Don’t go limp. They tack on more charges and it doesn’t bother the cops at all. In fact when they all get back together they laugh and tell stories of the ones “who went limp like a kid or cried like a baby or screamed like a tantrum.”
If you are getting arrested, and you want to fuck with cops: don’t go limp go “stoic.”
This means you have one of two emotional displays. No emotion or smiling.
-The entire time you can. stare the cop in the eyes.
-Do not speak, except to invoke your 4th and 5th amendment rights, to demand a lawyer and if you are not in cuffs to inquire if you are detained.
-Do not resist arrest, put your hands behind your back when told to. If you can look a cop straight in the eyes while they cuff you. If not look forward.
-Always head up, looking forward.
-You are presenting the image that you are not afraid, of arrests or them.
Mass arrests at protests are a scare tactic, to cause mass confusion and to break up groups through fear. Cops want the limp bodies, they want the screaming. It tells them they are putting fear in their targets. If their targets are afraid, their targets will “leave on their own” ending the protest.
The stoic who does not fear arrest, does not fear their commands, who they know will just return to the protest as soon as the magistrate bonds them out…cops don’t know how to deal with that. It bothers them. They are used to arrests at protests being messy and loud, silence messes with them.
They know their power is driven by fear. Fear of the items on their belt, fear of the back seat of the cruiser, fear of the court systems. They are trained to utilize that fear.
Show them they cannot make you afraid anymore. They are not trained or prepared for that.
(This is psychological warfare, not legal advice and not insight to how this could affect a case after being arrested.)
The world needs to understand that Congo is going through a silent genocide. The condition in Congo get worsened every day especially this rainy season as over 5 Million have been killed already, millions have been displaced and millions are starving.
People now live in tents in open field camps meanwhile some are now living in bushes and thick forest, meanwhile the raining season is making life miserable for the people. #FreeCongo
People who keep talking about “mental illness” here disgust me. As someone who has dealt with suicidal ideation most of their life, the idea to go out in the most painful way possible has never entered my mind. This was a brave political act and you will not erase that.