Bash Back! News

People of Color Contingent Forced From NYC Gay Pride Parade

NEW YORK – The NorthEast Two-Spirit Society (NE2SS) and Kris Hayashi, Executive
Director of Audre Lorde Project were forcefully ejected from this year’s annual
Heritage of Pride March in New York City yesterday.
Just before 2PM, Lieutenant Connoly of the Midtown Taskforce demanded that the
People of Color Contingent leave the parade. The reason given was that a delay of 6
blocks existed between the People of Color contingent and the contingent in front of
them. NYPD raised the issue of the gap once and POC contingent marshals were in the
process of closing the gap. Kris Hayashi, Executive Director of Audre Lorde
Project (ALP), and Loyda Colon also of ALP explained to Lieutenant Connoly, that
they were in the process of closing the gap and Lieutenant Connoly refused to
listen. Lieutenant Connoly then insisted that the POC contingent leave the parade,
and attempted to arrest both Colon and Hayashi. Lieutenant Connoly then ejected
Harlan Pruden, the driver of NE2SS’ support vehicle and co-founder of NE2SS, other
members of NE2SS (who led the People of Color Contingent), and Hayashi from the
parade. Hayashi was physically dragged off the parade route.
“It should have been a day to celebrate and have fun,” Harlan Pruden, Co-founder of
NE2SS.
After being ejected, Pruden and Hayashi asked to get NE2SS back into the parade.
Pruden was repeatedly threatened with a summons and towing of the organization’s
vehicle. After 30 minutes, the official answer from the NYPD as communicated by
Heritage of Pride was that NE2SS could continue to march as long as Pruden was not
included. Without their support vehicle, of which Pruden was the only driver, NE2SS
could not continue.
Kevin VanWanseele, NE2SS member, “This was supposed to be a proud day for LGBT
Native American people in New York City and in the end it was not!”

About NE2SS: NE2SS works to increase the visibility of the two-spirit community and
to provide social, traditional and recreational opportunities that are culturally
appropriate to the two-spirit community of NYC and the surrounding tri-state area.
According to the 2000 US Census, our area is the home to the largest urban American
Indian population in country. At the heart of NE2SS effort is community development
for all our peoples.
About ALP: The Audre Lorde Project is a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit, Trans
and Gender Non Conforming People of Color center for community organizing, focusing
on the New York City area. ALP coordinates the People of Color contingent at
Manhattan Pride.
Audre Lorde Project
85 South Oxford
Brooklyn, NY 11217
718-596-0342
www.alp.org

SEND SUBMISSIONS TO: anarchoqueer@gmail.com
AND PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY!

As Radical Queers, we are in a constant war against the HRC. Our
frustrations run much deeper than ENDA or any other single issue. However,
I have often found myself unable to substantiate my frustrations when
talking with more mainstream “LGBT” folks. So, me and a friend are
planning to compile and edit a zine on why we hate the HRC. We are looking
for more radical perspectives written in a language that would be
accessible to more mainstream “LGBT” folks.

Talking points could/should include, but are not limited to:

Racism, Classism, Assimilation, Militarism/Imperialism, Transphobia, The
Prison-Industrial Complex, The Non-Profit Industrial Complex, Immigration
as a Queer Issue, Public Sex/Sexuality and Pleasure (and how the HRC tries
to hide that as a part of our identities), The culture of respectability,
Healthcare.

Or maybe, even more fundamentally, why there are no “separate issues.”

We would also be interested in writings on things people have done,
actions that have been taken against the HRC, and why we don’t need the
HRC. (We can do this shit ourselves!)

Remember, the intended audience is mainstream “LGBT” folks who aren’t
already radical– this is an attempt to radicalize them!– so please make
sure submissions are written in a way that will make sense to these folks.
(I.e. don’t assume somebody knows what the prison industrial complex is or
why we don’t like it.)

PLEASE EMAIL SUBMISSIONS, QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, SUGGESTIONS TO:
anarchoqueer@gmail.com.

AND PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY!

Thanks!

Solidarity and Sodomy

The following account was submitted to BB! News.

Police Raid Gay Bar and We Failed to Riot

It is Pride season in Texas. In fact, it is forty years to the day, almost
to the hour, since the riots at the Stonewall Inn erupted. We are out
partying at the new queer hot spot in Fort Wayne, the one place where the
straight world gets washed away in alcohol and sweat and desire.

