ferguson….

ferguson fighting fear with fire:

a compilation …

(2014 – 15)

For updates scroll down the chronologycropped-delinquent-book-title-e1355336242477-300x285

“Wherever you find injustice, the proper form of politeness is attack.”

T-Bone Slim

“Black Lives Matter” disruption, 26th July 2015

ferg if we burn“IF WE BURN YOU BURN WITH US”
(“Hunger Games” slogan, written on gateway to posh St.Louis neighbourhood on 23rd November 2014, the night before the Grand Jury verdict)
(further ferguson graffiti here)
 
 

“The experiences and information are outright overwhelming. I’m unable to synthesize all of it or really understand the gravity of what I’m living through. And I think this is true of everyone I know. It doesn’t paralyze us at all. We are just in this swirling cauldron and we have little idea of what it looks like from the outside.”

(written November 28th)

First published: 11/9/14 – but updated all the time to include the latest information (chronology begins in August – so scroll down for latest information) 

Much of what appears here has appeared already on my News of Opposition page, even though some of the reflections have been added to or modified. However, it also has some other stuff: most notably a discussion between Z of St.Louis and Y of South Africa. Plus something on the mini-riot on July 14th, 2013 in St.Louis after the release of George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin’s killer. Plus various links to interesting texts about  Ferguson, though I should add, maybe obviously, that I don’t always agree with them in their entirety. The bits I’ve written here on this page are, like in this paragraph,  in this non-italic font.

I shall add in the comments boxes at the bottom any additional things that occur to me or any comments people might like to send in (assuming they’re not absolutely dogmatic). Though some slight modifications might be made to the text itself (e.g. correcting factual errors)

ferg bakunin quote

For a list of killings by cops in the US, click here. And you can click here to follow the streaming of events in or about  Ferguson  (includes lots of mainstream crap, though certainly not just that), this is my  chronology of events, and comments, constantly updated where relevant:

9/8/14:

Cop murders Mike Brown; cops leave body lying there for several hours, then desecrate makeshift memorial to himindependent witnesses confirm that Brown was surrendering when shot …peaceful demonstration, with crowds shouting “Hands up, don’t shoot” and “We are Michael Brown”

10/8/14:

Looting begins on second day (some occasionally intelligent, but mostly idiotic, comments on this thread here“TV footage showed streams of people walking out of a liquor store carrying bottles of alcohol, and in some cases protesters were standing atop police cars or taunting officers who stood stoic, often in riot gear. Other witnesses reported seeing people vandalize police cars and kick in windows. Television footage showed windows busted out of a TV station van.” (more here and here) Lots of videos hereanarchist eyewitness account here (“Ferguson  reportback”) Philadelphia: cop substation tagged

Another St Louis eyewitness account (only on this site, so far):

Thousands of people. Police lines a mile apart. For hours, they left us alone. After an initial confrontation with one line of cops (rocks, bottles) and 5 or 6 trapped cop cars running a gauntlet of angry kids, the gas station that reportedly called the cops on a boy for shoplifting was the first to go. What started as  a mob rush on the store gave way to a slow-motion unreal atmosphere as word spread and people drove or walked up and helped themselves. Down the street, a liquor store, then a beauty supply store, etc. etc.  Probably a dozen or so stores just in that stretch. Atmosphere was cordial. Smell of weed, people drinking in the street, smiling, cars cruising the stretch, playing loud music… but there was an edge, people were angry after all. Someone fired a gun into the air right next to me.

A white friend got hounded a few times by a group of black youth (but that sort of thing was the exception). By the time we left, the gas station was totally engulfed in flames. Others left the stretch and looted strip mall stores north of the police lines. Auto parts stores, Walmart, shoe stores, cell phone stores, a thrift shop.

The young people who “have no direction, no leadership” easily stole the night from the old guard of black nationalist leftists, ministers, and sympathetic politicians who appealed for calm earlier in the day at a protest at the police station. Also at that daytime protest, a younger faction of the New Black Panther Party members sang bizarre theatrical group songs and chanted “Black Power” and oftentimes rambled nonsensically about that devil rap music, the Moors, etc. It found little traction with others there. A black minister was shouted down as was the black leader of the County government at that daytime rally. The tension between the young and the old was clear at that point, and once it kicked off that night, there was no hope in recuperating it for any of those groups.

Along with the youth’s disconnection from (and disinterest in) the political world (including that of the tired 60s black nationalists), another interesting dynamic was that this was not an urban riot. It was a suburban riot. North County, where this took place, has seen waves of black folks migrate from the City over the past 20-25 years. Most of the North St. Louis suburbs (homes orginally built for 1950s white Americana) are majority black these days – and though there is a healthy dose of a Black middle class, most are poor, working class. So there’s no street grids, there’s strip malls and subdivisions. Subdivisions that over the last few days have been risky for police to cut through. So though the major four-lane strip mall-heavy streets seem impossible for people to control (Sunday night being the exception because of the sheer number of people – & the threat of gunfire aimed at the police), they are perfect for the style of smash-and-grab looting that occured outside the zone of rioting. Roll your cars up to the stores, smash windows, load the cars, get  off the major arteries, and disappear into the subdivisions. Hell, a group of kids cut through a subdivision on foot, crossed railroad tracks and looted a shoe store in a strip mall where the police were staging their operations! I used to think the poor getting pushed to the suburbs, decreases density and decreases the chance of any social, collective resistance. I’m glad I was wrong.

Keeping my fingers crossed for it spreading… The initial night, people in the middle of the melee were already thinking about how all the police were here containing us and how other stores were wide open. Then stores 2 or 3 miles away got hit farther north in the suburbs. Last night 10-20 cars took part in a smash-and-grab in the city on the south side. And in the afternoon, a mob of kids seemingly tried to steal from an electronics store and a shoe store in an indoor mall in the wealthier suburbs to the west. It’s hard to tell how big this is when I’m in it. It feels big though, and hopefully other cities will see this is their chance too.

And finally, nobody with a loud mouth is on the side of what happened Sunday night, though to thousands who were there, it made perfect sense. The radio is hideous, the TV, preachers, the politicians, the internet… nobody is saying anything interesting or remotely thoughtful. It just doesn’t compute. I’ll be surprised if any of these youth are duped by a “leader” in the near future ”

qtQuite Theoretical

The focus on the precise minutae of what happened or didn’t happen – whether Mike Brown reached for the cop’s gun, how many witnesses saw it  or whatever –  helps detract from the obvious:  cops are there to protect and serve this system and the capitalist mass murderers (black or white) who profit from it. Which is why all that idiocy about getting some police accountability (e.g. the Anonymous video about the situation in Ferguson) is just so much reformist shit aimed to get people to yet again believe that they could control the cops through some bourgeois democratic crap. The abolition of the cops as a specialised form of social control involves abolishing the stupid society which needs these filth. To the question “who polices the police?” the answer should be – “the mass community of proletarians abolishing their enslaved situation” – ie no specialists-in-order.

Having said that, however, there are immediate things that anyone with some semblance of humanity should support – like looting QT and burning it probably had the support of most rebellious young people in St Louis, but other shops being looted were met with a lot of moralistic finger-wagging which merely shows how colonised people are with the ideology of exchange value that is inculcated in people as soon as they begin to watch TV. Looting implies mass communal direct power, unmediated by buying & selling: it is the necessary ‘chaos’ through which we must pass in order to organise the distribution of things on a rational and playful human basis. Theft, particularly mass theft, gives you the chance to re-invent the use of a thing beyond the resigned individuals’ normal submission to the insult of its market value the use to which the Economy demands the individual sacrifice himself to, for which degrading irrationality all the Property Laws are the tedious justification. As for the shop-keepers – if they identify with their present means of survival, they always always side with the perpetuators of their misery in the end, regardless of their colour – and black and white youth are beginning to recognise it. It’s not too difficult to see that behind the shopkeepers’ “May I be of any assistance sir?”, behind the “Thank you” and “Please” and the obligatory smile, lurk petty-minded shrivelled little tyrants, who think they’re free because they’re ‘their own boss’, content with their island of illusory dictatorship, where power is reduced to short-changing. However, historically, the non-employing petit-bourgeoisie has not always been on the side of the ruling class by any means (those who are bosses almost invariably are, however much they complain about the rulers). And times change – more and more people are forced into petit-bourgeois work by the system. But at the same time, it’s inevitable that they became a target for the poor – they always have been and always will until the abolition of poverty and of shops.

qt ferguson

supermarkets of the future

The rumour on the internet is that it was QT that called the cops on Mike Brown for shoplifting – don’t yet know how true that is; and whilst the video apparently showing him nicking cigars has circulated  everywhere curtesy of the cops, this apparently shows he paid:

Of course, whether he paid or not is irrelevant really, except insofar as it possibly shows how much the cop lie machine will go to justify themselves. From those who protect and serve the looters of the planet (and are almost invariably on the take themselves), killing someone for stealing a cigar or two merely indicates their priorities.

11/8/14:

A personal account of what happened written by anti-statists (“an eye for an eye makes our masters blind”)more clashes – rocks thrown at cops, tear gas and rubber bullets fired at crowdsvideo of young black guy supporting looting whilst QT smoulders in background

Another eyewitness account:

“ been busy… shopping and such…. good deals these days here in st. louis. Was out late last night. Lots of roads blocked off by police. Ended up in neighborhood trying to get to ground zero (burned out gas station) where crowds were gathered all day. Police cleared it out, before we got there, with tear gas, and rubber and wooden bullets. They pushed a bigger crowd south and a smaller one to the north and into the surrounding neighborhoods. We ended up on the north end – a line of riot cops occasionally firing pepperballs at people who got too close, people watching from their yards and in cars and on the street and sidewalk. a small crowd. The cop on the loudspeaker was responding to what people were saying in a conversational tone. “Go home,” someone yelled. They responded, “It’s simple. Everyone go home and then we’ll go home.” Someone reported someone asked “Can we go home?” They responded, “Maybe you shouldn’t have acted a fool” Later, some in the crowd threw rocks and bottles. Then the SWAT vehicle zoomed up and shot pepper balls right at us. We scattered into the neighborhood side street and eventually everyone trickled home.”

FergusonCops2.jpg.CROP.promovar-mediumlarge

The free world in Ferguson 

swat st louis

Another eyewitness account

Sadly, riots do NOT spread from Ferguson to LA after this  new cop murder there.  More about this LA murder here

 cops restrict air flight zone over Ferguson to keep media out (added 3/11/14)

13/8/14:

More tear gas and arrestsleft-liberal video constrasting  cop attitudes with Nevada stand-off in April (also shows other stuff – eg massive amounts of tear gas)“Unmediated Solidarity; Just Do It! Uncovering and Disrupting Police Disinfo in Ferguson and Other Flashpoints”: critical look at how cops spread disinformation about Ferguson riots

st l cop sniper 13 8 14

St Louis – cop sniper trying to decide which pretext he’ll use after he’s decided which teenage black guy to shoot

14/8/14:

1st day of school in Ferguson district suspended till Monday in response to cop killing of Mike Brown, as top cop declares his fear of anarchists “Police Chief Thomas Jackson… said his fear is not of the understandably angry residents, but “the anarchists that are coming in, the people that don’t want healing, the people that just want to continue to fight.”

missouri-master1050

Democracy in action: protectors of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness defend their mine-resistant truck in Ferguson 

Soft cop policing descends on Ferguson “Captain Ron Johnson …..refused to rule out using the military-style equipment that drew sharp criticism from the state’s senior senator, Claire McCaskill, and a plea for calm from Barack Obama, who said there was “no excuse” for excessive force by police. However he signalled his intent was to rid Ferguson’s streets of the teargas, rubber bullets and pepperballs that have been shot at dozens of demonstrators this week. “Before I came here today, I had all my troopers take their teargas masks off their belts,” he told reporters. As evening began several of the few police officers who were present were chatting with demonstrators and residents – an unthinkable sight over the past four nights.”

ferguson soft cops

black and white unite and flight (from confronting the contradictions)

St.Louis anarchists speak of the revolt (radio broadcast)

North Carolina: 3 police cruisers smashed in solidarity with Feguson rioters etc.

“Ferguson Riots Move the US One Step Closer to Insurrection”

“Staying safe in the streets”

“Hey – step back with the riot shaming” Destroying ‘your own neighborhood’ won’t help.” I’m not sure how people who make this argument imagine ‘owning’ a neighborhood works, but I’ll try to break it down: we don’t own neighborhoods. Black businesses exist, it’s true. But the emancipation of impoverished communities is not measured in corner-store revenue. It’s not measured in minimum-wage jobs. And no, it’s especially not measured in how many black people are allowed to become police officers….insinuating that simply because all the white people left certain neighborhoods following desegregation doesn’t mean they are suddenly ‘ours’. This kind of de facto ‘self-determination’ is so short-sighted it makes me wonder how we can even talk about gentrification and segregation usefully if we think black people somehow ‘have all these neighborhoods’. We don’t have ghettos. Ghettos have us. Prisons have us. Sports teams own us. Record labels own us. We don’t have shit…..Police apologists: if you still think a few looted shops ‘distract from the message’, wait until you see the guillotines.”

15/8/14:

“Calm descends” on  Ferguson as Good Cop replaces Bad Cop and tries to disarm the movement’s moment  

The demonstration this weekend in LA because of another cop murder seems to have been the usual impotent display of useless moralising.

st l only good cop

Ferguson graffiti: Good Cop replaces Bad Cop….?

The following eyewitness report was more a reflection on this one day, a reflection which proved to be overly-pessimistic:

“Haven’t been up there as much lately, but it seems like a chapter is over. The days of tame, but boisterous protests, followed by the nights of violence is over. The looting couldn’t sustain itself past Monday night. And it failed to really geographically spread (some orchestrated daytime marches downtown and in the suburb with all the government offices and also heard recently of 3 more smash-and-grabs that took place on Monday night in places outside of North County).And slowly the mish-mash of “community leaders” have developed, not really a following, but a confidence and cleverness to stifle crowd criticism, organize pressure valves to release anger buildups, and put forth demands that actually echo some of whats being said on the street. Of course you could see it coming, but it’s still heartbreaking. Everything they say to the crowds now closely mirrors what the media and authorities say. But they can get away with it, because outwards they say firey words (though completely hollow). The loud ones have also engaged in a strategy of racializing the situation to the farthest extent possible (“This is *all* about race.”) to “unify” the black community for their own ends. They refuse to acknowledge how *willingly* fragmented that “community” is. Over the course of the week, thousands chose to shout them down and loot, vandalize, and fight the police when they told them not to. They have no place to put the “white” rioters in all this either, so they downplay it or demonize them. Authorities got real smart. Pulled the police out. Put black public figures in charge. Put “new” police in charge. Obama says blah blah blah. They release the name of the cop. The top cops mingle in the crowd. Other police departments come out against the old one that was in charge. The contradictions are deafening, but the “community” leaders are doing their best to skirt them. I didn’t make it out last night, but those who did, described it as a block party. There was nowhere to direct anger at last night. No police. And most of the businesses in the area were already pillaged. Only thing to do was occupy public space- the burned out gas station. A well-travelled LA Times reporter on the scene described it as a “Suburban Tahrir.” It’s become a tourist destination, with people visiting it just to take selfies in front of it. The future is uncertain. Anger and the experience of our collective power are still fresh.”

