Category: Chronicles

Political Theatre Does Not Represent Us: Part 4

Many of the people who are up in flames about non-voters are people whose “activism” ends at voting and getting people to vote. A lot of these people condescend non-voters and sarcastically ask leftists, “Well then, what do you want me to do?” Which begs the question… What can you do instead of voting?

“White Democrats who are pushing for Black folks to save America from itself have demonstrated our relative unimportance by refusing to help us strategize around safety during participation in electoral politics.” – Brittany Lee Frederick.

White voters, what are y’all doing to ensure the safety of Black voters and the follow-through of white politicians? What are y’all doing to ensure the safety of BIPOC period? There’s more work to be done than just voting on the ballot and never doing any other work. Still, we don’t want to encourage defeatism or inaction by overwhelming people with the amount of work that needs to be done; that’s the opposite of what any of us should focus on.

It’s when we renounce electoral politics and also refrain from doing other work that we feel most defeated and eventually, guilted into “at least” voting… and the cycle continues. That guilt and impotence that stems from inaction is diminished when we get involved in our communities and see our power first hand. We can’t invalidate the work people are doing outside of the system just because they didn’t bubble in their ballots; that’s just one action in their lives as opposed to many. Even if we all bubbled in ballots, the real change will come from doing the labor and building support networks within our own communities. So much attention is focused on voter registration and information, especially with the upcoming elections.

But how different could things be if we reallocated our resources and numbers from politics and directly into the community? The refusal to participate in this system comes after divesting from the system itself, a slow process that comes after the realization that no politicians will come to your rescue because they simply don’t care. Instead of letting that instill fear and hopelessness in you, let it radicalize and empower you. Choosing not to vote isn’t fatalistic, as some believe; in fact, there’s more hope in trusting that our communities can fend for themselves without relying on puppets. When we redirect our idealism and hope from the system and into ourselves, there is a higher likelihood that our needs and the needs of our communities will be met.

The reality for most is that we don’t have the resources to fully invest in electoral politics and also resist them. The truth is that with jobs, school, families, and downtime to account for, most can’t fully invest in phone banking for politicians and still have the time and energy to commit to organizing in their community. When we talk about dismantling and defunding and abolishing, it’s easy to get lost in the commitment to destruction and forget that we also need to build and nurture. A big part of the fight lies in how we build support networks outside of the structures we hope to destroy. There are already people and projects across the IE getting involved and helping their communities.

Do you have clothes you never got rid of during spring cleaning because we got stuck in quarantine? Consider putting together a clothing drive or clothes swap with some friends. Do you have a space in your yard and like to garden? Plant some herbs and veggies and distribute produce around your block. Do you like crafting and working with your hands? Make some face masks and hand sanitizer to give out to the houseless population. Anything from skill sharing – cooking classes, financial literacy courses, political education, translation services, and more – to providing services – child-care, ride sharing, community gardening, running errands for the elderly (especially during COVID) – is useful.

Everyone has a skill, an interest, a talent. We can all build on what we already have and share it with our community instead of waiting on politics to save us.

 

Further reading:

“Reaching Beyond ‘Black Faces in High Places’: An Interview With Joy James” from Truthout

“Socialist Faces in High Places: Elections & the Left” by Black Rose/Rosa Negra

“Voting is Not Harm Reduction” by Indigenous Action

Political Theatre Does Not Represent Us: Part 3

Flint, Michigan is still without clean water. Continuous accounts of state violence are being (badly) mitigated by Democratic promises of reform that will give more funding to police. Joe Biden himself has explicitly stated that he does not – and will never – support Medicare for All. The last post included deportation statistics under Obama vs. Trump; there is a reason Obama was labeled “deporter in chief” despite being a Democratic president. These problems don’t start or end with blue vs. red, and they won’t end just by flipping the White House. Even when Obama ran under a campaign that promised “change,” the most vulnerable populations still suffered and were placated by empty promises. Now, Joe Biden himself has assured Americans that “nothing [will] fundamentally change.”

For younger, self-identifying “leftists,” Bernie Sanders’ first presidential campaign was an initial exposure to “leftism.” If his 2016 – and his most recent – defeat should have taught his supporters anything, it’s that the two-party system is designed to maintain the status quo, and that even the threat of capitalism-lite (Sanders’ Democratic Socialism) is still threatening enough for Democrats to end it themselves. The 2016 email leak revealed correspondence between DNC officials stating that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) “tried to aid [Hillary] Clinton and hamper [Bernie] Sanders,” as well as discussed ways they could sabotage Sanders’ campaign and smudge his public appearance. Not only did this demonstrate the monopoly that the two-party voting system has over the United States, it also explicitly revealed that even the “progressive party” will refuse to move further left if it threatens the hierarchy.

