Minneapolis, MN – Nicholas Kraus was given a 20 year prison sentence after pleading guilty to second degree murder for killing Deona Marie Erickson, who also went by Knajdek, and injuring others during a protest for Winston Smith in 2021. Driving a Jeep, Kraus purposely accelerated for blocks, weaponizing the vehicle to ram into a barricade for the protests. Kraus was forcibly detained by protesters, turned over to police and has been in jail since shortly after the incident which happened just before midnight on June 13, 2021.
Kraus turned 37-years-old on Nov. 29, 2022 and spent his day being transferred from Hennepin County Jail to Minnesota Correctional Facility Saint Cloud, with the Hennepin County Sheriff reporting he left their jail at 7:09 a.m.
Minnesota state prisons allow “good time” which means Kraus only has to serve two-thirds of the 20 year sentence. According to the Minnesota Department of Corrections, he has an anticipated release date of Oct. 12, 2034.
Some activists call Kraus a domestic terrorist and a white supremacist. While Unicorn Riot has not found any evidence to backup the white supremacist claim, many say his actions attacking dozens of community members protesting against a Black man killed by authorities speak for itself. However, Kraus, who was already a five-time convicted drunken driver with a suspended license, claimed the car attack was not politically or racially motivated and that he was under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Kraus had previously told police that “he floored the accelerator” in attempts to “jump the barricade [Deona Marie’s car].”
During the sentencing hearing, Kraus asked for the heaviest sentence possible and said “it should’ve been me that died because they [Deona and the protesters] were fighting for stuff that’s going on in this world that shouldn’t be going on.”
Affected by Smith’s killing and a consistent activist during the initial June protests, Deona Marie Erickson, 31, was a mother of two and a program manager at a facility for adults with disabilities. Erickson showed up daily to the protests demanding justice for Smith.
Deona Marie Erickson (Knajdek) was 31 when killed by Nicholas Kraus who attacked a gathering of Winston Smith protesters on June 13, 2021
During the night of June 13, 2021, Erickson had parked her car longways across road lanes to protect protestors who gathered on the south side of Girard Avenue and Lake Street in Uptown Minneapolis.
She was sitting down on the sidewalk about 15 feet from her car moments before Kraus smashed directly against her car which then hit her, sending her flying. Street medics on the scene resuscitated her but she later died at the hospital. Two others were injured and all involved suffered psychological trauma.
Before the attack, Kraus had seen the gathering and revved his engine from a few blocks away, continued to gain speed, and revved the engine again before the fatal collision. Kraus then got out of the Jeep he was in and tried to run, but was detained by protesters who in turn were greeted by Minneapolis Police officers in riot gear spraying pepper spray at them as they sought medical help and to turn the killer over to the police.
Two nights after the car attack, Unicorn Riot heard from activist Tony Clark, who took part in detaining Kraus and turning him over to the police. After a long night of police operations clearing Winston Smith protesters from Uptown streets, Clark spoke about his experience that fatal night. He spoke about Deona, the crash, turning Kraus over to the police and the need for Kraus to face a murder charge for his actions.
Kraus was initially charged with criminal vehicular homicide, driving after license cancellation, and giving false information to the police. The day after we heard from Clark, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office filed three additional felonies on Kraus – second degree intentional murder and two counts of second degree assault with a dangerous weapon – while dropping the initial charges. [Criminal Complaint – PDF]
On Oct. 21, 2022, a year and a half after the attack and three days before a jury trial was scheduled, Kraus signed papers pleading guilty to second degree murder without intent and second degree assault. [Read the guilty plea paperwork – PDF]
On Nov. 23, 2022 Hennepin County District Court Judge Paul Scoggin sentenced Kraus to 240 months for murder and 45 months for assault. The assault sentencing runs concurrent with the murder sentencing, adding no additional prison time. Kraus was given 529 days time served in an amended sentencing [pdf] a week later and a day before he was transferred to prison (the judge failed to mention time served during initial sentencing on Nov. 23).
The ramming by Kraus wasn’t nearly the first time a driver used his vehicle to attack protesters in the Twin Cities and wasn’t the last. During a protest just six months later outside the Hennepin County Government Center on the first day of the trial of Kim Potter for killing Daunte Wright, a car rammed through the protest, bringing many bad memories back to those who witnessed the Kraus attack.
Since the movement for Black lives started hitting the streets after the Trayvon Martin killing in 2012, over a dozen car attacks have occurred in the Twin Cities metro area. Kraus is the only attacker convicted in Minnesota. In cities across the USA, vehicular attacks against anti-racist and anti-police protests have also regularly taken place.
Deona Marie was at least the third white woman and/or femme non-binary person who lost their lives in the United States after being hit by vehicles while they were protesting against racism and police in a four year span: Heather Heyer was killed in Charlottesville in 2017 opposing white supremacists and Summer Taylor was killed in Seattle in 2020 during a march for Black femmes.
