The Berkeley "Riots"

Not to put too much emphasis on it, but there was a sequence of running street battles in Berkeley (the town, not the campus) last Saturday that the white rightist/fascist cadres are touting as the opening of the "Civil War." The combatants apparently will be called "Patriots" (aka Brownshirts, Fascists, White Supremacists, etc) vs "Antifa" (aka Commies, Communists, Pussies, Little Girls, Snowflakes, etc.)

I watched an hour, hour and a half of video of the confrontation and it was surprisingly civil most of the time. Except for the rather striking blondness and red hats of many of the fascist participants (although there was a smattering of black and brown fascists among the militant blond people), it was relatively difficult to tell the combatants apart, as many on both sides seemed to ape black bloc attire and ultimately in the street melees, it looked like black bloc was mixing it up with black bloc.

How special.

There were fights and such, objects were thrown (including a pot of pinto beans) and people got hurt. Word was that all of the arrests were Antifa, which if true is interesting. [Not true, if reports from fascists are correct. One can never be sure...] The police were said to be hanging back, letting whatever would happen happen, until some word came from on high to break it up. If Antifa was targeted for arrest exclusively, then we are looking into the abyss. There will be no Civil War (quote unquote) but the police state will, of its own accord, ensure the safety, comfort and convenience of the fascists against all enemies, foreign and domestic. There will be no ability to fight back openly. The fascists will have won before the contest is truly engaged.

From the first this was the danger of Trumpism and its neo-Fascism. When the roundups of immigrants began under Trump there was a good deal of garment rending, some resistance, but mostly there was fear and acquiescence. What can you do when the Gestapo breaks down your door? Especially when one or more of your family, schoolmates, friends or what have you is in a difficult legal status/condition? Apart from hiding, how are you going to fight them?

The general thinking is you can't. The law protects the enforcers, pretty much no matter what they do, and there is nothing the average citizen or non-citizen can do about it.

The immigrant sweeps have been a demonstration of what ICE (the most Trump - loyal enforcement arm of the federal government) can do -- if they choose to be gentle. As much as we've heard about rough treatment and unwarranted roundups, this is nothing compared to what they could be doing. Mayhem is putting it mildly.

There are rumors that camps to hold tens of thousands of potential deportees are being prepared as we speak, the harbingers of what is to come.

The immigrant sweeps are rather popular with the volk as well.

Mr. Attorney General Sessions, for his part, has made it a point to unfetter, unleash the police to do as they will in crime suppression. Which to him seems to mean limitless mayhem and bloodshed in targeted communities. Ie: Black, brown and Other.

The Stasi and the Gestapo will be allowed to rampage as they want, it would appear, without let or hindrance.

As long as the targets are Black, brown, and Other, Wypipo are not going to raise too much of a stink, even in the coastal enclaves.

It's already happening.

So what do we do now? Hunker down? Disappear? Pledge allegiance -- even if it is false? Do battle in the streets?

A lot of people will not be able to escape. While the initial effort is focused on immigrants, targets are already on the backs of political enemies of all stripes, be they Antifa, liberals, progressives or really anyone who expresses and/or acts on opposition to the regime.

I live out in the country. So far, we seem to be doing OK in "opposition" to the regime, in part because out here few people really care, and those that do, while proudly flying the Stars and Bars, are seen as loons to be avoided in any case. Whether or not...

Fealty to the King is low priority.

But in cities, the situation is far more complicated. While there is strong support for the undocumented -- at least officially expressed -- actions speak louder, and it's not at all clear that officials are acting to prevent roundups and deportations or to defend those caught up in the dragnets and sweeps. Pleasing words have little effect on the Stasi and Gestapo in any case.

Because the cities in New Mexico depend so heavily on federal spending (which has already been severely cut back due to long-standing budget constraints in Washington) we're liable to see less and less civic "resistance" as economic screws are tightened. It's not so much that the poor people will lose -- they've already long since lost -- it is that the striving middle-managerial class will suffer, and we can't have that, good god no.

There are plenty of "patriots" to act as enforcers, even if the majority of New Mexicans don't buy into the program.

One of the things about fascists is that it doesn't take a lot of them to rule over the Rabble; ten percent or less.

So while the combatants in Berkeley were fairly evenly matched (a few hundred on each "side") and the "patriots" declared victory, their "victory" (such as it was) could have come with only a handful of coordinated Brownshirts -- assuming they had obtained police complicity. And even if they had not, depending on what they were prepared to do, a relatively few fascists could have easily overwhelmed the massed Antifa -- had they been massed. They weren't.

