The modern surveillance state is unparalleled. Many people are legitimately afraid of state repression.
But this fear can easily become paranoia and paralysis. As a result, some people will not get involved in radical organizing at all. Others will stay involved, but their paranoia will drive people away. The result? Our movements die.
How do we combat this? By creating a “security culture” in our groups.
What is Security Culture?
Security culture is a set of practices and attitudes designed to increase the safety of political communities. These guidelines are created based on recent and historic state repression, and help to reduce paranoia and increase effectiveness.
An Introduction to Security for Activists, Organizers, and Revolutionaries
Here at Deep Green Resistance, we are an “aboveground” organization with a firewall between us and underground action. That means that our primary work is legal (although this varies depending on jurisdiction). Our members also take part in non-violent direct action of the sort common among aboveground movements. This is in contrast with “underground” organizations that conduct clandestine, highly illegal activities. We advocate for this, as we think coordinated underground action is the best chance for saving the planet.
We do not plan or carry out underground actions. We do not even know about these activities, except when public communiques (see our underground action calendar for examples) are made. Our role is to be the public organization advocating for and explaining these actions. We call this separation thefirewall between aboveground and underground activities. Maintaining a firewall is essential for security and effectiveness.
Assata Shakur was a member of the Black Panther Party (an aboveground organization) and the Black Liberation Army (an underground organization). She was active in the early 1970s and was eventually arrested. She escaped prison in 1979 and went on the run, eventually reaching Cuba. In 1987 she published the excellent book Assata: An Autobiography, which contains the following quote on the importance of a firewall.
“One of the [Black Panther] party’s major weaknesses was the failure to clearly differentiate between aboveground political struggle and underground, clandestine military struggle. An aboveground political organization can’t wage guerilla war anymore than an underground army can do aboveground political work. Although the two must work together, the must have completely different structures.”
More information on the importance of a firewall and security culture can be found in the Deep Green Resistance book, available here.
Rules of Security Culture
Note: The following rules were created based on the legal and political situation in the United States.
Don’t Talk About…
Your involvement or someone else’s involvement with an underground group.
Your or someone else’s desire to get involved with such a group.
Your or someone else’s participation in illegal action.
Someone else’s advocacy for such actions.
Your or someone else’s plans for a future illegal action.
Don’t ask others if they are a member of an underground group.
Don’t talk about illegal actions in terms of specific times, people, places, etc.
Nonviolent civil disobedience is illegal, but can sometimes be discussed openly. In general, the specifics of nonviolent civil disobedience should be discussed only with people who will be involved in the action or those doing support work for them.
It’s still acceptable (even encouraged) to speak out generally in support of monkeywrenching and all forms of resistance as long as you don’t mention specific places, people, times, etc., but only if this is legal in your own jurisdiction. Even if voicing support for monkeywrenching is legal in your area, be aware of possible repression or consequences so you can make an informed decision about what level of risk you would be comfortable with.
Never talk to police officers, FBI agents, etc.
It doesn’t matter whether you are guilty or innocent. It doesn’t matter how smart you are. Never talk to police officers, FBI agents, Homeland Security, etc. It doesn’t matter if you believe you are telling police officers what they already know. It doesn’t matter if you just chit chat with police officers. Any talking to police officers, FBI agents, etc. will almost certainly harm you or others.
If you talk to a police officer, you give him or her the opportunity to testify against you based on what you said or what they say you said.
Simply and politely say you wish to remain silent. Ask if you are being detained or are under arrest. If you are not, then walk away. If you are arrested or detained, repeat to everyone who asks you that you wish to remain silent and that you wish to speak to a lawyer. Say nothing else but your name, address, and birth date.
Most convictions, whether people are guilty or not, come from people talking, not from investigative work.
Don’t snitch. A snitch is someone who provides information to the police or feds in order to obtain lenient treatment for themselves. Often, snitches provide information over an extended period of time to the police. Sometimes this occurs after they are arrested and asked to become informants. In return, they may receive money or have their own illegal behavior ignored by the police. Learn more about one prominent snitch.
Never allow a police officer, FBI agent, etc. into your home if they don’t have a search warrant
If you invite a police officer into your home, they have consent to search your home.
If they come to your house to ask questions, do not let them in. From inside your door, or from outside with your door shut behind you, politely say “I wish to remain silent.” Ask them if you are under arrest or if they have a search warrant. If they say no, go back inside your house and close your door politely. If they come in anyway, don’t resist arrest. Say “I do not consent to a search.” Take note of who they are and what they do.
Be Smart
Learn the laws in your country/state/jurisdiction: learn what you can and can’t say; learn what acts are legal and illegal; learn what previous activists have been tried for and what is permitted legally.
Find out the details of activist and protest lawyers/legal advocates in your area: if you go on an action, make sure you write their telephone number on your body in a permanent marker.
Link in with experienced activists: they will have a wealth of experience and knowledge about the landscape of activism where you are, and can teach you what are the local logistics and strategies for staying safe.
Myths of Security Culture
Myth # 1
“Hiding my identity aboveground makes me safe.”
“If I read the DGR website I will be on a government list.”
“I don’t want my name on a registration list for a DGR workshop so they won’t know who I am.”
Any action involves risk. Nothing can guarantee safety. Any effective aboveground action can lead to repression. Security culture makes us more effective.
Aboveground movements protect themselves almost exclusively through numbers and public solidarity.
There is no way to effectively do aboveground work and keep your identity hidden. Nor is it beneficial or necessary to hide your identity to do aboveground work (in most cases).
Aboveground movements can only build numbers and public solidarity by being public, open, and expressing support of the movement in order to attract others.
Operate on the assumption that all internet and phone communication is monitored. However, since aboveground movements have nothing to hide, except occasional nonviolent civil disobedience, we must use the internet and phones to communicate in order to be able to organize effectively.
One of the main roles of the aboveground is to be the public face of the movement. We stand publicly and say “I support this strategy and I advocate for DGR,” for example. This important work cannot be done if we are constantly trying to hide our identities.
There are perfectly legitimate reasons for wanting to keep a low profile, but hiding your identity completely while engaging with any movement is practically impossible. If you have reason to not want attention from the government (for example, if you are not a citizen), then the best way to be as safe as possible is to not engage with any movement.
Myth # 2
“We have to identify the federal agent, police officer, or infiltrator, etc. in the group”
It’s not safe nor a good idea to generally speculate or accuse people of being infiltrators. This is a typical tactic that infiltrators use to shut movements down.
Paranoia can cause destructive behavior.
Making false/uncertain accusations is dangerous: this is called “bad-jacketing” or “snitch-jacketing.”
Myth # 3
“Police officers have to identify themselves. Police officers can’t lie to you.”
Undercover infiltrators could not do their job if they had to identify themselves.
Police officers are legally allowed to lie to people – and do so routinely – to encourage compliance, both on the street and especially in interrogation. Police officers and other agents also present false evidence, including pictures, video, and audio to trick people into talking about other people.
Government agents of all kinds can threaten you, your family, and your friends. The best defense is to not talk, not believe them, not cooperate, and ask others for help.
Myth # 4
“Security Culture guarantees my safety.”
Security Culture makes you safer, but any effective action can lead to repression.
Nothing can guarantee safety, but Security Culture makes us more effective.
Strict separation between the aboveground and any underground that exists or may come to exist helps protect people.
