Gangsters in Blue

• … but the streets belong to the people! Jesse Walker, Hit & Run (2009-06-10): The People’s Stop Sign. In which people in an Ottawa neighborhood take nonviolent direct action to slow down the traffic flying down their neighborhood streets — by putting up their own stop signs at a key intersection. The city government, of course, is now busy with a Criminal Investigation of the public’s heinous contribution to public safety.

• Abolitionism is the radical notion that other people are not your property. Darian Worden (2009-06-09): The New Abolitionists The point is that the principles of abolitionism, which held that regardless of popular justifications no human is worthy to be master and no human can be owned by another, when carried to their logical conclusion require this: that no human is worthy of authority over another, and that no person is owed allegiance simply because of political status. When reason disassembles the popular justifications of statism, as advances in political philosophy since the 1850’s have assisted in doing, the consistent abolitionist cannot oppose the voluntaryist principles of the Keene radicals.

• Mr. Obama, Speak For Yourself. Thomas L. Knapp, Center for a Stateless Society (2009-09-09): Speaking of the State

• A campaign of isolated incidents. Ellen Goodman, Houston Chronicle (2009-06-08): Sorry, but the doctor’s killer did not act alone

• Let’s screw all the little guys. Just to be fair. (Or, pay me to advertise my product on your station.) Jesse Walker, Reason (2009-06-09): The Man Can’t Tax Our Music: The music industry wants to impose an onerous new fee on broadcasters.

• Some dare call it torture. Just not the cops. Or the judges. Wendy McElroy, WendyMcElroy.com (2009-06-08): N.Y. Judge Rules that Police Can Taser Torture in order to coerce compliance with any arbitrary court order. I think that Wendy is right to call pain compliance for what it is — torture (as I have called it here before) — and that it is important to insist on this point as much as possible whenever the topic comes up.

• On criminalizing compassion. Macon D., stuff white people do (2009-06-05), on the conviction of Walt Staton for knowingly littering water jugs in a wildlife refuge, in order to keep undocumented immigrants from dying in the desert.

• Freed markets vs. deforesters. Keith Goetzman, Utne Reader Environment (2009-06-04): Do You Know Where Your Shoes Have Been?, on the leather industry and the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. Utne does a good job of pointing out (by quoting Grist’s Tom Philpott) that the problem is deeply rooted in multi-statist neoliberalism: because of the way in which the Brazilian government and the World Bank act together to subsidize the cattle barons and ‘roid up Brazilian cattle ranching, the report is really about the perils of using state policy to prop up global, corporate-dominated trade.

• Well, Thank God. (Cont’d.) Thanks to the Lord Justice, we now know that Pringles are, in fact, officially potato chips, not mere savory snacks, in spite of the fact that only about 40% of a Pringles crisp is actually potato flour. Language Log takes this case to demonstrate the quasi-Wittgensteinian point that, fundamentalist legal philosophy to one side, there’s actually no such thing as a self-applying law. (Quoting Adam Cohen’s New York Times Op-Ed, Conservatives like to insist that their judges are strict constructionists, giving the Constitution and statutes their precise meaning and no more [linguists groan here], while judges like [Sonia] Sotermayor are activists. But there is no magic way to interpret terms like free speech or due process — or potato chip.) I think the main moral of the story has to do with the absurdity of a political system in which whether or not you can keep $160,000,000 of your own damn money rides on whether or not you can prove to a judge that your savory snack hasn’t got the requisite potatoness to count as a potato crisp for the purposes of law and justice.

• Small riots will get small attention, no riots get no attention, make a big riot, and it will be handled immediately. Loretta Chao, Wall Street Journal (2009-05-30): In China, a New Breed of Dissidents. The story makes it seem as though the most remarkable thing about the emerging dissident movement is that they are safe enough for the State to tolerate them, rather than launching all out assaults as they did against the Tienanmen dissidents in 1989. Actually, I think that that misses the point entirely; and that the most interesting thing is that they have adopted such flexible and adaptive networking, both tactically and strategically, and that they now so often rise up from the very social classes that the Chinese Communist Party claims to speak for (not just easily-demonized students and intelligentsia, but ordinary farmers, factory workers, and retirees) — that the regime isn’t tolerating them; it just no longer knows what to do with them.

• Counter-Cooking and Mutual Meals. Julia Levitt, Worldchanging: Bright Green (2009-06-03): Community Kitchens (Via Kevin Carson’s Shared Items.) If I may recommend, if you’re going to work on any kind of community cooking like this, particularly if you’re interested in it partly for reasons of resiliency and building community alternatives, you should do what you can to make sure that it is strongly connected with the local grey-market solidarity economy, through close cooperation with your local Food Not Bombs (as both a source and a destination for food) and other local alternatives to the state-subsidized corporate-consumer model for food distribution.

• Looking Forward. Shawn Wilbur, In the Libertarian Labyrinth (009-06-06): Clement M. Hammond on Police Insurance. An excerpt on policing in a freed society, from individualist anarchist Clement M. Hammond’s futurist utopian novel, Then and Now which originally appeared in serialized form in Tucker’s Liberty in 1884 and 1885. (Thus predating Bellamy’s dreary Nationalist potboiler by 4 years.) Hammond’s novel is now available in print through Shawn’s Corvus Distribution. The good news is that, while Bellamy’s date of 2000 has already mercifully passed us by without any such society emerging, we still have almost 80 years to get it together in time for Hammond’s future.

