Homeland Security Unit Detective P.B. Jackson at Egypt Solidarity Demo

Might not be 1000 people but it's also not some lone atlanta anarchists acting like wing nuts either. This is a wide spread practice.

http://www.systemiccapital.com/guerrilla-surveillance-camera-destruction...

I gotta be honest.  This conversation reflects part of what gets under my skin about this whole back and fourth between anarchists and their detractors.  The point that seems to go unacknowledged is this:

My politics aren't your politics.

My values aren't your values.

My truths aren't your truths.

and that's okay!



4:12am you said:
"That's a MUCH more reasonable presentation than
"ALL COPS ARE PIGS! ANYONE WHO SUPPORTS THE POLICE IS AN IDIOT!"

1.  That might be true but
. We're talking about power and how it effects people.  The idea that anarchists are all privileged white collage educated men couldn't be further from the truth.  Many of us come from broken homes, broken lives, and fucked up circumstances.  There's all kinds of emotions, experiences, and individual identities wrapped up in all of that.  It's not pretty and the world we live in is an ugly place.  If you continue to focus on presentation rather than content, the important details will fly right over your head.  Plus it's just a god awful way to base any approach to struggle or finding commonality with others. (Frankly it reflects an imperialist mindset.)



2.  The fact that the presentation does not suit your tastes does not make the second statement (which were YOUR words caricaturing an angry anarchist) any less true.  Often, the political content of a statement is far less important than its personal and emotional character and the experiences which shaped them.



3. what you might not be seeing is the other side of this tired old conversation.  Occupy changed the landscape.  Anarchists (myself included) might have to get used to the fact that we aren't the only ones making noise anymore.  But that to me is no reason to stop doing what we are and have been doing.  (diversity of tactics)  For a healthy start to a relationship that doesn't devolve into "fuck you" and "leave us alone", others could at least start by giving us the benefit of the doubt. (That is if you actually want a conversation instead of being written off and trolled)



Also, if you want that conversation...  Looking for it on the internet is probably not going to work out well.  Stop looking for heart to hearts and one on ones on the internet!



Anarchists aren't idiots.  I know these folks and they all have good heads on their shoulders.  When I talk to them about their more radical and off the wall ideas, they generally have very well developed answers and reasons.  They might not translate for you.  It might not resonate with you.  But no one said what they do or say is for you.

No one owes it to you to keep you in mind when they decide what tactics are appropriate to their situation and what level of intensity they feel they ought to bring.

Get over it might not be a nice thing to say but...  Get over it.



Time and time again anything presented or done by this camp that doesn't fall in line with accepted liberal dogma or statements that contradict social norms and already established narratives (and basically any challenge to power) are almost always put under a microscope by "the movement" and the individuals making the argument have to deal with being grilled and interrogated.  It's true that it's something anarchists should get used to and something we should be ready for but honestly, it gets really old sometimes.

(unlike a lot of my comrades, I'm not a patient person.)



I want for people to be empowered to struggle.  That's it. 
NO ONE owes you an explanation and the courtesy yall incessantly demand is not something you inherently deserve.

It might sound like what I'm saying is that I don't value things like solidarity and mutual respect.  That's not the case.  What I'm saying is that solidarity and mutual respect MEAN SOMETHING beyond just feelings and certain PC behaviors.



Another comment states:  
"But somewhere in the ideology of 'All cops are pigs' and 'All prisons are cages' we have to address the reality that there are people in our world who are very sick and have no ability to control sociopathic impulses...  yadda yadda yadda"


These baseless assumptions that anarchists and people who say "fuck the police" haven't already thought about this or don't have their own answers to these problems and questions is just a dishonest way to point to your own position's imagined superiority.  Also, it's pure shit to expect people to present you with an alternative before you aknowledge the root problem.

