‘Carnival of Liberation’ parade starts at 23rd/Union Sunday

Billed as “a call to invade the streets and brighten the pavement,” the Here Comes Everybody Carnival of Liberation will begin at 1:30 p.m. Sunday at 23rd and Union.

Participants will “parade down the streets of the Central District and display our determination to live freely without coercion, control, or violence,” according to the event description.

Details:

For the lovers of life and the defenders of freedom, this is a call to invade the streets and brighten the pavement. The grid of the city blocks can neither tame nor contain us. Our spirits flow outside and beyond the rigid parameters of gentrification, development, and law. Our beauty is our inability to be defined, categorized, or placed in a cage.

On August 19th, 2012, we will parade down the streets of the Central District and display our determination to live freely without coercion, control, or violence. We are calling all performers, musicians, clowns, carnies, players, children, witches, parents, hustlers, rude boys, santeros, freaks, and old folks to take the streets wearing all manner of clothing and making every type of sound.

The carnival will be multiform and diverse by nature. No one will be turned away from this family friendly event. We strongly encourage the attendance of all who have a commitment to taking care of each other and creating a strong neighborhood that does not rely on the law or the police to maintain itself.

Bring banners to hang across the streets, cook decadent food to share with everyone, dress like a clown or a cat, paint the faces of your children, build a carriage to parade atop, wear Venetian masks, bring a boombox, smoke a blunt, dance in the street, bring your family, and get ready for a the best time of your life. See you there!

50 thoughts on “‘Carnival of Liberation’ parade starts at 23rd/Union Sunday

  1. Tom, please report who is putting this on. Some of the language is quite familiar to me, and no doubt many others by this time.

  2. Duh, it’s a carnival. Of course there will be Unicorns. Are you okay with that?

  3. Ohh boy another anarchist riot, police action, and more bad press from outsiders who are hell bent on their racist mission to represent what they dem is the CD.

    Smebody please call their parents to come get them and take them home!

  4. Sure, Bananafruit. Will there be a winged black horse as well, and poorly written anti-snitching stories penned as if by an Emo, 6th grade girl? Just curious.

  5. UNICORNS! have been deamed unsafe and are banned from the city of settle for less. settle mayor mcgums warned that UNICORNS! will be shot on sight.

  6. The line about the venetian masks might be an indicator that this might be just more BS from out local anarchist groups. Can’t wait to clean up after them. Especially the tagged walls

  7. When was the last “riot”? Or do you consider anybody who expresses their freedom of speech to be rioting?

  8. I don’t care if you kids want to get together and beat your drums to whatever beat makes you happy. Just be safe, kind to your neighbors, and respectful of those around you. Clean up after yourselves and keep the spray paint at home. Thanks.

  9. The fact that Tide of Flames (puget sound anarchist publication) is answering questions on that Facebook thread as to who is organizing (but not really organizing cuz we’re anarchists, and so no one is in charge) this event, answers the question. Although we all knew the answer already. Get ready for some spray paint.

  10. And, here’s one of the apparent organizer’s posting on Facebook. It doesn’t exactly sound like a community friendly event:
    Phillip Neel: …successful revolts (are)…always mixing people from many oppressed backgrounds and often incited by folks who, to begin with, might be seen as “outside agitators.” At the same time, there is always the danger that white radicals in these communities are contributing to the very gentrification they are trying to fight. The only way to avoid that is for us to help make these communities unpalatable for the gentrifiers. Unfortunately, I think that the Central District is an uphill battle in this respect, as it is now majority white, with housing costs in the northern CD now too expensive for most people. Although many of the folks organizing events like this may be white, we do have the overall goal of making most white people scared and uncomfortable–of ultimately making the property values drop.”

  11. MsD,
    Thanks for the quotage. Let’s get into some detail:

    Unfortunately, I’m not one of the main organizers of the event, though I plan on attending (as anyone who opposes gentrification in the CD should!). I certainly support the carnival.

