#MayDay #cdmx #news #roundup in #english

This has already made the rounds in spanish social media so i thought i would mention it in english, cuz the struggle is internacional and all that good stuff.

First there was the usual. I went to a #march for the #rights of #sex #workers. A lively group stroll numbering a few hundred heads plus a radical marching band, taking a non-typical route, zig-zagging through the #working #class #barrio of the Merced.

We in the @catl split from the march before it got the the main square, the Zocalo, and went to set up for the activity planned for the day, a commemoration of Mayday's #anarchist history. I shot ahead on bike and along the way i crossed paths with a #blackbloc, smashing and looting a starbucks and circleK, and giving away the looted items to the houseless folks in the zone.

Our participation was a little more chill. Like most of our events, we took public space to #share #food, #zines, #music, #poetry and #words of #struggle, in what we called a #public #street #forum.

After the event, around 4:30, most of us were on our way to a space called the clandestine for a discussion on #work and later, #party (one of the pillars of struggle, and an important one). But before we got there we were notified that one of the musicians that performed at our event, #activist, #rapper and #friend Anonimo Uno, had been arrested in the #metro (another activist, his partner, was also arrested but quickly released).

He had been caught putting up a sticker. For this he was attacked, pinned, and put in pain compliance positions by a plethora of uniformed state thugs, before being dragged off. His partner was arrested for bravely recording the attack, getting out the video that was key, not only as viral propaganda, but as legal evidence.

And what did they charge him with? Groping a police officer, while hand-cuffed and pinned down. This may be an emerging new tactic of the #mexican #state of weaponizing new sex assault laws against activists.

After we got over the inicial confusion plus a hour or so of not knowing where he had been taken, or as we say "in a disappeared state" a plan was made to mass up in front of the Fiscalía (DA?), a building unaffectionately known as "el bunker". It wasnt the first time we held space in front of that building, and it definitively wont be the last.

Fortunately the bunker is next to a relatively main transit artery, which we are sure to #block and form some minor #barricades every time we visit.

As the news got around, more and more folks showed up, numbering over a hundred.We made some noise, painted messages of #liberation on the walls, kept blocking the roads and after a few hours of #disruption, Anonimo was freed and in the company of his very relived mother and friends.

Both freed hommies told us of their ordeal over a megaphone, and the crowd hissed and cursed the police every time their violence was exposed. We shouted at full volume, "death to the state, long live #anarchy", and "a conscious police shots themselves in the head" (it rhymes in spanish).

Afterwards, the vast majority of the rabble walked together to the nearest metro. This was for security, but also the time honored tradition of "metro popular". For the uninitiated, this is basically taking over the turnstile area en mass, opening the side doors, and letting everyone (radical and passerby alike) to enter for #free. Of course this is accompanied by a lot of yelling: declarations of #freedom, uncomfortable truths, brutal take downs of the state.

For my part, i hung around the metro for a bit, saying my see you laters, soaking in the alboroto echoing off the metro walls, then biked home in a light drizzle.