Gangsters in Blue

I am absolutely tickled to learn that I was “largely responsible for organizing the riot[s]” in Pittsburgh around the G-20 summit and related protests. From Flopping Aces, crossposted from Peter Lajoie’s blog:

Another Anarchist who was largely responsible for organizing the riot from Twitter was Mike Gogulski of nostate.com. A self-described, “Future stateless person,” Gogulski is an unabashed anarchist who no longer lives or works in the U.S. but has vowed to overthrow the current system of society. Through Twitter on his cellphone he was able to coordinate fellow protesters’ movements by tweeting where police officers were, where they were going, and what they were planning to do. Anyone who wanted to see these tweets just had to look at a feed entitled “#resistg20.”

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it is indeed possible to exhibit astounding levels of cluelessness by picking up a few scattered bits of information, and then doing your own little paint-by-numbers in between.

For Peter’s benefit, I’ll point out a few things wrong with what he wrote:

Rioting policeman assaults citizen at G20 protest in Pittsburgh. Photo by Foo Conner.

• The “riots” were almost entirely police riots. With the exception of some property damage (reported to have been largely caused by a single person), nearly all of the violence was either committed or instigated by police. No shock here. Protest is now a national security threat.
• I don’t have a “cellphone”. We call them “mobile phones” over here in Slovakia.
• I wasn’t a protester.
• I don’t do vows.
• I’m already a stateless person.
• I don’t know anyone who was involved in the protests.
• If I’ve ever been to Pittsburgh, it was only because the city was en route to someplace else.

What I was doing for a large number of hours was monitoring a Pittsburgh-area police/fire/EMS radio scanner linked up to an internet audio feed, and then repeating information I heard there to Twitter. For example:

• # (scanner) “All TAC Teams: Meet @ 5th & Oakland Ave” #resistg20 #g20 6:14 AM Sep 26th
• # Corrected: (scanner) arrest reported at Bouquet and Forbes #g20 #resistg20 6:13 AM Sep 26th
• # (scanner) arrest reported at (uncopy) and Forbes #g20 #resistg20 6:13 AM Sep 26th
• # (scanner) “hammer and anvil up on tennyson … clear the tower” #g20 #resistg20 6:10 AM Sep 26th
• # (scanner) one SWAT commander called “Oscar Mike”, code for “off air, in action for a while” http://bit.ly/2h2or4 #g20 #resistg20 6:08 AM Sep 26th
• # (scanner) “Waiting for booking team for 9 people now” (loc unknown) #g20 #resistg20 6:05 AM Sep 26th
• # (scanner) “Large crowd forming at Oakland and Forbes” “Bringing LRAD down for dispersal” #g20 #resistg20 6:01 AM Sep 26th

And so on. Some of these tweets were picked up by others on the #resistg20 hashtag and who had followed me, and repeated to others, some of whom may have been subscribing to their tweets or hashtags via their mobile, er, cell phones.

Who knows what effect any of this had. Hopefully, getting information on police movements, plans and locations out via Twitter to a few folks on the scene helped some avoid getting gassed, beaten, subjected to head-splitting sonic weapons emissions and/or arrested.

Related posts

• Rejecting Authority at Police State Checkpoint (0)
• Rejecting Authority at Police State Checkpoint #2 (0)
• University of Pittsburgh student: “With the police … you’re supposed to feel safe.” (3)
• Horrors of the present (4)
• About (0)

Seems like a couple of young ladies just woke up to their reality.

Related posts

• Electroshock torture new penalty for expired tag? (0)
• Adam Kokesh, Enemy of the State (0)
• San Francisco taxpayers billed $235,000 for aggro cop (2)
• Broad e-surveillance coming to UK (0)
• Philadelphia police beating restrained suspects: video (1)

An anarchist friend who prefers to be anonymous with respect to this story called me last night, but I couldn’t answer the phone. I sent him an SMS back asking what was up, and he gave a very short reply. I tried calling him back, but his phone was dying.

He’s on something of a wanderjahr through Greater Cascadia, northern Aztlan and nearby regions, hitchhiking and walking. Tonight I asked him, again through SMS, was had happened. Here is his story, with minimal editing, straight off my phone:

They were good people and could do what they want.

I’m sure the foot soldiers of the Khmer Rouge thought the same thing.

And people ask me why I left America… Ha!

