by DGR News Service | Jan 1, 2021 | ANALYSIS, Strategy & Analysis
By Vince Emanuele / Counterpunch
“Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat an enemy without too much bloodshed and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed; war is such a dangerous business that the mistakes which come from kindness are the very worst.”
― Carl von Clausewitz
“In practice, we always base our preparations against an enemy on the assumption that his plans are good; indeed, it is right to rest our hopes not on a belief in his blunders, but on the soundness of our provisions. Nor ought we to believe that there is much difference between man and man, but to think that the superiority lies with him who is reared in the severest school.”
― Thucydides
Ordinary Americans will never win the reforms we need to survive until or unless hundreds of thousands of poor and working-class people across the United States participate in the political process.
It’s really that simple.
The existing left does not have the numbers or resources, hence power, to win meaningful reforms.
The primary impediment to political organizing efforts is the lack of left-wing political institutions and structures. Unions must be rebuilt. Political institutions, perhaps in the form of new parties or structures somewhat similar to the DSA, must be developed. Community organizations, churches, tenants’ unions, and cultural projects will also play vital roles. In short, we need it all, and we need it now.
One of the obstructions to building structures and institutions is the unhealthy and unproductive cultural habits of poor and working-class people, including those already involved with political efforts. Here, I’m not so much talking about our eating habits or lack of exercise, though both are worthy of debate and discussion — I’m specifically thinking about the inordinate amount of time American adults spend on immature cultural activities that hinder organizing efforts: binge drinking, drug abuse, video games, Netflix, cosplay, etc. In my experience, Americans, particularly progressives, can muster any number of excuses to avoid cultural and political engagement.
To paraphrase the late-great comedian, Bill Hicks, the right is up at 4:00am, ready to fuck the world, whereas my left-wing friends wake up at noon, hungover and depressed.
We face a tremendous contradiction: on the one hand, serious, long-lasting, strategic, and powerful political structures must be developed in order to successfully channel the righteous anger and frustration felt by so many poor and working-class Americans, but in order to build those structures, we need poor and working-class Americans prepared to take the helm.
Here, things get tricky. While it’s true that we can find plenty of examples of successful single-issue or union campaigns — it’s also true that such efforts are limited in scope and do not represent bigger trends in American society.
This is the case for many reasons.
First, existing activists and organizers do not adhere to a strict set of methods and skills that are absolutely required to build long-lasting structures. Second, existing activists and organizers (not all, but many) treat their efforts like a hobby or job. Politics is neither.
Politics is war. And we’re fighting for our lives. Over 320,000+ Americans have died of COVID-19. Tens of millions of people have been catapulted into poverty, with millions facing eviction on January 1st, 2021. Nurses, warehouse workers, teachers, retail, grocery store, and service-sector workers of all stripes have been used, abused, killed, and discarded by a ruthless economic system and a federal government beholden to it.
The time for uplifting stories about resistance is long gone.
We’re not here to speak truth to power— we’re organizing to survive, and survival requires winning. What do I mean by winning? In the short-term, winning would look like Medicare For All, free childcare, increasing Social Security payments, expanding public housing, abolishing student debt, substantially increasing funds to public schools, and enacting some form of UBI, basically Bernie’s program, but with minor additions.
But Vince, why not go bigger? Because it doesn’t matter how badly we want or wish or scream for certain policies: the U.S. left lacks the basic institutions necessary to shift the balance of power away from elites and to ordinary people, hence we’re in no position to demand more. If we want more, we have to organize a base capable of demanding more. That requires a lot of hard work (social media posts, YouTube channels, and pithy essays won’t cut it).
We face unprecedented challenges:
climate change, increasing risk of global pandemics, nuclear proliferation, a fully globalized and technologically integrated financial system/economy, and an increasingly fragmented social and cultural landscape, with each trend fueling right-wing movements across the planet. That’s the context in which we’re living, fighting, organizing, and dying.
Do I want more than Bernie’s reforms? Fuck yes. I’m with Jim Morrison: “We want the world, and we want it now!” But wanting and actually doing are two different things. Achieving the goals I laid out above would significantly improve the lives of poor and working-class people. For many, such reforms would mean the difference between life or death.
If, of course, an opportunity to push a more radical agenda presents itself, existing activists and organizers should jump on it, but they should do so with a vision and strategy.