After Deona was killed, an internationalist anarchist woman in the Rojava Revolution in Kurdistan sent the following statement (see the full statement here):
“Every martyr is another reason to continue, another example to hold ourselves up to. For every woman who’s life they take, for every comrade, for every person who stands up to defend their community, who’s light they try to extinguish, we can make sure that a hundred rise up in their place. The time when we could be separated on the basis of race, class and gender is coming to an end.
When we sacrifice for each other in this way, as comrades, as people who share a freedom struggle, the methods of our enemies turn to dust. This is the time for us to defend our communities like Deona did. Anything else and we won’t have risen to her standard. Her choice to defend was a sacred act of love–let us all be lead by it.“
The Jeep Cherokee that Nicholas Kraus was driving sits in the middle of the intersection after smashing Deona’s black Kia into her, killing her – The Kia was parked on the far left of the image above before being hit head-on – image via @daviss
Inflation, skyrocketing energy prices for consumers, energy companies posting record profits due to the crisis, rising rents: thousands of demonstrators who had protested in Berlin on an unusual warm Saturday in November had all these points in mind.
Several thousand participants were expected by the organizers “if it goes well,” as one of the initiators was quoted in the German press. As it turned out, the estimate was on point: While there were initially significantly fewer, the march on Nov. 12, 2022, grew to over 7,000 people. The march was the largest yet in a so-far uneventful politically-declared “hot autumn.”
Organizations like ‘Who Has, Gives,’‘Fridays for Future Berlin,’ ‘Care Revolution’ and ‘Attac’ all called for the “Redistribute!” (“Umverteilen“) demonstration. A wide progressive spectrum of left-wing, environmental and neighborhood groups participated in the alliance which was founded in the end of summer 2022.
The organizers advocate a price cap for electricity, heating costs and rents, as well as higher wages.
Organizers stated that the unifying moment at the demonstration, which was also the main success of the action, was the rediscovery of the connection between almost all emancipatory struggles. These struggles are often carried out in isolation, and organizers remembered that there is a common necessity of changed economic conditions.
Surveys Show Europeans Are Worried Over Rising Inflation, Cost of Living
According to a survey [PDF] of the French newspaper La Tribune, Europeans have been forced to “tighten their belts” in order to cover their food and heating costs as winter approaches and are reducing the money they used to spend on their children’s needs. The survey of 6,000 people took place in Germany, France, Greece, Italy, Poland and the UK. The central finding is that rising prices of energy and consumer goods, which occurred at the end of the COVID crisis and were reinforced by the outbreak of war in Ukraine, have weakened European households.
Europeans questioned in the survey said it is “the increase in prices” that “explains most the decrease in their purchasing power, far ahead of taxes and the decrease in income linked to their activity.” Indeed, 89% of respondents think so. In particular, 92% of respondents in Germany and 91% in the United Kingdom, two countries where energy bills have increased considerably, believe this to be the case.
The survey shows that the situation for European households has worsened in 2022, with 53% of respondents reporting that they have had to make complicated choices due to the difficult economic situation in the last six months. Thus:
36% had to limit their travel (by car or public transport)
22% had to limit heating in their home and therefore get cold
14% had to ask relatives to lend or give them money
14% had to postpone the treatment of a health problem
13% need to do more than one job to survive or accept a job that does not satisfy them
11% skip a meal despite being hungry
6% had to ask friends, family for accommodation or a club for food and clothing
Other sources confirm the data for Germany. Due to high inflation, 63% of consumers in Germany are spending less money, according to a survey commissioned by the Federation of German Consumer Organizations. According to the survey, a further 20% expect to have to restrict their spending in the future.
In the end of October, the President of Germany Frank Walter Steinmeier delivered a dramatic speech in the midst of the war in Ukraine and the energy crisis, preparing his “compatriots” for “difficult, hard years ahead.”“We must not face the new era in fear as defenseless (…) We need a spirit of resistance, we need resilience,” he said. Similar perseverance slogans have been expressed across the ruling political establishment in Germany – from the economy minister Robert Habeck (Green Party), to the finance minister Christian Lindner (Liberal Free Democratic Party), to Chancellor Olaf Scholz (Center-left Social Democratic Party).
“Hot Autumn” in Europe?
Corporate media and politicians spoke all summer about an upcoming “hot autumn” because of rising prices. Energy and food prices comprise less than a third of the basket of goods and services used to measure inflation (the consumer price index – CPI). But according to The Economist the trends in the rest of the basket are also worrying.
Prices for services and goods other than food and energy increased by six percent over the last three months. Although energy prices may lie behind part of this shift—restaurants need heat, for instance—the size of the increase suggests inflation is spreading. At the same time, wages are increasing only a little. Politicians and central bank economists argue that a pay rise would just cause more inflation and the whole economy would enter a vicious cycle. Parts of the unions, which are traditionally powerful in Germany, agree.