• Here at Reason we never pass up a chance to have some fun at the expense of Pete Seeger. Jesse Walker, Hit & Run (2009-06-09): They Wanna Hear Some American Music. On brilliant fakery, the invention of Country and Western music, the cult of authenticity, and the manufacture of Americana. For the long, full treatment see Barry Mazor, No Depression (2009-02-23): Americana, by any other name…

• Anarchy on the Big Screen. Colin Firth and Kevin Spacey have signed on for a big-screen film adaptation of Homage to Catalonia. The film is supposed to enter production during the first half of 2010.

Technological civilization is awesome. (Cont’d.)

• Freezers are awesome. J.D., Get Rich Slowly (2009-06-06): 3 Easy and Delicious Ways to Preserve Your Berry Harvest. My plan is to make some freezer jam.

• Toward usable e-mail. Leah Chaney, OtherInbox (2009-06-05): Organizer By OtherInbox now available with Yahoo! Mail apps!. Even where technological civilization is not yet awesome enough, it soon will be.

Communications

• IMPACT! Strategies for Social Change Forum, Thursday, June 18, Sonoma County, California. Infoshop News (2009-06-08): Strategies for Social Change Forum on June 18th in Sonoma County IMPACT!, an independent and radical youth organization in Petaluma is turning one year old this month. Part 1 of the celebration is a forum, entitled Strategies for Social Change, where organizers from labor, immigrants’ rights, and anti-police brutality groups will be discussing their projects and strategies for achieving radical social change locally. This event will be bilingual and free. … As one part of the celebration of IMPACT!’s one-year anniversary, we are excited to announce a forum on Thursday, June 18th at 7pm at the Peace and Justice Center in Santa Rosa (467 Sebastopol Ave) … After hearing from all the different organizations, we hope to have an open dialogue about how we can build real people power in our communities and what methods, strategies, tactics, we can implement to achieve long-lasting and radical social change.

• Tasered While Black Internet Radio Show. Tasered While Black @ Blog Talk Radio. (Via Electrocuted While Black 2009-06-09.)

• Anarchist Movement 09, East London, England. Anarchist Movement Conference 09 was held last Saturday at Queen Mary, University of London. About 300 attended. Some reportbacks from Anonymous @ Infoshop News (2009-06-09), Nestor Makhno @ indymedia london (2009-06-07), Paul Stott (2009-06-08), and No Pretence (2009-06-07). One of the major events at the conference was anarcha-feminist group No Pretence’s appearance at the closing plenary to deliver a statement and project a video presentation calling out sexism in the U.K. movement:

• SPEAK! Listening Party. Sunday, June 14th, 2-5pm. Long Beach, California. Julie, feministe (2009-06-05): SPEAK! Listening Party in Long Beach, CA! Remember that awesome CD that’s out right now? The spoken word collection that features the work of BFP, Black Amazon, Little Light, and so many others? The one that combines personal history and movement making in truly inspiring ways? If you live in or around Long Beach, CA and haven’t heard it yet, now’s your chance! (Via bfp, flip flopping joy 2009-06-05.)

• New subscriptions. Served & Protected, @InjusticeNews, No Pretence

Don’t forget.

• The world is awesome.

• People are awesome. You don’t need plans, or politics, or power. Put them up against people, and people will win every time. People came up with that video. Also, other people came up with this.

• Technological civilization is awesome. (In case you’re wondering, it’s awesome because it’s made of people.)

• Books are awesome. Verlyn Klinkenborg, New York Times (2009-05-29): Some Thoughts on the Pleasures of Being a Re-Reader

• To-day is awesome. It’s an anniversary. My love and I were married three years ago today. If the normal online rounds are held up for a while, well, that’s why.

Solidarity.

• In memory of George Tiller. feministe (2009-05-31): In honor of Dr. Tiller (if you would like to donate in memory and in honor of Dr. Tiller’s work). Among others, the National Network of Abortion Funds has established a George Tiller Memorial Abortion Fund.

• IQSN, L.A. I.M.C. (2009-05-27): Solidarity with Queer Bulgaria on 27 June 2009. A day of international actions in solidarity with the LGBTQ Pride march in Sofia, Bulgaria. Last year’s march was attacked by neo-Nazi groups who decided to Keep Our Children Safe with a campaign of roving basher gangs and by slinging molotov cocktails and small explosives at the marchers. International Queer Solidarity Network calls for a European mobilization, with support from the United States, that will stand in solidarity with Queer Bulgaria for this year’s march.

News.

• Underground abortion networks in Chile. Feminist Daily News Wire (2009-05-29): Abortion Hotline Launched in Chile. The Chilean government inflicted a categorical abortion ban in 1989. A coalition of pro-choice feminist groups has now launched a phone hotline which gives women information about how to use Misopristol (usually used in the U.S. together with Mifepristone; in Chile it’s legally available to treat ulcers) to give themselves safe DIY medical abortions in defiance of the law.

• Shoot an unarmed old man, get a four-month paid vacation. Vickie Welborn, Shreveport Times (2009-05-24): NAACP questions Homer officers’ leave status

• The question is who is to be the master — that’s all. The Status of Forces Agreement requires all U.S. troops to be withdrawn from Iraqi cities by the end of June. A Senior U.S. Commander [considers] the security agreement a living document, so he intends to comply with the deadlines by withdrawing the political boundaries of Baghdad from his occupation patrol forces

Comment.

