Iron Snowflake

(this is a day late as the server was down last night and I was deployed today to the big Tampa USF mess)

Early AM on the 29th of April, Campus cops and even a vice provost launched a failed attack on the Students for Justice in Palestine emcampment at GWU.

An attempted arrest was defeated by a sucessful unarrest. Next, the barricades placed by the university in an attempt to isolate the protesters were ripped down and piled up. This was an effective reprisal for the failed raid and sets up the joining of the core protest with the secondary camp just outside the former barricades.

Orlando’s Critical Mass bike rides are huge, this April was no exception

Note that Friday, May 31 will be the last ride to start at the temporary Lake Highland Park location, in June the rides move back to the usual spot.

Ford Fischer got the video above of the mock execution scene.

On the 27th of April, protesters laid siege to the White House correspondent’s dinner,blocking some road access routes and forcing corporate media to run a gauntlet of protesters to get into the famous “Hinckley Hilton” where the dinner was held.

There were a reported 12 arrests, including a 15 year old Black protester who was subjected to a cop sticking a flashlight down the back of his pants. This can be considered a sexual assault of a minor by a police officer but will never be prosecuted as such.

Part of the protest included a rememberance of all the journalists murdered by Israel. Bloodstained press vests were laid out with the names of the murdered journalists on them.

Some of the protesters staged a mock execution first of blindfolded and partially stripped civilians, then of the “journalists” covering the scene.

Video: a speaker at the GWU occupation on April 26 warns against arrests or suspensions, reminding everyone that students have the power to shut the school down.

On Friday, the 26th of April, DC’s Mayor Bowser ordered MPD to reject a demand from George Washington University that they forcibly clear the pro-Palestine occupation. Apparently such a sweep is illegal on the university’s private property unless proceeded by declaring the students to be “trespassers,” which in turn would require prior suspension, expulsion, or other formal orders to leave probably the entire campus.

The Washington Post reports the probable motive for this actual compliance with the law may be fear of an “optics” problem. MPD was set up for an early AM sweep against a relatively small group holding the protest area, but someone would have been guaranteed to either escape with video or shoot long range video with a zoom lens.

With threats of National Guard use at least at Columbia University and Kent State having been invoked, any use of MPD and Bagshaw’s violence against student protesters at GWU could create ugly publicity for Bowser. There would even be the risk of protesters marching on shopping areas such as Georgetown or Chinatown to shut them down. So far, the student occupations have been largely free of such spillover action.

Thus, MPD was limited to beseiging the protest, letting anyone out who needed to leave but trying to prevent anyone else from getting in.

On the 23ed of April, “Genocide Joe” Biden foolishly visited Tampa, home to the largest Palestinian community in Florida and one of the largest in the whole US. The largest pro-Palestine protest I have seen in months descended on his campaign event. Speakers called out not only his genocidal war in Gaza, but his do-nothing hypocrisy on abortion rights, LGBTQ rights, and migrant rights. Biden came to Tampa to peddle the “vote for me or face a national abortion ban” message, but this message fell flat with the protesters.

It has been two years since the Dobbs decision to allow state level abortion bans. A Federal ban would presumably be blocked by a Democratic fillibuster in the Senate (assuming the Dems have any spine left at all). In 2021-2022 before the Jan 2023 Congress began, Biden could have rammed through Federal legislation to codify Roe v Wade, blocking the state bans in all 50 states. Manchin and Sinema could have been reeled in with threats to fund primary opponents against them, and on abortion they probably would have both kneeled. Instead, the only thing Biden has done on abortion or on the wave of anti-LGBTQ hate unleashed by Dobbs is talk. He cares about abortion VOTES only, not about abortion rights.

As for the rights of Palestinian women, Biden and Trump seem to speak as one on this issue: if you are Palestinian, your only “right” is to die under a storm of US bombs and missiles shipped to Netanyahu’s extreme-right regime in Israel.

Activists are not having it: Biden events are being protested everywhere, and the message “remember in November” has been going out since October. Trump and Biden both support genocide in Gaza. Remember Trump’s Muslim ban and move of the U$ Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Casting a vote for either major party candidate is consent to and endorsement of genocide in Gaza. Such a vote is tantamount to joining the IOF.