Nonetheless, workers in different sectors are trying to renegotiate the collective bargaining agreements. Before the inflation hit, hospital workers were already engaged in a continuous strike movement. The same happened during the summer with dock workers. More strikes are also being planned in the public sector services like waste management and public transportation. Some of these unions demonstrated in October in the capital under the slogan“In solidarity through the crisis.” Yet, these demonstrations seem to be only mobilizing a limited number of members of the unions and have not had an effect on the larger parts of the population.
Many people see the prices at the supermarkets rising and may realize that heating costs will rise dramatically, but continue to act strongly individualistic or believe in a government solution. The latter is doing its best to keep the society calm with some limited direct money transfers for households for energy support, which demonstrators call a drop on a hot stone.
The latest financial package, formed by the ruling coalition in Germany, includes some help that will come in March when the worst of winter will have ended: In addition to taking over the December charge on gas bills, the price of gas for a certain level of consumption is to be capped next year – starting in January for industrial customers and in March for individuals. (Gas storage inventories in Europe are now also higher than last year, easing fears of shortages.)
Furthermore, on the local level rising rents and privatization of housing companies are continuing. In Berlin, a campaign for the expropriation of real estate companies that own more than 3,000 apartments was successful in a local referendum – 56.4% voted for the expropriation – but the local government has not made moves to authorize this changeover because the vote is not legally binding.
Right-Wing Draws Wider Protests Against Inflation
For progressive groups, one big fear remains that the right-wing will profit from the social and economic problems resulting from the inflation.
In East-German cities at protests at times a total of up to 100,000 people, often with the participation of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) or other right-wingers, were on the streets to demonstrate against the effects of inflation and for “peace with Russia.”
Comparatively there were significantly fewer rallies from left-wing groups in Germany, who saw a lack participation and continuity and often resorted to small individual actions. There is the feeling that there are more alliances and campaigns with names like “Enough is enough,”“Heating, bread and peace” or “Redistribute,” than actual people on the streets.
For weeks, activists of the alliance “Redistribute” had carried out various preliminary actions, including neighborhood meetings, late-night flyer tours, joint banner painting, and smaller demonstrations. There had even been advertisements in the displays of subways.
What became clear to the participants in the demonstration was that the path for a wider mobilization of society against the social injustice is still very long and difficult. The left is still disconnected from the base of the workers and seems only successful in topics like housing or the climate crisis. Yet, even in those topics around which many more Germans regularly gather in the streets than for social causes, the state does not give a lot attention to the demands.
Organizers said the challenge for the left remains how presence in the debate can be transformed into meaningful pressure from the streets. Some recipes have still to be (re-)discovered and connections (re-)established.
The closing of Exarcheia Square by the Greek authorities in August 2022 to build a metro station marked a significant blow to the historic district. As those who reside in sections of Athens, Greece face an onslaught of ‘development,’ this article provides analysis to this development and takes a deeper dive into the recent rise of gentrification in the second part of Unicorn Riot’s series from Greece.
In the modern digital times with global communication and outbursts of information, the power of the image and its aesthetics have been weaponized by authorities worldwide in attempts to create new unconsented normalities.
Globalization of capitalism and its mechanisms of enforcement, along with directives that emerge from think tanks with neoliberal alt-right agendas interconnecting through an international thread (as it became obvious with the example of Cambridge Analytica being behind both Brexit and Trump’s election), are giving authorities a global manual on how to impose and preserve their power. An ever-present keynote in these agendas is the term of gentrification. Used especially in its planetary form, gentrification offers a facelift for authority and a new illustrated cover for growth and progress whose false promises and disappointments have led to climate change, inconceivable inequalities and a global depression that only gets worse.
This article is an analysis piece reflecting lived experience, research and local perspectives written by an Exarcheia resident. The views and opinions expressed don’t necessarily represent those of Unicorn Riot.
Gentrification as a New Phenomenon
Gentrification was introduced as a term in 1964 by sociologist Ruth Glass when she tried to describe the rapid changes of the neighborhoods of London and the vast alterations that they brought to the social characteristics. Glass inverted the British upper class term ‘gentry,’ which is a step below nobility, into a negative term while observing the displacement of mostly blue-collared communities in the areas of Notting Hill and Islington by the wealthier middle class bohemian gentry population.
In the last decades, gentrification has become an omnipresent phenomenon in big cities globally. In Athens and throughout Greece, this phenomenon has been intensely visible over the last ten years.
To further understand these modern urban conditions, we should refer to some general characteristics and forms of gentrification. Locality is of the utmost importance and with it, a variety of forms should be thoroughly considered.
Speaking to different examples with different geographical or sociopolitical contexts, we can roughly note twelve core characteristics of gentrification:
The commodification of social housing due to increasingly degrading conditions
The phenomenon leads to the growth of slums or informal settlements because of the displacement in the ever-growing urban tissue
Suburban expansion and development in peripheral areas, especially with fast-track ‘growth’ policies allowing land title regularization and de-normalization permitting the absolute reign of the rental market and home ownership by real estate funds or trusts.
