The Battle for the 3rd Precinct: a personal account.

When I arrived in the afternoon at 3rd precinct the vibe was jovial as thousands of people chilled around a burning car campfire in the bombed out Target mini-mall. With the backdrop of a waterfall pouring out of the charred skeleton of a massive torched two-story housing development, people celebrated their success and how surreal the entire situation was. Packed vehicles with folks hanging out the windows weaved through the Target parking-lot yelling, "Fuck 12!" blaring Lil Boosie's "Fuck the police" - a song that's become default to Midwest riot culture.

As the sun went down the mood shifted towards rage as the 3rd precinct siege began in earnest. Eventually, the building was smashed and broken into. In a last ditch effort to hold their territory, the pigs huddled in cowardice towards the back of the police station and lobbed tear gas into the wrath-swollen crowds of combatants. Fed-up and in the mood for a fight, the free people of the north pelted the ill-equipped enemy with projectiles behind make shift plywood shield-walls as they slowly overwhelmed the pigs. With munitions likely running low and no options left aside from a strategic yet pathetic retreat, nothing remained to contest the takeover. The precinct was taken.

As the flames from a 2-story building about a block away touched the heavens as it reached its apex, the 3rd precinct became a piñata. Its fences were torn down as the structure was smashed porous; and the front-portion was set ablaze as 20ft flames signaled flawless victory. At this point the rioters entered into what I can only describe as an ecstatic frenzy as a multi-decade blight was deleted and with it the pain its facade represented. As thousands sat and watched this bitch burn, I couldn't help but think about the generations of people tormented, tortured, and/or murdered by the sub-humans that walked the halls of this precinct. The precision of this act of vigilante justice oozed with the vitriol and fury of ancestral vengeance.

At this point, rioters broke into the back portion of the precinct that wasn't ablaze - its a really long building - and began looting it for weapons, bulletproof vests, rounds, and other useful items. There were rumors going around that rioters were trying to set the back half of the building on fire, but I suspect a reason they didn't might've had something to do with all the goodies they were sacking from its innards. Some folks did take it upon themselves to start a solid trash fire in the parking lot as people gazed in awe of the performance. Simultaneous to this, another building was set ablaze down the street, I can't confirm which one it was although I could see the flames in the distance.

The first gunshots of the night echoed in the air as some patriot appeared to be shooting semi-auto rounds into the sky while rattling on about all sorts of beta shit "blah blah 1776... blah blah we will not submit to the NWO...". Initially this shook people as live rounds tend to, but eventually it became evident these fools were mostly just looking for a cool sound-bite and temporal symbolic victory for a social media presence or some shit as one of the fuck-weasels seemed to be broadcasting his actions to his followers. After puffing out their chests for a few minutes, they left.

Around this time people started to report that the National Guard was being staged to retake the 3rd precinct. This had a tangible effect on the mood of 10% of the folks (especially with all the gunshots heard in the surrounding neighborhoods), but everyone else for the most part seemed unfazed. Some continued to build burning barricades, some looted Arby's (and eventually set it on fire), and others danced on top of and around cars blaring Meek Mill while energy-drink-pounding savages on crotch rockets did burnouts and badass tricks anywhere they could find space. If I had to put a vibe to that moment, I would say it landed somewhere between Fast and Furious (not counting that weak-ass Tokyo Drift shit) and the spirit of Ferguson.

While I can attest most accurately to the happenings around the 3rd precinct, the entire Twin Cities was being sacked. H&M in Uptown was reported to have been looted, people were rioting and looting in downtown Minneapolis, and after a day of mall destruction in Midway, rioters had turned their sites on other places in St. Paul. This isn't including the handfuls of accounts of small time looting and general spike in criminal activity going on all over both cities due to normies probably realizing that if the pigs can't protect a measly precinct without calling in the National Guard, they're clearly over stretched and simply can't be everywhere.

As I packed it in for the night, the destruction seemed to be pushing forward at a break-neck pace with rumored arsons across the entire Twin Cities and reports of people turning their focus onto the 1st and/or 4th precinct(s) as the 5th was rumored to be completely abandoned. It's difficult to encapsulate the energy of the battle for the 3rd precinct into pixels. I guess you had to be there. The current landscape around Lake St. was/is reminiscent of scenes from Escape from L.A., as 5-10 long Minneapolis blocks were either on fire or smashed-out with nearly no police presence or hope for reprieve from the insatiable war-dance. If the spirit of that night is any indication of what's to come, I seriously doubt the arrests of Floyd's killers or the National Guard is going to do much to subdue people's anger. This is about getting even in a time where there is much more to get even for.

The spiritual and strategic victory in compromising and sacking the 3rd precinct is incalculable and the symbolic power unleashed of what is possible in future revolts is nothing short of incredible.

Police stations CAN be overtaken.
The state CAN be bent to our will.

Long live anarchy and the free people of the north!

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I appreciated this tourist's description of the event in question. Must be nice to go off on a cheap holiday in other people's misery and then return to the peace and quiet of one's one bed. Slept tight!

“Police stations CAN be overtaken.
The state CAN be bent to our will.”

As another police precinct is overrun
(https://twitter.com/selfdeclaredref/status/1266549533250662406?s=20)
the question becomes: have the riots outdone them, or have the precincts been vacated hollowed out symbols of power for some time now? Much like the mayor’s office or the white house.

We saw how the national guard was deployed, we saw how they deployed drones.

This is not a critique of riots, but a question regarding what’s revealed behind the things they unmask.