• On knowledge problems and management make-work. quasibill, The Bell Tower (2009-05-28): Scene 3

• On free-market mutualism and open source solutions to the social question. Jesse Walker, Hit & Run (2009-05-27): Mutual Aid: A Factor in Cyberspace. (As for whether the word socialism is the best tag for the kind of mutualist projects under discussion, I reckon that it depends on your intended audience. I use it happily, but then, my intent in doing so is deliberately provocative, as is my use of freed market language around anti-authoritarian Leftists: given the right audience, you can pull some philosophical aikido by using a term’s very unpopularity in order to provoke a conversation about some fundamental premises.)

• The State is male in the political sense. (Cont’d.) Alderson Warm-Fork, Directionless Bones (2009-05-26): The State is Incapable of Submissiveness. (This particular article deals mainly with the external relations among many states; for discussion of the male State in the context of the internal relations between the government and the country that it occupies, cf. GT 2006-05-11: Quidditative essence.)

• The George Tiller I Knew. loree920, Daily Kos (2009-05-31): The George Tiller I Knew

• A Loatian American teen protested No Child Left Behind and Won. Mandy Van Deven, ColorLines: She Said No To The Test. In which a second-generation Laotian-American who speaks, reads, and writes fluent English and graduated 7th in her class was declared illiterate by school officials for refusing to retake a basic English-proficiency test that she’d already aced — and how she and her fellow students protested and won.

• Yes, Virginia, government roads really are government subsidized, and no, they don’t approximate freed-market outcomes. (Cont’d.) Chris Bradford, Austin Contrarian (2006-05-16): Do roads pay for themseles? (Cf. GT 2008-12-01: Yes, Virginia, government roads really are government subsidized, and no, they don’t approximate freed-market outcomes.

• On public space and the microphysics of male power. Norma, Happy bodies. (2009-05-25): Fighting Unwanted Attention

• On neuro-jargon as modern mumbo-jumbo. Crispin Sartwell, eye of the storm (2009-05-31) […] the problem is that these approaches work backwards from social categories to neurology and enshrine momentary social formations, which are essentially created by power, as inescapable bio-destinies. the entire scientificness of the thing is usually presented in a few phrases - ‘medial prefrontal cortex,’ say - which function essentially as authorities: they’re supposed to show you that you’re too ignorant to assess what’s being said, to put the actual ethical/political/economic conclusions beyond the realm of disagreement, to flummox you into nodding vaguely along. if you don’t, you must be a dolt. they function like phrases from the koran or something. they actually do no work except to assert a kind of prestige. […]

• Against psychiatric coercion and psychiatric contempt. anarchafemme (2009-05-11): I Am Crazy, Yet I Am Human

• On standing up for the marginalized and the enemies of the State. Wendy McElroy, WendyMcElroy.com (2009-05-31): The strategic wisdom of defending prostitutes

• The Conservative (Hive) Mind. Will Wilkinson’s cite class=”article”>The rise of collectivist conservativs is right-on in almost every respect, particularly in emphasizing how belligerent nationalism (I’d add sadistic law-n-orderism and anti-immigrationism) poison any attempt by the pseudopopulist Right to come out with a consistently individualistic position. Towards the end, Will asks Conservatism must stand for something. But here’s the big question: Can a politics of individual freedom be revived? Can it win elections? As you may know, I’m an optimist about the first question, a pessimist about the second, and mainly concerned that people realize that the two are importantly distinct. If you want to know why the substance of Beck’s politics is so much like the substance of Brooks’s politics, underneath the pseudoindividualist rhetoric, well, part of the answer is the structural limitations that you necessarily accept when you start out hitching the success of your political philosophy to victory in government elections.

Historicize.

• Jourdon Anderson authenticity update. Laster Hunt, E pur si muove! (2009-05-14): Jourdon Anderson’s Letter to His Former Master. (Cf. GT 2009-05-06: Wednesday Lazy Linking for my reprinting of the original letter.)

• We apologize for the fault in the historicity debate. Those responsible have been sacked. Roderick Long, Austro-Athenian Empire (2009-05-31): Dragonquest; or, A Voyage to Arcturus

Communications.

• ALLiance Issue #2 (Beltaine 2009) is now available. Thanks to awesome editor Chris Lempa. This issue features articles by Chris, Darian Worden, Fred Foldvary, Kevin Carson, Michael Kleen, Sharon Presley and Lynn Kinsky.

• Portland Anarchist Bookfair, June 6-7 at Liberty Hall, 311 N. Ivy in Portland, Oregon. The event is free to attend; childcare will be provided. Also, keep an eye out for Northwest ALLy Shawn Wilbur, who will be there to promote his new radical publishing project, Corvus Distribution.

• The Cop Watch LA Radio program is looking for volunteers interested in recording, producing, interviewing and researching material for the Cop Watch LA radio program which airs every evening on the Raise the Fist Radio Network.

• An IRC network for liberty builders: agora.anarplex.net:14716. The time for waiting for others to do things is over. … Learn, create, cooperate, advance. (Via Wendy McElroy.)

• Winter Soldier: Just Another Tuesday. From Ryan Endicott, formerly a United States government Marine stationed in Iraq.