This, by Loren Goldner,  about race in the States seems pertinent: “In the 1670’s, in Massachusetts and  Virginia, two fundamental components of American ideology were set down. The Puritans, in the wake of the 1636 Pequot War and the 1676 King Philip’s War, worked out the theological justification of wars of extermination in terms largely borrowed from the Old Testament,  transpositions of the old Iranian dualism of good vs. evil, projected onto the dark-skinned enemies of the “mission into the wilderness”. In Virginia,  after the black slaves and white indentured servants rose up together in 1676 in Bacon’s Rebellion, the planter class began to create an ideology and practice favoring the poor white at the expense of the black, in order to better chain the poor white to the status quo. The fusion of these two creations of the 1670’s, produced a complex that has run through 300 years of American history, in which questions of class, race and imperial expansion have all been inseparable. The key to this ideology is the appearance of a class condition as a racial condition. The working out of this complex has been one in which, from the beginning, questions of race and empire have cast their shadow over all attempts at working-class politics…..The white working man thus stepped onto the American political stage in alliance with both genocidal expansionism against the Indians and     accomodation with Southern slavery. This complex was repeated on a more international scale with the New Deal of F.D.R., and his alliance with the Dixiecrats. The status of the black at the bottom of the social scale gave the poor white, and later the working white,  a hallmark of the social floor,  above which he stood one small step. It created,  along with  other factors in the American liberal ideology,  a duality in the white worker between his status as (white) “citizen” and his status as a proletarian… This peculiarity sets up a “dialectic” between foreign expansion and domestic racism, because the theological foundations of the ideology justifying expansion are a form of social bonding.” – from here

But it has taken a black president to attempt to hide the racist foundation of the American state (and its expansionism) and the American identity (Obama said during the Ferguson riots “Let us remember – we are all Americans”) to try to hide the essential class contradictions hidden by the social function of the issue of race. Along with local black  leaders which include the decomposed attempts to reconstitute the Black Panther Party,   How these contradictions are played out in the separations of daily life need to be elaborated and understood as part of the practical process of overcoming them – a focus which I, partly because I don’t live in the States,  am not up to, but hopefully some of those reading this are.

For some interesting analysis of some aspects of US black history from the late 60s to the early 90s, check out this.

“Let Us Not Become Police, Let Us Not Become Sheep”

Anti-cop- banners in Tucson in solidarity with Ferguson rioters

ferguson graffiti1graffiti, Phoenix, Arizona…

….resistance to the colonisation of our point of view and of our daily lives by external authority, by the authority of some Collectivity, means resistance has to spread everywhere, along with solidarity with such resistance

16/8/14:

Another Ferguson (mini-) riot ”…police in heavy gear and armored vehicles confronted more than 100 protesters near the place where Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black man, had been shot dead by police. While peaceful demonstrators tried to dissuade them, even attempting to block shop fronts with their bodies, small groups of looters smashed windows and rushed into several stores, grabbing merchandise. Police in riot gear shouted on bullhorns, ordering them to disperse…At least three Molotov cocktails were lobbed”state of emergency and curfew imposed on Ferguson

 ”…peaceful demonstrators tried to dissuade them, even attempting to block shop fronts with their bodies”

The desire for a nice moral image of respectable “opposition” unites with a near-total incomprehension of any critique of commodity relations to produce the impotent Good Citizen. The Reified Good Citizen always tries to dissuade any anger other than a verbal show. The Good Citizens always attempt to block, with their bodies and minds, any attack on  the commodity form that makes them and us miserable, and which mentality  is essential to the entrenched reification of which cop murders are part of. Anger has to be channelled respectably because the Good Citizen fears losing the image of respectablity. As for those proletarian Good Citizens who don’t play any paid social role  in any respectable official capacity – they fear their own anger  against a dead-end deadened life, and crave the acceptability of normality. They suppress their doubts and choose to believe the lies of this world because belief in lies is somehow reassuring. Such belief sustains the sleep of reason, and sleep – shutting off your doubts – suppresses the anxiety. The truth hurts. And though the lies will kill you, acceptance of them dulls the pain: the pain of realising you’ve got a world to fight to discover the  feeling of being  alive and awake and not sleep-walking through this vale of tears.

Everything they say …now closely mirrors what the media and 
authorities say …
outwards they say firey words (though completely hollow).”

Ferguson crowd control equipment

New York Time bemoans lack of leadership “One protester…said, “Do we have a leader? No.”  Pointing to the spot where Mr. Brown was killed, he said, “You want to know who our leader is? Mike Brown.”… Many African-American civic leaders in St. Louis said they were frustrated by their inability to guide the protesters. At an emotional meeting at a church on Thursday, clergy members despaired over the seemingly uncontrollable nature of the protest movement and the flare-ups of violence that older people in the group abhorred.”

ferguson graffitit spain

unlead

Historical reflection by CLR James on the “leadership question”

17/8/14:

Saturday night – 200 blacks and whites  brave tear gas as midnight to 5 a.m. curfew is defied (more here) “ Activists from the Black Panthers, Nation of Islam and Christian groups urged people to go home by 11.30pm.”… more here Earlier that day the civil rights campaigner Jesse Jackson fell foul of the generational gulf when he asked a Ferguson audience to donate generously to a church, prompting scorn. “We were, ‘What? People here are poor. And angry……it seems he may be doing it for camera time.” …

A guy on the streets was accidentally shot and almost killed, losing a kidney and his spleen. A bullet also grazed his heart on entry and as it was being forced out through the same path somehow made it’s way inside the heart, though somehow not piercing it (despite being almost certain it wasn’t the cops who’d shot him, his first words on waking up from his medically-induced coma – written, because he had tubes inside almost every orifice – were “Fuck the police”). Shot by an idiot desperate for armed struggle now who had no idea how to make such a potential armed struggle part of the struggle against this indifferent carelessness that pervades reified social relations everywhere. The streets cleared pretty quickly, bullets ricocheting everywhere. How pleased the cops must be that this moron was doing their dirty work for them,  that if someone breaking curfew had got killed, they wouldn’t have had to face the blame. And how pleased they must be that the moron hadn’t done any target practice since  the age of 4, when  he threw a stone at the neighbour’s car and hit the cat instead.  Another guy who knew the guy who’d been shot, hurled abuse for about 20 minutes at the top cop, rightly blamed him for what happened to his friend (though, hopefully, keeping in mind not to let the moron off the hook)  told him he wanted the top cop’s kidney and that he would pay if his friend died. There was a small crowd following the top cop around for a while. Some people were interested in shaking his hand, others just in getting him to leave/intimidating him. The fact that people were able to yell all kinds of abuse at the officer in charge of the police operation without any immediate negative consequences speaks to the power of the moment. Acting like that at a normal protest would certainly have different results. When there’s such raw anger that it’s obvious that people don’t care much about getting arrested or not is when they get scared and feel the need to back off, at least when it’s just verbal abuse or stuff which doesn’t too physically threaten their power.

See this cop blog for an idea of how cops try to convince themselves of the reasonable nature of everything they do to protect and serve the forces of unreason.

ferguson washingtonUnfortunately it’s all too easy to believe that it’ll take a lot more than mere protest to change the shit definitively. All failed social movements get recuperated in the form of apparent change (e.g. a black president) whilst the reality of the hierarchy and divide and rule of the social organisation of each against all intensifies. Unfortunately it’s all too easy to believe that the vast majority don’t want to believe that contributing to an anti-hierarchical, anti-commodity revolution is the only way to overcome belief in illusions and to make progress.against this shit world. Without that fundamental recognition history will endlessly repeat itself as tragedy upon tragedy compounded by incomprehension.

Sunday night – smoke cannisters fired at about 400 demonstrators ”Police drove into the protest area in armored vehicles and shot smoke canisters at watching media representatives during a protest that had until then appeared to be peaceful”..whilst in L.A. – nothing so far

18/8/14:

$4.3 billion worth of equipment transferred from Pentagon to US cops  ….molotovs thrown at copsGovernor calls in the National Guard (after having said he wouldn’t)…more here  “This is a revo-fucking-lution,” said DeAndre Smith, a 30-year-old barber. “Plain and simple, this is the revolution. The one everybody was waiting on. It happened like this. It’s the gain in culture by a people who want respect. African American people in this country.“I been out here since day one. I was on the frontline. Mike Brown was the straw that broke the camel’s back. That’s when we said this is enough. That’s it.” …Ferguson schools still closedAmerican football players in gesture of  solidarity with Ferguson

A cop-defined protest zone is being put into effect to give the appearance of the right to demonstrate as long as it’s utterly passive and  contained and surrounded by the National Guard with their millions of dollars worth of equipment. The burnt-out QT supermarket, previously an area where people gathered spontaneously, has been surrounded by cops and declared out-of-bounds…

national guardThe National Guard going off to Ferguson

19/8/14:

State forces order everybody but the media to leave…then make arrests…no classes today – no class society tomorrow “The Ferguson-Florissant School District announced Monday night that schools would stay closed for the rest of the week….Originally, the school year had been scheduled to start on Aug. 14. That was delayed to Monday, then delayed again. In its announcement, the district said it made the decision with input from local law enforcement and the district’s security staff.”cops come under fire, molotovs thrown ….soft cop recommendations from the guy who was top cop during the Battle of Seattleno more official midnight curfew, now just an unofficial 10p.m. curfewlying manipulative cop-loving prosecutor still in place to apparently prosecute the cop who killed Mike Brown

ferguson flare up

 Order reigns in Ferguson

If nothing else, it’s kind of funny to see the panic that’s being shown amongst the policy makers for the situation. First they militarise, then when that seems to exacerbate things, they try the soft cop approach, then when that doesn’t seem to work, they impose a curfew. Then when that seems to exacerbate things, they withdraw the midnight curfew. Then they impose an unofficial curfew at an earlier time. They say they won’t bring in the national guard, then next moment they do. They say they won’t use tear gas then the next moment they do. They say peacful demonstrations are ok, then tell everybody to get off the streets. They tell people to go home, then arrest people trying to go home. Meanwhile, Obama keeps his distance, playing non-commital verbal games with bland assurance. Which merely shows he’s watching which way the wind is blowing,  fearing that things might flare up outside of Ferguson, but hoping that people will just get tired.

Which could well happen –  repeating the same strategy rather than trying to atack using different tactics (e.g. outside of Ferguson, or not just street demonstrations, but occupations or going to workplaces or…?)  does get exhausting and even demoralising.

“What They Mean when They Say Peace”

20/8/14:

More clashes (video)…more hereno justice, no sleep50 arrested

Ferguson 20 augAll Quiet On The Ferguson Front

peace. calm, peace. calm, peace. calm, peace. calm………

Changing the filth’s image

As for those who say cops should taser people rather than shoot them, check out this

white outsiderswhite outsiders

St. Louis anti-statist article “The situation in Ferguson is scary. It’s easy to understand why some, especially those who live near the activity, want a return to normal: bullets, tear gas, sound cannons, check points, fire. But despite all this, there are a sizable number of us who don’t want a return to normal. We descend on West Florissant day and night to figure out how to avoid it. To us, the struggle is not limited to justice for Mike Brown and the conviction of a single cop of murder in a court of law. We are doing this for ourselves, our friends and family, as well as Mike Brown. We’ve already found this system guilty – the racism, the class structure, the government, the police. When the “peace” you are continuously urged to return to looks like powerlessness, humiliation, poverty, boredom, and violence, it shouldn’t be a surprise many choose to fight. And to witness the ferocity with which some of us fight, it’s almost as if we’ve been waiting for this moment our entire lives. Two nights ago people took a run at the police command post forcing the authorities to call in the National Guard. Previously this would have been unthinkable, but then again just two weeks ago this whole thing would have been unthinkable. And so we raise a shot of looted gin – A TOAST! May we continue to surprise each other.”

“Solidarity With the Ferguson Rebellion” Posters Hanging in Athens, Exarchia Greece

21/8/14:

US, Indiana: cop and private security vehicles attacked in solidarity with FergusonSt.Louis: Jesse Jackson told he’s a sell-out

ferguson clean-up

ferguson: cleaning-up after the filth

New Posters & Zine for Ferguson

The Making of “Outside Agitators”

22/8/14:

US, Minneapolis: workers show solidarity with Ferguson revolt (more here and here)…North Carolina: march in solidarity with Ferguson rioters “..a Black student and columnist for the university paper (which we learned later) attempted to address the crowd. He shouted in exasperation, “This is not in the spirit of Ferguson! It is a time for healing! We should be mourning!” After a tense moment, the crowd yelled back at him, critical and dismissive of this attempted pacification….“In Ferguson they mourned by burning down the QT!” . As one of the speakers had said before the rally, “The authorities want there to be peace before there is justice, but we know it doesn’t work that way. No justice, no peace!”

 

23/8/14:

US, Phoenix: anarchists and others in party/demo against another cop murder (more here)

24/8/14:

Crimethink podcast

Philadelphia solidarity march (more here and here)

30/8/14:

Colorado: report about march and actions against another cop killing

31/8/14:

US, St.Louis: new “flash-bang” cop weapon used on Ferguson protest “Peter Callahan was caught between two police lines in the West Florissant section of Ferguson, Mo., on Sunday night, when something fiery hot  singed his leg. A nearby protester’s shirt briefly caught fire.”

3/9/14:

Ferguson – Mike Brown & The 21st Century Race Riots (translated from German)

9/9/14:

Ferguson council meeting shouted down (more here and  here)

10/9/14:

Cops pelted with bricks etc. at protest about cop murder of Mike Brown “police were pelted with bricks, rocks, concrete chunks, filled water bottles and glass bottles during the nearly three-hour stand-off with demonstrators….someone threw a brick at St. Louis County police officers. Someone else threw a bottle, then outran police who tried to capture him. “ professional activist denounces “professional agitators” (video)

23/9/14:

US, St.Louis: “unruly crowd” hit cops with rocks, loot store, attack cop cars, molotov city truck, fire shots at cops, etc. after burning of part of Mike Brown memorial (video hereA friend writes: “Thought you might wanna know the memorial for mike brown burned yesterday-arson or an errant candle who  knows. Good cop Johnson came in with pastors later on and news said people spit on the pastors and told the media to leave cause they lie. Then some kids broke into a beauty store on the main strip at night. Lots of cops responded. Crowd of 150 or so gathered yelling at police. Despite lots of black activist peacekeeper types, people threw stones at cops who then chased them back into side streets. They said people fired guns at them too:/. Later on some building in the quaint part of ferguson was set on fire with gasoline they say. Maybe it was a museum, I’m not sure. And they said the lot where police impound cars was tried to set on fire with molotovs. Busy night. People still jump on any provocation to restart things.”…demonstration in another St.Louis suburb after woman dies in cop custodyLouisiana: 65-year-old woman arrested for inciting riot after cops shoot 14-year-old

25/9/14:

US, St.Louis: clashes with Ferguson cops as top cop Jackson apologises for Brown killing  whilst his cops close protest camp …more here and here “Jackson had stepped out to answer questions from the protesters and was walking with them, when a scuffle broke out. According to the protesters, who lashed out at officials on social media, the police attacked peaceful protesters. …“If you are not resigning tonight, go home,” a man on a bullhorn, told Jackson” Here“I don’t think he was marching with the protesters more than 30 seconds before the riot cops came out into the crowd and tried to get themselves closer to him and protect him,” said French, a St. Louis elected official who has been following demonstrations since the Aug. 9 shooting and who supports calls for Jackson’s resignation. “Just them being out there pushing started stuff — it’s a complete misread of the situation. His very presence agitated the crowd.”  Clearly, as always, there are those hoping to advance their political careers by recuperating anger into a mere change of personnel at the top, just as there are those who would be temporarily satisfied by a mere change of who makes the world miserable. Fortunately, there are also a growing number of people who will never be satisfied until there’s some irreversible change of perspective, a society based on the needs and desires of the community of individuals, people who will continue to find the weak links in hierarchical social control, regardless of  the appearance of change this society deems neccessary to control explosions of anger.

