Police raid anarchist media collective 3 days before NYC film festival

The Fourth Annual Anarchist Film Festival is being held on Friday April 16th, 2010 in New York City. This year’s festival is being held to honor the life and work of Brad Will, a film-maker and movement activist allegedly assassinated by the Mexican government in Oaxaca on October 27th, 2006, as he was filming a popular uprising.

On April 13th, according to a statement put out by members of the Independent Anarchist Media (I AM) Collective:

…in Brooklyn NY, the NYPD entered without a warrant 13 Thames Art Space, a Bushwick based art and performance space where members of the Independent Anarchist Media (I AM) Collective have been organizing the Fourth Annual NYC Anarchist Film Festival in honor of Brad Will.

Two plainclothes detectives entered first, followed quickly by a Lieutenant and vans full of blue shirt officers. After corralling everyone present in the back room, they searched the space and detained two members of the collective.

The I AM collective was preparing for the NYC Anarchist Film Festival, a showcase of resistance movements and insurrectionary events from around the world presented from an anarchist and anti-authoritarian perspective.

Our response to the raid: regardless of these attacks, the film festival will happen as planned on Friday April 16, 2010 at Judson Memorial Church. The voice of decentralized creative communities will not be silenced by police repression. They cannot raid us, because we are everywhere.

Video of the police raid was posted on the Internet. Federal agents were also reported to be present at the raid.

--NYAnarchistFilmFest--