mass action – never sleep

A Report from a Mass Fare Evasion in New York City

Last week, a series of demonstrations took place in New York City after police attacked a person they accused of dodging the fare on the subway. The police opened fire, shooting the suspect, a police officer, and multiple other people who happened to be in the station. This shows the real cost of police enforcing subway fare. We received the following report from a mass fare evasion action in Manhattan on the evening of September 18.

It’s senseless to have police randomly shooting people to enforce a $2.90 fare. The subways should be free, as they chiefly serve to put working-class people at the disposal of capitalist profiteers in the first place. The resources to make this possible exist—they are simply held hostage by the ruling class, to whom the lives of ordinary people have no worth.

It was a demonstration very much like the one described below that set off the Chilean uprising of 2019, triggering copycat actions in the United States. Struggles against the cost of public transit and the murderous police that enforce it continue around the world.

Photographs by Abu Zeek.

Continue reading ““Live Free, Ride Free, Fuck NYPD””

September 18, 2024

NYPD OUT OF THE MTA: Tonight, New Yorkers stood up for their community and protested the expansion and impunity of the police occupation of their city. Last Sunday, the NYPD shot Derrell Mickles and three others after Mickles entered the platform through the emergency exit at the Sutter Ave. station in Brownsville—committing a mass shooting in one of New York City’s poorest neighborhoods. In response, hundreds of city residents conducted a mass fare evasion at the West 4th station, hopping the turnstiles to say clearly that no one should be killed for not having $2.90, that in fact the subway should be free—and free of cops.

For their part, the NYPD were once again humiliated and shown to be paper tigers when confronted by the ingenuity and mass action of the city. As dozens streamed through the gates, onto the platforms, and into the different subway cars, cops brutalized and arrested those few they could get their hands on. The people are undeterred and are committed to maintaining this form of mass action in the weeks to come.

An institution founded from the slave patrols past, the NYPD protects property and capital, it funnels black and immigrant populations into endless cycles of immiseration and poverty and modern enslavement. Our cities are under occupation: cop training facilities are flourishing all across America—we have one in our backyard near College Point Queens. These facilities advance and refine strategies of repression and counterinsurgency, so as to ensure that no mass action against oppression, incarceration, and depredation will be allowed to exist.

We must end this. Out of the homes and into the streets. Live free, ride free, fuck the NYPD.

Continue reading “Photos: Mass Fare Evasion at West 4th Street”