Indeed, the uprisings following the murder of George Floyd represent the limitations of what a non-organized left can achieve. Yes, millions can turn out for protests, but without organizations and institutions to keep them engaged, little is accomplished in terms of meaningful reforms or long-lasting institution-building.
All that said, in order to build successful institutions, especially long-lasting structures capable of taking on and defeating the most murderous and powerful government and corporate sector in the world, the U.S. left will need heavy doses of discipline, accountability, commitment, and seriousness, which requires challenging people.
Right now, I have friends, neighbors, and former coworkers in their mid-50s, unemployed, sitting at home playing video games all day. I have friends in their 30s, trade union members, who spend their weekends cosplaying. They’re not alone. Americans spend a disproportionate amount of their time distracted from the political world. Can you imagine our grandparents playing dress-up while fascism marched through Europe?
To be clear, I’m not prescribing misery — what I’m saying is that people in this country need to grow the fuck up.
Remember, everything is on the line. Yes, I also enjoy sports, parties, concerts, art, working out, my cat, going to the beach, visiting historical sites, family gatherings, and a whole host of shit that must, for the moment, take a backseat to political organizing efforts.
Creating institutions and cultural norms that facilitate solidarity, love, creativity, and fun should be the ultimate goals of our political efforts. In other words, let’s organize and fight back, then truly enjoy life. Yes, we can find enjoyment while fighting back, but I worry that too many Americans, particularly self-identified leftists, process politics as entertainment. In fact, the absurd proliferation of left-wing podcasts and media outlets is perhaps the best measure of this ongoing and troubling trend. For every left political organization that’s created, at least one hundred left media outlets are born — another sign of the deeply immature, narcissistic, and unserious nature of left politics in the U.S.
Here, I’m not prescribing burn out, nor am I prescribing workaholism.
I’m not asking you to discipline yourself for a corporation, government agency, or ungrateful spouse, nor am I encouraging you to beat yourself up in order to live up to some unobtainable cultural or beauty standard — I’m encouraging you to get disciplined and fight back for yourself and your loved ones, and yes, even for the people you don’t personally know.
I’m arguing that you should take politics seriously, which first requires taking yourself seriously — your life, desires, values, family, and friends. That means waking up early. That means making daily plans. That means making weekly work schedules. That means sticking to them. The best political organizers I’ve met over the years are also, unsurprisingly, quite organized in their personal lives. We should cultivate more.
In the end, the left will never accomplish much without building structures and institutions, and building successful structures and institutions requires disciplined, accountable, and serious people. Everything self-proclaimed leftists do in terms of organizing or activism should take place with these things in mind.
We’re fighting a war, not hosting a dinner party.
Act accordingly.
by DGR News Service | Sep 25, 2020 | Culture of Resistance
As the book Deep Green Resistance reminds us, there are certain aspects of collapse that are positive (declining oil demand, for example) and others that are negative (e.g., rising patriarchal, racist elements). This piece from Vince Emanuele argues that individualist survivalism is often an anti-social response to the social problems we are facing, and that we must organize as communities to survive.
Guns, Land, and Chickens Won’t Save You
by Vincent Emanuele / Counterpunch
“We are condemned to be modern. We can’t escape the facts of our history or of living in an age dominated by instrumental rationality, even as we look for ways out of it… But it has become our historic responsibility to acknowledge the continuing importance of myth, at a level beyond science, in realizing a more organic, holistic relation to the world. A future social ecology would transcend both anti-Enlightenment reaction and [a] reified Enlightenment counter-reaction, which remain only fragmented polarities within bourgeois modernity.”
– David Watson, Beyond Bookchin: Preface for a Future Social Ecology
Following the Great Recession of 2008, many of my friends started talking about “living off the land.” At the time, I didn’t give their words much thought. After all, Obama was in the White House; Neoliberalism was on the rise; imperial wars raged abroad, and the antiwar movement was falling apart.
During those dark and tumultuous years, my primary focus was building the sort of left institutions that could prevent the situation in which we now find ourselves: a nation on the brink of collapse, civil war, or some combination of the two. Sometime around 2010, I started reading about the connections between climate change and the U.S. empire and militarism, which led me to research and learn more about ecological devastation and biodiversity loss.
The global picture was much grimmer than I had imagined.
Not only was capitalism and empire destroying human life, but it was also destroying the planet. At that point, I began to better understand my friends’ urge to “move to the countryside,” but I didn’t agree with their vision. To me, it seemed like a uniquely white and middle to upper-middle-class thing to do. It also seemed like the easy way out.