So while I don't see a civil war in the sense of battling troops and a physically divided nation, I do see a war of subversion, attrition and threat being waged by officialdom in concert with fascist and white rightist elements to subdue and overwhelm political opposition to a regime that is more and more integrated into the system it was supposedly meant to smash.

What a whirled.

Comrades!

Until today, I hadn't watched any video of the takeover of Wheeler Hall at UC Berkeley when Peter Thiel, noted billionaire reactionary founder of PayPal, was pontificating on stage before a rapt audience of devotees.

Reminds me just a little of this:


And this is how the cowards of the Berkeley PD respond to nonviolent protest:



Fear-driven, roid-raging, violent cowards.

On the Other Other Other Hand....

White folks confronting a police line in Berkeley a few hours ago:



Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream
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Last night, Elon James White was adamantly denouncing the "highjacking" of the protests against police violence by ignorant or worse white folk who should step back. He seemed most annoyed with the handful of "anarchists" who were going around setting fires and breaking windows in Berkeley, he says they bring disrepute on the Movement.

He says these demonstrations are about police violence and murder -- of Black people. "Black lives matter..." Remember?  Eric Garner? Michael Brown? Not "all lives," BLACK lives. But so many of the demonstrators in Berkeley -- where he is -- are privileged white student asshole jerks who know nothing and care less about the oppression of African Americans and are only looking for their moment in the spotlight.

Tonight, however, he seems to be terrified on the one hand, elated on the other, wanting to denounce, and yet... there's something happening here...

They shut down I-80 in Berkeley. They went out onto the freeway and shut down traffic to and from San Francisco and the East Bay in both directions for however long they were able to hold the line, and Elon freaked out and had an anxiety attack. He does not approve.  #ICan'tDrive became a new hashtag.  They shut down BART. They shut down Amtrak, too. This is going too far.   

Lucid_Cogency: RT H0XH4: #Berkeley Bart is on complete lockdown tonight due protests. #berkeleyprotests pic.twitter.com/EADIpEb7hc
— Wayne (@Wayne9224) December 9, 2014

“@SputnikInt: Shutting down highway and train during this night protests in #Berkeley #BerkeleyProtests pic.twitter.com/R5aS6qrSHU”
— Toe Knee (@Fallout911) December 9, 2014

Apparently hundreds were arrested -- volunteered to be arrested?? -- at an Emeryville shopping mall.

Citizens lined up against the wall in zip ties for exercising the 1st amendment right to assemble. #berkeleyprotests pic.twitter.com/QKjHTWgs0L
— David (@TheZOMB) December 9, 2014

But I really can't tell what's going on from the Twitter Machine or any of the livestreams I've checked. It's disruption and chaos and yet...

There's something happening here...

Somehow the message is getting through: Slowly. Haltingly.

This has got to stop, the police murders have got to stop, the oppression of black folks and the destruction of black lives, families, and communities has got to stop. Until it does, the People -- black and white and all the other colors together -- are going to take action. Some of it will be nice and polite and friendly and manageable. Some of it won't be. But action there will be until this intolerable situation changes for the better.

It can be done and it will be done.

"Sorry for the inconvenience. We're trying to change the world here."

And then there's this: 

Dear White Protesters: 

As I walked through the streets of Berkeley tonight listening to the overwhelmingly white crowd chant things like “Whose streets? Our streets!” and “This is what democracy looks like!” I felt uncomfortable. I passed white people holding signs that said “I can’t breathe” and I felt uncomfortable. Then, when we were instructed to sit down in the middle of the main street that runs through downtown Berkeley and were made to listen to a white person on a bullhorn declare “All lives matter!” I felt invisible. Ignored. Forgotten.

Dear white protestors, this is NOT about you.

"Whose streets?" As a Black person in this country, I am well aware that the streets belong to white people. I am not empowered or made more safe by hundreds of white people chanting that the streets belong to them. The street in Ferguson where Mike Brown was murdered and lay dead for 4.5 hours should have belonged to him, but it didn’t. He’s dead. He’s not coming back. That’s because the streets belong to white people.

Dear white protestors, this is NOT about you.

"This is what democracy looks like?" You’re right. Democracy has always meant that (for reasons you’re well aware of but like to pretend you don’t remember or don’t matter anymore) black people are a consistent minority in this country and thus must petition white people for our basic human rights. Democracy means voter ID laws and poll taxes. Democracy in America is a white majority dictating whose voice matters. Democracy is white liberals telling black folks to calm down and go the polls (and vote for Democrat) as if Bob McCulloch isn’t a "democrat." As if Jay Nixon isn’t a democrat. As if our president isn’t Black and it hasn’t done shit to lower the ever mounting body count of Black people gunned down in the streets by police and vigilantes. As if any Black politicians in a non-majority Black district can get elected, much less reelected, without catering to white people’s feelings. I know what democracy looks like and it hasn’t done very much for people who look like me.

