Experiments Beyond the Brutality

Washing the pepper spray from my clothes and waking up regularly to startling dreams of riot cops, ex-lovers, and frenzied television production, I can't help but feel a bit depressed.

While the DNC was happening, significantly fewer cops plagued the neighborhood I live in, an impoverished community on the North East side of Denver. Now that protest has stopped, the neighborhood has filled up with cops again. Virtually no sustainable links between organizing against the police brutality against protesters and organizing against the regular violence in this neighborhood was created. While white subcultures flourished in both Denver and St. Paul, strong links were not made between anti-convention activism and the ongoing, life-or-death struggles faced by people of color. While these struggles were addressed rhetorically, and organizations such as Recreate 68 did attempt to make connections, the protests remained largely white.

I wonder if the enormous infrastructure set up by white subcultures to facilitate protest will ever have a real impact on the daily lives of poor people. I fear it will be used to simply facilitate cathartic protests that release the pressure in this steam-cooker of late capitalism; protests that create demonstrations of antagonism; protesters that fail to build sustainable alternatives; protests that falsely excuse people of privilege from their complicity in the violence of oppression.

Perhaps to scream out in the streets, to smash windows, to destroy cop cars, to fight the police, and directly, physically confront the perpetrators of violence is not enough. After 9/11, a broken window hardly garners media attention. After millions have been assaulted, falsely imprisoned, brutalized, and degraded by the police, a few blows at a line of riot cops hardly challenges the system. Perhaps the level of sophistication, military strategy, and organization needed to militantly confront global capitalism and the state in the streets exceeds our current capacity.

The old question I would like to re-pose is what forms of creation and destruction will most effectively eliminate relationships of oppression and most directly lead to global liberation, conditions for joy and possibility. If the answer to this is found in the shattering of Macy's windows, hand me a rock. If the answer to this is found in tactics of greater aggression, let's arm ourselves. If the answer to this is found in building strong community ties, networking diverse localities, and creating alternative economies, let's get to work. Sadly, we don't know which of these solutions will work outside of practice. Armed struggle may be a death trap. Window-breaking may be futile. Community organizing may never work. Unless we try, informed by history, we will never find out.

Kudos to those who struggled in Denver and St. Paul. Kudos to all who work regularly for liberation at home, while traveling, at convergences, and in isolation. Kudos to those who risk it all and dare to experiment.

So much to be done. So many experiments to be had!

Once again, Gramsci's dictum comes to mind: Pessimism of the intellect. Optimism of the will.