{"id":941,"date":"2011-05-30T18:08:21","date_gmt":"2011-05-30T23:08:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/waronsociety.noblogs.org\/?p=941"},"modified":"2013-02-03T16:51:40","modified_gmt":"2013-02-03T22:51:40","slug":"new-york-action-against-the-rapist-pigs-of-the-nypd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/waronsociety.noblogs.org\/?p=941","title":{"rendered":"New York: Action Against the Rapist Pigs of the NYPD"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>from <a href=\"http:\/\/anarchistnews.org\/?q=node\/14684\">anarchistnews<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Justice is Revenge&#8230;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>On May 26th, NYPD officers Moreno and Mata were acquitted of raping a  woman in her East Village apartment. The cops in this city have a long  history of acting with total impunity while unleashing their brutality:  rape, torture, and murder on the city all without any serious response  from the rest of us. We are not naive enough to believe in the &#8220;justice&#8221;  system that the police are a part of, and furthermore, we were not  surprised that Moreno and Mata were acquitted despite overwhelming  evidence of their guilt. We, however, were and still are filled with  rage.<\/p>\n<p>Inspired by both the rowdy end to Friday&#8217;s protest of the acquittals,  which saw hundreds facing off against the police, briefly blocking the  entrance to the Brooklyn bridge, and repeatedly pushing back police  attempts to corral protesters onto the sidewalk; we are also extremely  encouraged by anti-police actions in Seattle, Oakland, and Denver, and  we decided it was time to push back.<\/p>\n<p>Saturday night we converged on the intersection of Bowery and Houston  street in Manhattan. The intersection was blocked and held for 15  minutes, fireworks were set off, and hundreds of fliers were thrown into  the air while anti-police chants were screamed into the night and  dozens more leaflets were distributed to motorists and passersby.  Traffic came to a stop as Saturday night revelers gathered to observe  the sight of masked people holding a major intersection. Posters bearing  photos of Moreno and Mata with &#8220;NYPD Rapists&#8221; emblazoned on them were  simultaneously wheat-pasted on walls throughout the area. Eventually,  feeling that our point was made clear, we headed north up Bowery taking  the entire street. At this point trash cans and other debris were thrown  into the street. A garbage can was also sent through a plate glass  window of a Chase Bank before the crowd quickly dispersed into the  night. We encountered no police response to our actions and suffered no  arrests.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->This small, yet successful, action was only a beginning. We have had enough of police terror in this city, the tide is turning.<\/p>\n<p>This action is dedicated, in total solidarity, to Amelia Nicol,  currently in jail in Denver, Colorado facing trumped up charges for  taking a stand against police terror.<\/p>\n<p>Below is the full text of the flier distributed last night:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Moreno and Mata: Pigs Let Out of Their Sties<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>We hate to say, that unfortunately, we&#8217;re not surprised&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>After the rape and torture of Abner Louima; the years Officer  Wilfredo Rosario spent soliciting sexual favors with the threat of  arrest; the sexual attacks made by Officer Frank Wright; the sodomy of  Michael Mineo on a Brooklyn subway platform; the mutilated corpses of  young women appearing on the shores of Long Island being linked to  current and former cops; as well as the countless incidents of police  brutality that don&#8217;t make it to the front pages; one can easily  recognize a long history of violence, sexual and otherwise, clearly  attributed to New York State&#8217;s police departments. With this graphic  record allowed to speak for itself, the sexual assault committed by  Officers Kenneth Moreno and Franklin Mata is nothing less than the  pitiful behavior that we have come to expect from the NYPD.<\/p>\n<p>In societies such as ours, the most striking expression of the forces  of power and domination are the uniformed police on every corner.  To  uphold their authority, police are allowed exceptional recourse to  violence, and earning a badge, in many instances, means acquiring an  open license to rape whomever one pleases. The prevalence of sexual  violence by police should not be understood in terms of sex, but is  instead, a violent and coercive act motivated by the urge for power and  domination.  It is only in extreme cases, when police violence exceeds  the threshold deemed tolerable by public and legal standards, the Blue  Shied is then quickly brandished to absolve all culpability. The swift  hand of \u201cjustice\u201d at best, confines the police to a sentence of cushy  deskwork or a paid exile in their suburban homes.  More often, they are  simply let out of their sties and back into the streets to reconvene  their terror.  It need be said: that these observations are not appeals  for a fair trial by judge and jury, but rather to implicate the judicial  system\u2019s role in this broader cycle of State-institutionalized  repression, which was constituted by violence, and can only function by  perpetuating it.  And while the acquittal of Moreno and Mata left many  of us with a stinging sensation from a public slap in the face, an  adequate condemnation of their actions must also extend to the entire  police, judicial and prison system.