Archive for October, 2017

PITT: Nightshade Statement on the Murder of Alina Sheykhet

Thursday, October 19th, 2017

Statement from the Nightshade Collective, received on October 18, 2017

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Rest In Power Alina Sheykhet.

We give our deepest condolences to Alina’s family, friends and loved ones during this challenging time.

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On the morning of Sunday, October 8th, 2017, Matthew Darby murdered his ex-girlfriend, Alina Sheykhet in her Oakland home, according to District Attorney Stephen Zappala. Sheykhet was a 20-year-old Pitt student studying to become a physical therapist.

Just days before Alina’s death, she stood before a local judge and detailed the ways Matthew had previously abused her. She filed and received a Protection from Abuse order (PFA) against Matthew that day.

Alina complied with state protocols to keep herself safe. And her ex still killed her.

The law said Alina was safe. Yet, her death proves how vulnerable she remained. This contradiction makes clear what many of us already know: the state cannot and will not ever protect women from gender-based violence.

The state has no real interest in protecting women or others of marginalized genders. State apparatuses feed off of the decimation of femininity. State-related institutions like Pitt, where Alina conducted her daily life, actively subordinate women and gender variant employees, professors, workers and students. They do so to ensure that Pitt’s administration and highest paid positions remain dominated by cis-gendered men. Every day, the University shows those of us like Alina, that society is built on gender-based violence – and the institutions need it to stay that way.

The State, the University and their ensuing cultures keep women and those of marginalized genders in a constantly vulnerable position. Alina’s death is a tragic and extreme manifestation of the culture of patriarchal domination that creates daily acts of violence against women and those of marginalized genders.

Even though the state does not protect women, it maintains its power by crafting an image that it does and that it can. When women believe that they must rely on the state for protection, they don’t organize independent and autonomous methods to defend themselves. By uplifting the state as a protector, public opinion criminalizes women and trans folks who act in self defense against gender based violence, as happened in the case of CeCe McDonald. The logic goes: If the state claims it protects women with benevolent laws, any act to defend oneself outside of those laws is too extreme and too aggressive and thus should be seen as criminal and dangerous. Once this mindset is adopted by the public, the state is able to use this logic to incarcerate women and those of marginalized genders whenever they defend themselves against gender based violence.

Thus, the state needs to promote itself as a protector to become a hidden but active aggressor in the war against femininity. In this situation, women and people with marginalized genders have no way to defend themselves against acts of patriarchal supremacy. They can’t rely on the state and they can’t rely on themselves. Suddenly, the state and other individuals who rely on the institutionalized supremacy of cis-men have all the power to enact war on women and those of marginalized genders without fear of opposition.

Alina’s death shows clearly that the state cannot and does not protect women from violence. In efforts to encourage the public to keep trusting in the benevolence of the state, propaganda outlets are scrambling to keep promoting the state as a protector of women. Broadcasts assure the public that pending legislation will tighten the restrictions of PFAs. Articles write about the years of jail-time that Matthew will serve. Yet, more legislation and more jail-time will not solve the ubiquitous patriarchal violence that led to Alina’s death.

Instead, those of us with marginalized gender identities must defend ourselves. The state betrays us, the University betrays us, brothers and fathers betray us, friends who benefit from gender privilege betray us. We can only fight the war against femininity if we fight it ourselves and for ourselves. We must create collectives of women and those of marginalized genders that actively fight against manifestations of patriarchal violence. We must build a counter-culture of care, autonomy and horizontalism, that opposes the University’s production of patriarchal domination. Together, with trusted allies, we must all oppose the idea of the state as any sort of protector.

Let’s not let Alina’s death be in vain. Let’s fight for a world where no woman or person of a marginalized gender must die from gender-based violence.

To support Alina’s family with the unexpected loss and the expenses that come along with it, consider donating here: https://www.gofundme.com/paiges-college-fund-2v8j7u2k

Rest In Power Alina Sheykhet.

– Nightshade Collective
October 18, 2017

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Pittsburgh: Community Demonstrates Outside Home of Local Cop

Friday, October 6th, 2017

Originally posted to It’s Going Down

Pittsburgh doesn’t have a police brutality problem. We have a police problem.

This problem won’t be solved by internal investigations, desk duty, body cameras, or – can you imagine? – community outreach, de-escalation training, and disarmament.

It will only be solved by the total abolition of the entire state security apparatus – cops and cameras, batons and bombs, prisons, armies, mass surveillance, and drone strikes. Nothing less will do in service of total liberation.

***

A viral video, captured on a civilian’s cell phone outside the PPG Paints Arena, spread Pittsburgh’s shame and the events of September 19th across the web. Five cops, one victim. His face bashed against the hard concrete again and again and again. Torrents of profanity from the cops. One screams “don’t resist” at the man lying limp on the ground.

Giving Officer Andrew Jacobs desk duty was more than just a moral error on the part of the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police. They named the most violent cop in the video and gave us the name of the person responsible. Voter registration records gave us the address of the only Andrew Jacobs in a fifty-mile radius of the city. We spread the word to close friends and accomplices – offline, via text and in person. We made signs and flyers and brainstormed chants.

A group of around ten assembled downtown and took the train to Mount Oliver, meeting three of our friends waiting at the station near the cop’s house and a few more parked up the street. All told, over 15 people gathered on the night of October 2nd to condemn this bastard in blue. Standing on the sidewalk, we passed around a megaphone and chanted in what amounted to a half hour of targeted disruption.

At one point, a woman screamed at us from a neighboring window. We screamed back – “Police are violent! We will not be silent!” Her husband emerged and slowly crossed the street towards us. Our chants wavered. He was aggressive, but not hostile. His kid was trying to sleep. We apologized and expressed sympathy before asking if he knew his neighbor was famous. He didn’t. “It’s not a tight-knit community,” were his words. Once we told him who lived two houses down, he begrudgingly granted our request for a few more minutes. One friend gave a speech – “If Black lives don’t matter, no lives matter.” A few more chants and then we split.

It’s good we left when we did. Our walk back to the train station was interrupted by two squad cars – buddies of Officer Jacobs, no doubt. Had we still been chanting when they arrived, we would surely have been subject to greater harassment. Lucky us. Curious cops just asked some friends a couple questions before escorting our group the remaining twenty feet to the station. We caught our ride, made it downtown, and went our separate ways.

***

A friend, a little late to the party, drove by the house a few minutes after we left. A uniformed cop stood in the front yard patting a visibly distraught Andrew Jacobs on the back. Mission accomplished.

Cops aren’t afraid of their fellow cops, of their bosses, of courts or prosecutors or legislatures. But they’re afraid of us. A little research and some word of mouth is all it takes for us to bring the fight from our neighborhoods to theirs. Organizing against police violence challenges the separation of people from political power, the social logic of the badge made material by the physical force of the baton. Power insulates individuals from the consequences of their actions. This power must be seized through collective action and abolished, disorienting the powerful by rejecting the justification for their every misdeed.

We have a message for Officer Jacobs, for the cop comforting him, for the four who followed us home, for the four who assisted his brutality, for every Pittsburgh cop who thinks being the law makes you above the law:

You have names and numbers, just like us. Just like us, you have homes that can be surveilled, neighbors that can be turned against you, communities that will reject you if the alternative becomes too costly. Just like us, your actions have consequences.

Activists accept targeted retaliation as a basic fact of their work. It’s time the police reckon with something similar.

“When friends and neighbors are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!”

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