March for Alton, Philando, and All Black Lives: Abolition Now!

CHICAGO 7/15 -- Today, Friday, July 15, 2016 at 5:30pm, members of Assata’s Daughters will hold a march beginning at 51st and King Drive to honor those who have been killed by state violence.

Last week, news spread across the world that at least 2 more Black people had been killed by the police Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. Their murders bring the total number of people killed by police thus far in 2016 to 559.

“The police killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile are part of a larger structure of antiblack state violence that all Black people, trans and cis, straight and queer, experience on a daily basis. This violence against our communities is not limited to police killings. The state depletes our communities of material resources and wreaks havoc on us through unfettered antiblack racism, homophobia, and genderbased violence,” said Fullamusu Bangura, a member of Assata’s Daughters.

Bangura continued, “It is imperative that we hold the state accountable for ALL the violence it inflicts against us. Reclaiming resources for our communities is not a crime. Police accountability is not a hate crime. Black organizers in Chicago will not stand for continued state terror against our communities.”

If approved by the Chicago City Council, the Blue Lives Matter ordinance will add police officers and other first responders to the list of those protected by hate crime laws.

We are marching to show our support to the loved ones of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Rekia Boyd, and all black lives affected by state violence.

We will continue the work necessary to achieve abolition now, and we encourage you to join us in this fight.

Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1258340007539966/

Follow us on Twitter: @AssataDaughters and #AbolitionNowChi

#RememberRekia Organizers SHUT down the intersection at Jackson and Lake Shore Drive, disrupting the NFL Draft in chicago.

Organizers from Assata’s Daughters, Black Lives Matter Chicago, and the fierce femmes of F.L.Y. are shutting down the intersection at Jackson and Lake Shore Drive, disrupting the NFL Draft Town.

On April 29th, 201, 300 community members were laid off from Chicago State University due to lack of full funding for the university. Meanwhile, Dante Servin remains employed by the Chicago Police Department 4 years after murdering 22-year old Black woman Rekia Boyd.

Decision makers at the local and state levels have made it clear where their financial priorities lie. We continue to receive cuts to the institutions that keep Black women safe–institutions that continue to be replaced by terrorist cops that brutalize and murder Black women without penalty.

Dante Servin murdered Rekia Boyd because he felt he could. Lawmakers refuse to give CSU the funding it needs because they feel there will be no repercussions.

Our continued resistance serves as the penalty for destroying Black Lives. There will be no uninterrupted NFL Draft Town when Black women die without justice. There will be no silence while Mayor Emanuel and the city council are cutting a $302,000 deal for an event worth $3.2 million at the same time that we cannot afford to fund Black education.

We choose to #RememberRekia by demanding that Dante Servin is fired without a pension and instead that decision makers commit full, permanent funding to Chicago State University.

#DontPayDante #SaveCSU "

#ByeAnita

“The major job was getting people to understand that they had something within their power that they could use, and it could only be used if they understood what was happening and how group action could counter violence.” –Ella Baker

Demand:  Anita Alvarez must be voted out of office.

What:

-On Wednesday, February 17th, a group led by Veronica interrupted Anita at UofC event.

-On Friday, February 20th, the Collective met to plan month of escalating against Anita.

-On Saturday, February 21st, ByeAnita zines were distributed at Free Black Women’s Library.

-On Tuesday, February 23rd Collective interrupted/mic checked Annual C.F. Stradford Awards Ceremony (bourgie Black event)

-On Wednesday morning, February 24th the Collective blocked the entrance to Maggiano’s for Alvarez fundraiser hosted by the City Club of Chicago. Collective then marched.

On Wednesday evening, February 24th, we mic checked the States Attorney Candidates Forum at Kent College of Law, and then flyered in the lobby.

-On Sunday, February 28th, the Collective reconvened and developed a calendar of tactics to escalate against Anita.

-On Monday, March 1st, the Collective blocked entrances, rallied and had allies mic check in Oak Lawn at the Southside St. Patrick’s Day Fundraiser.

-On Tuesday, March 8th, the Collective led a train takeover asking voters to commit to voting Anita out.

-On Wednesday, March 9th and on Thursday, March 10th, Page and VLA students led a train takeover

-On Friday, March 11th, Collective blocked traffic on Van Buren and Racine at Trump Rally.

