I recently watched the following fourteen minute film, which was taken from deleted scenes from the longer and (from what I’ve heard) excellent documentary, entitled “Occupation Has No Future.”  Here’s the video, and I suggest you watch it:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpaO9DNlAF8&feature=player_embedded]
 
I was struck by the point made by former members of the IDF, regarding the ways in which sensitive and humanitarian people become incorporated into participating in the actions of a brutal and oppressive occupying force.  Thus, one fellow found himself thinking, “It’s better that I go, with my disapproval of the occupation and my humanitarian impulses, than somebody else go who is filled with hate and eager to have a gun in his hands.”  However, this fellow also goes through a further awakening: “Even if I’m giving out flowers to women at checkpoints, I’m still standing somewhere, with a gun, ready to kill people, in a place where I absolutely do not belong” (NB: these quotes are my paraphrases).
However, as a friend of mine pointed out, it is interesting to extend this way of thinking from the context of the military occupation of Palestine, to our own context.  Instead of thinking about soldiers, it is interesting to carry this trajectory of thought into our reflections upon the (increasingly militarized) police forces that operate in our own cities.  In many ways, the police are an occupying force who serve, not justice, but the interests of those who have the power to make laws.  Furthermore, just as much of the post-military service discourse in occupied Palestine focuses upon the good moral character and sensitivities of the IDF soldiers, so also much of the reflection upon police forces focuses upon the good moral character and sensitive humanitarian nature of some police officers.
I don’t mean to deny any of that (I personally know some very kind and moral people who went on to become cops), but that focus misses the broader point.  The police enforce oppressive social policies.  They (sometimes legally, sometimes illegally) act violently towards those who are marginalized within society and towards many of those who try to act in such a way as to bring about more just social arrangements.  So, sure, you can be sensitive and be a member of the IDF and, yeah, you can also be kind and be a member of the police.  The catch is that, at the end of the day, you are still a part of an occupying force that prioritizes the desires of the elite over the needs of the people.
This is part of the reason why it is fully appropriate to say “fuck the police” (without also meaning, “fuck you, Officer X”).

