The Rundberg Rebellion: A Retrospective

Austin Autonomedia: Keeping Austin Criminal

Revolt, of the sort that exceeds the form of permitted street marches and sign-waving rallies, has rarely manifested in Austin’s streets. As such, its occurrences–such as the wave of activity that came with the George Floyd rebellion–deserves attention and uplifting in our historical memory. Four years ago, at the beginning of the Trump’s term, one such revolt manifested in the Rundberg area in North Austin.

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Tracing ICE Infrastructure: Trailboss, Hutto Location

Edit 02/2024: This location appears to be permanently closed

In recent struggles against I.C.E., deportations, and all the state apparatuses that reproduce the violence of borders, there has been a shift from making demands of politicians to directly targeting the contractors, detention centers, and infrastructure that make these operations possible. The wisdom of this strategic maneuver is its recognition of the organization of power in our world–wherein power flows not primarily through the halls of politicians, but in the mundane infrastructure that reproduces this society and its violence. An important portion of this infrastructure, particularly in the context of the deportation machine, is the transportation and logistics infrastructure–that is, the vans, buses, and other means by which the State transports incarcerated migrants. This circulatory system keeps assorted offices, processing centers, and detention facilities connected. Sometimes, this infrastructure is managed directly by the State–whether I.C.E, Border Patrol, or DHS. However, in many places this infrastructure is contracted out to other private companies.

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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!


Got a story you need to tell? Publish it with us! Send us your opinion pieces, art, zines, reviews, news, statements, report-backs, or anything else you wanna see put out in the world. We take all kinds of content, with an eye towards marginalized perspectives and news about movements & revolutionary organizations. Submit content to austinautonomedia [@] autistici [dot] org.

Interview: Indigenous Resistance at the Border

Originally published by It’s Going Down

Welcome, to This Is America, December 22nd, 2018.

In this episode, we had the pleasure of speaking to someone at the Somi Se’k Village Base Camp, which is an indigenous led resistance camp that is organizing along the Rio Grande in so-called Texas to mobilize against various resource extraction projects, threats to sacred sites, destruction of butterfly and other wildlife habitat, to provide direct aid to migrants, and also to fight border wall construction.

#StopRioGrandeLNG Banner Drop

Earlier today, we held banners on the proposed site of Rio Grande LNG to demand French bank Société Générale no longer finance this fracked gas project that would pollute the Valley! #StopRioGrandeLNGOn Friday, activists in France will mobilize outside the bank office to demand they divest from Rio Grande LNG & all fracking projects.

SAVE RGV from LNG 发布于 2018年12月12日周三

During our interview, we talk about the land the the battles facing the people there, and their call for solidarity and support. On their Facebook page, they write:

the Somi Se’k Village Base Camp’s mission is to populate and support a network of front Line Encampments (Wolf Pack) villages along the so called Mexican-American border. These villages will be active in providing aid to our asylum seeking relatives, protecting indigenous sacred sites, resisting construction of the LNG (fracked gas) terminal, accompanying pipelines, and stopping the Border wall. We fight to stop the senseless endangerment of people, animals, and the environment.

The first encampment that our Base Camp will support will be the Yalui village, located at the National Butterfly Center, which the border wall will soon divide and desecrate. The village will exist on both sides of the wall. From there, we will rebuild more Esto’k villages, from which we will protect, aid, and bear witness along the so called Texas-Mexico border.

The Somi Se’k Village Base Camp will support and train activists to populate these villages. We operate with the understanding that the issues arising around the border– the right to migrate, destruction of the environment and indigenous sacred sites, and the inhumane incarceration of migrant children– are intersectional and are symptoms of centuries-long control and oppression by colonizers.

We are Natives and non-Natives, Water Protectors, military veterans, students, community organizers, antifacist collectives, and working people. Working under the leadership of indigenous communities, we are people of all races, genders, ethnicities, political and spiritual backgrounds, and ages. We recognize our co-dependence and understand that we are one people.

To get in touch, donate, and learn more, go here.

After the interview, our discussion then turns to headlines, where we tackle the continued rapid disintegration of the Trump administration, the increasing far-Right rhetoric against migrant workers, Trump’s failure to get border wall funding passed, and also, the ramifications of his recent decision to pull out of Syria, leaving the Kurds and Rojavan territories to face Turkish and ISIS aggression on their own. For up to the minute news from Kurdistan, please follow ANF News as well as our comrades at Internationalist Commune.

