Students have risen up to protect and defend the Multicultural Solidarity Coalition under the hashtag #DefendMSC. The Black African Coalition, one of seven institutionalized student coalitions on campus, released a statement in support of the MSC. It said ASU had told them it will be implementing increased security measures to protect marginalized students. In addition, the BAC is hosting a town hall at the MCC to address ASU’s failures to safeguard marginalized students on campus.
Tens of thousands of workers around the US could go on strike in the coming weeks in what would be the largest wave of labor unrest since a series of teacher strikes in 2018 and 2019, which won major victories and gave the American labor movement a significant boost. The unrest spans a huge range of industries from healthcare to Hollywood and academia, and is largely focused on higher wages, fighting cuts and better working and safety conditions, especially in light of Covid-19.
As morning broke over San Francisco’s iconic Golden Gate Bridge on Thursday, northbound traffic was brought to a halt when dozens of undocumented mothers, students and their allies risked arrest to engage in civil disobedience. Just before 7 a.m., protesters exited their cars, carrying banners and calling on Congress to provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Traffic piled up in the bridge’s northbound lanes as demonstrators decried the Democrats’ lack of action to pass meaningful immigration reform, stopping morning commuters for about an hour.
Activists gathered outside the homes of the White House chief of staff and the CEO of Moderna to demand the Biden administration and private drug companies do more to address the global vaccine shortage.
Again, you can’t shuttle through the headlines, the so-called news, without having spasms and fits. You will not get journalists doing shit to really go after the capitalists, uh? Baby food. And these transnational Wall Street thieves, these stockholding companies, not even a slap on the wrist. So, if I as an unjabbed person goes into a public place, and then the rabid fascists find out, they then can call the cops, do a citizen’s arrest, and take my ass down, zip ties and all. But, do these billionaires and multimillionaires get hog-tied or frog-marched into court, and have their ill-gotten profits used for a reparations fund for all those babies? Dream on:
Baby food manufacturers allowed products contaminated with heavy metals to remain on store shelves — even after dangerous levels of the toxic chemicals were detected in their products. That’s according to a new congressional report released Wednesday, which found baby food makers Gerber and Beech-Nut failed to recall infant rice cereals tested to have arsenic levels above FDA limits.
This is how these felons roll, these dirty rotten propagandists, the smoke and mirrors crowd, the polluters, all those elites and money grubbers:
Going from baby food to land, forests, indigenous rights, we can see more putridity of the White Savior Civilizations (sic) facilitating the land rapists and the water polluters. This is not outrageous in Can/Klan/Ada?
In Canada, a judge has ended an injunction granted to logging company Teal-Jones, which the court says was used to crack down on activists at the Fairy Creek watershed blockade in a way that violated their civil liberties and infringed on press freedom. Police have arrested over 1,000 land defenders, often violently, as they fight to protect the remaining trees in Vancouver Island’s ancient forests. The First Nations-led protest is Canada’s largest act of civil disobedience. Click here to see our coverage of this issue
It’s a simple formula, a simple illustration of how syphilitics the ruling class is, and here, “David Graeber’s bestselling book Debt: The First 5000 Years revolutionised our understanding of the origins of money and the role of debt in human societies. But intellectual revolutions take time, and David’s sudden and untimely death left this revolution unfinished. David’s widow Nika Dubrovsky has established ‘The Fight Club’ to keep David’s unique way of challenging conventional wisdoms alive. Each ‘Fight’ will pit leading advocates of different visions of how society functions against each other. The inaugural fight, to mark the first anniversary of David’s death, is a debate between the renowned economists Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century, and Michael Hudson, author of And Forgive Them Their Debts. Thomas Piketty wrote the preface to the tenth anniversary edition of Debt: the First 5000 Years. Michael Hudson’s anthropological research into the origins of money and debt in ancient Sumeria was the basis of much of David’s analysis in that book. Join us for an unmissable encounter between two celebrated and highly influential economic thinkers as they debate: what is money and what is debt? What are the most serious problems of today’s finance-capital economies? And what are the best remedies?”