    I am opposed to gentrification. I think it’s demonstrably occurring(/already occurred) in the CD, and I think it’s demonstrably something which does fuel the particular types of poverty cultivated in the US. It works well in doing this, since it moves poorer populations, who are largely people of color, out of sight and even sometimes out of the jurisdictional or infrastructural boundaries of wealthier city cores. I know of many individuals who have had to move from the CD to cheaper housing on the very southern edge of the city (Rainier Beach) or south of the city entirely, into Seatac, Tukwila, Kent or Renton, where they are then exploited in some of the most appalling working conditions (see Davis Wire in Kent, for example, or the condition of the Port Truckers) in our nearest vicinity–or they simply become a surplus population which acts to keep the wages of others low and to fill the stocks of our very profitable private prison complex. The racial disparity in mass incarceration is also empirically demonstrable, and if you want sources for any of this you can simply ask me. I would, for instance, refer to several of the studies coming out of the UW geography and sociology departments about the racial imbalance in our own criminal justice system–Katherine Beckett has a study showing that, though most drug dealers and drug users in Seattle are white, most people picked up for drug related crimes are disproportionately not white.

    So then we have the issue: what to do about something like gentrification, which is, as I have said, demonstrably bad for poor people.

    Ultimately, I believe that shelter should not be a marketable commodity. It should not be traded, it should not be subject to speculation and it should not become a cash cow for wealthy men like Paul Allen and Jim Mueller. As a renter and as a poor person working for little more than minimum wage, I have a clear interest in reducing the property values of homes in my immediate vicinity (the southern portion of the CD). As those property values increase, my rent increases with them OR my house gets torn down to build another aesthetically displeasing condo complex which, ultimately, makes a few rich contractors and developers even richer. If this happens, I have to move, again, to areas of the city that have less net resources–areas that are further from better-paying jobs, from social resources and basic infrastructure that I enjoy using every day (like good roads, clean air and water, access to green space).

    So I think it should be obvious why we oppose gentrification, and why I, ultimately, want to bring your property values down. Making wealthier, whiter people uncomfortable is a really important part of keeping them out of our neighborhoods. In the last decade (judging by census data), the CD has had an explosion of development, foreclosures, and vacant buildings. This is because of speculation by wealthy developers, who seek to develop housing for profit and then sell it at a gain.

    If you want to discuss any of these issues in person, I suggest you come out to our Food for Everyone event at the corner of 24th and Cherry, which we put on every sunday, starting at 2pm. We serve food free of cost to anyone who wants it. This sunday the event is being incorporated into the carnival, however.

    If you have any disagreements with my data, as I said above, I can provide citations drawn from academic studies and the most recent census. If you have different sources of data that contest my argument, please send them my way.

    Other than that, sorry that you don’t feel comfortable when the presence of poverty is made visible to you. Maybe the solution should be for you to help figure out how we might end poverty for good, rather than just sending it out of sight.

  12. So Phillip, in your ideal world who builds apartments, retail, single family homes? Face it, there is population growth, there are aging buildings. After it all falls down on our heads, where do we move? Is anyone who builds something a gentrifier?

  13. phillip, you and omari need to sit down and hash this shit out. let us know when you figure it out. also, you need a thesaurus.

  14. Dennis,

    Are you suggesting that having incredibly wealthy real estate developers speculate on property is the only way to reasonably construct urban infrastructure? I certainly disagree with that, if it’s what you are suggesting. I disagree with it based on historical evidence–this was not always the case, even under capitalism. I disagree with it on the basis of personal experience, having previously participated in the construction of houses that were not funded by money-gouging real estate developers nor by high-interest loans given out by enormous banks. I actually think that the people who build “apartments, retail and single family homes” are called workers. I’m one of them. It’s really cool.

