Police attack IWW pickets at Insomnia Cookies

 

American police are famous the world over for there motto "To protect and serve" -I have no idea what my local police motto is or even if they have one- and its absolutely true police the world over exist to protect property and serve the established order. This why police are militarised and have there powers expanded whenever the status quo is threatened. Though there are some groups that due to there existence will always face aggressive policing, ethnic minorities, political oppositionists and of course Labour organisers. Especially Syndicalists like the IWW since there structure and aims make it difficult for government and industry to co-opt and incorporate it like they occasionally do with big company unions.



In the past Wobblies or strikes and demonstrations believed to be organised by the Wobblies were often met with live ammunition and fatalities. Today police repression continues but thankfully no shoot outs or bodies.


 From Boston IWW iwwboston.org/

Last night the Cambridge Police swarmed a totally legal picket of Insomnia Cookies, demanded we shut down our PA (which we did), then attacked, punched, bloodied, threw on the trunk of a car, threw on the ground and dragged away IWW member Jason Freedman who has been charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and assaulting a cop. Jason sustained injuries to his back and arm. This was a completely unjustified attack on Jason, on civil liberties, labor rights and free speech. It was provoked (and lent legitimacy in the eyes of the cops) by a false report from the company that picketers were obstructing the sidewalk in front of the store. Feel free to register protests with Henrietta Davis, Mayor of Cambridge, at mayor@cambridgema.gov.

In response the Boston IWW organised even more pickets to promote the ongoing strike and protest the intervention by the police.

 This weekend the IWW held two separate actions in Harvard Square to protest the Cambridge Police’s 11/14/13 attack on our legal picket at Insomnia Cookies, where the union is conducting an organizing drive. Cambridge cops swarmed our picket, assaulted and then arrested a Wobbly — supposedly for assaulting them! Our Fellow Worker was punched, thrown on a car trunk and then the ground, and pinned partially under a car before being dragged away. This was a totally unprovoked attack on a legal picket on a public sidewalk. IWW members and allies protested in Harvard Square on Friday 11/15, and returned on Saturday 11/16, making the streets of Cambridge ring with our chants (“Cambridge PD / Stop the brutality!”), and letting community members know what local cops have been doing to suppress labor rights, civil liberties and free speech.

 

 

HOW TO HELP:
1) Feel free to register your protests over the police attack with Cambridge
Mayor Henrietta Davis at mayor@cambridgema.gov or by calling 617-349-4321.
2) To reach Insomnia Cookies' CEO Seth Berkowitz, and let him know how you
feel about his company's apparent complicity in police violence and attacks
on free speech, please call 877 632-6654.
3) For more information about the Insomnia Cookies campaign, find us Online:
https://www.facebook.com/insomniaunion http://iwwboston.org/