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Title: Please Riot: Retrospectives Author: Please Riot Collective Date: November 2021 Language: en Topics: community organizing, George Floyd uprising, COVID-19, Colorado, Denver, Elections, electoral politics, reflection, co-option, co-optation, police, abolition, police violence, direct action, zine, Please Riot Collective, dual power, 2020 Notes: Please Riot is a collective of students and staff working at Colorado State University in the occupied territory of so-called âColoradoâ. âRetrospectivesâ is issue #1 in a zine series aimed toward new radicals to agitate, educate, and reflect on radical anarchist ideas and practice and to learn and develop them within our commuinity. Can be found on Twitter at: @pleaseriot_
We are a collective of students and staff working at Colorado State
University. In the fall of 2019 and spring of 2020, we published a few
radical newspapers that were, in retrospect, both extremely of their
time and wholly inadequate to the circumstances we faced. At that time,
with the possibility of an electoral path to something approaching
socialismâat least as popularly defined by left-liberals and social
democratsâarticulation of the interconnection of supposedly distinct but
poignant social problems alongside policy prescriptions seemed
reasonable and victory looked possible. That is no longer the case. The
COVID-19 pandemic and cascading social crises laid bare the breadth and
depth of the social malaise overcoming the so-called âUnited Statesâ and
the world. The murder of George Floyd by a racist cop and the subsequent
insurrection for Black life offer a vision into a world of real
resistance to the imposition of white supremacy, one that necessarily
occurs outside traditional institutions of acceptable social change: the
courts, the legislature, the nonprofits, the Silicon Valley tycoons and
technocrats. Fighters in Minneapolis and around the country showed what
it meant to fight back against a deeply racist system of policing that
has dominated the lives of Black and Brown USians, but also the lives of
poor and working-class whites. There will never again be a sight as
beautiful as when the Third Precinct burned, across the street from that
Minneapolis Target.
In the glow of those flames emerged a truth known by revolutionaries
throughout history: we arenât voting our way out of this Hell. No ballot
box can hold the truth that we hold in our hearts. A better world is
possible, but we must fight for it. Anyone who tries to sell you on
electoral politics and reform is a dupe or a fraud. The clock is
ticking; every minute that passes is another minute of living
subservient to a system that denies the humanity and autonomy of all but
the wealthiest and most powerful, and every day that passes will be the
last for thousands around the world, killed by the uncaring and violent
systems that structure our whole lives. Climate catastrophe, too, looms
close over the horizon as extreme weather systems, that will only become
worse as the earth cooks, wreak havoc on human communities the world
over. What is incremental change in the face of so many life-ending and
world-shattering slow catastrophes? What is reform as we face down
apocalypse?
In the pages that follow, we will discuss the lessons we have learned
from these seminal events. We feel we have an obligation to try and
convince you that, although the times in which we live are bleak, there
is hope. There are ideological tendencies, historical practices, and
political frameworks that have won social change in the past. They have
shaped the world as we know it. The times in which we live are not a
symptom of some novel blight or unforeseen consequence, but a very
obvious logical end to an extractive, racist, late-capitalist system.
And thanks to capitalist, racist, and (small c) conservative
indoctrination, we as a species have forgotten that we have the power to
shape our world, though in many ways that power has been taken from us.
In the pages that follow we will reflect on what we see as being the
three most important issues of the past year and a half:
to the death of George Floyd and so many other Black, Brown, and
Indigenous people every day,
âUSâ, and,
Our hope is to illustrate that, though it may not seem to be, nothing
has fundamentally changed since early 2020. From this, it ought to
become clear that the energy and actions of genuine militants must be
redirected from courses of action that are fundamentally incapable of
effecting social changeâelectoral reformism and NGO workâto those proven
effective and capable of delivering the sort of total social
reconstruction we advocate. Though it may seem bleak, the only path
forward is revolution. It may sound far-fetched, but by working together
we can build a better, more humane world. In fact, it seems more likely
every passing day that revolution will be the only route to maintaining
a livable world.
The deck is stacked against any change, let alone revolution. But, in
the words of anarchist science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin: âWe
live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right
of kings.â
Those kings are dead.
On May 25^(th), 2020, a white police officer knelt on the neck of George
Floyd for more than 8 minutes, killing him. Three officers looked on
while a crowd gathered. Floyd had the police called on him for allegedly
using a counterfeit $20 bill at a bodega, and he had just recovered from
COVID-19. He was a tall man and had worked as a security guard in
Minneapolis. He had a daughter. But most of all, to the cop who murdered
him, George Floyd was a Black man and a threat.
Policing in the âUSâ came from two places. In the North, private
militaries like the Pinkertons were hired by capitalists to violently
break strikes and to destroy worker organizations. Pinkertons were
infamous for firing into crowds of striking workers and blackmailing
labor organizers. Though the most recent time a Pinkerton themselves
made the news was when one shot a fascist in the face in Denver in 2020,
the role played by that private detective agency has been internalized
in state institutions like the FBI and Secret Service, and also the
police (in controlling strike activities and cracking down on radical
labor activists). To this day, police regulate the militancy of the
labor movement through enforcement of anti-worker laws and by harassing
poor and unhoused people.
In the South, which relied upon enslaved Black labor for cash crop
production, slave patrols were constructed to hunt for Black people who
fled their captivity. The end of private slavery after the Civil War
eliminated the need for slave patrols, but the newly formed Klan
occupied a similar role. Slave Patrols sought to catch and return Black
people who tried to escape enslavement, which itself served to maintain
that slave society. The Klan sought to maintain white supremacy in the
South (and across the country, in different forms) with terror and
murder. While the immediate aftermath of emancipation was a significant
increase in political power held by the Black community, Klan violence
prevented Black participation in electoral politics and helped to form
the emerging sharecropping replacement to chattel slavery. Even without
the Klan, lynching was frequent in the South as a means through which
the white community held power over their Black neighbors. White
controlled courts and sheriffs had no problem looking away.
