Kick The Cops Off Your Block

07/31/20

Abolish the Police: 

Our communities are occupied by the cops. They put our friends, loved ones, and neighbors in prison, they consistently use unjust violence, they enforce property at the expense of human freedom and life, they criminalize dissent against the state, and they disproportionately target the working class, the dispossessed, Black people, Brown people, Indigenous people, trans people, and disabled people. Cops are defined by a double standard of violence. The very political, economic, and social inequality and unjust laws that cops are defined by enforcing–regardless of the intention of any individual cop– are the biggest causes we know of for overall violence in society (Link to statistics and analysis at end of pamphlet).

As of 2020, The USA has the most prisoners per capita in the world and has less than 5% of the world’s population and over 20% of the world’s prison population. One in three Black men born before 2001 will go to prison in their lifetime, and Black women are over 5 times as likely to go to prison as white women. 76% of people who go to prison are arrested again within 5 years, the highest repeat offense rate in the world. There has been a 700% increase in women incarcerated since 1980. (Links to statistics are at the end of this pamphlet). Although cops in the USA are particularly egregious, there are fundamental problems with any kind of cops.

Cops by definition necessarily enforce hierarchical laws and political economic class relations. Such hierarchical laws and class relations are unjust because they increase overall violence in society, decrease overall happiness in society, and do not allow individuals and collectives to make decisions proportionate to how they are affected by decisions. Therefore the position of cop is unjust, because cops by definition necessarily enforce unjust laws and unjust relations. Given cops enforce hierarchies, and that many of such hierarchies require cops (and other kinds of enforcement), we need to do more than just abolish cops; we also need to abolish hierarchical institutions and relations. Additionally, we need to find ways to meet our needs and organize with each other politically, economically, and socially without rulers.

Alternatives to the police:

Most of what the cops do is enforce inequality and unjust laws (such as victimless crimes like drug possession, enforcement of property over human freedom, and unjust ways of solving real problems that exacerbate overall injustice). We do need conflict resolution, and ways to interdependently support one another, but we do not need the cops to manage that for us. Instead we can handle conflict resolution through talking with each other directly–or in a way that is mediated by an agreed upon facilitator (or conflict resolution council)– to work through a conflict and decide how to resolve it. Transformative and restorative justice processes reduce recidivism and have a higher victim satisfaction rate than punitive justice. Additionally, we can use self defense against people who are unjustly using violence against us or others– distinct from punishment.  We can train each other in self defense so that self defense isn’t monopolized. We can organize collective self defense without hierarchical structure and without arbitrary rule. People should also learn and teach each other about an ethics of justified self  defense so that it is used in a way that advances freedom and equality while minimizing overall violence. People can call their friends, neighbors, and community assembly communication networks in times of emergency conflicts. Non-violent unarmed third party mediation teams can be on call. And additionally, we can abolish authoritarian relations that are the biggest causes of unjust violence towards people.

From here to there: 

Do you have three to five friends in a given area that have similar politics in favor of abolishing the police and providing mutual support to one another to meet each other’s needs? Then you can get together with other people in your block or neighborhood to start working on mutual aid projects and police abolition. Community assemblies can help to address the ways that cops–and the politicians who unleash them and the business as usual that cops protect– are harming people. Community assemblies can pool needs, abilities, tools, resources, and ideas together to help people and groups mutually support one another. In and beyond community assemblies, people can make decisions together about how to go about abolishing the police, how to build community, how to create infrastructure to meet each other’s needs (and the needs of others), how to take action against unjust inequality and unjust limits to freedom etc.

This can look like organizing or co-organizing protests, supporting uprisings with mutual aid networks, hosting skill shares and public education events, forming community copwatch groups, forming community tenants’ unions, providing tools and resources to each other, assisting direct actions, free food distribution for people, and teaming up with other neighborhoods and groups and individuals to make entire sections of the city a cop free zone. By supporting each other within and across collectives and communities, we can make every block ungovernable by the state while providing non-hierarchical solutions to social problems. It is important for people-powered organizations to generalize in society along with direct actions and mutual aid so that long term idealistic goals can be practically arrived at through dialogue, coordination, and collective decisions before, during, and after uprisings and revolutions.