<\/p>\n<p>It is true that the State and its servile police uphold the  patriarchy, which is decisively shaped by other forms of domination. In  this contradictory society, where the property relation unquestionably  rules, women are deemed both public and private property. In relation to  their fathers and husbands, women are still thought of as possessions.  Thus the police, designated solely to guard the rights of property,  half-heartedly defend the well-being of women, not as living human  beings, but in the same way they would protect a proprietor\u2019s car,  house, or any other inanimate and purchasable item. If on the other  hand, a woman is thought to have no discernible &#8220;owner,&#8221; then she is  considered to be an unclaimed object readily available for use or  plunder. With this in mind, we point to the innumerable instances, in  which women, most often poor and\/or working-class, report having been  raped, and the police sardonically reply with the question: &#8220;What were  you doing walking around in a neighborhood like that, alone?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The very same State, that condones, justifies, and aptly promotes  rape, is given the chance to secure another reprehensible victory, when  its said critics fall prey to a limited political vision and confront it  with a single issue campaign. We feel the need to reprimand the false  opposition, in their various manifestations, for again proving to be  astonishingly inept in recent days. On the one hand, we are obliged to  mention the noticeable absence of the various anti-police brutality  organizations and consider this a clear indication that they have joined  the other side. On the other hand, we censure many of the feminist  groups in New York City, who talk a big game, always reassuring their  comfortable existence within their tiny and insignificant activist  circles, yet seem quite happy to give their silent consent to the  police&#8217;s activity by doing little to nothing in response. To reduce the  conduct and subsequent acquittals of Moreno and Mata exclusively to a  question of violence against women, or to a question about police  violence, leads us to a dead-end, always missing our target, which left  unscathed, wins again by default.<\/p>\n<p>When more than half the population of living, breathing human beings  is inexorably regarded as things, no amount of legislative reform or  conclusive judicial rulings can cure the symptoms afflicting an ailing  society.  In our present situation, we can therefore only rely on  popular justice.  A justice, in which, there is no room for judge, jury  and trial; instead, there exist only the masses and their enemies with  no mediating body in between. Furthermore, the masses, when they  perceive somebody to be an enemy, and when they decide to punish this  enemy, they do not rely on an abstract universal idea of justice, the  farce passed off in a court of law, they rely only on their own  experience, that of the injuries they have suffered, that of the way in  which they have been wronged, in which they have been oppressed; and  finally, their decision is not an authoritative one, that is, they are  not backed up by a State apparatus which has the power to enforce their  decisions, they purely and simply carry them out.<\/p>\n<p>We vehemently cite Stonewall in 1969, Los Angeles in 1992, Cincinnati  in 2001, and Oakland in 2009.  For justice to finally become a  substantive it requires that it take the form of an angry mob; aroused  and incensed in the middle of New York City, carrying with it an  unmatched fury as it stampedes down city blocks, to then finally descend  upon One Police Plaza with a tremendous impact, unleashing a carnage  comparable only to the devastating force of a natural disaster.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Justice is Revenge!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; May 28, 2011<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from anarchistnews: Justice is Revenge&#8230; On May 26th, NYPD officers Moreno and Mata were acquitted of raping a woman in her East Village apartment. The cops in this city have a long history of acting with total impunity while unleashing &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/waronsociety.noblogs.org\/?p=941\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2532,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[880],"tags":[155,170,59],"class_list":["post-941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-actions","tag-amelia-nicol","tag-new-york-city","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/waronsociety.noblogs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/waronsociety.noblogs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/waronsociety.noblogs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/waronsociety.noblogs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2532"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/waronsociety.noblogs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=941"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/waronsociety.noblogs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6444,"href":"https:\/\/waronsociety.noblogs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941\/revisions\/6444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/waronsociety.noblogs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/waronsociety.noblogs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/waronsociety.noblogs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}