It’s Time to Disarm, Defund, & Democratize the Police as Well as Arm the Working-Class
By: Ali Alsous
Tags: Politics, Dialectics, George Floyd, Police Brutality, BlackLivesMatter

There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

The contradictions run deeper than the concretely material, however. Invariably, the citizenry and police caste will always remain in dialectical contradiction so long as the police operate as a bludgeon for all social maladies (income inequality, racism, etc). This will reinforce the precarity of the social order reflexively, ultimately resulting in more death and incarceration of the impoverished. This self-reflexive system re-amplifies itself unless the job of the police is fundamentally shifted away from the maintenance of private property rights, the servitude towards state-capital infused tyrannies (i.e private prisons, tech-platform surveillance capitalism), and the reinforcing of fabricated racial hierarchies in the face of a visibly crumbling empire. Inevitably, if left unchecked these contradictions will mount until they reach an inflection point, and arguably, we are witnessing the early-stage realization of this dialectical synthesis in realtime, though time will tell. Recall that under the dialectic process, quantitative changes accrue until they lead to a qualitative change. For example, when placing liquid water on a hot stove the temperature of the liquid rises (the quantitative changes) until it reaches its boiling point (the inflection point) and qualitatively becomes something different — steam. The piling up of unjust killings is the quantitative change in our case, the qualitative change is the restructuring of policing entirely to something radically more just. Nationwide, these uprisings are the manifestation of the old order diminishing as we approach the zone of chaos and make way for the new order to establish itself. But as always, paradigms don’t die in their sleep.

Example Diagram of the Dialectics Between Systems

What’s important for us today is that we are now existing at a juncture of extreme historical fluidity and as such will guide the course of history with the actions we take today. Indeed, we now find ourselves at that transient splinter in time Lenin described wherein decades of historical progression are materialized over the course of weeks; an infrequent anomaly where temporality itself seems suspended by the weight of the fleeting. So, the practical question then becomes, how do we alter the role of the historically racist police-state such that we can ameliorate the contradictions at work, and with luck, avoid a mass conflict in the process?

We can and should push for higher levels of transparency, which means body cameras that cannot be “turned off” or coincidentally “lost” by the wearer. We likewise ought to institute universally higher standards for becoming a police officer with regards to the training necessary, as well as upping the stringency of psychological and mental evaluations one must undergo. Additionally, properly training officers in the practice of de-escalation as is commonly done in European police contexts is also crucial. Currently, the standards for becoming an officer vary wildly from county to county, and sometimes even at the precinct level. Ideally, prospective officers would have to score very high on respect for human beings and human concerns, with a willingness to enter into dialogue with any individual.

However, none of these measures go far enough. They may quantifiably reduce the sheer amount of death and suffering wrought by police but they don’t fundamentally address the systemwide issue. So long as police are always highly militarized (meaning grossly over-funded), the force will always remain a depot for racists, fascists, and cowards alike to assemble and exert their power. By demilitarizing, defunding, and disarming the police, as well as arming the working-class, we can radically reorder the power-asymmetry that exists between the police and citizenry at the structural level. In the same vein, all use of weapons, whether beating a person, using any kind of gun, pepper spray or tear gas or electronic forms of torture — such as tasers, to enforce obedience of arbitrary police commands should be prohibited. The left must work to methodically arm the working-class, peoples of color, as well as those who are non-binary. It’s becoming increasingly apparent the dangers involved with allowing fascists, be them state-sanctioned, private, or otherwise to hold a monopoly on power and violence. The Black Panthers understood this intersectional power dynamic better than anyone else last century and were systemically destroyed for it. It’s time to build off of their work in the more materially precarious present-day, this time with a more durable cross-racial class-united base. Gun control policies in America are historically highly racialized and fostering cross-racial class-united armed community presences would mitigate sensitivities to any government attempt to repeat what Ronald Reagan and the NRA enacted in California with the Mulford Act.

One such organization doing vital work on the matter is the Socialist Rifle Association. The following is taken from their website.

