(en) US, First of May Anarchist Alliance – Detroit Local:
Notes on Ferguson and Beyond By B.D.
Discussion document on developing views on the movement/resistance which grew following
the police murder of Michael Brown and the failure to indict Michael Brown and Eric
Garner’s killers. For use at public discussion on the same using the theme: Resistance,
Reaction and Revolution. Here are some points to consider. By B.D. PDF Version here.
http://m1aa.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Notes-on-Ferguson-and-Beyond-Doc.pdf
RESISTANCE ---- The resistance following the murder of Michael Brown was immediate, local,
based in the community and angry. This resistance grew quickly, folks came to Ferguson to
support and, in the fall, with the failure to indict on Brown and the Eric Garner murder
in New York, the movement took off in New York, in Ferguson and across the country.
The breadth and depth of the movement surprised many, but there is a resistance in this
country. We were surprised by the Occupy Movement from a few years ago, and we were
surprised by the nationwide resistance on Trayvon Martin. Now we see this resistance
continues to grow and to deepen and to get broader, but it remains, in many ways, not
organized.
Encouraging developments were/are many: this started from the community in Ferguson and
grew from there. Various forces were in motion. Younger, working class youth from the
Black community, more middle class youth from the Black community, many young women and
parents. There also was support from the broader movement, which includes many younger,
white folks. This also appeared to include some younger middle class students as well as
some working class young folks. There also was support and actions from Latino, Asian,
Native and other communities. The breadth and scope was encouraging and a new development,
I think. This is something we’ve been working towards, and we’ve seen some examples of it.
The range of tactics also was encouraging, from the focus on the police and local
government/authority to the no business as usual/shut it down approach to blocking
freeways and bridges, actions at shopping malls and other. There were some good examples
of direct action tactics using social media to organize, having more than one action at a
time in the same community, coordination and taking these actions to the population as a
whole all were new directions which grew out of the struggle. There was some creativity
and coordination that we haven’t seen before.
We don’t want to overstate this, but it did seem that the movement went beyond the
traditional civil rights leaders and groups and that these groups and the Democratic Party
types were struggling to catch up or take control or not let the movement get out of
control. The NAACP march from Ferguson to the state capital seemed to be a bust and
clearly took the action and focus away from Ferguson and St. Louis and the Black community
to the roads of the hinterlands. Al Sharpton became a target for comedians on how he
showed up in so many photos and video clips of families of those who have been killed. He
was seen sticking his head around from behind so he could be seen when a grieving mother
was speaking, for example. The NAN march on Washington and marches on Federal Courts here
in Detroit and elsewhere also seemed hollow and harking back to a different time.
The focus of these liberal, democratic party types on asking the federal government for
help seemed out of touch and didn’t really amount to much. This is not to say that the
movement has moved beyond the old, traditional leaders; they and the democratic party
still have strength. But that strength is shaken and those groups do not represent, I
think, many or most of the participants in the movement and local actions. Sharpton and
the politicians seem to represent an older and more conservative and more self serving
layer and do not have the same hold on the movements and local communities as in the past.
The focus of the local movements was on opposing and resisting the police and the courts
and the government. The focus of the liberals on asking the government for help seemed
lame to many, I think.
The movement seems more radical than the democratic party, but there is not clear
leadership or alternative leadership. There are some new organizations, including Black
Lives Matter and others and we need to discuss this and learn more. We saw some the
traditional left: Workers World and RCP trying to take a leading role and showing up on
the news, but the movement appears local and community based without clear leadership.
Workers World and the RCP are not leading. This is encouraging, but it also means
anarchists and anti-authoritarians need to organize and present alternatives, to be part
of this movement as well as pressing revolutionary alternatives to the democratic party
and the traditional leaders/leadership and to the vanguardists, as well. We need more
discussion on what a leaderless movement means and how anti-authoritarian revolutionaries
organize. We also need to further the discussion of the role of the police and the state
as enemies.
