Report on East Flatbush

Memorial for Kimani Gray in East Flatbush. Photo by me.

I've written up a report of last week's events in East Flatbush in the aftermath of the police murder of Kimani "KiKi" Gray.

"Last Saturday night Kimani was in the neighborhood hanging out with friends. At 16, he was learning to navigate some tough turf. There's not an African-American kid his age in Brooklyn who doesn't understand the way things are: staying in school seems pointless, finding work will be hard, being pushed around or thrown up against a wall by cops is the price of leaving your house, and sticking with your friends or even a gang is the way to keep it together.

That night two plainclothes cops decided Kimani looked suspicious. They claim he pulled a gun on them from his waistband as they approached him. Two menacing strangers walking toward a kid who was just out on the street with his friends...."

Read the whole report at Kasama. 

 

Brooklyn: Justice for KiKi!

Been spending some time this week in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, supporting the community organizing against the brutal police murder of young Kimani "KiKi" Gray, shot seven times by the NYPD including three times in the back, last weekend.

I helped produce this flyer for Fire Next Time network: it was created in a small palm-sized version to pass out at the neighborhood vigils which have frequently morphed into rebellious confrontations with the legion of cops occupying the neighborhood. I'll be writing a longer piece on the week's events soon.

WHEN NOT EVEN CHILDREN ARE SAFE,
IT’S TIME TO FIGHT BACK!

This week the people of Brooklyn reclaimed their streets. We should be proud of all the sisters and brothers who rebelled against the NYPD lockdown of our neighborhood. But this is just the beginning. The cops have always and will always continue to brutalize and murder our people. What are we going to do next?
 
The NYPD rolls with crews from all over NYC. We need to roll with all the brothers and sisters from Bed-Stuy, Brownsville, Jackson Heights, Harlem, and the Bronx. The NYPD has unity. We need unity in order to stop this bullshit once and for all: to make revolution possible.
 
We must win all the poor and working people of New York City. They are on our side. We must stop the war inside our communities and instead focus on our real enemies: The NYPD and all those who protect a state that oppresses the black, brown and poor people of this country. Until justice has been served, peace is not an option.
And to Jumaane Williams and all other politicians who claim to represent our communities: Don’t blame us for our anger! The cops are the outside agitators!
 
JUSTICE FOR KIKI! POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
UNITE THE BLOCKS!
FREE THE STREETS!

That's All Right, We Got This

View of downtown Manhattan after the Hurricane Sandy blackout showing only the Goldman Sachs building still lit.

At the height of hurricane Sandy on Monday night, lower Manhattan was plunged into darkness. As the wind buffeted the city and the waves overran low-lying coastal areas, electric power failed in many parts of the city. My Brooklyn neighborhood was lucky, surviving with only a few downed trees. In lower Manhattan, one building stayed alit: the headquarters of Goldman Sachs, the massive Wall Street firm legendary for corporate greed on a massive, should-be-criminal scale. This symbolic coincidence has not been lost on the people of New York City. Fuck Goldman Sachs. Fuck Wall Street. We don't need you.

Occupy Sandy Relief NYC: almost ten thousand likes on Facebook in 4 days translated into many hundreds of volunteers on the ground and significant real-world mutual aid.

While Mayor Bloomberg debated cancelling the New York Marathon with the tabloid press, while President Obama claimed to be sending massive amounts of FEMA assistance, as the Red Cross started cranking up its donation engines, the people of New York also noticed something else: nothing was actually happening on the ground to help the thousands of people either displaced by wind, flood and fire, or trapped in powerless, heatless homes no longer served by public transportation. Enter the Occupy movement, yes the Occupy Wall Street movement derided as dead by so many on all sides of the media. Occupy activists gathered together and quickly formed "Occupy Sandy Relief: NYC," simultaneously unveiling a Facebook page and going out to the ravaged Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook to see what was up with our neighbors and try and lend a hand. Fuck the liberals who are phonebanking for Obama this weekend. Fuck the smug pundits writing their contemptuous obituaries for Occupy. Fuck you Mayor Bloomberg and your private NYPD army. We don't need you.