In an instant, the mood turns sour and the music fades. Uniforms come
through the front door, and they’re not being worn by our Daddies. The
police. We fall silent. They shine flashlights, speak in authoritative
voices, start to grab queers. “Have you been drinking?” They picked one of
the most effeminate queers, of course. “Some.” Snidely, they say, “Well
we’ll see how much!” and zip-cuff his wrists. Four officers team up on one
queer and slam him into the floor. His head starts to swell up.

Our bodies are tensed – are we frozen in fear or coiled to strike? We are
all thinking about the Stonewall Riots. Does history repeat itself? What
is the meaning of an anniversary? What happened to our queer rage? It’s
“Pride,” there are rainbow flags on a dozen cars outside, but we’ll allow
the police invade our space, beat us and lock us up?

…as I walked through the front bar there were a bunch of cops with
plastic handcuffs all ready to go. I left the bar and they had a paddy
wagon in the parking lot and cars on the street. They had about ten people
face down on the ground outside. They knew what they were doing when they
came here.

I think of the two lesbians who were beaten by cops outside the queer bar
in Brooklyn last month. One hundred of us, their community, stood there
and watched the batons falling, again and again, while they screamed.

The next day, we gather in anger on the steps of the Courthouse. People
have signs, there are chants. From somewhere, barriers have appeared
between us and the cops we want to fight, the Courthouse we need to smash.
We can’t reach them. We can only march in circles. Between the spineless
activists and the patronizing media, our rage gets watered down into the
words, “demanded an investigation,” which appear in the Star Telegram.

But it’s too late now. If we wanted to communicate clearly, last night was
our chance. If we wanted to come up against the cops with no barriers
except our own fear, we should have done it last night when a handful of
them were beating and arresting us from amongst a crowd. Right inside our
bar, our space, the one space where the straight world gets washed away in
alcohol and sweat and desire.

History can repeat itself, but we are the agents of history.

And anniversaries? They’re meaningless if you don’t know how throw a
proper celebration.

This was based on the following true (boring) stories:
http://www.star-telegram.com/804/story/1458523.html
http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2009/06/28/12635
http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa/latestnews/stories/wfaa090628_mo_raid.179e4762.html

Chad Gibson, the 26-year-old Fort Worth resident who wound up in John Peter Smith Hospital in the intensive care unit after a law enforcement raid on a gay bar over the weekend, remains in danger with a blood clot on his brain.

Dallas Voice senior editor Tammye Nash reports on the newspaper’s blog, Instant Tea, that Gibson’s sister, Kristy Morgan, told her a CAT scan had revealed the blood clot has quit growing, but it is still considered a life-threatening situation. Until the clot dissolves, there is a danger that the clot could break off and cause severe brain damage or death. A rupture of the clot could also start bleeding again.

The blood clot could take from six months to two years to dissolve, according to the update. Gibson, shown in a picture from facebook.com, will likely remain in the hospital for the rest of the week and will be referred to a neurosurgeon for follow-up treatment. Surgery is reportedly not being considered at this time.

Discussion is under way about the establishment of a medical fund to assist Gibson. His hospital bill will undoubtedly be enormous, and it is unlikely that he will ever recover any of those medical expenses from the City of Fort Worth. Police officers and other government employees are protected by state law from liability in any legal action that arises in connection with the performance of their official duties, unless they are involved in misconduct or broke laws.

Fort Worth police chief Jeffrey Halstead has promised an internal affairs investigation will be conducted, but the official police reports now claim that law enforcement officers accompanied by Texas Alcohol Beverage Commission officials were merely making a routine inspection. The officers claimed that the seven people they arrested at the Rainbow Lounge were belligerent and intoxicated. They also claimed that several of the patrons threatened them in a sexually suggestive manner. One officer claimed that Gibson groped him.

Two members of the Fort Worth City Council, including openly gay Councilman Joel Burns, have demanded an investigation into the incident.

Rainbow Lounge management and several bar patrons dispute the officers’ accounts of what happened in the nightclub. They claim the officers stormed the bar and randomly targeted patrons for arrest.

Gibson reportedly was slammed against a wall and thrown to the floor by officers. His friends who witnessed the arrest said that Gibson is a person of small stature, weighing at most about 160 pounds.

