NYE Noise Demo @ MCC Chicago
Cheers y’all, to another year of raising hell against the prison state in solidarity with our comrades and community behind the walls. Chicago did it right again with a rambunctious noise demo outside the Metropolitan Correctional Center, the hellacious downtown federal jailscraper. Mobile laser sound systems blasting, pots and pans clanging; bird whistles and a gaggle of megaphones filled the air with chaotic rhythms. Folks inside loudly banged windows from every cell window and floor, showing us dance moves and light shows of their own. “Free Them All!” we chanted, demanding the release of Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and all political prisoners; and called out the pigs for the murder of Dexter Reed in his car, Sonya Massey in her home, Cory Ulmer and Robert Brooks behind bars, just a few of the over 1300 people murdered by police this year. On the street, plenty of passing revelers stopped by to see what the street ruckus party was about, checking out the zine cart and even helping hold the ACAB banner. The crowd marched around the building to make sure people on all sides got to see that they are not forgotten, to share the countdown to the end, to ring in the new year and join in on the dance party happening on the street.
An overwhelming pig presence surrounded the area for hours in advance: cruisers lining the streets with dozens of cops idling on corners, a fence blocking off the plaza was installed since last year. Despite their seeming omnipresence, we resisted, shaking their fences and shooting fireworks bouncing off the heights of those brutalist prison walls, exploding joyously outside cell windows. Later, some went to the ICE field office conveniently located down the street visible from MCC. The pigs were too slow to stop a little redecoration with an important unwelcoming message to incoming Trump ICE dictator Tom Homan: painted on the front efface, “Die, Homan. GTFO Chicago”, “Abolish ICE”. We marched on for several blocks before disappearing into the new year for more late night revelry; unfortunately, after everybody had already dispersed, some sneaky pigs apprehended at random a few people at a CTA train platform; one was held overnight and released with a misdemeanor.
It’s imperative to mark the connections between the carceral state and the xenophonic white supremacist colonial project of of mass deportation; many more prisons and jails are being planned to be built to process the millions of lives they intend to interrupt. Homan, the incoming “border czar” says Chicago is ground zero on day one of the incoming Trump regime: but they underestimate how fiercely determined and prepared people are to defend our city from their racist federal stormtrooper armies. We reject the racialized copagandized ‘dangerous city’ narrative crafted by an entire ecosystem of police scanner bros, racist nightcrawlers, and low-orbit suburban MAGA chuds feeding video clips to FOX and other right-wing outlets, who all year have spread disinformation and sensationalist lies, hyping up crime and demonizing migrants to the point of absurdity. They’ve been laying the groundwork for the incoming regime to attack the good people in our supposed leftist “Sanctuary City”, but even despite this policy, neoliberal administrations fail our newest residents with embarrassingly insufficient social services and decrepit ‘shelters’. A coordinated astroturf campaign from the right has been underway to divide communities and erode the public, an attempt on Illinois MAGA takeover: dustbin of history types Paul Vallas and Darren Bailey have failed mayoral and gubernatorial power grabs, but unfortunately Eileen O’Neill Burke snuck through as new top prosecutor, a racist FOP-backed former judge who in her first week dropped charges against Oak Lawn pig Patrick O’Donnell who committed a brutal hate crime against a 17 year old Palestinian. Caught between cowardly neoliberals and fascist onslaughts, it’s time to break from elections, reforms, and turn to each other to carve new paths.
Crime will be the main vector in which the incoming fascist regime will leverage in justification for their abhorrent plans to deport, meaning our strategy of defending against this must apply abolitionist frameworks and a rejection of “citizenship”, “peace”, and their “law and order”. The struggle to overthrow carceral society is tied directly to the fight for inherent and forever rights and unstoppable force of migration. Facing an untenable dystopic future, more people are realizing the necessity to organize autonomously and collectively, to fight to survive against this fascist wave of aggressive prison politics going buck wild with Trump’s re-election, and to build a more liberated existence. Escalate against the state and support the comrades willing to take risks to bring it all down!
Remember, it wasn’t too long ago that two people escaped from MCC with bedsheet ropes from above the 10th floor of this downtown monstrosity, a reminder that no wall is too high to deter our desires and stop the will of people yearning to be free. Free Them All!!
Submitted anonymously via email.