Gentrification does not have exclusively class characteristics since its causes and effects have not only a financial face but also cultural, aesthetic, social, political and repressive ones. Its temporality also provides a different process in each place which may not escalate around an economic axis.
The gentrifiers have a less deeply rooted relationship with the neighborhood, its history and sociopolitical background, putting their armies of architects, builders and interior designers to mutate, perhaps permanently, entire parts of the city.
Gentrification cultivates cultural appropriation by market state, ‘folklorization’ of cultural aspects especially where ‘touristification’ is intense, creating a museum or gallery-like approach of the public space. Artists are pivotal in these situations and aid through aesthetics to valorize the mundane and the meaningless. (For example, street art is repackaged for lobbies of new luxury apartment buildings.)
Gentrification mostly does not stop, but changes phases. The landscape changes and the upcoming transformation of the neighborhood’s social character changes local politics, city planning and commercial needs, stimulating a wider gentrification.
It spreads the commercialization of the public space and a panoptic surveillance over it, especially in new so-called “smart cities.” The upgrading of public space and services serves as a step toward a more controlled, sterilized, privatized hypothesis.
Real estate, instead of a tool, becomes the regulator of access to housing and city planning. Rental and housing policies intensify displacement and exclusion of the locals. Real estate’s function is transmitted to previously irrelevant sectors such as finance and education etc. Real estate is not a labor sector, but a working sector as legal as gambling.
Gentrification often revolves around communities which have the aura of authenticity. That authenticity appears as a meaning to fill the void of what can be considered a plastic neoliberal life and the notoriety of grittiness. Through commercialized aesthetics of the privatized individual, that authenticity is portrayed to the gentrifiers as an innocent guilt, or a forgivable sin, in their effort to touch the forbidden fruit without getting dirty. Through the lenses of a white spatial imaginary, the art world legitimizes the above since its dominant aesthetical regime identifies with gentrification aesthetics. Inclusion, diversity, or immigrant urbanisms become cheap opportunities or trends which offer a politically correct cover for racist reactionary organizations. So, in the end there is a destruction of the aesthetics of the neighborhood.
Displacement has a huge psychological toll and impacts the living standard of the people who face it. Those displaced mostly try to move close to where they lived in order to retain personal, commercial or institutional ties that counter the economical or often racial restraints they face. This forces them into houses with inferior quality, less space and higher prices—a life less worthy of living. Exclusion of local populations is enhanced by the fact that in most cases “informal businesses” and local economies of neighborhoods based on solidarity, and not the laws of the market, become extinct for the regeneration process to take effect. (Crushing informal markets and unlicensed street vendors are often a sign of this trend.)
Public green space and public transportation systems, especially the metro, are signs of gentrification in neoliberal cities. The privatization of recreation and health as ecological damage of the urban space turn them from commons for the people, as they should be, to commercial goods for profit and control. Social innovators, digital nomads and academics who approach these goods as a fertile ground to access funds, profit and to build careers have a short-term stay in the area producing a long-term gap leading to transient, abstract and socially faceless neighborhoods.
Top two images: graffiti in Athens, Greece – images taken by Niko Georgiades, Unicorn Riot (2017). Bottom image: “Gentrify This!!!” graffiti in London, England – image via OpenDemocracy/spacebahr Flickr (2016)
Forms of Gentrification
Gentrification seems to always wear a liberal smirk that embraces diversity, talking openly about white guilt, responsibility and equality. But in fact, it carries an empty liberal delusional mirror where others are fading under oneself and the meaning stops when it starts getting uncool and boring. Gentrification creates a progressive playground for the privileged until the game flexes in a new way.
As the above list of characteristics are deployed in various ways and intentions regarding locality and its interaction in the global canvas, we can also note different forms of gentrification. Scale and contextuality are pivotal for gentrification’s alterations. The forms include the size and the speed of growth, the racial, ethical, religious or cultural relationship of each of the populations, the segregation and decentralization that exists to different degrees, plus the social and financial infrastructures, that altogether with the above, dictate the city’s politics and planning.
Briefly put, gentrification is referred to in six forms:
Perhaps the most recognizable is the new build gentrification through new homes and developments constructed in empty fields. Even if there is no displacement of the new upgraded neighborhood, it becomes gentrified.
Rural gentrification which happens in rural places giving an ‘authentic’ ticket of living in nature.
Super gentrification which appears mostly in big metropolises and in already heavily gentrified areas through further investments.
Student gentrification where universities function as real estate holding companies, sometimes even turning entire cities into student consuming commercial zones. Often these entities benefit from tax-free status (Edinburgh, UK, Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts are good examples).
