A world where that doesn't happen: Activists respond to police raids

Originally published at www.rhubarbarism.com on Sunday, Aug. 31, 2008.

[Ed. note: The following is an excerpt of a speech that Starhawk, a well-known activist and radical, gave to a group of about 500 activists gathered in Powderhorn Park of Minneapolis in the aftermath of raids on the homes of anti-RNC activists. Because the raids had just occurred, and rumors were flying left and right, the mood was understandably tense. Starhawk was responding to a concern, expressed by many at the gathering, for the safety of the children of activists during these shockingly aggressive police raids. The sections surrounded by brackets were indecipherable on my recording, but I think the overall speech is well worth the few words we can’t understand.]

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"I have been through a lot of these things, I think I’m pretty tough, but I started crying when it really hit me that we’re really here in Minnesota, the place I was born and the place where my family has radical history going back to the thirties talking about how we’re going to get little children out of houses where police are drawing guns on them. That’s something that should make us all really angry.

It’s [our job] to make a world where that doesn’t happen, not here, not in the third world, not in the black community, or the poor community, or any community [..]. I’m willing to bet that in some ways we have [made that world] by being here, because our job here is to show to ourselves, to the world, to the Republicans, that there are some people who will stand up against a world like that. Even after 8 years of the Bush and of Homeland security, of the removal of our civil liberties, that we’re strong and that even if one of us gets out on the street Monday, that is a victory.

We’re strong but we’re also human we’re also vulnerable and part of our vulnerability and part of our strength is to acknowledge that this stuff does hurt us, I just want to say that all you who had guns pointed at you […] let’s not be so tough that we can’t acknowledge that we have emotions and we have feelings and let’s be fair to one another around that.

Think of our great, powerful allies. We have allies around this city, we have allies around this country who are hearing this news on email who are reading it and looking at it, who are with us. If you have friends back home, if you have friends around the country who don’t know what’s going here, write and tell them, take a few moments today and let them know. Have them start calling the mayor and calling the council and bringing pressure from across the country to have this stop."