Occupy Bloomington continues to bloom, in deep winter, despite the loss of its camp. (For the many posts on Occupy Bloomington, search this site. The New Year’s Eve Dance Party was what triggered the mayor’s order last week to take the three month Occupy Bloomington encampment down. See this and this and this for that.)
From their Facebook page:
A facilitated discussion following a screeing of Visions of Abolition: From Critical Resistance to A New Way of Life, a film featuring Angela Davis, Ruthie Gilmore, and Susan Burton.
People claimed the streets of Bloomington as their dance floor this New Year’s Eve. After roving through downtown they descended upon the Monroe County Jail where they danced-in the New Year and spoke out against the prison industrial complex. Around 1AM the party began to disperse and a small group of people were targeted by Bloomington Police Department. Three individuals were tackled from behind and violently arrested. Force was used by officers despite compliant behavior.
These brutal arrests in our town are shining examples of the measures the state will use against those who attempt to take back their lives and claim what is already theirs. They are symbolic of the very system of coercive state control that the group was rallying against.
Please join the discussion asking questions like…
Why does the U.S. put so many people in cages? What are the alternatives to incarceration? What is prison for? Do we need prisons? Does prison work?
What work does prison do? Should prisons be abolished? What is prison
abolitionism? What is decarceration? How do prisons and policing matter to
the issues at stake in the Occupy movement? What does abolition have to do
with revolution?
Come talk about all these questions and pose your own!