    If you are right, and the only possible system is a system that creates a glut of housing on one end (again, look at the vacancy rates), and a glut of people pushed out of the neighborhood or out of homes entirely on the other end–then what do you actually suggest? We simply resign ourselves to it, pretending it is the “best of all possible worlds?” If this is the case, maybe economic arguments could sway you, such as this overview article with links to a series on artificially induced economic scarcity, from Financial Times:

    http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2012/06/20/1052251/on-abunda

    If economic arguments do not work, I’m not sure what can be done. I assure you that my generation will try very hard to prove you wrong, as we have a bit more hope than you apparently do that things can be changed. We kindly ask that you and your cohorts please stand out of the way as we fix the world that you destroyed.

    Lhunter76,

    Cool story bro. You wanna talk or you wanna troll?

  15. Phillip. There are many countries where shelter is NOT a a marketable commodity. Why are you not there? I ask in earnest because you have choices, let others have theirs. I come from Cuba. Have you been there? Many great things have been produced and rectified from Castro’s regime, but apart from the homes of the die hard Communist (50% of my family) and the foreigners, most of the housing stock is literally falling on people’s head. It hasn’t worked. Some of us have come here to avoid the ceiling plaster on our heads and we don’t appreciate a white person destroying the potential choices we may finally have (college options, financial support for parents, etc…) by investing in our neighborhood and trying to elevate it – not keeping it down. In earnest, I feel your message boils down to that because YOU want a cheap place to live you feel you have the right to keep others in poverty and further militarize the police against us – keeping us outside actual police protection. I feel the income inequities should be resolved by capping and regulating “the top” not the bottom. And I feel that, if you are indeed a white male, that you do not have the right to speak for a group of people for whom you can not even imagine how and what they have to go through each day. Brush off any white man and put him him in a suit and most of his troubles are over. We don’t have that luxury. No matter how well you “dress us up”, there will always be a negative perception until WE have something to offer other than an “problem to solve” and a people to “save”. My mother always said “if you don’t want people to think you’re an idiot/thief/criminal, don’t act like one”. NO solution comes from the outside EVER. It is doomed to fail because it comes from the OUTSIDE – the solution is not internalized. It’s up to us to solve our problems or we will never learn how to. And on a gut level, I feel that any minority leader who looks to a white man/men to solve our problems is a pawn or self serving and whose motivation should be questioned. Note, I will not be responding to any comments as I offer this as a alternative opinion to be considered and feel no need to debate. But feel free to comment or insult without expectation of reply. And if I have the wrong Phillip Neel (white male) then I apologize in advance for my error and assumption.

  16. Lazara,

    I realize that you won’t reply, but I want to clarify two things for everyone else:

    1. I don’t think it’s ok to make invisible the people of color also organizing events like this and participating in our radical community. Many folks who live here and put on these sorts of events are not white. Some are black, some are asian, some are indigenous, some are, in fact, Cuban. There are particular problems with being seen as an “outsider” as a white radical, even if one is poor and working class. I’ve described in the original quoted comment why I think it’s a difficult issue–and why, ultimately, oppressed groups only tend to free themselves if they ally across group boundaries. Staying isolated, and just coming from “inside” has historically tended to guarantee defeat. You can look at the original thread from the facebook event for more on this argument.

    2. It’s not that I “want” a cheap place to live. I NEED a cheap place to live. I am poor. I do physical labor in exchange for minimum wage. Many people are in this situation, and no matter what background you are coming from, it is not okay to just push people southward, into more poverty so that you can have luxury relative to them. No matter what your background is, it is never okay to live a protected life behind police boundaries while others are suffering at your expense outside of those boundaries. If you disagree, then fine, we disagree. We will take different courses of action in our lives, and likely find ourselves in some harsh opposition at some time in the future. But it’s not okay to just use the fallacy of “go to some other country if you don’t like it here.” Things are not good anywhere. We want to change everywhere for the better. You are invited to participate in thinking up better ways to do things. But if you sit in the mire of inaction, saying that this is the best it gets and ready to watch our biosphere collapse, ready to watch millions thrown into abysmal poverty by austerity measures, millions more killed in imperial wars–if you really think this is as good as it gets I am sorry. We want to fight for it to be better. And we will only win if we drop these petty differences and fight the right enemy–the wealthy–together.