Finally, the new brisk and slick predators, those capitalists, those impact bond folk, the algorithms, the mining of our minds, bodies, dreams, aspirations. Wrench in the Gears, a long one, with lots of sources to click on to enhance Alison’s work:
This past week someone sent me a paper on augmented cognition. As I read it, a number of pieces clicked for me about earlier research I’d done into executive function. I wanted to preserve the thread, so I captured it in the screen shots below. Follow along to see how grit and resiliency intersect with Metaverse navigation and soul theft.
Also, this week Philadelphia School Superintendent William Hite briefed the Federal Reserve. Listen carefully to hear him setting up human capital bond markets in ed-tech, social emotional learning (SEL), nutrition, and tele-health via public-private partnerships with “philanthropic” predators.
This is accepted behavior, accepted “follow the science” bullshit; accepted state paid for university research; accepted elite school work and disgust? This is what Americans cannot handle:
So, how can lead in Flint’s water be a big deal? Arsenic in baby food? Arresting protestors in Canada? Think about how polluted media are, how broken universities are, and how confused and full of Collective Stockholm Syndrome the public is. This last comment is pretty telling:
A national protest against an upcoming arms fair took place in Liverpool on 11 September with over 3,000 people in attendance. Jeremy Corbyn and Maxine Peake were among those who showed support. In his speech to the gathered crowd of protestors Corbyn urged, ‘let’s turn the page and learn the lessons from the past. Let humanity prevail.’
Opposition to a proposed petrochemical complex near Prince George, British Columbia, continues to build, with locals fearing environmental harms and environmental experts asking how such a project could proceed with the global climate on red alert. A council meeting in B.C.’s largest northern city grew heated last week as residents expressed “fierce criticism” about the C$5.6-billion petrochemical complex that Calgary-based West Coast Olefins (WCO) hopes to build outside of town, reports CBC News.
Thousands of Indian farmers blocked traffic on major roads and railway lines in the national capital Delhi on Monday as they marked one year since the passage of the federal government’s contentious agricultural laws. The farmers called for a nationwide strike to renew their protests against the “black laws” that they believe will bring an end to their livelihood, demonstrations that first began 10 months ago. The government says the changes will benefit farmers, but unions fear they could take away the protections provided by state-run markets.
Leaders of IATSE’s largest local – the International Cinematographers Guild Local 600 – are urging their members to authorize a strike against film and television productions across the country. The local’s national executive board voted unanimously on Sunday to support a nationwide strike authorization vote and to recommend that members vote “Yes” on it.
Insulate Britain campaigners, an environmental group calling on the UK government to implement a better national home insulation program, blocked on Monday the M25 highway encircling London for the sixth time, despite a court order warning them of jail terms if they carried on disrupting traffic on UK’s busiest road.
The employees at El Milagro tortilla factory partnered with Arise Chicago to stage a two-hour walkout at 2140 S. Western Ave. as they call for safer working conditions and higher wages. But they were locked out with their belongings inside, and they were only allowed to collect their personal items after hours of negotiations with the factory’s leaders.
One hundred and seventy-six different Indigenous groups from every region of the country arrived at the encampment of Luta pela Vida (the Struggle for Life movement) to protest against their own erasure. This Indigenous mobilisation, which is the largest in history, broke a spell of inviolability surrounding the institutions of power that have for centuries excluded Indigenous people or sought their demise.
Shoppers call upon every customer to delete the Instacart app immediately as a show of support for shoppers’ ongoing efforts to end Instacart’s long-standing practice of gig worker exploitation. We are asking customers to delete the app today — because there is only one thing Instacart and its executives and investors care about: money. And we ask that customers refrain from reinstalling the app unless and until Instacart rectifies the genuinely inequitable manner in which it treats its shoppers.
Early Thursday morning, 20 forest defenders barricaded logging roads in the headwaters of the upper North Fork Mattole River in anticipation of Humboldt Redwood Company (HRC) logging operations. “Road building on steep, unstable slopes and logging of old-growth forest is unacceptable,” said a local resident participating in the blockade. “This logging plan will release a large amount of long term greenhouse gas, and along with industrial logging across the Pacific Northwest, constitutes a major driver of climate catastrophe.”