28/9/14:

US, St.Louis: another Ferguson cop shot and slightly  wounded; report claims both shootings of cops are unrelated to protests2 arrested at protest as cops continue to refuse to arrest cop who killed Mike Browncall-out from black reformists (“Black lives matter”) for 4 day (October 10th to 13th) demonstrations and discussions in Ferguson ostensibly in order to put pressure on grand jury 

2/10/14:

US, St.Louis: several arrests of  Ferguson protesters for making a noise after 11 pmwhilst illusions in electoral system seem to be increasing

5/10/14:

US, St.Louis“Black lives matter” liberals disrupt concert by singing “requiem for Mike Brown” to the indifference, occasional outrage and some polite applause amongst St.Louis’s upper crust… as  4-day long weekend protest looms

6/10/14:

US, St.Louis: moronic pro-cop baseball spectators clash with mainly black Mike Brown protestersOhio: students and others occupy police station in protest against another cop murder of a young black

class war cardinals

v.

cardinals log st louis

 

8/10/14:

US, St Louis: cop cars damaged by protestors as cop kills another black teenager; no arrests (more here and here)

9/10/14:

US, St.Louis: 2nd night of clashes with cops “Throughout Thursday night and into the early hours of yesterday as many as 400 demonstrators spread out across several city blocks in south St Louis, shouting and chanting at police officers, many of whom were clad in riot gear.”  Excellent eyewitness accounts here.

US flag burning

“Some protesters in St. Louis burned an American flag on Thursday night, with one activist telling USA Today, “It’s not our flag. Our children are being killed in the street. This flag doesn’t cover black or brown people… ” here ) …nor is it on the side of most whites, of course…..

11/10/14: 

US, St.Louis: riot cops confront protesters near University A friend writes: “I don’t have much detailed information to pass on. My sense though is that after the first week or so of street-fighting, the terrain shifted from “uprising” to “protest” and that not much has changed since then. Even the latest flareups were more politicized-activist oriented than the initial rioting. Rocks were thrown at the cops, windows broken (even a house in a wealthy neighborhood) and American flags torn from houses were burnt, but still it seems like this activity is qualitatively different.  

There are a lot of old and new political formations acting and organizing events right now and it can be difficult to distinguish them all. Some groups, OBS [Organisation of Black Struggle] included, want resistance and protest to happen only on their terms. Hence the current weekend of marches and civil disobedience actions. But where are all the people who rioted two months ago? Have they changed their perspectives? Are they just sitting it out or going along with the leftist flow? Some of them are certainly still out there but it’s a much smaller number of committed youngsters who while not necessarily belonging to specific groups are approaching events more like activists than pissed off neighbors. I guess I’m still trying to make sense of it all. 
 
Part of the shift in locations (north county to south city) means that more people who had been in Ferguson are unfamiliar with the neighborhood and that some of the neighborhoods are less sympathetic or directly involved in the conflicts than was the case in Ferguson. There’s a lot of upper middle class white families that live in the area the most recent shooting took place. Some people who live around there did come out for the two marches but they were mostly activists/politicized people and because of both their own politics and the politics of racial separatism/white privilege (which have been loudly espoused by a few influential individuals) they haven’t really participated in the riotous aspects of the last few nights. Last night was quiet on the south side despite expectations that it would kick off again. Cops were staged all over the area and a gathering was announced on twitter, but no one showed, maybe because of the rain, an earlier (wet) protest in Clayton, and/or a competing vigil in Ferguson.
 
In the end, even if it’s very different now than it was in August, that doesn’t mean its all bad or that we couldn’t see a return to massive rebellion in the near future. That there is now precedent for a public confrontational response every time the police kill someone is a dramatic shift from years past. Another interesting aspect of what’s happening is that people are shooting at the police (in isolated, individual circumstances) more frequently than normal. It certainly puts the cops on the defensive but it also escalates tensions and has the potential to result in more tragic deaths.”….Washington: cop gets off with a warning (video here)
 
12/10/14:
 
US, St.Louis: 17+ arrests after sit-in protesters refuse to disperse; contradictory stories of rocks being thrown at cops …more here –   “A police car was attacked, prompting at least 10 arrests, and tear gas was released to disperse the crowd.St Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson said on Twitter to say that protesters were “throwing rocks” at officers and that arrests had been made for “continued illegal behavior.” The St. Louis Metropolitcan Police Department said its officers arrested 17 people for unlawful assembly in the QuickTrip parking lot. The St. Louis County Police Department said its officers made no arrests, despite “a few occasions of assaultive behavior directed toward officers.”  …report on how the cops changed their story over the Myers killing (though one can get bogged down in such details and miss the point.)
 
13/10/14:
 
US, St.Louis: University occupied in protest against killer copstown hall occupied ….interesting report of meeting about cop murders of blacks Shows how professional leaders, having been the object of the anger of mainly black youths for their complacency, are now busy recuperating that critique. But there was one particularly interesting statement from the father of Meyers, killed on Wednesday by an off-duty cop: “As the protesters gathered and debated how confrontational to be with the police, Myers’s father appeared and told them: “Whatever it is y’all want to do, I’m fine with it”.”  When one considers the usual “appeals for calm” on the part of black families pressurised by the cops to make such appeals, this is indicative of what a friend from St.Louis had already said: “That there is now precedent for a public confrontational response every time the police kill someone is a dramatic shift from years past.”
 
22/10/14:
 
US, St.Louis: more clashes with cops in Ferguson (more here, including lots of photos)
 
24/10/14:
 
US, St.Louis: cops get constitutional rights/riot training (spot the difference) in preparation for Grand Jury’s decision to let cops get away with murder once again
 
25/10/14:
 
US, Arizona: brutal cops stop protest against brutal cops
 

5/11/14:

US, St Louis (Ferguson): news vehicle vandalised as intersection is blocked on masked demo

11/11/14:

US, St Louis (Ferguson): black group prepares…

13/11/14:

US, St.Louis: transforming  the protection of the crime of business-as-usual into the defence from the protectors of this crime

14/11/14:

US, Pennsylvania:  self-defeating individualist notion of how to spark a revolution The road to permanent incarceration is paved with good intentions (not that many of us haven’t had these fantasies, but…)St.Louis: report that  local form of the commodity-spectacle is in crisis

16/11/14:

US: Anonymous hacks and  seizes KKK twitter account over their threats to use lethal force against Ferguson/Mike Brown protests

17/11/14:

US, St.Louis: dry-run protest in anticipation of Grand Jury verdict freeing the killer Darren Wilson briefly closes streets and blocks traffi; governor to order in National Guard again

Police Shooting Missouri

“premeditated anarchy” of the market

19/11/14:

US, St.Louis: road blocked outside Ferguson police HQforensic scientist shows how absurd Darren Wilson’s case is

20/11/14:

US, St.Louis: more clashes outside Ferguson cop HQ….Anonymous claims cop who killed Brown is linked to  KKK (though does this really matter?… there are plenty of murderous cops not linked to the KKK; are their murders less vicious than Darren Wilson’s?)

21/11/14:

US, St.Louis: D-I-Y riot  fashion  “Don’t have a bulletproof vest, but still want to face the cops (or go to the supermarket)? Here are great at-home recipes for all the accoutrements you need to protect your bod”

22/11/14:

US, New York: new cop murder – Al Sharpton undemonises the demons “We’re not demonizing the police,” Sharpton said, but “this young man should not be dead.”
ftp stateNew York demo: “Hands down – shoot back” chanted
 
24 – 25/11/14:
“Whatever plan the Leftists had for that day and whatever plan the police had for that day was lost on me.”
 
US, St.Louis: live feed “St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar: “As soon as grand jury announcement was announced, police started getting rocks thrown at them.” ….loot now whilst shocks last!schools closedCNN reporter hit by rock
Ferg v sign copcar
heating the heat: cop car burning
riots spread to other areas of St. Louis ” In Dellwood, a row of parked cars were set alight beside a gas station that was on fire. By the early hours of the morning there were reports that Dellwood’s City Hall was also in flames.”…demonstrations of solidarity in New York and elsewhere… protests in Los AngelesOakland: various businesses smashed, cops injured Looters smashed every window of the Starbucks at 8th Street and Broadway, and the business was shuttered Tuesday morning….Less than a half-block down the street, almost every window to the Smart and Final store had been shattered by looters and was boarded up Tuesday morning. Graffiti was scrawled on several businesses downtown, including the Wells Fargo Bank and the Oakand Marriott City Center. The entry doors to the Chase Bank sustained major damage after rioters shattered them. At one point during the melee, a police officer was hit in the face with a brick near 7th and Broadway. The male officer was taken to a hospital to be treated and was later released.The windows to the Oakland Tribune office in Uptown Oakland were spray painted with graffiti and a news van was vandalized near Interstate 580…At one point Monday night, protesters marched onto westbound Interstate 580, bringing traffic to a standstill before climbing the center divider and stopping cars in the eastbound direction.”various New York bridges shut down….Live stream coverage of protests in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Durham (NC), Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Oakland, Philadelphia, Portland, & Washington DC high school walkouts in MinneapolisObama praises peaceful sit-in of Chicago’s city hall
 
atlanta cops
the world turned right way up
 
 
 
title max nov 24 11 14
Titlemax pawn shop burning (above)
 
Map of recent fires in Ferguson, 6.30 a.m. local time (below)
map ferguson fires
“Riot is not a tool. We do not have “recourse” to riot. Riot is a moment where the poor fight without management, and without the mediation of the state, of commodity and of dominant information, and often against them. The conditions for fighting without enemy mediation are extremely rare in our society, and they have the particularity of liberating some thought: those who are there are forced to build their own mediations by themselves. It is by lack of wanting, of being, or of daring to do so that most riots are defeated. Nobody can call for riot, not because it is forbidden by law, but because a riot is an unprepared encounter between poor people who are precisely getting out of existing organisations and managements. It is not consciousness that commands riot, but emotion, the unconscious, opportunity that command consciousness, in riot. That is why it is an extremely interesting form of struggle : it has the potential of a beginning of a free debate. … That is, a beginning of a possible debate, but a beginning of a free debate, clear of the usual dross that make the poor unable to debate, to which ideologies also belong…. This moment of beginning of debate is exceptionnal, because revolutions, which are the debates of humanity on itself, the moments when humanity takes itself as its object, the moments when totality is the object of history, are always supersessions of insurrections ; and because insurrections are always supresessions of riots. Or, in other words : no known revolution has happened without an insurrection ; no known insurrection has happened without a riot.”
(from here)
ferguson nice night 3
 
atlanta 2
Barbie’s release new line of doll in run-up to Christmas: cops in Atlanta
 
25/11/14:
 
US: motorways in LA and San Diego briefly blockaded A friend has told me that almost all the major cities of the USA had at least one interstate – motorway – blocked by demonstrators for various periods of time….Minneapolis: report of school walk-outs and highway blocked…unusual article from “Time” magazine recuperating the meaning of rioting  “Riots are a necessary part of the evolution of society….VOTE: Should the Ferguson Protestors Be TIME’s Person of the Year?
 
26/11/14:
 
US, California: in Oakland and LA – a 3rd night of public anger at Darren Wilson getting away with murder “Oakland police spokeswoman Johnna Watson said 33 demonstrators were arrested after a march by about 100 people through the city streets, blocking traffic. She said that later, small groups began moving through the streets, with some smashed windows and vandalized property.”Portland: report of conflict between conservative “opposition” and more genuine kind ““The American justice system has failed us — I don’t see how you can go down there and do a kumbaya with that type of energy,” said Teressa Raiford…The protesters walked against the flow of traffic in downtown Portland’s one-way streets, then temporarily blocked freeways and Willamette River bridges. Police made seven arrests, and at least one injury was reported from a man who was punched in the face while sitting in his car. Organizers of the first protest quickly moved to distance themselves from the splinter group, announcing that anyone who acted disruptively was not associated with their group….Leaders of the offshoot protest argued the first group’s event was more “parade” than demonstration, and criticized the organizers for being too cozy with police. “They want to castrate any real revolution,” said Jessie Sponberg, a Portland activist who joined in the splinter group. They argued Brown’s shooting and a subsequent incident in which some Portland police officers posted images on Facebook of the words “I AM DARREN WILSON” over the Police Bureau’s badge warrant a more heated demonstration.”
 
 
28/11/14:
 
 
US, San Francisco: bank and shop windows smashed in protestSt.Louis: shopping mall shut down due to protest16 arrests (more here)… Texas: the joys of  normalityFlorida: example of changing atmosphere in USNashville: report on soft cop policing “We had no incidents of any vandalism of any violence of any type. What I noted [is] that people were even picking up the trash that they had left behind at the scene….Chief Anderson’s police force met protesters with hot chocolate and bottled water, rather than tear gas, marched alongside them, and ran the type of security that one might expect in a civic parade, communicating on an ongoing basis with protest leaders. At one point, protesters charged up an on-ramp and took over Interstate 24 over the objections of Nashville police. Chief Anderson made a controversial real-time decision, opting not to arrest protesters, and ordered officers to shut down I-24 temporarily, allowing demonstrators to make their statement by lying down on the roadway while drivers waited. Consequently, protesters were cleared off the roadway within twenty to twenty-five minutes.”
 
US, St.Louis: just received this from a friend:
“The experiences and information are outright overwhelming. I’m unable to synthesize all of it or really understand the gravity of what I’m living through. And I think this is true of everyone I know. It doesn’t paralyze us at all. We are just in this swirling cauldron and we have little idea of what it looks like from the outside. Whatever plan the Leftists had for that day and whatever plan the police had for that day was lost on me.
 