  Via Clay Claibourne, L.A. I.M.C. (2009-05-13): Winter Soldier Southwest on YouTube #1

• The regulatory State versus freed markets and the human future: A quote from Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, via B.K. Marcus at Mises Economics Blog:

  To expect the government to prevent such fraud from ever occurring would be like wanting it to provide cushions for all the children who might fall. To assume it to be possible to prevent successfully, by regulation, all possible malpractices of this kind, is to sacrifice to a chimerical perfection the whole progress of industry; it is to restrict the imagination of artificers to the narrow limits of the familiar; it is to forbid them all new experiments; it is to renounce even the hope of competing with the foreigners in the making of the new products which they invent daily, since, as they do not conform to our regulations, our workmen cannot imitate these articles without first having obtained permission from the government, that is to say, often after the foreign factories, having profited by the first eagerness of the consumer for this novelty, have already replaced it with something else. … Thus, with obvious injustice, commerce, and consequently the nation, are charged with a heavy burden to save a few idle people the trouble of instructing themselves or of making enquiries to avoid being cheated. To suppose all consumers to be dupes, and all merchants and manufacturers to be cheats, has the effect of authorizing them to be so, and of degrading all the working members of the community.

  —Turgot, Éloge de Gournay (1759), translated by P.D. Groenewegen

Outrage

• All Bizarro News that am unfit to print. In which a argument against an imaginary, Bizarro World version individualism is set to fight with a completely imaginary Bizarro GOP which somehow became the party of untrammeled freedom and maximum individual choice (?!). For more on an earlier installment in David Brooks’s concerted efforts to liberate the Republican Party from moral principles that it never held, cf. GT 2009-01-28: How to be social while staying civilized

• On intersections, boundaries, and fortifications. bfp, flip flopping joy (2009-05-01): northern territory, sexual activity, teens and police state. In which Ozzie territorial governments set out to create a territorial sex-Stasi to coerce reports of any and all sexual contact by Aboriginal teenagers. Including consensual sex or fooling-around between one teenager and another. Quote: This sort of nation/state targeted monitoring of the sexuality of teens/young people is something most people of color are vividly aware of. When you through in queerness, disability, and nationality (among others), and community expectations, things for especially teen girls of color get even worse. How do we learn, engage in, and trust ourselves to build a healthy fabulous sexuality when from the time we reach reproductive age, the nation/state literally owns the first and final say as to what happens to our bodies? How do we learn to say no or yes when the nation/state insists on doing it for us?

• We need democratic governments instead of private protection agencies to ensure that political decision-making remain transparent and decision-makers are held accountable to the people: Molly Ball, Las Vegas Review-Journal (2009-05-10): SECRET GOVERNMENT: Lawmakers keep public out as session winds down with most important decisions looming

• On planes as prisons and terrorizing as security: Jessica Bautista & Kitty Caparella, Philadelphia Daily News (2009-05-12): Blind interpreter detained at Philly airport says he has nightmares from arrest (On which, cf. also GT 2008-05-07: Airport security.)

• On legal lynching, part 2. For part 1, see last week, where I said this: When Anarchists propose that all the functions currently controlled by the authoritarian State, including the judgment of cases involving disputes or violent crimes, we are inevitably told that without a State-controlled, hierarchical system of courts, you’d have nothing more than the justice of the lynch mob. This is actually a classic example of statist inversion: by focusing on the dangers that informal and irregular efforts at seeking justice will lead to a disregard for objectivity or evidence, the statist completely blanks out the ways in which formalization and enforced hierarchy oblige government courts to disregard evidence themselves in the name of formal procedures, and to elevate authority above objectivity, by standing on ceremony or respect for turf at the expense of substantive justice. If the state’s plans to murder Troy Anthony Davis are not an example of a slow-motion lynching, what is? To which we will add, this week: Radley Balko, The Agitator (2009-05-18): Prosecutors Blocking Access to DNA Testing In which government prosecutors make active efforts to block access to DNA tests that could potentially exonerate the innocent, all in the name of you-had-your-chance jurisdictional turf wars and statist legal finality.

• The police are here to keep us safe. By driving their cruisers at 109 MPH in a 45 zone, on a major commercial thoroughfare, late at night, with no sirens and no flashing lights. Then, when this predictably leads to a fatal crash that kills one of the cops, by lying about it to the media in order to make your dead buddy look like more of a hero, and by arresting the poor innocent man that the cop slammed into at 90 MPH for his allegedly reckless driving.

• The police are here to keep us safe, part 2. Radley Balko, Hit & Run (2009-05-18): Cops Gone Wild, in which cops from around the country celebrate National Police Week in D.C. with wine, weapons, and reckless driving.

• The police are here to keep us safe, part 3. Commentary from Center for a Stateless Society news analyst Tom Knapp (2009-05-18): To Serve and Protect (Themselves)

• Name your own salary. Las Vegas Sun (2009-05-16): City, county may lose say in police pay negotiations. Las Vegas Metro is currently working to get a new state law passed which would allow Vegas cops to get a salary set unilaterally by their own boss cop, and then send the bill, whatever it may be, to folks who had absolutely no say whatsoever in the negotiations.

• The Gangsters in Blue come to Philly. Radley Balko, The Agitator (2009-05-01): Update on Bodega Raids by Rogue Philly Narcotics Unit Balko asks, apparently non-rhetorically, Why did no one in the department ask why an elite narcotics unit was wasting its time busting immigrant shop owners with no criminal record for selling bags instead of pursuing actual drug distributors? Come on, really? The reason is that the State as such is essentially irresponsible, and this kind of thing is Standard Operating Procedure for elite narc squads. There’s a lot here to justify outrage, but very little to justify surprise.