Community assemblies can make decisions together through direct democracy, free association and non-hierarchy. Together, these principles foster collective decisions, free participation and dissent by individuals, and an assembly with a form and content that does not create or support any ruling class or strata over and above people. These cellular block by block community assemblies can link up in networks of mutual support with other neighborhoods, communities, and collectives. Mutual aid infrastructure can assist any direct action effort– as every direct action effort has a sphere of social reproduction. Whether its an occupation, a blockade, a picket, or an insurrection, mutual aid organizations, networks and infrastructure can help literally fuel the needs of participants increasing the overall capacity of people powered organizations and actions allowing them to sustain overtime while reaching out to people and helping people at the same time.

Organizing community assemblies can be done through a potluck, then a meeting, followed by an informal gathering. Some meetings can be specifically issue oriented– such as mutual aid based or rooted in abolishing the police (or some other kind of oppositional politics and direct action). This can help keep give them a common goal and political focus. The assembly can overtime branch into a plurality of issues. People can then get to know each other, form friendships, talk politics, and find shared action projects to do together– within and beyond the assembly project. Overtime, assemblies can develop mutual aid collectives and infrastructure, create direct action networks and help with direct actions (such as occupations, pickets, blocking infrastructure, and assisting strikes), develop conflict resolution infrastructure (rooted in transformative and restorative justice as opposed to judges, police, and prisons), and find ways to strategically oppose the police and assist movements against the police in their neighborhoods and beyond.

People can promote community assemblies through door knocking, flyering, handbills, an online presence of some kind, and connecting with like-minded groups as well as with individuals one on one. These assemblies can build on already existing community ties and bring them into solidarity for a world where people make direct decisions about what affects them without bosses, politicians, cops, or oppression. Community assemblies have the potential to unite the widest array of people along common liberatory practice and are required for self-management to exist on every scale. If people are not making decisions about what affects them directly then decision making power is de facto privatized. Direct decision making should exist on a community scale in a way that does not arbitrarily limit the individual freedoms that we should have. This is not just about strategy, but what it means to live in a good society.

Process for meetings can be as simple as making an agenda, having a temporary facilitator who calls on people as they raise their hands, having a discussion, proposing decisions and alternatives, and then making collective decisions through dialogue. Assemblies and collectives can form committees and have delegates to implement specific decisions. Committees and delegates of assemblies and collectives should not make any decisions over and above the groups they are delegated by– instead they should carry out decisions they agree to do that are made by people directly.

Community assemblies are not the only kinds of organizations one can create for a better world; for example, there is the affinity group form which allows a small group of people to work together on specific actions. This can make sense for stuff that is intended to be underground, but also has other functions. Additionally people can form medic collectives, gardening collectives, mutual-aid collectives, bail-fund collectives, direct action collectives, community defense collectives, childcare collectives, community or worker controlled cooperatives, land trusts, radical unions, etc.  All of these different forms should use some kind of direct democracy (direct collective decision making) internally for ethical reasons and strategic reasons; cooperative conflict between people working on common goals allows better decisions and allows everyone to participate, agree, disagree, amend, question, critique, dissent, etc.

Different and similar kinds of groups can link up together for mutual aid, common projects, and joint actions. When working together, each group can communicate through direct written communication from groups and meetings of delegates from each group. This should be done in a way where collective decisions are made between groups but where all decision making power resides directly within each group’s membership–where delegates are communicative rather than representative policy makers. This can build towards something like a police abolition coalition that is in favor of defunding and abolishing the police and in favor of mutual aid and transformative justice. This kind of coalition can exist within and between regions. Such a coalition can catalyze and create momentum for police abolition, fuel liberatory social movements with capacity, can develop people powered infrastructure for meeting needs and resolving conflicts, and can win concessions from the state that minimize the police, while building towards revolution. Of course, we need to do more than just win concessions and we need to do more than just abolishing the local police; we also need to abolish sheriffs, state police, federal police, private police, and be prepared to oppose right wing militias who try to fill the void of the police. In order to abolish the police we must abolish the class relations which necessitate a police force ruling over and above people. In order to make sure that hierarchy does not emerge, we are going to need to develop horizontalist democratic processes for decision making as well as egalitarian cultural dimensions that can abolish and replace white supremacy, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression.