The officers reportedly arrived at the bar with a paddy wagon and plastic handcuffs on display when they entered the one-week-old club.

The raid occurred on the 40th anniversary of New York City’s Stonewall Riots in 1969 and the birth of the U.S. gay rights movement, but officers denied knowledge of the significance of the date.

Read Nash’s full update on Gibson’s condition at: http://www.dallasvoice.com/instant-tea/2009/06/30/update-on-chad-gibson/

This is taken from the English-language blog from Greece, 277streetfights. We are reposting it, firstly because it is an amazing text, but secondly because it weighs in on the events surrounding the recent Bash Back! Convergence in Chicago.

- Bash Back! News

The text below, “Instead of a Conclusion”, appears as the last chapter in the first proper book (to my knowledge) about December’s insurrection published in Greece. Although the translation from Greek to English, done by a wonderful comrade, has already set these words in a new motion, I can’t help but feel a paternalistic urge to guide their further movement. Of course, words are like children, they’ll go where they go despite anyone’s futile wish, but this fact does nothing to quiet the reservations that come with posting “Instead of a Conclusion” to be read by the milieu in the States. More specifically, I worry as to whether its even worth presenting a text that celebrates barricades to readers that condemn their constructions in Chicago streets. In my eyes, what could only be worse is for “Instead of a Conclusion” to be looked at as an exotic applause to blockades, riots, and street fights only in places and lives far from our own. Gladly and on the other hand, there were those who neglected the banal criticism from the “anarcho-liberals” and erected barricades to for once impede the State’s grip on their entire existence. Let be. For better or for worse, a split is inevitable. A split so that the tired discussion about whether or not to build barricades can be silenced like a drunk giving an inappropriate eulogy at a solemn funeral. A scission so that we get on with the important questions, refuse to consider the morality of barricades, and only correctly concern ourselves with how to make them taller, stronger, more terrible, so that metropolitan avenues can become as uncontrollable as an element of nature. So, while suppressing any false sense of guardianship, I send “Instead of a Conclusion” to only those who build barricades for the sake of barricades. Enjoy!

For if there is something to be won it is dignity, for if life has to be laughter and a laughter will bury them, then you have to create the conditions to laugh.

For burning souls should not comply to moulds, for we don’t fit anymore within the limits of narrow fucking microcosms, for sickness lurks everywhere. We saw, we dreamt and lived feral yells, we blocked roads with barricades of craze and desire, we addressed to deaf ears numerous times, we bled with wild joy, we followed, we incarnated and created the wild dream and the experience (sometimes they don’t differ from each other) of uprising, of this seductive goddess who haunts our heads for years now. Our necks that we risked, risk, and will risk… For there is nothing left to lose apart from self-respect, self-respect, which is tried, which is won and lost every hour and moment, every moment and second, with an action, with a glance, a consequence of clear and outright choice, which tries all the time to be better, more comprehensible, more dangerous… We sharpened knives that first hurt us when we judged ourselves inadequate. We extinguished our thirst with sea water a lot of times, knowing that in a few moments we would be more thirsty, sickly to some extent with an insatiable desire for clash, for revolt, for truth…

Let be, what counts is the derive in the oceans. Their waves raise and drop, crush, crash, and obliterate the castaways in a vortex. But the wave is us. The wild power that springs from the being of the liberated turns into a rough sea that will avenge with a rage that only an uncontrollable element of nature can have. It will avenge for centuries of coercion, it will extinguish kingdoms of exploitation in murky abysses, it will drown in blood the ones that have be drowned and then… Then it will relish, it will relish her dead, her jailed children living again, breathing again, getting lost in incredible dizzy color formations in her moist whirling and free embrace. Our sea is revolution, our insurgent sea is here, it always has been… SWIM…

- 277streetfights.blogspot.com

These kids wanted to put the “punk” back in “punctuality” so they promptly began at 11:55pm. The first song was by Michael Jackson, the crowd of more than 250 people went crazy. They were kicking up dust and yelling. They had been enduring a costly, corporate 21+ pride for two whole nights, this was there moment, their time to shine.

