Connecticut College Left (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} ccleft) wrote,@ 2007-03-19 18:33:00 |
|
Report Back from Brown SDS Anti-Textron Action
So this Monday (the 19th) I went down to Providence to go to Brown SDS's die in at Textron. Textron is a weapons manufactorior that just recently procured $93 million contract with the US government to produce cluster bombs.
I arrived around noon, grabed some lunch from the awesome Falffel place on Thayer St. and then wandered around until I found the Brown SDS kids. It was around 40 people, mainly Brown students, but also some SDSers from URI and RIC and others just there for solidarity. We gathered together around a block away from the Textron site and discussed the plans for the aciton. Then we took the streets as we walked there, chanting and holding banners and signs. When we arrived in front of the Textron building, we took the street in front of it. Then several SDSers, dressed in business suits and posing as the executives of Textron, broke from the crowd, and in stage whispers talked about their nefarious plans to build cluster bombs that would be used against innocent civilians. Then they threw their cluster bombs into the crowd, and we all fell to the ground, writhing as "blood" (strawberry jelly) frothed from our mouths and covered our hands. There were several news cameras around, the ones I noticed were from NBC and Boston Indymedia.
The "innocent civlians" then roused themselves and stood with the evil executives and chanted against Textron. Then, after a rousing speak by one of the Brown SDSers, we approached the building and smeared the white marble with "bloody" hand prints. Unfortunately, some of crowd were roughly turned away by the cops present, but still an impressive array of hand prints made it to the wall.
Then we took the streets again and marched back to the Brown campus, leaving our comrade Vall to continue talking to the reporters (this was a big mistake). We walked back to the campus chanting, receiving much support from pedestarians on the sidewalk; but unfortunately they did not join us. When we reached Brown campus , still being followed by the cops, we had a short shout-out to everybody who came and then dispersed. But then we realized that Vall had never caught up with us. Eventually it came out that he was arrested. So around 15 of us walked over to the "Providence Correctional Facility Complex" also known as the Police Station to give jail solidarity to our comrade. After around 2 hours and much fuss by the police, he was released with a misconduct charge (they originally tried to charge him with malicious defacement, but that was dropped, probably when they realized that we had used jam rather than paint).
So all in all, the action went pretty well, espicially as I managed to leave Providence before rush hour.
-Tristan
So this Monday (the 19th) I went down to Providence to go to Brown SDS's die in at Textron. Textron is a weapons manufactorior that just recently procured $93 million contract with the US government to produce cluster bombs.
I arrived around noon, grabed some lunch from the awesome Falffel place on Thayer St. and then wandered around until I found the Brown SDS kids. It was around 40 people, mainly Brown students, but also some SDSers from URI and RIC and others just there for solidarity. We gathered together around a block away from the Textron site and discussed the plans for the aciton. Then we took the streets as we walked there, chanting and holding banners and signs. When we arrived in front of the Textron building, we took the street in front of it. Then several SDSers, dressed in business suits and posing as the executives of Textron, broke from the crowd, and in stage whispers talked about their nefarious plans to build cluster bombs that would be used against innocent civilians. Then they threw their cluster bombs into the crowd, and we all fell to the ground, writhing as "blood" (strawberry jelly) frothed from our mouths and covered our hands. There were several news cameras around, the ones I noticed were from NBC and Boston Indymedia.
The "innocent civlians" then roused themselves and stood with the evil executives and chanted against Textron. Then, after a rousing speak by one of the Brown SDSers, we approached the building and smeared the white marble with "bloody" hand prints. Unfortunately, some of crowd were roughly turned away by the cops present, but still an impressive array of hand prints made it to the wall.
Then we took the streets again and marched back to the Brown campus, leaving our comrade Vall to continue talking to the reporters (this was a big mistake). We walked back to the campus chanting, receiving much support from pedestarians on the sidewalk; but unfortunately they did not join us. When we reached Brown campus , still being followed by the cops, we had a short shout-out to everybody who came and then dispersed. But then we realized that Vall had never caught up with us. Eventually it came out that he was arrested. So around 15 of us walked over to the "Providence Correctional Facility Complex" also known as the Police Station to give jail solidarity to our comrade. After around 2 hours and much fuss by the police, he was released with a misconduct charge (they originally tried to charge him with malicious defacement, but that was dropped, probably when they realized that we had used jam rather than paint).
So all in all, the action went pretty well, espicially as I managed to leave Providence before rush hour.
-Tristan
