Forgive the indulgence, but I was asked to expand this to its own diary in another thread so I am gonna do it for the benefit of those that missed it and because, honestly, I think it's a fine idea. The obvious caveat that I am typically in the "most cops = brutal pigs fronting for the cowardly 1%" camp naturally applies, but as a human being I always search for solutions and an impetus of thinking beyond my own cliches and stereotypes of situations, which led me to this concept, contained here.
This might get me flamed like grilled salmon by the more militant people here, but I think this Officer John Pike dude specifically and the Davis cops in general (as well as Chancellor Katehi, who really took it on the chin earlier with the stunning silent rebuke she received from the Davis students) are going to be getting some real (much deserved, really) bad press, and OWS should try to preemptively use the opportunity to offer him and/or other cops who have been mobilized against OWS or who are retired and sympathetic a fig leaf to save his/their reps and jobs and perceived integrity. This can be initiated by inviting, in a very public and coordinated way, their participation in a prospective summit of protestors and OWS people with cops and police people from all around the country, to attempt r'approchement with those that are willing. This could really help shift the media narrative, which is developing into an "OWS vs. the police" typical dichotomized thing, and be almost unprecedented in the history of non-violent resistance... also serving to accentuate the point that the 99% very much includes the cops too. I bet the police guy from Philadelphia (Captain Ray Kelly) that is a retired cop but got arrested protesting the other day at the NYSE could help put it on or develop the idea and all you'd have to do would be to find cops or ex-cops to come to the thing. This would throw a necessary and creative monkeywrench into the mass media that is hungry to cast the whole deal as cops-vs.-OWS in perpetuity, and would help serve to really drive home the truth -- of which the dissemination is crucial if we are to expand this movement in the unprecedented directions it needs to go to really succeed like we want it to -- of the police being just as much included in the 99% as anyone else, really.
A nutty idea, I know, but I ask that in this case you humor me by scrolling below the fabled Kurlycue de Kos.
|
I realize that this is essentially an insanely naive pipedream of galactic proportions, but I am just trying to think more creatively and not just pile onto the obvious "the cops are fascist pigs" thrust because as obvious and facile as that is (and believe me, I'm no fan of most cops), that attitude doesn't really innovate on the necessity to move the ball on what would be a monumental win for a movement as a whole that needs this kind of innovative expansion: to involve more police and ex-police as self-identifiable with the 99%, which after all is constantly being chanted at them at the rallies and so forth -- "Join us!" and whatnot. It just seems like the formalization of that ultimate olive-branch, non-violent strategy from the ultimate non-violent movement, to really drive home the inclusive point beyond the "OWS vs. cops" deal we are seeing dominate the overall narrative of this -- and which previous generations have seen and grown accustomed to before, where the activists fight the cops in the street and it just ends up playing as "protest-as-usual," thus turning potentially catalyzable people off to the Revolutionary possibilities this movement has to offer all of us at this point in our history, as contrasted with the movements of the past where the authorities-in-the-street weren't so statistically includable in what the protestors were protesting about. And even if it can't be done or this cop especially is just a totalitarian asshole -- he probably is, but it's about more than just him -- there may certainly be others who might welcome such a reaching-out, who knows? I'm just trying to think beyond the obvious and introduce a curveball into the sort of normal, desensitizing, cops-brutalize-resistance ideas that go through everybody's heads about all of it, I guess.
Of course Officer Pike is in all likelihood too far down the rabbit hole of militarization, but there are cops and particularly ex-cops who are less autonomically brutal and repressive than he who might not be, and could be at least put in the public position, through proactively engineered and publicized overtures, of making the choice. This is but one way that it might be possible to seize the narrative of "cops vs. hippies" away from the lazy mass media and make them at least report things in a way that draws perceptions of the cops as 99%ers -- which they are, because they aren't making millions doing their jobs -- closer to the top of the bubbling cauldron of coverage of these events as they are ongoing.
