Cops outside the British Consulate
The lovely folks at ABC Marseille did an action in solidarity with riot prisoners in London outside the British Consulate in Marseille!
They also had a benefit dinner afterwards where they raised 70 euros for London ABC.
The following is the text of the flyer they handed out at the demonstration:
LONDON BURNING
On August 6th of this year, Mark Duggan, a young black man was murdered by the police in Tottenham. As in the sixties and nineties, a wave of anger and violence followed, which shook at first the poorest districts of London. The fires then extended to Birmingham, Croydon, Bristol, Liverpool … After decades of political treason of the Labour party and the contempt of the “Tories”, an angry class full of resentment rebelled. Among the rioting demonstrators, we find many young people from immigration, twice exploited: by their social condition and by their origins.
The police violence was the spark, but this uncontrolled revolt is also the result of years of budgetary cuts, unemployment, a drastic decline of educational opportunity, and the worst political pettiness against the poor, the dispossessed, the migrants and other marginalized groups. All this left a lot of people with a bitter taste, particularly in the city that converted into financial center of Europe, where some people live a life of excess and abundance while the others survive.
But the answer of the State in front of this outburst of violence was immediate… The repression was quickly organized: more than 16 000 policemen, meant to ” to fight the poverty ” with bats, were deployed in the streets. Result: another young person was killed by the police.
As could be expected, the politics rushed to the microphones of television channels and radios to justify the police violence. The rioting demonstrators are described as “delinquents” and “hooligans”, as thieves. There is no mentioning of social conditions. As in France, the media try to set the young “vandals” against the rest of the society: the young immigrants who succeed socially, the good shopkeepers and the honest citizens who defend their businesses against the looters and the fires.
At the same time, groups of extreme-right as the English Defense League ( EDL) went out on the street to take part in the repression, besides the police.
Finally, the repressive machine also benefited from the narrow collaboration of big companies as FaceBook and BlackBerry who did not hesitate to reveal personal informations on supposed looters and rioting demonstrators to the police.
Until today, those who are in power in England listened to nothing! On the contrary, the narrow relations between the capital, the State and the British media in the repression against this protest movement is the most sensational proof.
What happened in England is not an isolated case. In Egypt, in Tunisia, in Libya, in Iran, in Israel, in Spain, in Italy and other places, protest movements appear …
Facing a growing wild capitalism, facing the privatization of public services, facing the loss of social benefits, the hardening of repressive laws and politics against the migrants, making our lives always more precarious, we cannot remain passive.
FREE ALL PRISONERS!
ACTION AND INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY WITH THE RIOTING DEMONSTRATORS!
ABANDONING OF THE PURSUITS AND DISCHARGE OF ALL THE PRISONERS !
ACTION AND INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY WITH THE RIOTING DEMONSTRATORS !
