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By Cousin Geoff
Aaron Timlin, executive director of CAID, is planning a 192 hour dance-in to protest the unnecessary force Detroit Police used to break up a recent after-hours funk dance party. John Sinclair would be proud.
A dance protest seems like no big deal, except that the Detroit Police told them that they needed a permit to dance, and this was one of the things they got ticketed for. Timlin was quoted in the above mention freep article saying, “We’re standing up for what we believe in. We’d prefer that the police come dance with us.” Translation: screw you and your laws, we’re dancing, come and stop us. Totally a page from Sinclair, who once stated that authority figures have no right infringing on the people’s consciousness.
This has gotten a huge amount of attention, with the freep spinning it in favor of Timlin and those who were ticketed at the party. The comments section on both articles in the freep have a ton of responses, with people taking both sides. My initial reaction was that this was totally uncalled for, but now I am starting to see it from the DPD’s perspective. If the police gave the art establishment a fair warning in advance, and they still broke the law, they had every right to crack down - just maybe not with so much force and intensity.
But let’s break this down a bit further. Had this been a mostly black party or a gay club illegally serving alcohol after hours, would there have been this much fuss made? Or did the police treat these white suburbanite hipsters like they would anyone else?
I am very interested in seeing how the police respond to this act of civil disobedience. Do they let ’em dance, or will they show these hipsters who runs things in Detroit?
Maybe Timlin should hand this 45 to the DJ and see where it takes everything:
