Since the uprising in Ferguson, Missouri, against police terrorism, we have been overrun with examples of police bravado. One story quoted a cop as saying "if you don't want to get shot, don't defy my orders!" Another video showed a police terrorist in Ferguson pointing his automatic rifle at citizens and media, yelling profane threats. Then, it was either that same jack-booted thug, or another one, who was quoted as telling a group of people that he enjoyed killing people, or something sick like that. There are actually countless propaganda pieces floating around like that. Most of this is designed to illustrate just how barbaric these cops are, but whether intentional or not, all of this exposure ends up affirming the notion that police can do whatever they want to us, and there's really nothing we can do about it because they have the state (law), and the guns, on their side. Coupled with the disgusting sight of sick people donating significant amounts of money to the cold blooded beast who killed young Mike Brown, and the track record of murderous cops getting away with killing our youth, its' easy to understand how the average person would look at police and their actions as invincible.
You should understand that none of this is by accident. The capitalist system was built on exploitation. The entire banking industry, I'm talking about Wachovia, Barclays, Wells Fargo, J.P. Morgan Chase, Lehmen Brothers, etc., was initiated from the seed money "earned" by enslaving Africans. If you don't believe that - just Google it. All of those companies have had to admit their origins in recent years. It's those banks along with many other accompanying industries like Aetna and New York Life insurance - which started by providing insurance premiums on enslaved Africans. Even Brooks Brothers Suits, got it's start by making clothes for slaves, much like clothes companies make clothes for dogs and other animals today. I know many of you reading this far didn't know that because the capitalist system - as Kwame Ture was fond of saying - "doesn't lie some of the time, it lies all of the time." So, although you have spent your entire life believing on some level that corporate America was built based on hard work and industriousness, the truth is it was built on theft and murder. Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there. Most of the land we live on was inhabited and utilized by Indigenous people at some point in history. Now today, the great grand children of the colonizers own most of the land and the Indigenous people have no land. This "transfer" didn't happen through any legal process where those Red folks were properly compensated for the loss of their land. It happened through the same theft and murder. Or, as the Indian scholar Vine Deloria stated "when the white man came, we had the land and he had the Bible. Once he got here, he got the land and we got the Bible." So, the point to all this history is that capitalism lies about its existence because for it to tell the truth would be for it to admit it's an illegal system. This logic rains true through all capitalist institutions, including it's police agencies. Now, yesterday, I heard a white man on talk radio say that white people have invented all of the progress in this world over the last 200 years. That's a great statement to placate and promote white supremacy for anyone who needs to believe that lie, but the truth is lies like that are predicated on capitalism protecting it's interests. And, those interests are having everyone believe that the way things are now is the way they should be because capitalism is God and God is benevolent and all powerful.
