On Friday, December 2nd at 3PM we’ll meet at Pace University in NYC and march to 1 Police Plaza for a nonviolent action to protest the NYPD’s policy of racist, unconstitutional searches that targets young people of color in poor neighborhoods. “Stop and Frisk” is a political tool of humiliation and control proven to be ineffective in preventing violent crime, and this event is part of a civil rights campaign to demand the end of the practice in our city. JOIN US!
Above are scans of some of the slides that accompanied Le Tigre’s live performance of “Slideshow at Free University” circa 1999. We juxtaposed protest images (like those above, in which people demonstrate against the police abuse of Abner Louima and murder of Pedro Oregón) with pictures of totalitarian t-shirt slogans that we felt neatly summed-up a long moment of cultural backlash when “protest” was rebranded by snowboarding companies and rap-metal guys.
Now there are new t-shirts, Giuliani’s not the mayor, Occupiers grab headlines, Suze Orman tweets about the prison industrial complex, and the Pepper Spray Cop is everywhere. Is this our moment?
As that UC Davis pepper-spray video went viral, I was still reeling from the arbitrary police violence I witnessed during the November 17th protests at the New York Stock Exchange, and I was waiting nervously for news of my friends who were arrested two days later at a Stop Stop and Frisk protest at the Queens precinct where Sean Bell was killed. For me the most inspiring statement out of UC Davis came from Kirsten Koster, who helped pepper-sprayed student Dominic Gutierrez. She said “When you protect the things you believe in with your body, it changes you for good. It radicalizes you for good.”
Read Monica Behney’s excellent piece “Why I Volunteered to Be Arrested in Brooklyn on Tuesday” to learn more about the issue and her decision to engage in civil disobedience.