I remember thinking, “I don’t know too many black or Hispanic people who are starting small farms.” And I still don’t. That’s not because they’re not interested in doing so. Black and Hispanic Americans simply don’t have the material resources to start small farms, which require land (money), equipment (money), time (money), specialized skills (access), and various other resources (money and access).
Plus, I don’t know too many black or Hispanic people who are champing at the bit to live in Southern Indiana, northern Wisconsin, or rural Montana, whereas many of my white friends wouldn’t blink an eye moving to those regions. And I sure as hell don’t know of any poor people who have the resources to do any of the above. They’re happy if they can go out to eat at a sit-down restaurant once a month.
If we’re genuinely interested in building multiracial coalitions of working-class people who are capable of combating capital, the military-industrial complex, corporate power, state repression, and rightwing nationalism, we can’t do it from the isolated countryside. We can’t do it from the safety of a family farm, totally detached from the day-to-day realities facing the very people, disproportionately black and Hispanic, but also poor whites, we need to build relationships with if we hope to win.
Urban communities, churches, schools, workplaces, bars, social and sporting clubs, recreational centers, community centers, and neighborhoods provide fertile organizing terrain for leftists. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, roughly 80% of Americans live in urban areas. By 2050, studies suggest that 66% of the global population will live in cities. Those numbers will only grow with time.
If you live in rural Iowa, you depend on people in New York City, Mexico City, and Tokyo.
You’re not some sort of lone-ranger-cowboy-farmer: you’re wholly dependent upon petroleum-based products, including everything from fertilizers and fuel to equipment and cleaning products. Multinational corporations produce those goods. International banks finance production. All of this requires international agreements, governments, legal apparatuses, and the like. Global supply chains provide your equipment. And the fuel that runs your equipment is extracted, refined, shipped, and distributed on a global scale. You’re not living a ‘sustainable life’ — you’re just as part of the global economic system as anyone else, hell, even more so than low-wage workers who live in cities.
Whoever controls the cities and, to some degree, the suburbs, will control the nation. Cities are the lifeblood of capitalism. Capital dwells in cities, not rural areas. Lockheed Martin depends on Wall Street. BP depends on Lockheed Martin. Corporate headquarters, executives, and lenders are located in cities. The bulk of their customers reside in cities. The economic activity that takes place in cities supports the flow of capital which facilitates capitalism.
Our enemies, both visible (corporations, governments, militarized police) and invisible (capital) reside in cities, not the countryside.
Furthermore, think about the past 20 years of social movements and political uprisings: the ‘Battle For Seattle’ (urban environment); the antiwar movement (largely based in urban environments); Occupy Wall Street (cities), the pro-union occupation in Madison, Wisconsin, (urban environment/college town), Black Lives Matter uprising in Ferguson, Missouri, (urban/suburban environment), and the current wave of Black Lives Matter uprisings, occupations, marches, and the like (yes, throughout the country, but primarily based in urban environments). The only notable exception is Standing Rock. Even the teachers’ strikes that swept the nation a few years ago were based in cities and suburban school districts. The same is true of insurgent socialist electoral campaigns.
At some point, I realized that many of the people, including my friends, who’ve moved to the countryside to start small farms aren’t interested in building political movements, fighting back against corporate and government power, or creating a better world. They’re interested in survival, yet they know nothing about survival. They didn’t grow up in the woods. They don’t live off the land. They use power tools. They use cars, and fuel, and technology, and all the rest. To the degree they’re able to “live off the land,” it’s only because modernity has allowed them to do so with minimal risk.
They believe, näively, that they can survive as a small family unit in a world of 7.8 billion people. They can’t even organize their family members or close friends to get on the same page, let alone function as a tribe or small community, yet they believe they’re going to live in some sort of self-sustainable fantasy land of yesteryear? It’s a joke, but it’s also dangerous.
The ‘back-to-the-land’ movement in the U.S. has a long history.
For the sake of time and courtesy, I won’t bore you by revisiting its history. In today’s context, however, the ‘back-to-the-land’ movement operates comfortably within the framework of Neoliberal ideology. Hyper-individualism is the religious dogma that fuels the ‘back-to-the-land’ movement. Only someone totally detached from the broader global community would be able to convince themselves that they can survive in this world with minimal social cooperation.
