New Year's Eve Noise Demos Against The Prison-Industrial Complex
Posted 12 years ago on Dec. 31, 2011, 6:23 a.m. EST by OccupyWallSt
Saturday, December 31st. 9PM (EST) </br> MCC (Metropolitan Correctional Center), 150 Park Row, Manhattan </br> (J to Chambers Street or 4/5/6 to City Hall)
via the NYC Anarchist Black Cross:
To many it feels like we live in a time like no other– with surveillance and repression at every turn, but also resistance, rebellion, and open revolt. However, this is neither the new golden nor dark age, it is simply another moment in time where we can collectively force conflict with a fundamentally fucked system.
Every day there are revolts of varying scale, many of which never make it to your local news or facebook stream. For those captured in revolt, we heed the call for an international night of noise demonstrations. In the rotten heart of world capital, we honor this call and use it as a reminder– prison is a means of social control to be absolutely destroyed.
We come together in protest and celebration. For those locked up, we bring that celebration. Through the din of revelry and rage, we tie ourselves to those who suffer systematized white supremacy and war against the working class, behind steel bars and safety glass.
May this simple night of noise-bringing carry momentum into a new year of open conflict with the state and capital. Free all Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War! For the Abolition of State Repression and Domination!
There are similar noise demos taking place in around 15 cities in the U.S. and multiple cities in Italy, Greece, Spain, Germant, the U.K., and Argentina. See here for a list.
At 10:00pm, we will march to Liberty Square to bring in the new year!
4 million Americans are in prisons 1.5 million more than communist China,Wich has a 1.5 billion population. And your saying theres nothing wrong with this fucked up system?? Idiots ur proberly the ones working for the bankers.
Also, in China there are 55 crimes punishable by death, some immediate death as in shot on the spot. That'd probably keep prison population down.
www.amnesty.org.au/china/comments/10960/
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China has one of the lowest crime rates in the world, so it would stand to reason they'd have less people in prisons.
The above stats might be the reason for low crime rate. Or the fact that China doesn't report honestly.
carlitini? of course he is.
You make no sense. What's wrong with you that you can't even make a small statement without misspelling words?
The welfare state produces criminals. The war on drugs contributes. End both and prison populations will drop. We do not have "political prisoners"
Our prisons are full of political prisoners, the majority of whom seek a way out of the exploitative and repressive economic system that benefits from poverty because it is founded on the extraction of wealth.
what do you call the drugies in prison? Rape camp veterans? The drug war is politics and only politics.
How many blacks would still have the right to vote but not for false felonies?
That's politics.
I want those druggies who commit burgularies and hijack people to go to prison and the key to be thrown away.
In a system of economic justice there is no need for people to commit burglaries. When people live in a Just economy they experience a level of well being and self esteem. They have no need to medicate their despair and pain.
I so much agree with you.
It's no joke or coincidence that the countries with the highest level of crime are the poorest ones and the ones with the lowest level of poverty (socialist ones are among those with the least crime) have the lowest levels of crime.
Too bad I have to pay taxes on your stupidity. But if you want to reward criminals with full healthcare, housing, dental, medicine plus education then I'm stuck paying for it. That's democracy for you, idiots that can't think running the show.
Stay right and never learn you were wrong!
I object to my tax dollars being used to run corporate welfare programs, now a new corporate prison industry and the military industrial complex that profits from maiming and murdering innocent civilians all over the world. These alone swallow 67% of our Federal revenues. I am grateful that there are enough legislators that do recognize that there is a social responsibilityto help the poor and dispossed in an economic system that is fundamentally Unjust.
Yeah, druggies with a couple of felony convictions are EXACTLY who I want voting for our President.
It should be "You created them, you pay for them". And it is. We call them criminals and we pay for their room, board, healthcare and dental plus education. That's better than I ever got.
You want to reduce welfare then stop making criminals out of drugies. Let them do their drugs, get their own housing, get their own healthcare, etc.
