Officers Jeffry Cox and Sgt Stache Master Delux lock down at the Earth First! Journal Office.
by Earth First! News
Lake Worth, FL – Activists with the Palm Beach County Sheriffs office converged at the Earth First! Journal office this morning. Two cops U-locked their necks together to the filing cabinets inside the office, disrupting business operations at the largest radical environmental magazine publisher in the nation. The cops’ primary concern is a proposal by one of the Journal collective members to print an article questioning the continued strategy and effectiveness of U-locks and sleeping dragons in the ongoing struggle to defend the Earth from pollution, greed and capitalism.
“We are outraged that the Journal would even consider changing–or God forbid, ramp up–their tactics for protesting corporations involved in environmental devastation, racism and imperialism just because they aren’t really working. Sure, we are fully capable of cutting U-locks in a matter of minutes but we believe that once the Journal collective sees that they can’t get to their important files in these cabinets or to their computers to check the collective Facebook account they will find a renewed sense of obsessive compulsion to continue to espouse the same practice. We are here to protest the Journal discussion of more effective means of halting the earth brutalizing machine, because, well, protecting that machine is our bread and butter,” said Officer Jeffry Cox, who added, “its bullshit.”
“This proposal is an act of environmental effectiveness against the profit-motive and probably Jesus and hot dogs and a direct attack on cops everywhere. If we stand by and do nothing we are also complicit in this potential effectiveness,” said the other officer who only identified himself as Sgt. Stache Master Delux, which he said was his patrol name.
The Earth First! Journal’s pending collective meeting includes plans to discuss promoting new methods of radical action. Cops nationwide have voiced their concern that such a move promises to make their lives harder and could even lead to the liberation of the Earth from corporate profit.
Last week a group calling itself the Mustached Pig Liberation Front (MPLF) posted a warning to the Earth First! Journal collective at an online forum warning that any attempt to question business-as-usual protest strategy would be met with direct attacks on the magazine office’s infrastructure, including arson. A spokesperson for the Sheriffs office denied any connection between the non-violent protesting officers and MPLF though he did say that “while the MPLF may be more effective at convincing the Journal collective to scratch discussion of tactics from their meeting agenda, we believe that our techniques are less likely to marginalize the members of the Journal.”
The “lock-down” lasted for two hours before the Journal collective were able to cut the officers from the cabinet and resume their work.
“Sure” Sgt Stache Master Delux said, “maybe the U-locks didn’t really stop the Journal in any meaningful way but we got our message out there. Photos of our action have been shared widely on Facebook and I saw that an article about our action actually made it onto the Earth First! Newswire and has even been re-tweeted. I think we can claim a victory in that.”
The two officers, though not arrested, are in desperate need of donut support. Click here to make a donation.