RECLAIM THE STREETS
The Reclaim The Streets was a success! We blockaded Canal Street to disrupt business as usual and create a police-free party zone where we danced to Lil Wayne. We held the streets for over an hour. Six of us got arrested. We want to see others blockade everything while injustice remains such a big part of our society!
See PHOTOS from the action and read the flyer handed out at the event.
Reports:~A Feminist Report from the streets ~Another Report ~A Third Report
~a feminist flyer from the action: Front | Back
A Corporate news article about the event from nola.com, and one from WWL. Hip Hop press articles, mostly picked up from the corporate article here, here, here, here, and here. Good one here. New Times-Picayune article here. (Contrary to some media reports, there were 40 people, not 6, and there were people of all genders there, not just men. Journalists suck, that’s why capitalists hire them! The efforts of those most effected by the PIC were in evidence on this night: youth, people of color, women, queer, and transgendered people were all out in force on the streets, taking space and demanding an end to the system that targets us disproportionately and oppresses everyone.)
The most important thing to note from this event is that YOU can throw an event just like this in your city, neighborhood, school, wherever. Just disrupt business as usual!
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Reclaim the Streets: November 30
(flyer to spread the word)
A street party highlighting the imprisonment of hometown heroes Lil Wayne and Lil Boosie as examples of how the police and prison industrial complex do not work.
These artists have brought happiness, hope, and strength through music to people around the world, and we think that putting them, or anyone else, in prison is not going to make us any safer.
There will be a sound system with great music and a festive atmosphere, so come in costume, bring party supplies, noisemakers, drums, silly string, chalk, and pictures of anyone you know in prison, to celebrate the day when we can reclaim their lives from prison, as our reclaimed space spreads!
What’s Wrong with prisons:
-Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in the U.S., yet we are no safer.
-Louisiana has the highest arrest rate in the U.S., yet we are no safer.
-The Angola 3 are still in prison, yet we are no safer.
-We spend more on police and prisons, yet our communities are never protected from the violence that is poverty, war, racism, sexism, and homophobia. In fact, these communities are disproportionately targeted by the very system claiming to exist for their protection.
-We spend more on police, but no one protects our communities from the destruction of our homes for private hospitals, new condos, and “mixed-income” developments.
-And on the 10 year anniversary after the WTO was shown to be a criminal conspiracy of corporate and government interests by protesters in the streets of Seattle, we still have not been protected from it’s policies by the police and prison system. In fact, those systems have continued to enforce the very WTO policies that are harming communities across the world.
WE WANT TO END THIS CHARADE.
We are not going to demand any changes, because we want a world where we no longer have to beg those in power to listen to us. We are simply going to create a space in the streets where the failed police and prison system do not operate and are not welcome. A space where we can celebrate the beginning of the end of that system, and the beginning of a new world.
We hope to spread this new world far beyond these streets on this one night. Carry it with you to your neighborhood, to your work, to your school, to your city, state, and country, and liberate space from this system by organizing with others where ever you happen to find yourselves.
RECLAIM THE STREETS!
LIBERATE TERRITORY!
OCCUPY EVERYWHERE!
Help us out: contact any Music Industry media (e.g.- Rolling Stone, MTV, BET, XXL, etc…) or local news media and send them the information about this event. Post a comment to let us know who you contacted. Thanks!
contact us at prisonsdontwork@yahoo.com
New Orleans Reclaim The Streets! 
D30 said,
November 29, 2009 at 6:49 pm
I contacted Vibe, The Source, and The Louisiana Weekly.
IAMNOLA said,
December 1, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Now that the TimesPickOnU has run the story as a headline, this should help other news sources catch on.
I commend whoever decided to do this, needed to be said, even radically.
D30 said,
December 1, 2009 at 5:43 pm
My friend was murdered, almost all of my friends have been robbed, and every day I see cop cars roll by with young black men in them going to prison. but it doesn’t stop the crime.
GREED KILLS.
We have to end poverty to end crime.
There is no other way.
This should be obvious to all of us who live in New Orleans, where they arrest more people than anywhere else in the country per capita, yet we still have high crime rates.
