Category: police violence

The Violence Inside

Earlier this week I had an emotional meltdown over Freddie Gray’s murder and the subsequent events in Baltimore. I wrote several tweets that were openly calling for the death of cops. I’m writing this blog post not to retract those comments, but to explain them.

The police mutilated Freddie Gray’s body in a way that I can’t even comprehend the physics of. I know the police can be animals, but that level of horrific brutality shocked me to the core. Not only were several cops were involved, but we know from cases like these that even cops not directly involved will lie and cover up for their co-workers and that prosecutors and attorneys general will avoid any punishment for the cops whatsoever. The Coup has a line: “Every cop is a corrupt one.” Absolutely true.

Every cop is a bad cop, because they all support this kind of brutality. “Police whistleblower” is an oxymoron – cops do not testify against other cops. Cops are, in a sense, not individuals. Becoming police means becoming a part of a mass that has no true understanding of justice or fairness – it is a depersonalized, sociopathic force to maintain the existing social order.

Thinking about how the Baltimore police mutilated Freddie Gray’s body ignited a murderous rage in me. I wanted to see cops killed. I wanted to kill cops myself. I still do. I want to watch a cop’s blood pour out into the gutter. I have seen fear in a cop’s eyes and it is a beautiful thing. But now I fantasize about watching the light fade from those eyes.

This very hateful and violent impulse is a scary thing to face in myself. But I see no value in denying it. It’s there, the mirror image of the sickness that the cops carry, that they give into. It has been one thing for me to read Martin Luther King Jr.’s words about how violence leads only to violence, and how hatred only leads to more hatred. It was one thing to become angry at the police and realize that that is a deliberate effect of state violence.

It is another thing entirely for me to personally plunge directly into the abyss, to not just intellectually think that someone should be killed, but to passionately desire their brutal death. I grapple with this twisted fact that the very evil I see in the world and fight against, rises up inside me and that my own strong drive for justice can become poisoned, taken over, transformed into the very thing I detest.

This has led me to go back to some of Martin Luther King Jr.’s words, particularly his Pilgrimage to Nonviolence. His six basic points about nonviolence are not easy. They can be very, very difficult. While I still wouldn’t rule out some kinds of violent action in order to get to a better world, my intense reaction this week reminded me to go back, again and again, to these fundamental points, in particular the fifth point. It is a struggle for me to avoid the “internal violence of spirit”, but its appearance has been a lesson for me.

So This is the Other Side of how the Sausage is Made

On Friday, March 29th, I went to the Hall of “Justice” in San Francisco to watch part of a hearing related to the case of the so-called ACAC19. These are 19 people who were arrested during a “Anti-Colonial, Anti-Capitalist March” on Columbus Day, 2012.

I was there for the whole afternoon – the hearing had apparently started in the morning, and will be continued at 9am, April 17th. The spectacle was fascinating in a sick way – so this is the other side of how the sausage is made. Apparently this hearing was about a motion to suppress certain evidence. A couple of cops testified and a video was played. There was no jury; just a judge, a prosecutor, and 19 defense attorneys, one for each defendant.

The hearing started out with the prosecutor showing the following video of events near the intersection of Battery and Sacramento:

Go to https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2014/10/13/18762796.php
and play the video about halfway down

First of all, I was astonished by just how much detail one can miss, which became clear when the cops were questioned by the defense attorneys. After watching that video (only 1 minute 39 seconds long), can you answer the following questions?

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Remaining at the Scene of a Riot, Baby!

Much more to say about this when I have more time, but for now, for the record: 400 people arrested, no dispersal order given, never read our rights. Everyone who made it inside the Y is being charged with “burglary”, which is obviously bullshit, and one guy I saw in the kettle and talked with in jail was charged with assault of a police officer for getting his back repeatedly in the way of police batons while lying on the ground.

Fuck the State.

