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Most folks radicalized online in these recent years have virtually no knowledge of what serious state repression looks like, and that lack of preparation scares me to my bones. So here's a thread about shit cops pull:
First off being abducted off the street by masked cops in unmarked vans? Totally a thing in the US. My friend Luce got pulled off her bike into an unmarked white van in Minneapolis in 2008 just before the RNC.
You've surely all read about the torture / off-the-books detainment blacksites the Chicago PD ran until recently? You can bet they still do this at other sites.
And activists in other cities have reported similar. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-police-detain-americans-black-site
And activists in other cities have reported similar. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-police-detain-americans-black-site
Brutal torture is not uncommon and was repeatedly used by cops against anarchists throughout the 90s and 00s. My friend Morgan had a plastic bag put over their head while being beaten in a painhold until they vomited and choked on that (Minneapolis).
Obviously cops regularly sexually assault activists and anarchists in particular, often this looks like grabbing breasts or doing a rectal search in front of laughing officers, etc, it can get a lot darker tho.
Older anarchist friends from the early counter-globalization era report being abducted with black hoods out to forest miles outside of town and forced into mock executions and then left without their stuff, forced to walk back into town.
House raids usually come down in the wee hours of the morning, almost always involve drawn assault rifles and flashbangs. One recurring favorite is hog-tying activists in their underwear or even naked on the front lawn and keeping them there for hours in the cold.
It should go without saying but obviously when cops raid family homes they are unrestrained in brutality towards small children. Pepperspraying them in front of bound parents, throwing them face first into the concrete, etc.
One particular trick the cops love pulling is breaking down a door with the SWAT team and then immediately threatening to arrest all the residents if they remain for living in an unsafe habitation that is not up to code (because the door is broken).
Cops are honestly pretty amazing at finding weird ways to abuse their supposed constraints. So like if they can only hold you without charges for two business days, they'll raid you friday night, and then when they release you wednesday promptly re-arrest you without charges.
Raids are primarily punitive so anything easily breakable in your house will be broken. But also expect every single piece of clothing and electronic device to be taken as "evidence" and held for years.
In this recent era the cops like to work hand-in-hand with fascist street gangs, typically they'll actively propagandize the arrest of leftists or anarchists and spread home information far and wide -- typically followed up by home attacks by fash. Broken windows, shot pets, etc.
Remember of course that police arrests are often wildly uncorrelated with any sort of criminal behavior. They will actually usually let you go after destroying your house, abducting and torturing you because they'll just decline to file charges (since there are none to file).
Of course the other direction is to file every single absurd thing they can even remotely think to throw at you to scare you. So like my friend Pax got charged with 72 felonies (every single vandalism of a bank over two years in three states)... they ended up with a misdemeanor.
Don't be surprised when police wildly and even publicly violate constitutional rights -- this is calculated. Police departments have giant pools of insurance money precisely to be free to eventually pay out in a few cases, years later.
For example, the FBI used a pipe bomb to try and murder IWW organizer Judi Bari in 1990. Folks won a couple lawsuits many years later but after her death. No real damage was done to the Oakland PD or the FBI for their roles minus some money, they *expect* this kind of result.
We can of course go back further to the MOVE bombing when the police dropped a bomb from a helicopter and destroyed an entire city block of residences to get one group. Or the various open assassinations of students/activists around that time.
It's important to note that these earlier extreme acts of slaughter of activists by police are still living memory -- not just survivors -- but the perpetrators. Chief Mark Kroeker back in 1970 marched in the LAPD tac squad beating/murdering activists chanting "kill kill kill"...
In the early 00s he was appointed chief of the Portland Police, then later trained the police and militaries of Israel and Liberia in repression, and still serves as a cop at the UN.
None of the cops responsible for past assassinations/tortures disappeared, they're still there.
None of the cops responsible for past assassinations/tortures disappeared, they're still there.
And the very few officers ever fired from one department for egregious crimes invariably were re-hired at a different department.
Every police atrocity since the 60s you think is distant past? The perpetrators are still wearing badges. They're RESPECTED for their acts.
Every police atrocity since the 60s you think is distant past? The perpetrators are still wearing badges. They're RESPECTED for their acts.
In Portland the police officer caught making a literal nazi shrine in a public park not only still holds his badge, he's in charge of the gang task force that largely avoids targeting the various white nationalist gangs that control most of East PDX. https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2014/07/portland_police_capt_mark_krug.html
Being an anarchist is a tough road. The toughness of this commitment is not so apparent to folks who've converted online. But some random selection of you WILL be targeted, probably just for shit like having a twitter. And you need to be mentally prepared for the slog.
They'll demolish your house and a dozen others because you all merely *attended* the same protest that a single window was broken at. (2012 PNW grand jury raids)
Fuck, they came for people who didn't even attend that protest, but made anarchist art or worked at an anarchist cafe.
You need to be prepared. I desperately want to howl this to every young anarchist alive.
You need to be prepared. I desperately want to howl this to every young anarchist alive.
You need to be prepared for:
1) being detained randomly for up to a week without charges (have a plan for contacting your boss, making rent, etc)
2) having everything in your house destroyed or stolen by the cops (have backups in the woods, at friends houses, etc)
...
1) being detained randomly for up to a week without charges (have a plan for contacting your boss, making rent, etc)
2) having everything in your house destroyed or stolen by the cops (have backups in the woods, at friends houses, etc)
...
3) psychologically prepared as much as you can for being tortured, denied medication, being sexually assaulted, mock executed, etc. no wave of police repression of anarchists happens without at least a few of those.
4) have memorized contact information and pre-worked out plans
4) have memorized contact information and pre-worked out plans
5) also fully encrypt everything a thousand ways, learn good behavior re that shit, yes it's a huge pain for years on end to have a 30 character passphrase for your full disc encrypted device you have to enter on every use, STILL FUCKING DO IT
6) Mentally prepare for some of your friends and lovers (no you're not magic at predicting) being revealed as undercovers. Remember to put partners of undercovers on suicide watch afterward.
7) Brush up on the absolute Non Compliance expected from you by the movement.
7) Brush up on the absolute Non Compliance expected from you by the movement.
8) Set in stone right fucking now what you will do when one of your friends snitches (and it should be cut them off forever). Because a milieu will split apart and go to war when the friends of a snitch push for "forgiveness".
After a fucking wave of repression is the worst time in the world to be suddenly deciding "what counts" as snitching or whether someone should be forgiven. Protip: It will do infinitely more damage to the movement try to defend a snitch.
Yes, people break under torture. A) The universal expectation of every political movement around the world is you need to last over 24 hours before you break under physical torture so that there's time to try to save your friends and family.
There's some reasonable allowances made for someone who folded under torture. But you NEED TO RELAY TO FOLKS WHAT YOU SAID & WHAT WAS ASKED A.S.A.P.
B) No, some threats to your family or life or career are not good enough excuse to snitch. Fucking just NO. It doesn't matter.
B) No, some threats to your family or life or career are not good enough excuse to snitch. Fucking just NO. It doesn't matter.
And yes, I know that they round up anarchists who have never done anything, but even those of us with perfectly clean hands who are only being asked questions like "is this person an anarchist?" (cf 2012 grand jury raids) have an obligation to be silent.
A small number of people always wanna go "restorative justice! mend the state's wound!" re snitches who crack. No. Just fucking no. Any attempted inclusion of them shatters the wider movement. They can make restitution ALONE, on individual projects, AWAY FROM EVERYONE.
Oh yeah, addendum: The cops will actively make absolute fabrications with astonishing chutzpah and double down in repeating them as conscious propagandists for the far right. The "concrete milkshakes" lie they pushed in PDX recently is just one in a long long of similar.
They had trainers come in and tell cops preparing for Seattle in 99 that anarchists had murdered police at prior protests in Eugene and Europe (totally made up). They always say "firebomb materials" because you have some glass bottles in the recycling.
For some unknown psychological reason all cops everywhere seem to have scatological obsessions, and always make up the same nonsense about anarchists throwing piss and shit (never happened). So greywater under the kitchen sink at a hippie house? Must be a stockpile of piss.
Oh yeah and since I didn't mention it explicitly: they'll parade any weapons like a locked up pistol as "an arsenal" and they'll seize all your books and present them to the media in the most outlandish way: "The Anarchist Case Against Terrorism" => "anarchist terrorist writings"
The media loves leaping on the twisted narratives the cops feed them, so like Crimethinc's cheeky "An Anarchist Cookbook" (guide to anodyne activist things like poster-making) gets presented as "The Anarchist Cookbook" without details so as to imply bomb making instructions.
Oh and another thing that I figured would be obvious: the moment FOXnews runs some fearmongering lie session about you -- taking all the cops lies and implying far further -- you're gonna get at least a week of death threats from idiot boomers around the country.