During his reign, Augustus Caesar attempted to push through a number of legal moral reforms in order to try and restore traditional Roman values related to sexual purity, family values, modesty, and piety.  Some of these reforms met with some success.  Others, especially those related to trying to restore traditional family values, were less successful.  In fact, some of the laws created by Augustus were so universally disregarded that they were abandoned or annulled by his immediate successors.
When reading Roman reflections upon these things — the imperial push for traditional moral practices and the widespread disregard of these laws and the ongoing presence of vices that were (officially) despised by Roman traditionalism — one discovers an interesting bit of counsel offered to the Emperors (I can’t remember if I came across this in the writings of Tacitus or the essays of Seneca).  Essentially, the Emperors are advised to practice a great deal of mercy and not focus too much upon those who break lesser laws.  The reason for this is the fear that overly rigorous efforts to prosecute immoral people will actually reveal to the public that the immoral and the law-breakers actually far outnumber the moral and law-abiding.  If this was revealed, it was feared that a state of total imperial collapse would result and that the majority would over power the minority.  Hence, the need for caution and clemency.
I was thinking about this the other day, when reflecting upon the hockey riots that occurred in my city last week (I’m sure most people have seen the images but this will give you an idea of what went on).  Immediately afterward, the Mayor of Vancouver along with the Chief of Police rushed to blame “anarchists and thugs” for instigating the riots and for engaging in the worst acts of property destruction (see this article for example).  Apparently, this anarchist activity caught the city off guard.  As the Mayor stated: “Both during the G-20 [leaders’ summit in Toronto] and the 2010 Olympics these thugs were well known to be organizing and preparing to take action and criminal activities on the streets. There were no indications of that leading into last night.”
Of course, the real reason why the police were unable to gain intelligence on “these thugs,” is because the anarchists weren’t the ones rioting or instigating the riot or running around setting cop cars on fire or looting from stores.  The truth is that the rioters and the instigators were all just regular everyday people.  Mostly young and middle class (for a better reading of the riots see this article by Andrew Potter and this one by Frank Moher).  This has become abundantly clear given the ways in which people have been employing current technology in order to police one another (a scary enough development in social media, but people are then also punishing one another — people are being threatened, expelled from school, fired from work and even forced to move from their home).  As the identities of participants have been revealed online, one has learned that they are pretty much all not thugs or criminals or anarchists, but are children of doctors, or elite athletes, or students at the University who volunteer for charities.  Thus, as of today, the police have modified their statement about blaming the anarchists.
However, it is worth asking why the police chose to blame the anarchists and why a lot of people were so easily duped by the lie (sadly, a lot of people will remain duped as the accusation was made at a focal moment, whereas the modification to the statement — a retraction without being a retraction… which is about the most you’ll ever get from the police — came much later and did not receive nearly as much attention).  This is why I thought of the parallel to the law and order maintained by the Roman Emperors.  When attempting to maintain “law and order” (i.e. when attempting to maintain socioeconomic divisions and imbalances by maintaining a sacred belief in  “private property” and ensuring that the profits of the wealthy are protected at all times), it is far better to encourage the public to believe that those who violate these laws are a small minority of black-hearted “anarchists and thugs.”  It is far more terrifying, to the powerful and those who have bought into their ideology, to be forced to admit that any one of us, any average old do-goodin’ suburban kid, might be willing to violate those laws and morals at any time.  After all, once everybody knows that pretty much everybody is willing to disregard laws about profits and property then people might get it into their heads that they could do something like this again.  That would be disastrous and so the myth of a small group of instigators composed of “anarchists and thugs” is spread.
Of course, even the police knew from the beginning that this was a lie.  This is why they admit that their intelligence gathering let them down this time.  The truth is that their surveillance did not let them down.  The truth is that it was not anarchists instigating the riots after the hockey game and both the police (and the anarchists) know this, but the value of the lie for maintaining the death-dealing status quo of law and order is what was crucial in the message fed to the media (who quickly and generally unquestioningly fed the official line to the public).
Now, don’t get me wrong.  I don’t think there was anything great about the hockey riots.  Everybody knew they were going to happen (despite what the police said) and I did not support them nor did I participate in them (actively or passively).  In fact, I thought they were pretty stupid and I never like to see people getting hurt (or to hear about parents wandering around looking for their kids in that madness… fuck, that makes me ill).