Public Slavery, wherein prisoners of the state were forced to work
without a wage, grew during this time. The most infamous sites of this,
the former-plantation-current-prison Angola (located in Louisiana), is a
look into the past, where white guards watch over Black men working in
fields for cash crops. This practice is found throughout the country.
The rise of mass incarceration following the Civil Rights movements of
the 1940s-1960s has left the âUSâ with more than 2 million people
currently incarcerated. Black people make up 13% of the population, but
40% of the prison population, thanks to decades of heavy policing and
increasing poverty[1] in Black communities.
The relevance of these historic roles was revealed in the causes and
responses to the murder of George Floyd. George was a Black man who
allegedly gave a clerk a counterfeit $20 billâan act near exclusively
taken by the poor and working class. The color of his skin was an
invitation of the power of police to use violence. If there is ever a
truth about the police that rings true throughout history, it is that
All Cops Are Derek Chauvin. Just like his forebearers and just as
countless more police fascists will do in the years between now and the
end of policing, officer Chauvin took the life of a Black man. He did so
because he could, because so many before him had done similar things
without consequences. He did so as his fellow officers looked on, just
as so many fellow officers have done so in the past.
Enough was enough. Crowds gathered then and the next day and marched on
the precinct where the officers worked. They demanded many things.
Police fired upon them with tear gas. Though some left, those who
remained fought back. Bottles, rocks, bricks, whatever they could get
their hands on; projectiles of all sorts were lobbed at the police
wielding grenade launchers and pepper-ball launchers[2]. On the second
day, militants torched an AutoZone. On the third day, they torched the
Third Precinct. All the while, rebels looted stores and clashed with the
police around the city.
After the burning of the police precinct in Minneapolis, the âUSâ
exploded with protests. At one point, there was a George Floyd/Black
Lives Matter protest in every state and in every major city in the
country, with even more cities around the world marching in solidarity.
For months, from late spring into the summer of 2020, people marched in
the streets, demanding a variety of things. From demanding Derek Chauvin
be fired, arrested and put in prison, to âdefundingâ the police, to
altogether abolishing them. In a few short months, the Overton window of
what the world could look like in regard to policing shifted greatly.
What once seemed like a pie-in-the-sky dream was now being discussed
daily on CNN, MSNBC, and even FOX News. The demands were met wholly with
resistance from the ruling class and their cronies. Crowds of protesters
were tear-gassed indiscriminately, beat, and shot with so-called âless
lethalâ rifle rounds. Far Right militias roved the streets in attempts
to intimidate, injure, and many times kill protestors. The National
Guard began pulling up in unmarked vehicles and disappearing protestors.
President to-be Joe Biden offered his two-sense when he suggested that
cops âshoot [suspected criminals] in the legâ with live ammo. As the
summer went on, Democrats refrained, âWe see you, we hear youâ with the
next phrase being âRioting and violence is never justified.â
Though demonstrations around the country were called the days after
Floyd was killed, the burning of the precinct and arrival of the weekend
propagated this revolt for Black life to localities big and small. Towns
as small as Alamosa, Colorado, or Norfolk, Nebraska, held regular
demonstrations against police brutality and racism. Every major city was
a site of some sized demonstration, and many turned violent after police
officers rioted[3]. Firing into peaceful crowds after misdemeanors were
committed by members of those crowds, police reveled in the opportunity
to prove to the public that they, even while the embers of the Third
Precinct still smoked, were still In Charge. From batons and Flashbangs
to Tear Gas, pepper balls, and the remainder of their arsenal[4], police
departments unleashed all they could on unprepared crowds.
In Denver, the story played out just like this: the day following the
burning of the Precinct, crowds gathered at the capitol building in the
afternoon and marched towards the interstate. Weaving through the
downtown, traversing 16^(th) Street Mall and the labyrinth of one-way
roads, bicyclists blocked traffic for the hundreds gathered while the
police attempted to cordon off the march from any âhigh value targetsâ
(think court buildings, police stations, and major roads). Though the
initial path to the interstate was blocked and the crowd faced down the
handful of police officers standing in the crowdâs path, the marchers
crossed two pedestrian bridges and a park. A third pedestrian bridge
laid ahead, but a number of marchers instead vaulted hip-height barriers
and began to inch onto the highway. Cautiously, and with increasing
numbers of participants, both directions of interstate 76 were shut
down. Then the police arrived in force.
Patrol cars, sirens blaring, weaved through traffic and parked nearby
those most brave rebels who had traversed most of the highway while the
remaining hundreds watched. Cops existed their vehicles and began
arresting those they could catch. Their partners and riot clad officers
who had approached the site from which those rebels had entered the
highway from began to fire their modified paintball guns at the crowd on
the bridge above and nearby. The pepper balls they unleashed, which hit
like a paintball but release aerosolized capsaicin[5] upon impact. Some
officers fired foam rounds at protestors who they deemed a threat and
blinded a young person that day. The crowd dispersed and many returned
to the capital building by the time the sun had set. The population of
Denver was not ignorant to the demonstration, and many had cheered or
jeered the march as it worked its way to the cityâs transportation
arteries. On the return, a number of fights broke out between those who
had just been attacked by police and bootlicking supporters of police
violence. One Right-Winger even fired a firearm thrice above the
demonstrators as they returned to the capital that evening.