We have to pay for every day they are alive now because no one is hiring felons. Should have left the bastards alone.
i agree
It's easy to single out drug prohibition for this issue, but the problem goes far beyond that. We've allowed the prison system to get so out of hand that people are routinely put behind bars, to their woe and at great taxpayer expense, even when their behavior clearly indicates that they are not really the sort of criminals we need to lock up to keep society safe. To give examples from the past few days, a woman from Tennessee visiting the World Trade Center site saw a sign telling tourists that guns were prohibited to the site, asked an officer if she could check her gun there... now she's facing three and a half years in prison. ( http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2011/dec/29/tennessee-tourist-wanted-check-loaded-gun-world-tr/ ) In another case, a man tried to pay at a Wal-Mart with a "million dollar bill" and has been jailed due to failing to make bail. ( http://news.yahoo.com/cops-man-tried-1m-bill-nc-walmart-165050318.html )
Now if you look at the first case, you'll notice that thanks to the "war on drugs" we've replaced a standard of criminal intent with an idea that simple possession can lead to jail; and we've so perverted the idea of federal regulation of "interstate commerce" that while it can be used to keep sick people from growing a pot plant in their backyards, it doesn't light a fire under the federal government to get them moving toward a consistent national system of reciprocal permits for carrying concealed weapons throughout the U.S. It also demonstrates that someone unashamed to do something openly within view of a police officer - one of the common legal criteria for "insanity" - receives no mercy at all for that, just as there is none for someone crazy or stupid enough to think a one million dollar bill is real. And the other problem is that people are often uncompassionate about such cases, forgetting that prison also punishes the taxpayers of the state, and forgetting the future victims of those convicted who receive a crash course in criminal behavior, then come out of jail branded as unemployable.
I don't know if there's any reliable way to convert the 1% of the population sent to jail into a percent decrease in GDP growth, but my gut feeling is that it must be substantial - enough to make the difference between a formal recession and the "not a recession" we have now, or between the current state and a state of economic normalcy, such as it is.
Since a for profit corporate prison system has been implemented the prison population has exploded in the US. As long as there is a profit to be made from the misery and misfortune of another it will be done now that it is legal!
Agreed.
Well reasoned! Keep typing!!!
This statement was filmed on October 8th at 23 Wall Street.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10150339795647857&set=vb.756432856&type=2&theater
Grateful for the link and the courage of OWS!
Hard to argue with this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM19T9lS7Ao&t=0m36s
I know what some of you are gonna say however once again, he is right.
Here are some statistics for you:
Wassup with that?
The biggest drug consumer market is in the 1%. They just don't get arrested and jailed. Our 2 tier Justice debacle.
And they are the ones keeping the Mexico-U.S. drug trafficking going.
You got that right.
That is quite a claim that the 1% use most of the drugs. Probably not true.
What we are talking about here is pot, cocaine, heroin... We should treat addiction to these as we do addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs. It is a disease.
More people are killed because drugs are illegal then would be if they were legal.
When I have more time I collect links on drug consumption by 1%/ Totally agree with legalization. Once something is legalized you kill the underground market which almost always involves crime rings and mafias.
WOW! That's typing the truth! Right #5 - Works for the wealthy!!!
I can't argue against any of the sound bite. I just wish he'd send all those cops busting up parties into the corporate kingdoms that rule over us, but it seems that he would free them from their shackles as well. I'll smoke a doobie for all my fellow Americans sitting in jail today, maybe one day the corpotocracy will fall and people will be held up higher than profits.
the end of cannabis prohibition is the RAPTURE!
end all prohibition.........let us live our lives the way we want.........not the way they think we should live it............fuck the police
we need to replace the DHS police with genuine community police. we need to replace the politics with compassionate community. we need to replace the misery of this society with joy. we need to replace INSIDE JOBS with transparency. we need to replace the violent images and horror stories of religion with ETERNAL JOY. one love one heart.
one blood
no psycho blood sacrifice. no hysterical holy blood preaching. no royal blood owning our land!
ha ha
Ho Ho Ho! Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh we shall fight and we will win!!
