NYE Noise Demonstration

Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 01/01/2012 - 2:05am

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Fifty people showed up outside the Atlanta City Detention Center on New Year’s Eve to welcome in the New Year with a noise demonstration. Participants blew whistles, beat drums, banged pots and pans together, and screamed at the tops of their voices as two police watched. (Sucks to be a cop on New Year’s…or ever.) Our passion for freedom is stronger than their prisons! First one, then two heads appeared at a cell window—and then more and more lights turned on as prisoners heard the noise. They banged their windows, waved, and flicked lights off and on as demonstrators shouted. Brick by brick/Wall by wall/Burn the prisons/Free them all! The demonstration continued for over half an hour. As voices began to give out, instruments were traded and new chants were picked up. Tear it down/Tear it down/Atlanta wants a free town! A spotlight was shone onto cell windows, both inciting more waving and bringing new faces to the windows. Revolt!/Escape/your prison cell/Revolt! A huge banner read END JAIL, hopefully large enough for the inmates to read.

As the demonstration began to die down, lights on the other side of the complex and two noisemakers ran over to be seen. A face was pressed against the glass—the person inside began to wave incessantly as the demonstrators jumped up and down in excitement. The prisoner shaped a heart with her hands and pointed to the window beside hers. That inmate, too, had begun to watch and wave. Soon, the rest of the demonstration, revived, came around the side of the building and many more lights turned on as prisoners began to watch.

The night ended happily in the streets, and hopefully a little happier on the inside of the prison walls, too. Fuck prison and the police who fill them!

Comments

Re: NYE Noise Demonstration

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 01/03/2012 - 11:13am

 I wish I could have been there!

This sounds way more fun than moving on New Years eve.

Hell yeah yall!

Re: NYE Noise Demonstration

Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 01/01/2012 - 10:09pm

This leaflet was distributed at the event:

 

Hated of the World -- Cops, Pigs, Murderers

The demand seems to come from all directions: "We need justice!" Tracing this demand to its sources, however, it becomes clear that it is the police begging us to work with their tools, that is to say, for them. The message of submission gains momentum from the laptops of the police - the media, to be sure, the mayor, GBI, and the well-to-do who stand much to gain in this police state.

 

They fall to their knees at every act of rebellion. In the face of hot anger, the hooded ones deftly gesture towards the open doors of the democratice system through which a better world is promised -- an uncreachable world that lies always on the other side of the daily grind of work, submission, and self-sacrifice. They don't care to admit that the only promise this system has ever kept is that anyone who does not submit to the grinder will be cast into a cage.

 

The lies they offer up to calm our rage have lost all weight. The coldness with which the cops carry out their duty is chilling - the seams of this society are beginning to fray. The deceivers busily bellow out a smokescreen thick enough to hide a war. But where there is smoke, flames can be found, and even in these times there burns and uncontrollable inferno.

 

The duty of every cop is social control. With each new tragedy, we are reminded of the conflict between those for whom this system offers nothing and those who would prefer to maintain social peace no matter the cost. The police are those who would maintain the quiet no matter what - some wear badges and some do not.

 

The police and their courts operate best in the field of abstraction. "Justice" and "accountability" - the watchwords of every cover up. What do thse phrases mean for those of us whom the state serves no legitimate purpose but to kill and torture? These words stink of inaction - we see it over and over again. What they stand in place of is the one thing we can truly feel, the only thing we can take at the present moment: vengeance. The word we are taught to avoid remains the only thing left that remains completely in our control.

 

They are afraid because they know that they are hated and reviled. Whether they are killing young men in Oakland, gunning down teenagers in Athens, shooting indigenous workers in Seattle or terrorizing veterans in East Point the same refrain can be heard growing louder and louder. What was only spoken between friends and classmates now rings clearly in the hallways, boulevards, and offices everywhere: "COPS, PIGS, MURDERERS!"

 

What they fear, what haunts their dreams and waking hours is a fate worse then death or prison. They tremble at the thought of bearing the torment, for once, of their victims and for their cries to fall on all of the deaf ears of those who no longer give a fuck. They fear us as uncontrollable bearers of our own fate.

 

They are at once pitiful and wholly undeserving of pity. No one can be redeemed as long as the police force as a whole continues its miserable existence.

 

On their side lie cowardice, misery, and control. On ours is a fearless and uncontrollable joy. The rest remains to be decided.

THERE IS NO "JUSTICE", THERE IS JUST US.