"The Progressive Era saw simultaneously an increase in state hegemony and the full rise of capitalist class hegemony.

To understand this concurrence, we must recognize that 'hegemony' is not synonymous with dictatorial rule. It is more subtle, more flexible, and therefore also more insidious and more resilient... It is through hegemony that the ruling class creates a bounded sphere of institutional autonomy."

and POLICE

o wow

the depression era heralded in a bunch of middle class protestant (bootlickers/system sympathizers) who were seeking steady employment

and were then able to move up in ranks as time moved on

creepy!!!!! and scary

more reason that police unions are not unions at all:

williams shows how combining police unionization with police reforms - towards autonomy for individual officers/patrolmen AND autonomy for individual police departments - AND how police suddenly got involved in electioneering and their support of a local candidate could "make or break" someone - all of these things point to the increasing power of the police and how they are NOT unions at all

police unions are, at least rn, a slight of hand to make individual cops and officers the same as laborers

where in reality they exist to expand the influence of the police on local politics

From "Our Enemies in Blue" by Kristian Williams

- on the proposed Civilian Review Board of NYPD in 1966

More here:

JSTOR: http://www.jstor.org/stable/24451025

On Civilian Oversight: http://apps.americanbar.org/abastore/products/books/abstracts/5330089samplech_abs.pdf

"The police have unionized and gone on strike - but continue their role as strikebreakers. They have pitted themselves against their bosses and the government, but represent a threat to democracy rather than an expression of it...
[but] Working people cannot afford to extend solidarity to the police, and we cannot let the reactionary goals of the police unions restrain us in our attacks on injustice."

- Our Enemies in Blue

"The police thus occupy a dual position as workers and overseer... [members of] this class share in both the power and rewards of the upper classes and in the alienation of the workers they control. This basic fact requires elites to treat police differently than other workers, seeking through ideology and material incentives to separate them from the mass of workers (and the labor movement especially), tying the interests of the police to those of capitalism and the state."

"When the Policeman's Benevolent Association organized in New York, collective bargaining rights were traded for no-strike agreements and a bar from affiliating with other unions. During the same period, police unions around the country were defecting from AFSCME to form police-only locals... police associations organize more along institutional rather than class lines - that is, they organize police as police, not as workers"

Williams talks about "managerial complicity" in that subordinates, managers, beat cops, etc will all look out for each other across the stratification of the police force which "reinforces the sense of identity and group cohesion, thus reducing the possibilities for conflict within the department."

so like in case you saw those Blue Lives Matter fucks as "having solidarity" with each other... nope nope nope

"As the rank and rile have become a more vocal, and more powerful, political constituency, some commanders have extended this strategy in order to share in the benefits of militancy. A savvy commander can secure the loyalty of his troops by participating in their revolt, providing himself with the platform for leadership and at the same time retaining a militant force prepared to back him up in clashes with civil authorities."

^ so the above idea is why many of the cops who raped and trafficked Celeste Guap in Oakland/Richmond are still on the force

^ why cops are quick to defend other killer cops, especially the racist ones

its not enough to look at the murder of Mike Brown or Oscar Grant or the brutal treatment of Celeste Guap (or her subsequent kidnapping after speaking out at a sex workers rally) and say "well, thats just a few bad apples."

because the whole GANG protects each other. they're ALL guilty as hell.

Police's "institutional identification is superior to their class consciousness. To a very large extent, police departments achieve internal peace by subsuming the interests of both workers and managers to those of the institutions. Even economic issues, like wages and hours, become common ground for cops and their bosses: both want increases in department budgets... For this reason some scholars describe police contract negotiations as exercises in 'collusive bargaining.'"

^ and shit like this is what gets us the situation we have in oakland:

40+% of oaklands budget goes to the pigs

instead of cutting back on, say, overtime pay for cops or downsizing or OUTRIGHT ABOLISHING OPD, they raise taxes for public services and keep using OPD as an occupying army in deep east oakland

thats what collusive bargaining gets us. an overpoliced and oppressed city

"By engaging in collusive bargaining, city leaders gain credibility with the public for being tough, gain some assurance of relatively uninterrupted service delivery, and regain some power to make programmatic innovations."

(Williams cites Margaret Levi https://books.google.com/books/about/Bureaucratic_Insurgency.html?id=0qwYAAAAIAAJ )

"In the wave of public employee unionization of the 1960s, many public service workers - not just cops - began to demand changes in the way their work was organized... whereas teachers and social workers rallied against discrimination, inequality, and the meager remedies of the Great Society, the police turned sharply to the right... [police] advocate longer prison sentences, fewer safeguards against brutality, and new weaponry"

(and, fascist training programs like Urban Shield)

"Though police regulations do notoriously little to actually control officer conduct, they do provide a layer of plausible deniability between commanders and the routine activities of their troops. That is, the rules help to insulate commanders from responsibility for misconduct while at the same time police unions defend the rank and file from meaningful discipline."

