IndyMedia - Vrij Media Centrum Nederland

Waar: Joe's Garage, Pretoriusstraat 43, amsterdam, Netherlands
Wanneer: 03/03/2016 - 19:00

Benefit against state repression in Madrid
(And the rest of the world!)
To al members of the Vrije Bond in and around Amsterdam, anarchists, Autonomists and other radicals, we invite you to come to this modest benefit for our comrades in Madrid.

At Joes Garage, Pretoriusstraat 43 Amsterdam
19:00 Door open and Food (vegan)
at 21:00 short talk about why this benefit and some bizarre state
repression examples in Spain from the last months.
21:30 Acoustic Concert: Almudena and Davide (voice and guitar)
Popular folk songs about revolution and love from Spain and Latin America.
https://soundcloud.com/almudena-y-davide

The money we collect this evening will go to the suport group of Javier,
see below for more info:

Two years in jail and € 7,500 for recording racist police round-up

On March 17th 2012, Javier, a member of the 15-M movement and the CNT
Union, was arrested while filming a racist round-up in Lavapiés, Madrid.

In the coming weeks we will know the exact date of the trial, scheduled
for the spring, in which the state prosecutor and the private attorney of
one of the officers who assaulted him during his detention charge our
comrade with resisting arrest and assault & battery, crimes punishable
with two years in prison and civil penalty of more than €7,500.

The events for which he will go to trial occurred almost four years ago,
when a spontaneous demonstration of neighbors tried to publicly denounce
the umpteenth racist police raid in the streets of Lavapiés. Peaceful
demonstrations like this had already occurred several times in that
neighborhood and other quarters with high migrant populations such as
Carabanchel, showing that residents had grown weary of the constant police
harassment of migrant workers, who suffer identity checks on a daily basis
merely for having a dark skin color. Although successive Spanish
governments have been reproached for these raids by organizations which
are far from revolutionary, such as the EU, the UN, and Amnesty
International, they are still occurring every day in the public spaces of
our city, with the active collaboration of the Madrid municipal police and
private security agents on the subway, commuter trains, etc. They intend
to fill the quota for people without residence permits which the Spanish
Interior Ministry requires of police department to satisfy their goal of
human bodies in their cells, their Immigrant Detention Centers and on
their deportation flights, and at the same time, to incite to hatred and
divide the native and foreign sections of the working class.

March 17, 2012 was a turning point in escalating repression against
neighborhood anti-racist self-organization. An unprecedented police
deployment and the subsequent police set-up of our comrade Javier tried to
put an end to these spontaneous and peaceful demonstrations of solidarity
which were marked by chants of "No human being is illegal!". The
authorities want to put an end to the emerging solidarity movement against
the scourge of ethnic identity checks and subsequent arrests (kidnapping)
of neighbors whose only "crime" was to be migrants, poor and to have lost
or failed to complete the administrative process to establish their legal
residence in our neighborhoods.

The Assembly of Lavapies is taking the opportunity of this new political
trial to appeal for solidarity with our comrade and to renew the fight
against racist police controls and raids. Watch out for updated
information on the trial and support grassroots organizing, without
leaders. Don't let the police continue to undermine coexistence in our
neighborhoods with their racist practices.

No human being is illegal!
Racists aren't welcome in our neighborhoods!!

A interview with Javier, in 2012 about the arest and the situation in
Lavapies-Madrid (in Spanish)
http://migracionyconvivencialavapies.blogspot.nl/2012/03/apaleado-y-dete...