I have, however, participated in other protests that were composed of a great deal of anarchists — such has the Heart Attack protest that occurred during the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, which contained a black bloc of about two hundred people.  The difference between that protest and between the hockey riots are numerous and significant, which is why anybody who knows about these things (police included) would know that the anarchists who were in the black bloc in 2010 would have no interest in rioting after the Stanley Cup finals in 2011.  Unfortunately, the general public is incapable of telling the difference — in part because they have been fed so much misinformation about anarchism by the police and by the corporate media — so it is worth highlighting some of these.
First of all, while some anarchists sometimes engage in the destruction of property they generally do so to accomplish one of two things: in order to attain an immediate and urgent goal (e.g. blowing up logging machinery to prevent the destruction of an old growth forest) or in order to try and communicate a political message (e.g. smashing the windows of The Hudson Bay Company in order to draw attention to their rapacious and ongoing history of colonialism, imperialism, and theft).  Violence is generally only employed as a tactic when the feeling is that it may be effective in accomplish one or both of these goals.  Violence is never practiced simply for the sake of being violent.
The whole idea that “anarchy equals chaos,” or “anarchy equals destruction” is an illusion, mostly spread by those who are afraid that people might actually learn what anarchism is.  A more accurate statement is that “anarchy is order” (to quote Proudhon).  It is simply that anarchists believe that people should be able to sit down and agree amongst themselves what sort of order they wish to live within (as opposed to simply accepting the kind of “law and order” that permits a few to devour the lives of many).  This, for those who don’t already know, is what the most famous anarchist symbol represents.
For this reason, when anarchists do gather in protests, one does not generally see random acts of violence, but deliberate acts that target corporations known for their rapacity (like The Hudson Bay Co. or Starbucks or international banks) but you do not see violence directed at people, at local small businesses, or at the property of individuals.  Consequently, when you compare the acts of violence that occurred at the Heart Attack protest in 2010 versus the acts of violence that occurred in the hockey riots in 2011 and the differences are obvious.  No individuals were attacked during the Heart Attack protest.  When a security guard attacked a participant within the black bloc, and when that participant responded by defending him- or herself, it was other bloc participants who stepped in immediately in order to ensure that nobody was hurt on either side.  When some other protesters wanted to get rowdy and do damage to parked cars during the Heart Attack protest, it was the bloc participants who convinced them not to do that.  Such acts of violence held no value in terms of the goals set for that protest and so they were not pursued.  Of course, in the hockey riots, those acts of violence — the random fights, the burning of cars, and so forth — had no real value either (they were neither effective in accomplishing an immediate goal, nor did they have any propaganda value) and that’s why you don’t see any anarchists there acting that way.
Secondly, it’s also worth pointing out that the few kids who showed up at the hockey riots wearing boots and black hoodies with black bandannas were acting in a way that showed no comprehension of the ways in which black bloc tactics are intended to be employed.  The purpose of a black bloc is to gather a critical number of people who appear the same, thereby providing people with anonymity so that some are freed to engage in less-legal actions without fear of repercussions (there are other reasons as well — as a show of strength against the police, for example — but this is the primary purpose).  Consequently, a small handful of people showing up in boots and black at the hockey riots would have exactly the opposite effect — rather than permitting people to vanish into the crowd, these people stood out like sore thumbs.  I am convinced that those who showed up dressed this way were simply suburban kids who saw protesters on TV and thought, “hey, I want to go and smash some shit and look like a mothafuckin’ ninja while I do that!”
Finally, the element of looting is worth highlighting when comparing the hockey riots with the Heart Attack protest.  During the Olympics, nobody was interested in stealing goods from the Hudson Bay Co., but it was looted during the hockey riots (as were some other large stores).  Here is the difference: the anarchists at the Heart Attack protest wanted nothing to do with the goods sold by The Bay.  They believed that those goods were stained with the blood of others and so were not interested in possessing those goods.  That is why the windows of the store was smashed but the goods were left in place.  The hockey rioters appeared to have no such moral qualms about the goods sold by The Bay.  They didn’t seem to care if the store was death-dealing or if those goods were blood-stained.  They just saw an opportunity to grab some free shit and so they did (and then later resold some of it).  Another action that points to the absence of any anarchists.
Of course, all this is not to say that there wasn’t one kid in the crowd calling himself an anarchist.  In fact, I ran into a few people that night who were calling for “ANARCHY!”  When I asked them what that meant they said it meant chaos and lawlessness.  When I asked them who they voted for in the recent federal election they said NDP and Conservative.  That’s an interesting kind of anarchism… not one represented in any of the communities I have known or any of the literature I have read.
(Other anarchist voices and allies from Vancouver respond here and here).

