💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › jeff-shantz-policing-protest.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 11:34:28. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-07-09)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Policing Protest Author: Jeff Shantz Date: 2011 Language: en Topics: police, police violence, police brutality, defund the police, protest, repression, abolition, resistance, black bloc, direct action, property, acab Source: Linchpin
Only a few days into the Olympic spectacle and much talk had turned to
black blocs and a few broken insured Hudson Bay Company windows. Yet
much of the discussion has been framed within a strange liberal duality
of choices between militant demonstrations (said to be offensive to
working class observers) and supposedly “peaceful” symbolic protests,
like the march the night of the opening ceremonies (which is presented
as more palatable to working class audiences). As if the actions of the
demonstrators are the real question and determine the structure of
events. Anyone who has ever been on a picket line might find this a bit
strange —working class folks have never been involved in dust ups with
the cops?— and it has me reflecting not so much on the specific actions
in Vancouver as on the broader context for policing and protests.
For anarchists, policing of demonstrations provides a mechanism for
economic and political elites to suppress attempts to re-distribute the
wealth and resources they control. Policing of protests period,
regardless of what activists are doing, provides a powerful agency for
maintaining inequalities of wealth and power in class societies.
Anarchists ask whose order is being maintained and what does this order
look like in terms of inequality, liberty, freedom or exploitation?
Policing of protests reinforces unequal class structures in society by
focusing on activities predominantly of the poor and working class
rather than the activities of elites, such as corporate crime,
pollution, ecological destruction or workplace injustice. Use of police
to break strikes also defines collective organizing and assembly by
workers as a criminal, rather than economic or political, act.
It is not coincidental that historically the most aggressive policing
has occurred during demonstrations organized by working class and poor
people and racialized minorities, especially by indigenous people in the
United States and Canada. Police have, since the earliest days of modern
policing, regularly been deployed to disperse striking workers and break
up picket lines. Much research shows that during the nineteenth century
many of the gatherings against which police were deployed that were
identified as “riots” were actually simply gatherings of striking
workers. Targeting of such “riots” was clearly more than an issue of
public order. Rather the suppression of strikes offered examples of
policing to benefit economic elites. Police strikebreaking under the
guise of riot control was an effort to defeat working class resistance
to employers. Breaking a few windows hardly constitutes a riot yet that
is how the black bloc action in Vancouver was described.
The first modern police forces in North America were developed in
industrialized urban centres in the northeast. Their main emphasis was
“maintaining urban order” in the face of class conflict as cities grew
through waves of migrant workers seeking employment. Local business
people have had influence, even control, over directing police against
striking workers. The earliest forms of policing in the southern United
States involved so-called “slave patrols” dating back to 1712 in South
Carolina. The function of these patrols was to maintain discipline over
slaves and prevent slave riots. Black people caught violating any laws
were summarily punished.
State forces were formed to deal with striking workers. The Coal and
Iron Police were created in Pennsylvania in 1866 to control striking
coal and iron workers. In 1905 the state formed a state police agency
for use in strikebreaking. These official state forces gave a legitimacy
to strikebreaking that private security, which lacked state
authorization as keepers of the public order, could not claim.
Strikebreaking and union busting have also, of course, been functions of
private police and security, most notably reflected in the history of
the Pinkerton agency. And history shows again and again that working
people have not had qualms about confronting police. In San Francisco in
July 1934, striking longshore workers were involved in several
engagements with police who attempted to break the strike. In response
to the killing of two pickets by police, area unions initiated a general
strike of all workers in the area. The result was the “Big Strike” of
San Francisco. During the 1945 strike of United Auto Workers members
against Ford in Windsor, Canada, pickets prevented police from
dispersing the picket line to open the plant by surrounding the factory
with parked cars, taxis and buses.
The extensive and often militant social and political struggles of the
1960s forced states to re-think methods of social control. The
transformation of urban police forces from community forces managed at
local levels in towns and cities in America to militarized forces
organized along national lines and standards related to changes during
the 1960s in which “law and order” became a matter of national politics.
Much of the impetus for this change came from the visible social
conflict and protests of the 1960s, beginning with civil rights marches
and boycotts and followed by anti-war movements and student protests.
The period of conflicts included the numerous urban uprisings and
so-called “race riots” against racism in cities such as Detroit,
Washington, D.C. and the Watts area of Los Angeles.
Policing of demonstrations reinforces existing unequal property rights
and the limited political processes of parliamentary democracy as the
preferred or privileged form of political expression. Forms of politics
outside of such legitimized and hierarchical channels are treated as
deviant, threatening or even criminal.
When they are, or risk being, effective, demonstrators are presented by
police and media as dangerous individuals belonging to fringe groups or
disaffected members of society who pose a threat to society's “normal”
way of life. In some cases, as in Vancouver, attempts are made to
disparage organizers and participants and suggest they are not raising
legitimate concerns but rather acting out of self-interest.
Focus on policing can serve to shift attention towards technical
processes and tactics, rather than the pressing need to expand social
justice and end inequalities. In the end police have the authority of
the courts and criminal justice system and government to support their
definitions of situations. A privilege that is not available to
protesters, whether they prefer black blocs or friendly marches.