Commercial gentrification where whole areas are turning into sterilized commercial avenues and trading places. (In the U.S., “big box retail” with very large square footage, supplants and displaces smaller locales, as Walmart expands near highways and old downtowns become abandoned and unviable. Eerie abandoned malls are testaments to the last wave of commercial gentrification.)
Tourism gentrification, which as a plague invades every hidden inch of a city turning it into a huge hotel providing neverending exclusive services to the tourists, and misery and a sense of constant enslavement to the locals. (In recent years AirBNB has contributed to reducing affordable long-term rental options in many cities worldwide.)
“A cheap holiday in other people’s misery!” as the punk rock group Sex Pistols sang.
Touristification is aggressive and intensifying in Greece, leaving the country with an awful scar, especially in Athens and across the islands.
Finally ‘gentrination’ is the gentrification perceived on a national level rather than a neighborhood one. Being that there are words also about planetary gentrification, these phenomena are described as being interlinked, interrelated and on a global scale.
Further, green gentrification is an approach that describes how a closer proximity to passive or natural green space is accompanied with enormous housing prices.
Squatter symbol – Athens, GreeceLeft/Top image: Squatter symbol graffiti in Athens, Greece – image via Niko Georgiades, Unicorn Riot (2017). Right/Bottom image: Trendy Hotel in Athens, Greece – image contributed by Yegor Halva (2022)
Parameters of Gentrification – Toward a Panopticon
We should try to elucidate the phenomenon of gentrification by adding two important parameters.
The first parameter of gentrification is the mobility of the present societies. As the concepts of communication, information and technology continue to change in the digital era, distance and the relation that individuals keep with their place of origin has also changed. Financial globalization has forced sections of social sectors to be on a constant move—from tourists and digital nomads to immigrants and refugees.
These non-stop flows and their rising intensity create more fluid societies, often unstable due to the irrational inequalities that can spring from aggressive authoritarian government policies. This, in turn, leads to more opportunities of profit for the real estate companies and corporations. These companies benefit from the efforts to present whole areas as diminished and feed on economic and social instability, following the old recipe of turning misery into money.
The second parameter is the digital interface in which societies function, interlink and interact in the frame of the so-called smart cities. Maybe this approach of smartness hides a delicate unthinkable irony, but a smart city means in simpler words, urban digitalization.
Governance, labor, production and city planning are redirected through data-driven digital systems, platforms and services such as Google, Amazon or Uber, which drastically change the social, political and economic relations in and across cities.
San Francisco and Silicon Valley are both characteristic examples of thesis metamorphosis as they’ve been heavily gentrified for more than two decades now, leaving sterilized remains of meaningful pasts.
Gentrification is tightly coupled with ‘smart city’ trends, precarious employment based on smartphone apps, physical security and control of space imposed through digital systems like Amazon Ring cameras.
Surveillance and control are important elements rising through overinvestment in this digital mode of the gentrifying process. It’s not only the security cameras, the data mining, and the panoptic privatization of public space, it is also the furious assumption on behalf of the tech companies that they own the city. They don’t just want to draw value, but they seek dominion or domination over it. (The battle in Seattle saw Amazon prevail against a modest corporate worker ‘head tax’ in 2018; its supporters aimed to eject progressives from the city council.)
The city embodies a digital-friendly interface, and then authorities can utilize artificial intelligence to predict citizens’ behavior, prevent the unexpected and practice an algorithmic governance by creating controlled spaces of proximity or practicing strict social discipline with alert warnings on faceless mobile phones as it happened with the pandemic measures in Greece.
Gentrification presents exactly this transition to the panoptic future and most importantly tries to bury all the public grounds in the city that the common people have ties to, those pockets which have cultivated dissent and protest, and provided the spaces for people who simply try to survive this mutation.. It is not by chance that the growth and progress which is promised to the gentrifier always means a new landscape of stores and services where time turns into value and meaning into commerce.
Sustainability, social justice and ecological proaction are the main promises in this illustrious tech driven pseudo-paradise. The last promise being of utmost importance since the neoliberal environment that these cities are anchored to in the last decades have caused an increase of instability and turmoil, a loud break of all kinds of social contracts and a possibly irreversible ecological catastrophe.
Gentrification is advertised as the exotic fruit by the natives, a promising growth, lifting to the face of empiric neoliberal cities, which crumble under the inherent vices of their leaders. Athens, after many years of a mainstream effort to break away from its Balkan, Eastern, mystified origin, is finally part of the West. Undoubtedly European with a heart of Euros, it’s now an accountable geopolitical player available to the appetites of the superpowers.
“Gentrified” spray painted onto Greater Friendship Missionary Baptist Church, which served as a community building for hundreds in South Minneapolis, days before it was demolished to make a grocery store – image via Niko Georgiades, Unicorn Riot (2015)
Strefi Hill and Exarcheia Square
This privileged relationship between Greece and the EU will ensure the panoptical character similar to the new Lofos Strefi (Stref Hill), and provide opportunity for their private interests to blossom. Strefi Hill is a massive hill located in central Athens with an integral importance to the Exarcheia neighborhood, which is increasingly threatened by gentrification. Just months ago, construction and security contractors from Unison, connected to Athens’ mayor and the Prime Minister of the country, began to fence sections of the hill off.