Again...  No one owes you an explanation and just because you haven't gotten one (or haven't gotten the one you wanted) does not imply that the next step should be to miss characterize the active agent/s in whatever struggle, or apply some sort of baseless assumptions to what the active agent's goals, intent, or level of intelligence and foresight are.  
I respect that the individual who posted that comment came with a string of well intentioned questions (even if founded on baseless assumptions) and there are answers to those but I don't see the internet as being a good place for that discussion. 

If the internet is your go to place, there's nothing but articles, essays, and journals you can find that have plenty of answers which should not have to be repeated here.



The bottom line is this

All of these demands insisting that we taylor our activity to gain popular support are missing the entire point.  What kind of popular support did slave rebellions gain from Southern whites?  Do you really think "popular support" was the goal when the Oglala Lakota (a minority) took up arms at Wounded Knee or was the goal the defense of the land base?  In 2008 when the police killed Alexandros Grigoropoulos, do you think the goal of the youth who set the entire country of Greece on fire, in riots, and insurrection cared about popular support or was the goal a reciprocal response to police violence?  A show of counter power?  When the poor riot and loot, do you think they care about popular support?
Popular support might be nice sometimes and it has it's place within the ongoing social war but that's about it. 
In the historical context of struggle popular support really isn't all it's cracked up to be.  Shit.  The Nazis had popular support.

Popular support isn't the fucking messiah that some of yall make it out to be and it's downright unethical to tell people that they shouldn't struggle and push hard against the domination that characterizes their lives because it might make you and other populists politicians uncomfortable.



Anarchists aren't liberals...  As I said before...  The understanding needs to be reached that:

My politics aren't your politics.

My values aren't your values.

My truths aren't your truths.

and that's okay!

before any kind of meaningful conversation can be had.



And then there's more of this:
  "But you HAVE to realize that a lot of folks are working REALLY hard at dismantling the machine to establish a less oppressive society for future generations"


That's just paternalistic and condescending.  Shut the fuck up.

I don't remember anyone in the occupation trying to get people to DO things.

I do, however, remember people in the occupation trying to get people to STOP doing certain things (with sound reasoning behind it.)

That went both ways. Anarchists didn't want to make and sell items at the occupation or to promote political candidates (with good reason.) Liberals didn't want to break windows and set things on fire (also with good reason.) To this day I have not seen any liberals try to sell goods with any OA related references.

And nobody (that I know of) has complained about the security cameras. In fact, I think a lot of folks are really supportive of it (even though they may not admit it out loud.) The comment that was made was that a dozen people breaking one or two cameras a month is not effective (as a political action) but a thousand people breaking one or two hundred cameras a month is.

The reason occupy was 'successful' was not because of the anarchists OR the liberals. It was because for 3 months in 2011 people from ALL walks of life and organized together against a common enemy. If it had only been the anarchist community in the park, they'd have all gone to jail the first night and that would have been the end of it. If it had been a bunch of liberals, they'd have all packed up the first night when the sprinklers went off. The call to action was put out by Adbusters (which SELLS their magazines at lots of CAPITALIST markets.) It wouldn't have even happened if over 700 people from ALL walks of life hadn't been trapped and arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge. It wouldn't have happened if tens of thousands of liberals all over the country hadn't come out to show their support in their own way, whether it was by making signs, marching, getting arrested, donating supplies, representing folks in court, bailing people out of jail, shuttling people around at all hours of the night, filming every police interaction (and publicizing the hell out of violent oppression.)

ANARCHISTS DID THEIR FAIR SHARE OF WORK, BUT THE SUCCESS IS CONTRIBUTED TO A MASSIVE COLLABORATION BETWEEN MANY DIFFERENT VIEWPOINTS.

The movement fell apart when people started pushing their ideologies on others and the movement was infiltrated by people with a very clear goal (and sound tactics to reach it) to destroy the movement within.

That blame is to be placed on ALL ideologies.