Someone climbed to the top of the hill and asked the DJ to stop. “It’s midnight motherfuckers! Stonewall was a queer and trans riot and it happened 40 years ago as of right now! Maybe you didn’t know Pride is supposed to be celebrating that moment in our history, Budweiser doesn’t include that on the banners they have all over the place. Fuck 21+ venues, fuck covers, fuck corporate Pride. This moment is yours, its ours!”

Dolly Parton blasted and everyone cheered. We did it, we really did it.

At the other end of the parking lot two cars had called the cops because of a minor wreck. The cop who was taking that report had been watching the goings-on and called for backup. The parking lot where a queer bar called Pony used to be suddenly got the Swine Flu as more and more cop cars showed up and began shining their lights on the crowd. The queers were not phased, they danced harder, used to the things they value being threatened by the systems that are supposed to protect them.

After five songs and much “you need to leave the parking lot” talk, the cops approached the speaker where the music was coming from. The DJ calmly unplugged his music player and walked away has he had been instructed. One person grabbed the cords connecting the device and disappeared into the crowd. The queer in charge of the power source flew into action and had everything in his bag in a matter of seconds. The kid who needed to take one part of the sound system ran with it clutched to their chest, ridding away in car. All of this took seconds to happen. These well prepared folx had their shit on lock and the cops were too slow to stop them.

The woman in charge of getting the speaker that was providing sound was carrying it away. The cops grabbed her by the hair and pulled her back, she screamed, witnesses saw the cops hand come down hard on the woman’s back. Another cop was shaking a man by his jacket screaming, “I’ve worked for 12 hours and don’t have to deal with this shit!”. The cops had pushed the large crowd out of the parking lot by now. Cops yelled hilarious things like, “There’s still time to drink, go back to the bars!”. Some of the crowd had disappeared leaving only 150 people to chant things like, “give us back our speaker!”, “up the punks!”, “fuck corporate pride”, “out of the bars and into the streets”.

One man was arrested, a cop claiming he had keyed his car. The man’s room mate was with him the entire night, “He was standing with me, he didn’t key anything. He was standing there and then he was gone.” People quickly formed a group around supporting the man until he got out on bail.

Last night’s guerrilla dance party showed two things, that queers now how to throw a fucking party and that we’re only allowed to celebrate Pride if a large company profits from our gatherings. But the cops came too late, we had proved to ourselves and others that queers don’t need to be backed by a corporate sponsor in order to commemorate the queer and trans folx who came before us and made the shit we do daily possible. The folx at Stonewall would have been proud of us and recognized what we were doing because they did it themselves, last night we made the world we wanted to see.

Edmonton, AB (Canada): On June 28th, 2009, a group of radical Queer activists will be marching to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the five days of rioting that began at the Stonewall Inn in New York City on June 28, 1969. In reclaiming the spirit of the Stonewall Rebellion, the Queer Recruitment Army (QRA) will also be taking a stand against the increasing commercialization of Pride.

Organized in protest of this year’s renaming of the Edmonton Pride Parade to the “TD Canada Trust Pride Parade and Celebration on the Square” the Queer Recruitment Army challenges LGBTTIQQ communities to demand liberation and fight appropriation.

QRA member Mitchell Jones notes, “Stonewall was a spontaneous and militant response to intense police repression, and symbolized a significant turn in U.S. and Canadian activism. Who in fact stood up to the police were communities often marginalized within the broader “Gay” movement, including people who were trans, drag queens, and People of Colour. Unfortunately, we see this marginalization continue today, which is why celebrating the 40th anniversary of Stonewall is so important.”

The origin of Pride parades and marches were in commemoration of the anniversary of Stonewall. However, each year, Pride celebrations around the world have become increasingly commercialized. Jones adds, “Pride celebrations are more and more about selling products to LGBTTIQQ markets than they are about demanding equality for all, and celebrating our Pride.”

The Queer Recruitment Army marched in this year’s TD Canada Trust Pride Parade and Celebration on the Square, holding signs that read ‘Our Pride Is Not For Sale’ and ‘Stonewall Wasn’t Sponsored by TD’. One participant wrote ‘My Colours Don’t Shine’ in lipstick on her body.

“Our intention was not to put down the Pride Week committee who I know care about equality. It is to challenge the impact and extent of sponsorship. We know that around the world, Pride sponsorship has squashed dissent. Here in Edmonton, our event was renamed after a bank!” QRA member Monika Penner claims. “I think it is great that a business wants to support Pride. In fact, all businesses – and individuals – should support Pride. But this rebranding turns a Queer event into a corporate event. And this has got to stop.”