Over 50 water protectors protesting Line 3 were arrested, some violently, outside the Minnesota Governor’s Residence in St. Paul on Saturday, August 28, 2021. Those arrested were among hundreds who marched from the Capitol to Governor Walz’ mansion attempting to speak to him about their opposition to the Line 3 pipeline construction in northern Minnesota that’s nearing completion.
And they’re acting differently too. They’re firing on protesters with rubber bullets and other projectile weapons with alarming frequency in order to end demonstrations against government shutdowns, lockdowns and vaccine mandates, frequently for no other reason than because the demonstrators are disobeying them.
Use of force by Victorian police is officially required to be “reasonable, necessary and proportionate to the threat posed by an incident.” When you see a video clip of Melbourne protesters just standing around the Remembrance Shrine begin fleeing to escape harm and being fired upon with less-lethal weapons as they retreat, for example, does that seem “reasonable, necessary and proportionate to the threat posed by an incident” to you?
Raw footage of the final two minutes of the protest at the Shrine of Remembrance. 22.09.21 pic.twitter.com/9m8JT24fW1
“But Caitlin!” you may object. “Those people they’re firing on are Bad People! They’re right-wingers and anti-vaxxers! And they’re protesting without permission!”
Okay, if you don’t want to oppose police brutality on principle without making it about the ideological positions of its victims then that’s your right. But surely you don’t think the normalization of this kind of violence is something that’s only going to affect people you disagree with politically going forward, do you? Surely you’re not naive and narcissistic enough to believe the many dramatic deviations from normal policing protocol we’ve been experiencing during these protests will be rolled back when you personally no longer deem them necessary?
Because that would be a very silly thing to believe. The way police are dealing with protesters today is the way they’re going to deal with them from now on, unless we do something. And in order for that something to be done we’re going to first have to collectively ask ourselves, is this the kind of country we want to live in from now on?
Do we want to live in a country where protesters are fired upon by dangerous projectile weapons if the police decide it’s time for them to leave? Where protests are violently quashed if the government (the only so-called democracy in the world without any kind of statute or bill of rights, mind you) decides they don’t have permission to protest? Where armored stormtroopers patrol the streets? Where people are apprehended simply for filming police? Where police show up at your doorstep to interrogate you on whether you’re planning to attend any protests or know of anyone who is?
I understand that lockdowns and vaccine passports are still fairly popular ideas here, but at what point do we say no? At what point do we say enough is enough? If those policies have literal soldiers patrolling Australian streets and enforcing state borders, if they have sectors of the populace so upset that heavily armed riot police are exercising abuses that will certainly be used on racial and environmental justice demonstrators in the future the moment their demonstrations are deemed unauthorised, is it really worth holding that hard line? How much of our soul is Australia willing to trade in order to enforce strict Covid regulations?
How far is too far? Looking at the footage that’s been circulating these past few days, I would say that too far is in our rearview mirror right now. Time to hit reverse and start saying no.
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At the end of August 2021, red dust rose like smoke from the pounding feet of some 6,000 Indigenous people marching on the main promenade surrounded by Brazil’s Supreme Court, Congress, and presidential palace in the country’s capital city of Brasilia. One hundred and seventy-six different Indigenous groups from every region of the country arrived at the encampment of Luta pela Vida (the Struggle for Life movement) to protest against their own erasure.
Two years ago, a small pocket of land three kilometres from Auckland’s international airport became the most prominent site of a struggle by Māori, New Zealand’s indigenous people, to reclaim land confiscated by the crown more than 150 years ago. With no ability to reclaim the land through the channels of the tribunal, the owners at Ihumātao began an occupation in the tradition of those at Whaingaroa, on the west coast, and Bastion Point in Auckland. Pania Newton, a recent law graduate, moved into a caravan on the site in November 2016, determined to stop the planned development.
