Before I get into a more detail about the last few days, with a special eye on London I wanted to take this moment to announce a collaboration that I have been looking forward to for a while now. Villy Villian is a superbly talented illustrator and artist from Argentina whose style and political stance is very much in line with my own. Having been a fan of her work for a long time I am incredible excited to announce that the above piece will drop on Wednesday, with a link being sent out to everyone then. The paying supporters will be getting an advance link with their discount code on Tuesday as per usual. I will be sharing a few teasers over on IG Tuesday as well.
Now, London. There is something rotten in the state of Denmark as Shakespeare once said and the Tory government, to the uninitiated, the Tories are the Conservative Party in the British Parliament that seems to have been hell bent on not only out-doing the Trump’s of this world but rapidly dissolving whatever was left of a “free” “democratic” system and replacing it with the neo-liberal, privatized, corrupt, fascist dream that Thatcher kicked off. To be clear, she, nor Reagan invited this vision, they merely were the first puppets to put it into place. Aside from the rampant corruption in Tory rule, the total disregard for their actual jobs, the criminal mishandling of the Pandemic, not mentioning Brexit, their masks genuinely slipped over the last few days.
I know the outrage over the police’ role on Saturday on Clapham Common in response to a vigil for murdered Sarah Everard is real, justified and right. I also know that large parts of London haven’t seen genuine protests since 2003 and even then, those were largely peaceful with little to no real response from those in power. Hence, it is very reasonable to be outraged at the police’s response on Saturday. I have to admit, my second thought was however, well, shit, what’s new? Why is this surprising? Anyone involved in the BLM protests across the US last summer can sing an opera about police violence in response to protests that challenge Power, the last 25 some years across the European Mainland, specifically, Greece, France, Spain and to a certain extent Germany ( G20 for example ) have been battlefields in which the state used highly militarized, violent police forces to, and lets call it, intimidate, arrest, coerce, beat up and arrest any and all protests against Power. The further we go, let’s talk about the Arab Spring, Central and South America, large parts of South East Asia as well as parts of Africa, well, shit, the actions on Saturday in London are extremely laid back in comparison. Does that make the outrage of the abuse of power any less valid? Absolutely not. Far from it, and I am not here to take that outrage away from anyone. On the contrary. I want to offer the realization that this is our reality and judging from the places I have mentioned above, the future to come.
Why? The answer is relatively simple ( and equally complex but I will leave that for another time ) but throughout history it is has been proven over and over again, that any power that is in decline, will resort to authoritative measures to cling to power for as long as possible. We may not want to hear it, but our entire existence as we know it, is in rapid decline. Those in power, know this, have known this - only research for how long large conservative think tanks and parties have been investing into the academic research of a Zero Growth Economy and you will start to see what’s happening - and they have been prepping, unlike us, for this decline for the past 20 years. Every new law that exist “for your safety”, the erosion of a critical free press, the erosion of social services and free, quality education, the incredibly destructive and the inhibiting reality of life in neo-liberalism exists for very few purposes only. Make the rich richer, quickly, because they know that time and resources are running out and to on the other hand, reduce our ability for critical thought, free time to organize and punish those that do, in order to challenge this greatest of pillages known to man. Make no mistake, the shit, as in, the extreme reduction of your ability to self-determination aka FREEDOM, is happening, has been happening and the only way to stop this, is large scale organization that truly wants to tackle Power. This is where the Police comes in.
Now, the police forces as we know them today exist largely to protect power, not you and me, but power and its subsequent wealth. People organizing in groups to challenge Power are the ultimate threat to Power only because Power knows that it rests on an illusion. An illusion protected and enforced by force and violence, via guns, the courts, laws and so on. The Police as it exists today, exists as the executive repressive arm of Power. When a large groups of people, predominately women in Saturday’s case, get together to hold a vigil for another woman that was brutally murdered, by what appears to have been a member of the police force, they represent the potential threat mentioned above. Their response, no matter who authorized it, comes as no surprise, as Jenny Holzer so wonderfully said all those years ago. There is another insidious angle to all of this as well, and that is what the government in Westminster is trying to push through Parliament today, something that worries me a great deal, and I urge you to watch the below, stay informed about today’s events, call your local MP, push, push and push some more against this insanity.
I will leave it to you to draw your own conclusions from the above and I am certain that most of you already know what to do, but to spell it out: Build Power From Below. Organize around OUR idea of the Future. Show Force. Build Gangs. Unions. Protest. Educate. Create YOUR own future and reclaim your Future. Not theirs.
Granted today was really singular topic wise, but I figured the topic warranted special attention.
Below are a number of links to book lists dealing with the subject of policing that I hope some of you might find useful.
A Reading List To Understand Police Brutality in America
10 Nonfiction Books on Defunding The Police
These should be a good starting point for anyone.