The same people who talk about ‘living off the land’ are the same people who say things like, “I’ve gotta look out for mine,” or “My family is the only thing that matters.” This parochial worldview is not uncommon in the U.S., especially since the Reagan Revolution. The Cult of Individuality infects virtually every aspect of modern U.S. culture, from politics and economics to sports, film, art, and social relations. This is evident when I see pictures of my friends hiding out in their quasi-secluded countryside homes, tending to chickens and growing tomatoes, while the country and world collapse in real-time.
Speaking of collapse, the people who think they’re going to hide out in relative safety as the world crumbles around them are so detached from reality that it’s hard to seriously consider where they’re coming from, but I’ll try.
Let’s say you live 60-120 miles outside a major city (this would apply to many of my friends in Northwest Indiana or Southwest Michigan who own property). If the economy collapses (due to any number of factors), or if the country devolves into a civil war, perhaps even a revolution, or a nuclear war, or a cataclysmic ecological disaster, you’re fucked. If cities become unlivable, you’re fucked. If suburbs become unlivable, you’re fucked.
You and the family are going to hunker down at the homestead, and the hundreds of thousands or millions of people who live within a week’s walk aren’t gonna discover your property? Oh, you have guns? So what? Have you ever used them in a combat situation? How often do you and your family drill? How often do you shoot? How big is your family? Big enough to fend off hoards of people traversing the countryside in search of food, shelter, and safety?
What are you going to do if we can’t stop governments (U.S., Israel, Pakistan, India) from triggering a nuclear conflict? As one Wired headline put it, “Even a Small Nuclear War Could Trigger a Global Apocalypse.’ You can’t stop nuclear wars from your chicken coup. You can’t stop nuclear wars with your daddy’s shotgun. You can’t stop nuclear wars with organic produce. And you can’t stop nuclear wars with gluten-free home-cooked bread.
Only internationally coordinated political campaigns and movements can stop a potential nuclear war.
What are you and your family going to do when tens of millions of Americans are migrating across the U.S. as a result of runaway climate change and rapidly changing weather patterns, ecologies, and natural landscapes? What’s your plan? To mow down thousands of people fleeing natural disasters? Is that how you want to live? Do you think they’re not going to shoot back? Do you think your property won’t, at some point, also become uninhabitable due to climate disaster?
My advice to people who think they’re going to survive a collapsing society? Take a flight to Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, or Yemen, then tell me about your absurd and childlike ‘collapse’ fantasies. Nothing is inspiring, humane, or decent about living in a fractured and crumbling society. The glorification of violence, destruction, and death in U.S. culture is, to say the least, quite disturbing. There’s nothing cool or sexy about banditry, religious mobs, sectarian violence, terrorism, torture, or wanton violence. Americans (mostly white people who grew up in the suburbs) hoping for collapse should spend more time in places that have experienced collapse. It’s not like the movies (or your imagination).
In the end, there’s no hiding from what’s coming.
Climate change is a global problem. Capitalism, the primary driver of climate change, is a global economic system. Each of us lives within its grips, unfortunately. The only way to stop or mitigate what’s coming is through collective action on a massive global scale. Either we make it out of this mess together, or none of us make it out alive. It’s that simple. Our collective challenges require national and international solidarity. We must build relationships, bonds, trust, and networks across geographical, ethnic, racial, and religious boundaries.
Regional or local solutions won’t suffice. Regional and local solutions will contribute, but we need an international vision to address 21st-century challenges. And that international vision won’t be cultivated by those living ‘off the grid.’ Any international vision worth considering must prioritize large-scale (global) projects. Large-scale solutions can only be developed democratically and equitably through collective decision-making processes that incorporate diverse political movements from around the globe.
I became a leftist because Marx’s and Engels’s writings, particularly those in the Communist Manifesto, resonated with me on a very deep level. Their writings didn’t encourage me to run away to the countryside and relive some sort of 18th-century ‘back-to-the-land’ fantasy. Their writings inspired me to build relationships and organize with working-class people around the globe in the hope that, someday, we will overthrow this terrible system (capitalism).
Today, we need a vision that’s inspiring, complex, and flexible (always willing to adapt to changing circumstances), but also principled.
Without a principled vision of how to proceed, we’ll continue to spin our tails resisting the latest excesses of capitalism, empire, or racism, without accomplishing much. People joined socialist and communist movements because those movements inspired poor and working-class people through ideology and action.
If our vision doesn’t include those who don’t have the means to escape ‘back-to-the-land,’ what sort of vision is it? The left should seek to include, not exclude, people. I’m not interested in building more walls (visible or invisible), internal borders, or tribal social relationships. The right does a fine job of inciting reactionary worldviews.
