From: "Nate Holdren" <nateholdren-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: recent riots
Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2003 13:47:04 -0500


Hi Peter-
We had a demonstration here in Chicago in November against the Transatlantic 
Business Dialogue, to which our city was the host. Leading up to the event 
the police and media went crazy, estimating turnouts of around 30,000 
people, training and mobilizing police and purchasing new equipment at a 
high level, and banning downtown parking. The day of the event we had about 
2,000 people show up (much more than any of the folks involved in putting 
together expected) and probably an approximately equal number of cops in 
riot gear. TV news said it was the largest police mobilization in our city's 
history. The rest of the weekend there were smaller events at various points 
and times, most of which also had a similar police over-reaction.
This is just speculation, but my sense of the first event (a fairly old 
fashioned rally-march-rally format, of the 'public display of our sentiment' 
variety, nothing particularly confrontational or disruptive) at the time was 
that the police were very much prepared for violence. The press and police 
spokespeople leading up to the event beat the drum for riot over and over, 
stating the 'violent history' of 'these protestors'. As the event planners 
(a loose coalition of pacifist, anarchist, trotskyist, and labor-left folks) 
had called for a nonviolent non-arrest/conflict situation (for whom the most 
vocal group was the anarchist contingent, interestingly enough) and that was 
how the event was publicized, we worked very hard not to give the police an 
excuse to beat us all up (which meant in part having to try and isolate or 
otherwise cope with undercover cops present who were trying to incite 
soemthing).

At the culminating rally the police initially were penning us all in and 
letting no one leave which was fairly tense for us for a while. My 
impression was that they had not yet decided whether to attack us or not, 
but that the big media presence and the lack of any excuse eventually made 
them decide in favor of public order.

Just some more thoughts and impressions.

best,
Nate



No more weekdays, they hanged Monday, shot Thursday, sliced up Friday! Every 
day is Sunday.

-Franca Rame and Dario Fo, "Waking Up"





>From: Peter Jovanovic <peterzoran-AT-hotmail.com>
>Reply-To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>Subject: AUT: recent riots
>Date: Mon, 03 Feb 2003 13:00:24 +1100
>
>hi all
>
>I've noticed that there has been an increasing number of mostly small, 
>mostly not explicitly political riots in at least some Anglophone 
>countries. For instance in Australia there was the brawl in the Sydney pub 
>I just mentioned as well as a small riot at Goulburn prison last April; a 
>riot in a small town in Queensland when a publican who allegedly murdered 
>an aboriginal youth he'd caught burgling his pub was seen back in town out 
>on bail; five out of seven of Australia's notorious immigration detention 
>centres burned around New Year and a few weeks ago riot police attacked 
>with battles and stones when they tried to break up a teenage party in 
>Perth that had gotten out of hand with gatecrashers. In Canada there were 
>riots in Vancouver last summer when the band Guns 'n' Roses failed to show 
>for a concert (see: 
>http://www.geocities.com/insurrectionary_anarchists/appetitefordestruction.html) 
>and at the annual fireworks competition (see: 
>http://www.geocities.com/insurrectionary_anarchists/fireworksclashes.html). 
>In the US there were Halloween riots in Madison Wisconsin and the small 
>town of Aurora, New York. The Aurora when was apparently partly inspired by 
>anarchoid leaflets distributed in the local high school saying Halloween 
>was the one time of the year that kids could fightback against the police 
>state. There was a riot largely provoked by police  in Oakland recently 
>after the Oakland Raiders lost the Superbowl with a cop apparently saying 
>to reproters it was practice for bigger riots. And in El Paso Texas last 
>week 1000 highschoolers fought the cops after they walked out of school in 
>protest at changes in the school timetable.
>
>Anyway it seems to me that increasing numbers of proletarians are prepared 
>to take on the cops, often around the use of public space and that 
>especially in North America the cops are afraid of any large gathering of 
>proletarians and try to break these gatherings up thus provoking a riot.
>
>Sorry for all the emails today.
>
>cheers
>peter
>
>
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