Related posts

• Stateless person’s travel document: approved (13)
• About Mike Gogulski, future stateless person (19)
• Institutional psychiatry horror, Texas-style (0)
• Christian Michel: Why I am not a democrat; I prefer freedom (3)
• The further education of Willow Kinloch (4)

With the passing of the smoking ban, Virginia demonstrates that, when it comes to individual liberty, its ongoing urbanization renders it just another Mid-Atlantic nanny state like New Jersey, Maryland, and New York. I don’t need to rehash the libertarian arguments against smoking bans in private establishments. I will, however, note the following:

• Despite an email sent out by a minority of Republicans in the legislature, this ban passed with bipartisan support.
• Republicans are the worst advocates of libertarian policy imaginable. They’re all too eager to go along to get along. And if they do have some moderate libertarian positions, they usually shoot their consistency in the foot by being moral policemen to the max (see my thoughts on the Blackburn vs. Stoch race).
• We erroneously and self-righteously frame this issue in simplistic terms of “rights” and “freedom” and “liberty”, a language that nanny staters learned long ago to turn around on us. Nobody is against “freedom” or “liberty” or “rights”, so this approach does not capture the essence of the controversy. If this were about abstractions like “rights”, there are far more egregious government intrusions that would have been rejected long ago. No, we are against bans on peaceful behavior because they are enforced by men trained to hurt and kill us – period.

It’s time to stop pretending our self-important, philosophical civics lessons wrapped in political activism work. Our outrage at the state, heartfelt as it may be, is not nearly enough to constitute the necessary resistance, nor is the rhetoric it produces adequate to the task of appealing to our fellow man. We have to start showing people that this is not a game: passing superfluous and intrusive laws pits men trained in violence and suppression against peaceful people. Confront the nanny staters directly with the means they’ve chosen to promote their agendas and ask them why they want to threaten, hurt, and even kill us and our fellow human beings. The stakes are too high to treat this as a friendly debate about ideas.

As I wrote in an essay a few months ago, the best way to view the imperial nature of the U.S. government is to view it as an empire controlled by the city-state of Washington instead of as a broadly American phenomenon. Indeed, the territorial U.S. differs from Iraq and Afghanistan only in the sense that our occupation is a less volatile one. This allows the resemblance of “civil society” that supports and approves of the occupation, and rules out the need for the frightening displays of force that other people around the world endure at the hands of U.S. armed forces. Generally speaking, we chalk this relative lack of open violence up to our status as a “free people”.

However, as we plunge deeper into financial crisis, that may change. Soldiers fresh from counterinsurgency operations in Iraq are deploying for missions within the U.S.. With the unrest likely upon full-blown collapse of the currency and the economy, Bush retains the prerogative to declare martial law and institute what is, in effect, military dictatorship. Essentially, the imperial managers of Earth in D.C. are deciding whether or not we need a surge - not in Iraq, but right here in the territorial United States.

Part of the process of taking back our freedom entails a sober analysis of our present political situation. There is no real difference between a free society under a government and a military occupation - each exists merely as different zones on a sliding scale of repression, which government dials up or down based on “conditions on the ground”. Until we understand that we live in occupied territory, we will always be able to say “well, we got it better than Iraq” without realizing that the same dynamics are at play, at home and abroad.

I just about threw my computer across the room when I read this article:

Twitter got a lot of attention from the various press outlets today for its value in following yesterdays rampage by anarchists and the response by police.

One aspect of the social networking service is getting less mention: Its being used to coordinate the violence.

You read that right: Twitter was used to coordinate the violence. Now, let’s set aside the absurdity of this notion that anarchist violence even registered on the same chart as police violence. Maybe they’re confused by incriminating messages, since they usually, you know, have sources for their reports?

Well, there’s this one:

sector 2 requesting backup at kellogg and wabasha, massive amounts of riot cops

And this one:

bringing in delegates at st peter and kellog WIDE OPEN

And this one:

Cops near Excel are searching people’s bags for goggles and gas masks– hide them!

Of course, none of that is violent - and I know there were no others because I monitored the feeds all week (I was a bit obsessive about it). But what are we to make of MPR’s interesting standards for what qualifies as “violence”? Apparently, it’s only ok to have a protest as long as:

• the people at the event you’re protesting don’t hear you,
• you don’t protect yourself from the chemical weapons the police deploy indiscriminately,
• you don’t show solidarity with your fellow protesters.

So what’s the point? Maybe MPR disagrees ever so slightly with Alix’s analysis of this past week’s debacle:

Were they protesting that they have no right to protest?

No, they were committing violence because they have no right to protest. If they had the right to protest, it wouldn’t have been violence!

In order for protests and civil disobedience to work, the media has to capture and disseminate to the public the evidence of the system’s brutality. It was the stories, photos, and newsreels of repression that made the struggles of Indian independence and African American civil rights successful. But if the media really is fully integrated into the authoritarian establishment, then we can expect the tactics of Ghandi and King to fail.