The left’s vision should be about more than simply surviving the coming storm. We need a vision that inspires and motivates people from around the world to join our movements, campaigns, and organizations. That can’t happen in seclusion. It can only happen through intentionally building broad, deep, and sustained social relationships with people from around the globe.
Vincent Emanuele writes for teleSUR English and lives in Michigan City, Indiana. He can be reached at vincent.emanuele333@gmail.com.
This article was originally published in Counter Punch on September 11, 2020. You can read the article here:
Guns, Land, and Chickens Won’t Save You
by DGR News Service | Aug 16, 2020 | Repression at Home, White Supremacy
This article by Vince Emanuele was originally published by Counterpunch on July 28 2020. Vince offers analysis on the issue of power, shootings, organizing, and the need to articulate a comprehensive list of demands to ease inequity.
Winning Requires Vision, Strategy, and Numbers
By Vince Emanuele / Counterpunch
“An incorrect power analysis can lead people who want to end capitalism to think that small numbers of demonstrators occupying public spaces like parks and squares and tweeting about it will generate enough power to bring down Wall Street.”
― Jane F. McAlevey on winning.
Winning is the primary task of any political organizing effort. Generally speaking, in order to win, people must change the power dynamic between elites and the rest of us.
Right now, ordinary people have very little actual power, but plenty of potential power. Elites hold institutional power, but their power is unstable, based on coercion, and requires our cooperation and participation.
Questions concerning tactics should always be tied to strategy. And strategy should always be tied to vision. First, vision. Second, strategy. Third, tactics. Many leftwing movements throughout the past two decades (antiwar, environmental, Occupy, BLM) started with tactics, then moved to strategy, and still lack a coherent vision. Movements today are making the same mistake.
Eight weeks ago, mass uprisings exploded across the U.S.
They were organic and fueled by righteous anger. Stores were looted. Police stations burnt to the ground. Most importantly, the uprisings included millions of people who don’t self-identify as organizers, activists, or radicals.
Today, the protests have largely died down, except for Portland and a few smaller scale actions taking place throughout the U.S. The goal, however, should be to increase participation. Without a broader political vision, which has yet to be articulated in any coherent or collective manner (here, I don’t solely blame BLM–this has been a fundamental problem with most left mobilizing efforts over the past 25 years), any future actions will have limited success.
This is already the case as many towns, cities, and states have stopped talking about how to reform police departments, and instead have switched their focus to mitigating the pandemic. To be clear, calls to ‘defund’ or ‘abolish’ the police is not a vision. It may be part of a broader political vision, but it’s definitely not an all-encompassing vision, or one that addresses the many challenges ordinary people face. Obviously, the current rebellions are not strong enough to seize, take, or create alternative forms of power, and even if they were, what the hell would we do with our newfound power?
I guess this gets back to the question: does the left actually want power?
Not the power to impose dictate and rule over the people, but the power to democratically make decisions? Some of my friends on the left have openly said, “I like being on the outside, agitating and causing problems.” But “agitating” and “causing problems” isn’t revolutionary, at least not in my view. If what we seek is revolution, it seems clear to me that we need a vision for what a new society could or should look like.
The current wave of protests includes democratic socialists, indigenous groups, communists, anarchists, non-affiliated leftists, first time protesters (including many teenagers), progressives, even some liberals. To be clear, I’m not suggesting that everyone in the streets should identify as one politically and ideologically homogeneous group, but there’s not even broad agreement on fundamental questions concerning the state, economy, ecology, or democracy.
On a small scale, the people currently marching in the streets have yet to articulate what, exactly, ‘defunding the police’ looks like, or what, exactly, the funds redirected from the police should go towards (and that’s assuming we could mount campaigns powerful and strategic enough to make sure defunding occurs), let alone what the movement would do if it actually had the power to collectively make decisions and reshape society.
Take Chicago, for instance, a city that’s 30% black (also the most segregated city in the nation). Not one reform has been announced in the third largest city in the U.S., a city plagued for over a century by corrupt policing (one of the most corrupt police departments in history). Yet, the left gathers 1,000 people for a rally at the Christopher Columbus statue in Grant Park to intentionally engage in skirmishes with the police (eventually, the city took down the statue). Yes, take down the statues, but let’s not confuse political theater and symbolic actions for political vision and strategic purpose.