Also present in the area of the Biden event were a half dozen Trumpers including an “Ultra MAGA” flagged pickup truck. Note that “Ultra MAGA”is a dog whistle for neo-Naziism. A few pro-Biden protesters also showed up, and a dozen or two antiabortion extremists. None had anything close to the numbers of the pro-Palestine protest, not even within the same order of magnitude.

Selected clips from live feed of the climate march against the 2024 Spring Meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Washington DC

(video by DC’s own Chuck Modi)

On the 15th of April, DC area activists descended on a Northern Virginia office of Lockheed-Martin and shut it down with a hard lockdown including lockboxes

On the 15th of April, pro-Palestine protesters across Turtle Island shut down freeways, bridges, and arms contractors. Thousands more participated in protests from coast to coast.

Orlando did not sit out this wave of protests. Answering the call from the A15 global organizers, protesters gathered at the Post Office, calling for a refusal to pay taxes that fund this war and a total blockade of the US economy. One of the chants asked taxpayers “how many kids did you kill today.” A speaker explicitly called on people to refuse to pay taxes that fund US bomb deliveries to Israel and to refuse to participate in the economy funding the genocide. Just off to the side were the bike cops who have been dogging pro-Palestine protests in Orlando for months now.

Until now, the IRS had not appeared on pro-Palestine radars in this way. This is not good news for those who profit from genocide.

Elsewhere, a Lockheed-Martin office in Virginia (near Washington DC) was shut down. I-95 was closed by a direct action team in Philadelphia while a big march took the streets downtown. At least one road to PortMiami blocked was blocked by protesters at the price of 7 arrests. Northrup Grumman got access to their Parking lot shut down in S Charlotte. In Minnesota, Wells Fargo got their windows smashed, and an Amazon distribution center was blockaded.Tesla got shut down in Fremont, CA. Chicago’s O’Hare airport was beseiged behind a freeway blockade for 2 1/2 hours at the price of 40 arrests.

Tampa FL managed to blockade Zack and Ashley, holding southbound traffic into the city for about 15 minutes. That one I could have been at, but with Twitter blocking 3ed party frontends I had zero notice of it until now. nitter.poast.org just managed to get back in it seems

For every major blockade there could easily have been a dozen or more smaller protests, as the whole community responded at once from coast to coast. Today’s actions large and small, spicy and otherwise were all about the same thing: putting genocide under a siege of our own. The combined total of all these protests and direct actions put some serious points on the board for Gaza.

On the 13th of August, the “Yes on 4” referendum kickoff rally and and march were held at Orlando’s Lake Eola. Some speakers told personal stories about having had abortions they never, ever regretted. Chants of “Yes on 4” rocked the paviliion before the rally became a march.

At one point, the march appeared to stretch fully halfway around Lake Eola, with lead elements at the far side of the lake while trail element were still leaving the pavilion area. This was the largest protest I’ve ever seen at Lake Eola.

A few dozen Christian nationalists counterprotested for an extreme forced-birth agenda, most of the time separated by a line of bike cops. One of them was Keith Hanley, an infamous and violent forced-birth extremist known for harassing clinics. One clinic defender called him a Nazi. Several times he has come close to getting himself arrested for assault

On the 11th of April, pro-Gaza protesters showed up in force at Valencia College. With them was a woman the college fired for writing “Free Palestine” on a bulletin board.

The woman fired for writing “Free Palestine” first on the bulletin board’s post-it notes meant for commentary, then on a blank sheet of paper that replaced the post-it notes was the keynote speaker. She chewed out the college for violating her rights and supporting genocide, then warned that the free state of Gaza would outlive Valencia College.

Displeased with the protest, the college made some kind of call to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department that brought a half dozen cars and a dozen cars. They may have been dissatisified with the Florida State Police, who sent only three apparent carloads of cops. For all the cops, protesters still outnumbered them. The Orange County deputies didn’t stay long, it seems they were not impressed with having so many of them tied up by Valencia College whining again about peaceful protesters. False police reports are not unheard of during protests.

When I was covering HLS protests in DC, there were at least two proven false police reports filed: one claimed a peaceful residential protest was an armed home invasion, the other claimed “shots fired” at a peaceful office protest.