I believe in the exercise of our political rights without fear, intimidation, or threats of violence and riot, whether from the left or right, DFL or Republican.
I received the following document in English and Spanish, and it’s origin has been subsequently verified using two independent sources:
The RNC Welcoming Committee- a group of Twin Cities-based anarchists and anti-authoritarians formed to organize resistance to the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul- stands firmly with immigrant communities in opposing the recent wave of nativist repression led by the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) branch.
To those people impacted by the raids, to those people resisting this new wave of anti-immigrant activity: we would like to offer our bodies and our infrastructure in whatever way is most constructive. As community turnout on May 19th demonstrated, you are not alone. We are always ready and willing to support you in your struggle for justice; we maintain a politics of solidarity, and believe we have common ground with all targets of State and systemic repression.
To ICE and the Minneapolis Police Department: We want to make clear our opposition to the raids that occurred in South Minneapolis last weekend, to all raids, and to this system that denies certain people and their families their basic right to survival. We condemn the practices of both ICE and the MPD, recognizing that the raids weren’t a break with policy so much as a continuation of the long-standing law enforcement tradition of terrorizing communities, for the sake of maintaining an unjust social order. Our communities have always been terrorized by law enforcement, whatever their initials; this terror is furthered daily, on the streets, in our workplaces, even in our homes. We know that it will continue- tomorrow, next week, at the RNC in 2008, and into the future- as long as our communities are not able to sustain and defend themselves. Thus, we are committed to building alternatives that render law enforcement agencies obsolete, and in the meantime to resisting State terror however it manifests itself, by whatever means are available to us.
www.nornc.org
rnc08 (a) riseup.net
Note well their threat - or promise - to be “committed to building alternatives that render law enforcement agencies obsolete, and in the meantime to resisting State terror however it manifests itself, by whatever means are available to us”. The haunting spectre of the Black Bloc .
This arrived both in text and as a Microsoft Word document. Microsoft Word embeds information in the document that identifies the source of the document. On a Mac, if you choose File>Properties… the Summary tab appears and you retrieve the Author and the Company.
In this case, the Author is Luce Guillen-Givins and the Company is RCTA, which are the initials for the Resource Center for The Americas. Miss Guillen-Givins appears to be an employee of the Center.
I have questions for both Miss Guillen-Givins and the Resource Center for the Americas:
1. Is Miss Guillen-Givins authorized to use resources, licensed or owned by the Center, for the authorship of a document making an implied threat against Minneapolis and Federal law enforcement officers by “resisting State terror however it manifests itself, by whatever means available to us“?
2. What is the relationship between the RNC Welcoming Committee anarchists, Luce Guillen-Givens and the Resource Center for the Americas?
If Miss Guillen-Givins wishes to deny authorship of this document and provide an explanation, she is free to do so. The Resource Center for The Americas must advise the public of their relationship with Miss Guillen-Givins; if they endorse the activities of the RNCWC; if they gave permission for the use of their resources in the production of this document; whether public funds - directly or indirectly - were used to produce this document; and how this activity reconciles with their legal status as a non-profit organization under federal and state laws.
The RNCWC can be asked these same questions on Mondays at 7PM at the North Country Co-op, 1929 S 5th St. in Minneapolis; and Tuesdays at 7PM at either at Cahoots, 1563 Selby Ave. in St. Paul or A Fine Grind 2038 Marshall Ave. in St. Paul (their website has conflicting information).
Filed under: Immigration, Republican, anarchist, non-profit |
http://www.americas.org/item_647
The individual is listed on the minnesota/staff page above.
So I’d guess this paper represents the official position of the organization.
I live in Minneapolis, I find the attitude of some on these raids rather interesting. Back in 2001 there were the exact same type of raids around town, except, the people in question were Asian, not Latin. No outcry, no protests, infact people praised the FBI and police for freeing those women from sexual slavery.
So now that Latin women are freed from sexual slavery and the criminals who forced them into it are behind bars, we get protests instead? The only possible answer I can think of is that we have racist among the protestors who are pro Latin but not anyone else. Go to Miami and see how they treat the Haitians, you will find very few Latins who support allowing them to stay in the US, you will find a lot of racial intolerance towards the Haitians by the Latin community. The protest againsts the raids are more about race than anything else. If they were Haitians, I would be you money, there woudln’t be a single protester out there and this letter would never have been created.
you people are f*****g morons….do your research and learn what anarchists are and what anarchism is before you criticize out of ignorance. we are those working to save the planet and provide community that will be sustainable and healthy for our great grandchildren.
go ahead and try to find out who I am so you can ignorantly try to smear me too. i don’t consider being an anarchist anything to be ashamed of and don’t mind it being known.
you probably would’ve talked s**t about communists during the communist witchhunts of the 1950’s wouldn’t have you……and you probably wouldve believed the german government and turned in those nasty jews who were hiding if you had lived in ww2 germany, eh?
i will do what i need to to defend my family, loved ones, and the precious (and fragile) ecosystems that make their sustainable ways of life possible. i am very much not alone.
Editor’s note: This post was edited for obscenities.