Anyways, nice time to remember that London Breed, the new SF mayor, has always been a bootlicker even as she ran a campaign saying she didnt agree with that, whatever

London Breed still secured her police union endorsement before she did anything else in her campaign

and London Breed enjoyed calling SFPD on students from SF State University when they protested one city council meeting about the use of tasers

"Here is a convenient rule of thumb: police will be disciplined when their behavior threatens the smooth operation of the institution. But there is a corollary to this: to the degree that officers collectively control the department, discipline will be weaker, as elites will have to bargain for access to the institution's power. That is one effect of police unionization."

"Police labor action reminds local governments that they have created for themselves a rival to their own power... if the police continued to patrol, make arrests, and otherwise conduct surveillance and enact violence but do so without direction from the local government, that would amount to a transfer of power from one institution to the other. It would portend the possibility of direct rule by the police."

the next section of this chapter is entitled The Police Union as a Semi-Autonomous Component of the State

the problem with this book is that I already agree and know these things

but its super helpful to, like, read Williams' specific research, the examples and stuff that he's collected

this isnt a "change my mind" thing, its a "how deep does this shit go" thing

"The use of legitimate violence, which was originally the 'property' of individual slaveholders, heads of householdes, and various secular and ecclesiastic authorities, was slowly formalized and consolidated. On the local level, this process produced slave patrols and then police...

None of the tactics or rhetoric of police departments, sheriffs, investigators, or even police oversight committees should be surprising anymore

any increase in a police budget, any increase in police municipal power, demands for "more kevlar vests" (the implication being that police lives are always at risk, which, fuck that), etc

we ALL need to view that as a collective threat against our existence, against our neighbors existence, against our community safety

"Under certain conditions, especially those of social crisis, the ruling class may prefer the stability of police or military rule, with all its accompanying constraints, to the possibility of facing extinction in the course of revolution. (It was just such considerations that led the middle and upper classes to support Franco in Spain and Pinochet in Chile.)"

"The development of modern police forces marked an unprecedented incursion on the part of the state into the lives of the citizenry, and signified in retropsect a clear step toward totalitarianism. As the police institution has evolved, it has become a major source of power not only for the state, but within the state... as the institutions of violence become more autonomous, they isolate themselves from democratic control... Blue Power reduces the possibility of democracy."

Our opposition to police must come from two places:

1) the acknowledgement that police forces in the US arose out of the Fugitive Slave Act and the desire to control free black people's movements and existence

2) the mere truth that power and the institutions that codify it must be dismantled to ensure freedom for all

BOTH 1 and 2 are necessary and if you're lacking either, you suck. Do better.

Ch. 7 is entitled "Secret Police, Red Squads, and the Strategy of Permanent Repression"

which I feel will be very upsetting to read, and give me the same outraged but frozen feeling that To Our Friends gave me

"The role of police in crushing dissent, and the place of intelligence work within that pursuit, began to take shape in 1886 in response to the movement for an eight-hour workday. In May of that year, the nation saw a wave of strikes..."

*shimmies excitedly*

"The authorities involved in the Haymarket affair... pioneered the use of radical-hunting as a means of building a career, consolidating power, and lining one's pockets at the same time" and ushered in a wave of police targeting anarchists (that we still live under)

fuck cops
FUCK cops

"Repression may involve a much broader range of both over and covert activiies, including surveillance, false arrest media smear campaigns, the use of disinformation, burglary, blackmail, infiltration, sabotage, the promotion of factionalism, entrapment, threats, brutality, assassinations, and torture."

so

1) fuck cops
2) dont talk to cops

Williams describes how repression shakes down across all levels of law enforcement from local to federal but focuses on the history of Red Squads

which

is already making me activated and upset and feeling like crying so

break time!!!!!

Williams is discussing the American Protective League, a bunch of off-duty cops who harassed IWW members and anarchists during WWI (and draft dodgers, aka "slackers")

https://bit.ly/2tl6Tkg <-- heres a bunch of their letters

spooky cub scout patriotism bullshit... ugh

doesnt this sound FAMILIAR ugh

The next section is entitled "COINTELPRO: the FBI's Greatest Hits"

which

chilling

So I read the sections on

- the murder of Fred Hampton
- the MOVE bombing
- other attempts to undermind black liberation movements

and it was a lot for me to read and process and i didnt really save any quotes or anything

just

know that the state will target POC first and kill us first - and will kill black and indigenous POC first. So

Keep that in mind when you're planning direct actions and which people you let into your circles

anti-terrorism laws after tim mcveigh lay the groundwork for the patriot act

yeah

more policing = more incarcerated, surveilled, murdered POC

and NO cop is ever a friend of any leftist whatsoever

fuckin

hell

historicize EVERYTHING you FUCKS

re: the green scare, which decimated the bay area leftist scene and made everyone paranoid (rightly so)

re: the bombing of judi bari's car

re: everything else

i just

fuck fuck fuck

this book was published in 2015

in fact, it had been published first in 2004

and then updated in 2015

can you imagine it being updated NOW

with j20 with hatecrimes and more