Berlin, September 22, 2021 — German authorities should immediately drop all charges against photojournalist Michael Trammer and ensure that members of the press can cover public events without fear of detention, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
On September 10 at about 1:45 p.m., police in Munich detained Trammer, a freelance photojournalist on assignment for the daily newspaper taz, while he was reporting on environmentalists protesting against the International Motor Show, according to a report by taz and the journalist, who communicated with CPJ via email and tweeted about the incident.
Trammer told CPJ that he clearly identified himself as a journalist to police, but authorities nevertheless charged him with criminal trespassing, an offense punishable with a maximum prison sentence of one year, according to those sources and the German criminal code. Trammer told CPJ that he has not been informed of a court date for his case.
“German police never should have detained photojournalist Michael Trammer, let alone filed criminal charges against him for simply doing his job and covering newsworthy events,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Authorities should drop the charges against Trammer and issue a public explanation for why he was detained despite clearly identifying himself as a member of the press.”
On September 10 and 11, thousands protested at the International Motor Show in Munich against the country’s “car-dominated traffic policy,” and activists repeatedly clashed with police, according to news reports.
Trammer told CPJ and tweeted that he covered a group of protesters as they entered a building near the auto fair, where they gathered to prepare for further demonstrations, and that he was arrested when police stormed that building to arrest the demonstrators.
Police detained him even though he was holding his press card and accreditation for the fair, according to Trammer’s email to CPJ and a video of his arrest he posted on Instagram.
Trammer said that police held him with the activists, searched him, and took the group to the central police station, where they held him until about 4:45 p.m., when he was charged and released.
Upon his release, police also issued Trammer two orders: one to refrain from entering the car show’s facilities or staying nearby, and another stating that he may be detained again if authorities suspected he may violate the law, according to Trammer and the taz report. However, after taz representatives contacted the police about those restrictions, authorities dropped both orders, Trammer told CPJ.
CPJ emailed the Munich police for comment, but did not immediately receive any response.
The Met Gala, a fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute that is also a gathering of celebrities, politicians, and the wealthy and well connected took place on September 13. The bourgeois press coverage focused on the celebrity spectacle, nearly ignoring the horrific police attack on abolitionist activists protesting outside the event, many of whom were arrested. Left Voice spoke with Prince, a photo-journalist and activist who was on the ground.
Activists aiming to stop the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion in Burnaby say they fear being removed against their will after crews put up fencing and cut down trees in their vicinity on Tuesday and Wednesday. For more than a year, protesters have been occupying treetops in the Brunette River Conservation Area, which sits on the path of the planned expansion to the existing 1,150-kilometre pipeline. They say recent moves from Trans Mountain leave them worried their treetop vigil might be coming to an end.
“The BCTGM’s striking members made enormous sacrifices in order to achieve a quality contract that preserves our Union’s high standards for wages, hours and benefits for current and future Nabisco workers. Their sacrifice will benefit all BCTGM members and working people around the country for years to come. Those Brothers and Sisters who walked the picket lines day in and day out are true BCTGM heroes. The BCTGM is grateful for the outpouring of fraternal support and Solidarity we received from across the labor movement in the U.S. and around the world.”
As groups from New Zealand to South Africa to North America prepare for the #BoycottPUMA Global Day of Action and PUMA’s celebrity ambassadors and business partners raise ethical concerns, join nearly 60,000 people calling on PUMA to end its support for Israeli apartheid.
An estimated 2,000 carpenters in Seattle and across the state of Washington began their first strike in nearly two decades Thursday after rejecting the fourth proposed contract agreed to by the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America (UBC). Rank-and-file carpenters are seeking to expand their strike to other construction sites, where the union has signed no-strike pledges, and bring out the other 10,000 unionized carpenters who are currently being kept on the job.
“West Coast Environmental Law analyzed hundreds of regulatory documents and construction reports and projected that the Trans Mountain pipeline is delayed into 2023, adding millions to the cost. This report compiles and analyzes various Trans Mountain documents, including regulatory filings, sworn affidavits and Trans Mountain’s own website to estimate and project the current state of delays to construction and their potential cost implications. Our analysis found evidence of delays in each of the seven segments (or spreads) of the project, ranging from two to 23 months.”
