ferguson fighting fear with fire:

a compilation …

(2014 – 15)

For updates scroll down the chronology

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

– T-Bone Slim

“Black Lives Matter” disruption, 26th July 2015

“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)

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 him…independent 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 here…anarchist 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 ”

Quite 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.

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 crowds…video 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.”

The free world in Ferguson 

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 arrests…left-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 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.”

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.”

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.

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

graffiti, 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:

17/8/14:

18/8/14:

$4.3 billion worth of equipment transferred from Pentagon to US cops  ….molotovs thrown at cops…Governor 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 closed…American 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…

The 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 Seattle…no more official midnight curfew, now just an unofficial 10p.m. curfew…lying manipulative cop-loving prosecutor still in place to apparently prosecute the cop who killed Mike Brown

 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 here…no justice, no sleep…50 arrested

All 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 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 Ferguson…St.Louis: Jesse Jackson told he’s a sell-out

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 here) A 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 custody…Louisiana: 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 protests…2 arrested at protest as cops continue to refuse to arrest cop who killed Mike Brown…call-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 pm…whilst 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 protesters…Ohio: students and others occupy police station in protest against another cop murder of a young black

v.

 

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.

“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.  

– 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.”

America’s favorite past-time: Go Cardinals!

29/4/15:

US, Baltimore: report on curfew horrors…report of fire…protests in New York, Washington DC, Boston and Ferguson…Denver: 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

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 activists…Minneapolis: high school students walk out to join anti-cop brutality demo….Baltimore: unintentionally funny video of CNN journalist moaning about hearing anti-cop  speech…Atlanta, 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

 

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 dead“Several 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

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)…

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

“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 protests…Florida: 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

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.”

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

10/8/15:

US, St.Louis: cops attacked with rocks and bottles…state 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.

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 hearing…whilst professional activists of “Occupy Baltimore” try to possess these protests, insisting they’ll remain “peaceful”…Texas: horror shock graffiti outrage shock outrage horror

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 broken…Missouri: 2 women arrested for anti-cop graffiti…New York state: more 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:

Meanwhile:

14/10/15:

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

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

end of chronology

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

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) 

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. 

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.