Thread by @UR_Ninja

New Documentary on Late Sixties Civil Unrest is a ‘Rosetta Stone’ for Decoding the Modern Day Police State #RiotsvilleUSA #Riotsville #Documentary
unicornriot.ninja/2022/new-docum…

Sierra Pettengill’s new documentary “#Riotsville, USA” still invokes striking parallels between the late 1960s and the George Floyd protest uprisings in 2020. In 1967, the U.S. Army built a makeshift town on a military base. unicornriot.ninja/2022/new-docum…

A mock urban center sporting fake liquor stores, pawn shops, and turned-over cars, it was made to simulate a real “ghetto” and the riots that raged in city streets that summer. It was created to train officers in responding to civilian uprisings. They named it “#Riotsville.”

The filmmakers craft an intimate view of this training program, weaved through long-lost and now recovered archival footage. The uprisings throughout 1967, like most of the unrest throughout that period, have their roots in police violence against African Americans.

#Minneapolis experienced three consecutive nights of unrest in July 1967, the second year in a row where cases of police brutality against Black residents led to “rioting” along Plymouth Avenue in the historically Black Near North neighborhood.

Photo of a riot simulation at a military base. “Riotsville, USA” shows us how Vietnam-era law enforcement was obsessed with maintaining “law and order” at all costs.

Sarah Saarela, a former Minneapolis cop turned police abolitionist, told Unicorn Riot that the film reminded her of riot training at Minnesota’s Fort Snelling before becoming a cop, and another location in the east Twin Cities metro area after becoming a sworn officer.

Recently, a SWAT team carried out a violent raid on activists occupying the Atlanta forest, who now face a range of severe charges including domestic terrorism. Full story: unicornriot.ninja/2022/swat-team…

"#CopCity" aka The Atlanta Public Safety Training Center - the widely opposed project is slated to include a mock village with a gas station, bank, bar, nightclub, school, apartments, park, and splash pad. It would also feature a warehouse for training in crowd control tactics.

Kerner Commission: Key Recommendations Ignored -- They frankly concluded that the unrest was a predictable, understandable response to systemic racism and inequality. The commission called for nothing short of a massive redistribution of wealth.

The only recommendations from the Kerner Report Congress followed through with was massive federal funding to militarize police depts across the country. "An addendum titled ‘Supplement on the Control of Disorder.’ ... It called for extensive new federal funding for police.”

Similarly, after George Floyd’s murder and the 2020 uprising, the Minneapolis Police Department’s budget increased by $3 million, even though MPD failed to spend their entire budget the previous fiscal year.

“A door swung open in the late ‘60s. And someone, something, sprang up and slammed it shut,” the narrator said in the opening lines of the film, referring to the garrison state that was crystalized by lawmakers in the years & decades following the post-civil rights era uprisings.

Tobi Haslett, who wrote #RiotsvilleUSA's commentary, said it’s important that the film showed what law enforcement was up to behind the scenes. “It’s just as important to show… [that] the events preceding and succeeding a riot are all being planned for.”

Like a Rosetta stone for the development of “civil disturbance” doctrine, the documentary led us to uncover more historical evidence. A “Military Police Journal“ from October 1968 covers the original Riotsville “Civilian Disturbance Course,” also known as “SEADOC.”

The film confirms what Black people have been saying for generations. @RottenTomatoes summed it up: “…RIOTSVILLE, USA…offers a compelling case that if the history of race in America rhymes, it is by design.” unicornriot.ninja/2022/new-docum…
Review by Marjaan Sirdar @peoplepowerpod1