  17. Phil. “I so poor that I not white anymore.”

    Lazer. “White people don’t know what poor is. One time I saw a crack in the wall, that’s how poor we were as commies.”

    Phil. “Let’s create a common toilet and live there.”

    Lazer. “I want my own toilet you white scum.”

    Phile. “But I’m not really white – didn’t I tell you I gave up trying and decided to be a rebel. Call me Che.”

    Lazier. “aphile – you sound white to me, what kind of phile are you?”

    Aphile. “It rhymes with white. Hey buddy, let’s burn everything man, like let’s have a festival and just burn everything”

  18. HITLER WAS STRAIGHT FORWARD IN YOUR FACE AND CAUSED EUROPEAN COLONIAL POWERS TO FIGHT OVER CAPITAL (CAPITALISM=NAZISM/EUROPEAN COLONIAL SETTLER “JUDEO-CHRISTIAN TERRORISM)RESULTING IN THE EUROPEAN COLONIAL POWERE TO LOSE ALL OF THEIR COLONIES IN ASIA AND AFRICA. SELF GOVERNING BRITISH COLONIES IN NORTH AMERICA AND PALISTINE ARE COLLAPSING REMANANTS OF THIS BYGONE EUROPEAN SETTLER COLONIAL JUDEO-CHRISTIAN TERRORISM. THE ATTEMPT TO SET UP NEO-COLONIAL POLITICAL ENTITIES IN IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN, PAKISTAN, SOUTH AFRICA(NEO-APARTHEID),PAKISTAN AND ELSE WHERE THROUGH HIGH TECH “DRONE TERRORISM” HAVE BANKRUPTED THE USA A SELF GOVERNING BRITISH SETTLER COLONY ESTABLISHED THROUGH THE MOST EVIL FORMS OF PHYSICAL, CHEMICAL, GUN, BIOLOGICAL, AND MENTAL DESTRUCTION (MENTICIDE)OF THE NATIVE AMERICAN’S AND BLACK REFUGEES FROM THE BRUTALLY VICIOUS “AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE” ENFORCED BY EUROPEAN COLONIAL SETTLER JUDEO-CHRISTIAN TERRORISM (IE GEORGE WASHINGTON “GUN VIOLENCE”). THE RESULTS OF “INDIANS” BEING MOVED FROM “RESERVATION” (CONCENTRATION CAMP)TO RESERVATION WILL NOT AND HAS NOT WORKED ON BLACK FOLKS AND ONLY LEADS TO RIOTS AND RACE/CLASS WARFARE (SEE KERNER REPORT ON CIVIL DISORDER FROM THE “LONG HOT SUMMER 1960S). “THOSE THAT DON’T LEARN FROM HISTORY ARE BOUND TO REPEAT IT” YES “THE TRUTH HURTS AND THE ABSOLUTE TRUTH HURTS ABSOLUTELY”!!! STAY TUNED FOR THE “REVOLUTION WON’T BE TELEVISED” IT WILL BE ON THE INTERNET AND “FACEBOOK”!!! OMARI TAHIR,66 YEAR RESIDENT OF AFRICATOWN/CENTRAL DISTRICT AND WORLD TRAVELED HISTORIAN

  19. man, these people are insane. they really think a newspaper is planning a carnival and therefor…graffiti???? i seriously doubt these people are real, most likely cops in the east precinct on the troll.

    btw, you all should donate to Tides of Flames new movie:

    http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1229639368/metropolis-a-film-2012

    or check out their paper:

    http://tidesofflame.wordpress.com/

    PS

    gentrifiers have guilty consciences that make them do weird things. the comments on this website show it pretty well