We need a diversity of tactics and a diversity of organizations to fill different niches. If we want to kick the cops off our block, we must strategically work within our given contexts as they develop and find out how to make decisions together without resorting to rulers and without arbitrarily limiting the freedoms people should have.

More Info: 

Statistics Sources: 

Criminal Justice Facts

https://www.sentencingproject.org/issues/racial-disparity/

https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=4986%20

Transformative Justice: 

Community Accountability

Organizing 101:

https://thenewmunicipalagenda.wordpress.com/2020/02/03/libertarian-socialist-method/

https://libcom.org/organise/general/articles/decision-making-and-organisational-form.php

Poverty and Inequality increases rates of violence:

https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/violence

Direct Action 101 Guide:

https://archive.org/details/DirectActionSurvivalGuide_210

Mutual Aid 101:

Mutual Aid

https://mutualaiddisasterrelief.org/mutual-aid/embed/#?secret=VPAFsWUDHL

Communalism 101:

https://thenewmunicipalagenda.wordpress.com/2017/09/19/introduction-to-neighborhood-assemblies/

https://www.communalismpamphlet.net/

Click to access Bookchin%27s%20Social%20Ecology%20and%20Communalism.pdf

https://libcom.org/library/mountain-river-has-many-bends

Origins of Police: 

https://libcom.org/history/origins-police-david-whitehouse

Community Self Defense Manual:

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Let-Your-Motto-Be-Resistance%3A-A-Handbook-on-New-and-Movement/44879ede18e7176efa0d9aff3601fdf44c13fcb0

Communalism and the Point of Production

07/26/19

Communalism has ethical features that logically follow from major libertarian socialist and communist arguments and principles. For example: the libertarian socialist argument for the right kind of interdependent self management bounded by the right kind of interdependent self management of other collectives and persons leads to communities having self management and means of production needed to reproduce daily life. Under socialism without communalism, power is relatively privatized over and above co-federated communities in the hands of relatively private councils. Such relatively private councils are distinct from embedded councils within communal assemblies– and they are distinct from auxiliary councils to such assemblies that do not privatize what should be common. Self management on every scale bounded by the self management of others on every scale entails at least some kind of significant self management on the communal sphere. Furthermore, communist distribution according to needs (if it is to include means of production as a need) entails means of production are in common. And given the needs that communal collectives have, that entails communal economic form and not just communist content (and communal form as a necessary but insufficient dimension of communist content). However, just because the reasoning of libertarian socialist argumentation and communism point towards communalism does not mean that communalism has been essential to all theories and movements that have gone under such names– hence its distinction as a strain of libertarian socialist and communist praxis.

Communalism has strategic features that are not just ethical in a mere abstract sense. Communalism is not just an end goal to be arrived at and developed, but a means to arrive at such a developmental ends that contains– as much as possible– the ethical dimensions of the ends it strives towards. Communalism can mobilize non ruling class people at the point of community (and co-federation) in a horizontalist political sphere to deliberate and take action in regards to reconstructive and oppositional politics at the points of resource extraction, production, distribution, reproduction, consumption, community life more broadly, etc. This malleable capacity of communalist organizing allows for variegated actions in many spheres of life as well as a shifting of strategy to conditions as they emerge while keeping at least some general principles consistent within the means and ends of such a development. Such minimal dimensions of communalism include but are not limited to horizontality, non-hierarchy, direct democracy, co-federation, ecology, liberatory technology, and communist distribution,

Communalism can be beneficial to other dimensions of an anti authoritarian socialist movement–for it can fill niches that need to be filled in an ecosystem of movements and supplement the filling of such niches by supporting groups and persons who are participating in–or would like to participate in– specific actions. If a radical union wants community support, or if a person has a community gardening project that they want help with, or if a collective is doing a direct action against banks, then communalist assemblies can do everything from bringing people to actions and broader promotion, to helping people with organizational infrastructure, to strategic advice in regards to contents of actions, to forming more formal co-decision making process between collectives, etc. Communalist praxis can potentially illustrate how particular problems and particular solutions are connected to general problems and general solutions, and inversely illustrate how general problems and general solutions are connected to particular problems and particular solutions. This can help people move between concrete actions and general organizing and understanding the potential relationship between both. However, such a potential for illustrative opposition (as the above is called by Chaia Heller) requires an educational dimension that includes more than just action– it is essential that good theory is generalized through popular education.