• On terror-famines for the international narco-crats. Jacob Sullum, Hit & Run (2009-04-30): U.S. Intensifies Campaign to Wipe Out Afghan Economy. Cf. GT 2004-11-20: The tall poppies and GT 2007-01-13: The tall poppies, part 2.

Think.

• Austro-Athenian Virtue Ethics versus Moral Fictionalism. Neverfox, Instead of a Blog (2009-05-17): Pulp Non-Fiction

• How political control of schools produces terrible textbooks. Tamim Ansary, Edutopia (November 2004): A Textbook Example of What’s Wrong with Education. (Via B.K. Marcus, lowercase liberty (2009-05-18): What’s wrong with textbooks?)

Left-Libertarianism

• On dialectical jujitsu: Roderick Long, Austro-Athenian Empire (2009-05-19): How to annoy a conservative

• Ownership failures, not market failures Chris Dillow, Stumbling and Mumbling (2009-05-01): Markets, the poor & the left. Dillow makes two really important distinctions: one of them the familiar left-libertarian distinction between freed markets, on the one hand, and actually-existing corporate capitalism, on the other; the other a less familiar, but very important, distinction between market processes and patterns of ownership. Quote: In many ways, what look like ways in which markets fail the poor are in fact merely ways in which a lack of assets fail the poor. Exactly; and the many cases where there are not really market failures, but rather ownership failures, have everything to do with feudal, mercantile, neoliberal, and other politically-driven seizures and reallocations of poor people’s land, livelihoods, and possessions — and nothing to do with genuine market exchange.

Counter-Economics

• Against tax-and-regulate reformism, and in praise of a thriving black market economy: Crispin Sartwell, eye of the storm 2009-05-18

• Law among the pirates. Jesse Walker, Hit & Run (2009-05-19): To Live Outside the Law You Must Be Honest

• Urban farming. Milagro Allegro Community Garden, L.A. I.M.C. (2009-05-12): Highland Park Adds a Garden

• Package-dealing portable double-key encryption for web browsing and web mail: Chris Acheson (2009-05-05): Firefox Portable + GnuPG + FireGPG = CryptoFox. (Via @H+ [2009-05-20], via Human Iterations 2009-05-21.)

Movement

• On freeing the MHD3 and all political prisoners. By way of follow-up to the recent report on the bullshit arrest and jailing of the Motorhome Diaries crew, see Motorhome Diaries (2009-05-15): Jones County Sheriff’s Department Falsely Arrests MHD Crew, which recounts the full timeline of their arrest, jailing, and release. See also Motorhome Diaries (2009-05-17): Thanks for springing the MHD3 from Jones County (with Allison Gibbs), Motorhome Diaries (2009-05-20): The “Grumbling Old Fart” Addresses Jones County Sheriff Alex Hodge’s Statements, Motorhome Diaries (2009-05-20): MHD on Freedom Watch

• Don’t vote. Secede and repudiate. Stewart Browne, Strike the Root (2009-05-18): A New Strategy For Liberty - Part 2: Secession in Three Easy Steps

• You say pissed-off, man-hating, dykes with an excess of body hair like it’s supposed to be a bad thing… Kevin Carson @ Mutualist Blog (2009-05-21): An Open Letter to Keith Preston, Mike Gogulski @ nostate.com (2009-05-21): Taking sides on the right to be a complete jackass, Darian Worden (2009-05-21): Perverts Versus Preston, and Brad Spangler (2009-05-22): Bigotry and Revolution

Communications

• Boston Anarchist Reading Group. Jake, Anarkismo.net (2009-05-17): Anarchist Reading Group at the Boston Anarchist Picnic! June 6th, 2009

• Iconoclasta for Colombian anarquistas: Revista Iconoclasta - Anarcol, Anarkismo.net (2009-05-15): New anarchist periodical in Bogota - Iconoclasta. More information online at http://prensaiconoclasta.entodaspartes.net/.

• New subscriptions. Anarchy in the Garden

(From a lot of places; most recently, Make No Laws 2008-09-30.)

Here’s the latest cheeky commemorative t-shirt from the Denver Police Protective Association.

A laugh riot, I’m sure. According to CBS 4 Denver, every cop in Denver gets a shirt for free; cops for neighboring police departments, like the Lakewood police and the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department, have been clamoring for the shirts and have ordered dozens more. abc 7 NEWS in Denver tells us that the shirt pokes fun at DNC protesters. For reference, here’s how Officer Scott Stewart poked some fun at a protester named Alicia Forrest:

This past Tuesday, the Denver District Attorney’s office publicly refused to pursue assault and battery charges against Officer Scott Stewart, the violent thug seen in this video hollering Back up, bitch and knocking an unarmed woman, who posed absolutely no physical threat to anybody, down to the ground by smashing her with the long end of his baton. The cops say that there will be an internal investigation, which of course means that absolutely nothing will happen to hold this dangerous hollering misogynistic batterer accountable for what he did, or to protect the public from his violence.

It’s a shame about his later work, but The Gulag Archipelago, at least, is a work of passion, insight, and genius. And a work that has a lot to say to us here in the Free World today—perhaps more than we would like to admit.

Why, then, should you run away? And how can you resist right then? After all, you’ll only make your situation worse; you’ll make it more difficult for them to sort out the mistake. And it isn’t just that you don’t put up any resistance; you even walk down the stairs on tiptoe, as you are ordered to do, so your neighbors won’t hear.