Those who returned to the capital and who did not leave for their homes
or vehicles found themselves facing off with riot police who arrived
later. Warning the crowd of an impending curfew, the crowd responded to
the police with insults and trash. With the final call to disperse, the
police equipped their gas masks and lobbed tear gas canisters into the
crowd. Night had fallen and the crowd split every which way. Police set
up a cordon around the capital and trucks with riot-gear clad officers
patrolled the downtown that night, firing pepper balls upon any who
dared loiter outdoors after curfew.
The following few days in Denver operated in similar ways: protestors
assemble at the capital, some local group leads a march through town for
a few hours (but never gets close to a police station), then police
officers riot and start firing upon crowds. News spread locally of this
violence, but crowds kept growing and kept fighting back. Barricades did
little more than slow a police force that seemed unstoppable, but they
were erected nonetheless. Bank windows were smashed, and buildings
tagged. Conservatives raged in their suburbs, and liberals were pushed
either against the protests or against the police.
Following days of revolt across the country, counter-insurgency tactics
developed from the colonial occupations of Vietnam, Iraq, and
Afghanistan were deployed. The two most significant were simple enough:
divide and co-opt. The dichotomy of the good protester versus the bad
one, which harkened back to those most acceptable of mass social
movementsâthose of Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhiâclaimed that a
passive nonviolence, where protesters ought to be content with being
attacked by police and should not fight back or damage property, is the
only acceptable form of civil action. Any behavior that did not comply
was counterproductive and can be forcefully prevented by those who cared
enough about the movement. The self-deputized who sought to control the
behavior of demonstrators and handed over to the police any rebels they
could were called âpeace policeâ. The enforcement of this dichotomy that
painted the righteously violent as an enemy to a movement for the end of
police brutality served well to drive revolutionaries from the streets
and from liberal demonstrations. Police had noticed, as had occupying
forces in the international frontiers of US empire, that the presence of
rebels within larger, more moderate social formations protected the
rebels from more precise retribution from the police and could push more
moderate members of those formations to more radical action. Further,
the inability of police (or any occupying force) to effectively target
rebels meant that punishment of rebels led to collateral damage; firing
upon rebels could just as likely harm a moderate who will turn against
the occupying force. Encouraging peace policing brought rebels out from
these larger social formations and made targeting them easier. It also
served to keep masses of people from radicalizing, as they had during
previous daysâ attempts to crush militancy in mass demonstrations.
Co-option of that remaining moderate element of the movement allowed
state forces of the state and the status quo to control the movement and
its demands through (at least the appearance of) concessions. Key
Democrat leaders and party operatives, as well as nonprofit leaders,
small business owners, and local megalomaniacs made symbolic gestures
towards the demands of the movement or attempted to plan and lead local
events. In so doing, they were able to indirectly or directly empower
key discourses around the status of police, elevating visions of reform
and paying lip service to the pain of Black people while delegitimizing
rebellious narratives around police abolition or violent insurrection.
In Denver, staff within the Mayorâs office served this role, leading
marches with the police chief (who had, for the past days, ordered the
brutal suppression of street action) and dispersing crowds well before
the sun set (where rebels had most effectively fought back against
police and the cover of darkness aided smaller bands of militants to
move around less seen). Alongside the Denver Police restraining
themselves and not firing upon crowds, this co-option effectively ended
the rebellion in Denver.
What was the result of so many days of violence? Many people lost eyes
and others suffered permanent injuries caused by impact munitions: some
had brain damage, others suffered from internal bleeding, some received
joint damage. The Denver Police Department lists 75 injuries inflicted
upon officers during the uprising. While all should be proud that more
than 50 of those were caused by protestors fighting back, the list also
includes self-inflicted injuries[6] and accidents. Compared to the
thousands of people who were attacked by and fought back against the
police, such a list pales in comparison. What of victories gained? The
Colorado State Legislature revoked many legal privileges police enjoy in
the court and now victims of police violence can sue officers for up to
$25,000 in damages after police misconduct. Compared to medical bills
after police violence or lost income from time spent incarcerated? This
is nothing.
The response to the murder of George Floyd reignited the Black
Liberation Movement nationwide and vastly widened its militancy. Though
variation emerged due to local histories of police violence and previous
organizing, streets across the country echoed with the demand: Abolish
the Police. Even the seemingly-less political âFuck The Policeâ was
demonstrated by the militancy with which average people fought with
riot-gear clad officers and with the vast numbers who looted. Most every
city had local Black people attempt to claim some sort of authority over
these demonstrations and steer them towards âpeacefulâ ends. These local
leaders deradicalized these demonstrations by emphasizing the importance
of peaceful demonstration, by removing or handing over rebellious
protestors to police, and by participating in publicity stunts with
police officers.[7] In the process, as radicals left demonstrations and
as liberal demonstrations gained legitimacy due to media intervention
and were less dangerous to attend, the average tenor of the Black
Liberation Movement became more liberal (with the demand shifting to
âdefund the policeâ or âreform the policeâ) but more stratified. Those
most radical would form their own demonstrations and clash with cops at
night while liberals marched with cops during the day. The clearest
example of this was in Portland, where anti-police demonstrations went
on nightly for more than one hundred days after George Floyd was
murdered. While liberal marches fizzled out quickly, radical
demonstrations were repeatedly crushed.
The demands of this movement, as varied as they are, have hardly been
met. Though some meager concessions have been made, things have largely
remained the same, and arguably are getting worse. At the epicenter is
Minneapolis PD. After the burning of the precinct Minneapolis
protestors, community members, and organizers moved to âdefundâ the
Minneapolis police department. When the city council of Minneapolis
voted to disband the police department as a whole and replace it with a
public safety team, many celebrated. But now, a year and a half later,
the department has remained mostly unchanged. Legal challenges to the
vote and resistance from within the city government have left the police
force intact. The City Council in Minneapolis did vote to move $1.1
million from police department to the health department, but a recent
ballot proposal to disband the police there did not pass. Nationwide,
liberal politicians, and even many radicals, distance themselves from
any support for defunding police (let alone abolition). Now, the Biden
administration and the Democratic blocs in Congress have increased
police spending, saying itâs for âmore trainingâ. Barring a few cities,
most sectors of the âUSâ state have increased police budgets. Police
spending remains one of the largest proportions of municipal and state
spending, especially in predominantly Black and Brown cities.