Security Culture Breaches
Behavior, not people, is the problem
There are many behaviors that can disrupt groups or make them unsafe. Whether someone is a cop or not does not matter. Focus on addressing the behaviors.
Some of the behaviors to watch out for are sexism, abusive behavior, gossip, and creating conflict between individuals or groups.
What to do if there are breaches of Security Culture
Educate (tactfully and privately) and point people who breach Security Culture to further resources.
Don’t let violations pass or become habit.
Chronic violators have the same detrimental effect as infiltrators. It is important and necessary to set boundaries. If a member consistently violates Security Culture, even after being corrected, they should be removed from the group for the safety of everyone.
Q: Do you have lawyers willing to help us/advise us as we act?
A: We are currently building legal support for this purpose. We need volunteers for this and other tasks.
Q: What should I say if someone says: “I want to form an underground, join an underground, start a safehouse, etc.”
A: Say: “We are an aboveground organization. We do not want to be involved in underground work to maximize everyone’s safety and effectiveness. We do not answer anyone’s questions about personal desire to be in or form an underground.”
Q: What should I do if someone breaks security culture?
A: In case of minor issues, use education. Speak up right away, or pull the individual aside afterwards. More major issues or repeated violations may require you to end a relationship or remove a problematic individual from a group.
Q: Are you involved in “the underground”?
A: No. For the safety and effectiveness of all parties, DGR is an aboveground organization. We recommend you do not say “the underground.” This could imply you are in contact with an already existent underground organization. Instead, use, “an underground (which may or may not exist)” or a similar phrase.
In this writing, taken from ‘The Ohio River Speaks,‘ Will Falk shares the history and songs of the River. Through documenting the journey with the Ohio River, Will seeks to strengthens others fighting to protect what is left of the natural world. Read the first, second and third part of Will’s journey.
Just a few miles from where the Ohio River sang me her song of peace, she showed me war. She did so through a succession of experiences that forced me to confront the pervasive violence that maintains our way of life.
I originally planned to begin my journey with the Ohio River in March. But, I left my parents’ home in Castle Rock, CO just as the first states started issuing shelter-in-place orders to slow the spread of COVID-19. To wait out the virus, Melissa Troutman, her parents, and grandparents were gracious enough to let me stay in a little house on their property, not far from Coudersport and near the Ohio River’s headwaters. During this time, I was lucky enough to spend time with Melissa’s 89-year old, Italian-American grandfather who was born and raised in a house built a few yards from the Allegheny River in Coudersport. The family calls him Pop-Pop.
Put your shoes on when it rains.
Pop-Pop was a boy when, in just a few hours spanning July 17-18, 1942, nearly 30 inches of rain fell on Coudersport and the surrounding region. In fact, I found accounts of the “flood of ‘42” reporting that 30.7 inches of rain fell on nearby Smethport, PA in a 4 and a half-hour period.
Pop-Pop described how fast the river rose. He watched from an upstairs window as the neighbors’ chicken coop was torn clean-off its foundations only to collide with his family’s house. The impact shook Pop-Pop’s house “like an earthquake.” The cellar in Pop-Pop’s house had a drain that ran down to the river. After the chicken coop slammed into his house, he heard something in the cellar. He didn’t have time to put on shoes before he ran down to the cellar and found “the whole Allegheny River shooting up through the drain.”
The water was already up to Pop-Pop’s knees. But, he wanted to gather the jars of canned vegetables that were swirling around and crashing into each other. Some of the jars had shattered. And, as Pop-Pop grabbed as many jars as he could, he sliced his foot on underwater glass. Luckily, Pop-Pop’s sister was training as a nurse for deployment during World War II and she was able to stop the bleeding and mend the wound. With classic Italian mischievousness, Pop-Pop asked me what I thought the moral of the story was. When I hesitated, he said, “Don’t walk around in a cellar barefoot in a flood!” When I told him I would try not to, he responded, “Well, when it starts raining really hard, make sure you put your shoes on.”
Trout Splash Lullaby
The flood of ’42 was part of a series of floods in the 1930s and 40s that motivated towns throughout the Ohio River basin to implement so-called “flood control.” After Pop-Pop told me the story about cutting his foot during the flood, I asked him for his favorite memories of the Allegheny River. Pop-pop leaned back in his chair and the humorous light in his eyes was replaced by a wistful one.
Pop-Pop explained that his boyhood bed was placed beneath a window facing the Allegheny River. Not far from this window, hungry trout chased minnows from the river’s depths into rocky shallows. Nearly every night, the feeding trout splashed so loudly they woke him up. He loved to lie awake listening to the splashing trout and, eventually, the sounds put him back to sleep. “Those trout were the best lullaby,” he said.
When Pop-Pop told me the flood story, he looked me directly in the eye. He may have done so to judge the best times to strike with a well-placed joke. But, when he told me the story of the trout splashing outside his window, he did not look at me. He looked beyond me. He looked out the window we sat by to a place I could not see. I got the distinct impression he could still hear those trout splashing. After a few moments, he met my gaze once more and said, “Ever since they put in the flood control, they don’t splash like that anymore.”
A few hours after Pop-Pop shared his memories with me, I sat in my favorite recliner in front of an east-facing window in the little house Melissa’s family let me stay in. A light rain grew heavier. I smiled, put on a pair of thick-soled, rubber boots, and contemplated the other morals of Pop-Pop’s stories.
A Tune of Trucks and Songbirds.
Thirty yards from where I sat, I watched the rain falling on a ridge forming part of the edge of the Ohio River basin. Little rivulets of rainwater flowed towards me. They were just beginning the long journey to nearby Mill Stream, on to the Allegheny, the Ohio, the Mississippi, and eventually the Gulf of Mexico. Across the road, I studied the hemlocks and a pipeline right-of-way forming the edge of weary woods. A few mature hemlocks sighed with a wind whispering of former glory, of the majestic white pine and hemlock forests that grew here before a post-Civil war logging frenzy left the hills naked and exhausted. A woodpecker disregarded the rain and beat a rhythm while eating from a hollow tree trunk.
The tree’s hollowness reflected mine. I wondered if the scene might have been peaceful if it wasn’t for the sadness Pop-Pop’s story left me with. As that thought formed, four trucks carrying radioactive fracking wastewater to a nearby storage facility banged and clattered by on the gravel road running across the ridge. Diesel engines snarled to pull the toxic loads. My angst infested the sound. For two weeks, the trucks had been running day and night. During the day, songbirds did their best to fill the gaps between trucks, but the little hearts of birds are only so big. Night was worse. With few other sounds to compete with the trucks, they only grew louder. I was grateful for my prescribed sleep medication, but my hosts were not so lucky. Each morning, bags under their eyes were a little puffier, their eyes a little more bloodshot, and lines on their faces were harder-etched.
I tried to think of some way to help. If the truck drivers would have taken some time off, I might have succeeded in ignoring the destruction the trucks represented. Regardless, I heard the violence caused, and enabled by, this culture’s addiction to industrial energy in the sounds of grinding metal and the rapid explosion created by the smashing together of air and diesel in the truck engines. I saw the global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations rising with the clouds of truck exhaust. As the heavy loads rumbled by, I felt the land shaking with fear, trembling in her efforts to support all who depend on her despite her worsening condition.