That's why people who use 'identity politics' are poisonous to progress. Whether you identify as an anarchist, liberal, marxist, democrat, republican, doesn't fucking matter. The moment you say "I am a ___" you are also saying that "___ is the BEST ideology and yours is inferior." That also opens the door for corruption, because all of those ideologies have been studied for centuries. "They" (the 1% for lack of a more appropriate label) know how to infiltrate and destroy any strict ideology. Anarchists follow guidelines and fit into a mold too, and it is easy to infiltrate even tight anarchist circles if you have studied the ideology.

The best ideology is one that is fluid and changes according to the environment. It doesn't HAVE a name, so people can't subscribe to it.

My question still remains to be answered though.

What is the solution to people who want to assault, rape, and murder other people? We live in a dangerous society, and I have not seen any viable suggestions to the very real threats that ALL of us face and are blissfully unaware of because someone else is taking care of it.
I brought up George Zimmerman as an example of vigilante justice and community policing. Whether the murder he commited was racially motivated or not, you need to realize just how many groups there ARE in America who want to perform ethnic cleansing.

Those groups, while still pretty small, are much larger than the anarchist population in Atlanta. Many of them are military trained and organized, and they're very well armed (and prepared for survival if the trucks stop running) which is more than can be said for the majority of urban anarchists that I've met.

So what is the alternative to these problems? How do we begin to implement it?

The tldr version of what follows is that mass movement-oriented politics is broken, and if its adherents wonder why anarchists aren't "doing it right" it's because a lot of us (maybe most of us?) simply aren't doing what you want us to do, but that doesn't mean it's not strategic or valuable for its participants.

For me, it's tiresome reading and engaging with the same old cliches about how we need large numbers of people (a mass movement) to accomplish anything at all. This tells me that the people who remain in contact with anarchists over an extended period of time and who still adhere to these ideas aren't really listening. This is very normal.

There are a lot of problems with mass movement-oriented politics, but one of them is the failure to imagine the massive gap between point A (here and now) and point B (that fantasy planted far in the future at an unspecified point in time when the mass movement is on the march). What do all of the mass movement liberals think will happen leading up to a mass movement? They are not spontaneous developments, they do not happen out of pure idealism or without context. I think that mass movements happen because:

• Their participants all share an immediately felt social desire and/or material need.
• There is already a social foundation that makes it easy for people to feel connected to the movement.
• There is already a lot of preliminary organizing and material infrastructure, which are the prerequisites for any movement to attain mass.
• The issues or points of struggle associated with the movement are comprehensible, not insulated by sub-cultural jargon or fogged by overly complex analyses that could be rendered palatable without watering down their militancy.

In a lot of ways it is very unrealistic to expect a movement to attain mass when it is still in its youth, and arguably that is the case right now for Atlanta at least. We are really re-inventing the wheel here because all of the mass movement-oriented organizers that came before us really left us a movement in tatters--so let's give credit to anarchists for being at the center of a new surge in revolutionary or organizing activity. Liberals and Marxists may hate us for it, but Occupy happened not in spite of its anarchist kernel, but precisely because of it.

Lots of things need to happen before anybody is going to be attracted to self-organization, which I think needs some clarification for this discussion. First of all self-organization is, I think, antithetical to specialized revolutionaries organizing other people from outside of their communities. Secondly the self-organization that so many would-be movement-builders fetishize is happening right before their very eyes in anarchist practice but they are too obsessed with their fantasy and its impossible preconditions to see that it has been realized for them in another form. Thirdly I'm convinced that movements don't attain mass because of idealism ("Wouldn't it be nice if...") but because of social and material necessity or strong desire associated (or perhaps identical) with need.

Right now if you talk about what's going on in Atlanta anarchist organizing, the liberal people you talk to will summon all of the flat and dusty cliches--we need a government because it represents a good compromise (for the ruling elite), we need police to protect us from the tiny fraction of violent criminals currently in prison, capitalism offers the best model for market exchange and economic mobility, there are no viable alternatives to capitalism because the proof is in the pudding (even though capitalism has left no room for real alternatives to emerge without material force), etc. Even if they don't use these arguments, they will try to hold up what we're doing to absurd and unrealistic standards, even as they summon the specter of realism (like the below commentator who is criticizing camera-smashing because it won't result in an immediate collapse of the state).