  20. FYI EUROPEANS ARE NOT “WHITE AMERICANS”? CHINESE ARE STILL CHINESE, JAPANESE ARE STILL JAPANESE ETC. WHY DO EUROPEANS IN AMERICA TURN INTO WHITES AND NOT “EUROPEAN COLONIAL SETTLERS”(NO LONGER FRENCH,GERMAN, ENGLISH, SWEDISH)? WHY DO AFRICANS TURN INTO BLACKS BUT NOT BLACK SKIN EAST INDIANS, ARABS, PALESTINIANS, ITALIAN, SPANISH? IS THIS A FORM OF MENTICIDE (DESTRUCTION AND/OR RECONSTRUCTION OF ETHNIC IDENTITY BASED OF COLONIAL “DIVIDE AND CONQUER” NOT SO SOPHISTICATED ETHNIC OPPRESSION STRATIFICATION (WHITE/LIGHT SUPREMACY AT THE TOP AND BLACK/AFRICAN INFERIORITY “SUBHUMAN”) STILL SAY THE TRUTH HURTS AND THE ABSOLUTE TRUTH HURTS ABSOLUTELY! STIL WAITING FOR INTELLIGENT FACT BASED REBUTTAL AND NOT HEAD IN THE SAND “THE NAKED KING IS SO WELL DRESSED” IGNORING OF “EUROPEAN COLONIAL SETTLER JUDEO-CHRISTIAN DRONE TERRORISM”? OMARI TAHIR, 66 YEAR ARICATOWN/CENTRAL DISTRICT RESIDENT AND WORLD HISTORIAN

  21. Thanks, Philip Neel, for lifting the scales from my eyes. I genuinely thought that the radicals in our community were interested in creating cohesion and change. After reading the event Facebook page it’s clear that the political intent is instead narcissistic manifest destiny. I.e.: We moved here, we will grab it and change it to reflect our vision of how to best suit our current needs.

    Then, on this blog, white privilege (from what was very likely an expensive education) allows you to unthinkingly supersede the people of color here and speak for them, without understanding that many of the striving middle-class black families have been here since the 1940s and have no interest in your ideas. Then, when someone adds some facts from Cuba you condescend to him in the most insultingly way (There are Cubans with us…, the equivalent of deflecting from accusations of racism by stating, I’ve got black friends)

    I had hopes that after the abject failure of Occupy to grow beyond its core group (because of the childish insistence on form and a blank refusal to decide on ways to actually progress) would be cause for reflection and would create an opportunity to this time embrace and welcome others not cut from the same cloth. To instead create change by being truly inclusive by listening to other people. Instead it’s a closed club, an echo chamber, “either you agree with our childish vandalism instead of coherent political action or get the hell out.” It’s clear your intention is to antagonize (such adolescent reasoning that it’s stunning you’d admit to it).

    Occupy comes into a neighborhood and decides to re-make it in its own image – to reflect generally temporary under- or un-employment situations. As Lazara pointed out, due to the color of your skin and your expensive education when opportunity knocks for you, and it will, you’ll be a full-fledged participant (as you are now, without awareness of it). I imagine you in 10 years, the director of a non-profit, dining with lobbyists and legislators and still congratulating yourself erroneously on how you’re not part of the system.

    It would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic and uninspiring –deciding to come in and categorize members of a community that you haven’t even yet begun to understand – naming some people as gentrifiers (which seems in your view to be tantamount to oppressors which is an un-nuanced reading, breathtakingly under-informed) without realizing that you are part of that oppressive continuum acting out of white privilege, defining terms to satisfy your view of yourself and resolutely and self-righteously remaining impenetrable to dialogue except on your own terms.

    I stand corrected; if you represent the anarchists then you aren’t part of our community, concerned and committed to change. It seems like commitment to preening narcissism and self-interest, from your writing to be sadly reductive, not self-aware and not very politically sophisticated. Having a ‘carnival’ with the intent to reduce people’s investment in their community (by destroying or vandalizing property) isn’t a step towards community change – it’s more of the same; people acting from sheer self-interest and claiming themselves as morally superior for doing so. Very disappointed, I did have hope…

  22. How many of you who are organizing or attending this event live or have lived in the CD?

  23. Phillip,

    Could you please tell us what your definition of “the wealthy” is? I’m genuinely interested how you define this group.