The salon at Walmart was closed Tuesday after the entire staff quit at the same time. The SmartStyle Hair Salon’s doors were locked Tuesday morning with the message “We Out” on a poster hanging in the window. The poster also included the note, “We love our people,” and listed where each of the stylists had moved to. Staff member Dana Roth said the mass exit was inevitable with the way the site’s upper management had disregarded any concerns voiced to them.
On September 9, 2021, President Joe Biden publicly issued sweeping statements and demands that make it clear that, whether they like or it, millions more people will have to get vaccinated or risk losing their livelihoods and security. His posture has been described by mainstream media as “aggressive.” Many alternative news and information sources describe Biden’s actions as righteous, arrogant, authoritarian, and incoherent. 1 Biden asserted that choice and freedoms are not the issue. He dismissed both in one breath. One’s right to consent to something was banished in three seconds. Many have also asserted that Biden does not have the legal authority to make and enforce such top-down mandates. Others claim that his White House speech on vaccinations is full of contradictions and disinformation.
Like Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and many other capital-centered ideologues and “leaders,” Biden keeps disinforming the polity with the worn-out dogma that economic recovery is largely dependent on getting everyone vaccinated. We are to believe that the broad and stubborn economic failure confronting everyone today is largely caused by the virus and that once the virus is “under control” through vaccines rush-produced by for-profit companies with a long record of malpractice, the economy will soar and flourish. A variety of mainstream news sources have been desperately reinforcing this disinformation for more than a year; they have no interest in economic science.
However, despite an enormous number of vaccinations issued worldwide, despite a large portion of humanity “taking the jab” already, the economy keeps declining and decaying; many serious economic distortions, problems, and uncertainties persist. Inflation, debt, inequality, homelessness, poverty, under-employment, and environmental destruction, for example, appear to be growing. More than one million people per month are still filing unemployment claims in the U.S. alone and job “creation” numbers are superficial and unimpressive. In addition, the U.S. labor force participation rate remains historically low and the number of long-term unemployed remains high. On top of all this, millions of employed workers are living pay-check to pay-check, which means that even full-time employment is no guarantee of security and prosperity. Various surveys also show that large majorities are not hopeful about the future and health of the economy.
It is no surprise that euphoric economic growth forecasts made just weeks or months ago by “leaders” and “experts” are already being revised downward—in some cases significantly. The ruling elite is always embracing magical thinking; they are not on good terms with reality.
It is also being said that large numbers of people will end up leaving their jobs—voluntarily or by being fired—rather than compromise their right to conscience and get vaccinated. This could mean even fewer workers taking available jobs and even more retailers, businesses, and services operating in dysfunctional, disruptive, and unreliable ways without employees. Thus, for example, many nurses, teachers, police officers, and other workers are choosing the right to conscience and unemployment over mandated vaccination. Thousands of businesses are already struggling to fill low-paying positions in the context of constantly-rising inflation and an uncertain future. The American Hospital Association said that Biden’s vaccination plan “may result in exacerbating the severe work force shortage problems that currently exist”. Not surprisingly, some organizations have already started to oppose Biden’s vaccination plan.
The economic depression confronting humanity at home and abroad will not be overcome by leaving major owners of capital in power while workers, the people who actually produce the wealth that society depends on, remain marginalized and disempowered. Economic collapse will not be reversed by funneling more socially-produced wealth to different monopolies and oligopolies, while leaving everyone else with less. Fostering policies, agendas, and arrangements that make the rich even richer is a recipe for deeper problems, not a promising path forward. To date, billions of vaccination shots at home and abroad have not stopped or slowed a range of serious economic problems.
Since the start of the never-ending “COVID Pandemic” more wealth has become concentrated in even fewer hands and more people have experienced more psychological, social, and economic problems. Inequality has soared over the past 18 months.
