Rally Against APD in Response to Murder of Michael Ramos

Anonymous submission. On the afternoon of April 25th, a small group of people showed up at the APD headquarters with signs and a megaphone. The protest came in response to APD’s murder of Michael Ramos in Southeast Austin on the evening of April 24th. This brief statement was sent along with the photos.

Witness neighbors of the shooting tell us that Michael Ramos was unarmed, was already totally blocked into the parking lot, so the dirty kkkiller police didn’t need to shoot him.
They could have shot tires without killing him.
Cops looked for a weapon, nothing. For 24 hours they looked.
But hey, chief Manley says the man needed to be shot because they train officers in Austin to kill you if you don’t stand there and let them shoot you with a ball in a shotgun.
Nonlethal failed. Cops kill then lie. This is how Austins genocide escalated during Covid Emergency 2020. Sick
 

All Lives Matter: White Reaction in Austin, TX (2015)

Austin Autonomedia: Keep Austin Criminal

This website and the parent organization it was born from, the Autonomous Student Network, were products of and participants in the wave of anti-fascist/anti-racist struggles that grew in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Some of us got an early start and caught glimpses of the preceding cycle of struggle in Austin–defined largely by the post-Ferguson moment with anti-police & Black Lives Matter movements, but we have little direct context for the depth and complexity of that moment. There is also a disconnect in historical memory between those more recently activated who see white nationalism as a product of the post-Trump moment and those who know the longer history of anti-racist struggles in Austin.

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Lakeway Police Chief Is ICE Guest Lecturer

Autonomous Student Media: Gestures Towards the Ungovernable

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year on contracted services, which include everything from IT and technical support to chartered flights and ground transportation. Dozens of companies grow rich from giving ICE the tools they need to surveil, incarcerate, and deport an ever-increasing number of migrants.

ICE also pays individuals for services, and among them is Todd A. Radford. A career cop, Radford is currently the police chief of Lakeway, Texas, an 82% white suburb of Austin with a 3.3% poverty rate. Radford has a combination of criminal justice and business degrees, and makes money on top of his police chief salary from giving lectures. The average salary of a police chief for a town the size of Lakeway is about $90,000/year.

ICE has paid Radford an average of more than $11,000 a year for these lectures. One lecture is billed as “a unique training geared to law enforcement management”, and the other is simply described as “law enforcement training”. One can imagine the pearls of wisdom Radford has gained after 30 years of doing capitalism and nationalism’s dirty work. As the police are given more and more money, discretion, and military equipment, ICE is eager to cozy up behind the thin blue line with them.

People who live near the US/Mexico border and people suffering from poverty alike know how militarized cops of all stripes have become. Collaborations like the one between ICE and this police chief can only further harm migrants, racialized people, and poor people as cops of different stripes become more and more comfortable with sharing knowledge and information. This collaboration between Radford and ICE is above and beyond what the infamous SB4 requires of law enforcement. Radford denounced the law in 2015 while he was running for Travis County Sheriff. Unsurprisingly, he does not actually give a shit about the people he criminalizes.

Close the lines of communication between the pigs and open the borders!


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Reportback: New Year’s Eve Prisoner Solidarity Noise Demo

Republished from It’s Going Down

Report back from the prisoner solidarity noise demonstration in Austin, Texas.

On December 31st, anarchists in Austin TX carried on the tradition of our annual solidarity noise demo at the Travis County jail. Around 10 folks gathered at a nearby park and walked to the jail together, joining others who were waiting for us. In total, there were around 15 of us, masked up and feeling festive!

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