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I believe it,"the end of cannabis prohibition," is the end of the Rapture for those sitting in jail, purgatory, for those petty crimes are the small percent who sit and wait for Armageddon to play out. And they, the ones sitting in jail for smoking a doobie, and their ilk will soon inherit the earth.
it is not a petty crime! they turn aside the just for a thing of nought. it is our holy communion. alcohol is a chemical lobotomy.
While pain pill poppers and pharma junkies are free to rape the coffers and pillage the home land, you scowled and condemn a doobie smoker? Please, get with the program. Hypocrisy knows no bounds.
hypocrites are bullies. see their attemot to block me because i question the doctrines and images of their violent and horrific religion.
Sorry, to have wasted time, debating a real American Problem With A United Kingdom citizen. You would not understand what I'm saying because your marijuana laws are more liberal than our state laws. You don't have the profit motive behind your prison epidemic. As for alcohal being a chemical labotomy, Id say that anything over used and under moderated by the individual has the tendency to lobotimize one's thinking. To say that drugs are the only colperate of today's discontent, is a little shallow on your part. Also, what is an "attemot"
There are no non-profit corporate run prisons in the US. There are only for profit prisons in our country. This is another reason why our prison populations is growing exponentially.
stop and frisk or stop and search in uk lead to the last summer riots. usa/uk is one fascist corporate system under the queen, the whore of babylon! she is the ENEMY OF OUR COMMUNITY. we are a global community for worldREVOLUTION! division is delusion!!!!
I'm glad you feel that way. So then you should understand that those who are in jail for smoking doobies are our brothers and sisters too. keep up the good fight, but don't delude yourself in believing that you are better than a pot head.
i am a naga sadhu. Ras Tafari is the True Christ. Free mi ganja! from the dread level. the stoned who are rejected! ganja is brain food, our holy communion. this is the key issue in the freeing of our community. the end of cannabis prohibition is the RAPTURE.
I miss understood you because the rapture takes on a different meaning here. Those who are uber religious believe only the unworthy will experience the rapture. So when you said the rapture begins when the pot head is released, I interpreted your words to mean that the ones in jail are unworthy. so I apologize for my ignorance and miss understanding.
that is a good example of how we have been brutalised by christianity. the rapture is for humanity, the end of cannabis prohibition is the true rapture! the joy of liberation of ganja lovers, pot heads, dope fiends all around the world.the joy of the sick that the herb is there for them instead of the slavery of medication, marijuana is for the healing of the nations. after our rapture all the christians will be gone! no more talk of crucifixion in our community! that's the good news!!
Perhaps, should we believe your numbers, it is because arrests are for SELLING drugs as well as for using them.
What is your point? Are you saying that only black people sell drugs?
You type like you're trying to say something but your statement is meaningless. SELLING drugs vs using them = wgaff?
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Our prisons are our torture chambers. Too few new & media sources are out there explaining to the public that prison rape is an accepted norm in our society. It should not be. It IS cruel & unusual punishment, as defined by the 8th Amendment of our Constitution, for which the powers that rule our country seem to have retained little use or remaining regard for.
Sites which provide info, actions against, & activist stories about prison rape:
www.justdetention.org
www.rapeis.org/activism/prison/prison.html
www.insideprison.com/prison-rape.asp
When this all started I thought this movement was going to achieve some great things for America , But now you lost another supporter , I know you don't care but you will we add up, It's to bad you could do so much good, But you would rather go after causes that will do nothing but divide the movement, good luck worrying about the prisons and other countries, Anything but changing the way our Country is heading. Nice try, But back to business as usual in America. The politicians win.
