Anonymous submission to Unsalted Counter Info.
JUSTICE FOR TORT, WE STAND IN SOLIDARITY, 1312
Michigan State Police Sign Tagged in Solidarity with Stop Cop City
Author: unsalted
the world IS on fire
Anonymous submission to Unsalted Counter Info, received mid-April, 2023.
last friday [April 14th], five fire alarms were pulled at university of michigan buildings simultaneously. the buildings were those with the most students in class, and the action was done in solidarity with the striking graduate students. trans people are being attacked from all sides and it is time that someone raised the alarm. love to every graduate student putting their job on the line for a better world, every u of m member who does not cross a picket line to side with the abusers, and to every queer and trans person who refuses to assimilate. rage at human resources, at scabs, and biggots.
xoxo
How “Black Visions Collective” & “Reclaim the Block” Support Slaver Colonialism
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Posted on “∞ Genders 4 Black Communisms” medium.com on February 11, 2022 – Link
In June 2020 — just after the peak of the uprising that took place in response to the killing of George Floyd — a group of Black activists in Minneapolis wrote an open letter demanding transparency from the two “nonprofits” named in the title of this post, BLVC & RTB. They had received over $30 million from white liberals & celebrities without explaining what exactly they were doing with it. The calls for financial disclosure were brushed off, & today these organizations continue to play the repressive, colonizing role all similar organizations are meant to play. However, some details did emerge about their more regular funders:
One thing not mentioned here, but consistent with some of the points raised in the letter: in FY 2018, BLM-Minneapolis and Black Visions Collective both received funding from Headwaters Foundation… under the same address https://t.co/itQwIGYkNY pic.twitter.com/DxwA2dR5bk
— bak (@measure7x) June 16, 2020
The address in question is a house which appears to be owned by Alondra Espejel Cano, the democrat who was city councilor for that area (Ward 9) from 2014-2021.Another even bigger funder was the McKnight Foundation:
You could go on making connections like this (& internet searching reveals others already have), but the point to be made here is ultimately political: these organizations function as tools of white liberalism, the “progressive”, reformist wing of a worldwide system that works to keep Black people & others overwhelmingly, brutally, violently oppressed.
One way this manifests is in the organizing tactics of these groups & the people in their orbit, which feature attempts to use the institutional channels of the slaver-colonial local government to enact piecemeal reforms — submitting complaints, lobbying for or against specific policies or politicians, & other typical abolitionist fare. If there is any innovation here, it’s in the fact that many of these liberals are deceiving others about their politics by showing support for protests & marches which include property destruction & attacks on police. By refusing to condemn such actions & even supporting them, they’re effectively engaging in “reform by riot”, using the much more militant actions of people generally more oppressed than them to try & push through their milquetoast bullshit.
This adds up to an organizing strategy which effectively says: “it’s okay to break the rules to change the rules!” This strategy does not challenge the fundamental legitimacy of the system, no matter how much its practitioners claim (or even genuinely believe) they are doing so. Outside of the specific reform-by-riot campaigns, there are some social patterns within these activist scenes which reveal this truth (and these patterns can be observed across much of the so-called “left” in the u.s., not just minneapolis):
- proclamations of socialist, communist, anarchist, & other radical politics that don’t stop the people claiming them from voting for the democratic party, which is fundamentally opposed to these things
- a general refusal to seriously consider the path of revolutionary armed struggle beyond occasionally acknowledging people who fought far away/a long time ago
- the omnipresence of careerism— activists getting jobs, degrees, & similar life opportunities from public “anti-oppression” organizing while conditions remain unchanged for the overwhelming majority of the oppressed
- systematic apathy & ignorance towards more or less the entire non-u.s. world, with exceptions mostly determined by mass media news cycles
What is important to understand here is that the anti-Black politics of the NPIC have the effect of stifling militancy in activist scenes generally, not just among people directly affiliated with specific nonprofits. Because of their resources — again, handouts from white liberals — Reclaim the Block & Black Visions Collective act as a center of gravity around which many others must operate (unless they break with the established left entirely, which so far isn’t happening). Social capital orients itself with the financial capital of these organizations; this can be seen online where a small, ~multiracial~ crew of abolitionists with thousands of followers all support each other & these counterinsurgency efforts simultaneously. Look at the people who appear frequently on the Twitter timelines of RTB, BLVC, MNUPRISING, MPD150, & other organizations to get a sense of this scene both locally & nationally.