Some background: I had a whole conversation with my roommate that set me thinking in this direction. He is an ex-police-officer who had to retire because he was shot in the line of duty chasing down a car thief one night, and additionally he is one of the most loving, sincerely generous and observably reasonable people I have ever known. He tried to tell me that a lot of people have it all wrong, or largely wrong, when they stereotypically assume the internal sentiments of the individual police officers when they are carrying out their orders to be identical or necessarily on-the-same-side of the people who direct them to carry out these orders. Very often -- the majority of the time in the majority of situations, according to him -- the police on the ground are just doing the (often dangerous and undercompensated) job they have been given to do, and do not necessarily look upon the performance of their duty in any given situation as some sort of ideologically-based action on their part, undertaken as if they believe absolutely in the political ramifications of what they are doing.
Even in the case of the Davis incident, there might be cops on that line who did NOT believe in pepper-spraying the peaceful protestors, but may have been in the position of feeling that their job security depended upon them endorsing this (admittedly ridiculous and brutally idiotic) course of action with their presence and participation because it was handed down from the highest level of the university that they be deployed to do so. IMO, these are the types of cops who might be amenable to discussion and being drawn out by their post-event conscience to participate in the kind of conference(s) I am suggesting be proposed in this diary. To not consider the possible benefit to the movement in making such public overtures to the police and their agencies is as I see it to fall victim to the ingrained, sweepingly-generalized idea of the cops as a universally-hostile force bent on destruction, and further it could be considered as a way to auto-dehumanize them in exactly the way the more reflexively anti-police people would accuse them of doing to us.
I'd add to this that I see this movement as tremendously unusual in its scope and potential tactics... kind of hard not to when you consider that this is one of those rare moments in history when you basically have the vast, vast overwhelming majority (indeed, 99%) agitating against the miniscule minority (1%) for their essential right to exist as something other than the slaves or the serfs of the minority. In the Civil Rights movement, for instance, you couldn't have used this idea of r'approchement with the cops or even attempted such because you had the African-American minority protesting the Caucasian majority for their rights, and the large percentage of police doing the beating and gassing were White cops doing it to Black people, a pretty stark contrast. In this case, the lines are not so distinctly and prohibitively drawn... actually, you could accurately say that the cops assigned to the protests -- and even the ones doing the brutal mischief we have seen -- are firmly in the camp of the protestors if you go by just their socioeconomic status as human beings behind the riot gear. To really make OWS the astonishing and groundbreaking success it can and ought to be, I believe we have to find creative and affecting ways to draw that analysis -- that everyone is with us in the 99% category whether they know it yet or can think their way through the corporate media propaganda to sympathize with it or not -- into the natural flow of our expression and our messaging. This idea I had is but one that, with the proper energy behind it, could conceivably get the snowball rolling down the hill in some way that adds to our momentum as a movement, especially now that a lot of the encampments have been removed and we need new directions and innovative actions to build ourselves further into what we can be as we try to topple the mighty beast of the 1% Plutocracy.
I of course get that it's kind of a stunt, really -- not to detract from the legitimacy of the idea of discovering and making common ground with sympathetic police because as we've seen in the case of Ray Kelly and others, they do exist -- but as I see it it's about identifying and implementing ways to shape the process of de-intensification/de-escalation that non-violence at its most inspirational and effective represents, while simultaneously building the necessary public perceptions of the moral & ethical intensity of your rightness, as Dr. King for example did so well in the 1950s and '60s. The more extreme the tamping down, the more the potential exists for the less extreme on the putative side of authority (the Ray Kellys of the world, for instance, and those like him not yet identified) to shy away from those extremes. If we surf the waves of that potentially-evolving disgust in their ranks proactively and shoot the right shot (bad metaphor) we can perhaps have some of those people -- and it might only take a few to start a tsunami (bad metaphor #2) -- begin to come our way if we're ready and available to accept them and help them help us tell the truth about how the cops (whether they be extreme pepper-happy fascists or potential articulate sympathizers, or anywhere in between) really are just as legitimate in their 99%-ness as we are. At the very least, the very public gesture of this idea, if well-coordinated and advertised to all media in an intensely committed and proactive fashion, can illustrate this essential truth to the people sitting at home watching this whole OWS movement unfold and who are as yet on the fence about it all, even though the vast, vast majority of them -- like the cops -- are solidly and statistically 99%ers like the rest of us. IMO, this idea is but one way this movement can lay powerful claim to innovative stances on non-violence that will help favorably mold the outcomes all of us will face as this whole thing takes shape and shakes out in the immediate future.
"You're sexy! You're cute! Take off your riot suit!!!"