If You Plan To Attend a Peace Rally....

I've seen what the NYC police do and it isn't pretty. I go to these things but I watch from the perimeter and stay away from the cops. I really don't like getting arrested, teargassed or clubbed. It totally louses up my day.

Don't think that by getting yourselves arrested that you accomplishing anything useful. You 're not. You're just fodder for the bully police to get their jollies off by beating you up and for the higher-ups in the lucrative prison industry to try out their new mass-incarceration facilities.

Do not think that just because your parade organizers acquired all the necessary permits to conduct your rally that law enforcement will honor those permits. They won't. Their goal is to arrest as many of you as possible, and are counting on your cooperation to make that happen as smoothly as possible. Their plan is a military strategy and you are the enemy.

The police game plan is as follows: They will corral protesters into penned-in areas and pack you as tight as sardines. They will surround your group and create as much space between you and the public as possible, so you won't be seen and your chanting and signs will be for nothing. Then they will subdivide you into smaller groups, herd you about here and there, deviating way off your approved parade route, and straight towards the waiting paddy-wagons and busses, where you will be cuffed, shackled, and taken to a detention facility.

It's time we stop cooperating with this plan. It's time we understand what we are really up against so that we can effectively resist this brutality without escalating violence. So how do we do this?

Something I call "Guerilla Protesting"

How we can do it is this: Do not stay with your group. Disperse. Have friends check out the perimeter and see what the cops are up to. Then, before the cops get a chance to surround your group, Disperse in all directions. Get out of there. Agree to meet your little clique of friends at some agreed upon location somewhere else. You've got a whole city to canvass and all the cops have converged in one area. Pop up all over the city in little groups of 3 to 5 or so, hold your signs, hand out flyers, talk to people, keep an eye out for the cops, and if they head your way, disperse again and re-convene somewhere else again. But do not engage in chanting slogans. It just annoys the fuck out of people and draws the cops in.

Hopefully you will all eventually end up at your assigned parade destination at the the approximate time that your event is supposed to end up there, which would be a much nicer place then a detention facility. by that time the cops should be all over the city chasing their tails. You will have successfully beaten them without violence, and will show your city and the world that we the people are not just a mass of stupid sheep. And maybe then you can start to really affect some change.

Viva la Revolución!