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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in witch police
Rethinking Policing: The Pagan Model

As the city of Minneapolis, and the US as a whole, begin the process of rethinking what policing might look like in the wake of the unrest following the death of George Floyd at the hands of the MPD, let me tell you a story from the Nights of the Burning.

Unlike my neighborhood, which the authorities—including the police—in effect abandoned to three nights of riot, looting, and arson, the Indigenous neighborhood here in Minneapolis saw very little destruction. Everyone agrees that this was thanks to the AIM (American Indian Movement) Patrol.

The AIM Patrol as we know it today originated in the Indigenous activism of the 60s, but its roots are firmly grounded in the old tribal models of self-policing.

It turns out that the stories that circulated locally attributing the protest-related arson to out-of-town assholes were correct. Only some of the arsonist assholes were, as bruited, White Supremacists, but all of them—of the ones that have been caught so far, anyway—were from somewhere else. Assholes drove in from all over the state—and from out of state—to burn other people's neighborhoods. Whatever their motivations, I think we can all agree that those who would do such things are, indubitably, assholes.

One night the AIM patrol caught some kids who had driven 100 miles from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, attempting to torch the Seward Co-op, a worker-owned and -operated neighborhood grocery.

The AIM patrol, armed only with baseball bats, stopped the kids and non-violently—I won't say there was no implied threat of violence—herded them into the middle of a parking lot.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs
The Great Lammas Massacre

It's gone down in local pagan lore as the Great Lammas Massacre.

Lammas 1985. One of the local Wiccan churches is holding their August Eve in a city park.

In mid-invocation, the high priest looks up and sees police approaching, so he picks up his athame and starts to open the circle.

Bad idea.

Anyway, no one got shot, and, in the long run, what opened up instead was a conversation that has resulted in a pretty good ongoing relationship between local law enforcement and the pagan community.

I talked a while back with a woman who had been there that night. She'd been a neophyte at the time, and had been wearing a white robe and a crown of flowers.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • M.T. Noah
    M.T. Noah says #
    I wish I knew more about this.... ly. Thank you.
  • Ian Phanes
    Ian Phanes says #
    That police officer from the mainland was very lucky that she didn't lead him on a frenzied chase through a cave to meet the...

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

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Series: Hexworld

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