People aren't going to be convinced that these rotten cliches are silly objections if anarchists argue with them online or if they read anarchist communiques, although that can help. People are going to be convinced, in my opinion, of the need for action when they see a working material resistance or even infrastructural alternative, when they see an effective movement, even if it is small, and even if it is largely unconcerned with winning hordes of fickle converts, situating itself against capitalism and the state. (How else are busy people with jobs and families going to sacrifice what little free time they have to participate in organizing if they don't get something out of it, if they don't really feel strongly that it is something worth their time?) There is a lot that can be accomplished with small numbers of highly organized and dedicated people, and these people can inspire and attract those who are already willing but individually unprepared to act; this is the power of collective action or solidarity. And lest "outsiders" think that anarchists can't be organized, think again.

Right now there is simply very little that anarchists have to offer in the way of what materially we have done. (We have a growing list but it is not enough to start chipping away at a lifetime of indoctrination, as would be necessary to fulfill the right preconditions to make mass movement-oriented people happy.) Likewise most organizing circles are still a little socially toxic and stressful so that is another barrier to entry (not to mention longevity and consistency). So if we just keep doing what we're doing--if we open a social center, if we get a solid newspaper box distribution program, if the newsletters stay fresh and relevant, if we put out quality propaganda like anarchist primers, if we win some strategic battles not based on charity but on solidarity, if intrepid hoodie ninjas carry out small but effective attacks--then we will one day be able to show even the most stubborn liberals an undeniably functional anarchist model, and in the absence of that model we will continue to see all of the same arguments for mass movements.

Right now that is still the way that people think because they think in the abstract, not in the concrete, and as long as they're doing that they aren't going to think about all of the nitty gritty details that reveal how badly mass movements have worked out in the past. They certainly aren't going to think about what battles anarchists can engage in right now that show some promise for coalition-building that leaves room for anarchism (like organizing around MARTA, the BeltLine, and gentrification, or being ready for the next round of police brutality).

In the end I don't think that it's really all that helpful for us to think about pleasing people who would rather see us put in jail for our organizing or who think that the only legitimate action is mass-oriented (leaving no room for the individual or small collective), even granted that many anarchist projects, including some relatively popular (but not massive) ones successfully interface with "the public." Anarchists might not waste our time on trying to prematurely build a mass movement, but I do think that we might be fulfilling some of the prerequisites for revolution, although I also think that we need to be cautious in dreaming about a quick revolution where the state collapses and life begins anew. In any case, I think that as mass movement-oriented people continue telling us that we're not doing it right, that is probably a good thing because it tells us that the people with exactly the wrong politics are opposed to what we're doing.

Still another way to look at mass movement-building, and one that I think liberals will relate to, is to consider how it effected Occupy. When radicals of all stripes initiated occupations all across the country, before liberals descended on them from the suburbs bearing with them the fantasy blueprints for a successful movement, there were no demands and there was no direction. It was like the slogan that predated occupy: "Occupy everywhere, demand nothing." The "mass" movement that was Occupy came about because of an un-reflective and directionless call for action based on contesting space. How can the mass movement people explain that? They can't! There was no goal beyond action itself, no unifying ideology, and no victory beyond holding a plot of ground and working together as we chose.

What brought Occupy down subsequent to the park evictions was not all of the anarchists doing as they pleased; no, it was the liberals and their authoritarian allies in various Marxist camps who kept insisting that we all abide by the same set of rules and the same set of goals, doing the same things and attracting people according to one ruling ideology and practice. If you go back to the residual Occupy spaces that are left today, it is the same authoritarian, unstable people saying the same things as 2011: "I do not stand in solidarity with fire!"

