Activists Build Community Garden and Provide Food and Water to Anyone in Need.
The Tempe Police Harass and Arrest People.
The City Orders the Garden Destroyed...
Five Days Pass...
Activists Build Community Garden and Provide Food and Water to Anyone in Need.
Again.
The Tempe Police Harass and Detain People..
Again.
The City Orders the Garden Destroyed...
Again!
Tempe's Citizens and Businesses are Collectively Confused...
Details Below!
On Sunday, police in Tempe, Arizona
destroyed a non-city-approved community garden and park for the
second time in a week. The garden, built twice by a non-hierarchical
collective, was first leveled under city orders during the early
morning hours of May Day, and destroyed again this Sunday where a
citation was issued for Criminal Littering after one protester
refused to remove a memorial for the first garden.
The location, a vacant strip of public
land, was chosen after activists were threatened with arrest for
trespassing at the empty lot next door owned by Brookfield
Asset Management, the same company which owns Zuccotti Park.
Left: Before... Right: After... I can't convey how much I wish these pictures were reversed.
A
number of other community members have been arrested, cited, frisked,
or otherwise harassed by the Tempe Police Department. The
crackdown came shortly after Derek Pittam, a detective with the
Homeland Defense Unit of the Tempe Police Department, released an
explicitly anti-anarchist memo regarding organizers of the community
garden. It reads, in part:
“After all, staging events that force the police to
take enforcement action police [sic] is how anarchists hope to erode
community support for local police departments. Anarchists want to
place police in a position so they can say in a clever sound bite,
“See we told you so… the cops are here to protect the interests
of the wealthy!” In actuality, police would provide the exact same
enforcement action to assist any person exercising lawful standing
regardless of their of socio-economic status. These are well known
anarchist tactics that I am all too familiar with.”
Potentially Pictured: Officer Roesch about to give the secret Anarchist handshake, another Anarchist tactic Homeland Security is all too familiar with.
After accusing Anarchists of tactically
tricking police officers into using “enforcement action” in order
to make them look like the bad guys, Detective Pittnam uses the old
stand-by that police serve the law, and the law protects rich and
poor alike. While that may be intended to inspire a warm and fuzzy
feeling in people, its sincerity rings hollow after the Tempe Police
permitted the city to destroy our private property on not one but two
occasions.
“Between the donations in-kind,
materials people bought, plants, soil, building materials, we've
received nearly $2500 worth of materials, between $500 and $1000 of
which have been destroyed, stolen, bulldozed, broken, and taken,”
stated one member of the collective. “Fortunately, we were able to
save a lot of materials for the next build.”
However, if the protesters have vowed
to rebuild, and they are not alone in their vision. Perhaps the most
optimistic outlook came from one passerby. There, with his partner,
as their young son licked a vanilla ice cream cone dripping from the
heat that the ground still radiated hours after the sun had gone
down, he prophesied; “A couple of years from now, there will be a
concrete bathroom where those cops are standing, and a plaque next to
it telling the history of how this garden started.”
...and we wont ask permission to help create that world.
Direct Action Gets The Goods
On the Job, At the School, In the Streets... and in the gardens...
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