The way our country is headed has every thing to do with prison population numbers which reflect the policies of America. The politicians will win if we continue to let them make bad policies, plead read the article.
snippet--With more than 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States leads the world in both the number and percentage of residents it incarcerates, leaving far-more-populous China a distant second--
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/02/28/ST2008022803016.html
"correctional capitalism in the Land of the Free"
http://j.b5z.net/i/u/2108258/i/Correctional_Capitalism_with_endnotes.pdf
welfare ran out of $$. they dont want the american people to know they did. why you think they denying folks left and right.
Then why do I keep getting money taken out of my paychecks for welfare??? You are so wrong.
What we need here are the facts regarding U.S. inmates in for drug use / mental health issues vs criminal / violent activity.
Drug use is a health issue, as defined by many nations. Public health care centers may employ real professionals and prove more valuable jails.
so this wonderful movement has been resorted to being dominated by anarchists. It's taken a downward spike in the last month or so. Not where many of us wanted a lot of this movement to go. We need to change it ourselves, not by occupying or protesting every issue we disagree with, but actually doing something about it. Change is not forced. Change is discovered.
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This isn't a goddamn free Mumia thread is it?
A New frontier is being occupied!!
OCCUPY EVERYTHING! http://www.occupyfashion.spreadshirt.com
THIS VIDEO STATEMENT SAYS IT ALL
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10150339795647857&set=vb.756432856&type=2&theater
WOLF GEYR
Anyone here interested i an easy very popular read about the Prison Ind complex should read The New Jim Crow - by Michelle Alexander. Or go to Teamster.org and type in The New Jim Crow. There's a nice short article on the new ecomomy based on prison labor.
total agreement and solidarity! aluta continua!
I'm confused. How many "political prisoners" are currently in US prisons? Any at all? Are you protesting in solidarity with murderers and rapists as well? This makes no sense.
No sense? Think before you type, my friend. Apart from the fact that the USA has higher percentage of its population in prison THAN ANY OTHER COUNTRY -and this, in fact, says a lot about its politics and its prisoners... There are of course many outright political prisoners in the USA. Besides the long-term classical ones listed here http://daisybrain.wordpress.com/2011/01/22/political-prisoners-in-the-united-states/ there are of course hundreds who spent decades in prison due to their radical stand in the sixties, like Linda Evans, who was only released from a life in jail thanks to a pardon from Clinton. Then of course there were all the activists that were not even "lucky" enough to get sentence to a life in prison: the black panther activists who were murdered by the police/FBI. Then there are the brand-new political prisoners: environmentalists like Tim DeChristopher, Palestinian supporters accused of terrorism because they supported charities, etc etc
Wise up! All is not so wonderful in the "land of the free" and only those who will not accept this injustice will change the world!
Mr sgbf, for you a terrorist, is a political prisoner. Sorry bud, that's not how it works. If you are violent or support violent causes you belong in prison or worse.
By your definition "support violent causes you belong in prision or worse": that means that the 69,456,897 voters for Obama all belong in prison (or worse), since he has upped G.W.Bushes war in Afghanistan and is responsible for drone attacks in Pakistan and the War against Libya as well. All of them pretty violent causes. Then of course to be fair we should consider the voters for G.W. Bush in 2004...62,040,610 should naturally also all be in prison guilty of "supporting violence and violent causes" that this man represents, with the a cool million killed in Iraq. Pretty damn violent if you ask me. Whereas someone like Bradley Manning could be faced with the death penalty or a life in prison... that's the "justice" you evoke? But funny, in the end you ARE right. That's "how it works". Sad...
Because this thread is on political prisoners, perhaps we should review stats of such in Libya, Afghanistan, etc. I know that many in Libya were set free by the rebels. I also know that there have been at least 50000 people arrested over the years for speaking against Gaddafi, many to never be heard from again. This is not to defend our involvement in the middle east, but to point out that these places we are assisting are not exactly the epitome of freedom.