Expressions of Life & Death
I wanted to distract myself from the trucks. My favorite distraction is writing. So, I grabbed my pen and notebook. I opened it up and was greeted with the last line I wrote in my last session: “All natural phenomena are expressions of Life – even ones that cause death. COVID-19 is a natural phenomenon. So, what is Life expressing through the virus?”
I sat with the question, but was afraid to answer it. I was afraid to describe something that has caused so much pain to humans as something positive like a lesson, or a message from the Earth, or even worse, an event necessary to draw human attention to ecological realities. I put my notebook down and sought distraction in my laptop. I ended up at the Johns Hopkins coronavirus map with its confirmed cases and death counters when the screeching brakes of a passing truck taking a curve too fast invaded my awareness.
And, that’s when I realized what Life expresses through COVID-19. Human encroachment into formerly remote and biodiverse lands is a major cause of the spread of pandemic viruses through human populations. Much of this encroachment is caused by humans seeking to exploit so-called “natural resources” like wildlife and land. The fracking trucks, and the industry they are part of, were a textbook example.
COVID-19 is another example. COVID-19 is a message from Life. It says: When humans violate Nature, when humans continuously invade Nature, when, humans wage war on Nature, there will be casualties.
With this in mind, I went looking in Coudersport for the flood control Pop-Pop told me about. As I entered town, a sign announced that I was crossing the “SPC Mike Franklin Memorial” bridge over the Allegheny River. But, when I walked onto the bridge, I did not find a river. I found a concrete tunnel. I found the flood control.
The Silence of Industrial Concrete
Water hurried through the tunnel. It made virtually no sound as it flowed over the barren, flat slabs of industrial concrete. There was no soil or stone for the water to dance over. There were no trees to offer shade for the water to linger under. There were no fallen leaves or branches for the water to twist and twirl with. And, without these, the water could not muster the songs of peace I had heard before. With the beauty of those songs still so fresh in my memory, my ears strained with anticipation and sought the Ohio River’s soothing songs. But, there were no songs. There was only an aggravating silence.
As the silence persisted, images flashed through my mind. I saw government workers scraping away the river bed. I saw them leveling the infinite inconsistencies on the river’s bottom and banks. I saw them pouring concrete slabs in perfectly ugly squares below the window from which Pop-Pop had once listened to the trout splashing as they chased the silver streaks of minnows across multi-colored pebbles lining the shallows. I saw them destroying the physical features that combine with water to create the liquid friction that gives the Ohio River her voice. Then, I saw the most disturbing image: I saw government workers pouring concrete down the Ohio River’s throat.
This hurt, but the Ohio River wasn’t finished with her lesson, yet. I followed the concrete tunnel about a few hundred yards to where Mill Stream converges with the Allegheny River. At this “convergence,” what I truly saw was concrete slabs arranged into two converging tunnels to form a massive letter Y. I stood in the crease of the Y, hoping the lesson would soon be over, when I stumbled over a small concrete marker set in the ground. The marker read: “In Memory of Jim Bushline (1936-1995). Writer, angler, friend. And, the Goodsell Hole. ‘For a century the greatest trout producing pool in Pennsylvania.’” This was a memorial for Jim Bushline. But this was also a memorial for the Goodsell Hole. It was commemorating the death of this natural community.
White Man’s Footsteps
The pain threatened to overwhelm me. Hoping that a direct question might yield a concise answer, I asked the Ohio River what she needed me to learn from these experiences. As I was listening for an answer, Melissa (who was accompanying me to help me learn how to use my new camera) pointed to a patch of what I had ignorantly assumed was weeds and said, “Look at this plantain patch. It’s one of the biggest and most healthy patches I’ve ever seen.” She explained to me that plantain is not a weed. Plantain is a soothing medicine. It has long been used to treat painful skin conditions, chronic digestive issues, and general nervous system ailments. When Melissa held a plantain leaf up to show me the way the leaf’s veins resembled the concrete convergence we stood near, I knew that despite the Ohio River’s voice being stolen by flood control, she still found a way to offer medicine by helping plantain to grow nearby.
As Melissa continued to describe plantain, the Ohio River’s lesson finally became clear. Some Native Americans, according to an herbal website Melissa found, call plantain “white man’s footsteps” because plantain proliferated wherever Europeans settled. I thought of the destruction of the Ohio River that followed the white man’s footsteps through her basin. Plantain is also known as “soldier’s herb” for the way the plant has served as battlefield first aid and infection prevention for centuries.
The Ohio River spoke to me through plantain, a plant that is a common resident of lawns across the United States. It can be found almost anywhere. War, today, can also be found almost anywhere. Plantain is an everyday, garden variety herb. To live today is to witness everyday ecocide and garden-variety genocide. To live today is to live with war.
Caste-based discrimination and violence has been prevalent in Nepalese society for a long time. Although both have been made illegal, Salonika explains why incidents occur, highlighting the harmful system that maintains the violence.
May 23, 2020 marks the nine-year anniversary of the day when the parliament passed a law against caste-based discrimination in Nepal. The day was marked by two incidents that highlight how far caste-based hierarchy is from elimination from the Nepalese society.
A young Dalit man, planning to elope with his “higher”-caste girlfriend arrived at the woman’s village with a group of seventeen friends. Some days later, the bodies of five men from the group were found floating in the Bheri river. One of them is still missing. On the day of the planned elopement, the group was met by a mob of “upper”-caste members who brutally thrashed them to death.
The body of a Dalit girl (aged 13) was found hanging from a tree near her in-law’s house. The girl had been married to her 25-year old rapist (from a “higher” caste) earlier the same day, at the behest of the local authorities. The girl was beaten by her in-laws before her death.
These incidents are not isolated. Violence against marginalized groups like Dalits have been persistent in the Nepalese society. Privileged groups have turned a blind eye to this for a long time. They refuse to see relationship to caste in such incidents, interpreting as solely criminal cases. Unfortunately, when the cases get legal attention, that is how they are labeled instead of a form of systemic oppression. I would argue that the caste of the victims, at least in these two cases, are a salient feature.
Caste system
Caste system has a strong historical root in the Indian subcontinent. It first originated as an open form of social organization. A person’s caste was determined by the work they did, i.e. their function in the society. However, over time, the system became a closed one. The caste of a person (as well as the work they did in the society) became based on the family they were born into. With changing times, a person’s work is no longer determined by their caste, but their caste is still determined by their birth. The rigid hierarchy still prevails.
Like every form of oppression, the caste system has dehumanized the oppressed group. The Dalit group, which occupies the lowest rung of that hierarchy, historically, have been barred from basic civil rights. They were not allowed to touch the water source of the so-called “higher”-castes. They were not allowed to enter temples. The dehumanization then becomes a justification for the group’s oppression, which has been perpetuated by the entire culture.
This caste based hierarchy has also translated to an economic and political hierarchy. Previously, the Dalits were not supposed to own money, relying on Brahmins and Chetris, whom they provided services to, for basic necessities. This has stripped them of considerable economic power. The same is true for political power. Even today, they are overrepresented among those living in poverty, and underrepresented in positions of authorities.
Crimes like honor killings, rapes, and domestic violence against newly married brides occur across all castes in Nepal. Caste is often a salient feature in particular crimes.
Caste-exogamy in marriage
Nepalese society still values caste-endogamy in marriage, that is, marriage among people of the same caste. In both cases described above, the marriages were exogamous. In the case of the young couple, a “higher”-caste woman was planning on eloping with a “lower”-caste man. Had the elopement been successful, it would have brought disgrace not only to the woman’s family, but to her entire community. It was perhaps to ‘protect the community’ from that disgrace that five young men were beaten to death.