Thus we come back to the police. The capitalist system wants you to believe that police agencies are all powerful. They need you to believe that because the police and the military are the armed protectors of the capitalist system. That's why they constantly propagate honoring those people who perform those "jobs" because that way, they hope to keep the gestapo's focus off of the inhuman jobs they are forcing them to do. This is why all of this propaganda you are seeing helps to perpetuate police invincibility. The way to combat that is for the revolutionary forces to start to propagate the other side of the story. Let's do that right now. Police agencies are not invincible. In fact, with just a slight bit of organization, police agencies can be easily defeated in spite of the cries of cowards that "they have all the guns!" Study the urban rebellions that have taken place. There are many you can study. I like to talk about the 1992 Los Angeles rebellion. In this instance, thousands of people cornered the police downtown near Parker Station. There was a massive response to protect the police headquarters building, but this response left other critical parts of the city wide open. Word of this spread rapidly and in no time, thousands of people were hitting the streets in areas where no police response could take place. And, when police did surface, they found dozens of local residents who were openly armed to protect the communities. There was nothing the police could do except vacate. There are numerous reports of dozens of citizens defying police orders to back away from buildings once the people realized the police had no capacity to stop them. These examples are based on the basic principle used in "flash mob" actions. As you probably know, those are spontaneous actions that are designed to catch authorities off guard so that they are unable to act. These actions are overwhelmingly successful from the 50 youth storming stores together to remove items from the stores to the same number of people jumping on public transportation at the same time and refusing to pay. The amazing thing about these acts from a scientific standpoint is they take place with very minimal planning. Only a text message or five or so minutes of planning. Imagine what could happen with a few days of planning? A few weeks? There are plenty of examples to underscore this point. The housing justice work taking place across the world is another case in point. Masses of people mobilized to take over buildings. The only reason these efforts may not have generated long term results is because the police waited until the supporters thinned out and moved in. This is the same as moving the Occupy campers out of the parks two years ago. In Portland, anyone who was there saw what happened. The night the police issued their vacate order, thousands of people showed up to resist the eviction. The police came with everyone and everything they had, riot gear, equipment and all, but they could not remove thousands of people who were determined to not move. So, the police waited until people got tired and left to go to their houses and get sleep. Then, when there were only about 50 campers left, they moved in, but this shouldn't be mistaken for police strength. The point is the people, properly organized, have the numbers to outlast the police, not the other way around. The question is simply one of moving from mobilization to organization.
For examples of revolutionary organization you can look at the work of the Viet Minh Front in Vietnam or the popular people's movement in Cuba. In each instance, the people stood up against military units that were supposed to crush them. In the case of the Vietnamese, the example is most clear because they were engaged in a war with U.S. military forces. From their victory, we learned that small military units, with support from the local people, could operate uninterrupted for months, even years, consistently inflicting damage on the enemy. They were able to do this with far inferior weaponry. In Cuba, they were able to start with only 11 rebels, but because of their political education efforts in cities like Havana, Santiago, and Trinidad, they were able to win people over to support the guerrilla movement while winning peasants over one by one to the actual armed struggle. In fact, they won many military troops over to their side. Another example was Hezbollah's defeat of zionist Israel in 2006. This defeat shocked the world because Israel, armed with U.S. weapons and training, is a force capable of inflicting serious damage as is witnessed by their terrorist assault against Gaza. Still, no one took time to study the day to day work of Hezbollah. In spite of what you may think of their Shia Islamic orientation, they spent years working to organize local people in Lebanon. They built programs to repair people's homes destroyed by Israeli bombs. They protected people from the Israeli backed Phalange Militia. Lebanese people were able to take in loans from Hezbollah. Over time, Hezbollah earned the support of the people and this was the crucial element that permitted them to hold off the Israelis in spite of Israel's superior weaponry. The point is Israel, the U.S. and any imperialist power is mighty, but they can't defeat all of the people at the same time.
Another method for the popular forces to use is political education against the enemy. This is effective when the forces you are fighting are not committed to their mission. Since the U.S. is always on the wrong side of history, this is a tactic that would always have some positive effect, although it has rarely been implemented. For example, the Vietnamese exploited this by having a complete understanding of the U.S. race situation. Nguyen Al Qouc, or Ho Chi Minh as he was popularly known, was a 20 something Columbia University student and restaurant dishwasher living in Harlem, New York, in the 1920s when he was known to frequent street corners to hear speakers like the Honorable Marcus Garvey speak about the conditions of African people. Once he returned home and became a leader of the Vietnamese resistance movement against the U.S., he used that knowledge to create leaflets that were dropped on U.S. troops. The leaflets read "Black man go home! This isn't your war!" Since the African troops knew that our own people were fighting for their lives for justice and freedom here in the U.S., it was an easy question to exploit: Why are we over here fighting for something we don't even have in the country we live in? This ideological dilemma began to have a psychological effect on morale that was articulated in works such as the book "Bloods." The Viet Cong troops were instructed to drive the wedge further by releasing any African troops they captured with political education lectures when possible.
