest operator of private prisons. The same corporation lobbied aggressively for SB1070, Arizona’s racist anti-immigrant legislation, to profit from the “enhanced opportunities” the law provides for immigrants’ incarceration. The rage expressed during the Anti-Capitalist March extends beyond the black bloc. No one should be surprised that people are angry enough to destroy the property of the 1%. Regardless of differences in practice, we share that anger.

Economic refugees and people of color everywhere are treated as exploitable labor. Media depictions support this exploitation. The media selects representatives from immigrant rights organizations to speak for all migrants and economic refugees, and silences the migrant workers marching in the Anti-Capitalist March and those of us organizers who are people of color, economic refugees, and indigenous people. Similarly, accusations that undocumented workers were put at risk on May Day conceal the truth: the only danger to participants in May Day activities came from the police themselves.

Mayor McGinn, the SPD, and the Seattle media have tried to split May Day participants between “good protesters” and “violent anarchists.” As organizers and participants, however, we reject all attempts to divide us, and stand together in defining our own message. 

We value people above property. The corporations attacked, and these institutions that protect them, are not on the side of the working class or the 99%. The lives these businesses destroy are more important than their windows. We remain in solidarity with those everywhere who fight for a life worth living.

Seattle Free University

Stop Jailing Youth and Start Supporting Communities!

Listen to "F**k You, Judge (God Dammified Remix)!"

Survive Sound Weaponry.

NYPD KKKop Tells Suspect He'll Rape Him (among other things).

From The New York Post

Chinga La Policia!

Mantenga sus manos a ti mismo o te Batir el culo!

Occupy/Decolonize Urban Guerilla Gardening

Only libturds, slowcialists, and Fox News fascists believe that Occupy is only about 'protesting' the 1 percent. Here we see a diverse group of folks in Seattle demonstrating one way to contribute to the new world that can (and will) be built from the ashes of the old. Wake Up, God Dammit!

Chicago: Everybody Was KKKop Fu Fighting...

Stop FBI Witch Hunts!

19 year old girl traveling with OWS group goes missing.

Timeline of Transition To A Classless Society



Timeline of Transition. by Ben Seattle.

Why We Are Not Occupy Hip Hop: A Letter to Seattle Weekly.

by Julie Chang Schulman on Thursday, May 3, 2012 at 1:36pm ·

Peace folks. Seattle Weekly has some great photos of our Westlake event. Unfortunately, they called the piece: "Before the Violence: May Day Occupy Hip-Hop at Westlake Park" (the story is here: http://www.seattleweekly.com/slideshow/before-the-violence-may-day-occupy-hip-hop-at-westlake-park-36700787/). 

This is double to my annoyance since 1) It's such bullshit they threw in violence, especially given that property damage is not violence & 2) the term "Occupy Hip Hop" is a huge pet peeve to me. So, I had to get this out of my system....Of course, the weekly has ignored me. Call them and tell them to issue a correction here: 206-623-0500. Thanks. My letter below as to why the term "Occupy Hip Hop" bothers me so much...

Dear Seattle Weekly,

Thank you for the beautiful photo spread and coverage of our event "Rise & Decolonize 2: May Day General Strike". We appreciate it. We do not want to seem petty here, but we would like you to issue a correction that is very important to us and the culture/community loosely defined as "Hip Hop".

We are not "Occupy Hip Hop"; we have never said "Occupy Hip Hop". Hip Hop is a culture embedded in artistic practices that are beautiful, broad, and vast. It does not need to be occupied, as it already has been occupied by commercial forces that seek to isolate these artistic practices from their radical, community roots. We are "Hip Hop Occupies to Decolonize" very deliberately and almost opposite to the term "occupy hip hop" for these reasons. We chose these words carefully with respect to practitioners of Hip Hop, those who identify with Hip Hop Culture, and with respect to the indigenous peoples whose land we currently occupy now.

Our use of the term "occupy" is selective, and largely embedded in creative resistance, aligned with Hip Hop's history. Hip Hop's artistic practices were birthed in resistant occupation. Young people in the Bronx occupied public parks w/ siphoned electricity for park jams, artists occupied subway trains and walls with their graffiti arts, DJs occupied intellectual property to looping and sampling break beats, largely in response to economic violence imposed by the state on their communities that was rapidly internalizing and playing out in negative ways amongst youth through gang violence.

Hip Hop back then was, as true Hip Hop still is now, a means to "decolonize" this negativity and exorcise it from the hearts and minds of the people while simultaneously exercising creative ingenuity & self-empowerment through self-definition.

We understand the misnomer was unintentional. Please respect this history & this request to correct the headline of your article from "Occupy Hip Hop" to "Hip Hop Occupies", or simply call the event its publicized title of "Rise & Decolonize 2: May Day General Strike" at Westlake.

Thank you.

Julie C

Fight The FBI Grand Jury! Hand Off Carlos Montes!