-On Saturday, March 12th, the Collective coordinated a train takeover and spoke at Silver Room asking for voters to vote Anita out.

-On Saturday-Sunday, March 12th-13th, Collective coordinated jail and court support for ByeAnita DumpTrump arrests.

-On Monday, March 14th, Collective dropped 16 banners throughout the city saying ByeAnita/We <3 Laquan.

-On Monday, March 14th, Collective mic checked, rallied supporters and flyered at Bernie rally.

-On Tuesday, March 15th, Collective coordinated 2 planes saying ByeAnita flying over city.

Who:

-BLM Chicago, BYP 100, fierce femmes of FLY, Assata’s Daughters

-Allies: OCAD, CLAW, Rapid Response Team, Mijente, For the People Artists Collective

Numbers:

-On Feb. 2nd out of 968 registered voters, 34% supported Alvarez compared to Foxx’ 27%

-On March 15th, election day, 1,066,001 people voted, 58% voted Foxx, 28% voted Alvarez.

Corresponding Actions:

-Asians Against Anita Alvarez held a press conference and led train takeovers

-OCAD and Mijente led door knocking and voter education in Latino communities

-Mariame led online voter education

-Allies routinely flyered and left zines throughout the city

Black Chicago Activists to Fly “Chicago Stands with Laquan, Hillary Stands with Rahm #Bye Anita #ByeRahm” Banners Along Chicago Skyline

 As Activists Drop Banners Targeting Anita Alvarez Around the City, Planes Carry Message Tying Clinton to Mayor Emanuel

March 14, 2016 – Chicago, IL

Final voter engagement before the March 15th Primary in Chicago is taking to the sky today as airplanes are set to fly with banners highlighting the link between Hillary Clinton to the unpopular Rahm Emanuel and the state’s attorney, Anita Alvarez, with whom he covered up Laquan McDonald’s murder during his own re-election campaign. This is one of a series of 16 banners that will be released throughout the city all pushing the messaging that Anita Alvarez must go.  

Assata’s Daughters is an intergenerational collective of Black women and girls. This demographic represents both the largest growing prison population and those leading protests against state violence in Chicago.  Tess Raser, of the organization, explains, “Tell me who you know, and I’ll tell you who you are. To this day, Hillary Clinton still supports Chicago’s anti-black mayor. He conspired with State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez during his own re-election campaign to cover up the police murder of Laquan McDonald — a life that to Emmanuel, Alvarez and Clinton did not matter – and any politician who supports him is implicated in it. Anti-black politicians are not welcome in Chicago whether they are running for President or State’s Attorney.”

To follow the banner releases follow: #ByeAnita #ByeHillary #ResignRahm#16Banners for #16Shots

BREAKING: Chicagoans Halt Loop Traffic with “Defund Police, Dismantle ICE” Blockade -Assata's Daughters Statement

As Immigration Authorities Raid Communities Nationwide, Chicago Says #Not1More

February 16, 2016 – Chicago, IL

Today Assata’s Daughters participated in an action of civil disobedience led by Organized Communities Against Deportation. We shut down the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office and the highway entrance ramp into Chicago during rush-hour morning traffic.

We did so as allies, we did so because we understand our struggles are connected, we did so because we were asked by friends, and we did so because it is our duty to love and support each other.

In recent months, ICE has increased their raids nationally. The Obama administration began 2016 with a new wave of arrests, specifically targeting Central American families. In one weekend in January, 121 people were taken into custody in Georgia, Texas and North Carolina, including many women and children. Assata’s Daughters is an intergenerational collective of Black women and girls, and we are enraged by the ways in which women and children are often targeted and devastated by the State. We recognize this as an extension of the same state violence we experience and resist

Undocumented people in Chicago and nationally are living in fear daily of being taken from their homes and away from their families. We, as Black American community organizers, can relate to that fear. Our communities experience that fear when Chicago Police Officers patrol our neighborhoods, stop and frisk us, occupy our schools, and arrest us in mass. Our families are kept apart by barbed-wire fences, our people exiled into cages.

The State continues to create ways in which to criminalize our people in the same ways it criminalizes Latino communities. The War on Drugs is a War on Black people and The War for Border Control is a war on undocumented people, and in the context of Chicago, on Latino people. We will not stand for this criminalization of our bodies and those of our brown allies.

