from Facebook
[August 26 2PM to 6PM at Clark Park 43rd St and Baltimore Ave]
from Facebook
Back by popular uprising! On August 26th from 10AM-3PM Food Not Bombs will be holding ANOTHER all vegan brunch, book and art sale to raise funds for comrades. $5-$10 for brunch (no one turned away for lack of funds!) Tons of great books, radical merhcandise and art for sale.
ALL money collected will go to in need comrades, we will update with specific recipients soon!
[LAVA Space 4134 Lancaster Ave]
from Facebook
An amazing friend and accomplice Sophia was beaten by police at an Alt-Right Counter Rally in Seattle the day after Charlotesville. Most of y’all knew her when she lived in Philly, but now she goes to school in Seattle.
At the counter-rally, she was hospitalized and had to get a ct scan and stitches in her head. We are trying to raise money for her to cover her hospital bills (copay for insurance, and any healing requirements). We are looking for bands willing to play a set for her! if you are interested, please message us, or comment!
Door fee will be sliding scale, if you can do 5-10 bucks, that’d be great, if you can’t donate, no one will be turned away.
Here is her statement:
“Hey y’all I just wanted to let everyone know that I am doing okay. Yesterday I had to go to the hospital after being hit in the head multiple times with a wooden baton. I had to have lacerations in my scalp stitched up and get a ct scan. All results came back clear with no internal bleeding or skull fracture. I am still on watch for any vision, neck and nerve problems that might occur from blunt force to the head. I am so thankful that I currently have health insurance and all of my medical expenses besides a co-pay are covered. Thank you to so many of you who reached out about helping with medical expenses. I encourage you to donate funds to folks effected in Charlottesville. My injury resulted from police protecting white supremacists. They are reporting no injuries even though many folks were attacked with chemical weapons, flash bangs, and blunt force. The police do not exist for protection. They exist to uphold oppression, white supremacy, capitalist interests and will use any means necessary to do so. This injury will not keep me off the streets and I will continue to fight. I am just so thankful that injuries were not worse.” please to not share for protection, but you can copy/paste if you would like”
[August 24 from 8PM to 10PM at LAVA Space 4134 Lancaster Ave]
from Insurrection News
On Sunday in Philly a banner was hung from the Reading Viaduct and pamphlets were thrown into the street in solidarity with the anti-fascists who fought in Charlottesville.
from Facebook
[August 12 7PM to 9PM at City Hall]
From Philly Antifa
We’ve written about Ellsworth George Lewis on the site before, but we’ve learned he was recently appointed as the leader of the Pennsylvania Alt-Knights.
In response, Anti-Fascists around the state and region are launching a push to get Lewis fired from his job at Taylor Hospital in Ridley Park, PA.
Take a few minutes and call the hospital at (610) 595-6000 and let them know what you think about them employing racist misogynists like Ellsworth George Lewis.
Here’s a good example of what might want to say when you call.
Hello,
You are currently employing Ellsworth George Lewis III, who was recently appointed to be the Pennsylvania Commander and State Point of Contact of the Pennsylvania Alt-Knights. Alt-Knights are a group of alt-right fighting squads and has been featured in Hate Watch by The Southern Poverty Law Center.
Lewis has been in the news several times in the last few months for his involvement with the “Kekistani Movement,” which has involved Lewis carrying a modified version of a Nazi battle flag around the country and participating in various far right and fascist rallies while looking for confrontation with protesters. The “Kek” flag also has added elements from 3%er militia groups and Ku Klax Klan imagery. Lewis intends to be in Charlottesville this coming weekend to participate in the “Unite the Right” rally being organized by Neo-Nazi and other far right groups including the National Socialist Movement and American Vanguard. Lewis’ activities should be cause of grave concern for you and represent a threat to your staff and patients, and do to his recent move to a leadership position within the Alt-Knights I would like to see him terminated immediately.
