race

by Tessa Landreau-Grasmuck and dave onion

On the morning of Friday, June 13th, 2008, Philadelphia police entered a Ridge Avenue home without a warrant and arrested four Philadelphia community members and dear friends – Daniel Moffat, Trevor Burgess, Andrea Okorley, and Jennifer Rock. These residents were pulled from their home at 1652 Ridge Avenue, arrested, and detained without charges at the Ninth District for over twelve hours. During their detention, Philadelphia Police called in the City’s Licenses and Inspections Agency, who deemed the house uninhabitable, and sealed the doors. Despite an extraordinary output of community support in response to the raid, the residents of the affectionately named Shoe Store are still facing an arduous struggle to reclaim their home. As we continue to support the displaced family of the Ridge Avenue Shoe Store, we seek to put their situation in the context of policing and displacement happening city, nation and world wide. We send this letter with two-fold intention: to respond to all the comrades who have asked how they can help, as well as to activate our support for those affected by these policies in the context of a diverse movement with wide and varied experience.

Urgent Action Alert! Prisoners Under Attack in Camp Hill's SMU

Summary of Prisoner Reports

In the last four months over a dozen prisoners confined in the Special Management Unit (SMU) at State Correctional Institution (SCI) Camp Hill have written HRC/Fed Up! about conditions of severe brutality, white supremacy, and the systematic sabotage at all inmate efforts to file grievances and/or obtain legal assistance.  See the attached 14-page document culled from prisoner reports detailing a violent program of dehumanization.  The SMU at Camp Hill is one of two such control units in the PADOC system, the other being in Fayette, and functions primarily to repress prisoners inclined to file grievances, pursue civil suits against PADOC staff and officials, and otherwise assert their dignity as human beings.

"La gente fuerte no necesita un lider, ellos por si mismos son lideres" - Emiliano Zapata

Autonomous/ Anti-Authoritarian/ Anarchist People Of Color from across the Northeast (and beyond) are gathering in Philly this summer to build a new vision for the future, and a new plan of action for today. We want to expand our understanding of race, class, gender, autonomy, and freedom - while attacking white supremacy, imperialism, colonialism, and ALL borders, boundaries, and barriers.

In their own words, “The One People’s Project is about one thing: disseminating information. We are a collection of people across the country and in Canada the UK that are active in gathering that information about any and all persons involved in racist/right-wing activity. We may participate in the organization of an action from time to time, but our primary mission is to be an online resource for those fighting fascism.”

Adapted from One People’s Project

Two nazi skinhead (hereafter boneheads) crews, Keystone State Skinheads (KSS) and Maryland “Skinheads” (MDS), recently made their presence felt at the April 19th protest against the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision to deny Mumia Abu Jamal a new trial. The white supremacists came to show their support of Philly’s police, their legal institutional counterparts in keeping a white supremacist system defended by force and held signs demanding Mumia’s and other African Americans’ executions.

From a flyer handed out at the rally:

Over the past year, both KSS and MDS who were both recently profiled on a recent National Geographic documentary, have stepped up their political activism, posting flyers in the townswhere members live and participating in mainstream political events such as anti-immigration rallies and the Ron Paul rally on November 10 in Philly. They have tried to revamp their image by discarding the Nazi symbolism they have been known for, but being as they are dumber than a sack of rocks they still maintain racist positions as well as their penchant for criminality and violence. Wilkes-Barre has seen not only KSS flyers around town as well as a member of KSS. A punk show this month in Allentown, where KSS member Keith Carney encouraged racists to attend, resulted in a number of them randomly attacking people in the audience. It reportedly took riot police to quell the melee. Carney himself has a long criminal record, and along with fellow KSS associates Vincent DeFelice, Andrew Boyle and Doug Caffarella, are facing attempted murder and weapons charges stemming from attacking one of their own on Memorial Day Weekend last year. MDS is headed up by Jason Tankersly, who also caught a charge and probation for beating someone with a hammer.