Similarly, when the adolescent girl reached the home of her abuser, she was physically abused by the man’s family. The crimes of the man were not visible to his family members, neither was the suffering of a child who was forced to marry the man who exploited and raped her. Instead, they beat the girl because a low-caste girl was about to become their daughter-in-law.
Whether it is the marriage of a ‘higher’-caste woman with a ‘lower’-caste man, or of a ‘higher’-caste man with a ‘lower’-caste girl, it is the ‘lower’-caste individual who has been the victim of the violence at the hands of the family of the other.
Involvement of authorities
After the rape of an adolescent girl, instead of reporting a First Investigation Report (FIR), the society’s idea of a punishment was to ensure the rapist marry the girl. The local representative held the same view. In fact, no official complaint was registered, neither in the local representative’s office, nor with the police authority. Due to this, the representative is now denying any role in approving the marriage of the perpetrator to his victim.
The local representative had a more direct role in the case of the five dead men. The representative is among the twenty people named by the victim’s family as part of the mob that beat and killed their son. Although all twenty of them are currently under police custody, the actions of police administration in cases of ‘lower’-caste victims is inadequate.
After being brutally abused by her rapist’s family, the girl’s body was found hanging with clear marks of physical violence. The police authority failed to register the crime, stating that the girl had killed herself. Usually, even clear suicide cases are registered by the police in Nepal for investigation. It was only after four days that the case was finally registered, after pressures from activists. Even after the man has been registered as the prime accused, the police have not yet arrested him.
“Often the police refuse to even register cases – such as rape – when the victim is a Dalit.” -Meenakshi Ganguly, Human Rights Watch
This is not an isolated event either. Oftentimes, police try to settle matters without registering a case if the victim is from the Dalit community. Even when they do, the chargesheet for the case is so weak that the perpetrator gets away with a minimal sentence from the court.
The indifference of law enforcement agencies and the involvement of elected officials in crimes against people of the oppressed groups further fuel the impunity among the privileged groups. This is a common phenomenon in every oppressive system. Every time a white cop kills an unarmed person of color, White people justify the abuse against people of color. Every time a sexual predator walks free due to a lack of ‘evidence,’ men gain confidence in physically violating woman, ignoring their boundaries. It is this impunity that makes sure that the oppressed group cannot rise from the dehumanization.
Casteism is ‘Dead’ in Nepal?
All forms of caste-based discrimination have been legally abolished for years. According to the law, it is illegal for a person to discriminate against anyone based on caste. The latest constitution of Nepal (released five years ago) even makes a provision to include at least one Dalit in every local political entity. These recent developments have many members of the privileged group consider casteism as an issue of the past. But that is the nature of privilege: it is invisible to the one benefitting from it.
But the caste system still has a stronghold in the Nepalese society. In fact, an elected political representative was beaten to death by two of her neighbors. Her crime: she touched the common water source. In a society where an elected representative (who holds more power than an average person of her community) could be beaten to death, what level of violence could be inflicted upon other members of her community?
Within the nine years since the law was passed against caste-based discrimination, a total of seventeen Dalits have died within the country, who probably would have been alive had they been a member of a “higher” caste.
Systemic casteism is rampant. It is evident in the power differential that is still present. A power differential that was borne out of historical oppression of one group of people over another. It is evident in the police administration’s refusal to register cases where the victims are Dalit. This makes it easier for perpetrators to target Dalit victims. It is evident in the basic civil rights that have been denied to Dalits. It shows that despite the laws banning it, the concept of pollution associated with one group of people is still strong, at least among ‘higher’-caste individuals.
The caste system is an oppressive system that benefits a certain group of people at the expense of another. A familiar pattern, in varying contexts, across the globe. Those who benefit have a strong motivation (and also the means) to keep this system alive. Dismantling the caste system, like any other oppressive system, is not easy, neither is humanizing a group of people that have so long been dehumanized.
A just society cannot be born as long as an oppressive system is in place.
Salonika is an organizer at DGR South Asia and is based in Nepal. She believes that the needs of the natural world should trump the needs of the industrial civilization.
Jocelyn Crawley reflects on the objectification, domination and abuse of women and girls. She highlights the importance of feminist theory and the right for women and girls to live free from abuse and dominance.
Epstein: The Eroticization of Domination and Women’s Fight for Freedom
By Jocelyn Crawley
Recently, a close friend of mine and I became deeply engaged in a dynamic dialogue regarding the persistence and pervasiveness of the contemporary regime which perpetuates systems of hierarchy and hegemony: white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. During the discourse, she encouraged me to watch the documentary on Jeffrey Epstein and his role in sustaining a sex trafficking regime. After viewing the 60 Minutes documentary “Exposing Jeffrey Epstein’s International Sex Trafficking Ring,” I found that my mind was drawn to analyzing his nefarious, necrotic activity through the lens of an important feminist theory: the eroticization of domination.
Those who are unfamiliar with Jeffrey Epstein should know that he paid underage girls hundreds of dollars to provide him massages and proceeded to sexually abuse them. The abuse transpired in many places, including homes in New York, Florida, and Palm Beach. As a hedge fund manager, Epstein’s wealthy status, associations, and access to shrewd legal representatives enabled him to allude severe sentencing for his activities. For example, in a 2008 non-prosecution agreement, Epstein was able to plead guilty to charges in Florida for the solicitation of prostitution involving a minor. The ‘victims’ in question were children who had been sexually exploited for profit. With the 2008 non-prosecution agreement, Epstein served a mere 13 months through a work-release program. When he was later met with more severe charges, he killed himself.
Feminist Analysis.
As many radical feminists have argued in analyzing how the patriarchy structures ‘relationships’ between men and women, the system of relations is predicated on the eroticization of domination. Although defined diversely, the eroticization of domination essentially references the process through which the patriarchy structures the system of sexual relations between men and women. In essence men expressing their sexuality by controlling and subordinating women. Within this system, women (generally speaking) come to naturalize and accept dominance as an integral, inalienable, and inevitable component of sexuality. For this reason, normative conceptions of female sexuality incorporate the idea of one being violated, humiliated, or repeatedly having all types of psychic and physical boundaries broken.
In her article Eroticized Dominance-Emotional Grooming, Predatory Behaviors As Cultural Norms?, Athena Staik notes six key components of sexual relations marked by eroticized dominance that are particularly pertinent to the forms of patriarchy actualized by Jeffrey Epstein. The first is the idea that the main pleasure the perpetrator acquires results from causing emotional pain to the other. This process involves tricking or manipulating the victim for one’s own gratification. In viewing the documentary, I noted that Epstein was able to make his sex trafficking ring functional by informing young women that he would pay them to provide him with massage services. Once in his home, he had them provide him with massages but then proceeded to sexually abuse them.
This type of manipulative, deceptive behavior reflects not only the principles of domination, but also the process of male objectification of women.
Within this schema, women are no longer viewed as thinking, emotive beings who bring their own thoughts and preferences to human interactions. Rather, they are reduced to entities whose thoughts, feelings, and volition can be ignored for the purpose of satisfying the male fantasy. In short, Epstein’s praxis of deceit to lure women into his home for the purpose of sexually abusing them works to create a system of relations between men and women in which the latter lack sexual agency and authority. Additionally, the system of relations ensures that sexual activity between men and women is not predicated on empathy and mutuality but rather the former ruling the latter. This system of domination diminishes the likelihood of equality between the sexes and continually recreates a world in which female objectification is presented as a normative, natural way for women to exist.