Little tidbits for you:
– This time it spread. There were three major flashpoints and lots of outlying smash-n-grabs and fires.– I read a couple people were shot again, one was killed. And maybe a carjacking or two. But all in all, the mentality of the mob was to attack everything police or business related.– It seems many of the fires were set before people had a chance to properly loot them. The fencing around the QuikTrip station erected to prevent people from gathering there in the summer was torn down. A dozen or so cars at a car dealership were torched. A church and a church van were even set ablaze (the pastor seems to be Sharpton’s mouthpiece in St. Louis, though some who don’t want to believe the black “community” is full of people furious at the church’s role in maintaining peace with the state, are claiming white supremacists did it). A journalist’s car was also burned at the memorial. The looting was mostly festive and people seemed to be sharing what they had with strangers.-…outside the police station in the nicer part of Ferguson….the announcement was coming, Mike Brown’s stepfather just lost it. “Burn that bitch down!” he said pointing at the police station. “Burn that motherfucker down!” He approached it and tried to get people to chant “Burn it down!”– One of the first things thrown at police was a bullhorn. Finally a real use for those things, ay?– After an uneasy calm, the escalation was quick and the diverse crowd bricked the cops and their cars and some businesses. This district had not seen any mob vandalism or heavy clashes even back in August. They reponded with a barrage of gas. Heavy, heavy gas. One woman lost an eye to one of the canisters. It cleared the main street. Those pushed north started looting and fires. I saw people looting the back of a business while riot cops were marching past the front of it. Somehow, the police station escaped vandalism, but two squad cars were set alight (not before an AR-15 [ a cop machine gun] was stolen from one of them).– Both on this strip and on W. Florissant, it didn’t matter if a business was black or white-owned. All that nonsense from the Black nationalists and Leftists over the last few months fell on deaf ears.ferg take w y n

– Across town on the southside of St. Louis City, near where city cops killed a guy in October, hundreds blocked the interstate. Later they marched south and 20 or so businesses on the South Grand strip …had windows smashed. Some looting at a pharmacy and pawn shop, including a crossbow(!).

– Sporadic vandalism, looting, and fires occured in other parts of south city (including a bank), downtown St. Louis, and East St. Louis, and some of the suburbs right around Ferguson. The scope and intensity surpassed the night of August 10th.

– Some people kept refering to it as “Black Monday,” not in regard to race but in regard to everything being “on sale.”
– Someone scrawled “Free Phones” outside a looted cell-phone store

Like I said, it’s hard to make sense of it all (see its limitations, its direction, etc.) because so quickly it plowed through all the rhetoric and efforts of the “sympathetic” politicians, pastors, activists who had all the time in the world to prepare for this.
No idea what the future might hold.”

ferg go CardinalsAmerica’s favorite past-time: Go Cardinals!

class war cardinals

29/11/14: 
 
US, Oakland: a shopkeepers lot is not a happy oneSeattle: cop and his van window get early Christmas present; Ferrari showroom window smashed, etc.
 

2/12/14:

US, Missouri: more high school student walk-outs over Ferguson

A friend writes: “Edgy. Thats how I would describe things here now. The storm has passed, but so much hasn’t settled out. Last weekend six Rams (the American football team) players did the “hands up” gesture at the game. Caused quite a stir. The local police union demanded the league fine the players and the team apologize. The league refused to fine them, though they had clearly broken rules- I suspect if they had fined them the protests would have spread to other teams, and the NFL knew that. These players may be millionaires, but most of them sure didn’t grow up that way. The weakness of using these spectacular sporting events as a way to “provide a distraction” and “help heal the city” (both real quotes from players and management before the game) is that it relies on the athletes to feel outside of the world around them, to discount their experiences as young black kids seeing the underbelly of American glitz. Anyhow, the team even refused to apologize. And later the Ethical Society of Police (!) a mostly black cop organization, supported the Rams “free speech expression.” Meanwhile, during the game, riot police met protesters outside the Dome. Later a cop bar in south city declared they weren’t going to show Rams games anymore. The next night protesters (which are still remarkably decentralized) showed up as Rams fans and were denied entrance sparking a lively protest.

Early this week, in the Bosnian part of town, a Bosnian guy was beaten to death with hammers by a group of kids. Some signs show it was a group of kids saying something about “Fuck the white people, Kill the white people.” But the mayor and police chief are playing down the racial dynamic. That night though, the Bosnian community in that neighborhood, blocked the main street to protest violence against them. Police responded with negotiators, but around the corner was a column of riot police ready to go. The following night saw an even larger march down that main street, with calls for more police protection. Really yucky racialized stuff. The city seems really on edge.

A dozen or so high schools had social-media organized walkouts. Every high school in North County I think, one in posh Clayton, some in the city and even one in South County. A couple of the ones in North county had mini-confrontations with the police (banging on a car, yelling…). The South County one is interesting because its a mostly white, working and middle class part of the region, with a growing Bosnian population. Schools still bus in students from across town as a part of the desgregtion policies from the days of old. But video of the South County walkout showed it was a mixed crowd. There’s also unconfirmed reports that there was a big fight between Bosnian and Black students that day. But this is being fed by local right-wingers. Some facebook posts confirmed that some Bosnian kids took part in the walkout though.

A different cop bar was robbed in deep south city in what seemed like a Wild West shootout between customers and robbers, 6 shot, 1 dead.

Amidst all this, the mayor is calling to increase the number of city cops by 15%. So much is in motion right now.

The NAACP has been marching to the capitol in Jefferson City for the past week. Recently in a small town, they were met with a nasty counter-protest in scenes reminiscent of 1960s Mississippi.

I can’t help but feel the obsessive racialization of the struggle by certain loudmouths has helped create this newfound racial edginess to the city (and maybe country). Like you said during the pumpkin riots in New Hampshire, some people here chose to separate themselves from what happened, instead of identifying with it and broadening the struggle. Maybe this is the result?

The protests continue here, like I said earlier, in a mostly decentralized form. A protest outside the Ferguson police department yesterday afternoon connected the struggle against the massacre of the Mexican students to the struggle unfolding here. Later, when the NYC Eric Garner stuff came out, protests hit the Fergusn PD, the downtown St. Louis Federal Building, the fancy Central West End (where demonstrators were hit by a van whose driver flashed a gun, later knocking out his back window & they also occupied the lobby of the nicest hotel), and then downtown inside the casino and on the main shopping strip.

In Ferguson, a controversial private group of current and ex-military volunteers dressed in camoflauge continue to protect business by standing atop them with rifles.

Nothing I said here was remotely normal before August. I hadn’t seen riot police in the city since 2004 and the tail end of that Trayvon mini-riot last year, now they seem ready on a moment’s notice.”

 

3/12/14:

US, Denver: high school students walk out and block roads in another Ferguson protest 

4/12/14:

US, New York: Brooklyin Bridge shut down after another killer cop not indicteddemo about this in OaklandMassachussetts: hundreds of high school kids walk out over police killings

5/12/14:

US, Colorado: several school walk-outs over killer copsNew York: Apple store on 5th Avenue taken over by Garner protestersOakland: protesters against killer-cops shut down BART stationMiami: as spontaneous blockade of main road  by 800 people develops, here’s an arty “radical chic” recuperation trivialising this anti-cop movement “If you wanted to get the eyes of art people wanting to party, that was the time, because we’re talking about 7.30pm Friday night – I mean that’s prime cocktail hour…and some of the biggest satelite art fairs around actually enjoyed some of this disruption” 

6/12/14:

US, Berkeley: shops looted, cop injured, as protest gets angry; rubber bullets fired by cops  (deliberately confusing article by pacifists blaming COINTELPRO for the violence)

7/12/14:

US, Seattle: rocks thrown at cops during killer-cop protestsVermont: cop’s home vandalisedMiami: anti-cop demo after graffiti artist is killed by cop car

8/12/14:

US, Berkeley: Amtrak train blocked, 1500 block motorway, as part of anti-cop movement

usa freeway 8 dec2014

Interstate 80

(recommended: account and analysis of interstate blockades, in particular the Oakland one in November)

9/12/14:

US, Berkeley: report of 3rd and 4th night of demos and roadway blockades A friend told me the fact that these interstate/motorway blockades are happening on a regular basis all over the place is a major shift, an enormous break with the previous epoch of depressing normality; in the past people would avoid doing such things because, for one, it’s a major felony but also because drivers didn’t give a shit and would drive straight into people because the freedom of the car is sacrosanct. He told me of a “Reclaim the streets” situation back in the 90s where someone was hooked up high on some contraption blocking the road and that a truck driver was told  that if he drove on the guy was sure to die; the driver just drove into the thing; fortunately at the last moment the protester managed to quickly hook up onto an overhead wire, and was saved, but this incident put a stop to these kinds of actons. All that is changing…Berkeley council cancel meeting...elsewhere in California: 300 high school students walk outsimplistic, but in some kind of  way moving, call to take over everywhere (video)MTV get in on the act (video)

See also this: From Ferguson to Oakland: 17 Days of Riots and Revolt in the Bay Area / CrimethInc. Ex-Workers’ Collective “I can’t breathe” – Eric Garner’s last words whilst being choked to death by NYPD officers.  “It has never been like this before. There’s no breathing room” – an unnamed Oakland police officer lamenting the current wave of protests.

10/12/14:

US, Berkeley: 5th night of angry protests “… the protesters’ numbers had dwindled to about 50 people, the statement said, some of whom broke windows at a T-Mobile store and a Chase bank. Looting also was reported in an area of small businesses at a downtown intersection, it said. “An officer outside the Oakland Police Department was assaulted and an arrest was made,” the statement said. A Reuters photographer witnessed an undercover police officer, who had been marching with the demonstrators, pointing his pistol at protesters after he and his partner were attacked” (more herea policeman’s lot is not a happy one “Officers say that many protesters are trying to provoke them into doing something wrong by yelling at them or even tossing full bottles of liquor at them that were looted from nearby stores.”

UK, London: clashes with cops as demonstrators march through shopping precinct in solidarity with anti-killer-cop demos in the US (video)76 arrests “Police were forced to use kettling tactics as violence broke out when members of the group assaulted security staff and caused damage to property.”

12/12/14:

US, Hollywood: Sunset Boulevard blocked by anti-killer-cop protesters

13/12/14:

US, New York: passive peaceful demo mars blockade of Brooklyn Bridge and hospitalisation of 2 cops “Protesters streamed onto Brooklyn Bridge Saturday night, closing traffic in both directions for nearly an hour. Debris, including a trash can, was thrown from the bridge’s walkway at police officers escorting protesters on the roadway below…The windows of one squad car were smashed by protesters”

15/12/14:

US, Oakland: temporary blockade of police department … demonstrators scaled poles to replace OPD flags with those memorializing unarmed black people killed by police. Meanwhile, others blocked a major intersection leading to a major freeway nearby.”

16/12/14:

US, Washington: council staffers walk out in anti-killer-cop protest

19/12/14:

US, Milwaukee: 74 arrested as rush hour traffic on motorway is blocked by anti-killer-cop demoreport of pro-slavery cops calling for extermination of all blacks

20/12/14:

US, Minnesota: as about 2000 people demonstrate about cop brutality  in shopping mall on biggest shopping day of the year, cops stop workers standing in solidarity (more here and  here)

24/12/14: 

US, St.Louis: clashes with cops as another young black guy is killed by cop (interesting text on this here)

25/12/14:

US, St.Louis: demonstration against new cop killing briefly blocks motorway….Christmas in Oakland ……march turns beautiful: “A “Black Lives Matter” march against police brutality in Oakland turned ugly, with protesters reportedly attacking a journalist, smashing shopfront windows, throwing bottles, and defacing the main Christmas tree in the heart of the city….around 30 storefront windows were smashed and liquor looted. The Chronicle reported one of its photographers received an injury to her hand after a protester lobbed a bottle at her. The Christmas tree in the square also served as an easy target for some of the more unruly demonstrators, who tore lights and ornaments off of its branches.”

26/12/14:

US, Ferguson:  improvised Mike Brown memorial destroyed and then rebuilt “The Washington Post reported that when asked if there would be an investigation, a police spokesman referred to the memorial as “a pile of trash in the middle of the street”.

30/12/14:

US, Ferguson: cops receive beauty treatment “…police officers were shot at Tuesday night, as they tried to investigate a burglary call at one of the town’s many buildings burned down in anti-cop riots. Officers were called to the shell of the old Beauty Town store on West Florissant Avenue on Tuesday night around 6pm, and found several suspects stealing hair products from the building’s basement. While trying to arrest the suspects, the officers heard gunfire coming from the Park Ridge Apartments located behind the store. They ducked for cover and then heard another round of fire coming from another location across the street. …They called for back-up and 15 to 20 minutes later, the area was cleared out and no one was injured. ” 

more dead cops

banner used on Santa Cruz demo (31st December), which ended up smashing County Jail vehicles

…The following reflections about armed attacks on the forces of the state, from a guy in South Africa, seem pertinent, and should certainly stimulate some consequential thinking and discussion (I don’t agree with everything said here, but I’ll leave this till later when I’m not so tired or busy with other stuff):

“…it would be good for all concerned to start paying serious attention to these questions before events impose difficult decisions without offering any chance at an adequate preparation. In 1977 when the Italian struggle began to drive many more people in the direction of Brinsley [the guy who killed the 2 New York cops on December 20th], Sanguinetti cautioned: ‘The lack of clarity in theory and practice on strategic issues, such as the issue of weapons, is likely to produce very serious effects if the radical movement cannot quickly overcome it. Weapons should not be used until everyone is ready to use them. They will be available for use when their use has become essential. The question is not tactical, but strategic. Those who play with guns today are playing with power, and power is much better armed than we are. When it comes to power, you don’t play with it; you destroy it.’

While the above certainly doesn’t provide any fail-safe recipe for conduct (and certainly was never intended as the basis for more-radical-than-thou denunciations of acts which, however misguided, cannot be condemned by anyone who wants even to pretend a semblance of seriousness when it comes to overthrowing the everyday violence against which ‘terrorists’ act in self-defence) it bears repeating.

