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A couple of the demo guards and the police contact intervened in order for the person to be allowed to walk away. That was what eventually happened without further consequences for the person, besides the already severe consequence of police violence.

This decision to involve the police reflects unpreparedness from our organising group, various levels of privileges and blind spots, and lack of supporting structures for our security team. However, nothing can excuse such action being taken as part of a revolutionary, internationalist demo. Inviting the police inside the demo should never be an option, while we should be able to protect and safeguard our own spaces and comrades.

Instead, we put them at risk and validated the police's state-given role of protectors, which they never are and never will be. The police embodies state violence and social injustice as an institution and through cop presence - their mandate is never to protect queers, minorities and activists. Their mandate is to protect capitalism and imperialism at all costs, and their modes of operation is violence, escalation and power used against those who we organised this demo for.

We, as demo organisers, failed to apply the fundamentals of our manifesto in how we planned and guarded this demo, and we need to urgently do better.

We want to sincerely apologize for the incident and we are inviting any further comment to be communicated to the organising team of the Internationalist, Revolutionary 8th of March. The situation was a key part of the debrief of the safety team right after the demo and of our internal debrief in April.

To ensure safer processes and avoid any similar situation moving forward, we will notably ensure that demo guards and police contacts get properly informed and prepared for de-escalation prior to the event. We will also gather a larger team of demo guards and police contacts so we can support each other make better decisions.

Finally, we will be more specific about our collective views on police and police involvement in our manifesto, and incorporate it our processes of gathering and informing demo guards and police contacts, to ensure collective understanding of how our values should translate into actions.

We also want to thank the many demo participants who helped de-escalating the situation and safely remove the person from the demo. But beyond this powerful community support, we as organisers had the responsibility for keeping our community safe. Many among us have been victims of police violence and got triggered, surprised and angry by the act of calling the police in our demonstration and by extension our community.

Again we would like to acknowledge the situation and make sure that it is being taken seriously in our processes.

In solidarity,
The organising group of RIIF

@riif stuff happens. Learn from it but don't beat yourself up over it!