The Occupation of Alcatraz was a 19-month long protest which began on this day in 1969, when 89 Native Americans and their supporters occupied and reclaimed Alcatraz Island as indigenous land.

The protest was led by Richard Oakes and Grace Thorpe. The group chose the name Indians of All Tribes (IOAT) for themselves and lived on the island together until the protest was forcibly ended by the U.S. government.

IOAT claimed that, under the Treaty of Fort Laramie between the U.S. and the Lakota tribe, all retired, abandoned, or out-of-use federal land was returned to the Indians who once occupied it.

By late May of 1971, the government had cut off all electrical power and all telephone service to the island. Left without power, fresh water, and in the face of diminishing public support and sympathy, the number of occupiers began to dwindle. On June 11th, 1971, a large force of federal officers removed the remaining 15 people from the island.

A Look Back at the Occupation of Alcatraz, 51 Years Later

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  • WhyEssEff [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    5·
    10 hours ago

    uggggghhhhhhh the reaction to the reaction to the Chi Osse bid is going to fucking calcify a lib lobe into my brain, I’m starting to get tired of western ‘anti-western Marxist’ Marxists cruelty-desolate

    atp like it’s just a bunch of people hitting the

    but wrapped in Maoist/Third-Worldist language, which allows the lack of the most basic materialist inference (i.e. a political party is an organization with a pool of resources and a group of laborers it is able to allocate but is restricted by time, work, and means) to pass with much less scrutiny than it deserves due to the geopolitics of said tendency being largely correct.

    like yeah America and Israel are a symbiotic unit in which Israel acts as America’s attack dog and therefore is allowed to pillage the entire Middle East under the threat of American soft/hard power and ultimately America is the one that can pull the leash. no we probably shouldn’t spend actual money and time and labor on attempting a decapitation strike on the House Minority Leader that is +24 in his district when there are like five infinitely more winnable districts up for grabs in the state. the legislative branch is a numbers game. there is a reason Dems can always find a rotating villain. the goal would be to smother their capacity to operate as such

    • WhyEssEff [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      4·
      9 hours ago

      there is so much resentment for reformism (correctly) permeating that the discourse has somehow arrived at a point where the idea of organizational strategy is indisputable proof that DSA is exactly the same as the Weimar SPD

      I do have a dog in this race, being transparent. unfortunately posting is not politics so until the vanguard dirty breaks or forms from whatever org it’s in I’m gonna be doing what I can to agitate IRL. Likely gonna have less luck in the 'burbs but that’s why I got myself to join my local DSA. At least I’m trying something shrug-outta-hecks