more information:
Media Round Up and Solidarity Actions
1
Pacific Northwest Grand Jury Resistance is posting about continued solidarity actions in support of those people resisting the grand jury.
Here is a list of media stories about the grand jury in Seattle from the last week or so. Click on the news outlet to be taken to the story:
The Portland Mercury: Fear of a Black Bloc Planet, Blogtown 8/01, Blogtown 8/03
The Stranger: Political Convictions, Slog 8/02
Seattle Times
The Oregonian
OPB
Associated Press
Portland Occupier
Willamette Week
KPTV
KGW
The Stranger: Political Convictions, Slog 8/02
Seattle Times
The Oregonian
OPB
Associated Press
Portland Occupier
Willamette Week
KPTV
KGW
Come out to Seattle on August 30th to stand in solidarity with those resisting the grand jury. If you can’t make it to Seattle, have a solidarity action in your own city or town. Email us and let us know if you are holding one.
LINK
AFFECT is a grouping of radicals based in New York City. We wish to add our voice to those denouncing the recent terroristic raids carried out on comrades’ homes in the Pacific Northwest, as well as the related federal grand jury, obviously intended to intimidate.
Battering rams, flash grenades, helicopters, search warrants, wrong houses . . . it shouldn’t surprise us that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Joint Terrorism Task Force have taken an interest in our comrades in the Pacific Northwest, but that their investigations are apparently most interested in our clothes and books seems a little disproportionate to such a show of force.
That our philosophical curiosities, potential politics, supposed ideologies might themselves be seen as some crime, means that more than ever, we should acknowledge that our movements towards liberation are real. We shouldn’t let the state take us more seriously than we take ourselves.
The illusions and pretensions of liberal democracy are rapidly dissolving in the heat of this clash of classes. Our abilities to express ourselves, form opinions, associate with others, to simply have friends – those basic “rights” we’re supposed to feel grateful for – are under constant attack. Prisons are overflowing with young Blacks, Latinos, and the poor, with the revolts inside multiplying. So-called “immigrants” who dare to ignore spurious divides imposed by the state are being imprisoned and deported by the millions. Muslims, as well as political dissenters, are finding themselves spied on, harassed, and locked in cages, too.
The United State government is increasingly centered on something it calls “Homeland Security,” seemingly oblivious to the various nightmares conjured up by this term, disasters that prided themselves on creating a “secure” – sealed and pure – “homeland.” Is it any surprise that anarchists, those who consider themselves to be without a homeland – or at least, without a state – should be targeted by the vast, cancerous police apparatus dedicated to “homeland security”? That this apparatus would attack those who understand that their real enemies – those who would control their lives – are not overseas, but at the summits of power in this country? More and more, the US finds itself in the clutches of a prison-security-industrial complex.
The US has long harassed, intimidated, imprisoned, and deported those it has seen as a threat to its interests. And its interests are now to defend a system that has brought a level of economic and social inequality unseen for generations. The state’s only response to our resistance against austerity and crisis is repression and brutality, all opportunities for economic re-integration having been exhausted.
We’d like to think that this attempt at intimidation will fail; that every act of state repression only increases our resolve. But for this to be real, our friends, spaces, projects, networks, groups, collectives, assemblies, will need to create even stronger shows of resistance and refusal; to activate and mobilize even more, or else we will continue to suffer such abuses. This should extend beyond signing statements, writing texts, sending messages to one another, dropping banners, spray-painting slogans, keying a cop car, etc. We will do all this and more, but let’s also commit ourselves to organizing against these conditions we’re in. This commitment is the only solidarity worth having. True solidarity means rejecting compromises with the system and immersing ourselves ever deeper in the struggles of our comrades and all the oppressed.
We are committed to supporting our comrades, those engaged in struggle against this world. Our love and solidarity goes out to those who find themselves on the front lines in Olympia, Portland, and Seattle.
Thanks and Continued Solidarity
Thanks to everyone who showed their support this week. Over 200 organizations have signed on to the solidarity statement. Hundreds of people flooded US attorney Jenny A Durkan office with phone calls demanding the end to the grand jury and witch hunt of anarchists. Actions took place in Seattle and across the US in solidarity with Leah and Dennison as they resisted the grand jury. As of Thursday, the grand jury date for people subpoenaed in Portland and Olympia has been pushed back to August 30th. We will be planning more actions in the coming weeks to support those resisting the grand jury. Please check the website to keep up to date.
Until that time, there are still several ways people can show support:
1) If you are in the Portland area, please come support PAX at their court hearing THIS MONDAY, August 6th. The hearing is at 1:30 PM at the Multnomah County Courthouse on the 7th floor. For more information on their case, visit Free pax .
2) Donate money to support the legal costs and provide material support for those resisting the grand jury and the investigation. Click on the donate tab at the top of the page.
3) If you can’t come to Seattle on August 30th, plan a solidarity action in your own community. Email us and let us know if you are planning something.
Thanks again for all your love, care, and support you have shown in the last weeks.
