I’m not crying for cop cars and it’s a shame they didn’t get harder-to-replace buildings instead like Minneapolis. My point is with the third picture:
Raid them before they raid you!
It’s a call to action without organisation. Doing this one-time thing immediately puts the state on high alert and it has to be followed by spontaneous escalations by individuals if it’s to survive that response. Right out of the gate they’re alienating communists by decrying any formal organisation. It just has to be people being inspired by spontaneous praxis to take on a militarised police state through their own spontaneous actions that can never be matched by the state.
When Food Not Bombs rejects that centralisation, the result is that I make soup but there’s no ladle unless I personally spontaneously bring a ladle. There’s no coordinated menu or guarantee that there will be anything more than apples unless people spontaneously do that between themselves three times per week. There’s no buying in bulk or storing things in a common space or pooling resources behind a structure with bylaws. It’s praxis without any political education or interorganisational networking like the local DSA events have, and it only works if people see that and then themselves decide to show up three times per week with their own food and utensils while individually doing all the administrative coordinating between their own cliques. Even if I agree with the act in isolation it’s an act of faith that it will inspire someone else to also cook. And if it doesn’t, all that energy is limited to that specific moment. PSL may be driving people to join PSL at its equivalent mutual aid days, but it’s because PSL has a budget for utensils and national network and sign up sheets. The energy fuels a structure that will exist tomorrow and consciously build networks with other orgs using full-time organisers. There’s risk-reward calculation between a group so that one anonymous person doesn’t personally declare war on the police without a plan B if the following week doesn’t have enough copycat response to counter what the state does.
This is a good point; I don’t agree with the Bonanno-style exhortations for people to just go out and do more destruction of policing instruments (and also preemptively striking counter-protestors; most if not all university encampments have a strong policy against engaging at all with them, for good reason). A declaration that “they have been revealed as illegitimate and we have demonstrated that they are not safe amidst our escalations” would do.
I’m not crying for cop cars and it’s a shame they didn’t get harder-to-replace buildings instead like Minneapolis. My point is with the third picture:
It’s a call to action without organisation. Doing this one-time thing immediately puts the state on high alert and it has to be followed by spontaneous escalations by individuals if it’s to survive that response. Right out of the gate they’re alienating communists by decrying any formal organisation. It just has to be people being inspired by spontaneous praxis to take on a militarised police state through their own spontaneous actions that can never be matched by the state.
When Food Not Bombs rejects that centralisation, the result is that I make soup but there’s no ladle unless I personally spontaneously bring a ladle. There’s no coordinated menu or guarantee that there will be anything more than apples unless people spontaneously do that between themselves three times per week. There’s no buying in bulk or storing things in a common space or pooling resources behind a structure with bylaws. It’s praxis without any political education or interorganisational networking like the local DSA events have, and it only works if people see that and then themselves decide to show up three times per week with their own food and utensils while individually doing all the administrative coordinating between their own cliques. Even if I agree with the act in isolation it’s an act of faith that it will inspire someone else to also cook. And if it doesn’t, all that energy is limited to that specific moment. PSL may be driving people to join PSL at its equivalent mutual aid days, but it’s because PSL has a budget for utensils and national network and sign up sheets. The energy fuels a structure that will exist tomorrow and consciously build networks with other orgs using full-time organisers. There’s risk-reward calculation between a group so that one anonymous person doesn’t personally declare war on the police without a plan B if the following week doesn’t have enough copycat response to counter what the state does.
This is a good point; I don’t agree with the Bonanno-style exhortations for people to just go out and do more destruction of policing instruments (and also preemptively striking counter-protestors; most if not all university encampments have a strong policy against engaging at all with them, for good reason). A declaration that “they have been revealed as illegitimate and we have demonstrated that they are not safe amidst our escalations” would do.