The Revolution Continues... ?

While I've been otherwise engaged, events in St. Louis have taken on quite a broad-based character leading to protests and demonstrations and violent police reactions in the city and surrounding areas.

I've watched a bit of Rebelutionar_Z's livestream recordings from the Shaw demonstrations and the sit-down at the Quik Trip, and it's inspiring. People are taunting the police, and the police are reacting with their usual intimidation and violent tactics, and as we saw in Oakland during the Occupy protests, the upshot is that authority loses legitimacy.

The QT action overnight demonstrates how the process works.

The video below is long, but it's easy to scroll through. At about 33 minutes in, the po-po's tank arrives to threaten the demonstrators, and from that point, things get intense. At about 50 minutes in, the videographer is pepper-sprayed in the face -- again, he says it's the second time in three days that he's been sprayed -- and several in the crowd are sprayed as well. Listen for calls of "Medic!" The police follow crowd clearing protocol without resorting to tear gas, but there are reports of "snatch-and-grabs" and violent arrests. These are typically intended to frighten members of crowds into leaving. They usually work reasonably well. But in this case, the crowd refuses to be intimidated after the confrontation, they walk away.



Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream

The police tactics are routine by now, but in this case there's a quality of absurdity made manifest by the police outnumbering the protesters at some points, with the appearance of the tank and the police challenge of camera people. The police claim to be threatened by people with cameras. Indeed.  They are violently arresting sit-down, nonviolent protesters. They hide behind shields, but not everyone in the police line has a shield. One of their vehicles has to be jumpstarted in the street. It's just ridiculous.

"Who do you serve? Who do you protect?"

Obviously, it's not The People.

More videos here.

Others on scene include Tim and Luke. Bella Eiko is in town.

Some mainstream coverage has been occurring as well.

Thousands of people are participating in demonstrations, a fair contingent of youthful anarchists as well as a large group of local and national activists.

The tipping point isn't here yet, but it's coming.

The Meme Is Spreading -- "The LAPD Brought This On Themselves"

 

Last I remember hearing of the LAPD before this Dorner situation arose was after Anthony Villaraigosa  pranced around with nipples erect praising his shock troops for "masterfully" evicting the Occupy LA folks from the grounds of City Hall. That it was a violent and brutal raid in which dozens were injured and hundreds were arrested seemed to escape hizzoner's notice, but then, those were the days when kicking the shit out of the hippies was considered virile and manly and all. (Well, those days have never left us, have they.) The video above, for example, resulted from LAPD's violence against LA Art Walk participants in July of last year.

LAPD's reputation for excessive force, cruelty, murder, mayhem and violence -- toward selected segments of the public you understand -- has been known for generations; it's inbuilt. Every effort at "reform" -- that is to say, to curb the violence and cruelty and murder -- has had only limited and generally temporary success, if any success at all. What's true of LAPD is true of pretty much all law enforcement in Southern California: they are routinely violent, brutal and cruel -- toward selected segments of the public -- when they aren't outright murderous. There have been so many incidents just since the Rodney King Thing, that the public generally lives in greater fear of the police than they are of vaunted gangs and criminals.

The Doner Thing has opened floodgates of absolute outrage and contempt of the police, particularly LAPD since they are in the center of this mess, but affecting all the Southland law enforcement agencies. The ripple affect is traveling throughout the country.

The Dorner Thing has catalyzed the widespread recognition that enough is enough, and it was the panicked actions of the LA and Torrance PDs in shooting up two pickup trucks being driven near the home of one of LAPD's "high value protectees" -- ie: cops -- that wounded two women delivering papers and scared the shit out of a man while destroying two trucks while sending hundreds of bullets flying wildly into houses and cars and landscaping in a sleeping neighborhood that did the trick.

This action, they say, was the perfect demonstration of what Dorner was writing about in his lengthy "manifesto."

It is a culture of corruption, violence, impunity and... incompetence that afflicts the practice of policing in Los Angeles and throughout the land. Someone has to put a stop to it, because police agencies cannot do it themselves. 

While people are not happy about the way Dorner has chosen to try to put a stop to it, they "understand." What else works with these people, ie; the Po-Po, but a dose of their own medicine?

The wan and pathetic defenses of LAPD actions -- whether firing Dorner or shooting up pickup trucks in Torrance -- rub people the wrong way, to put it mildly.

And so a sort of conventional wisdom is congealing that says that the LAPD "brought this on themselves" by their actions specific to this case, by their historic incompetence, their long and disturbing record of violence and brutality (some of which was on nauseating display during their suppression of Occupy LA and other mass police actions in the Los Angeles area -- remember the LA Art Walk, or the Anaheim shootings?)

And look!

As Dorner seems to have disappeared -- whether into the mountain snow at Big Bear or somewhere else -- the police are modifying and mitigating their most outrageous behavior and even promising now to "review" Dorner's specific complaints.

