On Tuesday, February 12, I’ll be speaking on a panel discussing alternatives to the police.
Here are the details:
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
5 – 7 pm
PSU Smith Center room 327/328
If you want a preview of what I’ll be talking about, you can tune into KBOO 90.7 FM a day earlier. On Monday, February 11, some time between 9 and 10 am, I’ll be interviewed on The Old Mole.
A few weeks ago I participated in an event called “Our Lips are Sealed” about grand jury resistance and withstanding repression more broadly.
In the course of the day, I spoke on two panels, alongside Dennison Williams (no relation), Richard Brown of the SF8, and the Freedom Archives‘ Claude Marks. It was a great and humbling experience to share the stage with these folks, two of whom have done serious time as political prisoners and one who resisted a grand jury subpoena earlier this year but (so far) remains free.
One can hear audio of from the event at the Radio Autonomia website.
I’ve also written about the grand jury for Counterpunch, earlier in the fall (“A Defense of Contempt: The Kafkaesque Case of Matt Duran.” Counterpunch. October 1-15, 2012. Subscription only; sorry!)
At the time Matt Duran was the only northwest grand jury resistor in prison; since then, Kteeo Olejnik and Maddy Pfeiffer have also been imprisoned for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury looking into the anarchist movement.
For more information on the Northwest Grand Jury, visit the Committee Against Political Repression website: https://nopoliticalrepression.wordpress.com/
When I was in Oakland a couple weeks ago, I gave a speech at a rally demanding justice of Alan Blueford, a young man shot and killed by the Oakland police.
The demonstration drew a crowd a few hundred strong. After hearing speeches from several people who had lost family to the cops, we marched to the police station, where I briefly spoke.
The text of my speech is below. To learn more about the Blueford case, and the organizing that has resulted, please visit: http://justice4alanblueford.org/
“Our demands should be an attack.”
We are here today, with grief and anger, because the police shot and killed Alan Blueford.
But not just Alan Blueford. We are here because the police killed Mack Woodfox, Jose Buenrostro-Gonzalez, Anita Gay, Oscar Grant — and so many others.
In a country where police kill, on average, 364 people per year — nearly one a day– and where 35% of these people are black, when the cops shoot a young black man it cannot be treated as an accident. It cannot be understood as a mistake. It is not even a crime in the ordinary sense.
When the cops kill people of color that is simply the normal operation of a racist institution in a grossly unequal society. That’s the job that the police are put there to do.
That role goes all the way back to the origin of the institution. The modern US police are the descendants of an older body called the slave patrols. Those patrols were militia organizations responsible for keeping slaves on the plantation and, more importantly, responding to or preventing slave revolts. As the country industrialized and urbanized, the slave patrols evolved and took on the characteristics of what we now recognize as a modern police force. And, tellingly, their mission expanded — not only the control of slaves, but free blacks and poor whites as well.
In the 200 years since, the form of inequality has changed — from slavery, to segregation, to legal equality masking social inequality — but the role of the police has remained remarkably constant. The police developed to control poor people and people of color, and they are still on that job today.
That suggests to me, very strongly, that the racism and violence of the police are not incidental, but are inherent features of the institution. And that means, among other things, that we cannot reform our way out of our police problem.
The twentieth century was the century of reform. We saw progressive campaigns against municipal corruption, mid-century efforts to professionalize the police force, then the introduction of military discipline, the emergence of community policing, diversity training, and the creation of advisory boards. And as a result, the police today are better paid, better trained, better organized, better armed than at any other point in history — and they continue to act as racist thugs. That core function of preserving inequality remains very much the same.
Our efforts, then, should not be directed toward fixing this institution — but toward destroying it. As we make our demands and plan our campaigns, this ultimate goal must always be kept in mind. We should pursue changes that de-legitimize, demoralize, discredit, and disempower the police and which, correspondingly, energize, embolden, and empower the community. When we demand justice, let us be clear that it is not the justice of the courts and the government, but the justice that abolishes courts and government that is required. Our very demands should be a form of attack.
I will be in the Bay Area this weekend, speaking at several events:
Friday, November 9, 7pm
Modern Times Bookstore
2919 24th Street, San Francisco
I will be discussing my collection, Hurt: Notes on Torture in a Modern Democracy, and a recent essay about grand jury resistance. Q and A to follow.
Saturday, November 10, noon
March Against Police Brutality and Against Racial Profiling
14th and Broadway, Oakland
I have been invited to speak about the police and racism, and will then be joining the march.
Saturday, November 10, 6pm
The Long Haul Infoshop
3124 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley
I’ll be talking about Hurt — specifically, about the experience of writing about torture, and how anarchism can help us understand it. Q and A to follow.
Sunday, November 11, 11am-5pm
Grand Jury Resistance Panel
The Hold-Out
2313 San Pablo Avenue, Oakland
I’ll be speaking alongside Richard Brown (of the SF8) and others on a panel about grand jury resistance. Free lunch!
Each event will be different.