wednesday myself and 10 other radical kids got dressed up in our sunday best and walked right into cargill's lake office mansion headquarters which houses 20 of their top execs. we gave the poor receptionist some decoy about being in a student organization and darted immediately for the staircase. 5 of sat down and proceeded to lock ourselves to the banister and each other... oh did i mention on the other end of each of these chains were giant speakers blasting the sound of cargill's supply chain? giant fucking speakers welded shut and keys thrown away. photos and video were taken and half of our crew left.
the money shot.
the noises of chainsaws & rainforest took over the room and the receptionist tried to shut the doors, but still cargill employees managed to fill the room. the police were called and i swear, it was the most exciting thing the minnetonka police have ever seen. instead of harassing us, they'd walk around us admire our equipment. "oh you're locked to the banister, and then u-locked together... then chained to the soundbox?" said the look on their faces. the only thing that didn't go like clockwork in our scheme was that one of the soundboxes stopped working 3 minutes into lockdown. eventually the police taped the box shut in order to muffle the noise, but it still rang loud.
by the time it was time for the police to read us our rights and what we were going to be charged with (unlawful assembly), the sergeant read it off a laminate sheet of paper and his hands were shaking. the poor small town police didn't want to arrest us! he gave us 10 minutes. we didn't unlock. he charged us with unlawful assembly and gave us 5 minutes to disperse. we didn't unlock. by 12:10pm, wednesday afternoon we were under arrest. however it took them another two hours to finally start cutting us out because the local police didn't have the equipment to do so, and neither did the minneap. department. it wasn't until the sheriff's department came did the start to cut us out of our gear. at that time the room was swarming with cargill employees and 20 police officers all standing around watching.
we were arrested and spent four hours in jail before being released on bail. by this time there was 39 news articles surfing the web and fox 9 news was waiting for us when we got out. the next day we make DEMOCRACY NOW HEADLINES. and seriously, the crew we ran with was phenomenal! we were able to end business at usual at cargill headquarters within 35 seconds and stay strong for 4 hours. i bet they'll think twice about adopting a sustainable palmoil policy.
check that shit out! my life is complete.
for more information on cargill and the problems with palmoil check out theproblemwithpalmoil.org and make sure to read the cargill report: a burning threat in borneo.
wha!!!! Oh my. There were other arrests this weekend. We must catch up.
ReplyDelete