How can these people know what solidarity means if they want GA "approval" for each and every action under the name of "Occupy Atlanta?" They have always wanted to turn anarchist projects into flat and homogeneous platforms for attaining mass, but it was that effort to homogenize against the will of the participants that corroded Occupy from within. Instead of insisting that everyone do the same things with the same exact goals and methods, it would have been more effective--and this applies to our present situation--to take action, to actually self-organize with the people we have right now, and to not worry about everyone agreeing on the same things or what we can accomplish far off in the future when we have more people.

If liberals are earnest about building mass movements then I think that they will have to stop committing the same mistakes over and over again; trying to make anarchists (or anyone) do what you want them to do against their will is like the uncomprehending infant shoving the square block into the circle. The same depressing image is apparent in some of the below comments.

"3:25"

That's a MUCH more reasonable presentation than

"ALL COPS ARE PIGS! ANYONE WHO SUPPORTS THE POLICE IS AN IDIOT!"

Although you're still going to have a lot of folks who will ALWAYS believe that they need SOMEONE to protect them from people who mean to do them harm...

That's the illusion that people subscribe to. They still believe that although there are individuals in the police force that are corrupt and evil and oppressive, the idea of having a group who's sole intention is to 'serve and protect' is something they support.

Even the liberals who agree that police have gotten violent and oppressive will still say that not everyone is able to defend themselves against violent or sociopathic individuals (rapists, etc.)

What IS the solution or alternative to dealing with VIOLENT people? IE: people who are willing to rape or kill in order to satisfy their own sociopathic desires? THAT is the main barrier of compromise between the folks who say 'fuck the police' and the folks who say 'fix the system.'

I've heard the notion of 'community policing' mentioned, but isn't that THEORETICALLY what we already have? Sheriffs are elected. Although most of the election base are idiots and the choices aren't really choices, the concept is still similar (and the sheriffs are still pigs.) Plus you have issues like George Zimmerman when local vigilantes decide to take it upon themselves to perform their own ethnic cleansing of black men wearing hoodies...

I guess the idea I present to you is still the same:

We understand the problems. What are the VIABLE solutions?

One thing that I think a lot of our well-intentioned activists/anarchists in the city don't admit to is the fact that our system IS so big and overreaching. Of course it's easy (and commendable) to disable a security camera or parking meter. But on a massive scale actions like that will NOT be successful because the system is SO large and powerful. (and getting larger and more powerful by the day.)

Small and tight-knit groups can only accomplish so much without popular support. The trick is to figure out what tactics generate more support and discontinue those that push people away.

NOBODY got pissed when the parking meters were liberated. VERY FEW people got pissed when the security cameras were destroyed. Those are radical and somewhat direct actions that people support.

I don't know... Maybe folks just aren't really interested in changing society. Maybe they're just more interested in living the life THEY want to live while they still can. I guess I can't really fault people for that. But you HAVE to realize that a lot of folks are working REALLY hard at dismantling the machine to establish a less oppressive society for future generations.

Blah Blah blah... I guess different folks have their own opinions. Nothing ever changes anyway.

Yea because everything is black and white with no shades of grey in between...

If you would read the post instead of making ASSUmptions about what I meant, you would see that I said that I don't know anything about this guy.

But I know from first hand experience that there are several people who wear a badge who support the movement from the inside.

Btw Chris dorner killed at least two innocent people who's only connection to the police was through birth. Although you may support old tesEmmett style justice, I don't support killing innocent people just to prove a point...

4:45 pm
You're saying that this ass hole who was video taping and photographing the faces of demonstrators and keeping tabs on them for the department of homeland security is on our side secretly doing "good things" from the inside?

You fucking liberals are far more delusional than I thought.

Yes! Thanks for the thorough reportback comrades!

Maybe a page with all of the data on repression of Atlanta revs should go up, there is a lot of date.

Public information requests couldn't hurt either...