The second element of eroticized dominance that Athena Staik references in her article pertains to an individual being viewed as “a weak or defective object without feelings, thoughts, opinions, etc.” This principle is prevalent in many of the actions and attitudes of Jeffrey Epstein. I was particularly drawn to two examples of it. The first was the fact that Epstein’s master bedroom contained prosthetic breasts. . In addition to doing harm to real female bodies through his trafficking ring, Epstein reworked the material reality of a woman’s physical form to become something that he could toy with, without having to with the real female human who possessed the breasts.
In my conceptualization of Epstein’s activity, he has observed and isolated a component of women’s bodies in a fetishistic manner that precludes him from having to deal with women as whole humans.
Women who have breasts yet are not just this one body part. In Epstein’s world, women repeatedly become their body parts; he was fine with removing them from the realm of material reality. He recreates them as prosthetic toys so he could handle without a living, thinking entity being part of the sexual process. According to Staik, eroticized dominance creates a system in which “sex is a weapon for personal gain to prove superiority via dominance (versus a key aspect of emotional intimacy in a couple relationship).” As I analyze Epstein’s appropriation of prosthetic breasts, I concluded that he actualized this principle of superiority through dominance by creating the prototypical system of relations in which men are subjects and women are objects.
Within this schema, Epstein can use his perverse imagination to invent and control how he relates to femaleness. In his mind, femaleness or womanhood involved not only sexually abusing real women but reducing them to non-thinking body parts which he could control. This component of the eroticization of domination is distinct from the objectification referenced in the previous paragraph because, in this component of the schema, objectification is no longer just objectification but rather the foundation or building block upon which domination is established.
In Epstein’s toxic mimicry of humane sexuality, superiority was actualized through his ability to dominate the other.
He perpetuated the system by reducing real female bodies into synthetic objects which could not protest or resist his advances. Those who are familiar with the diversity of Epstein’s sexual depravity may be aware that when his home was raided, authorities found child pornography and a stash of lewd photos stored away in a freestanding safe. These realities are also representations of both 1. objectification and 2. objectification as the springboard through which domination is attained. I think it also goes without saying that Epstein’s selection of victims as young as 12 years old is an example of the eroticization of domination insomuch as these individuals lack the emotional maturity, intellectual development, and physical power necessary to interact with him as sexual equals.
Reflecting on Epstein’s depravity and dehumanization of women, I found myself ruminating on the importance of presenting ourselves with alternatives to the modality of domination. Considering systems of relations that include parity, mutuality, and empathy. One thought that gained traction in my mind while pondering alternative modalities was the fact that people typically present two suggestions as solutions for domination: practicing love or cultivating individual and institutional freedoms.
Love and the fight for freedom.
Love is defined as an intense feeling of deep affection for another. It is an ethical, sustainable way to interact with others. However, prototypical schemas of love do not necessarily facilitate liberation from domination, or freedom. Rather, love embeds one in a system of relations with another individual who is viewed as an equal (or as having innate value and thus commanding respect) rather than freeing one from the dictatorial, oppressive grip of a malevolent individual or institution through which the subject has been reduced to an object. Although defined diversely, freedom is typically construed as the ability to speak, think, and act without restraints or hindrances being imposed on one by another. I posit that freedom exists but, because collective consciousness has yet to demonstrate an intense love for freedom, systems of domination are able to persist.
I conclude that cultivating a love of freedom, which involves being intentionally and continually in allegiance with thought systems and resistance movements that relentlessly fight for liberation, is the modality through which the current regime of domination can and should be contended.
We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.
Jocelyn Crawley is a radical feminist who resides in Atlanta, Georgia. Her intense antagonism towards all forms of social injustice-including white supremacy-grows with each passing day. Her primary goal for 2020 is to connect with other radicals for the purpose of building community and organizing against oppression.
Male violence against women is one of the most serious problems in the world. The numbers are staggering. Every year in the US, more than 230,000 sexual assaults are committed. At least 1 out of 6 American women have suffered rape or attempted rape, and 1 out of 3 women worldwide.
Native American women are the most likely targets of sexual violence. 44% of sexual assaults and rapes target children under the age of 18. Almost 2/3 of all sexual assaults are perpetrated by a non-stranger. Sexual assault is one of the most under-reported crimes – 60% of sexual assaults are not reported to police. Only 3% of rapists ever spend a day in jail.
Resistance Radio with Wendy Murphy
In this podcast Derrick Jensen interviews Wendy Murphy, who talks about the level of sexual assault experienced by women and girls. She describes how, in our culture, language can be used passively and therefore lead to accepting sexual violence as the norm. Wendy states that how language is used connects with real world experiences and can be translated in the courts as unjust verdicts.
Changing the way we talk about sexual violence can change the way we feel and shift from passive to proactive in relation to harms towards women and girls. Wendy created a multi-disciplinary team – The Judicial Language review – which enabled the team to review decisions in courts and state whether language is appropriate. The project critically analyses discourse, providing alternate phrases and use of language to the courts. Wendy gives real life examples of how language is used in the media and the courts to minimise (brush aside) the harms done towards children and strongly advocates a cultural shift, including the need to challenge passive use of language.
I was a police officer for nearly ten years and I was a bastard. We all were.
This essay has been kicking around in my head for years now and I’ve never felt confident enough to write it. It’s a time in my life I’m ashamed of. It’s a time that I hurt people and, through inaction, allowed others to be hurt. It’s a time that I acted as a violent agent of capitalism and white supremacy.
Under the guise of public safety, I personally ruined people’s lives but in so doing, made the public no safer… so did the family members and close friends of mine who also bore the badge alongside me. But enough is enough.
The reforms aren’t working. Incrementalism isn’t happening. Unarmed Black, indigenous, and people of color are being killed by cops in the streets and the police are savagely attacking the people protesting these murders.
American policing is a thick blue tumor strangling the life from our communities and if you don’t believe it when the poor and the marginalized say it, if you don’t believe it when you see cops across the country shooting journalists with less-lethal bullets and caustic chemicals, maybe you’ll believe it when you hear it straight from the pig’s mouth.
WHY AM I WRITING THIS
As someone who went through the training, hiring, and socialization of a career in law enforcement, I wanted to give a first-hand account of why I believe police officers are the way they are. Not to excuse their behavior, but to explain it and to indict the structures that perpetuate it. I believe that if everyone understood how we’re trained and brought up in the profession, it would inform the demands our communities should be making of a new way of community safety. If I tell you how we were made, I hope it will empower you to unmake us.
One of the other reasons I’ve struggled to write this essay is that I don’t want to center the conversation on myself and my big salty boo-hoo feelings about my bad choices. It’s a toxic white impulse to see atrocities and think “How can I make this about me?” So, I hope you’ll take me at my word that this account isn’t meant to highlight me, but rather the hundred thousand of me in every city in the country. It’s about the structure that made me (that I chose to pollute myself with) and it’s my meager contribution to the cause of radical justice.
