#mlkshutitdown

[artbyamanda33]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Art By Amanda (@artbyamandanelson)

For the third year in a row the Anti Police-Terror Project is calling for a national week of direct action beginning on Martin Luther King day and culminating on Inauguration day. This blessing started the #120hours of action in SF, with an occupation of UN Plaza until the Inauguration. #120hours #reclaimMLK #MLKshutitdown (at San Francisco City Hall)

[fullpraxisnow]

"Rise Up! Resist! Need No killer cops or jail. THE WHOLE DAMN SYSTEM IS GUILTY AS HELL!": Oakland, CA marches to Remember & Reclaim MLK’s Legacy| AmericaWakieWakie

January 19th, 2015

(Set 2 of 2 | Photo Credit: José Antonio Galloso)

[undercommoning]

MLK was killed by an American Sniper.

[fullpraxisnow]

"Rise Up! Resist! Need No killer cops or jail. THE WHOLE DAMN SYSTEM IS GUILTY AS HELL!": Oakland, CA marches to Remember & Reclaim MLK's Legacy| AmericaWakieWakie

January 19th, 2015

(Set 1 of 2 | Photo Credit: Rae Louise Breaux via Facebook, Marc Matheson via Facebook, & Violent Fanon via Twitter)

[miseducationofthenegus]

“Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with.”

— Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1963)

[fullpraxisnow]

Oakland Community Demands Justice for John Crawford III at East-Side Walmart | AmericaWakieWakie

January 18th, 2015

Pictured: John Crawford, 22, was shot and killed Aug. 5th by police in the Dayton suburb of Beavercreek, Ohio, while holding a toy rifle in a Walmart. He was remembered today as protesters shutdown an East Oakland Walmart and placed stickers on products reading "WARNING: Persons of color picking up this object may be subject serious injury or death at the hands of Walmart and police". It has been 163 days since Crawford was gunned down by two police officers, neither of which were indicted.

This action, like several others across the Bay Area this weekend, took place in response to the Anti-Police Terror Project’s call for a weekend of reclaiming MLK’s militant legacy of direct action, a call which came initially from Ferguson Action. The Anti-Police Terror Project is a multi-racial, multi-generational coalition of concerned and committed institutions, organizations and individuals committed to ending state sanctioned murder of Black, Brown & Poor People. 

(Photo Credit: Twitter)

[sosanista]

Black organizers stormed city hall with demands to end violence on black communities. "Today and every day we pledge to resist all state-sanctioned violence, including the economic oppression of Black people in this city. Gentrification and displacement of Black residents is also a form of violence we challenge and resist today."

[fullpraxisnow]

(Photo Description: Members of Oakland's clergy stage die-in after Selma screening and near Lake Merrit)

[a4bl]

OFFICIAL STATEMENT: Third World Resistance for Black Power Reclaiming MLK's Legacy of Militant Internationalism: Linking Third World Struggle With Black Resistance

“Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor. Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken.” -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Beyond Vietnam – A Time to Break Silence, 1967 To kick off Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, thirdworld people and allies have shut down the Oakland Federal Building to demonstrate our support for the heightened struggle for Blackliberation, power, self-defense and self-determination in the U.S. The verdicts in the cases of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice, have drawn renewed attention to the ways that policing and the “justice system” are used to wage war on Black communities in service of imperialism and white supremacy that continues to undergirdthis country. For MLK weekend, we are reclaimingthe militancy and internationalism that was the hallmark of the last phase of Dr. King’s life. We join international movements for the liberation of Palestine, Haiti, and the Philippines, for indigenous sovereignty in Hawaii, for native peoples in the U.S. and Mexico, and for immigrant, worker, queer/transgender, and youth justice in communities in solidarity with the resurging calls to build “Black Power” and “Black Resistance” alongside the original nationwide galvanizing statement that “BlackLives Matter!” Today’s action targets the Oakland Federal Building because of its role in promoting a war on Black people and people’s struggles for self-determination in the U.S. and around the world. Protecting their imperialist economic interests, the U.S. and its collaborators like Israel and its puppet states like the Philippines are co-developing and deploying military and policing tactics in an attempt to perfect techniques of counter- insurgency, crowd and population control, surveillance, and the militarization of local police forces. In the Bay Area, people struggling against surveillance, policing,detention, forced displacement, deportation, and militarization of their schools and communities, both here and in their homelands, are connecting the dots and linking these issues with the systemic problem of settler colonialism in places like Palestine. As the state attempts to tamp down the rising fists of dissent, people’s movements in Ferguson, Haiti, Palestine, the Philippines, and across the globe are only intensifying. And as an extension, today in the Bay Area, we are organizing together and deepening our collective commitment to the increasingly militant struggle for Black liberation and self-determination. We know that we cannot fight imperialism abroad unless we fight its domestic manifestation - violent racist policing- in our own streets. The West has built and structured this world on Black death, while systematicallywaging attacks on third world people in their struggle for self-determination. By exposing and confronting these systems, we seek to weaken their foundations, and strengthen our movements, our communities and our families. For centuries, the devastating consequences of U.S. imperialism have been the order of the day for third world people from Vietnam to Korea, from the Dakotas toHaiti, from the Philippines to Palestine to Pakistan, from Hawaii to Mexico, and from Ferguson to Staten Island. We stand together today in the name of Dr. King, Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, Brown Berets, Red Guard, and AmericanIndian Movement who took on the state-sanctioned attacks on our communities directly, elevating the struggle against state violence and for an end to the capitalist system that deploys killer cops and militarized repression against our people. In the words of Malcolm X: “It is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negro as simply a racial conflict of Black against White, or as a purely American problem. Rather, we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiter.” Justice for Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and all victims of police: End State Violence! From Palestine to Ferguson to Haiti to the Philippines: Fight Back! Long Live International Solidarity! “THIRD WORLD RESISTANCE” Participating Organizations and Allies: Anakbayan-USA, AROC: Arab Resource & Organizing Center, Asians4BlackLives, AYPAL, BAYAN-USA, BASAT: Bay Area Solidarity Action Team, BLIS: Black/BrownLatin@s in Solidarity, Catalyst Project, Critical Resistance, Freedom Archives, Gabriela-USA, Haiti Action Committee, HOBAK: Hella Organized BayArea Koreans, IJAN: International Jewish Anti Zionist Network, the International League of People’sStruggles, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Ruckus Society, VietUnity, Xican@Moratorium #3rdWorld4BlackPower #MLKShutItDown #BlackPowerMatters

For interviews or additional information please contact: Sanyika Bryant – Malcom X Grassroots Movement - 510.485.3125 Ayana Labossiere – Haiti Action Committee – 510.717.4001 Lara Kiswani – Arab Resource and Organizing Center - 530.220.2842 Rhonda Ramiro – Bayan-USA - 415.377.2599 Aurora Lopez – Xican@ Moratorium – 510.390.3004

###

[18mr]

About 25 activists locked themselves together to block two entrances of the Ronald Dellums Federal Building in Oakland Friday morning, check out the Storify and live feed here!