The current economic crisis started long before 2020 and is rooted in the same contradictions that produced big economic problems before 2020. Even if there were no covid virus mutations, the economy would still be declining because economic upheavals are endemic to the capitalist economic system. Depressions and recessions are not caused by external factors. To claim that the economic system is generally sound but runs into problems now and then because of exogenous forces is nothing more than a way to apologize for the outmoded economic system.
Without major changes, without vesting power in workers themselves, economic crises will keep recurring and deepening. The rich and their representatives have shown time and again that they are unable and unwilling to solve economic and health crises, let alone in a human-centered way.
In December 2020 Biden publicly stated that the federal government should not or could not mandate vaccinations.
“We’re just tired!” April Flowers-Lewis told a rally in support of striking Mondelez workers*.* It’s not hard to see why the folks who make the nation’s cookies and crackers are exhausted and fed up. All through the pandemic, Flowers-Lewis, 48, and her co-workers, members of Bakery and Confectionary Workers Local 1, have been on their feet up to seven days a week, 16 hours a day baking and packing Wheat Thins, Chips Ahoy, Nutter Butter, Velveeta, and Animal Crackers here at what was the historic Nabisco plant on this city’s southwest side.
Around 400 union distillery workers in Bardstown, Kentucky, hit the picket line yesterday after rejecting a contract offer from Heaven Hill Distilleries, which included healthcare price hikes that reduce take-home pay, cuts to overtime, and drastic scheduling changes. Heaven Hill produces some of the most popular bourbon brands in the world, including Evan Williams, Elijah Craig, and Old Fitzgerald. According to the website Inc. Fact, the company averages annual profits of over $500 million.
One of the most important resistance leaders in Indian-controlled Kashmir, the site of the world’s longest and most militarized conflict, has died. Since 1947, Kashmir has been divided between India, Pakistan and China, all nuclear powers. India and Pakistan have fought multiple wars over the region, which both claim as theirs. The majority of people in Indian-controlled Kashmir, however, claim their right to self-determination, with many supporting the creation of an independent Kashmir. The Indian government refuses to acknowledge this position, arguing that political unrest in Kashmir is entirely fueled by Pakistan.
On September 1, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who consistently opposed Indian rule through decades of political activism, died at his residence at age 91. Geelani, who was suffering from a prolonged illness, had been living under house arrest since 2010. In total, the pro-self-determination politician spent more than 20 years of his life incarcerated.
Geelani began his career as a schoolteacher and later joined Kashmir’s biggest religious and political party, the Jamaat-e-Islami, in the 1950s. In the late 1980s, when an armed movement against Indian rule burgeoned in the region, Geelani quit electoral politics and became the face of anti-India resistance. In 1993, he helped found the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, a political organization that popularized tactics of civil disobedience, such as mass strikes and shutdowns.
In the political space, Geelani was a consistent proponent of Kashmir’s incorporation with Pakistan, a position he justified based on his Islamist beliefs. While many did not agree with this position, Geelani was widely respected for refusing to negotiate with the Indian state, famously asserting that, “India can’t be trusted unless it calls Kashmir a disputed territory, demilitarizes the region, and releases political prisoners for a meaningful dialogue.” Unlike other Kashmiri leaders who have been popularly criticized for compromising on Kashmiri demands for self-determination, Geelani maintained his commitment to seeking a UN-mediated resolution to the Kashmir conflict. During Kashmir’s recent years of civilian protests, the slogan “Na jhukne wala Geelani! Na bikne wala, Geelani!” (Geelani, the one who doesn’t bow and can’t be bought!) became popular.
News of the death of the former leader of the All Party Hurriyat Conference spread quickly. Police and paramilitaries blockaded the area around Geelani’s home, blocking media and civilian access. Traditionally, people in Kashmir visit the homes of the bereaved as part of the mourning process.
Police and paramilitary personnel deployed in Srinagar, Kashmir, after news of Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s death.Sanna Irshad Mattoo
After Geelani’s death, the government restricted public movement and cut almost all internet and mobile phone services across the entire region. According to the state government, the communication blackout is an effort to preserve “law and order” in the troubled region. However, many people in Kashmir see the blackout as a deliberate effort to prevent collective mourning in the wake of Geelani’s death. Cultural mourning practices in the region frequently involve public funeral processions, congregations, and, in the cases of deaths of political figures, may also include protests. The Indian government has severely restricted public mourning in Kashmir since the outbreak of mass protests following the death of an armed fighter, Burhan Wani, in 2016.