Filmmaker, organizer, former marine, and native Ukrainian, Sergio Kochergin puts it well:
This is the 4th time in my life that I see statues being toppled. The first time it was during the collapse of the Soviet Union. After the statues were toppled, these countries were raped economically, socially and culturally by the neoliberal system. The inability of close-knit communities to organize and develop a vision for a new society turned into another exploitative playground for the elites. The second time was In 2003, when I personally saw statues of Saddam Hussein toppled in Iraq. The country was thrown into a civil war (U.S. and U.K. imposed genocide), resources were privatized, masses imprisoned, abused, and exploited. The country is still recovering from decades of war and a caliphate created by the U.S.-U.K. invasion. Elites in Iraq have made out like bandits, enjoying billions of dollars worth of contracts and extracted oil revenues, while the people of Iraq suffer and protest in the streets, demanding security, food, healthcare and peace. In 2015, I saw statues being toppled after the popular uprisings in Ukraine. The movements on the ground did not have a collective vision. As a result, the country completely opened its doors to more capitalist predators, putting up 60% of all agricultural land for sale to the highest bidder, unleashing an onslaught of murders and attacks on small-scale farmers. Also, the passing of the E.U. visa mandate, replacing low-skilled workers in E.U. countries who migrated west to England, Netherlands, and Germany with high-skilled Ukrainians performing low-wage, low-skill jobs in countries like Poland, Czech Republic, etc. And finally, In 2020, in the U.S. people are toppling statues while the economy slumps into a dark hole, unemployment benefits are running out, people are getting evicted, and we are still waging wars around the world. With a continuous assault on our educational system most people don’t know our history anyhow, so whether statues stand or fall, those who don’t know the history are likely to repeat it. And without a vision, what are we doing? I am not bashing the toppling of the statues or trying to ignore the violent history these statues might entail. I am critiquing the lack of understanding about the most important issues we are facing: capitalism, low wages, lack of healthcare, lack of affordable housing, climate change, and militarism. Our lack of vision creates a lack of participation. Creating truly revolutionary movements requires dedication and discipline. Romanticizing violence and disorder is an easy way out.
Toppling statues and engaging in street skirmishes with the police may give the impression of a radical political movement, but such actions are nothing more than a sort of revolutionary simulacra. Turning our actions into truly revolutionary acts requires behind the scenes work–the sort of work that’s not sexy: one-on-one conversations, meetings, reading, studying, planning, strategizing, and the like. Our most effective weapons are not our bats, shields, or fireworks, but our collective organizations and institutions. Once the skirmishes are over, will people continue to organize? That’s always the question.
Meanwhile, the night prior to the action in Grant Park, fifteen people were shot in the Gresham neighborhood following a funeral for a man who was killed by gun violence.
Of the fifteen, ten were women, with one 65 year old woman critically injured. All the victims were black. Without doubt, tragedies like this drive down support for ideas like ‘defunding’ or ‘abolishing’ the police (it should be noted that two patrol cars were at the funeral home when the shooting took place). While most Chicagoans don’t want the Department of Homeland Security patrolling their streets, they’re also tired of the neighborhood violence and shootings. Indeed, many of the same activists fighting against police violence are also the same people organizing against neighborhood violence, something the corporate media conveniently leaves out of their nightly news stories.
Most importantly, Chicagoans don’t believe that defunding or abolishing the police will solve problems such as systemic racism, poverty, or the many ills of Neoliberal Capitalism. The 2020 police budget in Chicago is $1.6 billion. That may sound like a lot of money, but what it amounts to is a measly $600 per city resident. In order to genuinely meet the needs of poor and working class Americans, to get at the root cause of neighborhood violence, we must end the War on Drugs, levy heavy taxes on the rich, corporations, and financial transactions, break up, then nationalize the banks, and radically slash the Pentagon’s budget.
Here, in Michigan City, Indiana, a town of 30,000 people, we’ve had 2-3 shootings every week since the beginning of summer: a fifteen-year-old killed at a house party; a sixteen-year-old shot at the beach; and a twenty-year-old shot while driving down the highway (his vehicle eventually crashed into a local business; people live-streamed the whole thing on Facebook).
We’ve had twice as many shootings this year as we had last year during the same period.