[Update: this is what happened — the Council decided to cut the 70+ speakers out of their agenda,  and are seeking to employ silence, co-opt, divide, and conquer tactics.]
Over the last few years, the mayor and other council members in Vancouver have made it increasingly clear that they function as middle-management for corporate interests and do not function as democratically-elected representatives of the people whom they have been appointed to serve.  One of the ways in which that is now coming to a head in Vancouver is around the matter of gentrification in our downtown eastside — the central community of poor and marginalized people in this city.  Essentially, real estate developers and their allies are trying to change very significant zoning bylaws in order to gentrify that neighbourhood, drive out the poor and the homeless, and make a lot of money while further ostracizing, isolating, and harming the most vulnerable populations of our city.  Basically, they want the City Council to legalize a criminal act (which is a fair expectation on their part, the law in Canada has consistently demonstrated its willingness to modify itself in order to meet the rapacious goals of Canadian capital).
The crucial vote on these zoning bylaws is occurring today (the matter has been given the name of the “Historic Area Heights Review” in order to obfuscate what is really going on).  Prior to that vote, any citizen of Vancouver has been invited to contact City Hall in order to speak to the Council about the issues involved.  I have agreed to do this.  If you live in Vancouver, you should try to attend (things start at 2pm and will probably go late).
Being fully cognizant that others will go into much more technical and statistical detail about this effort to gentrify the downtown eastside, here is the transcript of what I intend to say to City Council later today:
When all is said and done, I believe that the discussion of the Historic Area Heights Review (HAHR) is prompted by a very basic division. This is a division between the mostly poor and marginalized people who actually live in the downtown east-side, and the wealthy and powerful real estate developers who do not live in that community, but who want legal permission to steal the land and gentrify the neighbourhood. To gain this legal permission, the developers need the City Council to implement the HAHR. Therefore, I want to pose a simple question to the Council:
Will the Council permit people who live in the downtown east-side to determine the future of their neighbourhood, or will the Council permit external corporate interests to determine the fate of that community and the people who live there?
If we are trying to live within a “democracy” and actually subscribe to the notion of “the rule of the people,” then it is clear that the City Council should prioritize the desires and goals of the residents of the downtown east-side who have almost unanimously gathered together to voice their opposition to the HAHR and have, instead, requested that the City set aside ten previously determined sites for social housing.
However, I sometimes wonder if the democratic process has stopped working in Canada. For years, the government has been transferring public property and common wealth into the pockets of private corporations and individuals. Thus, during the 2010 Olympics we saw an international spectacle that was used to transfer public monies into private pockets, we saw services being cut, social housing being destroyed and promises being broken. Additionally, we saw the further criminalization of poverty, something already begun by the Safe Streets Act, and the increased exercise of surveillance and force over against poor people.
Consequently, I am often left thinking that City Council members, those who are elected to represent and serve the people, actually do not care about the people. Instead, they seem to be the representatives of corporate interests and appear to be more keen to befriend the wealthy and powerful few who want to plunder the poor and marginalized many.
I think the ways in which the Council members vote on the HAHR will make their allegiances apparent. If council members choose to faithfully act as democratically elected representatives, they will reject this move to gentrify the downtown east-side. However, if Council members are more interested in profit – even when the cost of that profit is human life – then they will approve of this move.
To be perfectly honest, I have little hope that this Council will listen. I only agreed to speak here today because those whom I know and love, who happen to live within the downtown east-side, requested that we come and speak. Out of respect for them, I am doing that. Besides, there are sometimes wonderful and unpredictable moments when the unexpected happens and when those with power choose to act in a life-giving instead of a death-dealing (but profitable) manner. Maybe this will be one of those moments. If it is not, then you will have joined a great host of those who have gone before you—those who have had power and walked away with blood on their hands.
If that more predictable result occurs, then we should consider this: when the democratically elected representatives fail to listen to the people but instead choose to oppress the most vulnerable segments of the population, then it is time for the people to reject the legitimacy of those representatives and come together to rule themselves. Remember the words of the prophet Isaiah:
“Woe to you who add house to house, and join field to field til no space is left and you live alone in the land… Surely the great houses will become desolate, the fine mansions left without occupants” (Is. 5.8-9).
Even now, it is not too late to do what is right. Reject the gentrification of the downtown east-side. Create 100% resident-controlled social housing at the ten sites selected by the Downtown east-side Neighbourhood Council. Or plunder the poor and then look for a pretty way to phrase that so that you can sleep at night. The choice is yours. But regardless of whether you choose to serve Life or serve Death, we will continue to serve Life and will continue to resist all that which is death-dealing.
_____________________________
For more on this issue, see the following media links:
Plan for towers in the Downtown Eastside under fire
The Province
Condo towers could push out poor from DTES: activists
CTV News
Downtown Eastside activists protest over-height condo plans
Vancouver Sun
Activist Rider Cooey joins fight against towers proposed for Downtown Eastside
Global TV
City building height review faces more opposition

