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Please be very suspicious of today’s police strategic leak around the investigation of “Umbrella man” who broke windows at the E. Lake St Autozone during the Minneapolis Uprising.

Here in Minneapolis, we are in the first "trough" of the wave of the uprising. MAJOR concessions have been granted by institutions cutting ties with the MPD and the City Council (including members who have been consistently obstructionist to the movement against policing) announcing a plan for abolishing the MPD.

As discussions of police abolition and how other models of justice could work move forward and gain a mainstream audience, it is important to reiterate that "transformative justice" does not mean centering the harm-doer and their process of redemption.

As the summer born in flames nears its end in Minneapolis, the counterinsurgency playbook plays out much as expected. As symbolic concessions are granted all over, the material reality of racist police violence driven by propertied interests continues.

What are some counterinsurgency tactics you've noticed this summer? What things you have seen people—especially people with clear connections to the existing power structure—do that have led to the demobilization, suppression, discrediting, intimidation, or marginalization of the movement for black lives and against police brutality?  Learning and recognizing these tactics is crucial. Here are some that people named in one big thread.

Conversations during and after the Uprising led to people forming up a Whittier copwatch. In that copwatch, connections were made which helped workers get in touch with union organizers and tenants to revive tenant organizing committees and more.

On New Year's Eve, our community gathered for a noise demonstration in downtown Minneapolis in support of prison abolition and in solidarity with incarcerated folks. Officers swarmed the scene, abruptly making violent arrests without dispersal orders. It is an abuse of power to disperse a protest without issuing such an order. Instead of ticketing or releasing folks - which is the norm - our friends and relatives were held over the holiday weekend under probable cause charges, which historically has been used by police to give extra time to justify otherwise unlawful arrests that violate everyone’s first amendment rights to protest.

One of the basic questions aspiring revolutionary groups have to ask is, "How do revolutionary changes come about?", and then ask if what they are doing is in line with their own beliefs about how revolutions happen.

We express our solidarity with the people of Ukraine struggling against the attempt by the Russian state to re-colonize them. We condemn both the invasion, and the long campaign of aggression that Russia has waged against Ukrainians.

On this date in 1934 the Minneapolis Police opened fire on strikers in the warehouse district, shooting 67 picketers and killing two men – a Teamster and an unemployed supporter.