STATEMENT AGAINST POLICE ACTION AT ROSEMARY WILLIAMS’ HOME
09/21/09
The action taken by police to evict Rosemary Williams from her home last week was unacceptable. The eviction itself, along with the thousands of unjust evictions currently taking place in this country as a consequence of an inhumane economic system, is also unacceptable. From the use of pepper spray and brute force to the sealing of Rosemary’s home with shields designed for warfare and a 24-hour security guard, GMAC, the MPD, and the City of Minneapolis have made it clear that they will pay to protect property but not people and that they will pay to brutalize but not to subsidize. We reject the notion that in a situation of ‘economic crisis,’ people must be forced from their homes while the building of bombs and the acceleration of multiple wars and occupations remains unaffected. Rosemary Williams and thousands of others should not have to endure dispossession while the US government pays for foreign wars and economic bailouts that benefit only a marginal elite. We believe that the universal provision of basic needs should come before any political agenda or party line. We support those who endured abuse and arrest while resisting the unnecessary actions of the state that day and we encourage those personally unaffected by eviction to act in direct solidarity with all people struggling to keep their homes. No more war, no more foreclosures.
SOLIDARITY WITH ROSEMARY WILLIAMS ON PALESTINIAN LAND DAY
03/30/09 video
We are here today to stand with Rosemary Williams who is in a position not unfamiliar to many living in the United States—she is threatened with police violence and imprisonment for simply remaining in her home. While many would like to reduce Ms. Williams’ situation to being merely an unfortunate consequence of our current financial times, anyone familiar with the history of the shelter system, public housing, and its attendant massive prison system knows that the criminalization of poverty is nothing new in America.
We are also here to mark Palestinian land day, which asks us to remember the resistance to a wide-scale land confiscation in Galilee in which Israeli forces killed six Palestinians, injured 96, and arrested more than 300 people for defending their land. Today we stand in solidarity with the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian people for whom the violent dispossession and demolition of homes has been a routine occurrence for decades.
It is no secret that the dominant economic system thrives on the drastic unequal distribution of wealth—a radical imbalance that brings about the undue suffering of many for the profit of the few. Just as Ms. Williams’ defense of her home calls on us to confront the structural nature of economic injustice in this country, its union with Palestinian Land Day offers us the occasion to confront the global impact of US-government sponsored economic and military violence. While millions of US residents are denied access to their basic needs of subsistence, our government is exporting trillions of dollars to fund war and occupation throughout the Middle East. In particular, we are providing for more than 70% of Israel’s military spending, and Israel continues to be the largest recipient of US foreign aid on the planet. The focus of these funds is on sustaining the violent occupation of indigenous Palestinian land. The US-backed Israeli military has been aggressively grabbing Palestinian property since its inception, leveling communities to build walls and checkpoints, often giving Palestinians only a moments’ notice before bulldozing the homes that they have lived in for generations. And in the Gaza strip, hundreds of thousands of landless Palestinians now live in permanent refugee camps.
Today we can begin to see that Palestinian people and struggling people here in the United States share the experience of being forced to confront US-funded state violence in order to simply exist. And so Ms. Williams is in a situation in which all bureaucratic remedies can only lead to homelessness or incarceration. For Ms. Williams and many others here in Minnesota, in the United States, and on the other side of the world, the ability to continue to live with stability—a right that should be guaranteed to all people—directly conflicts with what is legal. There is nothing right about dispossessing some people of their land and property in order to keep others in luxury homes furnished with swimming pools and four-car garages. There is nothing right about forcing people already at-risk in a fundamentally corrupt system to have to stand down guns in order to sleep in their own bed at night. There is nothing right about privileging the survival of the banking industry or the war industry over the survival of entire populations of suffering people. And there is nothing right about valuing the preservation of your own way of life over taking part in defending access to basic needs for all people. Today we act in solidarity with Rosemary Williams and take a stand for a free Palestine because we must not remain obedient and law-abiding while others are being systematically subjected to violence and dispossession at the hands of the state and its economy. We must not allow our own comforts come at the expense of others. We are calling on all people to take action, to act in direct solidarity with people and communities standing in the way of the arms of the state to defend or reclaim their homes, their land, and their dignity. No more evictions, no more demolitions.
For more information about Rosemary Williams and the struggle to resist foreclosure and economic violence, see here and here.