The reduction of the green element of the hill is not treated like another ecological error, but as a minor appropriate misdemeanor in the name of growth and prosperity. This sense of anthropocentric, ecologically hostile progress together with sustainability are the key illusions that gentrification tries to sell to its willing or unwilling clients without a receipt of freedom, of course.
In the beginning of August, engineers accompanied by numerous praetorians of the state, arrived and tried to work on Strefi Hill, but were stopped by residents and people from the Assembly Against Strefi Regeneration. This was met with a repressive stance by the police, making it clear that the cops will happily execute their masters’ orders to oppress, beat and arrest brutally. Their goals, to build Attiko metro—adding a station where a square once was and “develop” the hill. Using Prodea, the biggest private real estate investment company in Greece and Unison facility services, the government seeks to deliver a safe private yard for their customers and the real estate vultures to take the profiting feast to the next level. All this happens with the total exclusion of the locals and residents from any decisions and planning regarding the neighborhood they live and function in everyday.
“Don’t be an asshole – don’t do AirBnB” graffiti stenciled in Athens, Greece – image via Assembly Against Strefi Regeneration (2022)
The resistance through residence assemblies, initiatives against the metro or Strefi privatization and the hundreds who act and keep the square’s character alive all these years are the only breaks that could delay or even cancel the procedure. Therefore it is urgent that this resistance message breaks the walls of the monopoly of state control over the media and spreads massively into society. A message that echoes hope against the future they have planned for us, a future painted black with the brushes of exception, asphyxiating control and a survival mode imposed with unbearable living costs.
It is important to raise awareness beyond the borders. Exarcheia has symbolic importance in the global movement, but also this can create dynamics in groups and individuals. People can add to and broaden the struggle with priceless experience from similar fights in their realities, and, importantly, interconnect and interact with each other.
Since the visionary sociologist and philosopher Henri Lefebvre’s 1968 book The Right to the City, and the white plans of the Provos, housing, city planning and ecological urbanism have been among other pivotal starting points or distinctive moments in the request for freedom and the pursuit of a meaningful everyday life.
The arsenal of resistance is full, but it has to be used directly with unity, imagination and persistence. Activists with the Exarcheia assembly go by the motto: “If we don’t resist in our neighborhoods, our cities will become modern prisoners. Stop Gentrification. Free Exarcheia!”
Cover image of art in Athens, Greece taken by Niko Georgiades, Unicorn Riot.
Sioux Falls, SD – Native American communities and grieving family members have been organizing ongoing protests to demand justice for Jacob James, who was shot and killed by police last summer in Sioux Falls. A march took place on Sept. 9, 2022 calling for accountability.
On Aug. 9, 2022, a Sioux Falls police officer and a Minnehaha County sheriff deputy serving on the Sioux Falls Area Drug Task Force fatally shot 21-year-old Jacob James after a traffic stop. Police say they were conducting a drug investigation and pulled over a vehicle in the parking lot of Burger King on W. 12th St. and S. Williams when two men got out and ran.
Image courtesy of DCI Report
According to police, James fired three shots from a handgun as he fled. A detective and an investigator returned fire, striking James at least four times. James died a short time later at the hospital.
The officers who killed James have not been identified and were cleared of charges just two weeks later.
According to the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) report [PDF], still images released from a police car dashboard video show James shooting at cops.
Image courtesy of DCI Report
“James shot in the direction of Investigator #1 and Investigator #1 returned shots at [James]. Detective #1 was in fear for their partner’s life at this point, as well as in fear for bystanders since it was around 5 PM,” according to the DCI report.
However, James’ family does not believe the police’s version of events. The photo that the DCI claims shows James shooting at cops does not show him holding a weapon, his family contends.
There are many inconsistencies in the stories from police and bystanders.
Onlookers said James threw his gun and then sat down on the ground surrendering to police. Meanwhile police stated that before they fatally shot him, he fled on foot and stopped and fired three shots in their direction.
According to the DCI report, only the dashboard camera video from one of the cop cars shows James pointing a gun and firing at a cop. However, there is no audio, only video of the incident.
“The dash camera recording has video but no audio…Jacob Michael James was seen pulling a black object from his waistband area in his right hand as he continued running south. As Jacob Michael James got to the southwest corner of the Burger King building, he looked to the southwest, pointed a firearm to the southwest and fired at least one (1) shot.”
DCI Report
According to its own review of the video, the DCI report posits that James fired “at least one shot” at officers, however there is no actual way to tell if James fired a shot simply by watching the video because there is no sound.
One video, perhaps the best bystander depiction of what happened that day, appears to show James throwing something after the sound of two gunshots. James then continued to fall to the ground in a hail of bullets. The video does not show James shooting at officers.
