An injury to one is an injury to all

[sabotabby]

Like many (most) of you, I'm grieving the murder of Fellow Worker Heather Heyer, a member of the IWW (an organization I was proud to be a member of for many years), the injuries of dozens of others, and the brutal assault of Deandre Harris at the hands of fascists and white supremacists in Charlottesville, VA. Unlike a lot of (white) people, I'm not surprised. This is America with its gloves off. This is what we warned against. It was always going to come to this, and I fear it will get much worse before it gets better, if it does at all.

For a good long time, I've been actively confronting local fascists who organize and demonstrate under the thin veneer of free speech. Plenty of liberals and radicals alike have informed me that this is a waste of time, that the antifa who show up reliably every time the fash demonstrate are not radical enough, are too radical, aren't diverse enough, are too militant, are not militant enough, exclude less privileged people who can't physically show up, are secretly anti-Semites despite a significant number being Jewish, and are just plain doing it wrong. I'm not into calling out individuals and groups, but I have paid careful attention to who I see there, and who I don't see there.

I can only hope that Heyer, Harris, and those standing beside them and fighting back haven't sacrificed in vain. I hope that this is the end of inaction, of false equivalence, of turning our words on each other rather than on the enemy. I hope that this is a clarion call for action.

I'll repost what I said in the Other Place:

Hey GTA people posting your outrage over Charlottesville: did you know that a group of fascists regularly demonstrate at City Hall under the guise of "free speech"? We go to oppose them and try to prevent them from marching. Sometimes we're outnumbered. If you're really angry about what happened, coming out to shut this shit down here before it becomes tiki torches and vehicular manslaughter is a concrete thing you can do.

Also, if you have $ and are not sure which crowdfunding initiatives are legit, this is a good place to start.

Comments

[smhwpf]

It is fucking scary. I think this has woken me up to the need to make sure I'm at every antifa counter-protest I possibly can be. I'm not sure I'm well cut out to do quality violence, but sheer numbers are perhaps most important.

[sabotabby]

Sheer numbers are the most important. The best defence against violence is having more people than them, regardless of how prone to violence those people are. I've seen them scared shitless at a big crowd of little Muslim girls in hijabs singing "O Canada." Granted, the dynamics are different in the US where they have access to guns, but here I've only ever seen physical violence break out when the numbers have been more or less equal.

[ironed_orchid]

Agreed.

Also for the first time in about 6 years I'm not working weekends, so I have no excuse not to attend more rallies/counter protests.