In June, two members of the Revolution Club, Xochitl and Magda, courageously raised banners of “Rise Up for Abortion Rights” and “End Roe? Hell No!” on the floor of the Chase Center arena during the fifth game of the NBA finals in San Francisco. This was in response to a call from Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights and was part of important actions around the country—it was a daring and urgent effort to reach millions with the need to take to the streets to stop the Supreme Court from ending abortion rights. In San Francisco, they took action only days before the Supreme Court brought down the hammer.

Xochitl and Magda were immediately slammed by security and SFPD, brutally dragged off the court, choked, and handcuffed, and Xochitl was injected with a sedative by the Fire Department while tied to a gurney! This starkly posed two sides in intense conflict. On one side, passionate fighters for women’s basic rights (and in the case of these two members of the Revolution Club, for the emancipation of humanity) on a mission to mobilize society to fight—on the other side, wanton brutality and viciousness by the authorities and the armed enforcers of this system.

This past Wednesday, August 10, noted civil rights attorney John Burris held a press conference to announce the filing of a federal civil rights lawsuit against the City and County of San Francisco. In his statement opening the press conference, Attorney Burris recounted the outrageous events:

…she resisted very strongly that an injection was unwarranted, and that she opposed it. Shortly thereafter, she was on a gurney, she was handcuffed. She was wheeled over to a fire truck and there an injection was given to her. She was dumbfounded and shocked that that had taken place. She did not give any permission for that to occur. Importantly, there were no questions asked her as to what her mental or physical condition was. Was she in fact, allergic?

Burris’s statement also spoke to the legal basis for filing the lawsuit in violations of the Fourth Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

Having something injected into your body without your permission is a seizure under the Fourth Amendment. You, in fact, have invaded that person’s bodily control with something that they did not ask for and certainly was not needed. The Fourteenth amendment, obviously is the liberty question. They have the right to be free, control their own body, control their own destiny. That was in fact, infringed upon. It is that kind of case. She was taken to the hospital by the police afterwards, and she was almost immediately released. She wasn't incoherent. And she wasn't threatening. She wasn't doing anything. All she ever did was protest, loudly. You can't do this.

Xochitl spoke at the press conference of the urgency of taking to the streets and of why it is important to not just let the city get away with this violation, but it has to be taken on in the courts:

[It] is intolerable that activists, that people protesting for civil rights, would be treated, will be sedated, would be injected, to silence them. And I looked back and I see the young people behind me, the high school students. What message are they trying to send, if they're gonna do this to people? And so this case, it's not just a civil case, it's a case to say that we will not accept this or tolerate this, and we're gonna fight it.

Xochitl also spoke to and challenged those who should be acting but are still on the sidelines, and called on people to support this case:

I want to call on everybody to support this case, to join this case. And specifically, I want to call on the Warriors fans, and the leadership of the Warriors, Steve Kerr, all the basketball players who were there that night, as we were being dragged down, to make a statement to oppose what the SFPD, what the Fire Department, what the security, did to us that day.

Magda, who took part in the action at Chase Center, and was brutally dragged from courtside by security, said this at the conference:

No one in police custody is disposable. Xochitl is not disposable. Xochitl is not disposable, and I am not disposable. The millions of women and girls whose lives are impacted by the overturn of Roe v. Wade, they are also not disposable. And this is why we are here fighting because of that. And make no mistake. This is what the Christian fascists on the Supreme Court want. They want this brutality. They want this degrading, sinister white supremacy. They want this humiliating, subjugating patriarchy. They want this violent apparatus of the state that stabbed Xochitl in the arm and sedated them for nonviolently protesting for abortion rights.

The press conference was covered by local and some national media. All of the major local TV news ran stories. The conference was also attended by about 25 people who came to support Xochitl and Magda, including a number of people who are active around the Bay Area Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights chapter, who held a large banner as a backdrop to the press conference. Two young activists who support Rise Up also made statements.

It is very important that this suit is being filed at this time. The lawsuit is an important assertion of basic rights at a time when rights are under attack. It brings to the fore the ugly reality of what happened at Chase Center—this has been largely hidden up to this point—and it should shock and awaken people to just how intense things are in this society right now. The Supreme Court has ripped away abortion rights for women, state after state is rolling back the ability of women to have access to urgently needed abortions. There is an urgent and great need for what police and fire personnel did to nonviolent protesters for abortion rights in the liberal city of San Francisco to be repudiated and rejected. This is part of and must contribute to calling forward millions to step into the streets, to refuse to accept forced motherhood, and to demand that the federal government restore legal abortion nationwide now!

And this is all in the even larger context of all society ripping apart—which opens up grave dangers as well as the possibility of revolution, which we must seize. The ugly, deceitful and dangerous attack on Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, Sunsara Taylor, and especially Bob Avakian serves to shut down the possibility of a liberating future. This suit should play a role in putting resistance and revolution on the map at a time when this is urgently needed.