Saturday, December 20, 2014

No Justice, No Peaceful Shopping

"The Whole System is Guilty as Hell!”

This is one of the chants at today’s civil disobedience at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, USA.  Led by a young black-led group – “Black Lives Matter” – it garnered perhaps nearly 2,000 people interested in disrupting the orgy of commercialism that is the Mall and Christmas.  The protest was against racist police brutality and the legal system that supports it. 

One side of this huge mall was shut down – 3 levels of one side of the ring of shops – for nearly 2 hours.  The mall cops, city cops and State troopers walled it off after the crowd left.  This mall is a hard place to control, as there are many entrances, and protesters more or less look like shoppers.  Perhaps with a fewer bags in hand and more youthful.  It was reported that 20 people were arrested. The TV press naturally started to focus on shoppers whose experience was disrupted.  Or demanded to know why more weren't arrested, given this was 'private property.'  The Bloomington city attorney promised prosecutions to the 'full extent of the law.' While they released 20 with citations, they may go after organizers.  December 23 the city attorney confirmed the would go after the organizers, proving that she really works for the Mall of America and no one else.

Most of the crowd were young white people.  The local organizers had guts to target a national mall like this.  Their violation of the ‘sacred right’ of private property was intentional.  They were first offered a cold parking lot a block from the mall, which was an insult.  So, like Occupy, which thought that public parks actually ‘are’ public (and we found out that they are not…) the organizers made the Mall, which hosts thousands of people each day, an actually ‘public’ place for a brief period of time.

Red Frog
December 20, 2014
Happy Coming Solstice!!!!

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