#how we haven't had any act of open resistance to our regime in years and that i couldn't believe what i'm seeing | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

2ells2tees · 3 years

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A year after the uprising, we have a responsibility to look at where things stand today, in terms of revolutionary counter-power on a national and local scale. In the immediate wake of the Uprising, there seemed to be endless possibilities- the steady march of capital, white supremacy, and the state seemed ruptured, and in the opening, we began to try to construct some alternative visions of life. The last year has seen an incredible counter-offensive by forces of repression and recuperation. Where have they succeeded in foreclosing on the horizon of possibilities that opened in the wake of the uprising? Where have they been pushed back?

In the wake of the Uprising, the City Council promised abolition of the MPD and its replacement with a department of public safety. It now seems evident that there is no serious impulse towards this, and that the debate is going to be between a community accountability board (which the MPD already has, but this one is modeled more like the one the CPD operates under), an amendment that would allow for the future defunding of the police, and a resurgent call for more policing in the wake of highly publicized violent crimes. The media has certainly done a blitz around violent crime in the Twin Cities, and a narrative has been - falsely- spun that it's because the MPD has been somehow defanged or defunded. In reality, the MPD is still lavishly funded, and very active and brutal. They just never had the ability or the interest in stopping violence in the poorest neighborhoods. Revolutionary movements have to find answers to this interpersonal violence and the roots causes behind it- not so much as a quest to take political legitimacy from the state, but because it is a pressing human need in our communities. This is part of a program of abolition from below- and these answers can only come from the communities most impacted by the violence.

The most important consideration after an uprising, is to ask- to what degree did oppressed and working class people come together and form new organization, new relationships and practices, and maintain these through the "trough" that follows the wave? Here we have a wealth of examples- new young Black revolutionary and progressive organizations, new community defense organizations like the Rock Steady Alliance or the resurgent Workers Defense Alliance, copwatch programs such as the one here in Whittier, and so on. Many of these hold a revolutionary or abolitionist perspective. There are also other groups which have been successfully recuperated, often because they were not built on a revolutionary perspective at all- such as "defense" or "de-escalation" organizations which have accepted government money to police protests. The usual way that governing systems try to digest social movements, is to recuperate whatever they can, and then leave the rest of the new formations isolated and feeling powerless until they either accept their own recuperation, get repressed, or disband from despair. It's crucial that we build mutually supporting ecologies of revolutionary organizations, and resist encirclement and isolation. One of these tasks of support is solidarity with the prisoners of the uprising- many of whom have been forgotten or been misrepresented in the media as "outside agitators" in a crackerjacketing counterinsurgency scheme.

What of the reactionary counter-offensive? The police and the state more broadly are feeling largely re-legitimized now that Trump is gone and Biden is in charge, bringing back that veneer of "normalcy". The city was forced to actually launch a competent prosecution of Chauvin as a concession to the people. His conviction assures liberals that justice within the system can be done, while firing up conservatives to view him as a martyr, "cancelled" (the greatest of Red atrocities) for life for practicing his God-given American freedom to murder. The conservatives themselves appear to be re-living some of their Obama year experiences- once again in the opposition, fearful that the Democrats are going to finally cancel America and install a regime of queer critical-race-studies Marxist-globalist Sharia. As they lick their wounds, the fascist fringe tries to reach out to them to re-grow, to bind to them more tightly, and to re-emerge in the next crisis having radicalized more of the Right. At the base and at the top, fascist inroads into the American right remain strong. Antifascist vigilance is still essential, but it's hard to keep them away from the mainstream with a levee built of shame and stigma when they've already burst that levee, left a lake in the conservative polder, and the Right has forgotten how to feel shame.

Meanwhile, the question of shop floor organizing and tenant organizing remains a weak point for revolutionaries here. Let's not claim an easy victory and pretend that a market dynamic driving up wages is a "de facto general strike". Let's not delve so deep into a fetish of spontaneity that we see worker collective action in the invisible hand of the market. The conditions are ripe for shop floor organizing, but so far our most militant offensives tend to be localized, and directed at smaller shops, or are rank and file driven actions within the larger workplaces and unions. The defeat in Bessemer is just one example among many of the failure of the union officialdom to be able to fight and win up and down the supply chains and industries of today's globalized firms. A similar story can be told in housing struggles- many small offensives, no coordinated breakthrough. We're a class struggling through an imposed amnesia, learning to walk before we can remember how to run.

One thing that we absolutely need to understand, is the difference between mobilizing and organizing. This last year started with an immense mobilization of people who wouldn't take it any more, and as the months wore on, the people mobilizing dwindled down to resemble more and more the "usual suspects"- including a new generation of usual suspects, but not generally reflecting the broader community even of those who had mobilized in the uprising. Many of the mobilizations in recent months were large marches or other demonstrations of outrage making demands on the state. These demands typically haven't been met, and won't be met through marches, because the people in power understand marches to be a spectacle, not an actual threat. If we want to build counter-power and hold it against offensives by the state, we need to build deep rooted relationships in our communities through day to day acts of resistance, building relationships and joint work around which we craft organization, and coordinating that work to escalate from small acts of resistance over our grievances to greater ones which challenge the causes of those grievances and strike at the foundations of power.

https://www.facebook.com/259251571496690/posts/969539153801258/?d=n

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It’s worth noticing that, while for white folks in the US it can feel like we’ve progressed, if you look at statistics, support (in all possible ways — from positive responses on opinion polls out to money and legislative action) from white Americans for Black lives and racial justice broadly is about HALF what it was last April.

Yes, really. It’s measurable. Many things have changed for the WORSE, and only a tiny fraction of the motion for change that has been announced in the past twelve months has materialized.

We need to learn to keep seeing it. It’s our white people homework: the minimum effort required to try not to be complicit in ongoing genocide.

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