It is interesting to note, however, that the historical development of class struggle has tended towards a definite REDUCTION of class violence over the years — especially in the US. Whereas, for example, it was not uncommon for American strikers and scabs to engage in shoot-outs during the 19th century, and the most radical situations of the early 20th century tended to be precipitated by crises involving mass slaughter (All of which followed the model of the Paris Commune erupting from the Franco-Prussian war: WW1 which precipitated revolutions and near-revolutionary uprisings across europe; the build-up to WW2, more violent in Spain than anywhere else, that precipitated the Spanish revolution; Hungary 1956 that began as something like a nationalist war of independence) those of the latter half of the 20th century, while certainly not pacifist, saw the role of armed struggle significantly diminish (France 1968, Italy throughout the 70s, the fall of fascism in Portugal and Spain, the movements in Poland and South Africa) to the point where it was often more of a spectacular distraction, assisting in the work of repression — first of all repression of the forms of proletarian violence whose organisation is ACTUALLY called for by the circumstances of the moment, secondly as a justification and obfuscation of the state repression directed against proletarians in the name of combatting terrorism & the parastate repression which under these conditions almost always constitutes the terrorism itself. Even in Italy it is possible to trace how over the course of the decade the social war involves actually radical armed struggle at the start, during the uprisings in Battipaglia and Reggio Calabria in 1970 where proletarian self-organisation was only in its infancy, localised and poorly co-ordinated, whereas by 1977, when these embryonic councils had got to the point where in ‘Milan, for the first time, 3000 delegates from 350 factory councils gathered in a common assembly’, it was not proletarians who were shooting at cops, but the specialists in armed struggle who no doubt would turn their guns against the proletarians — who even when they did fight the police would loot gun shops and then throw the weapons in the river — the moment they took power. The situation in South Africa, where Mandela and his cronies prestige was almost entirely based on the image of an armed struggle which never actually existed except when, during the democratic transition, it was waged by every competing fraction of the ruling class (and  ruling-class-in-waiting) against the proletariat and its violent self-activity as a whole. Finally, the 1997 Albanian revolution confirmed everything Sanguinetti said as the use of guns became revolutionary precisely at the moment when everyone siezed them from the cops and turned them from tools of hierarchical oppression into toys of ludic subversion — the population doing target practice by taking potshots at the embassies of foreign states and the crosses of churches, and so on. Once the proletariat rose up en masse with the determination to seize weapons for its own use, the cops could do nothing to stop them and, once armed, there was very little need to use their weapons, since there was no one left to oppose them. The uprising in Southern Iraq during the Gulf War was again initiated spontaneously by masses of proletarians — the mass desertions in the army taking on such a revolutionary character precisely because they threatened to dissolve a significant portion of the forces of specialised violence, merging into the generalised revolt on their return and putting weapons in the hands of a people already up in arms.

The dismal record of failed revolutions in the present century only confirms this tendency. From the 2001 revolt in Algeria to the revolution in Ukraine this year, not a single insurrectionary situation has been initiated or even aided by groups specially organised around armed struggle. Rather, the immediate targets of these rebellions have always been precisely these groups, namely, the security forces of the state. Where rebels have looked for assistance from these groups, such as in the 2011 Egyptian protests when the army was welcomed as an ally against the Mubarak regime, they either remained neutral (as was the case until after Mubarak was already dead in the water) or imposed their own dictatorships, as happened in Egypt after the fall of Mubarak and again when the Muslim Brotherhood was toppled, as was the case with Libya in the same year, and in Syria and Thailand this year. It seems clear then, that the global revolutionary movement must struggle with weapons that are available to everyone, but this is not to say it must resort to pacifism until the moment insurrection magically materialises out of the ether. Opposition movements around the world, which are as I write drawing millions into ever fiercer combat against the established order, demonstrate eloquently just what weapons are available to everyone: petrol, matches, sticks and stones, barricades and occupations, strikes and sabotage, courage and communication, fury and self-organisation. It is precisely from the effective deployment of these that other more sophisticated forms of arms become both possible and necessary.

Strangely enough, around the same time Brinsley iced the pigs I was reading an essay by Hilaire Belloc about how, in the absence of a socially regulated outlet for the release of mental pressure and wild passions through regular bouts of reckless festive irreverence as once occurred when the Lords of Misrule presided over the Saturnalia, that same pressure and those same passions tend to express themselves individually in various far more malignant forms. It seems to me that, despite all the above, there is definately a need for some sort of collective combat which will allow those at the sharp end to release the pressure and passions constantly accumulated by their position in an effective socially regulated way. Probably, as you say, this will require them ‘to connect to other struggles and to white working class people resisting in some way or another but not with any understanding of the race question (ie probably supporting Wilson and the state in this situation) and to think up new intitiatives not just involving attacks on the cops, banks etc., maybe something involving riots and occupations as well as  theoretical elucidations of the contradictions we set ourselves against.’ It may also need to involve, as a means through which such initiatives might be mediated and sustained, the development of ongoing forms of collective self-defence that will be able to harness the anger, frustration and despair for which struggles against the direct agents of oppression is obviously the most  immediate outlet. “

Vice has just published this about New Black Panther Party (NBPP) gun clubs in Dallas. Considering how fearful they were about all independent forms of opposition, like looting of black-owned shops, during the riots in Ferguson in August, we can assume that this elitist form of armed struggle is a classic hangover from Leninism worthy of  our contempt and disgust. Much of this is the victory of apparently “cool” style and  image over any clear revolutionary content or goal. As a guy from St.Louis wrote about the NBPP during August: “Their role in the events has been to direct traffic, protect shops that others were attempting to loot, telling people to go home and obey the state imposed curfew, marshalling crowds onto sidewalks, projecting terror into peoples’ minds by declaring that we will all be massacred unless we obey police commands thus ignoring or attempting to hide the middle ground that people have been occupying since the beginning: somewhere between all out war and compliance. The NBPP even goes so far as to don berets, sunglasses and leather jackets. A testament to just how out of touch they are with the current moment and generation. Fitted hats, t-shirts as masks, high top sneakers: these would all be better choices for a uniform. “

Hitler complains of arm-ache from having to do his own salute

31/12/14:

US, Oakland: bricks and bottles thrown at cops

1/1/15:

Santa Cruz: anti-cop protesters smash up County Jail vehicles

4/1/15:

US: Oakland and New York: anti-cop protests move into restaurants… right-wing report on how illegal immigrants are joining anti-cop movement “Some illegal alien activists… are threatening to kill U.S. police officers if their demands are not met. Threats are nothing new, but what is new is the audacity displayed by protesters who have no fear of retribution by police or federal law enforcement agents and no fear of public outrage.”

5/1/15:

7 St Louis residents file bar complaint against prosecutor Bob McCulloch

8/1/15:

US, Washington: anti-cop graffiti on 10 businesses in Olympia district

15/1/15:

US, Boston: another interstate blocked  (more here)

19/1/15:

US, Indiana: cop’s body camera liberated on demo against cop brutality (see also thisA tire on a squad car also got slashed Monday evening.

bloomington demo

demo in Bloomington, Indiana

31/1/15:

US, Missouri: chief cops car set alight outside police station….

3/2/15:

US, Detroit: angels arrested  “An Angel can illuminate the thought and mind of man by strengthening the power of vision.” ~ St Thomas Aquinas

5/2/15:

US, Massachusetts: sign of the times…?

9/2/15:

US, New York: protests about killer cops continue; die in at Grand Central station Read this for a critique of die-ins: “…the die-in aspires (on the one hand) to a disruption that re-enacts scenes of police murder within spaces of civil society that are normally sheltered from the regular barbarities of racial and class-based violence. On the other side, the tactic is a kind of didactic theater, communicating a message[7] on police brutality to oppressors and oppressed alike. The common targets for die-ins have included luxury retails stores (like Macy’s or the Apple Storeon 5th Avenue, or Brooklyn’s Barclays Center), hubs of human and commodity circulation like Grand Central Station and Times Square, and of course the blockaded streets themselves. To the surprise of many, it has progressively become common sense that “diversity of tactics” is an integral part of most historical movements that have changed society. Existing alongside and supplementing more aggressive forms of protest (road occupations, blockades, even urban riots), the die-in has played a useful role in the post-Ferguson cycle (and not only in NYC). However, as the more militant, “practical” dimension of the street protests faded, the preponderance of the die-in shows the extent to which the previous mobilizations had become largely symbolic; rather than spontaneous efforts at disrupting or challenging the police or the flows of commodities, these demonstrations risk becoming mere appeals to the state for reforms that it will not and cannot concede. Although we cannot explore the issue further in this account, considered strategically, we call attention to how the die-in might shed light on a fundamental tension within both the discourse of the movement emerging after the killing of Michael Brown (#blacklivesmatter) and its tactics (#shutitdown).”

14/2/15:

US, Washington: demonstration against another killer-cop

28/2/15:

New Jersey: protests against another killer cop

4/3/15:

US, Georgia: ex-cop transforms ordinary cop into a good cop, according to the standard proverb about “the only good cop…”

9/3/15:

US, Wisconsin: capitol occupied by 1500 high school and university students on 4th day of protests against another killer-cop (for backgound information, see here)

12/3/15:

US, Ferguson: 2 cops wounded by gunshots on demonstration celebrating resignation of chief cop in wake of government report (very unclear video of shooting here)

16/3/15:

US, Florida: small riot in juvenile prison

19/3/15:

US, Philadelphia: protesters get angry at meeting with DA and Police Commissioner justifying yet another  release without charge of yet another killer cop (video)

20/3/15:

US, Virginia: students storm out of meeting with officials over violent arrest of black student leader

6/4/15:

US, Dallas:  proletarian death-threats

14/4/15:

US, New York: Brooklyn Bridge blocked by anti-cop brutality protesters

15/4/15:

US, Ohio: partial victory for prison hunger strikers

18/4/15:

US, St.Louis: protesters against another killer-cop block road outside of police station

19/4/15:
 
US, New York State (Fingerlakes): riot in juvenile prison
 
22/4/15:
 
US, Baltimore: relatively feeble response so far to what seems like another cop murder “… police officers, who were stood behind metal barriers and concrete road blocks erected at the intersection before the station, were occasionally pelted with plastic bottles and regularly goaded by protesters…one lieutenant was doused in water from a bottle hurled from the crowd…The lieutenant…bore much of the protester’s goading and was later struck by a box of fried chicken thrown from somewhere in the crowd.
 
23/4/15:

US, Baltimore: continuing protests against killer cops Baltimore police were out in large numbers, and the department said it had canceled time off for its officers.” …videos here...”I would  hope that the crowd there will settle down and give this investigation an opportunity to come forth…” – President of the National Organisation of Black Law Enforcement Executives. “In a typical mob scene-type situation you do often see just an escalation and the group behaviour and group think take on a mind of its own and in this case it’s getting uglier…and you just can’t have anarchy on the street for a long period of time” – CNN Law Enforcement AnalystLos Angeles: graffiti now a capital crimeCalifornia: dockers announce May 1st port shutdown in protest against cop brutality

25/4/15:

US, Baltimore: 5th day of protests against killer cops gets angrier “Multiple police cars were damaged and the protests bled into neighborhood businesses, with windows of bars and restaurants broken from thrown objects. Fights inside bars near Camden Yards between baseball fans and protestors also occurred” More here “…there were several cars with broken windows. Police are calling for officers scheduled on later shifts to report for duty immediately. One protester broke out the window of a police cruiser, grabbed a police hat inside and wore it while standing on top of the cruiser with several other protesters.” More here Soon, demonstrators began smashing police cruisers’ windows. “We have isolated pockets of people from out of town causing disturbances downtown,” a tweet from the Baltimore Police Department stated….Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake tweeted a brief statement.  “… Concerned about the violence and those who want to destroy our city,” she said.”

Another video here .

Some minor looting.

loot now baltimore

loot now while shocks last

Right-wingers complain about the Mayor’s softly softly approach. In fact, when she said “It was a very delicate balancing act because while we tried to make sure that they were protected from the cars and the other things that were going on — um — we also gave those who wished to destroy, space to do that, as well,”  she expressed a more intelligent strategy for the dominant forces than the “zero tolerance” ideology of the more dogmatic right. Often, if you don’t bend you break. “Softly softly catchy monkey” is the ideology of the more subtle sections of ruling policy which will undoubtedly come to the fore the more  social contestation there is. It of course doesn’t rule out brutal repression, but combines it in a “a very delicate balancing act” involving allowing  people to let off steam, arresting them later on the basis of CCTV and other evidence and at the same time giving an image of taking up the concerns of the – rightly angry – blacks so as to hold out some hope of reform and pull the rug out from under their fury. “Softly Softly” was also the title of a 70s cop show in the UK which was  propaganda aimed at the gullible intended to make them believe in this tough but fair and often soft police force, which nevertheless was also very nasty behind the facade. For those who haven’t read it, see the section “Good Cop Bad Cop” (in particular the subsection “Far from the madding crowd controllers” onwards) in “Cop-Out…” which looks at soft cop policing and it’s worthwhile seeing how such strategies develop, in tandem with brute force, over the next months and years, and how such state strategies could be subverted .

27/4/15:

US, Baltimore: cop cars and buildings burned, windows smashed after funeral of Freddie Gray  The rioters set police cars and buildings on fire, looted a mall and liquor stores and hurled rocks, bottles and cinderblocks at police in riot gear. Police responded occasionally with pepper spray or cleared the streets by moving in tight formation, shoulder to shoulder. At least 15 officers were hurt, including six who were hospitalized. There were 144 vehicle fires, 15 structure fires and nearly 200 arrests.” Also this “…police understood the Bloods, Crips and Black Guerilla Family gangs had met and each pledged to kill a police officer.” If you look back at the 1992 Los Angeles riots, the truce between gangs was an essential part of the uprising; check out section 5 of this Aufheben text (this is not to endorse the constant use of Mike Davis, the proletarian-turned-academic, by Aufheben which, in retrospect, could be seen as in some way an endorsement of their own fence-sitting balancing act between academia and revolt which lead to the absurdity of John Drury’s schizophrenia)

Another video here.

The mayor of Baltimore called Monday night “one of our darkest days as a city”. No surprise that a politician gets everything the wrong way round –  confusing day and night and dark and bright. “We cannot allow our city to devolve into chaos”, she said.When they  refer to it as “our city” they show they have nothing in common with those who live there  but who in no way can say it’s their’s, those  whose  lives are normally chaotic but who create clarity when they create chaos for those who possess the city.

US, Baltimore: National Guard enforce week-long curfew Also here for live updates.  Looks like the Crips and Bloods have backtracked on their original resolve: In amazing scenes in the run-up to the curfew at 10PM, the Crips and the Bloods, the US’s two most famous gangs, held what appeared to be an impromptu press conference and appealed for calm.” See also this. 

And this comment from someone on A-News

Not everyone completely acquiesced with  the gang leaders’ backwards “lead”- see here: Police in Baltimore fired smoke bombs and pepper pellets at hundreds of protesters who defied a night-time curfew that took effect across the city late on Tuesday, police and US media said, a day after the worst rioting in the United States in years. …“The curfew violators are refusing to follow lawful orders by officers to leave the area,” police said on Twitter, adding that “criminals” had started a fire outside a city library.  Armoured vehicles were moving into the area of the standoff between police and protesters, television images showed.”

BALTIMORE-POLICE274

….Ferguson: rocks thrown at cop patrol cars, dumpsters set on fire across town

ferguson 28 4 15

Ferguson 28/4/15

Seattle: juvenile prison construction truck burnt in solidarity with Baltimore

29/4/15:

US, Baltimore: report on curfew horrorsreport of fireprotests in New York, Washington DC, Boston and FergusonDenver: cop pushed off motorbike (more here)

30/4/15:

US, Philadelphia: light clashes with cops on Freddie Gray  solidarity rally“Several times, the clash of protesters and police officers at Broad and Vine Street resulted in heavy pushing and shoving. In one photograph, a protester sitting on the shoulders of another wore a police cap that had been tossed into the air….About an hour later, the demonstrators rallied at the Federal Bureau of Prisons on Chestnut Street. Once there, they blocked the doors of the building. Prisoners inside the building could be heard banging on the windows and flashing their lights….A crowd eventually gathered at a statue of Frank Rizzo, a former police commissioner and mayor of Philadelphia from 1972 to 1980. …someone spray-painted “FTP” on the back of the Rizzo statue” Baltimore: tragic story of injured police officers only doing their job

croc tears

Sadly,  there’s always a dark cloud in front of every silver lining: “We’ve seen officers dressed in riot gear show their uniforms to little children and share laughs with teenagers and that’s encouraging” …hopefully laughs of derision…

the laughing policeman

“He said “I must arrest you!”