Dear white protestors, this is NOT about you.

"All lives matter?" NO THEY DON’T AND THAT’S THE FUCKING POINT! Black people’s lives don’t matter, that’s why I’m out in the streets, to get people to realize that my life has worth. I have to protest to get people to even think about the possibility that if the police or some vigilante gun me down, it’s not because the genetic defects believed inherent in my blackness finally manifested and I had to be put down before I became more of a threat to white america. White america doesn’t need a reminder that "all lives matter," it needs to be made to recognize and respect that Black lives matter.

It’s Black bodies that are bleeding and dying in the streets. It’s Black bodies that can’t breathe. It’s Black bodies that are seen and treated as threats to whiteness as we shop in Wal-Mart, play in parks outside our homes, walk home with a pack of Skittles, sleep in our beds. It’s Black bodies that have hung like strange fruit from the trees of this nation for centuries.

Dear white protestors, this is NOT about you.

Stop whitewashing our movement. Stop pretending that “All lives matter” means anything other than “HEY ME TOO! WHAT ABOUT MY WHITE FEELINGS! DISREGARD THE ACTUAL REALITY OF BLEEDING AND DYING BLACK PEOPLE AND CATER TO THE HYPOTHETICAL AND EXTREMELY RARE POSSIBILITY THAT POLICE OR VIGILANTES WOULD BE ABLE TO EXTRAJUDICIALLY MURDER A WHITE PERSON AND FACE NO CONSEQUENCES!” Black people know our lives don’t matter because white people’s hypotheticals matter more than Black people’s reality.

Dear white protestors, this is NOT about you.

Stop cannibalizing our movements with hashtags about every other life but ours. Stop plagiarizing Black people’s actual struggles for fictionalized white pain (I’m looking at you Hunger Games, with your whitewashed protagonist. “The Hanging Tree?” For real?). Stop scrambling to stand atop the growing pile of dead Black bodies to use it as your makeshift platform to secure more privileges and status for yourself. Stop using protests that should be about Black lives to exercise your white angst, break shit under the cover of darkness, and then bask in the bright light of white privilege while Black lives are declared to be worth less than the windows you broke.

Dear white protestors, this is NOT about you. This IS about making Black Lives Matter.

Our streets shouldn’t be burial grounds for Black people. Black people’s rights shouldn’t be put to a vote. Black people should be allowed to breathe, walk, exist, without fear.

So, if you’re actually here for making Black Lives Matter, put down your “I can’t breathe” signs (because you can, and that’s the point) and pick up one that declares Black Lives Matter (because right now they don’t, and that’s the point). Get off the ground and stand in solidarity as Black people “die-in” (because it’s not white bodies lying dead on our nation’s streets, and that’s the point). Hand over the bullhorn to a Black person (because your voice doesn’t need a bullhorn to be heard, and that’s the point).

And please, stop saying #AllLivesMatter…until they actually do.

It's true, yes, and yet tragically police violence and killing is not solely about blacks -- unless we want that division to rule us forever.

I got into this issue with people who didn't know anything about the killing spree the Albuquerque Police Department were on for years. Remember that? No? It's forgotten now? Well, I haven't forgotten. And I got into the issue of that killing spree -- which has mercifully paused if not completely ended; there hasn't been a police killing in Albuquerque since August -- with people from out of town and out of state who claimed the police must have been targeting blacks... And I scratched my head and looked at the statistics and said, "No. Not really." Less than 10% of those killed by police were black. "Then they must be targeting Indians and other people of color." Well, that might be closer, but only because most of those killed had Latin last names. In New Mexico, a lot of folks whose last names are Hispanic look "white." Unless you knew them, you wouldn't know they were Hispanos. So, no, the killing spree wasn't based on color or ethnicity. More than half of those killed by APD, however, suffered from mental illness of one sort or another. A significant number were drug users/abusers. Many -- not all -- were poor.

There were specific targets for killing, in other words, but it wasn't black folks because they were black. Those targeted for killing were people with mental conditions, regardless of color, especially if they were poor or homeless; drug suspects or known users/abusers, again, regardless of color, and supposedly armed suspects, regardless of color, especially those who ran from, fought or resisted police.

These are the universal police targets for killing in this country.

In some jurisdictions, the effect of this universal targeting falls disproportionately on black and brown victims, but the targeting goes on regardless of color.