When faced with a fact-based assertion, “shugE” hurls invective instead of posting a legitimate rebuttal. In recognition that she is trying to Save The Planet(tm), this blue-collar tradeunionist thanks her for her noble endeavors on our behalf.
I wasn’t around during the Communist witch hunts of the 1950’s. There were clearly excesses by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and lives and careers were destroyed. The right wing has been called to account for their misdeeds. At the same time, tens of millions of people were either murdered or imprisoned by various Communist and Socialist regimes during the 20th Century, one of the bloodiest on record. If an international tribunal won’t judge the Left for their misdeeds, certainly history will.
German Jews were lawful residents of Germany. With the passage of the Nuremberg Laws, they were placed out of the protection of the State. No such analogy can be drawn with respect to illegal immigrants in the United States. Your ignorant exploitation of the Holocaust for your own purposes is a disgrace.
haha, ohh watch out for the big bad anarchists! next you’ll find out about our world domination plan… haha.
you people are f*****g morons….do your research and learn what anarchists are and what anarchism is before you criticize out of ignorance. we are those working to save the planet and provide community that will be sustainable and healthy for our great grandchildren.
You mean like the way Leon Czolgosz changed the world for the better by assassinating President McKinley?
go ahead and try to find out who I am so you can ignorantly try to smear me too. i don’t consider being an anarchist anything to be ashamed of and don’t mind it being known.
I guess that’s why you signed your real name, then, Mr. shugE?
If you guys were as brave as you say you are, then you wouldn’t be covering yourselves in black masks the way the KKK used to cover themselves in white ones.
“From my point of view the killing of another, except in defense of human life, is archistic, authoritarian, and therefore, no Anarchist can commit such deeds. It is the very opposite of what Anarchism stands for…”
Joseph Labadie, Anarchism and Crime
shugE should inform himself of what Anarchy is really all about on here: http://www.simplyanarchy.com/
Being an Anarchist is, I agree, nothing to be ashamed of. If the term is properly understood and applied. The font of wisdom above is as ignorant of the philosophical foundations of Anarchy, as opposed to anarchy, as he is of rhetoric, manners or history. These would-be ninjas are the true practitioners of the fascistic tactics they claim to oppose. It is they who destroy what others create. But as others point out, they have neither the guts nor numbers nor skills to instigate the “Revolution” they claim is so necessary and perpetually ignorant. Oh, and on the “witch hunt” meme… there is no such thing as witches and never was. Commies? Oh yes. New Deal Commies? Oh yes. Murderous traitors in high places? Oh yes. And that is just a fact. Why a supposed Anarchist would be so solicitous of the greatest totalitarian menace of the modern age is… paradoxical.
I’m not going to get into this blogosphere “debate” about immigration raids, but I do have a couple comments to make.
That’s very clever of you all to point out that Luce wrote this from a computer at work. But see, for most of us it’s pretty clear who’s claiming ownership for this, considering “The RNC Welcoming Committee” are the first four words of the statement. I think I can clear up this confusion for you by noting that:
1. The Welcoming Committee has no computers of its own, so stands to reason that whoever writes statements for it has to use somebody else’s computer
2. It’s really a lot easier to type on a keyboard when you do it one person at a time. Like, if 50 people from the Welcoming Committee each pick a key (somebody gets ‘A’, somebody gets ‘@’, somebody gets , etc.), typing up a document like this would turn into a nightmare real quick.
Given the above limitations, generally what happens when a group writes a statement is that the group formulates the points they want to make, one person is tasked to write the statement, and the group approves, amends, or rejects it.
But of course you’re just interested in slandering individuals. Well I’m a friend of Miss Guillen-Givins. Agree with her not, she has strong convictions and has busting her ass for a better world as long as I’ve known her. She obviously is not hip to the blogosphere’s tricks for anonymizing your Microsoft Word Software, but in her defense I’d say she has more important work to do than read dumbass blogs all day.
In any event, Luce is worth the lot of you and doesn’t deserve any of your ridicule. Or maybe she’s flattered by it, hell, I don’t know.
This is not a “debate about immigration raids”. A group issued a statement making an implied threat against law enforcement officers. You may wish to rationalize all that you want, however, the question remains: whether, as a non-profit, the RCTA concurs with Miss Guillen-Givins, or gave her permission to use their resources. For the RCTA, it is a question of liability. For Miss Guillen-Givens, it is a question of issuing threats and using the software or resources of others to issue such threats.
The definition of slander is “making a false spoken statement damaging to a person’s reputation”. Because my post is in written form, you should have stated that I was “just interested in libelling individuals”. Libel is a “published false statement that is damaging to a person’s reputation; a written defamation.” I assert the statement by the RNCWC exists as objective fact, it can be reasonably deduced the origin of the document was from the RCTA, and that truth is an absolute defense to libel.
You state, Fellow Worker, that my sole purpose is in “slandering individuals”. You offer no objective proof that I have uttered a verbal falsehood about more than one person.
Anarchist was not allowed in democtratic country…
http://ngadutrafik2007.smandung.com
Editor’s note: abusive post deleted.