from Facebook
A Conversation With Tilted Scales Collective, Human Rights Coalition and Philly J20 Defendants On How To Beat The Authorities When They Drag Us Into Court
In April of 2010 six prisoners at SCI-Dallas were charged with riot after a coordinated protest against abusive conditions in solitary cofinement durng which they covered their cell doors with sheets and bedding material. On January 20 2017 over two hundred protestors who attended a spirited ‘anti-fascist, anti-capitalist’ march were chased by police, assaulted with chemical weapons and mass arrested. They were initially charged with riot and conspiracy. Several months later those charges were expanded to include numerous other felonies and the 211 remaining defendants face up to 75 years in prison. The case against most defendants is not that they specifically commited a crime, but that they entered into a criminal conspiracy by covering their faces and wearing black. How do we defend our movements when the authoriteis attack? How do we work together to win in court and protect each other?
Join Human Rights Coalition (a group of prisoners families and supporters), Philly J20 defendants and The Titled Scales Collective (a Los Angeles based legal support collective) for a conversation about how we act together to keep each other safe. Tilted Scales will be in town discussing their ‘Tilted Guide To Being A Defendant’, a comprehensive guide to facing charges in the criminal legal system to help defendants not only figure out how to handle their legal cases, but also how to think about their cases personally, politically and legaly. People who have faced cases or who are currently caught up are encouraged to attend and participate in the discussion. Of course we will not talk about specifics about any case (what someone did or did not do that led to charges) in a way that could jeaporadize anyones legal defense. However, we will talk about ways we can act in solidarity in the courts and through the legal process and how we can build resilient movements that can withstand state repression. Come and be a part of the conversation!
Sponsored By Up Against The Law Legal Collecitve, Philly J20 Solidarity, Tilted Scales Collective, Human Rights Coalition, Irish Against Oppression and Decarcerate PA
[August 8 from 6:30PM to 8:30PM a Arch Street United Methodist Church, 55 N Broad St]
Submission
Seen this in South West Philly
from Instagram
Philly Stands with J20. #defendj20
from Unicorn Riot
Harrisburg, PA – On Tuesday, July 25, a judge on Pennsylvania’s Environmental Hearing Board ordered a temporary stop to all horizontal drilling operations underway to construct the Mariner East 2 pipeline. The ruling against Sunoco Logistics (which recently merged with Energy Transfer Partners) was issued as part of an ongoing lawsuit by Clean Air Council and other environmental groups. It requires the pipeline company to cease all horizontal drilling activities, but permits other construction activities, including non-horizontal drilling, to continue.
One day earlier, on July 24, a Public Utilities Commission judge had also ruled to grant an emergency order sought by West Goshen Township to “cease and desist all current construction” in their area. West Goshen alleges Sunoco violated the terms of a Settlement Agreement made with the township in 2015 by building on township property without permission, ignoring local regulations, and parking in front of the local fire department’s driveway.
Pipeline contractors employed by Sunoco Logistics have had a series of “inadvertent returns“ (drilling slurry spills into groundwater) along the pipeline route, including but not limited to; spills in Chester County, Blair County, Delaware County, Westmoreland County, Washington County, Allegheny County, Indiana County, and Huntingdon County.
According to Clean Air Council, court filings made last week “disclosed 61 drilling fluid spills and water contamination in multiple Pennsylvania regions.”
Earlier this month, we visited neighborhoods in Chester County where drilling leaks in West Whiteland Township had ruined local sources of drinking water.
The $2.5 billion dollar pipeline would carry natural gas liquids such as propane, ethane, and butane from frack fields in Scio, Ohio, across West Virginia and Pennsylvania to export terminals at Marcus Hook, near Philadelphia, where they would be shipped across the sea for use by the European plastics industry.
In Huntingdon, in central Pennsylvania, tree-sits at Camp White Pine have blocked the Mariner East 2 right-of-way for many months. Sunoco work crews began preemptively clearing trees on the Gerhart family’s property in 2015, bringing sheriffs’ deputies who arrested several people. Many trees of a conserved forest plot were cut down but some trees were occupied, and remain to this day as part of a tree-sit village. Sunoco is active in areas near Camp White Pine, but despite a recent court injunction giving police more authority to make arrests on the family’s private property, they have not yet tried to retake their eminent domain easement on the Gerhart’s land.