YES, ALL COPS ARE BASTARDS
I was a police officer in a major metropolitan area in California with a predominantly poor, non-white population (with a large proportion of first-generation immigrants). One night during briefing, our watch commander told us that the city council had requested a new zero tolerance policy. Against murderers, drug dealers, or child predators? No, against homeless people collecting cans from recycling bins. See, the city had some kickback deal with the waste management company where waste management got paid by the government for our expected tonnage of recycling. When homeless people “stole” that recycling from the waste management company, they were putting that cheaper contract in peril. So, we were to arrest as many recyclers as we could find.
Even for me, this was a stupid policy and I promptly blew Sarge off. But a few hours later, Sarge called me over to assist him. He was detaining a 70 year old immigrant who spoke no English, who he’d seen picking a coke can out of a trash bin. He ordered me to arrest her for stealing trash. I said, “Sarge, c’mon, she’s an old lady.” He said, “I don’t give a shit. Hook her up, that’s an order.” And… I did. She cried the entire way to the station and all through the booking process. I couldn’t even comfort her because I didn’t speak Spanish. I felt disgusting but I was ordered to make this arrest and I wasn’t willing to lose my job for her.
If you’re tempted to feel sympathy for me, don’t.
I used to happily hassle the homeless under other circumstances. I researched obscure penal codes so I could arrest people in homeless encampments for lesser known crimes like “remaining too close to railroad property” (369i of the California Penal Code). I used to call it “planting warrant seeds” since I knew they wouldn’t make their court dates and we could arrest them again and again for warrant violations. We used to have informal contests for who could cite or arrest someone for the weirdest law. DUI on a bicycle, non-regulation number of brooms on your tow truck (27700(a)(1) of the California Vehicle Code)… shit like that. For me, police work was a logic puzzle for arresting people, regardless of their actual threat to the community.
As ashamed as I am to admit it, it needs to be said: stripping people of their freedom felt like a game to me for many years.
I know what you’re going to ask: did I ever plant drugs? Did I ever plant a gun on someone? Did I ever make a false arrest or file a false report? Believe it or not, the answer is no. Cheating was no fun, I liked to get my stats the “legitimate” way. But I knew officers who kept a little baggie of whatever or maybe a pocket knife that was a little too big in their war bags (yeah, we called our duffle-bags “war bags”…). Did I ever tell anybody about it? No I did not. Did I ever confess my suspicions when cocaine suddenly showed up in a gang member’s jacket? No I did not.
In fact, let me tell you about an extremely formative experience: in my police academy class, we had a clique of around six trainees who routinely bullied and harassed other students: intentionally scuffing another trainee’s shoes to get them in trouble during inspection, sexually harassing female trainees, cracking racist jokes, and so on. Every quarter, we were to write anonymous evaluations of our squad-mates. I wrote scathing accounts of their behavior, thinking I was helping keep bad apples out of law enforcement and believing I would be protected. Instead, the academy staff read my complaints to them out loud and outed me to them and never punished them, causing me to get harassed for the rest of my academy class. That’s how I learned that even police leadership hates rats. That’s why no one is “changing things from the inside.” They can’t, the structure won’t allow it.
And that’s the point of what I’m telling you. Whether you were my sergeant, legally harassing an old woman, me, legally harassing our residents, my fellow trainees bullying the rest of us, or “the bad apples” illegally harassing “shit-bags”, we were all in it together. I knew cops that pulled women over to flirt with them. I knew cops who would pepper spray sleeping bags so that homeless people would have to throw them away. I knew cops that intentionally provoked anger in suspects so they could claim they were assaulted. I was particularly good at winding people up verbally until they lashed out so I could fight them. Nobody spoke out. Nobody stood up. Nobody betrayed the code.
None of us protected the people (you) from bad cops. This is why “All cops are bastards.” Even your uncle, even your cousin, even your mom, even your brother, even your best friend, even your spouse, even me. Because even if they wouldn’t Do The Thing themselves, they will almost never rat out another officer who Does The Thing, much less stop it from happening.
BASTARD 101
I could write an entire book of the awful things I’ve done, seen done, and heard others bragging about doing. But, to me, the bigger question is “How did it get this way?”. While I was a police officer in a city 30 miles from where I lived, many of my fellow officers were from the community and treated their neighbors just as badly as I did. While every cop’s individual biases come into play, it’s the profession itself that is toxic, and it starts from day 1 of training.
Every police academy is different but all of them share certain features: taught by old cops, run like a paramilitary boot-camp, strong emphasis on protecting yourself more than anyone else. The majority of my time in the academy was spent doing aggressive physical training and watching video after video after video of police officers being murdered on duty.
I want to highlight this: nearly everyone coming into law enforcement is bombarded with dash cam footage of police officers being ambushed and killed. Over and over and over. Colorless VHS mortality plays, cops screaming for help over their radios, their bodies going limp as a pair of tail lights speed away into a grainy black horizon. In my case, with commentary from an old racist cop who used to brag about assaulting Black Panthers.
To understand why all cops are bastards, you need to understand one of the things almost every training officer told me when it came to using force: “I’d rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6.”
Meaning, “I’ll take my chances in court rather than risk getting hurt”. We’re able to think that way because police unions are extremely overpowered and because of the generous concept of Qualified Immunity, a legal theory which says a cop generally can’t be held personally liable for mistakes they make doing their job in an official capacity.
Even if Mistakes Were Made™, the city (meaning the taxpayers, meaning you) pays the settlement, not the officer. Once police training has – through repetition, indoctrination, and violent spectacle – promised officers that everyone in the world is out to kill them, the next lesson is that your partners are the only people protecting you.
Occasionally, this is even true: I’ve had encounters turn on me rapidly to the point I legitimately thought I was going to die, only to have other officers come and turn the tables. One of the most important thought leaders in law enforcement is Col. Dave Grossman, a “killologist” who wrote an essay called “Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs”. Cops are the sheepdogs, bad guys are the wolves, and the citizens are the sheep (!). Col. Grossman makes sure to mention that to a stupid sheep, sheepdogs look more like wolves than sheep, and that’s why they dislike you.
This “they hate you for protecting them and only I love you, only I can protect you” tactic is familiar to students of abuse. It’s what abusers do to coerce their victims into isolation, pulling them away from friends and family and ensnaring them in the abuser’s toxic web. Law enforcement does this too, pitting the officer against civilians. “They don’t understand what you do, they don’t respect your sacrifice, they just want to get away with crimes. You’re only safe with us.” I think the Wolves vs. Sheepdogs dynamic is one of the most important elements as to why officers behave the way they do. Every single second of my training, I was told that criminals were not a legitimate part of their community, that they were individual bad actors, and that their bad actions were solely the result of their inherent criminality.
Any concept of systemic trauma, generational poverty, or white supremacist oppression was either never mentioned or simply dismissed.
After all, most people don’t steal, so anyone who does isn’t “most people,” right? To us, anyone committing a crime deserved anything that happened to them because they broke the “social contract.” And yet, it was never even a question as to whether the power structure above them was honoring any sort of contract back. Understand: Police officers are part of the state monopoly on violence and all police training reinforces this monopoly as a cornerstone of police work, a source of honor and pride. Many cops fantasize about getting to kill someone in the line of duty, egged on by others that have.
One of my training officers told me about the time he shot and killed a mentally ill homeless man wielding a big stick. He bragged that he “slept like a baby” that night. Official training teaches you how to be violent effectively and when you’re legally allowed to deploy that violence, but “unofficial training” teaches you to desire violence, to expand the breadth of your violence without getting caught, and to erode your own compassion for desperate people so you can justify punitive violence against them.