REACTION
As the movement grew and spread from Ferguson to New York and throughout many areas of the
country, the liberals and the corporate media tried to keep up or catch up. This all
changed when the two police were killed in New York. One of the most important discussions
in the developing movement was/is on the role of the police: are they predators in our
communities or protectors? Many in the movement see the police as predators, while the
liberals say no, police are protectors but there are some bad apples. This all exploded
with the killing of the two police. Suddenly, the media and the liberals were scrambling
to change direction and defend the police and try to isolate the more radical elements in
the movement.
Deblasio in New York changed from discussing how he had to warn his son on how to deal
with the police to praising the police and asking for their forgiveness. This happened up
and down the line, as the media discussion shifted from cops killing unarmed youth to poor
cops being targeted by demonstrators. This allowed the racists to come out of the
woodwork. Cops held a “Blue Lives Matter” march in Washington D.C. which was small but
clearly racist. Many young folks in the movement were, I think, surprised by the depth and
breadth of the racist reaction, the pro-cop reaction, but there should not be a surprise.
The racists and reactionaries control the government and the country. The liberals from
Deblasio to Sharpton accept this, navigate within this system, represent the liberal
opposition and work to keep movements and opposition within these safe channels.
Part of our work now, I think, is to point this out. This is class war and shows the
outlines of civil war. The state, the rulers, the upper classes, the racists, the police
and their apologists, including the liberals and the Democratic Party on one side, with
the movement, communities of color, the poor, the outsiders, and more conscious workers on
the other. This is the outline of forces. We need to face this in a realistic way and
develop approaches to build the strength and understanding and consciousness of our side,
of the working class side. We need to make clear that the police murders of Michael Brown,
Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and many others is part of a class war, a racist war by the police
and the state and the wealthy few against the rest of us.
The younger generation seems to have made some progress on these issues. Again, not to
overstate, but there seems to be some progress on having a multiracial movement, having
women play a leading role, having LGBT participation, all of this seems to make sense to
many people, especially young people. It almost goes without saying for many. This is a
real gain; it is progress. But it is not complete and should not be overstated. We have
much work to do, among young folks and within the working class, as well as with education
on racism, the right and the reaction. Education about the reactionary forces we are up
against is necessary, along with the fact that the liberals capitulate to these
reactionary forces. The strong reaction against the Ferguson movement shows both the
growing strength of our movement and the continuing strength of the reactionary forces.
The police are the armed enforcers of the power and authority of the state and the ruling
class. The movement which grew out of Ferguson was, in many aspects, anti-police and
anti-authority. It was nationwide, it was based in the Black community, it was
multiracial, it was young and it was militant. The movement used direct action in some new
ways. The traditional leaders, Sharpton and others, seemed to have trouble gaining control
of this movement. These are the strengths, and this is why the reaction against the
movement has been strong. We should not be surprised.
REVOLUTION
As revolutionaries, as anarchists, how do we organize and build for revolution? We
actively participate in and support movements of people of color and working people
fighting for justice and against oppression such as the movement/s in Ferguson and beyond.
We support, learn from and build this movement and others. We work to have this movement
organize in a way that is without central committees or new authorities but that builds up
from the community and ordinary people and is based on those people and where the people
active in and building the movement exercise direct control over how the movement develops.
As in other work and groups where we are active, we support open meetings and discussion
and decision making. We support and participate in direct actions to defend our
communities and to oppose the police and the government authorities who oppress and attack
us. We oppose all forms of racism, white supremacy, sexism, homophobia, anti-immigrant
bias and patriarchy. We seek to have the movement and the organizations reflect the type
of society we fight for: open, honest, direct and fighting for freedom.
Within this movement, and all of our work, we oppose the saviors, the vanguardists, the
social democrats, the reformists, the supporters of the Democratic Party, and any others
who attempt to control the movement for their own ends and to expand their own power and
control. We fight to make the movement consciously independent of the Democratic Party,
the courts, the government, the cops and the various reformist and traditional civil
rights organizations, such as the NAACP and the National Action Network, which attempt to
control the movement and direct the movement into safe channels of relying on and
supporting the government which oppresses us.