We can now return to the tweet included at the beginning of this post. What kind of politics would frame the governor of a stolen u.s. state built on genocide— one which, like other u.s. states, repeatedly called out the army to put-down uprisings against anti-Black violence — as somehow “betraying” social movements? In what world is joe fucking biden stepping in to decide a question of resource extraction on indigenous land a positive development? Hopefully, you now have some idea.
michigan’s national guard and the repression of the 2020 uprising
Anonymous submission to Unsalted Counter Info
in most nation-states around the world, the military spends as much time repressing uprisings against colonial capitalism as it does fighting “foreign” enemies. the united states is no exception, as this brief look at a national counterinsurgency campaign in one section of u.s.-occupied ᐊᓂᔑᓈᐯᐗᑭ (anishinaabewaki) will show.
as the may-june 2020 uprisings against the police took place, the michigan national guard supported a curfew in grand rapids by maintaining vehicle barricades, boarding up stores, and otherwise giving operational support to city and state police, who beat protesters, shot tear gas, and made arrests. the troops were summoned by the mayor.
they did much the same in kalamazoo, where the mayor also requested national guard reinforcements after declaring a curfew—threatening jail for noncompliance—as his police force tear-gassed demonstrators at point-blank range. in lansing, national guard troops were deployed to similar ends.
many people infected by the u.s. left’s racial, colonial, gendered, and [dis]ableist biases act as if national military forces are different from—specifically, not as bad as—police. this bias is especially easy for u.s. citizens to maintain, since the overwhelming majority of victims of “the troops” suffer and die outside the physical and conceptual borders of the country. but as demonstrated above, elites in the imperial core who believe their positions are seriously threatened call on those same troops when the cops aren’t enough. and on more than one occasion, the army national guard have proven themselves able to take part in lethal repression “at home” when ordered.
this has been written in solidarity with efforts to stop camp grayling.
University of Michigan Career Fair Disrupted Over Military Recruiters
Anonymous submission to Unsalted Counter Info.
On Wednesday February 9, 2023, the University of Michigan welcomed a variety of military and government recruiters into its Career Fair in Ann Arbor. The U.S. Navy, the National Security Agency, and other militaristic organizations, were provided stands to promote US imperialism and occupation– and to recruit many young students to their ranks.
In protest, a series of disruptions against these recruiters took place throughout the day. Multiple people pushed passed the registration desk carrying banners that said “Stop Camp Grayling” and chanting “No prisons, no borders, fuck your law and order”, emphasizing the Army’s plan to expand an already massive and environmentally-damaging National Guard training facility in Grayling, Michigan. The actions converged in a rally outside of the career fair, where protesters chanted “Stop Cop City” and “Fascist, racist all the way, US army, go away!” and passed out flyers to incoming students to warn them against working for the US war machine.
Another group sprayed red food coloring on the NSA and U.S. Navy displays, and were then detained for several hours while the U of M police refused to give information about their whereabouts or status to concerned friends and supporters. They were eventually released, but this just demonstrates how the University of Michigan continues to support the military industrial complex by unlawfully holding detainees for extended time and refusing to provide information on them to outsiders.
We will not stand by while the University of Michigan continues to support and help recruit people into the US military-industrial complex. We will not stand by while the state expands its capacity to brutally repress our communities by expanding Camp Grayling in Michigan and building Cop City in Atlanta.
2, 4, 6, 8, FUCK THE POLICE STATE
tortuguita mourned in ann arbor- cars painted and tires slashed
Anonymous submission to Unsalted Counter Info.
last saturday, a crowd of 100 people gathered in front of the merrill lynch office building to share memories, tears, and vengence for tortuguita. the crowd was a militant throng, mostly in black from head to toe. the march took state street and then paraded behind a porsche dealership, which funds the atlanta police foundation. the crowd riotously engaged in expressions of grief, including spray painting fancy cars and slashing the tires of 40+ cars waiting to be sold. signs were left behind at porsche and merrill lynch stating “cop city will never be built” and “you fund police murder”. no arrests were made.
people discussed the cop city project, and how direct action can locally be taken to stop it. stopreevesyoung.com was discussed as a resource listing the companies (and the people who run them) who profit off of the murder of tortuguita. stopapf.noblogs.org lists the companies who fund this murder and desire to fund more police killings of us and our loved ones.
we love you tort, and we will never stop fighting for the world you believe in.
Atlas Offices Redecorated
Anonymous submission to Unsalted Counter Info.