HOW TO BE A BASTARD
I have participated in some of these activities personally, others are ones I either witnessed personally or heard officers brag about openly. Very, very occasionally, I knew an officer who was disciplined or fired for one of these things. Police officers will lie about the law, about what’s illegal, or about what they can legally do to you in order to manipulate you into doing what they want. Police officers will lie about feeling afraid for their life to justify use of force after the fact.
Police officers will lie and tell you they’ll file a police report just to get you off their back. Police officers will lie that your cooperation will “look good for you” in court, or that they will “put in a good word for you with the DA.” The police will never help you look good in court.
Police officers will lie about what they see and hear to access private property to conduct unlawful searches. Police officers will lie and say your friend already ratted you out, so you might as well rat them back out. This is almost never true. Police officers will lie and say you’re not in trouble in order to get you to exit a location or otherwise make an arrest more convenient for them. Police officers will lie and say that they won’t arrest you if you’ll just “be honest with them” so they know what really happened. Police officers will lie about their ability to seize the property of friends and family members to coerce a confession. Police officers will write obviously bullshit tickets so that they get time-and-a-half overtime fighting them in court.
Police officers will search places and containers you didn’t consent to and later claim they were open or “smelled like marijuana”.
Police officers will threaten you with a more serious crime they can’t prove in order to convince you to confess to the lesser crime they really want you for. Police officers will employ zero tolerance on races and ethnicities they dislike and show favor and lenience to members of their own group.
Police officers will use intentionally extra-painful maneuvers and holds during an arrest to provoke “resistance” so they can further assault the suspect. Some police officers will plant drugs and weapons on you, sometimes to teach you a lesson, sometimes if they kill you somewhere away from public view. Some police officers will assault you to intimidate you and threaten to arrest you if you tell anyone. A non-trivial number of police officers will steal from your house or vehicle during a search. A non-trivial number of police officers commit intimate partner violence and use their status to get away with it. A non-trivial number of police officers use their position to entice, coerce, or force sexual favors from vulnerable people.
If you take nothing else away from this essay, I want you to tattoo this onto your brain forever: if a police officer is telling you something, it is probably a lie designed to gain your compliance.
Do not talk to cops and never, ever believe them. Do not “try to be helpful” with cops. Do not assume they are trying to catch someone else instead of you. Do not assume what they are doing is “important” or even legal. Under no circumstances assume any police officer is acting in good faith. Also, and this is important, do not talk to cops. I just remembered something, do not talk to cops.
Checking my notes real quick, something jumped out at me:
Do
not
fucking
talk
to
cops.
Ever.
Say, “I don’t answer questions,” and ask if you’re free to leave; if so, leave. If not, tell them you want your lawyer and that, per the Supreme Court, they must terminate questioning. If they don’t, file a complaint and collect some badges for your mantle.
DO THE BASTARDS EVER HELP?
Reading the above, you may be tempted to ask whether cops ever do anything good. And the answer is, sure, sometimes. In fact, most officers I worked with thought they were usually helping the helpless and protecting the safety of innocent people. During my tenure in law enforcement, I protected women from domestic abusers, arrested cold-blooded murderers and child molesters, and comforted families who lost children to car accidents and other tragedies. I helped connect struggling people in my community with local resources for food, shelter, and counseling. I deescalated situations that could have turned violent and talked a lot of people down from making the biggest mistake of their lives. I worked with plenty of officers who were individually kind, bought food for homeless residents, or otherwise showed care for their community.
The question is this: did I need a gun and sweeping police powers to help the average person on the average night?
The answer is no. When I was doing my best work as a cop, I was doing mediocre work as a therapist or a social worker. My good deeds were listening to people failed by the system and trying to unite them with any crumbs of resources the structure was currently denying them. It’s also important to note that well over 90% of the calls for service I handled were reactive, showing up well after a crime had taken place. We would arrive, take a statement, collect evidence (if any), file the report, and onto the next caper. Most “active” crimes we stopped were someone harmless possessing or selling a small amount of drugs. Very, very rarely would we stop something dangerous in progress or stop something from happening entirely. The closest we could usually get was seeing someone running away from the scene of a crime, but the damage was still done.
And consider this: my job as a police officer required me to be a marriage counselor, a mental health crisis professional, a conflict negotiator, a social worker, a child advocate, a traffic safety expert, a sexual assault specialist, and, every once in awhile, a public safety officer authorized to use force, all after only a 1000 hours of training at a police academy. Does the person we send to catch a robber also need to be the person we send to interview a rape victim or document a fender bender?
Should one profession be expected to do all that important community care (with very little training) all at the same time?
To put this another way: I made double the salary most social workers made to do a fraction of what they could do to mitigate the causes of crimes and desperation. I can count very few times my monopoly on state violence actually made our citizens safer, and even then, it’s hard to say better-funded social safety nets and dozens of other community care specialists wouldn’t have prevented a problem before it started. Armed, indoctrinated (and dare I say, traumatized) cops do not make you safer; community mutual aid networks who can unite other people with the resources they need to stay fed, clothed, and housed make you safer. I really want to hammer this home: every cop in your neighborhood is damaged by their training, emboldened by their immunity, and they have a gun and the ability to take your life with near-impunity. This does not make you safer, even if you’re white.
HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE A BASTARD?
So what do we do about it? Even though I’m an expert on bastardism, I am not a public policy expert nor an expert in organizing a post-police society. So, before I give some suggestions, let me tell you what probably won’t solve the problem of bastard cops:
Increased “bias” training. A quarterly or even monthly training session is not capable of covering over years of trauma-based camaraderie in police forces. I can tell you from experience, we don’t take it seriously, the proctors let us cheat on whatever “tests” there are, and we all made fun of it later over coffee.
Tougher laws. I hope you understand by now, cops do not follow the law and will not hold each other accountable to the law. Tougher laws are all the more reason to circle the wagons and protect your brothers and sisters.
More community policing programs. Yes, there is a marginal effect when a few cops get to know members of the community, but look at the protests of 2020: many of the cops pepper-spraying journalists were probably the nice school cop a month ago.
Police officers do not protect and serve people, they protect and serve the status quo, “polite society”, and private property. Using the incremental mechanisms of the status quo will never reform the police because the status quo relies on police violence to exist. Capitalism requires a permanent underclass to exploit for cheap labor and it requires the cops to bring that underclass to heel.
Instead of wasting time with minor tweaks, I recommend exploring the following ideas:
No more qualified immunity. Police officers should be personally liable for all decisions they make in the line of duty.
No more civil asset forfeiture. Did you know that every year, citizens [sic] like you lose more cash and property to unaccountable civil asset forfeiture than to all burglaries combined? The police can steal your stuff without charging you with a crime and it makes some police departments very rich.
Break the power of police unions. Police unions make it nearly impossible to fire bad cops and incentivize protecting them to protect the power of the union. A police union is not a labor union; police officers are powerful state agents, not exploited workers.
Require malpractice insurance. Doctors must pay for insurance in case they botch a surgery, police officers should do the same for botching a police raid or other use of force. If human decency won’t motivate police to respect human life, perhaps hitting their wallet might.
