“Next Tuesday, McDonald’s workers at restaurants in 10 cities will walk off the job at lunch, waging the first-ever nationwide strike to combat sexual harassment.”
If you’re new to actions with an arrest risk and you don’t have experienced protestors with you, there’s stuff you can find online about having a legal team, writing the name of a lawyer on your body, saying NOTHING to the cops except the name of your lawyer, etc. That’s all good advice.
But let me give you a bit of advice that is just as essential as all that:
If one of your comrades gets arrested, and you know they can be held for 6, 9, 12 hours, depending on where you are, you get a group of people together and you wait outside the police station.
You may be tired, you may be stressed, it may be freezing, you may need to take turns, but you take whoever can still physically and mentally bear it and you go to that police station and you wait for your comrade. You can spend the time taking care of each other, drinking hot drinks, doing whatever gets you through, but you wait.
And when your comrade gets out, you make sure they do not walk home alone in the dark thinking about the fucked up experience they just had, you make sure there’s a big fucking crowd of their comrades there to greet them with hugs and hot drinks and a cigarette if they smoke.
And whether the arrested comrade that just got out is happy or sad or pissed off, you take that for what it is and give that space and you support that. And you get them a hot meal and you hang out with them and you offer to let them stay at your place or you stay with them so they don’t have to spend that night alone with their thoughts.
You do this every damn time, regardless of whether you really like that comrade and regardless of how you feel about the thing your comrade got arrested for, regardless of how often they’ve been arrested. Because you never know how shitty their experience is going to be in there this time.
Trust me. This is absolutely essential. Once you’ve been arrested and have felt the difference between walking home alone or having your friends waiting for you, you’ll understand.
Be good comrades
I can’t stress how important this is. When my father and I were arrested in Seattle some years back for agitating for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, we were greeted outside the jail by the event’s organisers. They cheered us, had cokes and munchies for us. They drove us to our car and, during the drive, asked if we wanted to stay the night in Seattle with one of the organisers, they filled us in on what had happened after our arrests, they asked about and listened intently to what we experienced from arrest to release. They did so much so well that when another call went out for potential arrestees, we were amongst the first to raise our proverbial hands.
Read the post. Re-read the post. Remember it. And, when the chance comes, do it.
When I was arrested at a Black Lives Matter protest a few years ago, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice were doing Jail Support when I was finally let out of One Police Plaza at around 6am.
They had gotten a klezmer band to stand along the hill you have to go up to leave the jail, and as I walked to where the volunteer lawyers were waiting (they were there to make sure all 200+ people who were arrested that night would be represented at their later hearings. They also were surrounded by volunteers who had food, phone chargers, directions to all the nearby subway stops, and one of them let me borrow her phone to call my mom when I got frustrated with how slowly my phone was charging) the band played music, cheered and applauded.
Honestly? That band playing klezmer for me as I left jail, cheering me on and making me laugh… it’s a memory I really treasure.
It’s also one of my mother’s favorite stories. Before I told her about that band, she got so upset and agitated whenever anything reminded her of my arrest. She’d freak out, cry, start fussing over me, and so forth. After I told her about the klezmer band though? It became something she’d tell her friends about, over and over again, laughing each time. She stopped calling me to beg me not to go and protest every time she knew a big one was happening, and instead would call to make a joke about how if I want to listen to klezmer she has some CDs I can borrow.
When I think about that night, rather than any of the many many terrible things that happened from the moment the cops grabbed me onward, the first thing I remember is the klezmer, and how it made me laugh, and the popcorn someone gave me as I gave the lawyers my name and info, and the kindness of strangers.
After the dehumanization of even a few hours in police custody, those volunteers made me smile, and gave the night a new fun and funny angle to be remembered from. I actually laugh when I think about that night, thanks to them.
Jail Support is a beyond vital part of protesting. It really really is.
Remember, during the resistance
every
little bit counts, especially if you for some reason can’t be part of the front row action.
John Henrik Clarke Cheikh Anta Diop Stokely Carmichael aka Kwame Ture Ashra Kwesi Dr. Chancellor Williams Ivan Van Sertima Dr. Ben Jochannan Dr. Amos Wilson Mumia Abu Jamal
Mark Zuckerberg lost $119 Billion dollars on the stock market today (7/26/18). This is the largest loss of wealth in a single day in modern stock history.
This will literally not change his lifestyle or effect his livelihood at all. He is still a multi-billionaire.
If I worked every single day, for the rest of my life, at $15/hr - which is more than twice the national minimum wage - I would never make even 1/1000th the amount of just the money that Zuckerberg lost today.
If I worked every single day, for the entirety of the time that anatomically modern humans have existed (200,000 years) - at $15/hr - I would still not make one tenth of the amount of just the money he lost today.
And he is still a billionaire and will lose literally zero luxury or well-being from what happened today.
You want to know how absolutely grotesque modern wealth inequality is?
People who argue that wage labor is “good motivation” probably don’t have to worry about where their next meal is coming from. Wage labor leaves people burnt-out and stressed. Doing tedious work to make someone else rich while you yourself can’t make ends meet is dehumanizing and infuriating, not “motivating”. The rich only value the working class to the extent that they are productive automatons, cogs in the machine who will do their commanded duties for scraps; and most people have no choice but to work beneath the rich in situations like this. Pampered right-wingers will probably never understand this core truth of capitalism, and if they do it’s because they’re the very bosses grinding the workers into the dirt, parasitically getting rich through the sweat and blood of the oppressed.
she’s amazing. she’s hilarious. she’s a woman in STEM, kicking ass.
she just found out she has a brain tumor.
the doctors are pretty sure it’s benign, but it’s big, and she’s gonna have to have pretty major surgery which is gonna keep her from making videos for a while.
while she’s recovering, her patreon is pretty much gonna be her only source of income, so if you enjoy the gifs of her videos, or just want to support a pretty awesome chick who needs some help, you might want to kick a few dollars over that way.
(i’m not associated with simone in any way, i don’t know her - other than the fact that she favorited one of my tweets once! - but i absolutely adore her personality and her work and i haven’t seen any posts about this, so i figured i’d put something up.)