Outreach for Occupy Sandy at a Brooklyn Church (photo by me)

Within a day the Occupy Sandy activists had a food kitchen set up near a blacked-out low-income housing project and were prowling the flooded streets reaching out to frightened hurricane survivors. In a few hours they expanded operations to the Rockaways, both to the middle-class neighborhood ravaged by a massive fire, and the working class areas full of people seemingly abandoned by the city and alleged relief agencies. They soon began to reach out to Staten Island, where angry residents were feeling ignored and forgotten. (While Staten Island is home to a notoriously right-wing white community it's also home to large working-class communities of color: A community of color which just lost two of its youngest sons, swept away in the flood to their deaths as their mother cried for help, ignored by cold-hearted neighbors.) Politicians started to tour the scenes of devastation. And yet, people were still left to fend for themselves. Grassroots organizations started to follow Occupy's lead and soon started helping to fill the void. But one thing became very clear: those who were most effected by Frankenstorm Sandy needed mutual aid. We would have to do this ourselves.

After my small neighborhood General Assembly meeting this morning, now held in the lobby of an apartment building on rent strike because of the machinations of a charitable agentocracy, we walked over to St. Jacobi's church and joined the hundreds of people arriving every few minutes to make donations of food, material goods, or their time to the cause of people's hurricane relief. We sat through a quick volunteer orientation where it was explained that this was not about saving other people it was about empowering communities to help themselves. It was explained that this was Occupy walking its principles of anti-oppression and horizontal organization. Racism, sexism and homophobia were condemned. We were advised to treat each other and members of the afflicted communities with respect, without being condescending or patronizing, to listen for what was needed. Each of us could be a leader in the relief effort. In a half hour I was leading volunteer orientations myself. This was Occupy's radical vision in action. Fuck the nonprofit industrial complex with its overpaid staff and its penchant for channeling people's rage into harmless nonprofit triplicate. We don't need you.

Altar for the Day of the Dead at St. Jacobi Church in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, in the recreation room being used by hundreds of volunteers to sort donations and prepare food for meals to be delivered to hurricane victims. (photo by me)

Tens of thousands of meals were prepared for people in affected neighborhoods. Carpools were organized to ferry goods and people between Occupy Sandy intake centers and those neighborhoods. Donations flooded in. People spread out to help neighbors support each other, help clean up, help find out who was in need. People were motivated and stayed enthusiastic and united. This happened under the leadership of a movement led largely by anarchists and social justice activists radically influenced by anarchist thought. An activist friend of mine complained on facebook that a "socialist" acquaintance had shouted at her, "we need solidarity not charity." Which is sadly typical of much of the left's sneering dismissal of Occupy. Because this is real solidarity. This is the real world. This is what it means to organize, to relate to real people. These downtrodden and oppressed people don't look like a history book, they look like your neighbors, surviving a hurricane. Fuck the social democrats waiting for an imaginary labor party they can make themselves head of. Fuck the trotskyists and their world of weasel-word formulations. Fuck the condescending saviors who think they know everything but don't even know who the workers are and won't lift a finger to be with them.

Time has moved on. This is not the world of 2008. This is not the world of 2010. This is why I am not voting for Obama. This is the future. This is hard work. This is painful. This is joyful. This is the not-so-slow-motion apocalypse that we can only stop if we get real busy now with our friends and comrades. This is the possibility of winning. This is the possibility of losing. This is fear, this is hope. This is how it's going to be, from now on.

Fuck the government, fuck the state. We don't need you. People's power is coming.

Revolution in Our Times?

