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Title: Queers With Guns Author: Elisha Moon Williams Date: February 7th, 2022 Language: en Topics: queerness, police violence, Structural Violence, Dual Power, community self-defense
There's a lot of discussion nowadays in relation to both the rights of
marginalized people and gun reform due to the consistent problem with
mass shootings in America and the rest of the world, as well as the many
intersecting problems made clearly evident in the shooting of Amir Locke
by the police. Many of the victims of mass shootings as well as police
shootings, especially by white supremacists, have been those most
marginalized within society. Civilian shootings had dropped off almost
entirely because of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and the
subsequent lockdowns. They seem to be coming back in full swing, however
the Biden administration is taking a pre-emptive strike against "rising
gun violence" in preparation for the rise in gun crimes that is
occurring due to the country opening back up. Of course, these actions
mean more funding for police. This will undo much of the work that
activists have done over the past 2 years to defund the police and put
their power closer to being accountable to their communities.
Meanwhile, there is a rising tide of fascism within the United States
that has no signs of disintegrating on its own after the ousting of
Trump from the presidency by the right-wing Democrat Joe Biden. He has
proven to either maintain trump-era policies on the down-low, or openly
break what little promises he did make on the campaign trail. There is a
rise in hate crimes still happening within the US, with black people and
now Asians being the most at risk during this time, among many others.
What is there to do with these many crises happening all at once? What
should we do in the face of the state establishment flopping on itself
in the face of greater autocracy? This essay seeks to partially answer
that question, mainly within the purview of guns, violence, police, what
could replace said police (along with many other things) and how we
might do so from a queer anarchist perspective.
This essay's purpose is to convince the reader, whom may or may not be
queer or otherwise marginalized, that we cannot trust the US government
(especially the police and military, but not exclusively) to protect us
against the rising tide of fascism and vigilante hatred within American
society from an intersectional queer perspective. I also seek to supply
possible alternative(s) to the current model of community defense that
the police fill across this country, so that we as queer people don’t
just deconstruct the current system, but also build the foundations for
something to replace it as we do so.
There have been very few LGBT+ activists in America who have actively
defended the many racist police murders of black people that have caused
the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. Many liberal queer people stood
side by side with black activists in holding those officers accountable
for what they did. This stance against police brutality, however is not
deep enough as to support police abolition within largely liberal LGBT+
circles and groups. This opens them to criticism for believing and
mainly pushing for reform of the police rather than complete abolition
like many within the black community are still fighting for. This
section will catalogue a brief history of the police and the US
government's role in the lives of its subjects.
The modern police force came into being in a multitude of ways across
the United States, like many institutions in this country. Many of the
first constabularies within the American colonies and then the United
States were formed to mainly subjugate indigenous people in the defense
of European and American colonialism, as well as slave patrols that
sought to capture self-freed slaves and punish them before heading back
to their master. Once slavery was reformed through the 13^(th)
Amendment, the formations of the modern police force made vagrancy and
loitering laws that disproportionately targeted black people who had
just gotten out of slavery with no reconciliation. These impoverished
and often homeless people were forced to perform slave labor at the
hands of the states that owned those bodies as part of their
imprisonment. This trend has exploded with the rise of mass
incarceration that especially hits the black community.
In the north, state troopers in Philadelphia were actively modeled on
the white supremacy and colonialism of the American Constabulary in the
Philippines, actively seeking to keep workers (especially immigrants)
from organizing within the mines of Philadelphia[1]. We can see that the
very origins of modern policing, and policing in general, stem from
white supremacy, settler colonialism, imperialism, and enforcing the
interests of the owning class over that of collective bargaining by the
working class. These institutions are also known for overpolicing
working class neighborhoods in general, which disproportionately affect
black and other colonized working class people due to things like
redlining and banking discrimination. These institutions were never
meant to be in the common interest, but mainly serve to protect the
interests of those who own property and are at the top of these social
hierarchies.
There's even explicit legal admission by the US government that police
officers and government offices aren't legally bound to protect others
from harm, as court decisions like Warren v. District of Columbia
show[2]. More recently the trial of the security officer who blatantly
ran away from the Parkland Shooter a few years ago shows how little cops
are legally bound to "protect and serve." The court ruled that he had no
legal duty to protect the children he was stationed to protect in case
of situations exactly like these[3]. This isn't even getting into all of
the overt white supremacist, patriarchal, classist, and ableist violence
that the police systematically enforce and protect in the modern day
that they actually do as a part of their job.