What of the dozen cities that did defund their police departments to
some degree? Most of these spending cuts were relatively small compared
to the overall size of their police budgets. Claims about subsequent
increases in crime rates, so often touted by blue-lives bootlickers,
fail in a number of consequential ways to justify increasing police
funding. Perhaps most importantly, data used in these arguments is
tainted by the pandemic. Claims by police advocates about large
increases in homicides or domestic violence in cities that defunded
police omit the nationwide increase in certain violent crime. Further,
it is the police themselves who collect data on crime rates. Police
unions are the strongest labor organizations in the country, and police
chiefs and many political leaders agree with these unions: fighting
budget cuts is vital to their careers and to the police as an
institution. Police often ignore or fail to investigate certain crimes,
so what is stopping them from inflating these numbers to prove a point?
Police officers on patrol, for example, instigate most of the crimes
they themselves must report through traffic stops, and harassment of
poor people, Black and Brown people, and sex workers. Finally, it is
important to note that the police do not even do the job they proport to
do (stop or solve crime) well. Most crime goes unsolved, even for more
heinous ones (murder, sexual assault, robbery). Long-term data suggests
that police funding does not influence crime rates, and it is not hard
to see why. As for those cities who did cut police funding, only the
passage of time will illuminate the impacts.
So, was last summer a failure? If so, what lessons can be taken from
said failure and how can the movement for Black Lives and those who
fight for a world without police move forward? It is disheartening to
see that after almost a year of tirelessly protesting through tears and
grief that the movement has so few victories to show for it. But there
are many lessons that can be taken from these âfailuresâ.
To abolish the police, it is vital to maintain a unity between the end
goals for radicals and the means through which those goals are achieved.
For anarchists, this notion is called prefiguration. The move of many,
after the murder of George Floyd, was to demand state policy to
alleviate the harms caused to Black and Brown communities by state
policy. The only reasonable way for the working class to end police
terror is through the creation of institutions that can mediate the
harms caused by human action so as to prevent any possible need for the
police. Delegitimizing the policeâs supposed role in capitalist
societyâby preventing and repairing harm through an alternative system
based in working communities that is capable of actually doing soâwill
reveal the true social role of the police: the heavy hand of the racist
and violent status quo. Backing away from a prefigurative path to the
end of police yields political gridlock and compromise that is, itself,
tantamount to murder. Every day that passes while the police still exist
is another day of unbearable pain and suffering for those whom the
police were built to suppress.
Alongside this must be efforts to directly confront the power of the
police, capital, and the state. Every strike and every stone thrown are
admirable. For this, it is important to recognize the bravery of all
those who have and will fight back against police in the war for human
emancipation. Radicals must protect their peers and communities from the
state and capital and should do this through prisoner support and mutual
aid alongside the torching of outlet malls and cop cars. Without past
radicals who have chosen to fight for themselves and others, the world
would be unrecognizable. Doing so together, with neighbors and loved
ones, can multiply the impact of every act of resistance tenfold.
What can be said about the George Floyd Insurrection? People around the
world reacted to Georgeâs murder with the ferocity of someone who knew
him personally, who loved him. Revolutionaries nearly did what has not
been done in the US for so long; the flames leaping from the Third
Precinct revealed an end to a deeply racist system, if only enough
people chose to take that path. Most USians at the time thought these
revolutionaries were justified, too. State violence and cynical
co-option quelled an insurrection that may have changed everything. The
path for liberation is a long one but starts with building the power of
working people to govern themselves. That path, seen so clearly in the
burning of the Third Precinct, is the path to a better world and it is
time to prepare to finish what was started that evening in May.
Though early on it was relegated to a similar status to many previous
infectious diseases as something that only happens âover thereâ in some
foreign land, COVID-19 came to dominate the lives of all living in the
so-called United States since lockdowns in the spring of 2020. Alongside
the billions of people around the world facing some degree of economic
and social dislocation, working-class residents of the âUSâ faced
mounting debt, income loss, eviction risk, and physical danger from a
viral illness that has killed hundreds of thousands within the borders
of the âUSâ and left millions disabled or permanently scarred. The
result of this death toll: significant increases in social isolation and
substance abuse, and vast infliction of the sort of psychic damage that
occurs during any sort slow mass-casualty event such as the one
simmering throughout the past year and a half. Why did so many suffer,
even just in the âUSâ, during this crisis? The answer is simple enough:
there are more many âAmericansâ than are needed for capitalism.
The State is that entity entrusted with great power in times of mass
social crisis, and all levels of the stateâfrom the city to the federal
levelâacted in relative harmony during the early days of the pandemic.
Though some localities, especially more Right-Wing ones, resisted
implementing lockdowns or instituting mask-mandates or public health
regulation of commerce, most issued policies that limited indoor
gatherings and recommended mask use. Further, the federal government
pushed wide-ranging fiscal stimulus that sought to keep the economy
humming along while many businesses shut their doors (at least
temporarily) and millions were left without a paycheck or with one
severely reduced in size.
