If you’re new to actions with an arrest risk and you don’t have experienced protestors with you, there’s stuff you can find online about having a legal team, writing the name of a lawyer on your body, saying NOTHING to the cops except the name of your lawyer, etc. That’s all good advice.
But let me give you a bit of advice that is just as essential as all that:
If one of your comrades gets arrested, and you know they can be held for 6, 9, 12 hours, depending on where you are, you get a group of people together and you wait outside the police station.
You may be tired, you may be stressed, it may be freezing, you may need to take turns, but you take whoever can still physically and mentally bear it and you go to that police station and you wait for your comrade. You can spend the time taking care of each other, drinking hot drinks, doing whatever gets you through, but you wait.
And when your comrade gets out, you make sure they do not walk home alone in the dark thinking about the fucked up experience they just had, you make sure there’s a big fucking crowd of their comrades there to greet them with hugs and hot drinks and a cigarette if they smoke.
And whether the arrested comrade that just got out is happy or sad or pissed off, you take that for what it is and give that space and you support that. And you get them a hot meal and you hang out with them and you offer to let them stay at your place or you stay with them so they don’t have to spend that night alone with their thoughts.
You do this every damn time, regardless of whether you really like that comrade and regardless of how you feel about the thing your comrade got arrested for, regardless of how often they’ve been arrested. Because you never know how shitty their experience is going to be in there this time.
Trust me. This is absolutely essential. Once you’ve been arrested and have felt the difference between walking home alone or having your friends waiting for you, you’ll understand.
Be good comrades
I can’t stress how important this is. When my father and I were arrested in Seattle some years back for agitating for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, we were greeted outside the jail by the event’s organisers. They cheered us, had cokes and munchies for us. They drove us to our car and, during the drive, asked if we wanted to stay the night in Seattle with one of the organisers, they filled us in on what had happened after our arrests, they asked about and listened intently to what we experienced from arrest to release. They did so much so well that when another call went out for potential arrestees, we were amongst the first to raise our proverbial hands.
Read the post. Re-read the post. Remember it. And, when the chance comes, do it.
I can say that this type of exhaustive report on an obscure topic at least makes individual fiction writers very happy: “YES! Finally some hard data in tavern attendance and drink prices in 1780s Bruges!”
me, looking at the current state of the world, crying:I wish none of this had happened…
Gandalf, materialising in my conscience, smiling kindly: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, besides the will of evil.
One of the more fascinating and horrible details in Reuters’ thoroughly fascinating and horrible long-form report
on Trump’s cruel border policies is this nugget: ICE hacked the
risk-assessment tool it used to decide whom to imprison so that it
recommended that everyone should be detained.
This gave ICE a kind of empirical facewash for its racist and inhumane
policies: they could claim that the computer forced them to imprison
people by identifying them as high-risk. The policy let ICE triple its
detention rate, imprisoning 43,000 people.
Blacksad: Under the Skin first screenshots. The game will launch for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC, and Mac in 2019.
About
Blacksad: Under the Skin is based on the world of the comic book series Blacksad, created by Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido and published by Dargaud.
For the first time, players will be able to see their hero John Blacksad in 3D, along with some of the game’s settings: the boxing club where his investigation begins or an alley in the city of New York, as imagined by Pendulo Studios and YS Interactive.
As part of this novelesque exclusive adventure, players will play the private detective John Blacksad, a cynical, seductive and nonchalant anthropomorphic cat.
“We want the player to discover all sides of John Blacksad’s complex personality and choose the one he wants to be,” said Pendulo Studios game designer Josue Monchan in a press release.
Story
In 1950s New York, Joe Dunn, the owner of a humble boxing club is found hanged. At the same time, Robert Yale, his protege and greatest hope, is reported missing. Although overwhelmed by these terrible events, Joe Dunn’s daughter, Sonia, decides to continue working towards her father’s dreams: she takes over the boxing club and calls on John Blacksad to investigate this mysterious disappearance. It’s the eve of the fight of the year and the club, which is in serious financial difficulties, will not survive Robert’s withdrawal. The investigation will lead John Blacksad to the very heart of a world in which corruption reigns supreme.
Mooncustafer 