The reason why queer people should care about what cops do to working
class people, especially the homeless with vagrancy and loitering laws
is because queer people (and especially queer people of color) are
already disproportionately likely to be working class and homeless due
to non-supportive family members or guardians[4]. Another important
intersection that should be considered by queer people in regards to
their relationship to the police is that of sex workers. Plenty of sex
workers, especially queer sex workers experience the humiliating,
patronizing violence and regulation put up against them for the sake of
their "protection" at the hands of cops and the rulers who set those
laws that cops enforce. There is already a deeper queer analysis of sex
work by C. B. Daring in the collection of essays called "Queering
Anarchism"[5].
Why should we as queer people rely on such a rampantly authoritarian
system of social control to protect us, especially those within our
communities that are facing direct violence and harm from these supposed
"protectors?" Who would those people with badges and a gun at their hip
really be protecting? The answer would be cisheteronormative white and
able-bodied queer people, especially those of which who are already
economically privileged and can access upper class mobility that many
working class and otherwise marginalized queer people cannot. None of us
are free until all of us are free, we cannot leave parts of our
communities behind for the sake of maintaining the "normalcy" that is
police.
Many people have posited to defund the police and replace them with
mostly "non-lethal" EMT workers who deal with calls that don't deal with
weapons. This is a step in the right direction, but still doesn't
address the underlying problem with the monopoly on the use of force
held by the government and the white supremacist history of policing in
general. The case of Elijah McClain is a clear example that you don't
need a gun or even a police officer to kill a black man who is
inherently seen as a threat using the authority of the state. It wasn't
a bullet that ended his life and extinguished his soul, but a deadly
injection by these so-called "less lethal" EMT workers as he was begging
for his life and apologizing as he was being killed. Eric Garner was
choked to death for selling loose cigarettes, he wasn't shot. George
Floyd was knelt upon for 9 minutes, he wasn't shot. It's not the use of
guns itself that is the problem, it's the fact that they're police or
act like police and can determine what the law is at any given moment
and enforce that law upon you with violence. If they actually misapply
the law they were citing, you will then have to go through years of
court charades and thousands upon thousands of dollars to prove that
they were in the wrong. And even if that's proven, the government can
STILL give the cop little to no consequence for their actions through
qualified immunity, even though they are the ones who can determine how
the laws are enacted and enforced while on the job. This is all done
without any direct oversight from the communities that they enforce
their laws upon, with only bureaucratic husks in local and city councils
sleepily reacting to the people's demand for justice with perhaps one of
the committing officers getting a jail sentence at best, but nothing to
actually prevent this kind of behavior from happening within the system
of policing in the future.
This is because the system isn’t broken and in need of fixing, it's
working exactly how it's intended to work. It's not a bug or a glitch,
but a feature. This system needs to be abolished entirely in order to
make a better path of justice, one that is actively drawn by and for the
community itself. But how would we go about that?
With all of this said, one might ask, "Is this lady going to
unironically parrot the Good Guy with a Gun narrative like many
conservatives and libertarians do? Is she just going to tell everyone to
get guns and think the problem is solved?" To put it simply, no. I don't
have anywhere close to the same views as people like the Pink Pistols or
some queer conservatives. I don't reductively implore everyone to just
get a gun individually and think it will apply to everyone or think
that’s the solution to fighting such a massively intrenched system of
violence and domination. There is a lot that is deeply wrong with the
way Americans use this hyper-individualist line of thinking in their gun
culture.
To start with the most obvious problems, many gun groups both online and
in person center around the views and opinions of very reactionary
conservative men, or one of their marginalized tokens who parrot the
same talking points. Many people within these communities use their guns
as a symbol of power and yearning to dominate others. I see so many
people online, especially conservative gun owners, talk about how much
they would love to have a burglar come into their house so they can
shoot them with an array of weapons at their disposal. This was
especially bad during the racial uprisings that happened almost 2 years
ago, where many of these conservatives fearmongered about these people
who were grieving the loss of their loved ones and tired of playing
within the system that keeps killing them. They talked about how they
would gladly shoot any "rioter" that came to their hometown and tried to
"destroy property" or "steal." These ways of viewing their weapons
perpetuate a very deep level of white supremacist and patriarchal social
domination, from this deep need to show their supposed strength and
capacity for disproportionate violence at a moment's notice that just so
happens to be targeted at black people fighting for justice. This is the
definition of white supremacist machismo culture, and it isn't exclusive
to the right wing and fascists. Such patriarchal yearning to dominate
others or to use these weapons as symbols of their capacity to kill can
be seen throughout armed leftist spaces as well.
