30 October 2024 – 🧵 Unity of Fields thread:
A year ago today, 9 people were arrested – and others successfully de-arrested – at the Elbit office in Cambridge, MA. Cops charged at the crowd, brutally tackling & pepper-spraying protestors. At 2:50 in this video, protestors push back police barricades & a mini-riot begins:
The protest took place because the Cambridge PD had surrounded the entire Elbit building with barricades after repeated clandestine direct actions there. The incompetence and paper-tiger-nature of the empire’s pig foot soldiers were on full display.
Literally slipping and falling on their own faces, cowering behind their riot gear and pepper spray canisters to protect Elbit, a genocidal weapons company, the pigs were completely caught off guard by the crowd’s powerful, collective resistance.
Police complained “Cambridge police were outnumbered and almost overwhelmed… protesters were pelting officers with eggs, paint and smoke bombs.”
The 10/30 protest was some of the first clashes with police at a post-Oct 7 protest in the country. Ultimately, arrests are demobilizing, disorganizing, and should be avoided. The local movement learned to separate mass rallies from autonomous direct action/property damage to avoid further arrests.
The 9 people arrested were charged with various misdemeanors and felonies, from disorderly conduct to vandalism to resisting arrest and assault on an officer. 7 people’s charges were dropped in July, and 2 are still facing charges.
Thanks to Pal Action US autonomous direct action, and relentless community organizing and protest, the Elbit in Cambridge, MA became the first Elbit to permanently shut down in the United States.
Take note of the effective secondary and tertiary targeting strategy that forced Elbit’s eviction. Protestors with BDS Boston did home demos at the landlord’s house, and the community relentlessly phone-banked Elbit’s landlord and co-tenants, building pressure from all possible points to evict Elbit, giving NO PEACE to the genocide profiteers and their accomplices.
Later in December 2023, Cambridge PD even positioned snipers on top of buildings overlooking Elbit in anticipation of a protest that didn’t even happen:
(View on Telegram)