We can refer to many more examples, but the message is police and military are not invincible. They can be defeated with the proper organization. They flex their muscles every time people rise up against them because they know their greatest weapon isn't any of the equipment at their disposal, their nasty attitudes against the people, or certainly not the dishonest portrayal of the events. Their best weapon is keeping you believing that any efforts to organize against them beyond what they term acceptable is always 100% off the table. Realize that history provides many examples to demonstrate this is not true.
You should understand that none of this is by accident. The capitalist system was built on exploitation. The entire banking industry, I'm talking about Wachovia, Barclays, Wells Fargo, J.P. Morgan Chase, Lehmen Brothers, etc., was initiated from the seed money "earned" by enslaving Africans. If you don't believe that - just Google it. All of those companies have had to admit their origins in recent years. It's those banks along with many other accompanying industries like Aetna and New York Life insurance - which started by providing insurance premiums on enslaved Africans. Even Brooks Brothers Suits, got it's start by making clothes for slaves, much like clothes companies make clothes for dogs and other animals today. I know many of you reading this far didn't know that because the capitalist system - as Kwame Ture was fond of saying - "doesn't lie some of the time, it lies all of the time." So, although you have spent your entire life believing on some level that corporate America was built based on hard work and industriousness, the truth is it was built on theft and murder. Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there. Most of the land we live on was inhabited and utilized by Indigenous people at some point in history. Now today, the great grand children of the colonizers own most of the land and the Indigenous people have no land. This "transfer" didn't happen through any legal process where those Red folks were properly compensated for the loss of their land. It happened through the same theft and murder. Or, as the Indian scholar Vine Deloria stated "when the white man came, we had the land and he had the Bible. Once he got here, he got the land and we got the Bible." So, the point to all this history is that capitalism lies about its existence because for it to tell the truth would be for it to admit it's an illegal system. This logic rains true through all capitalist institutions, including it's police agencies. Now, yesterday, I heard a white man on talk radio say that white people have invented all of the progress in this world over the last 200 years. That's a great statement to placate and promote white supremacy for anyone who needs to believe that lie, but the truth is lies like that are predicated on capitalism protecting it's interests. And, those interests are having everyone believe that the way things are now is the way they should be because capitalism is God and God is benevolent and all powerful.
Thus we come back to the police. The capitalist system wants you to believe that police agencies are all powerful. They need you to believe that because the police and the military are the armed protectors of the capitalist system. That's why they constantly propagate honoring those people who perform those "jobs" because that way, they hope to keep the gestapo's focus off of the inhuman jobs they are forcing them to do. This is why all of this propaganda you are seeing helps to perpetuate police invincibility. The way to combat that is for the revolutionary forces to start to propagate the other side of the story. Let's do that right now. Police agencies are not invincible. In fact, with just a slight bit of organization, police agencies can be easily defeated in spite of the cries of cowards that "they have all the guns!" Study the urban rebellions that have taken place. There are many you can study. I like to talk about the 1992 Los Angeles rebellion. In this instance, thousands of people cornered the police downtown near Parker Station. There was a massive response to protect the police headquarters building, but this response left other critical parts of the city wide open. Word of this spread rapidly and in no time, thousands of people were hitting the streets in areas where no police response could take place. And, when police did surface, they found dozens of local residents who were openly armed to protect the communities. There was nothing the police could do except vacate. There are numerous reports of dozens of citizens defying police orders to back away from buildings once the people realized the police had no capacity to stop them. These examples are based on the basic principle used in "flash mob" actions. As you probably know, those are spontaneous actions that are designed to catch authorities off guard so that they are unable to act. These actions are overwhelmingly successful from the 50 youth storming stores together to remove items from the stores to the same number of people jumping on public transportation at the same time and refusing to pay. The amazing thing about these acts from a scientific standpoint is they take place with very minimal planning. Only a text message or five or so minutes of planning. Imagine what could happen with a few days of planning? A few weeks? There are plenty of examples to underscore this point. The housing justice work taking place across the world is another case in point. Masses of people mobilized to take over buildings. The only reason these efforts may not have generated long term results is because the police waited until the supporters thinned out and moved in. This is the same as moving the Occupy campers out of the parks two years ago. In Portland, anyone who was there saw what happened. The night the police issued their vacate order, thousands of people showed up to resist the eviction. The police came with everyone and everything they had, riot gear, equipment and all, but they could not remove thousands of people who were determined to not move. So, the police waited until people got tired and left to go to their houses and get sleep. Then, when there were only about 50 campers left, they moved in, but this shouldn't be mistaken for police strength. The point is the people, properly organized, have the numbers to outlast the police, not the other way around. The question is simply one of moving from mobilization to organization.