That all being said, it’s safe to say that most of us are not represented or protected by electoral politics and politicians, even locally. When you trust the government and its legislation instead of yourself and your community, you unintentionally reinforce the need to appeal to the moral judgement of those in power. Voting cannot be our survival strategy when so many colonized and oppressed people won’t survive, even after they vote. We don’t need to ask permission to exist safely and live dignified lives. We deserve more than the crumbs of politicians and reformist legislature.

References

Ballotpedia (2016) Democratic national committee (DNC) email leak, 2016. https://ballotpedia.org

Higgins, E. (2019, June 19) Vowing not to ‘demonize’ the rich, biden tells billionaires ‘nothing would fundamentally change’ if he was elected. Common Dreams. https://www.commondreams.org

Political Theatre Does Not Represent Us: Part 2

Time and time again, we see and hear the argument about privilege in regard to voting: the people who do vote are privileged and selfish, and the people who don’t vote are somehow also privileged and selfish. This argument is tired and premised on shaming people into action through condescension and guilt. So, who are these people who aren’t voting, and why don’t they vote, anyway?

Despite the opinions claiming that non-voters are the “privileged few” who have no critical stake in politics:

  • Voting trends in 2016 and 2018 both show that almost half of nonvoters are non-white, even though these communities compose only one-fourth of the voting population.
  • 56% of nonvoters are quite poor – making less than $30,000 per year – even though that income group constitutes just over one-fourth of the voting population.

People who abstain from voting do so because they are so misrepresented or entirely ignored by electoral politics and policies to bother voting. The solution to a corrupt system can’t be to just register these people to vote and provide information on candidates or policies, because the problem isn’t whether they have the capacity to vote. They choose not to vote because electoral politics have not substantially changed their lived realities. There is a correlation between those who choose not to vote and those who belong to the most vulnerable communities – people who are indigenous, Black, undocumented, queer, poor, and so on.

One of the most common arguments for “voting blue no matter who” is the fear of mass deportations and further xenophobia from the Trump administration.

  • 409,849 undocumented folks were deported under Obama in 2012.
  • A little over 265,000 undocumented folks were deported under Trump in 2019.
  • Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act states that law enforcement (local) can partner with ICE (federal) to deport people in a local community. This means that cities and counties can become subject to federal jurisdiction regardless of more benevolent local policies – and/or local elected representatives.

These local representatives and local elections are, on a smaller scale, comparable to “voting blue no matter who” when it comes to presidency. At the end of the day, local and federal electoral politics are just electoral politics, and this is just one snapshot demonstrating the neglect of one vulnerable group of people.

In San Bernardino, local elected officials are making six-digit salaries while the city recovers from bankruptcy for the past five years, and while most members of the community aren’t making even close to that salary range. How can it be argued that electoral politics and elected officials are designed to listen to and protect vulnerable communities, when these communities are the first to be exploited – even at the local level?

“… We must recognize how [these] systems have evolved to the point where you hardly have to keep someone from voting to keep their vote from having effect. The system evolves to protect itself, and privilege is the opposite of giving up on the belief it will self-rectify” – Hari Ziyad.

We can do more – and better – for ourselves than voting.

References

– Clusiau, C. & Schwarz, S. (Directors). (2020). The power of the vote [Television series episode]. In Schwartz, S. (Producer), Immigration nation. Scotts Valley, California: Netflix.
– Greenwald, G. (2020, Apr 9) Nonvoters are not privileged. They are disproportionately lower-income, nonwhite, and dissatisfied with the two parties. The Intercept. https://theintercept.com
– NYT Editorial Board (2019, Jul 13) All presidents are deporters in chief. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/
– Department of Homeland Security (2020, Sep 30) Delegation of immigration authority section 287(g) immigration and nationality act. https://www.ice.gov/287g
– Ziyad, H. (2016, Oct 13) Not voting is not a privilege. Black Youth Project. http://blackyouthproject.com/

Political Theatre Does Not Represent Us: Part 1

126 million people do not care about political theatre.

There has been a lot of discourse over the upcoming presidential election this coming November. All kinds of people have had deep arguments revolving around the following concerns: “Why should we vote?” “What are the downsides of not voting?” “Reasons why we should never vote.” “Why voting is anti-Black and colonial,” etc. In the end, debates about all of these positions around voting re-center the American political machine, whether or not people feel sympathetic or apathetic towards the political institution itself. However, there has been very little discussion that mentions the large mass of people who do not vote.