And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood that they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur — what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked? The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!

If… If… We didn’t love freedom enough.

(Via The Picket Line 2008-08-06.)

Show me what a police state looks like…

This is what a police state looks like!

In the interest of equal time, this footage comes from the streets of Occupied Denver, during the protests outside of the Democratic National Coronation. While police repression was much less severe in Denver than in St. Paul, the city government’s use of fascist free speech zone cages was much more extensive, and the paramilitary cadres in Denver engaged in plenty of their own pre-emptive raids on activists, round-ups and mass arrests, pepper-spraying, beatings with batons, and all the rest.

Remember that so-called electoral democracy — in fact, nothing more than an imperial elective oligarchy — never means that we (meaning you and I and our neighbors) are respected as sovereign individuals or left alone to manage our own affairs. What it means is that a highly organized, heavily armed elite insists on the privilege of representing us, ruling over us, and ordering us around, on the excuse that, once every several years, we are given some minimal opportunity to select which of two tightly regimented political parties will take control of the ruling apparatus. It is, in other words, not freedom, but rather a Party State, in which we are given only the choice of which of two bureaucratic political parties might control our lives and livelihoods, with their authority supposedly justified by the ritual of elections and the mandate of popular sovereignty. And if the people (again, meaning you and I and our neighbors) should dare to think that we might challenge the authority of the regime supposedly representing us, you’ll find that it’s the people that go out the window, not the rigged electoral system or the parties’ grasp on the authority supposedly derived from those people.

See also:

• GT 2008-09-09: Cops are here to protect you. (#7)
• GT 2008-09-05: Free the St. Paul 8 and all political prisoners!
• GT 2008-09-05: Emergency action alert: Twin Cities protesters imprisoned without charges; human rights abuses in Ramsey County jail. Free all political prisoners!
• GT 2008-09-04: This is what a police state looks like. (Part 2 of ???)
• GT 2008-09-03: This is what a police state looks like. (Part 1 of ???)

This special edition of Cops are here to protect you is brought to you from the streets of Occupied Denver, during the recent police riots against people protesting the Democratic National Convention.

Government cops protect you by yanking random dark-skinned men out of the park for no clear reason. Then, if you should walk up and try to take some photographs of what’s happening, or ask them why they’re arresting a dark-skinned man who, as far as anyone could tell, was standing around not doing anything wrong, they’ll protect you by jabbing you with a stick. Then, if you should dare to verbally demand that your public servants stop jabbing you with a stick for asking questions, they’ll make sure you’re good and protected by screaming Back up, bitch! in your face and slamming you to the ground with a body check from the same stick.

Oh, and then grabbing you and hauling you away to jail when you try to talk to reporters about what just happened.

The woman shown on video being shoved to the ground by a Denver police officer says the officer hit her four times with his baton in an incident she describes as unprovoked.

CodePink protester Alicia Forrest, 24, was released on $500 bail Tuesday night and has a court date for late September, she said Wednesday at an anti-war protest march through the middle of Denver.

I’m a little sore, she said, but I’ll make it.

Forrest is a former fashion designer from Los Angeles.

She and others were asking officers why they were arresting another protester Tuesday afternoon outside Civic Center Park when the officer poked her twice with his baton. He then pushed her with the long side of the stick once, Forrest said, before yelling, Back up, b—— and shoving her hard to the ground.

The final shove was captured by a Rocky videographer.

[…] I was taking photos (and) he kept hitting me with his baton, she said. I was so shocked that he did that.

Forrest and CodePink said the officer was reassigned and can no longer interact with demonstrators, but that could not be immediately confirmed Wednesday.

Forrest was in jail about five hours, then spent another two hours talking with the Denver Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division, she said.

—Paul A. Anthony, Rocky Mountain News (2008-08-28):

I suppose it’s for the best that he can’t get all interactive on demonstrators’ asses anymore. But if it is true that he acted improperly enough to yank him from protest control duty, then isn’t also the case that he violated the rights of an innocent woman with his use of force? And, if so, why is this dangerous thug — who feels perfectly free to beat an unarmed woman with a stick, while screaming misogynistic curses at her, apparently for nothing more than daring to give him lip — why, I say, is he not in jail on charges of assault and battery?

See also:

• GT 2008-06-03: Cops are here to protect you. (#6)
• GT 2008-05-20: Cops are here to protect you. (#5)
• GT 2008-05-11: Cops are here to protect you. (#4)
• GT 2008-05-10: Cops are here to protect you. (#3)
• GT 2008-02-26: Cops are here to protect you. (#2)
• GT 2008-02-18: Cops are here to protect you.
• GT 2007-11-09: You got served and protected.

From the New York Times (2008-09-01): As Throngs of Protesters Hit Streets, Dozens Are Arrested After Clashes:

Elsewhere in St. Paul, a prominent Democratic Party strategist, Donna Brazile, was hit by pepper spray while trying to walk around protesters outside the convention hall, Ms. Brazile said in an interview.

I got a strong whiff — just toxic — and my head and throat are still hurting, said Ms. Brazile, who appears on CNN as a political analyst. I’ll avoid the protesters tomorrow.

Wouldn’t it have been more to the point for her to avoid the cops?

See also:

• GT 2008-09-05: Free the St. Paul 8 and all political prisoners!
• GT 2008-09-05: Emergency action alert: Twin Cities protesters imprisoned without charges; human rights abuses in Ramsey County jail. Free all political prisoners!
• GT 2008-09-04: This is what a police state looks like. (Part 2 of ???)
• GT 2008-09-03: This is what a police state looks like. (Part 1 of ???)

