ChicagOtra, Indymedia and friends of Brad Will held a rally and vigil outside of the Mexican Consulate in Chicago on Monday afternoon. While many came out to celebrate the life of Brad Will and the struggle of the people of Oaxaca to which he was among those martyred in previous days, the police came with a different tune.

Arrests

Perhaps embarrassed after their riot cop repression preparation-without-a-protest on the Saturday before, the 12th District had clearly paid attention to events through out Europe and the Americas over the course of the day. Mexican consulates were occupied in Barcelona, Madrid, Rome, Buenos Aires, San Francisco, Indianapolis, and New York, in the latter case garnering about a dozen arrests, almost all of whom were friends of New York Indymedia radical and documentarian Brad Will. In Chicago, the 12th District was determined to interrupt the peaceful and legal memorial service of those murdered in Oaxaca by arresting two of Brad’s friends.

Christine Geovanis, Chicago Indymedia activist, was the first taken. She was initially surrounded during the early set-up for the rally as she attempted to temporarily post a picture of Brad to the wall of the Mexican Consulate. Led by Lieutenant Bauer #761, the officers told her that she wouldn’t be allowed to do so, and she responded that people tape up pictures of their friends and family all the time in Chicago when they are killed by car crashes, gang violence, or police murder. Geovanis later said that she thinks Bauer took it personal when she quickly asked him on the spot if his father had been the infamous commander who had done much to trample the civil rights of activists and the poor. Bauer led his officers to arrest her, pulling her across the street, and though she obeyed entirely, he made sure to twist her cuffed wrist.

A few activists followed them across the street as they placed Geovanis into an unmarked car. As one crying friend of Brad shouted that the police were fascists, Bauer turned around on the activist, commenting “Yeah, I am a fascist.” This activist was suddenly turned around onto a fence and cuffed. Both arrestees were taken to 12th District, where they were transferred respectively to Area 5 at 5555 W. Grand, where female protest-related arrestees are sometimes sent, and Area 2 at 111th St., where male protest-related arrestees are often sent. During the course of the rally, participants called the precincts to for jail support, and several people went to each jail where the arrestees were both released at about 2 o’clock in the morning, almost eleven hours after their arrests.

Memorial Service

Some seventy-five (75) activists, including many personal friends and comrades of Brad, and supporters of ChicagOtra and Indymedia, came to the three hour demonstration and memorial. One ChicagOtra organizer went into the consulate with a letter demanding justice for the martyred and the demonstrators in Oaxaca, and people who knew Brad spoke of his life and of the struggle to which he gave it.

The PAN government of President Vicente Fox exploited the four deaths of leftists at the hands of police and PRI death squads on Friday and the more that followed to invade and repress Oaxaca’s five month revolt by the APPO umbrella of popular movements. While PRI and PAN government officials have tried to muffle the exact circumstances of the deaths, the United States Ambassador to Mexico showed a tepid backbone in joining the chorus of voices that focused on the videotaped evidence that the murderers were law enforcement officers.

That the United States government can play little to no progressive role in the situation is understood, but the demand for justice by Chicago’s demonstrators and Brad’s friends can help both weaken the formation of state-sponsored PRIista death squads, and undermine the alleged motives for the federal intervention that is doing more to help the murderers than to claim justice for the martyred.

Check out the many other articles on the Oaxaca resistance and repression, and come out to support the next few events ChicagOtra is planning.