Making the issue entirely about race is a classic means of division. Telling white folks to step back is one thing, but insisting that black lives are the only ones that matter, or that only or mostly black folks are the victims of police violence and killing -- because they're black -- defies reality. And who does that serve?

White folks should be stepping back and should not try to hijack or betray the pain and suffering of their black comrades in this struggle. But black folks should welcome their comrades as well, regardless of color, gender, status or other attribute. For it is when the People are united in struggle and persistent in their demands that Authority and Power trembles.

Solidarity matters.

On The Other Other Hand -- What Went Down In Berkeley The Last Two Nights Is Appalling

[Two hour archived video of the protest action and police response in Berkeley on Saturday. There was a similar protest and police response last night as well. This video can be difficult and frustrating to watch because of poor lighting and frequent hand-held shakiness, but it gives an idea of what was going on and it gives the lie to the nearly universal media premise that protesters somehow "become violent." It is the police who unleash violence on non-violent protesters.]



Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream

Thousands gather in Berkeley, California, take it to the streets, and express their displeasure with the lack of justice in this country. Police hunker down at The Fort (the Berkeley police station.) Demonstrators call police "cowards; murderers!" Police react with violence.

Concerned Officials say "We need a conversation about race...."

We need more than a "conversation"  in the wake of the civil disobedience these last several months. Much more than a "conversation."

We need the killing to stop.

We need police to cease fire.

That's it. Right there. Non-negotiable. The necessary pre-condition to "talks." Stop the killing.


It's not about black on black or white on white crime. It's about police killing. That's the issue. It's been about police killing all year long.

This is the primary social issue in America -- and it has been for the whole year. It didn't start with Eric Garner and Mike Brown. There had been protests of police killings for years; police killings were averaging around a hundred a month, and it was unacceptable.

Police were almost never held to answer or account at trial for their killings of too often unarmed or mentally ill suspects. They simply killed and killed and killed. Many times, their killings led to protests in the streets that were widely ignored. The police had -- and in many cases still have -- a lock on the media's attention, and whatever they say happened is broadcast as if it were truth and fair and right and just.


But the People have long known otherwise.

They've known about police impunity, police lies, police violence, murder and misconduct for as long as they've been alive.

This year, however, finally, police outrages became the principal social issue in the United States.

And that's led to numerous mass protests and civil disobedience in cities all over the country, some of the initial ones in Albuquerque over police misconduct and killing that had been going on unchecked, even "unnoticed," by city officials for years. "There's nothing wrong here. Albuquerque has the BESTEST police in the whole damn country!"

In many cases, again starting in Albuquerque, the protests have been met with highly inappropriate militarized police -- shooting grenades and gas and rubber bullets at non-violent but angry crowds of citizens and residents who are fed up with police violence and demand that it stop.

There were many, many precursor demonstrations to the widespread protests and persistent civil disobedience Authority is facing now throughout the land. Authority chose not to pay attention. Authority demanded compliance and went about its business of looting, pillaging and killing as if nothing had happened. Authority was deaf to the pleas of the People. Authority was blind to the suffering. Authority had no answer but the back of its hand or a gunshot to the head.

Authority was at war with the People.

This had to stop. Making it stop seemed nigh unto impossible.

But it's not impossible.

And the killing will stop.

The Altar Boy is Radicalized at Berkeley -- Mario Savio and More About "Subversives"

Mario Savio, Free Speech Movement, UC Berkeley, 1965

Now that I've gotten to the chapters about the student rebellion at UC Berkeley and more particularly about Mario Savio, I'm learning plenty of stuff I didn't know or didn't think about if I did know.

Images of the early Free Speech Movement protests at Berkeley and of those involved (particularly Mario, but not just of him) are burned into my brain. They form a huge part of what I considered positive in my adolescence. "Who" these people were and the underlying motivations for "why" they were doing what they were doing hardly mattered. What mattered was that they were doing it, fearlessly, determinedly, and at considerable risk to themselves and and their futures. Bravery was only the most obvious of their attributes.

While I was riveted by Mario Savio's eloquence and charisma -- and oh, yes, I had a sheepskin lined suede jacket like his, and I think in other ways I strongly identified with him -- I knew nothing, really, about him, except that he was considered "working class" among the students and administrators who came from money (I knew too many of those people), and thus he was subject to relentless denunciation and ridicule by those opposed to the FSM protests.

After the glare of the media spotlight faded from him and the student movement went on to other issues and other campuses, I didn't try to follow Mario's further adventures. I knew that he was a reluctant hero, if you will, and was deviled by doubt during the Free Speech Movement years, but beyond that, not much. It wasn't until much later that I learned he'd gone on to become part of the initial faculty at Sonoma State University in the 1980s, and died of heart failure in 1996. Resquiat in Pacem.