That month of lockdown was a number of things, from surreal and
mind-numbing to hopeful and novel. So the story went: lockdown for a
month, and things will be back to normal. Huge sections of the
working-class people in the âUSâ, even in a healthy economy, struggle to
cover their cost of living, but the lockdowns intensified this. Millions
were unable to pay their rent, and more were forced to forego
essentials. Even as the lockdown lifted and the categories of labor
deemed essential to the normal functioning of capitalism expanded (and
thus as millions returned to work, to weather the onslaught of customers
who demanded prompt and friendly service and the ever-present risk of
viral infection), the economic and social crisis persisted. State relief
was often slow and was painfully insufficient; how far does $1400 in
stimulus go in a city where rent for a single bed apartment is $1350?
Any seemingly positive State action, like that of increased unemployment
benefits, appears to have unmentioned strings attached: far too many
people around the country are ordered to repay any amount of
unemployment aid they received, and many more found even the increased
amount to be unable to handle the increased costs of caring for children
and relatives or paying for medical, student, or credit card debt
accrued during the pandemic.
So, even as the economy started to whimper back into action, millions
continued to face an uncertain economic future, one that could contain
increased debt or eviction or even death. The remainder of 2020 after
the lockdown was this process of State policy makers seeking to further
reopen the economy by expanding the categories of economic activity
deemed âessentialâ, by loosening public health regulations that limited
indoor dining, bar use, and other key elements of the service economy,
and by limiting protections and benefits granted during the beginning of
the pandemic to working people. The momentary lapse in economic activity
was devastating for the capitalist class; it had eliminated the majority
of profit that was so essential to the reproduction of their class and
State aid to the working classâas meagre as it wasâhad succeeded in
decimating the coercive power of capital in enforcing labor discipline.
With State aid, it was more feasible for working people to steer clear
of or quit low-paying service work and other labor in high-risk sectors
of the economy that were key to the existing capitalist order. Eliminate
the aid, and workers must return.
The fall and winter of 2020 was characterized by accelerating rates of
COVID transmission, hospitalization, and death. The spring of 2021,
though, offered hope. Vaccines had been approved for public inoculation
and had shown promising effects: decreased transmission rates, lower
rates of hospitalization, mitigation of symptoms of âLong COVIDâ, and
far lower rates of death. Though slow at first, millions within the âUSâ
were vaccinated leading up to the summer. Optimistic forecasts said that
COVID may soon be a thing of the past, and some even predicted some
future date where everything would be ânormalâ. New variants, far more
transmissible than the original strain and seemingly more resistant to
existing vaccines, soon put an end to this hope. Mask mandates and other
public health precautions, relaxed or removed in previous months,
returned as Delta ripped through communities, paying little heed to the
vaccination status of individuals[8]. Children, sent back to school in
person after a year of mask-wearing or distance learning, are now a
hotbed for COVID transmission. Whole communities where social and
political pressure weigh against mask-wearing (let alone mask mandates)
and vaccination are sites of increased social tension as fascist forces
and movements turn from failed electoral campaigns and riots to
âprotecting childrenâ, arguing mask wearing and vaccination harm kids.
Alongside a defense of white-supremacist education that indoctrinates
generations, these fascists are willing to have those same generations
suffer from unknown long-term effects of COVID illness or even risk
death rather than cede control over their children (and the children of
others) or appear weak in an increasingly important realm of the culture
war. The early adoption by the fascist Right of campaigns to âsave the
childrenâ (with origins in the Q-Anon hivemind conspiracy) from alleged
sex-trafficking undertaken by the so-called âglobalistsâ[9] and the
subsequent violence committed by fascists in the pursuit of that goal
does not bode well for the possibilities of fascist campaigns to control
school boards and local education systems after the radicalization
experienced by the Right after the failed J6 riot, but it does point to
the consistency of the ideology of the Right-Wing: the existing social
order, which is racist and classist and patriarchal and transphobic and
homophobic, must be maintained and they must stay at the top.
For the working class, 2021 has offered both continuity and break. While
early in the pandemic much was said about the importance of âessential
workersâ, nothing more than lip-service was offered to working people
after the start of 2021. Especially after the vaccine rollout and a year
of living and working during COVID, labor militancy has reached unheard
of levels. Even with a more âworker friendlyâ ruler in the White House,
the end of economic support for working people and traditional
union-busting techniques seem somewhat capable of managing labor
discontent. What appears to the owning class as a âlabor shortageâ,
manifesting as the inability of capitalists to employ workers at the
same dismal wages as before the pandemic, seems more likely to be the
refusal by working people to continue to suffer in unsafe conditions for
poverty wages. This mass refusal has managed to raise wages in many
sectors, especially in service work, and time will tell by how much. The
increase in wages will not prevent the hundreds of thousands of
potential evictions in the coming months, as eviction moratoria lapse
and potentially more than a year of unpaid rent comes due. For the most
part, those evicted will be unable to rent again and will likely be
forced into a life of precarious housing or homelessness. Meagre
rentersâ protections put in place early on in the pandemic, meant to
prevent an acceleration of the existing public health crisis, fell out
of effect after protracted political conflict and liberal apathy.
Nothing remains between millions of working people across the country
and the uncertainty of a life without access to capitalist housing
markets. Only time will tell the magnitude of the crisis to come.
Altogether, COVID-19 has accelerated the sort of social breakdown and
impoverishment that capitalism requires. The only way the owning class
can maintain the profits they need to perpetuate themselves as a class
is with unemployment; the risk to the working class of a lost income and
all that entails (hunger, austerity, homelessness, forgone medical
treatment) is often enough to keep wages low and thus keep profits high.
High rents and costly medical treatment exacerbate this risk and
themselves serve to channel wage income from working people to the
pockets of parasites like landlords and insurance speculators. In the
face of a disease like COVID that lead to job loss and can lead to
permanent disability, these risks come further to the fore. Even the
measly crumbs offered by the state to the working class during the
pandemic were granted not out of a humanistic care for the suffering of
the masses but out of a concern that a prolonged fall in consumptive
behavior would destroy the economy. When the capitalist class signaled
that the deaths of hundreds of thousands of USians was preferable to a
more strict but costly lockdown, pandemic restrictions were lifted.