From so-called Novi, MI:
On the Night of Rage (January 20) the Detroit MI Atlas offices were artfully decorated with acid-etching paint. Hope you had fun discovering that your windows are totally fucked, you shitheads. Atlas, until you stop supporting Cop City, there will be no safe corner for you on Turtle Island.
We did this in Tortuguita’s name. We love you, friend, and will never stop fighting. Love and rage to all those fighting in Atlanta.
-Your friends up north
Community Defends Drag Story Time in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario
Anonymous submission to Unsalted Counter Info.
Community members in Sault Ste. Marie mobilized after an apparently small but far-right “Unity Centre” group publicized plans to protest a Drag Queen Story Hour event. The group’s founder, Steve Hunter, published the media release that repeated fearmongering over the existence of queer people, citing other far-right groups such as “500 Mom Strong” and “Action4Canada”, and declaring their intent to protest.
They were met by a much larger crowd of Drag Queen Story Time supporters who protested in front of the library, denying that space to the far right. Police would later separate the groups, having the smaller crowd of far-right protestors stand across the street. The event itself had no reported disruptions or other issues.
These attacks against the LGBTQI+ community are widespread, but so is their unpopularity. In most cases, the bigots are outnumbered by local supporters and the events continue without issue. As our societies have become more accepting of certain aspects of people who don’t conform to hetero-patriarchal standards, conservatives in general sense a threat to the dominance of their beliefs, and desperately lash out to undo these changes. Thankfully they don’t seem to have as much grassroots support as they imagine, but a continued strong rejection of their bigotry will be necessary. We keep us safe!
Local mainstream coverage can be found here:
https://www.sootoday.com/local-news/video-drag-story-time-brings-pride-and-protesters-6379349
https://www.sootoday.com/local-news/war-of-words-rages-on-as-drag-story-time-protest-looms-6358555
Jane’s Revenge Publishes Open Letter to Jeanne Vanegmond
Submission to Unsalted Counter Info claimed by Jane’s Revenge.
Dear Jeanne Vanegmond,
Your Pro-Birth And Anti-Choice Work At Pregnancy Aid In Eastpointe, Mi Has Not Gone Unnoticed. No Doubt You Know This, As We Left Messages For You There And At 1469 Yorktown St In Grosse Pointe Woods, Your Home. The “Pro-Life” Movement Has Cost Thousands Of People Their Lives And Trapped Even More In Desperate Circumstances They Didn’t Choose. Each Fake Clinic That Still Peddles Their Dangerous And Dehumanizing Lies Is A Threat To The Lives And Freedom Of Pregnant People. Vulnerable Pregnant People Who Need Help Deserve Access To All Of Their Options, They Don’t Deserve To Be Lied To And Coerced Into Making The Choice That You Want For Them. So, As Long As Abortions Aren’t Safe, Neither Are You.
To Anyone Else Reading This: The Anti-Choice Movement Wants A World Where Women Don’t Own Their Own Bodies, Where Their Bodies Are Instead Owned By The State And The Church. But We Can Fight For A Freer World. The Members Of The Anti-Choice Movement Have Names; Their Homes And Businesses Have Addresses. Our Tactics May Not Be Popular With The Media, But That’s No Matter. This Isn’t A Popularity Contest, But A Fight For Our Lives, And A Little Can Go A Long Way.
Over 100 Trees Spiked in Opposition to Camp Grayling
Anonymous submission to Unsalted Counter Info.
Over the past 2 weeks more than 100 trees in and around the proposed camp grayling expansion area were spiked, namely forests managed by the grayling and gaylord department of natural resources. Spikes of various sizes were placed at various heights in red pine plantations (not necessarily marked for cut) and areas marked for cutting. To avoid worker injury we insist that all trees in Crawford, otsega, Roscommon, and kalkaska be thoroughly checked for spikes before cutting. We are very concerned about these worker’s safeties and wellbeings.
To ensure our claims are taken seriously, we have marked a stand of red pine in a dnr managed campground to demonstrate we are not bluffing. The bathroom is tagged and a few trees are tagged with a white s.
These trees were spiked as an opposition to camp grayling and the Michigan DNR. We will not sit idylly while the military industrial complex expands and the world and it’s people are destroyed by extraction.
We urge Michigan department of national resources to reject the proposal to expand camp grayling, to end cooperation with camp grayling, and to give landback.
Please, stop camp grayling and cop cities everywhere