Forum Post: Preliminary reflections on Occupy Oakland and our relation to Police
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 26, 2011, 4:35 a.m. EST by krosky
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For what it's worth, I felt the need to write this after seeing via eyewitness video the events surrounding the forced eviction of Occupy Oakland and the belligerence of police there.
After watching the eviction of Occupy Oakland, I have a few remarks I’d like to add to the din of discourse about The Occupation. It is important to realize now, with wisps of tear gas dissipating from Oakland’s streets, with comrades sitting in jail for refusing to end The Occupation, with bruises from police batons and beanbags discolored and raw, it is important to realize now that the police are not your friends. They may be part of the 99%, but they assume another identity when they don the uniform of a policeman. When they put on that uniform, they identify with an order and society and economy and politics that is dominated by the owners of our world, the 1%.
Remember this when you encounter a cop next time. When he raises his clenched fist to rain down blows from a black club upon your proud head, he is not your comrade. When he orders his lieutenants to coordinate a mass arrest, he is not your friend. When he fires tear gas into a crowd of dissatisfied people in an effort to coerce them to return to their homes, to shopping, to working, to eating and drinking and drowning their sorrows and stillborn dreams and unthought possibilities, he is not your buddy. When he grinds your face into the asphalt for failing to follow an “order to disperse”, he has not your best interests in mind. He is and will remain, until he burns the uniform and the mask of uncaring unseeing thoughtless “duty”, your enemy.
The power to change our world is within our grasp, should we only choose to take it. But you can’t grasp much when your hands are zip-tied. In General Assemblies and mutual aid we can glimpse a better world of our own creation, nascent and ready to grow. But you can’t see much when your eyes sting from tear gas. We can rely on each other to make our collective dreams a reality, but one finds little help from a comrade sitting in a jail cell. Before we seek to liberate the world from the hegemony of elites, we must liberate each other from their footsoldiers.
No, sorry but that is silly emotional rhetoric. I posted another thread here about getting in touch with the rank and file to find out what their motivations are etc. Are the non evil ones really afraid of loosing there job all that much? Do they fail to understand the law that badly? What?
Also, they are brainwashed a lot in their training, to demonize and dehumanize the enemy, overrate the importance of "the law" (no matter who wrote it or what morality says) etc.
I don't buy the bad apple argument because bad cops are never punished, which means the whole force is mostly corrupted. However they are still people in the end, and 99%ers, and we need to know more about what is going on in their heads before we come to conclusions about what they are thinking, their potential as allies etc.
That's the irony. They are the 99% but work for the 1%. I'd be willing to bet the majority of the 1% hold little respect for the police. The elite feel they are above the law, and besides, cops are "blue collar" employees.