He didn’t know what for.

And then he started laughing

Until he cracked his  jaw.

Oh ho ho ho ho ho ho ho. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.”

Right-winger inadvertently reveals uncomfortable (if partial) truth amongst distorting lies “…support for rioters comes from a particular kind of thinking. This thinking sees oppression not as something that individuals do, but as a systemic process…In this view, Person A does not oppress Person B. Rather, “society” is structured in such a way as to make any action by Person A oppressive by definition to Person B. Person B is not oppressed by a man, but by The Man. This is a very dangerous kind of thinking. …Support for mass violence is the logical conclusion of this type of thinking. Once you believe that oppression is part of The System, the only way to stop oppression is by destroying The System…and there’s no way to do that without mass violence. The oppressors are not just going to let you change things peacefully, are they? There’s no effective way to argue against this, in my experience.”

1/5/15:

US, Seattle : clashes with cops Anti-capitalist protesters hurled wrenches and rocks at officers … Footage on social media showed protesters smashing shop windows in Seattle and crowds scattering as police in riot gear threw in “flashbang” grenades. Demonstrators set fire to garbage and damaged at least two dozen vehicles”….(Critique of Seattle media)Oakland “More than 100 windows at businesses, restaurants and banks along the route were smashed, and several people were taken into custody overnight. At least one vehicle was burned and others damaged on the lot of a local car dealership.” More here Portland “Pepper spray and flashbangs were also used in Portland after some protesters threw objects at officers and tried to force their way onto a bridge, the city police department said on its Twitter account. One officer was injured, it said.”….New York: Guggenheim Museum occupied by traditional labour activistsMinneapolis: high school students walk out to join anti-cop brutality demo….Baltimore: unintentionally funny video of CNN journalist moaning about hearing anti-cop  speechAtlanta, Georgia: cops pelted with stones, road blocked

Brief notes from someone in Baltimore:

” The situation remains quite fluid. In the “good” neighborhoods, life pretty much is going on as before. In the rest of the city, there’s been an effective militarization of the streets. The National Guard and police have a heavy presence. Last night, on my job, which borders one of the riot areas, I saw over 100 police cars silently stream up the street, sirens flashing, followed by rows of National Guard trucks. This stepped up military presence of course is intended to send a message.

 This weekend I think will determine how far events go. Several rallies are scheduled in support of the rioters. There’s still a lot of palpable  anger in the poor areas, an anger that will continue to simmer, especially if a whitewash of the police actions in Freddie Gray’s death is issued, which looks likely. Already, the Mayor and police department are attempting to downplay the results of the investigation and may even try to hold off releasing the information. New information is regularly coming out, such as news of a highly unusual and unplanned stop made by the police van carrying Gray on its way to the station. Small groups of protestors have tried to defy the curfew and this weekend, the numbers might grow. Another wildcard is if the nation wide demonstrations in solidarity expand. Contrary to what the authorities are trying to say, that the worst is behind, I think there’s a strong possibility of new eruptions.

 It’s impossible to summarize anything now. However, I don’t think the standard left response about poverty, unemployment, the need for jobs, captures the full dynamics of what’s going on. In some ways, the unrest reminds me of what happens in the French suburbs. The young people in the streets Monday night are still unheard; most of the “spokespeople” for the demonstrators are Black college students who don’t always have the raw contact with the street. In contrast to Ferguson, where you had a rebellion against a white-dominated political establishment, in Baltimore, there’s been an entrenched and self-serving Black political leadership ruling the city for decades. In some ways, it can be said the riots have been the first significant rebellion against this type of leadership and it’s been a welcome sign that many protesters see through the  hollowness of this establishment.

 These are just some quick thoughts.”

3/5/15:

US, Philadelphia: some graffiti

 

cops lives

4/5/15:

US, California: prison riot (no context for this riot) More here

10/5/15:

US, Nebraska: prison riot as 2 prisoners are found deadSeveral disruptions followed in various housing units, resulting in small fires and property damage, prison officials said. … “The inmates have taken over the prison.” More here“We’ve pretty much taken the whole prison,” Frank told the newspaper. He said that no prison employees were inside the housing unit and described the scene, saying: “The ceilings are fallen. There’s drywall on fire. There’s cameras torn down,” according to the Journal Star.Foster told the Omaha World-Herald that inmates had gained access to an office with a phone. At some point during the disturbance, a second inmate was injured by a rubber projectile”

18/5/15:

US, Oregon: small anarchist demo against killer cops; Starbucks and bank windows smashed, traffic disrupted

Police in area

19/5/15:

US, California: 200 prisoners riot (not at all clear what this was about or what happened)

21/5/15:

US, Washington: a few rocks thrown at cops after cop shoots and badly wounds unarmed would-be shoplifters  (video here)…

olympia

Philadelphia: clashes with cops after homeless man is arrested

23/5/15:

US, Cleveland: highway blocked in protest against cops’ acquittal after killing black youths

24/5/15:

US, Oakland: cops crack down on night time protests “…the city began implementing a law that requires that protest marches be permitted and that they be limited to sidewalks and take place before dark. The group then headed towards Oakland Police Department, but officers turned them back. Some of the marchers— and the police who followed— blocked a portion of Broadway.”

29/5/15:

US, Michigan: pig craps on pigs

30/5/15:

US, Baltimore: report of how much damage was done to shops in the riots last month “More than 380 businesses were struck, a mix of national chains and local vendors. The toll included dozens of shops selling phones and other electronics, more than 30 liquor stores, pharmacies and at least seven jewelers, according to a list compiled by the Baltimore Development Corp. Family Dollar saw damage at eight locations, Boost Mobile at 14.”

31/5/15:

US, Florida: riot in teenage girls’ detention centre One of the girls managed to steal keys from a member of the detention staff, enabling them to open doors inside the facility and allowing the other defendants to engage in multiple counts of battery”

7/6/15:

US, New Jersey: hip hop on a cop  The annual New York City hip-hop festival Summer Jam devolved into a tense and scary situation as police fired tear gas at a group of attendees. According to reports, a small riot broke out as fans waited in long lines to enter MetLife Stadium. Several people were seen throwing bottles at New Jersey State Police, injuring one officer. Police responded by using tear gas grenades. Several people were also arrested. In a statement, New Jersey State Police said, “This evening, security personnel at one of the entrance gates to MetLife Stadium were confronted by crowds attempting to illegally enter the sold out Summer Jam concert by climbing over fences and forcing their way through security personnel…”

8/6/15:

US, Los Angeles: “black lives matter” activists camp out on pavement in front of mayor’s house

mayor-garcetti-home-img_0284

“They’re all these rich white people gawking at us like we’re ornaments on a tree. They see all these black and brown faces and they get a little bit intimidated, they get a little bit antsy. The mayor went out of his way to go through the back [of his house], so that says our presence actually made him uncomfortable, that’s the point of this” 

16/6/15:

US, Ohio: cops clash with teenagers at swimming pool

21/6/15:

US, Charleston: Confederate flags burnt, memorial graffitied, in protests against mass murder More here A second Charleston statue memorializing 19th-century South Carolina statesman John Calhoun was defaced in recent days as well… Initially, the monument to the secessionist and defender of slavery read “Truth Justice and the Constitution.” But the words “AND SLAVERY” were tacked on the end.”

26/6/15:

US, Chicago: public burning of Confederate flag

1/7/15:

US, New York: disarm the cops demo burns stars and stripes

2/7/15:

US, Arizona: 2nd night of riot in prison In Wednesday’s incident, a small group of minimum security inmates were chasing down an inmate when prison staff intervened to stop the assault, Wilder said. The inmates assaulted the officers, and six officers suffered minor injuries.,.. it took a couple of hours to get the prisoners back to their housing units…Thursday’s incident involved many more inmates and turned into a full-blown riot involving an unknown number of inmates…. It took many hours for prison staff and Department of Corrections officers to bring the situation under control, and the prison wasn’t secured until early Friday morning, Wilder said. Three guards were hurt.”

4/7/15:

US, Arizona: July 4th celebrations prison-style Problems began July 2 in the medium-security Hualapai Unit of the Arizona State Prison Complex-Kingman when inmates were “non-compliant and caused significant damage” in two housing areas”

5/7/15:

US, Arizona: I have only one burning desire – let me stand next to your fire

12/7/15:

US, Louisville: “EXPLETIVE the police!”

18/7/15:

US, South Carolina: report on anti-KKK demo (see also this, on the wave of attacks on the confederate flag and other racist symbols) 

20/7/15:

US, Denver: disruption of pro-cop demo (video)

21/7/15:

US, Alabama: protesters block roads after cops claim 18-year-old woman hanged herself in police cell

22/7/15:

US: various demos against the cop murder of Sandra Bland Sandra Bland had stated during her arrest, ” “Don’t it make you feel good officer Encinia? You’re a real man now.”. After her death her mother said : ” Sandra Bland’s mother stated: “I have a baby to put in the ground. She wasn’t my convict, she wasn’t my suspect – she was my baby. Once I put this baby in the ground, I’m ready. … This means war.

25/7/15:

US, Arizona: excellent “Black Lives Matter” disruption (video)

26/7/15:

US, Cleveland: cops and anti-cop protesters clash after 14-year-old is beaten for carrying open container

29/7/15:

US, Cincinatti: new version of “What is to be done?”

30/7/15:

US, Ferguson: mayor forced to leave meeting as clashes break out in Town Hall protestsFlorida: confed lives don’t matter

1/8/15:

US, Texas: 16-year-old immigrant burns cop car

5/8/15:

US: report of manipulative cop brainwashing of youngsters

7/8/15:

US, Ferguson: demonstrators block traffic

8/8/15:

US, Ferguson: roast pig

cop pig on plate

9/8/15:

US, Ferguson: the rulers’ protectors and servers shoot someone after coming under fire; commodities liberated “You know the police and this racist system value stuff, their property, more than our lives, like we’re disposable. If our lives are so disposable, we oughta gladly dispose of their stuff.” – here

“A few lootings were reported through the night and windows to some store fronts were smashed. Paul Hampel, a reporter for the St Louis Post-Dispatch, was assaulted and robbed by looters minutes after reporting on their actions on Twitter.”

fuck the media

Baltimore: crowd watching illegal dirt bikers pelt cops with rocks; no arrests

10/8/15:

US, St.Louis: cops attacked with rocks and bottlesstate of emergency declared…more here… See also CONFLICTING REALITIES: THE FERGUSON POLICE DO IT AGAIN AND SOMETIMES WE SHOOT BACK

11/8/15;

US, Ferguson: frozen water bottles and rocks thrown at cops…on 50th anniversary of Watts riot See also STATE OF EMERGENCY DECLARED IN FERGUSON AS OATH KEEPERS ARRIVE…discussion between eyewitnesses/participants of last 2 days of events: “On the anniversary of Mike Brown’s murder: 48 hours in Ferguson”

12/8/15:

US, California: riot follows prisoner’s killing of Hugo Pinell, one of the San Quentin 6 politicised prisoners of 1971, a man who’d killed a screw Though this is pure speculation – maybe this was manipulated by screws…? And this seems to confirm something like that…Oakland: roads blocked, stores attacked, anti-cop graffiti painted after 4th black guy since June is killed by cops 

15/8/15:

US, St.Louis: weird report about Oathkeepers arming black groups in order to affirm right to carry arms openly (presumably to claim to be non-racist)

19/8/15:

US, St.Louis: protesters block roads, start fires,  as another black guy is shot dead by cops The protests escalated, with demonstrators throwing bricks and bottles at police, who responded with tear gas in an attempt to clear the streets…Late Wednesday, images on social media showed at least one car and one building set on fire, and demonstrators piling burning furniture into the street.” More here ” In the wake of the killing, crowds poured into the street, where they were met with military police tanks and tear-gas. People cursed the police, burned American flags, erected barricades, and chanted “Black Lives Matter.” Some first-hand accounts here.

Firefighters attempt to put out a fire at an abandoned building with the protection of St. Louis City Police in St. Louis, Missouri August 19, 2015. According to eyewitness, protesters demonstrating against a police shooting earlier in the day in St. Louis set the building on fire. St. Louis police fatally shot a black teenager on Wednesday who they say pointed a gun at them, and later faced angry crowds, reigniting racial tensions first sparked by the killing of an unarmed black teen in another Missouri town a year ago. REUTERS/Lawrence Bryant TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY - RTX1OVQE

cop guards burning abandoned property, St.Louis

Nashville: graffiti artist gives some sound medical advice

24/8/15:

US, Atlanta: cops in graffiti horror shock!!!

26/8/15:

US, New Jersey: a certain chemistry between woman and cop

2/9/15:

US, Baltimore: fairly minor clashes with filth at Freddie Gray hearingwhilst professional activists of “Occupy Baltimore” try to possess these protests, insisting they’ll remain “peaceful”Texas: horror shock graffiti outrage shock outrage horror

cop gun texas

4/9/15:

US, Washington: black block anti-cop mini-riot after cop not prosecuted for shooting & paralysing would-be shoplifter (anarchist report here)New Orleans: cop car window brokenMissouri: 2 women arrested for anti-cop graffitiNew York state: more graffiti

webster graffiti

Whilst basic proletarian graffiti like this gets horror shock reactions from cop-lovers exaggeratedly fearful of any results, this safely sweet “middle class graffiti” elsewhere gets results and praise:

painted-post-box

Meanwhile:

ferguson evedrywhere graffiti

14/10/15:

US, Baltimore: activists occupy City Hall with reformist demands concerning cops

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end of chronology

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 Recommended: the most concrete edition of Insurgent Notes ever – Issue 11
Contains first-hand accounts and reflections from New York (one on Manhattan, the other on Brooklyn), Philadelphia, Chicago, Oakland, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Pittsburgh
 
See also:
REFLECTIONS ON THE FERGUSON UPRISING
This is a very interesting conversation, in particular  about the contradictions of being an anarchist living in the area and not wanting to be in the activist role yet wanting to have an influence (and be influenced)….
 

“That’s one of things about the limitations of the riot. There’s this disconnect between people being in the streets together and larger or more nuanced social struggle. How does rioting lead to bigger occupations or general strikes or occupied neighborhoods or completely autonomous zones or neighborhoods where the cops can never go?Because there are these other entities now. To answer the question of how the social terrain in St. Louis has changed, there are more activists now, these politicized people, and they’re still trying to find their way, and there’s more socialists and more Black Power nationalists or people involved in trying to get “police oversight.”

 It seems like there’s always going to be a disconnect between those people and those who are not organizers.

There’s no inside I can join or a vanguard that meets who are the realest of the real. There’s just people, some who are organized in sketchy ways that I can probably never be a part of, some who just show up and fight.”