For examples of revolutionary organization you can look at the work of the Viet Minh Front in Vietnam or the popular people's movement in Cuba. In each instance, the people stood up against military units that were supposed to crush them. In the case of the Vietnamese, the example is most clear because they were engaged in a war with U.S. military forces. From their victory, we learned that small military units, with support from the local people, could operate uninterrupted for months, even years, consistently inflicting damage on the enemy. They were able to do this with far inferior weaponry. In Cuba, they were able to start with only 11 rebels, but because of their political education efforts in cities like Havana, Santiago, and Trinidad, they were able to win people over to support the guerrilla movement while winning peasants over one by one to the actual armed struggle. In fact, they won many military troops over to their side. Another example was Hezbollah's defeat of zionist Israel in 2006. This defeat shocked the world because Israel, armed with U.S. weapons and training, is a force capable of inflicting serious damage as is witnessed by their terrorist assault against Gaza. Still, no one took time to study the day to day work of Hezbollah. In spite of what you may think of their Shia Islamic orientation, they spent years working to organize local people in Lebanon. They built programs to repair people's homes destroyed by Israeli bombs. They protected people from the Israeli backed Phalange Militia. Lebanese people were able to take in loans from Hezbollah. Over time, Hezbollah earned the support of the people and this was the crucial element that permitted them to hold off the Israelis in spite of Israel's superior weaponry. The point is Israel, the U.S. and any imperialist power is mighty, but they can't defeat all of the people at the same time.
Another method for the popular forces to use is political education against the enemy. This is effective when the forces you are fighting are not committed to their mission. Since the U.S. is always on the wrong side of history, this is a tactic that would always have some positive effect, although it has rarely been implemented. For example, the Vietnamese exploited this by having a complete understanding of the U.S. race situation. Nguyen Al Qouc, or Ho Chi Minh as he was popularly known, was a 20 something Columbia University student and restaurant dishwasher living in Harlem, New York, in the 1920s when he was known to frequent street corners to hear speakers like the Honorable Marcus Garvey speak about the conditions of African people. Once he returned home and became a leader of the Vietnamese resistance movement against the U.S., he used that knowledge to create leaflets that were dropped on U.S. troops. The leaflets read "Black man go home! This isn't your war!" Since the African troops knew that our own people were fighting for their lives for justice and freedom here in the U.S., it was an easy question to exploit: Why are we over here fighting for something we don't even have in the country we live in? This ideological dilemma began to have a psychological effect on morale that was articulated in works such as the book "Bloods." The Viet Cong troops were instructed to drive the wedge further by releasing any African troops they captured with political education lectures when possible.
We can refer to many more examples, but the message is police and military are not invincible. They can be defeated with the proper organization. They flex their muscles every time people rise up against them because they know their greatest weapon isn't any of the equipment at their disposal, their nasty attitudes against the people, or certainly not the dishonest portrayal of the events. Their best weapon is keeping you believing that any efforts to organize against them beyond what they term acceptable is always 100% off the table. Realize that history provides many examples to demonstrate this is not true.
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