I am confident in saying that most of CVLT Nation’s readers have a less than savory view of the world’s police forces. Living in one of America’s metropolises means living under the porky shadow of organizations like the LAPD and NYPD, whose atrocities over the past half-century have made global news. From the Chicago PD’s assassination of Fred Hampton, to the LAPD’s merciless beating of Rodney King, to the NYPD’s attacks against the Occupy protesters, the police organizations have shown themselves to be harbingers of doom for the so-called “lower classes” of America. Kristian Williams, author of Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America, has spent many years researching the American police forces, and has traced their roots from the slave patrols to their modern day incarnation, an insular group charged with destabilizing impoverished communities of color and protecting the interests of the small number of capitalists who control the majority of this country’s wealth. In the video below, he reads a rough draft of his chapter for the upcoming book We Are Many, a collection of essays about the Occupy movement from AK Press. He outlines how the police have developed strategies to control and subdue the masses in order to preserve the status quo, and how they have been created as a separate and unequal. What’s most fascinating about his reading is the very informed and highly researched conclusion – that we must position ourselves against the police in all things. Williams insists that we can’t separate ourselves by class and race the way that the White Supremacist Captalist system wants us to – we must stand unified as students, working class, people of all colors, free and jailed, against the watchdogs of those that would be our masters. Check out the video below and Williams’ other work here.
Police and the 99% from Because We Must on Vimeo.
The Shivering Sands
March 28, 2012 at 3:06 pm
I am in a DIY band, and also serve as a first responder, as well as hold a B.S. in Criminal Justice.
I think society has a big problem and this speech gloriously illustrates it, which is the public being completely willing to accept such a blatantly one-sided and narrow perception of history and reality itself.
Several political activist groups who are professionals themselves at provoking authority started the Occupy Wall Street movement. This is not necessarily a bad thing, however I greatly detest the self – righteous double standards that people are willing to accept in order to achieve this.
Political activists exploit the public’s ignorance of the law by always professing to be the victims of law enforcement in order to elicit sympathy for their cause. They also are quick to deny the very humanity that they claim to serve by always assuming that every single action by a police officer is a macrocosm for the entire department thus completely denying the fact that although a police officer is expected to act a certain way, they are human beings who do have various tempers which can be challenged. And be sure to know that the hardcore activists behind these protests have done plenty of pushing themselves.
This speech is just another tool of such political activism. Notice how the speaker immediately brings race up, that’s not a coincidence. He knows his audience and purposely brought up race in order to elicit a sympathetic emotional reaction. I know this, because I am aware of the fact that the whole slave patrol connection to modern police, although not entirely unfounded, was just a very small colloquial part to law enforcements origins and not as grandiose as this speaker would have you believe.
Overall, this post also displays the typical romanticism of people who are sympathetic to the Occupiers cause. They see themselves as living this Star Wars like drama, them being the rebels, and the police being apart of the evil empire. When in reality, cops dislike of the protesters have very little to do with their politics for they see themselves really as babysitters of naive youth, and I am sorry to say that in most cases they are right.
Boue records
March 28, 2012 at 9:18 am
This facts are not only in States but it’s a true globalisation. In Valencia (Spain) the police said our enemies is the people. Specially in this case the students and young people. Recently in France with the evens in Toulouse, we can guess by several evidences that there reign conspiracy and manipulation. If some of you can translate this link you can see how the world’s going to be alarming…
http://www.wikistrike.com/article-attaques-de-toulouse-la-version-officielle-de-la-mort-de-mohamed-merah-est-un-mensonge-102334901.html
Alfonso
March 28, 2012 at 6:21 am
this is awesum ^_^