The following statement is reposted from East Coast Renegades:

We are in an historic moment. The economic crisis is deepening the poverty gap and its racial disparities, expanding and intensifying police repression, and causing the political system to waver and fracture. It appears this process will continue, giving rise to more radical and extreme struggles nationally and globally. Yet despite its potentials, the Occupy movement has failed to sustain and grow into a revolutionary mass movement. Now is the time to regroup, re-strategize, and commit ourselves to taking action as best we can in the outbreaks that are coming.

The authors of this statement are forming a network on the east coast, and we hope others will join us. Our network brings together old and new militants to share analysis, strategy, tactics, resources and methods of struggle. Together we want to open up a space for principled debate, in which we respectfully challenge and develop each-other’s ideas about revolutionary practice, and push each other to do better than we are doing. We want to develop our ability to intervene in crises, whether they be cases of police violence, community violence, austerity cuts, housing occupations, prisons strikes, labor struggles, etc.

We believe our central task is to seek out the revolutionary elements of people’s everyday experiences, to support and push this self-activity in ever more radical directions. At the same time, we must ruthlessly critique everything that holds it back: both the racist, sexist, reactionary elements within it, and the liberals and self-appointed leaders who co-opt it, such as politicians, nonprofit staff, and union bureaucrats.

While working toward the worldwide overthrow of the capitalist system, many in our network are currently agitating and organizing in urban neighborhoods of color, and feel this work will be central to any revolutionary strategy in the U.S. In order to build local popular power that can challenge the existing order, we must connect a wide array of labor, immigrant, student, feminist, queer, rural, and other struggles. We understand that many of these categories overlap with each other, and are prevalent within neighborhoods of color.

We hope our efforts will move us closer to a form of organization that is useful for our time, different from the vanguard parties and structureless networks of the past, and we think this grouping could serve as an embryo for such an organization down the road. Together we will study and critique past revolutions and current movements, and undertake serious political education. We will grow together as committed militants, analyzing and acting in the world around us, and working toward revolution in our time.

The above statement was written by some of the same folks who put out the Con Ed flyers I reposted earlier. The graphic is one of the brilliant works of agitprop art produced by Emory Douglas of the Black Panther Party way back in the day. I'm not sure I'm as negative about the Occupy movement having already "failed," but I think this statement makes some great points I completely agree with.

Sunset Park Rent Strike: Scenes from the Struggle

The first rent strike support flyer

My local Occupy group, Occupy/Ocupemos Sunset Park, has been immersed in a local struggle, a rent strike in a series of buildings on 46th Street in this Brooklyn neighborhood. Here are some of the flyers we've been producing for the actions.

The strike has been receiving terrific media coverage and terrific support from the Occupy network. I will be back in the next few days with a post to detail what's been happening and put the struggle in context.

The first action ended with an impromptu hour-long occupation of state assemblyman Felix Ortiz' office, which was truly awesome. Tonight, see the last flyer below, we're staging a sidewalk sleep-in and people's inspection of the buildings.

This video was taken at the first action; it sums up what was happening at the beginning. Yours truly is interviewed at length toward the end. Enjoy.

A terrific account of the strike with interviews with many of the rent strikers can be found here: "Brooklyn Women Make Their Building Theirs."

"The Most Powerful Workers in New York City"

Locked-out Con Ed worker in Brooklyn: "If We Go Out the Lights Go Out!"

On Sunday, July 1, contract negotiations between New York City's electric utility, Consolidated Edison or Con Ed, and its 8,500 unionized workers represented by the Utility Workers Union of America broke down. Even though New York City was entering a heatwave, stressing the electrical grid across the city, the electric company locked out the workers, replacing them in their crucial jobs with a smaller number of managers and bosses. The union for the workers has continued to try to negotiate with the electric company, but they've also been holding daily pickets and solidarity rallies across New York City.