Many people would object to my characterization of American gun
communities, saying that there's a level of feminism in having women
protect themselves from predatory men by giving them "the great
equalizer." This can be a very liberatory and empowering thing to
encourage women to do on paper. The problem with this is that many gun
groups and communities think that this is the best and only way to solve
such broad issues, and never address the more implicit, systemic
problems of patriarchy in society. They only focus on the most obvious,
violent, and overt impositions of power by men over women and don't seem
to critically analyze the roots of where that mindset and therefore
action come from. It seeks to individualize the problem of patriarchy by
just telling women to get a gun in order to stop any attacker, when not
every woman can get a gun, and the threats women face aren't always the
man following her to her car at night.
This problem doesn't just apply to patriarchy within these communities,
but to people who are victims of systemic violence in general. The
answer to the problem within most American gun communities isn't to
advocate for or build a better system to replace the one currently
victimizing them, but instead to just get a gun and shoot at anyone who
might want to hurt them. As with women and patriarchy, it individualizes
the problem many marginalized groups face, or even just people in
general under the current economic system of capitalism. Without this
critical analysis of the world and the social interactions they
participate in, they instead externalize it to being solved by "getting
a gun." These gun communities are bound to keep reproducing the
capitalist, patriarchal, white supremacist, cisheteronormative, and
ableist structures that keep all of us down within society if they
maintain to have that lens within their popular structures. As
journalist Sam Levin[6] points out in a piece talking about his
interview with the President of the Pink Pistols:
"As Nicki demonstrated how she would have stopped the Orlando shooter if
she was armed at Pulse, I understood the painfully depressing truth of
the Pink Pistols’ message. They accept gun violence as normal, promote a
grotesque culture of firearms, and blame LGBT people for showing up to
nightclubs unarmed. And if I learned anything from my trip to Target
Masters, it’s that there’s nothing empowering about loading a gun and
firing back."
This isn't a problem that gun communities have alone within America,
many social institutions suffer from this exact same lack of awareness
of all of these systems, this is just my criticism within the context of
how most gun communities operate, including some left leaning,
explicitly radical or even revolutionary organizations.
Telling anyone who experiences marginalization and violence for being a
member of a certain social group to simply get a gun and shoot at
whatever seemingly threatens them also alienates a wide range of people
who are at their core sympathetic to armed self-defense. There are many
people who simply don't want to or cannot use firearms to defend
themselves. Whether it be due to a physical disability, mental health
issues, previous trauma in regard to gun violence in their lives, or
they simply don't feel comfortable with firearms as a way to defend
themselves, people have valid reasons to be uncomfortable with using
firearms or be uncomfortable around people who have firearms. It's up to
those who have those weapons to respect the boundaries that others have
and work with them if they ever wish to have those same people respect
their boundaries. Respect is a two-way street. Having firearms is just
as much about the safety and comfort of the people around them as it is
the safety and comfort of the person who has the firearm. Calling people
who aren't comfortable having firearms or being around firearms
"snowflakes" and calling any criticisms by them "liberal nonsense" is
exactly why there is a growing movement away from firearm ownership, and
even to start banning certain types of firearms that are coveted and
fetishized for their capacity to kill people (cough AR-15 cough).
Now that we have those criticisms in mind and the assurance that I am
not seeking to individualize the problems of marginalized people by just
telling people to "get guns," let's discuss how we can change American
gun culture (or to use queer theorist terms, "queer" it) to help suit
not only marginalized people in the here and now, but also build the
foundations for a better society in the future.
So, how does one go about queering American gun culture? One way in
which American gun culture should be queered is by de-emphasizing
individualist and ultimately harmful ways of viewing armed self-defense
and putting it towards free association and community self-defense,
especially by and for those most affected by such violence. It can be
done in a much more traditional way as in having open militias and
organizations in the same vein as the Black Panthers and other radical
liberation groups and providing spaces for queer lives while also
actively and openly defending ourselves against queerphobic violence
both by vigilantes and also by the police. These organizations can for
example provide services for queer youth who get estranged by their
family or guardians for being queer, like safe houses or free health
clinics, especially during a massive pandemic that is disproportionately
affecting working class people. We can give legal or other professional
services for disabled queer people who are often left out to dry within
the queer liberation struggle. We could be giving security for protests
in regards to not just queer issues, but also to intersectional issues
as a whole like the black panthers famously did. This can be used to
help allow the queer community to become less reliant on the systems of
police and military violence to maintain peace and solve problems within
their communities. Through this, we can look to stand in solidarity with
the most marginalized both within and without through direct action. It
is important, however, that these organizations aren't controlled by a
centralized bureaucracy or vanguard party like the Black Panthers. There
should be no separation between those that are being protected and those
that are protecting them within these communities, and the protectors
should have direct democratic oversight from those that are being
protected. This factor ultimately led to the downfall and splintering of
the BPP under the pressures of Counterintelligence Programs under the
weight of their very centralized and lack of direct control by the
people. We must learn from the lessons taught by black anarchic radicals
like Lorenzo Ervin, Ashanti Alston, and Kuwasi Balagoon among others who
came from the Black Panther Party and take what worked and what didn't
into this new context of organization for this better world to be
possible.