And so today, we stand in solidarity with OCAD, united against enforcement and state sanctioned violence. We do so, humbly, as a collective of Black women mostly with documentation status privilege. We also do so as a collective of Black women with varied personal connections to the effects of racist immigration policies (from the mass deportation of people of Haitian descent by the Dominican Republic to the disproportionate targeting of Black immigrants in the United States, we know Black people throughout the diaspora are directly impacted by racist immigration policies). And finally, we do so as Black revolutionaries who deeply understand and appreciate the fight for our right to move freely and have self-determination.

On October 24th, 2015, OCAD stood in solidarity with us as we participated in an act of civil disobedience with the Black Youth Project 100 and other organizations to shutdown the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference. We called for a divestment of policing and for an investment in our Black communities. Chicago spends 40% of its budget on policing and routinely takes away social services from our communities. This city is over-policed and the police are over-funded. Nationally, the US spends $18 billion dollars on immigration enforcement—more than any other enforcement. Our communities of color are over-policed and policing is at the root cause of a lot of our communities’ harm. When enforcement is overfunded, that is money that is not being spent on services such as health care, education, mental healthcare and youth development programs—services that actually keep us safe, services that our neighboring white communities take for granted.

It is important to clearly name the enemy. At our IACP action we called out former Chicago Police Department Superintendent McCarthy and the Mayor Rahm Emmanuel for their investment in policing and specifically in their investment of policing Black communities. We called for their immediate resignation and/or firing. Today, with OCAD, we call out Ricardo Wong, ICE director, who has called for an increase of violent and destructive raids and deportations here in Chicago. He, like former Superintendent McCarthy, is responsible for a lot of harm. Yes, our fight is against systems, but there are individual actors who enforce these systems and who must be held accountable.

ICE uses anti-black rhetoric as a tactic in their raids, and city police departments comply with and often assist ICE. When undocumented families refuse to open their doors to ICE, ICE agents will often say they are the police looking for a “criminal,” at times proven through a photo of a Black person. They are intentionally evoking and reinforcing anti-blackness in Latino communities. In building with OCAD, we are actively combatting that manifestation of anti-blackness and disproving the myth that our communities do not seek to build and work together. For after all, both anti-blackness and settler colonialism, are deeply rooted in white supremacy—our main target. We believe that the muscle of white supremacy is containment, criminalization, and enforcement—as seen both in the CPD and in ICE.

Assata’s Daughters will continue to build with Organized Communities Against Deportation because of the intrinsic ways in which our struggles are connected. This doesn't mean we mistake our struggles as being the exact same: we know settler colonialism and anti-blackness are distinct, but united under white supremacy. However, we don't require solidarity to mean “we are the same.” Solidarity is as much to do with difference and self-reflection, as a shared commitment to end oppression. It is, at its best, a verb: It means the ongoing work of appreciating another communities oppression and resistance even when it has nothing to do with you, building deep relationships, developing shared analysis and strategy, taking action together, studying and being transparent about the ways we are complicit in each others oppression, showing up for each other and practicing accountability.

Today, tomorrow, the next day, we stand with our allies in OCAD against state sponsored violence. We call for an immediate end to ICE raids and deportations that destroy and tear apart families.

Follow #StoptheRaids, #Not1More, #NiUnaMas, and #StopICE on twitter for updates.

And check out OCAD here: http://www.notonemoredeportation.com/2016/02/16/chicagoice/

#FUNDBLACKFUTURES ACTION SHUTS DOWN International Association of Chief of Police [IACP] CONFERENCE

 Activists and supporters blocked off Martin Luther King Drive and 26th St for more than three hours in protest of the IACP Conference.

This week, the International Association of Chiefs of Police has brought their annual conference to Chicago. Law enforcement leadership from over 80 countries are in attendance, gathered with their corporate backers in the thousands at McCormick Place, to share tactics and strategy. Over the course of the week, mayor Rahm Emanuel, governor Bruce Rauner, police superintendent Gary McCarthy, and president Barack Obama will all be in attendance.

Today, Black Youth Project 100 and allied affinity groups are staging disruptions in various locations, attempting to shut down not just the IACP conference, but the city of Chicago itself.