“ Танк, припаркованный
прям за воротами
Он не стреляет, стоит
тут для понта“

To expound, recent events elsewhere exposing important looking buildings as being empty, while unassuming warehouses are stacked to the brim with key resources.

But to go deeper, it’s important to understand the important role that obeying and playing along nicely, the underlying system of values, has in preserving the status quo. “Not complying is necessary, but insufficient; it is also necessary to “refuse to command” and to refuse to cultivate an ascendency over one’s fellows.“

It’s amazing that a group of people can manage ti overrun a police station. Now, can a similarly sized group of people manage to live together without bossing/obeying and policing each other? That’d be pretty amazing as well and seems even harder to do.

Some think that’s impossible, so you should stick to quit bossing and obeying by yourself, and attack! society! and do whatever. That’s seems pretty impressive as well.

love the description! Nice to see something that's catching people's eye so much in the midst of the corona virus pandemic. That was getting kind of boring.

I'm curious though, why has this instance of police brutality erupted in such a big riot as opposed to the others?

Good question. That can only be answered with guesses and speculation, specially if you’re not from there and were present throughout these events. A lot of academics might rush in with bad takes in hindsight. You can never pinpoint/predict exactly when it will happen, and which will be the tipping point, but it’s better understood when the potential is there for something like this can happen, which doesn’t always mean that it will, but eventually it does since it’s a recurrent thing.

I think it has to do with Ahmaud Arbery, then Breonna Taylor, and then George Floyd in quick succession, all at the same time that the lockdowns are beginning to lift and it's getting warm outside. I also get the sense that this uprising is kind of hopeless and fueled by vengeance. No one believes that anything's gonna change, so let's burn some shit.

i was also thinking that the general pent up anxiety of the pandemic, and the looming sense of "chaos" that basically everyone in the US has been feeling

This reads like some hipster's pop culture laden version they strung together from reading news articles rather than a "personal account."

",,,and the free people of the north!"
Maybe the only really free people to ever inhabit the land were the indigenous. There used to be a log fort there 300 years ago.
When can the individual ride again across a land without fences and guns blocking their path?

In North Muhrika, log forts have been replaced by bong farts!!

Sociaĺ change, what I've been saying all the time to activists, is never achieved by an ideological driven policy and tactical action. Its always just a spontaneous random incremental event, like the butterfly effect, a homeless Inuit person gets stomped on in Anchorage Alaska by some goldminers, and 4 months later a dictatorship in South America is toppled by a popular rebellion.
Let's just wait and see what the mix of events produces in shifting the paradigm a little bit more away from authoritarian capitalist control.

History doesn't happen by some magical latent underlying processes. It's forces, usually conflicting forces. And in the current context there's a very high likelihood of a major destabilization in the country, where the winning party might not be those you like.

It might or it might not. Thats the gamble of every social uppheaval. That’s the game. If you don’t like it then stop calling yourself a radical, revolutionary or anarchist or whatever you call yourself. Because you are not I can assure you.

there can't be a "winning party" though, to me it would be just a net loss of political power for ALL PARTIES. That's in the end why eco-extremism caught on as something in anarchist circles, the parallel is that both anarchists and eco-extremists would agree to a loss of human authority overall.

Who knows where all this anti-racist or anti-cop rioting is going to end up? I'm definitely very curious to see, the events of this year have overall shown to be some pretty dramatic terrain-shifting events...yet it's possible that things will more or less just be the same in the pretty near future, that's probably where i'd place my bets. If capitalists really lose their power, will something else take its place?

7:26 back from the random universe, I'm calling myself the eternally returning random spontaneous upheaval anarcho/nihilist, an ERRSUAN,
I'm going to just go on with my mediocre yet contented daily insurrectional life which is rich in deep meaningful and compassionate interpersonal sharing and feelings, with alot of fun element added, and to hell with politics, ideology, ressentiment and discontentent. I'll deal with those who wrong me with my own code of justice and live outside of aùthorities control, yet inside their infrastructural service and utility structure.
Keep strugglismoing for your unattainable totalitarian revolution if it fills some void in your beingness, I'm already there with my dasein purpose.
Time to throw the dice in this eternal crap game ;)

So in other words you sit at home and get high all day. Hey man, nothing wrong with that. Too bad you have given up on actual social change and freedom for your drug fantasies though. But to each his own I guess.

I'm actually creating dynamic insurrectional epiphanies within my circle of influential individuals, so no, I wouldn't say I have given up on social change, I am actually performing it, àt this moment.

I don’t even know what that means and I can’t tell if you are joking or not so I will leave it alone.

I aM dEaDlY sErIOuS sNOwFlAkE. Everything has to begin with an internal command, your own determination to change who YOU are.
I 'spose you haven't reached this non-hierarchal level of perception, maybe later you will be enlightened,,,,,,,,,,,or maybe you will remain boring and unable to discuss the human condition of being a spontaneous insurrectional anarcho-nihilist,,,,,,,:(

does anyone know anything about the communications blackout in dc i keep seeing references to? and apparently all live stream cams in dc stopped streaming around 1am. i saw a couple were blacked out. not a single mention in the mainstream media, a shitload of repetitive and urgent sounding shit on twitter. provocateurs? trollers? people seem to think the protesters from last night have disappeared, beyond those that were arrested. saying no comms from unarrested protesters since 1am.

seems like a high potential for "fake news", but wondering what others have come across, esp anyone from the area. like luke i think? i know the cops are looking at footage from many cams to find more arrests, but i can't believe the couldn't do that offline, leaving the cams up.

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