from Facebook
Presentation by the French collective Desarmons-les!
The collective “Let’s disarm them!” was founded in 2012 by anarchist activists who for several years faced state violence and were directly affected by the use of grenades and rubber bullets. Invested in major radical anti-capitalist and ecological struggles between 2011 and 2015 (anti-nuclear and against “useless big construction projects”), the collective met other groups opposed to police violence, street medics, but also many victims, mutilated or close to people killed by the police.
At the end of 2014, “Let’s disarm them!” participated in the building of a national network of mutilated people, the “Assembly of the Wounded”. The state of emergency decreed at the end of 2015 after the attacks of Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan fundamentally transformed the French society and the militarization of the public space accelerated between 2015 and 2018, together with a sharp rise of the far right. Members of the collectives were under house arrest and on numerous occasions prohibited from demonstrating, arrested and brought to justice. The revolts against the labor reform and those of the Yellow Vests between 2016 and 2019 were harshly repressed. Many people have been injured, mutilated and imprisoned.
A member of the collective is organizing an infotour on the East Coast of the United States in November 2019. He proposes to describe the workings of state violence and the evolution of policing in France, from a historical and radical perspective.
[November 18 7PM at 704 South St]