We will return before the end of the year with announcements on new projects for 2019 as well as info on looking back on 2018. See you soon!

Support Immigrants in Hays County

Reposted from the Student Community of Progressive Empowerment at Texas State

https://www.gofundme.com/support-immigrants-in-hays-county

The Student Community of Progressive Empowerment (SCOPE) is a student-led organization dedicated to supporting immigrants of all statuses (or lack of), the first of its kind on the Texas State University campus. Founded in 2015, SCOPE has been providing resources and support for its members and the Hays county community through a variety of initiatives –from raising money to provide scholarships to undocumented immigrants so that they may renew their DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), to organizing pro bono days to provide free consultations with immigration attorneys free of cost and open to all community members, no questions asked.

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Red, White, & Blue

A submission from Mapache. September 28th marked two weeks since they were deported.

windows just big enough to see the flags they used to lock me up
but we all saw this coming
it was just a matter of time
tossed in the back of a van and taunted with threats of being sent back to a home i dont remember
kidnapped
taken by cowboys who would die for those 3 colors which persecute me
the same 3 colors which destroy the countries my cellmates seek refuge from
they guard the entrance to this prison
and haunt my only view of the outside world
red, white, and blue
judge, jury, and executioner


Write a letter to Mapache at the upcoming letter writing night for Mapache & Red Fawn, being hosted by the Austin Anarchist Black Cross and the Autonomous Student Network.

Got a story you need to tell? Publish it with us! Send us your opinion pieces, art, zines, reviews, news, statements, report-backs, or anything else you wanna see put out in the world. We take all kinds of content, with an eye towards marginalized perspectives and news about movements & revolutionary organizations. Submit content to austinautonomedia [@] autistici [dot] org.

Justice For Andres: Abuse, Mistreatment, and Retaliation by ICE

Submission from participants in Abolish ICE SATX. If you read this story, we ask that you please donate to help Andres and Margaret get back on their feet!

About two weeks ago, Andres Mancilla was deported without warning. Andres, a permanent resident, was detained by ICE about a year ago and subject to horrific mistreatment and neglect. His fiance, Margarita (aka Margaret), dropped everything to follow Andres as he was moved throughout the immigration prison system. This brought both of them to San Antonio, where Margaret came into contact with local activists. Together, they followed Andres to the processing facility at 3523 Crosspoint Drive, from where he was then sent by bus to be held at the Pearsall Detention Facility. It is because of Andres and Margaret that we even know of the Crosspoint facility’s existence. Andres’ story and Margaret’s energy helped lay the foundation for Camp Cicada.

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San Antonio ICE Agents

Republished from a document produced by Revolutionary Horizon

Click through the images to see the agents that have been identified with photos & social media profiles. Below are agents who have not yet been matched with a social media profile or photo.

If this interests you, check out this article regarding an anti-ICE & anti-fascist alert system set up by organizers in San Antonio.

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¡Viva La Huelga! Report-back from San Antonio’s Cesar Chavez March

This is a report-back submitted to us by The Autonomous Brown Berets de TejAztlan, SATX chapter.

 

Editor’s note: On Saturday, March 24th, The Autonomous Brown Berets de TejAztlan, SATX chapter, attempted to disrupt the local Cesar Chavez march, which had become nothing more than a liberal parade that failed to uphold Cesar’s politics. In particular, they were protesting the parade’s collaboration with the police (i.e. the strikebreakers of the ruling classes) and their refusal to endorse a boycott of an exploitative agricultural corporation, a direct affront to everything Cesar Chavez fought for.

 

We are republishing this report back in order to break the media silence around what happened yesterday. Despite numerous journalists with cameras taking photos of the disruption and the police repression it encountered, not a single news outlet even mentioned the protest or its content in their articles. We in Austin know too well how the police will silence stories and keep their media contacts in line, so that nothing that serves as bad press for the cops will make it onto a story. We encourage all who read this to share this article, spread the word, to recognize who the cop collaborators & enemies of the people are, and to discredit those who would seek to use Cesar Chavez’s image in service of exploitation and oppression.

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