Even the DCI report confirmed that James tossed something.
“A bystander video was reviewed and showed Jacob Michael James sitting on the ground, appearing to throw something from his right hand.”
DCI Report
Logically, according to James’ supporters, a man who just shot at cops would not subsequently throw his gun.
Family and community have continued to gather and protest every Friday at the westside Burger King where James was killed. Activists are calling for justice and accountability for the cops involved in the death of the 21-year-old.
Allison Renville, an organizer and political consultant, said at the march on September 9, that “Jacob’s death didn’t have to happen. Jacob didn’t have to die.”
At least twenty-one 9mm shell casings from police were found on the scene. A couple of spent .357 casings and a .40 caliber handgun were found near James’ body, according to police, who also reported the .40 caliber handgun slide was jammed.
.40 caliber handgun found near Jacob James. Image courtesy of DCI Report.
After the DCI investigation into the police-involved shooting concluded, South Dakota Attorney General Mark Vargo released a statement clearing officers of any wrongdoing.
“Based on body camera footage, dashboard-mounted footage, interviews, and additional evidence including spent shell casings from James’ weapon, our investigation determined that reasonable officers present at the scene faced clear and present danger to themselves and bystanders… The officers were justified in firing their weapons and using lethal force.”
Attorney General Mark Vargo
The DCI Report acknowledges an officer’s car was struck by a fellow officer. Image courtesy of DCI Report.
Supporters of James suggest that officials can release the police body camera and dashboard camera videos to the public to clear up any lingering doubts, but they refuse to.
Unicorn Riot requested body camera and dashboard camera videos from the Sioux Falls Police Department (SFPD) from the Aug. 9 shooting, but were denied due to the undercover nature of the drug task force operation. SFPD cited five South Dakota Case Laws as reasons the information isn’t “a matter of public record.”
To many observers we encountered, the killing of Jacob James sounds eerily familiar to that of Winston Smith, a Minneapolis man who was shot and killed by a federal task force in 2021 as they were executing an arrest warrant in the early afternoon of June 3.
Similar to the case of Jacob James, authorities refused to release video of the Smith killing or names of the officers involved, citing the clandestine nature of the federal task force. Later, police denied that any such videos existed at all, and in a twist of fate, the officers’ names were discovered unredacted in the initial investigation report. All officers involved in the killing of Winston Smith were cleared of any wrongdoing by the state.
Unicorn Riot extensively covered the killing of Winston Smith and the subsequent protests against his killing.
Reports initially claimed that Smith pointed a gun at officers, a claim disputed by Smith’s date. She was in the car with him and said that at no point did Smith have a gun. Authorities later stated in their report that they found a handgun next to the driver’s side door where Smith was killed.
A spokesperson for James’ family, Jessica Williams, addressed the crowd at the Sept. 9 march and refuted the official findings.
“In the DCI summary report, they said that Jacob was seen on video throwing a gun and that’s why they kept shooting at him. In that video, did you guys see a gun? He did not throw a gun. His empty hands were up. I could clearly see that. Jacob was light skinned. He was standing by a dark car and his hands were empty. And then you can see him fall to the ground and see his hands were still empty until he died, they were still empty. The police don’t wanna give us answers. And that’s bullshit. His mom should not have to sit here and still wonder what happened to her son.”
Jessica Williams, Jacob James’ family spokesperson
Even the medical report demonstrates that James was turned around, likely running from cops, when he was shot:
“One bullet entered his right elbow area and was lodged in his upper arm.”
“One bullet entered through the back side of his right upper thigh area and exited through his right hip area.”
“One bullet entered through his right upper chest area, exited through the left side of his chest area, and then reentered into the inner part of his left bicep and was lodged in the left bicep.”
“One bullet entered the left side of his abdomen and exited through the right side of his abdomen.”
According to the DCI report, after police shot James, “All three task force officers then approached Jacob Michael James to render aid.” However, a bystander video from inside a gas station across the street contradicts this. Instead of rendering aid, the video shows what appears to be cops in the background handcuffing James while he was on the ground. One person can be heard in the video saying, “Why are they fucking handcuffing him?”
Williams, the family spokesperson, said Jacob James wasn’t the monster police tried to make him out to be.
“He wasn’t a low life criminal like they’re trying to portray him to be. He was a family man. He put his family and friends first…Jacob knew the value of love, of friendship, of family. He was just living his life as a regular normal person…[cops] want to say they recognized parolees with warrants. Jacob wasn’t a parolee and he didn’t have warrants. And yet he’s the only fucking one that died. And that’s so fucking wrong.”
Jessica Williams, Jacob James’ family spokesperson
James proudly worked at Arby’s as a cook where he was employee of the month. James’ family described him as a caring, loving individual who was artistic and inquisitive, and respectful of his elders. He left behind three small children.