We are not naïve. Not everyone active in these movements is a revolutionary or has
revolutionary consciousness. We work with people who believe in reform and attempt to show
and convince them of the need for revolution. We work in these groups as in other united
front formations. We fight for our principles, while we participate in struggles we can
support which are fighting for reforms or improvements or in defense of our class and our
communities. We work to build united fronts, which unite our forces, defend our
communities and fight our enemies.
And in every group or movement or struggle, we seek to explain and convince people of the
necessity of moving the struggle towards the struggle for revolution, towards the
overthrow of the capitalist system. We focus on the principles which move us in this
direction: that the movement must be independent of the reformists and the Democratic
Party, that the movement must be based in the working class and communities of color, that
the movement must rely on direct action and struggle and not elections or begging, and
that the movement opposes the cops and the courts and the system which oppresses and
attacks us.
Our numbers are small; we can’t build mass movements. But as movements develop and
explode, we participate, we support and we put forward our ideas for how to move forward
and the direction we need to go. And we can build struggles and specific broader groups or
organizations which are based in the community and are active in the fight to defend our
communities from attack.
The police are predators in our communities. They attack and kill our people. These
attacks are focused on the Black community and communities of color, but they attack the
entire working class. The cops kill Black men, Black children, Black women. They kill
Latinos and Arabs and Native People and people of color. They kill gay people. They kill
people who have disabilities. They kill people who have mental health disabilities. The
police attacks are focused on poor people and poor communities, but they are not limited
to that. The police are the armed expression of the state, and the state is organized to
defend and represent the ruling class and the elite. The police, the courts, the prisons,
the politicians and the government are the state and attack our communities and are the enemy.
The police are the armed protectors of this racist system, this patriarchal system, this
white supremacist system, this system which devalues, discounts and attacks people of
color, women, gay people, poor people, old people, children, people with disabilities and
ordinary working people. The police do not serve and protect us; they serve and protect
the wealthy few and this racist system. And the police are not the only predators in our
communities. The police and this racist system give rise to the George Zimmerman’s and the
killer of the three young Muslim students in North Carolina. These racist vigilantes and
their supporters also are predators in our communities.
Men who attack women are predators in our communities. Men who rape, assault or abuse
women or others are predators. These men are predators and are enemies of the community,
as are racist vigilantes and the police. Our communities must organize to oppose, defend
against and defeat these predators, all of them.
This means organizing community self defense in many forms. This means organizing our
communities to defend against the police, the racists and perpetrators of violence against
women. We don’t know all the forms this self defense will take. It likely will take and is
taking a variety of forms. The keys are to organize with our communities, not to set
anyone or any group above our communities. And to have groups which are fighting to defend
our communities, are known for that work and are available for new people to contact and
join. We are organizing for ordinary people to take control of their own communities and
to begin to build the groups and organizations where people can take control of their
lives and defend their communities through collective action.
We can work in and build many different types of organizations from small affinity groups
to local collectives to broader united front organizations. We can build M1 as a
revolutionary anarchist organization based in the community and participating in the
struggles of ordinary people to organize and defend our communities against attacks. And
in all of this organizing and all these types of organizations, we work to develop the
kind of relations and organizations which express the vision of what we are fighting for:
maximizing freedom, opposing all forms of racism, patriarchy and elitism, providing room
and space for each person to participate, finding ways to make collective decisions and
take collective action, opposing all forms of vanguardism and elitism, fighting to build
the new society within the shell of the old.
The last point is this: we are not alone. People around the world are fighting and working
to find new ways to live. Old boundaries are being broken. Reaction is on the rise. The
time is ripe for revolutionary organizing, for anti-authoritarian and anarchist
organizing. We are not saviors or reformers. We fight to overthrow the capitalist system
and to expropriate the wealth and the power of the billionaires and exploiters. That
wealth belongs to all and must be used to meet the needs of all the people and the earth.
We fight not to take control of this system but to overthrow this system and build a new
way of living.
http://m1aa.org/?p=932