    Thanks.

  24. this is why i marvel at the comments on this website…

    now it is taken for granted that the carnival will produce vandalism. phil neel is not an organizer, neither is the anarchy newspaper, so why not everyone chill the fuck out, eh?

    I had hope this website would lose is aura of being a forum for fascistic gentrifiers to openly plot with the police about how to further sterilize the CD. based on the comments it seems like another few months of this shit and there will be way more hatred on the street (which at this point, especially re: grumbo, mrsd, etc, is well deserved).

  25. hey imseeee

    stop speaking for me, please. you are so bloated with privilege that you can’t see how hypocritical your comment is. also, you think you could loan me 350 bucks for this months rent?

  26. insaneinthemembrane – Your comment hurts me deeply. It really does.

    Phil! I get your point, although a bit pedantic and insulting at the end (-2 points for trying to be just mean and insulting at the end, but +2 for a well thought out rant). My question is this: WHY will you not just be honest and say “We’re having a rally to make certain people (insert label here) fear living in the CD, and to make property values drop! Come to the F you and F your property values parade! NOT family friendly, NOT inclusive.” Why not just be honest? Hell, I’d show up to see that were it billed honestly, as would my many neighbors of color (many of us multicolored!) who are, by the way, property owners.

  27. I get deleted each time I post the public records regarding some well known folks in the “Decolonize!” group. Needless to say, I could only find one living anywhere near the CD. Even if you multiply that by 10, that’s fewer people than are selling drugs outside my local store right now. Big woo.

  28. imseee,

    If i’m incorrect about gentrification occurring, please, inform me. If there is some detail I’m missing by not being born in the CD, please inform me.

    If you’d like to continue your ad hominem disguised as an attack on white privilege, please do so.

    If you have an actual argument, please state it.

    Privilege is not embedded in the simple fact that a speaker is white, it is embedded in whether or not what they say reinforces racist stereotypes and helps to justify the continuing unequal distribution of wealth, which primarily benefits white people.

    In this regard you seem to be defending racist dynamics in the community, justifying the forcible removal of its poorest residents. To me, that seems to be speaking from a position of privilege. Considering the strong racial aspect of that forcible removal, it also seems to be racist.

    The original thread quoted from above gets into some detail about the subject of white radicals and poor whites in communities like the CD being used, usually unwittingly, as the battering ram of gentrification.

    I’m sorry to say that I disagree with your analysis of privilege. The type of privilege politics standpoint you are taking seems to be more often used to prevent alliances being formed between people of different race but of the same underclass–relegating anyone not of a particular group to being an “ally” of that group, not allowed to provide an analysis or organize in any way. Here is a more detailed explanation of that, from a POC radical crew down in Oakland:

    http://escalatingidentity.wordpress.com/2012/04/30/who-is-oa

    Otherwise, did anyone on here want to actually confront the fact of gentrification? Did they want to argue that it wasn’t happening or that, if it was happening, it is not a bad thing? Did anyone want to provide evidence, as I have? Or did we want to troll each other?

    And if we wanted to troll each other, could you old people learn to troll a little better?

    Finally: why are people assuming this carnival is going to be an orgy of spray painting and window-smashing?

  29. deathtofascism: I do read your publication. Some of it is interesting, but the horse / don’t be a snitch / glorify arsonists tale was just so me-in-7th-grade-english-wearing-black-eyeliner-and-being-all-emo that it was actually painful. Yeeeeeeesh. (They didn’t call it Emo back then, but you get my meaning.)