QRA member Sleepflower adds, “With increasing commercialization of Pride, the focus has shifted from liberation to acceptance. Stonewall wasn’t about wanting straight people to simply ‘accept’ that ‘gay’ people exist – it was about demanding liberation from an oppressive culture. That’s what we’re demanding.”

The June 28th Stonewall Liberation march will follow the original Edmonton Pride Parade route. Participants will meet at 3 p.m. outside of Corbett Hall (82 Avene and 112 Street) and march down Whyte Avenue to Gazebo Park.

For more information or media interviews, email StonewallLiberation@yahoo.ca

We just wanted to let you guys know that we have formed a Bash Back chapter in Eugene OR and we are putting on an alternative to Eugene Pride called QueerFest (didn’t have time to think of a better name). In any event here is our blog http://queerfest.wordpress.com/

On Saturday, June 20th, Nike hosted a pride event to shame all others.
Complete with HRC floats, “progressive” politicians, overpriced
concessions, corporate advertising, army recruiters (?!?), police, and
speakers calling to send even more folks into the prison industrial
complex with hate crime legislation, Memphis Pride provided us with a
glimpse of the dreadfully dull world we would live in if the mainstream
gay and lesbian “movement” had its way.

Luckily, BB! Memphis was there to remind folks that a queer community
exists that isn’t funded by Budweiser, that doesn’t settle for politicians
empty promises, & doesn’t treat the BTQ it LGBTQ as an afterthought.

Friday June 19th
-BB! lines Cooper Street with anti-police and anti-Nike fliers, even
flyering around the Cooper-Young police substation.

Saturday June 20th
-BB! drops a banner near the assembly point for parade goers and the Nike
float, which reads “Labor, Just Exploit It” in response to this years
theme “OUR RIGHTS ARE CIVIL RIGHTS” and the choice to allow Nike to become
the major sponsor. Some folks cheer while others look on, confused what
racism & sweatshops have to do with rich white gay civil rights.

-BB! file in behind MAGY (Memphis Area Gay Youth) and HRC, and eventually
form a breakaway group. Carrying a banner that reads “FABULOUSLY FIERCE”,
a boom box, and signs commemorating murdered transwomen, they begin
militantly chanting which riles up the crowd.

-When the BB! marchers approach the Cooper-Young railroad trestle, a
giant banner it dropped over the trestle by BB! operatives which reads
“THE MPD KILLED DUANNA JOHNSON! END RACISM & TRANSPHOBIA, BASH BACK!”

-When the banner is dropped BB! marchers play “Fuck the Police” on the
boom box and a dance party under the railroad trestle ensues. The march
stops, police look bewildered, and other folks start cheering and joining
in.

-BB! reunites at Peabody Park where the festival is being held and begins
passing out queer counter-recruitment literature (thanks BB! Denver!) in
front of the Repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell folks.

-BB! confronts Michigan Womyns Festival who is tabling at Memphis Pride
and call them out on their transphobia.

-A BB! operative interrupts Congressman Steve Cohen while he is on stage
saying he supported ENDA, calling him “Transphobic Liberal Scum”. Some
folks cheer on the protester, some transphobic folks boo them.

Early afternoon, punktime, in Chicago, Illinois, a carfull of trans, genderqueer, queer, POC, cismale submissives, and female-bodied insurrectionists started driving down the road towards the highway. We didn’t care that we were driving because the environment is already destroyed and 2012 was an inside job, so we co-oped the technological beasts of our masters to use for our own means, speeding towards the northern suburbs. We hoped to smash straight into anarchists protesting nazis protesting socialists, in the absurdity that has become our reality– policed by… police.

Leaning out the car window with our teenage angst anthems playing full blast, we looked straight into the eyes of the guilty pleasure of our childhood, none other than Blink 182’s Travis Barker. U-turn! Parking lot! Out we jump! Followed him by foot into the doughnut hole of capitalism, “Hey!,” we yelled, “Come beat up nazis with us!” After canceling a few appointments, he agrees to jump into the speeding steel vehicle. Off we go again, with our black flag flowing majestically out the window, it’s folds fluttering in the cloudless sunny sky like a butterfly.