A group of revolutionary organizers calling themselves the New York City Renegades have been agitating among the workers with some of the most powerful worker-focused propaganda I've seen in years. This is a brilliant example of some of the fruits of the Occupy Wall Street movement: class consciousness, solidarity, autonomous community/worker organizing outside the confines of existing organizations, all in convergence with solid revolutionary organizing traditions. The goal of these organizers is to "unite the workers with the 'hood." I met with some of the Renegades in time to pass out some leaflets at a rally of the UWUA workers outside the Con Ed offices on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn; I found the gathered workers hungry for solidarity, the leaflets flew out of my hand.

These leaflets are a necessary challenge to the top-down strategies of existing union leadership. Union-busting is a priority strategy of state and local governments, both Republican- and Democratic -led, across the country. The Renegades are arguing that the small minority of working people who are still unionized must unite with those who are not, in order to beat back a fundamental attack on the right of people to organize themselves. A bitter defeat is possible: the unions who still hold sway with public employees desperately need allies.

Here are two of the leaflets distributed by the Renegades to the locked-out Con Ed workers in preparation for organizing a workers and community meeting to plan a course of action.

THE MOST POWERFUL WORKERS IN NEW YORK CITY

Con Ed, MTA and healthcare workers are the most powerful workers in the entire city. But they have been defeated by the bosses and politicians in every major labor fight in the last decade. Unless things change quick, more defeats are coming.

The bosses win because they pit the poor and working class public against the workers when the workers resist. In this right over the Con Ed contract, many everyday people see the wages of Con Ed workers as the cause of their high utilities bill, instead of a small taste of what all working class people could win if they stick together. Others consider the lockout a private matter to be handled between Con Ed and its workforce, instead of an issue that affects all New Yorkers. This is a trap set by the bosses and politicians, and it has worked all too well.

The only way to escape this trap is for workers to lead the whole of New York City in a struggle for a better life, including people outside their own workplaces and unions. If MTA workers called a fare strike with free transit for everyone in the city, all poor and working people would immediately support it. If Con Ed workers called for a strike to end stop and frisk and make utilities free, every young person of color in the city would have their back.

If workers provided this kind of leadership, all the crap about young people smoking weed and acting like delinquents would disappear. Young people would show up at picket lines and throw eggs at managers. They would fight the police tooth and nail if scabs were brought in. Instead of beefing with each other and hurting the community, poor and working class youth would direct their anger at the bosses, politicians and police who oppress us all. One million students are on summer vacation right now, with no work and few social programs, waiting to take up this fight.

Will Con Ed workers provide this leadership for New York City? It will require leaving isolated pickets outside Con Ed yards, and doing public actions at drop-in centers and other busy locations across the city. It will require explaining to millions of everyday people what the Con Ed workers are fighting for, and discussing how to fight together against the bosses in the common interest. It will require finding new ways to fight, and taking initiative without waiting for direction from the union leadership.

If free utilities, healthcare, and transport become part of workers' demands, the working class of New York City will unite, and become unstoppable. Then workers will be able to win not only a contract, but a hell of a lot more.


And here's a second, follow-up flyer:

THE MOST POWERFUL WORKERS IN NEW YORK CITY, PART 2

Management is preparing for a long battle with Con Ed workers, and is willing to risk the deaths of New Yorkers and its own management to win. An opponent like this can't be defeated with kid gloves. Con Ed workers need to take their gloves off and beat management to a pulp. But how?

Praying for a blackout to bring Con Ed to its knees is hardly a winning strategy. It's more like the hail mary of people who don't have a plan to win by their own initiative. Rallies are often just glorified pep rallies, and do little to win over the public. The rally on July 5th was like the festivals put on during Roman times. Orgies and spectacles were the order of the day while the rest of the society was collapsing. Right now we have millions in prison, many more in failing schools, and even more with no jobs and no hope of finding them — many Black and Latino. These same people are being told in the Daily News that stubborn workers are the cause of their problems.

