As organizers and activists in the city of Philadelphia, we’re excited to find ourselves caught up in this vibrant new movement. Few things have happened in Philly since we can remember that have looked so much like a genuine expression of popular power and direct democracy on a large scale. In this movement, we see an opportunity to truly challenge a system controlled by and serving elites. We love this and are full-heartedly engaging in this insurrection!

At the same time, we’ve found some of the dialogue regarding Occupy Philly’s relationship to Mayor Nutter and the police deeply disturbing and detrimental to fighting this system controlled by profit, greed and exploitation. Nutter has come out embracing the occupation that is on the doorsteps of his offices, claiming he too is part of the 99%. During the first night of the occupation, Nutter even received warm embraces by Occupy Philly campers. At the General Assembly, numerous voices stressed that Nutter and the police have come out as our allies. While the mayor has some clear political aspirations and obligations in regards to our occupation, we feel he’s already exposed himself over and over as an enemy of struggling communities in Philadelphia and has always worked in favor of the 1%. The mayor has chosen a strategy of appearing to embrace the protests in an effort to ensure that he and his bad policies do not become a target.

Both Mayor Nutter and police chief Ramsey have made careers for themselves by catering to and doing the work of the rich and powerful in ways that have pitted organizers for social justice against him time and time again. Both Ramsey and Nutter have consistently made decisions with brutal (even deadly) impacts on the lives of struggling Philadelphians while giving elites and powerful corporations massive tax breaks, protection and preferential treatment.

This of course may not be apparent to folks who have not followed some of these movements. So here is a quick roundup of just a few of these recent fights:

Following the election of Obama, many folks involved with a spectrum of different anti-racist work were left dumbfounded by the rise of the aggressive and often explicitly racist white Tea Party movement. Though the Tea Party Movement had been funded in the millions, enjoyed the enthusiastic backing of Fox News and was being manipulated by powerful forces on the right, it was also clear that the right was comfortably engaging with a sector of the North American working class largely abandoned by the broader left.  In the throes of economic crisis many formerly enfranchised whites were looking at serious setbacks. In response the left for the most part smugly responded by dismissing the crazy tea baggers while white supremacists and conservatives moved into largely uncontested territory. In looking for exceptions, I decided to check out the John Brown Gun Club, a group of white working class anarchists who before the emergence of the Tea Party movement, had been sowing class struggle and anti-racist solidarity amongst mostly white gun enthusiasts in Kansas. Here I interview long time anti-racist gun slinger Dave Strano.

On September 3rd police approached Askia Sabur in the doorway of a Chinese Restaurant at 55th and Landsdown where he was waiting for food. Police threw Askia to the ground and subjected him to a storm of violence. For nearly 3 minutes, 6 cops swung down on him with clubs, cracking his skull and breaking his arm in the process. A video recorded from a cell phone shows Askia on the ground, handcuffed by one hand, blows raining down with no indication he was even physically resisting the abuse, let alone attempting to fight off the cops. One cop in an apparent frenzy of rage and violence pulled his gun and pointed it at individuals in the crowd including the person filming. Police then did what they always do after sending someone to the hospital: they pressed charges. For being a victim of the beatdown, Askia was charged with assault on an officer as well as attempted robbery (of the cops baton).