CKNW

Mayor Robertson’s party wages war on Downtown Eastside

The Mainlander

Brigade of academics petition city hall not to raise heights in DTES, Chinatown

Francis Bula blog

Fight the height: condos are killing us

Vancouver Media Co-op

SFU, UBC professors concerned about effect of height review on Downtown Eastside

Georgia Straight

Proposal for higher buildings in downtown Vancouver criticized in advance of city vote

Georgia Straight

On January 8, 2011, Gabrielle Giffords, an American congresswoman, was shot in the head in a mass shooting at a political meet-and-greet event.  Nineteen people were shot and six have died at this point — including Arizona’s chief federal judge and a nine year old girl.
Giffords was a Democrat and has drawn negative attention from Republicans for supporting Obama’s health care bill.  Thus, for example, she is listed on Sarah Palin’s target list (which, by the way, placed cross-hairs over Giffords location and employed a fair amount of gun-based rhetoric — oh, and at the same time as posting this list to her facebook, Palin tweeted, “Don’t Retreat, Instead – RELOAD!”).
Giffords’ office was also targeted last March when a glass door and window were found smashed, either by boot or by bullet.  She is not alone in this regard.  Four other Democrat offices had windows smashed on the same day.  Around ten others received death threats.  To pick a few examples: Nancy Pelosi was personally threatened on the phone by a man who said he would burn her house down; a Democrat in New York, Louise Slaughter, had the lives of her and her children threatened; another Democrat in Virginia, Tom Perriello, received death threats and a member of the Tea Party tried to post his address online and encouraged others to stop by to express their “gratitude” to him; and so on.
As of yet, nothing is known of the political position that the shooter, Jared Loughner, may or may not have held.  What is apparent is that he is probably quite unwell mentally and that he may have acted with the assistance of another older male accomplice.
However, regardless of the stance(s) taken by Loughner and his possible accomplice, it is clear the the violence enacted on January 8th fits with the criteria and goals of the Tea Party and the Right of America’s Republican party.  To borrow the language of Hardt and Negri, this is an example of the sort of populist violence that may occur when “the people” rise in order to reassert traditional relationships of privilege, property and power.  Over against the creative resistance offered by “the multitude,” this sort of violence is not liberating but only further deepens the oppression of those who are lashing out against their perceived enemies.
Of course, it is appropriate for Americans to feel betrayed by the Obama administration and the Democratic party.  Obama played off the hope of the voters (who were audacious enough to vote for him) but only continued to further the agendas of the transnational corporate power-players of global capitalism.  Instead of “fixing” America, Obama made it worse (his health care reform is a good example of this — something that postures as a radical action in favour of those in need of health care, but something that actually makes very minimal changes and also furthers the interests of American capitalism — as is his ending of the “combat mission” in Iraq).
It is appropriate for the American public to be thinking about things like subversion, resistance, and revolt (although, I should stress this: I do not think that it is ever appropriate for somebody to do what Loughner did).  However, it is precisely here that the violence desired (and enacted) by the Tea Party has an insidious impact upon movements of resistance.  Populist (American) violence is violence that and supports an oppressive status quo, and also ends up strengthening other pro-capitalist agendas — it causes an increase in security measures and surveillance, it brings more oppressive laws into being in order to target those who pursue change (thereby altering the legal system so that social justice advocates and community organizers become defined as “terrorists”), and it causes the general public to be increasingly suspicious, fearful, and violent against any who might pursue liberating change outside of the prescribed legal, institutional or governmental avenues.
For a parallel example, think of Jim Jones and the ways in which he poisoned the perspectives of any who (even today) think about living in alternate, more intentional, forms of community that seek to explore better ways of sharing life together.  When I first began to approach people about living in  a more intentional kind of community, the same comments (half-serious, half-joking) were always made: “When do we drink the cool-aid?” or “I’m not going to let you sleep with my spouse.”  Thus, those who want to do something that might look a bit like what Jones did — because, you know, he did create a community where people of all races where equal and were the rich shared with the poor so that everybody had enough — are also going to be looked at like they might be sociopathic killers and sex offenders.
Therefore, one of the results of Loughner’s actions will be that the public is increasingly unwilling to consider or engage in anything that looks like less-legal tactics of resistance and the Powers will be increasingly able to criminalize dissent.  This, just like the deaths that occurred on January 8th, is a tragedy because life-giving change will not come through the means that are legally available to us.

Well, I don’t know how many people are aware of what has been happening in France ever since the government started driving through a law that would shift the age of retirement from 60 to 62 but there have been massive uprisings across the country that have seen workers, students, seniors, new immigrants, and many others uniting to fight back against the powers that be.  Gas and oil refineries have been shut down, along with other locations like high-schools, universities, highways, and airports.
There is an inspiring series of pictures documenting some of this here.  I think this really shows us the two faces of “democracy.”  On the one hand, we see the multitude rising up in an effort to claim (a form of) self-rule, and on the other hand we see hegemonic powers employing force to prevent anything that resembles the actual “rule of the people.”