The streets and alleys of the Gaza Strip were almost completely submerged from rain on November 8, 2022, coinciding with the beginning of the winter season. Water flooded the main roads and stopped traffic almost completely in the early morning hours.
As a result of the flooded streets and roads, cars lined up inside the city centers and various neighborhoods in the Strip were submerged by rain. Many students and employees were not able to reach their schools and workplaces.
The ongoing Israeli blockade on Gaza, along with four Israeli-waged wars in the last 15 years, has exacerbated the flooding as infrastructure has been bombed and upgrades and development stunted. Residents suffer from unsafe drinking water, power outages, and continually worsening living conditions.
After this year’s flooding, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip accused the municipal councils of failing to prepare for the winter which is still in its infancy. Each year, residents in Gaza have called on the municipalities to prepare for the winter season early by asking that municipalities clean the water drainage channels scattered in various areas in a way that does not lead to flooding streets and homes and paralyzing movement.
Yet, these scenes have been repeated several times in recent years, and the winter season for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip has come to represent the imminent flooding of the streets. In some cases, the flooding is so severe that residents have to use small fishing boats to cross the streets.
The majority of municipal councils announce their readiness about a month or two before the winter season by talking about opening airport water and sewage drainage channels. However, these announcements differ from the reality experienced by residents.
After the flooding on November 8, we heard from Tariq Abu Sidou, an affected shop owner whose store was flooded and goods were damaged. He said “the Gaza municipality is supposed to know that winter is coming, and they know that this area is flooding every year.”
“I opened the shop and was surprised to see that it was flooded. looked at the shoes, all of them were not suitable for use, and none would fit anymore. The UPS, battery and charger were all damaged, who will compensate me for these damages? The Gaza municipality is supposed to know that winter is coming, and they know that this area is flooding every year. Everything on this street was supposed to be fixed from the start, but they didn’t fix anything on it and now we’re drowning and hurt and I don’t know what I will do.”
Shop owner Tariq Abu Sidou
Activists in Gaza have recently criticized the heads and members of municipal councils, demanding their resignation and calling for elections for municipal councils that would be able to meet the needs of the population.
No elections have been held for municipal councils in the Gaza Strip since 2005, as the current councils are appointed by the Hamas Movement’s Follow-up Committee on Governmental Work, which has managed the affairs of the sector in recent years.
In turn, the various municipal councils in the Gaza Strip attributed the flooding to the collapse of infrastructure caused by repeated Israeli targeting during bombings in the last two decades. Much of the existing infrastructure is also more than 50 years old and basically dilapidated. Municipal councils also blamed the failure to implement new infrastructure projects and the Israeli restrictions imposed on the reconstruction process.
On the ground, teams of the local municipal councils deployed in a number of cities in the Gaza Strip to empty the water drains at the airport. Using primitive methods, they drained the water and reopened the streets to the movement of cars.
There are 25 municipal authorities and councils in Gaza which provide services to more than two million citizens in Gaza, most of which suffer from stifling financial crises due to the blockade, or siege on the Gaza Strip.
Graphic mapping Gaza, the governorates, and Israeli blockade – via Al Jazeera’s guide to the Gaza Strip
Roughly the size of Detroit, the Gaza Strip, or Gaza, is a self-governed territory consisting of a 25 mile strip of historic Palestinian land off the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Five large governorates, North Gaza, Gaza City, Deir al-Balah, Khan Yunis, and Rafah, hold around 2.1 million people in 141 square miles [see maps via Al Jazeera and via B’tselem].
Over six of 10 Palestinians in Gaza are refugees, initially expelled from their homes as the state of Israel was formed in 1948. Israel then captured the Gaza Strip in 1967 and similar to other Palestinian territories like the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Gaza has been under Israeli occupation since.
Over the last three decades, Gaza has been a central flashpoint in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Israel built a barrier wall around the whole Gaza Strip in the 1990s and has, since 2007, conducted a full land, air, and sea blockade of Gaza. The blockade has led to shortages of medical supplies and even food and fuel.
Israel has waged several wars on the territory and repeatedly bombed infrastructure including sewage and water lines, roads, and homes in high-residency neighborhoods. The blockade also prevents construction materials like steel and cement from entering the Strip. That, along with the economic degradation the territory is facing from the siege, has effectively stunted the ability to update infrastructure.
The blockade on the residents in Gaza, which has one of the world’s densest populations, has earned the territory the title of “the world’s largest open-air prison.”
A short 10 days after the flooding, a tragedy struck North Gaza as 21 people perished in a fire in a residential building the Jabalia Camp. Jabalia is the largest out of eight refugee camps in the Gaza Strip.
Funeral procession for the martyrs of the Jabalia camp fire, from the Rashidun Caliphate Mosque in the northern Gaza Strip
21 bodies were recovered from inside the residential building in which the fire broke out in Jabalia camp, and they were transferred to the Hospital pic.twitter.com/LkBkoS4cuY
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