Tottenham, Fullerton, San Diego: Recent Actions Against Police

A big day in the world yesterday, with people's frustration with the police coming to a head in various ways. Events unfolded in Fullerton, CA, San Diego, CA, and Tottenham in the UK.

Closest to home, in Fullerton, people responded to the deadly beating of a man by a group of six police officers. The police claim to have been responding to car break-ins in the area. Kelly Thomas, the man murdered by the police, is the son of a Orange County Sheriff himself. His father feels embarassed to ever be affiliated with law enforcement. Yesterday, a group of Kelly Thomas's family and friends held signs outside the Fullerton Police Department, demanding "justice" and an end to police "misconduct."

In the UK, the police killing of Mark Duggan, father of four, prompted a protest march that bloomed into a fullscale riot. The protestor's marched from Mark Duggan's residence to the police station, demanding answers, presumably as to why he was killed. When the police refused to engage in dialogue with the group of 500 angry people, the crowd inserted themselves into the discourse anyway. According to eyewitness reports, the police were "running and hiding" as the crowd expressed their anger. Police cars were burned with petrol bombs (molotovs), stores were looted, and the crowd effectively defended themselves against the police with flaming dumpsters and improvised projectiles. This situation is the wet dream of every anti-police protest, but one that is rarely enacted.When the looting happened at the Mehserle verdict, we heard the complaint from left-anarchists or liberals that looting has nothing to do with demands for "justice." We agree that it doesn't, but we aren't asking for justice. The thin blue line of the police exists to protect property, to keep it in certain hands and out of others. In large part, it is the police that keep us poor. When a situation like the one in Tottenham is created, when shopping malls were, at least temporarily in the hands of excluded, expropriation isn't just rational--it's fun!

In San Diego, the police had the nerve (or the thickheadedness) to call the assassination of a police officer "unprovoked." A black Audi pulled up next to a police car in El Cajon and someone in the Audi shot the lone officer in the head. Later in the day, a police helicopter observed someone getting into a black Audi with what appeared to be shotgun. When police responded to that location, the man produced the shotgun and was shot dead by police.

No act of rage against the police can be considered unprovoked. The structure of the world keeps many of us excluded and the police protect that structure. As resistance expands, the first obstacle everywhere is the police. A liberatory social vision cannot be actualized in a world full of police, whether they wear a uniform or not.

Kelly Thomas, Murdered by Fullerton Police

Mark Duggan, Murdered by Metropolitan Police

I Told You We'd Be Back

Dear SFPD and the BART Police,

Please do not consider yourselves special. We hate you this is true, but it does not come from our hearts. It comes from the entirety of our beings. Our lives our antagonistic to yours in every way shape and form. We did not develop a feeling of disdain for you over time but under capital and the state apparatus we were born enemies. This is why San Francisco was shaken like an earthquake on Tuesday. As police you exist to protect the relations of capital, the dominance of the state, the reproduction of apparatuses meant to enforce our subservience and docility. Capital depends on your existence for its protection. However we exist to see your total elimination.  We are the ones who produce value for capital. Who work for others. Who pay rent. Who are unemployed. Who are students. Who are women. Who are queers. Who are brown. Who are hooligans looking for fun. Who evade fare and die trying. Who black out on BART platforms and get killed for it. Who are unarmed and executed on New Years just trying to get home. Who have nothing in this world. We are the elements you either must be scared of, prepared for or both. Confrontation is essential to our relationship. You stand between what is possible and what is horrible in this world of capital. And it is not just you, but all like you, police everywhere. We say this with the utmost seriousness and lucid consideration. This is not childish rage nor a mosh pit at a punk show, this is fact. You do not defend nor protect us, but kill us in cold blood for reasons out of individual officers control. There are no good cops and bad cops, only a social relation of submission, domination, and enforced value extraction. You are the material line of defense between us and another world beyond the tragedy we live in.

Stop playing stupid. You know exactly why paint, hammers, and fireworks were thrown. You know why 200 people from all over San Francisco and the Bay Area took to the streets angry. Why passersby stopped to yell obscenities at you in a fit of rage.  There is no mystery - this is war. This is only the beginning, trust us there is more to come.

sincerely,
an autonomous working committee at Surf City Revolt!

This Tuesday: RAGE IN THE STREETS

Tuesday. 5pm.
Dolores Park. 
San Francisco. 
Snake March.

On Saturday the SFPD shot a 19 year old man 10 times after he ran to avoid paying the MUNI fare. Now the pigs have claimed the deceased instigated the shoot out despite dozens of witnesses saying otherwise. Thousands of us refuse to pay MUNI every year but rarely do we assume the refusal will lead to our murder by ten police bullets.

Saturday saw two spontaneous demonstrations of rage and resistance in Bayview and the Mission. As this is being written San Francisco Police are attacking a speak out in Bayview.

If you have ever jumped the turnstile, walked on the back of the bus, or tossed fifty cents into the coin slot meet us in the streets. The poor, the pissed must stick together. Once again San Francisco has imposed a death sentence on the poor. This time we will not allow the murderous swine to get away with it.

The original indybay event can be found here.

Seen Around Town

Mad ups

New Cop Shops on the Horizon?

When the flooding happened, seeing fully submerged cop cars brought smiles to our faces. Now, Capitola police are trying to use this as an opportunity to move out of a building that "has not been adequate for the department's needs for a long time." We can expect that the residents of Capitola, with its deep law-and-order tendencies, will generally support rebuilding the police station (it ain't called "Copitola" for nothing). Even in Copitola, the police are always looking for opportunities to increase their power.

Unfortunately, the Capitola pigs aren't the only ones considering an upgrade. The Santa Cruz County Sheriff-Coroner is looking to spend $44 million out of a $75 million redevelopment budget on a more centrally located Sheriff's Center. The current Sheriff's Center, located in the Ocean Street government complex, is aging and poorly located (for them). The new facility would be in a midcounty location close to Highway 1. The current push for the project is a response to the proposed cuts to redevelopment agencies to balance the state budget. The proposed sheriff's center is a bit of a departure from the usual fare of the redevelopment agency--past projects include parks, parking lots, and sidewalk improvements (and also unfortunate things like graffiti removal).

The massive prioritization of police infrastructure illuminates the larger vision of the Redevelopment Agency. Projects like the Twin Lakes Neighborhood Park and the parking lot at the Hook are, in a sense, community projects: they provide common space, encourage togetherness, and are much preferable to the condos that would probably have been built in those locations otherwise. When the RDA bends backwards to police interests, it shows these projects in a different light. These projects, apparently for everyone, are done for those who play by the rules of this society. The RDA spends half their budget on developing Santa Cruz County and the other half policing it. This is the similar to the logic of the Downtown Association: we want a fun and vibrant downtown, but only so long as business interests are protected. The RDA is building a Santa Cruz for a community of people with money and property, those who will never be considered criminals by this society. For the rest of us--those of us excluded from this community, those who find it disgusting, those who want to destroy it--now is the time to act together.

The police have found openings in recent circumstances to increase their power and consolidate the control that capitalism mandates. These developments are also openings for resistance. Looking forward, we must build the power to prevent these developments. For now, they appear as opportunities to clarify how we feel about the police (hatred) and come together to express our rage. Building connections to others based on a mutual hatred of police (and the prison world that they maintain) is a powerful point of connection, especially when coupled with a libertarian social vision. Most importantly, allowing the police to operate without opposition gives them the impression that they run this town. For now, it seems that they do. And they will, until we do.

stay up,
scr