An Open Letter to Oakland Mayor Jean Quan

Dear Jean Quan,

I hear you will be a panelist at a forum tomorrow on the future of Occupy. I find that remarkable – almost as if Karl Rove were invited to a friendly discussion on the future of the Democratic Party. You claim to “share the concerns of the Occupy Movement” but so far you’ve been responsible for some of the harshest repression seen in the US, including the use of tear gas, not-always-lethal projectiles, and flash-bang grenades in the streets of Oakland. To prevent another encampment, you’ve flooded Oscar Grant Plaza, threatening the iconic oak tree, a symbolic reminder of how the 1% so often destroy nature in pursuit of power and profit. In addition, you’ve done all that you could to minimize Occupy Oakland’s effectiveness, discouraging people from joining the West Coast Port Shutdown and calling it “economic violence”. I have yet to hear you use the label “economic violence” to describe evictions, foreclosures, massive fraud by the banks, or the day-to-day suffering of unemployment, job insecurity, and lack of worker control under capitalism.

muddy area on Oscar Grant Plaza with a small sign that says Lake Quan

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Chris Jones and the Criminal Neglect of the SFPD

On Tuesday night, December 6th, the SFPD raided and destroyed the Occupy SF encampment. As a side note, related to the main story, there were 3 or so firefighters there – there was some piece of SFFD equipment holding up lights to further illuminate the already well-lit plaza. I talked briefly with a couple of the firefighters, and told them that their participation was shameful. One of them replied sarcastically, “Oh, I feel bad now”. My opinion of SFFD dropped significantly. But events the next night would raise my opinion again.

#OccupySF Walked into a crazy situation. 70+ riot cops marching into the GA.
6:29 PM, Dec 7th

On Wednesday evening, December 7th, people came back to Bradley Manning Plaza/Justin Herman Plaza to have a GA (General Assembly meeting). I came by a little bit late, and arrived to see 7 columns of 10 riot cops each positioned in the walkway (and more cops elsewhere) while people were gathered in the plaza. I came to be focused on a small aspect of that evening’s events, which I think is rather telling of our current situation. I tweeted from time to time, and include some of those tweets here to illustrate the events and mark them precisely in time.

The cops marched into the plaza and circled a small portion of it – about a third or a quarter. It seems that there was a little bit of time for people to decide whether to stay or not. One of my friends decided to stay in the plaza, willing to risk arrest for the sake of upholding our basic First Amendment rights to assembly and free speech. About 40 or so people and one tent were within police lines for over 2 hours during the ensuing standoff. It should be noted that lots of other people, including myself from time to time, were in the plaza, but outside of police lines – the police did not have enough numbers to surround the entire plaza.

At the edges there was quite a bit of verbal confrontation. Apparently Chris Jones was sitting on the raised embankment – for the most part cops were on or in front of that embankment. However, where he was, as Chris Jones points out in this video of the police attack, the police were standing inside the embankment. Nevertheless they had a problem with his position. He had a sign that said “Bill 1867 = George Orwell’s 1984”. Bill 1867 is also called the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which, in the words of the ACLU, “would authorize the president to send the military literally anywhere in the world to imprison civilians without charge or trial…. No corner of the world, not even your own home, would be off-limits to the military.” That’s rather important to be protesting, and it adds a certain tang to the following events.

#OccupySF Two roughly arrested. One’s name is Christopher Jones. People are yelling for a medic or 911. REMEMBER: 415-285-1011
6:50 PM, Dec 7th

I was right in front of the police lines, keeping as close a distance to the cops as I could, and doing my part as one of the white people regularly yelling at police officers. To the right of me was a sudden scuffle, and two people were pulled over the embankment, dragged through the grass, and each jumped on by several cops. It looked pretty damn rough given the number of cops, the distance from the crowd, and the lack of urgency. I have to admit that I didn’t pay a lot of attention right away, but many of the people nearby were yelling about one of the arrestees. He was still lying prone on the ground a couple minutes after being zip-tied, even though the other arrestee seemed in reasonably good shape and had shifted to sitting up.

People started yelling for medical attention, for a medic, for 911. The cops stood around impervious. Eg:

SFPD cops stand around impassively as Chris Jones is lying on the ground shaking

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