On Friday 13th, June 2014, around 8:00PM, an angry crowd of about sixty people converged
on the Durham County Detention Center in downtown Durham for the June 11th international
day of solidarity with long term anarchist eco-prisoners Marie Mason, Eric McDavid, and
all others whom the state has imprisoned. The crowd brought banners bearing messages of
solidarity with those inside, one even saying ?We Are the Bad Luck? with a provocative
image of a cop being kicked, drums, a variety of noisemakers, and a giant crow puppet
which waved around visible to inmates, until it eventually blended in with the night sky,
creating a witchy silhouette. Bandanas were brought along with ?How to Do It? posters,
which provided info about how to mask and bloc up properly in order to conceal one?s
identity from police or random do-gooders who might be filming. Almost immediately, a pig
tried to talk to us, but his unwelcomed chit-chat was stopped ultimately when people
gathered around him and drove him away with loud, disruptive drumming.
We stayed on the left side of the jail for about forty minutes until we began marching
toward the front. DPAC (Durham Performing Arts Center) was hosting an event that evening
for the Israeli dance company, Vertigo, which was also a target of protest by some, and
presumably to keep us from interrupting it, twenty or more bike pigs were stationed
outside. We stayed across the road from them on the jail side banging loudly on drums,
waving and screaming to prisoners, and holding banners up for them to see. The crowd moved
closer to the jail, and firecrackers and other fireworks were thrown at the entrance. Soon
after, about fifteen or twenty pigs wearing yellow shirts who were part of the Detention
Emergency Response Team, whose function is specifically to stop rebellions inside, came
outside armed and unhappy. They created a line in front of us and the jail, physically
pushing us back when possible. More firecrackers were hurled at them, hitting and bouncing
off the prison guards. A couple days later we heard back from a prisoner that many could
see the confrontation from their cells, and were thrilled.
Several minutes later, we moved back to the railroad tracks, chanting, still drumming, and
banner-laden. Caring little for the consequences, prisoners inside placed signs on their
windows, which were hard to read from our position, but presumably as in the past, bore
messages of thank you?s, acknowledgements of them hearing us and seeing our banners and
floating lanterns, and fuck you?s to the jail and all the pigs who keep them locked
inside. The guards eventually, as far as we could tell, made the prisoners take down their
signs. Lanterns were lit, and more fireworks were set off, and loud pops echoed through
the streets as firecrackers were thrown there. We marched further down to the leftmost
back corner of DCDC, where we continued being as loud as possible for about twenty minutes
or so. After marching back up the sidewalk, we gathered in a tight cluster, silent for the
longest thirty seconds ever, and then erupted with the loudest drum beats and screaming
noises we could make as our finale. We then dispersed. No one was arrested.
This demonstration was an important catalyst for future actions of resistance in Durham
for several reasons:
1) You Can Crush the Flower, But You Can?t Stop the Spring This was the first public
display of anarchist-oriented resistance since the winter, when the marches for Jesus
?Chuy? Huerta kicked off. Participants donned masks, bloc?d up, and damaged police
property as a response to the obvious cover-up of the police killing seventeen year old
Chuy. The first march saw the police headquarters vandalized, a cop car window smashed,
and anti-cop graffiti sprayed downtown. The second march which led up to a vigil at the
spot where Chuy?s life was ended at the police station, was brutally repressed, ending in
several arrests, and riot police teargassing the crowd and beating people with sticks. The
third and final march had fewer participants than the previous two, and happened just
before another vigil inside of the church that Chuy and his family attended. In a
disgusting PR stunt, police chief Lopez attended the vigil which sparked outrage from the
family, and caused some in attendance to walk out. The march went past a police
sub-station where windows were again broken and cop cars were vandalized. These marches
set a precedent for street marches in the Bull City. None of them were permitted, many
people chose to mask up, and property destruction wasn?t halted by the ?good citizen?
crowd in spite of a scare campaign by the city council and police chief Jose Lopez. When
the police fucked with people, people fought back with their rebellion, refusing to be
corralled away from the streets. See the zine ?Unforgiving and Inconsolable? for a more
thorough analysis of these specific incidents.
2) Your Laws Are Bullshit After the winter street demonstrations, the city of Durham and
the DPD made a public statement reaffirming certain ?protest rules? that were disregarded.
They made it clear that marches must, from now on, take place on the sidewalk, during the
daytime, without masks, without pyrotechnics, and without property destruction. This
demonstration disregarded most of these things explicitly, and the call for it outlined
the reasons for this. These legislative attempts to quell dissent were put in place
specifically to criminalize people and youth of color, and general rebellion that isn?t
defined as civil and productive. The fact that there were people present to challenge
these laws with the intensity that they were is an accomplishment. They didn?t fuck with
us because we didn?t let them.
3) All Prisoners Are Political Prisoners: Solidarity With All Prisoners! Prisoners inside
of the Durham jail, like all jails and prisons, have been subjected to horrible living
conditions, denied basic rights, and have struggled against racist prison industrial
complex. Our solidarity extends not only to our immediate comrades who have been
incarcerated for challenging and attacking oppressive, capitalist institutions, but to all
those who are survivors of the hegemonic tool of the state that is meant to continue the
legacy of white supremacy and patriarchy. This also comes near a time when a hunger strike
at the Polk Correctional Institution in Butner began.
Until every cage is empty,
Fuck DPD and every cop who ever did his job
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» US, June 11th Solidarity Noise Demo Reportback from Durham, North Carolina