Here are a few basic statistics:

  • There are about 330 million people living in the US.
  • There are about 16-20 million people who cannot vote because they are undocumented, felons, or ex-convicts.
  • There are about 246 million people who are eligible to vote in the US.
  • There were only about 136 million people who turned out to vote for a president in 2016.

So, these numbers and some simple math show that there were about 126-130 million people in the US who did not vote in 2016.

We argue that these people will never be fully absorbed into the system and its political institutions, and we should explore the potentialities that underlie this reality. In particular, we want to ask some questions about all the debates regarding voting: Who’s having these conversations about voting in the first place? Are we speaking to educated, college degree audiences? Are all of the debates on voting – whether defenses for or rebuttals against – even relevant to the over 126 million people who do not vote? If we all know that the political system is failing and dying, how can we side step and move beyond the need to center the political institution in the first place? If there are at least 126 million people who frankly do not care about politics or the nation’s political theatre, what can this mean for autonomous movement building?

The debates around voting tend to be very saviorist, which imply a desire to “save” others from acting “improperly.” This is a form of paternalism. We hope that we can one day render all political institutions (and the police that underlie them) irrelevant to our lives, and maybe that begins with the 126 million who are apathetic about politics – as we should all be.

Autonomy will never be achieved at the voting booths.

In Question of the “Peaceful Protest” (and in Defense of Violence): Part 4, Section ii

Part 4, Section i:

4b. Property Damage: A Symbolic Liberation from Capitalism

Public non-injurious violence, such as property destruction, creates new subjects without adhering to the dehumanization that is a cornerstone of capitalism: the subject inevitably unlearns their submissiveness. Violence then becomes the integration of trauma into unity.

Property destruction is not just violence against inanimate objects; it is violence against what that property is used for, those who get to decide that, and what property represents. The verb “profane” describes the process of transforming the sacred into something mundane again, to be used by humans, and that is exactly what property destruction attempts to do: give back what rightfully belongs to the public. Property destruction targets not only the institutions that own the property, but also the relationship to property. The destruction of personal property during riots is minimal and never the goal of anticapitalist property destruction.

The way some bystanders choose to physically defend property by hurting protestors shows the way some people actively choose property over life, even when the property does not belong to them. In the United States, protestors attacking property is synonymous to them attacking the only thing this country sees as sacred, and this is why targeted property destruction is so powerful: it breaks the myth surrounding the sacredness of private property and becomes a tool for liberation.

 

References

This piece was inspired by Shon Meckfessel’s “Nonviolence Ain’t What it Used to Be: Unarmed Insurrection and the Rhetoric of Resistance.” You can find the full work at akpress.org.

 

Further Reading:

“How Nonviolence Protects the State” and “The Failure of Nonviolence: From the Arab Spring to Occupy” by Peter Gelderloos

“Pacifism” by Tom Nomad

“Concerning Violence: Fanon, Film, and Liberation in Africa, Selected Takes 1965-1987”

In Question of the “Peaceful Protest” (and in Defense of Violence): Part 4, Section i

Part 4, Section i:

4a. The Illusion of Property Rights as a Capitalist Tool

If violence is consistently defined as harm or threat on living beings, why do we keep having conversations likening violence to burning buildings and broken windows? This gears the conversation towards philosophy and theory, but nonetheless has material manifestations. Massino De Angelis calls this the “value struggle,” in which the antagonism that was previously hegemonically forced is made present, calling into question the values of the opposing groups. If the oppressed group does not value what is a “fact of life” for the oppressor — for example, the white oppressor’s acceptance that racism and police brutality are merely a “fact of life” versus the oppressed’s desire to subvert the system that makes this possible — then there is a value struggle.

By applying this theory to greater society, we can see that marginalized groups are rendered speechless in the face of dominant relational modes; that border line between opposing groups is the line of conflict. The value struggle only exists by questioning what was previously thought to be unquestionable. Any time dominant structures are questioned, there is a struggle of values between opposing groups.

In the “Second Treatise of Government,” philosopher John Locke – whose thoughts formed the basis for some of the United States’ most foundational values – explains that the law protects bodies and their commodities, inextricably linking people to their property. This equivalence of human rights to property rights is capitalist in nature and yet, self-proclaimed liberals’ own ideology finds this admittance too embarrassing to mention, which is why people are so quick to defend property even while acknowledging that property damage hardly subverts the institutions it symbolizes. Riots serve to illuminate this painfully embarrassing equivalence and the ensuing value struggle. The consequential denial of the capitalist superstructure is second-nature to anyone who has not yet divested from capitalist ideology.