Defund, demilitarize, and disarm cops. Thousands of police departments own assault rifles, armored personnel carriers, and stuff you’d see in a warzone. Police officers have grants and huge budgets to spend on guns, ammo, body armor, and combat training. 99% of calls for service require no armed response, yet when all you have is a gun, every problem feels like target practice. Cities are not safer when unaccountable bullies have a monopoly on state violence and the equipment to execute that monopoly.
One final idea: consider abolishing the police.
I know what you’re thinking, “What? We need the police! They protect us!” As someone who did it for nearly a decade, I need you to understand that by and large, police protection is marginal, incidental.
It’s an illusion created by decades of copaganda designed to fool you into thinking these brave men and women are holding back the barbarians at the gates.
I alluded to this above: the vast majority of calls for service I handled were theft reports, burglary reports, domestic arguments that hadn’t escalated into violence, loud parties, (houseless) people loitering, traffic collisions, very minor drug possession, and arguments between neighbors. Mostly the mundane ups and downs of life in the community, with little inherent danger. And, like I mentioned, the vast majority of crimes I responded to (even violent ones) had already happened; my unaccountable license to kill was irrelevant.
What I mainly provided was an “objective” third party with the authority to document property damage, ask people to chill out or disperse, or counsel people not to beat each other up. A trained counselor or conflict resolution specialist would be ten times more effective than someone with a gun strapped to his hip wondering if anyone would try to kill him when he showed up. There are many models for community safety that can be explored if we get away from the idea that the only way to be safe is to have a man with a M4 rifle prowling your neighborhood ready at a moment’s notice to write down your name and birthday after you’ve been robbed and beaten.
You might be asking, “What about the armed robbers, the gangsters, the drug dealers, the serial killers?”
And yes, in the city I worked, I regularly broke up gang parties, found gang members carrying guns, and handled homicides. I’ve seen some tragic things, from a reformed gangster shot in the head with his brains oozing out to a fifteen year old boy taking his last breath in his screaming mother’s arms thanks to a gang member’s bullet. I know the wages of violence. This is where we have to have the courage to ask: why do people rob? Why do they join gangs? Why do they get addicted to drugs or sell them? It’s not because they are inherently evil. I submit to you that these are the results of living in a capitalist system that grinds people down and denies them housing, medical care, human dignity, and a say in their government.
These are the results of white supremacy pushing people to the margins, excluding them, disrespecting them, and treating their bodies as disposable.
Equally important to remember: disabled and mentally ill people are frequently killed by police officers not trained to recognize and react to disabilities or mental health crises. Some of the people we picture as “violent offenders” are often people struggling with untreated mental illness, often due to economic hardships. Very frequently, the officers sent to “protect the community” escalate this crisis and ultimately wound or kill the person. Your community was not made safer by police violence; a sick member of your community was killed because it was cheaper than treating them. Are you extremely confident you’ll never get sick one day too?
Wrestle with this for a minute: if all of someone’s material needs were met and all the members of their community were fed, clothed, housed, and dignified, why would they need to join a gang? Why would they need to risk their lives selling drugs or breaking into buildings? If mental healthcare was free and was not stigmatized, how many lives would that save? Would there still be a few bad actors in the world? Sure, probably. What’s my solution for them, you’re no doubt asking. I’ll tell you what: generational poverty, food insecurity, homelessness, and for-profit medical care are all problems that can be solved in our lifetimes by rejecting the dehumanizing meat grinder of capitalism and white supremacy. Once that’s done, we can work on the edge cases together, with clearer hearts not clouded by a corrupt system.
Police abolition is closely related to the idea of prison abolition and the entire concept of banishing the carceral state, meaning, creating a society focused on reconciliation and restorative justice instead of punishment, pain, and suffering — a system that sees people in crisis as humans, not monsters.
People who want to abolish the police typically also want to abolish prisons, and the same questions get asked: “What about the bad guys? Where do we put them?” I bring this up because abolitionists don’t want to simply replace cops with armed social workers or prisons with casual detention centers full of puffy leather couches and PlayStations. We imagine a world not divided into good guys and bad guys, but rather a world where people’s needs are met and those in crisis receive care, not dehumanization.
Here’s legendary activist and thinker Angela Y. Davis putting it better than I ever could:
“An abolitionist approach that seeks to answer questions such as these would require us to imagine a constellation of alternative strategies and institutions, with the ultimate aim of removing the prison from the social and ideological landscapes of our society. In other words, we would not be looking for prisonlike substitutes for the prison, such as house arrest safeguarded by electronic surveillance bracelets. Rather, positing decarceration as our overarching strategy, we would try to envision a continuum of alternatives to imprisonment-demilitarization of schools, revitalization of education at all levels, a health system that provides free physical and mental care to all, and a justice system based on reparation and reconciliation rather than retribution and vengeance.”
(Are Prisons Obsolete, pg. 107)
I’m not telling you I have the blueprint for a beautiful new world. What I’m telling you is that the system we have right now is broken beyond repair and that it’s time to consider new ways of doing community together. Those new ways need to be negotiated by members of those communities, particularly Black, indigenous, disabled, houseless, and citizens of color historically shoved into the margins of society. Instead of letting Fox News fill your head with nightmares about Hispanic gangs, ask the Hispanic community what they need to thrive. Instead of letting racist politicians scaremonger about pro-Black demonstrators, ask the Black community what they need to meet the needs of the most vulnerable. If you truly desire safety, ask not what your most vulnerable can do for the community, ask what the community can do for the most vulnerable.
A WORLD WITH FEWER BASTARDS IS POSSIBLE
If you take only one thing away from this essay, I hope it’s this: do not talk to cops.
But if you only take two things away, I hope the second one is that it’s possible to imagine a different world where unarmed black people, indigenous people, poor people, disabled people, and people of color are not routinely gunned down by unaccountable police officers. It doesn’t have to be this way. Yes, this requires a leap of faith into community models that might feel unfamiliar, but I ask you: When you see a man dying in the street begging for breath, don’t you want to leap away from that world? When you see a mother or a daughter shot to death sleeping in their beds, don’t you want to leap away from that world? When you see a twelve year old boy executed in a public park for the crime of playing with a toy, Jesus fucking Christ, can you really just stand there and think “This is normal”?
And to any cops who made it this far down, is this really the world you want to live in? Aren’t you tired of the trauma? Aren’t you tired of the soul sickness inherent to the badge? Aren’t you tired of looking the other way when your partners break the law? Are you really willing to kill the next George Floyd, the next Breonna Taylor, the next Tamir Rice? How confident are you that your next use of force will be something you’re proud of? I’m writing this for you too: it’s wrong what our training did to us, it’s wrong that they hardened our hearts to our communities, and it’s wrong to pretend this is normal.
Look, I wouldn’t have been able to hear any of this for much of my life. You reading this now may not be able to hear this yet either. But do me this one favor: just think about it. Just turn it over in your mind for a couple minutes. “Yes, And” me for a minute. Look around you and think about the kind of world you want to live in. Is it one where an all-powerful stranger with a gun keeps you and your neighbors in line with the fear of death, or can you picture a world where, as a community, we embrace our most vulnerable, meet their needs, heal their wounds, honor their dignity, and make them family instead of desperate outsiders?
If you take only three things away from this essay, I hope the third is this: you and your community don’t need bastards to thrive.
The author of this piece is a former California Police Officer.
![[The Ohio River Speaks] Everyday Ecocide and Garden-Variety Genocide](https://dgrnewsservice.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2020/06/Everyday-Ecocide-and-Garden-Variety-Genocide.jpg)