Most of the black people that we know in the city are now holding events and rallies to figure out what the hell they’re going to do about neighborhood violence, as opposed to police violence (a tragic turn of events). In some ways, the tides have fundamentally shifted. I’m assuming that’s also the case in other Rust Belt towns and cities across the U.S. where street violence remains the primary public health concern. Many black people in Michigan City are, in fact, calling for more police to patrol the streets. They’re scared for their children. They’re desperate, angry, and tired. At the same time, some residents are trying to figure out a combination of alternatives: social programs, community policing, after school and youth programs, and various other alternatives have been proposed.
The problem, of course, is that the organizational infrastructure doesn’t exist to implement these reforms, which is why people look for easy answers (such as more police). When people don’t see viable alternatives, they’re willing to settle for a miserable system instead of betting on a new (potentially more miserable) system.
For those of us living in places like Michigan City, Gary, Hammond, and similar small Rust Belt cities, we’re in a serious bind. Without doubt, people are more critical of policing than ever before, but on the other hand, people are scared of the street gangs and neighborhood violence (I call it neighborhood violence because most of these cats aren’t even crewed up–they’re just shooting it out at house parties, acting wild as hell in public, without affiliation or material interests).
Basically, without major federal government programs, we’re fucked.
Indiana is a trifecta Republican controlled state with all sorts of preemptive laws, which means we can’t do much at the municipal level. And even if we could, there’s not enough money in the municipal, county, or state coffers to properly deal with the issues we face.
Public opinion concerning the police is changing, but mostly in the direction of minor reforms. Gallup recently released a wide-ranging poll of 36,000 participants who were asked various questions about policing reforms. Below are their responses:
Requiring Officers to have good relations with the community: This idea meets with little controversy, as almost all Americans (97%) support it overall, including 77% who strongly support it. Black Americans are somewhat more likely to strongly support this requirement, at 83%, than are White (76%) or Hispanic Americans (77%).
Changing management practices so officer abuses are punished: Ninety-six percent of Americans support changing management practices so officer abuses are punished, with 76% saying they strongly support the idea. Nine in 10 Black Americans (91%) strongly support such a change, versus eight in 10 Hispanic Americans (80%) and just over seven in 10 White Americans (72%).
Promoting community-based alternatives such as violence intervention: Eighty-two percent of Americans overall support a greater role for community organizations, with 50% saying they strongly support it. Most likely to strongly support the idea are Black Americans (73%), Democrats (75%) and adults aged 18 to 34 (65%).
Abolishing police departments: For most Americans, the idea of abolishing the police goes too far: 15% overall say they support it, with Black Americans (22%) and Hispanic Americans (20%) somewhat more likely than White Americans (12%) to do so. Almost no Republicans (1%) support the idea, versus 27% of Democrats and 12% of independents. However, there is also a sharp distinction between younger and older adults on this question; one-third of those younger than 35 (33%) support the idea, compared with 16% of those aged 35 to 49 and 4% of those aged 50 and older.
Ending ‘Stop and Frisk’: Overall, 74% of Americans support the idea of ending stop-and-frisk policing altogether, with 58% saying they strongly support it. Though Black Americans are most likely to strongly or somewhat support ending stop and frisk at 93%, strong majorities of Hispanic (76%) and White Americans (70%) do as well. However, there is a much larger partisan divide; 94% of Democrats versus 44% of Republicans support ending the practice, with independents in between at 76%.
Eliminating police unions: A majority of Americans, 56%, support eliminating police unions, with results relatively consistent among Black (61%), Hispanic (56%) and White (55%) adults. Despite much higher approval of labor unions in general among Democrats than Republicans, Democrats are significantly more likely than Republicans to favor eliminating police unions (62% vs. 45%, respectively). Political independents fall closer to Democrats, at 57%.
Eliminating officer enforcement of nonviolent crimes: Half of Americans overall (50%) strongly or somewhat support this idea, including majorities of Black (72%) and Hispanic (55%) Americans, compared with 44% of White Americans. As with ending stop and frisk, there is also a huge partisan divide on this proposal; three-fourths of Democrats (75%) and about half of independents (49%) support the idea, but 16% of Republicans do.
Reducing police department funding and shifting the money to social programs: Overall, 47% say they support reducing police department budgets and shifting the money to social programs, including 28% who strongly support it. However, 70% of Black Americans strongly or somewhat support reducing police department budgets, versus 49% of Hispanic Americans and 41% of White Americans. Moreover, the partisan divide is wider for this idea than for any other police reform proposal: 5% of Republicans support it, compared with 78% of Democrats and 46% of independents.