Until I got into the biographical chapters about him in "Subversives," I didn't know that he had been an altar boy in Queens, or that he was considered a "troubled genius" in school and had a terrible stammer when speaking -- unless he was on stage or in front of a crowd, at which time he could become extraordinarily eloquent and persuasive. I didn't know that his mother wanted him to become a priest -- and he seriously considered it -- but he chose physics and the sciences in his initial college days in New York, only to switch to philosophy studies when he transferred to UC Berkeley in 1963.

I didn't know that he was initially enthusiastic about the Kennedy presidency, but he became disillusioned as Kennedy seemed incapable of following through on his campaign rhetoric and promises. Where have we heard that before?

I didn't even know that he had gone South for the Freedom Summer, and that his experiences with the Freedom Riders and with CORE and SNCC at Berkeley had profoundly shaped his perspective about the absurd and arbitrary restrictions placed on student political advocacy and activity on the University campus.

While Mario's iconic speech about "the gears of the machine" he gave on the steps of Sproul Hall on December 2, 1964, will likely resonate forever, the issues he was speaking about are not really well known at all, and they're not particularly easy to explain or examine from the distance of almost 50 years.

I remember what I was feeling about it back then, but the issue of the prohibition of on-campus political activity -- which is what the Free Speech Movement was opposing -- seems somewhat arcane and even petty from a distance.

It was actually a pretty much universal rule to prohibit on-campus political activity throughout California's public education system at the time, especially so at the University. The premise was that California's students would receive a mandatory and "free" public education through high school, and qualified students would be eligible for tuition free higher education at any public institution of higher learning in the state -- any that they could get into, as access was highly competitive and restricted. But part of the bargain that made this possible was that the public education system, particularly the University, had to stay out of politics... thus the prohibition on political advocacy on the Berkeley campus that became the fuse that lit the fire of the Free Speech Movement.

Up to a point, this prohibition was tolerated because the University didn't interfere with tabling and political speechifying "outside the gate," Sather Gate. Well, that is they didn't until they discovered that the sidewalk outside the gate actually belonged to the University, not the City of Berkeley as they had assumed. The campus administration and police started enforcing the rule on the sidewalk as well on the campus proper, and this seemingly arbitrary act triggered the protest. Students moved their tables onto the campus in front of Sproul Hall, the administration building, and defied the administration and police orders to desist.

And when Jack Weinberg, a graduate student, refused to desist or identify himself to police, he was taken into custody and hustled into a waiting police car on Sproul Plaza. This arrest by campus police precipitated a sit-down action by hundreds and then thousands of students, and the Free Speech Movement was launched. Nothing would ever be the same again.

Mario quickly emerged as the spokesman for the Movement, though it was obvious even then that he was uncomfortable in the role that had been thrust upon him. Nevertheless, he was a passionate and very articulate spokesman.

His passion derived from his experience, an experience I knew very little about until I started reading "Subversives." I have a much greater regard for him now than I did nearly 50 years ago, and I hardly thought that was possible. But learning about his past, and what he believed in, and what he had done prior to the Free Speech Movement only makes me admire him the more.

I'm no hero-worshiper, as anyone who knows me knows. There are many individuals, however, for whom I maintain great admiration and respect. Mario Savio has always been one of them, but now my admiration and respect for him has increased substantially.

The more I learn... I'm grateful I can still learn...

Videos from a day of confrontations at UC Berkeley

http://www.dailycal.org/2011/11/10/video-series-november-9-day-of-action-occupy-cal/

The Daily Californian has been covering the events at Berkeley very well, but I can sense it is hard for them.

Ever since the enormous tuition increases of a couple of years ago, the Berkeley campus has been in a more or less continuous uproar. The Occupy Movement has just come to the University, and the tumult level has gone through the roof. Last night, for example, delegations from Occupy San Francisco and Occupy Oakland joined the Berkeley students to confront the administration and the police. I particularly like the response to the Vice Chancellor's speech: "Bull. Shit."



Yes. Well.

It's hard to explain, but for me all this is very difficult to watch.

"We're Doing This For Your Children!"

At Sproul Hall, UC Berkeley today:



http://www.dailycal.org/2011/11/09/live-blog-day-of-action-2/

Events continue to be documented on the liveblog linked above. The administration is now trying to negotiate with the hundreds of demonstrators of Occupy Cal.

I don't need to link Mario's speech on the steps of Sproul Hall again, do I?
---------------------------------------

This is very evocative. The scene in Sproul Plaza around 10:30p Novemeber 9, 2011: