Rotating Skull @rotatingskull@mastodon.social

Banners from the West County Detention Center demonstration in Richmond CA #AbolishICE #FightFascism

So, leftists and marginalized folk in Portland have to watch their back right now.

The next fed or cop crackdown is around the corner, and the next MAX train murderer is out there too: https://www.alternet.org/right-wing/god-will-wipe-them-out-white-supremacist-preacher-promises-bloodshed-future-rallies

Several days ago, former congressman Trey Radel condemned the restaurant that threw Sarah Sanders out and demanded we make friends with people from the other side.

Why would we make friends with these people?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/06/25/theyre-lucky-we-arent-executing-them-national-guardsman-face-punishment-for-facebook-post-on-migrants/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f1541f370faa

Folks who want the state to massacre immigrants don't deserve friendship. They deserve a hell of a lot worse.

@cypnk

I love this thread, and the fact that makeup so absurdist works to defeat surveillance.

The irony of course is I only wear a nose when I perform.

Clown makeup traditionally was used to heighten existing features. One of the reasons the juggalo makeup is so unsettling is that it intentionally obscures or rewrites them. Interesting to see how deeply the effect works.

@TheGibson

https://mastodon.art/media/avsFNcRr5jtOXJsXh8A

One account of the "fun" brought to my fair city yet again yesterday by fascists. Don't read w/o your mental armor buckled on:

https://crimethinc.com/2018/07/01/portland-holds-it-down-against-fascists-and-police-the-clashes-of-june-30-2018

@rotatingskull @SuzanEraslan I once had a conversation with a govvie inside the DC Beltway back in '06 about that. He said that they took it as a sign that were actually doing the right thing - if the little people were angry, it was working.

Is there anyone who was a witness to this Proud Boy/Police attack on protesters who would let me interview them for my channel?

https://twitter.com/shane_burley1/status/1013247053797867521

Britpol, but actually USpol could do with some of this.

@SuzanEraslan comparing your experience (and those of others) with the palpable blind terror in cops’ faces as thousands of people descended on Chicago’s airport (which is NOT a convenient trip for anyone) in a spontaneous travel ban protest and literally shut down the terminal is illuminating

the power of a protest is how quickly it can turn into a riot, and they drained it of power before the event started

@rotatingskull About 15 of us were separated from a large group and standing on a median between 125th St. and the entrance to the bridge. 34 (I counted!) cops, who had stood with their batons out across from us, slapping them in their hands, refusing to answer our questions about what they expected us to do, bum rushed us, nearly breaking my leg as we were forced over a low brick wall.

@rotatingskull A guy threw his water bottle in the air in a moment of just pure, instinctual panic, and two cops grabbed him while another hit him with a baton. It was the most terrifying thing I’d ever seen first hand, and that was when I realized, forever, that these people are not our friends, and they are not here to protect us during marches. They’re there to contain us.

The best days, the days where it felt like people had to listen, were when we took the highways, when we shut down 5th Ave., when we blocked the bridges and tunnels.

They were also the days when I was most scared, when I experienced first hand that cops are NOT your friends and will intimidate, physically threaten, and rush you en masse to then arrest you for running from a weapon wielding threat of violence.

And people were PISSED. Even rich liberals were up in arms yelling about how they couldn’t get across town (boo hoo). The marches weren’t there to put pictures on social media— they were there to disrupt people’s daily experience. The problem was that they kept to the same routes, to the point where it became expected. We let the cops guide us too much by the later days and the tactic lost effectiveness. It got cold.

I went to the first Women’s March in NYC, and all I could think was how ludicrous it was that we had a pre-assigned path with street closures announced in advance, and yesterday’s march was no different. I kept comparing it to when we marched, organically, after the Mike Brown murder verdict, after the Eric Garner murder verdict. We took over streets. We shut down parts of Manhattan, tunnels and roads in and out of the city.