Fewer âAmericansâ, especially fewer Black and Brown working people,
means less spending on schools, pensions and other social services. To a
ruling class concerned with maintaining profits against increasing
wages, these people are dead weight. To a state tasked with replicating
capitalism first and foremost, the interests of the owning class must
become the law of the land. Now, as the Delta Variant spreads, no help
is on the horizon.
The only path out of the pandemic, and all the consequential social
crises that have followed, is together.[10] Mutual aid programs, most
formed early during the pandemic to share groceries and stimulus checks
as well as to run errands for the immunocompromised, have shown
themselves to be capable of developing into a form of social
organization capable of providing for the most vulnerable of us all,
especially poor and disabled neighbors (housed or unhoused). Working
together, members of the working class are fighting to alleviate the
most glaring harms rising out of this pandemic. From providing food to
the hungry and preventing evictions to transporting people to
vaccination clinics, this action by the working class has done
incalculable good.
Mutual aid can be a liberatory practice. Through democratically governed
organizations that operate on a principle of solidarityâthat is, an
understanding that all oppression is linked together and that there can
be no freedom for anyone from oppression without the freedom of all from
oppressionâinstead of a principle of charity. Acting in solidarity means
recognizing that care for others is as important as care for yourself
and it requires acting in a way that fights against hierarchical (that
is, top down) control over the distribution of goods and resources and
care. It means understanding that a landlord pricing your neighbor out
of their home may soon leave you on the street. It means recognizing the
health of any member of a community is determined by the health of the
community overall, which itself is composed of the health of its
constituents. Using resources to control others is not mutual aid, that
is charity. Charity has not brought us liberation yet, and never will.
Part of overcoming all oppressions is through changing the way that
people relate to one another. Oppression is relational and based in
differences in material power. By building mutual aid practices, working
people can start to build a better world in the ashes of this one.
While COVID-19 has done much to disorganize the lives of billions,
returning to normalcy means returning to poverty and social
domination[11]. COVID-19 is an opportunity, if anything, to reimagine
the world. To return to what once was normal is to choose death: death
from deprivation and climate inaction, a death ensured by the hubris and
greed of the owning class. The only acceptable path, that of Life,
requires a rejection of the old status quo. It means the end of Work,
the end of the government, and the end of social hierarchy. The path of
Life is built by the oppressed, together, fighting for a world where
their lives matter and where they, not rich assholes or slimy
politicians, build their future. The path of Life is called many
thingsâanarchy, socialism, communismâbut it is the only cure for the
social suffering highlighted by COVID-19. Against a violent system,
revolution is the answer.
The fact of the matter is, the âUSâ is essentially in the same place
under Joe âShoot them in the legâ Biden as it was under Donald Trumpâ
the pandemic still rages on while his administration is lying about the
severity of COVID cases and deaths, and he governs brutally too (Biden
has deported 1,283,415 people at the time of writing, more than Trump
did in 4 years). Biden bombed Syria in early July, killing 5 militia
members and one child, and drone bombings in Afghanistan have killed
more than that. Bidenâs domestic policy amounts to miniscule state
handouts (he was responsible for ending expanded unemployment insurance
that pulled millions out of poverty during the pandemic, and he gave out
less in cash than Trump) alongside massive investment in police and
intelligence agencies. Bidenâs governance has been like a funhouse
mirror image of Trumpâs, similar seeming in many ways, though the
original has been twisted and turned in noticeable ways. Nothing is
substantively different under Biden, except that all those who voted for
him, those who proudly marched with pink hats in 2017, can safely go
back to sleep now that the Orange Man is out of office.
Things might actually be measurably worse under Biden, not only for
immigrants and refugees, but for the Left as a whole. Under Trump, the
Left had an enemy to unify against, albeit one that empowered the far
Right of the country and egged on culture and race war rhetoric; he was
easy to be against because he was and is at the same time both grossly
stupid and plainly evil. Under Trump, liberals, democratic socialists,
communists, and anarchists were able to, in large part, be somewhat
united against Trump and his administration. Now that things are back to
normal, Liberals are back to blaming those on the Left just as much as
they blame the Right (though, who really wants to work with liberals
anyway?). The political logic liberals operate under, that of an
equivocation of fascists and antifascists as âextremistsâ who harm the
stability of the existing capitalist system, requires them to form
alliances with the Right to punch Left. Liberalism must be the only
possible route to âprogressâ, however shallow, and fighting the Left
makes this appear true. Blaming radicals for âbeing unrealisticâ is,
though, a tacit admission by Liberals; real substantive societal change
is a risk to the Liberal project, and most Liberals do just fine under a
Right-Wing government (though they tend to think Right-Wing leaders are
a bit ostentatious).
The phrase âvoting as harm reductionâ was floating around discussions of
who to vote for in the 2020 US election, as the phrase always does every
4 years. But if voting is harm reduction, how does one measure harm?
Consider voting from the perspective of an indigenous person. From the
zine by Indigenous Action, Voting is Not Harm Reduction: âIf voting is
the democratic participation in our own oppression, voting as harm
reduction is a politics that keeps us at the mercy of our oppressors.â
If one candidate is a lesser of two evils, for whom are they less evil?
In regard to the metric of deportations and denial of sanctuary of
Haitians, Trump was the lesser of two evils. By the metric of being less
outright crass and unpleasant, perhaps then Biden was the lesser, but
certainly not in regards of deportations. Biden has not had the time nor
the same circumstances as Trump with regards to sabre rattling
(considering the relative amount of time each has spent in office), but
is it reasonable to expect Biden to stand against worsening tensions
with nearby states like Venezuela and Cuba or far-away ones like China?
