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“Minneapolis Could Easily Burn Like Baltimore”

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“Minneapolis could easily burn like Baltimore.”

Or so says a community organizer within the Black Lives Matter movement. And a number of so-called community leaders would agree. But this acknowledgement is followed up by solutions to make sure that it doesn’t. The list of demands, whether body cameras or better jobs, the protest marshals placed between the cops and ourselves, all tools to prevent things from getting out of control. Quite often they don’t even attempt to hide the fact that they are de-escalators. And here is where the community leaders find themselves shoulder-to-shoulder with the police—both working just as adamantly as the other to eliminate unrest.

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SPPD officer chats with protesters at Hamline Park.

Indeed, many participants of the recent “Emergency Shutdown” action in St. Paul actually felt keen on shaking an officer’s hand as he walked freely through through the timid crowd. And despite the call to shut down the streets, a number of so-called allies actually took to picking back up construction equipment that had been knocked over to stop traffic. Minor stoppages occurred along the Green Line, but the event remained entirely contained by the organizers and their designated de-escalators. Instead of blockage used to physically interrupt the material functioning of white supremacy, it is used to draw attention to the cause. Not so different from last month’s solidarity march for Sandra Bland, invoking her mother’s call for “war”, but failing to go beyond an empty media spectacle.

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Police escort along University Ave.

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Unmarked police car in front of Target, next to SPPD station.

The riot, on the other hand, becomes the last-resort threat in order to force concessions. But liberation from the systems that oppress us cannot be found within the realm of politics. There are no laws that can grant us liberation, no politicians that can promise it us, no amount of reforms that could possibly address the basic operation of the forces that control our lives. Instead, they are used to restore peace, by which they mean order. Therefore, every maneuver on the field of politics can be understood as an attempt to delay our liberation.

Minnesota State Patrol prepared at the highway entrance, which the demonstration never approached.

Minnesota State Patrol prepared at the on-ramp to I-94, which the demonstration never approached.

Instead of attempting to dissect why certain people try to manage dissent, we find it much more fruitful to sketch a way out. As mentioned earlier, blockage has emerged as an instinctual response to police violence. To block the flows of the city is to interrupt the physical processes through which forces of domination manifest. The riot allows for these blockades to multiply: blocking roads and trains with dumpsters and debris instead of leaving our bodies vulnerable, blocking police operations with projectiles, while also providing the opportunity to directly attack the structures of our enemies and temporarily claim territory as autonomous. We must also learn how to expand beyond the riot as well, pushing the limits until there is no going back.

Minneapolis can indeed burn just like Baltimore, and everywhere else too. It takes confidence, effort, and intention. We certainly aren’t devoid of reasons to revolt, two people have been shot by police in the Twin Cities in the past month. Police shootings are the culmination of so many other, more subtle forms of oppression, and it’s unfortunate that at the current moment we seem to be unable to act before tragedy strikes. Yet, it won’t matter when we act if we cannot escape the impotent symbolism that activism has accustomed us to.

National Night Out: Community Policing Coming To Your Local Block Party

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gfeSSN5xXSN5ryVvRvyQ1274188714This week, citizens across the country will come together once again for National Night Out, an annual event held on the first Tuesday of August, which aims to bring people together with law enforcement in order to strengthen police relations, and boost crime-fighting efforts. According to CBS, Minnesota leads the nation in participation, and Minneapolis was ranked #1 out of the whole country last year. This year, there are over one thousand events in Minneapolis and several hundred in St. Paul.

While getting to know one’s neighbors and organizing together usually garners praise amongst anti-authoritarians as well as the left, this form is being used by law enforcement as a policing operation. Neighborhoods aren’t organizing here for a rent strike or to obstruct police activity, but to augment existing police departments to better preserve law and order. This strategy of “community policing” sounds pleasant, and is even called for by many activists in response to what they see as strained relations between people and the cops, which is where police brutality supposedly stems from. But “community policing” is actually a key component of counter-insurgency. For those of us who see not only police brutality, not only the police, but policing itself as fundamentally oppressive, it’s clear that National Night Out has got to go.

Not only do cops attend various National Night Out events in order to improve relations, but citizens are also encouraged—usually with the help of neighborhood associations—to form their own citizen crime-fighting initiatives. The most popular of these being neighborhood watch groups, like the one George Zimmerman was a part of when he murdered Trayvon Martin in Florida. It’s not so surprising then, that after Zimmerman’s acquittal, people took their rage to the cops. Regardless of whether he wore a badge, he was working on behalf of law and order.