Just because communalism can be malleable towards variegated action in differentiated spheres does not mean that all actions in all areas of life that can be taken within the bounds of communalist minimal principles are all equivalent as far as ethics or efficacy in regards to communalist development (as well as additional ethical criteria over and beyond mere minimal principles of communalism). There will be general trends of various kinds of communalist content that are better than other kinds of content under various conditions for developing approximations of good ethical criteria, but there are nonetheless important exceptions that can be relatively extreme (given such trends can be probabilistic to relatively slight and extreme degrees). Furthermore, actions that are probabilistically better than others under specific conditions according to good ethical criteria will change as sufficiently relevant variables emerge. This goes into how the universal minimal dimensions of communalist praxis are necessary but insufficient for good communalist praxis– for good praxis also requires a strategic content that adapts to relevant variables as they develop in general and specific contexts.

Communalist assemblies can catalyze anti-fossil fuel direct action, create food justice projects, build community and worker controlled cooperatives and collectives, do targeted boycotts (hopefully in tandem with oppositional politics in other spheres), help with workplace organizing, block capitalist distribution systems, support migrant defense, facilitate tenant organizing, socialize reproductive labor, spread popular education, build people powered infrastructure throughout community life, develop new public ties that enrich community life, and create solidarity within and between communities and collectives on more immediate actions and on long term visions and plans. Such projects are by no means an exhaustive account of all of the possible content community assemblies can create. The above list is meant to be illustrative of the potential of community assemblies to be keystone organizations in and for an ecosystem of movements and actions.

Because communalism does not merely prescribe organizing at the point of production, it is able to organize a broader swath of the population than those who are currently wage laborers at the point of production and/or those who are only trying to organize at the point of production. A dogmatic conception of revolutionary subjectivity and action as only being limited to being at the point of production can exclude various non-ruling class persons such as much of the youth, much of the elderly, people with disabilities, unwaged reproductive laborers, unemployed, unemployable, some self-employed people, people who work at cooperatives, and even some professionals from revolutionary activity– activity which might be outside of the point of production or even in solidarity with oppositional politics at the point of production. Furthermore, such a dogmatic conception of revolutionary subjectivity and action as only being limited to being at the point of production inhibits an approach that deals with various spheres of life and the entire process of hierarchical and liberatory development–both of which include and go beyond the point of production. Revolutionary subjectivity potentially belongs to the whole of the non-ruling class–which under capitalism is of course largely made up of the working class– even though in different contexts different segments of society will be more and less likely to be revolutionary.

Even though workplace organizing is not essential to the core praxis of communalism–which is a fruitful critique for its insufficiency strategy wise– there is no reason that a communalist assembly in the mode of opposition against capitalism cannot have an organizing committee for workplace organizing or solidarity with workplace organizing. In fact, strategically developing such potentials for workplace organizing within communal assemblies that are in the mode of opposition to capitalism (which are distinct from assemblies in the mode of freedom) could further anti authoritarian left processes, help radical unionism, as well as give communal assemblies a class struggle character. The capacity for communalist organizing to add broad community solidarity with workers struggling in workplaces and at the point of production makes it ideal for assisting point of production based organizing, and if done right can be more fruitful than a purely point of production approach. A purely point of production approach to organizing is not only at the expense of a broader scope of where and how opposition and reconstruction can and should happen, it is at the expense of point of production based organizing itself.

Under a communalist society, different spheres of life would be qualified by a gestalt of the minimal principles of communalism. The economy would be integrated into horizontalist politics creating a horizontalist political economy with embedded councils, and embedded mutually equitable usership for collectives and persons, with decision making for communities, collectives, and persons according to needs and volition– deciding everything from resource use, to production, to reproduction, to distribution, to action, to participatory communal and co-federal development. Ethical development that includes and goes beyond the mere minimal dimensions of communalism should drive the content of people powered decisions towards greater freedom, mutuality, virtue cultivation, differentiation, happiness, pleasure, excellence, as well as an array of other good criteria.