One might ask about the vast majority of gun owners in America, those
that are perpetuating this social system. How can we help change things
within those communities? This is where a decentralized, democratic, and
community-centered organization comes into play again. We should have
organizations that are led by and help support marginalized people and
even using firearms to do so when necessary, but we should also have
those organizations directly involved with the communities around them
and have directly democratic council structures that will control these
organizations. When those who have such privileges see these
organizations that not only help the marginalized and the oppressed, but
also the community at large, it can help confront the deeply embedded
biases that they have been taught their whole lives living within the
current gun culture. It's different to talk to someone individually as a
marginalized person about these issues. They can easily dismiss you as
the caricature that they've always given to those who don't fall in line
with the gun culture status quo: a liberal snowflake who wants to take
everyone's guns away. But it's much harder to ignore and dismiss entire
organizations led by those oppressed people and helping their local
community, and potentially being part of a larger movement that
ultimately helps that person out and show them that a better world is
possible. Action as well as revolutionary education is what can help
turn these people who were once willing participants in the current gun
culture into accomplices in the larger struggle for liberation. There is
a great set of writings that talks about how one can help construct such
a directly democratic system that I highly recommend by Daniel
Baryon[7][8].
I want to be clear on certain things before folks start making
criticisms of this work. These recommendations and points are not going
to fit every political context, especially outside of the United States.
The point of anarchist political philosophy and practice is to
incentivize experimentation and to find what works within your local
context. I hope this work at least started to answer some questions
about queer liberation and helped you understand where queer radicals
like me are coming from.
We cannot sit idly by and watch the capitalist state structure tear up
our communities and watch those most affected by it continue to be
brutalized by thugs in badges that occupy where we live. We need to be
building a better world, not just for queer people but for everyone who
is oppressed under this system. We cannot, like many LGBT moderates that
are going into politics, have queerness shaped and co-opted into the
capitalist state structure and be used to oppress other marginalized
groups with the likes of Pete Buttigieg or conservative LGBT
politicians. They are essentially political tokens to the right wing on
most issues and use their queerness as a bludgeon against any claims
that the organizations they participate in are systemically oppressive
and fundamentally wrong.
It is clear that the proliferation of such rulers will not lead to the
liberation of queer people, just as much as "black faces in high
places"[9] helped liberate black or other colonized people, nor has
neoliberal or "girlboss" feminism liberated women from these patriarchal
social structures[10]. As Kuwasi Balagoon[11] puts it:
"When a gay group protests lack of police protection by making an
alliance with police to form a gay task force, they ain’t making a stand
against the system, they are joining it. Putting more power in the hands
of those who attack them for being what they are in the first place.
Those women’s organizations with members with underpaid Black, Puerto
Rican, and Mexican maids who decided to vote differently when the Equal
Rights Amendment was defeated can’t be called left, just as Blacks
mobilizing to field a presidential candidate ain’t left. Left is the
land and means of production in the hands of the masses, and right is
land and the means of production in the hands of a few pigs."
We need to be working towards a much more radical vision of the future
if we want to make fundamental changes that impact peoples' lives for
the better. If we continue on the path of queer folks imbedding
themselves deeper and deeper into the web of these systems that keep all
of us under its thumb, we will only have a worse world ahead of us and
freedom will ultimately become all but impossible. The only realm of
escape would be dreams of becoming the dominator as we grind ourselves
into dust under the pressure of this death machine. As we take our last
breaths we will still think, "Just one more, just keep working and
you'll make it someday."
[1] https://plsonline.eku.edu/sites/plsonline.eku.edu/files/the-history-of-policing-in-us.pdf
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2018/12/21/us-judge-says-law-enforcement-officers-had-no-legal-duty-protect-parkland-students-during-mass-shooting/
[4] https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/lgbt-homelessness-us/
[5] http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/c-b-daring-j-rogue-deric-shannon-and-abbey-volcano-queering-anarchism#toc65
[6] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/23/lgbt-gun-rights-orlando-shooting-pink-pistols
[7] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anark-constructing-the-revolution#toc1]
[8] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/daniel-baryon-after-the-revolution]
[9] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lorenzo-kom-boa-ervin-anarchism-and-the-black-revolution
[10] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzAyLV5XpCQ
[11] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/kuwasi-balagoon-a-soldier-s-story