Into the barren wasteland that is suburbia– Not only suburbia, but one which is constantly bombarded by metal cages which explode with the fumes of the rich. More parking lots, a Target, hotels, dotted here and there with moving smudges of human. Cop cars! Lots of black clothing! No, these are not the BDUs and helmets so common to police, the military, and neo-nazis. These are the masks and hoods of our friends! Countless bodies mingling, waiting, scheming. Some engage in dialogue with the cops, most do not. The scene is one like that of the most melodramatic Battle In Seattle spin-off films– Hostility, tension building up. We arrived at just the right time! A sign above the heads of our enemies flashes: “JONAS BROTHERS! DEMI LOVATO!” But our American Apparel looks better than those of the pre-teen Disney channel stars outting the National Socialist Movement’s pedo-affiliation. Did you read Bill White’s resignation letter?

The polished heads of our enemies hide behind the thinning hair of other enemies, nazis behind cops… Kind of a tragic equation: 20 and 5. We surged forward like a tidal wave of destruction, and the thin blue line broke like a popped balloon. Cops scattered! Some took sides. After the previous dialogue with those who had arrived prior to punktime, an officer throws his badge to the ground and dons his shirt like a mask! He screams “ANARCHY! CHAOS!”, and lives all the burning desires he has waited so long to imagine. We charge, but not to the cops, or the nazis, towards the cars!!! Into the trunks we reach! Out we return, with bullet-proof vests, with helmets and snazzy face shields, with tasers, with teargas, with cool little walkie-talkies. This is dispensed to the crowd. Those without protection seek it, those who came with it, break it out.

We are beyond verbal confrontation. Not a word is uttered as brass knuckles, knives, rotten fruit, stale muffins, and flag poles fly through the air! Panes of glass are broken over heads! The silence ends: “FIST FIGHT YOUR OPPRESSORS! FIST FIGHT YOUR OPPRESSORS! FIST FIGHT YOUR OPPRESSORS! FIST FIGHT YOUR OPPRESSORS! FIST FIGHT YOUR OPPRESSORS! FIST FIGHT YOUR OPPRESSORS! FIST FIGHT YOUR OPPRESSORS! FIST FIGHT YOUR OPPRESSORS! FIST FIGHT YOUR OPPRESSORS! FIST FIGHT YOUR OPPRESSORS! FIST FIGHT YOUR OPPRESSORS! FIST FIGHT YOUR OPPRESSORS! FIST FIGHT YOUR OPPRESSORS! FIST FIGHT YOUR OPPRESSORS! FIST FIGHT YOUR OPPRESSORS! FIST FIGHT YOUR OPPRESSORS!” These words scratch our throats abrasively, like the granules of concrete which roadrash the faces of those we’re confronting.

The ISO, a monolithic political organism which acts as a parasite, born in the bowels of some Marxist theological hell-laboratory, feeds on babytape and dreadlocks. It begins with a rash, and quickly transforms into a thick red sludge that enters through the ear canal to cloud autonomous thought. The turns its hivemind to the melee. Out of the hotel erupts a group of zombified college students– Upon closer inspection we realize they have ISO! Communist philosophy oozes from their eyeballs.They run, with arms outstretched, schedules in hands, cameras and microphones dragging behind them. Thank you’s are drowned out by the sounds of the original crowd. They are pulled in.

We make no distinction between national socialist or international socialist. All feel the power of our collective fight. The cops have deserted us. Here and there, bodies drop to the ground… Their bald heads, red armbands and shiny boots adorn the pavement. One small masked, hooded figure removes the boots from a fallen douchebag, ties the laces together, and hits the last Xbox fanatical Youtube-using racist in the face, knocking him to the ground! They drape the boots over their shoulders and yell “I was the 16 year old blonde-haired Aryan chick you friended on New Saxon!” On second glance, the small figure appears to be a rather androgynous queer POC destroyer of worlds.

We look around as the dust settles. None of us has fallen. There are a few scrapes. Travis Barker has a broken leg. We attend to the wounds of our companions and walk away… As we look over our shoulders and the sun sets, we see one of those ridiculous metal cages explode fumes into the hotel full of Trotsky cookies and matching tracksuits.

Onward ho! Your town next!