Seven BerKKKeley’s “finest” surround a solitary, unarmed antifascist. Your tax dollars at work.
It’s becoming ever-more apparent that the police are serving as the lethally-armed wing of racist extremists in their efforts to arrest, injure, or get anti-fascists killed. That might sound like hyperbole if you haven’t been paying attention. From Sacramento to Seattle; from Hannover to NYC; from Newnan to Toronto; from Portland to Berkeley (to name some recent examples), the po-po can’t wait to help white supremacists to frame, assault, injure, and try to murder anti-fascists.
Then there was Berkeley earlier this month. Police there decided the best thing to do when white supremacists march in the streets was to attack, assault, and arrest as many of the 1000+ antifascists there to counter the march as possible. And immediately release photos and full names of the antifascists arrested on social media.
It’s not hypothetical to say that releasing the identities of antifascists endangers them. Just ask people who knew Dan Shersty and Lin “Spit” Newborn, two Las Vegas antifascists that were identified by a local neo-nazi gang that then stalked and murdered them. This goes beyond making antifascists appear guilty without a trial (as the Guardian notes, much of the fabricated charges police lay against antifa disappear soon after). This is providing the people responsible for the majority of terrorist attacks with a hit list. And it’s not just Berkeley cops doing it: the month before, Toronto police arrested five anti-fascists on completely fabricated charges during a counter-protest of yet another Islamophobia rally, with one arresting cop publicly providing the full names of all five arrestees to the Islamophobes, who promptly attempt to dox all five.
The Berkeley police received a ton of criticism for endangering the lives of the people they (falsely) arrested. But criticism doesn’t get the charges dropped or pay for your legal defence. It doesn’t help you find a safe place to live after neo-nazis have used your name to track down your address. And it doesn’t help you pay the bills when you can’t work because the kkkops broke your clavicle arresting you.
That was the situation D. found himself in after the events in Berkeley. He reached out to us for some help paying his bills while he’s off work with his cop-sustained injury. We were happy to help him out directly and would recommend that anyone reading this follow suit by kicking in to his crowdfunder.
Until some of the tax money spent on kkkops enabling them to arrest, assault, and endanger anti-fascists starts getting diverted to support anti-fascism (hey, we can dream!), The International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund is going to need your support to help take care of the people putting themselves in harm’s way to thwart fascism. Here’s what you can do.