These are video segments from a press conference hosted by members of the RNC Welcoming Committee and the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign. Several police agencies, ramrodded by the Ramsey County Sheriff’s department, staged massive pre-emptive raids against houses where activists were staying and against the RNC Welcoming Committee’s convergence space. Many of the imprisoned protesters continue to be held without charges. Many have been abused by their jailers, including a woman being knocked to the ground and dragged by her hair, several protesters being denied prescription or over-the-counter medications for serious medical conditions, and a 19-year-old activist named Elliot Hughes, who was beaten and tortured for over an hour because, according to the Ramsey County Sheriff’s department, he was being verbally disruptive.

Ramsey County prosecutors have formally charged eight members of the Welcoming Committee with conspiracy to riot in furtherance of terrorism. If convicted, the St. Paul 8 face up to 7 1/2 years in prison. Affadavits filed by police informants who infiltrated the Welcoming Committee allege that members of the group sought to kidnap delegates to the RNC, attack police officers with firebombs and explosives, and sabotage airports in St. Paul. These allegations have not been corroborated by any physical evidence or any other evidence independent of the testimony of police infiltrators. Members of the RNC Welcoming Committee held a press conference together with the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign in order to respond to these charges and to discuss violence against imprisoned protesters by police and jailers.

In related news, William Gillis is my fucking hero.

See also:

• GT 2008-09-05: Emergency action alert: Twin Cities protesters imprisoned without charges; human rights abuses in Ramsey County jail. Free all political prisoners!
• GT 2008-09-04: This is what a police state looks like. (Part 2 of ???)
• GT 2008-09-03: This is what a police state looks like. (Part 1 of ???)

Show me what a police state looks like…

This is what a police state looks like!

August 30

Protesters here in Minneapolis have been targeted by a series of highly intimidating, sweeping police raids across the city, involving teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets. Last night, members of the St. Paul police department and the Ramsey County sheriff’s department handcuffed, photographed and detained dozens of people meeting at a public venue to plan a demonstration, charging them with no crime other than “fire code violations,” and early this morning, the Sheriff’s department sent teams of officers into at least four Minneapolis area homes where suspected protesters were staying.

[…] In the house that had just been raided, those inside described how a team of roughly 25 officers had barged into their homes with masks and black swat gear, holding large semi-automatic rifles, and ordered them to lie on the floor, where they were handcuffed and ordered not to move. The officers refused to state why they were there and, until the very end, refused to show whether they had a search warrant. They were forced to remain on the floor for 45 minutes while the officers took away the laptops, computers, individual journals, and political materials kept in the house. One of the individuals renting the house, an 18-year-old woman, was extremely shaken as she and others described how the officers were deliberately making intimidating statements such as “Do you have Terminator ready?” as they lay on the floor in handcuffs.

[…] There is clearly an intent on the part of law enforcement authorities here to engage in extreme and highly intimidating raids against those who are planning to protest the Convention.

—Glenn Greenwald, Salon (2008-08-30): Massive police raids on suspected protesters in Minneapolis

August 30

This is Eileen Clancy, one of the founders of I-Witness Video, a NYC-based video collective that’s in St. Paul to document the policing of the protests around this week’s Republican National Convention.

The house where I-Witness Video is staying in St. Paul has been surrounded by police. We have locked all the doors. We have been told that if we leave we will be detained. One of our people who was caught outside is being detained in handcuffs in front of the house. The police say that they are waiting to get a search warrant. More than a dozen police are wielding firearms, including one St. Paul officer with a long gun, which someone told me is an M-16.

We are suffering a preemptive video arrest. For those that don’t know, I-Witness Video was remarkably successful in exposing police misconduct and outright perjury by police during the 2004 RNC. Out of 1800 arrests, at least 400 were overturned based solely on video evidence which contradicted sworn statements which were fabricated by police officers. It seems that the house arrest we are now under and the possible threat of the seizure of our computers and video cameras is a result of the 2004 success.

—Eileen Clancy, I-Witness Video Blog (2008-08-30): i-witness video emergency press statement from the RNC

August 30

The work of the I-Witness Video collective was interrupted this past Saturday, August 30, 2008, when St. Paul police detained 7 members of the group (along with an assortment of other individuals) for several hours. The NYC-based video collective is in St. Paul to document the policing of the protests at the Republican National Convention.

The incident began in the late morning when an FBI agent and a Wisconsin Deputy Sheriff showed up on the doorstep of the house in which members were staying (on Igelhart St.), interrupting a collective planning meeting. The officers left after a short conversation with members through a locked front door. Two hours later, around 30 police surrounded the house. Two people who left the house were detained in handcuffs; several others, who were inside, were told that if they left, they would be also be detained. Around the same time, three other I-Witness Video members who had left the house on bikes and two others who were riding in a car across town were also detained by police.

Two hours later, after the search warrant arrived, police at the Igelhart Street house stormed in, pointing an automatic handgun at the people inside. They handcuffed all the individuals inside, collected their personal information, and corralled them in the back garden. While police held the media activists and their friends there, members of the media, who had gathered in an adjoining backyard, interviewed I-Witness Video member Eileen Clancy from behind a fence. After completing their search, the police finally uncuffed everyone and departed. Within about two hours, the other I-Witness Video groups—who had been detained on bikes and in a car, all of whom also had their identifications verified and had undergone searches of various kinds—were also released.