  30. I hear ya D. It was indeed a good post. I just picked up on the poor me – I’m not white complaint. Like all whities have it easy. It’s just another form of racism and it is Lazaras directing negative feelings on himself and the white community – not the same negatively intended racism but with equally negative results.

  31. When did they smash up the courthouse? That qualifies as a riot. How many and how large of a riot should we accept?

    I saw a three black kids get off a bus. Does that count?

  32. I remember a CD when it was safe to walk the streets! Now there are Unicorn, and angry suburbanite commuting organized anarchist parades! Im a pull out my best parade chair and bong and enjoy this one here, its going to be epic!

  33. And I shall take a break from uptightyness, set my chair next to yours and pull out a blunt. Except I don’t really have access to such supplies. Everybody thinks I’m a cop.

  34. imseeee ‘s post above is the most well thought out, concise, on the mark comment I’ve ever read on any online blog or news source. Fantastic.

  35. Phil – When you decolonize the CD are you going to remove whites like yourself, and all the black folks who came in waves during WWII to purchase – at desperation sale prices – the homes and businesses of Americans of Japanese descent? These Americans were stuffed in to horse stalls at Long Acres racetrack in winter before being shipped to American concentration camps. Schools in the CD lost more than half their student population to the camps during this time and the Japanese-American population was actively discouraged by the U.S. government from returning to the West Coast (and what was there to return to, when they’d lost their homes and businesses). By 1940 “Japan Town” was concentrated “on both sides of Yesler between 5th Avenue S and 23rd Avenue S. The internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II virtually depopulated the Central District’s Japanese community. The old Bailey Gatzert School, opened in 1921, lost approximately 45 percent of its student body during this period. Relatively few Japanese returned to the area after the War and the Our Lady Queen of Martyrs parish was closed in 1953, with the property becoming the St. Peter Claver Center, an interracial center serving the growing African-American population in the Central Area….The African-American population remained relatively small in Seattle, not exceeding 4,000, until the demand for military/industrial workers during World War II attracted many workers from the East and South,
    many of whom were African-Americans. At that time the Central Area was one of the few locations where African American residents could purchase property and avoid hostility from neighbors.” – Horace Mann Public School Landmark Nomination Report

  36. You mean Tom castigated me unnecessarily a couple of weeks ago when I suggested these idiots move on/out of the CD? They don’t even live here to start with? Thanks for doing the research, MrsD.

    I think all we accused gentrifiers should show up with Guy Fawkes masks (“Venetian” masks??? Do they even know who Guy Fawkes was?)

  37. Wow, the Facebook link is full of personal attacks upon anyone, including residents, who asks a question about this event. Jeez Louise.

  38. They’ve apparently occupied an empty building on 24th and S. Lane. Autonomia, anyone?

  39. I was wondering if it was only coincidence that the march was headed in that direction given the banner they were carrying. When I saw them, there were a couple dozen bicycle cops behind the group – didn’t they stop them from trespassing, knowing the recent history of the building? Here we go again.

  40. 1. If your ancestors settled here, i.e. – your family didn’t come here as cargo, you are a gentrifyer/invader from birth.

    2. If you pay taxes in any form, you support police terror locally against your black and latino neighbors, and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq against our non-white neighbors in those places; plus hundreds of CIA covert operations around the globe.

    3. If you openly and willingly support amerikkka, especially as a demokkkrat or a republikkkon, you tacitly support:

    – the wholesale robbery of the amerikkkan worker via govt/taxpayer bailouts for the banks and the auto industry, plus the cash cow for the HMOs called ‘Obamacare’.

    – the wholesale killing of the poor by Obama’s drone planes, among other atrocities.

    – suicide and IED attacks upon amerikkkans by Al-Qaida.

    4. WAKE UP, GOD DAMMIT! http://www.allpowertothepositive.info

  41. You pay taxes every time you buy anything. So do you just steal to avoid this dilemma? I’m curious. Also, when you pay taxes you fund food stamps, GAU, SSDI, etc. Are you against those things? If so, please turn in your EBT card.