We make up a smaller affinity group of this larger action, representing members of Assata’s Daughters, Black Out Pride, Fearless Leadership by the Youth, Fight for 15, Organized Communities Against Deportation, and Not One More. We are shutting down the intersection of 26th St. and Martin Luther King Drive, in front of McCormick Place. Our goal is to make entrance into the conference as difficult as possible, and to bring traffic to a standstill in the heart of Chicago.

Our reason for being a small part of this larger action is this:

We are witnessing an unprecedented mass disinvestment in the Black communities of our city. From Homan Square’s disappeared, to the closing of half the city’s mental health clinics, to Barbara Byrd-Bennett’s theft of public funds, Black communities are being robbed of their most precious resources, maliciously and intentionally, and offered nothing in return but harassment and abuse in the form of more prisons and cops. While Rauner slashes supports for homeless youth, mental health, HIV services, and child care, Emanuel’s proposed city budget for 2016 allocates a whopping 2.1 billion dollars–40% of the annual budget–towards policing.

Even as we block this intersection, the city of Chicago spends 4 million dollars a day on policing—more than it spends on mental health services in an entire year.

What this tells us is what we already know: That Black lives don’t matter to the city of Chicago; That the primary violence our communities face does not come from gangs and crime, but from structural violence in the form of evictions, school closings, budget cuts, policing and incarceration; That the systems born of chattel slavery to maintain Black lives as disposable commodities are as thriving now as they ever were.

What we understand is that the role of policing is not community safety, as we’ve long been taught. It is an apparatus which protects property and wealth, the power and social control of the elite, precisely by targeting, terrorizing and marginalizing Black communities on a consistent basis. As the state inflicts deep social and economic violence on our people, the police use physical violence to keep that structure in place.

The police do not protect us; They protect the status quo–one dependent on the demonization of Blackness.

Today, we stand as a multiracial collective, representing multiple organizations, ethnicities, faiths and genders, all united in the struggle for economic justice and Black liberation. While our action is led by Black people for Black people, we recognize that the struggle for Black freedom is our collective responsibility to carry out, and necessary for the justice sought by us all to be achieved.

In participating as a cohort within this larger action, these are the short and longterm goals of our collective:

Abolish Bail and Bond—End the racist, classist, and ableist taxation of oppressed people! Abolish bail, bond, and all fees associated with detention and incarceration!

Close All Youth Detention Centers—Stop holding our young people in cages, and provide them with public schools, arts, fair wages, and free mental health services instead!

Reopen All Schools and Mental Health Clinics—Stop replacing housing, healthcare and education with prisons! Reopen all closed schools and mental health clinics with the money stollen from our communities to bolster and bailout the private sector!

End the Criminalization of Survival—When local and federal government have removed all support systems and social services, fighting to survive is not a crime! Decriminalize sex work, drug use and possession, and release all those currently incarcerated with “Quality of Life,” drug, homelessness and sex trafficking related charges!

Cap the CPD Budget—The CPD is sucking resources from Black communities for the purpose of abusing them. Cap the CPD’s budget, including within it the millions doled out every year in reparations and lawsuits!

Close Homan Square and All Black Sites—The “War on Terror” has not been brought home; It began on US soil in Black and Brown communities. Close Homan Square and all other so-called black sites in the city of Chicago, and around the world!

Disarm the Police–We reject our communities being treated as a marketplace for violence. Disarm the police, divest from weapons manufacturers, and keep arms out of Black communities worldwide!

End Stop and Frisk—Stop and Frisk is a racist, classist, sexist and transphobic practice that targets our communities for harassment and violence. Safety begins when Stop and Frisk ends!

Our message is this: When you invite the world leaders of torture, terror and death into our city, you can expect disruption. When you steal money from our communities to provide a red-carpet welcome to the organizations that deny us safety, be assured that we will not be silent. When you starve the most vulnerable among us to bolster the systems that keep us hungry, know that we will fight back.

The brilliant future we look to, and the abolition we call for, is not merely based in the permanent dismantling of the police and prison systems. It is about rebuilding Black communities with the resources that have been stolen from them for the purposes of police and militarism. It is about investing in education, housing, healthy food, parks and gardens, community centers, affordable mental health services, and community safety based on our people having the things we need to live full, abundant lives. Guns and cages have nothing to do with this future we envision.

Until all Black people are free, none of us are free. Until all trans people are free, none of us are free. Until all women are free, none of us are free. And none of us are free until we have abolished police once and for all.

Power to the people!

#FundBlackFutures #StoptheCops