A Biden White House may be even more capable of meddling in the affairs
of the developing world, which should be frightening. Would Biden resist
fighting the seemingly eternal War on Terror (especially given the
murder he has already ordered in that conflict)? Biden and the
Democratic establishment are looking to expand the powers of the
surveillance state after the January 6^(th) riot, which will undoubtably
be turned against radicals and Black organizers (as has been after the
passage of the Patriot Act). These questions of how harm is calculated
and by what metric one candidate is âmore evilâ is what problematizes
the supposed simplicity of voting in the US.
But Biden wasnât the foregone conclusion. Many radicals put their hopes
and dreams into another candidate: Bernie Sanders. Many looked at
Medicare For All and saw it as at least marginally better than what we
have now. A future with reforms to the healthcare system, climate
action, racial justice, and student loan forgiveness. But was that
future really even possible? Or would have things been relatively
substantively the same under a Sanders candidacy as well? How would the
last year have been different? George Floyd would still be dead. The
COVID pandemic would still be ravaging the nation. Police would still
not be abolished, and Black rebels and their accomplices would have
still been told to stop rioting last summer, albeit with a thick
Brooklyn accent. It seems like a foregone conclusion that Sanders would
have trounced Trump at the ballot box (especially given opinion polling
information), but what would have happened after the polling locations
closed? A Sanders Presidency may have provided student debt relief and
maybe another stimulus check, but the rest would be relatively the same.
Sanders in the White House would likely result in the majority of
Democrats, alongside Republicans, refusing to work with the
administration. Bernie would not have been able to socialize medical
care, nor would he be able to tax the rich. He and his administration
would still deport migrants and would still order the murder of
innocents.[12]
All of that said not to be overly cynical or to suggest that an
apathetic, nihilistic approach to things. In a number of ways, a Sanders
Presidency would be markedly superior to either Biden or Trump. Radicals
must not, though, have any delusions about the capacity of electoral
politics to build a world worth living in. Electoral victory is limited
by the structure of the state in many important ways. The division of
power within governments prevents the exercise of power by elected
officials without overwhelming control over the state apparatus. As seen
wherever self-declared socialists have won political office, incomplete
control over the political institutions those positions reside within
result in compromise. These elected socialists must scale back rhetoric
and must lower their demands if they wish to ever win support for any of
their policies. The result? How many socialist politicians have voted to
expand funding for the police or the border control or the military? How
many have broken foundational campaign promises for the sake of
fundraising or playing nice or playing politics? The presidency is one
of the most limited of all these offices and highlights some of the
implicit constraints of any sort of socialist holding power in a
capitalist country. The president is responsible for management of the
military, manages international diplomacy, oversees the administrative
state, and has some power over legislation (among other powers). A
socialist president could refuse to utilize military force, but they
cannot unilaterally disband the military. They could ease tensions
internationally but can only do so as long as they hold office. Top
administrators can set priorities in their departments but much of the
labor in those departments is carried out by bureaucrats who can simply
refuse to pursue those goals vigorously. Any legislation pursued by a
socialist president would require approval from both houses of Congress
and would need to pass scrutiny by the Supreme Court. Even with the
explicit constraints on politicianâs pale in comparison with implicit
ones; without complete control over the state and its bureaucracies and
over capital, socialist politicians are bound by the function of the
state in capitalism to rule in the general interest of the capitalist
class. In the âUSâ, too, this role requires the maintenance of the
American Empire for the sake of business interests, domestically and
abroad. Imperialism is profitable, and this knowledge is a strong
determinant of state policy. Factions within the state have shown
themselves more than capable of intervening in political affairs (with
the clearest being sections of the security state leaking info about
Trump meeting with Russians to the media), and this would play out here.
The more radical the president, the more radical the pushback. There is
nothing special about the structure of the âUSâ state, and there have
been countless times around the when a socialist president has been
booted from power by some section of the military. What is stopping that
here? In order to learn from this past year, we must make an honest,
clear-eyed analysis of why things played out the way they did and what
we can do differently in the future to achieve our goals.
The lesson is clear: it is time to stop putting effort into electoral
campaigns for leaders who not only have, in reality, little concern for
the working, poor, and marginalized of this country, and whoâs power
either does not reach far enough to change the conditions in which many
live, or which power they so frequently choose not to exercise or to
exercise in opposition of the will of the people. Although it is
probable that Bernie is a person who genuinely cares about working class
issues and, as president, would earnestly strive to enact things like
Medicare for All, the fact is that he is only one man, with a host of
congressmen and women who all oppose him for different reasons and
likely would have been able to accomplish very little as president. The
very apparatus and infrastructure of the State is not one that has
social progression preconfigured into it, and that is apparent by the
bureaucracy, elitism, nepotism, corruption, and money laundering it
enables.
Many often posit that âYes, presidential electoralism is corrupt and
bad, but local elections are where you can really make a changeâ. While
local elections may have the potential to make change in oneâs
community, they often contain the same pitfalls as presidential
electoralism. Take, for example, the election for the City of Fort
Collins last spring of 2021. One of the ballot issues was âShould the
land that Hughes Stadium is on be turned into Hughes Open Space?â The
initiative passed 68.6% to 31.4% in favor of turning it into an open
spaceâa clear majority in favor. However, despite the will of 68.6% of
residents in Fort Collins, CSU, the current owner of the land, decided
to tell voters to go fuck themselves. âThe decision and authority rests
with the Board of Governors of the CSU System,â the university said. In
other words: âyou had your cute little election, but the decision has
always been ours.â In electoral change, and political change through
existing channels, the owning class has the power to decide whether or
not to abide by âdemocracyâ, despite the illusions many of these
elections may cast. If the rich do not like the rules, they can change
the rules. If they cannot change the rules immediately, they will buy
elections until they can.