 ******************************************************

The following was written in September 2014 and obviously things have changed since then:

 Since the social explosion in August (and even whilst it was going on) there have been quite a few killings by the cops, most notably this one in  Chicago. On 26/8/14 there was a mini-riot at a vigil for this murdered teenager “…some pelted police with candles and bricks, authorities said. People threw branches, bottles and other debris from the street while yelling “CPDK,” which stands for “Chicago Police Department Killer,” officials said. At some point, a woman drove a Ford Escape into an officer, sending him to the hospital with a fractured leg. Two other officers also were hospitalized after they crashed their squad car heading to the melee… police intentionally provoked family members who were devastated by Desean’s death. “The police officer kicked over a candle and said ‘Awww, too bad he’s dead,’” White claimed outside of the courtroom Wednesday. “Why would he do that?”…Other family members said the officer laughed, tore down memorial posters and stomped on more candles.”.

But for the most part, the only thing following these  murders have been peaceful marches. Why haven’t these broken through the fear barrier and confronted these protectors and servers of the dominant misery with the fury such brutality merits? Perhaps one of the reasons (there are undoubtedly others) is the absence of a living libertarian tendency in the areas where these cop kilings have taken place, which is not so much the case in St.Louis. Which is not to say that “revolutionaries” are indispensible for revolt, but certainly practical ideas can help create a culture and community of opposition to challenge the mere image of it.

” What the image of revolt does do is to modify the conditions of social alienation – and thus the struggle against it. It is integrated into the mainstream of social life, and is produced, consumed and reproduced by millions of proletarians as modified spectacle of their dispossession, whether as tranquilizer or as justification for cynicism and resignation.”

Chris Shutes, “On the Poverty of Berkeley Life”, 1983

This very interesting text – “New Ghettoes Burning” (from August 17th) –  gives more verifiable reasons why the revolt in Ferguson has been so constantly ongoing: Police killings have sparked outrage and limited riots in many cities in the US in recent memory. But none of these events have been able to take on this same character, and none have been this difficult to suppress. An urban counterpart to events in Ferguson was the 2013 Flatbush riots in New York. These riots, similarly sparked by a police murder, were crushed much faster than the riots in Ferguson, despite the fact that they seem to have attracted larger protests and garnered greater immediate and active support from the surrounding neighborhood. So what accounts for the difference? Why did Flatbush not create the type of national atmosphere that Ferguson has? The difference between the two is primarily one of terrain. Flatbush is in a central inner-city zone, monitored and occupied by the world’s seventh largest standing army, the NYPD. The uprising took place in a city that, after the ghetto riots of the late ‘60s, was completely redesigned for riot suppression—avenues were widened, housing projects were dispersed, movable objects were chained to the sidewalk, etc. When the riot broke out, it was deftly suppressed by well-trained tactical squads operating on an urban battlefield that had literally been built for them….. In Ferguson, by contrast, the rioting erupted in a region with so many micro-municipalities that some local police departments have as few as five officers. The county and city government, pumped full of military-grade equipment but lacking in people trained to use it, found itself wielding a police force that was both inept and heavy-handed. These suburban police were well-armed but also ill-trained in riot suppression. They fired teargas almost immediately—something that the NYPD hardly ever does, and other large police departments only use when they must clear a space rapidly or force an evacuation of territory that has been occupied for some time (like Oscar Grant Plaza). They then shot a second person. And, for all that, they failed to make significant mass arrests, were unable to corral protestors, and mostly just stood parked in front of big box stores firing tear gas canisters. They were so inept, in fact, that the state stepped in, putting the highway patrol in charge. One reason that the tactics failed, however, is that the suburbs themselves are not designed for the prevention and crushing of riots, as are the major cities. Corralling protestors becomes nearly impossible. The police have few staging areas that are secure, nearby and out of sight. The rioters’ targets are more dispersed and cannot easily be defended—large forces have to be committed to basically sit in front of strip malls and other big targets, spreading the police thin across the terrain.” (excerpt) 

CHICAGO CHANGE COMING

demonstrator, Chicago

It’s been over 50 years since Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” (and James Baldwin’s “The fire next time”). And whilst the movement of the 1960s certainly challenged capitalist social relations in certain ways, the weaknesses and eventual defeat of that partly revolutionary epoch has meant that the only changes that came were those which kept everything the same. That is to say,  merely an accumulation of rebellious images of revolt and change  (ie cosmetic reforms – eg more black police chiefs, more blacks amongst the exploiters, a black president, etc). Optimism is as much a form of resignation as pessimism.

Whilst it’s very unlikely that  the world won’t see some attempts to change things of even greater significance than have erupted over the last 4 years, it’ll require  considerable reflection and practical experiment to reduce the possiblity of repeating the same tired old mistakes to the bare minimum. Just hoping that change will come, however, is another useless way of avoiding the immensity of such a task. The immensity of this task involves, amongst other things, recognising that the environmental crisis and the crisis of capital accumulation which vastly limits capitalism’s non-genocidal choices means that there is far less time left to make the leap to such a revolutionary change than there was 50 years ago. Each new generation faced with this frightening future is going to have to seriously apply themselves to unravelling the strengths and weaknesses not just of present movements, but of those past movements searching for some exit from the craziness.

***********************************************

The following was written (by me) for some friends in St. Louis, about a month before Ferguson erupted, and was to be included in a compilation of memories, poems, etc related to the response in St.Louis to the Trayvon Martin case. This compilation has been put  back in the metaphorical cupboard, since current events have obviously gone way beyond what happened a year ago.

July 14th 2013:

The Storming of the Bastille

When George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin’s killer, was found not guilty I expected there to be riots, like there’d been in 1992 after the release of the cops videoed beating Rodney King. But this is a very different epoch, and Barack Obama played a clever game of sympathising with those who were angry at the result of the trial, just as he had known how to tame the anger of the blacks soon after the killing when he’d said something along the lines of “Trayvon Martin could have been my son, he could have been me 35 years ago”.  Something no white president could have even begun to do, obviously (which is why significant sections of American capital groomed him for the presidency).  When virtually nothing happened the day after Zimmerman was cleared, I had no expectations of anything.  But the reality of expressed anger was fortunately a bit better than that – something between massive riots and everyone stuck at home.

We went along to what I somehow thought was the town courthouse and there was a smallish demonstration (perhaps 250  at first, but maybe it grew a bit). The speeches were being addressed from the stairs to the rest of us. Everyone could use the mic if they wanted (apparently this had very rarely been the case for demos in the past). The speakers were almost exclusively black. They spoke like it was a revivalist church meeting – and many in the crowd responded as if they were shouting “Amen”. I found most of it a performance of anger, not authentically embodied or felt, not passionately put over in any genuine way, a role that people in the States seem to put on almost habitually, like they’ve been raised on Jeremy Kyle or Oprah Winfrey and think this manner is “natural”. Anyway, it seems a more crude internalisation of “correct” forms of social behaviour than the subtler role-playing you get  in France (where I live) or the UK (where I come from), but maybe others from outside French or UK culture would find different forms of method acting phoniness in the way the French or Brits express themselves than someone, like me,  more immersed in the culture.  Personally, being white, with a British accent, having shortly before arrived in the States, I didn’t feel confident enough to speak, particularly as what I would have tried to say would have been a little more incendiary and provocative than the standard speeches about democracy and changing things through a change in governing personnel.

There were a couple of black teenage girls with a life-size cardboard cut-out of Obama carrying a packet of Skittles (what Trayvon Martin had gone out to buy when he was shot). I approached them saying something to the effect that Obama was no better than George Bush, that he was a mass murderer like all capitalist leaders. They told me I was being “totally negative”, the standard response used to avoid dealing with what and how one says something. As if one could be anything but negative towards someone one had called a mass murderer.  A bit later, as the demo moved off round the centre of town, a black guy, considerably older than the teenagers, came up to me and said he  agreed with what I’d said about capitalism and we chatted for a couple of minutes, making me feel a bit better about the whole situation. The demonstrators were chanting “No justice – no peace” (without the follow-up: “…fuck the police!”), and I pointed out to a couple of women that unfortunately all we’ve got is no justice and far too much peace. They laughed. Then suddenly a contingent of the demonstration ran off – about 100 or so – and I rushed off with them, making sure I caught up with my (at that time) 19 year-old daughter. Somebody had got nicked. The cops had their batons out, but they’d clearly been told to soft pedal the response to the verdict, and weren’t overtly very aggressive. Someone tagged “fuck the police” on the back of a bus whilst there was a lot of running around. Then a really sudden extraordinarily heavy downpour. Within 5 seconds we were drenched like we’d been chucked into a pool with our clothes on. The cops and media disappear with that torrential rain (we know, from the Wizard of Oz, what happens if evil sorcerers get covered in water).

So it’s pissing down and we all loudly head back toward what I somehow thought was the town courthouse, and I go first into  the little vestibule banging a saucepan very noisily. Everybody else seemed a little hesitant, like I’d stepped over an invisible barrier that everybody normally respected. But then this was the vestibule of the city jail, and not merely a courthouse as I’d assumed. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. The noise we were making was deafening, and seemed to echo into the area beyond the glass doors we were not going through.  I suggested going further than the vestibule. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, urging others to join them. Ignorance is bliss.  A masked guy (Zorro? the Lone Ranger? Billy the Kid?) ran in and chucked the only thing that moved – a floor mat. When he returned a bit later, and threw in some flowers that he’d just picked from outside the jail, a black woman got upset – “This is meant to be a peaceful demonstration – Trayvon Martin’s family insisted it should be peaceful”. What sad/mad times these are when throwing flowers is somehow thought of as not peaceful enough.

“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread

Angels never go to war – they masturbate instead”

We then retreat from the jail as we get pushed out by armed guards.  A few minutes later the courthouse is surrounded by heavily armoured riot cops with their sticks at the ready, the TV cameras reappearing for the first time since the downpour.  We all go off back to our cars, and then off to a birthday party of a woman friend of my friends. She was born on July 14th, famous in France for what happened in 1789 – Bastille Day – appropriate, since we’d “stormed” the city jail. Well, almost –  the vestibule…still, it sounds good – “WE STORMED THE CITY JAIL!!! – ON BASTILLE DAY!!!!!”

This wasn’t great, of course –  but it was good because it made people feel good.  Something considerably better is needed and even then, it won’t be enough.  The days when such incidents are a dime a dozen is still a long way off – maybe so long that they won’t happen in my lifetime.

Or – who knows? – maybe sooner than I or you think. The optimist in me and the perception of a very deep anger increasingly reverberating almost everywhere, makes me think sooner, much sooner than I dare to hope. But either way, it  won’t depend on us, but we can certainly have an influence.  And we should aim to influence ourselves and others to a point that satisfies us, that makes us feel like we’ve accomplished something significant. Which means persistently experimenting, constantly keeping abreast of reality, and always trying to extend our humanity and lucidity.

Some links:

St Louis:

http://www.ksdk.com/news/article/388327/3/Hundreds-protest-Zimmerman-verdict-in-St-Louis

http://fox2now.com/2013/07/14/rally-to-be-held-in-downtown-st-louis-for-trayvon-martin/

Oakland:
http://www2.canada.com/news/acquittal+trayvon+martin+death+sparks+protest+calif+cities+vandalism/8658009/story.html?id=8658009

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/14/oakland-demonstrators-burn-flags-smash-cop-car-after-zimmerman-verdict-photos/

http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/3-charged-in-Oakland-protests-4671454.php

LA:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/07/16/zimmerman-protesters-raid-la-wal-mart-stop-freeway/

Though perhaps the best critique of the cops came from a cop himself, shortly before July 14th:

http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2013/07/11/st-louis-officer-hit-by-ricocheting-bullet/

Short discussion between Y, a black guy from South Africa and X, a white guy from St.Louis

Y asked:

” Have you any sense that blacks in the US are coming together to ask questions about the way they live and maybe searching for solutions in between the explosions that have erupted once a decade for the past 30 years (LA, Cincinati, St Louis)? Your site says interesting things about the distance between the young and the old leftist organisations: does this disdain for senile leftism translate into any new activity other than a few riots? “

X replied:

People are definitely talking about racialized poverty, exclusion from the economy, targeted policing. I don’t have a sense that people are talking about a solution to those problems outside the evolving movement against the police/police killings that has been coalescing across the country for the past 6+ years (Oakland, LA, Seattle, Oakland again, North Carolina, New York, Atlanta…). A peak of which was the national mobilizations in the wake of the killing of Trayvon Martin. What’s changing is not so much police policy or economic benefits (social democracy) or even some sort of community organized relief but rather the way people respond to the violence of the police and the structural inequalities of society. It’s shifted from individual and suicidal acts of vengeance to collective protest, mass rebellion, armed yet chaotic and uncoordinated uprising. 

 
This is the way in which “our” society is changing right now. Later there will undoubtedly be other changes (recuperative, repressive, loosening or tightening of the noose) but there will also be the living memory of these dramatic events, the experience of street battles that people will never forget and that they will carry with them into future rebellions. These are mostly young people after all learning how to use the weapons of social struggle. I think it’s a mistake to see these more recent events across the country as isolated flare ups given that the participants themselves understand the connections and often have been involved in some of the different moments. Whether that experience and momentum will actually carry forward to more rebellion and even radical social transformation remains to be seen, but it certainly does feel as if we are on the other side of some sort of tipping point.
 
Hope that helps.”

Y replied:

“The problem is not that people do not understand connections among various moments of rebellion, but that there really seems no material basis for solidarity being developed. This is certainly the case in SA. The rebels of the 70s/80s are still among us, the experience of one of the most significant revolutionary movements of the past century remains well within living memory, but almost none of them have anything to do with the struggles going on now, nor do those in the present struggle show any interest in learning from these past experiences, nor are any material links being made among participants in even the present struggles so that a sustained movement capable of withstanding the inevitable counter-attacks and setbacks can begin to emerge. The old organisations such as the Panthers had that going for them. The new relations established during moments of heightened struggle all too often take on a mythological or symbolic function during the daily grind. Activists imagine that somehow, some way, they will have some sort of lasting effect, whose existence, without any concrete basis in observable facts, remains speculation. Everybody else tends to simply refer to similarities in situation, in cause and effect — Watts: Ferguson, Sharpeville: Marikana — without even bothering to impute imaginary continuities regarding the respective social relations. The latter tendency, while practically useless, seems at least less delusional than the former. Which is not to say that the past is ‘lost’ to us; I am well aware of the ‘return of the repressed’ and so on. The point is that this return, the memory of exceptional moments, remains limited to new exceptional moments, while what is needed, it seems to me, is the ability to make the exceptional habitable. Are people starting to develop the basis for such an ability? Not in South Africa, not that I can see. There seems much more movement in this direction in places like Brazil and Portugal, but maybe that’s just a defect of my own perception…”

X replied:

“I agree that something more, something different would have to develop in order for this cycle of struggles to become … well more than it currently is: concrete material gains taken in the course of struggle (land, housing, useful infrastructure, lasting relationships, anything else?), expanding beyond the limits currently in place (geography, race, protest/rioting that is distinct from one’s daily routine). But the context in this case is everything if we’re talking about the relative importance of this moment. Is this a revolutionary break? No, at least not yet, but it is a huge change from the recent past. From isolated individuals who just want to die while taking a few police or politicians with them to a collective yet often divided force that is not afraid of death but has a sense that there could be a future worth fighting for and living to see. Maybe its difficult to understand the power and importance of that shift from a different context, but it’s something akin to going from almost nothing to a flawed but real and sustained something.