[Video]
The order to halt horizontal directional drilling lasts until the next Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board hearing on August 7. Sunoco reportedly expects to be able to resume drilling after the hearing, promising to “demonstrate that we have expended every effort to meet the strict conditions of our environmental permits.”
The lawsuit, filed in 2015 by Clean Air Council, Mountain Watershed Association, Inc., and the Delaware Riverkeeper Network seeks to stop Mariner East 2 entirely, asserts that permits from the Department of Environmental Protection “failed to adequately address the severe negative impacts of the pipeline project on Pennsylvania’s streams, wetlands and forests.” The case heads to trial at Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court later this year.
from Insurrection News
In the dark hours between July 24th and 25th two vacant residential construction sites and a back hoe had their windows smashed in Greys Ferry in South Philly.
Solidarity and complicity with grand jury resistance in North Carolina!
Solidarity and complicity with J20 rebels facing repression!
Solidarity and complicity with imprisoned anti-fascists!
Fuck gentrification!
from The Fire Inside
There is a fire seething in US prisons. September 9th of 2016 saw some of the largest prisoner rebellions in history. This August, prisoners are calling to fan the flames up again.
Participants in last year’s mass mobilization and nationally coordinated prisoner protest are calling for another wave of actions starting on August 19th of this year. In order to succeed and combat the brutal repression prison rebels face there must be robust, visible, and widespread support on the outside. To that end, we’re putting out a reportback zine and organizing speaking tours to distribute it.
Read our tour announcement for more info.
Mon July 31- Philadelphia, PA
6PM at A-Space
4722 Baltimore Ave
from Facebook
from Unicorn Riot
West Whiteland Township, PA – Construction of the Mariner East 2 natural gas liquids pipeline faces several new obstacles as local authorities and the public respond to a series of drilling accidents.
Sunoco/Energy Transfer Partners recently voluntarily stopped construction in certain areas where horizontal directional drilling for the pipeline had contaminated local water sources. After a meeting with township officials on Friday, July 14, the company announced that it was halting drilling operations in Chester County “indefinitely.” The horizontal directional drill (HDD) has been withdrawn from the site at Whiteland West Apartments where it had been active until last week, and has been sitting unused in the parking lot at St Peter and Paul Catholic Church and School.
It is unclear how long drilling in the area will stop, and if construction activities other than drilling are still taking place. Sunoco Logistics reportedly intends to blame Union Pipeline contractors, who had been operating the drill in Chester County, and replace them with workers from Michels Corporation, a pipeline contractor known for its work on the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines.
Sunoco admitted puncturing an aquifer in Exton while drilling on June 22, and has offered bottled water and hotel vouchers to over a dozen residents whose water supply either disappeared or was tainted. The incident has been described as an “inadvertent return” – an accidental process in which a chemical slurry of underground drilling lubricants ends up flowing back towards the surface, contaminating any local waterways in its path.
Contaminated water from a tainted well in West Whiteland Township
Sunoco has paid to attach several homes to the public water system after their private wells were tainted with drilling slurry containing chemicals. However, problems with the aquifer feeding the public water system have also been reported since drilling began last month. Before residents started reporting contaminated water, the company had ignored requirements to notify downstream residents 72 hours before starting to drill.
Permitting paperwork from February of this year shows both Sunoco and Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection were aware that drilling was likely to damage the local aquifer. Despite this knowledge, Sunoco was given regulators’ blessing to drill anyway.
Earlier this month we heard from affected residents in Chester County about how pipeline drilling accidents are impacting their neighborhoods and their lives:
Water contamination from drilling has also been reported in other counties along the route of Mariner East 2. Blair County reported an ‘inadvertent return’ earlier this month. On Monday, July 17, another drilling spill was reported at a Mariner East 2 HDD site in Middletown, PA, in Delaware County:
On Monday July 17th, Middletown Township reported to residents that the township had been made aware of a bentonite spill at Sunoco’s HDD drilling site behind Tunbridge apartments. Middletown Township reported that they had been notified around 4:30pm, and that PADEP had also been notified and was responding to the event. It is reported that the spill reached Chester Creek. – Middletown Coalition for Community Safety
On Tuesday July 18, a Middletown resident posted a video of the drilling spill site to Facebook and noted how contractors’ efforts to contain the spill seemed inadequate.