My feelings about Manning are that I don't care about this supposed treason against the US, but he released documents that could have gotten fellow soldiers killed. However, the fact that his superiors were unaware of what he was doing leaves them with just as much to blame.
Obama and Bush are defending the U.S. against Muslim Terrorist. Bradley Manning is a traitor. You obviously don't like the U.S., so go live in one of your wonderful turd world countries.
dear carlitini99, I wish you a wonderful 2012, with a very big load of "instant kharma" to boot! http://youtu.be/IVoy-047gHE
adios sgbf, have fun travels
Bradley Manning would have already faced a firing squad in a just world. It's pretty darn clear about what the expectations are for a soldier - in this country and almost any other.
The world would be a much safer place if there were fewer fanatic punishers like you, who are the real terrorists. Punishment and incarceration have never righted a wrong: just satisfied the thirst for brutality, idiocy and violence against another. Go bang your head on a wall and see how that affects you!
1siriusMagus, let's let all the prisoners free! Is that what you want you idiot. Some people are just violent or dangerous, period, if you don't lock them up they will kill or do society damage. Go sing kumbaya (sp?) you dumb loser.
More than 95 % of the individuals who make up our prison population do not belong there. Most are incarcerated for petty law violations today named felonies. A moving traffic violation is a felony because municipalities and states can charge steeper penalties for them! There are deeply disturbed and violent individuals in any society: individuals whose psychiatric disorders have not been successfully treated. Keeping them behind bars does not address their psychiatric disorder. 99% of the white collar criminals are never adjudicated nor put behind bars. This is the fact of our 2 tier Justice system where incarceration is being used for racially driven agendas. Justice requires the righting of the wrong that one committed against another. Putting individuals behind bars does not right any wrong it just replaces one wrongful act with another.
According to your implied conclusion: since there are some that need to be separated from society then imprisoning them is the answer. Try upgrading your observation and assessment skills from kindergarden to first grade. It may dissipate a lot of your rage - always born of feeling powerless and helpless.
1sirius, 95% are innocent. That's funny. But don't give up your day job for comedy.
Individuals who think like you are the real danger to any society.
loser
The challenge of focus for Occupy protests is not necessarily one of targets or tactics. Though strategic maneuvering of their members to the pinch points and bottle necks of the dominant culture is a conversation of constant necessity, more pressing is the discovery of the poisonous heart of the dominant culture. What is the common thread which grafts together the banks, the oil companies, the degradation of the planet’s ecosystems, the drugging of children, the indefinite detention of “terror suspects,” and the imprisonment of non-violent drug possessors?
To me, it seems clear that the dominant culture is a culture of domination. The dominant culture, that is — the culture of industrial capitalism, that is — our culture — is a culture that rests on a foundation of violence, exploitation, slavery, and brutality. In the privileged West, it is harder to see this than in, say, the Niger Delta, the Brazilian rain forests, or in the sweatshops of Asia. To be sure, the barbarity of our culture is present domestically, but as most modern, “civilized” people have lost connectivity with the natural world, they likely don’t see their city, suburb, or local shopping mall as an exploitation of the land. Further, they take little notice of the flowers, the salamanders, the moths, or any of the over two hundred species which go extinct every day on Earth, including those who forever exit their own communities. Somehow, the exported violence of the tar sands mining operations in Alberta Canada, the Pacific or Atlantic garbage “islands,” or the petroleum wastes of Azerbaijan or newly liberated Iraq remain invisible to those who benefit from these graveyards the most
mr anachornism, you've take too many stupid college courses. Use your brain and common sense.
Murderers and rapists either have partners in crime or eventually make a mistake. Somebody better speak up and point out who held a gun on them and forced them to do things against their will. We have innocent people being killed, in mental institutions, prison or elsewhere shut off from the world to keep them quiet and distant for simply asking questions. There is absolutely no excuse for war and poverty in the 21st.century. Start talking, go public.
Please give me an example of "innocent people being killed, in mental institutions, prison or elsewhere shut off from the world to keep them quiet and distant for simply asking questions."