The generational lesson of the 60’s was most generally, “violence doesn’t work.” The people who were around for those rebellions and are still around are carrying that message forward and attempting to pacify the angry ones. Where there are actual links and a coherent movement to speak of is not between ’65 or even ’92 and ’14 but rather ’08, ’13, ’14. Some of the same people on the streets last year are on the streets today and perhaps that trend will continue.
 
I’m not sure what is meant by “no material basis for solidarity.” Could that be elaborated? I certainly feel a genuine basis for solidarity based on my lived experience of the world (violence, dis-empowerment and humiliation at the hands of the police, the brutality of poverty, etc.) I have also seen and participated in moments of what I would describe as material solidarity (perhaps too numerous and emotionally laden to enumerate here and now). 
 
I also don’t agree about the Panthers or any similarly structured organization being able to withstand the counter-attacks of the State. Fred Hampton was shot in his bed. Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver fell victim to drugs and the cult of personality (both of which can be understood as elements of a broader counter-revolutionary strategy), Cleaver even going so far as to design jeans with a pouch for his genitalia before becoming a born again Christian and member of the conservative Republican party. The Panthers were totally destroyed by the State through every conceivable means. Those who weren’t “neutrlized” wen’t down the path of specialized and isolated armed struggle via the Black Liberation Army, United Freedom Front, etc. But more to the point, even before that destruction the Panthers came out against and attempted to stop rebellions of which they were not the leading force, which they could not contain and control. The Panthers wanted to be the State and an uncontrollable rebellion is not conducive to State control, it can’t be ridden into power, without first being reigned in, precisely because it disperses power and defies authority. 
 
Today we have the New Black Panther Party and they have played exactly the same role in Ferguson. Their role in the events has been to direct traffic, protect shops that others were attempting to loot, telling people to go home and obey the state imposed curfew, marshalling crowds onto sidewalks, projecting terror into peoples’ minds by declaring that we will all be massacred unless we obey police commands thus ignoring or attempting to hide the middle ground that people have been occupying since the beginning: somewhere between all out war and compliance. The NBPP even goes so far as to don berets, sunglasses and leather jackets. A testament to just how out of touch they are with the current moment and generation. Fitted hats, t-shirts as masks, high top sneakers: these would all be better choices for a uniform. 
 
Forgive me if I’ve misunderstood anything, it’s not wilful. It’s nice to think that we can communicate around the world like this without really knowing each other. I’m certainly still existing in an emotionally and physically exhausting environment and I wouldn’t want that to get in the way.”
 
 Y replied:
 
“Thanks for your response, I appreciate that you speak from first-hand experience and take the trouble to engage under what must be intense conditions with many other immediately pressing concerns demanding your attention. The fact that you don’t let exhaustion get in the way with such distant communication seems to me worthy of much admiration.

To clarify a few things: by ‘material basis for solidarity’ I mean precisely what you call ‘material gains taken in the course of struggle(land, housing, useful infrastructure, lasting relationships…)’. The miserable lived experience of the world we share is overwhelmingly determined by our common dispossession of these…

My question was not directed towards ‘the relative importance of this moment’, which I don’t dispute. What I’m wondering is precisely how does this ‘flawed but real something’ get sustained? What happened in the five years between ’08 and ’13 that was different than what happened in the five years prior? In what concrete ways did ’13 change things again, once the dust settled, so that the year which followed was lived differently? And for whom was it different? And why just for them, and not the millions of others who share the same lived-experience but have never felt compelled to get onto the streets or do anything else to change their condition? What new things have been done to draw these significant others into the conversation, the convivium, the collective struggles and re-inventions of an era in which recycled and pre-cycled fear of the unknown continues to rule supreme? How have these measures fared? What else might have been done, in this direction? What might still be done? What new things will be done after the appearance of order has successfully been imposed on the streets? Where exactly have new concrete possibilities opened up, and what practical steps are being taken (by whom?) in order to take advantage of them? 

As for the Panthers, old and new, I share your critical assessment of them. However I was not holding them up as an example to be followed, but rather an example of a practical attempt at change which, like all others, expresses many contradictions including that between revolutionary and reactionary aspects, practices and relations. They shared with your comrades-in-arms a revolutionary subjectivity in conscious antagonism to the agents of oppression and a gut fury against a system that needs such agents to function. They communised a network of places throughout the ghettos of the US in which people could begin to get organised, to share and develop required techniques and consciousness of their own condition. To learn to handle all that may prove necessary. To co-operate. To this they added a thousand free lunches they distributed everyday, their autonomous press, and arms for self-defense. It seems that their tendency to centralise the latter into the hands of specialised cadres acting under centralised command played a major part in their destruction. Tactically this move, determined by their adherence to a third-worldist ‘armed struggle’ ideology woefully inappropriate to their conditions, was a deadly blunder. It allowed the state to take them out without appearing to assault the black populations in which they operated as a whole. The biggest strength of their specific situation, the fact that the authorities could not resort to the sort of scorched-earth tactics used against rural-based guerillas from the Boer war onwards without extremely grave consequences (when pushed, the US may again resort to the violence seen in the Kent and Jackson state university shootings, but these in turn pushed 100 000 to engage in ‘civil war’ on the streets of the capital and 25 000 onto streets nationwide in the largest and most audacious disruptions the country had ever seen on Mayday 1971 as well as the only nationwide student-strike involving 4 million students [Samotnaf note: this is not accurate and rather confusing ]; had they not rapidly resorted to less lethal repression things would certainly have escalated even further), was thus left unexploited. If, on the other hand, they had made available a cache of arms supplied by residents in surrounding neighborhoods and accessed when residents themselves (including, importantly, women and girls: struggle against racist violence goes hand in hand with struggle against the sexist variety) embarked on self-defence militia/police-the-police patrols, the situation would have been far more difficult for the state. They then would have functioned more as facilitators contributing infrastructure and specialist expertise to the sort of citizen’s militia that predates standing armies and on which the US gun laws are based. Any group acting as specialists of violence in modern states can only compete against an established order which claims a monopoly on such a role. Considering the heavy superiority of the authorities in most cases, such a course of action can only court catastrophe. If the co-ordinated use of arms is to have any sustainable basis in future struggle, it will have to be based on self-defence self-organised by ordinary folks, for ordinary folks. Specialists can at most play a subsidiary role in such a case: contributing experience towards a collective study of strategy and martial arts, target-practice and arms storage, facilitating licencing, manufacture (which is now possible on a decentralised mass basis with 3D printers), and so on. Most of all it is essential that bases for communal self-defense are accessible to the diversity of interests, tactics and struggles to be found throughout the community: the struggles of youth against the imposition of compulsory irrational sex morality by the church, the school and the family, of kids against compulsory brainwashing in classrooms, of women against patriarchal oppression, of the hungry against hunger, of immigrants against immigration laws, of workers against work, of people without homes against homes without people. In this way ‘armed struggle’ could develop as a sustainable, organic expression of people who have begun to constitute themselves as a coherent force in the social war: one necessary front that crosses and is crossed by all the others, a practical tool in the service of everyday human needs (as when Panthers would show up at anti-eviction actions to stare down the marshals, guns in hand — of course such tactics would have to be used extremely judiciously, and certainly never when they would likely lead to avoidable armed conflict) rather than a machismo fetish in the service of a wannabe state bureaucracy.

There are other examples that could have served just as well, I simply thought to use something that was local and thus obvious. The ‘material basis for solidarity’ could also be found in the network of street & area comittees, civics, unions, student and youth groups, autonomous women’s and worker’s groups, religious networks and so on inside and out of the UDF which facilitated sustained mobilisation in South Africa even after the first State of Emergency was imposed in 1984. Unfortunately, these were riven with many deadly contradictions of their own, which contributed towards their vulnerability. Eventually, after the second, more thorough State of Emergency was imposed in 1986, and the campaign of paramilitary terrorism begun in 1989, these networks were (with the notable exception of the unions, necessary to keep blacks from taking up the struggle violently suppressed in the streets on other terrain, which they continue to do, with more or less difficulty) also completely destroyed, surviving at best only in appearance but with no mass base.

Hopefully this helps us understand each other better. As for my questions, they are not necessarily meant to be answered immediately by you or any other individual, though those wanting to document their experiences later might benefit from keeping them in mind. It is more important that we and fellows in Ferguson, Cape Town, Lisbon, Faridabad keep asking these sorts of questions and, in audacious but always concrete steps, try to work out the answers together. “
 
And X finished, for the moment, with:
 
“This has been helpful, understanding other perspectives, putting some thoughts in writing, having something to concentrate on other than anxiety and worry. I’ll definitely open this up from here and let others read, see if there are thoughts or a conversation to be had. Maybe that will produce another response. For now though I don’t have anything to add. Thanks for taking the time to engage with me/us about this. It’s not without meaning.”
******************************
 Added 16/8/15:
 
black on black murder  black on black murder  black on black murder
In many of the threads dominated by cops, their friends and families, and much of the conservative working class as well, the mantra-cum-cliché of those who defend &/or are utterly resigned to  this fundamentally sick stupid anti-social society and in particular the power-crazed cops who police it,  repeat endlessly the fact that there has been an enormous amount of black on black murder.
Of course, this is taken  out of all historical context:
For example, the fact that for blacks the miserable high-risk drug industry is virtually the only work they can get in many areas, and besides, pays considerably more than the vast majority of black minimum wage wage slaves can earn; not to mention other significant factors like the state-encouraged inundation of rebellious areas with drugs ever since the late 1960s and the decimation of traditional forms of work. .
 
That’s the only “argument” these reactionaries have for justifying the slaughter of blacks by the filth (though not just blacks by any means). Even within its own terms “black on black” murders (punished by heavy sentences in the gulag of the prisons where cop murderers hardly ever end up, and where once again blacks are turned into slaves) obviously hardly justify the cops getting away with mass murder. Anybody who defends this society can only resort to such ideological “facts” divorced from all context, and irrelevant to the obvious fact of the increasing amount of killer-cops  because they are totally dominated by the idiotic discourse churned out endlessly by the corporate media and repeated endlessly in the meaningless chatter of those who parrot it.
black on black murder  black on black murder  black on black murder
Added 11/8/18:
Union bureaucrat gives $25,000 to racist non-prosecutor of Mike Brown’s murderer
 
 
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Comments

7 responses to “ferguson….”

  1. igor carl wiener avatar
    igor carl wiener

    just wanted to let you know that we linked your fine compilation on our blog, you probably won’t mind. http://mentalerandale.wordpress.com/2014/09/23/copy-paste-ferguson-fighting-fear-with-fire-a-compilation/

    regards from the country of deadly silence!

  2. […] their piece “Hey, Step Back with the Riot Shaming” remains as relevant as it was this summer. Ferguson Fighting Fear with Fire from the Dialectical Delinquents site is a huge compilation of information taken from a lot of different sources, including first-hand […]

  3. SK avatar
    SK

    Apropos the discussion between X and Y.

    During an insurrection the likes of which the current uprising in the US seems only one step away, the situationists said “The practical problem that Reggio, and all the other battles of the last two years in which blood has been split, has objectively posed to the workers isn’t the problem of disarming the police, but that of arming the proletariat.” (http://www.notbored.org/calabria.html) Today we might say ‘The practical problem that Ferguson, Marikana, Ayotzinapa, and all the other all the other battles of the last few years in which blood has been split has posed isn’t the problem of disarming the police, but that of arming the proletariat.’

  4. SK avatar
    SK

    It should be pointed out, however, that the Italian insurrection, and the smaller revolts which resemble the current rebellions so much, all had much to do with an immense revolt against WORK the likes of which cannot be seen anywhere in the world at present. The assault workers against their alienation spilled over into the streets; the impassioned, creative, strategic violence they directed against their bosses translated into impassioned, creative, strategic violence against their bosses minions — politicians, unions, leftists and police. Something of the sort was in fact seen in the 2006 Oaxaca rebellion but, significantly, this was isolated from what was going on elsewhere in the country both in terms of the street fighting and the workplace struggles which precipitated it. In this context it seems best to specify that the arms most desperately needed by proletarians today are the weapons of CLASS STRUGGLE. That said, caution should be taken with too schematic a relation between struggles inside and out of the workplace. It is a fact, for example, that the incredible explosion of violent struggle among workers in South Africa during the 1970s – 80s was a direct result of the struggles of students and unemployed youth which preceded them in the streets. There is no automatic causal relationship that automatically confers primacy to worker militancy. It may cause insurrection, or may be caused by it. What is certain is that the two need to go together, or they will all too soon begin to wither away in the inferno of bourgeois repression.

  5. Sam FantoSamotnaf avatar

    List of prison-related events sent by a friend through email:

    INSIDE
    On August 14, 11 detainees began a hunger strike at Krome Immigrant Detention Center in Miami, Florida. The strikers, 10 from Pakistan and one from Armenia, demanded to have a lowered bond and to be released. Last month, a hunger strike by 22 inmates at the same facility ultimately resulted in their release.
    -Miami Herald

    On August 16, prisoners at Ontario, Canada’s Toronto South Detention Centre refused meals for three days upset over increasingly routine lockdowns in their 12×8-foot cell, without access to showers, yard time, or visits from family or lawyers. They also were upset over not having enough TV time and water leaking from the showers, making floors dangerously slippery.
    -Toronto Star

    On August 30, inmates at the Baltimore (Maryland) Pre-Trial Complex refused to “lock-in” to their dormitories after an argument between an officer and a detainee. Detainees then attacked officers before barricading themselves in the dorms. Media reported that inmates were frustrated because they had previously been held two to a cell, but are now held in larger dorm-style rooms. Eight guards and six detainees were injured were injured in the riot.
    -Baltimore Sun

    OUTSIDE
    On August 22, for the second time in a week, protesters marched into the lobby of the Dallas County Jail in Texas furious over the killing of a man who three weeks prior ran into the jail looking for help. Sheriff deputies responded to his pleas for help by pinning him to the ground, resulting in his death. Riot police were called to force protesters from the lobby.
    -WFAA-Dallas

    On August 23, dozens of people marched into the Etowah County Detention Center in Gadsden, Alabama after visitation to immigrant detainees was abruptly cut off by authorities.
    -The Gadsden Times

    On August 28, protesters in St. Paul Minnesota blocked the doors to the upscale Whole Foods Market because the store profits from selling fish and cheese produced by Colorado prison inmates.
    -St. Paul Pioneer Press

    On September 4, 50 people noisily marched around the Santa Clara County Main Jail in San Jose, California. They were angry after guards beat to death a prisoner there a week earlier.
    -San Jose Mercury News

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