There is a lot of big talk about the power of the union. But a lockout tells another story, that management was preparing this for months, getting ready to sucker punch the workers. Where were the union leaders when this was happening? Sitting around, reassuring workers that they were powerful, while sipping margaritas with [NYC mayor] Bloomberg and the ruling class of this city. That's not a winning strategy.

Con Ed workers have a choice: either build a citywide counterattack against the bosses, or submit to a drawn-out, exhausting negotiation process that will probably end in an ass whooping. Tough talk is not enough.

A growing crew of young people is ready, willing and able to join with Con Ed workers. We want to strategize and try out new ways to bring the workers' struggle to millions of everyday New Yorkers. We want to uppercut [Con Ed CEO] Kevin Burke and knock his ass out. Together we can make it happen.


Here's an excerpt from a third flyer calling for a community meeting:

WORKERS AND COMMUNITY MEETING

We believe only the rank and file of Local 1-2 can win against Con Ed and lead NYC. The ranks have power, but they have not used it so far. There are only two endings to this struggle: defeat or victory. The next 10 days will determine the next tens years of your life. Won't you wish you gave everything you had to fight against Con Ed?

The point of this meeting is not to tell each other Burke is a jerk, Con Ed is making lots of money, and the unions are under attack. All of us know these things. The purpose of this meeting is so Con Ed Workers, along with community members, can discuss how we can win against Con Ed. We must think, plan, and execute a strategy to defeat Con Ed. We do not have even a second to lose. Management is working its ass off to defeat you. How hard are you willing to think and work to win?

[...] Should we occupy Con Ed HQ, should we march through the streets of Manhattan shutting them down or occupy Brooklyn Bridge? Should we ask the people of NYC to not pay their bills while workers are locked out?... Bring your ideas to the table!

Police Terrorists Raid Leftist Organizers in Seattle

Apartment in Seattle ransacked by SWAT team looking for "anarchist materials"

An apartment used by organizers for Occupy Seattle and the Kasama-affiliated Red Spark Collective was raided early this morning by a SWAT team who broke down the door and used flash grenades to force their way in. Though they arrested nobody, the police terrorists cuffed the residents while they tore the apartment apart, looking for "anarchist materials" and a black hoodie allegedly connected to this year's militant May Day marches in Seattle.

The apartment has been a hub for organizing an upcoming cultural and political festival called "Everything 4 Everyone."

Here's the official Occupy Seattle press statement:

"Early morning, June 10, SWAT police forced their way into the Seattle apartment of several organizers from the Occupy movement. The sleeping individuals, two residents and two visitors, scrambled to put on clothes as they were confronted by officers holding drawn tactical rifles.
The neighbor, Natalio Perez heard the attack from downstairs: “Suddenly we heard a loud crash which was, I guess, them breaking down the door, and then right after I heard what must have been the flash bang grenade and a lot of yelling over a loudspeaker. I heard them go up the stairs and then there was just a lot of crashing and stomping as they tore the place apart.”
After the raid, the residents examined the papers handed them by a detective. One explained: “This warrant notes that they were specifically looking for ‘anarchist materials’—this says to me that it’s an explicitly political thing. That we are not being raided for connection to any crime, but to some political ideology that the police think we have. I was just doing research on the old Pinkerton strikebreaking paramilitaries, so it’s kind of funny, you know, to have that old red scare history burst through my front door at six AM.”
This action targets well known activists from Occupy Seattle who have recently been involved with anti-police brutality organizing, actions against the juvenile detention center and the weekly Food for Everyone free barbecue in the Central District.
“They took basic stuff,” another resident said. “A zip-up sweater, one glove, a blue beanie, a pink scarf. They took a few flyers we had, one from a book release party for a book on Occupy.
This is stuff that would be in the house of any activist or even people who just come to events now and then.”

For ongoing details of this blatant attack on the right of the people to organize, check out updates on Kasama including this account of details. For information on Everything for Everyone, including a link to make donations, click here.