As time passes, as the streets of the United States are lit ablaze again and again with rioting, those who prefer things as they are often find themselves taking an active role in maintaining this. Whether it was waiters in Oakland who stood guard outside their bosses’ businesses during the revolt against Zimmerman’s acquittal, or bar patrons in Baltimore who felt the need to confront marchers in the streets. Those who wish to preserve the social order as it is—white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist—are organizing as a counter-insurgent force that supplements all the shortcomings of state-sponsored law-enforcement.

There is nothing inherent about neighborhood organizing being a project of policing. There is hardly more than a difference of intention between organizing to prevent anarchy as there is organizing to spread anarchy. Neighborhood assemblies have been a classic feature of uprisings all over the world, and this is certainly not a denunciation of the tactic.

Many National Night Out events will happen in every neighborhood. You can find the full lists above for Minneapolis and St. Paul, or search your own city or neighborhood for elsewhere. These events must be disrupted, and policing in general even more so. If anything, use the day, or any day for that matter, as a day to organize with your own neighbors against the police. National Night Out encourages citizens to take the initiative all year round, we must do so as well.

Solidarity With Kurdish Insurgents

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swkiConflict MN received the above image and this brief email:

Some posters expressing solidarity with Kurdish insurgents were flyposted around south Minneapolis.

The posters appear to say “Solidarity With Kurdish Insugents – Smash Repression! Smash the State!” with an image of an armed militant in the streets of Istanbul. The past few days, many Kurdish cities in Turkey have been ablaze with riots after a suicide attack killed dozens of people on their way to help rebuild Kobanê, which withstood several months of clashes with ISIL. The Turkish state responded by arresting hundreds of rebels and launching airstrikes on Kurdish areas of Iraq. For updates on the rapidly developing situation, follow @OccupiedTaksim and @cahitstorm on Twitter.

Power Lines: Police Brutality, Public Transit, and Development in the Twin Cities

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The Metro Transit police made the news this weekend in the Twin Cities for their significant size increase over the past few years, almost the same day as a video surfaced showing a police officer slam a handcuffed passenger onto the ground for not paying the light rail fare. The outcry has focused on the unnecessary brutality administered on the black man who they say was not resisting, but the police have the honesty to admit that this was all within protocol and completely legal. Like many conversations around police brutality, it is too easy to get stuck in the quagmire of legality and morality, instead of the fundamentally oppressive nature of policing itself. Those who suggest that the officer’s force was excessive because he was not resisting arrest only serve to legitimize violence against those who do resist arrest.

The report on the Metro Transit Police Department’s growth described the 67% increase of officers on the force. The chief, John Harrington, who was previously the St. Paul police chief as well, also expressed his new philosophy for the department: a shift towards so-called “community policing,” which is the pleasant face of counter-insurgency. With more officers spending more time on trains, police can better project their presence and deter people from not paying the fare, which supposedly costs Metro Transit tens of thousands of dollars a week. A recent audit shows that 9% of Green Line riders don’t pay the fare—likely less now that body slams are on the table. But what is a fare other than a barrier to those who can’t afford to move around the city?

But of course, policing takes many forms beyond those in uniform, it manifests itself through the basic organization of the metropolis. For instance, let’s examine the trains themselves. Public transit aims to organize the movement of the population through the city, whether funneling them to work or to the Mall of America for shopping. It also allows for capital to expand beyond the immediate downtown areas into the surrounding neighborhoods. On the Green Line, just over a year old, billions of dollars of development has already been brought to St. Paul along the light rail. While those with money welcome the long line of developers buying up the neighborhood, the rest of us know what this really means: being pushed out of our homes, away from the cities that are colonized (again) for those wealthier and whiter than us.

Police and gentrification are two expressions of the same logic, but it is not inevitable. Resistance against this logic has sparked uprisings across the globe. A few examples might be Istanbul or Burgos, Ferguson or The Hague. The struggle against development and policing resonates beyond borders, and hopefully these revolts can inspire our struggle locally.

Fuck the Fourth!

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A number of American flags liberated from the neighborhood found themselves burnt to ashes on the 4th of July. This was a small gesture of solidarity to all those in struggle against domination. America, as any system of exploitation, cannot be reformed, only obliterated.

Nevertheless, this constitutes nothing but a symbolic gesture. Burning the flag does not burn white supremacy, it does not burn the myriad of oppressive systems that so many of us see clearly in the stars and stripes. Much of the country has their attention drawn to the outcry over the use of confederate logos and other symbols that represent this oppression. While it is worth noting how deeply embedded white supremacy is in the history of the United States, we must set our sights on the material, not the symbolic.