The two demands most associated with the current wave of protests, namely, calls to ‘Defund the Police’ and/or ‘Abolish the Police,’ receive the smallest amount of support among those polled, though support for ‘Defunding the Police’ (47%) is much greater than public support for ‘Abolishing the Police’ (15%). In some cities and towns, defunding the police may be a viable option, but the impact of that victory will be short-lived because the funds gained from defunding the police will never be enough to meet the needs of the people.
The current wave of protests will enjoy a very short shelf life if we’re unable to gain the support of large numbers of poor and working class whites, Latinos, Hispanics, and Muslims.
Here, I’m thinking of the original Rainbow Coalition, which included the Black Panthers, Young Lords (Latino, largely Puerto Rican organization), and the Young Patriots (poor and working class whites), who found common ground (housing, poverty, war), while recognizing important differences. Fortunately, to some degree, the protests have a sort of baked-in ‘Rainbow Coalition’ quality to them (thanks to previous movements): young white, Latino, Asian, Muslim, and Hispanic people fill the streets alongside young black people. It’s been a remarkable two months. Yes, mistakes have been made, but that’s always the case. We’re here. Now what?
It seems clear to me that the next step is to broaden our demands to include issues like Universal Basic Income (UBI), Medicare For All (M4A), student debt forgiveness, extending the $600 per month Unemployment Insurance benefit, expanding the moratorium on evictions, and protecting and expanding workers’ rights. These issues have the ability to bring millions of ordinary people into the mix.
Speaking anecdotally, I will say that I know many people who sympathize with the BLM protests, but who are too busy with children, work, family, and generally coping with the pandemic to join them.
They would, however, join a nationwide protest movement that simultaneously demanded police reforms and social democratic reforms. Basically, Bernie’s platform, but with much more emphasis and a clearer (better) vision on racial justice, militarization, and ecological devastation. Such a platform would have the support of tens of millions of Americans who would see their primary concerns (housing, rent, bills, medical care, education) addressed, while also understanding how those concerns are connected to systemic racism and police violence.
Even if the people I know were able to join the movement, where would they go? Locally, in places like Northwest Indiana, leftwing political organizations simply don’t exist. I’m assuming that’s the case in many small cities, suburban, and rural areas. Yes, a few left organizations exist, but they’re small, insular, and culturally isolated from the public. Some of them periodically mobilize, but their efforts are mostly uncoordinated and lack support from ordinary people (people who don’t self-identify as leftists/radicals/progressives). Actual deep-organizing efforts are non-existent. At best, momentary mobilization.
They’re showing that left political organizations can both mobilize (OURMC held a BLM solidarity rally with over 700 people no less than two months ago) and organize ordinary people (OURMC is currently organizing tenants in Michigan City). When the pandemic started, OURMC immediately set up a city-wide mutual aid network.
OURMC doesn’t claim to have the answers, but it does understand that successful (or potentially successful) organizations should be able to do multiple things at once: mobilize in solidarity with national and international campaigns and movements; support local, state, and federal electoral efforts that align with its core values and bring ordinary people into the mix; adapt to changing political, economic, and cultural conditions (strategically, tactically, and ideologically); and create alternative cultural outlets (virtually impossible during a pandemic) that help build community.
Building multiracial organizations and coalitions is absolutely essential to winning.
Any action, strategy, or vision that doesn’t include a multiracial and internationalist component doesn’t deserve the light of day. And any action, strategy, or vision that drives down the opportunity to build such a movement should be critiqued and questioned. If the current wave of protests devolves into symbolic protests or a series of street skirmishes with police and rightwing agitators, we run the risk of eroding public support and driving down participation. I know many people on the left don’t want to hear that, or they may disagree, but it’s the truth (the polls don’t lie, which is why the powerful pay so close attention to them).
The current wave of protests must articulate winnable demands with regard to policing (which will vary greatly depending on geographical location/political context) while simultaneously articulating demands that meet the primary material needs of poor and working class people (wages, housing, debt). In order to do both, our movement needs vision. In order to develop vision, movements need organization and discipline. If we don’t do all the above, I’m afraid we’ll miss a great opportunity to make fundamental changes at a critical moment in history.
Vincent Emanuele is a writer, journalist and activist who lives in Michigan City, Indiana. He hosts “Meditations and Molotovs” which airs every Monday @1:00pm(CST) on the Progressive Radio Network (prn.fm) and can be reached at vincent.emanuele333@gmail.com
