Submitted anonymously from comrades in struggle for abortion rights.  We  support autonomous actions against the christian fascist forced-birthers!

REPORTBACK: Noise Demonstration at Home of Anti-Choice Lawyer in Chicagoland Area

Since the leak of the Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade approximately two months ago, the movement against the state and the anti-abortion movement has inspired many dynamic slogans and actions. From the charred ruins of fake “pregnancy crisis centers” to sidewalks on the fringes of liberal rallies, one slogan dominates: “If abortions aren’t safe, neither are you.” With Roe v. Wade officially overturned, the opposition has made good on their promise, so it’s up to us to make good on ours. Our intent is to take resistance from the symbolic to the concrete: from the things they simply value to the comfort and safety of their own homes. This was the leading light in the action against Thomas L. Brechja, co-founder of the anti-abortion legal advocacy firm, the Thomas More Society.

It started in Lovelace Park at dusk, where nearly fifty of ours milled about as word got around where the cops were hiding at the moment. Slowly, we gathered ourselves up as a speaker mounted the megaphone and a patrol car wheeled into view twenty yards behind us on the winding asphalt trail. We listened to a brief speech that moved from the inadequacies of protest to the need for autonomous resistance, taking a short detour into our route and simple logistics. Another comrade launched into a rant against anti-abortion terror: the legal road to the present and future abortion ban had been paved with the corpses of clinicians and supporters. Boombox blasting N.W.A., we marched through the park, the patrol car closing in and trailing us from an ever-shorter distance.

Our first encounters on a residential street were overwhelmingly positive. White, middle-aged liberals wandered out of their townhouses to greet our chant, “FUCK THE CHURCH, FUCK THE STATE, ONLY WE DECIDE OUR FATE,” with smiles and waves. We handed off and distributed flyers identifying Brechja, with some comrades hanging back to chat with his neighbors about his work with the anti-abortion movement. We continued on, chanting and slipping flyers under the windshield wipers of countless SUVs lining the streetside. Winding down the next street, we found ourselves at our target location, facing kettle lines on our northern and eastern flanks. We clogged the sidewalk at Brechja’s house and commenced our chanting and ranting. The trailing patrol car moved onto the corner of our street: the kettle zone had been established on our western flank.

We held our ground, diving between ourselves to keep the energy and initiative up, and inform each other about new arrivals from the neighborhood and pig positioning. Two impressed teenagers in tuxedos stumbled in from a Minions showing; a small throng of neighbors craned their necks and gawked from the other side of the street; the older lesbians next door proclaimed that they’d take their dog to shit the Brechjas’ lawn from now on. The common peal of the crowd shifted from Brechja and the anti-abortionists to the pigs who protect them. At the sight of fifty people in bloc shouting “Death to Amerika!” all at once, shifting about on restless feet, the patrol car vacated our corner and zoomed out of the neighborhood, breaking the zone and leaving us a safe exit.

Night had fallen. The block was lit only by scattered porch lamps and the floodlight of a cruiser tracking our comrades as we screamed, “Death to the pigs!” Suddenly, the call was put out to step onto the lawn. There, the rager at Thomas L. Brechja’s residence started as quickly as it ended, in a flash of fiery pops, smoke, and screams. A column of bike cops flooded the street and funnelled our comrades down our exit route. We called out to move people down with us to safety. Some broke off, hid away, and successfully regrouped; many of us moved down, and out, with our comrades without a hitch. At our rally point, we found out there had been no arrests and no one had any trouble arranging transport.

What became obvious in those last few moments was that the cops weren’t simply an occupational hazard: they were an extension of Brechja as the chief means of keeping him safe. This was a struggle on two fronts. Just as the pressure is applied to the anti-abortionists, a more determined and militant struggle against the police is needed to keep that pressure building and exceeding its limits.

 

Members of the Thomas Moore Society in the Chicagoland area:

Thomas Brejcha – click here

Joan Mannix – click here

Peter Christopher Breen – click here

Rita Gitchell – click here

Sally Wagenmaker – click  here

Martin Whittaker  – click here