During the raids, members of I-Witness Video managed to send out several email and text messages to supporters, legal support, and press. In response, hundreds of people called the office of the St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman.

Among those individuals detained was Democracy Now! producer Elizabeth Press, who had her camera with her throughout the incident. This morning, Democracy Now! ran a news segment on the many preemptive raids that police have launched against activists in St. Paul this month, including the raid that I-Witness Video suffered on Saturday.

This was a clear effort to intimidate and undermine the work of I-Witness Video—a group that was remarkably successful in exposing police misconduct and outright perjury by police during the 2004 RNC. Out of 1800 arrests made that week, at least 400 were overturned based solely on video evidence which contradicted sworn statements by police officers.

—Rachel Mattson, I-Witness Video Blog (2008-09-01): I-Witness Video Members Detained En Masse by St.Paul, Minnesota Police in Advance of the 2008 Republican National Convention

September 3

At about 2:45 this past afternoon (Sept. 3), police wielding batons and a battering ram entered the professional office building on Selby Avenue in St. Paul where I-Witness Video is renting work space.

Geneva Finn, an attorney with the National Lawyer’s Guild went to head off the police. After the police left, she made this statement at an impromptu press conference on the street:

A few minutes ago, one of our legal observers called me to the door. I saw the St. Paul police unloading a bunch of equipment from their cars and they saw me at the door. They saw me at the door, they motioned me forward. I came forward to their cars. They told me that they had reports that somebody was holding somebody hostage in the building, that there had been a kidnapping. They told me that somebody, an undercover had told them, that the anarchists were holding people hostage in our building.

I work for the NLG [National Lawyers Guild] here, we have, we’re working at one of our lawyer’s offices, I said, “Is it in our law office?” They said “No, it’s upstairs.” They then came into the building with me, I showed them what was going on upstairs. They did a pull-up on the frame of I-Witness’ door, looked in, saw that there was people in there, nobody was being held hostage. I then asked the police to leave, since no one was obviously being held hostage here, and they refused. Eventually their head sergeant came here, and decided that they could leave the building.

Anarchists taking hostages? Kidnapping?

This is extraordinary, folks. The St. Paul police came after us with unfounded allegations that we were engaged in criminal behavior. This harassment has interfered with our ability to do the work of documenting the policing of protests that we have come to St. Paul to do. They were able to put pressure on the landlord to do something that they could not force under the law. We were informed that, as a result of all of the commotion, our landlord wanted us to leave the premises immediately.

We packed up our belongings as quickly as possible and were welcomed at the offices of Free Speech TV in St. Paul, for which we are deeply grateful.

—Eileen Clancy, I-Witness Video Blog (2008-09-04): St. Paul Police use bogus “hostage” claim to seek entry to I-Witness Video office

While reporting from a protest at the Republican National Convention, Utne Reader intern Chelsey Perkins captured footage of police launching gas canisters at protesters and chasing them down the banks of the Mississippi river in St. Paul. […]

Having seen protesters and police clash in the distance, Perkins asked an officer how to get away from the conflict zone. She was directed toward a river walk with a large group of people including both protesters and bystanders. The police followed closely behind, until multiple groups of officers on bikes, horses, and on foot surrounded and detained everyone in the area.

Once surrounded, Perkins was told to get on the ground with her hands on her head. Some of the people were placed in plastic cuffs, and a large bullhorn announced that everyone in the area was under arrest. Members of the media were eventually told to leave, because the area was deemed a “crime scene.” Perkins tried to explain that she was a member of the media, but without credentials, she was unable to leave.

After some 45 minutes of being detained, Perkins was told that she was no longer under suspicion and could leave if she wanted. When she agreed, she was surrounded by a group of police who escorted her away from the area.

—Bennett Gordon, Utne Blogs (2008-09-01): RNC: Police Tear Gas and Arrest Protesters

Before the protests, police from several different government agencies repeatedly used hyperviolent paramilitary SWAT assaults in order to harass, intimidate and disrupt protest groups even though there was absolutely no evidence, other than wild speculation, that anyone posed a threat of violence against the cops sent to serve the warrants, and even though no crime had yet been committed. The cops attacked not only protest groups but also journalists. Then, once the demonstrations had begun, heavily-armed riot cops repeatedly surrounded nonviolent protests, attacked them with batons, ordered them to disperse and then blocked off all possible routes of exit, and fired tear-gas cannisters into crowds of retreating protesters and bystanders.

Remember that so-called electoral democracy — in fact, nothing more than an imperial elective oligarchy — never means that we (meaning you and I and our neighbors) are respected as sovereign individuals or left alone to manage our own affairs. What it means is that a highly organized, heavily armed elite insists on the privilege of “representing” us, ruling over us, and ordering us around, on the excuse that, once every several years, we are given some minimal opportunity to select which of two tightly regimented political parties will take control of the ruling apparatus. It is, in other words, not freedom, but rather a Party State, in which we are given only the choice of which of two bureaucratic political parties might control our lives and livelihoods, with their authority supposedly justified by the ritual of elections and the mandate of popular sovereignty. And if the people (again, meaning you and I and our neighbors) should dare to think that we might challenge the authority of the regime supposedly “representing” us, you’ll find that it’s the people that go out the window, not the rigged electoral system or the parties’ grasp on the authority supposedly derived from those people.

More to come.