Voting is an easy solution: go to the ballot box, fill in the bubble and
then stop. It takes minutes, not including prior research of candidates.
People are told that voting is the means through which real change
happens in the âUSâ, that electing representatives is the best possible
way to make big decisions. Radicals can easily fall into this same trap.
The action needed to save ourselves from the clutches of capitalism is
going to take much more time and militant commitment than what modern US
electoralism offers. The BLM uprisings of 2020 and 2014 have shown that
you cannot just abolish the police by popular vote. You cannot vote away
pandemics. It ought to be clear by now that nobody is coming to help the
working class but the working class themselves. No longer can you put
all hope into elected officials, no matter how genuine their hearts; the
position they occupy and the system in which they function is not meant
for liberation. The highest priority of the revolutionary sections of
the class must be building dual power in working communities to help
each other. Radicals must fight for liberation through direct action,
and solidarity, and by building non-hierarchical institutions like those
in the world they wish to build. It is clear: the ruling class has
convinced the working class that the only power workers can utilize to
affect political change is through the ballot box, but this is a lie.
Every single day, the working class builds and reproduces the world and
the system that dominates the lives of everyone. Wage labor and profit
keep the whole system running, to one extent or another. Workers daily
make the world, and they have the power to unmake the world, too. By
fighting to create institutions and entities that challenge the
hegemonic capitalist system, and not by settling and playing by the
rules of the political game as it exists, oppressed people around the
globe can struggle towards a better world.
After all, as Lucy Parsons said, âIf voting changed anything, theyâd
make it illegalâ.
Little has changed over our absence. Police violence, as typified in the
murder of George Floyd, continues, and the racialized domination central
to the foundation of the âUSâ remains. COVID-19 is as deadly as ever,
with no end in sight. The authoritarianism of Trump has been followed by
the authoritarianism of Biden.
Small differences in circumstances around the edges of these issues
exist, without a doubt. Many cities are experimenting with social
systems less reliant upon the police. COVID vaccines greatly reduce
death and injury rates for those who catch it and can slow the spread of
the disease overall. Social programs under Biden have reduced the
financial cost of being a parent, too. Regressions in all these fronts
exist, too. Most cities increased police funding after George Floyd was
murdered. Politicized vaccine hesitancy and the removal of mask mandates
have made COVID increasingly pervasive, and an eviction wave of millions
of working-class people looms over the horizon. Biden and Democrats, in
both wings of that party, denounce any efforts to combat police
violence.
New threats are emerging too. The deadliest of these will likely be the
increased radicalization of the Right Wing and increasing calls for
succession and civil war. Though this movement is small compared to the
population, the police and military, as well as small business tyrants
and anxious white suburban men form the core of a movement that views
the present control of the state as illegitimate and considers violence
as acceptable means to cleanse a country they view as degenerated by
liberation movements. These reactionaries possess greater material
wealth and knowledge of firearms use, and the variety of social
locations they inhabit makes them both incredibly common in some spheres
(especially those granted increased rights to kill and maim) while their
numbers make the diffusion of those in other spheres as an ever-present
threat, especially when considering stochastic violence[13]. Prevention
and mitigation of this violence takes a number of forms, but all
effective methods fall under a broader category of building
revolutionary potential called Dual Power. In the next issue, we will
outline how to build Dual Power. We hope to see you there. After all, we
have nothing to lose in this fight, except our chains. And if we win?
We Want Everything.
[1] Which forms a vicious cycle due to discrimination against the
formerly incarcerated and the financial costs incurred in legal fees,
jail time and lost income.
[2] Pepper Balls are small plastic shells filled with aerosolized
capsaicin, fired from paintball guns. Upon impact, pepper balls rupture
and spray the capsaicin around, irritating eyes, lungs, and mucus
membranes.
[3] Police violence after the burning of the Precinct (or after any
circumstance where their power is threatened) is a clear example of the
sort of orgy of violence associated with rioting.
[4] So well-stocked after two decades of counter-terror grants to local
departments.
[5] The same active ingredient in peppers, pepper spray, and common
types of tear gas.
[6] Though it is safe to argue police caused most of these injuries by
their own action.
[7] The most infamous form these stunts took was the all-too-common
âpolice officers take a knee with protestorsâ, with white high-level
Democrats posing for a photo while doing the same.
[8] Current data suggest COVID vaccines prevent transmission of the
delta variant to vaccinated people half the time, holding other
precautions constant.
[9] âGlobalistsâ is a common antisemitic dog-whistle (a word or phrase
that sounds innocent or that most people cannot hear, but those who are
aware of notice), often used by Alex Jones and other nationalists.
[10] Do not forget that the most vociferous advocates for personal
freedom are also the least likely to get vaccinated or wear masks, both
of which are strong tools to prevent transmission of COVID and to lesson
harm done to oneself upon contracting COVID.
[11] The inability of COVID vaccines to be issued throughout the world
due to profitability concerns and the heavy hand of intellectual
property rights points to COVID never really going away.
[12] All of these caveats would hold, too, for a Sanders Presidency
starting in 2016, though with less existential fear driving policy.
[13] Stochastic violence refers to violence undertaken, typically by the
right wing, in a seemingly random pattern. This violence is increased in
probability of occurring by ideological encouragement. The right-wing
stochastic terrorist is typically motivated by anxiety over social
position and seeks to use violence to âtake backâ or âcleanseâ social
space they think belongs to them. Stochastic terror that is not
explicitly right wing often is justified along similar lines (control
over people or places that belong to the shooter in some way). Ex of
right-wing stochastic terror: Christchurch Massacre, El-Paso Walmart
Shooting, Mother Emanuel AME Church massacre, Oklahoma City Bombing.