Police personnel near the residence of Syed Ali Shah Geelani. Entry and exit points to the area were restricted to media personnel.Sanna Irshad Mattoo
In the last decade, the Hindu nationalist Indian government has imposed hundreds of communication blackouts in regions it deems politically sensitive, leading some to call it the world’s leader in internet shutdowns. Kashmir’s 8 million citizens are frequently subjected to internet and telecommunication blackouts. From August 2019-February 2020, following the Indian government’s revocation of Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood and autonomy, Kashmiris endured the longest communication blackout in any democracy’s history. “This feels just like August 2019,” photojournalist Sanna Irshad Mattoo said in a phone call during a short restoration in internet services when she also sent these photos.
Tensions rose further when media reports emerged in which Naseem Geelani, Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s son, described how, immediately after his father’s death, the Jammu and Kashmir police “snatched his father’s body and forcibly buried him.” In this Muslim-majority society, the interruption of death rituals is a profound violation. The family was prevented from conducting last rites and family members were not present at the burial. Later, the Jammu and Kashmir police also filed a police case against Geelani’s family under the UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act), one of India’s draconian anti-terror laws, after a video surfaced of Geelani’s body draped with a Pakistan flag.
Protesters face off against Indian forces in street clashes.Sanna Irshad Mattoo
As news of Geelani’s death and forced burial spread across Kashmir on September 2, protesters clashed with heavily armed paramilitary forces in areas across Srinagar, despite the strict policing measures in place. While civilians shouted slogans and threw stones, police and paramilitary forces retaliated with teargas and lead-coated pellets. In Srinagar, one protester was severely injured, hit in the eyes and face with lead-coated pellets. Several protesters received minor injuries. Aggressive “anti-terror” laws also enable police to proactively detain “suspicious” persons. Dozens of people were arrested as a “preventive” measure following news of the protests.
In the following hours, new barricades and checkpoints appeared throughout the city of Srinagar, preventing residents from leaving their neighborhoods and accessing basic essentials and medical services. For three days, most internet and mobile phone services remained blocked.
A woman shows her medical prescription in order to be granted passage during the second day of military restrictions in Srinagar, Kashmir. Patients and medical professionals are technically granted safe movement during curfews and restrictions, but in reality, many are denied the right to move freely, and they experience harassment from armed forces.Sanna Irshad MattooNeighborhoods in downtown Srinagar are barricaded by a police vehicle.Sanna Irshad MattooOne of Kashmir’s most important mosques, the Jamia Masjid, remained closed for prayers on Friday, September 3, along with other major mosques in the region, to prevent mass mobilizations.Sanna Irshad Mattoo
The following day, on Friday, September 3, mosques across Kashmir remained closed, ostensibly to prevent protests from erupting after Friday congregations. However, for many, the closure of mosques and prevention of collective prayers further signified the impossibility of collective mourning in Kashmir.
The Jammu and Kashmir police hurriedly buried the body of Syed Ali Shah Geelani in a local graveyard near his home, instead of at the Martyr’s Graveyard, as per the wishes of the deceased. The grave, considered a sacred site, remains militarized and under 24-hour surveillance.
Despite being one of the region’s most popular leaders, Geelani’s grave remains inaccessible to the public, media and even to his family, who were prevented from conducting prayers at the grave. “Even after death, Kashmiri bodies are not left alone because the Indian government fears martyrs,” said one witness who was prevented from praying at the grave.
The Indian government has been keen to project an image of peace in the region after the widely criticized revocation of the region’s autonomy and statehood in August 2019. However, the severe security measures and the criminalization of mourning imposed after the death of Syed Ali Shah Geelani reveal the government’s fear of mass action and their delicate hold on the situation.
Meanwhile, people in Kashmir continue to mourn the death of one of the most important political figures in silence.