It’s time for us to discard a decades-old tactic that has long since been neutralized by the establishment. We need a new strategy, and many of us need an altogether new goal. We need creativity, innovation, courage, focus, but most of all we need a passion for freedom that can guide our desperation. From now on, let’s stop mourning the passing of the old order, however outraged and angered we are by it. Let us start building the organizations and structures that can move our work forward into new territory.

McCain said:

My friends, if you find faults with our country, make it a better one. If you’re disappointed with the mistakes of government, join its ranks and work to correct them.

Just don’t join it’s ranks from within the Republican party:

Today at the Republican National Convention, as the Ron Paul Delegates were taking a picture in front of the model White House inside the Convention Center, they were surrounded by Secret Service which proceeded to search the bags of all the delegates. They took any and everything related to Ron Paul including signs, buttons, videos, slim jims, cards, even books.

They were followed, surveilled, and harassed. Indeed, even if you make it into the ranks of government, they may still try to hold you back:

Earlier Tuesday, Paul said he was told he could go to the Republican convention floor, but only under very restricted conditions.

The Republican National Committee told Paul he would have to pick up his pass at the gate and couldn’t have any guests.

“Republican congressmen should have a pass to the floor, but they said, ‘Your pass will be at the gate, and we’ll pick it up when you leave, and you can’t take anybody with you,’ ” he said on CNN’s “American Morning.”

And since they’re treating even peaceful protest and civil disobedience as terrorism, they’re leaving us with very few options. Whether we see our role in fixing problems as within, without, or against government, the response is clear: submit or suffer. Make this a better country, but a better country according to our definition, not yours. And don’t make any sudden moves while you’re working on those flaws!

I cover A.L.L.y William Gillis’s contribution to the RWC press conference at leftlibertarian.org:

William’s willingness to personally speak out, not just against the brutal, self-destructive police state, but also as an unrepentant and bold advocate for anarchism at a time when adherents to that peaceful philosophy are being singled out as terrorists, is nothing short of heroic. We all owe William a debt of gratitude, for I’ve never felt more proud of my opposition to the criminals and serial sadists of the state as I did watching him speak.

Over and over again, law enforcement demonstrates that they are not only interested in forcing their alien vision of “law and order” on the people they’re supposed to “protect and serve”, but that they are actively hostile and sadistic towards the protestors. We’ve seen this before, like in Miami’s ‘06 FTAA protests:

The resentment has come out full force, now. On Democracy Now!, the arrested journalists told how the police would tighten restraints when detainees complained about how tight they were. The psychology of the human beings in law enforcement is becoming a serious menace and is being actively promoted in their training:

The police brutality that we’ve seen in Denver and St. Paul this week is the result of ongoing indoctrination of the police against protesters, especially any protesters of the left-wing stripe. Local police departments have been militarized to deal with protesters, with much of this militarization happening during the Clinton administration. After 9/11, local police were further turned into anti-terrorist organizations, with the effect that they see their work as fighting terrorists. Local police are also bringing home the terror tactics that the U.S. has been using in dozens of countries around the world for the past century.

The war on terror has escalated into an increased war on the “rabble” of America, most significantly protesters and anarchists. This doesn’t surprise us, because the U.S. government has always been at war with dissidents of many kinds.

We do not have any hope that the police will change their attitudes or their ways. The purpose of the police is to act as the violent arm of capital and the state. The only way for the people to stop the police is to stand up to them, abolish the police and build a different society which needs no police.

Indeed, this jives with my own research: police are being trained to see civil society as their zoo full of mere animals to keep in line, and many are adopting an abusive relationship with their “wards”. Witness their open sadism in St. Paul:

The sad part about all this is that these attitudes towards the public are going to make the jobs of officers who genuinely want to get along with the public much more difficult. While many officers may look forward to the police state as their chance to beat up hippies (see the end of Daniel Clowes’ Like an Velvet Glove Cast in Iron for a perfect portrayal of this attitude), I’d advise them to take a good look at Iraq. The officers there are targeted by insurgents and are never safe, on or off duty. It’s easy to be a bully when you can still go home to your family in relative safety - a police state turns street protestors from prey into predators. Moreover, it was arguably the attitudes of American soldiers (including cops in reserve units) that turned the people against them and their police. Not only are these attitudes quite similar to those displayed by cops in the twin cities, the attitudes may even be brought back by soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan to new careers in domestic law enforcement.

If cops want to militarize their jobs, they need to consider the down side for themselves, their families, and their communities. There’s a lot more civilians than soldiers and officers, and continuing abuse - including the branding of activists as terrorists - just threatens to push Americans over the edge the same way Iraqis were pushed. If civil society is lost, cops may look back fondly on the days when the public merely committed minor property damage.