Capitalism is deeply entrenched in the fabric of the country, but questioning and re-inventing meaning is necessary to bring change. People must have their core values challenged to then challenge the system they say needs to be changed. Post-structuralist thinkers have agreed that the “subject” and “subject position” are a socially-constructed process and position, respectively, by which an individual can speak and be understood as a speaker. The agreement that these are socially-constructed inevitably verifies that they can also be socially-challenged and thus, changed. Forming new subjects and abolishing old ones necessitates violence because none, especially those with the greatest power, will relinquish that power without violence. Frantz Fanon explains that violence on the colonizer’s body is required to disprove its inviolability; the post-colonial subject is thus borne of violation.

To defeat capitalist social structures, one must defeat what is at the heart of capitalism: the value of property over life.

 

In Question of the “Peaceful Protest” (and in Defense of Violence): Part 3, Section ii

Part 3, Section ii:

3b. The Validity of Rioting as an Effective Strategy

In reality, violence against state property does not equate to the presence of torture and crimes against humanity, as opposed to that caused by institutions and regimes. Armed dissent has become less popular due to the increase in surveillance brought on by the neoliberal age, but militancy has not vanished. In fact, counterhegemonic militancy is explained by describing two forms of militancy: one can be labeled “The Party” and the other, “The Riot.” The Party is a top down approach where orders come down the chain of command to execute violence, similar to the guerrilla, terrorist groups, and the like. The Riot, on the other hand, is a bottom up strategy that is spontaneous, decentralized, and does not rely on hierarchy.

An analysis of revolts throughout history shows that it is mass defiance that works rather than formal organization. Lower-class people respond to the underlying force of insurgency, not organizations; this is especially noticeable in labor strikes. Disrupting institutions means withdrawing a dependable resource – like labor – and that capacity for withdrawal becomes a natural resource. When considering contemporary examples of the political riot, we see that there is a clear connection between the initial dismissal of the public’s concerns and the ensuing property destruction. After Mike Brown was murdered by a pig in Ferguson, Missouri, there were riots and looting to demonstrate the exhaustion and pain the Black community faced; this was not their first or last time. When the grand jury refused to bring Mike’s killer to trial, the demonstrations went national; this was the reach of the initial Black Lives Matter movement. When Freddie Gray was violently killed in Baltimore, Maryland, the riots in his name were largely ignored by media and political figures until the massive burning of a CVS pharmacy during one of these riots.

Similar to the way workers withdraw labor during a “labor strike,” the withdrawal of passivity from a marginalized community is interpreted by some as a “social strike.” The more nuanced version of this, however, would understand the riot as a collective force that manifests material antagonism to police and property relations; a “social appeal” instead. Unlike a strike, the social appeal by riot is not a refusal to participate entirely but is instead a refusal to act tame by participating in a “respectable” fashion. When the public creates immediate material consequences, such as property destruction and looting, there is a subversion of power that begs the institution to follow public opinion or perish. It is not necessarily the property damage that is highlighted here, but the willingness to engage in it. The riot occurs when there are limited conditions, leading people to desperate measures. There is a sense of condescension and racism when (specifically Black) rioters are likened to mindless animals rather than humans consciously expressing grief and anger through violence.

In a similar vein, Frantz Fanon wrote: “The existence of an armed struggle shows that the people are decided to trust to violent methods only. The native of whom they have never stopped saying that the only language the native understands is that of force, decides to give utterance by force. In fact, as always, the settler has shown him the way he should take if he is to become free. The argument the native chooses has been furnished by the settler, and by an ironic turning of the tables it is the native who now affirms that the colonialist understands nothing but force. The colonial regime owes its legitimacy to force and at no time tries to hide this aspect of things.” (82-3, Wretched of the Earth)

 

In Question of the “Peaceful Protest” (and in Defense of Violence): Part 3, Section i

Part 3, Section i

3a. Debunking Negative Connotations of Violence

Just as anyone can participate in nonviolent strategies, the riot is easily accessible: small amounts of violence by a large group of people seems to be most effective. Obviously, it is non-white people that are most at risk of state violence following a riot, but if the program becomes focused on not risking vulnerable populations, the only answer is reform and retreat. Similar to the need for ongoing conflict, there is a need for risk in order to foster a sense of urgency. On the other hand, when there there is a total avoidance of risk, the option of nonviolence becomes condescending: nonviolence becomes a performance rather than an effective strategy.