Crime is ended by ending poverty, otherwise, there is new kids being born into poverty and destined to become likely “criminals” every single day.
tomagnew said,
December 2, 2009 at 7:39 pm
“We are not going to demand any changes, because we want a world where we no longer have to beg those in power to listen to us. We are simply going to create a space in the streets where the failed police and prison system do not operate and are not welcome. A space where we can celebrate the beginning of the end of that system, and the beginning of a new world.”
You fucking lifestyle anarchists make a mockery of civil disobedience. Nobody is helped by your apolitical “protests.” But then again, you don’t care. Your selfish egoism makes you worse than irrelevant; you effectively discredit good causes with your bullshit.
D30 said,
December 2, 2009 at 11:05 pm
if by lifestyle anarchists you mean insurrectionary, revolutionary anarchists who want to overthrow the government and capitalism because it is destroying our lives, then yes, that’s us.
it specifically says this event was not a protest. and the political reasons for this are clearly stated on this website: prisons, the WTO, etc… did you read the page or what?
our only “cause” is our own liberation as victims of capitalism, state violence, the prison industry, and the horrible world that those institutions have created.
if you have any helpful suggestion of what actions to take, or if you want to support US as your “cause” since you apparently don’t have any of your own problems with this system, then by all means, send us your money and we’ll put it to good use. email us at prisonsdontwork@yahoo.com and donate.
subcomandante dunn said,
December 3, 2009 at 12:18 am
Hey, what you need to do is get the goons on your side.. start forming small armies, and make some moves on the pigs.
Yes i said it.
Fuck the pigs, all cops…
You wear that badge, you wear an idelogy that says people with money and land can use lawyers and their books of law to screw over every hard working family from sea to shining sea. Not only here, but globally. Every country in the world faces the brutal hand of America.. so when conservative mouthpieces tell others to go somewhere else if they want to escape American oppression, they might as well just tell them they’re cornered in like a rat in a cage, and wherever they go they will be swallowed by the economic impact of brutes who oppress and determine how their subjects will live their lives.
If we are all serfs, we should be fighting for our rights.. doing whatever it takes until we are indeed free. Never take a conman’s word when they tell you that you’re free… always ask questions, and always stand up for the little guy, because the longer you wait, the smaller you will become. The amount of freedom dwindles with each passing generation, seemingly at an accelerating rate. If you do not reclaim it by any means necessary, then you surrender and are as important as an replaceable machine… when they don’t need you, they throw you in the junk and you become forgotten. Not unlike many in our society. Get up, stand up… or you’ll be asleep forever.
le bloc said,
December 3, 2009 at 11:11 am
Dude, I am proud to “make a mockery of civil disobedience” any day of the week. When resistance to authority became ritualized into passively allowing mass arrest, it quit being resistance.
100 rioters with no agenda except destruction are more effective than 1,000 measured, careful, silent-vigil liberals. This dead civilization and this worthless government are old lumber… nothing but tinder… sparks are everywhere!
prisonsdontwork said,
December 3, 2009 at 12:24 pm
so true le bloc,
how many people protested at the SOA this year? their passivity = their irrelevance and their ability to be ignored by those in power.
after 20 years of the same thing, you’d think they’d realize their tactics have failed.
disruption of business as usual is the only thing that power listens to.
this is why so much social progress occurred in the wake of the widespread ghetto riots of the 1960s and even post-Rodney king riots (which was when South Central Farm was given to the community, among other things).
resistance must disrupt the smooth operations of power or it is useless and will fail.
giggles said,
December 3, 2009 at 1:56 pm
it was so great to watch that pig fall on his face after trying to intimidate us.
a said,
December 9, 2009 at 1:27 pm
this just in:
Lil Wayne Tackles the Drug Problem in Mexico
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/dea_recruits_lil_wayne_to_use_up
Hugh jannis said,
December 29, 2009 at 3:21 am
Idiots like lil Wayne deserve to be locked up. Being famous doesn’t give anyone the right to break the law – over and over again.