Sunoco had previously spilled drilling slurry into Chester Creek in Delaware County earlier this year while drilling in Brookhaven on May 10. The Middletown Coalition for Community Safety is demanding that Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) revoke “prematurely issued water obstruction and encroachment permits” for Mariner East 2 as well as calling for a moratorium on all pipeline construction. State Senator Andy Dinniman, of West Whiteland Township, also alleges that Sunoco used loopholes in DEP regulations to ignore potential impacts private wells when applying for permits.
Additionally, Sunoco is facing legal action from the Chester County township of West Goshen, which seeks an injunction to immediately and indefinitely halt construction on Mariner East 2. West Goshen Township supervisors, who voted unanimously to petition Pennsylvania’s Public Utilities Commission (PUC) for an emergency order, allege that Sunoco began pipeline construction at an unapproved location without notifying them or asking for their permission. Township officials also say Sunoco pipeline crews ignored local construction and safety regulations, and have repeatedly blocked the driveway to the local fire department with their vehicles.
Several hundred miles west in the Susquehanna Valley in central Pennsylvania, tree-sits at Camp White Pine still block Mariner East 2’s route through Huntingdon County. The property is owned by the Gerhart family, who have refused to allow pipeline work crews onto their property despite repeated rulings against them by local courts on behalf on Sunoco. Huntingdon County judge Georce Zanic recently approved an injunction sought by Sunoco to allow police to arrest the Gerharts (and/or their supporters) on their own property at the pipeline company’s request.
One of several tree-sit pods at Camp White Pine, on the route of Mariner East 2 in Huntingdon, PA
With drilling paused in Chester County, the blockades at Camp White Pine still in place, and neighborhoods along the route self-organizing to respond to pipeline safety issues, hundreds of miles of Mariner East 2 are still incomplete. Nonetheless, Sunoco Logistics (‘an Energy Transfer company’) claims the pipeline will be operational sometime this year. The line would carry liquified gases such as ethane, butane, and propane from frack fields in Scio, Ohio across Pennsylvania to export terminals at Marcus Hook, where it would then be shipped across the Atlantic to a plastics company in Scotland.
Stay tuned to Unicorn Riot for more updates as we continue to report on this unfolding story.
from It’s Going Down
Six months ago, on January 20th, the spectacle of a peaceful transition of power was smashed by hundreds of brave souls who descended on the streets of Washington D.C. and numerous other cities in these so-called United States. Their defiant rejection of the newest authoritarian regime set the stage for continued resistance against Trump and all those who keep us in chains.
On that day in D.C. an anti-capitalist / anti-fascist march was violently suppressed by the Metropolitan Police Department in conjunction with the US Parks Police. Chemical weapons were deployed indiscriminately, while storm trooper riot cops attacked demonstrators, bystanders, and supporters with a volley of flashbangs, stinger grenades, and rubber bullets.
After the smoke settled that afternoon, over 230 people were kettled for hours in a cold January rain without access to food, water, or restrooms, and were then hit with a felony rioting charge. Since then, over 200 of the #J20 defendants were re-indicted on 7 or more new felony charges and are now facing over 75 years in prison. The #J20 defendants are working collectively to fight back against a state that seeks to criminalize dissent by locking them in cages for the rest of their lives.
Their bold resistance will not be forgotten.
Their sacrifices will not be in vain.
These trumped up charges will be fought and defeated.
We call on our comrades in this week of solidarity to #DefendJ20!
Solidarity with all #J20 defendants! Solidarity with all those who oppose fascism and capitalism! Solidarity with all those fighting for autonomy and dignity!
Love and rage,
Philly