For nonviolence to mean something, the subject must already be strong but choose nonviolence. By doing so, the subject negates the oppressor’s idea that they are weak and must choose nonviolence because of that weakness, instead displaying nonviolence as a form of self-restraint: the subject is strong enough to be violent but chooses not to. When there is no structural power to wield, adherents of nonviolence and the contemporary “peaceful protest” must hope for their oppressors’ benevolence. This is a strategy that puts these folks at the mercy of the institutions they already know lack mercy and conscience.

As has been iterated before by people such as Jackie Wang and others, the innocent versus non-innocent binary not only serves to uphold anti-Black frameworks, but also convolutes the reality of situations. The rhetoric of guilt in the context of protest situations reaffirms the anti-Black structure of policing, preemptive policing in particular. When protests affirm their alleged innocence and peace, they are in reality whitewashing themselves and attempting to render themselves legible and credible to white civil society’s psyche. In other words, the distinction between peaceful and non-peaceful protests, grounded in anti-blackness, are made for the white supremacist body-politic. The rhetoric of innocence forces protesters to label their actions in accordance to white-supremacist standards.

In Question of the “Peaceful Protest” (and in Defense of Violence): Part 2, Section ii

Part 2, Section ii

2b. The Function of Language in Rhetorical Strategies

The language used to describe rioting is sometimes similar to that used to describe warfare. In reality, the privilege of true “war” is given only to the elites whereas the riot is associated with the poor and otherwise powerless. If we look at labor movements in America, even these have used coercion to persuade, this being the “brawl” (another term for the riot). A cornerstone of American society has been to limit government, often by street revolt. This allows for checks and balances by the American people on their own government, simultaneously expressing people’s agency. What is this, if not the contemporary “riot and looting”?

Unfortunately, democracies have institutionalized protest and persuasion, so these methods alone — that is, without violence — may not be enough to counter the state, and this is a current dilemma being seen with the spread of “peaceful protests.” Labeling and enforcing peace at a demonstration detracts from and attempts to purify the sentiments that precede the protest itself.

The focus should be on the reason why people take action instead of how they are doing so, as this further demonizes protestors, especially Black ones. Mass media is also complicit in the perpetuation of anti-Black messaging by focusing on protest tactics instead of police tactics. All protest actions are inherently conflictual once the police arrive: the police arrive with the sole purpose of neutralizing resistance – physically, morally, and psychologically – and repressing protesters.

In the words of folks from the Youth Justice Coalition in Los Angeles: “Showing up to a conflict with the mentality that you’re labeling protesters as ‘peaceful’ totally erases the power dynamic between a militarized force and unarmed residents of color. AND even if people at protests are doing things that are deemed ‘not peaceful,’ it’s either as a response to systemic violence OR they’re police/agents themselves.”

In Question of the “Peaceful Protest” (and in Defense of Violence) Part 2, Section i

Part 2, Section i

2a. The Rhetoric of Nonviolence

Shon Meckfessel defines nonviolence as “a rhetorical strategy in which the very definition relies on calling violence into the speakers’ mind even as the speaker disavows it.” In other words, for nonviolence to exist effectively, violence also has to exist, even if just in theory. Nonviolence is not, however, an aversion to conflict. It is also obviously not an armed struggle. Instead, what makes nonviolence so powerful is the potentiality of violence.

Nonviolence advocates seem to confuse the dismissal of nonviolence with a commitment to direct force no matter its legitimacy, like the instilment of an illegitimate authoritarian government after a coup. The phrase “Fuck the police” has become inherently violent and has led to fear in those who oppose it, including peaceful protestors. But even if language is read as violent, does it deserve to be met with brute police force? The issue is that “violence” is harder to define than “armed.”

The term “strategic nonviolence” has been replaced by “unarmed insurrection,” but this creates a false dichotomy between “nonviolent” and “armed,” which further perpetuates a dualism and unnecessary revulsion towards “armed” conflict. People often confuse that false dichotomy of violence versus nonviolence by associating violence with revolution and nonviolence with reform when in reality, violence is congruent with action and nonviolence with inaction. The choice of violence versus nonviolence is actually a choice between action and inaction.

There is no set definition for “violence” and “nonviolence.” As mentioned before, words with no action can still be read as violent. We do, however, know that nonviolence does not mean passivity, and as such, a nonviolent protest at least demands intervention — crowd control, defusing of counter-protest, the list goes on — even if it does not demand being armed or physically violent. Violence and nonviolence are actually interdependent and can work together to achieve a set goal. If this is the case, then why do people insist on labeling protests as “peaceful” from the get-go? It’s important to look at the way language is being used in these conversations.