Who'dathunk.

Happy Fourth, Brief Note on Events in Philadelphia, Travel Day

Yes, I'm headed back to California this morning; should arrive tomorrow evening. May catch the parade in town before I leave, but I've missed it (by "that much") in the past, and that may happen today as well. If my memory hasn't failed me, this is the second year in a row that I've traveled on the Fourth; what I recall of the journey is that there are a lot of motorcycles and hot rods on the highways, and that's always cool, daddy-o. (Note to youngsters, yes, we really did say that in the 1950s, though when we did, it was usually with a wink....)

A brief note on yesterday's extended march in Philadelphia: a couple of chants got things into a muddle. The "A-Anti-Anticapitalista!" chant has become very popular because it is so energizing and fun, but it appears that many people don't understand it and as they try to repeat it, or even start the chant, they garble it. This happened several times in Philadelphia. The first time I heard it, a woman started the chant with something like this: "Ah-a-tea-a-tea-a-lee-a-lees-ta!" Well, the rhythm was right anyway. It took a while, but eventually some people who knew the correct chant joined in and cleaned it up.

The second time I heard the "A-anti..." chant in Philly,  I laughed out loud. It went something like this: "Ah, I need, I need a slice of pizza!" That was great, but few joined in, sorry to say.

Then I heard the "A-anti" chant again, done very dramatically, at the Comcast or Verizon headquarters, starting out very soft and low, with the crowd crouched down. It built to a crescendo, as everybody jumped up and down and shouted lustily in an echo-y canyon of tall buildings. If the people in the offices above could hear the plebes below at all, I'm sure they were perplexed if not stunned.

Finally, near the tail end of the march yesterday, someone tried to start the chant again and mangled it, much as happened the first time I heard it in Philadelphia. I was watching Nate's livestream, and he became impatient with the woman who was trying to start the chant. He said, "You know, it's 'A-anti-anticapitalista!" She tried it and mangled it again. Nate again tried to demonstrate the correct chant, and several people nearby picked it up. The first woman still couldn't get it quite right. Nate tried again, and then, exasperated, said, "Anticapiltalista! It's 'anticapitalist' in Spanish."

"Ohhhh," said the woman, and from then on, she got it right. This tells me that somebody needs to explain what this chant means...

Then there was the "Shit's fucked up, shit's fucked up and bull shit!" chant, which I've heard several times during the Philadelphia festivities. It is often joined in quite lustily by the crowd, other times not so much. During yesterday's march, the chant was started and joined in by the crowd as they marched along, and I saw a bicycle cop grab onto a guy in the crowd and say something to him. The guy seemed stunned and said something to the people nearby but I couldn't hear what he was saying. The chant got quieter and then stopped as the guy ran ahead to the front of the march. Eventually Nate caught up to him and asked what was going on. The guy said, "We were passing by a daycare..." Oh. Heh heh. Maybe not the most appropriate chant then... (actually, I imagine kids would love it.)

Despite occasional intense encounters with the "Po-Po" in Philadelphia, the Occupy National Gathering seems to me to be for the most part a very festive event, one that celebrates the success of a Movement Becoming Revolution (or Revoluja, as the Reverend Billy would put it) that came out of nowhere and is blazing the trail to the future.
---------------------------------
The Fourth always puts me in mind of my father's birthday. He would be 111 years old tomorrow -- if he were alive. Born on the Fifth as it were, and yes, he made jokes about it. He was both a patriot and a rebel, something Americans still have trouble reconciling. He gladly served in both world wars (though let it be said, not in combat) yet he was eager to denounce injustice in America. He rebelled against convention and institutional corruption, defied the Church and at least part of his community, lived his own life and died his own way.

Tip o' the hat, Dad.
-----------------------------------
-----------------------------------
When I heard the rotors in the distance yesterday evening, at first I thought it was some kind of strange thunder. It's Monsoon season after all, and there was heavy cloud cover in the east and south. But thunder doesn't keep on and get louder, and I could tell at some point this wasn't thunder, there were Chinooks in the sky, though what they were doing in my neck of the woods was anybody's guess.

The rotor-noise got louder and louder, shaking the windows. There must be four of them at least, I thought. And my God, are they going to land? What the holy fuck! As the rotor-thunder got louder, I knew they were directly overhead, and I peered out the side door to see just how low they were. Sure enough, through the drought ravaged tree branches, four, then five Chinooks, painted non-reflecting black, made their stately way across the sky, maybe 1000 ft above the ground, shaking everything below, an unfathomable convoy in the air, headed west, perhaps back to Kirtland. Or... somewhere. I've seen these black helicopters (and they are painted black, if anybody is wondering) in this area before, flying in low formations over the fields and houses for reasons that are never clear. They always feel like a threat.