Plenty of documentaries and investigative reports have been made public on the deaths of juveniles who die from overmedication in the corporate run juvenile detention centers. Also a multitude of human rights abuses documented and reported by the Human Rights Watch dog . US was listed as the largest human rights violator by the UN. Do your own homework.
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There is SO MUCH evidence on the abuse that happens at mental institutions. One need not dig far to find out.
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If u wernt an idiot you would know there are hundreds if not thousands of political prisoners in american prisons.
Golly gee really?!? Who knew . . .
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Someone needs to wake up and get this whole OWS together with some organization.....seems to me that people are just asking people to put it all on the line....that I understand....but there are just to many unanwsered questions lying around that need to be addressed and some type of organization needs to surface....not just some spur of the moment party.....Revolution is a serious and oft times deadly choice....just my quick thoughts on this subject....come on people get something together!!
Thankfully the OWS is not here to answer stupid questions.
They are here because this is where one can go after finding the insane answers.
Yeah and for sure they are some really stupid and insane answers out there for you to contemplate if you open your eyes!
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OWS kinda reminds me of a person firing in all directions. No coordinated or cogent message; just pulling causes out of the sky left and right. A bunch of do-gooders without a pot to pee in between them.
Maybe they're going to get the message soon: people are tuning out and they're tired of OWS.
Keep it up. You're your own worst enemy.
If that is your first thought then fine. You have to start somewhere as there are many things wrong.
Some people need single issues and black and white answers but that is more a product of how they can cope with the indefinite and multiple front perspective real world.
Tired of OWS is fine also.
I hope you are also tired of the increasing oppression by the 1% of the rest and the gross injustices imposed everyday on millions, global military intervention into the governments and lived of million around the world, wholesale sacking of cities, villages, economies and livelihoods of innocent families who mourn the deaths of their loved ones just because big US money what to increase their profits ; let alone the deaths of US citizens sent to war and returned in boxes.
OWS is a response to curb the wanton destruction of the human condition by the greed and un bridled megalomania of the few against the rest.
We have lain dormant for a long time and an uprising will happen.
If you don't understand it and want a short clear cut answer then just keep reading until the reasons behind OWS become clearer and perhaps you can contribute to join with the movement for change. Good luck fellow traveler.
Prisons do not contain the perpetrators of the global financial crimes that have brought recession and collapse to world economy causing poverty and starvation, loss of trillions yet taxpayers here have bailed them out so they can give themselves fat bonuses while the poor get nothing and loose their homes and meager subsistence income yet have done nothing wrong.
Get with it man.
Not a clue
Right ! But you have to start somewhere. Good luck to those who try.
JohnWa.
That was a long post, that verified what mee44 stated.. Can you boil down your explanation of OWS into two statements? OK, OWS is a response to curb the wanton destruction of the human condition.
Dude, tell me what the hell that means. Please. Majored in philosophy did ya?
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mee44- respect. Read the declaration. Or, if you want it even more concise, read wikipedias definition on Occupy Wall Street. Spring is going to be very fun and productive, even for those with short attention spans (its only been 3 months). We serve you too. Brendan Burke
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Occupy protests have targeted everything from Goldman Sachs and Bank of America’s recent abundance of criminality, to homelessness, the degradation of the environment, the corporate influence in politics, the toxicity of the food supply, foreign wars, domestic repression, foreclosures, Wal-Mart, big Pharma, etc, ad nauseam. This plethora of targets, this seemingly endless hit list, is not as the critics smugly proclaim: a lack of focus or meandering of thought. Rather, it is an acknowledgment of the greater cultural malaise.
OWS gave a message loud and clear. They are no ones enemy or friend but a reflection of yourself. Make of it what you will. Your attitude sucks and you been bought off by a system which can no longer sustain itself. God and money is no defense shield for any one. You may want to work on your personality. People like you are cold and distant, alien to a human being.
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