The Socialist Rifle Association is an educational organization dedicated to providing the working class with the information they need to be effectively armed for self and community defense. This includes all manner of community defense, from the right of the working class to possess firearms to the ability to be well versed in the fields of medicine, disaster relief, logistics, agriculture, and survival skills. Our goal is to provide an alternate to the mainstream, toxic, right-wing, and non-inclusive gun culture that has dominated the firearms community for decades. We seek to provide a safe, inclusive, and left-leaning platform for talking about gun rights and self defense, free from racist and reactionary prejudices, while providing a platform for the working class to obtain the skills necessary for all aspects of community defense. If you are any of the following: working class, progressive, anarchist, socialist, communist, eco-warrior, animal liberator, anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, PoC, LGBTQ+, or anyone else who is interested in learning about firearms and modern self defense — YOU are invited to join the Socialist Rifle Association today!

Indeed, it’s hard to find a more prescient warning for why these efforts must be pursued than the President himself quoting racist Miami police chief, Walter Headley, stating that: “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” — in reference to the Minneapolis unrest. When the highest perch of office in the world is loudly calling for entire crowds of people to be fired upon, you know something is seriously f*&ked up. If the events in Minneapolis were taking place in a nation of the Global South, Western media would report it like this:

In recent years, the international community has sounded the alarm on the deteriorating political and human rights situation in the United States under the regime of Donald Trump. Now, as the country marks 100,000 deaths from the coronavirus pandemic, the former British colony finds itself in a downward spiral of ethnic violence. The fatigue and paralysis of the international community are evident in its silence, America experts say.

In tandem with the disarmament of the police and armament of the working-class, the police apparatus must also be democratized. This can only be achieved by intertwining local police with the communities they serve at the department level. Training procedures and internal rules of the department should all be made public and discussed, with possible modifications proposed and ratified by neighborhood assemblies. All aspects of policing should ultimately be discussed, modified collectively, and ratified by all the communities in the city. Time for an officer to be promoted? Let the community as a whole or a community representative board review their record and decide as a democratic body if they are deserving of it. If the police are public servants, then they must be known fully to the public. All that they do and are should be open to public scrutiny, and available for criticism, judgment, and correction by the community and or its appointed representatives. This also means dismantling the corrosive police union which vehemently shields and obstructs justice from coming to their members even in the face of clear wrongdoing. In the event of misconduct and termination, decertified officers must be thoroughly databased so that they cannot simply move one county over and become a cop again.

By instituting basic transparency and training reforms, democratizing the police apparatus, and disarming/defunding police, we can break the self-reflexive cycle that is hurtling society towards a destructive conflict of contradictions desperately trying to synthesize itself. With luck, the withering of the old order and establishment of the new can occur relatively peacefully. Had something akin to this model existed in Minneapolis, George Floyd might still be alive today. Unfortunately, Floyd wasn’t officer Derek Chauvin’s first victim. His first reported “incident” can be traced back to the mid-2000s. Thanks to inaction on the part of the then Hennepin County Attorney in Minneapolis and now former potential vice presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar, Chauvin was allowed to keep prowling the streets in uniform, ultimately taking more lives along the way. Chauvin’s career would have been short-lived under a collective and inclusive community-governance model.

Instead, the same Minneapolis police force is currently touting the autopsy report of George Floyd, claiming that “potential intoxicants in his system likely contributed to his death.” NOT the knee of Chauvin digging into the back of his neck for several minutes after he passed out and ceased gasping for any air.

Under the current system, it’s clear who, or rather what the police “serve and protect” in this nation. The recent viral confrontation with Amy Cooper and Christian Cooper in Central Park is a perfect distillation of who the policing apparatus belongs to in America, chiefly affluent whites. Amy cooper brandishes her own knowledge of this reality by hysterically exclaiming the race of Christian Cooper to the 911 dispatcher before the dispatcher even inquires about it. That demonstrates a level of practicedness that only someone who does that regularly would possess. Make no mistake, the weaponization of white tears that’s presented in that video may not be as graphically violent as the video of George Floyd’s murder, but the act itself was one of extreme violence in much the same way, as Amy Cooper ultimately aimed to sic the police on Christian Cooper in much the same fashion.